Keystone Kops

Keystone XL is a proposed pipeline to transport Canadian crude oil from a supply hub in Alberta to delivery points in Oklahoma and Texas. It has emerged as a major political headache for the Obama administration. It is being pitched by its backers as a jobs bonanza, creating over 20,000 jobs directly during the construction phase, and 118,000 indirectly. Once complete it will provide feedstock for Gulf Coast refineries and reduce reliance on less friendly foreign suppliers. Its detractors are calling it an environmental catastrophe. The issues aren’t just political. Thus framed, they pit two themes of Catholic Social Teaching in opposition to one another, the call to care for God’s creation, and the human right to meaningful work at a living wage.

The case for jobs is pretty solid. We know what it takes to build a pipeline. Several unions have already signed contracts with the proposed construction company. These are good jobs at union scale. The ripple effect that will produce the indirect jobs is also well understood. I have not seen an analysis of the long term impact but I should think a stable oil supply will be a good thing for the foreseeable future.

The environmental reasoning is dicier. There are concerns about the route, it passes over the Ogallala aquifer, but we have a good safety record with pipelines and the builder has offered extra risk containment measures. The oil is to be extracted from oil sands. That process looks more like strip mining than conventional drilling but there again there are reclamation processes that can minimize any long term damage.

The real issue is Jim Hanson’s claim that, if fully developed, Canadian oil sands will release so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere the damage will be irreversible. Not even a complete shutdown of coal fired power plants will offset it. Global warming will be catastrophic and unavoidable.

Dr. Hanson is well known for his dire warnings about carbon dioxide and global warming, perhaps second only to Al Gore. His Keystone argument rests on a complicated carbon life cycle analysis of the crude. Heavy crude from oil sands is higher in carbon content than conventional petroleum. The end products are the same so we are talking about carbon to be released in the extraction, transport, and refining processes.

I’m not competent to challenge Dr. Hanson’s calculations and I really don’t want to rehash the arguments about whether or how much man-made carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. Alarmists and skeptics abound to take both sides of that debate. But it seems to me the sands will be developed whether we build the pipeline or not. If we don’t buy the oil someone else will, most likely India or China, neither of them noted for their concerns about carbon emissions. Like King Canute standing on the shore commanding the tide we will have sacrificed all those jobs in a futile attempt to stop the inevitable. And we will still have to get our oil from somewhere.

The responsible course is to develop our energy resources as cheaply and cleanly as we reasonably can wherever we can find them, and use the supplies to promote economic growth around the world. That will provide rewarding work for millions more people, maybe billions more. The resulting prosperity will enable us to mitigate climate change when, where, and if it comes.

Environmental activists aren’t having any of it. They are energized and planning another round of noisy demonstrations at the White House next month. I don’t expect riot police to show up in funny hats and bumper cars but this should be entertaining.

Heartless

I wish Rick Perry were a better debater. I will likely vote for the Republican nominee in next year’s presidential election but one thing I don’t like about the current crop of candidates is all this immigrant bashing. One of Perry’s more defensible acts as Governor was his signing of a bill to offer in-state tuition at state universities for Texas residents regardless of immigration status. When challenged about it he accused his rivals of being heartless. It was a mistake. The several million Americans who disagree with the policy were needlessly offended.

Governor Perry apologized for the remark but the damage was done. It was probably already impossible to pass serious immigration reform under the current administration, or in this congress. Perry’s ham handed charge may well have helped make it impossible in the next. And we need the reforms. I know it. The governor knows it. His opponents know it. We all know it. But cutting through the technical complexity and all the emotionally charged issues associated with illegal immigration will require a level of leadership, bipartisanship, and pragmatism that we haven’t seen in many years. Some of us thought we saw it in Barack Obama three years ago. We have been disabused of that notion, but frankly I don’t see it in any of his likely successors either.

We pretty much know what reform should look like. It probably includes some sort of temporary work program and a path toward permanent residency, even citizenship. It certainly includes equal protection of the laws. Even our prison inmates have that. As we have done in the past with immigrants we should include measures to encourage family reunification, and to see to it children are in school. We should review and expand policies on refugee status, especially for those subject to persecution for supporting us in Iraq and Afghanistan, shame on us for not doing that already.

And of course we should get control of our borders. No one seriously disputes our right to determine who enters the United States and who does not. But we have to find more effective and humane ways of doing it. That we have allowed often cruel human smuggling operations to flourish on our southern border is unconscionable.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops insists we should address root causes. Those would be principally economic. People who have access to decent jobs in their own countries have far less incentive to emigrate. We can influence that through our trade policies at net benefit to ourselves.

Comprehensive reform isn’t going to happen in the current political climate but maybe we could do some small things. Toning down the rhetoric would be a good place to start, on both sides of the debate. Our pastors could help, not with noisy protests but with calm voices of reflection. The pulpit can be a wonderful platform for getting people to think seriously about what they already know to be right. After all, most of us are Christians and there is no clearer message in the Gospel than the mandate to welcome the stranger. Maybe we could even revisit the DREAM Act, the US senate bill that would have provided a way to citizenship to certain students who arrived here as minors. That had bipartisan support for a time before positions hardened. It made sense to a lot of people. Nobody really wants to send those kids back to homes that are no longer theirs. The bill is still alive in the Senate but not going anywhere at the moment.

One thing immigration reform does not include is mass deportation. That would be a humanitarian catastrophe. Americans don’t have the heart for it.

Better not to Know

Well, it is certainly counterintuitive. A government panel recommended last week most men no longer be tested for elevated PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) levels in their annual physicals. The same panel recommended two years ago most women in their forties and fifties not have annual mammograms. They reason the tests don’t save many lives, create unnecessary anxiety, and often lead to over diagnosis and inappropriate treatments. With all the angry debate about pulling the plug on Grandma in the lead up to passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare if you prefer) it’s worth a little discussion on this panel and their recommendations.

The US Preventative Services Task Force is not a product of the ACA, it does not set government policy, and its members are not federal employees. It was created by congress in 1984 to review scientific evidence on the efficacy of various preventive medicine measures and make recommendations to the health care community. Anybody can nominate a member. You can nominate yourself. There are sixteen current members serving four year terms. I count thirteen MDs, two nurses, and one public health PhD who is neither a nurse nor a physician. Most are academics.

Over the years the panel has issued recommendations on screening and preventive measures for everything from hearing loss to scoliosis. The Department of Health and Human Services uses these recommendations in formulating implementing regulations for ACA, so they are relevant to Obamacare. DHHS doesn’t use the revised standard for breast cancer screening issued two years ago. They use an earlier standard issued in 2002 which recommends mammograms every 1-2 years for women over 40. No word on whether DHHS will adopt the new recommendations for PSA testing.

The new panel logic goes something like this. If you get back test results suggesting you might have cancer you may have an overanxious reaction. You might want more testing when there is no need to worry. This is where the panel logic breaks down. Of course you would want more testing. When a spot showed up on my CAT scan last year I went to see an oncologist about it. She compared it to an earlier scan and didn’t see anything to indicate cancer. I regularly send her a copy of my blood work and that’s it. I don’t even talk to her about it. She will let me know if there is anything new.

But three years ago a spot also showed up on a scan for my wife. Her surgeon recommended a biopsy and that’s what we did. The panel seems to be saying the biopsy might have been negative and it would have been better to let it alone. No scan, no spot, no biopsy, probably no harm. But the biopsy showed cancer. The surgeon recommended removing a swollen lymph node and some surrounding tissue. Two oncologists agreed so we did the surgery. We never actually found a cancerous tumor. There is a possibility we were seeing residue from a cancer that was no longer active. Nevertheless, the oncologists recommended chemotherapy and radiation so we did that too.

If we hadn’t done the original scan I don’t know when we would have found the cancer. Maybe never, never had that terrible sinking feeling when we first thought she might have cancer, never been so frightened as when we knew it was cancer, never had to go through that awful chemotherapy. But what if we hadn’t? She had stage two cancer. What if we had waited until it progressed to stage three or four? What then?

The panel seems to have the numbers right. A lot of people are overreacting to scary test results. But stop doing the tests? Not me. I would rather know.

Take No Prisoners

I have mixed feelings about the two recent high profile extrajudicial killings in the War on Terror. On the one hand, as you will have already noted, I do not consider this a law enforcement issue, one to be addressed through police work only after crimes are committed. Terrorism can and should be combated with all reasonable means and that includes military means. Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Alawki were waging war with the United States and had made themselves legitimate military targets. On the other hand it would appear that we had the option of taking both men prisoner and chose to kill them instead. I’m not sure that was the case but that’s how it looks. We wanted them dead.

Bin Laden appears to have been unarmed when he was killed. I would not second guess a navy seal who shot first and asked questions later but with the president and his staff watching a live feed, and the speed with which his body was taken to an aircraft carrier and disposed of at sea, it would seem reasonable to assume that all went according to plan. Circumstances were different with al-Alawki but news reports suggest a Marine Expeditionary Unit was prepared to go in on the ground. I wouldn’t criticize a decision not to put American troops unnecessarily at risk but it seems likely the intelligence to be gained would have been priceless had al-Alawki been taken alive. Or maybe not, water boarding would be out.

I can think of some very good reasons why the Obama administration wouldn’t want either man in custody. Bin Laden at Guantanamo would have been a public relations nightmare. He would have been headline news every night for months, maybe years. Pressure for a public trial would have been enormous. I can only imagine the spectacle that would have been. It would have probably been impossible to confine al-Alawki at Guantanamo. His citizenship would have entitled him to trial in a civilian court with all the constitutional protections that entails. The two men could conceivably have been more trouble as captives than as fugitives.

All of that said, I would rather we had taken them both alive, used any and all interrogation techniques likely to have been effective, and stood up to whatever political heat might have come. The idea that we may have killed them to avoid the complications of capture, if that is what happened, just doesn’t sit well. The position that harsh interrogation measures are morally indefensible in all circumstances, and killing is justifiable as a matter of preference is absurd. If water boarding has the potential to save innocents from wanton murder then we should water board. If there is valuable information we could have had but don’t because it was simpler just to kill these two men, then we have acted irresponsibly.

I know I’m putting a fine point on this. Many argue that terrorism should be treated as a police matter. A case can be made for that but I wouldn’t want those people in charge of the common defense. Others will argue that the men were enemy combatants and therefore fair game. A better case can be made for that but we can and commonly do disarm our enemies and take them prisoner. Where that can be done without undue risk to our own troops or to their mission it should be done, even with the likes of these two. Like I said, I have mixed feelings. Had I been Commander in Chief I don’t know what I would have done

Comparative Advantage in Education

Economists like to say that nations fare best in international trade when they focus on what they do well. It makes sense. None of us would be very successful if we tried to build careers around things we aren’t very good at. In America’s case one area where we have a comparative advantage is higher education. We have the finest university system in the world. Every year we produce large numbers of very well equipped graduates in all sorts of fields, ready to contribute to society to the benefit of us all. We ought to be building on that for all we are worth. But we are neglecting the input side of the equation. Our primary and secondary schools haven’t been up to the task. They have been mired in the near monopoly of government run public schools where innovation is stifled and education often takes a back seat to social engineering. Too few of our best and brightest are matriculating with the tools to succeed at the highest levels.

Lately there have been some interesting developments. Last June Newsweek published their ranking of the best high schools in America. Two of the top five were Dallas magnets. That’s great news for a school district that has been a train wreck for most of the nearly four decades I’ve been in North Texas. Magnet schools are not for everyone but their existence alone is innovative. It is encouraging to note that they are at least sometimes successful. So are charter schools. A number of them have been able to raise literacy and numeracy levels among groups of children who have traditionally lagged far behind. Voucher programs have helped some children get into better schools where they have tended to do well. More and more parents are opting for home schooling and even home school cooperatives. And the internet is making possible things like virtual classrooms with the potential to revolutionize education from top to bottom.

Last Sunday’s opinion section in The Dallas Morning News was devoted to fixing what’s wrong with the city’s schools. Incredibly they didn’t mention any of these things, preferring instead to devote space to establishment educators who promote ideas that sound distressingly obvious. We need better teachers, more accountability, inspired leadership, and social services. Well, duh! One thing they all agree on is the need to close the so called achievement gap, the unacceptably low reading and math scores that have been a fact of life in some neighborhoods and ethnic groups for generations.

There is nothing wrong with paying special attention to the neediest children. God’s preferential option for the poor is a theme of Catholic Social Teaching. It is in all our best interests to see No Child Left Behind succeed. But nowhere does it say the option is exclusive, that God cares only for the needy. The law has come with unintended consequences. It has frequently been implemented at the expense of our more talented children who need broader curricula and a faster pace in order to fully develop. It has promoted more than a few instances of fraud. Too many unqualified students have been shoe horned into advanced placement classes where they cannot succeed. We are improving performance at the lower levels too often by depressing performance overall.

It’s bad Christian stewardship. We have responsibility for all creation and that includes the society we live in. We are charged to tend it and make it productive. We are instructed to invest our talents and make them grow. To the degree that we neglect the children who have the most potential to give back to society we fail in that responsibility. We are not taking full advantage of this wonderful university system we have built and we are all the worse for it.

There is real danger in this. Few things are more important to most parents than their children’s education. If they begin to see public schools as welfare programs and laboratories for social change, if they see their own children getting short shrift, they will do whatever they can to remedy it and that will often mean flight. DISD has first hand experience here. Federal judges took control of Dallas schools in the civil rights era and implemented programs that drove middle class families out of the city in droves. We don’t want to see that again.

But there is opportunity as well. If parents have choices, and increasingly they do have choices, competition will force change despite establishment resistance. Parents also have better access to more information. A concerned mother looking for answers can find them on the internet. Parents are discussing this information among themselves and with their friends, and they are making their own decisions. That’s a good thing too, even if some of them make bad decisions. Another tenet of Catholic Social Teaching is that parents have primary responsibility for their children’s education, and after all, public school administrators are making bad decisions for them today.

I expect to see accelerating change, though I doubt most of it will come from the public sector. Entrenched interests are powerful. But so is the technological revolution going on around us. Despite a setback early in the Obama administration with cancelation of the District of Columbia’s school voucher program, voucher use is slowly growing. As districts come under more and more budget pressure vouchers will become even more attractive because they are less expensive. And as more light shines on the negative effects of disproportionate attention at the lower end of test scores, there will be demands to restore discontinued classes at the upper end, and maybe add a few new ones.

On balance I am sanguine about the future. No Child Left Behind is good public policy. We can fix the problems with it and when we do ours will be a more prosperous and more just society. And with more top level students this magnificent university system of ours will be better than ever.