If Only They Could Be Combined, We Might Yet Save Some Money

As we all know, Jim Nauls, Commissar of Fun, is at his best when he sends out emails.

Below you'll find some of today's. This first one came with the subject line "mind reader" and the second, with the subject line, Free HIV, Chlamydia, and Gonorrhea Testing. (Free, which is to say school paid for, which is to say you paid for it.)

The emails were sent two hours apart, but still I wonder if he ever thought of combining the two events. Presumably mind readers would be a bit cheaper than administering the tests, though perhaps a little less accurate.

A Few Preliminary Thoughts on Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Yesterday, Aditya Bindal CMC '11, Ben Judge CMC '09, Elizabeth Schmitz-Robinson CMC '11, George Posner CMC '12, Tina Nguyen CMC '11, and I had lunch with AEI's Chris DeMuth and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. We had planned on only dining with DeMuth, former president of AEI and so Ms. Hirsi Ali's arrival was quite the surprise. (I'll have more written up about Dr. DeMuth later this weekend.)

Having read her fantastic autobiography, Infidel, which has her picture firmly and courageously on the cover, I immediately recognized her, leading to this rather silly dialogue. (Ms. Hirsi Ali has a slight accent and speaks extremely softly.)

Me: You're Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Yes.
Me: Wow.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: (hesitation) Thank you...
Me: Charles Johnson (extends hand) I'm just, I'm just a really big fan.

And that ladies and gentlemen, was the first experience in which I was just flat out hero struck.

I should have more to say when I'm collected my notes from last evening, but I just thought I would point out how much of a farce the had orchestrated against Ms. Hirsi Ali's provocative, yet insightful talk. Ms. Hirsi Ali is a forceful proponent of classical liberalism and a critic of the violence committed in the name of Islam. And naturally, she has a fatwa, or death order, against her, which is just what you would expect of a religion of peace.

One of the organizers of that protest against Ms. Hirsi Ali asked for all the Muslim women to raise their hand and then asked the audience if there were people in the audience who agreed with what Ms. Hirsi Ali had to say.

I raised my hand. I had queued up for the question and answer period and was at her eye level, and so the organizer me out and said something to the effect of, "And you, you are not a Muslim woman, do you agree with her?"

I don't like identity politics and I certainly don't appreciate these kind of I said yes and that I stand firmly with Ms. Hirsi Ali. I was offended, naturally, as if my genitals or faith (or the lack thereof) ought to preclude me from having an opinion. (Strange, isn't that how it is in many majority Muslim countries? I must say I found it deliciously ironic that not only were women only sitting in the front rows, but that only women asked questions and their opinions, unlike in many Muslim countries where they are neither asked for, not appreciated, were welcomed, solicited, and respectfully dismantled. Beautiful.)

In any event, the organizer continued to berate Ms. Hirsi Ali and didn't even ask a question until a few moments later, when she demanded, "What gives you the right to say these things about Islam?

To which I yelled, "The First Amendment," leading dozens of people to applaud and some to stand. I made sure to turn to Ms. Ali and applaud her instead.

But it was clear from that moment on that whatever "resistance" the MSA had sought to bring about, they were going to have, at least, a somewhat suspicious audience. All the hotair and indoctrination was exposed for all to see.

Sojourner Truth Speaker, Connie Rice, Left Much to Be Desired

Here's a rundown of what Connie Rice said at the Athenaeum on February 4th.

As per usual with some of the Ath speakers, Ms. Rice got her digs in against Republicans. I sigh, "Yep, it's going to be one of those talks." I contemplate going back to my room.

On her famous second cousin, Dr. Condoleeza Rice, "she's brilliant, but she just hangs out with the wrong crowd for eight year." Connie Rice says that Condoleeza's been working to close the gap between the millionaires and billionaires, while she's been working on closing the gap between the middle class and the working poor. (By the way, that's total garbage. Notwithstanding what you hear on your TV, life's been very good to the middle class during the Bush administration. For evidence, check here, here, and here (if you care about global middle class issues). But hey, if anyone wants to solve inequality, the fastest way would be for all of us to drop out so we can get lower paying jobs with those who didn't graduate high school. And for those of you who are wondering, around 89% of middle class people said they were "satisfied with their job.")

After some pleasantries about how much fun all of her friends and family had on the mall and on the importance of the election of Barack Obama, she said that she never thought that the first black president would be a "liberal." She thought it would have been someone like Colin Powell or Condoleeze Rice. She said that now that we have this "wonderful, progressive regime" she can "breathe again."

She then jumped into some of her work saying that she was meeting with the Department of Defense earlier to apply the same techniques she was employing in the rougher parts of L.A. to Baghdad and Mosul. She joked and figured she would "get in there before they start to apply the Patriot Act to gang members." (Not a bad idea, if I do so say myself. Later in the evening, she called for the Marines to come in there. The cognitive dissonance seemed lost on the audience. Does she really worry about gang bangers having their library records looked into?)

Then Ms. Rice started to talk about why this "moment could be the most transformative since the Civil War." She cited Harry Belafonte who talked to Dr. King about how King worried that black Americans would be "integrating into a burning house." Belafonte asked King what "they" must do. King replied, "we must become firemen." This became a recurring motiff of the evening. Rice says she will be including it in her new forthcoming book, Power Concedes Nothing.

Rice said that there's an America we don't see -- "an invisible America" -- that if something isn't done about them, they will lead to the death of the middle class. She said racial and economic barriers were an impediment She moved on and mentioned that she first encountered this invisible America in L.A.'s ghettos. She said that eleven of the seventeen men she worked with initially are now dead. Six of them are in prison. She says that we have "left these men behind."

She then jumped back to talking about Obama and how his election, while important, won't change things for this invisible America. She compared him with Dr. King and said that when he went through the door on his way to take the oath of office, she was struck by Gory Island at the doorway there. Obama's election was "proud -- we brought ourselves to this point." But there's still some work to be done. "The folks in the burning house's basement will not get out."

At the same time that we have shifted greater and greater risk onto the invidual, we have socialized risk at the corporate level. She was happy about that as it helped get rid of that bad inflation. (That's not what happened, by the way, but moving on.) Of course, Ms. Rice later confessed that she didn't much like economics because when she read about "the invisible hand -- it didn't make any sense to me and so I stopped going to class." Yeah, she made that argument at a school known for its economic students. I know, I know.

She then called for something going beyond equality of opportunity.

We "need to radically reconstruct our economic system to redistribute public resources more equitably." She alluded to a study done during King's time that said for about 1 trillion dollars in King's money, we could help the rich get richer while at the same time end Extreme Poverty in America. (Gosh, that sounds awfully familiar... Oh yeah, thanks Jeffrey Sachs!) King knew that the "the country desegregated, but it would never fully integrate."

She said that she has spoken with all the policy makers in L.A. and elsewhere and said that the assumption is that the very poor people won't make it into the modern world economy. Later Rice said we need to "re-imagine" the public schools and start with early childhood development. That would help tremendously. (I'm naturally a skeptic, but then again, I don't believe money can solve every problem and I have actually read about this issue.) Fortunately, she didn't describe school choice as a "phantom solution" as she has before. She just ignored the issue. Hurray for small victories.

To her credit, she criticized the failing public teachers unions -- which she nonetheless referred to as "our friends -- and the disastrous policy of modern-day prohibition. (I'm with her all the way in full legalization of every single drug, but I suspect she doesn't go nearly that far.) Her discussion of the "thin blue line" was a bit much for me, though. There isn't some magical line that police won't cross, rather, it's a cost benefit analysis. (I'd be curious to hear what she has to say about women like Susan Kelo, who want to arm themselves against the malefactors of violence.)

I had more than a few gribes with her presentation. I was frankly insulted by her comparison of the Jewish ghettos and the violence in the Khmer Rouge and Rwanda to the death rates of gang bangers and innocents in the urban core. If they are comparable, she needs to recheck her numbers and her assumptions. The ghettos in Warsaw led to people being rounded up and gassed. Nothing is comparable. It isn't "ethnic cleansing," as she argues. And her insinuation of the "Prison Industrial Complex," defies the sociological research that shows more people behind bars is actually a better, safer America. And again, contrary to what she argued tonight, the overwhelming majority of those in the California prison system are violence offenders.

I happen to agree with her that the civil rights struggle will never be complete until we get serious about urban policing. But as Heather Mac Donald and others have pointed out, Rice is spend, spend, spend tactics haven't done much good. In fact, she was most critical of bringing Chief Bratton's innovative policing to L.A., contrary to what she argued tonight. Her comparison with the elephants and the gorillas that were paid for by the LA zoo and the amount of money that is spent fighting gangs was a bit disingenuous. She tried to argue that we only spend $8 million dollars a year. The actual figure is $82 million.

Her report, "A Call to Action: A Case for a Comprehensive Solution to L.A.'s Gang Violence Epidemic," wasn't nearly as effective as she made it sound tonight. Indeed it overlooked the number one thing that leads to gang recruitment: the breakdown of the family. The report, by the way, cost over half a million dollars just to be a wishlist for the same kind of failed programs Rice said worked. For the real story, see this piece in The Los Angeles Times. Here's just a snippet.

Compared to this overwhelming reality, Rice’s jargon-ridden recommendations border on irrelevancy. For instance, Proposal 4.21, addressed to no one in particular, holds: “Acquire expert assistance to provide culturally competent, linguistically fluent, developmentally appropriate services that improve program performance, facilitate communication and improve access to services for immigrant and/or isolated and alienated communities.”

“A Call to Action” is also internally contradictory. Rice acknowledges that there is no evidence that the $82 million that the city already spends annually on gang interventions has had any effect. Yet she would repackage these types of programs into a huge new bureaucratic structure, which would include a deputy mayor for neighborhood safety, community action teams, a gang intervention advisory board, an expert action committee, a permanent oversight committee, an expert policy advisory board and an interagency intervention team – at an undoubtedly low-balled estimated cost of $1 billion over 18 months. If the city’s social service interventions have not been working on a local scale, there is no reason to think that going large scale with them, or coordinating them better, will markedly improve their effectiveness. To her credit, Rice says that nonperforming programs should be terminated or changed. Even if such an unprecedented bureaucratic miracle occurred, her assumption that there are performing programs to fill up a new department of neighborhood safety is ungrounded.

Bigger isn't always more effective, Ms. Rice. Still, there was one moment where I was left with the impression that things might not be so bad and that there might be room for improvement. Rice described the ceasefire talks between the Crips and the Bloods in which they asked for a copy of the treaty between the Jews and the Arabs. (Referring, we are told, to the Sinai peace accords.) The reason? If the Jews and the Arabs can get along, maybe we, Crips and Bloods, could, too. Of course astute historians know that what we did with the Israelis and the Egyptians was bribe them not to kill each other, all the while rearming them. Not exactly sound policy, but hey, maybe we ought to consider doing likewise.