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January 15, 2009 04:38 PM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 58 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”

–Thomas Jefferson

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58 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

      1. they definitely don’t forget the loser 🙂

        Actually, most of the kids on each team know the kids on the other team. It’s a fierce rivalry, but in a sense it is also family. The Boulder Daily Camera however definitely takes Boulder’s side…

  2. from CNN

    Last month, Bjorkman, like millions of Americans, became a victim of the economic downturn when he was laid off. The 57-year-old was fired from KWGN, his $250,000 salary soon to be gone. He has already applied for unemployment benefits.

    …

    Three years ago, sensing that his days as a well-compensated anchorman were numbered, Bjorkman went back to college to prepare for a second career. Growing up, he’d always loved animals and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, but at his age, it didn’t seem realistic to take on eight years of study. Instead, he enrolled at a nearby community college and decided to become a veterinary technician.

    …

    But taking on a new career will mean an enormous drop in salary. Next May, when his contract stops paying him a quarter of million dollars a year, his annual income will drop more than 80 percent to $30,000 a year or less, assuming he can actually find a job as a vet assistant.

    1. In the grocery store parking lot the other day was a car with a lot of Obama and anti-Bush stickers on it.  I got to tell the departing driver I liked them and I said, “Eight more days!”  She smiled and said, “I’m leaving for Washington tomorrow.”  

      I can’t imagine dealing with those crowds, I’ll settle for television.  

  4. It’s interesting, we liberals tend to be very supportive of science including the theory of evolution. We are all “yes, we should rationally make the best choice.”

    Yet when it comes down to day to day efforts – we tend to be very conservative and hostile to the concept that everything must evolve over time or die off.

    Newspapers as they exist are not economically viable. A few will figure out how to evolve into a model that is viable. The rest will die off. The pity is not that the RMN will go away, the pity is its reaction to the changing world were small & tenative.

    Unions as they exist are diappearing in the private sphere. And EFCA is not going to change that. The unions are desperately fighting to return back to their golden days of the ’50s rather than seeing the new world they face and evolving to meet it. We will see something take their place because there will always be a need for worker representation – but I think it may require a totally new organization.

    Public education is a disaster. Our long term future is more closely tied to the job we do educating our citizens than anythin else. Yet the main response we see is keep doing more of the same, and shovel more money at it.

    Transportation – more roads, healthcare – more dollars, the list goes on and on. I understand that we human beings are at root very conservative creatures and that we look outside our comfot zone only when we absolutely must.

    But it sure would be nice if we would proactively really look for new approaches so more often. Not do so at last, but at first.

    That’s my vent of the day.

    1. so it won’t be law-of-the-jungle, kill-or-be-killed, evolve-or-die. Many of us are liberals because we philosophically believe in protecting the weakest in society, rather than leaving the weakest to die in the woods.  

        1. which you seem to propose primarily just for the sake of change, often without thinking too deeply about the predictable consequences. Sometimes stability has its own value, and thus when radical reforms are proposed, there is a big burden of proof on the proposer, to ensure that the change doesn’t make the situation worse.

          And my comment was more about the fact that politics has nothing whatsoever to do with the theory of evolution, and that in some sense I choose to be a liberal precisely because I believe in the mechanisms of evolution and want to ameliorate them.

          1. it’s that I bring up possibilities that I think should be considered. My maon point is that in many cases what we are presently doing is clearly not working – and so we need to find something better.

            For those that have a comfortable & secure income, there is a strong tendancy to stick with what we have. But for those that we are not helping, business as usual is very harmful.

            So yes, I am open to significant change. Because long term, that is what is required to advance civilization. But I’d like to see us advance a bit faster.

            Or should we just say – hey, gay marriage has always been illegal so why do you want to go change that?

            2. Find something you dislike. (Usually not hard.)

              Declare it to be a complete disaster which will fail and explode and probably kill us all if it’s not fixed immediately.

              Propose a solution that involves hurting lots of people severely who aren’t you.

              Never present any evidence that your plan will actually help, instead saying “Well it’s better than EVERYBODY DYING ALL THE TIME FOREVER isn’t it?”

              Briefly consider the possible ramifications, then decide tax credits for the affected will take care of any potential problem.

              Tell everyone who disagrees they’re rich and comfortable and thus happy to support the evil deathkill system that all decent hard-working people like you despise.

              Eventually it starts to feel like it’s not so much problems you want to solve, rather that you find big radical things exciting.

              1. it’s really NOT a good idea to have Hindus administrate Jerusalem? Or allow teenagers to drink piГ±a coladas with their parents if they get good grades, or whatever that one was?

              2. It’s not find something I dislike, it’s find something I think is facing major problems. I personally don’t face any issue with transportation as I live & work in Boulder. I don’t face any problems with public education because my daughters go to very good schools. I personally don’t face health insurance issues because I can afford it.

                In each of these cases I see that it harms others, individually and out state and country as a whole. And I want to try and address that harm.

                Second, I don’t say that we will all die tomorrow if it isn’t immediately fixed. What I do point out is that we face ongoing hurt when we leave things as they are. Every year we don’t fix our schools, that is leaving thousands of additional people in Colorado to a life of low wages.

                Third, I propose solutions that I think will make people better off. Although, when I support increased taxes to fund some of these things, that does tend to hurt me and others who are well off – but we can afford it. But fixing transportation, schools, etc – that helps people.

                Finally, I’m proposing ideas that I think are worth considering. That beats the hell out of just sitting around shooting down any new idea because it’s not perfect in every way.

                What I do find exciting is the possibility of improving our society. Especially where we can give the poor a true opportunity at a good life.

          2. If the goal is to maximize some balance of efficiency and egalitarianism (i,e., producing “wealth,” broadly conceptualized, and distributing it, or opportunity to access it, fairly), then the evolution of ideas (in the form of technologies and social institutions) is one valuable mechanism toward ever-more effectively achieving that goal. Too much emphasis on distributive justice destroys productivity (producing an egalitarianism of abject poverty), and too much emphasis on short term productivity ignores distributive justice. But, the same evolutionary mechanisms that have led to technological and social institutional innovations which have dramatically increased our productivity have also increased our egalitarianism (states that, to some degree, devolved power being more competitively successful than states that did not). In other words, pragmatic humanism requires an understanding of the complex dynamical systems within which, and of which, we exist, and the implementation of policies which neither surrender to an “invisible hand” (i.e., the organic processes of human history) nor struggle against it.

              1. just analytic and humanistic. We are at our best when we simultaneously balance and maximize both reason and compassion in our thoughts and actions. The nature of Nature, including human existence, is systemic, and more often than not, non-linear. Understanding how those systems operate, to the best of our ability, and employing that understanding in our efforts to act purposefully, is what politics should and could be all about. It is of crucial importance to understand how geological, meteorological, ecological, and human social institutional systems operate and interact: How the matrices of information employed in the exploitation of exosamtic energy evolve, how human welfare and sustainable regimes can best be achieved and maximized, how that welfare interfaces with ecological and epidemiological systems, and how human political economic policies are devised and implemented. Political action can fall anywhere on the spectrum from highly informed to blindly ideological, from analytical to assumption-laden, from broad-minded and far-sighted to narrow-minded and short-sighted. Like all people, I have an agenda, though mine doesn’t fall into the traditional categories: My agenda is to increase the analytical content of political action. Understanding, to the best of our ability, the complex dynamical systems of which we are comprised and of which we are one part, and mobilizing that understanding in our efforts to improve the quality of our life, now and in the future, seems to me to be, constantly, the most pressing demand of political action.

                  1. Though I have just over an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays (from 11:50 until 1:00), and am otherwise not in Boulder (I have an externship with the House Majority as well, though the days are still in flux). A monday, wednesday, or friday in Golden might be better.

                2. How the matrices of information employed in the exploitation of exosamtic energy evolve.

                  Is “Exosamtic” a real word?  Assuming you meant exosomatic, what in the world do you mean with that sentence?

                  1. harvested from the environment, while endosomatic energy refers to energy derived from our own metabolic processes. In one sense, human civilization is driven by the twin generators of energy and information: Our technologies and social institutions utilize exosomatic energy to power our lives, from cooking food to forging swords to fueling cars, and so on. Understanding how these packets of information, these technologies and social institutions, evolve, is an essential cornerstone to informing sound and sustainable social (political economic) policy.

                    British biologist Richard Dawkins wrote, in “The Selfish Gene,” that human cognitions evolve by a process very similar to that by which genes evolve: They are packets of information which reproduce, mutate, compete for reproductive success, and thus evolve according to the dictates of reproductive success. In human history, this is largely a political economic (and often military) process: Those cognitions that give one organization of human beings a competitive advantage over others reproduce more robustly. As the challenges we face are increasingly natural challenges to global civilization, and decreasingly localized challenges posed by foreign aggressors (as much as recent history seems to suggest otherwise), the cognitions (or “memes”) that are likely to experience the greatest reproductive success are those that address that larger challenges. The gradual emergence of international law and international organizations is one by-product of that development. Of course, individuals, communities, states (ie, provinces), nations, and regional alliances will continue to compete among themselves. But the pacification of that competition through viable and enforceable social institutions will continue to be one of the global challenges we collectively face and address.

                    The bottom line, in answer to your question, is that the sentence means that the develpment of the technologies and social institutions that define how we exploit exosomatic energy (fossil fuels, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, etc.) are a vital component of well-informed social policy.

                    Sorry for the typo

                    2. but if I thought I could say the same thing with fewer or simpler words, I would. Instead of “exosomatic energy,” for instance, I could have said “energy we harvest from the environment,” but that involves more words (though, even so, would probably have been a better choice). I have to respect the general consensus that I’m overly verbose, and I’ll see what I can do about it, but sometimes (not always) complex ideas require complex language. There are two uses of jargon: That which is used to obfuscate the vagueness of the ideas presented and to self-inflate the speaker/writer, and that which is used to condense large amounts of information into a compact package. I realize that some people think I am engaging in the former, but, truthfully, I am always trying to accomplish the latter. Still, thanks for the suggestion, and I’ll make an effort to trim the fat.

                      Good to be back.

                    3. …your posts are starting to get long again.  Granted, far shorter than some from your previous incarnation!  

                    5. 9 times out of 10 most people do use it to obfuscate or self inflate the speaker/writer, but I don’t see this in your case.

                       

        2. If you’ve got something against horse buggy manufacturers…

          Seriously, pulling up an example like that shows a lack of understanding of the complexity of seemingly simple issues that seems to underscore the point that sxp just made – change for the sake of change.

    2. I agree that they should try to evolve, but they are an important institution in any country. If you don’t have unions, then chances are you are living in an authoritative regime.

      EFCA is really neither here nor there, and organization isn’t really the issue either. Until the Supreme Court changes its interpretation of the 14th amendment, then we will have unions that are similar to what they are now.

      Maybe if we didn’t have the kind of craziness that we had last election, then the unions wouldn’t feel that they had to defend themselves against reform. People aren’t trying to reform the unions, they’re trying to do away with them entirely.

      1. My worry is the union leadership. Unions will be destroyed by becoming irrelevant, not by business owners who fight them. Some business owners will always fight unions.

        The problem is that unions view their job as getting as much as they can for their members from a company. It’s entirely adversarial and it doesn’t address the key issue of insuring that the company stays in business.

        The contract with Chrysler become irrelevant when Chrysler closes it’s doors. If the union had instead put energy into making sure Chrysler was well managed, had good products, and would survive – that would serve it’s members much better.

      1. .

        to the left of Libertad’s title immediately above, it says “(new).”  [the parentheses are part of the quote, thus the period placement.]

        But this is the same video she/ he has posted 15 times before.

        .

    4. I was talking once back in the .com days with the technical founder of another start-up here in Boulder. He made the critisizm that I wanted change whereas he preferred to stick with what worked.

      My reply was not that I liked or disliked change, but that it was a fact of life in the high-tech world and embracing it was the best route to success.

      His company cratered before the .com crash. The market changed and they didn’t adapt.

      I’m not saying we should blindly embrace every new idea that comes down the pike. Nor am I saying we should change everything. What I do think we need to do is in the areas where we face big problems, is look for a significantly different approach. Because that is the only way to get significant improvement.

  5. Give President Bush a Grade

    Live Vote

    If you were grading George W. Bush on his performance as president, what would he get?   * 49260 responses  

    He gets an A

    6.5%  

    He gets a B

    10%  

    He gets a C

    7.5%  

    He gets a D

    17%  

    He gets an F

    58%  

     

  6. Racist Justice department official has to apologize to the woman he insulted.

    Tanner — who has a history of questionable racial remarks and appears still to be working on voting issues on DOJ’s payroll — explains that he only used the phrase because he had recently heard an African-American customer at a coffee shop order coffee “black and sweet — like me.”

    Right, because there’s no real difference between “black and sweet like me” and “black and bitter like the chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights.”

  8. Check out the new video by AFSCME as part of their Make America Happen campaign. The video reminds us that we have overcome financial crisis before, and we can do it again.  It compared FDR’s solutions to the Great Depression with Obama’s plans to tackle our current economic crisis.  

    As AFSCME President Gerald McEntee pointed out in his Huffington Post piece yesterday,

    “President-elect Barack Obama’s call for bold action and civic engagement in response to our present crisis echoes FDR’s inspiring call to pull the nation out of the Great Depression and forge the New Deal. The video shows how our nation triumphed over economic crisis once before and can do so again by reinvesting in public service, providing health care for all Americans and growing the middle class.”

    With a severe economic recession, an unemployment rate that reached 7.2 percent in December and continues to grow, and with more Americans falling into poverty, Americans are demanding action. Please sign our petition and make your voice heard.

    The Make America Happen campaign is dedicated to helping President-elect Obama revitalize our economy, provide health care for all, and strengthen the middle class. Our best days are still ahead of us.

    http://www.afscme.org/makeamer…

    1. or in other words, SHUT UP! If you’re not going to post  a meaningful discussion or comment, save the spam for all those folks on the Obama email list…

      1. this is really, truly your LAST CHANCE to be part of history by ordering this commemorative mug, which will enter you into a drawing to attend the inaugural along with five other …

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