I’d tagged this article and want to just toss it up while I work on a longer piece on the points it makes.

David Brooks at the NYT, writing ‘Thoroughly Modern Do-Gooders‘:

Earlier generations of benefactors thought that social service should be like sainthood or socialism. But this one thinks it should be like venture capital.

These thoroughly modern do-gooders dress like venture capitalists. They talk like them. They even think like them. That means that aside from the occasional passion for heirloom vegetables, they are not particularly crunchy. They don’t wear ponytails, tattoos or Birkenstocks. They don’t devote any energy to countercultural personal style, unless you consider excessive niceness a subversive fashion statement.

Next to them, Barack Obama looks like Abbie Hoffman.

It also means that they are not that interested in working for big, sluggish bureaucracies. They are not hostile to the alphabet-soup agencies that grew out of the New Deal and the Great Society; they just aren’t inspired by them.

He’s talking about something that resonates with me pretty closely:

The older do-gooders had a certain policy model: government identifies a problem. Really smart people design a program. A cabinet department in a big building administers it.

But the new do-gooders have absorbed the disappointments of the past decades. They have a much more decentralized worldview. They don’t believe government on its own can be innovative. A thousand different private groups have to try new things. Then we measure to see what works.

Sounds good to me…

Commenters Metrico, Davebo and Dreuk challenge me on my support for Obama in the comment thread below.

I’ll make a comment and then a suggestion.

I’d like Obama to win; I’m anxious about his foreign policy, but not as anxious as I am about McCain’s because I’m confident that it won’t survive contact with reality (I said so here) – and Powers was probably fired as much for saying that was true as she was for calling Hillary a monster. I’m working on a post on McCain’s, and hope to get it out next week, work permitting.Of course, I have until I put the card into the slot on the Inkavote to make the decision, and lots could happen between now and November. Lots already has in this race.

But when I criticize Obama in my posts on Wright, I’m making a concrete suggestion on what he could do to win over voters like me who might be more anxious than I about him. I’m telling him how he could improve his game, and how – I think – he could make his election more certain.

Now I’ve had running battles on the blog for years with liberal voters who state, simply, that I’m a party of one, and that there’s no ‘voter cohort’ that thinks like me, and so on. I’ll suggest that if that were the case, both Hillary and Obama would be 10 – 15 points up on McCain at this point in the game. Hint: they aren’t.

So when I toss out the idea that Obama should make a more solid explanation of how he combines his ‘radical roots’ and his moderate expressions, it’s intended to help him win.

MDD, below, aren’t so interested in that. Because if they were, and they had a wobbly Obama voter in front of them, they’d be propping him up – offering responses to his concerns, pointing out facts that have been missed and doing everything they can to say, “Hey, Marc I get it that you’re concerned about this, and here’s why you shouldn’t be and should support Obama more solidly.” They’d reassure me, publicly lock me into a position, and maybe create the seeds of some arguments that might persuade others as well.

In fact they aren’t interested in that: they are interested in feeling smug and high-fiving each other over how wondeful and righteous they are. If they do it at my expense, I’m pretty much indifferent (although if bored, I might swipe back). But when they do that, they are carrying on a long trend in US left politics, which has resulted in – among other things, an effective electoral tie with a geriatric standard-bearer for a party that ought to be on it’s last legs for the next eight years.

I don’t know how often I have to post this quote, but I’m prepared to keep doing it until somebody starts to get it. From John Schaar:

“Finally, if political education is to effective it must grow from a spirit of humility on the part of the teachers, and they must overcome the tendencies toward self-righteousness and self-pity which set the tone of youth and student politics in the 1960’s. The teachers must acknowledge common origins and common burdens with the taught, stressing connection and membership, rather than distance and superiority. Only from these roots can trust and hopeful common action grow.”

And if you want to understand ‘the arc of my beliefs’, an earlier post that cited this offers a pretty good explanation: ‘Why does Brian Leiter Want to Kill Poor People?‘ It’s also all over www.armedliberal.com (look for ‘Skyboxes’) and this site.

Why do you want to kill poor people, Davebo?

In 1975, he wrote a story (not really science fiction) called “Sierra Maestra” which takes place about now in a penthouse apartment above a riot-torn Manhattan. In that apartment, a progressive radical clique plots to take over America; they do it by having spent the last twenty-five years working their way to positions of incredible prominence – running General Motors, richest financier in the country, Senator, Governor. Their entire lives to that point had been dissembling so that they could attain the positions they wanted to have on this day and move to make change.

I get a creepy reminder of that story when I read things like this about Obama:

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.” He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, “Keep up the good work!”

or this:

Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.”

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

I can understand why these things would make conservatives – and many moderates – hyperventilate.Because they think that what they are seeing is a real-life re-enactment of Spinrad’s story.

Now that’s not necessarily true; I have a diverse body of friends and lots of friends who I don’t mix together – deliberately, out of courtesy and respect to each. I can understand how Obama could face the same issue, writ far larger.

And I’ll note that in the story, Spinrad approves of the plotters who plan to rescue a collapsing United States.

But the one thing Obama needs to do – and did not do, in spite of some excellent sleight of hand in his speech last week – is explain the arc of his beliefs and how it is that he’s comfortable with Rev. Wright and uncomfortable with some of Rev. Wright’s core beliefs.

I’m still standing on his side of the line – along with lots and lots of people like me – and if he wants to nail my feet to the floor here, this is the first and most important thing he needs to do.

Snowed in. Of course Jimbo and Blackfive are down where there is sun…

…who’s around for a round of drunks and food tomorrow around lunchtime?

The ATF had a 2007 solicitation for bids to deliver 2,000 Leatherman tools.

Engraved with the following:

ATF-Asset Forfeiture AND “always think forfeiture”

…are you outraged yet?

I wonder how Donald Scott’s family feels about that?

I think asset forfeiture is reprehensible, and when it funds law enforcement corrupting. I think it should be banned outright; I can understand it being used very narrowly in the case of convicted criminals – but very narrowly. And when a law enforcement agency sends little promotional items to the troops reminding them that it’s really about marque and reprisal – will, I’m deeply disgusted.

I debated posting the contract officers information here, and encouraging everyone to let him know what you think of this “opportunity”, but I think instead you ought to send a message to your Congressmember. You can find them at Congress.org; you can find your local officials by entering your zip in the box at the upper left, and then create your own message about this.

…amaze me with their Wiley Coyote Super-Genius brainpower yet again.

Over at the serious academic Thom Brooks ‘Brooks Blog’, we get this gem: “Is promising tax cuts tantamount to bribery?,” which explains:

. . . and so we learn that the Tories are not promising tax cuts before the next election. (Details here.) This tendency of politicians to even discuss tax cuts as a major election issue has always troubled me. Now I think I know a bit more why.

It is wrong for politicians to bribe the electorate. They cannot pay for our votes. Of course, the expenditure of large sums of cash on advertisement, etc. can have positive effects in general (although not always). But spending money on tv ads in no way is like bribery.

When politicians promise tax cuts, they are promising the electorate that if they vote for the politician, then they can expect extra money in their pocket. We might call this indirect bribery. Direct bribery is when politicians pay you directly from their coffers for your vote. This is illegal in an obvious sense. Indirect bribery is different. Rather than pay voters from the party’s accounts, the party pays back voters from the treasury.

Promises to, say raise teachers’ salaries, on the other hand…he’s OK with that:

There is at least one major qualification in all of this. Of course, the public has a right to know how politicians and parties might spend public money if elected.

This is, of course, beyond ridiculous. Politicians make promises of benefits all the time; they discuss zoning plans which may increase or decrease the value of my home; they discuss tax policy that may leave more money in my pocket, or advantage or disadvantage my industry.

Sheesh.

I’m generally pretty admiring of Josh Marshall; he’s an unabashed partisan but usually one with a fair respect for facts and sense.

Today, not so much.

First, he gets spun by Juan Cole’s mistranslation of the Iranian threat to Israel. Here’s Marshall citing Cole:

According to Farsi-speaking commentators including Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan, Ahmadinejad’s exact quote was, “The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.” Cole has written that Ahmadinejad was not calling for the “Nazi-style extermination of a people,” but was expressing the wish that the Israeli government would disappear just as the shah of Iran’s regime had collapsed in 1979.

When Cole made his post, a commenter here at Winds took him to school:

I am Iranian, and I can tell you Cole is wrong.

Let’s start with simple fact, that is not directly relevant. He writes that Khomaini said the Shah government “must go”. But “az bain bayad berad” does not mean “go”, it litterarly mean something like “must cease to exist”, and the most direct translation would be “must be destroyed”.

Now to the latter part:

“bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad”
The translation is not perfect, the dear Professor is not convewing the action implyied the sentence, as I or any Iranian would read it.

So Cole errs, or lies, and somehow it becomes a part of the historical record…

Next he catches McCain in a double-secret intellectual jujitsu hold.

…But that’s really secondary to the real issue which is that the strategic aim of the surge has failed. It’s fastened us down even more firmly in Iraq whereas the aim was to jumpstart a political process in the country that would allow us to begin to disengage.

These points are completely lost on McCain. A savvy campaign should be able to make McCain’s failure to understand the surge’s failure into a potent political issue.

So the disagreement becomes a flat disagreement over facts; the problem, of course is that this presupposes that the issue isn’t whether McCain disagrees – because we’ve already assumed facts that make McCain wrong – so no debate is possible or even desirable.

The last time I saw intellectual jujitsu that slick was last week, when the data showed that the oceans were stubbornly not warming up:

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

…if you’re a Democrat like me.

Neither Michigan nor Florida look they will do a revote, meaning we’ll have a stupendous floor fight about seating the rump-delagates elected in the non-primaries that were held too-early in the primary season.

Now I just don’t see how this is going to do anything except give the GOP a significant leg up in those states. The ads just write themselves.

I continue to be astounded at the ability of the Democrats to pull defeat from what should have been the slam-dunk electoral victory of the new millenium. Does anyone there have two clues to rub together?

First of all, to paraphrase Nixon, “this was a great speech”. I don’t quite know if forensics students will be repeating it in a decade, but the guy is an amazing orator.

Two things struck me negatively about the content of the speech.Obama said:

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

Two percent of the US population died in the Civil War. It seems at best callous of him to slight that very real sacrifice paid in blood by Americans to clean the moral slate of slavery.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

I think the missing piece here is the explanation of how his values intersect those of Rev. Wright. I think that it is legitimate for Obama to state that those values aren’t the same, and that other things that the church brought him made it possible for him to overcome his discomfort with the “…remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church…”

I think he should have talked less about Ashley and more about that. because if people understood that – understood the real values Obama is trying to realize in his life and his policies, I think they would be better able to judge from something other than blind devotion to him or equally blind revulsion.

One of the things I like the most about the speech is the fact that in it, Obama embraces moral ambiguity – and hence embraces the morality of the real world. I am profoundly uncomfortable with people comfortable in the moral certainty of the world that exists in their words or their imaginations.

I’m not sure it’s enough politically, and I’m still a wobbly supporter, but liked what the speech said and who it showed. Now we need to see that that man is really who Obama is.

Conservative parents often raise radical children – and vice versa. I’m not panicked by Obama’s relationship with a radical. Let’s see more of the substance of who he is and what he wants to do with the country.

Social engineering, not hacking. Here’s the news:

’06 election officer pleads guilty to voter fraud conspiracy

LONDON, Ky. (AP) — An eastern Kentucky man who was an election officer has pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit voter fraud during primary elections two years ago.

Acting U.S. Attorney James Zerhusen’s office says 36-year-old Charles Newton Weaver of Manchester admitted agreeing to change votes of voters who were unfamiliar with new electronic voting machines. The prosecutor’s office says Weaver led voters to believe their vote was cast by pressing one button, although a second button was required to cast the vote.

Zerhusen’s office says Weaver changed votes after voters left the machines during the 2006 primary elections for county officials in Clay County.

The secretary of state’s office said after the 2006 primary that some voters reported that they didn’t know how to properly cast their ballots and that they were misled by poll workers.

For more information, check out the Kentucky SoS site.