Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
For me, one of the more interesting tracks of the Aspen Ideas Festival is the series of conversations about education. Aspen is the natural habitat of America’s overconfident plutonomy: the kind of people who are convinced that since they have been successful themselves, they are therefore qualified — more qualified than education professionals, in fact — to diagnose problems and prescribe solutions. The ultimate example of this in recent weeks was the firing of Teresa Sullivan as president of the University of Virginia, by rich trustees who had no substantive beef with her at all. Instead, they just didn’t like her reluctance to sign on to various inchoate strategies, which sound great in a mass-market leadership book but which are unlikely to be particularly helpful in the context of a venerable educational institution.
These people have all read their Steve Brill, and have watched (or even funded) Waiting for Superman. They’re generally convinced that bad teachers are The Problem, and seem to think that that reforming the nation’s education system is a task somehow akin to akin to remaking General Electric. Measure everything, work out who’s good and who’s bad, and fire the underperformers: half of the problem is solved right there. Then, look at the great teachers, the inspirational ones, and the ed-tech innovators. If America’s remaining teachers just take a leaf out of their books, and start doing the things that work really well, that’s the other half of the problem addressed.
This year, however, the tone of the discussion was different — not least because the American Federation of Teachers appeared on the list of corporate underwriters, alongside the likes of Ernst & Young, Mercedes Benz, and Pepsico. (And Thomson Reuters, too.) The AFT is all too often considered to be some kind of reactionary force of darkness, interested only in ensuring that all teachers, no matter how bad, have jobs for life. But with the AFT literally setting the agenda at Aspen, that changed in constructive ways.
Education is horribly complex, but I think it’s still possible to put together a stylized model of the main forces at play. The dramatis personae would look something like this:
By John Markoff, New York Times, June 27/28
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Etched into the base of Google'ss new wireless home media player that was introduced on Wednesday is its most intriguing feature. On the underside of the Nexus Q is a simple inscription: “Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A.”
The Google executives and engineers who decided to build the player here are engaged in an experiment in American manufacturing. “We’ve been absent for so long, we decided, ‘Why don’t we try it and see what happens?’ ” said Andy Rubin, the Google executive who leads the company’s Android mobile business.
[....] the project will be closely watched by other electronics companies. It has become accepted wisdom that consumer electronics products can no longer be made in the United States. During the last decade, abundant low-cost Chinese labor and looser environmental regulations have virtually erased what was once a vibrant American industry.
Since the 1990s, one American company after another, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple, has become a design and marketing shell, with production shifted to contract manufacturers in Shenzhen and elsewhere in China.
Now that trend may be showing early signs of reversing.
It’s a trickle, but some American companies are again making products in the United States [....]
By Ian Johnson, New York Review of Books Blog, June 26, 2012
Excerpt:
This was in 2005. And your family was still so poor?
Ahh, maybe you don’t know my village. When I went to school I’d be happy if I just got enough to eat. At the grassroots a lot of people want to be involved and want to do things but they can’t. They are just too poor. There’s such inflation now but no one’s income has gone up. Most people’s situation is like this: you can just survive on what you plant so people have to go out and labor. If you don’t go out and labor, you are just barely on a subsistence level. That wasn’t just true for my family but for many, many farming families in China.
Do you think urbanization is beneficial to people? They can move to the city and earn more money.
No, I don’t think it’s beneficial. Right now it’s a blind urbanization. Cities grow up naturally over time. Now they’re trying to do it all at once. The main thing about urbanization now is to make the economic statistics look good—to build and pump up economic activity.
There’s nothing positive about urbanization?
I think for those who go to the city and work there’s a benefit. But the current way of villages being turned into towns—I don’t think there’s an advantage to that. People in the village often rely on ordinary kinds of labor to earn a living, like working in the fields, or raising geese or fish and things like that. So now what happens? They turn a village into one high-rise apartment building and that’s all that’s left of the village. Then the land is used for real estate projects controlled by the officials. Where are the people supposed to work? How is that supposed to function?
People abroad look at China’s human rights situation and they mainly see the situation of better-known people. But they don’t know about all the violations of ordinary people. You know my situation but you don’t know the situation of the huge number of the disabled in China, or the women who are bullied and abused, or the orphans in China. You probably don’t know much about them or just about a few of them. But this is why the officials are so afraid—because they know the true extent of the problem. They are terribly afraid of people organizing. It’s very delicate in the countryside now. This is why they constantly resort to detentions and so on. They don’t even try to find an excuse, they just do it—they are that scared.
By Atul Gawande, M.D., Daily Comment @ newyorker.com, June 28, 2012
Home page teaser: It’s tempting to imagine that the health-care battle will subside. But many obstructions remain…
Angela Merkel softened hard line on fiscal discipline and debt repayment to hand Mariano Rajoy summit triumph
By Ian Traynor in Brussels and Phillip Inman, guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 June 2012
European leaders have moved to halt the crisis engulfing Spain and Italy by agreeing a radical bailout package for the single currency's teetering banks.
Amid deep divisions over the debt and currency crisis, and under immense pressure to come up with credible moves, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, softened her hard line on fiscal discipline and debt repayment to hand Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, a summit triumph.
Leaders agreed to set up a supervisory system for eurozone banks that will form the first step towards full banking union, scrapped the requirement that governments get preferential status over private investors in the event of a default and eased the stiff terms for future bailouts.
Markets surged after the deal was agreed, giving European leaders the respite they have been seeking for several months. The German and French stock markets jumped more than 4% while the main market in New York soared in early trading as renewed confidence among investors erased several weeks of losses.
In Madrid and Rome, the deal was hailed as a victory over the all-important bond markets [...]
The list of defense-related and other gifts the U.S. administration is willing to offer to Israel in exchange for three months of construction freeze in the settlements raises suspicions that someone has gone mad.
By Haaretz and Natasha Mozgovaya, Ha'aretz, June 29, 2012
Speaker of Iran's parliament says Islamic Republic used to American threats to attack, adds 'no one listens' to Hillary Clinton's comments concerning military action
Plant geneticists say they have discovered an answer to a near-universal question: Why are tomatoes usually so tasteless?
...
The unexpected culprit is a gene mutation that occurred by chance and that was discovered by tomato breeders. It was deliberately bred into almost all tomatoes because it conferred an advantage: It made them a uniform luscious scarlet when ripe.
Now, in a paper published in the journal Science, researchers report that the very gene that was inactivated by that mutation plays an important role in producing the sugar and aromas that are the essence of a fragrant, flavorful tomato. And these findings provide a road map for plant breeders to make better-tasting, evenly red tomatoes.
The discovery “is one piece of the puzzle about why the modern tomato stinks,” said Harry Klee, a tomato researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville who was not involved in the research. “That mutation has been introduced into almost all modern tomatoes. Now we can say that in trying to make the fruit prettier, they reduced some of the important compounds that are linked to flavor.”
Losses on JPMorgan Chase’s bungled trade could total as much as $9 billion, far exceeding earlier public estimates, according to people who have been briefed on the situation.
When Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, announced in May that the bank had lost $2 billion in a bet on credit derivatives, he estimated that losses could double within the next few quarters. But the red ink has been mounting in recent weeks, as the bank has been unwinding its positions, according to interviews with current and former traders and executives at the bank who asked not to be named because of investigations into the bank.
[Another round of applause for the Dimonster.]
Radiation levels above radioactive water in the basement reached up to 10,300 millisievert an hour, a dose that will kill humans within a short time after making them sick within minutes.
The annual allowed dose for workers at the stricken site is reached in only 20 seconds.
“Workers cannot enter the site and we must use robots for the demolition,” said TEPCO.
The Fukushima operator said that radiation levels were 10 times higher than those recorded at the plant’s two other crippled reactors, number two and three.
[Thank gawd we still have The Affordable Care Act.]
Clear, understandable explanation if you're looking for one:
By Kevin Russell, SCOTUS blog, July 28
The Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion is divided and complicated. The bottom line is that: (1) Congress acted constitutionally in offering states funds to expand coverage to millions of new individuals; (2) So states can agree to expand coverage in exchange for those new funds; (3) If the state accepts the expansion funds, it must obey by the new rules and expand coverage; (4) but a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing all of its Medicaid funds; instead the state will have the option of continue the its current, unexpanded plan as is.
The votes for this outcome are divided among several opinions [....]
[Adbusters] A new petro state has emerged in global affairs and its extreme political behavior has unsettled both Americans and Europeans alike.
For starters, the year-old regime has muzzled government scientists who are now accompanied by Soviet-like “minders” at public events.
It has branded environmentalists as “foreign radicals.”
It has abandoned its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce atmospheric pollution and effectively has no national plan to deal with climate change.
The state’s Auditor General has accused the government of lying to elected officials and concealing the real price tag for military aircraft: An astounding $25 billion.
More than 30,000 citizens have filed complaints with authorities accusing the ruling party of committing massive electoral fraud during the last election.
The same ruling party has gutted most of the country’s environmental legislation to quicken the approval times for pipelines and other oil and gas projects.
It also proposes to sell its supertankers of petroleum to three highly corrupt state-owned corporations ruled by the Communist Party of China. All comfortably deal with dictators and human rights violators.
Although this petro pirate may sound like Nigeria, Angola, Ecuador or Equatorial Guinea, think again. It’s Canada. That’s right: The northern mining giant that shares a border with the United States. It used to be a polite place – but the country’s gone rogue over oil.
By Katherine Eban, Fortune, June 27, 2012
A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust.
By Vicki Needham, On The Money blog at The Hill, June 27, 2011
A majority of House Democrats admonished U.S. trade officials for failing to consult with Congress and disclose details of negotiations on an Asia-Pacific trade deal.
On Wednesday, 132 of 191 Democrats sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk pressing him to increase transparency and openness in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks while ramping up engagement with Congress as complaints increase about the secrecy of the talks.
"We are troubled that important policy decisions are being made without full input from Congress,” wrote the lawmakers, led by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.) and George Miller (Calif.) [....]
By Justin Sink, The Hill Blog Briefing Room, June 27, 2012
A spokesperson for The Washington Post said Wednesday the newspaper would not be retracting a controversial report about Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital despite a request from the candidate’s campaign.
The announcement came after members of Romney’s staff met with senior editors in Washington on Wednesday afternoon to ask them to withdraw the article.
“We will not be issuing a retraction," Post communications director Kris Coratti said, adding she could not discuss additional details of the meeting. [....]
Romney's campaign team, however, has argued that the report is misleading. His staff claim the examples cited in the Post story unfairly imply that [....]
For those who might have some concerns. His is a link to live coverage.
http://www.krdo.com/news/WATCH-LIVE-KRDO-NewsChannel-13/-/417220/1477645...
Editor’s Note: Beginning June 4, and continuing over the next several weeks, Environmental Health News will publish Pollution, Poverty, People of Color, a series of stories examining environmental justice issues. For this project, EHN dispatched reporters to seven communities across the United States to report on their struggles to cope with an array of environmental threats. On the 30th anniversary of a North Carolina battle that is widely considered the birth of the environmental justice movement, our reporters and photojournalists found a legacy of lingering problems and newly emerging threats that are jeopardizing people of color in low-income communities. Their stories resonate with all of us, no matter what color or class. - Marla Cone
[Yeah, I'm still on about that Eagle Rock thing.]
Head in any direction on Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula and you will reach gushing rivers, placid ponds and lakes – both Great and small. An abundant resource, this water has nourished a small Native American community for hundreds of years. So 10 years ago, when an international mining company arrived near the shores of Lake Superior to burrow a mile under the Earth and pull metals out of ore, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa had to stand for its rights and its water. And now, as bulldozers raze the land and the tunnel creeps deeper, the tribe still hasn’t backed down. “The indigenous view on water is that it is a sacred and spiritual entity,” said Jessica Koski, mining technical assistant for the Keweenaw Bay community. “Water gives us and everything on Earth life.” The Keweenaw Bay Indians are fighting for their clean water, sacred sites and traditional way of life as Kennecott Eagle Minerals inches towards copper and nickel extraction, scheduled to begin in 2014. State officials say reverse osmosis technology will ensure that any water in the sulfide-extraction mine will be "almost more pure than rainfall."
By Rob Nordland, Nick Cumming-Bruce and Alan Cowell, New York Times, June 27/28, 2012
Syria said that rebels stormed a pro-government television station, but opposition fighters said the attackers were in fact defectors from the loyalist Republican Guard.
---
[....] The conflicting accounts of who carried out the assault on the television station, the al-Ikhbaria satellite broadcaster, reflected the difficulties that outsiders face in ascertaining the true course of events in the Syrian conflict, from which independent reporters and most international relief and monitoring officials are effectively barred.
Those difficulties were illustrated Wednesday in findings by a panel from the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, which is investigating rights violations in Syria. The panel said it was unable to determine conclusively who was responsible for the May 25 massacre of 108 civilians in the western region of Houla, but “considers that forces loyal to the government may have been responsible for many of the deaths.”
While the investigators accused government forces of committing violations on “an alarming scale” in recent months, they also found that both sides had carried out summary executions. And they determined that the nature of the conflict had changed, escalating significantly despite Mr. Annan’s peace entreaties [....]
By Patrick Lannan, Reuters, June 27, 2012
While South African athlete Oscar Pistorius attempts to become the first amputee runner to compete at the Olympic Games, scientists are still arguing whether his artificial limbs give him a critical advantage or not.
Pistorius, born without fibulas and who had his lower legs amputated when a baby, uses carbon fibre prosthetic running blades and is hoping to qualify for the 400 metres at the Games [....]
Photo by Francois Lenoir/Reuters