As in,
them non-profit Packers, the one-and-only NFL team, and
by Dave Zirin's report, the only "major professional team in the United
States" to be owned by its fans.
"Volunteers work concessions, with sixty per cent of the proceeds going
to local charities. Even the beer is cheaper than at a typical N.F.L.
stadium. Not only has home field been sold out for two decades, but
during snowstorms, the team routinely puts out calls for volunteers to
help shovel and is never disappointed by the response. It doesn’t matter
how beloved the Cowboys are in Dallas; if Jerry Jones ever put out a
call for free labor, he’d be laughed out of town."
29.Jan.2011
Which part was confusing?
Clarence Thomas got a federal appointment-for-life relatively early in
his career, and his wife is no slouch either. Among her other employment
opportunities, the Heritage Foundation paid Mrs. Thomas $686,589 from
2003 to 2007. And on the legally required financial disclosure form
that Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States of
America are obligated to fill out, there's a section for
Spouse's Non-Investment Income. Seems pretty straightforward.
But
not for Justice Thomas who has had to admit that mistakes were made
in this most basic obligation of his high office. (No mention about
regrets for the appearance of impropriety. And never mind such crazy
advanced topics of
his conflict of interest in deciding last year's landmark Citizens
United case given his wife's founding the conservative legal group
Liberty Central in 2009 to oppose Obama's policies, or Thomas'
appearance at a private political retreat organized by Charles Koch, a
prominent conservative financier.)
Just filling out the form with date and source and type of his spouse's
non-investment income wasn't clear to him.
"I don't think that online classes are legitimate ..."
"There is no substitute for a classroom setting with structure, social
interaction, and a teacher. ..."
"You don't learn from online classes because you rush into it and do the
work at the last moment. ..."
"I took an online class and hardly remember learning anything from it.
..."
"Students forget the class as soon as they are done with it. ..."
"... you don't remember a thing you learned. ..."
"... I don't recommend it to anyone. ..."
And yes, there's one "positive" statement among the overwhelmingly
negative reviews:
"[Online courses] allow students to take a class that might not be super
important in a couple months span."
Like if you just needed a High School diploma (or B.S.) to check a box
on an application form or something.
Questions for Tom Luna
Not that we're keeping score or anything, but
none
for, and six against Luna's plan in today's Idaho Statesman.
Laptop questions from Janice Fenton:
"Will we also pay for their Internet? Will students who drop out get to
keep the laptops? What if they move? What if they lose them? They are
stolen? Dropped? Stepped on? Or simply crash? Will we replace them? What
happens if they show up on eBay or Craigslist?"
Sally Andrus Mitchell shared Luna's plan with her high
school students, "who are keen at seeing through lies adults tell them,
and got this question: But if students come first, why would he want
bigger class sizes?" And "But wait, isn’t creating more jobs a good
thing? Bigger class sizes would mean fewer teachers, so wouldn’t that
mean cutting jobs?"
And a question about the most revered cultural phenomenon in Boise, from
Brett Crow:
"Do you think that substantial replacement of personal guidance with
remotely provided online content delivery would improve performance
quality in athletic competition, given athletic intellectual needs from
rote facts to higher strategic thinking?"
Education conclusions
Yesterday's entry and the essay it points to were rather a blanket
condemnation of the Luna plan, and it occurs to me I should outline some
particulars.
Increasing class sizes will be counterproductive. If required to meet
the immediate financial exigency, it should be done as little as
possible, and with a limited duration.
Buying every 9th grader a laptop is not a wise use of state money. As
teacher Adam Phillips pointed out in
his
Sunday Reader's View, a shortage of technology is not a significant
issue at present.
Requiring students to take a certain number of credits
"online" for graduation is wrong-headed. The quality and effectiveness
of educational means must not be arbitrarily subordinated to cost.
Emphasis on pay-for-performance is distraction that is unlikely to do
much for Idaho students. Teachers (and administrators, for that matter)
should have fair and constructive evaluations, and be accountable for
their performance.
The Idaho Education Association is instrumental to the future of
education in this state and should be recognized as an ally, not
an enemy to be defeated.
Thanks to Dale Garrard's letter for a pointer to
The Tennessee Study of Class Size in the Early School Grades, which
provides some background our Superintendent seems to lack. Idaho's class
sizes for elementary schools reflect the understanding that yes, class
sizes matter. (And even Luna's plan acknowledged that fact, by exempting
grades K-3 from the proposed increase.)
26.Jan.2011
The future of education in Idaho
The debate over Tom Luna's
"Three Pillars for Customer-Driven Education" proceeds apace. His
plan to remake Idaho's system goes beyond a response to financial
exigency and into radical reinvention of government, putting at risk
one of the foundations of this country's greatness: public education,
available to all.
There is nothing "conservative" about the plan, but some number of the
state's reliably right political scene are happy enough with a plan to
kill the teacher's union, and maybe rack up some collateral damage to
boot.
Darrel
Deide's Reader's View in the Idaho Statesman gushes that
"there is nothing in this plan for taxpayers and consumers of public
education not to like!"
He apparently speaks for
Idahoans for Choice in
Education, a political action committee with a mission of allowing
parents to choose among public, public charter, private and home
schools. (Which they can do, so ... mission accomplished, eh?)
ICE-PAC's Board includes the inevitable Ralph Smeed (never mind that he,
um,
passed
away last September), who they say has often been called the "H. L.
Menckin [sic] of the West" in his defense of liberty, free markets,
limited government and secure property rights in Idaho.
I sent in a letter to the editor to the Statesman, and I'm guessing
there will be a steady stream of them, which, if they follow the pattern
of those who attended
last
week's Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee hearing, will find
a ton of things not to like in Luna's plan.
I guess the National Archives will be patting people down and
confiscating fountain pens after
this?
Thanks to acting chief of reference Trevor Plante for recognizing the
crime, and exposing the work of "historian" Thomas Lowry, trying a bit
too hard to make his mark on history. (Ironically enough, he has made a
name for himself, with a single character.)
We appreciate that Wisconsin, in 1854, sought to nullify the federal
Fugitive Slave Act, and draft northern states into service for the
south's peculiar institution. But still. The other cases do not stand
out on the right side of moral causes that I can see, nor have they come
out on the winning side in the Supreme Court.
I have not, ever, pledged allegiance to a state. I've followed state
laws, give or take, paid the taxes three of them have demanded from time
to time, served jury duty, voted, shared my opinions with my (and other)
legislators.
The trouble, as I see it, is that small groups of troublemakers without
the native ability to do something useful in their (actually rather
important) jobs are more interested in being in a parade and getting
publicity than the hard work of governance. Yes, states have a share of
"sovereignty," as does the federal government. But respect must always
be earned, not simply usurped, unless the decision is to be by force of
arms and might making "right." Idaho would lose that battle too, no
matter how many sunshine patriots with NRA decals on their pickup trucks
think another civil war would be jolly.
Update:
an assistant chief deputy in the Idaho attorney general's office offered
up his
opinion on nullification, reponding to a request from Rep. Bill
Killen (D-Boise). Shorter version: no.
24.Jan.2011
They should talk to Payette County!
Couple of
Italian scientists say they've turned lead into gold. Er, nickel
into copper. And a bunch of electricity coming out, too! Yes, that's
right, it's time for some COLD FUSION again.
And not just some stuff in a mad scientist lab with dodgy record-keeping
and missing neutrons, they say one reactor has been running
continuously for two years, providing heat for a factory, according to
the physorg news, and
"the scientists say that the reactor is well beyond the research phase;
they plan to start shipping commercial devices within the next three
months and start mass production by the end of 2011."
Too cheap to meter (almost, "less than 1 cent/kWh") and clean:
the reaction produces radiation (as one would expect from a nuclear
reaction) but "note that no radiation escapes due to lead shielding, and
no radioactivity is left in the cell after it is turned off, so there is
no nuclear waste." Tidy. They can't quite explain how the thing works,
but they know when they've got a good thing!
Equally tidy, since no peer-reviewed journal has accepted their paper,
"they published their paper in the Journal of Nuclear Physics,
an online journal founded and run by themselves."
"We have passed already the phase to convince somebody," Rossi wrote in
his forum. "We are arrived to a product that is ready for the market.
Our judge is the market. In this field the phase of the competition in
the field of theories, hypothesis, conjectures etc etc is over. The
competition is in the market. If somebody has a valid technology, he has
not to convince people by chattering, he has to make a reactor that work
and go to sell it, as we are doing."
Some kind of outlier, too, as the
graphic accompanying Charles Blow's
op-ed
shows, illustrating statistics for firearms and firearm homicides per capita,
and the fraction of homicides by firearm in 14 countries around the
world.
However we got to where we are, it stands to reason that if we have a
lot more guns than other countries, we'd have a lot more shooting,
and killing. Not that such conventional wisdom pervades our discourse on
the topic; you're more likely to encounter the belief that the more
guns, the safer we'll be, since more of the "good guys" will be ready to
protect themselves and others. Timothy Egan's
Myth of the Hero Gunslinger takes aim at the counterpoint with
particulars out of Tucson, and
one
of the highlighted comments in the Opinionater blog revists the
Western, citing Richard Harding Davis,
"later famous as a war correspondent, novelist, and adventurer, [who]
toured the west in 1891. He pointed out that there was more crime
and violence in New York City each day than there was in the whole west
in a year. Those out in sparsely inhabited places carried guns, but no
one was permitted to carry a weapon in town. Out-of-towners had to turn
in their firearms at the sheriff's office when they arrived in town, and
collect them when they left. Talking with old timers Davis concluded
that the Wild Wild West was mostly the Mild Mild West, and old west
gunslingers and outlaws stood out and were so well remembered because
there were so few of them."
20.Jan.2011
Delusions of grandeur
I guess Tom Woods' tome is this year's legislative "let's all read
the same book":
Nullification:
How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. Touted by Barry Goldwater Jr. (son of the one
you've heard of), and Fox News Channel's senior political analyst, who
refers to the "just say no" idea as "utterly" lawful.
I guess that makes it even more so.
Brought to my attention
by the Idaho Statesman today, I see that local firebrand of the
Capitol steps, Mountain Home's Pete Nielsen is yet again a featured
speaker, if late after the jump.
"The states created the Constitution and the federal government.
Why should the creature be more powerful than the creator when it comes
to deciding what the Constitution really meant?"
(Is it necessary to mention that Idaho's best minds had not yet been
assembled in the late 1700s, and did not participate in the Creation?)
The immediate context is looking for yet another way to defeat the
Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act, after yesterday's resounding and
inconsequential "repeal." Apparently waiting for the many court cases to
be decided, appealed, and ultimately dispatched by the Supreme Court is
just too boring to watch.
Perhaps we'll think back fondly to these rosy early days of the 2011
Idaho Legislature when the hapless solons are wailing about how long the
session is going. Yes, we can't wait for you to leave town, either.
You can hear Woods speak for himself
on NPR's "On
Point" last March. I like the part where he neatly summarizes that
"the left" have become "bureaucratizing freaks." Thank you for all
you've done for us, Von Mises Institute.
19.Jan.2011
Lax conscience
Last year, Idaho's legislature passed the so-called
Freedom of Conscience bill, SB1353. And our Governor did the least
courageous thing possible: let it become law without his signature.
It's not about your freedom of conscience, but rather health care
professionals' conscience, should they wish to deny you their
services.
It didn't take very long for someone to try it out. A pharmacist at
Walgreens in Nampa
didn't like the idea of filling a prescription for
Methergine, an ergot alkaloid used to prevent or treat bleeding from
the uterus that can happen after childbirth or an abortion.
Because... stopping bleeding violated his or her conscience? The
pharmacist reportedly "asked [the nurse practitioner] if the drug was
needed because of an abortion." As if that matters? As if federal law
doesn't preclude answering a question that shouldn't have been
asked?
It's an outrageous event, triggered by an outrageous law.
Fire for effect
No, it's not the report that 6 of 19 missed their mark, nor that the
president "was unhappy with the results, urging the military to improve
its training," the funniest line in
the
story about Taiwan lighting up some of their munitions is that
"The timing of Taiwan’s missile tests—a day before President Obama
and President Hu Jintao of China were to meet in Washington—was
widely seen as coincidental."
You don't say.
18.Jan.2011
Yes, it's probably a really bad idea
Back when
Windows Live
ID was known as Microsoft Passport (and before their
Hailstorm melted back to obscurity as
.NET), that company was touting the convenience and benefit of a single
login for all your web commerce needs. All those darn account and user
names and passwords to keep track of. It's too much! Except that, well,
things like your bank account and credit cards and bill paying are
rather important to you, along with the money changing hands to
keep it all going. So there was some tempering of enthusiasm to turn
that all over to the most ubiquitous (decidedly not most popular)
computer monopolist.
Yes it would be convenient, but maybe we'll just muddle along. Some
years pass...
And then last summer, good old Uncle Sam drafted a proposal for a
national strategy for trusted identities in cyberspace, in which he
would create options for enhanced online security and privacy. Well
maybe not him, how about if the private sector were to lead the
implementation? That's what White House Cybersecurity Coordinator
Howard Schmidt and US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke were talking about
earlier this month in Silicon Valley
Good idea, or bad idea?
The ACLU's take is that "it's possible that if all the stars lined
up perfectly, this 'online identity ecosystem' could be a good thing."
But really, how often do the stars line up perfectly?
"The involvement of the private sector in this non-centralized or
'federated' identity scheme is of course preferable to a direct,
centralized government-run identity system. That kind of a system would
be a non-starter. But we would also have questions about what the
private sector will do with this system. The interests and values of
large companies tends to push toward stability, security and
predictability—not toward the raucous freedom that online privacy and
anonymity makes possible. Once a standard is in place, will people have
to start identifying themselves everywhere online—even when it's
totally unnecessary."
Here's what the ACLU would be looking for in another draft:
"We would support a system that empowers individuals, not large companies
and government security agencies. That means a system that does not
create records of individuals' activities online, and does not force
them to reveal their identity significantly more often then they do now.
It would be a system that uses advanced encryption techniques to
expand the freedom and possibilities of what individuals can do
online—not to track and control them."
Martin Luther King Day
We are bound together
It might not stay up there on YouTube, what with copyright and all,
but I enjoyed the chance to hear and see James Taylor (and
friends) singing his song, Shed a Little Light. One of his
all-time greats, gives me chills every time I hear it.
And this remarkable piece in the Coeur d'Alene Press,
Zach Beck's apology "for the image of hate that I helped bring upon
this decent community." Both he and the culture he's in are a work in
process (as his return address, and the comments on cdapress.com
quickly show). A glimmer of understanding is the first step in a long
journey. In the prophetic words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper
darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out
darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love
can do that."
15.Jan.2011
Catching my breath
It was a busy campaign season, and I can't be expected to follow
every race in the country, so imagine my surprise when cleaning
out some old bookmarks, and considering a link buried in Timothy Egan's
Curse of the Scorned Class (worth reading) from back in September,
to this,
The Sound of Silence, offered by the once-appointed, and now elected
Governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer.
You might say "words fail."
And you might say that the bar must have been set pretty low.
The deep divide in American political morality
Whether you agree or disagree with my political views, can we at least
agree that we live in a time of disagreement? See how you feel about the
following statement:
Government has a proper and legitimate role in our lives.
If you think that's obviously true, you must be some kind of flaming
liberal. If you think that's laughably, obviously false, then you're
an anarchist. Or the mighty John Galt.
In between, there are those who merely pretend
that the very idea is ludicrous when it's convenient, and go ahead and
run (or manipulate) the government in a way that provides for their own
self-interest, or bloviate about the horrors of government on TV and
radio for entertainment purposes.
Paul Krugman is a regular target for such persons these days, but his
Tale
of Two Moralities provides what I think is a correct
description of where we've come to:
"This deep divide in American political morality—for that's what
it amounts to—is a relatively recent development. Commentators who
pine for the days of civility and bipartisanship are, whether they
realize it or not, pining for the days when the Republican Party
accepted the legitimacy of the welfare state, and was even willing to
contemplate expanding it. As many analysts have noted, the Obama health
reform—whose passage was met with vandalism and death threats against
members of Congress—was modeled on Republican plans from the
1990s.
"But that was then. Today's GOP sees much of what the modern federal
government does as illegitimate; today's Democratic Party does not. When
people talk about partisan differences, they often seem to be implying
that these differences are petty, matters that could be resolved with a
bit of good will. But what we're talking about here is a fundamental
disagreement about the proper role of government."
David Brooks has a slightly more upbeat take on where we sit, meditating
under the
Tree
of Failure, and identifying what's wrong with us. Civility, he
writes "is a tree with deep roots... of failure, sin, weakness and
ignorance." "A sense of personal modesty" ensues gratitude for a
political process that can produce better communal results than any of
us can on our own. Our current lack of civility comes from having been
persuaded that we're each and every one of us more special than we are
limited.
"The problem is that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a
culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that
encourages people to think highly of themselves.... Children are raised
amid a chorus of applause.... Athletes routinely celebrate themselves as
part of the self-branding process."
In keeping with his theme, he gives Reinhold Niebuhr the last word, and
I might as well do that, too:
"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore,
we must be saved by hope.... Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be
accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is
quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from
our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love,
which is forgiveness."
Invaders on the menu
A friend who studied at the University of Pennsylvania at the turn of
the 1980s shared a variety of stories about local culture, including the
fact that the problem of urban wild dogs was solved by an influx of
Vietnamese refugees. I think about that whenever I see a gaggle of
Canada geese in town. Times must not be really hard just yet,
with all those uncooked goose dinners still at large.
James Gorman's recent
Diet for an Invaded Planet piece notes that Jackson Lander's
Locavore Hunter blog
includes geese and pigeons as possibilities, but not zebra mussels ("too
little meat and too much salmonella"). My own diet includes the occasional
dandelion (definitely "all you can eat" for a good part of the year),
but we haven't been bringing in any invasive game. Yet.
(Lander's gone semi-viral,
says
he's going to be on
Michael Feldman's Whad'ya
Know? today.)
14.Jan.2011
The soul-crushing tyranny of entitlement
That charming phrase was in Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter's windup,
page 9 of his
2011 State of the State and budget address, which as
local commentators pointed
out didn't have a lot of "budget" in it. He looks toward "governance
that emboldens and frees individuals and communities from the
soul-crushing tyranny of entitlement."
Leading up to that, read his lips, no new taxes (except maybe $1.25 per
pack of cigarettes), and that it's going to be time to "turn [the
discussion] back to the family," to our communities, to personal
responsibility, and to do more with less, just like his daddy used to
say, when Butch was growing up in a family of 11 in southern Idaho.
Otter hearkened back to "our Mormon pioneers" and the Massachusetts Bay
Colony settlers, extending "community" perhaps toward communism... but
whatever, just don't ask government to pay for anything more.
In fact, following the model of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, he's rather
taken with
Marv Hagedorn's proposal to lower taxes dramatically even
though, unlike the federal government, we're not in a position to enable
that reform through deficit spending.
There is something like that, except just a short-term loan:
"a plan to eliminate the need to increase Idaho’s Unemployment Insurance
rates and stabilize the trust fund [by] issuing bonds to repay the
entire amount we borrowed and redeeming those bonds over four years."
We're going to pay back he funds by... getting a different loan, and
paying that loan back. Ok, so it's circular, at least the money is
moving around.
He did avoid last year's mistake, identifying specific programs he wants
to cut. This year, he's inviting the Legislature's "ideas for
eliminating whole programs that may fall outside the statutory or
constitutional responsibilities of State government." (See how
you like it when the people who want to keep the program com
after you!)
The Twin Falls Times-News has a suggestion for what needs an
increase: the State Police, which currently has
"exactly the same number of officers patrolling [Idaho's] highways as it
did 34 years ago." When there was a lot less traffic, and 40% fewer
people in the state.
He's the idea guy, doesn't actually paint himself. Maybe a little
Photoshop work, but he hires out the actual paint-to-canvas transfer to
apprentices who are happy enough for the job, apparently. Given the
contemporary art scene that we saw back in our 2003 visit, Zhou is
actually moving Art forward in China. Especially if you like Joe the
Camel send-ups. The scene was more industrial than artistic, with a
whole lot of painters copying one thing or another, and tourists being
led into "museums" and "studios" by Communist Party officials who ran
the store but knew pretty much nothing whatsoever about art; except,
perhaps, for what sells well.
"Mr. Zhou calls Joe Camel a likable character. But many in the art
industry here say it is more clever than that. Joe Camel, they say, is
the prototypical Westerner (Westerners are often referred to as 'big
noses' in China), but also Mr. Zhou's alter ego.
"His Joe Camel is a globe-trotter who likes to play in the Western art
world, wears dark sunglasses and does mischievous things, like inserting
himself, Zelig-like, into paintings of historical scenes.
"In creating his own brand, Mr. Zhou says he has beaten China's great
artists at their own game, and no one really seems to mind...."
Nice try, but no
Figures that a smear plot cooked up against the woman who profiled
the Koch brothers' funding of the Tea Party in The New Yorker
last summer would be half-baked. Accusations of the author's having
plagiarized a liberal blogger were
dismissed
by said blogger:
"Jane Mayer properly credited me in her story... She clearly did a ton
of her own research. I have nothing but admiration for her integrity as
a journalist."
The search for motivation can connect the dots between the
Daily Caller, a self-styled "24-hour news site" with original
reporting, most, best, wry and unvarnished conservative blather,
founded by Tucker Carlson and former Dick Cheney
aide Neil Patel, to Mayer's documentation of Cheney's latest visit to
the Executive branch,
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.
Not that Patel would have any unvarnished opinions about Ms. Mayer?
11.Jan.11
"Months" of troubleshooting? Really?
It appears that it was the 2004 tax forms from the IRS when I first saw
PDF "fillable forms" that allowed you to type into the fill-in fields,
save your form data in case you had to edit in multiple sessions, and
print. Way better than printing paper documents for tax forms and
filling them in by hand, which I'd been doing for years before.
Then the next year, our Idaho state tax forms had the same deal. Except
that you couldn't save the form data. You could type your name
and numbers and everything in, print a nice copy, and... throw away your
typing. If you had to edit something, just start over. Not only
annoying, it didn't make any sense. But oh well, it doesn't have to,
does it? After running into this a few times (including with
Wisconsin's tax forms), I complained to Adobe, figuring their product
pricing was to blame. The state's couldn't afford the "full" version of
Acrobat, maybe? No no, they told me that Acrobat allows you to go
either way, and it was apparently simply a user choice to make the form
data non-saveable.
Why would anyone choose that? (An answer occurred to me today:
because (a) it's the default, and (b) it's not easy/obvious enough to
change the setting, and maybe (c) Adobe invented the "fill in a form"
before someone had the bright idea of "hey, let's let people save the
form data," but they didn't think to change the default to the setup you
would want either 99.99% or 100% of the time.)
Absent a good reason, can you, um, change it to the other
way?
I asked that question of a company I do business with, when they
provided me with some PDF forms that were fillable but not savable. Can
they fix this, please? (I'm just sure I'm talking about a 2 to 5 minute
job.) Here's the answer I got:
"I consulted with a peer who helps with the forms... This is an issue we
are aware of and have been working to resolve since last year. After
months of troubleshooting to determine the cause, a work order was
submitted to resolve this issue. However, we do not have a date of
expected completion."
Words fail. (And so do the 2005 IRS forms, I just found out, going back
to the archives:
Descent into madness
Of course guns by themselves do not kill people. Barring accidents
(which apparently do happen), it takes someone to operate the machine.
And if we were to outlaw guns, only outlaws would have guns, so the old
saw saws.
They don't call it an "arms race" for nothing, and there's not much
question that the runners in this country have outdistanced the "hold on
just a minute" crowd, of which Gail Collins is one, as shown by her
op-ed,
A
Right to Bear Glocks?. While yes, "we should be able to find a way
to accommodate the strong desire in many parts of the country for easy
access to firearms with sane regulation of the kinds of weapons that
make it easiest for crazy people to create mass slaughter," no, we're
not going to talk about it much, because most politicians
are afraid of the NRA.
"Today, the amazing thing about the reaction to the Giffords shooting is
that virtually all the discussion about how to prevent a recurrence has
been focusing on improving the tone of our political discourse. That
would certainly be great. But you do not hear much about the fact that
Jared Loughner came to Giffords’s sweet gathering with a semiautomatic
weapon that he was able to buy legally because the law restricting their
sale expired in 2004 and Congress did not have the guts to face up to
the National Rifle Association and extend it."
Candidates for Republican National Committee were asked "how many guns
do you own?" and you know the person who answered "none" is no longer in
contention.
In spite of Arizona eliminating the requirement for concealed weapon
permits, there was not sufficient good guy firepower in the crowd to
stop Jared Loughner's desire for massacre; he was instead
tackled while reloading, apparently intent on another 30 shots.
And for those who will still insist that if only more good people were
walking around armed, we'd be safer, I have to ask if that's how it's
working in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Or maybe there just aren't enough arms
in those countries yet?)
And while we're talking about public policy, consider that if you think
mental health services are too expensive to maintain—as Pima Co.
did,
dropping
almost half its recipients off public rolls last year
—consider the alternative.
2011.01.10
Where transformation begins
Tragedy can bring a moment of clarity, of recognition of our shared
humanity, goals, purpose.... or not. It's been disappointing to read
partisans debate who all is responsible for fomenting the violence that
erupted in the mind of one young man in Arizona on Saturday, and led him
to kill six and wound 14 others.
Marc
Johnson's personal response is worth reading, as is the comment one
our mutual Facebrook friends made in reply, regarding the "getting to
the bottom of this American tragedy":
"The Buddha pointed out that ignorance and desire cause suffering. That
each of us causes our own suffering and has the power to choose not to
suffer. That there is an end to suffering and a path to that end. I'd
call this wisdom 'the bottom,' and I'd suggest that each of us, in our
own life, do all we can to replace ignorance with understanding and
desire with compassion. That's where transformation begins."
7.Jan.2011
Get me rewrite!
Most of us don't have good feelings about the Internal Revenue Service,
but they have a job to do, that others have mandated. And believe it or
not, one of their employees is an ombudsman, considering the interests
of taxpayers.
Nina E. Olson has some criticism of her own, "sweeping," according to
David Kocieniewski on the NYT, and calling for rewriting the tax
code. "The time for tax reform and tax simplification is now," she
says, and we say "hear, hear!"
"[T]he volume of the tax code had nearly tripled in size during the last
decade—to 3.8 million words in February 2010 from 1.4 million in 2001.
[Olson] estimated that Americans spent 6.1 billion hours preparing their
returns each year—the equivalent of 3 million employees working full
time...."
That equivalent of 3 million employees is about 50% more than the number
on the federal payroll: 2.1 million full-time workers.
Out of order
Barely edging above freezing down here in the valley, although the sun
is cheery.
Three thousand feet
above us, it's in the mid-40s. You could get a sunburn, probably.
No new snow for a week. We are tired of this inversion.
Saturday's forecast calls for maybe a little snow, and then colder
temperatures into the week. Please send us fresh air, so we can get
our lapse rate
straightened out.
Epiphany
Birther in the House
I have no idea how they decide who gets to sit in the big chair, but
it's clear they get to take turns, somewhat. Imagine my surprise in
seeing Idaho's Rep. Mike Simpson—my representative to
Congress, no less—whacking
the big gavel to call Order down upon the obstreperous House gallery
goer who attempted to insert her opinion about our President's
citizenship into the Veneration of the Constitution.
Ok, so he had to read the cue cards the Parliamentarian handed him, but
still. Local boy makes good!
If that little snippet of the public participation portion of the
Veneration was not enough for you, Jon Stewart gave a more complete
rundown on The Daily Show
tonight. Suffice it to say that much of the entertainment value was
unintentional.
But one thing, about that on-camera announcement of Honors' sacking
by USN Admiral John Harvey, Jr., there on the shelf behind the Admiral's
left shoulder. Thomas Ricks'
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq,
the 2006 report of America's
"misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly."
Michiko
Kakutani's review of the book in the NYT noted that
"many of the book’s most scorching assessments of the White House and
Pentagon’s conduct of the war come from members of the uniformed
military and official military reports."
Oh hello, speaking of the little-known Republican from northern New
Jersey, here's Rep. Scott Garrett in the second news story to
cross my desk today,
How Wall St.
execs bankrolled GOP victory. He figures into the story by
being
"slated to become the new chairman of the House Financial Services
subcommittee on capital markets, a key panel that has direct oversight
of the industry. A staunch foe of the regulation of Wall Street, Garrett
has threatened to cut funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission
and roll back some provisions of Dodd-Frank."
Sounds important. How much is that worth? Oh, about $195,800 from
executives at Elliott Management Corp. and their spouses late last
summer.
Let's pretend it just doesn't exist
A concept which works so well for a variety of "it"s. Remember the
deficit (as in, "THE DEFICIT!") last year? Right up until the end, when
there would have to be some actual sharing of the cost of doing
something about it, and then OMG, we can't raise any taxes!
As the 112th Congress swears its way in, we have a planned Veneration of
the Constitution by the Republican leadership of the House, extended to
include a rules requirement that all legislation submitted must include
"a statement citing as specifically as practicable the power or powers
granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the bill or joint
resolution."
In case any members have trouble finding the support they need,
get help, from
the
Federalist Papers, the Congressional Research Service's
Annotated Guide to the Constitution (which may not be able to keep
up with the workload), and your choice of think tanks.
Let's review Article 1 Section 8 of said Constitution:
"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts
and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and
general Welfare of the United States... [in many specific ways;] And To
make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into
Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this
Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any
Department or Officer thereof."
But wait! Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ, and founder and chair of the
Congressional Constitution Caucus) doesn't like that wishy-washy
catch-all "general welfare" and "necessary and proper" stuff.
That shouldn't be good enough, he says.
Constitution not good enough?! Or, "let's read it my way."
Word is, a conference meeting didn't see it his way, but stay
tuned, right after we're done swearing and reading.
4.Jan.2011
Making the world safe for plutocracy
Now that we've dispatched tax cuts for the rich for an election cycle,
how about
another round of union busting? Nothing quite like having the
working class duke it out amongst themselves for class warfare
entertainment. Never mind that "a raft of recent studies found that
public salaries, even with benefits included, are equivalent to or lag
slightly behind those of private sector workers." There's a lot of
misery in the workforce looking for company.
And never mind that the most privileged public employees—the
legislators slicing up the dwindling budget pie—are pretty much
immune to any hardship other than occasionally being pushed through the
revolving door to "retirement" and a career in lobbying.
New Jersey's politicos do better than many, it sounds like, making
"an art form of pension collection. Some politicians draw multiple
pensions as county legislators, called freeholders, and as prosecutors
or union leaders. Back in Washington Township, people tend to talk of
state government as a casino with fixed craps tables."
More fuel for the fire, off with their heads and everything, but don't
it always seem to go, the folks in charge are last in line for the
sacrifices? They watch the front lines of the battle through heavy
lenses.
Non-starter
Flush with electoral success and full of themselves, the House
Republican leadership's first act, supposedly responding to "the
American People," will be to...
repeal
last year's health care insurance reform law. W00t! That's the
ticket.
Never mind the cost of repeal: we'll just make
an
exception to the new "CutGo" playbook. (So soon?) And of course
never mind the mythical two-headed beast of
"bipartisanship"; their plan is to just "jam repeal down the throat"
(as they liked to say) of Democrats.
And the Democratic majority in the Senate, and the Democratic President
are going to... I don't know, laugh in your faces? Or maybe
have you stand up and be counted on the specific benefits you want
to eliminate?
3.Jan.2011
Don't breathe the yellow air
One of the most striking memories of
our trip to China in 2003 was the
hideously bad air quality in every region except while it was raining
(acid, no doubt), and when a strong cold front blew down out of
Mongolia and cleared the air around Beijing, temporarily. It made me
appreciate the phenomenal success of environmental protection laws in
this country, even as I wondered how much of their "externality"
crosses the Pacific Ocean and is shared with us.
George Will's Dec. 30 column brings surprising news: the flow of
coal in our neighborhood (more or less) is now flowing westward,
with plans to ship Wyoming coal out the Columbia River,
at a rate of
5 or 6 million tons a year. But that's relatively small potatoes:
the Powder River basin, in 17 surface mines, is now producing more coal
than all of the mines east of the Mississippi, according to
2009
stats from the EIA, and the quantity figured to move through Cowlitz
Co. is well less than 1% of the western total production, and haulable
with a couple unit trains a day. Every day. It would be enough to
supply... about one large electricity generation plant.
The James Fallows Atlantic piece that set Will off,
Dirty Coal, Clean Future, has the possibly hopeful preamble that
China is now the leader in new technologies that will make coal "more
sustainable." Highly recommended reading. I say "possibly" hopeful
because why aren't we in front of the technology curve? One
reason is that our environmental regulations have kept our air from
being that yellow, and reduced the acid content of our rain so
that it doesn't kill quite all the fish in downwind lakes. China is,
how shall we say, more visibly motivated, with 70% of their
rapidly growing electricity production from coal (versus about half in
the world as a whole). Whether it will be clean, dirty, or somewhere in
between, our future lies in a coal bed:
"Coal will be with us because it is abundant...
It will be with us because of where it's located...
It will be with us because its direct costs are in most circumstances
far lower than those of the alternatives...
It will be with us because its indirect costs, in miner
deaths, environmental destruction, and carbon burden on the atmosphere
are unregulated and 'externalized'...
"And it will be with us because of a surprising constraint: after a
century in which medical diagnosis and treatment, computer and
communications systems, aerospace and nanotech industries, and nearly
every other form of technology have routinely achieved the magical,
energy production is essentially what it was in the time of James
Watt."
Odds are, what innovation there is to be done will be done in
China, "a huge laboratory for deploying technology," because:
"In the search for progress on coal, like other forms of energy research
and development, China is now the Google, the Intel, the General Motors
and Ford of their heyday—the place where the doing occurs, and
thus the learning by doing as well. 'They are doing so much so fast that
their learning curve is at an inflection that simply could not be
matched in the United States,' David Mohler of Duke Energy told me."
"Starting in September, all high school students will be introduced to
new courses such as 'political training' and 'living skills' that
will warn against 'perverted political movements' and encourage girls
to marry at an early age, Education Ministry officials say."
Compare Idaho Rep. Steve Thayn's approach, eliminating public schools,
starting from the ground floor,
kindergarten.
You might say that those who have no clue about the past are destined to
wander off and get lost in the sagebrush.
2.Jan.2011
U.S.B! U.S.B!
Madam President
What better testimonial to Brazil's strong economy than an 87% approval
rating for their first working-class President, as Lula
hands over the reins to his annointed successor, "a former Marxist
rebel turned career technocrat," And their first woman president, to
boot.
From the brink of default, to pulling 20 million people out of poverty,
record low unemployment, the World Cup coming in 2014, and the Olympics
2 years after... maybe the United States of America should be taking
some pointers from the United States of Brazil, eh?
There are a few political flies in the ointment, however, as Andres
Oppenheimer included in his run down of "what really mattered" last
year, offering the subhead that
Brazil
becomes new headache for Washington, having "embraced Iran's regime"
and "[recognized] a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, which did
not include east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip or the West Bank."
Speaking of political divisions, Rousseff's inaugural speech
acknowledged that
"There is still poverty shaming our country. I will not rest while there
are Brazilians without food on their table, homeless in the
streets, and poor children abandoned to their luck."
Can you imagine? The U.S.A.'s cause célèbre at the turn of
the decade is how we extended the tax cuts for the richest among us for
two more years. The
megayacht drivers say damn the deficit, full speed
ahead!
As in,
There is nothing "conservative" about the plan, but some number of the
state's reliably right political scene are happy enough with a plan to
kill the teacher's union, and maybe rack up some collateral damage to
boot.
. Touted by Barry Goldwater Jr. (son of the one
you've heard of), and Fox News Channel's senior political analyst, who
refers to the "just say no" idea as "utterly" lawful.
A friend who studied at the University of Pennsylvania at the turn of
the 1980s shared a variety of stories about local culture, including the
fact that the problem of urban wild dogs was solved by an influx of
Vietnamese refugees. I think about that whenever I see a gaggle of
Canada geese in town. Times must not be really hard just yet,
with all those uncooked goose dinners still at large.
That's what
.
Not that Patel would have any unvarnished opinions about Ms. Mayer?
Most of us don't have good feelings about the Internal Revenue Service,
but they have a job to do, that others have mandated. And believe it or
not, one of their employees is an ombudsman, considering the interests
of taxpayers.
,
the 2006 report of America's
"misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly."
.
