Recently, a television news commentator, whose initials are A(lbert) B(ray) C(ary), called for sharply higher cigarette taxes to keep young people from smoking. If only engineering social behavior with the tax code was as simple as ABC, then we could rid ourselves of our sins for pennies here and dollars there.
To understand why tobacco smoking became popular, one needs to start with Sir Walter Raleigh and the Virginia Colony in the late 1500s. Raleigh learned of tobacco from the native Indians, who smoked the leaves in their religious ceremonies. This distinction, the religious rite, makes tobacco desirable — not its nicotine.
In his classic study of human behavior, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” Thorstein Veblen demonstrates that in the earliest, primitive human tribes, leisure was accorded to a few distinct class members of the tribe. Leisure — not money, not furs, not gold, not emeralds — was the very first emblem of wealth. What we would call the religious hierarchy of the tribe — the shamans — were afforded leisure because the tribe believed their duties should exempt them from the menial labor of gathering food or building shelter.
What was true one million years ago is still true today.
Veblen coined the term “conspicuous leisure” to mean the epitome of leisure for leisure’s sake. Because tobacco was afforded religious status, it also received leisure status. Tobacco smoking, then, is an act of conspicuous leisure. Had all the Virginia Indians chewed tobacco and spit tobacco juice on the ground, Sir Walter Raleigh never would have introduced tobacco to Queen Elizabeth’s court. Once tobacco arrived in England, it did not take long for tobacco to circle the world.
And it is important to note that certain ritual behaviors accompanied the act of smoking. In Holland, for example, the bars and public houses featured long-stemmed, ceramic pipes. The stem, a foot long or more, would be snapped off after a patron finished smoking, thus leaving a clean mouthpiece for the next smoker. (Pass the peace pipe, please.)
In gentlemen’s clubs, a manservant offered expensive cigars to the members and then trimmed the stogie and lit it. Sherlock Holmes, a man of leisure, puffed on a pipe that he had ritualistically filled with exotic tobacco. A gentleman in the 1950s would take two cigarettes from his sterling silver pocket case, light them both, and gracefully hand one to his lady.
If smokers valued tobacco only for its nicotine, then I would submit that none of this ritual would have ever come about. Leisure time is the only way that people can show off what Veblen coined “conspicuous consumption.” The English fox hunt is a prime example of how the landed gentry blended conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption. The fox hunt, both conspicuous and pointless, was described by Oscar Wilde as “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.”
To be sure, West Virginia’s middle-class workers cannot enjoy their leisure time by foxhunting on horseback with hounds. But they can crisscross the countryside on four-wheelers, blow their bugles at imaginary hobgoblins and finish their hunt by consuming rounds of beer, Vienna sausages served on toothpicks and rashers of deer jerky.
Once again: the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.
Sharply raising the price of cigarettes by government levy presents a problem that abolitionists don’t comprehend. When you add $1 per pack in taxes, you may very well elevate cigarettes from the status of conspicuous leisure to that of conspicuous consumption. High-priced cigarettes, then, become a badge of leisure. And the likelihood of expanding the black market for cigarettes also adds to their mystique, desirability and status in this regard.
Tobacco use has dropped considerably during the past 50 years. But the decline has nothing to do with government policy, education or higher prices. Narcotics and mood-changing drugs have become easily available. It is not that tobacco use has dropped but that tobacco use has been supplanted by newer forms of conspicuous consumption. It is now reported that more than 70 million Americans are “being treated for pain.” I will leave you to translate that euphemism in the privacy of a smoke-free environment.
For the record, I smoke. I am a man of leisure. I write opinion columns.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Beleagured Postal Service Rides a Snail Into the Sunset
The U. S. Postal Service (USPS) expects to lose $7 billon this year. Postmaster General John Potter has recommended termination of Saturday mail delivery to save $3 billion. In addition to reduced service, we can expect rate increases.
Netflix ships DVDs to over twelve million subscribers and is the USPS’ biggest corporate customer. Saturday delivery is crucial for renting movies by mail. And higher postage rates won’t help the company’s bottom line either. Rather than wait for the USPS put it out of business, Netflix is now offering unlimited movie downloads. Netflix users can now watch movies all day for their regular subscription price.
In trying to save money by eliminating Saturday mail service, General Potter is shooting his mail carriers out of the saddle. Netflix is moving its deliveries to cyberspace, never to return to snail mail.
As a general rule, businesses bend over backward to accommodate their biggest customers. In this case, one Netflix equals one million or more small businesses when it comes to earning revenue. Do the math Gen. Potter.
UPS (Big Brown) and FedEx are remarkably efficient. Just compare their package tracking services with that of the USPS. The USPS is twenty years behind the package services, especially so when it comes to capturing signatures.
I don’t ship many parcels. But I do know that I can go online to Big Brown and print a shipping label much easier than I can at the USPS website. With the post office, I usually resort to using the one-rate envelopes or boxes even though it costs more. If I overestimate shipping weight and pay Big Brown too much, the company refunds the difference after weighing the parcel.
The USPS has had a monopoly on first-class mail service since the nation began. By definition, monopolies cherish archaic work rules and resist innovation as long as possible. At any given moment in a monopoly’s workday, one-third of its employees are “in meetings.”
A good example of how the USPS monopoly operates is provided by its web-based postage stamp store. When I order stamps online, the USPS charges a service fee. And even though my order is an electronic credit card transaction, it takes five business days for my stamps to arrive.
If the USPS cannot provide next-day, or even second-day delivery of postage stamps, then I ask, “What can it do efficiently?” Nothing much, it seems.
It is particularly galling that the USPS charges a shipping and handling fee on stamp sales. It’s not as if the mail carrier is making a special trip to my mailbox to deliver the order.
Big Brown employs about 240,000 people. The post office employs well over 600,000. FedEx has even fewer employees than Big Brown, but that figure can be misleading because FedEx classifies some delivery people as independent contractors.
I would guess that the USPS is overstaffed by at least 200,000 employees. As to whether the real number is higher or lower matters little because the post office is in no hurry to downsize.
Can you imagine what would happen if Postmaster General Potter recommended firing as few as 50,000 employees? Congress and the postal unions would go berserk. By the end of the day, Gen. Potter would be on the street, and Congress would have blocked any downsizing until it was thoroughly studied by a special commission.
The Postal Service has two options going forward. First, it can limp along as it has for years making fixes to the system like the proposed reduction in service and rate increase. Such thinking will continue to drive customers away.
The second option requires embracing technology. The Postal Service could be just as efficient as Big Brown and FedEx. And if it was, the USPS just might find that it could cut rates and reclaim some of its lost market share.
Regardless of choice, however, the USPS faces a major reduction in its workforce.
In the recent past, the USPS has invested heavily in bricks and mortar—the buildings are called Processing and Distribution Centers. To my ear, the words “distribution center” connote a warehouse operation—not a delivery service. As for “processing”, I can only wonder idly: If Spam is processed meat, then what is processed mail?
If I was facing extinction (like the USPS is), then I would want a warehouse full of processed mail, too. I’d gather as many things as I could that reminded me of the good old days when I had it all.
Netflix ships DVDs to over twelve million subscribers and is the USPS’ biggest corporate customer. Saturday delivery is crucial for renting movies by mail. And higher postage rates won’t help the company’s bottom line either. Rather than wait for the USPS put it out of business, Netflix is now offering unlimited movie downloads. Netflix users can now watch movies all day for their regular subscription price.
In trying to save money by eliminating Saturday mail service, General Potter is shooting his mail carriers out of the saddle. Netflix is moving its deliveries to cyberspace, never to return to snail mail.
As a general rule, businesses bend over backward to accommodate their biggest customers. In this case, one Netflix equals one million or more small businesses when it comes to earning revenue. Do the math Gen. Potter.
UPS (Big Brown) and FedEx are remarkably efficient. Just compare their package tracking services with that of the USPS. The USPS is twenty years behind the package services, especially so when it comes to capturing signatures.
I don’t ship many parcels. But I do know that I can go online to Big Brown and print a shipping label much easier than I can at the USPS website. With the post office, I usually resort to using the one-rate envelopes or boxes even though it costs more. If I overestimate shipping weight and pay Big Brown too much, the company refunds the difference after weighing the parcel.
The USPS has had a monopoly on first-class mail service since the nation began. By definition, monopolies cherish archaic work rules and resist innovation as long as possible. At any given moment in a monopoly’s workday, one-third of its employees are “in meetings.”
A good example of how the USPS monopoly operates is provided by its web-based postage stamp store. When I order stamps online, the USPS charges a service fee. And even though my order is an electronic credit card transaction, it takes five business days for my stamps to arrive.
If the USPS cannot provide next-day, or even second-day delivery of postage stamps, then I ask, “What can it do efficiently?” Nothing much, it seems.
It is particularly galling that the USPS charges a shipping and handling fee on stamp sales. It’s not as if the mail carrier is making a special trip to my mailbox to deliver the order.
Big Brown employs about 240,000 people. The post office employs well over 600,000. FedEx has even fewer employees than Big Brown, but that figure can be misleading because FedEx classifies some delivery people as independent contractors.
I would guess that the USPS is overstaffed by at least 200,000 employees. As to whether the real number is higher or lower matters little because the post office is in no hurry to downsize.
Can you imagine what would happen if Postmaster General Potter recommended firing as few as 50,000 employees? Congress and the postal unions would go berserk. By the end of the day, Gen. Potter would be on the street, and Congress would have blocked any downsizing until it was thoroughly studied by a special commission.
The Postal Service has two options going forward. First, it can limp along as it has for years making fixes to the system like the proposed reduction in service and rate increase. Such thinking will continue to drive customers away.
The second option requires embracing technology. The Postal Service could be just as efficient as Big Brown and FedEx. And if it was, the USPS just might find that it could cut rates and reclaim some of its lost market share.
Regardless of choice, however, the USPS faces a major reduction in its workforce.
In the recent past, the USPS has invested heavily in bricks and mortar—the buildings are called Processing and Distribution Centers. To my ear, the words “distribution center” connote a warehouse operation—not a delivery service. As for “processing”, I can only wonder idly: If Spam is processed meat, then what is processed mail?
If I was facing extinction (like the USPS is), then I would want a warehouse full of processed mail, too. I’d gather as many things as I could that reminded me of the good old days when I had it all.
Friday, May 7, 2010
A Tribute to Real Tomatoes and Mom's Bloody Mary Mix
When May rolls around, I think of gardening. Actually, I think about how long I will have to wait for the first ripe tomato.
When I was very young, I asked my mother, a Methodist, what Methodists believed in. Dad was a Baptist, and he wanted me to be one of them, so it followed naturally that I inquire about Methodists. She told me that Methodists (at one time) believed that tomatoes were poisonous.
This revelation about poisonous tomatoes bewildered me and put me squarely in the Baptist camp during my formative years. I will say this much, that in salving my curiosity about tomatoes, and Methodists, I learned later in life that the tomato is a member of the nightshade family, and further, that eating the vines and leaves of the tomato plant will make you nauseous. So I defend my Methodist ancestors and their fear of tomatoes accordingly.
Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Smallwood, raised tomato plants in their backyard garden each summer. The practice was fairly common in my neighborhood. When the tomatoes ripened, Mr. Smallwood, a grandfatherly type if there ever was one, would hail and invite me over for a tomato sandwich.
That’s all it was--a thick tomato slice on white bread with a little salt and pepper. One tomato sandwich always led to a second; they were heavenly. And I think it had to do with the anticipation of green tomatoes turning red. Of course, picking the tomato off the vine and slicing it right then also piqued my taste buds.
I wonder how many Americans have never tasted a vine-ripened tomato from the backyard garden. And worse, I wonder how many Americans believe that the reddish thing sold by the supermarket as a tomato is a real tomato.
Supermarkets puzzle me.
I have raised and butchered my own beef. However, the beef sold in stores looks nothing like fresh, farm-raised beef. I have to believe that three-out-of-four Americans have never tasted the real product.
When I shop for chicken, I usually see a red tint to the water in the package. The only red parts of a chicken are its blood and feathers. Pardon the pun, but there is something afoul with the corpus delecti.
It’s the age of manufactured food, an age made necessary because Americans are extremely price-sensitive when it comes to buying food. The soccer mom who routinely drops $100.00 on a pair of Nikes bristles when she sees the price of head lettuce. She’ll sometimes go without lettuce but never even wince at the Nikes sticker.
The University of California at Davis ushered in the manufactured food age when it developed the modern tomato. The school crossbred a tomato that was uniform in size and resisted bruising. The Davis-bred tomatoes could be picked green, handled roughly, and ripened with ethylene gas while in transit from farm to market.
The fact that Davis-bred tomatoes never tasted like tomatoes made no difference. And why should it? Everything else in California is make-believe.
The uniform size concept also led to the modern meat packing industry. Whether it’s beef, pork or poultry production, the animals are bred and fed in a way to make standard-size carcasses that fit the slaughterhouse handling machinery.
In one respect, the food industry deserves credit for its efficient mass production. The family food budget, as a per cent of family income, is about half of what it was forty years ago. But there are trade-offs with mass production, taste and appearance being the most obvious.
“Food, Inc.”, the 2008 agribusiness documentary, provides a good overview of how we have changed agriculture. The documentary does mimic Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, but its bias is pretty transparent. Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, “Botany of Desire”) is interviewed, and his commentary, along with others, is level-headed.
If you feel that some of the scenes in the film depict animal cruelty, then I would hope that you don’t. The only reason these animals ever lived was to become food on someone’s plate. Or, as farmers have long said: “What’s time to a hog?”
Going back to the tomatoes of my youth, I am glad that my mother never feared them. She perfected a Bloody Mary mix that cannot be topped. She would can a hundred quarts of the beverage each summer, and when football season came, she was the hit of the tailgate parties.
In the end, Mom won me over to the Methodist camp with her Bloody Mary mix. The Baptists were never going to top that.
When I was very young, I asked my mother, a Methodist, what Methodists believed in. Dad was a Baptist, and he wanted me to be one of them, so it followed naturally that I inquire about Methodists. She told me that Methodists (at one time) believed that tomatoes were poisonous.
This revelation about poisonous tomatoes bewildered me and put me squarely in the Baptist camp during my formative years. I will say this much, that in salving my curiosity about tomatoes, and Methodists, I learned later in life that the tomato is a member of the nightshade family, and further, that eating the vines and leaves of the tomato plant will make you nauseous. So I defend my Methodist ancestors and their fear of tomatoes accordingly.
Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Smallwood, raised tomato plants in their backyard garden each summer. The practice was fairly common in my neighborhood. When the tomatoes ripened, Mr. Smallwood, a grandfatherly type if there ever was one, would hail and invite me over for a tomato sandwich.
That’s all it was--a thick tomato slice on white bread with a little salt and pepper. One tomato sandwich always led to a second; they were heavenly. And I think it had to do with the anticipation of green tomatoes turning red. Of course, picking the tomato off the vine and slicing it right then also piqued my taste buds.
I wonder how many Americans have never tasted a vine-ripened tomato from the backyard garden. And worse, I wonder how many Americans believe that the reddish thing sold by the supermarket as a tomato is a real tomato.
Supermarkets puzzle me.
I have raised and butchered my own beef. However, the beef sold in stores looks nothing like fresh, farm-raised beef. I have to believe that three-out-of-four Americans have never tasted the real product.
When I shop for chicken, I usually see a red tint to the water in the package. The only red parts of a chicken are its blood and feathers. Pardon the pun, but there is something afoul with the corpus delecti.
It’s the age of manufactured food, an age made necessary because Americans are extremely price-sensitive when it comes to buying food. The soccer mom who routinely drops $100.00 on a pair of Nikes bristles when she sees the price of head lettuce. She’ll sometimes go without lettuce but never even wince at the Nikes sticker.
The University of California at Davis ushered in the manufactured food age when it developed the modern tomato. The school crossbred a tomato that was uniform in size and resisted bruising. The Davis-bred tomatoes could be picked green, handled roughly, and ripened with ethylene gas while in transit from farm to market.
The fact that Davis-bred tomatoes never tasted like tomatoes made no difference. And why should it? Everything else in California is make-believe.
The uniform size concept also led to the modern meat packing industry. Whether it’s beef, pork or poultry production, the animals are bred and fed in a way to make standard-size carcasses that fit the slaughterhouse handling machinery.
In one respect, the food industry deserves credit for its efficient mass production. The family food budget, as a per cent of family income, is about half of what it was forty years ago. But there are trade-offs with mass production, taste and appearance being the most obvious.
“Food, Inc.”, the 2008 agribusiness documentary, provides a good overview of how we have changed agriculture. The documentary does mimic Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, but its bias is pretty transparent. Michael Pollan (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, “Botany of Desire”) is interviewed, and his commentary, along with others, is level-headed.
If you feel that some of the scenes in the film depict animal cruelty, then I would hope that you don’t. The only reason these animals ever lived was to become food on someone’s plate. Or, as farmers have long said: “What’s time to a hog?”
Going back to the tomatoes of my youth, I am glad that my mother never feared them. She perfected a Bloody Mary mix that cannot be topped. She would can a hundred quarts of the beverage each summer, and when football season came, she was the hit of the tailgate parties.
In the end, Mom won me over to the Methodist camp with her Bloody Mary mix. The Baptists were never going to top that.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Politicians Have a Poor Record of Managing Toll Road
We had a brutal winter. The potholes prove that. The damage that motorists don’t see yet is the cost of plowing and salting the roads. That cost will show up later this year when paving projects are scrapped for lack of money.
Making matters all the worse is the continuing failure of our leaders to address a shrinking road fund. Prior to 1980, the user taxes that comprise the road fund grew sufficiently from year-to-year to adequately maintain our roads. But since 1980, driving habits have changed drastically, thus making the user tax concept archaic.
In the 1970s, cars got very poor gasoline mileage. Owners also traded cars more often because cars wore out faster. When gasoline hit $1 per gallon in 1979, consumers demanded fuel efficiency and long-term warranties. Ever since, the two main user taxes – the gasoline tax and the privilege tax on motor vehicle sales – have increasingly lagged.
Every year, there is talk amongst the pundits about building toll roads and bridges as a way to solve our road funding woes. Tolls are just another user tax. Given the high cost to build a highway or a bridge, there has to be sufficient traffic to pay the tolls that, in turn, pay off the bonds that funded the project.
Unfortunately for West Virginia, there is not enough traffic to justify toll roads or bridges anywhere in this state. But even if there were, politicians do not have the will to maintain tolls to keep up with inflation.
The original West Virginia Turnpike was funded by revenue bonds in the 1950s. Within four years of its opening, the turnpike found itself unable to pay interest to the bondholders, a situation that remained so until 1979. The turnpike never did accumulate a sinking fund sufficient to retire the bonds.
The turnpike was rebuilt as I-77 under an agreement with the Federal Highway Administration which paid for 90% of the cost. The state’s road fund paid the balance. The agreement allowed for tolls to remain on the highway until the original bonds were retired, and then the road was to become a free interstate.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a free road – that’s funny peculiar, not funny ha ha. The new four-lane highway became a favorite north-south route. Traffic also increased significantly when I-64 was completed. The bankrupt West Virginia Turnpike quickly became a money maker, and the politicians smelled bacon on the griddle.
If you came into the movie late, that’s okay. You know what happened next. The Turnpike Commission became the WV Parkways, Economic Development and Tourism Authority. This led to Tamarack, one of the biggest money-losing enterprises ever concocted by the statehouse gang. The Authority also removed turnpike tolls everywhere except the three main toll barriers, a perk for locals that cost the turnpike some $2 million in annual revenue at the time.
Today, the Authority’s bastard child toll road is facing over $335 million in deferred maintenance with about one third of the 88-mile highway rated as substandard. And there seems to be faint political will to raise tolls to adequate levels or to cure Tamarack’s annual cash drain.
This is how West Virginia politicians run a toll road. If you think that the state should consider building more toll roads, then you deserve a desk at the state capitol in the Head Examiner’s office.
There are two plausible solutions for the state road fund’s inadequacy. The first is simple. As the state maintains a network of secondary roads that were once, and still should be, the responsibility of the counties, the personal property tax collected on motor vehicles by each county should be transferred to the state road fund. It makes sense to do this because the counties have gotten off scot-free since 1933 when the State Road Commission was formed to rescue Depression-era counties from their road building and road maintenance duties.
The second solution does not involve taxes. If the state eliminated the prevailing wage requirements in road contracts, the annual savings would be huge. West Virginia cannot justify paying road contractors to hire laborers at $34.71 per hour. But it does just that because $34.71 per hour is the "prevailing wage" for the lowest-paid laborer.
That’s funny ha ha.
The impact of these high prevailing wage rates doesn’t end there. Road construction is seasonal work, and construction workers’ wage-based claims are a big drain on the unemployment fund which you, the motorist, also pay for.
Making matters all the worse is the continuing failure of our leaders to address a shrinking road fund. Prior to 1980, the user taxes that comprise the road fund grew sufficiently from year-to-year to adequately maintain our roads. But since 1980, driving habits have changed drastically, thus making the user tax concept archaic.
In the 1970s, cars got very poor gasoline mileage. Owners also traded cars more often because cars wore out faster. When gasoline hit $1 per gallon in 1979, consumers demanded fuel efficiency and long-term warranties. Ever since, the two main user taxes – the gasoline tax and the privilege tax on motor vehicle sales – have increasingly lagged.
Every year, there is talk amongst the pundits about building toll roads and bridges as a way to solve our road funding woes. Tolls are just another user tax. Given the high cost to build a highway or a bridge, there has to be sufficient traffic to pay the tolls that, in turn, pay off the bonds that funded the project.
Unfortunately for West Virginia, there is not enough traffic to justify toll roads or bridges anywhere in this state. But even if there were, politicians do not have the will to maintain tolls to keep up with inflation.
The original West Virginia Turnpike was funded by revenue bonds in the 1950s. Within four years of its opening, the turnpike found itself unable to pay interest to the bondholders, a situation that remained so until 1979. The turnpike never did accumulate a sinking fund sufficient to retire the bonds.
The turnpike was rebuilt as I-77 under an agreement with the Federal Highway Administration which paid for 90% of the cost. The state’s road fund paid the balance. The agreement allowed for tolls to remain on the highway until the original bonds were retired, and then the road was to become a free interstate.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a free road – that’s funny peculiar, not funny ha ha. The new four-lane highway became a favorite north-south route. Traffic also increased significantly when I-64 was completed. The bankrupt West Virginia Turnpike quickly became a money maker, and the politicians smelled bacon on the griddle.
If you came into the movie late, that’s okay. You know what happened next. The Turnpike Commission became the WV Parkways, Economic Development and Tourism Authority. This led to Tamarack, one of the biggest money-losing enterprises ever concocted by the statehouse gang. The Authority also removed turnpike tolls everywhere except the three main toll barriers, a perk for locals that cost the turnpike some $2 million in annual revenue at the time.
Today, the Authority’s bastard child toll road is facing over $335 million in deferred maintenance with about one third of the 88-mile highway rated as substandard. And there seems to be faint political will to raise tolls to adequate levels or to cure Tamarack’s annual cash drain.
This is how West Virginia politicians run a toll road. If you think that the state should consider building more toll roads, then you deserve a desk at the state capitol in the Head Examiner’s office.
There are two plausible solutions for the state road fund’s inadequacy. The first is simple. As the state maintains a network of secondary roads that were once, and still should be, the responsibility of the counties, the personal property tax collected on motor vehicles by each county should be transferred to the state road fund. It makes sense to do this because the counties have gotten off scot-free since 1933 when the State Road Commission was formed to rescue Depression-era counties from their road building and road maintenance duties.
The second solution does not involve taxes. If the state eliminated the prevailing wage requirements in road contracts, the annual savings would be huge. West Virginia cannot justify paying road contractors to hire laborers at $34.71 per hour. But it does just that because $34.71 per hour is the "prevailing wage" for the lowest-paid laborer.
That’s funny ha ha.
The impact of these high prevailing wage rates doesn’t end there. Road construction is seasonal work, and construction workers’ wage-based claims are a big drain on the unemployment fund which you, the motorist, also pay for.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Performance of Public Schools Just Doesn't Add Up
Whenever anyone asks me if 180 days per year in school are enough, I answer by relating my high school experience. I was required to take American History. The teacher never got us to World War II.
This sums up my opinion of the public school system, both when I was a prisoner of it and now. The system is a failure. I can claim that is a failure because there hasn’t been a definition of a proper education since the one-room schools closed down—the three Rs as it were.
Where did the magical 180 days of classroom instruction come from? Some folks believe that farm families in the olden days demanded that their children go to school for not more than 180 days because they needed the kids to work the farm in summer. The 180-day rule has been around so long that other people believe it came from divine guidance. As in: Noah built the ark, and then it rained for 180 days.
You can teach Algebra in 180 days. You cannot teach American History in 180 days. You can teach Civics in 180 days. You cannot teach American Literature or English Literature in 180 days. You can teach an introductory course in biology, chemistry or physics in 180 days. You cannot teach Writing in 180 days.
Schools have become babysitters. In addition to providing free day-care, schools provide breakfast and lunch. Who expects lazy parents to get up an hour early and fix breakfast or pack lunch boxes?
Schools have become sports complexes. Schools have an obligation to teach physical education and offer daily exercise periods to all students. But the system has gone way beyond its charge. The system spends millions of dollars per year to field teams in most sports. Meanwhile, nearly one-fourth of our students are obese come graduation day.
Schools are inept when it comes to preventing dropouts. The attitude of school administrators towards dropouts is “so what.” Administrators don’t want students in school who pull the averages down. So what if dropouts cost society a fortune later on.
Schools have given up trying to prevent cheating. Cheating is rampant. But cheating, via the resulting passing grades, makes school administrators look better in those “No Child Left Behind” reports.
Schools have given in to grade inflation. There’s no way that so many students should make the honor roll as they now do. There’s no way that a school should have several 4.0 GPA graduating seniors all selected as class valedictorians. Unless, of course, you inject grade inflation into the system.
When it comes to grade inflation, never forget former Governor Bob Wise and his PROMISE scholarship. The PROMISE scholarship is a financial entitlement, and West Virginia teachers aren’t going to deny a “C” student that entitlement. Bob Wise did more to increase the number of “B” students than he’ll ever know.
My heart goes out to mentally challenged students. But the notion that all children can be mainstreamed in the public schools is a costly fantasy.
The school system has no clear mission. Schools are trying to be all things to all people and thus, serve no one well. If our schools were soup kitchens, the broth would be so thin that it would remind you of Moe, Larry and Curly pouring hot water through a rubber chicken. Until we define what a student should learn in each year of schooling, then we can’t know whether 180 days of schooling is too much, too little, or just right.
Given our current assembly of legislators, they will probably fine tune the 180-day rule by mandating that history teachers begin with World War II and then teach American History backwards. Or in the alternative, they might have teachers skip colonial history altogether and begin with Paul Revere’s ride.
In the past decade, Finland’s public schools have consistently ranked as the best in the world. Why? Because Finland has defined a “proper education” for the 21st century, and the schools teach to that standard.
Helsinki is Europe’s snowiest capitol city, averaging 101 snow days each winter. The difference between Finland and West Virginia is not measured in snow days, however. The Finns believe that getting an education is their most important endeavor. As such, their kids will ski to school if they have to.
In case you were wondering, Finnish students attend school 190 days from mid-August to the end of May. The school term includes holiday breaks as well as a week-long spring break.
This sums up my opinion of the public school system, both when I was a prisoner of it and now. The system is a failure. I can claim that is a failure because there hasn’t been a definition of a proper education since the one-room schools closed down—the three Rs as it were.
Where did the magical 180 days of classroom instruction come from? Some folks believe that farm families in the olden days demanded that their children go to school for not more than 180 days because they needed the kids to work the farm in summer. The 180-day rule has been around so long that other people believe it came from divine guidance. As in: Noah built the ark, and then it rained for 180 days.
You can teach Algebra in 180 days. You cannot teach American History in 180 days. You can teach Civics in 180 days. You cannot teach American Literature or English Literature in 180 days. You can teach an introductory course in biology, chemistry or physics in 180 days. You cannot teach Writing in 180 days.
Schools have become babysitters. In addition to providing free day-care, schools provide breakfast and lunch. Who expects lazy parents to get up an hour early and fix breakfast or pack lunch boxes?
Schools have become sports complexes. Schools have an obligation to teach physical education and offer daily exercise periods to all students. But the system has gone way beyond its charge. The system spends millions of dollars per year to field teams in most sports. Meanwhile, nearly one-fourth of our students are obese come graduation day.
Schools are inept when it comes to preventing dropouts. The attitude of school administrators towards dropouts is “so what.” Administrators don’t want students in school who pull the averages down. So what if dropouts cost society a fortune later on.
Schools have given up trying to prevent cheating. Cheating is rampant. But cheating, via the resulting passing grades, makes school administrators look better in those “No Child Left Behind” reports.
Schools have given in to grade inflation. There’s no way that so many students should make the honor roll as they now do. There’s no way that a school should have several 4.0 GPA graduating seniors all selected as class valedictorians. Unless, of course, you inject grade inflation into the system.
When it comes to grade inflation, never forget former Governor Bob Wise and his PROMISE scholarship. The PROMISE scholarship is a financial entitlement, and West Virginia teachers aren’t going to deny a “C” student that entitlement. Bob Wise did more to increase the number of “B” students than he’ll ever know.
My heart goes out to mentally challenged students. But the notion that all children can be mainstreamed in the public schools is a costly fantasy.
The school system has no clear mission. Schools are trying to be all things to all people and thus, serve no one well. If our schools were soup kitchens, the broth would be so thin that it would remind you of Moe, Larry and Curly pouring hot water through a rubber chicken. Until we define what a student should learn in each year of schooling, then we can’t know whether 180 days of schooling is too much, too little, or just right.
Given our current assembly of legislators, they will probably fine tune the 180-day rule by mandating that history teachers begin with World War II and then teach American History backwards. Or in the alternative, they might have teachers skip colonial history altogether and begin with Paul Revere’s ride.
In the past decade, Finland’s public schools have consistently ranked as the best in the world. Why? Because Finland has defined a “proper education” for the 21st century, and the schools teach to that standard.
Helsinki is Europe’s snowiest capitol city, averaging 101 snow days each winter. The difference between Finland and West Virginia is not measured in snow days, however. The Finns believe that getting an education is their most important endeavor. As such, their kids will ski to school if they have to.
In case you were wondering, Finnish students attend school 190 days from mid-August to the end of May. The school term includes holiday breaks as well as a week-long spring break.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Ignorance of Human Nature Is Criminal
The problem of prison overcrowding is not going away anytime soon. If anything, it probably will get worse because government ignores human nature when enacting laws.
Moses began with 10 laws. Since then, governments have written 10 zillion laws. In the beginning, it was easy for all people to comprehend the prohibition against coveting thy neighbor's donkey. But increasingly, laws have become more complex and sometimes almost impossible to obey.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently declared carbon dioxide a pollutant. If you breathe, you pollute the atmosphere; you are a lawbreaker. If past is prologue, the next law will be: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's carbon credits. But you will covet thy neighbor's carbon credits given the alternative.
Most people would never rob a bank. Banks are a safe place to keep money because of this common trait, not because of federal and state laws against bank robbery.
Jaywalking is a misdemeanor in every city, but only because architects and engineers ignore pedestrian habits and design streets and building lots in rectangles. Humans triangulate and will jaywalk as surely as they breathe.
Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not declared swine unclean, the agency nevertheless writes dietary laws. Trans fat is now "unclean."
There are so many laws, a citizen cannot help but be a lawbreaker. We have gone beyond unlawfully removing mattress tags. For example, if the EPA monitored the chemicals that you routinely pour down your sink, you'd probably be in jail by year's end.
During the last century, laws controlling alcohol and drug use mushroomed. Not surprisingly, incarcerations for violating those laws also have mushroomed. This was entirely predictable.
In 1899, Thorstein Veblen wrote "The Theory of the Leisure Class" and had this to say about drinking and drug use in the chapter titled "Conspicuous Consumption": "Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of [intoxicating beverages and narcotics] therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark [...] of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence."
In 1899, the free use of narcotics was considered an indulgence, a pleasure enjoyed by the leisure class as a measure of their status. So what caused drug cases to clog court calendars a century later?
Every law ever written to control the consumption of intoxicating beverages and narcotics has had the opposite effect.
As Veblen explains, restricting stimulants and making them more expensive only increases the common man's desire to consume them.
We will always have to live with crimes of passion. Neither law nor any threat of jail is going to dissuade a jealous husband in a moment of passion from shooting his wife's lover.
There are, of course, criminals who need to be locked up forever. Pathological killers fit this category. They cannot be reformed, at least not with our present understanding of how the mind works. But does it make sense to lock up the jealous husband in a maximum-security prison that should be reserved for pathological criminals?
According to a Pew Center report last year, 1 percent of American adults are behind bars. And 7.3 million adults (one of every 31) are in the penal system (in jail, on parole or on probation.)
In their zeal to enact more and more punitive laws, legislators have guaranteed that prisons will be overfilled. The courts have abetted the lawmakers admirably; our robed judges meekly complain as they hand out mandatory sentences. When you replace "let the punishment fit the crime" with rigid sentencing guidelines, is it any wonder why we can't build prisons fast enough?
Government always thinks it can solve problems by demanding more, not less. In this case, it wants more police, more lawyers, more laws, more courts, more prisons, more guards and more time behind bars.
I am most disturbed by politicians who proudly crow that they have appropriated funds to build a new prison and then tell us that new prisons are economic development projects. Prisons, they gloat, create construction jobs in the short run and correctional jobs for the long term. Hence, prisons are a business model.
This is how far we have fallen. In a nation founded on the principles of individual liberty, democracy and capitalism, we thirst to lock people in cages and have the audacity to call it economic development.
How pathetic is that?
Moses began with 10 laws. Since then, governments have written 10 zillion laws. In the beginning, it was easy for all people to comprehend the prohibition against coveting thy neighbor's donkey. But increasingly, laws have become more complex and sometimes almost impossible to obey.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently declared carbon dioxide a pollutant. If you breathe, you pollute the atmosphere; you are a lawbreaker. If past is prologue, the next law will be: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's carbon credits. But you will covet thy neighbor's carbon credits given the alternative.
Most people would never rob a bank. Banks are a safe place to keep money because of this common trait, not because of federal and state laws against bank robbery.
Jaywalking is a misdemeanor in every city, but only because architects and engineers ignore pedestrian habits and design streets and building lots in rectangles. Humans triangulate and will jaywalk as surely as they breathe.
Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not declared swine unclean, the agency nevertheless writes dietary laws. Trans fat is now "unclean."
There are so many laws, a citizen cannot help but be a lawbreaker. We have gone beyond unlawfully removing mattress tags. For example, if the EPA monitored the chemicals that you routinely pour down your sink, you'd probably be in jail by year's end.
During the last century, laws controlling alcohol and drug use mushroomed. Not surprisingly, incarcerations for violating those laws also have mushroomed. This was entirely predictable.
In 1899, Thorstein Veblen wrote "The Theory of the Leisure Class" and had this to say about drinking and drug use in the chapter titled "Conspicuous Consumption": "Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of [intoxicating beverages and narcotics] therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark [...] of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence."
In 1899, the free use of narcotics was considered an indulgence, a pleasure enjoyed by the leisure class as a measure of their status. So what caused drug cases to clog court calendars a century later?
Every law ever written to control the consumption of intoxicating beverages and narcotics has had the opposite effect.
As Veblen explains, restricting stimulants and making them more expensive only increases the common man's desire to consume them.
We will always have to live with crimes of passion. Neither law nor any threat of jail is going to dissuade a jealous husband in a moment of passion from shooting his wife's lover.
There are, of course, criminals who need to be locked up forever. Pathological killers fit this category. They cannot be reformed, at least not with our present understanding of how the mind works. But does it make sense to lock up the jealous husband in a maximum-security prison that should be reserved for pathological criminals?
According to a Pew Center report last year, 1 percent of American adults are behind bars. And 7.3 million adults (one of every 31) are in the penal system (in jail, on parole or on probation.)
In their zeal to enact more and more punitive laws, legislators have guaranteed that prisons will be overfilled. The courts have abetted the lawmakers admirably; our robed judges meekly complain as they hand out mandatory sentences. When you replace "let the punishment fit the crime" with rigid sentencing guidelines, is it any wonder why we can't build prisons fast enough?
Government always thinks it can solve problems by demanding more, not less. In this case, it wants more police, more lawyers, more laws, more courts, more prisons, more guards and more time behind bars.
I am most disturbed by politicians who proudly crow that they have appropriated funds to build a new prison and then tell us that new prisons are economic development projects. Prisons, they gloat, create construction jobs in the short run and correctional jobs for the long term. Hence, prisons are a business model.
This is how far we have fallen. In a nation founded on the principles of individual liberty, democracy and capitalism, we thirst to lock people in cages and have the audacity to call it economic development.
How pathetic is that?
Friday, January 15, 2010
NCAA Misses the Point in Caring for Injured Athletes
For four minutes, it looked like Texas was going to stomp Alabama in the BCS championship game. Then, Bama’s Marcell Dareus tackled Colt McCoy, the Longhorns’ star quarterback, and the contest was over.
McCoy was sidelined by a pinched nerve causing his right arm to go completely numb. Dareus told reporters after the game that his neck was still sore from tackling McCoy. The injuries surprised even the announcers because the tackle looked pretty tame. Watching the replay, it looked like Colt McCoy’s shoulder pad cushioned the blow to both players.
When horrifying moments like this occur during televised football games, the announcers are instructed to wax philosophic during interludes. You can tell when this happens because the announcers use real verbs, not the ones they have invented to describe play-by-play action.
The use of real verbs lends gravitas to tone down their manic cheerleading. For example, the player whom they just made fun of for getting “de-cleated” is, after his season-ending injury, “a good student who enjoys visiting war veterans in the hospital.” (And there is nary a whisper about the Candystriper he allegedly knocked up on one of those visits.)
During such an interlude in the Texas-Alabama game, the announcers recalled Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford’s season-ending shoulder injury. Then they mentioned Florida quarterback Tim Tebow’s season-interrupting concussion. These two young men are former Heisman Trophy winners.
Colt McCoy was edged out for the 2009 Heisman by Bama’s Mark Ingram. But for the moment, Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit elevated Colt McCoy to the pantheon of wounded Heisman winners.
Not too long after this moment of glib gravitas, a shocking graphic flashed before my eyes. It was a chart detailing the head coaches’ pay. Texas coach Mack Brown is paid $5 million per year. Alabama’s Nick Saban is paid $3.9 million per year. If Texas had won, Mack Brown would have gotten a $450,000 bonus. Saban got paid $400,000 for the win.
At the end of the game, one thing could be said for certain. Neither Mack Brown nor Nick Saban risked injury to earn his preposterous salary. The injuries were borne by their unpaid players. And many of those lads will face complications for the rest of their lives for “leaving it on the field.”
A century ago, the United States accepted that workers should have a reasonable expectation of an injury-free workplace. States adopted worker compensation insurance plans, and the concept of no-fault insurance for workplace injuries took hold.
College football is a big business; it is not a playground sport where the true amateur plays. You know it’s a big business when West Virginia University can afford to pay its head football coach a million dollars per year in salary and expenses.
The NCAA has rigged the college farm team system to perfection. By pretending that collegiate sports are all about the amateur athlete, then colleges and universities can avoid the niceties of paying athletes or providing them with workers’ compensation and disability coverage.
We are beginning to learn that concussions take their toll later in life. I hope that Pat White and Jarrett Brown, both quarterbaks at WVU, never suffer from their college football concussions. But the evidence at hand suggests that their golden years may not be so golden.
WVU linebacker Reed Williams sacrificed his shoulders for college football. Who will pay for his arthritis medicine in 2050? Likewise for the women, who pays for former basketball player Meg Bulger’s future knee replacement?
Honestly, I think the Romans had more respect for the wellbeing of their gladiators than the NCAA does for amateur athletes. But I am being unfair. The Coliseum in Rome never had a television contract.
Pat White’s season-interrupting concussion serves to illustrate my point. When he returned to the field, much was made of the special helmet he was wearing. His new helmet was designed to protect him from another head injury.
Why wasn’t Pat White wearing the best helmet in the first place? How does a coach look Pat White in the eye and say, “After you’ve suffered a doozy of a concussion, then we’ll buy you a really good helmet!”
Someday, an injured player will sue his or her university, and the judge will rule (correctly, I believe) that the school is the player’s de facto employer. When coaches make seven figures, and Wyoming wins a bowl game ($750,000 payout), it’s hard to pretend that we still live in the days of Knute Rockne winning one for the Gipper.
Last season, a thousand college athletes left something on the field, and all they got were numbered T-shirts.
McCoy was sidelined by a pinched nerve causing his right arm to go completely numb. Dareus told reporters after the game that his neck was still sore from tackling McCoy. The injuries surprised even the announcers because the tackle looked pretty tame. Watching the replay, it looked like Colt McCoy’s shoulder pad cushioned the blow to both players.
When horrifying moments like this occur during televised football games, the announcers are instructed to wax philosophic during interludes. You can tell when this happens because the announcers use real verbs, not the ones they have invented to describe play-by-play action.
The use of real verbs lends gravitas to tone down their manic cheerleading. For example, the player whom they just made fun of for getting “de-cleated” is, after his season-ending injury, “a good student who enjoys visiting war veterans in the hospital.” (And there is nary a whisper about the Candystriper he allegedly knocked up on one of those visits.)
During such an interlude in the Texas-Alabama game, the announcers recalled Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford’s season-ending shoulder injury. Then they mentioned Florida quarterback Tim Tebow’s season-interrupting concussion. These two young men are former Heisman Trophy winners.
Colt McCoy was edged out for the 2009 Heisman by Bama’s Mark Ingram. But for the moment, Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit elevated Colt McCoy to the pantheon of wounded Heisman winners.
Not too long after this moment of glib gravitas, a shocking graphic flashed before my eyes. It was a chart detailing the head coaches’ pay. Texas coach Mack Brown is paid $5 million per year. Alabama’s Nick Saban is paid $3.9 million per year. If Texas had won, Mack Brown would have gotten a $450,000 bonus. Saban got paid $400,000 for the win.
At the end of the game, one thing could be said for certain. Neither Mack Brown nor Nick Saban risked injury to earn his preposterous salary. The injuries were borne by their unpaid players. And many of those lads will face complications for the rest of their lives for “leaving it on the field.”
A century ago, the United States accepted that workers should have a reasonable expectation of an injury-free workplace. States adopted worker compensation insurance plans, and the concept of no-fault insurance for workplace injuries took hold.
College football is a big business; it is not a playground sport where the true amateur plays. You know it’s a big business when West Virginia University can afford to pay its head football coach a million dollars per year in salary and expenses.
The NCAA has rigged the college farm team system to perfection. By pretending that collegiate sports are all about the amateur athlete, then colleges and universities can avoid the niceties of paying athletes or providing them with workers’ compensation and disability coverage.
We are beginning to learn that concussions take their toll later in life. I hope that Pat White and Jarrett Brown, both quarterbaks at WVU, never suffer from their college football concussions. But the evidence at hand suggests that their golden years may not be so golden.
WVU linebacker Reed Williams sacrificed his shoulders for college football. Who will pay for his arthritis medicine in 2050? Likewise for the women, who pays for former basketball player Meg Bulger’s future knee replacement?
Honestly, I think the Romans had more respect for the wellbeing of their gladiators than the NCAA does for amateur athletes. But I am being unfair. The Coliseum in Rome never had a television contract.
Pat White’s season-interrupting concussion serves to illustrate my point. When he returned to the field, much was made of the special helmet he was wearing. His new helmet was designed to protect him from another head injury.
Why wasn’t Pat White wearing the best helmet in the first place? How does a coach look Pat White in the eye and say, “After you’ve suffered a doozy of a concussion, then we’ll buy you a really good helmet!”
Someday, an injured player will sue his or her university, and the judge will rule (correctly, I believe) that the school is the player’s de facto employer. When coaches make seven figures, and Wyoming wins a bowl game ($750,000 payout), it’s hard to pretend that we still live in the days of Knute Rockne winning one for the Gipper.
Last season, a thousand college athletes left something on the field, and all they got were numbered T-shirts.
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