Power + Isolation = Brain Damage

Once we become socially isolated, we stop simulating the feelings of other people.* As a result, our inner Machiavelli takes over, and our sense of sympathy is squashed by selfishness. The UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner has found that, in many social situations, people with power act just like patients with severe brain damage. “The experience of power might be thought of as having someone open up your skull and take out that part of your brain so critical to empathy and socially-appropriate behavior,” he writes. “You become very impulsive and insensitive, which is a bad combination.”

Of course, we live in an age when our most powerful people – they tend to also have lots of money – are also the most isolated. They live in gated communities with private drivers. They eat at different restaurants and stay at different resorts. They wear different clothes and skip the security lines at airports, before sitting at the front of the plane. We shouldn’t be surprised that they’re also assholes.

*I think this helps explain the public preference for politicians with ordinary preferences, or why Scott Brown kept on talking about his truck. And it also justifies Obama insistence on not becoming informationally isolated, whether that’s by reading ten letters from constituents every day or following a variety of blogs.

Frontal Cortex, via Andrew Sullivan

In The Good Years, Take From NYC. In The Bad Years, Take From NYC.

The 1^st lesson of Economics 101 is the rule of scarcity: An economy is faces with limited resources but unlimited wants and needs for these resources. But what happens when you have someone each year taking more and more of your resources? This is the dilemma New York City faces again.

The worst kept secret in state and city relations is we have given billions more to the State coffers than we receive back. We have essentially bailed out the entire state year after year. But now that we are in a recession and New York City is facing the brunt it, Albany has decided that there’s no better time to take more from us.  In Governor Paterson’s latest budget, there are more than $700 million dollars in cuts for New York City.

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg gave his preliminary budget for Fiscal Year 2011 (July 1^st, 2010 to June 30^th, 2011). It was a sobering account of what New Yorkers must face given the hurting economy and Albany’s shameless practice of taking more and more from the city.

Here are only some of the cuts New Yorkers will have to face:

• Proposed New York City Budget would be $63.6 billion.
• Teachers would receive a 2% raise on the first 70K of their salary (instead of the 4% original agreed on) or would 2,500 teachers would be laid off.
• Four pools will be closed and “pool season” is shortened by 2 weeks.
• A 24-hr Drop-In Homeless Center would be closed.
• 20 fire companies would be eliminated.
• 32 more schools would be without nurses
• The staff at the Administration for Children’s Services would need to take on greater caseloads.
• 934 layoffs would need to take place and more than 3,300 jobs lost through attrition would not be replaced (police, fire, sanitation and corrections would be exempt)

Can NYC Afford the Terror Trials?

Count me as someone who would philosophically like to see the 9/11 suspects tried in the former shadow of the World Trade Center. I think it would be powerfully symbolic to the world and illustrate the best principles of American justice in a time when that concept has withstood a serious test under the Bush administration. (I also believe that terrorists should treated as criminals rather than “enemy-combatants.”) And speaking for myself, a citizen who admittedly did not live in New York in 2001, but does spend each weekday in lower Manhattan, I do not believe we should allow the fear of further attack to influence decisions like this…

But reading an article like this, a good case is made that NYC simply cannot afford to have the trials held here, not because of cowardice (political or towards further attacks) but because budgets in New York State and City are looking pretty horrible these days. Should our budget and economic problems make New York pass up its chance to dole out justice for an act that disproportionately effected New Yorkers?

Bloomberg has previously estimated that providing security for the trials could cost up to $250 million per year. If the trials drag on, it is not unforeseeable the security price tag could hit $1 billion, a figure that doesn’t count the impact of that security on businesses and real estate values in lower Manhattan.

White House mulls moving terror trials out of Manhattan (Politico)

Awesome: 1.3 million watched SOTU via Whitehouse.gov

Awesome (via Mashable):

According to the White House blog, 1.3 million people watched U.S. President Barack Obama’sState of the Union speech live on the White House’s website — or at least on sites that embedded the official video. The White House also said that 50,000 people participated in a Q&A with officials on Facebook after the speech.

Less awesome (speaking for me only):

The Twilight Saga: New Moon red carpet event on Ustream actually had more live viewers than the State of the Union did on whitehouse.gov…

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

(Of course, we weren’t watching via WhiteHouse.gov, because we were at Tonic with DL21C [which was packed!], watching the SOTU on twelve gloriously humongous screens.)

Gas Drills Bring Gas Spills to PA – Don’t Let Them Come Here!

According to the investigative journalists of ProPublica, “as more gas wells are drilled in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, more cases of toxic spills are being reported”. The DEP in Pennsylvania discovered 13 violations from drilling company Atlas Resources in an 8 month period last year. Many of these violations were related to the spill of fluids due to the hydraulic fracturing process. Liquids released during this process are extremely harmful to people and the environment. They contain chemicals used in the hydrofracking process, including known carcinogens.

Altas Resources is just one of the companies that owns drilling rights in the Marcellus Shale, a broad area of gas deposits which stretches through New York State’s pristine waterways.  If PA is a test case, hydrofracking is definitely not safe for NYC water.

Want to help defend our water?  Join MYD’s Environmental Committee.

Did You Watch A Different SOTU, Rudy?

Rudy should have stayed up a little longer and watched the whole speech before going to bed for his morning TV appearance. In a post by David Kurtz from Talking Points Memo, David focuses on claims made by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the CNN morning show accusing President Obama of avoiding the discussion of terrorism and the Christmas Day bombing attempt during last night’s SOTU address. But exactly the opposite happened and thanks to some quick editing you can see Rudy make mistake after mistake:

In hindsight, his mind might have been otherwise occupied… He could have been focused on the incriminating article in last week’s Village Voice that ties him even closer to shamed former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik or maybe he was excited over an article in Wednesday’s Salt Lake Tribune making waves about a possible Mitt-Ruby campaign ticket - but criticizing before fact-checking is no way to rekindle your national political prospects.

It does make for great video, though.

Administration Does Not Support 9/11 Health Bill

The Obama administration stunned New York’s delegation Thursday, dropping the bombshell news that it does not support funding the 9/11 health bill.

The state’s two senators and 14 House members met with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just hours before President Obama implored in his speech to the nation for Congress to come together and deliver a government that delivers on its promises to the American people.

So the legislators were floored to learn the Democratic administration does not want to deliver for the tens of thousands of people who sacrificed after 9/11, and the untold numbers now getting sick.

“I was stunned — and very disappointed,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who like most of the other legislators had expected more of a discussion on how to more forward.

“To say the least, I was flabbergasted,” said Staten Island Rep. Mike McMahon.

The 9/11 bill would spend about $11 billion over 30 years to care for the growing numbers of people getting sick from their service at Ground Zero, and to compensate families for their losses.

Daily News

Director Applications Due Tomorrow!

Just a friendly reminder that that MYD Director Applications are due tomorrow!

We look forward to building a fantastic team this year and encourage everyone to apply.

All the info is HERE

Idealist.org: Support It or Lose It

Idealist.org, the best resource for non-profit jobs, volunteer opportunities and pretty much everything having to do with “doing good” in New York could be the next victim of the recession. Idealist sent out an appeal earlier today:

Very briefly, here’s what happened. Over the past ten years, most of our funding has come from the small fees we charge organizations for posting their jobs on Idealist. By September 2008, after years of steady growth, these little drops were covering 70% of our budget.

Then, in October of that year, the financial crisis exploded, many organizations understandably froze their hiring, and from one week to the next our earned income was cut almost in half, leaving us with a hole of more than $100,000 each month.

That was 16 months ago, and since then we’ve survived on faith and fumes, by cutting expenses, and by getting a few large gifts from new and old friends. But now we are about to hit a wall, and that’s why we decided to ask.

If you’ve ever found a job, posted a job, found an internship or used Idealist to learn about the non-profit world, it’s time to give back, even if you can only give $5 or $10. Without it, many local organizations in our city will suffer.

Donate to Idealist.org here.

Is New York City’s Democracy Too Complicated?

Matt Yglesias, in a response to Larry Lessig’s ideas about campaign finance reform – mentions the difference between a Democracy in a place like Toronto and here in NYC. He has a point. Being a good electorate in NYC is harder than it is possibly anywhere else – and with election turnout as low as it was this past fall, this complexity is probably at least partially at fault for voter disengagement..

Consider, for example, America’s staggering quantity of elected officials. If you live in Toronto, you vote for a member of the Toronto City Council, you vote for a member of the Ontario Parliament, and you vote for a member of the Canadian Parliament. That’s one large Anglophone city in North America.

What happens in New York City? Well, you’ve got a city council member, a borough president, a mayor, a public advocate, a comptroller, and a district attorney. You’ve also got a state assembly member, a state senator, an attorney-general, a state comptroller, and a governor. Then at the federal level, there’s a member of congress, two senators, and the president. That’s sixteen legislative and elected officials rather than Toronto’s three. New Yorkers don’t have three times as much time in their day to monitor the performance of elected officials. Instead, New Yorker elected officials simply aren’t monitored as closely. That creates more scope for corruption. What’s more since campaign money has diminishing marginal returns, the proliferation of elected makes money matter more than it otherwise would.

A big country like the United States is never going to have public officials who are as well-monitored as the ones in a place like Denmark. But we make the situation much, much worse by proliferating the quantity of elected officials to the point where most people have no idea what’s happening. How many people can name their state senator? How many people know what things their school board has authority over and what things their mayor decides? And this is all without considering the absolutely insane practice of electing judges.

For Less Voting (Matt Yglesias @ Think Progress)

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