Climate Change, Government, and Pretty Things

I remember reading somewhere, during the election season, that Republicans were fretting about Obama making access to unemployment benefits and food stamps easier, when in fact all he had done was advertise the programs more effectively.

This is what I was thinking of when I read about Obama's not super eloquent press conference on climate change. The president "emphasized creating "a conversation across the country" to educate Americans and determine what they're really ready to commit to, policy-wise, on the issue." The article I linked there doesn't really talk about how that might be accomplished, other than President Obama making frequent speeches on the topic.

Which had me wondering.

I know the White House couldn't put up posters saying "Global Warming is Real!" without the right wing throwing a conniption and comparing it to Nazi propaganda. And it might just be a consequence of being in college that I think putting up posters is the solution to anything.

But I do feel like the government has much greater capacities for public education than it actually uses. Think about the health care reform law. For months and months after it passed, and still now, tons of people didn't even know what was in it, much less that they could sign up for special insurance pools to cover them while it went into effect. (You can, by the way. Sign up here.) The places that government provides information are frankly so scattered and poorly designed (think of the massive web of endless .gov websites which no one has ever heard of) that it's not very effective. I guess they have a lot of information to get out while trying to avoid charges of propaganda, but come on guys, do better.

So if the White House wants to start a national conversation to educate Americans on climate change, I really do think they should make some posters. Pretty ones. Which link to well-designed websites full of practical information. Seriously.

(This has been a bit of a rant. Sorry!)

Game Night: Make Mitt Romney's Tax Plan Add Up!

Washington Post has a glorious new interactive feature: Make Mitt Romney's Tax Plan Add Up! Can you do it? I am going to attempt!

Why Romney Made Fun of Obama Last Night

So last night I stumbled upon this weird thing on TV which I guess is actually a long-standing political tradition, wherein both presidential candidates attend a fundraising dinner in New York and pretend to be funny. Like, they have comedians write their speeches and everything, to present to a bunch of incredibly wealthy Catholics at an absurdly fancy dinner. As you can imagine, it's mostly just sort of awkward and deeply uncomfortable for all parties involved, and Romney did nothing to make it less weird; most of his jokes were about President Obama, whereas most of President Obama's jokes... were also about President Obama.

Melissa McEwen thinks this is because Romney is a terrible person, and I'm certainly not going to argue that point, but I was also wondering if it might have something to do with the fact that the Democrats are far and away better at branding their party and their candidate. In 2008 Obama's "hope and change" thing was endless fodder for comedians, and a lot of his jokes last night referenced parts of his stump speech as well. He's got a pretty solid public image as kind of the sober statesman, which he referenced. He's got a nifty logo and a nice one-word slogan.

Romney, on the other hand, has a boring logo, a slogan that I can never remember, and keeps referencing this 5-point plan thing that no one seems to have heard of. He doesn't have a consistent public image other than "rich guy" - is he the centrist former governor of Massachusetts, or the Super Businessman, or just kind of a confused flip-flopping out-of-touch jerk? He doesn't really tell compelling personal stories the way Obama does, and his surrogates are all over the place. So there's not, like, concrete, recognizable things about him that make for funny jokes without being actually sort of damaging?

This is my theory, anyway. Also, Mitt Romney might just be a jerk.

Binders FULL of Women!

I can't not jump on this one - this is your friendly morning reminder that not only was Romney's binders full of women remark patronizing, but it was a lie.

Via David Bernstein

What actually happened was that in 2002 — prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration — a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.
They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
....Note that in Romney's story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn't know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?

 So to summarize, Romney did not seek out these binders full of qualified women - 25 years of business experience apparently had not taught him how. Prior to the election, information about qualified women was put together and handed to him, and his answer to the wage gap was to take credit for that, and then assure us that the Free Market would provide a flexible workplace because there would just be so many jobs that businesses would even hire women!

Uh. Sure. You tell us how that works out for you.

FLOTUS at UMW

So, I saw the First Lady today. She's basically the classiest lady ever.

The speech was, among other things, a list of everything you say to someone who asks things like "But what has Obama even accomplished in the past four years, anyway?" It was helpful, because usually when people say shit like that I just want to glare at them and tell them to Google it.

When she said, "We know that the American Dream should be available to everyone regardless of who they are, what they do, what they look like or who they love," I may have gotten kind of emotional.

But being a religion major ruins everything, especially one who focuses on religion and politics. I kept comparing Michelle Obama's lovely speech to all the journal articles I've been pouring over for my thesis. "Ah, yes, that sounds like article I read on liberal spirituality. But it doesn't seem to match up with that other article on American exceptionalism. Curious." Rather than coming away wanting to do some canvassing, I came out of the speech wanting to do some research. And maybe punch Robert Bellah* in the face.

*He coined the idea of American Civil Religion, which is the root of all my above-mentioned problems. I don't just randomly want to punch religion scholars. At least not usually.

Teenagers and the Minimum Wage

More than 100 House Democrats have proposed a bill to raise the minimum wage, so naturally conservatives are full of reasons why we shouldn't do that, like it'll make it prohibitively expensive for businesses to hire new workers. I keep seeing links to studies claiming that that's bullshit, but it's an argument I understand, at least, and it makes up myth One and Two on ThinkProgress's "Top Three Myths Conservatives Use To Oppose Increasing The Minimum Wage" But number 3 I don't understand at all, and it really made me angry.

3) Increasing the minimum wage only benefits teenagers. Many Republicans argue that raising the minimum wage just hurts teenagers’ ability to gain work experience. But as a new report from the Economic Policy Institute shows, nearly 90 percent of minimum wage workers are 20 years old or older. Plus, “more than a third (35.8 percent) [of minimum wage workers] are married, and over a quarter (28.0 percent) are parents.”

Ok, so ThinkProgress responded to this by saying that most people with minimum wage jobs are adults. But what's wrong with benefits for teenagers?

We're a country with enormously expensive higher education, high teen pregnancy/parenting, and lots of inter-generational poverty. There is absolutely no reason why teenagers shouldn't have a pay raise; I mean, I would probably spend it on movie tickets, but I know friends from high school who could have really used it for the sort of bootstraps-y things that Republicans are into like helping their families and saving for college. So why in the world is "eh, they're just teenagers" a legitimate argument for not raising the minimum wage?

Katie Talks Economics!

Some money-related bits in the news lately that have caught my eye...

New regulation would force companies to disclose CEO-worker pay ratio: Think it's horribly unfair for a CEO to make 127 times what an average worker does? A new rule under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act would force companies to release information about that sort of thing. A lot of company owners aren't a big fan of this idea - they say it's too hard to calculate, and besides, it's picking on them for making lots of money. To which I say: Damn straight it's picking on you. You have made this mess, and if you won't clean it up yourself, we will publicly shame you into being less greedy.

Kevin Drum says we can't do things that would fix the economy for younger people because of older people. Any big investment in economic stimulus or job creating programs would threaten retirement funds or require a raise of taxes, which younger voters are usually more ok with (being not at retirement age and taxed in lower income brackets) and older voters are so not ok with (for the opposite reasons). This article paints a very rosy picture of older Americans jealously guarding their benefits while my generation lives in unemployed misery while being reviled as lazy mooches. I do like to think things aren't so bad as that, but damn, what a grim way of looking at it. (The comments dissolve into some awful fighting too, which makes me wonder if that's why reporters don't often talk in terms like this.)

Providing Housing for Homeless Saves Gov't Money

In my Inequality and Social Exclusion class in Ireland, we spent a good 2 weeks or so on homelessness, because, well, pretty much no one is more socially excluded than the homeless. Our assigned reading for those two weeks was pretty much every study on Irish homelessness policy published in the past five years. Seriously. Hundreds of pages. And since they were all different organizations discussing the same policies, it was hundreds of pages saying pretty much the exact same thing. That was one very long afternoon in the library.

Highlights:

Me: *raising hand during discussion of homelessness demographics in Ireland* In the States we have a big problem with high percentages of LGBT youth being homeless. Is that a problem here too?"
Professor: Well... ...The thing is, homelessness is such a huge problem in the States that it really can't be compared to the situation in Ireland.

He looked it up for the next class for me, but that was a day I skipped. Oops.

Anyway, I was suitably embarrassed (for skipping class, but mostly for the incomparably large nature of my country's homelessness problem). But today I found an American study that said EXACTLY THE SAME THING all those Irish studies I read said, and I got excited. The gist of it is, if you get homeless people into housing, like real housing, not overnight or temporary shelters, you save money and more effectively address the causes of homelessness.

Of course, in Ireland, this is becoming the strategy for dealing with homelessness in the entire country. In LA, where the study was conducted, the homeless population is 51,000 people, and the program in question was for 50 people. But still, I was happy to see that they're at least trying it.

Well That's Grand (On the Minimum Wage and Stuff)

In my home state, you have to work 112 hours a week at minimum wage to afford an apartment. For comparison, there are 168 hours in the week. (In New York, it's 136, but I bet their stats are skewed by New York City, which is a world unto itself. I wonder what the difference in Virginia's numbers is between the DC Metro Area and Everywhere Else...)

That's pretty cool.

I'm working in Fredericksburg this summer, in the department office for Classics, Philosophy and Religion. I work nowhere near 112 hours a week, but I'm hoping to make enough money to pay for taking the GRE and paying my grad school application fees, anyway, which is more doable than paying for an apartment. And since I'm on campus already 3 days a week anyway, I'm spending some time locked in the library, preparing for the above-mentioned GRE, studying Dutch, and putting together my Fulbright Scholarship application.

This is much more exciting than it sounds, really.

Fun Facts on Guns in Virginia

In my home state, more people die from guns than from car accidents.

There's more on why this is seriously disturbing at the link. Gotta say, after a semester in Europe, where there is no such thing as debates about who can carry a gun in public because you just don't, it's really weird being back here and reading about guns all the time.

Catching Up

I got home a little bit less than a week ago, and haven't read the news until today. Here's some awesome articles that I'm reading in my grand game of catch-up.

Occupiers Take the Farm - A group of community members took over a patch of little-used agricultural land owned by UC Berkley and turned it into a farm. Chaos ensued. Professors and scientists felt the farm was an attack on academic freedom since they use the land for agricultural research, even though much of it was being parceled out to build a Whole Foods and other buildings and not being used for research at all. The occupiers, who had been asking the university for use of the land for years, felt it was finally being put to some good use. All a very interesting story, I'm sorry it turned into arrests and legal mess before that conversation really got to happen.

Carbon taxing to fix Europe's budget problems? - I tend to think carbon taxing is a good idea, but this suggests starting with household emissions, and I can just imagine how that would go over in Ireland, where household taxes are already a subject of endless angry posters. Not gonna happen. But maybe there are other ways to do it?


Men moving into "pink-collar" jobs - Interesting article in the New York Times about how more men are taking jobs in fields dominated by women, like nursing and primary education. Includes lots of fond memories from Women's Studies 101 about the Glass Escalator phenomenon.

Facts are Cool - A great response to a great article explaining privilege in video game terms that was published a few weeks ago. Read both. Now.

What else have I missed while I've been gone? Let me know!

In which Out in UL Wins Everything, and Other News

Since coming to UL, I've been really involved with Out in UL, our school's GLBTQetc organization. It's a really awesome group - I was actually quite nervous about being out in Ireland, what with the Catholicism and all, so having an active group of lovely people holding all sorts of events around campus to join up with means a lot.

Because Out in UL is so awesome, we were nominated for three awards at last night's Clubs and Societies Ball - Best Society Event for Queerbash, an annual party/variety show held by the club; Best New or Improved Society; and Best Society Individual, for our fantastic president Niall.

"So if we win..." someone said on the bus ride over to the hotel where the ball was being held.

"When we win," Niall interrupted. "When we win all three."

Naturally, because we were all so excited and anxious, everything ran late. The dinner that was to start at 8pm SHARP, according to the ticket (and capitalized just like that) arrived sometime around 9pm, so the awards didn't start for another hour, and then we had to wait while people who we were much less interested in got awards for things. Finally, the nominees for the first award were called, the envelope was clumsily and at great length opened, and... We won! We cheered and shouted were excited. Some more awards that weren't us happened. "Even if we don't win this one, we already won something, so it's still really exciting," I thought as they read the nominees. They opened the envelope, and... us again! "There's no way we win all three," I told myself as they got to the final one, though even as I thought it I was also thinking that we'd damn well better get the last one because that would just be the coolest thing ever. And, long story short, we also got the third award, and then there was a big party and it was awesome.

This weekend is St. Patrick's Day, so I have lots of plans, with blog posts to follow! But first, I wanted to share this article...

TreeHugger has another kids these days kind of article about how us young people are all a bunch of apolitical narcissists who don't actually care about the environment and don't vote and don't trust each other and all of these things. I can't argue with his data that we don't recycle consistently, but I find his argument that college kids who don't vote are responsible for the Tea Party coming in and destroying the environment. I would instead say that the way our generation - surrounded as we are by the internet and a pretty broken economy and a whole lot of change - understand politics and activism differently than previous generations did, and that it's often kind of confusing and overwhelming and we haven't quite worked out the kinks yet, so maybe we don't always do it very well. What do you think?

Irish Government Cuts Communion Payments

I've been trying to watch the news while I've been here. It's proving tricky - most of the channels we get are from the UK and so only talk about Northern Ireland, and when I do find an Irish new channel it's always right when it's about to switch to talking about soccer! But today I caught, on the Irish equivalent of C-Span, that the government is cutting exceptional needs payments (a kind of social welfare, I think) going to families on the occasion of communion or confirmation.

So far I've been unable to walk into a class without some of the discussion revolving around the current economic situation in Ireland, so the fact that the government was making cuts really didn't surprise me. What surprised me is that they give out money for communion at all. I mean, I guess First Communion is probably a bit expense - I remember my Catholic friends getting their fancy white dresses and having parties - and the point of Exceptional Needs Payments seems to be so that unusual large expenses don't push struggling families over the edge into debt or whatever, so in that way I guess I understand the logic.

But as the Labour Party representative railed against the man who'd proposed the cuts, I couldn't help but disagree with her. Aid for struggling families is great. But if you have to make cuts, ending government support for a religious ceremony seems like a good place to start to me. Separation of church and state and all that.

But whether or not the state should give people money for First Communion never came up in all the discussion of it I've seen. It was framed exclusively as money out of the pockets of needy families, with hardly any mention of the occasion.

Here's the article, if you're interested! Struggling Families' Communion Payments Slashed

Occupy DC Update: 31 Arrested

The Occupy DC twitter feed featured cheerful updates yesterday about their building of a non-permanent wooden structure, which was promptly torn down and everyone in it arrested. It sounds like it was an exciting evening:

One of the protesters landed with a flamboyant somersault on the inflated mattress. He was arrested as onlookers cheered as if he were a gymnast who had just stuck a landing. A few more protesters were then removed one at a time in the cherry picker basket.

The rest of the camp was undisturbed, and it doesn't sound like it go too tense. I think I have to agree with the police on this one - building a meeting hall in the park seems like it's crossing a line for park use, especially since it would take up the last open corner of McPherson. We visited Occupy DC last weekend, and while they've got some good things going on, including a shiny new library full of fantastic information, it feels the same way it felt when I visited over fall break: there's no momentum, and it's hard to say just what they're trying to accomplish. They released a pretty great declaration recently, so no one can say it's unclear what their goals are; I guess it just doesn't feel like the occupying technique is particularly effective for them the longer it goes on.

Pre-Thanksgiving Links

Long time no blog! I've been working on a few different projects for school, which you'll get to see shortly. Right now I'm supposed to be packing up my apartment for Thanksgiving break, but I made the mistake of opening my blogroll first, and apparently a lot has happened in the past twenty four hours! And frankly, much of it makes me glad that I'm soon leaving the country! But here's what I'm reading this afternoon.

The Case Against Buying Christmas Presents by Leo Babauta.

A rant, but a good one. I like making and baking Christmas gifts! :D (Though that still means buying things, and stuff like fabric and yarn is often sort of treacherous environmentally and in terms of labor, being made cheaply far away, dyed with all sorts of suspicious stuff, and shipped miles to my local big box craft store...)

Some Occupy reading...

A short, interesting piece on Occupy Wall Street's office space from Mother Jones.

An amazing open letter calling for the resignation of the Cancellor of UC Davis from Professor Nathan Brown.

Occupy Minneapolis occupies a second foreclosed home from Think Progress

There's been some talk about what the Occupy movement should do next as cities make it more difficult to hold actual encampments, and I really like the idea of adopting Minneapolis's strategy of occupying foreclosed homes more widely. It targets a clear issue, brings real attention to the increasing poverty or near-poverty in this country, and has immediately visible results.

And finally, A long, detailed article on different perspectives of higher education by Steven Brint. As a college student, the question of "who should be in college and what should they be doing there?" is relevant to my interests.

Guy Fawkes Day!

I didn't know Guy Fawkes Day existed until V for Vendetta came out, but it fell on a Saturday this year, so in true college style we had a party. We spent a little bit of time pondering how problematic the whole thing is - the masks in V for Vendetta as a symbol of revolution against an oppressive government when that doesn't really make a terrible lot of sense... And then we made scones and ran around and gave up on trying to make it make sense.

James Ford over at Monkey Mind, however, didn't give up on trying to make it make sense, and he has a really interesting reflection up. Here's a bit:

During the Occupy Wall Street and the whole ongoing “Occupy” protests, the mask appears internationally being used as a symbol of popular revolution. Artist David Lloyd is quoted saying: “The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny – and I’m happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way.”

I’m sure Warner Brothers, who must make a little money off of each mask worn, are happy as clams to have become the face of revolution…

And, of course, in a world where everything is connected, irony becomes the commonplace of communication.

Sometimes I like it. But. Me, I’m not so sanguine about the Guy Fawkes mask part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, with its undercurrents of violence, and frankly, with its misdirected zeal.

He talks about his hopes for the Occupy movement, which involve it shifting its focus entirely to electoral politics... which seems unlikely, and which I might disagree with him on. But it's an interesting thought. Read the whole thing!

Occupy the Banks' Mailboxes

ThinkProgress and TreeHugger have both shared a brilliant idea: When credit card companies send you junk mail, send it back.

I get all my junk mail at my permanent address, so I can't do it at school, but it sounds like a great idea to me. To quote TreeHugger:

If enough people take a second to participate, this could irk the mailroom staff at JP Morgan et al enough to spur the sort of conversation [...]. Or better yet, it could provide the media -- ever hungry for the next 'Occupy Wall Street' angle -- with fodder for a new narrative.

TreeHugger recommends including a note with exactly why you're angry at the bank, but I've heard some other ideas - for example, my co-workers fold up all of the paper that came with the return envelope and just send it all back, sparing themselves having to throw any of it away.

So if you want some easy activism AND to get rid of some junk mail, send back those credit card offers!

A Lesbian Library Story and What I'm Reading

Once upon a time, I was working on a research paper. (Hint: Is it at least halfway through the semester? Then I'm working on a research paper.) This one was about how historians interpret Frances Willard's diary, where she discusses being exclusively attracted to women.

One of the things that makes me very proud of my university is the amount of women's studies and queer studies books we have, so when I went into the library today, I came out with a HUGE stack of books, many of which had "queer" or "gay" or "lesbian" on the cover somewhere.

I'm really excited about this research, so I was annoyed at how embarrassed I found myself feeling at I went to check out. I worried the library staff would see what I was reading and judge me; I felt the urge to say, "It's for a paper!" (Because surely no one would want to know about lesbian history and queer theory  just because?) What if they thought I was gay because I was reading about gay people? They'd be right, but I'd hate for someone to think it just because of what I was reading.

Naturally, all of this is silly. Obviously people can read about gay people for fun, even if they're not gay. But I was blushing, and I didn't even check out the Big Book of Lesbian Sex that was shelved next to the history!

Here's what I'm reading today!

The Supreme Court will probably decide that prisoners can't sue privately-run federal prison employee for cruel and unusual treatment.

The Supercommittee is likely to cut really awesome programs supporting organic farming and farmer's markets while continuing to support giant agribusiness.

Occupy Wall Street made bike powered generators!

Occupy Mary Wash Points of Unity

Really quick, before I run off to class, here are the Points of Unity for my school's Occupy group. I like them.

Points of Unity
1. We, #OccupyMaryWash, stand in Solidarity with all Occupiers. With anyone who is oppressed by the top 1%. We stand in Solidarity with the 99%.
2. We stand in Solidarity with all who struggle for equality be it of race, class, age, sexuality, gender, disability, religion, and any associations. We are witness to and stand together in their struggles.
3. We see education as a human right and sky rocketing tuition as an obstacle to that right.
4. We see an organization composed of faculty, staff, and students as key to our success.
5. We recognize there has been a short coming of the administrative and bureaucratic structures of this university in protecting and elevating the voice and rights of all members of the Mary Washington community.
6. We believe in respect for all workers and a livable wage for all workers.
7. We believe in environmental sustainability as the only just future for this community.
8. We believe students and faculty are instrumental to the success and continuation of this university and therefore students and faculty must be instrumental in all decision making processes that impact the university.
9. We are committed to non-violence, non-hierarchical structure and respect for diversity of all types.
10. We are committed to the creation of a transparently run university.

Jobs and the Counter Protest that Wasn't

My favorite part of the Occupy DC General Assembly was the announcements. During the day it was hard to tell what was going on, and the voting on proposals part of General Assembly was enormously frustrating (more on that later), but the announcements were great. We heard about the things that were going well - the speakers who were going to come visit and teach us about protest techniques, the victories from marches we'd participated in, and best of all, the counter protestors who were coming to visit us! We were invited to join a Welcoming Committee, to make sure they felt included and informed.

Sadly, the counter-protest never happened. The goal was to hand out job applications to occupiers. Of course, many of the occupiers have jobs and are in school; the rest of them can't find jobs, because there's an 11% unemployment rate in the DC area.

One of the demands I've heard thrown out by the protestors is a living wage for everyone (I can't cite that, of course, because they don't have an official set of demands, but it's an interesting ideas.) Which I take to include people working part-time and people who are unemployed.

I don't think the 53%-ers would like this. Bootstraps, man! They work five jobs and have no insurance and THEY DON'T BLAME ANYONE! So if they don't get a living wage, why should some unemployed person? They'd be freeloading, and if America hates anything, it's the idea that undeserving people might get some sort of help from the good hard-working bootstrappers.

But honestly, the idea of freeloaders really doesn't bother me. Even if the occupiers were all unemployed slobs who just wanted to live in the park and be pissed off for a while (which they're not, it should go without saying,) I would much rather they have access to health care and food and shelter than not. A living wage would provide these things! I'd rather risk some free loaders and have everyone healthy than deny benefits because someone might free load and have people suffer.

I mean, not that we can fix everything. Of course not. But I'd rather err on the side of helping people and trusting that they're not trying to screw people over than not. I don't know how much of a viable political position that is, but that's how I would like to think about things.