Reince Priebus

Perhaps the GOP's Reince Priebus is trying to hide an uncomfortable truth... He is a secret greenie!


Reince Priebus
=
Prince Rebus [i.e.
 I b Prince ReUse]

 

or
maybe he actually is cold hearted...

Reince Priebus
=
Brine super ice

Justice and Mercy

By the end of his book Haight was representing Liberals as believers in equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. He did not acknowledge the change in his position, though, so I wonder if the chapter 7 statements reflected an overlooked residual, pre-edit state ?

Anyway I still disagree with the author about a few points. He contrasts what he describes as a liberal lack of some kinds of moral measurement with more numerous conservative dimensions of morality as if these were opposing responses. I actually believe that mercy is often applied by liberals only after they have gone through the same justice calculations as conservatives. In the courts, 'sentencing' follows 'conviction', it is not an alternative to conviction.
 
This is not just a metaphor; Conservatives are much more likely to favour mandatory sentencing for crimes. Liberals can also believe an act is wrong, but ask that before we condemn the actor let us remember that the guilty are sometimes confused by complexity, mistaken about missing information or constrained by the power of others. These conditions do not make an act less wrong, but they may mitigate punishment.

For liberals guilt and knowledge are matters of degree. For conservatives, these are absolutes. Haight is mistaken when he describes Liberals as less complex or less nuanced than Conservatives.

Jonathan Haidt and the Righteous Mind

I am about halfway through "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion” by Jonathan Haidt. So far it has been quite persuasive, but I just stubbed my toe on chapter 7: The moral foundation of politics.
Haight says:

“Everyone cares about fairness, but there are two major kinds. On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality – people should be rewarded in proportion to what they contribute, even if that guarentees unequal outcomes.”

  
I myself have NOT observed that “On the left, fairness often implies equality” of outcomes. Perhaps a handfull of communists believed that generations ago, far away across the planet but no-one I’ve ever met thinks it would be a good idea.
 

My left-leaning friends are just fine with unequal outcomes. What they do want to see is widely available opportunity… access… having a chance.

 

What anyone does with opportunity is up to the individual. We benefit from rewards earned by our own effort and skill. It is, however, profoundly unfair to condemn to eternal misery someone who was never allowed to compete in the first place, or who ran handicapped by illiteracy, bigotry, malnutrition or illness.

  
Taxation is NOT about redistribution of wealth.
It IS about removing barriers to competition and supporting a democratically designed institutional framework of opportunity and accountability for everyone. It is about public health and safety. It is about maintaining the system that made your own acheivements possible.  

   

Haight claims to have been raised a liberal, then he says things like this. It is not the first time in this book that I have questioned his statements, but this one is outrageous.

Hyperbolic Discounting

Hyperbolic Discounting is the act of over-weighting short term pain and under-weighting any resulting long term gain.

For an explanation of the term 'hyperbolic discounting' see the book review page of this blog. In 'Filthy Lucre' Joseph Heath writes in great detail about public policy implementation and the ways that details can derail intent.

In this post I had intended to share a few thoughts about how this concept resonnates with personnal freedom and commitment. I will, however, demonstrate it instead by going to a scheduled class at the gym. 

Americans got another thing right

Give Americans their due... The constitutional separation of Church and State was brilliant. It meant that 'citizen' was a category that transcended other tribal or sectarian affiliations.

Now, however, by turning the Republican Party into a tribe whose interests are more important than those of the wider country; by being willing to destroy government rather than let any part of it remain in the hands of the other sect; by playing 'chicken' with the national credit rating and by sheer pig-headedness they abdicate their own citizenship.

They aren't even coherent. They obstruct health-care reform that would lower costs over-all, improve the physical well-being of tens of millions of fellow citizens and prevent half-a-million bankruptcies caused each year by health care expense.

They would rather inflict pain, sufferring and unnecessary costs on it than allow the country to benefit in any way during a presidential administration of the other camp. This is not fiscal prudence, it is a self-inflicted wound. These malice-crazed fools have a real shot at grabbing the steering wheel in November.
 
God help them all.

Federation and the Other Net

We take our safety nets so much for granted that we no longer see they exist. It is gratifying to forget the occasional misstep and to remember our own success as a purely independent merit-fueled progress. 
 
Help does not have to have been continuous... A single out-thrust hand that prevented us from stepping off the curb in front of a car that might have killed us, that single momentary gesture, made everything since possible.

The concept of 'too big to fail' in banking reminds us that any institution, any person, any state no matter how strong before or after, can pass through a moment when their very existence is at stake.
 
In our personal lives we understand there will be times when a friend needs to camp on your couch, or you on theirs.

The Canadian Federation is built on the understanding that the one-way flow of gift from today's 'have' to 'have-not' provinces is in everybody's long term interest. Maybe the flow has been one-way for decades, but for that one fleeting crucial moment when we most need it, the flow will come to us and make our own future possible.

Americans do not even see that they also catch each other when they fall. It just happens. It's just there.

George Soros writes:
"The authorities didn’t understand the nature of the euro crisis; they thought it is a fiscal problem while it is more of a banking problem and a problem of competitiveness. And they applied the wrong remedy: you cannot reduce the debt burden by shrinking the economy, only by growing your way out of it. The crisis is still growing because of a failure to understand the dynamics of social change; policy measures that could have worked at one point in time were no longer sufficient by the time they were applied."

Forming a European Federation means a commitment to being there for each other; It means accepting that we are ALL stronger when we stand together.
  
----
This was originally written in June, when the EU had just rejected Euro-bonds (again) because the Germans failed to commit resources.

IT "skills shortage"

There is much moaning about the "failure" of schools to produce IT professionals in sufficient quantity and quality for industry needs in North America.            
 
In fact, schools have never been the source of these desired skills. I have been an IT professional for more than three decades. It has always been the case that the most valuable skills are acquired on the job.    
 
I graduated with a BSc in Computer Science and started working for IBM in the eighties supporting mainframe operating systems. When I joined I was given a booklet claiming that IBM had never laid anyone off even during "the great depression" and that I was embarking on a lifetime career. The people I worked with certainly believed that and were totally committed to the wellbeing of the company and its clients. We were proud to work 'round the clock, if needed. We were a team.        
   
The team looked like this: There were a few senior hands who mentored the rest, recommended training and rescued us when we got in over our heads. The bulk of the team consisted of smart, well trained, dedicated professionals. We could stretch ourselves and be creative in our diagnostic techniques and solutions because we knew we were working with a net. Then there were always newbies coming along; They got stuck with the tedious work that was, nonetheless, good training.       
     
So the conveyor belt was always full. Ever more skilled workers were continuously moving into positions of greater responsibility. The system worked for everyone. Then, in the early nineties, management at our company and at our major clients decided that they wouldn't pay for a team or training or learning of any kind. The expensive senior staff were 'packaged out'. Then the juniors with their lower skills. Then the ones in the middle were 'outsourced' and only brought in on contract for specific, limited tasks.  
   
After two decades of this those of us who were originally in that middle group have become senior in our skills and earning capacity. We pay for our own upgrades and work mostly as independant contractors. For two decades the money that companies should have put back into developing IT staff has instead been paid out in bonuses to greedy, foolish managers. Now they wonder why there is a shortage of technical skill needed for their business.
  
They stopped watering the garden then wonder why it turned into a desert.     
  
I gnash my teeth in their general direction.