5/29/2011

1) I highly recommend anyone coming across this page to take fifteen minutes of their day and read Atul Gawande’s Harvard Medical School commencement address. If only our policy makers could have this level of discourse.

5/24/2011

I’m very pleased with yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Brown v Plata.  In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that California’s prisons are so overcrowded that they are unconstitutional according to  the 8th amendment, which protects citizens from cruel and unusual punishment.

I understand and emphasize with those who oppose this decision.  It is difficult to make sense of releasing nearly 37,000 convicted criminals.  Justice Sacalia, who authored the fourteen page dissent, provides a scathing rebuke and eloquently lays out the opposing talking points.

It is entirely true that this decision will lead to prisons opening their gates and allowing thousands of inmates back on to California’s streets.  It is true that an already battered state economy will have difficulty absorbing thousands of potential workers (that is, if companies elect to hire convicted felons) and that law-abiding, tax paying citizens may flee the state in fear of the newly released convicted felons.  It is also true that the opinion orders the release of  prisoners, but provides NO guidance on how to actually do it.

But these worries, among countless others, fail to consider the bigger picture.  Prison reform has long been an ill-debated and under reported issue in this country.  The US has the leading incarceration rate and the courts impose draconian sentences on non-violent criminals.  Prisons have nefariously become a profit making industry and most greatly affect blacks and latinos.  Additionally, and I make no claim to be prison historian, but I have lived my life believing that the system is meant not only to punish, but rehabilitate inmates.  I fear the latter goal has gone ignored.  Our prison system leaves inmates disenfranchised and unskilled, and today, released inmates are more likely than ever to return to a life of crime.

My hope is that prison reform gets the debate it is worthy of.  Politicians loath such debates because they don’t want to appear weak on crime or have blood on their hands.  So the easy course is to keep our prisons brimming with inmates.  With any luck, this supreme court decision will set in motion a healthy debate about reform and how to better handle non-violent criminals.

5/19/2011

1) Cynicism, in my opinion, is one of the most unattractive and repulsive qualities a person can have.  I find that most cynics are shortsighted and have no capacity for nuance.  In today’s NYT, Nick Kristof addresses some of the shortcomings of aid and acknowledges the need to spend our dollars wisely.  But when one takes the time to dig a little deeper and get past the pettifog that clouds clear thinking, it becomes evident that there are ways to spend aid dollars efficiently.  And results abound.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/opinion/19kristof.html?src=tptw

2) I stumbled upon a gold mine today.  The Atlantic runs a series called “What I Read” where they ask opinionators, literary figures, reporters, and prominent businessmen to comment about their reading habits and daily news diet.  For a nerd like me, especially a nerd that only gets to consume content instead of create it, this is a very fun.  I finally get to size up the people I rely on to help me understand the world around me.  And I finally understand why these people are so much more informed and so much smarter than me: ALL THEY DO IS READ!  It’s funny how at my sort of job it is taboo to spend more than a few minutes per day reading the newspaper or checking out blogs.  For these guys, that’s their job.  (NOTE: Kudos to The New Yorker.  I don’t think one person failed to mention it as required reading.  Damn uppity media elites.  Stop hating your country!)

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/posts/media-diet/?page=1

5/18/2011

1) In the next life I want to be a Navy SEAL Team 6 tracking dog.  Here’s a pretty neat photo essay by Foreign Policy.  (Unfortunately, the titanium teeth myth gets busted.)

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/12/war_dog_ii?page=0,0

5/15/2010

I’m not sure that you’d call it a phrase or a figure of speech, or even a writing tick.  But please, please, we must ban the following from our writings: “I myself would never…”; “She herself denied…”; “We ourselves acknowledge…”

I get it!  You are yourself.  She is herself.  We are ourselves.  I am no David Remnick, but if I were I’d start a campaign to combat this repetitive, redundant (get it?)  language.  To me this is the equivalent of running one’s nails over a chalkboard.  I cringe every time I see it.  And what’s worse, this language is pervasive–I see some of my favorite writers do it in some of my favorite newspapers and magazines.  Now this of course instills in me some doubt, that maybe this sort of language is perfectly acceptable or even proper.  But it can’t be.  Can it?

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Anyway, some good reads:

1) Turns out HUD is a highly wasteful and has poor oversight.  Wait, a government agency that’s wasteful and incompetent?  You don’t say.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-pattern-of-hud-projects-stalled-or-abandoned/2011/03/14/AFWelh3G_story.html?hpid=z1

2) Adrew Ross Sorkin asks us to rethink “Rich.”  $250,000 just ain’t what it used to be. (And may not be the right level to start raising taxes.) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/weekinreview/15tax250copy.html?ref=todayspaper

Note:   1) I work with HUD fairly often and I have seen evidence of tremendous inefficiencies and flutters of incompetence at certain levels.  But HUD provides good services and support for many elderly and indigent people who rely on their funding.  I offer this article in no way to promote HUD bashing, but rather in hopes that this issue gets daylight and the agency cleans up its act.