TEST SCORES DON’T MEASURE EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
July 14, 2011
Happy Bastille Day.
Adults have experienced things children have not. Children can spot invincible ignorance and conceit in adults. No adult is entitled to believe that s/he knows more than a child what a child needs to learn her or himself. One great absurdity is to figure that student test scores say diddly about how much our children are learning for coping in their own adulthood. Let’s give up measuring educational attainment by tests rather than by the public nature of student teacher growing together as one generation learns and teaches another. It’s a global issue now, isn’t it? Love and peace--hal
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
What's New about Hacking?
what's new about hacking?
Pepinsky, Harold E.
You forwarded this message on 7/13/2011 12:40 AM.
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 12:18 AM
To: worldhaveyoursay@bbc.com
Attachments:
In the fifties and sixties in the US I grew up believing that any phone conversation I had might well have been monitored by "my" National Security Agency or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hacking is nothing new, and industrial espionage apart (which was notorious even though it was never my problem), my government led the way.
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com, 209 St. Pierre St., Worthington, OH 43085-2262, 1-614-433-7386
Pepinsky, Harold E.
You forwarded this message on 7/13/2011 12:40 AM.
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 12:18 AM
To: worldhaveyoursay@bbc.com
Attachments:
In the fifties and sixties in the US I grew up believing that any phone conversation I had might well have been monitored by "my" National Security Agency or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hacking is nothing new, and industrial espionage apart (which was notorious even though it was never my problem), my government led the way.
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com, 209 St. Pierre St., Worthington, OH 43085-2262, 1-614-433-7386
Monday, July 4, 2011
beyond incorporation
BEYOND CORPORATE GOVERNMENT
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
July 4, 2011
Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that corporate charters were the enemy of “the invisible hand” that makes economies work for people. Governments give corporate investors limits on their liability. You can be a shareholder from the other side of the planet who can only lose what s/he gambles on how much s/he can profit from doing business with strangers. Smith argued that corporate charters like this should only be granted for limited public purposes. The privilege of limiting liability (aka incorporation) should only be granted to foreign for-profit investors should be limited to those few businesses which demonstrated they were vital to collective (national?) security.
Now worldwide government services are under attack. Privatize is the slogan for economic welfare. Unless Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations 1776 economic bible of liberal economics is all wrong, any bank or financier whose debt gets financed, any US corporate charter in any state ought to be subject to revocation for putting absentee profit ahead of the public purpose any grant of incorporation in any state is legally obliged to serve.
To my inhabitants of the US particularly (maybe Greece too), if you think government is bad, privatization is much worse, so less publicly responsible and open. Let’s call for-profit corporations to account and not allow their money to corrupt our governments. Love and peace--hal
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
July 4, 2011
Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that corporate charters were the enemy of “the invisible hand” that makes economies work for people. Governments give corporate investors limits on their liability. You can be a shareholder from the other side of the planet who can only lose what s/he gambles on how much s/he can profit from doing business with strangers. Smith argued that corporate charters like this should only be granted for limited public purposes. The privilege of limiting liability (aka incorporation) should only be granted to foreign for-profit investors should be limited to those few businesses which demonstrated they were vital to collective (national?) security.
Now worldwide government services are under attack. Privatize is the slogan for economic welfare. Unless Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations 1776 economic bible of liberal economics is all wrong, any bank or financier whose debt gets financed, any US corporate charter in any state ought to be subject to revocation for putting absentee profit ahead of the public purpose any grant of incorporation in any state is legally obliged to serve.
To my inhabitants of the US particularly (maybe Greece too), if you think government is bad, privatization is much worse, so less publicly responsible and open. Let’s call for-profit corporations to account and not allow their money to corrupt our governments. Love and peace--hal
Thursday, June 30, 2011
privatizing medical marijuana enforcement
MEDICAL MARIJUANA ENFORCEMENT: A MODEST PROPOSAL—PRIVATIZE IT
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
June 30,2011
Greeks are doing it and so are our US states as the midsummer fiscal deadline sets in: privatize state assets. In the US there’s also a lot of talk about how to enforce corruption of state medical marijuana laws. For instance one journalist reports that there are more medical marijuana stores in Denver than Starbucks and liquor stores combined.
For those who want to balance state budgets and control marijuana, I have a modest proposal. Why not privatize drug enforcement, starting with the US drug enforcement agency? Lease it out to one or more private security firms. Let them bid for how much they will pay for contracts to rent drug enforcement assets from the DEA local narcotics enforcement. If it works for schools and turnpikes and prisons, why not in the drug control industry? There’s a bonus in the case of law enforcement. In the US constitution, people only enjoy privacy protection and protection against unreasonable search and seizure from government agents. Privatize enforcement, and any evidence seized illegally or without reasonable cause or a warrant is still admissible against the bad guys in criminal prosecutions. Seems like a win/win program in this time of selling off government assets for (inter)national security. Love and peace--hal
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
June 30,2011
Greeks are doing it and so are our US states as the midsummer fiscal deadline sets in: privatize state assets. In the US there’s also a lot of talk about how to enforce corruption of state medical marijuana laws. For instance one journalist reports that there are more medical marijuana stores in Denver than Starbucks and liquor stores combined.
For those who want to balance state budgets and control marijuana, I have a modest proposal. Why not privatize drug enforcement, starting with the US drug enforcement agency? Lease it out to one or more private security firms. Let them bid for how much they will pay for contracts to rent drug enforcement assets from the DEA local narcotics enforcement. If it works for schools and turnpikes and prisons, why not in the drug control industry? There’s a bonus in the case of law enforcement. In the US constitution, people only enjoy privacy protection and protection against unreasonable search and seizure from government agents. Privatize enforcement, and any evidence seized illegally or without reasonable cause or a warrant is still admissible against the bad guys in criminal prosecutions. Seems like a win/win program in this time of selling off government assets for (inter)national security. Love and peace--hal
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
a daydream
This Morning I Had the Strangest Daydream
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
June 22, 2011
As I write the US president is due to give a primetime speech today on “drawing down troops” in Afghanistan. I daydream that the US leader tells the US that it is time for Euro-Americans to apologize for American genocide and global for-profit corporate military/prison-industrial conquest. I daydream that the US president announces tonight that all US troops worldwide will be brought home to serve as public school teachers’ aides, to repair bridges and roads, in short as honored soldiers to serve the US with decent pay and benefits and bargain collectively here at home where they belong. I daydream that for-profit strangers’ corporate investment will wither while public investment and not-for-profit investment in local enterprise grows. I dare to daydream. Love and peace--hal
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
June 22, 2011
As I write the US president is due to give a primetime speech today on “drawing down troops” in Afghanistan. I daydream that the US leader tells the US that it is time for Euro-Americans to apologize for American genocide and global for-profit corporate military/prison-industrial conquest. I daydream that the US president announces tonight that all US troops worldwide will be brought home to serve as public school teachers’ aides, to repair bridges and roads, in short as honored soldiers to serve the US with decent pay and benefits and bargain collectively here at home where they belong. I daydream that for-profit strangers’ corporate investment will wither while public investment and not-for-profit investment in local enterprise grows. I dare to daydream. Love and peace--hal
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Stability in Corruption
STABILITY IN CORRUPTION
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
May 25, 2011
There’s a whole lot of talk these days about how stable “economies” are for stranger/foreign investment. There’s also a whole lot of resistance to “corruption.” Here I suggest that the quest for economic stability is a global delusion—that interpersonal economic security rests instead on what we call corruption.
I get an image of the Buddha laughing at the idea of stability meaning that strangers can make corporate investments on the assumption that economic circumstances in any “market” will not change. Change is inevitable. Some of us may get by in our lifetimes getting rich without losing the wealth we accumulate, but no corporation, nation or empire lasts forever.
While I’m alive on this planet, the safest investment I can find in my future and of those I most personally care about, like my partner, our parents, children and grandchildren, is inherently corrupt. I was taught this lesson twenty years ago in Tanzania by an occasional roommate who for 3 days was acting prime minister, who stayed with extended family and hence with me when he was in Dar es Salaam. He lived as modestly and honestly as any major public worker I have ever met. As we discussed corruption, he told me of the duty he felt to take care of his extended family, including public employment..
Who among us who enjoys any amount of economic security is not corrupt? In academia, I have survived in part by personal ties to journal or book editors. Colleagues of mine publish by citing the right people. Just to take one example politically, how did the present mayor of Chicago get to be the chief of staff of a Chicago-established US president without being chosen to be inner political family? What member of the US Congress is independent of lobbyists who contribute to his or her re-election? (Well, actually, I can name a couple of members of the US house and one late senator who tried.)
Recovering criminologist that I am, I cannot pretend to be morally superior to my corrupt human fellows. Indeed, I believe that my social, professional and economic security depends most heavily on my putting my commitments to families of choice ahead of all else. While the human world is corrupt, I am of it. Let’s own up; we’re all corrupt. In my case, I figure corruption with people I know is more stable than investing for profit in the lives of people to whom my commitment, in legalese, is “limited.” Honestly, openly done, it turns out that stability IS corrupt. Love and peace--hal
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
May 25, 2011
There’s a whole lot of talk these days about how stable “economies” are for stranger/foreign investment. There’s also a whole lot of resistance to “corruption.” Here I suggest that the quest for economic stability is a global delusion—that interpersonal economic security rests instead on what we call corruption.
I get an image of the Buddha laughing at the idea of stability meaning that strangers can make corporate investments on the assumption that economic circumstances in any “market” will not change. Change is inevitable. Some of us may get by in our lifetimes getting rich without losing the wealth we accumulate, but no corporation, nation or empire lasts forever.
While I’m alive on this planet, the safest investment I can find in my future and of those I most personally care about, like my partner, our parents, children and grandchildren, is inherently corrupt. I was taught this lesson twenty years ago in Tanzania by an occasional roommate who for 3 days was acting prime minister, who stayed with extended family and hence with me when he was in Dar es Salaam. He lived as modestly and honestly as any major public worker I have ever met. As we discussed corruption, he told me of the duty he felt to take care of his extended family, including public employment..
Who among us who enjoys any amount of economic security is not corrupt? In academia, I have survived in part by personal ties to journal or book editors. Colleagues of mine publish by citing the right people. Just to take one example politically, how did the present mayor of Chicago get to be the chief of staff of a Chicago-established US president without being chosen to be inner political family? What member of the US Congress is independent of lobbyists who contribute to his or her re-election? (Well, actually, I can name a couple of members of the US house and one late senator who tried.)
Recovering criminologist that I am, I cannot pretend to be morally superior to my corrupt human fellows. Indeed, I believe that my social, professional and economic security depends most heavily on my putting my commitments to families of choice ahead of all else. While the human world is corrupt, I am of it. Let’s own up; we’re all corrupt. In my case, I figure corruption with people I know is more stable than investing for profit in the lives of people to whom my commitment, in legalese, is “limited.” Honestly, openly done, it turns out that stability IS corrupt. Love and peace--hal
Monday, May 2, 2011
the fallacy of taking out "leaders"
Al Qaeda never had a leader
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
May 2, 2011
I believe al Qaeda never had a leader, and for that matter, when the US has a president who can be led to support a war in Afghanistan while campaigning for office and to proceed at an obviously orchestrated and timed event that our president approved with probably negligible historical sense of why there should be a May Day assassination of a mythical “leader” whose whereabouts President Obama had allegedly known for half a year, I think it mythical that any US president since Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex has been leading rather than being led by forces he has no sense of control over either. Militarism is a force that knows no personal leadership, anywhere, anymore. Organized violence is a headless force, over which no head incarnate has control in the US, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iran, in Israel, in Egypt, in Bahrain, in Syria…getting personal and beheading “leaders” is a global delusion. Love and peace--hal
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
May 2, 2011
I believe al Qaeda never had a leader, and for that matter, when the US has a president who can be led to support a war in Afghanistan while campaigning for office and to proceed at an obviously orchestrated and timed event that our president approved with probably negligible historical sense of why there should be a May Day assassination of a mythical “leader” whose whereabouts President Obama had allegedly known for half a year, I think it mythical that any US president since Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex has been leading rather than being led by forces he has no sense of control over either. Militarism is a force that knows no personal leadership, anywhere, anymore. Organized violence is a headless force, over which no head incarnate has control in the US, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Iran, in Israel, in Egypt, in Bahrain, in Syria…getting personal and beheading “leaders” is a global delusion. Love and peace--hal
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