Quotation Of The Day: Net Neutrality With Very Brief Comment Edition

From this IO9.com post:

[Eliminating net neutrality] is the first step toward a world where corporate monopolies on content start affecting not just what you can see and read online — but also how you gain access to it. The signal will be out there, but your ISP just won't deliver it to you.

An internet without network neutrality will look a lot like television does now. You'll depend entirely on your cable company to get broadcasts, and they will only deliver their handpicked channels in their cable packages. There will probably be a little room for the web equivalent of public access television, but it will be so underfunded and slow to load that almost nobody will see it.

The post is in response to proposed F.C.C. rules changes. This decision is just one more item on the list of reasons that makes me glad I did not vote to re-elect President Obama. I really can't imagine a Mitt Romney administration being able to give away more to corporate America than the Obama administration has during the past two years.

Obamacare Is Not The Biggest Problem Facing The United States

Yesterday, I drove to St. Joseph, Missouri, picked up a young'un and returned to South Dakota, so I didn't have much time to blog or read blogs. This morning, I found this post and Larry Rhoden's claim: "The battle against Obamacare is the most pressing issue our nation is facing." Repealing a law passed by Congress, signed by the President, and upheld by the Supreme Court is "the most pressing issue" in the country. Seriously?

In no particular order, here are 10 issues that are more important than repealing the PPACA.

1. The expanded practice of governing through executive orders begun by George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama. House Republicans seemed fine with the practice during the Bush administration and Senate Democrats are fine with Obama's use of the instrument even though the practice seems more reminiscent of a monarchy than it does a republic.

2. In that vein, Congress continues to abdicate its power to declare war. The Afghanistan war is the longest in our history, but Congress never bothered to declare war. Now, the President is apparently preparing to attack Syria without any Congressional debate.

3, The surveillance state has run amok and Congressional leaders seem unwilling or unable to do anything to stop it.

4. The "too big to fail banks" that brought the country to the bring of economic ruin are still too big to fail. Further, nothing has been done to prevent those institutions from engaging in the same practices that led to the recession.

5. Economic stagnation threatens the basic American Dream, the promise that one's children will have a better life than their parents. Please spare me the ridiculous chestnut that Obamacare is causing this stagnation. It's been a decades long trend.

6. Our roads, bridges, electronic grid and other infrastructure are crumbling. Our broadband efforts to create and maintain a broadband infrastructure trail many other nations.

7.The country doesn't seem to have a coherent plan to deal with China or any other rising economic power.

8. Terrorism, nuclear proliferation, chemical WMDs are still bigger threats than a legally enacted law.

9. The country and the world still relies on Arab states for oil. The nation has no coherent plan to deal with energy. On a related note, I'm not sure that country has a secure food supply.

10. The revolving door between government and corporate America that centers control in fewer hands.

Now that I think about it, the most pressing issue facing our country might be the people who believe Rhoden's rhetoric because their screams to eliminate Obamacare have prevented serious efforts to deal with any of the more pressing issues.

Quotation Of The Day: Civil Liberties And Why I'm Angry Edition

From this Joseph Baldacchino book review:

Constitutional liberties, dating back in some instances to Magna Carta, are being jettisoned, ostensibly to protect against terrorism. Through the National Defense Authorization Act, Congress has empowered the president to imprison without charges or trial any American whom he decides, based on secret evidence, is a threat to national security. Barack Obama and his attorney general claim the president has the right to execute summarily anyone in the world—not excluding Americans—without due process of law. The Pentagon has been lending unmanned drones to local and state law enforcement agencies to spy on citizens without search warrants.

The 2008 election was viewed by many as a repudiation of torture and other dangers to civil liberties supported by George W. Bush. Five years later Obama seemingly has doubled down on policies that he had condemned. 

Tweets Of The Day: Bigoted People Exposing Their Ignorance Edition

Some people need to learn that political opponents should not be considered evil:

Republicans want to make it harder for people to love one another and easier for them to kill one another.
— Peter Flom (@peterflom) April 21, 2013

Can we just lock Richard Dawkins and Pat Robertson in a room and let them scream at each other. It will make the rest world a better place.

Mehdi Hasan admits to believing Muhamed flew to heaven on a winged horse. And New Statesman sees fit to print him as a serious journalist
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) April 21, 2013

Quotation Of The Day: The Disposable Middle Class Edition

April Rubin gives cold-blooded advice to financial managers:

The middle class is toast. In the wake of the financial crisis, middle class families in the U.S. are burdened by too much debt, the rising cost of health care, fewer jobs and the ever-increasing price tag on retirement.

Financial advisors in the future who want to prosper need to hitch their star to high net worth clients, including , maybe even especially, those from outside the U.S. who are seeking a dynamic asset allocation approach designed to deal with rising global market and economic volatility.

It’s a reality that advisors need to embrace, but all too many are behind the curve. They are using old-fashioned methods to appeal to clients who are rapidly disappearing and who will in the future not be able to afford their products and services.

I guess that if one is a financial planner one doesn't care that the middle class is being destroyed; one only cares that one is "behind the curve" in chasing wealthy clients and throwing middle class clients to curb.

Romney Or Obama: How About None Of The Above?

Troy Jones makes the standard Republican case to deny President Obama a second term. Cory offers a line by line rebuttal.  As an interesting side note, it seems a bit odd that Cory mentions Governor Romney only twice; Troy mentions Romney only in the concluding sentence's injunction to "vote Romney," hardly a ringing endorsement.

I'm going to unleash my inner Libertarian and argue that "None of the Above" is the best vote. Listening to Romney and viewing Obama's record makes it clear that checking the box for either is really a vote against the more evil of two lessers. In this election, the differences are not distinct enough to justify making that vote.

Troy and Cory focus on economic arguments. This AlterNet post may be hyperbolic but it contains this kernel of truth: "Republicans [are] more committed than ever to repealing every economic gain the working-class has achieved in the last century and the Democrats [are] seemingly unable to resist." Unwilling might be a better term than "unable." Both posts provide the necessary supporting evidence. Troy correctly asserts:

Too Big Too Fail banks are getting bigger and JPMorgan/Chase lost closer to $9Billion in activities banks should not be allowed to do.  D-F made our financial system more unstable vs. more stable.

Cory responds:

I’ll grant Dodd-Frank is flawed. But a Romney return to deregulation and high-finance free-for-all is not the proper response.

I have no confidence that Obama and the Democrats will prevent "return to deregulation and high-finance free-for-all."

Let's move beyond the economy. The tea party party folk frequently contend that health care reform is the biggest existential threat to liberty that the country has ever faced. The Affordable Care Act, whatever its flaws, is not a major assault on liberty.The biggest threats to liberty are the Patriot Act, the expansion of the security state and the dismissive attitude toward civil liberties. President Obama and the Democrats refuse to repeal the Patriot Act, Obama has expanded the security state beyond Bush's ambitions.

When it comes to civil liberties, the choice seems to be between a person who will take them away with an ironic smirk and a person who will take them away with a plastic smile.

The second non-economic issue is the military. The United States needs to cut back on foreign adventuring. Our military is stretched too thin; the suicide rate among veterans is alarmingly high, and the drone war justifies killing civilians. Governor  Romney is rattling the sabers at Iran, and President Obama seemingly hasn't seen a drone target he doesn't want to attack.

Finally, I've never seen Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Mitt Romney in the same room.  When it comes to education policy, they may be the same person. Both will continue to pursue policies that harm more than help.

One may be less bad than the other.  For example on a Richter scale, a 10. 1 earthquake is twice as powerful as a 10; both would destroy my house, so there's no reason to hope for one over the other. Both Presidential candidates will ensure an increase in corporate influence on government, a decline in the working class standard of living, a decrease in civil liberties, and continued foreign adventuring; there's no reason to vote for one over the other.

A Minor Musing About Expanding Government Power

The local blogosphere on both the right and the left is hashing out Obama's immigration executive order; the local tea party is concerned about the rising numbers of corporations that are being crucified.  After all, some on the far right believe corporations are people whose life begins at the moment of incorporation.

The imperial presidency is a perpetual danger.  I wish the right had expressed more concern about the abuse of executive orders when George W. Bush expanded their use.  I also wish the tea party folk were more concerned about torturing actual human beings rather than the use of a hyperbolic metaphor about a corporation.

Meanwhile, both ends of the political spectrum should be worried about the government's seemingly insatiable demand for citizens' data.  Forbes reports,

In the second half of 2011, Google received 6,321 requests that it hand over its users’ private data to U.S. government agencies including law enforcement, and complied at least partially with those requests in 93% of cases, according to the latest update to the company’s bi-annual Transparency Report that it planned to release Sunday night.

That’s up from 5,950 requests in the first half of 2011, and marks a 37% increase in the number of requests over the second half of 2010, when Google received only 4,601 government requests and complied to some degree with 94% of them. And compared with the 3,580 requests for its data it received from U.S. agencies in the second half of 2009, the first time Google released the request numbers, the latest figures represent a 76% spike.

More alarmingly, the article continues, "Whether firms like Facebook, Microsoft, Comcast, AT&T and others have seen a parallel rise in requests can’t be determined."

Other governments are also increasing their requests for data:

Total government requests for users’ data from outside the U.S. have also been increasing steadily, spiking sharply to 11,936 in the second half of 2011 compared with 9,600 in the same period last year and 8,959 in the second half of 2009. And the number of foreign requests may be growing even faster than they appear to. Because mutual legal assistance treaties allow some countries to pass on their requests through U.S. government agencies, some portion of those foreign requests are lumped together with the U.S. requests.

Thankfully:

Google has a far lower rate of complying with foreign requests, however. It only fulfilled 64% of U.K. requests and 45% of German requests, for instance, and complied with none of the requests from Russia or Turkey.

Most of these requests probably claimed the information was necessary for national security, so the political right will smile, nod, and go along with these warrantless searches even though those information requests are as unconstitutional abusive executive orders.  Pat Buchanan had a broken clock moment when he asserted that the U.S. should be a republic not an empire.  Critics of a President as emperor should should be vigilant and condemn all imperial actions even if the actions institute policies the critics support.

Sad Work Facts

I ended the school year feeling as tired as I can ever remember feeling.  According to this Business Insider slide show, I'm not alone.  American workers are probably among the most tired in the world.  The most frustrating takes from the article:

The average American gets 90 minutes less sleep than they should, and the number of sleep disorders has skyrocketed in recent years. 

If current trends continue, Americans will be spending as much time at their jobs in 2100 as they did back in 1920, when regulations were put into place to protect workers.

83 percent of employees report going to work sick because they're afraid they'll be punished for missing.

36 percent of Americans don't plan to use all of their vacation days.

The U.S. is one of few countries that doesn't legally require workers to take time off. By contrast, countries like France and England require workers to take 30 days of vacation 

24 percent of employees work six or more extra hours per week without pay.

 I wonder if the corporations that are people get as tired as human workers.

South Dakota Department Of Education And Other Ed. Reformers Ready To Ignore Voters And Facts?

In this excellent post, Grant Wiggins observes,

Why it makes me mad. All this makes me deeply angry.  These policies will drive good people out of education and undercut the accountability movement. But this kind of policy-making is more than stupid and Kafkaesque; it is immoral. It is immoral to demand of others what we are unwilling to do to ourselves, whether we cite Kant’s Categorical Imperative or the Golden Rule. And no one, absolutely no one, promulgating this policy is willing to havethemselves be held similarly accountable. Who would? Who would willingly hold themselves accountable for measures that involve arcane math, no formative feedback en route, unreliable data, and admit no counter-evidence? Shame on the hypocrites proposing this; shame on the policy wonks who cheerfully overlook the flaws in order to grind their political axes; shame on all of us for not rising up in protest.  [Emphasis in original]

Bob Mercer reminds South Dakotans that they have another reason to be angry.  The South Dakota Department of Education (SDDOE) apparently plans to move ahead even if HB 1234, the legislation that will link teachers' evaluations to students' test results, is referred.

The petition drive to refer House Bill 1234 to a statewide vote is steaming along, with a June 18 deadeline for submitting the signatures. If Secretary of State Jason Gant determines there are sufficient valid signatures of registered South Dakota voters – at least 15,855 are necessary — the legislation would be on hold until after the results ae known from the Nov. 6 general election. The legislation wouldn’t become law until July 1 at the earliest if the petition drive falls short. All of which calls for the question to be asked: Why did the state Department of Education proceed already in naming the members of three of the panels created in the legislation? Those are the teacher evaluation work group, the principal evaluation work group and the local teacher reward plan advisory council. Do the voters not matter?

Ignoring voters may be a new twist, but education bureaucrats seem to frequently ignore inconvenient facts.  Wiggins writes,

. . .the ugly truth is that current and proposed uses for the approach are not ready for prime time on psychometric grounds. Worse, policy-makers (and, yes, some enemies of public education) are foisting these flawed approaches on us with seeming disregard for margin of error and the invalidity of shifting the purpose of the test – an old story in education.

Wiggins offers a solution that might also solve some of the burnout sources I mention here.

The solution requires us to learn from athletics: utterly transparent and valid measures, timely and frequent results, the ability to challenge judgments made, many diverse measurements over time, teacher-coach ‘ownership’ of the rules and systems, and tiered leagues (e.g. Division I, II, III) in which we have reasonable expectations and good incentives to make genuine improvement over time.

Why Corporations And Politicians Want Teachers To Teach To The Test

Claire Needell Hollander sums up how the current focus on testing reading destroys students' experience of reading literature.

We cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that purposely ignore their hearts. By doing so, we are withholding from our neediest students any reason to read at all. We are teaching them that words do not dazzle but confound. We may succeed in raising test scores by relying on these methods, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.

She correctly points that standardized tests like the Dakota STEP "are complex only on the sentence level — not because the ideas they present are complex, not because they are symbolic, allusive or ambiguous."

Hollander quotes Franz Kafka who claimed “a book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us.”  Therein lies the rub.  Helping students have a richer inner life doesn't fit with the purpose that corporate America believes that they should perform.  That purpose is succinctly and humorously summed up in this tweet:

"Oh, nooes!!! It's 'economic change'. What should we do? We won't be able to sell enough McShit!!"
— umair haque (@umairh) April 21, 2012

Diane Ravitch correctly sums up the stakes with this tweet:

Education is increasingly a race between civilization and a system of accounting that has no brain and no heart.
— Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch) April 21, 2012

I fear the battle for hearts, minds, and souls may be already lost; McShit has won.  

I Continue To Be Convinced That Voting For President Will Be A Waste Of Time

Conor Friedersdorf reminds us that President Obama's record on civil liberties is spotty at best; in fact, it can probably be described as deplorable.

As political scientist Jonathan Bernstein put it:

What will the 2012 Democratic Party platform say about civil liberties? What will it say about the U.S. government's lethal attacks on citizens overseas? About Gitmo and military tribunals? About drone wars? And, perhaps a more important question: Will Democratic activists push the party to keep and perhaps strengthen its platform -- and if so, will the Obama campaign push back?

It's an uncomfortable choice: either betray your principles and accept the Bush-Cheney-Obama approach to the War on Terror, or else highlight in a minor way how your standard-bearer has betrayed the principles on which he ran and adopted so many of the policies he once criticized. . . .

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney continues to get checks from Bain Capital, a company that profits from helping the Chinese government do a better job of destroying any civil liberties its citizens might try to keep.

The New York Times reported today that Bain Capital, the private equity firm started by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, owns a Chinese company, Uniview, that supplies highly advanced surveillance equipment to the Chinese government. China’s authoritarian rulers are using the equipment to create an “omniscient monitoring system” throughout the country, according to a Human Rights Watch researcher quoted by the Times. “When it comes to surveillance, China is pretty upfront about its totalitarian ambitions,” said Nicholas Bequelin.

To realize those totalitarian ambitions, China’s authorities, with Bain Capital’s help, are expanding the country’s already vast network of surveillance cameras. The city of Chongqing is spending $4.2 billion for a network of 500,000 cameras, Guangdong Province is installing a million cameras, and Beijing is planning to put cameras in all entertainment venues, the Times reported.

The authorities use these cameras, along with Internet monitoring and cellphone surveillance, to monitor as much of the entire population as possible. But they are particularly interested in keeping a permanent eye on democracy advocates, intellectuals, religious figures and other people they deem dangerous. For example, police used a surveillance camera to record a human rights lawyer named Li Tiantian entering a hotel with men other than her boyfriend, then taunted her about her sex life and threatened to show the tape to her boyfriend. “The scale of intrusion into people’s private lives is unprecedented,” Li told the Times. “Now when I walk on the street, I feel so vulnerable, like the police are watching me all the time.”

I suppose a difference exists between the two men; the former considers civil liberties the source of an easily broken political promise whereas the other sees them as a marketing ploy.  Both positions demean the Presidency.

Being President Is Like An Item On A Bucket List?

Governor Rick Perry will announce that he's running for President.  Unlike George W. Bush who infamously claimed he didn't seek help from the previous Republican to hold the office, Perry sought out advice.

In an interview with Time magazine, Perry, who's set to make an announcement about entering the race this weekend in South Carolina, said he has decided he wants to be president. And he said his predecessor in Texas governor prodded him toward running.

" 'You’ll do what’s right,' " Perry said Bush had told him when Perry called the former president on his birthday. "He said you don’t want to wake up when you’re 70 and go, 'I wish I had tried that. I wish I had done that.' "

So, the best reason to run for President is "you don’t want to wake up when you’re 70 and go, 'I wish I had tried that. I wish I had done that.' "  I thought doing something big to avoid regret was the reason for a Bucket List.

What happened to skydiving, bungee jumping, winning the Coney Island hot dog eating contest, going to a baseball fantasy weekend, visiting every Starbucks in the world, eating at every restaurant that Guy Fieri profiles, following what remains of the Grateful Dead for a summer, designing the next Mt. Rushmore, attending the Sturgis rally, climbing Mt. Everest, backpacking through Europe, walking the Great Wall of China, or memorizing every name in Iceland's phone book?

I would prefer Governor Perry seek the presidency because he has a plan to create jobs, reduce the debt, preserve the social safety net, and extricate the country from interminable wars that can't be won.
(HT @coralhei)

Target Targets Teachers

I may be getting a bit sensitive here, but these commercials anger me.

First, Target treats us to a second grade teacher who apparently is only slightly less mature than her charges.  Maybe the produces thought that they were dispelling the stereotype of the overachieving Asian.

Of course, all music teachers are frustrated lounge singers or out-of-place hipsters.

And every coach is old, gruff, technologically illiterate; they also hide a secret past as a United States Marine drill instructor.

Like all stereotypes, the ones that Target is perpetuating have some basis in reality.  These commercials, however, exacerbate a problem that this Ariel Sacks post points out:

. . . while teaching is very difficult, it can look easy to the public. Some . . . reasons are that it is seen as "an extension of child-rearing" which doesn't require professional training. Also, everyone has been through school, so thinks they know about teaching.  The knowledge and skills K-12 teachers teach are skills all competent adults have, so "the impression of ordinariness is hard for teaching to shake...As a group teachers are too visible to be inscrutable and too numerous to be elite...They don;t have the distance, obscurity, and selectivity of the high-status professional...Everyone is an expert on education, except the educator."

The teachers I know are not perfect.  We try hard to do the best we can to use our gifts and limit our foibles.  We don't need a major corporation perpetuating myths and attitudes that make the job more difficult.  Target can successfully sell school supplies without perpetuating stereotypes and education myths.

Debt Ceiling And Default Silver Lining: Language Use

The Economist gives readers some alliteration:

It is because the vast majority of Republicans, driven on by the wilder-eyed members of their party and the cacophony of conservative media, are clinging to the position that not a single cent of deficit reduction must come from a higher tax take.

Note the repeated hard C in cacophony, conservative, and clinging.  Not also that the author repeats the T sound at the end of cent, deficit, and must and the beginning of tax and take.

Steve Benen points to this @jamescrabtree tweet 

Frm a friend in Asia: "I can summarise the mood of Asian central bankers to the US debt imbroglio in two words: Resigned incredulity."

Appropriately, "resigned incredulity" also applies to parents watching the more bizarre actions of their teenage children or sports fans hearing a report that Bret Farve may come back from one more season.

Of course disaster has always brought out some authors' poetic sides.  Consider this famous passage which, with its description of economic turmoil, seems appropriate.

¹And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
 ²And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
 ³And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
 ⁴And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
 ⁵And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
 ⁶And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
 ⁷And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
 ⁸And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

More on Dishonoring God: Rick Perry Edition

Apparently Rick Perry like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum is hearing God's call.  Apparently, I'm in a minority in believing that this claim constitutes hubris. In The Daily Beast, Michelle Cottle writes,

Better still, Perry’s assertion that he has been “called” also sends a signal that the governor is not unnaturally fixated on this whole presidential dream. He’s running because he sees it as God’s will, not because he needs an ego boost or a purpose in life. He is not, God forbid, personally ambitious—like say, the cold-blooded meritocrat currently inhabiting the White House or a certain flip-floppish ex-governor frantic to hold onto his front-runner status.

You could see Perry pushing this message in another quote to come out of his interview: “I’ll be real honest with you,” he told the Register. “I don’t wake up in the morning—never did and still don’t today—and say, ‘Gee, I want to be president of the United States.’”. . .

For many Americans, however, Perry’s professed ambivalence will be as irresistible as ice cream on a hot day. It is an enduring political irony that, despite being a nation of strivers, Americans find naked ambition distasteful. Especially in presidential candidates, visible hunger can be a turnoff, an indication that the pol in question is too desperate for the job, too power-hungry, or just plain needy.

 Reading between the lines, it seems that the claiming God's call is not only hubris, it's an effort to hide one's pride.  I always thought that God created humans to serve him; apparently, certain politicians believe God exists to serve their political advantage

Will Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann Please Stop Dishonoring God!

The New York Magazine's "Daily Intel" reports that Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachman all claim that God has told them to run for President. The article reports that Cain has heard the call at least twice, once by text.  Cain also claims that God cured his cancer so that Cain could run for President.

Cain told the crowd about his battle with cancer in 2006, saying he's been "totally cancer free" for the past five years.

"You want to know why? God said, 'Not yet Herman,'" Cain told the crowd. "God said, 'Not yet. I've got something else for you to do.' And it might be to become the president of the United States of America."

As for Santorum, his wife,

Karen Santorum told CBN's David Brody in May about her husband's decision to run for president, "It really boils down to God's will. What is it that God wants? ... We have prayed a lot about this decision, and we believe with all our hearts that this is what God wants."

Michele Bachmann

. . . told World Net Daily in 2009, she would never run without God's personal endorsement:

"If I felt that's what the Lord was calling me to do, I would do it," she answered. "When I have sensed that the Lord is calling me to do something, I've said yes to it. But I will not seek a higher office if God is not calling me to do it. That's really my standard.
"If I am called to serve in that realm I would serve," she concluded, "but if I am not called, I wouldn't do it."

Bachmann recently confirmed that she has, indeed, "had that calling and that tugging on my heart."

I'm not a theologian, but I have a difficult time understanding how the Being who created and sustains the universe that humans inhabit needs the help of a mere mortal to lead one nation on one small planet in one galaxy among millions of galaxies.  Further, claiming that God has called them to a higher purpose implies that they are uniquely blest because God has called them.  In a perverse way, each claims to deserve glory and power because God has said so.

David Platt in Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream reminds readers that God has said that humans exist for God's glory.  God doesn't exist for their glory.  Platt quotes Ezekiel 36:22-24 (page 68).

‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, house of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes. 

Platt then goes on to assert, "We are not the end of the gospel: God is.  God centers on himself . . . ." (page 71).

Finally, and I admit I may be being cynical here, people who run for President seem to desire power and the use of that power.  Platt illustrates how Christianity illustrates a different view.

The gospel betokens us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and trust his power. . . .

As long as we achieve our desires in our own power, we will always attribute it to our own glory (46).

Cain, Santorum, and Bachmann have it backwards.  They are centering on themselves by claiming to have a divinely appointed to run for President of the United States.  In doing so, they make themselves laughingstocks and exhibit profound hubris.

A New Form of Intelligence: Another Thing NCLB/Race To The Top Will Screw Up

David Livermore, president and partner at the Cultural Intelligence Center in East Lansing, Michigan, and . . . a visiting scholar at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, writes,

What’s the number one predictor of success in today’s global economy? It’s not your IQ, not your résumé—not even your expertise. It’s your CQ (cultural intelligence quotient), a powerful capability that is proven to enhance your effectiveness working in culturally diverse situations.

CQ is the ability to function effectively in a variety of cultural contexts—national, ethnic, organizational, and generational. It is a set of capabilities and skills proven to give employees and their organizations a competitive advantage in our ever-shrinking world.

He goes on to break down the elements of cultural intelligence.

Academic research across more than 30 countries reveals four capabilities that consistently emerge among individuals who are culturally intelligent:

1. CQ Drive: They possess a high level of interest, drive, and motivation to adapt cross-culturally.

2.  CQ Knowledge: They have a strong understanding about how cultures are similar and different.

3. CQ Strategy: They are aware and able to plan in light of their cultural understanding.

4.  CQ Action: They know when to adapt and when not to adapt when relating and working cross-culturally. [emphasis in original]

One could boil those elements down to two qualities.  The first two require curiosity while the latter require a willingness to adapt.  Filling in the bubbles on a standardized DSTEP test will do little to test either quality.  Teaching to that test will do little to develop either quality.

More importantly, education should help students develop eudaimonia, a sense of fulfillment.  Alyssa Rosenberg writes,

One of the places cultural capital seems valuable is when it’s surprising, when two people doing a deal discover that, contrary to their expectations of each other, both love the same author, or a client finds out that the person who is responsible for entertaining them can talk knowledgeably about their favorite sports team. It’s the spontaneity of that mutual recognition that’s useful, and that’s hard to engineer or to hire strategically for. (HT Andrew Sullivan)

Once again, preparing students to fill in bubble tests won't help people to love Shakespeare, Hawthorne, or Flannery O'Connor.  It won't help students learn to know how to talk about the Minnesota Twins or Green Bay Packers.  It won't help them develop a love for jazz, appreciate a good rock guitar riff or the poetry inherent in Johnny Cash's songs.

Employers want students who are curious and can think globally.  Students who are curious and think globally have a better chance of developing a sense of fulfillment.  Why can't Arne Duncan and the rest of people shoving testing down people's throats understand that?

Who Decides Which Gamblers Are Arrested?

The government is going after the three largest poker sites in the country.

Eleven executives at PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and a number of their affiliates were charged with bank fraud and money laundering in an indictment unsealed in a Manhattan court. Two of the defendants were arrested on Friday morning in Utah and Nevada. Federal agents are searching for the others.

Millions play online poker and watch televised tournaments despite the fact that "[i]n 2006 Congress passed a law curtailing online gambling. Most of the leading sites found ways to work around the law, but prosecutors allege that in doing so they broke the law."

Government officials allege, “These defendants concocted an elaborate criminal fraud scheme, alternately tricking some U.S. banks and effectively bribing others to assure the continued flow of billions in illegal gambling profits,”

No one is for fraud, and those who benefit from millions of dollars in illegal profits should be prosecuted.  Still if the government can prosecute 11 people who ran allegedly illegal gambling sites why can't they arrest and prosecute those whose gambling caused the banking crisis that caused the worst economic crisis since the great depression?  Apparently, failing to prosecute these individuals is unique and risky.

But several years after the financial crisis, which was caused in large part by reckless lending and excessive risk taking by major financial institutions, no senior executives have been charged or imprisoned, and a collective government effort has not emerged. This stands in stark contrast to the failure of many savings and loan institutions in the late 1980s. In the wake of that debacle, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail. Among the best-known: Charles H. Keating Jr., of Lincoln Savings and Loan in Arizona, and David Paul, of Centrust Bank in Florida.

Former prosecutors, lawyers, bankers and mortgage employees say that investigators and regulators ignored past lessons about how to crack financial fraud.

I guess if something's too big to fail it's also to big to prosecute; he only time to safely "go all in" is if one can bring down the whole house.

Of Big Government and Big Corporations

Neil M. Barofsky, former special inspector general of the TARP bailout program, penned a rather disturbing op-ed in yesterday's New York Times.

Barofsky's assertion that the provisions of the bailout designed to help Main Street "have been a colossal failure" should surprise no one.  In fact, it's surprising, if not shocking, that a former government official has admitted that failure.  Nor should one be surprised that the "Treasury [Department] apparently has chosen to ignore rather than support real efforts at reform."  I seldom expect Washington to make things better; I foolishly continue to hope that they will do no harm.

The disturbing element of the editorial is "[t]hese banks now enjoy record profits and the seemingly permanent competitive advantage that accompanies being deemed “'too big to fail.'"  More frighteningly,

The biggest banks are 20 percent larger than they were before the crisis and control a larger part of our economy than ever. They reasonably assume that the government will rescue them again, if necessary. Indeed, credit rating agencies incorporate future government bailouts into their assessments of the largest banks, exaggerating market distortions that provide them with an unfair advantage over smaller institutions, which continue to struggle.

 If one parses that last quotation a bit, the true failure of TARP and the true hubris of corporate America becomes clear.  The institutions that caused the financial collapse expect to be bailed out again.  Further, they are bigger than they were when they were to big to fail.  Logically, that means that when they bring America to the brink of collapse again the economic devastation will be greater.  Finally, smaller institutions will not be able to catch up.  If that's the case, individuals have little or no chance of getting ahead.

A Short Musing on the Mangling of History and Literature

Michelle Bachman, the Tea Party lust object du jour, has recently been caught mangling American history. When she confuses New Hampshire and Massachusetts because both have cities named Lexington, I’m pretty sure she has failed to meet one of the Common Core Standards. I don’t get to teach history because I don’t coach a an athletic activity, so I’m not sure which standard Bachman failed to meet, but I’m pretty sure it was one of the more basic ones.  Her failure to meet basic standards becomes more obvious when one notices that she has made similar mistakes in the past.

While I will hang my head in shame and ignore both her factual errors and her misinterpretations of history, I can’t let her misappropriate literature.

Representative Bachman has called a vote on a continuing budget resolution “a mice or men moment,” concluding that her Tea Party allies must ask themselves, “Are we mice or are we men.”

Literature has two famous “of mice and men” moments. Neither involves comparing rodents to humans. The first is Robert Burns’s “To A Mouse,” the poem that has its speaker muse,

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Clearly, Bachman, a woman brimming with Tea Party certitude, doesn’t have enough doubts about the alleged propriety of her cause to wonder who will suffer “grief and pain” if she gets to impose her “best laid plans” on innocent Americans.

The other, is the John Steinbeck novel, Of Mice and Men. At the novel’s conclusion, George must shoot Lennie to prevent him from being taken by a lynch mob. I’m not sure Bachman wants voters comparing her to either George or Lennie, a mentally challenged man who accidently kills a young woman. Besides, I’m pretty sure that Bachman doesn’t want anyone to read Steinbeck who had some left of center ideas.

I wish Bachman and the rest of her ilk would represent their districts and stop mangling history, the constitution, and great literature. It’s obvious she neither loves nor understands any of it.