Archive: 2011

I wasn’t planning on spending a day and a half turning around an op-ed.  But when editors from certain venues call, I jump.  Some opportunities are just too good to turn down.

Colleagues—especially, often, academics—sometimes ask me how it’s possible to turn something around with the speed that today’s media requires.  So I thought I’d break it down, blow by blow, in an effort to demystify the process and show how it is possible to hop on the news when you’re ready with expertise—even on a day when you have other things planned.  I hope this helps!

(A note of gratitude: I could not have made this happen had my babysitter not been flexible and able to stay that extra hour.  Thank you, Erica.  This one’s for you.)

Day 1

1:01pm – I check my email before walking into a restaurant where I’m slated to meet a colleague for lunch.  There’s an email from an editor from national news outlet, inviting me to write—quickly!—an opinion piece of 500-700 words on a general topic she suggests.  I haven’t written for this outlet before.  I know what this opportunity means.  I get fired up, order a Caesar salad with egg, then email the editor to say that I could file a draft by end of day tomorrow and ask whether that would work.  That time frame feels realistic, given what else I have slated for that day (specifically, this lunch, a short meeting, a hospital visit, and a babysitter to relieve at 6pm).

1:40pm – I receive a second email from the editor.  It’s a hot topic and they’d really like to run it tomorrow morning.  Could I file it today?  I tell her I can get it to her later tonight.  The editor asks for my approach, my thesis.  I tell her I’ll get back to her with it soon.

2:15pm – I walk my colleague back to her office, have a brief meeting while there concerning other topics, then read a number of online articles related to the op-ed topic from my colleague’s office.  I formulate my angle.  It’s a topic I’ve thought a lot about before receiving this particular invitation today, and it doesn’t take me long to know where I stand.

4:10pm – I email the editor a paragraph and some bullet points.

4:12pm – The editor emails back to say “great.”

4:30pm – I call the babysitter, realizing that I’m not going to make it to the hospital to visit my friend and make it home at 6pm.  She says she can stay a little late.  I race to the subway and go visit the friend, 30 weeks pregnant and on bedrest, picking up Haagen Dags and chocolate bars on my way.

4:50pm – One block from the hospital, I email a savvy colleague my angle to ask if she’s seen any other articles on the overall topic I should read.  She sends me a helpful link.

4:55pm – I visit with my friend.  We commiserate about bedrest (I was on bedrest when pregnant too).

5:45pm – I outline the piece on the subway home.

7:00pm – I arrive home, late for the babysitter, and apologize profusely.  I read Goodnight Moon to my toddler twins and begin easing them into sleep.

7:30pm – Toddlers are out.  I get to work fleshing out a full draft, consuming half a bag of Oreos to stay awake (all the while reminding myself: I really must learn to like coffee one day).

10:30pm – I send the completed draft to a trusted reader, whose opinion I deeply respect.  While awaiting her feedback, I insert links.  She sends her feedback, with tweaks, swiftly.  She likes it.  I breathe a sigh of relief.

10:45pm – I incorporate my reader’s feedback and send the draft to two more readers who I know are still awake, then incorporate their feedback as well.

11:00pm – I send the draft to editor, thank her for this opportunity, and tell her how energizing it was to write.

Day 2

9:05am – I email to confirm that the editor has received draft.  The editor thanks me for the quick turnaround.  She’s just sitting down to her desk and will have edits for me soon.  She asks about my availability this morning to make changes.  I tell her I’m available!

9:30am – I reluctantly cancel plans to meet an old friend in the city for a writing date long-scheduled for today.   I don’t want to be on the subway when editor responds, in case there are questions we need to resolve by phone.  I wipe my slate clean for as much as the day as I can.

9:45am – The editor and I chat via phone about the need to flesh out some details here and there.  She braces me for heaps of edits, reassuring me that they are “garden variety”.  I tell the editor I love to be edited (because honestly, I do) and I promise not to panic when I see her revision.

10:00am – I leave the toddlers with my husband, who happens to off for the day (holiday weekend) and therefore available for the handoff to the babysitter in an hour.  I’m ready to go.

10:30am – Astonishing breaking news has hit.  I email the editor to check in.  She explains that she’s been diverted by the breaking news but is now returning to my piece.

11:27am – The first round of edits come in, with a gracious note to please tweak and adjust or push back as necessary.

11:33am – I email the editor that the edits all make sense (which they do), thank her for her thoughtfulness, and set about filling in the gaps.

12:42pm – I send the editor the revised draft, with all holes filled but one.  I call her to make sure the revise works.  She asks that I address the remaining hole.

1:35pm – After a second search, I email the editor that there is very little out there I can access today that would help fill said hole.  She emails back ok.  I make sure she has my bio.   I tell her I’m going to be away from my computer, in a meeting, until 4:15pm but reachable via cell and email anytime.

2:00pm – I enter the meeting, checking email every 10 minutes or so (oh, the obsession!)

2:24pm – I start getting antsy, as I haven’t heard from the editor and know that she wanted the piece to go live as early as possible.

2:50pm – She emails back that she’s been diverted again due to the breaking news story from the morning and will let me know where we stand when she can.

2:51pm – I start wondering whether the piece will indeed go up today, or whether it might be killed, and start brainstorming alternate outlets.  I’m invested.

3:19 – Editor kindly reassures me it will go up today; it’s just a normal upended day, due to the breaking news.  The piece now goes to the Standards and Practices desk, and she may have more questions after that.

5:10pm – The editor emails that the piece has cleared the Standards and Practices reviewer.  She asks me to eyeball the final changes that she made, based on the S&P review.

5:23pm – I make the case for the reinsertion of some links that were taken out during the last edit but approve all else.  The links go back in.

5:59pm – The op-ed goes live.  I send the url to my network, tweet, and race home to the babysitter.

7:00pm – Once the twins are down, I network the piece around a bit more.  The negative comments start pouring in, as do the Facebook “recommends.”  It’s Shabbat, and my husband and I try hard not to check the site every five minutes…but it’s hard.  My op-ed is the lead opinion piece and makes it to the homepage.

And so it goes – a day and a half in the life of an op-ed.

With the buzz about Michele Bachmann running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, many journalists are wondering about the Tea Party’s power.  So, I’m taking a break from blogging about healthy bodies to focus on healthy politics and share a recent email exchange with Tufts sociologist Sarah Sobieraj, Ph.D. whose new book Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism (NYU Press) takes readers inside activist groups’ struggles to get their issues and perspectives covered in the news.

 Adina Nack: What is media-centered political activism, and how perilous is it?

Sarah Sobieraj: I studied 50 U.S. activist groups from across the political spectrum, expecting to find engagement in a range of political strategies, but nearly every organization had the same strategy – attracting attention from the mainstream news media. They invested astounding amounts of time, money, and energy into media preparation and training, but were largely unsuccessful. This exclusion from mainstream news diminishes the richness of our political discourse, and consequently weakens democratic processes, but I found that the activists’ relentless pursuit of media inclusion also threatens activism.

With news coverage as the raison d’etre, organizers often approached their own members as potential liabilities in need of discipline.  As a result, open communication among fellow activists was often replaced by rigorous attempts to control their speech and behavior. Activists were meticulously schooled on talking points, warned about “entrapment,” and reminded repeatedly to “stay on message” at all costs. In some cases, members were given practice interviews, recorded, and critiqued by their group. This happened in the organizations that allowed participants to speak to reporters; many groups had designated spokespeople and prohibited other members from answering journalists’ questions altogether.  This member management stemmed from desires to control whatever fleeting coverage the group might attract.  This approach was practical but could also be toxic. One activist described feeling like a prop, invited only to show journalists that their group had numbers, but told to keep quiet and stay out of the way.

In addition to creating internal problems, media-centrism also interferes with external communication. Most groups were determined to reach the “general public” and assumed that the news would serve as intermediary, instead of working to reach those in the vicinity of their protests, rallies, and other public events directly. As a result, the organizations perseverated on media strategy – creating photo ops and sound bites, writing press releases and designating spokespeople – but these extensive media trainings inadvertently undermined their abilities to communicate with bystanders. On several occasions, I watched pedestrians approach activists to ask questions only to have an activist respond with a rehearsed one-liner.  Activists were ready with talking points but unable to actually talk. Sometimes media trainings left activists so anxious that they directed bystanders to their website to avoid answering questions.  

AN: Given the slim chances for media attention — why has the Tea Party fared so well?

SS: The Tea Party is not among the groups I studied, but my research offers some clues to their success. Soundbitten shows that journalists have an appetite for activism and a clear idea about what makes activism newsworthy: authenticity.  Authenticity can be communicated to news workers in a variety of ways: including emotionality, spontaneity, and originality – all of which the Tea Party had in excess in their early months. For example, during the Town Hall meetings on health care, their disruptions violated social norms and created tense standoffs between elected leaders and emotion-fueled audience members that didn’t feel staged.  Plus, the activists themselves were unexpected: flag-waving, silver-haired conservatives in orthopedic shoes and athletic socks are not what come to mind when most people think “protester.” The events were perfect fodder for the 24-hour news cycle.  

In contrast, the groups I worked with were passionate about their issues, but many of their events felt formulaic and professionalized – hyper-managed by rational-tongued spokespeople wielding talking points (designed to get journalists to focus on the issues) – or playful and cartoonish, which sometimes captured reporters’ interest but rarely resulted in a serious examination of key issues.

AN: So, did the activists you studied just take the wrong approach to mainstream news media?

SS: Yes and no. In terms of capturing media attention, activists face a daunting catch-22 because of the professional routines and standards of reporting that have emerged in mainstream news organizations. The odds are stacked against them.  Most of the groups I studied failed to see that showcasing their professionalism – striving to appear legitimate by creating press releases on letterhead and answering journalists’ questions with the latest data – was not an effective tactic. Yet, if they cater to journalists’ appetites – for raw emotion rather than research, personal stories rather than publicly minded-speech, etc. – the coverage they receive tends to depoliticize public issues by portraying them as personal troubles.  

So, the activists didn’t approach reporters in the “wrong” way, but there may not be a reliable way to do it “right” in the current journalistic climate. This is a problem, and media reform is critical, but until those reforms take hold, activist groups might consider realigning their strategic emphases.  It might make sense to stop investing the lion’s share of their organizational resources in trying to win this battle. It is easy to forget that the quest for media coverage is a tactic for political change, not simply an end in itself.

On Thursday 6/23 at 1-2pm ET, I’m hosting one of my favorite authors for a frank conversation about writing/life integrity on She Writes Radio from 1-2pm ET.  Here’s a description, and how to join in, plus a tweet — thanks for any help the word!

Recalibrating Writing/Life Balance in a Digital World: A Conversation with Dani Shapiro and Deborah Siegel (6/23, 1-2pm ET)

Bestselling author Dani Shapiro and Girl w/Pen’s Deborah Siegel contemplate the precarious balance of being a writer while living this social media-filled life.  How do you carve out time when Facebook and email beckon? Does your outer atmosphere reflect your inner writerly needs? Listen for thoughts from two wired authors, both currently between books, on the quest for quiet.

Listen online at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/s_w/2011/06/23/recalibrating-writinglife-balance-in-a-digital-world

Hope to “see” some of ya’ll there!

This week I sent a video of my daughter Maybelle to a friend who recently had a child with Down syndrome. In this video, Maybelle—who’s almost three—is reading word cards, signing and saying the words she sees. My friend responded, “That’s pretty impressive. Is that uniquely Maybelle, or is there some sort of emerging sense that kids with Down syndrome read precociously?”

Of course I was delighted to answer this question for my friend, and I’ll answer it for you: Kids with Down syndrome tend to be good visual learners, so they can often learn to read fairly early. (Downs Ed is a fabulous group in England that’s been leading the research on this.) Kids with Down syndrome may have difficulty speaking effectively, but they can often read quite well–ahead of grade level, etc–if they’re taught to read. This “if” is important, as illustrated by another conversation I had this week.

One of my best friends is an occupational therapist. She just started working with an eight-year-old who has Down syndrome and is in the life skills class at his public elementary school. The life skills class, for those who don’t know, is essentially the class for kids that the school system has decided can’t learn. It’s a segregated special education classroom where kids aren’t taught the kind of academic subject matter you’d learn in second grade; instead, they’re taught how to get dressed, how to sit quietly, how to interact with another human being. As an example of the kinds of academic challenges that are left out of life skills classes, this child is eight, and he can count to three. To three.

Maybelle is almost three years old, and she can count to ten, say the alphabet, and read more than 100 words. I share this with you and with other people in the world not because it’s “uniquely Maybelle.” She’s not a prodigy. She’s a child with Down syndrome who has been given the opportunity to achieve, and—like most of us in the world—when given an opportunity, she rises to meet it. I don’t mean to suggest that she, or anybody, will achieve every opportunity that’s presented, of course. But it’s rare for any of us to achieve without being provided with the space, the support, and the belief that make achievement possible.

Maybelle is one hell of a reader. I am incredibly fortunate to have friends who are speech therapists, early interventionists, and scholars of Down syndrome. These folks told me about high expectations and helped shatter my stereotypes about Down syndrome. I think about the eight-year-old that my friend is working with. His parents probably followed the advice of the authorities at the school, who perhaps haven’t been doing their jobs all that well and haven’t learned that full inclusion in typical classrooms is almost always recommended for kids with Down syndrome. I’ll bet good money that, if given the opportunity, this child would learn to count, to read, to perform fairly well in an inclusive classroom with his same-age peers. But if he isn’t provided with that opportunity, he isn’t going to achieve.

Thirty years ago educators believed it was impossible for people with Down syndrome to learn to read (click here if you want to hear some of my reflections on this). It’s long past time for our false beliefs and low expectations to be sad relics of an era we’ve moved beyond.

Update from Alison: I very quickly got feedback from several people about this post that has made me want to apologize and clarify. I’m sorry to imply that kids–any kids, with Down syndrome or not–should be performing in a certain way if they’re getting the “correct” opportunities. All kids are unique individuals, and their strengths and challenges are going to be specific to them. This of course has nothing to do with Down syndrome: some kids are going to be readers, some kids are going to be athletes, some are going to have artistic sensibilities, some are going to have the knack for fixing things that are broken, some are going to be beautifully attuned to other people’s emotions. Etc. And these strengths will emerge at various times in their lives. I know about one kid who really didn’t read at all until the Harry Potter books came out, and then–as a teenager–he learned to read, and loved to read.

I want us to live in a world with high expectations and lots of opportunities for all our kids. And I want us to appreciate our kids for their gifts, whatever they are, and whenever they emerge. You’re right to be skeptical of my assessment of the eight-year-old I haven’t met: a child’s ability to count, or speak, or read isn’t evidence of lack of opportunity. And it’s lack of opportunity that’s my concern, not the individual gifts and talents of any particular kid in the world.

Again, I apologize, and I appreciate the feedback!

The Arab spring took a different turn in Saudi Arabia with today’s #Women2Drive campaign.  Organizing via Facebook and Twitter, Saudi women hit city roads in protest of the ban on women’s driving.  Many of them asked their passengers to film their drives and uploaded the videos to YouTube, following the example of Manal al-Sharif, a single mother who posted a video of herself driving solo last month:

Manal al-Sharif was arrested and jailed, but this didn’t stop other women from taking the car keys.  The New Yorker has aggregated several of the videos from today’s campaign here.

The right to drive is one of several rights denied to women in Saudi Arabia, the only Muslim country in which women cannot drive.  In a powerful opinion essay about this act of civil disobedience, Farzaneh Milani argues that restricting women’s mobility is about more than driving cars:

It is about dominating, excluding and subordinating women.  It is about barring them from political activities, preventing their active participation in the public sector, and making it difficult for them to fully exercise the rights Islam grants them to own and manage their own property.  It is about denying women the basic human right to move about freely.

And while The New York Times reported that today’s protest was hardly earth-shattering—apparently only several dozen women drove—I prefer to think of them, as Milani does, as freedom riders heralding future change:

the women defying the ban on motorized mobility are in fact demanding an eventual overhaul of the entire Saudi political system. They want not just to drive but to remap the political geography of their country.

I would only add that I’m not surprised that Manal al-Sharif is a single working mother. You go, global mamas!

Pepper Schwartz and I are just wrapping up the 2nd edition of our book The Gender of Sexuality. My favorite part? Analyzing the changing status of men in sex scandals. And lo and behold, here’s a  sample of what we have been thinking about posted at CNN.com.

(CNN) — Whoa! I know more about Rep. Anthony Weiner’s private business than (I pretend) I’d like to know. Not just the bulging gray underpants, but also the understanding that all the texting, tweeting, and online lurid repartee is really about… what, masturbation? TMI, right?

One of the biggest developments in American sex scandals in our recent past is the rise in just this sort of “too much information.”

Read the rest at CNN: you’ll see how TMI has become a tool for making men look foolish without doing anything to modify the sneaky gender inequality that persists  in our social and sexual arrangements.

-Virginia Rutter

If you wanted to convince the remaining unconvinced populace that the F word is not so scary, Tina Fey would be the perfect conduit. In her new book, Bossypants, Fey, like a jocular Mary Poppins, gives readers many spoonfuls of sugar to make the feminist medicine go down. Coating incisive points about sexism with sweet comedic flare, her prose is easy to swallow, much like her infamous Sarah Palin impersonations, of which she writes “You all watched a sketch about feminism and you didn’t even realize it because of all the jokes. It’s like when Jessica Seinfeld puts spinach in kids’ brownies. Suckers!” (216-7).

In the introduction, Fey explains the book’s title, noting that as an executive producer people often ask “Is it hard for you being the boss?” to which Fey deadpans “You know, in the same way they say, ‘Gosh, Mr. Trump, is it awkward for you to be the boss of all these people?” (5).

Many sections mock female beauty norms, as when Fey discusses “Twelve Tenets of Looking Amazing Forever.” In the chapter, she relates an embarrassing mother-daughter bra fitting story, admitting that “This early breast-related humiliation prevented me from ever needing to participate in ‘Girls Gone Wild’ in my twenties” (104). Here, Fey alludes to lots of big feminist ideas – the institution of motherhood and how mothers often enforce patriarchal norms that are detrimental to themselves and their children, the hyper-vigilance expected of the female body, and the mainstream media’s sexualization of women – all in a simple couple of sentences that most who have ever worn a bra can likely relate to.

Though a celebrity herself, Fey ridicules the cult of celebrity throughout, framing it as a ruse. In her typically understated tone, she advises “You have to remember that actors are human beings. Which is hard sometimes because they look so much better than human beings” (122). Her section on magazine cover shoots reveals all the effort and artifice that goes into celebrification. Noting “at five foot four I have the waist of a seven-foot model,” Fey pokes fun at body ideals promoted in the media, offering a sort of ode to Photoshop, which she names “America’s most serious and pressing issue” (157). Acceding that “Retouching is here to stay,” Fey puts a comical spin on the inanity, arguing “At least with Photoshop you don’t really have to alter your body. It’s better than all these disgusting injectibles and implants. Isn’t it better to have a computer to it do your picture than to have a doctor do it to your face?” (161).

Later, in the same vein, she laments “I’ve never understood why every character being ‘hot’ was necessary for enjoying a TV show” (193), admitting “I personally like a cast with a lot of different-shaped faces and weird little bodies and a diverse array of weak chins, because it helps me tell the characters apart” (192).

Perhaps my favorite section is “Dear Internet” in which Fey answers some of the more insulting missives directed at her online. To “jerkstore” who claims “she completely ruined SNL” by virtue of being too celebrated because she’s a woman, Fey sarcastically agrees “Women in this country have been over-celebrated for too long…I want to hear what men of the world have been up to. What fun new guns have they invented? What are they raping these days?”

Her mantra “Do your thing and don’t care if they like it” (145) coincides with what she titles her “Bossypants Managerial Technique”:

“I hire the most talented of people who are the least likely to throw a punch in the workplace. If this is contributing to the demasculinization of America, I say hold a telethon and let me know how it goes. I don’t ever want to get punched in the face over a joke – or even screamed at” (175).

Lamenting that women, especially comedians, are labeled “’crazy’ after a certain age” (270), Fey offers the following theory on Hollywood’s infamous inability to write roles for females ‘of a certain age’: “I have a suspicion that the definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking after no one wants to fuck her anymore.”

Fey is particularly astute about how the media (and society) is more critical of women than men, relating “There was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was ‘mean’ when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of ‘going too far’ in their political impressions. You see what I’m getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. Too imply otherwise is a disservice to us both” (234).

Neither is Fey the overbearing ball buster indicated by her title “Bossypants” – it is just that our society, as her book so humorously reveals, still likes it women in certain types of boxes – and the boss box  isn’t one of them. But, and let me put this in my bossiest tone, “Do yourself a service! Read this feminist comedic treat!”

There are rare moments when I read an article or listen to a recording and can’t form words to respond. Today is one of those moments and it is because you really should just listen to this recording for yourself. It’s that perfect.

The NYTimes invited four women who are at the top of their respective fields of science in for a roundtable discussion. They shared their thoughts about:

Differences between men and women in science:

TAL RABIN: Even when we do make it to the conferences, I think that there is still something different about the way that we promote ourselves.

I remember standing next to one of my co-authors, and he was talking to some other guy, and he was telling him, “I have this amazing result. I just did this, I just did that.” And I was sitting and thinking there, what result is he talking about? Until he got to the punch line. It was a joint result. It was a result of mine also. I would have never spoken about my result in the superlatives that the guy was speaking about it.

MS. KOLATA: What would you have done?

DR. RABIN: I would have said, you know, “I have this very interesting result, and we achieved very nice things.” But not “This is the best thing since we invented the wheel, and here it is.”

Having a family:

MS. KOLATA: It must be exciting for your children to grow up with a mother who has such passion for what she does.

DR. APRILE: It depends on the child. The second of my daughters used to say, “Mommy, why can’t we have dinner at 6 p.m. like everybody else?” They finally accepted these crazy hours that I had to live with.

Asking where the women are going:

DR. KING: I think the choke point is going from a postdoc to an assistant professorship to a tenure-track position. In my experience the largest remaining obstacle is how to integrate family life with the life of a scientist.

What they would say to their daughter about going into science:

DR. RABIN: The truth is that I feel differently. I think that the life of a scientist is a fantastic life. I think it is exciting because every day there is something new that you can go and think of. There are challenges, no doubt, and the times when you can’t solve things. So I think it is all a wonderful life. And not to mention even things like time flexibility, traveling around the world, meeting a lot of exciting people. I think that these are fantastic jobs.

This is the type of conversation I would have KILLED for as an undergraduate. The one faculty member I tried to have this conversation with rebuffed me. She was pretty old school, couldn’t go to Harvard with the men and it took me awhile to figure out why she wouldn’t address the gender issue. I don’t blame her either. When you build up a defense mechanism, it is hard to let it go.

What I love about the conversation are the differing opinions. As I tell my students, there are no firm answers. You gather up all the data you can and make the best decision you can. From this conversation, one can see that difference decisions all lead to some awesome science making.

Here’s some useful evidence that unions matter for women’s upward mobility. But quality of life is about security and justice as well as economics, and Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center on Economic and Policy Research, explains how so in a recent Guardian post, “Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the union maid.”

Fact is, DSK attacked a member of a labor union. She has protections that U.S. workers without a union do not. Without the protection of a union, would she have had the confidence to come forward? Here’s how Baker poses the question:

Housekeepers are generally among the lowest-paid workers at hotels, often earning little more than the minimum wage. It is a high turnover job, meaning that any individual housekeeper is likely to be viewed as easily replaceable by the management. If this housekeeper did not enjoy the protection of a union contract, is it likely that she would have counted on her supervisors taking her side against an important guest at the hotel? Would she have been prepared to risk her job to pursue the case?

This is no outlier. Today, the New York Times reports about a similar attack at another “high end” New York hotel:

The supervisor of a housekeeper at the Pierre hotel was suspended on Tuesday after she failed to report to the police the housekeeper’s complaint that she was sexually assaulted by a prominent Egyptian businessman, causing a 15-hour delay in the investigation.

As Baker mentions via a link to this New York Times article without union protections, hotel housekeepers recognize that they  “simply have to accept sexual harassment and even sexual assault as “part of the job”.

Baker has another agenda in his article worth noting.

The IMF has also urged western European countries to eliminate or weaken laws that prevent employers from firing workers at will. These laws, along with unions, are seen as “labour market rigidities” that prevent labour markets from operating efficiently.

So, workers can get fired at will. It is only “efficient.” Where’s the bias? Dean Baker is reminding us that hotel housekeepers can tell us.  You think efficiency arguments and “textbook” economics don’t serve the interests of power? Do the math.

–Virginia Rutter