Jonathan Chait can be a very annoying person. Today, he wrote an article about the Atlanta school cheating scandal, Teachers Cheating on Tests: Not a Big Deal. His argument is that cheating is found in every area where people wish to excel, therefore we shouldn’t use this scandal as a reason to abandon our test-focused education system. Well, that’s true as far as it goes. But maybe the cheating is a sign of a more fundamental problem with our educational system.

Chait takes specific target at Eugene Robinson’s article in yesterday’s Washington Post, The Racket with Standardized Test Scores. Just in terms of a hit piece, Chait is way off base. He starts by trivializing Robinson’s article. He ends by weaseling out of the argument he made throughout his article, “But minimizing cheating is a terrible top priority. The top priority should be teaching students better.” Oh really?! So he didn’t mean all those words that he wrote about cheating being inevitable and needing to minimize that cheating rather than minimizing the use of standardized tests? He just wants students to be taught better. As opposed to Robinson who, what? Wants students taught worse? This is by far the worst article I have ever read by the generally reliable Jonathan Chait.

As Robinson points out, the problem is that those controlling our education system have become enamored with testing. He even quotes education reporter Valerie Strauss on this subject that we don’t know just how big this kind of cheating is. “What we do know is that these cheating scandals have been a result of test-obsessed school reform.” Listening to Chait, you would think that no such thing exists and that the fact that states can design their own standardized tests means they are somehow tailored to different communities. Think about that for a moment: are the students in East Los Angeles and Palm Springs the same? As I recall, they are not only in the same state, they are located quite near each other.

The emphasis of bureaucrats on test scores a good example of non-leadership. By quantifying something that cannot be easily quantified, using simplistic meters, people can claim to be approaching education in an objective form without doing anything at all. In this case, they create an almost random metric and then dump the task on local schools to improve student scores on the metric. It isn’t fair, but more important, it isn’t effective.

Jonathan Chait seems like someone who has eagerly drunk the education “reform” Kool-Aid. The truth is that whether test scores are going up or going down, educational attainment is not. That’s what we should be worried about. Instead, we place teachers and administrators in a ridiculous situation that does students no good at all. He’s right that these cheating scandals aren’t a reason for abandoning our test-focused educational “reform.” We have plenty of better reasons than that. But his almost hysterical attack on Robinson and lame defense of testing is a perfect example of what is stopping us to genuinely improving education.

Afterword

I recommend checking out Fair Test, a group that is fighting against our failed test-centered approach to teaching. They have an excellent FAQ, What’s Wrong With Standardized Tests? Check it out; it’s an eye-opener.

Yesterday, I wrote about Liz Cheney’s insane rant against Obama and Obamacare. The insightful healthcare policy observer Aaron Carroll wrote about the Reagan quote she used that freedom was over because of the evil which Cheney dare not speak its name. That evil, of course, is Medicare. Cheney conveniently left out that context for the quote because it only would have highlighted how wrong Reagan was and Chaney is with their hysterical domino theorizing.

Carroll puts it all into context:

This, I think, is the real problem. No one ever loses anything because they are shown to be shockingly ignorant. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, no one wants to be around others who make them look bad. So someone like John McLaughlin is not going to fill his panel show with people who were right about the Iraq War or the housing bubble. The mainstream media will continue to be wrong about major policy issues because they don’t want to admit being wrong in the past. Another reason is just that the people on the TV machine and in major newspapers are not there because they are right or smart; they are there because they are friends with with the people who run the TV stations and newspapers.

It frustrates me that such people are allowed to say things that are so obviously wrong—even at the time they say it. But this explains why, say, the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s (CPC) budget gets almost no coverage while Paul Ryan’s fictional budgets get blanket coverage: no one who would be interested in a progressive budget is employed in the mainstream media. It isn’t that they have it out for such ideas; it is just that those kinds of people are not serious, even if they have quite a good record of being, you know, right. Thus: why employ such people?

And so Liz Cheney continues to write Op-Eds and Reagan continues to be treated as though he had ever been a great thinker. There is no solution to be found within the mainstream media itself. Instead, we must look to sources of information that provide voices to a larger selection of thinkers. Despite what conservatives claim, it isn’t necessary on the right. Unless the person is explicitly racist, you will see their ideas presented and even pushed in the mainstream media. For example, the guys who brought us the idiotic Freedom Map occupied an entire feature on “liberal” MSNBC’s prime time coverage. This is about equal to all of the coverage of the CPC’s budget. So it is important to watch shows like Democracy Now! and The Young Turks. And to read this site and the lesser sites such as those listed on the sidebar.

If you stick with the mainstream media (much less the conservative media), all you will get is an endless parade of lies and incompetence with never a whisper of accountability.

[1] This was mistyped “tyrrany” in the original article on Carroll’s blog, The Incidental Economist. That’s understandable; it happens all the time. But then it was picked up by The Washington Monthly—a real publication. But they didn’t catch it. What is wrong with the publishing world? I accept that blogs are going to have a lot of errors because they don’t have editors or pretty much any staff. But why can’t actual newspapers, magazines, and book publishers manage to copy edit their content? This story ran three days before it was published in The Washington Monthly. So time wasn’t the issue. They appear just not to care.

David Sheff is the author of Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy. It only came out today, so I haven’t read it. Of course, I’m not going to. As regular readers could have predicted, I bristled when I heard the title of the book. Who can reasonably say that addiction is “America’s greatest tragedy”? Have we forgotten about slavery? Or the genocide of the Native Americans? Or more recently, what about our drone attacks on civilians in Afghanistan? These strike me as distinctly greater tragedies than addiction. And right on point: what about the tragedy of those who are greatly harmed and even killed by the drug laws?

I understand that Sheff is what we would call a liberal. He wants to limit some of he harm done by our drug laws. But he still buys into the same old lies about drug use being a terrible problem that we must do something about. The book claims to be a myth-shattering look at drug abuse” that is based on the “latest research in psychology, neuroscience, and medicine.” But the latest research on drug use indicates that it is not a disease any more than other human behaviors. What is perhaps most telling is that the book’s description starts with, “Addiction is a preventable, treatable disease, not a moral failing.” But the very word “addiction” makes the whole discussion moral. There is a scientific definition of the word “addict,” but the way that Sheff uses the word, all it means is, “Someone who does drugs I don’t approve of in quantities I don’t approve of.”

The author was on The Last Word yesterday. Lawrence O’Donnell made a comment that floored me, “You want marijuana to be legalized. You also think it can be harmful.” This sent Sheff off on a discussion of how children should not use cannabis because it affects their development. I agree with that. Children shouldn’t use drugs, and in fact (Sheff did not mention this), having drugs illegal actually makes them easier for kids to obtain. But my problem with this comment has nothing to do with kids.

All human behaviors are risky. You can die from drinking too much water. It is only in the realm of drugs (because we approach them moralistically) that people expect that behaviors should have no danger before we let others do them. And that is the problem with people like David Sheff. They want drugs to be less dangerous. They want others to be less moralistic about their use. But they can’t get past their belief that drugs are uniquely dangerous because they think drug use is a moral issue. They’ve come to believe that drug addiction is not a moral issue by medicalizing it and turning it into a disease. But they still maintain the moral paradigm of drug use. They’ve just invented a disease that causes people to act “immoral.”

Sometimes, allies are worse than enemies. When it comes to the fight against the drug war, in the long term David Sheff and Lawrence O’Donnell are such allies.

Afterword

Here is the interview:

Charlemagne was born on this day back in 742. Certainly, I could have named him the winner of today’s birthday contest, but there is no good video of him. Buddy Ebsen was born in 1908. He only died back in 2003 at 95—outliving Irene Ryan by 25 years! The great actor Alec Guinness was born in 1914. Most people know him from Star Wars. Frankly, I get him confused with John Gielgud, who I like rather more. (And who I will talk more about on his birthday in a couple of weeks.) And Rodney King was born on 1965—not so much a person as an important cultural symbol.

The lovely Gloria Henry is 90 today. Barret Eugene Hansen (Click the link!) is 72. Leon Russell is 71. Diminutive and wonderful actress Linda Hunt is 68. And bad girl philosopher, who I both love and hate, Camille Paglia is 66.

Man of the Day

Just a pop star? I don’t think so. On this day in 1939, a musical genius was born: Marvin Gaye. He died tragically young. And he was still producing great music up to the end. It is sad that he is gone, because I’m sure he would be thrilling us today if he were still around. Just the same, we have the decades of great music he left us.

Here is a live version of “What’s Going On” from the DVD Marvin Gaye: The Real Thing – In Performance 1964-1981. (That’s the great bassist James Jamerson in the band! He sadly died the same year as Gaye.)

Last week was a good week for Republican looniness. It was notable because it involved two mainstream figures in the party: Liz Cheney and David Stockman. These are not Tea Party idiots nor are they political neophytes. The are respected establishment figures in the party. And they are, apparently, mad as hell and unwilling to take anymore of the pain that goes along with being rich and powerful in America.

I have to admit that I don’t know that much about Liz Cheney. But I’ve read interviews with her and she always seemed pretty reasonable—for a Republican, anyway. And then she wrote her Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal, Republicans, Get Over the 2012 Loss—and Start Fighting Back. It starts with a quote from Ronald Reagan back in 1961. “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Those are important words that ought to be heeded.

But as Jonathan Chait points out, Reagan cautioning about the extinction of freedom? He was talking about Medicare. You know conservatives: if we allow Medicare then soon the government will kill all the doctors and we will all starve. Or something. It’s not supposed to make sense; it’s conservatism!

As regular readers know, Obama is a pretty conservative guy. He certainly isn’t a liberal and it is loony to suggest that he is a socialist. But according to Cheney, “President Obama is the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office.” I don’t know who she’s writing for. There are other conservative wackos like her, but they already agree. Is her writing really going to allow Republicans to “get over the 2012 loss”? I don’t think so. Maybe she should have titled her article, “Ignore the 2012 Loss—and Start Being Delusional Now.” That would have better reflected the content of her article.

Cheney is not the only one hearkening the way to Conservative Crazy Town. David Stockman provided comic relief for the economically inclined. But unlike Cheney, Stockman is mad at everyone. Of course, this has been the case since 1986 when he wrote The Triumph of Politics. That was when he started ranting that Reagan was abandoning the revolution by not savaging social spending. You see, Stockman was one of the big forces behind supply-side economics. At the time, he made some sense—there was something very wrong with the Reagan administration, but of course, it started with Stockman’s embrace of Supply Side Economics. The more he talks, however, the less sense he makes. In this most recent article he is screaming about the evils of fiat currency and how wonderfully constraining the gold standard is. It’s funny that people always say this, and yet the Great Depression happened under the gold standard. Bqhatevwr!

A well run political movement naturally constrains the crazies—or at least marginalizes them. In the modern Republican Party, the crazies are running the place. As a result, there is no incentive for people like Liz Cheney and David Stockman to control their inner radical. And so you see their craziness slipping into the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. (Of course, compared to the WSJ editorial page, Cheney hardly stands out.)

I admit it: I get great pleasure taking swipes at Rob Portman about his own very self-serving position on same sex marriage. But I have been very clear: being for gay rights at least makes you a human being. And that brings us to Representative Matt Salmon.

Just like Portman, Salmon learned that his son was gay two years ago. And what a gay son he was! Matt Jr used to be the leader of the Arizona Log Cabin Republicans. This group, as you may know, is basically the “gay Republicans.” In fact, they were banned from CPAC for a couple of years. But let me say for the record that I find the Log Cabin Republicans a very creepy group. I know what they say: the Republican Party is in favor a individual rights, blah, blah, blah. But the fact is that the modern Republican Party is a hate-filled group depending upon the fear and rage of their base to hang onto power. The Log Cabin Republicans should see that their cause (free markets and free beds) fits far better in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party. And that makes them a bunch of Uncle Toms looking to their betters for acceptance.

But being a leader of the state’s biggest “we hate our gay selves too” group wasn’t good enough for the old man. Or the old lady. As staunch Morans, they weren’t moving anywhere on the gay rights issues. After all, it might get in the way of running their own universes in the after life. Insert your own underwear joke [here].

So I am not here to defend Rob Portman. I still think the man only barely qualifies as human. In fact, I even imagine a conversation between Rob and his gay son Will. Will said, “You’d better jump on the gay bandwagon! Soon, this is going to be a real political winner for Republicans.” And Rob said, “You know, son: for a gay, you’re pretty smart!” Okay, I don’t really know. But I’m pretty certain that Portman’s announcement was politically calculated.

Salmon, on the other hand, is not only just a cruel bigot—he’s an idiot. Because it is only too clear that that “the gay” will be part of the Republican coalition moving forward. But I guess that the dream of managing your own universe is just too much for the Salmons to give up.

Afterword

I think it is interesting that in the mainstream media, it is perfectly acceptable to lampoon the 72 virgins of Islam. But it is somehow wrong to lampoon the even more ridiculous notion of giving a whole new universe to the very best Mormons. I say this because the idea of life as a kind of game is ridiculous, not the idea of multiple universes. That actually seems about the most reasonable thing in the world.

Update (30 August 2013 1:19 pm)

I originally misstated Liz Cheney as an example of “Uncle Toms looking to their betters for acceptance.” In fact, it is Mary Cheney who is a gay Republican. I have a hard time telling the difference between all the blond female conservatives.

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born on this day back in 1873. Actors Lon Chaney Sr, Laurette Taylor, and Wallace Beery were born in consecutive years 1883 to 1885. And the insanely great D. Boon was born in 1958.

Debbie Reynolds is 81 today. Ali MacGraw is 74, which is surprising, because I thought she died back in 1970. (Get it?!) Jimmy Cliff is 65, so he won’t be performing anymore. The great Gil Scott-Heron is 64. Sexist and overall pathetic excuses for a jurist, Samuel Alito is only 63 today. Director and CP-16 enthusiast Barry Sonnenfeld is 60. Susan Boyle is 52. And Rachel Maddow is 40 today.

The day, however, belongs to the great psychologist Abraham Maslow who was born back in 1908. Like all great scientists, Maslow’s ideas were simple. His most famous contribution was the “needs hierarchy.” It showed that, for example, Rachmaninoff would not have written beautiful music if he had been starving. Unfortunately, as a society, we seem to have not learned this lesson. It seems I spent the whole of last year listening to Mitt Romney talk about how he was in favor of “equality of opportunity.” By that he meant that everyone had the opportunity to go to extremely unequal schools given extremely unequal home lives. You know, just like in 1984: unequal = equal.

Happy birthday Dr. Maslow! You made as all smarter. And you have a very charming smile!

Afterword

I came very close to giving the day to D. Boon, so here’s a little Minutemen: