Open Government Czar Close-Mouthed About Regulatory Reform...

Apparently, I wasn't the only one struck by former Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University and long-time University of Chicago Law School icon Cass Sunstein's lack of substance at this afternoon's Brookings Institution talk (which event also drew a protester dressed up like Oscar the Grouch and a woman singing "I Love Ash"--referring to a coal industry toxic waste issue that apparently has something to do with the Paperwork Reduction Act, if that makes any sense...).

In any case, here's what the Federal Times Fedline Blog has to say:

Sunstein said surprisingly little about regulatory reform — his chief area of responsibility as the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Aside from quoting President Obama, John Rawls, Federalist 1 and Aristotle, Sunstein did little but regurgitate boilerplate talking points in favor of open-goverment, transparency, accountability, and "the wisdom of crowds" (though not mob rule, I guess). To say I was disappointed was an understatement. He deflected questions about his previously published positions by saying something that sounded distinctly odd to this listener-- that his academic publications were written by "somebody else" with the same name.

Wikipedia claims the former Supreme Court clerk (Thurgood Marshall) is named after Lewis Cass, a former US Secretary of State. From the Wiki photos it looks like there may be a family resemblance. Notably, the glamorous Samantha Power (of Hillary Clinton "is a monster" fame) appeared to be sitting in the first row--according to Wikipedia, she's his wife, as well as director for multilateral affairs in the Obama administration's National Security Council--so if she was at the lecture, who's dealing with Iranian nukes?

Among the odd topics that Sunstein was willing to discuss with the audience was their 10-month old child, Declan Power-Sunstein (according to Wikipedia). Sunstein stressed the importance of information about child safety seats being made available to the public on the web.

The Starbucks coffee and free cookies were good. Perhaps the transcript will reveal some hidden DaVinci-code like messages upon further study...

Another IBEW Suit Against Goldman Sachs...

Over allegedly fraudulent mortgages, from 2008. I don't know what, if anything, came of it...

IBEW Union (Philadelphia Local 98) v Goldman Sachs!

(ht Huffington Post) Here's the story from Pensions and Investments Online:

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 Pension Fund, Philadelphia, filed suit against Goldman Sachs Group, accusing it of overpaying its executives while underpaying its shareholders and damaging its stock price.

The suit, filed March 8 in Delaware Court of the Chancery in Wilmington by the $562 million pension fund, seeks to stop Goldman Sachs from allocating 47% of its 2009 net revenues to compensation.

Also, the suit seeks to require that Goldman Sachs management bear the cost of the $500 million the firm pledged in November for philanthropic and lending support for small business as an “apology for taking enormous bonuses.” It also wants management to be responsible for paying any fees imposed by the government on banks in reaction to their excessive compensation practices.

Also named as defendants are Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and CEO; the other 11 Goldman Sachs directors; and two non-director executives, David A. Viniar, executive vice president and CFO, and J. Michael Evans, vice chairman.

“Goldman’s employees are unreasonably overpaid for the management functions they undertake, and shareholders are vastly underpaid for the risk taken with their equity,” the suit states.

The pension fund is a Goldman Sachs shareholder. The number of shares it owns wasn’t available.

Russia TV on Geert Wilders

(ht Diana West)

Happy International Women's Day!

CNN has the story...

Don Argott's The Art of the Steal

School Reform for Dummies: "Race to the Top" Evaluation Form Published

Education Week has put the form used by the Department of Education to evaluate "Race to the Top" applications online, here. There's an interesting article explaining the politics behind the contest, which raises serious questions about the fairness and validity of the process, here.
More about this topic on Valerie Strauss's Washington Post Blog.

Providence Journal: Obama's "Race to the Top" Really a Race to the Bottom

Rhode Island attorney and law professor Monica Teixeira de Sousa writes:

public services.

The U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, placed Rhode Island in an untenable position with the “Race to the Top”: forgo an opportunity for much-needed resources or compete for funds by dismantling public education. This is one race in which it behooves us to walk, not run.

The heart of the Central Falls community was torn apart as almost 100 educators, the entire staff of the city’s sole high school, were let go. Duncan was quick to support the termination of the teachers, which he did without bothering to speak to them. Had he done so he would have learned that some are local success stories: the kids who made it and later returned as educators and role models. They now face unemployment.

It’s ironic that this joblessness is the result of actions prompted by Rhode Island’s effort to curry favor with Secretary Duncan, since the terminations were prompted by the decision to compete for federal “Race to the Top” funds. The $4.35 million initiative — a grab-bag of harsh and unproven strategies that include closing schools and wholesale dismissals of personnel — is itself funded through the economic stimulus package that was supposed to produce jobs.

By applying the Race to the Top’s “turnaround model” in Central Falls, calling for the termination of all staff and the rehiring of no more than 50 percent, our state is harming the very children that it hopes to help. It has been shown that the results of these draconian actions make it harder to attract new dedicated and well-qualified teachers while doing nothing to address the numerous socioeconomic problems that impede children’s progress.

Critics who point to low student test scores fail to put them in the context of concentrated poverty. The community’s many woes include some of the state’s highest rates for student mobility, children testing positive for lead poisoning, and childhood asthma hospitalizations. In Central Falls 41 percent of families have incomes below the federal poverty line. A median family income below $23,000 must contend with an average yearly rent greater than $11,000. Rather than addressing these root causes of failing schools in disadvantaged cities and towns like Central Falls, it’s more politically expedient and far less expensive to blame schools, blame teachers, and propose privately run charter schools as solutions.

But the events in Central Falls highlight the limitations of the reform strategies promoted by Secretary Duncan. The “school closure model” is not feasible because it assumes that there are high-performing schools within the district to which students may be reassigned. There is only one high school in Central Falls.

Under the “restart model,” Central Falls High School would become a charter school. Supt. Frances Gallo explored this option with no success. The Journal reported that no charter was interested in running a failing secondary school. This is not surprising, given that, with only one high school, the charter school would lose its “magic bullet,” the ability to cull students.

Transparent House's History of Apple Computers

(ht Huffington Post)

Anatomy of Apple Design from Transparent House on Vimeo.

Malvina Hoffman, American Sculptress

While in Cedar Rapids a while back, someone I know and yours truly saw an interesting exhibition of sculptures by Malvina Hoffman, Rodin's last student and sole sculptress for the "Hall of Man" exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair sponsored by Marshall Field, later displayed in the Field Museum of Natural History. They were removed from Chicago in 1968, and some ended up on display in Grant Wood's home town. Perhaps someone will bring them to Washington, someday. In the meantime, if you find yourself in Iowa, a visit to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is highly recommended.

Chile Earthquake Person-Finder from Google

Found this app when downloading Google Earth. Perhaps one of our readers might find it useful, in a tragic situation:

http://chilepersonfinder.appspot.com/

Wartime Contracting Commission: State Department Response "Unacceptable"

(ht Huffington Post) During questioning by Cong. Michael Thibault of Ambassador John Herbst, coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization, representing the US State Department:

I'd like to offer it to poor staff work. In other words, staff should be monitoring—you know, so many communications come across, but I don't know because, as of late last week,—we didn't have a response, and no response was acknowledged.

So Ambassador Herbst, I tried to give you a heads up on this—in fairness—but what's going on, and where's the response, and why hasn't someone worked with your secretary to—you know, you report directly to the secretary—your office does. So you must sit in staff meetings where they talk about the most important things, and contracting and coordination, and a contingent environment is pretty powerful today.

Where's this response?

HERBST:
Certainly, coordination is a very important issue, but I'm afraid I could just tell you that this is being looked at and given serious consideration, and a response will be forthcoming.

THIBAULT:
OK. Well, my time is almost up, but I'll just have to make this statement. I am the Democrat in this bipartisan group, but in this particular case, I am compelled to say that's unacceptable. And I would ask you to go back and say—because I think the Secretary of Defense has been much more diplomatic than I have here by saying it's unacceptable, but I think I have to call it like it is.

Earlier, Cong. Thibault had noted conclusions of an earlier hearing:

Our witnesses agreed that there are serious gaps and defects in interagency coordination of reconstruction and stabilization projects and that these shortcomings can put huge sums of money at risk of waste and undermine our efforts to improve the lives of people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These concerns apply not only to U.S. government agencies, but to operations conducted by our coalition partners, non-government entities and international organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations.

Dutch Election Victory for Geert Wilders

From Radio Netherlands:

The anti-Islam party of far-right politician Geert Wilders has made major gains in local elections held in the Netherlands. The party took part in two cities and has become the largest party in Almere and the second largest in the Hague.

Votes are still coming in but it is clear that the Freedom Party has taken around 20 percent of the vote. Geert Wilders told Dutch TV that it was fantastic day for his party.

"This is a springboard for the vote on June 9," said Wilders refering to the forthcoming national elections.

An opinion poll held earlier in the wake of the local vote showed that national Wilders'Freedom Party had the most support in the Netherlands and would be the biggest party nationally, another poll put them as the third biggest party a few seats behind the established political parties.

Diane Ravitch: Obama Picks Worse School as Rhode Island Model

From the Huffington Post. To be fair, perhaps they didn't teach the President how to make valid comparisons when Obama attended the private Punahou School in Hawaii (tuition $17,300 per annum), private Columbia University (tuition $18,735) or private Harvard Law School (tuition $39,325).

President Obama thought it was wonderful that every educator at Central Falls High School was fired. At an appearance before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on March 1, the President applauded the idea of closing the school and getting rid of everyone in it. At the same meeting, President Obama acknowledged Margaret Spellings, who was President George W. Bush's Education Secretary, because she "helped to lead a lot of the improvement that's been taking place and we're building on."

Well, yes, the President is right; his own education reform plans are built right on top of the shaky foundation of President Bush's No Child Left Behind program. The fundamental principle of school reform, in the Age of Bush and Obama, is measure and punish. If students don't get high enough scores, then someone must be punished! If the graduation rate hovers around 50%, then someone must be punished. This is known as "accountability."

President Obama says that Central Falls must close because only 7% of the students are proficient in math, and the graduation rate is only 48%. Sounds bad, right?

But the President has saluted a high school in Providence, Rhode Island, called "The Met" whose scores are no different from the scores at Central Falls High School. At Central Falls, 55% of the kids are classified as "proficient readers," just like 55% at The Met. In math, only 7% of students at Central Falls are proficient in math, but at The Met--which the President lauds--only 4% are proficient in math. Ah, but The Met has one big advantage over Central Falls High Schools: Its graduation rate is 75.6%.

But figure this one out: How can a high school where only 4% of the students are proficient in math and only 55% are proficient readers produce a graduation rate of 75.6%? To this distant observer, it appears that the school with lower graduation standards rates higher in President Obama's eyes.

Rhode Island's Mass Teacher Firings Drive Cost Obama Union Support

The Providence Journal reports on the crisis at Central Falls High School:

The wildfire of national debate over the mass firings at Central Falls High School spread further Tuesday, when the executive council of the AFL-CIO unanimously condemned the removal of all 93 teachers, support staff and administrators at the city’s only high school.

The executive council said its members were “appalled” that President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had endorsed the terminations in recent comments, and said the firings will not help the 800 students at the high school, which is one of the poorest and lowest-performing schools in Rhode Island.

“We stand in support of the Central Falls Teachers Union in its fight to improve teaching and learning … preserve the rights of its members and keep the teachers where they belong,” the council said in a statement. “We call on the Central Falls administration to return to negotiations … and seek, in good faith, a collaborative path to proven reforms that provide students with the opportunity to succeed.”

A few hours later, Central Falls Teachers Union president Jane Sessums offered an alternative reform plan for the troubled school, which closely resembled a set of conditions proposed by Supt. Frances Gallo that the two sides failed to agree on during negotiations last month. Money was the main sticking point.

Tuesday, Sessums said the high school teachers would agree to a longer school day for students; providing more support for students; and submitting to rigorous evaluations — three conditions in Gallo’s proposal. She also said the teachers want a “research-based high school reform program” they believe will achieve good results.

“This proposal is a start, and we know that more can and should be done,” Sessums said. “We are ready to collaborate with the district and work toward changes that will ultimately give our students the education they deserve.”

Gallo said she had not been contacted by the union and was learning of the proposal for the first time Tuesday evening. “I have no comment at this time,” she said.

On Monday, the union filed three unfair labor practice charges against the school district, the union’s first move to appeal the mass firings.

Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, which represents the Central Falls teachers, said the local union filed three charges against the district: failure to negotiate; refusal to provide information to the union and terminations in retaliation for the teachers’ union activities.

“The primary reason [for the filings] is that we want to secure the jobs of the Central Falls teachers themselves,” Reback said. “But we also know this situation is a national situation. If what happened in Central Falls is upheld, it will set a precedent across the United States.”

According to the Central Falls High School website, the school has at least one celebrity alumna. The school is Alma Mater to actress Oscar Nominee Viola Davis (Best Supporting Actress, Doubt).
More here.

Joshua Foust on the Battle of Marja

In today's New York Times, Registan blogger Josh Foust calls for the US military to set up what sounds like an Afghan version of the US Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency's price support program, in which farmers are paid not to grow certain crops, to reduce opium production in Afghanistan:

Good government will matter little, though, if the local economy is in a shambles. Marja’s agricultural base relies primarily on opium, and any new counternarcotics policies will wreak havoc; arresting or killing the drug traffickers will ultimately be the same as attacking local farmers. The timing of the offensive could not be more damaging: opium is planted in the winter and harvested in the spring, which means those who planted last year cannot recoup their investment.

In Helmand, opium is the only way farmers can acquire credit: they take out small loans, called salaam, from narcotics smugglers or Taliban officials, often in units of poppy seed, and pay back that loan in opium paste after harvest. If they cannot harvest their opium, they are in danger of defaulting on their loan — a very dangerous proposition.

Western aid groups distributed wheat seeds last fall, but there was little follow-up and it seems few farmers used them. This year, the aid workers should be prepared to pay farmers compensation for any opium crops they are unable to harvest as a result of the fighting, and the Western coalition should help the groups develop a microcredit system.

Speaking of The Hurt Locker...

Author Mark Monday recently sent this email to members of the National Press Club's Book & Author committee, about his work on an "Ambush Field Manual" for the US Military, available to the American public from Amazon.com under the title Killing Zone: A Professional’s Guide To Preparing Or Preventing Ambushes:

Being a writer you may appreciate the thrill of penning some scribblings that can potentially save the lives of our soldiers. Pardon my post, but now that I am effectively out of journalism there are few people, other than those of you with me on the Book and Author Committee at the National Press Club, with whom I can share my euphoria. Few people, usually only other writers, fully understand the experience of writing.

Although most American troops killed in the decades from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq have died in ambushes of one kind or another, including explosive IED ambushes, the U.S. military has not published an ambush field manual since the 1950s. Troops had to find mentions of ambushes in other manuals, five pages here, three pages there and perhaps two pages somewhere else. In 1994 Gary Stubblefield, a former Navy SEAL commander, and I tried to fill the gap. A publisher friend agreed to put the book on his list. Our book, Killing Zone, provided extensive basic instruction in the area. The book was never designed to be on the New York Times bestseller list; it certainly met its design. But we found out later to our satisfaction, that Killing Zone was being used by U.S. military instructors as a supplementary text when training troops. LTC Joshua Potter, a Green Beret now on his fourth tour of duty in Iraq, was one of the Special Forces members trained using Killing Zone. Josh and I met in 2008 at a government conference on complex operations. A year ago he told me had been trained with Killing Zone and had used the knowledge successfully in the war zone. But, he cautioned, much of it was outdated by new equipment and techniques. He was thinking of handing out a sheaf of update papers along with the book when teaching his own troops. I suggested we ask the publisher to allow us to revise the book—if Josh would lead the effort. Josh agreed. The publisher agreed. Over the last year LTC Potter and I have been reviewing and revising the original version to create a book that you, and most Americans, will never have any interest in reading. That revision, Ambush! was formally published this week.

There is a corollary to this: Shortly before LTC Potter revised the book, writers whom I had worked with—writers doing a manual for Navy SEALs—phoned to ask if they could include parts of Killing Zone in the new manual they were writing. Since the original idea of Killing Zone was to help our service personnel I immediately gave permission. But I was curious to see what part they found useful enough to plug into their manual. I asked. The reply was “we can’t tell you what we want to use. It’s classified.” But both Killing Zone and Ambush! are easily accessible by troops, unlike the SEAL manual.

As Richard Danzig, the former Secretary of the Navy and an advisor to the Obama campaign, wrote in his foreword to the new version – Ambush! – “For those who are smart enough not just to read it, but to study and apply it, this manual will save lives.”

Of all the words I’ve ever penned, the ones in this book probably have the best potential of saving lives of our Soldiers. I cannot think of a higher compliment to LTC Potter’s work, his dedication to protecting his troops by educating them about the most prevalent enemy tactic, or his efforts to improve their own offensive operations than Secretary Danzig’s words: “this manual will save lives.” I’m thrilled to have a small part in this project.

Best,
Mark Monday

Christopher Hitchens v. Amnesty International

Writing in The Australian, Christopher Hitchens comes to the defense of Gita Sahgal:

This organisation is precious to me and to millions of other people, including many thousands of men and women who were and are incarcerated and maltreated because of their courage as dissidents, and who regained their liberty as a consequence of Amnesty International's unsleeping work.

So to learn of its degeneration and politicisation is to be reading about a moral crisis that has global implications.

Amnesty International has just suspended one of its senior officers, a woman named Gita Sahgal who, until recently, headed the organisation's gender unit. It's fairly easy to summarise her concern in her own words. "To be appearing on platforms with Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment," she wrote. One may think that to be an uncontentious statement, but it led to her immediate suspension.

The background is also distressingly easy to summarise. Moazzam Begg, a British citizen, was arrested in Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan in the aftermath of the intervention in 2001. He was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, then released.

He has since become the moving spirit in a separate organisation calling itself Cageprisoners.

Begg does not deny his past as an Islamist activist, which took him to Afghanistan in the first place. He does not withdraw from his statement that the Taliban was the best government available to Afghanistan.

Cageprisoners has another senior member, Asim Qureshi, who speaks in defence of jihad at rallies sponsored by extremist group Hizb-ut Tahrir (banned in many Muslim countries). Cageprisoners also defends men such as Abu Hamza, leader of the mosque that sheltered Richard "Shoe Bomber" Reid among many other violent and criminal characters who have been convicted in open court of heinous offences that have nothing at all to do with freedom of expression.

Yet Amnesty International includes Begg in delegations that petition the British government about human rights. For Sahgal to say that Cageprisoners has a program that goes "way beyond being a prisoners' rights organisation" is to say the very least of it.

But that's all she had to say to be suspended from her job.

As I write this, she is experiencing some difficulty in getting a lawyer to represent her. Such is -- so far -- the prestige of Amnesty International.

"Although it is said that we must defend everybody no matter what they've done," she comments, "it appears that if you're a secular, atheist, Asian British woman, you don't deserve a defence from our civil rights firms."

That may well change and I hope it does. But Sahgal has it slightly wrong. Amnesty International was not set up to defend everybody, no matter what they did. No organisation in the world could hope to do that.

IRA bombers and Khmer Rouge killers and generals Augusto Pinochet and Jorge Rafael Videla were not Amnesty prisoners when they eventually faced the bar of the court.

Wall Street Journal: Amnesty International Fronts for Taliban

On today's op-ed page, Michael Weiss reports there's apparently no free speech for Amnesty International employees, at least not when criticizing Taliban, in the case of Gita Saghal:

Enter Ms. Sahgal, a longtime Amnesty employee who believed that her organization's support for Mr. Begg betrayed its core principles. She went public with her concerns in a Feb. 7 interview with London's Sunday Times in which she called the collaboration "a gross error of judgment" that posed a serious threat to human rights and to Amnesty's reputation. Amnesty suspended Ms. Sahgal from her job, claiming it didn't want her opinion of Mr. Begg to be confused with its own.

Amnesty continues to defend its affiliation with Mr. Begg and Cageprisoners. Last week, on a Canadian radio program, Amnesty's interim Secretary General Claudio Cordone described Mr. Begg's politics as benign, saying there was so far no evidence to suggest that the organization should sever ties with him.

This is nonsense, says Ms. Sahgal via telephone in her home in London. "Amnesty has messaged him as a human-rights advocate . . . He was in Taliban Afghanistan. He was not a charity worker."

Especially galling for Ms. Sahgal is the fact that she only accepted her job after insisting to Widney Brown, senior director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty, that she be allowed to address the Begg alliance.

"I told her, 'If you don't give me the power to clean up this Begg situation, I won't take on the gender affairs assignment. Widney encouraged me to write a memo on it and even came past my office late one night while I was writing to discuss it. There was no internal resistance against this. So I was promoted with full support. Then, when the Sunday Times story broke, everything I uncovered was deemed 'innuendo.'"

For Ms. Sahgal, her case is not simply a minor lapse in judgment. She thinks the problem is systemic. "This is a very peculiarly ideological approach to human rights, which misses the point."

Novelist Salman Rushdie had harsher words. In a public statement, he said that Amnesty had "done its reputation incalculable damage" by allying with Mr. Begg. "It looks very much as if Amnesty's leadership is suffering from a kind of moral bankruptcy, and has lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong."

Are Wall Street Bailout Bonuses 21st Century "Welfare Cadillacs"?

IMHO, Bankers who used federal bailout money to pay themselves bonuses are today's welfare queens. Definition from Wikipedia:

A welfare queen is a pejorative phrase used in the United States to describe people who are accused of collecting excessive welfare payments through fraud or manipulation. Sensational reporting on welfare fraud began during the early-1960s, appearing in general interest magazines such as Readers Digest. The term entered the American lexicon during Ronald Reagan's 1976 presidential campaign when he described a "welfare queen" from Chicago's South Side.

Here's a link to lyrics from Guy Drake's 1970 country-western song, Welfare Cadillac. Just substitute "rich folks" for poor folks, and "mansion" or "penthouse" for shack, and it works for Wall Street executives...

Well, I've never worked much
In fact, I've been poor all my life
I guess I really own is
Ten kids and a wife

This house is a lived in mine
But it's really a shack
But I always managed somehow
To drive me a brand new Cadillac

Backdoor steps
They done fell plum down
Front screen door's off and laying
Somewhere out there on the ground

Wind just now whupped another piece
Of that old tar roofing off the back
Sure hope it don't skin up that new Cadillac

Front porch ?, they're loose at the bottom
It don't make no sense to fix them
Cause that floor just too darn rotten

Wintertime, we sometimes have some snow
That blows in through the cracks
It gets too bad, we just all pile up
Sleep out there in that new Cadillac

I know the place ain't much but
I sure don't pay no rent
I get the check the first of every month
From this here federal government

Every Wednesday, I get commodities
Sometimes, four or five sacks
Pick em up down at the welfare office
Driving that new Cadillac

Some folks say I'm crazy
And I'd even been called a fool
But my kids get free books and
All them there free lunches at school

We get peanut butter and cheese
And, man, they give us flour by the sack
Course, them welfare checks
They make the payments on this new Cadillac

The way that I see it
These other folks are the fools
They're working and paying taxes
Just to send my youngins through school

Salvation Army cuts our hair and
Gives us the clothes we wear on our back
So we can dress up and ride around
And show off this new Cadillac

But things still gonna get better yet
At least that's what I understand
They tell me this new President
Put in a whole new poverty plan

Why, he gonna send us poor folks money
They say we gonna get it out here in stacks
In fact, my wife's already shopping around
For her new Cadillac