More fun with statistics and arguments

For the life of me, I can't figure out how Democrats fumbled the messaging on the "Build Back Better" act. No matter the medium, journalists cite the bill as amounting to $3.5 trillion, and that certainly is a figure that grabs your attention.

"Build Back Better" is solid as a title in some ways, but that quick alliterative phrase fails to describe any of the benefits that Americans might gain upon passage. I'm sure it sounded great in some brainstorming session, where everyone in the room was well-acquainted with the details of the bill. 

In my writing classes, we discuss over and over the importance of imagining our audience clearly and making certain we organize our arguments to appeal to that audience. At this point in the lengthy conversation in D.C., the audience appears to be BOTH moderate and progressive Democrats (though the president continues to hold out hope for some Republican support).

Ultimately, the audience boils down to two Democratic senators who are standing in the way of the entire bill. Both of them appear to be taking lots of campaign cash from large industries that might lose some revenue as a result of the bill, though no politician likes to be revealed as in thrall to some donors. 

National polling reveals that a large majority of Americans is in favor of all the individual pieces of the larger bill, which adds even more frustration about poor messaging.

But ignoring the merits of the bill, which is easy since so few details are well-known, my true puzzlement grows from the fact that the $3.5 trillion in new spending would be spread over ten years. The reality is that "only" $350 billion would be spent each year. Still a big number but not nearly as outrageous.

And lots of segments in the federal budget cost way more than $350 billion. Social security alone was about $1 trillion.

I am not blaming the media, precisely, though journalists tend to be terrible with math, statistics, budgets, etc. The audience for most media is usually the largest possible, so details and complexity tend to be passed over in favor of more simplicity. No offense to the average American newspaper reader, for instance, but most papers try to write at a middle school reading level (just in case). 

That target reader choice sounds much dumber as many who are not accomplished readers and thinkers can while away hours on social media, YouTube, and online games. Newspapers, after all, are way behind Facebook as a source of news for many Americans.

That puts the onus on those attempting to pass large programs to provide more accessible language for the media.

I don't have an easy fix for Democrats, but perhaps something that keeps pounding on the ANNUAL investments and the projected benefits EACH YEAR for a broad array of voters might help.

Or perhaps we could all check out some math. Total federal expenditures in FY 2019 were about $4.4 trillion. Adding $350 billion to that total adds about 8 percent in total spending.

Again, not a small amount. But most of us can actually wrap our heads around adding 8 percent to, say, a gallon of gas. I saw a station with $3.56 per gallon yesterday, and that cost would go up about 28 cents if the price rose by 8 percent. 

I'm not suggesting manipulating statistical truth here. I am simply reminding us that we need to consider our audience when we make arguments.

I can imagine some citizens who might be OK with learning about the details of "Build Back Better" once they could accept 8 percent as the actual annual budget increase. 

A little progress is still progress

A recent post from Westword teased readers with this reporting:

Denver had a 2020 goal of building twenty miles of sidewalk, but only six miles' worth was completed.

A lack of resources isn't helping, says DSP director Jill Locantore. She estimates that it would cost $1.1 billion to complete Denver's sidewalk network, "but the previous year's expenditure was around $2 to $3 million. At that level, it would take more than 400 years to finish. And who knows if the Earth is even going to exist in 400 years?"

You can read the entire post here, and there is far more to it than some breathtaking math. My favorite part is the final quote from Locantore. Now there's a city planner who doesn't let her optimism about life get out of control.

Regarding math: I know a million is a tiny fraction of a billion, but the difference between $2 million and $3 million is not nothing. And that range ends up being about 550 years if the annual sidewalk repair budget is $2 million, down to a "mere" 366 years, give or take, if the budget averages $3 million per year.

Of course, over that amount of time today's dollars will certainly lose value, so that current $1.1 billion estimate most likely balloons to double or triple that amount.

The point of the rough guesstimate, I suppose, is that we aren't making enough progress currently to EVER replace the Denver sidewalks -- after all, over 400 years most sidewalks would need to be rebuilt ten times.

This seems like a predicament rather than a problem. A predicament is something that is a challenge, but we mostly just have to live with it. For instance, Colorado is famous for its changeable weather, which can cause everything from traffic accidents to damaged plants to flattened cornfields. Most people don't discuss unpredictable weather as a problem. It's something to understand and try to prep for, but no one is going to "solve" the weather.

Figuring out how to efficiently edit audio levels in Adobe Premier Pro (one of my challenges tomorrow, as it turns out) is an actual problem which I fully expect to solve.

We all get very frustrated when we mix up predicaments with problems, and the Denver sidewalk replacement project seems like the former. 

It's a "lost cause," but as we learn in the 1939 Frank Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for. We know none of us will be around in 400 years to check on the project's progress, but I would say that NOT letting that get in the way means we are fighting the right fight. 

There is a saying that we plant trees for the next generation.

Perhaps the Denver sidewalk replacement project is for some future country.

What's the pay-off?

Over seven decades observing my fellow humans, I know one thing that seems to hold true for almost everyone: no matter how we try to avoid saying it directly, we do what is in our best interests.

This may be simple logic. This may be due to evolutionary factors, like those who take care of themselves and seek what benefits them tend to have larger families, more offspring, etc. This may be due to our species being inherently selfish. Maybe the advice we get on airplanes applies: put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.

Even people who are clearly quite charitable and who volunteer lots of time and money and expertise tend to get something they value from all that giving. That doesn't strike me as a problem. It's a win-win for society and for the individuals.

That's why the increasing divergence between areas of the country that voted for Trump in 2020 or for Biden in terms of vaccination rates and death rates puzzles me. Check out this post from the New York Times Morning Report to see much more on the actual statistics.

From my perspective, it seems that a lot of Republicans (and I know vaccine denial is not limited to Rs) have made a conscious choice to risk death rather than risk the supposed negatives of vaccines. 

As for Republican politicians, it appears that they are OK with at least some number of their voters dying prematurely (I also realize that ALL voters and politicians eventually will die... though not Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, evidently, who just announced running for reelection at age 88).

I read about a rabidly right-wing minister from the Denver area who died from Covid last week, and who proudly refused the vaccine despite his imminent death. I kind of admire his loyalty to his cause, as he remained bigoted, hateful, and ignorant right to the end. At least he owned it.

All those stories we get about vaccine-deniers who recant on their death beds? I find it much harder to admire them since it took looking death in the face for them to reach the ultimate selfish confession: "I wish I could go on living and I realize now I made the wrong choice."

Those deaths make a mockery of the refrain about "God taking care of us." As my wife often notes: perhaps God IS taking care of us, through doctors and scientists, etc. The ultimate selfishness may lie in people who think they are so important to God that they will receive individual attention, on demand.

But there are counter-forces to self-interest, quite obviously.

I just wish more reasonable people were not being put in danger by hospitals being overburdened and by their neighbors blithely spreading disease.

I just don't see the pay-off.

It's important to get off to a good start

Tomorrow marks 50 years of marriage for Kathleen and me, and that seems like a big deal for any number of reasons. Of course, wouldn't it be great if marriages lasting that long were NOT such a big deal? To get to this point combines marrying (not always a choice couples make), with both partners living to see this point, and avoiding divorce.

So, a bit of luck and lots of will power and loads of love are necessary for a Golden Anniversary.

Our finding each other involves a rom-com cliché -- I was dating Kathleen's college roommate, or we would never have met -- as well as my parents not being all that enthusiastic about the match (at first). Oh, and there was that pesky Vietnam War thing in the mix.

I was their first-born and I was not even 21 when we announced our engagement and plans to marry. I'm not sure my parents were prepared for that and have to admit that now the idea that we would marry at age 21 seems precipitous. We weren't worried about how the marriage could thrive and last for five decades (and counting!). We were in love and simply wanted to be together.

Every marriage has its stories, of course, and most people outside the immediate family could not care less. But one fact that even a stranger might find interesting is that I flew off to England just a few weeks after the ceremony (I was in the Air Force in 1971 and RAF Lakenheath was my first deployment). Kathleen followed as soon as arrangements could be made, arriving in December.

My first airplane trip was flying to San Antonio for basic training. Kathleen's first plane trip was from Cedar Rapids to Gatwick Airport in England (and she has all sorts of stories about that).

We had very little money. I was paid about $100 per month until January, when the military received "huge" pay increases -- my monthly pay went to $300, for instance -- and Kathleen received a separate spouse support payment of $100 per month. I know. It was ages ago, but even then $200/month was not good.

Yet we had enough to live. Ah, youth!

But enough about that. My point is that we ended up having a two-year honeymoon in Europe, far away from family and friends. When we returned to the States in 1973 we brought home a five-month-old daughter, which is probably NOT how most people finish their honeymoon. But that's also another story, for another time.

We never sat down and planned out much of our life. Heck, we were 21 and mostly just stumbled along. We were in love and we also liked each other. And if and when we ran into difficulties or disagreements, we couldn't call parents or commiserate over a beer in a local bar. We had no options but to work it all out.

I occasionally think about how our long marriage began and wonder why our partnership has endured so long while many others (look at the statistics) ran aground. I give some credit to that two-year "exile" in England where we learned so much about ourselves and each other.

We only faintly resemble the strong, fearless youth we once were, though every once in a while I can "see" us as we were. We don't love each other in the same way as we did 50 years ago -- I'm not sure anyone that young truly understands what a partnership can be. Our love for one another is so much deeper today.

What does that mean? I don't know that this can be explained to someone NOT in the partnership. You have to take it on faith, I guess, with 50 years as a piece of evidence.

There's a Zen saying, "Leap and the net will appear."

We took the leap and, somehow, it turned out fine.

Analyzing great passages can lead to stronger essays

I subscribe to several e-newsletter and bloggers, many of whom seem to collect cool sample sentences and passages, and today's post from Frank Bruni is full of writing to savor and analyze. Here are three passages with a few thoughts on each:

"It was the longest day of the year, and the Irish Sea had a metallic tint. The waves were tiny but insistent, like uncooperative children."

 passage from a profile by D.T. Max published in The New Yorker

That second sentence features both a bit of personification (insistent waves) and a simile (comparing those waves to children). That specific description of the water's surface helps set the scene.

From Jason Gay, writing in The Wall Street Journal, on Russian tennis champion Daniil Medvedev: "A 6-foot-6 collection of arms, legs, and wondrously unorthodox strokes, Medvedev swinging away on the baseline can look like someone at a picnic batting away flies."

This sentence features a nice use of the "rule of three," where a series of three seems to be a good place to start when you are trying to prove a point, and the series ENDS with the key descriptor, which combines an adverb and adjective before the noun "strokes." And the following sentence includes another simile, comparing the tennis player's actions to a well-known image.

"It's no accident that Trump's favorite outlet was Twitter: the medium is perfect for people who think in spasms, speak in grunts, emote with insults, and salute with hashtags."

by Bret Stephens, in the New York Times

Nice use of a colon here, moving the reader from a general observation to the more specific descriptions. I was a little surprised to see that the writer went with FOUR in the series, as opposed to three. Still seems to work, perhaps because each item in the series is so short. But what I really admired was the parallel constructions, built on verb + preposition + noun.

These example sentences all are carefully crafted, with each word doing its job. They are all cumulative sentences, meaning they build momentum and push the power of the passages to the end. 

That syntactical choice has a long history. Think of St. Paul writing about faith, hope, and love, with love being the most important of the three nouns in the series. 

I spend a lot of time urging writers to pay special attention to how they START their essays and posts. But we all need to realize that how we STOP is important. 

In-person classes are sort of like that. Good teachers find ways to focus on how the period begins and ends, and try not to slowly ease into a lesson as well as wrapping things up that goes beyond: "oh, there's the bell..."

Bill Maher doth protest too much

On last Friday night's "Real Time with Bill Maher" episode, Mr. Maher made a point of saying, several times, that some people are lying when they claim the rich don't pay taxes (really ENOUGH taxes). He used a statistic like, "81 New Yorkers pay 61 percent of all the taxes the state collects." I likely have not nailed those numbers, but that was the gist.

As I often say about journalists, it turns out that talk show hosts and comedians may also have only a loose grasp of how math works.

At first glance, we might be shocked that so few Americans pay that percentage of the total tax bill and might start thinking, "Hey! They are certainly paying their share."

But the truth is that the statistic is much more likely to indicate the mammoth difference between the wealth of the ultra-rich and everyone else.

Maher has taken some heat for his naïve claim, mostly because he is clearly interested in burnishing his reputation for making everyone a bit angry (and therefore he settled for a superficial claim that does not stand up to any scrutiny). He deserves that criticism, and, of course, he might be a bit disingenuous about his position since he is a multimillionaire himself.

What he didn't or couldn't get into was the more instructive statistic of percentage of income or wealth paid in taxes by various people.

Ten percent of one dollar is always going to be 10 cents, and ten percent of $100 is always going to $10, but the effects of those percentages are nowhere near equal.

I chose ten percent just for simplicity. It turns out that the top one-tenth of one percent average paying about three percent of their total wealth in taxes each year, while everyone else averages over seven percent. 

I can imagine a perfectly fair tax system in which 90 percent of all taxes are paid by a very small number of extraordinarily wealth individuals. Maher was not interested in that possibility, but if we imagine that 100 Americans possess 90 percent of the nation's wealth -- and we are not there... YET -- then it would be completely fair for those 100 people/families to provide 90 percent of tax dollars.

When the bank robber Willie Sutton was captured and asked why he robbed banks, he answered, "Because that's where the money is."

If we need more revenue to provide for the common good, it makes sense to focus on where the money is.

I'm so glad I was not the reporter in this case

One of the foundations of good interviewing is to come to the situation prepared, having done enough research to ask better, more to-the-point questions.

I have had young reporters ask questions of, say, the head football coach, like, "What is your current record?" That obviously gets things off to a poor start, with the coach properly wondering whether the entire interview is a waste of time. Seriously, the kid couldn't be bothered to look up the team's record?

I see that a more public example of not being prepared -- or maybe not possessing common knowledge -- occurred Monday night, as Gillian Anderson was questioned via Zoom about her Emmy for playing Margaret Thatcher in "The Crown."

Ms. Anderson was asked this question in a press conference:

“Just to kind of continue with the whole Margaret Thatcher thing, first question: Have you talked to her about this role at all?” the journalist asked, forcing Anderson to confirm that she had not been able to contact the late British leader before playing her role in the show.

“Um, I have not spoken to Margaret,” Anderson said, with a straight face — a response that some on social media said was so dignified it should have won her another award.

 Unfortunately for the American reporter, Thatcher died eight years ago.

The British in the audience were amused, much as we might be amused by the naïve musings of a four-year-old. It occurred to me that someone like a young Steve Martin might have asked such an ignorant question as part of a routine, and gone even bigger. But maybe the age of willful ignorance has made such a comedic approach all too close to reality.

Just another reminder that we all must do our homework prior to embarking on a public writing or speaking adventure.

Stop feeding the flames of viral trends

Over the past couple weeks everyone has learned of the latest teenage craze, the Tik-Tok viral challenge by "delicious licks." Students across the nation have been blithely and openly (I mean, it's on the internet!) sharing quick videos showing them vandalizing school property. 

Sinks broken. Handles and doorknobs missing. TP hijacked. You can picture it, I'm sure. 

The "people in charge" are outraged, of course, and no one really blames them. Lots of school districts are sending stern emails and letters to parents, warning about potential suspensions and other punishments, not to mention reminding them that those videos are destroying property funded by tax dollars.

Completely logical. And probably not very effective.

The most effective response is likely to increase security in the building, close down all but a very few restrooms and monitor who goes in and out, etc. Oh, and to basically try to ignore the entire trend.

That's right. If we know anything about teen trends, they tend to die out as quickly as they appeared, and denying the "oxygen" needed to keep them going is a simple strategy.

If everyone would just stop talking about it (but charging the culprits for damages and issuing other penalties privately), the entire craze would quickly fade. Then the NEXT craze could begin.

I have been amused by some memes online shared by teachers, such as a Tik-Tok challenge to bring their English teacher coffee one day a week, or meeting deadlines for a class this week.

Oh, if only students were so easy to manipulate.

In the meantime, the outrage from the wise adults -- you know, the ones who suspect that microchips are being inserted in vaccinated folks to, um, control their thoughts? -- will likely end up as overkill and the wise adults won't even realize that the kids have moved on to the next thing.

But at least we had something besides politics to moan about... for a few minutes.

The world rarely offers 'simple rules'

From a recent Seth Godin blog post about respecting people's time: "The simple rule is: If this can be done on multiple tracks, at our own pace, it should be. If it creates a benefit when we all do it together, then let’s."

That sounds so reasonable and I'm sure that, on some level, the future of education may be contained in that simple pair of sentences. 

But my nearly four decades of in-person teaching created habits and opinions that are tough to shed. I have seen posts that claim showing a movie in class, for instance, is a horrible waste of time. After all, the movie could be watched on the students' own schedules and the 2-3 class periods required for a movie would be better invested in answering questions, discussions, projects, and assorted creative activities.

I know I should adopt the "improv credo" of "... yes, and..." but I can't help thinking of some reasons to say, "No, because..." 

My main objection is simple observation: If I provide a link to a two-hour movie (and that is rarely possible), what assurance do I have that any particular student will find that time within a busy schedule? And prior to our class period where all that cool creative thought is scheduled to occur? My experience has taught me that there will ALWAYS be a percentage of students who can't find the time.

When I taught a high school course on Shakespeare, I made it a point to show a filmed version of most plays. My reasoning was that we should read the play, of course, but that Shakespeare never intended that his plays be read privately. He expected them to be performed.

Later in my high school teaching career I would even show TWO versions of "Romeo and Juliet" -- still one of my favorites to teach -- starting with Zeffirelli's 1968 version followed by Baz Luhrmann's 1996 version "Romeo + Juliet."

Here is the trailer for the 1968 film. Here is the trailer for the 1996 film. Even a brief sampling makes clear the stylistic differences, not to mention changes in setting. I thought seeing both of those, even if they spanned five days of class, was worth the deep dive. 

I wanted students to develop comparison skills while forcing them to also get to know the narrative and the poetry and themes a bit better. At least a few years I added watching "West Side Story" to not only enhance understanding of the themes but to get students thinking of how many movies and books and TV shows rely on the basic "two households" in conflict plot device.

In a perfect education world, I suppose the school day could be shortened, allowing for more flexible time for students to watch videos, etc. In a perfect education world, we could access the videos we need on demand, rather than having teachers buy the DVDs for classroom use (and I still have those). In a perfect education world, students would adhere to deadlines to do that "out of school" viewing and notetaking and come ready to talk about what they saw in class on a designated day.

I just never taught in that perfect world. 

A lot of angst over education tends to focus on efficient time use, with a classic culprit being a harried teacher showing "Goonies" in class while sitting in the back of the classroom grading papers that have piled up. 

Very rarely there would be a local stage production of a Shakespeare play with a matinee offering designed for students to attend. 

We would go as a class on that field trip and all sit in the theater and experience the play live.

How was that different from watching a professional film version right in school, without the need for buses and permission slips and excuses from other classes for the day?

So Mr. Godin's "simple rule" reminds me that in education there are few simple rules.

The gender gap comes to American universities

I'm not sure what to make of the latest estimates comparing men and women and college attendance.

Women now make up nearly 60 percent of all college students, which may mostly serve to remind us that the ratio was reversed not all that long ago. It may have something to do with economics. It may have something to do with women not having many viable options WITHOUT a college degree. It may signify an anti-intellectualism among males.

Who knows?

Not everyone wants to go to college, nor does everyone NEED to attend. But considering just how much of a boost college grads get economically, this preponderance of female students should alert us to a future that may look dramatically different (better? worse?). 

Women still earn much less than men in comparable jobs, so the baked in sexism and "biology penalty" (my term for women often needing to step away from school to have babies) remains.

As a long-time high school teacher, I consistently found young women to be much stronger students as a group than young men, though there were always lots of exceptions. "Sit at your desk and pay attention" sorts of classrooms tend to reward young women, who have always coped with such restrictions better than guys. I never thought the intelligence levels of the genders were any different but something about K-12 school was always a challenge for males

The Wall Street Journal did a major story on this last week and sounded the alarm, as news media tend to do. Oh dear! Change is coming! 

If there ARE changes coming, they won't arrive quickly nor evenly distributed among social and economic classes.

But I, for one, am optimistic about this change. I mean, it's tough to imagine women fouling things up worse than men have for centuries.

One great sentence usually leads to more great sentences

Long ago and far away, when the web was mysterious and Facebook, Twitter, etc., did not even exist (that is, in 2002), people experimented online in all sorts of ways with the goal of bringing people together and creating something new.

One of those experiments was something called "One Sentence Stories," which was a spin-off from the six-word story craze that grew from a probably apocryphal Hemingway quote about the shortest story he ever wrote: "For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn." Expanding from a strict limit of six words to a limit of one sentence appealed to many.

Here are a few examples of one sentence stories I gathered:

The last piece of advice that my mother ever gave me was, "Don't dip your fries in the ice cream."

I think the worst thing about being in nursing school and working full-time is coming home at night to find that my roommates made tacos without me.

My grandmother asked me my favorite part of 'Titanic' when we saw it at the movies when I was six, and I replied, "When everyone fell asleep in their floaties."

Here is an archive of a few more of the thousands of sentences www.onesentence.org gathered from 2002-2014.

Of course, to describe these one-sentence exercises as true stories is a stretch. The best stories include the four vital pieces: setting, characters, conflict, and resolution. In those single sentences, we get hints about all four of those factors but there is just not enough space to do the narrative justice.

On the other hand, I came to appreciate these focused, concise sentences as great starting points for true narratives. Each of them seems like a "tease" about what is still to come.

I am early in the semester with my Composing Arguments course that I teach each semester for Metro State, and our first larger writing assignment is a short memoir (maybe 800 words). All I ask is that the writers focus on just one or two key moments or scenes and that they, as writers, feel a significance in those scenes. 

I was thinking that each of the three examples I included above would be great first sentences for a short memoir. 

One top goal for the course is for students to understand the importance of a strong first sentence and how that can provide energy for the entire essay to come.

Taking some extra time to get that opening sentence "just right" always pays off.

When you can't win them all...

Here are the first three grafs of a story in today's Washington Post about the firing of a football coach:

The long, unusual tenure of Clay Helton, the 49-year-old head coach at Southern California, ended Monday afternoon when the school fired him two games into the season. It came more than 11½ years after his arrival as an assistant and almost six after his ascension to the helm. It left an opening at one of the country’s storied football programs.

Donte Williams, an associate head coach who coached USC’s cornerbacks, will serve as interim head coach, his first such turn in a career that has taken him through Nevada, Washington, San Jose State, Arizona, Nebraska and Oregon before his arrival at USC in 2020. He is regarded as an excellent recruiter.

Helton’s head-coaching tenure, long viewed as pretty good but not good enough, ended at 46-24. His 70th game became a flashing-lights loss to Stanford sound-tracked by booing in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Saturday night. Two late USC touchdowns window-dressed the score from 42-13 to a final 42-28, and the Trojans exhibited some of the same issues of football discipline that have plagued them in recent seasons.

I'm sure Coach Helton's tenure has not been perfect and I'm also certain that one loss, however embarrassing, was not the key factor in his being terminated so early in the new season. I also am well aware that USC has a long and storied tradition as a college football power and that expectations for any coach of that program are quite lofty. But the guy's teams managed to win two-thirds of their games, and many universities would be more than satisfied with that.

I often think about the near-impossible task coaches face. Win or lose, most eventually get fired. Win or lose, all coaches are being constantly second-guessed and criticized. Athletes, parents, and boosters all see the sport through unique lenses and no coach can possibly meet every need and make everyone happy.

This seems related to my thoughts on politics and government. Much like coaching, politicians and government officials will always be criticized and will always be second-guessed. Once politicians can accept that they will never receive universal approval, they can get on with making the best decisions possible, based on their philosophies and experiences. 

Coaching requires judgments and discipline and technical skill and interpersonal "genius," at least at the highest levels. There is also the reality that in most contests, one coach will be leading the losing team.

Even the best athletic coaches tend to get fired. Same with politicians. 

I honestly wonder why ANYONE would want to get into either career at this point in American life. 

Country goes from crazy uncle to patient dad

We needed a dad, or at least someone who could cut through the whining and bickering and stubbornness... all the behaviors that were encouraged for several years under a president who, beyond all his other failures and idiocy, was like a silly kid.

We got Joe Biden, and in only nine months he has done many of the things that we all (deep down) know are needed for the country. We are mandating vaccines. We are out of an unwinnable war. We are having discussions with other countries and not constantly pounding our chests. We are lifting innocent children out of poverty with modest stipends.

Is the country still a bit chaotic, a bit unorganized, and a bit just plain nuts? Duh. That helps explain the recent drop in President Biden's approval ratings, according to some polls, anyway. When dad makes the call and cuts the crap, the children are rarely big fans.

Of course, dad is not always right, and I'm certain we all have quibbles and questions about exactly how the Biden administration is proceeding. 

Some people would argue that we should have been mandating Covid vaccines as soon as we could have, for instance. After all, it doesn't seem to matter to the more rabid Republican politicians that the vaccines are fully approved (well, one is and the others are not far behind) and that there are virtually zero long-lasting or life-threatening effects from getting vaccinated.

Our "dad" did what he could to urge his children to do the right thing. We all appreciate a bit of patience in our parents, as they allow us to figure it out on our own... up to a point. 

But there comes a time when an exasperated dad goes with, "Because I said so." 

And that's the end of the discussion.

Kids aren't happy about that answer, at least at first. But most of us eventually acknowledge that some of those seemingly arbitrary rules and admonitions issued by dad or mom or grandma turned out to be wise. And when it is our turn to be parents... well, THEN we really see the wisdom of our elders.

The wacky mix of politics and health science means that anything resembling a mandate will get politicians (and some of their followers) to overreact, to protest, to proudly proclaim that they are guarding the nation against socialism or baby-eaters or whatever.

When you know you will be criticized by the tiny percentage of pundits who dominate our national discourse, no matter what you do, a solid choice is to choose to do what your discussions and your research and your common sense and your experiences lead you to.

No politician can "win" approval from all in the short term. Attempting to placate all parties and all views is a fool's errand.

It's becoming a theme for me: do the right thing to the best of your ability. All other choices go nowhere.

The past is always with us

We love nice round anniversary numbers, and tomorrow is an irresistible anniversary: 9-11.

The events are no more or less horrible this year, as opposed to last year or next year, but most of us appreciate an agreed upon time to memorialize major events. We do it with wedding anniversaries -- two weeks from tomorrow my wife and I will celebrate 50 years of marriage -- and with high school and college graduations -- ten-year and twenty-year gatherings, for instance. 

Logically, agreeing on a time to check in on what happened then, what has happened since, what is different or the same, etc., makes sense. Twenty years is a large enough period of time to provide some separation. Twenty years is long enough past to be only an entry in a history textbook for Americans who have not reached 21 years of age, including our four grandchildren. Twenty years is enough to create an entire new generation of societal reference points and allusions.

I drove to Safford, Arizona, the evening of Sept. 10, 2001, spending the night at a Comfort Inn prior to meeting with a yearbook staff at the high school. I had just begun a short, forgettable job as a yearbook publisher representative, and meeting with the adviser and staff at Safford HS was one of my first tasks.

My sales territory was vast, and there are only so many towns and schools in southeast Arizona. Our home was in Tucson, and the most efficient strategy to stop in and see teachers and students was to spend a couple days "on the road," cramming as many visits in as practical.

Anyway, I was eating the hotel breakfast when the two TVs high on the wall began showing the attack. There were a number of folks in the breakfast area, but no one spoke. And no one left. We just watched.

By mid-morning the towers were down, confusion was everywhere, and I had joined the rest of the country with a sick feeling in my gut. I tried to call Kathleen, who was still in Iowa City, selling our home there and prepping for the move to AZ, but the phone system was overwhelmed. I did not even own a cellphone at the time, but the cell towers couldn't handle the volume of calls in any case. Imagine that.

Kathleen, of course, tried multiple times to call our elder daughter, Lesley, but that didn't work either. Why repeated calls to Lesley, you ask?

She was the associate features editor for the Rocky Mountain News and one of her "beats" was fashion. As part of her work, she went to New York for Fashion Week each fall, and it turns out that she was the only RMN staff member physically in New York City that morning. 

She was able to use the paper's resources to contact her editors back in Denver and suddenly her assignment switched from covering fashion trends to gathering stories for the paper back home. It took at least three days for a senior columnist/reporter to get a flight to New York and to relieve her so she could return home.

When something overwhelming happens we can be forgiven for panicking a bit. I knew in my head that her hotel was in Midtown and that the towers were in lower Manhattan, miles away. Still, my wife and I worried as only parents can. After all, Lesley was just 28, married for just one year. 

She was OK, though to this day she still does not talk about what she saw and smelled and heard as she did her best to find angles to cover that would be unique for Colorado readers. She walked south from her hotel for miles until authorities would let her go no closer. She did file a half-dozen stories over several days, somehow keeping it together, embracing the chaos, and finding those local angles. I have copies of all her stories, and they are terrific.

Many hours later Kathleen got through to her, if only for a few minutes. We were separated from one another by distance but as one in our worry. We were safe, far away from the attack, but adding the possible dangers for our daughter to the overwhelming images and tragic human stories made it all so personal

And twenty years on, those emotions and fragments of memory remain raw and vivid.

Lesley was among a legion of unsung "heroes," people who did their best to do their jobs in the face of enormous confusion and tragedy.

She'll always be a hero to me.

Sometimes we need to just rely on "story power"

The clear strategy being used to encourage hold-outs to get the Covid vaccine relies on the power of storytelling. Journalists/interviewers connect with patients who are lying in hospital beds and who are willing to share their fears and regrets.

The most effective of these videos and written reports incorporate some personal background and some references to other family members. Then the inevitable statements like, "I never thought I would get sick" and "I doubted how widespread the virus was."

Those, by themselves, are unsupported claims. The power of these testimonies lies in the support, in the shared worries and hopes of readers/viewers and those giving the testimony. 

For some people, the statistics and the advice of experts is enough to persuade. But for everyone, nothing beats a good story, one with a setting, characters, conflict, and resolution.

These Covid stories tend to feature hospital rooms with lots of tubes and machines. The characters are the suffering patient, with off-stage appearances from grieving and worried family members. The conflict is obviously the collision of human and disease. 

Unfortunately, the most powerful of these stories end with death as the resolution, though we all realize that death will not end the suffering of those who loved the folks who gambled and lost.

We are now at 75 percent of American adults with at least one shot. 

The power of stories may yet produce happy endings.

Empty threats get attention, but no more than that

From the "Power Up" newsletter on the Washington Post website, here is the first graf of the lead story:

For the second time in the organization's history, the League of Conservation Voters political action committee last night alerted all Congressional Democrats it will only consider endorsements for members who support key climate provisions in the $3.5 trillion spending blueprint, according to a letter shared with Power Up.

These sorts of threats seem both desperate and dangerous. Maybe the power of these conservation voters is enough to sway election results, or maybe not, but as long as we have a two-party system, and one party is clearly and loudly anti-conservation, the threat seems like self-harm.

Most people like being able to lord it over somebody (anybody!) and brag and threaten, but this sort of letter seems like bluster without bite, doesn't it? So called environmentalists cost Al Gore victory over two decades ago, and lack of common cause allowed Trump to squeak out a win in 2016. I wonder if environmentalists are pining for more Republican rule of the government. 

But at least they can stand proudly, sticking to their principles as their cause languishes (or maybe even causes a backlash among those not quite so radical).

Of course, extremism is back in vogue in our politics and it's tough to get the media to pay attention when there is so much chaos to cover, from floods to fires to drought to collapsing structures to a pandemic that won't ever end.

My most recent line of thinking on the state of the nation is absorbed by the question, "How does it all end, or at least calm down?"

I have not been able to even imagine an event or turn of history or natural disaster that would make significant changes in the nation.

But I still have faith in the bedrock selfishness of most people (including me, I guess). If government can deliver some needed and important services, government can regain a bit of status.

I see that an unprecedented report endorsed by 200 medical journals states that climate change is the "greatest threat to global health." This may be logical and may take the proper longer view of health trends, but this report seems as likely to effect change as the Conversation Voters' letter. Those medical journals are all tools of Satanic baby-eaters, after all.

But, by all means, let's focus on academic journals and arguments that span multiple human lifetimes in terms of policies and repercussions.

Yes, they SHOULD help guide decision makers, but that's not how politics works.

Let's run the numbers, one more time

Far be it for me to criticize the news media (ha!), but today's New York Times Morning Report highlights the fact that the odds for a fully vaccinated person in the U.S. getting Covid is 1 in 5,000. For places that boast higher overall vaccination rates, that can jump to 1 in 10,000.

I often point out that most news tends to be bad news, and the fact that a large chunk of the country overestimates the likelihood of being infected, even if vaccinated, should remind us that news often is not only bad but represents something out of the ordinary.

There are hundreds of putouts in Major League Baseball games each day, for instance, but only the most unusual and even spectacular will make the ESPN SportsCenter highlights reel each night -- a great example of "the expected" not making news very often.

Most people spend most (or all) of their days "acting right." A very small percentage of people don't act right. Guess who makes the news?

I'm sure the government, the media, political parties, and social media all contributed to this, but we are now living in a country where a large percentage of the population fears the pandemic too much, while another large percentage fears it too little.

The full report makes for reassuring reading. 

Playing the odds is sort of fun, and sort of pointless. After all, the chances of any one person catching one disease in one restricted period of time don't really help us plan our daily lives.

The chances of a 71-year-old white male living at least another 10 years is 71.8 percent. Not perfect, but a decent reason for me to have waited until age 70 to begin taking social security. There is certainly a chance that I won't live long enough to make the wait for maximum benefits to pay off. But simply surviving the next decade really pays off for me. I took that bet.

I see that about 72 percent of American drivers will get in at least one car accident in their lifetime, and that drivers average 3-4 accidents over their lives. Most accidents don't result in death, but they are not pleasant and usually expensive and can disrupt our lives.

But most of us don't think twice about leaping into the vehicle for a quick errand.

For the vaccinated, Covid looks to soon become just another fact of life. Like driving, where we stay alert, follow the rules, and anticipate weird actions by others, so keeping ourselves healthy should prompt us to wear a mask, even if vaccinated, in crowded places and to stay home when feeling sick, etc.

In Seattle on an average recent day, about one out of every one million vaccinated residents have been admitted to a hospital with Covid symptoms. That rate is beyond tiny. That makes driving look like a crap shoot, particularly during rush hour on I-5.

For the unvaccinated, the rates in Seattle over the same period jumped 900 percent. Those odds don't guarantee getting sick, but wearing a seat belt doesn't guarantee surviving a car wreck.

There are few guarantees. Smart people look for best odds, however.

Is doing the right thing bound to be punished?

There is an old saying among the elite commentators: Good policy is not good politics. I saw a version of this in a column about how President Biden's approval ratings have fallen despite overwhelming approval for some of his administration's biggest initiatives.

I read a commentary today about how Democrats may suffer in future elections due to advocating for more competitive legislative districts, effectively eliminating gerrymandering. That writer thought Colorado might end up losing two Democratic seats in 2022. Maybe that was exaggerated, and the writer certainly has no idea of what will happen. After all, a commission has only now released a first draft of a redistricting plan.

That would be disappointing to the clear Democratic majority in the state and would mimic the national problem of rural areas having far more political power than raw numbers suggest.

No good deed goes unpunished, as another saying goes.

So let's flip the old saying to "Bad policy is bad politics." Do politicians regularly lose when they make poor decisions or simply create laws that are bad for the majority of voters? 

There is little evidence of that. Most legislative seats don't change parties no matter how bad individual decisions turn out.

Or how about flipping the saying to "Bad policy is good politics." Ah, maybe that's were we find ourselves right now, particularly in Republican-led states which seem to be creating laws that the majority of voters in their own states oppose (or at least are not passionate about).

Texas is ground zero for this laboratory studying cause and effect in politics. 

As the anti-mask gang continues to rage and the anti-vaccine mob continues to scream about freedom, it's tough to NOT see the combination as "bad policy," though politicians are unlikely to swim against either stream.

Of course, much like the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a logical way out of the pandemic is to simply let Nature take its course. After all, the current crisis is restricted to the unvaccinated when it comes to serious repercussions from the virus. And many people have gotten sick and may have some acquired immunity from variants. And viruses TEND to weaken as they mutate, but not always, as the delta variant (now the only strain) shows.

At this point, the virus is here to stay. We have chosen that course as a country. Maybe there were no solid options. At some point, we will have to live with yet another of the hundreds of diseases that might get us. 

As for Mr. Biden, one other truth about American politics is that the voters have goldfish-like attention spans and memories. Grumbling and outrage will continue, of course, but Americans have little appreciation for history and whatever happens NEXT summer will have much more to do with the 2022 midterms. 

I would continue to opt for good policy if I were president. Everyone loses when the game is played cynically, or without any regard for rules at all.

Do some good today. Do some good tomorrow. That seems like a solid strategy for life.

Individuals vs. The Common Good

Tax revenue last fiscal year in Colorado exceeded the somewhat arbitrary Tabor Amendment cutoffs by about $450 million. That means there will be refunds for many taxpayers in the coming year.

The average per joint return? $166.

Nobody is likely to refuse even that paltry sum, of course. Heck, I still make it a point to stoop down in a parking lot and pick up a nickel. Logic and basic math be damned.

Colorado remains stuck in a tight place between crumbling and inadequate highways, water systems, etc., and growing population, so there are still lots of unfunded needs.

I guess I could contribute my $166 to pave, what, an inch of highway? Or to make sure a light rail driver gets paid for working next Tuesday morning. But there's no mechanism to do that and even writing it down seems silly.

This refund illustrates one major reason for government. Individually, our small "donations" or simply tax dollars, can do little. But in aggregate... well, even $450 million isn't enough to cover our highway and bridge repair needs, but that chunk of change certainly could make a bigger dent than, I guess, nothing.

Yes, that $166 is/was my money. I paid it in taxes. I never really expected to get it back and it comes to an extra $13.80 per month... so no big deal.

I am trying not to be elitist here, and am sympathetic to arguments that even a small amount of unanticipated income could make a difference for a struggling family. But what if the entire $450 million were invested in making a difference reducing some specific problem? Like homeless housing or mental health support.

If you walk around downtown Denver, you can "fight homelessness" a few bucks at a time, dropping some money in a hat or cup. We've done that for many years, and that approach clearly does not work. 

I guess I could mail a check for my refund amount to some social net program but would that office even know what to do with my paltry donation? 

I sometimes wonder why we don't do more crowdfunding for things like repairing highways. Politicians seem to be able to tap into vast numbers of very small donations to come up with plenty of campaign cash.

All my wondering is in search of what is recently called "counterfactuals," or potential results of other choices. The word is not clear until we get some context, as it on the surface might be some version of "fake news." But I'm coming to embrace it.

After all, without well-supported counterfactuals, how can any progress be made? How can goals be established? No one likes the way the war in Afghanistan ended, but are there useful counterfactuals (options not chosen) that MIGHT have made things better?

Devising compelling counterfactuals is key to many arguments, particularly when some law or policy or activity is being criticizes. 

Persuasive writers need the capacity to wonder, "What if?"

Devolving into a simple conflict: powerful vs. powerless

Here is the lead to today's Dana Milbank column in the Washington Post:

Texas this week showed us what a post-democracy America would look like.

Thanks to a series of actions by the Texas legislature and governor, we now see exactly what the Trumpified Republican Party wants: to take us to an America where women cannot get abortions, even in cases of rape and incest; an America where almost everybody can openly carry a gun in public, without license, without permit, without safety training and without fingerprinting; and an America where law-abiding Black and Latino citizens are disproportionately denied the right to vote.

The use of three specific examples is powerful and a vivid demonstration of "the rule of three," where three examples seems to be the right number of supporting details.

One example or incident is clearly not enough to establish a pattern. Two examples could simply be coincidence. Four examples starts to feel like piling on, though there is a strategy for supporting a claim that relies on a LONG list of examples (indicating overwhelming evidence).

Milbank argues that these Texas laws are undemocratic by citing Texas state polls that indicate that none of these laws enjoys the approval of the people who live in the state. That is frustrating if you disagree with the laws and cheering if you do approve. After all, who doesn't like a good underdog story, where good triumphs over evil despite being faced with overwhelming opposition?

The problem lies in whether those Texas laws are on the side of good. And good is clearly relative. I have no doubt that many who support those restrictive (or expansive, in the case of guns) laws have their own reasons. Few people do not act in self-interest.

Of course, that means we must cast Texas white Republicans as the underdogs, and that characterization doesn't hold up to much scrutiny.

But here's how idealistic I remain, despite years of disappointments: Democracy CAN work, but only if voters participate and -- this is key -- appreciate the power of people to make changes. If voters become cynical and simply shrug and ignore government and more powerful people creating laws that they disagree with -- after all, what's the point of fighting the money and privilege? -- then the anti-democratic tendencies of many states will continue.

When the dog finally catches the car it is chasing, what then? (The Taliban suddenly NOT being at war after two decades and needing to run a country is a classic example.)

I keep thinking that elections and representatives needing to respond to their constituents' needs will eventually triumph. 

I also keep thinking that politics is all about power, but that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," and that the more brazen the power play, the more voters will object. Perhaps there is a line that even the most suppressed and confused and isolated voters just can't stomach.

Have some politicians crossed that line? Is anyone paying attention?

Sporting events are always about more than the score

Ever wonder if high school sports have gotten a bit out of hand? If you were still not certain, last week's ESPN national game between a tiny Ohio charter school and a Florida powerhouse program, both of which represented schools that were essentially founded to provide top-notch football competition and which ended with a 58-0 blowout by the Florida school should be the decider.

It turns out that the Ohio school is only three years old, founded by the head coach, and had played just TWO DAYS before this nationally televised "contest."

Everyone is embarrassed. The announcers early on recognized that the rosters they had been provided did not match uniform numbers and that the ten Division I prospects the coach had boasted about did not exist.

I have not even begun to get into all the craziness involved in this, but you might want to read this article to get some sense of it all.

What did not seem to rise to the level of "news" is the very existence of high school football programs that play national schedules and that act as feeders for hot shot college programs. Education officials in both Ohio and Florida should be ashamed and tax payers should be outraged. Neither will occur because this is America and, you know, freedom.

Back in the dark ages when I played high school sports, there were no club teams, no charter schools... heck, my high school did not have a weight room! I was able to play at a mediocre level in three sports, but that is now so rare as to deserve a special story in the local press.

My guess is that the new Ohio charter school will soon be disbanded. Good. But there WILL be a next time.

If there is money to be made, Americans always find a way.