debitage

4.5.07

It Is About Immigrant Rights

Commenting on the May Day protests, RonF writes:

But these marches aren’t asserting immigrant rights; legal immigrants, such as the ones I work with (2 of whom just got their citizenship after years of following American law) have no problems that I know of. These marches are specifically asserting and demanding certain rights for illegal immigrants, and to call them marches for “immigrant rights” without making that distinction seems deliberately deceptive to me, making it sound as if people are trying to withhold rights from legal immigrants.

I find it "deliberately deceptive" the way RonF, like many conservatives, insists on foregrounding the "illegal immigrant" versus "legal immigrant" distinction. The protests were simply about "immigrant rights." First and foremost, one of the critical rights the protesters were demanding is the right to be an immigrant. Ceteris paribus, nobody would want to be an illegal immigrant if they could be a legal immigrant -- but the fact is that the US immigration system is so arcane and restrictive that legal immigration is simply not a feasible option for the vast majority of people who want to come here.

Secondly, it's hugely ignorant to claim that legal immigrants "have no problems." I can't say for sure if these issues were on the minds of all the protesters in LA, since they tend to get forgotten in the focus on people who entered illegally, but the immigration advocacy community is certainly concerned about it. If you're not a citizen, you have to walk a very fine line lest you find yourself thrown out of the country. There are dozens of crimes -- some as small as posession of drug paraphernalia -- that can make you deportable, not to mention non-criminal violations of visa conditions like being enrolled in one two few credit hours of classes or taking a job when you're on a non-working visa. And getting deported isn't just a matter of being put on a bus to Nogales. Anyone that ICE wants to get rid of will get sent to prison* for a month before they even issue the charges, and then process your case so slowly that you start to wonder whether they're deliberately stalling in the hopes that you give up and accept deportation just to get out of jail.

*Technically it's non-punitive detention, but that hair-splitting is a farce when ICE detainees are sharing cells with people serving sentences for felonies.

Stentor Danielson, 18:19, |

Why Does John McCain Hate Our Troops?

Incidentally, once I found his website, I sent my esteemed Senator the following message:

Senator McCain,

I read with interest your recent comments that "open homosexuality within the military services presents an intolerable risk to morale, cohesion and discipline." I am baffled that you can make an assertion so insulting to our troops of all sexual orientations.

The militaries of many other countries -- including our close allies Great Britain and Israel -- have successfully allowed gays and lesbians to serve openly. Are American troops so much weaker than their British and Israeli counterparts that they can't handle serving alongside a gay man or lesbian?

The kind of disrespect you have shown toward homosexuals, and toward our men and women in uniform, make me ashamed to be your constituent.

Stentor Danielson
Casa Grande

I tried to strike a balance between reframing the issue in a way that might be persuasive to him, and letting him know I think he's a disgusting slug. Also, I let McCain's reference to homosexuality distract me from the fact that DADT bars bisexuals too.

Stentor Danielson, 17:52, |

Sneaky

I googled for "McCain 2008" so that I could find his website, and I noticed something interesting -- the top sponsored Google ad was for Rudy Giuliani. So I checked a few of the other candidates. It looks like Giuliani's ad people are worried about Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, but not Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback, or Tommy Thompson. I didn't notice any other candidates buying ad space in their opponents' searches.

Stentor Danielson, 17:37, |

Risk Thermometers

I've seen a number of references recently (can't remember exactly where) to John Adams' "risk thermometer" theory. In essence, the risk thermometer theory states that for any activity, a person has a certain level of acceptable risk. If something is done to make the activity safer, the person will adust their behavior to take more risks, bringing the overall risk level back up to the maximum acceptable level. He famously demonstrated this in a study of seatbelts, which failed to save lives because belted drivers simply drove faster and more recklessly since they knew the seatbelts would help keep them safe. The risk thermometer should be distinguished from the phenomenon of risk tradeoffs, in which addressing one risk produces another (e.g. chlorinating water to kill bacteria creates a risk of chloroform poisoning).

The risk thermometer idea is frequently cited in order to show the futility of safety policies. However, there are several qualifications that must be borne in mind (most of them touched on by Adams himself):

1. Adams summarizes the theory as "the potential safety benefit gets consumed as a performance benefit" (emphasis added). In other words, safety measures don't do nothing. They allow us to reap the benefits of taking more risks. So seatbelts, for example, may not save lives, but they let us get where we're going faster and with less anxiety. Of course, it's less politically efficacious to advocate a policy that increases benefits as compared to one that's claimed to save lives, except in cases where the benefit is allowing people to do things we think of as normal -- e.g. fixing the ozone hole so that Australians can sunbathe without fear.

2. The risk thermometer's operation depends on the risk victim being able to recognize the safety levels before and after the risk-reduction policy is implemented. Seatbelts are a good illustration of the risk thermometer because people have a fairly good idea of the risks entailed by driving various speeds with or without a seatbelt. But other risks, like toxic contamination, are much harder for laypeople to judge precisely, and so they're susceptible to behavioral overreaction or underreaction to changes in the riskiness level.

3. The risk thermometer's operation also depends on the risk victim being able to adjust the risk-creating behavior. This possibility for adjustment can be absent in two ways. The first is when there's no performance benefit to be had by riskier behavior. If the EPA cleans some of the lead out of the soil in the vacant lot next door, that's a pure reduction in my risk of lead poisoning. It would make no sense for me to go breathe in a bunch of extra lower-lead dust (thus offsetting EPA's efforts), because I wouldn't gain anything from it. My level of dust-inhalation is dominated by the unpleasantness of inhaling dust, with worries about lead being a very minor aspect of my decision-making. The second type of situation is when the victim is not the risk-taker. Adams discusses the example of pedestrians, who are put at greater risk when seatbelted drivers go whizzing by (though the example is imperfect because pedestrians can adjust their own risk thermometers by avoiding walking by roads).

4. The risk thermometer only applies within a single activity. Much to the dismay of economistic thinkers, people tend to compartmentalize risks, so that they don't make conscious tradeoffs between risks in different arenas. Thus, decreasing the risk of skin cancer won't lead people to make an offsetting increase in reckless driving. This compartmentalization makes thermometer-breaking of the type discussed in point #3 more common.

An interesting implication of all of these points is to call into question the common objection that reductions in environmental risks (such as contamination cleanups) is an inefficient way to promote safety. The typical claim is that for the money that's put into something like a Superfund cleanup, we could save more lives through traffic safety programs. Yet traffic safety is the paradigm case of a risk thermometer effect, whereas toxic cleanups have features that limit the thermometer -- the extent of the risk is unclear to the victims, and there is either little performance benefit to be had by changing behavior or else the benefit is something like "being able to let your kids play outside" that we consider to be of much more fundamental importance than "being able to drive faster."

Stentor Danielson, 09:59, |

3.5.07

Colgate Stuff

As an alumnus of Colgate University, I was amused to learn important Colgate-related news through the Volokh Conspiracy -- particularly when the news involves a plan to empower the alumni. Specifically, the "Accountability to Colgate Alumni Initiative" wants to make a majority of the Board of Trustees elected by the alumni.

The initiative is being pushed by SA4C, a group that has gotten lots of attention as opponents of the University's efforts in recent years to shut down the Greek system (though their agenda also includes concerns about how liberal the faculty is).

In the abstract, having a majority of the Board elected by alumni is a fine idea. In practice, it means having a majority of the Board elected by SA4C, since that's the only group of alumni organized enough to field candidates and know enough about where the candidates stand to cast a meaningful vote. On the other hand, the Initiative's system at least opens up the opportunity for another group to similarly organize. And the current system gave us Buddy Karelis*, so it's hardly a paragon of effective management.

*Former university president who was forced to resign after a couple years of ineptitude and being universally reviled by everyone affiliated with the university.

Stentor Danielson, 09:48, |

2.5.07

Climate Change Word Choice

There's a certain faction that insists that environmentalists ought to use the term "global warming" because Republican strategist Frank Luntz famously advised Republicans to say "climate change." In that light, I found it very interesting to catch this comment by "pimp hand strikes!" to a Matthew Yglesias post:

tut tut, yglesias. It is no longer 'global warming'. It is now 'climate change' since that allows us to cite any short term weather effects, whatever their nature, as proof of the coming apocolypse.

(I happen to prefer "climate change" not because of what the no-action side says, but because I think it's more accurate. But I also think quibbling over this one bit of terminology is a distraction from the larger question of proper and effective framing of the issue.)

Stentor Danielson, 22:46, |

1.5.07

Good News For Once

Apparently a bunch of states have recently re-enfranchised people who have served their felony sentence. And as if to strike at the heart of my cynicism, one of the first in this wave was Texas, where nine years ago a re-enfranchisement bill was signed by Governor George W. Bush.

Stentor Danielson, 00:02, |

30.4.07

Ugh

Can we kick out all the current Democrat presidential candidates and get a new set? All of them appear to be first-class wankers. (And I include Al Gore, even though I'm certain he won't actually run, because his current appeal is due to his status as an activist -- as soon as he's a candidate again, it will be all triangulation.)

Stentor Danielson, 20:22, |