This is fucked up: police beating lawyers who are protesting the imposition of martial law in Pakistan. And so what does the Bush Administration do in response to the repression and detention of human rights activists, lawyers, opposition politicians, and media? They choose to continue aid to the military of Pakistan, using the “key allies in the war on terror” as their bullshit excuse for abandoning the rule of law. At least they are consistent! (consistently authoritarian assholes.)

And they don’t care about us. They are playing a game against the ruling classes in China and Russia, fighting over who will control scarce resources in the future. They look like they are going to do this Iran thing. We can’t stop them.

Some random ideas:

1. Pay teachers in poor (hard to staff) schools 50% more
2. Poor schools should get at least 50% more funding to make up for how much harder the job is, and the fact they can’t fundraise
3. universal healthcare for children
4. Eliminate local control and funding. School boards are staffed with people unqualified to make these decisions. Fund schools at the state level and harmonize standards across districts. If poor schools can’t produce the same quality of education that means they need better people and more money
5. Streamline administration to reduce overhead so money goes to education, not administration
6. Allow wealthy public schools to charge means-tested tuition(crazy idea) to make up for their lower funding…either that or tax rich people more
7. Accept that education actually helps everyone (and the economy)
8. ignore libertarians
9. universal preschool
10. higher education should be free for students that can’t afford it
11. stop spending three quarters of a trillion dollars a year on warfare

Yeah. And get on this, its an emergency.

Reality: no, actually they didn’t. This morning CNBC’s chyron read: “housing prices rebound” along with gleeful depictions of housing stocks climbing, the noted that KB Home was up on the news. Up 1.25% today in fact, after losing half its value in the last year. Further, year on year housing sales are down 23%. Worse, the margin of error is ±10.3%, so the actual, statistically significant change is zero.

This actually follows a trend I have noticed on CNBC. They are sort of a business oriented Fox News (I am sure Fox business is worse), they hype every gain, truth be damned. I wonder if business news has a vested intrested in promoting the wonderfulness of the economy, or if their “metrics” just shows that bullishness keeps viewers watching.

The senate is currently considering a bill changing provisions of the FISA act. Initially it was a blank check to the administration to keep spying with impunity, but it looks like the few democrats in the senate with principles managed to get rid of the most odious provisions.

There is one exception: the bill provides immunity for companies that helped the administration with illegal wiretaps. Of course this is absurd, no company should think that they will get a pass on breaking the law if they did so on government request. Senator Dodd has placed a “hold” on the bill, which is a great move and goes a long way towards stopping it.

Interestingly, the leadership is trying to stop Dodd from blocking this bill. If you find this odd or confusing, realize that the telecom industry has of late given millions to the new majority party. They are for sale, and they are doing what they were paid for.

Check out the all-star cast of the “In Defense of Academic Freedom” conference (University of Chicago, 12 October 2007). Listen to the recordings in mp3 here.
Introduction — Tariq Ali — Talks by Dr. Noam Chomsky, Dr. Akeel Bilgrami, Dr. Tony Judt, Dr. John Mearsheimer - - Q & A with Mr. Evan Lorendo, Dr. Mehrene Larudee, Dr. Neve Gordon, Professor, Dr. Norman Finkelstein.

Also for sale

I am currently reading the old testament straight through. My first thought when reading it is that biblical literalists cannot possibly have actually read the old testament. The book, as any one who has read it can see, is self contradictory. Several stories are repeated multiple times, with subtle variations. A lot of it seems to be not relevant or even obsolete (the promised borders of Israel, for example).

The thing is that the bible, like most western literature before the enlightenment, is not written to tell a specific, true story. Its meant to be about Truth, the deeper meaning the writers saw in the world. This is really difficult for modern readers, because we are used to reading books that are about things that happened. We don’t really have myths and legends in the same way anymore. Augustine himself struggled with accepting christianity because he found the scripture to be absurd until he found what he was a deeper meaning in the book.

For some reason the idea that all truth can be found in the bible ( a thoroughly modern notion ) seems to appeal to the fundamentalists. That its as simple as looking in the bible and all will be answered. For most evangelical christians “bible study” consists of very slowly and methodically reading the bible and then accepting what it says in isolation, assuming that a three line verse means anything on its own.

I always wondered how the leaders of this movement, who often have advanced degrees and clearly aren’t complete idiots, can accept this view of a “literal bible”. It turns out they don’t believe this at all. In fact, their version of biblical literalism leaves as much room for interpretation as catholic exegesis:

Scripture is inerrant, not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed.

So what they mean is that bible means what they say it means. More from the “Chicago Statement” after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

Health care is a basic human right. Everyone deserves it. Rich people, poor people. I don’t think it should be a privledge you can lose because you don’t save enough money or don’t plan.

…but developers are still converting rental units to condos and most new construction is owner occupied. In my more conspiracy minded moments I wonder if they problem is caused by the fact that decision makers in regards to development are also usually property owners who benefit from high real estate costs.

In this article the creator of CraigStats proposes that reseting ARMs and interest only loans are causing landlords to seek much higher rents. Its hard to say based on the listing if actual rents are going up, but clearly asking rents are increasing. I would also suspect that the fact that people have almost completely stopped buying non-luxury housing in the city is putting a lot of pressure on the small rental supply.

I suspect (hope) that as houses and condos don’t sell a lot of those will end up on the rental market. Hopefully this is just an aberration.