One Step Too Far

San Francisco is by any measure one of America's most liberal metropolises. Nearby Berkeley helps round out the eccentricity. Tree-sitting, gay marriage, sex scandals, medical marijuana; it's life in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. It's also a very expensive metropolitan area to live in (trying to get facts was hazy. . . a few websites searched for "most expensive cities" popped up Beijing, China, aka you can live on $0.50 a day if you want, as 14th most expensive, proving that whoever did research for the webpage was either intoxicated, on drugs or robbed of all their cash on the way out of the bank. A city in Cameroon, Africa pops up as 26th most expensive). A search on US ZIP codes has Bay Area-based zip codes taking 12 of the top 30 spots in the country. Whatever the facts, San Francisco is already pretty expensive. San Francisco lawmakers are trying to make it more-so.

San Francisco passed a new law with the high-minded intention of helping underprivileged workers: the law requires one hour sick leave for all employees, full or part-time, for every 30 hours worked. This translates to one day sick for every thirty days worked, assuming an 8-hour day.

This law does four things, one of them good and three of them bad. Positively, it helps out hard-working, underprivileged workers who are taken advantage of by their employers. An employee who is sick should not be at work for productivity and personal health reasons, as well as for others' health; look no farther than those who work with food or have close interaction with others. The number of these employees is probably less than a number to get excited about, but a single story is enough to captivate voters.

Negatively, however
1.) it encourages under-the-table employment. Under-the-table employment isn't necessarily bad, but it's unseen by the government and employees in these professions are ironically more susceptible to employer abuse, not less. This falls particularly hard on illegal immigrants who have no choice but to work illegally. It does not take a leap of the imagination to guess that day-laborers aren't given sick-leave by those who employ them.

2.) it makes work slightly more expensive for businesses which hurts workers, and increasing expense is an upward trend in San Francisco. In 2003 San Francisco passed a minimum wage of $8.50. A wage floor is a foundation for working-class Americans, but an $8.50 wage floor is a tad over the top. Further, San Francisco sales tax is higher than anywhere else in the Bay Area, which may explain why more shoppers head to the East Bay and Palo Alto areas to take care of their shopping. Businesses, loathed by green activists, are the same entities who give life to employees. It is true that many business, unchecked, will likely exploit workers. But this attitude has driven activists to play the zero-sum game of hurting businesses to the point where businesses hurt workers, and these activists forget how far regulation and conditions have improved.

3.) San Francisco is simply passing the buck. This is the most unfortunate trend in San Francisco's misguided economic policies. Business go elsewhere, poorer residents are the biggest losers, and San Francisco's disparity problems, housing problems, and social problems get siphoned off to the suburbs, some in developments which core Bay Area locals also look down upon as the greed of corporate America. While this author has a strong distaste for unplanned urban development, city planners in big cities ignore ignore the fact that it's their own ill-sighted economic policies that are causing social, economic and environmental problems everywhere else. The Bay Area is fortunate because it is beautiful, the weather is nearly perfect and an unlimited number of activities and venues are all within easy reach. It can choose, so to speak, who lives there thanks to the extraordinary cost-of-living. But San Franciscans should not pat themselves on the back if San Francisco ever basks in the utopian sunlight it desires. It should look farther east to the suburbs of Sacramento, and south-east to Stockton, to see what it really has accomplished. Chances are it has simply tossed its problems into someone else's basket.

It is unclear if devout litmus-test liberals are so because they truly care about helping the less unfortunate, or because their parents gave them too much free time and free money as children. It's nearly as contradictory as the vegetarian who knows eating meat isn't entirely healthy, and explains this and the problems with corporate America while smoking a Camel. This is for certain: San Francisco will probably be a nice place to live for a long time. It's unclear whether or not it will be a great place to work.


This article is based on this article, and this article, both in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Education

The "A-Team" is the status my friend, a high school math teacher in Washington DC, gives to students who achieve an 80% or higher on their tests in his class. Members of the "A-Team" have their tests posted in the room for all to marvel at. Yet visiting his classroom a few weeks ago, I noticed that there were fewer than eight tests posted under the "A-Team" sign despite him having over 90 students spread between three classes. This does not seem like a good average.

My friend teaches high school math at one of the poorest-achieving high schools in the country. Some of the stats from his school are outlandish: 7% of the high school are "proficient" in math (based on national, rather low, standards) and less than 15% are proficient in reading. As of a month ago, 60% of the 90+ students in my friend's geometry and alegebra 2 class were failing the course (although recently, that number has dropped to 45%). Only 30% of the senior class graduates. According to the school, 99.9% of the students are black. There are only 800 students in the school, so I'm not even sure where the other .1% comes from.

My friend hasn't met some of his students (he has been teaching since September), some students miss school because they're in jail, other students because they're pregnant. There are other oddities that certainly don't help the students learn: unnecessary announcements over the school-wide PA system that interrupt class, no repercussions when students walk into class 15 minutes late (those who arrive on-time to class are in a very small minority), fellow teachers who themselves show up 15 minutes late to class, gang-related fights in the halls, a shooting in the campus parking lot, a principal who seems oblivious to the cyclical plight of his students and parents, etc. etc. My friend has a mental storybook full of eyebrow-raising incidents, which he must repeat over and over again to the scores of incredulous suburbanites back home in California, where we are both from.

These stats and incidents do not address the problems, they merely touch on the symptoms. My friend has aptly noted that many of his students' parents, and their parents, have always lived in the same tired part of Washington that is awash in ramshackle houses, carry-out food restaurants, check cashing booths and metal-bar-covered windows. Recently, three students at the high school were gunned down at the "Good Hope Carry-Out," serving as a reminder to my friend's students just how much hope society really gave them. These students are far beyond being failed by society; they completely lack opportunity. Growing up in a neighborhood that was left behind long ago, these students are isolated by a cycle that failed their parents and will fail them too.

Oddly, both the school's website and a not-for-profit website called "ExploreDC" fail to see a problem. The school's website has the wrong principle pictured. The ExploreDC site, when writing about my friend's school, says that new changes are benefiting the school where my friend teaches. "This change in our approach to education has been very successful in helping to raise student performance on standardized tests, in addition to providing students vital information required for making wise career choice." Even odder, at the bottom of the page the site writes "Attendance: 90% or better". I think it fair to say my friend would disagree. A simple walk through the metal detectors, past the corridor displaying the students' national testing statistics and into any class would probably make the author of the ExploreDC website wince on both his points.

It is but a 5 minute drive to traverse DC's roads from my friend's high school to the Capitol Building, that fine building where politicians heatedly debate what's in our national interest while making deals to secure Americans' better future. Yet for my friend's students, the Capitol Building may as well be another world away. These students isolated without opportunity, it is up to people like my friend to make the difference.

T.S.A. and no I.D.

Have you ever known anyone who had a fake ID when they were under 21 so they could buy booze? Have you ever used Photoshop to doctor something to make it look like something it isn't supposed to be? Chances are you have done one of the two things above, or at least know someone who has. And since it's relatively easy to pay for or make a decent-looking fake ID, and it's even easier to use Photoshop (to make things like, say a fake boarding pass), these questions lead me to a third question:

Why exactly do people check IDs when we get on the airplane?

First, you may not know it, but you don't actually have to show ID if you want to get on a plane. In a ruling on December 8, 2005, the US Ninth Court of Appeals (San Francisco) determined that a passenger must either show ID or be subject to a more thorough search, including "walking through a magnetometer (*metal detector, in layman's terms), being subject to a handheld magnetometer scan, having a light body patdown, removing one's shoes, and having one's carry-on baggage searched by hand and a CAT-scan machine" (see the whole ruling here). The TSA website for air travel now confirms this.




This was spawned by a rather aggressive activist, Jim Harper, who last challenged his friends to mail their licenses home to Boston and then fly from San Francisco (where they were attending a conference) back home. Mr. Harper and his friends all got home eventually (after missing a few flights), and successfully boarded without ID, but the ruling last year was actually a ruling against Mr. Harper; he was hoping to both board without ID and also not be subjected to the more rigorous search (the entire story about Mr. Harper, which is quite comical, is here).

These things said, a second comical story was published in today's Sunday New York Times (found here), about a graduate student named Chris Soghoian who is under investigation for creating a website that generated fake Northwest Airlines boarding passes. The website wasn't very original or secretive in name: it was called "Chris' Northwest Airlines Boarding Pass Generator." The boarding passes obviously couldn't get you on the plane - the boarding pass would've been checked with the roster of people who actually paid for tickets - but Mr. Soghoian said it was a convenient way to meet grandma or gramps on the jetway instead of at the curb.




Mr. Soghoian is under investigation by the T.S.A., however doesn't this seem a little pointless? Some people cry that we're teaching the terrorists the holes in our system. But I don't think this gives terrorists enough credit. As the New York Times points out, "Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more than we can teach them."

What terrorist threat?

A recent article in the September/October edition of Foreign Affairs magazine posits an interesting hypothesis: that there are, in fact, no terrorists in the United States. Our safety, this argument would conclude, is not thanks to extraordinary security measures, the war in Iraq, etc. Instead, it is because terrorists aren't in America. The author is John Mueller (not to be confused with Robert Mueller, the 6th Director of the FBI), a political scientist See the article here

What Mueller says is interesting food for thought, but Mueller fails to define what constitutes a "terrorist," and for that I think the article could be expanded. He gives roughly 6 arguments for why it's possible a terrorist attack hasn't occurred since 9/11, and then cleverly debunks them. They are:

1.)It is more difficult for potential terrorists to enter the US since 9/11 (Mueller counters that with 300 million legal entries into the US each year, coupled with 1,000 - 3,000 illegal ones, it's impossible that bad eggs don't slip through)

2.)Homeland defense precautions and government programs have thwarted potential threats in the five years since 9/11 (Mueller counters that there were no major terrorist attacks in the US in the five years prior to 9/11 either, without the programs)

3.)The overthrow of the Taliban and destruction of al Qaeda networks in Afghanistan hindered terrorist capabilities worldwide (Madrid 2004, London 2005)

4.)Global terrorists are all being drawn to Iraq, allowing US forces to fight them "over there" (Mueller documents numerous other terrorist activities that have occurred outside Iraq since the Iraq war started. One could also point to the recent CIA report which indicated America is less safe from terrorism, not more safe, since Iraq)



Only in Iraq?


5.)The Muslim community is better integrated in America, and the American social and economic fabric doesn't leave room for "radicalization." (Then why haven't there been terrorist attacks in more homogeneous countries with less integration of minorities, like France and Norway? And why did the 2004 bombings occur in the UK?)

6.)That al Qaeda is planning another attack, biding its time (9/11 only took two years to plan and execute, Tim McVeigh planned the bombing in Oklahoma City for less than a year, Madrid 2004 took less than six months).

So why no plots since 9/11? Are there really no terrorists here? Why haven't they attacked using simpler means, like the Beltway Sniper(s) did in Washington in 2002?

It's important to identify what Mueller means by a "terrorist." It seems likely that he is referring to large-scale foreign-influenced fighters attacking civilian or military targets, and not to the equally despicable but differently motivated "home-grown" terrorist like Tim McVeigh. Today (12/8/06), a US citizen was arrested suspected of plotting to murder civilians in a mall north of Chicago during this holiday season. He was arrested trying to buy grenades from government agents; certainly, he had the will to take the plot past the planning stage (See this article in the San Francisco Chronicle) However, it seems that this individual wouldn't count in Mueller's definition of a terrorist because, although potentially deadly, this person was self-motivated, didn't visit al Qaeda bases for training, and the scope wouldn't have been as wide as a 9/11-style attack.

I had an interesting discussion with my friend Scott the other night, and he made a legitimate point: international terrorism needs to be on a spectacular scale. 9/11 set a morbidly and visually high bar; modern terrorism has a need to be beyond outrageous. Simultaneous attacks, biological and chemical weapons as well as massive attacks on landmarks make impressions in the media, and likewise on the mindset of the public. Small-scale, less logistically complicated attacks using simpler methods isn't as psychologically effective. Terrorist forces lack the resources of a state, and thus they must maximize their perverse output by not wasting efforts on operations they consider too trivial.





Definitely not in America


So maybe everyone can be right. For starters, it seems that there aren't too many al Qaeda cells operating in the United States, which seems to align itself to Mueller's hypothesis. Indeed, true-and-true terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late al Qaeda-in-Iraq leader, are probably not in America. However, what about those "terrorists" who aren't aligned with al Qaeda, but who sympathize with the murder of innocents, regardless of their ideological motivation? This is where I think the article misses the point. Individuals like the one arrested today keep the possibility alive that misguided individuals with no goals other than murder and little to lose could conduct smaller-scale attacks.