Coronavirus Reveals Dysfunctional Culture in Arizona

In mid-October, 2020, when the coronavirus was again peaking in E.U. states such as France and Germany and U.S. states such as Wisconsin and New Mexico, public health experts were worried about how the upcoming flu season would interact with the new virus, especially as people gather more indoors when outside temperatures turn colder. On October 15, 2020, for instance, seven U.S. states saw record numbers of hospitalizations, according to the Covid Tracking Project, and fourteen states set records for their seven-day averages of new daily cases, according to Johns Hopkins University.[1] France and Germany had already instituted nightly curfews. On October 16, Tier 2 Restrictions went into effect in London, which include urging people to avoid public transportation. Because physical distancing is not always possible on buses, subways, and light rail, universal mask wearing was crucial. According to IHME projections at the time, universal mask wearing in general “could save the lives of more than 70,000 Americans in the next three and a half months.”[2] With New Mexico’s chief executive referring to the coronavirus situation as “the most serious emergency that New Mexico has ever faced” on October 14, it was very troubling that Arizona, which borders New Mexico, had failed to enforce laws requiring masks on public transportation. This failure is extraordinary because of the mentality behind it.
On June 19, 2020, Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix metropolitan area, had announced mask regulations approved by the Board of Supervisors. One of the regulations reads, “All riders and operators on public transportation must wear a mask.”[3] This bore directly on the light rail and buses, which Metro Valley, the transportation authority, either ran directly or through subcontracted operating companies and Allied Security. With enforcement of the new regulation being “the responsibility of law enforcement,”[4] Metro Valley announced that it would not use its employees and subcontracted security guards to enforce the regulation. In allowing passengers to board the buses and light rail without wearing masks, Metro Valley was actually breaking the law even during the “second wave” of the virus in June, 2020. In fact, it was not uncommon to see bus drivers and security guards either not wearing masks or wearing them around their chins rather than on their mouths and noses. It was especially common to see the riders wear masks covering only the chin.
Metro Valley’s excuse for not enforcing the “requirement,” which meant allowing passengers (and employees) to be on mass transit without wearing masks even though the regulation forbid it, was that some passengers (and employees) could not wear masks due to medical conditions like asthma. Allowing this exception to break the rule overall bespoke ignorance, stinginess, and laziness. Because at risk riders could have been accommodated with the modest requirement of having their respective physicians fill out a medical form that in turn would be necessary to obtain a special medical transit ID. Medical IDs were already issued to the disabled who had a medical provider fill out Metro Valley’s medical form. The transit authority did not have to emasculate the regulation and thus the public health on account of an exception. Talking to Metro Valley supervisors, I was struck by the near obsession on the exception to the extent that I could detect no awareness of making a requirement anything but, and in so doing, violating the regulation. Small minds should not rule large companies, for the consequent harm to the public can be large.
I was thrice flabbergasted when I listened on my phone to Metro Valley customer-service employees insist that masks were required on buses and light rail and that passengers could ride without masks was not incompatible with the requirement! Declarations by ignorance that cannot be wrong have a bad odor. Such ignorance has no legitimate basis in standing on stilts above customers (or anyone). When I pointed out the obvious point that allowing maskless riders on buses and trains means that masks are not required, the standard reply was actually corrective. “Masks are required. Riders will not be turned away for not wearing masks.” How can a mind possibly hold those two thoughts together as if they were consistent? Perhaps willful ignorance enjoys being corrective because of the little bit of power that can be enjoyed—so starved for the pleasure from power is the weak bird of prey, according to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Unfortunately, neither the county sheriff’s office nor the Phoenix police (nor that of at least one suburb) felt the need to enforce the county and various city laws on masks. “You need to call Metro Valley on that,” I was told as I sought comment. Even if Metro Valley had a policy of enforcing rather than breaking the regulation (and city laws) mandating masks on public transit, it was still the responsibility of law enforcement (i.e., not a transit company) to see that the regulation (and laws) are enforced. For law-enforcement agencies of municipal governments to rely on company policies conflates governmental law with organizational policies. The lack of accountability was staggering even as the coronavirus remained as a viable threat to the public health.
The political and educational cultures in Arizona were such that efforts to enforce the regulation and correct Metro Valley’s pathetic policy were especially important. On October 17, 2020 in a conference room at a resort at Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix, two presenters with QAnon “went on a long diatribe against people who wear masks to prevent the spread [of coronavirus]. It’s a way to control people, and a symbol of submission, they argued.”[5] It bears stating that in 2019, Arizona had ranked 49^th out of the 50 American states on education prior to college. Unfortunately, a culture of ignorance can easily support and spread the message of QAnon in Arizona—“inventing an imaginary threat and ignoring the very real virus” in spite of all those people who had already died from the pathogen. Such a culture can also enable a vacuous “requirement” to be perpetuated as if it were really a requirement rather than an instance of reason turned against itself with impunity. In such a culture, a significant number of riders and employees, including bus drivers, can be expected to skirt their company’s policy on mask-wearing because it is a fraud anyway. Such employees need only have told their respective supervisors that a medical condition prevents the wearing of a surgical mask without any written documentation to support the validity of the claim. In such a culture, bus drivers would rather bar riders from sitting in the front half of the buses, meaning that the riders might not be able to keep apart spatially as per governmental and even Metro Valley’s own guidelines, than bother to wear masks while driving. Why could such drivers be required to wear plastic face guards if a legitimate medical reason exists for not wearing a surgical mask? Besides the culture of ignorance, one of a lack of regard for the public health (i.e., other people) is also part of the sordid culture that has been so ensconced in Arizona.

A Metro Valley employee and a rider covering their respective chins. 

Security employees exposing their noses and mouths contrary to company policy. It is no wonder that riders did so as well, or went without masks, even though they were "required."

At times, the bus rider on the right held his green towel by his teeth, as if this were equivalent to wearing a mask. Such minimalists were common on public transportation during the pandemic.

A bus driver wearing his mask to cover his chin. I called Metro Valley to report the unsafe practice, and yet two months later, the driver was still leaving his mouth and nose exposed (see photo immediately below). Moreover, the continued prevalence of drivers without masks or not wearing them correctly is an indication that Metro Valley and its subcontracted operator companies have been managerially incompetent in holding drivers accountable. The continued bad driving (e.g., stopping abruptly rather than coasting to a light already red) also points to managerial negligence. 

Two (of several) other bus drivers not wearing masks, hence violating company policy. Were they medically exempt, presumably they would be wearing face coverings instead. 

Seats being held/blocked contrary to Metro Valley's policy by drivers. A plastic divider between the drivers and the seats is supposed to be sufficient protection for the drivers. Their efforts at over-protection, incredibly even by maskless drivers, can be at the expense of passengers being able to maintain physical distance between each other. Even though restricting the seating violates company policy and the company is aware of the practice, accountability has been a problem. 

A security guard starring at me taking a picture (which is legal) perhaps to intimidate me while literally overlooking the maskless rider stretched out on three seats. Starring at innocent riders to intimidate them while ignoring infractions of train policies (e.g., lying over three seats) epitomizes the local police/security culture. 

Four security guards in one-half of a train car, and four in a train car on a routine basis. Such excessiveness intimidates paying customers and leaves other trains without any protection. This epitomizes the local police/security culture in which as many of three backup police cars are used for police giving a traffic ticket. Meanwhile, the police departments refuse to enforce the laws on mask-wearing in retail stores and on public transportation. Hence, "bipolar" aptly characterizes the culture, wherein minor matters deprioritize more important ones. 

A security employee prohibited by Metro Valley even to instruct riders how to wear masks correctly. 

Perhaps the overriding question is how such a badly managed mass transit company (including its subcontractors that operate the buses) could continue in such a condition of ineptitude. In 2019, I had shot lots of videos of aggressive bus drivers, bad driving (e.g., stomping on the brake pedal at the last minute), and excess security on some trains (hence with none in others). The city of Tempe’s Transportation director invited me to attend a meeting with Tempe’s transit director, representatives from Metro Valley and the director of one of the bus-operating subcontractor companies (First Trans) in the room. Reflecting the local culture, the director dismissed all of my videos because one of them shows speeding of only six miles-per-hour above the speed-limit. To my utter astonishment, the other people in the room let him get away with the illogical effort to invalidate all of the videos—even those showing aggressive bus drivers shouting at passengers (the drivers generally viewed their ridership as lower class than themselves, which would have to be pretty low). Tempe’s representative lied to the director, “The city of Tempe has no problem with the driving,” after only months earlier having told me that speeding is a real problem (to which I added hard braking). Perhaps bribes helped reinforce the pathetic inter-organizational culture there.
Also up for grabs is why the local law enforcement would decide not to enforce a law so relevant to the public’s safety/health, and let the mass transit company (and its contractors) violate the law by allowing passengers to ride without wearing masks. It seems that in Arizona, the local law enforcement agencies have too much discretion over which laws they will enforce. Anyone calling in a noise complaint there knows this to be true. 
Ironically, and reflective of the bipolar culture, residents in poor and middle-class areas have had to endure police departments' excess reliance on low-flying police helicopters, which have routinely interloped beyond their respective jurisdictions (such as a city helicopter flying over county land), flown outside of designated air corridors for fly-through traffic, and flown around more expensive neighborhoods.  
On the evening when I published this essay at a coffee shop, a police car passed by as I was about to go to the shopping center's parking lot, and a few minutes a police helicopter flew over diagonally. Both seemed to be on a routine basis and duplicative rather than on a coordinated search. Then a mile away, just after I had stopped at a grocery store, another police helicopter was making at least ten wide circles over a nice looking residential neighborhood before flying away. Then just before I reached my apartment, several miles away, I saw yet another police helicopter (with yet another in the distance). The next morning on my way to the coffee shop to edit this essay, I again saw a police helicopter. The local residents may be used to living in a police state, but we others are not and it doesn't take long for us to notice it on account of its excessiveness, just as we new-comers notice the proclivity of the local police departments to refuse to enforce certain laws. To be sure, surveillance and so many back-up police cars for traffic tickets do take up resources, including personnel. If half the effort were applied instead to enforcing masks on public transit when the E.U. and many U.S. Midwestern and Northeastern states were coronavirus hotspots, Arizona would have been in a better position going into the winter.  

[1] Christina Maxouris and Jason Hanna, “The US Has Reached 8 Million Covid-19 Cases, and the Pace of New Infections Signals a Tough Winter,” CNN.com, October 16, 2020.
[2] Ibid.
[3] “Board Approves Mask Regulations Due to Community Spread of COVID-19,” Maricopa County Communications Office, June 19, 2020.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Donie O’Sullivan, “Analysis: A CNN Reporter Went to Two Different QAnon Events. Here’s What He Found,” CNN.com, October 19, 2020 (accessed same day).

An Aggressive Culture Applied to a Pandemic

If a local culture does not value education, such that the public education system is weak, and furthermore engages in and enables aggressive behavior, even self-protective statements and efforts can provoke aggressive responses based on ignorance. In such a culture, authorities may be particularly unlikely to stem such aggression, and they may even be inclined to engage in active or passive aggression against victims rather than enforce laws and rules. For existence, police called on a noise complaint at an apartment complex may willfully or unwittingly turn on the complainer not due to lack of noise, but, rather, out of ignorance as to what constitutes a residential disturbance, fear of confronting people who are disturbing others, a desire to inhibit future calls or simply due the aggressor’s bidding by blaming the victim for complaining. Besides indicating a corrupt, sordid police culture, that of the locality itself would likely be compromised. During a pandemic, such pathology might be especially transparent because it is clear when people and authorities are not only not enforcing laws and organizational policies geared to protecting both employees and customers, but also acting against public health by turning on the victims. The case of Arizona and, more particularly, the Phoenix police department, is particularly revealing.

On March 30, 2020, the chief executive of Arizona issued an executive order in response to the coronavirus pandemic. With enumerated exceptions, people in Arizona were to stay in their places of domicile. Essential activities constitute the first exception in the order. Obtaining food (i.e., groceries) is first on the list of such activities. Interestingly, outside exercise, including walking, and “constitutionally protected activities such as speech and religion” are also listed.[1] The order requires that when “individuals ar using shared or outdoor spaces when outside their residence or property for Essential Activities, they shall to the extent possible maintain physical distancing of at least six feet from any other person, consistent with guidance from the CDC.”[2] The word shall here means must. The executive order is stronger than mere guidance. Even so, even local police in Phoenix took physical distancing to be nothing stronger than CDC guidelines. Even though the executive order states that “(n)o person shall be required to provide documentation or proof of their activities to justify their activities under this order,” the order was enforceable against infractions. Even so, the police in Phoenix were not necessarily grasping this point.

  

For example, while I was shopping at an Albertsons (Safeway) grocery store in Phoenix on May 1, 2020, when the executive order was still in full effect, a man approached me very closely from behind while I was at the front of a one-way aisle. Even though the “cash register has emerged as the most dangerous place” in a grocery store, “according to public health and worker safety experts,” the most dangerous place for customers may be the aisles when confronted with a customer who not only refuses to keep a distance, but also becomes physically and verbally abusive as a result.[3]

The customer who I encountered was confrontational and aggressive from the outset. He refused to step back, causing me to back up past the product I had been selecting. I asked him to step back so I could get the product, but he told me I would have to go down the aisle and come around again. We were at logger-heads. The aisle was too narrow for him to pass me. Indeed, passing me so closely would have violated the store requirement that six feet be maintained where possible (e.g., excepting the cashier area). While I was calling for a store employee or manager to come (none did), the other customer rammed into my cart, causing it to block the narrow aisle. Both he and his wife (far behind him) were hurling insults to me even though he had violated the store requirement. Even as I was walking to the store manager’s office, the customer’s wife felt the need to insult me. It is such aggression on top of fault that I submit is particularly toxic, as well as prevalent in the local culture there.

A police supervisor claimed he couldn't tell tell from either my video or the store's who slammed into whom. Why would a police manager lie? I had called to complain about his subordinate, but the supervisor managed to dissimulate and deflect (indicative of the culture).

Adding insult to injury, when the police arrived—seven or eight of them!—after I had agreed to the manager’s suggestion that I report the aggression to them, four of the police were positionally or vocally hostile and even confrontational with me even in approaching me. Put another way, when the caller is the victim, he or she does not need three police standing in a hostile pose behind the police employee conversing with the victim. Such distrust applied to a victim is consistent with blaming the victim.

Even though the store manager told me later that she had told the police that the store requirement on physical distancing was not a suggestion, the policewoman told me that the manager had told her otherwise. I showed the police employee a large sign indicating that maintaining six feet of distance was a store requirement and told her that a store policy is not a suggestion, then she was once again antagonistic, threatening me by asking me if I understand that I could be charged with assault because my cart blocked the aisle after the other customer repeatedly slammed into the cart. 

I don't know why law enforcement would even venture an opinion on a store policy (and getting that wrong) when it is clear that law enforcement enforces laws. The police employee even got the law wrong. She erroneously claimed that the governor’s executive order only gave a guideline for physical distancing, so it was unenforceable. Strangely, she even told me that the police cannot enforce a store policy, or suggestion as she viewed a policy to be. “A store policy is not a law,” the police employee told a man with three degrees in business. Perhaps because she was irked at me for knowing more, she even told me that I had committed an assault against the customer who had rammed my cart because my cart was blocking the aisle. Incredible!

Was there no limit to the lengths that the local police would go to blame the victim? Later, when I spoke with the policewoman’s supervisor, who had also been at the store but had not bothered to speak with me, I was stunned when he claimed that he couldn’t tell from the store’s video (and presumably mine, as the police woman had shown my video to him in the store) who was slamming whose cart. After the police herd had left the store, the store manager and I examined very closely the store video, and we agreed that the other customer had rammed my cart—not vice versa. Yet later, the police supervisor claimed that nothing of the sort was on the tape (including my own!) and that the store manager had agreed with him. “It is on tape,” I told the supervisor by phone. “You’re wrong,” he said, “maybe your conduct was disorderly.” He was threatening to charge me with disorderly conduct!

In short, the local police seem to have been getting away with turning the tables on victims, especially if a police employee (or supervisor!) is annoyed when a victim tries to support his or her claim even with audio-video by returning to the matter of the actual aggression. Even when I called in a complaint against loud, heavy-bass music near my apartment, the policeman who responded felt the need to focus on me rather than the ordinance-violator. “She says that you taping her music from inside your apartment is harassment.” Even getting some evidence away from the culprit’s apartment outside would not constitute harassment. In fact, for a police department to discourage evidence and then refuse to intercede for lack of evidence (i.e, he said, she said) suggests (just a suggestion!) a dysfunctional police culture (as well as incompetent employees). For a police department to take such a counter-claim seriously and even use an accusation-tone with the victim of the disturbing loud noise may suggest (just a suggestion!) that the police employees are habituated to blaming the victim or even viewing every call as a dispute rather than a complaint.

In my conversations with the policewoman at Safeways and her supervisor later by phone, neither person wanted to talk about the aggression against me. They were both accusatory throughout. Even though I had both the store requirement and that in the governor’s executive order backing me up (as well as even my video of the incident), the strategy of the police was to undermine me at every point—too keep the focus on me—even accusing me of physical assault and disorderly conduct. The store manager had suggested that I let her call the police, and I concluded after the police herd had left that I could no longer trust the police to even focus on aggressors. Such passive aggression, moreover, is a glaring indication of a dysfunctional department culture.

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[1] Executive Order 2020-18, State of Arizona, March 30, 2020.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Nathaniel Meyersohn, “This Is the Most Dangerous Place in the Grocery Store,” CNNbusiness, May 1, 2020 (accessed same day).

A U.S. Visa Fast-Track For Rich Investors

The New York Times reported in December 2011 that affluent foreigners had been rushing to take advantage of a U.S. immigration program. The foreign applicants must invest at least $500,000 in construction projects within the United States. The number of applicants had nearly doubled since the end of 2008 to more than 3,800 in the 2011 fiscal year. The intent of the program is to spur economic development at a time of high unemployment. Yet the program has also been characterized as a cash-for-visas scheme. Besides the question of whether the program’s rules have been stretched in New York City to qualify projects in prosperous areas for special concessions, an ethical question can be raised concerning who should get a visa.
Obviously, the program’s designers must have known that only wealthy people could qualify. A public-interest ethical argument could be made that they deserve a green card because they contribute to economic development out of which jobs for Americans can ensue. Indeed, to the extent that the additional investment results in more economic activity, the visitors making the investment in 2011 could have been helping to forestall a double-dip recession. This was a distinct possibility at the time, given the E.U. debt crisis.
The ethical issue is in the exclusion of people who are not wealthy. The principle of fairness would seem to mandate that just as many non-rich foreigners be granted green cards above the ordinary limit. However, this would seem to be rather artificial—a sort of tit for tat—as in “we’ll accept your tax cut if you accept ours.” Moreover, in the context of high unemployment, any such increase in visas should not add to the supply of labor.
John Rawls suggested that in designing such a system as applying for a green card, a veil of ignorance as to whether one will be rich or poor should be utilized. Rawls’ thinking was that if the designers cannot know whether they or their friends will be rich or poor, then the proposed system design will be fair (i.e., there would be the chance that one’s friends are poor foreigners unable to get a green card). While fair in itself, this ethical device may not adequately take into account the public interest that could be satisfied by only one segment (e.g., the rich). Should the U.S. renounce the possibility of more economic development, particularly at a time of high unemployment, just because poor and middle-class foreigners cannot participate?
Related to the matter of income and wealth, it can be asked from both the public interest and ethical standpoints whether capital investment is more valuable economically than highly skilled and educated foreigners. To be sure, the latter ought not crowd out citizens and existing residents who have comparable skills and knowledge, and it is presumably possible to further train and educate existing citizens and residents.
For example, the very same issue of the New York Times containing the story of the green cards for foreign investors reported that M.I.T. was announcing an expanded program that would still allow anyone anywhere to take M.I.T. courses online free of charge, but would add online labs, self-assessments and student-to-student discussion. Also, for a small charge, a certificate can be obtained. At the time, the university’s free OpenCourseWare included nearly 2,100 courses and had been used by more than 100 million people. Rafael Reif, the provost, gave the following as the operating assumption: “There are many people who would love to augment their education by having access to M.I.T. content, people who are very capable to earn a certificate from M.I.T.” To be sure, a certificate would not be a degree, but in terms of non-professional jobs the former may be sufficient. “The most important thing is that it’ll be a certificate that will clearly state that a body sanctioned by M.I.T. says you have gained mastery,” Reif added. The notion that cost (and debt) ought not be an obstacle to a natural drive to learn more, whether in terms of skills or knowledge, is foreign in the United States (and increasingly in Europe as well).
Yet from the standpoint of economic development as well as jobs, viewing education as an investment rather than as a purchased product would likely pay substantial dividends. Where such an approach to vocational training and higher education falls short for citizens and residents, welcoming the best and the brightest from abroad—even training and educating them at online programs such as M.I.T’s—may be an investment policy even more beneficial than that of attracting additional capital investment in construction projects.

Sources:

Tamar Lewin, “M.I.T. Plans to Expand Its Free Online Courses,” The New York Times, December 19, 2011.

Patrick McGeehan and Kirk Semple, “Rules Stretched as Green Cards Go to Investors,” The New York Times, December 19, 2011. 

Analysis of Inferences and Assumptions: A Homework Assignment for “We the People”

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both strongly believed that the continued viability of a republic depends on an educated and virtuous citizenry. Public education and even the practice of some of the professional schools (e.g., medicine and law) since at least the early twentieth century to require a degree in another school (e.g. Liberal Arts and Sciences) before being admitted to the undergraduate program (i.e., the M.D. and J.D. or LLB, respectively). This lateral move is unique to the U.S.; entering medical and law students in the E.U. need not already have a college degree. I submit that the Founding Fathers’ firm political belief in the importance of an educated electorate concerns the value of not only having a broad array of knowledge, but also reason being able to assess its own inferences, or assumptions; for inferences, or leaps of reason, go into political judgments. Ultimately, voters make judgements, whether concerning the worthiness of candidates on a ballot, their policies, or proposals on a referendum. To the extent that subjecting assumptions to the “stress test” of reasoning is not a salient part of secondary education, an electorate is likely to make sub-optimal judgements, resulting in suboptimal elected officials, public policies, and laws.

Government ultimately by “We the People” can be risky business, especially if any plank of a constitution can be changed by amendment. Were a super-majority of Americans intent on bringing back slavery, the constitutional-amendment process would enable the people through their elected representatives to repeal the 12^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages was repealed in 1933 after thirteen years. Clearly, the assumptions that had gone into the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment turned out to be faulty. Had the American electorate have subjected those assumptions to better critical-analysis  when that amendment was being debated in the first place, perhaps organized crime would not have prospered and grown as much as it did. My assumption here is in need of critical analysis, however, as I know very little about the history of Prohibition. Yet I just made the assumption nevertheless. I contend that such a making of assumptions—out of very, very imperfect information yet made nonetheless—is a huge problem that remains largely invisible in representative democracy as a form of government. My aim here is to improve it by making one of its fault-lines transparent, and thus potentially treatable.

Speaking recently with a construction worker—a man of about 30 years old—I was impressed with his knowledge of how to put windows on buildings. “If you use a finger to smooth out the caulking around a window, you are getting chemicals such as the oil on your finger on the caulk, and this could diminish the sealing ability.” I was stunned that something I would admittedly do without a thought would be in his eyes an elementary error. “Even some of the guys who do residential windows don’t know this,” he said. He worked on office buildings. He went on to complain that the company, with his union’s consent, takes as much out if his paycheck for health-insurance as from the paychecks of workers who have families insured. “It’s just me,” he lamented, “so I’m subsidizing my union brothers whose health insurance covers their wives and kids.” I agreed with him that the arrangement seemed unfair.

Then, unfortunately, he turned to politics. It was as though he was suddenly on drugs. “I’m for Hillary,” he asserted. “Bill Clinton was one of the best presidents, and if Hillary were president, the two of them would talk in bed about stuff. Bill would be president again. Hillary had influence when Bill was president.” I asked why Bill Clinton was such a good president, to which my interlocutor replied, “Unemployment was low, the economy was humming, and the [federal] government had a [budget] surplus.” Exhausted just from contemplating the guy’s leaps in reasoning alone, I did not comment.

I could have added that Bill Clinton had signed off on legislation repealing the 1933 Glass-Steagal Act forbidding commercial banks to do investment-bank work and vice versa. The risk taken on by many of the largest banks in the U.S. would play a significant role in freezing up of the commercial paper (i.e., overnight inter-bank lending) market in September 2008. Additionally, Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, played a significant role in lobbying Congress to keep financial derivative securities, such as the bonds that are based on risky home-mortgages, unregulated. With Larry Summers, also in the Clinton Administration, and Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Fed, Rubin lobbied members of Congress to ignore the pleas of Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to give her agency oversight of the off-exchange markets for derivatives.[1] She resigned in 1999, just after Congress passed legislation prohibiting the CFTC from regulating derivatives.[2] As a result, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed chair Ben Bernanke had no idea how many subprime-mortgage-based bonds existed when so many of them defaulted in 2008. In that financial crisis, the U.S. Government was flying purblind, as if the Titanic in the North Atlantic at night.

Viable assessments of Bill Clinton’s presidency would have to include the above, whereas the impact of his administration on unemployment and GNP-growth is more questionable. That the dot.com bubble collapsed in 2000 may suggest that any impact Clinton may have had on the U.S. economy was not necessarily good in the long-run. Even so, my interlocutor simply assumed that Bill Clinton was largely responsible for the economic boom.

Even to assume that Clinton should get the credit for the federal government’s budget surpluses ignores the vital role that the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, played. Furthermore, to the extent that a president does not have an appreciable impact on the U.S. economy as a whole, any surplus due to increased tax revenues from the economic boom could also not be credited to Bill Clinton. In fact, that he decided to spend half of the surpluses rather than use all of the extra money to reduce the government’s accumulated debt—perhaps under the assumption that the boom would continue for decades—can be said to be problematic, or at least short-sighted.

In terms of Bill and Hillary’s relationship, I must confess complete and utter ignorance. In the movie Dave, the fictional U.S. president and his wife hate each other and thus perpetuate the illusion that they are sleeping in the same bed. The assumption itself of any knowledge of the Clinton’s relationship, and more specifically even who would “be president” were Hillary elected in 2016, is a red flag. In other words, that the construction worker presumed so much on a matter so private, and so very distant, told me just how carried away people can get in making assumptions and yet be wholly unaware of how deeply problematic the sheer making of the assumptions is. In other words, I saw no evidence of an internal feed-back corrective in the man’s mind, such that he might beg off his declaratory asseverations. 

Moreover, I realized that his faulty chain of inferences would play a key role in the construction worker’s eventual vote for U.S. President in 2016. I contend that he is by no means alone. In fact, bad assumptions may play a very significant role the American—and indeed any—electorate’s votes.

Consider, for example, how many Americans have declared that Barak Obama is a Muslim. The very ideational act of presuming to know the faith of a person so distant is itself a red-flag. If the assumption played a role in how some of the electorate voted in 2008 and 2012, and if the assumption is wrong, then the phenomenon of unchecked assumptions really does play a significant role in how an electorate—the popular sovereign—does as the “We the People” of a representative democracy. In other words, popular sovereignty itself, to which governmental sovereignty (i.e., governments) is, theoretically at least, an agent, has a rather basic downside, or vulnerability.

If I am correct, then public education in any representative democracy should include assumptional analysis, wherein students are taught how to assess their assumptions and any “supporting” inferences. As a result, the future electors should be able to get a better grip on how far they go in making inferences based on no or scant information. I contend that representative democracy would be a much better form of government were the human, all too human, assumptional “brain sickness” made transparent and treated.

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[1] Peter S. Goodman, “The Reckoning: Taking a Hard New Look at a Greenspan Legacy,” The New York Times, October 9, 2008.

[2] Michael Hirsh, Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future Over to Wall Street (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2010).

Ebola in Liberia: The Government’s Fault?

With the Ebola virus “spreading like wildfire” in Liberia, “devouring everything in its path,” Brownie Samukai, the state’s defense minister, went on to tell the U.N. Security Council on September 9, 2014 that “Liberia is facing a serious threat to its national existence.”[1] With more than half of the epidemic’s deaths in that state—1,224 out of at least 2,2296 in West Africa as of September 6, 2014—and new cases “increasing exponentially,” the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that “the demands of the Ebola outbreak have completely outstripped the government’s and partners’ capacity  to respond.”[2] Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that the illness had severely handicapped the mining, agriculture, and service sectors of the state’s economy.[3] Quite understandably, pleas for the government to do more peeled like frightened bells across the state. “The patients are hungry, they are starving. No food, no water,” a terrified woman told journalists. “The government needs to do more. Let Ellen Johnson Sirleaf do more!”[4] Even if valid, such blame is hypocritical to the extent that the people themselves had been refusing to do what is necessary to stop such a virus from spreading.

Concerning the validity of woman’s charge that the government was not doing nearly enough, Samukai pointed out that the “already weak health infrastructure” was overwhelmed.[5] That is to say, the government had to deal with an already-insufficient healthcare system. Why insufficient? Two theories of development give different answers. According to dependencia, or dependency theory, the infrastructure of a colony is oriented to getting commodities out to the colonizer rather than to developing an internal, web-like system. Roads of a coastal colony, for example, are prioritized that go from the interior to the coast, where ships can pick up the goods and transport them to the core economy (e.g., Europe). The colonists and even their successors cannot be blamed for the lack of internally-oriented infrastructure, yet at some point after a sufficient amount of time as a sovereign state the lack of any progress is surely blameworthy.

The modernization theory says that what holds a developing country back is not its colonial infrastructure, but, rather, things like tradition and ignorance that a people stubbornly cling to even when offered a better way. Superstition, for example, may keep people from working on certain days while tradition has it that a person should stop working as soon as he or she has enough for subsistence living. This inverse of the Protestant work ethic can keep capital from accumulating to the point that reinvestment can broaden an agrarian economy to include manufacturing industries. Rigidly sticking with the custom that puts child labor above education, a people can keep its young from becoming professionals, business entrepreneurs, and managers. Quite understandably, executives of foreign corporations are hesitant to start operations where such a base labor pool exists and reinforces itself.

Taken together dependencia and modernization theory can account for the weak health infrastructure in Liberia and other former colonies in Africa. Health-care of the natives had not been a priority of the colonizers. Additionally, education and investment, as well as even foreign direct investment, may be lacking even though they would contribute much to building a sound healthcare system.

Applied to the Ebola outbreak, we can look beyond the government and healthcare infrastructure to apply modernization theory to the people themselves. The funeral custom, for example, of touching the body the deceased friend or relative is great for the virus, which spreads by touch rather than air. Even so, the African who have this tradition stubbornly and/or ignorantly held to it even as the epidemic was spreading. Additionally, villagers took to hiding sick residents rather than allowing visiting healthcare workers to take the infected people to makeshift treating facilities out of fear that people go to die at such places; meanwhile, the villagers themselves could become infected. In some cases, villagers even attacked the visitors, stubbornly ignoring their pleas.

Scared villagers in Liberia stand far away from the healthcare worker, even as they risk getting the virus by rubbing up against each other--ignoring the worker's pleas. (Image Source: The Washington Post)

Simply maintaining a distance from other people, rather than continuing to touch them, would have done a lot to smite the Ebola. Especially sordid is the assumption that the healthcare workers and government officials don’t know what they are talking about, especially if the person also assumes that he or she cannot be wrong—such as in knowing that touching a dead body brings with it benefits that can keep the person healthy or safe. Ignorance that cannot be wrong, backed up by tradition, can indeed be a silent killer, the odor of which can only be pleasing to the Ebola virus. Blaming the government rings hollow from such a putrid drum, even if officials could be doing a better job in mopping up the mess.

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[1] Abby Ohlheiser, “Ebola Is ‘Devouring Everything in Its Path.’ Could It Lead to Liberia’s Collapse?” The Washington Post, September 11, 2014.

[2] WTO, “Ebola Situation in Liberia: Non-Conventional Interventions Needed,” September 8, 2014; Elahe Izadi, “Ebola Death Toll Rises to 2,296 as Liberia Struggles to Keep Up,” The Washington Post, September 9, 2014.

[3] Anna Yukhananov, “IMF Says Ebola Hits Economic Growth in West Africa,” Reuters, September 11, 2014.

[4] Abby Ohlheiser, “Ebola.”

[5] Ibid.

On the Democratization of Credibility: Global Warming Experts

Even as late as 2013, as if the mounting evidence of global warming and our carbon footprint were some new kind of faith narrative whose white-coated high priests preside over a new political religion distinctly American, some members of Congress, political commentators, and lay apostates recoiled with the declaration, "I don't believe in global warming." Epistemologically, to believe is less rigorous than to know. Actually, what they mean is that they know that our industries and carbon-emitting vehicles are blameless, even pure. It is the sheer declarativeness and the underlying epistemological assumption that I want to make transparent, as being inherently problematic and yet likely "hard-wired" in the very fabric of human brain. 

In mid-February, 2014, Charles Krauthammer, a former psychiatrist turned political analyst after his paralyzing accident, sarcastically asked on a Fox "News" show how the "Global Warming Religion" was doing since the polar vortex had drifted southward, well into several U.S. states unaccustomed to such frigid air, in January. He also pointed to the severe drought in California as discrediting the scientists' belief that warmer temperatures would bring more, not less, rain. Were global warming a religion, belief would be the appropriate currency and the political commentator would be entitled to protest the established civic religion by preaching his own belief. Unfortunately for Krauthammer, who strikes me as a natural in analyzing politics, the abundance of scientific evidence on the warming planet and a human contribution made him look ignorant rather than as a prophet chastising zealots. 

Perhaps most incredibly, Krauthammer was ignorant of the actual scientific position on rainfall. Rather than increasing precipitation everywhere, the pattern is expected to shift closer toward the poles. So, while Alaska, Canada, and Europe gain, regions already lean on rainfall, like California, Arizona, Texas, and North Africa, would tend to face even more severe droughts. Not only was the political commentator unaware of the "more extremes" nuance even in the planet warming over all; he also missed the ubiquitous refrain of climatologists that 1) it is extremely difficult to assess the impact that climate change has on a particular storm or season's weather in a given region in part because 2) the predicted changes from global warming are tendencies rather than the case for every storm or season. 

Let's take the extreme cold dipping unusually southward in North America in the winter of 2013-2014 as an example. Can we conclude that the onslaught of frigid Arctic air would occur every winter thereafter? No. We can say that the occurrence is more likely to occur. Because the poles are warming disproportionately over the warming going on closer to the equator, the differential from the latter to the poles reduces (i.e., a less steep downward slope). Less energy in "riding" the slope downward means the resulting "river of air," or jet-stream," is weaker, hence more loopy (not unlike some tired people). Similarly, the circular "river of air" going around the Arctic (and AntArctic) air weakens too (the temperature differential there too being less). As a result, this polar vortex "relaxes" in circulating further southward and with greater lopsidedness. 

Combine the Northern Hemisphere's jet-stream and the Arctic’s spinning polar vortex fencing in the Arctic air, and you have a vortex elongating more and being "enabled" by the elongated loops of the jet stream. The video and pictures (from NASA) below tell the tale. The jet stream looks like a white noodle winding around the Northern Hemisphere. The elongated loop southward in North America captured here on December 16, 2013, opens a sort of void into which the Arctic air can slip because the vortex "river of air" is more pliable or stretchable. 

Can we say therefore that the cold winter of 2013-2014 resulted from climate change (paradoxically the way in which the planet warms causes both warm and cold extremes in various regions)? Perhaps if the extreme cold weather is understood as a more likely tendency, though here too factors idiosyncratic to that winter had a significant impact. Namely, the low-pressure system over Hudson's Bay in Canada meant that a counter-clockwise movement of air around the low would facilitate the Arctic air's trip southward. 

Therefore, to claim that a cold winter in North America (and Siberia too, as shown in "The Big Chill" picture above) invalidates global warming shows just how substantial ignorance of the science can be. Similarly, to claim that a drought in California also invalidates "the religion of global warming" rather than adding support to it shows the same sort of gross over-simplification. Charles Krauthammer's innate insight into politics does not translate into scientific knowledge on climatology. The same can be said of many other self-declared "experts" on global warming on both sides of the political debate.

Being active in political public-discourse is not sufficient to count oneself as knowledgeable on the underlying science. Similarly, having a college degree in medicine does not necessarily mean that a person knows something about climate change, not to mention climatology. In fact, few Americans know that the M.D. degree in medicine is the first degree in medicine, and thus a prerequisite to the doctorate in medicine, the D.Sci.M. (Doctorate in the Science of Medicine). In being a terminal degree, a doctoral degree (even those of professional schools like law, medicine, and business) cannot be a prerequisite to a higher degree in the same discipline or body of knowledge (e.g., medicine). Perhaps the sheer extent of esteem in American society for the well-compensated practices of law and medicine relative to the irrelevant academics in the "ivory towers" (e.g., "those who can't do, teach.") has enabled the undergraduate degrees in medicine (MD) and law (LLB a.k.a. JD) to be counted as if they were doctoral degrees (i.e., terminal rather than prerequisite to another degree, comprehensive exams by professors (not industry boards), and a substantial contribution of original research (typically a book-length dissertation, defended in front of professors in the specialty)).

Therefore, Americans are particularly susceptible to the fallacy that a psychiatrist, physician, or lawyer can be taken as a credible mouthpiece on another discipline, such as climatology. Put another way, Charles Krauthammer was not even entitled to use the title of the doctorate even as he presumed he had earned a degree equivalent to the D.Sci.M. degree (which would be illogical, as only graduates of medicine (i.e., holding the M.D. degree) can be admitted to the doctoral program in medicine), assuming he had even heard of the doctorate in his own field. As though arrogance on stilts during a flood, the political pundit could leap from that presumption to the one I have detailed in this essay. Put another way, presumption can be addictive, even perhaps becoming a personality disorder. This disorder can even be part of the collective unconscious of a society. Now, to round this circle (of hot air?), might it be that presuming we know more than we do has a genetic basis in our species' DNA?  

Human nature may contain the seed of its own destruction to manifest as extinction due to human-induced climate change? That carbon emissions hit a record high in 2012 (rather than being on a downturn by then) may point to such a basic dysfunction in the species that had ironically done so well in terms of natural selection (i.e., multiplying DNA via population growth). We fail to realize that too much success for a species can spell disaster as a result.

No State Left Behind: American Education Eclipsing Federalism

Facing a federal requirement that every student be proficient in math and English by 2014, the member-states in the U.S. rushed to apply for waivers in 2011 and 2012. In 2010, 38 percent of the schools had failed to meet their goals for annual progress toward the 2014 goal. The U.S. Secretary of Education thought that figure could soar to 80 percent. When a school fails to meet such goals, the No Child Left Behind law requires “a series of interventions by the district and the state that can culminate in a state takeover. With so many schools failing, “that threatened to create an impossible burden on states and districts,” according to Chester Finn, director of an institute that studies education.[1] The waivers did not come without strings, however. The Obama administration pushed the governments to measure teacher performance, and put increased emphasis on low-performing groups as well as on the lowest-performing schools.

While the waivers can easily be seen as an effort to put the Obama administration’s own priorities on legislation from a prior administration, the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, claimed that his aim was to get out of a bad law that could overwhelm states that don’t measure up. “Our goal with this waiver process, frankly, has always been to get out of the way of states and districts,” he said.[2] If this were so, however, he would not insist on negotiating for better terms in granting the waivers. Beyond this extent of intervention, that of the No Child Left Behind law requiring “interventions by the district and the state” with failing schools interlards the U.S. Government in a domain that is constitutionally reserved to the states. Absent the enumerated (i.e., listed) powers of the federal government, the fifty republics are sovereign states. While the Congress can spend in the general welfare of the political and monetary union, strings beyond the general purpose trigger a breach of the constitutional design, which should give the republics enough power to act as a check on the other system of government—that of the union itself. That is, specifying down to district intervention meddles inordinately in a state’s system of government to implement federal law.

In terms of education, the role of the U.S. Government should be oriented to regulating the interstate aspects, such as making sure that students are not deprived of equal protection (e.g., not discriminated against) and that out-of-state students are not gauged at the university level. Any spending should come attached to a general purpose (which I believe must be within an enumerated power, especially if there are any strings attached), rather than with requirements for implementation (or penalty). Should a republic not spend the money in line with the purpose (especially if that purpose lies within one of the sovereign domains of the member states), the federal government could sue to get the money back. If this seems to restrict Congressional power unduly, it may be that the federal power had gone so far beyond what is consistent with a federal system that what seems drastic is merely what is necessary to get back in line with it. In terms of failing schools, the underlying problem may be that Americans (i.e., including parents of school children) do not value self-discipline (i.e., at the expense of instant gratification) or education itself enough. Imposing federal requirements and penalties are doomed to fail against such societal disvalues. In other words, we are trashing federalism for nothing.

1. Richard Perez-Pena, “Waivers for 8 More States from ‘No Child Left Behind,” The New York Times, May 30, 2012.

2. Ibid.

California Fiscal Policy: The Crowding-Out Effect

In the U.S. Constitutional Convention of 1787, some delegates expressed the concern that giving the General (federal) Government the authority to tax income would eventually result in a “crowding out” of the ability of state governments to raise revenue. Over two hundred years later, in 2012, California had cut its budget by 20 percent over the previous three years and was still faced with a $16 billion deficit.[1] Unlike Greece, California cannot avail itself of bailout funds from the federal level. Additionally, the Federal Reserve, like the European Central Bank, is barred by statute from bailing out a state government. Even as the U.S. Government places certain requirements on California’s budget that make it more difficult for the Government of California to make cuts, it could not avail itself of the bailout (TARP) that had benefitted Wall Street banks and the Michigan auto industry.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.

1. “California Governor Calls for Higher Taxes, 4-day State Workweek to Fill $16 Billion Gap,” NBC News, May 14, 2012. 

A Lawyer Comes Up Short on Obama on the U.S. Supreme Court

As president, Thomas Jefferson campaigned against the U.S. Supreme Court in the pivotal 1800 election after the court let the Alien and Sedition Acts stand. The law criminalized criticizing government officials of the U.S. Government. Lincoln announced during his 1860 campaign that he would not enforce the court’s Dred Scott decision upholding slavery in U.S. territories. In saying that invalidating the Affordable Healthcare Act would represent an unprecedented act of judicial activism, Obama was not going nearly that far. In other words, he was not saying he would ignore the decision. Nor did Obama announce anything like Roosevelt’s unsuccessful court-packing scheme.

Even so, a lawyer who teaches law at Samford University in Alabama opined, “It’s virtually unprecedented for a president to criticize the institutional powers of the Supreme Court. I don’t know of any other instance where a president has publically questioned the legitimacy of judicial review.”[1] Apparently the lawyer had not heard of Lincoln’s announcement or Roosevelt’s court-packing.

This example of commentary by the lawyer illustrates why law schools hiring lawyers to teach law classes is fundamentally different than hiring legal scholars to be law professors. A lawyer can become an expert on the technical nuances of a statute or judicial opinion, as well as how to argue such points in a court of law. This is not the same as having scholarly expertise on jurisprudence, which includes constitutional philosophy and history. The difference can be expressed as that which exists between examining individual trees and grasping the contours of the forest. Ironically, as a graduate student in law progresses in the LLM and JSD degrees, the seminars become more specific in coverage (the dissertation of the doctoral candidate in a JSD program being incredibly specific), the level of abstraction increases so a wider perspective is proffered though the narrowing disciplinary focus.

Were law school deans in the U.S. republics to hire scholars as professors rather than lawyers as instructors, the students would benefit immensely from the standpoint of learning the knowledge of law, rather than simply how to practice it.

1. Richard Wolf, “Other Presidents Took on High Court before Obama,” USA Today, April 6, 2012.