Tuesday, June 29, 2010
"Midterms May Mean Roster Shake-ups"
Only in the pages of Roll Call would you ever see such a headline. What's it all about? It turns out that tonight is the 49th annual Roll Call Congressional Baseball Game, to be played at Nationals Park. The Democrats beat the Republicans in 2009, snapping an eight-game losing streak.
The story appearing under the above headline analyzes the November 2010 elections and their likely impact on Congressional baseball. According to Roll Call, the Democrats' long-term baseball fortunes may rest on the electoral fates of two Ohioans from highly competitive districts: John Boccieri of Ohio's 16th Congessional district and Steve Driehaus of Ohio's 1st.
Boccieri, who is listed as a catcher/pitcher, bats right, throws right, and, according to Roll Call, votes "switch," unlike most of his teammates, who are lefties. Driehaus, also a switch-voter, is that rare second baseman who bats right and throws left, which would seem to make for an awfully awkward pivot on the double-play.
The Republican team will be led by Joe Barton of Texas, recently famous for his apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward. In terms of voting behavior, the GOP lineup leans strongly to the right.
The bipartisan Washington Buckeye will maintain a scrupulous neutrality, of course, though he finds it hard not to root for the switch-voters on both teams.
June 30, 2010, Update: Democrats win, 13-5.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Universal Health Care Tends to Cut Abortion Rate
The Summer 2010 Glenn Fellows currently are Reading Eugene Bardach's A Practical Guide to Policy Analysis and working up proposals for their own foray into public policy research and analysis. I hope we'll have a chance this Wednesday to talk about the following article, which appeared in The Washington Post on March 14, 2010:
Universal Health Care Tends to Cut Abortion Rate
By T.R. Reid, Sunday
Countless arguments have been advanced for and against the pending bills to increase health-care coverage. Both sides have valid concerns, which makes the battle tight. But one prominent argument is illogical. The contention that opponents of abortion should oppose the current proposals to expand coverage simply doesn't make sense.
Increasing health-care coverage is one of the most powerful tools for reducing the number of abortions -- a fact proved by years of experience in other industrialized nations. All the other advanced, free-market democracies provide health-care coverage for everybody. And all of them have lower rates of abortion than does the United States.
This is not a coincidence. There's a direct connection between greater health coverage and lower abortion rates. To oppose expanded coverage in the name of restricting abortion gets things exactly backward. It's like saying you won't fix the broken furnace in a schoolhouse because you're against pneumonia. Nonsense! Fixing the furnace will reduce the rate of pneumonia. In the same way, expanding health-care coverage will reduce the rate of abortion.
At least, that's the lesson from every other rich democracy.
The latest United Nations comparative statistics, available at http://data.un.org, demonstrate the point clearly. The U.N. data measure the number of abortions for women ages 15 to 44. They show that Canada, for example, has 15.2 abortions per 1,000 women; Denmark, 14.3; Germany, 7.8; Japan, 12.3; Britain, 17.0; and the United States, 20.8. When it comes to abortion rates in the developed world, we're No. 1.
No one could argue that Germans, Japanese, Brits or Canadians have more respect for life or deeper religious convictions than Americans do. So why do they have fewer abortions?
One key reason seems to be that all those countries provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. That has a profound effect on women contemplating what to do about an unwanted pregnancy.
The connection was explained to me by a wise and holy man, Cardinal Basil Hume. He was the senior Roman Catholic prelate of England and Wales when I lived in London; as a reporter and a Catholic, I got to know him.
In Britain, only 8 percent of the population is Catholic (compared with 25 percent in the United States). Abortion there is legal. Abortion is free. And yet British women have fewer abortions than Americans do. I asked Cardinal Hume why that is.
The cardinal said that there were several reasons but that one important explanation was Britain's universal health-care system. "If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it's needed," Hume explained, "she's more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn't it obvious?"
A young woman I knew in Britain added another explanation. "If you're [sexually] active," she said, "the way to avoid abortion is to avoid pregnancy. Most of us do that with an IUD or a diaphragm. It means going to the doctor. But that's easy here, because anybody can go to the doctor free."
For various reasons, then, expanding health-care coverage reduces the rate of abortion. All the other industrialized democracies figured that out years ago. The failure to recognize this plain statistical truth may explain why American churches have played such a small role in our national debate on health care. Searching for ways to limit abortions, our faith leaders have managed to overlook a proven approach that's on offer now: expanding health-care coverage.
When I studied health-care systems overseas in research for a book, I asked health ministers, doctors, economists and others in all the rich countries why their nations decided to provide health care for everybody. The answers were medical (universal care saves lives), economic (universal care is cheaper), political (the voters like it), religious (it's what Christ commanded) and moral (it's the right thing to do). And in every country, people told me that universal health-care coverage is desirable because it reduces the rate of abortion.
It's only in the United States that opponents of abortion are fighting against expanded health-care coverage -- a policy step that has been proved around the world to limit abortions.
T.R. Reid, a longtime correspondent for The Post, is the author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Mr. Justice Scalia and the Moritz College of Law (another reposting, this time with a heretical update)
I argued on August 18, 2009, in a post called “’Out Here’ in D.C.,” that Easterners are inclined to dismiss Midwesterners as provincials and that Glenn Fellows, though they have every reason to be professionally ambitious, forget or ignore this at their peril.
“One of my former clerks whom I am the most proud of now sits on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals" in Cincinnati, the justice said, referring to Jeffrey S. Sutton. But Justice Scalia explained that Mr. Sutton had been hired by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. after his retirement and then helped out in Justice Scalia's chambers. "I wouldn't have hired Jeff Sutton," Justice Scalia said. "For God's sake, he went to Ohio State! And he's one of the very best clerks I ever had."
My reading of this story is that Justice Scalia was conveying brute facts, which are not in dispute, and that his endorsement of Judge Sutton indicates that he understands that the prejudice in favor of elite law schools is ultimately not rational. True, he seems disinclined to buck the system, but I think it’s pretty clear that his “For God’s sake” remark was intended ironically. They learn that sort of thing at the elite schools, such as Harvard, where Scalia earned his law degree. They also learn not to harbor too many illusions about the quality of instruction at the nation's most prestigious institutions.
September 14, 2009, update. Further evidence that Harvard law graduates tend to be lovers of irony comes from an AP story that Lawrence Hurley cites in his Supreme Court blog, Washington Briefs. Elitist joke alert: Asked if too many of the justices came from elite law schools, CJ Roberts says no -- some went to Yale (AP).
May 13, 2010, update: I find it just fascinating that as our society has in some ways become more and more committed to diversity and level playing fields, it has in some other ways become remarkably complacent in the face of increased stratification. Yesterday's Washington Post explores some facets of this phenomenon here.
June 24, 2010, heretical update: I keep re-posting the Scalia story in hopes that it will provoke some conversation about how OSU alumni could help generate a more complex and and nuanced public image of The Ohio State University. Perhaps I have been too subtle. What I have been trying to say is that Northeast Corridor Buckeyes should heed the example of President Gordon Gee by celebrating OSU's many centers of excellence, rather than being fixated on NCAA football, the origin of the bedrock stereotype that is working--on the Supreme Court and elsewhere--to our disadvantage. There, I've said it.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Summer 2010 Glenn Fellows visit Capitol
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Summer 2010 Glenn Fellows Arrive in Washington
From left to right: Helene Holstein, Kelly Finzer, Kelly Schultz, Adrianna Braden, Lindsey Titus, Mallory Treleaven, Andrew Sager, Shawn O'Meara, Meredith Asbury, Drew Herrick, Linsey Shay, Sean Fitzpatrick, Haley Callahan, Oghogho Igodan. MIA: Zachary Taylor
We conducted our lottery yesterday and determined that internship presentations (and private appointments and policy paper presentations) will be scheduled in the following order:
1. Lindsey Titus
2. Linsey Shay
3. Oghogho Igodan
4. Helene Holstein
5. Drew Herrick
6. Sean Fitzpatrick
7. Adrianna Braden
8. Mallory Treleaven
9. Andy Sager
10. Shawn O'Meara
11. Kelly Schultz
12. Kelly Finzer
13. Zach Taylor
14. Meredith Asbury
15. Haley Callahan
Life Imitates Art--Again and Again
This is a re-posting from September 24, 2009. The links are still good.
It never ceases to amaze me how often--and usually, how eloquently--the daily newspaper expresses ideas that have been explicated at a high level of abstraction by certified intellectuals. It happened again today.
Last week, students in the Washington Academic Internship Program read and discussed two classic works of political science. The first, James Madison's Tenth Federalist, argues that one of the chief virtues of our "pluralistic" political system inheres in the many points of access offered to interest groups bent on frustrating popular majorities ("the mischiefs of faction"). The second, Charles Lindblom's essay on "the science of muddling through," explains why it is simply impossible for policy makers to be strictly rational, and why they must therefore settle for a decision-making method involving "successive limited comparisons" that guarantees incrementalist results.
And click here to access William Schambra's article in National Affairs.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Upper House
There is a new book out on the United States Senate. Written by Terence Samuel, The Upper House focuses on the class of new Senators ushered in by the elections of 2006: Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Jim Webb (D-Va.), and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). Click here to read the review written by Emily Heil for Roll Call.
Speaking of Roll Call, today's issue has on its cover a photo of Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) chatting in the Ohio Clock Corridor. What is the Ohio Clock Corridor, you ask? Well, it's one of the prime spots for Senate photo opportunities. The hallway is named for an early nineteenth century mahogany clock (pictured) that has been standing here since 1859. It is said that the clock is named for the 17 stars carved on its front (Ohio was the 17th state to join the Union).
Friday, June 4, 2010
Mentoring and Real Life
My colleague, Laura Allen, created the WAIP mentoring program early in 2009. Since that time she has displayed an uncanny gift for matching Glenn Fellows with Ohio State alumni possessing a rare combination of tour-guide and coaching skills, plus the capacity for friendship. And so our Fellows have been extremely well served by the program, though Tom Fox of the Partnership for Public Service cautions that the best mentoring occurs informally. Here's the money quote:
Okay, the first rule of mentoring is, you do not talk about mentoring. Most people who look for mentors make the mistake of asking someone to be their "mentor." It scares people off. It's like asking someone to marry you on a first date.