Cogitamus

Wednesday Open Thread

 

"Marie Marie" and "American Music" - The Blasters

Crazy schedule continues -- heading to Richmond -- new college basketball capital of America -- in about thirty minutes.  Hope to write tonight.

Atrios beat me to mocking Tom Friedman on his notion that there must be boots put on the ground in Libya.  But not our boots.  (I should have posted Nancy Sinatra.)  God, he's a glib and fatuous fuck.  The bottom line is that the fate of Libya -- and I think even those who favor the liberal interventionist claim in Libya would agree -- and the future of other middle eastern countries lies in the hands of their own people. 

Gotta run. 

In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves.   

Screw the Cheating: It's a Statistical Experiment. Was It Designed Well?

Matt Yglesias, who apparently sees cheating as the scope of the problems with testing, says, "I hope that people who are skeptical about the possibility of measuring school performance will spell out in greater detail what they think the implications of this view are."

First, though, let's talk about the implications of doing testing badly, and how difficult it is for the persons responsible for it to do it well.

Hopefully, the implications of doing it badly are obvious: you boost the pay of teachers and principals who really aren't any better than anyone else, you fire those who aren't any worse, and you drive teachers out of the profession who have enough intellectual honesty and awareness to see what's going on and simply not be able to stand it.

Then the question becomes, is it reasonable to expect school administrators to come up with testing programs that are only used to measure what they can actually measure with some reliability?

I'd say it can happen, but it's not a reasonable expectation.

In the words of seminal statistician R.A. Fisher, "To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of."  And to reach conclusions based on testing is to conduct a statistical experiment.

It seems simple enough: we'll reward teachers if their students' scores go up, and penalize them if the scores go down. What could go wrong?

What couldn't?

For one thing, do we know how much a class's scores tend to bounce around in a testing regime where carrots and sticks aren't remotely on the horizon?  In other words, what's the variance of these scores?  Because if you don't know that, you don't know whether a better number from one year to the next, or a difference in scores between one teacher and another, is likely to be an artifact of better teaching, or could be well within the realm of statistical chance.

Take something non-controversial: I just flipped a coin 30 times, getting heads 18 times.  Then I flipped it another 30 times, getting 13 heads.  Did the coin's performance get worse, or better, depending on whether we view heads or tails as the desired outcome?  Of course not!  The coin is the same coin, but the measurement we derived of its performance sure looked different: 18 heads v. 13, in 30 tries. 

But is the difference statistically significant?  No, it isn't; it's an artifact of chance.  And if you reward or punish teachers for chance variations in their classes' test scores, that's going to be counterproductive.  So the first thing that you want to do is make sure you've got enough prior data to be able to compute variances.  The second is that you want to be able to keep your administrators from making carrot/stick decisions on the basis of differences that aren't statistically meaningful.

In how many school systems do you think they even thought about that first criterion before implementing high-stakes testing?  And even if they did, how likely do you think it would be, in general, for the stat wonks (if the school system kept any in house, instead of just contracting out the occasional statistical issue) to keep the administrators from making decisions on what look like big differences in test scores, but that are not statistically significant?

Good luck with that.

After your school system jumps through that hurdle, it's got a bunch more.  You'd like to compare one teachers' performance one year with the same teacher's performance the next year.  You'd also like to be able to compare different teachers in the same year.  You can compare test scores straight up, but how do you know you're really measuring differences in teaching quality, rather than something extraneous, like the affluence of the students' families, the quality of their teachers in earlier grades, and so forth?  I think that given enough time and resources, I could set up an evaluation system that would at least somewhat control for a lot (but probably not all) of this stuff: you could compute mean scores for students from different neighborhoods, you could do year-to-year comparisons on a student-by-student basis (but you'd run up against the fact that a decent number of students, each year, would have been in some other school district the year before), and so forth. 

But this would take a serious commitment to statistical wonkitude on the part of the school administrators.  And while some of them would have it, most wouldn't, or would want to but not have the resources, or would face resistance from other political actors. 

In short, it's hard to see that this is something we'd do particularly well as a society, even under the best of circumstances. 

And even if we designed the testing program as a good statistical experiment, and eliminated any traces of cheating from the system, you still have the problem that Stephen emphasized: that of teachers gaming the system by spending far more time than we'd wish preparing kids for the specific knowledge covered by the tests, and in teaching test-taking skills.  In other words, wasting a good chunk of your kid's school year so that the teachers can get good evaluations. 

Maybe testing can be made to yield some useful benefits, but I really don't see how it will be possible anytime soon.

Maybe We Should Care About More Than Test Scores

Somehow I'm not shocked that someone has found something weird with Washington, DC's school district test scores under Michelle Rhee:

A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.

Basically, the schools in DC that improved the most under Rhee also had extremely high erasure rates.

On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.

"This is an abnormal pattern," says Thomas Haladyna, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who has studied testing for 20 years.

The plain fact of the matter is that when standardized test scores are the major, if not only, measure of a teacher's performance - especially if those test scores are tied to either a bonus or termination - teachers are going to game the system.  The most common way to to that is to sacrifice education for test prep.  My daughter's teacher has been doing that for over a month now. I don't blame her, and it's not as if she's only teaching the test.

Another way, of course, to game the system is to cheat.  Surely there are teachers and principals doing this.  Perhaps there are groups of teachers conspiring together to bring up their entire school's average.

It's also possible, of course, that certain superintendents and chancellors, especially those who have made their careers as "crusading reformers" who "get things done," have decided not to trust their teachers and students to get their scores high enough to justify their reforms.

It would be irresponsible to suggest that Michelle Rhee falsified test results as the DC schools Chancellor.

But I hope they nail her to the fucking wall.

Monday Open Thread

 

"Laredo" - Band of Horses

Share your thoughts and links -- I lost a more substantive post earlier -- twice -- and can't really take time to try to recreate it.  So frustrating.

Hopefully will write this evening.    

Everybod Pay Attention To Bart Erhman

HEY HEY, LOOK AT ME!  I'M BART D. ERHMAN!  I'M AN ICONOCLAST!  WHEE, WHAT WILL I SAY NEXT THAT TEARS DOWN YOUR MOST CHERISHED BELIEFS!?!

The above is really the best summary that one could give of Erhman's latest column (written in support of his latest book), but since most, if not all, of you will have no idea of who he is, perhaps I should provide some more context.

From his writings I have come to the conclusion that Erhman is the type of professor/scholar that goes far beyond the normal and appropriate role of one who challenges her/his student in their beliefs.  Erhman is that type who enjoys the role of iconoclast so much that instead of merely asking uncomfortable questions and requiring that students prove their long-held beliefs - as well as knocking down those for which there is no proof at all - he has moved into drawing conclusions, declaring that "this is not so" and "this is so" when there is still too much of a controversy to be able to do so.

Erhman's latest shtick is that many of the books of the New Testament were not actually written by the persons traditionally granted authorship.  Much of the Pauline corpus was not written by Paul, John's by John, etc.  This is hardly shocking to anyone in the field.  Erhman's hook, though, is that this makes much of the New Testament based on LIES LIES LIES:

[H]ere is the truth: Many of the books of the New Testament were written by people who lied about their identity, claiming to be a famous apostle -- Peter, Paul or James -- knowing full well they were someone else. In modern parlance, that is a lie, and a book written by someone who lies about his identity is a forgery.

The "modern parlance" bit is a huge tip-off that Erhman is not doing responsible scholarship.  In fact, he's wrong about the "modern parlance" bit.  What he should have said - would have said were he a better scholar - is that in "modern Western parlance" it's a lie.  There's also the fact that Erhman is accusing anyone who uses a psuedonym of forgery, which would decimate the required reading lists of high school and college English courses.

The standard explanation is that ancient peoples had different ideas of what constitutes a lie versus the truth, and that it wasn't considered a big deal for someone who considered themselves a member of a school of thought to publish under the name of that tradition's founder.  Erhman attacks this, saying

Scholars may also tell you that it was an acceptable practice in the ancient world for someone to write a book in the name of someone else. But that is where they are wrong. If you look at what ancient people actually said about the practice, you'll see that they invariably called it lying and condemned it as a deceitful practice, even in Christian circles. 2 Peter was finally accepted into the New Testament because the church fathers, centuries later, were convinced that Peter wrote it. But he didn't. Someone else did. And that someone else lied about his identity.

I can't be the only person who figures the Huffington Post had enough spare bits and bytes lying around for Erhman to be able to provide one shred of supporting evidence for this claim.  Perhaps his book is full of this evidence and he didn't want to give it away for free, but even then he could have made some mention of it.

But that's Erhman's way.  He is an iconoclast with a fundamentalist mindset:  this is not so simply because I declare it not to be so.

Sunday Open Thread

 

"Thunder on the Mountain" - Wanda Jackson

Great cover of a Dylan tune by the "Queen of Rockabilly" ably assisted by Jack White.  (So we've got a 73-year old singing song written by a then 65-year old Dylan -- senior citizens have gotten so cool.) 

- I was sorry to see that yesterday will be Bob Herbert's last day with the New York Times.  There was a time, pre-recession, that I found Herbert's work generally agreeable but not all that scintillating.  In recent years, though, I have found him to be a voice of passionate sanity in a world gone mad.  I think he has been more or less unique in major newspapers -- and in this way different even then Krugman or Meyerson or other good lefty voices -- in his focus on the tragedy that is afflicting the least among us economically,  He will be sorely missed.  Even if he isn't a bitchy, flightly gadabout, who can barely look past his own navel, unless it is to focus on people distant enough to be abstractions.  

What's happening with you?
 

Friday Open Thread

 

KMAGG YOYO - Hayes Carll

(A military acronym for "kiss my ass guys, you're on your own.")  I blame Joe and his fellow subversives in the academy for the fact that now even our country musicians write songs against our most excellent wars.  What happened to my country right or wrong?  (It occurs to me as well that Dylan might have a cause of action for the ripping off "Subterranean Homesick Blues" -- but there are a lot worse things from which to steal artistically.)

Still a little foggy-headed from day tripping to Roanoke yesterday.  Left the house at 5:30 AM and back at 9:00.  (God I hate the early move to Daylight Savings Time -- two hours of driving in the dark in the morning is just not fun.)  But got to meet and have a much needed late afternoon coffee with our friend Jeanne Marie and her husband.

-   To follow up on Stephen's post of yesterday, I find it amazing that in light of the recent census data showing that there are now 50 million people of Hispanic descent in the country -- roughly 16% of the population -- that the Republicans continue down the path of suicidal nativism. The Hispanic population of the United States grew by 43% in the last decade and accounted for more than half of the nation's population growth.  The population of those who describe themselves as "white only" increased by 1% during this time period, dropping from 69% of the country's population to 64%.  Over 23% of people under 18 in the U.S. are Hispanic, and over half of the children in California.  Hispanic voters have a widely negative view of the GOP these days and I have seen recent polls suggesting that in the 2012 presidential election that Republicans at this point can only count on receiving about 16% of the Hispanic vote and about 1% of the black vote.  Pretty amazing stuff.  And no, I don't think the white vote is going to rescue them.

It's fascinating to watch a party so committed to believing its own bullshit -- so convinced that it represents a majority world view -- that it can't really begin to recalibrate either its rhetoric or policy positions.

Should be an interesting thing to watch unfold over the next decade.

What's on your minds?   

It's Racism. It's Always And Only Racism

Conservatives will do anything, say anything about anyone in order to get their way:

A metropolitan Phoenix school district has launched an inquiry into a substitute teacher who wrote a letter that portrayed Hispanic students in a harsh light and was read aloud last week at the Arizona Legislature during a debate on an immigration bill.

The Glendale Elementary School District said it has determined that some statements by teacher Tony Hill in his letter to Senate President Russell Pearce were inaccurate.

In the letter, Hill said a majority of the eighth-graders he had recently taught at a Glendale school had refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance and declared that Americans had stolen their land. Hill also wrote that while substitute teaching in the area, he came to believe that "most of the Hispanic students do not want to be educated but rather (want to) be gang members and gangsters."

The letter quickly inflamed the immigration debate in Arizona. A Republican in the Legislature read the letter on the Senate floor during the immigration debate. Democrats expressed suspicion that it was a hoax that had no place in the public debate on immigration.

District spokesman Jim Cummings said all students questioned in the inquiry have said everyone stood for the pledge and that none said their land had been stolen. "What we are finding here — and what we believe — is that the statements that he made weren't accurate," Cummings said.

After the completely unprincipled Tony Hill decided that it would serve his ideological goals to libel the students he taught, the Republicans in the Arizona state legislature gave a profound example of how conservatives will also believe anything, no matter how ridiculous, if it confirms their worldview and/or advances their agenda.

Anyone with the slightest degree of intelligence - and without the massive levels of pure racism and nativism that courses through conservatives' veins and causes their malformed synapses to erratically misfire - could see that the letter was in no way true.

Children in eighth grade don't go around talking about the freaking reconquista* or the glories of a resurgent Aztlan.  They don't refuse to stand for the pledge of allegiance.  While there are certainly many discipline problems in our nation's junior highs, there are very concrete ways for schools to deal with misbehavior.  This means that students are going to misbehave when they feel that the benefits outweigh the consequences.  The number of young teenagers who feel that the benefits of making highly-charged political statements to a substitute teacher outweigh the consequences is vanishingly small.

If all that wasn't enough, the line, "most of the Hispanic students do not want to be educated but rather (want to) be gang members and gangsters" should have sealed the deal.  That's shockingly obtuse, and I say that as someone who has had to boot trolls from a comment board.  It's extremely racist, a textbook example of how conservatives/racists - should we use separate words to describe them anymore?  It's not like you find the first without the latter - have to create a world in which everyone different from them is a criminal.

It's not the fringe, it's not just elected officials or interest groups.  Every single conservative in the USA, with the exception of pretty much just statistical noise, has gone insane with rage and hatred: at women, at non-white races, at liberals, at foreigners, at poor people, at non-Christians, and on and on, world without end.

 

*My wife purchased Rosetta Stone software for Spanish.  She's been doing the lessons and listening to the audio CD in the car.  She recently took her team out to lunch, they saw the cd, and expressed surprise that she would feel it necessary to study Spanish at all. A few of them made comments about "they need to learn our language."  When she told me that she had troubled making them understand why she would want to learn it, I said that she should tell them that because I'm a native New Mexican, the many, many illegal immigrants that I know have assured me that when the reconquista happens and Aztlan is formed as a subsidiary of Mexico, I will be granted citizenship and given 40 acres and a burro, even though I'm a white boy.

Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) - RIP

 

From "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" - one of my all time favorite movies.  Sad to hear of the passing of Elizabeth Taylor, who was not only stunningly beautiful, but, as the above clip shows, could really act.

The subhumans at the Westboro Baptist Church are planning on picketing her funeral.

Wednesday Open Thread

 

"The Fightin' Side of Me" - Merle Haggard

(This one's for our friend Joe S. -- I couldn't resist this -- it's not argument from authority; it's argument by Merle.)

I've been in meetings and on the phone all day.  What's happening out there? 

Unions - Not the Cause of State Pension or Fiscal Woes

There was a good article this weekend in the Washington Post about the State of Virginia, where collective bargaining for public employees is illegal.  And yet, lo and behold, Virginia 1) provides a defined benefit pension plan for its employees and 2) that pension plan is significantly underfunded.  (The state employees pension fund is about 74% funded and the teachers pension fund is about 69% funded -- pretty normal for pension plans at this moment.)  This in turn seems illustrative to me of two points -- first, that offering people pensions as a way of attracting them to state employment is pretty much the norm, even in a non-unionized environment; and second, that pension plans are underfunded pretty much across the board, be they private or public, the product of collective bargaining or not. And it's that latter point that just doesn't seem to be getting communicated to people.  Pension funds are underfunded not because of unions and their rapacious demands -- they are underfunded because the investment returns of the last decade have sucked.  It's that simple.  Well that and the fact that some states have shortchanged their contributions to the plans in order to make their balance sheets look more favorable. 

At the risk of being repetitive, pension plans are funded based on the assumption that they will have long term annualized earnings of approximately 7% to 7.5%. (CALPERS, the primary California state employee pension plan is a little more optimistic -- they use 7.75%).  In order to achieve these results plans typically hold at least half of their assets in stocks.  So when the broad stock market is negative -- as it was in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2008 -- by 37% alone in 2008 -- and when it is cumulatively negative for a nine year period, as it was from 2000 through 2008 -- pension plans will not be able to meet their funding targets.  It's just not possible.  But, contrary to what some have been claiming, these assumptions are not historically unreasonable -- we've just lived through a period of extraordinarily bad markets.   

The thing is, though, unions have had virtually no impact on pension plan funding as is illustrated by the example of Virginia.  Yes, there are the odd police and fire pension plans where abuses occur -- usually related to disability claims or manipulation of overtime -- but they in no way explain the existence of funding problems.  Pension plans will return to sound health when markets have recovered sufficiently to make up these shortfalls -- a little inflation and higher interest rates would help.  In the meantime, most places, again whether unionized or not, will find it necessary to trim future benefit obligations and to increase the amount of money put into the plans, whether via the state or through employee contributions to help bring liabilities and assets into balance.

Similarly, the presence -- or absence -- of unions does not explain state fiscal problems.  They stem plain and simply from the recession and, again, have affected states with both strong unions and no unions at all.  Revenues are down because income is down, property values are down, and sales were down, attacking the three sources of revenue typically available to states.  At the same time, expenditures on things like unemployment insurance and Medicaid have gone up.  Put people back to work and resolve the mortgage crisis and state finances will largely take care of themselves.  Unfortunately, the requirement that states balance their budgets is prompting layoffs and large scale expenditure cuts, just the opposite of the expansionary policies that should be dictated by the recession.   If we had a decent news media -- especially in television -- these facts could be conveyed to the public in an easily understandable fashion.  Instead, however, there seems to be a deliberate attempt to misinform the audience while stoking resentment and confrontation.  It makes for good television I guess, but lousy public policy and an ill-informed electorate.           

Tuesday Open Thread

   

"The Dirty Jobs" - The Who

Sorry for the lack of substantive writing.  The legal gig is going full tilt and the home front has been rather busy as well.  I've got a couple of things in progress that I hope to get posted today. 

In the meantime I found this item in Media Matters regarding Glenn Beck even more infuriating than usual.  It describes Beck mocking the idea that Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered while advancing the cause of public employee collective bargaining -- which, of course, is exactly what King was doing at the time -- trying to aid striking sanitation workers in Memphis.  And there isn't anything about this that strikes me as terribly amusing.

As cited in the article:

Though deeply committed to a program of freedom for Negroes, he had love and concern for all kinds of peoples. He drew no distinction between the high and low; none between the rich and the poor. He believed especially that he was sent to champion the cause of the man farthest down. He would probably say that if death had to come, I am sure there was no greater cause to die for than fighting to get a just wage for garbage collectors. [Benjamin Mays' eulogy of Martin Luther King, 4/9/68, via Bates College]

One of the things I most object to in the ritualization of required King veneration is that they have written the man's radicalism out of the picture.  MLK was very much a man of the left, a social democrat through and through, and someone who was moving ever more in this direction at the time of his death.  His support for the Memphis sanitation workers and the "Poor People's Campaign," his final substantive movement work, were illustrative of his deep concern for economic as well as racial justice.

I know that violence in advancing political argments is wrong, and violence carried out in the name of MLK. would be especially wrong, and yet, if presented with the opportunity I would surely punch Glenn Beck in his smug and idiotic face.  And would enjoy it. 

Whose ass do you want to kick today? 

Bitch Set Me Up

David Prosser, a member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, whose re-election bid is becoming a possible proxy fight for those opposing Governor Scott Walker, admits calling the Court's Chief Justice, Shirley Abrahamson, a "total bitch."  But, naturally, she totally had it coming to her because she (and coincidentally another female justice on the court) "are masters at deliberately goading people into perhaps incautious statements." (I linger here for a moment on the "perhaps.")  Thus, Prosser's statements are merely the product of "bullying and abuse of very, very long standing" by these two bitches in black robes. 

I'm not sure how this will play in Sheboygan. 

I see a bright future for the former justice addressing men's rights conventions.   

Monday Open Thread

 

"Young Adult Friction" - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Ah, the rain has finally stopped here for a moment.  Woke to thunder and lightning this morning.  It didn't exactly make me want to hop up out of bed. 

- It seems to me that now that the U.S. along with its European allies has embarked on military action in Libya, there is little choice but to make sure that Qaddafi is deposed.  And this again leads to a question regarding the wisdom of taking what Jeffrey Goldberg rightly describes as a "seventh-tier problem" for the U.S. and elevating it well beyond the scope of any rational national self-interest.  It also once again reinforces the notion of military intervention as the solution to a host of ills, a tendency that just doesn't need to be reinforced at this time.  Oh, and it's expensive.

- The amazing anti-union push by Republicans in the industrial Great Lakes region continues unabated, with Indiana once again on the front lines.   As I've noted earlier, I would guess that Republicans generally pull about 40% of the vote of union households in places like Indiana -- probably a little higher among union members who are in the building trades or the police and fire services.  I've got to believe that these direct and aggressive attacks against people's livelihoods is going to translate into a precipitous drop in Republican support in these households, something that I believe is going to be of enormous consequence in 2012 throughout the region.  

- On a lighter note, I saw both Limitless and The Lincoln Lawyer this weekend. Both were rather entertaining as long as you don't overthink them.  Since I was deeply in the mood not to think I enjoyed them both. 

What 's going on out there?      

Sunday Open Thread

Hey, Broder didn't say anything stupid this morning!

But even without looking, I have faith that George Will took up the slack.

The coffee's good this morning, and the sunrise was pretty.  How's your Sunday so far?

Saturday Open Thread

 

"A Certain Girl" - Warren Zevon

Time to lighten up a bit -- there's only so much bad news I can take.  It's a Friday night and it was 75 degrees here today.  [That's 24 degrees Emma ;-) ]  Felt like Spring for sure and this seemed like the perfect song for the occasion.

What's on your minds? 

The Case FOR Classifying WaPo Columnists

Ezra, arguing against such classification, says: "my bigger problem with this system [] is not how we categorize writers, but what those categorizations say to readers."

Exactly.

Take this morning's breakdown, for instance. 

The 'right-leaning' columnists are Charles Krauthammer, Marc Thiessen, Michael Gerson, and George Will - unabashed, full-throated conservatives all, with at least a couple of them so far right that their connection with reality is in doubt.  When the WaPo gives you conservatism, it doesn't mess around; it gives it to you with both barrels.

The 'left-leaning' columnists, on the other hand, are Ruth Marcus, Richard Cohen, Harold Meyerson, and Jonathan Capehart.

I'm unfamiliar with Capehart, but consider the other three: of them, only Meyerson could be characterized as an unabashed liberal.  Marcus is a centrist who's been auditioning for years to be the next Broder (and hey, the position just opened up!), and Cohen's just plain worthless, an embarrassment to whatever side he's associated with.  Incidentally, he's barely left of center, if at all.  But mainly, he's the sort of columnist you'd prefer to have embarrassing the other side by his rhetorical presence.

So that's the 'left-leaning' lineup: one genuine liberal, one centrist, one worthless sack of shit, and one unknown quantity.  Versus four unequivocal advocates of the right-wing point of view.

As Ezra says, these characterizations say a great deal to readers - in particular, they highlight the editorial (lack of) balance of the 'liberal' Washington Post.  I, for one, am glad the WaPo has chosen to spell this message out so unequivocally.  They have done their readership a great service by doing so.

We Could Use Some Dem 'Employment Hawks.' Where Are They?

Like everyone else here, I'm pretty damned tired of almost invariably bogus 'deficit hawks.'  But since the hawk-v.-dove meme doesn't seem to be in any danger of dying out, it would be nice if our side used it to be hawkish on our most urgent national problem.

So, elected Dems, how about it?  Can we have some employment hawks, some jobs hawks, some put-Americans-back-to-work hawks?  Why isn't pretty much the whole party, minus a handful of incurable Business Dogs, composed of employment hawks? 

Maybe if you guys put on at least a decent pretense of caring about the problems that most deeply concern most Americans, you might pick up a few votes.

That's my rant for this Friday; what's yours?  Consider this an open thread.

Thoughts On Libya

-As Atrios says, it's good that wars are always free; otherwise our current budget crisis might put a crimp in any plans to wage war in Libya.

-Let's just say that I share John's skepticism about whether A) the Arab League will do jack shit about Libya and B) how successful NATO will be in convincing the rest of the Arab world that waging war on Libya isn't yet another example of Western imperialism.

-Do the rebels want us there?  Do we know what their plans are?  Will we have to occupy the country for the indefinite future?  I remember when our involvement in Afghanistan was supposed to be just a combination of hunting down bin Laden and helping out the Northern Alliance, then getting out of the way.  Of course, George Bush intentionally fucked up the hunt for bin Laden, but we were still supposed to just be the Northern Alliance's assistants.  What's the situation in Libya?  Do they even have that level of organization?

-I can't imagine that any Libyan of moderate awareness would want the USA to get involved after watching the disasters we've created in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It's not like we've suddenly figured out how to occupy a country without abusing its population or bombing wedding parties.

-Ultimately, the responsibility for the Libyan rebels' success or failure needs to rest with the rebels themselves.  Sometimes these things work out, and sometimes they don't.  The world can be a shitty place, but I don't believe that it is the USA's responsibility to go stampeding in wherever people start to stand up to a horrible leader.  Partly this is because of how many horrible leaders we have installed and continue to support against their people, and partly because it just isn't possible for outsiders to impose a suddenly free, democratic society by dropping bombs and shooting people with rifles. 

It's not just that it's hard to create a functional, stable society in which the rule of law is universally applied, all citizens have a wide variety of personal freedoms and rights, and the government is actually elected by and accountable to the citizenry.  It's not that it's especially hard to create that type of situation from outside, or that it's even harder to do it by destroying the nation's infrastructure and killing a not-insignificant number of the population. 

No, the real issue is that we have yet to create that type of society here, in the USA.  We're trying to export a system we refuse to fully implement for ourselves.

There's a lot to admire and love in America, and lot for which I am grateful.  But the plain truth of the matter is that many things for which I am grateful are not experienced by people who were not born a male in a white, middle class family like I was.  No nation that allows citizens to be routined subjected to electrical torture without any formal charges ever being brought against them, even at times without any suspicion that they were breaking any law, is not a nation that can claim much moral high ground.

No nation that incarcerates and puts to death black males at the rate we do can claim a high morality.  No nation that allows so many of its citizens to go hungry every day, that is so closely connected to despicable, murderous regimes like the House of Saud or the 'Communist' dictators running China can claim the level of freedom we like to think we enjoy.

America has the most potential of any nation to be truly great.  I firmly believe that.  There have been many times at which we have lived up to that potential, but we have not yet reached the end of it.  We have not yet created a nation that is in line with our self-assesment.  Rather than trying to impose a system we ourselves have failed to fully achieve - and especially rather than trying to do it by dropping bombs and shooting people - our goal should be to export the potential for greatness. 

I suffer no illusion that I know how to do that.  But I do know that we've been trying, and failing, at the other method long enough to more than satisfy the popular definition of insanity.

A Nice Showing of Solidarity in DC

 

DC workers and union activists protesting a fund raiser for Wisconsin Republican senators held last night at the offices of BGR Group, the Republican political lobbying firm (or Haley Barbour's pig circus as I prefer to think of it.)

It's a pretty impressive and spirited turnout, which evidently included an impromptu march on the Chamber of Commerce as well.  In these difficult times, I take some heart in these kinds of displays.  I've linked to good write ups at both TPM and kos regarding the event. 

Happy St. Paddy's Day

 

"Thousands are Sailing" - The Pogues

The island it is silent now
But the ghosts still haunt the waves
And the torch lights up a famished man
Who fortune could not save

Did you work upon the railroad
Did you rid the streets of crime
Were your dollars from the white house
Were they from the five and dime

Did the old songs taunt or cheer you
And did they still make you cry
Did you count the months and years
Or did your teardrops quickly dry

A tremendous song, written by Phillip Chevron, the band's guitarist -- who now sings it as well when they perform live. 

And speaking of things Irish, I highly recommend the movie, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, an extraordinary film by director Ken Loach, about the struggle for Irish independence during the period 1919-21 and the subsequent Irish Civil War.  It's as good a historical and political film as I've ever seen and deals incredibly well with issues like the brutality of foreign occupation, the humiliation of colonialism, and the problems associated with political violence as a means of redressing the former.  This makes the film sound more didactic then it is -- it's real strength is presenting these issues on a micro level in a personal and organic fashion.   

I have had the good fortune to have an arbitration scheduled for today settle, it's sunny and in the mid-60s, and I've got an invite from a bunch of investment guys to attend an NCAA basketball shindig this afternoon.  So I think light posting and heavy drinking will be the order of the day.  (My attitude towards accepting favors from investment folks would be summed up by this Sam Rayburn quote.)

How are you all doing?   

Societal Choices and Wednesday Open Thread

 

"Downbound Train" - Bruce Springsteen

- This article in today's New York Times struck me as heartbreaking.  Really, it's astonishing that it has come to this -- that in so many parts of the country the mere aspiration to have a modestly decent paying job, health insurance, and a pension is becoming out of reach.  Indeed, is something that to aspire to makes you an unreasonably greedy individual, some kind of labor aristocrat.  And, of course, the ultimate irony is that the same people who would level those charges against you and seek to deprive you of this small bit of security and dignity will also argue passionately that a $250,000 a year income doesn't make you rich.  Please read the whole article -- it's well worth your time.  Somehow we on the left have got to communicate better with the demographic portrayed in this piece and convey a vision to them that makes sense in light of their increasingly marginal circumstances and motivates them to coherent political action.  It just seems like this shouldn't be that difficult, but results suggest otherwise. 

- Speaking of unreasonable demands on behalf of parasitic public employees, the Times also has an article concerning a study indicating that if the U.S. wants to achieve better education results it should emulate other countries in which teaching is considered a high status profession, one in which salaries are at least comparable to those earned by other professionals.  This would seem to be a matter of common sense, especially among all of those allegedly market-oriented conservatives.  And yet, I've yet to see much of a clamor in right wing circles to significantly increase teacher pay.  (Kristof, in his piece that I linked to the other day, noted that basically the United States got a fair amount of teaching excellence on the cheap in days gone by when teaching was one of the few avenues really open to women -- now that the legal and medical professions, among others, are open to women on a more or less equal basis with men, this ability to exploit discrimination has largely disappeared.)

- Still not feeling good about the nuke plant situation in Japan. 

- Croak, monsieur - Boehner thinks that we should be more like France when it comes to nuclear energy and Lindsey Graham sees them as advocating the appropriately manly route to dealing with Libya.  When a leading Republican then cites the French health care system as worthy of emulating, I will really know that we are in the end times.

What's happening with you?   

 

Public Schools

I'm spending Spring Break in a small town about an hour southeast of Dallas in the Glorious People's Gunocracy of Texastan.  It was fun to see Spring happen around us as we drove south, and very fun to be outside playing while it was snowing in Kansas City.

My two sisters that live here are teachers, and the nature of their work - both of them are in Special Education - reminded me of an extremely important aspect of public education, something that is mentioned at times but isn't emphasized enough.

You see, almost without exception, the public school system - any district, any town in the country - will accept and attempt to educate a child.

ADD/ADHD?  That child will be accepted and taught.

Down Syndrome?  That child will be accepted and taught.

Physical challenges requiring a wheelchair, a walker or other devices?  That child will be accepted and taught.

Bipolar?  That child will be accepted and taught.

Borderline Personality Disorder?  That child will be accepted and taught.

Abusive home situation?  That child will be accepted and taught, and if teachers or other officials even suspect the abuse, they will notify the police and child welfare services and will continue to provide a safe environment for that child to learn while they go through the transition from abusive family to foster/adoptive care.

Hungry?  That child will be accepted, taught and given food, even at no cost to the child if necessary.

It just doesn't matter to the public school system whether a particular child is a well-behaved genius - or somewhat disruptive genius - a perfectly average child in every way, or someone will an emotional, mental or physical challenge.  That child has a place in the public schools and will be taught to the best of that school's ability.

The public schools take this so seriously that they require additional education and training for the teachers that take on the challenge of teaching kids with serious problems.

As we continue to debate education - for as long as this nation lasts and beyond - we must always remind people that public schools do this while private schools - even those publicly-funded private abominations called 'charter schools' - can pick and choose their students.  Further, we must always bring to bear the fact that part of the reason conservatives hate public schools so much is the fact that everyone, regardless of ability (or their parents' status) is accepted in public schools and educated to the best of their ability.  Conservatives fight public schools because they - unless it's their own children under discussion - don't feel that it is their responsibility to help those with physical, mental or emotional challenges.  They don't feel that society has any responsibility to them at all.

Conservative opposition to public schools, no matter what flimsy excuse they've come up with recently, is always due to the same sick, twisted hatred that infuses every other decision they make.  That's why every school 'reform' idea that comes from them, if not rejected out of hand, needs to be viewed with extreme suspicion.

"Ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid": State Department's P.J. Crowley, prior to his forced resignation, on Pentagon's treatment of PFC Bradley Manning

On Sunday, U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley resigned, just days after his remarks to a BBC journalist--at an informal lecture--about the abusive treatment of long-detained whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning:

And then, inevitably, one young man said he wanted to address “the elephant in the room”. What did Crowley think, he asked, about Wikileaks? About the United States, in his words, “torturing a prisoner in a military brig”? Crowley didn’t stop to think. What’s being done to Bradley Manning by my colleagues at the Department of Defense “is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” He paused. “None the less Bradley Manning is in the right place”. And he went on lengthening his answer, explaining why in Washington’s view, “there is sometimes a need for secrets… for diplomatic progress to be made”.

But still, he’d said it. And the fact he felt strongly enough to say it seems to me an extraordinary insight into the tensions within the administration over Wikileaks.

A few minutes later, I had a chance to ask a question. “Are you on the record?” I would not be writing this if he’d said no. There was an uncomfortable pause. “Sure.” So there we are.

The next day, a group of residents and activists, including Code Pink, mounted an impromptu protest march that began at the State Department and concluded outside the White House. They applauded P.J. Crowley's candor and urged President Obama to put a stop to the unconstitutional pre-trial treatment of Manning.

Former C.I.A. analyst and present-day peace activist Ray McGovern--who last month attended a speech by Secretary Clinton and was bound and physically dragged from the room after merely standing and turning his back in silent protest--was among those who gathered peaceably in protest of the Obama administration's amplification of Bush-era detention and torture policies.

And so was Lisa Simeone (between the 1:20 and 1:30 minute mark, in black coat and sunglasses).  Lisa reports that the group included both ordinarily-dressed citizens and some prison-garb-wearing activists and that, despite having been organized at the last minute, the mood among (and surrounding) the protesters was upbeat and positive, with onlookers saying things like "God bless you".

-----

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

-- Hermann Goering

Tuesday Open Thread and Japan Worries

 

"Is it Like Today" - World Party

I am just overwhelmed by the bad news coming from Japan.  This nuclear plant scenario seems nightmarish in a way that I can't quite believe. 

Let's hope the wind keeps blowing the right way and that the desperation efforts of the brave people working at the plant somehow avert the worst.

Jesus.

It kind of dwarfs just about everything else going on.  Except maybe Libya.  And I've got nothing brilliant to say about that either.

Anyway, your thoughts and updates are appreciated.