Atomic history, nuclear future

October 19, 2008

We’re going to see more nuclear power plants in the U.S., it’s a safe bet.  Both presidential candidates support developing alternatives to oil and coal.  Nuclear power is one of the alternatives.

John McCain kept repeating his comfort words, that ‘storage of wastes is not a problem.’ There is not a lot of evidence to support his claims.  With turmoil in financial markets, however, the nuclear power issue has gotten very little serious attention or scrutiny.  From the push to get compensation for radiation victims of atomic weapons and development in the U.S., I learned that the issue is not really whether wastes and other materials can be safely used and wastes stored. The issues are entirely issues of will.

Advantage to Obama, I think.  He’s not claiming that the storage problems are all solved.  A clear recognition of reality is good to have in a president.

Son Kenny sent a link to a history site, Damn Interesting, and it tells the story of the Techa River in the old Soviet Union — a place condemned for generations by the nuclear excesses of the past.

To make the story briefer, in their rush to produce nuclear weapons, the Soviets did nothing to protect Russia from radioactive waste products until it was much too late.  Efforts to reduce radioactive emissions, by storing them in huge underwater containers, resulted in massive explosions that released more radiation than Chernobyl (What?  You hadn’t heard of that, either?).

It’s a reminder that safety and security with peaceful uses of nuclear power depend on humans doing their part, and thinking through the problems before they arise.

Can we deal with radioactive wastes?  We probably have the technology.  Do we have the will? Ask yourself:  How many years has the U.S. studied Yuccan Mountain to make a case to convince Nevadans to handle the waste?  How many more decades will it take?

How is our history of dealing with nuclear contamination issues?  Not good.

Last spring SMU’s history department sponsored a colloquium on a power generation in the southwest, specifically with regard to coal and uranium mining on the Navajo Reservation.   We’ve been there before.

One of the photos used in one of the lectures, by Colleen O’Neill of Utah State, showed two Navajo miners outside a uranium mine during a previous uranium boom.  Neither one had a lick of protective equipment.  Underground uranium mining exposes miners to heave concentrations of radon gas, and if a miner is unprotected by breathing filters at least, there is a nearly 100% chance the miner will get fatal lung cancers.

Of the 150 Navajo uranium miners who worked at the uranium mine in Shiprock, New Mexico until 1970, 133 died of lung cancer or various forms of fibrosis by 1980 ([Ali, 2003] ).

Our Senate hearings on radiation compensation, in the 1970s, produced dozens of pages of testimony that Atomic Energy Commission officials understood the dangers, but did nothing to protect Navajo miners (or other miners, either).  It is unlikely that anyone depicted in those photos is alive today.

AP Photo (borrowed from ehponline.org)

"Mine memory - Navajo miners work the Kerr-McGee uranium mine, 7 May 1953. Today, uranium from unremediated abandoned mines contaminates nearby water supplies. image: AP Photo" (borrowed from ehponline.org) This photo is very close to the one used by Prof. O'Neill. It may have been taken at nearly the same time. If you know of any survivors from this photo, please advise.

At a refining facility on the Navajo Reservation, highly radioactive wastewater was stored behind an inadequate earthen dam.  The dam broke, and the wastes flowed through a town and into local rivers.  Contamination was extensive.

Attempts to collect for the injuries to Navajo miners and their families were thrown out of court in 1980, on the grounds that the injuries were covered under workers compensation rules (where injury compensation was also denied, generally).

Navajos organized to protest the power plant. One wonders whether they can win it.

Sen. McCain seems cock sure that radioactive wastes won’t kill thousands of Americans in the future as they have in the past.  The uranium mining and uranium tailings issues occurred in Arizona, the state McCain represents.  Does he know?

We regard ourselves in the U.S. as generally morally superior to “those godless communists.”  Can we demonstrate moral superiority with regard to development of peacetime nuclear power, taking rational steps to protect citizens and others, and rationally, quickly and fairly compensating anyone who is injured?

That hasn’t happened yet.

When [uranium] mining [on the Navajo Reservation] ceased in the late 1970’s, mining companies walked away from the mines without sealing the tunnel openings, filling the gaping pits, sometimes hundreds of feet deep, or removing the piles of radioactive uranium ore and mine waste. Over 1,000 of these unsealed tunnels, unsealed pits and radioactive waste piles still remain on the Navajo reservation today, with Navajo families living within a hundred feet of the mine sites. The Navajo graze their livestock here, and have used radioactive mine tailings to build their homes. Navajo children play in the mines, and uranium mine tailings have turned up in school playgrounds (103rd Congress, 1994 ).

Think of the story of Techa River as a warning.

Resources:

5 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Barack Obama, Economics, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Health care, History, John McCain, McCain 2008, medicine, Native Americans, Natural resources, Navajo, Nuclear power, Obama 2008, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Tom Chapin, “It’s Not on the Test”

October 18, 2008

A couple of recent studies show the moral, intellectual and educational bankruptcy of the so-called No Child Left Behind Act.  The groundswell necessary to scrap the thing has not caught up to the urgency of doing so, alas.

Tom Chapin, the youngest of the musical Chapin Brothers who once included Harry Chapin, worked in advanced childhood education before we knew what it was.  As host of ABC Television’s “Make A Wish,” Chapin significantly contributed to one of the finest education programs ever broadcast.  It’s a sin that it’s not on DVD for kids now.  “Make A Wish” demonstrated what television could do, in that era before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) turned its back on the public interest requirements of the Communications Act of 1934, and before commercial television pulled the plug on dreams that commercial television might be a great engine of education and cultural enrichment.

Chapin is back, with a modest poke at the NCLB balloon, and a more powerful vote for arts education in public schools:  “It’s Not on the Test”:

I ponder the research I’ve seen over the years, both inside the Department of Education and out, and the statistical and anecdotal stories that show art training and education (not the same thing) improve academic performance, and I wonder what squirrels have eaten the brains of “reformers” who kill arts programs for the stated purposes of “improving test performance.”  Einstein played the violin.  Feynman drummed.  Churchill painted, as did Eisenhower.  Edison and his team had a band, and jammed when they were stuck on particular problems, or just for fun.  When will education decision makers see the light?

May this little spark ignite a prairie fire of protest.

Where are you protesting this week?

7 Comments | Art, Brain development, Brain learning, Education, History, Learning, Learning styles, Music, No Child Left Behind Act, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Television | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Cut off your arm, move on

October 17, 2008

It will probably be several weeks before the full effects are known. Dallas ISD is about 500 teachers lighter today than it was two weeks ago. Yesterday the forced layoff notices went out, to teachers whose positions could not be saved by another teacher’s having retired, or simply resigned.

There is great irony. The year started with a mass meeting of Dallas’s 20,000 or so teachers, with an inspirational speech from a Dallas fifth grader. After nearly a decade of shaky leadership at the district office, most people thought Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa was close to established trim in the ship of educational state. Even Dallas Mayer Tom Leppart showed up to congratulate Hinojosa and cheer on the teachers.

News of an $84 million shortfall, the result of finance and payroll offices failing to integrate their systems, followed a couple of weeks later, and it’s been a downhill slide for teachers since then. NEA and AFT affiliates point to a lot of problems in Dallas ISD financial controls. How could they not notice an $84 million hemorrhage?

(Let me note here that I’ve been at private corporations that made errors of similar magnitude. Generally the problems were dealt with quietly. “Writeoff of bad investment” was what the annual reports usually said, or something like that.)

Originally, we heard 750 teachers would go. There are about 250 schools in the district — three teachers per school. Welcome to “Survivor, Dallas ISD.” Who gets to vote whom off the island?

Morale is low. It’s been interesting to see who used the turmoil as just an excuse to get out. It’s been interesting to see how many teachers had illnesses suddenly flare up. Requests for information or work from the central offices get a lot more sneers from teachers. In the teacher’s work areas, in meetings in the hallways, cynicism rose to all time highs.

Our department of about 20 people lost two — one position that was not yet filled, and one retirement. That’s a 10% hit. Overall, our school lost just under a dozen teachers. So much for the “three per school” hope. It’s still unclear how some classes will be covered come Monday. Some schools will have to shuffle their student/class assignments completely. We’re starting over on the year, eight weeks in.

Some of the effects are predictable, some are not.

  • Special education teachers laid off complain that they are paid from federal funds. At least one will sue.
  • Students whisper to other teachers, wondering whether their favorites will go (why don’t they as the teacher?); sometimes the students hope a teacher will be terminated.
  • Already noted, illnesses appear to be up.
  • Several teachers with offers from other districts resigned, collecting a double paycheck for the next few months. Many of the teachers leaving Dallas are among the best. One we lost had just started what promised to be a brilliant career teaching math.
  • Parents are confused. We had report card/parent-teacher conferences last Monday. One family asked me whether schools would open at all come next Monday.
  • Class reshufflings yield gaps in education, when a student moves from one class where subject A had not been covered, to another class where subject A was taught in a project three weeks ago.

So, damage is done that cannot be undone. Teachers who had spirited devotion to their jobs and the district less than two months ago, hunker down.

Remember that rock climber who got his arm stuck under a falling rock? In 2003, Aron Alston amputated his own arm to get to freedom after a few days with his arm stuck.

That’s a good metaphor for Dallas schools right now. We’ve amputated most of an arm. No time to mourn. Move on. Except, there was no rock, and there was no chance to make such a clear calculation.

Ask not for whom the bells toll.

Tally from the Dallas Morning News:

The cuts

About 375: Teachers laid off Thursday, representing 3 percent of the district’s 11,500 teachers

40: Assistant principals and counselors released Thursday

152: Number of noncontract employees laid off last week, including clerks, office managers and teacher’s assistants

About 100: Number of unfilled, noncontract positions eliminated last week

62: Central office members laid off

About 100: Number of vacant central office positions eliminated

More than 200: Number of employees who have voluntarily resigned

Total: More than 1,000 total positions eliminated

Projected savings

$30 million: Expected savings from job cuts and unfilled vacancies

$38 million: Expected savings from cutting various programs throughout the district

Total: $68 million

Resources:

1 Comment | Business, Business Ethics, Education, History, Politics, Teacher Pay, Teaching, Texas, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“See ya Red States,” and a paean to Texas

October 16, 2008

You’ve seen it before — the letter saying toodle-oo to the red states, as the blue states muster the courage to let them go.  Somebody passed it along, I forwarded it to a few people I thought hadn’t seen it.

A discussion broke out.  Part of the discussion centered on Texas’s second secession from the U.S., and how nasty things can be in Texas (“It’s not the heat and humidity; it’s the hate and stupidity”).

A couple of exchanges in, I started to wince.  God knows Texas has its problems.  I haven’t even started in on the latest three months of lunacy at the State Board of Education where Creationist-in-Chief Don McLeroy is loosening his belt to drop his pants (figuratively, of course) and moon every kid in Texas before he eviscerates science education.

But — you know? — Texas has a couple of things going for it, reasons to smile while you’re stuck here.

Below the fold, the “So long, Red States” letter — but before that, a modest defense of Texas, as I wrote back:

I do regret that [y’all have] had such a difficult and unhappy time in Texas.  Texas is far from my ideal place, especially for the weather and lack of mountains (I appear to be losing the retirement fight – I wanted Jackson Hole, Kathryn wants Kanab.  Red rock wins with the family.)

And Yellowstone is a part of my soul, especially after we (probably illegally) scattered my brother’s ashes there in the last great family reunion before this past summer.

But, you know, Texas has some fine points that shouldn’t get overlooked. Especially, it doesn’t deserve to get every redneck.

Here are some of the great things about Texas:

It’s been a rather miserable 21 years in Texas for us, for a lot of reasons.  There are good things and good people in Texas.  It ain’t all gloomy.

Wildflowers not only do blossom where they grow:  They must blossom there.

Which reminds me, there are a dozen other wildflowers better than bluebonnets, and we haven’t even started on the magnificent grasses like big bluestem, little bluestem and side-oats grama.

(More humor below the fold.)

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Botany, Education, Fiesta de Tejas!, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Humor, Molly Ivins' Ghost, Museums, Politics, Science, Texas, Texas history, Texas Music, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Ian Hamilton’s blog is back; “Stone of Destiny” is on the screen

October 15, 2008

We need good news from any quarter:  Ian Hamilton’s blog is back in action.  You remember Hamilton, one of the more recent heroes in the saga of the Stone of Destiny.

Maybe just in time, too.  Charles Martin Smith’s movie of Ian Hamilton’s story, “Stone of Destiny,” is just recently released, with dates booked in the UK and Canada.  You may have to call your local theatre in the U.S. to ask that they book the film.

Poster for Charles Martin Smiths Stone of Destiny, based on Ian Hamiltons story.

Poster for Charles Martin Smith's "Stone of Destiny," based on Ian Hamilton's story.

Hamilton captured the Stone of Destiny, the Stone of Scone, from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1950.  The Stone is the traditional seat of power for the throne of Scotland, and its presence in London was a source of irritation to Scot nationalists.

The Stone of Scone is reputed to be the stone upon which Jacob slept when he dreamed of ladders to heaven (see Genesis 28).

You cannot make this stuff up.  This is great history.

Resources:

7 Comments | Dissent, Free speech, Freedom - Political, History, Movies, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Chuck Yeager/BOOM! Day

October 14, 2008

I won’t let the whole day go by without a nod to one of my heroes, Chuck Yeager.  On October 14, 1947, Yeager pushed the Bell X-1 just a little faster than the flight plan called for, and broke the sound barrier, over Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager, recipient of the Congressional Silver Medal of Honor. MedalofHonor.com

Chuck Yeager and a modern aircraft -- yes, he's flown it, too.

 

Last year, belatedly, I got around to posting on the flight, and on Yeager, and on the deeper meaning of flight records and the space race on the psyche of America in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.  More details and sources there.  It’s a year later, Yeager is 85, but the story still gets me the same way.  Just over a year ago, Yeager flew in a fighter and broke the sound barrier again, one of the oldest people ever to do that.

You could fly your flag in his honor.  If there’s a stiff breeze when you do, the ends of the flag will snap in the wind — they break the sound barrier, and you hear the report.  Wonderfully appropriate, don’t you think?

Here’s a salute to you, Chuck Yeager!

1 Comment | Airplanes, History, Invention, Science, Space Race, Technology, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

History for fun, not profit (other than a little drink)

October 14, 2008

E Clampus Vitus has tens of thousands of members across seven Western states, though nowhere are the groups eccentric ways more alive than in California. Above, Noble Grand Humbug Scott Neilsen, left, and Steve Slonecker at Eds Restaurant in Twain Harte.

Caption from the New York Times: E Clampus Vitus has tens of thousands of members across seven Western states, though nowhere are the group's eccentric ways more alive than in California. Above, Noble Grand Humbug Scott Neilsen, left, and Steve Slonecker at Ed's Restaurant in Twain Harte. Photo fro the New York Times, by Jim Wilson.

You don’t think history can be fun? Consider the group of Californians known as Clampers, who gather to celebrate history in a place called Twain Harte (ask any California historian, or American literature mavin, how the town got its name):

“It’s a common saying that no one has been able to tell if they are historians that like to drink or drinkers who like history,” said Dr. Robert J. Chandler, a senior historian at Wells Fargo Bank and a proud member of the group’s San Francisco chapter. “And no one knows because no one has been in any condition to record the minutes.”

Whether a historical drinking society or a drinking historical society, the Clampers claim tens of thousands of members in 40 chapters across seven Western states, though nowhere are the group’s strange ways more alive than in California, where members are said to have included Ronald Reagan; John Huston, the film director; and Herb Caen, the famous San Franciscan master of the three-dot journal. Some Clamper membership claims, of course, can be suspect. It is true, however, that many noted historians have been members, as is the current director of the State Office of Historic Preservation.

I already like the bunch:  The Order of E Clampus Vitus.

Read about them in the New York Times. The Times carries a series of stories based on the WPA-produced state guide books (Works Progress Administration).  Each one of these articles would be a good topic of focus for a lesson plan.  Other articles in the series so far include:

See also the introduction to the series, and go back in time to read the .pdf of the story announcing the creation of the WPA, intended to created 3.5 million jobs in the Great Depression.

Leave a Comment » | Capturing history, Current History, Education, FDR, Great Depression, History, Lesson plans, Travel, WPA - Works Progress Administration | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Should a teacher let students know her voting preferences?

October 14, 2008

Law professor Stanley Fish tackled the issues around teachers wearing campaign buttons in the classroom, at his blog with the New York Times.

Fish says teachers don’t have a free speech right to wear buttons supporting their favorite candidates.

My point is made for me by William Van Alstyne, past President of the AAUP and one of the world’s leading authorities on the first amendment. In a letter to current president Nelson, Van Alstyne corrects his view that faculty “have a first amendment right” to wear campaign buttons. “I have no doubt at all,” he declares, “that a university rule disallowing faculty members from exhibiting politically-partisan buttons in the classroom is not only not forbidden by the first amendment; rather, it is a perfectly well-justified policy that would easily be sustained against a faculty member who disregards the policy.”

Right! It’s no big deal. It’s a policy matter, not a moral or philosophical matter, and as long as the policy is reasonably related to the institution’s purposes, it raises no constitutional issues at all. On Oct. 10, the United Federation of Teachers filed suit to reverse the button ban, claiming that the free speech rights of teachers had been violated. If that’s their case, they’ll lose.

I think he’s right — check out his post, and tell us what you think.

4 Comments | Campaigns, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Classroom management, First Amendment, Free speech, Freedom - Political, Politics, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Econ Nobel goes to Paul Krugman

October 13, 2008

His long-time readers of his columns for The New York Times were even surprised — not used to hearing the Nobel goes to someone you read a couple of times a week:  Paul Krugman of Princeton University won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics.

Congratulations!

Leave a Comment » | Economics, History | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fly your flag today: Columbus Day

October 13, 2008

Fly your U.S. flag today. Fly it to honor Columbus’s discovery of the Americas.

The second Monday in October is celebrated as Columbus Day, a federal holiday (though not widely honored in private enterprise).  Columbus made landfall in the Americas for the first time on October 12, 1492, 516 years ago.

John Vanderlyn Oil on canvas, 12 x 18 Commissioned 1836/1837; placed 1847 Rotunda Christopher Columbus is shown landing in the West Indies, on an island that the natives called Guanahani and he named San Salvador, on October 12, 1492. He raises the royal banner, claiming the land for his Spanish patrons, and stands bareheaded, with his hat at his feet, in honor of the sacredness of the event. The captains of the Niña and Pinta follow, carrying the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella. The crew displays a range of emotions, some searching for gold in the sand. Natives watch from behind a tree. John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) had studied with Gilbert Stuart and was the first American painter to be trained in Paris, where he worked on this canvas for ten years with the help of assistants.

John Vanderlyn, Oil on canvas, 12′ x 18′ – Commissioned 1836/1837; placed 1847 in the Rotunda of the Capitol. Christopher Columbus is shown landing in the West Indies, on an island that the natives called Guanahani and he named San Salvador, on October 12, 1492. He raises the royal banner, claiming the land for his Spanish patrons, and stands bareheaded, with his hat at his feet, in honor of the sacredness of the event. The captains of the Niña and Pinta follow, carrying the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella. The crew displays a range of emotions, some searching for gold in the sand. Natives watch from behind a tree. John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) had studied with Gilbert Stuart and was the first American painter to be trained in Paris, where he worked on this canvas for ten years with the help of assistants.

 

11 Comments | 1492, Christopher Columbus, Education, Flag etiquette, Fly your flag today, History, Patriotism | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

UTEP class

October 12, 2008

Hey, UTEP.  Just for my own gratification, could someone let me know what class it is that is using which material from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub?

Thanks.

Leave a Comment » | Administrivia, Education, History, Personal, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Obama didn’t start the sub-prime mortgage crisis

October 12, 2008

The intensity of the rabid attacks on Barack Obama is troubling. The issues grow more bizarre, the links to Obama grow more tenuous, and the shouts more shrill.

And that’s from the reasonable opponents of Obama.

For example, over at the oddly-named IUSB Vision Weblog (Indiana University – South Bend), there is much yammering about how Barack Obama personally is responsible for the sub-prime mortgage industry collapse, because he represented an ACORN client in a redlining case and won the decision from the judge.

From there, the story trails off into a rabbit warren of wild conspiracy theories and the granting of supernatural powers to Obama (though the authors wouldn’t admit it’s supernatural). For example, there is this post about a letter Sen. McCain signed urging some action on oversight of federal mortgage refinancers.

The authors stoutly defend their bizarre claim that Congress is the agency responsible for the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through the OFHEO, Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Congress maintains its usual oversight over the executive branch agency, but it is, after all, an executive branch agency. Think about your high school civics classes: Separation of Powers, Checks and Balances.

Congress is not the superintendent of OFHEO

Here is OFHEO’s mission statement — notice no reference to being in Congress’s chain of command:

OFHEO’s mission is to promote housing and a strong national housing finance system by ensuring the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation). OFHEO works to ensure the capital adequacy and financial safety and soundness of two housing government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the nation’s largest housing finance institutions. They buy mortgages from commercial banks, thrift institutions, mortgage banks, and other primary lenders, and either hold these mortgages in their own portfolios or package them into mortgage-backed securities for resale to investors. These secondary mortgage market operations play a major role in creating a ready supply of mortgage funds for American homebuyers. Combined assets and off-balance sheet obligations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were $4.2 trillion at year-end 2005.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are Congressionally-chartered, publicly-owned corporations whose shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Under terms of their GSE charters, they are exempt from state and local taxation and from registration requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Each firm has a back-up credit line with the U.S. Treasury.

OFHEO’s oversight responsibilities include:

Conducting broad based examinations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; Developing a risk-based capital standard, using a “stress test” that simulates stressful interest rate and credit risk scenarios; Making quarterly findings of capital adequacy based on minimum capital standards and a risk-based standard; Prohibiting excessive executive compensation; Issuing regulations concerning capital and enforcement standards; and Taking necessary enforcement actions.

OFHEO is funded through assessments of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. OFHEO’s operations represent no direct cost to the taxpayer. In its safety and soundness mission, OFHEO has regulatory authority similar to such other federal financial regulators as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

The legislation that established OFHEO also requires Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to meet certain affordable housing goals set annually by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. These goals specify the share of mortgages that the two GSEs are required to purchase annually from low-income, moderate-income and central-city homebuyers.

And, explaining its role in mortgage refinance regulation:

OFHEO was established as an independent entity within the Department of Housing and Urban Development by the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 (Title 13 of P.L. 102-550). The agency is headed by a Director appointed by the President for a five-year term.

OFHEO’s primary mission is ensuring the capital adequacy and financial safety and soundness of two government-sponsored enterprises, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are congressionally-chartered, publicly-owned corporations whose shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the nation’s largest housing finance institutions. They buy mortgages from commercial banks, thrift institutions, mortgage banks, and other primary lenders, and either hold these mortgages in their own portfolios or package them into mortgage-backed securities for resale to investors. These secondary mortgage market operations play a major role in creating a ready supply of mortgage funds for American homebuyers. Combined assets and off-balance sheet obligations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were more than $4.2 trillion at year-end 2005, which represents over 40 percent of mortgages outstanding.

In fulfilling its role in the secondary mortgage market, OFHEO promotes housing and a strong national housing finance system.

OFHEO’s oversight responsibilities include the following:
– Conducting broad-based and targeted examinations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
– Making quarterly findings of capital adequacy based on a minimum capital standard and a risk-based capital standard
– Administering a risk-based capital standard, using a “stress test” that simulates interest rate and credit risk scenarios
– Prohibiting excessive executive compensation
– Issuing regulations concerning capital and enforcement standards
– Taking necessary enforcement actions
– Issuing an annual Report to Congress on the financial and operational condition of the Enterprises

OFHEO is funded through assessments on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. OFHEO’s operations represent no direct cost to the taxpayer.

The website for the agency is clear that it resides in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), though it is an independent agency whose director is appointed by the president for a five-year term. When I posted this information at IUSB Vision, however, it was censored. Instead, I got this charming response from the immoderator:

Ed – Stop lying,

You did not read the links. You need to start reading at OFHEO.gov and go and read the links I provided. OFHEO reports to Congress, not the administration. It is a fact. Deal with it. All you have to do is go read on their site THEY will tell you.

Charming fellow. He has censored all of my comments since then. At one point he was lecturing me that I didn’t know the organization. I pointed out to him that the Constitution makes clear the lines of organization in this case: OFHEO is an independent agency within the executive branch. It works closely with the Secretary of HUD. The organization charts show it is not a Congressional agency.

Similarly, this fellow is convinced that Obama, as a lawyer, made the federal courts dance to his tune. He appears to have no understanding for how federal courts work, nor for how a federal judge would regard any attorney acting as arrogantly as they claim Obama did.

Object lesson: You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not get to by reason in the first place.

Election, come soon!

Resources:

8 Comments | Barack Obama, Campaigns, Economics, Government, History, Obama 2008, Politics, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teacher Appreciation Week 2008, October 11-19

October 12, 2008

Show a teacher some sort of appreciation this week, will ya?

Barnes and Noble offers 25% off of most books for personal or classroom use, and 10% off of CDs and DVDs, to teachers.  Teachers, you can buy your own appreciation gifts.

Barnes and Noble logo for Educator Appreciation Week 2008

Barnes and Noble logo for Educator Appreciation Week 2008

Starbucks in Dallas offered a free cup of coffee to teachers every Monday in September.  What other goodies are there out there for teachers?

Dallas teachers are looking for good buys.  Layoff announcements should come this week — Educator Appreciation Week.

Is there an Academy Award for irony in a supporting role?

Leave a Comment » | Education, Teaching | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: Book of Proverbs, on winking

October 12, 2008

12 A scoundrel and villain,
who goes about with a corrupt mouth,

13 who winks with his eye,
signals with his feet
and motions with his fingers,

14 who plots evil with deceit in his heart—
he always stirs up dissension.

15 Therefore disaster will overtake him in an instant;
he will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.

Proverbs 6 (New King James Version)

9 The man of integrity walks securely,
but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.

10 He who winks maliciously causes grief,
and a chattering fool comes to ruin.

11 The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life,
but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked

Proverbs 10

29 A violent man entices his neighbor
and leads him down a path that is not good.

30 He who winks with his eye is plotting perversity;
he who purses his lips is bent on evil.

Proverbs 16

2 Comments | Famous quotes, Humor, Literature, Politics, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

‘We don’t got no stinkin’ education. We don’t need no stinkin’ education!’

October 12, 2008

My family’s heritages are migrant and education. By that I mean that moving someplace else for a better life, and getting the kids into better schools, has been a tradition running back at least 6 generations. My paternal grandfather was a seaman in the British merchant marine. He married a woman in Guyana, then moved the family for a job in the stockyards in Kansas City, a better place to raise kids. His children became nurses, politicians, law enforcement officers, successful trucking magnates; his grandchildren are doctors, lawyers, nurses, business executives, and teachers — one Rhodes Scholar. I am second-generation American on my father’s side.

My maternal grandfather was a farmer of great skill. He moved from Provo, Utah, to the frontier town of Manila, Utah, then to Delta, then to Salt Lake City, in a quest for riches from farming. Deciding that wouldn’t work, he took a job with Utah Oil Co., a company that was eventually merged into Standard of Indiana and now, British Petroleum. His children all graduated from high school, except for the daughter lost in infancy. Several went on to college. They became construction company owners, contractors and engineers, railroad engineers, small company entrepreneurs and retailers. His grandchildren are physicians, lawyers, business executives, successful salesman, investors — and a couple of good old boys who scrape by (every family has some). My grandfather was second-generation from pioneers, people who moved their families west in wagons, or if necessary, on foot and pushcart. They were people who fought Indians sometimes, and died in those fights and in the migrations. They left legacies in the towns named after them, and in their records as educators — both my maternal grandparents were schoolteachers early on, many of their cousins were college professors, one a college president.

Education in our family was always viewed as a ladder to personal success, to a good life, if not always a key to economic well-being. Especially in the case of my maternal grandparents, there was great assistance from the Latter-day Saint emphasis on education.

If I had to typify their version of the American dream, certainly a huge part of that dream involved the kids getting educated well beyond their parents, and getting a better life as a result.

Education was a part of the American dream from pre-Revolution days. Foreign visitors often commented that in America the crudest of men read the newspapers and discussed politics with vigor and earnestness absent in other nations. Education was the cornerstone of freedom, in the view of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and as demonstrated by Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington.

Sometime in the 1980s, I think, the tide changed. Certainly the Reagan Revolution had something to do with it. Cuts in Pell Grants, the grants that got thousands of kids into college, were a signal that education was no longer valued as it once was. One by one the federal government stripped away some of the most important building blocks of our modern society, things like the GI Bill, which had provided America with a highly-trained, highly-skilled corps of engineers in the 1950s. Those engineers invented the infrastructure to our nation that now crumbles, and they invented the industrial processes, and sometimes the industries, that we now use daily. Transistors, which make computers possible on the scale we have today, were invented and developed into powerful “cogs” for machines that do what had not even been dreamed of 40 years earlier.

I can’t tell you exactly when the tide turned, but I can tell you when I first realized it had. After staffing the Senate Labor Committee for most of a decade, I escaped to the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors, a good place for a budding environmental lawyer to work, I thought at the time. The chairman of the commission was Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander (now senator from Tennessee). Lamar had two big projects in Tennessee that he pinned his hopes for the state upon. Both were influenced in no small part by his work trying to recruit auto manufacturers to build production facilities in Tennessee.

Nissan and Toyota had levelled with him: Tennessee looked good, but for two things. First, there were few good ways to get products like automobiles out of the state to markets they needed to be sold in. Second, Tennessee’s education system wasn’t providing the highly-educated workers the car makers needed to run highly-sophisticated machinery in a fast-moving, just-in-time inventory system that produced high quality products at lowest cost.

Alexander responded with one initiative to build good roads out of Tennessee to major markets. He called that initiative “Good Roads.” He responded to the education needs with a program designed to plug money and support into Tennessee schools to improve education, bolstered by the report of the Excellence in Education Committee in 1983. He called that initiative “Good Schools.” In retrospect, those were good places to focus development efforts. Tennessee got at least one Japanese company to locate a plant there, and snagged the much-desired Saturn production plant of General Motors.

The Commission had some hearings in Tennessee. I was along on one of those hearings, and I was with Alexander when he was met by a Tennessee constituent who just wanted to talk to the governor. Alexander, being from Tennessee, hoping to keep his election chances good, and being a good governor, agreed to give the man and his wife a few minutes — I watched. The constituent complained about all the changes coming to Tennessee. He complained about the costs of the roads, and the costs of improving the schools. He worried about taxes, because, he said, he didn’t make a lot of money. Alexander assured him that his taxes would not rise much if any at all, and that especially the education part of the program would benefit all Tennesseans. “Do you have children?” Alexander asked the man.

He responded that he had two kids, both in their early teens. And then he said something that just stunned me: “You know, I’ve gotten by pretty good with my 8th grade education all these years, and I don’t see why my kids need to have any more than that. I’m not sure we need Good Schools.”

To Lamar Alexander’s everlasting credit — or shame, if you’re very cynical — he didn’t strike the man down. Alexander spent a few more minutes explaining the benefits the man’s children would have from better education, and he closed off telling about his meetings with car company executives who made it clear that they wanted to hire only good students who had graduated from good high schools, and maybe who had enough college that they could do the complex mathematics to run big machines. Alexander asked the man for his name and address, said his opinion was very important to him, and promised to get back in touch.

I suspect Alexander did contact the man later. His office tended to work very well on such matters as constituent contacts.

But I’ll wager he didn’t change the man’s opinion about education.

Sometime in the mid-1980s many Americans began to look on education as unnecessary, as expensive, and as “elitist” in a new, derogatory sense. Instead of education being something blue-collar workers hoped their children would earn, it became something blue collar workers felt oppressed by, somehow.

From that commission, I moved to the U.S. Department of Education, in Bill Bennett’s regime. Over the next few months I observed the same anti-education phenomenon playing out in debates about school reform in dozens of states. Then I got out of government and into private business, where education was demanded, and I only occasionally worried about the drama I had seen.

The past few weeks, especially since the nomination of Sarah Palin, have heightened my fears about the loss of the shared dream of better education for our children. It was part of the American psyche, woven into the fabric of our government from the “Old Deluder Satan” law in Massachusetts, which required towns of any size to set up some kind of school, through the Northwest Ordinances, which set aside sections of every township to be used for the benefit of public education, through the settlement of the west where nearly every town with a kid in it built a school — schools were built in Utah before many pioneers had houses to get them through the winter — through the dramatic rise of public education that helped knock out child labor, and that provided us with truly American armies and navies to get us out on top of two world wars.

Now comes conservative columnist David Brooks to explain how this process has been aided and abetted, if not intended, by the Republican Party, “The Class War Before Palin.”

In 1976, in a close election, Gerald Ford won the entire West Coast along with northeastern states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine. In 1984, Reagan won every state but Minnesota.

But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.

Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.

It’s a sobering piece. Please read it.

We remain a nation of migrants, a nation that migrates. We remain a nation that desires economic success and is willing to move to get it. Have we lost the good sense to remember that education improves our chances at success? Does Brooks explain the entire motivation for the War on Education?

What do you think?

4 Comments | Ben Franklin, Campaigns, Economics, Education, George Washington, Higher education, History, Immigration, James Madison, Lessons of history, Politics, Public education, Thomas Jefferson, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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