I know that I've put together something good when people mod me underrated.

Assume with me, at least for the moment, that it is possible to build a just society through gradual progressive initiatives, rather than through revolution, and that enough cultural progress has been made that increases in democracy will translate into increases in social justice. Also, let us accept what I'll call the populist democratic thesis - regardless of leadership, even overtly democratic institutions will only function in a democratic way under orchestrated popular pressure.

  Given these assumptions, what should our policy priorities be?

Point 000504: (that's the inverse of 1984) This contrasts notably "worse is better" doctrine promulgated by certain types of revolutionary Trotskyist. In reference to the policies of the Party in 1984, which used general economic strangulation to keep the population quiescent and disorganized. Policies which will increase employment and economic growth, stimulate demand, and generally improve the economic situation of the populace tend to provide ordinary people with the time and energy they need to organize.

Democracy and Education: Republicans generally, and the Bush administration in particular, have orchestrated a major attack on the system of public education. In addition to defending this institution and reversing most of NCLB, we need to reduce class sizes and cycle younger teachers into the system. In addition to the economic benefits, John Dewey (in Democracy and Education) generally held that certain educational practices (diametrically opposed to those promoted by NCLB) can be radicalizing - with younger (and, socially at least, more liberal) teachers, motivated teachers with the resources and training to improve their students welfare, it will be. It's very nice that Obama *talks* about such a program, but: talk is cheap.

The Employee Free Choice Act: Labor unions are a major vehicle for reform, and, especially in the post-Reagan American political realignment, a platform to build longterm, broad based vehicles for coordinated popular action. The Reagan, Bush II (and to an extent, Clinton) administrations gutted union organizer protections in executive ways that will be difficult for Obama to reverse (assuming he even tries to do so - unfortunately not a given.) The employee free choice act would largely circumvent these, and effectively restore the right to form a union in this country. And now a brief plug: my aunt, who is a major supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, is possibly-about to engage in a series of legal battles with her Republican opponent in US House OH-15. She's down by ~150 votes, but 2 years ago she gained 1,500 votes when the provisional ballots were counted, so when that happens, we expect her to take the lead, but the Repubs are trying to block the secretary of state from counting the ballots. Given that the employee free choice act is going to be a major battle, you should give her some money: http://www.actblue.com/page/kilroycountsvotes

  What are our other progressive priorities?

  We might also discuss Obama himself (who I think is more progressive than some of his rhetoric would indicate - but this doesn't matter) and the means by which activists can best exert pressure on their elected officials to execute a progressive agenda.

So, once again, some right-winger has modded down one of my posts at the last second. At least it wasn't "overrated" this time.

  Those with a desire to slavishly serve the powerful are intrinsically dishonest - they can't help but game the system as hard as they can, it's simply an expression of their nature.

Steve Stivers

  In case this isn't obvious, I'd like the gag page to have a higher pagerank in response to a search for "Steve Stivers" than his actual homepage.

Firstly, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the entire observable universe - you, me, this dinner party - is, indeed a simulation.

  It's probably true that this dinner party has been run through in its entirety, at least once. So in the sense that things inside the simulation are real - this dinner party is probably real.

  However, it's also probably true that whoever is running the simulation is going to choose interesting segments, and run them over and over again with slightly different parameters.

  The total simulation time of these small repeats probably greatly outweighs the simulation time of the entire age of the universe.

  So, while it's true that this dinner party is probably real, in each particular moment that we occupy, we are vastly more likely to be in some instantaneous slice of simulation - disconnected, in a sense, from everything that may have happened before or since - than in a continuous run that includes the entire dinner party.

  So the Buddha is probably right, most of the time. The only thing that exists is the now.

  If we assume that all of this is true, this also helps to explain why it is so difficult to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics.

  Relativity is a pretty straightforward simplifying assumption on large distance scales - if I want to simulate what happens in this room for the next 45 seconds, my simulation only needs to include a sphere, 90 light-seconds across, centered on the room. The simulation can shrink as it runs.

  Likewise, quantum mechanics is a simplifying assumption on small distance scales.

  If we assume that quantum mechanics are relativity are both kludges, tacked on at the last minute to save CPU cycles, maybe coded by different people looking at the problem from opposite ends, it makes sense that they don't reconcile cleanly or easily.

  Given that it's such a dirty hack, the universe probably was written in perl.

Post a comment to this thread, and I will:

1. Tell you why I befriended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc..
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your Journal/Blag/whatever.

More NCLB-related musings.

  Venture philanthropy: you use your philaonthrophic foundation (like the Gates foundation) to "leverage" your donations in order to pursue your policy goals.

  To run this at a direct profit - you donate $30 mil to a philanthrophy (which you run), and then you get the state to "match" your donation, and then you get the philanothropy to spend the $60 mil buying services form a company which you have set up to provide them. There are all kinds of ways to use this kind of leverage to further your policy goals (directing policy towards "market based" solutions), but this is the most egregious.

  Not only is the Emperor naked - he has invested in the invisible cloth manufacturing concern, and when some kid says "why is that man naked?" they hold him back for a year and he drops out of school instead of graduating.

  Getting back to the difference between the Dems and Republicans: if you study the training offerings which the current crop of educational services have for science education, there is very clearly nothing there. There are warehouses and warehouses all over Texas (also CA and MA) full of invisible cloth that these hucksters want to sell.

  These are all programs that were envisaged and flourished under the administrations of Republican governors.

  The Democrats are also willing and eager to use venture philanthropy as an ideological tool to sell off the country at firehouse-sale rates. But they, at least, are competent enough to produce some kind of useable educational services out of it.

  It's Iraq and Katrina writ large - the Dems have constiuents such that they have some concern over maintaining a functioning society. The Republicans have no such interest - there's no substance at all to their proposals, just the graft.

Firstly, as background, a 2004 report from the Boston Phoenix on policies to push minority kids out of the high schools. My mother is a chemistry teacher in a low income district in MA. This is a variant on a letter that she's been circulating among colleagues and potential political allies; I thought my fellow slashdotters might be interested, since MIT is the hero of the piece, and Harvard Business School is the villain.

"Educational Entrepreneurship" is an enormously powerful nation-wide effort to sub-contract educational administration, curriculum, and professional development services in low-income public school districts to private for-profit partners, after districts are taken over under NCLB. Mass Insight is a leader in this drive, and you can view its proposal to coordinate the takeover process for its partners in a report on its website. They are explicit, in their report, that their eventual target is to take over the entire public education system and run it, free of "bureaucratic interference."

  Another powerful player is New Schools Venture Fund, which has just added former Mass. Education Board chairman Jim Peyser to its partners; The Gates Foundation is a backer, and the Harvard Business School now offers MBA classes in
Educational Entrepreneurship.

  The eventual for-profit providers of services are located under several layers of interlocking "advocacy" organizations, with a conscious strategy of leveraging investment of public and private money to promote the takeover. Texas, Massachusetts, and California are epicenters of the project, where Republican governors have built Education Boards dominated by adherents. An example of a "partner" might be K-12 Inc, which went public last week with a stock offering that raised $108 million, according to the current issue of Education Week.

  The rationale for forcing public schools to consume these private services is that the services are "research-based" and have proven their effectiveness. A problem is that the research is often biased or distorted by researchers with hidden agendas. In many cases, especially in Texas, it was fabricated outright [she means Reading First]. Most activity has been in math and reading, since those are the high-stakes targets of NCLB. But as concern has risen over the condition of science instruction, vast amounts of money have been appropriated to improve it, and entrepreneurial attention has now focused on science education.

  As you may know [remember this was originally sent to other teachers], the federal "What Works" clearinghouse has failed to recommend very many marketed educational programs as showing "research-based" effectiveness.

  In the current effort to create a follow-up reading commission to get approval for more programs, many public-interest advocacy groups function as lobbyists for partner programs.

  A favorite way to profiteer as well as to consolidate control is to force dumbed-down, "standards based," for-profit professional development programs on teachers in urban districts. Texas is exporting these. I am convinced the only way to save my students or science teaching is to bring the whole monster down.

  If anything, the forced drop-out situation is worse now [compared to the background article before the blockquote] because of the structure of the AYP requirements under the NCLB law. With the requirement that every school's test scores continually increase toward 240 ("proficiency"), even a kid who would pass the test and graduate from high school is a score suppressor. My students have cried when they came to me to turn in their chemistry text and be signed out to Alternative Ed; then they disappeared from my roster and the school system, and didn't even get counted as dropouts somehow. We have been putting our little girls out onto the street with less than a 10th grade education to leverage our MCAS scores. Our graduation rate hovers in the 50-60% range, but we report 0%-5% dropout rates. I promise you I have been fighting it with all my heart every day, and the only reason I still have a job is teacher tenure.

  It may change this year (or not), because our Alternative Ed has been "taken over" by the same Board of Education and private education reform consultants who have been showering my district with awards for our supposedly rising test scores. [This may make it harder to use the alternative Ed to disappear students] If we do succeed in increasing the number of 10th graders who make it through to the test in my school, the MCAS average will undoubtedly fall. So, who is circling over our heads waiting to pick off the urban schools when NCLB finally brings them down? What is Education Reform? Briefly, it is a for-profit "solution" to the problems Ed Reform consultants cause, while they dominate school boards under cover of "non-profit" advocacy groups (with their hidden for-profit partners). Here is an example.

  Nobody can seem to take an aim at the real enemy, who hide behind a dizzy profusion of glossy websites linked to "social capital" and "venture philanthropy" at one end and "market strategy" and profits at the other. They are all over the Education Departments, "leveraging" this and "leveraging" that. The flow of corporate venture philanthropy to its ideological partners becomes an overwhelming tool to shape opinion and policy.

  I think I've found a way to get some traction against the real perpetrators of these outrageous and cowardly education policies: We can demand transparency and accountability. We do have some allies - Deval Patrick has appointed Ruth Kaplan to the Board of Education in my own state, and there is an organization of scientists centered at MIT who have not been and cannot be bought off or scared away. You can meet them through the Parents Care website.

  Exxon has given a $250 million "gift" to improve AP science instruction (the NSMI), and it is being distributed to leverage the take-over of public school science by hucksters. The FAQ for applicants for funding, on the NSMI website, includes the question,
what if there is no suitable non-profit recipient? The answers include the information that a for-profit can only be a cooperating partner, and MUST CREATE a non-profit entity to receive the funds. Demonstrating your political connections in your own state, especially with the governor's office, will also help your application. You will even find helpful links to create your own tax-exempt non-profit.

  We have to reframe the "accountability" debate, and get terms like huckster and for-profit and leveraged take-over out into public consciousness. Is it possible that internet savvy people could discover the identity of for-profit entities currently awarded contracts by their own state and local school boards? The kick back schemes by Reading First never would have been investigated unless competitors complained. Can somebody please advocate for the actual children? Low-income districts with low graduation rates are crucially vulnerable. The data base from the 2007 Gates Foundation Diplomas Count report will help you find them in your state.

  My alarm goes off at 5:30 every morning. I dress professionally, and go into a low-income public school building and teach chemistry all day until, frankly, I can barely stand up. Somebody else needs to expose the Board of Education. Maybe you could help, or maybe you know somebody who wants to.

Evidently, the position that the Dems are marginally better than the Republicans is actually *trolling*, and two moderators have modded it as such. Is it Republican or Democratic partisans whom I am supposedly trolling for flames?

Robert Fisk, the outstanding middle-east correspondent for the London Independent has announced that he will retire. A loss for journalism, a loss for human rights advocates, a loss for the world, he will be missed. Slashdotters may know him best for being the origin of the term "fisking" - the practice common on usenet and in forums where a piece of text is broken into little bits and disparaged, commonly characterized by a complete failure to grasp the overall content. He doesn't think he's done any good: I am among those who would disagree - we don't know how much worse it could have been.

Very nicely put.

Intriguing and worth reading.

  David F. Noble, by the way, is the genuine article. He is also a bit nuts.

  Nonetheless, he's an outstanding scholar, very careful and insightful, with genuinely unique ideas (some of which I think are harebrained, but that's an unavoidable consequence of the capcaity for original thought), and probably one of the most dilligent and careful researchers in recent history.

  The case of his tenure at MIT is particularly relevant, because it was denied under rather similar circumstances to those currently surrounding Norman Finkelstein. David won some kind of judgement against MIT (it was a procedural thing, though, obviously the court couldn't rule on the substance of his tenure denial, or lack thereof), which is unlikely to happen in Norman's case, but Norman is hardly the only US scholar to be punished for the excellent quality of his scholarship.

  Anyone who is interested in fixing this country would do well to understand what is wrong with it - Forces of Production: A worker's history of industrial automation - is a must-read for anyone who is serious about fixing this country.

Firstly, to clarify my original point: I don't think their natural rights were necessarily violated. HOWEVER, it is definitely *a free speech issue* that must be considered, and carefully considered. A blanket statement that free speech is never an issue in commercial media is completely unjustified.

  Shows are cancelled all the time:

  If they are cancelled because they do not have an audience, that is legitimate.

  If they are cancelled because of pressure from advertizers, that is censorship. Thus, Don Imus was censored.

  Let us start from basic principles.

  You have a natural right to communicate with your fellow citizens to the limit of technological and economic feasability, in a market of ideas. If the government artificially raises (or lowers, through subsidy) the cost of such communications, those who benefit from those restrictions or subsidies are answerable to the public interest.

  The FCC officially recognizes this, although their enforcement is a pathetic joke thanks to the lobbying power of the corporate media.

  This is not a socialist statement: you have the right to participate equally in the marketplace of ideas, which is a market (market market market), from those who produce content, to their audiences (market!). MARKET! If the government meddles in this market in such a way that equal participation becomes impossible, that is a violation of our natural rights. Recall that a true market must have an effectively infinite number of participants, with a low barrier of entry or new participants.

  The fact that 90% of supposed free market liberals do not seem to believe this reveals the depths of cynicism to which they have sunk - to an adherent of liberal philosophy, the above statement should not be (MARKET!) controversial.

  Why does XM radio exist? *Completely distinct* from the government charter of the institution itself, you have a government charter for the entire business model - they couldn't stay in business if the government didn't actively prevent other people from decoding the incoming satellite signals without paying some kind of government imposed fee.

  Another basic assertion that should not be non-controversial to liberals: government licenses and privileges (including every kind of intellectual property) is *not* property, and no property rights attach to the person who owns it. If you get a government license of any sort, it is supposed to be in the public interest, and you do *not* have a *natural right* to do whatever you want with the associated government privileges.

  The same is far more true for terrestrial radio, which doesn't just depend on a copyrighted (or whatever) decoding key, but on the government actively intervening to prevent ordinary citizens from setting up "pirate" radio systems, even in unlicensed spectra.

  This is in *no sense* a requirement of the underlying technology - when I was a teenager in California I helped put together pirate radio stations.

  I think that covers all relevant responses to my original post.

Two unrelated topics (seemingly...)

  Am I the only person who thinks this news photo looks photoshopped?
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/05/14/world/14cnd_mideast-600.jpg

  On the republican candidates (semi-serious contenders only, at least for VP, which is why I'm not mentioning Ron Paul):
In general, the differences between the Republican candidates are far wider than the ones between the leading dems. Mainly, this is because the dems are not seriously considering running anyone other than a centrist. The same cannot be said for the Republicans. Sorted in increasing order of reprehensibility.

Chuck Hagel - Was the only one of them I could've tolerated. Ah well: http://www.ktvu.com/politics/13314504/detail.html

  If he runs as an independent it'll probably be a 50:50 spoiler (like Ross Perot), but I think is more likely to help dems than to hurt them - even if merely be changing the emphasis of the discourse. Which might very well be his plan. He'd be about as bad as Eisenhower and, on reflection, we could do worse. Specifically, we could have any of these other people.

Mike Huckabee - Is *almost* tolerable. He's plenty socially conservative - he's not a firebrand, but that is not his problem. He's not rapacious enough for the powerful and under-discussed "corrupt cigar-chomping businessman" wing of the party, which is immensely powerful. Also, he seems decent and genuine rather than sleazy and republicans don't trust people like that. Since I don't think the President really has much influence over social policy, an *actually christian* conservative wouldn't be so bad.

Rudy Giuliani - Is not nearly as strong in the general election as people seem to think, but in any case, he won't be nominated - that's pretty clear at this point. It's very nice that he doesn't want to put all the homosexuals in camps, but the president has very little power to enforce a social agenda anyway. A civil liberties agenda is a different matter - and Rudy has an *awful* record on civil liberties as mayor of New York. As a rule, I don't regard gun control as a civil liberties issue - but for Rudy, it is: he wants to take away your guns so we can have a police state. He'd be about as bad as Bush Sr. The following people would be worse.

John McCain - I'll grant that he does have some degree of human decency - the fact that this draws so much attention says something about our lackluster political environment, rather than anything good about McCain. The latest round of ass-kissing to the extreme right is shameful, but hey, you can tell he's ashamed of it. But that's a problem: the religious right wants someone like Romney, who can kiss their asses and feel no remorse. McCain would make a terrible president because he's a fool - which is not the same as being stupid - but anyway he won't win the nomination.

Fred Thompson and Sam Brownback - Are quite reactionary, in a classical sense. They'd be about as bad as Reagan. The following people would be worse.

Mitt Romney - Is a scum-bag (my family lives in Mass), with poor demographics, an embarassingly inconsistent record, and negative charisma. I hope the Repubs nominate him because he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. Yes, I'm serious, this guy is worse than Sam Brownback.

Newt Gingrich - *Is* a serious contender - not because anyone would vote for him, but because he might come out as a compromise candidate from a tied convention (to face Gore, nominated the same way). He'd be about as bad as Nixon, but it's a moot point, because here's the plan:
  * Republicans nominate Gingrich.
  * Democrats nominate Ficus.
  * Ficus wins in a landslide.
  * We give up and go home, switching over to a parliamentary proportional system.

Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter - Would be worse than Nixon. If there were any republicans to the right of these guys, I'd say they'd be worse than Hitler. These guys are serious contenders for VP, because of their ability to mobilize the base, especially for a candidate weak on ultra-right-wing credentials.

Firstly, tactical considerations.
  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton could either of them win, it's true (especially if the Pachyderms nominate Romney or someone equally unappealing.) However, to nominate either is an unacceptable risk, Obama because he's black and Hillary because no-one likes her. We *must* get the Republicans out of the white house; any risk of failure is too high.
  Edwards is likable. It doesn't even matter if he isn't qualified, or if he's a pretty boy (which people actually like), or a trial lawyer (focus group results: no one cares), or any of his other supposed weaknesses.
  The Republicans would inevitably *attempt* to attack him for running in spite of his wife's cancer. Even knowing that it's a huge tactical mistake, they would still do it. It'd backfire spectacularly.
  Nothing but upsides to this guy.

  For my money, Obama would make a devastatingly good running mate. All those closet rascists would *love* to see an affable, empathetic white southerner with a black sidekick. They'd be frickin' thrilled.

  Secondly, policy considerations.
  Okay, the state of American politics is so bad that most people don't even *know* the policy differences (such as they are) between the main candidates. They don't amount to much.
  However, among those who have a chance of being nominated (so not Gravel or Kucinich) Edwards has made the best policy statements. Obama is one of those people who seldom *says* much of anything, and Hillary is to the right of her husband, who was practically a Republican, on the bread-and-butter issues I care about.

A business - including especially a joint stock corporation - is nothing but a small government. In the case of a joint stock corporation, this is literally true - they are created with a constitution by a writ of one or another "real" government.

  Some forms of anarchist thinking maintain that such institutions should be demolished entirely. This is not the position of anarcho-syndicalist thinkers, which is:

  * Any institution, if it controls resources or wields power of any kind, is a form of government.
  * The restrictions which liberal thinking places on governments should be applied to all such institutions.
  * If their existence cannot be justified, they should be demolished.
  * If their existence can be justified, they should be democratic in nature, and be forced to respect fundamental human rights.
      - Stockholders in General Motors have no more right to make decisions for General Motors than someone who holds a US Treasury Note has a right to make public policy.
      - This does not involve the abrogation of private property (which is generally recognized as a natural right), but there is no concept of stock. You can own a physical object, but not an institution (or an idea, for that matter.)
      - The institution cannot fire you because the governance of that istitution (even if properly democratic) does not like you or does not like what you say. Any punitive action against an employee must be justified.
  * The material interests of the community are a justification. Therefore, it is legitimate for institutions to engage in economic activity (provided that the gain in efficiency is great enough to justify the inevitable loss of some personal freedom, which is a judgement call), and to provide for community needs which require the coordinated action of multiple people.

  The other key philosophical assertion of anarcho-syndicalism is that it is consonant with the inherent moral nature of human beings; it is intended to be a codification of the better aspects of human nature, and derived from (rather than imposing itself on), that nature.

  Anarcho-syndicalism is generally a gradualist form of anarchism, rather than a revolutionary one. Actions which elevate the power of individuals, which weaken illegitimate institutions, which force existing institutions to respond to the public will (becoming more democratic, even if not formally so) or which strengthen individual rights are seen as steps towards achieving a just society within existing frameworks.

  The key differences between anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-capitalism are:
* Anarcho-capitalist notions are cynically exploited by the wealthy to pursue their own agenda. 90% of articulate anarcho-capitalists in the media (e.g. the Economist) are frauds, being neither anarchists nor capitalists, being advocates of corporate power, which amounts to a return to feudalism and private government.

* Anarcho-syndicalism views taxation for purposes of providing social services as legitimate, provided that justification can be met, which in the case of social services it generally can. It should be noted that, even in the United States, a majority of the population agrees (supports socialized medicine, for example.)

* Anarcho-syndicalism does not recognize property rights in so far as they attach to ideas or institutions. Anarcho-syndicalism does not ascribe natural rights to institutions. It should be noted that some anarcho-capitalists share these ideas, but not the 90% of articulate anarcho-capitalists who are cynical liars.

* Individuals have a natural right to a stake in, and to control of, their own productive output, which must be balanced against, and generally trumps, any property rights invested in capital goods.

* Anarcho-syndicalism views wage labor, as it exists today, as little better than slavery.