Undernews For September 2, 2010

Undernews For September 2, 2010

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
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MORNING LINE
There has been no significant change in the Democrats' pending disaster over the past month. They still stand to lose seven Senate seats with another four unclear. In other words, it is possible - albeit not likely - that they could lose the Senate as well as the House, where they stand to lose about 49 seats.

The Democrats also still stand to lose seven governorships with one additional Democratic and 3 GOP slots unclear.

The Review's three poll average finds Obama comfortably ahead of only Pawlenty, Barbour and Basil Marceaux. He has a six point lead over Gingrich and Christie, a five point lead over Palin, and a 2 point lead over Huckabee, Romney and Paul.

Here is the three poll standings of GOP contenders

23 Romney
19 Huckabee
17 Gingrich
16 Palin
07 Paul
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?
Bill Blum, Anti-Empire Report - The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured . . . The people of that unhappy land have lost everything ¬ their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives. More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile. The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium . . . the most awful birth defects . . unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up . . An army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia . . . a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris . . . through a country that may never be put back together again.

WHY VALUE ADDED TESTING IS A BUST
Economic Policy Institute - In a new EPI report, leading educational testing experts caution against heavy reliance on the use of test scores in teacher evaluation

Student test scores are not reliable indicators of teacher effectiveness, even with the addition of value-added modeling, a new Economic Policy Institute report by leading testing experts finds. Though VAM methods have allowed for more sophisticated comparisons of teachers than were possible in the past, they are still inaccurate, so test scores should not dominate the information used by school officials in making high-stakes decisions about the evaluation, discipline and compensation of teachers.

The Obama administration has encouraged states to adopt laws that use student test scores as a significant component in evaluating teachers, and a number of states have done so already. The Los Angeles Times recently used value-added methods to evaluate teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District based on the test scores of their students, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan supported the paper's decision to publicly release this information, asserting that parents have a right to know how effective their teachers are. But the conclusions of the expert co-authors of this report suggest that neither parents nor anyone else should believe that the Los Angeles Times analysis actually identifies which teachers are effective or ineffective in teaching children because the methods are incapable of doing so fairly and accurately.

The authors of EPI's report, Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers, include four former presidents of the American Educational Research Association; two former presidents of the National Council on Measurement in Education; the current and two former chairs of the Board of Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences; the president-elect of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management; the former director of the Educational Testing Service's Policy Information Center and a former associate director of the National Assessment of Educational Progress; a former assistant U.S. Secretary of Education; a former and current member of the National Assessment Governing Board; and the current vice-president, a former president, and three other members of the National Academy of Education.

The co-authors make clear that the accuracy and reliability of analyses of student test scores, even in their most sophisticated form, is highly problematic for high stakes decisions regarding teachers . Consequently, policymakers and all stakeholders in education should rethink this new emphasis on the centrality of test scores for holding teachers accountable.

Analyses of VAM results show that they are often unstable across time, classes and tests; thus, test scores, even with the addition of VAM, are not accurate indicators of teacher effectiveness. Student test scores, even with VAM, cannot fully account for the wide range of factors that influence student learning, particularly the backgrounds of students, school supports and the effects of summer learning loss. As a result, teachers who teach students with the greatest educational needs appear to be less effective than they are. Furthermore, VAM does not take into account nonrandom sorting of teachers to students across schools and students to teachers within schools.

There are further negative consequences of using test scores to evaluate teacher performance. Teachers who are rewarded on the basis of their students' test scores have an incentive to "teach to the test," which narrows the curriculum not just between subject areas, but also within subject areas. Furthermore, creating a system in which teachers are, in effect, competing with each other can reduce the incentive to collaborate within schools-and studies have shown that better schools are marked by teaching staffs that work together. Finally, judging teachers based on test scores that do not genuinely assess students' progress can demoralize teachers, encouraging them to leave the teaching field.

As EPI's report makes clear, "There is simply no shortcut to the identification and removal of ineffective teachers." The authors conclude that that, "Although standardized test scores of students are one piece of information that school leaders may use to make judgments about teacher effectiveness, test scores should be only a small part of an overall comprehensive evaluation."
VICTIMS OF POLICE CHECKPOINT GET SETTLEMENT
Sam Smith - One of the most outrageous police abuses that has attracted hardly any media attention was the establishment of checkpoints at a DC neighborhood with a high crime rate. As the local NBC station reports, "Drivers were subjected to police questioning, and the checkpoint officers refused to let motorists pass through if they would not reveal information about their residency or destination."

The checkpoints were the brainchild of the city's police chief, Kathy Lanier, who got some of her training from Israeli law enforcement and shows a similar contempt for civil liberties.

Those of us on the NAACP police and justice committee tried to raise the alarm, but neither the Washington Post nor the national media thought much about it. Happily, the courts came to a different conclusion

Channel Four - Plaintiffs who challenged Metropolitan Police Department checkpoints used two years ago in Trinidad in Northeast will each receive $3,500 and legal fees for their trouble. In a case that led a federal appeals court to rule the checkpoints unconstitutional, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund represented three D.C. residents who complained about the checkpoints. The District of Columbia reached a settlement with the plaintiffs on Thursday.

The checkpoints were established in an effort to prevent crime in Trinidad. Drivers were subjected to police questioning, and the checkpoint officers refused to let motorists pass through if they would not reveal information about their residency or destination. The settlement also requires police to expunge any data they collected on any persons stopped at the checkpoints.
REMINDER
The original Tea Party crowd was not after independence but was willing to settle for a few seats in Parliament. If the Tea Party had been successful we would still be a colony of Great Britain- Josiah Swampoodle
TWITTER POST OF THE DAY
We've reached that critical point before a trip when it's too late to order anything from Amazon. - AmyJane
FREE MARKET CAPITALISTS STRIKE AGAIN
Wisconsin State Journal - The city of Madison has endorsed a plan to pay McDonald's more than $300,000 to settle a 2008 lawsuit alleging that a recently constructed pedestrian footbridge has crippled business at an East Side branch of the fast food behemoth. "The bridge completely blocks the view of that restaurant when heading out of town from the Capitol," said Mike Mangin, a vice president with Missoula Mac Inc. of Poynette, which operates the franchise at 3051 E. Washington Ave.
WORLD'S LAST LORAN STATION CLOSES
WCSH, Portland Me - The Coast Guard is closing its LORAN station in Caribou. The station was first commissioned in 1974. For 35 years, it has transmitted navigation and timing signals for the U.S. and Cananda. The Caribou station was the last operating LORAN facility in the U.S. With its closing, the LORAN program is over.

LORAN LULLABY
THINGS WE HADN'T STARTED WORRYING ABOUT YET
BBC - California wildfire was sparked when a golfer trying to hit a ball out of the rough struck his club against a rock, fire officials have said. The fire burned 12 acres on a densely wooded hill by the Shady Canyon golf course in Irvine, California. Officials said the golfer, whose name was withheld, will not face charges over the fire on Saturday.
ELITE ETHNOGRAPHY
NY Post - Top Lazard banker Matthieu Pigasse is being chased for $165,000 after a broker claimed he rented a Hamptons beachfront mansion -- but left after two days because he said he "didn't like the view." Paris-based Pigasse, the co-CEO of Lazard in France who recently bought left-leaning newspaper Le Monde, arrived at 2170 Meadow Lane in Southampton in early August. He flew in from France having paid no deposit, but a broker agreed to let him into the $30 million Norman Jaffe-designed, five-bedroom house.

Broker Jack Prizzi, who rented Pigasse the house and met him on arrival, told us: "It was my mistake letting them in with no deposit or signed contract, but they flew in at night. He had eight people with him including a 16-month-old baby. By 3 p.m. the next day, all hell broke loose because the money still hadn't arrived. They said they didn't like the house because it didn't look like the pictures -- it looks exactly like the pictures."
ISRAELI SOLDIER ACQUITTED OF KILLING 13 YEAR OLD GIRL
Guardian, UK - An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday.

The soldier, who has only been identified as "Captain R", was charged with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.

The manner of Iman's killing, and the revelation of a tape recording in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was "scared to death", made the shooting one of the most controversial since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though hundreds of other children have also died.
GALLUP GIVES GOP LARGEST GENERIC LEAD EVER

WORD PLAY
Sam Smith

Because the corporate media insists on describing John McCain a maverick, I am often called upon to defend my faith against such imposters by pointing out that a true maverick, as they say in Texas where the term originated, is a cow that drinks upstream from the herd. McCain is a different sort of creature, a mugwump, which sits on a fence with its mug on one side and its wump on another.

The term maverick comes from the 19th century Texas rancher Samuel Maverick, who was one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, but who was particularly noted for refusing to brand his cattle. He was the grandfather of Maury Maverick, a longtime member of Congress, who invented another great word, "goobledygook."

The other day, when business was a bit slow, it occurred to me that referring only to a cow left out bulls, steers and calves - all of which can also drink upstream from the herd and to similar advantage. I could say that "mavericks are cattle that. . ." but that doesn't sound as good. So I began wondering what the singular for cattle is.

I soon realized that there isn't one and with some cursory googling discovered that "cattle" is actually known as a "defective noun," belonging to a small group without a singular version that includes vittles, tidings, thanks, nuptials, measles, billiards, and annals.

Come to think of it, for other reasons, John McCain is a pretty defective noun as well.

SEX IN THE WORKPLACE: SHORT TERM ADVANTAGE, LONG TERM PROBLEMS
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Harvard Business Review - Research out this fall from the Center for Work-Life Policy shows sponsorship to be the critical promotional lever for women in the marzipan layer, the layer just below the top layer of management. No matter how high achieving, an upper middle-level female executive will fail to find career traction unless she is sponsored by a powerful senior executive - who, more often than not, is male and married.

Which is where sex enters the picture. Thirty-four percent of executive women who participated in the survey that underlies the new study claim that they know a female colleague who has had an affair with the boss. (Indeed 15% of women at the director level or above admitted to having had such an affair themselves!) They also perceive that these liaisons sometimes yield a payoff: of those who know of an illicit affair, 37% claim that the woman involved received a career boost as a consequence.

The CWLP data show that 61% of men and 70% of women lose respect for a leader involved in an affair. Most poisonous of all, when a junior woman is having a sexual dalliance with the boss, 60% of male executives and 65% of female executives suspect that salary hikes and plum assignments are being traded for sexual favors. This can have a disastrous effect on morale and productivity. Forty-eight percent of men and 56% of women feel animosity towards the involved couple, and 39% of men and 37% of women see a fall off in productivity as the team splinters.
WHAT THE GERMANS KNOW ABOUT ECONOMICS THAT AMERICA DOESN'T
Richard Clark, Op Ed News - The Germans still slap import taxes on stuff that their companies might be tempted to manufacture abroad, and by this means and others, the German government protects German jobs and incomes. As a result, last quarter saw more German GDP growth than at anytime since the reunification of the country. Plus, their unemployment rate during the recent recession was never anywhere near as high as ours in America.

The German government subsidized worker salaries after it asked employers to cut their hours down to 30 or even 20 a week (rather than terminate any of them) if there wasn't enough work to keep all of them busy full time. This enabled all workers to keep on spending just as they had been, and so a German recession was for the most part, by this two means, avoided. In short, high-wage countries like Germany figured out a way to compete with China and Mexico. The proof of this: In 2008, Germany ran a $267-billion trade surplus, while the United States ran a $568-billion trade deficit.
WHAT OUR 'FISCAL EXPERTS' AND THE MEDIA STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND
Dean Baker, CEPR - The economists and central bankers attending the annual meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming apparently have not noticed the collapse of the housing bubble and the wreckage it has caused. This is the only plausible explanation for a WSJ article that told readers about a paper on a new approach to fiscal policy that argues:

"Fiscal policy could benefit from the more scientific approach taken by monetary policy over the past two decades."

The article continues:

"The former U.S. Federal Reserve economist [the person presenting the paper] noted how monetary policy has improved after central banks started to adopt goals such as inflation targeting and as central bankers started to articulate the 'science' in public speeches."

People who pay attention to the economy know that the monetary policy pursued over the last three decades has devastated the economy, leaving tens of millions of workers in the United States unemployed or underemployed. It would be hard to imagine a policy that could produce more disastrous results than the single-minded focus on inflation that central banks followed even as housing bubbles in the U.S. and elsewhere grew to ever more dangerous levels.

If the central bankers and economists at Jackson Hole still don't understand how harmful these policies have been then it should raise enormous concern in Congress and among the general public about the competence of the people controlling economic policy. This should have been the main focus of a news article on the meetings.
RACE TO THE BOTTOM
Sarah Palin at the Beck rally: “I hope that Dr. King would be so proud of us . . .“This is sacred ground where we feel his spirit and can appreciate all of his efforts. He who so believed in equality and may we live up to his challenge.”
WOMEN MAY LOSE GROUND IN CONGRESS
LA Times - Women now hold 90 seats in Congress: 69 are Democrats and 21 are Republicans. After the November election, Congress could end up with as many as 10 fewer female members, prognosticators now say, the first backslide in the uninterrupted march of women to Washington since 1978.

Just four women are among the GOP's 46 "Young Guns," as the party calls its frontline challengers who are considered future leaders. Many of the vulnerable Democratic women this fall first arrived on the waves of the 2006 and 2008 elections, but now face tough odds in districts that have since soured on the party in power and on President Obama's agenda.
STRIPPERS TAKE ON CHURCH THAT WANTS TO BAN THEM
BBC - Bikini-clad dancers are picketing a congregation that has photographed customers' number plates and asked if their wives know where they are. The Fox Hole club's owner has told the pastor he will call off his protest if the church ceases its demonstrations.

But the pastor has refused, saying, "as a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil". The strippers have been sitting in deckchairs outside New Beginnings Ministries church in Warsaw, Ohio, during Sunday services. Some hold signs bearing Christian messages such as "Jesus loves the children of the world" and citing Bible verses.
AMERICAN HOME SHRINKING
CNN - After years of growth, the Census Bureau recently reported that median new home size fell to 2,135 square feet in 2009 after peaking at more than 2,300 earlier in the decade.
CIA DEEP INTO AFGHAN CORRUPTION
Washington Post - The CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of President Hamid Karzai's administration, in part to maintain sources of information in a government in which the Afghan leader is often seen as having a limited grasp of developments, according to current and former U.S. officials. The payments are long-standing in many cases and designed to help the agency maintain a deep roster of allies within the presidential palace. Some aides function as CIA informants, but others collect stipends under more informal arrangements meant to ensure their accessibility, a U.S. official said. The CIA has continued the payments despite concerns that it is backing corrupt officials and undermining efforts to wean Afghans' dependence on secret sources of income and graft.
FIRST THEY PUT THEM ON PRESCHOOLERS. . ..
Contra Costa County CA preschoolers will have to wear RFID tags in their jerseys so school officials can track them, take attendance and determined if they have eaten.

The Orwellian scheme, paid for out of a federal grant, will pay for itself in one year according to a school official.

No word on when the tracking devices will be required of older students as well.
DEPARTMENT OF WEIRD POLITICAL STRATEGIES
Politico - Facing a perilous political environment that has left the House Democratic majority in jeopardy, Van Hollen told reporters in a briefing at the National Press Club that the party faces a series of difficult decisions about which candidates to invest in this fall ¬ and whom to leave behind. . .He also indicated that Democratic leaders had given vulnerable members permission to distance ¬ and in some cases outright criticize ¬ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in campaign ads, as Indiana Rep. Joe Donnelly, Pennsylvania Rep. Jason Altmire and North Carolina Rep. Mike McIntyre all have done. “I think the Democratic leaders have said the job of the members is to reflect the views of their constituents as best as they are able,” he said
READER CLIPS
PUBLISHING TEACHER TEST SCORES

Larry, Hawaii - Pierre Omidyar's website Civil Beat has posted the salaries of public employees in Hawaii. While that doesn't sink to the depth of publishing teacher test scores, I'm wondering what service that actually serves. There could be many benefits from having that information available, but there could also be fallout. For example, landlords seeing the information might be motivated to raise rents.

JERSEY SHORE

Wellbasically - The shore is naturally beautiful. One thing to note, the waves drown out radios and music, which actually makes the place much better than many beaches around Massachusetts for instance. The sad part is all the dopes and monsters in the world will come to the shore now, in search of these animals you see on the show. August 26, 2010 11:54 PM

MICROBES HELPED CLEAN UP GULF OIL

One, this study was funded by BP so it is clearly not free from bias.

Two, the oxygen level in general is 68% and this microbe leaves behind an oxygen level of 59%, almost a 10% reduction. For many forms of ocean life, this might not be all that insignificant.

CHINA CONFRONTS ITS CHOPSTICKS

Sometimes at import stores I've found chopsticks that come in a little box with a slide top that can be pulled out and the whole thing washed. The boxes are only large enough to hold one set of chopsticks and would easily slip in a laptop case, backpack, or purse. Sometimes the cases are built for 2 sets of chopsticks then they are larger with 2 separate compartments and slide covers. My parents have a pretty double box set carved in wood they were given as a gift years ago. Undoubtedly this was the old way people took chopsticks out with them. Very easy to take home and wash all of it.

Unfortunately the amount of disposable chopsticks used each year suggests this is a major employer, so other than changing from wood to bamboo, they would have to consider unemployment concerns if the disposable chopstick industry was to be ended.
BREVITAS
CNN - The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search for a possible missing boater after an empty yacht mysteriously washed ashore near Madeira Beach in Florida. The empty 48-foot boat washed up on the beach about 1 p.m. Wednesday, triggering a police investigation and a Coast Guard rescue mission. . . Adding to the mystery is the fact that the vessel is registered to the federal government, CNN-affiliate WFTS reported. Also when the ship came ashore the engine was still running and lights were on, witnesses told the affiliate. . . "We do not see something like this often. I have lived here since 1958 I have never seen a boat this size beached like this," Rob Klingel told the affiliate.

Daily Beast - Mosques are being vandalized across the country, with the latest incidents at mosques in Queens and Fresno, California on Wednesday. In Fresno, Imam Abdullah Salem discovered a pair of signs at the Madera Islamic Center, one of which read, “Wake up America, the enemy is here”; a week earlier, a brick was thrown at a window at the center. Meanwhile in Queens, a man barged into the Iman Mosque in Astoria, shouted anti-Muslim slurs at the worshippers, and peed on prayer rugs

Simon Cowell says "We have never, nor would we ever, use Auto-Tuning during the American Idol competition."

Most boring headline of the week: USM students moving into dorms ahead of classes - WCSH, Portland ME
THE LIBERTARIAN MONEY BEHIND THE TEA PARTY & GLENN BECK

RAPE CASE REOPENED AGAINST WIKILEAKS FOUNDER

TRACK HURRICANE EARL

OHIO DENIES CITIZENSHIP TO PUERTO RICANS

BORDER PATROL QUESTIONING PEOPLE MILES FROM BORDER

ENDS

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