TIMES are tough for Debbie, a prostitute in western England who runs a
private flat with other “mature ladies”. She does two or three jobs a
day. A year ago she was doing eight or nine. She has cut her prices: “If
I hadn’t, I wouldn’t still be open.” She says that she can now make
more money doing up furniture and attending car-boot sales than she can
turning tricks.
George McCoy, who runs a website reviewing over 5,000 massage
parlours and individuals, says that many are struggling. Sex workers
tell him they have been forced to hold down prices. Like other
businesses, massage parlours and private flats are suffering from rising
rents and energy costs. Even Mr McCoy’s website is under the cosh:
visitor numbers are down by a third.
In part, this reflects the sluggish
economy. Overall consumer spending at the end of 2012 was almost 4%
lower than its 2007 peak. And Vivienne, an independent escort in the
south who works part-time to supplement her income as a photographer,
says paying for sex is a luxury: “Food is more important; the mortgage
is more important; petrol is more important.” She is offering discounts
out of desperation, reckoning it is better to reduce prices by £20 ($30)
than to have no customers at all. Another woman says that some punters
are just as anxious to talk about the difficult job market as they are
to have sex.
The days of being able to make a full-time living out of prostitution
are long gone, reckons Vivienne, at least in larger towns and cities.
“It’s stupidly competitive right now,” she laments. More people are
entering prostitution, agrees Cari Mitchell of the English Collective of
Prostitutes. Some working women in Westminster say they have halved
their prices because the market has become so saturated. In London, and
increasingly elsewhere, immigrants provide strong competition. But
Sophie, an expensive escort in Edinburgh, says she is seeing an influx
of newbies including students and the recently laid-off, many of them
offering more for less.
Parts of the sex trade are comparatively hale. At the top end of the
market, Marie, another escort in Scotland, says custom has not dried up.
Girls increasingly report requests for discounts, she says. But those
who lower their prices sometimes swiftly raise them again, deterred by
the kind of customer who is attracted to bargains. The market for
dominatrices is holding up well, too, according to Mr McCoy. Some of the
cheapest massage parlours, such as Club 25 in Sheffield (the price is
in the name), attractive to the skint, are busy. Some newcomers are
offering cut-price services such as webcams and phone sex.
On the streets, where prices are lowest and life is harshest, things
are more desperate. Georgina Perry, the service manager for Open Doors,
an NHS centre in east London that offers health services to sex workers,
says that in the past few years some former prostitutes who had found
low-paid work, for example as cleaners, have returned to the sex trade
as other jobs have become harder to find. The women are back on the
streets, charging £20 at most.
Many of these changes reflect broader trends in Britain’s unstable,
part-time economy. But the danger in sex work is greater than in other
industries. Newcomers advertising on websites include photos of their
faces, their e-mail addresses and offers of risky services in their
profiles, says Sophie, the Edinburgh escort, aghast. Moving around in
search of clients, prostitutes must deal with unfamiliar and potentially
dangerous men. Since July 310 have contacted Ugly Mugs, a scheme that
encourages sex workers to report violence, although only around a
quarter went to the police. Sex workers are taking greater risks for
smaller returns.
ON THE evening before All Saints' Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed
95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis
was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar,
asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a
doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original
research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of
students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.
In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in
academia. It is an introduction to the world of independent research—a
kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close
collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary
enormously between countries, universities and even subjects. Some
students will first have to spend two years working on a master's degree
or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will pay their own way.
Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes and examinations
and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A thesis can be
dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history. As a
result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or
world-weary forty-somethings.
One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some
describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days,
low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a
graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated
than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It
isn't graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student,
who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What's
discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”
Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine
problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the
practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and
medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs.
Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the
number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings.
Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level
skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest
critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.
Rich pickings
For most of history even a first degree at a university was the
privilege of a rich few, and many academic staff did not hold
doctorates. But as higher education expanded after the second world war,
so did the expectation that lecturers would hold advanced degrees.
American universities geared up first: by 1970 America was producing
just under a third of the world's university students and half of its
science and technology PhDs (at that time it had only 6% of the global
population). Since then America's annual output of PhDs has doubled, to
64,000.
Other countries are catching up. Between 1998 and 2006 the number of
doctorates handed out in all OECD countries grew by 40%, compared with
22% for America. PhD production sped up most dramatically in Mexico,
Portugal, Italy and Slovakia. Even Japan, where the number of young
people is shrinking, churned out about 46% more PhDs. Part of that
growth reflects the expansion of university education outside America.
Richard Freeman, a labour economist at Harvard University, says that by
2006 America was enrolling just 12% of the world's students.
But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly
motivated and disposable labour. With more PhD students they can do more
research, and in some countries more teaching, with less money. A
graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of
teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in
2009—higher than the average for judges and magistrates.
Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for
university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia
Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more
than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period
there were just 16,000 new professorships. Using PhD students to do
much of the undergraduate teaching cuts the number of full-time jobs.
Even in Canada, where the output of PhD graduates has grown relatively
modestly, universities conferred 4,800 doctorate degrees in 2007 but
hired just 2,616 new full-time professors. Only a few fast-developing
countries, such as Brazil and China, now seem short of PhDs.
A short course in supply and demand
In research the story is similar. PhD students and contract staff
known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of
academia”, do much of the research these days. There is a glut of
postdocs too. Dr Freeman concluded from pre-2000 data that if American
faculty jobs in the life sciences were increasing at 5% a year, just 20%
of students would land one. In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or
less per year before tax—the average salary of a construction worker.
The rise of the postdoc has created another obstacle on the way to an
academic post. In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a
prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.
These armies of low-paid PhD researchers and postdocs boost
universities', and therefore countries', research capacity. Yet that is
not always a good thing. Brilliant, well-trained minds can go to waste
when fashions change. The post-Sputnik era drove the rapid growth in PhD
physicists that came to an abrupt halt as the Vietnam war drained the
science budget. Brian Schwartz, a professor of physics at the City
University of New York, says that in the 1970s as many as 5,000
physicists had to find jobs in other areas.
In America the rise of PhD teachers' unions reflects the breakdown of
an implicit contract between universities and PhD students: crummy pay
now for a good academic job later. Student teachers in public
universities such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison formed unions
as early as the 1960s, but the pace of unionisation has increased
recently. Unions are now spreading to private universities; though Yale
and Cornell, where university administrators and some faculty argue that
PhD students who teach are not workers but apprentices, have resisted
union drives. In 2002 New York University was the first private
university to recognise a PhD teachers' union, but stopped negotiating
with it three years later.
In some countries, such as Britain and America, poor pay and job
prospects are reflected in the number of foreign-born PhD students. Dr
Freeman estimates that in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs
in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006
that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate
poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign
labour also keeps wages down.
A PhD may offer no financial benefit over a master's degree. It can even reduce earnings
Proponents of the PhD argue that it is worthwhile even if it does not
lead to permanent academic employment. Not every student embarks on a
PhD wanting a university career and many move successfully into
private-sector jobs in, for instance, industrial research. That is true;
but drop-out rates suggest that many students become dispirited. In
America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after
their first date of enrolment. In the humanities, where most students
pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%. Worse still, whereas in other
subject areas students tend to jump ship in the early years, in the
humanities they cling like limpets before eventually falling off. And
these students started out as the academic cream of the nation. Research
at one American university found that those who finish are no cleverer
than those who do not. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of
money cause them to run out of steam.
Even graduates who find work outside universities may not fare all
that well. PhD courses are so specialised that university careers
offices struggle to assist graduates looking for jobs, and supervisors
tend to have little interest in students who are leaving academia. One
OECD study shows that five years after receiving their degrees, more
than 60% of PhDs in Slovakia and more than 45% in Belgium, the Czech
Republic, Germany and Spain were still on temporary contracts. Many were
postdocs. About one-third of Austria's PhD graduates take jobs
unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up
in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%.
A very slim premium
PhD graduates do at least earn more than those with a bachelor's degree. A study in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management
by Bernard Casey shows that British men with a bachelor's degree earn
14% more than those who could have gone to university but chose not to.
The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master's
degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one year, is almost as
high, at 23%. In some subjects the premium for a PhD vanishes entirely.
PhDs in maths and computing, social sciences and languages earn no more
than those with master's degrees. The premium for a PhD is actually
smaller than for a master's degree in engineering and technology,
architecture and education. Only in medicine, other sciences, and
business and financial studies is it high enough to be worthwhile. Over
all subjects, a PhD commands only a 3% premium over a master's degree.
Dr Schwartz, the New York physicist, says the skills learned in the
course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses.
Thirty years ago, he says, Wall Street firms realised that some
physicists could work out differential equations and recruited them to
become “quants”, analysts and traders. Today several short courses offer
the advanced maths useful for finance. “A PhD physicist with one course
on differential equations is not competitive,” says Dr Schwartz.
Many students say they are pursuing their subject out of love, and
that education is an end in itself. Some give little thought to where
the qualification might lead. In one study of British PhD graduates,
about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go
on being a student, or put off job hunting. Nearly half of engineering
students admitted to this. Scientists can easily get stipends, and
therefore drift into doing a PhD. But there are penalties, as well as
benefits, to staying at university. Workers with “surplus
schooling”—more education than a job requires—are likely to be less
satisfied, less productive and more likely to say they are going to
leave their jobs.
The interests of universities and tenured academics are misaligned with those of PhD students
Academics tend to regard asking whether a
PhD is worthwhile as analogous to wondering whether there is too much
art or culture in the world. They believe that knowledge spills from
universities into society, making it more productive and healthier. That
may well be true; but doing a PhD may still be a bad choice for an
individual.
The interests of academics and universities on the one hand and PhD
students on the other are not well aligned. The more bright students
stay at universities, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate
students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors' publication
records. Academics pick bright undergraduate students and groom them as
potential graduate students. It isn't in their interests to turn the
smart kids away, at least at the beginning. One female student spoke of
being told of glowing opportunities at the outset, but after seven years
of hard slog she was fobbed off with a joke about finding a rich
husband.
Monica Harris, a professor of psychology at the University of
Kentucky, is a rare exception. She believes that too many PhDs are being
produced, and has stopped admitting them. But such unilateral academic
birth control is rare. One Ivy-League president, asked recently about
PhD oversupply, said that if the top universities cut back others will
step in to offer them instead.
Noble pursuits
Many of the drawbacks of doing a PhD are well known. Your
correspondent was aware of them over a decade ago while she slogged
through a largely pointless PhD in theoretical ecology. As Europeans try
to harmonise higher education, some institutions are pushing the more
structured learning that comes with an American PhD.
The organisations that pay for research have realised that many PhDs
find it tough to transfer their skills into the job market. Writing lab
reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month
literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where
technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply
to a wide audience. Some universities are now offering their PhD
students training in soft skills such as communication and teamwork that
may be useful in the labour market. In Britain a four-year NewRoutePhD
claims to develop just such skills in graduates.
Measurements and incentives might be changed, too. Some university
departments and academics regard numbers of PhD graduates as an
indicator of success and compete to produce more. For the students, a
measure of how quickly those students get a permanent job, and what they
earn, would be more useful. Where penalties are levied on academics who
allow PhDs to overrun, the number of students who complete rises
abruptly, suggesting that students were previously allowed to fester.
Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and
will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have
amassed awards and prizes. As this year's new crop of graduate students
bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the
system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others,
that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed,
and that they would be better off doing something else. They might use
their research skills to look harder at the lot of the disposable
academic. Someone should write a thesis about that.
The law professor implicated in the
sex-for-grades case has been found guilty of corruption after a trial
that spanned five months, from January to May. He will be sentenced on
Wednesday.
SINGAPORE: The law professor implicated in the
sex-for-grades case has been found guilty of corruption after a trial
that spanned five months, from January to May.
He will be sentenced on Wednesday.
Tey
Tsun Hang, 42, was convicted of all six counts of corruptly obtaining
gratification in the form of gifts and sex from his former student
Darinne Ko Wen Hui, in return for giving her better grades between May
and July 2010.
Following the verdict, the National University of
Singapore (NUS) said it has terminated Tey's employment with immediate
effect. It said in a statement that Tey had contravened the conditions
of his appointment.
The Dean of NUS Faculty of Law, Simon
Chesterman, said that NUS staff and students are expected to behave
ethically and responsibly.
The case centred on Tey's relationship with his former student. The defence had argued it was a mutually-loving relationship.
But
in a 200-page judgement, Chief District Judge Tan Siong Thye listed
reasons why it was one-sided and described it as "an illicit
relationship laced with corrupt intent".
He said Tey never once
mentioned in his statements (to authorities) that he was in love with Ms
Ko, nor had he ever referred to her by her name.
Instead, the
judge said Tey would use "female student" and even "star prosecution
witness" when he referred to her in his cautioned statements.
The judge said Tey only told the court they were in a romantic relationship "as an afterthought".
He noted that in the second tranche of the trial, Tey changed his tune and claimed they were in love.
The judge pointed out that in his email correspondences to Ms Ko, Tey was always "terse" and "sometimes even curt".
Pointing
to Tey's Chinese poem and an email on the background of Frederic Chopin
to Ms Ko, the judge said: "When he (Tey) did write to Ms Ko, it was an
anti-climatic copy-and-paste exercise."
During the
three-hour long judgement, Tey was described as not having any "basic
decency" as he made Ms Ko pay his expenses for a trip to the United
States. At that time, Ms Ko was an exchange student at Duke University
and Tey visited her, but only offered to pay his own airfare.
The judge said this happened when the law professor was earning S$225,000 as at February 2010, while Ms Ko was a mere student.
On Ms Ko's pregnancy, the judge said Tey had told her to abort their child when he found out about it.
The
court heard that at that time, Ms Ko was in the US and Tey told her to
have an abortion there and that he had no money for the operation. She
had to pay US$2,000 herself.
And while Ms Ko may have
showered him gifts out of love and affection, the judge agreed with the
prosecution that the 23-year-old was also trying to get into Tey's good
books.
The judge also impeached the key prosecution
witness' credibility on the reasons for getting the gifts -- the
Monblanc pen, tailored shirts, iPod, as well as the payment of a dinner
bill.
He said there were serious discrepancies in these areas between her CPIB statements and testimony.
The
judge said she negated the corrupt intent and told the court she gave
the gifts without intent to seek special favours. This differed from her
first statement to the CPIB.
The judge said he is of the
view that Ms Ko's first and second statements to the authorities were
reliable and her third was not.
"Sometime after her second
statement on 28 April 2012, she realised that her first statement had
incriminated herself and exposed her to possible charges under the
Prevention of Corruption Act.
"She could be charged as a
giver who corruptly gave gratifications to the accused. She then decided
to retract the incriminating parts of her statement," said Judge Tan.
But
the judge highlighted that it is irrelevant to determine whether Ms Ko
had breached the Act, and that the court should instead focus on Tey's
corrupt intent.
Previously, Tey had argued that there was
no corrupt intent as Ms Ko was an "A" student who did not need him to
give her good grades.
But the court found that Tey had great influence over Ms Ko and the status of the two were "clearly disproportionate".
The judge said favouring Ms Ko need not be extreme. It could just mean bumping her grades up slightly from a "B+" to "A-".
In
court, two professors were asked of their view of Ms Ko's directed
research paper. One said he would give her a "B+" while the other said
he would give either an "A-" or an "A". Tey had awarded Ms Ko an "A".
The
judge stressed that whether Tey had shown favour to Ms Ko or not was
not vital. What was important was that he could influence her grades,
and showed her he could, in order to obtain the gifts.
As for
anonymous marking practised at NUS to deter corruption and favouritism,
the judge said: "The integrity of the anonymous marking system no longer
applied to Ms Ko as the accused would have recognised her handwriting,
as she had sent him several handwritten love cards.
"When a professor and a student are in a relationship, like in this case, the virtues of anonymous marking no longer existed."
Another point of argument was Tey's claim that he reimbursed Ms Ko for the gifts and dinner bill with a S$2,500 cheque.
But
the judge found this to be untrue -- first, because Ms Ko denied
unequivocally ever receiving the reimbursement. Second, that if Tey had
repaid her, she would have told the court and would have been exonerated
of bribing her lecturer.
On Tey's part, the judge said
this was the key to proving his innocence, but he did not inform the
CPIB of the reimbursement for the gifts.
The judge made it
plain that the defence of reimbursement was an "afterthought" as it was
"impossible to estimate the cost of dinner at Garibaldi on 21 July,
2012, before it happened".
Judge Tan said: "The accused
could simply have produced his bank statements to show his withdrawal of
the money (the $2,500 reimbursement), but he chose not to do so.
"As
he would have produced his bank statements if they supported his case,
it stands to reason that his bank statements would, if produced, be
unfavourable to him."
On Tey's mental condition, the judge
rejected psychiatrist Dr Tommy Tan's diagnosis that Tey was suffering
from acute stress disorder. The judge said it was "unreliable" and "not
objective".
In a report dated 2 May, 2013, forensic
psychiatrist Dr Bharat Saluja said Tey "does not suffer from any
psychotic disorder or any organic brain disorder".
Judge
Tan said: "By a process of elimination, since the accused was not
suffering from severe brain damage, organic disorders, or chronic and
severe psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia, it must stand to
reason that the accused was malingering."
The judge said
Tey was also "dishonest" not only in court, but also to Ms Ko, CPIB
officers and medical experts. He said a "depraved" Tey "clearly took
undue advantage" of Ms Ko.
The judge said secrecy and
serendipitousness are common characteristics of someone with criminal
intent and that "evidence against the accused was overwhelming".
The court also rejected Tey's allegations that his statements to the CPIB were made under duress.
The
judge also took into account that Tey had admitted that he breached the
university's code of conduct, but continued to hide this from the
school.
He also said the university is a public body as
it's an instrument to implement government policy. This meant that Tey
was a public servant and the presumption of corruption applied to him.
Judge
Tan said: "In this case, the presumption of corruption under Section 8
of the Prevention of Corruption Act operated against the accused. In
other words, he was assumed to have received the gratifications in the
six charges as an inducement for showing favour to Ms Ko in his
assessment of her academic performance.
"Even without this
presumption, there was sufficient evidence to show beyond a reasonable
doubt his corrupt intention and guilty knowledge. For the above reasons,
I came to the irresistible conclusion that the accused had the corrupt
intention and guilty knowledge in all of the six charges against him."
In
mitigation, Tey's lawyer Peter Low asked for a stiff fine. He said if
the court had to give a custodial sentence, to make it a short one.
During the hearing, Tey was seen listening intently to the judge as he sat in the dock with his head bowed low.
Once
the session was over, Tey was greeted by his supporters, most of whom
are his colleagues. They were visibly upset with his conviction and
teared when they hugged him.
Tey will be sentenced on Wednesday. He could be jailed up to five years and fined up to S$100,000 on each charge.
THIS month a major film distributor
from Indonesia visited the Odeon cinemas in High Street Kensington to
watch the “The Dictator”, a bawdy comedy involving Arab tyrants,
beheadings and muscular female bodyguards. “I’m looking forward to
this,” he said. But I was puzzled. He usually watched movies in
Indonesia, preferably in one of his own theaters, where tickets cost
50,000 rupiahs—around £3.50, or $5.50, compared with Kensington’s £11.25
(160,000 rupiahs). Considering he was in London for only three days, it
seemed an odd priority. “Well, you see,” he said, “the film has been
banned in Indonesia.” Oh? I said. “Yes, they’re getting a bit nosy these
days.” Later, during a particularly bawdy scene, he pointed out that
“even if they allowed the film to pass, this entire scene would have
been cut.” He wanted to see the film in its unadulterated form.
In
early May, a Canadian liberal Muslim writer, Irshad Manji, who is a
lesbian, had several book events in Jakarta disrupted by toughs from a
local Islamic militia. A colleague of hers was hospitalised after being
walloped repeatedly with a metal stick. Two hotels, worried over
precisely this kind of security risk, had refused her request to stay.
She sniffed: “Four years ago, I came to Indonesia and experienced a
nation of tolerance, openness and pluralism. Things have changed.”
Perhaps
they have changed decisively. In 2008 a controversial anti-pornography
bill was passed by parliament that regulates images, gestures, or talk
deemed pornographic. The presidential task-force charged with
implementing the bill began its work in February this year and has since
been aggressive in highlighting freedoms it deems curb-worthy.
The
law’s most recent victim has been an American pop singer, Lady Gaga,
who cancelled what would have been her first concert in Indonesia,
refunding 52,000 tickets. This was the culmination of a month-long
national saga in which wispy-bearded vigilantes in groups like the
Islamic Defenders Front threatened “chaos” if this “messenger of the
devil” so much as showed her face. The authorities appear to have
acquiesced. For instance, Indonesian authorities asked Ms Gaga to tone
down the show by not, for instance, frolicking on stage with a harem
troupe of male dancers. Rather than defend the right to artistic
expression against an irritable rabble, the government has joined them
as another thorn in her side. As Ms Gaga herself pointed out in a tweet:
“the Jakarta situation is 2-fold: Indonesian authorities demand I
censor the show & religious extremist separately, are threatening
violence.”
This fracas does not entirely ruin
Indonesia’s reputation as a place where “religion and democracy need not
be in conflict,” as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, said
recently on a visit to Jakarta. Many Indonesians were appalled by the
stink over the Gaga affair, though no one much expects it to linger.
Most are admirably ecumenical in their religious instincts. But where
the views of the majority appear to have been overruled by a vocal
minority so easily, it makes one wonder who is in charge. With the
anti-pornography bill’s task-force gearing up in the background, the
recent slew of cultural skirmishes is unlikely to stop soon.
WASHINGTON, DC – Among the fundamental principles of any functioning justice system is the following: Don’t lie to a judge or falsify documents submitted to a court, or you will go to jail. Breaking an oath to tell the truth is perjury, and lying in official documents is both perjury and fraud. These are serious criminal offenses, but apparently not if you are at the heart of America’s financial system. On the contrary, key individuals there appear to be well compensated for their crimes.
As Dennis Kelleher of Better Markets has argued, the recent so-called “robo-signing” settlement – in which five large banks “settled” their legal liability for carrying out fraudulent foreclosures on mortgages – is a complete sell-out to the financial industry.
First, there was no serious criminal prosecution – meaning that no one will be charged with a felony, and no one will go to jail. In terms of affecting executives’ incentives, this is the only thing that matters.
Even the terminology used to frame the discussion is wrong. Kelleher, an attorney with extensive experience in private practice and the public sector, tells it like it is: “‘robo-signing’ is massive, systematic, fraudulent, criminal conduct.” Alternatively, as he points out, we could just call it “lying, cheating, and stealing.”
Second, the civil penalties in this settlement – a form of fine – are minuscule relative to the size of the companies involved. As Shahien Nasiripour, one of the best reporters on this issue, dryly put it: “None of the five lenders have said they expect to incur a material charge due to the settlement.” In other words, from a corporate perspective, the penalty is a trifling affair.
Third, such fines are, in any case, paid by the companies’ shareholders, not by their executives or board members (all of whom carry insurance). In the rare cases in which fines have been levied on individuals, either their insurance policies picked up most of the bill, or the penalties were trivial relative to the cash compensation that they received while committing their crimes – or both.
The Obama administration and its allies have worked hard to sell its roughly $20 billion settlement with the banks as one that will have a meaningful impact on the housing market. But nothing could be further from the truth. As Kelleher points out, the United States has “more than 10 million homes under water” (the outstanding mortgage exceeds the house’s value). “Twenty billion dollars doesn’t make a dent in that: one million homes at $20,000 loan forgiveness is it.”
In fact, the Obama administration’s settlement with the mortgage lenders is consistent with its track record on all of its policies related to the financial sector, which has been abysmal. But it is also puzzling. Why would the administration continue to bend over backwards to be lenient towards top bankers under these circumstances?
I honestly do not believe that the administration’s stance reflects any form of corruption – payments made to individuals or even to political campaigns. And, in this case, it does not even appear to reflect the lobbying power of big financial players. That power certainly explains why the Dodd-Frank financial reforms enacted in 2010 were not stronger, and why there is now so much opposition to effective implementation of that legislation (for example, there is currently a huge fight around the “Volcker rule,” which would limit proprietary trading by megabanks). But mortgage lenders’ criminal activities are another matter.
Indeed, at stake in the mortgage settlement are fundamental and systemic breaches of the rule of law – perjury and fraud on an economy-wide scale. The Justice Department has, without question, all of the power that it needs to prosecute these alleged crimes fully. And yet America’s top law-enforcement officials have consistently – and now completely – backed off.
The main motivation behind the administration’s indulgence of serious criminality evidently is fear of the consequences of taking tough action on individual bankers. And maybe officials are right to be afraid, given the massive size of the banks in question relative to the economy. In fact, those banks are bigger now than they were before the crisis, and, as James Kwak and I documented at length in our book 13 Bankers, they are much larger than they were 20 years ago.
Top bankers want to make a lot of money. They also want to stay out of prison. Political leaders can huff and puff as much as they want, but, without a credible threat of poverty and time behind bars, bankers have no reason to comply with the law. For them, it’s all about the trade – and you can be the sucker in public policy as easily as you can be the sucker in an individual loan agreement.
The message to bank executives today is simple: build your bank to be as big as possible – and then keep growing. If you manage to become big enough, you and your employees are not just too big to fail, but also too big to jail.
The Obama administration has just made everyone else the sucker.
Simon Johnson, a former chief economist of the IMF, is co-founder of a leading economics blog, http://BaselineScenario.com, a professor at MIT Sloan, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and co-author, with James Kwak, of13 Bankers.
BEIJING – What is the big story of our age? It depends on the day, but if we count by centuries, then surely humanity’s urbanization is a strong contender. Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, compared to less than 3% in 1800. By 2025, China alone is expected to have 15 “mega-cities,” each with a population of at least 25 million. Are social critics right to worry about the atomized loneliness of big-city life?
True, cities cannot provide the rich sense of community that often characterizes villages and small towns. But a different form of community evolves in cities. People often take pride in their cities, and seek to nourish their distinctive civic cultures.
Pride in one’s city has a long history. In the ancient world, Athenians identified with their city’s democratic ethos, while Spartans prided themselves on their city’s reputation for military discipline and strength. Of course, today’s urban areas are huge, diverse, and pluralistic, so it may seem strange to say that a modern city has an ethos that informs its residents’ collective life.
Yet the differences between, say, Beijing and Jerusalem, suggest that cities do have such an ethos. Both are designed with a core surrounded by concentric circles, but Jerusalem’s core expresses spiritual values, while Beijing’s represents political power. And a city’s ethos shapes more than its leaders. Beijing attracts China’s leading political critics, while Jerusalem’s social critics argue for an interpretation of religion that holds people, rather than inanimate objects, sacred. In both cases, despite objections to the ruling ideology’s specific tenets, few reject the ethos itself.
Or consider Montreal, whose residents must navigate the city’s tricky linguistic politics. Montreal is a relatively successful example of a city in which Anglophones and Francophones both feel at home, but language debates nonetheless dominate the political scene – and structure an ethos for the city’s residents.
Hong Kong is a special case, where the capitalist way of life is so central that it is enshrined in the constitution (the Basic Law). Yet Hong Kong-style capitalism is not founded simply on the pursuit of material gain. It is underpinned by a Confucian ethic that prioritizes caring for others over self-interest, which helps to explain why Hong Kong has the highest rate of charitable giving in East Asia.
Paris, on the other hand, has a romantic ethos. But Parisians reject Hollywood’s banal concept of love as a story that ends happily ever after. Their idea of romance centers on its opposition to staid values and predictability of bourgeois life.
In fact, many cities have distinctive identities of which their residents are proud. Urban pride – what we call “civicism” – is a key feature of our identities today. This matters in part because cities with a clear ethos can better resist globalization’s homogenizing tendencies. It is worrying when countries proclaim their timeless and organic ideals, but affirming a city’s particularity can be a sign of health.
Chinese cities seek to counter uniformity via campaigns to recover their unique “spirit.” Harbin, for example, prides itself on its history of tolerance and openness to foreigners. Elsewhere, Tel Aviv’s official Web site celebrates, among other attractions, the city’s progressive role as a world center for the gay community.
Urban pride can also prevent extreme nationalism. Most people need a communal identity, but it may well be better to find it in one’s attachment to a city than in attachment to a country that is armed and willing to engage in conflict with enemies. Individuals who have a strong sense of civicism can make decisions based on more than mere patriotism when it comes to national commitments.
Cities with a strong ethos can also accomplish political goals that are difficult to achieve at the national level. China, the United States, and even Canada may take years to implement serious plans to address climate change. Yet cities like Hangzhou, Portland, and Vancouver take pride in their “green” ethos, and go far beyond national requirements in terms of environmental protection.
Urbanization is blamed for a wide variety of modern social ills, ranging from crime and incivility to alienation and anomie. But, by infusing us with their unique spirit and identity, our cities may, in fact, help to empower humanity to face the most difficult challenges of the twenty-first century.
Daniel A. Bell is Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Jiaotong University, Shanghai, and Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at Tsinghua University, Beijing. Avner de-Shalit is Chair for Democracy and Human Rights and Dean of Social Sciences at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. They are co-authors ofThe Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age.
Copyright: Project Syndicate/Institute for Human Sciences, 2012.
www.project-syndicate.org
NAIROBI – Nineteenth-century European explorers called Africa the “Dark Continent,” because to them it was vast and largely unknown. Today, Africa may still be dark, but for a very different reason: it is chronically short of electricity. Indeed, nocturnal satellite images show that, except for some parts of southern and northern Africa, it barely twinkles.
The United Nations has designated 2012 the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. Its official launch in Africa in mid-February will not “switch on” the continent in a flash – but it can help to jump-start global efforts towards that goal, thereby enhancing the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.
Attempts have been made before to electrify Africa, with mixed results. But this time can be different. Many countries are already testing the technologies and policies needed to bring energy to rural areas and growing cities. Innovative investment mechanisms and sharply falling manufacturing and installation costs of renewable energy technologies, including wind, advanced biomass, and solar power, are essential to unlocking the continent’s potential.
In Kenya, new drilling techniques are tapping the country’s geothermal energy resources, adding hundreds of megawatts of generating capacity in recent years. Kenya is also about to begin construction of sub-Saharan Africa’s largest wind farm.
In Egypt, investment in renewable energy rose by $800 million, to $1.3 billion, in 2010, owing to the solar thermal project in KomOmbo and a 220-megawatt onshore wind farm in the Gulf of Zayt.
In Morocco, the provision of solar photovoltaic kits to isolated villages has helped to raise access rates to electricity in rural areas from less than 15% in 1990 to more than 97% in 2009. The country has been chosen as the first location to develop a 500 MW concentrated solar plant as part of the Desertec Industrial Initiative.
Instead of waiting for a grid to come to a town or village, renewable energies can be swiftly deployed in remote areas. Distributed generation using renewables can also help to reduce the risk of massive power outages and resulting reliance on expensive diesel power, which currently can cost up to 5% of a country’s annual GDP – a problem that affects 30 of the 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Innovative schemes are underway: in parts of Africa, for example, mobile phone companies have begun piloting ways to provide customers access to solar energy. Electricity is supplied on a pay-as-you-go basis and tied to phone bills, unlocking market opportunities for isolated farmers.
But more is needed. Africa is endowed with vast untapped renewable energy resources that can provide electricity for all at an affordable cost. The potential of wind power alone is more than 1,000 gigawatts, or more than five times the continent’s current total installed generating capacity. The potential output of solar energy is ten times higher, in excess of 10,000 GW, while only 5% of the region’s estimated hydropower resources has so far been exploited. In parts of Africa, sustainably developed biomass could provide fuels to assist in meeting growing demand for transportation fuels.
With Africa having yet to build nearly two-thirds of the additional capacity that it will need in 2030, the continent faces a unique opportunity to benefit from recent advances and cost reductions in renewable power-generation technologies, thereby leapfrogging the energy path taken by industrialized countries.
The story is not limited to electrification. In Ghana, an African Rural Energy Enterprise Development project, supported by the UN Foundation, has helped small entrepreneurs to scale up and supply 50,000 homes with cleaner, more efficient cooking stoves, while generating manufacturing and service jobs and cutting health-damaging emissions in houses. There are similar stories across Africa – and, again, significant need for further progress.
The International Year of Sustainable Energy for All coincides with the year of the Rio+20 Summit, when, marking 20 years since the Earth Summit of 1992 paved the way towards sustainable development, world leaders will meet again to achieve that goal. One cooperative decision that world leaders can take when they meet again in Rio de Janeiro is to reduce or phase out the more than $500 billion of global fossil-fuel subsidies, the benefits of which reach less than one-tenth of the poorest 20% if the world’s population.
It will be a challenge, but a gradual, well-designed, and properly communicated set of policies could accelerate the quest for more sustainable sources of energy. A good place to start is the public sector: procurement by governments and local authorities can play an important role in shifting economies towards cleaner forms of energy. Building the banking sector’s capacity and managing exchange-rate risk in some African countries would also help to realize Africa’s potential for sustainable energy production.
Many barriers remain, but today they are no longer insurmountable. Governments, the private sector, and civil-society groups in Africa and beyond should support the UN Secretary-General’s initiative, by nurturing the new generation of entrepreneurs and innovators who will bring light to 600 million African citizens whose lives and livelihoods remain benighted.
Adnan Amin is Director-General, International Renewable Energy Agency; Achim Steiner is Executive Director, UN Environment Programme; Kandeh Yumkella is Director-General of the UN Industrial Development Organization.
COPENHAGEN – One of the world’s biggest green-energy public-policy experiments is coming to a bitter end in Germany, with important lessons for policymakers elsewhere.
Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies – totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University – to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned, and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong?
There is a fundamental problem with subsidizing inefficient green technology: it is affordable only if it is done in tiny, tokenistic amounts. Using the government’s generous subsidies, Germans installed 7.5 gigawatts of photovoltaic (PV) capacity last year, more than double what the government had deemed “acceptable.” It is estimated that this increase alone will lead to a $260 hike in the average consumer’s annual power bill.
According to Der Spiegel, even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s staff are now describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s minister of economics and technology, has called the spiraling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”
Germany’s enthusiasm for solar power is understandable. We could satisfy all of the world’s energy needs for an entire year if we could capture just one hour of the sun’s energy. Even with the inefficiency of current PV technology, we could meet the entire globe’s energy demand with solar panels by covering 250,000 square kilometers (155,342 square miles), about 2.6% of the Sahara Desert.
Unfortunately, Germany – like most of the world – is not as sunny as the Sahara. And, while sunlight is free, panels and installation are not. Solar power is at least four times more costly than energy produced by fossil fuels. It also has the distinct disadvantage of not working at night, when much electricity is consumed.
In the words of the German Association of Physicists, “solar energy cannot replace any additional power plants.” On short, overcast winter days, Germany’s 1.1 million solar-power systems can generate no electricity at all. The country is then forced to import considerable amounts of electricity from nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. When the sun failed to shine last winter, one emergency back-up plan powered up an Austrian oil-fired plant to fill the supply gap.
Indeed, despite the massive investment, solar power accounts for only about 0.3% of Germany’s total energy. This is one of the key reasons why Germans now pay the second-highest price for electricity in the developed world (exceeded only by Denmark, which aims to be the “world wind-energy champion”). Germans pay three times more than their American counterparts.
Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germany’s CO2 emissions by roughly eight million metric tons – or about 1% – for the next 20 years. When the effects are calculated in a standard climate model, the result is a reduction in average temperature of 0.00005oC (one twenty-thousandth of a degree Celsius, or one ten-thousandth of a degree Fahrenheit). To put it another way: by the end of the century, Germany’s $130 billion solar panel subsidies will have postponed temperature increases by 23 hours.
Using solar, Germany is paying about $1,000 per ton of CO2 reduced. The current CO2 price in Europe is $8. Germany could have cut 131 times as much CO2 for the same price. Instead, the Germans are wasting more than 99 cents of every euro that they plow into solar panels.
It gets worse: because Germany is part of the European Union Emissions Trading System, the actual effect of extra solar panels in Germany leads to no CO2 reductions, because total emissions are already capped. Instead, the Germans simply allow other parts of the EU to emit more CO2. Germany’s solar panels have only made it cheaper for Portugal or Greece to use coal.
Defenders of Germany’s solar subsidies also claim that they have helped to create “green jobs”. But each job created by green-energy policies costs an average of $175,000 – considerably more than job creation elsewhere in the economy, such as infrastructure or health care. And many “green jobs” are being exported to China, meaning that Europeans subsidize Chinese jobs, with no CO2 reductions.
Germany’s experiment with subsidizing inefficient solar technology has failed. What governments should do instead is to focus first on increasing research and development to make green-energy technology cheaper and more competitive. Production should be ramped up later.
In the meantime, Germans have paid about $130 billion for a climate-change policy that has no impact on global warming. They have subsidized Chinese jobs and other European countries’ reliance on dirty energy sources. And they have needlessly burdened their economy. As even many German officials would probably attest, governments elsewhere cannot afford to repeat the same mistake.
Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.
KOLKATA – The year 2011 will be remembered as the time when many ever-optimistic Americans began to give up hope. President John F. Kennedy once said that a rising tide lifts all boats. But now, in the receding tide, Americans are beginning to see not only that those with taller masts had been lifted far higher, but also that many of the smaller boats had been dashed to pieces in their wake.
In that brief moment when the rising tide was indeed rising, millions of people believed that they might have a fair chance of realizing the “American Dream.” Now those dreams, too, are receding. By 2011, the savings of those who had lost their jobs in 2008 or 2009 had been spent. Unemployment checks had run out. Headlines announcing new hiring – still not enough to keep pace with the number of those who would normally have entered the labor force – meant little to the 50 year olds with little hope of ever holding a job again.
Indeed, middle-aged people who thought that they would be unemployed for a few months have now realized that they were, in fact, forcibly retired. Young people who graduated from college with tens of thousands of dollars of education debt cannot find any jobs at all. People who moved in with friends and relatives have become homeless. Houses bought during the property boom are still on the market or have been sold at a loss. More than seven million American families have lost their homes.
The dark underbelly of the previous decade’s financial boom has been fully exposed in Europe as well. Dithering over Greece and key national governments’ devotion to austerity began to exact a heavy toll last year. Contagion spread to Italy. Spain’s unemployment, which had been near 20% since the beginning of the recession, crept even higher. The unthinkable – the end of the euro – began to seem like a real possibility.
This year is set to be even worse. It is possible, of course, that the United States will solve its political problems and finally adopt the stimulus measures that it needs to bring down unemployment to 6% or 7% (the pre-crisis level of 4% or 5% is too much to hope for). But this is as unlikely as it is that Europe will figure out that austerity alone will not solve its problems. On the contrary, austerity will only exacerbate the economic slowdown. Without growth, the debt crisis – and the euro crisis – will only worsen. And the long crisis that began with the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007 and the subsequent recession will continue.
Moreover, the major emerging-market countries, which steered successfully through the storms of 2008 and 2009, may not cope as well with the problems looming on the horizon. Brazil’s growth has already stalled, fueling anxiety among its neighbors in Latin America.
Meanwhile, long-term problems – including climate change and other environmental threats, and increasing inequality in most countries around the world – have not gone away. Some have grown more severe. For example, high unemployment has depressed wages and increased poverty.
The good news is that addressing these long-term problems would actually help to solve the short-term problems. Increased investment to retrofit the economy for global warming would help to stimulate economic activity, growth, and job creation. More progressive taxation, in effect redistributing income from the top to the middle and bottom, would simultaneously reduce inequality and increase employment by boosting total demand. Higher taxes at the top could generate revenues to finance needed public investment, and to provide some social protection for those at the bottom, including the unemployed.
Even without widening the fiscal deficit, such “balanced budget” increases in taxes and spending would lower unemployment and increase output. The worry, however, is that politics and ideology on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially in the US, will not allow any of this to occur. Fixation on the deficit will induce cutbacks in social spending, worsening inequality. Likewise, the enduring attraction of supply-side economics, despite all of the evidence against it (especially in a period in which there is high unemployment), will prevent raising taxes at the top.
Even before the crisis, there was a rebalancing of economic power – in fact, a correction of a 200-year historical anomaly, in which Asia’s share of global GDP fell from nearly 50% to, at one point, below 10%. The pragmatic commitment to growth that one sees in Asia and other emerging markets today stands in contrast to the West’s misguided policies, which, driven by a combination of ideology and vested interests, almost seem to reflect a commitment not to grow.
As a result, global economic rebalancing is likely to accelerate, almost inevitably giving rise to political tensions. With all of the problems confronting the global economy, we will be lucky if these strains do not begin to manifest themselves within the next twelve months.
HELSINKI/JOHANNESBURG – The world is on an unsustainable path, and must urgently chart a new course forward, one that brings equity and environmental concerns into the economic mainstream. To do so, we must put sustainable development into practice now, not in spite of the economic crisis, but because of it.
Our challenges today are many. Economies are teetering, ecosystems are under siege, and inequality – within and between countries – is soaring. Taken together, these are symptoms that share a root cause: speculative and often narrow interests have superseded common interests, common responsibilities, and common sense.
As Co-Chairs of the United Nations’ High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, we have been asked by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to work with 20 of the world’s most eminent leaders in grappling with these issues. Our task is clear: propose how to provide greater opportunity for more people with less impact on our planet.
A quarter-century ago, the Brundtland report, named for former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland, called for a new paradigm of sustainable development. It stated that durable economic growth, social equality, and environmental sustainability are mutually interdependent. Human well-being depends on their integration.
We are convinced not only that this concept is sound, but also that it remains more relevant than ever. Now we need to put theory into practice by moving sustainable development into mainstream economics and making clear the costs of action – and inaction – today and in the future.
By 2030, as the human population swells and appetites increase, the world will need at least 50% more food, 45% more energy, and 30% more water. Our planet is approaching, and even exceeding, scientific tipping points. This has serious implications for how we manage the global commons – and for reducing poverty: if developing countries are to realize their legitimate growth aspirations, they will need more time, as well as financial and technological support, to make the transition to sustainability.
Yet we remain optimistic. Representative democracy is now the world’s dominant form of government. Advances in science have given us a better understanding of climate and ecosystem risks. Billions of people are connected by technologies that have shrunk the world and expanded the notion of a global neighborhood. We believe that we can summon the wit and the will to choose our future, rather than have it choose us.
The greatest risk lies in continuing down our current path. In 2030, a child born this year will come of age. We cannot mortgage her future to pay for an inherently unsustainable and inequitable way of life.
So, how do we begin to tackle the massive challenge of retooling our global economy, preserving the environment, and providing greater opportunity and equity, including gender equality, to all? The Panel’s report, Resilient People, Resilient Planet, offers suggestions.
First, we need to measure and price what matters. The marketplace needs to reflect the full ecological and human costs of economic decisions and establish price signals that make transparent the consequences of action – and inaction. Pollution – including carbon emissions – must no longer be free. Price- and trade-distorting subsidies should be made transparent and phased out for fossil fuels by 2020. We also need to build new ways to measure development beyond GDP, and propose a new sustainable development index by 2014.
Second, we must put science at the center of sustainability. We live in an era of unprecedented human impact on the planet, coupled with unprecedented technological change. Science must point the way to more informed and integrated policy-making, including on climate change, biodiversity, ocean and coastal management, water and food scarcities, and planetary “boundaries” (the scientific thresholds that define a “safe operating space” for humanity). To see the big picture, we propose a regular Global Sustainability Outlook that integrates knowledge across sectors and institutions.
Third, we need to provide incentives to take the long view. The tyranny of the urgent is never more absolute than during tough times. We need to place long-term thinking above short-term demands, both in the marketplace and at the polling place.
Limited public funds should be used strategically to unlock greater private investment flows, share risks, and expand access to the building blocks of prosperity, including modern energy services. The UN’s Millennium Development Goals – aimed at, among other things, halving global poverty by 2015 – have served us well. Governments should develop a post-2015 set of universally applicable Sustainable Development Goals that can galvanize long-term action beyond electoral cycles.
Fourth, we should prepare for a rough ride ahead, because extreme weather, resource scarcity, and price volatility have become the “new normal.” We need to strengthen our resilience by promoting disaster risk reduction, adaptation, and sound safety nets for the most vulnerable. This is an investment in our common future.
Fifth, it is crucial to value equity as opportunity. Inequality and exclusion of women, young people, and the poor undermines global growth and threatens to unravel the compact between society and its institutions. Empowering women has the potential to reap tremendous benefits, not least for the global economy.
Ensuring that developing countries have the time – and the financial and technical support – to make the transition to sustainable development ultimately benefits all. Promoting fairness and inclusion is the right thing to do – and the smart thing to do for lasting prosperity and stability.
No expert panel, including ours, has all the answers. But if we work together, we can help to steer our world onto a safer, more equitable, and more prosperous course. We call on leaders across all sectors of society to join us. The need is urgent; the opportunity, enormous. Let us seize it.
Now is the time for consenting adults to lock their bedroom doors
Jan 7th 2012 | from the print edition
RICK SANTORUM, a former senator from Pennsylvania, is a virtuous man: intelligent, industrious and God-fearing, the proud father of six children, whom he and his wife have schooled at home. His misfortune as he strives to become president of the United States is that virtue is in the eye of the beholder. As anyone who Googles his surname will discover (don’t let your children try), many gay Americans abhor him and will resort to any revolting prank to besmirch his name.
abhor = detestutterly;loathe;abominate
besmirch = to tarnish,todetractfromthehonororlusterof:tobesmirchsomeone'sgood name.
They have reason. Last September the former senator was one of nine Republican hopefuls participating in a televised debate in Orlando, Florida. A question was posed over video by a soldier in Iraq who said he had hidden the fact that he was gay because he did not want to lose his job. Did any of the candidates intend to repeal the measure Barack Obama signed into law last year that had at last given gay soldiers the right to serve their country openly? Mr Santorum’s unblinking answer was Yes. Allowing gays to serve in the military was giving one group of people “a special privilege”; it was “social policy” that ought to have no place in the armed forces.
This became a notorious exchange, not least because some members of the ultra-conservative audience in Orlando booed the soldier. But the episode hardly does justice to the depth of the former senator’s feelings about the things gays get up to. The propinquity of the wicked plainly has an unsettling impact on the peace of mind of the virtuous Mr Santorum.
propinquity = similarity
Gays should not only be disqualified from serving their country, says Mr Santorum. They should also be prohibited from marrying one another. Even if unmarried, they would be ill-advised to have sex. To Mr Santorum the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2003 that anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional was a bad mistake: this was a slippery slope that would establish a right to bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery—“anything”.
It is not quite clear what Mr Santorum thinks about heterosexuals who have sex for fun—or at least who have it only for fun. The special status of marriage, he told the New York Times, does not exist “because people like to hang out together and have fun”; it is there to provide “a stable environment for the raising of children”. As president, he said more recently, he would at last address “the dangers of contraception in this country”, because contraception is a “licence to do things in a sexual realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be”.
If Mr Santorum has doubts about contraception, he has none about abortion. It is wrong, even in cases of rape or incest, because life is sacred and begins at conception (he does, however, support the death penalty, as it is not the innocent who die). Any doctor who performs an abortion should face criminal charges.
Because he is a virtuous man, Mr Santorum does not lay down a code that he is not prepared to abide by himself. In 1996 he and his wife were told that their unborn child had a fatal defect. They decided against an abortion and the newborn died within two hours. The next day they took the dead baby home to be cuddled by their other children. They named the baby Gabriel, and Mr Santorum’s wife later wrote a series of letters to Gabriel, which she turned into an affecting book.
Why it matters
If you write the most controversial opinions of a sincere and thoughtful man down in a list, you are in danger of ending up with a caricature. Google the words “Santorum” and “bigot” and you will get about 5m results. But is it fair to dwell, as the media caravan now will, on Mr Santorum’s divisive attitudes to sex, abortion, family values and gay marriage instead of his many interesting ideas about economics and foreign policy (for example, that “all of the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis”)?
The case for doing so is threefold. First, these are undoubtedly the opinions that appealed most to the caucus-goers of Iowa when they placed him in second place behind Mr Romney, the front-runner in the nomination race. Mr Santorum was the clear favourite of those who described themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians (Mr Romney was the favourite of the rest). They are also the views that will repel a lot of voters, not least in secular New Hampshire, who might otherwise be intrigued by Mr Santorum’s qualities. Last, Mr Santorum argues in his own 2005 book, (“It Takes a Family”), that family values are not just one page in a portfolio of policies. They are the foundation on which all else must stand. A former aide once told the New York Times that he thought of his boss less as a politician and more as “a Catholic missionary who happens to be in the Senate”.
Besides, Mr Santorum’s thinking on public morality highlights a division in his party. He says in his book that the family, not the individual, is “the fundamental unit of society”. This idea, plus his religiosity, undergird his wider politics. Before he went down to defeat (by a margin of 17%) in Pennsylvania’s senatorial election of 2006, he was a champion of George Bush junior’s notion of “compassionate conservatism”, ie, giving taxpayers’ money to faith-based organisations, on the theory that do-gooders who had God on their side perform better than social workers.
undergird = tostrengthen;secure, togivefundamentalsupport; provide withasoundorsecurebasis:ethicsundergirdedbyfaith.
Such ideas do not grate only on liberals. They also collide with the strand of conservatism represented in this cycle by Ron Paul, whose army of avid followers insist that the best thing government can do is to get out of people’s way—and certainly out of their bedrooms. Mr Santorum prefers government to serve as an instrument in the urgent task of remoralising a society that has lost its spiritual moorings. These philosophies are opposites, hard to accommodate in the breast of a single political movement. The eventual Republican nominee, even if it is the elasticated Mr Romney, will not find it easy to regroup his party.
