North Texas Nonconformist

An explanation of the two different types of banking...and how/why the banking system is currently in disarray, from a banker based in Paris.
The Tax Foundation publishes a lot of interesting data on taxation in the USA. This table from its web site shows the ration of Federal taxes paid to Federal dollars obtained by the States in the Union.
Calculated Risk is an interesting blog dealing with economics and finance. Amongst its current postings is a pointer to the fact that both Chrysler and GM are coming back for yet more money (who would have guessed? No surprise to me, having watched the slow death of the UK-owned volume car industry in the 1980's for reasons that are partly similar to the issues here).
Doctor Housing Bubble discusses and reports on property market issues, both from a practical dollars-and-cents perspective, and from a wider societal perspective. The Housing Bubble Blog provides a round-up of news on the housing market from around the country by pointing to and summarizing articles and news about housing markets. As you might expect, not much of the news is good right now. Neither blog is afflicted with housing market cheerleading; the last thing I need right now is a realtor attempting to convince me that we have reached bottom in the housing market...
And back in the UK...Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's expenses claim included adult films viewed by her husband...WHHHOOOOPS...

Mike Doogan is a Democratic State Representative in Alaska. A couple of days ago, for reasons which remain unclear, he decided to reveal the name of the author of the blog Mudflats, which deals with Alaska politics and governance. The author operates the blog under a pseudonym.
Doogan chose to "out" the blogger without permission, using a constituent newsletter presumably created using state resources.
Doogan's response to complaints about this action has been dismissive at best, and bullyingly obnoxious at worst.
Doogan has provided no cogent explanation for why he stripped away the author's privacy in this fashion. His action is similar to other such actions taken in the past, usually by authoritarian commentators and journalists, who seem to operate on the principle that one's opponents do not have any privacy rights.
This is nothing more than bullying and threatening behaviour designed to induce fear. It is beneath contempt, and for this reason I have no hesitation in making Mike Doogan my Jerk Of The Week for this action. And Mike, if you're reading this, by all means put me on your "list". I shall accept it as a badge of honor, and when the time comes for your re-election I will donate to your primary opponents. You're a mean-spirited bully, and you need to be removed from elected office before you poison the governance process any further.

While contemplating a lot of things following a spat with a friend online this morning (outcome uncertain), I went off to see if I could find some cogent discussions or elaborations on the nature of patriotism.
Growing up in the UK, I personally observed a positive correlation between claimed patriotism and authoritarianism, often accompanied by a militaristic component. The British National Party, a motley collection of authoritarian and racist scumbags, usually claimed to be patriots, railed against other politicians for conniving in the decay of the UK, and wrapped themselves in the Union Jack. They were not a pleasant or positively convincing collection of people. I also noticed the positive correlation between mob violence (often originating with soccer supporters) and the frequency with which those violent people wore flag grab such as t-shirts and hats. I saw those types of people attempting to demolish bars in my home town as an adolescent.
I thus have a background that has left me extremely wary of any overt claims of "patriotism", and especially wary of any group of people who wave a nation's flag as they seek to assert their patriotism. By extension, I am also wary of people who denigrate other people for being "unpatriotic" either because they refuse to uncritically support their country, or because they do not respect the flag. In the 1970's I saw numerous street demonstrations in the UK where angry demonstrators would burn the Union Jack as a way of demonstrating their dislike for the UK or its policies. Aside from a small community of mostly retired military people, there were few people who were incensed with these displays, and there was no attempt made to ban flag-burning.
I was dismayed by the atmosphere that descended in the USA after 9/11. It seemed that many people were unable or unwilling to understand the difference between dissent and disloyalty. I was personally invited to leave the country during a discussion by a work colleague (he seemed to have temporarily forgotten the irony that he was married to a German) because I disagreed with his worldview. I also had at least 2 other people stop speaking to me because I disagreed with their ideas about how to respond to 9/11. Included in this population was a work colleague who asserted that the Constitution only applied to citizens, and when I produced my copy of the Constitution and asked him to find the exclusion, responded by saying "well it should exclude non-citizens", which essentially terminated the discussion.
All of those incidents, plus the more recent incident, left me wondering "what is patriotism, what types of patriotism are there, and what does research tell us about the worldviews and pathologies underlining patriotism?"
One interesting facet of patriotism as a concept is that there is very little useful empirical research on it. You can't find much in the way of interesting reading on patriotism as a concept. Views of patriotism tend to occupy a dichotomy between the worldview that Patriotism is a good thing (and there should be a lot more of it) and the worldview that (to recycle an old quote) Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I did find this blog posting, that examined research and posits that there are two basic types of patriotism:

...divide patriotism into two main types: blind and constructive patriotism, and these two types seem to line up almost perfectly with the situation described in the opening paragraph. In this paragraph, they describe the two types:
[B]lind patriotism [is] a rigid and inflexible attachment to country, characterized by unquestioning postitive evaluation, staunch allegiance, and intolerance of criticsm. These factors comprise core elements of Kelman's "sentimental attachment" to country. In contrast, constructive patriotism refers to an an attachment to country characterized by "critical loyalty, questioning and criticism of current group practices that are driven by a desire for positive change". Both orientations are "patriotic" in the core sense of positive identficiation with feelings of affective attachment to country. However, the blind patriot views national criticism and dissent as inherently disloyal, whereas the constructive patriot does not. Instead, the constructive patriot may criticize and even actively oppose the nation's actions because he or she believes they violate fundamental percepts or are contrary to long-term national interests.

Having read the blog posting, I think I am now able to distinguish the pathologies that I have encountered. It seems that some of my post-9/11 encounters were with blind patriots, or at least, people who were behaving in that fashion at the time.
What the articles fail to make clear is how situational the two types of patriotism might be, and the extent to which people can morph their views between the two types. For example, is it possible that a lot of constructive patriots were converted to blind patriots by the shock and horror of 9/11? And if so, have some (or most) of them now reverted to constructive patriotism?
As an adolescent victim of bullying, I find that a lot of the time, blind patriots appear to me as intolerant bullies, which sensitizes me to their presence and arguments. Quite simply, I will not tolerate any behaviour that I construe as bullying. Remarks like "if you don't agree you need to leave the country" are not worthwhile arguments, they are merely the verbal outputs of a bullying pathology that is going to get short shrift from me. When I heard a variant of this argument from my work colleague in 2001, I ended the conversation and did not spend any more time talking to him. Bullies deserve nothing more than contempt from those that they attempt to bully.

As we watch the train-wreck that is the AIG bonus mess continue to unfold, it is worth while remembering that none of what we are witnessing is really new, at least in terms of human behaviour. Not too many years ago, we watched the implosion of Enron, a corporation that, with hindsight, was dominated by a the mindset so appropriately dubbed "Master Of The Universe" by Tom Wolfe in his book "The Bonfire Of The Vanities", which is still one of the great tales of greed, hubris and excess (Gordon Gecko's infamous "Greed is good" speech in the movie "Wall Street" could have been lifted entirely from "Bonfire Of The Vanities").
This interesting article was written a few years ago on the subject of Enron and other related corporate malfeasances of the time.The messages in the article are just as relevant to the AIG fiasco. Here is the most directly applicable one (which is also the most chilling):

The "few rotten apples" theory ignores the fact that affairs like Enron and WorldCom were not isolated incidents—nor were they conducted conspiratorially and surreptitiously. What is now conveniently labeled "misconduct" was an open secret. Information — albeit often relegated to footnotes — was available. The charismatic malignant narcissists who headed these corporations were cheered on by investors — small and institutional alike. Their grandiose fantasies were construed as visionary. Their sense of entitlement—never commensurate with their actual achievements — was tolerated forgivingly. Their blatant exploitation of co-workers and stakeholders was part of the ethos of the virile Anglo-Saxon, natural selection, can-do, dare-do version of capitalism. Everyone colluded in this mass psychosis. There are no victims here—only scapegoats.

UPDATE - Here is another interesting article about Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

...was a study eagerly cited to me by a work colleague who argued that the media in the USA has a left-wing or liberal bias. I did try to point out to him that any argument based on "liberal" vs. "conservative" or "left-wing' vs. "right-wing" is obsolete; the right discussion topic is libertarianism vs. authoritarianism. I didn't get very far with that part of the debate.
I read the UCLA study that he cited, and found it to be no different in may respects to several other studies that I have read in the past, all of which claimed to demonstrate some degree of bias within the media. Since I consider the real issue in media reporting to be truth and full coverage of issues, rather than bias, I find most of these studies to be at best peripheral and at worst totally irrelevant to the current reality that most mainstream media outlets in the USA are a waste of human endeavour.
I just found this dissection of the UCLA study in Media Matters. The most important part of this dissection to me was the demonstration of the extent to which the authors either overlooked or ignored a large amount of preceding academic research on the topic.
Whenever I see people who represent themselves as scholars or experts ignoring most of the previous endeavours in their field, I tend to become rather skeptical of their credibility. After all, would you place much faith in the diagnosis of a doctor if during his discussion with you he admitted "I don't read most medical textbooks and articles"?

By commenter Justcorbly, who does a good job of explaining why the media is a terrible forum for any form of balanced discussion:

The way most of the media portrays balance is the way those car magazines I read as a kid reviewed new models: They pair them off in phony combat with some other brand. Camaro vs. Firebird! Corvette versus 911!.
It's the same way PC Magazine would review things like printers in its special annual "All The Printers In The World" issue (just aother 450-page magazine, with printer companies placing ads mysteriously close to the reviews of their products). Epson versus Lexmark! Canon versus Brother!
It was, and is, an effort to frame almost every story as a zero-sum battle to the death. That's what drives much of media, not a compulsion to deliver balance.

When I first arrived in Dallas in 1994 on a 1 year overseas assignment from the UK, it did not take me long to discover that the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) was the sort of organization that Will Rogers would have loved to report on. For examples of incompetence, malfeasance and just plain awful governance, DISD truly is the gift that keeps on giving.
Not too long ago, DISD "discovered" that it had a budget shortfall of at least $60m, and possibly as high as $80m. The fact that nobody seemed to be able to provide a consistent number for the shortfall, or explain how the shortfall had occurred, ought to have been cause for the termination of at least some DISD officials. However, the N.O. Body syndrome appeared to eliminate accountability, and the DISD set about cutting left right and center to balance the books.
Now, courtesy of the Dallas Observer, we learn that on 21st November the DISD proposed to extend the term of DISD trustees from 3 to 4 years. This proposal would be extremely convenient, in that 3 trustees would be up for election early next year, and 2 of them happen to be supporters of the current superintendent, Michael Hinojosa.
The Dallas Observer article, in best Molly Ivins style, summarizes the proposal thusly:

The Dallas school board, in the throes of the worst fiscal crisis in the history of the district and growing voter unrest, this week will consider dealing with its political problems by suspending upcoming school board elections.
No, now, I told you. This is not a joke. This is not a bulletin from Zimbabwe. The Dallas school board at its November 20 meeting will vote on canceling school board elections due to take place next May.
In fact, it's a little worse than that. They don't just want to cancel the election. They want to do it without public debate.

Earlier this year, I kept reading conspiracy theory suggestions that President Bush was planning to cancel the 2008 Presidential Elections on some pretext...but it seems that DISD has boldly decided to actually implement a similar idea to perpetuate the terms of office of trustees, who, I would suggest, ought to be accepting at least some miniscule smidgeon of accountability for the unholy financial mess that the DISD has been mired in. They, as far as I can tell, voted to appoint the leaders and officers who were in charge when DISD suddenly "discovered" its budget shortfall.
This is not like a third world country. The DISD is operating right now as a third world country within a city. This sort of behaviour is just mind-bogglingly unbelieveable. It resembles the worst duplicity, anti-democratic actions and attitudes of Stalinist Russian. Josef Stalin would be laughing from his grave.
It might be worth noting that this sort of unbelievable behaviour is not exactly new in this part of Texas. Next door to DISD, the Wilmer-Hutchins ISD was shut down in 2005 by TEA after continued decline, poor academic performance, and accusations of corruption and malfeasance from all points of the compass. This 2004 article provides some insight into the mess.
UPDATE - It seems that the proposal was passed by a 7-2 majority at the school board meeting, with no serious debate, and in the teeth of clear public opposition.
This sort of egregiously anti-democratic behaviour is going to continue until electors toss all of the current DISD trustees from office. Until electors fire school boards and trustees for Stalinist nonsense like this, the bad behaviour and endemic stupidity and waste wihin the DISD will most likely continue.
Over to the electorate.
UPDATE 2 - Not to be outdone, the Lancaster ISD has now joined the North Texas School Board Malfeasance Contest, via the investigation of their superintendent for various alleged malfeasances. Examples:

...an outside investigator reported that Dr. Lewis used district funds to give employees interest-free loans, authorized payroll advances to himself and other employees and handed out cash prizes to employees.

If these allegations are true, and another superintendent is fired, I'm starting to wonder if there is something in the water in North Texas. Something that electors are drinking, which renders them consistently unable to stop voting idiots into positions of power on school boards. If you wanted to make a compelling case that local electors are not capable of making sound decisions on these aspects of local governance, you won't have to go far to find the evidence.
UPDATE 3 - The Lancaster ISD board has now fired the superintendent...
UPDATE 4 - The Lancaster ISD superintendent has now asked for a public hearing on his case...
UPDATE 5 - A settlement has been reached between Superintendent Lewis and the Lancaster ISD. He will work out his contract until July 2009 and then leave with a cash settlement.

From the UK blogger The Osterley Times comes this highly useful comparison between politics in the USA and the UK.
One of the more amazing memes that has become prevalent here (to my dismay, I have already heard it from at least 3 friends in the last 2 months), is that Barack Obama is a "socialist" or is going to introduce "socialism".
My response is usually to ask them to define "socialism", which often leads to confusion, since they usually got the term off of talk radio, and they have no idea what it means. Another possible response is to point out that in absolute political terms, calling Barack Obama socialist is so far off the mark as to be embarrassing. Most mainstream members of the Democratic Party would be regarded as highly conservative in European countries, including the UK, where Obama would feel right at home in the Conservative Party.
The main thrust of The Osterley Times is to point out that most of the memes and debating points being deployed by fringe commentators in the USA who are opposed to the Obama administration would not be taken seriously in the UK, because they would be regarded at best as irrelevant, and more likely would be dismissed as intellectually and morally bankrupt. To wit:

Bush, when asked about the criticism of waterboarding - which he refuses to see as torture, despite the fact that the US itself has prosecuted people for doing that very thing - asked, "Which attack would they rather not have stopped?" He actually acted as if this could be sold as a "red pen or blue pen" scenario where one has to choose between torture and attacks.
No British politician could dare sit on national TV and make that argument. But in the US, Bill O'Reilly can sit on national television and actually argue that people who oppose torture are "despicable".

As he neatly summarizes:

Every society has politicians who hold disgraceful positions on things like torture, abortion and gay rights; but I can think of no European country, indeed almost no country anywhere outside the Muslim world, where a political party who espoused such views could possibly hope to be taken seriously.