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At lunch today friends were discussing Donald Trump’s uninspiring choice of yet another older white guy as running mate. I said “He should have chosen Michelle Rhee.” What do folks think? She’s 10 years younger than Pence. She is not a man. She is not white. She has experience as a teacher and as an education bureaucrat. Of all of the things that the government does, running schools is near the top of the list of stuff that matters to a large bloc of voters (i.e., those with children and grandchildren in K-12). I would still be pessimistic about Trump’s chances but at least with Rhee as a running mate he would not put potential voters to sleep.

Readers: What do you think? Could Michelle Rhee have given Trump a bigger boost than Pence?

Related:

• “Can two old white guys win a U.S. Presidential election?”

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Folks:

Friends of mine in Massachusetts have been installing rooftop solar. Apparently there are some government handouts that expire at the end of 2016 that make it much more attractive to do now.

I’m wondering if the payback periods are not correctly calculated for a homeowner who is using savings that would otherwise be invested in stocks and bonds. Suppose that a solar array costs $50,000. Had that money been invested in stocks and bonds it might have yielded 2 percent or $1,000 per year. This $1,000 of income will be subject to a tax rate of anywhere from 25-40 percent, however, depending on city and state. The energy generated by the solar array and used within the home, however, is not taxed as income (but maybe if you end up selling it all back to the power company they will issue a 1099 and then you fill out a Schedule C for your power generating business?). Thus electricity for the person who buys a solar array goes from being paid for with post-tax money to being paid for with pre-tax money, no?

This perspective could be entirely wrong, though, if we bring in property tax. What if there is a 2 percent property tax on the extra $50,000 in home value? It seems that at least in some states there are specific exemptions preventing towns from raising assessments due to solar energy systems (e.g., Massachusetts).

What do readers think? Is now the time to do rooftop solar? On the one hand the government has set things up so that people who live in crummy apartments have to work longer hours to buy solar panels for rich homeowners. On the other hand, if one waits a few years the technology will presumably improve. I don’t like the idea of buying anything for the house unless it is sufficiently common to be found at Home Depot.

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The deCordova museum and sculpture park in Lincoln, Massachusetts (suburb of Boston) has two shows that photographers (and allies) won’t want to miss. Both close on September 18, 2016.

The first show includes portraits by Lotte Jacobi and Lisette Model. There are some powerful images that will inspire you not to throw out the slightly out-of-focus pictures that nonetheless capture a subject’s mood perfectly. The second is “Overgrowth,” which includes a lot of photography of tangled vegetation.

Go on a nice day for walking as the sculpture park and grounds are worthwhile.

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Donald Trump has apparently picked a boring old white guy as his running mate (nytimes). It is tough to believe that more than a handful of voters will be motivated even to research Mike Pence’s biography (and if they did they would learn that Pence was yet another lawyer-turned-politician).

More than a year ago I wrote a post about how it seemed impossible for any Republican to win the Presidential race. Donald Trump is not exactly a standard Republican, e.g., he promises various forms of protectionism so that American workers will enjoy a higher income without working harder or developing better skills. However, he is an older white guy, a concept previously rejected by American voters.

Does this choice of VP doom whatever chances Trump might have had? Could he not have found a 40-year-old non-white female running mate? (Though of course we must always recognize the possibility that a running mate identifying as “female” in July could identify as “male” by October or November…)

Readers: Are you shocked by this choice? Does it not seem that Trump could have enhanced his chances with a non-white female?

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It’s summer so one of my usual dog-walking companions sometimes brings one of her three children along. On a recent day it was the 15-year-old daughter, a girl who has been carefully sheltered within a two-parent home or at a private school. The topic of her future career came up. The girl volunteered “Everyone knows that if you want to make money you marry and divorce a rich guy. That’s why my parents sent me to a school full of rich boys with low self-esteem. All that they need is an understanding wife. Then, oops, divorce after six months.” From whom had she learned this? “A bunch of the moms at our school made their money this way,” she responded. “[friend’s name]’s mom did it three times. And [other friend’s name]’s mom made money by having a baby without being married.”

After a little more conversation, we established that she overestimated the likely profit from a very short-term marriage and underestimated the profits from having children out of wedlock (Massachusetts offers unlimited child support revenue following a one-night encounter with a high-income resident or visitor). This was consistent with the survey of adults that we did in Harvard Square.

The inter-generational aspects are kind of interesting. The teenager’s mom is a fully trained attorney. The dad is an MBA who works in the financial services industry. They entered the workforce before the 1990s child support guidelines made it straightforward to calculate the potential profits from having children. The daughter is intelligent and healthy and will be the repository of more than $500,000 in education (K-12 plus college). Yet she recognizes that, compared to working with her college degree at a W-2 job, under today’s U.S. family law system, she can expect to earn far more cash through a thoughtful use of her body and her children.

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Excerpts from a mailing list of righteous Bernie and Hillary supporters in our wealthy Boston suburb (renamed to “Social Justice Village”)…

Mom #1 (a dentist): McLean Hospital [a local mental hospital] has signed a P&S agreement and intends to purchase 2 houses in the family neighborhood near Bleeding Heart St. Although only a few people who happen to peruse our Social Justice Village website regularly may have picked up on what has been transpiring, most of Social Justice Village has no idea that this is going on. McLean intends to run a transitional (half-way) house for teenage boys aged 15-21 who have psychiatric disorders. The closing is scheduled for the end of May. I am shocked that this project could have come this far without any notification to our neighborhood and town and I urge everyone to familiarize yourselves with what is going on since it appears that our Village has given their approval without finding out exactly what is proposed. In a town where we are protected from garish lighting, people cutting down trees, building garages that are deemed too large, it seems outrageous that our Planning Board, Selectmen, Zoning Board, do not consider a threat to its citizens’ security of importance. Is this the Social Justice Village Way? If it is … beware because this could happen in your neighborhood too.

Mom #2 (Harvard University employee): I suspect Town Counsel has determined that these uses are protected by right (State/Fed law?), and we will have only limited say. It is not that Town Counsel and/or other boards, committees and commissions have let us down, but rather that State & Fed. regs. may the our hands.

Mom #3: I don’t want to appear naive, but want to make an observation. I’ve never known more thoughtful, brilliant, upstanding, kind, philanthropic, humble, accomplished, creative, and worldly men than the husbands, fathers, and public servants in Social Justice Village. It is an excellent town for male role models.
A psychiatric disorder in a young man is not the same as a behavioral problem or a budding criminal. A person who has a psychiatric disorder may be suffering from depression or an eating disorder, or may be recovering from a trauma or an addiction. If they are in a halfway house, it means they have already shown they are committed to recovery. I wonder if this isn’t really the very best place for them, a place close to nature, where they can see such good men being good fathers and good husbands and excellent citizens every day. Maybe our community could rally behind them and help them in their re-integration into society, and in the discovery of themselves as capable and worthy, and maybe we could ask for their contribution to our town, which is also their town if they feel they are part of it . Maybe they have talents, maybe they’re willing to do chores and yard work and other things that would help them feel independent and help in their recovery.

[Note that Mom #3 has apparently not spent too much time in the local family court to hear how the local high-income husbands and fathers are described by their plaintiffs when it is time to pull the ripcord and grab the house, kids, and cash! Based on her ideas about these folks with psychiatric disorders doing chores it seems that she is unfamiliar with SSDI.]

Dad #1: I’m not sure which side of the fence I fall on without more info but I was also curious (mostly because I’m unfamiliar with them), does anyone know what the tax implications are with standing up such a facility on a property zoned for residential? At least their other facility charges like $1000 per day (average stay of 90-120 days, not covered by insurance….ouch). Do property taxes differ between residential and business zones?

Mom #4 (a Professor of Law): I am always pleased when I read that residents have had good experiences living next to one of the kind of group homes we are discussing (no snark–that is sincere.) That said, Dr. [Mom #1]’s question (and mine) is about process NOT about anecdotal experience. I assume that if she wanted to know how residents of these homes interacted with neighbors etc she would have asked about that. She didn’t. She (and many others) would like to know when the town learned about this and why homeowners most directly affected were not promptly notified. I take Mr. [Village official’s email] to be an attempt to respond to this issue. He says the kind of disclosure being demanded “…would be typically viewed as being discriminatory.” I do not understand that answer. Is it illegal for towns like Social Justice Village to inform residents about an impending group home or not? I am beginning to suspect that the answer is it is not. If so, this leads to the perfectly reasonable question–if not, then why are the interests of the owners/operators of the group home superior to those of Social Justice Village citizens?

Mom #5 (with a Masters in Education from Harvard): A few of the laws that make us do the right thing:

Affirmative Fair Marketing for Affordable Housing
Anti-discrimination laws
Right to vote laws
Equal Right Laws
Chapter 40B: requires affordable housing
Chapter 40A: allows educational, religious organizations: No zoning ordinance or by-law shall regulate or restrict the interior area of a single family residential building nor shall any such ordinance or by-law prohibit, regulate or restrict the use of land or structures for religious purposes or for educational purposes on land owned or leased by the commonwealth or any of its agencies, subdivisions or bodies politic or by a religious sect or denomination, or by a nonprofit educational corporation; provided, however, that such land or structures may be subject to reasonable regulations concerning the bulk and height of structures and determining yard sizes, lot area, setbacks, open space, parking and building coverage requirements.

We no longer warehouse people with special needs in institutions.

People with Developmental Disabilities now live in group homes and experience family with staff that can meet their needs. The Department of Disability Services does not release the addresses of group homes so as to not draw unwanted attention.

Mentally ill people and people with disabilities, transgender, gay or lesbian people are at the receiving end of violence far more often than initiating it.

*Why do we need these laws? Because without them, women would be making 50 cents on the dollar, black and white people would not be allowed to ‘inter marry’, African Americans would not be allowed to get mortgages, gay people would be back in the closet, mentally ill people would still be in institutions, there would be no affordable housing west of Boston, and no churches or schools in our neighborhoods, to name just a few reasons.*

People with disabilities are entitled to their privacy, that is why we are not told much about these programs. 20% of the population has one form of mental illness or another. They/we are everywhere.

[Note that the posited world in which “women would be making 50 cents on the dollar” would allow at least some women to get very rich indeed. They could run a company with a 100-percent female workforce and have dramatically lower labor costs than competitors, and therefore supranormal profits.]

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Seven months ago Honda finally got its jet certified (review). Getting a design certified (a type certificate) is only half the battle, however, in the highly regulated aviation industry. It was just a few days ago (press release) that Honda received an FAA production certificate for the factory in which the airplanes are being built.

This is presumably the same issue that is holding up deliveries of the Icon A5 seaplane, quasi-certified with great fanfare a year ago but not going into production until 2017. (The Icon A5 is a “light sport” aircraft that is subject to much less regulation and therefore getting a light sport design approved cannot be directly compared to type certification under the standard FAR 23 rules.)

Investors: Remember this extra delay if anyone ever asks you to put money into a new aircraft design from a new company!

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If there is a “Black Lives Matter” movement then presumably there are Americans for whom black lives do not matter. The questions for today are “why not?” and “what should we do about it?”

First, I wonder if the U.S. is now simply too populated and government too centralized for us to be confident that Citizen A will care about Citizen B. As there are people suffering badly in other parts of the world and most of us don’t do much to help them it is clear that human sympathy cannot stretch to a population of 7+ billion. Thus why should we expect sympathy to stretch to 324 million (popclock)? (i.e., it is not simply that black lives don’t matter but that American lives per se may not matter to Americans, unless it is the life of a family member, friend, or immediate neighbor)

What about citizen involvement in local government, though? That doesn’t require concerning oneself with the full 324 million population of the U.S. Perhaps federal government involvement with law enforcement has demotivated citizens from becoming involved. Why invest a lot of emotional energy and caring in something over which you have no control? (See my review of the book Missoula for an example of how a local prosecution for a state crime was driven by bureaucrats from Washington, D.C.; it wouldn’t have made any sense for a Montana resident to weigh in on the question.)

From A Pattern Language:

. . . just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for every human institution. In the Greek type of democracy all the citizens could listen to a series of orators and vote directly on questions of legislation. Hence their philosophers held that a small city was the largest possible democratic state. . . . (J. B. S Haldane, “On Being the Right Size,” The World of Mathematics, Vol. II, J. R. Newman, ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956, pp. 962- 67).

It is not hard to see why the government of a region becomes less and less manageable with size. In a population of N persons, there are of the order of N 2 person-to-person links needed to keep channels of communication open. Naturally, when N goes beyond a certain limit, the channels of communication needed for democracy and justice and information are simply too clogged, and too complex; bureaucracy overwhelms human processes.

And, of course, as N grows the number of levels in the hierarchy of government increases too. In small countries like Denmark there are so few levels, that any private citizen can have access to the Minister of Education. But this kind of direct access is quite impossible in larger countries like England or the United States.

We believe the limits are reached when the population of a region reaches some 2 to 10 million. Beyond this size, people become remote from the large-scale processes of government. Our estimate may seem extraordinary in the light of modern history: the nation-states have grown mightily and their governments hold power over tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, of people. But these huge powers cannot claim to have a natural size.

They cannot claim to have struck the balance between the needs of towns and communities, and the needs of the world community as a whole. Indeed, their tendency has been to override local
needs and repress local culture, and at the same time aggrandize themselves to the point where they are out of reach, their power barely conceivable to the average citizen.

(emphasis added)

Are there any simple practical steps that we can take? As noted in “Should we have unarmed police?” (thoughts sparked by “Why aren’t there a lot more police shootings in the U.S.?”), I think it would be worth exploring the extent to which we could have a tier of law enforcement that didn’t automatically generate armed confrontations. I’m just back from Israel and there are plenty of security people there with guns but there are also people involved with security and law enforcement who don’t have guns.

If the folks behind A Pattern Language are right we should scale back federal and even state involvement with law enforcement. We accept a lot of variation from state to state in laws that have enormous effects on citizens’ lives (see Minnesota versus neighboring Wisconsin in family law, for example; or compare a state where marijuana is legal and taxed to one where possession and sale leads to a prison sentence; or look at penalties following a murder conviction). Now that some states are so heavily populated that the average voter has no voice, power, or access to those in power, why can’t we let the residents of a city substantially determine the way in which law enforcement is to be accomplished? (maybe there is a state-wide framework with some limits so that a local law can’t impose super-harsh penalties for crimes that most state residents consider minor)

At least some of the incidents that have led to recent protests began with traffic stops. How about we simply cut back on those? Use cameras and robots to mail car owners tickets for speeding, broken taillights, etc. The “due process” of being pulled over by a police officer, having a chance to explain oneself, and then to appear in court sounds good except that (a) nowadays someone might get killed, and (b) legal fees have skyrocketed in the 100 or so years since we established this convention.

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One big lesson from Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany is that the Germans went to war prematurely. They had a potentially devastating and insurmountable technological lead in ballistic missiles (e.g., the V-2 rocket) and the first practical jet fighter aircraft. If the Germans had spent another four years perfecting and stockpiling these weapons before attacking neighbors they could probably have won World War II. (The author notes that Germany actually did plan to wait until the mid-1940s before fighting a Total War but that a stronger-than-expected response to the invasion of Poland forced an accelerated schedule of world domination.)

The American and British bomber war against Germany is portrayed as ineffective until roughly mid-1944 and then highly effective for the last year of the war. American military leaders worked under a flawed doctrine of sending unescorted bombers over Germany and thus did not develop a long-range fighter aircraft to go with the B-17s until near the end of the war. Once the P-51 Mustang (originally designed for the British) entered the war, the bombers had a much higher survival rate. Due to intelligence failures and misguided analysis, the Americans spent years trying to damage the German war industry with little effect. Only towards the end of the war did they figure out that almost everything could be crippled by targeting the railroads and canals, so as to prevent the transportation of coal, and the synthetic fuel industry, so as to prevent the Germans from using tanks and aircraft. Civilian planners had told the generals to bomb electricity plants and grid, but the generals ignored them, thus ignoring another way that the synthetic fuel industry could have been shut down.

With the benefit of hindsight, in other words, either side could easily have won World War II. But perhaps one can say that about nearly any war.

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It has been a month since the Orlando nightclub attack, which I hope is enough time that we can think about something other than how tragic it was (though of course the tragedy remains just as bad, if not as immediate, and my sympathies are with those who were touched directly).

Until 1965 it would have been impossible for someone like Seddique Mir Mateen to have emigrated from Afghanistan to the United States. Thus it would have been impossible for his son, Omar Mateen, to have been born and educated here at taxpayer expense. With the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, considerations of cultural compatibility were eliminated.

Syed Farook, the former San Bernardino County Department of Public Health food inspector, is another person who was here in the U.S. as a result of this 1965 law. His parents emigrated from Pakistan. (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his family provide another example, though the Tsarnaev brothers were not born in the U.S., only educated here in the Cambridge Public Schools.)

Plainly neither Mr. Farook nor Mr. Mateen developed any real fondness for the nation that adopted their parents. Both were likely guilty of what mainstream Americans would consider ThoughtCrime on a range of social subjects. This eventually led to a violent end for both men. Yet it seems possible that both could have fit in reasonably well back in their parents’ homelands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their beliefs would likely not have been out of step with neighbors’ beliefs in those countries. We didn’t do ourselves any favors by admitting their parents, but the full scale of the waste is apparent only when we reflect that we didn’t do Mr. Farook or Mr. Mateen any favors either.

I’m wondering if we are so biased in favor of our own culture that we can’t understand that there are people on the planet for whom prevailing U.S. culture would not be their first choice. If so, at least as long as we maintain our culture-blind immigration policy (plus a few generations beyond), we are doomed to be repeatedly shocked by events similar to those in Orlando and San Bernardino.

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