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April 25, 2006
Softball - in a parallel universe
by Sylvia S Tognetti
It is probably delusional to even think that we could all ever at least play by the rules of the science policy game when we can't even agree on the rules for informal softball games. According to the DCCC blog (via Digby) Republican teams on Capitol Hill have just seceded from the Congressional Softball league and formed their own - "after accusing its Democratic commissioner, Gary Caruso, of running a socialist year-end playoff system that gives below-average teams an unfair chance to win the championship." This "league" is an informal tradition that has been going on for 37 years. The year I worked as a research assistant at the now defunct OTA (~1987), they even let me play. To avoid embarrassment, I would have been happy just to be there to watch and catch a late afternoon breeze, but with some encouragement, I even managed to hit a few balls. I probably still have a "TechSox" t-shirt somewhere. Most of what I recall is that the rules, if they existed at all, got made up along the way, and that the teams of Republican staffers took the thing way too seriously. The whole point was that we could all at least get along on the softball field. No more I guess. Now, even in Major League baseball, the political affiliation of team owners is becoming a criteria for whether to fund baseball stadiums....
Does anybody else feel like we are all in the back seat of a car that is being driven by a two year old? This may seem like a minor issue but, to have any hope of resolving larger social conflicts, there has to also be what has been called the "capacity for peace." I can't remember what book I found that term in so pardon me for not including a reference but, what becomes important are those things we continue to do that transcend social and political divisions, like playing softball... Or assessment of science for policy - oh wait - OTA doesn't exist anymore. If we can't do that, what can we do? I'm not sure a single government can preside over parallel universes....
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 9:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 18, 2006
But how do we know that the answer is forty two?
by Sylvia S Tognetti
I was about to blog an op-ed by David Michaels about the new film Thank you for Smoking* and about further developments in the Data Quality Act saga - I see that Chris Mooney beat me to it, and notes that many of the Bush administration science games are happening under the radar - like at OMB - where, as I have noted, political appointees have a lot more power than public relations officers at NASA. (i.e., George Deutsch). I hadn't quite gotten around to blogging about the DQA because, how we insure data quality is a topic that merits some serious and substantive discussion - and it takes time to deconstruct misleading and malicious soundbites in the length of a blog post. In case you haven't noticed, the use of misleading and malicious orwellian soundbites as titles to legislation is a pattern.
The DQA, a bill that was passed without debate as a "midnight rider" to the 2001 appropriations bill, would in effect institutionalize the manufacture of uncertainty and doubt, and also its abuse, to support arbitrary and capricious behavior by those entrusted to make policy decisions. In other words, instead of being merely a public relations strategy of big tobacco and big oil companies, it would become government policy, to use science to make a case that there is not enough information to make what is essentially a value judgment. In a new development, according to Michaels, "Now, with its risk assessment proposal, the Bush administration is interpreting the DQA as a license to override the Clean Air Act and laws meant to protect the public's health and environment." I haven't entirely read the new proposed risk assessment guidelines but I'll take his word for it. (see footnote for a digression)
The only reason this strategy of manufacturing doubt and uncertainty works at all is because of the rampant Low Tolerance for Ambiguity that seems to be endemic to our culture. This is not so much an issue of public myth-understanding of science, but of how policy issues are framed. A narrow technical framing of social problems - and of how risk assessments are conducted, implies that we just need to get the science and the prices right, usually leaves out most of what people who are affected care about, like fairness and actually having clean air and water, i.e., values, which then become merely obstacles to be overcome in the implementation phase. This also creates false and unrealistic expectations of what science can tell us, and essentially becomes a one-way flow of information from scientists to policy makers. Ultimately it polarizes and paralyzes the whole process of making a decision - which seems to be the whole point of the DQA and the proposed risk assessment guidelines.
* I may have more comments after I see the film - If you are in the DC area, you should make sure to see the film at the recently restored AFI Silver theater in Silver Spring which, if you haven't been to yet, is awesome, and not just for the decor.
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Footnote digression: Another pattern that goes back at least as long as I have been around as a witness to all of this nonsense is to strangle outnumbered public interest lawyers and advocates with technical documents to respond to. Its just a trap. In the early '80s I worked as an assistant to a lawyer who was intervening in the licensing hearings for the restart of the other Three Mile Island facility, that had been down for maintenance at the time the other one melted down (btw, TMI stands for "They Melted It"). Finally, after the company was criminally convicted for behavior that led to the accident, she went after the license on grounds that the conviction demonstrated "bad character" and that we shouldn't allow criminals to be running nuclear plants - we do, and btw, NRC stands for "Nobody Really Cares" but I digress.... ok, back to the present. The lesson seems to have been learned - that the only rational way to answer the climate denialists is to play bingo and move on.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 12:32 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
April 13, 2006
Hiding behind locked doors
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Jeez - I'm glad that there are Republicans who are looking for common ground on environmental issues. But giving MD Governor Erlich credit for making MD the 8th state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative? Sorry - this doesn't pass the laugh test. The RGGI is a provision of the new MD Healthy Air Act which Ehrlich vehemently opposed and fully intended to veto. Knowing that a veto would be promptly overridden, his office door was locked at 4:30 on the Friday it was brought to him, so he could say he didn't receive it until Monday. Since he is given 6 days to act on a bill, and since there was one week to go until the end of the legislative session, this would have allowed him to veto it at the end of the last day of the session, thereby removing any opportunity for an override. According to the Washington Post, that bill and about a dozen others were slipped under his locked door by Senate aides at 4:50. After a barrage of e-mails and phone calls from irate citizens like myself, and an opinion of the MD Assistant Attorney General for the Legislature. Robert A. Zaranoch, that "unreasonable office hours may not be set to frustrate presentment" and (citing a 1982 Alabama Supreme Court decision) that the governor was required to act by Friday, Ehrlich caved and signed the bill. This was done in secret - presumably to avoid giving any credit to those who fought for its passage. For more info see the MD League of Conservation Voters. (Hat Tip: Environmental Economics blog.)
Full disclosure: I am also a precinct official for the Montgomery County MD, Blue Crab Democrats who are known as:
Luminaries of the Maryland Political Ecosystem. Blue Crab Democrats are the most loyal, tenacious and hardworking enthusiasts of the Maryland Democratic Party. Unbowed by attacks from the radical right, they are fierce defenders of individual liberty and freedom. They work hard to strengthen Maryland communities and are revered for their industry, especially when cleaning up after Republicans.
We used to have a moderate Republican representing our Congressional district, who was great on environmental issues too, i.e., Connie Morella. Unfortunately, by helping to give the Republicans a majority, she undermined everything she stood for, so we replaced her with Chris Van Hollen. Until the so-called moderate Republicans are willing to break with their party on issues that they say they stand for, I have a hard time taking them seriously. Especially the ones in Takoma Park who I have witnessed in elections past actively campaigning for a Green Party candidate as a way to split the Democratic vote for delegates to the state house of representatives.... Once they are willing to stand their ground on environmental issues within their own party, and play by the rules of the game, we can talk about common ground, and also about important differences of perspective that at the moment seem, well, trivial. Unless we can agree on the rules of the game, democracy will soon become a figment of the imagination.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 4:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack