Detached Observer

Morally bankrupt

Few things are as politically revealing as the recent bankruptcy bill. Supported primarily by credit card companies, and pushed through the Congress mainly by Republicans, the bill would make it more difficult for poor and middle class families to file for bankrupcy: more paperwork, new complicated rules, more work for lawyers, unwavable deadlines, and increased minimum payments to creditors. By contrast, the law pointedly refuses to close two holes in the systems typically used by the affluent: offshore trusts and the homestead exception.

Details: if you are rich, about to file for bankruptcy, and wish to shield assets from your creditors, here are two well-publicized ways to do it. A small number of states will allow you to set up a trust incorporated overseas - a trust that will be shielded from U.S. courts. Utah is one such state - and you don't need to be a resident to set up the trust. Some states - like Florida - also will shield your home from creditors. Purchasing a home in Florida, filing for bankruptcy, and selling the home afterwards lets you keep your money. It goes without saying that one must be rich to be able to take advantage of these opportunities. 

That this bill cracks down on the poor, while doing nothing to harm the rich, is no accident. Democrats offered two amendments (Schumer Amendment No. 42, Feingold Amendment No. 17) addressing the above problems. Republicans voted them down. 

The immense hypocrisy of this should be obvious to anyone. Let us also note that while the most visible bankrupcies lately have been by corporations - Enron, Worldcom - and airlines, who go in and out of bankruptcy court almost as a normal business operation - Republicans primarily feel that the only bankruptcy laws deserving of reform involve individuals - and poor and middle class ones at that.

Finally, let's note regardless of the hypocrisy, the arguments for reform are, in any case, weak. The statistics have been endlessly cycled around in this debate: half of all bankruptcies result from medical bills; 90% are immediately preceeded by either ilness, job loss, or divorce. Statistically, the amount of abuse is pretty minimal.

But bad arguments or not, the bill is set to pass, buoyed by a Republican majority willing to do the bidding of the corporations that fund it, and two or three Democrats from states with credit card-related industries willing to vote the parochial interests of their state. Disgusting.

Stuff to read on this issue:

This Kos entry is a good introduction. Harvard prof Elizabeth Warren and her students have a blog devoted to the bill here - read and scroll up. See here for one survey on the causes of bankruptcy. Paul Krugman always does a good job of explaining economics in an emotionally engaged manner. Scott Lemieux has a good post on the details here.

Almost surreal

Over the past four years, the Bush administration has advanced the following claims:

• It can arrest an American citizen, on American soil, claim there exists evidence showing this man is a terrorist, and keep him in jail indefinitely without trial, without showing this evidence to anyone.
• It can fly him overseas and ask friendly governments to torture him, again without showing a shred of evidence to anyone.
• The power of the president to do the above can not be taken away by any of the other branches of government. The man who passed this recommendation along to the President is now Attorney General.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein makes a couple of silly points regarding the Summers affair. Bernstein approvingly quotes an anonymous commentator,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but about 6-8 weeks ago there was a flurry of activity in the blogosphere re: the dearth of conservatives/Republicans on university faculties. If I recall, the general, not to mention immediate, consensus among liberal/Democrat professors was that Republicans either didn't have the intellectual oomph to be professors, or just preferred to do other things. Natural selection, in other words, certainly not any sort of bias. We now have Harvard jumping through hoops to explain the dearth of female professors in math and science departments. They're not quite sure why this condition endures, except for the fact that it absolutely, positively, ain't natural selection. Strangely enough, this was another immediate, reflexive consensus, excepting Mr. Summers' brief but embarrassing romp off of the intellectual plantation.

It's really pretty simple: there is a long history of discrimination against women in the workplace. There is also current evidence that such discrimination exists in significant amounts. On the other hand, there is absolutely no empirical verification of discrimination against conservatives in academia - though there is no shortage of complaints. Indeed, as I have repeatedly pointed out, there is a piece of evidence that contradicts this. Namely, arts and humanities departments are not the only ones dominated by liberals; the same goes for engineering and science departments as well, where identifying conservatives is impossible. See my previous post for a link to the data. Bernstein then writes,

I would add that if Summers' quite measured comments have gotten him into such hot water, imagine how regular faculty, untenured faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates whose views don't reflect the politically correct mainstream are treated, and how much their careers can be placed in potential jeopardy. And then consider whether a young conservative or libertarian scholar would be wise in pursuing an academic career.

One does not need to imagine. Steven Pinker, a prof. at Harvard just like Summers, has been quite vocal in his support of Summer's statements. Is anyone calling for his resignation? Not at all. Why not? Because Pinker is a member of the faculty, a scientist, and Summers is an administrator. As such, they are subject to radically different standards: while academics generally are free to do whatever research they desire, the standard for university administrator is set at will by the institution - and a large part of the job is presenting a good image to the public. I myself have criticized Summers for making statements unsupported by the evidence; I really doubt its the job of a university president to do so.

How biblical is continental drift?

In a typically interesting post over at Left2Right, David Velleman notes that while scientists are always skeptical of new hypotheses, especially coming from outsiders, theories that consistently made correct predictions have always won the day. Velleman takes issue with the complaints of skepticism from the scientific establishment, made by intelligent design proponents, and with the attempt of ID theorists to sneak into science "through the back door" (i.e. through actions by legislatures, school boards, etc). My one quibble is with the following bit: Velleman is using Wegener's Continental Drift as an example,

the hypothesis of a single primordial continent, dubbed Pangaea by Wegener, bears a striking resemblance to the creation story in Genesis, which tells us that God began by making a single division between land and water. The website's author complains that Wegner has been given credit for a "discovery" that wasn't his. But the history of science is full of misattributed discoveries. What's important about this case is that a Biblical hypothesis, though vigorously rejected by scientific authorities for decades, gradually won their adherence by explaining and predicting more phenomena than competing hypotheses.

Is Continental Drift really a "biblical" theory? This assertion reminds me of some of the stuff my great-grandmother often says.

You see, in 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the two or three days before the start of the invasion were marked by a large number of planes flying overhead (at least as my great-grandmother tells it). Since that day, my great-grandmother has taken to attributing a near mythic significance to planes. Often she will remark on the number of planes she saw flying in a given day, and if that number happens to be large enough, she is often in a a speculative frenzy over what could possibly have gone wrong.

She also claims that she has predicted events by counting planes. For example, the Asian tsunami, and the invasion of Iraq, were supposedly likewise accompanied by large numbers of planes overhead.

The thing about her predictions, though, is that they always occur after the fact. If she were able to perceive that something terrible was going to happen right before the tsunami, well, that would be really something wouldn't it?

Those who claim Pangea was predicted by the bible - or those who claim that the bible says the earth is round - are doing the same. I'm glad that there exist biblical verses that sound like they imply these theories, but where were you before scientists figured them out? The fact is that no one had even thought of interpreting Genesis to support continental drift until 19th century geographers noted how well South America & Africa fit together. Similarly, Christians did not interpret the bible to say that the earth is round until it became scientifically confirmed. On the contrary, the Catholic church persecuted all who said so, and only now do we get all this bullshit about the verse in Isiah that refers to "the circle of the earth."