Netanyahu’s Iran Thing
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/opinion/roger-cohen-netanyahus-iran-thing.html
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The Opinion Pages | OP-ED COLUMNIST
Netanyahu’s Iran Thing
MARCH 6, 2015
Let’s begin with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran logic. He portrays a rampaging Islamic Republic that “now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sana,” a nation “gobbling” other countries on a “march of conquest, subjugation and terror.” Then, in the same speech, he describes Iran as “a very vulnerable regime” on the brink of folding.
Well, which is it?
The Israeli prime minister dismisses a possible nuclear accord, its details still unclear, as “a very bad deal” that “paves Iran’s path to the bomb.” He says just maintain the pressure and, as if by magic, “a much better deal” will materialize (thereby showing immense condescension toward the ministers of the six major powers who have been working on a doable deal that ring-fences Iran’s nuclear capacity so that it is compatible only with civilian use). Yet Netanyahu knows the first thing that will happen if talks collapse is that Russia and China will undermine the solidarity behind effective Iran sanctions.
So, where is the leverage to secure that “much better deal”?
Netanyahu lambastes the notion of a nuclear deal lasting 10 years (President Obama has suggested this is a minimum). He portrays that decade as a period in which, inevitably, Iran’s “voracious appetite for aggression grows with each passing year.” He thereby dismisses the more plausible notion that greater economic contact with the world and the gradual emergence of a young generation of Iranians drawn to the West — as well as the inevitable dimming of the ardor of Iran’s revolution — will attenuate such aggression.
With similar sleight of hand, he dances over the fact that military action — the solution implicit in Netanyahu’s demands for Iranian nuclear capitulation — would likely set back the Iranian program by a couple of years at most, while guaranteeing that Iran races for a bomb in the aftermath.
What better assures Israel’s security, a decade of strict limitation and inspection of Iran’s nuclear program that prevents it making a bomb, or a war that delays the program a couple of years, locks in the most radical factions in Tehran, and intensifies Middle Eastern violence? It’s a no-brainer.
No wonder Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Party’s House Leader, saw Netanyahu’s speech to Congress as an “insult to the intelligence of the United States.” Netanyahu’s “profound obligation” to speak of the Iranian threat to the Jewish people proved to be a glib opportunity for fear-mongering and evasion above all.
Netanyahu’s credibility is low. In 1993, in an Op-Ed article in The Times headlined “Peace in Our Time?” he compared the late Yitzhak Rabin to Chamberlain for the Oslo Accords. Rabin’s widow never forgave him. For more than a decade now, he has said Iran was on the brink of a bomb and threatened Israeli military action — and hoped his hyperbole would be forgotten. He called the 2013 interim agreement with Iran a “historic mistake”; the accord has proved a historic achievement that reversed Iran’s nuclear momentum.
Invoking Munich and appeasement is, it seems, Netanyahu’s flip reaction to any attempt at Middle Eastern diplomacy. Here, once again, before the Congress, was the by-now familiar analogy drawn between Iran and the Nazis. Its implication, of course, is that Obama, like the great Rabin, is some latter-day Chamberlain.
The kindest thing that can be said of Netanyahu’s attempt to equate Iran with the medieval barbarians of Islamic State, and to dismiss the fact that Iranian help today furthers America’s strategic priority of defeating those knife-wielding slayers, is that it was an implausible stretch. Of course Netanyahu mentioned the Persian viceroy Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jews, but not Cyrus of Persia, who ended the Babylonian exile of the Jews. The prime minister’s obsessive Iran demonization runs on selective history.
The Islamic Republic is repressive. It is hostile to Israel, underwrites Hezbollah and has sponsored terrorism. Its human rights record is abject. The regime is wedded to anti-Americanism (unlike the 80 million people of Iran, many of whom are drawn to America). But the most important diplomacy is conducted with enemies. Given Iran’s mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle, there is no better outcome for Israel and the world than the successful conclusion of the tough deal sought by Obama; one involving the intensive verification over an extended period of a much-reduced enrichment program that assures that Iran is kept at least one year away from any potential “breakout” to bomb manufacture.
One word did not appear in Netanyahu’s speech: Palestine. The statelessness of the Palestinians is the real long-term threat to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Iran has often been a cleverly manipulated distraction from this fact.
Among foreign leaders, nobody has been invited to address Congress more often than Netanyahu. He now stands equal at the top of the table along with Winston Churchill. Behind Netanyahu trail Nelson Mandela and Yitzhak Rabin. That’s a pretty devastating commentary on the state of contemporary American political culture and the very notion of leadership.
Not the Usual College Party (This One’s Sober)
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It started with a wine cooler, said Paige Cederna, describing that first sweet, easy-to-down drink she experienced as a “magic elixir.”
“I had no inhibitions with alcohol,” said Ms. Cederna, 24. “I could talk to guys and not worry about anyone judging me. I remember being really proud the day I learned to chug a beer. I couldn’t get that feeling fast enough.” But before long, to get over “that feeling,” she was taking Adderall to get through the days.
But it was now more than three years since she drank her last drop of alcohol and used a drug for nonmedical reasons. Her “sober date,” she told the group, many nodding their heads encouragingly, was July 8, 2011.
Ms. Cederna’s story of addiction and recovery, told in a clear, strong voice, was not being shared at a 12-step meeting or in a treatment center. Instead, it was presented on a cool autumn day, in a classroom on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, to a group of 30 undergraduate students in their teens and early 20s.
On the panel with Ms. Cederna were two other Michigan graduate students. Hannah Miller, 27, declared her “sober date” as Oct. 5, 2010, while Ariel Britt, 29, announced hers as Nov. 6, 2011. Like Ms. Cederna’s, Ms. Britt’s problems with drugs and alcohol started in her freshman year at Michigan, while Ms. Miller’s began in high school. All three are participants in a university initiative, now two years old, called the Collegiate Recovery Program.
Staying sober in college is no easy feat. “Pregaming,” as it is called on campus (drinking before social or sporting events), is rampant, and at Michigan it can start as early as 8 a.m. on a football Saturday. The parties take place on the porches and lawns of fraternities, the roofs and balconies of student houses, and clandestinely in dormitories — everywhere but inside the academic buildings.
For this reason — because the culture of college and drinking are so synonymous — in September 2012 the University of Michigan joined what are now 135 Collegiate Recovery communities on campuses all over the country. While they vary in size from small student-run organizations to large embedded university programs, the aim is the same: to help students stay sober while also thriving in college.
“It shouldn’t be that a young person has to choose to either be sober or go to college,” said Mary Jo Desprez, who started Michigan’s Collegiate Recovery Program as the director of Michigan’s Wolverine Wellness department. “These kids, who have the courage to see their problem early on, have the right to an education, too, but need support,” she said, calling it a “social justice, diversity issue.” Matthew Statman, the full-time clinical social worker who has run Michigan’s program since it began in 2012, added, “We want them to feel proud, not embarrassed, by their recovery.”
At the panel presentation, Ms. Britt, who temporarily dropped out of Michigan as an undergraduate, shared with the students her anxiety when she finally sobered up and decided to return to campus. “I had so many memories of throwing up in bushes here,” she said. “I wanted to have fun, but I also had no idea how to perform without partying.”
Ms. Cederna also remembers what it felt like to return to Michigan sober her senior year. Not only did she lose most of her friends (“Everyone I knew on campus drank,” she said), but she also dropped out of her sorority (“I was only in it to drink,” she said). “I ended up alone in the library a lot watching Netflix,” she said. Molly Payton, 24 (now a senior who once fell off an eight-foot ledge, drunk and high at a party), said, “I read all the Harry Potter books alone in my room my first months clean.”
Everything changed, however, when these students learned there were other students facing the same issues. Ms. Cederna first found Students for Recovery, a small student-run organization that, until the Collegiate Recovery Program began, was the only available support group on Michigan’s campus besides local 12-step meetings, most of which tend toward an older demographic.
“Through S.F.R., I ended up having five new friends,” she said of the organization, which still exists but is now run by the 25 to 30 Collegiate Recovery Program students; both groups meet every other week in the health center. The main difference between the two is that students in the Collegiate Recovery Program have to already be sober and sign a “commitment contract” that they will stay clean throughout college through a well-outlined plan of structure. Students for Recovery is aimed at those who are still seeking recovery, may be further into their recovery or want to support others in recovery.
When a young student incredulously asked the panel, “How do you possibly socialize in college without alcohol?” Ms. Britt, Collegiate Recovery Program’s social chairwoman, rattled off a list of its activities — sober tailgates, a pumpkin-carving night, volleyball games, dance parties, study groups, community service projects and even a film screening of “The Anonymous People” that attracted some 600 students. “But we also just hang out together a lot,” she said.
Indeed, looking around the organization’s lounge just before the holidays (a small, cordoned-off corner on the fourth floor of the health center, minimally decorated with ratty couches, a table and a small bookshelf stocking titles like “Wishful Drinking” and “Smashed”), it was hard to believe some of these young adults were once heroin addicts who had spent time in jail. On the contrary, they looked like model students, socializing over soft drinks and snacks as they celebrated one student who had earned back his suspended license.
“By far the biggest benefit to our students in the recovery program is the social component,” said Mr. Statman, who is hoping a current development campaign may provide more funding. (The program is currently supported by a mandatory student health tuition fee.) “Let’s just say, we all wish we could be Texas Tech,” he said.
The Collegiate Recovery Program was established at Texas Tech decades ago, and it is now one of the largest, with 120 recovery students enrolled (along with Rutgers University and Augsburg College in Minneapolis). Thanks to a $3 million endowment, the Texas Tech program now offers scholarships as well as substance-free trips abroad. The students there have access to an exclusive lounge outfitted with flat-screen TVs, a pool table and a Ping-Pong table, kitchen, study carrels and a seminar room. Entering freshmen in recovery even have their own dormitory.
“We found that simply putting them on the substance-free halls didn’t work,” said Kitty Harris, who, until recently, was the director for more than a decade of Texas Tech’s program (she remains on the faculty). “Most of the kids on substance-free floors are just there to make their parents happy.” (The Michigan students in the recovery program mostly live off campus for the same reason; they do not have their own housing.)
“Most students begin experimenting innocently in college with drugs and alcohol,” said Mr. Statman, who just celebrated his 13th year in recovery. “Then there are the ones who react differently. They are not immoral, pleasure-seeking hedonists, they are simply vulnerable, and for their whole life.”
Rates of substance-use disorders triple from 5.2 percent in adolescence to 17.3 percent in early adulthood, according to 2013 data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It thus makes this developmental stage critical to young people’s future.
It is at the drop-in Students for Recovery meetings where one often sees nervous new faces. At the beginning of one meeting at Michigan last semester, a young woman introduced herself as, “One day sober.” Shortly afterward, a young man spoke up, “I am five days sober.” Danny (who asked that his last name not be published), a graduating recovery program senior applying to medical schools, later explained an important tenet all of them know from their various 12-step programs. “The most important person in the room is the new person,” he said, adding that after the Students for Recovery meetings, members try to approach any new participants, directing them to the C.R.P. website and to Mr. Statman, who is always on call for worried students.
“In the same way a diabetic might not always get their sugar levels right, part of addiction is relapsing, and we really don’t want our students to see that as a failure if it happens,” said Mr. Statman, adding that it is often the other students in the program who tell him if they suspect a student is using again.
Jake Goldberg, 22, now a junior, arrived at Michigan three years ago as a freshman already in recovery. “I did really well the first five months,” he said. “I was sober. I was loud and proud on panels, but I had internal reservations. I had few friends and felt like I wanted to be more a part of the school.” He recalled that in the spring of his freshman year, he suddenly found himself trying heroin for the first time. “I should have died,” he said, remembering how he woke up 14 hours later, dazed and bruised.
After straightening up, Mr. Goldberg relapsed again his sophomore year when he thought he might be able to have just one drink. “That drink led to drugs and to more drinking,” he said, remembering how Mr. Statman and Ms. Desprez called him into their office one day. “They told me this is not going to end well,” he said. Now sober two years, Mr. Goldberg said: “I now live recovery with all the structure, but I also am in a prelaw fraternity. When they drink a beer, I drink a Red Bull.”
Ms. Miller echoed Mr. Goldberg’s feelings over coffee one day on the Michigan campus. “Most of us did not get sober just to go to meetings all the time,” she said. “We want to live life too.” She also said that socializing with nonrecovery students is still challenging. “I went to a small party recently where everyone was eating pot edibles and drinking top-shelf liquor,” she said. “I got a bit squirrely in my head and had to leave.”
But now students in the Collegiate Recovery Program have a new place in Ann Arbor they can frequent: Brillig Dry Bar, a pop-up, alcohol-free spot that serves up spiced pear sodas and cranberry sours and features live jazz. And in March, four of the students in the program are joining dozens of recovery students from other colleges on a six-day, five-night, “Clean Break” in Florida, arranged by Blue Community, an organization that hosts events and vacations for young adults in recovery. (The vacation package includes music, guest speakers, beach sports and daily transport to local 12-step meetings.)
“My hope is that we continue to get more students who need a safe zone to our social events,” said Ms. Britt, who is about to publicize a “sober skating night” in March at the university ice rink. “They would see you can have a lot of fun in college without drinking.
“And honestly, we really do have fun.”
G.O.P. Race Starts in Lavish Haunts of Rich Donors
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PALM BEACH, Fla. — Instead of the corn dogs and pork chops on a stick ritually served up on the hustings of Iowa, the latest stop on the donor trail featured meals of diver scallops and chocolate mousse. The setting was the Breakers, a sprawling Italian Renaissance-inspired hotel here, where the cheapest available rooms fetched $800 a night. And for the half-dozen Republican presidential candidates invited to the annual winter meeting this weekend of the Club for Growth, an influential bloc of deep-pocketed conservatives, the prize was not votes. It was money.
Long before the season of baby-kissing and caucus-going begins in early primary states, a no less decisive series of contests is playing out among the potential 2016 contenders along a trail that traces the cold-weather destinations of the wealthy and private-jet-equipped. In one resort town after another — Rancho Mirage, Calif.; Sea Island, Ga.; Las Vegas — the candidates are making their cases to exclusive gatherings of donors whose wealth, fully unleashed by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, has granted them the kind of influence and convening power once held by urban political bosses and party chairmen.
Bruce Rastetter has organized a gathering in Iowa focused on agricultural issues.
Even a single deep-pocketed donor can now summon virtually the entire field of candidates. No fewer than 11 Republican White House hopefuls will fly to Iowa this week to attend the Iowa Agriculture Summit organized by Bruce Rastetter, a businessman and prominent “super PAC” donor. Each will submit to questions from Mr. Rastetter, who said he wanted the candidates to educate themselves on agriculture policy.
“I get it that it’s helpful that I’ve given nationally and been helpful in Iowa to different candidates,” said Mr. Rastetter, whose business interests range from meat processing to ethanol production, and who is not yet backing anyone for president. “They know I’m going to be a fair arbiter in this,” he added. “We’re going to have a good discussion around these issues.”
High season on the shadow campaign trail informally began in Coachella Valley in California the weekend before the Super Bowl, near the end of January, when Charles G. and David H. Koch hosted their annual seminar for a few hundred libertarian-minded donors. It continues through the early spring, when the Republican Jewish Coalition, a pro-Israel group bankrolled by the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, holds its annual meeting in Las Vegas, this year at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino.
In between are a number of other gatherings of donors, representing overlapping clubs of the wealthy with particular passions and interests. Some are informal gatherings, like a daylong meeting last Tuesday near Jackson Hole, Wyo., hosted by the TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and his son Todd, and featuring several Republican donors who favorsame-sex marriage and immigration reform. Others, like the Club for Growth’s conference here in Palm Beach, have been around in one shape or another for years, forming part of the longtime invisible primary for the allegiance of dono
But the high-dollar donor trail has taken on far more importance in recent years because of the Citizens United case and the super PACs for which the decision cleared the way. Candidates attend knowing that just a handful of donors can lift them from the second or third tier into the first. For Jeb Bush, who has spent much of the past two months meeting privately with potential donors, occasionally posting photos on Instagram taken from outside private equity firms and investment banks, Mr. Rastetter’s Iowa meeting will be his first official trip to the critical caucus state.
“They’re here to help themselves,” said David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth. “And it’s a testimony that they think the club’s an important place to be in order to be the standard-bearer.”
Some of the gatherings are expressly intended to bring candidates in line with the policy positions of donors on issues like government spending and foreign policy. While Mr. Rastetter’s agriculture forum will cover a range of issues, much of the advocacy surrounding the event, including a “V.I.P. press reception” featuring Iowa’s Republican governor, is aimed at pushing the candidates to support the Renewable Fuel Standard, which is coveted by the ethanol industry.
Mr. McIntosh noted that the donors attending the Palm Beach event — among them Robert Mercer, a publicity-shy hedge fund executive, and John Childs, a Florida-based investor — had helped unseat numerous Republican lawmakers deemed soft on taxes, spending or free trade. The goal of the event, Mr. McIntosh said, was to “lay the plans for affecting both the policy debate and the elections in 2016.”
The season of donor events poses hurdles both logistical and ideological: Mr. Bush, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas all sought to attend both the Palm Beach gathering and the overlapping Conservative Political Action Conference, held just outside Washington. Mr. Walker’s appearances at donor conclaves will take him back and forth across the country several times between late January and early March.
In an interview, Mr. Walker said he was unconcerned about the appearance of spending so much time and energy courting donors, noting that he expected to do plenty of retail campaigning in the months ahead.
“Oh, I think along the way I’ll be at plenty of dairy events and farm events and factories just like when I was governor,” Mr. Walker said.
Some skip the time-consuming cattle calls in favor of a more targeted approach, wooing a handful of donors they know personally. Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who has pitched himself as a lunch-pail conservative, will attend the Iowa meeting but has otherwise passed up most of the gatherings.
“You have to understand what is the best use of your candidate’s time, and their appeal, and who is going to gravitate towards the candidate,” said Matt Beynon, an aide to Mr. Santorum. “The senator can identify who his folks may be — and in many instances knows who they are.”
For Democrats, who have not had a contested presidential primary since the Citizens United decision, the shadow campaign trail is less demanding, and the overwhelming favorite, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is under less pressure than her Republican opponents.
High-profile Democrats, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have appeared at meetings of the Democracy Alliance, a club of liberal donors. And Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental activist who emerged as the leading super PAC donor in the country in 2014, is planning a series of meetings in response to the Koch brothers’ spending that are intended to get the candidates to commit to specific policies to combat climate change.
For Republican candidates and their aides, the donor gatherings sometimes have the feel of a command performance. While candidates did not attend the Ricketts meeting, a half-dozen of them — including Mr. Bush, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — were invited to send high-ranking representatives. They were given 30 minutes each to make a case to the assembled donors, including the investor Paul Singer; Linda McMahon, the Connecticut wrestling magnate; and Charles R. Schwab, founder of one of the country’s largest financial services firms.
The presenters were not told ahead of time who would be there, and at least two were surprised to find former Vice President Dick Cheney among the guests. Afterward, the rival campaign strategists shared a slightly awkward drink with one another, before joining the assembled donors for a group dinner.
They had little choice, according to one Republican who attended, and who asked for anonymity so as not to offend any of the donors. “This is going to be the super PAC election,” he said.
The Beauty Of Women All Around The World [Video]
https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/mihaela-noroc-the-beauty-of-women-all-around-the-112136996368.html
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The Beauty Of Women All Around The World [Video]
Enjoy!
https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/mihaela-noroc-the-beauty-of-women-all-around-the-112136996368.html
Little Kid Drums With Philharmonic Orchestra
My friend Lawrence Quilici sent me this link.
Enjoy!
[Frank]
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5 facts about religious hostilities in Europe
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/27/5-facts-about-religious-hostilities-in-europe/
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5 facts about religious hostilities in Europe
While Europe is not the region with the highest level of religious hostilities – that remains the Middle East-North Africa region – harassment and attacks against religious minorities continue in many European countries. Indeed, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center, hostilities against Jews in particular have been spreading.
Here are five facts about social hostilities – i.e., hostilities perpetrated by individuals or social groups rather than by governments – that tend to target religious minorities in Europe:
1In 2013, the most recent year covered by the study, harassment of Jews in Europe reached a seven-year high. Jews faced harassment in about three-quarters (34 of 45) of Europe’s countries. In France, for instance, three men attacked a teenager who was wearing a traditional skullcap, or kippa, in Vitry-Sur-Seine, reportedly threatening to “kill all of you Jews.” In Spain, vandals painted a large swastika on the side of a bull ring in the city of Pinto, along with the words “Hitler was right.” And in the town of Komarno in southern Slovakia, metal tiles in the pavement honoring a local Jewish family killed in the Holocaust were destroyed when vandals poured tar over them.
2Muslims experienced harassment in nearly as many European countries (32 of 45) as Jews. By comparison, the Middle East and North Africa was the only region where Muslims faced more widespread harassment, dealing with hostility in 15 of that region’s 20 countries. In Germany, bloody pig heads were found at a site where the Ahmadiyya Muslim community was planning to build Leipzig’s first mosque. And in Ireland, several mosques and Muslim cultural centers received threatening letters, withone of the letters stating: “Muslims have no right to be in Ireland.”
3In two-thirds of the countries in Europe, organized groups used force or coercion to try to impose their views on religion in 2013. Sometimes this activity is aimed at dominating a country’s public life with the group’s particular perspective on religion through means such as online intimidation of minority religious groups. Other times, it is focused on a particular religious group, such as anti-Semitic postings and anti-Muslim rhetoric on online forums. In Italy, for example, four men were sent to prison after they published lists of Jewish residents and businesses on neo-Nazi websites. This type of social hostility was more prevalent in Europe (30 of 45 countries, or 67%) than in any other region.
4Women were harassed over religious dress in about four-in-ten European countries (19 of 45) – about the same share as in the Middle East-North Africa region (where it occurred in eight of 20 countries, or 40%). This includes cases in which women were harassed for either wearing religious dress or for perceived violations of religious dress codes. In France, for example, two men attacked a pregnant Muslim woman, kicking her in the stomach and attempting to remove her headscarf and cut her hair; she suffered a miscarriage in the days following the attack. And in Italy, two Moroccan men attacked a young Moroccan woman, beating her for “offending Islam” when she refused to wear a headscarf.
5Individuals were assaulted or displaced from their homes or places of worship in retaliation for religious activities in roughly four-in-ten European countries. In Poland, for example, arsonists set fire to the door of a mosque in Gdansk. And in Greece, arsonists attacked Jehovah’s Witnesses’ houses of worship and several informal mosques in multiple cities during the year.
For details on the sources and methodology of this analysis, and to read an expanded sidebar on social hostilities toward religious minorities in Europe, see our full report on religious restrictions.
Productivity culture, cognitive triage and the pseudo-commensurability of the to-do list
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Productivity culture, cognitive triage and the pseudo-commensurability of the to-do list
What struck me this morning however is that this process can have unforeseen consequences. It’s not a case of ‘stress’ caused by e-mail giving way to an absence of stress but something more subtle than that. I tweeted earlier today:
Spend day crossing items off to do list. Spend next morning adding ‘to do’ items from new e-mails Spend day crossing items off to do list.
I say intrinsic because it has all sorts of extrinsic benefits: by dealing with e-mail in this way I neutralise it as a source of stress, I ignore my inbox for the rest of the day*, I have more time and energy for the things I care about etc. But in and of itself, the practice of ‘inbox zero’ is devoid of value: it’s a kind of cognitive triage, systematically attending to what is urgent in order to free up resources for what is important. That at least is what it’s supposed to do. But I think the instrumentalism of triage practices, desiring to do something as quickly as possible because you’re fundamentally irritated by the fact it’s necessary and want to get it out of the way, risks seeping into how other activities are engaged with.I was suddenly struck by the horrible repetitiveness of this process. Had the character limit not precluded it, I would have likely added a fourth line: “continue daily until death”. Well actually I probably wouldn’t because of how unspeakably depressing a sentiment that would be in the absence of the navel-gazing contextualisation a blog post like this would provide. Nonetheless I’ve been thinking about that feeling all morning. It quickly passed but it was an arresting sense of the intrinsic pointlessness of practices conducted in this mode.
What provoked that slightly despairing feeling in me this morning was the exercise of going from e-mail to omnifocus: clearing my inbox, clarifying the necessary actions ensuing from those e-mails and filing them in my organiser. Suddenly the various lists contained within that organiser grew dramatically – in one case going from 10 items to 20 items. My problem is that while some of those tasks were incredibly dull, others were not and yet the way I framed them led me to see them all as problems to be solved. They were irritants, barriers to a conceptually incoherent state I was implicitly seeking to attain in which everything I’d ever have to do was now done.
This is the mentality that cognitive triage generates: things are conceived as obstacles to be eliminated rather than activities to be enjoyed. As the list gets bigger, it becomes harder to see the individual ‘to do’ items as activities in their own right. They are reduced to uniform list items and nothing more. Things you enjoy and things you despise are given equal weight. The logic of the to-do list is one of commensurability and this is the problem with it. The process of triaging combined with the logic of the to-do list can lead to an evisceration of value: the potential goods internal to activities, those experiences of value that can only be found through doing, get obliterated by the need to cross items off a list. There’s a relational richness to practical activity which can easily be obliterated at the level of phenomenology by the tendency of ‘productivity’ to give rise to ‘mindless busyness’. This is how Heidegger describes it in What Is Called Thinking?
A cabinetmaker’s apprentice, someone who is learning to build cabinets and the like, will serve as an example. His learning is not merely practice, to gain facility in the use of tools. Nor does he merely gather information about the customary forms of the things he is to build. If he is to become a true cabinetmaker, he makes himself answer and respond above all to the different kinds of wood and to the shapes slumbering within wood – to wood as it enters into man’s dwelling with all the hidden riches of its nature. In fact, this relatedness to wood is what maintain the whole craft. Without that relatedness, the craft will never be anything but empty busywork, any occupation with it will be determined exclusively by business concerns. Every handicraft, all human dealings are constantly in that danger. The writing of poetry is no more exempt from it than is thinking. (pg 14-15)
In other words: your desire to ‘get things done’ obscures the fact that you actually like many of the things you’re doing and, as a statement about moral psychology, if you forget this fact then you’re much less likely to enjoy doing them. Being in a rush to get something done runs contrary to attending to the task itself. Unfortunately, it is only through attentiveness that we derive value from practical activity. Focusing on the next thing you have to do squeezes out awareness of what you are presently doing. Wondering how quickly you can get something done makes it hard to focus on the logic of the task itself. Seeing something as an obstacle to be overcome precludes experiencing it as a source of fulfilment. Productivity culture or rather the various forms of triaging it encourages can easily undercut many of the things which motivate it in the first place e.g. seeking to perform mundane tasks more efficiently in order to have more time to write.
*Well actually I don’t but at least I recognise that it’s blind compulsivity that undermines this rather than any practical necessity.
Patients Mired in Costly Credit From Doctors
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A VULNERABLE AGE
Patients Mired in Costly Credit From Doctors
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
The dentist set to work, tapping and probing, then put down his tools and delivered the news. His patient, Patricia Gannon, needed a partial denture. The cost: more than $5,700.
Chip Litherland for The New York Times
Patricia Gannon, 78, of Dunedin, Fla., received a line of credit from First Health Funding at an annual 23 percent interest rate for dental work. She was later offered a medical credit card.
A Vulnerable Age
Articles in this series are examining financial challenges and pitfalls faced by older Americans in lean economic times.
Ms. Gannon, 78, was staggered. She said she could not afford it. And her insurance would pay only a small portion. But she was barely out of the chair, her mouth still sore, when her dentist’s office held out a solution: a special line of credit to help cover her bill. Before she knew it, Ms. Gannon recalled, the office manager was taking down her financial details.
But what seemed like the perfect answer — seemed, in fact, like just what the doctor ordered — has turned into a quagmire. Her new loan ensured that the dentist, Dr. Dan A. Knellinger, would be paid in full upfront. But for Ms. Gannon, the price was steep: an annual interest rate of about 23 percent, with a 33 percent penalty rate kicking in if she missed a payment.
She said that Dr. Knellinger’s office subsequently suggested another form of financing, a medical credit card, to pay for more work. Now, her minimum monthly dental bill, roughly $214 all told, is eating up a third of her Social Security check. If she is late, she faces a penalty of about $50.
“I am worried that I will be paying for this until I die,” says Ms. Gannon, who lives in Dunedin, Fla. Dr. Knellinger, who works out of Palm Harbor, Fla., did not respond to requests for comment.
In dentists’ and doctors’ offices, hearing aid centers and pain clinics, American health care is forging a lucrative alliance with American finance. A growing number of health care professionals are urging patients to pay for treatment not covered by their insurance plans with credit cards and lines of credit that can be arranged quickly in the provider’s office. The cards and loans, which were first marketed about a decade ago for cosmetic surgery and other elective procedures, are now proliferating among older Americans, who often face large out-of-pocket expenses for basic care that is not covered by Medicare or private insurance.
The American Medical Association and the American Dental Association have no formal policy on the cards, but some practitioners refuse to use them, saying they threaten to exploit the traditional relationship between provider and patient. Doctors, dentists and others have a financial incentive to recommend the financing because it encourages patients to opt for procedures and products that they might otherwise forgo because they are not covered by insurance. It also ensures that providers are paid upfront — a fact that financial services companies promote in marketing material to providers.
One of the financing companies, iCare Financial of Atlanta, which offers financing plans through providers’ offices, asks providers on its Web site: “How much money are you losing everyday by not offering iCare to your patients?” Over the last three years, the company’s enrollment has grown 320 percent. Another company posted a video online that shows patients suddenly vanishing outside a medical office because they cannot afford treatment. The company offers a financing plan as a remedy, with the scene on the video shifting to a smiling doctor with dollar signs headed toward him.
FOR DISCUSSION
Have you been offered a medical credit card or have you worked for a medical provider who offered the cards to patients?
A review by The New York Times of dozens of customer contracts for medical cards and lines of credit, as well as of hundreds of court filings in connection with civil lawsuits brought by state authorities and others, shows how perilous such financial arrangements can be for patients — and how advantageous they can be for health care providers.
Many of these cards initially charge no interest for a promotional period, typically six to 18 months, an attractive feature for people worried about whether they can afford care. But if the debt is not paid in full when that time is up, costly rates — usually 25 to 30 percent — kick in, the review by The Times found. If payments are late, patients face additional fees and, in most cases, their rates increase automatically. The higher rates are often retroactive, meaning that they are applied to patients’ original balances, rather than to the amount they still owe.
For patients, the financial consequences can be dire.
Ms. Gannon said she was happy with her dental care, despite the cost, and there was no suggestion that Dr. Knellinger had done anything wrong. But attorneys general in a several states have filed lawsuits claiming that other dentists and professionals have misled patients about the financial terms of the cards, employed high-pressure sales tactics, overcharged for treatments and billed for unauthorized work.
The New York attorney general’s office found that health care providers had pressured patients into getting credit cards from one company, CareCredit, a unit of General Electric, which gave some providers discounts based on the volume of transactions. Patients, the investigation found, were misled about the terms of the credit cards, and in some instances, duped into believing that they were agreeing to a payment plan with dental offices when, in fact, they were being pushed into high-cost credit.
In June, CareCredit reached a pact with Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, to improve protections for consumers, and a spokeswoman said the company “does not incentivize providers to have patients open accounts” or give referral fees to providers.
In Ohio, the attorney general has sued the operators of several hearing aid clinics, claiming that they misled customers about using medical credit cards to pay for batteries and warranties.
Cameron P. Kmet, a chiropractor in Anchorage, Alaska, said he had stopped offering medical cards. “One missed payment can really ruin a patient’s life,” he said. Mr. Kmet now runs a company that administers payment plans directly between providers and patients, with annual interest rates around 8 percent.
Regarding medical credit cards, Mr. Kmet said he had urged providers to ask themselves “whether this is something that you would recommend to a family member or friend.” The answer, he said, is usually no.
While medical credit cards resemble other credit cards, there is a critical difference: they are usually marketed by caregivers to patients, often at vulnerable times, such as when those patients are in pain or when their providers have recommended care they cannot readily afford. In addition to G.E., large banks like Wells Fargo and Citibank, as well as several specialized financial services companies, offer credit through practitioners’ offices.
The growth of this form of consumer credit is difficult to quantify because data on medical credit cards specifically, as opposed to credit cards generally, is unavailable. But credit cards of all types are playing a growing role in financing medical care. In 2010, people in the United States charged about $45 billion in health care costs on credit cards, according to the consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
“When the economy got worse, our business got better,” said Katie Kessing, an iCare spokeswoman. In 2010, a little more than a thousand dentists offered the iCare finance plan — a program that requires patients to pay 30 percent down as well as a fee of 15 percent of the total procedure cost. The number of participating providers has since risen to 4,200. Russell A. Salton, the chief executive of Access One MedCard, a credit card company in Charlotte, N.C., said demand for specialized cards — the MedCard has an annual interest rate of 9.25 percent — is driven by providers interested in removing an “obstacle to providing valuable care.” The company says the number of hospitals offering its credit cards has grown about 25 percent a year in recent years.
While neither national medical or dental associations have formal policies, ADA Business Enterprises, a profit-making arm of the American Dental Association that connects dentists and businesses, endorses G.E.’s CareCredit, whose cards are used by more than seven million people nationwide.
“Cardholders tell us they like using CareCredit because it gives them the ability to plan, budget and pay for certain elective health care procedures over time,” said Cristy Williams, the spokeswoman for CareCredit. She said the company had improved consumer protections, going so far as to telephone “senior cardholders with significant first transactions to confirm their understanding of the program and terms.”
She said roughly 80 percent of patients who opted for the deferred interest paid off their debts before they were charged any interest. She and others in the industry said the credit cards and credit lines had helped patients afford otherwise prohibitively expensive care not paid for at all, or in its entirety, by insurance providers.
But state authorities and care advocates in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and elsewhere say that older people — many of them grappling with dwindling savings and mounting debt — are running into trouble with medical credit cards and loans.
“The cards prey on seniors’ trust,” said Lisa Landau, who heads the health care unit at the New York attorney general’s office.
Minnesota’s attorney general, Lori Swanson, is investigating the use of medical credit cards, which she said could come with “hidden tripwires and other perils.”
Interviews with patients, along with the review of contracts and lawsuits, show just how significant those perils can be.
Carl Dorsey, 74, recalled his experience at Aspen Dental Management, a nationwide chain that has come under scrutiny for its practices. Mr. Dorsey said that after a dentist at Aspen’s office in Seekonk, Mass., told him that he needed dentures, at a cost of $2,634, he was urged to take out a medical credit card. He was charged the full cost upfront, financial statements reviewed by The Times show. Mr. Dorsey, who made about $800 a month working as a used-car salesman, in addition to receiving Social Security, has since fallen behind on his payments. The lapse set off a penalty interest rate of nearly 30 percent. Mr. Dorsey said he was being pursued by debt collectors.
“This whole ordeal has been devastating,” said Mr. Dorsey, who along with other patients is part of a civil lawsuit filed against Aspen in a federal court in upstate New York. He said he still needed dentures, noting that the ones he received from Aspen were unusable.
Diane Koi-Thompson said that her father, Harold Koi-Than, did not realize that he had signed up for a CareCredit card during a dental visit. She said Mr. Koi-Than, 82, was shocked when a company representative called his home near Niagara Falls, N.Y., saying he had missed a payment. “My dad had no idea he had a credit card, let alone that he was behind on it,” Ms. Koi-Thompson said. She said her father was upset because he is normally meticulous with his finances and thought his memory was failing. Mr. Koi-Than, through a family member, was able to cancel the credit card.
The industry’s growth is being driven by people seeking dental care and devices like hearing aids, which are not covered by Medicare.
Dental care is a large and expensive gulf, according to Tricia Neuman, the director of Medicare policy research at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The new federal health care law, she said, will not change that. “Lack of dental coverage remains a huge concern and expense,” Ms. Neuman said.
Working with care providers, financial services companies have rushed to fill the void. To make medical cards attractive, some companies offer them without checking patients’ credit histories. The cards can be arranged in minutes, with no upfront charges. Such features are attractive selling points.
“Your patient does not require good credit,” First Health Funding of Salt Lake City, Utah says on its Web site. On the site of another lender, the words “No Credit Check” flash in bright letters. First Health Funding did not respond to requests for comment.
Lawyers and others who assist patients say such features make it easy for people who are already on a weak financial footing to take on new debt.
“Ultimately, this credit facilitates a bad financial decision that will haunt a patient because it adds to indebtedness,” said Ellen Cheek, who runs a legal help line for older people through Bay Area Legal Services in Tampa, Fla.
Such critics also say that because there are no industrywide standards for pricing care — costs vary from practice to practice — the cards could encourage providers to charge more for treatment.
Brian Cohen, the lawyer representing Mr. Dorsey, said the cards enabled providers to “bill whatever they want for care, regardless of whether the cost is reasonable.”
State authorities say health care finance in general, and medical credit cards in particular, are a growing worry. In 2010, Aspen Dental, the chain where Mr. Dorsey signed up for a card, reached a settlement with Pennsylvania authorities over claims that, among other things, it had failed to tell patients that missing a payment would mean the rate would rocket from zero to nearly 30 percent. A review of court records and online forums shows hundreds of customer complaints against Aspen, which is based in Syracuse. A civil case brought on behalf of customers is pending in a federal court in upstate New York.
Kasey Pickett, a spokeswoman for Aspen, which is fighting the lawsuit, said the accusations were “entirely without merit.”
Aspen provides mandatory training for office employees who discuss financing with patients, according to Ms. Pickett. “We know that for many patients,” she said, “the availability of third-party financing may be the only way that they are able to afford the care they need.”
Straight Talk for White Men
* * *
SUPERMARKET shoppers are more likely to buy French wine when French music is playing, and to buy German wine when they hear German music. That’s true even though only 14 percent of shoppers say they noticed the music, a study finds.
Researchers discovered that candidates for medical school interviewed on sunny days received much higher ratings than those interviewed on rainy days. Being interviewed on a rainy day was a setback equivalent to having an MCAT score 10 percent lower, according to a new book called “Everyday Bias,” by Howard J. Ross.
Those studies are a reminder that we humans are perhaps less rational than we would like to think, and more prone to the buffeting of unconscious influences. That’s something for those of us who are white men to reflect on when we’re accused of “privilege.”
White men sometimes feel besieged and baffled by these suggestions of systematic advantage. When I wrote a series last year, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” the reaction from white men was often indignant: It’s an equal playing field now! Get off our case!
Yet the evidence is overwhelming that unconscious bias remains widespread in ways that systematically benefit both whites and men. So white men get a double dividend, a payoff from both racial and gender biases.
Consider a huge interactive exploration of 14 million reviews on RateMyProfessors.comthat recently suggested that male professors are disproportionately likely to be described as a “star” or “genius.” Female professors are disproportionately described as “nasty,” “ugly,” “bossy” or “disorganized.”
But researchers at North Carolina State conducted an experiment in which they asked students to rate teachers of an online course (the students never saw the teachers). To some of the students, a male teacher claimed to be female and vice versa.
When students were taking the class from someone they believed to be male, they rated the teacher more highly. The very same teacher, when believed to be female, was rated significantly lower.
Something similar happens with race.
Two scholars, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, sent out fictitious résumés in response to help-wanted ads. Each résumé was given a name that either sounded stereotypically African-American or one that sounded white, but the résumés were otherwise basically the same.
The study found that a résumé with a name like Emily or Greg received 50 percent more callbacks than the same résumé with a name like Lakisha or Jamal. Having a white-sounding name was as beneficial as eight years’ work experience.
Then there was the study in which researchers asked professors to evaluate the summary of a supposed applicant for a post as laboratory manager, but, in some cases, the applicant was named John and in others Jennifer. Everything else was the same.
“John” was rated an average of 4.0 on a 7-point scale for competence, “Jennifer” a 3.3. When asked to propose an annual starting salary for the applicant, the professors suggested on average a salary for “John” almost $4,000 higher than for “Jennifer.”
It’s not that we white men are intentionally doing anything wrong, but we do have a penchant for obliviousness about the way we are beneficiaries of systematic unfairness. Maybe that’s because in a race, it’s easy not to notice a tailwind, and white men often go through life with a tailwind, while women and people of color must push against a headwind.
While we don’t notice systematic unfairness, we do observe specific efforts to redress it — such as affirmative action, which often strikes white men as profoundly unjust. Thus a majority of white Americans surveyed in a 2011 study said that there is now more racism against whites than against blacks.
None of these examples mean exactly that society is full of hard-core racists and misogynists. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a Duke University sociologist, aptly calls the present situation “racism without racists”; it could equally be called “misogyny without misogynists.” Of course, there are die-hard racists and misogynists out there, but the bigger problem seems to be well-meaning people who believe in equal rights yet make decisions that inadvertently transmit both racism and sexism.
So, come on, white men! Let’s just acknowledge that we’re all flawed, biased and sometimes irrational, and that we can do more to resist unconscious bias. That means trying not to hire people just because they look like us, avoiding telling a young girl she’s “beautiful” while her brother is “smart.” It means acknowledging systematic bias as a step toward correcting it.
FRANK'S REPRINTS 
42 COMMENTS:
Anonymous said…
Anonymous said…
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Miss janbo said…
Ari said…
Unknown said…
Anonymous said…
Wallis Leigh said…
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Anonymous said…
Do not critize just enjoy this incredible protege!
Anonymous said…
DAVID said…
DCB
Anonymous said…
.AFTER VIEWING THE BOY PLAYING THE DRUMS:
When Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address, he asked a friend why nobody applauded. Just deafening silence.
FRIEND: They were stunned, just awed.
MYSELF, after hearing and watching the boy: “A Lincolnesque drummer”. Re the Dad: I’m merely admiring and envious. Also, I’ll remember his
name: Lionovsky as I recall. Probably based on lion or leo. WOW !!!
DAVID said…
(WHEN I WROTE THE ABOVE, I THOUGHT THE DAD HAD BEEN IN THE AUDIENCE)AFTER VIEWING THE BOY PLAYING THE DRUMS:When Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address, he asked a friend why nobody applauded. Just deafening silence.FRIEND: They were stunned, just awed.
DAVID, after hearing and watching the boy: “A Lincolnesque drummer”. Re the Dad: I’m merely admiring and envious. Also, I’ll remember his
name: Lionovsky as I recall. Probably based on lion or leo. WOW !!! I THINK IT’S RELATED TO THE
HEBREW “ARYEH”
Play on! You budding artist!
Mazal Tov,
DCB
DAVID said…
MY COMMENTS ABOVE WERE PREMATURE, MERELY RELATED TO NEGATIVE COMMENTS. CORRECTION:AFTER VIEWING THE BOY PLAYING THE DRUMS:When Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address, he asked a friend why nobody applauded. Just deafening silence.FRIEND: They were stunned, just awed.
MYSELF, after hearing and watching the boy play: “A Lincolnesque drummer”. Re the Dad: I’m merely admiring and envious. Also, I’ll remember his name: Lionovsky as I recall. Probably based on lion or leo. WOW !!! Equivalent to ARYEH, hebrew for Lion.
Play on, budding artist!
DCB
Anonymous said…
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Betty said…
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nam vet! said…
Anonymous said…
Lyle Chausse said…
How do you blame him for being caught up in the moment and excitement for his son?Bravo!
Kids – enjoying art, parents participating in the kids explorations of art…what’s the problem?
Relax folks. It’s not a super bowl half time show. it’s a young man with talent and his father is there for him.
the dad is not at the bar.
the dad is not being abusive.
the father is involved in his son’s life.
amazing!
Teach the kid the Black Sabbath Catalogue now. Watch him take off!
LC
Jody said…
Glady and Brian said…
Glady and Brian
Anonymous said…
SagesnifferNV said…
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Susan said…
maisry said…
kinnisingh said…
wish the young lad all the best
Anonymous said…
Anonymous said…
aragain82 said…
If he takes it all further in the direction of music well and good. He might end up a Dr or a really good dad and work in a local store! Good luck to him the world needs all sorts.
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