Sunday Funday: The Daily Show on AZ’s Anti-Gay Bill

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Sunday Funday: The Daily Show on AZ’s Anti-Gay Bill

Earlier this week SLACE discussed a bill, SB 1062, passed by the Arizona Legislation that, by the end of the week, was widely viewed as being anti-gay.  As of last Monday, when the SLACE post was published, the bill was awaiting enactment through the signature of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.  In the interim, a strange turn of events came to fruition.  The bill was lambasted as being discriminatory, and even some of the legislatures who voted for it repudiated their votes and urged the governor to veto the bill. Gov. Brewer did eventually veto the bill.  However, before tearing the bill out of the legislative history and tossing it to the trash bin of bad ideas, here is a clip from The Daily Show lampooning the failed bill and pointing out the hypocrisy that sounded it.  

“The Morality of Nationalism”

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

“The Morality of Nationalism”

That was the issue being debated on the BBC’s Moral Maze podcast.  An appropriate topic given the current state of affairs in the Ukraine, where nationalism plays a central role.  

Here is a description of the podcast from the BBC website: 

This week the Moral Maze looks at the morality of nationalism. In Ukraine and the UK people are fighting and in the former case dying over the idea and the ideals of nationhood. Those are just the biggest headlines today; without pausing to think too hard you might add Syria, the Basque and Catalan regions of Spain and Tibet to the list and that’s just from the news in the last seven days – let alone going further back in history to the breakup of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Chechnya and Ireland. Nationalism and the struggle for national identity is a complex moral puzzle. What makes nationalism such a powerful and morally problematic force in our lives is the interplay of old feelings of communal loyalty and relatively new beliefs about popular sovereignty. On the one hand it undoubtedly expresses something deep in human nature – a yearning for self-determination and justice. But it can also come with darker tribal undertones of “us” and “them” and has been seen all too often through ethnic cleansing and genocide. To what extent should people be permitted to act on the basis of loyalty to those to whom they are specially related by culture, race or language? Are there benign forms of nationalism? Should enlightened people repudiate nationalism? What value should we attach to cultural diversity? Given the current examples of how nationalism can sometimes seem to be a force for good, and sometimes a force for very great evil what are the moral underpinnings of nationalism?

Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk with Melanie Phillips, Anne McElvoy, Matthew Taylor and Giles Fraser.

Witnesses are John Breuilly, Edward Lucas, Philippe Legrain and Gideon Calder

Apparently North Korea is an Evil Place

/ David Kailer / Leave a comment

Kerry Slams North Korea

Secretary of State John Kerry has issued statements denouncing the North Korean government. Kerry called North Korea “an evil, evil place”, discussing “human rights violations”, including executions involving “122-millimeter aircraft guns to obliterate people and force people to watch these kind of executions.”

Kerry reiterated that North Korea was evil, and said the world would need to focus to keep the country accountable. Kerry thinks “every aspect of any law that can be applied should be applied.”

These statements come against the background of North Korean defectors giving “harrowing testimony” to a United Nations inquiry. The U.N.’s report said “North Korea’s leaders should be brought before an international court for a litany of crimes against humanity.” The article did not elaborate on what actions might be pursued. The report found that “systemic, widespread and gross human rights violations have been and are being committed by North Korea, its institutions and officials.”

As the details in the United Nations report become more widely disseminated, what role should the United States, or the United Nations, play in protecting the citizens of North Korea from their government?

I am troubled by the characterization of North Korea as an evil place. This is a vast oversimplification of the situation in North Korea. If the international community wants to take some responsibility for the fates of North Korean citizens, it is important to distinguish between the government and the people it oppresses. Labeling an entire nation as “evil” is not an effective way to encourage international understanding and community.

Japan’s Continued Nuclear Program

/ Danielle Kloster / Leave a comment

The Guardian reported Tuesday that Japan has released it’s draft energy policy, the first following the 2011 nuclear crisis at Fukushima. Somewhat surprisingly, the nation has not significantly changed its attitude toward nuclear power, despite the environmental and health consequences of its recent accident. The energy policy draft continues to focus on the importance of nuclear, in conjunction with renewable energy, in supplying Japan with its electricity. All 48 of its nuclear plants are currently non-operational pending their meeting new safety requirements. It is expected that Japan will be slightly less dependent on nuclear energy, with more focus on renewable sources, but all plants passing the new safety requirements are expected to come back on line.
In some ways, the continuation of Japan’s use of nuclear energy is surprising and in other ways it is not. This trend doesn’t follow that of the United States, which tends to back off of nuclear energy following each accident or near accident. In the United States, the Fukushima accident has prompted many environmental groups and politicians to call for the end of nuclear power here at home. A similar trend has been observed with previous accidents (such as Chernobyl) or even partial-accidents with few consequences (like Three Mile Island). So it can be hard for us to understand why, despite the clear health and environmental consequences of the Fukushima accident, the Japanese would choose to continue using nuclear power.
On the other hand, Japan does not have many options. According to the EIA, Japan follows only the US and China as a net oil importer and is the world’s largest liquefied natural gas importer due to limited domestic energy resources. Prior to the Fukushima accident, nuclear energy supplied about 26% of power generation and had to be replaced by significantly more expensive fossil fuel resources while the nuclear plants were shut down. Energy imports represented one third of Japan’s import costs in 2012. Nuclear power represents an essentially domestic source of energy, requiring only imports of uranium and plutonium. In addition, while the latest energy policy has focused on increasing the quantity of renewable energy, Japan currently uses little renewable energy. Hydroelectricity represents 16% of total power generation, but other renewables only represented about 3% of total electricity production in 2011.
So while it is difficult to imagine why Japan would be willing to take the risk on nuclear, they are not in much of a position to give up on that sector. It will be interesting to see if the cabinet approves the draft Basic Energy Plan in March, as expected, and if the public will be accepting of this continued push for nuclear.

Freakonomics on Marriage Part II

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Freakonomics on Marriage Part II

Last week, we linked to the first part of Freakonomics podcast on motivations for marriage. This week, to quote the late Paul Harvey, is “the rest of the story.”

Here is a description of “Why Marry? (Part 2)”:

In last week’s podcast, “Why Marry? (Part 1),” we talked with economists Justin Wolfers and Claudia Goldin about how marriage has changed over the last half century. How popular is marriage these days? Are married people happier? Isdivorce as prevalent as we hear?

Now it’s time for “Why Marry? (Part 2).” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript.) With the U.S. marriage rate at an all-time low, around 50 percent, we try to find out the causes, and consequences, of the decline of the institution.

First, to get a picture of who marries today and who does not, we talk with Ivory Toldson, a professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and research analyst at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. He tells us:

TOLDSON: People who are less educated tend to be married less than people who are more educated. People who have higher incomes are more likely to be married than those who have lower incomes. And people in smaller cities are more likely to be married than people in larger cities. And that’s true across all races.

One area of particular interest to Toldson is the marriage rate among African-Americans. He talks about his research into the question “Are there enough successful black men for the black women who want them?” The answer is nuanced — but surprising nonetheless.

We also hear from Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster and strategist and co-author of the bookWhat Women Really Want. Lake has spent much of her career looking into the intersection of marriage and politics. For instance:

LAKE: We asked married men and married women: Do you usually vote the same way as your spouse? And 73 percent of married men said confidently yes, and 49 percent of married women say yes. And I call that the “sure honey” factor.

Lake talks about one of the most striking consequences of the low marriage rate: the number of unmarried women who are having children. She tells us that in 1980, 18 percent of births were to unmarried women, while the number today is just over 40 percent. There are inevitable economic ramifications to such a dramatic shift:

LAKE: Two-thirds of unmarried women say that there was some basic cost that they had in their families that they couldn’t make ends meet in the last year. They couldn’t pay the bill compared to 40 percent of married mothers.

For  years, marriage has been promoted as a way to fight poverty, particularly for women with children. But would these mothers be better off if they were married? The answer isn’t clear.

What is clear is that the old model of marriage is nowhere near as attractive as it once was. So how about a new model? What would happen if marriage were treated more like an employment contract?