The Dumping Ground

Amid the wailing and gnashing of teeth that has accompanied this financial meltdown, one might easily overlook or dismiss as rote the testimony before Congress of the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. But mark my words: Greenspan's testimony yesterday is the single most important thing that will happen in this entire fiasco.

Why such strong words? Because this marks the unequivocal end of perhaps the single most defining U.S. policy of the past two generations: unrestrained ideological free-market capitalism. For the past several decades, our federal fiscal policy has been driven largely by the notion that government meddling decreases a market's ability to most efficiently move capital, and thus hobbling economic growth. Beginning with the Reagan Administration, our regulatory agencies have been systematically stripped of their oversight powers through legislation and executive policies. The idea was that the market would police itself, and regulate itself, better than any government ever could. Despite some bumps and glitches, it seemed to be working, and Alan Greenspan (who was appointed the chairman of the Federal Reserve by President Reagan) was in the middle of it all.

Then the credit markets collapsed, with the potential to take down the entire world economy, and suddenly the truth is painfully obvious: Zero regulation is not the best regulation. Alan Greenspan is an epic heavyweight in the minds of politicians, policy-makers, and the public, and he deserves accolades for abandoning his once-staunch policy theory - to say nothing of his professional legacy and near-mythical status - in the face of evidence to its contrary. But that this great thinker, the maestro of the single longest continual expansion of the U.S. economy, can sit before Congress and say in plain words "I was wrong," means that no politician or policy-maker can continue to espouse those same policies of deregulation and be taken seriously.

The era of unregulated markets is over. Perhaps it was already dying, but Mr. Greenspan plunged the final dagger into its heart yesterday, ensuring the deed was done. Et tu, Alan?

I've been on jury duty all week this week. The experience has been a fascinating glimpse for me into the inner workings of the criminal judicial system, as well as a fascinating glimpse into my own psychological and emotional limits. The trial isn't over yet, so I cannot say anything about that; however, I can talk about my personal experiences.

This is my first time on a jury - or even called up for jury duty. I take such a civic duty quite seriously. Though serving on a jury is second only to voting in importance for securing trust and transparency in our particular civilization, it easily surpasses voting in the impact it on the lives of other people. The responsibility is enormous, even greater than I imagined. Sitting in judgment of another person, with life and liberty at stake, is weighty indeed.

The case has continued on a couple of days longer than the judge expected. From my first night home after a day at the courthouse, despite no more than an hour actually in the courtroom, I was simply overwhelmed. There was so much in my heart and mind, and I simply couldn't get it out. Our instructions from the bench are to speak with nobody about the case, including spouses. Cut off from Hedda's amazing ability to listen, I quickly devolved into a near-depression. Except for a short interlude of wine and beer on Tuesday evening, my week has basically been:

1. Wake up;
2. Go to courthouse;
3. Come home and eat;
4. Sleep.

This reaction surprised me. I wasn't expecting to be so affected. I didn't realize how greatly I needed to talk to somebody - anybody! - about these life-changing judgments placed (partially) upon my shoulders.

Today I'm feeling better than I have all week, though. We started deliberations this afternoon, and with deliberations is lifted the restriction on speaking to my fellow jurors. Upon finally speaking with them, I felt a great tension drain from me, as the reservoir of thoughts and emotions pent up inside me finally had somewhere to go.

I'm looking forward to finishing our deliberations - hopefully tomorrow!

I'm running for ANC 2F03!

This morning, I picked up my petitions for inclusion on the ballot. Soon (probably tonight), I will start collecting signatures in my Single-Member District. If you live in ANC 2F03 and you see a guy with a funny hat carrying a clipboard with pink pages on it, please take a moment to stop and sign. You must be a registered voter, but that's it!

Chris Dyer, the current and long-serving commissioner for ANC 2F03, announced at the last ANC meeting that he would not be seeking reelection this fall. He will be missed. And though it will be impossible to fill his shoes, I am personally looking forward to the opportunity to fight for our neighborhood as best as I can.

I guess I have to get on the ballot first, though. Wish me luck!

Ever wonder where Law & Order episodes come from? If you've ever watched the show, you know that they often scrape the headlines, sometimes mix-and-match style, throw in a homicide, and set Jack McCoy and the Good Cop/Bad Cop on the case. So when I was reading this article about the drug raid on the home of a Maryland mayor, I couldn't help wondering how long it will be until we see the episode on this one. Except for the lack of a murder - easily written in by even a semi-accomplished screenwriter - this one seems to be cake-in-a-box for prime time television.

And now, here are the plot points of my imaginary episode. Determining which are real and which are fake is left as an exercise to the reader.

1. A small-town mayor is suspected of having a lot of drugs.
2. The jurisdiction of the police is fuzzy, overlapping with several neighboring towns.
3. The police are issued a warrant.
4. The police execute the warrant, knocking down the door, shooting two dogs, and discovering an unopened package containing 32 pounds of marijuana.
5. While recovering the body of one of the dogs, which escaped out back, the police also discover a dead body in the back yard. It is identified as a big-city lawyer with 2.5 kids all in an expensive prep school.
6. The police uncover an elaborate plot involving the mayor, the dead lawyer and a big-city drug dealer to use the mayor's house as an exchange location. Police arrest the drug dealer.
7. It turns out that the warrant was a standard search warrant, and not for a no-knock warrant, thus making the search illegal. The mayor's attorney gets the drug charges (32 pounds!!) thrown out, and the murder rap is also teetering, and Jack McCoy the district attorney gets to say "fruits of the poison tree" like six times.
8. The DA figures out how to put everyone away, using a clever legal tactic and impeccable oratorical skills. Everybody gets 25-to-life, and the DA rubs it in their faces with a semi-smug, semi-stoic head wobble. The end.

Sure, it's a brain-dead piece of legislation that simultaneously undermines the longevity of our modern cultural heritage and turns graduate students into criminals, but at least Congress got one part of the DMCA right - even if only by accident. The US Court of Appeals ruled last week that the DMCA doesn't apply to the government.

So after you get over your revulsion at the apparent hypocrisy involved, stop for a minute and think about what great news this is! If the government is excluded from the DMCA, then that means that public libraries are excluded from the DMCA. So while the Air Force might give a half-hearted Huzzah! for their minor victory in cheating one of their own out of the fruits of his labor, the entire preservation community can throw a big party. Libraries can now legally pay to create DRM-circumvention software, finally giving them a chance to legally create and archive copies that might still be playable in fifty years. We might finally have a chance to save our digital heritage!

And lest you think this is a merely academic, let me point you at my recent tour of the National Audio/Visual Conservation Center. The NAVCC is charged with preserving both analog and digital movies. For the latter, they often come on DVDs, and preserving that today means either capturing and re-encoding an analog version of the movie (not so good) or deciphering the video files with (up until now) illegal software. The difficulty faced really hit home when we toured through a room filled with with dozens of DVD drives, used to capture movies.

Do you know about the Astronomy Picture of the Day? It's a site, courtesy of NASA, that showcases a cool, interesting, or sometimes funny picture that comes out of the world of space exploration, astronomy, and cosmology.

For those of us too lazy to go to the site every day, there's even a nice RSS feed to stick into your favorite reader.

Anyway, yesterday's APOD was, I think, the best one ever. Courtesy of that dancing guy, the July 22nd picture is actually a movie; and rather than being about astronomy, it's about things closer to home.

Take five minutes, and check it out. Totally worth it.

This is one of those posts where the title is disproportionately long with the post itself, but whatever.

Vacant properties are a huge problem in DC, and a particular blight in our neighborhood. Owned by everyone from churches to foreign governments to local slumlords to even the DC government, they are dangerous, unsightly, and break up the mesh of our urban village. But what do you do about them?

At the same time, one of my pet issues is the difficulty the people who serve our neighborhood have in finding places to live here. Our police should live in the neighborhoods they protect. Our teachers deserve to teach the students they meet in the street. Our fire fighters ought not live seventy miles away when a three-alarm blaze hits. But the city has so far provided no good ideas for addressing the lack of affordable housing for those who, while not below the poverty line, are underpaid thanks to our screwed-up value system.

I can't believe I've never thought of it before, but Cary Silverman, who we are supporting in his bid for the Ward 2 council seat currently occupied by Jack Evans, has a great idea about this. Turn vacant property into affordable housing for exactly this purpose! Simply brilliant!