Petty Water Frustrations

Tap-water is a pretty remarkable thing. We think about it an awful lot in the southwest, or at least we're starting to. I remember water conservation edutainment plays from elementary school, and at summer camp in New Jersey I had a culture shock when the guys in my dorm left the faucet running while brushing their teeth. Scary, I know, but it struck me as something akin to blasphemy

So I'm a big fan of using little water, of using the cheapest water, and of being grateful for that water. If they existed, I'd probably be in favor of a still-suit dress code. Okay, that's a tad extreme, but it's my opposition to dress codes and not conservation that rules it out.

But this whole bottled water thing is frustrating, and I cannot fathom my numerous peers who have crates and crates of bottled water shipped to their dorm rooms, or my peers who will only drink water that has been purchased in gallon jugs from Whole Foods. I will carry my water in jugs when civilization has collapsed, but until then I am perfectly content with tap water, and cannot fathom the need for water that "tastes better".

This all would be an empty rant were it not for the high social costs of bottled water, and the very easy social gains of tap water. Bottled water is an entirely unnecessary product, and tap water is a vital social good. I'm behind the times, but today I found out about pre-paid cards for tap water. Brilliant invention of capitalism, but a terrifying loss of the common good. And, at the same time water is privatized (in such a way that facilitates the spread of water-borne diseases), New York City has had to launch a campaign to say "this tap water you guys have had for a surprisingly long time, you can drink it. It's cool, no really."

Bah. It's unfortunate that it takes the scarcity of the desert to produce some common sense.

Blogroll!

Since this is a productive weekend for me, here is the third installment of "Kelsey lists a bunch of links and hopes you like some of them". This time, I'm explaining all the links on my blogroll, which you may have glanced at once or twice. Why I am doing this? Partly it's pure self-indulgence, and partly this is self-indulgence because this is the 100th post I've started to write. If you notice a numerical discrepancy, it's because I have 8 posts (including the fabled Youth Rights post) which are all in various places in development hell. So, empty milestone or not, here are the blogs I read, and reasons why you should like them:

At the top of the list (and breaking alphabetical order) we have UUlogy. This is where the YRUU steering committee posted their video about the death of YRUU, and where lots of righteous UU angst and impassioned outcry is taking place. Besides hosting the articulate and disenfranchised, it has lots of communications with the heads of the UUA, and so is the first stop for biased news on this issue. (Disclaimer: this may be meaningless if you aren't UU. Apologies)

AHS Foliage is Albuquerque High Schools' premier underground newspaper, in its second year of publication. I had more than a little role in its early days, but now it has its own staff. It's continuing the tradition of hyper-relevant social commentary through sarcasm in zines, and is good fun.

Terry Arnold was my late grandfather's best friend, and he posts intelligent essays that aim at putting reason back into the State Department, and serve as a critique of modern US policies from the perspective of the dignified old school. I have no idea why he posts on Rense, but his stuff merits consideration despite the setting.

Had I been the typical good little AHS-er, I would have probably had Scot Key as my favorite middle school teacher. I had a middle school experience that was not at Jefferson, however, and so instead I know him through his bitter, bitter commentary about Albuquerque Public Schools. He's smart, and there is a certain humor to his posts that I appreciate, but boy does it seem like the current system of schooling just will not do much good. Rather than actively dismantling it, however, he provides snark from the inside. Which, all told, is probably the better thing to do.

Ever read all the comics in the newspaper, get angry, and wonder why you keep putting up with this crap? The answer is Comics Curmudgeon, where like minded people analyze comics all the way through death and back to some form of zombified humor. Great, dorky fun.

No burqueno's internet experience would be complete without the occasional foray to the Fix, and the quality of the site is such that I check it almost daily, even 1,500+ miles from the city. The new social networking version is fun as well.

Nora's blog can be found under the in-joke moniker of Esther de Groot. Her blog is far more bloggy, the best aspects of which are summarized in this post. Or, perhaps, this one.

John Fleck is Albuquerque's local "understands science and explains it sensibly in the newspaper" guy, and for those inclined to seek out even more science-y fun, we have his blog. I comment here sometimes, when I am feeling smart but don't want to just take and repost what he said verbatim.

Fleen is my webcomics review of choice; others prefer websnark.

GamePolitics is a blog about the politics concerning video games, and comes from the standpoint of both consumer advocacy and thinking that people are responsible enough to be trusted with pixels. Biased, but good.

Indexed is so good, it's made me figure out hand gestures so I can quote Venn Diagrams in conversation. A great blog, a great way to interpret information.

iMinister is the blog of Christine Robinson, the minister from First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque. She's very well reasoned and compelling, and works from the sensible premise of gradual, lasting change. This contrasts nicely with the far-reaching "everything is wrong and must be fixed all at once now" attitude common among others whose opinions on social justice I trust. Her blog is far more accessible than some of the other Albuquerque blogs and UU blogs, and I would put this at the top of my list of recommendations, were the list not alphabetical.

Alright, that's it from the blogosphere for me for now. With luck, I'll get those eight posts in limbo fleshed out soon.

Stuff White People Like

This is a well done anthropological perspective on modern white Americans, and as such I found it both entertaining and uncomfortable to read. It's good, it's really good, and it helps to have a perspective analyzing "white" as "other", since assuming white is the default is a fundamental problem in understanding modern racism.

The series is up to 73 posts, ranging from absurd cultural phenomena, detailed popular yet seemingly hypocritical attitudes, and the wonderfully blunt. I recommend reading all of it, but as that's a bit intense, skimming may be advisable.

Lessig Roundup

I rarely do short posts full of links, but with this being a blog it seems a shame to not take advantage of the medium. So, here we will have a few links to the best of Lawrence Lessig that I have so far found on the internet.

This was my introduction to Lessig, and clocks in at under eight minutes, so I'd go here first.

In this video, he explains remixing video and music as youth culture, and as the modern way in which youth interact with the media around them. It's good, and is the one I'd recommend to people uncertain about where to stand in the piracy debate.

In this hour-long lecture, Lawrence Lessig discusses his new focus on corruption, as he starts out on day one, and manages to do a fantastic job of examining a fundamental flaw in the current American political system. This is what won me over to his ideas, and I found it to be the most inspiring political statement I heard all of last year.

Lawrence Lessig has shown up in at least two of my posts about Barack Obama, so his endorsement speech makes sense here. It's a very compelling argument for using personal character as a standard, when the candidates positions are very similar, and so it hits upon points that I was unable to make in my analysis of positions.

Lastly, what makes all this relevant, and relevant now, is that Lessig is considering a run for representative from California, and even if that doesn't happen, he's started a movement to change congress.

Lessig is the inspiring academic of the now, and should he decide to run, he will fast become my favorite politician (sorry Heinrich). This is an exciting era, and the chance for a progressive to step out of the ivory tower and into the fray is especially exciting.

RIP YRUU

This is a placeholder post, a stop-gap for my intended Youth Rights post and a needed statement concerning the death of formal YRUU. I'll have more fleshed out opinions on both, which won't be as timely as I'd like, and this will have to be kept short, as school demands insist.

Back to the point, and an explanation - YRUU is "Young Religious Unitarian Universalists", the organization that coordinated (at continental, district, and congregational levels) youth organization with the Unitarian Universalist Association. Yesterday I was informed by a summer camp acquaintance that YRUU will cease to exist and function as it had, primarily because the UUA has withdrawn funding for the continental level. There's a lot to be said about this, and I encourage all those who want to join the discussion to comment here.

As for my say, YRUU was one of those key organizations in both my political coming of age and my coming of age in general, and while I will certainly agree that it had flaws, I think that the good it did, that the unique experience it provided, and that the leadership it helped develop are key to the UU experience, for those who do not find this faith in their 30s church-shopping. Its demise was predictable, and the very nature of an organization whose members may serve for only a year or two (if lucky, 3, and theoretically 4 was possible) means that change will be fast, change will be sweeping, and independence will be easy to lose and move away from. In four years, YRUU will be a distant notion to those who, had they been 4 years older, would have provided the most dynamic leaders.


It's rough, and I can see this as a tremendous alienation of UU-raised young adults for years to come (an alienation that furthers an already-present division in UU Young Adults), and i think it hurts the sustainability and the validity of the church. I've more to say, much much more to say, but for now I will leave this with a question:

What does a future youth organization need to be to validate youth as they are youth, honor youth empowerment, provide for institutional memory and independence, and facilitate a meaningful transition into active young adult status for the many UUs who come from such a strong tradition?

This, I think, is the fundamental YRUU question, and is a key component of the fundamental Young Adult question. Any thoughts?

Technocracy Now!

Technocracy has come up a lot in my classes this semester, and it has a hell of an appeal to it. There are many definitions I could provide, but I'll go with the simplest:

Technocracy = Government of the Competent

Which, you know, just sounds like the exact best kind of government possible. How's the saying go? "... If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary..." (more of that wisdom here). Technocracy aims at creating such rulers, and any such government worth the name will have leaders who are all trained in the art of ruling, have been trained in such an art since childhood, and belong to a group that is destined to rule. This is, in part, the justification for royal lineages and the power of monarchs - they are trained for this their whole life, so of course they should be competent. Usually the training fell through, or the monarchs assumed innate ability, so it's a poor example.

A better example would be France, where one school has graduated all but three prime ministers since 1948, and where a political elite not only exists (as they kind of exist everywhere), but where the political elite derives a large share of their power from technical skill. For someone who places a high value on civil service, this is exciting, and it helps that in such a country the public sector attracts the best and the brightest. Prestige and skill associated with civic duty is something almost alien in the United States, and the idea of guaranteed competent bureaucrats and leaders is enticing.

Certainly, the program has success, and with political elite having all the technical knowledge they could need, their plans will be well-informed and effective. Technical skill, that fundamental guiding force behind Technocracy, is something everyone would want available to their leaders (if not an innate trait of the leaders themselves). The justification, however, that technical skill is all it takes is folly.

Technocrats, especially hereditary or entrenched or class-based, will still be human and hold human values. People without values are nothing we would want, but in the rulers-as-angels scenario we would hope that they would have our values, and be the shining pillars of what we hold dear. The same skill that can beautifully execute every program we can possibly imagine, creating that approaching-utopic vision of society, can just as easily lead to someone else's paradise, and the paradise of entrenched elites tends to be a far different world than that of any regular citizens. It may overlap in areas, but on the whole it is likely to be a vision detached from the populace. If angels ruled men, would they care for what men thought?

Certainly, we like to think they would, and we know that as angels they are our angels, the angels that agree with us on all the finer points. But that's an impossibility in society, and we cannot hope (nor should we) for a world where all values conform to one glorious vision. It is diversity of opinion that makes the world rich, and it is diversity of opinion that allows for compromise at the same time that it threatens stability.

Democracy, or stable democracy at the least, is a forum for compromise, for dissent, and for acceptance that though we do not hold all same values, what we do share can be acted upon. Technocracy involves a detached judgment of the "General Will" of the populace, without asking the populace what their general will is. It is a detached government for the betterment of all society made by those who are, primarily, outside of society, and it is inevitable that the technocrats will disagree with the populace at some point to completely void the consent of the governed.

Technocracy is not an ideal system, for the very reason that no system can ever be ideal. A dystopias have a tendency to be well executed, administered by those who know exactly how to use government, and engineered around some purpose that is forwarded as in the interest of the populace. Dystopias are scary stuff. The whole premise that those governed are not responsible enough to have a say in how they are governed assumes tremendous competence on the part of the governing and tremendous incompetence on the part of the governed, and so while it is a common belief among intelligentsias, I cannot help but feel it voids fundamental notions of human dignity.

This is not to say that there is nothing to learn from technocracy, or that leadership by the skilled is a terrible thing. Certainly, skilled leaders are ideal, and technical skill for the running of government is something to be sought out. That doesn't mean that training is the only requirement, and it doesn't mean that we should just trust the opinions of the trained. People change, values change, and without a system to reevaluate consent and remove or restore legitimacy skill becomes meaningless. A perfectly skilled administrator acting against the will of the entire populace should not be left in place just because they are skilled.

The first time that was tried the results were, well, hellish.

The 2008 Democrat Endorsement

When I decided in earnest that I was going to blog about as many democratic presidential candidates as I could, I had intended to refrain from endorsing anyone. After all, this was December, and there were still nine democrats in the race. With so many people running, I felt arrogant saying that one candidate's programs are comprehensive enough that in every arena they are superior enough to grab all the votes that can be swayed by me. Instead, I intended to have a rundown of how voting for a given candidate would influence the final candidate's positions. Primary votes for Mike Gravel would have meant that legalization of marijuana might be something for the final candidate to consider, if they thought the risk was worth it. Primary votes for Kucinich would signal to the democrats that a move to to the left would be good, and with enough of them, the party might generally inch in that direction for good. Primary votes for Richardson (which I had intended to do) would mean that foreign policy, and his foreign policy, would be adopted in part by the final candidate. Having been hesitant in reviewing Dodd, Biden, and Edwards, I cannot say what votes for them would have meant. At this point, however, it is mostly irrelevant. The democrats are in a two candidate race, and I've made my endorsement.

If you didn't catch it, which is perfectly fair given as how it is on the end of the longest post I have ever blogged, I have endorsed Barack Obama.

~
Why Not Hillary Clinton?

The endorsement comes, as it must, as a preference for him over Hillary Clinton, so I will start by saying that Hillary Clinton is not all bad. She is a tremendously experience politician, and one who
has been working within the system and achieving change for a surprisingly long time. She is also the most serious chance a woman has ever had for the presidency so far. I do not mean to discredit either the idea of a woman president or the positive good Hillary Rodham Clinton has produced. I do, however, believe that Hillary's relative complacency, silence, and ineffectiveness against the policies of the past seven years by the current administration hurt her, and are a disservice to those who believe her to be an independent mind. She has not resisted enough, or made enough of a name decrying the practices of the worst presidential administration since at least Reagan, if not ever. She has been in power and in prominence and remained relatively quiet, refusing to stall or halt or make dissent known in the face of issues as important and vital as the civil rights and constitutional protections voided by the USA PATRIOT ACT. She did not oppose the War in Iraq, a war that has served to alienate vital allies and the spirit of both international cooperation and the rights of sovereignty, and has instead produced a mess of which there is no good way out. Her past inaction or silent consent offends me, and it makes her in my mind that status quo candidate; given the status quo, this is not something I will support.

When I set out to do this, I intended to focus on the candidates plans for positive good, and attack flaws in their plans and not petty assessments. With that said, a few words on gender before I look at her plan versus Obama's. Hillary Clinton is a woman who could win the presidency, and stands a decent chance at it. This is the first chance a woman has really had, and it it tempting, very tempting, to vote for her as an affirmative action towards the centuries where a majority of people in this nation have not had a descriptive candidate in the White House. I think that voting this way ignores many of the important tasks of a concerned and informed electorate, and I think that it is based on a fear of this being a one-shot option and then lost forever. Hillary is the first women to have a real shot at the presidency, but she will in no way be the last, and I can only imagine that by the time I can legally run (2024), we will have seen many more serious female contenders for the office, and an election seems almost inevitable by the time my generation is predominant in national government (2030-2050 or so). This is, to be perfectly honest, a really long way off, but Hillary has shown that a woman can be a serious contender, and others will come, even if she isn't elected.

The reasons one such as myself wouldn't want her elected, of course, have nothing to do with gender, or her religion, or her husband. My reasons, instead, have to do with stated policy aims, and how I tend to disagree with her about most of them. The sum of her domestic policy, "pro-business policy, with no serious changes in education and no real plan addressing immigration", doesn't speak to me, and doesn't really seem like it is addressed at fixing any problems that exist today. Her foreign policy is limp, and I am bothered that she doesn't care enough to make it more meaningful; her "Foreign Affairs" article is more a justification of simple aims than an elaboration of critical thought and policy directives. Her emphasis on a social welfare (universal health care, immigration reform, veterans policy) for those who are ready to be employed and keep the American economy functioning is nothing bad, but it makes welfare her game to play - a person gets the benefits provided they play along, and not from any notions of inherent worth and dignity. Her selling points do not move me.

Hillary Clinton believes in a stronger and more controlling federal government, and while she is slightly on the left in terms of how to use that pattern, the real spectrum that defines her is "Governmental Power <---> Individual Freedom", and she is willing to go towards nanny state policies to a greater degree than I would like.

She does, however, have strong points in a specific piece of education reform and with her proposal for the United States Public Service Academy. These are good things, but these are thing should can accomplish in the Senate, and things she should accomplish in the Senate, in the many years I see her remaining there.

~
Why Barack Obama

It troubles me that this issue can be debated in terms of white woman/black man, and everything I said about future serious women candidates holds true for African Americans as well (excepting the majority of the population part). The debate over experience versus inexperience/idealism is a marginally better debate, but it simplifies things, and it assumes that sufficient knowledge required for the presidency comes from multiple terms in the legislature. I can point out Abraham Lincoln (one term, representative) or Dwight Eisenhower (no terms; general) as examples of success, but the real problem has to do with the framing of the race in this way by national media, which is irresponsible and over-simplifies.

Justifications for inexperience must still be made, and this shows itself in the language Barack Obama uses on his website, which is full of technocratic jargon and legal notions that I can only just comprehend. He talks as though he is eminently qualified, and I will trust that he is. I have read nothing to disprove me of this notion.

Moving on to policy, I must say that there are serious flaws in some of what Barack Obama proposes. His foreign policy contrasts overly-firm statements to Hillary's inaction. I do not want militancy, but it is preferable to have an opinion, to make a stab at strength, than to pay lip service to a vast segment of presidential policy. I don't like his mentions of the PATRIOT ACT, especially when they concern making it more legal, rather than doing away with it as unconstitutional. Neither candidate speaks out strongly against torture, and that is also frustrating.

Obama's economic reforms are of a different veins than Clintons'. He aims at tax rebates and low income consumers as well as small business; Hillary Clinton aims at tax cuts and targets business and the middle class. Rebates are to me more sensible, and Obama's plans seem to fit in more with protecting consumers and competition than with strengthening American business abroad. His faith in a gently guided free market is reassuring, and his universal healthcare proposal seems to me to be better for both business and consumers, as it offers more than a consolidation of plans, a menu, and a buy-in to a national system.

Likewise, in education Obama hits upon the better points of Clinton's plan and offers more meaningful solution.

A complete blow-by-blow will be terribly redundant, so that last issue worth commenting upon is technology. Hillary Clinton "talks about the internet on her website like she's explaining it to an octogenarian on the campaign trail". Barack Obama incorporates the internet into many of his other plans, has a tremendous and well-written section on technology, and "he gets technology, and he gets the internet, and he would make sane and sensible polices regarding the internet and technology while protecting freedom of speech and the consumer". He incorporates brilliant uses on the internet into his ethics reform, fixes problems others have had (searchable date versus pdfs), and just feels like an appropriate candidate for the year 2008. This section, more than anything else, cements my trust in Barack Obama.

He is not an ideal candidate, and he is not an ideal candidate in my foremost area of concern, but he is a genuinely good candidate, and it is exciting to have the possibility to support and maybe even elect a candidate, backed by a major party, who I want more for his own strengths than for fear of the other guy. It is incredible to have a candidate like this, and to have one who understands the internet, and who trusts the American voter with making government more responsible, provided the information they need is made accessible. He will put up bills on the white house website for 5 days before signing them, giving time for feedback and reaction (and in this internet age, that is an entirely reasonable amount of time). I would trust a government with Barack Obama at its head.

If my opinion means anything to you in determining how you vote, I urge you to support Barack Obama as well.