Thursday, September 2, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, September 2, 2010


Well...???
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9 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467004575463841606641572.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

[O]n Sunday the Los Angeles Times published evaluations of some 6,000 city school teachers based on how well their students performed on standardized tests.

After decades of measuring education results only by money spent, with little to show for it, parents are finally looking for an objective measure to judge teacher effectiveness. Taxpayers also deserve to know whether the money they're paying teachers is having any impact on learning or merely financing fat pay and pensions in return for mediocrity.

Since 1990, K-12 education spending has grown by 191% and now consumes more than 40% of the state budget. The Cato Institute reports that L.A. spends almost $30,000 per pupil, including capital costs for school buildings, yet the high school graduation rate is 40.6%, the second worst among large school districts in the U.S.

The Times rated teachers using a "value added" analysis that has been popular in education research for years. To account for the fact that children in the same class often start the school year with different abilities, the value-added approach looks at individual student progress from year to year. An instructor is credited or faulted based on how much progress the student makes under that instructor.

* SOUNDS REASONABLE... (*SHRUG*)

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told ABC News that she objects...

* SOUNDS TYPICAL... (*SMIRK*)

Currently, less than 2% of teachers are denied tenure in L.A., and teacher evaluations don't take into account whether students are learning. Ms. Weingarten prefers to continue a system of meaningless teacher assessments that almost never result in an instructor being fired for performance.

September 2, 2010 at 10:30 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/02/AR2010090202266_pf.html

As depositors thronged branches of Afghanistan's biggest bank, Mahmoud Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a major shareholder in beleaguered Kabul Bank called on Thursday for intervention by the United States to head off a financial meltdown.

"America should do something," said Karzai in a telephone interview, suggesting that the U.S. Treasury Department guarantee the funds of Kabul Bank's clients, who number about a million and have more than a billion dollars on deposits with the bank.

* F--K KARZAI...

* F--K KARZAI'S CLIENTS...

Kabul Bank handles salary payments for soldiers, police and teachers. It has scores of branches across Afghanistan and holds the accounts of key Afghan government agencies. The collapse of the bank would likely spread panic throughout the country's fledgling financial sector and wipe out nine years of effort by the United States to establish a sound Afghan banking system...

* F--KING IDIOT BUSH...

* F--KING IDIOT OBAMA...

Treasury officials have said they have confidence in Afghanistan's Central Bank...

* OHHH... SHIT...

The U.S. Treasury Department has assigned a small team of experts to work with the Afghan Central Bank on the Kabul Bank mess...

* THE U.S. TREASURY IS STAFFED BY UTTER INCOMPETENTS AND THE ONLY THING THEY POSSESS "EXPERTISE" IN IS EVADING TAXES (GEITHNER) AND MAKING ALL THE WRONG ECONOMIC DECISIONS!

* WE ARE SO F--KING -F--KED.

September 2, 2010 at 12:34 PM
Anonymous said...

At the risk of sounding "snarky," does it really make sense to judge teachers based on how well their students perform on a standardized test? After all, what is the purpose of the educational system, to ensure that students learn certain facts that we have all since forgotten (see e.g. Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?) or to prepare students for the next step in their journey to adulthood? Shouldn't elementary teachers really be judged based on how well their students do in middle school? Just a thought...

-Carl

P.S. - When I first glanced at this newsbite I thought it was from an LA Times article and was shocked by its tone, only to be brought back to reality when I realized it was a WSJ piece.

September 2, 2010 at 4:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

@ Carl --

"...does it really make sense to judge teachers based on how well their students perform on a standardized test?"

Yes.

(And btw, if you had bothered to follow the link and read the full article you probably wouldn't have asked the question because you would have been aware that the student performance review is only one of the categories of teacher reviews.)

"...what is the purpose of the educational system..."

To educate.

"...to ensure that students learn certain facts that we have all since forgotten..."

Yes, Carl... the purpose of education is to educate - to ensure that students learn certain facts.

Over time do we all forget certain facts... certain things we're taught? Yes.

Are we taught facts and trained to perform certain tasks that we may never in "real life" have to duplicate? Sure. But that's another topic... we're not discussing the pros and cons of particular curriculum here.

(*SMILE*)

"Shouldn't elementary teachers really be judged based on how well their students do in middle school?"

Carl. Read the article. If you can't "click" on the address, then simply copy it and paste it to your address bar.

BILL

September 2, 2010 at 6:20 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/106207-hhs-begins-accepting-applications-for-early-retiree-reinsurance-program

The Department of Health and Human Services announced today it has begun accepting applications for the early retiree reinsurance program created by the healthcare reform law. The law sets aside $5 billion that businesses, unions and state and local governments can use to cover the healthcare costs of their retirees - and their spouses and dependents - who are older than 55 but don't yet qualify for Medicare.

* IN PLAIN ENGLISH... THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS BORROWING AN ADDITIONAL $5 BILLION FROM CHINA IN ORDER TO FINANCE SPECIAL INTEREST GIVEAWAY SPENDING.

The program provides an 80% subsidy for retiree claims of between $15,000 and $90,000...

* AND SCREW THE REST OF US. YEP. YOU GOT IT. FOLKS LIKE YOU AND I GET TO SUBSIDIZE THE PENSIONS OF "EARLY RETIREES" UP TO $90K A YEAR! NICE RACKET, HUH!?

[A] new report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute finds that if the subsidy were drawn down for all early retirees and their dependents, half the money would be exhausted in the first year of the program. The $5 billion would last no more than two years and would not be available in 2012 or 2013, the study says.

* MEANING THIS INITIAL $5 BILLION IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG!

* HERE... READ FURTHER DETAILS -- http://spectator.org/blog/2010/09/02/another-federal-giveaway-to-un

2,000 “groups” are eligible to receive money for “reinsuring” their retiree health programs. Only a third (32%) are private businesses, the rest are state and local governments (26%), unions (22%), “education” (I guess public universities) (14%), and non-profits (5%).

For years these organizations have been giving in to union demands for generous retirement benefits, but they haven’t been funding their promises. Hmmmm. What to do? What to do? I knew! We’ll have the Feds bail us out. They’ve got plenty of money!

(*SNORT*) A GUY AFTER MY OWN HEART.

September 2, 2010 at 6:21 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/02/the-other-religion-at-ground-zero.html

St. Nicholasis the patron saint of sailors in the Eastern tradition...

[Lower Manhattan's] St. Nicholas Church was built in 1916 on Cedar Street, across the street from where the World Trade Center eventually stood, by Greek immigrants who worked the shipyards at New York Harbor.

By 2001, just about 70 people were worshiping there on Sundays.

On September 11, [2001,] St. Nicholas Church was literally crushed. Like the Ark of the Covenant, a safe containing the relics of saints was lost. Only a few objects were ever recovered from the wreckage: two icons, several bibles, a few mangled candles. They wait in safety uptown as the Archdiocese negotiates its new building with the Port Authority.

Father Mark Arey won’t put it quite this way, but he doesn’t see why Muslims are getting all the attention for their religious building near Ground Zero. Especially when...St. Nicholas Church was actually at Ground Zero; was obliterated when the South Tower fell on September 11, 2001; and has never gotten the green light to proceed rebuilding - despite nine years of promises by the Port Authority that were reiterated last week by New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

* IT IS A PRETTY GOOD GOD DAMNED QUESTION, ISN'T IT?!

In 2009 negotiations broke down completely over the size and location of the new church.

According to [Father] Arey, the Port Authority offered the church a bigger site up the road, on Liberty Street, and then rescinded that offer. In a statement, the Port Authority said it had reached out to St. Nicholas last week, but that the Liberty Street location was no longer on the table. "St. Nicholas Orthodox Church has always had and will continue to have the right to rebuild on its original location," it said.

* SO WHERE ARE THE PERMITS...???

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that negotiations had resumed, but [Father] Arey says no one has reached out to him. “We are very concerned. We’re not going to be pushed out. We are very determined to rebuild the church at Ground Zero.”

September 2, 2010 at 6:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/9e997301051748e6b7ba5d8b60b1e3c1/Article_2010-09-01-US-Solar-Public-Lands/id-2dc0563497304d8497dbfe86b4d9928d

Not a light bulb's worth of solar electricity has been produced on the millions of acres of public desert set aside for it.

Not one project to build glimmering solar farms has even broken ground.

Instead, five years after federal land managers opened up stretches of the Southwest to developers, vast tracts still sit idle.

At a time when the nation drills ever deeper for oil off its shores even as it tries to diversify its energy supply, the federal government has, so far, failed to use the land it already has - some of the world's best for solar - to produce renewable electricity.

* THIS IS WHY YOU READ BARKER'S NEWSBITES, FOLKS; I DO THE READING - AND PASS IT ON - THAT YOU DON'T HAVE TIME FOR.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Nevada, where a Goldman Sachs & Co. subsidiary with no solar background has claims with the BLM on nearly half the land for which applications have been filed, but no firm plan for any of the sites.

* NEVADA... NEVADA... WHY DOES THAT STATE SOUND SO FAMILIAR... (*SMIRK*)

* OH, YES... AND LET'S NOT FORGET GOLDMAN SACHS - FRIEND OF OBAMA... (FRIEND OF REID?)

BLM has yet to give final approval to one solar lease.

(The Bush administration...kept BLM's focus on oil. [T]he agency approved more than 73,000 oil and gas leases in the last five years.)

* WHICH IS GOOD CONSIDERING MY CAR REQUIRES GAS AND I LIKE TO HEAT AND COOL MY HOME WHEN NECESSARY! (OH... AND COOK... AND WATCH TV... AND ACTUALLY USE ALL MY MECHANICAL AND ELECTRONIC POSSESSIONS... (*SMIRK*)

In the Southern California desert near Palm Springs, for example, San Diego-based LightSource Renewables filed an application in August 2008 for 2,500 acres, BLM records show. The small, two-person development firm knew enough to recognize the land's worth - it was close to transmission lines - but had no previous experience with such projects. Co-founder Paul Whitworth said it is now focusing on getting private land, and is not pursuing plans for its BLM site. The agency, however, still considers the application active, meaning other interested firms cannot access it.

While dozens of smaller firms like Lightsource joined in the rush, BLM records show two Goldman subsidiaries filed 52 of the 354 applications throughout the region, more than any other company.

* HEY! OBAMA'S BUDDIES AGAIN! IMAGINE THAT!

The Obama Administration has identified 14 promising "fast-track" projects targeted for approval by year's end so they can qualify for stimulus funding. None of Goldman's claims are among them.

* SO FAR... (*SHRUG*) (*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)

September 2, 2010 at 6:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012772168_banklobby01.html

The 10 banks that received the most bailout aid during the financial crisis spent over $16 million on lobbying efforts in the first half of 2010...

* CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN, HUH? (*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*) ALL HAIL OBAMA, FRANKS, DODD AND THE... er... AGE OF REFORM.

Disclosure reports show that the banks that got the most government help in late 2008 and early 2009 also invested the most to influence members of Congress, the White House, the Federal Reserve...

* HMM... NOW REMIND ME... WHICH PARTY IS IT WHICH CONTROLS BOTH THE LEGISLATIVE AND EXECUTIVE BRANCHES OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT...?

Ed Mierzwinski, consumer-program director at U.S. Public Interest Research Group...said more than 2,000 lobbyists worked on the financial overhaul bill.

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

The $16.32 million spent in the first half of 2010 was 26% higher than the combined $12.94 million they spent in the first half of 2009.

* PERHAPS IT'S BUSH'S FAULT... (*SNICKER*)

September 2, 2010 at 6:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/01/AR2010090106148.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Lunch at the National Press Club on Wednesday caused some serious indigestion.

It wasn't the food; it was the entertainment.

Christina Romer, chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, was giving what was billed as her "valedictory" before she returns to teach at Berkeley, and she used the swan song to establish four points, each more unnerving than the last: 1) She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be; 2) She still doesn't understand exactly why it was so bad; 3) The response to the collapse was inadequate; 4) And she doesn't have much of an idea about how to fix things.

At week's end, Romer will leave the council chairmanship after what surely has been the most dismal tenure anybody in that post has had: a loss of nearly 4 million jobs in a year and a half.

Romer had predicted that Obama's stimulus package would keep the unemployment rate at 8% or less; it is now 9.5%.

One of her bosses, Vice President Biden, told Democrats in January that "you're going to see, come the spring, net increase in jobs every month." The economy lost 350,000 jobs in June and July.

(*SIGH*)

September 2, 2010 at 6:23 PM

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