DC Metro system safety guide
The Red Cross and WMATA (Washington Metro Area Transit Agency) were handing out information in Metro Center station the other day. I popped over for a look on my way to work, and picked up a copy of Metro Emergency Guide: A personal preparedness resource for Metro riders. As often the case with guides of this sort, the advice often seems banal; given the unpredictability of events, it can seem contradictory as well. But it helps to think ahead so you don't have to think fast (or think you have to). Some of the things I thought might be worth repeating:

• "In an emergency, abandoning a train to take your chances in the tunnel without trained professionals is almost always the wrong thing to do. Stay in place and listen for instructions unless the threat is imminent."
• If walking in the tunnel is necessary, wheelchairs and strollers may need to be left behind: tunnel walkways are too narrow.
  "For those who can't walk, means of evacuation could include being carried or placed on one of the evacuation carts that are stored throughout the tunnels."
• This may be hard (not) to do, but think about the advice:
  "If you see a package that seems suspicious at either end of the Metro car to report it to the train operator. Moving the bag [off the train] could endanger more people -- and send Metro police out looking for you as a suspect."
• Metro stations are not refuges:
  "Metro stations are not suitable shelters for chemical, biological, or radiological attacks. Sheltering in place -- whether at home or work -- would be safer."
• To use the intercoms: push to talk, release to listen. (The sign on the intercom just says "push to talk")
• If you have to use a tunnel walkway, they're extremely narrow:
  "If a train approaches while you're on a walkway, put your back, arms and legs against the wall until it passes."
• It's better than nothing: if you suspect or know a chemical or biological attack is happening,
  "breathe through whatever is handy -- your clothes, paper towels, etc. Take shallow breaths."

And of course, always avoid that third rail. Check out the guide, you'll find something worth reading. Thanks to the Washington Post Express for publishing it. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:02:00 PM -- |    

 
Barring compelling reasons to the contrary
Not one single Republican voted against Gonzales for Attorney General -- not Graham, not Hagel, not Snowe, not Alexander, not even McCain, about whom RudePundit points out:

But, in the end, what happened to you [in North Viet Nam] meets the boundaries of legal torture laid out in the memo that Alberto Gonzales requested: you were never brought to organ failure or, indeed, death. If you support Gonzales or the President on this, what you will say is that others deserve what you went through, that your torture at the hands of your captors will be simply the average, expected behavior of our nation towards those we pre-deem evil. Like the North Vietnamese believed you were.
(via "What It Is Today," where you'll also see a roll call of the 60-36 vote)

Well come on, you say, whoever expected a Senate Republican to choose morality and the rule of law over partisanship and the love of power? I did. Even just one would have been nice.

Of course six Democrats voted for Gonzales as well: Salazar (CO), Nelson (NE),* Pryor (AR), Landrieu (LA), Nelson (FL), and of course sanctimonious Joe Lieberman (CT). Remind me again exactly why it's a good thing to elect Democratic Senators who'll go for anything and stand for nothing? All right, some day they might stand with the rest of us on Social Security etcetera, that's worth something, too, I guess. But then again, they might not; who knows what a Gonzales supporter is capable of, really.

I don't know about Louisiana, Arkansas or Nebraska, but Colorado and Florida have substantial Hispanic votes, so that's an excuse -- if a feeble one given that the Hispanic Caucus came out against Gonzales. But even that won't fly for Joe "Moral Values" Lieberman. From the New York Times:

Mr. Lieberman said he believed that a president should be able to pick his Cabinet team, barring compelling reasons to the contrary. The senator said he had met with the nominee and was satisfied that Mr. Gonzales's allegiance was “to the Constitution and the people of this country,” not simply to President Bush.

Barring compelling reasons to the contrary. I suppose Gonzales hasn't ever eaten a baby or developed a violent video game, so there you go.

I'm not sure what I hold against Al Gore more by now -- losing to Bush in 2000 in the first place, or elevating Joe Lieberman to national stature as his running mate. But there's a way Gore can make up for it -- and step 1 is "establish residency in Connecticut." Barring, of course, compelling reasons to the contrary.


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* Not Colorado, as Gary Farber points out about the Times article cited above. However, he endorses the swap.

EDIT, 2/4: quotes around "barring...contrary" removed. The New York Times article has been pulled since I picked it up yesterday, meaning the Lieberman comment is no longer available by that route. The Congressional Record may indicate that the reporter paraphrased Lieberman's remarks to the Senate (unless Lieberman made separate remarks to the reporter). A pretty close fit in the Senate remarks came when he said "on a very few occasions ... I have determined that the views of certain nominees, usually on one end of the political spectrum or the other, fell sufficiently outside the mainstream to compel me to oppose their nominations. In other words, I give a presumption in favor of the nominee unless there is a reason to decide otherwise." Lieberman apparently felt that was enough to vote against Senator John Tower's appointment as Secretary of Defense, but not against Alberto Gonzales' appointment as Attorney General. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:59:00 AM -- |    

 
Volunteer Tailgate Party
Another installment of the Volunteer Tailgate Party is underway at Mike Hollihan's "Half-Bakered" blog; it's a selection of the best recent posts by Tennessee and ex-Tennessee bloggers.

One post I liked a lot was by Libby ("Paisley Dreams"), who writes of dolls and Dolly Parton -- one of my favorite Tennesseans. Read why! posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:00:00 PM -- |    

 
Ways the founders could not have foreseen
I don't disagree with everything Bush said in the State of the Union address tonight. I'm glad he supports expanding DNA testing and counsel for those accused of crimes, increased NIH funding and Ryan White funding, and a focus on ethics when it comes to using stem cells. And I of course share his admiration for the troops in Iraq, and his respect for the Iraqi woman who spoke with Dexter Filkins -- I relayed the same story below that Bush retold tonight.

But as for his principal initiative, Social Security "reform" by whatever name -- privatization being the most honest name for it -- I'm 100% opposed.

Bush claimed that Social Security is challenged because when it was designed "people didn't live as long, benefits were much lower than they are today, and a half century ago, about 16 workers paid into the system for each person drawing benefits. Our society has changed in ways the founders of Social Security could not have foreseen."

But that's wrong. Thanks to foresight and planning -- almost anathema to this administration -- they foresaw just about exactly where we'd be. From "A Question of Numbers," by Roger Lowenstein in the New York Times Magazine:

The actuaries predicted that the proportion of Americans over 65 -- then only 5.4 percent -- would rise to 12.65 percent in 1990, meaning that retiree costs would soar. They were just a tad high; the actual figure would be 12.49 percent.

Now that's only part of the story; immigration, productivity, and wage increases play a role as well. The fundamental story Lowenstein tells is that while predictions are sophisticated guesswork, the consensus is that there is no crisis requiring the kind of major surgery Bush proposes:

The actuarial view is that the system is probably in need of a small adjustment of the sort that Congress has approved in the past. But there is a strong argument, which the agency acknowledges as a possibility, that the system is solvent as is. Although prudence argues for making a fix sooner rather than later, the program is not in crisis, nor is its potential shortfall irresolvable. Ideology aside, the scale of the fixes would not require Social Security to abandon the role that was conceived for it in 1935, and that it still performs today -- as an insurance fail-safe for the aged and others and as a complement to people's private market savings. [...]

Prudence dictates taking steps now to minimize the possible shortfall. This could include raising the cap, some modest cuts and tax increases and a gradual redeployment of the trust fund into assets that may not be tapped, willy-nilly, for whatever legislative purpose. But only a real crisis would dictate undoing an institution that has provided a safety net for retirees, that has helped to preserve in the social fabric some minimum of shared responsibility and that has been supported by workers in good faith. And, in looking at Social Security today, the crisis is yet to be found.
(emphases added)

In fact, as Kevin Drum and others have been pointing out, that magic date for "exhausting reserves" -- currently set at 2042 -- has been steadily pushed out to that date over the past many years as positive trends made themselves felt. Bush knows about this firsthand -- back in 1978 he thought the system would go broke in 10 years.

As ever, I found the visuals Bush and Cheney provided were telling and irritating; but I suppose I'm always going to feel that way with this guy. Bush was looking over at the Democratic side of Congress a lot -- and to me, it seemed like he was smirking, as if to say "You'll roll over for me, it'll be easier for everyone that way." If Social Security is sacrificed with Democratic help, it will indeed have been brought low in ways its founders could not have foreseen: by a party abandoning one of the principal benefits it has bequeathed to the American people.

No how, no way, not now, not ever, Dubya. You have zero support from me for your Social Security piratization plans, or for most the rest of your plans, including a constitutional amendment "protecting" marriage, and a pass for every screwball judicial nominee you send up to Congress.

Here are a few more links to facts and arguments about Social Security:

• Social Security: A conversation, Kevin Drum, 1/13/2005
• Social Security privatization in pictures, Kevin Drum, 1/5/2005
• Social Security is simple, Max Sawicky, 12/26/2004
  
• Inventing a Crisis, Paul Krugman, 12/7/2004
• Social Security and income, Economic Policy Institute, 11/18/2004
  
• Wedge, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, 9/10/2004:

  ...Lodged in your heart there’s an elderly, needy, cast-off version of you, whispering that when the time comes, nobody’s going to pay to help you. Children stop looking like our hope for tomorrow. Instead, they’re the heartless little bastards who’re going to let you live on dogfood in your SRO until a heat wave finally does you in.

  The other thing about believing there’ll be nothing left when you retire is that it makes you far less likely to scream in outrage over the long-term looting of the national treasury. After all, you already know you’re not going to get any of that.

  It’s not inevitable. I think we need to say so, early and often.

It's not inevitable, and it's not true. Check out the "There is no crisis" site for more of these under the "Articles We Recommend" heading.


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UPDATES: 2/3: added 2d Drum article ("pictures"). 2/4: added EPI snapshot, Sawicky "simple" post.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:23:00 PM -- |    

 
A wonderful thing
I'm very glad the Iraqi election seems to have gone pretty well. To see Iraqis lining up to vote, whole villages apparently trudging down highways to vote, people carrying their elders to vote, all braving attacks to do so, is a wonderful, inspiring thing.

Credit where it is due: to the Iraqi, American, and coalition soldiers protecting the voters, and to those who planned the election. And above all to the millions of Iraqis who exercised their right to vote on their future. From one story, filed by the New York Times' Dexter Filkins:

The explosions had already begun as she rose from her bed early on Sunday. One after the other, the mortar shells were falling and bursting around the city, rattling the windows and shaking the walls.

For an instant, Ms. Musawi, a 22-year-old physical therapist, thought it might be too dangerous to go to the polls.

"And then, hearing those explosions, it occurred to me - the insurgents are weak, they are afraid of democracy, they are losing," Ms. Musawi said, standing in the Marjayoon Primary School, her polling place. "So I got my husband, and I got my parents and we all came out and voted together."

Wow. You herewith will never again have a serious excuse for not voting.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:50:00 PM -- |    

 
Scraping the bottom of the barrel
It's hard to get much lower than suicide bombing a polling station -- but some Iraqi insurgents have done it, MSNBC reports:

Iraq’s interior minister said Monday that insurgents used a handicapped child as one of the suicide bombers who launched attacks on election day. [...]

He gave no other details about the attack, but police at the scene of one the Baghdad blasts said the bomber appeared to have Down [sic] Syndrome.

It's not the first time this tactic has been reported. The Palestinian "Fatah Tanzim Brigade" attempted the same tactic last year (German newsweekly SPIEGEL, via this blog):

An Israeli officer, Lieutenant Tamir Milrad, told a Haaretz reporter: "The boy told us he didn't want to die, he didn't want to blow up." He said he wanted to be a "hero." His dispatchers were said to have promised him that he would have sex in heaven with 70 virgins.

The 16-year old has Downs syndrome, a Palestinian witness said according to the DPA agency. He was known to many in Nablus... Haaretz and AP also report that the boy's family describe him as mentally very slow. His brother is to have said: "He doesn't know a thing." [...]

According to Haaretz the Fatah Tanzim Brigade of the Balata refugee camp has acknowledged sending the boy off with the explosives.

We can hope that the insurgents are starting to have trouble recruiting the averagely intelligent. But it's not the people who recruited these poor kids who are scraping the bottom of the barrel -- it's the ones who recruited them. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:45:00 PM -- |    

 
Discussing German poverty at "le sofa blog"
Peter Praschl of the German "le sofa blog" recently excoriated an article in the weekly German glossy periodical "Stern" titled "The true misery," by Walter Wüllenweber. Run under the rubric "underclass," the article zeroes in on one of the poorest neighborhoods in Germany: the Meerkamp quarter of Essen, a city in the rustbelt Ruhrgebiet of northwest Germany.*

The photographs give you some of the flavor of the story. A toddler sits two feet away from a huge TV screen; tattooed arms sort through a plate of junk food; a tidy, but soulless housing project dwarfs a children's slide; a single, pregnant 35 year old smoking a cigarette stares tiredly at the camera. Wüllenweber opens with a provocative profile of German poverty:

The lowrise housing projects from the 60s are well tended. No trash, no graffiti, slides and swings stand in the autumn leaves on the large grassy areas. A battalion of dishes points to satellites. Salon-tanned girls click-clack down the sidewalks. Bluish light shines from behind the curtains. Fat guys heave themselves out of wide-tired BMWs, Audi TTs and lowrider Golfs. The housemaster sweeps up a couple of cigarette butts. "Poverty?" His laughter dies in smoky coughing fit. "I know everyone in Meerkamp. But poverty, no, not here."

A family of four living on welfare gets about 1550 Euro a month, including rent and all services, it's about 1840 Euro for five persons. That's more than untrained people can earn after taxes. In Meerkamp [and other poor German neighborhoods], in the typical German underclass quarters the poor live in roomy housing with built-in kitchen, microwave, washing machine, dishwasher, cell phone, usually several TVs and VCRs. These are the findings of the German census bureau [Statistischen Bundesamtes]. Today's underclass does not suffer want like it's described in novels of the 19th century. But it still lives in misery.

The misery isn't poverty of the wallet, it's poverty of the spirit.

Praschl's angry reaction:

Cut chocolates, cut candy, cut cigarettes, cut money wasting cellphones, cut tattoos, cut junk food, cut trash service, cut large lawns, cut slides and swings,... [18 lines later] ... some arcades are OK, TV, DVD, PC, Playstation, just take everything.

The poor still have too much stuff.

Let it be said straight off that this isn't to be some kind of "ha! they have problems, too" post. Rather, I think that the terms of the discussion the article provoked are interesting. The idea of a German underclass is one that shouldn't surprise me by now, but it still does -- as did the resulting wide-ranging discussion that the Praschl's post and the article touched off. The first comment:

I don't understand the "cut everything" summary here. The article doesn't imply taking stuff away from the poor, but rather that the generation-spanning, all-encompassing lethargy it describes follows from insufficient education -- and not from the economic status quo. Is it bad if STERN points out that parents are not doing right by their children if they don't provide some way out of the cable/Xbox/cheap bar ghetto? "Invest in people's heads, not their stomachs." - that's surely a supportable demand that isn't bound to some model of social class. No?

It shouldn't necessarily be an either/or choice, I think. Responding, Praschl (I think correctly) identified an off-putting tone to the article, a kind of wildlife documentary approach that dehumanized its subjects while purporting to care about them:

...it's unseemly to do this. It's unseemly to walk through a poor neighborhood, to size up the poor and write that they're not poor because they have this or that and something else besides. It's unseemly even if one just does it for two-thirds of the article, and then sticks on another third that there really is poverty, poverty of the spirit, poverty of education, etc. [...]

It is, and this is the saddest part, the usual gaze, the gaze that one grants the lower classes, this mixture of shuddering and finger-wagging. ... It's no gaze that loves the people it claims to worry about, it's the gaze that always just demonstrates to them that they're idiots, it's their own fault, and that they still have too much of the wrong stuff.**

I suppose I agree with that, and yet I think it was ultimately unfair to Wüllenweber, who I think was (also) trying to say that there was (a) not a situation of dire want here, (b) that there is nevertheless a malaise being medicated, so to speak, with consumption of all sorts, and (c) that the focus should be on how to keep poverty from becoming something being passed on to children and grandchildren. But even this impulse was suspect to some commenters, e.g.:

...but to talk about people as if they were absolutely in need of help, just because their life is different from yours or for that matter mine, that has something of the social worker about it, come now, I know better, I'll show you the way, you're just a little stupid, but that's because of the environment, etc. I hate hearing that.

So what is Wüllenweber's solution? A paragraph's worth of experts repeats the single word "Education" over and over (a consensus so complete you almost forget to add "jobs"). And Wüllenweber describes worthy, if ad hoc, grant-supported day care and kindergarten programs that spend time with poor and/or immigrant parents to foster parenting skills, and that have shown good results. Another reader defended the article along those lines:

...there's a lot that I'd rather have had go differently in my life. But I only had the choice to get out of there because my parents worked their hands raw on the night shift so we could go to a good school, and because we had books... I don't know [how to fix this]. Maybe someone can calmly explain why it's wrong to demand opportunities for those who can't make demands themselves.

Praschl acknowledged the STERN article's call for improved education programs, but ultimately felt the earlier sensationalization of conspicuous "underclass" consumption made the author's and magazine's motives suspect; at the end of the day, maybe it was just a way to peddle some smug tut-tutting to middle class subscribers:

if I were worried about inadequate education, inadequate books and all that, then I'd write about that and how to solve that. ... and the [well-off] wouldn't mutter to eachother about articles like that, because they would know after all, that an educational system for the lower classes would just [cost them a lot of money]. But that the supposedly poor are only supposedly poor... one likes to mutter that to one another, and that doesn't cost anything.

Yet Wüllenweber didn't exactly let the well-off off the hook in his article:

Like most cities, Essen is a divided city. The underclass lives in its quarter, Katernberg in the north. The south belongs to the chairmen of the board of the Ruhrgebiet [Ruhr region]. The upper class kids don't need as much help from school and kindergarten as the children of Meerkamp do. That should mean: fewer teachers, fewer kindergarten teachers, fewer programs in the south, more of them in the north. "Handle inequity unequally," [Essen development director] Wermker calls it. "But no politician of any party would survive taking something away from those in the south part of the city," says Wermker.

But those comments come at the end of a long article, Praschl is right that the first impression is a different one.

The discussion seems pretty close to those here in the U.S. back in the early and mid-90s, as welfare reform ideas were kicked around and finally implemented. What's similar is the degree of awkwardness in discussing whether there's even a problem, the questionable empathy with the subjects of the discussion, and the suspicions and accusations swirling around the issue.

The difference may be that the impact of 1990s welfare policy reform in the US was cushioned by an economic upswing, however illusory that upswing may have been. In Germany, by contrast, this discussion takes place against a backdrop of pessimism about the economic future that has already led to highly controversial reductions in unemployment compensation, the so-called Hartz IV reform. With globalization at work in Germany, too, the poor and working poor of that country will be under the gun just as they are here and everywhere. In Germany, at least, they seem to have political allies -- even if those allies don't recognize eachother, or agree what is to be done.



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* I've also read articles describing similar hopelessness in parts of the former East Germany, for example "Even the mayor wants to leave," Die ZEIT, 2004
** Incidentally, the idea of "unseemliness" rang a bell, and I soon recalled the generally unseemly discussion of hunger, obesity, and poverty at the libertarian/conservative Asymmetrical Information site (via Belle Waring).

TRANSLATION NOTES: "it's unseemly": "es schickt sich nicht." posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:28:00 AM -- |