I can't seem to get myself together this week. Maybe it's the post-holiday comedown, or too much eggnog (or not enough eggnog), but it's been a total nonstarter, and here it is Wednesday already. My professor this morning said that getting people to read their assignments at the end of the semester is always the hardest time, and I can vouch for not wanting to do any work at all. It doesn't help that the weather since last week has been a nonstop gloomfest, with rain and humidity vying daily to see which can bring me down further. On top of that, I seem to be tired and enervated pretty much all the time. I need a turnaround and I need it now, because I have a paper due Monday (Thanks, surprise-extension fairy!) and a long list of things that need to get done pretty much now, and definitely by next thursday (aka Ceciliannukah). Everybody around me seems to be in the same kind of funk, too. And coffee is no longer cutting it, more's the pity.
At least there's Christmas music at work to keep me going. And holiday beers!
Oh, the weather outside is frightful (true, though hardly wintry)
dum-di-dum, delightful
11.30.2005
11.27.2005
Vocabulary Break
fac·to·tum (fặk-tō'tәm) n.
- An employee or assistant who serves in a wide range of capacities.
11.21.2005
Friday's on My Mind
So, instead of working on Friday, I went with my professor and a couple of undergraduates to a lecture by Yale professor and New America Fellow Jacob Hacker. I read one of his books for class and the new one was all over the blogs a few weeks ago. He's also something of a blogger himself, once in a while, and can be found on tpmcafe and polysigh. His lecture was good, but very dense and heavy on the statistics. So heavy it seemed that Prof. Hacker hadn't finished parsing them yet.
He's writing a new book on the privatization of risk--how, in America today, the burden of risk (and the consequences of that risk) has shifted from the government and corporations to individuals and families. Now, he made it a point to mention that he's speaking in very specific terms about risk, namely the risks inherent in the health insurance industry (shift of risk/responsibility from insurance companies/hmos to individuals) and in the private retirement insurance industry (from governmental responsibility--through Social Security and regulated corporate account--to individuals through tax-sheltered IRAs and 401(k)s and Bush-beloved private accounts). The gist of his argument is not only that this shift has taken place since the last expansion of the Social Security Act (ERISA, in 1974), but that when the consequences of that risk come due, individuals and families are placed under enormous stresses and burdens. The most telling figure of the lecture was that 20% of individuals/families who experience a major health-related expenditure are subsequently forced below the poverty line when paying for it, regardless of pre-expenditure insurance level. A tragically absurd statistic that really drives home some of the realities of health care in America today.
On a lighter note, going to lectures at Harvard is a gratuitously humbling experience. Just sitting in that room, I felt a little out of place (I think I was the only one wearing sneakers) and even though I can't recognize the faces of leading political scientists yet (and a part of me hopes that I never can), I'm pretty sure a good handful of them were at the table across from me. Needless to say, I didn't ask any questions.
He's writing a new book on the privatization of risk--how, in America today, the burden of risk (and the consequences of that risk) has shifted from the government and corporations to individuals and families. Now, he made it a point to mention that he's speaking in very specific terms about risk, namely the risks inherent in the health insurance industry (shift of risk/responsibility from insurance companies/hmos to individuals) and in the private retirement insurance industry (from governmental responsibility--through Social Security and regulated corporate account--to individuals through tax-sheltered IRAs and 401(k)s and Bush-beloved private accounts). The gist of his argument is not only that this shift has taken place since the last expansion of the Social Security Act (ERISA, in 1974), but that when the consequences of that risk come due, individuals and families are placed under enormous stresses and burdens. The most telling figure of the lecture was that 20% of individuals/families who experience a major health-related expenditure are subsequently forced below the poverty line when paying for it, regardless of pre-expenditure insurance level. A tragically absurd statistic that really drives home some of the realities of health care in America today.
On a lighter note, going to lectures at Harvard is a gratuitously humbling experience. Just sitting in that room, I felt a little out of place (I think I was the only one wearing sneakers) and even though I can't recognize the faces of leading political scientists yet (and a part of me hopes that I never can), I'm pretty sure a good handful of them were at the table across from me. Needless to say, I didn't ask any questions.
11.18.2005
Metablogging in Boston
For about a week now, I've been trying to round up a good selection of Boston-based blogs to check on a semi-daily basis (about the same regularity as my posts), and I was having some problems. It turns out there are plenty (949, according to boston-online) of Boston blogs out there, but it's tough to find the good ones. Here's what I've got so far.
General Boston
the bostonist
universal hub
hub blog
Politics
left center left
The T
badtransit
Starbucks (sadly defunct)
Bostonia
Everything else seems to be focused on national stuff, personal stuff (which is for a future list), or boring stuff. Feel free to tell me otherwise though, you know I love that.
General Boston
the bostonist
universal hub
hub blog
Politics
left center left
The T
badtransit
Starbucks (sadly defunct)
Bostonia
Everything else seems to be focused on national stuff, personal stuff (which is for a future list), or boring stuff. Feel free to tell me otherwise though, you know I love that.
It's Good to Believe in Fridays Again
We had an interesting discussion in class this morning, where I surprised myself by being anti-teacher. The topic was public schooling versus private schooling, and the debate was over school voucher programs and the concept of controlled choice in schooling. Controlled choice is basically when parents are able to list the schools in order of preference for their child. When this takes place in traditional school districts, and it usually involves inter-district choice. When there happens to be more than one high/middle/elementary school in a district is where it starts to get interesting. And when you add in the increasing (and increasingly laudable) charter/magnet school population, then you start to really have a system where market forces can actually do some good--unlike the traditional voucher examples, where the market would probably destroy some neighborhood schools while shifting the problem to others.
Anyway, that's all background. The meat of the issue is that I don't think overhauling the system is the answer. Or that I don't think it's enough of the answer to justify spending billions of taxpayer dollars on those kind of reforms, yet. I think the real problem is teachers. Not all of them, and certainly not just them, but the state of the teaching corps in the country is in desperate need of some reform. Teaching should be one of the most sought-after postitions in the economy. Teachers should be well-rewarded, rigorously trained, and held to exactingly high standards. Even more crucially, teachers should love their job, and I mean eat, sleep, and breathe teaching. They should be happy, enthusiastic, knowledgable, and completely backed up by all the resources the government has to offer.
The public image (especially among recent college graduates) of teaching as a profession needs to be revamped so that the best and brightest among us will see teaching not as résumé-padding or a ticket out of student loan debt, but as a field in which they can be happy, proud, successful, and motivated to succeed, not to mention focused on preparing the next generation of minds for intellectual and civic engagement. Trying to change the nature of public education without changing the recruitment, retention, and infrastructure of the teacher corps is a kind of big-picture myopia.
Anyway, that's all background. The meat of the issue is that I don't think overhauling the system is the answer. Or that I don't think it's enough of the answer to justify spending billions of taxpayer dollars on those kind of reforms, yet. I think the real problem is teachers. Not all of them, and certainly not just them, but the state of the teaching corps in the country is in desperate need of some reform. Teaching should be one of the most sought-after postitions in the economy. Teachers should be well-rewarded, rigorously trained, and held to exactingly high standards. Even more crucially, teachers should love their job, and I mean eat, sleep, and breathe teaching. They should be happy, enthusiastic, knowledgable, and completely backed up by all the resources the government has to offer.
The public image (especially among recent college graduates) of teaching as a profession needs to be revamped so that the best and brightest among us will see teaching not as résumé-padding or a ticket out of student loan debt, but as a field in which they can be happy, proud, successful, and motivated to succeed, not to mention focused on preparing the next generation of minds for intellectual and civic engagement. Trying to change the nature of public education without changing the recruitment, retention, and infrastructure of the teacher corps is a kind of big-picture myopia.
11.15.2005
P.S.
I also got my ass handed to me by Zawada in fantasy football. Stupid Tom Brady. Man, I hate the Patriots. And Zawada.
A Very Long and Uneventful Weekend
Wherein I also avoided all news. Today though, I changed my tune to one a little more uptempo. I read a whole bunch of junk, including the Somerville News (apparently, Somerville High School rules!). I mostly learned that Sarah Silverman is funny, Howard Dean is good at his job, and James Carroll is bad at his (registration required). Here's what i jotted down after reading Carroll's op-ed, my initial thoughts and reaction:
I'm more than sure that there are holes in my logic and I'm equally sure that my rule about ethics in the political workplace is anything but universal. But in Kaine's situation (and in executive positions in general), I think that the responsibility of the officeholder to the imperatives of the electorate come before his or her personal morals. I have much the same view about Judges. It seems like an essential tradeoff to maintain the rule of law.
One caveat though, the imperatives of the electorate aren't always the same things as the desires of the electorate. The real questions to be asking of Tim Kaine and politicians everywhere are whether they can distinguish between the two and if they are willing to go against the latter to provide for the former.
Mr. Carroll argues that the dichotomy between public and private morality in politicians is nothing more than political cover, a beard to interest groups who potentially control large blocs of votes. In Governor-elect Kaine’s case, that means that his professed private opposition to the death penalty, true or not, only matters as it relates to his public stance that it is the law in Virginia and if necessary, he will enforce that law. This analysis misses the point that Mr. Kaine’s willingness to subsume his moral objections comes not from a need to pander but from a clear ethical obligation. It’s his job to enforce and execute Virginia’s laws, not to legislate from the Governor’s office. The problem with Mr. Carroll’s argument is that the ethical ground here is far firmer than he would have us believe. The concerns of the Virginians that elected Mr. Kaine will have to trump his personal moral foibles until and unless he can change his citizens’ (or his legislators’) minds. He knew when he ran for Governor that enforcing the death penalty would probably be required of him, no matter his moral objections to it. And it looks like the people of Virginia have decided that they need both Mr. Kaine and the death penalty and he is required to fulfill both of those needs to the best of his ability.
I'm more than sure that there are holes in my logic and I'm equally sure that my rule about ethics in the political workplace is anything but universal. But in Kaine's situation (and in executive positions in general), I think that the responsibility of the officeholder to the imperatives of the electorate come before his or her personal morals. I have much the same view about Judges. It seems like an essential tradeoff to maintain the rule of law.
One caveat though, the imperatives of the electorate aren't always the same things as the desires of the electorate. The real questions to be asking of Tim Kaine and politicians everywhere are whether they can distinguish between the two and if they are willing to go against the latter to provide for the former.
11.11.2005
WriMo Update
1,144 words, 850 words short of my all-time NaNo record, and only 48,850 words short of finishing! Yes!
11.10.2005
Oh Yeah, The Crazies Lost Too
Mike, Emily, and The New York Times all tell me that I missed one of the most important election results out there: the total sweep of the Dover, PA school board seats by the DoverCARES slate. Now that's education reform! Too bad the district they just took over is going to have to pay massive amounts of money to the plaintiffs when they lose the lawsuit. And then the real losers will be the students whose school can't afford textbooks or art supplies or computers or gifted classes all because their neighbors are intellectually brain-dead. Have fun in community college!
Radioactive Election Fallout (for the Right)
Due Diligence (with help from Nancy Pelosi) connects the dots between tuesday's results and today's implosion of the Let's-Give-The-Rich-More-Money-And-Destroy-America-Too Act. Good fun.
Op-ed Danger!
Yesterday in the Globe, Jeff Jacoby let forth a spume (registration required) of anti-privacy invective, tracing society's current privacy obsession to--what else?--activist judges. Conservative boilerplate is wicked tiresome, huh? Far be it for me to rebut the legislating-from-the-bench meme, though I have a hunch it was old back when Griswold v. Connecticut was decided in 1965. Jacoby tells us that Griswold enshrined the ambiguous "right" to privacy in the Constitution and led more-or-less directly to Roe's decision eight years later. As obnoxious as Jacoby is, he has about half of a point here: the Constitution says next to nothing about privacy.
This is one of those rare times when the document shows its age. The founders could not possibly have envisioned a time when privacy would need to be protected the way it is now. They guaranteed the sanctity of the home and personal property, but gave not a thought to digital privacy, wiretapping, or public video cameras. Today, while privacy is not sanctioned in the Constitution, it exists as a series of powerful decades-long precedents (much like Roe itself) that would be difficult to overturn even if it were politically feasable (it's not). The quote from Justice Black at the end is interesting in Jacoby's context, but again, Black was on the bench until 1971 and had no knowledge, let alone prescience, into the digital age. Plus he was the Conservative movement's favorite animal, a strict constructionist, which while not always a bad thing, comes hand in hand with a certain inflexibility.
P.S. Jeff, your objections to protection of privacy would carry more water if you hadn't gone on the record defending it four years ago.
This is one of those rare times when the document shows its age. The founders could not possibly have envisioned a time when privacy would need to be protected the way it is now. They guaranteed the sanctity of the home and personal property, but gave not a thought to digital privacy, wiretapping, or public video cameras. Today, while privacy is not sanctioned in the Constitution, it exists as a series of powerful decades-long precedents (much like Roe itself) that would be difficult to overturn even if it were politically feasable (it's not). The quote from Justice Black at the end is interesting in Jacoby's context, but again, Black was on the bench until 1971 and had no knowledge, let alone prescience, into the digital age. Plus he was the Conservative movement's favorite animal, a strict constructionist, which while not always a bad thing, comes hand in hand with a certain inflexibility.
P.S. Jeff, your objections to protection of privacy would carry more water if you hadn't gone on the record defending it four years ago.
11.09.2005
WriMo Update
Not much to report, sadly. I'm foundering at around 150 words (out of 50,000) with about a third of the month gone already. I'm going to try to knock out a few thousand words tomorrow morning and I desperately want to hit 10,000 by Monday. Fingers are firmly crossed.
...And in Somerville
Mayor Curtatone ran unopposed...and won! I really have no idea if this is good for the city or not, as I only started paying attention to local politics about five minutes ago. I do know that he's not as much fun to talk about as Dorothy A. Kelly-Gay, our previous mayor, but that really doesn't help me evaluate his civic policies. With that said, I have lived in Somerville for the entirety of Mayor Curtatone's first term and I haven't really noticed anything bad happening. The buses were on time for the most part. No riots (except for that pesky World Series thing). Somerville Cable Access sailed along peacefully. Oh yeah, and PJ Ryan's is open until 2 AM! I'm calling this a win for Somerville! Maybe Smokin' Joey C. needs an aide...
The four alderman-at-large seats were won by Desmond, Sullivan, Provost, and White, all of them incumbents. These guys are like Somerville's Senate, they represent the entire town.
The seven alderman seats are the city's representatives and each is responsible for one of the city's wards. The incumbents won every ward except for ward six, where Connolly lost to Gewirtz. Again, as with the Mayor, I have no idea if these results are good or bad for Somerville, so maybe I'll pay attention this time around (though probably not). Here's the breakdown:
Ward 1: Roche
Ward 2: Heuston
Ward 3: Taylor
Ward 4: Pero
Ward 5 (my ward!): O'Donovan
Ward 6: Gewirtz
Ward 7: Trane
And there you have it, a list of people I know nothing about and most people probably care next to nothing about. Tune in next year for elections that really matter (none of them take place in Somerville)!
P.S. Oh yeah, and Menino got re-elected too. And Youn got on the Boston city council. Yay diversity!
The four alderman-at-large seats were won by Desmond, Sullivan, Provost, and White, all of them incumbents. These guys are like Somerville's Senate, they represent the entire town.
The seven alderman seats are the city's representatives and each is responsible for one of the city's wards. The incumbents won every ward except for ward six, where Connolly lost to Gewirtz. Again, as with the Mayor, I have no idea if these results are good or bad for Somerville, so maybe I'll pay attention this time around (though probably not). Here's the breakdown:
Ward 1: Roche
Ward 2: Heuston
Ward 3: Taylor
Ward 4: Pero
Ward 5 (my ward!): O'Donovan
Ward 6: Gewirtz
Ward 7: Trane
And there you have it, a list of people I know nothing about and most people probably care next to nothing about. Tune in next year for elections that really matter (none of them take place in Somerville)!
P.S. Oh yeah, and Menino got re-elected too. And Youn got on the Boston city council. Yay diversity!
Results Around the Nation...
The Great
New Democratic governors in Virginia and New Jersey! Arnold's referenda sent down in flames! Bush support for Kilgore actually costs him votes!
The Good
Fuel tax rider defeated in Washington (state)! Minor Democratic pickups in various state legislatures! Democratic Mayor of St. Paul who posed for photo op with Bush in '04 booted! Maine anti-gay ballot measure defeated!
The Bad
Bloomberg re-elected! Texas voters invalidate gay marriage (The Hilarious: they may have invalidated all marriage by mistake!)!
The Terrible
Reform Ohio Now resoundingly defeated on all fronts!
New Democratic governors in Virginia and New Jersey! Arnold's referenda sent down in flames! Bush support for Kilgore actually costs him votes!
The Good
Fuel tax rider defeated in Washington (state)! Minor Democratic pickups in various state legislatures! Democratic Mayor of St. Paul who posed for photo op with Bush in '04 booted! Maine anti-gay ballot measure defeated!
The Bad
Bloomberg re-elected! Texas voters invalidate gay marriage (The Hilarious: they may have invalidated all marriage by mistake!)!
The Terrible
Reform Ohio Now resoundingly defeated on all fronts!
11.08.2005
Happy Democracy Day!
Yes, it's election day again, don't everybody celebrate at once. Being an off-year, it's mostly local elections: here in Somerville we have various aldermen and aldermen-at-large to vote for, while down in Boston there's a fancy-pants mayoral race and an eight-way city council run-off to keep the fans interested. Elsewhere in the country, there are some actually important races to watch.
New Jersey Governor
Millionaire Senator John Corzine (D) is leading in the polls, but the margin is pretty slim. It's a good thing i cut my nails short because biting them is a bad habit.
Virginia Governor
Tim Kaine (D) is the Lt. Governor and he's been fighting long and hard against Jerry Kilgore (R)'s evil smear tactics. He has a slightly higher lead than Corzine's but I'm pretty sure Kilgore has God on his side (and a supervillain's last name), so I guess we'll see. This one would be pretty sweet, stealing a huge red state a year before the midterms. My fingers are very crossed.
California and Ohio Ballot Referenda
Among the various crap on both of these ballots are votes on redistricting plans. I don't know much about the California one, but Ohio's would give the power to redraw Congressional districts (usually done after the diennial census) to a nonpartisan panel. Up til now, it has been done by the politicians in power at the time--a surefire recipe for corruption and hard-to-oust incumbents.
Vote if you live in any of these places and if you don't then call people who live there and tell them to vote and that Democracy is fun. If you can't do any of that then at least play "Electioneering" really, really loudly.
New Jersey Governor
Millionaire Senator John Corzine (D) is leading in the polls, but the margin is pretty slim. It's a good thing i cut my nails short because biting them is a bad habit.
Virginia Governor
Tim Kaine (D) is the Lt. Governor and he's been fighting long and hard against Jerry Kilgore (R)'s evil smear tactics. He has a slightly higher lead than Corzine's but I'm pretty sure Kilgore has God on his side (and a supervillain's last name), so I guess we'll see. This one would be pretty sweet, stealing a huge red state a year before the midterms. My fingers are very crossed.
California and Ohio Ballot Referenda
Among the various crap on both of these ballots are votes on redistricting plans. I don't know much about the California one, but Ohio's would give the power to redraw Congressional districts (usually done after the diennial census) to a nonpartisan panel. Up til now, it has been done by the politicians in power at the time--a surefire recipe for corruption and hard-to-oust incumbents.
Vote if you live in any of these places and if you don't then call people who live there and tell them to vote and that Democracy is fun. If you can't do any of that then at least play "Electioneering" really, really loudly.
11.04.2005
Wilkommen
It's funny, after my blogging experiments in college, I was pretty down on the whole scene for a long time. It seemed awfully self-indulgent, and coming from me that's saying something. Then I started to (semi-)seriously think of myself as a writer and a thinker and this fall I went back to school for a degree in political science. And now I have something to prove, albeit self-indulgently and something to say (some of the time) and this seems to be the forum to accomplish both. Also, my bandwagon-hopping muscles were seriously atrophying.
So, a resounding "Welcome back!" to myself, maybe this time people will read me other than kawklyn. Keep up the good work, buddy!
Alright, I'm off to DC for the weekend. Stay tuned for a mission statement or two come Tuesday.
So, a resounding "Welcome back!" to myself, maybe this time people will read me other than kawklyn. Keep up the good work, buddy!
Alright, I'm off to DC for the weekend. Stay tuned for a mission statement or two come Tuesday.
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