Archive for July, 2008

I’ve been kind of kicking back for a couple of weeks or so, not posting much and paying attention to even less, but occasionally some things cross my screen that I simply can’t ignore. Things like a couple of news releases, both issued by the Wilderness Society.

The first concerns BushCo’s proposed rule change for 4.4 million acres of roadless land in Colorado, which would pave the way for more logging, ski resort development, and would open the door to issuing 97 oil leases on 87,000 acres of previously protected land. Meetings were held this week in DC with limited public input. Says William Meadows of the Wilderness Society:

“President Bush is doing the Texas Two-Step to trample public lands in Colorado on his way out of the barn,” said William H. Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society. “The meetings in Washington are Bush’s latest attempt to weaken strongly-supported protection for the state’s 4.4 million acres of undeveloped roadless lands. Combined with the fancy footwork he’s doing in Idaho and the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the president is trying to leave his bootprint on nearly 50 percent of America’s roadless forests.”

The second is regarding the Senate’s defeat of cloture on two bills, HR6049 and S3335, concerning renewable energy and America’s energy future. These bills would eliminate, at least in part, the 18 billion dollars in subsidies given to the big oil companies, and invest more in alternative energy sources. They would also extend the tax incentives for renewable energy that will otherwise expire at the end of this year.

You can find the release on the roadless issue here, and the one on the energy bills here.

Read ‘em and weep.

I watched an interesting discussion last night between journalists Bill Moyers and Jane Meyers, author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. There’s a full transcript of the interview here.

I am struck by something deeper going on. I have no doubt that the United States is deeply involved in torture, in Guantanamo and Iraq and in secret prisons and ships all over the globe. And it’s not a new phenomenon - the U.S. has long been involved in torture. But in the past it was more by proxy. Survivors of torture in Central America during the Reagan wars testified to English-speaking men who wandered in and out of cells offering tips and advice, but who did not actually administer the burning cigarettes and battery cables.

Torture is real, the U.S. is doing it. It was caught cold at Abu Ghraib, and since then has been engaging in seventh-grade sophistry to cover it up and deny it. Since we don’t like to think bad things about ourselves, the sophistry works.

But here’s an interesting snippet from the Meyers interview:

JANE MAYER:The reason that people don’t torture is not just because it’s a moral issue. It’s because when we moved to a system of law that was on the principles of the enlightenment, the effort was to get at the truth. And you don’t torture because people say anything under torture. And, according to a very top CIA officer I spoke to who was very close with Tenet, he said 90 percent of what we-

BILL MOYERS: George Tenet.

JANE MAYER: George Tenet, the former director of the CIA. He said 90 percent of what we got was crap. And he said and that was true of every method we used: Torture, non-torture.

Our leaders are not stupid people. They are surely not deluded into thinking they are getting useful information by torturing. So the question is, what are they trying to accomplish? Are they mere sadists?

The answer is yes, most, if not all, of those administering torture are probably sadists. Who else would be drawn to such work? Lindie England is a patsy, but she is also a person who apparently enjoyed what she was doing.

But she was also a tool in a larger quest. In Iraq, the quest is to pacify that society. There is strong resistance to the U.S. invasion, and from the beginning the U.S. has been doing night raids on homes and disappearing young Iraqi men. I see one object in this practice - to remove real and potential leaders of the opposition from the ranks, to destroy them, to demoralize them, and to set an example to others who might want to fight in the resistance. Torture is a terror tactic more than an information-gathering tool.

While torture may elicit information on the whereabouts of other young men that the U.S. wants to neutralize, its largest effect is pacification, destruction of individuals, induction of a sheep-like submissiveness in potential opposition leaders, or worse yet, psychosis. Try standing for twenty hours straight with a hood over your head. It’s a deliberate torture tactic, meant to destroy individual personalities. The U.S. invented many of these techniques.

Iraq, in the end, will be a quiet place, and torture will be one of the reasons. Chile quieted down post-Pinochet. Suharto, with U.S. assistance, killed a half-million people and tortured countless others in the 1960’s. Indonesia quieted down.

Operation Phoenix in Vietnam merely murdered opposition leaders. We are more sophisticated now. Torture removes the minds, if not the bodies, from conflict. And each tortured individual is a warning to twenty others. Don’t mess with us.

The U.S. is not playing games - it is conducting a calculated scientific endeavor whose objective is to make people compliant. There’s nothing new about it. Its methods are as old as tyranny itself. If the U.S. is enjoying “success” in Iraq, if we are “winning”, the torture regime is a large part of the reason.

They are not torturing to get information. They are doing it to pacify people who object to our rule. That they are doing it right under our noses, that we still use words like “win” and “freedom” and “success” while we do it - that’s another story. For that I invoke Orwell, but not today. I’m discouraged.

Is this what McCain means when he explains the SURGE? Maybe next time he will not complain while standing in the “cheese” section of a super mart. The only question would be – Do you want some cheese with that whine?

Lets see. McCain gets a crowd of 1 (plus a cameraman)  in New Hampshire vs. Obama 100,000 in Berlin, Germany
So who has the power to draw people who “want” to hear what they have to say?

I’d bet that at this point, McCain wished that he never would have challenged him to go overseas ya think?

John McCain and the Republican party is toast! McCain is hollering that Obama is getting more news coverage than he is and that in fact is true. Given the fact that ONE (Yes 1) reporter and his cameraman was in New Hampshire upon his arrival speaks VOLUMES as to how his campaign is doing.

That, and the fact that he attempted to paint Obama as the “reason” for high gas prices is yet another flap that he seems to embrace. He goaded Obama to go to Iraq and that too has blown up in his face.

The simple fact is this election is OVER and they may want to attempt to get some of their cohorts elected to the Senate and Congress because it is quite clear that they don’t have a chance in hell of winning the White House even IF McCain decides to announce his VP in the next few days.

It may be time for him to pick up his marbles and just go home because he does not have a chance of pulling this election out of the bottom of the pits. He is simply outclassed and way to old!

Back in February, I wrote a post called C-44 Basics. Well, last night I had a request in the comments section to be a part of the opposition to C-44 from Senator Jerry O’Neil:

Cece, Would you like to be involved with my opposition to C-44 which will be published in the voters information booklet? Sen. Jerry O’Neil

To which my response was:

Senator O’Neil -

Thank you so much for your request, it is an honor.

One of the problems I have with possibly appearing in the voter pamphlet against C-44, is that I am moving to Moscow, ID in about 3 weeks to go to law school, so I won’t actually be a citizen of Montana come this November when people are deciding for or against this issue. The other problem I have is that I am certianly not a financial expert, nor even a Constitutional one, just a lay person researching and putting my own opinion out there on the web for public consumption.

Have you already written your opposition piece? If you don’t have a problem with the above facts, I would be interested in signing on in opposition once I reviewed what you have proposed for the pamphlet. Weren’t these position statements due on the 15th though?

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Very truly yours;

Cece

I thought this might be an interesting opportunity to talk a little bit about who writes those position pieces in your voter’s pamphlets.

According to the Secretary of State’s website, for this election cycle the deadline for appointment of committee members by designated individuals for ballot issues is July 15 (§13-27-403 MCA). Committee arguments are due to the SOS no later than July 22 (§13-27-406, MCA). July 22 is also the deadline for appointments by ballot issue committee members to fill vacancies (§13-27-403(2), MCA), and this is where I believe that Senator O’Neil is asking me to step in. Rebuttal arguments are due to the SOS by August 1 (§13-27-407, MCA).

As a part of the ballot issue process, this is the final step on the path (First you draft the issue, collect signatures, then make an argument for it).

1. As the sponsor of the ballot issue, you’ll be asked to prepare an argument in support of the issue for use in the official state Voter Information Pamphlet, which is published by the Secretary of State. Certain elected officials will choose someone to prepare an argument against the issue, and then each side will have the opportunity to provide a rebuttal. In regard to arguments and rebuttals in the voter information pamphlet, factual statements must now be supported by documents filed with the Secretary of State within 2 business days of the date on which the arguments and rebuttals are required to be filed.

The actual law is (§13-27-402, MCA):

(3) (a) The committee advocating rejection of an act referred to the people or of a constitutional amendment proposed by the legislature must be composed of:
(i) one senator appointed by the president of the senate;
(ii) one representative appointed by the speaker of the house of representatives; and
(iii) one individual who need not be a member of the legislature, appointed by the first two members.
(b) Whenever possible, the members must be known to have opposed the issue.

Of course there will be media, and public discourse, but many people sit down with their voting pamphlets and read the positions for, against and rebuttals as they choose how to mark their ballots.  It is an important couple of paragraphs in the voting process.  I’ll say it again, what an honor to even have been asked.  If it doesn’t work out that I can do it because of moving to law school (although I will still be a Montana citizen for the entire length of the argument and rebutal process), I bet I can find someone to help out.  I’ll keep you updated.

I have been thinking over things lately, which usually spells trouble. I have taken a little time off from blogging in part because work has been pressing but also in part because I have been wondering “Why is it I do this?” This pondering has brought me to a single conclusion: I have drifted astray. Over the last couple of years I have been paying special attention to some of the people that I admire, Mark Tokarski, Geoge Ochenski and PJFinn. By comparing their styles to my own, I think that I understand where I have went wrong.

You see, I have fallen into the trap of supporting the person over the cause and began to accept the lesser of two evils. The biggest problem with this tact is that by accepting the lesser of two evils, I have found myself in the position of figuratively supporting evil. Maybe even literally, who knows.

You see, we are facing some very serious obstacles in the coming years. They will require us to work together and make sacrifices together in the next decade. Supporting a politician because they are willing to throw a few more buzz words to my side of the fence is simply not OK. Each person who posts here gets a megaphone and a position as an independent journalist. We don’t answer to Lee Newspaper’s HQ, we don’t answer to Time-Warner, we don’t answer to Howard Dean, we don’t answer to whoever the chair of the RNC is and we don’t answer to Markos. Hell, we don’t even answer to George Soros. We have a unique position in Montana politics and I think that I have been squandering it.

While we don’t answer to Brian, Max, Jon, Brad, Mike, Linda or Denny, they answer to us. These are just people doing a job. Some of them do it better than others, but none of them do it really well. I have busied myself in the last years pointing out the positives of some and the negatives of others, completely ignoring the fact that none of them are doing much of anything to address the underlying issues that have pushed us into our current problems as a nation. The fact is, these are just people and I am done blogging about the cult of personality when there are a lot of important issues that need to be addressed. If I am busy being a democratic-party fan boi, then I am not doing my job of saving the world.

In a strong show of unity, the leaders of the G8 nations came together in unanimous agreement to do absolutely nothing about climate change. They decided that while it might be nice to reduce emissions by mid-century, nothing as drastic as actually doing something about it needs to happen right now.

The same holds true here at home. Bush and the boys won’t do anything either. They’ll gladly shove it off on the next administration. They’ve got other things in mind. Meanwhile, the Democrats in Congress, fearing a backlash in November from an enraged electorate, are preparing to roll over and capitulate to the ‘drill drill drill’ crowd regarding offshore oil drilling as well as exploration and drilling in other sensitive areas.

This, all of it, serves as a shining example of the kind of bold, decisive leadership that gives us all hope for the future. Right? Good gawd…

There’s often talk on this blog on the importance of participatory democracy, the sacredness of the vote and the vitality of our deliberative system. I am an idealist, but I’m also 58 years old, and so have learned a thing or two about “us”. I look at our political campaigns, and in the darker reaches of my soul think that literacy tests would be a good idea prior to voting.

I face this contradiction daily on the blogs and in real life. I know lots of people, and mostly they are smart enough to make a living, often by intricate means, and are also able to structure their lives to allow for enough work to finance their pleasurable pursuits. In short, these are smart people. Their lives are complex, and they manage just fine.

My exposure is limited, Admittedly, I don’t know a lot of convenience store clerks or WalMart shelf stockers. I do know some Starbucks baristi, and was recently profoundly disabused of the dignity of the vaunted working class when four of them spent nearly two hours at a party talking shop. It cannot get more frivolous.

So maybe my exposure is limited, but here is the contradiction: Smart people do dumb politics.

It really boils down to this: Politics is an exercise in propaganda. American campaigning is not a deliberative process. The usual means by which politicians reach voters is television, an expensive medium. In addition, voters are looking for entertainment when watching TV, so politicians only have a limited time to grab their attention before they flee to the Price is Right. So they have to hit them quick and often with mindless 15 and 30 second ads crafted by the technicians and psychologists of the advertising business.

We don’t deliberate. We advertise. We sell politicians like rolls of toilet paper, harping on their sensory properties while ignoring their real purpose.

Our campaign finance system is one of private bribes, the theory being that if each bribe is kept small, no one bribe will rule. Those who do the bribing know their way around this - they know to bundle their bribes for maximum impact. There’s also a clever loophole in the law that allows wealthy people to run private propaganda campaigns on the side of regular ones - ‘527’s’ they are called. The loophole is no accident. It’s meant to be there.

Politicians have no choice but to accept the bribes because they need the money to buy television time, otherwise they will not be elected. And they know to use the 527’s for maximum impact (while disavowing any connection to them).

What seems a complex mess really has as two simple solutions - one: public financing of campaigns. Mandatory. It works well in Canada and other industrialized countries. The premise is simple - establish a minimum threshold of support above which politicians will receive access to public funding to finance their advertising. Private funding, including 527’s, would not be allowed.

Secondly: Elimination of the uncontested television and radio spot. Candidates are allowed to politic, of course, schmoozing and kissing babies, but appearances on radio and TV would be limited to interview shows that offer equal time to all candidates. They can also be pitted in debates and town forums, the forum being the preferred venue (American journalists have a tendency to go soft are soft, and this comes out when they question candidates).

It’s interesting to watch how dumb we are in politics, and yet how smart we can be when, say, twelve of us are on a jury and have to pay attention to two well-argued sides of a debate. Jurists are often known to change their minds after weighing facts. Though far from perfect (and OJ aside), juries do pretty well in ferreting out the truth in most situations. It’s because of the nature of the forum in which they operate. It’s deliberative, rather than propagandistic.

Maybe Democrats will return to campaign reforms amid the rubble of an Obama defeat in November, after witnessing their candidate having been destroyed by 527’s and a blitz of negative ads, rumors and personal attacks. That assault won’t begin until after Labor Day. It will be a bizarre spectacle, indeed. It will be American politics at its absolute worst, and it will be terribly effective.

Following the BIG money being paid to athletes, CEO’s etc., talk show hosts are fast becoming among some of the highest paid individuals and are in a league all by themselves these days.
Word has it that Rush Limbaugh has inked a deal for $400 Million dollars to remain on the airwaves until 2016. Give me a break

Aren’t we lucky!
Talk really isn’t cheap I guess! And, to imply he is a conservative – that too falls on deaf ears. If not, then maybe it should be. If true then we are all in the wrong business.

What is good about all of this? We can always just tune them out.

Happy 4th of July

I just wanted to use the word trounce, but the margins are high. According to Rasmussen, Obama is beating McCain 48 to 43 in Montana.

This is big news. Mathew Yglesias discusses how this could be really big for the Democrats downstream on the ballot and has the potential to make significant changes in the content of our state races. One has to wonder if this is a cause or an effect. As Matt Singer said when discussing the disqualification of CI-100:

It’s also good news for progressives of all stripes headed into this fall. Increasingly, one has to wonder just what exactly will motivate a conservative to turn out to the polls — John McCain, Bob Kelleher?

Last week we talked about the nuclear option as a way of dealing with the energy problem. While the poll showed broad support for the nuclear option, the reasoning was not reflected in the comment section. In the end, their were enough strong arguments against increasing nuclear generation to sway me from my initial leanings. Based on the success of that discussion, there are many other options that we will investigate in the future, but the one that stuck out in my mind the largest came from the most excellent Jay Stevens:

The quickest, cheapest, and most effective way to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels is efficiency. That is, $100 billion spent on upgrading home insulation and energy efficient appliances would save more energy than what the same amount of money invested in a nuclear plant could produce.

Well, yeah. Of course. It makes a lot of sense. Of all the things that we can do to sway energy policy, personal efficiency is the only one that we can individually effect. While we must travel down the path of renewables and alternatives, efficiency is the one thing that we can start working on right now.

It is easy to talk that talk, but since Jay made that comment, I have come to realize that I am not walking that walk. II have come to the realization that I must put my actions where my mouth is, and there is no time like the present. As such, I have decided to lower my families consumption and waste any way that I can. I hope to half our footprint in the next year, and I have quiet a few ideas on how to do that. Here are the main points:

• Drastically reduce our energy consumption (gasoline, electricity and natural gas)
• Drastically reduce our waste

Drastically reducing our waste means that we will avoid items with excessive packaging (AKA cheap plastic crap) which has a great hidden effect, for every pound of waste you see from a product, many more pounds of waste went were generated before the product ever made it to the shelf. Additionally, consider the energy used in shipping and production! The effects are far reaching.

I actually have quiet a few ideas on how to begin, and indeed I have already started this past week. I will be describing and quantifying these efforts at my personal blog The Wrong Dog’s Life Chest. Please drop in and check it out, see if any of the ideas can be applied to your own life.

Yesterday’s IR had a piece on a ‘controversial’ applicant pre-screening test used in the Helena school district. The cause of ‘controversy’ is that the goal of the test is to build a profile of the teacher’s style and disposition as opposed to knowledge or grasp of the subject matter:

It’s not a typical test, though, because TeacherInsight doesn’t have any clear right or wrong answers. Instead, applicants are asked how they would handle particular situations.
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But it’s those nebulous questions, and the fact the results are not made known, that have potential teachers like Flemming and retired local educators like Rita Williams questioning the process.
[snip]
The test is an instrument that measures the likelihood of the test-taker’s ability to be an effective teacher.
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“It’s a predictor — not a guarantee — they’ll be an effective teacher,” Helena School District Superintendent Bruce Messinger said. “We’ll get content out of other things. It’s more about characteristics that predict highly effective teachers.”

First of all, lets build a shared assumption here. There were over 600 applicants for 24 job openings in the Helena school district (don’t tell me that more money doesn’t attract a better selection). When we screen an applicant at my job, it takes at least a half day with us before they get to the real interview with the top brass. With so many applicants, it would take one person a full year to properly screen each one. Even then, the teachers are at the mercy of a single persons opinion. This is unrealistic, so we must assume that there should be some sort of automated pre-screening system in place.

Based on the assumption that there must be some sort of pre-screening mechanism in place, I see a few alternatives to this type of system. One is to base the pre-screening metrics on accomplishments alone. For instance, give precedence to teachers with masters degrees over bachelors degrees. That would filter the number down nicely. An additional metric could be based on the school: graduates of Stanford, MIT and Yale get preference over MSU and U of M grads. In our screening device, we could give additional weight based on years of experience.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Surely these things should be considered, but I see a big problem using these as the only metrics. As far as level of education, it speaks more to knowledge of subject matter than to ability to effectively teach kids. Knowing a thing is one thing, being able to help another learn that thing is a completely different beast. As far as schools go, I don’t believe this indicates anything at all. I work with graduates from MIT, CMU and Stanford everyday, while they are capable enough, so are the people from MSU and U of M. Verifiable experience might be the best indicator of all, but some of the worst teachers I ever had also taught my Mom when she was a kid.

Many of the complaints about the TeacherInsight test was that the questions had no clear right or wrong answers. Well, that’s pretty much how real life works. I am positive that the claim that bright capable teachers have been culled by the test is 100% correct, but I also think that the same would be true of face to face interviews.