Sunday news: useless NYT edition

Nothing really jumped out at me today in the NYT, except for one magazine piece.  Somehow I'm just disinterested in the Iraqi election or the latest gossip on healthcare reform.  Anyway, here goes.

• In said magazine piece, a discussion on the importance of teachers in educating students, and how to make those teachers teach better, as apparently it's teaching is the most essential ingredient in education, and not necessarily funding or testing.  Who'da thunk?
• DC mayor Adrian Fenty is a corrupt little whiny-pants who funnels huge sums of government money to his friends.  At least Marion Barry was corrupt but personable.  This is why you should vote for Buster, who is currently preparing his mayoral campaign. 
• It amuses me to no end that an article on political buffoonery features a photo of Michael Steele.
• A piece on how Toyotas aren't inherently death traps, which is why I still hope to buy another one in the next year or so, if I can raise ye olde cash.   

See, the news is much more fun when you ignore the things that people are panicking over. 

Sunday news: we're all gonna die edition

It's Sunday! That means there's a decent chance I've read the morning papers (as emailed to me). What do I find today? Death, mayhem, poverty, destruction, and no hope of anything ever getting better, ever. And these newspapers wonder why they're losing business.

Here's a recap:

• The economy = teh suckage.
• Texas will probably continue to be run by a crackpot, who was just endorsed by Sarah Palin. If my left arm was endorsed by Sarah Palin, I'd cut it off.
• The U.S. Senate is a shit show, but maybe Evan Bayh will run for president and save us all.
• If you're in DC and get on the Metro, it could kill you, and won't have any money to send your mother a decent house plant.
• People are stealing from non-profit bookstores that ostensibly raise money to promote literacy programs for poor urban youth.
• The U.S. Senate is still a shit show, but Rahm Emmanuel is keeping Barry O from becoming the next Jimmy Carter, so it's all good.
• The president orders up his robust policy offerings at some bland hoity toity DC restaurant, which explains a lot.

Well now, this was kinda fun. Maybe I'll do it again sometime. ;)

News of the sleaze: televangelists and ethnicity-based elections

You may remember our dear friend Pat "Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Meteor Showers" Robertson, from his recent idiocy related to a certain Haitian pact with Satan (it sort of rhymes!). Now, at the war crimes trial for Charles Taylor -- that's right, the war crimes trial -- it has come out that the good reverend offered to lobby U.S. officials on the venerable Mr. Taylor's behalf. Now which is worse? A national pact with Satan to overthrow systemic slavery (which somehow included paying reparations to the enslaving party), or a personal pact between a real, live, actively-slaughtering-innocent-people war criminal and one of Amer'ca's finest lobbyvangelists?

In other news, the NYT has a decent run-down of the complexities of holding an election in Cote d'Ivoire, wherein one must be a bona fide Ivorian to vote. Of course, determining who is what is clearly a tumultuous and easily corrupted process, quite possible leading to a powder keg.

Hat tip to Chris Blattman for the first piece.

Max Baucus can kiss my pansy ass

This grand non-compromise plan isn't worth the paper it's written on. To paraphrase from The American President, what good is health care reform legislation that does virtually nothing to reform healthcare?

Also, I want more than just some good old fashioned market choice, especially if these ridiculous "you're not insured" taxes are going to be foisted onto people.

Now let me make myself clear: I support healthcare reform. Hell, I support turning the whole healthcare system on it's head, shaking it down, and rebuilding it in Sweden's image. This proposal, however, simply doesn't cut it.

Is there some drive up window wherein I can order 535 legislators with integrity and fortitude?

Amoral healthcare reform bordering on immorality

This article from today's Post pisses me off in about 14,000 different ways. And, as many of you know, I'm not a morning person. The issue here is mandated coverage, particularly for young adults (like me).

As has been known for some time, the plans progressing through the idiot Congress mandate that everyone has healthcare. Excellent. Good idea. It's both true and necessary.

However, since the public option has been scrapped in the name of political expediency and Rush the Addict Limbaugh, this comes down to an unfunded mandate to the taxpayer.

Anybody other than me notice that unemployment is up and incomes are down lately? No? Have you read a newspaper/blog or heard a radio or seen a TV? No? Then you have no business writing or voting on legislation. Now isn't the time for an unfunded mandate to anybody.

Since I try to avoid national domestic issues like the plague on our houses that they are, I don't have any data available that I can readily cite. What I do know is this: more of my friends are unemployed than there used to be. Many of those that are employed scrape buy. If my job didn't provide insurance, I, like many, simply wouldn't have it. A mandate from Congress will not change that reality. And yes, it's great that the Medicaid cap on income would go up to about $14,000 a year. But what about the multitudes that make more than that (even by a few dollars), but don't have access to employer supplemented insurance?

Say you live in DC and make $20,000 per year, and you don't have a car, so living outside the city isn't much of an option. Rent and utilities will likely eat up at least half, if not more, of that income. If you ate cheaply, you could maybe get by on $100 per month, if you have no dependents. Factor in another few hundred in bus fare, etc. Everyone needs to buy clothes periodically, but assume you rely on thrift stores. That all would come to roughly $15,000 of the 20. Now, where exactly will the $200/month for a baseline government mandated insurance plan come from? Yeah, you could do it, but you could save virtually nothing and your budget would have to be planned to the penny, and you couldn't survive any contingencies (say, a month being unemployed). Even a college graduate making roughly $32,000 per year, but say carrying $20,000 in debt, is going to find it phenomenally challenging to buy insurance, regardless of the cost. A tax break is a nice idea, but those usually come once a year, and after a purchase has been made. Where does the cash come from in the meantime?

My social security deduction already goes straight from my payroll to my grandparents, after a quick stopover at the Treasury. That's fine with me, as I like my grandparents. But to force young people to buy insurance to keep insurance companies' costs down as they pay for my parents' coverage isn't really ethical. If I had wanted to pitch in on the repair costs for my stepfather's recent broken ankle, I could've done that on my own.

Without a public option, any healthcare reform bill is immoral, particularly if it shoulders more of the costs onto people with the least means. How about we cut the disgustingly high salaries of healthcare execs, or something more socially equitable? The people that claim a public option would fund abortions or provide free healthcare to illegal immigrants (heaven forfend!) or haul my grandmother out and shoot her (I defy anyone to even try that -- you'll lose) need to shut the hell up. And I've yet to buy the argument that reform is somehow unconstitutional. But the plans as they're taking shape are immoral, and for a looney lefty like me, that's entirely unacceptable.

EDIT: Had I read to the bottom of the Post's daily email before sending my blood pressure through the roof, I would have discovered that at least one senator's views comport well with my own. All we need are 99 more.

Open letter to Prince Gomolvilas: You corrupted me

(As emailed to the above named recipient.)

Dear Mr. Gomolvilas (if that's your real name):

This evening, I found myself glued to my computer for approximately 96 minutes while watching the entirety of one High School Musical. This is your fault, and I blame you totally. Your little teenage obsession finally wiggled its way into my otherwise respectable head.

This afternoon, I was sitting in the National Cathedral soaking in beautifully illuminated rose windows while listening to works commemorating the life of Abraham Lincoln composed by some of the greatest American music geniuses of the last century. Sam Waterston narrated one piece. Sam Fucking Waterston. These works were gorgeous. The culminating piece was Hindemith's setting of Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd." A poem inspired by Lincoln's death set to music driven by the death of FDR and millions in the Holocaust. The baritone soloist was Asian, for God's sake, so you would be proud.

And where did I end up this evening? Watching High School Musical with Zac Fucking Efron. Zac Fucking Efron. I was casually searching for a movie to watch online, as this afternoon's entertainment had been a touch... heavy... and doing more reading on nonviolence theory just wasn't appealing to me, even though I need to get it done so that I can continue my God-given mission of changing this fucking shithole planet into something more bearable for us all. And what popped up under musicals, but High School Musical. High. School. Fucking. Musical.

And I watched it. And maybe I even liked it a little. And maybe I got a little bit misty at one part, and perhaps might have shed a single fucking tear. And maybe the gay one was a little endearing, with his cute shirts and all. All while my rabbit mocked me. See?!?! I was mocked by an animal whose brain is the size of a shelled pecan. And it's your fault. It's all your fault. And worse yet, there are still still two fucking more of these fucking endearing little fucking Disney gems left. And I'll probably watch them. And I blame you for corrupting me.

By now, you're probably sitting at your little desk laughing your ass off with your big beast of a cat. You're probably even wanting to repost this on your silly little blog. But I won't let you have the best of me, mon Prince. You may have corrupted me, but you shall not take my dignity.

Yours sincerely,

Jason A. Terry, M.A.

P.S. Watch this, you perv.

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

The spiraling situation in Zimbabwe is of course a gross violation of virtually every tenet of democracy, but the rhetoric surrounding the whole affair may be even more frustrating for the casual observer like me. Just today, EU leaders lectured a SADC meeting about the need to do something to bring Mugabe into line and accept defeat. Yet for all the high-flying rhetoric about how somebody should do something, nobody seems to know 1) who should do said something, and 2) what that something might be. The West seems fairly certain that the SADC countries and/or the African Union as a whole should do the ambiguous thing, but haven't really said what the thing is. Meanwhile, the whole thing does have whiffs of colonialism floating about. The West says to the Africans "jump!" and then get annoyed when they don't respond with "how high?"

Basically, Mugabe, and more importantly, the security apparatus that supports him, are going to have to be engaged -- perhaps even threatened -- over the consequences of perpetuating their electoral farce. Rather than passing the buck as to who should act in some ambiguous way, some other nation needs to step up to the plate. South Africa is the logical choice here, but clearly that's not going to happen. Meanwhile, continuing declarations to the effect of "this is someone else's problem" doesn't do anyone in Zimbabwe any good.

Intestinal fortitude, anyone?

Global politics quicky

Because I'm too lazy too actually analyze things, I give you a bulleted list.

• One of these days, I too shall appoint myself as President Prime Minister, or perhaps "Mr. Speaker the President of the United States."
  
• Ban Ki-moon may have actually expressed an emotion regarding the rapidly descending spiral that is Darfur.
• Dear Mahmoud: It's ok to be gay in New York, and a Jewish man wants to love you. (Hat tip: Daniel Drezner -- too good not to miss.)
  
• Burma: Far scarier than we thought. Several protests with monks and Burmese Americans hit DC this past week, including one I witnessed yesterday. Now people seem to think that threatening to boycott a sporting event might change something? Color me unconvinced.
  

And briefly on the homefront.

• DC: No water to fight fires on the high ground.
• ENDA: Still discriminatory. Those of you with actual congresspersons, please do something.
  

Finally, some progress in the AU president search

The Post gave us this little teaser this morning saying that the recalcitrant American University Board of Trustees might actually bother to pick a president tomorrow, and that it will probably be the interim president the University has already had for two years.

Well gee guys, it's about damn time.

My woes with AU governance started just shortly after I enrolled there as a graduate student. I watched in horror as President Moronic Asshole Thief stole a lot of money, was caught, and then was given severance pay. After all, I was a student rep to the Board of Trustees when I was in college, and I got a nice tutorial in college and university finances. I also enjoyed, and helped improve, a fairly open and transparent system of governance back when I was a lowly undergrad at liberal arts college. That hey day ended as soon as I got to AU, and I realized how good I'd had it before.

I also got really damn pissed off. And I said so. And it got me nowhere. So I shut up. Anyway.

I think Neil Kerwin will be a fine president at AU. He hasn't had a lot of leverage in the past to years, as he's basically been seen as a caretaker, and as the Post reveals, hasn't really been taken seriously by the Board until just recently. But he seems to be an amiable guy. He actually can be seen walking around on campus, smiling and saying hi to people, which is something his predecessor didn't do (probably because his fat ass was being driven around everywhere).

Nonetheless, this search has been run in a smoke-filled room, with as little transparency as humanly possible. Indeed, there were student, faculty, and alumni reps on the search committee, but no one was allowed to talk about anything. The only public forums on the subject dealt with characteristics various constituencies would like to see in a new president, which of course led to a lot of "we'd like someone who isn't a crook, please." I understand being sensitive to candidates' needs to keep things quiet, but I don't think it's unreasonable to at least name the finalists and bring them to campus for general ogling (sans press).

Even this process would have been more tolerable if the Board had been more transparent to begin with. In spite of going through a big governance reform process during 2006, it seems that most changes were cosmetic. Although a student and a faculty member were added to the Board (without vote), the process of selecting those individuals was done completely in private, after the initial solicitation of applications. In short, who the hell knows what the AU Board will do, except the Board itself. It was telling when, after completing its so-called reform, the Senate Finance Committee wrote back and said "not good enough," to which the Board basically responded "tough." Frankly, inviting a couple more people to your meetings and publishing a very, very brief summary of meetings doesn't quite make Board operations transparent. There needs to be actual effective communication back and forth, and in that regard, the AU Board is still seriously lacking.

Nonetheless, I'm excited about tomorrow's announcement. AU left a bad taste in my mouth at the end of two years. While I think it's a fantastic institution academically, the fact that it's managed by idiots/assholes at the highest level rather casts a negative light on the whole thing. If we could get a forward looking president with the genuine best interests of the University in mind, and a Board that is willing to exercise its responsibilities while neither grandstanding nor micromanaging, then things will be in good shape. If Neil Kerwin is given the authority to do that, then I'm all for it. I guess now we wait and see.

Smithsonian Board takes governance lessons from AU

Our great national museum is doomed to never change. After the ouster of Lawrence Small (whose expenses have been described as Ladner-esque, a term I hope doesn't enter local parlance) as head of the Smithsonian, its Board of Regents did exactly what the American University Trustees did a little over a year ago: they created a governance committee! And what do governance committees do?

They say the problems are so big that they can't possibly be resolved until well after the media feeding frenzy is over. They may eventually call for some token transparency to appease the still-incensed, but only after at least six months have passed. After that, it's back to closed-off smoke-filled rooms to find a new leader who will again be allowed to run amok. Nothing will be done to address institutional culture or repair the broken processes that allowed for such gross misspending to occur.

Corruption doesn't exist in a vacuum, especially not at the top. If a leader is tossed out for ridiculously abusing his expense account, you can probably bet that somebody somewhere down the chain is following the dear leader's example, and will probably be the first to speak up and say the problem was only at the top. Maybe, maybe the Regents of the Smithsonian will really learn from AU and see that token change isn't good enough. If not, I hope that they at least raise the ire of Chuck Grassley and company, who, at least in AU's case, weren't too shy to say that proposed reforms weren't good enough.

And now, cue the wild speculation about who the next Smithsonian Secretary will be. For the record though, former Mayor Anthony Williams has yet to be named AU's president, so careful with the speculation.

Mapping and Fighting Corruption in War Torn States

In an effort to demonstrate my academic mettle, I offer this bit of shameless self promotion. Click here to read to full report by the above title which I helped to write, or click here (and scroll to the bottom) for a synopsis of the project.