Failures of Truth, Failures of Justice, and Failures of Love

There are parts of the Gates of Repentance Prayer Book that keep me coming to High Holiday Services every year.  The section that outlines all the sins we may have committed this last year and should strive to avoid next year is a good example.  This is useful to reflect on more than annually.

Failures of Truth 

We sin against you when we sin against ourselves.
For our failures of truth, O Lord, we ask forgiveness. 

For passing judgment without knowledge of the facts,
and for distorting facts to fit our theories.

For deceiving ourselves and others with half-truths,
and for pretending to emotions we do not feel. 

For using the sins of others to excuse our own,
and for denying responsibility for our own misfortunes. 

For condemning in our children the faults we tolerate in ourselves,
and for condemning in our parents the faults we tolerate in ourselves.   

Failures of Justice
For keeping the poor in the chains of poverty,
and turning a deaf ear to the cry of the oppressed.

For using violence to maintain our power,
and for using violence to bring about change.

For waging aggressive war,
and for the sin of appeasing aggressors.

For obeying criminal orders,
and for the sin of silence and indifference.

For poisoning the air, and polluting land and sea,
and for all the evil means we employ to accomplish good ends.  

Failures of Love
For confusing love with lust,
and for pursuing fleeting pleasure at the cost of lasting hurt.

For using others as a means to gratify our desires,
and as stepping-stones to further our ambitions.

For withholding love to control those we claim to love,
and shunting aside those whose youth or age disturbs us. 

For hiding from others behind an armored of mistrust,                                                and for the cynicism which leads us to mistrust the reality of unselfish love.  

I'm not very religious.  I'm fairly certain man created God and not the other way around.  But I've been lucky to have the ability to pick out the useful from the problematic.

I can read academic theories and find those parts that seem to be a good description of how the world works and not be hung up on those parts that seem less useful.  Theorists trying to put together an explanation of some aspect of the world, often get parts right and parts wrong.  

And with religion, the same is true.  I'm not much of a theist.  I can take the bible as stories from which to learn, but I also recognize that many of the laws we find there made sense in the context of social and political and economic life of 3000 years ago, but no longer are make sense.  And can even be harmful when twisted to the ends of the ambitious.   There are parts of the High Holiday services that I find offensive.  But many parts are still wise.

I'm not alone in picking and choosing.  Few people follow all the 613 commandments Maimonides extracted from the Torah. (You can see the history of this and list of commandments at Wikipedia.)

Some say that the dietary restrictions were connected to health - eating shellfish in hot climates with no refrigeration is risky.  Some may be moral - slaughtering animals in the quickest and least painful way.  Others say that keeping Kosher requires a self-discipline that is useful in other parts of one's life.  Other than Orthodox Jews, I'm not sure there's anyone who follows all the bible's dietary laws today.  Though lots of Jews try to observe a few of the commandments - like not eating pork.  (Sources conflict and tell us they do, partly because the Bible doesn't explain the reasons.  Here are a couple:  Judaism 101 on Kashrut;  Biblical Archeology on Making Sense of Kosher Laws; or Jewish Food Hero on Kosher Explained. )  

There have only been one or two years when I've failed to go to High Holiday services.  It began  family custom.  My mother would take me every year, though we didn't go to services weekly.  I think for her it was a connection to her parents, who she never saw again after she left Germany as a teenager.  And the rabbi we went to for many years was an old  white bearded, German rabbi who is still my image of a 'real rabbi.'    It's also way of staying connected with a community bigger than just the family.  The Jewish New Year celebrations are also an important personal day of reflection.  

It's a time to think about how one has lived one's life during the year that's ending and to ask forgiveness for one's sins.  And also to forgive those who have sinned against us.  The ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a time for repentance.  On Rosh Hashanah "it is written" but on Yom Kippur "it is sealed." 

"It" is who shall live and who shall die during the next year.  Those ten days are one's time to convince God that your repentance is sincere.  In my mind, what's written is in pencil and can still be erased.   Do I believe someone is writing everyone's name in the book of life or the book of death?  Not really.  But it makes the abstract more concrete.  It reminds me that it is a time for me to reflect on how I can be a better person in the next year.  

So I focus on those parts that reflect my values, and take as metaphorical those parts that portray a patriarchal God demanding total obedience.

Attending to these Failures of Truth, Justice, and Love would bring the United States and the world to a much better place.  These values don't require anyone to adhere to any religion.  They are self-evident to most human beings.

And for those I've wronged in the past year.  Please forgive me.  As I forgive those who have wronged me.  Shana Tova.  (As I read the first article I found on the meaning of Shana Tova, I quickly realized this was not the message I wanted people to get.  The next google hit turned out to be a response that expressed my feelings about the first article.) 

Here's What Real Heroes Do - They Take Big Risks To Do The Right Thing

There are countless people you rarely hear about who fight to protect those who don't have the power to protect themselves.  They risk their careers and sometimes their lives to do what's right.


Richard Sipe - ex-priest who worked hard to expose sex abuse in the Catholic Church.  This LA Times piece tells some of his story.

". . . Sipe was ordained in 1959 and soon became aware of priests who had relationships with adults and children. Later, he worked at a Baltimore psychiatric institute where abusive priests were sent for treatment and evaluation, and he began documenting their stories. With the help of his future wife, a psychiatrist at the institute, he published a 1990 book called, “A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy.”
Sipe, an expert witness in hundreds of clergy abuse cases, argued that celibacy and abuse were connected. We’re sexual creatures, he said, so celibacy is an unnatural expectation, and sex and sexual abuse are rampant among priests.
Those who abuse minors, he explained, have a convenient racket going. Peers may keep quiet because they’re predators too, and even if the abuse is reported to superiors, they’ve got reasons to maintain the code of silence. Maybe they don’t want to damage the image of the church. Or maybe they have their own sins to hide.
So pedophiles remain in ministry, or they’re shuffled to another parish, or to Mexico. Often, there’s no attempt to explain what’s happening to parishioners, to call the police or to do the most basic, caring, human thing — to offer an apology, comfort and support to victims. . . 

Hugh Thompson - Stopped My Lai massacre before it got worse.

" . . . Who were the people lying in the roads and in the ditch, wounded and killed?
"They were not combatants. They were old women, old men, children, kids, babies."
Then Thompson and his crew chief, Glenn Andreotta, and his gunner, Lawrence Colburn, "saw some civilians hiding in a bunker, cowering, looking out the door. Saw some advancing Americans coming that way. I just figured it was time to do something, to not let these people get killed. Landed the aircraft in between the Americans and the Vietnamese, told my crew chief and gunner to cover me, got out of the aircraft, went over to the American side."

What happened next was one of the most remarkable events of the entire war, and perhaps unique: Thompson told the American troops that, if they opened fire on the Vietnamese civilians in the bunker, he and his crew would open fire on them. . . ."

[Thanks Dennis for this one.]

A Cry For Imagination From Trump Opposition

This Tim Miller essay at Crooked is titled Embarrassingly Timid Trump Opposition.   He posits that when he asks people to name a trait of Trump's that they would want their children to emulate, they are silent.  If they come up with anything, it's that he's imaginative.  And Miller would like Trump's opposition to be imaginative too.  Here's an excerpt:

"As things stand today, that conventional wisdom lags far behind the reality: The writing of his demise is on the wall and it is past time his critics started acting like it.
This is not actually new, so much as it is finally coming into focus. The fact that Trump’s orbit is thick with garden-variety criminals has been staring everyone in the face from the outset. Paul Manafort was a known Russian agent, with deeply shady financial entanglements when he became Trump’s campaign chairman. Michael Cohen is such a walking cliche, he could make extra cash as a Paulie Walnuts stunt double. Trump’s first national security adviser was on the take from, and thus compromised by, Russia, Turkey, and Qatar. I have yet to find a single person in Washington, even among Trump’s supporters, who believe that a thorough scrubbing of the Trump and Kushner Organization books wouldn’t uncover dozens of felony-level financial crimes and fraud offenses. And yes, Trump stooges, Trump has already engaged in a treasonous level of collusion with Russia in plain sight, the President’s and media’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding 

All of these nefarious crimes and misdemeanors are apparent right now—before the New York Attorney General has moved against the Trump Organization, or Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained his most significant indictments, all of which are sure to reveal much we don’t yet know. 

Against this backdrop, most Democrats seem satisfied with business as usual, banking on a midterm wave this fall, and Republicans—even those who privately dislike the President—either continue to openly enable him or have abandoned the political field altogether. 

While Trump creatively fights for his survival, his opposition has tried nothing and is all out of ideas."

It's not original to say that Trump is a classic bully, of the Mafia variety. But people seem to require a regular reminder.   All the Republicans in Congress are afraid to stand up to him because he comes at critics with a noisy attack.  But being called names on Twitter, or even having Trump support your opponent in November, is a small price to pay to minimize the damage this president is wreaking on the US and the world.

And neither of my two Senators  are up for election this year.  And one of them has already stood up against her party when she lost in the primary.  And Alaskans supported her.  I understand it's considered prudent to try to make nice and negotiate for as many goodies as you can for your state.  But that's like [fill in a better metaphor than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, my mind isn't producing anything].  Actually, in the face of climate change, every day we don't work hard to reduce carbon in the atmosphere does mean we're aggravating the effects of extreme climate in the future.  And you don't have to look past current forest fires to get this.

So each day waiting for the Trump card castle to collapse on its own, adds to the number of lives that will be terribly altered or lost by floods, droughts, fires, and dislocation in the future.

Sometime ago I posted (or so I thought, I can't find the post anymore) a call for a statue for the first six Republican US Senators and 20 Republican Representatives to unite and hold firm against Trump.  The point was we should award those brave enough to stand on principles early on, when it wasn't yet safe.  These congress members would be able to sleep at night, knowing their grandchildren would see their names as people who were not afraid to stand up against the corrupt and disgusting president.  

I'm not sure anyone should get rewarded now - except maybe those like Jeff Flake, who have resigned themselves to not running again so they could critique the president.  Let's hope we have a Congress that will and can do something after the November election.  People who will use imagination and creativity to stop the insanity and lead the country back to some semblance of justice and rule of law.

The New Abnormal

We've all been warned about the 'normalization' of previously unthinkable acts with the president as the main example.  Things that would have destroyed every past president, Trump does daily with (so far)  impunity, because enough Republicans in Congress put their reelection above the good of the United States.  

But I'm noticing something else - ordinary acts of decency, that used to be pretty routine, are now glorified and persons involved are given hero status.  Here are two stories from the ADN in the last two days:

Man helps woman in wheelchair (Link goes to theWashington Post version ADN reprinted)

Bilal Quintyne was on a training run and saw a 67 year old woman stranded in a broken wheel chair.  He stopped and pushed the chair (whose battery had died) home, a 30 minute walk.

We used to expect people to do that sort of thing.  When we arrived in the 1970s, Alaskans knew if they skidded off the road, the next passing pick-up would pull them out of the ditch.  Bilal was on a training run, and pushing the balky wheelchair for 30 minutes would work different muscles maybe, but it wasn't a big departure from what he was doing.  Was it a good thing to do?  Yes, of course.  But not helping would have been shameful.  In the old days helping others in need was expected of us all, like saying please and thank you.


People find engraved bracelet on Seldovia beach and return it to owner

This was in the letters to the editor today.  Again, this used to simply be common decency.  People looking out for each other.  This one is a little different because it's a thank you from the person who got the bracelet back.  So it's not the editor picking up a story and highlighting it.  But there have been others of late, particularly on social media.

The Point

I have mixed feelings here.  On the one hand, these kinds of actions should be everyday occurrences.  Unremarkable.  Simply people helping people because that's what decent people in a decent society do.

On the other hand, it's not a bad thing to remind people that these things are occurring all the time. So, I guess I'd say we should get these kinds of stories - I'm sure they inspire others to copy them - but we shouldn't make these folks out like heroes, like unusual events.  Rather, people who don't do these sorts of things should be pictured as troubled.

And, of course, if someone helps another while taking great personal risks, then, yes, that shows heroism.  But not finding a woman in a broken wheel chair and helping her get home.  Not finding an engraved bracelet and tracking down the owner.  Those should be treated as normal behavior, not heroic acts.

Our perception of things like the prevalence of crime and human decency tend to be anecdotal and emotional, not fact based.  I've written here before that when  highlighting a car crash death, the reporter ought to also mention how many people did NOT die in a car crash that day.  Just to help us keep things in perspective.

I'm all for stories of people doing good deeds, but keeping them in perspective as what a decent citizen is expected to do.  Not making the good samaritans into  heroes doing unexpected goodness.  We shouldn't be making doing good deeps into the new abnormal.

AK Press Club: Some Afternoon Highlights - Panels on Data and Anonymous Sources

I can't keep up the pace I started this morning.  Here are just some notes


Heather Bryant presented on Using Data.  A great quote went something like, "Data and Fact are synonyms in the dictionary only."

This is a topic I've scratched a number of times.  Heather reminded me of lots of things I've heard before but had forgotten.  Most useful for me was a list of links to resources.
Sorry, the light in the room was bad and even playing with contrast didn't help the image much, but I've listed a bunch below.

• Google Fusion Tables
• Open Refine
• Atom
• Overview or Tabula - convert pdf images to data HTML Table to CSV

DataViz Tools

• Community   (not sure this is the link she had)
• Data Drive Journalism Listserv
• NICAR-L Listserv
• OpenNews
• Data Journalism Handbook
• Codeful Data  Journalism  (couldn't find anything that seemed like this link)
• Command Line, SQL, Python, Github
• Codecademy Curriculum
• Automate the Boring stuff with Python

The Next Panel:

Anonymous Sources  - NPR - KTVA-TV News Director Janis Harper, Managing Editor Sara Goo, CoastAlaska's Ed Schoenfeld.

This really was a panel discussion.  I don't think any of the panelists actually made a presentation.  They just jumped into discussing the topic.  Here are some highlights.  Again, this is rough in the interest of getting this up quickly.  If I have time, I may come back to clean it up a bit.

Reasons people want to be anonymous:

• People had genuine story and good reason not be be identified
• People who didn't understand how journalism works 
• People who saw journalists on TV or movies - someone wanted to be paid for his story or wants something

Examples, of anonymous source

Goo:  I need to understand something even if I can't report it.  Situation where people are ok giving their names, but we think it's not a good idea, that they might not understand the impact.  Case where interviewed someone for print, but when it went online we decided not to put name up because not sure that person agreed to the online use.

Using actors to read out the words in the interview - in a video on drug addicts.
In small communities often hard to get someone that people can't figure out.

Remember the guideline "to do no harm."    

Panelists had already handed out the Fairness section of the NPR ethics code.

Take pressure off source by getting them to help you find a document that has the information in it.  

Examples of getting documents and hard drive data anonymously.  In one case, salacious, but no real wrong doing.  Confirming with others.  

Even in small towns where you think you know people, you can still get used by someone.  Be suspicious about another person and why they're telling me the story.  But if they have documentation, even if the person doesn't have honorable intentions.  Another person's intent was to positively impact someone else.  Or just ask, "Why are you telling me this?  Why me?"

Someone doesn't want to be on the record, you can refuse and say, "just don't tell me."  Because they really want to tell you.  Or someone tells you it's off the record thinking that means you can't report it.  Response:  No, I just need to find another source for the information and not attribute it to you.  

Checking With The Reporters On A Couple Of Amazing Claims They Made

There were two lines in the Anchorage Daily News today that caught my attention.  "Really?  How do they know that?"

The first was a line in Erica Martinson's story about Alaska's two US Senators' relationship with the President.  It talked about how they didn't support him, but they are getting policies that help Alaska. (Of course, what helps Alaska is open to interpretation and to whether one is looking short term or long term.)

Martinson wrote:

"More than 500 days have passed since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. Alaska's Republican senators didn't vote for him . . ."

Wow!  They didn't vote for the presidential candidate in their own party.  (I have to say that it was a safe bet in Alaska, where their two votes were not going to swing the state to Clinton.)  But to tell people?  I assumed that Martinson had evidence, so I emailed her asking if she meant in the November election (which is what the sentence would seem to say) and if yes, how she knew this.

I got a quick response:

"I meant in the Nov. 2016 election.
I wasn't in the voting booth, but that's what they told me and others at the time. Sullivan said he was going to write in Mike Pence's name. Murkowski said she was going to write in a name, but she never did say who, at least to me.
https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/10/08/u-s-sen-lisa-murkowski-in-interview-said-decision-on-trump-was-instantaneous-after-seeing-video/
https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/10/08/alaska-sen-dan-sullivan-calls-on-donald-trump-to-drop-out-of-presidential-race/They both resigned their positions on the Alaska Republican Party's central committee until after the election because they would not support Trump: https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/10/11/alaska-republican-party-is-sticking-with-donald-trump/Not sure if it made it into a story that day (I think we ran a day-of blog?), but I spoke to both Senators about it on or around election day and they had not changed their plans."

I guess during the election coverage I missed this or forgot it.  Had I read the story on-line instead of in print, I'd have seen the link, but I didn't do that until I was getting the link for this post.

 

The second line that jumped out at me was from an article by Marc Fisher, also in the ADN, reprinted from the Washington Post, about Trump's campaign against Jeffrey Bezos - the Amazon head and owner of the Washington Post.

"But others who have heard Trump rail against Amazon as a “monopoly” say his central complaint is based more on a cultural gap than a financial one, deriving from the fact that the president has never been known to shop online and does not use a computer — and has therefore never experienced what has drawn so many Americans from local storefronts to Amazon and other online retailers." [emphasis aded]

That jumped right out at me.  The president doesn't use a computer!  I remember the uproar when George H. W. Bush expressed amazement at a demonstration of supermarket scanners.that checkers use.  (This Snopes assessment suggests the New York Times played up that story to Bush's detriment.)  I was thinking that the US president doesn't necessarily get too much time going to the supermarket and he'd been VP for the eight years before he became president.

But in 2018 it seems remarkable that the US president doesn't use a computer.  And if he doesn't, how can he tweet every day.  So I emailed Marc Fisher my questions - did he mean by 'computer' a laptop or desktop?  Surely Trump uses a smart phone or he wouldn't be able to tweet.  Before I sent the email I googled the topic and found quotes about Trump feeling no computer was secure to use.

I also got a quick reply from Marc Fisher:

"Yes, Trump uses a phone, primarily for voice calls and for tweeting, which he does only on his phone or by dictating to his digital politics advisor. What he does not and has not ever used is a desktop or laptop computer. He has, for example, never used email. As for his reasons, when he’s been asked about his avoidance of computers, he says he doesn’t have the time. Not a terribly enlightening answer, but there it is."

Given that a smart phone today is a mini-computer with access to the internet, I guess it isn't as shocking as it originally sounded.

What is shocking - and would seem to be illegal - is the possibility that Trump is intentionally using the office of the presidency to damage someone because he's offended by what Bezos' newspaper writes about him.  (Fisher cites several WP people who say Bezos plays no role in the content of the paper.)

"Later in the campaign, Trump complained that “every hour, we’re getting calls from reporters from The Washington Post asking ridiculous questions, and I will tell you, this is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos.” Trump said Amazon was using The Post “as a tool for political power against me. . . . We can’t let him get away with it.”

"Amazon’s stock value declined by more than 5 percent after the president’s recent attacks but has gained ground this week."

"A Wells Fargo analysis concluded that although 'the arguments made by the president against Amazon have been undermined by third-party fact checkers . . . the president’s actions [could stir] additional scrutiny of Amazon beyond the federal government.'” 

"But Politico media critic Jack Shafer argues that Trump is right to connect Amazon, Bezos and The Post, because the retailer’s wealth made Bezos’s purchase of the paper possible. “If Amazon didn’t exist, it’s unlikely the Washington Post would exist in its current form,” wrote Shafer, whose wife, Nicole Arthur, is The Post’s travel editor. Shafer rejected the notion that The Post is lobbying on behalf of Amazon but said that by linking The Post to Amazon and driving down Amazon’s stock price, Trump had found a way to try to punish a news organization that he otherwise couldn’t harm."  [emphasis added]

 If a company is misbehaving, the president of the United States can say something about that.  and even call for an investigation.  But he's got to be careful not to bias that investigation.  But if the reason for the president's attack on a company is criticism in a newspaper whose owner also owns the other company, it seems to me there are real First Amendment issues being raised.

In any case, I was pleased that both these reporters were quick to respond to my questions and to have information to back up what they wrote.  Fisher clarified what using a computer meant, but didn't say how he knew about the president's computer use.  But when I looked back at my original email, I didn't ask that of him.  And it should be pointed out that Fisher works for the Washington Post, which is the target of the president's attacks.

Protestantism Began 500 Years Ago Today (Tuesday)

I don't have much to say - meaning, I guess, I have way too much to say - so I'll just mark this event with a few quotes.  First  from Christianity Today:

"Sometime during October 31, 1517, the day before the Feast of All Saints, the 33-year-old Martin Luther posted theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The door functioned as a bulletin board for various announcements related to academic and church affairs. The theses were written in Latin and printed on a folio sheet by the printer John Gruenenberg, one of the many entrepreneurs in the new print medium first used in Germany about 1450. Luther was calling for a "disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences out of love and zeal for truth and the desire to bring it to light." He did so as a faithful monk and priest who had been appointed professor of biblical theology at the University of Wittenberg, a small, virtually unknown institution in a small town."

If the word indulgences didn't pop out at you in that paragraph, let's try again.  From Crosswalk:

"Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses were particularly focused on the practice (and corruption) associated with indulgences. Specifically, indulgences were being sold for financial gain, as well as giving people a false assurance of salvation. It is not surprising that Luther posted his theses on October 31st, the eve of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day, a time which emphasized the distinction between the souls of “saints” and the souls of everyone else, as well as revealed widespread misunderstanding about the power of indulgences (and the afterlife in general).

About a year after the wall came down in Berlin and between East and West Germany, I had an opportunity to visit Wittenberg and the famous church.  I wanted to put up my own picture of the church door in Wittenberg, but I haven't found it.

But this is a good time to ponder what actions stick and what actions disappear into nothingness.  Many were upset with the corruption of the Catholic bureaucracy in those days.  Why did Luther's actions make such a big difference?  I'm not going to answer that question because this isn't something I know all that much about.  But I'm sure he was helped by things that had happened before him.  I'm sure his own personality and skills played a role.  And I'm sure timing was a large part of this.

And we can ponder too, whether his 'solution' has made the world a better or worse place overall.  I don't know the answer to that, but the most interesting take that I've read on the impact of Protestantism was Max Weber's The Protestantism Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

You can read the whole book at this link.  Here's a bit from the 1976 introduction by Anthony Giddens.  It's hard boiling a complex work into a short summery, so consider this only a few notes of of a symphony.  I'll warn you that academic German writing can be hard and the translations are often even harder.  But the content is worth the effor

"What explains this historically peculiar circumstance of a drive to the accumulation of wealth conjoined to an absence of interest in the worldly pleasures which it can purchase? It would certainly be mistaken, Weber argues, to suppose that it derives from the relaxation of traditional moralities: this novel outlook is a distinctively moral one, demanding in fact unusual self- discipline. The entrepreneurs associated with the development of rational capitalism combine the impulse to accumulation with a positively frugal life-style. Weber finds the answer in the ‘this-worldly asceticism’ of Puritanism, as focused through the concept of the ‘calling’. The notion of the calling, according to Weber, did not exist either in Antiquity or in Catholic theology; it was introduced by the Reformation. It refers basically to the idea that the highest form of moral obligation of the individual is to fulfil his duty in worldly affairs. This projects religious behaviour into the day-to-day world, and stands in contrast to the Catholic ideal of the monastic life, whose object is to tran- scend the demands of mundane existence. Moreover, the moral responsibility of the Protestant is cumulative: the cycle of sin, repentance and forgiveness, renewed throughout the life of the Catholic, is absent in Protestantism. 

Although the idea of the calling was already present in Luther’s doctrines, Weber argues, it became more rigorously developed in the various Puritan sects: Calvinism, Methodism, Pietism and Baptism. Much of Weber’s discussion is in fact concentrated upon the first of these, although he is interested not just in Calvin’s doctrines as such but in their later evolution within the Calvinist movement. Of the elements in Calvinism that Weber singles out for special attention, perhaps the most important, for his thesis, is the doctrine of predestination: that only some human beings are chosen to be saved from damnation, the choice being predetermined by God. Calvin himself may have been sure of his own salvation, as the instrument of Divine prophecy; but none of his followers could be. ‘In its extreme inhumanity’, Weber comments, ‘this doctrine must above all have had one consequence for the life of a generation which surrendered to its magnificent consistency . . . A feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness’ (p. 60). From this torment, Weber holds, the capitalist spirit was born. On the pastoral level, two developments occurred: it became obligatory to regard oneself as chosen, lack of certainty being indicative of insufficient faith; and the performance of ‘good works’ in worldly activity became accepted as the medium whereby such surety could be demonstrated. Hence success in a calling eventually came to be regarded as a ‘sign’ – never a means – of being one of the elect. The accumulation of wealth was morally sanctioned in so far as it was combined with a sober, industrious career; wealth was condemned only if employed to support a life of idle luxury or self-indulgence." (pp. xi-xiii) (emphasis added)

Lots to think about there.

Comparative History Lessons

Enough has been said about whether statues are erected as history lessons or to honor people who protected collective values.  I don't think it's hard to see through the rhetoric of those discussions.

But I'd like to share this tidbit about comparative history teaching, from South AfricanTrevor Noah's Born A Crime.

"In Germany, no child finishes high school without learning about the Holocaust.  Not just the facts of it but the how and the why and the gravity of it - what it means.  As a result, Germans grow up appropriately aware and apologetic.  British schools treat colonialism the same way, to an extent.  Their children are taught the history of the empire with a kind of disclaimer hanging over the whole thing.  “Well, that  was shameful, now wasn’t it?” 

In South Africa, the atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way.  We weren’t taught judgment or shame.  We were taught history the way it’s taught in America.  In America, the history of racism is taught like this:  “There was slavery and then there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it’s done.”  It was the same for us.  “Apartheid was bad.  Nelson Mandela was freed.  Let’s move on.”  Facts, but not many, and never the emotional or moral dimension."

For those who need more clarification on how the US has treated slavery and its aftermath, I refer you to some posts I made on the book White Rage.
Part I   Looks at how the Supreme Court essentially nullified the rights blacks had won with the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th and 14th Amendments.
Part II  follows up with a list of court decisions and their practical implications,  and
Part III, which looks at more modern times - the great migration of blacks from the South, Brown v. Board of Education and its aftermath, and up to today with our Attorney General who was born in Selma, Alabama in time to be embroiled on the white side of the civil rights movement.

NPR Adopts Simplistic "Good People"/"Bad People" Dichotomy

The use of terms like 'good guys' and 'bad guys' in political discourse has increased over the years.  That oversimplification of terms is reminiscent of Hollywood's white and black cowboy hats and the religious dichotomy of good and evil.  

Life isn't that simple.  First of all, people are either good or bad.  Most are a mix of morally positive and negative behaviors.  In Born A Crime, Trevor Noah writes about his step-father Abel who gets nasty when he's drunk.  

"The Abel who was likable and charming never went away.  He had a drinking problem, but he was a nice guy.  We had a family.  Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love.  It's a strange feeling.  You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad, where you either hate them or love them, but that's not how people are."

Lots of intercommunications experts (for example) tell people to talk about behaviors rather than to talk about their character.

So it's depressing to hear hear this sort of language on NPR, where they like to think of themselves as having a somewhat higher standard of reporting.  Their code of ethics talks about their guiding principles:

"Our journalism is as accurate, fair and complete as possible. Our journalists conduct their work with honesty and respect, and they strive to be both independent and impartial in their efforts. Our methods are transparent and we will be accountable for all we do."

Those principles include Impartiality:

"We have opinions, like all people. But the public deserves factual reporting and informed analysis without our opinions influencing what they hear or see. So we strive to report and produce stories that transcend our biases and treat all views fairly. We aggressively challenge our own perspectives and pursue a diverse range of others, aiming always to present the truth as completely as we can tell it."

Yes NPR too slips into the simplistic and dichotomous thinking of 'good people' and 'bad people' too.
[An abbreviated excerpt from the audio interview.]

Rachel Martin:  The president said there were good people on both sides, did you see them?
UVA Professor  and 'presidential historian' Michele Hemmer:  The people who came on behalf of the white nationalists were not good people. . .  Among the counter protesters there were plenty of good people, but not among the white nationalists.  

I realize they were working off of things Trump said.  (Though I could find 'very fine people' in his recent discussion rather than 'good people.')  But rather than fall into the trap of adopting this good/bad dichotomy themselves, it would be better to step back and point out how simplistic and misleading it is.  Thinking about Trevor's step-father, I'm wondering about the 'plenty of good people' among the counter protesters.  Are they good because they are against racism?  Are they being labeled 'good people' because of what they are doing on that day?  Do any of them get drunk and beat their spouses and children?  Would that disqualify them form being 'good people'?

Not only are they simplifying human complexity, they are also dropping their impartiality to make a judgment call about the morality of the marchers and counter-marchers.  Not about the morality of their actions, but whether they are 'good' or 'bad' people.

What I want to know is why these men have adopted white supremacy as their guiding principle.  Do they believe it?  Do they do this simply because it makes others angry?  Do they feel so isolated and unloved in their lives that espousing white supremacy is a way to justify why people don't like them?   Not only is that a much more nuanced way of thinking about the neo-nazi marchers, but it's the only way we, as a society, can start to figure out how to locate people who are vulnerable to this path and how to rescue them before they swallow this poison.

OK, I know these terms are a short hand.  Radio news formats allow a limited amount of time to tell the story.  But the more we use this short hand, the more we also think it.  And as soon as we put someone in the 'bad person' category, we're less concerned about what happens to them.  That's why we allow terrible things to happen in prisons.  It also inoculates 'good people' from harm when they do terrible things.

What Are Your Ethical Responsibilities To Your Pets?

Next Tuesday evening, you can find out:

The UAA Ethics Center and Philosophy Department is please to welcome philosopher, Prof. Gary Varner, Texas A & M to campus for a free, public symposium.  Prof. Varner who will be speaking on 

Pets, Companion Animals, and Domesticated Partners: Ethics and Animal Companions on 

April 18th 

between 6-8 pm in Library 307.  

Abstract: Prof. Varner is author of Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare's Two Level Utilitarianism (Oxford University Press, 2012).  In this presentation, he will introduce stipulative definitions of terms "companion animal," "domesticated partners," and "mere pet."  He will argue that the institution of pet-keeping is justifiable, but that the justification is stronger for companion animals than for mere pets, and that it is stronger for domesticated partners.

Time For Everyone To Voluntarily Leave United Airlines

I watched the video of the man being dragged off the plane.  WHATTTTTT????????????  FOR REAL???

OK, Alaska Airlines once removed a passenger for insulting a female crew member.  And more recently they had a woman leave the plane for being disruptive and insulting to the man sitting next to her because he'd supported Trump.  But neither was physically dragged off.  Watch how politely the flight attendant spoke to the unhinged woman passenger.  And in both cases, the passengers were at fault.

From what I can tell (given the sketchy info available so far), United decided to bump four passengers so that four United crew could get to work, presumably, at the destination, Louisville.  In my experience passengers don't generally board until the bumping is taken care of.   In this case the passengers were already on board.

The airline says they offered $400 then $800 vouchers to people who would voluntarily get off.   No one volunteered.  Then, they say, they picked four people randomly.  Presumably they would all get the $800  that was offered to people who voluntarily left the plane, but I don't know that for sure.

Three passengers got off 'without incident.'  The fourth said he was a doctor who had patients to see the next morning.  He also was of Asian descent.

The passenger did nothing wrong except insist that his valid ticket for that flight be honored.  The airline screwed up by overbooking the flight and boarding the passengers first and then insisting that four get off.  They should have thought about their crew members before filling the plane.  Once it was filled, there was no reason why their crew should have precedence over paying passengers. Even before the passengers boarded the plane, there's no reason crew should have precedence.  How did they pick him?  Was he flying on frequent flyer miles? Was it because he was Asian?

If they needed to board sky marshals, I might give them a little more leeway.  But the passenger said he had to get to work the next morning which was no different from the United crew having to get to work.  And crew members are much more interchangeable than a doctor seeing his patients.

I applaud the man for not backing down.  The airline employee used terrible judgment when he forcibly dragged the passenger off the plane.

I can't believe that there wasn't a single person on the plane who couldn't have been persuaded to take the $800 voucher (or move if necessary) to free up one more seat.  They could have even offered to let them wait between flights in the United board room.  There were lots of other options.  They could have even found another crew member to substitute in Louisville.  Surely they do that all the time when crew call in sick.

I understand that an unruly passenger might need, on occasion, to be forcibly removed from a plane.  One who might be endangering other passengers.  I don't know how often passengers are dragged off like this man was.  Here's a story about an abusive United passenger causing a Sydney - San Francisco flight to divert to Auckland, but the video shows him walking off on his own power.  And the passenger was the problem.

But this man was only standing up (or in this case sitting down) for his rights.  The airline overplayed its authority to make these decisions, which they have for airline safety requirements.  Not to fly they screw up and need to fly their own crew around.

I'm guessing the pressure to fly on-time played some role in this.  There was also some machismo in the security guy having his authority challenged.

I have to give a big cheer for cell phone videos that document what happens.  Of course they can be edited to distort what happened, but it seems that most of these get up pretty quickly and are from ordinary folks who aren't editing before they post.

I don't normally write about something like this where all the facts are not clear yet.  Perhaps it's because family matters have made me a frequent flyer over the last several years, but this one hits home.  And I'm ready to eat crow if it turns out the passenger wasn't a doctor and did something, besides refuse to give up his rightful seat, that legitimately provoked his removal.  But it will be hard to justify dragging him out.  But I'm ready to say I was wrong if time proves I jumped the gun.  And my wife and I volunteered, when getting our boarding pass, to bump and when they offered us $400 each on flight that was leaving right away (though with stops on the way), we said ok.  Before we got on the plane.

The United CEO's non-apology letter doesn't help. In fact it suggests that the problem starts at the top of the company.  I agree you should support your employees when they take the difficult, but right, action. I cheered on Alaska for backing up their crewe when they booted the man who demeaned the female crew member.   But not when it's the airlines fault.

I hope lots of regular United passengers start checking out other airlines.  Given the leggings incident a couple of weeks ago, and this saga (video below), I'd say that United has a serious problem.

What Does "Pay Their Fair Share" Mean?

Alaska's budget is about $4 billion short.  The legislature is battling to balance the budget.

Republicans, pretty much, want to do it by cutting the budget.
Democrats say it's been cut to the bone over the last couple of years and that revenue needs to be raised.

In a recent blog post I quoted a letter to the editor which called on teachers to take a pay cut to preserve their colleagues' jobs.   I pointed out that it seemed unfair for only teachers to take a pay cut.  Everyone benefits from kids getting a good education.  Everyone should take a pay cut.  And that there was a way already set to do this, and it was done in most other states.  It's called an income tax.

I, of course, knew that this term is like blasphemy to conservatives, particularly to wealthy ones.

Oliver, who comments here once in a while, suggested, in a comment to that post, that we have a sales tax instead.  After a discussion about all the people who would not pay an income tax, including those who make less than $14,000, Oliver concluded that:

"Not what I would call fair or everyone paying their fair share."

I took some time to think about and respond to his comment.  When I tried to post my comment, there was a problem and it wouldn't post there.  I had thought about making it all a new post, but figured the discussion should stay with the original post and comment.  Then I tried again and it said my comment was too many words.  So I'm making this a new post.  You can see the old one and Oliver's comment in full here.

My response:

1.  For the sake of this discussion, I'll just accept the numbers that Oliver offered.  I agree in general principle that as many people should pay the tax as possible.  I would point out that as of 2016, there were 198,617 residents 18 or under, many of whom would live in families that paid an income tax.

2.  It's long been understood that a sales tax is a regressive tax, meaning the poor pay a larger percent of their income in sales tax, and that it 'hurts' them far more than it 'hurts' wealthier people.  Even if wealthier people pay more in sales taxes.  I won't go through that argument here.  That link also discusses the reasons for a progressive tax, like most income taxes, in which higher income people pay a higher percentage of their income. (Assuming there aren't enough loopholes to make the higher rates moot.)

So I would just like to focus here on the idea of "everyone paying their fair share."  More particularly, on the underlying assumption of that.



The Problem Of The Work Ethic In The 21st Century World

The work ethics that most Americans can quote goes something like this:  hard work and diligence are morally good.  There are some corollary assumptions:

• that if you work hard, you will do well
• wealth is the result of hard work
• poverty is the result of laziness

  reminds us that work wasn't always seen as having intrinsic value, particularly manual labor.  The Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans saw work as something to escape, to have slaves do.   It wasn't until the Reformation that work became holy.  Luther equated one's vocation with one's calling from God.  But, with Calvin, according to History of Work Ethic, work didn't make you good, it was a sign that you were predestined to be good.  

"Central to Calvinist belief was the Elect, those persons chosen by God to inherit eternal life. All other people were damned and nothing could change that since God was unchanging. While it was impossible to know for certain whether a person was one of the Elect, one could have a sense of it based on his own personal encounters with God. Outwardly the only evidence was in the person’s daily life and deeds, and success in one’s worldly endeavors was a sign of possible inclusion as one of the Elect. A person who was indifferent and displayed idleness was most certainly one of the damned, but a person who was active, austere, and hard-working gave evidence to himself and to others that he was one of God’s chosen ones (Tilgher, 1930, p. 53-61).
Calvin taught that all men must work, even the rich, because to work was the wil of God."

In any case, today, most of us, at least subconsciously if not explicitly, tend to look down on the poor and give respect to the wealthy.  But despite this general rule, there have always been exceptions:

1. Those who inherit wealth only work if they want to or their families require them to. If they do work it’s often in jobs provided through family connections
2. Slaves worked, but didn’t get paid for their work - their masters took the benefit, and those lost wages are still reflected in our society’s wealth inequality.
3. Women didn’t work outside the house unless economics forced them to.  Married women whose  husbands had enough income to support the family worked at home.  Depending on how much the husband earned, the woman might work hard in the house or might have help to do most of the work.
4. People who were physically or mentally ill or disabled may or may not have worked depending if they could find something that matched their abilities  
5.  Children may or may not have worked - it depended on the family income and where they lived.  Farm kids often worked from a young age.  Child labor outside the house/farm expanded greatly in the industrial age for poor families.  And conditions were often horrendous.

Today, we still have this moral value attached to wealth and working.  Not working, or at least being poor, is seen in the US as a moral failing.  We may provide services for the homeless, but we tend to blame their homelessness on lack of a work ethic.

A Change In the Nature Of Work

The myth is that the work ethic was useful once in a time when everyone had to work for the family and the society to survive.  That may have been true of families, but most societies in history had workers and those who lived off the work of the rest.
The work ethic was probably a convenient tool when human economies became industrialized and workers were needed in the factories.   But our economy has changed.

Trump has blamed immigrants for taking away American jobs though we know for the most part immigrants take jobs that Americans either don’t want to do, or skilled positions for which employers can’t find enough qualified Americans.

The Real Job Thief Has Been Automation.  

From the time that science was applied to management in the US (around the early 1900s) workers were seen as a problem. Early Management Science tried to make factories more efficient by making people more machine like.  People no longer created a whole product from the beginning to the end.

Instead the process was broken down in to separate pieces, and factory workers did the same 10 - 90 second action over and over again all day.  The joy of work, of having a craft and doing it well, was replaced by tedious, boring work.  First this was with factory work, but then it spread into other fields.  Some of the last fields are education and medicine.  The technology of distance education, for example, reduces teaching into components.  Teachers prepare, with the help of teaching technicians, videos, reading assignments, etc. before the class begins.  Everything is put on line and the teacher may have no role except to comment in discussion groups. And a new teacher could step in and appropriate the work of the teacher who designed the class.   Doctors are no longer working in private practice.  They are now mostly employees of hospitals.

What Will We Do With Our Leisure?

This change was already anticipated in the 1950s and 1960’s when weekly magazines had cover stories with titles like “Automation:  What will people do with all their leisure time?”  They were predicting 30 hour work weeks.

What they forgot was that we have a capitalistic society where profits go to the owners of the companies.  So, as work got automated, some employees did get more leisure - they lost their jobs.  The remaining employees often ended up working more than far more than 40 hours a week.

Companies then used automation to out-source a lot of the remaining work to customers - think about self-service gas and grocery checkout, ATM machines,  skipping travel agents and booking your own tickets on line.  Now we even have to check ourselves in and get our own baggage claims.

Instead of 30 hour work weeks, we have far more unemployed, and a much greater income gap between the heads of corporations and their employees.

Are You Ever Going To Wrap This Up, Steve?

The point of this long explanation is that people are unemployed because our society doesn't need everyone to work to produce the goods and services that we want.  In fact, we do it more efficiently with more machines and fewer workers.

But our value system is still based on a society that needed every able bodied person to work.  I’m guessing that you, like most people, are still thinking in terms of those old values.  But owners of companies have an incentive to automate and get rid of jobs - it’s cheaper and machines don’t have personal lives that interfere with their work.

So that’s why I’m not persuaded by your argument that with an income tax, some people don’t contribute their fair share.  That language implies a moral shortcoming on the part of those who will get something for nothing that echoes the Protestant work ethic.

Most, if not all of those people who don’t earn enough to pay an income tax, also didn’t get a fair share when it came to things like good parents, skills that are rewarded in our school system and job market, good mental and physical health, and other factors that impact who will succeed and who won’t in our society.  Brawn which was marketable in the past, is much less in demand.

The systems we have for allocating pay are also very skewed.   How hard you work is not necessarily related to how well you do or whether what you do makes society better or worse.   Should the people who get rich selling alcohol have some extra responsibility for the people who die at the hands of an alcoholic?   Should a teacher get tax credits for inspiring a student to succeed despite a difficult upbringing? [UPDATE a little later:  When I wrote this, I didn't know that a bill has been introduced in California to exempt teachers from state income tax.0

An important measure of human beings for me is how they play the hand they were dealt at birth.  Those who are given a lot, owe a lot more than those who were dealt a lousy hand.  In my ideal world, people's moral worth would be measured by the ratio between the benefits one receives and what one gives to society.  Ideally, everyone would be at least 1:1.

The people who camp in the woods along the bike trails would mostly like a decent home and income and only camp in the woods when they chose to.  But their skills and life experiences have gotten them to a point where they really can’t get out of their ruts without some serious interventions.  Our health care non-system caused many people to self-medicate, with alcohol being the legal drug, but lots of illegal drugs have also been available.   American individualism still attributes poverty to the laziness of the individual.  Other countries recognize that the social, political, economic systems play a big role in who succeeds, financially, in life and who doesn't.

I  don’t have a problem paying higher taxes to offset what they can’t pay.  I wouldn’t want to trade places with them.  And I also know that as the percentage of poor gets bigger, the more brutal society gets, even for the wealthy.

I would love a society where people are nurtured as kids and helped to discover and develop their skills and talents so we have far fewer people who can’t make it on their own.  But we also have to figure out how to distribute wealth when there just aren’t real jobs for a large segment of society.

And so "paying their fair share" doesn't mean that everyone pays in money.  Lots of people are paying with abusive parents,  with learning disabilities that weren't overcome because their school saw them as problems kids not teachable kids, with skills that are no longer valued, with trauma from war or crime, and in many other ways.

This Debate Isn't New

And I'd note, these conflicting  ways of looking at the world aren't new.  Hilary Mantel, in Bring Up The Bodies, describes how Henry VIII's chief minister,  Thomas Cromwell's attempt to hire the poor to build much needed infrastructure was treated by Parliament:

"In March, Parliament knocks back his new poor law.  It was too much for the Commons to digest, that rich men might have some duty to the poor;  that if you get fat, as gentlemen of England do, on the wool trade, you have some responsibility to the men turned off the land, the labourers without labour, the sowers without a field.  England needs roads, forts, harbours, bridges.  Men need work.  It's a shame to see them begging their bread, when honest labour could keep the realm secure.  Can we not put them together, the hands and the task?
But Parliament cannot seee how it is the state's job to create work.  Are not these matters in god's hands, and is not poverty and dereliction part of his eternal order?  To everything there is a season:  a time to starve and a time to thieve.  If rain falls for six months solid and rots the grain in the fields, there must be providence in it;  for God knows his trade.  It is an outrage to the rich and enterprising, to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread in the mouths of the workshy.  And if Secretary Cromwell argues that famine provokes criminality;  well, are there not hangmen enough?" (emphasis mine.)

I'd note that Thomas Cromwell lived from 1485 - 1540 and Martin Luther lived from 1483 -1546.
John Calvin lived from 1509 - 1584.

What Does Fail Mean? This Ad Fails In Every Way

This ad was in the Wednesday, March 8, 2017 Alaska Dispatch News and it's full of misinformation and manipulation of the facts.  (Not sure how to link an ad so that non-subscribers can see it in the paper, but it's on page A-5)

The headline claims Obamacare has failed.  But ask the 10 million or so people who now have coverage because of Obamacare whether it failed.  It's only failed in conservative ideology whose proponents failed to block the Affordable Care Act, and failed to repeal it.   Obamacare isn't perfect, but I would argue that most of the problems are there because the Republicans, in their fervor to repeal it, refused to work with Democrats to make improvements.  What they feared, came true.  Americans don't want to lose their health insurance.

But let's look at the ad.  Here are three key claims:

• "Premiums are skyrocketing"
• "Our choices are limited"
• "Alaskans are losing coverage"

Premiums are skyrocketing

Note the quote "Skyrocketing premiums as high as 40%."   I checked the Alaska Dispatch October 30, 2016.  I could not find this article in that day's edition. (Here's the link, but you have to be a subscriber to see the archive.

But using the words in the claim, I did find this article from 2011, before Obamacare went into effect.

"HEALTH CARE: 9 percent rise far outpaces wages, inflation.
BY TONY PUGH
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON After modest increases last year, the cost of job-based health insurance for families and individuals has jumped sharply this year, even though insurers are paying less in benefi ts as cash-strapped American workers opt for less medical care.
For the estimated 150 million workers with employer-sponsored coverage, the average cost of family health insurance jumped 9 percent this year to $15,073, while the price of individual coverage rose 8 percent to $5,429.
What is clear, however, is that family coverage premiums have climbed 113 percent since 2001, compared with a 34 percent rise in workers’ wages and a 27 percent increase in inflation over the period.
Employers still absorb the bulk of insurance costs. They pay an average of 72 percent, nearly
$11,000, toward the cost of family coverage. Workers pay about 28 percent, an average of $4,129. For single coverage, workers pay about 18 percent, or $921, in premiums, while employers pay the rest, about $4,508." [Emphasis added]

 The citation mentions the Alaska Dispatch News September 28, 2016. (I think you have to be a subscriber to see the link.)  But if you look at that edition of the ADN, there's nothing there about this.  If you look harder, there's an opinion piece by Dermot Cole published  June 20,2015 and updated Sept. 28) but it's actually titled:

"17,000 Alaskans face risk of losing health insurance subsidies" (emphasis added)

So,
It's not "lost coverage"  it's "risk of losing."

And it's not losing insurance, but subsidies. Here's the beginning of the article: (this link should work)

"17,000 Alaskans face risk of losing health insurance subsidies
 Author: Dermot Cole   Updated: September 28, 2016   Published June 20, 2015
Robin Barker, a longtime resident of Fairbanks and Bethel, struggled with chronic illnesses for years that kept her from working. Her only option for health insurance cost nearly $800 a month for a policy that came with a $15,000 deductible. Prescriptions alone set her back $12,000 a year."

Why were these subsidies at risk?  Because, according to this Washington Post article:

"The challenge to the health-care law was brought by the same conservative legal strategists who three years ago fell one vote short of convincing the court that the law was unconstitutional. The latest challenge was about how the law is to be carried out."

If we could figure out who "One Nation" (the funders of this ad) is, we might find that the people who fought to get rid of the subsidies all the way to the Supreme Court were funded by the same people who now use that failed court challenge as though they had won.

A few days after this article was published in June 2015 the US Supreme Court ruled to keep the subsidies 6-3.  (Only Scalia, Thomas, and Alito opposed.)  So, in fact they didn't lose those subsidies and the quote is made up to warp people's understanding of ACA.

They are misleading readers further by saying people would lose coverage, when in fact it was a subsidy to buy the coverage, which, in fact, they didn't lose.

Limited choices with only one insurer in the marketplace

This link does take us to the New York Times story cited, which  does mostly say that five states, and parts of other states, are likely to have just one insurer in 2017.  But this article was published a month or so before the final decisions were to be made, so it's not clear how things ended up.  "Many" turns out to be in the article:

"17 percent of Americans eligible for an Affordable Care Act plan may have only one insurer to choose next year. "

Why would 17% of Americans have only one choice?  Paul Krugman argued

". . .  it would be quite easy to fix the system. It seems clear that subsidies for purchasing insurance, and in some cases for insurers themselves, should be somewhat bigger — an affordable proposition given that the program so far has come in under budget... There should also be a reinforced effort to ensure that healthy Americans buy insurance, as the law requires, rather than them waiting until they get sick. Such measures would go a long way toward getting things back on track."

He goes on to argue that if there were a public insurance option, the problem would also be solved, but that insurance companies opposed that strongly.  But if insurance companies say they can't afford to offer insurance, he goes on, then a public option should be available to provide the competition that a market needs to keep rates lowers.

And finally, this third headline - limited choice - ignores the fact that before Obamacare, many more Americans had NO choice of health insurance.  For them, one choice probably seems better than no choice.

And given that Republicans made repealing Obamacare their top priority, it's clear they wanted it to fail in order to fulfill their own prophecies.  Sure, Obamacare is not perfect, but millions of Americans now have health insurance who didn't before.

The ad tells you to call Lisa Murkowski's office and "thank [her] for fighting to repeal and replace Obamacare."  I'd suggest that you call and ask her who put out this ad in her name and that you do not support the repeal of Obamacare until there is a replacement that's at least as good (covers the same number of Americans and has the same affordability levels) as Obamacare.  The number they listed is 907 271 3735.  I got right through.  It only takes a minute to do.  It's more important for Alaskans to do this, so share the number and this post with other Alaskans.

And who is One Nation?  Not sure who funds them.  But their website (you can google it) sounds much more reasonable than our president, but basically wants to stop Obamacare and get public funds to private schools among other things.

Finally, there's the question of the ADN's responsibility to monitor 'alternative facts' in paid ads in their paper.  Especially when the ADN itself is wrongly cited.  I don't think they should ban such ads, but they should alert readers that the citations are wrong and the claims are, at best, misleading.  I know that's not part of traditional journalism, but in this time of a president who lives in an alternative reality and lies regularly, traditional journalists are learning new ways to get readers closer to the truth.

Oscar Screwup Response Was Class Act

It was any event organizer's worst nightmare.   The last award.  The most important.  And the wrong film was announced.  The La La Land crowd - there were a lot of people who took the stage - began their jubilant thank you's when La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz (I didn't know who it was at the time) told the audience that it was a mistake, that Moonlight had actually won.

There were no tears (at least visible on tv), no refusal to give back the awards, no yelling, no blaming.  Just the opposite.  It was one of the wrong winners who announced the mistake and who said very positive things about the actual winner, and the La La Land crowd gracefully ceded the limelight to the crew from Moonlight.

The mistake was acknowledged immediately and openly and the response was all so adult, so gracious, so harmonious.  This was not some minor issue, but rather the most prestigious award in the film industry, an industry filled with ambitious people.

Our news has been so dominated by three-year old tantrums lately, that this is a wonderful relief, and we should all be glad for the error, just to see how decent people behave.

Deadline says that PricewaterhouseCoopers has claimed the blame:

"We sincerely apologize to Moonlight, La La Land, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for Best Picture. The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC, and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation."

Another, adult statement.  No weaseling.  Just standing up and admitting the fault, and apologizing to those who were affected.

Principles And Verification Tasks For Journalists And Their Readers

I've mentioned I'm taking an online class called Journalism Skills for Engaged Citizens from the University of Melbourne.  Last week I got one of the optional books they recommend - Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel's The Elements of Journalism.  The copy I got from the library is a 2007 edition and given the changes in electronic journalism since then, I'm sure the newer version has been updated quite a bit.  Nevertheless the chapter on verification is still worth thinking about - both for journalists AND for readers (listeners, viewers, etc.)

Much of this stems from, according to the authors, a 1997 meeting of journalists concerned about the future of journalism in the age of digital and commodified journalism.  The meeting led to a group called the Committee of Concerned Journalists.  (I chose this link because it lists their principles of good journalism.)

In Chapter 4, they talk about verification being central in defining good journalism.  I'm going to offer several of the guidelines for journalists including techniques for verification.

Note:  I've done some editing because the authors have written quite a bit about each point and the one and two word titles don't necessarily capture the gist.  I've tried to give a slight bit more to aim the reader in the right direction.  I've added some links at the bottom* for a little more depth.

Let's start with "Intellectual principles of a science of reporting"

1. Do Not Add.  Never add anything that wasn’t there (don't make anything up)
2. Do Not Deceive.  Never deceive your audience
3. Transparency.  Be as transparent as possible about your methods and motives (more on transparency below.)
4. Originality.  Rely on your own original reporting (get the facts yourself, don't just rely on others, a particular issue in the age of 24/7 news and online rumors)
5. Humility.  Exercise humility 

 Transparency Questions

1. What does my audience need to know to evaluate this information for itself?
2. Is there anything in our treatment of this that requires explanation, including any controversial decisions made about leaving something in or taking something out?
3. Journalists should acknowledge the questions their stories are not answering. a. Misleading sources: Corollary to transparency. Truth goes both ways. Sources need to be truthful. Some say a misleading source should be revealed. Part of the bargain for anonymity is truthfulness.
4. Masquerading (getting stories with deception) - ok if you follow principles: Three Step Test:
1. Information must be sufficiently vital to public to justify deception
2. There is no other way to get the story
3. Journalist should reveal to audience whenever they mislead sources to get info, and should explain reasons, including 1. why the story justifies deception and 2. why there was no other way to get story.

I'd like to think that I've incorporated most of this in my blogging.  Some comes from having to verify in academic writing, some comes from my personal values of keeping the public interest in mind.  I know that I have often, for example, spoken to readers directly about how I've gotten a story, why I'm writing it a certain way, what cautions they should take interpreting what I've written.  The most typical warning I'd guess, has been reporting meetings when my fingers couldn't keep up with what was being said.  For example, from a redistricting board meeting:

"Below are my very rough notes.  Use with caution, until the official transcripts are available."

And finally I get to the list specifically addressing Verification.   There's a fair bit of discussion on the definition of 'objectivity' and whether a journalist can achieve it.  The authors say that the original use of 'objectivity' coming from Walter Lippmann and others, acknowledged bias in the writer, and offered 'objectivity' as a method that focused on techniques of verification that would unite journalists regardless of their bias.  (I would argue that even those techniques have their built in biases to be aware of, but that's for a different day and post.)


Techniques of Verification

1. Edit with skepticism - check line by line - how do I know this? Why should a reader believe it? what is the assumption behind this sentence? If the story says events may raise questions, who suggested that? Reporter? Source? Citizen?
2. Keep an accuracy checklist (See below - this is particularly useful for readers as well as journalists.)
3. Assume nothing.  (See Protess Method below)
4. Tom French’s red pencil - he made a check after each sentence if he’d double checked it.
5. Be careful of your sources  

Accuracy Checklist (useful for readers to think about when reading/hearing news stories)

• Is the lead of the story sufficiently supported?
• Is the background material, required to understand the story, complete?
• Are all the stakeholders in the story identified and have representatives from that side been contacted and given a chance to talk?
• Does the story pixies [pick sides] or make subtle value judgments?  Will some people like this story more than they should?
• Have you attributed and/or documented all the information in your story to make sure it is correct?
• Do those facts back up the premise of your story?  Do you have multiple sources for controversial facts?
• Did you double-check the quotes make sure they are accurate and in context?  

This is all good stuff for me (and other bloggers) to be thinking about.  I even put a note about originality in a story I posted recently about a Superior Court decision.  I was quoting the Alaska Dispatch's report, but couldn't figure out how to get the decision online.  I noted the journalist's need for originality and my attempt to get the judge's decision in my post.  Yesterday an attorney told me you can't get them online, you have to go to the courthouse and buy it.  I called the court just now trying to see if there was a way, but they haven't been able to point out a link to get the decision.  They connected me to the judge's assistant and I've left a voice mail message.


*Short of getting the book itself, ideally the most recent edition, there are websites you can check on to get a little more depth on each of these points than I'm giving.

On Verification - Transparency, Humility, Originality

Informing the News - an essay based on a book by that title also stems from the Committee of Concerned Journalists' work that overlaps a bit with the lists here.

Protess Method of Verification - a way of thinking about verification by the head of the Chicago Innocence Project.  It's the method he uses with students to determine which prisoners to work with on their appeals.

[I've made some typo corrections, some of which look like auto correct errors.  Others are mine.]

From Love To War - New Books At UAA

I checked the new books shelves at UAA library the other day and I'm finally getting around to putting up a short sampling.  I'm trying to spend more time off the computer, so this will be brief.  There were also some more technical books, but social sciences and humanities seemed to dominate.

These two books with practically the same title:

From an interview with Nancy Sherman the author of Afterwar:

"The concept of ‘moral injuries’ associated with combat experience, an affliction of growing interest to both military and healthcare communities, features prominently throughout the book."

And from a review of Zoë Wool's After War:

"In After War: The Weight of Life At Walter Reed, Zoë Wool shares her experience working with some of the most grievously wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a year of research from 2007-2008, Wool conducted fieldwork with amputees recovering at Walter Reed Medical Center, the military hospital complex that has become emblematic of the post-war experience of American combat wounded service members."

There were two books about Yiddish - one on short stories and one on theater.
















These covers seemed a bit out of place at a university library - but they're Alaska stories.

And now that I've looked it up, it seems that sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.  From Lifeway, where you can watch a video of the author and/or read the transcript :

"Christian Romance Fiction author Dani Pettrey talks about her books Shattered and Submerged. We also find out more about her writing process, the role of fiction in ministry, and her favorite authors."

Here's a more academic look at romance.  You can read a review of Brossard's On Romantic Love.

This one deals with a subject dear to my heart - how we know things.  In particular it looks at how the stories sent from the New World back to Europe reflected what Europeans thought about the New World as much, if not more, than it reflected the New World.  From the back cover:

"Comparing the official 1784 edition of [Captain James] Cook's journal for that voyage with Cook's actual journal accounts, Curie demonstrates the representation of North America's northwest coast in the late eighteenth century was shaped as much by the publication process as by British notions of landscape, natural history, cannibalism, and history in the new world.  Most recent scholarship on imperialist representation of the non-European world takes these published accounts at face value.  Constructing Colonial Discourse combines close textual analysis with the insights of postcolonial theory to critique the discursive and rhetorical strategies by which the official account of the third voyage transformed Cook into an imperial hero."

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is one of the UAA/APU Books of  the Year along with The Color of Water.

These books should show up in a lot of different classes and discussed from the perspective of the course subject.  The "Topics of Relevance" for 2015-2017 is "Negotiating Identity in America."

From Project Muse:

"Networks of Modernism offers a new understanding of American modernist aesthetics and introduces the idea that networks were central to how American moderns thought about their culture in their dramatically changing milieu. While conventional wisdom holds that the network rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s in the context of information technologies, digitization is only the most recent manifestation of networks in intellectual history. Crucial developments in modern America provide another archive of network discourses well before the advent of the digital age. The rise of the railroad recast the American landscape as an assortment of interconnected hubs. The advent of broadcast radio created a decentralized audience that was at once the medium’s strength and its weakness. The steady and intertwined advances of urbanization and immigration demanded the reconceptualization of community and ethnic identity to replace the failing “melting pot” metaphor for the nation. Indeed, the signal developments of the modern era eroded social stratification and reorganized American society in a nodal, decentralized, and interpenetrating form—what today we would label a “distributed” network that is fully flattened and holds no clustered centers of power."

You can look at the table of contents here.

From a Journal of Europe Studies review of the book:

“Inner emigrants were nonconformist writers ‘dealing in ambiguity’, whose works had - and retain - ‘the potential to be read and understood simultaneously as both a form of tacit opposition to and acquiescence in the regime.’

From an interview with the author on why she chose to write about social media in the war zone:

"A: My brother was on his first deployment in Iraq while I was in graduate school studying communication. At the time, he and I mostly wrote letters back and forth. But I began paying closer attention to advancements in digital communication technologies, especially when the infamous Abu Ghraib photos emerged. At the time, it seemed like new communication technologies (MySpace, YouTube, Facebook) were becoming available at the same time we were becoming increasingly entrenched in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I was personally and academically invested in keeping a close eye on both of these “fronts.” I wondered how all this connection would change what it’s like to be at war."