Vote tampering in Ohio, 2004

November 8, 2007

Kathy Dopp’s project keeps turning up reasons to watch out for electronic voting machines, and other tampering with elections.

Below the fold I copy a recent e-mail from Dopp’s group. If true, the allegations here paint a sad picture of the U.S. as a nation plunging to third-world status in important areas, such as democratic elections.

I wish it were different, but for myself, I have little confidence that either the 2000 or 2004 election was straight up. Was it crooked enough to skew results? Let me know what you think in comments.

Dopp’s e-mail follows: Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, Elections, Government, Law, Lessons of history, Voting Rights Act | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah voters spike vampire school vouchers

November 7, 2007

Vouchers are dead in Utah, for the moment.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports “Vouchers go down in flames“:

Voters decisively rejected the will of the Utah Legislature and governor Tuesday, rejecting what would have been the nation’s most comprehensive education voucher program in a referendum blowout.

“Tonight, with the eyes of the nation upon us, Utah has rejected this flawed voucher law,” said state School Board Chairman Kim Burningham. “We believe this sends a clear message. It sends a message that Utahns believe in, and support, public schools.”

More than 60 percent of voters were rejecting vouchers, with about 95 percent of the precincts reporting, according to unofficial results. The referendum failed in every county, including the conservative bastion of Utah County.

In the face of colossal failure, voucher supporters desperately searched for a scapegoat on which to hang it — anything other than the manifold problems of vouchers:

Voucher supporter Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne – who bankrolled the voucher effort – called the referendum a “statewide IQ test” that Utahns failed.

“They don’t care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don’t care enough about their kids to think outside the box,” Byrne said.

Funny, from my conversations with people in Utah, I got the idea they opposed vouchers specifically because the voucher plan would damage schools, and that would in turn hurt the kids.

I suppose it depends on what the definition of “care about kids” is.

Utah, the most conservative state in the nation, has strong teacher organizations, but nothing like a union that leads strikes and is not itself populated with conservative Republicans. Also favorable to vouchers, the Utah legislature is heavily Republican, with voucher supporters in most leadership positions. Millionaire Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., also pushed for the vouchers, stacking the state’s political powers in favor of vouchers. Such facts cannot get in the way of the desperation to deny them voucher supporters show.

Doug Holmes, a key voucher advocate and contributor, said, “We started hugely in the hole and it’s always been the case. The unions have done this in four different states, where they take the strategy of confusion to the people.”

But Holmes said, “You don’t run away from something because the odds are stacked against you.”

Odds stacked against vouchers? It’s not the voters who are confused, Mr. Holmes.

Voucher supporters blame even their friends and supporters, and offer headline writers the chance to use an avalanche of clichés with a promise that vouchers will rise again, perhaps in the old Confederacy:

Both sides, at one point, embraced the governor, who Byrne blasted Tuesday for his lukewarm backing.

“When he asked for my support [for governor] he told me he is going to be the voucher governor. Not only was it his No. 1 priority, it was what he was going to be all about,” Byrne said. “He did, I think, a very tepid job, and then when the polls came out on the referendum, he was pretty much missing in action.”

Byrne said the referendum defeat may have killed vouchers in Utah, but “There are other freedom oriented groups in other states – African-Americans in South Carolina are interested in it.”

Got that, South Carolina? Vampire vouchers are headed your way. Stock up on garlic, wooden stakes and silver bullets.

Oh, and don’t forget the Oreo cookies. Get lots of milk, too.

3 Comments | Economics, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The whole world should be watching Utah

November 6, 2007

This is election day in much of the U.S. In Utah, voters have a referendum on vouchers to take money from public schools to give to students to attend private schools. This is the first state-wide test of vouchers anywhere.

William Hogarth's election series,

  • The Polling, from William Hogarth’s series, The Election, oil on canvas, 1754; from The Tate Gallery, on loan from Sir John Sloane’s Museum, London.

I think vouchers will be voted down, but either way, I wish there were more, serious national coverage of the story in Utah. Public education has refused to back down from scurrilous and often false claims against the schools, and parents and educators have fought a gallant, fact-filled campaign against Utah’s voucher proposal. Utah voters are traditionally among the better-educated, better-informed, and better-voting people. Known as a conservative stronghold, Utah will probably vote to put this voucher program in the trash can.

The rest of the nation could benefit from knowing more about the reasons this proposal fails, if it does — or why it succeeds, if lightning strikes the way Richard Eyre prays it will.

Marchers protesting the Vietnam War in 1968 used to chant “The whole world is watching.” If only it were true today.

Vote today!

Whatever your views, go to the polls if there is an election in your town, and vote. Your vote will count, and it angers and frustrates the big money interests who hope you won’t vote, so their campaign contributions and, perhaps, outright bribes, will have more clout. Go vote.

The County Election, George Caleb Bingham, 1851

5 Comments | Education, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, Politics, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Lot of damage, not much benefit: The truth about Utah vouchers

October 22, 2007

Editorials in two of Utah’s second-tier daily newspapers spell out exactly why the Utah voucher proposal submitted to voters is a bad one. The Provo Daily Herald urges voters to study the voucher proposal, and then vote for it. The Logan Herald-Journal discusses a key problem for Cache Valley parents and educators, in aging buildings that are often older than the grandparents of the students, but which will cost a fortune to replace.

The Utah voucher plan is only half-vampire (blood sucking, that is; or money sucking), leaving with the public schools some of the money allocated for students who choose to leave — at least for five years. In that one regard, the Utah proposal stands a head above other voucher plans offered in the U.S.

That is not enough to make it a good proposal, however. Why?

Here are “givens” for this article, the basic set of facts we have to work from.

1. Crowding is a key problem for Utah schools. Statewide, public schools average 30 pupils per class. That’s above national norms, and twice the concentration of students that studies show make for the most effective classrooms (15 students). (A new study from the Utah Taxpayers Association, a usually credible source, shows Utah’s public school student population growing from today’s almost 550,000, to about 750,000 by 2022 — requiring more than $6 billion in new construction costs.)

2. Partly because of large families in Utah, per pupil spending ranks near the lowest in the U.S. The usual figure used in the voucher discussions in Utah is $7,500 per student per year, but I can find no source that corroborates that figure. The actual number is probably closer to $5,000 per student, but may be lower. Legislative analysts based their scrutiny of the proposal on the $7,500 figure, and for discussion purposes, that’s good enough. It won’t make any difference in the outcome. (A reader in comments on another post says the $7,500 figure comes from the Park City School District, the state’s richest — it may be high by as much as 40% for the state. Can that citation be accurate?)

3. Utah’s schools perform well above where they should be expected to perform, on the basis of number of teachers, teacher pay, and student populations. Despite crowding and shortage of money, three Utah middle schools were named among the nation’s 129 best last month. Utah students score respectably on nationally-normed tests. A high percentage of Utah students go to college. Utah parents deserve a great deal of the credit for this performance boost. Utah has for years had higher than average educational attainment. With several outstanding colleges and universities in a small state, many Utah parents have a degree or two, and they buy books, and that achievement and the drive to get education rub off on their children.

4. These problems should get worse without drastic action. Utah family size may decrease slightly, but immigration from other states adds to pupil population increases. Utah’s economy is not so outstanding that it can easily absorb significantly higher taxes to pay for schools. (See the Utah Taxpayers Association study, again.)

Those are the givens. Advocates of the voucher plan, notably people like Richard Eyre, who made a fortune investing in Kentucky Fried Chicken, and has since invested much of his time in dabblings in public policy, argue several benefits to the voucher plan:

A. Not much damage to public schools by taking money away. In fact, they argue, during the first five years, for each student who leaves a public school with a voucher, the school will keep at least $4,000 (this figure would apply only to the richest districts, if the baseline number comes from Park City as my commenter suggested). This $4,000 would be spread among the other 29 students remaining, effectively, leaving just under $140 additional money per student in the average classroom. (There are problems with this calculation, of course).

B. Public school classroom size will shrink, to the benefit of the remaining kids.

C. Public school spending can hold steady when schools fire the teachers who lose students (I assume this is a misstatement from the Eyres’ video — that instead, some savings might result from dismissal of low-performing teachers in schools where a significant portion of students leave).

D. Magically, competition will create better education.

Below the fold, I’ll tell you why the benefits will not obtain, and point out some of the dangers of pushing the whole education system over a cliff that are inherent in this scheme.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Economics, Education, Education quality, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, History, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Vouchers as Oreos: Crumbs for the kids

October 21, 2007

Here’s the infamous “Oreo® cookie” ad by the pro-voucher Richard and Linda Eyre, in the 30-second version:

I have a few questions for the Eyres and their Modified Vampire Voucher program:

1. Private schools are few and far between in Utah — where is a kid supposed to find a school?

2. National statistics tracked by the Department of Education show Utah at the bottom of the per-student spending list. Were Utah spending $7,500/year/student, Utah would rank comfortably near the top. Where did you get your figures for spending in Utah, and why do they differ from the national statistics?

3. Are you saying that, if vouchers cut student loads at public schools, no teachers or classrooms would be cut? I don’t see that guarantee in the law, and I’m wondering why you’re claiming something like that will occur.

4. How many kids need to leave the average public school classroom before there is a significant increase in money left over for the rest of the kids, under your formula? By “significant,” I mean at least 10% increases, or with your statistics, $750/pupil. My quick, in-my-head calculations show that, if only rich kids leave, we need to get 5 rich students , with the lowest vouchers, out of that 30-student class in order to get a significant increase in spending. That’s 17% of the students.

If 17% of the students left Utah’s public schools, how much would your program cost? How many private schools would need to be created to accommodate that percentage?

5. You say Utah spends about $7,000/student, and you suggest that Utah should be spending nearly $10,000/student. In order to get a $3,000/student increase in that classroom, you’d need to get 10 rich students to leave, or 33%. How soon do you think you can get a third of the students to leave Utah’s public schools?

6. You say teachers should lose their jobs if students leave public schools for private schools. Why? Studies show that generally it is the best students who leave public schools for private schools. If their teachers are punished . . . well, explain just what it is you really advocate?

7. When I published the research studies at the U.S. Department of Education, we published studies showing that reduction in classroom size helped student achievement — a measurable amount once classroom size got down to 18 students, and significantly once classroom size got down to 15 students per class. By your figures, we’d need to get half of all students to leave Utah’s public schools to get down to 15 kids per class — without firing any of the bad teachers. How long will it take to get that reduction? How much will it cost?

8. If we can’t get a third of all students to leave the public schools, we’re still stuck with a massive shortfall in funding. What’s your backup plan, since getting a third of all students to leave is a stupid idea with zero chance of success? When you’re done hammering at the foundations of public education, what then?

9. Do the good people at Nabisco approve of your abuse of their cookies?

Eyre’s program may look neat as Oreos, but it leaves only crumbs for the kids. Taking money out for vouchers does almost nothing to contribute to solutions for Utah’s education problems.

Below the fold: The longer version of the ad.

Read the rest of this entry »

7 Comments | Education, Education spending, Elections, Politics, Rampant stupidity, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Pro voucher forces panic in Utah

October 20, 2007

With the nation’s first state-wide voucher on the ballot in Utah this November, and with the polls showing a large majority ready to vote the idea down, voucher supporters push every button they can find, hoping one of them is the real “panic” button. Panic button, from iWantOneofThose

But, legislators recruiting lobbyists into a referendum? A new blog dedicated to the Utah referendum, Accountability, carries the story with links to local Utah news media.

. . . I know there’s a whole industry built up now to protect the will of lawmakers from their constituents.

But I didn’t think that was the prevailing wisdom here. We hadn’t fallen victim to the political industry like folks have back East.

Then I read articles like Paul Rolly’s column in this morning’s Trib and I wonder if we’re not so far away from succumbing to it, too.

“Lawmakers stack the deck on vouchers” is the headline, and the first sentence tells the whole story. “About 20 lobbyists were summoned to a meeting Monday by legislative leaders who urged them to roll up their sleeves and help save the voucher law.”

Isn’t a ballot referendum supposed to be the voice of the people? In fact, isn’t it the last chance the people have to have their say on a law, after the legislature has had its way? That’s what the Constitution provides. So what’s wrong with informing every Utahn man and woman of voting age what the referendum says, answer any questions they have, then let them vote on whether to keep this law or discard it?

The story as related at Accountability would be a road map for a corruption investigation into the Republican leaders of the Utah legislature for a state attorney general out to defend the electoral process from graft and the legislative process from corruption. Does Utah have such an attorney general? Utah’s relatively clean and open political processes, artificially bipartisan by LDS Church decree in the 19th century, appears to be going the way of all political flesh.

Cash is provided from interest groups far outside Utah, groups that have never considered the effects of a voucher bill on a kid in San Juan County, Utah, who has a 50-mile, one-way bus ride just to get to the nearest public school.

Later stories at Accountability detail the cash flow from outside, and the folly out-of-state and out-of-their-mind interests create in local elections. (I have not found any identification for the author of that blog — does anyone know who it is?)

Maybe it’s time we took a more historic view of this fight, and labeled it for what it is: As Chris Mooney has documented the Republican War on Science, this Utah skirmish is part of the larger War on Education; whether it’s an exclusively Republican declaration of war is not yet clear. It doesn’t bode well for peace, progress and prosperity that the Republican leaders of the Utah legislature are the ones commanding the gun batteries shooting at Utah’s schools.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Education, Education blogs, Education reform, Elections, History, Politics, Public education, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah voucher wars: When very desperate, bribe

October 13, 2007

Salt Lake Tribune political reporter Paul Rolly shows just how desperate are the voucher supporters in Utah, with polls showing the voucher referendum on the November ballot will crush the pro-voucher legislation:  They offered bribes.

Yes, bribes are illegal.  You know that, I know that.  Tell it to the voucher advocates:

With polls showing overwhelming numbers of voters poised to repeal the voucher law that was passed by the Legislature last winter, voucher advocates got so desperate Thursday they sent an e-mail from the FreeCapitalist Project offering money for pro-voucher votes in next month’s referendum election.
    But then someone must have let them know it usually is considered illegal to buy votes, so they sent a second e-mail several hours later retracting everything they said in the first e-mail.
    The original e-mail said Parents for Choice in Education is conducting a “Friends and Family” campaign in which “advocates” are encouraged to sign up friends and relatives who commit to voting in favor of the voucher law in next month’s referendum election.
    If the advocate provides his or her field manager with 25 names committed to voting for vouchers and they actually vote, the advocate gets $10 per person, or $250 for the 25 names, the e-mail said. Plus, the advocate will get $10 for each voter they get beyond the 25.
    The contacts for the program were listed as Brandon Dupuis and Jim Speth, PCE field managers for northern and southern Utah, respectively.
    So, as the old saying goes (a bit amended): If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with a bribe.
    But then came the Oops!
    “Retraction,”  the second e-mail boomed.
    “We apologize for the previous e-mail . . . . It was simply incorrect and misrepresents the Free Capitalist Projects’ grass-roots efforts. Neither Parents for Choice in Education nor the Free Capitalist Project will ever provide incentives that appear to pay people to vote. The earlier e-mail was sent by determined and sincere individuals who are working diligently, but the Free Capitalist Project and Parents for Choice in Education did not approve, authorize or see the e-mail in advance.”

I’ll wager it wasn’t the illegality that stopped them.  Somebody probably sat down with a calculator and suggested how much it might cost them, at $10.00/vote, if people took them up on the offer.  And for the $10.00, there’s no guarantee that any of the votes would be switches — no guarantee that it would sway any votes their way.

3 Comments | Education, Education spending, Elections, Rampant stupidity, School vouchers | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Instapundit plays politics with Iraq policy

August 3, 2007

Glenn Reynolds wants to be able to blame Democrats regardless what happens in Iraq. Instapundit jumps on a stretched, absurd claim that Democrats will “be in trouble” in the 2008 election if the surge in Iraq works.

Santayana’s ghost laughs.

First, one needs to remember what happened to George Bush I, whose approval ratings were north of 80% at the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War, which liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. On February 28, 1991, George H. W. Bush looked to be a solid lock for winning the 1992 election campaign.

Bill Clinton defeated Bush handily just 22 months later. Among many other factors, with the nation not focused on war in the Middle East, the economy became a key issue. There are a few people deep in Democratic strongholds who are cynical enough to say the Iraq War could have been over by the end of 2003, but Karl Rove wanted a war to be sure Bush won in 2004, Rove having observed the lessons of 1992.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Elections, Iraq, Politics, Santayana's ghost | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Flag desecration arrest in North Carolina

July 28, 2007

The Volokh Conspiracy notes the arrest of an Asheville, North Carolina couple for improper flag display — they flew the U.S. flag upside down (a universal sign of distress), and with protest notes attached to it.

Details from the Asheville Citizen-Times.

The newspaper also notes that the flag desecration statute appears not to have been used since the Vietnam War era (anybody care to guess which political views got cited?) . A local fireworks sales stand in the area displayed U.S. flags in violation of the Flag Code near July 4, but while news abstracts appear to show the stand was cited for a violation of the sign code, there is no indication it was cited for the flag desecration code.

We need to amend the Flag Code, to authorize flag displays that have become popular recently, such as shirts that resemble the flag, flag decals in autos, flag bumper stickers, and other displays that technically violate the Flag Code — unless, of course, we want to try to criminalize innocent attempts to honor the flag. Flag desecration cases almost always have a political component, however, and such prosecutions should generally be suspect under the First Amendment — don’t you agree?

How much of the ire against the Kuhns in Asheville was prompted by their support of Ron Paul for president? (See the photo of their protest signs, and note the lawn sign in the background.) Mark and Deborah Kuhn show their flag protest signs, after arrest incident

If someone has the details of the fireworks stand case near Asheville, please send them along — was the stand in the same county as Mark and Deborah Kuhn?

Update:  The Mountain Xpress story carries a slightly different tone, identifying the Kuhns as “activists,” and featuring interviews of eyewitnesses to the arrests.

Other improper flag displays, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

7 Comments | Dissent, Elections, First Amendment, Flag etiquette, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah voucher fight: Ball of confusion

May 25, 2007

It’s not clear who will win in the bloody vouchers war going on in Utah — it’s only clear that, once again, public education, students and teachers, lose.

Utah’s legislature, a bastion of Republican conservatism in the last decade or so, passed a voucher bill in its just-ended regular session. Conservative legislature, conservative governor — a law authorizing vouchers is what should be expected these days, no? What the advocates of vouchers failed to take into account has made this quite a drama.

Utah’s voters don’t like vouchers much, but love their public schools a lot.

So, the Utah state board of education opposed the measure. A hint of graft in existing alternatives to public schools angered many citizens. Opponents pointed to, among other things, the possibility that vouchers would vacuum funding from public schools — Utah is already dead last in per-pupil spending in the U.S.

It’s turned into a real donneybrook. [Bloody details below the fold.] Read the rest of this entry »

16 Comments | Economics, Education, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, Politics, School vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Voting machine soap opera: Fire, faulty machines, new election?

May 19, 2007

City elections in Aurora, Texas, may need to be re-run after spectacular failures of two of three Diebold voting machines, and a fire that damaged the impounded units after 38 votes were completely erased and Diebold technicians were unable to hack results out of their own machines. Do you even need to be told the fire’s cause is undetermined?

Is your local government considering voting machines with no paper back up?

The voting machines don’t work even when there isn’t a great partisan prize at stake; the first explanation from the Justice Department for mess-ups in personnel there is that dismissed people were not aggressively enough pursuing a campaign against minority voting; a federal conviction of a campaign worker in Wisconsin turns out to have been a bogus case created by a U.S. attorney appointed to bring exactly such bogus cases . . .

How great must the assault on the Constitution and rights of Americans be, before there is a general clamor for justice, and change?

Leave a Comment » | Civil Rights, Current History, Elections, Ethics, Justice, Law, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Olio/Olla podrida/Mulligan stew/Stone soup

March 26, 2007

Here are some of the posts I’ve been thinking about over the past couple of days:

Iraq and Vietnam:  Writings by Hudson has been reading about LBJ and Vietnam.  Santayana’s ghost appreciates the exercise.

Camels in the Outback, camels in the dogfood:  Would you believe a million camels are feral in the Australian Outback?  And now, with a drought, it’s a problem.  The Coffee House alerts us.

What if everybody in your organization came to you for help? The Drawing Room tells us why you’d be wise to work for such a thing.

U.S. soldiers protest the war:  No, not the current war — African American soldiers protest the Filipino conflict.  Forgotten soldiers, forgotten war — you’d do well to reacquaint yourself with this chapter of U.S. history at Vox ex Machina.

Leaks about the incident that got us into the war:  No, not yet the Iraq war (see how you jump to conclusions?).  POTUS reflects on LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the leaks and lack of intelligence that may have gotten us into a quagmire.

Earthquakes in Tornado Alley:  Tennessee Guy points to an article that wonders about the New Madrid Fault, and whether it is tensing up for “the Big One” to shake West Tennessee (and the rest of the Midwest), or it is going to sleep for a millennium.

Science and racism:  A collection of Darwin’s writings that touch on race and slavery, for your bookmark file.

Cool school libraries:  We’re not talking about air conditioning.

1 Comment | Charles Darwin, Civil Rights, Dissent, Education, Elections, Evolution, History, History blogs, Leadership, Lessons of Vietnam, Patriotism, Politics, Presidents, Public libraries, Santayana's ghost, Theodore Roosevelt, Vietnam, War, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“Penetration however slight”: More on a good and noble hoax – the U.S.S. Pueblo

March 9, 2007

1968 brought one chunk of bad news after another to Americans. The year seemed to be one long, increasingly bad disaster. In several ways it was the mark of the times between the feel-good, post-war Eisenhower administration and the feel-good-despite-the-Cold-War Reagan administration. 1968 was depressing.

What was so bad? Vietnam manifested itself as a quagmire. Just when Washington politicians predicted an end in sight, Vietcong militia launched a nationwide attack in South Vietnam on the Vietnamese New Year holiday, Tet, at the end of January. Civil rights gains stalled, and civil rights leaders came out in opposition to the Vietnam war. President Johnson fared poorly in the New Hampshire primary election, and eventually dropped out of the race for the presidency (claiming he needed to devote time to making peace in Vietnam). Labor troubles roiled throughout the U.S., including a nasty strike by garbage collectors in Memphis. It didn’t help to settle the strike that the sanitation workers were almost 100% African American, the leadership of Memphis was almost 100% white, and race relations in the city were not so good as they might have been – the strike attracted the efforts of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Martin Luther King, Jr. – who was assassinated there in early April. In response, riots broke out in 150 American cities.

More below the fold, including the key confession to “penetration.” Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | 1968, Dissent, Elections, Free speech, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Heroes, History, Hoaxes, Space exploration, Vietnam | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Pseudo-science and skepticism: How do we know what’s true and accurate?

February 18, 2007

Working to figure out history, one constantly asks how we can know what happened in the distant past. In our justice system, we use some of the same tools to learn what happened in the near past, or immediate past, to help dispense justice in criminal trials or establish liability in civil trials. Strong skepticism helps in discarding bad theories, and in assembling data into a cohesive story that reveals what we often call “truth.”

American skepticism runs too shallow.

Recent surveys and reports provide a wealth of data for discussion.

First, out of a conference a meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Francisco on February 15, we get a report that only 40 percent of Americans put stock in the biology theory of evolution. In contrast, in European nations there is 80 percent acceptance of the theory. The report is by Michigan State University Science and Mathematics Education Prof. Jon Miller, based on a study he published in 2006. Miller worries about implications for public policy in a republic:

“The number of public policy controversies that require some scientific or technical knowledge for effective participation has been increasing. Any number of issues… point to the need for an informed citizenry in the formulation of public policy.”

Miller ran a clinic at the meeting, urging scientists to improve their school boards by running for election.

On the whole, scientific literacy in the U.S. is improved over a decade ago. Massive pockets of ignorance still plague science and public policy, however.

Two, socialists argue that the U.S. and Britain are tough places for kids to grow up. No kidding. One key thing to watch: Can critics of the report find real information to rebut, or will the response be solely to try to brand the socialists as socialists, and therefore, somehow, inexplicably, evil.

But, as if to suggest an answer, the 54th Skeptics’ Circle is up, over at Action Skeptics.

Update, February 20, 2007:  Oh, yes, I had meant to mention this, too — see Larry Moran’s discussion on a fellow who went through the motions to get a Ph.D. in geology, but doesn’t believe in it (scrub brush tip to P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula).  In this fellow’s case, it’s not how he knows what’s true, it’s whether he knows anything at all, perhaps.

Among the more common errors I run into are errors of evidence — people who grant credence to reports that do not merit credence, people who fail to give weight to reports that should be given weight. I see this almost every time I get into a courtroom, where one lawyer team or both get into amazing discussions over minor points, elevating them to serious issues that lead justice astray (cf., the trial of O. J. Simpson and the DNA evidence derailment); I see this in public testimony before government bodies, where people confuse opinion with fact, and when they fail to adequately weight hard, conclusive data.

How do we know Abraham Lincoln lived at all? I asked one class of middle schoolers. We would know for certain if only he were mentioned in the Bible, one kid quickly said, with agreement from several others. Cecil Adams is right, the fight against ignorance is taking longer than we thought.

4 Comments | Dissent, Education, Elections, Evolution, Freedom - Political, Public education, Science, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Eleanor McGovern

February 2, 2007

The past few weeks have been studded with the deaths of people important to my life, or important in history. The string is a long, unnecessary reminder that there are a lot of people holding history in their memories whom more historians need to get out and interview, even (and perhaps especially) high school-age historians.

Eleanor and George McGovern

Eleanor McGovern died in Mitchell, South Dakota, last week. I wonder how many of the town’s high school history teachers ever thought to invite the woman to speak?

McGovern was the probably the first spouse of a presidential candidate to campaign alone, without the candidate along. The respectful, rather long obituary in the Los Angeles Times made that a focus point of its tribute (free subscription will eventually be required). That was the place I first got the news of her death, while I participated in a Liberty Fund seminar in Pasadena, California, last week.

I was recruited to politics by a McGovernite in early 1972, in Utah. Over the next few months we saw Eleanor McGovern look cool, calm, intelligent and charming in her husband’s losing campaign. She may not always have been so cool as we saw — the Times piece mentions she was nearly ill before the first-ever Sunday interview program solo appearance by a candidate’s wife.

That she was both pretty and smart probably scared the opposition more than anything she ever said. Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Campaigns, Dissent, Elections, History, Lessons of Vietnam, Politics, Presidents, U.S. Senate, Vietnam, Watergate scandal | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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