The Washington Post and The Denver Post asked writers, thinkers and doers in our community and across the nation to suggest one thing we’d all be better off without. From Denver’s big blue bear to Brussels sprouts to billboards to stress, here are their answers.
Denver’s big blue bear
By Ray Mark Rinaldi, Denver Post Arts & Entertainment editor
Denver doesn’t need a maid service for its spring cleaning, it needs a taxidermist – to take out that Big Blue Bear downtown, before one more person starts to use it as symbol for our city.
Yes, it’s grumpy to demand the extinction of a species that delights school children, captivates tourists and makes even luddites appreciate the possibilities of public art. Standing tall and peek-a-booing into the Colorado Convention Center, it’s a charming throwback to a simpler time, when just drawing the curtains could protect privacy.
But that bear is a danger, I tell you. People are latching on to it as an icon of our icon-less city; and that threatens to overshadow all the gains we’ve made to transform our image from wilderness outpost to modern, tech-savvy metropolis. It’s not the kind of publicity we need to lure forward-thinking corporations and urban-minded professionals to our ranks.
For too long, outsiders have thought of Denver as little more than a stagecoach stop on the way to somewhere else. It’s not a good thing when people know you best for your fabulous pointy airport. Already the tour buses are using that blue bear as a pick-up stop. I’m seeing it on the sides of trucks. You can buy a little blue bear souvenir to take back from your visit to Denver. But is being a beartown really so far away from being a cowtown?
That bear’s gotta go. Maybe we could use that giant dustpan and broom over at the art museum to swat it away.
Oh, and while we’re cleaning out: How about getting rid of all of Hampden Avenue, half the Auraria campus, the new Four Seasons building, and Susan Barnes-Gelt?
Billboards
By Richard D. Lamm, former governor of Colorado
Why does this beautiful state tolerate billboards? Why do we pollute our magnificent scenery with them? Billboards only exist because the public puts a massive investment into the highways and roads of this state. Billboards are a parasite to the public investment; they don’t make people visit our state more, or eat any additional meals, or sleep in any additional beds. Of the myriad reasons that people come to Colorado, one dominant reason is our beauty and scenery. We should not commercialize our visual beauty. Would France put a billboard on the Eiffel Tower? The English put billboards in Trafalgar Square? The Egyptians use the pyramids to advertise? We are the current trustees of “Colorful Colorado.” Let’s rethink this form of visual pollution.
Fine print
By Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor
All of life is in the fine print – and that’s precisely the problem.
Contract law is based on the idea that two people can come together and strike a deal, knowing the courts will enforce their agreement if something goes wrong. I firmly believe it is the foundation of our free-market economy and critical to personal liberty.
Over the past generation, the proliferation of fine print, in everything from car loans to credit card applications to television commercials, has shaken what we value about contracts. Fine print means that one party (think: a big corporation) can lay down the terms of the deal in a way that the other party (think: a customer) is unlikely to figure out. Long after the contract has been signed, the party that inserted all the fine print can do almost anything – raise prices, cut service, extend the contract – all because the fine print says so.
Remember that our current financial crisis began one lousy mortgage at a time – one lousy, incomprehensible, complex mortgage loaded with tripwires and legalese at a time. Many borrowers knew they were engaging in a high-risk game, but millions of others were unaware of what they had agreed to until the foreclosure notices started coming.
Fine print costs everyone else money, too, because it makes products impossible to compare. (Just look at four credit card agreements and try identifying the cheapest one.) By decreasing competition, fine print increases prices. My proposal is simple: No more fine print. If you can’t explain something in simple, straightforward terms, it shouldn’t be part of the agreement.
Warren wrote this for The Washington Post.
Stress levels
By Adele Arakawa, KUSA-Channel 9 anchor
Have you ever wondered how hard – or easy – it would be to reduce your stress level? A recently conducted study just found that stress levels actually decrease as we get older.
Working for 35 years in a business known for its stress levels, I can concur with those findings.
The study questioned 340,000 people between the ages of 18 and 85 and found that stress and anger decline with each decade, but worries tend to hang on until age 50. Would I give up being in my 50s for those stress-filled 30s and 40s? No way!
Now, if I could only figure out how to get rid of the gray hair all that previous stress has caused
Fear as a political tool
By Buie Seawell, University of Denver law professor
It’s long since time we got fear the hell out of our politics. But it will not be easy. Lazy politicians from Genghis Khan to Niccolo Machiavelli to Joseph McCarthy to Karl Rove know that fear is the shortcut of choice for manipulating the body politic. Getting rid of fear as a political tool is a public house-cleaning first advocated by English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who saw the organized terror of 17th century England as the greatest threat to mankind.
Yet the use of fear to manipulate political processes persists. Democrats tell senior citizens they will lose their Social Security or Medicare if they dare vote for a Republican. (As I recall, it was a Republican, Colorado Sen. Bill Armstrong, who “saved” Social Security from bankruptcy by his excellent bipartisan work in 1983). In their unconscionable effort to defeat health insurance reform, Republicans frightened the vulnerable and naïve by talking of “death panels.” In this post-9/11 world, the fear of terrorism is intentionally employed to instigate unlawful acts of war and to justify unwarranted government intrusion into our fundamental freedoms of privacy, communication, travel and association.
In a time when the great political work should be building trust, our politicians thrive on destroying it by sowing distrust and fear.
“The land of the free and the home brave” has become the land of fear and the home of the afraid. I’m an old partisan politician, but this year I plan to vote against anyone who employs fear tactics to achieve election.
Fear in general
By Marilyn Mitchell, Denver author and businesswoman
Growing up in the Rocky Mountains backcountry, I learned firsthand about native wildlife. Orphaned and injured critters gravitated to my father, who was something of an animal whisperer. I experienced the ways of deer, skunk, bats, bighorn sheep, chipmunks, badgers, raccoon, cottontail rabbits, porcupines and, one day, a particularly feisty fox pup.
“Talk softly, move slowly, ease down to the fox’s level,” my father instructed. “See the world through his eyes. The fox is in human territory, so he’s tense and cautious.”
I did my 6-year-old best to commune, but soon the fox bit me. I admonished him: “Bad!”
“The fox didn’t bite you because he’s bad. He bit you because he’s afraid,” my father responded.
My attitude toward the fox shifted. Learning he was afraid, I no longer saw the fox as my adversary. I felt empathy and compassion for him.
Six decades have passed. Humans seem to be growing angrier, more aggressive, and more fearful. When my own anger flares, I think of the fox and ask myself, “What am I afraid of?” As I define my fear, my anger subsides.
I wonder what terrorists, politicians, pundits and CEOs are afraid of. If we could dispel our misguided fear, I believe we’d stop biting each other.
Marilyn Mitchell is author of “Dancing on Quicksand: A Gift of Friendship in the Age of Alzheimer’s.” She owns a personal support business in Denver.
Internet memes
By Joe Randazzo, editor of The Onion
At some recent point, bacon became a meme. Bacon.
The cured pork product that has been a staple food for hundreds of years was suddenly a fashion accessory for Internet style-mongers.
There were odes and T-shirts and cartoons. People taped bacon to their cats and took photos. It was so ubiquitous that I started to hate bacon.
No one should ever have to hate bacon.
What used to be an amusing byproduct of Internet use has mutated into something horrible: an insatiable parasite that impairs its host’s judgment, rendering it totally useless. Instead of acting as an organic cultural touchstone, the modern meme – from LOL, which hasn’t been used to signify physical laughter since 1997, to Lolcats – now sucks the joy out of our interconnectedness. It destroys uniqueness.
Once an “enjoyable thing” becomes a “meme,” we stop enjoying the thing for its own sake, but consume and regurgitate our enjoyment of it as a symbol of hipness, as if to say: “I am aware of this thing’s popularity – therefore I, too, exist!”
But the short life span of the average meme means it can’t imprint itself on the human psyche in any real way. We want instant nostalgia, and what we get is manufactured zeitgeist. The faster memes spread, the more homogenized online conversation becomes, until a few phrases dominate the discourse.
Life on the Internet moves too fast. There’s no time to let experience meet friction, or to absorb and truly reconstitute information. So slow down, breathe, and appreciate what’s real in life.
Joe Randazzo wrote this for The Washington Post.
Stuff in junk drawers
By Jake Schroeder, lead vocalist, Opie Gone Bad
The leaves that I should have raked up last fall are now being collected with twice the effort amid the cursing of my own name, making me the most endearing neighbor on the block. I’d really like to get rid of about 90 percent of the contents of our eight different junk drawers and junk closet, but it’s similar to Christmas when I go through them, i.e., “Hey! I forgot I owned that! Cool!” which makes it difficult to be very efficient in my selection of what goes in the trash. I’ve also tried to figure out a way to remotely get rid of Justin Bieber without injury to him or others, but it’s just not happening. Unfortunately, a musical “Horseboy of the Apocalypse” is here with us to stay.
Cynicism
By Judi Wolf, philanthropist and trustee of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts
Let’s get rid of cynicism. We are living in times that consistently demonstrate that cynicism and mistrust are appropriate outlooks. Our leaders, our institutions and our places of worship betray our trust at every turn. They make it easy for us to expect the worst not just from anyone, but from everyone.
Cynicism, however, kills hope. It blunts our efforts. It dilutes our results. It prevents us from seeing past the horizon. No great achievement was ever built on a foundation of jaded negativity. Believing that the next politician will truly change the world, or that the next athlete will be morally pure, or that the next banker has our best interests at heart may be unrealistic, but imagine a world where all these things are true. If we never believe this is possible, we will never be able to work to make it true. Our distrust of others prevents us from becoming a better community. We are better than that. The Denver Post’s founder, Frederick Bonfils, placed a quote at the top of the editorial page for all to see: “There is no hope for the satisfied man.” Nor for this woman; I will not be satisfied until cynicism is the exception, not the rule.
Texting and tweeting
By Pete Hautzinger, Mesa County district attorney
I try to keep up with the times and technological advances. As an elected official and the father of three teenagers and one pre-teen, I know the value of staying informed and in touch most all of the time. I’ve used a BlackBerry for many years, bought an iPad not long ago, and use several iPods. I’ve equipped all my kids with cellphones and we have seven functioning computers in our home.
While having lots of information available quickly is definitely positive, having too much information available too fast is definitely negative. I wish the entire concept of Twitter had never come about. Neither I nor anyone else really needs to know how long a celebrity has been waiting for his order at Starbucks.
Text messaging is just as bad. Not only is a generation learning incredibly bad writing skills, the bad writing goes out to the world instantaneously. The message very rapidly gets totally out of control. Of course, my grudge against texting is fueled somewhat by the fact that it caused a mini-scandal at my expense here in Grand Junction. When my wife and I were out of town for a few days and our teenage sons decided to have a few friends over to play video games, within a few minutes word of “party at Hautzinger’s” had been texted across the Grand Valley. When the police broke it up a couple of hours later, my sons swore they didn’t even know who most of the kids there were. I sure can’t say the party wouldn’t have happened without instant messaging, but I’m pretty sure it would have been a whole lot smaller.
Brussels sprouts
By Rick Enstrom, regional manager of Enstrom Candies
I’ve been wondering who in the world declared the Brussels sprout an edible vegetable? To the uninformed, imagine something bitter to eat that smells like a cross between a skunk and a goat’s rear end. (Not that I know exactly what a goat’s rear end smells like, but I run a few head of cattle. You get the drift.) Last year I arrived at a friend’s home to watch a NASCAR race and, lo and behold, as we entered the home I wondered if they had sewage problem and if the party would have to be canceled. Nope. “Brussels sprouts and a great family recipe!”
My bride, Linda, tells me that Brussels sprouts are “good, if they are fresh,” but I can’t fathom it. I have no idea what we ever did to Belgium to deserve such a culinary abomination. Give me liberty, or give me death. But don’t even think about giving me Brussels sprouts. Fruitcake, anyone?
Old national security ideas
By Gary Hart, former U.S. senator from Colorado
One of the legacies of the 20th century, now made redundant by dramatic global changes, is our Cold War definition of national security. This central idea needs to be rethought and revitalized for a new century.
We became used to defining our sole threat as the Soviet Union and our response as exclusively military. The Soviet Union went away almost two decades ago and, while there are certainly potential threats from other rivals requiring military readiness, new realities confront us that do not yield themselves to military solution, or solution by us alone.
These include: proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; failed and failing states; climate-driven dislocations; radical fundamentalism; pandemics; competition for natural resources; fragile oil distribution systems; a domino-like international banking system; mass migrations; and the list goes on. We cannot address these risks by ourselves, nor can our Defense Department, the largest and best in the world, solve them by itself.
We are now much more threatened by ad hoc terrorist organizations, possibly using biological or cyber weapons, than we are an attack by another nation. That means more special forces than big divisions and superior intelligence. But for the rest, we will find ourselves looking for new international partners to form alliances necessary to protect our common security in non-military ways.
Lawns
By Ed Begley Jr., actor, environmentalist
One of the first things I did when I moved into my Los Angeles home in 1988 was rip out the lawn. I realize this borders on heresy: If the American Dream were a book, it’d probably have a grassy green lawn on its cover.
I have no problem with garden gnomes or lawn jockeys, if those are your thing. But lawns are thirsty, and in Southern California we get nearly all our water by dipping our straw in someone else’s drink. Nationally, it’s estimated that up to 70 percent of residential water use goes toward landscaping, most of it to water lawns.
The small amount of water I need to irrigate my drought-tolerant plants, fruit trees and vegetables all comes from rain and recycled graywater. So simply by using water that otherwise would have wound up in the sewer, I have one of the best-looking yards on my block – and fresh produce to boot.
Ed Begley Jr. wrote this for The Washington Post.
School testing sanctions
By Diane Ravitch, historian and author
Kids in America’s public schools have always faced penalties for performing poorly on tests. They might not advance to the next grade; they might miss the chance to get into a good college.
Thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act, however, if a school’s standardized test scores don’t go up every year, the school and its teachers also face dire consequences. The school may be privatized, taken over by the state or threatened with closure. None of these sanctions has been shown to improve student performance. But high-stakes tests have become the organizing principle for American education, to the detriment of real learning.
It’s time to get rid of the punishments we’ve attached to testing. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is picking up where the Bush administration left off, endorsing the same retribution for schools with low test scores: Fire the teachers! Close the schools! Privatize them! Turn them into charters!
This is not good education. Tests should be used for information and diagnosis, not punishment and sanctions.
Diane Ravitch was assistant secretary of education in the George H.W. Bush administration. She wrote this for The Washington Post.
Government subsidies
By Hank Brown, former U.S. senator from Colorado, former president of the University of Colorado
When did we decide that life should be risk-free? We subsidize rich and poor alike with literally thousands of federal programs. From major industries and unions to beekeepers, a growing number of Americans are finding the federal government will protect them from economic uncertainty.
Both of our political parties understandably support assistance for the poor, but subsidizing those who are not poor has become a political obsession. The enthusiasm in Congress to assist us with government spending appears to know no bounds. It is as if there will be no cost for all this excess. The current Congress has even given up on writing a budget for next year, and as you read this letter, is pushing through another $200 billion, budget-busting spending bill.
Deficit spending is not magic and our worship of this false god is delusional. Common sense tells you that following the Greek model for spending will not work. There is an answer that Americans will support. Ending subsidies for those able to care for themselves can end our addiction to deficits and special interest groups.
Superfluous bureaucracy
By Bruce D. Benson, president, University of Colorado
The University of Colorado got some help with its spring cleaning from the state legislature. Lawmakers passed the higher education flexibility bill (awaiting the governor’s signature), part of which allows CU to continue our year-round cleaning project: cutting superfluous bureaucracy.
The project began internally two years ago, with suggestions from faculty, staff and students on how to eliminate unnecessary, self-imposed regulation. We thinned the herd of policies that were outdated, unworkable or redundant, going from 210 to 106 (and condensing 20-page policies to two pages). For example, raising the dollar threshold on one special events form from $100 to $500 eliminated 8,000 forms. Additionally, we cut $8.3 million from central administration.
The flexibility bill helps us further trim bureaucracy by eliminating burdensome state fiscal regulation that duplicates controls we already have in place. Streamlining processes means we can get better deals with vendors on everything from scientific supplies to credit cards.
We don’t let our desire for efficiency compromise accountability. We retain checks and balances through state audits, federal compliance and oversight from our elected Board of Regents. We have an obligation to be efficient and effective with our resources, and trimming bureaucracy helps us do that. It’s a spring cleaning project that never stops.
Political weeds
By Pat Waak, chair, Colorado Democratic Party
Spring allows us to remove all of the weeds, dried and fresh; till the soil; nurture the healthy foliage that comes back; and plant new seeds. It is a great metaphor for the political process.
The weeds overtook the garden when Republicans were in charge and it’s taken a new administration some time to get things in order. Now we can plant for the future.
I particularly like the new seeds. Although John Hickenlooper is the mayor of Denver, his candidacy for Governor is the first as a Democrat. Stan Garnett, nominated by Colorado Democrats for Attorney General, has a first-time statewide run. Melissa Hart mounts her first campaign as a candidate for CU Regent At-Large. These are just some of the faces you will see this year.
The healthy foliage comes with our incumbents Democrats who are running for re-election. Whether you are a DeGette, Polis, Salazar, Markey, Perlmutter, Buescher or Kennedy, you can show off what you have accomplished.
Weeding out the untruths that will be told this season will make way for a great garden. Those are the best things to clean out of the closet, the yard, and our heads.
The failure to say “no” in politics
By Mark Hillman, farmer and former Colorado Senate majority leader
If parents stood for election, the responsible ones – rarely appreciated until their children reach adulthood – would lose to the “fun parents” who never have to say “no.”
Politics isn’t all that different from parenting. It’s easier to win elections by promising to “do something” – usually at someone else’s expense – than to embrace policies that teach people to do for themselves.
Polls exacerbate this problem by allowing voters to focus on what they want from government, rather than how much they are willing to pay or how much government meddling they are willing to tolerate in their daily lives.
Government disguises the reality that, when we demand more than we are willing to pay, we are insisting that our neighbors pay for it instead. Who would go to a neighbor’s doorstep and demand that they pay for your health care or finance your retirement? Anyone who did would see many a slamming door – especially if they squandered the generosity of those who “donated” once.
Worse still, we are now saddling each of our children and grandchildren with more than $100,000 in debt, so we can have more entitlements today and they can have less opportunity tomorrow.
Female genital mutilation
By Dottie Lamm, former first lady of Colorado
The American Academy of Pediatrics recently voted to allow a slight “nicking” of the clitorises of young girls as a nod to the “cultural sensitivities” of immigrant groups that practice female genital cutting, and as a way to prevent more drastic mutilation. I empathize with the academy’s goals, but I strongly disagree. First, to consent to this abusive procedure in any measure is against the law. (The Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation was passed by Congress in 1996.) In addition, to compromise with a “lesser” procedure is bound to give sanction to the outrageous custom, performed sometimes on girls as young as 6.
Genital cutting is a blatant attempt to control a female’s sexuality by damaging the locus of her desire and sensation. It is practiced by a number of Middle Eastern and African groups, mostly Muslim, but also by other religious groups from that geographic area.
The physical and psychological effects of this cruel assault on the personhood and dignity of young girls can last a lifetime.
It’s time to eliminate female genital cutting in all its forms.
Stuff in the garage
By Elbra Wedgeworth, Chief of Government and Community Relations, Denver Health
This past winter, you thought about it. You convinced yourself you had a couple of months to wait. Maybe March was the month to tackle it. Then there was another snowstorm, so you waited again until May.
Finally, you opened that door to the garage. Everything you moved from the main house to have various spaces uncluttered is now gathered here. What can you do with this stuff? Can you part with it, toss it or save it until infinity? The garage has been taken over by old campaign signs, boxes, chairs, paint from renovation projects, and items your parents insisted you pick up from their house. You have the best intentions to participate in the neighborhood garage sale. (Why else did you save those five different sets of glasses and that box of mismatched coffee cups?) It is a thankless job, but it is time to get focused and take your garage back to park your car in it!
The computer keyboard and mouse
By Kara Swisher, technology reporter
The prototype of the first computer mouse – which got its name because of the wire that trailed it – was invented by Doug Engelbart in 1963.
Yes, nearly 50 years ago.
But it’s only a toddler compared with the keyboard, which is a direct descendant – via punch-card and teletype technologies – of the typewriter, patented in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes.
In other words, it’s long past time for a change in the way we interact with the digital devices that have proliferated in our lives.
While the keyboard and the mouse have introduced billions of people to the digital experience, they have become antiquated obstacles to the kind of computing that is now emerging.
This new computing is immersive, augmented and completely social.
As sci-fi movies predicted, our digital devices are poised to become even more ubiquitous. They will surround us, responding to our expressions, emotions and gestures. From wearable devices to sensors that will envelop our world to 3-D screens that will react to us, personal computing is about to get a lot more personal. Internet-based television now in development will recognize a viewer and deliver customized entertainment.
And it will do this without the trusty keyboard and mouse. We’re already phasing them out, thanks to the increasing popularity of touch screens – including the patron saint of all this, the Apple iPhone, and a spate of copycat smartphones. All of these devices allow users to navigate without physical buttons or input devices.
Thus, with a flick of the finger, the era of the mouse and the keyboard will soon be over.
Kara Swisher is co-executive editor of the technology website All Things Digital. She wrote this for The Washington Post.
Political pundits
By Donna Brazile, political analyst
I probably shouldn’t say this; it’s the definition of biting the hand that feeds me. So I’ll say it just once, in hopes that all the newspapers and blogs and television and radio networks will hear: It’s time to abolish punditry.
If a single move could restore civility to politics, that is it. Get rid of the left-vs.-right commentators who are out just to score points for their team. This sort of opinion-mongering is not only boring and predictable, it is destructive of the truth. If your only credentials are “GOP shill” or “Democratic hack,” you’ve no business cluttering up the airwaves or the op-ed pages. My momma always told me that if you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s best to keep your mouth shut. That’s good advice.
Replace them with people who have genuine expertise – whether from their academic work, professional life or personal experience – on the key issues of the day. Instead of partisan talking heads or mad hatters from the “tea party” preaching their views on, say, health care and taxes, let’s hear from doctors and insurance professionals, or the number-crunchers from the Congressional Budget Office.
Some pundits could remain as political analysts. (I’m not crazy, am I?) There is insight to be gained from the dark, secret knowledge they hold from their decades pacing the political corridors. But let’s not mistake the gallery for the game.
Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist and campaign manager for Al Gore’s presidential bid in 2000, is a frequent on-air contributor to CNN, NPR and ABC. She wrote this for The Washington Post
“Washington Week” television program
By Jay Rosen, author of PressThink blog
“Safety first” is not a good principle in television programming or political journalism. I wish PBS understood this. But it doesn’t, and that is why we still have Friday night’s “Washington Week,” a show now in its 43rd year.
This amazing longevity counts neither for nor against it. What is exhausted is the show’s premise: Five insiders (journalists) display their understanding of what other insiders (politicians) did this week for an audience of those who’d like to be insiders (the show’s assumption about viewers).
Host Gwen Ifill and panelists such as The Washington Post’s Dan Balz, the New York Times’ Peter Baker and CNN’s Gloria Borger are pros; they’ve mastered their business. And that’s the problem. They’re in the same business as the people they cover – the game of professional politics, also called the permanent campaign.
As lifers in this game, they share a sensibility with their subjects: that in politics savviness is next to godliness, and everything’s really about the next election.
Because the boundaries of political debate in Washington are also the horizons of the discussion on “Washington Week,” the show has no grace, mystery, edge or dissonant voice. What if the system is broken, the political elite is failing the country, accountability is a mirage and the game a farce run by well-educated people who manipulate the symbols of the republic? Whenever those things are true, “Washington Week” becomes a lie. And around that lie the show’s producers have put yellow caution tape.
Jay Rosen is a journalism professor at New York University. He wrote this for The Washington Post.
Election exit polls
By Karl Rove, former adviser to President George W. Bush
Let’s get rid of exit polls. I hate ’em.
On Election Day, the news media endows exit polls – surveys asking people whom they voted for and why – with false scientific precision.
And their early release often generates off-base projections and misleading coverage, which can affect the contests themselves.
Remember 2000? Early exit poll numbers released midday on Election Day showed George W. Bush tied with Al Gore in Mississippi, Colorado, Arizona and Alaska, and losing Florida. It was virtually impossible for Bush to prevail without Florida, yet those early poll results encouraged commentators to put the state into Gore’s column as early as 7:48 p.m., while voting continued in the Florida panhandle.
This affected turnout. The 24 states where polls closed after 8:30 p.m. Eastern time saw turnout rise by 2.3 percent over the 1996 election. But in the 26 states and the District of Columbia where polls closed before 8:30, turnout increased 2.9 points over 1996. This meant that more than 400,000 voters stayed home in the central and western United States, most of them likely Bush voters. This potentially affected New Mexico (which Gore won by 366 votes) and Oregon (where he won by 6,765).
The exit polls colored the night’s coverage. For example, CNN’s Bernard Shaw declared Georgia and Virginia “too close to call,” even though Bush ended up winning the former by 12 points and the latter by eight points.
In 2004, things were even worse. Early exit polls had Bush losing Ohio and North Carolina and dead even in Florida, Arizona, Colorado, South Carolina and Mississippi – all states where he prevailed. Again, the polls affected the coverage, with the media reluctant to award Ohio to Bush, though he won it by nearly 120,000 votes.
On election nights, networks feel pressure to display early exit poll numbers in snazzy graphics to explain what groups are breaking what way. But these numbers almost always differ from the final version of the exit polls, after gurus crunch the data during the evening.
If America must have exit polls, then let’s not add up the numbers until the voting ends – and let’s break our addiction to these polls over actual returns.
Karl Rove wrote this for The Washington Post.
The Congressional Budget Office
By James K. Galbraith, former head of Joint Economic Committee
The forecasts of the Congressional Budget Office are holy writ in Washington, and they fuel scary headlines about an impending federal debt disaster. This is a shame, because the CBO’s projections are indefensible, internally inconsistent and economically impossible.
The CBO predicts that unemployment will fall to near 5 percent by 2014 and stay there. It also expects a rapid recovery in the next few years, followed by a steady 2.4 percent GDP growth rate thereafter.
Inflation is expected to stay below 2 percent indefinitely. But alongside these rosy numbers, the CBO also projects that short-term interest rates will increase from less than 0.2 percent now to 4 percent in 2014 (and higher later), while rising health-care costs will drive Medicare expenditures ever higher. These figures imply that interest payments on the federal debt will by 2020 “rival the defense budget,” as Clinton-era Treasury official Roger Altman recently wrote in the Financial Times.
These things cannot happen together. If the CBO’s happy growth scenario is right, with low inflation and low unemployment, why would short-term interest rates rise? Conversely, if the CBO’s assumptions about health-care costs and interest rates are correct, how can inflation stay low? Ballooning interest payments and health-care spending would spur the economy to full employment and drive up prices – but also slow the rise in debt as a proportion of the nation’s gross domestic product.
So where does the CBO get its numbers? That miraculous return to full unemployment and those higher interest rates both come from thin air. More likely, given the passivity of today’s banks, high unemployment and low interest rates will linger, unless the government moves on a real jobs program. And that won’t happen, because of fear-mongering about the debt – buttressed by the CBO.
If we’d had a CBO in the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt could never have gotten the New Deal off the ground.
James Galbraith is the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. chair in government/business relations at the University of Texas at Austin. He wrote this for The Washington Post.
Tactial nuclear weapons
By John Nagle, president, Center for a New American Security
The treaty President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed last month reducing their countries’ supplies of strategic nuclear weapons goes a long way toward boosting stability between the two former Cold War rivals, whose arsenals together account for 95 percent of the world’s nuclear arms. But it is only a first step toward a safer future for a planet that remains awash in nukes. The next logical step is to slash the thousands of American and Russian tactical or “battlefield” nuclear weapons, which are meant to support troops in the field during a conflict.
Today, these weapons serve no military purpose. During the Cold War, the United States deployed them in Europe to deter a Soviet attack against our NATO allies, but a Russian invasion through the Fulda Gap is no longer a major concern. America’s strategic nuclear arsenal and conventional military superiority provide all the deterrence NATO needs. While strategic nuclear weapons will be necessary to protect the United States for many years, tactical nuclear weapons are a dangerous and unnecessary expense for everyone, and especially for Moscow.
Russia has thousands more tactical nuclear weapons than we do, and our allies sometimes consider U.S. deployment of such weapons in Europe to be concrete proof of our commitment to NATO’s defense. So it will not be easy for the United States to negotiate a deal reducing or, better still, eliminating them. Yet in an age when every tactical nuclear weapon the world gets rid of is one less that could fall into the hands of terrorists or a rogue state, these political challenges seem well worth tackling.
John Nagle is author of “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons From Malaya and Vietnam.” He wrote this for The Washington Post.
The concept of “virginity”
By Jessica Valenti, founder of feministing.com
While researching her 2007 book “Virgin: The Untouched History,” Hanne Blank went to Harvard’s medical library looking for a definition of virginity. She was surprised by what she found: nothing. That’s right, there’s no accepted medical definition or diagnostic standard for virginity.
Why, in such an out-of-the-closet world, do we still define sexual initiation – and in many quarters, virtue – by such an artificial and old-fashioned standard? And why don’t we mind that, increasingly, that standard is more about image than actual purity? Tween pop singers are trotted out wearing both miniskirts and promise rings, allowing their handlers to profit off the girls’ sexuality without offending anyone’s parents.
Promise rings, virginity pledges and other efforts to enforce chastity aren’t just backward: They’re failures, and they may even endanger teenagers. A 2008 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that pledgers are just as likely to have sex as non-pledgers and are more likely to have that sex unprotected.
These are the predictable results of telling teenagers that sex is wrong and that the only pure thing to do is wait. A teen-ager who takes these messages to heart won’t in good conscience keep condoms – much better to get “carried away” than to plan for an impure act. He or she may, however, look for loopholes, often dangerous ones. And teaching young women – and let’s be honest, this is mostly about women – that they must “save” their virginity only conflates their worth with their sexuality.
It’s fine to have some way of demarcating sexual initiation, but old-school definitions of purity aren’t it; they’re more about inflicting shame than celebrating rites of passage. It’s time we talked about sex as something healthy and natural. Losing “virginity” is one step in that direction.
Jessica Valenti is founder and editor of Feministing.com. She wrote this for The Washington Post.
