Author: The Opportunity Agenda

What We Can All Learn from Truckers & Poker Players

For many of us, reading the latest economic indicators has become the new masochistic pleasure in our mornings – surely other people have a tickler reminding them of the latest BLS Employment Situation Summary and the Gallup mid-month underemployment statistics? The problem with those indicators is that even when they show improvement, they still reflect a dispiriting reality. This is why a recent article about a new economic indicator holds such appeal. First, it reveals facts about our economy that are divorced from the personal impact reflected in other statistics. Second, it actually has a cautiously optimistic tale to tell.

The Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index, essentially, tracks the diesel fuel purchases of professional truckers, providing a graphic description of the movement of goods across the country. While the system has its drawbacks, it does provide some data regarding industrial production. In fact, if economists had been paying attention, it would have provided a warning about the recent downturn.
In addition to new data sources, it appears that the primary engine driving our economy has a new source of intellectual fuel. For those who have been worried about the continued instability on Wall Street, recent dips notwithstanding, there is finally a new source for traders. Apparently, the latest crop of bright young minds spinning economic gold from straw is emerging, not from ivy-covered halls of learning, but from the ranks of online poker players.

While this may seem, at first, like a reason to shift your 401K to gold bars hidden inside your mattress, it might not be as crazy as it appears at first glance. Online poker players, at least the ones who can make a living at it, have to possess many of the skills of a successful trader: calculation, the ability to quickly assess a situation, the temperament to bounce back from a loss, and a drive to make money. Apparently, for some firms, a quick hand of poker is the capstone of an interview, telling employers what they need to know about a prospect’s ability to make split-second firm decisions with a lot at stake.

Although there’s an argument to be made that many of our recent economic woes can be blamed on a risk-taking ethos (Derivatives 101), there’s also an argument to be made in favor of a shift in focus by Wall Street. After all, our retirement savings might have an incrementally better chance of growth in the hands of a hungry young trader who’s learned by eating only what she kills.

While this may seem flip, the take-aways from both of these news items is a shift in emphasis necessitated by our current economic reality. Both forecasters and moneymakers are learning to look at things from a 45-degree angle, as opposed to doing things the way they’ve always been done.

For more, visit The Opportunity Agenda website.

What We Can All Learn from Truckers & Poker Players

For many of us, reading the latest economic indicators has become the new masochistic pleasure in our mornings – surely other people have a tickler reminding them of the latest BLS Employment Situation Summary and the Gallup mid-month underemployment statistics? The problem with those indicators is that even when they show improvement, they still reflect a dispiriting reality. This is why a recent article about a new economic indicator holds such appeal. First, it reveals facts about our economy that are divorced from the personal impact reflected in other statistics. Second, it actually has a cautiously optimistic tale to tell.

The Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index, essentially, tracks the diesel fuel purchases of professional truckers, providing a graphic description of the movement of goods across the country. While the system has its drawbacks, it does provide some data regarding industrial production. In fact, if economists had been paying attention, it would have provided a warning about the recent downturn.
In addition to new data sources, it appears that the primary engine driving our economy has a new source of intellectual fuel. For those who have been worried about the continued instability on Wall Street, recent dips notwithstanding, there is finally a new source for traders. Apparently, the latest crop of bright young minds spinning economic gold from straw is emerging, not from ivy-covered halls of learning, but from the ranks of online poker players.

While this may seem, at first, like a reason to shift your 401K to gold bars hidden inside your mattress, it might not be as crazy as it appears at first glance. Online poker players, at least the ones who can make a living at it, have to possess many of the skills of a successful trader: calculation, the ability to quickly assess a situation, the temperament to bounce back from a loss, and a drive to make money. Apparently, for some firms, a quick hand of poker is the capstone of an interview, telling employers what they need to know about a prospect’s ability to make split-second firm decisions with a lot at stake.

Although there’s an argument to be made that many of our recent economic woes can be blamed on a risk-taking ethos (Derivatives 101), there’s also an argument to be made in favor of a shift in focus by Wall Street. After all, our retirement savings might have an incrementally better chance of growth in the hands of a hungry young trader who’s learned by eating only what she kills.

While this may seem flip, the take-aways from both of these news items is a shift in emphasis necessitated by our current economic reality. Both forecasters and moneymakers are learning to look at things from a 45-degree angle, as opposed to doing things the way they’ve always been done.

For more, visit The Opportunity Agenda website.

What do our border policies say about our values as a nation?

President Obama committed to dispatching up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and is asking Congress for $500 million for increased law enforcement in the Southwest and for other border protection tools.

The White House is calling the maneuver "a multi-layered effort to target illicit networks trafficking in people, drugs, illegal weapons and money.”  But in practice, beefing up border enforcement under existing federal programs has only drained our government resources, has put into serious jeopardy our commitment to due process under the law, and has presented serious human rights implications. 
For example, Operation Streamline, an existing Department of Homeland Security program, was instituted in 2005, and mandates the federal criminal prosecution and imprisonment of all people who cross the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully.

According to a report published by the Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity at U.C. Berkeley Law School, the program fundamentally transformed the prior enforcement practices of DHS Border Patrol agents. 

Formerly, DHS agents would voluntarily return first-time border crossers to their home countries or detain them and formally remove them from the United States through the civil immigration system.  Before the institution of Operation Streamline, the U.S. Attorney’s Office would reserve criminal prosecution for immigrants with criminal records and for those who made repeated attempts to cross the border. 

Operation Streamline removed prosecutorial discretion and requires the criminal prosecution of all people who cross the border without documents, regardless of their specific actions.  In practice, the program mainly targets immigrant workers with no criminal history, and has strained the resources of judges, U.S. attorneys, defense attorneys, U.S. marshals, and court personnel. 

Resulting voluminous prosecutions have forced many courts to cut procedural corners.  Magistrate judges are conducting en masse hearings, during which as many as 80 defendants will plead guilty at a time. 

This is a clear threat to our values of dignity and respect, and an outright violation of our goal of providing due process to all people within our nation’s borders.

In addition to the threats that border enforcement presents to judicial discretion and due process in the United States, we cannot forget the human rights implications of our existing strategies at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Some of the human rights violations currently occurring at the U.S.-Mexico border, and specific to the Texas/Mexico border wall, have been identified by The Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, and include:

1. Violations of the right to property and equal protection guaranteed under international human rights law;
2. Severe degradation of the environment and violations of the government’s human rights obligation to consider harm to the environment when undertaking public projects; and
3. Violations of the rights of indigenous communities protected under international human rights law.

While we’re spending our federal funds on policies that threaten both human rights at the border and judicial and prosecutorial safeguards, is there room for us to reaffirm our commitment to human dignity and due process?

Read more at The Opportunity Agenda website.

CNN/Opinion Research released earlier today a new telephone survey of U.S. adults on immigration. One forced choice question asking respondents to indicate what they thought the main focus of the U.S. government ought to be with respect to the immigration issue, appears to contradict findings that a number of other public opinion surveys have reported over the past two years. Some may wrongly interpret the CNN poll as showing surprisingly high support (60%) for deportation of "illegal" immigrants and low support for a pathway to citizenship (38%). Recent surveys conducted by CBS News, AP, Pew Research and others find support for legalization or a pathway to citizenship to be in the high 50%s and support for deportation to be just above 30%.  Why does the CNN appear to be different?

A closer look at the CNN question reveals conceptual and methodological concerns with respect to the question and in particular, the answer categories and its structure.  These issues can lead some to misinterpret the results.

 The CNN question is worded as follows:

"What should be the main focus of the U.S. government in dealing with the issue of illegal immigration — [1] developing a plan that would allow illegal immigrants who have jobs to become legal U.S. residents, or [2] developing a plan for stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. and for deporting those already here?" (bolding edit for impact)

[1] Allow to become legal residents_38%

[2] Stop illegals and deport those here_60%

[3] No opinion_2%

Of particular concern is the second answer choice offered to survey respondents ("developing a plan for stopping the flow of illegal  immigrants into the U.S. and for deporting those already here") because it contains two different concepts: a. stop the flow of "illegal" immigrants, and b. deport those already here.

When an answer choice combines two concepts in one and does not leave the respondent the choice to answer each independently, one cannot know for certain to which of the concepts the respondent is reacting. In this case, people choosing the second answer choice might favor only a plan for stopping future "illegal" immigration or only deportation or both. Summing the responses of these three subgroups can result in larger net support for this answer than if these two concepts were tested individually.

It’s notable that in a similar question in a Gallup/USA Today Poll (May 2010) where the above two concepts were not combined, the survey found that 53% support a plan for "halting the flow of illegal immigrants to the US" (no mention of deportation here) to 45% who say that the main focus should be on developing a plan to deal with immigrants who are currently in the US  illegally.

In addition to the answer choice concerns about the CNN question, there is another methodological issue with both the CNN and the Gallup force choice question format because the immigration solutions that they test against each other are not mutually exclusive:  Developing a plan for stopping the flow of illegal  immigrants into the U.S and a plan that would allow illegal immigrants who have jobs to become  legal U.S. residents. A better approach woulld be a survey question that allows respondents to choose both or neither answers. If done so, perhaps we would have seen a different response distribution.

Finally, other public opinion surveys further support the notion that the results of the CNN question could be spurious. In general, polls show that more than 70% of Americans think that the U.S should do more to prevent "illegal" immigrants from coming to the country, while more than 50% support legalization or a pathway to citizenship for "illegal" immigrants, and only about 30% support deportation of those already in the U.S. (Relevant surveys listed below.)

Understanding what the public thinks, especially on an issue as complex as immigration, can be a difficult task. We need to make sure that any attempt to examine the public mind, and report on it, should be fair and methodologically sound.

AP/UNIVISION MAY 12 2010 POLL

   
• 59% support providing a legal way for illegal immigrants to become citizens 39% who oppose it

   

• 81% say that the U.S. Gov should be doing more to keep illegal immigrants from entering and staying in the country

CBS/NYTIMES MAY 2 2010 POLL

   
• 43% "Illegal" immigrants should be allowed to stay in their jobs, and to eventually apply for U.S. citizenship

   

• 21%: should be allowed to stay in their jobs only as temporary guest workers, but NOT to apply for U.S. citizenship;

   

• 32% say that illegal immigrant should leave their jobs and the U.S.

   

• 78% The U.S. should be doing more along its borders to keep illegal immigrants from crossing into this country

Pew Research Center May 2009:

63% support providing a way for illegal immigrants currently in the country to gain legal citizenship if theypass background checks, pay fine and have jobs (to 34% who oppose)

ABC NEWS APRIL 2009:

74% strongly (59) or somewhat (15) believe that the U.S. is not doing enough to keep illegal immigrants from coming into this country.

When Rand Paul won a primary last Tuesday, becoming Kentucky’s Republican nominee for the Senate, he declared himself a national leader of the Tea Party movement.  It was an important moment for the movement as it, coming on the heels of the election of Scott Brown to the Senate, served as another step in its potential transformation from a loosely confederated group of grassroots groups into national level political force.  But, as Dr. Paul’s attacks on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 just two days later highlighted, the true implications of the movement’s ideology are chilling to say the least.  

The point that Dr. Paul made—the landmark anti-discrimination bill should only have applied to government entities, not private businesses—is consistent with his libertarian ideology of non-interference in the markets.  But, it also demonstrates how that ideology breaks down when applied dogmatically to the complexities of the real world.  In Paul’s view, the right of equal treatment by businesses must be relitigated over and over again, through boycotts and sit-ins at every single establishment.  As Adam Serwer at TAPPED points out, this may not be explicit racism on Dr. Paul’s part, but it does display a stunning inability to imagine the life experience of another person.  Because Rand Paul would never be subjected to this type of discrimination, he seems incapable of understanding why the need to explicitly outlaw it trumps his selfish and, frankly, childish, desire to not have anyone telling him what he can and cannot do.

Never mind that this ideology, which sees little to no role for government action to prevent lenders from exploiting the public, was a major cause of the current economic downturn.  And never mind that this ideology, which sees no government role in forcing oil companies to make modest short-term investments in preventing wide scale ecological calamity, allowed BP to build its rigs on the cheap and would allow them to avoid paying for the consequences of the spill.  These things don’t matter because Dr. Paul, and the Tea Party that has pushed him to national prominence, believes that they will just work themselves out.

The Tea Party claims to be a populist movement, speaking out for the members of the American public who don’t have a voice in Washington.  But Americans, at least the ones I know, value our communities, and believe that we can and should band together to make them fairer and more just places to live.  If Dr. Paul truly wants to be a national leader of the Tea Party, and the Tea Party truly wants to be a national political force, they might want to remember that, every time we’ve truly risen to a national challenge, it was because we were all in it together.

Read more at The Opportunity Agenda website.

This week’s Immigration Blog Roundup covers the Az bill, federal policy, and more...

President Calderon of Mexico says Arizona’s new immigration measure will promote discrimination during a visit to the White House.  President Barack Obama also stepped up his criticism of Arizona’s illegal immigration law, calling it "misdirected" and warning that it has the potential to lead to discrimination as well.

There is much debate about the new immigration measure slated to take effect July 29 in Arizona.  So far two officers are challenging the immigration law in court, while police unions that lobbied for it are defending it against criticism from police officials. Supporters and proponents are speaking up around the nation.

Rhode Island State Rep. Palumbo has introduced the Arizona bill.  Read more here.

A New York Times/CBS News poll this month that found that Americans 45 and older were more likely than the young to say the Arizona law was “about right” (as opposed to “going too far” or “not far enough”). Boomers were also more likely to say that “no newcomers” should be allowed to enter the country while more young people favored a “welcome all” approach.

The Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board voted unanimously Wednesday to adopt a framework for a video training course that will be distributed to all 15,000 Arizona police officers.  Police Chief Jack Harris told The Associated Press last week "the way the law is written, it almost leads officers to do racial profiling, while at the same time saying, ‘Don’t do it.’"

On May 3, 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that government doctors are immune from personal liability for inadequate medical care of immigration detainees.  Read more here at the National Immigration Forum website.

Read: The Meaning of Marriage: Immigration Rules and Their Implications for Same-Sex Spouses in a World Without DOMA by Scott Titshaw.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided yesterday that sentencing young people to life in prison without the possibility of parole for nonhomicide crimes violates the Constitution’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment provision.  The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, upholds basic constitutional principles of opportunity, rehabilitation, and the capacity of young people to grow and change over time.

“A State is not required to guarantee eventual freedom to a juvenile offender convicted of a nonhomicide crime,” the Court said.  “What the State must do, however, is give defendants … some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.”

Requiring the possibility of parole for youth in nonhomicide crimes is the right decision under the Constitution, and the right outcome for our country.  It is no guarantee of release in any particular case, but, rather, a guarantee that our criminal justice systems must provide for careful review to determine whether, years later, young offenders continue to pose a threat to the community.

The decision also recognizes that young people’s brains and emotions are still developing.  They must be held accountable for crimes they commit, while acknowledging their greater capacity for change.

The states should respond to this decision not only by abolishing the sentence of life without possibility of parole for young people–which they must do under yesterday’s decision–but also by improving their rehabilitation programs for all people in prison.  Better preparing incarcerated people to reenter and participate productively in society is a smart response to the Court’s decision, and is in our national interest.

Read more at The Opportunity Agenda website.

This week’s Immigration Blog Roundup covers the nation-wide response to the Arizona immigration bill, policy news, and more…

While the Arizona Governor defends her state’s new immigration bill the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association says the state has lost 23 conventions scheduled from this summer to 2013 and between $6-million and $10-million from those meetings since Brewer signed the bill about three weeks ago.

Another controversial bill signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer bans  an ethnic studies program in the Tucson school system.  HB 2281  bans schools from teaching classes that are designed for students of a  particular ethnic group, promote resentment or advocate ethnic  solidarity over treating pupils as individuals and bans classes that  promote the overthrow of the U.S. government.  The ban targets a Mexican  American studies which is supported by a court-ordered desegregation  budget, and is part of the district’s initiative to create equal access  for Latinos.

A growing number of conservative evangelical leaders are openly criticizing Arizona’s new immigration bill and lobbying republican leaders to support comprehensive immigration reform.  Influential evangelical activists such as Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy wing, Mathew Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law, and Samuel Rodriguez, an influential Hispanic evangelical figure are currently trying to draft a consensus evangelical position on immigration reform.

City Councils around the country are demonstrating their disapproval of the new Az. bill.  San Francisco, Los Angeles, and DC are considering boycotts while other cities and states are reporting that they may also consider taking action if the bill goes into effect in July.

Lastly, USCIS has created a  new green card that is actually green.  The new card  incorporates holographic images, laser engraved fingerprints and radio  frequency identification chips that will allow Customs and Border  Protection officers at ports of entry to read the card from a distance.

With the massive march on Washington DC and the passage of S.B. 1070 in Arizona, immigrants in general, and a potential immigration reform bill specifically, have taken center stage in the American political debate.  But, buried within these political questions—Will an immigration bill come before a climate change bill? How will the debate affect voter turnout in November?—is a more fundamental, and far more important set of questions about who we are as a nation.  These questions—Do we rise and fall together? Do we remember the stories of how our own ancestors came to this country?—cannot be answered by facts or figures.  No, to answer these questions, we must turn to our values.

As a nation, we can embrace the value of being a welcoming community, or we can wall ourselves off from the rest of the world.  We can work with communities of new Americans to be sure that they have the tools to be healthy and productive members of society, or we can isolate them, ensuring that they will never be able to fulfill the very same dream that has brought people to this land from across the world since our founding.  We can talk to and about each other in a way that conveys mutual respect, or we can give into the darkest and cruelest back alleys of our minds.

Throughout the debate, we as a nation will be well-served by taking the high road, and remembering that the overwhelming majority of people who come to our country do so because they believe it will mean a better life for their children and their children’s children.  And, we should remember to lift up those among us who are joining us on the high road.  With that in mind, I would recommend Lisa Miller’s recent piece on the role that American Bishops of the Catholic Church have played in pushing for real immigration solutions that uphold our values and move us forward together.  In their advocacy, the Bishops have clearly dug deep into their institutional values and remembered Exodus 22:21, “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

“As they say on my own Cape Cod, a rising tide lifts all the boats.”

-John F. Kennedy

“Rising tides don’t lift all boats, particularly those stuck at the bottom.”

-Reverend Jesse Jackson

President Kennedy made that declaration in 1963. Since then income inequality in the United States has greatly increased. As reported by The Economist:

Between 1970 and 2008 the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, grew from 0.39 to 0.47. In mid-2008 the typical family’s income was lower than it had been in 2000. The richest 10 percent earned nearly half of all income, surpassing even their share in 1928, the year before the Great Crash.

Parsing these numbers further, we see that different American groups and communities experienced starkly different levels of opportunity. The African American male unemployment rate in 2007 (11.4 percent) was more than twice as high as the white male unemployment rate (5.5 percent), and the Latino male unemployment rate was also much higher (7.6 percent). The current crisis is affecting some groups and communities far more severely than others.

Any economic recovery policy should not only jump-start the economy in the short-term, but also invest in lasting opportunity for all. We must address inequalities that challenge our ability to move forward together, such as the fact that African American median household wealth is only one-tenth that of white households. As our economy continues to falter, stimulating greater and more equal opportunity remains crucial to both short-term rescue and long-term prosperity.

Meanwhile, in early 2009, 71 percent of Americans still agreed that hard work and personal skill were the main ingredients to get ahead.

Let’s work together to make our beliefs in this country closer to its reality.

For more, visit The Opportunity Agenda page on ensuring equal and expanded opportunity.