Utah voters spike vampire school vouchers

November 7, 2007

Vouchers are dead in Utah, for the moment.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports “Vouchers go down in flames“:

Voters decisively rejected the will of the Utah Legislature and governor Tuesday, rejecting what would have been the nation’s most comprehensive education voucher program in a referendum blowout.

“Tonight, with the eyes of the nation upon us, Utah has rejected this flawed voucher law,” said state School Board Chairman Kim Burningham. “We believe this sends a clear message. It sends a message that Utahns believe in, and support, public schools.”

More than 60 percent of voters were rejecting vouchers, with about 95 percent of the precincts reporting, according to unofficial results. The referendum failed in every county, including the conservative bastion of Utah County.

In the face of colossal failure, voucher supporters desperately searched for a scapegoat on which to hang it — anything other than the manifold problems of vouchers:

Voucher supporter Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne – who bankrolled the voucher effort – called the referendum a “statewide IQ test” that Utahns failed.

“They don’t care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don’t care enough about their kids to think outside the box,” Byrne said.

Funny, from my conversations with people in Utah, I got the idea they opposed vouchers specifically because the voucher plan would damage schools, and that would in turn hurt the kids.

I suppose it depends on what the definition of “care about kids” is.

Utah, the most conservative state in the nation, has strong teacher organizations, but nothing like a union that leads strikes and is not itself populated with conservative Republicans. Also favorable to vouchers, the Utah legislature is heavily Republican, with voucher supporters in most leadership positions. Millionaire Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., also pushed for the vouchers, stacking the state’s political powers in favor of vouchers. Such facts cannot get in the way of the desperation to deny them voucher supporters show.

Doug Holmes, a key voucher advocate and contributor, said, “We started hugely in the hole and it’s always been the case. The unions have done this in four different states, where they take the strategy of confusion to the people.”

But Holmes said, “You don’t run away from something because the odds are stacked against you.”

Odds stacked against vouchers? It’s not the voters who are confused, Mr. Holmes.

Voucher supporters blame even their friends and supporters, and offer headline writers the chance to use an avalanche of clichés with a promise that vouchers will rise again, perhaps in the old Confederacy:

Both sides, at one point, embraced the governor, who Byrne blasted Tuesday for his lukewarm backing.

“When he asked for my support [for governor] he told me he is going to be the voucher governor. Not only was it his No. 1 priority, it was what he was going to be all about,” Byrne said. “He did, I think, a very tepid job, and then when the polls came out on the referendum, he was pretty much missing in action.”

Byrne said the referendum defeat may have killed vouchers in Utah, but “There are other freedom oriented groups in other states – African-Americans in South Carolina are interested in it.”

Got that, South Carolina? Vampire vouchers are headed your way. Stock up on garlic, wooden stakes and silver bullets.

Oh, and don’t forget the Oreo cookies. Get lots of milk, too.

3 Comments | Economics, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

300,000

November 6, 2007

Sometime tomorrow, November 7, 2007, this blog will record its 300,000th “view.”

Thanks, again.

I wonder: Does any of this have any good effect?

6 Comments | Administrivia, Weblogs | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Golden Wingnut Awards!

November 6, 2007

Washington Monthly always deserves reading. The on-line presence is almost as good as the magazine was back in its very fertile youth. Generally it has good writing and good thinking, and there is almost always a good bunch of fun — sometimes the fun even comes with good writing and good thinking.

Golden Wingnut Award

And now, the magazine has announced its Golden Wingnut Awards, the top five worst posts on the web:

  1. John Hinderaker: “It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius….”
  2. Glenn Reynolds: “Maybe we should rise above the temptation to point out that claims of a ‘quagmire’ were wrong….Nah.”
  3. Michelle Malkin: “The Defeatocrats Cheer”
  4. Ann Althouse: “Let’s take a closer look at those breasts.”
  5. Kim du Toit: “The Pussification of the Western Male”

Congratulations, wingnuts! And special congratulations to Power Line’s John Hinderaker, who ran away with first place by a wide margin — and deservedly so. (More at Washington Monthly)

You can check out the whole list of nominees here.

Now, go vote in your local election.

Tip of the old scrub brush to reader Bernarda, who continues to mine intelligent comment from the internet.

1 Comment | Humor, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The whole world should be watching Utah

November 6, 2007

This is election day in much of the U.S. In Utah, voters have a referendum on vouchers to take money from public schools to give to students to attend private schools. This is the first state-wide test of vouchers anywhere.

William Hogarth's election series,

  • The Polling, from William Hogarth’s series, The Election, oil on canvas, 1754; from The Tate Gallery, on loan from Sir John Sloane’s Museum, London.

I think vouchers will be voted down, but either way, I wish there were more, serious national coverage of the story in Utah. Public education has refused to back down from scurrilous and often false claims against the schools, and parents and educators have fought a gallant, fact-filled campaign against Utah’s voucher proposal. Utah voters are traditionally among the better-educated, better-informed, and better-voting people. Known as a conservative stronghold, Utah will probably vote to put this voucher program in the trash can.

The rest of the nation could benefit from knowing more about the reasons this proposal fails, if it does — or why it succeeds, if lightning strikes the way Richard Eyre prays it will.

Marchers protesting the Vietnam War in 1968 used to chant “The whole world is watching.” If only it were true today.

Vote today!

Whatever your views, go to the polls if there is an election in your town, and vote. Your vote will count, and it angers and frustrates the big money interests who hope you won’t vote, so their campaign contributions and, perhaps, outright bribes, will have more clout. Go vote.

The County Election, George Caleb Bingham, 1851

5 Comments | Education, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, Politics, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

U.S. dollar edge incusions

November 5, 2007

A few weeks ago I looked all over to find an image of the engraving of the edge of the new U.S. “presidential dollar” coins.

Now, of course, I don’t need it — so I found a marvelous illustration at the U.S. Mint site (yes, I checked there earlier).

FYI, and use:

U.S. Presidential Dollar, showing edge incusions

1 Comment | Art, Economics, Government | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Vox Day, the goad goes on forever*

November 5, 2007

You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. The Right Wing is working hard to make sure that every parody of them comes true. Vox Day said this today, in a comment about serial plagiarizer and general garden-party skunk Ann Coulter:

What Ann understands and so many nominal conservatives do not is that women’s suffrage is completely incompatible with human liberty or a republic as described in the U.S. Constitution. The two cannot co-exist. One cannot defend freedom on the basis of emotion, as fear always runs to promises of security, however nebulous.

It’s interesting to note that since women received the right to vote, no bald politician has been elected in either the United States or the UK with the exception of Eisenhower and Churchill. (Atlee was bald too, but he was running against Churchill so there was no hair option in 1945.) And being bona fide war heroes, both Churchill and Eisenhower represented security even more than the archtypical tall politician with executive hair; neither one of them were capable of winning in less extraordinary times.

So, Vox thinks we should take the vote away from women to elect bald men again? That will make one heck of a campaign button, and I can’t wait to see how it’s phrased in the Texas Republican Party platform.

Isn’t that roughly the same sort of thinking that got us into Iraq — same quality of reasoning, same clear connections, and of course, same sorts of historical error in blind ignorance of the facts and amazingly tin ear on what people think.

Is Vox balding that much? He’s that sensitive about it?

Historical error? Well, yeah — who among the presidents prior to Eisenhower was bald? (You can check pictures of the presidents here.) John Quincy Adams certainly had a lot of shiny pate visible. Martin Van Buren was bald, if we don’t count the copious hair he had around his receding hairline. But if we count receding hairline as bald, then we’d have to count Coolidge, Hoover, Truman and Nixon (whose bald spot was rarely photographed).  The bald and balding presidents:  John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren (with qualifications), Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford.

In fact, if we just look at the follicularly challenged, and not wholly bald, we find that the men with the least hair were all elected AFTER women’s suffrage. Vox Day rarely lets fact or reason get in the way of his thinking. Only Quincy Adams and Van Buren before women’s suffrage, and six baldies starting with Coolidge after.

But the question is, who is focusing on baldness here? Vox Day makes an implicit assumption that women do. It’s a wholly unevidenced, and in the light of history that shows the contrary, unreasonable assumption. He’s making hysterical error, with all the irony that drags along with it.

That anyone would argue for depriving women of the vote, hanging it on such flimsy evidence and bizarre reasoning, shows why women are justified in voting for Democrats. No one in the Democratic party is advancing arguments against women’s suffrage, on any basis.

You know what else? The mainstream media will “hide” Vox’s bizarre comments, not covering them at all, thereby protecting him and Republicans from the howls of justifiable outrage. Why do the media always protect conservatives who have taken leave of their senses?

* Apologies are probably due to Robert Earl Keen, composer of “The Road Goes On Forever.“

2 Comments | Bogus history, Dwight Eisenhower, Mythology, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Voodoo history, Winston Churchill, Women's rights | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Creationism eruption in Cincinnati City Council race

November 5, 2007

Is there a miasma that spreads from the Creationism Museum of Ken Ham, that has finally gotten to Cincinnati?

The Daily Bellwether reports a Cincinnati City Councilman wants to put creationism into the schools. I hope that the schools are not governed by the City Council.

______________________

And — could you guess? — the guy’s an engineer:

Monzel, 39, is trying to hold onto a seat that the GOP appointed him to after he was voted out of office in 2005. He is an engineer and holds a masters degree in public policy from Harvard University. He was the valedictorian at parochial Moeller High School in 1986. He is a very intelligent fellow. He did not elaborate on the questionnaire exactly what it is that teachers should offer as contradicting Charles Darwin. Perhaps intelligent design, perhaps scientific creationism, perhaps Genesis or something from Greek mythology. Perhaps a script from Star Trek.

He was asked about “Alternatives to Evolution,” and the question reads:

“When lessons on the origins of life are taught in Ohio public schools, do you support or oppose requiring teachers to present the evidences (sic) both supportive and contradictory to the theory of evolution?” Monzel is in the supports box.

1 Comment | Creationism, Intelligent Design, Politics, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival catch up: Sputnik at Philosophia Naturalis 14

November 5, 2007

Interesting carnival of natural philosophy that I had not seen before — and Philosophia Naturalis Number 14 celebrates Sputnik. History teachers may want to visit the carnival.

This one is hosted at Dynamics of Cats, one of the Seed Empire science blogs. I regret it took so long to call it to your attention.

1 Comment | History, History images, Science, Space exploration, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Accuracy in quoting: Hotheads after Kennedy again

November 5, 2007

Historian David Kennedy of Stanford University attracts flack almost everywhere he writes, these days, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

A couple of years ago the neocons were angry at him for saying that America’s people are generally unconnected to America’s soldiers in Iraq, and that’s bad for policy. But a few months later when others noted exactly the same thing and issued the same call Kennedy issued to support troops, neocon pundits were quick to praise the idea they’d claimed was destructive a few weeks earlier.

Kennedy wrote a review of economist Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal, for the New York Times. It’s arcane, sure, but economist Brad DeLong at UCLA takes Kennedy to task for not understanding laissez faire economics well enough.

Academic disputes are so bitter because the stakes are so small, still.

Leave a Comment » | Economics, Free market economics, History, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

No kidding: “Abstinence education” doesn’t work

November 5, 2007

Headline in this morning’s Dallas Morning News: “Texas teens lead nation in birth rate.”

The subhead: “Experts questioning abstinence-only education approach.”

What was the clue?

While the national teen birth rate has slowed, Texas has made far less headway, alarming public health officials and child advocates.

Texas teens lead the nation in having babies. Last month, the nonprofit group Child Trends conferred another No. 1 ranking on Texas. In the latest statistics available, 24 percent of the state’s teen births in 2004 were not the girl’s first delivery.

“That astounded me,” said Kathryn Allen, senior vice president for community relations at Planned Parenthood of North Texas. “I mean, what are we doing wrong?”

Texas’ policy is to deny contraceptives without parental consent wherever possible and to push an abstinence-only sex education program in public schools.

Conservatives blame liberal policies. The radical, “pregnancy is punishment from God” Eagle Forum believes success in reducing teen-aged pregnancies in other states is due to increased abortions, though there is not an iota of evidence to support such a claim.

The good news is that Texas’ teen pregnancy rates are down 19%. The bad news for Texas is that the national rates are down about 30%, and California has achieved a 47% reduction in the same period of time, by emphasizing honest sex education that teaches the use of prophylactics and by making birth control devices available to teens for free at public health clinics.

I have suffered through amazingly destructive presentations in which abstinence-only educators tell fantastic falsehoods to kids. In one presentation, the fellow started out claiming condoms are effective only 60% of the time, but got the failure rate up to 90% by the end of his talk. Kids in the school told me that they learned not to use condoms.

Where is Susan Powter when you need her rage?

Check out the good reporting by Robert T. Garrett, and tell us in comments what you conclude.

1 Comment | Accuracy, Education, Public education, Public health, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

And just who is Tim Panogos?

November 5, 2007

Mt Timpanogos, from geobloggers, photo by a4gpa

Yes, there really are mountains of such stark beauty, in Utah, next to civilization.

3 Comments | Geography - Physical, geology, Humor, Personal | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Politicians can lie, but they can’t hide

November 5, 2007

A decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Washington last month had wags and pundits claiming that it is okay for politicians to lie, at least in the state of Washington.

On October 4 the Washington Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a law that banned publication of “a false statement of material fact about a candidate for public office” in advertisements or other campaign materials, if the statement was made with “actual malice,” or with “reckless disregard to its truth or falsity,” according to a report in the New York Times.

“The notion that the government, rather than the people, may be the final arbiter fo truth in political debate is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment,” Justice James M. Johnson wrote for four the justices in the majority. A dissenting justice, Barbara A. Madsen, wrote that “the majority’s decision is an invitation to lie with impunity.”

Justice Madsen added that the decision would help turn “political campaigns into contests of the best stratagems of lies and deceit, to the end that honest discourse and honest candidates are lost in the maelstrom.”

Utah’s voters now are engaged in a great debate that tests those views. Can voters discern the truth from a fog of claims and counterclaims about school vouchers?

Polls show vouchers losing. What does that mean?

Ironically, perhaps, in the Washington case, the candidate who got the claim wrong, according to the court’s decision, also lost the race:

Mr. Sheldon said Ms. Rickert had violated a state law that made it unlawful to publish “a false statement of material fact about a candidate for public office” in advertisements and campaign materials if the statement was made with “actual malice,” meaning in the knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard to its truth or falsity.

The commission ruled against Ms. Rickert and fined her $1,000. It found that Mr. Sheldon had not voted to close the facility and that it was, in any event, a juvenile detention center rather than one for the developmentally challenged.

Justice Johnson said the law under which the commission had acted was “a censorship scheme.”

“It naïvely assumes,” Justice Johnson wrote, “that the government is capable of correctly and consistently negotiating the thin line between fact and opinion in political speech.”

Mr. Sheldon had other ways to combat the brochure, Justice Johnson added. Mr. Sheldon and his supporters could have “responded to Ms. Rickert’s false statements with the truth.” And Mr. Sheldon remained free to file a libel suit, though he would have to prove not only falsity and actual malice but also that the statement had harmed his reputation.

In a brief concurring opinion, Chief Justice Gerry L. Alexander said the flaw in the law was that it penalized false “nondefamatory speech,” meaning statements that do not injure reputation. But he said the government should be free to “penalize defamatory political speech.”

The voters figured it out.

___________________________

Opinions in Rickert v. Washington:

 

Leave a Comment » | Education, Ethics, History, Law, Politics, School vouchers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Ten minutes on Yellowstone NP in winter, with outdoor writer Tim Cahill

November 4, 2007

Yellowstone National Park is just a cool place. If you’re not using it for anything in your geography and U.S. history courses, you’re missing out.

Here’s a ten-minute video that the producers hope you’ll show far and wide to encourage television stations to pick up the series. It’s a ten-minute pilot for “Travelers’ Tales,” featuring outdoor writer Tim Cahill, a founder of Outside magazine, and photographer Tom Murphy.

Here are some of the points you might use in class:

  • Yellowstone in winter, especially the wildlife, like bison, elk and coyotes (all shown), and wolves (not shown)
  • Volcanic geology — Yellowstone is the world’s largest caldera, after all
  • Diversity of landforms in the U.S., or in the world. More than half the hot water features on the planet are in Yellowstone
  • Travel and adventure
  • What makes good writing (travel writing in this case)
  • Western geography
  • Development of the west, especially after the Lewis and Clark Expedition

The video features a lot of snow, elk, bison and coyotes, hot springs flowing into a river making swimming in January feasible, Mammoth Hot Springs and the travertine pools, and the cold northern desert of sagebrush and juniper.

Questions you might consider to turn this into a warm-up exercise (bell ringer):

Geography, not answered in the video (map or internet exercise):

  1. Yellowstone National Park covers parts of which three states?
  2. Yellowstone National Park is mostly located in which state?
  3. What is the most famous feature of Yellowstone National Park?
  4. Ashfall Beds State Park features ancient mammals killed by an eruption in the Yellowstone Caldera. Where is Ashfall Beds State Park?
  5. Thomas Moran played a key role in getting Congress to designate Yellowstone as a park. What did he do to help convince Congress to act?

Geography, answered in the video:

  1. What year was Yellowstone designated a National Park by Congress?
  2. What sort of volcanic feature is the entire Yellowstone area?
  3. The Yellowstone Caldera explodes catastrophically about every 600,000 years, according to some geologists. How long has it been since the last such catastrophic explosion?
  4. The wags say there are two seasons in Yellowstone, ______ and winter.
  5. What is a “hot pot?”

2 Comments | Adventure, Bell Ringers, Geography - Physical, geology, Natural history, Natural resources, Travel, Warm-up exercises | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

When do we reach the “never” in “Never again?”

November 4, 2007

You won’t find this in your world history text.

Events in Congo trouble at so many levels. Reports in The New York Times and other places document unspeakable violence: 27,000 sexual assaults in South Kivu Province in 2006, just a fraction of the total number across the nation of 66 million people. The assaults are brutal. Women assaulted are often left so badly injured internally, they may never heal.

  • Map of Congo, showing area of high violence in east, from New York Times Map of Congo, highlighting province of Bukavu where violence against women is epidemic, from New York Times

Genocide you say? Many assaults appear to be spillover from the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in next-door Rwanda. But assaults by husbands on wives also are epidemic. Result of civil war? Then how to explain the “Rasta” gang, dreadlocked fugitives who live in the forest, wear tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys, and who commit unspeakable crimes against women and children? What nation are they from, and against whom do they fight, if anyone — and for what?

The facts cry out for action:

  • Nightly rapes of women and girls. The violence appears to be a problem across the nation.
  • Huge chunks of Congo have no effective government to even contend against the violence.
  • Killers with experience in genocide in their native Rwanda moved into Congo; they live by kidnapping women for ransom. The women are assaulted while held captive. Sometimes husbands do not take back their wives.
  • The oldest rape victim recorded by one Congo physician is 75; the youngest, 3.

Surely intervention by an international group would help, no? However

  • Congo hosts the largest single peacekeeping mission of the United Nations right now, with 17,000 troops. Congo is a big nation, bordered by nine other nations. How many troops would it take to secure the entire nation, or the entire border? No one knows.
  • 2006 saw an election that was supposed to remake history, end the violence and start Congo on the road to recovery; but was the $500 million it cost enough to change Congo’s history of a string of bad governments?
  • International attention focuses on other crises: Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Darfur, Iran, Korea, Chechnya, Turkey and the Kurds, Palestine and Israel. Congo, constantly roiling since the 1960s, is way down the list of world concerns, no matter how bad the violence.

Americans looking for a quick resolution to the situation in Iraq might do well to study Congo. At Congo’s independence in the 1960s, there was hope of prosperity and greater peace. Foreign intervention, including meddling from the U.S., regional civil wars, bad government and long international neglect, ate up the hope. Achieving what a nation could be is difficult, when so many forces align to prevent it from being anything other than a violent backwater. Pandora’s box resists attempts to shut it. Quick resolution is unlikely.

So the violence in Congo continues. In this world, when is the “never” in “never again?”

How many other such cases fall outside our textbooks, and off the state tests?

Resources:

2 Comments | Africa, Disasters, Economics, Genocide, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Human Rights, Natural resources, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: How to succeed in business

November 4, 2007

Several years ago I found a quote attributed to business consulting guru Tom Peters, that ascribed success to hard work — if a lot of other things didn’t get in the way. I lost the quote, and the citation, and have sorely wanted to have it a hundred times since then when I found executives and administrators admonishing people for their failure to soar when the bosses themselves had anchored their employees to the ground.

Ah, the Glories of Google! I have found it again. Turns out it’s not Tom Peters after all; he quotes a passage from novelist Ann Beattie’s novel, Picturing Will.

It’s still worthy of noting; here is an excerpt from a Tom Peters column in 1990 featuring the passage:

“Do everything right, all the time, and the child will prosper. It’s as simple as that, except for fate, luck, heredity, chance, the astrological sign under which the child was born, his order of birth, his first encounter with evil, the girl who jilts him in spite of his excellent qualities, the war that is being fought when he is a young man, the drugs he may try once or too many times, the friends he makes, how he scores on tests, how well he endures kidding about his shortcomings, how ambitious he becomes, how far he falls behind, circumstantial evidence, ironic perspective, danger when it is least expected, difficulty in triumphing over circumstance, people with hidden agendas, and animals with rabies.”

The quote is from Ann Beattie’s latest novel, Picturing Will. It speaks directly to an increasingly important corporate issue — the peril of overestimating our ability to influence outcomes. In short, the way we recruit, organize, plan and act very much depends on how much we feel that we are in control. The problem is ageless, though as the world becomes less predictable the consequences of personal or corporate hubris are increasingly severe.

Systematically review a stack of annual reports. Without fail, a good year is explained as “the fruits of the strategic planning process your management put in place five (three, seven) years ago.” A bad year, however, is invariably the result of “the unanticipated rise in interest rates (unexpected foreign competition, etc.) which upset our planning assumptions.” But our corporate chiefs are hardly alone. A sizable branch of psychology, called attribution theory, examines the way human beings explain events to themselves. In short, we attribute good outcomes to skill and hard work; bad ones to bad luck.

For centuries, Cartesian cause and effect thinking has dominated our science — and management — paradigms. The causeless, effectless, probabilistic world of quantum mechanics that informs today’s scientific thought has still not permeated our psyches — or our approach to making corporate strategy.

Beattie’s novel is listed as an academic selection now, by Random House.  Do you, or does anyone at your school, use this book?

3 Comments | Best practices, Books, Business, Business Ethics, Education success, Literature, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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