Conniption Fit

Returning the Memory of a Father

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The First Nerd President of the Modern Era

Why We Honor Their Memory

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Memorial Day speech
May 30, 1884
Keene, New Hampshire

Image courtesy of Kurafire under a Creative Commons License

Obama's Comedic Remarks to White House Correspondents

The President has some fun for a change. Watch for the teleprompters.

Part 1

Part 2

Your Legislature At Work

The biggest legislative news of the week, of course, is that there isn't any state budget news. Five days after the first joint conference was scheduled, no such meeting has yet taken place. The House and Senate leadership are in deadlock as the last days of the session approach. If no agreement is reached by Tuesday, then Legislative rules will prevent a budget from being passed during the regular session and special session will have to be convened. Efforts to reconcile major differences that had been scheduled over the weekend were cancelled late Friday afternoon, and lawmakers were told to go home and enjoy the weekend.

Somehow, though, our beleaguered legislators found time while they weren't working on the budget to expand Florida's shameful nudge-nudge-wink-wink voucher scam in which business get dollar-for-dollar tax credits for paying for private school tuition.

While schoolteachers, state troopers, and other public employees clutched their pink slips and waited for news of a budget deal, lawmakers also found time argue about what picture of Jesus Christ was appropriate for a new state license plate, with proceeds going to fund faith-based education.

As Florida's highways, bridges, airports, schools, hospitals, and water systems crumbled around us, the Florida legislature mustered the courage to propose new rules concerning how to deal with the public menace of kids with droopy drawers.

Yes, really.

Image courtesy of Lauren Nelson under a Creative Commons license.

The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class (from 2007)

Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren explains why you are actually earning less household income than your parents did; why your children, health, and home are at such peril; and how events conspired to put you in this awful place.

She is witty, engaging, enormously well-prepared, and horrendously depressing. If you can stand listening to this, it's well worth the time.

Congresswoman slams Americorps volunteers; warns of "re-education camps"

In a baffling attack on the nation's community service volunteers, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has described the program as an attack on America's freedoms.

In an interview with Minnesota radio station KTLK-AM, she warned the nation that President Obama is seeking to place young people in "re-education camps" where she fears they will be brainwashed into accepting the "transnational global authority."

She was talking about the national community service program in which volunteers build affordable housing, clean up blighted neighborhoods, support after-school programs, and help communities recover from disasters. That's the work she finds abhorrent "as a parent."

A Manifesto for Florida Political Blogs

Kenneth Quinnell over at the Florida Progressive Coalition has posted what amounts to a manifesto for bloggers toiling in the swamps of Florida politics. A prolific writer and a vigorous mover and shaker, his opinion is always important, but this time he seems to have really gotten to the heart of the existential matter.

The basic thrust of his manifesto is that Florida bloggers need to take the next step, and assume the responsibility for actually reporting news, not just our considered opinions. The collapse of of all other sources of news is both manifest and inevitable, so if bloggers don't professionalize themselves into something like journalists, then who will take up the mantle? The alternatives are grim indeed.

He lists some excellent principles (which he refers to as "biases"), and offers a basic three-step approach:

1. Identify what is "news."
2. Develop sources
3. Promote ourselves and each other

His first two items are hard, but the last seems easy. It's a little embarassing for him to have to call Florida bloggers out on this, but he's got me dead to rights. I'm going to be thinking long and hard on all three points, as should we all.

How Progressive Are You, Really?

The Center for American Progress has a splendid little quiz up that estimates the degree to which your political and social opinions  are truly progressive. It's quick, fun, and eerily accurate. They've also got a powerful interactive map that drills down to the state and county level to show how political leanings have been changing. Be sure to check it out.

A Weary Sigh for the Florida Legislature

The 111th session of the Florida Legislature opens today.

Sigh.

During this sure-to-be-historic session, Florida legislators will face enormous questions about devising a sustainable revenue and budget structure, creating a genuine post-agricultural and post-growth economic base, deciding if and how to proceed with a mid-Florida commuter rail, and qualifying for an leveraging the ARRA federal stimulus funding. Sticky problems include managing the state's epidemic of unemployment and mortgage default, planning for redistricting, dealing with the long-delayed issue of a gambling compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, addressing controversial sales tax exemptions, evaluating the environmental and economic costs and benefits of adopting green standards for Florida, meeting taxpayer expectations regarding property taxes, and coping with immense and daunting changes in the Florida homeowner's insurance market.

And, of course, there is the question of how to handle Florida's education program, which is constitutionally the "paramount" duty of the state, but which in recent years has slipped so sharply in its share of state funding so that it is now, at least in terms of taxes, the paramount burden of local school districts. Legislators will take on all manner of FCAT-related bills, class size tweaks and extensions and amendment proposals of all kinds, contradictory and mutually-exclusive proposals regarding health and sex education, tuition schemes of varying complexity, and several attempts to address the public's growing dislike of what some regard as abuses of the state retirement system. They will have to make financial and program decision about the state's prepaid tuition program and scholarship programs such as Bright Futures, Medallion Scholars, and Gold Seal. They will vote on measures for reducing local control of teacher salaries, for promoting charter schools, for reducing or expanding mandatory grade retentions, and for allowing certain kinds of budgeting and scheduling flexibility for school districts.

Expectations are immense, the fiscal outlook is bleak, and the legislative session is brief. After 60 days of intense and sometimes contentious committee meetings, hearings, floor votes, and lots of lobbyist wheeling and dealing, the Legislature's sole mandatory task is to pass a balanced budget for next year. Florida educators, parents, and taxpayers will be watching most intently.

Sigh.

With all this heavy lifting to be done, all this landmark legislation to be drafted, all this human suffering to be relieved—with all this, why is that the Florida Legislature cannot summon itself to stop focusing on the picayune, stop pandering to the wingnuts among us, and stop trying to micromanage things about which they know next to nothing?

House Bill 33 and SB 308 pander to the scary people who are seeking to raise completely groundless fears about childhood vaccinations by actually making it harder for parents to do the right thing and give their children life-saving vaccinations. This bill would require health care providers to try to scare parents into thinking that vaccinations were somehow dangerous. Vaccinations not dangerous, but people who work against them are.

HB 417 & SB 806 would make it unlawful to sell cigarette lighters with little flashing lights on them. You can't make this stuff up.

HB 883 & SB 1978 would bring back a moronic idea—the 65% solution formely championed by Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne—and make it even more moronic. Back in 2005 when this was a hot idea of the extreme far right, the argument was that, since local school boards can't be trusted with important decisions about how to set budgets, we'll just make a law that says that 65% of all their revenues have to spent "in the classroom." That way, supporters could be seen as helping raise teacher salaries without actually spending any more money on education! That sounds lovely in its simplicity, but the simple truth is that defining what is and is not "in the classroom" is no easy matter. If you think students with catheters should have access to a school nurse, or if you think schools should have librarians or guidance counselors, or if you think its okay for kids to eat lunch during the school day or if you think that maybe it makes sense to provide buses to bring kids to school, then the "65% solution" looks stupider and stupider. No one running a school district wants to waste money on things that aren't needed, but what it costs to run schools in Miami is different than what it costs to run schools in Lake City—some things are cheaper in each town and some things are more expensive. In the end, what each district spends on its education program is really best left up to people who live in each school district, and micromanging from afar always creates waste and promotes mediocrity. But the most galling part of these two extra-stupid bills is that they take it up a notch and require that—wait for it—a full 70% of all revenues be spent "in the classroom!" Sorry about your catheter, kid.

HB 999 & SB 2124 would require school districts to notify parents at any point in the school year in which any student's classroom exceeds the constitutional class size limit, to offer to reassign and transport the student to the parents' choice of another public school, and to offer a private school voucher. Really? So, if the Legislature fails utterly in its duty to provide for public schools and shortchanges school districts, then it makes sense that we'll take more money away from public schools and pay for students to attend private schools? In what Kafkaeque nightmare does that kind of thinking possibly make sense? Anyone who speaks kindly of these bills is an enemy of education, pure and simple.

HB 997 & SB 1540 would provide definitions to clarify that mandatory zero tolerance policies should not be applied to petty acts of misconduct and misdemeanors, including, but not limited to, minor fights or disturbances. Ha! Nice try, but you can't fix an innately stupid idea—and zero tolerance polices are, by definition, stupid—by trying to add impossible-to-implement footnotes to it. Zero means zero, and no footnote can change that. A much better idea would be to ban zero tolerance policies of all kinds and require state and local agencies to instead adopt thoughtful policies that could then contain all the footnotes and guidance anyone could possibly need. This bill may be well-intentioned, but it's a waste of time.

Sigh.

Image courtesy of Midorionna under a Creative Commons license.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

Jonathan Jarvis, a graduate student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, has produced an elegant and easy-to-follow explanation of the current credit crisis. This is a brilliant example of how and why we rely on artists to make sense of the world we make for ourselves.

Love

Courtesy of XKCD under a Creative Commons license.