Category Archives: Current Affairs

I’m working on some interesting posts, but since it’s Saturday (and unbelievably beautiful here in Southern Cal) I wanted to share a quick, amusing story courtesy of Slate. Courage in action: don’t mess with stenographers.

The "legal tabloid" abovethelaw.com named Ron Tolkin "Court Reporter of the Day" last month after the 61-year-old Brooklyn stenographer was called upon to wrestle a rampaging criminal to the ground in open court. Tolkin jumped on defendant Victor Wright after the convicted drug felon started choking federal prosecutor Carolyn Pokorny, head of the Eastern District of New York narcotics division. The crazed Wright also tried, unsuccessfully, to slash Pokorny with a razor (see Page 6), but the weapon fell to the floor amid the tumult. As Tolkin subdued the assailant, with help from the defendant’s lawyer and two U.S. marshals, his tape recorder picked up the scuffle. Several days later, the conscientious court reporter produced a certified (Page 7) transcript of the unusual proceedings. Excerpts appear below and on the following six pages.

"I told him, ‘You want to try something, try it on me,’ " Tolkin explained to the New York Times. "Only I wasn’t that polite." Let the record show that Tolkin’s precise words, as quoted in the transcript, were: "Try it on me, man, I’ll kick you in the fuckin’ balls" (Page 3). Tolkin is also quoted in the transcript saying, "You cocksucker, get off of her. Get off of her. Get off of her. You cocksucker, get off of her" (Page 3) and, "Fuckin’ shit. Son-of-a-bitch" (Page 4). Tolkin offered the court an unnecessary but gentlemanly apology for the harsh language in his transcript, much of it his own. The trial was subsequently postponed.

A few weeks ago, 30 congressmen published a letter protesting budget cuts to programs like AmeriCorps.
My latest commentary on public radio’s Marketplace aired yesterday and it’s about who benefits from national service programs.

You can listen to my commentary here or read the text, written for radio, below. 350 words is not enough to fully explore this interesting topic, so this is meant just to start a conversation, not finish it.

Thanks to Arnold Kling and David Boaz for offering feedback on an early draft.

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Listen carefully to those who hail the benefits of national service programs. "It’ll improve civic engagement, build national unity, instill duty and honor in America’s youth." Isn’t it strange how the conversation is always about the benefits to us?

A few years ago, a Washington University report noted that nobody has really studied how broad service programs affect those actually being served. It suggests that in some cases the local communities in which we are volunteering may be hurt more than helped. How so?

Say an Uncle Sam-sponsored American comes along and offers to rebuild a dilapidated home in a poor area for free. What rational homeowner would say no? The community’s happy, and the subsidized volunteer feels good about himself, but what about the local builder who was charging market rate for the service? Sorry, he’s out of a job. Temporary streams of volunteers can disrupt local labor markets over the long haul. One study of AmeriCorps, for example, suggests the positive impact may be only short-term.

Now national service is just a sliver of the total volunteer pie. Americans volunteered over three billion hours last year. The vast majority of these people did so without an order from the government. They worked with private non-profits. Since they choose to volunteer for a specific local cause, these people are better able to create a long-term positive impact on the folks they serve.

Nevertheless, John McCain and others want to nationalize volunteerism. There’s an effort underway to pump up the social pressure. Advocates want to offer various financial incentives for kids to serve "voluntarily" for the United States. McCain talks about increased "patriotism" and "serving one’s country." So wait. Is McCain’s plan a nationalistic morale building exercise? Are the benefits intended to flow primarily toward the servers or the served?

Now what’s the point of an expensive government program that doesn’t quite know whom it’s trying to help? Let’s stick with local, community-organized service programs, and make sure those in need come first, and those who offer the services are contributing of their own volition.

The current financial / credit crisis in the U.S. exposes an ongoing societal need: people who can understand complex ideas and then translate them for consumption by the quasi-informed and curious but non-expert segment of the population.

Malcolm Gladwell, for example, has made a living out of reading hard-to-understand psychology papers and writing about them to the lay audience. Michael Pollan is the Gladwell of food science. Pollan’s books on agriculture, farming, and eating have been bestsellers. He once boiled down all nutrition advice thusly: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Simple but right.

Who’s the Malcolm Gladwell of finance? Who is translating the macro-economic gibberish into concepts the average person can understand, without offending economists?

As anyone who reads Brad DeLong knows, the economic literacy of the average journalist is not very high. There’s a big difference between “simple but right” and “simple but wrong.” Ben Stein, in the New York Times, is often simple, often wrong. Jim Cramer, often simple, often wrong.

On the contrary, James Fallows on China and the deficit, David Leonhardt on how even experts are confused about what’s going on in the markets, or James Surowiecki on real estate and foreclosures, are all examples of solid explanations that are simple and clear. Michael Lewis is also a reliably thoughtful lay-person’s explainer on business issues.

I read lots of economics blogs, and blogs are good for in-the-moment analysis, but they rarely can afford to step back and offer a higher level overview. Also, professional economists, by virtue of being professional economists, can struggle to translate economic jargon.

In an old post of mine titled When to Think Hard, When to Outsource, I talked about how I rely heavily on certain people’s insight for certain types of issues (in effect “outsourcing” some parts of the critical thinking process to them). To wit, I’m trying to construct my “dream team” of people who are following the macro-econ scene, following the credit markets and mortgage situation, and conveying their thoughts in sound, simple prose.

Any ideas for who should be in the starting lineup?

The district attorney of Harris County (Texas) – Chuck Rosenthal – just resigned his post. It’s good news for opponents of the death penalty as Rosenthal asked for the ax more than any other DA in the country. Why is he stepping down? Among other things, he had sent love notes to his secretary, sent emails with racist jokes, set off firecrackers in a stairwell, and endorsed one judge because "she looked great in jeans." What a man. His explanation for his most recent brouhaha:

“The particular combination of drugs prescribed for me in the past has caused some impairment in my judgment."

Riiiight. Sounds to me like he never matured past the horny 8th grade rebel stage.

In other news, a school district in Arizona, in an attempt to clarify its policy against public displays of affection, has banned hugs which last longer than two seconds. Students protested by organizing one big group hug across the street. Another one of those moments when you’re embarrassed for the human race.