Why, there’s always room for white whine

Why, there’s always room for white whine

Katherine Kersten moaned Sunday about Lakeville schools sending teachers to a conference about racism. Waste of money.

The Lakeville schools are sending a delegation of teachers to the 12th annual "White Privilege Conference" at the Bloomington Sheraton from Aug. 13-16. The district is shelling out $160 a pop -- plus $125 a day for teacher subs -- for this "white guilt" festival.

Unstated is the number of teachers who are going to the conference. (Probably not a lot.) Perhaps Katie needs to check her calendar, too. The conference is in August; school isn’t in session. Subs? Unlikely.

Kersten describes the conference:

The conference is sponsored by the Minnesota Justice Collaborative, a consortium of local higher-education and philanthropic institutions. It is expected to draw 1,500 teachers, students, activists, artists, social workers and counselors from more than 40 states. Minnesota public schools are represented on the list of speakers and workshop presenters.

Katie goes on to have a good belly laugh about racism in schools, or anywhere else for that matter, or that Christianity had anything to do with it! Ha Ha!

But before you take her too seriously, take a look at the video.

Update: Well, hold the phone! The  early web version of Katie’s story, quoted above, called August the time of the conference. Now the column, available at the link, says it will be in April. And I just rechecked the “paper copy” of the Strib, and the dates are reported correctly there. The quote from the Strib above was a cut and paste, not a transcription, so the Strib corrected its web version, apparently without noting the correction.

I also forgot a thump of the tail to Two Putt Tommy, who reminded me of the video clips.

And yet, they call it slander

In observance of the upcoming Tea Bag Rally at the Capitol, here’s a video I did some time ago. Some Tea Baggers take offense at the term.

And yet, they call it slander

The soundtrack got laid down pretty loud; you might want to turn your audio down a touch before you start the video. Don’t turn it off, though.

Caption contest with the Strib

This morning, readers of Hot Dish Politics were invited to suggest a caption for this photo:

We’re going to run a parallel contest here at the Stool. I’ll bet we’re funnier.

Here’s a first offering from Spot:

Get your soft, filthy insurance lawyer hand off my knee.

Readers can do better and are encouraged to try. Put your answers in the comments.

East Bethel man caught in St. Paul safety net

An East Bethel  man who was visiting St. Paul was struck by a car while jogging on Wednesday morning. Luckily, he was caught in St. Paul and Ramsey County’s safety net. Police responded to the incident, as did local first responders, and the man was taken to Regions Hospital, a Ramsey County facility, where he is reported to be in satisfactory condition and recovering nicely.

The man was identified as Republican State Senator Michael Jungbauer.

The case of the barfing burglar

The Des Moines Register has a pretty complete account of Ben Foster, the Pawlenty staffer in Iowa, whose botched B&E and barf escapade had a homeowner holding him at gunpoint.

The homeowners, Stacy and Kevin Steward, said their 15-year-old daughter, Chloe, went to investigate why the family dog was barking at 3 a.m.

“Kevin stated Chloe woke him up and said a man was trying to get in the house. Kevin stated he grabbed his gun, which was located in a safe, located Foster, and held him at gun point until police arrived,” the report states.

“Stacy stated after Chloe woke her up, she called 911 while Kevin approached Foster. Stacy stated Foster threw up on the back deck.”

Although his car was on the street near the Steward’s house, and he was alone, Foster also maintained he hadn’t been driving the car. Didn’t know how it got there.

Defective empathy genes

Spot’s alter ego, Sigmund Spot, has theorized for some time that defective empathy genes cause conservatives to believe a lot of the things they believe.

George Bush the Elder held a similar view, declaring famously (so famously that I don’t need to provide a link) that some conservatives were “extra gene” conservatives. He may have crafted his theory watching W.

Now, it seems that the pioneering work of Sigmund and George the Elder is receiving some confirmation from a study by Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, as reported in the U.K. Independent. Here’s the lede from the article:

Lucy Adeniji – an evangelical Christian and author of two books on childcare – trafficked two girls and a 21-year-old woman from Nigeria to work as slaves in her east London home. She made them toil for 21 hours a day and tortured them if they displeased her. The youngest girl was 11 years old. [Since there were two girls, and one woman, it should have been “younger girl.” But I digress.]

Sentencing her to 11-and-a-half years in prison last month, Judge Simon Oliver [the judge’s name is how you know it was a case from the U.K.] said: "You are an evil woman. I have no doubt you have ruined these two girls' lives. They will suffer from the consequences of the behaviour you meted out to them for the rest of their lives."

Most people would probably agree with Judge Oliver's description of Adeniji as evil, but Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, would not be one of them. In his latest book, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty, Baron-Cohen, argues that the term evil is unscientific and unhelpful. "Sometimes the term evil is used as a way to stop an inquiry," Baron-Cohen tells me. "'This person did it because they're evil' – as if that were an explanation."

Baron-Cohen believes that the principle cause of evil behavior is a lack – sometimes a stunning lack – of empathy.

At zero degrees of empathy [on a scale developed by the professor and described in the linked article] are two distinct groups. Baron-Cohen calls them zero-negative and zero-positive. Zero-positives include people with autism or Asperger's syndrome. They have zero empathy but their "systemising" nature means they are drawn to patterns, regularity and consistency. As a result, they are likely to follow rules and regulations – the patterns of civic life.

Zero-negatives are the pathological group. These are people with borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. They are capable of inflicting physical and psychological harm on others and are unmoved by the plight of those they hurt. Baron-Cohen says people with these conditions all have one thing in common: zero empathy.

The question is: did people with these personality disorders lose their empathy or were they born that way?

One of Baron-Cohen's longitudinal studies – which began 10 years ago – found that the more testosterone a foetus generates in the womb, the less empathy the child will have post- natally. In other words, there is a negative correlation between testosterone and empathy. It would appear the sex hormone is somehow involved in shaping the "empathy circuits" of the developing brain.

Given that testosterone is found in higher quantities in men than women, it may come as no surprise that men score lower on empathy than women. So there is a clear hormonal link to empathy. Another biological factor is genetics. Recent research by Baron-Cohen and colleagues found four genes associated with empathy – one sex steroid gene, one gene related to social-emotional behaviour and two associated with neural growth.

This has, of course, implications for the utility of trying to reason or argue with conservatives.

A thump of the tail to Roger Ebert for a tweet linking to the article.

R.T. Rybak: We put out the fires for everybody

Here is the final, and I think my favorite, clip from my interview with Mayor R.T. Rybak discussing Local Government Aid and the bills for it pending in the Legislature. Part Three is a close second.

Putting out the fires for everybody

Parts One, Two, Three, and Four are at the links.

Thanks to Mayor Rybak, Communications Director John Stiles, and to one of the people who makes the Mayor’s office run, Grace, for the arrangements.

A tweet from the Deputy

I thought to myself, gee, there’s an idea. So I contacted the Deputy – and MIchael Brodkorb, too – multiple times to see how many budgets the Senate Republicans offered when they were in the minority and Governor Gutshot was in office.

[crickets]

And no, the weasel is not the Deputy’s regular avatar.

Republicans playing with constitutions

They should never be given matches, either

Republicans are never more painful idiots than when they pretend to be constitutional scholars. The example de jour is from the Minnesota Independent’s article about the “school vouchers” debate in the Minnesota Senate; here’s a comment by Sen. Benjamin Kruse:

To the possible constitutional agreement [we’ll give Ben the benefit of the doubt and say he meant “argument”] here, we just saw yesterday in Arizona, the Supreme Court upheld a very, very similar piece of legislation so I think we are heading in the right direction with this,” he said.

If your read Andy Birkey’s excellent piece,  you’ll see that the bill under consideration is a tax credit for private school tuition plan, a “back door” voucher plan as critics of the plan contend. The bill, an omnibus education bill passed the Senate, with the voucher plan attached, along party lines.

If you attend carefully to the decision in ARIZONA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL TUITION ORGANIZATION v. WINN, you will see that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a U.S. Circuit Court decision and held that the plaintiffs lacked standing: they weren’t proper plaintiffs, since they were mere taxpayers. It was a 5 – 4 decision on, of course, federal grounds.

It is hard to know what the U.S. Supreme Court is going to do these days, depending as it does on whether Justice Kennedy’s lower GI track is acting up again. So, we will regretfully lay aside the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and focus on Minnesota state law, and the Minnesota Constitution, specifically.

I have written about this issue quite a lot, including in a post entitled Captain Ahab Fishsticks’ Favorite White Whale. Perhaps Senator Kruse is not aware that Minnesota has a constitution, but it does. And it speaks more directly and comprehensively to equal educational opportunities than the Arizona Constitution’s Article 11, Section 7.

Here are the first two sections of Article XIII of the Minnesota Constitution:

Section 1. UNIFORM SYSTEM OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The stability of a republican [little “r”] form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall [must] make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.

Sec. 2. PROHIBITION AS TO AIDING SECTARIAN SCHOOL. In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught.

Something else that Sen. Kruse may not know: Minnesota had a system of tax credits for private schools that was struck down by the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1974 in a case entitled MCLU v. State. Here’s a quote from my earlier post:

Oh, by the way, boys and girls, did you know that Minnesota used to have a voucher-like scheme for private, including sectarian, schools? Well, it did until the Legislature got spanked by the Minnesota Supreme Court in MCLU v. State (oh, vile MCLU!) in 1974. It was called a tax credit system, where private school tuition up to a certain amount could be credited against Minnesota income tax, and if the credit was bigger than the tax owed, the state would send you the difference. Vouchers without the actual coupon.

The Court said, in a unanimous opinion, what? Are you nuts? (That’s Spot’s paraphrase, anyway.) It’s a violation of the separation of church and state. The Court ruled [partly] on US constitutional grounds, but noted that Minnesota also had this constitutional provision:

[Art. XIII, Sec. 2, quoted above]

Current law in Minnesota holds that a tuition tax credit system for private sectarian schools is Minnesota Constitution unconstitutional. Period.

And we haven’t even talked about Section 1 yet. There was an argument in desegregation cases brought in Minnesota that segregated schools and the system of school finance violated Section 1 of Article XIII, in that the educational opportunities for minority and inner city kids was not equal to others. I don’t think that issue was ever litigated to a conclusion, but settlements that included the inter-district school choice programs and the multi-district magnet schools indicate that the defendants took the argument seriously.

It is probably time to dust off Article XIII, Section 1 again.

The voucher bill, along with tax cuts for business proposed by the Senate Republicans, are Exhibit A – or  is it B, C, or D?; one loses track – of the fundamental unseriousness of Republicans about the deficit. They moan and wail about it until something their constituency wants comes along. Then, it’s where’s the checkbook?

Net Contributors

"In Minnesota’s case, we’re going to take the [stimulus] money, because we’re a major subsidizer of the federal government. For every dollar we send in, we only get 72 cents back, so we’re going to accept the money, because we’re paying the bill."

- Former Governor Tim Pawlenty, 2/19/09

When Republicans in Minnesota struggle for a way to reconcile bashing the federal government with accepting federal funding, the go-to strategy is "Minnesota is a net contributor to the federal government." Just yesterday, Rep. Jim Abeler (R - Coon Rapids) used it in the House Ways and Means Committee in parrying Rep. Buesgens' complaint that Minnesota was taking federal money financed by debt.

The "net contributor" argument has the virtue of being true, and according to the most recent statistics, it's even more extreme than Pawlenty's statistics. Minnesota received 54 cents in federal spending for every federal tax dollar sent to D.C from 2007 - 2009. That ranks us at 49th of the 50 states. Compare that to the libertarian utopias that the Minnesota GOP wants us to emulate:

North Dakota #11 - received $1.93 for every dollar paid in taxes

South Dakota #13 - received $1.82 for every dollar paid in taxes

Indiana #25 - received $1.26 for every dollar paid in taxes

But this is not about hypocrisy, well, at least not *that* hypocrisy. It's about another double standard. While it's perfectly acceptable for Republicans to make the net contributor argument when it comes to federal money, they're targeting Minnesota's net contributors for massive cuts in LGA.

Mayor R.T. Rybak points out that Minneapolis sent $2.86 billion in sales and property taxes to the State of Minnesota from 2003 - 2008. I wrote earlier of the hypocrisy of Rep. Linda Runbeck in protecting cities in her district from LGA cuts, and noted that Minneapolis sends 4 sales tax dollars to the state for every one dollar in LGA it receives. The economic engines of this state are cities, and they are the net contributors to Minnesota's tax coffers.

This shouldn't be surprising. We know in Minnesota that the metropolitan area functionally subsidizes the rest of the state. According to Minnesota House Research:

There's nothing inherently wrong with this. As Mayors Rybak, Coleman and Ness have stressed, we are one Minnesota that rises and falls together. But if the "net contributor" argument is persuasive on the federal level, it ought to be persuasive on the state level as well.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

The water is warm, and it’s tingly all over, too!

CNN reports that water pouring into the Pacific Ocean from the “stricken” – I personally think malignant is a better word – Fukushima nuclear power plant is radioactive 7.5 million times (that’s a seven and a five, followed by five zeros) times the legal limit. Obviously, the law is really asleep at the switch to let that happen.

No, belay that; the law is working. Now the radiation in the water is down to only five millions times the legal limit. Truly, a victory for the rule of law.

Since radioactive iodine has now been detected in fish caught off Japan, the Japanese government has imposed a limit on the radiation in fish and set the rule of law to work immediately.

Regrettably, of course, sometimes the laws of physics trump the rule of law.

Meanwhile, officials in the U.S. tell us not to worry; this isn’t a health risk, even for the fish!

John Till, president of the South Carolina-based Risk Assessment Corp., said he does not expect to see any permanent effects on marine life, even close to the plant. However, he added that officials should monitor radiation levels closely -- in the ocean as well as in seafood that reaches restaurants and markets.

Personally, I don’t favor getting health information from insurance executives.

Now this is just a hunch, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see radiation – in safe amounts, we will be told – start showing up in Pacific salmon as they start their spawning runs in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, if not this summer, then next. As predator fish with a large Pacific range, they’ll eat bait fish that have been exposed to the radioactive iodine in the water; radioactive isotope of iodine are associated with thyroid cancer. The iodine (or cesium)  will begin to accumulate in the larger predator species, just as mercury does. Over time, the radioactivity decays, but in one isotope of radioactive iodine, 129, a product of nuclear fission, the half life is 15.7 million years.

The fish above is from a Simpson’s episode.

Update: Here’s a little more about radioactivity accumulating in fish:

With a radioactive half-life of 30 years, cesium can build up in the meat of marine predators as they eat smaller animals, said Karen Gaines, chairwoman of the biology department at the University of Eastern Illinois in Charleston.

“If they’re going to restart fisheries and make people feel comfortable, they’ll need real-time monitoring of the catch,” said Gaines, who studies radioactive cesium in animals at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which made plutonium for U.S. nuclear weapons. (The sushi graphic in this update is from Avidor.)

Further update: Here is a challenging but very good post at A Tiny Revolution about why the simple linear dose model for radiation (“it’s much less than a chest x-ray!”) is of dubious validity:

I am actually sympathetic to the dose assumption. For one thing, I like the physics. If you’re trained in the field, then it’s sensible to think in terms of mass attenuation coefficients, linear energy transfer, cascades, and such things. But you should note that calculation of quantities such as these refer to model biological systems which are inanimate. This sounds complicated, but all it means is that dose calculations treat living beings as though they were not alive.

Health Care Math

Mark Dayton announced this morning that four major health care providers that receive state contracts would refund 2011 profits that exceed 1%. Sounds good to me, but the percentages don't mean much. What are the absolute dollar amounts?

Total amount of state contracted health care: About $3 billion

2010 profit rate on state contracts: 3.8%

2010 profit on state contracts, including investment income: About $150 million

Compared to a cap of 1% profit, about $30 million, this would be an $120 million refund assuming that 2011 profits are at the same rate. However, since 2010 was an up year for HMO's, the real savings may be smaller. Especially now that they've agreed to a cap in the next year, I'd guess. But if you were to project $120 million a year in refunds over the next biennium, this would represent over 4% of the total deficit.

UCare has already returned $30 million in profit and reserves to the state. The total amount held in reserve by Minnesota's non-profit health plans exceeds $2.5 billion, the highest it has been in years. In an environment where schools are asked to borrow against future revenue this cushion is not politically sustainable.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

The Mayor and the Draz

In the fourth clip from my interview of R.T. Rybak on the subject of local government aid (LGA), I asked the Mayor about Minnesota House member Steve Drazkowski.

The Mayor and the Draz

Here are parts One, Two, and Three of the interview. There will be one more clip.

Doug Tice’s cramped and bony fingers

Are all over the editorial in the Strib this morning. Rather than rehash the rehash of the original Strib editorial hash (if you parse that carefully, boys and girls, you will see that it does make sense), I am going to pick out a single sentence.

Research shows that next to family and home environment, effective teaching is the most important factor in helping students learn -- especially disadvantaged students.

And four out of five dentists chew Dentyne gum. It is to laugh.

In other words, after you have enough to eat, a place to sleep, parents who love and support you, have time to read to you and don’t abuse you, and you don’t live someplace in such grinding poverty that you don’t know what to do when you hear gunshots, well then, teachers are important.

So, says Doug (or whoever the author really is; my money is on Tice, however), let’s beat up the teachers to close the achievement gap. This we will do, “for the children,” but at the same time, we’ll tear and rend the already fragile social safety net that is really what these kids need.

My sidekick Rob has written on this subject many, many times, including here.

If you think that the poisonous, black-hearted knave who wrote this editorial cares a whit about minority kids, you’re more delusional than the writer of the editorial.

Meanwhile, if you have kids or grandkids in school, ask them what they’re doing this week (at least in Minnesota). Dollars to doughnuts they’ll tell you they are getting ready to take the MCAs, the annual high stakes test to determine whether a school has made “AYP.”  To do this, the current crop of, say, seventh graders will be compared to last year’s crop of same, even though they are different kids.

And while they’re drilling for the tests in reading and ‘rithmetic, they won’t be studying history, health, civics, art, or any of  the other subjects that make a curriculum rich. Then realize that in lower performing schools teaching to the test consumes huge amounts of time all year.

R.T. Rybak: “We’re all in this together”

Here is the third clip from my recent interview with Mayor Rybak on the subject  of Local Government Aid.

We’re all in this together

Conflicted woman lands on feet

Many of you remember Chas Anderson, the former Deputy Commissioner of Education in the Pawlenty Administration who was tasked, among other things, with destroying  the teaching profession. She left the Pawlenty clan abruptly and somewhat mysteriously last fall in the closing months of the Gutshot regime.

She was tasked – or tasked herself – with one last mission: hiring herself as a consultant. The state’s Management and Budget Office found that Anderson had violated conflict of interest rules, but that she had not defrauded the state. Perhaps because the contract was never performed.

I did not realize until recently, however, that Anderson has popped up in government again. She is now MIchael Brodkorb’s doppelganger in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Her title is the Executive Director of the Majority Caucus.

She is joined at the hip House by David Strom, formerly of the Minnesota Taxpayer’s League and the Minnesota Free Market Institute, a “Research Consultant” for the Republican Caucus. As is Davey’s wife, Margaret Martin, also listed as a “Research Consultant.”

All four are no doubt unalterably committed to reducing public employment.

Update: But it happens in Wisconsin, too.

Cheating is fundamental

For all the talk of "accountability" from the education deformers you'd think they'd be all over the latest scandals surrounding standardized testing and the deformer in chief Michelle Rhee. But of course accountability is for the little people - teachers - not the leaders. I defy anyone to peruse the Twitter feeds, for example, of 50Can.org's Marc Porter Magee, or Vallay Varro of MinnCan for even a mention of the scandals unearthed by USA Today. But you can save your time - you won't find any.

Mayor Rybak talks about cities of the First Class

Cities of the First Class

In the second part of my interview with Mayor Rybak, he discusses how the proposed cuts to certified LGA for 2011 affect only the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth.  Rochester slipped the noose by choosing 1998  - even though it’s 2011 – as the year to determine which cities receive the “first class designation.” This from Minnesota House Research:

"They ruined our neighborhoods with integration"

Who would say such a thing? George Wallace, decades ago at the schoolhouse door? Haley Barbour, who doesn't think segregation was all that bad? Scott Walker, working hard as Milwaukee County Executive to stop transit that might change the most segregated city in the country?

Wrong. It was Minnesota State Senator Dan Hall, a Republican legislator from Bloomington. And he said it on the floor of the Minnesota Senate. And right before he uttered those words, he said, "I watched Minneapolis get destroyed, so I not only didn't want my kids in the school system. I took them out of Minneapolis..."

But not to worry. Senator Hall isn't the racist those remarks might suggest. Because immediately afterward he clarified everything by assuring us that (we kid you not), "My best friends are minority."

Full story at MnIndy.

Art of the day

Click here for explanation and credit.

This is the original