Chicago school strikes

The teachers in Chicago are on strike this week, and Richard Fernandez discusses that the sticky point is not the pay raise, offered, not accepted, but rather how the teachers are going to be evaluated (the weight of testing) and who will be hired first (the unions want first fired first hired.)and not about the children.

Klein notes that the “2010-11 annual teacher salaries ranged from $47,268 for teachers with bachelor’s degree with a year’s experience or less, to $88,680 for those with doctorates who have at least 16 years of experience … All told, teachers in Chicago make an average of $74,839 a year.” And a 16% raise is not bad in a recession economy.

But with 80% of Chicago students unable to meet the Department of Education standards in both literacy and mathematics, it not obvious that taxpayers are getting a lot of value for money. All the same, it’s good theater.

As Fernandez' discussion moves forward, he observes the irony of Rahm Emmanuel taking on the unions. Is it a "Richard Nixon goes to China" moment? Perhaps not, but at some point, the rule of law needs to be upheld, even by those that don't necessarily adhere to it.

Politics is a rough world. That’s just a fact. Why is it so? Perhaps Mammon has something to do with it. The Bible — that two-thousand year old book of delusions — observes that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Ironically, many in DNC agree that money is the problem, especially when somebody else has it.  Peter Schiff, interviewing delegates during the Democratic convention, noted that disdain for money was so great that many were eager to ban profits altogether, the better to transfer it to themselves.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/09/10/harbinger-2/?singlepage=true

Unless you have money in the US, your children are stuck in public schools: whether they are good schools or not seems to depend on your neighborhood (so again, on what you can afford to rent/buy.) Both in Germany and in France, private schools are subsidized, so that even though parents don't have too much influence on curriculum, they have a choice on how it is taught. In the US, there are two ways to get around this problem, neither which are mainstream/acceptable options. Homeschooling and vouchers.

If you accept that this strike is about maximizing income and job security, and not about job conditions, it is clearly not about teaching children. Most teachers begin their career, I would suspect, because they truly love to work with children, and then they get sucked into a system when Mammon is key. What is the way out? What truly helps out children?

The Big Economic Debate

Yup.  

Organic Foods

A new study shows that organic foods are not necessarily higher in vitamins. OK, we know that plants don't care about the origins of their minerals. What is important here is:

1. Organic farming methods are  better for the soil, and thus longevity for the farm.  Not too many people talk about this, but how long can industrial farmers keep working on soil that becomes increasingly barren, without running the risk of a new dust-bowl era?

2. Produce sourced from far away is subject to many transportation problems - contamination (eg listeria, salmonella), bruising (and lack of taste due to early harvesting.) The cost of such transportation is not incidental, either. Do we really need to buy fruit from South America? Or peaches in Nov.? Personally, I have never been able to home-ripen the rocks that pass for peaches in the grocery store, despite my best efforts, and I have finally concluded that the only way to enjoy them is if I buy them at the local farm, and can them myself.

3. This article points out that residual antibiotics and pesticides were more commonly found on the conventional foods. Yet these traces were still below FDA guidelines. What does that mean? Some organic pesticides are just as bad as inorganics. And a question: is it better to put a lot of pesticides on your crop (eg corn,) or use a small amount because the seed is a gmo? Is that trade-off even necessary?

Organic Food

The most interesting line on this video from the NYT's interview with Michael Potter, founder and CEO of Eden Foods is that organic is much more than ingredients. "Organic means the health of the soil, the quality of the soil that produces the plant." (1.50)

What do you think when you hear the word organic? Does it mean simply no added inorganic components (pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers?)

Several years ago, I decided to spend a semester studying plants at our local agricultural college, and it was there that I learned how plants "eat." Basically, the process is called translocation, in which the roots suck in molecules such as K+, and Na+ and deliver them up the plant. Combined with water and CO2, using the power of sunshine, the plant produces simple sugars with mineral componenets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/business/organic-food-purists-worry-about-big-companies-influence.html?pagewanted=all

About that tax hike...

Maybe I'm not seeing clear this am, but people like Sergey Brin, Walter Buffet, and others cited in this article seem to be making money through their shares of stock. Remember, stock is not taxed until it is sold. So, it is probably safe to say that the most that they will pay would be the AMT -- which is vastly reduced by charitable contributions. How does increasing the tax rate on earned income change this for these 1 percent??

Arafat - victim of polonium poisoning?

From USA Today: Tests show that Arafat might have been a victim of polonium poisoning. This is the same stuff that killed Livechencko, the Russian billionaire, several years ago. So, does that mean that the KGB offed Arafat? If we believe Ion Pacepa, the former head of the Romanian secret service, granted political asylum by the Americans in the late 70s, Arafat was a creation of Andropov. This information came to public ears in March 2004. Arafat died in October of that year. Layers upon layers upon layers...

On Schooling

I spent the better part of Sunday afternoon sitting on the floor listening to the dreams and aspirations of many young parents. Their questions: what characterizes a good education, what is the value of education, do schools provide a good education?

My question: what are the skills and tools that we (parents, community) can give our children in order to enable them to live independent, healthy lives as adults?

In no particular order: grit, (determination, work ethic); self-confidence tempered with a dose of humility, compassion, drive.

Then, ability to pull diverse pieces of a puzzle together (creativity). Skills to see the big picture, as well as to look for the small details. Patience.

Others?