Libraries Still Relevant: Keep Reading (and Paying Your Taxes)

The other day I had an engaging conversation with an eager reader on the street who wondered if many of our fellow South Dakotans are doing any reading and thinking when they vote.

I can't speak to the thinking, but Mr. Gebhart points to encouraging evidence of reading:

The role of libraries and their reinvention is, I think, documented by what Siouxland Libraries has seen since renovating and expanding its main branch. The first six months since the main branch reopened to the public saw record use. During that time, the main library had close to 7,000 visitors a day and patrons borrowed nearly 267,000 items, a 17 percent increase over the same time period in the last year of normal operation. It’s clear the demand isn’t just for printed material. For example, there were almost 54,000 sessions of computer use during that period, meaning the computers there are being used roughly 300 times a day [Tim Gebhart, "Library Dealing with Reinvention Curve," A Progressive on the Prairie, 2010.11.18].

I'll take that as cause for cultural optimism. People want to learn. We need books and libraries and free public Internet access for that learning. In a democracy that depends on educated voters, we have a community obligation to pay for good libraries.

Hamiel and Turbak Berry to Attack Blogs and First Amendment?

Why do I feel like Google in China?

Following up on a story he broke last night, Dakota War College posted the following proposed legislation purportedly from Rep. Noel Hamiel of Mitchell and Senator Nancy Turbak Berry of Watertown earlier this evening. No such bill has been filed yet. The post showed up in my RSS feed. The original post appears to have disappeared from DWC. Perhaps the chilling effect of such a disastrously unconstitutinoal piece of legislation is already kicking in. Here's the leaked copy of this blog-killing purported legislation:

For an act entitled, An act to provide for a process of obtaining certain information from online content providers in slander and libel actions.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
Section 1. That chapter 20-11 be amended by adding thereto a NEW SECTION to read as follows:
Any person who allows internet posts shall keep a record of the internet-protocol logs adequate to provide identifciaton and location of otherwise unknown, anonymous, or pseudonymous persons who leave or upload content. However, no person may be compelled to produce such information except in response to a court order.
Section 2. That chapter 20-11 be amended by adding thereto a NEW SECTION to read as follows:
Any party seeking an order compelling production of internet-protocol logs, whether in an action brought under this chapter or under common law shall establish:
(1.) That the request for infoamtion is made in good faith and not for any improper purpose;
(2 )That the information sought relates to a material claim or defense;
(3.) That the identifying information is directly and materially relevant to that claim or defense; and
(4.) That the information sufficient to establish or to disprove that claim or defense is unavailable from any other source.
Section 3. For the purposes of this ACT the term, internet, is the same as the term is defined in 37-24-41.

As other users of free site tracking software know, we don't get permanent archives of identifiable IP info on our users. A law like the above, if passed and enforced, would mean bloggers around the state would be shutting down comments, if not shutting down their blogs entirely.

Is that what our legislators want? Is the online monitoring and discussion of their actions in Pierre just too much democracy for them to handle?

A bill like this would be an enormous threat to the First Amendment and our ability to hold our legislators accountable through online discourse. Rep. Hamiel, Sen. Turbak Berry, if you really have legislation like this in your briefcase, if you are really thinking about placing it in the hopper for the full Legislature to consider, think again. A law like the above would be a bad, bad, bad idea.

And if you do file this legislation, expect calls. Lots of calls. And e-mails.

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Update 22:23 CST: "any person"—I assume that includes corporations. Have fun applying this law to Twitter. They're working on technology to circumvent censorship by oppressive governments.

But if Pierre really wants to shut the blogosphere up, they could just make us all get licenses to post Web content. Works like a charm in China.

Legislature: Roads, Farmers Markets, Pipeline Tax, and Corporate Democracy

Some legislative notes to sprinkle on your Wheaties:

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The State Senate Transportation Committee has unanimously killed SB1, the road tax increases. What was that Senator Mike Vehle from Mitchell said in October?

Everyone in this committee.. has a feeling that we need to do something... We'd all like to do probably a lot more than we feel in a recession we can do. But we need to take a hard look and be ready to explain to our colleagues the need that our highways have.... [A]ny society that lets its infrastructure fail or start to fail is also going down a wrong road and putting our society in jeopardy [Senator Mike Vehle, 2009.10.14].

Senator Vehle yesterday abandoned the bill, deciding he didn't want to fight to convince his colleagues to pay for the roads that get them to Pierre and back. Oh well. Maybe we all can just stop driving and do all our business online.

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If we can still get to the farmers markets over our new gravel roads, we might find more local sellers. Democrat Pam Merchant from Brookings is proposing House Bill 1222 to exempt farmers market vendors from licensing requirements. The bill does add some labeling requirements—basically a sticker to say this food's homegrown; if you have allergies, you take your chances. But essentially, HB 1222 is Democrats promoting deregulation for small local businesspeople. I bet the Republican-controlled Legislature kills this one. Please, Russ, prove me wrong!

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Republicans and Democrats are working together to try again to get a pipeline tax. Senate Bill 161 imposes a two-cent-per-barrel tax on oil pumping through big pipelines (i.e., TransCanada's) in South Dakota. Two cents per barrel: at today's crude oil prices, that's a 0.027% tax—less than three cents on every hundred dollars TransCanada will make. And like previous measures, SB 161 caps the tax at $30 million and dedicates it to a fund to clean up oil spills and other messes TransCanada will make.

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Senator Heidepriem says if corporations really are persons qualified to participate in democratic processes, then they should behave democratically. His Senate Bill 165 tells corporations, "Go ahead! Contribute to politicians and campaigns. But you have to get the approval of a majority of your stockholders first." Ah, democracy!

Independent Candidate B.T. Marking Promotes Nationwide e-Democracy

Seth Tupper pops the press release first; the general media follows up with a couple sentences: professed independent B. Thomas Marking from Custer has declared his candidacy for South Dakota's lone U.S. House seat. Lifelong government employee Marking offers some small-government talk about citizen rights and small bills—but seriously, people, this idea that a bill is bad because it is long is wearing thin: screaming, "Oh no! So many pages!" feels like a lazy freshman's excuse for not engaging with the true complexity of policy issues.

Marking also offers some views on energy independence (o.k.), a vague call for personal responsibility as the solution to health care costs (dodging the issue), and securing the borders (any daylight between him and pro-immigration Black Hills neighbor Thad Wasson?).

What really catches my attention, though, is Marking's call for electronic democracy. Far from the pointless Tea Party hyperventilations of "Republic not a Democracy!!!" Marking actually thinks we need more direct democracy. In an October 11 comment in the Custer County Chronicle, Marking calls to task editor Norma Najacht for a little "RNAD" ramble:

Walt Whitman, in about 1860, noted that democracy \"is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened . . . It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.\" Whitman\'s words are as true today as then. The ideal of democracy has never been achieved, not in ancient Athens, not even in modern Switzerland. And pure democracy may never be achieved on the level of the nation-state. That said, this beautiful concept must be kept alive and vigorously defended. It will always be the standard by which we gauge the shortcomings of all other forms of government, most especially our own.

...A constitutional republic was the best we could do in colonial times. It was a revolutionary departure from oppressive monarchy -- the system the founding fathers really feared. In the past 233 years, however, our world has changed a bit. At least one founding father, Thomas Jefferson, knew that \"laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.\" Alas, our institutions of government have not kept pace. Furthermore, if modern technologies can take us closer to democratic governance, why settle for something less? [B. Thomas Marking, comment, Custer County Chronicle, 2009.10.11]

Marking's #1 goal is to use modern technology to allow us, the voters of South Dakota, to directly control his work in Congress:

Within 90 days of being sworn in, my staff will set up a secure computer system and register all interested South Dakota voters, so they can begin voting on national policy issues (domestic and foreign). The majority decisions of these referenda will dictate my voting on bills brought to the floor of the House. (Relax. If the internet isn't your thing, we'll accept paper ballots.) [B. Thomas Marking, "Goal 1," campaign website, retrieved 2009.11.06]

Wowza! That's actually a cool idea, a step more radical than the relatively simple participatory but non-binding information system I've conceived of for the South Dakota Legislature (shades of OpenCongress.org). Mr. Marking has even written a novel, Amendment XXIX, on the issue.

I suspect even amidst Tea Party fervor, South Dakota's voters (and the mainstream media, which needs a much simpler two-party battle narrative) probably won't give half a hoot about independent candidates. But I hope Mr. Marking can get his foot in the door and start a conversation about electronic democracy.

What would Jefferson do? Given the Internet, he might side with Marking and recognize that today's tech tools make possible a direct, lively democracy that the Founding Fathers couldn't make work in horse-and-buggy days.

Obama Duly Wary on Iran: Ahmadinejad and Mousavi Not Too Different

Before we get all excited about expressing our forceful support for democratic uprisings in Iran (and believe me, I want to), let's remind ourselves why this fight between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is more complicated than a nice Hollywood good-vs.-evil script. As Mr. Woodring appropriately reminds us, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the main opposition candidate around whom Tehran's street protesters are rallying, is connected with terrorist attacks on American soldiers. He was Iran's prime minister in the 1980s, when Iran orchestrated the terror campaign that included the 1983 Beirut bombing that killed 241 American soldiers and 58 French soldiers.

Former CIA Middle East field officer Bob Baer explains Mousavi's politics:

"When Mousavi was Prime Minister, he oversaw an office that ran operatives abroad, from Lebanon to Kuwait to Iraq," Baer continued.

"This was the heyday of [Ayatollah] Khomeini's theocratic vision, when Iran thought it really could export its revolution across the Middle East, providing money and arms to anyone who claimed he could upend the old order."

Baer added: "Mousavi was not only swept up into this delusion but also actively pursued it" [Jeff Stein, "Mousavi, Celebrated in Iranian Protests, Was the Butcher of Beirut," CQPolitics, 2009.06.22].

President Obama recognizes that there is not much difference on policy between the current regime and Mousavi. As ABC's Jake Tapper notes, Iran's nuclear program was restarted under Mousavi in 1987. He doesn't recognize Israel, and his response to a question about Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial feels slippery at best.

Supporting democracy is good, but we must also look at the practical results of that democracy. Hamas won the 2006 elections in Palestine, and we felt a little egg on our faces for having pushed for elections that produced results inimical to our interests. Sometimes I can't help wondering if some conservatives are pushing for a "more forceful" response from our president to the Iranian turmoil just so they can blame Obama for whichever pro-nuclear, anti-Israel candidate is in charge of Iran.

No Election for Lake Herman Sanitary District

While Iranians fight for fair and honest democracy, Lake Herman residents prefer not to raise any electoral hubbub. For lack of interest, the Lake Herman Sanitary District will not be holding an eleection this July. Two seats are open on the board, but only one candidate, incumbent Lawrence Dirks, submitted a petition by last weeks deadline. We will thus swear Dirks in at our next meeting and go on as we always have, two guys making decisions about tax dollars with no mandate other than the indifference of our neighbors. —sigh—.

Vaclav Havel to Iran: 'Virtue in Working for a Good Cause"

I know better than to believe that the current protests in Iran will lead to some quick Hollywood ending where law and democracy and the good guys win. Hope for the best, but expect Tiananmen Square.

Playwright and former Czech President Vaclav Havel knows a thing or two about fighting what appears to be a losing battle against an oppressive regime. He wrote plays and philosophical tracts that critiqued the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. He sat in prison for years for his words. And 21 years after seeing the Prague Spring crushed by the Soviet/Warsaw Pact military, he oversaw a bloodless revolution and became president of his country.

Havel offers a few words of encouragement for the Iranian supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi who think the Ahmadinejad government is trying to steal the presidential election:

Interviewer: You are well-known and highly respected by many people in Iran. What would you like to say to Iranians directly?

Havel: [I would tell them that] I sympathize with them, that I'm keeping my fingers crossed for them and I would advise them not to fall prey to skepticism if they do not achieve immediate results in spite of their efforts.

These efforts are important in and of themselves because there is virtue in working for a good cause. And these efforts can pay off later, God knows when, God knows how. But you cannot time it. That, at least, is our experience [emphasis mine; interview, "Havel Expresses Solidarity with Iranian Demonstrators," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2009.06.15].

Even if your words and deeds do not produce the results—or the regime change—you seek, you do your soul good by fighting the good fight. That's pretty strong idealism.

Havel also recommends a dose of idealism for politicians outside Iran trying to figure out what to say and do:

...expressions of solidarity with those who are defending human rights, with students and others, are important. In general, oil should not be more important than human rights [emphasis mine].

Vive la liberté en ligne! French Court Recognizes Internet as Fundamental Right

Hat tip to Progressive on the Prairie!

Here in America, broadcast television has disappeared from the western shore of Lake Herman. In January, we received five channels, maybe seven if the planets aligned. The signal degraded with the warm weather, and now, with the analog-to-digital switchover finally complete, our federally subsidized converter box finds not one usable signal in the air. (Advertisers, if you want the Lake Herman demographic, call KJAM... or Hulu.)

As TV dies, the French are declaring the Internet a fundamental right. Just last month, le Parlement français passed legislation to crack down on online piracy of music and video: les citoyens caught downloading illegal content would have received three e-mail warnings before having their Internet access cancelled for a year. (Reminds me of the 1980s Twilight Zone episode where a man convicted of "coldness" is sentenced to one year of invisibility, where no one is allowed to communicate with him.) President Nicolas Sarkozy thought this legislation was a great idea, as did his chanteuse wife Carla Bruni, whose pop albums would have been among the numerous copyrighted works protected. Sarkozy's darned Socialist opponents appealed, saying the law gave too much power to France's new Internet policing agency, the HADOPI.

The Socialists won. The Constitutional Council, France's highest court, ruled last week that the legislation went too far. Citing Article 11 of the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, the court held that Internet access is now an essential means for supporting the "free communication of thoughts and opinions." The Internet is vital to participation in democratic life. If you want to take that away from someone, you've got to prove your case in court, not just issue an arbitrary ruling from some administrative body like HADOPI.

As explained in the Times Online and Ars Technica, the court additionally found that HADOPI's Internet surveillance authority breached individual privacy rights. It also violated the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" by cutting off pirates without allowing them a chance to defend themselves (or at least brandish their cutlasses). Pirates could get a hearing, but they would have the burden of proof to show they hadn't been naughty (rather like IRS audits).

I know the declaration of the French court (which agrees with votes by the European Parliament) isn't binding here in the New World where we invented the Internet. But it poses a fascinating political question: Do you and I have a right to this technological service? Applying the reasoning of le Conseil Constitutionnel, does the state have an obligation to provide Internet access to all communities? And can any other media—print, radio, television—make a similar claim to be so fundamental to our democratic life that only a judge can take it away?

I'll miss television, but I don't plan to make a federal case out of it. Everything worth watching is on either YouTube, Hulu, C-SPAN, or Netflix. And when it comes to la vie démocratique, TV is just too passive, too one-way. The Internet is a much better tool not just for informing citizens but in opening the door for them to inform each other (what do you think we're doing here on the Madville Times?) and participate in democracy in ways that were impossible twenty years ago.

*libre, as in freedom, not gratuit, as in without cost.

Vote for New Madison Library Card Design!

Online democracy rears its mighty head again in Madison: I just learned from the city website that the Madison Public Library is taking votes online for its new library card design! Cat lovers appear to have stuffed the preliminary entries or had an in with the judge pool that included three feline designs among the five finalists.

Voting appears to close Friday, so hop to it. You might say it's only a library card, but I say it's democracy! Never miss a chance to vote!

HB 1187: Fire 30 Legislators?

How many legislators does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Speaking of smaller government, Representative Brock Greenfield (R-6/Clark) has filed House Bill 1187, which declares the Legislature's intent to downsize itself by almost a third, to a 25-member Senate and 50-member House.

Considering that legislators (including good Republican Reps. Rave and Noem) declined Monday to cut their own pay by 5%, the chances that they'll put 30 of themselves out of their part-time jobs seem pretty slim.

Even if HB 1187 might save money, do we really want to reduce the number of voices being heard in Pierre? 30 fewer representatives in the Capitol could represent a significant dilution of the popular voice. Some reps would end up having to cover a lot of territory to reach all of their constituents. Our District 8, for instance, already spans four counties along a hundred miles of Highway 34. The Internet is nice for keeping in touch, but it still doesn't replace a good face-to-face crackerbarrel.

30 fewer legislators saves $180K in legislator salaries and some administrative expenses. But that also means a third more constituent complaints and requests and other work that each legislator has to handle. It would mean fewer kids who get to serve as pages and witness legislative work firsthand. It would mean fewer legislators that the governor has to strong-arm to get his way.

If all this bill does is save money, that's not good enough. I'll need to hear an argument that a smaller legislature is good for democracy before I can support it.

Obama Was Here: Student Photos at SF Lincoln

While judging debate at Sioux Falls Lincoln HS this weekend, I got to hear an interp round in Room 404, which appears to be home base of the LHS Statesman. I found this wall-size reminder of why last year's long primary season was so good for South Dakota and the country:


Lincoln HS journalists Lauren Thompson and Ellen Reinecke took these excellent photos at Barack Obama's campaign rally in Sioux Falls back in May. Great work, ladies!


Thanks to the primary season going the distance, kids all around the country, all the way to here in South Dakota, got to see history. They saw and heard and shook hands with historical figures like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton.


And now, as Barack Obama prepares to swear the oath, take the reins, and lead the free world, there are that many more kids and adults for whom the President of the United States is not just a character on TV or a name in the headlines. He is a real person, whose picture they've taken, whose eyes they have met, whose hand they have grasped.


That kind of broader contact, thanks to the long primary season, was nothing but good for South Dakota and for democracy. GOP, bring us a campaign like that in 2012.

Dissent: Spark of Deliberative Democracy

I just finished reading Cass R. Sunstein's Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge. (The book is an extension of an academic yet accessible paper Sunstein wrote for the NYU Law Review.) Basic thesis: group deliberation doesn't always produce good answers. We form project teams, committees, juries, legislatures, etc., because we believe as Aristotle did that different people hold different pieces of knowledge and opinions that deliberation will bring together into the most complete and correct explanation or plan or verdict possible. Sometimes, though, the pressures we feel in a group to go along with the leader or the popular opinion prevent us from contributing the different pieces of knowledge and opinions we hold. Going along to get along (or to just not look stupid in front of everyone else) can lead to really bad group decisions (Sunstein cites the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the CIA's threat assessment of Iraq in 2002–03; for another example, step back and take a hard look at your next team meeting at work.)

Sunstein doesn't say we should pitch democratic deliberation and install a philosopher king (put that application down, David Bergan). Rather, we need to be keenly aware of the pressures that stifle the sharing of information and ideas in group settings and consciously counter them. One way to do that: vigorous dissent. Every group needs at least one person who is willing to disagree with what might look like the majority opinion. Says Sunstein [p. 67]:

People are much more willing to say what they know if other dissenters are present and if a principle of equality is widely accepted within the group.

Dissent and disagreement produce better decisions, even in the midst of urgent, dangerous situations. Sunstein points to the 1948 book Administrative Reflections from World War II, in which Luther Gulick maintained that the United States outperformed the Axis powers in part due to our democratic decision-making processes. The Axis dictators lived in information cocoons, hearing only what they wanted to hear (tends to happen when advisors are afraid they'll be shot or sent to the Eastern Front if they challenge the Führer). FDR still had to deal with public scrutiny and criticism. FDR also liked to draw out conflicting views by privately leading his advisors to believe he agreed with them, thus encouraging them to more fully develop and defend their conflicting ideas, which then contributed to better deliberative synthesis.

Whether we're working at the university, a corporate office, or the White House (note to Obama: break the info cocoon; keep the Blackberry!), we may need a "fundamental definition" of teamwork:

Frequently, a team player is thought to be someone who does not respect the group's consensus. But it would be possible, and a lot better, to understand team players as those who increase the likelihood that the team will be right—if necessary, by disrupting the conventional wisdom [Sunstein, p. 201].

Sometimes the best thing you can do for your team is to argue against it. Sometimes being contrary is your civic duty.

You're welcome.