Across the Great Divide

Light Duty.

I'm planning on doing lighter posting as I work on some stuff that is more directly in service to people than a blog, as well as some writing that no one is going to see for a while.

Here's a story about a therapy program run by my sister-in-law that uses horses to help rehabilitate Iraqi vets who have come back with multiple injuries and issues.

I also heard some top teachers on MPR talk today about what the standardized tests really tell us about what's happening in our schools — especially for individual kids and their progress.

As one put it, more or less, the tests represent one snapshot in time. We are taking individual snapshots of each student's progress in the classroom every day and every child is different. Suppose you have a benchmark for children tying their shoes, and on the day of the test, one child can and other can't. If the other child does it a few days later, does that mean the first child is more intelligent?

This certainly squares with my experience in the pre-school classroom. Each kid is in a different place and is progressing at a different rate. What I do that's of any value is to help each kid move forward from the place they are in that moment. It is total fantasy to think that the group of kids should move at the same rate to the same points, and if they haven't, the school or teacher is failing to do its job.

I understand why individual parents may be critical of schools, teachers and classrooms. But it is eye-opening  to spend extended time with a group of kids who are not your own and with people who may not have your abilities and advantages.

Health Care Conversations We Should be Having.

If the government were really trying to impose health care choices on Americans, it wouldn't start with Death Panels. I'd recommend Awareness Panels, in which the Town Hall questioners would be allowed to ask any questions as long they also agreed to answer questions — or at least listen to them and give them serious consideration.

Here are some of the questions I would ask:

• What happens to your wonderful health care coverage if you lose your job?
• Do you know how much your insurance will cost if you decide to continue your health care coverage under COBRA after you are no longer employed?
• What will you do in 18 months if you haven't found a job with health care benefits and your COBRA expires?
• Do you know if you and all your family members will be insurable again if your coverage is interrupted?
• Do you believe that none of these things could ever happen to you or your loved ones?
• Do you believe national policy should be based on your personal situation, beliefs and fears, or should it take into consideration all Americans?
• If you believe your experience reflects the true Americans, should our policy change if your situation changes as described above?

The answers would be interesting. Except for the ones that go "I don't want change because I don't want to lose my FREEDOM!"

*****

Former state epidemiologist Mike Osterholm was on MPR today talking about the nation's flu readiness.

The short version:

We're ready if nothing too extreme happens.

But he's concerned about our vulnerability to the "global just-in-time" economy. That's the system that has left public health to the free market; where companies have not invested in new ways to produce flu vaccines because the financial returns are too uncertain; where vaccines and other critical drugs are manufactured in Asia; where the factories are staffed by low-paid workers who will not be vaccinated and may not be able to come to work during an epidemic; where our stockpiles are on foreign ships sailing to the U.S., not in domestic clinics and hospitals; and where a serious flu outbreak is likely to disrupt this global supply chain — not just for drugs, but for food and other commodities.

*****

Similarly, Dick Armey, the former House majority leader and lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, is predicting an October surprise from Obama in the form of “a hyped-up outbreak of the swine flu, which they’ll say is as bad as the bubonic plague to scare the bed-wetters to vote for health care reform.”

The assertion may sound ludicrous, but it dovetails nicely with a view among conspiracy theorists that a sweeping and deadly plot lurks behind the swine flu pandemic. Influenced by the work of a whacked-out Austrian “journalist” named Jane Bürgermeister, some on the far right believe the virus was manufactured by the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the rest of the black helicopter crowd’s usual suspects, as “part of a long-term plan by the syndicate, who have built large numbers of FEMA concentration camps with incinerators and prepared mass graves in states such as Indiana and in New York to quarantine people and dispose of the bodies of the people who are killed by the bioweapons attack.” This “depopulation” scheme has in turn been linked by conspiracy theorists to the Obama administration’s plans for a “global planetary regime to enforce forced abortion” and sterilizing the population through the water supply.

[...]

Obama and the Democrats in Congress quickly frittered away any populist energy that might have come out of the recession, the fiasco of the Bush years, or the 2008 election. All that’s left are the compromises on top of compromises that they call policymaking, for which no one can muster much enthusiasm. Right-wing zealots, on the other hand, think they are fighting for their lives by standing fast against communism, or the anti-Christ, or both; they’re not only doing God’s work, but also fulfilling their destiny as true American patriots.

— James Ridgeway [h/t Norwegianity]

The Shelter Report: Unplugging the Weep Hole.

A bittersweet day today. Kindergarten is starting and that means some of the kids I've grown attached to will be moving on the real school.

One boy, call him Andre, has already stopped coming to preschool. I saw him outside with his mom and sister, Kaiah. It was nice to be able to say good bye, wish him well in school and tell his mother again what a good boy he is and that I think he will do great in school.

The first day I had him in preschool, he was kicking me. I told him he couldn't be my friend if he kicked me, and he made the right choices, mostly, from then on.

I have eyes that are connected directly to my heart. Especially my right eye. Whenever I'm feeling something deeply, it wells up. I can't stop it. Because of this, I often act a harder ass than I would otherwise be.

Jamal is going, too. He, like, Andre, is an attractive boy and enjoys some of the crazier play I come up with. Each morning I come in, he is drawing or coloring a Spongebob Squarepants. He's sharp with his letters and can work with concepts. He, too, will do fine.

Last, there's Carmine. If they were remaking the Mouseketeers today, the casting directors would put her in the front row. She has an unrehearsed sparkle that could launch a thousand teen pageant moms. She's first with the answers, often anticipating the question. Today, she showed me her muscles. Last week, she filled a chalk board with the teacher's opening monologue. The words lacked many of the letters, but you could tell what it was. I can write it, she said said, because I have brains in my head.

Indeed she does.

Near the end of gym today, her big toe in open sandals got run over by a trike. It bled under the nail, and I ministered to her wound, carried her back across the threshold to the class room and wrapped on a bandage.

In her honor, and Jamal's, I stayed for lunch. It may not have mattered to them, but I knew this was the last I'd see of them.

I gave Carmine a little pep talk about how great I thought she was and how well she was going to do in school. I said, you can go to college. You will be able to do anything you want, Carmine. I was trying to load up good karma that would somehow propel her through the next 13 years. Impossible, of course.

I'm just this guy who showed up once a week for a few months — who felt her muscles and announced her flips and put a bandage on her toe. She will have to do it herself, and there is a lot arrayed against her gifts, many people ready to suck out her sparkle, as if they could have it for themselves.

Have you thought about what you want to be when you grow up?, I asked, and she said: A mom. Presumably like the woman who has delivered her here, so whole, so far. You can be a mom and more, I said.

In masonry walls, it is necessary to leave weep holes so the inner moisture can get out and not compromise the structure. Yes, I tell myself, it is good to have weep holes at times like these.

Big Boxes and Brands Stretch the Meaning of "Local."

"Just so you know, buying local means any store in your community: mom-and-pop stores, national chains, big-box stores — you name it."

— Fresno, CA "Buy Local" campaign

Is buying local really that malleable? National brands and retailers would like us to think it is — especially as consumers seek fresher foods, more authentic experiences and a greater sense of community.

In Seattle, Starbucks has experimented with unbranding some of its stores, agribrands are buying up organic brands and then sourcing the product from China, and Hellman's is labeling its mayo "local" because most of the ingredients come from North America.

The New Rules Project has a good article that surveys "local-washing" practices across the country.

"Food is one of the biggest gateways, but we're seeing this idea of 'local' spread across other categories and sectors," said Michelle Barry, senior vice president of the Hartman Group. A report published by Hartman last year noted, "There is a belief that you can only be local if you are a small and authentic brand. This isn't necessarily true; big brands can use the notion of local to their advantage as well." Barry explains: "Big companies have to be much more creative in how they articulate local … It's a different way of thinking about local that is not quite as literal."

Right. I mean, Wal-Mart hires local people and pays local sales taxes. Cargill, that's a nice little local company. And a local distributor delivers your Budweiser. How's that any different from Surly, Summit or Brau Bros.?

Well, it is different. A study conducted by the firm Civic Economics and promoted by Orlando, FL, city officials found that, for every $100 spent locally, $45 stays in the community. But that was true only if the money was spent at a locally owned business. Spend $100 at a chain store, and only $13 stays.

Cities and their economic development agencies are likely to lean toward a broad definition of local, because the big boxes collect sales taxes just like mom & pop do, but

sales tax driven campaigns may well be doing more harm to local economies than good, according to Jeff Milchen, co-founder of the American Independent Business Alliance, a national organization that helps communities start and grow local business alliances [...] "If you encourage people to shop at a big-box store that takes sales away from an independent business, you're just funneling more dollars out of town, because, unlike chains, local businesses buy lots of goods and services, like accounting and printing, from other local businesses."

There's another wrinkle. Big chain stores know that consumers want to support companies they perceive to be acting responsibly, and

tossing around the word "local" is a far less expensive way to convey civic virtue than the alternatives. "Local is one of the lower-hanging fruits in terms of sustainability," explains Barry. "It's easier for companies to do than to improve how their employees are treated or adopt a specific sustainability practice around their carbon footprint, for example."

Social Calendar.

Tonight, Wednesday the 26th, I'm heading for the August installment of Give & Take sponsored by Solutions Twin Cities at 7:30 pm, Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Avenue South.

The line up:

Mike Phillips knows about charcuterie (the art of curing meat).
Aaron Helle knows about fishing in the city.
Courtney McLean knows about the power of auto-biographical story-telling.
Brett Kallusky knows about poetic photography

Thursday, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman will be at Drinking Liberally for a meet and greet. You can ask about local government aid, health care, the impact of the federal stimulus package on St. Paul or what office he's running for.

DL gets started around 6 pm at the 331 Club in Minneapolis, 13th and University NE. Coleman is expected around 7 pm.

My Download Speed: A Good as Sweden's. Actual Results May Vary.

Ed Kohler isn't all that happy with Comcast, and in the comments, Robin Marty wonders if she's getting the speed the ISP promised her.

I just got a notice from Comcast that said:

Comcast wants to ensure that your cable modem can take full advantage of the speeds we are able to deliver over our advanced fiber-optic network. We would like to upgrade your existing cable modem at no additional charge.

We'll see.

Coincidentally, I received notice of a report on internet speeds in all 50 states. You can hit the link and go to a cool map that will let you drill down to the ZIP code level to compare your speeds with the rest of the nation's.

Interesting, that my neighborhood had the second-best download and upload speeds in the metro, after the University of Minnesota area. Also, Red Lake County, which is reservation country, had some of the best recorded speeds in the state. My Colorado service, by contrast, sucks, with about 1/4th the download speeds I enjoy in Golden Valley.

Overall, Minnesota (23rd) and Colorado (26th) are mediocre in a country where our internet connection speed averages 5.1 megabits per second, compared to South Korea (20.1 mbps), Japan (16 mbps) and Sweden (12.7 mbps).

Health Care Reform Simplified.

I've been waiting for this explication of health care reform — actually, insurance reform. (h/t Ed Kohler)

 

Health Care May Account for Small-Business Disparities Between U.S. and Other Rich Countries.

Credit Lee Egerstrom of MN2020 with finding this study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research that compares U.S. small business employment with that in 20 other rich nations.

By every measure of small business employment, the United States has among the world’s smallest small-business sectors (as a proportion of total national employment). The lower taxes, less stringent regulations, and freer labor markets in the United States, it appears, have not yielded greater small-business employment here than elsewhere.

That's right. Although it's an article of faith in both parties that small businesses fuel America's job creation and innovation, we're worse than an also-ran in the global economy.

The study looked at:

• self-employment (the U.S. has the second lowest share of self-employed workers at 7.2 percent)
• shares of small business employment in manufacturing (only Ireland (9.6 percent) and Luxembourg (8.5 percent) ranked lower than the U.S. (11.1 percent)
• high-tech fields — computer-related services and research and development —where we ranked second- and third-lowest, respectively (Luxembourg spanked us in both categories)
• and lower-tech services (“restaurants, bars, and canteens”; “real estate activities”; and “renting of machinery and equipment etc.”) where we ranked dead last.

One comforting myth is that businesses are started by entrepreneurs with a design for a better mousetrap or maverick employees who wrote a business plan to exploit an opportunity their employer refused to invest in. These start ups will overcome obstacles and grow into healthy, profitable enterprises that provide good jobs and make the world a better place.

The job statistics will tell you that Minnesota’s smallest businesses (with 1-19 employees) account for about one-quarter of all new jobs annually. Even when its job losses are counted, this segment provides a net gain of jobs about equal to the state’s overall private sector job growth.

A lot of these small business simply deliver basic services and provide individuals a way to make a living in an economy that increasingly relies on part time labor and independent contractors. For every long-time mom and pop store or entrepreneur with a dream to build a company, there are several spouses supplementing the household income, displaced executives “consulting” between jobs, and painters, programmers and truck drivers who don’t know who they’ll be working for or what they’ll be making next month.

These may represent "new jobs," but they are hardly an engine of economic growth. Nearly three quarters of "small businesses" in Minnesota do not have employees.

I believe the downsizing and outsourcing by larger corporations is responsible in large part for this “job growth.”

Nearly three quarters of small businesses in Minnesota do not have employees. Most of these business owners will tell you the biggest decision they face is whether to hire some help; most never will. The second biggest is whether to offer "benefits" — which means health care and a 401(k) plan.

By outsourcing more work to small businesses, corporations can effectively buy the services without incurring the obligation to provide benefits. We've seen this gambit occur also in the retail sector, where employers use part-time work as a way of avoiding providing health care and other employee benefits.

The CERP study puts this practice in global perspective. In countries where there's national health care, a real barrier to entrepreneurial growth is removed. People are more likely to start businesses — and hire employees — knowing that health care will not be a cost that constrains their growth.

When I started my business I made an early decision to provide employee benefits that were competitive with what big companies offered — because those were our clients, and we wanted to attract talent that was comparable to what a major corporation would hire. That was the right strategic decision for my business at that time, but I know many start ups and sole proprietors who see health care as a major cost that they can't risk funding.

As Lee Egerstrom says:

Without a universal health care system that moves insurance costs off the backs of doing business, we will continue to thwart entrepreneurial development and we will continue to encourage large manufacturers and service providers to keep out-sourcing and off-shoring work and jobs.

Unless, of course, companies in those more enlightened countries simply take the business away from us.

How Do Communities Thrive: By Maximizing Wealth or Redistributing it?

The comments at This Road is Designed to Kill You have drifted a bit off topic — from the safety effects of traffic roundabouts to incentives for people to live closer to work to flight from city schools to the influence of school district size on student achievement. (Go ahead and read them if you haven't. I won't make many explicit references here.)

Running through the discussion is a divide that often surfaces here, and in fact simmers under most of what passes for debate in politics today. Whether the topic is health care, schools, the economy, taxes or infrastructure, it boils down to the merits of government intervention versus free market solutions as ways to solve big problems.

Another, less common way to put it is this: Communities thrive by redistributing wealth or by maximizing opportunities to accumulate wealth.

For example, Mark and Jeff had a back-and-forth over whether a single, large school district that allocated dollars first to lagging schools would help improve student performance, especially in inner city schools.

Mark says: "Turn all contiguous metropolitan areas into a single school district, with funding prioritized so as to deal with the lowest performing schools first."

Jeff responds: "The measure that shows the greatest correlation with school performance isn't funding, and it isn't class size. It's school district size. Kids in smaller school districts do far better."

Jeff is correct that studies show smaller school districts tend to have better student achievement, but size matters only insofar as it negatively affects the factors that really produce learning outcomes.

It's worth noting that school districts usually are large because a) they were formed to encompass large city boundaries with their diverse populations and the education challenges that go with them. Or b) they were consolidated from smaller districts experiencing enrollment declines, substandard offerings or funding issues that led them to seek economies of scale. In both cases, upsized districts are a consequence of factors other than pure pursuit of improved student achievement.

Mark is talking about disparity of income between districts, not size; a super district would be just one way to redistribute money to aid lower-performing schools. Of course, a similar move — giving more responsibility for school funding to the state — was tried and then has been slowly dismantled by Gov. Pawlenty. But redistributing school aid dollars isn't really the whole answer, either. Living in economically advantaged communities tends to be accompanied by other factors that relate to school performance, and these advantages are more difficult to export — or to benefit students who are bused in to those communities.

Growth & Justice delivered a research-based report last year that summarized three factors that were most critical for getting students from pre-K all the way through college. Each of these has financial implications, not necessarily tied to what we think of as "school funding."

Quality academic preparation and alignment. Children receiving sustained quality instruction, rigorous curriculum, and meaningful, ongoing assessments are more likely to succeed at the next education level.
Social supports. Relationships between children and adults in early childhood, school, and non-school settings are significant to academic success. Parents contribute to a child’s educational success when they are involved with care providers, teachers, mentors, and tutors.
Access and financial support. Access to quality providers, programs, and institutions places children and students in a position to take advantage of learning opportunities. But limited financial means can be a barrier to access. Subsidized childcare, preschool, and post-secondary tuition grants expand access to quality learning experiences for students at all income levels.

To over-simplify my point, I'd say the education discussion drifted toward comfortable positions for Mark and Jeff, but got richer as they shared the research and the complexities became more evident.

In another post, I'll discuss one other angle their discussion raised — taking personal credit for successes and blaming government for failures.

Nothing Runs Like a Brand that has Lost its Way.

I ran across this 8-foot-high John Deere tricycle today. A bit of a joke, like the John Deere venture back in the 1970s, when company decided to jump on the last bike craze (10 speeds!) with cheap, crappy bikes manufactured in Taiwan. (Not that they've learned their lesson.)

This Deere is guaranteed not to run unless it is being towed, but like many bikes (and cars and motorcycles), the object here is to attract attention.

In that respect, it succeeds.