More Energy Hijinks

Al Gore calls for a carbon-neutral grid within ten years

There is a somewhat useful attendant speculation on logistics here.

Yes, I do link to things other than the Oil Drum. Here TOD provides good data on where our power comes from, and why nameplate capacity is not the same thing as power delivered. However, his thoughts about wind power lead into the question I have about all this:

It seems fairly clear that a carbon-neutral grid is technologically possible. But where will the political will come from? Consumers buy their power from utilities, which in turn buy it from power plants. Because a utility is a natural monopoly, consumers can't individually reject the energy politics of their utility, unless they're prepared to go completely off-grid, which is not economically feasible for most.

This leaves State regulation as the best/only means of controlling where a utility buys its energy. PG&E has lately signed a number of big contracts to buy renewable power, as the State of California has a compulsory renewable portfolio standard. Which brings me finally to,

Is this really a Federal problem? What are the politics of making it into one?

I believe it is a Federal problem. The physical nature of the grid means that electricity is constantly passing between States, except in Alaska, Hawaii, and Texas. Given that your Investor-Owned Utility wants to burn coal in Kentucky, and sell the power to the Public Utility Commission in Atlanta, a National Renewable Portfolio standard makes legal sense.

But it also makes financial sense. It is all well and good to talk about "Building More Solar". But just who is going to set down and do that? Why build a plant that produces a kw/h for 5 cents, on its own schedule, when you can build one that produces power for 3 cents a kw/h, whenever you throw the switch?

With a State-level RPS, the PUC receives a mandate as part of its monopoly, and in turn stimulates the IOUs into helping the PUC achieve its goal. With a national RPS, individual IOUs would be directly required to diversify their portfolios, or be denied the right to transmit power across state lines. This would have several effects:

1) The culture of a particular state would allow for an 'opt-out'. This would not amount to seizure or nationalization.
2) The very people profiting from the externalities of carbon would be required to pay for the greening of the grid.

However, on the downside

1) There would be nothing requiring a PUC to buy the green power. Green capacity might just sit idle, if an IOU tried to charge more for its output.

Food for thought. Kudos to Gore for beginning the dialogue, and for pushing the overall discussion in the right direction.

City Guides of San Francisco

My sister was in town yesterday and discovered the San Francisco City Guides, a group of over 200 volunteer history buffs who lead over 40 different tours around the city. You just check the schedule of tours online, show up at the designated spot, and some San Francisco enthusiast shows up to walk you around town while telling you stories. It's free, although they do accept donations at the end of the tour.

We saw 2 of them yesterday ("Gold Rush City" and "Nob Hill"), and both were very good, especially "Nob Hill". Our middle-of-the-weekday tours each had about 10 people, so I don't think there's much chance of an awkward, just-you-and-the-tour-guide session.

I strongly recommend the tours, and I'm more than a little embarrassed that my sister had to discover these for me, since I've lived in the Bay Area for almost a decade and she lives in Illinois.

The Energy Crisis: Red vs. Blue

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4125

The map alone will tell you something very important about the current/looming energy crisis: Republicans will be under pressure to push for short-term practical relief, but Democrats will, depending on your viewpoint, be "free" to meaningfully craft a long-term solution to the problem.

If Democrats gain the White House and a majority in both houses, one wonders what will become of those parts of the country where personal transportation costs are now pushing 20% of household income. With plug-in hybrids scheduled to debut in 2009, and a carbon-neutral grid only now becoming a long-term goal in blue states, I expect the only option Republican pundits will have will be to pound harder at the anti-environment message. How can Democrats effectively neutralize this potentially explosive source of opposition?

Posts of Recent Relevance

A couple of subjects I'd posted about way back in the day came up in conversation yesterday, so I dug said posts up out of the archive. This was an easy post to write as it consists almost entirely of me plugging things I'd already written.

First, on discriminatory marriage institutions.

Second, on (the myth of) free will. In case it's not clear from the post, the reason I don't care for saying that people "earn" things is that the whole idea of free will doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.

Incoherence vs "unrecognized subtlety"

This whole discussion about libertarianism and liberalism is so facinating I'm sad I missed a lot of it due to a super-long awesome wedding party. Reading the comments however I think I have bit more to add.

Though it's generally never a good idea I'd like to draw a distinction between my own views and Paul's when he writes:

...The point is that when you put pressure on thinking that is ostensibly "libertarian", you tend to find a hodge-podge of other philosophies being applied in selective ways. Sometimes it's strict constructionism, sometimes it's about negative liberty, sometimes it's about the inefficiency of government. That makes the arguments difficult to engage with and, I think, suggests that the philosophy itself is somewhat incoherent.

Paul writes that since many libertarians don't seem to be applying their claimed precepts in a regular way that those individuals probably have an incoherent philosophy. I disagree. In the same way that a native English speaker can form coherent sentences without having to memorize thousands of grammatical rules, so to can people subscribe to and practice a coherent political philosophy without being consciously aware of which values they are applying and how. Indeed, I suspect that most politically aware people have very regular system of rules and values for making political decisions that they follow even if they are mistaken about the nature of their own political philosophy.

Allow me to be the first to plead guilty to being mistaken about my own beliefs. In rereading my previous post on liberalism I realize that it does a poor job of explaining what I believe. In fact, it seems that I defined liberalism so broadly that it could probably include most of conservatism. I guess this shouldn't be surprising. Both liberals and conservatives agree that the government should be used to make people's lives better - they just differ as to the best way. Liberals want to use government to create a high-speed rail system. Conservatives want to use it to stop people from drinking too much.

The only thing my definition does manage to do is distinguish my philosophy with the rights-based constricted ones like Communism and Libertarianism where rights based arguments - not efficiency ones - are used much more more often to define the role of the state in the economy.

But back to my crappy definition of liberalism. I first recognized this shortcoming when I started trying use the "more better options" business to explain why I support the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA). It turns out it's pretty difficult. The "more, better options" doesn't include any concept of fairness which is pretty important. I think I ought to think about exactly how that figures in and if that can be used to distinguish conservatism from liberalism.

Predictions - Chait - 9/18/2008

Via Matt Yglesias, Jon Chait makes the following prediction:

Anway, let me now go on the record to say that another McCain staff shake-up is, if not inevitable, very likely. McCain's staff is just too factionalized to remain stable unless McCain is consistently winning. And Schmidt is a Bush 2004 veteran who lacks the deep emotional ties to the candiate that other McCainiacs have. I predict that at some point, probably just before or just after the convention, there will be a move to "Let McCain be McCain," and new boss Steve Schmidt will be replaced with either John Weaver or Mike Murphy, to try to recreate the magic of the 2000 campaign.

Let's say that "just after the convention" could mean up to two weeks later.

Expiration Date: September 18, 2008

America Rules. England Sucks.

Because every day's the 4th of July in my book. (NSFW)


America Rules England Sucks - Watch more free videos

Solar & Clean Energy Act of 2008

There's some weirdness around California's Proposition 7:

A November ballot measure to boost the amount of renewable energy generated by California utilities has attracted a wildly diverse group of opponents - from the Natural Resources Defense Council to the Democratic Party and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

...

The measure requires all California utilities to generate at least half their power from alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, biomass and geothermal by 2025, well above the 33 percent level Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to see by 2020. Utilities currently must reach a 20 percent goal by 2010.

...

The groups, many of which had been working on energy legislation for years, were never really brought into the initiative effort, said Ralph Cavanaugh of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"There was very late consultation," he said. "We asked them last November to step back and take a look at the measure, but by then they already had a finished product."

The initiative sets up such a detailed plan for dealing with renewable energy and siting and building the new, greener power plants that it opens the way for many unintended consequences, Cavanaugh said. Even groups closely involved with renewable energy, such as the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technology, have lined up against Prop. 7.

"If you're going to legislate at the ballot box, keep it simple, don't write 70 pages," he added. "Our objection isn't to their good intentions, but to their bad initiative."

Normally I'd defer to the relevant interest groups on an issue like this, but it's not obvious from the Chronicle article how much of the opposition is legit and how much is sour grapes from not being included in the process.

The full text of the measure can be seen here.

Note that Prop. 7 is only about 40 pages long, not 70. For comparison, Prop. 6 (changing criminal penalties) is about 30 pages long, but probably contains more words. Proposition 5 - which changes sentencing guidelines for non-violent offenders - is about 60 pages long.

Not A Flag Tattoo?

Judging which candidate to vote for can be difficult. Fortunately, there are quick and easy ways of identifying which ones are best suited for office. From a CNN poll:

Another question asked in June: How often should a U.S. presidential candidate wear a flag pin (when dressed in other than casual clothes)?

Forty-one percent of respondents said a candidate should always wear one. Another 13 percent said "frequently," 16 percent said "sometimes," 19 percent said "only occasionally," and 9 percent said "never."

Personally, I think presidential candidates should always wear a button with my face on it. That way I know they care about me and are looking out for me.

Happy 4th!

What's liberalism

I think Bret brings up some good points in the post below and he's opened my eyes to how unclear I've been in my formulation of what liberalism is. In order to help myself think more clearly (and help give others firmer grounds upon which to attack any mistakes I might be making) let me try to restate my definition of Liberalism.

"Liberalism argues that government should give people more and better options if a mechanism can be found to reliably do so."

There are a lot of things that are left unsaid here so let me break it down into bite-sized pieces.

"...government should give people more and better options..."

The idea here is that it would be nice if we had more options, and if the options we had were better. Obviously these two desires can conflict. It would be nice if I had the option of getting good health care. In fact, I'd like it so much I'd be willing to trade my current condition (many bad options) for one in which having good health care was my only option.

Furthermore the "people" in the above phrase is important too. It would be unfair for government to expand one person's opportunities at the expense of everyone else. Taken to the extreme this would be confiscatory as Bret rightly points out. However, we should recognize that the services provided by government are a package deal. As long as the overall affect is to expand the opportunities for the vast majority (i.e. "people") I think we can excuse the odd program which is basically confiscatory if taken alone. I would put Social Security and the Civil Rights act into this group. With such programs, government can reach out to improve the options of people who are left behind by other programs.

(As a corollary to the above, people who eat pudding do not, as a class, constitute a group that has been ill-served by government so a program to help them could not be justified.)

Now the question naturally arises: Who decides what's more and better and for whom? Bret asked precisely these questions and they are good ones. If you're just trying to decide what you personally support, then use your own metric. If we're trying to decide what the government should actually do, well... this is why we have a democracy. With the proper minority protections in place (which our constitutions provides in spades) I see no problem in resolving these questions at the ballot box.

"...if a mechanism can be found to reliably do so."

Lastly, government should only act if it can do so effectively, technically and politically. On a technical level, we should only support government programs if we expect them to produce the intended effect if carried out competently (i.e. No to price-caps and wage controls). On the political level, we should only support program if we think they're going to be politically sustainable in the long term. Thus we need to be wary of regulatory capture, rent seeking, and good old fashioned unintended consequences.

This last issue is - I suspect - what Bret is getting at when he calls me a "techno-liberal". I suspect he thinks I'm only looking at the technical aspects of government programs while ignoring the very real threats posed by government failures like regulatory capture. If that is the case then I'll assure everyone that I am aware of these issues and even made a point to include them in my formulation of Liberalism and indeed, in my personal political beliefs. This is why I support a carbon tax much more strongly than cap-n-trade.

So, to sum up: There are a lot of judgment calls that this formulation leaves open. Of course there is: it's a pragmatic philosophy that doesn't pretend to give you all the answers. Still, much better no answer than a wrong one.

Predictions - DeLong - 10/4/2008

Predictions are cheap, especially on the internet. So why not keep track of them?

Hearing that President Bush extended unemployment benefits, Brad DeLong makes the following prediction:

It seems to me likely that--whatever happens to the economy--George W. Bush has just produced four bad unemployment-rate headlines on the Saturdays August 2, September 6, and October 4.

Expiration Date: October 4, 2008.

Giving the wrong answer vs. no answer

Ok, Bret inspired me to post this.

No good political philosophy can answer every political question without sliding into dangerous idealism. But we can certainly hope that a philosophy will give us constructive ways to think about every question. As an example liberalism argues that government should give people more and better options if a mechanism can be found to reliably do so. On it's own, this doesn't settle the question over whether we should - for example - support universal health care. But it at least gives us a way to organize our subjective judgments to make a political decision.

In contrast to liberalism, libertarianism seems a much more far-reaching. It says that "I should be allowed to do anything I want, as long as it doesn't harm others". This is a simplification of course. But instead of leaving difficult questions open - like liberalism or conservatism for that matter - it seems to give us exactly the wrong answer on a host of issues.

Is the government allowed to regulate portions of the economy merely because doing so will lead to prosperity? Libertarianism says no. Not unless you can show it involves someone harming someone else. So goodbye universal health care or even preventing insurers from discriminating against those with hereditary conditions. And the federal reserve system is out as well.

But that's not all, because there's nothing in the libertarian formulation that seems to account for the level at which government programs are enacted. So I don't see why street-lights or Bart or Cal trans, or even state parks or zoning laws are allowable under this philosophy. And indeed, there are many libertarians that think just that.

Ok. Now that I've made libertarians angry by over-simplifying their views let me step back and recognize that this probably isn't what most libertarians think. On the occasions that I've made this argument to libertarians their response was basically to whip off the mask and to reveal a totally different, non-libertarian, philosophy underneath. For some it's radical federalism: the belief that somehow local government is better than federal government (which is wrong for a whole host of reasons). For others it's a kind of soft liberalism that dares-not-speak-its-name: people should be left alone unless we can prove there's a really good reason to do so. For others it's good old conservatism: they just want to cut the welfare state to force people to turn to churches and other similar organizations for support.

I don't think you get this with other philosophies. Liberalism doesn't always give you an answer, but at least you don't have to jettison it to get pragmatic solutions to everyday problems. With a lot of libertarians on the other hand, it really does seem like it's just an attitude masquerading as a philosophy.

Most People Are DJs. Also Thieves.

Since this blog came up in conversation today, I thought I'd mention that I endorse 100% of the things Kevin Carey says here. To sum up:

• The Hold Steady is awesome.
  
• Stealing music is lame.

Carbon Offsets

Via the libertarians at Marginal Revolutions comes this website making fun of liberals who think carbon offsets are good:

At Cheatneutral, we believe that we should all try to reduce the amount we cheat on our partners, but we also realise that fidelity isn't always possible.

That's why we help you neutralise your cheating. Your actions are offset by a global network of fidelity, developed by us. By paying Cheatneutral, you're funding monogamy-boosting offset projects - we simply invest the money you give us in monogamous, faithful or just plain single people, to encourage them to stay that way.

Ha ha! Those stupid liberals! Seriously though, does anyone see the fatal flaw in this satire? Cheating is bad for the individuals involved but has little effect on society at large. Releasing carbon into the atmosphere has no immediate negative effects but hurts society. Offsets don't do anything to mitigate the immediate effects of something but could work at alleviating the cumulative evils. QED

I understand the importance of protecting the environment but I also believe in capitalism. That means that in my ideal world people would charged for the damage they do and that the rich would obviously be able to pay for more carbon than the poor. I see no problem with using offsets in a reasonably ingenious stop-gap effort while we try to set up a more market-based carbon-tax or cap-and-trade scheme.

Great minds think alike

See this at Lawyers, Guns and money. The princess bride is the ultimate political metaphor of our time.

Was the civil war was about slavery or states rights?

I got into another brief discussion about the causes of the civil war yesterday. The issue of contention seemed to be:

• What was the civil war really about?

And as a special bonus question:

• Was Lincoln a good guy or a bad guy?

I took the liberal position ("Slavery, duh" and "good guy") my counterpart took the conservative position ("states rights" and "bad guy"). Here’s my thinking. Let me know if I’ve missed something.

By our modern standards Lincoln was a racist, but so was just about every one else of that era. When judged by the standards of his day he seems down-right progressive. He always opposed slavery personally but when it was politically impossible to get rid of it he held that it was up to the states to decide. When getting rid of slavery became feasible he happy to force states to end it. Is this so different from what we see with modern politicians on issues like Gay Marriage?

Lincoln’s views on slavery were relevant because the US was on the verge of inducting a lot of new states and each would have to decide whether to allow slavery or not. Slave holders thought (fairly) that slavery would not last politically if Free states far outnumbered Slave states. The status of slavery in those new states – not the right of each state to choose – is was what lead the South to start the civil war.

In fact, the confederacy cared so little for states rights that under its constitution new states had no choice in the matter of slavery: “In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.”

Granted the majority of confederate soldiers probably believed they fought for states rights and not slavery. But I bet most Russian soldiers in WWII thought they were fighting for freedom and equality rather than extending the power of Stalin into Eastern Europe.

The danger of navel-gazing and the princess bride

Atrios asks:

...why is that conservative bloggers are perpetually writing some version of "what conservatism means..." or "what conservatives think..."

Let me suggest that when the meaning of an ideology can't be determined from the policies espoused by its proponents - or when those policies are manifestly unpopular and wrong - adherents suffer cognitive dissonance. In this particular case the belief that conservatives are good and right is conflicting with fact that the policies conservatives have favored have lead our nation into more than one cluster-f*ck. What can one do when the group you've decided you belong to turns out to be stupid?

Well, I know what you don't do. No self-respecting Homo sapiens would even think of leaving said group. Not while other options are available. Like anyone experiencing cognitive dissonance the very first thing you try is contorting logic beyond all recognition to avoid the fact that you have no idea what your doing. In this case, a lot of energy gets focused on slicing and dicing the exact meaning of "conservative".

What kind of wacky beliefs and tricks of logic are they looking for? The basic requirement is tribalism. Your new definition of conservative has to include all the people you like and exclude all the people you don't (no matter how decent your enemies may be). Plus on some abstract level it has to exclude all those stupid beliefs you and your friends supported and all your opponents fought against. Case in point.

In my many years of blogging nothing has amazed me more than the capacity of certain people to call themselves "conservative" or "liberal" while holding positions and fundamental values diametrically opposed to their stated ideology. Honestly. If you suspect that the president should be allowed to spy, imprison, and torture you, without judicial oversight of any kind and if you also call yourself a libertarian - well - I do not think that word means what you think it means.

I don't want to sound like I'm immune to cognitive dissonance. I was a fake Catholic for many years. But the point is, we should all try to be more aware of what we believe and who we claim to agree with. This time, I mean it!

Does anybody want a peanut?

Defending Reason, Attacking Faith

This video by Richard Dawkins (hat tip pharyngula) is pretty interesting and does a good job I think of bringing home just how ridiculous most faith-based/superstitious beliefs are. This isn't to say those beliefs are wrong, it's just to say that if the holy spirit descends and inspires you to believe that Jesus was the only son of God and that he was born of a virgin, well... you should be aware that your belief are going to seem silly to those who don't share them.

What struck me as really interesting was the way Dawkins frames the battle between science and unreason. He views his struggle as a defense one:

...Reason and a respect for evidence are precious commodities, the source of human progress and our safeguard against fundamentalists and those who profit from obscuring the truth.

Yet, today, society appears to be retreating from reason.

Apparently harmless but utterly irrational belief systems from astrology to New Age mysticism, clairvoyance to alternative health remedies are booming.

The emphasis is mine. Though I respect the project Dawkins has devoted himself too I think the idea that "New Atheism" is just a response to new attacks from unreason is pretty far-fetched. If anything it's a new offensive by atheists which overtly breaks the old truce between science and religion that gave each their own Nonoverlapping Magisteria. Dawkins refusal to politely respect religious beliefs destroy this pact just as surely as a Federation Cloaking Device.

Granted, this truce is being attacked from the other side too. The view that the revealed truth of God can over-rule testable hypotheses is not confined to the New Age faith-healers.

Here's another theory of what's happening. Most people who hold these unscientific positions aren't stupid or gullible, they've just been raised with beliefs that humans are all too prone to accepting. The religious community has always herded it's friendly non-threatening casual believers with hard-core uncompromising evangelists/bishops/imams. Could it be that the atheist community has only recently gained enough adherents to support their own version of the uncompromising take-it-to-the-logical-conclusion type leader that has been the staple of religion for thousands of years?

On not being racist

Reviewing the post below I realized that it may sound a bit... racist. I certainly don't mean to single out any racial or ethnic group as specifically prone to being poor or not having the skills to succeed. We should always keep in mind that the majority of American poor are white. I want to be completely clear that insofar as any particular group is doing more poorly than another this is almost always due to historical circumstances. Genetics can play a role - like how the lack of disease resistance in Native American populations lead to the downfall of many civilizations* - but I have seen no evidence that it played a role by modifying cognitive ability or behavior or that it plays any role in explaining modern day inequality. Humans are all pretty much the same and if some of us digest milk easier, or lose our Epicanthic fold as we age, or are more prone to rickets than to skin cancer, well, that's no reason why some of us should be rich and some should be poor.

Liberals tend to view the solving the problem of inequality as a matter of making up for past wrongs. Conservatives tend to reject this and argue that just about every group was oppressed at some point and most of them are now doing just fine. Basically, if the Asians could become successful after all the crap they went through, certainly Blacks can too. And if they haven't that's basically their own fault.

Personally I find neither of these arguments convincing. The "making up for past wrongs" view seems dangerously close to logic "blame the son for the sins of the father". To me, if you're going to make any kind of social justice argument it has to be grounded in current modern-day consequences of past injustice. The problem with conservative view is that though you can, for each poor person, chalk up their circumstances to a lack of "personal responsibility" it makes no sense to do this for a group. Ethnic and racial groups do not make collective moral choices. So even if you want to argue that, say, Sicilians are poor because they lack personal responsibility you still have to explain why they lack it so much more often than other groups. It's either 1) a really incredible coincidence or 2) due to outside forces. But if it is outside forces than you can hardly hold them personally responsible for the consequences.

Well... now I'm rehashing old ground. I just want to make the argument that inequality is real, in many cases it's not solely attributable to a lack of personal responsibility, and it's something that society should fix.

*Obviously war-making Europeans had a hand in it too, but let's not sell the Native Americans short: they probably could have defended themselves just fine is it wasn't for the whole small-pox thing.

Update: For a really interesting take on the sticky poverty problem see Ezra Klein. He references an interesting take on poverty from blogger Tyler Cowen a libertarian.

Cultural defense mechanisms

I was talking with a friend recently about immigration and assimilation and cultures of the poor when my friend opined that one of the reasons urban poverty was so persistent was that academic achievement wasn’t valued by the culture. When we hear this argument in the media, rap music and “thug worship” are usually singled out as the identifying marks of this trend. I have two observations to make. (Beware! The second one makes the first one unnecessary.)

---

First, every culture has defense mechanisms: methods of persuading members to stay in that culture and be proud of it. These mechanisms can include violence like punishing intermarriage by stoning or legal force or they can be less overt like French language policy. The amount of time Lou Dobbs’ spends worrying about Univision is difficult to understand if you believe he is motivated by a simple desire that America have a common language* but in the context of defending the integrity of his culture from outside influence it makes more sense.

One way a culture can defend its integrity is by discouraging members from pursuing activities where they are in the minority. This has the double effect of insulating members from outside influence and maintaining pride by devaluing things culture members don't have. It’s conceivable that a child from the inner-city might find it more rewarding to play basketball with their neighbors after school than to study for the spelling bee with a bunch of middle-class kids that won’t want to hang out afterwards anyways (because their parents don’t want their child picking up bad cultural habits from poor kids!). It's conceivable that poor urban youth might look at his low chances of getting a college education and think "Fine! I don't want your lousy diploma anyways!"

But even if you accept this line of reasoning it's clear that though "the culture devalues academic achievement" can explain why inner city culture is stuck where it is it can't explain how it got there in the first place. For that of course, you have to turn to the legacy of slavery.

Becuase you all understood that when I said "inner city children" and "poor urban youth" that I meant "poor black kids". Right?

---

The second point I want to make is that I don't think inner city culture actually devalues learning and academic achievement all that much.

No one on earth is more a product of their culture than a 7^th grader. Lacking any self-identity they pretty much exist as a vessel for peer pressure to act on. My girlfriend teaches 7^th grade at a public school in Oakland and she reports that just like students in middle-class schools her students enthusiastically want to go to college. And like middle-class students they also generally lack the long-term vision to study hard so they can get the grades they need to get there. The difference is that their parents generally don't give them the kind of incentives they need to achieve. For some, it's easier to accuse a teacher of racism than it is to take responsibility for a child's bad behavior. It's easier to say "It's in God's hands" than to force their child to study for the test. And all the while these kids have to deal with unstable home lives, bad nutrition and high-crime neighborhoods.

It's not that the culture doesn't value academic achievement. It's that the members don't understand what they need to do to achieve it and they face a whole bunch of additional obstacles besides that.

That leaves the question of how to fix it. On that score I don't really know. As far as I can tell conservative policy circles think it can be fixed by encouraging marriage (and discouraging teenage pregnancy as long as it doesn't involve sex ed), reducing dependency on government programs, reinging in teachers unions, and instituting school vouchers. The liberal plans basically break down into two camps: help individuals to move out of the ghetto, or try to fix the whole ghetto in the first place. In the upcoming primary these two views are represented by Edwards and Obama alternate plans to fight poverty.

*All the studies ^(PDF) I’ve seen show Hispanics are learning English just as fast as previous immigrants did though they tend to be bilingual longer.