My son, who is in the teaching profession, has reminded me that most teachers care about kids, know how to teach, and don’t need advice from outsiders like me. I agree. This is not about them. It is about public policy, or more specifically, the testing regime.

I never took the SAT, though it probably existed. Instead, I took the “ACT” (I think). These were general tests given perhaps yearly. I don’t recall being grilled on anything more than basic abilities in math, science, reasoning and language. I received the results in a percentile form, and have never been told what my “IQ” is. Such testing was important to identify strong students as part of the culling process, as these would be our future technicians, scientists, and blah blah blahs. It was a system that relied on testing, but not a testing regime. I have struggled with the idea, as do teachers including Polish Wolf, who wrote this piece about a testing scandal in Atlanta. NCLB had created perverse incentives, people have responded accordingly, and now we must punish them.
Continue reading “The testing regime” →

“The greatest enemy of the truth is not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.” (John F. Kennedy)

Driving home yesterday we listened for a while to NPR, not expecting much and not disappointed. During the Vietnam war protesters had managed to use various local radio outlets to spread their message, and the result was widespread dissemination of information that the government did not want. NPR, which went on the air in 1971, is not without an accomplishment here and there, such as exposing Archer Daniels Midlands corruption in the mid-1990’s. (ADM promptly began funding NPR, so that never happened again.) But the effective result of NPR and its 900 stations is to suck up bandwidth. Those pirate community stations are almost all gone now, blanded out of existence. NPR has replaced them with news indistinguishable from any other major outlet, and cultural programming. I listen to some of it, but have long given up on NPR as a meaningful alternative to government-managed news as presented to us by the other major outlets.

We listened to Talk of the Nation Yesterday as the host interviewed Washington Post editor Jackson Diehl. (Transcript here.) He appears to have all of the credentials of an ‘Op”, or government intelligence employee placed at a critical junction as a news filter in the private news media*. He’s a Yalie, and pro-military aggression and war all the way, including an advocate of the attack and invasion of Iraq in 2003. News, after all, is too important to be left in independent hands. If Diehl is not an op, he’s very dumb.
Continue reading “Another dung beetle on the feedlot of power” →

A Cypriot news source has accused Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades of wiring €21 million of his own funds to London prior to announcing the Eurobank-sponsored haircut that would affect his fellow countrymen’s holdings. He has promised that he would authorize an investigation of himself by a committee that will be organized tomorrow. There is no word on the reliability this committee, as any government that investigates its own activities must be held to extremely high standards of transparency and accountability.

I found no coverage of this story in American news.

Lee Harvey Harroun?

Don Progreba, Democrat, does not seem to understand why it is important for a politician to fight for the things he believes in while holding office.

Jimmy Carter turned out to be quite a man of peace, after leaving office. Al Gore turned green, after leaving office. Bill Clinton became a professional liberal, after leaving office.

At least Republicans like Conrad Burns and George W. Bush have the decency to remain the right wing hacks they were while in office, after leaving office.

March 28, 2013

To: All Democrats
From: Central Committee

Effective immediately you are IN FAVOR of the Keystone Pipeline, and have ALWAYS favored this pipeline. At no time did you ever doubt that Great Leader would approve it, and that it is a wise, virtuous, and good public policy. 35 jobs are 35 jobs we would not have without Great Leader

You are also in favor of protecting Monsanto from oversight and lawsuits regarding genetically modified foods, and have always been in favor. Great Leader signing a bill today protecting Monsanto is what you want, and what you have always stood for.

Just as with wars, torture, Gitmo, tax cuts, austerity, and saving Medicare and Social Security by attacking those programs, Great Leader reminds you that your support for him in this trying time is critical to the success of his Administration. Remember, a successful presidency is on your shoulders.

Just like most people I know, I hear things from authority sources and do not question accuracy. News presented to us in major media is given automatic credibility, even as I know that it is that credibility that allows lies to own us. I have read and heard repeated stories that fracking technology has opened up new strata previously inaccessible, and that we now have a century of natural gas under our feet. Similar claims are made about oil, especially the Bakken reserves in Montana, North Dakota and Alberta.

Not so, says F. William Engdahl in a very long article at Voltaire. He says it is hype, another bubble, and that smart investors are waiting to pounce when the gas frenzy subsides. Fracked gas reserves are just like those developed by older technology – they decline at an exponential rate, so that a drilling frenzy is required just to stay even on production. But they cannot keep up, and eventually we will realize that that far from a century’s worth of reserves, we have more like 10-25 years supply. At that time prices, currently in the $3-4 range, will bounce back. A few will be ready for this as they buy up existing underpriced reserves.

The 100-year figure, often repeated, is nonsense, and anyone famliar with oil and gas jargon should know that it came from adding together “proven,” “probable,” and “potential” reserves. It is that last word, “potential,” that is the kicker, as these reserves are better called “speculative.” Together with decline rates even steeper than gas produced under older technology, is creating the false confidence that we have solved our domestic energy shortage.

The desert air in the morning is cool and clean. Birds are everywhere. Occasionally the coyotes sing, and they can be very close to us without being visible. It is early in the year, but some snakes are out, we are told, so to be careful.

We went to the Musical Instrument Museum late last week, just on a whim. A friend of a friend suggested it. What a delight! I thought of Ed Kemmick, who is a musician in addition to his other life’s pursuits. We spent over five hours there, and even as museums for me are automatic sensory overload, I could not get enough. They have managed to provide a small venue for every political boundary on every continent on the second floor. We were equipped with a hands-free headset, and just walking near an exhibit triggered its music as it was shown on a video. They have on hand over 10,000 musical instruments, and just the guitar exhibit on the main floor is enough to keep one occupied for an hour.

Because we did not know what lay in store, we did not spend enough time in the North American and European rooms upstairs, but I love drums and spent a few minutes with Keith Moon and Buddy Rich and a couple of others. Man what a rush!

On the main floor are various tributes. Currently on display is Taylor Swift, not my flavor. But there are dozens of others – famous jazz men and singers, a corner for Leonard Bernstein, Duane Eddy, and one for the Ventures. My musical tastes are pedestrian*, as I just have not traveled and lived enough, so I nearly cried standing next to the John Lennon Steinway (encased in plexiglass) on which Imagine was recorded and listening to an international musical montage performing it.

This was an unexpected day, an unexpected pleasure. We originally came here on a brief trip to take in spring baseball several years ago. Shortly thereafter two sets of friends from Bozeman purchased homes down here, and another couple comes here to stay with us in our rental. Each year now is more adventure, less baseball, more desert, from Sedona to Nogales. It’s a big beautiful state that happens to host Spring Training.

The view from the back patio is shown here. On seeing it our son-in-law (Portlandia) asked why we vacationed in Afghanistan. But the desert holds many charms, and in March is a delightful respite from the recent two feet of new snow in our driveway in Colorado.
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*I just learned that my ring tone is a piano introduction to George Thorogood and the Destroyers’ Bad to the Bone. Who knew?

I have seen the tactic of obfuscation via diversion used against Chomsky so often that I take it for granted. It was gratifying to read this essay by Glenn Greenwald confronting the tactic head-on and dispensing with one of the more churlish critics.

I do remember watching evening TV once years ago when Chomsky’s name was actually mentioned. I do not remember the context, but remember Jeff Greenfield saying that he’d debate Chomsky anywhere, anytime. It was an easy thing to say, as Greenfield surely knew he’d never actually have to debate Chomsky anywhere, anytime.

I had a dog like that once. She would snarl and bark at other dogs, as long as they were on the other side of a fence.

We went to a ball game last night, the A’s and White Sox at Phoenix Memorial Stadium. I didn’t think tickets would be a problem, but the place was packed. We ended out far down the right field line in a section with many young people. I could not help but notice as I watched them moving about that they were carrying in mountains of bad food – chips and soda – and that most of them were overweight, many morbidly so. And so young. As I looked at the food I thought the hot dogs were the least of the problem – it is those massive sodas. They serve that stuff in buckets, and it makes them fat.

New York Mayor Bloomberg has taken a lot of heat for his soda proposal but it is the right thing to do. Fuck so-called “freedom of choice.” We need information before we can make a smart choice, and some powerful force does not want us to have that information. They just want us to choose Coke or Pepsi and call it freedom. Just like our elections, it’s not choice. It’s just an illusion of choice.
Continue reading “Real public policy in fake free markets” →