Monday

BuyMyShitPile.com. Awesome.

Literally no one in America thinks the economy is getting better. (See the the third table down.) Also, Bush's approval rating is down to 19% - and yet, I still predict the Democrats will capitulate and bail out a bunch of financial institutions that f*cked up with no meaningful oversight and no guarantee of future good behavior.

As Atrios says: Capitalism! Fuck Yeah!

Short Timeline of US Government Bailouts

Via Majikthise and from Pro Publica. Check it out (no excerpt because it's a table).

[LCSD] Going off the rails on a Sunday evening

From Lebanon Proof:

For years this community has been held hostage by a controlling interloper who was able to schmooze his way into the hearts and minds of some of the pivitol community leaders.

Make no mistake, Mr. Robinson is a very smart man. He probably did his homework to such an extent that he would know which church to attend, which insurance agent to choose, which clubs to attend, which stores to shop in and which neighborhood to inhabit in order to meet the people he would need to win over in order to provide a buffer for himself and his unorthodox leadership style that he had tried to implement and failed in two prior communities.

When he goes, the ripple effect and the aftershocks will be intense and painful...but the alternative is much more dangerous.

This statement is so strange I don't even know where to begin.

First of all, it's simply untrue to phrase the 'community held hostage' claim as a universal, declarative statement. That would imply that it's a fact. It's not - it's LP's opinion, and while it may be shared by others, there are also plenty of people who disagree with that characterization of things. I also see very little evidence for this claim being true: What, exactly, is Robinson using to hold the community hostage? What did he have in the beginning that the community needed that got him his contract? I can't think of anything.

Oh, right: That's because the rolling contract is common. Also, if the hostage characterization comes from the belief that since Robinson isn't leaving because the 'whole' community wants him gone he is therefore somehow holding the community hostage, maybe that's because a) the community isn't united on their opinion of Robinson and he sees that, and b) the reasons people give for opposing Robinson may not make much sense to him. I know they don't always make sense to me. Also, possible: c) that Robinson believes it would be bad for students to have Alexander and Wineteer running the district.

.... one thing that just struck me is that LP might be referring to Robinson using himself as a hostage. As was guessed last week, if the board is trying to buy Robinson out, then maybe he's demanding something in return that the blogger knows about, and that's what the blogger is referencing. Who knows?

Second, I want to address the use of the term 'interloper'. I'll be blunt and concise: To think that the Superintendent has to be from Lebanon is just stupid, and we need to get over it. This does not mean that Robinson has to be Superintendent, or that Lebanon can't produce someone who would be a good Superintendent.

Rather, it is to note that I want to unearth what I think is an assumption that is floating around Lebanon: That Lebanon and Lebanon alone is best suited to determine what needs to happen to educate students in Lebanon.

Again with the blunt: This is wrong, and dangerous. Lebanon - and by Lebanon I mean the residents of the community - should have a say in how education in Lebanon happens, but it should not be the only say. It should not even be the final say. Education professionals and experts - some of whom will come from outside - are the people who have dedicated their lives and careers to the field, and are in the best position to relate educational outcomes and educational practices. Of course, parents still have the right to determine what they want for their child's education, but that doesn't necessarily extend to dictating how the local school district works.

I don't know of any other industrialized country that grants such a level of control to something as local (or so lacking in traditionally-defined expertise) as a school board.

Bear in mind, I have said before, and still believe, that there is a role for people without advanced degrees, and people from the community. This is not a call to blindly follow anyone with a PhD. But the opportunity for expertise in the form of a Superintendent is there, and I would hate to see Lebanon move forward by hiring a Superintendent but leave all meaningful authority in the hands of a school board - any school board. Remember, a school board is there for oversight, and is, frankly, an historical anachronism, left over from a time when a local oversight board was necessary due to a lack of speedy communication.

Let me also say it another way: Even in the Age of Internet, it is nearly impossible for a small community to know what outcomes needs to be in place in the education system that will enable students to be successful in the (globalized) working world. It's very difficult to get the necessary prospective from a place like Lebanon - and I say that as someone who lived there for the first 19 years of his life. The expectation the US has developed at this point, for better or worse, is that a) students need to be prepared to work in a globalized world, and b) education experts and professionals are the best equipped to know what is required to make that happen.

Contra that, the implicit belief I've seen from a lot of the anti-Robinson folks that the school board, this school board, can do a better job running the district strikes me as misguided and dangerous. Face it: While people from Lebanon may have had a good idea what students needed to learn to be employable in Lebanon thirty, forty, or fifty years ago, times have changed. There are a lot more out-of-town or even out-of-state employers in Lebanon now, and a lot less mills.

Third - and possibly most ludicrously - who in their right mind thinks Robinson actually scoped the district and made all his decisions based on his ability to manipulate local folks into being his friend? Were I Robinson, I'd consider that one of the nastier personal attacks I'd faced here.

Consider that for a second: The blogger LP is claiming that someone actually developed a plan to subvert a whole community and was willing to subsume his entire personal life to do it. Actually doing that would take quite the evil person, and gives Robinson a lot more credibility than he deserves. I don't think Robinson is that malicious, but I do think that if we take this view as being common among anti-Robinson folks it has some explanatory power.

Come to think of it, this is the second time LP has intimated that there's some sort of shadowy thing going on in Lebanon - the first time was when they suggested that CARES and the myriad of PACs is a conspiracy (rather than either innocuous or designed to increase tax write-offs).

Come on, people. First, I don't think CARES or Robinson has enough ill will or free time to create that kind of conspiracy, and second, I am reminded of something a political science prof said to my intro class back in 2001 or 2002: You don't need to resort to conspiracy to explain something when there's a group of people that all believe similar things involved. Their common actions stem from their shared beliefs, not some kind of secret master plan.

This is not designed to suggest there can't be conspiracies; clearly the two are not mutually exclusive. But Occam's Razor seems to apply here.

Bottom line on this one: I think LP is giving Robinson both far too much credit and assuming he's far more evil than he actually is.

Fourth, the last sentence that I excerpted: "When he goes, the ripple effect and the aftershocks will be intense and painful...but the alternative is much more dangerous."

I can read the first part of that sentence two ways. The first is rather benign: That whenever someone has been in a position like Robinson's for a decade, in a district that's undergone the changes Lebanon has, the person's leaving will make a noticeable difference. That difference can be good or bad, depending, but it will be there. The second way of reading the statement is not benign: That LP is (intentionally or not) lowering expectations. If Robinson leaves, and for some reason things go very poorly either in his absence or with a new Superintendent, LP's statement is the first step in claiming that it will either be Robinson's fault or the fault of Robinson's network of sleeper cells supporters. In politics, it's usually called shifting the goalposts.

The second part of that sentence is kind of frustrating, and just kind of silly. "Get rid of Robinson, or else!" claims his detractor. Or else what? Can the board not provide oversight? Can concerned citizens and parents not work with the remaining board members to provide oversight? It's not like Fisher, Shimmin or McUne is anywhere near being in Robinson's pocket.

Fifth - and finally - I have been asked plenty of times if I have any idea who the person behind Lebanon Proof is. I have avoided speculation both on this blog and in my contacts with others until this point, mostly because I had no idea. People have suggested it to me that it is either attorney Paul Meadowbrook or former LHS teacher Lyndon Brown. I had also wondered if it was former PIE Chairman Jay Jackson.

After the last few posts, I think I can narrow my guess down a bit (It could, of course, be someone who has not been so publicly active in the LCSD recently, and I don't want to rule that out): I think it's either Jay Jackson, or more likely Lyndon Brown. I think Meadowbrook would be more straightforward and less, um, venomous; he also doesn't seem to be as personally invested. The last few posts also suggest a level of anger that Brown is rumored to have attained in regards to Robinson and the LCSD.

To be clear: This is speculation. I don't know who the blogger is. And back when their posts contained interesting (if context-free) facts, like the number of administrators and non-classroom teachers in the district, I was happy to let it lie. However, the last several posts have struck me as being increasingly divorced from reality, which flies in the face of the claim made on the blog that it differentiates truth from innuendo, not when it uses words like 'tyrannical' and 'hostage'. Those are subjective judgment calls, not facts, and while it's fine to print both, it's not OK with me to fail to differentiate and present subjective opinions as facts. Hence my publicly guessing - and if I'm right, neither Jackson nor Brown has anything to lose, as one just resigned and the other is retired.

Also, this is post #900. Woo hoo!

Preznit takin your turkee

When I said this:

This is also, in a way, the continuation of one way of reading neoliberalism: The privatization of profit and the publicization of risk. Only in this case, it's being done in the open - the risk is being publicized (that is, the bill is being footed by taxpayers) after things went bad.

I didn't think it would be taken so literally:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Saturday formally proposed to Congress what could become the largest financial bailout in United States history, requesting unfettered authority for the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets.

...

A $700 billion expenditure on distressed mortgage-related assets would be roughly what the country has spent so far in direct costs on the Iraq war and more than the Pentagon’s total yearly budget appropriation. Divided across the population, it would amount to more than $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

All those political philosophy classes I took seem more relevant than ever right about now. Sadly, this is depressing, not exciting.

So I'll say to Bush what I refrained from saying to Hering yesterday: Fuck you.

... if the Dems fold/cave/go along on this one, there's no doubt I'm fucking voting for McKinney. This is insane.


Also, Atrios retains his ability to spell it out like no one else can:

Again, the problem is that lots of bad loans were made, lots of people made highly leveraged investments in those bad loans, and still more people bet on those loans by insuring them. The loans are bad. The mortgages are not going to be repaid in full. Housing prices are not going to magically shoot up 50% over the next 6 months. People gambled and lost and now the Democrats are racing to bail them all out.

In case that I'm not being clear enough, what's happening is that the US government just proposed giving $700 billion to a bunch of companies that knowingly made bad deals. Crony capitalism doesn't even begin to describe it.

UPDATE: Atrios finds this bit in the text of the act submitted to Congress authorizing the spending:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Why anyone in their right mind is going to do anything but kick the ass of the folks who submitted this is beyond me. Nevertheless, I predict that Democrats will take this 'bill' seriously.

Normally when people bury their head in the sand for so long, they suffocate

Shorter Hering: I can't be bothered to actually figure out what's going on with the financial system, so I'll just call for a return to the 1950s (and thereby conveniently avoid mentioning the political party responsible for this debacle).

My only consolation is that there are people writing for a national audience who actually pen stupider things. Not many, but they exist. Call it a silver lining.

Reproductive Health, Lebanon, the FBI, etc.

From the DH story on the loss of the building that housed the Lebanon Pregnancy Alternatives Center:

The FBI says it is investigating the fire jointly with the Lebanon Police Department and has authority to do so under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

Now, at first glance, the name of that act sounds to me like it was written to guarantee access to - let's be honest - abortion clinics (pro-choicers are not exactly notorious for shaming anyone who enters churches, now are they?). Given that 'pregnancy alternatives center' is synonymous with 'anti-choice center that will do everything but provide actual reproductive health,' I was a little surprised that such an act would cover something like the LPAC in the way the FBI is claiming according to the story. So I looked up the act. Check this out:

§ 248. Freedom of access to clinic entrances

(a) Prohibited activities.--Whoever--

....

(3) intentionally damages or destroys the property of a facility, or attempts to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship,

So.... I think it's reasonable to conclude that whoever wrote this act wrote it to include so-called pregnancy alternatives centers, specifically Christian ones (are there any other kind?). After all, why the hell else would a reference to 'a place of religious worship' be in there?

And after all, it's not like such places actually provide meaningful reproductive health services beyond 'here is how to care for your baby once it's born'.

It's an interesting false equivalance, as well: Something like Planned Parenthood provides the full gamut of reproductive health services, including, I believe, information for those who want to remain abstinent and who want to carry to term. Something like the Lebanon Pregnancy Alternatives Center doesn't seem to provide birth control or even mention abortion, much less abortion referrals, as an option on their website (which I will not link to). Clearly, the two are not equal, yet they are treated as equivalent under this law, apparently.

Sketchy.

Spontaneous Combustion

Clued in by LT's post, I went looking for a particularly bad Hering editorial. And I found it:

It is a common refrain that Oregon high school students are not good enough in math. But most of us have no idea what we are talking about.

If we did know, we would probably shut up. Because most of us are no good at math either, at least some of the math that high schools try to teach in the junior and senior years.

...

Here’s the problem with math in 2008: Most people can get through life perfectly well after they forget whatever they learned in trigonometry and calculus. They forget it because they don’t need it.

You need no quadratric equations to work in most trades, professions and other service industries. You can be a production supervisor, a health care specialist, a real estate developer or a politician without knowing the first thing about the properties of conic sections or the zeroes of polynomials.

To say he misses the point is to be far more charitable than I feel at the moment.

Hey, Hering? It's the 21st century. Complaining isn't going to change that. Might as well get used to it.

I have never, ever seen someone write so much about themselves and pretend it's even remotely generalizable.

..... I'm going to stop here, because otherwise it's going to degenerate into me calling Hering all sorts of names not fit for a family blog such as this. Let's just say I agree with LT on this one: This is an insulting and idiotic editorial.

[LCSD] A thought or two about the recall

Briefly:

If I'm Jim Robinson, and the board that wants to negotiate with me over my resignation stands a chance of losing the two members who dislike me most, why in the world would I agree to anything before I find out if said board members will be recalled or not?

Similarly, if I am Fisher, Shimmin or McUne, and I also know there's a chance that Alexander and Wineteer will be off the board in three weeks, I would be damn loathe to do anything that might end up in a lawsuit and/or have other consequences that I'd have to deal with, especially if it was started by the maybe-departing board members. At best, I'd want to own - literally and metaphorically - any decision that was made between now and October 7th, just in case.

In other words, it would seem prudent on the parts of everyone but the two facing the recall to put on the brakes until after October 7th. The opposite is true of Wineteer and Alexander, of course. They have every incentive to get as much of their agenda enacted before the vote as possible, on the chance they get recalled.

By the way, I have no frackin' idea how likely it is for the two to get recalled. I am aware of no relevant precedent, and no one's done any formal/scientific polling on this one. I do know that CARES is putting a lot of effort into this, and I don't know how much effort Wineteer and Alexander and their supporters are putting into opposing it.

Dumb

From Columbia Journalism Review:

The Associated Press retracted two government-issued photographs last night after a photographer in Texas alerted the agency that the photos in question appeared to be doctored.

Bob Owen, chief photographer of the San Antonio Express-News, notified the AP that the photos of two deceased soldiers, who died in Iraq on Sept. 14, were nearly identical. Upon examining the photos, Owens noticed that everything except for the soldier’s face, name, and rank was the same. The most glaring similarity, Owen told CJR, was that the camouflage patterns of the two uniforms were “perfectly identical.”

Apparently the Army did the photoshopping.

Via Majikthise.

Can't. Stop. Laughing.

While I've been following the recent economic news with my usual mixture of glee and despair, I've also had one thought rattling around in my head just about non-stop the last few days, and it's time to get it out:

When the government buys* and owns things like AIG, it's textbook socialism. When the government announces an even bigger plan (and the AIG buyout cost taxpayers something like $85 billion!) to buy a lot of these failing assets, it's socialist to the core.

I hope the irony of that, and of how hard Republicans and so-called free market supporters are cheering for it, is not lost on anyone.

Also, see this point from Kevin Drum:

...I will, of course, note for the record that if Uncle Sam can afford to spend a trillion bucks or so rescuing Wall Street, it would be nice if they could spend a trillion bucks shoring up all the poor saps losing their homes because they can't make the payments on those option ARMs they were talked into buying during the boom years. We could do it if we wanted to, and the risk wouldn't even be appreciably different from the Wall Street bailout.

Fifty bucks says anyone who brings this up on cable TV gets shouted down and called a Commie, the massive corporate bailout underway not withstanding. This is America, dammit. No one** gets a free ride!

UPDATE: This is also, in a way, the continuation of one way of reading neoliberalism: The privatization of profit and the publicization of risk. Only in this case, it's being done in the open - the risk is being publicized (that is, the bill is being footed by taxpayers) after things went bad. In that sense, it's a big FUCK YOU from political and economic elites to everyone else. We're all going to get our own piece of Big Shitpile©, and there's really nothing we can do about it.

*Obligatory disclaimer: For the purposes of this post, I am agnostic on whether or not the buyouts are a good thing. However, we should at least acknowledge that the so-called free-market capitalism touted for decades by the Republican Party would simply let all these companies fail. The fact that Bush, Paulson, Chris Cox and Ben Bernanke are diving in with both feet means that they don't believe the ideology they push, or are really, really dumb. I'm not ruling out the possibility of both being true.

**Unless you're under 12 years of age or worth more than, say, $500 million.