From the Archives

Part of the mission for this blog was to post some of my earlier writings- particularly the political and public policy articles that have had little public airing. Some of these may be well outdated by now, but they nonetheless make for good reading if you're interested in the particular topic.

So here is a series of posts from the Goodman Vault. Feel free to comment, and I hope you enjoy. . .
D



This first article was in response to an editorial in the Washington Post just prior to the Saddam Hussein execution.


That Iraq is still "struggling with civil war, daily bombings and death-squad killings" is exactly the point. How can such a "government" carry out justice at all? Why not wait and have all of the charges be aired out in public to allow the victims and their families the experience of what modern, democratic justice feels like. The 'justice' we are seeing now for Mr. Hussein smacks of the old fashioned tribal justice which we see enacted on the streets of Iraq everyday. The justice felt by those victims whose crimes will never be tried in court will be a sense of mere vengeance, not the completion a full airing of the facts would give.

One need only remember the video of victims’ testimony from Saddam's first trial to see what a healing experience it is to be free to tell the truth of what happened during an open proceeding. For thousands of victims, that healing will never take place. This is a cynical tragedy that will not help whatever unity may yet be latent in Iraq to congeal. It will instead, fuel the feelings of mass retribution that are at the source of nearly every killing we see today in that country. Part of the reason we put up with the tedium and glacial slowness of the judiciary process is that it generally ends with a feeling of resolution and completeness- that all reasonable steps have been taken to insure justice was being served. The Hussein execution bears more resemblance to a Wild Western 'string-em' up' (and literally) style justice that is beneath any government calling itself a Democracy.

And as such, the rushed execution calls into question the legitimacy of the Iraqi government itself. What authority does this government stand on to carry out an execution? When Saddam was captured, there was no Iraqi government. It was an international coalition that found him, not the Iraqis. The present government is rife with corruption and guilty of we'll-never-know-how-many murders and atrocities. And in fact, we have no idea whether there will be any government in Iraq at all in the next few years.

And while we may know how many victims of Saddam's regime there have been, we do not yet know how many there will be of the US invasion. And at the current rate, that number is certain to be very high- especially if we include the less-and-less hypothetical regional conflagration that appears to be in the works. By any sane measure, the cost of taking out this one man will be absolutely enormous. So enormous that we are forced (or ought to be forced) to ask the question- was Saddam the problem, or was he the solution to exactly the mess Iraq is in now? As the Iraqi body count mounts, the scales of justice tip ever more towards the reality that Saddam was an essential plank in a dam overflowing with nascent chaos. And it should be obvious now that whoever manages to control Iraq in the future (if anyone indeed does), it will simply be a Saddam Redux, as that is the only way to hold together a country that is inherently at war with itself.

If anyone should hang this month, perhaps it should be an exhumed British parliament, which conjured up the Iraqi monstrosity in the first place. America is famous for its short sightedness- especially when looking backwards. But our failure to administer real Democratic justice combined with our failure to secure Iraq in the first place will have made a mockery of the Hussein proceedings that can never be taken back.

A full addressing of Hussein’s war crimes, preferably in an international court, would be one of the few positive things that could have come out of the Iraq debacle. And now that last opportunity will have been squandered. Saddam’s hanging may wind up being the shot heard round the world of the 21st century. And though the sound will have been drowned out by the daily car bombs and suicide attacks, the world’s failure to administer true and thorough justice will compound and cement the hatred in the hearts of those Iraqis seeking only raw vengeance.

The Middle East’s future is far from clear, but in all likelihood it will be far worse than its past, thanks to the removal of ‘the key log,’ holding the region together. There is no way history will be kind to George W. Bush for his foolhardiness and sheer idiocy. But depending on how bad things get, Saddam may come off as less of a monster than as a man who presided over the last era of peace and stability Iraq will have seen for a long, long time. His speedy execution may well wind up hanging around our own necks for a long time as well.



The next piece is a plan for Iraq that I came up with last winter. At this point, it may be too late to enact. This was all pre-surge, pre-2007 State of the Union. If enacted, it would have had to be done in secrecy and very quickly. I am pretty sure the ship has sailed on this one, so I'm posting it here to inspire thought and receive feedback.



New Iraq Strategy:

“Pull US soldiers out of harm’s way” – Tom Vilsack

Well of course. There are many areas of Iraq that are stable, secure, and prospering. We let it be known that US troops will be at the disposal of those localities in which there is already order. They will serve as police security, they will protect the borders from insurgents, etc. Let it be known that US troops will only patrol areas that are already safe. If the area ceases to be safe, the US forces will leave and go somewhere else.

This will increase the incentive of those regions to stay safe, so as not to lose the extra protection of the US forces. The result will be that people who live in unsafe neighborhoods will want to move into the safer ones. This can happen at a controlled rate (like normal US immigration). If there is an increase in violence or an influx of insurgents, the previous residents will have an incentive to expose them and turn them out. They will not want their stability ruined by a few bad apples, because if the insurgents infiltrate, there will be a little more violence and then increased violence as the US forces decide to leave.

This will generate regions of Iraq that will increase in size and become de facto mini-countries whose borders and “immigration” will be managed by the US troops. The result will be that if these borders are attacked, the US can go into full combat mode without making dainty efforts to win hearts and minds. The country will be divided into three groups- the already peaceful, those seeking to be peaceful, and those concerned with violence who will continue to isolate themselves and be easier to fight without the protection of large civilian populations. (Whether or not these regions are divided along ethnic lines is irrelevant. The rearrangement will happen organically based on the desires of individual Iraqis on where they want to live.)

There will of course be questions of how to manage an expanding population, and it will likely be accompanied by expanding borders (within the mini-countries) with the US perimeter expanding as well. Logically, infrastructure development would be easier in the already-peaceful districts since there is a pre-existing level of relative stability. Therefore accommodating the ‘foreigners’ (or intra-Iraqi immigrants) would be less difficult.

Over time, and with relatively few US casualties, the country would divide itself into those residing in peaceful sectors and those trying to disrupt that peace. This would make fighting much easier, as it would be less surgical than previous fights.

Under normal situations, Iraqis would be less likely to move around the country and give up their homes. But “fortunately” the situation being so chaotic, most Iraqis would welcome stability rather than hold on to their homes in highly dangerous areas, and in fact there is already mass migration throughout and outside of the country.

As to the criticism that this might appear to be an American retreat or a sign of weakness, I believe that the American soldiers have already proven their mettle and endurance and would not be any less feared were they to adopt this strategy.

The country would thereby be decided into new ‘improvisatory’ regions unlike the ones we currently see on maps.


The current strategy of seize, hold, build is unnecessary. There are already seized and held areas in Iraq. Let us secure those completely and let them build. In these areas, real investment can be made in infrastructure, electricity, etc., with the guarantee that there will be no increase in insurgents. As soon as there are, the US will simply leave and redeploy to another safe area. The local citizens will certainly police themselves stringently if they already live in safe (/prosperous) areas and know the risks of allowing insurgents to breed in their midst. And if they do, then the US will simply redeploy. This is real leverage- leverage that has eluded us with the Maliki government from day one.

There is a chance- a good chance perhaps – that the plan will be resented by those already secure regions that would rather be left alone, that would rather be free of the ‘humiliating’ presence of US soldiers and of the threat of infiltration from destructive elements- not to mention the burden of growth and taking on refugees. This natural resentment should be acknowledged, and due compensation be offered for the necessary inconvenience and disruption. But the citizens of these regions must be made to understand that without their assistance, the country and region will degenerate into uncontrolled chaos and their regions will not be spared. This argument should make sense to the locals and their cooperation ought to be able to be counted upon.



The US should immediately act on this plan, and it should do so quickly and in total secret, so that their plans are not understood by the insurgents who might attempt to beat them to the punch and infiltrate before the US is able to secure the perimeters. In fact, it may be necessary to “secure first” answer questions later. This would likely be an unpopular tactic – reminiscent of all of the high and heavy handed tactics the US has been failing with for years – but it may be the only way to ensure that the plan is effective. That the already-secure regions may not want to wake up to a renewed and concentrated US occupation is a foregone conclusion, however, once secure the plan could be revealed to the population and would necessarily be accepted.

The US military leaders should seek counsel with Iraqi culture experts on this last point to make sure it is implementable. Perhaps secret discussions with the local elders could precede the plan to assure public cooperation once implemented. This would be a delicate matter and require exquisite diplomacy- a novel idea for sure, but perhaps it’s due.
The “good news” is that President Bush’s surge and Maliki’s failure to hold up his end of the bargain will pave the way for a ‘no confidence vote’ (by the US) in the Maliki government (it seems obvious that this was the strategy Bush planned all along: put unrealistic demands on the Maliki government, then use their inevitable failure as US political cover to pull troops). The failures of the democratically elected government of Iraq will “leave us no choice” but to rely on those local governments that are capable of effective governance- and this is the moment this new strategy can be implemented.

Finally, once the regions are relatively secure, and the world is duly impressed with the United States’s ability to salvage the situation in Iraq, there may be a chance – there may be a chance- that we could enlist some of our more squeamish allies to assume some of the duties of border patrol for the mini-states. This would in time free US forces to regroup and become available for more important missions. The heavy lifting will have already been done, and the US could begin to reestablish its leadership role in the world having overcome significant odds to stabilize Iraq. It would also allow other countries to re-ally themselves with the US militarily on a mission that seems genuinely sound – and also relatively safe.



At some point, once the regions are stable and prospering, they will want the US out. This will be fortuitous time, because while they may want the US out, they will by then have built something worth protecting. Therefore, the local population will have a strong incentive to build a competent army- and an army devoted not to individual sects (though the regions may be highly sectarian) but to the geographical locale to which they belong. In other words they will have their own mini-state to fight for, and they will have a real stake in the state they would be protecting. This is the incentive structure currently lacking in the Iraqi army training program. There is no ‘larger vision’ of Iraq, and there is nothing to protect. But in the new plan, local strength will develop organically out of its own will to thrive.

In reality the model somewhat mirrors the advent of the early North American colonies. The key to the early development of the US was that it was well protected from the tribulations of Europe. In those days, getting across the ocean was a strenuous multi-week-long journey with no guarantee of survival. America was safe during its early years and thus able to experiment, bloom, and flourish without the threat of constant invasion from the outside. This is why the only pre-20th century democracy in the whole Eurasian continent (since Rome) has been Switzerland- again because it was protected by the mountains.

In Iraq, we would be creating an ad hoc natural boundary – the US military to protect the budding nation in a womb-like fashion until that ‘nation-lets’ become able to protect themselves.

Will democracy necessarily ensue? We don’t know. But usually once the fundamental needs of safety and security are met, people feel free to take risks and grow. And what could be more risky than representative democracy- and yet what else could be so rewarding? With internet hook-ups and satellite TV, the new Iraqi mini-states will hardly be isolated from the world’s ideas- only from its weapons.



There has long been an assumption that without securing Baghdad, without securing the capitol, there would be no hope. But why must Baghdad remain the capitol? Right now it is a capitol in name only- the real capitol, the Green Zone could be transplanted anywhere, so if Baghdad is already lost by virtue of being run by the gangs, then let the capitol move elsewhere.

Also, if the elected government of Iraq is in reality inept and unable to provide security or law enforcement or any kind of civil order, then it is itself irrelevant. If there are local communities that are secure and functioning (by virtue of whatever local mores and structures), then let those assume the duties of governorship- democratic or not. Because in Iraq, reality must matter more than ideals.

In fact, there is an even greater risk in the making that Iraqis may come to look on democracy itself as a negative force. It appears to already be happening in some quarters. Compare this with Russia’s disenchantment with the concept and willful retreat to authoritarianism.

[[[[Empty symbols, like democracy (in their case), if they can not protect innocent civilians are useless. We had best beware the fate of democracy’s reputation that has taken hold in Russia. There is great cynicism towards the institution in that country, and if Iraqis continue to be killed over some “idea” that can’t even keep the electricity on, then they may fall prey to the very same souring as the Russians.]]]]x

The core mistake of the Bush administration was the idea that people inherently prefer freedom. This may be an assumption of a country (the US) all of whose immigrant members prefer freedom. But the vast majority of the world still prefers to be told what to do. That way, when something goes wrong, they always have someone else to blame. Freedom requires self-scrutiny and ruthless self-accountability which, let’s face it, is a huge burden when compared with just scapegoating the other guy.

So if the stable Iraqi districts are able to secure their areas by modestly humane means (including, perhaps sharia law), let them do so, and protect them from outside ‘invasion’ by insurgents. The parts that are not stable will go to the dogs and quickly, but a slow intra-national refugee situation will slowly restore complete order to the country as the vast majority of people who want peace find their ways to the expanding stable core.

No doubt the insurgents will use pressure to intimidate people not to leave Baghdad and other unstable regions. But this will give those citizens the test of their true desire for freedom. Will they be cowed by villains, or pursue their liberty with their own two hands? This is the test that all successful Americans have passed when they transitioned from their own less-free, more-intolerant homelands. Do they have what it takes to pick up and leave? That is the test that was missing when we invaded Baghdad. There was no effort on the Iraqis’ part, and freedom is something that requires effort. It must be earned- stolen even.

In fact, in all of the stories of ancient times, the Holy Fire, the Divine Spark of Enlightenment and Freedom was never given away by the gods. It was always stolen and at great cost to the thief (see Prometheus). And yet the theft as well as the toll it took were always necessary, understood, and welcomed by the ‘thieves.’

This plan, in a real way, places the burden of reconstructions squarely on the shoulders of the Iraqis, while at the same time, averting an outright US withdrawal. That there is already a call in the US to remove our troops from harm, that there is already a call to avoid total catastrophe in the Middle East at the same time, that there is already mushrooming chaos, seemingly impossible to ameliorate makes the decision an easy one.

The US should immediately act on this plan, and it should do so quickly and in total secret, so that their plans are not understood by the insurgents who might attempt to beat them to the punch and infiltrate before the US is able to secure the perimeters. In fact, it may be necessary to “secure first” answer questions later. This would likely be an unpopular tactic – reminiscent of all of the high and heavy handed tactics the US has been failing with for years – but it may be the only way to ensure that the plan is effective. That the already-secure regions may not want to wake up to a renewed and concentrated US occupation is a foregone conclusion, however, once secure the plan could be revealed to the population and would necessarily be accepted.

I would seek counsel with Iraqi culture experts on this last point to make sure it is implemable. Perhaps secret discussions with the local elders could precede the plan to assure public cooperation once implemented. This would be a delicate matter and require exquisite diplomacy- a novel idea for sure, but perhaps it’s due.



Note: this plan will work, but it will require an extended (though less lethal/costly) US deployment. One of the most significant arguments for immediate withdrawal from Iraq is the opportunity cost we are paying. Iraq is a public demonstration to the world of our depleted military and treasury. Furthermore, the continued focus of the public’s attention on Iraq has preempted many important issues from receiving the attention, debate, and support that they require (Russia, North Korea, Darfur, trade with Africa, global warming, and so many others).

So while this plan may in fact save the situation in Iraq, there will continue to be negative consequences for the US which may not be balanced by simply having a stable Iraqi nation (and one that will serve only as a demonstration of American will and ingenuity (if lack of planning) not a shining beacon of democracy for the middle east.) In the end, the price may not be worth it. The present author would prefer to see a speedy drain of overall involvement in the region by rapidly converting the world energy supply to renewable materials. For numerous reasons, this would be the wisest course.

D





Finally for this installment is a speech that Nancy Pelosi could have given shortly after her elevation to Speaker of the House. I believe at the time, Bush had made it clear that he was not really interested in Democratic feedback for his policies. My notes about the speech are included as a follow-up.
D


We have all made decisions in our lives which we regret. Tragic decisions that have hurt ourselves and others. We know what we have done, and we sometimes think we couldn’t live with ourselves if we really thought about all of the implications of our actions. Sometime it takes years to admit our mistakes, even to ourselves.

Well the President has made many tragic decisions during his short time in office. They are mistakes that have affected, our country, our armed forces, and our reputation for years to come. I don’t envy the process he will have to go through to acknowledge the enormity of these personal failures to himself. I doubt most of us could look ourselves in the mirror if we held ourselves fully responsible for the catastrophe which is Iraq today. Most of us would invent alternative realities- imaginary stories that it will actually turn out alright in the end, or that things aren’t as bad as they seem, or that it’s not really about Iraq, it’s about something else, something bigger or grander- we’d say almost anything to avoid facing the reality of what we’ve done. Like I said, for most people that process of denial could last a lifetime.

Well, as a country, we don’t have that kind of time. Sad to say, the President is no longer capable of viewing the reality he has wrought with enough objectivity to carry us forward. He is too deep in his own denial to lead us effectively, not just to a solution for Iraq, but to the larger task of re-establishing America’s leadership role in the world. We simply don‘t have time for the President to come to terms with these failures on a personal level- that will most likely occupy his conscience for the rest of his life. My prayers are with him that he eventually find peace within himself for what he has done.

But as a country, as a nation, we must move on. Therefore, as Speaker of the House, and as a citizen of this great land, I must insist that the current President be removed from office and removed from the equation- an equation which he, himself, cannot solve. For the good of country, we must begin impeachment proceedings to install fresh leadership in America, leadership that can honestly acknowledge the administration’s mistakes and failings so that real concrete action can be taken to correct them. So long as the current occupant of the White House is deluded about his faults, there is simply no opportunity to correct them. We need a strong leader, one who is capable of facing the truth- whether it be difficult or easy. We need a leader with the courage to face ‘bad news’ like Hurricane Katrina head-on rather than insulate himself from the harsh realities of the world. We need a president who will acknowledge mistakes – past and present – so he can correct them, not simply change the subject or pretend that everything is perfect.

The American people have seen what the current President has been unable to see for years. They are not burdened with the guilt of having deceived the public and sent our military into a no-win situation without a plan or a way out. The American people deserve better. They demand better. It is time for the current occupant of the White House to move aside for a wiser, more mature leadership. He should resign immediately, along with the Vice-President who has been so instrumental in maintaining the illusion of success in Iraq; and should he refuse to do so, this body will take action to begin impeachment proceedings so that the current president be held to account for that which he is unable to hold himself.

There was an opportunity in November for the President to face his own conscience, his own shortcomings. The people could not have been more clear in delivering the message that their patience had been tried long enough. The current President and Vice-Presidents’ continued tone of arrogance and gross indifference to the facts indicates that he is deaf even to the will of the people. This is not a dictatorship- the holder of that office can not act in the name of the people without their consent. The current President does not seem to understand that, and the nation can no longer bear the costs of his slow learning curve.

Today I call for the current President and Vice President to resign effective immediately. Should they choose to ignore that call, I will hold a vote on the House Floor to immediately launch an impeachment trial. The country can no longer wait for this President to face reality. Our soldiers and our citizens face reality every day. We should require of our chosen leaders that they do the same.

Thank You.

D


Notes:
“slow learning curve” while powerful is tricky, as many Americans feel themselves to have a slow learning curve (due to a broken education system- but that’s another subject), and we want the punch without killing the buzz by people remembering their 8th grade Math class. “no longer suffer the consequences of his lack of interest in what the public thinks.”

Referring to the President and Vice-President as “current” begins to open up the possibility in the listeners mind that these positions could be temporary, making the idea of replacement more conceivable-ergo-palatable. Introducing this appellation in the second part of the speech allows a full experience of empathy in the first part, but moves us clearly and deliberately towards the goal of impeachment.

How to get around Nancy Pelosi? That her introduction of this speech would appear blatantly self-serving is almost unavoidable. Furthermore, she has no publicly accepted track record of leadership, except for the botched vote for her No.2.
Also, the question of whether America is ready to accept a (non-Hillary at least) woman for the job is up in the air. The best thing she could do would be to announce that, “My place is here in the Congress, where I am honored to lead as speaker. I have no Presidential ambitions myself, and should the President and Vice-President step down, I would willingly pass on my place in the order of succession to the Majority Leader in the Senate {Same problems here of unknown track record, but without the woman/botched vote/self-serving issues of Pelosi} who will be more than qualified to complete the final two years of the current president’s term.

Besides this it’s pretty good- the heavy heart business should probably be cut—it is sad that it would come to this, but after the blood feuding of the past 6 years, it may well sound disingenuous.
D

Ok, Murphy, but just this once. . .

“Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.” – Murphy’s Law

Saeran St. Christopher's "a posse ad esse"

The first point I’d make is about politics, not science. The current round of Creationism debate is primarily political. There hasn’t been a national debate on evolution of this scope since Scopes. Why has it resurfaced now- along with the other red herring issue of the day- gay marriage? These are political hooks meant to solidify Republican hegemony. All of the serious intellectuals (and most of the adult homosexuals) in this country are stocked in the solidly Blue states of NY, CA, MA, and IL. These states have been lost to the Republicans forever, so there is no harm in letting the blowhards (pundits & professors, etc.) blow as hard as they like. Those of us on the Upper West Side will never pull the R lever no matter the candidate. However, in the 50/50 states that we now call Red States, the surest fire way to get the angry proles out to the voting booths to create that 51% majority is to wave around pictures of arrogant scientists from New York and Cambridge claiming that the middle-American religious lifestyle is bunk.

In other words, you’ve taken the bait, seeing an opportunity for self-aggrandizement and self-promotion. There really is no debate on this subject except with fairly narrow, provincial minds. You’ve fallen into the intellectual trap of believing that reason is the causal actor in life, that reason alone shall set you free. The emotional response elicited by threatening (intellectual) ideas is what moves people’s passions and moves them to act. And while the intellectuals pat their own backs for being “right” they watch the world go to hell around them with nothing but their own self-satisfaction to comfort them. The most recent result of this farce was the victory of Bush/Cheney in 2004.

You took the bait in the typically stupid manner to which most smart people are prone – an idiotic question was posed and you couldn’t resist showing everybody how smart you were by refuting it. But the people who posed the question have no concern for intellectual rigor or who comes out on top of the debate. It’s basically a give away. What they’re concerned with is raising emotions which cause people to act and override their reason. And my friend, it is working splendidly.

No intelligent person likes being condescended to. And no one who would take your points on faith I would consider to be an intelligent person. As for the rest, you’re just fanning the flames of their resentment of intellectualism in general, further widening the (unnecessary) rift in the social fabric.

“There is no conflict between Science and Religion, however there is conflict between stupid science and stupid religion” – Abraham Maslow

My second point would be religious. The assumptions you make about the nature and intent of the universe are profoundly arrogant and at the same time revealingly simplistic. I can empathize to a point, as I remember myself as a young scientist puzzled that any fool would spend his time majoring in Theology since we had already proved that God did not exist, so what was the point? Of course I was only fourteen at the time and had never seriously investigated faith, myth, religious history, or any kind of practical numinosity. But as I matured I began doing my own research into the more sophisticated spiritual worldviews and learned of their richness, depth, wisdom, and indeed, practicality.

In hearing what I could tolerate of your lecture I was taken aback by the wideness of the assumptions you make about what religion has to offer us – that somehow the primary religious tenets are that we are “meant” to live in a perfectly harmonious world where creativity is “efficient” and hostility to life is the exception and not the rule. Ignoring the fact that serious scientists ought to examine their own assumptions exhaustively, a step which you do not seem to approach in this segment, I would condemn the emotional weakness such assumptions imply:

It is a typical intellectual conceit (and in general a male prejudice as well) that there be some kind of fixed, harmonious, Euclidian order to the world. The intellectual’s feeling of superiority over the emotionally-driven population leads him (generally) to discount the emotional experience as irrelevant, or at best primitive and unworthy of very much respect. But if one takes the emotional person’s point of view, it is the imperfections, the vicissitudes of life that create the challenge, the drama, and the experience of life itself. While the intellectual spends his time breaking life down into meaningless bits, all the while searching for “meaning,” the life experience - which may be the meaning itself - passes him by. From a psychological standpoint this tends to be due to a weakened emotional stance in the individual forcing him to use reason to attempt to control-by-making-sense-of something which is not inherently reasonable. This tail chasing is evident in the current creationist debate.

Suffering, death, the ferocity of nature, the process of creativity - these are all the subject of serious religious thought, discussion, and philosophy. In Saeran's video post, you seem to be refuting an assumption about how these subjects are understood by religious persons. Making such assumptions, of course, makes your case seem all the more obvious and yourself all the more superior. But you have chosen those assumptions just for that purpose, ignoring the rich history and exploration into the deeper psycho-spiritual underpinnings of the human experience. It is an argument against Maslow's "stupid" religion, invoking Murphy's directive to stop arguing with those people!

I am aware that the typical Creationist point of view is moronic- from a scientific point of view. And if Saeran had posted one of their rants on her site, I would be telling them that their simplistic and shallow view of religion was provoking this inflated reaction in the scientific community and that they would do well to seek out the deeper truths in their faiths rather than the fatuous "Thou Shalts" that make them all sound like Philistines. The people that promote these simplistic religious ideas are just as guilty of opportunism and self-promotion as you are, only on the other side – none of which is to the public benefit. The “sensible” Christians and the “sensitive” scientists don’t get air time on Bill O’Reilly – or even Charlie Rose. It’s only the sophomoric fringe that get the play in the public forum – and it’s for exactly the same reasons – they stir emotions, get people to act (i.e. tune in) and boost ratings – again to no great public benefit.

Just to iterate, the cleverness of this tactic politically is that while there is indeed an emotional reaction in the intellectual elite to the silliness of the creationist rhetoric, it is a reaction that is impotent to effect change, due of our political landscape. No matter how angry the folks get in Harvard Square or at Northwestern, the political outcome will not be any different than if they had all been asleep- whereas in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, those few angry rednecks are just enough to push the conservatives over the top. And you are the one luring them on. “Stupid Design.” What better way to get a redneck out of bed on a cold Tuesday in November than calling Jesus stupid. And here we are today. "Four more years!"

A third point is this: Have you ever been to Kansas? Have you ever seriously opened your mind to what you consider to be the ridiculous? As a middle-class, prep-schooled New Yorker myself, I had what must be a similar aversion to life beyond the Hudson. But in a recent bout of courage I made my way to Kentucky – or was it Ohio? – to the new Creationist museum. I had heard the blurb on NPR which declared it to be an anti-abortion, anti-homosexual political tool and decided to see for myself – a little scientific inquiry, eh? I’ll spare you the story of my entire adventure (unless you’d like me to elaborate) and say the whole thing was really quite civilized. From a technological view it made the Museum of Natural History on the West Side look like something my uncle threw together in his basement. They used (perhaps ironically) the full power of modern scientific technology to make their case. It was indeed an impressive display.

But as for substance, when I tried to suss out exactly what they were getting at, it turned out to be a very simple point, and one that I find wholly worthy of discussion. They chose the medium of film to show a young girl asking questions about her life, who she was, what was her purpose, and why was she here – questions that most thoughtful people ask in their lives. During the film, the hipster-looking angels sweep down (accompanied by vibrating seats and surround-sound speakers) and attempt to assuage her concerns that she was here only as an accident of random genetic mutation and that her life had no meaning, purpose, or significance whatsoever.

Now this is a fair point, I’d say. Highly intelligent people have criticized the idea of random mutation as the driving force of evolution – and the nihilism that logically follows from it. In their plain little film, the creationists suggest that there are holes in much of the scientific evidence (points I’m sure you’ve addressed in your many public engagements) and that therefore the world must have been created in the way the Bible says it was. This is certainly an enormous leap in logic. But by failing to adequately address the underlying concerns of the Creationists – not the self-serving explanation of weak-minded theologians - the scientific community is missing an important issue that will never go away. This is not surprising since science has never been able to adequately address such issues of purpose and meaning, so it behooves scientists to ignore them and fight on grounds for which they are better equipped, carbon dating for instance.

It has always been my feeling that scientists have handled the question of Darwinian purposelessness by assuming for themselves the purpose of bringing reason to the ignorant. This is a sort of intellectual sleight of hand that allows them to feel a sense of purpose while at the same time denigrating the concept of purpose (as espoused by traditional religions) through reductionism and, in this case, the concept of random mutation.

By the way, I got through about 3/4 of the exhibits and didn’t see anything about abortion or ”gay marriage.”



So getting back to you, Mr. Tyson, I am not really arguing with your science. I am not really interested in your science. Science will go round and round as it always has, oblivious to what it chooses to ignore- that is irrational, unquantifiable forces that act in reality but which are excluded from scientific inquiry. I am suggesting that science is by and large besides the point. I am taking issue with your tone, your manner, and the other aspects of your presentation that deteriorate the public good to the benefit of your personal career. Science is not the only force in the universe. It is but one perspective, even though it is the dominant one in our culture. So, as a fish in water, it is hard for an intelligent person to realize that there is anything else besides it, yet there most certainly is. And that which we ignore will always come back to haunt us – in ways that not even science can predict.


I have further thoughts on this topic, but I'll leave it here for now. Would be happy to discuss further at your pleasure.

All best,
[D-Blog}

Hagelberg, nice to visit, but. . .

Please Read:

Bloomberg and Hagel for 2008?
by David Broder



David Broder is generally a big dork. His columns are uninspired and his sense of the national “pulse” is generally misplaced. He comes off as an old guy who’s been in Washington too long and is grasping at stories. So when he took to writing about a possible political union between Chuck Hagel and Michael Bloomberg, I was pretty certain that the union would never happen.

There’s something intriguing about this kind of powerhouse third party ticket. But for me at least, the intrigue is short lived. Why would I think that? They are, after all, both highly accomplished politicians, one the technocrat business executive, one the congressional stalwart and war hero. Bloomberg’s appeal deficit in ‘the sticks’ would be balanced by Hagel’s homeliness – and vice versa. The Bloomberg fortune – as it did in New York City – would raise his candidacy largely above the fray of patronage and back-scratching that plagues the integrity of contribution-dependent candidates. He could, in other words, afford to tell the truth and act in the best interests of the people. And what better time for a third party ticket to enter the arena? We are more democratically wired than ever – between 24 hour “news” channels and the Internet. The two major parties are rife with corruption and mired in pettiness, torpor, and inertia. Wouldn’t a breath of fresh air by this quintessentially American duumvirate be just what the country needs?

You’d think, wouldn’t you?

So how come I don’t see it? How come I still see Hillary, Barack, or even Fred Thompson in the Oval before either of these two (and it’s not yet clear who would be the top and who the bottom – unless some sort of consulship might be established – a de facto version we seem to have been putting up with for the past 7 years.)?

But why?

I hate to say it, but it comes down to a single word: celebrity. Maybe two words- add charisma. These boys, despite their strong competence and integrity just don’t have either.
Anyone who’s heard Bloomberg speak can’t wait for him to stop talking and just bring out the Harlem Boys Choir. His voice is an out of tune piano to (say) John Edwards’s soothing chalumeau. Chuck Hagel is boring and though a decent man seems not appallingly bright (based mainly on Esquire profile form last year). Despite his current “maverick” stance (only compared with John Warner) he is pretty much a box thinker and reluctant to look outside it – unless an interminable war happens to jar him out of his comfort zone.

But really, Dave. How important is celebrity to the presidency? If we’ve learned anything from president Bush it’s that you actually do need brains to run the world, and that a mere handshaker isn’t enough to do the job as it should be done- especially at this moment in history.

Well yes that’s true, but virtually none of the current candidates appear to be lacking in intelligence – at least not to the Bushic degree. And I really believe that almost all of them would make tolerable to excellent first citizens.

But these days Celebrity really is important. Because while some of us are wired to nytimes.com and CNN, more of us are wired to People Magazine and Entertainment News. Now that’s not the only reason celebrity is important, but it’s worth mentioning that Broder’s example of a successful “post-party” candidacy, reflecting America’s distaste for partisan politics, blah blah blah was none other than the Kindergarten Cop himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Arnold” ran a two week campaign during the Gray Davis recall and ran away with the vote despite anybody knowing anything about him. He cornered the bone-head vote as well as the “what’s a governor” vote and went straight to Sacramento before anybody realized that this wasn't the Oscars but a political event.

Now he’s been a great governor for the state and a great leader for the country. But he has relied primarily on Star-Power to get him going and to sway the voters. His competency is almost an afterthought- and it took a few years to catch on once he realized that he couldn’t run the entire state by ballot initiatives alone. (Early on, every policy initiative was followed by a threat that if Democrats obstruct, 'I'll bring the issue directly to the voters.' This stopped working after nobody voted for his initiatives. Perhaps the he had taken for granted that the bone head constituency payed any attention once the Best Actor award had been given out.)

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, America desperately needs as its next Commander in Chief some kind of Symbol. There are enough people left in Washington (or they could be brought back to Washington) to run the country effectively. But the task of providing world leadership calls for charisma and celebrity as well as competence. The political road is actually fairly clear on the majority of issues – especially if you’re not a partisan ideologue. So the more important element is how s/he will connect to the world as a symbol of American regeneration after 8 years of darkness.

The Hagel-berg ticket just doesn’t reach that level of glamor. The Euros won’t warm to a whiny Jew and another redneck- to say nothing of how the Iranians might react.

The glamor issue is at the heart of the allure of the fantasy Gore-Obama ticket. In truth, Al Gore could walk into the race on Halloween, ‘08 on the “told ya so” platform and carry the whole thing. Obama too has the rock star cult organizing around him, and it’s what the people want and love. Politicians are no longer Gods incarnate (if they ever were), but celebrities are. If George Clooney ordered his fans to march on Manitoba to find Weapons of Mass Destruction, you’d better believe they would- and not just the ones living in North America.

What I’m saying is we need more than another guy in a suit right now. The packaging and future packaging of presidents is a foregone conclusion – even the human quirks Obama is so happy to exhibit streamline perfectly with his new politico ‘image.’ We can’t get away from it anymore, as long as there’s TV. So let’s go with it. Schwarzenegger has shown us that governing can be done pretty effectively and invisibly by competent guys behind the curtain. If they get out of line they can always be nudged a little by the opposition. But someone needs to be there with the million dollar smile. It may be the only thing that Americans believe in anymore.

Briefly. . .

So folks I won't lie to you.

The road trip part of this blog is winding down and what remains is not very interesting. Perhaps some day I will recount previous road adventures
from one of the dozen or more cross country excursions I've made over the past several years. But as for this one, Home for Now is now Home for Now, if you catch my drift, and the topics will move off the road a bit and more onto the bustling streets of New York City.

But have no fear, dear reader, there's lots more ahead. Mitt Romney is on his way, along with excursions into the world of mathematics, some of my favorite pictures, and trying to get my car inspection certificate from the guys out in Jamaica (no luck so far. . .).

So look forward to a change of scenery in the upcoming posts. It will be a pleasure to bring you all the latest updates from a fixed location. . .

. . .at least for now.

Sam Brownback- and so much more

[This one turned out to be a little long, but it should be worth the read if his stuff interests you. It's also a little out of order, so I'll be doing some retro-posting in the future. Enjoy.]

So I’m in Iowa today, and in Iowa there are only two things to talk about- corn and primary season. Well, the corn is everywhere, so there isn’t much need to discuss it, so that leaves Primary Season. It turns out that on the radio they play little snippets of all the major Presidential Candidates’ speeches so that the Iowa Caucus, who I’m told take their responsibilities as first voting state quite seriously, can get a real sense of what each candidate is about.

Today it was Sam Brownback, Republican Senator from Kansas. He launched into his plan for an alternative flat tax- that is, a regular, predictable tax, progressive, I believe, by income. This tax would lay alongside the old tax system which citizens could continue to use if they chose to. Brownback pointed out that in the old system, the rich pay much fewer taxes because of loop holes and deductions.

Now generally I could give a shit about tax policy. I guess I still look at it like they did in the old Boss days in New York- it’s basically a bribe you give the government to keep them off your back. But as I get older, or I should say as I have more political power than I did when I took my class on Urban History in the 9th grade, I have become more philosophical about taxes, though no less bored by them. As a trained classical musician, and as the sitting Chairman of the Board of my own 501(c)3 Non-Profit organization, however, Brownback’s passing scorn of ‘deductions’ caught my ear- but not in the way you might think.

Despite running my own non-profit, I am not particularly in favor of the concept of the tax-exempt status for certain organizations that ostensibly “serve the public.” That is the magic phrase that qualifies one as a non-profit organization- that one serve the public. Thus, Schools, Hospitals, Arts Organizations, Religious Organizations, and Environmental Organizations are all exempt from paying taxes and are able to receive tax-exempt donations (and in fact are often required to) from the public. So as a church owner, you pay no property tax on your church lot. As a school teacher, you pay no taxes on the erasers you buy for your classroom- or the chairs, video equipment, computers, microscopes, pencil sharpeners, dowels and construction paper, hockey equipment, or toilet paper. And as a Symphony Orchestra, you can solicit donations with the promise that all contributions will be tax-deductible. Also you get a discounted postal rate.

The government, then, passively assumes a percentage of the operating costs that you would normally have to pay were you any other “for-profit” organization- whether that organization made an actual profit or not. It is a form of subsidy to pay for things which the government considers to be a “public good.”

I have always taken issue with this concept, particularly regarding the arts. Is there a way that anyone could articulate – articulate – in which the public benefits more from hearing the Franck D minor Symphony more than from hearing “Oops, I Did It Again” live in concert at the Colloseum? I can’t think of one. The argument which I would expect to hear (though it holds only a few droplets of water) is that somehow the Franck Symphony is “better “ for you or is more “culturally” meritorious. Ignoring that those are standards impossible to define, we could also mention that the same Orchestra that performed the Franck also performed pop concerts at Tanglewood that summer featuring excerpts from Cats and an arrangement of a Frank Sinatra Song. Getting harder to discern cultural superiority here- especially when you move from Britney to Sgt. Pepper.

In the arts what non-profit really refers to is the fact that no one really wants to hear/see the music/opera/ballet/18th Century Baroque Sculpture exhibit. Or at least not in the numbers that would offset the incredible labor intensity required to put them on. What does it cost to put on an Opera, say at the Met? Let’s say about $150 - $200 per service for each player in the orchestra (conservatively). That’s 80 players, so $16,000 per rehearsal times six rehearsals plus 6 performances a week. Plus all the stage guys, plus all the lighting guys, plus all the costume guys, plus all the costumes, plus all the ushers, plus all the ticket takers, plus all the chorus members, plus the sets themselves, plus moving the sets, plus the truckers, plus the soloists ($25k per night maybe each), plus the conductor, plus plus plus plus. These quickly amount to about a half a million to one and a half million a night. They sell such and such number of tickets per night and that takes a bite out of their operating costs.

But even the most popular orchestra in the country doesn’t offset its costs by ticket sales alone. Their real bank comes from contributions. Big ones- from people and organizations who can’t wait to let it be known how classy and cultured they are. And this is the real issue for classical music as a non-profit- and the reason why the art will never develop so long as it remains protected from normal taxation: The people and institutions who give money to these organizations do not do so out of pure magnanimity (yes, Mr. Smith, you were right here too). Yes they do get the little tax break, but for most of them the more important gain is the social prestige of donating to something so sophisticated, so bettering as the Symphony- which could not survive but for their own noblesse. No, the masses alone would not support such treasures, so it is incumbent on the elite to subsidize it on behalf of the general public.

So despite the classical music industry’s professed desire to bring in young people, to bring in the general public, to make concerts more accessible, the hand that’s really feeding them benefits from them being elitist, snobby, and superior to the masses. If orchestras went ahead and delivered concerts that were appealing to regular people, then there would be no incentive for the Gottrocks’s of the world to donate to them- there would be no prestige, no cultural kudos. So the classical music industry is chasing its tail- and too often catching it- with large donations to create patronizing programs to ‘educate’ the public as to why the performances they don’t like are good for them. Perhaps they should take a lesson from the spinach lobby to see how much Americans like being told what’s good for them. I still haven’t seen a McBrussel Sprout platter behind the Golden Arches, and I don’t expect I will.

But what if we did away with non-profit status for the orchestras? What if we let them fend for themselves- give the people something they would want or just give up the ghost and move to Germany where the culture commands that people like what they are supposed to and not ask too many questions. Well we had an instance of this with my orchestra, The Wild Ginger Philharmonic back in the 90s. Let’s just say that people loved our concerts. There were people who disliked them too- but these people hated them - passionately (a reaction that would please any artist) - they didn’t just walk away without noticing or fall asleep. We had blue haired old ladies and blue haired college students and everyone in between standing in the aisles to hear us play. To one of our concerts a devoted fan invited none other than Brooke Astor, hoping to land us a fat check to get the endowment going. After the first piece he leaned over to Ms. Astor and said, “How can you give money to the New York Philharmonic after hearing something like this?” And that was the end of Wild Ginger’s relationship with Brooke Astor. She walked right out and never returned. We didn’t have to market to people or convince them that it would make them do better on their SATs. They came of their own volition, cheered with real heart, and made financial contributions from their own pocketbooks. But there was no reward of social status for their participation- only a great fucking time.

So for a while I have been considering the real value of non-profit-hood to the world of Classical Music. And while I had played with the idea, it was not until I heard Sam Brownback’s sound byte that I began seriously thinking about whether the same truths (as I saw them) were relevant to the other non-profit status beneficiaries.

So forgive the preamble, as I realize that I have not yet even posed my question regarding Mr. B’s tax policy- my question is- would there remain in his system any mechanism for tax-exempt status at all? Could people still get any deductions in his flat tax system, or would that be it? That’s my question. Right-wingers are notorious for their support for pulling funding for PBS, NPR, and the NEA. Would they really consider a wholesale removal of the concept of non-profit status in America?

Brownback himself is an ordained minister of some sort, so he is certainly involved with a certain sector of the non-profit world- the church. But anyone who follows modern-day Christianity knows that there is no shortage of funds flowing into the religion, and that the rise of the mega-church and televangelist has transformed the experience of Christianity from anything it had resembled previously- and in a completely American style (innovative, efficient, and without any style). In fact many of the modern churches are run on an entirely corporate model, based on giving the people what they want. You want meaning, purpose, direction, a way to raise your kids and keep them out of trouble? Buy God. And the membership is enormous. No hell and brimstone here, just community, emotional support, lots of music, and the occasional rapturous experience. Not bad for a few hundred bucks in membership dues- taxed or otherwise.

So perhaps Mr. Brownback feels the same way about ol’ time Religion that I feel about ol’ time Classical Music. I would not be surprised.

But religion was not my point of inquiry regarding exemption from tax exemption. It was one of my other favorite subjects, education.

Columbia University has an endowment in the billions. They are the largest owner of real estate in Manhattan. They’re doing fine. Yet not one penny of their real estate is taxed, nor are the capital gains from their investments. So they have benefited enormously from non-profit status. Were they taxed like a normal company, their liability would likely be 100s of millions of dollars a year. But instead it’s nothing.

Like other schools, they get the bulk of their capital from two sources- tuition and public or private contributions.

There are a few problems with this. First of all, the existence of tuition makes attending Columbia University an impossibility for millions of intelligent Americans- not to speak of third world internationals whose education might even be considered more important for global peace and prosperity.

Next, the bulk of public contributors make donations for the same reason as for classical music- the prestige of donating to something somebody deems to be important. (I will concede right away that there is an enormous amount of important research being conducted at universities. My point here is that it is not up to a democratic process to decide what makes these things important, and any academic can tell you there are tremendous amounts of waste in the Uni way of doing things. Fun or not, those are dollars that could be spent in other, more productive ways. But they won’t be, because there’s not as much prestige in many of those other ways. This is a longer discussion that aims at core problems with research and the scientific method. For another day.)

As for private donations, of the graduated who give back- and here let’s drop down a tier to a less prestigious College, say Sarah Lawrence- those graduate donors who are worth cultivating by the development office (and thus those who may have some influence in the school) will be only the most successful graduated, say 5 – 10 % of alums making significant contributions in the millions of dollars. So the monetary votes of those SLC grads working at Starbucks simply will not count- and with no cost to the school or impact on its curriculum, values, or methods. Only the rich’s voice will be heard, and presumably their voice will favor that which is already in place (with some tweaks), because that is what brought them to their state of richness The Starbucks barista might be angry and embittered, resenting the school that taught him nothing about life, but he would be in no position to do anything about it. Were he to bang on the door of the dean’s office, they would simply call security and have him escorted out. The people for whom the curriculum worked would have the red carpet rolled out with the credit card machine waiting at the other end. This makes the academic feedback process self-referential and self-reinforcing, thus impeding growth, innovation, and progress.
[NB: this point could be argued extensively, but it is not central to my case, and so I will leave it as is- food for thought).


Before I go on, let me state for the record that I waste little love on academic institutions in general and that I find the modern approach to education deeply, deeply flawed. It would be my hope that if my proposal to drastically reduce the voting age were to move forward, kids would soon enough realize that compulsory schooling of the sort we have now is not in their interest, and they would lobby to strike down laws mandating attendance in schools as well as laws prohibiting child labor (with some protections and provisions- of course). Free from the compulsion to attend school, serious, effective, and nurturing models of learning would be created spontaneously by those to whom education is most important- the young people themselves. But this is for another posting as well.

Back to the point.

My first impulse, then, would be that eliminating non-profit status for schools would be a good thing. But then who would pay for education? Would only those institutions with legacy funds be able to continue operations? That would be unfair to say the least, and it would contribute to real academic stagnation- not that there is that much competition between schools (another symptom of protectionist-ed fields)- the competition is dumped rather on the prospective students, vying for status and acceptance by institutions relying, again, largely on prestige to recommend them- a system I find perplexing and problematic.

It is worth repeating what one author, James Herndon, said about institutions: An institution’s first, and usually unstated, goal is self-perpetuation. Whatever is in their mission statement comes after that one. All the lofty goals of improving society, etc., come after paying the rent, the faculty, and the bureaucracy that runs it. Forgive the cynicism here (I’m quoting a cynical author), but few Americans can afford to work productively for an institution that has a sunset clause built into its mission. People have tended to want to keep their jobs as long as possible, at least if they are expected to commit real effort and energy to them.

So it is not hard to see how this arrangement can easily conspire against the interests of the students, the ones whose interests the institution ostensibly serves. The best teachers, after all, are the ones who make themselves obsolete- they convey their information, they teach the students how to learn for themselves, and like so many male arachnids, their task completed, they simply expire. Since most professors don’t want to expire, there is a natural power struggle built into the teaching relationship (a parallel exists in any inter-generational relationship, including parent-child) in which there is an incentive in the teacher to prevent the student from achieving intellectual independence, as such independence would render the teacher obsolete=powerless=dead. Whether this is enacted overtly (as in music conservatories) or more subtly (as I expect would be the case in liberal arts schools), it is a fact of human nature that must be dealt with in a society.

(Indian culture tends to deal with this religiously, as teachers see themselves as vessels for information flowing from the gods, their reward is a certain amount of prestige and social deference. But in America, we have no such thing- or only very little of it. We don’t want societally granted prestige- we want money, with which we can buy prestige on our own.)

So how to we generate a system of education that is genuinely student centered?

Easy. And no need for tax breaks, at least not for the schools.

Higher education (let’s start with that) would be absolutely free of charge to students.

But there would be a contract. Upon graduation, or shortly after, a small percentage (say ½ a percent) of the student’s annual income (salary) would go to back to the school until retirement, say 70 years of age

This system would inextricably link the life interests of the student with the financial interest of the schools.

In the current system, once the student forks over his tuition, the school is under no obligation to do much of anything. They can teach Ping-Pong for 4 years and call that an education (or Art History, perhaps). But under the new system, schools would have to think seriously about the entire life future of the student- starting with the basics: If the student drops dead at 35 by eating too many Big Macs, the school has just lost 35 years of income. Therefore basic life skills would factor heavily into the initial curriculum. 4 or 5 failed marriages can drain the coffers pretty quickly too and cause bankruptcy. How about general life skills about building relationships- and not just the fruity new age kinds. Schools would have to do research (on their own dime) to find ways of getting along that really work for people, and they would have to find ways to teach those ways effectively to their students.

And then the whole manner of teaching changes- how things are taught, what is deemed important is no longer ‘deemed’ but is discovered- if reading Chaucer adds enough to one’s quality of life that it allows for more productivity and more income, then Medieval English would be a good investment. Otherwise, not so much. Note: I am a firm believer in the value of leisure, reflection, and learning for learning’s sake. Presumably the proportional value of this would be factored in to a school’s calculus.


A school that taught the students nothing useful would receive nothing useful (i.e. dollars) in return and would fold. A school like Juilliard that graduated hundreds of Starbucks baristas would be entirely bankrupt, unable to function. If they wanted to raise money, they would have to demonstrate the worthiness of their mission- and do so without the tax-break incentive to donors.

The same would go for research institutions. Research is indeed valuable to society, and factored into that ought to be a certain amount of inefficiently spent time. But this money can be raised separately from the education funds. Generally student research is a form of slave labor, pardoned by the prestige and sophistication of the work they are doing and the institutions that permit it. So another system would need to be in place.

Eventually, schools would be competing amongst themselves for the best high school students (if such a thing still exists), very much the way the virtually-for-profit football wing of the school already does.

Prospective students would also think seriously about whether or not college was a useful option for them. Could they learn as much on their own without being indentured to Harvard for the rest of their lives? Right now there is virtually no choice for a promising 18 year old than to spend $100,000 to be taught by graduate assistants for 4 years. Why not turn the tables and empower the student- on whose fortunes the collective depends far more than the institutions themselves.

Economic prejudice would also end with this system, as less well to do families would have the same opportunities as wealthier families. This would also contribute positively to racial and cultural integration. Business works best when it is color blind, and this would indeed be a business relationship.

Another positive effect of this system would be that high school “education” would be less concerned with "getting into college” than real life excellence and utility. Again, de-schooling the culture would have a significant positive effect on all of this.

Also, instead of a fixed percentage being given back to the school, other arrangements could be made: perhaps a Medical student could defer back payments until he was 35 but pay a slightly higher percentage. There could also be some sort of buy-out arrangement for the ultra rich. Presumably a four year college education is not worth ½ a percent of a CEO pulling seven figures each year. Some sort of figure could be agreed on in advance to release the student from his obligation to the school.

The flip side would also need to be taken into account. There are many (and ought to be many) who pursue a career out of love for their field with the predetermination that they will live a modest life. I personally believe that this thinking is unnecessarily limiting, and that even someone who enjoys sea horse biology can still find a way to become wealthy given the right frame of mind. So I leave this to others to ponder. Perhaps remnant specialized, not-yet-profitable centers could be in place to accommodate such people. Or some cut of the 1/2 percent would be used as a kind of ‘tax’ to even the playing field for those choosing less profitable professions.

Now, could the system be corrupted? The short answer is- very likely. Research could be distorted to push students towards excessive financial achievement at the expense of personal happiness. Financial gain is hardly the only measure of life success, and there would need to be some system in place to assure that quality of life be valued appropriately (although this has generally been an issue skirted by American Institutions “What defines Quality of Life, anyway?”). Again, in the long term, schools found to be abusing the education of their students would see a drastic drop in attendance (remember, they’re competing for students, not the other way around), and any temporary gain would not be worthwhile. A smart school would therefore set up effective checks on the power of its administrators.

I believe that the teachers’ salaries should be directly tied to the school’s annual financial gains. So that each teacher receives a certain percentage of the school’s annual earnings. The difficulty with this is that teachers would not realize the rewards of their effort until 20 – 40 years after those efforts, so some alternate system would need to be put in place. Perhaps the teachers could be paid an estimated rate and in twenty or thirty years be required to give a refund – not to go below a certain amount – or be given extra funds if their students turned out to be especially successful. This would be a little more complicated, but if there were certain guarantees, then it might work. Perhaps a better system could be worked out.

If this system seems too restrictive – in the sense that it views education as simply a means for making money in the narrow free-market view of the world – then perhaps some 20 % of the education would be required to be reserved for. . .Art History, Chaucer, whatever. The money to pay for it might even be able to be collected from the students themselves or through some kind of donation system. But a strict cap would have to be placed on what percentage of the budget could be used for school-reimbursed time.

The other non-academic aspects of College life could be outsourced so that the students participate as real workers in research facilities or as part of a volunteer book club, chess club, fencing team, etc. The truth is only people with adequate money will be able to devote serious time to these other activities anyway. So it will be the rich who can afford them and the rich who would be able to send their kids to liberal arts college, where they would have done these activities otherwise, anyway. Those who make adequate money through the new system will be able, later in life, to pursue ‘extracurricular activities’ with more freedom, having become wealthy themselves.


That’s the start of the plan, anyway. There is no doubt much to be argued about, but this should get the ball rolling on a discussion.

So thank you, Mr. Brownback for causing me to contemplate the value of non-profithood for those outside my own industry. I probably won’t vote for you, but your candidacy has already been of service to my imagination.