California to Limit Classroom Materials to 200 Pages?!

Talk about making up meddling regulations for the sake of making up meddling regulations: AB 756 would limit any instructional materials used in California classrooms to 200 pages. And it has passed the Assembly and is being considered by the Senate! Here's a San Jose Mercury News editorial:

"Assembly sticks nose into textbooks"

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T.J. Rodgers To Keynote Santa Clara University Event

While we're at it, let's throw in one more libertarian entrepeneur. T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, will be speaking at Santa Clara University:

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the School of Engineering and the Engineering Alumni Board, I am inviting your presence at the subject event to honor our faculty and alumni, and to hear the keynote speech by T.J. Rodgers, titled "Silicon Valley Attacking New Problems: Renewable Energy."

The event will be held on June 8 in Mayer Theatre, from 3 to 6 p.m., including an outdoor reception immediately following the ceremony.

It is open to the public and is intended as a means to showcase the School's accomplishments to the rest of the University, as well as to our surrounding Silicon Valley Community. To this end, the Engineering Alumni Board has put together an attractive program and received sponsorships from four major local companies, HP, United Defense, AMD, Intel, and Apple. Slides and other displays on our programs and student activities will be shown during the event.

We look forward to your participation in what promises to be a festive, informative, and entertaining gathering.

Sincerely,

Cary Y. Yang
Professor of Electrical Engineering
Associate Dean of Engineering
Director, Center for Nanostructures
Santa Clara University

Recently, Rodgers has been moving into the business of producing high-efficiency solar cells:

San Jose Mercury News: "Chip maker's sunny forecast" (requires sign-in)

The Philosophy Behind Whole Foods

Here's a good read. John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, talks about how his views changed from democratic socialist to libertarian, the need for a philosophy beyond libertarianism, running a customer-comes-first business, organic farming, and more.

"Interview: John Mackey"

Congressman Sensenbrenner Pushing Nark Bill

James Sensenbrenner, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is pushing a bill, H.R. 1528, that this article claims would require U.S. citizens to nark on their family, friends, and neighbors or possibly face a prison sentence:

"Spy vs. Spy" by Bill Piper.

I've never been interested in drugs, but, like most Americans, I know people who do drugs. The last person I saw smoking pot was a responsible, middle-aged father, who spends most of his spare time helping out with his sons' Scouting and sports activities. Could I live with myself if I turned him in to the authorities? No way. I think most people would feel the same.

Well, it's only a bill. And one that probably won't get very far.

How Much Recycling Gets Recycled?

How much of the stuff we put in the recycling bin every week actually gets recycled? I got started thinking about this question one day when my girlfriend called me out on throwing away a plastic bottle instead of recycling it. I had just assumed that throwing away a bottle or a piece of paper once in a while doesn't make any significant difference since a lot of it probably ends up in a landfill, anyway. But, as is true of many of my self-serving beliefs, I really didn't know.

I tried to find an answer on the Internet, but found no leads. Then, the other day, I was listening to the Earth Day edition of the "Science Friday" radio program. Host, Ira Flatow was interviewing Daniel Imhoff, author of "Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World". Here's what Imhoff said:

About 70% of paper and cardboard gets recycled. A lot is exported to countries where cardboard is "incredibly valuable".

About 50% of aluminum cans are recycled.

Only about 10% of plastic gets recycled.

Imhoff also had a lot of interesting points to make about overpackaging. Hopefully, I'll get time to read the book one of these days and report on it here.

Civil Society Institute at Santa Clara University

The "civil society" movement seeks to counter big government by building up the non-political institutions and associations that help glue our society together: free markets, non-profit organizations, churches, clubs, etc.

The "Civil Society Institute", hosted by the University of Santa Clara, hosts an excellent series of public lectures featuring topics that explore the potential of civil society. The current schedule is here (although, at the time of posting its a little sparse and out of date):

"http://www.scu.edu/civilsocietyinstitute/events/index.cfm"

Hopefully, the Institute will continue to thrive the departure of guiding light, Professor Dan Klein, who is headed for a new position at George Mason University. Notable among the remaining CSI members is David Friedman, son of Nobel laureate economist, Milton Friedman.

San Jose Mercury News: "California Teachers Association: An obstacle to reform"

One of the biggest problems with California's highly-centralized public school system is that the teachers union has much more lobbying presence in Sacramento than the students' parents.

According to this Mercury News editorial, "The CTA has been able to codify obstructive policies into both law and union contracts and has lobbied against other reforms." The Merc goes on to list several harmful CTA-backed policies: a mere two-year period for school administrators to evaluate a new teacher before he or she becomes protected by tenure rules; rigid teacher/student ratios; over-protection of incompetent teachers and refusal to consider merit pay; opposition to charter schools; etc.

"http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/10772374.htm"

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Obstacles to opening a private school

A friend of mine who runs a private school in San Jose was telling about how hard it was to open a new campus. He ran into several onerous zoning restrictions and uncooperative officials.

This Reason Foundation study gives an overview of the type of regulatory obstacles he faced. Several examples are taken from right here in Santa Clara County:

"Addition and Subtraction: State and Local Regulatory Obstacles to Opening a New Private School"

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REAL ID Snuck Past Congresswoman Eshoo

On May 11th, 2005, REAL ID was signed into law by George Bush, effectively establishing national identity cards. Many civil libertarians are concerned that REAL ID is an encroachment on the privacy and autonomy of American citizens. Others are concerned about the expenses that the states will incur in complying with its requirements.

The Republican Party introduced REAL ID as H.R. 418. H.R. 418 had passed the House and was under consideration in the Senate, when most of its text appeared as a rider on a defense spending bill, H.R. 1268, two days before the final vote on H.R. 1268 in the House.

Looking on the Internet to find out how my local Representative, Anna Eshoo, voted, I discovered that she didn't vote on REAL ID. At the time, I didn't realize I was looking at the record on the wrong vote. The vote that she missed was on H.R. 418, the original REAL ID bill. After checking more carefully, I discovered that Eshoo voted "Yea" on H.R. 1268.

That Eshoo voted for H.R. 1268 didn't imply that she supported REAL ID. Perhaps she had voted for H.R. 1268 in spite of the REAL ID rider? I looked on Eshoo's website for a statement on the issue, but couldn't find anything. Then I searched Google and the San Jose Mercury News website to see if any news reporter had interviewed her on the subject. Nothing. The same day, though, I received a flyer saying that Eshoo would be holding a Town Hall meeting at the Mountain View City Hall.

So, I figured I could do a small service for Democracy by attending the Town Hall meeting to find out why Eshoo voted the way she did on this important issue.

Judging from the questions that were submitted for Ms. Eshoo to answer, REAL ID isn't a major concern for the local constituency. After several questions about Social Security, the Iraq War, and illegal immigration, Ms. Eshoo got to my question. Her answer genuinely surprised me:

She said that there would be a chance to vote on REAL ID after it had come back from the Senate. She then went on to explain in brief detail about the process where House bills go through a conference committee after they have been approved by the Senate. It was obvious that Congresswoman Eshoo was unaware that REAL ID had been appended to H.R. 1268. And that she had voted for REAL ID.

Later, there was one more question about REAL ID, asking why Eshoo had not voted on the bill. Apparently, the person who wrote the question wasn't aware that H.R. 418 had been rolled into H.R. 1268. It turned out Ms. Eshoo had a very good reason for not voting on H.R. 418 -- she missed several days of Congress because her mother had passed away. She also said that she had released a statement on how she would have voted on the bills that she missed because of her mother's death.

I haven't been able to find this statement on her website. It would be interesting to see how she would have voted on H.R. 418, since, during the Town Hall meeting, she never explicitly stated her position on REAL ID.

I agree with critics of the Republican Party that it was a dirty tactic to sneak REAL ID into H.R. 1268 just two days before the final House vote. But does that excuse a U.S. Representative, representing 570,000 citizens, from being responsible for knowing what is in the bills she votes on? Is there an excuse for her not keeping up on the daily news?

It's possible that this incident isn't typical for Ms. Eshoo. Perhaps she has been distracted by her mother's passing away. The aspect of the story that disturbs me the most is that, apparently, none of our local newspapers have interviewed Eshoo on this topic. Isn't the media supposed to be a watchdog over our politicians?

Stewart Brand on "Environmental Heresies"

I've been a Stewart Brand fan ever since 1981, when I bought my now well-worn copy of The Next Whole Earth Catalog. He has curiosity and talent for "thinking outside the box" that transcend his 1960s counterculture persona.

In this MIT Technology Review article, Brand ventures beyond the box of today's typical environmental thinking:

"Environmental Heresies"

"That’s why the Amish, the most technology-suspicious group in America (and the best farmers), have enthusiastically adopted GM crops."

"The best way for doubters to control a questionable new technology is to embrace it, lest it remain wholly in the hands of enthusiasts who think there is nothing questionable about it."

"The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power."

The Technology Review blog has also posted a follow up to the article, in which Brand debates the benefits of nuclear energy with former Department of Energy official, Joseph Romm. (Warning: The debate becomes repetitive after the first few posts.)

What's an "Issuefish"?

OK, it's a dumb name. It's better than the name I was going use for this blog.

Issuefish is a place for exploring political issues in depth. A place where I'm going to spend a lot of time fishing for facts. And slowly cooking up conclusions.

Some topics that you will see a lot of here:

* Local politics. The closer it is to home the more likely I will talk about it.

* Decentralization of government. More and more, power over our lives is being ceded to remote centers: inaccessible and unaccountable. We need to fight this trend.

* Depoliticization of society. There is a spreading rift in this country between liberal and conservative. Many of us feel caught in the middle. The way out is for both sides to agree to limit the powers of government over many aspects of our lives. To decrease the political prizes being fought over.

* The Libertarian Party. After 25 years of membership and running for the California Senate as a Libertarian, I have a lot of constructive criticism to offer. I will also spend some time explaining what the Libertarian Party and the broader libertarian movement are all about.

I tend to see things from a libertarian perspective, but I hope to spur comments from people of all political views. I hope I will get a chance to learn from you.