Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 679
August 27, 2016
They have the money and the political power: Wealthy whites are more represented than people of color at every level of government
(Credit: Yuri_Arcurs via iStock)
Though much political science research and news coverage focuses on federal and state level politics, most Americans interact far more often with municipal government. Yet research at this level is difficult: The data available is sparse and tends to be of uneven quality. New research by leading scholars, however, suggests that municipal representation is as unequal as national representation, and that wealthy whites get more representation than low-income people and people of color.
For many Americans, municipal governance affects their lives far more than far off Washington bureaucrats. Though the increasing “nationalization” of elections and the destruction of local media make it difficult for Americans to keep apace, city politics have large effects on them personally. According to the Census Bureau, in 2012 all levels of government (federal, state and local) employed 22 million people. Of those employees, 14 million, or 73 percent were local employees.
As leading scholar of municipal politics, Jessica Trounstine has noted, issues like housing, education, crime, drugs and gun control, which are considered among the most important matters for Americans, are the province of local governments. She finds that 85 percent of Americans believe local elections are important and that Americans view their local government far more favorably than the federal government. Zoning, libraries, waste, teaching and policing, municipal governments are at the center of many of the most important public debates.
After Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, reporters noted that though the city was 29 percent white, five out of six city council members and the mayor were white. (Increased turnout among black residents has lead to a more diverse council.) As political scientists Brian Schaffner, Wouter Van Erve and Ray LaRaja have documented, while there weren’t large turnout gaps between black and white residents in the 2012 presidential election, there were large disparities in the midterm election (see chart).
In a report that I provided research assistance for, Demos policy analyst Karen Shanton finds that city councils in diverse cities are frequently far whiter than the community they represent. Using the International City/County Management Association’s 2011 Municipal Form of Government Survey, Demos has found that 1 in 6 African-Americans where they are underrepresented on their council (compared with 1 in 66 whites). About 77,000 African-Americans live in communities where they make up more than half of the population but hold only one or even no seats on the local council.
Disparities at the municipal level
In an early and pioneering study on representation at the municipal level, political scientists Chris Tausanovitch and Christopher Warshaw used survey data to measure the policy conservatism (or liberalism) of every town or city with a population that’s greater than 20,000. They have found that policies, such as how much cities tax and spend and how regressive their taxes are, tend to reflect the ideology of citizens. They also have observed that preferences at the municipal and federal levels tend to be quite consistent. (There are few people who want to live in a conservative city under a liberal federal government.) Tausanovitch and Warshaw also discerned that variations in political structure don’t dramatically affect representation.
Their pioneering work was unable to study key questions, however, such as whether race and class affect representation. Rather than use survey data, Brian Schaffner, Jesse Rhodes and Ray La Raja employ the ideology measure developed by Catalist, a data vendor used by progressive organizations and campaigns for voter targeting. This allows for granular analysis, because Catalist has an estimate of ideology, race (except when it is on the voter file) and wealth for every American. In a new working paper, discussed here for the first time, Schaffner, Rhodes and Raja have found that municipal governments are more responsive to the preferences of white people and wealthy individuals.
Their sample included the residents, council members and mayors of 449 towns and cities across the country. The first thing they uncovered was deep race and gender divides between the general population and the council members representing them. While white men make up 34 percent of the population, they are 69 percent of all mayors and council members in the sample. Women of color make up 12 percent of the population, but only 3 percent of the politicians in the sample. As political scientist Daniel Smith has noted, it may be useful to weight according to city population, but on its face, this data is quite troubling.
To examine representation, Schaffner, Rhodes and Raja explored two measures shown in the charts below. First, they used a measure called “distance in means.” Put simply, they take the mean of the ideology of citizens (measured on a 0 to 100 scale, with 0 being the most conservative) compared with the mean for the ideologies of members of the city council. Second, they use a measure called “overlap in distributions,” which compares how similarly the distributions of ideology compare (using a Bhattacharyya coefficient, a measure of overlap that goes from 0 to 1, with zero indicating no overlap).
The chart below helps illustrate how this works. On the top, the charts show three cities where the council members represent the low-income citizens well: The distribution of council members’ ideology on a right to left continuum, represented by the blue bars is similar to the distribution that of the low-income citizens, represented by the green line. The taller bars represent when multiple members have a similar ideological score.
On the bottom are three cities where the ideological makeup of the elected officials is not representative of the ideology of the low-income citizens. The ideologies of these officials are all more conservative (a lower score indicates more conservatism) than the preferences of the low-income citizens. This lack of representation is the norm throughout the sample. Schaffner told Salon, “The average member of a town/city council is 10 points more conservative than the average member of the low wealth group.”
The charts below show for 449 towns the relationships between group size and representation, using both measures discussed above (and indicating for each town the arithmetic mean for the ideology of citizens there). In the top charts, a lower score means more representation because the gap between preferences of the constituents and preferences of council members are closer. In the bottom charts, a higher score suggests more representation because it indicates more overlap between the council members and the group. The charts suggest that white representation is relatively stable no matter what share of the population they represent.
African-Americans and Latinos don’t receive similar representation to whites until they make up at least half of the population. In a city where black people make up half of the population, the mean for the ideologies of the black constituents is 20 points away from the mean for the ideologies of councilors. In cities where whites make up half the population, the mean for the ideologies of the white constituents is 10 points away from the mean for that of the councilors.
The three scholars also examined wealth and representation. They have found that low-wealth people also have less representation unless they make up a large share of the population, while middle- and high-wealth people are well-represented no matter what share of the population they comprise.
Summarizing their work, Schaffner told Salon, “Scholars have documented disturbing inequalities at the state and federal level; we find that these inequalities exist at the municipal level as well.”
Added Schaffner: “Our findings suggests that in town councils that deal with issues central to people’s lives — their children’s schools, policing and their community — the rich rule. And they rule regardless of how little of the town’s population they comprise.”
There are numerous factors that could contribute to this: For one, as leading scholars on municipal politics Jessica Trounstine and Zoltan Hajnal have shown, turnout is far lower and more stratified by race and class in city elections than for national ones. They also find that higher turnout could increase representation for people of color and lead to better legislative outcomes. Campaign finance could also play a role. My research on Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Miami-Dade County has found that the political donors in these communities are overwhelmingly white, male and wealthy.
Wealthy people are also more likely to contact their representatives. In their study of the wealthy, Jason Seawright, Larry Bartels and Benjamin Page found, “Most of our respondents supplied the title or position of the federal government official with whom they had their most important recent contact. Several offered the officials’ names, occasionally indicating that they were on a first-name basis” with, say, Rahm Emanuel, then President Obama’s chief of staff, or David Axelrod, his former chief political counsel.
These researchers determined that 55 percent of the wealthy in their survey reported having contacted public officials, compared to just 21 percent of those with an income below 30,000. Former state Senator and political scientist Jeff Smith has found that constituent contact affects the passage of bills, suggesting that this inequality in interactions could affect legislative outcomes. Economist James Feigenbaum and political scientist Andrew Hall have uncovered, “Higher-income census tracts make more requests for government services.” High-income citizens are also more likely to use smartphones to request services.
Feigenbaum and Hall find that this disparity in making requests also leads to inequality in service delivery. A robust public financing system and on-cycle elections (when local elections synchronize with national ones) would increase representation. In addition, mobilizing and organizing working-class constituents would also lead to better representation. The difficulty is mobilizing Americans to participate in a system that all too often ignores their preferences.
August 26, 2016
The kids are (going to be) all right: Our special snowflakes are leaving home — to make the world better
(Credit: Mettus via Shutterstock)
The telltale signs started appearing over the winter. Pyrex containers of leftover starchy foods piling up in the fridge. He’d always loved my breakfasts.
“Mom, stop with the French toast!”
“What about just toast toast?”
“Mom!”
Then there was that tower of bath towels.
“Mom, I haven’t even graduated yet.”
“There was a sale at Bed Bath & Beyond.”
“It’s February!”
“OK I’ll put them away until August.”
Only there’s nowhere near enough storage space in the bathroom that my husband, son and I share. So the first thing I see every day? A set of bath sheets balanced on top of the commode. The last thing before going to bed at night? The reminder that he will be leaving us.
“Are you trying to breastfeed that cat?” My husband asked, when he caught me swaddling our tabby in a throw blanket.
“Don’t be absurd. That would be insane.”
But I am coming unhinged because it’s August and I’m on the empty-nesting countdown.
We’ve had our share of parental highlights, like his baseball tournaments and jazz band concerts. But it’s the little moments that bring on the waves of weepy nostalgia. There was the day when the joy of reading kicked in and he announced, “My brain is exploding! In a good way!” The time he uploaded a video of me warbling a Judy Collins song for the amusement of his friends, but then let me braid his hair into pigtails like Pippi Longstocking. It only cost me five bucks — and just five more to post it on social media.
Those halcyon August afternoons, punting a kickball with so much force it sent our sneakers sailing through the air. It’s August, the backyard is empty, and there are only 336 hours, 20 minutes and 17 seconds left that he will be living under our roof. But who’s counting?
I am mourning the reliability of bake sales, back-to-school nights and that dirty tube sock wedged into the kitchen corner.
Snap out of it, I tell myself. Focus on the forms to fill out, checks to be written and boxes of towels to ship to his college dorm room.
“Don’t take nude photos and upload them to the internet! Neither a borrower nor a lender be!”
“I’m going out, Mom.”
“Floss anyway!”
“I’ll call you later, Mom.”
I worry about him and all the fledglings that are leaving their nests. He and his peers are coming of age under the specter of domestic terrorism and climate change, and their economic security seems less certain than it was for my generation. For the first time in 130 years, young Americans between the ages of 18 to 34 are more likely to be living in their parents’ home than they are to be living with a spouse or partner in their own household. It might be too soon to turn his bedroom into an Airbnb.
But theirs is also a generation that defies definition. There’s a widely held perception that the ample time they have spent on electronic devices has left them with a deficit of empathy and wisdom. They’re the “iGeneration,” and they’re native to the “The Shallows.” But emerging evidence suggests that their generation is deeply interested in justice and equality. A new study has pointed to 90 percent support of LGBTQ rights among this group already known for being nonjudgmental. And I’ve had a front-row seat to their acts of inclusion and class acceptance, which give me hope.
Take prom night. We parents hovered on the lawn, staking out the best spots to photograph this deliriously diverse posse. A fresh-faced Chinese, Jewish lesbian wrestled with her artisanal mash-up boutonniere, handcrafted by her date’s mother. A wild-haired Athena, flaunting her curves, executed a series of exuberant dance moves. A multiracial same-sex couple intertwined hands as a trio linked arms and compared thrift shop smocks paired with combat boots. Together, they were a compelling example of a society transforming for the better: Some of these seniors are headed for the Ivy League, some to community colleges and others to more uncertain futures. In my own graduating class of 1980, these different strata of students rarely mixed.
Early the next morning, I awoke to a house full of sleeping teenagers. Diego, a faux-rabbit fur cape resting on his shoulders, perused “The Little Book of Big Boobs” in our breakfast nook. He’s a fan of photography and had been poring over our collection of Taschen books.
“Would you like a cup of tea and toast?”
“Yes, please.”
I placed a pot of strawberry jam on the table.
“Do you have a butter knife?” he asked.
“A butter knife? Sure.”
I dutifully located one and joined him for breakfast. Diego inquired about my work and listened with interest as I described the life of a freelancer. I suggested he might enjoy the Cindy Sherman exhibit “Imitation of Life” and offered him a ride to the subway. His family lives in a dusty corner of the San Fernando Valley, a train ride and two bus transfers away from our home.
On the way to the station, Diego spoke of his medical school aspirations. He’ll be getting a job and enrolling in a community college while he saves up to transfer to a four-year institution.
“Sounds like you’ve got a plan.”
“Uh, huh,” he said, with a bit less certainty than he’d mustered only 30 seconds earlier. As I pulled up to the station, he squeezed my hand and made good eye contact just like I always remind my son to do.
“I really enjoyed our talk, Ezra’s mom.”
“Me too, Diego.”
O brave new world that has such Lulus and Lucias, Autrys and Alitheas, Reasons and Gifts in it! We are sending our special snowflakes into the world with names as individual as the paths they hope to carve out for themselves. I marveled as Diego, with his fondness for specialized cutlery, disappeared into the crowd. I will miss these singular creatures almost as much as my own singleton.
If you should drive past my home and spot a woman cradling a cat in a rocker, please rest assured, she is not — I repeat, not — trying to breastfeed that cat. That would be ridiculous. Everyone knows that cats’ tongues are like sandpaper, right?
Barack and Michelle’s first date: “He thought she could teach him a thing or two”
Tika Sumpter and Parker Sawyers in "Southside with You" (Credit: Miramax)
Parker Sawyers gets a breakout role as a young Barack Obama in the lovely, appealing romance “Southside with You.” The film chronicles the first date between Obama and Michelle Robinson (a wonderful Tika Sumpter). The film is set on a day in 1989 when Barack invites her to a meeting. He picks her up early, hoping to get to know Michelle that day, taking her to an art gallery, buying her a sandwich for lunch in a park and eventually catching a screening of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”
“Southside with You” gives Sawyers a plum role as the future president, which includes scenes of Obama orating in a church, moments of tenderness between the lovers, as well as a few frank discussions of race and class.
The actor radiates an easygoing charm and flashes a dazzling smile. Salon spoke with Sawyers about playing the president, a favorite first date of his own and racial and social politics.
What was the best (or worst) first date you ever had?
Best date. . . . Let’s see. I suppose [with] my wife. Do I have to say that? We went for dinner, dancing and then we talked and made out on the hood on her car outside my buddy’s apartment until 6 in the morning. The worst one, hmm. . . . I think I accidentally got drunk. I had as many as I could handle but I hadn’t eaten. I didn’t say anything offensive. I wasn’t rude. But I was dumb.
Did you feel pressure playing not just a real person but Barack Obama?
It was all right, actually. I suppose if I was the actual president that would be way harder. I was happy to be the lead in a film, have a job and be on location. There were so many words and emotions to figure out. I got to the work and just had to do it.
How did you prepare to play the president’s younger self? What research did or could you do on the character?
I read “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.” I watched videos of him when he was younger. I worked on the voice and had a strong impersonation already in my back pocket. I removed some layers from that, so it wasn’t a direct impersonation.
What do you think was the essence of Barack’s personality and motivation during this date?
The motivation was he was really enamored and smitten with this woman. I wanted to play him as someone who knows himself well. He was confident and intelligent. He thought he could learn something from her. He thought she could teach him a thing or two. That was why he was interested in her. He was playful but wasn’t playing games with her.
How did you work on your chemistry with your co-star, Tika?
We had it from the get-go. Maybe that’s why I was cast? It just worked. We rehearsed via Skype when I was in London [before shooting]. When I flew into Chicago we rehearsed for four days but we rehearsed mostly as individuals, so we were getting to know each other when we were together. I didn’t know her reactions [to what I’m saying] so I could smile back or look away as the scene unfolded.
There’s a lovely scene at the art gallery where the characters talk about cultural touchstones — “Good Times” for example, and basketball. What can you say about the cultural images and stereotypes that Barack had versus the ones you grew up with?
They were very aware of who they were in 1989, but they also understood that there is always progress that needs to be made. They would usher in a new wave of progress. I’m a black man in 2016, and I am glad to be a part of that.
What do you think about the film’s discussions of race and class?
It is an ongoing narrative in America. It’s part of our thread of the past and hopefully it unravels in the future and is no longer a thread. It’s an unfortunate circumstance, but it is the truth right now.
They had to work to get to where they are in the film and then . . . they had to work even harder to get even further.
They bettered themselves and their community and, in a wider sense, America.
Parker, what did you think about the speech Barack gives about “letting go of judgment?”
One of the things I realized that was similar between me and President Obama in the film was that I’m about letting go of judgment, especially when it’s kids who are 25 holding grudges against their parents. I became a father at 26, and I still mess up some things. That’s how life is. It’s hard for me to judge my parents strictly or to hold onto a grudge because people are people and they make mistakes — as long as it’s not “I’m going to hurt you.” We all mess up. I don’t know anyone who is perfect. We’re all flawed and fractured.
ESPN’s “Undefeated Conversation” about race and violence disproportionately burdens black players
LeBron James (Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II)
The promotional video for ESPN’s “An Undefeated Conversation: Athletes, Responsibility, and Violence,” ended with a slew of young people ripping silver duct tape off their mouths. The message was clear: With the help of their corporate overlord, athletes would finally break their silence about violence wrought upon the black community. Each strip of tape had a name scrawled upon it, but unlike the diverse bunch of young people, the names all had something in common. “LeBron,” “Melo,” “Curry,” “Paul,” “Wade.” They are all black players.
The trouble, of course, is that these athletes have already spoken out about gun violence and police brutality. Thursday evening’s televised special was inspired by Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James’s powerful statement at the ESPY awards. Steph Curry has spoken out about how gun violence that claims the lives of children affects him as a father, a clip that was played at one point during the evening. The silence of black athletes when it comes to race and violence has long been broken. But they could sure use some white company.
At one point in the evening, the special’s host, Jemele Hill, did pay lip service to the notion that white athletes also have political obligations to the black community, but the special’s treatment of the idea was entirely superficial, and undermined by its structure. (Beginning with its significantly delayed start because the network was unwilling to prioritize the serious conversation over a Little League game.)
The very combination of crimes committed by and against laypeople and police brutality in the same discussion belied a confusion about the origins of the latter; the fact that the evening focused overwhelmingly on the former felt like a capitulation to ugly, Giuliani-esque views. Setting aside the practical point that police brutality in a community is not correlated with its rates of violent crime, the distinction between so-called “black-on-black” crime and blue-on-black crime is philosophical as well.
Private citizens have little to no control over the behavior of other private citizens, violent and illegal or no. This is a feature, not a bug. Private citizens, in theory, have a great deal of control over the behavior of armed agents of the state via the elected officials who hire them, fire them, set the policies they operate by, and ensure those policies are enforced. Again, this is by design. Citizens ought to have this power over their government and are thus responsible to call out its prejudice and incompetence. Citizens ought not be able to dictate the actions of other citizens, regardless of whether they share the same skin tone, and thus bear incredibly limited responsibility for their actions. (This notion, by the way, that our governments work for us is a decidedly conservative ideal. That the right abandons it readily when discussing carnage wrought upon communities of color is grossly revealing.)
When the ESPN “Conversation” did, occasionally, touch upon the idea of systemic reform, rather than calling out black youth and parents for their respective misdeeds and inaction, it often did so in problematic ways. At one point, a retired police officer complained that the streets would be safer if more young people — the small fraction of black youth he characterized as violent — spent a longer time in jail.
In contrast, the special’s most powerful moments served as implicit rebuttals to these common conservative narratives. Successful black commentators, athletes and activists described their own brushes with violence, on the receiving and perpetrating ends, illustrations of the moral heroism required to overcome the psychological manifestation of a lifetime bearing the brunt of systemic brutality via violence, poverty and segregation.
We heard a story of a young man who, growing up in Compton, assumed that lethal violence was omnipresent, and got a gun before heading off to Buffalo. But he got rid of the gun when he realized it made him more inclined to escalate peaceful situations, and to perceive other black men as threats. Another panelist described his strategy while working security for a prominent black athlete, and his attempts to deescalate and diffuse situations through calm, reasoned dialogue rather than force. Sitting next to a cop who’d suggested longer sentences for seemingly irredeemable violent youth, this panelist elaborated on his own violent history, inspired by a dearth of successful black role models save the gangsters on his block. In doing so, he inadvertently highlighted the problem with ESPN’s narrative.
The very title of the special and its decision to focus almost exclusively on the responsibility of black athletes to condemn and confront violence suggests that engaging in politics is, for them, a choice, a responsibility to shirk or to live up to. But to be a successful minority in America is an inescapably political act. If anything, athletes who are able to overcome substantial systemic disadvantages to achieve material comfort and cultural cachet are more entitled to an overly optimistic view of America, wherein personal agency can solve all ills, than their privileged white counterparts. It is a testament to their humility that they’ve chosen, instead, to be vocal participants in and advocates for black America. It’s long past time for their white teammates to be the same.
Hillary Clinton hasn’t held a news conference since December — but NPR has proven why it’s not media blackout
FILE - In this Aug. 17, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at campaign event at John Marshall High School in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) (Credit: AP)
One of the circulating scandals surrounding Hillary Clinton is that she hasn’t held a news conference in 265 days (and counting!), leading to allegations that she has something to hide or is trying to “run-out the clock.”
The Clinton camp denies this, and has begun to claim that she has given more than 300 interviews this year alone. To prove it, they provided NPR with a list of interviews through the end of July. NPR “made minor corrections after conferring with the campaign, and analyzed the results,” finding some interesting things.
Clinton by far gave the most interviews to television (both national and local) and local radio. Those three account for 81% of the interviews she’s given this year. Despite her affinity for television, she rarely appears on Sunday shows, usually considered a staple of a politician’s press diet. (Trump, for reference, has appeared on twice as many Sunday shows as she has this year — 43 to 22.)
Most of her interviews only last for between three and eight minutes — short enough that the reporters don’t have the time to ask follow-up questions or really press her on the issues. In nearly a fifth of the interviews she gave, they weren’t with what NPR considers a journalist or reporter. One radio host gave her an astrological reading.
That radio host happens to host a show on an R&B station in Detroit, and the interview was given just before the Michigan primary, keeping in line with another of Clinton’s media strategies: “Clinton turned frequently to broadcasters and targeted publications who reach Latino and African-American voters, both key elements of the Democratic electorate.”
U.S., Russia renew push for elusive agreement on Syria
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) during a bilateral meeting focused on the Syrian crisis in Geneva, Switzerland August 26, 2016. (Credit: Reuters)
GENEVA (AP) — The United States and Russia on Friday renewed efforts to secure a military and humanitarian cooperation agreement for war-torn Syria after months of hesitation, missed deadlines and failed attempts to forge a truce.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the talks on Syria with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were “excellent” as they took a lunchtime break from meetings in Geneva as part of a new U.S. effort to enlist Russia as a partner in Syria as fighting becomes more volatile and complicated with the introduction of Turkish ground forces. But well into Friday night the talks were continuing, with the ministers meeting and breaking to consult with staff, diplomats said.
Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. envoy for Syria, joined the conversations in the early afternoon, and told The Associated Press after the break: “We are still working.”
Ahead of the discussions, neither Washington nor Moscow had signaled that an overall agreement is imminent, although progress appears to have been made in one critical battleground: the besieged city of Aleppo, where the United Nations has been clamoring for a 48-hour cease-fire so humanitarian aid can be shipped into the city.
Asked to describe the main impediment to a nationwide ceasefire in Syria as he sat down with Kerry, Lavrov said: “I don’t want to spoil the atmosphere for the negotiations.” Kerry did not speak and it was not immediately clear if either man would address reporters after their talks, which include discussions about the crisis in Ukraine.
On Thursday, U.N. officials said Russia was on board for the temporary pause in fighting in and around Aleppo. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry simply reiterated its general support for a ceasefire to open an aid corridor, and was waiting for the U.N. to announce it is ready.
The three-point plan for Aleppo, which U.N. officials say now needs the approval of two rebel groups and the Syrian government, would involve road convoys both from Damascus and across the Turkish border through the critical Castello Road artery. Another mission would go to southern Aleppo to help revive a damaged electric plant that powers crucial pumping stations that supply water for 1.8 million people.
Kerry was to meet with de Mistura separately later Friday in Geneva.
Expectations are low for the talks, particularly given how efforts to forge a new U.S.-Russia understanding have fallen short virtually every month for the past five years. At the same time, the administration is not of one mind regarding the Russians. The Pentagon has publicly complained about getting drawn into greater cooperation with Russia even though it has been forced recently to expand communication with Moscow. Last week, the U.S. had to call for Russian help when Syrian warplanes struck an area not far from where U.S. troops were operating.
Despite the apparent incremental progress on Aleppo, U.S. officials are keen to broaden the focus and hammer out a diplomatic initiative that would see greater military cooperation with Russia that could lead to a resumption of talks on a political transition. However, previous efforts to set target dates for the start of the transition process have failed, most recently when an early August timeline had to be abandoned.
U.S. officials say it is imperative that Russia use its influence with Syrian President Bashar Assad to halt all attacks on moderate opposition forces, open humanitarian aid corridors, and concentrate any offensive action on the Islamic State group and other extremists not covered by what has become a largely ignored truce. For their part, U.S. officials say they are willing to press rebels groups they support harder on separating themselves from the Islamic State and al-Nusra, which despite a recent name change is still viewed as al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria.
Those goals are not new, but recent developments have made achieving them even more urgent and important, according to U.S. officials. Recent developments include military operations around the city of Aleppo, the entry of Turkey into the ground war, Turkish hostility toward U.S.-backed Kurdish rebel groups and the presence of American military advisers in widening conflict zones.
Meanwhile, in a blow to the opposition, rebel forces and civilians in the besieged Damascus suburb of Daraya were to be evacuated on Friday after agreeing to surrender the town late Thursday after four years of grueling bombardment and a crippling siege that left the sprawling area in ruins. The surrender of Daraya, which became an early symbol of the nascent uprising against President Bashar Assad, marks a success for his government, removing a persistent threat only a few miles from his seat of power.
Baby dolls aren’t birth control: School-issued fake babies aren’t stopping teen pregnancy
(Credit: Calvste via Shutterstock)
From this week’s department of No Kidding, Everybody, a new Australian study published Thursday found giving teenage girls dolls to deter them from getting pregnant doesn’t work. In fact, girls from schools that use “baby simulator” programs are actually 36 percent more likely to become pregnant by the time they’re 20 than those in schools that don’t. Apparently, dolls are not birth control. Huh.
The study’s results, published in The Lancet, involved 2,800 girls at 57 western Australian schools from the ages 13 to 15, following them until they turned 20. The RealCare baby dolls are supposed to be a boot camp — the dolls cry, fuss and require feeding and diaper changing. They’re part of an educational curriculum designed to show girls “the physical, emotional, social, and financial consequences of becoming pregnant and dealing with parenthood.” The Reality Works company that produces them promises that its product “provides unforgettable lessons” for use in teen pregnancy prevention, as well as child care. They’re also not cheap, costing around 1,200 Australian dollars each.
In a statement this week to ABC News, the company argued that the study “was not a representation of our curriculum and simulator learning modality but the researchers ‘adaptation’ and is consequently not reflective of our product nor its efficacy.” Reality Works says the study tracked girls who’d put in “a mere 2.5 hours” of hands-on time. ABC also notes that the simulators are used in 89 countries, including the U.S.
Of course, small scale studies are imperfect vessels. But if, as the study’s lead author Sally Brinkman says, one result of these experiments is that “A lot of the teenagers become attached to their fake babies,” one can understand how that might not be the intended result. The findings also cite other studies that suggest that “few girls believed caring for their own infant would be the same as caring for a simulated infant.” Is this like how video games don’t actually prepare one for driving? Likewise, is it any shock that here in the U.S., the states with abstinence-only sex education have the highest teen pregnancy rates? Things that tend not to be effective: initiatives that try to dissuade teens from having sex or flat out pretend that they don’t.
So, what does help? Surprisingly, two years ago, the National Bureau of Economic Research found a correlation between areas of high viewership of MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” and declining adolescent birth rates. Researchers concluded that the show likely “had an influence on teens’ thinking regarding birth control and abortion.” So maybe actual human experience trumps playing with dolls.
But you know what really seems to do the job in preventing pregnancy? Birth control. Last year, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released its findings that after offering free, long-term birth control options across the state, the teen birthrate dipped by 40 percent, and the abortion rate dropped by 42 percent over a four year period. And the biggest changes were in the poorest communities.
As Peggy Orenstein masterfully explained in her book “Girls & Sex,” the climate around sex education for females is centered on telling them what not to do: Don’t be a victim. Don’t get pregnant. Don’t. As she told Salon earlier this year, “And then we tell them to go into their sexual encounters with a sense of equality. How is that supposed to happen?” When education gets real about female sexuality, including healthy relationships and birth control, girls have better odds of controlling their own reproductive futures. No, a doll won’t directly lead to unplanned pregnancy, but unrealistic initiatives won’t curtail it either. And in an editorial accompanying the Lancet study, Dr Julie Quinlivan of the University of Notre Dame put it simply when she said, “We cannot afford the quick fix, especially when it doesn’t work.”
Look Again: The day’s most compelling images from around the globe
An Afghan policeman stands guard after an attack at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, Afghanistan August 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail - RTX2MY8I (Credit: Reuters)
Amatrice, Italy Andrew Medichini/AP
A volunteer rests in a makeshift camp set up inside a gymnasium following the earthquake
There’s something dissonant about a natural disaster breaking into today’s news cycle. All deaths are on some level the same, and natural disasters always intersect with human decisions from infrastructure spending to government response. But when an earthquake kills people, the deaths are often assessed without recourse to politics. This picture captures a human responding to a human tragedy.
–Daniel Denvir, Staff Reporter
New York, NY Lucas Jackson/Reuters
Journalists walk among cardboard cutouts showing where attendees will sit for the 2016 MTV VMAs
I rewatched the final moments of the 2015 MTV VMAs after reading that Kanye West will get four minutes of free rein on stage this Sunday. Last year, while accepting the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, West declared his 2020 presidential candidacy. I laughed, but now Donald Trump is the GOP nominee.
–Sophia Tesfaye, Deputy Politics Editor
Hong Kong, China Bobby Yip/Reuters
A rabbit looks at a customer at the first rabbit cafe in Hong Kong
Four years of rabbit college, then 8 years of rabbit graduate school, and 2 more years doing a rabbit postdoc…for this? I would be better off driving for Uber!
–Chauncey DeVega, Politics Writer
Kabul, Afghanistan Mohammad Ismail/Reuters
An Afghan policeman stands guard after an attack at the American University of Afghanistan
Mohammad Ismail’s photograph, taken shortly after the attack on the American School in Kabul, captures the fragility of this particular foray into nation-building. It should be a strong composition, given the centered image of a soldier, the sharp lines defining the space behind him — and yet all the elements of the composition undermine that strength. The soldier drags his leg, almost daintily, and stares not at the camera but off into a distance, betraying what in another context would pass for wistful, but which here hints of weary.
–Scott Eric Kaufman, Assistant Editor
Watch Mika Brzezinski completely lose it over Donald Trump: “You have no idea what your words mean”
“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski on Friday reached her breaking point with respect to GOP nominee Donald Trump’s various threats and criticisms of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump this week stood by his veterans adviser, New Hampshire politician Al Baldisaro, who refused to apologize after suggesting Clinton face a firing squad for treason.
“Are you kidding me?” Brzezinki — an avowed Democrat — responded. “This actually happened … This is not the way we want to win, but Hillary Clinton needs to win this election because this is sick.”
Then, in an interview on Thursday with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the real estate mogul reiterated his claim that Clinton “is a bigot.”
“You have no idea what you words mean,” Brzezinski, staring coldly into the camera, told Trump. “I can’t pretend and sort of cover this fairly and put it in the veil of objectivity. This is wrong. You have no idea what your words mean and what you’re doing to this country.”
Trump insists Clinton 'is a bigot'… @morningmika: Donald Trump, you have no idea what your words mean https://t.co/YXAFYbnowl
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) August 26, 2016
Dysfunction in Obamacare: Dr. Kevin Campbell explains what’s next on Salon Talks
Health insurance giant Aetna made waves earlier this month when it announced its plan to pull out of 11 of the 15 states where it participates in the Obamacare exchanges.
Salon’s Carrie Sheffield sat down with cardiologist Dr Kevin Campbell on Thursday to explore what this actually means for the future of the much-maligned Affordable Care Act.
“Consumers are going to have less choice, more cost, more difficult access, in some cases in some states, there’s no choice in the exchanges,” Campbell said. “We’re seeing what many of us predicted: the implosion of the Affordable Care Act because it was just not sustainable.”
Basically, he sees one of two or three things happening: a Congressional bailout of insurance companies, fixing some of the holes in the ACA through legislation, or finally take the plunge and move towards single payer.
According to Campbell, insurers like Aetna are dropping out because Obamacare hasn’t done enough to lower health care costs, making insuring everyone too expensive. “What it doesn’t address is tort reform–limiting malpractice claims against physicians which really drives up cost,” Campbell said. “It does nothing to limit the cost of pharmaceuticals as we’ve seen evident in this weeks press on the expensive EpiPens and other price-gouging by pharmaceuticals.”
These high costs get passed onto the consumer, which means people but only the insurance they can afford, not what they need.
“On paper we look great, it’s great for the White House to put out these statistics,” Campbell said. “In reality, I still have tons of un- and under-insured patients coming into my office.”
Watch an excerpt of their discussion above.
