Mad Mad World

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre called last week for armed guards in every school. The response was a firestorm of vituperative in the press and on the internet. One thing is clear. Those calling for a national debate on gun control don't want any such thing. The peasants are out with their pitchforks. They want new gun control laws and they will get them. I don't see that much harm will be done. Neither do I see that much good will come of it.

Connecticut already has some of the strictest gun control rules in the country. Short of banning guns altogether I don't see that tougher laws will do anything to prevent the sort of awful carnage that happened at Sandy Hook. Adam Lanza's mother and her guns didn't cause his rampage. His madness did. It was madness wasn't it? Could anything else explain that senseless slaughter of innocents?

More than a week after the horrible event we know surprisingly little about the man who killed those women and children in Newtown. He had Alzheimer's Syndrome, or maybe not. He may have been taking anti-psychotic drugs, or maybe not. His mother was planning to move away to be near him in college, or maybe she was planning to have him committed. I doubt we will ever really know what drove that poor insane soul to take the lives of those precious innocents, or what could have prevented it.

I don't own a gun and don't want one. Those who do, hunters, self defense advocates, and hobbyists will continue to have access to them pretty much as they do now regardless of the current uproar. Schools will take a renewed look at security. Some will bring in armed guards. Nothing will change in the entertainment industry. No practical step anyone is likely to propose will do anything to prevent another Sandy Hook.

I worry about the autism connection. My youngest grandson has autism and I don't want to see him stigmatized. So far press reports have been careful to say that it is not associated with the sort of violent outrage Adam Lanza went on but I wonder if many people really don't buy that. It doesn't reassure me that geneticists are planning to look for a cause in Adam's DNA. Most medical research into autism has for a number years gone into genetics. Scientists and psychiatrists have been trying to blame autism on the parents since it was first identified in the 1940s. Who knows where they will go with this.

Nor do I see new precautions coming in mental health. Several incidents in recent years have been preceded by warning signs but ever since the Warren Court emptied the insane asylums it has been very difficult to commit anyone involuntarily unless they have done something violent. I doubt legislatures will make it easier or that courts will let them. I'm not sure I want them to. The history of psychiatry is not a proud one. Maybe we could look a little more closely at when and how we use psychotropic drugs.

What I expect is that we will have new gun laws, new registration requirements and restrictions on high volume magazines, nothing that would have deterred Adam's mother from her gun hobby or the types of firearms she bought legally. Nothing that would have prevented the horror of Sandy Hook, or Phoenix, or Columbine, or Virginia Tech, or the theater in Colorado. Anti gun zealots who don't know what an automatic weapon is will congratulate themselves on having finally taken meaningful steps and we will slouch along toward the next massacre. We won't even have a meaningful public discussion about it. 

Texas School Choice

School choice is making big gains around the country. At least twenty states now have programs up and running to provide some form of public funding for private school tuition in grades k-12. Texas may be next. It makes sense. The programs are reporting uniform improvements in student performance and the states save money.

Of course some form of school choice is available in every state. Parents who can afford it can send their children to private schools at their own expense. Home schooling is legal in every state. Most states have established charter schools and public schools are a big factor for many people in deciding where to live. But public funding for private schools is gaining favor.

The coming legislative session looks promising. The issue is quite partisan. Republicans tend to be for it, Democrats against. Texas took a couple of steps to the right in the fall elections and major advocates for private schools have already begun lobbying. The largest associations, the Texas Catholic Conference, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, and Texas Association of Non-Public Schools have jointly written to Governor Rick Perry, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, and House Speaker Joe Straus in support of tax credits for corporations who underwrite scholarships to private schools, their preferred option. All three officials appear ready to push the measure, as does Senator Dan Patrick, incoming Chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

Teachers unions and public school administrators are reflexively opposed but  most of their objections are transparently self serving. The financial case is pretty compelling. Texas spends about $11,000 per year per student in public schools. The cost at a typical private school is about half that, the proposed tax credits about a third. Add that to improved student outcomes and it's hard to see it as anything but a no brainer.

As school choice spreads the arguments against them are growing weaker. Many of the charter schools are quite good. Two Dallas magnets are widely regarded as among the best public high schools in the nation. I haven't seen anyone make the argument that they deprive traditional schools of needed funding. All of the private school subsidies I know about are substantially less than those for public schools. The lost funds are offset by fewer students to accommodate.

The church state separation issue was always a red herring. We settled that long ago when ex-GIs started going to parochial universities on the GI Bill. Some voters and some liberal foundations genuinely believe on ideological grounds that the nation's interests are best served by a public monopoly on education but that just isn't holding up to the evidence as it comes in.

There is a report circulating that private schools may be unwilling to accept new students under the proposed subsidies. The associations say that isn't true, they are committed to providing quality education for as many students as they can accommodate. The report is counter intuitive. If there is demand for private schools and the money to pay for them we will get more private schools. If the schools aren't very good parents won't send them there. That's an option many parents don't have today.

This is important. Too many of our children are leaving school without basic literacy and numeracy skills needed for productive careers. Well to do families have always taken advantage of private schools and the schools have generally served them well. We have an opportunity to extend that advantage to at least some of our needier children. There is every reason to think the schools will serve them well too.

Write your legislators. Better yet call. Better still visit. Let them know you support this initiative.

Self Destruction

Union thuggery was on grand display yesterday in Ann Arbor, and violent political rhetoric in full throat. I'm sad to see it. It's another step toward the demise of what was once and should still be a vital force for advancement of the American worker. Labor has become a movement caught in its narrow self interest, oblivious to the common good, often acting to the detriment of its members. 

It was understandable in the early days. Before WWII it was the company who had the power, and who employed the goons. strikes were regularly broken with brutal force. The company, with complicit government officials, was more than capable of seeing to its own interests. Unions necessarily focused on organizing and improving the lot of its members.

Something went wrong after the war. Unions began doing more harm than good. Membership peaked and began to decline. Workers began to see that a vote to unionize or strike just might mean a vote to drive the company out of business, taking jobs with it. Many proud names died. The New York Journal American, Eastern Airlines, and now Hostess Brands come to mind. Maybe they were mismanaged and would have failed in any case but strikes and unsustainable labor contracts played a role too.

The public began to see unions as villains. Elia Kazan's 1954 movie On the Waterfront depicting union corruption and violence struck a chord. I can't remember a film since then from even ultra liberal Hollywood that has put unions in a good light. Through the years one strike after another turned ugly. Last year's failed attempt to abolish the secret ballot through "card check" legislation was widely seen for what it was, an undemocratic move to intimidate workers who might not otherwise vote to unionize.

Today most union members are public employees. There too they have often shown little concern for the common good. Children remain trapped in failings schools while teachers resist all attempts at reform. Confronted with unsupportable salary and benefit costs, and reaching limits to taxing authority over tapped out citizens, many cities have begun to cut back services. Some have become ghost towns. Some have filed for bankruptcy. Some states appear about to follow.

The decline is accelerating. Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan are all states with long traditions of solid labor support. All have recently taken steps to rein in unions. All enjoy broad public support for the moves. Of the ten states with lowest unemployment and highest growth, all but one (Washington) is a right to work state. Of the ten with highest unemployment and lowest growth, none is a right to work state. People have begun to notice.

I don't begrudge anyone the right to join a union, though I do question the propriety of elected officials accepting campaign contributions from public employees, then voting to increase pay and benefits. But there is a reason for falling membership. Unions have not been responsible stewards of the enterprises their members depend on for livelihood. They have been slowly strangling the goose that laid the golden egg. They often benefit in the short term. We all suffer in the end.

If organized labor expects to survive it will have to change. Reforms will have to be real. This isn't a public relations problem. Issues are structural. Schools must Improve. Companies must thrive. Public services must come at costs tax payers can afford. The economy must grow and provide meaningful work for all comers, not just union members who already have a job.

Union management and rank and file should listen to some words of wisdom from the immortal Pogo. "We have met the enemy and they is us."

Medicaid Eligibility Expansion

Governor Rick Perry wants to reject Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid eligibility. A majority in the legislature apparently agree, mostly on financial grounds. Probably a majority of voters do too. The Texas Catholic Conference, a number of other groups, and most of my friends in the social justice advocacy community want them to reconsider.

I think expansion is a bad idea. It will make a bad situation worse. For years Medicaid officials have been controlling costs by holding down payments to providers. The result is fewer and fewer doctors will accept new Medicaid patients. It is almost impossible to find one in Collin County. If you have Medicaid and need a doctor you will most likely have to look elsewhere, if you can find one at all. If we add millions more poor and near poor Texans to the program we can expect it to cease functioning altogether.

Obamacare purports to address this by temporarily raising payment rates to Medicare levels. Then after two years price controls resume. It is less than reassuring to look at what is happening in Medicare. The government has been trying to control payment rates there as well. As we might guess doctors are threatening to leave that system too. Congress has to pass the so called "doc fix" every year to prevent a mass exodus. Expansion proponents, if they are thinking about this at all, appear to be reasoning that it they can get enough voters enrolled in Medicaid they will force  congress to include them in the annual fix. This year's doc fix threatens to become lost in the overwhelming financial crisis so dominating the current news. It is a frightening prospect.

Let me stipulate something. I believe access to basic health care is a fundamental human right. We are morally obligated to see to it that no child dies of a brain infection because he couldn't get treatment for a toothache. We can prevent that and we should. But that doesn't extend to the right to heart transplants at public expense for nonagenarians.There is a place for triage within our ethical universe, and a place for palliative care.

There are some promising ideas out there, and room within the current system to implement some of them. Florida started a pilot premium support program six years ago in five large counties that gave recipients a choice from a variety of plans offered by insurance companies. By all reports costs went down, outcomes improved, consumer satisfaction went up, and provider participation is higher. Florida wants to expand the program statewide (it requires a waiver from the Feds) and Louisiana is looking at trying something similar.

Texas has something called STAR Medicaid that is a state wide alternative to traditional Medicare, available for some patients, required for others. It sounds somewhat similar to the Florida pilot but if it has had the kind of success claimed in Florida I don't see it in the news. Former Governor Jeb Bush is touting his plan as a Medicare Cure. I would like to know more about it. Maybe now that the election is over we can get a little breathing room from the demagoguery and entertain some serious discussion. Or maybe not. The headlines aren't encouraging.

Texas has among the most restrictive eligibility requirements in the country. Unless you are a child, disabled, or elderly you are almost certainly not eligible for Medicaid. I would like to see better access to health care for more people but the solution currently on the table doesn't look workable. If we could get costs under control I might be able to support it. Maybe others could too. I hope Jeb Bush gets a hearing.