twoeleven: (dark overlord)
1) national justice: little scandinavia

this week's science is running a story about an experiment to see how well scandinavian-style prisons work in the US. getting the crude answer – are they better in any measurable ways? – is worthwhile, but as the PIs themselves note, figuring out why they work, assuming they do, is one of the real answers.

for example, this demonstration project has six times as many guards as a typical US prison, in this case, 3 guards for 64 prisoners, rather than 1 for 128. it also largely excludes "'custody level 4' individuals, who are classified as posing a higher risk [of committing violence(?)] while incarcerated". well, sure, that ought to lead to less violence in the cell block, less fear of violence, lower prison gang membership, and perhaps a few other things.

but on the other hand, it will be roughly six time as expensive to run, and if our existing problems with finding places to stuff all the criminals we convict now are any guide, we're too cheap to afford even merely awful prisons. (er, 'scuse me, correctional institutions for incarcerated people. god forbid we call a spade a spade.)

the real test, though, is not whether conditions in the prison are better, but whether scandinavian-style prisons will reduce recidivism. i think that for many americans, that's the only test that matters.

one of the PIs hedges on that:
“That’s a supercomplicated outcome” to assess, [PI Jordan] Hyatt acknowledges, because so many other factors play in to a person’s trajectory after prison.
which is true, but it is something we can measure, and all other factors being equal – or statistically adjusted for – something we can work with. it's measured for other experimental approaches to crime and criminals.

“Not everywhere is Norway,” which offers intensive supports to aid in reintegration, [University of Cambridge criminologist Ben] Crewe says [of measuring recidivism].
and since we're not in norway, i have to wonder if these prisons will work because they're better lives than many poor people live here in the US. in addition to the usual "benefits" of being in prison (free food, clothing, shelter, and medical care, for very low-quality values of each), these model prisons offer:

• a room of one's own, along with the peace and quiet that goes with it
• saturation police presence to prevent violence and mitigate it when it does happen, which leads to...
• a relatively safe and low-stress social environment
• and a few meaningful daily tasks, as opposed to working a poorly-paying junk job

i hate to say it, but if these prisons provided people with internet access and a small park, they'd be a step up for many poor americans. this may argue that the problem isn't with our prisons or so-called justice system, but a larger problem (or set of problems) with the US and how we do things generally.

this demonstration scandinavian-style prison block is apparently (part of?) a drug rehab unit. it's good that people are getting off of drugs. but i have a general problem with such things: why should people have to commit crimes to get drug rehab, job training, mental health care, or social skills counseling? why can't we offer these things generally? or on the other hand, why do people need to be tossed in prison before they'll admit that they have serious problems? it seems to me that we're doing something wrong somewhere.

2) local injustice, part 1

a story sadly hidden by the local fishwrapper's paywall, and in any case, their search engine is so dodgy that i can't find the link to the story that actually ran.

however, the story goes like this: former delaware deputy attorney general mark denney cut a deal with william wisher, a convicted drug dealer, to reduce his sentence if he testified against damon anderson, who was accused of being second in command of a local drug gang. this is perfectly legal, and is routinely done.

what isn't legal, but may be routine, is that the prosecution "forgot" to mention this to anderson's defense counsel. regardless of the merits of the case, the defense is entitled to know that a witness is being offered a deal, so they can tell the jury, who can then judge the credibility of the witness' testimony.

so the case is now dead, and anderson is free. that a six-year-old boy was shot in the back and paralyzed by one of a small number of people, possibly on anderson's orders is, of course, irrelevant.

i think we're doing something wrong here somewhere, too. the crude approach we're using to what's euphemistically called prosecutorial misconduct – as opposed to, say, witness tampering, which would be what it would be called if i secretly offered bennies to a witness to crime – seems to result in multiple miscarriages of justice: somebody gets away with the shooting, and the prosecutors get away with perverting the course of justice.

3) local injustice, part 2

another story hidden behind the paywall, but at least i have a link people can try, should people want to see if their library can help them read it: Dover police [officer] fractured man's skull while investigating loitering

this one is straightforward: dover cop justin richey apparently used excessive force against paul jackimek and lied about it in official reports; the city ended up settling with paul for $175k, while claiming nothing was wrong here. the cop is still on duty.

the newspaper found out about the settlement only because delaware's usually air-tight code of silence about police brutality (and other wrongdoing by governments) sprung a leak, and the settlement showed up in the public record. as the article notes, the public rarely hears about settlements by delaware governments, especially those involving cops and random violence against private citizens. the total costs are suspected of being a drain on government budgets, but elected officials simply don't care; it's not like it's their money.

i'd say there's an easy solution to this problem, but it's isomorphic with wishing for a pony: it ain't gonna happen. but since i don't want a pony, i'll wish for this: the state and local governments must publish a list of all cases they've lost or settled over the past year, identifying who was sued and why, and whether that person is still employed by said government. the reports must be published every october first.

why then? because in election years, that's close enough to the election that the voters to weigh that information when considering allowing those in power to stay that way, but not enough time for said individuals clinging to power to change the conversation.

i have similar dates for many things that people in power might do: fiddling with the tax code, raising officials' salaries and benefits, and so on. gotta keep the dazzling light of truth on them whenever money is involved, lest it disappear into people's pockets in the shadows.

since the state budget usually gets passed just before the legislative session ends, shifting the session from january through the end of june to march through the end of september would work too. and would also make other dodgy laws fresher in people's minds.
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
or, slowing the doomscrolling

i read an article talking about the skills gap in the great plains. as usual, people want to earn more, but lack the skills companies want; companies in turn can't find enough trained people.

but a few states are doing something about it )

=•=•=•=

the beeb has a short article on why only the US government shuts down. shortened further, we find the key difference:
America's federal system of government allows different branches of government to be controlled by different parties. It was a structure devised by the nation's founders to encourage compromise and deliberation, but lately has had the opposite effect.

That's because in 1980, the Attorney General under President Jimmy Carter's administration issued a narrow interpretation of the 1884 Anti-Deficiency Act. The 19th Century spending law banned the government from entering into contracts without congressional approval; for almost a century, if there was a gap in budgets, the government had allowed necessary spending to continue. But after 1980, the government took a much stricter view: no budget, no spending.

That interpretation has set the US apart from other non-parliamentary democracies, such as Brazil, where a strong executive branch has the ability to keep the lights on during a budget impasse.
right: it's not a constitutional requirement, nor even a law, but merely a previous attorney general's opinion. which means, as far as I can tell, the current attorney general could simply change it back by saying he has a different opinion.
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
Judge's ruling invalidates FEC regulation allowing anonymous donations to 'dark money' groups
By BRENT D. GRIFFITHS | 08/04/2018 04:11 PM EDT

A U.S. District Court judge on Friday issued a ruling invalidating a Federal Election Commission regulation that has allowed donors to so-called dark-money groups to remain anonymous, the latest development in a years-long legal battle that could have major implications for campaign finance.

Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled the FEC's current regulation of such groups, including 501(c) 4 non-profits, fails to uphold the standard Congress intended when it required the disclosure of politically related spending.

"The challenged regulation facilitates such financial 'routing,' blatantly undercuts the congressional goal of fully disclosing the sources of money flowing into federal political campaigns, and thereby suppresses the benefits intended to accrue from disclosure ... ," wrote Howell, an Obama appointee to the D.C district court. The decision is likely to be appealed. [...]
money in elections is one of things on my mind for large-scale electoral reform, so i'm going to track down the full text of her decision, in order to say something intelligent about it.
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (mad science)
i mentioned a while ago that having read two books on democracy, one on democracy in classical greece, the other on the US constitutional convention. both inspired me to think about fixing up our democracy, and i'm still thinking about it.

for the moment, i have four major areas i'm thinking about: redistricting, referenda, recalls, and restricting money in politics. there's a bunch of other issues i wouldn't mind talking about, like ranked-choice voting/instant-runoff voting, but they don't seem as important to me now.

i'm curious what my dear readers think of my various proposals, since i'd like to refine them enough to make them some sort of agenda or manifesto. ideally, they'd become concrete enough to get political candidates to support them as a plank in their platform.

i figure changing legislative redistricting is sufficiently accepted i might as well just say what's on my mind. i prefer a belt and suspenders approach: independent redistricting committees, with your choice of algorithms to keep them honest.

algorithms by themselves have two flaws. one, they only tell you that something's gone wrong, not how to make it right. given that legislatures have vested interests in redistricting, it would fall to the courts (again) to try to fix their wrong answers. i don't see this as an improvement.

two, any algorithm can be gamed. tell people what the rules are, and they'll find a way of exploiting them to their advantage to the extent possible. so at best, any algorithmic solution reduces the problem of vested interests, not eliminates it. this seems, frankly, inadequate.

so, what say you?
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
Rebeccmeister@lj mentioned this study of cities and relationship between their economic output and their walkability. I've got some interest in urban planning and the study seemed have plausible and well-presented statistics, so I thought I'd dig into it. Which I did, and found that – as expected – the answer isn't as clear-cut as the study's authors would have you believe. So, I was gonna write that up... and it occurred to me that only a handful of my readers could make any sense of what I was writing about, so I wrote a simple introduction to the statistical method the study uses.

The result is kinda long. So, I've broken it up into sections:

the claims )
my initial impressions )
So, what's this regression thing this study relies on? )
The skeletons in the study's closet )
What it means (I think) )
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
...in reverse order

SCOTUSblog discusses former supreme john stevens' statements to the senate's rules and administration, which mentions:
Third, Stevens urged members of Congress to enact campaign finance regulations that distinguish between money provided by constituents and others, such as corporations and individuals who live elsewhere. As support for that distinction, he cited a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit – authored by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a well-respected conservative judge – which upheld a federal prohibition on campaign expenditures by non-citizens to support or oppose candidates for political office. The regulation was justified, Stevens explained, because it advanced the federal interest in preventing foreigners from participating in U.S. elections, but it did not restrict their ability to speak about more general issues. That same logic, in his view, would apply to the distinction that he would draw between constituents and non-voters.
while stevens really wanted to push for his laundry list of amendments, i'm intrigued by the idea that current case law permits such a distinction to limit not how much people can spend on elections, but who can.

i'd wondered if such things were possible, though i'd thought about it on a state-by-state basis rather than a constituency-by-constituency basis. i'd be just as happy with that, since for some important offices (governors, federal senators) there's no difference.

OTOH, allowing such small groups to donate to campaigns may produce undue influence by a handful of wealthy individuals in those areas, since wealthy people with other political ideas living elsewhere can't oppose them. it also really drives home the importance of constituency boundaries and keeping them away from those who would abuse them by gerrymandering.

---

SCOTUSblog also mentions (twice) last week's cases on the privacy of cell phones -- and specifically, smart phones -- carried by people the police arrest. unlike previous oral arguements which have yielded juicy tidbits revealing the how the supremes are planning to rule, the arguements in these cases just show that the judges are trying to figure out how they should treat electronic data.

sure, i'm pleased that they didn't say that the police could do whatever they wanted, but it's not clear how far they'll go in requiring the police to show cause before randomly riffling through people's private information for fun and possible political gain. of course, for those interested in technical rather than legal protection, the old mantra still applies: encrypt, encrypt, ok!

---

a couple of months ago, judge lucy koh of the US district court of northern california tossed the attempt to form a single class of people suing google for reading their email. google, for its part, doesn't deny that it routinely reads people's email to advertise at them and build up dossiers on them, but insists that despite federal eavesdropping laws, that its ok, even for people who haven't agreed to its worthless "privacy policy" nor people unaware that gmail is acting as the mail servers for other domains. a number of judges, including judge koh, have called bullshit on this claim. however, that's not what i was interested in now.

i was trying to find out if the plaintiffs have attempted to put together new classes for class-action suits, since the judge canned their attempt to put everybody in one class. i found one attorney's list of current cases, but there's no further information there. the actual court records are behind PACER's paywall, so i can't tell if there's been official action on the case either.

both are unfortunate, since -- if i follow the judge's reasoning correctly -- the single large class could be broken up into a few smaller classes, but each would still hold millions of people. that is: gmail users who were deceived by google's non-disclosure that google was reading their email (as various judges have held), other people sending to gmail addresses (who knew that google was handling the email, but not that google was routinely reading it to keep tabs on them, and people sending email to other addresses handled by gmail (who had no idea at all that google was involved). those should still be large enough to make google regret its nosiness.
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
Congressman calls evolution lie from 'pit of hell'
ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — Georgia Rep. Paul Broun said in videotaped remarks that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of hell" meant to convince people that they do not need a savior.

...

"God's word is true," Broun said, according to a video posted on the church's website. "I've come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior."

...

Broun spokeswoman Meredith Griffanti told the Athens Banner-Herald (http://bit.ly/Us4O0Z ) that Broun was recorded speaking off-the-record to a church group about his religious beliefs. He sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

...
gee, i guess i never knew that that was the reason that acceptance of scientific truths was now official doctrine of most christian denominations.

nor does it really surprise me that this loon is on that committee; there was a fair amount of coverage in science that such things were part of the GOP's grand plan last congressional elections.

but i have been thinking about this story since it ran. question: should we do anything about this guy (or the equivalent loons on the left)? and if so, what and why?

the trivial answer is "no, he represents a loony district, and they're entitled to their loon."

a slightly less trivial answer is "maybe; let's see if his district has been gerrymandered above and beyond the call of duty -- that is, he's not representing 'the people' but 'his cherrypicked people' -- and if so, adjust that the next census, say by amending the state constitution.". a little checking confirms that georgia has had little problems with the voting rights act, so perhaps a bigger hammer is needed.

otoh, one of the problems with the trivial answer is the all-too-common observation, "congress is a wreck, but it's not my congressman's fault, he's great!". this sounds like some sort of tragedy of the commons: we've broken a fine public good by asserting our own interests too strongly, which suggests the need for accepted collective rules on how we act.

i'm curious what ideas people might have for collective rules since i don't have any good ones. (or alternatively, vigorous defenses of the thesis that the status quo is fine.)

i do have what i suspect is a bad idea, but i haven't thought it through: the "toss the bums out" amendment. specifically, every off year, we hold a vote on the performance of congress. if some suitable supermajority votes for "toss the bums!", no current member of the house can run in the next congressional election. (this does nothing about the senate, but because of its greater powers and responsibilities, i'm less willing to have it run by a bunch of newbies.)

by design, i don't intend "toss the bums" to win very often; i'm hoping for once or twice a century. it's also admittedly a very crude tool to wield: it's a brute-force veto over all local decisions, good and bad.

still, it does match the apparent rhetoric, and the effect of voting for tossing the bums is easy to understand, even if its consequences aren't. if it works as desired, it should restrain individual and collective excesses on the part of the house. shut down the federal government in a fit of pique? "hey, we could get fired for that!" put people with loony ideas in positions of greater power? "hey, we could get fired for that!". it's not government by consensus -- which has its own problems -- but it may help along those lines... assuming that's what we want.
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
an LA times article on california's election reform says:
Voters authorized the two new wrinkles in this year's elections. In 2010 they approved Proposition 14, which requires that all candidates, regardless of party, appear on a single ballot received by all voters. Only the candidates who finish first and second in the June 5 primary will move on to the Nov. 6 general election, all but eliminating the chances of most third-party candidates, who used to be granted a spot on the runoff ballot no matter how poorly they fared in the primary.

In 2008, voters stripped the Legislature of the responsibility for redrawing political boundaries for state Senate, Assembly and Board of Equalization seats and gave the job to an independent citizens commission. Two years later, voters added California congressional districts to the commission's task.
(my emphasis)

i'm all in favor of ending the practice of those in power deciding who will (re)elect them,¹ but i'm not sure restricting the general election to just the top two primary candidates is at all well-considered. beyond my usual objections to "open" primaries -- it's my party, dammit, and i'll nominate who i want! -- this seems to entrench the dominance of the two current big parties at the expense of newcomers. why is this desirable?


1: i'd also restrict the similar power of lawyers to decide who will hear the case they want to argue by eliminating peremptory dismissal, the dismissing of potential jurors without cause.
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
buried in the comments for the previous post with a similar title, i said:
I'm not sure cities per se are the right locale for experimentation. My thinking these days about the proper scale of governance is mostly centered on metropolian areas.
the way the census defines metropolitan and the amusingly named "micropolitan" ares is pretty much what i want, although i think the micropoli are frankly too small to be useful policy-making areas. i also wouldn't include existing county lines as significant in the definition, but it's at least a starting point. since the us census has already made some detailed maps of metro areas, i've lightly hacked them up to give an idea of what i'm thinking of:



that shows the "combined statistical areas" (CSAs) in ... aqua? teal? shades, and the metropolitan statistical areas outside of CSAs in tan. (really big map for those who want to look at specific areas in detail.)

chicago and northeast sprawls plus some blathering )
twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
the 10 december issue of the economist has a pair of back-to-back articles on honduras's experiment with semi-autonomous cities to try to improve the country's economy. the first is just an overview of what honduras is proposing. the second is much more interesting.

a couple of libertarian groups want to run two of the semi-autonomous cities honduras is setting up. their leaders have some... interesting ideas about the nature of government:
Mr [Patri] Friedman[, a grandson of Milton Friedman,] is an outspoken critic of democracy. It is “ill-suited for a libertarian state”, he wrote in an essay in 2009—because it is “rigged against libertarians” (they would always lose) and inefficient. Rather than giving its citizens a voice, he argues, they should be free to exit; cities should compete for them by offering the best services.
one of his backers is peter thiel, "a Silicon Valley billionaire who founded the internet payment service PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook". mr. thiel has similar beliefs:
Mr Thiel’s ambitions go far beyond scouting out the next big thing in technology. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wrote in an essay in 2009. This is why libertarians should find an escape from politics, he added. “Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode of escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country.”
the notion that there's a fundamental tension between democracy and freedom isn't new. it's why we have a bill of rights; some of the founding fathers convinced the rest of them that mere majority rule was no protection for individual liberty.

however, these guys appear to believe in what might be termed a "market approach" to rule. i was rather skeptical of that when i originally read the articles a week ago, and my recent virtual flight from livejournal has done nothing to convince me that such an approach is at all useful.

the right to leave is better than no such right, but it's a poor guarantee of good government. in order to exercise it, a person must be willing and able to simultaneously change jobs and move house, and as a result probably lose most of their in-person social network. people who are wealthy can pull off a trick like that, as can those whose skills are presently in demand. and the truly desperate can flee as well; if the only other options are starvation or slavery, why not take a chance in the despotate next door?

but does that yield well-governed cities? if the logic were to apply, social networking sites would be "well governed". they'd do what their users wanted them to, to the extent that their conflicting demands could be made to work together. their interfaces would be as slick as wet glass, and their dev teams would be responsive to their needs, and certainly not make abrupt -- often technically broken -- changes to the service without consulting their users. but we don't see that, despite the switching costs for online social networks being much lower than physical moves and job changes.

the reason is obvious: social networking sites' "communities" are not their customers. their customers are their advertisers and whoever the sites sell their "communities'" information to. so long as those customers are relatively happy, the social networking sites are free to do whatever they want to their users.

i have deep suspicions that's what these libertarians really want. their customers will be the corporations who bribe them to permit shoddy goods, pollution, and poor working conditions in their cities. the residents will be just another commodity to profit from.

but perhaps one of these guys does really does believe that something like a market solution will provide utopia. maybe he'll even try to set up a showpiece city like singapore (conveniently forgetting that singapore is a republic, if a dubiously honest one). but if the absolute power doesn't corrupt him, the huge piles of money his customers can offer will. i have great faith in human nature. one of the tenets of my faith is that people who want power without responsibility shouldn't be given any.

advocacy: if you want to comment to the FTC about the facebook settlement and my modest proposal for it, you have until friday. vote early, vote often!

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twoeleven: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon (Default)
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