The Truth of Industrial Agriculture

Matt's post about raising pigs reminds me of this scene from This American Life's first season TV show on Showtime:

A Private Affair?

People sure have strong feelings about John and Elizabeth Edwards' marriage, and it's all getting stirred up again with the release of Elizabeth's new memoir, Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities, due out May 12. (Does anyone know why the cover looks like a romance novel? That seems in poor taste.)

My general feelings about this are that firstly, it seems clear that John Edwards should not be president of the United States, and probably shouldn't have run in the first place. Secondly, now that he's out of the public sphere, this is all really not anybody's business but their own. I know it's a little different when they're high-profile people like the Edwards. I also know that a lot of people who supported John in the primaries feel betrayed. Those all really understandable reactions, but it still doesn't justify things like some of the comments here.

Cheating is really bad. It can destroy relationships and devastate people. But passing judgment on how Elizabeth Edwards has dealt with her husband's extramarital affair reminds me of the town gossips. Such a thing can only be understood when you're inside the situation. Instead, I'd prefer we focus on the fact that she has mad cool things to say about health care reform.

Shady Stuff Going Down in South Carolina

Ben Miller has uncovered some pretty shady stuff that's going on in the student loan industry in South Carolina. It all has to do with something called a guaranty agency, a state-run agency that serves as a government-subsidized backup for federal loans. Miller has the goods here:

The federal lender-of-last-resort program is administered by the designated guaranty agency in each state to provide government-backed loans to students whose applications have been denied by other lenders. Since the agency must give qualified borrowers a loan-of-last-resort, the federal government agrees to take on all the risk associated with the debt. This means that holders of these loans are reimbursed for 100 percent (page 8) of any losses sustained due to borrower default, as opposed to ordinary loans made through the Federal Family Education Loans program (FFEL) that are reimbursed at only a 97 percent rate.

As its name suggests, this program is supposed to be used only in rare cases. But the documents, which we obtained from the Department of Education through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, show that over at least the past six years, South Carolina's guaranty agency has provided loans to students through this program with unusual frequency. The rate at which the agency used this program to request reimbursement from the Department was at least 100 times greater than any of the other nine agencies whose documents we obtained -- a sampling that included the largest guarantors in the country. All told, South Carolina's lender-of-last-resort claims were three times greater than those for the other nine agencies combined. (See chart below or the spreadsheet at the bottom of this post for additional information on the guaranty agency claims.)

In an e-mail to Higher Ed Watch a spokesperson for the Department of Education said the Department "is aware of the situation and the Federal Student Aid office is conducting a program review." The spokesperson, however, declined to comment further until that process is completed.

Miller has a lot more details here.

100 Days in Women's Lives Under Obama

President Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pair Act from White House on Vimeo.

The following timeline is thanks to Ms. Magazine, who tracked the things President Obama has done for women in his first 100 days.

JAN 23 Overturned "global gag rule," which will help re-fund international family-planning groups

JAN 29 Signed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, restoring women's ability to sue for pay discrimination

FEB 4 Expanded government health insurance to cover 11 million children

FEB 17 Saved and created jobs in traditionally women-heavy fields-health care, child care and education-in
$787 billion economic stimulus package; also increased Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits

FEB 27 Moved to rescind the Bush administration's "conscience" clause-which could have let health-care workers deny patients abortion and contraception

MAR 2 With the choice of Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services secretary, appointed a total of seven women to Cabinet-level positions

MAR 6 Instituted a new ambassador-at-large for global women's issues

MAR 9 Lifted restrictions on stem cell research

MAR 11 Established the White House Council on Women and Girls

Restarted U.S. contributions to the United Nations Population Fund

Reinstated low-cost birth control availability at college health centers and at some 400 clinics serving low-income women

MAR 19 Pledged to sign U.N. declaration to decriminalize homosexuality, which Bush refused to sign

MAR 20 Obama appointee Elena Kagan is confirmed as the first woman Solicitor General

APR 3 Obama calls Afghanistan's proposed Shia Family Law "abhorrent"

APR 23 To date, Obama's appointments to posts needing Senate confirmation were 32% women with a substantial portion women of color

Nancy Keenan from NARAL Pro-Choice America also has some great analysis up on HuffPo.
It seems like Obama has done a lot to further not only reproductive health and rights but pay equity as well. Still, no one is perfect and there's a lot of work to be done.

Beyond Lilly Ledbetter

Over at Campus Progress, I have a piece that tries to respond to all the justifications for pay disparity, and why the Lilly Ledbetter Act just isn't enough:

Today is Fair Pay Day. Again. It’s yet another reminder that women make, on average, about three-quarters of what men make. For women of color, that gap gets even bigger. The American Association of University Women created an interactive map where you can see exactly how bad the pay gap is in your state. The reality is that the gender pay gap has barely budged in the decades the AAUW has began studying this problem.

Every time we open up the debate about equal pay, the response is that this issue is complicated. Pundits put forth reasons explaining away why women make less than men. They scratch their heads and think about all of the reasons women are paid less. In the end, they help justify the pay gap rather than finding solutions.

Go ahead and read the whole thing here.

An Update on That Whole Early Marriage Thing

Mark Regnerus' column on how people should get married earlier caused quite a stir. It looks like today the Washington Post got someone to respond -- someone who, you know, has actual knowledge about the issue of marriage of society today (sadly, it wasn't my favorite marriage historian, Stephanie Coontz). The column by Andrew Cherlin today is a bit shorter but deals with the issues of modern marriage well:

Cut to the 21st century. Children are costly to educate and contribute little to the family economy. I don't know about your children, but I haven't received many checks from mine recently. People still want to have children, but one or two will do. Infant deaths are blessedly rare. So a woman who marries at 26, the average age in 2008, has plenty of time for the two pregnancies that are typically required to produce the size of family that most couples want.

Plain and simple. People get married later in life because they don't need to get married early. Cherlin also actually notes people with a high school education alone, a group that Regnerus seems to have forgotten actually existed.

I'm glad they actually got someone with interesting ideas to respond to the piece, but it's regrettable they didn't just go with someone with interesting things to say in the first place.

Weekend TV: Grey Gardens

This weekend I had the chance to watch HBO's version of Grey Gardens, a film adaptation of a play adapted from a documentary with a similar titile. It sounds like a premise for disaster, but it was actually a really well-executed film, with stellar acting by both Drew Berrymore and Jessica Lange. I was also stoked to see Big Love's Jeanne Tripplehorn as Jackie Kennedy Onassis. (Spoilers to follow.)

The story is about eccentric relatives of Jackie O's, both named Edith Bouvier Beale. Jackie's aunt and cousin were living on a decrepit estate in Long Island. Because they were entirely dependent on the mother's ex-husband, who left most of his money to his second wife. Eventually the trust runs out, and they live in poverty, never leaving the manor known as Grey Gardens. Eventually a documentary crew comes to record them, which is how the story has lived on.

It was great to see two female actresses take the lead, playing characters that actually age. Still, they're characters with their own problems. Complicated, yes, but also entirely dependent on others. First they were dependent on Big Edith's ex-husband. When the trust ran out, they were dependent on the kindness of Jackie O for the basic necessities of trash removal and food. There are also pitiful moments where Big Edith affects an accent when answering the phone to give the impression servants are still around. Little Edith, or Edie, despite constant pressure to marry, refused to do so, instead engaging in an affair with a married man, played one of the Baldwins. Her hair began to fall out, according to an account in New York magazine thanks to a stress-related illness, in her early twenties. Even after losing her hair, and after her mother died when she was well into her middle age, she still performed in nightclubs, although she always wears scarves as head coverings.

The strength of this film had more to do with the relationship between mother and daughter than anything else. To some degree, they each blame one another for their lot in life. But they are fiercely devoted to each other, remaining by one another's side even as health inspectors threaten to condemn the house. Seeing this adaptation makes me want to see the original documenatary.