Category Archives: Politics

Happy Easter. Let’s solve some problems.

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As well-fed comfortable primates our interests tend to turn to the superficial, but wouldn’t it be interesting if we could focus our great resources and enthusiasm on the real problems of the world, and focus attention in proportion to their impact on the globe?

This list of Global problems and potential solutions from the Copenhagen Consensus:

Challenge   |   Opportunity

Communicable Diseases   |     Scaled-up basic health services
Sanitation and Water        |    Community-managed water supply and sanitation
Education                            |    Physical expansion
Malnutrition and Hunger  |   Improving infant and child nutrition
Malnutrition and Hunger  |   Investment in technology in developing country agriculture
Communicable Diseases    |   Control of HIV/AIDS
Communicable Diseases    |   Control of malaria
Malnutrition and Hunger  |   Reducing micro nutrient deficiencies
Subsidies and Trade Barriers | Optimistic Doha: 50% liberalization

Poli techs may rule the 2008 election?

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In 2004 the internet was credited with much of the early success, and even the later flame out, of the Howard Dean Campaign, though it was not considered a major factor in the Kerry or Bush campaigns.

Fast forward to the already hopping 2008 presidential campaigns where most observers, including the New York Times are suggesting the internet will play a significant strategic and marketing role for most if not all candidates vying for the US Presidency.

Who would benefit most from a “web centric” campaign system? Hard to say since onliners, especially those who blog regularly, are a curious blend of outspoken conservatives and liberals (I’d say more conservative banter on average).

At first glance it seems Barack Obama would have the online edge as he is arguably the most charismatic, young, and hip candidate and should play well with the young internet audience. However in an election the blog banter will probably drive the discussion of the candidates and it’s hard to predict how well prominent blogs like DailyKos or Drudge will process candidate information.

The transparent right wing bias of Fox News pales in comparison to bloggers like Anne Coulter or Michelle Malkin whose “frothing at the mouth” style is fun too read but hardly generates the intelligent reflection that best serves the democratic process.

However, elections aren’t won on deep reflection or discussion of issues. They are now based largely on careful modelling of primary states combined with targeted negative campaign ads on television combined with superficial media analysis of small gaffs or personality quirks.

Maybe a political technology injection is just what Doctor Democracy has ordered.

Lomborg on “Climate Hysteria”

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As concerned as I have been about the scientific sensationalism and downright deceptive presentations in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth“, I was rooting for Al last night at the Oscars. Perhaps as consolation prize for losing the US Presidency?

Contrary to what many think it’s clear to me that Al Gore is sincere in his crusade against climate change, and also it’s important to remember that if the US electoral system OR the ballots in a critical county in Florida did not have significant quirks he is *extremely* likely to have won the presidency, shifting global affairs over the past 6 years about as much as you can imagine since Gore was strongly against the Iraq war and would have brought an entirely different agenda to the American political table.

As Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out at the National Press club recently, political compromise and partnerships are the practical approach to solving problems. I really like that guy!

With this in mind I’ve been feeling too strident in my criticism of focusing far too much on Global Warming, but whenever I read Lomborg’s clear headed analysis…I know I’m right to be upset at the hysteria mongers who are deflecting us from caring about ongoing health and human welfare catastrophes in the 3rd world.

Lomborg’s got it right .. again… but nobody is listening … again.

PS – for anybody who thinks Katrina was from Global Warming *please* at the very least, review the comments by key, mainstream scientists which suggest quite clearly that it’s absurd to suggest Katrina is from warming.  Also interesting.  People have become so immune to the Global Warming truth they aren’t even reading any science. READ the IPCC summary!

Jobs to bad teachers: You should be out of JOBS!

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I’m still digesting Steve Jobs comments about educational reform that will likely prove to be controversial. My first reaction is to say amen – he’s talking good stuff and I can only hope educators listen up. Jobs is suggesting two key pieces of educational reform. One is the elimination of textbooks in favor of free online content, regularly updated by experts in the field. Gee, I’d have to say that one is pretty much a no brainer, though I’m worried this won’t be clear to many teachers, too many of whom fear the online educational cornucopia rather than embracing it. This idea is more provocative than it appears at first. Textbooks are part of the insulation we have between the “real world” and school. Online interactive instruction would break this down in very positive ways, not to mention save money and bring unprecedented levels of expertise to students. Textbook: $55. Getting nobel prize winners to interact in real time with high school students across the country? Priceless. I say bring it on, Steve!

The second suggestion is to make it easier to fire bad teachers. I certainly and strongly agree with this in principle, though I’m not sure in practice this style works well in the public sector because it can reduce the morale and productivity of the good teachers and I’m not convinced there are a lot of “bad teachers” out there, especially in the K-12 programs. I’m the son of two teachers, the spouse of a teacher, and friend and relative to perhaps a hundred teachers across the country (I have a very large extended family). Teachers, in my extensive experience, are a good group of hard working folks who almost to a person are primarily and overwhelmingly interested in helping kids.

So, will firing the few bad apples help or hurt? In my talks with teachers it is always striking to me how different the perceptions are of good, hard working folks in the public sector compared to those of us in the private sector. Like Steve Jobs I’m gung ho on the benefits of kicking some major ass when needed. Incompetence should be “rewarded” with a swift boot out the door. However the private sector has this expectation where the public sector does not. Bringing the fear of firing to the education sector could bring unintended consequences such as forcing the good teachers to process more paperwork to “prove” their worth and thus diminishing their ability to teach. I’d want to see proof that “firing bad teachers” will do a lot of good before we go to far in this direction, though clearly we should help put pressure on *all* systems to allow for dealing with incompetence swiftly and mercilessly. That is not ruthless at all because the alternative is far worse as it lets a single bad worker ruin hundreds of children’s lives or thousands of products.

Global Warming Report logical conclusion: Ignore Global Warming?

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My disclaimer: I’m a well educated and experienced (social) science research person and hardly ignorant about scientific analysis. Yet I still fear I must be missing something major in the Global Warming debate because I find only a handful of people agree with me that the current debates about Global Warming border on complete nonsense.

We certainly should look for CHEAP ways to reduce emissions. But we should NOT do the expensive things everybody seems to insisting upon now. I may revise my views when the next IPCC report comes out later in the year or when IPCC starts to address the economic implications of dealing with GW as they did in the earlier report. It was that report that led me to believe we should ignore global warming even though most others seemed to feel the IPCC 3rd report was a call to do everything possible at whatever cost to stem the tide of GW.

Of course there is Global Warming and of course it appears that human causes are significant – only a handful scientists believe otherwise. But it does not follow that we should forego trillions in global GDP in an effort to stop Global warming. On the contrary it’s not clear we should allocate any resources to the very low ROI Global Warming alleviation efforts while millions starve and die of diseases that cost dollars to prevent.

For the most part we should ignore Global Warming.

What should we do with the time and treasure that will likely be largely squandered failing to reverse the warming trend? Use these resources to solve the ongoing catastrophic conditions on earth that are the product of poverty and disease.

Bad water, malnutrition, and diseases like malaria run rampant in underdeveloped countries. Advocates for foregoing trillions of dollars in global GDP in the hope of delaying the effects of Global warming rarely (it would seem almost NEVER) even remotely contemplate the alterative uses for this money. The alternative uses are so dramatically superior to the life return on the GW investment that there is a *moral imperative* to ignore the warming in favor of saving lives NOW.

Ironically the current report actually *decreased* estimates for sea level rises, the median ranges of which are anything but catastrophic. Yet the media headlines imply something new has been learned. It’s been obvious for some time that humans play a role in warming. The issue we must address is: Should we forego trillions in economic development to delay the effects or should we solve other, easier problems? The answer is obvious – put the money where it will do the most good, which is saving the planet NOW, not later.

Why are so many failing to see the light here? I think several powerful forces are in play in this debate to fuel the intellectual irrationality. Among these forces are:

1) The selfishness and narrow focus that comes from our affluence. GW is seen as a threat to our personal affluence, rotaviruses and malaria are not. Picture a GW person strolling through a South African Aids ward with a can asking for carbon sequestration donations to see my point here.

2) Media frenzy, media math ignorance, and media excluding the daily catastrophes in health. The media, even non-commercial and blog media, generally seeks interesting and provocative content over reasoned logical content. Also, few journalists handle research well because they prefer reporting on contentious things rather than reporting the ‘gist’ of the subject in an educational way. This is why the current report, which mainly reaffirmed what most knew already, is presented as a big new indication that catastrophe looms around the corner. Media also fails dramatically to adequately address critical situations like Darfur, poverty, and global health challenges. These catastrophes are simply are not in the news, which needs to save precious room for the latest about Britney Spears.

3) The enthusiasm in the scientific community. I’m not suggesting the reports themselves are sensationalistic, rather what I think happens is that in normal scientific environments you have researchers checking and balancing each other. In the Global Warming community is seems it’s simply unacceptable to challenge the prevailing wisdom. Also, it’s simply naive to think that the jaw dropping amounts of grant money that are flowing into the process have no influence on research proposals. Scientists don’t have to distort the facts to create a problem – they just need to be silent when movies like “An Inconvenient Truth” suggest that science proves catastrophe is around the corner when science shows nothing of the kind. Example: Sea level rises were just predicted to be lower than previously thought. Unfortunately that headline won’t sell many papers or get any new grants funded.

4. Politics, rather than reason, allocates government resources and government attention. The above factors make it politically difficult to suggest anything but what many politicians are suggesting now – that catastrophe is looming around the corner and they want to fix it with more public spending. It’s not even clear you’d have a remote chance at winning an election on a “spend on Africa, not GW” platform.

This report would suggest I am wrong about this.

Davos: Easterly on Poverty

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Thanks to Jeff Jarvis’ Davos blogging I learned about William Easterly, an economist who is very critical of his former employer the World Bank. At Davos he appears to be bashing much of what is now considered good poverty reduction strategy by World Bank and large private funds like the Gates Foundation. I’ve been impressed with Gates Foundation and still trying to find out more about whether the World Bank, on balance, is helping or hurting the poor. Digging a little deeper I found this Easterly quote, which certainly seems very reasonable:

William Easterly, a former research economist for World Bank:

The right response is to demand accountability from aid agencies for whether aid money actually reaches the poor. The right response is to demand independent evaluation of aid agencies. The right response is to shift the paradigm and the money away from top-down plans by “experts” to bottom-up searchers—like Nobel Peace Prize winner and microcredit pioneer Mohammad Yunus—who keep experimenting until they find something that works for the poor on the ground. The right response is to get tough on foreign aid, not to eliminate it, but to see that more of the next $2.3 trillion does reach the poor.

Of course few would disagree with the above, so he’s not really addressing the question of how to “get tough” on foreign aid.    I’ve been very impressed with the ability of the Gates foundation to focus laser-like on key health issues like malaria and fund accordingly.  I’m not convinced a bureaucratic or governmental approach can be nearly as effective, especially because it seems many of the poorest countries struggle with the simplest forms of accountability in business and government.      Clearly one of the great challenges is how to *bypass* ineffective and corrupt people and agencies within the poor countries so that aid can flow to the needy.

Shaming and blaming and the tragic death of James Kim

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Over at Salon.com, Sarah Keech has a thoughful article about the Kim Family story, though I read it as a somewhat too defensive reaction to the letter from James’ Kim’s father Spencer published in the Washington Post last week.

In “Who’s to Blame for James Kim’s Death” Keech suggests, correctly in my view:

It’s not the federal government or law enforcement or the people who tried to rescue him from the Oregon wilderness.

Ironically, Spencer Kim would probably agree with her statement.   I’ve been concerned at the tone of many locals who have suggested a father, grieving his son no less, has no right to suggest that better maps, signs, gates and policies might have kept this from happening. Of course he has that right and his letter was in my opinion quite a reasonable reaction given that Mr. Kim has just lost his son to an unforgiving Oregon winter wilderness.

I know this area well and it’s common knowledge that signs on the Bear Camp Road could use improvement.   Money and priorities are legitimate issues with such improvements as are the rights people have to access to public lands.     A route that would be fine for an experienced hunter with 4WD Truck, chains, winter gear and provisions may become a death trap for a family car.

Here’s my reply to the Salon article:

Ms. Keech you have made several good and several obvious points about the folly of legislating solutions on the basis of unusual and tragic events, but that’s not the big story of the Kims tragic trip into Oregon’s Rogue River Wilderness. I think Spencer Kim’s letter is a reasonable characterization of the many challenges facing the search effort, though I agree the solutions suggested are far too expensive to justify the handful of lives this might save over many years. Better to spend on life saving measures that have a much higher return on the investment of tax dollars.

But that is _not_ the big story here!

As a southern Oregon local and long term resident of the region the Kim Family story capitivated me from the beginning. This interest has become almost obsessive as I blogged the event – almost play by play – as “Joe Duck”.

The Kim story is the triumph of a mother and children surviving the wilderness after nine days, and a father heroically challenging that wilderness in an unsuccessful, tragic hike to save them. It’s the story of an enormous and sometimes heroic search and rescue effort that was well intentioned at all times, but plagued by many of the bureaucratic forces that are likely to be proposed as the solution to future problems in Oregon. Perhaps more than anything the Kim Story is remarkable because it has touched the lives of millions around the world, millions who saw in the Kim’s happy family their own family and the life-shattering consequences of a single wrong turn on what appeared to be a passable road.

Laptops!, Step right up and get your laptops! Only $100!

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$100 Laptop Website
News for the Community
Wiki

I love the $100 laptop project. It is hard to know this early on how the developing world children – and adults – are going to make use of these gadgets but if we let recent history be our guide it’s sure to shake things up a bit when you put a browser and a word processor in the hands of many more millions. Governments are stepping up to the plate and starting to buy these for their schools and children. Most importantly this device will accelerate the development of key skills and will pull the 1st and 3rd world together in ways that we can’t predict.

I’m confident we are now starting to dig into the meaty part of the most profound change in human communication since the invention of … language. Let’s hope we make mostly good use of this amazing global social connectivity.

More: www.cnn.com

Malaria initiative coming from Gates Foundation and White House – bravo!

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You’ve gotta love the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for simply outstanding efforts on behalf of the hundreds of millions who suffer from preventable diseases, lack of water, and lack of education. I also want to give the President some kudos for this coming public recognition of malaria and global health as extremely pressing problems of modern times. History will judge us harshly if we fail to tackle these problems NOW as awareness, funding, and political priorities are bringing the solutions within our reach.

The following press release just came in:

December 11, 2006

Major Commitment to Global Fight Against Malaria

New grants to expand malaria control, research, and advocacy efforts

At White House summit, Melinda Gates to call for stronger global malaria response, more funding

Contact:

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Phone: 206.709.3400
Email: media@gatesfoundation.org

SEATTLE — On the eve of a major White House summit on malaria, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed $83.5 million in new grants to combat the disease, which claims more than one million lives every year. The grants will expand access to bednets, treatment, and other malaria control tools; speed research on vaccines and other new prevention methods; and boost global advocacy to fight the disease. Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, will speak at the White House summit on December 14.

“Every day, thousands of mothers watch helplessly as their children die from a disease that we have known how to prevent for decades,” Mrs. Gates said. “The continuing toll of malaria is a moral outrage-we would not allow it here in the U.S., and we should not allow it anywhere.”

“The world is finally waking up to the malaria catastrophe,” Mrs. Gates continued. “It’s time to close the gap in funding, accelerate research, and work together in a more strategic way to strengthen the global malaria fight.”

The upcoming White House malaria summit, hosted by President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, will convene 250 political leaders, scientists, and advocates to discuss new opportunities to combat malaria globally and kick off new public-private efforts to address the disease.

Interesting: is this be a realistic death toll from DDT ban? 

MORE INFORMATION

Bravo Branson

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Richard Branson, in this Forbes article, does a fine job of articulating how and why entrepreneurial capitalism and social responsibility can work together in vibrant ways.   Branson recently pledged to give *all profits* from his tranportation companies to projects that are working to alleviate global warming.     Although I’d rather see the money go to global health initiatives it’s admirable and exciting to see how socially proactive the “super rich” like Branson, Gates, and Buffett have become.     In fact it almost seems to be “infectious” which bodes well for a world desparately in need of innovative thinking combined with big money to fund clever projects.

I’d like to see a study of what may be a natural tension when Governments do a “really good job” at eliminating significant problems because it puts bureaucrats out of work and shrinks budgets.   Could this help explain why governments often seem to spend so much and accomplish so little when it comes to solving significant problems?