The journal of Dvd Avins

OK, I'm chalking this up as a successful prognostication

2008-05-10T22:07:18Z

http://barking-iguana.livejournal.com/133922.html

I didn't get the states exactly right, but I think I nailed the dynamic earlier than most.

3 times a week is a lot.

2008-05-09T01:54:56Z

For some things, anyway.

I continue to post at Blue Jersey. I'll only post here any stories I think might be of particular interest here. You can see all my posts there any time at http://bluejersey.net/userDiary.do?personId=493

Mayor Booker visited my classroom this week.

2008-05-07T22:10:46Z

Cross-posted from Blue Jersey. I hope you want to comment. If so, please do so there.

To my surprise, Mayor Booker and his entourage visited my very small school on Monday, and stopped by my classroom that had two students in it, briefly conversing with the three of us. He lives two blocks from the school and contrary to form, he was in the neighborhood during school hours. As I heard it, our gregarious head custodian cornered him and got him to take a tour of the school.

Who goes to Pathways Academy? Well, first, it's in Newark, so the kids are those growing up in the extraordinarily unsafe environment that is Newark today. Many Newark students who have involved parents go to schools that are not part of Newark Public Schools (NPS)—mdash;either private or charter schools. Of those who go to NPS high schools, many are siphoned away from the general population into magnet schools. Many of the magnet school teachers will tell you that there's no difference between the lack of ambition and poor mental health of their students and those in the general high schools, but again, the students who go to the magnet schools disproportionately have parents who are engaged with their children's education.

When students get in enough trouble that their principals arrange for them to be removed from the general population, they are assigned to one of NPS's Alternative Education programs. Most of the time, that means they attend evening classes in the same school they had been going to. But when their behavior is bad enough, they get sent to one of two stand-alone Alt Ed high schools. Those scheduled to go back to their regular schools after only half a year go to SOSA. Those sent where they're going for at least a year, and who then have to find a high school principal willing to take them back, go to Pathways.

That's where I teach math, as the sole math teacher. I see up to about 45 kids per day, usually more like 25, spread out into five periods. We have a mix of kids, including as many girls as boys, which surprises some people. Some students rarely show up. Some do show up because their probation officer has made it clear to them that that's what they have to do to avoid being locked up. And some show up most of the time and want to get back to their regular schools. Very few of them lack the innate intelligence to succeed academically, but most aren't succeeding, because they don't really believe any success is achievable, most have severe emotional problems, and their family support ranges from problematic to non-existent.

I help as many as I can, by "meeting them at their [academic] level," which means mixing a little of what the curriculum calls for with a lot of foundational material that they missed a long time ago, and have fallen further and further behind grade level since, because everything in the intervening years has depended on that foundation and it's less embarrassing in their world to sullenly not try than it is to ask for extra help.

Most of these students have been locked up at various times. Often for things you almost certainly want people prosecuted for, regardless of how you feel about the War On (Some) Drugs. They could reasonably be called criminals. Most of them are also good people in most ways. In the four years I've been teaching here, I've only had three students about whom I thought 'I hope the world sees to it that they don't have the chance to harm others.'

If I took the attitude that they are morally reprehensible, or even the attitude that their behavior in their current environment is so awful that I refuse to see the moral logic that they live by, I'd be a less effective teacher. I don't condone what they do. I spend a lot of energy trying to show them that there are other ways of approaching life and that those other ways will leave them happier. The primary difficulty is not convincing them that the other ways are better, but that they are possible.

I hope to post at Blue Jersey a fair amount for a while, and part of what I want to explore is how to be a principled activist in corrupt environments. I had planned to that largely by looking at my (successful and unsuccessful) experiences in Middlesex County from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. But it now occurs to me that my students and the world those students live in are good analogues for most corrupt politicians and the world the politicians live in. Most corrupt politicians don't see themselves as venal; they are operating in what they believe is the only way things ever really are, behind the platitudes of honesty. Even many non-corrupt, non-politicians from corrupt areas believe the same thing. Our principal task as reformers is not to fight individual bad actors, though surely some of them must be prosecuted to make any progress. Our principal task is rather to awaken in people the notion that truly representative government is both possible and desirable. And we should judge politicians in large part by whether they inculcate true democracy as an important value, even if that means cutting some slack for those who have specific positions (like school vouchers) with which we probably disagree. To that end, here's an excerpt from the email I sent to the Mayor's Office after he visited us:

I appreciate some fraction of the difficulty you face in creating a more open and accountable political culture in Newark. I was a part of the reform movement that briefly supplanted the machine in the Middlesex County Democratic Organization in 1993-94, as well as one that almost did so in 1979-80. And I've seen from a distance how reform-oriented mayors usually fail for one of two reasons. Some, like Sharon Pratt Dixon (Kelly) in Washington and John Lindsay in New York, too quickly antagonize too many of the entrenched power structures, and fail for lack of allies. Others, like Sharpe James and Ken Gibson, too thoroughly accept the nature of those structures and eventually become indistinguishable from them. I can't claim to be an expert on your administration, but from what I've seen, very few have managed to thread that needle as adroitly as you have so far. I hope my perception of you is right, and that you continue to successfully navigate such a difficult but necessary course.

I think it's over

2008-05-07T04:43:29Z

Kos reports that Russert reports that Clinton has canceled all her morning appearances.

I are a blogger at bleu jersey

2008-05-04T18:03:12Z

I'm on a trial run as a potential front pager at Blue Jersey. I have to come up with three New Jersey policy/politics posts a week for a few weeks, for me and Juan (the editor) to see if we both want me as a regular there. Any support you want to give, by engaging in conversation in my posts there, would be nice.

A Single House Upon A Hill

2008-05-04T17:58:26Z

Cross posted from Blue Jersey. I hope you have a comment you want to make, but please make it there.

Huntsu mentions calls for a state constitutional convention in his diary on the timidity of the legislature. And it's not only timidity our current system fosters, it's the corruption that ebbs and flows, but always remains much higher than we'd like.

The heart of the problem is the individual legislators' relative anonymity. Most well-informed voters probably know who at least one of their legislators is, especially if the voter comes from a town large enough or lucky enough to have one of its own political figures in the legislature. But how many, even among primary voters, could name all three?

I don't know what solutions she thinks a convention would or should come up with, but I know of one change that would make for a more accountable and probably courageous set of legislators. It sounds radical, but it's been in place n Nebraska since 1937.

I propose a unicameral (that means only one house) legislature, with small districts, each electing only one legislator. Let's look at both the positive and negative effects that would have, as well as why we have the system we have now.

Bicameral (two-house) legislatures trace their roots to the English Parliament, where it was flet the nobility and the untitled rich who were allowed to vote vote for the lower house were deemed to need separate representation, to account for their distinct interests. When legislatures were introduced in America, that was still a big factor in the thinking. As the class distinction between the houses became passe, other, quite real, advantages of separate houses were brought to the fore. But much of the support for bicameral legislatures is really just comfort with tradition.

The principal effect of a divided legislature is to make the legislature weaker in comparison to the executive. That may seem counterintuitive, because one might think that two houses can speak twice as loudly as one. But unless both houses agree, the legislature does nothing. This produces a strong bias toward inaction, which can be a good thing, if you're worried about a government that acts impulsively. If I'm remembering right, the Federalist Papers makes that case quite well, but I don't think the Nebraska government is known for being reckless, and I do think there are safeguards that can be easily implemented to make the legislative process as fast or as slow as we want it. For some ideas on that, see the Checks and Balances section of http://www.unicam.state.ne.us/web/public/history

In New Jersey, we used to have the horribly undemocratic practice of each county electing one of the then twenty-one Senators, regardless of the population of the county. We got rid of that in the 1947 constitution, but with the legislature needing to be reconstituted, they came up with the, I argue, not so bright idea of abiding by tradition, seemingly saving money, and keeping districting simple by having only one set of districts for two houses of differing prestige. The way they kept the Senate the more exclusive club was to elect multiple Assemblypersons from the same district, at the same time.

That makes each legislator more anonymous to the voters. And because they are less watched, the spend more of their time wheeling and dealing, rather than attending to the public's interests. We can rail against those who neglect us, especially against those who are most egregious. But we must recognize that it is to a fair extent an artifact of the environment in which they operate; and environment we can change.

The combined districts do save the headache of an additional redistricting (U.S. House, N.J. Senate, and N.J. Assembly) each decade, as most states go through. But a unicameral legislature would give the same benefit. Furthermore, having only one house's worth of committees and committee staffs would save the taxpayers some momey.

Going to a unicameral legislature would also allow for smaller districts, giving a more local input to each legislator, while reducing the total number of legislators and their staffs. With a 100-seat legislature, each legislator's attention would be spread out among only 40% as many citizens as now, but we'd still have a 17% reduction in legislators.

Does this make sense to you? Have I missed important advantages or disadvantages? Do you have other structural ideas for improving the nature of the state government?

Election Wars

2008-05-04T01:14:53Z

h/t to my way cool local newpaper editor (even if he did royally muck up the story when I got elected Democratic Chair 15 years ago, making a lot of fences for me to mend), Hank Kalet

On Rob Andrews

2008-04-29T20:14:14Z

I'm copying below a post I made at Blue Jersey, because I like to have most of what I post in one place. This is probably only of interest to Democrats from New Jersey, but all you political junkes from elsewhere and non-Democrats from her are welcome to it, too.

I should also point out that if next year's Governor race comes down to Andrews vs. Christie, (or most other plausible Republicans) I'll vote for Andrews. I like that Christie has been going after corrupt Democrats. I don't like that he leaks that he's investigating other Democrats, in investigations that are going nowhere, in order to influence elections. That sort of partisan use of US Attorney positions is not traditional. It is a major component in the Bush's administration's dismantling of the non-political operations of the federal government, and Christie has been an eager soldier in that dismantling.

I also don't like that he ignores Republican corruption, though being less eager to investigate corruption in one's own party is, sadly, not new. Anyway, here's the post on Andrews:

Maybe exposure in debates is the true purpose of Andrews' campaign.
Others (including Juan and/or Thurman, if I remember right) have suggested that Andrews wins from this primary even if he loses, because it gives him the exposure to mount a successful campaign for the gubernatorial nomination should Corzine retire or be sufficiently unpopular.

The polls suggest that Lautenberg can probably win this, even if he ducks all debates. Contrary to the slander put out by Andrews partisans, Lautenberg would do fine in a debate. He'd probably win according to a majority those who listen on the radio and he'd probably lose to Andrews' prettier face according to a majority of those who watch on TV. But neither would score a knockout blow, or anything close to it.

So Lautenberg wins if he debates and he wins if he doesn't.

In which case I hope he tells Andrews to go **** himself. Because we don't need him as Governor any more than we need him as Senator.

On issues and philosophy, Rob Andrews is like Bob Kerrey or Evan Bayh, without having the excuse of coming from Nebraska or Indiana.

On corruption, he may be less tied to the machines than Sires or Payne, but he's certainly more so than Pallone or Holt. I don't know enough about Pascrell or Rothman to know where they fit, because they're so far north they're out of my orbit.

By personality, he shows overwhelming ambition and limited maturity, even compared to other politicians.

The only thing he's got going for himself is the sense of South Jerseyans that they've been neglected and are now entitled to get theirs, no matter who they make the mistake of choosing as their champion.
I don't totally reject the regional argument. I think national and global issues are a lot more important, but all else being close to equal, I want South Jersey to have people in positions of power who don't need an introductory course whenever they need to do constituent service south of Trenton.

I worked for Jim Florio's nomination and election in 1981, and had I not been working in DC at the time, would have worked for him in 1989. Being back in the state, I enthusiastically supported his reelection in 1993. But in the days sine Florio left the county to become governor, Camden County has been sliding back in the direction of Erichetti-style politics, and Andrews is part of the problem.

I also need to point out that some (likely most) of the regional loyalty Andrews has is simply pride in the possible success of someone folks are already familiar with. That's fine for picking a sports team, but it's a lousy way to choose a political leader.

So if South Jersey wants more prominent representation, how about finding somebody else to be Mr. or Ms., South Jersey? Because so long as you choose a Norcross-allied, centrist-voting popinjay, you'll get limited sympathy from most of the folks I know.

This is why we are where we are

2008-04-29T19:40:29Z

For decades, polling has shown Americans to be far more liberal on issues than in our voting patterns. Part of that difference comes from the superior job what used to be accurately called the Far Right did in making itself an effective movement in the 1970s. In the last six years, we've been catching up, but they probably still have an edge.

The greater part, however, comes from institutional bias in the media. It's to be expected that the right wing will obscure and vilify liberal candidates. What most folks don't expect and don't take into account when they form their opinions of politicians is that since 1981, the supposedly liberal media has consistently spun the coverage of liberal candidates, functioning as part of the Far Right's apparatus.

For a trenchant, current example, see http://syndicated.livejournal.com/greenwaldsalon/149537.html (h/t chemoelectric)

A lack of information

2008-04-20T19:04:17Z

By the middle of the century, the strongest indicator of a country's wealth will be its total annual rainfall. Other minerals and the lack of indigenous endemic disease (as in rain forests) will also be a factor, but for a first approximation, just multiply rain per acre times the country's acreage and you'll get the key to the size of its population and its power.

Yet nowhere on the Web can I find such information.

EDIT: I forgot. The closest I could find was the following picture from http://www.geoportal.org

What do y'all make of this?

2008-04-16T03:19:41Z

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/15/192310/975/912/496395

An attempt to belittle someone opposing the diarist's (and my) candidate, or an actual medical condition affecting our ex-President?

Why I vote Republican for county offices

2008-04-15T01:22:32Z

Bossism. Right now, Middlesex isn't quite as bad as Bergen, where this example is from, but the general model is the same.

http://bluejersey.net/showDiary.do?diaryId=7495

That's a pro-Ferriero (the Bergen County Democratic Chair and boss) municipal clerk dealing (or not dealing) with someone filing for a County Committee slot on the reform slate.

Typically, even pro-machine clerks have played things at least a little more by the book for the past 35 years. They still want to act the way this miscreant did, but since the civil rights movement focused attention on such abuses of the process, they've generally found it not worth the bad publicity.

But the corruption remains. And the immense amount of money siphoned from the system makes it impossible for the state to implement a progressive agenda at a reasonable price.

At the state level, there are enough ideologically informed policy decisions that I vote Democratic for state legislature, even if it means voting for the same crooks I voted against when they were Freeholders. What's more, I've generally been spared having the most egregious hacks run for legislature from my county-straddling legislative district.

Aaangel of Death

2008-04-10T01:18:14Z

kent_allard_jr is Famous

2008-04-01T14:56:30Z

He's been noticed by Websense, the silly filter I have to go through at work. When I try to open any of his posts from my Friends Page, I'm told

Your organization's Internet use policy restricts access to this web page at this time.

Reason: The Websense category "Tasteless" is filtered.

Well, you've got to be famous for something.

I'm NOT not-calling-you-back

2008-03-27T20:29:43Z

I'm unable to get my viocemail on my home phone. I hope nobody's left me messages and taken in personally that I haven't returned calls.

For the past 6 or 7 weeks, I've been in FiOS hell. I signed up for Verizon Triple Play online. Then I called a few days later and asked if I could keep my old phone number. They said yes, but that the fastest way would be to let the original order go through with a new number and to put in an additional order to bring in my old Comcast number a afterward.

Well, that screwed up their systems big time. I've spent about 20 hours on the phone with Verizon's helpful people and very unhelpful automatic systems, and have never had working service for more than a few days at a time. I've never had access to my voice mail, even though people probably think they're leaving messages for me. Unfortunately, the computer says my voicemail access number is 111-111-11111 and nobody seem to know what to do about it.

This week, I can get incoming calls (which makes this week better than average) but have no dial tone and can't make outgoing calls.

As I knew even before this, the computer systems telecoms stick their customer support people with are awful. The systems don't talk to each other. They're too complex for even the occasional geniuses who use them to fully understand. And their users are trained to treat what the system tells them as reality, even when physical reality is clearly different.

So reach me by email or cell. You can try home first, since I don't always take my cell inside and I have lousy reception here, but don't leave a message that way. If you want any contact info for me you don't have, reply here. And if anyone mentions that I've not gotten back to them, please explain why.

The sort of Travelogue one REALLY Needs

2008-03-26T22:18:21Z

And very good reason to be glad one's not Japanese.

http://supacat.livejournal.com/111072.html

And I thought I had sexual hangups.

Laugh of the Day

2008-03-19T22:25:29Z

http://halfricanrevolution.blogspot.com/2008/03/some-things-you-just-gotta-laugh-at.html

Huckabee on Obama's speech

2008-03-19T14:52:36Z

I'm very glad Mike Huckabee will not be President. But I'm also glad that he remains a voice that religious conservatives will hear. Though his policies would prop up traditions born of hatred and opression (of many groups, not just Blacks), he is not personally driven by such hatred. And sometimes that comes through in a way that shows up those who do trade in hatred and fear.

HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama...anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.

Now, the second story. It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say "Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that."

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDS...

HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you're not. I know you're not. I'm just wondering though, for a lot of people...Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama's spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?

HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what's the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.

HUCKABEE: I don't think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it's not October. It's March. And I don't believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.

And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

MIKA: I agree with that. I really do.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's the Atticus Finch line about walking a mile in somebody else's shoes. I remember when Ronald Reagan got shot in 1981. There were some black students in my school that started applauding and said they hoped that he died. And you just sat there and of course you were angry at first, and then you walked out and started scratching your head going "boy, there is some deep resentment there."

On Today's Speech

2008-03-19T02:33:38Z

As Inland at DKos says

This speech did not require Obama to reinvent the wheel, or himself. There wasn't anything in the speech that was new, besides specific references to Wright and Ferraro. Most of it is in his books. He's not inventing a spin, he's articulating his most deeply held belief.

That's why he gives a great speech: he's better than most politicians because he's reaching for something better and is determined to get there.

This is what Bill Bradley tried to be, but was too inhibited and maybe not smart enough.

OTOH, I think the speech was too long for its purpose and media environment by at least 10 minutes. It wouldn't have had as much good and necessary material had he not written it himself, but it could have used editing by others.

Tomorrow may be historic

2008-03-17T01:31:40Z

But we'd damn well better hope it isn't.

My financial situation is awful (but ultimately salvageable), in any case. I'm glad most of my friends with significantly positive net worth own houses. Later this year, those houses may be worth many fewer dollars than they are now, but they will still be worth a house, no matter what happens to the dollar or the rest of the economy.

Saturday morning, I observed to my father that there was a small but non-negligible chance of a financial meltdown on Monday. That's because people would have all weekend to stew about Bear Stearns, without seeing any reassurance of seeing the markets function normally.

Bear Stearns, for those who don't know, is was a major nexus in the overly leveraged economy of the past 20 years. Friday, it almost went under and had to be indirectly bailed out by the Fed. The Fed had to stretch its mission and rules, as well as expend resources to accomplish the task. I don't think it has the ability to do this over and over.

Now it turns out the bailout wasn't enough. Bear Stearns, which was trading at $150 per share months ago and closed at $30 per share on Friday, was just bought $2 per share (translation: a drunk pitching coach and a rosin bag) by the Fed's companion of late, JP Morgan.

If Bear Stearns had actually declared bankruptcy, rather than merely gone bankrupt, all of its 'unsalable' assets would have been sold, putting rather unpleasant, but actual, market-driven numbers next to everybody else's (like JP Morgan's) similar assets. That would, I believe, almost immediately trigger many other Wall Street bankruptcies.

It remains to be seen how much confidence (that's a euphemism for lack of complete, rational and irrational panic) JP Morgan's playing White Knight will instill. Asian markets are down only 2% and the dollar hasn't collapsed, and if things have held so far, it's reasonable to bet that they will hold for the immediate future.

But it's also reasonable to hedge your bets. How much cash would you need for a week or two, if none of your cards worked. The cost of losing the return on having that much money invested is probably small right now, compared to the security of knowing you have it at hand.

Down the Memory Hole

2008-03-15T11:48:42Z

When Hugh Carey was Governor of New York, his brother Donald was President of LILCO, the controversial private utility that then was the provider of electricity and natural gas to Nassau, Suffolk, and Queens. LILCO has since been bought out by the state, which formed LIPA to replace it.

I was curious whether Hugh ran for governor with Donald already head of LILCO or Donald got appointed head of LILCO with his brother already as governor.

The Web provides no information on the subject. There is no mention of brother Donald on Hugh's Wikipedia page, nor on LILCO's page, nor is there a page on Donald himself.

Expanding the search, there are no useful hits on Google. In fact, the query "donald carey" lilco has no hits at all. Perhaps my now documenting the lack of documentation will prompt some future searcher with more prior knowledge than I have to add what she or he already knows to Wikipedia.

Basil Paterson

2008-03-14T21:44:27Z

I'm pretty sure I remember him as a hopeful for the statewide nomination to something other than Attorney General. Was he one of the folks who was headed for the 1982 gubernatorial primary before Koch cleared the field of everyone but Cuomo?

ETA: I'm not talking about his 1970 Lt. Gov. run. Something more recent than that.

In Defense of Clinton and her Surrogates

2008-03-11T02:58:34Z

(Note: This is copied from elsewhere. Here, I should note that I do think Clinton has stepped over the line several times, though the details invariable turn out to be less damning than the way I first see them presented.)

I'm an Obama supporter. I also think that Obama, until very recently, has received media coverage uncharacteristically positive for a Democrat. And I think that's largely because the media is happy to find a Black candidate who is so 'friendly', for the lack of a better term.

Since exploiting that is a tool available to Obama, he should use it, so long as he doesn't do so in clearly harmful ways. (And I see no reason to believe he has used it badly.) But I also think it's legitimate for the Clinton campaign to point out that he's gotten unusually favorable treatment, and that that treatment may not last, leaving Obama with a tougher job getting elected than many of his supporters assume.

It's true that any mention of Obama's blackness can serve as dog-whistle politics. But when it's also a real factor, both directly and indirectly, in electability, it's not reasonable to declare it completely off limits. Especially in a Democratic primary fight, where the vast majority of the actual bigots will not participate.

Sometimes, the attitude of my fellow Obama supporters seems to be that Clinton has no right to run a campaign at all, which is as incorrect and obnoxious as Clinton's former attitude of inevitability and how everyone should just get out of her way.

Obamablogosphere is increasingly deluded

2008-03-11T02:12:37Z

So New York is about to get an African American, pro-Clinton governor and people are saying this will hurt the Clinton campaign? Expect Patterson to get a lot of national exposure between now and when the nomination is finally settled.

XKCD

2008-03-07T23:48:42Z

Leave it to XKCD to make the perfect tribute to Gygax:

http://www.xkcd.com/393/

h/t polydad, spiralsongkat