Atrios is wrong about California's HSR and liberal spending priorities

I think Atrios is right to keep pounding away at the idea that our elites love to bail out banks and leave austerity to the poor masses. But I think he's wrong that liberals should love California's High-Speed Rail project, even though there are massive cost overruns and questions about its utility: "My point is, on the rare occasion that the government is considering giving us some nice things, we should probably just stand up and applaud, even if we can imagine even nicer things that the government should give us but won't. The choice isn't between HSR in California and What Atrios Wants To Spend Money On, the choice is between HSR and, you know, more high tech killing machines, money for war contractors, and tax cuts for rich people."

Not really. There will always be money for high-tech killing machines, war contractors, and tax cuts for the rich. So liberals really need to prioritize what they want to do with a not-limitless pot of resources—particularly if we want to have credibility with that taxpayers providing those resources. "Spending lots of money is awesome!" isn't going to win many political campaigns. Unfair? Maybe, but also reality.

'Mad Men' and the infantilization of America, continued

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner kinda-sorta confirms my theorizing about how Depression-era generation helped create the never-grow-up culture that followed it: "One of my things is that human behavior doesn't change, but certainly the manners change, and what you're watching is the manners changing.

And I use it in every aspect of the storytelling. And it's a very fine gradation, and it's hard to do, but I think the audience felt that there was this kind of precipice, and Don feels it, too. It's not just about people saying exactly what they want. When Megan's going to follow her dreams, because that's what she wants to do, and Roger says, "My father told me what to do," and Don says, "I grew up in the '30s; my dream was indoor plumbing." We take it for granted that you can choose what you want to do. That's all part of a new generation, and very soon there's going to be a generation doing whatever it wants, and they're completely supported by the generation before them. In the Rolling Stones episode, when Don's backstage with that girl, she says, "You don't want us to have fun because none of you did." It's actually the opposite: a lot of parents really indulged their kids because of that very thing, because they grew up in the Depression."

Emphasis added. I meant to mention Don's line about "indoor plumbing" in my previous post—it's a thought that stuck with me through the rest of the season.

Death of Football Watch: Pop Warner makes changes

The kiddie football league limits full-speed collisions—but only in practice. In games, it'll still be legal to watch your child get his block knocked off: "Dr. Matt Grady, a pediatric sports medicine specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the new rules, while a good start, did not go far enough, and that the emphasis in football for players who have not yet reached high school should be on developing skill and technique, not learning how to tackle. “Playing tackle football at 10 years old doesn’t translate to being a pro athlete,” he said. “I think the ability to catch and run and throw translates to being a pro athlete. Players should develop these skills, and then we can add in the collisions later.”"

As I think I've said before, it's going to be increasingly untenable for most parents to let their kids play tackle football as it becomes more and more clear that the game takes a huge toll on their bodies. That'll dry up the supply of players over time. Football is going into decline.

Archbishop Chaput pleads for a state bailout

The leader of Philadelphia Catholics urges Harrisburg to pass vouchers, or he'll have to close schools: "What I noted in February is even more pressing today: Without new scholarship tax credits and school vouchers to relieve costs, more archdiocesan schools will close soon, and more of the financial burden of educating young people will fall on the public."

But even under Chaput's solution, more of the financial burden of educating young people will fall on the public. Students whose education isn't currently publicly subsidized would be for the first time, a likely hit to taxpayer wallets over time.

Conservatives who balk at auto industry bailouts will be amenable to Chaput's proposal. But it's worth considering the idea that Catholic schools are failing of their own accord: Philadelphia church pews aren't as full as they used to be, certainly, so it makes sense that the population of students for church schools would also be in decline. Chaput is blaming the closure of schools on financial challenges, but it might also be true that market forces are working as they do—and that Philadelphia families are voting with their feet.

Hey, I think he's talking about me!

At least he managed to get the link right.

Richard Arenberg is wrong about the filibuster

A scholar writes in defense of filibusters: "But those seeking to end the filibuster would rue the day. We need only recall how overzealous majorities in the Wisconsin legislature attacked collective bargaining, or in Virginia sought to impose mandatory vaginal probes on women seeking abortions. We can easily imagine efforts to overturn health reform, repeal financial reforms, cripple environmental regulation, scale back Medicare, privatize Social Security, or drill for oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. If Mitt Romney is elected with a Republican Congress, without the historic protections in the Senate rules, where could a Democratic minority turn?"

I'm fine with rewriting the rules, as Arenberg suggests—my own suggestion would be that filibusters actually be filibusters, and to make Mitch McConnell stand in the Senate well for 50 hours at a stretch if he really wants to block President Obama's appointments to the judiciary. It might simply be easier, though, just to scrap the filibuster entirely.

Yes, that means that legislative minorities might be brushed aside in crafting legislation. But it also means that legislative minorities could scrap that legislation once they became the majority again. (There is no such thing as a permanent majority in American politics.) Wise senators would hopefully take that into consideration and craft legislation that would be politically difficult to undo at the next change in power. Right now, the filibuster isn't used to protect Social Security—it's often used for no better reason than to make the president's life a living hell. I can't get misty-eyed about that. Scrap the filibuster and let the chips fall where they may.

Are scoops the entirety of journalism?

Stephen Silver seems to think so: "In the end, I don’t see the Inquirer‘s Banner scoop as a reason to see salvation in newspapers, but rather, I view the very rarity of such an event as an indication of the medium’s doom."

Only if "the medium" is composed entirely of scoops. Of course print can't compete on that basis—and, of course, it keeps trying to compete on that basis. Look at today's front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer at right: All but two stories are recaps of events that happened yesterday—events that anybody with a decent RSS or Twitter feed already knew about.

Print is going to be diminished. It will be a very long time before it goes away, I think. To the extent that it can thrive in a downsized state, it will do so because it offers depth, analysis, and thoughtfulness. It can't be about the business of scoops—and the longer we keep measuring its impact by scoops, as Silver does, the harder and faster the fall will be.