Department of Analytical Tools

Now that the quadrennial dog and pony show is behind us, I have been reflecting on the failure of every attempt to revive the voice of the citizens in post Citizens United America. The dismal turnout numbers that “More Money = More Free Speech” helps facilitate is purely understandable. I can no longer argue with people who refuse to participate in a rigged system. Yet the potential of this group of non-voters is undeniable. Non-voters have been the Holy Grail of progressives throughout our Republic’s history. The 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th & 26th Amendments were all purposed toward adding more voters and thus strengthening the Power of the People. Read below the fold...

Crossposted over at themontanamaven.com
Might be a good idea to have a Weasology Handbook. To his credit yesterday Chris Hayes on his show "UP" signaled a problem with the words "high quality" as in "high quality charter schools" after one of his guests, Darrell Bradford of something called "Better Education For Kids" praised some charters in Chicago. Yeh, of course high quality charter schools are just great, Chris laughed. Who doesn't love "high quality" anything? So he was right to warn us about this phrase. But he let the phrase "high quality pre-school education" be defined by his guests without real analysis*. As defined by most of his guests this morning, high quality preschool education was about learning...get this..."persistence, "discipline" and my favorite, "finishing things." The professor (and to my chagrin a woman) also emphasized how spongy little brains are at 4 years old. Ugh.

My psychological type in Myers/Briggs Jungian land is an ENTP (extroverted intuitive thinking perceiver). Didn't discover this until I was around 42. Much to my relief, my type just doesn't finish things. Once we mostly master something, we move on. We are notorious for not completing things like degrees and we rarely put the degrees we do achieve up on the wall. We move from project to project. My former husband was quite kind but used to lament the many different piles of dirt and stones around our cabin of projects I had started and then grown bored with. I didn't finish my dissertation for my Ph.D in theater and film. Ran off to New York instead. My friend and I wrote a whole book about what it was like for two Hollywood New York movie agents to fly the coop; her moving to Italy and me moving to Montana. We got through many drafts and then both of us started other projects. What a relief to discover that it is just my nature to not always finish things. I do finish making dinner. I finish most books although I am simultaneously reading 5 books right now (four non-fiction and one fiction). I'm pretty loyal and probably should have finished one marriage sooner than I did. If I do finish, I often make a strong finish. But nobody really knows if I will finish or take a turn and jump over the fence and run away. Read below the fold...

There's been some loose talk lately that the blogosphere is no longer "vital." And indeed some blogs are ripe for disintermediation; who needs a partisan blog when you've got The Party? And who needs who needs Kos when you've got Maxim?

But to those who say that blogging is dead, I say, take a look at this chart:

It shows how a single comment ignited a media and policy explosion* two-and-a-half years later. Does that look like a power curve to you, or what? Read below the fold...

[I'm leaving this sticky because I've been struggling for months with a massive theory of everything on the market state, and this discussion is useful to me. So feel free to stretch out with theories in comments! --lambert]

[I'm stickying this because the thread this comment came from was terrific, and because the writer is combining a lot of ideas in a very concise way -- and his grandma bought in! Hard to argue with that... Also, I like Theories of Everything, which this post is. --lambert] Read below the fold...

I originally wrote the following essay in late 2009, almost three years ago. I never got it published, though I did circulate it privately. At the time I theorized that debt was the common element of oppression in American life across ages, ethnic groups, geography, etc.. Debtors were the largest oppressed group in the US if only they would recognize it. Therefore teachingpeople to recognize that fact would be a way of organizing people against the current system. Read below the fold...

This should be a long, long post but I don't have the ideas straight in my mind (yet). So the theory of everything will have to wait for another day.

Recall (from this post) the shorthand representations of capitalism and financial capitalism:

That is, Marx [gasp] got this right for capitalism:

M-C-M'

and this right for finance capitalism:

M-M'

Read below the fold...

Originally posted atOccupy Oakland Media

Last week I wrote about the continued relevance of the nation state. This week's piece is on seizing the American identity.

As leftists, we should seize the American identity from the moribund hands of dying bigots and refashion it into something that centers on economic well being for the majority of Americans. Ultimately a nation state depends on its citizens embracing a common orientation, or a common identity if you will. Read below the fold...

Originally posted at Occupy Oakland Media

First in a series on building a new consensus.

The nation-state still matters.

Although I have met and talked with many people in OO who believe that the nation-state is obsolete, evil and must be abolished, I do not agree. There are quite a few things that the nation-state does that I have not seen as possible otherwise. Among other things, this includes the maintenance of the physical infrastructure of civilization, such as water/sewage distribution and telecom, as well as the monopoly on violence. Read below the fold...