I sympathize with the Boulder teachers, who face salary cuts and possible staffing reductions next school year. They argue, and in my opinion rightfully so, that since the school district’s top administrators are hired by the School Board, they don’t really represent the teachers’ interests. Instead, they impose a business model on education, cutting expenses designated for classroom teaching without imposing commensurate austerity measures on the managers and accountants and other overhead types who don’t directly contribute to the educational mission. On the other hand, the amount of money available for education really has diminished, a consequence of a general economic downturn that’s lowered the state and local tax revenues which are the only sources of funding for public schools. It’s possible that the electorate will vote for increased school taxes next year to offset the shortfalls, but I seriously doubt that the voters, facing their own diminished economic situations, will be in any mood to do so.

There are more drastic ways to reduce educational costs than incremental reductions in pay and in force. As I noted in a prior post, the school district has been experimenting with online courses. With no classrooms and with discussions taking place via blogs and emails, online teachers can be spread more thinly, reducing per-student costs. Then there’s home schooling, which costs the taxpayers nothing at all. I’ve not made a systematic study, but on a cursory review it’s evident that, in comparing course grades and test scores and student…

As an aside in a post about lobbying, Ezra Klein posits that “This is, essentially, what journalism is about: Leveraging social relationships to get people to tell you things they probably shouldn’t be telling you, and that they certainly wouldn’t tell someone they didn’t know and have human feelings for.”

Obviously the concept of journalism contains many discrete activities, but I feel like to offer this as a generic characterization even of the investigative reporting function is a kind of double mistake. It’s starts with the erroneous conception of the “hard core” reporter who has a fierce attitude and piercing gaze, and roots the truth out from the unwilling and corrupt establishment. This attitude leads to the “cocktail party” critique of actually existing journalists as a bunch of gadabouts and schmoozers. This, in turn, leads to Klein’s reconceptualization of the cocktail party circuit as the essence of journalism—you schmooze, breaking down the psychic and emotional barriers, and then you get the scoop. This seems a little self-serving to me. I’m going to a dinner party tonight featuring a minister from the Afghan cabinet and I’m attending because doing so seems more interesting than the reverse, but if I learn anything there it’ll be because someone wanted to tell me something not because I tricked them with my charms.

Now admittedly, some people (viz: Ezra Klein) are arguably more charming than I am. But in general I think admissions against interest are quite rare. The reason investigative scoops happen…

Previously, I used the term Green Stalinism hyperbolically to emphasize the fact that we need to figure out ways to force people to change rather than focusing on consumer choice. Now Zizek appears to be advocating actual Green Stalinism — or at least Leninism. I can’t say I object, other than on the level of not being able to imagine how his plan would concretely ever happen.

Richard Lewontin, author of The Dialectical Biologist, gives a wonderful interview on politics and science.

Ronan Lyons is unimpressed by the now-viral NYT graphic showing the web of debt within Europe. It’s particularly unfair to his native Ireland, he says:

Because they didn’t look behind their statistics, however, the graphic is about as informative as CNBC’s now infamous unveiling of Ireland as the world’s most indebted country, with debts worth 1300% of GDP! The point that both miss is that you can’t look at debt liabilities without looking at corresponding assets.

That is why the markets are worried not about all debt. They are worried particularly about government debt, because typically there is no corresponding asset.

It’s true that Spain and Ireland — particularly the latter — have much less of their debt at the government level than, say, Greece. And Lyons helpfully provides a little chart showing how much of each of the PIIGS’ external debt is government debt.

But we’re still a long way from the point at which markets are more worried about government debt than about corporate debt, at least if you’re measuring such things using credit spreads. Investors still believe in the concept of the “sovereign ceiling”, and it’s still extremely rare for any corporate, including a bank, to be able to borrow more cheaply than the government of the country it’s in.

Writes Lyons:

For Portugal and Spain, it’s only one fifth of all debt. In the case of Ireland, just five percent of all its debt is general government debt.

The reason is hardly a secret:

…

From Though Cowards Flinch:

The banks have pronounced which party they want to govern us, and the Credit Rating Agencies are preparing to tell us who’s really in charge

An alliance of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties to form a British coalition government would “almost guarantee” a credit downgrade, BNP Paribas SA said, recommending investors sell the pound against the dollar.

A cut in the rating is likely “since both parties agree that early expenditure cuts could harm the economy,” a team at BNP Paribas led by London-based Hans-Guenter Redeker wrote in a research note today. “A Labour/Liberal government is the least- liked option by markets.”

You know, I really don’t know why we bothered with an election.

I predict this will be all over the Tory media within an hour.

I still can’t muster much enthusiasm for the Lab-Lib-nats rainbow coalition, but it would be nice to see the bankers forced to work that bit harder for their pound of flesh (or, rather, their 167 billion pounds of flesh), and a delicate coalition of the ‘progressive’ parties would be just the ticket on that score.

Copyleft of Lenin’s Tomb

Watch out. It. Is. Spreading.