The current impasse is pretty much the same one that has bedeviled education reform efforts for decades. Governor Cuomo wants teachers to be rated on their students' standardized test scores, and the NY State Teachers Union (NYSUT) is rejecting that as arbitrary and unfair.
The Governor is correct to demand some type of accountability for teachers. Is is virtually impossible to fire incompetent teachers in New York, as a successful dismissal can cost taxpayers up to $250,000. Rather than protecting this ridiculous state of affairs, NYSUT should be working in good faith to create a decent evaluation system. A recent poll found that "Forty-seven percent of respondents said they thought unions have hurt 'the quality of public school education in the United states'", despite that 75% of respondents in the same poll "had tust and confidence in public school teachers." Fairly or not, teachers unions have lost in the court of public opinion and this is a serious development for a group who rely on taxpayer money to pay their salaries and benefits. It is in the unions' best interests to not be perceived, as they often correctly are, as protecting the worst teachers; especially if they want to be taken seriously when they are on the right side of other issues like demanding higher salaries and smaller class sizes. They would be wise to pick their fights more prudently.
However, NYSUT is also correct to be critical of standardized-test-based evaluations. Whatever their merit may be, having test-based evaluations for individual teachers is a bad idea because it ends up making teachers "teach to the test" and waste valuable class time doing so instead of actually teaching. So how can both of these sides be reconciled in a way that gets NY the federal money it needs and also created a fair evaluation system where the worst teachers are no longer immune to any accountability?
Here's my idea:
* Individual teachers should not be evaluated using standardized tests. They should be evaluated by a simple questionnaire that is asks a handful of questions about their effectiveness with a numerical rating system. This questionnaire should be submitted separately by all of each teacher's students, the parents of those students, and the principals in their schools. Any teacher who falls into the bottom 15 or 20% of each of the student, parent, and principal evaluations (thus, being not in the bottom 15 or 20% of only one of the evaluations will preclude a teacher from being fired) for 2 consecutive years will be fired.
* Individual teachers who are in the top 15 or 20% of each evaluation should get a significant bonus, like $20,000 per year.
* Principals should be subject to the same evaluation system, except they are rated by students, parents and teachers.
* And finally schools as a whole, but not individual teachers, should be evaluated on a variety of metrics that include standardized tests, but also graduation rates and post-graduation employment and higher education attainment statistics. Schools in the bottom 5% of those evaluations for a certain amount of consecutive years without showing improvement should be shut down.
I believe this idea is the most fair to all parties involved and will create an effective teacher evaluation system without a lot of red tape and standardized tests and I hope the two sides actually implement something along these lines. What do you think?
I've had my issues with Governor Cuomo on some things, but today he came out with something that I completely agree on: getting rid of New York's Combined Ballistic Identification System, or CoBIS.
CoBIS is based on the premise of ballistic "fingerprinting" of bullets. If you've ever seen CSI, you probably know that a bullet fired from a gun receives a distinctive set of marks and scratches on it's way out of the barrel. These markings can be used to match a bullet to the gun that fired it--theoretically, a great way to connect crimes to the weapon that was used in them.
CoBIS, since 2001, has been used to collect a "fingerprint" from every single new handgun sold in New York State, which has then been entered into a massive database to let the police solve crimes by being able to match a bullet to the exact weapon that fired it, even if they don't have the weapon.
Here's the part you don't see on CSI: those distinctive markings change, gradually, as the gun is fired. By the time a gun has been "broken in," it's ballistic fingerprint has been completely changed from what CoBIS has recorded for it, making the database utterly useless. That's why ballistic fingerprinting is only useful in matching a gun to a very recently fired bullet, and it's also why CoBIS has not resulted in the solving of even one single crime in New York in the last 11 years. Nevertheless, New York State has spent $44 million dollars on this project, money that if Cuomo has is way will go elsewhere, and we'll be better off for it.
You probably already know that federal judge Gary Sharpe has ordered new York to hold its primaries for congressional office on June 26, to accommodate the federal law that requires a 45-day window for servicemembers overseas to return absentee ballots.
While Judge Sharpe did not order the state to change its primary for state office as well, having three different primary days (one each for President, Congress and state office) is ludicrous.
The problem (for state electeds) is that the legislative session in Albany is scheduled to end on June 21, leaving incumbents only a few days in which to campaign. While I would have no problem with that scenario, it's unlikely to happen.
The solution is simple. End the "main" session during the week before the Memorial Day weekend. Send everyone home for the summer. Then reconvene after Labor Day for three or four weeks.
This not only gives incumbents plenty of opportunity to campaign, but has two side benefits.
First, we all know that most major non-budget legislation is passed in the final days of the session. By having two sets of "final days," especially with the first set so close to the primary and the second set only weeks before the general election, a lot more can be accomplished.
Second, anything that doesn't get done in May will give constituents three months to let their elected representatives know what they think, and allow the issues to percolate longer.
This is something that needs to be discussed -- and acted on -- quickly, and with pressure coming from all over the state.
The proposed LATFOR redistricting maps are out for the State Senate and the Assembly. The changes... wait, you were expecting changes? Well, there are some, and at least none of the new proposed districts are more than 120 miles or so long. Although that's a really, really low bar.
Most interesting from a competitive perspective is, of course, the State Senate:
Full Senate maps can be found here, and Assembly maps found here. No word yet on Congressional districts.
The Personal blog of Marc Cenedella (via New York Times)
The GOP sure can pick 'em in NY state.
Last go around they offered up "crazy Carl" Paladino, who after an epic campaign of facepalm-inducing blunders snared a whopping 33.3% of the vote to Andrew Cuomo's 62.6%. In the special 2010 election for the Senate, A-list hopefuls (if anyone GOPer in NY still qualifies for that title) stepped back and let the hapless GOP nominee Joseph DioGuardi lose 35/63 to incumbent appointee Kirsten Gillibrand.
The GOP hasn't fielded a serious contender for any statewide office in New York in quite some time.
But 2012 was going to be different! The GOP thought they'd found the ideal candidate in the person of Marc Cenedella to take on Senator Gillibrand as she runs for her first full term. The multi-millionaire CEO of the The Ladders met with GOP party leaders and they were glad to hear he was prepared to self-finance half of the $30-40 million tab for the race. (Whew! The party can then focus on holding the Senate.)
Never mind that the job search company Cenedella founded The Ladders screams "One-percenter!", built on the idea of being an exclusive club of $100K jobs for $100K people. Never mind it has a reputation for over-promising, and under-delivering (kinda like the GOP's trickle-down economic theories) and complaints abounded it lists jobs that don't exist.
Nicholas A. Langworthy, chairman of the Erie County Republican Committee, says,
"There are a lot of people within our party encouraged by his candidacy. His overall life experience makes him an excellent candidate for the Senate."
Until recently, a Web site, blog.theladders.com/rock, bore Mr. Cenedella's photograph and the title "The personal blog of Marc Cenedella." It provided tips on polishing résumés, preparing for job interviews and the like. But it also had a number of entries containing random observations about sex, women and drugs.
The entries had headlines like "Sexy vs. Skanky," "Dating Advice for Girly Girls," "He Stole My Weed" and "High Quality Dope."
In an entry titled "A New Holiday for Men," there was a link to a separate site that designates March 14 as a special occasion on which women are encouraged to offer steak and oral sex "to show your man how much you care for him."
Another entry linked to a site that purports to provide biblical justification for a man's having more than one wife. "I wasn't so sure about all this Bible stuff," the entry accompanying the link said, "but I'm starting to cotton to it."
Before Mr. Cenedella proceeds any further in his interview process with the voters of New York, it seems like the self-styled job search guru might want to refresh himself with Forbes magazine's Corporate Guide For Social Media. Some relevant notes for CEO Cenedella:
Lead by example. Rules aren't enough. Leaders should model the behavior they would like to see their employees take.
Show your personality. You weren't hired to be an automaton. Be conversational while remaining professional. If your personal life is one that you (or your employer) don't want to mix up with your work, then consider establishing both private and public profiles, with appropriate sharing settings.
Stay on the record. Everything you say can (and likely will) be used in the court of public opinion--forever. So assume you're "on the record." Never say anything you wouldn't say to someone's face and in the presence of others. Never use profanity or demeaning language.
One would have hoped that a human resources and internet guru like Cenedella might have already been familiar with these concepts.
When the The New York Times confronted Cenedella about these entries his blog site immediately went dark.
The usual back-paddling and excuse-making ensued. They denied the "personal blog of Marc Cenedella" and was in fact the personal blog of Marc Cenedella, of course.
His campaign says it wasn't really him that posted all that sexist stuff and references to weed and blow jobs. The site, in the words of his campaign, "contained testing content from a wide variety of sources, including spam from automatic spiders."
...apparently it's never occurred to Mr. Cenedella that our kind of sort of misogynistic culture doesn't already mandate every other day of the year to be such an occasion?
Hey, at least Mr. Cenedella didn't forward any links to horse porn, so the NY GOP is showing incremental improvement over last cycle.
Via Capital New York, Senator Gillibrand was asked asked about this at an event this morning at New York University. She said:
"I think it fundamentally shows a lack of judgment," Gillibrand told reporters at the event at NYU's Kimmel Center. "And I have concerns because I feel like the nature of the rhetoric is very anti-women and very disrespectful and disregards women. And I think it's a matter of judgment that, and a level of inappropriateness, that's not appropriate for anyone seeking any office."
I woke up New Year's morning with a nervous stomach. It was finally 2012, the year that I'd been talking about casually since people started asking me, "will the Affordable Care Act survive?" As I wrote in the epilogue to my new book, Fighting for Our Health: The Epic Battle to Make Health Care a Right in the United States, health reform has to jump two big hurdles in 2012 to survive. The first is the Supreme Court ruling on its constitutionality, with three days of oral arguments in March now just a few weeks away. The second, of course, is the election for President.
On the campaign trail in Iowa, Rick Santorum baldly revealed why the right is so intent on killing the promise of good health care for all: Santorum said it would make people "dependent" on the government. As I write in my book: "The right understands that if the Affordable Care Act is implemented, it will create a bond between the American people and government, just as Social Security and Medicare have done. The last thing that the corporate and ideological right want is for a new health care pillar to be added to the foundations of government social insurance."
The battle over the Affordable Care Act needs to be understood in its historic context. While the legislation that passed was certainly compromised from an ideal law, it will for the first time - when its key measures are implemented in 2014 -establish a government responsibility to make decent health care affordable to almost everyone. Following a century of failure, during which the United States emerged as the only developed nation to guarantee health care, the passage of the ACA needs to be understood as a remarkable accomplishment.
That history weighed over the battle that began in 2008, when I helped found Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a coalition that as health care historian Paul Starr told me, was the first time that there was a major grassroots, field campaign to pass reform. Fighting for Our Health is the story of that campaign, starting from its early roots in 2003, when Yale professor Jacob Hacker (pdf) and I (pdf) separately developed a new policy approach, the public option. We each envisioned the public option as a way to bridge the gap between those who championed single-payer government health insurance and reforms based on expanding private health coverage. As I write: "It is impossible to overstate how important the idea of the public option was to creating the powerful unified coalition that became HCAN."
Introduction
It now can be logically argued that we now have less freedom (= less rights) than even a decade ago - for example, via indefinite detention, "legal" assassination of Americans, (lack of) on-line privacy, the "death" of "habeus corpus" and warrantless wiretapping. And yet one local (to NY State) hard won right is the freedom to vote with the money you spend on your electricity bill as to how you want that electricity made. Do you want it made via polluting or non-polluting means? You get your choice - by a way that maximizes the probability of a Fukushima/Chernobyl event (and we've had some really close calls in NY State), or way with a zero probability of such a horror? Do you want that electricity made in a way that has minimal CO2 pollution, or maximal CO2 pollution. After all CO2 pollution (CO2 made by burning fossil fuels) is the prime driver for Global Climate Change, which will NOT be good for us, by a long shot. About 40% of the CO2 pollution made in our country comes from burning coal and natural gas to make electricity. How about electricity in a way that maximizes NY State job creation, instead of in a way that exports the maximum quantity of money (out of state corporate profits, fossil fuel expenditures/corporate rentier profits)?
Cenedella arranged for this story today on CapitalNewYork.com, which has some interesting details, like Cenedella's contributions to Ron Paul and South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint and his current position on the leadership council (i.e., major donors) of the Club for Growth, which is dedicated to reducing taxes on the wealthy and repealing New Deal and Great Society social programs.
OK, Cenedella is a rich wingnut, lots of those running for office these days.
But the business that made him a 1-percenter, a job-search website that until very recently promised access to $100K-plus jobs for a price, is not squeaky clean.
I typed theladders into the Google today, and one of the suggested drop-down links is theladders scam.
New York State energy policy is a game that's largely about territory and players and not so much about principles. I obviously don't work in Albany, and would be happy to be wrong about much of this, but this is the story I tell based on what I've seen.
The key pieces of this story are New York City and Westchester County.
New York City depends on power generation from outside of the city much the same way it depends on water from outside of the city. One of the key tasks of state government for the past century or so has been keeping New York City supplied.
Electricity has been a particular challenge, as NYC's supplies sometimes get stretched, especially in summer, and the temporary generators Con Ed pulls out haven't been very popular. On top of that, there's a pretty loud call to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant just north of NYC, which needs its licenses renewed in 2013 and 2015 to keep operating. Sure enough, it's on a fault line, and Westchester is too densely populated for the evacuation plans to make much sense.
Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s there were hopes to buy electricity from HydroQuebec's ever-larger hydroelectric plants, but Governor (Mario) Cuomo stopped that, or at least barred one set of plans for doing so. The Shoreham nuclear plant could have provided power too, but a nuclear power plant in Long Island had even crazier evacuation plans than one in Westchester.
More recently, the city has been looking to Upstate for power. Around 2004, NYRI, a Canadian company, proposed a major power line from around Utica to Middletown (map), serving NYC, and residents fought hard (rough summary). After a lot of wobbling, Governor Pataki denied them the use of eminent domain in 2006, and it's more or less died since.
However, the Federal Government created a "National Corridor Designation" including roughly the same area. We didn't hear too much about it here because neither Tompkins nor Cortland County is included, but Cayuga, Chenango, Otsego, and Broome are.
That's designed to make it easier for power companies to build corridors. From their FAQ (49KB PDF):
On a more specific level, the designation of a National Corridor is a necessary first step in providing the federal government - through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission - siting authority that supplements existing state authority. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides a potential siting venue at FERC for transmission facility proposals within a National Corridor.
In practice, this will mean that if an applicant does not receive approval from a State to site a proposed new transmission facility within a National Corridor, the applicant may then apply to FERC for a permit and authorization to construct the facility. If FERC accepts the application, before it would issue a permit, it would conduct a full National Environmental Policy Act review and consider alternatives.
Such a federal permit would empower the project developer to exercise the right of eminent domain to acquire necessary property rights to build the facilities. However, that authority could only be exercised if the developer could not acquire the property by negotiation, and even then would not apply to property owned by the United States or a State, such as a national or State park. (Emphasis and paragraph breaks added.)
I think the story politicians (Governor Andrew Cuomo in particular) were hoping would yield political happiness was:
Add powerlines and/or gas pipelines from Upstate to the NYC area.
Generate power Upstate with wind farms and new plants running on natural gas. (Article X helps with both of these.)
Shut down Indian Point.
Point (3) appeals to most Downstate environmentalists. Until recently, natural gas seemed like the miracle fuel, burning cleaner with less climate change impact (yes I know that's questionable), and wind farms were the future, so point (2) also appealed to Downstate environmentalists. Point (2) tied in nicely to growing desperation Upstate for economic development of any kind as well.
Point (1) has always been ugly, but maybe the Feds would take care of that for the state, and let Albany off the hook?
Until it became clear that hydrofracking had massive side effects, this was a plausible story. It's not the only possible story - see, for example, this expensive offshore possibility - but it at least sounded like a balancing of Downstate consumption with clean Upstate production. (And yes, Liquified Natural plants, pipelines elsewhere, etc., mean that this is not just a New York State story.)
This plan, of course, isn't going over very well in a lot of Upstate communities, largely because of hydrofracking. Powerlines don't make people happy, but pollution can force them to desert a place.
How does this tie to home rule, in particular Senator Jim Seward's push for it?
Seward's home rule position lets him find political balance on most of this, except with the relatively small group of voters who have the time to see how the pieces don't fit.
He can tell places like Dryden and Middlefield that overwhelmingly want to avoid hydrofracking that they can stay out of it, while letting places that cheer it on move forward. It takes the heat off of him for the ugliest piece of this puzzle, while letting him stay more or less in the general story Albany is pushing. (And it leaves the conflict open place-by-place for the long run, too.)
Lately I've noticed an uptick online in the number of people trying to sway the left wing over into supporting Ron Paul. Some of this may be driven by Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, who has been singing Paul's praises as an anti-war, anti-imperialist libertarian hero for liberals. (As opposed to Greenwald's portrayal of President Obama as a warmongering neo-fascist who didn't really end the Iraq War, Bush deserves that credit thank-you-very-much.)
Of course, there's the little complication to that that Paul is neither "libertarian" nor "anti-war" in any way, having supported the Iraq War until it turned out bad, has previously supported attacking Iran, and supports the criminalization of abortion and homosexuality. But then, you could say that about most of the Republican candidates.
No, where Ron Paul really stands out is where he actually departs from the Republican pack. Less in what he believes than in what he's actually willing to say, or was willing a few years ago. You may have heard about his controversial newsletters, but I guarantee you haven't heard even a fraction of the worst of them, simply because you can't read the worst of them on TV.
No, it's not just a few vague quotes taken completely out of context. In fact, Paul's newsletters read like a "greatest hits" album of far right bigotry, conspiracy theories, and violent propaganda. The following quotes were all taken newsletters operated by Ron Paul and published between 1985 and 1994.
Those who don't commit sodomy, get blood transfusions, or swap needles are virtually assured of not getting AIDS unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay.
If you heard a certain behavior of yours caused a deadly disease, wouldn't you immediately cease & desist? Well, gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense. They have stopped practicing "safe sex." The rate of AIDS infection is on the increase again. From the gay point of view, the reasons seem quite sensible.
First, these men don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners. These conditions do not make one's older years the happiest.
Second, because sex is the center of their lives, they want it to be as pleasurable as possible, which means unprotected sex.
Third, they enjoy the attention & pity that comes with being sick. Put it all together, and you've got another wave of AIDS infections, that you, dear taxpayer, will be asked to pay for.
A mob of black demonstrators, led by the "Rev." Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City "to reclaim it for our people."
Hmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis?
But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the face of what the right wing really believes but can no longer say openly. It's also why anyone who thinks that Ron Paul is anything other than a wretched sack of human bile, no matter his positions on a few issues, is badly mistaken. That you agree with a Republican on something doesn't make the Republican right, it makes them only slightly less wrong.
And make no mistake: Paul's crime in Republican politics is not to believe this, but to have it committed to paper in no uncertain terms. Look at every other Tea Party approved Republican, and tell me they would disagree on substance, instead of on language.
Remember that the next time that someone tells you that there's no real difference between the parties; the next time someone expresses admiration for Ron Paul; and most importantly, remember it when it comes time to choose between apathy, and fighting like hell to elect Democrats.
A telephone "push poll" unfairly slamming the legislative record and progressive stance of State Senator David Carlucci is making its rounds in Rockland and Orange Counties. The so-called poll comes from an anonymous source, and the pollsters flippantly misidentify themselves when pressed by residents they reach.
Eleven concerned Rockland County residents, all Democratic Commitee members, contacted Left of the Hudson today to complain about the poll, and several others have responded to an email query sent out by us this afternoon. Several recipients that asked the pollsters who they worked for were told the survey came from a company called either "National Research," or "Central Research."
According to several sources who were called, the poll begins with a live questioner asking respondents if they're satisfied with the direction New York is heading. If they answer "yes," the are promptly thanked for their time, if they answer "no," they're lead into a diatribe masquerading as a poll, which faults Carlucci for reaching across the aisle and then questions his progressive credentials. Worse yet, two people who have received the poll claim that it smacked of race baiting. They claim that questioner asked them if they it bothered them that Carlucci had turned his back on "the most influential African-American leader the State Senate has ever seen."
That was the headline of the LA Times op-ed of December 6th, by a lady with the unusual name of Spike Dolomite Ward, who announced at the top that she had an apology to make to President Obama.
I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.
...
Not having insurance amplifies cancer stress. After the diagnosis, instead of focusing all of my energy on getting well, I was panicked about how we were going to pay for everything. I felt guilty and embarrassed about not being insured. When I went to the diagnostic center to pick up my first reports, I was sent to the financial department, where a woman sat me down to talk about resources for "cash patients" (a polite way of saying "uninsured").
...
Fortunately for me, I've been saved by the federal government's Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, something I had never heard of before needing it. It's part of President Obama's healthcare plan, one of the things that has already kicked in, and it guarantees access to insurance for U.S. citizens with preexisting conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months. The application was short, the premiums are affordable, and I have found the people who work in the administration office to be quite compassionate (nothing like the people I have dealt with over the years at other insurance companies.) It's not perfect, of course, and it still leaves many people in need out in the cold. But it's a start, and for me it's been a lifesaver - perhaps literally.
Which brings me to my apology. I was pretty mad at Obama before I learned about this new insurance plan. I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the "h" on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, "Got nope" instead of "got hope." I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down.
So this is my public apology. I'm sorry I didn't do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I'm sorry I didn't realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I'm getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says "Got nope." It will say "ObamaCares."
Last night the Legislature and the Governor, in classic three-men-in-a-room fashion, passed a new tax bill complete with a unanimous Senate vote while the pages were still warm and no one had time to read them. You can see the resulting tax brackets here.
It's not precisely the "millionaire's tax" but it's also very different from the pre-2009 rates. Whether taxes on the rich have gone up or down depends on where you start counting from, giving the Murdoch papers and their friends room to complain about tax hikes while everyone else considers it a tax cut.
Might this change have something to do with calls for fairness and a shift away from the "inequality is good for you" models of the past coming from the Occupy movement, including the folks he doesn't want on his doorstep in Albany?
He said the Occupation protests had nothing to do with his change of heart.
"My job as governor is to make the best decisions I can at the time to meet the needs of the state at the time," Cuomo said. "The role of government is to try and help the people of the state, bring a direction for the circumstances of the moment."
Maybe. Meanwhile, one of his predecessors, a ghost I'm less than happy to invoke on this site, is telling a different story:
"Occupy Wall Street has won, not that they achieved changes in policy, but I think that they have had a demonstrable effect on political discourse: What we are talking about, and what the agenda is most like these days," Spitzer said.
Spitzer added that he believed that, before Occupy Wall Street, nobody was paying attention to equity issues, the distribution of income and the inherent unfairness of the current economic structure.
Somehow I think protesting had an impact on the political conversation, even as it makes the very serious people nervous. The Three Men in a Room seem to have noticed that the conversation around them is changing, even if they haven't changed much.
A telephone "push poll" unfairly slamming the legislative record and progressive stance of State Senator David Carlucci is making its rounds in Rockland and Orange Counties. The so-called poll comes from an anonymous source, and the pollsters flippantly misidentify themselves when pressed by residents they reach.
