Abdul posted a question for discussion: “when schools fail, whose fault is it?” My comment in response was, as usual, mostly glib and only partially informed. Which, of course, makes it perfect for a blog post.

It’s a cascading failure.

There is a chicken & egg dynamic, but let’s say it starts with a chaotic, unstructured home life.

There isn’t a parent to stay home with the child either because both parents are working, unwed mother, divorce or some combination thereof. Often, I suspect, the time the parent is able to spend with the child lacks disciplinary and educational value because of lack of time, lack of energy, lack of inclination, or some combination thereof.

This leads to kids arriving at school unruly and uneducated. Throw in a smattering of kids who maybe don’t understand English too well in the first place for good measure. The more of these kids you have, the smaller the class sizes need to be for teachers to deal with them. But resources tend to be lowest in areas where these problems are the worst. And, these areas are probably where you need the most talented teachers, but the most talented teachers are likely to go where the pay is better and the work is easier.

Layer the whole thing with stubborn teachers unions who are dug in to resist ideological union busting (and therefore, not very responsive to legitimate needs for change); bureaucratic stagnation and maybe even a little corruption at the administrative level; tax payers with unrealistic expectations; and lawmakers who like to make education a political football, and you have something really special.

Eric Bradner, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, reports that Dick Lugar is concerned that health care is too costly at a time when we already have huge deficits.

Major health care reform is too costly an undertaking with federal deficit spending already ballooned, Sen. Richard Lugar told crowds at several stops on the first day of a two-day visit to Evansville.
. . .
“This is not an appropriate time for our government to adopt a comprehensive, whole-scale change in the health care system of the country,” Lugar said late Tuesday afternoon.

Let’s not kid ourselves. If it doesn’t happen now, it’s not going to happen. This country has been talking about health care reform for 50 years. The Clinton attempts were throttled in their cradle. Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II, didn’t make any efforts that I’m aware of. The current system has only gotten worse. Part of the problem is some sort of fundamental cognitive dissonance in our citizenry. The other day, I was trying to collect a medical debt from an individual who hadn’t paid his bill off in 5 years of me pushing. He was talking about how tough times were, how he couldn’t get insurance because of his pre-existing conditions, and then got off on a tangent about how the country was veering toward socialism and started channeling Fox News on health care. Then he said something like “but I’m paying, and I’m not relying on the State!” My jaw may have dropped a bit — he’s paying small portions of his bills in dribs and drabs, meanwhile the hospital has, in effect, given him an involuntary loan — and he’s proud of his self-reliance? He didn’t recognize the fact that –having to talk to me in court was a pretty strong indicator that he had failed to live up to his responsibilities.

But, I digress. Senator Lugar is now concerned about deficits. I am too. In fact, from about 1988 – 2002, it was by far my number one concern. Since then, the country has taken such a detour that it has gone down the priority list a few notches for me. But, the fact is, we would be in a pretty strong position to address health care if the Clinton tax structure had remained in place through the Bush II years and had we not voluntarily and for no good reason elected to go piss away money and lives in Iraq. Using those colossal mistakes — which opponents of health care reform generally favored — to bolster the argument against changing the status quo in health care seems to be rewarding bad behavior. All too many of the born-again fiscal conservatives didn’t raise any serious questions about the cost of the Iraq adventure (I’m looking at you, Blue Dogs.) The message I’m getting is that billions for discretionary military activities are o.k. but if the money might make poor or middle class people’s lives a little better, we’d better pinch pennies until Lincoln cries.

And, frankly, I’m not entirely convinced on the expense argument. We spend more per capita on health care than other industrialized nations and get worse results. We’re Americans – we should be able to do better. The money is already being spent, we’re just not getting the results.

Michael Zennie, of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reports that Indiana DCS is launching a public relations campaign to spread the word that sleeping with an infant isn’t recommended and can lead to the death of the infant.

Medical experts, law enforcement officers and child advocates want to spread the word – sleeping with your baby can be deadly.

Suffocation or other asphyxiation from unsafe sleeping kills more babies in Allen County than any other preventable cause of death – more than car crashes, more than drowning.

I suspect that advocates of the co-sleeping movement won’t appreciate this. I’ve never been a fan of the whole sleeping with your baby thing — probably for selfish reasons. It interferes with my sleep. We went with the Ferber method (i.e. “cry it out”) to get Cole sleeping through the night at about 4 to 5 months. I can’t say it works for every kid — in Harper’s case, I’d say the results have been mixed — but for Cole, the results were dramatically positive. He went from a rarely-sleeping crank, to a champion sleeper and one of the sweetest kids around. (Not that I’m biased or anything).

As for the PR campaign, I wouldn’t be surprised if the DCS has their facts right on this one, but they also wouldn’t be the first government agency to jump into a hyperbolic ad campaign based on incomplete data.

Update The Indiana Law Blog noted a case that is on topic which is slated for oral argument before the Indiana Court of Appeals:

Alisha Harradon & William Kenneth Jones, Jr. vs. Kathy & Keith Schlamadinger – Alisha Harradon and William Jones, Jr. (collectively “the Parents”) filed a complaint in Starke Circuit Court against Keith and Kathy Schlamadinger (collectively “the Schlamadingers”) alleging that the Schlamadingers’ negligence proximately caused the death of the Parents child. The Parents were overnight guests in the Schlamadingers’home, and they allege that the Schlamadingers did not provide an adequate place for the Parents’ three-month-old child to sleep. The child suffocated during the night while sleeping on the couch with his mother. The Schlamadingers filed a motion for summary judgment, which the trial court granted. The Parents appeal and argue that the Schlamadingers owed a duty to the child, and there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the Schlamadingers breached that duty.

What a horrible situation.

(Via Blue Indiana and the Journal Gazette)

Howard Dean and Karl Rove are scheduled to debate at DePauw University in September.

Dean is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Rove is the former chief political adviser to President George W. Bush. The two political speakers are slated to debate Sept. 11 about America’s challenges and opportunities.

There is a pairing that should capture the interest of any political junkie.

The Urbanophile has an extensive write up on “Detroit: Urban Laboratory and the New American Frontier.” The piece has a lot of ideas, but one that particularly caught my eye was the notion that government there was so weak that innovative solutions to problems are possible. In Chicago, if you don’t have the proper permit to tie your shoe laces, you’ll probably have code enforcement on you every time you reach for your feet. But, in Detroit, apparently, that’s not going to happen.

In most cities, municipal government can’t stop drug dealing and violence, but it can keep people with creative ideas out. Not in Detroit. In Detroit, if you want to do something, you just go do it. Maybe someone will eventually get around to shutting you down, or maybe not. It’s a sort of anarchy in a good way as well as a bad one. Perhaps that overstates the case. You can’t do anything, but it is certainly easier to make things happen there than in most places because of the hand of government weighs less heavily.

Go North, young man!

I generally stay away from Indianapolis-specific coverage because that beat is well covered by others, but the brouhaha in Indianapolis caught my eye. stAllio! provides some links and a general explanation of what happened last night at the Indianapolis City-County council meeting. (Abdul provided some extensive twittering from the event, incidentally.)

also at tonight’s meeting, the republican majority—who were swept into power in an anti-tax frenzy in 2007—swallowed their pride and obediently voted for a tax increase to fund the CIB. the democrats on the council were more than happy to sit back on this one and let the republicans, many of whom had signed no-tax-increase pledges, hang themselves on their own hypocrisy. one republican, christine scales, voted against. one democrat, jackie nytes, crossed over to ensure that the bill passed.

The anti-tax rabidity of the Ballard campaign against former mayor Peterson almost can’t be overstated. Then, as I recall, the public safety tax that was one of the outrage triggers somehow wasn’t ever rolled back. And now, this.

I’m sure I’m guilty of it too, but this highlights the fact that glib solutions are easy to pontificate about, but when it comes time to actually govern, the solutions get a little less easy.

Jamais Cascio has an excellent post about those who bemoan “politics” and call for their end.

Politics is part of a healthy society—it’s what happens when you have a group of people with differential goals and a persistent relationship.

If you accept this formulation, and I don’t see any major flaws, the “end of politics” means you either end the persistent relationship or end the differential goal.

Sure, politics are messy, ugly, unfriendly, and frequently wasteful – – – (“but aside from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”) – – – but political discourse and sausage making are better than the alternatives.

The 2009 Blog Indiana is coming up this week. I think I’m going to be able to make it Saturday, but some family logistics have to be addressed. Those of you interested in the Indiana blogosphere — presumably a non-trivial percentage of folks who stumble into these parts — should consider going.

And, the fine folks at Blog Indiana have opened voting for the BLINDY awards in various blog categories including *drumroll please* best political blog where this blog along with Blue Indiana, Capitol Watch Blog, Advance Indiana, and Hoosier Access have been nominated. Other categories are Social Media Superstar, Best Social Network/Local Blog, Best Business Blog, Best Hoosier Blogger, and Best Family Blog.

(h/t Reverent & Free) Democrats are willing to concede to the right wing town hall concerns.

Yes, in light of the provisions that conservative activists have demanded be removed from any and all legislation, Stroszek is willing to say, without equivocation, that under Democratic reform proposals, “We will not euthanize your grandmother.” Democrats will also agree, among other things, not to let Rahm Emanuel’s brother kill Sarah Palin’s baby, not to nationalize hospitals, not to “provide illegal immigrants with unlimited free health care,” not to eliminate private insurance, and not to establish “a super-secret-awesome health care program for ACORN employees.”

With these concessions having been made, I trust that we can now move forward on health care reform with a broad, bipartisan consensus. Blue Dogs and Republicans, you can now rest easy knowing that the concerns of the town hall protesters have been met. While the progressive dream of a nation in which old people are slaughtered to pay for the abortions of ACORN-employed illegal immigrants will again have to be deferred, we are willing to settle for a bill without these measures in the name of bipartisanship. Congratulations, Republicans. You’ve won this round.

Speaking of which, Baron Hill is being inundated with calls on the health care debate. Hopefully he can promise he will vote not only “no,” but “hell no!” on government death panels.

Brad Stone, in the New York Times, had an article that describes my family’s morning Internet usage pretty well. Basically, you wake up and get online before doing much of anything else in the morning. The article is in the “technology is ruining us”/”damn kids and their rock & roll music” genre, but not horribly so. One thing that struck me was that a couple of times they mentioned “used to be you read the newspaper” as if that was an example of fading family togetherness.