Long night in Texas?

March 4, 2008

Our precinct caucus is almost always a sedate affair.  While our precinct votes heavily Democratic, few of the voters are interested in working much more for the party machinery, especially if it involves giving up a couple of weekends to attend conventions.

So in the past decade we’ve been in this precinct, caucuses have been tiny.  Five people was the high water mark.  A couple of times we’ve had one other person.  In years I was not the precinct chair, the precinct chair didn’t bother to show.  More often I’ve been the only person there, and had to work hard to recruit 23 delegates and 23 alternates to our senatorial district convention.  We don’t have that many relatives in Texas, let alone in this precinct.

Two presidential campaigns work hard:  This year should be different, we’re told.

The New Republic’s website features an article that plumbs some of the problems that may develop. Oy!

Will Texas be a disaster?  I doubt it — the disaster would occur at the senatorial district convention, I think.

I need the time tonight to work on lesson plans, though.  Against my small-d democratic better sense, I almost hope everyone else votes and goes home, leaving me to try to recruit 23 delegates and 23 alternates . . .

Wish me luck!

4 Comments | Elections, Politics, Presidents, Texas | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Should voting be required?

February 6, 2008

“Paul Revere” at Effects Measure muses on the effect of one vote in the grand scheme of things, and comes up wondering whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to require voters to vote — as indeed is done in Australia (voters pay a fine for failing to vote).

It’s a good discussion of the impact one citizen’s vote really makes, a discussion leavened by the science background of Revere.  The article would make a wonderful warm-up exercise for classes in civics, government, economics and U.S. history.

Voting is a privilege, but it’s also a duty of good citizenship. Should we require people to vote, by law, with criminal penalties for those who fail to make a choice at the polls?

What do you think?

3 Comments | Bell Ringers, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Economics, Government, Voting Rights Act, Warm-up exercises | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Stephen Colbert, now at the National Portrait Gallery

February 3, 2008

Stephen Colbert portrait

His presidential candidacy was cut short. But, for a while, you can still view his portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

At least someone in that town still has a sense of humor.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Art, Elections, Humor, Museums | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Let the candidates debate science!

December 12, 2007

Oh, yeah, good debates are hard to come by.

Still, wouldn’t you like to see the final presidential candidates debate science issues seriously?

Science Debate 2008 logo

Lawrence Krauss got through the muddle at the generally science-averse Wall Street Journal to make the case.

The day before the most recent Democratic presidential debate, the media reported a new study demonstrating that U.S. middle-school students, even in poorly performing states, do better on math and science tests than many of their peers in Europe. The bad news is that students in Asian countries, who are likely to be our chief economic competitors in the 21st century, significantly outperform all U.S. students, even those in the highest-achieving states.

While these figures were not raised in recent Democratic or Republican debates, they reflect a major challenge for the next president: the need to guide both the public and Congress to address the problems that have produced this “science gap,” as well as the serious consequences that may result from it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Almost all of the major challenges we will face as a nation in this new century, from the environment, national security and economic competitiveness to energy strategies, have a scientific or technological basis. Can a president who is not comfortable thinking about science hope to lead instead of follow? Earlier Republican debates underscored this problem. In May, when candidates were asked if they believed in the theory of evolution, three candidates said no. In the next debate Mike Huckabee explained that he was running for president of the U.S., not writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book, and therefore the issue was unimportant.

Apparently many Americans agreed with him, according to polls taken shortly after the debate. But lack of interest in the scientific literacy of our next president does not mean that the issue is irrelevant. Popular ambivalence may rather reflect the fact that most Americans are scientifically illiterate. A 2006 National Science Foundation survey found that 25% of Americans did not know the earth goes around the sun.

Our president will thus have to act in part as an “educator in chief” as well as commander in chief. Someone who is not scientifically literate will find it difficult to fill this role.

Chris Mooney makes the case in Seed Magazine.

Science is too important, too big a player in too many issues, to not have a major focus of its own in the final debates. Failing to have such a discussion is tantamount to failing to ask whether the candidates are capitalist or communist in economic policy (as if such a question could be unanswered by a wealth of other campaign material).

Science Debate 2008 argues for a science debate, lists supporters of the idea (it’s an impressive list, really), and offers advice on how you can help the campaign for science discussion at the presidential level. You can track the issue at the Intersection, or at Bora’s place, A Blog Around the Clock.

If nothing else, a science debate might make it clear to the candidates that we need to revive the Office of Technology Assessment, in addition to making the candidates aware that the president needs to have a strong, independent science advisor to whom the president actually pays attention.

Science literacy is to important to leave it up to chance, or partisans alone — in the case of our kids in school, and in the case of the person we elect president.

3 Comments | Education, Elections, Politics, Presidents, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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

“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

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