...is guys like Karl Zinsmeister.

Social Policy with Karl Zinsmeister

Hello, I’m Ben Wattenberg. The old saying goes, you can’t legislate morality. But many problems in America -- from illegal drugs to teen sex -- have the government doing just that. Political elites line up on one side or the other, and PR machines crank out a barrage of buzzwords that inflame, but don’t inform. Can social policy actually fix the problems of society without dividing it further?

To find out, Think Tank is joined this week by Karl Zinsmeister, my very first research assistant, former editor of the American Enterprise magazine, now a fellow at AEI. He is also the author of 'In Real Life: Powerful Lessons from Everyday Living.'

Yes, our new Presidential domestic policy advisor.

Zenpundit:

As poorly as we sometimes are at paying attention extrospectively - we could benefit far more by greater attention or some old fashioned Zen "mindfulness" being directed inward. Metacognitive regulation requires an introspective monitoring of one's thoughts and ideas, which means active, conscious, effort to pay attention. This requires practice to sustain for any length of time though on the other extreme, master Yogis and Zen monks have exhibited the ability to effect siginificant physiological changes through meditative concentration. Having acquired sufficient attention to engage in metacognition, we can begin to select our cognitive frames and approach problems with greater discrimination and conscious choice, rather than being driven frantically by events, simply reacting.

I should warn you Zenpundit is not the blog you might expect from the name and the quote. At the same time, the quote is not quite atypical.

You should follow that Metacognitive regulation link. I actually eliminated all the other links in the paragraph to make sure you noticed it.

Maybe he needed to get the bad taste of his defense of the CoulterThing out of his mouth. It's not out of my mouth yet, but the central assertions of [TS] Free and Easy Riders are just...correct.

Until his head collided with a windshield, Ben Roethlisberger savored the liberty of riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Now the Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback says he has "a new perspective on life."

...If Roethlisberger had done a sober cost-benefit analysis, he never would have gotten on a motorcycle. Even a minor accident — a spill that shattered his elbow — could have ended his career and cost him tens of millions of dollars.

Now he's got a new perspective, and so do the many motorcyclists who will be wearing new helmets this weekend after the publicity about his accident. But their new perspective isn't entirely rational, either. Their odds haven't changed just because of one accident. Why should they start wearing helmets now?

Republican Strategists, Sex, MySpace, and Pride: A Heartwarming DC Tale

It’s getting so that a couple nice young girls can’t drive up to DC for the Pride parade without getting openly propositioned by Republican Strategists who give them their real names and business cards these days. Take, for example, the MySpace blog of one such lady, whose sordid tale is reprinted (as a warning to the well-endowed) below:

Business card?

Yup. Business card.

Husband Aided Wife's Suicide in Cliff Plunge, Police Say
By JAMES BARRON

It looked like an ordinary family outing. A minivan stopped at a scenic overlook, a strip of blacktopped pavement that is little more than a wide spot on a one-lane road along the edge of a cliff. In the distance is the Hudson River. A hundred feet below is a forest as thick as when the Harriman family owned it a century ago.

The police say three things happened next. A man stepped out of the minivan, maybe to take a picture. His wife, inside with their two young daughters, put the transmission in gear. And the minivan drove off the cliff.

The End Of Small Politics
Sen. Barack Obama
June 16, 2006

These remarks are excerpted from a speech Obama delivered at the Take Back America conference on June 14, 2006. Click here to watch a video of the speech.

We meet at a time where we find ourselves at a crossroads in American history. It’s a time where you can go into any town hall or veterans’ hall or coffee shop or street corner and you’ll hear people express the same anxiety about the future. You’ll hear them convey the same uncertainty about the direction that we’re headed as a country. Whether it’s the war or Katrina or health care or outsourcing, you’ll hear people say that, now, surely we’ve come to a moment where things have to change. And there are Americans who still believe in an America where anything’s possible; they’re just not sure that their leaders still do. They still believe in dreaming big dreams but they suspect maybe that their leaders have forgotten how. 

Diversity Fatigue article in Time Magazine:

Are Americans Suffering Diversity Fatigue?
People are willing to be tolerant, but only to a certain point. And from California to the Midwest and Florida, signs of exclusionary thinking are popping up all over.

Has it become okay to exclude again?

Perhaps one of the most treasured of American rights is the freedom of association. This is the right to hang out with whomever we want, wherever we want. It's a complicated right, because when we hang out with "people like us," inevitably someone gets kept out. Where and how to draw the line is a question we all seem to be struggling with right now.

Black Jack, Mo., made national headlines late last month when it drew its firm line. An unmarried couple with three children tried to move into the house they had just bought. The house is zoned for single family residences—and the city decided this family does not fit their legal definition of family. The couple pleaded with the city council to change the law. The city said no, and intends to evict. When this news broke, many assumed Black Jack must be one of those white, religious conservative towns in the Bible Belt. But Black Jack turned out to be a suburb of St. Louis, and it’s 70% African American. Their enforcement of the zoning doesn't seem to be motivated by race or religion—just a genuine desire to preserve the pro-family environment.

Quote of note:

The clause that is being used to block us is a "one-man-one-vote" clause that requires that a majority of the shareholders approve any change to the shareholders' agreement. Mergers and financings require such changes. Asset sales do not. What that means is that one of our shareholders who has 75 shares has as much voting power as I do with my 540,000 shares (38.8% of the company). So, a tiny minority is able to block us moving forward on any of the normal paths for raising money. If no alternatives arise, we'll be in bankruptcy and we'll lose the employees within days.

The Rumors of our death are only slightly exaggerated.

Paranoia of note:

"It's crystal clear to us that unless we get involved in the outcome of foreign law then we're going to be at grave risk," says Bull. Ann Beeson, associate legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, says "We now see regional and international human rights forums as simply another tool in the fight for social justice here in the United States."

Christian conservatives take the culture wars overseas to foreign courts
By Scott Michels
Posted 6/14/06

When a devout Christian man in England was fired in 2002 for refusing to work on Sundays, his case became something of a cause célèbre among British evangelicals. But the money and part of the legal strategy behind Stephen Copsey's latest court appeal comes not from London but from Scottsdale, Ariz., and the Alliance Defense Fund.

Rep. Roy Blount (R) just refered to "the Global War on Totalitarianism," and yes, the italics were in his voice. Check it yourself:

And Rep. Murtha looks like the Anti-Cheney.

Quote of note:

Yesterday, a lawyer for the school, Michael Flammia, said the New York report grossly distorts what goes on at the school, which is often used as a place of last resort for students with autism, mental retardation, or behavioral problems.

...The school has about 250 students, about half of whom wear electric shock devices that teachers can activate around the clock.

But this is the deep one to me.

The investigators said some forms of discipline, such as a device that delivers shocks at timed intervals

"Shocks at timed intervals"?? What could justify that?

N.Y. report denounces shock use at school
Says students are living in fear
By Scott Allen, Globe Staff | June 15, 2006

New York education officials issued a scathing report yesterday on a Massachusetts school that punishes troubled and disabled students with electric shocks, finding that they can be shocked for simply nagging the teacher and that some are forced to wear shock devices in the bathtub or shower, posing an electrocution hazard.

The report, based in part on an inspection last month of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, portrayed a school in which most staff lack training to handle the students and seem more focused on punishing bad behavior than encouraging good acts.

NIH Scientist With Ties to Pfizer Takes the 5th
Scientist's supervisor tells a House panel that the alleged wrongdoing warrants firing.
By David Willman
Times Staff Writer
June 15, 2006

WASHINGTON — A senior scientist at the National Institutes of Health exercised his right against self-incrimination Wednesday, refusing to answer questions from a congressional subcommittee investigating conflicts of interest at the agency.

Armed gangs in several violent slums in Port-au-Prince had voluntarily put down their weapons a few weeks before Haiti's February 7 presidential election to facilitate the balloting. But gunfire has become more frequent since the winner, President Rene Preval, was inaugurated on May 14.

Gangs kill three Haitian police, nine others
Thu Jun 15, 2006 04:33 PM ET
By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Armed gangs have targeted police officers in a new outbreak of violence that has killed 12 people in Haiti, including three policemen, in the last five days, a police spokesman said on Thursday.

Quote of note:

DHS officials testified the department, which is responsible for protecting the country from terror attacks, has no way to conduct background checks on companies that bid for contracts.

Duke" Limo Letter Disappears from Files
June 15, 2006 6:32 PM

Jennifer Duck Reports:

Convicted former Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham urged the Department of Homeland Security to give a $21.1 million contract to a controversial Washington limousine company, but the letter has mysteriously disappeared from DHS files, members of Congress were told Thursday.

The Shirlington Limousine Company is owned by a convicted felon and is under investigation for providing prostitutes at parties attended by Congressman Cunningham and defense lobbyists.

Interesting comment of note:

But the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, of California, said Mr. Jefferson had been afforded due process. "This is not a court of law," Ms. Pelosi said. "This is about a higher ethical standard, and you know it when it isn't being met." 

I do find it interesting that Congress operates under such undemocratic (and, in fact, unrepublican) procedures.

Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have supported Mr. Jefferson, who is black, arguing it was premature to remove him before he was found guilty of any crime.

Note to Rich Lowry: See? No race card. A Black person supporting another Black person is NOT an automatic invocation of race...by those Black people. The connections it makes in YOUR mind is totally on you.

Democrats Vote to Force Jefferson Aside
By KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, June 15 — House Democrats voted on Thursday night to strip a Louisiana congressman of a key committee position as they tried to avoid any taint of scandal in a year when they want to ride accusations of Republican corruption to election victories.

I just can't help but think a vast swath of humanity is bypassing the opportunity to reproduce because it's just too hard.

The irresistible rise of cybersex
15 June 2006

CLAD in a PVC mini-dress, fishnet stockings and studded knee-high boots, Cheri Horton leads me through the corridors of her Gothic castle. We stop to chat for a few minutes about the architecture of the building, before she takes me to bed, undresses me, and we have sex.

The encounter took place in the online game Second Life, so the sex was not real, at least not in the physical sense. Within Second Life, people interact via animated 3D characters called avatars, created using software tools provided by the game. Gamers can write programs to give their characters unique hairstyles and outfits, as well as useful objects like boats and aircraft. They can also program their avatars to perform actions such as dancing and swimming. Now some gamers are using these programming tools to give their avatars genitalia and erotic outfits, and to have them engage in animated cybersex.

Jack Kemp's White Guilt
By Steven M. Warshawsky
Published 6/15/2006 12:07:05 AM

Recently, in Human Events, the New York Sun, and several other newspapers, former Republican Party vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp has been arguing that Republicans need "to get on the right side of history" on racial matters, by supporting the creation of a permanent seat in the House of Representatives for the District of Columbia. Mr. Kemp's article is an outrage. His premise -- that the Republican Party is on the "wrong" side of history on racial matters -- is deeply flawed, both as a matter of historical fact and political philosophy. And his proposed "solution" -- to grant representation in Congress to D.C. (a majority black city) -- is grounded not in sound political analysis, but in what Shelby Steele calls "white guilt."

First, a little history. The National Review's Deroy Murdock has laid out many of the facts regarding the Republican Party's strong support for black Americans, both after the Civil War and more recently. Significantly, Republicans were responsible for the two most important events of the modern civil rights era: the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, and President Eisenhower's decision in 1957 to use federal troops to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas.

I'm not going to defend Jack Kemp. In fact, his being strong-armed into running with Bob Dole on a platform that was antithetical to the position he'd always put forth...think a sincere John McCain...ended any possibility of my seeing the Republican party as a big-tent organization.

No, I have some commentary on the material Mr. Warshawsky uses to support his really poor analysis of Black America's political motivations.

Note this is tagged "Race and Identity" rather than "Politics" where it belongs. That's where Rich Lowry put it.

The congressman in question is the infamous Rep. William Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat who was discovered by the FBI to be keeping $90,000 in hard cash in his freezer along with his ice cream and TV dinners.

Ordinarily it would be unremarkable that a congressman stinking of bribery would earn such a rebuke. But Jefferson is black. So his allies naturally turn to the race card to defend him, even if it means playing it against Pelosi, about whom many critical things can be said — but not that she’s a racist.

They did not turn to the race card to defend him. They turned to the procedural card to defend him. And Mr. Lowry turned to the race card to attack the Democratic party.

tsk, tsk.

Tom Cole opened with four points that need be recognized, and all of them had to do with Iraq...so the resoultion should be rejected because it's about the "global war on terror."

Democrats need to restrain themselves and not dog Republicans qua Republicans...but count the number of Republicans that try to jack Democrats in their statements. You get to close with something like "160 Republicans spoke and 125 of them made the specific point of attacking Democrats. They've advanced a political point without advancing a military or diplomatic one. Our friends being intelligent men, I think we can easily deduce their intent from the results."

(No, I'm not live-blogging the thing) 

It's difficult to know what George Will actually thinks of Shelby Steele's White Guilt theory. One could give one's opinion directly, but I don't think Mr. Will wants any of the assertions in the column associated with him. Educated people know they are all nonsense. I have to guess that anything that's not enquoted or directly attributed is his personal contribution to the message.

Like this.

The dehumanizing denial that blacks have sovereignty over their lives became national policy in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson said: "You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race and then say, 'You are free to compete with all the others'."

Blame ptcruiser for this mini-series. I missed George Will's Cliff Notes® version of Shelby Steele's latest book, White Guilt. Gregory Kane caught it though, and pointed it out to me.

First, Will crams his foot completely down his throat about black power. Then he quotes Steele talking about King, the “selfless” black leader, vis-a-vis other black leaders. The implication is that Carmichael, the black leader who coined the phrase “black power,” was somehow not as selfless.

Let me be clear: Carmichael was just as selfless as King. His contribution to the civil-rights movement was as great, if not greater than, King’s.

The quote of note is a whole 'nother article. 

New Orleans public housing residents take back their homes
by JusticeforNewOrleans.org

Public housing residents took action Saturday to take back their homes, despite the efforts of HANO (Housing Authority of New Orleans) and HUD authorities to stop them. Residents rallied at the Florida, St. Bernard, C.J. Peete and Magnolia sites, forcing their way through locked and boarded doors to begin gutting and repairing apartments.

At the Florida development, residents led by the New Orleans Survivor Council and volunteers from Common Ground forced open doors with crowbars and removed flood damaged property. Tenants were visibly joyful at being in their homes for the first time since Katrina.

To date, HANO has not announced any plans for re-opening or rehabilitating public housing, leading to growing anger and frustration among residents.

5,000 Public Housing Units in New Orleans Are to Be Razed
By SUSAN SAULNY

NEW ORLEANS, June 14 — Federal housing officials announced on Wednesday that more than 5,000 public housing apartments for the poor were to be demolished here and replaced by developments for residents with a wider range of incomes.

The announcement, made by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso R. Jackson, provoked strong criticism from low-income tenants and their advocates, several of whom noted that thousands of public housing apartments had been closed since Hurricane Katrina. But local officials have for months said they do not want a return to the intense concentrations of poverty in the old projects, where crime and squalor were pervasive.

GOP Measure Forces House Debate on War
Divisions Within Party Likely to Surface
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 15, 2006; A01

"I can't help but feel through eyes of a combat-wounded Marine in Vietnam, if someone was shot, you tried to save his life. . . . While you were in combat, you had a sense of urgency to end the slaughter, and around here we don't have that sense of urgency," said Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (Md.), a usually soft-spoken Republican who has urged his leaders to challenge the White House on Iraq. "To me, the administration does not act like there's a war going on. The Congress certainly doesn't act like there's a war going on. If you're raising money to keep the majority, if you're thinking about gay marriage, if you're doing all this other peripheral stuff, what does that say to the guy who's about ready to drive over a land mine?"

Quote of note:

Mr. Specter's lawyers have arguments for many of these criticisms, and say the bill is being improved. But the main problem with the bill, like most of the others, is that it exists at all. This is not a time to offer the administration a chance to steamroll Congress into endorsing its decision to ignore the 1978 intelligence act and shred constitutional principles on warrants and on the separation of powers. This is a time for Congress to finally hold Mr. Bush accountable for his extralegal behavior and stop it.

A Leap of Faith, Off a Cliff

On Monday, the Bush administration told a judge in Detroit that the president's warrantless domestic spying is legal and constitutional, but refused to say why. The judge should just take his word for it, the lawyer said, because merely talking about it would endanger America. Today, Senator Arlen Specter wants his Judiciary Committee to take an even more outlandish leap of faith for an administration that has shown it does not deserve it.

Fees Sought for Oil Leases
By BLOOMBERG NEWS

The Bush administration wants 56 oil and gas producers to renegotiate Gulf of Mexico drilling leases that let them avoid paying as much as $10 billion in government fees.

The Interior Department may ask the companies to voluntarily rewrite contracts from 1998 and 1999 to add a provision for royalty payments when oil and gas prices are high, said Johnnie Burton, director of the Minerals Management Service. Price thresholds for relief from royalty fees were accidentally omitted in those years.

"I am hoping that maybe some industry folks would be willing to come back and talk to us about getting some thresholds in those two years of leases," Ms. Burton said yesterday in Washington.

In [TS] Changing Bedfellows, David Brooks invents a fantasy world where liberals don't exist.

If American politics could start with a clean slate today, the main argument wouldn't be between liberalism and conservatism, words that have become labels without coherent philosophies. The main fight would pit populist nationalism against progressive globalism.

The populist nationalist party would be liberal on economics, conservative on values and realist on foreign policy. It would bring together a wide array of people who are disenchanted with their respective parties' elites, and who would find they have a lot in common. It would bring Kevin Phillips together with Pat Buchanan, the Virginia senatorial candidate James Webb together with Lou Dobbs, Al Sharpton together with James Dobson.

...The progressive globalists, on the other hand, would be market-oriented on economics, liberal on values and multilateral interventionists in foreign affairs. The leading spokesman for this movement would be Tony Blair. Domestically, it would be led by the major presidential aspirants, who don't differ much: John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Mark Warner and Rudy Giuliani.

Why not? They don't count food prices and you KNOW those have been rising for a while. They don't count energy prices either.

Consumer Prices Rise in May
By Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 14, 2006; 1:42 PM

Consumer prices rose briskly again in May, led by rising costs for gasoline and housing, the Labor Department reported today, boosting the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will keep raising rates to restrain inflation.

With many motorists paying more than $3 a gallon for gasoline, landlords hiking rents and businesses passing on more of their rising energy and materials costs to shoppers, the department's consumer price index rose a sizeable 0.4 percent last month, after a 0.6 percent increase the month before.

Quote of note:

Many former soldiers are finding it difficult to return to 9-to-5 America. The number of disabled vets from all wars deemed "unemployable" by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs tripled from 71,000 to 220,000 between 1996 and 2005. Unemployable vets receive about $2,393 a month, with the total cost of the program now $3.1 billion a year (up from $857 million in 1996). That staggering price tag doesn't include the bulk of recent vets from Iraq and Afghanistan who will enter the system over the next few decades.

Supporting the Troops
The yearly cost of unemployment benefits for disabled military personnel has ballooned to $3 billion. Is the U.S. prepared for the oncoming wave of Iraq war vets?
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Martha Brant
Newsweek

Quote of note:

The commission found that MCRI targeted African-American communities and areas where large numbers of African Americans congregate in a "deliberate and calculated manner." Signature collectors would then tell these Michigan residents that by signing the petition to qualify the initiative, they would be protecting affirmative action.

Commission: Connerly Anti-Affirmative Action Ballot Campaign Misled Voters
By Tyler Lewis
civilrights.org
June 13, 2006

A new report by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission has concluded that Ward Connerly's so-called Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), which would eliminate equal opportunity and affirmative action initiatives in higher education, employment, and contracting in Michigan, obtained its petition signatures fraudulently.

The report, which includes affidavits from hundreds of voters, is based on public hearings held over the past five months in four Michigan cities - Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, and Lansing. Earlier this year, Governor Jennifer Granholm asked the Commission to look into widespread reports that signature collectors had misled voters about the effects of the ballot proposal

Team Booker Sweeps Municipal Races in Newark
By DAMIEN CAVE

NEWARK, June 13 — A new mayor, like a new broom, apparently sweeps clean.

All six Municipal Council candidates backed by Cory Booker won seats in a runoff Tuesday night, giving Mr. Booker, the mayor-elect, a nine-member Council of allies and a crystal-clear mandate to carry out his proposed overhaul of city government.

The results — coming five weeks after Mr. Booker coasted to victory with 72 percent of the vote — effectively end the era of Mayor Sharpe James, who has dominated Newark for two decades, and kick-start what many here hope will be a period of increased public safety and economic growth.