Is Specter going down sooner rather than later?

The most recent polls show Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak exactly even or close for the Democratic primary. The gap between them has been closing over the past month.

And now Joe Sestak, as Chris Bowers at Open Left indicates, has unleashed a devastating ad that portrays what a true weasel Specter is.

Specter isn't an endearing figure in any way, but I just can't see how Democratic Pennsylvanians are going to want some guy who was so clearly opportunistic to be their choice. When the choice is between a real Democrat and one who will be whatever it takes to get elected, why not pick the real one?

As a Republican, I think that Specter would be easier to defeat. That same Sestak ad minus the jabs at President Bush could be an ad for Pat Toomey. So I'm hoping that Specter pulls it out. But the trendline is not favorable for Specter. He can go down either this spring or this fall. Either way, he sacrificed his dignity to achieve his defeat. Good riddance.

Surprise, surprise! Businesses considering dropping health insurance due to Obamacare

Remember that whole kerfuffle when Henry Waxman was going to subpoena business men from companies like ATT&T and John Deere because they announced that they might drop some of their health care coverage for retirees after ObamaCare passed? As a part of Waxman's high dudgeon over their temerity to indicate that ObamaCare wouldn't be so hunky-dory for their health care policies, the House subpoenaed internal documents from the companies involved. Fortune Magazine got a look at what those documents said. And here's the surprise: just as critics of ObamaCare had predicted before the bill passed, the companies found it made more sense to drop insurance for their employees and simply pay the government fines.

Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill's critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.

That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama's statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we'll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America's employers would remain the backbone of the nation's health care system.

Hence, health-care reform risks becoming a victim of unintended consequences.

Unintended consequences? Ya think? You pass a huge bill that most haven't even read and find out later that there are unintended consequences? Imagine that.

Well, Henry Waxman, one of the Democrats chief demagogues, got these documents because he was so horrified that any company would dare say that ObamaCare would adversely affect their health care coverage and planned to call the CEO's in before his committee. And he got more than he planned for. And when he found out what was in those documents, he had to cancel his hearings because he didn't want the CEOs to come out in the public and explain how ObamaCare was fulfilling the predictions of the plan's critics.

But Waxman didn't simply request documents related to the write down issue. He wanted every document the companies created that discussed what the bill would do to their most uncontrollable expense: healthcare costs.

The request yielded 1,100 pages of documents from four major employers: AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar and Deere (DE, Fortune 500). No sooner did the Democrats on the Energy Committee read them than they abruptly cancelled the hearings. On April 14, the Committee's majority staff issued a memo stating that the write downs were "proper and in accordance with SEC rules." The committee also stated that the memos took a generally sunny view of the new legislation. The documents, said the Democrats' memo, show that "the overall impact of health reform on large employers could be beneficial."

Nowhere in the five-page report did the majority staff mention that not one, but all four companies, were weighing the costs and benefits of dropping their coverage.

All the Democrats' sweet promises that their marvelous health care plan wouldn't harm people who already have insurance would have been revealed as totally false.

AT&T produced a PowerPoint slide entitled "Medical Cost Versus No Coverage Penalty." A document prepared for Verizon by consulting firm Hewitt Resources stated, "Even though the proposed assessments [on companies that do not provide health care] are material, they are modest when compared to the average cost of health care," and that to avoid costs and regulations, "employers may consider exiting the health care market and send employees to the Exchanges." (Under the new bill, employees who lose their coverage will purchase health care through state-run exchanges.)

Kenneth Huhn, vice president of labor relations at Deere, said in an internal email that his company should look at the alternatives to providing health benefits, which "would amount to denying coverage and just paying the penalty," and that he felt he already had the ability to make this change under his company's labor agreement. Caterpillar felt it would have to give "serious consideration" to the penalty option.

It's these analyses -- which show it's a lot cheaper to "pay" than to "play" -- that threaten to overthrow the traditional architecture of health care.

In the real world, not the world of politics, businessmen have to weigh costs and benefits. And when the penalty for not providing health care is much less than the costs of providing that health care, it is rational of them to seriously consider dropping their health insurance plans.

ndeed, companies are far more likely to cease providing coverage if they predict the bill will lift rather than flatten the cost curve. Deere, for example said, "We do expect double digit health care increases as most Americans will now have insurance and providers try to absorb the 15% uninsured into a practice."

Both Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500) and Verizon believe the requirement to allow dependents to remain on their parents' policies until age 26 will prove costly. Caterpillar puts the added expense at $20 million a year.

Here's another surprise that critics predicted. The new taxes in the ObamaCare plan on expensive plans that are supposed to kick in starting in 2018 are going to cause businesses to reconsidered their insurance plans.

First, there is the "Cadillac Tax" on expensive plans. This is a 40% excise tax on policies that cost over $8,500 for an individual or $23,000 for a family. Verizon's document predicts the tax will cost its employees $255 million a year when it starts in 2018, and rise sharply from there. Hewitt also isn't sure that Verizon can pass on the full tax to its employees; so it could impose a heavy weight on the company as well. "Many [have] characterized this tax as a pass-through to the consumer," says the Verizon document. "However, there will be significant legal and bargaining risks to overcome for this to be the case for Verizon."

Once companies start dropping their coverage their employees will be thrown into the needing to buy the public plans through the pools that the government is supposed to provide. This will vastly increase the cost of ObamaCare way beyond what the CBO predicted because the CBO assumed that companies will keep or even expand their coverage of their employees.

What does it mean for health care reform if the employer-sponsored regime collapses? By Fortune's reckoning, each person who's dropped would cost the government an average of around $2,100 after deducting the extra taxes collected on their additional pay. So if 50% of people covered by company plans get dumped, federal health care costs will rise by $160 billion a year in 2016, in addition to the $93 billion in subsidies already forecast by the CBO. Of course, as we've seen throughout the health care reform process, it's impossible to know for certain what the unintended consequences of these actions will be.

Unintended consequences indeed. And that is why Henry Waxman canceled the hearings. He didn't want the public to know what he and his fellow Democrats have wrought.

Why was law enforcement leaking so much about the Times Square bombing?

Andy McCarthy links to this story from NPR about the role that leaks from law enforcement officials investigating the Times Square bombing attempt. I remember listening to these stories earlier this week and wondering why they were making public such information about finding the VIN number on parts of the car and that they had traced the ownership of the vehicle to a man in Connecticut. Apparently, the reporters knew so much about the ongoing investigation that they could stake out the same locations that the police and FBI were staking out.

As one law enforcement official told NPR, "Our operational plans were being driven by the media, instead of the other way around. And that's not good."

He said they watched in horror as news organizations started talking about the fact that the vehicle identification number on the Nissan Pathfinder used in the botched bombing had been taken off the windshield. Then another report said that wouldn't matter, as authorities could find the VIN on other parts of the car. A short time later, the fact that they had found the number was reported. The coverage was providing a lot of clues about the direction the case was going.

On Monday afternoon, basically a day-and-a-half after the attack, a news organization reported that law enforcement officials were looking for an American citizen of Pakistani descent from Shelton, Conn. (NPR also had the information but didn't report it out of concern that it would affect the investigation before Shahzad's arrest.)

Shahzad mentioned that news report after he was in police custody, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the case. He told the arresting officers that the moment he read it was the moment he knew it was only a matter of time before authorities would close in on him. He also assumed from the report that he was under surveillance.

That's an important detail, because surveillance is only effective if people don't know they are being watched. "It was like watching an episode of 24 in real time," a law enforcement official said. The only problem was that Shahzad was able to watch it, too.

Then it got worse: Reporters started showing up at Shahzad's house in Shelton, waiting for the arrest to happen. Shahzad was actually up the road at a ramshackle apartment he had rented in Bridgeport. That's where officers were watching him — but apparently that also was leaked. A TV reporter showed up there and waited.

For the arresting officers, there was another wrinkle. They knew from running Shahzad's name through databases that he had purchased a gun in March. If the suspect was following the media reports, he knew the noose was tightening and might try to shoot his way out. They had to fundamentally change how they were going to approach the house to prepare for that possibility.

But Shahzad surprised them by leaving the apartment. He went to a local supermarket and they lost track of him. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told NPR on Wednesday that they lost him for about three hours. When they finally caught up with Shahzad just before midnight Monday on a plane bound for Dubai, he smiled at the officers and said, "I've been expecting you. Are you NYPD or FBI?"

There is irresponsibility all around here. Law enforcement officials who leaked to the media should be fired. There is no excuse for that. Were they grandstanding to demonstrate that they were on top of things or just blabbing away? They lost this guy and only gwere lucky enough to get him as the plane was taxiing away from the airport. Wouldn't it have been easier to pick him up if he hadn't known that they were so close to tracking him down? And how did this guy get away if both law enforcement and the media had staked him out at his apartment? That's another goof-up that should be investigated.

I realize that there was tremendous public pressure to find out information about the investigation, but there is no excuse for giving away key information to the media that came close to throwing the whole game away. What if they had been too late to catch Shahzad at the airport and lost him simply because he could watch TV and realize how close he was to getting picked up?

It's come to this

Five students at a California high school were told that they couldn't wear T shirts with images of the American flag on them. They had to either wear their shirts inside out or go home. They chose to go home.

So why were these shirts considered so offensive? Because it was Cinco de Mayo and the principal was afraid their shirts would spark fights with the Mexican-American students who were celebrating that day.

Note that wearing the Stars and Stripes is now considered rather like wearing gang paraphernalia that might lead to fights so it should be censored.

The boys told Rodriguez and Principal Nick Boden that turning their shirts inside-out was disrespectful, so their parents decided to take them home.

"I just couldn't believe it," Julie Fagerstrom, Maciel's mother, told the Morgan Hill Times. "I'm an open-minded parent, but it's got to be on both sides. It can't be five kids singled out."

Galli told NBC Bay Area, "They said we could wear it on any other day, but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it's supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it."

It's fine if the Mexican-American students wanted to spend the day wearing images of the Mexican flag, but that shouldn't mean that other students can't express their national pride also. There doesn't seem to be any history of fights having broken out previously due to someone wearing the flag, so the administrators are just assuming that the Latino students will get angry and attack the kids wearing the American flag. Isn't that insulting to the Latino students?

In addition to the natural offensiveness of considering the American flag on the level of gang insignia, the administrators' actions seem pretty clearly to violate the students' First Amendment rights.

Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California-Los Angeles, said the students are protected under California Education Code 48950, which prohibits schools from enforcing a rule subjecting a high school student to disciplinary sanctions solely on the basis of conduct, that when engaged outside of campus, is protected by the First Amendment.

If the school could point to previous incidents sparked by students who wore garments with American flags, they could argue that the flag is likely to lead to "substantial disruption," Volokh said.

"If, for example, there had been fights over similar things at past events, if there had been specific threats made," he said. "But if [school officials] just say, 'Well, we think it might be offensive to people,' that's generally speaking not enough."

Volokh said the students and their parents likely have a winning case on their hands if they decide to take the matter to court.

"Oh yes, it's almost open and shut," he said.

Lis Wiehl, a former federal prosecutor and a Fox News legal analyst, said the incident appears to a "blatant" violation of the students' First Amendment right to free speech. She noted that inciting violence is an exception to a First Amendment legal defense, but Wiehl said she saw no indications that the students provoked anyone.

And note the sense of entitlement from this student.

"I think they should apologize 'cause it is a Mexican Heritage Day," Annicia Nunez told KNTV. "We don't deserve to get disrespected like that. We wouldn't do that on Fourth of July."

If the big push by supporters of illegal immigrants is that they be granted a path to citizenship, why assume that Latino students would object to the sight of a flag that so many immigrants are hoping to call their own? And if the sight of someone wearing an image of the American flag is indeed considered an incitement to violence or even a sign of disrespect, then we need to reconsider the debate over citizenship. Apparently, when we celebrate diversity, some students' diversity is more equal than others.

UPDATE: Dafydd Ab Hugh has some suggestions of how the administrators could have turned this whole experience into a valuable learning experience. And isn't that what schools are for?

* Think what a revelation it would have been had Miguel Rodriguez explained to them that, while their heritage may be Mexican, they themselves are American citizens… so the American flag is not insulting or disrespectful to them. (I doubt a single one of the protesting students is actually a Mexican citizen.)
* Imagine if Rodriguez had told them that celebrating a victory by Mexico over France does not require them to attack the United States… which allied with Mexico in that very war.
* Imagine if he had lectured them about showing civility themselves: The five students didn’t tell anyone else not to wear the colors of the Mexican flag; why should Hispanic students demand that their classmates not wear the colors of the American flag — which is, of course, also the flag of the Hispanic students?

Alas, the administrators simply thought of how to use rules to enforce their own idea of civility and passed up this opportunity. Clearly, mutual respect is not an aspect of this school's culture and the administrators model that lack of respect themselves.

Cruising the Web

Ah, once again economics works. Florida places a whopping big tax on boats registered in their state. It is a tax that is more than 100 times what it costs to register the boat in some other state or the Cayman Islands. So what do you bet that people do when it comes to the time to buy and register their boats? This luxury tax on the rich is rebounding to hurt people in Florida who aren't getting jobs working in an industry that is being taxed out of the state. It might be satisfying to put a huge tax on a luxury good, but the ones who are hurt aren't the rich.

Hotline reports that Democratic turnout in Tuesday's primaries was quite dismal. I had noticed that only about 50,000 more people voted in the very competitive Democratic primary to pick a challenger to Senator Richard Burr than voted in the Republican primary where Burr was basically uncontested. In Ohio, where there was a competitive primary there was a 200,000 dropoff from 2006 when the incumbents running didn't have serious primary opponents. You think that enthusiasm for Democrats might be drying up?

How much will this really hurt Arizona? SEIU and LaRaza are going to boycott the state to protest its new immigration law.

Daniel Pipes wonders why so many commentators are mystified by what the motive could be to blow up Times Square. How can we win a struggle if leaders are so reluctant to name the enemy that wants to kill us?

Hmmm. It's not a good idea to have the Chief of Staff of the Department of the Interior take a vacation white-water rafting in the Grand Canyon while his department is responsible for coordinating the federal actions in the Gulf of Mexico. Remember all those leaders of our national security who went on vacation after the Christmas Day bombing attempt. Just not good timing.

When the FBI put Faisal Shahzad's name on the no-fly list, they asked the TSA not to pick up the phone and call the airlines to alert them that a new name had been added to the list.

The Washington Post is trying to sell Newsweek which lost $28 million last year. Why doesn't the Democratic Party buy it since it already seems to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrats?

Despite brave words from the Democrats, David Obey's announced retirement will add one more tough battle for the Democrats to maintain a seat thought to be safe. The leading Republican candidate was once on MTV's "The Real World." That will be a first.

Voters don't seem to be buying the teachers union's big effort that Toledo, Ohio needed a tax increase in order to get more money for the schools. Voters seemed to catch on that, with spending an average of $10,000 per student, more money isn't the solution. Two-thirds of Tuesday's voters voted against the tax increase.

Why are the Democrats so resistant to reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? They blocked all efforts to reform the two companies before our financial meltdown. And they didn't include any such reform in their much touted Senate financial package. NOw Senators McCain, Shelby, and Gregg are proposing an amendment to that package. We'll see if the Democrats will even allow a vote on the amendment much less support the reform. We'll see if they're really serious about preventing any more bailouts.

Please help a worthy cause

This is just a reminder to ask you to vote again for a project run by a teacher at my school and a lot of our students so that they can win a $5000 grant from Pepsi.

A co-worker of mine at my school began a wonderful organization with the help of students to raise money to provide financial help for retired Blues musicians in the Piedmont as well as to introduce younger people to great Blues music. They call their organization SOOTS (you can read more about it here and here) and they work feverishly to find ways to raise money.

Right now they're trying to win a grant from Pepsi and they need people to go to Pepsi's site to vote for their project. Please take a minute and go on over to the Pepsi site and vote for their project. It's a wonderful effort by young people to help these great bluesmen. Here are instructions on how to vote.

To VOTE through Pepsi's Site, go to this link

1. Click that you want to vote for this organization.
2. Follow the directions for "Sign Up" (beware not to ask to be contacted about Pepsi Offers unless you'd like to be )
3. Then you should be able to "Sign In" everyday (by clicking on the words at the bottom left of the Pepsi Refresh Project Homepage)

Thank you.

Reforms for me, but not for thee

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post examines Arizona and pinpoints the culprit for allowing conservatives to get elected to the state legislature - state public financing of political campaigns.

One admirable notion underlying the law was to make campaigns more competitive, leveling the playing field between entrenched incumbents beholden to moneyed interests and upstart challengers otherwise unable to amass the necessary resources.

Trouble is, it worked -- perhaps too well. The barriers to entry were extremely low. People with little experience in politics at any level ran for the legislature and won. Previously, for better or worse, candidates of both parties were "vetted" by business groups that then proceeded to help them raise money, a process that served to filter out extremes on both sides.

And, as it turned out, a law pushed by "good government" types, primarily Democrats, ended up benefiting conservative Republicans who quickly figured out that the Clean Elections money could be used to take on Chamber of Commerce-type Republicans.

"Clean Elections allowed individuals . . . not to have to compete financially since they didn't have to build constituencies," Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, a Democrat, said in an interview.

J.D. Hayworth, the conservative former congressman who is challenging Sen. John McCain in the Republican primary here, told me that "for those of us who derided it as nanny-state government, and properly so," the "unintended consequence is that it has empowered conservatives."

Horrors! Unintended consequences that benefit those who aren't liberals. Nasty, nasty. That is not what is supposed to happen with progressive reforms. Perhaps that is why there is an effort by Arizona's own progressive Supreme Court justice to repeal the law.

Retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor is spearheading a reform effort that includes repealing the financing law. But a measure to do so died in the just-concluded legislative session.

Marcus concludes,

I am a firm supporter, in theory, of public financing and, even more, of nonpartisan redistricting. But the Arizona experience offers a sobering lesson to reformers. It's not necessarily to be careful what you wish for. But craft your wish with precision, or you may regret making it.

Yup, that's the rub with such progressive reforms. They don't turn out the way they planned. Think of all the campaign finance reforms these good government folks have supported for decades. Have you noticed how money has been removed from politics since the first reforms were passed in the early 1970s?

A Democrat making sense on unions

If you haven't seen the column that Mickey Kaus, the quirky blogger who is running in the California Democratic primary against Barbara Boxer, just wrote in the LA Times, head on over and read it. Kaus breaks with liberal orthodoxy and says that it is time for Democrats to start being skeptical about unions. Kaus makes the point that, as I've taught the history of the labor movement in US history I think is so clear, unions once served a very important purpose in our economy and achieved great things for their workers. But they've achieved their major goals of safe working conditions, good salaries, and great benefits for workers. Times have changed and we don't need unions that are fighting the battles of the 19th century or even from the 1950s. And Kaus recognizes that it is time for a change.

But our union system is stuck in 1950, when it was considered a glorious achievement to generate thick books full of work rules that restricted what could be changed. At some automobile plants, every position on the assembly line was considered a distinct job classification. You wouldn't want an "Installer Level II" to have to do the job of an "Installer Level I," would you? Then came the competition from Japanese factories, where employees spent their time building cars instead of work rules, and there was only one job classification: "production." If something needed doing, you did it. Is it any wonder the Japanese cleaned Detroit's clock for two decades?

Keep in mind that Detroit's union, the United Auto Workers, is one of our best. It's democratic. It's not corrupt. Its leadership has often been visionary. Yet working within our archaic union system, it still helped bring our greatest industry to its knees. And the taxpayers were stuck with the bill for bailing it out, while UAW members didn't even take a cut of $1 an hour in their $28-an-hour basic pay. How many Californians would like $27-an-hour manufacturing jobs? Actually, there was a good auto factory in California, the NUMMI plant in Fremont. It got sucked under when GM went broke. Those 4,500 jobs are gone.

Yet the answer of most union leaders to the failure of 1950s unionism has been more 1950s unionism. This isn't how we're going to get prosperity back. But it's the official Democratic Party dogma. No dissent allowed.

And Kaus recognizes that the increasing power of public unions is coming to threaten the economies of states such as California as well as the country at large.

Government unions are even more problematic (and as private sector unions have failed in the marketplace, government unions are increasingly dominant). If there are limits on what private unions can demand — when they win too much, as we've seen, their employers tend to disappear — there is no such limit on what government unions can demand. They just have to get the politicians to raise your taxes to pay for it, and by funding the Democratic machine they acquire just the politicians they need.

No wonder that in our biggest school systems, it's become virtually impossible to fight the teachers unions and fire bad teachers. The giant Los Angeles Unified school system, with 33,000 teachers, fires only about 21 a year, or fewer than 1 in 1,000, according to the findings of an L.A. Times investigation. Now either Los Angeles has the greatest teachers in the world or something is very wrong. Talk to parents and you'll know the answer.

When I was growing up in West L.A., practically everyone went to public schools, even in the affluent neighborhoods. Only the discipline cases, the juvenile delinquents, went off to a military academy. It was vaguely disreputable. Now any parent who can afford it pays a fortune for private school. The old liberal ideal of a common public education has been destroyed. And it's been destroyed in large part not by Republicans but by teachers unions.

As the private economy has faltered, we increasingly have a two-tier economy: If you're an insider, a unionized government employee, you're in good shape. Even if you don't do a very good job, you won't be fired. Even in hard times, Washington will spend billions in stimulus funds so that you don't get laid off. You won't even have to take much of a pay cut. And you can retire like an aristocrat at taxpayer expense. But if you're an outsider, trying to survive in a world of $10-an-hour jobs, competing with immigrant labor, paying for your own healthcare, forced to send your children to lousy public schools run by unfireable teachers and $100,000-a-year bureaucrats — well, good luck to you. But be sure to vote Democratic.

Of course Kaus has no expectation of actually defeating Barbara Boxer. That is why he's free to say what would be poison to any real politician. But what he's saying is so very important for voters to hear. As long as the Democratic Party is a fully owned subsidiary of the unions, there can be no serious reform of how government relates to unions and the unions themselves won't change.

For example of the power and myopic vision of public sector unions in California, how about the teachers going on strike for one day in Oakland simply because the school district added in an expansion of funding for charter schools that are competing with Oakland's failing schools to a new tax to raise teacher salaries. The unions are upset because they don't want any of the new tax money to go to charter schools but the district needed to include that in order to get the necessary two-thirds support from the electorate to approve the tax increase. And so the teachers went on strike for one day to express their ire.

I just hope that Kaus's message gets out and California's Democratic voters decide to send Barbara Boxer her own message. Not that she would change her positions, but one can dream, can't one? At least, it may become clear throughout the state what the unions have wrought.

History Bloopers

This week is the week of Advanced Placement exams for my students and I've been busy helping my students get ready. Since the kids in my US History class are feeling a bit stressed, I shared with them some of the bloopers from last year's exam that real students had written on their exam. A friend of mine had been to the grading and collected a list of some of the honest-to-god sentences that students wrote on their exams. Here are a few examples.

Here are some responses for a question about slaves and free blacks in the period from the Revolution to 1830:

-Slaves could earn their freedom by sacrificing their lives.
-During this time, blacks had to live in ghettos and ride on the back of the bus.
-The Underground Railroad was a non-profit organization.
-African-Americans were forced into slavery, even after slavery was abolished. This was very frustrating.

For a question on the lead-up to the American Revolution, here are some of the answers:

- The Boys of Liberty dressed like Mowhawks and made dumps of tea.
-If the king had not taxed the colonies so heavily and made everyone so mad, I might be taking the AP British History exam right now.
-By 1770, we had overthrown republican values once and for all.
-To make sure the soldiers had housing, Parliament passed the Cootering Act.
-fter the Boston Massacre, the Colonies were no longer nerdy Bruce Banner, but the raging hulk. With fearsome eyes and a green body, he turned his wrath towards the King.
-The British king and government feared the emergence of the Confederate States of America. This later led to a war between Britain and the northern colonies against the southern colonies. The Southerners were led by Jefferson Davis, whose daughters attended my school!
-If they'd won, God knows what our teeth would look like.
-If the British had played their cards differently, we'd all be running around with British accents and calling diapers "nappies."

And for a question on various ethnic groups during World War Two:

- The Spanish-American War was fought in Mexico, and was a major part of World War II.
-The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and were all like, 'We all that,' and we were all like 'Oh noes you didn't!'
-The Japanese were put into gated communities.

Jumping to conclusions

I realize that authorities have a concern about making sure that people don't get panicked when there is a news of a terrorist attack, even one that we were so fortunate that it didn't work. But our leaders should also be super careful about not going on TV and making assumptions that they can't possibly know in the early stages of the investigation.

Here is what Mayor Bloomberg said on CBS

Bloomberg later told CBS Evening News Anchor Katie Couric that the suspect behind the bombing attempt could be a domestic terrorist angry at the government who acted alone.

"If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything," he said.

"There is no evidence here of a conspiracy, there is no evidence that it's tied into anything else. It looks like an amateurish job done by at least one person," he told Couric.

How would Bloomberg know that there was no conspiracy?

And why throw out there the possibility that it was a mentally deranged person or give as an example that it might have been someone who "didn't like the health care bill or something?" Why throw out there such musings in the first place? And how convenient that the example he chose was a conservative who didn't like Obama's agenda.

And then there is Janet Napolitano who went on the Sunday shows to allay anxieties.

Janet Napolitano, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, said today that the unexploded car bomb found in Times Square in New York late yesterday appeared to be an "amateurish" terrorism attempt.

Ms Napolitano said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security and the City of New York were examining security video from the area around the vehicle, a Nissan SUV, which was towed early on Sunday to a forensic lab in Queens after a robotic arm was used to break the windows and remove the most dangerous materials.

There was no information to suggest that there are any other terrorism targets linked to the incident and the evidence so far suggested that this was a "one-off attempt", Ms Napolitano told Fox News.

Is it amateurish simply because it was detected and didn't kill anyone? How do you define a professional terrorist? And how would she know that it was a "one-off?"

And Bloomberg and Napolitano weren't the only ones.

A couple of hours later, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, stood in front of a CNN camera in Times Square and said, “The odds are quite high that this was a lone wolf.”

Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security, suggested that the reason behind the attempted attack was “the whole issue with ‘South Park,’ which Islamic terrorists were threatening to have retribution for.”

Yes, people on the internet had speculated that there was a connection to "South Park," but someone in an authoritative positions shouldn't be speculating on that any more than Bloomberg should be guessing randomly that it was someone who opposed ObamaCare.


And now that we find that the police have arrested a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, all these pronouncements seem quite silly.

Reactions to this story should be a case study for officials of what not to say when a story is breaking and they really don't know much about what motivated the terrorist and what his connections were. Such unsubstantiated guesses do nothing to allay public concerns.

Cruising the Web

James Taranto notes the different treatments by Associated Press of the violent riot in Santa Cruz by marchers in a pro-immigrants march and the way that AP treated protesters of ObamaCare. There is quite a difference in assumptions and tone.

Professor John B. Taylor of Stanford suggests that we should scrap Dodd's financial reform bill and instead adopt a new bankruptcy process for failed financial institutions. It makes sense. Let's avoid any chance that the federal government will be on the hook for more bailouts.

Thomas Sowell puts forth his theories to explain the black on Asian violence in San Francisco.

A new study says that Congress passes too many vague laws. Ya think? They're writing laws in terrible rushes and then having to find suitable language to get enough votes. They don't seem to care about possible errors or vague language. They'd just prefer to leave it to bureaucrats to muddle through to figuring out how to enforce it. It's a safe prediction that we're going to be finding out about dozens more of such "vague" or ill-written provisions in the health care bill.

The Associated Press casts doubt on the Obama administration's claims that they have been fully engaged from "Day One" to the BP oil rig explosion. But not to worry: Janet Napolitano is in charge of this emergency also. That should allay all anxiety.

Ah, another piece of evidence that the federal government hasn't been as on top of the BP oil spill as they'd like to pretend. Why, despite a federal plan calling for them, are fire booms still not in place in the Gulf?

Racism in San Francisco

San Francisco's politicians are all up in arms over their misunderstandings of Arizona's new law, but they might want to pay attention to what is going on in their own community. San Francisco Chronicle columnist C. W. Nevius writes about the dirty little secret of black on Asian racism in San Francisco.

San Francisco's hidden truth is out. That's what community organizer Carol Mo calls the realization that Asian residents are being targeted for robberies, burglaries and intimidation by young black men.

"It is San Francisco's dirty little secret," said Mo, a former Safety Network Community organizer in the Sunset District. "It's not news to us."

Hundreds of people marched into Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting to express their fear, frustration and outrage. But so far the response has been disappointing, particularly from the San Francisco Police Department. It seems intent on downplaying the role of race and its impact in the community.

The recent incidents of black violence against Asians is the perfect opportunity to open a dialogue about racism. Instead, they are attempting to close the door.

City officials, including the Police Department, say these assaults are part of a larger crime picture where gangs of kids take advantage of a vulnerable group of small stature. But Mo participated in a 2008 survey by the Police Department in which about 300 strong-arm robberies were analyzed. "In 85 percent of the physical assault crimes, the victims were Asian and the perpetrators were African American," she said.

The squeamishness city officials are experiencing about confronting those numbers doesn't reflect well on anyone. No one is saying the entire African American community is violent. But ignoring the legitimate anger and frustration from Asians is disingenuous and unfair.

Perhaps Mayor Gavin Newsom should worry a bit less about what law Arizonans have passed to deal with their burgeoning crime situation due to illegal immigrants and worry about the racial crimes in his own city.

Debra Saunders had a perceptive take on San Francisco's moral preening about Arizona.

I still have to ask: Why should San Francisco support a boycott of another government? Don't city politicians have their hands full governing this place, without telling other politicians how to run their turf?

"There is a need for uniformity in this area," [S.F. City Attorney] Herrera told me. Now that's choice, considering Ess Eff's "sanctuary city" policy. Back in 2007, Mayor Gavin Newsom proudly announced that he would not allow "any of my department heads or anyone associated with this city" to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of immigrant fugitives.

So one year, city solons proudly flout federal law; another year, they complain that immigration law is sacrosanct as a federal bailiwick, so how dare Arizonans trespass? So much for uniformity.

Herrera pointed to the success of a past boycott that drove Arizona to accept the Martin Luther King Day holiday. He noted that politicians from other cities -- Los Angeles, Oakland -- want to join San Francisco in using their weight to force little Arizona to buckle. Alas, these bullying tactics only serve to divide the country.

It's easy for San Franciscans, from 700 miles away, to sneer at Arizonans. Folks here don't live in an area where cross-border drug violence has led to highway gun battles.

The Democrats' version of free speech

The Democrats have been up in arms over the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United that threw out the provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that limited independent campaign expenditures by corporations and unions before an election. So they've turned to the leaders of their campaign committees in Congress, Senator Schumer and Rep. Van Hollen to craft a bill to add in restrictions on free speech by corporations.

The legislation, sponsored by Democrats Charles Schumer in the Senate and Chris Van Hollen in the House, would prevent government contractors and corporate beneficiaries of the Troubled Asset Relief Program from spending money on U.S. elections. It would also ban U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies from making political contributions if a foreign national owns 20% or more of the voting shares in the company, or if foreign nationals comprise a majority of the board of directors.

The provisions are designed to undermine this year's landmark Supreme Court Citizens United decision, which held that limits on independent campaign expenditures by corporations or unions violate First Amendment free speech guarantees. But, under the bill, unions with government contracts would not be subject to the same restrictions as corporations.

If, as proponents claim, their worry is that a company will use campaign contributions to win government contracts (pay-to-play), why does their bill not show equal concern that labor unions will support candidates with the goal of getting government contracts driven to union companies? The legislation also fails to impose limits on the foreign involvement of unions with global reach, such as the Service Employees International Union or the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

You see, the whole goal is to regulate speech by those whom the Democrats don't like, but not that of groups which support Democrats.

Cruising the Web

Here's a nice change a pace: The Metropolitan Museum of Art believes that one of their works that they thought was done by lesser known Renaissance artists is actually the work of Michelangelo.

Democrats are all upset that the History Channel is allowing a group led by Joel Surnow, the man who brought us "24," to produce a mini-series about the Kennedys. They are all bothered that the mini-series will depict JFK's private life. In other words, they are not gliding over JFK's extremely active sex life. Some liberal historians want the History Channel to rewrite the mini-series. Hmmm, were these historians equally upset at how Hollywood has portrayed Republicans including Nixon, Reagan, or George W. Bush?

The French are absolutely outraged and marching in the streets about Sarkozy's proposal to raise the age of retirement with full old-age pensions from age 60. They feel that, somehow, one of their basic human rights to retire at a full pension when they're 60 years old, rising deficits, declining birth rates be damned.

Britain's National Health Service is barring a hospital from using potentially life-saving technology that can deliver radiotherapy with pinpoint accuracy to tumors even though the hospital has already purchased the machine. Their National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) hasn't yet even begun its study on the cost benefits of using the new technology, so the machine sits idle while patients wait for NICE to get around to writing up a report.

You want to buy a newspaper in the nation's capital? Sun Myung Moon is reportedly shopping around the Washington Times.

How cool is this? A British sniper set a world record by killing two Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan from more than a mile and a half away.

Two presidents in one! President Obama gave a commencement speech in which he sets up a strawman by criticizing those who say say that "all of government is inherently bad." Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi is asking Barack Obama to cease and desist bashing Washington and talking about how Washington is broken because she feels that his tone doesn't do enough to include the Republicans in his blame game. I guess that he's the only one who is allowed to point the finger at Washington.

Ed Morrissey links to this devastating story from IBD about how the federal government created its own dust bowl devastating one of our richest agricultural areas of the country, California's central Valley. The federal government, following overblown concerns over the delta smelt and the need to divert water for salmon have cut off water to the valley. Now they've totally destroyed agriculture in the area with unemployment in some areas up to 45%. Say good-bye to our nation's almond production. And the Obama government has used water allocations as inducements to buy the votes of congressman from the area on health care. In a final irony, farm workers who are now getting handouts of food are receiving carrots grown in China when they are living right in the area that used to produce its own abundant carrot crop.

A classy role model for students

A classy guy: the United Federation of Teachers president, Mike Mulgrew, repeatedly calls the Chancellor of New York City schools, Joel Klein, a "numbnuts." Governor Christie is a "butterball." Yup, that's real class. A model of reasoned debate to set for students.

And what really gets AFT and Mulgrew going is any hint that incompetent teachers might be let go in favor of keeping younger, better teachers.

Sources said Mulgrew announced at the convention that the union will run a Democratic primary fight against Manhattan Assemblyman Jonathan Bing, who has proposed a bill to curb the "last hired, first fired" provision that protects veteran teachers from layoffs. Mayor Bloomberg has warned layoffs might be necessary because of budget cuts.

Mulgrew revealed to the delegates he spoke to Bing, and that he told the assemblyman he's politically "dead to the union."

For this union leader, it's all about protecting verteran teachers, not making sure that the best teachers are the ones in the classrooms. I guess being concerned about budgets and making sure that students have the best teachers available is something only numbnuts care about.

Learning from the successful charter schools

The New York Times looks at charter schools today in their front section. In a long article they come to the conclusion that, despite all the high-power celebrity and political support for charter schools, some charters are doing fabulous jobs educating poor and minority students and some...aren't.

Well, what a shocker! The important thing is that there is a model out there that is successful with the same sorts of students that the regular public schools haven't had success. That model can be duplicated if there can be found enough talented administrators and dedicated teachers who want to put in the long hours and hard work. As the article recounts a visit to one fifth grade teacher's classroom at Williamsburg Collegiate in Brooklyn, you can get an idea of what is working to make this a successful school.

At Williamsburg Collegiate, whose middle school students annually outscore the district and city averages on state tests, Jason Skeeter stood before his math students the other day as tightly coiled as a drill sergeant. He issued instructions in a loud, slightly fearsome voice, without an extra word or gesture. “Five minutes on the clock,” he told the 26 fifth graders, as they began a “Do Now” review sheet on least common denominators.

On the whiteboard, an agenda told students precisely what to expect for the 60-minute period. Mr. Skeeter placed his digital Teach Timer on an overhead projector so the countdown was visible to all. When the buzzer sounded, he announced, “Hold ’em up,” and students raised their pencils.

“Clap if you’re with me,” he said, clapping twice to snap students to attention. The class responded with a ritual double-stomp of the feet and a hand clap.

Mr. Skeeter, 30, a stocky man in a dark blue shirt and tie, moved swiftly to a second timed exercise, the “Mad Minute,” 60 multiplication problems in 60 seconds.

“Pencils down,” he ordered after the minute was up. “Switch papers with your partner.”

The teacher read aloud the 60 answers. “Hands on your head when you’re done counting” correct answers, he told students. He started the timer again as he called students’ names — DeAndre, Alejandro, Nakeri, Lyric — typing their scores into a laptop. He announced the class average: 37.86.

“Brian Leventer,” he said, making what the school calls a cold call to one student rather than looking for a raised hand, “what does it round to?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Thirty-eight is correct,” Mr. Skeeter said. The class had fallen two points shy of fifth graders in a rival class. “Close, close, close,” the teacher said.

At Williamsburg Collegiate, everything is measured, everything is compared, graphed and displayed publicly. Besides academics, students compete for merit points for good behavior and receive demerits for absent homework or disrespect. The school drills students on posture and clear speaking, known as SLANT, shorthand for “Sit up straight. Listen. Ask and answer questions. Nod for understanding. Track the speaker,” meaning follow with your eyes.

“I will give merits to the first group to stop what they’re doing and track me,” Mr. Skeeter said at one point.

A rigidly structured environment is part of the formula the school believes produces success. Another is “the use of data to inform everything we do,” said Brett Peiser, the superintendent. If tests reveal that 70 percent of students do not know how to add fractions with like denominators, teachers reteach it. The curriculum is constantly adjusted.

Although half of Mr. Skeeter’s fifth graders began the year, their first at the school, below grade level, his goal is for all to pass the state exam. It is a goal that eludes most schools statewide with populations like Williamsburg Collegiate’s, which is 99 percent African-American and Hispanic, with 83 percent eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.

Yet last year all 78 of the school’s fifth graders who took the math exam passed. “If our goal is to close the achievement gap and prepare students for college, obviously we’re trending in the right direction,” Mr. Peiser said.

Williamsburg Collegiate is part of the Uncommon Schools network which places an emphasis on high standards and data-based instruction.

All of our schools are predicated on standards-based instructional models, proven curricula driven and informed by assessment, and highly structured environments.

How much of this approach is practically anathema to many public school teachers? I've sat through so many education workshops where the leader and other participants pooh pooh such ideas. The emphasis is strongly on discovery learning. They want to engage all sorts of learning styles and get away from the drill and learn approach. They don't believe in lots of testing or holding teacher and students accountable to standards and testing.

And for some students that is just fine. If you're teaching students who come in with a strong foundation in reading and math, you have the time to devote to discovery experiences. But such lessons take more time and can be more hit and miss, especially if the class discipline is not strong. With students coming in to a fifth grade classroom who are already below grade level in reading and math, there isn't the time for constructivist learning experiences. They need to master the basics quickly so that they're ready to move on.

The wonderful thing about charter schools is the flexibility they offer school administrators to figure out what they're doing wrong and turn it around.

“I think many people settle and tend to let themselves off the hook,” said Perry White, a former social worker who founded the Citizens’ Academy charter school in Cleveland in 1999 — naïvely, he now recognizes — and has overseen its climb from an F on its state report card in 2003 to an A last year. “It took us a while to understand we needed a no-excuses culture,” he said, one of “really sweating the small stuff.”

Sweating the small stuff and not letting themselves off the hook: those are lessons all schools could learn from.

And what is even more difficult to measure is that parents may prefer a charter school that isn't doing well to putting their students back in the regular public schools. So in the contrasting school in Cleveland that the NYT article describes, what stands out for me is that the school is trying to turn around its poor performance and that the parents don't want to leave.

As fifth graders one year ago, only 20 percent of the school’s students passed the state math exam, results that contributed to the school’s overall grade of F. The principal, Debroah A. Mays, was disappointed by the results. She introduced a yearlong improvement plan that included Saturday tutoring and teacher training.

“We are determined to become a school of excellence,” Mrs. Mays said.

Even though the school did worse on the Ohio math and English exams than the average Cleveland public school, families did not flee Arts and Social Sciences Academy. On the contrary, enrollment has doubled in each of the past two years. It is a phenomenon often seen in academically failing charter schools when parents perceive them as having better discipline than district schools.

“Families love the feeling of community; they walk in and say they feel safe,” Mrs. Mays said. “They don’t worry about bullying. My kids are just a bunch of marshmallows.”

Hey, don't downplay the value of having a school where the students feel safe and where there is better discipline.

And now that there are models out there like the Uncommon Schools and KIPP Academies of what works, schools like this one in Cleveland can adapt and learn. And hope that they'll find more teachers who are willing to put in these long hours for the toughest job they'll ever love.

Mr. Skeeter of Williamsburg Collegiate is what advocates mean when they talk of human capital. A former public school teacher in the Bronx, where he lives, he works from 7 a.m. to 5:30, nearly three hours longer than his public school day. The charter school says it pays teachers about 15 percent above union scale, though there is no tenure. “I have more say in what I teach and how I teach, which is important to me,” Mr. Skeeter said, adding that in a traditional public school he felt “handcuffed” to the assigned curriculum.

Imagine that. He teaches in a highly structured school where there is a strict emphasis on data and assessment. Yet Mr. Skeeter feels that he has more personal control over what he teaches than in the traditional public schools.

There's a lesson there. And it's a wonderful thing that there are these billionaire philanthropists who are willing to invest in funding such schools and, as importantly, paying for the research to find out what works and what doesn't and how the successful models can be duplicated elsewhere.