Author: Steve

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Taxation Without Representation

taxation without representation
Tip o’ the hat to me dear mum, who just sent me this article on how officials from the local government of Washington, D.C. who are traveling the country to drum up support for D.C. statehood are receiving the indifferent response that they probably should have expected.

The reason for the D.C. statehood movement, which is extremely popular among District residents and virtually unheard of elsewhere, is that since those who live in the district don’t have any real representation in Congress, it’s unfair that they’re held to federal laws and regulation. Their battle cry, based on similar sentiment from the American Revolution, is that they live in an democratic system of “taxation without representation”. And that photo is real — they have it on the license plate and everything.

And if you subscribe to small-r republican principles, you might see their point. Sure, Washington, D.C. has a lot of Congressmen, lobbyists, and other power brokers, but that doesn’t mean that all 600,000 people who live in the city are wheeler dealers who are shaping the destiny of the federal government. While the city has its wealthy areas, much of it is working class, and their claims to disenfranchisement shouldn’t be lightly dismissed, especially since there are several states that have a lower population than D.C., yet have their full Congressional complement.

The problem is that outside D.C. itself, no one cares about this issue. And even if they did, it’s arguable that it would take an amendment to the U.S. constitution to change things, which is the way D.C. residents got electoral votes in the presidential election. That’s hard to do even when people around the country actually want something. There are other options than statehood however. Personally, I’d just give the whole place back to the Piscataway Indian tribe, although I doubt that would set well with the city’s current inhabitants. Another option is to return the city to being part of Maryland, from which it was carved in the late 18th century, and just keep a “federal enclave” separate from that state, one without residents. There’s precedent for this, in that the portion of Virginia that was ceded to be part of D.C. was given back in the 1840’s, since it didn’t seem at the time like the federal government would ever be large enough to need it, among other reasons.

One option that I never hear people suggest, and it sort of surprises me, is to solve the taxation without representation problem not by adding representation, but by removing taxation. Especially considering much of the city isn’t affluent, it would be a prosperity enhancing move to say, “You don’t get a vote? Fine, no federal taxes for your residents.” Do that, and watch the place become the biggest boom town ever seen in North America. Maybe it would even have the healthy effect of causing people in other parts of the U.S. to realize that taxation, and maybe even Congressional representation, are overrated.

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The Recent SOPA Strike

For what it’s worth, I meant for this site to participate in the SOPA strike on the 18th. But the WordPress plugin I so confidently chose to make this happen apparently didn’t do anything. So, in the now famous words of erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, “Oops.”

Oh well, at least I blogged about it over on eLearners News.

Meanwhile, if you don’t know what all the fuss is about, I think the best concise description of the danger of SOPA and PIPA has been provided by Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy. Shoot first and think later, indeed!

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Gary Johnson For President

This will probably surprise those who know me well, but I’ve become interested in Gary Johnson’s run for President. Gary Johnson was a Republican governor of New Mexico for two terms, which was a feat in a state that leans Democrat. He started his campaign last year as a candidate for the Republican nomination, but after being shut out by the Republican establishment and assiduously ignored by the mainstream media, at the end of the year he decided to switch parties and run as a Libertarian Party candidate instead. His record as governor is surprisingly strong, and this basically makes him the highest quality presidential candidate the Libertarian Party has ever fielded.

One way I find Gary Johnson interesting is the contrast he provides to the other noteworthy libertarian running for president this year — Ron Paul. Both hold similar positions, with the noticeable exception of abortion, where is no universally recognized correct position among libertariana, and immigration, where Gary Johnson’s positions are a lot more freedom friendly than Ron Paul’s. Overall, while Ron Paul is more of a paleolibertarian with more natural appeal to those on the right, Gary Johnson’s lifestyle and record are much more in keeping with the sort of left-libertarianism that shares goals with many progressives. Left-libertarians like myself don’t always have the same “virtue of selfishness” or “God-given rights” motivation of their right-libertarian colleagues, instead many of us are primarily motivated by concerns about poverty, environmental degradation, eroding civil liberties, and the like and simply understand that markets are a better way to solve those problems than constantly expanding state power could ever be.

And by markets, I don’t mean big corporations! Indeed, many on the left are surprised to hear that there are libertarians who are as distrustful of big business as they are of big government. Ultimately, corporations are not the epitome of capitalism, they’re a perversion of it. To own a corporation is to have a state entitlement of limited liability for the actions of the company that you control. There’s nothing libertarian about that! Indeed it’s frustrating for people like me to see progressives correctly rail against certain corporate abuses but then don’t see that the corporate power they oppose comes primarily from the collaboration between those firms’ executives and government policy makers. And it’s especially frustrating to see progressives who understand the harm done in communities, the country, and even internationally by maintaining a law enforcement approach to drug abuse that has clearly failed — an approach Gary Johnson came out to oppose while still in office as governor of New Mexico.

While obviously not as radical as myself, I believe that Gary Johnson is a left-libertarian at heart. And I further think that it would be a fascinating experiment to see him run his campaign specifically to attract progressive voters who have lost faith in Barack Obama. I say this because Obama’s broken promises about closing Guantanamo, abandonment of civil liberties by signing NDAA, and refusal to consider alternatives to drug prohibition have left many on the left without a candidate they can believe. Unlike previous cycles, there’s no name brand candidate running to the left of the Democrat — two little known figures are fighting for the Green nomination and Ralph Nader’s finally sitting one out. There’s opportunity for a left-libertarian to come in and make the case to many progressives, particular younger ones, that freedom in every sphere of life, not just on social issues and civil liberties, is progress in its truest form.

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Please Join Me In Helping Hawa Akther Jui

Adversity
This is not a conventional blog post for me, and those who are disturbed by accounts of severe domestic violence may find it unsettling.

Most people who pursue a degree through eLearning end up having to overcome some sort of adversity to get to graduation. But for most of us that means trying to balance work, family, and study. Sure, that’s a challenge, but it’s nothing compared to the story of Hawa Akther Jui. She’s a young woman in Bangladesh who, like many, decided that she wanted to take advantage of higher education. But her husband, who was working abroad, disapproved of her ambition. She defied him, continuing with her education anyway. On his return to Bangladesh he blindfolded her, gagged her, restrained her right arm, and cut off all of the fingers on her right hand.

He has been arrested for this horrible crime and is likely to be punished severely. Ms. Akther has said she has no desire to have anything more to do with him. But this is not his story, it’s hers.

It’s said that who you are isn’t determined by what happens to you, but instead by how you respond to what happens to you. And Ms. Akther’s response to this is that she is more determined than ever to complete her education. Her right hand cannot be repaired — her husband and one of his relatives ensured this by discarding her fingers so that by the time her family could recover them it was too late for them to be reattached. But she has been been relearning how to write, saying, “I have now started practising writing with my left hand. I want to see how far I can go. I never imagined that my fingers would be chopped off like this because of my studies.”

I’ve never met Hawa Akther Jui, nor even heard of her before I read the BBC article and other articles about what happened to her. But I feel drawn to try to help her, if possible. I expect that she has medical, educational, and living expenses, and I am willing to contribute $100 to help defray them. If you’re reading this, and you would like to help also, please contact me by email to steve@hiresteve.com. I have the contact information for the Bangladesh-based BBC reporter who interviewed her, and would send her the money through him. In the event that Ms. Akther does not need or want any money raised, I would instead donate it to the Asian University for Women, also located in Bangladesh.

No one should have to face this sort of thing, particularly not as a consequence for trying to improve one’s lot in life. If you would like to help, even just to send a little, please get in touch. I’ll be sure to post updates so that everyone who helps finds out what happens.

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Body Surfing

“Surfing soothes me, it’s always been a kind of Zen experience for me. The ocean is so magnificent, peaceful, and awesome. The rest of the world disappears for me when I’m on a wave.” — Paul Walker

Waves III
I recently spent a few days at the beach with the kids, and the older boys and I engaged in one of our favorite seaside activities, body surfing. If you’ve never done this, it’s when you’re out a ways into the sea, just past where waves are cresting as them come into shore. If you start swimming at just the right time with a wave that’s shaped in just the right way, it will pick you up and carry you all the way in.

Obviously, this uses the same principle that surfing with a board does. And sure enough, while we were out there, we were sharing that section of ocean with quite a few surfers on surfboards. But as cool as those folks look, I came to wonder what they were getting out of the experience that we weren’t. They weren’t really any further out when they would catch a wave. They didn’t seem to be able to ride the waves they caught in as far as we could. Most importantly, it seemed to me that the quality of their experience was inferior to ours.

What I mean by that is that the biggest difference I could see is that the board surfers were riding the waves, but we body surfers were becoming part of the waves. There was no intermediary of wood or fiberglass between us and nature; when a wave would pick us up, we and the wave would become as one — at least until we reached the beach and were returned to being our former selves.

Now, I’ve never learned to surf with a board. I’m perfectly open to the possibility that there’s some awesome aspect to it that I simply don’t understand from that lack of experience. But body surfing offers such a strong connection with the wave that one rides that I’m not sure what that aspect would be. If there are any board surfers out there who would like to enlighten me, by all means, please do.

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King Of The Traffic Lights

“At least for now, I’m going to continue to do the commuting thing, … It’s just become part of my life. Sometimes coming home I think, ‘What am I doing? I’m completely insane.’” — Scott Harris


I’ve started at VIU, and so far so good. I’m getting enough to do to keep me on my toes here, but I can see value in what has to be done.

But this post isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey. Specifically, it’s about commuting. As soon as I realized I was looking for work I wouldn’t be doing from home, we realized that we had one car too few. When I worked outside the house before, Adella either was at home or was working close enough that we could carpool. But now she has a far ranging Zumba schedule, and I work too far away for her to be able to drop me off and pick me back up.

I hadn’t really wanted to devote resources to a second car, but there was no choice, and as the saying goes, when life give you lemons, make a whiskey sour. So I decided as long as I was going to get something anyway, it might as well be something fun, like, say, the Mazda Miata I’ve always wanted. Our budget on this was nowhere near that for a new one, or even a middle aged one, but fortunately they’re well made and they’ve been in production since the ’80s, so find one old enough that even I could sort of afford it was possible. I only had to go back to model year 1996 to accomplish this. Yeah, the car is older than my fourteen year old.

But like I said, I’ve wanted one of these for a long time. When I myself was sixteen or so, I went to the local Mazda dealership and asked whether I could test drive one. They let me, and it was awesome. Some of you might be wondering what sort of crack smoking car dealer would let a sixteen year old kid test drive a new car, but I grew up in an affluent area where some parents bought their kids new cars for their birthdays or graduation, so the dealer wasn’t as crazy as he might seem.

Anyway, it really is a fun little car. My mechanic looked it over and said it looks sound, so hopefully it will let me recover from the impact of having had to buy it before it gives me any repair bills.

The other thing is that I’d forgotten how cripplingly insane Northern Virginia rush hour traffic is. I’m “lucky” in that I commute the other way from most drivers, outbound in the morning and inbound in the afternoon, but even at that it’s been bumper-to-bumper both days so far on the Beltway. I’ve decided to give up on it and take local roads all the way. It’s twelve miles from my house to VIU, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but traffic lights have always adored me, turning red on my approach to be able to spend as much time with me as possible. Both days it’s taken forty-five minutes to get to work.

But hey, everyone else does it, right?

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I Found My New Job!

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” — Seneca

VIU logo
This is a pretty exciting follow up to my most recent post. On May 12th I start at Virginia International University as Academic Operations Manager. I’ll be reporting to Dr. Goran Trajkovski, the Dean of the School of Computer Information Systems and the School of Online Education. I understand I’ll be doing a bit of everything, but it’s largely a student facing position, which will be refreshing after a number of years dealing mostly with faculty members and then clients. Even though it’s been rewarding to teach the students I’ve had in my online courses, that’s not the same as getting to know them in person.

I’m interested in VIU for a few reasons. One, as I mentioned, is that the position lets me work with students. But not only that, VIU’s population is 97% international students, and as someone with a long running interest in international higher education, that’s especially interesting to me. The school is also fairly new, having been founded in 1998, started operations in 2000, and becoming accredited in 2008. That newness means that there’s room for diligent, capable people to gain more responsibility than they would at an institution that has been around for decades, and indeed this is something that was suggested to me by a number of people throughout the interview process. I also appreciate that VIU’s goal is to differentiate itself from alternatives by offering a superior service experience to students. In particular, the chance to help build up their online programs should be a blast!

So that’s it in a nutshell. Conventional employment will be an adjustment after nearly two years of working from home, but I’m ready for it.

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Back On The Job Market

“Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.”

So I’ve had a major bit of news this past week. For nearly two years, my two main contracts have been to design and teach courses for LCO Ojibwe Community College, and to write articles and other content pieces for Education Dynamics. The latter has taken up the vast majority of my time since then, and provided a more or less full time income. Unfortunately, however, Education Dynamics has been wrestling with changing market realities lately, and my contract has been reduced pretty dramatically as a result.

On the one hand, I’m fortunate in the sense that I still have them as a client, even if it’s just a few hours worth of work per week. But what’s left isn’t enough work, so I find I’m back in the job market. The name of my web site hasn’t been accurate for a long time, but it seems for the time being it’s exactly right: hire me!

If you or anyone you know needs an educational technologist, higher education administrator, or writer, with experience in for-profit education, non-profit education, and startup environments, please let me know. My resume gives a pretty good idea of what I can do, but I’m also fast to pick up new things, so if there’s something you need done that’s even close, let’s talk about it!

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Important: Unesco Replaces OER Acronym

Unesco logo
Today brings an important announcement from Unesco pertaining to open education. Those educational resources that have been referred to for the past nine years as “Open Educational Resources” are to be renamed. There are two reasons for the end of the use of the OER acronym. One is that there is continuing debate between those who believe these resources should be called “open” and those prefer to term “free” to describe them. Also, simply referring to them as “educational” resources has been shown to exclude many other areas where they have become increasingly important, such as research and training.

As a result, officially they are no more to be referred to as “Open Educational Resources”, or OERs. From 1st April on, they are to be known as “Freely/Openly Enabled Resources Supporting Training, Education, and Research”.

Unesco officials explained that while they realize that many people have become accustomed to the now deprecated “OER” terminology, it is important that these vital, renewable intellectual resources be renamed to something that highlights all of the areas where they are transforming education around the world. As such, it is expected that before long, those in the movement will become familiar with and happy to use the new term “FOERSTER” to describe these crucial resources.

Please make a note of it!

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Spring Cleaning

“Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.” — Samuel Ullman

Now that it’s spring, at least astronomically, many people’s thought turn to spring cleaning. Traditionally that’s meant tidying up the house, getting rid of all the things that accumulated during the winter when it was too cold to spend much time outside, and taking advantage of the newly returned warmth to finally clean out the car. (Those of you with kids know exactly what I mean.)

I think this spring I need to go a step further. I think this year I need a thorough spring cleaning of my brain. Lately I’ve felt bogged down by a life filled with many things to do but without a lot to show for it in terms of reaching my goals. In fact it’s a bit worse than that, sometimes I’m not even sure what my goals are anymore. Just getting to the next paycheck without having a negative bank balance isn’t enough, but that seems to be where too much of my thought every month is going. I’m too young to let things like that make me feel old.

So I’m going to think about what it is that I’m doing, and what I really might want to do instead and start finding better ways of making that happen. Everything is on the table — my approach to school, the contracts I go after, everything. It’s not that everything in my life is bad, far from it. And I do enjoy most of what I do. But increasingly, I have a rudderless feeling, like these things don’t actually add to much of a destination, and with only so many years on this earth, it’s not okay to feel like they’re being… well, not wasted, exactly, but not maximized either.

Going back and rereading this, I see that it seems a bit jumbled. But I think I’ll leave it that way and post it anyway. I expect that in future posts what I’m trying to say will be a bit clearer. Besides, jumbled is a bit how my brain feels. See? A spring cleaning is definitely in order.