Emergent Chaos » politics

Dear England, may we borrow Mr. Cameron for a bit?

adam — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:36:22 +0000

Back when I commented on David Cameron apologizing for Bloody Sunday, someone said “It’s important to remember that it’s much easier to make magnanimous apologise about the behaviour of government agents when none of those responsible are still in their jobs.” Which was fine, but now Mr. Cameron is setting up an investigation into torture by UK security services. (“
Britain Pledges Inquiry Into Torture.”

And yes, it’s certainly more fun to investigate the opposition, but…I’d really like to bring Mr. Cameron over here for a little while. Some investigations would do us, and our fight against al Qaeda, a great deal of good.

The Next Unexpected Failure of Government

adam — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:07:49 +0000

In looking at Frank Pasquale’s very interesting blog post “Secrecy & the Spill,” a phrase jumped out at me:

I have tried to give the Obama Administration the benefit of the doubt during the Gulf/BP oil disaster. There was a “grand ole party” at Interior for at least eight years. Many Republicans in Congress would have tried to block nominees for Interior who were committed to environmentalism. But the more I read about the controversy, the harder it gets to excuse current players for their actions.

Now, if you had told me six months ago that the Minerals Management Service was critically messed up, I might have searched a bit and said “sure, ok.” There are a lot of government agencies which are poorly run. Prioritizing between them is hard. Had you told me that their failure would cost a billion dollars, I’d have been more skeptical than usual.

Government is too big to clean out; at each level, you get appointees who are less likely to be interested in pursuing the President’s interest, and more likely to be interested in featherbedding. That’s not to say that all agencies are mis-run. There are still people out there who consider themselves civil servants who aim to run their agencies (or areas) well. I don’t have enough data to know what fraction of agencies are well run, but I expect that you could graph it and it would look a lot like a bell curve. Some good, some bad, most middling.

The agencies that are well run don’t get attention. The problems they face are ‘managed’ and don’t descend into crisis very much. Unfortunately it’s hard to tell, a-priori, if an agency is well run or lucky.

For any Administration to dig deeply into each of the government agencies could easily become an all-consuming issue. And it’s unclear if it would do any good. Agency executives are expected to be able to present a pleasant picture with a few things that need fixing.

This is a structural and systematic issue which emerges from how big government is and how much it tries to do. The only way to clean things up will be to reduce the size of government, so that prior oversight becomes a reasonable expectation.

Otherwise, we can look forward to the chaotic universe helping us discover where the problems emerge.

On Politics

adam — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:39:00 +0000

In “Jon Stewart on Obama’s executive power record” Glenn Greenwald writes:

When ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero last week addressed the progressive conference America’s Future Now, he began by saying: “I’m going to start provocatively . . . I’m disgusted with this president.” Last night, after Obama’s Oval Office speech, Jon Stewart began his show with an 8-minute monologue on Obama’s executive power and civil liberties record which, in essence, provided just some of the reasons why Romero’s strong condemnation is so justified.

meanwhile, in the UK, David Cameron apologized for Bloody Sunday, calling it “unjustified and unjustifiable.” Abi Sutherland has good analysis at Making Light:

We do not honour all those who have served with such distinction in keeping the peace and upholding the rule of law in Northern Ireland by hiding from the truth.

The Liquids ban is a worse idea than you thought

adam — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:54:09 +0000

According to new research at Duke University, identifying an easy-to-spot prohibited item such as a water bottle may hinder the discovery of other, harder-to-spot items in the same scan.

Missing items in a complex visual search is not a new idea: in the medical field, it has been known since the 1960s that radiologists tend to miss a second abnormality on an X-ray if they’ve found one already. The concept — dubbed “satisfaction of search” — is that radiologists would find the first target, think they were finished, and move on to the next patient’s X-ray.

Does the principle apply to non-medical areas? That’s what Stephen Mitroff, an assistant professor of psychology & neuroscience at Duke, and his colleagues set out to examine shortly after 2006, when the U.S. Transportation Security Administration banned liquids and gels from all flights, drastically changing airport luggage screens.

“The liquids rule has introduced a whole lot of easy-to-spot targets,” Mitroff said.

Duke University press release, Mitroff’s home page, full paper.

Some Chaotic Thoughts on Healthcare

adam — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:00:43 +0000

Passage of this bill is too big for my little brain, and therefore I’ll share some small comments. I’m going to leave out the many anecdotes which orient me around stupid red tape conflicts in the US, how much better my health care was in Canada (and how some Canadian friends flew to the US for optional procedures), etc.

I am glad that some of the worst elements of the American health care system are getting reined in. I can think of few worse ways to accomplish that goal, and many better ones. People thinking as I do are why the system perpetuated in the form that it did.

I am pessimistic that the system proposed will achieve its broader goals. The Massachusetts model is cumbersome and ineffective. Optimistic ideas about how prices would fall in a regulated market did not come to pass. The likely next step is a government run health system with supplemental insurance available. I expect this will come to pass in 10-20 years. Medicare seems reasonably well run for an American government program.

The Republican failure to push a coherent and principled alternative will haunt them. Going into the next election cycles, 32 million people will have some idea that the Democrats gave them ~~bread and circuses~~ health care. David Frum describes it as a Waterloo. I’m hopeful but not optimistic that the Tea Bagger Party will follow in the tradition of the Know Nothings and just fade away. I used to be hopeful that the Libertarians would split from the Republicans, but they’ve failed to. I would not be surprised to see the Republican minority shrink in 2010 and 2012, and I think some (but not all) of the shrillness I hear is people who fear that outcome is now inevitable.

I do expect that removing the health care impediment to entrepreneurship will be very positive for smaller companies. I wish we’d apply that same thinking to health care, enable people to make choices for themselves, and let the government own the residual risks, as it does today. But no one offered a credible way to un-couple employment and insurance that would let people keep their doctors, short of nationalization.

Anyway, there’s my negative 8 cents on the bill.

Please keep comments civil.

Seattle: Pete Holmes for City Attorney

adam — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:08:37 +0000

I don’t usually say a lot about local issues, but as readers know, I’m concerned about how arbitrary ID checking is seeping into our society.

It turns out my friend Eric Rachner is also concerned about this, and was excited when a Washington “Judge said showing ID to cops not required.” So when Eric was challenged by the police, in accordance with the law, he refused. He was charged with obstruction of justice by city attorney Tom Carr. Well, it turns out Eric didn’t roll over, and after much stress, charges were dropped. The city shouldn’t be putting people through such things after state judges have ruled. It’s a waste of city resources, and it subjects nice folks like Eric or you or me to the leviathan power of the state. Such power must be responsibly exercised, and Tom Carr has shown he can’t do that.

On that basis alone, Tom Carr should be voted out of office.

It’s just a sweetner that Pete Holmes, his challenger, seems to have his head screwed on straight, with priorities that include government accountability and transparency, smart sentencing, and not a new $250MM jail that we don’t need and can’t afford.

As if you needed any more, our sole remaining newspaper has endorsed Holmes.

So please, vote Pete Holmes for city attorney.

[Update: Thank you! Tom Carr has conceded the race. I don't think I can claim lots of credit, but I'm glad he's on the outs.]

Some thoughts on the Olympics, Chicago and Obama

adam — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:18:57 +0000

So the 2016 Olympics will be in Rio de Janeiro. Some people think this was a loss for Obama, but Obama was in a no-win situation. His ability to devote time to trying to influence the Olympics is strongly curtailed by other, more appropriate priorities. If he hadn’t gone to Copenhagen, he would have been blamed for not caring. If he went, he’s blamed anyway. In reality, he does have some control over what happened. He could have fixed the “harrowing experience” we show the world under the ironic words “Welcome to the United States:”

In the official question-and-answer session following the Chicago presentation, Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, asked the toughest question. He wondered how smooth it would be for foreigners to enter the United States for the Games because doing so can sometimes, he said, be “a rather harrowing experience.” (New York Times, “Rio Wins“)

Ironically, the President has experienced harrowing nonsense at borders, see “US Senators Detained In Russia.” He should put someone on fixing the Customs and Immigration service before it costs us even more.

However, it’s really unclear if the “loss” is a loss. “No Games Chicago” was a citizens group advocating against destroying Chicago’s parks and budget for the Olympics, and according to CNN, 45% of the city’s residents didn’t want the games. And as the AP documents in “Olympics Aren’t Necessarily an Economic Bonanza,” the outlandish “economic benefit” numbers that Olympic advocates usually throw around are based on a “multiplier effect” of around 3. Me, I know what an Olympics event costs–Montreal taxpayers paid off the ‘76 Olympics in 2006.

So congratulations, Rio. I hope you don’t bulldoze the less waelthy neighborhoods, and I hope you’re all paid off by 2030 or so.

Happy Banned Books Week!

adam — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:05:11 +0000

Quoting Michael Zimmer:

[Yesterday was] the start of Banned Books Week 2009, the 28th annual celebration of the freedom to choose what we read, as well as the freedom to select from a full array of possibilities.

Hundreds of books are challenged in schools and libraries in the United States each year. Here’s a great map of challenges from 2007-2009, although I’m sure it under-represents the nature of the problem, as most challenges are never reported. (Note the West Bend library controversy is marked on the map.)

According to the American Library Association, there were 513 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2008.

I’m somewhat surprised by how many blue~~noses~~ dots there are in the northeast. Does anyone know of a good tutorial that would help me to re-map the data against population?

Happy Emancipation Proclamation Day!

adam — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:37:05 +0000

That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States [including the military and naval authority thereof] will, during the continuance in office of the present incumbents, recognize [and maintain the freedom of] such persons, as being free, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia has a good article on the Emancipation Proclamation.

[Quick update: Bryan Carter has a great photo he mentioned in the comments.]

What should the new czar do? (Tanji’s Security Survey)

adam — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:56:31 +0000

Over at Haft of the Spear, Michael Tanji asks:

You are the nation’s new cyber czar/shogun/guru. You know you can’t _force _anyone to do jack, therefore you spend your time/energy trying to accomplish what three things via influence, persuasion, shame and force of will?

I think it’s a fascinating question, and posted my answer over at the New School blog.