futurehead

Furious over health care situation

I"m furious over what's happening to health care reform -- including at Obama's wan and lackluster effort at pushing for true reform.  For months I've been wondering why he hasn't been using the power of the presidency to ram through reform.  The degree to which the White House has the power to shape and define the public debate can hardly be overstated.  He could be on television every night, ratcheting up the pressure.  He could be putting insurance company victims on television three times a week.  He could be making every person out there who has insurance think about whether, if they get really sick, their insurance might contain fine-print loopholes that leave them out in the cold (who among us has read every line of our policy?) 

But we're just not seeing that.  And this is just so central to how this administration will be judged -- in the short term and by history. 

Glenn Greenwald lays out one possible answer: this is exactly what the White House wanted all along.  Right or wrong on that theory, he nicely sums up how Obama could be doing so much more.  Among his points:

• The White House has been vocally denigrating Howard Dean for attacking the Senate bill for being too weak -- but they've never actually gone out and denigrated Joe Lieberman, the one who is actually blocking decent reform. (Must be that Joe-mentum at work).
• The White House didn't hesitate to knock heads in Congress when opposition began to build to the supplemental war spending bill -- threatening members that they would be cut off and lose help with reelection from the DNC. But on health care reform?  Nope.
• Obama defenders argue "that progressives should place their trust in the Obama White House to get this done the right way, that he's playing 11-dimensional chess when everyone else is playing checkers, that Obama is the Long Game Master who will always win.  Then, when a bad bill is produced, the exact opposite claim is hauled out:  it's not his fault because he's totally powerless."

It's far from clear that Obama's wet-noodle approach to health care reform is good politics either.  Howard Dean is already being mentioned as a possible primary challenger to Obama in 2012 as he emerges as the voice of the progressive opposition to a weak "centrist" bill. If we don't get good health care reform and it's because Obama didn't try, sign me up. For me, health care reform is a core, nonnegotiable policy goal bigger than party loyalty or admiration for Obama or anything else. It is central to my vision and that of most progressives for what this country most needs that it does not now have: decent social policies to reduce the unnecessary human suffering brought about by our barbaric health care system, in which people are expected to buy insurance for their own bodies on the open market the way a merchant might shop for insurance for a warehouse full of appliances.

The best thing to do is to support and give money to MoveOn and other groups that are pushing for a decent bill -- that's how things work in Washington, through interest groups.

Update: Check out this piece by Eric Wattree calling on Obama to get some toughness. Sample: 

The irony of Obama's presidency is that if he fails in his first term...it's not going to be because he wasn't cultured enough, or intellectual enough, but because he's not ghetto enough.

Mount Weather century ride from The Plains, VA

Photoblogging at 20 MPH

Went on a great century ride Sunday.  I brought my camera, and kept it strapped around my wrist for nearly the whole time.  Added a new element of novelty & fun to what was my 5th century ride in as many months (training for my May 1st Ironman). Click on photos to see full-sized shots.

We parked in the parking lot of this Post Office in The Plains, VA, about an hour from Arlington, and hit our saddles at about 7:10:

Born to Tout

So the APMA, the podiatrists' association, has put out a statement on barefoot running. I would characterize it as "grudging."  As always barefooting is forced to bear the burden of proof -- it would make more sense it you swapped "running barefoot" and "running with shoes" in their first paragraph.  Then it would read like this: 

Running with shoes has become an increasing trend, and a possible alternative or training adjunct to running barefoot. While anecdotal evidence and testimonials proliferate on the Internet and in the media about the possible health benefits of running in shoes, research has not yet adequately shed light on the immediate and long term effects of this practice.

Running barefoot "has been touted" as having benefits, they acknowledge (grudgingly), before quickly moving on to the risks, such as "puncture wounds" (okay, I'll grant it's a risk but in my experience and others', small) as well as "increased stress on the lower extremities" (this is a bald assertion that I would be interested to know the basis for, since the studies I've seen have shown *less* shock moving up through the skeleton when barefooting).

Finally, the podiatrists encourage the public to consult a podiatrist -- now there's a surprise.

I think this is what you call "being dragged kicking and screaming" into a reassessment of professional folklore, which is how I would characterize the belief by most podiatrists, in the absence of any supporting evidence, that shoes and shoe inserts are presumed beneficial. Born to Run is to podiatry as last year's economic crash was to economists.

It's amazing how entire professions can be totally full of it. 

Barefoot Media Wave

So barefoot running is enjoying a bit of media wave at the moment. 

In fact, according to this New York Times blog post, barefoot running is actually now "trendy."  Or, at least, "as trendy as any millenia-old activity can be." 

Wow, how did I go from freakish to trendy practically overnight? 

Of course, the answer is Christopher McDougal's best-selling book Born to Run (a phrase I used myself a few years ago to close out an April 08 post here on one of what become the major theses of the book - that humans are evolved for endurance running).  The barefoot running idea has always percolated through the media - there have always been a slow trickle of stories on the subject since I've been barefooting - but now it's a flash flood. 

One of the best pieces I've seen is this other NYT blog piece with accompanying video, which gives McDougal a chance to really concisely lay out the rationale for running barefoot.  In McDougal, the barefoot running community has really gotten a top-flight spokesperson for the cause.

The only caveat I would add to that piece is, I hope nobody out there tries kicking off their shoes and just setting off on a 6-mile run like the NYT guy did – not sure how he got away with it but most people if they are even able to do so they WILL get blisters at a minimum as well as wicked calf soreness (which is usually felt some by first-time barefooters as the achilles is stretched out in absence of high-heeled shoes).

Other recent media include this so-so business story that actually ran in the printed NY Times, and this very good, widely reprinted story in the Baltimore Sun story. This is one of the few articles that fails to feature the obligatory quote from a podiatrist pulling some assertion out of thin air about the harm that barefooting will do. One thing I would correct is that running barefoot does not create calluses, just thick, soft but tough skin (like a dog’s paw).

McDougal's book, to which we owe all this fuss, is a hoot. It actually has very little directly and explicitly on barefoot running - rather it tells a story and sets a context within which barefooting looks not "quirky" (to quote NYT article) but a perfectly natural and sensible thing to do. It is part travelogue, part "great race" story and part meditation on the meaning of running. If you are a runner at all it will inspire you and if you're not it it probably will make you want to be one. At times I was conscious of being in the presence of a *storyteller* in the good and bad senses - not someone who makes things up but someone who definitely knows how to sharpen and highlight and dramatize reality in the stories he tells. I had McDougall pinned as a gregarious British reporter type in the tabloid tradition (I was wrong; he is American). But it is also a rip-roaring narrative, fueled by genuine passion and amazement - an amazement that many barefoot runners have experienced when they realized that they'd been lied to by our culture and just what their bodies are capable of.  Realizing you don't need shoes is kind of like realizing one day that you can fly.

Many people who read Born To Run will come away with a new appreciation for barefoot and minimal-footwear running. For me, a lot of the concepts in the book were familiar ground, and the main takeaway for me was to its theme that running should be approached with joy and abandon, and not like some grim discipline, eating our wheaties and grinding out miles on suburban sidewalks according to rigid formulaic "training plans."  After I read this book I starting doing more trail runs, and worrying less about my pace and my distance and just going out and running.  That message is a whole other form of liberation on top of the shoe-liberation, and for that I am grateful to McDougal. Trendy or not.

Of course, the trendiness declaration is probably premature. I have noticed, as I mentioned after the Savageman triathlon, that fewer people think I'm totally nuts when they see me running around barefoot. But, on the other hand, outside of a few New York Times readers and fitness enthusiasts who have noticed this coverage, I think most Americans still think it's pretty freakish.

But, eventually, in a few years when a third of everybody at every local race is barefoot, I expect I will feel like the guys who used to be fans of U2 when they were playing in small clubs, or something like that.  Glad that the world finally gets it, but missing the fun of being cutting edge and, to be honest, the charge that comes from feeling one is possession of an esoteric truth. 

Obama's Afghanistan problem

Obama has a big problem in Afghanistan -- one of many problems he was handed by his predecessor the walking national disaster George Bush.

Actually to be precise he has two problems: Afghanistan the military/geopolitical problem, and Afghanistan the political problem. 

As far as the military/geopolitical problem, I am deeply skeptical that having a bunch of frightened, heavily armed, militarized 18-year-old American kids running around Afghanistan can do any good, advance the national interest, at all. There are rare times when force makes the world a better place, so I am open to well-reasoned arguments from those who are actually on the ground there, but they would have to be awfully well reasoned. 

As far as Obama's domestic political problem, however, I know exactly what I would do if I were president.  I would announce that I am withdrawing all U.S. forces from Afghanistan within x months unless Congress approves a declaration of war.  The country is divided? Obama is in danger of being painted as soft on terror if he does anything less than a full-bore commitment to this war?  His base is getting mad at him for considering escalation?  Simple: throw the vote to the people.  Let Congress debate the issue.  Let members of Congress hear from their constituents on the matter.  Let talk radio light up over the issue.  Let letters to the editor flow.  Let the talking heads argue for hours on end.  And then let the people's representatives make a decision.  And then honor that decision.

You know what?  The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they invested Congress with the power to declare war, and all the other powers that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gives to Congress to deal with national security issues.  We're supposed to be living in a democracy and warmaking -- when it is not an emergency decision -- is supposed to be a decision that is up to the people's representatives.  The Cold War and 9/11 have so distorted our democratic system that nobody bats an eye that one guy -- Obama -- is going to decide what our nation will do in Afghanistan. 

By following my suggestion, Obama can kill 2 birds with one stone: take the weight of the political decision off his own shoulders, and start to restore the health of our democratic system of government.

Race report: Savageman Half '09

Deep Creek Lake, MD
Sept. 20, 2009

I was stressed about 3 major things on the Savageman Triathlon, the “world’s hardest half.”  First, would I be able to make it up the short but super-steep 31% grade “Westernport Wall” without unclipping or falling over (which is hard enough that succeeding earns you the privilege of getting your name engraved in a brick they put in the roadway), humilitating myself in front of the big crowd and getting an ignominious video of myself posted on YouTube?

Second, would I be able to handle the bike course -- 5,800 feet of climbing, most of it packed within 30 miles of the 56-mile course -- without my legs totally blowing up and leaving me walking my bike up every little riser and generally miserable as hell?  I jumped into this race somewhat casually, aware of “the wall” but not really aware of how difficult the *rest* of the race was.  A month before the race, I finally took a look at the course, freaked out a little (as someone who is not an especially strong hill climber) and peppered my biking group with a series of panicked e-mails.  

Third, would I be able to do the run, which was a little longer than I was conditioned for, without reinjuring my old stress fracture injury, when I thought (imagined?) that I was feeling some pain in that area after an 8.5 mile run two weeks before.  Worst case scenario: sharp shooting pains during the race, followed by a DNF and 6 weeks wearing a boot. 

Piled in the car on Saturday with my friends Will Colston and Dave Phillips for the drive to Deep Creek lake.  Driving toward the check-in, we saw a sign that said “Mile 35” and got excited to realize we were actually on the race course.  So when we came to the course turnoff, we followed it while Dave, who had pre-ridden the course several weeks earlier, narrated what it was like to ride it.  Basically, we drove straight up, and then straight down, and then straight up.  I took a few photos along the way.  It was good to get a realistic sense of what we’d be riding the next day. 

Dave and Will -- checking out Killer Miller the day before the race

After checking in and racking our bikes and attending the race meeting, we wandered off to our motel, had a nice pasta dinner and shared a pitcher of beer, and I had ice cream, then we crashed early.

We woke up at a civilized hour of 6:00 AM and had breakfast, not leaving the hotel until after 7:00. The race didn’t start until 8:30, because in prior years the start had been delayed by fog.  The temperature was in the mid 60s I think, with the water in the high 60s. An absolutely gorgeous day. Our wave was the last of 4 and didn’t go off until around 10 before nine. 

The gun went off and I started strong but as always concentrated on staying loose and relaxed at the start, when it is so easy to overdo it.  I felt good, though after a few minutes I felt my paucity of swim training over the previous summer (hadn’t done a single swim in 2 weeks).  On the first third of the swim it was impossible to sight because we were swimming straight into the sun, but I was surrounded by plenty of other swimmers so I didn’t sweat the navigation.  I noticed that a bunch of swimmers pulled ahead of me and then I felt I was swimming alone, until I started passing through the back of the prior wave. This made me feel I was swimming slowly.  Then a while after the first turnaround I found myself 25 yards to the left of the buoys and all the other swimmers and cursed the element of navigation, which always adds a wild card to swim times.  But, at least it kept me from swimming into the prior-wave swimmers.  Overall I felt good on the swim, relaxed and comfortable. My time was 30:56, which is actually a PR for me on a half ironman swim.  I think it was new wetsuit, which feels faster than my old one; it certainly wasn’t my swim training.  I ranked 39th of 219 male starters and 6th out of 48 men in my 40-44 age group.

I swam up the beach until my hand hit sand, stood, passed over the timing mat, and then did something I don’t think I’ve ever done in a triathlon:  I walked to transition. Unlike every other race I’ve done, except the Ironman, I made no effort to log quick transitions.  I sauntered over to my bike, pulled off the wetsuit, toweled myself off, put on a shirt (which I didn’t wear underneath my wetsuit as usual as I wanted to be dry on the bike), socks, bike shoes, jammed a pump and some food in my pockets, and headed out for the bike course.  Having been warned about how an 18-mile downhill ride at 9:20 in the morning wet from the swim could be very cold, I had thought about wearing arm warmers and a windbreaker.  Except, I forgot my windbreaker at home. But once in transition, as usually happens to me, I felt plenty warm and departed with just my wet tri shorts and my usual sleeveless tri shirt. T1 time: 3:32. Amazingly to me, despite all that leisure in T1, I still logged a faster time than all but 46 of the 219 men who started this race.

I barely got out of transition when I had my first hill experience.  I coulda sworn I’d put my bike in a low gear before parking it but as I mounted I had to grind to avoid falling over as it was already a bit of a pitch and I was in way too hard of a gear.  Recovered from that, rode up the hill to the main park road, and headed out for about a mile to the first steep hill – a nice little wakeup call maybe the equivalent of Tilden Road in DC.  Then it was 18 miles of flat and downhill (some of it dangerously steep and winding) on a beautiful road along the Savage River.  Then into a valley where we were met with what to me was the most dramatic sight of the day:  a gigantic paper factory, nestled among the beautiful hills, shooting great plumes of white smoke into the air.  I guess they do still make some things in America.

Then into the town of Westernport, where I could hear the noise of the crowd in the distance.  “Okay here goes” I said to myself as I made the turn and looked

straight up and the hill in front of me ribboning up into the sky.  I was expecting it to be bad, so it didn’t really freak me out.  I muscled up the first few hills; since I was uncertain exactly what I would be dealing with on the last, toughest block with the rough pavement (see here for a taste -- but the videos generally don’t capture just how steep the hill is) I took my time and did some zig-zagging to conserve my legs as much as possible. Then I got to the big block and concentrated on keeping my weight forward so my front wheel wouldn’t lift up but not so far forward that my rear wheel would spin out, and my chest down, and just motored straight up it, concentrating on the 4 feet of pavement in front of my bike and the

crowd around me was a blur, and just like that it was over.  “That wasn’t such a big deal” I said to myself.  Then I looked up and saw that after like a 5 yard pause the road continued up toward the sky at a pitch scarcely any shallower than the much-balleyhood wall and I knew I had 7 miles of steep climbing ahead of me.  Crazy. 

The next 30 miles was a blur of laboring up mountains and twisty, frightening, almost surrealistic plunges into hollows and valleys.  At one point there was a 3 mile climb (in Savage River state forest) averaging 4%, and that was my favorite, since that’s the kind of grade that’s close enough to flat that I can do well in, and I actually passed some people on that hill instead of being passed.  That hill led without a break straight into the 9% McAndews Hill, which was followed by some flat and then in short order by the 8% Otto Lane.  Meanwhile through all of this I knew that coming up was the formidable Killer Miller climb (1.3 mile, 8% average, 22% peak grade) that I had seen from the car the day before.  After a long, steep descent – too twisty and technical to really relax on –- I was there and I labored up it, proud to be passing a guy or two walking their bikes, though I did some more zig-zagging again on this hill.  Though I had seen it from the car, I was shocked just how long it was.  It just kept going and going and going.  Meanwhile, as on all the hills of this race, there were humorous teasing signs on the side of the road such as “How is that aero working for you now?”

If you were to think that was the top of the hill, you'd be wrong

Finally reached the top and stopped to refill my one water bottle at the aid station there.  Then back on the bike – straight up another hill.  The last 15 miles were flattER but not flat.  We still weren’t exactly in Kansas.  In some ways this was the hardest part of the ride, since the excitement was gone, and yet there were still lots of hills (even if not as crushing as what came before) and I was feeling very tired.  The fact that a group of 4-5 guys overtook me and drifted ahead was also kind of demoralizing – I wanted to feel that at least on this less hilly section I could make up some ground on the field (however, I did overtake these fellows on the last 2 miles or so when there was a lot of downhill and true flat). 

Such sympathy!

Climbing Big Savage Mountain I dropped my chain once, and I stopped at the aid stations on top of Big Savage Mountain and Killer Miller but otherwise never had to unclip.  It is nice to know I can survive this kind of a ride.  My 12/27 cassette and compact crank certainly helped -- and I did spend a huge amount of this day in my granny gear. Of course, part of the reason that it was so tough was not just the hills, but the fact that it was a race, with the time pressure that entails (no long chit-chats at the top of big hills as we are wont to do on our Sunday group rides), and also the fact that it was preceded by a refreshing but somewhat energy-draining swim, and followed by a half-marathon run.

Total bike time: 3:44:20.  That is roughly an hour slower than my other four half-irons, and only 1:45 faster than my bike split on my ironman race (and I spent a lot more time in anaerobic territory on this race than on the ironman).  For the bike split I ranked 100th of 219 men and 20/48 in my age group. 

The run.  Ouch.  I’ve done a fair number of triathlons in the past couple of years, including four prior half ironmans, but good god my legs were shot as I came into transition.  Again I took my time, unloading the 2 empty gel packs from my shirt, sitting down, taking off my socks, and putting on some shoes.  My plan was to run the first lap with shoes on, since according to the course description there were numerous gravel portions, and then hopefully, depending on what I observed, do the second lap barefoot.  I hadn’t run in shoes since my Ironman.  Unfortunately I was running late when I left my house for this race and I left a number of things behind, including my Puma H Street running flats, which I was planning to use here since they did not injure me for the Ironman.  So though I hated to do it, I ran in my absolute favorite shoes of all time, my Vivo Barefoot Aqua shoes.   They are actually great for running, it’s just that I like them so much, they are so much like going barefoot, and I can get away with wearing them to somewhat formal occasions, and expensive enough that I hate to wear them out by running with them.

Again I actually *walked* out of transition.  I was just so tired; my chest was sore from breathing so hard and so long on the bike, and my legs were pretty beat up.  But, I always force myself to run the first mile of a tri no matter how bad things are (since my desire to walk actually declines once my legs loosen up after the first couple of miles) so once I crossed the timing mats I reluctantly set into a jog.  I did so quite gingerly because I was still afraid of my old stress fracture which first hit me on my very first half iron race (which I ran in shoes BTW).  To my surprise, what hurt was my left knee.  But that didn’t worry me; a little tendon and ligament pain was something I could handle.  I figured I’d run the first 3 miles, which would bring me back by transition, see how my ankle felt, and make a decision at that point.  The knee pain probably came from the fact that I did the bike ride with my bike set to a brand new geometry (road instead of aero).  In any case it soon faded away (and I didn't feel it after the race).

The first 3 miles were just tough, tough, tough. I suffered through the first mile, and then the second, walking wherever there was a hill.  At mile 3 still no ankle pain so I kept slogging along.  Around this point I saw DC Mayor Adrien Fenty.  Last time I was in a race with him he passed me at mile 10 of the run, but this time he was already well ahead, probably 3 miles.  I gave him a cheer and he waved and cheered back.  Poor guy, I thought afterwards, he probably just wants to put his head down and suffer through the run like everybody else, but probably has to keep acknowledging jerks like me. 

The course looped through a campground, along a main park road, and then headed for an out-and-back up a very rocky and steep fire road for about a quarter mile.  Then back to the main road, and along some gravel roads back to transition.  I just walked up the fire road (“Swim, Bike, Hike!” I thought to myself) but enjoyed the run back down it.  By this time I realized my legs and the rest of me was feeling much better.  I still walked every hill, but felt stronger. 

On the loop at the campground and the fire road out & back I passed Will, who looked to be about a mile behind me.  He and I would probably have been running side by side if I didn’t have about 7 minutes on him on the swim.  About 3 miles in I was passed by a very strong and sprightly looking Dave, who was on his *second* lap.  Holy cow, amazing.

After passing by transition, and running through a short gravel road, I paused to take my shoes off and jam them in the back of my shorts and race belt.  Ah, liberation!  It felt great to feel the road again, and I tackled the task of getting this second loop done.  This also meant that the comments began – though since a widely read New York Times article on barefooting came out, I find fewer people think I’m plumb loco (though more might think I’m just some trendy guy responding to something I saw in the paper).  I was periodically bedevilled by cramping in my right hamstring – a cramp that had first emerged in the latter stages of the bike ride, and cropped up in the first loop of the run and the first part of the second.  Usually I find I am able to “think away” a cramp and for the most part that continued to work.  I also ate some salt tablets, but I don’t have much faith that they actually do anything so any placebo effect is lost on me, though it’s possible I would have been worse off without them.  In any case, with the amount of walking I was doing anyway, the cramps weren’t more than an annoyance. 

By this time I had settled into a tolerable steady state of low-level pain and just counted off the miles as I ran, seeing Will again twice at about the same spots as on the first loop.  I continued to walk the steep hills, and put my shoes on for the quarter-mile out and back up the fireroad. Despite some uncomfortable gravel at the end of the loop, I otherwise kept them off, and finished the run in 2:24:01, the slowest half iron run I’ve done (though only by 12 seconds, and it wasn’t nearly as painful overall as my worst run, when I persisted in thinking I should run the whole race without walking breaks).  My run time put me at 126th of 219 among men and 19th of 48 in my age group.  Amazingly within my age group I placed better in the run than on the bike, which has got to be a first for me and must reflect how bad I am at biking hills relative to flats.  My pace was just under 11:00 a mile – pretty bad but I’m still proud I did this run. 

Overall my time was 6:45:42, which put me in 94th place of 219 men and 16th of 48 in my age group.  Will was just a few minutes behind me, and Dave Phillips’ performance was amazing, finishing in 5:22 and winning his age group.  Although my time was 70 minutes slower than other half irons I’ve raced, I am more proud of completing this race than any of the others!

Overall, it was simply a wonderful race and I can’t wait to do it again next year!  The swim was great, the bike course was challenging and exciting and fun, the run was painful but perfectly nice, the venue was gorgeous, and the production of the race was flawless.  This was a race that clearly was not put on by any corporate machine –- it seemed to be a labor of love, the object of pride of a group of people that is genuinely passionate about this race.  The food was good, the logistics were relatively hassle-free, the volunteers were super, and a sense of fun and friendliness pervaded the event.  One thing I especially appreciated was that they had many many photographers stationed around the course, and promise to sell pictures for reasonable rates for once (when will the rest of the world figure out that photography, like everything that’s made of bits, has been devalued and is no longer worth what has traditionally been charged? But I digress...) 

After finishing, Will and I went for a swim in the 68-degree Deep Creek Lake, which felt so great I have no words for it.  We ate the wonderful french fries and BBQ they were serving, cheered for Dave as he collected his age group prize, and went home happy (Savage)men. 

The Gates Affair

The Henry Louis Gates incident is a couple of weeks old now and a lot has been said & written about it, but I am still bothered by it.  I have been a fan of Gates since I read his excellent memoir Colored People in the mid-1990s.  But the thing that bothers me about this doesn't have anything to do with race -- it's that many of our cops seem to think they can arrest someone for disrespecting them -- and an amazing range and number of Americans seem to think either that this is correct -- that it is illegal to give a police officer a piece of your mind -- or that a cop's retaliation against such behavior is something that should just be accepted. Have Americans really become such a weak, docile, timid and authority-cowering people as that?

The woman who called the police was blameless.  I would not be surprised if America's racial context and history played a role in the initial telephone call to the police reporting a possible break-in; on the other hand the house HAD been broken into before, and what homeowner wouldn't prefer that someone in such a situation make a report rather than not, if there is any doubt.

The police were blameless for showing up at Gates's house.  I would also not be surprised if race played a role in the attitude and bearing of the police officer, James Crowley, when he challenged Gates.  Gates reports that his bearing was hostile.  However, unless you were there, this is subtle and fundamentally unknowable.  On the other hand, if Crowley just accepted that Gates was the homeowner, and Gates later turned out to in fact be a burglar, he would have become the laughingstock of the Boston Police Department.

Gates was blameless for being angry. Given our national history of which Gates as much as anyone was all too aware, as well as whatever personal animosity took place between the two men, any anger that Gates may have displayed may have been understandable (and let it be noted that Gates denies being verbally abusive, and in fact says that a throat condition prevented him from raising his voice - his most detailed account of the incident is here).  And, regardless of whether it was understandable, it was entirely within his rights as an American not only to ask for the office's badge number (which under Massachusetts law the officer was required to furnish him) but also, if he so chose, to express his anger verbally to the officer in any way he saw fit short of credible threats of violence.  It may not be prudent to shower verbal abuse upon a police officer, given the inevitable discretion that the police have in enforcing the law (in many circumstances there may just be a legitimate infraction to be found under which a police officer can legitimately charge you).  But when a man is standing in his own house, that is not a circumstance in which any self-respecting self-governing democratic citizen of our brave nation should have to cower and crimp and swallow anger before an official who has no legitimate business on your property (and from the moment Gates had established his residency by showing Crowley his Harvard ID and driver's license with address, Crowley no longer had any legitimate business on Gate's property).

Up until this point, other than the probable but ultimately unknowable role played by the overall racial history and culture in the United States, everyone was pretty much blameless in this unfortunate incident.  Then the cop arrested Gates.

Crowley had no legitimate or legal basis on which to arrest Gates.  This was implicitly recognized by the Cambridge prosecutors who dropped the charges faster than molten lead.  He abused his authority in a very serious manner, handcuffing and bringing to jail an innocent man as a retaliation for having his personal feelings hurt.  As those prosecutors surely know, "disrespecting a police officer" is not a crime and indeed is an activity protected by the First Amendment as much case law around the United States makes clear.  The ACLU regularly takes and wins cases of people arrested for "flipping the bird" at officers of the law who are not professional enough to handle it without abusing their power in retaliation.  Overbroad "disturbing the peace" statutes are the most common vehicles for such abuses of authority.

This incident prompted a lot of discussion about race in America, and that is as it should be, but the nation should have risen up and recognized as one that the arrest constituted an abuse of power, and should have been used as a teaching moment not only to the public, but also to many police officers, who apparently need it, that disrespecting a police officer may be justified or it may not be, but it is every American's right.  Instead Crowley was allowed to continue defending his abuse of power, seeming or perhaps worse genuinely unaware that Gates did not break any law, as in this appalling piece.

Five factors behind the Town Hall Crazies

Everywhere I go everyone seems to be talking about the recent health care town hall meetings and how the country feels like it is going a little bit crazy right now.  My take is that there are five factors behind this:

1. We have a serious situation in this country: a pretty crazy right-wing media machine that pumps out lies and disinformation to a receptive slice of the population. For years a lot of people have talked about the fragmentation of media, and now it has come to pass.  The fact is, we must share our country with a lot of fellow citizens who get their information from liars and crazy people, and whose reality is defined by those broadcasters.  Many smart philosophers have concluded that reality is socially constructed; we all live in a complicated world - much more complicated than we can directly observe ourselves - and most of our understanding of our world comes not from direct observation but from imaginative construction based on the reporting of others.  However, as I have discussed before, this is a highly unreliable process, and when people hear that Obama was not born in the United States, or that he is threatening to take away everybody's health care, and do not access any sources of information that refute that claim, they in all earnestness believe it.  The anecdote cited by Paul Krugman just sums it all up: the guy who stood up at a meeting and demanded, "keep your government hands off my Medicare!"
2. The country has always had a foaming right wing fringe.  Before the Birthers, there were Birchers (members of the loony John Birch society) and other wild-eyed far-right conservatives driven crazy by civil rights and socialism.  And a history of "respectable" business interests making use of that fringe from time to time for political and/or economic purposes (such as in the McCarthy and civil rights periods). In many ways what we are seeing is not new, it is just more apparent because it is being pumped up and turned out by the right-wing media machine, as well as by certain for-profit organizing groups that are being paid by the health care lobby in order to turn out the crazies. 
3. It looks like there is a racist element here as well - that many of these people feel alienated from their government because someone who is irrevocably "other" to them has taken over leadership of the country.
4. The media is overdramatizing individual interactions because they make good television and making the lunatic fringe look like a significant political force.  (The reform forces need to make the media's inability to convey abstractions work in their own favor by finding and dramatizing individual victims of our barbaric health care system.)
5. The economic situation may, in some diffuse way, be creating a pool of free-floating angst and anger that is finding a (perverse and counter-productive) outlet in these incidents.  The Great Depression sparked grassroots movements and leaders such as the Townsendites, Huey Long, and Father Coughlin.  Whenever the nation experiences such turmoil, people will cast about for answers, and that process of defining blame and solutions is highly unreliable; it can lead to genuine reform that actually solves problems and makes people's lives better, as happened during the New Deal, or it can swing right and turn nasty, as happened for example in the 1930s in Germany, or in the U.S. South, where poor whites, oppressed by a wealthy aristocracy, occasionally banded together with poor blacks to push for unions and other economic reforms, but more often were led into lashing out against their black brethren in a long-term conflict that set poor man against poor man and increased misery and unhappiness for all instead of addressing its causes. 

All of this insanity raises an obvious question: if Obama's mild, gradualist health care proposals have sparked all of this right-wing gnashing and bashing, why shouldn't he have gone ahead and proposed a health-care fix more far-reaching and direct?  It's not as if the opposition could be any less vociferous. Then at least it would give progressives like me something to get excited about to counterbalance these misinformed loonies. 

So far Obama is looking like just another weak, spineless début du siècle Democrat - all reconciliation, no ferocity.  But reconciliation with crazy and utterly misinformed people does not make sense; there's no percentage in it, and people who are dying because of our health system deserve a little ferocity on their behalf for once.  This fight will test Obama's meddle; if he loses this round, will he cave and never bring up health care again, as Clinton did, or will he pick himself up, propose something even tougher, and get right back into the fight again?

This is the "hope" we all heard about, time to produce.

Machines Listening In

A month after my family and I moved into our new home, we received a letter from the utility company.  Our water usage had increased sharply, we were told, and we should check for leaks and various other problems.  We chuckled at this – it was no surprise that my family of five used more water than the kindly widow we’d bought the house from. 

Of course the utility company has every reason to know about my usage of utilities, and this program is a fine thing that probably saves a lot of water.  But I always remembered that letter.  It permanently changed my mental understanding of my relationship with my utility, which has vast numbers of customers, and surely (I believed) would not pay any attention to a random, reliable bill payer like me.  After the letter came, I became a bit more self-conscious about my water usage.  I had a bit more of a sense that I was being watched.

The letter was certainly generated by a computer.  And I prefer the image of a dumb computer churning through water-consumption levels, looking for spikes, and mindlessly firing off a form letter, to the thought of some utility official personally reviewing my water consumption each month.

But what happens when we take that concept – the automated, mass monitoring of behavior – and dial it up 1000%?  At what point, if any, should we start getting concerned?  When if ever does automated monitoring by a computer constitute an invasion of privacy?  And does it make sense to worry less about our privacy when we are monitored by machines than when we are monitored by      more. . .

Further thoughts on Detox

The other day I proposed a seemingly simple plan for addressing the mortgage and financial crises: have the government pay the mortgages of those who go into default -- and assume commensurate ownership in the real estate.

I had a chance to poke around and look at some quick numbers. For the 12 months through January 2009, there were an average of 247,913 foreclosures in the United States, or about 3 million for the year.  If you figure that each monthly mortgage payment is $1,700 (the national median), the government would have to shell out $5 billion per month -- $60 billion per year, or roughly 10% of our annual defense budget -- to pay all those mortgages. That's a lot of money -- except in today's context. AIG alone, for example, has received government commitments of $160 billion to keep it afloat.  And (though there would inevitably be losses due to bubble-priced real estate that will not regain its value for decades) the government will be gaining equity in all these properties and in some cases will make profits, so it will recoup a large percentage of these billions. 

A letter writer in the March 5 Washington Post, one Edward Y. Carp, points out another benefit that this plan would have: it would help bolster real estate values by keeping foreclosed properties from flooding the market and driving down prices.  

The day after I made this post, the Obama Administration announced a foreclosure plan. I haven't looked at it closely yet, but instead of my plan or something similarly clean, simple and effective, it appears that the administration has pursued the path described so well by Michael Lind here: opting for complex, inefficient private-sector rube goldberg mechanisms instead of simple, direct government provision of public services. I call this Democratic "deep wimpiness" -- wimpiness that runs deep into the intellectual orientation of the party, as opposed to shallower tactical wimpiness of, say, (pre-compromising on legislation when one holds all the cards).

Okay I realize the chance is good there is some huge looming practical problem with this plan that some expert could point out to me in 2 seconds, but right now this or perhaps some suitably modified plan along these lines, seems a helluva lot better than what they're doing now.