South Dakota Politics

Blanchard Triumphant! Sort of, at the Aberdeen Pig Out.

Yours truly won a big honkin' trophy and a small purse at the Aberdeen Pig Out this afternoon.  I came in second in the Chicken cook off, with my Southern Pulled Chicken.  To give you an idea of my minimalist methods, consider this shot. 

The little set up on the left, that's my station.  Just next to it was my competitor.  I don't like to admit it, but he may have been my sole competitor. If so, I won the purse merely by turning in something resembling chicken.  Some folks might take a hit to their pride over something like this.  Me, I'll take the cash.  Here is a shot of a friend and former student playing in a blues trio, the Retro Rockets. Pete is on the right.   

Mother nature was about 95% cooperative for the Aberdeen event.  It was sunny but comfortably cool almost all day long, with a nice breeze.  It did sprinkle on us just a bit.  Here is a shot of the cumulonimbus cloud as it moved away to the south. 

And here, finally, is a shot of the master at work.

And by the way, my pulled chicken was very good. 

Coleman and Thune Fight For Real Fairness

Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota is fighting the reimposition of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" in which the federal government forces it broadcast license holders (namely radio and broadcast TV) to give "equal time" to all sides.  This is widely perceived to be an attack on conservative talk radio, which has flourished since the abolition of the fairness doctrine in the late 1980s.  Coleman is getting help from John  Thune. 

Senate Democrats on Friday blocked an amendment by Sen. Norm Coleman that would have prevented the return of the Fairness Doctrine, a federal rule which required broadcasters to air opposing views on issues.
(snip)

Coleman said he thought it was "very dangerous for government to be in the position of deciding what's fair and balanced."

Coleman has been pushing his legislation along with several other Republicans, including John Thune of South Dakota.

"Having the bureaucrats dictate the content of the airwaves," Thune said, "isn't much different from what we are seeing in places like Iran and Russia where they are rolling back freedom of the press."

While Thune may exaggerate a bit, one takes his point that government deciding who gets to say what and when is not exactly the definition of freedom.  What do the proponents of the Fairness Doctrine have to say on their behalf?  Here's Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL):

"The airwaves belong to the American people," Durbin said. "Those who profit from them do by permission of the people through their government." He said that broadcasters should provide both points of view on an issue.

Sen. Durbin is channeling Jean Jacques Rousseau.  Apparently Durbin believes that there is a "people" who have certain demands of their broadcasters, and the "general will" of the people is to be translated by regulators into policy.  But how do we know what "the people" want?  "The people" want different things.  Evidently a lot of people want conservative talk radio.  Some people want NPR (which, admittedly, is a government run radio station that likely could not survive without public subsidies).  Some people want rock music, others country music.  Some people want the farm report.  Some people wanted Al Franken, but not enough to keep him on the air.  If "the people" want to listen to a particular program, that program will attract advertisers, and it will be a successful program.  If it does not attract advertisers because of low audience, then it will go away.  That is another way of figuring out what "the people" want.

The Simple Life

Patrick Deneen asks an important question, whether modern suburban life and the commerce that sustains it is subversive to the good life.  In particular he asks whether it is reconcilable with Catholic thought.  It's a long post, but read the whole thing.  In short, Dr. Pat argues that suburban life undermines community, social cohesion, and perpetuates inequality.  Here's a taste:

Suburbs not only segregate families from one another - and increasingly, family members from one another - but segregate our life-activities from one another. Zoning regulations forbid the intermingling of commerce and "living," and hence few suburban settings allow for the possibility of enacting commercial transactions in or near the places where one lives. Compare the current suburban enclave - where one must drive significant distances to purchase a distantly produced gallon of milk or loaf of Wonder Bread (R)- to many older American towns and cities (take, for example, the town where I live, Alexandria, Virginia) or most European communities where families still live above their shops and stores, where one's shopping can be done by walking through one's town.

I commented at length on Dr. Pat's site, taking a comment by Joe Knippenberg as my starting point.  Let me reproduce that comment here: Let me build on Joe K.'s comments. Living in an isolated small town struggling to survive, and surrounded by even smaller towns fading from existence, one sees that small town life can be idealized to the extent it blurs reality. As Joe sugggests, at this point most small towns are small because no one wants to live there. In my town there are plenty of jobs, but not very many "white collar" jobs. So most kids, including the college kids I teach, must look elsewhere for their career (or, if you will, vocation). Indeed, in South Dakota , out migration of young people is a major problem. In most small towns, unless you want to farm or work as a clerk at the gas station, there are no jobs for you.

I share Patrick's discomfort with modern life, with its consumerism, frivolity, and isolating tendencies. But the alternative picture he paints will certainly make us poorer than we otherwise would be, and that's a problem. Does Patrick deny the efficiency created by the modern economy, with its division of labor and economies of scale? This has created massive amounts of wealth allowing Americans to live in unbelievable comfort.

Now that comfort may also be hollowing out our souls. It may produce countless gadgets with which to distract ourselves (physician heal thyself!), a nihilistic popular culture that thrives on vulgarity, and the reduction of all questions to ones of either comfort or economic calculus. But, that same economy has produced untold wealth that allows us to, say, treat childhood cancer patients so they have a chance to live. Allows older people to get artificial joints so they can lead lives free of constant pain. Creates the MRI machines that allow us to do to see into the body in ways that used to be done through invasive surgery. Allows the common man to travel the world with relative ease to see things our grandparents only dreamed of. These kinds of innovations do not come about in rustic, self-sufficient, quaint neighborhoods and economies. This is why, for example, in most of the world clean drinking water is still a dream.

It may be that at the heart of the American (and perhaps the modern) experiment lies a contradiction, indeed a tragedy. The desire for Progress, indeed an almost religious faith in Progress, comes from a very human desire to live a life of comfort, liberating one's self from back breaking labor and conquering disease. That same faith in Progress also neglects another part of the human soul that longs for community, that seeks to know the infinite, that wants to pass on a certain way of life to ones posterity in addition to passing on wealth and comfort. This, I think, is at the heart of Tocqueville's discussion of religion along side the "perfectibility of man." There is a war in the American soul, and I think it is clear which side has won. I am with Dr. Pat in lamenting that, but I think we should recognize the very reasonable basis for the modern commercial life Dr. Pat deplores and the undoubted good that it has produced.

Forgetting The Past

Fewer schools are being named after former presidents.  The reasoning of this Minnesota administrator is a bit curious:

So when it comes to naming schools, most Minnesotans tend to favor geography over history. South Washington County district residents did when it came time to name their new high school. It's East Ridge.

"The committee felt that the name should be something that the community will resonate with," said South Washington County's communication director Barb Brown. "I don't think it has anything to do with patriotism."

Is Barb Brown suggesting that George Washington or Abraham Lincoln will not "resonate" with her community?  If so, so much the worse for South Washington County. 

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths about Human Nature

I haven't read Psychology Today for a long time.  But I caught this item in a waiting room, and it is now posted on Arts and Letters Daily, my second favorite website.  Here are the ten truths:

Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
Humans are naturally polygamous
Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
Most suicide bombers are Muslim
Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
Beautiful people have more daughters
What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals
The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of
It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male)
Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist

These "truths" are culled from a recent book: Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa.  They are the results of recent work on evolutionary psychology (or sociobiology).  The article is worth a look. 

 

Rape Trials and Language Police

Anna at Dakota Women has a story:

Here's a story from Omaha that has been making the rounds of the feminist blogs lately: in the trial of Pamir Safi, accused of rape, the judge has ruled that the accuser is not allowed to use the words/phrases "rape," "victim," "sexual assault kit," "attack," and "assailant." Tory Bowen is being forced to describe her encounter with Safi as "sex," which must be unbelievably difficult for her.

And Anna takes a shot at SDP over this:

I wonder why the victim is not being allowed the ability to name and speak her recollection of the experience in court. This seems so obvious to me. I want everyone to keep this in mind the next time the guys at South Dakota Politics talk about the horrors of jails full of men falsely accused of rape.

Well, I, for one, happen to agree with Anna on this score. This ridiculous exclusion of the most ordinary language from the trial must make it difficult for the prosecution to put on a case at all.  This is the result of more than fifty years of Supreme Court decisions based on the dubious premise that, for a trial to be constitutional, the most heinous criminals have to have a sporting chance of getting away with it. Now I haven't witnessed a lot of trials, and maybe Todd Epp can fill us in, but isn't it the job of the defense attorney to keep piping up with "alleged rape,"?  If juries can't understand the difference between an accusation and a case made, then we ought to abolish juries. So I am all with Anna on this one.

I take no position on the case itself, as presented in the Omaha World Herald, beyond saying that I understand why it resulted in a mistrial. 

They Are Forgetting

The English have dropped Winston Churchill from secondary school history curriculum.

Britain's World War II prime minister Winston Churchill has been cut from a list of key historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools, a government agency says.

The radical overhaul of the school curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds is designed to bring secondary education up to date and allow teachers more flexibility in the subjects they teach, the Government said.

This brings to mind Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, Recessional.  While this poem seeks to remind us of the temporary nature of all regimes except one, it may also prompt us to remember what is great and noble, such as Mr. Churchill.

GOD of our fathers, known of old,
      Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
      Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
      The Captains and the Kings depart;
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
      An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away;
      On dune and headland sinks the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
      Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
      Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
      Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
      In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
      And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Update: See the comments at NLT.  I particularly like this one:

We can guess, but do we know who/what will replace these political men? I'm inclined to think that this is a move away from giving students the educational background that would come in handy if they would govern themselves. Studying Churchill and Hitler, Gandhi and Stalin, enables students to make distinctions between republicanism and tyranny, to think about empire and independence. But if you're being trained merely to produce, consume, and obey, you won't be needing any such distinctions or thoughts.

 

WaPo on Withdrawal

Washington Post editorial:

Advocates of withdrawal would like to believe that Afghanistan is now a central front in the war on terror but that Iraq is not; believing that doesn’t make it so. They would like to minimize the chances of disaster following a U.S. withdrawal: of full-blown civil war, conflicts spreading beyond Iraq’s borders, or genocide. They would have us believe that someone or something will ride to the rescue: the United Nations, an Islamic peacekeeping force, an invigorated diplomatic process. They like to say that by withdrawing U.S. troops, they will “end the war.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE:  Jake Tapper asks, "What about the Iraqis?"

McGovern

From Roll Call in an article entitled "McGovern's Milestones":

George McGovern will be the guest of honor at a series of events on Capitol Hill this weekend in honor of the 35th anniversary of his presidential campaign against Richard Nixon and his upcoming 85th birthday. The festivities will shine light on the former Democratic Representative and Senator from South Dakota’s efforts to stamp out global hunger.

“I think it’s fair to say that there’s probably no one who has made as profound an effect as [George McGovern has] in the fight against hunger,” said Marshall Matz, a lobbyist and the chairman of the board at the Friends of the World Food Program.

Specifically, McGovern has advocated for food stamp subsidies and in-school meal programs in Congress, in his role as President John F. Kennedy’s first director of the Food for Peace Program and as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. He currently is continuing his efforts as the WFP’s global ambassador for hunger, a position he has held since 2001.

This weekend, the collective effects of his advocacy will be remembered at a World Hunger Symposium at 10 a.m. on Saturday at The George Washington University.

Those familiar with his work say these effects are staggering, particularly in the arena of subsidized meals for children in school. In the United States, the number of students receiving lunches provided by the government soared from 19.4 million in 1969 to 30.1 million in 2006 — thanks in large part to McGovern, according to Matz.

On the global scene, his mark is present through the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which served 3.4 million students in 15 countries last year.

Now To The Important News

Duck numbers are up. 

Toward A Better Farm Policy

George Will writes today about Sen. Richard Lugar's attempt to shift farm policy from subsidies to rural development:

An Eagle Scout and Rhodes scholar, Lugar became mayor of Indianapolis at 35. There he achieved the consolidation of the city and county, which brought into the city hitherto suburban tax resources - and the 604-acre Lugar farm. On it he raises corn, soybeans and black walnut trees. Because his trees sequester carbon, he participates in the trading of carbon allotments. Farmer Lugar is up to date.

Farm policy is not. Farm lobbyists have toiled to preserve the New Deal approach. They stress the romance of the family farm, but their fog of sentimentality obscures pertinent facts:

Fifty-seven percent of farms receive no payments and two-thirds of those that do receive less than $10,000. The largest 8 percent of farms receive 58 percent of the payments. Farms with revenues of $250,000 or more receive payments averaging $70,000. Lugar wants to redirect the flow of federal funds, from subsidizing favored crops to rural development, because fewer than 14 percent of residents in rural areas work on farms.

On a different yet related note, I went to Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix last night.  The best Harry Potter film yet.  I also happened to hear on the radio yesterday that the high price of corn is driving up the cost of popcorn.  As of yet, no signs of that at the movie theater. 

Page Executed

Here's the story:

The state of South Dakota carried out its first execution in 60 years Wednesday night, taking the life of Elijah Page, 25, for a brutal torture slaying committed in 2000.

Page, of Athens, Texas, died from a lethal injection at 10:11 p.m., administered at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

He pleaded guilty to killing Chester Allan Poage, 19, of Spearfish, who was stabbed, beaten with rocks and forced to drink hydrochloric acid during a robbery of his home. The torture lasted two to three hours.

Page gave up his court appeals and requested to die.

He was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, leather straps were around him and a sheet was around the lower half of his body. Page had intravenous tubes in both arms.

He showed no remorse while on the execution table.

“He blinked but he showed no emotion whatsoever,” media witness Bill Harlan, a reporter with the Rapid City Journal, said.

“It was very clinical. It was a very bright room,” Harlan said.

Warden Doug Weber asked Page if he had any last words, and he said an emphatic “No.”

Higher Ed

While we're on the topic of higher education, here's some more bad news:  "As legislation is introduced in more than a dozen states across the country to counter political pressure and proselytizing on students in college classrooms, a majority of Americans believe the political bias of college professors is a serious problem, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows. Nearly six in 10 - 58% - said they see it as a serious problem, with 39% saying it was a 'very serious' problem. The online survey of 9,464 adult respondents nationwide was conducted July 5-9, 2007, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.0 percentage points."

McGovern and Chappaquiddick

Argus Leader:

The way former Sen. George McGovern remembers it, another senator’s misery opened the door to his successful run for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination.

Speaking Tuesday night in Mitchell, McGovern said he was vacationing on July 19, 1969, when he heard that Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy had driven his vehicle off a bridge after attending a party on Chappaquiddick Island. Kennedy swam to shore, but passenger Mary Jo Kopechne drowned.

And so did Kennedy’s presidential fortunes for the 1972 nomination.

McGovern said he woke up with a premonition the next morning after digesting the news.

“A quiet feeling came over me: ’I’m going to be the next president of the United States. I’m going to be the nominee,”’ McGovern said. “I couldn’t see anybody else.”
McGovern eventually lost the 1972 election to President Nixon.

The recollection came during a conversation with former network television newsman Sander Vanocur at Dakota Wesleyan University as part of a celebration of McGovern’s 85th birthday. McGovern turns 85 on July 19.

Tuesday was 35 years to the day since the opening of the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami.

The South Dakota senator had made a brief run for the 1968 nomination after the Robert Kennedy assassination. McGovern said his strong showing in a candidates’ debate put him in the national spotlight and set the stage for him to run for the 1972 nomination.

McGovern said he was convinced he could win the Democratic nomination when it became clear Ted Kennedy would not run in ’72.

“In the bid for the nomination, for almost a year and a half, I don’t think we made a mistake,” McGovern said. “We just did everything right. The press was just dumbfounded.”

Following the convention, the campaign unraveled, McGovern said.

McGovern said he hopes his legacy will be his efforts to reduce world hunger and end the war in Vietnam.

Give Me A Higher Education

A couple pieces lamenting the state on modern university education.  First, Wendell Berry gave the commencement address at Bellarmine University this past May (HT Patrick Deneen).  Berry states:

And yet by all this fuss we are promoting a debased commodity [i.e. higher education] paid for by the people, sanctioned by the government, for the benefit of the corporations. For the most part, its purpose is now defined by the great and the would-be-great “research universities.” These gigantic institutions, increasingly formed upon the “industrial model,” no longer make even the pretense of preparing their students for responsible membership in a family, a community, or a polity. They have repudiated their old obligation to pass on to students at least something of their cultural inheritance. The ideal graduate no longer is to have a mind well-equipped to serve others, or to judge competently the purposes for which it may be used.
Now, according to those institutions of the “cutting edge,” the purpose of education is unabashedly utilitarian. Their interest is almost exclusively centered in the technical courses called, with typical ostentation of corporate jargon, STEM: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The American civilization so ardently promoted by these institutions is to be a civilization entirely determined by technology, and not encumbered by any thought of what is good or worthy or neighborly or humane.

Victor Davis Hanson's (HT Julie Ponzi) critique of the university is that it no longer teaches truth, choosing to offer students a panoply of politically correct by educationally suspect courses at the expense of a classic humanities education.

Sometime in the 1960s—perhaps due to frustration over the Vietnam War, perhaps as a manifestation of the cultural transformations of the age—the university jettisoned the classical approach and adopted the therapeutic.
Many educators and students believed that America was hopelessly corrupt and incorrigible. The church, government, military, schools, and family stifled the individual and perpetuated a capitalist, male hierarchy that had warped Western society. So if, for a mere four years, the university could educate students to counter these much larger sinister forces, the nation itself could be changed for the better. Colleges could serve as a counterweight to the insidious prejudices embedded in the core of America.

I have blogged on this subject before, so I will not go into detail, but there is a question of what is the proper education for a free person.  Berry argues that it is not a technical or vocational education, as that simply turns one into a consumer without feeding one's soul.  Hanson argues that the modern university is not really interested in the free person; it is instead interested in indoctrination and using power to shape young souls in the direction preferred by the "tenured radicals" who don't really believe in such thing as a truly free person. 

Let me suggest that the change in the university over the last, say 50 years, has something to do with factors beyond the shift towards professional training or the curse left-wing political correctness, however true those may be.  The democratization of higher education (or, perhaps more accurately, "further training") certainly had a significant impact on the university.  Instead of a student body made up of elites (of wealth or intelligence), the university student body now comprises over half of all high-school graduates, very few of whom are interested in a classic liberal education.  Most are more interested in a credential that they can use to get a higher paying job.  This is also how parents and administrators see university education.  Not surprisingly, parents want to know what kind of job their kid will get once he graduates from college. The administrator measures success based on how many graduates get job placements, not on whether their souls have been fed.  If one looks at education on an economic model, the education consumer has changed over time and desires different services from universities.  The universities have then changed so as to accommodate.  I suggest my conservative friends who decry the state of higher education (so called) take a look at Herbert Storing's essay "Liberal Education And The Common Man" and ponder whether classic liberal education is for everyone.

The problem is not that most students get a professional rather than liberal education.  It is that there are precious few places to go where liberal education is still valued, leaving those who do care about the soul with places to go to have it fed.  But as Wendell Berry points out, those who are interested in a classic liberal education do have a handful of choices left (and please don't be fooled by schools that claim to believe in liberal education; most of them are fudging).  Berry is also correct that students are more likely (but not guaranteed) to get a sound education at smaller colleges than at the major research universities.    

Johnson To Return After Labor Day

The latest on Tim Johnson:

A staff person for Senator Tim Johnson says he expects to return to the U.S. Senate sometime after Labor Day.

Sharon Stroschein, who is the Northeast Area Director of Johnson’s Aberdeen office, told Pierre city commissioners Tuesday night that she had dinner with the Senator and his wife, Barbara, last week. Johnson has been out of the Senate since December after suffering a brain hemorrhage.

Stroschein says there is no specific timetable for Johnson’s return. She says it will be sometime after Labor Day, but it could still be October or beyond.

Johnson’s staff says the Senator continues to recover and do office work at home.

Turning the Page on the Death Penalty

I am teaching full time this session, so blogging is likely to be sporadic.  On the impending execution of Elijah Page:  I am generally not in favor of the death penalty.  First, given the Court-imposed hurtles, it is simply too expensive both in terms of treasure and energy.  Second, I am inclined to accept my sober colleague's preference for mercy, at least in most cases.  I would not be opposed to giving Mr. Page life in prison. 

On the other hand, I think there is pretty strong evidence that the death penalty saves lives.  Many of the most violent murderers will go on to kill other people, in prison or out, without it.  So I am ambivalent.  But I do think society has a right to put brutal murderers to death.  Moreover, there is the simple matter of the rule of law.  If you are going to have a death penalty, you probably ought to use it in cases where guilt is not denied and the crime was horrific.  It is very silly to worry about whether death by lethal injection is cruel or not.  By any reasonable standard, it is a merciful method. 

McGovern: An Anti-War Dem May Not Win

From the Politico:

For Democrats of a certain age, there is no figure more haunting than George McGovern, who ran for president pleading, "Come home, America," but instead was sent home himself with just 38 percent of the vote.

Among those who worry that the lessons of 1972 may still spell trouble for Democrats in 2008 is none other than … George McGovern. He is 84 now, is as opposed to the Iraq war as he was to the one in Vietnam -- and is paying close attention to the race for president.

"I'm not sure that an anti-war Democrat can win," McGovern said in an interview. "We haven't proved that yet."

Read the whole thing.

What Happens After Withdrawal?

From the Boston Globe, which still favors withdrawal:

The reality that has to be confronted is that the disparate armed groups in Iraq will go on committing atrocities against civilians as US troops begin withdrawing, and a residual American force hunkers down in a few well-guarded bases. Should the mayhem reach a certain point, Iraq's neighbors will come under pressure to intervene, if not directly, then by proxy. There is also a possibility that Iraq will devolve into a chronic failed state in the mode of Somalia. And Iranian influence may grow, at least in the south of Iraq, in proportion to the sectarian mayhem.

DUSEL Is A Go

Homestake Mine has been chosen for a federally funded underground lab. 

The National Science Foundation has chosen South Dakota’s closed Homestake Gold Mine to house a federally funded underground physics lab.

South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds has scheduled a news conference at the mine for 3 p.m. MDT Tuesday. In a news release Tuesday morning he and members of the state Congressional delegation congratulated efforts to bring the lab to the state.

Sen. John Thune, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and a representative from Sen. Tim Johnson's office will also be present at the press conference.

“This is great news for science and of course for South Dakota and the region. The NSF site selection process was rigorous and fair. On behalf of the citizens of South Dakota, Dr. Lesko and I encourage and welcome collaboration members from the other three sites to join with us in making the Sanford Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory a world class laboratory. My hope is that the tremendous talent and wealth of ideas proposed by all of the scientists will come together for the advancement of science,” said Rounds.

Death Penalty

We just got this in our email.  Surely someone trying to encourage us to support the execution of Elijah Page.  I have little doubt the death penalty is a deterrent.  But so is torture, and I am not for that.  The utility of the punishment is only one aspect to its justness.  Anyhow, here is what an emailer sent us.  Sorry for the format issues:

To: All South Dakota Legislators and

           Media throughout South Dakota

 

Death as Deterrent,  By Professor John Lott

------------

Mr. Lott was a senior research scholar at Yale University’s School of Law, held positions at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, UCLA, the Wharton Business School, and Rice University, was Chief Economist at the United States Sentencing Commission in 1988 and 1989, is author of the forthcoming book "Freedomnomics" and soon to be a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Maryland. Mr. Lott has published more than ninety articles in academic journals including the Journal of Law and Economics and the Journal of Legal Studies, and is a frequent contributor to major newspapers.

--------------

Capital punishment clearly increases the risk to criminals of engaging in various crimes, especially murder. But does this increased risk affect criminals’ behavior? Last week the academic debate erupted in the media with an Associated Press article headlined "Studies: Death Penalty Discourages Crime,� but even this recognition downplays the general consensus on the findings.

The media is a bit Johnny-come-lately in recognizing all the research that has been done on the death penalty over the last decade, with nine of the 12 refereed academic studies by economists finding that the death penalty saves lives.

Some academics are yet to be convinced and argue that the risk of a criminal being executed for murder is so remote that, “It is hard to believe that fear of execution would be a driving force in a rational criminal’s calculus in modern America.�

Yet, before trying to answer whether this risk to criminals is significant, let’s first consider how another group that faces similar dangers reacts to the risk of death.

Academics classify being a police officer as an “extremely dangerous� job. In 2005, 55 police officers were murdered on the job, while another 67 were accidentally killed. With nearly 700,000 full-time, sworn law enforcement officers in the United States, the murder rate of police officers comes to 1 in 12,500, a ratio that jumps to 1 in 5,600 when we include accidental deaths.

Police officers undertake a variety of measures to reduce the dangers: They wear bullet-proof vests, develop special procedures for approaching stopped cars and in some situations officers wait for backup even when this increases the probability that a suspect will escape.

These dangers also create strain on officers’ marriages, contributing to a divorce rate that is twice that of the general population.

Officers undertake all these measures as a natural human reaction to the risk of death -- the riskier an activity, the more a person will usually avoid it or take steps to make it safer.

The risk that a violent criminal faces from execution is much greater than the risk of a police officer being killed. In 2005, there were almost 16,700 murders in the United States and 60 executions. That translates to one execution for every 278 murders. In other words, a murderer is 20 times more likely to be executed than a police officer is to be deliberately or accidentally killed on duty.

Those who argue that the death penalty has no effect on violent crime assume that the risk of execution in no way deters criminals from committing capital crimes. While criminals, just like police officers, are naturally less adverse to danger than, say, school teachers or accountants, the notion that it is irrational for them to take into account such an enormous additional risk is irrational.

But a non-trivial issue is how to define the execution rate. It actually matters a lot.

When defined as executions per murder committed, academics find that the death penalty deters murders and saves lives.

But those academics who instead define their measure as death penalty executions per person in prison find no relationship. Which is the best measure?

Clearly, we should consider the real risk to the potential murderers, and executions per murder seems to be a much more direct measure of that risk. By contrast, executions per prisoner includes all sorts of extraneous crimes in the measure.

For example, if fewer criminals were arrested and imprisoned for stealing radios from cars, executions per prisoner inexplicably implies that the risks to committing murder increases. It is not at all surprising that this strange measure implies no real link between the execution rate and murders.

There is widespread public debate over the effectiveness of the death penalty. Unfortunately, this has included some misleading reporting in the popular press. Take a widely publicized New York Times study that compared murder rates in 1998 in states with and without the death penalty. The Times concluded that capital punishment was ineffective in reducing crime, noting that “10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average ... while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average.�

This simple comparison really doesn’t prove anything. The 12 states without the death penalty have long enjoyed relatively low murder rates due to factors unrelated to capital punishment.

When the death penalty was suspended nationwide from 1968 to 1976, the murder rate in these 12 states still was lower than in most other states. What is much more important is that the states that reinstituted the death penalty had about a 38 percent larger drop in murder rates by 1998.

There were no executions in the United States between 1968 and 1976, a time when murder rates skyrocketed. Various explanations were put forward in the 1970s to explain the jump in violent crime.

Some claimed that the Supreme Court’s Miranda decision — mandating that suspects be read their rights during arrest — reduced criminal confessions and otherwise hindered convictions. Other theories blamed softer criminal penalties or lower arrest rates. Back in the 1970s these studies were generally inconclusive, however, due to the poor quality of the data available at the time, especially a lack of crime statistics by state.

This research was conducted as violent crime rates were plummeting while executions were rising sharply. Between 1991 and 2000, there were 9,114 fewer murders per year, while the number of executions per year rose by 71.

Generally, the studies over the last decade that examined how the murder rates in each state changed as they changed their execution rate found that each execution saved the lives of roughly 15 to 18 potential murder victims. Overall, the rise in executions during the 1990s accounts for about 12 to 14 percent of the overall drop in murders.

Of course, there are exceptions to capital punishment deterring murder. One particular kind of crime where the death penalty shows no significant deterrent effect is multiple victim public shootings. This was the conclusion of a study I performed with Bill Landes at the University of Chicago.

This exception, however, is easy to explain: The vast majority of these killers either commit suicide or are killed at the scene of the crime. The threat of legal punishment, including the death penalty, doesn’t really affect their actions since so many of these criminals expect to die in the course of their crime.

Compared to more sophisticated Europeans, Americans long have been portrayed as uneducated yokels for supporting the death penalty. And the Supreme Court has looked to guidance from other countries in justifying limits on the death penalty. But Americans have stuck to their guns, with the majority of Americans in a May 2006 Gallup poll even feeling that the death penalty should be used more frequently.

Possibly it is time to concede that everyday Americans might actually know something that some members of the Supreme Court have had a hard time understanding.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007  FOXNEWS.com

New Opportunities In Aberdeen

IKOR Industries in Aberdeen does research on animal blood to the end of creating new pharmaceutical products.  They are seeking a federal grant to expand this research, hoping to partner with Northern State University.  (Yes, NSU is my employer).  Full information here. A snippet. 

IKOR, which plans to process blood from Aberdeen's beef processing plant under construction, now seeks a $1 million federal grant to launch what Canton calls an ag pharma research center in Aberdeen with Northern State University as a partner. Ag pharma is short for agriculture and pharmaceuticals. South Dakota's congressional delegation is working on the grant request, he said.

NSU's International Business Institute and Biology Department are perfect fits with IKOR, he said. Professors and students in these fields would be involved in the research center.

All this connects with the world economy because IKOR uses bovine blood to create pharmaceutical products for humans and animals.

Page Execution Is On

It sounds like Elijah Page will die tonight at 10:00pm unless he decides to restart the appeals process. 

Mike Butler, Page’s lawyer, has said the governor and the state Supreme Court chief justice have assured him that if Page wants to call off the execution – even moments before – to restart the appeals process, his verbal request will be honored. Butler plans to watch the execution. He has said he will not restart the appeals process unless Page requests it.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like The Ferret?

   
In the Native American Times they are reporting on the conflict over the poisoning of prairie dogs in the Buffalo Gap and Ft. Pierre National Grasslands.  This is controversial as the prairie dog is the major food supply for the black footed ferret, an endangered species. 

In response to pressure from cattlemen and political leaders, The U.S. Forest Service released a draft plan that may drastically increase the poisoning of black tailed prairie dog colonies this fall throughout the Buffalo Gap and Fort Pierre National Grasslands in South Dakota and the Oglala National Grassland in Nebraska. Widespread poisoning could kill tens of thousands of prairie dogs, which would jeopardize the continued recovery of the critically imperiled black-footed ferret, the most endangered mammal in North America. Prairie dogs are considered keystone species in the prairie ecosystem because so many other animals depend on them for food, shelter, or both.

Prairie dogs, of course, are also pests who destroy the grass and create pot holes that cattle step into and injure themselves.  I have a solution to this problem.  Let's send in Jimmy Carter and perhaps he can negotiate a settlement between the ranchers, the environmentalists, the ferrets, and the prairie dogs. 

Social Capital and the Midwest

In his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam worries about the erosion of communities and the threat that presents to undermining America's democratic prospects.  The debate over declining community activities, associations, and participation, what Putnam collectively referred to as "social capital," is a discussion about democracy's ability to function and survive. When citizens retreat from civic participation and community affairs, democracy goes on the decline.  Putnam, who first studied Italian political culture, fears the Sicilization of the American republic.  In Sicily, "[e]ngagement in social and cultural associations is meager.  From the point of view of the inhabitants, public affairs is somebody else's business, that of the i notabili, 'the bosses,' 'the politicians,' -- but not theirs."  The demise of social capital becomes especially problematic in areas like the Dakotas, which Putnam's research ranked the highest in the nation in social capital.  If small towns and communities in South Dakota cannot hold themselves together, can any place?

Despite these concerns, the evidence still points to strong currents of social capital in the area.  One area that Putnam explored as volunteering and philanthropy, noting that volunteering increased since the 1960s while participating in community projects fell off.  Putnam concludes on a hopeful note, saying "One may hope--indeed, I do--that a new spirit of volunteerism is beginning to bubble up from the millennial generation . . . [the number of young Americans volunteering in the 1990s] displayed a commitment to volunteerism without parallel among their immediate predecessors.  This development is the msot promising sign of any that I have discovered that America might be on the cusp of a new period of civic renewal . . ."  More evidence for Putnam's optimism was reported by the Associated Press today:

The spirit of volunteerism is thriving in the heartland, but not so much on the coasts.

Midwesterners are more likely to volunteer their time than are people elsewhere in the United States, according to a government study being released Monday. The highest rates were in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area, where more than four in 10 adults volunteered.

"It's really about Minneapolis' commitment to the quality of life," said Michael Weber, president and chief executive of Volunteers of America of Minnesota.

The Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency, used Census Bureau data to determine the share of people age 16 and older who had volunteered their time in the previous year.

The study provides three-year averages, for 2004 through 2006, for the 50 largest metropolitan areas.

Minneapolis-St. Paul was followed at the top by Salt Lake City, Utah; Austin, Texas; Omaha, Nebraska; and Seattle, Washington.

Las Vegas, Nevada, had the lowest volunteer rate, 14.4 percent. It was joined at the bottom by Miami, Florida; New York City; Virginia Beach, Virginia.; and Riverside, California.

Nationally, 26.7 percent of adults in 2006 said they had volunteered in the previous year. That compares with 28.8 percent in 2005 and 20.4 percent in 1989.

The study said several demographic and social factors appear to contribute to higher volunteer rates:

• Short commutes to work, which provide more time to volunteer.
• Home ownership, which promotes attachment to the community.
• High education levels, which increase civic involvement.
• High concentrations of nonprofit organizations providing opportunities to volunteer.

Here's the full Corporation for National and Community Service study (PDF alert).  The study focused on metro areas, so the Dakotas were not included, but our neighbors to the east ranked first in volunteerism.

Pelosi v. Sheehan?

Washington Post:

Antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan said Sunday that she plans to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) unless Pelosi introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.

Sheehan's deadline, July 23, is the same day she and her supporters are to arrive in Washington after a 13-day caravan and walking tour departing from the group's war protest site near Bush's Crawford ranch.

Sheehan said she lives in a suburb of Sacramento but declined to disclose the city, citing safety reasons. She added that she would run against Pelosi in 2008 as an independent and "would give her a run for her money."

"Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership," Sheehan said. "We hired them to bring an end to the war."

Pelosi and the Environmentalists

The Washington Post reports that Speaker Pelosi is siding with the environmentalists:

In February, only a month after becoming speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi settled weeks of threats from Rep. John D. Dingell, her blustery Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, by putting in writing her assent to one of his big demands -- Pelosi's new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming would not infringe on his power to write legislation as he saw fit.

Four months later, Dingell (D-Mich.) appeared in the speaker's conference room to walk through a bill that would override California's attempts to combat global warming by raising fuel efficiency standards, strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases and promote a controversial effort to turn coal into liquid fuel.

This time, Pelosi was in no mood to mollify Dingell. The bill he was sponsoring, she said, was unacceptable. The environmental costs would be too severe, the political costs for the Democratic caucus too high, she said.

Values Impositions

The second of the Elijah Page posts I linked to below includes some thoughts on politics and values.  In that post from last August I wrote:

Politics is, to a significant degree, about values.  Politics exists because there is disagreement over what our values should be.  The law, no matter what it does, even if it is silent, endorses some values over others.  The law is one very important way in which we express who we are and who we want to be as a people.  These are values questions. Political talk is values talk.  There is no way to avoid it.  So let's stop the silly talk about who is imposing values on whom.

In democracies, very rarely do political actors actually impose values.  They often propose policies that are founded on certain values and they hold those values up for public approval or disapproval.  Often conservative Christians are accused of seeking to impose their values when really they are simply proposing their values in legislative terms for the endorsement (or not) by the public.  See the latest abortion law in Missouri, for example.  Advocates on the political left do the same thing, for example when they say that justice demands that we take money from some people in the form of taxation and give that money to others in the form of social welfare spending.   

Now a group of Catholic Democrats are calling on the Catholic bishops to be more active in denouncing the war in Iraq and working to end that war.

The legislators, all Democrats, wrote to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops asking for a meeting to discuss how Congress “and the clergy can work together to mobilize public action to end the war,” according to a statement released Tuesday.

“As Catholic members of Congress we stand in unison with the Catholic Church in opposition to the war in Iraq,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said in a statement. “Yet to attain the ideal of peace, we must not only speak the words, we must take action.”

Let's look at the wording.  These liberal Democrats are calling on Catholic clergy to work to change public opinion.  Further, they say, simply speaking against injusitce is not enough; action must be taken.  One assumes this means legislative action.  The Catholic Democrats are asking the bishops to use their moral weight to fight injustice through lobbying for legislation.  If the bishops were being asked by other parties to work against the injustice of abortion instead of the war in Iraq, one would expect an outcry about the bishops seeking to impose their values on the public.  Predictably, we'd read blog posts and opinion columns about "theocracy" and "separation of church and state" as the Catholic bishops were denounced for trying to write their own religious values into law. "It's all right for them to be opposed to abortion," we'd hear, "but why must they seek to impose their values on everybody?" 

One see liberal Christians increasingly discussing their policy preferences in terms of their religious faith.  This is a welcome addition to the public rhetoric.  Let's have people of various political and religious perspectives express their policy preferences in both terms of secular reasoning and demands of faith. The American people can then work through the competing claims as diligent citizens ought.   Then let's drop the silly rhetoric about "imposing values" and "theocracy."   

Elijah Page

My thoughts have not changed since last time.  See here and here.  In short, it is just he should die; it would be merciful to save him.  In this case, I favor mercy.  Here's the latest Argus on the case.

Thune On The "Fairness Doctrine"

Our junior Senator has penned a piece that shows up at Real Clear Politics.  In it he argues against the reinstatement of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" in broadcast media.  Here is the central point:

Since 1987 we have seen even greater growth in how we get news and information including the rise of talk radio, internet news sites, and blogs, yet some critics on the left are calling for the reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine. The efforts of these critics, who are especially offended by the success of conservative talk radio, should be rejected. Our support for freedom of conscience and freedom of speech means that we must support the rights granted to even those with whom we disagree. Giving power to a few to regulate fairness in the media is a recipe for disaster on the scale that George Orwell so aptly envisioned.

National Health Care and the London Bombers

Leave it to the irrepressible Mark Steyn to point out a connection between England's National Health Service and the London bombers. 

Of the eight persons arrested as of Friday in the terrorist plot, seven are doctors with the National Health Service (the eighth is the wife of one, and a lab technician at the same hospital). The bombs failed to go off because a medical syringe malfunctioned. I don't mean it malfunctioned as a syringe (even in the crumbling NHS, the syringes usually work) but as a triggering mechanism, to which it had been adapted, though evidently not too efficiently.

These facts lead Steyn to reflect on another:

Does government health care inevitably lead to homicidal doctors who can't wait to leap into a flaming SUV and drive it through the check-in counter? No. But government health care does lead to a dependence on medical staff imported from other countries.

Some 40 percent of Britain's practicing doctors were trained overseas – and that percentage will increase, as older native doctors retire, and younger immigrant doctors take their place. According to the BBC, "Over two-thirds of doctors registering to practice in the UK in 2003 were from overseas – the vast majority from non-European countries." Five of the eight arrested are Arab Muslims, the other three Indian Muslims. Bilal Abdulla, the Wahhabi driver of the incendiary Jeep and a doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital near Glasgow, is one of over 2,000 Iraqi doctors working in Britain.

Immigration rates vary according to fairly mechanical laws.  For medically trained persons to be attracted into Britain from outside, two things have to be true.  First, Britain has to offer them more for their training than they could get at home.  That one is easy.  Second, Britain's health care system has to offer native born men and women a less attractive career than they can get by pursuing other fields.  This is obviously the case in Britain. 

So today the NHS is hungry for medical personnel from almost anywhere on the planet, so hungry that the government set up special fast-track immigration programs: Mohammed Asha, Mohammed Haneef and their comrades didn't even require a work permit to come and practice as doctors in state hospitals.

The NHS is the biggest employer in Europe, and it's utterly dependent on imported staff such as Dr. Asha and Dr. Abdulla. In the West, we look on mass immigration as a testament to our generosity, to our multicultural bona fides. But it's not: A dependence on mass immigration is always a structural weakness and should be understood as such.

I don't agree that this is always a structural weakness.  America's dependence on immigrant labor was almost always a result of its economic vitality: even when the domestic population was growing rapidly, we were still creating jobs faster than babies.  But when, in the last century, Argentina had to import almost all of its industrial engineers from Europe, that did indicate an underlying problem.  And it is clear that the dependence of the English National Health Service on immigrant labor is a sign neither of a robust society or robust institutions. 

Congress

New York Times:

In the six months since he took control as the majority leader, Mr. Reid, 67, of Nevada, has experienced the highs of leading his party and the lows of almost losing a senator to a critical illness and then losing an Iraq spending fight to Mr. Bush.

The Democratic inability to bring quick change, coupled with a Republican backlash to the rejected immigration proposal, has sent Congressional ratings plummeting.

“The Democratic Congress has lower ratings than President Bush,” said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas. “You have to try hard to do that.”

Mr. Reid has also been hobbled by his fragile majority, reduced to 50-to-49 because of the extended absence of Senator Tim Johnson, the South Dakota Democrat who has been recovering from a brain hemorrhage since December. With most Senate action requiring 60 votes — the tally needed to cut off debate — much of the legislation that House Democrats rushed through in their 100-hour sprint has bogged down across the Rotunda, mired in seemingly endless procedural votes and Republican objections.

On Iraq, Mr. Reid has led a 49-to-50 minority as Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who caucuses with Democrats, has sided with Republicans on that issue.

SDP Jazz Note: NPR on Kind of Blue

NPR has a new series, Jazz Profiles, that is available by podcast.  I have only listened to one: "Miles Davis: Kind of Blue", a 54 minute adoration to the best selling record in the history of jazz.  Almost fifty years after its release, more than 5,000 copies of Kind of Blue are purchased every week.  And of course, those are only the legal purchases. 

Kind of Blue brought together seven now-legendary musicians in the prime of their careers: tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb and, of course, trumpeter Miles Davis.

If you are interested in modern jazz, the program is worth a listen.  Unfortunately, the writer felt compelled to tell us, over and over again, how great the record is, something that should speak for itself when they treat each selection.  Most of the information is hardly new, but it is nice to have it in one package, with the music as the background.  Any certified jazz nerd knows that when Wynton Kelly showed up at the first of two sessions, he was irritated to find Bill Evans at the piano.  Kelly had just replaced Evans in Miles' band. Kelly played on only one of the five tracks.   

It is also well-known, but well worth repeating, that Evans was as much or even more responsible for the compositions as Davis was.  Bill Evans was one of the prime geniuses of modern jazz, and if he got little share of the immense royalties from the disc, he ought at least to get credit for his input. 

The best thing about the program is the many brief interviews.  I had never heard Bill Evans actually talk before. It is also fascinating to hear how Miles' genius as leader worked.                        

Davis was at a musical peak in the 1950s and had been preparing the ideas that would become Kind of Blue for years. A year before the recording, Davis slipped Evans a piece of paper on which he'd written with the musical symbols for "G minor" and "A augmented."  "See what you can do with this," Davis said. Evans went on to create a cycle of chords as a meditative framework for solos on "Blue in Green."

"Blue in Green" is one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces of music that I have ever heard.  Here is a clip of Miles Davis and John Coltrane playing "So What?", the first piece on Kind of Blue. 

Anti-Semitism on the Left: Jim Abourezk

Powerline alerts its readers to a string of anti-Israel comments on the blog The Politico.  The general drift is that the U.S. spends too much money supporting Israel, something with which I disagree; but it is not an unreasonable position.  But a lot of the comments display an open Antisemitism.  One post that caught my eye contained a long quote from our very own former Senator, Jim Abourezk.  It  focused on supposed dirty dealings by the Israel lobby.  There is no reason, of course, to suppose that Senator Abourezk knew of or hand anything to do with  this blog post.  But the post included  the image to the right. I assumed at first that the image must have been inserted by "Busheviks" (Tim Brinton?), the author of the post. 

There was no source provided for the quotation, but it was easy to track down.  I was a bit shocked to discover that it accompanies the original essay by Abourezk in the Christian Science Monitor.  The essay is, if a bit jaundiced, within the compass of respectable commentary.  There is nothing wrong with complaining about lobbyists, or American policy toward Israel, or Israeli policy.  But the image is blatantly Antisemitic, playing on some of the oldest and most virulent prejudices against the Jews.  Its inclusion along with Abourezk's essay ought to be a deep embarrassment to the Monitor, and Abourezk's  allowance of it next to his writing is an embarrassment to him and to South Dakota.  It is also an embarrassment to The Politico.  Powerline says:

I'm sure the people who run Politico would be horrified by this thread, and will take it down when they find out about it. (Funny that hasn't happened yet.) But that won't make the problem go away.

To give you an idea of the rest of the thread, one poster, "Octavian," defends Israel as a reliable U.S. ally.  Another poster, ASU86, asks: "OCT are you JEWISH?" Both the left and the right in American politics have their black sheep.  It is interesting to note the emergence of Antisemitism on the left.