party fouls

Via the inimitable Dave Weigel, parliamentary procedure gets exciting in Wisconsin.



A few notes:

1. Some Americans are going to consider this the collapse of civilization, but this is pretty tame stuff by international standards.

2. If you're wearing orange shirts in the chamber as a show of solidarity, don't expect the other side to play nice.

3. Liked the guy who shouted "we love you anyways."

4. Never be the last person chanting.


Added: Weigel's diary of the scene inside the Capitol is worth a gander, too.

more power to the referee

The most powerful man in America, at the moment, is a parliamentarian.

As Democrats try to salvage health care reform, there is one man who above all others will help determine its fate, and he is not Barack Obama or Harry Reid or even a member of Congress. In fact, odds are you've never heard of Alan Frumin, the Senate parliamentarian. But when it comes to the complex budgetary procedure known as reconciliation, the filibuster-proof process which Democrats hope to use to make certain fixes to the Senate bill, Frumin is "the defense counsel, he's the prosecution, he's the judge, he's the jury and he's the hangman," says Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the top Republican on the Budget Committee.

It will be up to Frumin to decide what parts of the previously passed Senate health care bill Senate Democrats can and cannot amend with a simple majority of 51 votes. House Democrats, who are being asked to pass a Senate bill with which they have some real disagreements, are counting on their Senate colleagues to make a certain number of tweaks after the fact, but that is no easy task.

The problem in using reconciliation is twofold: 1) it's open to amendments and many Republicans Senators, including Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, say they plan on filing hundreds of amendments, potentially gumming up the Senate for months; and 2) under a provision known as the Byrd rule — named after Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia — every provision passed through reconciliation must be deemed relevant to the underlying budget by the parliamentarian.

Or, in other words, "germane to the resolution," a staple of Robert's Rules of Order and classic parliamentary procedure. (The same general principle forbids amendments that merely insert "not" into bills or resolutions as a way of negating their impacts, except in the case of an obvious typo.)

Read the whole thing to learn about the fascinating intricacies of the Senate's parliamentary procedure--and what would make a parliamentarian say, "The rules are perfect and if they're all changed, the rules are still all perfect."

Olympia City Council adopts my "door prize democracy" scheme

The Olympia City Council has embraced the value of randomness. Here's what I recommended here and on Olyblog, a little while back:

A random draw would level every individual's probability of being chosen first, and would also lead to a representative sample of the various opinions represented, especially if at least 60 people were chosen (3 minutes each = 3 hours). The council could post the first 60 names drawn, and those picked would have the option of passing their turn to a friend, if they thought s/he would do a better job or otherwise needed to go earlier. The council could even set a rule saying that they would not be allowed to adjourn until at least 60 people had spoken.

The only element lost would be the "back-and-forth," but since such situations are usually far removed from the rigor of a formal debate, there's no need to go Pro-Con-Pro-Con in lockstep.

Here's what the Council approved:

In the method approved Monday, people who want to speak would sign a form upon entering The Washington Center, which would open at 5 p.m. that day. Of the forms received from 5 to 6 p.m., a city official would randomly draw 40 names.

Those people would be notified by their names being put up on a screen, and they would be asked to relocate to the lower section, where three rows would be reserved for them.

A second drawing would take place for the next 40 speakers at 7 p.m. They would speak after the initial 40.

Those who do not get to speak, but sign up by 7 p.m. that day, would be able to speak at another hearing, at a date to be scheduled.

Freaky / awesome.

I promise not to abuse my powers of persuasion.

door prize democracy and the Olympia isthmus

Thad Curtz has noted something interesting about the way the City of Olympia organizes its public comment:

At the Planning Commission hearing this June 142 people signed in to speak against the rezone and 62 people signed in to speak in favor of it. In spite of this, the Commission had people take turns back and forth, pro and con. People in favor of the rezone got to speak half the time - in addition to the extra 15 minutes at the beginning Triway got all to itself to present its proposal (another five turns). The public comment period lasted three hours; 63 people actually got to speak - 31 opposed and 32 in favor.

If you'd taken the time and energy to get ready to try to say something persuasive in three minutes and you were in favor of the rezone, you had almost a 52% chance of getting to speak (32 slots for 62 people). If you were opposed to the rezone, you had just under a 22% chance of getting to speak (31 slots for 142 people)....

In spite of that, it was easy to walk away from the hearing feeling that half the people there were for the rezone and half opposed it, since that was what you'd just spent three hours listening to. The fact that three-quarters of the people there opposed it was invisible, unless you looked up the documents from the hearing afterwards and counted...

One of the functions of a community conversation like this is supposed to be to give the assembled citizens a sense of the whole community's thinking and feeling about the issue. It's not only unfair for people supporting the rezone to have a much better chance of talking, it produces a strongly misleading impression in the audience about the community's views on the issue.

Over there, I've posted a version of what I argue below.

The simplest way to ensure a speaking order that gives everyone a fair shot is a random draw. If each attendee puts her name in a box, and the order of speakers is chosen once a predetermined deadline is reached, each has the same individual probability of first pick as everyone else; simultaneously, the overall ordering, given a large enough sample, will reflect the composition of the group. Randomized assortment also prohibits any sort of selection bias.

This precludes the back-and-forth usually seen in a parliamentary style debate. However, since your average citizen isn't trained in the art of rebuttal, the pro-con lockstep may not be the ideal discussion style anyway.

"...because I have big thighs..."

When a kilt-wearing postman named Dean Peterson tries to freshen up the official USPS wardrobe, but has to run the change past conservative leadership first, who wins?

Says Brooks Bennett, executive board member of the letter-carriers union in Washington state, "In Washington and Oregon, I guess we like to see ourselves as being progressive. Things get a hearing here that might not in other places."

But at the national convention, reception was frosty from the decision-makers. At one point, Peterson was so nervous that he mistakenly said "UPS" when he meant "USPS," for United States Postal Service. That got him roundly booed.

The committee in charge of the resolution nixed the kilts, saying there wasn't much demand for them.

Peterson says it was the older members — "the fuddy-daddies," he calls them — who didn't like the kilts. He says he could see them staring at him as he wore a kilt on the convention floor.

"All you could see was dirty looks."

He vows to return with his resolution at the next national convention in 2010.

So, who wins? Why, parliamentary procedure, of course.

the world needs parliamentary procedure

Although Student Congress sometimes draws my (mostly loving) barbs of criticism, at least its practitioners become well-versed in parliamentary procedure, even if their faulty reasoning leaves the event unscathed.

Maybe that only increases their frustration in the "real world," though. It does for me: whenever I sit through a meeting of any type, listening to people rambling on without a timer, or dominating a discussion, or foundering on the shoals of uncertainty over what to do or say next, I think, if only they knew how to conduct a meeting according to Robert's Rules of Order, with a dash of NFL rules thrown in to keep the times short, the passions muted, and the discussion moving.

If only!

I learned it at Nat Quals: part II

Extemporaneous speaking: almost as bad as Student Congress, these days. This past Friday, I learned...

• We have to do more to support "academically really high students."
• There was a player who had beaten "Babe Ruth's record for hits." This player did not have a name, nor did he realize he was actually breaking Ty Cobb's record.
• The economy is easy to forget.
• The surface of a river may appear smooth, but "it's a hurricane under there."
• The government should "help out foreign aid."
• We have to do something about "the oil dependence that we rely on."
• "Keyly" is a word.

Part I here.

I learned it in Student Congress: part IV

This past Student Congress session, one of the less offensive in recent memory, still brought a few moments of drollery, embarrassment, and pain.

yet another synonym for raising exists
"Rising."

the American criminal justice system is harsher than you imagine
"If I jaywalked, I'd probably go to the Monroe prison."

they have chilly winters in Minnesota
"It drops below--I don't know. It gets really cold there."

found on a future penal colony
"We'd have a smörgåsbord of 8-year-old candy stealers and 21-year-old rapists."

it's difficult to escape from Alcatraz
"It's hundreds of miles out..."

it's only understatement if it's delivered with irony
"I think that's slightly appalling."

fuzzy math is alive and well
"Multiply 50x12, and you get approximately 600."

cigarettes provide a surprising social benefit
"Smoking makes people feel good. Because they feel good, they won't kill themselves."


[tacky tie found here.]

MTV has fallen farther than you can possibly imagine

The T/R/P describes:

They are profiling a kid from a rival school for their show Made. Apparently, a ditzy cheerleader wants to be taken intellectually seriously, so they're re-making her by having her join the debate team.

That's all well and good...more power to her. But I'm a little bummed out with a lot of the process and with MTV in general.

First off, the concept of the show is that they bring in a coach--somebody good-looking and ever so painfully-hip--to help the kid. So instead of the school's excellent coach, they've brought in some dude in his mid-twenties. I overheard him describing Public Forum postings to the camera operator, and describing them incorrectly. This kid can make herself simply by walking into the actual coach's office after school. But that won't do, of course...he's in his fifties and doesn't have slick, spiky hair. Instead, MTV has brought in a less-qualified, more-hip outsider.

Second, as my wife points out, the fact that a kid who wants to be taken intellectually seriously decides the way to do that is to call MTV...well, that's a pretty comical premise to begin with.

Third, MTV and/or Hip Spiky-Haired Coach have decided that, for yesterday's meet anyway, that the kid should compete in Student Congress and Interpretive Reading.

Seriously? Congress?

Like the T/R/P, I starred as a parliamentary officer this weekend--off-camera, thankfully, considering I had to intervene after The Worst Speech in the History of Speeches, which linked "Don't Ask Don't Tell" to... I can't even say it. It wasn't just offensive, it was stupid offensive--both illogical and factually wrong. Yet our love-me-love-me Presiding Officer had to be prodded to take a stand for professionalism.

Blech.

Anyhow, some highlights:

Describing what it's like to stand beside a heavyset woman in a tube top, ordering a combo meal at Burger King
"If I had to see that, I would feel perverted."


The future presidential candidate exchange
Speaker: "I spoke with several servicemen in my hometown. They said that knowing a member of their unit was gay would wreck morale."
Questioner: "Why is that? How does that work?"
Speaker: "I won't presume to know. I don't inquire into the minds of other people."


The malapropisms
"I am in strong negation of this bill."

"This bill is benefiting crimedoers."

"This would lead to a pattern of felon-type behavior."

"Their skills would be reduced, physically and coordinationly."


Things that are a "step in the right direction"

• Repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
• Providing healthier school lunches
• Using gene doping to create a race of super-soldiers

Added: As always, The Onion has the last word.

"I motion to move to call the previous questions."

At the Gig Harbor debate tournament, I split my time between co-running Junior LD tab and prepping novices for their first-ever rounds, so I didn't have the joy of judging much of anything--just one horrific Open Impromptu round, one high-quality Novice LD round, and, sadly, no Student Congress.

Luckily, Josh judged the latter, and has the quotes to prove it.

lessons of the Brian Baird visit

In case you missed it, Baird came to Capital High School this past Friday, defending his Iraq War conversion experience and taking flak from anti-war protesters. It took me a couple days to digest the experience. Here are some of my observations, distilled and purified.

1. The left seems ready to sacrifice one of the more reasonable members of Congress out of sheer fury. Who's going to replace Baird, though? Not someone from the Green Party, that's for sure. "Intuitive faith" won't get us out of this mess.

2. This debate coach was impressed by Baird's handling of the situation. He was almost unflappable in the face of unrelenting criticism and emotional tirades. Baird got a little heated, though, when comparing fired-up locals to those who actually have "skin in the game." Baird was merciless with one commentator, who had called him out for "not representing his constituents." The Congressman shot back, "So should I have voted to go to war back when it was popular?"

3. A whole lot of folks need a course in basic logic, rhetoric, and argumentation. I'm fully convinced that Debate should be a required class in high school. For the sake of democracy.

4. Speaking of democracy, it's hard to know exactly what was accomplished Friday night. People vented, which I suppose could be healthy, but Baird didn't appear about to change his mind. Maybe that's good for T.J. Johnson's political career, as Emmett O'Connell notes, but it's not changing the situation on the ground in Iraq, or in the halls of Congress. There were scads of choir-preaching, and strong feelings of solidarity, but precious few minds changed.

5. An open mike without a time limit is an invitation to disaster.

6. If you say you're not going to respond to hecklers, you just have to rein it in and absolutely refuse to respond to hecklers. Not even once. If you can't resist zinging in a quick comeback, the floodgates open.

7. Thank God the air conditioning worked.

I learned it in Student Congress: part III

Yesterday's round was largely smooth and ineffectual--as all Congress should be--at least until the last fifteen minutes when everything turned stupid. (This is a function of time, hunger, a stuffy room, impatience, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics.)

Along the way, though, several "aha moments" arose, and I was truly enlightened.

Pravda means truth, or something about the United States I did not know
"When we left Afghanistan at the end of the cold war, we left it in chaos."

not all states are created equal
"Who likes Tennessee? Country singers?"

be sure to cover all the bases
"As many of you might or might not know..."

a picturesque metaphor is worth a thousand words
"That would be 1000 pounds... a couple of you big guys."

neologism is the spice of life
"Sexism is a form of discriminization."

"...gives it a higher awesomeness above nuclear power."

"It would take more energy than the giveoff it would make for energy."

I have a thicker skin than I thought
"Isn't it offensive to our hardworking teachers to call school a 'daycare?'"
--"It may be, but that doesn't change the fact."

I thought it was the prom
"Drinking is a fundamental part of being a teenager... Should we take away something that is a part of so many kids' lives?"

I learned it in Student Congress: part II

regarding dangerous coworkers
"...because of attacks by the secretary insurgents..."

regarding strategies to avoid drunk drivers
"You could get off the road and not die."

regarding onomatopoeia
"Shoulda woulda coulda. Sound like a little train to you?"

regarding irony
[after describing how to make napalm to a room full of high school students]
"Do you want that kind of information available to high schoolers? I think not."

regarding analogy
"It'd be Columbine times a billion. No, not a billion, unless this is China."

regarding epistemology
[responding to a question about whether medical marijuana works]
"I know my mom says it does."

regarding eminent domain
"Knock knock knock, hey, we want your property. Get off."

regarding moral quandaries
"What is the crackhead going to do when he can't get his usual 60 sack?"

regarding neologism
"I'm going to get a whole oodleload of money offa this."

regarding personal questions
"If this bill were enacted, would you buy drugs?"

regarding one's role as a CIA operative
"I'm not at liberty to say if this is true."

interesting changes to NFL Student Congress

Got these via email from our NFL district chair. Changes in bold; comments normal typeface. (I noted a few changes before; these are all new to me.)

Scoring changes:
A) Eight (8) points per speech not Six (6)
B) Forty (40) points per day not twenty-four (24) can be awarded
C) Presiding Officer can receive eight (8) points per hour up to 40 for the day

I wonder how this will square with recordkeeping. Sorry, former Reps and Senators. Point inflation means asterisks all around.

No more than 30 students in a chamber.

Hasn't been a problem in our region, generally.

No changes in location of a student from the registration are allowed. Alternates may replace someone in a chamber, but students CANNOT move from one chamber to another.

Good. I can't stand it when competitors try to angle their way into the "easy" house.

Standard Speech – 3 minutes with a 1 minute CX period

I didn't emphasize this last time: now there's a mandatory questioning period after every speech. I don't know what to say, other than, "Crap." I hate question time.

Authorship speeches can ONLY be given on legislation from that school submitting. If no one from the school is in the chamber, no authorship speech can be given.

Huzzah!

Nomination for finalists:
A) The maximum number to be nominated is seven (7).
B) Judges' nomination will be used. If the nominees number fewer than seven, the top scoring individuals may be added to make seven.

Why "may?" Who decides? The tournament director? The parliamentarian?

Voting can be by preferential ranking with the parliamentarian having a tie breaking vote.

Hopefully this speeds up the laborious voting process, which used to work by elimination in round after round after round.

I learned it in Student Congress

Compelling new rhetorical flights of fancy:

"Our country's basic beliefs are based on religion."

"They have isolated themselves, instead of doing the other."

"Anyone at all that wants to affirmate the bill?"

"We do not have a sufficient number of troops to entertain the services of our country."

Daring revisions of history:

Apparently, we fought the Second World War absent a draft.

The New York police could never quite catch up with Al Capone. (Probably because he lived in Chicago.)

If weda had separation of church and state, Thomas Becket woulda never got kilt.


A lesson for us all:

"Domestic tranquility shouldn't be disturbed, 'cause it means 'peace.'"




[See also here and here and here.]

National Forensic League rule changes for 2006-2007

Normally my eyes gloss over when I'm sent an NFL packet, but this year's rule changes might make a measurable difference in the quality of specific events. Let's run down the list.


Lincoln Douglas Debate
1. The Council has approved new LD debate event and judging descriptions, ostensibly to clear up contentious issues about the nature of the event. The biggest, and likely most grating, change: no kritiks. At least, that's how I read this passage:

The debaters are equally obligated to focus the debate on the central uestions of the resolution, not whether the resolution is worthy of debate. Because the affirmative must uphold the resolution, the negative must also argue the resolution as presented.

Obviously, this rule change affects only those tournaments that operate under NFL rules--but that's a conservative shift for LD, a bold move to keep it from becoming quasi-policy.

2. For LD and Policy, the NFL wants to make judging paradigm forms available online. If anything, this might make the inanest of questions--"What's your paradigm?"--superfluous.

Student Congress
1. It's still going to be called "Student Congress."

2. No plagiarized legislation. Sorry, lame-os.

3. In a district qualifier, if you don't make at least one speech, you don't vote in the final election (and no points for you). Finally, a way to get the log bumps involved.

4. Cross-examination--one minute of questioning after a three-minute speech--will be a factor in scoring.


Policy Debate
In a 5-3-1 vote, the Council decided to allow a one-year trial where laptop computers may be used within Policy Debate rounds, with District competitions to have the option. There are provisions forbidding the use of wireless networks, but really--are judges going to have to check in between every speech to make sure no one's cheating? I hope and pray computers never become a fixture in Lincoln-Douglas.


Individual Events
1. I wasn't aware that some competitors have been changing the gender of characters in interpretive events, but apparently they have, and it's now verboten. "In all interpretation events, the gender stated by the author must be honored. However, a female may play a male role and a male may play a female role," preserving Shakespearian tradition.

2. All interpretation events have a "grace period" rule.

from the mouths of dweebs: our second annual installment

More Student Congress, more crazy quotes.



On the merits of lethal injection versus a firing squad: "What if I told you I could get you a nice, peaceful, relaxed death?"

On capital punishment via diplomacy: "...until your life is ended by the state department."

On the conservation of our most precious natural resource: "...considering that oil--and petroleum, for that matter--oil and petroleum are fast disappearing."

On important dates: "...when George Washington left office in... eighteenwhatever..."

On bombast: "...as we take our rightful place as the moral leader of the enlightened world."

On blaming the adolescent victim: "If she's in an abusive family, then obviously she shouldn't be in that family in the first place."

On crypto-fascist education: "We must preserve the purity of intelligence..."

On malapropism: "A woman will arrive at the hospital bleeding from the universe..."

On the utility of coats: "It keeps me warm, and keeps me from getting a disease."



(Read the original edition here.)

from the mouths of dweebs

If I didn't spend most of my social life shepherding students to debate tournaments, I'd probably... well... blog more. (I've never had much of a social life; when I was in high school, I was the one being shepherded.) This past and present weekends have been spent at the University of Puget Sound, surrounded by adolescent nerd angst and nerd angst denial--teenage debaters, and their slightly older college peers.

Today, for about two hours, I watched Student Congress, and there were enough moments of stultifying ignorance to fill an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. A few favorites:

• The kid who said that we ought to outlaw gay adoptions because "those children who are diagnosed with homophobia won't be able to handle not knowing which is the mommy and which is the daddy."
• "And in the Kashmiri town of Maflablalala Flaballa... whatever..."
• The argument that teenagers shouldn't vote because they're not eligible for the draft. Just like women... hey... maybe they shouldn't vote either...

More tomorrow, I'm sure.

Update: Perhaps because I was parliamentarian and didn't have to actually listen to speeches, Saturday didn't contain nearly as much idiocy. Except for one gem: "If we put an embargo on India, we'll inevitably have another World War II... um... I guess that would be World War III."

Mr. Fix-it

When I should have been just relaxing by a campfire, enjoying casual chit-chat under the stars, instead I spent too many hours last night working through all sorts of social and political problems with a Reluctant Republican--you know, the kind who actually believes in smaller government, that old bugaboo of the GOP, and is voting for Bush despite GW's affinity for spend-and-cut beyond-voodoo economics.

Turns out that this particular RR had seen something on cable news that informed him that his political philosophy is closer to libertarianism. He won't dare vote capital-L Libertarian, though, and who can blame him? In a national election, going with a third-party candidate is like waiting for the D in BINGO. So, saddened that the GOP's ideology has been coopted by moralizing hypocrites, our Reluctant Republican holds his nose and dimples his chad for Bush/Cheney.

There's a better way, though. Why don't we adopt a parliamentary form of government in which parties are identified by an actual ideology, are proportionally represented, can form bizarre alliances, and can call for elections without waiting four agonizing years? If you're a Libertarian, you could vote that way and have your vote still count for something. (It might even help fix our abysmal voter turnout.)

Let's forget about abolishing the Electoral College or campaign finance reform. Why trim the mullet when we should just shave it off and start all over?

Besides, we'll need that headspace for powdered wigs.