Boise
Idaho
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unraveling
28.Feb.2011
We're Number One (who's two, three, four?)
Here's a factoid I would not have guessed, out of
VP
Joe Biden's remarks to the National Governors Association:
"Our GDP is bigger than that of China, Japan and Germany combined,"
Biden said. Really? Combined?
Wikipedia's list of countries by nominal GDP suggests it's so,
although it would have been more informative to say that the GDP of the
USA is comparable to that of China, Japan and Germany combined.
Just as he might have said that we are still better positioned than any
country in the world to lead the 21st century economically (as
opposed to "own" it, which is what he did say). Then this:
"Americans have never settled for number two—literally. This is
not hyperbole. It’s not one of these chauvinistic things. We want
other nations to do well. We’ll do better if they do well. But we are
not prepared, nor are you, to settle for being number two in
anything."
I like Joe Biden, but I think the idea of American exceptionalism in
everything is a little crazy. We've got the biggest economy, the biggest
military, the biggest empire, sure. And we continue to lead the world
with both our incarceration rate and in the number of people imprisoned.
Shanghai says we've got most of the best universities. We spend more
per capita on healthcare than any other country. A lot more. But
we're twenty-seventh in
life-expectancy for that #1 spend. (Good news: we're ahead of Cuba,
#28. Not so good news: they spend 1/25th what we do.)
We're 47th in
infant mortality.
14th in education when 15-year-olds are measured.
By all means, let's be the best we can, but we don't have to be
the best. We could settle for really, really good when it comes
to equality of opportunity, justice, education, access to health care,
clean water, and so on.
Voting with their feet
This just in, from
Eye
on Boise:
"About 100 Boise High School students are now gathered in the
second-floor rotunda of the state capitol, where they're quietly doing
their homework. It's part of walkouts at high schools across the state
this morning in protest of the proposed school reform plan; the
Associated Press reports that about 100 students walked out of classes
at Meridian High School and more than 150 walked out at Nampa High.
Students were also reported to have walked out of classes at other high
schools in Boise, Caldwell and Pocatello.
"We are trying to show our disgust at the Legislature's passing of the
two education bills so far, and that we would not like them to pass the
third bill," said Tyler Honsinger, an 18-year-old senior. "We're
skipping class. I think everyone here agrees that the passage of these
bills are more important than what we're doing in class today. It'll
affect their future schooling, he said."
This protesting at capitols thing is catchy.
Clear statement on Luna's work in Idaho
Thanks the the Idaho Statesman for
reprinting two editorials from others in its "WestViews" feature today.
The Lewiston Morning Tribune lays it out plainly enough with
Luna: A Public Servant Turned Corporate Lackey, and as a bonus,
the Idaho Falls Post Register suggests a money-saving idea:
let's disband the State Board of Education, since all it seems to be
doing is rubber-stamping whatever the Superintendent proposes.
And here's a surprise:
computer
companies are already eyeing what could become a lucrative contract with
the state. The budget plan for phasing in laptops for HS students,
and maintenance, repairs and support comes to $57.2 million
over five years. House Education Committee Chairman Bob Nonini is
apparently excited about the lobbyists' dog and pony shows.
"I think technology is great. I wish we would have had it in our era but
we didn't," Nonini said. "I don't think we can let the kids move forward
without it."
The tightwad and anti-public education Republican legislature of the
State of Idaho wants to buy gadgets for high school kids? I guess
anything that will put union thugs out of work must be a good program in
their eyes.
27.Feb.2011
I'm sure he's right about that
I heard more Glenn Beck at once than ever before, quoted on the
Apologies of the Week© on Harry Shearer's
Le Show
blathering on and on and on and on about something he "got wrong" and
wanted to set right. OMG. Part of it was memorable though, and had the
solid ring of Truth to it:
"I'm on the air for Four Hours a Day," Beck said, "without a script.
That's a long time, and it's a recipe for disaster."
Burning the furniture to heat the house
I know where our drinking water comes from (the pumphouse is disguised
as a tract home in the subdivision) but I don't know about the natural
gas. It comes up out of the ground through a pipe, into the furnace and
hot water heater every time it's called for. Maybe it's coming
down from
British Columbia, or up from the San Juan basin under Colorado and
New Mexico. The company that keeps it flowing is my age, born in the
middle of the baby boom.
The marketing of natural gas for domestic purposes just about always
includes the word "clean," but as compared to what? The black steel
plumbing in the house is way cleaner than a coal bin, as is the flue
gas, compared to what burning coal would produce. No clinkers to dispose
of, either.
And it's pretty darn cheap too, thanks to the watchful oversight of our
(and other) Public Utilities Commission(s). The last couple price
adjustments have been down, not up (and we never saw the
wild price swings that some did last decade).
The processes to obtain new sources of natural gas aren't what they used
to be though, as one of
tonight's Academy Award nominees has so memorably described.
And now Regulation seems to be going out of style. The new plan is
to test no
evil, see no evil:
"[F]ederal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment
plants that accept drilling waste [from hydraulic fracturing] not to
test for radioactivity. And most drinking-water intake plants downstream
from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of
regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even
though the drilling boom began in 2008."
Pennsylvania knows something about coal, and now it's learning the hard
way about this "cleaner" fossil fuel with more than 70,000 wells into
the vast Marcellus Shale. Waste from the drilling process is going into
the Monongahela River, the Susquehanna River, Chesapeake Bay, the
Delaware River, the Ohio River, waters that provide what tens of
millions of people in the northeast drink.
"There were more than 493,000 active natural-gas wells in the United
States in 2009, almost double the number in 1990. Around 90% have
used hydrofracking to get more gas flowing, according to the drilling
industry."
Whether there's a will to measure the toxic components doesn't
much matter if there's no way to remove them... or even to keep
up with the enormous task.
26.Feb.2011
70,000 protestors in Wisconsin
That's a big crowd.
Biggest there since the Vietnam War.
Our turnout for solidarity with Wisconsin was more than 100 times
smaller, but spirits were high. (The
Idaho
Statesman staff said "nearly 400"; my estimate was a bit higher,
500+. Have a look at
my
pictures and decide for yourself.)
Nobody knows the inside like an insider
From today's mailbox, accompanying what I put in the second update to
Thursday's post about for-profit
education, a book recommendation for
Deadly Spin:
An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing
Health Care and Deceiving Americans
, by
Wendell Potter, former health
insurance exec who wrote disinformation talking points, turned
"outspoken critic of corporate PR and the distortion and fear
manufactured by America's health insurance industry" as he now describes
himself. An Amazon reader's conclusion:
"Potter's book is essential reading for understanding the flaws in our
system and how corporate profit continues to dictate who gets coverage,
who doesn't and why we are ranked so poorly compared to other nations
when it comes to health care."
Not so jolly, roger
What do 6 bulk carriers, 1 LPG carrier, 8 dhows, 2 yachts, 14 fishing
vessels, 4 tankers, 12 cargo vessels of various types, 1 tug boat and 3
other vessels have in common? They've all been
hijacked and are currently being held by Somali pirates, along with
more than 800 passengers and crew members.
"When a vessel is hijacked, ship owners cough up a ransom, nowadays in
the neighborhood of $5 million, and most of that cost gets passed to the
end user—consumers. Until recently, most hostages would emerge
unharmed, albeit skinny and pale from being locked in a filthy room. The
average time in captivity is around six months. ...
"The pirates used to stick relatively close to Somalia's shores. But now,
using "mother ships"—hijacked vessels that serve as floating
bases—they attack ships more than 1,000 miles away. Sometimes that
puts them closer to India than to home. The red zone now covers more
than one million square miles of water, an area naval officers say is
impossible to control."
25.Feb.2011
A motion, a second, and then nullity
Turns out the Idaho legislature does still have some adult supervision,
as the
Senate
State Affairs Committee stuck a fork in Vito Barbieri's
nullification bill; it is done, at least for this session, with a
scant two votes in favor of sending it out of committee to the whole
Senate. Betsy didn't say if Jack Stuart came in costume, but he was
using his Patrick Henry script for his testimony, bringing an ovation
from his fellow Tea Party patriots.
"I will not accept or obey the health care law. I will go to jail. ...
Give me liberty or give me death!"
But I'm guessing he is using his federally-funded Medicare health
insurance these days all the same, and will not be using that
line for doctor visits. Don't want to risk misinterpretation when you
appear before a Death Panel.
Barbieri had removed the word "null" from his bill to get it through the
House, so maybe we have to call his effort a "voidity" instead.
Scott Walker, piece of work
Nice post
by digby, with follow up questions about the "David Koch" call to
Wisconsin's Governor, who "apparently blindly answers every call and
blabs uncontrollably no matter who it is."
"But seriously, folks. Are we supposed to believe that he doesn't really
even know who Koch is or how much he contributed to his campaign, but
that he picked up the phone and had this extremely intimate strategic
discussion with him? Really?"
(Even after Andy Kroll's piece in Mother Jones,
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Funded by the Koch Bros.?) The
transcript of the call is now out there for your consideration in
answering these questions.
"Murphy: [Laughs] Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush
these bastards I'll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good
time.
"Walker: All right, that would be outstanding. Thanks, thanks for
all the support and helping us move the cause forward, and we appreciate
it. We're, uh, we're doing the just and right thing for the right
reasons, and it's all about getting our freedoms back."
Honey, I shrunk the economy!
We're well into the experiment to find out if sabotaging government
magically "enables" prosperity, even as we watch remarkable history
unfold in countries in the middle east. Can Libya transition from a
tribal oil patch to a functioning member of the community of nations?
Can Egypt bootstrap democracy after 4 decades of Mubarak? What about
Bahrain, Yemen, Iran and more?
Back in the Homeland, we're having a go at
slashonomics,
maybe a
government shutdown to torpedo the tenuous recovery,
driving a stake through the heart of unions, so we can all be taken
advantage of equally, and why not
sell off some infrastructure to see if that'll make ends meet.
24.Feb.2011
Our future in for-profit education
The mysteriously funded conservative "think tank" run by one-term
Congressman Bill Sali's former chief of staff, the Idaho Freedom
Foundation, paid to bring in
a motivational speaker for the Idaho House and Senate Education
Committees today.
Dan Popkey touts Tom Vander Ark's "star power," the subhead calls him "a
world leader in education reform" and the lede says "Newsweek
once called [him] America's most influential baby boomer in education."
All of which makes him the most famous person you never heard of.
Not that fame and a Wikipedia page are synonymous, but he doesn't have
one. The Internet
Academy that he founded back in 1996 does, though.
After doing time as a school superintendent in Federal Way, Washington,
and then having the happy job of dispensing some of Bill Gates'
$billions, he's worked his way from degrees in mineral engineering and
energy/finance
to heading a PR firm, being a partner in a private equity fund for
"innovative learning tools," and being on the Board of
the International Association of K-12
Online Learning.
With record numbers of people looking for one job, this guy has
three big ones. High-powered, at least.
I imagine the Executive Summary of the 2009 paper he wrote for
the American Enterprise Institute,
Private
Capital and Public Education: Toward Quality at Scale
encapsulates the message he's delivering today?
"Education remains one of the few sectors that information and
communication technologies have not transformed. There has been
virtually no productivity improvement in U.S. schools, despite a
doubling of per-pupil funding over the past fifteen years. While the
public delivery system is inflexible and bureaucratic and provides an
inadequate impetus for performance and improvement, non-profit
organizations have weak incentives and limited ability to aggregate
capital for research and development or scaled impact. In contrast,
for-profit enterprises may have greater ability to attract talent and
capital, incentives to achieve scaled impact, and the ability to utilize
multiple business strategies.
"Private capital and for-profit enterprises will play a vital role in
creating tools that increase learning, staffing, and facilities
productivity; developing formats and services that leverage these tools;
managing high quality, cost effective education networks; and leading
the sector transition from batch processing—in which learning is
organized around classes of students of the same age, who progress
through material at the same pace—to personalized, digital,
learning services."
Never mind that his notion that information and communication
technologies haven't transformed education is slightly disconnected with
reality. "Public delivery system"? "Batch processing"?
He's after "productivity" breakthroughs, like, say,
massively multiplayer online World of Warcraft innovation being applied
to learning games. Seriously. As a bonus, maybe the U.S. military will
stop complaining about
the quality of their potential workforce. (Physical fitness won't be
a problem with Wii Fit, right?)
Here's another gem, from Vander Ark's edreformer.com site
(part of his Vander Ark / Ratcliff PR business),
App Store
School:
"When students and teachers start to crave interaction, social
networking and real world projects could fill this void. Twitter,
Facebook and social networking apps in both android and apple could help
students stay connected, study in groups, or locate resources."
Update:
Betsy Russell's blog
has a flurry of entries describing the debate over SB1108 (kill the
teacher's union), and SB1110 (pay for performance, with, um,
no
funding source, we'll worry about that later. Maybe). Both bills
passed the Senate, 20-15.
Thanks to Senators Andreason, Bilyeu, Bock, Broadsword, Cameron, Corder,
Darrington, Keough, LeFavour, Malepeai, Schmidt, Stegner, Stennett,
Tippetts, and Werk for the NO votes.
Update #2: from a fortboise.org reader: "Idaho connection:
Partner Bennett Ratcliff was media guru Bob Squire's assigned consultant
for the Stallings Senate campaign. More recently the Honduras coup
regime hired him as a PR consultant."
23.Feb.2011
Yes, the Governor will take that call
I imagine Buffalo Beast editor Ian Murphy didn't really expect to
get away with the prank, but did expect to get a pretty good
laugh out of it, when
"David Koch" called to talk to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. He
had to navigate the receptionist, the executive assistant, and then the
chief of staff, Keith Gilkes.
That name opens doors, even if you don't give a callback number and say
"calling from the VOID--with the VOID, or whatever it's called. You
know, the Snype!"
Walker's spokesperson says he "says the same thing in private as he does
in public," but before the Beast went to press (so to speak),
maybe he wasn't quite so candid about how we was working to trick
Wisconsin's Senate Democrats to coming back to the capital and then to
ram his union-busting program through.
22.Feb.2011
We got the call, but didn't bother joining
We need a different name than "town hall" for a robo-calling selection
from a list of 700,000 voter names, a mostly listen-only presentation,
and a couple chances to "press 1 for yes, or 2 for no." For some company
in Chicago, it was a decent way to collect 15 to $20,000, and for the
we-have-no-experience-in-education-but-we're-reforming-it group of
Otter, Luna, Goedde and Nonini, they can now say with a straight face
that, "thousands of Idahoans participated" in the discussion," as
Dan
Popkey led in his report of yesterday's event.
The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, who paid for the
get-together "polled" callers on two questions: "Do you support
education reform?" and "Do you support raising taxes or not?"
I presume there was not a "press [3] if you recognize that this question
is self-serving at best, but certainly useless to assess anything
meaningful about what you think" option?
Good for IACI President Alex LaBeau for being "not sure he'll release
the survey results" (other than, um saying what they were) because
"he has doubts about scientific validity."
You think?
And gee, just a coincidence that the question screening by their
out-of-state vendor, and having an Otter aide pose them to the team
resulted in no one opposed to the Luna-Otter plan having a chance to say
or ask anything. As compared to the 5 or 10-to-1 opposition in public
testimony before the Senate Education Committee.
I saw House Education Chair Bob Nonini hanging out by the Capitol
yesterday during the rally at Capitol Park, watching from a safe
distance. He apparently wasn't interested in walking across the street
to collect some public opnion directly. (Too many union thugs in the
mix?)
And the voters of the state can certainly rest easier knowing that
IACI's sitting on "the largest and most sophisticated voter file in
Idaho, with over 700,000 names" in it. Don't call them, they'll call
you, maybe.
Education for a new century
Rather than commoditized and more "customer-driven" education, where
corporate interests profit from increasing students' productivity at
filling in bubbles on their No Child Left Behind standardized tests,
is there a vision for sustaining and enhancing the system of free,
public education that has made this country great, and provided a model
for the world? Here's one idea, from Zoe Weil, with the cautionary title,
The World
Becomes What We Teach.
"Because we are confronted with escalating, interrelated, global
problems, such as climate change, human trafficking, growing extinction
rates, economic instability, a looming energy catastrophe, to name just
a few, we must educate a generation to solve systemic problems."
Some of the information to begin to understand and address
systemic problems is already online. More of it will have to be
discovered, organized and presented in concise ways and be put online,
by the students of today. The means to understanding, and solving
systemic problems is not something that can be taught "online"
however.
Weil's TEDxDirigo
presentation (available via one of our great online institutions,
YouTube) shows her personally presenting the idea that we can
change "schooling" from a plodding idea to an inspirational one,
and education a generation that's up to solving the substantial problems
we'll be leaving them.
21.Feb.2011
Jonny Saunders rocks the house
Definitely worth the price of admission to hear Timberline HS
Jonny Saunders speak
at today's rally in Boise's Capitol Park. Public education hasn't
failed everyone in the state, Jonny made that much clear.
"Teaching is not just another job in this society, it's the way the
future is shaped, and the way the next generation is raised!"
Thanks to Idaho Reporter for being right up front and capturing
the speech and getting it up on the intertubes.
Brian
Murphy's report for the Idaho Statesman highlighted another
strong speaker, Rory Jones, from the Boise School District board:
"If [Luna] was so proud of (the plan), why didn’t he run on it?" Jones
asked. "The fix was in." (Gee, maybe he
reads my blog?)
Tom Luna's focus on the customer
Dan Popkey's story in Sunday's Idaho Statesman
was definitely worth the Saturday tease. Tom Luna's plan was
a long time in the making, with friends in high places (and with
deep pockets) going back into the first term of the Bush administration,
in which Mr. Luna enjoyed a federal government job as consolation for
losing his first bid for election to Idaho Superintendent.
In the sidebar section,
How 'Students Come First' Came to Be, Luna bristles at the
idea that he's carrying water for the corporations who will be the
beneficiaries if his "customer-driven" education reform plan goes
through.
"Do you think I can't have an original thought? That I’ve been spoon-fed
this information and I'm incapable of doing any of this on my own?"
Just a coincidence then that it comes out so much like the ideas of the
for-profit education industry making a business out of substituting
technology for teachers. Still, no man is an island, and at the end of
that sidebar, we read that "Luna said he did consult some outsiders, but
wouldn't name them."
"They're people that are leaders in education here in Idaho that I
trust, have confidence in and bounce a lot of ideas off of. And I'm
going to keep that confidential."
That would be the Dick Cheney model of transparency in government,
protecting one's "sources" as you move their plan through the
system.
Legislature to establish system of free schools
That's what
Article
IX, Section 1 of the Idaho Constitution says.
"The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon
the intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislature
of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough
system of public, free common schools."
Both the Governor and the Superintendent of Public Instruction swore an
oath to uphold that Constitution.
19.Feb.2011
Divide and conquer, in three easy steps
Robert Reich:
"The Republican
strategy is to split the vast middle and working class—pitting
unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against
non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security
against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there
for them, and the poor against the working middle class."
First, scream like crazy over deficit spending (which, gosh, just wasn't
that much of a problem during the Bush years), and convince everyone
that the budget is a zero-sum game for which the more "other people"
lose, the more you win.
Second, attack public employees and kill their unions. Republicans in
Wisconsin and Ohio are leading the way, with Idaho's GOP doing their
part.
Third, politicize the Supreme Court, with Scalia and Thomas setting a
new standard as "activist judges," palling around with the Koch brothers
and their Tea Party shills.
Following the well-connected money
Randy Stapilus posted
Grove Koger's 1993-2010 timeline following the education money, on
Tuesday, noting that "when the Luna-Otter plan emerged seemingly out of
nowhere a month ago ... it didn't really emerge out of
nowhere." A couple days later,
Randy
said they've had "a clutch of additional emails," and "the list of
particulars has grown to an impressive length," with a link to John
Miller's AP article
in the Idaho Press-Tribune, Albertsons heir mixes foundation,
business. (It ran in today's Idaho Statesman too, under a
more direct headline, above the fold on the front page,
Albertson
heir cashes in on online education.)
"Since 2007, Albertson's supermarket heir Joseph B. Scott has had a
golden touch with one of his investments, a company that sells online
education courses and other services to public schools."
That's pretty much all the explanation needed for what seemed so
inexplicable, the recent full page ad from the Albertsons Foundation
saying "we've thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at education and
nothing's worked so we better do the Otter-Luna plan!" (I'm paraphrasing
the
foundation's "letter" to Idahoans, slightly.)
The Statesman also teases for a Special Report in tomorrow's
paper, Dan Popkey reporting that "Tom Luna's long ties to for-profit
education leaders have helped shaped his ideology—and now his
ideology may help them make money." A lot of money. Meanwhile,
Kristin Rodine's report on Luna's go at the City Club of Boise
yesterday quoted his mixed catastrophe metaphors:
"These are steps we must take to get our schools out of this financial
tailspin. We are at a funding cliff, and we cannot ignore it."
The Republican-dominated state government has been in the driver's seat
for many years, no mystery how we got here.
Now pass this legislation or else I'm going to drive us right
off!
US House says YES!
to prohibiting the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases; reducing
funding for the National Endowment for the Arts; restoring $557M for
special ed; killing "Green the Capitol"; reducing financing the
Institute of Peace; prohibiting funds for the FCC to enforce "net
neutrality"; prohibiting the EPAs regulation of cement plants
(because ... more mercury in the air is a good thing?); zeroing
salaries for White House senior policy advisors (down with the czars!);
eliminating financing for Planned Parenthood (down with family
planning!); canceling the spare engine for the F-35 (down with the ...
redundancy!).
US House says NO!
It will not eliminate funds for The Presidio Trust; nor restore $50M in
heating subsidies for the poor; nor strip financing for the National
Labor Relations Board; nor reduce funding for Amtrak; nor restore $131M
for the SEC (who needs financial regulation?); nor prohibit government
advertising on NASCAR cars; nor limit funding for the wars in
Iraq or Afghanistan; nor eliminate funding for the Selective Service;
nor remove Wyoming grey wolves from the Endangered Species Act;
nor eliminate funcing for the V-22 Osprey, the military boondoggle that
will not die.
And those are just highlights of
the
highlights of key amendments to H.R.1. Four hundred eighty
more amendments we could talk about. Before we send this baby on to the
world's greatest deliberative body.
18.Feb.2011
Courage in a small town
Hell of a story about Idaho Falls and its Post Register
on the Nieman Foundation's site at Harvard:
A
Local Newspaper Endures a Stormy Backlash, by Dean Miller,
the paper's managing editor.
The same Frank Vandersloot that bought full-page ads opining against the
reporting of the Boy Scouts' problem with pedophiles bought full-page
ads in favor of Tom Luna's plan to decimate education in Idaho, and kill
the union. Real stand-up dude.
Race to the bottom
A couple talking Congressional heads
on the Newshour last night, fairly and balancedly chosen one
each from the two name-brand parties were talking about how the
closed-door bull sessions were working to see if they could make
the Simpson-Bowles deficit
commission's recommendations the legislative default, and
then cast about for what else they could do.
Which, you know how stuff works in D.C., would be exactly like enacting
the B-S commission's recommendations. Not because the commission's work
was so widely recognize as ne plus ultra, but because the people
who came up with the recommendations think that's what we should do.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA):
"[T]hat's why we gradually expanded our group. And now we've involved some
folks who frankly have a lot more expertise about the debt commission
report itself than we do, because they were members of it."
First, let's talk about discretionary spending, which is the talk of the
town at the moment. From the point that George W. Bush and gang went to
work on unbalancing the budget and dividing the spoils among their best
friends, that part of the budget has almost doubled: in constant
dollars, it went from two-thirds of a $trillion in 2001 to $1.25T last
year, and 88% increase. Almost two-thirds of that increase went
to the Defense Department and two wars. All but about 20% went to
defense, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security and the State Department.
(The accompanying graph is from OMB data, as tabulated by Rep.
Xavier Becerra in his statement responding to the Fiscal Commission's
report, see pgs. 4-5 of the
member statements.)
So if you want to talk about discretionary spending,
the
only serious conversation begins with DEFENSE, after we thank
Secretary Gates oh so much for his suggestion of reducing the rate of
increase of defense spending, and then decide which part of our
out-of-control military industrial complex, wars, black sites, and
empire
we're prepared to reduce voluntarily, before bankruptcy forces our hand.
Beyond that, I have two big concerns with the federal budget: the first
is that the machinations over them are a total sham,
essentially fraudulent as Paul Krugman puts it. The second is that
even more damage will be done by the political hacks hacking away even
as they don't do a damn thing to fix what's broken. Krugman's point is
that health care is the top three things we need to be working on
(and government revenue fourth).
"What would real action on health look like? Well, it might include
things like giving an independent commission the power to ensure that
Medicare only pays for procedures with real medical value; rewarding
health care providers for delivering quality care rather than simply
paying a fixed sum for every procedure; limiting the tax deductibility
of private insurance plans; and so on.
"And what do these things have in common? They’re all in last year's
health reform bill."
The action in D.C. may not be quite as outrageously useless as
what the Idaho House came up with this week, but it may still be
functionally useless, and wasting our time and money with a barking
carnival show along the way.
15.Feb.2011
Speaking of hostility
I understand from an Idaho GOP press release and
the
Associate Press that "Over the weekend an angry teacher showed up at
Luna's mother's home, last night Luna's truck was spray painted and his
tires slashed, and there have been multiple incidents of harassment in
public venues." Those would be unwarranted acts of vandalism, to be
sure.
However, the further quote from State Chairman Norm Semanko is almost
equally over the top:
"Up to this point, the vocal minority has been spreading their
propaganda without much resistance from the majority of Idahoans who
support the plan. It's time for that to change. It's time for Idahoans
who care about education to step up and take the time to express their
support for Governor Otter and Superintendent Luna's plan through civil
means: contact their legislators, write letters to the editor, post on
social media, and talk to their family and friends."
Where shall we start? First of all the clever little twist of phrase
about "the majority of Idahoans who support the plan": Semanko didn't
say that a majority of Idahoans support the plan, but one might easily
overlook that crucial "who" that allows his sentence to be true, but of
no significance.
Propaganda? Cheap, and baseless shot, Norm.
Were you out of town last week when hundreds of opponents spent
hours at the statehouse civilly waiting their turn to testify? Did your
subscription to the Idaho Statesman run out so that you haven't
been able to keep up with the letters running overwhelmingly against
Luna's and Otter's plan?
You want "civil," set an example.
And the same goes for Tom Luna, who while justifiably upset by acts of
vandalism and anger directed toward him and his family, has no basis to
slander the Idaho Education Association for "union thuggery."
Killing the teachers' union
The description of Idaho
Senate
Bill 1108 runs on a page and a half (AND IN ALL CAPS IS THAT REALLY
NECESSARY?), but in the testimony I just sent the Education Committee, I
offered a shorter title that cuts to the chase:
Teachers Shall Be At Our Mercy. Here's the whole message:
I am deeply disappointed in the proposals brought to the Senate
Education Committee by Superintendent Luna, and by the Committee's
willful dismissal of the unprecedented outpouring of public opposition
to them.
Rather than top-down directives from a management team with little
experience in education, I feel it is crucial to the future of education
in Idaho that budget challenges and reform needs be met with a
collaborative effort between state officials, school administrators and
teachers. That will of course mean working with teachers' associations,
rather than working to minimize their influence, add administrative
burdens to them, and define in State Code what can and cannot be
negotiated.
As I read Senate Bill 1108, I find it replete with the assumption that
teachers are adversaries in the process. At a minimum, this creates a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Elimination of what little job security
teachers have, reduction in notice for termination, putting dismissal at
the sole discretion of boards of education but enjoining them from
considering length of service are all unilateral, hostile acts. It
appears to be the sponsors' intent to embody hostility to teachers in
State Code.
Specifying that mutually-agreed mediation be non-binding seems likely to
guarantee that it is a waste of time and money. The bill provides an
arbitrary deadline (to be declared by law as "not arbitrary") for
agreement to be reached, and if that fails, "the board of trustees ...
shall establish compensation ... as it deems appropriate."
In other words, it shall be Idaho State Law that negotiations with
teachers will be a sham and a farce.
And the sham "negotiations" will be made an annual event; the
Legislature would deny teachers even the benefit of the two-year term
they themselves enjoy. In order to empower itself and local school
boards to dismiss teachers at will, the Legislature appears ready and
willing to forgo the possibility of having stable, committed educators
engaged in its school system.
On the positive side, I don't see the words "Students Come First"
anywhere in SB 1108. Perhaps "Teachers Shall Be At Our Mercy" could be
used as an appropriate title? Certainly they will be able to figure that
out even without such candor.
Things go better with Koch
Not that the financial disclosure forms for federal officials are all
that intrusive (or that officials manage to fill them out
correctly and completely), but it pays
to be a little bit consistent when you make stuff up to fill them
in. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' spokeswoman says it was a
"brief drop-by" at billionaires Charles and David Koch's Palm Springs
soirée, but then the disclosure report said the Federalist
Society chipped in for four days of "transportation, meals and
accommodations" over the weekend.
Palm Springs is a nice place; you just want to linger when you drop by,
eh?
The Kochs landed two, count 'em two of the nine members of the Supreme
Court for their January 2008 weekend do; Antonin Scalia was there also.
Common Cause has a few questions, and a
request
to the Attorney General:
"Common Cause hereby formally requests that the Justice Department
promptly investigate whether Justices Thomas and Scalia should have
recused themselves from the Citizens United case under 28 U.S.C.
§ 455. If the Department finds sufficient grounds for
disqualification of either Justice, we request that the Solicitor
General file a Rule 60(b) motion with the full Supreme Court seeking to
vacate the judgment."
♥.Feb.2011
The incomprehensible budget (and let the debate begin)
With trillions of dollars whizzing overhead, it's hard to know what to
think right now. Brink of disaster? Wrong track? Investments for the
future? Bloomberg collects
some sound-bite
reactions: David Stockman (Reagan's one-time budget director who
eventually called b.s. on Reaganomics) says "a new low in political
cowardice," since "in defense, in revenue, entitlement reform, there's
nothing."
Jeffrey Sachs: "it's absurd what we're doing," "driving down the
poorest of the poor" after an unprecedented boom for the wealthy
(which in case you hadn't noticed, is on again).
As Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan (R-WI) is
the go-to guy for rebuttals, and he's managed to count up $8 in tax
increases for every $1 in spending cuts (as opposed to $2 in cuts
against $1 in tax increases the administration estimates).
I don't know where he gets those numbers, and he couldn't explain it to
the radio interviewer when she asked.
His own bullet list is a confusing hash of this year, this decade,
deficits and debt, and does nothing to explain that gigantic claim he's
waving around.
Can Ryan make sense of what he's talking about? Does he want to? Or is
he more interested in repealing the laws of arithmetic ("too much
regulation!"), as
Paul
Krugman suggests.
You may have missed it
distracted as you were by the ginger doo-dad mysteriously floating over
the speaker, but the reception at the Conservative Political Action
Conference for
Donald Trump's assessment of Ron Paul's chances for getting elected
President was interesting. The folks who've "elected" Paul the
winner in the last two CPAC straw polls apparently can't handle the
truth. (Mitt Romney was #1 for the three previous years, before and
after the GOP nominated John McCain in 2008.)
What, are they on drugs?
We've got some good news, and some bad news, and they both fit in one
paragraph of
Betsy Russell's report from the Statehouse:
"For every $1 spent on treatment costs, Idaho avoided $1.38 in criminal
justice costs, according to new research from the Washington State
University Public Policy Center. Nevertheless, Gov. Butch Otter's budget
proposal for next year calls for cutting the services by 30.3 percent in
state general funds, and 10.8 percent in total funds, and lawmakers are
now saying they're likely to trim substantially more from the state
budget than Otter recommended."
13.Feb.2011
The fix is already in
Never mind that Idaho's Capitol saw
unprecedented public participation last week, most of it in
opposition to the legislative proposals brought by Superintendent of
Public Instruction Tom Luna; the chair of the Senate Education
Committee, the Speaker of the House, the Senate President Pro Tem, and
the Governor are all co-sponsors. Chairman Bob Goedde got as
much as he could from the claque, alternating "pro" and "con" testimony
as long as he could in spite of the signups becoming increasingly
lopsided over three days, ending up
10
to 1 against.
Thanks so much for sharing your opinon, now step aside while we ram this
through. We come to bury public education, not to praise it, let alone
support its future in our state.
Sen. Russ Fulcher (R-Meridian) told a statewide audience how he'd
"generalize" what he'd heard in the committee hearings (in preparation
to dismiss them) that "those that support the school choice movement and
the business advocates tend to be in the support column, those who tend
to be the traditional stakeholders in the current public education
system tend to be in the opposed column."
Fulcher smugly pointed out
on Idaho
Reports last week, "the people overwhelmingly went
for the policy side of not expanding government" in the November
elections, so "no one came up with any other alternatives."
Because raising taxes (or correcting the mistakes of the historic
tax shift short-term Governor Jim Risch accomplished in
2006) is simply not an alternative.
It's not whether we're going to dismantle education in Idaho,
in other words, but the particulars of how.
A few "small corrections" to be made to the Luna bills over the weekend,
and then the Committee will approve them, I'm sure.
That said, you can still be a part of history, even if you didn't make
your way to the Capitol last week: comments sent to the Committee
Secretary, Sara Pealy at spealy@senate.idaho.gov or
edutestimony@lso.idaho.gov will be distributed to the members, and
become part of the public record.
Because that's where the money is
The headline on Frank Rich's op-ed today is sort of hopeful,
At Last,
Bernie Madoff Gives Back, but the content is pretty much all bad
news, about our continuing "plan" to have "socialism for capitalists,
and capitalism for everybody else," as Michael Lewis described it.
Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase might be momentarily discomfited by the
dirt dug up by Madoff bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard, but they'll
soon be laughing
off business as usual.
As America's Number One financial bad guy, Madoff's name seems to be the
only one in the public imagination, no doubt because "he's the only
headline figure of the crash who did go to prison." It's certainly not
due to the enormity of his crimes, substantial though they might have
been; what the banking socialists did to the economy is orders of
magnitude worse.
Instead of a "new era of responsibility," the political scene devolved
to the usual suspects, bad economy means throw bums out, and our new
sound track is the broken record of Republicans calling government
regulation the root of all evil. In spite of the Financial Crisis
Inquiry Commission failure to capture any bad guys (let alone the
public's imagination), all that's left is the tragicomedy of newly
empowered Darrel Issa on the attack, looking for overspending and
partisanship in the Commission, and
its chairman saying sorry, we don't have the budget or staff to
answer your silly questions.
11.02.2011
Circus comes to town
The American Conservative Union's CPAC conference seems pretty far
over the top to me. I mean,
Dick Cheney? Presenting an award to Donald Rumsfeld? You'd get
laughed out of Hollywood if you showed up with that crazy treatment.
Still, I appreciate the protesters interrupted the ex-dark lord, calling
him a "draft dodger" and "war criminal." I'm guessing you won't see
either of these Bobsey twins going on a European vacation any time
soon.
It not only seems too early to be serious about a Presidential
candidate for the GOP, it just is, as former Minnesota Gov. Tim
Pawlenty demonstrated by writing his own speech:
"At a very young age, I saw up close the face of loss, the face of
hardship, the face of losing a job And I saw in the mirror, something
else: the face of a very uncertain future."
He's still got that baby face, as a matter of fact. Among the other
possibles, Donald Trump? Seriously? (Let's start by reaching agreement
on what that is on his head.) Maybe to her credit (or maybe just because
she couldn't negotiate the speaking fee she wanted), Palin didn't show
up. CPAC not conservative enough for her? Too organized?
And Newt Gingrich, now pinched, pudgily waddling up to the lectern
to blame all our troubles on Obama. Anybody feeling we need to see more
of the Newtster? Maybe the Donald could hire him for something.
Ok, that's low key
I don't know where California's economy ranks this week, but presumably
"if it were a country," it would still be in the top 10 largest, with
more than an eighth of the USA's GDP.
(Wikipedia says
it would be 59th largest, by area.)
And the current leader of the Golden State is travelling...
by himself, on Southwest.
He's approachable, what can we say?
What's next in Eqypt?
All I know is what little I hear or read on the news from half a world
away, and even though
Mohamed
El Baradei's Op-Ed was written before Mubarak's departure, his
opinion is more important than most. Seems like he'll be the
front-runner for their next President, if he's crazy enough to want the
job? After they come up with a new Constitution and a new Parliament,
following his prescription.
"What needs to happen instead is a peaceful and orderly transition of
power, to channel the revolutionary fervor into concrete steps for a new
Egypt based on freedom and social justice. The new leaders will have to
guarantee the rights of all Egyptians. They will need to dissolve the
current Parliament, no longer remotely representative of the people.
They will also need to abolish the Constitution, which has become an
instrument of repression, and replace it with a provisional
Constitution, a three-person presidential council and a transitional
government of national unity."
There seems little doubt that the transitional (?) "presidential
council" will include a representative of the military. Several
representatives, I'd guess.
Dark tales from the Capitol
Here's
an interesting story from inside Idaho, on the third day of public
testimony before our Senate Education Committee. It seems the
committee's secretary was dispatched to clear some unwanted literature
from the hands of the public, lined up to testify.
Seriously? "This is not authorized."
"The young woman continued moving down the line, ripping papers from
people's hands, then found a large pile of the papers on a bench and
started collecting them."
This after day two had
the Chairman just about busting a gavel in frustration at "very,
very pointed and uncalled for comments."
People can get frustrated when they have to present themselves
as supplicants to prevent the dismantling of a system built over a
century of hard work. Who would have guessed?
Cue Bobby McFerrin
Gail
Collins with a timely list of things we don't have to worry about.
Especially comforting while the Idaho state legislature debates deciding
for themselves which federal laws they'll ignore, dismantling public
education (no more kindergarten! Sing along with me, "schools out for
EVER!"), and so on.
"About 10 percent of a state legislature is composed of people who are
totally loony. This is in a good state. It's possible that in yours, the
proportion is much, much higher. That is probably something to worry
about, but not today.
"The point is, they only introduce these bills to get your attention.
Resist."
Starting over
Yesterday's rumors about Hosni Mubarak stepping down appeared to be
wishful thinking. I was listening to the radio as his statement
came live, translated on the fly. I didn't hear the whole thing, but the
convoluted language did communicate "not stepping down right now" well
enough.
And the army's
Communiqué Number One, that's interesting.
(Déjà vu, anyone?
From 1969, in
Libya.) Sounds like the
start of a new ruling party, rather. There they are meeting, and
there they are
forming a
protective cordon around the state TV building to send out
Communiqué
No. 2, confirming "the lifting of the state of emergency as soon as
the current circumstances end."
Is that like we'll relax the unconstitutional provisions of the USA
Patriot Act when the War on Terror is over, I wonder? As
Roger
Cohen notes, in his Op-Ed from Cairo, "Egypt has lived under one
form or other of dictatorship since 1952."
"This is a seismic event in a long-dormant Arab world, reflecting at last
the modernizing urges of the region's overwhelmingly young populations.
They are questing, Facebook- and Twitter-empowered, to become citizens
rather than cowed subjects; they have learned that the utopias proposed
by fanaticism are empty."
I hope he's right that "the tired binary view of the Arab world where
only despots can hold off fanaticism is exhausted," but a ring of
Generals doesn't look like quite the same as the Continental
Congress.
I guess I'll have to look at Twitter myself to keep up to speed.
Cohen's lead feed
8 minutes ago: #mubarak's possibly worst political speech in history.
talk about a buried lead. what he meant is "I'm leaving town." which
he's now done. (That was versus the 17-hours ago
#Mubarak delegates his "powers and authority" to Suleiman but doesn't
quit. Fury in #Tahrir. Bait and switch. Ugly Friday looms.)
It'll be a long road back from
his resort home in Sharm el-Sheik to Cairo, if he ever travels that
far.
10.Feb.2011
Talking points twisted frame of the day
Now that the Republicans control the House and run the Committee on
Government Oversight, we can be treated to the absurd spectacle
of Dan Burton (R-IN) saying that "regulation is strangling the private
sector" before a parade of witnesses all selected to speak on one side
of the issue have their say?
Would that be the regulations that give Americans confidence that their
food is safe, the water is drinkable and the air is clean? Or the
regulation that makes our electric, natural gas, water and sewer
utilities reliable and inexpensive? The regulations that keep the
internet humming, or the Global Positioning System working? Cellphones,
radio, TV, highways?
"Strangle" is apparently the talking points word of the day, but
somebody needs to cough up this hairball of misframing. Here we go,
Robert Reich:
"The reason we have continued sky-high unemployment has nothing to do
with excessive regulation.... If anything, the economy unraveled
because of too little regulation.... Thirty years of
deregulation, culminating with the dismantling of Glass-Steagall and the
abject failure of regulators at the Fed and the SEC to use the authority
they still had, enabled the Street to make bundles of money and expose
the rest of the economy to unprecedented levels of risk."
And more importantly,
"most of the complexity and verbiage that finds its way into the Code of
Federal Regulations is the result of industry lawyers and lobbyists who
exploit every potential ambiguity to avoid doing what lawmakers
intend—thereby necessitating ever-more detailed and picayune rules
to close the loopholes. It's an endless cat-and-mouse game that runs
from regulatory agencies through the courts and then back again."
Same as the old boss
The man with the name that makes you go huh?, Reince Priebus, is
filling the shoes of his predecessor, Michael Steele, with the same sort
of krazy klown panache we came to know and love. Paid for by the
Republican National Committee, and as ever, the same punch line as you
get from your kids in college (you know, "send money"), but
Valentine's Day?
Really?
"Pass along a Valentine's Card from Obama, Biden, Pelosi and many more.
Choose from 18 different Valentine's E-Cards that the Republican
National Committee has created for this very special day. Share them
with all your family and friends, especially those Democrats who need to
know how you feel about the wrong direction their Party is dragging our
country."
Guess who I think is a drag on the RNC, if not the country?
I took a look at one, just for giggles. Sample message:
"Hope you like this Valentine's Card, your grandchildren are paying for
it." (At least it is next to an attractive picture of Obama.)
Underneath the pithy parody putting words in someone else's mouth there
is the obligatory disclaimer, "Not Authorized By Any Candidate Or
Candidate's Committee," because OMG, who would put his or her name on
something like this? Besides the RNC, that is.
9.Feb.2011
An even bigger gamble on education
Tom Luna is complaining that there's been
"an organized attempt to get people riled up," but really, we need to
give credit where it's due. This is pretty much all your doing, Mr.
Superintendent. You come up with a plan to decimate Idaho educators, to
destroy their union, to substitute technology for human contact, and you
think organization is required to develop opposition?
The chairman of the Senate Education committee had to
bend over backwards to get testimony from your supporters wedged in,
all 14 who showed up when called, versus more than twice that many who
spoke in opposition. The signup tally was seven-to-one opposed, more
than a hundred people willing to spend most of their day at the
statehouse hoping to be heard.
And unlike
Frank VanderSloot who has a corporation to pay for full page ads in
the newspaper, and a private jet to pop over to the Capital, a lot of
them were using personal time off to do it.
Gambling on education
The surest, most reliable, "can't lose" way to beat the
lottery—any lottery—is of course not to play.
But where's the fun in that? Mohan Srivastava, a professional
gold-digger consultant, parlayed a couple of "gag" tickets into a ton of
fun with statistics, and
more
than his share of winners.
That's not as much news as you'd think it would be, most likely because
the folks who run the games that return, on average, 53 cents for
every dollar spent, aren't big on this sort of publicity. As the
president of one of the few companies that prints tickets put it, "Every
lottery knows that it's one scandal away from being shut down."
Even though the most enduring scandal doesn't seem to bother the people
who are losing the most money:
"While approximately half of Americans buy at least one lottery ticket
at some point, the vast majority of tickets are purchased by about 20
percent of the population. These high-frequency players tend to be poor
and uneducated, which is why critics refer to lotteries as a regressive
tax. (In a 2006 survey, 30 percent of people without a high school
degree said that playing the lottery was a wealth-building strategy.) On
average, households that make less than $12,400 a year spend 5 percent
of their income on lotteries—a source of hope for just a few bucks
a throw."
Beyond figuring out the baited hook of "extended play" tic-tac-toe
(and deciding that $600/week wouldn't be worth the trouble to plunder
the defective game), there's the much more interesting fishy pattern of
"payout anomalies":
"The anomalies are always the same: Break-even tickets—where the
payout is equal to the cost—are significantly underredeemed while
certain types of winning tickets are vastly overredeemed. Take a
blackjack scratch ticket sold by Virginia: While there were far too few
$2 break-even winners redeemed, there were far too many $4, $6, $10, and
$20 winners. In fact, the majority of scratch games with baited hooks in
Washington and Virginia displayed this same irregularity. It's as if
people had a knack for buying only tickets that paid out more than they
cost."
8.Feb.2011
Population waves
In classic Baby Boomer style (you might say), I read the NYT story about
the
business opportunity in a graying population thinking about myself.
Looking at the
interactive graphic showing the aging of America, I picked out "my"
histogram bar and noticed that it rides just on the face of the peak
moving through time.
I first saw one of these demographic histograms when I took a Geography
class in the mid-70s, when the "traditional" pointy plots gave way to
stockier forecasts for the future. That future has arrived, and I was
struck by how flat the distribution now is from age 0 to the mid-50s,
the once-dramatic wave of the Boom upon which I've ridden my life still
visible, but now the younger bars are quite filled-in behind it.
The NYT's point was "look at all the people 65+," and the top hat of the
distribution does show dramatic increases from here on out. Now 13%,
forecast to be 16% in a decade, 20% in two (with modest growth from 2030
to 2050).
I thought it would be interesting to be able to see the shape of these
histograms plotted together... so I drew what you see here, picking off
the data in 20 year jumps (as compared to every 5 years in the
source).
Everything's bigger in Texas
For example,
the boasting about fiscal responsibility and how many companies
might find a move to Texas attractive. Their budget shortfall is
definitely in the big leagues, "roughly one-third of the state's
budget," at $27 billion, give or take. Woo-ee.
"[Gov. Rick] Perry's claims of companies that have decamped from
California to lay down roots in Texas appear to be overblown. When the
Austin American-Statesman looked into the Texas governor's boast that
there were 153 such companies in 2010, reporters found the claim
included California firms that stayed put but maybe opened a Texas
branch. The newspaper concluded that Perry's figure was grossly
inflated.
"Perry's staff said the governor was too busy to be interviewed in
Austin last week. Media reports later revealed that he was on a five-day
trip through California, which involved trying to coax companies east.
His spokesman refused to name the companies."
7.Feb.2010
Imported from Detroit (and stuff)
Great game yesterday, most of all because my favorite team in pretty
much all professional sports won, but also because it was competitive
and left the conclusion uncertain right up to the last minute, and the
4th and 5. (Imagine...
111
million viewers on the edges of their seats.
I remember a 4th and... 18 was it? that didn't turn out so
well for Green Bay once upon a time.)
But now that the football season's over, we can talk about the main part
of the half-day broadcast: the advertising. Hats off to Chrysler for
their rock 'em-sock 'em pitch (for a product I have absolutely
no interest in, whatsoever) for (a) the city of Detroit, (b) some
expensive new car they're selling, and (c) Black is Beautiful. Congrats
to voice-over guy Kevin Yon for getting featured, and check out what
kind of attention to quality went into the ad:
"he spent 2½ to 3 hours in January recording the commercial."
You can enjoy the rest on
superbowlads.fanhouse.com.
Yeah that's right, you're going to seek out advertising. This one
day of the year.
What's not to like about Star Wars, and
Volkswagen's Darth Vader kid? Even Anheiser Busch came through with
one of note (selling that most-forgettable of products, industrially
manufactured beer), going with the
Western
theme rather than the usual beer = babes formula.
The 1984 theme came back, for yet another computer (thingie),
Motorola
Xoom doing a backflip on Apple. Sentimental favorite, and as a bonus
the leading actress just happens to look like one of my nieces. (And
yes, she is that beautiful.)
Cars were big, except that smaller is actually getting to be better,
isn't it? Have we seen gas mileage touted before? Still, luxury is a
bigger sell, as in
Audi
v. "old luxury" (tapping into cultural themes from
The Simpsons and Mission: Impossible). There was Kia's
Futurama-ish
concept, and
yet
another Beetle coming.
Update:
Stuart
Elliott's take, in the NYT. Among the cultural allusions he
mentions that I didn't pick up on was the connection to the "Tiny
Dancer" scene in Almost Famous. Thanks to
the miracle of
YouTube, memory of that charming film is easily refreshed.
Outreach to Albania
New addition to (and rotated to the top of) the blogroll, my friend from
church Mike Weiss'
Idahoan in Albania blog.
Infrequent but interesting updates about his continuing service in the
Peace Corps in that country. He was in town for a short visit before his
final months of service, and I asked him about the culture shock of
visiting what must feel like a bit of a foreign country to him. He
mentioned "the obesity" as one of the more striking features.
"My general impression is that the Peace Corps is well intentioned, but
often confused and misdirected. Yet it is almost unique among American
institutions in its approach to the world. It is not trying to convert
or pacify. It does not spread American largesse. It is simply an effort
to meet the larger world on a one-to-one basis, a world where there are
incredible inequities and challenges, to get to know them and they us,
and to help, a bit, if we can. It sends mostly young people with the
time, education and inclination to volunteer, and, a few oldsters, as
well."
5.Feb.2011
Just scraping by
After all the wrangling in court settled down, the Idaho Transportation
Department posted the
comments and responses
it received in regard to the proposed massively oversized shipments by
ExxonMobil from the port of Lewiston up US 12 to Montana and then north
to Alberta. Those were slated to start "when the weather allows in early
2011." Meanwhile, the early adopter, ConocoPhillips got the green light
for a paltry four (as opposed to the two hundred+ bound for Alberta)
monster trucks.
Time is money, but if you're headed up Lolo Pass with a
you-can't-be-serious oversized load this time of year, we have to ask,
"you're not from around here, are you?" I don't know what factor the
weather might have played, but here, the very first load
scraped
into the rocks,
between
Greer and Kamiah. A "sharp curve" snuck up on 'em, and the "we won't
ever delay traffic by more than 15 minutes" plan was busted up to 59
minutes. (The Lewiston Tribune apparently reported that
ten of the delays this week ranged from 16 to 59 minutes.)
Now the ITD is demanding things. Better late than never.
It's been a lot of years (34½ if you must know) since I road my
bike from Orofino to Kooskia and up over Lolo Pass on U.S. 12. The photo
of the rig parked at a turnout near Kooskia in the
Huckleberries
item on the Spokesman-Review site is quite close to where I
spent my first night (of 50) on the road in early June. The toughest
part of the trip was the 50 miles up and down the rolling hills of
the Palouse from Moscow to Orofino earlier that day. The stretch from
Orofino up to Kooskia was smooth sailing with the relatively gentle grade
of that stretch of the Clearwater and a lovely tailwind. None of the
curves seemed all that "sharp" on a bike, but I do know that the turns
get sharper—and steeper—on up the road.
It's going to be an interesting trip for those guys.
Work week
Amazing how a regular job interferes with web surfing and blogging
anymore. Not that my job has gone "regular," but I did put in "three
quarters time" this Mon.-Fri. (which, now that I only bill for focused
attention, is equivalent to 2 or 3 weeks on salary). Anyway, it's
Saturday, so time to relax a bit, and see what all I missed.
A suburban bobcat
on Boise's Greenbelt, that's worth noting! Nice day to decide to carry a
camera.
From the same author, some of the
Egyptian tightrope
that the U.S. is walking in response to the dramatic political upheaval
in the middle east. I hadn't heard much about the "first new Vice
President in thirty years," but finding out that Omar Suleiman has
"headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service" since 1993
helps connect the dots. Somehow I don't think the folks in Egypt are
going to see Suleiman's ascension as fondly as George H.W. Bush becoming
the U.S. President after Ronald Reagan, but there are some interesting
parallels to be drawn there. Nicaragua, Iran-Contra, around to Iraq.
Everything is connected.
Speaking of which, in other disturbing news from that region,
saboteurs
blew up a pipeline that runs through Egypt's North Sinai and
supplies gas to Israel and Jordan.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
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Tuesday, 01-Mar-2011 12:10:55 MST
http://fortboise.org/blog/201102.html
