Tag: posts

For those of us subject to his misrule, the second week of December did not seem a particularly auspicious week for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to start touting his experience with reopening public schools as a model for the rest of the country.

After all, my 12-year-old still hadn’t set foot on her campus for weeks, having attended class just seven times this academic year. My 5-year-old was back in kindergarten (after an arbitrary, de Blasio–imposed break), but only half time, because her school didn’t have enough personnel to process kids in groups larger than eight or nine. That half time quickly turned to no time when two staffers in a 1,000-student school tested positive for COVID-19.

Remote learning—the borderline oxymoronic term to describe classroomless education attempted via computer screen by tens of millions of K-12 students nationwide—continues to be the norm for more than three out of four New York City public school students, including a disproportionate share who are economically (and now academically) disadvantaged.

Yet de Blasio may have been onto something when he puffed out his chest to Politico and said, “Just do it! We have proven you can keep school safe if you are willing to adopt enough rigorous measures.”

And with the election of a teachers union–friendly Democratic president, Gotham’s policy of prioritizing guild wish lists over student and parental concerns may indeed become the national norm.

God help us all.

“Reopening schools is vital for the health and education of our children,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten wrote in The Hill in late November. This sentiment was rather belated. Then–President Donald Trump and then–Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had been banging the school-reopening drum since July, when the science and global track record had already shown that kids in group settings were not catching, spreading, or suffering from the novel coronavirus in any statistically meaningful way. Weingarten’s conversion reflected three new political realities.

First, initial public school enrollment figures from this fall were brutal: 3–5 percent lower than the previous year, as parents opted for homeschooling or the more reliably open private sector. Fewer students mean less government funding, and eventually fewer teachers able to pay union dues.

Second, after eight months of widespread school closures concentrated in heavily Democratic jurisdictions, and with the electoral removal of a convenient White House scapegoat, unions found themselves on the receiving end of withering parental anger.

De Blasio delayed the beginning of the school year twice in September (both times at the last minute), then shut down all of the city’s schools in mid-November (once again at the last minute), even though the positive-test rate among randomly tested students, teachers, and staff was a miniscule 0.18 percent. The backlash was immediate.

That shutdown was based on a 3 percent positive-test threshold for the entire city, a “community spread” figure much lower than the standards used by the state of New York and virtually any other country you could name.

On the Friday before the shutdown, local union honcho Michael Mulgrew, whose summer negotiations with de Blasio produced both the unusually low threshold and the two school-year delays, told The New York Times, “When the mayor told us about the 3 percent, we went to our doctors, and they said it was an appropriate number.” Within days, the outpouring of bile, evident daily in the Times and on the local NPR affiliate, had Mulgrew furiously backpedaling, pinning the one-size-fits-all standard on de Blasio and saying he favored a more targeted approach. Less than three weeks after the shutdown, the mayor abruptly announced that the 3 percent figure had been scrapped and that schools would be reopening for five days a week when possible.

Which brings us to the third main reason that unions and the politicians they bankroll had started singing a different tune by December: With the absence of Trump and the prospect of trillions in new coronavirus relief money coming from Congress, the public education industry sensed a golden opportunity to keep teachers whole, on terms written by them, even if most students remain in remote-learning hell.

“Our leaders must use every tool at their disposal to reduce the spread of the coronavirus and pass a relief package that includes funding for states, schools, businesses, and the Americans who now struggle with rents, nutrition insecurity, and student loans,” Weingarten wrote. “It is why we need a national blueprint that has these objectives to safely reopen schools.”

In case the rattling of the cup wasn’t loud enough, the leaders of the country’s three largest school districts—New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, the latter two of which have been and likely will remain shuttered for many months—penned a joint op-ed piece in The Washington Post with the unsubtle headline: “We need a Marshall Plan for our schools. And we need it now.”

Do you know who has not required a Marshall Plan to open up K-12 instruction facilities throughout the country during this pandemic? Catholic schools. Charter schools. Ad hoc “pods” of parents pooling resources and time (as we have with our 5-year-old) to make up for what the local public system has failed to deliver despite its guaranteed tax revenue. Where teachers unions hold most sway, kids get the least in-person instruction. And parents even in the bluest of cities, I can tell you, are noticing.

The hypocrisy is in some ways even more grating than that of politicians who impose COVID-related bans on activities they are immediately seen enjoying. In Chicago, for instance, so many public school teachers (between a quarter and a half) are demanding to teach remotely that even when in-person classes are scheduled to resume, many will be “supervised” by non-teachers in classrooms as the kids communicate via computer with remote teachers receiving the same compensation as last year. No wonder they need a Marshall Plan!

New York City kids, in the name of safety, have been herded into “Learning Development Centers,” which have less stringent COVID-19 protocols than the schools that were shuttered in the name of “science.” There, supervisors spend their days wrangling competing Zoom meetings with faraway teachers.

The damage that can be done to elementary school–age children by monthslong separation from their peers can be heartbreaking, bordering on horrifying. My nieces and nephews in France and Switzerland, like my friend’s kids in England, all go to school without wearing masks, without having their class sizes lopped by one-half to two-thirds, and without teachers unions calling the shots and fighting for stay-at-home pedagogy while crying out for more money.

On a December 16 conference call, President-elect Joe Biden told the majority of the country’s governors, “I know it’s going to be controversial for some of you—but I’m going to ask that we’re going to be able to open schools at the end of a hundred days.” I am glad for the sake of a mangled generation of kids that Biden caught up to where his predecessor was five months earlier. But if New York City is indeed the model, the most “open” thing will be the government’s checkbook—that and parents’ web browsers as they explore every option for their kids that doesn’t include a teachers union.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3pko40U
via IFTTT

Since assuming the chairmanship of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2017, Ajit Pai has insisted on taking a market-based approach to regulating the nation’s always-evolving telecommunications industry. He started his tenure by repealing Obama-era net neutrality rules, despite vocal opposition from congressional Democrats and progressive crusaders who worried that allowing internet service providers to offer products tiered by price and speed would lead to a massive gulf between internet haves and have-nots.

In a conversation with Reason‘s Nick Gillespie, Pai stands by that decision. “We saw predictions that this was the end of the internet,” he says. But the internet is faster now than it was when net neutrality rules were repealed, and America’s digital infrastructure was even able to withstand the massive changes in online behavior brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks to increased regulatory certainty, companies “were able to build a lot stronger networks in the last three years before anyone even heard of COVID,” he says.

Q: You’ve said that your priority since becoming FCC chairman in January 2017 has been closing the digital divide. How is that going?

A: We’re in the midst of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, a $20 billion reverse auction program. We’re allocating money to underserved parts of the country through the market mechanism—not just by cutting a check to a fly-by-night operator and saying “vaya con Dios” but by using the auction mechanism that [Nobel-winning economist] Ronald Coase pioneered almost 60 years ago.

Q: How does an auction help people who don’t have access to good broadband? 

A: The traditional model was a universal service fund program that essentially cuts a check to a rural telephone company. Those rural telephone companies didn’t have a strong impetus to use that money to build out the networks, especially in these rural or Native lands.

What we did was set up a reverse auction where we encourage all kinds of companies using any technology—so long as it meets the FCC service thresholds—to compete for that funding. So we’ll say for a certain census block, for example, “this is the amount of money that we estimate will be available.” Anybody, from electric utilities, satellite companies, cable companies, telephone companies, whatever, [can] compete for that funding. So there’s downward pressure on prices using the same market mechanism that will hopefully make sure that the best technology for that area will win ultimately and deliver a fiscally responsible result.

Q: What is an exciting use of next-generation 5G wireless internet?

A: I think from a consumer perspective, some of the early use cases we’ll see are things like telehealth and connected care, generally just getting super high resolution and low latency. Gaming is another one. Augmented reality, virtual reality, that sort of thing.

On the industrial side, I know it’s not as sexy, but the improvements in terms of efficiency and safety and productivity are going to be tremendous. Connected cars, for example, or precision agriculture increasing the yield in an environmentally sustainable way. All these types of things are at our fingertips.

Q: Let’s talk about net neutrality. You and the Trump administration rolled those rules back. Has it worked?

A: In 2017, when I announced that we were going to move to reduce government involvement in internet regulation and restore the market-based approach that had served us well from 1996 until 2015, we saw predictions that this was the end of the internet. “You’re going to have to pay $5 per tweet. Certain websites are going to be inaccessible.” Fast-forward almost three years. Internet speeds today are twice as fast as they were in December 2017. Millions more Americans have access to the internet.

If anything, the internet is better than ever, especially during the pandemic. Europe, which has the net neutrality regulations that certain advocates in the U.S. love, had subpar infrastructure development the last few years due in part to these regulations. [Government officials] had to go hat in hand to these streaming companies—YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc.—in the early days of the pandemic and beg them to throttle content from [high definition] down to [standard definition].

So I think we made absolutely the right decision. And the fact that it’s now receded into the background of most people’s memories is, I think, a testament to the fact that we did the right thing.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity. For a podcast version, subscribe to The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2KJSaMj
via IFTTT

Hong Kong Broadband Network has confirmed it has blocked access to HKChronicles because of a police order. HKChronicles becomes the first website blocked under a public security law imposed by the Chinese government. HKChronicles covered pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong last year, documenting police abuse of protesters.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3sWtmBW
via IFTTT

This is the fourth and final post in my series on how to write and academic press book and get it published. In Part I, I summarized the criteria that can help you decide whether you want to write an academic book in the first place. Part II addressed the issue of how to choose a publisher. The third post in the series offers advice on how to get publishers to accept your proposal. In this part, I offer some advice about how to get through the often-difficult and painful process of actually writing the book.

If you write effortlessly and well, and have no trouble getting readers to understand your meaning, you probably don’t need need the advice in this post. If you’re well-organized and consistently hard-working, or have few competing commitments taking up your time, you can probably skip large parts of it, as well.

For the rest of you, the good news is that you can write successful books even if you’re not a naturally talented writer, and even if you’re as lazy and disorganized as I tend to be be a lot of the time! If I can get a book done, you probably can too.

There is no one fool-proof way to write a book. But I can, nonetheless, offer a few suggestions that are likely to be useful for many academic writers. I’m far from an ideal writer, myself. But I have written six books, including some that attracted considerable interest and attention. I also have plenty of painful experience battling problems that often beset writers.

I. Getting the Book Done on Time

As emphasized in my first post in this series, writing a book usually takes a lot of time. To add to the problem, there is a great temptation to procrastinate and delay.

Publishers will usually give you a substantial amount of time (six months to a year or more) to finish the manuscript after your proposal gets accepted. And most will let you take some additional time even after the official deadline passes. This flexibility can be helpful. But it also creates incentives to put the project on the back burner while you attend to seemingly more pressing matters—or just waste time surfing the internet, watching the internet, guzzling beer, or doing any of the many other activities that may be more fun than working on your book!

Before you know it, the submission deadline is approaching and you face a tradeoff between submitting a subpar, rushed work, or asking for more time. Extensions are fine, up to a point. But if you ask for too many, the editor and publisher will gradually lose faith in you, and your project may eventually get terminated (most contracts have a clause enabling the publisher to do that if the author doesn’t deliver on time). A good rule of thumb is that it’s a bad idea to stretch things out more than a few weeks beyond the deadline in your contract. If you go beyond that, you’re living on borrowed time—both literally and figuratively.

I don’t have data on this. But I would bet that more books and other academic projects  have been killed by time-wasting and procrastination than by any other cause. Believe me, I know from painful personal experience!

There is no foolproof solution to this problem (at least none that I know of). But you should at least be aware of it, and develop a strategy for dealing with it ahead of time.

One possible approach is to develop better time-management skills, so you waste less time to begin with. Jason Brennan’s recent book, Good Work if You Can Get it: How to Succeed in Academia, has lots of excellent time-management advice for scholars. Read it and learn. But the fly in Brennan’s otherwise wonderful ointment is that following his advice requires considerable self-discipline. And inadequate self-control is one of the reasons why  many of us procrastinate in the first place!

Another strategy is to recognize that you have some tendency to waste time, and try to work within that constraint. Thus, you can set aside more time to write the book than would be strictly necessary if you had strong self-discipline. Publishers will take it better if you ask for some extra time up front than if you request it at the last minute, after missing a deadline.

If you have trouble forcing yourself to sit down and work, you can partly compensate by pushing hard when during those times when you do manage to force yourself. I often find it hard to get started writing. But when I do get started, I can push ahead for hours on end. Knowing this about myself, I try to create multiple time blocks when I can write, knowing in advance that only some of them will pan out. But those that do can be extremely productive.

Think also about what times you tend to work best, and under what conditions. I’m generally most productive in the afternoon or late at night. Thus, I try to set aside writing time during those times of the day (the latter of which is also  convenient because the kids tend to be asleep). Others work best early in the morning, or some other time period.

Similarly, think about what conditions are most conducive to work. I  work best in my basement at home, amidst as much quiet as possible. I spend enough writing time there that my two toddlers call the basement “Daddy’s office” and sometimes also refer to it as “where Daddy writes books.” Other scholars work best in their office at work, at a coffee shop, or some other environment. Figure out what works for you (by experimentation, if need be) and stick to it.

Ideally, you should both find ways to reduce the amount of procrastination and develop better strategies to work around whatever time-wasting remains. But if you succeed at even one of the two, that might well be enough. It works for me (most of the time…).  And if you’re taking the time to read this post in hopes of becoming a better writer, you’re probably not nearly as lazy as I am.

II. Getting Your Point Across—Organization and Style

There is no one way to organize a book, and there certainly isn’t just one writing style that works well. Much depends on the topic of the book, and on the strengths and weaknesses of the writer. But there are a few rules of thumb that I believe apply to a wide range of academic books.

First, it’s important to be as clear as possible about what the thesis of your book is, and how the different parts fit together. If it’s hard to tell how Chapter 1 connects with Chapter 2, 3, and so on, readers are likely to get confused, and perhaps even stop reading altogether.

You can forestall this by giving an overview of what you plan to do in the book in the Introduction (including explaining how the different parts fit together), and then indicating near the end of each chapter how it connects to the next one. It can also be helpful if the conclusion of the book reminds the reader of its key points.  As my father-in-law (a retired teacher) once put it: “Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, then tell it to them, and then tell it to them again.” The trick is to do this without being tedious and boring.

To avoid the latter problem, the introduction—and  the beginnings of individual chapters—shouldn’t be just a dry “road map” of what you plan to say. You can also grab the reader’s attention with dramatic stories and examples that help illustrate your points.

For example, in my recent book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom, the Introduction includes a summary of the later chapters, which explain the advantages of different types of “voting with your feet” and offer responses to a variety of criticisms of expanded migration rights. But I also tell briefly the stories of Frederick Douglass—the great nineteenth century abolitionist and African-American leader—and J.D. Vance (author of the bestselling Hillbilly Elegy). Their life and work dramatically illustrates the tremendous life-transforming benefits of mobility, which are the focus of the book. And they make the Introduction more exciting and attention-grabbing than it would be if I just gave a straight preview of my arguments in the rest of the book.

If you’re unsure about whether your arguments and the connections between chapters are clear to readers, ask someone who is interested in the subject, but not an expert on it, to read it over. If that person has trouble understanding your point, that probably means you need to make it clearer.

Make sure, also, to ask your editor about this issue. He or she is likely to have good insight into it, and offer good suggestions for improvement.

Another useful point to remember is to try to avoid long, complicated, sentences and paragraphs. They make it harder for readers to figure out what you’re saying, and also make the book more tedious to read.

Don’t make a fetish of simplicity! I’m not suggesting you should never have a compound sentence or a lengthy paragraph. Sometimes, there may be a good reason for including them. But when you read your work, consider each such ase carefully, and only leave in those that are strictly necessary. Simpler and shorter isn’t always better. But it is better most of the time.

III. Improving Your Argument

There are obvious limits to how much I can tell you about how to make the substance of your book better. I don’t know what your book is about, and—most likely—I’m not an expert in your field. That part is your job. If you need highly specific advice about substance, it’s probably best to get it from other experts. Still, there are some general strategies I can offer for avoiding pitfalls that regularly recur in many disciplines.

One that I find particularly useful is to think carefully about potential criticisms of your thesis. If you are advocating a specific point of view on a controversial issue, ask yourself what defenders of the opposing position are likely to say in response. In some cases, you can readily figure it out by reading their own works! But even if they haven’t specifically addressed the point at issue, you should ask yourself what they might say in response to your position. If you have the opportunity, ask one of them to read an early draft of the chapter in question, and give you their responses. If not, at least ask yourself what  arguments you would make if you had to defend their position. If a good point occurs to you, try to develop a rebuttal. The issue may well occur to readers and critics, as well.

The more you can forestall possible objections, the more persuasive your work will be to those who don’t already agree with your position. Even if they aren’t totally convinced, they will at least take your arguments more seriously. And a good scholar should aspire to do more than preach to the already converted.

You can’t deal with every conceivable objection. But the more you can address counterarguments that are likely to be raised by intellectually serious advocates of opposing views, the better your book will be.

Occasionally, considering counterarguments might lead you to the painful conclusion that you need to discard or at least moderate one of your own claims. That’s OK! Indeed, if that happens, it’s good to point it out in the book, and qualify your argument accordingly. If you make such concessions when called for, the rest of your argument will have greater credibility with intellectually serious readers—particularly those not previously sympathetic to your views.

For example, in my book The Grasping Hand, which forcefully criticizes the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling in Kelo v. New London (2005), I had to admit that Kelo was consistent with some fifty years of prior Supreme Court precedent. Much as I wanted to do so, I couldn’t credibly claim that the result in the case was just manufactured by the Court out of whole cloth.

But that unpleasant admission probably added credibility to my argument that the Kelo majority nonetheless badly misinterpreted key nineteenth and early-twentieth-century precedent. Eventually, even Justice John Paul Stevens, the author of the majority opinion in Kelo, admitted I was right on that particular point (though he still differed with me on other issues related to the case). That might not have happened if I had obstinately refused to give opposing views the credit they were due.

In considering which objections to deal with, it’s obviously important to address major points likely to be raised by experts. But, in some cases, you may want to deal with arguments that are often made in public discourse, even if experts shy away from them. That’s especially true if you want your book to appeal to interested lay readers, as well as academic specialists.

For example, few academics are willing to argue that argue that all or most potential migrants have a strong moral duty to stay home and “fix their own countries,” though many do make more modest version of this argument (such as that skilled professionals educated in part at public expense have such an obligation). But this sort of argument often comes up in lay public discourse. So I decided to address it in Chapter 5 of my book Free to Move, in addition to the more limited variants deployed by experts.

While it’s often good to err on the side of inclusion in dealing with potential counterarguments, it’s also important to avoid trying to do too much in your book. When you consider covering an additional issue, always ask whether it’s really necessary to do so in order to advance your main thesis. Sometimes, adding  another issue just sets up another target for critics to shoot at, without doing much to buttress your own argument. Other times, the additional issue is so large and complicated, that addressing it effectively would make it a tail that grows so large it begins to wag the dog of the rest of the book.

If that happens, you should avoid the temptation to include that issue in your project. You might even include an explanation for why you chose not to cover it, so readers who think of it are not left wondering. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, I make the case that the problem of widespread political ignorance justifies making government smaller and more decentralized than might otherwise be preferable. But I also emphasize that the book does not advance a comprehensive theory of what the optimal size and degree of centralization of government should be. Including that issue would have made the book vastly longer, and overshadowed the focus on political ignorance.

Much more can be said on how best to write books on particular subjects. And, ultimately, yourself are in the best position to know how to make the most of your own unique skills. But I hope the advice I offer can at least help you get started.

Unless you’re one of those lucky people who is naturally hard-working or actually enjoys writing for its own sake, the process of completing a book is often painful and difficult. But if you do a good job of filling up those blank spaces with words, the high at the end will be worth the pain. Don’t listen to Taylor Swift—it really will be.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3pg8OlQ
via IFTTT

Jeremy Chisenhall (Lexington Herald Leader) reports:

[Damon Michael Beckley, who was subjected to these conditions,] has been charged with unlawful entry of a restricted building and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, according to the FBI. He was filmed at the Capitol on Jan. 6, saying, “we aren’t putting up with this tyrannical rule. If we’ve got to come back here and start a revolution and take all of these traitors down, which is what should be done, then we will.” …

Other Kentucky residents charged in the riot face atypical constraints. Gracyn Courtright, a University of Kentucky student, can only travel to D.C. and West Virginia for court appearances and Kentucky for college classes, according to court records.

Robert L. Bauer was ordered not to attend or participate in any public rallies or protests as a condition of his release, according to court records. He was also barred from entering any state or federal Capitol grounds.

I did a bit of research back when there were stories about broad pretrial release restrictions on people arrested in the Oregon protests, and the matter is a bit complicated.

[1.] Generally speaking, the government has a good deal of latitude in imposing conditions on convicted defendants who are released on probation and parole, including conditions that restrict defendants’ speech or association. One way of thinking about it is that the people have been convicted and could be in prison, where their First Amendment rights can be sharply restricted.

[2.] Courts have at times also imposed similar conditions on people who have been indicted (based on a finding of probable cause that they committed a crime) and are awaiting trial. One can imagine a rule saying that you can’t be deprived of liberty at all until you’ve been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, whether by being locked up or by being subjected to pretrial release conditions; but that’s not what our legal system has adopted.

Thus, for instance, in U.S. v. Collins (N.D. Cal. 2012), several defendants were indicted for interfering with PayPal computers (via a distributed-denial-of-service attack), as retaliation for PayPal’s blocking of service to Wikileaks. The court upheld a pretrial release condition barring the defendants from using Internet Relay Chat (IRC), because the defendants had used IRC to coordinate their attacks:

While any limitation on free speech must be imposed cautiously, and each defendant retains the presumption of innocence during the pretrial period, the IRC restriction in this case furthers a compelling government interest in protecting the public from further crimes coordinated through a means specifically addressed by the grand jury in the language of the indictment. The condition operates in a content-neutral fashion. The condition does not restrict political or any other discourse by any other means, even by use of other internet services such as email, blogging services such as Tumblr, chat other than IRC, or social networks such as Facebook or Google+. All of this suggests to the court that a restriction on IRC use, while permitting substantial internet use for purposes that include political discourse, strikes a reasonable balance between the legitimate and yet competing interests of the parties….

The court also notes that the condition does not impose any burden greater than associational and other First Amendment-impacted restrictions routinely imposed by courts as a condition of pretrial release. See, e.g., United States v. Spilotro (8th Cir. 1986).

The indictment makes no mention of Twitter whatsoever…. In the absence of any indictment charge, any evidence, or even any specific proffer of such illicit activity [using] Twitter, the court is not persuaded that the restriction advances any legitimate interest in protecting the public’s safety or prevent any defendant from fleeing. Under these circumstances, any illicit use of Twitter by any defendant may be adequately addressed by the monitoring approved elsewhere in this order.

Continue reading “Pretrial Release Condition: Can’t Speak About “the [Capitol Riot] or the Matters Related to the United States Government””