Is this the face of change?  I've worked at my current institution for almost 33 years, and the place has been hostile to tone deaf on the color line.  People in close working relationships have said abysmal things and exhibited ugly responses to encounters with persons of color.  Attempts to push back and hold us accountable have been met with indifference and derision.  Well, this President has started something.... We are talking.  Only a few show up, but it is a few, talking.  The stories are coming out, stories that will break your heart.  These are stories worth hearing, and stories that might help people develop the vocabulary to respond to those ugly situations in the future.  Sometimes talk is action.  I've served her under other presidents here, and it is clear that this guy gets it.  About time.   Maybe an open heart is what it takes.  Maybe I don't like the pace of change, but I like the change.

Just wrote a final exam.  My favorite question is #3:

One premise of the humor unit is that some serious parts of life contain ridiculous dynamics of power.  John Locke is not funny.  His argument in the Second Treatise of Civil Government is full of foundational ideas about understanding power.  Select three of his most important claims or conclusions, and show what is ridiculous about them.  Your standards for what is ridiculous must be based on other course material.  You may but are not required to include a joke based on each idea you found to be ridiculous.  

In response to an surge of questions about whether I am running for President (the trend went from zero to one), I hereby announce that I am not running for President in 2016.  Still, a subsequent questioner might ask,  What would be my Policy Agenda?

Domestic Priorities

We need to take care that everyone shares in the bounty.  For the less well off, we need to double the minimum wage, expand the Earned Income Credit, create lots of low cost education opportunities, and subsidize jobs in useful industries like a vast expansion of solar power.   For those in the middle layers of our great country we need lots of higher education opportunities, at very low cost.  We need to dramatically increase manufacturing jobs through apprenticeships and other education for highly technical jobs.  We need to invest in infrastructure, including green energy.  Most subsidies should go to small to medium firms.  It turns out manufacturing policies can also be environmental policies. 

For the top income groups, we need tax simplification, at progressive rates, and a financial transaction tax to discourage rent-taking through high speed and other volatile trading practices.

And, of course, a single-payer health care system.  We should open Medicare to all. 

International Priorities

We have a profession of trained diplomats who have vast experience in international affairs.  We should put them more at the center of our policymaking circles.  At the same time we should not put there people whose main qualifications are helping a President get elected.  We should not rely on people who have demonstrably misled our policies.  This would include all neo-conservatives, for example.  Since war and corruption are the two biggest obstacles to the poor countries catching up with the wealthy, we should not encourage war (for instance, by sending more weapons into a civil war) and should discourage corruption through all of our policies.  The domestic clean-energy policies mentioned above should dramatically shift our position in international climate change policies.  We should avoid unnecessary entanglements. 

Known no-no's....   Rumsfeld's picture on front page of NYT in a story about US shift to torture prisons.

So, the torture report summary is out.  Yes, many new gory and salacious details, but who is surprised by any of it?  I posted this web page almost a decade ago, and it goes through the reasons why "President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Attorney General Gonzalez, and probably several other top civilian and military officials, would, in a world governed by these laws and treaties, face trial for these crimes."   The other responsible parties identified through sources on the page include Rice, Addington, Yoo, Bybee, and more.  
   All these years later and there is no chance this government is going to enforce these laws.  At Least the International Criminal Court should issue warrants so their international travel is curtailed.  
   The executive director of the ACLU had an interesting suggestion, a reversal of his earlier stance:  Obama should pardon them all, by name.  Hah!  They are getting off anywa.  But this would mark down that, under US law, bad things happened, there is a policy they bad, and culpable individuals are on the hook.  

Interested in getting ahead in this world?  Where are the best places, and where are the worst places to be?  This site has the best data for figuring out such things.

This story on a poll within Likud shows their selection of a More right-wing leader would give them at least as many seats as under Netanyahu....  The Israelis can show us a thing or two about polarization, when a right-wing party has incentives to drift further to the right.  Classic collective action problems, when the interests of all run counter to the interests of the smaller players whose actions produce the outcomes for all.   What to do.... what to do....  Maybe we could swap leaders, let them come over here and work on the color line and fiscal policy, while ours go over there and try to come up with a sustainable Israel/Palestine bargain.

Heads up, there is a background discussion to the economic news.  Professional economists have ideologies, too.  This is a good essay that points out the ways the different camps respond to data.  Short version:  The Obama recovery beats the Bush (II) recovery, but right wing economists have repeatedly adjusted their models when the data turn inconvenient... This is about a defense of policies they like.  As to motive, that's a much longer path to map, but it doesn't take a lot of imagination.

Landrieu lost the runoff in Louisiana.  On election night the last White Democrat serving in the House lost.  So, that is the Southern Strategy complete-- all Southern governors are Republicans, all Southern Senators are Republicans, and no White Democrats are left in the House.  Let's see, does this mark a clear enough line between the two major political parties?  Does this have anything to do with the demonstrations going on over police killings of young Black men?  "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line."   Double down on that for the twenty-first century.

The F-35.... in a dogfight with the A-10.  (thanks to our friends at POGO)  This is a story of USAF priorities, not wanting a plane so far from the technical frontier, one that actually supports the people on the ground.  USAF leaders want to go it alone no matter how much it costs.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Just found this "Piketty Explained" blog, seems like good Cliff notes.   The best summary I've seen is one of the earliest, by Branco Milanovic.   For a brief description (with links) on how the right-wingers are attempting to respond now, check this entry from the Real World Economics blog.  For the latter, in a nutshell:  Well, inequality isn't so bad because the very rich deserve it.... And, look away, look away--  look at poverty instead, which we know how to ignore.
   Seriously, that's it.  All the critiques of Piketty I've seen have withered under even the lightest scrutiny.  He got it right.

Another gem from Greg Schneier, the future of monitoring conversations.  Pretty much all of them.  That scene in the third Bourne movie where an utterance on a phone triggers a computer and an alarm sounds?  Gonna get there, maybe fairly soon.

Ever wonder how the NSA and Britain's GCHQ grab all the internet stuff they want?  Read about it here.  Thanks to Greg Schneier's security blog.

New report on Oil Shipments by Rail in WA state....  500 pages very few people will read.  The emphasis is mainly on living with increasing danger.  Nationwide rail oil shipments have increased one to two orders of magnitude over the last decade, and the main conversations are about training responders in case of a 'mishap.'   I meant to publish something on risk analysis, why we treat issues through that lens and how it affects the way we live.  I didn't because I thought, like this report, no one would read it.

Honey Bees....  This is not something that will take care of itself.  Half of the commercial colonies have died out in the last ten years.  And yet, the commercial bees are imports, some 3 centuries ago.  Interesting conflicts.  This story shows some of the complexities of both the commercial and policy complexities of figuring this out.

Good article on the Lima climate change summit.... a few graphs that show you what's up.
See it here.  

Haha, Chris Rock has a take on recent events in Furgeson, esp. as they inform us of the broader USA experience.  Comedians (yes, he produces, he stars, he writes, but this is from the comedian) get that we enjoy incongruity.  And Fergeson brings up incongruity.  Check him out.

Grist published a short 10-point summary of the recent IPCC report...   The news is very grim, if you take the time to read it.  We are assured of going past a rise of 3.6 degrees F, and maybe far beyond it.  Scientists agree that is a 'tipping point' where we will get serious effects on availability of fresh water, on agriculture, on the oceans.   I predict international political conflicts will be one result, possibly a nuclear war.  It could be very bad. We have to make BIG changes over the next few decades, and we have to get started now.  Remember we knew about this back in 1990.  We have wasted a quarter century and will bear costly consequences.
   Climate change is a classic collective action problem.  The incentives facing any one actor---me, who needs gas today; the Koch bros. who want to extract their tar sands riches, Republicans and some Democrats in Congress who want to keep the money flowing from carbon-intensive energy interests--- lead them to behavior that, all added together, produces a bad outcome.
   There is recent good work on how to approach this, a 'building block' strategy that stands a chance of working.  At home we have to continue to promote awareness of what is happening.