Pelosi, Although Slow and Dangerous Behind the Wheel

As long as Democrats aren't successful, then I agree with Friedman ($) that Pelosi's resistance to Bush's war policy is actually constructive. Although I don't think Iraq is to blame for not having put the country back together yet (that blame lies with us, and people like Tom Vilsack are stupid for even suggesting otherwise), I do think it is useful for the Iraqi government to know that they need to make concessions soon because the Democrats won't allow an extended troop presence. But equally important is Friedman's point that we also need to hope that General Petraeus can make the surge successful. We need some form of stability in Iraq before we can leave. I can't stress this enough.

Let My Poultry Go

I don't know if my favorite vegan would be surprised to hear this or not, but I agree with every word of this opinion piece($). Here is a highlight for those of you who don't have TimesSelect:

Numerous studies have documented crated sows exhibiting behavior characteristic of humans with severe depression and mental illness. Getting rid of gestation crates (already on their way out in the European Union) is welcome and long overdue, but more action is needed to end inhumane conditions at America's hog farms.

Basically, I think animals should be treated much better than they are; this is in their interest and in ours. To put animals in unsanitary situations where disease is rampant and combat this by injecting the animals with very high levels of antibiotics can't be good for consumers, and it certainly isn't good for the animals. Free range pork and free range chicken - or at least cage-free - should be the norm, not the expensive exception.

Why Chavez?

To continue on the foreign policy trend, I think the popularity of Hugo Chavez can teach us something important. This article talks about Chavez's appeal in terms of his message of South American empowerment. Although there are many flaws in his positions, he articulates an alternative to US policies that always ensure that South America remains dependent on us. Right now, Chavez is the only alternative for people who are sick of our pressure for policies that always benefit the US (despite Bush's push for ethanol while in Brazil, he is still unwilling to end protectionist tariffs on imported sugar cane-based ethanol). If we were honest about free trade and if our policies really were fair to all parties, demagogues like Chavez would have much less appeal.

Surprisingly, President Bush has moved a bit in the right direction with this change in agriculture subsidies. Hopefully the Democratic Congress will not cave into the giant Agribusiness lobby, but I am worried. In the meantime, even people who see through Chavez will continue to be drawn to his message of empowerment.

Pick a Side

I can't stress how important this debate is and I wish people really thought about it more. Do we want to use force or do we want to stress diplomacy to accomplish our foreign policy aims? As I see it, one cannot work without the other, although I think Bush is just learning this. The question though is which should we stress?

I think it is undeniable that in Iraq we should have stressed diplomacy, sanctions, and working with the international community. In fact, sometimes force and the threat of force only makes leaders of rogue states stronger. Unfortunately, in our dealings with Iran it seems like we haven't learned any of these lessons (for a really funny take on this, check out Kristof's column where he shows just how much bad decisions can hurt our cause - more so than espionage). Of the candidates on the left, I get the impression that Bill Richardson knows how to stress diplomacy while still showing that the US can use force.

The Purse Strings

I know I post a lot about education policy; quite often I talk about early intervention, improving middle schools, and rigor in high schools. The bottom line though is that none of it is really worth talking about if we don't change the way we allocate funds. The only way we can eliminate the achievement gap is by making a determined effort to support schools with the greatest need. This means giving more funding to New York City and Syracuse, and less to Long Island and the Hudson Valley.

The problem is that this isn't politically popular. As you can see in this article, the schools in the suburbs want to protect their own interests and are resistant to any decreases in funding. But if funding doesn't decrease in the areas that can afford it, there is little chance of significant increases to schools that need it - there is only so much room in the state budget.

Policy discussions are necessary, but the real action is in the budget. When programs aren't adequately funded, the policy cannot succeed. It is that simple. So don't expect any major improvements in achievement until serious funding changes are made.

In Sports, I Follow People

I don't usually write about sports, but I think I just realized something. The sports teams I follow - both now and as a kid - revolve around some person that excites me. As a kid, I liked the Detroit Tigers, New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals, and Oakland Athletics. I used to be embarrassed about this apparent fickleness because I thought it meant I was a front runner. The reality is that only two of those teams actually won while I was a fan (the Tigers and Cards weren't good in the late 1980s). But the truth is that I liked those teams because of a player that thrilled me. For the Tigers it was Jack Morris, the Mets it was Ron Darling and Lenny Dykstra, it was Ozzie Smith on the Cardinals, and of course Mark McGwire on the A's.

The reason I realized this now is because I am finding myself rooting for the New York Islanders, a team I have long despised almost as much as the New Jersey Devils. I am rooting for them because they finally hired Ted Nolan. For those of you who don't know, Ted Nolan was the head coach of the Buffalo Sabres back in the mid 1990s. He won coach of the year in 1997, was fired / not given a contract extension for the following season, and hasn't coached since. I have long thought the reason he wasn't offered a job since then was racism - Ted Nolan is an American Indian and grew up on the Garden River First Nation Reserve.

The truth is that he and his boss, General Manager John Muckler didn't get along, nor did he get along with goalie Dominic Hasek. But for anyone who knows the NHL, they will agree that many coaches have bad reputations for not getting along with GMs and star players, but still get hired if they have had some success (Mike Keenan is the best example of this). Ted Nolan won coach of the year because his Sabres that year played well above anyone's expectations. In light of all this, I was never able to understand why he wasn't hired.

But after a long absence, Ted Nolan is back and I find myself doing the unthinkable, rooting for the Islanders (I think I might even root for them to make the playoffs over the Rangers). For those of you who are unconvinced, here is a recent interview I read.

Closing Schools

I feel like this is the part of No Child Left Behind that people don't talk about enough. When schools fail to perform, they are closed down and students are sent to other schools. While it makes sense that poor performing schools shouldn’t just be allowed to continue operating as usual, closing them isn’t having any effect either. A friend in Syracuse told me about one of their schools that closed down. In response, the city essentially sent the kids to another school with a different name; it is still plagued with the same problems. It appears that the schools in the NYC are having the same problems.

The fact is, closing the school and opening it under a new name doesn’t change what is causing poor performance. What we need to do is decide that we are truly serious about changing education results in low income areas. While there has been a lot of lip service given to this, too many groups are actually standing in the way of meaningful reforms. To my mind, one of the best things we can do is to pay teachers a premium to teach in these areas. Data shows that low income areas on average have teachers with less experience.

This makes perfect sense economically; if you are paid the same whether you teach in a school with a challenging education environment or less of a challenging environment, more often than not you will choose the easier environment. I think NYC Department of Education is trying to do this though a new focus on weighted student funding. The unions are of course opposing this, which is really unfortunate because the unions are so strong they can kill almost any proposal or evolution. But make no mistake, we need to make this decision or else we cannot actually deal with the achievement gap. We need to say that we are willing to spend a lot more money in low performing areas, and that includes paying teachers more to teach there.

Unions Protect the Worst

I don’t think I could either be classified as pro-union or anti-union (as a whole, I have been rejecting the idea of binary distinctions lately). I certainly recognize the roll unions have played in our history – the 40 hour work week, child labor laws, safe working conditions – the list goes on. But at the same time, I recognize their significant flaws. Above all, their goal is to protect their workers, but in executing this they frequently rely on an adversarial, and unproductive, relationship with management, and worse spend much effort defending poor-performing workers.

When I was an undergraduate, I had a part-time job on campus driving some of the trades workers around campus to perform their duties. Almost all of the workers were excellent and competent. There was one, the electrician, who was notoriously slow, lazy, and adept at hiding and avoiding work. He refused to carry a radio so that he could not be found and dispatched to his next assignment – and in other ways ensured that he would have maximum time between tasks and thereby accomplishing a minimum. Every time management tried to confront him, he filed a grievance and the union defended him. In a small way, the campus would have functioned better if it could have fired the electrician and hired someone willing to work hard for the pay and generous benefits offered by the university.

I see teacher tenure in the same way. In K-12 I see no reason that tenure should exist – in academia I see that it is meant to protect professors and allow them to conduct research that may be unpopular. Teachers unions though protect tenure with all of their effort. In my mind, a system of teacher tenure only protects the low-performing teachers. As a product of public school, I can remember a few teachers who had either long since lost their ability to reach the students, or quite possibly didn’t have it in the first place. The school should have had the ability to fire these teachers if they weren’t effective. Instead, every year 25 students (more or less) had to suffer through a class with this teacher.

This is the fundamental problem I have with unions – their desire to protect the worst employees instead of the best. I am sure the logic is that by protecting the worst, they are protecting all – but I don’t see it that way. I have seen how employee moral can be affected by lazy employees who are never disciplined. What makes me really angry is that the unions want to increase their grab to cover charter schools as well. The idea behind charter schools is to make them closer to their private school counterparts, with more flexibility in curriculum and staff management (hiring and firing teachers, hours and responsibilities, etc). Forcing them to unionize only makes them more like public schools - cumbersome and slow to evolve.