Boise
Idaho
windsurfing
Photography
Politics
Religion
Economics
unraveling
31.March.2011
The 16 and two-thirds percent solution
The lunatics are officially in charge of one-half of one-third of the
asylum.
John Boehner:
"There's no agreement on numbers. And nothing will be agreed to, until
everything is agreed to. We control one half of one third of the
government here, but we're going to continue to fight for the largest
spending cuts that we can get, uh, to keep the government open and
funded for the balance of this fiscal year."
La la la I can't hear you
The Idaho Republicans had everything on schedule, give or take, for
their oh-so-appropriate sine die celebration on April Fool's Day, but
the Dems got a notion to get uppity and be
as
annoying as possible unless they could get a hearing for one
measly attempt to raise some money from smokers (and provide a little
disincentive to drug use for good measure), sponsored (but never
introduced) by the GOP's own House Tax Committee chairman, Dennis
Lake.
The most pressing business on the GOP minds was to add an EMERGENCY!
clause added to the anti-union, anti-teacher and pro-laptop school "reform"
bills so that a referendum—a vote of the people, don't you
know—couldn't overturn them until late 2012. As Minority Leader
John Rusche puts it, to "speed things up to subvert legal recourse and
popular opinion."
One of Idaho's smokers, Rep. Bob "No No" Nonini said he doesn't think
Idahoans oppose the school reform bills, a notion he's apparently not
keen to actually have tested. "I don’t see this overwhelming outcry to
do anything - I'm hearing good support up home," Nonini said.
He didn't hear the overwhleming outcry when it was in front of the
place he works (even though there he was, taking a smoke break during
the protest), when
it
surrounded the Capitol, when it filled hearing rooms for
hours
on end, and he sure has hell isn't going to hear it when he's ready
to pack his bag and head up home for the season.
30.March.2011
Sky falling. Film at 11.
Dean
Baker's take on the deficit hawks is that in spite of the outsized
share of national income going to the super-rich, they want the middle
class to pick up the slack, raise the retirement age, buy your own damn
pension, quit whining about being unemployed.
"Over the last three decades, the richest one percent of the population
has increased its share of national income by
almost 10
percentage points. This comes to $1.5 trillion a year, or as
the deficit hawks are fond of saying, $90 trillion over the next 75
years. ...
"[T]his upward redistribution was brought about by deliberate policy. We
pursued a trade and high dollar policy that was intended to put downward
pressure on the wages of manufacturing workers. The Federal Reserve
Board deliberately kept unemployment higher than necessary in order to
weaken workers bargaining power. We extended patent monopolies to allow
drug companies to jack up prices, raking in hundreds of billions a year.
And, we gave the Wall Street banks the benefit of "too big to fail"
status so they can borrow with a government subsidy."
Idaho's U.S. Senator Mike Crapo is one of the deficit hawks, banging the
drum at
last week's City
Club of Boise, his talk titled "Summoning the Will to Reduce the
Deficit." He was one of the 18 members of the President's National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and is now one of the
so-called
Gang
of Six trying to come up with a package that could find its way
through the Senate.
Listening to him speak, I couldn't help but wonder whether his
difficulty in speaking directly and giving a clear presentation of
either our supposedly dire straits or the way forward reflected
the inherent complexity of our predicament, or the inevitably stilted
thinking of his position in a terminally polarized debating society
driven by corporate donations.
He told the group that studies of countries over the last two centuries
that let their sovereign debt get out of hand, where "out of hand" is
conveniently bounded by where we are right now, debt-to-GDP of 90% or
greater, is that "policy options are restricted ... you start seeing a
shrinkage in the growth of the economy." And it leads to a "painful
path forward."
Sounds painful. Sort of. Then he slipped in "tragedy" and "a huge
collapse" which sounds slightly worse than "restricted policy options."
He mixed a lot of "if" and "when" but the "experts" he talks to all
agree the sky will fall in 5 years or sooner.
"Economists can predict this better than I, but you're going to see,
probably, rampant inflation, interest rates will skyrocket,
the dollar will be devalued, we may end up in a, frankly trying to
monetize our debt, and ultimately if we see interest rates skyrocket,
and we see the accumulation of debt weighing down our budget, as it
could, so rapidly, we will probably see the United States face a
circumstance like Greece is facing, or like Japan and a number of other
nations in the world today, which would mean essentially that we would
have to see the United States go into a restructuring. And if that
happens, the economic consequences will be devestating to the
country."
Never mind that we've been
"monetizing our debt" right along. And that interest rates are and
have been ridiculously low. And that the United States and Greece have
as much in common as Athenian democracy and the U.S. Senate do.
Restructuring? Is that like Chapter 9 or something? Will we have to let
Texas go? Don't be flippant, when the bond market loses confidence in
our solvency, there will be "incredibly heavy devestation." (Worse than
the greatest real estate bubble of all time? Worse than a 9.0 earthquake
and tsunami?)
Meanwhile, back in Congress, they're gridlocked over the decision of
whether to cut six or sixty billion dollars of
discretionary spending out of a $3.5 trillion budget. What he
said: "What we need is much, much more and much more robust."
Crapo said the Fiscal Commission was "the only game in town" that was
considering things with a comprehensive enough scope to accomplish
meaningful change, agreeing that "everything had to be on the table."
They agreed that Social Security had not created the crisis, and
shouldn't be used to resolve it, other than to avoid having it cause
greater trouble.
They proposed "strong spending caps" over a decade on the discretionary
side, to save "almost $2 trillion over a decade." On the entitlement
side, "it was light," but they "started the process," and got somewhere
"about $1 trillion in reform, reduction of the debt, in the entitlement
system." (Presumably also over a decade.) I have a notion of what "the
entitlement system" not including Social Security might mean, but he
didn't say, and if he voiced a word about health care in his
talk, I didn't hear it.
And what about taxes?
"On revenue, we reformed the tax code by reducing rates and
helping to create a tax code that would generate a bigger base and a
stronger economy and thereby generate more revenue to give a revenue
component to the reduction of our debt."
Is this still the
fairy
tale about lowering rates increasing revenue? Without acknowledging
that
current federal
tax rates are at historical lows?
More numbers on parade. "In a sense [?] a flat tax with three tiers," a
"zero option plan" that "eliminated all deductions and all credits."
Rates reduced from 39 to 23%, 28 to 14%, 15 to 8%. "And we also reduced
the corporate tax rate to be comparable to the highest income tax
rate."
But they knew "politics" would prevent that full zero option plan from
being accepted, so you can add in exceptions, but you have to pay for
them with higher tax rates.
They figured they could reduce the forecasted increase in the debt by $4
trillion, and get it down to only 60% of GDP by the end of 10 years. By
2035, we'd have the "budget balanced" (just like it was 10 years ago!)
and on our way to paying off our national debt. The two bad choices
were to vote for the awful plan, or against it, thus "condemning
America to a terrible, terrible future." Oh my. 7 of the 18 did, all the
same, failing to reach the 14 supermajority necessary to force the
Senate to find some other reason to avoid its findings.
29.March.2011
Head somewhere else
Dave Johnson's got a good question:
why are Republicans forcing a government shutdown and doing other things
aimed at blowing up the economy?
There's no question that's what they are doing, the only question
is to wonder why they're doing what they're doing. Is it really
their plan to do everything they can to keep the economy in the crapper
for another year so they'll win big in the next election, because that
worked so well the last time around?
"If you read their websites and magazines you know that they hate
government and talk about ways to get rid of it. They have said they
just want government to go away and have been running strategies to get
it small enough that they can drown it in a bathtub. If you are a
Republican who doesn't think destroying government is the best approach
you are called a RINO and shunned.
"They don’t talk about governing, they talk about killing government,
and when they get power they don't govern they destroy government. They
appoint industry lobbyists to agencies that are supposed to oversee
their own industries. They appoint polluters to the agencies that are
supposed to protect us from pollution. And they appoint people who have
called for getting government out of areas like education, medical care,
etc. to head up and dismantle those departments."
If only corporations ran everything, life would be so much better,
eh?
Head in the clouds
It had something to do with my dad being a weather forecaster (for the
Navy, in WWII) I'm sure, but the "Golden Guide" to Weather was one of my
favorite early books, lots of informative pictures and diagrams,
accessible text, ever-informative for reference. (I see
St.
Martin's Press has the series refreshed
with new covers, at least.) So, of course a story about a field guide to
clouds would catch my eye.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney's
Cloud Collector's Handbook
is
featured,
along with a lovely slide show linked in the sidebar. Not content to
populate coffee tables, Pretor-Pinney has also founded the
Cloud Appreciation
Society, with "more than 25,000 members in 87 countries and
counting."
"His goal, Mr. Pretor-Pinney said in an interview, is to help readers
escape the tyranny of 'blue sky thinking' and to understand and
appreciate the beauty of a cloudy day."
28.March.2011
They know when you are sleeping, they know when you're awake
Not Kris Kringle and his team of geotracking elves, it's
Deutsche Telekom keeping an eye on a German Green Party politician,
along with the rest of its customers. Maybe your cell provider does that
for you, too? Malte Spitz "went to court to find out exactly what his
cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts. ...
In a six-month period ... Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his
longitude and latitude coordinates 35,831 times."
That's almost 200 times a day.
Herr Spitz is more mobile than I am, and he uses his cellphone
way more than I do mine. My 6-month trace would be a sleep-aid,
I'm sure, but
his is
kind of lively, as you can see courtesy of his making it public, and
Zeit Online turning it into a Google Maps animation.
27.March.2011
Anti-union thugs
The minivan-shopping alibi didn't pan out, and one-time Indiana
deputy prosecutor
Carlos Lam is now "ex" d.p. Yes, that was his email
suggesting that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stage some sort of
attack to discredit protesters, and "Jeez!" he's sorry about being such
a putz. Back on February 19, Lam wrote:
"... I've been involved in GOP politics here in Indiana for 18 years,
and I think that the situation in WI presents a good opportunity for
what's called a 'false flag' operation."
Art imitates life: just a few days later,
"David Koch" would give
the Governor a call and toss in a similar suggestion. Walker said
"we thought about that." Before, or after Lam chipped in, I wonder?
Is there not enough to do in Indiana or something? A month ago, they
lost their Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Cox after his helpful tweet
that Wisconsin riot police should "use live ammunition" to clear the
Capitol of protesters.
Lam decried Indiana as
"an unsustainable public worker gravy train bubble," so he will have at
least resolved the personal angst he must have had, "feeding at the gov't
trough" while keeping up his investments and stocking up on guns, gold
and gasoline. (Use only with adult supervision.)
I'm sure he can find a job as a lobbyist.
26.March.2011
Not too early to collect swan songs
Timothy Egan provides one for Newt Gingrich,
in his latest Opinionator post,
In Defense of "Dithering":
"Overstatement and misjudgment are Gingrich's stock in trade—two
reasons why he'll never be president. He can always be counted on to
fulminate on demand, with consistency the only casualty; the subject
doesn't matter."
Austerity freaks
Between now and the next election campaign, there will be some serious
money spent on marketing. Call that +1 for the near-term economy, while
you try to hunt down some other plusses.
21%
unemployment among workers ages 16 to 24, that's enough to start a
revolution in some countries.
New
home sales lower than recorded in the half-century we've been
keeping track.
The dream of home ownership that fueled the real estate bubble has
morphed into
a
squeeze on rental housing; great for "seasoned" investors who don't
need financing to tap into the market, not so great for people who just
need a place to live, and are trying to piece together part-time jobs
into a regular income.
Congress' most basic homework assignment will be half a year late
in less than a week, and the Republicans and their TEA Party fellow
travellers remain more interested in
the size of their symbolism than doing their jobs. Whether it comes
to what can be accused as "shutdown" or not, the continuing unresolution
is having plenty of negative effects on the economy.
One close-to-home anecdote: a Pell Grant that was expected a while ago
is still "pending" and in the meantime, household expenses were slipping
behind ... to that point that unpaid rent garnered an eviction notice.
Lucky for the student in question, family could help bridge the gap, but
add the legal costs to the debt to make up. How many others have fallen
behind without recourse to anyone who could help?
Here's a growth sector, though:
corporate tax avoidance. Move the jobs, the money, whatever it takes
offshore or into carefully constructed loopholes, invest in
lobbying that saves $billions for the investment of a few $millions.
Corporations United, All for One!
Halfway into FY2011, the plan is that everyone (with an income, and
especially those with the biggest incomes) should pay less in taxes,
government workers' unions are the root of all evil, and why should
anyone get a pension if I don't? And don't you dare touch Medicare. Oh,
and repeal the job-killing Obamacare so we can all shop for own
healthcare insurance, thank you, or just go to the Emergency Room when
we need to see a doctor.
If the drink is poisoned sugar water, just politely sipping it only
delays the inevitable. Having given in to the concept of the budget
slashing that Republicans had in mind, the Democrats now stand accused
of "not agreeing among themselves" about how many times to shoot
themselves in the feet.
Paul Krugman's take on
the
austerity delusion:
"A serious fiscal plan for America would address the long-run drivers of
spending, above all health care costs, and it would almost certainly
include some kind of tax increase. But we're not serious: any talk of
using Medicare funds effectively is met with shrieks of "death panels,"
and the official G.O.P. position—barely challenged by
Democrats—appears to be that nobody should ever pay higher taxes.
Instead, all the talk is about short-run spending cuts.
"In short, we have a political climate in which self-styled deficit
hawks want to punish the unemployed even as they oppose any action that
would address our long-run budget problems. And here's what we know from
experience abroad: The confidence fairy won't save us from the
consequences of our folly."
25.March.2011
Republicans in Wisconsin scraping bottom
You remember the Republican approach to transparency in the Bush
administration, don't you?
10 days into his new job, ex-Halliburton CEO Richard B. "Dick" Cheney
convened a secret energy task force and then fought like hell to
keep his guest list super-top-secret. Executive privilege! That could be
Cheney's two-word obituary.
Times have changed, or perhaps it's just that state politicos don't have
as grand a vision as Cheney did. Here comes the Wisconsin GOP with a
shabby
crusade to take a University of Wisconsin professor to task for
having the temerity to speak out against Republican Governor Scott
Walker's union busting. They filed a freedom-of-information request
with the university, demanding all the professor's emails containing
"Republican," "Scott Walker," "union," "rally," and so on.
Just trolling for whatever they can find.
But they don't need a FOI or teh Google to find
Prof.
Cronon's Op-Ed, it's right there in the Times.
"Republicans in Wisconsin are seeking to reverse civic traditions that
for more than a century have been among the most celebrated achievements
not just of their state, but of their own party as well.
"Wisconsin was at the forefront of the progressive reform movement in
the early 20th century, when the policies of Gov. Robert M. La Follette
prompted a fellow Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, to call the state a
'laboratory of democracy.' The state pioneered many social reforms: It
was the first to introduce workers' compensation, in 1911; unemployment
insurance, in 1932; and public employee bargaining, in 1959.
"University of Wisconsin professors helped design Social Security and
were responsible for founding the union that eventually became the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Wisconsin
reformers were equally active in promoting workplace safety, and often
led the nation in natural resource conservation and environmental
protection.
No stark reversal of a storied legacy would be complete without
a heaping helping of further irony. Consider the Republican effort to
discredit Cronon with their fishing expedition, given this:
"[Governor] Walker's assault on collective bargaining rights breaks with
Wisconsin history in two much deeper ways as well. Among the state’s
proudest traditions is a passion for transparent government that often
strikes outsiders as extreme. Its open meetings law, open records law
and public comment procedures are among the strongest in the nation.
Indeed, the basis for the restraining order blocking the collective
bargaining law is that Republicans may have violated open meetings rules
in passing it. The legislation they have enacted turns out to be radical
not just in its content, but in its blunt ends-justify-the-means
disregard for openness and transparency."
Three votes short
Mr. Luna's reworked bill to deform education in Idaho,
SB
1184,
made it
through
the Senate yesterday evening, after statewide demonstrations
opposing it (and the other two bills), after volumes of opinions
expressed in opposition, after the Democrats objected to waiving the
actual reading, after the guy who actually runs the Senate from a back
seat and the President Pro-Tem
whacked
away that formality, after the guy who actually runs the Senate from
a back seat voted NO, after the Senate co-chair of the Joint Finance and
Appropriation Committee voiced the
9
reasons he was voting NO, and after first-in-the-alphabet Sen. John
Andreason (R-15) prefaced his NO vote by saying constituents
contacted him were 95 to 5 opposed.
"I don't know whether anyone's mind is actually open today on the Senate
floor."
Sen. Elliot Werk
All these things,
Tom Luna's glorious personal achievement
at the expense of the people of the state,
a
disaster for rural schools, and Dean Cameron's 9 reasons:
-
"It's completely unnecessary." It won't do anything to generate revenue
or solve the current funding problem, and isn't needed to advance
technology.
-
"Every single stakeholder is opposed to it." Never mind "consensus,"
Luna's effort never aspired to even perfunctory collaboration.
-
Taking money away from school districts does not provide
"flexibility."
-
It "ties the hands of JFAC and future legislators" with
a scheme of inflators and deflators.
-
Cuts more than $10 million from schools in seven counties:
Shoshone, Payette, Canyon, Gooding, Twin Falls, Lincoln and
Bingham.
-
A "most appalling" multi-year reduction in salary-based
apportionment.
-
It shifts authority from the Legislature to the State Superintendent of Public
Instruction to distribute funds. [Damned if you do, and so on.]
-
It requires taxpayers to fund any online courses students take.
-
It creates new "entitlements" for online learning, dual credit for early
graduates, and mobile computing devices.
Freedom of association
Now that
the
Judge ruled their way and all that's left is for the
good
old boys to finalize the particulars in the back room, I have a
question.
Apart from some their notions of purity and exclusivity by Kountry
Klub members, why can't I join both, or all the parties, and vote
in all the primaries? They all have something I could learn to
like. For example, Republicans in Idaho pretty much get their way
(except for
the
stupidest ideas, sometimes).
I mean, you could
sue them for the right to vote in a public election, but if you
can't beat 'em, why not join 'em?
Everybody partay!
22.March.2011
Speaking of bullies
Apparently the Idaho Press Club has become
too
intimidating for the Governor. It's a good news/bad news deal, I
guess: on the one hand, the press must be doing something useful if he's
afraid to meet with them. On the other, seriously, Governor? Popkey:
"I'm told Otter was his charming self last week at a reception hosted by
his lobbyist friends, Pat Sullivan, Phil Reberger and Roy Eiguren. A
photo of Otter appears on the Sullivan Reberger Eiguren homepage. Seated
at the governor's desk, apparently ready to sign a document, Otter is
flanked by the power trio."
"At least he's on the job for somebody."
Of course, I had to go have a look at
said home page, which has
the pitch-perfect domain name "idaho-politics.com." And what a nice
picture! The file name is "home-eiguren-team.jpg". I am not making this
up.
I thought they passed that anti-bullying thing
But no, here it is
stock
in trade as Idaho
School Boards Association Executive Director Karen Karen Echeverria
passes on the word to trustees that she's been led to understand they
need to get on board with
the
reconstituted last leg of the education "reform" plan, or else.
"While we are not trying to change your opinion of the bill or
discourage you from taking any action you feel is necessary, we want you
to know that we have been warned that school districts will face some
consequences should we work to kill this bill."
The Senate Education Committee is reportedly no longer interested in
hearing public testimony: they got a snootful in the last round, and
didn't really care for what the public had to say. They're going to give
some "stakeholders" some time this afternoon.
Echeverria's email (reprinted in full in Popkey's blog) is a good
introduction to what the Governor and his Superintendent of Public
Instruction are about to ram through the Legislature. Hope y'all like
what's coming!
Equinox
Reconsidering errors
Our choir sang yesterday, which among other things gave me the
opportunity to listen to the readings and the sermon twice. I found my
head full of ideas during and afterward, and then we heard part of
Wisconsin Public Radio's
To the Best of Our
Knowledge on the way home, with Diane Ravitch talking about the
ideas she's put into her latest book,
The
Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and
Choice Are Undermining Education
.
Ravitch was Assistant Secretary of Education during
George H.W. Bush's term, and a strong proponent of expanding
charter schools and what became the "No Child Left Behind" program.
As reported on the show, Ravitch says she's changed her mind, and
now sees a political agenda behind all the recent school cuts.
"This is not just states responding to the need for austerity. The
larger picture is ... a very powerful corporate reform movement.
They talk about 'reform,' but their real goals are first of all
privatization—taking public money out of the public sector and
having deregulated schools with very little public oversight. So it's
privatization but it's also de-professionalization. They want to be able
to hire teacher who have very little training, and also to hire
principals who were never educators, and hire superintendents who were
never educators, and to relax the rules across the board."
Indeed, Idaho went a step further, and elected (and re-elected) a
Superintendent of Public Instruction who was never an educator.
"The thing that's so wrong about all this is that first of all there's
absolutely no research to support any of these changes; they don't
improve things for kids. And secondly, if you look at the highest
performing nations in the world, none of them are doing this. They are
strengthening and improving their education sector."
She cites the success story of Finland— first in the world
according to the
Programme for International Student Assessment. (The US was #17 in
2009.) Finland
"reformed its education system over the last 3 decades by recruiting and
attracting the best teachers." And it's 100% union, thanks.
Ravitch noted that charter schools have become the stand-in for
vouchers, which voters have consistently rejected. The "competition"
provided by a somewhat freer market with charter schools has led to
schools working to reject the lowest-performing kids. Test results
improve, so the schools must be doing a good job, right? But even with
that leg up, there is no evidence that going off in a new direction, in
and of itself is a good thing. Going in the wrong direction is not an
improvement.
"Conservative" has come to mean ideological, in a way that precludes
changing one's mind, regardless of reality. If you have enough "faith"
in your beliefs, you don't need facts. Which is not to say that ample
facts are not available if you're interested.
"The moment I concluded that [the federal "No Child Left Behind" law] was a
failure was when I was invited to a day-long meeting at a conservative
think tank, the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C., and my
job was to sum up the papers that day, the conference was about 'how's
NCLB doing, what progress have we made in the first half-decade. And
there were a dozen papers [from all over the country], and each of the
papers said 'it's not working.' 'Choice' is not working, the required
tutoring is not working, we're not seeing any real improvement in test
scores. ... At the end of the day, I had to sum this up, and I had to
say, it's not working."
So what should we be doing? Looking for a solution to poverty, and child
poverty in particular. Finland has 3% of its children in poverty; the US
20%. Promoting a community of deeply-involved parents, children
well-fed, and ready to learn; as opposed to, say, eliminating
kindergarten, as some Idaho legislators think would be a good idea.
Schools can't solve the problems of poverty; the most important thing we
can do is do something to address the problem of poverty ... which comes
down to JOBS, does it not? Where was that Republican job program
again? Hello, House of Representatives? As one teacher friend of mine
wrote to me:
"Policy makers are 10 years behind the research. Ideological paradigms
are hard to unseat."
19.March.2011
Did he really say that?
Nuclear experts are popping up all over the place to help explain what's
happened, what might be happening and what's going to happen at
Fukushima Daiichi and its now acknowledged "wider" consequences. (If it
were me, I'd say let's just call it at least a
serious
accident now.) Given that we have the
Idaho National Laboratory in our neighborhood, there's no surprise that
a
local reporter checked in with them to get a response. I was
surprised to see "hysteria" in the front-page, above-the-fold headline
on Thursday, given that I wasn't aware of any. I've seen a lot of grave,
thoughtful concern, heard about hopes and prayers and heroism, but
nothing rising to hysteria.
Nevertheless, INL Director John Grossenbacher, a retired Admiral who
commanded the Navy's nuclear submarine fleet, is said to have said that
while the melting cores, fires and high radiation around four damaged
reactors are bad news, "the devastation in Japan doesn’t necessarily
mean that the multi-leveled safety technology at the Japanese reactors
has failed and public safety is threatened." From Rocky Barker's
report:
So far, he’s confident that even if the worst happens in Japan, it
presents little or no risk to people in Idaho.
"There’s no evidence of something that is going to propel contamination
into the atmosphere and carry it over here," he said. "This is not
Chernobyl."
I haven't been obsessing about the calamity, but I have been following
the news, as I suspect a great many others are. Apart from the
unnecessity of guessing whether or not "we're OK in Idaho," the second
statement is simply wrong. Demonstrably wrong.
He criticized media reports that suggested Tokyo, 150 miles south of the
reactors, was measuring high levels of radiation. Television networks
were putting on experts who he said were drawing conclusions about
conditions without facts. "To me, that’s hysteria," he said.
Oh, so that's hysteria. Who knew?
Meanwhile the non-Admiral, non-expert Executive Director of
"Idaho's Nuclear Watchdog," the
Snake River Alliance,
Liz Woodruff is quoted after the jump as pretty much the
calm voice of reason:
"I tell people to look at the range of alternatives based on economic
costs, resource use and risks. People should look at how we
should spend our resources on energy and how the risks sit in their
values and ethics."
18.March.2011
The push to kill NPR
This is the kind of story that commercial media can mostly be counted on to
ignore:
Shaping
State Laws With Little Scrutiny, by Laura Sullivan. No cocked-up video
drama, just the story of how an outfit called the
American Legislative Exchange Council
is coordinating insider and corporate authorship of state legislation
around the country.
"ALEC is a membership organization. State legislators pay $50 a year to
belong. Private corporations can join, too. The tobacco company Reynolds
American Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp. and drug-maker Pfizer Inc. are among the
members. They pay tens of thousands of dollars a year. Tax records show
that corporations collectively pay as much as $6 million a year."
Member legislators can enjoy ALEC's three annual conferences, maybe with
"scholarships" to cover the cost of their travel and entertainment, and
bring home "model bills" for their states. Such as Arizona's immigration
law, and maybe that stuff out of Snowflake. And just as our local
Idaho Freedom
Foundation dodges the definition of "lobbying" to enjoy non-profit
status, so does ALEC.
"If ALEC's conferences were interpreted as lobbying, the group could lose
its status as a non-profit. Corporations wouldn't be able to reap tax
benefits from giving donations to the organization or write off those
donations as a business expense. And legislators would have a hard time
justifying attending a conference of lobbyists."
Out of Snowflake
That's Snowflake, Arizona, where state Sen. Sylvia Allen hails from,
chairwoman of that state's "Border Security, Federalism and States
Sovereignty Committee." (Idaho's got a little border, but we haven't
marhsaled that sort of committee. Yet.) She's come up with
a
Concurrent Resolution and a Bill that would amend their Constitution
(if the voters approve) "to allow the state to become the sole regulatory
authority over the levels of pollution that can be discharged into
intrastate waterways," and to "make it illegal for any government official
to enforce federal laws over greenhouse gas emissions and particulate
matter in the state."
Making it illegal to enforce federal laws. There's a concept.
Sen. Allen's been at a while. Last year she came up with the
Freedom
to Breathe Act, dutifully noted by the John Birch Society and Ron Paul
Forums.
Where the money is
Nice Op-Chart by John Arquilla and Fogelson-Lubliner, tabulating a
"sampling" of
the
Pentagon's biggest boondoggles. Current SecDef Robert Gates hasn't had
near enough applause for his brilliant pre-emptive strike, proposing to cut
$78 billion!
over the next five years
from increases that were planned,
without really addressing the elephant astride the planet. Their list has
just eight items, but totals $1.3 trillion with a "tr".
"Unworkable or unnecessary systems tend to have something in common: their
costs are often uncontrollable."
16.March.2011
Pushbutton protest
Robo-call yesterday, coming in with a 888 number and "toll free" on the
caller ID, I let it go to voicemail. Jeanette said "I'll answer it!" but
I didn't hand her the phone. One of the less-capable machines, it didn't
recognize it had been shunted to VM, and left the tail of its message
and prompts. The point of it (ha!) was to tap into dextrous
indignation over "Obamacare," and get me to press [1] to have my name
added to their petition to repeal it. Was it Idaho's Senator Mike Crapo
doing the voice-over? I wasn't sure, and alas, it was too late for me to
press [1] or [2] or [6][6][6]. [7] in the voicemail menu was still
timely, however.
I'm guessing I might have had an opportunity to make a contribution to
something if I'd pressed the right button, too. Darn it.
Ides
"More turmoil than I can stand thinking about"
Turns out the design of the reactors that are now
failing—dramatically, in the best case scenario—at
Fukushima Daiichi have had some criticism in the past. The flaws of
"cheaper and easier to build" with smaller and less expensive containment
structures are being laid bare, but some, at least, were
anticipated 40 years ago.
The response to an Atomic Energy Commission safety official's memo in 1972
detailing the risks, from the man who later became a chairman of the
successor agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is short and to the
point, concluding:
"[T]he acceptance of pressure suppression containment concepts by all
elements of the nuclear field, including Regulatory and ACRS, is firmly
imbedded in the conventional wisdom. Reversal of this hallowed policy,
particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power. It would
throw into question the continued operation of licensed plants, would make
unlicensable the GE and Westinghouse ice condensor plants now in review,
and would generaly create more turmoil than I can stand thinking
about."
Hard to imagine a more classic entry for the annals of GroupThink.
(Stephen Hanauer's memo, and Joseph Hendrie's response are both linked from
the NYT article. ACRS is presumably the now-NRC's
Advisory
Committee on Reactor Safeguards.)
Engineering demands greater factors of safety as uncertainties increase,
and when risks from system failure include potential for great harm.
The engineered design life of nuclear power plants was in some respects a
wild guess, but in many cases a well-informed and conservative one.
Twenty-five years. Let's see how it goes. After it went OK (in almost every
case), some problems maybe, mostly manageable, how about another 15?
Having $billions invested in the infrastructure (and similarly large or
larger replacement costs), and a going concern makes a a powerful case for
"let's keep going a while longer," even if the intervening decades have
provided ample experience that would make you do things differently if only
you could.
Yes, "it is possible that any reactor design could succumb to the one-two
punch of an earthquake and tsunami," but the manner of failure, and its
possible mitigation under varying scenarios are the essence of the
engineering, management, and regulatory challenge. The risk of great
earthquakes and tsunami were not esoteric and unknown considerations in
1970, certainly not for a facility built on Japan's east coast.
14.March.2011
60 years of electricity from nuclear power
Thanks to a fortboise reader (and older brother) for a link to the
European Nuclear Society's
encyclopedia
entry on nuclear power electricity generation, which started with
four light bulbs and EBR-I at the National Reactor Testing Station
(now known as the
Idaho
National Laboratory) in SE Idaho.
A few entries to the left,
"nuclear power plant complexes," says that the largest power plant
complex in the world as of Dec. 2009 was Fukushima, with 10 units, and
9GW gross output. Not so much any more.
High energy learning
After the 2nd hydrogen explosion, this one at unit #3, Reuters reports
that "... officials said repeatedly it was unlikely there would be any
radiation leakage." (Video in the sidebar of
NYT
coverage) More specifically, that Chief Cabinet Secretary "said that
the release of large amounts of radiation was unlikely." (My
emphasis.)
"I have received reports that the containment vessel is sound," Mr.
Edano said. "I understand that there is little possibility that
radioactive materials are being released in large amounts."
But now we hear that the fuel rods in #1 had been completely
exposed, as opposed to the earlier report that the coolant level had
dropped enough to expose "2 to 3 meters" which is still a lot.
And another, and another. It seems likely that all three reactors are
going to follow the same path to demise, on similar schedules, and
that the
experts
estimating continuing releases of contaminated steam (at the very
least) "could go on for weeks or even months" have a better forecast
than the Chief Secretary. Those releases could be
longer still:
"You're looking at several thousands of gallons a day potentially out as
long as a year," said Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear engineer who
worked on reactors of the same design as those in Japan.
Here's one certain conclusion: the
U.S. nuclear industry faces new uncertainty. Oh, and Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell is not a useful source of technical information
or opinion, with his pithy weekend blather that "we ought not to make
American and domestic policy based upon an event that happened in
Japan." As if ... we're in our own little world? But no, we're on the
same planet,
with
the same plate tectonics (in fact the same North American
plate, go figure).
More useful:
the American Nuclear Society's background paper, published Saturday
afternoon. "The nuclear power industry will learn from this event, and
redesign our facilities as needed to make them safer in the future."
13.March.2011
Good news and bad news from Japan
The good news is that more information about the problems at Fukushima
Daiichi suggest that it may well turn out to be more of a "local
incident" than "major accident," with
a
handful of workers closest to the problem sickened, but
even
those in harm's way by virtue of going to help might not be much
affected.
The bad news is that radiation is the least of the worries of
thousands killed outright, tens of thousands devestated, hundreds of
thousands with lives profoundly affected.
As ever, a story of one person's incredible rescue arrests our attention
in a way the despair of hundreds cannot: a 60-year-old man
rescued after riding the roof of his house out to sea ... for the past
two days, 9 miles offshore. Given that his wife was swept away by
the deluge, even that joy is muted.
Some people can't be trusted
Top of the list is James O'Keefe, and his doctored videos, about
anything. The Blaze considers the question
Does raw video of NPR exposé reveal questionable editing &
tactics? to which the answer, as it has been for every other O'Keefe
video to shake the news, is "Duh."
Peter Capano's NYT piece,
Masters of Deception referred me, in the postscript after running
more angles about the man who considers himself an "investigative journalist
and filmmaker."
Looking forward to the next chapter
It's been a highlight of whichever day they put him on, Sundays of late,
but alas,
Frank
Rich's swan song for his NYT Op-ed stint. I will indeed look forward
to meeting up with him at the next stop.
"A columnist's clout may well have been overstated even in Lippmann's
heyday, but it has certainly dimmed in an age when everyone can and does
broadcast opinions on the Web, Facebook or Twitter, let alone in print,
or on cable or radio. No opinionator in any of these media could prevent
the war in Iraq or derail the rise of Sarah Palin. Nor did pundits
create phenomena like Barack Obama or the Tea Party. The forces of
history are far bigger than any of a democracy's individual voices,
however loud or widely disseminated. That's one reason America is so
thrilling to write about."
Time management
You may be feeling a bit rushed today, what with it being an hour
shorter and all. But if you've got a spare couple of minutes, you might
enjoy
Howard
Mansfield's retrospective on how we got to this shared fiction of
"daylight savings time." I'd heard how standardization began with the
railroads, but somehow hadn't really absorbed what it would have meant
for there to be "hundreds of local times, each city setting its city
hall or courthouse clock to match its own solar noon." (That would be
1:54pm in Boise today, by the way.)
"To eliminate the confusion, railroads took it upon themselves in 1883 to
divide the country into four time zones, with one standard time within
each zone. To resist could mean economic isolation, so at noon on Nov.
18, 1883, Chicagoans had to move their clocks back 9 minutes and 32
seconds. It's as if the railroads had commanded the sun to stand still,
The Chicago Tribune wrote. Louisville was set back almost 18 minutes,
and The Louisville Courier-Journal called the change a
'compulsory lie.' ... In an 1884 referendum, three-quarters of voters
in Bangor, Me., opposed the 25-minute change to 'Philadelphia
time.'"
What say we all vote on it?
I was all set to join the effort to recall Tom Luna from his post as
Superintendent of Public Instruction in Idaho, even with full knowledge that
it was a hopeless cause. But Marty Trillhaase's point is worth
considering:
recall is the wrong tool but not the only one.
Instead of 75 days to collect 158,107 signatures,
"[s]ixty days after this dreadful legislative session ends, round up at
least 47,432 signatures from registered voters—or 6 percent of the
electorate—and demand a referendum on Luna's legislation. ...
"This would become the defining issue of the 2012 state election. The GOP
legislative majority and its agenda would be on trial."
Nuclear reactions
The flood of partial and vague information continues as Japanese power
companies scramble to deal with the aftermath of last week's earthquake
and tsunami on their nuclear facilities. I assume
what
comes from the Chief Cabinet Secretary has been carefully massaged
and reconstituted to allay fears (good luck with that) and put things in
the best possible light. Plenty to infer from "what they're saying and
what they aren't saying," as one friend put it.
Only "a very small amount" of stuff. But, uh, there might be a hydrogen
explosion at another reactor, too. But that's OK. "Some melting." That's
OK, too. 2 to 3m of fuel rods exposed above the coolant? Definitely not
OK, but we think they have them covered now. (They're supposed to be
3 to 4m under the top of the coolant.)
"Unit 2 is shut down but the backup cooling system is not working,
Tepco [Tokyo Electric Power] said. Workers are trying to install
equipment in order to enable cooling with seawater."
That'll be the last useful power out of that one, too, then. And here,
there are six reactors on site, but the good news is that #4, 5
and 6 happened to be be shut down for scheduled maintenance when the
earthquake hit.
They've still got
color
codes at the International Atomic Energy Agency, with 7 levels
ending at "major accident." "Major" is worse than "serious" or "accident
with wider consequences" or only "local consequences." Level 4,
"accident with local consequences" is where the NucNet update says this
is. Chernobyl was a 7, Three Mile Island a 5. (IAEA is
on Facebook, and
twitter. Of course.)
Update: The Barrrel has
the best single article on the situation (as of 8:12am this morning
in some U.S. time zone) that I've come across.
12.March.2011
Meltdown?
Add a new name to the history of signal events in nuclear power:
Fukushima Daiichi. Idaho's brush with the genre is not in the public
consciousness the way Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are, but the
core meltdown and steam explosion at an experimental reactor at the
Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (as it was then called) in 1961
provided early experience in how badly things can go wrong.
The official messages out of Japan are somewhat confused, but some facts
are clear enough: there have been intentional releases including
radioactive material, and there was a major explosion, almost certainly
from hydrogen. Exactly where the explosion occurred and which systems
were affected isn't clear in the news, and it may not be clear to
those closest to the problem, either.
"Last-ditch" is not a term you want to hear when it comes to nuclear
engineering, but Hiroko Tabuchi's and Matthew L. Wald's account for the
New York Times had that in the first paragraph, describing the
"effort to avoid a nuclear meltdown." They've flooded the reactor
(containment vessel?) with seawater, which guarantees it's done for any
future production; corrosion is the eventual killer of nuclear power
plants, and saltwater is highly corrosive.
"Shirakawa, Japan
(CNN) — Japanese authorities are
operating on the presumption that possible meltdowns are under way at
two nuclear reactors, a government official said Sunday. ..."
H/t to the American Nuclear Society's blog,
ANS Nuclear Cafe.
Update: There have been some forgettable diagrams made for
explainers during this crisis. The
NYT has a decent one in 8 whizzy Flash views that doesn't provide
the plumbing schematic, but does what it does pretty well, and puts it
in the context of the Daiichi site. Two of the compounding issues it
shows are (1) another reactor (#2) we haven't heard anything about so
far, and (2) the "spent fuel pool" [in slide #3] which is outside
the primary containment vessel in the "diagram of a typical GE Mark I
Boiling Water Reactor." That's the part of the building where the
explosion was, the roof and part of the walls destroyed [slide #7].
11.March.11
Smartest statement on Idaho's union-bashing
At least the smartest one that I heard, was
Rep.
Brian Cronin's statement on the floor of the Idaho House.
"Let's stop pretending that Senate bill 1108 has anything to do with
education reform or the classroom or—and this is the part that
offends me most—our children. My children. The bill intends to
dismantle the Idaho Education Association, put teachers in their place,
and ensure that teachers' voices are effectively silenced on matters of
contract, classroom learning conditions, scheduling, curriculum, and
many other areas where there expertise should be welcomed."
And on the not-so-smart side, we have the Governor continuing to
complain that opposition to the bill is due to
"confusion"
from "misinformation", the same talking point Superintendent Tom
Luna has been shaking his finger at. Nobody is going to accuse
any Idaho politician of being a Great Communicator, but Otter and Luna
seem to be aiming for a new low.
Luna did have the courage to face an auditorium of high school students
this week and go one-on-one with Cronin (but
drew
the line at sharing the stage with the president of the Idaho Education
Association, go figure). Still, compare his and the Governor's
complaints about "misinformation" with
a
letter from a Moscow High School student, Celeste Hufford. The
people of the state have the means to be extraordinarily
well-informed these days, to take the time to read proposed legislation
and form their own opinions. Even high school students. The Republican
plan to "reform" education has motivated them to get informed,
and to do something with the information.
The Governor is speaking from a distant place and time, imagining things
the way they might have once been. It's annoying on the one hand, and
patronizing, but ultimately just pathetic.
Dumbing down the debate
The Tea Party and its Republican pals are big on "we're broke" at the
moment, because it's so wonderfully easy to say, and startling to boot.
Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker, for example: "We are broke in this
state. We have been broke for years." And it seemed like such a nice
place. But as
Politifact describes, this is "broke" in the sense of "I'm broke.
Can you buy the next round of beers?" They give Walker a flat-out
False for his blather.
On the national scene, where deficit spending is simultaneously
enshrined by history and decried for political effect, the Party that's
beside itself in indignation
has a squadron of staffers to unleash with
dripping derision at the idea that there is anything to discuss in
regard to health care beyond the repeal and replace of "ObamaCare."
The fund for prevention and promoting public health is "the prevention
health slush fund," the idea of actually measuring what works, and
trying to promote it (effectiveness research) is "so-called,"
just a boondoggle for "PhDs who come to Washington on the government
tab."
As ever, when the ideologues come to power and feel the power of
slashing come upon them, there is no reasoned argument that can stand
against the power of the bottom line.
Paul
Krugman details what lies before us if the only response the
opposition can muster is hunkering down and only agreeing
halfway.
"The president and his aides know that the G.O.P. approach to the budget
is wrongheaded and destructive. But they’ve stopped making the case for
an alternative approach; instead, they’ve positioned themselves as
know-nothings lite, accepting the notion that spending must be slashed
immediately—just not as much as Republicans want."
9.March.2011
Speaking of heads rolling
NPR's CEO Vivian Schiller (who is not related to senior executive Ron
Schiller, recently pwned by the pustulous James O'Keefe)
announced her immediate resignation after
the Board decided she should quit.
The NPR CEO is out because they can't handle as much controversy as
they've been having, while Fox News (the first story link I
provided) happily feeds on controversy. Commercially, so that's OK.
Does it feel like we're living out a science fiction episode yet?
House Majority leader Eric Cantor's takeaway from the Mr. Schiller
video was that it "makes it clear that taxpayer dollars should no longer
be appropriated to NPR," but then he would have said that anyway,
wouldn't he have?
The risable comments by Mr. Schiller included the observation that the
Republican Party had been "hijacked" by the Tea Party, that "the current
Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved
with people's personal lives," and that the Tea Party movement is
"white, middle America, gun-toting," and "seriously racist people."
Which of those statements do not express facts on the ground, now?
Ron Schiller went on to lament what he called an "anti-intellectual"
component of the Republican Party. "Liberals today might be more
educated, fair and balanced than conservatives," he said.
Again, while we understand that conservatives wouldn't want an NPR
executive to be thinking the obvious, much less stating it out loud,
they went all apoplectic when Juan Williams was cut loose for his plain
old opinion expressed on his moonlighting job. It's not like we're after
equal treatment, it's just that the anti-intellectual, anti-NPR
component of the Republican Party is keenly looking for an excuse to
defund thoughtful, fair and balanced media interested in examining
their behavior for what it is.
That decision lends itself rather nicely to an emotional approach; I
suspect Cantor and pals will get excellent leverage from this latest
round of self-correction by NPR.
Masters of the House
Unlike most of the majority members, I listened to some of the floor
debate over
SB1108
in the Idaho House yesterday. Just as in the Senate
Education Committee, the whole Senate, and the House Education
Committee, overwhelmingly negative public input had no effect
whatsoever; the more than two-thirds who voted in favor of busting
the educators union had their minds firmly made up to follow their
leaders, under the false flag of "education reform."
Only two House members bothered with the formality of speaking up in
favor of the bill, after Democrats required the whole 25 pages to be
read.
The House Education Committee chairman and floor sponsor of the bill,
Bob Nonini acknowledged that
"you do remember your good teachers" without saying whether he
remembers his good teachers. More important than vague obeisance to
motherhood and apple pie, there is the apparently pressing need to
remove the bad ones that this bill will supposedly addresses.
Freshman Rep. Roy Lacey (D-Pocatello) is still finding his way into his
new job, but rose in opposition, wanted to read from an email he'd
received but someone tweaked him by
objecting
away unanimous consent. Then when he quoted another member's
characterization of the Bill as "mean-spirited," the Speaker reprimanded
him, supposedly for direct villification of another member.
However warranted such villification may be from time to time, it's
against the rules. He hadn't done it, actually, and so wasn't quite sure
what he'd done wrong, but meekly proceeded to try to say what he
wanted to say. His quoting from Hitler was over the top, as was the
mention of the Reign of Terror, but all that slid by without reaction
from the chamber.
Rather than mobs in the streets chopping off the heads of aristrocrats,
the Idaho House is more of a Reign of Error, better analogous to
Les Miserables than actual bloodshed. I was reminded of the 25th
anniversary show at London's O2 arena that we'd just seen on public TV,
and the performance of the second-rate innkeeper-thief and innkeeper,
Thénardier. I thought I might make a parody from the lyric of
his famous song, but when I looked them up, I saw the only modification
needed was to pluralize the first word:
Masters of the House
Doling out the charm
Ready with a handshake
And an open palm
Tells a saucy tale
Makes a little stir
Customers appreciate a bon-viveur
Glad to do a friend a favor
Doesn’t cost me to be nice
But nothing gets you nothing
Everything has got a little price!
8.March.2011
Proof by repeated assertion
"The Tax Daily for the Citizen Taxpayer" is providing David Cay Johnston
ample space to develop and document his reporting on tax issues.
Breaking news: Tax Revenues Plummeted
is a good one to start with.
"Federal tax revenues in 2010 were much smaller than in 2000. Total
individual income tax receipts fell 30 percent in real terms. Because
the population kept growing, income taxes per capita plummeted."
Individual income taxes down 36% per capita for the decade. Corporate
income tax receipts down 34% per capita, while profits rose 60%.
Payroll taxes were up slightly, but lower per capita as the workforce
grew faster than jobs and average wages slipped lower.
"You read it here first. Lowered tax rates did not result in increased
tax revenues as promised by politician after pundit after professional
economist. And even though this harsh truth has been obvious from the
official data for some time, the same politicians and pundits keep
prevaricating. Some of them even say it is irrelevant that as a share
of GDP, income tax revenues are at their lowest level since 1951, when
Harry S. Truman was president.
"No matter how many times advocates of lower tax rates said it, tax rate
cuts did not pay for themselves, did not spur economic growth, did not
increase jobs, and did not make America better off. ...
"In Washington the principles of advertising—make it simple, make
it attractive, and say it over and over again until the jingle is
embedded in millions of minds—have supplanted the rhetoric and
reasoned compromises of the Framers. War is peace. French fries are
healthy. Lower tax rates mean more revenue."
5.Mar.2011
Cheesy pension reporting from the herd
You might not have noticed it with the mob of protesters sleeping in the
rotunda and all the drums banging, but as
David Cay Johnston points out,
one of the complaints from Wisconsin's Governor about those underworked
and overpaid public servants is completely bogus. The Governor said
he wanted state workers to "contribute more" to their pensions and
health insurance plans. Trouble is,
"Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin's pension and health insurance
plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.
... The 'contributions' consist of money that employees chose to take as
deferred wages—as pensions when they retire—rather than take
immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan."
Johnston's point is not about how much public workers are, or should be,
paid, but rather that an essential component of journalism is the
understanding of basic economic principles, and the ability to express
them clearly. Employee compensation is more than simply "take home
pay." It includes benefits (for all but the lowest-paid jobs), and
tradeoffs between cash and benefits that are either offered by the
employer and accepted by the workers, or negotiated between them.
Accepting the Governor's framing of the issue (and the scapegoats he's
chosen) serves to amplify false assumptions, and put proposed
"solutions" in a context they don't deserve.
So much for the liberal, left-wing media.
"The reason that falsehoods are transformed into the public's common
knowledge via inaccurate reporting is simple. When editors or producers
back home get an account that differs from what the news herd says they
raise questions and often delete unique and accurate insights. But if a
reporter just repeats what everyone else is saying it usually sails
unchallenged to print or airtime even when it is untrue."
Johnston's piece is long (for the web), and more nuanced than what
fits in the daily blurb or a teleprompter, and well worth the read.
4.March.2011
Dear U.S. House Natural Resources Committee
I'm writing to you regarding the March 1, 2011 press release posted on
the your website, and because Idaho's Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter is
featured at the top of that press release,
"State and Local Officials Decry Administration’s Wild Lands
Order."
I want you to know that Mr. Otter does not speak for me, as a resident of
Idaho. What's more, his additional comments (not included in the press
release) were ridiculously off the mark, and deeply embarrassing to me
as someone who has been proud to call the great state of Idaho home for
most of my life, and who chose to move to Idaho in 1975 for its wild
lands, not for its golf courses.
The Idaho Statesman ran a story on its front page yesterday
describing
the Governor's problems with mathematics. The Governor supposed
that a certain golf course in north Idaho has more people visiting in a
day than one of Idaho's signature Wilderness areas, the Frank Church
River of No Return in a year.
Aside from the rank obscenity of his comparison, there's the fact that
he was off by about a factor of a couple hundred. From Rocky Barker's
story:
"The Middle Fork [of the Salmon R.] alone attracted 10,222 floaters in 2010.
Add the Main Salmon’s 8,769 floaters, the 1,229 hunters who bought elk tags
and the 13,000 steelhead angler days and you have more than 33,000 people
who visited the Frank Church. That doesn’t include the thousands of hikers and horseback packers who use the Frank Church’s thousands of miles of trail
through meadows of wildflowers and past rocky peaks."
Cordially,
/s/
Idaho's worst case scenario
I spent much of yesterday morning listening to Idaho's House Education
Committee entertain commentary on SB 1108, the bill to disembowel the
teachers' union in the state. The chairman, Bob Nonini, made it clear
that even though he wasn't listed as a sponsor, he's been all in favor
"from the get-go."
"I have been very supportive since the superintendent and the governor
have shared these bills. ... I am supportive of these bills, and I have
listened to the public testimony and yes it's very touching."
One commenter on Betsy's blog wanted to know how in the world someone
with no children and no experience in education could get to be chair of
that legislative committee. Who better to ignore all the "very
touching" testimony running 10 to 1 against the Republican plans?
Last year Nonini celebrated the cuts the legislature made to teacher and
administrator pay, and campaigned on more of the same. Still on the home
page of
bobnoniniforidaho.com:
"Going forward school districts trustees need to proceed with extreme
caution and how they deal with the teachers' union and contract
negotiations. For far too long trustees have not exercised fiscal
constraints and responsibility in negotiating contracts and some would
say they have given away the farm in contract negotiations."
(I'll let you picture the red ink an average high school teacher would
apply to those two sentences without [sic] hints.) In his concluding
comments to the committee, after complaining yet again and ever that all
his critics are wrong-headed, Superintendent Luna asked "So what's the
worst case scenario?" I do believe having him and Governor C.L. "Butch"
Otter setting the agenda for education in the state sets the stage for
us to find out.
Having stood up an army of mythical ineffective teachers (you know you
all had one you hated!) to pass the union-busting bill, there was then
SB 1110, the supposed "incentive" for "great" teachers in a "Pay for
Performance" plan slated to work miracles. In a couple years. If it
gets funded, which it hasn't been and won't be by this session of the
Legislature. The Magic 8-ball says "LOOKS DOUBTFUL" for
years to come.
Rep. Brian Cronin pushed back in questioning Luna, who
claimed
that "We know what works. The question is do we have the will to do
it." Luna implies that his three bills (these two and SB 1113, replacing
teachers with technology, currently stillborn in the Senate Education
Committee) are "what works," which is errant nonsense.
Today, continuing the general program of carving the heart out of
Idaho's future, the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee is
figuring out
how they'll cut higher education funding, and
setting
a bare-bones budget for community colleges, with
"none of the community colleges' requests for funding, including those
to cover enrollment increases."
Just the way you'd run a business, guys? You have a product that's in
huge demand—the College of Western Idaho's enrollment started at
1,208 students three years ago, and is
over 7,000 now—and you cut its funding?
Not only do we not have the best and the brightest running the store,
the mistakes they're now legislating are guaranteed to answer Luna's
rhetorical question.
3.March.2011
Just when you thought it was safe to ride the subway
We find out that
the "cooling off" period for Larry Craig has run its course. HuffPo
reports that he and the "losing Senate class of '08 [are] already
lobbying." We wouldn't have needed a rule and a two year bar if we
didn't know they'd all be right back to feed at the trough they helped
build.
Still, some Senators, may want more than just a two year "no contact"
order.
2.Mar.2011
Citizen involvement
I didn't catch his name, but watching the
House Education Committee on
Idaho Public TV's Legislature
Live, I got to hear a man who said he's a veteran, a district 19
representative, a Republican, the husband of a teacher, has a bachelors
and masters degree, and completed doctoral studies in chemical
engineering, has managed several plants, worked with unions all his
life, congratulated Tom Luna on the night he was re-elected
and now he's mad as hell, sounds like.
But he kept his cool for his three minute testimony, and wrapped it up
with a call for the Superintendent to "quit taking shortcuts, and do the
hard work."
It was applause-worthy, and the audience applauded. Rep. Nonini
whacked his gavel, apologized for not reiterating "the" ground rules,
said "please no applause, all I need to do is make a call and I can
empty this committee room and have people come in and testify one at a
time."
Update:
Betsy reported the gentleman's name—Scott Nicholson—and
the Chairman's threat. As I commented in Huckleberries, Nonini has been
gracious in presiding over the meeting after his rather intemperate
outburst.
1.March.2011
Idaho House theater signifying nothing
In thoughtful testimony to the Idaho House Education Committee this
morning from a Blaine Co. teacher, Thomas Van Slyke described the
benefits of collaboration from collective bargaining, and the
importance of the parties in the negotiation being equal.
He pointed out, accurately, that SB 1108 would give school boards NO
REASON TO BARGAIN IN GOOD FAITH, and asked what would be the point of
such negotiation?
The process is not broken where he is; the board and teachers
collaborate productively. They build on their master agreement
every year, and are able to consider more than just pay and benefits,
to "the entire work experience. We believe that we're a district that
puts students first."
Chairman Nonini attempted to infer from that testimony that "you have no
trust in your school board." In other words, if you trust your school
board, you should just let them dictate your working conditions?
The Chairman demonstrated that he completely missed the point Van Slyke
made: that good-faith negotiations require both sides to have some
power. It's as if the ... chairman of a committee, say, already had his
mind made up in favor of something, and were to politely listen to hours
of testimony with not the least motivation to change his mind in favor
of a bill he'd cosponsored and has every intention of pushing
through.
Never mind that the signups ran 4-to-1 opposed to the two bills
they're considering today (and the actual testimony
6-to-1
opposed). He had a "townhall" meeting in his district and had a
crowd he says was 8 or 9 to 1 in favor. So it depends on who you talk
to. Don't bring him any anecdotes, because he can match you one-to-one
until he ends the proceeding.
And don't bother with any actual facts about the possible efficacy of
the bill; sure there aren't any, but he doesn't have to care about
that.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
Home
Weblog
Useful
Sporting
Sailing
Friendly
Site map
Fine Print
Tuesday, 05-Apr-2011 20:23:16 MDT
http://fortboise.org/blog/201103.html
