sysprog quotes a letter from Katherine S. Newman pointing out the obvious, that FDR, arguably the most elite of all our presidents (see his family tree at Wikipedia, if you don't believe me, landed aristocracy back to the 1600s, IIRC) was the best champion the poor ever had in the White House.

But Newman is equally good on the not-so-obvious. Back when I was pretty much a full-time book reviewer, I reviewed her book, No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City, which was a detailed two-year study of more than 200 African-American and Latino fast-food industry employees in Harlem, supplemented by related empirical findings. One thing comes throgh quite clearly: the strength of desire these people--most of them young--have to work, in the face of considerable obstacles. Generally speaking, they cannot get jobs near where they live, even when there are openings. They are forced to travel for minumum wage jobs--at least a subway stop or two, or the equivilent--at the same time that the identical jobs in the white suburbs pay $2 more per hour, with help wanted signs out all the time.

Newman also makes it clear how much skill is involved in these so-called "low-skilled jobs." While it's true that most of the individual things they do are relatively low-skilled, that's not true of what's required to do it all in context under pressure as part of complex multi-member team. (Similar to how teams composed entirely of team players with strong "fundamentals"--basic skills--can outperform teams with high-skill high-stat stars, for example.)

Newman is just the sort of social scientist who patiently, with little fanfare, produces incredibly valuable insight into the workings of our social world that any government, any media, any political system truly interested in improving the lives of its citizens would treasure like gold. Instead, if she ever gets media attention, the rules of the game require that her painstakingly accumulated knowledge be "balanced" by some talking-point-packing blowhard from a rightwing think tank. Truth must be balanced by lies--that is, if it ever gets heard at all. Mostly, though, it's just talking points all the way down.

DCLaw1:

Without getting too into it, my main concern is how to administer such a standard.

Well, gosh. We had it for over 50 years. I'm sure someone took notes.

L.W.M:

When we spend months wondering about which of Anna Nicole's babies is Gödel's, it will be fast enough and Gödel will have finally arrived.

Alas, 'twill never be!

I fear that Anna Nicole has completely redifined the meaning of "essentially incomplete," with no assistance whatsoever from Herr Gödel.