antipaucity

I have a very long-term interest in education.

As I look at the current public education “system” in the US, I can see a variety of major problems.

The biggest problem, endemic of any system built around the premise that the only people who should be together all day long should all be “similar”. Somewhere along the way, we decided it would be a Good Idea™ to split children into monocultures of more-or-less indentically-aged groups called “grades”, and then batch them into groups of 20-30 and herd them through a variety of subjects every day.

We have lost the concept of learning as exemplified throughout history in the “apprentice” or “disciple” model.

Before the monoculturification of schooling, whole (but small) groups of children were taught together – it’s how my dad’s uncle was taught. From 1st (or K) through 12th all in one room. At any given moment, all ages were either being reminded of earlier work, or hearing about later work, or doing their own work.

This model is still used by the large segment of the population that homeschools (presuming, of course, they have more than one child).

What if we re-adopted this approach to school in the public system? What if, instead of having schools which housed hundreds of students in just a couple grades, we had schools in every neighborhood that had a few dozen students that represent all the grades of the community?

What if schools became “migratory” – in the sense that as the demographics of the community change, the location of the school ‘building’ can shift. Perhaps, for example, in a suburban community the school could be usage of a development community center – but if and when the community has fewer or no children, the school locale could be removed or shifted to a new young demographic area.

Some of the myriad benefits I can envision in such a scenario:

• reduced overhead for any given school in terms of hiring, maintenance, etc
• reduced school board / district overhead – elimination of now-unneeded positions
• increased teacher-to-student engagement
• lower student-to-teacher ratios
• increased student retention as they are continually being reminded of old concepts
• teachers becoming more generalized, rather than [potentially] myopic in their teaching
• team teaching – cutting across disciplines and seeing an integrated view of the world
• improved teaching flexibility
• reduced union strength
• improved connections between teachers and the community they serve
• more well-rounded graduates
• reduced / eliminated busing
• decreased prevalence of bullying
• increased likelihood of teachers living near/in the communities they serve

Some of the antibenefits I could envision:

• loss of school sporting teams
• forced generalization of teachers
• more complex IT support infrastructure (if managed by a central authority such as the board or district)

I eagerly anticipate your feedback – what do you think?

I was harshly criticized a few years ago when I pointed-out Mr Obama’s anti-gun stances. While several good things for gun owners did happen in his first term, irrational exuberance over the recent shooting in Connecticut has led Vice President Biden to say the following:

“The president is going go act,” said Biden, who is conducting meetings all week on gun control. “There are executive orders, executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet, but we’re compiling it all.”

…

“I want to make clear that we’re not going to get caught up in the notion that, unless we can do everything, we’re going to do nothing,” Biden said. “It’s critically important we act.”

This year’s election results seem to – again – be confusing a LOT of people.

The incumbent presidential candidate, Mr Obama, won ~51% of the popular vote. His main opponent, Mr Romney, won ~48% of the  popular vote.

However, when you look at the electoral votes (the only ones that really matter), you see a different picture: 332 vs 206, which puts Mr Obama’s electoral victory at 61% of the Electoral College, and Mr Romney at 39%.

For some reason, and I have my personal theories on this, civics and American History is no longer actually taught in schools. No one today knows what the Connecticut Compromise was about. Let’s do a little history lesson to bring everyone up to speed.

In 1787 there was no “United States of America” – folks were still trying to figure out what to do with the nascent country that just won its independence from the British Empire. Virginia representatives proposed having a two-house structure for Congress (the Senate and House). However, they wanted both houses of Congress to be apportioned based on population – at the time, that would’ve meant a disproportionate level of influence from the more populous states over lower-populated ones (irony: New Jersey in 1787 was one of the smallest states by population while Virginia was one of the largest: NJ has almost a million more people today than does VA). For obvious reasons, the smaller states felt this was a Bad Idea™ – their voice would never be heard.

The Compromise brought the ideas that New Jersey wanted (a unicameral representation based on the concept of one vote per state) and the one Virginia was lobbying for (bicameral, but both houses based on population) into the system we have today: a bicameral Congress with one house based [loosely] on population^*, and the second a flat number per state (ie, our House of Representatives and Senate).

With Congress out of the way, let’s look at how the President is actually elected. Article II of the Constitution covers this (along with Amendment 12). This is where things get interesting: to help mitigate the disproportionate effect of large states on small ones, each state votes for Electors who will then “really” vote later for the President (and Vice President).

Why is this important?

First, it is an evidence of the fact that we do not live in democracy – we live in a representative republic.

Second, it allows every state to have at least minimum voice in an election – which means that it views every state as important.

Third, it means that pure favoritism shouldn’t be the exclusive basis for why any given candidate becomes President. Being President isn’t supposed to be a popularity contest in the way a beauty pageant is, it is supposed to be a race to determine the best leader for the country (of course, “best” is subjective, and few actually seem to campaign because they want to ‘lead’ – they seem more to run for the thrill of being “in charge” .. but that’s another post entirely).

How are electors apportioned? Most states distribute electors in a winner-take-all form: if a candidate receives a simple majority of the popular vote in the state, they get all the electors of the state (eg a 51% win in CA gets all 55 electors even though 18.4 million of the state’s population of the state may disagree with the 18.6 that elected a given candidate). Hypothetically this shows that the States are joining together to vote for the President rather than merely the populace.

Not all states follow that model, however – Nebraska is a notable exception which awards Electors based on the vote percentages of its population.

Some argue that this system inherently creates “swing states” which lead to disproportionate campaign expenditures and focus instead of spending approximately-equal time in every state.

Personally, I think this is a fantastic system because pure democracies devolve into anarchy and/or split into multiple groups upon reaching a given size.

The Founders of our country were a lot smarter and forward-thinking than most are willing to give credit for. Were they perfect? No. Did they have flaws in the initial proposals? Absolutely. But this is one artifact of our founding that needs to stay.

^{*_{“The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand” – Article I, Section 2. If we followed this minimum today, we would have >10,000 representatives in Congress (2012 US population ~310,000,000)}}

While I have some pretty strong personal views on the issue of “gay marriage”, I have a possible solution that not only gets it away from being a societal problem, but also gets the government out of being involved in our personal lives a little more. There is a side benefit of being able to return the entire concept of “marriage” back to the individuals involved in the marriage itself.

Instead of looking at this through the [valid] lens of religion (of any kind), let’s look at it through the lens of economics.

Instead of having the government be in the business of certifying and approving marriages, let’s put them back to the role they should have – which is overseeing contracts. And instead of tax, inheritance, health, and benefits laws being tied to whom you marry, let’s tie them to those you economically support and/or with whom you enter into a contract of mutual support.

No more marriage licenses. No more weddings before a magistrate or justice of the peace. Weddings can go back to being the religious ceremonies they have been for centuries, and for those who prefer a non-religious ceremony, a contract of mutual support can be granted.

How could this look from a taxation perspective?

First, let’s throw-out the different type of filing, and simplify:

• Single taxpayer
• Taxpayer with dependents (where a “dependent” is defined as someone who receives at least 51% of their core sustenance (housing, food, clothing) from the non-dependent)
  • Minor (under 18) Dependents
  • Other Dependents
    • Primary Dependent
      • An individual who has entered a contract of mutual support with the Single Taxpayer and who resides at the same address, or
      • The only dependent over 18 in the Household
    • Secondary Dependents
      • Other members of the Household who reside at the same address

I am simplifying, but will also give the option annually to change your filing status if it gives a more advantageous overall benefit to your family / living arrangement.

Untaxable Income (or, the prebate):

• Single Taxpayer
  • $6000 annually
• Single Taxpayer with Dependents (ie Household)
  • $6000 plus
    • $3600 per Minor Dependent (under 18)
    • $6000 for the Primary Dependent (over 18)
    • $5400 per Secondary Dependent (over 18)
  • if a Dependent earns more than the Single Taxpayer Untaxable Income Level ($6000), they may file as a Single Taxpayer or contribute their income to the Household and only a file a Contributor income tax return

Tax rates:

• 20% on income per Taxpayer after Untaxable Income is eliminated
• 3% federal sales tax on all first-time, end-use purchases from a business (ie not purchased for resale by a business and not resold in a secondary market such as a garage sale or eBay)

Definitions:

• Contract of Mutual Support
  • A legally-binding document of either a permanent or time-limited nature in which two adults enter to establish a Household
• Dependent
  • Any resident of the same Household whom receives more than 51% of their core sustenance (housing, food, clothing) from the Single Taxpayer
• Household
  • A single taxable unit or those related to each other (either by blood, adoption, religious marriage, or Contract of Mutual Support), residing at the same address and combining their incomes and together for the betterment of the group
• Income
  • Any money earned via any legal or illegal means including but not limited to:
    • Bonus
    • Capital Gains
    • Dividends
    • Gifts/Inheritance from outside the United States
    • Interest
    • Rent
    • Salary
  • Exclusions to taxable Income are all sources of money earned via secondary markets or personal gifts, including but not limited to:
    • Garage sale proceeds
    • Personal services on an ad hoc basis (eg mowing a neighbor’s lawn)
    • Gift/Inheritance from inside the United States from a Taxpayer
• Single Taxpayer
  • Any person who has earned Income in the United States or has received a Gift/Inheritance from outside the US while residing in and earning Income in the US
• Untaxable Income
  • A subsistence-level income needed for basic living

Examples:

• Single Taxpayer earning $50000/yr Salary only
  • Subtract $6000 as Untaxable Income
  • 20% * $44000 pays $8800
• Single Taxpayer earning $50000/yr Salary and $500/mo Rent
  • Subtract $6000 as Untaxable Income
  • 20% * ($44000 Salary + $6000 Rent) pays $10000
• Single Taxpayer with Primary Dependent earning $50000/yr total
  • Subtract $12000 Untaxable Income
  • 20% * $38000 pays $7600
• Single Taxpayer with 1 Minor Dependent earning $50000/yr
  • Subtract $9600 Untaxable Income
  • 20% * $40400 pays $8080
• Household with Primary Dependent and 2 Minor Dependents earning $50000/yr
  • Subtract $19200 Untaxable Income
  • 20% * $30800 pays $6160
• Household with Primary Dependent, Secondary Dependent, and 2 Minor Dependents earning $50000/yr
  • Subtract $24600 Untaxable Income
  • 20% * $25400 pays $5080

Further examples left as an exercise to the reader

Dave Winer had an interesting take on the recent Twitter-NYPD flare-up.

Personally, the thought of any government organization demanding records without a warrant is abhorrent.

However, since the entire point of Twitter is to make your tweets public … then what is there to subpoena? They’re all out there – visible to the world… Unless the user has deleted them (and, from my understanding, they are “real” deletes (unlike facebook “deletes” which may or may not go anywhere)).

So, NYPD – why are you not just looking at the tweets that are available publicly? Why are you trying to demand data that may or may not exist, and without a warrant?

Lastly, to Mr Winer’s comment that “the government has no business investing taxpayer dollars in private companies”: there’s a couple big problems therein. First, since it was in reference to the Library of Congress, we should make sure that in addition to not “investing” in archiving tweets, they also not invest in archiving books, journals, newspapers, etc – after all, those are also coming from “private companies”. Second, if the government shouldn’t be investing taxpayer dollars in private companies, then where, exactly, do you propose the “government” get what it needs to operate? By fiat? By dictatorial claim? No – those aren’t good public relations moves. The government needs to obtain the services and goods it needs to continue its functions from private industry (or we need to abandon this whole ‘capitalism’ thing and go for a pure central economy wherein all produced goods and services are provided by the government).

Tax Day in the US is “late” this year because the 15th of April was a Sunday.

I was able to prepare and file my taxes early-ish (January) thanks to a proactive employer who got our W2s out quickly.

Every month I look at my pay stub, and am appalled at how much the various governmental agencies claim is “theirs” of MY worked-for pay:

• 11.3% – Federal
• 4.7%  - State
• 3.8% – Social Security
• 2.3% – Lexington-Fayette
• 1.3% – Medicare
• .5% – Fayette County
• 23.9% total taxes claimed

And it’s only that “low” because I participate in (completely legal) programs to reduce my taxable income (401(k), FSA, etc which reduce my taxable income by about 12%).

We have not yet added-in the state and local sales taxes that are claimed, nor the federal, state, and local fuel taxes (over and above sales taxes in most states). Currently I am not a home owner, but when that eventually changes, I’ll be paying property taxes – a fee to the city/county for the privilege of living there!

Of my take-home pay, if I spend $2000 per month on “stuff” (groceries, eating out, gas, shopping, whatever), about 7% of that is going to the tax coffers of the county and state (and maybe city, depending on where you live). 7% of $2000 is $131 (or if you want to add 7% on top of the $2000, it’s an additional $140).

I am a proponent of pay-as-you-go – in all areas of life: if I want to make use of something that belongs to someone else, or that is maintained by the “people” (eg roads), I do not at all mind paying for that opportunity.

However, I despise double-dipping and multiple-paying on the same service/product. A prime example is the concept of a toll road: if the road is owned/operated by the “government” (which is really the people, but with a delegated responsibility to maintain the facilities), it makes sense to me that it should cost something to have to take care of that road. However, if the government wants to charge a toll for a road, then it must eliminate the fuel tax that every driver pays: by charging a toll and a fuel tax, drivers have double-paid for the privilege of using the road.

Double-dipping affects all consumers in every other purchase they make as well because corporations are charged taxes on their income, and since businesses are in business to make money, they have to cover that cost from somewhere, which means it comes from their customers.

Several years ago I wrote a paper on implementing a flat tax in the United States. In the intervening years, I have become convinced that the premise on which I wrote that paper is not the best (ie, taxing income), but that it was a solid start in the Right Direction™.

What needs to be done instead is far simpler, and would in the process also eliminate the need for most of the IRS, and give substantially more power directly to the people over the direction their government takes.

Abandon the concept of an income tax entirely.

Eliminate taxation on gifts (including estates). Eliminate the “special” Medicare and Social Security taxes.

Implement a flat sales (or “consumption”) tax on all non-food purchases in the country.

One of the beauties of the sales tax is that everyone pays it – whether you are “rich” or “poor”, it is equally, and fairly applied to all – and it’s shown every day on transactions around the country: you buy a $20000 car, you pay $1400 in sales tax. You buy a $40000 car, you pay $2800 in sales tax. That’s a simple, easy-to-understand model, and one that everyone can follow straightforwardly.

According to Wikipedia, in 2007 total tax receipts (income, employment, corporate, excise, gift, estate) to the Federal government was just under $2.7 trillion. That’s trillion – with a “t”. According to this site, total personal income in the US in 2010 was $12.3 trillion (in 2007 it was $11.9 trillion)^*.

IF every American who earned an income paid a flat tax on that income (with no deductions, no special categories, no “loopholes”, etc) of 23%, that would *completely* cover the tax receipts of the Federal government. That would be a simple solution – if it wasn’t for what one of my favorite entertainers said:

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. –Will Rogers

Let’s end that lying now.

In 2011, the US spent $10.9 trillion. Subtract out non-durable goods for the moment (a quick way to distinguish food out of the mix, though I’m sure people didn’t spend $2.5 trillion on food^{^}). That brings us down to $8.4 trillion.If every person who bought something new in the US paid a sales tax of 37%, that would more than cover the tax receipts of the Federal government. With the far more probable $0.5 trillion spent on food at home, that gives $10.4 trillion spent. A sales tax rate of %26 would cover the Federal tax receipts.

Businesses already collect sales tax. Collecting a different rate is simple.

If the “average” citizen saw that on top of his $10 meal at Applebee’s he needed to pay $2.60 in taxes, it might help him budget better. It’s certainly more transparent – and easier to track.

Yes, it would put all kinds of tax attorneys, accountants, and the like out of work – but it would also mean that folks wouldn’t have to spend hundreds of millions and billions of dollars per year to worry about their taxes: pay when you buy. It’s really that simple.

Eliminate the overt, unnecessary complexity of our tax code, and make it the simplest to understand and comply-with in the world.

Oh, and make the US an enviable target for corporations wanting to headquarter/operate here: no taxes on business income would be a clarion call to start/operate here.

^{*_{See bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/2012/pdf/pi0212.pdf for more recent numbers}
^_{according to creditloan.com/infographics/how-the-average-consumer-spends-their-paycheck, the average 2.5 person household spends $3750 per year on food at home (untaxable in my plan); there are 325 million people in the US; that’s 130 million households and $487.5 billion (just under $0.5 trillion)}}

Following-up a recent post on copyrights, I want to share some further thoughts I have on the topic, and about patents, too.

First of all, the concept of a copyright is meant to protect the author from others unduly benefiting from their work. One obvious conclusion to make from that statement is that after the author ceases to live, they can no longer claim to receive any benefit from their work. I know I certainly wouldn’t care about royalties after I die.

Second, only individuals or their proxies should be allowed to claim copyright over a work. By proxy, I would include work created for a company in the context of something sold and/or shared publicly.

My proposed fix for copyright law would be to cap copyrights at 25 years, or the life of the author – whichever is shorter. If something is written for a corporation, the copyright could be retained either by the author(s) or the company, but it will expire no more than 25 years after it has been written (this would cover the case of one of the authors being tragically lost due to illness or accident). Knowledge grows when information is spread. The more people have access to information, the more applications of it can be made. And, overall, knowledge is a Good Thing™!

With regards to patents, I think there are many broken aspects of the current system: not the least of which is that non-physical “things” can be patented (algorithms, software, etc). While not an inherently bad thing to be able to protect a proprietary process or method for accomplishing work, the fact of the matter with regards to modern society (speed/quality of communication, the ability to analyze data, etc) is that whether you patent your process for accepting multiple inputs at once to a program or not, someone will be able to [nearly] instantly copy what you did.

My first fix to the patent system would be to cap patent life at 10 years from the date of issuance, and 15 years from the date of filing (honestly, if it take more than 5 years to get it issued, your competitors have already caught and exceeded you). I would also preclude the ability to extend the life of a patent through any means – innovate more if you want, but you cannot extend the life of a patent past its expiration.

My second fix will be to ban the ability to patent software. It would not be just to apply a new law to old thinking, so extant software patents would not be affected beyond the ability to extend their life.

My third fix would be to ban security orders being placed on a patent (as the NSA has been known to do with regards to encryption algorithms). No one – private individual, corporation, or government agency – should be allowed to “preview” patent applications and attempt to get the blocked or hidden.

My final fix to patents would come with streamlining the application and approve-or-deny process. The USPTO is overwhelmed with applications. Some of this comes from companies trying to file exceptionally-broad applications just to see what they can get away with (“I know! We’ll patent the process of processing patents!” – or some other silliness). Some of this comes from inadequately-informed patent officers – there is no possible way every patent officer can possibly know about all the fields that patents are asked-for and -about! There needs to be an improvement in the general population of the patent office, whereby more skilled/knowledgeable/talented people are put in place to review patents (not saying they don’t have talented people now, but that needs to be increased).

Lastly – and this would related to copyrights, trademarks, and patents – a public database of all current patents and trademarks should be made available. That database should also show all expired patents and trademarks. And, for those authors who have chosen to register their copyright with the USPTO, a database of authors, their work(s), and the copyright date (and, by calculation, its expiry) should be visible.

This is going to ramble a bit, and I’m not 100% sure my opinions are even remotely reasonable, but I had a great conversation on the Gold Standard recently, and thought sharing that would be fun. The quoted sections are relevant parts of the conversation from my friend^*, and the unquoted segments are my responses.

I’ve seen pundits, or as I call them, “blowhards”, on both sides of the aisle claim that even suggesting we return to the gold standard is madness. Maybe it’s just because I’m not an economist, but I don’t understand that - we had like 3-4 thousand years of experience with the gold standard; we have less than a century with floating currencies. Why is it so crazy to say “we keep getting into trouble this way, maybe we should fall back until we’ve got this figured out better”?

The only issue I can see with returning to the gold standard (or the silver or any other), is that since gold is by nature a finite resource (whereas many others, while finite, are growable (eg crops, industry, etc)), there would be no reason to have an “exchange” between different countries, and that it would make an effective universal currency – to some extent, undervaluing the currency systems of every country that chose to use the standard, and globalize (even more) our economies.

Plus, it makes issuing loans (and receiving them) substantially more difficult – and loans are NOT always a Bad Thing™.

For example, if, say, Canada and the US use the gold standard and decide that $1000 US is one ounce of gold, and $500 Canadian is one ounce of gold, the exchange “rate” is fixed – and it’s fixed to something that is increasable, but only at a fairly fixed rate (how fast you can acquire/generate gold). Whereas if you have floating currencies with no “real” backing, exchange rates can change based on the relative health of each country.

By setting a fixed exchange (which is what the gold standard would do … like what China has been doing for years to the US, but only on paper), is that it can cyclically under- and over-value individual countries currencies and economies, ultimately bringing more down at once when a few fail (or, of course the reverse – bring more up when some few major ones succeed).

During the early part of the last century, we were still mostly working with gold, and we had both the Great Depression, and some of the greatest economic growth ever seen.

The Great Depression, imho (though, admittedly, a biased, and fairly-underinformed opinion), was about 90% perception, and 10% reality – a fairly commonplace occurrence in economics, but one that was exacerbated by the [initially] fixed relations between the various national currencies

Also, imho, basing currency on a fixed standard (like gold) was truly only viable in an era of poor communication (I’d personally argue that shortly after the telegram became more than a technological marvel, this became more and more true until it was universal) - with poor communication, perceptions take a LONG time to be transferred – which correspondingly means that “news” was A) old, and B) taken with larger grains of salt than we *tend* to take it with now, since comunication is [effectively] instantaneous. {I have no research or citations to this point – yet: it is currently only my opinion.}

In my opinion, by floating currencies against each other and the relative strengths of each country involved, crashes are slowed (not eliminated, of course). Of course, again, the reverse is also true – booms are flattened-out. So, I’d view the floating-currency approach as one that will *tend* to flatten local (and global) booms and busts into substantially smaller ripples, rather than major mountains and troughs.

Not being an economist, I’m not sure I understand why that should be. What’s the evidence for that? How can we be certain that’s a good thing? Maybe the cycle of mountains and valleys is important, socially?

[not being an economist either,] I’d *think* that it would be better to keep the mountains and valleys more stable / less high|deep, so that slowdowns aren’t felt by a disproportionately small community/niche of the economy, and so that speed-ups can have a “good neighbor” effect to bringing some of the underperforming sectors ‘along for the ride’.

As to question 2 – I don’t *know* that it’s “a good thing” … but I also can’t say it’s a ‘bad thing’, either.

I’d be happy to hear arguments that either oppose mine, or are different

I think my strongest one would be that we used the gold standard for like 4000 years, and it seemed to work very well for us nearly globally during that time. As far as any possible good neighbor effect from flattening things out, it may be that social upheaval is an important component of progress: almost all major advances thus far in history have had some component of socio-economic shift; flattening those upheavals could very well have consequences that we can’t foresee (I realize this is a weak, speculative argument, but it’s worth considering).

There’s also part of me that feels like floating currencies are so much handwaving and voodoo. You talked about how they allow countries to create exchanges that are tied to their relative health, instead of some fixed point - but isn’t how much currency they’ve arbitrarily decided to create often used as one of the measures of health? If so, that’s somewhat circular logic: if floating currencies let us control how much inflation we’ve got, and inflation is one of the health metrics, then what prevents nations from trying to hide economic problems, just the way that nearly every EU member has done over the last 15 years?

Isn’t it exactly the fact that their currencies were floating relative to one another before hand that allowed them to hide so much of their debt before entering the euro zone? Or have i misunderstood that?

Prior to the “euro zone” cluster****, country finances were a LOT less open/transparent, too … kinda like a private vs public company (not that public companies are as transparent as would be helpful, but the comparison stands).

I feel like if they’d been the gold standard, the euro zone negotiations would have been more along the lines of:

“ok, so how much gold have you got?”
“oh, quite a bit!”
“ok, well, we’re going to need to count all of it, so that we can figure out how many euros to give you.”
“oh, well, we have quite a bit of gold!”
“yeah, still need to count it.”
“oh. um. crap. …fine”

It’s a lot harder to hide how much actual wealth you have, when your wealth can be reduced to a physical object, instead of just assertions on paper.

However, if you’re going to count the gold nuggets (or whatever), it’s also trivially-simple to elect to *NOT* show your whole hand … which would seem to me to be the same economic sleight-of-hand as can be done when asked “how many barrels of oil do you have?” and you reply “we’re recovering 5million bbl/day”

That’s not an answer – it’s interesting information … but not an answer.

In this particular case, there’s no benefit I can immediately think of to hiding your wealth – the whole point was to get your finances into a good enough shape to be able to qualify for the euro zone. The shenanigans were more about hiding debt than hiding wealth.

I think that hiding wealth *could* be beneficial to make yourself *appear* weaker than you are, so that when you “need|want” to be “strong”, you can be. It could also be from a detail-vs-gestalt approach.

So now I ask all of you – is this plausible/reasonable/right? Or am I smoking some serious space crack?

^{*_{He gave me permission to quote him as appropriate if desired}}

ars technica has a great article on some short-term, easy-to-implement fixes to the current copyright fiasco in the United States.

I have a bevy of thoughts on this myself, but not quite enough time today to write them down.

Pick your slant report – Huffington Post or Fox News: it has been reported that President Obama’s administration will be issuing waivers to 10 states with regard to compliancy with No Child Left Behind (which, in my opinion, is one of the biggest debacles in public education ever).

If the point is to “leave no child behind”, why are waivers being granted over a decade later?

And why are there 28 more states who are planning to “seek flexibility” with regards to NCLB?

Seems like that’s MAJOR proof that it was distinctly NOT the best thing we could have done as a country to address education.