Month: October 2013

Perverse Incentives: Government Shutdown Edition

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2013-10-04 ParksShutdownAP

A friend on Facebook posted this quote from Thomas Sowell:

Back in my teaching days, one of the things I liked to ask the class to consider was this: Imagine a government agency with only two tasks: (1) building statues of Benedict Arnold and (2) providing life-saving medications to children. If this agency’s budget were cut, what would it do?

The answer, of course, is that it would cut back on the medications for children. Why? Because that would be what was most likely to get the budget cuts restored. If they cut back on building statues of Benedict Arnold, people might ask why they were building statues of Benedict Arnold in the first place.

He didn’t specify, but he didn’t have to: he’s talking about the political efforts to make the government shut down as painful as possible in order to score points for Democrats. Look: I can’t get all outraged about politicians playing politics. It’s what they do, and we’d be kidding ourselves to think otherwise. But I do think it’s important to try and keep a level head and track what’s really going on.

And here’s the story: in prior government shut downs the parks and memorial services have not been forcibly barred against visitors. Now? They are. The Obama administration is spending more money than would be spent on regular operations to add additional law enforcement and barricades to do things like preventing World War II vets from visiting their own memorial in the hopes that everyone will blame the Republicans. Well: the Republicans sure helped the shutdown along. But during Clinton-era shutdowns the Democratic President didn’t feel the need to spend supposedly non-existent federal dollars to prevent World War II vets from, for example, continuing to give tours at Pearl Harbor. (Daily Caller) 

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Historical Context: Every Previous Gov’t Shutdown in One Article

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2013-10-01 Govt Shutdown

The Washington Post has a rundown of all the past government shutdowns, starting in September of 1976. For each shutdown, the WaPo gives you dates, duration, the President, and which parties controlled each of the House and Senate, along with a basic overview of what caused the shutdown and what resolved it. There have been 17, if you’re curious. My quick breakdown of responsibility is based on looking at who controlled the House and Senate during each shutdown. If both were controlled by one party, I blamed them, otherwise I blamed both.

Democrats: 8, Republicans: 2, Both: 7

I wouldn’t take that too seriously or anything, I’m just pathologically incapable of not doing at least a teensy bit of analysis whenever I see numbers.

Lorde and the End of Childhood

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2013-10-01 Lorde

Spotify let me know that Lorde is a spotlight artist whose debut album was just released and told me I should go listen to it. Always keen to hear new music, I queued up her first track. Always interested in who I’m listening to, I searched for her on Wikipedia.

2013-10-01 Lorde 02

So here’s what stands out to me. First of all, Lorde is 16 years old. At 32, I’ve seen the tragic trajectory of enough child stars like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and a gaggle of others to be concerned. Whether it’s Selena Gomez ending up in Spring Breakers or Miley Cyrus twerking (no link needed), the career path always seems to bend towards exploitation as though it were an inescapable black hole. I don’t have any inside knowledge of the record industry, but even from the outside it seems plain that young stars, and especially girls, don’t fare well. We all want to be famous like moths want to be closer to the bug zapper, never paying attention to the burned-out husks below the light.

Here’s how Wikipedia describes her rise:

At the age of 12, she was spotted by A&R scout Scott Maclachlan when he saw her singing in a video of a talent show at her school, Belmont Intermediate. Later, when [she] was 13, Maclachlan signed her to Universal and, at the age of 14, she began working with their songwriters.

Does this make anyone else just a bit queasy? Discovered at 12? Signed at 13? Working with pro-songwriters at 14? She’s the first woman in 17 years to top the alt chart (I would say “girl” with no disrespect intended), and that’s an achievement, but how much of that is a reflection of corporate strategy and marketing? The relationship between artists and publishers is always fraught; how does someone so young hope to avoid becoming the packaged merchandise? There’s something deeply disturbing to me about the worship of youth philosophically and the plight of these starlets practically.

Look, I wish Lorde (real name: Ella Yelich-O’Connor) the best of luck, but at this point I feel like listening to her music is condoning a culture that devours it’s own young.