VA - House GOP Sinking Public Education

Yesterday, the debate on the Assembly floor got heated as Republican Del. Dave Albo stood on the floor yelling and waving a photocopy of a bar chart that allegedly showed how they were increasing funding for public education in the budget.

But anytime a Republican tells you they're increasing funding for public education, read the fine print.

As it turns out, the Republicans are really cutting the legs out from under public education while bragging that they're buying it a new hat. Here's what the Republicans new benchmarking process does:

• Reduces the base level of benchmarking by $348 million


• Gets rid of the relationship between state funds and actual costs


• Reduces state funding of school secretaries, instructional assistants, and other clerical staff by over $78 million


• Reduces state funding for teacher salaries by $227 million


• Caps inflation provisions, which will reduce funding by over $20 million


• Removes the cap on the deduction for federal funding, reducing funding most for Virginia's poorest school


• Increases real estate taxes to make up for the difference in state funding

The Republicans are changing the way education costs are calculated. The state's public education money in Virginia is determined based on a complex process called "benchmarking" that is supposed to peg the education budget to what it actually costs to educate kids. This is a $348 million cut.

Republicans are changing the way that benchmarking is done, so that the education budget will have no relationship to the actual costs of educating kids in Virginia.

A stark example is the way the Republicans are putting a cap on the inflation provisions. While worries about inflation continue to rise, Virginia Republicans are setting the education budget pegged to the costs of education years ago, not the cost of education today.

Adding insult to injury, the Republican plan by cutting state funding for education based on federal funding. So, if the federal government gives money to a school district, the state takes it away. This means places like Petersburg, VA will get hit with a loss of $1.15 million in state education funding.

Check out this Google Map that shows the education funding cuts across the state.

Virginia Republicans are trying to hoodwink voters by telling them that they're going to provide a new deckchair every year, meanwhile hiding the fact that their new benchmarking is a huge iceberg that's going to sink public education.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

As Congress discusses ways to bail out lenders, borrowers, mortgage insurers, everyone in between, Martin Wolf lays it out:

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. One obvious lesson concerns monetary policy. Central banks must surely pay more attention to asset prices in future. It may be impossible to identify bubbles with confidence in advance. But central bankers will be expected to exercise their judgment, both before and after the fact.

A more fundamental lesson still concerns the way the financial system works. Outsiders were already aware it was a black box. But they were prepared to assume that those inside it at least knew what was going on. This can hardly be true now. Worse, the institutions that prospered on the upside expect rescue on the downside. They are right to expect this. But this can hardly be a tolerable bargain between financial insiders and wider society. Is such mayhem the best we can expect? If so, how does one sustain broad public support for what appears so one-sided a game?

Yes, the government can rescue the economy. It is now being forced to do so. But that is not the end of this story. It should only be the beginning.

House of Cards

From Prime Numbers: The Plastic Revolution, in Foreign Policy:

Should regulatory agencies take the place of tort law?

On Monday, the New York Times reported that the Supreme Court is considering protecting drug manufacturers from products liability lawsuits where the products have been approved by the FDA.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the fundamental question in the cases was who should make the decisions that will determine whether a drug is “on balance, going to save people or, on balance, going to hurt people?”

“An expert agency on the one hand or 12 people pulled randomly for a jury role who see before them only the people whom the drug hurt and don’t see those who need the drug to cure them?” Justice Breyer asked.

Normally a member of the court’s liberal wing, Justice Breyer came down squarely on the industry’s side when he answered his own question, saying Congress left the role of policing the medicine market exclusively to the Food and Drug Administration.

“What worries me is, what happens if the jury is wrong?” he said.

Interesting question. Of course, Breyer's analysis assumes that the FDA has the resources and expertise to properly evaluate the products in question.

Today's Wall Street Journal casts some doubt on that assumption.

The FDA's leader, in an unusual public departure from Bush administration policy, says in an interview that he requested more than the 2.95% increase in overall agency appropriations proposed in the president's 2009 budget, though he declines to discuss specific figures. An outside advisory panel yesterday suggested the agency needs about 150% added to its appropriated base budget, phased in over five years, to cope with challenges such as inspecting a rising tide of imports.

"I think to do what we need to do requires substantially more dollars than what has been invested in the FDA thus far," Dr. von Eschenbach says. "This is a systemic overhaul that must go on over a period of years."

...

A recent report requested by Dr. von Eschenbach from an outside advisory group said the agency's "inability to keep up with scientific advances means that American lives are at risk." A series of earlier reports from government and independent organizations have faulted the FDA's handling of imports and drug safety, as well as the agency's habits and culture.

This is a fundamental problem with federal preemption of state tort claims based on the theory that regulatory agency approval is sufficient to provide an adequate level of safety for consumers - it assumes that the agency is fully funded and independent.

Industry trade associations will tell you that it's important to have a single standard, rather than "51" (as if a corporation would make 51 different products and not conform to the strictest level of safety). Reading between the lines, though, what the associations are saying is that it's easier to influence one federal agency chief than multiple agencies across the country.

The plaintiff's bar will tell you, on the other hand, that only in the "crucible of truth" can the proper level of safety be determined.

Of course, there's also the third way - split the difference and establish that regulatory approval creates a rebuttable presumption that the manufacturer has not committed a tort. But, again, that requires some assumption that the regulatory agency is acting in an independent manner and not advancing a particular ideology.

No class

Josh Marshall pretty much sums up the Clinton campaign:

10:13 PM ... I thought for a moment there that Hillary was going to say something classy. Guess I was wrong.

Yeah.

FDIC preparing for bank crash

FDIC preparing for bank crash

"Regulators are bracing for well over 100 bank failures in the next 12 to 24 months, with concentrations in Rust Belt states like Michigan and Ohio, and the states that are suffering severe housing-market problems like California, Florida, and Georgia," said Jaret Seiberg, Washington policy analyst for financial-services firm Stanford Group.

What am I doing wrong?

I don't even know what to say about this.

The firm that includes Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist and pollster, and his team collected $3.8 million for fees and expenses in January; in total, including what the campaign still owes, the firm has billed more than $10 million for consulting, direct mail and other services, an amount other Democratic strategists who are not affiliated with either campaign called stunning.

Howard Wolfson, the communications director and a senior member of the advertising team, earned nearly $267,000 in January. His total, including the campaign’s debt to him, tops $730,000.

The advertising firm owned by Mandy Grunwald, the longtime media strategist for both Mrs. Clinton and Bill Clinton, the former president, has collected $2.3 million in fees and expenses, and is still owed another $240,000.

“Fees and payments are in line with industry standards,” Mr. Wolfson said. “Spending priorities have been consistent with overall strategic goals.”

But some Democrats are now asking if the money spent on a campaign that appears to be sputtering — $106 million so far — was worth it.

Howard Wolfson earned over a quarter of a million dollars in one month!?!

What am I doing wrong?

How sausage is made

Last weekend's Washington Post Magazein featured one of the best case studies of how Washington, DC works that I've seen in some time.

Mickey Goes to Washington follows the efforts of one industry to get taxpayers to pay for $200 Million in overseas advertising.

Read the article and study the process if you want to see how things get done around here. And note the story's moral. In DC, even when you lose, you still win.

Well, we shouldn't do stuff like that, anyway.

Today's NYT features an op-ed by Morris Davis, an Air Force colonel and chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from 2005 to 2007. His op-ed, Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible Evidence, is a stark rejoinder to Justice Scalia's embarrassing tirades.

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.”

Today, Tom Ahern might have to say: “We don’t do stuff like that very often.” Or, “We generally don’t do stuff like that.” That is a shame. Virtues requiring caveats are not virtues. Saying a man is honest is a compliment. Saying a man is “generally” honest or honest “quite often” means he lies. The mistreatment of detainees, like honesty, is all or nothing: We either do stuff like that or we do not. It is in our national interest to restore our reputation for the latter.

...

There are some bad men at Guantánamo Bay and a few deserve death, but only after trials we can truthfully call full, fair and open. In that service, we must declare that evidence obtained by waterboarding be banned in every American system of justice. We must restore our reputation as the good guys who refuse to stoop to the level of our adversaries. We are Americans, and we should be able to state with conviction, “We don’t do stuff like that.”

It just sounds worse in Russian

The Wall Street Journal's Opinion page offers, without comment, A list of known torture colonies in Russia.

This as we await President Bush's promised veto of a bill banning torture by the United States.

Although President Bush has stated that the United States has not and will not torture people, it has been learned that Mr. Bush himself has authorized the use of waterboarding on detainees (a practice previously prosecuted by the United States as a war crime), and has claimed the authority to do so again in certain circumstances.

Despite military interrogators' assertions that waterboarding and other brands of torture do not produce reliable intelligence, the Bush administration continues to argue that it needs the option of waterboarding when seeking information from recalcitrant prisoners.

George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, cut from the same cloth.

I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.

Hold on to your pocketbook

The headline in today's WSJ says it all, Worried Bankers Seek to Shift Risk to Uncle Sam.

That the housing market is in serious trouble is no secret, and those high-risk loans are coming back to bite banks hard. Treasury Secretary Paulson predicts that the worst is just beginning", and we may be looking at a continued rise in foreclosures.

Now, like their Savings & Loan predecessors, high-risk lenders are looking for the taxpayer to underwrite their losses. "Shifting risk to Uncle Sam" means that you and I get soaked while irresponsible lenders walk away from the mess, untouched and unaccountable.

Two op-eds in today's WaPo worth reading:

The Democrats' Undemocratic System

and

Shades of Chicago

The Financial Times gets to the heart of the problem with the trials of six Guantánamo Bay prisoners linked to the September 11 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

There is no doubt that “high value” detainees such as Khaled Sheikh Mohammed – who brags he was the mastermind behind 9/11 and beheaded Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter – must face justice. But the case against him and some of his associates has been compromised by the circumvention of legal process and the use of torture techniques such as waterboarding or simulated drowning.

Tony Scalia continues to embarrass himself and paint an ugly portrait of American barbarism.

"I suppose it's the same thing about so-called torture. Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the constitution?" he asked.

"It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that. And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game.

"How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?"

Ah, the old ticking time bomb scenario that serves as the foundation of mediocre TV shows and conservative jurisprudence.

Keith Olbermann (not a Supreme Court Justice) pokes a giant hole (at 2:37) in the logic of Tony Scalia (is a Supreme Court Justice).

"Sisyphus? Isn't that what Voltaire died from?"

- Ahmed, a 19-year-old intern in my office, 02/11/2008

President Bush explains that we shouldn't even bother trying to tax the rich because, hey, they aren't going to pay their taxes anyway!

Bonus oddity: Mr. Bush criticized Democrats for saying that they would focus on taxing the rich. That’s just not realistic, said the president who considers tax cuts one of his signature legacies: “Most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck.”

- via Washington Wire

Mitt Romney said in his concession speech today that, "I am convinced that unless America changes course, we will become the France of the 21st century..."

Huh. So, if McCain wins, we get to be more like France.