Joe Weinstein’s Blog

Review - overview, critique and response - of:

‘Is Democracy Possible?’ (John Burnheim, 1989, U. California Press)

SUMMARY

As a practical basis for their persistent rational advocacy of change, political reformers require a set of sufficiently complete and consistent quantifiable goals for performance of public decision-making bodies. This landmark book largely fails to articulate such goals, but it does recognize the need for them, and it moreover gives an inspiring account, at once visionary and practical, of major democratic features of the political system that cogent reform goals will likely require. In a forthcoming essay this reviewer will not only propose an initial set of quantifiable performance goals but also will illustrate how such goals may be used in the rational selection of reform aims, and in other reform decisions.

OVERVIEW

In its introduction this book acknowledges that pure democracy - all the people making all the public decisions - is impossible or ineffectual, at least given today’s large populations. However, the practical question is whether a version of democratic governance, notably better than today’s regimes, is possible; and if so then what might be its essential features. The book well answers this question in the affirmative. Its proposed solution for political structure, termed demarchy, is defined by two readily understood and envisioned, though as yet untypical, features (pp. 7 and 9), namely ‘functional autonomy and ’statistical representation.’

FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY replaces today’s monolithic ’state’ - i.e. sovereign multi-purpose regimes, such as nation-states or all-services cities - by autonomous special-purpose agencies.

The jurisdictions - i.e. regions and groups - served by agencies for a given purpose are functional for that purpose. They need not coincide with another purpose’ jurisdictions.

Responsibilities assigned now to large hierarchic state-run or corporate ‘vertical’ bureaucracies are filled, arguably far better, by the agencies’ executive teams in ‘horizontal’ relationships. Coordination among various agencies occurs not by central or hierarchic control but by negotiations and - if need be - arbitration. Findings of arbitration are backed not by centralized force but by public opinion, reinforced by other agencies’ sanctions.

STATISTICAL REPRESENTATION is used to choose decision-makers for any given agency.

Namely, good deliberative decision-making cannot be expected from a merely formal ‘democratic’ setup wherein everyone votes on every question, regardless of their interest or degree of involvement. Effective decision-making requires limiting the decision-makers on a given matter to a manageable number of persons who moreover each have a legitimate material interest in the matter to be decided. Hence (p. 9) ‘decision-making bodies should be statistically representative of those affected by their decisions. Democracy is possible only if the decision-makers are a representative sample of the people concerned.’
Such representation is to be achieved (p. 9) by ‘the ancient principle of choosing by lot those who are to hold various public offices … The illusory control exercised by voting for representatives has to be replaced by the chance of being selected [by lot] as an active participant in the formulation of decisions. Elections … inherently breed oligarchies.’ So representatives are to be chosen by lot from among those affected people who moreover are willing voluntarily to spend some time in deliberating on the matter with their peers.

PRACTICALITY. The book argues persuasively that demarchy could be introduced gradually and in practical stages.

POTENTIAL ADVANTAGES. The book also argues persuasively that demarchy - or anyhow its functional autonomy feature - could be expected to improve the quality and desirable scope of public decision-making in matters of major importance, including matters of peace and security, resources management and economic policy. The largely horizontal inter-agency relationships would obstruct creation and abuses of totalitarian power, including aggressive wars.

Functional autonomy could also permit a well-balanced ‘mixed economy’ whose operation could realize constructive goals traditionally sought by activists of every kind (from philosophers to revolutionaries) and stripe - including those of communalism, socialism, welfareism and capitalism.

Namely, control of various resources and financial institutions could be assigned to a variety of autonomous public trust agencies, whose decision-makers would represent a variety of interests including arguably those of future generations. These agencies would interact to constrain resource prices and money availability, but these prices and availability would operate within an open market system of production and consumption, so as to enable market-driven efficiencies and promotion of enterprise. Income to the public trusts from land and other resources could replace taxation and moreover allow a comprehensive system of basic welfare, including a guaranteed minimum income.

CRITIQUE

As detailed in the following paragraphs, the book is at once inspiring and quite flawed and incomplete. The book does well to seek, above all, ‘reappraisal of the whole problem of public decision-making’ - but it takes only first steps to address this aim. A rational reappraisal must at least suggest a set (perhaps incomplete) of cogent quantifiable performance goals and resulting procedures for public decision-making: but the book scarcely does this. As presented in the book, the demarchy concept is logically muddled: its first key feature (functional autonomy) is at times - but wrongly - treated as though logically implied and necessitated by the second (statistical representation). The book calls for public decision-making by various ’statistically representative’ groups, but this overall method in fact includes, as extremes, both impractical direct democracy and intolerable oligarchy. The book scarcely discusses what criteria to use for making the needed choices of parameters which specify the preferred number and size of groups and length of members’ service.

ON TARGET! According to the introduction’s last paragraph, the author has ‘many ideas about the practical details of implementing demarchic principles that are not mentioned in this book. To do so would have been misleading. What I am anxious to produce is a radical reappraisal of the whole problem of public decision-making.’

The author’s aim is on target: precisely such reappraisal is what reformers need!

So far as this reviewer can see, explicit rational appraisal - radical or otherwise - of ‘the whole problem of public decision-making’ has been lacking during the entire history, spanning over two millennia, of political philosophy and so-called political science. Instead both these disciplines both have presumed that decisions must be made by a centralized state, and both have been content to either describe and analyze actual state decision-making or else to speculate on would be an ideal (or better-run) state.

MISSING FIRST STEP. The needed ‘rational appraisal’ must start with the fact that, above all, public decision-making is group decision-making. Its design or reform must hinge above all on goals - and their implied procedural directives and constraints - posited for decision-making in general and in particular for group decision-making.

The book’s big deficiency is that it scarcely takes this first step, to explicitly posit such goals. Of course, some clearly cogent goals for group decision-making do imply an important role for democratic practices, and in turn those arguably will call for both key features of demarchy. However, other evident goals for rational group decision are disregarded or are even treated inconsistently.

A notable example is the overall goal of precaution and in particular the prevention of undue concentration or monopoly of powers of decision and enforcement. This very goal seems to be the major rationale for the book’s call to abolish ‘the state’ as a monolithic all-powerful entity. However, although even the antiquated USA federal constitution explicitly addresses this need, in its provisions for ’separation of powers’, the book’s version of demarchy fails to incorporate precaution or to forbid monopoly. On the contrary, within its jurisdiction each ‘functionally autonomous’ agency is allowed and indeed assumed to be an unchallenged monopoly: with no requirement that even internally the decisions of that agency require concurrence of one or more separated power centers, e.g. a primary decision committee and then a review committee.

DEMARCHY A MUDDLE. Demarchy is first presented as combining two major features - functional autonomy of agencies, and statistical representation of decision-makers. However, demarchy is then formally equated (p. 9) just to the second feature. This muddling of two different concepts is logically insupportable. Neither of the two features implies the other and in particular the second does not imply the first. Statistical representation could be used to run a monolithic state. Conversely, functionally autonomous units could each be run by an appointed or elected oligarchy.

The book moreover fails to recognize and respond to the fact that, no matter how narrowly one defines the scope of a given ‘functionally autonomous’ agency, distinct decisions by that agency may well affect distinct (if likely overlapping) populations, and hence true ’statistical representativeness’ will in general require use of different decision-makers for different decisions by that agency, not just the agency’s single controlling ‘representative’ body.

UNADDRESSED CHOICES FOR DEMOCRACY. The book presumes correctly that rational decision-making requires deliberation that normally can be done only by a small-enough group working over a long-enough time. Hence, in a large society or other group, acceptable decision-making on each issue directly by ‘all the people’ is impossible. As the book also argues implicitly, we can still have a democracy more direct than today’s de facto oligarchy, wherein all decisions are made by an elite of long-term-serving officers, appointed or elected.

The book in effect argues for practicality of a middle way: assignment of decisions to a larger number of small shorter-term groups. Such a middle way is not a single option, but rather is subject to various parametric choices as to number and size of groups and length of their members’ terms of service. The choices range from impossible direct democracy at one extreme to intolerable total oligarchy, even autarchy, at another. The book leaves open the criteria for arriving at preferred middle-way parametric choices.

RESPONSE

This reviewer is currently preparing and will post an essay, ‘How Many Should Decide?’, which formulates democratic and other relevant goals for group decision-making and which goes on to illustrate how, using basic decision-analytic methods, these and like goals may be used to select political reform aims and target reform efforts.

In particular, the essay explores criteria for preferred parametric choices for implementing the book’s demarchic concept of decision-making by a number of small limited-term groups.

The essay also explores and quantifies measures of quantity and distributional equality of decision power, as objective and replicable indicators of ‘democracy’.

END

LBreport’s story (24 Feb.) on State Sen. Lowenthal and ‘Redistricting Reform’ prompted me to look up the various proposals (via California Common Cause website and its links). Here’s my take. I would be interested in others’ views.

Joe Weinstein

Bixby Knolls, Long Beach CA USA

For four reasons, truly reform-minded citizens can disregard ALL the hyped so-called ‘redistricting reform’ plans now circulating by petition or in the legislature.

These include ‘California Voters FIRST Act’ advanced by Common Cause of California (CCC) and Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA). Or any of the ‘competing’ very similar plans. These apparently include (or recently did) at least one other initiative, and also ACA 1 (Nunez), ACA 4 (Villenes), SCA 9 (Ashburn) and SCA 10 (Lowenthal).

In summary - I find ALL these ‘redistricting reform’ plans to be misdirected, incompetent, irrelevant - and misguided !

* MISDIRECTED. Each of the plans misdirects laudable structural reform effort away from the major structural problem in state government: the undemocratic and corrupting concentration of political power in an elite of officers and politicians.

The big problem is NOT that electoral districts are ‘unfair’ or favor incumbents (who anyway must leave after a couple of terms). Under the existing state constitution, the problem is simpler and worse: the elected officers will anyhow be a privileged power-elite of politicians. With political power concentrated in a few long-serving officers, abuse and corruption are invited. (As Acton famously put it: ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’

This elitist scheme is undemocratic, no matter who fills the offices, no matter how ‘fair’ the redistricting map. (By the way, even in districts that some call highly ‘competitive’, no voter has notable chance of making a difference. Ironically, a district that is ‘uncompetitive’ in a general election may be very ‘competitive’ in a primary.)

The elitism in fact keeps worsening, because population keeps growing but the number of jurisdictions and empowered offices scarcely increases, and the length of each single term of service is never shortened. In fact, a typical service term is absurdly long - years rather than weeks. As a result, instead of their duties being accomplished short-term by thousands of willing ordinary citizens, these offices are filled by an elite of expensively perked professional politicians.

This elitist scheme is needless. Compare it with the alternative used in our courts and more consistently in ancient Athenian democracy and elsewhere. Namely, through a limited and manageable amount of jury service, each of thousands of citizens gets limited power and responsibility to make one or a few public decisions, and thereby (and usually quite conscientiously) perform public service.

* INCOMPETENT. Viewed even as a would-be modest reform - to bring about ‘better’ or ‘fairer’ redistricting maps - all the ‘reform’ plans fail hopelessly (and needlessly).

The plans could - but don’t - take steps to ensure that new redistricting maps would actually have to be ‘better’ or ‘fairer’, by objective and quantifiable standards. In fact, all the plans disregard currently available tools - of mathematical and statistical modeling and of computing - that could be used to provide and employ such standards.

NONE of their legal texts include or provide for precise and measurable definitions - not even by reference, or by a prescribed future process - of the allegedly sought result of reform - ‘better’ or ‘fairer’ maps! The plans all mention a few vague goals for maps, such as ‘compactness’, regard for ‘communities of interest’, etc. These goals sound good, but absent their objective quantification there is, sadly but predictably, no guarantee that future maps need really meet the goals any better than did past maps.

This gross deficiency is needless. A century of progress - in mathematical and statistical and decision-theory modeling and techniques, and in computing hardware and software - now enable practical, credible, objective quantified measure of each of the map goals and indeed of an overall measure of comparative ‘merit’ or ‘fairness’ of a redistricting map.

* IRRELEVANT. Each plan focuses not on the alleged objective - ‘better’ or ‘fairer’ maps - but on irrelevant elaborate arrangements for an allegedly ‘unbiased’ (but in fact unneeded) redistricting commission.

A new (and of course well-perked and staffed) commission, no matter how ‘unbiased’, is NOT needed. With an objective quantified measure of merit for maps, there would be no call at all for such a commission. The adopted redistricting scheme could simply be whatever submitted map (e.g. to Sec. of State) has highest merit. (In case of tie for tops, toss coin.)

* MISGUIDED. By focusing not on the actual needed (or anyhow desired) product - the map - but on the unneeded commission, all the plans reinforce the very attitude that most calls for reform.

This attitude views state officeholders - whether elected politicians or appointed redistricting commissioners - as ultimate ends in themselves, never mind what they actually do, or whether they are actually needed.

Joe Weinstein

Bixby Knolls, Long Beach CA USA

— Post-script for reference: LBreport’s headline and start of story —

State Senator Lowenthal Says If Sac’to Fails To Put Redistricting Reform (Like His Own) On The Ballot, In That Case He’d Support Jarvis/Common Cause Proposal (”Half a Loaf Better Than None”)…But Says His Proposed Measure Is Better And Deals With Congressional Districts

(Feb. 24, 2008) — State Senator Alan Lowenthal (D, LB-Lakewood-Paramount) says that if Sacramento lawmakers can’t reach consensus on a proposed constitutional amendment to change the current system of drawing district lines and put it on the ballot for CA voters, under those circumstances he’d accept “half a loaf” and vote for a redistricting measure backed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and Common Cause (and endorsed by Governor Schwarzenegger) that’s currently gathering signatures (roughly 1 million needed by April 15). …

A couple weeks ago Semantha Larson, a Long Beach local, became celebrated(at age 19, I believe) as the youngest-ever person to climb all ‘The Seven Summits’.

This phrase ‘The Seven Summits’ has in recent years been applied to the highest mountaintops on each of ‘The Seven Continents’. Here is the resulting list of summits - each here given with its continent, in descending order of elevation above sea level: Everest (Asia), Aconcagua (South America), Denali (or McKinley: North America), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Elbruz (Europe), Vinson (Antarctica), Kosciuszko (Australia).

Gaining all these summits is certainly an achievement at any age. After all, certain of the summits are in themselves known to be challenging -even though others require little or no technical climbing expertise. Moreover, climbing multiple summits around the world requires persistence and patience. And, as one friend has noted caustically, in almost all cases plenty of money. Yes, it takes money to gallivant about, more money to support oneself during the requisite time, and yet more money to engage technical training or support for the climbs.

However, the notion that these particular seven summits should rate as most prominent, and thus meriting ascent, depends on the idea that each is the highest point of one of ‘the’ continents.

A bit of common-sense musing (and posted background discussion, e.g. in Wikipedia) shows that there are several broadly extant definitions of ‘the’ continents, all somewhat arbitrary. These definitions do not fully agree on just what bodies of land do or should qualify as ‘continents’ or even on the resulting number of continents. A quest for the ‘best’ definition of ‘continent’ will readily become as absurd a debacle as the recent similar quest for the ‘best’ definition of ‘planet’. But changes in the list of ‘the’ continents would significantly change the resulting lineup of ‘the’ summits.

The journalistically popular list of ‘the seven summits’ seems to be the result of a slapdash compromise between two quite different approaches -neither of them truly objective nor satisfactory - that have been used by atlases and like sources to present lists of the world’s ‘most prominent’ summits.

However, if we try intelligently to look for a truly objective way to makeup a list of the ‘most prominent’ summits, we can bypass the difficulty I mentioned regarding arbitrariness of what makes a ‘continent’. We can bypass altogether even bothering to define ‘continent’.

A few years ago, annoyed by subjective approaches of the atlases, this is exactly what I did in a conceptual-math essay entitled ‘Eminent Peaks’. I won’t go to lengths here to describe at length either of those approaches or what makes each of them subjective and silly. (That is done in ‘Eminent Peaks’, which soon I’ll post elsewhere, under math research, on the website.) Here, I’ll just sketch the basic idea of my alternative objective procedure - and then note what ’seven serious summits’ it yields.

For every point on the earth’s surface, we can define its ‘radius of dominance’ to be the shortest great-circle distance to some other point at equal or greater elevation (if such point exists; otherwise, namely for the summit-point of Everest, it is the distance - half a circumference - to the globe’s opposite point). Then, quite simply: the greater a point’s radius of dominance, the more ‘prominent’ it is.

An amusing consequence of this procedure is that thereby (at least for our present geologic era and its geography) exactly seven summits now DO merit being singled out as specially prominent!

More precisely, there are three especially prominent summits, followed by four next-in-line approximately equally prominent summits:

Especially prominent summits (in descending order of prominence):
Everest
Aconcagua
Denali
Next four (approximately equally) prominent summits:
Kilimanjaro
Jaya (alias Carstensz: Western New Guinea, Indonesia)
Aoraki (alias Cook: South Island, New Zealand)
Vinson

These are the only summits whose radius of dominance is close to or exceeds 1/8 the earth’s circumference (i.e. 45 degrees of arc, approximately 3100 miles or 5000 kilometers).

The same approach allows one to speak of regionally prominent summits too. The three most prominent ones (by far) in California, in order, are those of Whitney, Shasta and San Gorgonio.

On Tuesday 5 June 2007 my preoccupations and recollections turned exactlyforty years back to Monday 5 June 1967, the idiosyncratic (at least for me)day that the Six-Day War began.

Since fall 1965 I had been an assistant prof of math at UCLA and had livedin frugal comfort in an apartment just west of campus. I lacked a car (and would not get one until 1968, and then primarily in order to take ‘week end escape’ trips outside Los Angeles). Even so, my life was enviably foot loose and carefree (especially compared with that of hundreds of thousands of menmy age who were then in or bound for battle in Vietnam and Israel). Onfoot, after work on evenings and weekends, I would roam the nearby neighborhoods. These I deemed to contain a goodly and sufficient fractionof the entire city’s offerings of anything (be it restaurants or book stores or miscellaneous events) that I actually craved. But, as June 1967 began, Iwas also planning longer trips.

I had gone to bed late on Sunday night 4 June, radio music playing at low volume. Around 4:30 or 5:00 AM I was awakened, perhaps by a slight changein the timbre of the radio sound, as it veered into a short news update.The announcer began by describing at length the latest diplomatic maneuvers and reactions, including those of Jordan’s King Hussein, in regards the’Middle East crisis’. Then, without any break or change in voice, the announcer continued to the effect that ‘of course, all these items now seem outdated by the fact that war has broken out’. He had, however, nothing further to say about the start or subsequent course of the war.

I got little further sleep. But at any rate I had already long planned for early rising and an unusual day, one taking advantage of the fact that the regular spring classes were done, leaving me a weekday morning with no class to be met. Per plan, I early got on the Wilshire Blvd. line public bus for downtown Los Angeles and its US Passport office, in order to apply for a passport.

People in the Passport office could plausibly have suspected me of planning to travel to Israel, perhaps to volunteer there in a civilian capacity, as so many others did (or anyhow tried to do). But in fact, my actual motive was to prepare for a months-planned summer journey to Mexico - primarily via
inter-city buses - which was indeed taken a couple months later.

During the university’s winter break back in January 1967, I had joined a couple friends - one with a car to transport us - for a few days’ campingand hiking at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, in the far southern Arizona desert. Our return drive took us through the Mexican borderlands,and thus stirred us to possibilities of travel in Mexico during the coming summer. No US passport - only a Mexican tourist card and a birth certificate - was then required either to enter Mexico or to return to the USA from only Mexico. However, on the outside chance that the projected Mexican adventure might expand impromptu to take us to further - say to Guatemala or beyond - as June began I decided to obtain a US Passport.

My memory has faded for the midday hours after return from the Passport office. But I recall dinner that fateful Monday evening. Bypre-arrangement of some days I joined one of the UCLA math grad students(still one year away from his doctorate) in a Westwood Japanese café. JoeMotzkin was an unusual case. His father, Ted Motzkin, a truly distinguished mathematician, was my senior colleague on the UCLA math faculty. However,the family name was best known on account of Ted’s father (and Joe’sgrandfather) Leo - or, in Hebrew, Aryeh - Motzkin, a leading Zionist who was on the delegation which pressed Zionist claims at the Versailles conferencefollowing WW1. (During WW1 Zionists had in fact notably aided the British against the Turks, both through the Nili spy network in Turkish-controlled Palestine and at Gallipoli through Jabotinsky’s Zion Mule Corps.) Later in honor of granddad Aryeh, a Haifa suburb was named Qiryat Motzkin, but according to Joe none of his family had ever visited the place. Also named (presumably) for his granddad was Joe’s brother Aryeh - whom fortuitously years earlier (when I was just twelve) was my summer camp counselor!

Our dinner conversation readily turned to the new Mid-East war. Given the dearth of definitive information, I expressed my concern. Joe persuaded me not to worry. He said that earlier in the day he had heard excerpts of an Egyptian ‘news’ broadcast. After hearing its amazing claims of miraculously huge Israeli losses, of sky-sweeping total Egyptian air victories and the like, he had inferred that the only likely truth was the very opposite. ‘I knew then that we had won’ he concluded.

Dear friends and visitors to this site,

It’s been a good while since I’ve written to this log, but henceforth I intend to update it at least weekly.

This past week on 23 May I marked the fourth anniversary of Della’s passing. Life - without my dearest companion of over thirty years - has not been the same; but it has continued. I have been sustained by family and friends, and by the many things to be done or anyhow to be attempted.

In particular, just over a week ago I returned from my first excursion since 2004 beyond the USA, a few days’ visit with Della’s sister Judith in Vancouver BC.

There, along with some of her friends from back home in Sydney, she was on a long-planned de luxe grand tour - an Inside Passage cruise to and from Alaska, then Vancouver, the Canadian Rockies, and Vancouver island. In effect I joined this tour for its Vancouver segment. I shared Judith’s room (otherwise grandly beyond budget) at the Hotel Vancouver (which is now a Fairmont hotel, along with all the other historic grand-chateau-style hotels built for the Canadian Pacific RR).

Our first full day (of two) was given mainly to an agreeable semi-guided tour of downtown Vancouver, on trolley and double-deck bus, with unlimited hop-on-hop-off options. We spent some time in the prime in-town attraction, the gussied-up old Gastown neighborhood and its souvenir and art shops - including the outstanding Inuit Gallery with its celestial (and celestially priced) high-art sculptures from the far north. On our second full day we used the multi-modal public transit system (ferry, bus, rail) - which was convenient, speedy, economical and attractive - to get to and fro two enjoyable (if at times a bit unsettling to this acrophobiac) prime touristic attractions. One was the famed swaying foot bridge across 70-meter-deep Capilano gorge - nowadays supplemented by memorable forest-canopy boardwalks! The other was the gondola lift up 1000 meters to the yet-snowy summit of Grouse Mountain, which not only commands spectacular views of the city but also includes a grizzly bear refuge - and the bears were there to be seen!

In my opinion, downtown Vancouver either does or soon will match San Francisco and maybe even Manhattan for satisfying urban verve. It clearly beats Manhattan and arguably even San Francisco for worthy scenery and at-hand outdoor adventure: in Stanley Park, by or over the water, or into the mountains.

To be sure, being on this continent’s northwest coast, Vancouver has many grey overcast days. (And, for all I know, maybe its high-rise buildings are at just as great seismic risk as are those further south - whether from California-style lateral fault action or Puget-Sound-style subduction.) Further, it’s Canada’s costliest living: locals jest that the provincial acronym BC really means ‘bring cash’. But that’s just what many have done - thereby creating soaring land values and then soaring towers. After all, for scenic west-coast mild-climate magnet metropolises the USA has San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle; but Vancouver is Canada’s only real choice. This unique choice has been compelling not only for native Canadians but also for immigrants and especially - ever since the moment that a date (in 1997) was fixed for their city’s reversion to mainland control - for bet-hedging Hong Kong billionaires.

The Vancouver rendezvous was good fun, but on my return home (Sat. 19 May) I needed active recuperation: a good local mountain hike at my own pace. I still feel upbeat about the hike I took the next day, because - for the first time in maybe a year - it actually went the full distance to the 3000-meter summit of Mt. Baldy. (To mute my triumph just a bit: the hike was up the shorter of my two habitual trails - Ski Hut Trail for 7 km and 1200 meters gain, rather than Old Baldy Trail for 10 km and 1800 meters gain.)

Over previous weeks I was busy not only at work but also with some other projects - including writing (and other minor agitation) on local matters, notably on the May Day special city election here in Long Beach. Some of my writings were posted to this site; others appeared as official arguments on the voter sample-ballot, or were posted to ‘thisland’ at ‘yahoogroups’. (By the way, precisely the six measures against which I wrote official arguments were the ones that passed. This outcome was actually quite OK with me! After all, ‘my’ measures were all trivial or benign and the only really bad measure was handily defeated - maybe in part due to points made against it in my arguments.)

I had hoped by now to have posted here my long (and long in preparation) essay on constitutional design and political reform, “How many should decide?”. Besides its general-interest discussion - which in interests of clarity I am now revising - it includes computational appendices (for technical completeness). After I finally post a draft of this essay - maybe in a couple weeks - comments will be most welcome.

Here in southern California, the year’s drought continues. It has brought our usual dry summer forward into the spring months. Creeks whose flows usually swell in spring are already long dried up or nearly so. Native drought-tolerant shrubs - whether in our front yard or on mountainsides that I hike every weekend - have long been in flower. Our matilija poppy bush has already popped forth many of its characteristic enormous ‘eggs sunny-side-up’ floppy blooms.

Formal reminder, that spring has matured and that summer is soon to come, occurred during this past week: the traditional Jewish pilgrimage festival, Shavuot (alias Pentecost; the holiday is named for being seven weeks or fifty days after Passover). Shavuot celebrates both the giving of the Ten Commandments (or, maybe better, Ten Declarations) and the late spring harvest of barley and of other ‘first fruits’.

These days, rather than to divine declarations, university students like son Yigal look forward to more fallible summary judgments on their spring quarter or semester labors. But the late spring harvest can still be bountiful. From our backyard, thanks greatly to Yigal’s labor, it will include beans, cucumbers and passion fruit.

With best wishes to all for this Memorial Day (in the USA) weekend,

Joe

Dear friends,

More on other topics will soon come, but today at last I am posting material - which in effect I promised to thousands of voters - on the upcoming special election this Tuesday 1 May in my home town, Long Beach, California. Please see my new postings for today:

‘VOTE NO ON ALL!’ and ‘ ’H’ IS FOR ‘HOAX’ ‘.

Cheers! - Joe

Dear friends,

Welcome to this new site, which I hope and expect will enable me to readily (and systematically) share works, memorabilia and - above all - active concerns with all of you. For that reason, Yigal Weinstein - ‘my son the website creator’ (as well as physics student) - has long urged me to let him set up a site for me. Finally, two days ago we found the needed combination of time and energy to launch this site.

The date, 14 November 2006, was auspicious: Della’s and my 35-th wedding anniversary. Yes, it’s three and a half years since her very untimely passing, but her memories and spirit are with us, and assure us that now is a good time to start this venture.

For now, most of the topic buttons that you see on the home page are just promises, and lead nowhere. That will soon change. Over the next few days or couple weeks some serious stuff will get posted on some topics; over ensuing weeks and months yet more will follow. (The promised music will take a while.) Meanwhile there will be time and occasion to learn from your comments. Please send these to joe@joeweinstein.info .

Next week is the Thanksgiving holiday (for us here in the USA) and Yigal and I look forward to being with the family. The next blog/news/opinion will likely come shortly after. Meanwhile, best wishes!

Joe