Publish or Perish

When I was young (in the 1960's and early 1970's) the higher education establishment came under attack as a privileged good old boy network, if you knew the right people you got tenure on a college faculty and were set with a cushy job for life.  In part, it seemed to me, the attacks, while they had some merit, were largely driven by the political right who wanted to undermine the influence of the generally liberal leaning higher education faculties.

The solution that developed was to require professors to publish prolifically in their field of expertise to retain their position on the faculty.

Looking back on what has happened since it appears to this outside observer the solution was worse than the problem.   

It became apparent pretty early on that teaching suffered.  Now it is rare for a professor to actually teach a class, graduate students with little teaching experience do that so the professor can pursue their research.

But the bigger problem that has become more apparent as the years go by is that all fields of human study are being buried under mountains of research findings that are unreliable at best.

Major research studies have announced big breakthroughs with great fanfare, earning their authors tenure and riches, only to be unreproducible by any other lab.  A prominent recent example is that the (probably) billions of dollars that has been poured into thousands of MRI studies to try to understand the brain was probably largely wasted because of huge flaws and assumptions built into the software that found statistical effects where none existed.

The fundamental problem is publish or perish does not align motivation with the public interest.  If an individual has to publish to survive in their chosen field the need to publish eclipses the detached view that is necessary for effective research.   Publishing volumes of useless or misleading research findings forwards the individual interest but makes the search for knowledge vastly more complicated and difficult.

Republicans have controlled Congress For 17 of the last 21 Years

What do we have to show for it?  Lets have a look;

Climate change - Republicans as a party have spent most of the last 21 years denying that the climate was changing. Now it is becoming so obvious they are not saying much about it but still dragging their feet about doing anything to try to slow climate change down. 

Tax law - For the last 21 years our tax laws have been universally acknowledged to be extraordinarily verbose, complicated and complex and produce ridiculous results - some very wealthy individuals pay nothing while middle income and low income people pay a lot.  Every election cycle some Republican has been pounding on the issue.  But if anything the tax laws have become unremittingly more complex and convoluted during the last 21 years.

The Deficit - In the last 21 years Republican policies (invading Iraq and turning Banks loose to blow up the economy) have greatly increased the deficit.  Republicans pound the table about our deficit but all they ever actually recommend is tax cuts - like cutting the nation's income is going to pay off the debt?

Immigration - For all of the last 21 years our "failed" immigration laws have been an election issue pounded hard by Republicans.  Yet comprehensive immigration reform never makes much headway in Congress.  

Economic Competitiveness - Setting aside the fact after the first decade of Republican control their anti-regulatory and tax policies set the stage for a worldwide financial collapse we are still trying to pull ourselves out of, in the last few years the Congress controlled by Republicans has scarcely sent a single bill to the President to try to improve our economy.  (see related post-  http://motrvoter.blogspot.com/2016/02/fact-check-democratic-president-v.html )   

Civil Rights - For most of the last 21 years Republicans have pushed policies making gays second class citizens.   But when the issue was finally presented to a Republican dominated Supreme Court even they couldn't find a way to justify discriminating against gays under the constitution.  This is another issue current Republicans are doing their best to ignore hoping folks will forget about their past table pounding.

Education - In 2002 the Republican Congress sent our Republican President the "No Child Left Behind act" over the complaints of many educators who said its focus on testing would lower the quality of teaching and not improve student learning.  It was enacted amid much fanfare.    Fast forward to December of 2015 when President Obama signed a law replacing the "No Child Left Behind" act with the "Every Child Succeeds" act sent to him by the Republican Congress (with strong Bipartisan support in Congress).  The consensus was the 2002 bill made teachers spend far to much time on testing, rather than teaching critical thinking.  Pretty much exactly what the critics said in 2002.

Republicans have also heavily promoted Charter Schools for the last twenty years and Republican money has funded an influential non-profit to push for Charter Schools - the Center For Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) based out of Stanford University.  In 2009 CREDO heavily promoted a film (waiting for Superman) based on their first round of research in which CREDO claimed 1 in 5 Charter Schools outperformed public schools (actually their numbers showed 17%), but neglecting to mention that their own study found that twice as many (37%) did worse than public schools.

Then in 2013 a new CREDO study found that Charter School Students were one one-hundredth of 1 percent (.01%) better readers than non-charter schools.  CREDO issued press releases trumpeting that Charter School Students do better at reading than public school students, neglecting to mention the difference is statistically insignificant.

The National Education Policy Center recently reviewed all the research, both CREDO and other independent researchers, on the topic and concluded the data shows no significant difference in test performance between students in public schools and students in charter schools.  A couple of decades of uproar orchestrated by Republican think tanks to make no forward progress.  Perhaps we should have been talking to teachers instead of castigating them?

Foreign Policy -  In 2003 our Republican President and Republican Congress led us into an invasion of Iraq that has resulted in a middle east spiraling into region wide chaos.  More recently, not having a like minded President, they have actively sought to undermine virtually every foreign policy initiative of the Obama administration.

Lots of Republican are talking this election season about what bad shape our country is in.   Seems to me If Republicans want to see the cause for the current state of the Union they only need to look in the mirror. 

A Definition of Being "Trumped"

"Trumped" has always had a special meaning in certain card games.  But now Donald Trump has turned it into a very useful shorthand for certain types of business transactions seen frequently in the news, or by lawyers in a business practice.  No longer do you have to explain the details of the transaction, you just say someone was "Trumped".

The scenario involves a promoter who wants to achieve some outcome for his benefit.  He goes to investors and promises big benefits if they lend him money.  Then perhaps he hires contractors or employees to get it up and running.  Once the promoter has achieved their goal they see no reason to actually pay what they owe to investors, or the contractors or employees.  The investors, contractors and employees have been "Trumped".

Now a caution to those who might have ambitions to "Trump" people to achieve their goals.  It only works if you are a billionaire dealing with regular folks.  If you are a regular folk you will get sued and a judge will make you pay lots of money to the folks you "Trumped".

But if you are a billionaire with an army of lawyers at your disposal you can bury regular folks in legal entanglements so no judge ever gets a chance to address the fact you behaved like a scoundrel.  Or an even cheaper solution is for the billionaire to just create a corporation, become the CEO, award themselves with a huge salary then throw the corporation into bankruptcy and walk away with all the money.

For the rest of us who don't want to get "Trumped" the trick is either not have anything to do with anyone who has a history of "Trumping" people, or beware promoters who offer grandiose but vague promises.  

A clever promoter will always have an excuse why this time is different, or why he/she can't be specific.

Trade Agreements - Good or Bad?

Wall Street and big business say Trade Agreements accelerate growth and make the country wealthier, Trump and Bernie say they steal jobs.

Seems pretty clear there is some truth to both arguments.  But the middle ground isn't that difficult to find.  Other countries deal with trade agreements by having benefits for workers who lose their jobs and in particular retraining them for new ways of supporting themselves.  

Our problem is a Congress that has been dominated for two decades by Republican's allergic to taxing the folks who benefit from trade agreements and unwilling to spend money to help the folks hurt by trade agreements.

Trade agreements aren't the problem, we have just been too tax phobic and ideologically rigid to do what we need to do to make trade agreements a plus for everyone in the country.

Making America Great Again

The Republican Convention in Ohio is hammering on the theme Donald Trump can "make America great again".

When you stop to think about it the whole notion is really surreal. Republicans have been the dominant political force in this country  for the last 36 years.

Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for the last four years (and managed to be most notable for not doing much) and for 17 of the last 21 years.  

The Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress for just 2 years out of the last 36 (2008 to 2010).

Republicans have controlled the Presidency for 20 of the last 36 years, and had eight years in the last 16 with a Republican Congress and Republican President (during which we invaded Iraq and blew up the world economy). 

Yet the Trump campaign is built on the notion Democrats are keeping America from greatness.

How am I to make sense of this?  Doesn't seem to be any way to look at it that reflects well on Republicans.

Are Democrats smarter than Republicans, so can still control the agenda even when Republicans have the majority control?  

Or perhaps that Republicans are better at the ideological platitudes that win elections than actually governing?  

Why Has Congress Spent So Much $ Investigating the Clinton's?

Having watched the wars between Republicans and the Clintons since the Clintons first appeared on the national scene in Bill's Presidential run 25 years ago, the current uproar about Hillary's emails leaves me inclined to see it all more as unsavory partisanship driven by Republicans than a threat to our security.

Did in hindsight Hillary make some mistakes, maybe even exercise some poor judgment?  Maybe.  Did it harm our national interests?  There doesn't seem to be any evidence to suggest that was the case.  Have Republicans used their control of both houses of Congress to try to destroy Hillary's viability as a Democratic Presidential Candidate?  Absolutely, and that conclusion in part flows from the history of Republicans efforts to politically cripple Bill and Hillary Clinton.  I cut Hillary a lot of slack in her efforts to avoid giving Republicans political cannon fodder (which I take it is at least part of why Hillary set up the separate email servers) because in my judgment she and Bill have been subjected to an extraordinary level of political abuse by Republicans using taxpayer money during periods they have controlled Congress during the last couple decades. 

It started with Whitewater - This failed Real Estate deal from 1978 was seized on by Republican opponents of Governor Bill Clinton in Arkansas alleging some sort of corruption which sparked investigations in Arkansas.  When Clinton became a viable Democratic Presidential candidate in 1991 the national party picked up the issue.  The Republicans kept Whitewater in the headlines from that time until nearly the end of his Presidency.  No investigation in Arkansas or by the Feds ever uncovered any illegal activity by the Clinton's in the Real Estate deal, but when Republicans took over both houses of Congress in 1995 they appointed a special prosecutor.  In the end Congress spent about $80 million investigating Whitewater and spin offs from that politically motivated investigation. No investigation ever ended in anything other than a pompous report trying to justify all the money wasted.

The $80 Million figure comes from a 1999 CNN article 
http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/04/01/counsel.probe.costs/  

I saw it at that time as mostly partisan politics, unsavory but tolerable on the campaign trail, but smacking of an abuse when the Republicans started using the money and power of Government to beat down political opponents.

Once it appeared Hillary was likely to run for President Benghazi and the email issues that spun off from it have become the cudgel.  After years of investigation and $6.8 million spent by the Republican controlled House committee they found no evidence of negligence by Clinton on the night of the attack.   However, that investigation revealed Hillary had her own servers for separate email accounts.  

AHA, something else to investigate!  

The State Department then investigated and reported that their investigation revealed that what she did (and what Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell did before her) was a violation of department policy but the department had been lax in enforcing the policy.  The FBI (headed by a Republican appointee) investigated and found no evidence that would support criminal charges.

Now Republicans, unhappy there isn't any evidence that could support bringing charges against Hillary, are seeking to start another investigation.   This is the same Republican Congress that has been most noteworthy for doing less actual legislating than any other Congress in my lifetime.
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We don't need another investigation, we need a Congress that wants to solve problems rather spend their time and our money beating down political rivals.

Globalization - Boom to Bust to War?

Globalization is an abstract notion, a construct of words and logic.  Like many abstract ideas it is sometimes difficult to judge the value of the notion in the swirling complexity of reality.  

Globalization at its core is rooted in the idea of free trade.  In theory if everyone could simply trade freely across borders we would all be better off.   The different circumstances of people around the world would allow everyone to make a living doing what their circumstances allow them to do most efficiently.

Reality keeps getting in the way.  Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the world economy has gone through repeated burst of globalization, which lead to aggravated income inequality, which leads to Nationalism as dissatisfied populations turn to leaders willing to pretend other groups are the problem, which leads to war or to idealistic communist notions that in the past have become the most abusive governments in the Modern era.

As an abstract idea it has just enough truth in it to make it very appealing to folks (like me) who live in a world where logic is relied upon because it is so time consuming and difficult to analyze the complex experiences we find in history.

Now I have lived through a big part of a globalization cycle.  I was born with the world starting over after the destruction of WW II (the cataclysmic end of the last big globalization cycle).  For the first five decades of my life the world was driven by ever expanding globalization ambitions.  Now, to the bewilderment of believers in globalization, we find ourselves in world at war with itself over religious difference internationally, and the most economically powerful western democracies are sinking into populist nationalism.

The theory of globalization is probably correct but incomplete, which has caused us to neglect much in the implementation.  The lesson of history is that globalization will eventually self destruct without focusing on two fundamental related motivational problems that trigger a "race to the bottom" - that will undermine support for globalization in the long term:

1.  The inability to recognize and control excessive disparities in income.
Jurisdictions buying into the notion "the winner takes all the spoils" create an underclass that will gradually become less and less attached to the existing status quo and eventually revolt (unless ruthlessly subjegated).

2.  The lack of a worldwide tax scheme.  Without a universal tax scheme powerful business interests use their influence and power to locate in the most tax friendly jurisdictions.  To attract the business jurisdictions keep taxes low, which limits their ability to provide much of their population with a decent standard of living.  This is great for businesses big enough to go where they get the best deal, and for the upper crust of society who benefit from those business.  But it undermines the economic situation of those in society don't own a piece of those businesses.

It also undermines the economic competitiveness of countries that aspire to provide for their population, since often their biggest businesses may move big parts of their operations to other jurisdictions not so concerned about providing for their population.  

Without a greater attention to income disparities and universal scheme of taxation stability and growth in the economies of the developed western democracies will be difficult to maintain.