Fantasy Congress... no really

Photo by: James Morrison

See that there? That's an absent Congress, right before the war in Iraq, actually. There's one guy there, talking to himself about how much it stinks that his fellow Congressmen/women aren't there to have a legit debate on the upcoming war.

Though it doesn't seem like he's scoring high in the esteem of his peers, this guy would kick major congressional ass at fantasycongress.com!

And isn't that what matters?

The name of the game is simple, technically: much like fantasy football, you get to draft congressmen/women to your "team" and compete against people in your "league." You're scored by how many bills, of what import, and how far those bills make it through the House and the Senate.

The whole while, you're ditching lazy congressmen/women who have poor attendance records and votes you disagree with and draft better legislators once you've built up some "political capital."

Honestly, the best part about the game is that it really involves you in finding out how your congresspeople are doing. There's a facet of the website that lets you look in at the actions of all the Congress so you're constantly in the know about what's happening in the 2nd branch of the government.

Leave it to Americans to make politics into an actual sport, but whatever, participation is participation.

Anybody want to start a TTTM league?

The Cost of Living

photograph by YuDesign

David Zahniser's piece in today's Times laid out some of the latest about anti-gang program reform in Los Angeles - mainly, that the L.A. Bridges program will be dropped in favor of (hopefully more accountable) prevention and intervention programs in 12 specific gang-reduction zones. While reading it, I tripped over the following piece of information:

"Each of the 12 zones -- neighborhoods such as Panorama City, Cypress Park and Baldwin Village -- will receive $1 million per year in prevention funds, enough to target at least 200 children per zone."

It was sobering to think about how, even after whatever lessons have or haven't been learned by the inefficiency of L.A. Bridges, this is the best we can realistically hope for in terms of raw numbers. $1 million to target 200 children per gang-reduction zone (to this, Councilwoman Janice Hahn reliably quips: "'I mean, all of Markham Middle School' -- which has an enrollment of 1,500 -- 'is at risk of joining gangs'"). And what would an acceptable success rate be in terms of gang prevention? 70%? 10%?

I believe strongly in the value of human lives, and 20 or 50 "saved" children per zone is no small thing, but with tens of thousands of gang members in L.A. (estimates vary between 30,000-60,000), we're talking about band-aids. In addition, there is the problem of measuring success: How long would one keep tracking the children involved in such programs? How effective can long-term tracking be, when many of these children are illegal immigrants? Do we declare success if they stay out of gangs for 10 years, and join in the 11th? How surely could we determine whether they were active gang members or not? How to know whether a child would have stayed out of gangs anyway?

I'm in support of both prevention and intervention programs, as I think too much emphasis is placed on law enforcement when it comes to this problem. And I certainly am not smart enough to draw up a short-term plan that sounds better than this new strategy. But I don't think much will change unless this city somehow tackles larger issues of economic and educational inequality (in addition to all those thornier issues of gun control, immigration, prison reform, interracial tensions, etc.) If ever gang membership and gang violence significantly decrease in L.A., I can't see it being by design.

Back to Special Order 40

LAPD squad car | bailbonds888

At the urging of libertarian political opportunist Walter Moore, the city of Los Angeles is going back to the well of Special Order 40.

Much has elapsed since the death of an L.A. high school student named Jamiel Shaw, and as I predicted weeks ago, the conversation about his death has become an ugly one about immigration.

Moore has ridden the zeitgeist and pressed a repeal of an LAPD regulation called Special Order 40, which bars police from investigation someone solely to determine his or her citizenship. 40 is intended to encourage illegal immigrants' cooperation in police investigations. (Reasoning: An illegal immigrant will tell police about a crime he has witnessed if he knows he won't get deported for it, proponents say.)

His proposed repeal, called "Jamiel's Law," has no political traction, but a related motion in the city council by a San Fernando Valley council member by the name of Dennis Zine does. Zine wants to amend 40 by requiring officers to check the immigration status of gang members they run into, even if those gang members aren't under arrest.

(The plan has obvious surface flaws. For instance, how do you know who's a gang member and who's just a troublemaker? Sure, there are government lists of gang members, but gang membership changes everyday, and the LAPD's Excel spreadsheets of gang membership cannot possibly keep up. Still, one can understand the appeal of Zine's proposal.)

Whether Zine, Moore, or 40's proponents are right I cannot say. The debate over 40 is typical of a policy debate, in which there are pros and cons, and the "right" policy is the one where the pros outweigh the cons.

I can't say whether the pros outweigh the cons because the debate lacks the statistics that comprise pros and cons here. To determine whether 40 is good policy, you'd have to know things like how many illegal immigrants feel protected by the existence of 40? How many crimes have been solved with an illegal immigrant's help? Et cetera.

Right now, the debate is solely an ideological one: should the LAPD be in the deportation business or not? As we know from watching (for instance) the Bush administration, ideology is not necessarily a springboard to good policy.

As such (and as usual), city council president Eric Garcetti is on the right side here:

We need to look at the big picture and focus on creating a system that effectively deports criminals, encourages cooperation from victims and witnesses, and ensures the federal government accepts its responsibility as the enforcer of our nation's immigration laws.

Sure, he sounds non-committal, but starting from a premise of "these are worthwhile policy goals" is so much more effective than starting from a premise of "I believe illegal immigrants should be ______."

Eco-Fashions Defeat the Point

Photo by: EJP Photo

The masses have spoken. They want green. They want eco-conscious. They want stunning vistas in the background and stunning celebrities in the foreground. They want all this stunning, green, consciousness splashed across the pages of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The Advocate and even Fortune—at least once a year when Earth Day rolls around. Who are we to deny the masses?

The iconography of the post-Al Gore green movement is gelling, and even if the use of the actual color green is becoming a design cliché, there are some major upsides. Perhaps the biggest is that the charge of greening the world is no longer a responsibility relegated to the progeny of the counterculture—at least stylistically. Green’s glossy moment has arrived.

So it is that from our newsprint pages in Los Angeles—a city full of glossy tastemakers—we find ourselves struggling with this next chapter of the environmental movement unfolding in our urban, not-so-dense backyard. And we keep finding ourselves squarely in the "it's not easy being green" camp, and we're becoming resentful of anyone telling us otherwise.

Sure, it's easy switching to fluorescent lights, hopping on DASH or buying organic. But, for anyone with more than just a fleeting interest in the environment, there's always that nagging feeling. Was my organic Whole Food produce shipped from Chile? Was the green issue of Vanity Fair printed on recycled paper? Does living alone in my fluorescent-lit apartment increase my carbon footprint?

Politicians and celebs who dare to call themselves "green" face these nagging questions publicly. Gore—the man, the PowerPoint, the Nobel Peace Prize—has had to answer tough questions about the size of his house and his jet-setting ways of spreading the green gospel. Even Mayor Villaraigosa's use of the word "green" to describe Los Angeles—and his own mayorship by extension—is tainted. The DWP still relies on coal-fueled power plants for 47%, which puts us way out of the league of PG&E's 3% or California's average of 15%.

Going green is easier said than done and the process can easily slide into guilt-inducing territory. Now that we've entered the glossy phase, the twin oxymorons of lifestyle journalism and green consumerism are ready to sell indulgences to wash away our eco-sins. (Gore himself has opted for the less glossy but no less controversial carbon offset credits.)

The Times' green blog, Emerald City, is typical of this eco-indulgence trend. The blog links to stories from the green beat and tips on how to reduce your carbon footprint. But they're sandwiched between posts that rely a bit too heavily on a sort of press release journalism that's keen on advising eco-sinners where to get an organic facial or eco-hangers or organic oreos.

Here we face the catch-22 of environmentalist ideas in a liberal market democracy: to make a change, you have to be in the market for change. Environmentalism means consuming less, but consuming less equates to a lower profit margin on environmentally-friendly goods right from the get-go. American consumer culture and the enslavement to shareholder values means that the movement is catering to a group with the desire and money to retrofit their homes with neat-o gadgets that aren’t universally accessible. This notion that we can buy our way out of this crisis or that saving the environment is a matter of personal preference is dangerous and out-of-touch.

The trouble with the new toys and baubles is that they encourage consumerism and take the glint of guilt off the purchase—you can feel like you’re helping the cause, but if you’re changing the quality but not the quantity of your consumption habits, you’re kowtowing to the big cash register in the sky every bit as much as before, and that has never and will never make the world a cleaner place.

“It’s a good thing to have green be chic these days but it shouldn’t turn away middle America who don’t have access to latest fashions. It should still be something democratic in its involvement with everyone,” said Terry O’Day, executive director of Environment Now, a LA-based environmental group.

But O’Day impressed upon us that buying eco-friendly Prada pumps or taking your house completely off the grid are not the only ways to make a difference. The things that average people can do to improve their impact on the environment aren’t sexy. They don’t involve buying new toys or running out and switching your old car for a Prius. They do involve making conscious changes in lifestyle and, the ultimate American hang-up: consuming less.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest changes that needs to be made here is sacrificing the notion that individual efforts can substitute for substantive political change.

Los Angeles is trying, but not hard enough. We’ve got a mayor that wants to go green but can’t quit the DWP’s oil habit, a Million Trees that just isn’t even close and a plastic bag ban that’s stymied in the Board of Supervisors who have passed the buck onto Assemblyman Mike Davis.

So please, green the government before you green up your clothing choices. In our glossy-green world of eco-Oscar’s and Leonardo DiCaprio’s pretty face on Al Gore’s important words, know that the most important individual effort any of us can make is at the ballot box. If not, we’re just biding our time before green goes out of fashion and with it the Hollywood gleam that’s giving it some cache.

--By Emma Gallegos and Ashley Archibald

Two Abortion Stories

Image by Labour Youth

A few weeks ago, I came across this paragraph at the bottom of the second page of an article on a search and consent case the Supreme Court was about to hear at the time.

In other action on Monday, the court rejected an appeal concerning an
Arizona county jail's policy on abortions for pregnant prisoners. The
unwritten policy requiring an inmate to obtain a court order before
jail officials would transport her for an abortion was found by an
Arizona appeals court to place an undue burden on the right to
abortion. The justices, without comment, turned down the Maricopa
County sheriff's appeal, Arpaio v. Doe, No. 07-839.

Now, maybe it's a sign that my head's been buried in the sand the past few months (election, election, election, aaaahhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH), but this one took me by surprise. And then there was this article last week: Health Database Was Set Up to Ignore 'Abortion'.

The Arpaio v. Doe decision came as a pleasant shock to me. Of course there are government officials trying to limit abortions - I'm not that out of the loop. That this would be an even bigger problem for prisoners, whose rights and movement are greatly restricted is also no big shock. Never mind that most prisoners are in a uniquely, shall we say inconvenient, situation to bring a child into this world - 'they shoulda thought of that before they went and had sex.' What did surprise me is that the Supreme Court - the Roberts Supreme Court - might possibly side with those women who, realizing that they cannot care for their children and uncertain that anyone else will do so for them, choose not to bring a pregnancy to term behind bars. And don't give me that old sob story about all the childless couples out there ready to adopt these unborn children. The number of children in semi-permanent foster care speaks differently.

Now, I know that Arpaio can't really be taken as a test case for how this court will treat future abortion cases. The sheriff's appeal was rejected without comment, masking any opinions held by members of the court. But it still made me happy, unlike the second story, about search limits on Popline, only the world's largest reproductive health database.

It all started in February, when the Agency for International Development, the government body that funds Popline (which is run by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University), noticed that it included two articles on abortion advocacy. They 'expressed concerns,' it was determined that the articles didn't meet the database's criteria, and the articles were removed. Then the database's search engine was reprogrammed to ignore the query word 'abortion.'

Right...That's not an overreaction at all. As Debra Dickson, one of the Popline managers pointed out, database users still could still find information on abortion by using such search terms as, "fertility control, postconception," and "pregnancy, unwanted." Silly me! It's 'Guess the Query Word!' Here I've been missing out on a great game.

It's still not clear exactly what happened. In a statement on the School of Public Health's website, Dean Michael Klag, promised to look into the issue, assuring people that "I could not disagree more strongly with this decision," which he hadn't been aware of it until that morning.

In the end, this'll probably all be chalked up to an explosive misunderstanding on the Popline managers' part, but it's easy to see how they got there. The database does depend on federal funds, and the paws currently clutching at the purse strings don't exactly smile upon family planning going further than what you learn in an abstinence only sex ed class. Maybe there was some personal ideological motivation there too, but most likely they just got scared. Massive databases don't fund themselves, and with the Bush administration out to get anything that smacks of 'immorality,' what would you do?

Gah! I may not agree with fiscal conservatism, but at least I can comprehend it. Moral conservatism... Just because you have a close personal relationship with Jesus, doesn't mean I have to. Believe me, I've tried. We just couldn't seem to make it work. Please, stop trying to save me from myself.

Damn, I'm Hungry

So, as I’m sure many of you have noticed firsthand, there is a massive food crisis going on throughout the world right now. I’m sure you all noticed, you went to Trader Joe’s or Chipotle and they were out of a bunch of stuff, like bread and other essential items you need to survive, right? Oh wait, you haven’t noticed, you’ve only read about it? Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot we live in a rich country so it’s not our problem. Never-mind.

Alright, we may as well talk about it, that’s kind of like helping right? So I guess all these poor countries all over the world have no food or something. I can’t imagine it’s that big a deal, I mean it’s just food, but I guess it is. Alright, so the crisis cost the Prime Minister of Haiti his job. And it’s caused a few riots, but just in countries like Indonesia, Egypt, the Philippines, Cameroon, and the Ivory Coast (where the price of beef has almost doubled—in three days). Ok and maybe there’s been a little civil unrest in a couple of other places; but it’s just in countries like Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mauritania, Morocco, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Mexico, and most of South America. Most of those places are probably in Africa though, and they don’t really have food there anyway, right?

Either way, all I know is that all this “agflation” (my new favorite political buzzword) can’t be the United States’ or Europe’s fault. It’s gotta be India’s and China’s fault, if they didn’t have so many damn people eating so damn much there would be plenty of food left for Africa and those other places. Oh yeah, and fuel prices have gone up too thanks to India and China’s trillion people driving all their fancy new cars, which makes fertilizer way more expensive and makes it cost like $300 for my boss to fill up his Hummer. This, coupled with poor harvests in 3rd world countries (which has nothing to do with global warming, which China and India also caused; that is, if global warming existed, and it doesn’t) has created this food crisis.

Alright, so maybe the United States is investing way more of its subsidies for corn into biofuel (in 2005, 6% of U.S. corn production was used for biofuel, now it’s 23%). Ok, and maybe rich countries like the United States have caused developing nations to become reliant on food imports so that the U.S. can subsidize its farmers (we sure taught them a lesson in self-reliance when we switched the subsidies for corn from their food to our precious biofuel!). And maybe corn ethanol is one of the least efficient and least practical fuels ever. And sure, the amount of corn ethanol biofuel it takes to fill up the average American car requires roughly the same amount of corn the average African eats in an entire year. Whatever, though, maybe if all these countries learned about the wonders of democracy and capitalism they wouldn’t be so hungry all the damn time. All I know is I can walk down to the corner and buy a Big Mac for $2, and if the United States can do it, I don’t understand why everyone else can’t. And we’re in a recession too (which has nothing to do with the lack of investment in food commodities that may or may not have something to do with the food crisis)! Again, I place full blame for this on India and China.

Seriously though readers, a lot of people in the world are starving and it’s only going to get a much, much worse. Don’t take your plentiful food for granted and don’t ignore the problems faced by people in developing nations. Please. At the very least, go to www.freerice.com and donate rice to developing nations while playing a fun game that vastly improves your vocabulary; it's an easy way to do something good!

The Latest Poll Shows: It's a Recession!

photo by marshlight

President George W. Bush is famous for saying he doesn't pay attention to public opinion polls.

Many reasonable people think that this is arrogant – democratically elected leaders should not flout the will of the people who elect them, critics say.

But perhaps there is some wisdom in Bush's policy against reading polls.

What I'm getting at is: Most people just don't know that much stuff, and polls must reflect that. That is, in many cases, polls are asking people about things they simply don't know very well.

Imagine if a pollster called you and asked, "Is the economy headed for a recession?"

You're smart, sure, but do you know what a recession is? Troll your memory for a second. Formulate a guess.

Going by that most reputable of all sources, Wikipedia, a recession is defined in two ways.

Economists say: "A recession is a decline in a country's real gross domestic product, or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year."

The National Bureau of Economic Research says: "A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough."

Did you guess right?

Knowing whether the American economy is in recession requires knowledge of the definition of "recession," as well as the directions of GDP, and perhaps income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.

Knowing whether the economy is headed for recession requires all that, plus advance knowledge of what will happen in the future.

So you'll excuse my skepticism when I see a poll that announces, "Majority of Americans expect a recession." I don't think the majority of Americans even know what a recession is, let alone whether one is on the horizon.

There are many things that the majority of Americans are expert on: how to speak English, whether they are happy, and whether they like their cars and houses, for instance.

But when a pollster calls and asks the majority of Americans a bunch of questions that baffle economists, we ought not to grant the results much credence.