Stu's Views

My wife and I finally saw last year's documentary "Supersize Me" in which a Michael Moore wannabe goes on a McDonalds only diet for a month. The filmmaker begins to approach Moore both in girth and more importantly in witty documentary style. His health steadily deteriorates over the course of the month with his doctors showing apparently genuine concern over the risk to his life.

The point of course is that our country is killing ourselves with food and we are being aided and abetted by fast food companies. The lawsuit against these fast food companies which has sparked derision (and a bill passed last year by Congress outlawing such suits) is portrayed sympathetically.

Like Moore's documentaries, Supersize Me is a bit over the top and unfair in places while making a centrally valid point. Obviously personal responsibility has to come in to play at some point and individuals must be held responsible for their own eating habits. However we have to make sure that individuals understand the consequences of their consumption, have sufficient choices to eat healthily, and that companies like McDonalds aren't allowed to deceive their customers.

Toward that end there are some obvious public policy solutions. Many are appropriate at the local level such as requiring school lunches to be healthy and not allowing soda machines in schools. At the national level, this is one area where the Bush Administration has been surprisingly progressive. Requiring labelling of foods for trans-fatty acids, and revising the dietary guidelines to encourage exercise and less fatty foods are both very positive steps.

Obesity is a privileged nation's problem. Part of the reason that it has had a more profound impact on health is because we now live long enough for it to make a difference. Still, when we look at other nations, particularly Japan, it is clear that our habits and our culture are costing us years of life. If that is because people genuinely make the choice to live shorter lives but enjoy their French Fries (excuse me, Freedom Fries) then that is fine. If it is because they don't know how bad the food they eat is, then we can do something about it and we should.

Many in the blogosphere have written extensively on the torture of "enemy combatants" in the War on Terror. I have refrained until now not because of a lack of moral outrage but rather because I felt I had little to add. After reading this piece by committed Iraq hawk Andrew Sullivan, I'm still not sure I have anything to add but my outrage can be contained no more.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the use of torture has not been restricted to a few soldiers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. It has been used at Guantanamo Bay, and wherever we are keeping prisoners in this neverending war. It is occurring because of the human nature of captors to abuse their captives has been set loose by an Administration that would not send a clear signal that such practices were forbidden. One can only assume that the lack of such signals was not accidental and was done with the knowledge that the abhorrent practices currently being revealed would occur.

The justification for torture is that if it can produce information that will forestall a terrorist attack then it is not wrong to do. Unfortunately we live in the real world, not one that operates according to the script of the TV Series "24." As Sullivan notes, those soldiers holding the prisoners cannot distinguish between those prisonners who might have information and those who do not. By describing a theoretical setting in which torture might be acceptable, our leaders have unleashed it throughout the many fronts in the battle on terrorism. There is no evidence and barely any assertions that such techniques have produced valuable information. Meanwhile we have given ammunition to our enemies that will allow them to continue to demonize us and justify the same techniques on their captives.

The mainstream media has by and large ignored this issue since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. It has been covered mainly in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh and a few other "liberal elite" publications. Sullivan is not talking about these pieces however, he is discussing government documents that admit the atrocities have taken place. The fact that the public knows nothing about this is abominable.

And part of the responsibility lies with John Kerry. He never made this an issue in the presidential campaign, doubtlessly seeing the poll numbers that 80% of Americans did not have a problem with torture. But Americans are not evil people. He easily could have built a case that this was wrong, and dangerous for the United States. He did not have the courage to do so and we should add that to the many reasons he is still a Senator today.

The Democrats now have an opportunity to make this an issue. The Senate is continuing to deliberate the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General. Gonzalez is a chief architect of the policy that turned a blind eye to torture and possibly even condoned it. Democrats should make front page news with speeches denouncing his nomination (while confirming Rice and Bush's other cabinet nominees). The case is easy to make. Gonzalez has hleped the Administration make our troops less safe, make terrorist attacks more likely, and do something that goes against everything this country stands for.

Well Lenny Wilkens resigned today as coach of the Knicks so that is one possible answer whose effects we will be able to test. Now don't get me wrong, I think Wilkens has done a pretty poor job as coach. The team doesn't seem as if its trying on defense some times and fourth quarter breakdowns are a sign of a coach who can no longer effectively manage a young team. But if anyone thinks that the coach was the biggest problem with this team, they are kidding themselves.

It has appeared in recent weeks as if Isiah Thomas has come to an important revelation about the Knicks. While his trades have improved the team, they are a significant distance from contending for an NBA title. By saying that the Knicks are basically a .500 team and acknowledging that he was looking forward to moving players such as Hardaway and Tim Thomas this summer, Isiah may have realized that all the moves in the world won't get the Knicks to the next level any time before the 2006-07 season.

If Isiah's plan is to build for that year around the still young Marbury, Crawford, Sweetney, and Ariza then he is hopefully on the right track. I say "hopefully" because I worry about Marbury's ability to run the point for a top notch team. He is immensely talented and is the best player the team has had since Ewing but he shows judgement at times that makes one wonder if he is indeed a six year veteran or an anxious rookie. The numbers on his defense are also pretty awful. Still, perhaps Isiah and a new coach (Phil Jackson?) can reach him because it certainly appears as if he will be a Knick for a long time.

A few other thoughts as the NBA approaches midseason:

The runs by Phoenix and Seattle are nice but if anyone thinks the Spurs aren't the overwhelming favorites to be NBA champions, they should consider devoting themselves to football.

After years of dormancy the east may be preparing to rise again. The two best young players in the league are LeBron James and Dwayne Wade. Both will be contenders for League MVP in only their second season.

Teams I've been most surprised by (in order): Seattle, Phoenix and Washington. Most disappointed: Minnesota, Denver, Houston, and Detroit.

When I worked for the federal government, it was always seen as a good idea to release unpopular news on a Friday or over the holidays. Clearly little has changed. Over the holidays and to much less fanfare than accompanied their initial proposal, the Bush Administration Office of Management and Budget released their final regulatory peer review guidelines.

I've discussed regulatory peer review before here. Basically it is one of those ideas that sounds good but could have long term negative consequences. It would require agencies promulgating regulations with a scientific basis to have the science supporting the regulations peer reviewed prior to issuing the regulations.

The Administration asserts that peer review is needed to ensure that regulations are based upon "sound science." However they have now gone through three iterations of these guidelines and at no time have they cited any regulation not based upon sound science. OMB regularly criticizes agencies for issuing regulations where there is no evidence of a problem. It will be hard for agencies to take that criticism seriously after this.

OMB also tells agencies that the benefits of their actions should justify their costs. Despite two attempts by yours truly to get OMB to do the same (the guidelines along with comments on them, including mine are here), they have refused to do so. As is the case when most agencies are reluctant to conduct an analysis of their actions, one has to conclude that the numbers don't look good.

And there is good reason to think that they don't. Benefits will come from these guidelines only if regulations are improved by peer review or if bad regulations are stopped by peer review. Costs will occur for every regulation that is subject to the guidelines. Delaying such regulations, which OMB has acknowledged generally have high net benefits, has costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Furthermore, it is possible that peer review will make regulations worse or stop regulations with net benefits (since OMB has been unable to provide an example of how peer review will improve regulations). This will only add to the costs.

Sound science supporting government decisions is a noble goal. However ensuring that this goal is reached is more complicated than simply saying you are doing so. By not explaining why this change is necessary or analyzing its implications, observers are forced to believe that the motive for regulatory peer review is not sound science but rather making it harder for agencies to protect the environment, workers and consumers, and impose costs upon the Bush Administration's industrial consituents

I've hesitated to write about Social Security before because the issue is sufficiently complicated that anything I say will certainly suffer from errors of omission and possibly from errors of commission. However the issue is likely to dominate domestic politics over the next year so I figured at least put down my somewhat rudimentary position.

The Bush Administration is strategically exaggerating the threat to Social Security. If nothing is done, the system will not go bankrupt leaving current 25 year olds with nothing when they retire as Bush contends. This is of course impossible, since there will always be people paying into the system. Because of demographics (and there are good reasons to doubt the demographic assumptions), starting in approximately 2042, benefits will have to be scaled back for retirees if nothing is done to bolster the system.

Why is the Bush Administration exaggerating the threat? In this case, the most sinister possible reason is the most likely one. Social security is both a fundamental underpinning of the New Deal society and is a viewed as a "Democratic program." Attacking is essential to undermining the view that government has a role in providing for a safety net for its citizens. It also removes a potent weapon for Democrats who can regularly get votes by saying they will protect the system better than Republicans.

Privatizing Social Security is a recipe for bankrupting the government, particularly the way it has been envisionned by Bush. Borrowing to fund the transition to private accounts will drive the government further into deficit, making the case for cutting all other social programs. Those who will fare best under private accounts are those who have the most information about investing, in other words, those with money already. Many of the poorest working people will make bad investment choices (some will do very well of course) and be left with much less than they would under the current system. The government will then have to decide what to do with those people when they retire, particularly if the government has no money to help them.

The social security system does not need saving. It can be made more robust with a few politically unpalatable choices such as raising the age of eligibility or increasing payroll taxes. It is despicable to be talking about saving social security when its sister program, Medicare, is in so much more trouble. But dealing with Medicare would mean dealing with the rising cost of health care, and that is very hard.

I'll write more on the politics of this debate as the year progresses, but suffice to say the Democrats should fight this with every arrow in their quiver. For more on the substance of this debate, few have been better than Kevin Drum who summarizes his position here.

Late last week, as expected by many, Howard Dean announced that he was running for chair of the Democratic National Committee. As long time readers know, I supported Dean through his implosion in the primaries. Three things appealed to me about Dean. First was his record as a conservative Democrat as Governor of Vermont. Second was his opposition to the war in Iraq. Finally was his revolutionary use of the Internet to mobilize voters and begin to change the way that campaigns were financed.

In retrospect Dean would have been a lousy presidential candidate. By the time the primaries were over he was already portrayed as a liberal (despite his extensive record) and had shown that he wasn't quite prepared for a national campaign. If the Bush campaign had gotten a hold of him, they would have eviscerated him, emphasizing the fact that he was from a state even more liberal than Massachusetts, his position on gay marriage, and most importantly would have convinced the public that he was weak on terror. He would have lost by a greater margin than Kerry did (although I still maintain that Edwards or Clark might have won).

Many people have used the logic in the paragraph above to argue against Dean's campaign to run the DNC. But this is a very different job, one much more outside the public eye. And I think Dean would be perfect for the job. He changed the face of the Democratic Party and his methods were used by Kerry to remain financially competitive with the best funded Republican campaign ever. Taking this innovative thinking coupled with his policy philosophy and the fact that he will bring an "outside the beltway" perspective to a Party that desperately needs it makes Dean an ideal party chair.

Will the Republicans try to make a big deal out of the author of "The Scream" becoming the leader of the opposition party? Of course, but no one will care. The next four years are for building the party from one that can reliably count on 48% of the electorate into one that represents the majority of Americans. This is work that will occur outside the media's eye and the person in charge of it should be the one who is most capable, not the one who is most telegenic. Dean is the most capable candidate.

Other Dean endorsements from Publius and Kevin Drum.

I recently finished Andrew Zimbalist's book, May The Best Team Win, which looks at baseball from an economic and public policy perspective. Given my background and interests, I have to say it is the book I wish I had written. Putting my jealousy aside, I have to admit it is a very good book.

Zimbalist wrote the book shortly after the 2002 collective bargaining agreement was signed averting a potentially catastrophic strike for the game. He looks at issues of competitive balance, antitrust, management-labor relations, and stadium construction. His most important conclusion is that Congress should take away baseball's antitrust exemption but that Major League Baseball will do nearly anything to prevent this.

In making that point, Zimbalist exposes lie after lie that the baseball owners have told. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Bud Selig has a serious problem with the truth although Zimbalist is too polite to say this. Zimbalist acknowledges that baseball has a competitive balance issue, although not significantly worse than the other major sports besides football. The owners in general and Selig in particular have used this competitive balance issue to keep the antitrust exemption and extract concessions from the players without really doing anything to fix it.

Once again this offseason, player salaries have exploded with Carlos Beltran signing the first $100 million contract since the new agreement was signed. My guess is that we will start hearing rhetoric from Selig again about how the game is in trouble (never mind that four different teams have won the World Series in four years and the small market Twins and A's have found ways to become perennial contenders). Before you believe any of it, read Zimbalist's book.

No, this is not some wacky father's rights tirade or an angry white male tired of special treatment. Instead the title of the post refers to the pervasive feeling in our culture that only women know how to raise children and even worse, these women should not expect their male partners to know anything.

When my wife and I got married, nearly every vendor we dealt with (less so the ones we actually chose) was very surprised that I was taking an active interest in planning the wedding. Most of them talked primarily to my wife and seemed shocked if I asked any question besides "How much will it cost?" There is little doubt that this attitude in the wedding industry feeds into the expectation that men just need to show up at the wedding. Given such a low effort option by both the industry and their fiances, it is not surprising that many men take this approach.

While the wedding bias may cause marriages to get off to a rocky start the bias in the baby industry has more dire consequences. Magazines with such gender neutral titles as "Parent" and "Parenting" feature articles nearly exclusively geared to women, the most egregious of which are titled something like "How to get your husband more involved." Leaving aside the issue of single moms and nontraditional families, this sends a message to women that men not participating in child rearing is normal and they should accomodate it.

I'm guessing that these magazines and the scores of people who hawk baby products are not part of a male plot to keep women in the home. Rather it wouldn't surprise me if women were equally complicit in writing and selecting the articles, propagating the idea that only women know how to raise children and any contribution by the father should be treated with waves of admiration.

This bias against fathers leads to furthering gender inequality in our society. Men are all too willing to accept the fact that child rearing is a woman's job. Much like allowing women to do wedding planning, it makes our lives easier. It also feeds into the perception with which many of us are comfortable that since women raise children, men should work harder, have more power in the workplace and earn more money. Therefore until women accept the idea that there should be equality in the home (an idea my wife has embraced), they will have trouble convincing men that there should be equality in the workplace.

As with seemingly everything these days, the response to the immense tragedy in Southeast Asia got caught up in political recrimations. The Bush Administration responded slowly and critics quickly jumped on the White House. The Administration's excuse was that it was trying to gauge the appropriate response to the tsunamis. While this seems like an indicator of officials with a moral compass that needs a bit of adjustment (most other nations seemed to grasp the magnitude quickly), the controversy obscures some deeper issues.

As the crisis was unfolding, a UN official (too lazy to look up his name now) criticized the US for stinginess in aid which met with an angry response from Colin Powell. As Nicholas Kristof notes today, the criticism has merit. When a disaster comes, we are free with the aid both as a government and as private citizens. The rest of the time we lag sorely behind most other developed countries.

Even more importantly, as Kristof alludes to, our giving is often misdirected. It is misdirected in two senses. Money used to prevent and treat diseases such as AIDS, malaria, and diarrhea, can be applied in a very cost effective manner, saving more lives, than money given to many other causes, including disaster relief. Second, we fail to follow the old saying that an "ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." An 7.5 earthquake in Los Angeles is likely to kill 50,000 people. The same earthquake along a similar fault in Teheran would kill 1 million people. The difference is building standards and crowded living conditions. One of the best ways to save lives with money (and minimize the impact of both disaster and disease) is to give to things that support better living conditions like women's education, clean water, and rudimentary health care.

On a somewhat related note, conservative jurist Richard Posner has written what promises to be a fascinating (if difficult) book on how we are underinvesting in preventing disasters of global proportions. His examples include asteroids hitting the earth, bioterrorism, global warming (yes a conservative who thinks we need to do more about global warming), and particle accelerators. It can be found on Amazon here.

The results of the annual election to baseball's Hall of Fame will be announced tomorrow. I posted on this last year and little has changed. I continue to believe that Bert Blyleven and Ryne Sandberg deserve induction for the reasons given last year. There is one new addition to the ballot that deserves a vote and I would like to revisit my thoughts on relief pitchers on the ballot (although not change my conclusion).

The one new candidate who deserves election is Wade Boggs and it is not really close. There is an emerging consensus among those who follow baseball closely that batting average is an overrated statistic. However when you have a batting average record like Boggs, even statheads like myself take notice. Five batting titles, four years in a row of hitting above .350 and 3000 hits in his career are all very impressive. For us statheads though, Boggs gives us something more. In addition to getting so many hits he walked very often and scored very often. His on base percentage (.415) puts him among the all time greats. A no-brainer selection.

Baseball is still figuring out how to evaluate relief pitchers. Alan Schwarz has an excellent piece in the Sunday Times pinpointing the problem. Three talented relief pitchers, Goose Gossage, Lee Smith, and Bruce Sutter reappear on the ballot this year. The numbers pretty clearly indicate that Gossage was the best of the group for the longest period of time. So if you think any of the group should go in, then Gossage should be your choice. I'm not ready to endorse Sutter (partly because of articles like this by Rob Neyer (subscription required)). I agonize most over Smith, whose 478 saves is the record but is widely regarded as an inferior reliever to Sutter and Dan Quisenberry (who got booted off the ballot in 1996). I have a feeling that the saves record will grow in stature as no one approaches it so I keep Smith on my ballot with reservations.

The inductees should therefore be Boggs, Sandberg, Blyleven, Gossage, and Smith. What is likely to happen is Boggs and possibly Sandberg getting in and the others remaining on the outside looking in.

In the past, the holidays have been a chance for rest, relaxation, and catching up with friends. Everything changed this year. The day before I proctored my last exam, my son was born. The little fellow came nearly three weeks early changing our world into one of feedings, diaper changes, and deciding whether the fact that he had snot in his nose was worthy of a call to the pediatrician.

Many more eloquent than I have opined on the wonders of parenthood. I was in the delivery room with my wife and words cannot capture for me the experience. The entire day (which began with my wife waking in labor at 4am) is so vividly etched upon my memory that it will never leave. To be in the room when a life begins is indescribable and when you add the fact that the life beginning is that of your child, well there is a reason that it is often described as the greatest moment of one's life.

Taking care of him over the past two weeks has also proven to be wonderful. Many warned us to enjoy the pregnancy because of the misery of the first few months of caring for a newborn. It has only been two weeks but these warnings have proven false. He sleeps well (five hours at a clip at night) and learning his habits and watching him slowly awaken to the world is fascinating. I am sure many challenging moments and sleepless nights lie ahead but right now the experience is a lot of fun.

Of course the new arrival has changed my schedule considerably. As someone who already felt pressed for time between work, obsessing over sports, and devoting time to friends and family, I now have a child who promises not to compromise in his demands for my time. One partial casualty of this may (and I emphasize "may") be a reduced blogging presence. I have every intention of continuing this blog but the frequency of entries may decrease, particularly once the spring semester starts. For the near future, I have a lot I want to write about so there should quite a bit of posting over the next few weeks.