This was predictable: Vision 2015 poised to become Vision 2020

Originally it was Vision 2012.

Then, when it became evident that the corporate donors weren't coming across with the promised money, it became Vision 2015.

I have been predicting for about two years now that with 2015 just around the corner it would be time to move the goal posts again.

I thought Vision 2020 would be a lame enough visual pun and give Rodel et al a long enough timeline to keep avoiding accountability.

Sure enough, here's a quote from their invite to a big event next week:

"Rodel is hosting an event to officially announce the foundation’s new mission to help Delaware become a global leader in public education by 2020, and to acknowledge all the work we’ve collectively accomplished in getting to this point."

The problem is that Rodel, and Governor Markell, all really do think that the public (and the General Assembly) is so stupid that they won't notice what's happening.

Based on prior experience here, they're right.

Delaware's (corporate) welfare queens take money from your schools and roads thanks to the General Assembly

Everybody (including me) likes to keep beating the Markell administration (and the legislature that let it happen) over the head about Fisker.

But by the time that the News Journal gets involved, you have to know that the story is finally old hat.

Instead of pointing the finger at Alan Levine and Jack Markell (neither of whom is running for re-election in 2014), how about we do the responsible thing and stop this team of capitalist geniuses before they help us again.

Oops.  Too late.  AstraZeneca.

OK, maybe we can still expect our legislature to stop them before they do it again.

But probably not.

Here's what Governor "Trust me I'm a knowledgeable Wall Street capitalist" Markell and Alan "I made mine, so now it's time to play with your tax dollars" Levine plan for our 2014 State budget.

Remember that revenues are down, hard choices must be made, and we can't afford Minner Reading teachers, School Resource Officers, or to conduct a statewide safety assessment of our schools and public buildings to make them better protected against people who might want to kill children.

But for this, we've got $29,000,000 just sitting around:

First, notice that the list of "recent projects supported" has been purged of those pesky losers like Fisker and AstraZeneca, where spending millions (including uncollected school taxes) didn't turn out to preserve or create jobs.

Second, let's take a look at our current crop of Delaware welfare queens:

JP Morgan Chase has an annual revenue of $109 billion.  Uh, folks, the State of Delaware has a total income of $3.6 billion, and we're giving them money?

Citigroup has an annual revenue of $97 billion, and we're giving them money while we make schools compete for "safety grants"?

Amazon has an annual revenue of $60 billion, and we're giving them money while we cut reading and math specialists in our schools?

Capital One has an annual revenue of $23 billion, and we can barely afford medical care for prison inmates, but we're giving them money?

Kraft Foods has an annual revenue of $18 billion, and we're giving them money while we cannot afford School Resource Officers?

Ashland has an annual revenue of $8 billion, and we're giving them money while tens of thousands of people in Delaware have no healthcare?

Atlantis Industries has an annual revenue of $3.6 billion, which is the same as the State of Delaware, and we're giving them money while we can't afford environmental clean-ups?

OK that's seven of the companies that Governor Markell is bragging that we have given money, seven companies with a combined total revenue of $318.6 BILLION, as opposed to Delaware's $3.6 Billion (or, think of it this way:  they take in, between them, nearly $100 in revenue for ever $1 Delaware receives of your tax money), and we're giving these corporate welfare queens money?

And we're bragging about it?

Yes, of course we need jobs in this State.

But two observations here:

1.  If you really wanted to give away money to help potential employers, just think how many small businesses in Delaware could be supported to hire new workers and expand their enterprises with the $29 million that is literally a rounding error to these mega-corporations?

2.  The reality is that our pitiful few million dollars of grant money do not even constitute effective bribes for companies like JP Morgan Chase or Citigroup.  They take the money out of our coffers to remind us that they can.  They actually base their employment decisions and their location decisions on things like our infrastructure, our public education system, our crime rates, etc. etc.  They cash our tiny (in their terms) little checks and use the money to pay for the appetizers they serve in the boardrooms on "Chump Appreciation Day."

I don't blame Governor Markell or Mr. Levine half as much as I blame our General Assembly.

Anybody can offer you an indecent proposition:  it's your choice to lay down and spread your legs.

Vermont: wherein effective nullification becomes both a Green and Libertarian thing

The Vermont House has just passed a GMO labeling bill by a heavy majority:  99-42.

This basically represents a state choosing to nullify the Monsanto Protection Act [assuming the Vermont Senate also passes it and the Governor signs it] by requiring labels that the Feds have said are unnecessary and may even be illegal.

State legislatures and referenda pushing back at the Federal government used to be derided as the province of "Tenthers" and conservative extremists.

But Colorado and Washington pushed back on marijuana legalization.

Twelve states have pushed back on marriage equality.

Vermont is now pushing back on food labeling exemptions.

For Libertarians this is pretty simple, doctrinaire stuff, trying to limit Federal power.

For our Green friends, who have consistently advocated for environmental and economic policies driven from the top down this may be new territory.  "Think globally, act locally" may take on an entirely different connotation.

A national biometric database: obviously just more Libertarian paranoia ...

Except, of course, that the source is Wired:

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system. 

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID. 

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

Of course, both President Obama and all of his supporters will tell me that (a) it is paranoid to think the government has intentions other than those stated; (b) that "slippery slope" arguments are always fallacious; (c) that the government would never target its own citizens for involuntary detention; (d) and that Gitmo will be closed, with the innocent there being released.

The reality, once again very uncomfortable for my liberal friends, is that Richard Nixon had far more respect for civil liberties and the rule of law than Barack Obama.

Random thoughts about Delaware's 2014 budget

I really should do a coordinated piece on this, but times are full of lots of stuff, and so I offer just a few observations:

1.  Higher Education

You can really tell who owns the General Assembly here.  According to the proposed increases for next year:

UD will receive an increase of over $9 million--a 4% increase

DelTech will receive an increase of over $5 million--a 7.8% increase

and

DSU will receive an increase of about $0.9 million--a 2.8% increase

In other words, in both terms of total money appropriated and percentage increases, despite the most rapidly growing enrollment in the state, DSU will again be the stepchild of higher education in Delaware.

Four years ago the state appropriated about $38 million for DSU; this year's "increase" will bring DSU back up to just  $33.7 million.

From a comparative standpoint, DelTech's 2009 appropriation was about $73 million, and this year it will rake in over $74 million.

Again:  you can tell who really owns the General Assembly here.

2.  Safety and Homeland Security

The completely unnecessary Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security had a budget appropriation in 2012 of $8.3 million.  In 2013, when almost all other state budgets were shrinking, that appropriation leaped to $12.9 million, and next year they are slated to get $13.5 million.

Now remember, this office is above and out of the budget line of the Delaware State Police.

So what are we getting for our $13.5 million, aside from the privilege of having a hefty-salaried retired FBI bigshot sitting on his ass in Wilmington?

I don't think you'd believe it if I just quoted it, because you probably think the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security actually has something to do with law enforcement.  The reality is that all it has to do with is ... $13.5 million in paper-shuffling.

Here's the screenshot:

You get this, right?

The performance measure for the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security is evaluated on "the percentage of fiscal documents received, reviewed and processed within three days."

There's, uh, nothing in the entire freaking document about being evaluated on making Delaware safer, on conducting risk assessments, or anything like that.

Here's a thought:  instead of taking $13.5 million for plush offices and sending a retired FBI agent to conferences so he can pimp for the next FBI Directorship on the state dime, let's actually spend the money on ... homeland security.

Want to know how to make our schools safer?

Eliminate this office and return its oversight functions to the Delaware State Police.

Then take $13.5 million and have an actual safety audit of our public schools done and begin spending the money to upgrade their security.

Let's see:  over five years we would be able to commit over $75 million to improving the safety and security of our public schools without increasing taxes by a dime, and we could get rid of the ridiculous idea that our schools should compete for grants to make their students safer.

Later I'll do public education and a few other topics.  This is enough to chew on today ....

More government idiocy on containing the spread of information

US citizens prohibited from even handling scientific manuscripts originating in Iran.

Sort of a governmental form of Sha'ria law: 

Major scientific journal publisher Reed Elsevier and others are vowing to obey thelatest US sanctions against Iran in their day-to-day operations, implementing bizarre policies aimed at following the letter of the law.

The sanctions ban Americans from having any contact with anything written in whole or part by Iranian government employees. Though Elsevier is a Dutch company, it has plenty of American employees, particularly as relates to its English language publications.

So the company has had to introduce a series of zero tolerance policies that its American-born employees cannot have any interaction with the physical manuscripts of Iranians, and also advises managers to “reject outright” any manuscripts from Iran if they can’t find a non-American employee to handle it. The company is concerned that journal editors could be held personally liable by the US government for acquiring the taint of handling Iranian manuscripts.

An over-reaction from Elsevier?  Possibly.  But since the US Government has asserted the power to issue national security letters to anyone violating its policies, letters that the recipient cannot challenge or even tell anyone else about (that's a crime, remember), this policy may not have sprung directly from the minds of the publisher.

Should the US Government be able to make the flow of information on an international basis illegal?

Funny, we didn't even do that with Soviet papers of nuclear physics during the height of the Cold War.

We didn't do that when India was developing nuclear weapons.

We didn't do that when Israel was (illegally, according to international law) developing nuclear weapons.

I am, apparently, an unreasonable Libertarian dogmatist for pointing out that this policy (a) makes no sense when European and Asian nations are not doing anything similar; (b) actually inhibits our own passive intelligence gathering about the Iranians; and (c) is another example of why the current administration is by far not just the worst administration on civil liberties in the history of the nation, but is also the most dangerous in terms wanting to stop the free flow of information to and between its citizens.

I will say it again:  the Obama administration routinely (almost daily) pursues policies that would make Richard Nixon cringe, and gets a pass on them.

Over half of the prisoners at Gitmo are known to be innocent, but we still don't release them

That's right:  86 of the 166 prisoners at Gitmo have been officially cleared for release because the US government now admits they have no connection to terrorism, but they continue to be held because our leaders can't figure out how to release them.

Not that we're trying too damn hard:  the Obama administration closed the office responsible for figuring it out, and the Pentagon refuses to make use of relaxed restrictions on prisoner release granted by Congress.

Another 50 are being held--presumably until they die--because the "evidence" we have against them is the result of torture (er, enhanced interrogation) and cannot be used in court.  So even a military tribunal cannot convict them, so we basically intend to force feed them (many are on hunger strike) till they die.

This is not new, unfortunately.  The US government has a long, sordid history of holding people without charges until they die, just as the US public has a long, shameful history of ignoring it.

About twenty years ago I was deployed to the Joint Readiness Training Center, then at Fort Chaffee AR, for wargames.  Most people don't know it, but Fort Chaffee is where we eventually sent part of the remnant population from Castro's Mariel "boat lift"to live out the rest of their lives in squalid conditions in condemned barracks.  By hook and crook I got to see some of this up close, and most of what I saw was now wizened old men in their sixties and seventies, most with no teeth.

The US government gave most of the troops involved in imprisoning these folks the Humanitarian Service Award (you just can't make this stuff up).

Ironically, the two largest mass life-time detentions by the US in modern history have been overseen by the two Presidents to win the Nobel Peace Prize:  Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.

For all of Carter's subsequent posturing about human rights around the world, just as with all of Obama's rhetoric on similar topics, both pursued (especially Obama) foreign and domestic policies that would have made Richard Nixon cringe.

And we continue to give President Obama a pass on it.

The US Government and King Canute

So the State Department is attempting to suppress the blueprints for 3-D printable firearms ...

You can hold any opinion you like about the propriety or morality of spreading the information about how to create your own weapons via 3-D printers around the planet, but at this point (sorry if I offend your sensibilities) your opinion is meaningless.

The information is out there.  It has been downloaded and copied to mirror sites (many far out of reach of the US government) millions of times.

Suppressing knowledge, even potentially dangerous knowledge, has always been a fool's game, which is to say:  something the government constantly attempts.

The height of irony, of course, is for the State Department to take this action under the pretext that publishing the blueprints violates arms trades regulations.

The State Department presides over the largest arms trade operation on the planet, and will sell virtually anything to virtually anybody.  There are multiple conflicts now where US arms are being provided to both sides.

So instead of believing that the State Department is somehow motivated by the idea of keeping us all safer, my best guess is that its clients (the arms manufacturing industry) demanded that action be taken to keep their profits safe.

Reflections on process: Gun Control and Marriage Equality

I'm sometimes as interested in process as I am in the content--can't help it, I'm an academic.

Over the past two months we have all watched two major, high-profile fights in the Delaware General Assembly:  the first over gun control and the second over marriage equality.

What's interesting for me to reflect upon is that my personal ideological bent opposes the gun control measure, but supports marriage equality.  So--to put it bluntly--I watched one fight from the the losing side, and the other from the winning side.  Aside from some of my fellow Libertarians and Senator Ernie Lopez (who supported gun control and opposed marriage equality, so he's like my evil twin, I guess), this gives me a different perspective on the process.

Leave aside the relative merits of gun control of marriage equality for a  moment (I know that's difficult for some of you, but take a real deep breath), and consider what the fights had in common.

Dead Blog Walking

Reluctantly, I have reached the decision to delete the blog Delaware Politics from my blogroll.

As one could certainly tell my decision to retain sites like Libertarian Republican, which is pretty far ideologically removed from me and run by someone who disdains my own political positions, this is not an issue of disagreeing with the politics of David Anderson's blog.

However, over the past few weeks (maybe months) as the number of commenters has declined, so has the level of comment, until we are now at the point where commenters are being told that nothing in the blog's rules prevents the administrators from choosing to "out" commenters with whom they disagree.  Not trolls, just people who disagree with them.

This may be the way to run a police state, but it is certainly not a way to run a blog.

So while it will certainly be small loss to them, this Libertarian will no longer be allowing traffic to be directed from here to Delaware Politics.

Congratulations to Chuck and Bruce, and all the other couples who will now be equal

Chuck Mead-e with my daughter Alexis at the Delaware State Fair
last summer collecting signatures for marriage equality

Why Democrats stay in power in Delaware (at least partly)

To some extent this post piggy-backs on the one at Delawareliberal about why "moderate" Republican Cathy Cloutier manages to hold her Senate seat in a heavily Democrat district.  Basically, the conclusion is that she pays attention to her constituents--as one commenter said, she has "a ground game."

Let's extend that point, and ask why Republicans in Delaware struggle just to stay in the debate.

Last week, as noted in posts below, I started contacting DE Representatives in an attempt to influence their votes on SB 51.  The emails I sent were all polite and to the point.  I sent the messages to six Democrats and four Republicans (based on membership in a key committee and people I thought might be interested/responsive).

To date, five of the six Democrats have responded, and none of the Republicans-including my own representative.

In one sense I don't care if I had gotten the polite brush-off email--at least it would have indicated a minimal amount of attention being paid to these concerns.

From the Dems I received actual replies from the Reps, several of which contained requests for more information or suggestions of other Reps to contact.

From the Republicans ...

<>

There is something besides ideology that keeps people in power.

Moody's: Highmark heading toward junk bond status

... thanks to what analysts see as an extremely risky move in Pennsylvania ....

But in Delaware Highmark's partly owned offspring, MedExpress, continues to spend bazillions of dollars in advertising to use Wal-Mart tactics [and questionable preferential reimbursement policies] in a brazen attempt to drive all other urgent care centers out of business.

An Open Letter to members of the Delaware House of Representatives

[I will be sending this letter personally to my own Rep and others; I encourage you to cut and paste as necessary and send it to yours.]

Within the near future, SB 51, which purports to raise standards for teacher education preparation programs in Delaware will come across to the House.

I am asking you to look past the "feel good" rhetoric in the precis of the bill, to look past the unanimous Senate vote in favor of it, and to look past the claims by the Governor's office that these changes will make Delaware eligible for additional Federal grant money.

Instead, please consider the following:

1.  This bill was prepared and introduced without the input of the Professional Standards Board, the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, Wilmington University, or many relevant offices within the Delaware Department of Education.  In other words, legislation that will make dramatic structural changes to teacher preparation and licensing are already coming to the General Assembly without any input or data from either the organizations that prepare our new teachers or the board which credentials them.  This should be a red flag.

2.  Delaware already has in place a rigorous set of standards for teacher preparation and certification.  Our universities are accredited by NCATE [National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education], which enforces the toughest national standards in real time.  Our Professional Standards Board has done yeoman work over the past two decades to tighten licensing requirements and carefully assess the qualifications of each applicant.

3.  Our current approach works.  Between the entrance and exit requirements, UD and DSU already winnow out over two-thirds of the students interested in teaching careers.  All students graduating from UD, DSU, and WU have passed Praxis I and II; have logged hundreds of hours of observation and additional hundreds more hours of supervised teaching under the watchful eye of master teachers in our public schools.  Compared to the standards even 10 years ago, new Delaware teachers graduated by these universities are the best prepared to enter the classroom in our history.

4.  There is no research to suggest that our new teachers have significant problems in the classroom that impacts student learning.  Aside from the anecdotal offerings you may have heard, when you inquire you will discover that there is no data suggesting that students with new teachers (a) fare less well on standardized tests; or (b) have greater disciplinary problems.  If anything, our graduates are better prepared to handle the latest innovations in instructional technology than their peers, and understand the high-stakes testing environment better because they have lived through it as students.

5.  SB 51, as amended by SA-1, will have a corrosive structural impact on Delaware's ability to train and certify new teachers that will far outweigh any positives received from Federal grant money.  The changes in SB 51/SA-1 actually lower some credentialing standards rather than raise them [see the section on now accepting Composite Scores].  The sweeping provisions of this bill will literally require all credentialing standards in the State to be rewritten from the ground up.  The new provisions for teacher preparation programs will not only waste valuable time in meaningless new compliance, but will also divert resources away from students, endanger the NCATE certification process, and serve to make it more difficult to recruit the "best and brightest" into public education.

I urge you to vote against this bill, either in committee or on the House floor.

If you believe that our teacher preparation and certification program needs revision, then I urge you to demand that legislation be crafted that (a) involves input and review from the Professional Standards Board and our universities; (b) is supported by actual research and data; and (c) is accompanied by an impact statement regarding how this will affect recruiting and certification of new teachers.

Please do not allow seriously flawed legislation to slip through on your watch because the precis of the bill uses bipartisan platitudes that would be better employed on a Hallmark greeting card than in a serious bill.

You can find your House Rep's email address here.

This is a bad bill.  A very bad bill.  Please do what you can to stop it.

DSEA President now trying to backpedal furiously to "victory"

Yesterday the Senate proved once again that nobody there--despite party differences--actually thinks about public education critically by passing Dave Sokola's ridiculous SB 51, which is supposed to improve teacher preparation in Delaware.

I will have more to say on this later today, but here's the morning takeaway.

Earlier this week the DSEA Facebook page praised the bill because

It also gives DSEA a seat at the table to help develop the criteria for the exam and the assessment.

I pointed out that this is both disingenuous and dangerous.  There are already plenty of teachers involved in the teacher preparation programs at UD, DSU, and WU (which produce 95% of our new teachers), that there are already rigorous national standards being closely monitored (via NCATE), and that no research has ever EVER actually determined the preparation of our entry-level teachers in Delaware to be a problem.

Today I discover DSEA President Frederika Jenner, who has publicly endorsed this bill now backpedaling away from the (brutally honest) statement on her own organization's Facebook page:

DSEA leadership does not actually want that proverbial "seat at the table." What I would like to see is a greater number of working teachers involved in every aspect of teacher prep--the profession managing the profession, so to speak. I do not know which teachers were involved in any of the planning of this legislation. I have recommended that teachers be involved in planning, preparation, and implementation of teacher prep. A variety of working teachers. I also believe that lots more teachers could and should be involved in teaching college students about teaching.

Ms. Jenner, get real.

Your first statement is contradicted by your own organization's testimony in front of the Senate and other public statements.

And your agenda is for DSEA, not teachers, to become involved in teacher preparation, and involved not on the basis of professional quality, but involved on the basis of having state law MANDATE that involvement.

My guess is that you don't even know how many teachers are currently involved in such preparation programs.  There are dozens if not hundreds across the State.

Master teachers work with ALL the pre-service candidates for extended periods.

Teachers have a virtual veto over the credentials of all student teachers.

Many teachers are involved as adjunct faculty at our universities, and many retired teachers (or teachers who went on to get their advanced degrees and then switched career fields) are on the full-time faculty. Take a look at the teacher preparation faculty at our universities and you will discover ... teachers!

But apparently not the right teachers for Ms. Jenner.

Her rhetoric about not wanting a seat at the table is woefully thin at this point, given that such has been the argument she used while committing DSEA's full support for Vision 2015 and Race to the Top, both of which have been disasters for Delaware teachers as a whole.

How the teachers of Delaware continue to support a union that makes common cause with corporate officials who blame virtually all the problems of public education on them is beyond comprehension.