August 28, 2003
Cassel finds hope in Chicago
Elaine Cassel thinks average Americans might be getting a clue:
A young salesperson in Neiman Marcus on Michigan Avenue asked me if I thought it odd that Ashcroft was holding rallies to promote the Patriot Act. Isn't there a law against that, he said?
Another young man asked if I thought that the Patriot Act's provisions would be extended. Weren't many of the provisions "against the law," he asked?
The people I spoke with were reluctant to suggest that Bush was "evil." The young man in Neiman Marcus asked, "Do you really think he is trying to do the right thing?" Another, does he only care about his father's buddies? Or does he care about "us"? Did Bush knowingly lie about intelligence that indicated Iraq was an imminent threat?
Is something wrong with Ashcroft, another young man asked? I mean, why would anybody cover up a statute (sic) to hide breasts?
Despite all the Orwellian pronouncements, despite the stage sets and the managed messages, Bush and his cronies seem to be losing their grip on power. This is double plus good. I just hope there are still some average citizens alive and solvent to enjoy the rest of the century.
Verizon asks to raise rates 50%
Gee, how shocking. The phone companies, who wrote this bill regulating themselves, are now using the law to screw consumers. From Tampabay: the SP Times:
The PSC must approve or reject the requests within 90 days. If approved, the increases would go into effect immediately.
The new state rules on phone rates, which were crafted by the major phone companies, permit them to increase their base phone rates if they agree to corresponding decreases in the fees they charge long-distance providers to access their networks.
The law marked a dramatic easing in Florida's regulation of phone rates, which until recently had permitted base rates to increase 1 percentage point less than the rate of inflation.
The major phone companies argued that the changes would benefit consumers because wider profit margins for local phone services would encourage more companies to enter the market, spur competition and expand consumer choice. They also noted the law requires long-distance companies to pass along their cost savings to customers.
Consumer advocates scoffed at that, arguing long-distance rates aren't regulated so any customer savings could be short-lived.
MJ Melone Gets it
Jeb is still trying to mess with individual rights. MJ fills us in:
What a chance for the governor to chase the prize he's really after. He'd like nothing better than for a judge to declare a fetus a person with legal rights, including the right to have a guardian.
That would turn Florida law on its head. It would open the door to a flood of challenges to abortion and a woman's right to decide about the most private parts of her life.
One of the most offensive elements of Bush's position in the Orlando case is his opportunism. He has taken advantage of a woman attacked while unable to care for herself and turned her plight into a weapon with which to wage war on women.
Education: Bush flow dries
From the NY Times, Bob Herbert picks a theme familiar to BlogWood readers: (those are 2 different links, but both to BlogWood archives. Click away!)
He was going to be the education president, and during the campaign in 2000 he hugged kids from coast to coast, crowing about the education miracle in Texas and promising to spread the Texas model nationwide.
He said he was a different kind of Republican, a man of honor and compassion who would look out for the kids.
It was all smoke, of course — photo-ops in a cynical campaign. You knew it was smoke when the "compassionate" George W. Bush put Dick Cheney on the ticket, a former congressman who had voted against funding for Head Start, against subsidizing school lunches and against federal aid for college students.
In other words, against kids.
Next week the Senate will take up the education budget proposed for next year by the White House and Senate Republicans. From the perspective of those who are pro-children, it's loaded with bad news. Not only does the bill fall far short of the photo-op promises Mr. Bush made to provide funding for programs to improve public education, but it would actually cut $200 million from the president's very own (and relentlessly touted) No Child Left Behind Act.
...
As for the Texas education miracle — more smoke. The largest and most frequently praised district, Houston, is being monitored by the state after an audit showed that more than half of the 5,500 students who left school in the 2000-2001 year should have been counted as dropouts, but were not.
President Bush was apparently serious about bringing the Texas model to the nation. He made the superintendent of the Houston school district the nation's education secretary.
August 27, 2003
Iraq: Dick firm large money
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The Washington Post reports that a buck can still be made on human suffering:
Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion out of Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors.
August 26, 2003
Record gas prices: are oil companies colluding and gouging?
David Lindorf, writing in Counterpunch, takes on the oil comapnies:
Remember that $400 family credit that you got from the IRS (assuming you weren't one of those 8 million poor families that the Republicans and the president decided didn't deserve a tax rebate)?
Well, if your family has the typical two cars and two drivers, and you each drive the typical 15,000 miles a year and get the typical 20 miles per gallon, that windfall will be more than eaten up by New Years by what might be called the Bush/Cheney oil price surcharge, which has seen gas prices soar in recent weeks to the high they reached last March on the eve of the war against Iraq.
MJ Malone almost gets it...
From today’s SP Times, where Mary Jo Melone is ignoring statistics and attempting to prove that violent crime in Tampa is a massive problem:
I sometimes think that the bay area is particularly dangerous.
Then I think that the impression is false, that we are still just small enough that the police disclose to the press some serious crimes that larger police forces, in larger cities, would prosecute, but otherwise ignore.
In other words, I sometimes think that talking about crime is a matter of perception, that the bay area picture isn't nearly as grave as last week indicated.
But last week in Tampa was a whopper.
Last week was one of those reminders to check your reflexes in elevators and parking lots, to make sure the car and house doors are properly locked, to remember that no possession - no car, no wallet, no jewelry - is worth a life, and that, in the face of terror, there is only so much you can do.
She ALMOST gets it. And then she sells out to the hype machine. Her last thought
in the face of terror, there is only so much you can do
completely neutralizes her previous reasonable statements about perception and reality.
Listen: violent crime is ultra-hyped by local media, especially TV. Violent crime makes for good TV and good ratings, so the TV stations naturally hype it. Having a populace which is under the impression that violent crime is a problem is advantageous to government leaders and police departments, as long as the problem isn’t seen as having been allowed to fester uncontrolled by those same leaders and police.
So, TV and other local media play up the incidence of violent crime by running columns like MJ’s, and the populace naturally thinks violent crime is a big problem that must be dealt with. The populace rallies behind their government leaders and the police, seeking protection from the rapists and killers who are lurking behind every corner. Politicians talk tough, police get bigger budgets, civil liberties of poor and minority residents are often trampled, and everyone is happy.
According to statistics, violent crime is down right now, but studies show that regular TV news viewers think that violent crime is up. MJ dredges up a 12 year old case to further skew citizens’ impressions. It was a horrible and violent crime, but this sort of thing simply does not happen every day around here.
From News Dissector: Pallast on blackout
MediaChannel.org | News Dissector Web Log (scroll down for Pallast piece)
So who are these "experts" who revealed The Truth to the The Times? The authors quote seven in the article, beginning with David Owen, the industry's chief lobbyist. That paid shill is followed by James Hoecker, identified by his former title only, as a "independent" regulator. Just from the article, you'd think the poor guy is unemployed these days. In fact, he's walked comfortably through the revolving door and onto the industry payroll. His law firm represents, among others, First Energy, the characters who started the black-out rolling. I guess that fact was not "fit to print" in The Times.
"My favorite is the Times giving us the expert advice of the "director of Transmission for the National Grid Transco which owns and runs the grid in England and Wales." This Brit says Americans should pay more money to grid operators. What he doesn't say -- and the Times is happy to keep his secret -- is that his corporation owns Niagara-Mohawk Power Corporation, the company that spread the power outage into New York. Undoubtedly, NiMo's failure to react to the emergency resulted from the corporation's eliminating 800 workers in New York over the past two years and radically cutting investment in the grid system it operates in the USA.
August 22, 2003
Fight the power
While Dubya golfs, we need to get active!
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Not Geniuses: Flood the Zone Fridays, brought to you by Karl Rove
Flood the Zone Fridays, brought to you by Karl Rove
Posted by Ezra Klein
George W. Bush has a new website up, and upon seeing it, you have to admit -- this is a campaign that "gets" the web. Their website consolidates many of the tools that the Democratic challengers and their supporters have been experimenting with, and they are well implemented. Particularly impressive is their Action Center, which has one the the coolest, most useful tools I've ever seen:
If you scroll about halfway down the page, you'll see a field where you can input your zip code -- once you do, you'll be given a large list of newspapers and radio shows in your area, complete with contact information for each of them. It's mighty impressive.
Well, George Bush might have some good tools, but we have the online organization -- and tools mean nothing without good, motivated activists. However, we can do a lot with those tools, and we mean to.
Matt Singer and I originally conceived of this as a project for the DDF, but we quickly realized this wasn't candidate specific -- this is for every lefty in America. So here is what we propose. We want to get a coalition together -- every influential and non-influential lefty site with the ability to direct readers and members over to the Bush action tools. And every Friday, we want to use those tools to write letters and make calls highlighting a different part of the Bush disaster. This Friday will be fiscal irresponsibility day -- where we blanket the media with calls and letters about Bush's absurd fiscal policies. We're even going to get you the info, for instance, behold the Bush Record (if you're not a Dean supporter, just ignore the stuff about Dean).
But this week, we have to pull together the players. That's where you all come in. This needs to move through the blogosphere in much the same way that the "Fair and Balanced" day did. Matt and I can get to a lot of people, but we don't know everybody and we don't have the manpower to do it on our own. So E-mail this around, or simply E-mail your favorite blog-owners and ask them to be part of "Flood the Zone" Fridays, brought to you by Karl Rove and the good folks running the Bush Campaign.
Come Friday, Matt or I will post up some talking points and sample letters, and then watch the fun begin. Lets show Rove who owns the 'net.
August 21, 2003
Radical demagogue uses state funds to aid election bid
From the Sp TImes:
House Speaker Johnnie Byrd used a list of "Choose Life" license tag owners to promote a new parental-notice abortion law, an aide confirmed Wednesday.
Byrd spent $14,000 in tax money on the mailing last month, days after he announced his bid for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination. A letter sent to about 30,000 holders of the tags, signed by Byrd and Rep. Sandra Murman, R-Tampa, criticized the Florida Supreme Court for ruling that a parental notification law violated the state Constitution's privacy clause.
Byrd's use of the Choose Life database to send a political message shows that the tag is a political statement against abortion, not a pro-adoption plea as its supporters claim, says a lawyer who is suing the state to outlaw the tag.
"It's totally improper, but it's consistent with the agenda demonstrated up there," said Boca Raton lawyer Barry Silver, a former Democratic legislator. "They're totally responsive to the radical right. . . . The Legislature knew that the license plate was designed to be antiabortion."
The targeted mailing stirred criticism of Byrd from Republicans, too. Sue Banks of Palm Beach Gardens, of the Florida chapter of the Republican Pro-Choice Coalition, said she was angry that Byrd tailored his message to a select group.
"He did not communicate this issue to his constituents across the board. He chose a very narrow band to get the word out," Banks said. "And there's the implication, because of the narrow band of people that he sent this to: Support me for election, send me money, send me votes."
August 20, 2003
Face-it gone after dismal failure in Ybor
The fliers screamed “Stop Facial Profiling!” Hundreds of people donned cheap plastic Lone Ranger style masks and took to the streets in protest. Local TV and newspapers were all over the place. National press took notice, but the City Council rolled over and allowed Visionics Corp. (now known as Identix) to sniff and paw all over us.
A little history: Visionics makes software called Face-It which purports to be able to recognize faces in a crowd and identify those that are on a list. Hopefully, the list will contain wanted criminals, but it could just as easily be set up to find any individual or member of a group.
Face-It was not doing too well in the marketplace. This was probably because it doesn’t work. Visionics offered to buy the extra cameras and install Face-It in Ybor for free so that the company could claim that the system was up and running in a major metro area. In other words, the citizens of Tampa were to be used as guinea pigs as Visionics tried to make the software work and sell it all at the same time. This all sounded just fine to the Tampa City Council.
So a few of us got together and organized a protest. In Ybor. Under the cameras that were already there.
The cheap plastic masks were my idea. We gave away well over 1,000 masks that night and were joined by hundreds of like minded folks wearing homemade masks, masks of politician’s faces, Hitler masks, and more. The energy was fantastic, and it was the most enjoyable protest I’ve ever attended here in Tampa.
We packed a city council meeting with Facial Profiling opponents. We pointed out that the software did not work. We told the Council that such a system was ripe for abuse. We said that this was going too far, that cameras manned by an officer were one thing (and possibly also intrusive, but we let that go) but that adding computers to the mix and having a computer decide that a face may be similar to the face of a wanted criminal and to stop and hassle people based on that flimsy evidence was just too much.
Look: an officer manning a camera is going to be looking for active crime: pickpockets, fights, and other inappropriate behavior. Having police respond to these kinds of problems is exactly what I want, especially in the crowded carnival-like streets of Ybor. On the other hand, having a computer “recognize” someone’s face as that of a person who is on some list, and having police detain and question that person based solely on that recognition is flat wrong. Remember: if the police are busy chasing down people who aren’t actively engaging in any criminal act, then the police aren’t gonna have time to intervene or catch the purse-snatcher who is working the crowd.
The only argument anyone on the other side could muster was the old “you must have something to hide if you are against these cameras” tactic. We asked the other side if they value their privacy. We asked them if they close the door when they use the bathroom, and if so, what were they trying to hide?
The Council ignored the pleas of the citizens and sided with the corporate thugs of Visionics.
From the SP Times:
Two years after Tampa became the nation's first city to use facial-recognition software to search for wanted criminals, officials are dropping the program.
It led to zero arrests.
......
The city first toyed with the technology during the 2001 Super Bowl, when surveillance cameras monitored people entering Raymond James Stadium.
That led critics to dub the game, "Snooper Bowl." And although cameras picked up 19 "hits," or possible matches with wanted criminals, none were arrested.
That June, New Jersey-based Visionics Corp. offered the city a free trial use of a similar program called Face-It, and the software was installed on 36 cameras in the Ybor City entertainment district.
......
Even as the software proved unsuccessful in nabbing wanted offenders, it did a superb job of attracting outrage from critics.
Republican Dick Armey, the House Majority Leader at the time, called for congressional hearings on the controversial surveillance technology.
Leaders from the American Civil Liberties Union denounced the practice, likening it to something out of George Orwell's novel 1984.
Scores of protesters donned bandanas, masks and Groucho Marx glasses and took to the streets of Ybor City on a busy Saturday night to show their contempt for the face-scanning system.
......
(Tampa Police spokesperson) Durkin emphasized Tuesday that the trial run with Face-It didn't cost the city any money. But even so, he said, its use likely benefited the city.
"Something that's intangible is how many wanted persons avoided (Ybor City) because the cameras were there," he said. "That's something we may never calculate."
That quote just floors me. This is one of Visionics most oft repeated arguments, that arrests didn’t happen because criminals were scared to enter an area with cameras. Of course there is no way to prove or disprove This theory, but the company flogs it mercilessly.
From the Tribune:
The Tampa Police Department has eliminated the facial-recognition software hooked up to cameras scanning crowds in Ybor City - after two years, zero arrests and zero positive identifications.
The software, provided to the city free by its manufacturer, was intended to recognize the facial characteristics of felons and runaway children through a database of more than 24,000 mug shots. It was shut down Tuesday, having failed in its objective.
``It's just proven not to have any benefit to us,'' said Capt. Bob Guidara, a department spokesman.
At least Guidara’s not buying into the “criminals were scared away” argument...
The 36 surveillance cameras, which were installed a few years before the facial- recognition software, will remain. Police spokesman Joe Durkin said the software might not work but the cameras have led to several arrests.
``Officers have been able to make arrests involving illegal drug dealing, fights and things of that nature,'' Durkin said. ``One officer monitoring the cameras has been able to be the eyes of many in foiling this type of activity.''
So Durkin, the guy who said that wanted felons were scared away by the Face-It cameras, seems to be saying here that the cameras are better suited for traditional methods of use. Hmmm...
A few questions linger in my mind: Were any images taken from the cameras saved? Are these images the property of Identix? Wait, I know of at least one image that was saved (from the same SP Times article as above):
Rob Milliron, then 32, wound up on a surveillance camera one day while at lunch in Ybor City. Tampa police used his photo to demonstrate the system to local news media.
A woman in Tulsa, Okla., saw his picture and fingered him as her ex-husband who was wanted on felony child neglect charges. Three police officers showed up at Milliron's construction job site, asking if he was a wanted man.
Turns out he had never married, never had kids, never even been to Oklahoma.
"They made me feel like a criminal," Milliron said at the time.
August 19, 2003
State: Drug offenses responsible for prison population "bulge"
According to the Tribune, Florida says that an increase in prisoners is due to more drug offenders being locked up. Do we really want to spend millions of dollars locking up non-violent drug “criminals”? This quote strikes me as rather incredible:
McDonough, director of the state's Office of Drug Control Policy, notes most people sent to prison for drug crimes are dealers, not small-time users who could be helped by treatment.
A quick look around the My Florida web site reveals that statistics are not broken down, at least for the public, in such a way as to differentiate between “dealers” and “users,” but it seems to me that there would have to be more buyers than sellers, so it seems logical that there are plenty of just plain users rotting in jail.
Nearly 3,000 prisoners were locked up in June, the largest number of new inmates in a single month in Florida in more than a decade.
The bulge in the state prison population, which caught officials by surprise, was largely driven by more people being imprisoned for drug crimes, according to state Department of Corrections figures.
The immediate problem - a looming lack of bed space - may have been resolved last week when Gov. Jeb Bush signed an emergency measure shifting more than $65 million from reserves into prison construction.
But officials are starting to question what is causing such a large and unexpected spike in prison admissions while, as politicians are quick to point out, the crime rate has dropped to record lows.
With drug crimes causing about a quarter of the new admissions, some advocates for drug treatment are pointing to cuts in spending on treatment programs for prisoners and people who otherwise might go to prison, suggesting they're at least partly to blame.
``There is little substance abuse treatment available to offenders,'' John Daigle, executive director of the Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association, said Monday.
That’s $65 million in no-bid contracts for OFFaL’s (Our Fearless Florida Leader) cronies, and 3,000 more citizens who will not be able to vote in the next election.
August 17, 2003
OFFaL in, more garbage out.
Our Fearless Florida Leader (OFFaL, not to be confused with his brother OFaL) is teaming up with a Texas based Repulican-run non-profit to re-digest and re-regurgitate the same data (from the FLDOE website, titled GOVERNOR JEB BUSH ANNOUNCES BIGGEST IMPROVEMENT EVER ON FCAT) that the state is already manipulating to show that OFFaL’s education agenda is a good thing. The SP Times and the Tribune both ran the same wire service article:
"I love it," Bush said. "They're a little bit different twist on our grading system, but it's very similar."
Critics say Just for The Kids puts too much emphasis on test scores and makes superficial recommendations that vary little from state to state.
"If all you're really doing is mixing some numbers in a computer and saying poor kids do worse, we all know that," said Al Kauffman, who teaches at Harvard Law School and led legal challenges against school testing in Texas. "It's important to look at demographics, but I don't think a greater emphasis on test scores is a way to do it."
Maybe OFFaL is getting a little nervous, with reports like this, from the Miami Herald, popping up frequently lately:
Nearly 90 percent of Florida's public schools failed to meet reading and math standards this year under the new federal No Child Left Behind law, The Herald learned Thursday.
There are no direct consequences to the failures, but they are a stinging rebuke to a system that Gov. Jeb Bush's A Plan for Education has painted as steadily improving.
'What purpose does it serve to call a school an `A' if it's not making adequate progress?'' asked Sam Yarger, dean of the University of Miami School of Education.
State education officials are scheduled to release the results today in Tallahassee, but sources familiar with the data said only 13 percent of the state's schools demonstrated ''adequate yearly progress,'' federal lingo for meeting No Child Left Behind standards.
The Federal analysis seeks to measure progress of poor and minority students. I’m not up on the details, but I think that the state does not really care if minorities do well on the FCAT. That seems to be the big difference between the Fed numbers and the state’s.
By bringing in another entity to crunch the same numbers. OFFaL can dismiss the Fed numbers as an aberration, or a product of the “bureaucracy,” as his brother did with EPA global warming data.
Look for Newspeak obfuscation to continue to emanate from both Bush houses.
August 16, 2003
Asscroft's war on federal judges
Attorney General John Ashcroft continues to look for new ways to lock up even more of our people. If this country is so free, how come we have so many of our citizens in prison for non-violent and often victimless crimes? From Elaine Cassels Civil Liberties Watch:
With a little help from Congress, John Ashcroft has mounted a new assault on the Constitution: He wants to control federal judges--and his own prosecutors. As with so much of what Ashcroft does, his rationale is riddled with hyperbole, lies, and half truths. What's the truth about sentencing that Ashcroft does not want you to know?
...
This spring, the PROTECT Act was signed into law. While it is famous for containing the federal version of the "Amber alert," it also included another important provision relating to federal criminal sentencing.
That provision directs the U.S. Sentencing Commission to amend the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines "to ensure that the incidence of downward departures are substantially reduced." (The Sentencing Guidelines apply to all criminal sentences meted out in federal court, and dramatically constrain judges' sentencing discretion. Judges can choose a "downward departure" - imposing a sentence below the range that Guidelines prescribe - only in limited circumstances.)
On July 28, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a memorandum to all federal prosecutors outlining the Department of Justice's policies with respect to downward departures, in light of the PROTECT Act. It states that prosecutors should not "acquiesce" to departures except in rare occurrences. In addition, when a judge imposes a departure over the prosecutor's objections, the memo requires the prosecutor, within 14 days, to report the departure to DOJ. In short, DOJ's departure policy is no policy at all.
...
In its state and federal prisons, combined, America incarcerates approximately 1 out of every 143 of its residents (over 2.1 million people). In comparison, England, Italy, France and Germany are only about 1 out of every 1,000. The federal inmate population now exceeds that of any single state. And this is largely due to Congress's Draconian mandatory minimum sentencing laws.
Meanwhile, though you would never know it from the PROTECT Act, downward departures do not mean that federal judges are disobeying the law because they are "soft on crime." The truth is quite to the contrary.
Republican recipe: more prisons, less schools
Remember: in Florida, prisoners almost never get their voting rights back.
From the SP Times:
Lawmakers will even let Corrections Secretary Jim Crosby go on a building spree without competitive bids. That means he doesn't have to accept the lowest price offered, and rival companies can't appeal his selection. Crosby says bidding slows everything down.
Crosby and his boss, Gov. Jeb Bush, were both unhappy that legislators cut the corrections budget during the regular session. Now, they say, a recent spike in prison admissions has pushed the inmate population close to capacity.
But nobody can explain the reason for the increase. Is it the start of a trend or a short-term aberration?
Many new inmates are doing time for drug offenses, according to the Criminal Justice Estimating Conference, and more than half come from five counties: Hillsborough, Polk, Escambia, Volusia and Leon.
Is it a coincidence that drug crimes are surging after a series of cuts in drug treatment, juvenile crime prevention and probation?
August 15, 2003
Kristof gently comments on right wing religious nutcases
Kristof comments on our country’s increasingly evangelical religious convictions:
My grandfather was fairly typical of his generation: A devout and active Presbyterian elder, he nonetheless believed firmly in evolution and regarded the Virgin Birth as a pious legend. Those kinds of mainline Christians are vanishing, replaced by evangelicals. Since 1960, the number of Pentecostalists has increased fourfold, while the number of Episcopalians has dropped almost in half.
The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America.
Some liberals wear T-shirts declaring, "So Many Right-Wing Christians . . . So Few Lions." On the other side, there are attitudes like those on a Web site, dutyisours.com/gwbush.htm, explaining the 2000 election this way:
"God defeated armies of Philistines and others with confusion. Dimpled and hanging chads may also be because of God's intervention on those who were voting incorrectly. Why is GW Bush our president? It was God's choice."
Is this the future for Florida schools?
The NY Times reports on a growing public school scandal in Houston that involves extreme manipulation of statistical data to produce extraordinarily low dropout rates.
ROBERT KIMBALL, an assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, sat smack in the middle of the "Texas miracle." His poor, mostly minority high school of 1,650 students had a freshman class of 1,000 that dwindled to fewer than 300 students by senior year. And yet — and this is the miracle — not one dropout to report!
Nor was zero an unusual dropout rate in this school district that both President Bush and Secretary of Education Rod Paige have held up as the national showcase for accountability and the model for the federal No Child Left Behind law. Westside High here had 2,308 students and no reported dropouts; Wheatley High 731 students, no dropouts. A dozen of the city's poorest schools reported dropout rates under 1 percent.
Now, Dr. Kimball has witnessed many amazing things in his 58 years. Before he was an educator, he spent 24 years in the Army, fighting in Vietnam, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel and touring the world. But never had he seen an urban high school with no dropouts. "Impossible," he said. "Someone will get pregnant, go to jail, get killed." Elsewhere in the nation, urban high schools report dropout rates of 20 percent to 40 percent.
A miracle? "A fantasy land," said Dr. Kimball. "They want the data to look wonderful and exciting. They don't tell you how to do it; they just say, 'Do it.' " In February, with the help of Dr. Kimball, the local television station KHOU broke the news that Sharpstown High had falsified its dropout data. That led to a state audit of 16 Houston schools, which found that of 5,500 teenagers surveyed who had left school, 3,000 should have been counted as dropouts but were not. Last week, the state appointed a monitor to oversee the district's data collection and downgraded 14 audited schools to the state's lowest rating.
...
"You need to understand the atmosphere in Houston," Dr. Kimball said. "People are afraid. The superintendent has frequent meetings with principals. Before they go in, the principals are really, really scared. Panicky. They have to make their numbers."
Pressure? Some compare it to working under the old Soviet system of five-year plans. In January, just before the scandal broke, Abelardo Saavedra, deputy superintendent, unveiled Houston's latest mandates for the new year. "The districtwide student attendance rate will increase from 94.6 percent to 95 percent," he wrote. "The districtwide annual dropout rate will decrease from 1.5 percent to 1.3 percent."
...
As for those who fail to make their numbers, it is termination time, one of many innovations championed by Dr. Paige as superintendent here from 1994 to 2001. He got rid of tenure for principals and mandated that they sign one-year contracts that allowed dismissal "without cause" and without a hearing.
On the other hand, for principals who make their numbers, it is bonus time. Principals can earn a $5,000 bonus, district administrators up to $20,000. At Sharpstown High alone, Dr. Kimball said, $75,000 in bonus money was issued last year, before the fictitious numbers were exposed.
With similar statistical driven pressure on Florida schools, look for something like this in our state very soon. And possibly in other states as well:
To skeptics like Dr. Kimball, the parallels to No Child Left Behind are depressing. The federal law mandates that every child in America pass reading and math proficiency tests by 2014 — a goal many educators believe is as impossible as zero dropouts. And like Houston's dropout program, President Bush's education budget has been criticized as an underfinanced mandate, proposing $12 billion this year for Title 1, $6 billion below what the No Child Left Behind law permits. "This isn't about educating children," Dr. Kimball said. "It's about public relations."
Washington Post guest editorial by Fox News?
There is so much wrong with this piece that I can't even begin. OK... I'll begin... First, the arrogant prick who wrote this piece might want to look at a world map and notice that Europe is a little farther north than Texas, and thus it usually enjoys much milder summers than the current brutally hot one. I can't go on. Turn up your AC and read it for yourself.
Can't Stand the Heat?
Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page A18
TO LISTEN TO THE FUSS Europeans are making about their weather, anyone would think that it was actually hot over there. In Paris, shops have experienced a run on electric fans. In Sweden, a male bus driver showed up for work in a skirt after his company informed him that he was not allowed to wear shorts. In Amsterdam, zookeepers are giving iced fruit to their chimpanzees to cool them off.
Okay, so maybe it's a bit warmer than usual. Temperatures across the continent have shot up into the 90s and once or twice have topped 100 degrees in London and Paris. But is this really hot -- hot enough to close businesses, hot enough to cancel trains (the tracks might buckle), hot enough to wax nostalgic for the summer rain to which some Europeans, notably residents of the British Isles, are more accustomed?
Last time we checked, the weather here in Washington was in the upper 80s, which is average to low for this time of year. Temperatures in Houston and Dallas in the past couple of days have topped 100, as they usually do in summer. Yet somehow, no one's talking about extraordinary measures being taken by Texans or Washingtonians. On the contrary, President Bush, who qualifies as both, by some measures, is currently mocking the press corps by pretending to enjoy jogging in the Texas heat. Not all Europeans may want to go this far -- but maybe they will now at least stop turning up their noses at those American summer inventions they've long loved to mock: The office window that doesn't open, the air conditioner that produces sub-arctic temperatures and the tall glass of water, served in a restaurant, filled to the brim with ice.
August 13, 2003
Hillsborough School Board members pray for holy paddles
It seems that some Hillsborough County School Board members are into spanking. From the Tribune:
As board members expressed frustration at a lack of consequences for misbehaving students, Barrington recalled his days as a teacher and administrator when he could ``slam 'em up against the wall and counsel them.''
Board member Jennifer Faliero quickly took up the cause for harsher measures for such students, saying, ``Most of them are just brats.''
They will continue misbehaving ``until we slam 'em against the wall and put the fear of God into them,'' she said. picking up Barrington's cue.
This is a publicly elected servant of the people talking about beating the shit out of children in order to force them to worship her vengeful god. This isn’t about maintaining discipline in the schools. It’s about spreading the Christian word (“spank ME!”)through fear and intimidation. “If you don’t worship my vengeful god, I, as god’s agent, will hurt you.”
So the kid’s learn that violence is ok, as long as you’re in a position strong enough to avoid any type of recrimination for your actions, or as long as you’re acting out of religious conviction. (Kinda like our invasion of Iraq, eh?)
Perhaps we can use this logic elsewhere, as well? Are you a wife beater? No problem. Just explain to the judge that you doing a little proselytizing. If the judge doesn’t buy this explanation, beat him up until he too has the fear of god.
Hey Jennifer: if you really need someone to spank, check out the personal ads in the back of the Weak Planet. You can probably find a nice boy who will call you “teacher” as you beat him like an atheist schoolchild.
August 08, 2003
Early beer sales to aid Bucs fans, rich white folks catch a buzz, and more!
The Tampa City Council is considering allowing early liquor sales on Sundays. This is a good thing, as government has no business enacting and enforcing laws based on religious convictions. But why is the proposal only allowing sales after 11:00? Why not earlier? Apparently, the reasoning is that 11AM sales will allow Bucs fans to more easily stock up for their pre-game tailgate parties. It must be a real hardship to have to plan ahead and go the liquor store the night before a big game.
Beer, wine and liquor would go on sale at 11 a.m. instead of 1 p.m., according to a proposal to change Tampa's decades-old ``blue laws'' - designed to restrict drinking on days once reserved for church.
...
Economic reasons outweighed religious concerns, said Councilwoman Rose Ferlita, who said she has been called a sinner - ``and it got worse from there'' - for advocating the change.
``This is simply a good business avenue in a tourist- driven economy,'' Ferlita said.
In addition to letting tailgaters buy booze before the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' usual kickoff time, the change allows restaurants to offer cocktails to the Sunday brunch crowd.
Note to Rose Ferlita: religious concerns should not ever be used as the deciding factor for an ordinance. Don’t try to legislate morality, and keep your damn laws off of my body.
Funny thing about laws like this is that the people who write them don’t have to live by them. Go to any country club on a Sunday morning, and you’ll find rich white self-described Christians chugging mimosa’s and screwdrivers as a cure for their Saturday night hangovers. They can get away with this behavior because they have the economic means to form and operate a private club. The club gives away the booze for “free” (even though the members collectively pay for it through dues), thus circumventing the letter of the law.
If you’re poor, maybe your local pub can do the same thing? Not likely. Although a bar can literally give away booze any time, as soon as they charge a cover, it becomes a sale. So, dues paid to a club do not constitute a sale, but a cover charge does. That means that if you’re poor your best bet is to find a Catholic church and take a few shots of communion wine.
In the meantime, back at The Club, our rich white Christians are mixing alcohol and pills. That’s ok, though, because these are prescription meds, not drugs. See, these are good people. They don’t live in duplexes , and they get their mind altering substances only through AMA and FDA approved channels. They settle in to a nice mellow buzz, and begin to discuss the plague of drug use and crime that they hear is inundating our community.
What they fail to grasp is that drug use, by itself, is a completely victimless “crime”. It hurts no one but the user. So, if we stop designating drug users as criminals, crime drops immediately. Once drug use is legal, addicts will be much less likely to resort to real crime to feed their habits. (How often do we hear of someone breaking into a house to feed his alcohol habit?) Also, through drug taxes, we can fund rehabilitation programs and make them easily accessible to folks from all income levels.
Gads of money will be saved by not locking up non-violent pot smokers. Remember: we are currently incarcerating 2.1 million people in this country. Most are in for non-violent drug related offenses. No other so-called civilized country has ever had a higher percentage of its population in jail. And we call ourselves free?
Read this quote about a poor neighborhood carefully:
According to Tampa Police Department crime statistics, 28 percent of the city's reported drug crimes in 2002 took place in the area. Residents trace the problem to a proliferation of low-rent duplexes over the past several decades.
Now, council members have started the legal process to rezone the area bordered by Florida Avenue, 15th Street, Busch Boulevard and Fowler Avenue to prohibit construction of duplexes. Existing duplexes would be allowed to remain unless they are vacant for six months. In such cases, the owner would have to convert the building to a single-family home.
So, 28 percent of reported drug crimes take place there? All that means is that drugs are being used openly by people who have no where to go and use their drugs in private. They don’t have a country club to go to. (Is anyone reporting to the police the trading and abusing of prescription meds there?) They don’t have a house or an apartment to go to. Rezoning will undoubtedly “solve” the problem by pushing it to another neighborhood, but as long as we allow homelessness and poverty to flourish in our communities, these problems are not going to be solved. Hmmm... maybe we could use drug taxes for rehab and housing and education and healthcare... nah... makes too much sense...
Links:
Decriminalize drug use.
Release non-violent drug “criminals” from prison.
Malpractice reform looks to be done deal
Jeb and his Republican cohorts have stopped squabbling long enough to do a deal on the Florida malpractice reform that has been a contentious issue this summer. Look for this issue to heat up nationally, as OFaL (Our FeArless Leader) attempts to essentially trade cash to insurance companies and doctors in return for campaign contributions and votes.
Settling on a $500,000 cap represented a victory for the Senate and a setback for Bush, who has campaigned doggedly around the state for the $250,000 cap. The governor has argued that capping lawsuit judgments at a higher figure would not give insurance companies the certainty they need to set aside reserves for future losses.
But Bush has been dogged by accusations that his real motive was to ``whack the trial lawyers,'' as he was quoted saying in an unguarded moment this year.
Adding to the perception of a political agenda was the national Republican Party's use of the $250,000 cap as a fundraising tool and as a weapon against the trial lawyers, who traditionally support the Democratic Party. The cap was recently killed in the U.S. Senate by a Democratic filibuster.
This is the 3rd expensive special session this year. While the Republicans argue about how to make doctors and insurance companies richer, they continue to ignore the very real need to provide healthcare for the average citizen.
August 05, 2003
OFaL and the religious right
In today’s Village Voice, James Ridgeway writes of Bush’s extreme religious views:
... Bush quickly sent a message of support to anti-abortion protesters in front of the Supreme Court: "We share a great goal: to work toward a day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law. . . . But the goal leads us onward: to build a culture of life, affirming that every person, at every stage and season of life, is created equal in God's image."
Roe v. Wade is still law, but Congress, with Bush's backing, has done everything possible to get rid of it: Bush backed a ban on what abortion foes call partial birth abortion and tried to end stem cell research. Congress is well on its way to giving fetuses constitutional rights, maybe even the ability to sue for damages under terrorism laws. Like a mullah, Bush pushes abstinence, proposing to spend $135 million to promote it, and administration mouthpieces preach that it's important for young people to delay the "debut" of their sexual life. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson explained the no-fuck policy like this: "When adolescents become sexually active, it can have negative effects on their physical and emotional health."
Well, yeah it can have a negative health impact, mostly since OFaL refuses to admit that some kids are gonna have sex. This leads logically to restricting the availability of cheap (government subsidized) condoms and STD and pregnancy screenings. Unfortunately, those wacky kids have sex anyway, and are now faced with having to make do with no birth control or protection against STDs. Of course, they can always pray for divine protection.