Big, big news on the affirmative action front today :

In its most important statements on affirmative action in a quarter-century, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld the admissions policy of the University of Michigan law school today, finding that minority applicants may be given an edge, but struck down the part of the university’s undergraduate-admissions system that relies on a point system.

The pair of rulings did not go as far as opponents of affirmative action would have liked, nor perhaps as far as people committed to affirmative action would have wished. But taken together, the twin decisions were the most important rulings on the subject since the landmark Bakke decision of 1978, which rejected rigid quotas but recognized race as a “factor” in admissions and hiring decisions.

The rulings are expected to have wide impact through private college and universities, businesses and other areas of everyday life even though, technically, they address only admissions at public institutions.

It seems to me that this was the right decision for now. While striking down a controversial program, the justices still stood by affirmative action as a program. Unfortunately, these decisions aren’t going to do a thing to make the controversy over affirmative action go away.

Say what you will about the virtues of affirmative action, for people who are overlooked for college admissions in favor of a less qualified minority candidate, affirmative action is unfair. Personally, I think this injustice is minor compared to the generations of racial injustice that are being slowly undone by affirmative action, but marginalizing people with legitimate grievances with accusations of racism can only hurt your cause in the long run. The fact is affirmative action may be a great program, but it is also very flawed.

The big problem with affirmative action is that it doesn’t seem to be very flexible. In theory, a program like affirmative action should be designed to be eventually phased out. Granted, it isn’t likely to happen in our lifetimes, but there could eventually be a day when racism is completely gone from our society. Of course if that day ever came (and some conservatives would agrue that it’s already here), those in favor of affirmative action would still be upset at the program’s elimination.

An ideal solution would be an affirmative action-like program that evaluates potential biases against people based not only on race, but also gender, religion, age, and (especially) economic status. Why is affirmative action a big controversy while the routine acceptance of low-performing rich kids (like our current president) over qualified students (regardless of race) barely merits a mention in the media? What we have now is a system that favors one race over another in a way that opens up as many questions as it purportedly solves : Which races are to be given favorable treatment? In what order are races to be favored? Who’s to say which races are more deserving than others?

I hate to sound like a “big-government liberal” here, but with these questions in mind there really should be an independent board set up to evaluate the effectiveness of and the need for affirmative action like programs every five years or so. The way things are right now, affirmative action programs are set up to avoid being labeled racist and avoid charges of reverse-racism from the white C-students who aren’t admitted. Shouldn’t affirmative action be a program that can not only make up for the inequalities in our society but also be used as a measure of the progress that we have made?

Along with my site, there are two other new blogs that are worth checking out. The first one is Briantology from Brian Byrne, a great writer who occasionally posts here, and the other is CoulterGeist from right-wing wacko Ann Coulter (Sorry, Ann. Didn’t mean to slander you) Both should be fun for insane ramblings (although only one of the authors realizes it). So whether your appetite for weirdness is of the “Call me Optimus Prime” variety or the “we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”, both sites should be good for a laugh.

Today is the first day of a three day international conference on genetically modified food in Sacramento. Like most gatherings of white people wearing ties in northern California, it spawned a protest :

The purpose is to show how biotechnology can improve crop yields and perhaps end famine in some of these countries. But protestors say not all points of view are being represented at the conference and those attending should hear about traditional and organic methods of farming.

One woman from Berkeley told KCBS she is worried that genetically modified food will soon spread worldwide. “We feel like our food supply is being hijacked and that it is a very important issue. And we wish that all Americans would wake up and learn about it because it’s going to effect all of us,” said the woman.

I’m sure this conference was about as one-sided as Bush’s energy meetings, but I agree with the suits on this one, in theory at least.

Genetically modified food does have the potential to end famine and for that reason alone I think an outright ban on GM foods is as foolish as a ban on nuclear power or cloning. Of course, saying something can happen isn’t the same as saying something will happen.

The only reason the biotech industry is interested in GM food in the first place is money. Their commitment to saving the starving people of the world just doesn’t compute, especially when it’s biggest proponents are “free market” zealots. The free market gave us viagra and rogaine before a cure for cancer, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t suddenly think that saving the starving people of the world is their biggest priority.

That said, I think outright bans on GM food are a little harsh and can only serve to ensure the status quo. Paul Krugman put in well in an article from a few years ago :

A report on the controversy by “Equinox,” a British equivalent to the PBS news program “Frontline,” caught the picture perfectly: comfortable middle- and upper-class activists talking reverently about the virtues of traditional ways of life and the evils of modern agricultural methods. (Yes, Prince Charles is an anti-GM crusader.) A recurrent refrain was that we have managed without GM for many centuries, so why change?

The answer, of course, is that throughout those many centuries the vast majority of people lived at the edge of starvation; only very recently has a decent life become available to more than a tiny elite. And that decent life is made possible by applied science and technology — including modern agriculture, which relies crucially on chemicals that developing countries cannot afford. Now, finally, genetic modification — which can substitute for some of the expensive chemicals used in the West — offers a hope of escape

Now I agree with protesters that the thought of plants deveoping their own pesticides is a little scary, but like every other scientific breakthough, it deserves to be tested by the scientific community and safety to ensure that it’s safe. Of course this is the part where the government comes in.

Let’s imagine that scientists suddenly developed a strain of wheat that could grow in sand and only needed a minimal amount of water. With Bush and pals in charge, we could expect this to get a fast track through the FDA so it could get sold to the poor countries for vastly inflated prices. Essentially extorting massive amounts of money from people already too poor to eat for a product that could possibly kill the. Let’s not forget, these are the same people who support the tobacco industry.

But would the reverse be much better? If the handful of Sacramento protesters were in charge, what would they do? Ban the grain before it ever has a chance to be tested? Spread the gospel of organic farming to people who live in an area that receives less than two inches of rain per year? This doesn’t make much sense either.

Clearly, the best solution would be for the govenment to extensively test the grain’s effects on animals and humans as well as its effect on the ecosystem in which it will be harvested. And when everything has been tested a retested, I would suggest there be some sort of patent buyback program be in place the way there is for some pharmaceuticals as well as a patent expiration so that generic versions of GM breakthroughs can be made available to the public. That’s what people should be protesting for.

Ahhhh…It feels nice to finally be free of the evil clutches of Blog*Spot. I’m so in love with Moveable Type (not in a “boy meets girl” way but more of a “just found Jesus” sorta way). There’s more features, a better interface, and everything is much more stable. If you’re stuck with BlogSpot and you want to upgrade, drop me and email and I’d be glad to help.

Should I be worried that the first word that pops into my head when I see this picture is “Democrat”?

The latest test of the missile defense system (formerly known as Star Wars) has failed :

The Missile Defense Agency conducted a missile defense test over Hawaii Wednesday, and while the warhead did not strike the target, officials said they still considered the exercise a success.

“I wouldn’t call it a failed test, because the intercept was not the primary objective,” said Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the MDA. “It’s still considered a success in that we gained great engineering data. We just don’t know why it didn’t hit.”
. . .
The MDA program came under scrutiny earlier this month from two senate senators who said the agency is in danger of getting off track, and its efforts impaired, because of President Bush’s order for the Pentagon to begin fielding a missile defense capability by 2004.

Sens. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, examined a General Accounting Office report that showed the MDA was starting system integration with “immature technology and limited testing.”

Levin said the report showed that the administration’s planned missile defense system will not be fully tested or proven to work under realistic conditions.

What is the Bush Administration’s obsession with sinking money into and deploying a missle defense system that doesn’t work? (Oh yeah, bribes campaign contributions) This is hardly the kind of behavior I expect from a “reformer with results”. Personally I’d rather see the money being spent on a “boxcutter defense system”.

Tonight’s episode of Nightline should be a good one. It covers what looks like a cross between the Spelling Bee and the 700 Club being held at Bob Jones University. Here’s the episode description :

They look like typical teenage boys, but they’re not. Focused, driven and called to service by God, these three young men compete ? in the National Evangelistic Preaching competition. Nightline follows their route to the finals.

How do you judge something like this? Are they able to accurately measure how many souls they save? Or is it more like a debate tournament where they’re all given a random topic to preach about?

“Seth, your topic is ‘Why all scientists will burn in hell’. Elijah, yours will be ‘The evils of race-mixing’ and Joshua’s topic will be ‘Why the devil put dinosaur bones in the ground to trick us’.”

Whatever the hell it is, I’m sure it’ll be worth checking out.

Why isn’t this great holiday more popular?

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln?s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger?s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

Later attempts to explain this two and a half year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of a messenger who was murdered on his way to Texas with the news of freedom. Another, is that the news was deliberately withheld by the enslavers to maintain the labor force on the plantations. And still another, is that federal troops actually waited for the slave owners to reap the benefits of one last cotton harvest before going to Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation. All or none of them could be true. For whatever the reason, conditions in Texas remained status quo well beyond what was statutory.

One of General Granger?s first orders of business was to read to the people of Texas, General Order Number 3 which began most significantly with:

“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.”

The reactions to this profound news ranged from pure shock to immediate jubilation. While many lingered to learn of this new employer to employee relationship, many left before these offers were completely off the lips of their former ‘masters’ – attesting to the varying conditions on the plantations and the realization of freedom. Even with nowhere to go, many felt that leaving the plantation would be their first grasp of freedom. North was a logical destination and for many it represented true freedom, while the desire to reach family members in neighboring states drove the some into Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Settling into these new areas as free men and women brought on new realities and the challenges of establishing a heretofore non-existent status for black people in America. Recounting the memories of that great day in June of 1865 and its festivities would serve as motivation as well as a release from the growing pressures encountered in their new territory. The celebration of June 19th was coined “Juneteenth” and grew with more participation from descendants. The Juneteenth celebration was a time for reassuring each other, for praying and for gathering remaining family members. Juneteenth continued to be highly revered in Texas decades later, with many former slaves and descendants making an annual pilgrimage back to Galveston on this date.

The emanicpation of slaves seems a lot more worthy of celebration than Columbus Day or Presidents Day.

“Why release all the information, when we can just release the parts that agree with our policies?”

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report next week on the state of the environment, but after editing by the White House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs.

The report, commissioned in 2001 by the agency’s administrator, Christie Whitman, was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known about various environmental problems, where gaps in understanding exist and how to fill them.
. . .
Drafts of the climate section, with changes sought by the White House, were given to The New York Times yesterday by a former E.P.A. official, along with earlier drafts and an internal memorandum in which some officials protested the changes. Two agency officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the documents were authentic.

The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tail-pipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems.

Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council (news – web sites) that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion.

I’m really tired of the Bush Administration’s distortion of expert opinions to support their own predetermined conclusions. I guess this is the kind of thing we should expect from someone who’s only able to understand the world in terms of black and white.

It looks like the rich are getting another early Christmas present from Congress :

The House voted Wednesday to eliminate estate taxes by the end of the decade, keeping the Republicans’ tax cut efforts at the top of the congressional agenda.
. . .
Estate taxes are scheduled to disappear in 2010 but reappear a year later, a situation caused by a senate rule designed to curb budget deficits. The House bill, passed 264-163, would end estate taxes permanently. It would reduce Treasury revenue by $162 billion through 2013.
. . .
Democrats countered with an alternative that would prevent 99 percent of estates from being taxed. It would allow an exemption worth $3 million for an individual and $6 million for a married couple.

The House voted 239-188 to reject the senate alternative, which was designed to continue taxing the wealthiest estates.

If the Republicans care so much about hard working families and small businesses, why are they more concerned with eliminating the taxes on income that is essentially “found money” (estate, dividends, capital gains) than the taxes on income that is earned through hard work (state and federal income taxes & payroll taxes)? I think it’s really telling that the GOP majority rejected a compromise measure from the Democrats that would eliminate the taxes for all the people Republicans pretend to care about but doesn’t include multi-millionaires.

Another thing worth mentioning is that this is a permanent repeal of the estate tax cut that was supposed to expire in 2010. Isn’t the whole point of having the tax cut expire so that we can reevaluate the economic benefits of the cut in the future? Of course I’m giving the Republicans the benefit of the doubt here. The real reason they do this is so they can sell the tax cut to the American people as a temporary stimulus and lie about the tax cut’s overall cost and then quietly make the tax cuts permanent later when nobody’s paying attention.

DailyKos and the Democratic party have set up a great program called ePatriots that allows bloggers to help raise money for the upcoming 2004 election. As you may have heard, the Democrats are going to need every penny they can get :

Bush’s advisers say they are prepared to spend as much as 200 million dollars, twice the amount of his first campaign, to finance television advertising and other campaign expenses through the primary season that leads up to the Republican convention, the Times said. They plan to begin broadcasting television advertisements as early as next spring.

When you compare this to the funds of senate candidates (a lot of which will be spent during the primaries), you can see how desperate this situation is. The two and a half years of Bush’s presidency have already been far worse than even his biggest detractors would have predicted. If you’d like to donate, you can either click on the Bush image on the right side of the page or click here. (Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the use of the Bush drawing)

Well first Dr. Frank started a blog and now Ben Weasel has gotten into the act. I look forward to seeing what Ben has to say, since he wrote the one of the only political punk rock songs I can even tolerate (Interpunk has an mp3 of the first half of the song here.):

Racist Society

Did you know that you live in a racist society
Did you know you’re the privileged class
And everybody else is essentially taking it up the ass

Did you know that you could be free
Did you know that’s not the way that it has to be
Did you know you can still change everything

Did you know that there’s no such thing as equality
And there might never be if you don’t change
Did you know that you live in a war zone (culturally)
Did you know that your parents were fucked
When they taught you how to fear anybody who wasn’t white enough

Did you know that you could be free
Did you know that’s not the way that it has to be
Did you know you can still change everything

Did you know that the older you get
It gets easier to blame somebody else for your own mess
Did you know that the Jews don’t run the world
And all black men aren’t criminals
Did you know there’s a lot of money to be made
From keeping you paranoid, suspicious, worried, frightened
All wound up and tense inside ’cause

Big business runs the government and it’s not good business
If we burn down the government so they keep us occupied
With moron TV shows and shitty beer that wipes out brain cells
And whining about Congress and stupid fucking income taxes

And if that’s not enough
To keep your mind off of
The way you’re getting dicked around
They fill you with fear and hate
Give you someone to blame
For all your problems
While the country’s going down the fucking toilet

Do you know what they think of you
Do you know how contemptuous they are of you
Do you know how easy you are to fool
You’re like a dog doing after a ball that was never thrown
Well guess what you’re on your own. Good luck

I wonder who’s going to be next? Kepi or Joe Queer?

While I’m working on the new site, here’s a guest commentary from Ross about the “Hero” who destroyed a robber’s car with his tank Hummer :

I have extremely conflicting views on this. In most cases, I’m opposed to people taking the law into their own hands. It’s bad and always leads to really awful things. Without the rule of law, anarchy and rule of the strongest and meanest inevitably follows, and that of course is really, really bad for people like us. Unfortunately, 2 decades of Republican propaganda has pretty much created that anyway. We don’t want to further erode the level of infrastructure cohesion in this country. And this sort of
thing really does play into republican hands, giving them further excuses to A) demonize liberals, B) instigate marital law, and C) further destroy our national infrastructure.

Furthermore, I want to emphasize that I think that SUV’s are incredibly selfish and stupid vehicles, driven for the most part by people who are, politically speaking, willing to act like complete sociopaths. The Hummer is one of the worst examples of this problem. It’s a car whose only purpose is to show off that you can afford it, and lord your ego over all other drivers. And SUV’s promote an “everyone for themselves” kind of mindset that is literally ruining this country.

Before I go further, let me stress that whatever my feelings about this situation, this guy is probably a violent reactionary asshole – don’t think I’m actually suggesting that he’s a hero. I don’t think he should be propped up as a hero.

However, and I know I’m probably the only one who is going to feel this way, I kind of think that the guy had a point. Those guys held up his business at gunpoint and threatened his life. If anything, they committed attempted murder against him, not the other way around. I’m not a violence advocate, but I think that if the robbers weren’t killed, then they ought to thank their lucky stars and apologize to the guy they tried to kill.

Personally, I’m starting to think that if that happened to me, I’d probably be capable of that sort of retaliation too. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t’ want to exact retribution against someone who attacked me, and if possible, make sure that the punishment was lingering and extremely painful. Thanks to modern conservatism and the rule of the rich over the poor, it isn’t
like we can count on the Government to watch out for us anymore. I’m even lately starting to feel some sympathy for the 2nd amendment.

Because this event happened in such close temporal proximity to an actual threat against his life, I think a shaky but convincing case can be made that he acted in self defense – if not in self defense, then with justifiable deadly force. I honestly don’t know.

I want to make it clear that I feel even more strongly about white collar criminals, who hurt even more people than violent criminals, and if some disgruntled Enron employee ran their Hummer over Ken Lay’s car and nearly killed him, I would probably think they had a point too. Financial crimes are worse than murder in my eyes. Anyway, those Robbers will get no sympathy from me. People who threaten the lives of strangers, who rob and cheat or whatever, or almost the lowest kind of people, and if they don’t want to be shot or killed, they shouldn’t be waving guns in people’s faces, or robbing people of their life’s savings, or whatever. Screw them.

Okay, not really, but you’ve gotta look up to people who love their country so much they’re willing to do this :

One Iranian exile died and two others were badly burned after setting themselves ablaze on Wednesday during a day-long protest against France’s mass round-up of dissidents opposed to Islamic rule in Tehran.

Marzieh Babakhani, aged about 40, died in hospital after setting fire to her clothes early on Wednesday at a protest of about 100 exiles outside France’s DST counterintelligence agency near the Eiffel Tower, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

Segigheh Mojaveri, 38, set herself ablaze at the same protest at midday and Mohammad Vakilifar, about 45, did the same late in the afternoon, witnesses said. Both were rushed to hospital with serious burns.

These women hate what has happened to their country so much that they’re willing to set themselves on fire! Meanwhile, in America, most people aren’t even willing to vote. As Ross pointed out in the comments for the post below, Americans just don’t care anymore :

Every day I become more convinced that what we’re going through is no less a crisis than that experienced by the Romans in the First Century B.C.E. The disconnection between the citizens of the republic and the body politic in the US is so terrifying that thinking about it literally keeps me awake at night.

Of course the sad thing is that the government doesn’t want us to care. The less we get involved, the more they can get away with.

I think this can be considered yet another official warning sign that our elected officials are far beyond out of touch :

The chairman of the senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.

The surprise remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, during a hearing on copyright abuses represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against illegal music downloads.

During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.

“No one is interested in destroying anyone’s computer,” replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can’t.

“I’m interested,” Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.”

The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, “then destroy their computer.”

I’m assuming Hatch keeps a sledgehammer handy around the house at all times, in case any pesky flies come buzzing around. I don’t know whether it’s more disturbing that he’s proposing a solution as insane as this one, or that Congress is so blatantly in the pocket of heavily moneyed interests that they waste their time on crap like this when unemployment’s just topped six percent (that’s nearly 18 million people, if my math is right), every state in the union is experiencing budget shortfalls — in short, when they’ve got better things to do than protect the rights of the very rich to keep getting very rich.

The record industry keeps using the same losing strategy: They try to stop the progress of digital music, rather than figure out how they can make it work for them, and actually profit from it. Apple’s new online music service is the closest the industry has come to accepting progress; who knows if it’ll actually work, though initial results have seemed pretty impressive.