Archive for July 18, 2008

Energy Crisis? Blame Manhattan Landlords

Unsurprisingly, especially in the winter, this entire island is a humongous waste of energy. While my law firm turns off the lights in the elevator lobbies to save energy, that’s small pennies compared to the amount we squander on heat during the winter. Every pre-war residential apartment building (“brownstone”) throughout Manhattan – i.e., almost every residential building – uses the single most wasteful winter heating system ever conceived of by mortal man (right).

Enemy of the People.

If you’ve ever lived in a brownstone, you’ll know the terror of which I speak. It’s the little metal abomination that, together with the heat pipe, somehow manages to raise your apartment’s temperature to the mid-90s despite the fact that it’s snowing outside. It’s the reason you have to open the window just to stave off heat stroke. Turning it off isn’t an option. The heat pipe is centrally controlled by someone who doesn’t have to live in the hell they’re creating, and the radiator, I’m told, can’t be turned off without imperiling the safety of the entire building.

What kind of sick operation, fully aware of our dependence on foreign oil and $4 gasoline, squanders valuable fuel by heating an entire island twenty-five degrees above the comfort zone? I can only chalk this criminal waste up to corrupt incentives somewhere in the supply chain, and the truly legendary inertia of the Manhattan landlord (why install a better heating system when you can get a new, less annoying tenant just by sneezing?). But something has to change. Quite apart from comfort, if all of Manhattan could slice their winter heating bills in half, we’d be taking a sizable bite out of our national energy crisis.

Defining Feminism, and McCain’s Anti-Feminist Record

Feminism is an umbrella term that demands very little.  While academics can debate the finer points of the ideology, parse the movement into “waves,” and wrangle with MacKinnon and Dworkin, the result is a “big tent” philosophy united on the single, unoffensive, and simple point that women are entitled to the same rights and respect as men, and ought to have the same choices as men. 

Choice is the operative word there.  While the right tries endlessly to equate the entire philosophy with its radicals - we’ve all heard from conservative pundits that, apparently, ”feminists hate stay-at-home moms” – feminism doesn’t require that women do anything with their lives, other than what they want.  And that’s the beauty of it. One can be a feminist lawyer, a feminist soldier, a femimist stay-at-home mom, or even a feminist man.  It’s all about respect, and the freedom to choose.

A freedom that, in whatever form it takes, John McCain opposes (kudos to Judith Warner).  McCain’s idea of women is one who has no choice but to get pregnant (no birth control), stay pregnant (no abortion), and, dare she work, get paid less (no equal pay).  Make no mistake: John McCain will do no favor for women.

Scientific Due Process, Part 1: Why & How the Law Mediates Science

Editor’s introduction: I would like this post to become the first in a series about the nature of science, and its intersection with law and public policy. I have a great deal of interest in the subject – in fact, my note for my Journal is on this very subject – and I think some of the readers here have the same interest. Since it’s an ongoing series, please leave a comment if you like the topic, don’t like the topic, or have an idea for the way the topic should go.

The Problem of Pseudoscience

Science is dangerous. In the context of a public policy debate, the invocation of science to justify, oppose, or recontour the issue in controversy either removes an element of the debate from contest, or elevates it to another level, where (ideally) objective fact must be met by objective fact, subject to the procedural rigors of the scientific method. In most cases, though, proffered scientific arguments are accepted at face value: science connotes objectivity and trustworthiness, and requires expert training to give it a closer look. Since most of us lack that level of training, we must trust the expert’s assertion that the science is correct: the use of science to debate public issues, then, carries with it an implicit promise that the expert’s scientific knowledge is being used correctly, in good faith, and with the benefit of experience. The scientist has to act as the fiduciary of the public, leading the untrained wisely and without prejudice or bias. In return, in the abscence of proof to the contrary, we assume good faith on the part of the social-minded scientists.

Thus, the problem of pseudoscience. While we in the public sphere are conditioned to trust science, and scientists, the potential for largescale abuse of trust lurks just beneath the surface. As Answers in Genesis and Expelled have shown us, dressing anything up as “science” automatically puts your opponent on weaker footing, because they then have to rebut the contention of special expertise or disprove the “science” scientifically, before even addressing the merits of the underlying argument. While science may be a wise policy guide, to the unprincipled, it can become a shield for bad ideas. Continue reading »

Democracy in America: Democracy in Iraq

Unsurprisingly, I agree with the New York Times: especially if Iraq wants us out, it’s time to get out of Iraq. While I’ve previously wondered aloud about whether pulling out of Iraq is the right thing to do, especially since we knew (or would have known, absent a lying president and a complicit press corps) that going in that Iraq was a long-term commitment, when the rebuilding nation’s will comes into play, our task must inevitably narrow, lest our presence subtly transition from nation-building to occupation.

It’s also well past time that we transition from our futile and naive “democracy-building” mission back to focusing on our initial causus belli: fighting terrorism (remember that?). Especially If Obama plans to draw down troops but not entirely abandon the Iraqis – his plan incorporates residual forces tasked with derailing Al Qaeda – we can call this a “victory,” as long as “victory” is realistically defined.

That will mean abandoning the goal of building perfect democracy in Iraq.

While I acknowledge the honor and raw optimism – dare I say, the audacity of hope? – behind the pipe-dream of building lasting western democracy in Iraq, that goal was never realistic, and it completely failed to account for the importance that historical tradition plays in building democracy. Looking back on our own history, the Anglo-Saxon democratic model grew over the course of a thousand years, a thousand injustices, and a thousand sacrifices. The stunning realization that democracy is “the worst of all forms of government, except all the others that’ve been tried” is a realization bought by blood and the passage of time. Democracy never grows by fiat, it never grows without a fertile historical tradition, and if forced on a nation before its time, it’s never quite right. We need only look at Russia’s slow slide to despotism, and Algeria’s tragicomic early-90s democratic experiment, which ended with the election of an anti-democracy party. Without the proper historical soil, democracy just doesn’t “take”: while we needn’t abandon all hope on Iraq’s democratic experiment, we mustn’t expect it to work perfectly or quickly. It may yet work out, but we can’t “hold our breath.”

And here is John McCain’s problem. All of the experience in the world can’t save America, and can’t save Iraq, unless it’s applied to sensible goals. What we need from our next president is experience, yes, but experience plus perspective.