luni, 28 iulie 2014

Seth's Blog : Doing the hard things

 

Doing the hard things

One model of organization is to find something that you're good at and that's easy and straightforward and get paid for that.

The other model is to seek out things that are insanely difficult and do those instead.

Dave Ramsey does a three hour radio show every day. He books theaters and has a traveling road show. He has the discipline to only publish a new book quite rarely, and to stick with it for years and years as it moves through the marketplace. He has scores of employees. And on and on. By doing hard work that others fear, he creates unique value.

Rick Toone makes guitars that others would never attempt. Rollin Thurlow does the same with canoes.

Henry Ford did the same thing with the relentless scale and efficiency he built at Ford. Others couldn't imagine raising their own sheep to make their own wool to make their own seat fabric...

"How do we do something so difficult that others can't imagine doing it?" is a fine question to ask today.

       

 

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duminică, 27 iulie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Ukraine's Army Advances; Unguided Rockets Kill Civilians; Demise of Rebels?

Posted: 27 Jul 2014 04:23 PM PDT

There are lots of conflicting, even contradictory news reports regarding Ukraine in the past couple of days. Let's take a look at a few of them starting with the Bloomberg report Ukraine Army Advances as EU Plans Tougher Putin Sanctions.
Ukraine's army advanced on a last main separatist stronghold as the U.S. said Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to give the rebels heavy weapons and European Union leaders considered their toughest sanctions yet on Russia.

Ukrainian troops are battling insurgents in the town of Horlivka, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of the regional capital Donetsk, a city of 1 million people where rebels retreated after abandoning other positions earlier this month. Taking Horlivka would open the way to attack one of their last redoubts, Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Andriy Lysenko said yesterday in Kiev.

"Fighting to take over Horlivka is going on," he told journalists. "Donetsk will be next." CNN reported that long lines of cars jammed roads leading south from the city yesterday as residents tried to flee.

Ukraine's State Security Service, or SBU, posted what it said was an intercepted plea for help made by Alexander Borodai, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, to a Russian it identified as Alexei Chesnokov.

"If nothing changes in terms of military activity, the situation will not be held for more than two weeks," a voice that the SBU said is Borodai's says in the intercepted call it posted yesterday on its YouTube page.
YouTube Page

Chesnokov cited a YouTube page in a voice that allegedly matches Borodai's.

OK. Let's see the video. If you are going to post an allegation citing a YouTube that purportedly "sounds" like Borodai, why not link to it?

So why doesn't Bloomberg ask for it?

Civilians Flee Horlivka

In regards to Civilian fleeing Horlivka and other war zones. I don't doubt it.

Bloomberg cites CNN, but Bloomberg's link is to a totally useless Bloomberg discussion page called http://topics.bloomberg.com/cnn/, not anything useful on CNN, not even a discussion of the civilian flight.

Clearly Bloomberg is fishing for clicks. 

CNN Video of Fleeing Civilians

Here is a link to the real CNN report and video: Donetsk residents flee fighting; Russians report spike in Ukrainian refugees.
Long lines of cars jammed the roads leading south out of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine Saturday, as residents attempted to flee the city center after a night of heavy shelling on the city's northern outskirts.

Hundreds of vehicles were caught in heavy traffic, and trains are no longer running in and out of the city, which is a stronghold for the pro-Russia rebels.

There was heavy shelling and antiaircraft fire on the outskirts of the city to the north throughout the night. There has been sustained fighting in the area for weeks, but it appeared more intense overnight than in recent days.

Russian news agency Interfax reported a dramatic increase in the number of Ukrainian refugees seeking refuge over the border in Russia.

"The Ukrainian government officials were seeking to encircle the city, really squeeze the remaining pro-Russian separatist forces that had fallen back there since being driven out of other strongholds across Eastern Ukraine," said CNN's Phil Black, reporting from a congested road in Donetsk while scores of people attempted to leave.
Why do Civilians Flee?

Neither CNN nor Bloomberg gave the real reason civilians are fleeing. Human Rights Watch does provide the reason: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians.
Unguided Grad rockets launched apparently by Ukrainian government forces and pro-government militias have killed at least 16 civilians and wounded many more in insurgent-controlled areas of Donetsk and its suburbs in at least four attacks between July 12 and 21, 2014, Human Rights Watch said today.

The use of indiscriminate rockets in populated areas violates international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, and may amount to war crimes.

Grads are unguided rockets that cannot be targeted accurately, and are often fired in salvos from multi-barrel rocket launchers to saturate a wide area. Human Rights Watch called on all parties to the conflict in eastern Ukraine, particularly Ukrainian government forces, to stop using Grad rockets in or near populated areas because of the likelihood of killing and wounding civilians.

"Grad rockets are notoriously imprecise weapons that shouldn't be used in populated areas," said Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. "If insurgent and Ukrainian government forces are serious about limiting harm to civilians, they should both immediately stop using these weapons in populated areas.".
Unguided Rockets Kill Civilians



40 Barreled Grad



My understanding is these rockets fire sequentially, one after another, sort of like roman candles going "poof, poof, poof" louder of course.

Both sides have these weapons, but it is the Ukrainian troops who are readily willing to use them on civilians. Please don't compare this to the accidental downing of a plane, regardless of who you think did it.

Attack on Gorlovka

Here's a short, 43-second video of a grad attack on the city of Gorlovka.



The title reads On July 27 Gorlovka suffered rocket mortar attack.

Perspective

While Ukraine is advancing in some areas, the above videos add a needed perspective that mainstream media does not provide.

What with all the satellites in the sky, all the tens of billions of dollars the US spends on "intelligence" every year, is it too much to expect the US to portray these aspects? 

Not All Battles Going Ukraine's Way

Contrary to mainstream media reporting, not all of these battles are going Ukraine's way. Yesterday I posted a video of Ukraine's 72'nd brigade.

Today I have a video of the demolition of part of the 79'th brigade. It was taken a few days ago.

Ukrainian forces are doing the talking. Reader Jacob Dreizin, a US citizen who speaks Russian and reads Ukrainian provided this synopsis.
In this video, the speaker is actually on the Ukrainian side. The speaker is complaining about not getting enough support from Kiev, and recounting what types of munitions were used to destroy his camp. In the other video you posted earlier, it seemed that the people in the video were rebels who came to take a look. 

This is a different video, which shows remnants of a unit of Ukraine's 79th Airmobile Brigade, not the 72nd Mechanized Brigade.

Here's one notable part:

"We have no option but to retreat because our government doesn't do anything to pull us out of here or to give some kind of reinforcement, to save people. They are doing absolutely nothing."
Regarding Ukrainian advances, the flight of civilians, and trapped Ukrainian forces, Dreizin adds ...
41 Ukrainian soldiers are reported to have escaped to Russia today, the largest one-day total so far.

Nonetheless, the rebels in Lugansk city, Donetsk city, and some other spots are very hard pressed at the moment. Lugansk city in particular is being pounded hard.

However, the Ukranians are incapable of any kind of targeted fire.  OSCE observers have been monitoring the situation and have confirmed the civilian casualties and the indiscriminate, seemingly random fire that causes them. 

A few days ago, the rebels had to make an organized retreat from the Severodonetsk/Lisichansk region nothwest of Lugansk city. Their hope now is to finish off the surrounded Ukrainian forces in the south quickly in order to free up substantial forces for a counterattack in the north. These southern forces would certainly shift the balance. The question is how fast they can be freed-up.
So is the war really going as mainstream media plays it?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com 

"Place to Avoid" - French Blogger Fined $2,000 for Writing Bad Restaurant Review

Posted: 27 Jul 2014 01:12 PM PDT

Want to review a French restaurant? Only good reviews are allowed in France.

Caroline Doudet a blogger who runs the site "Cultur'elle," found that out when she wrote a restaurant review that the French court said "ranked too high in a Google search" (as if any writer can know in advance how many times a blog will be read, or what its ranking will be).

Link to Cached Review of "Place to Avoid"

Doudet was ordered to change the title of her blog and pay a fine. Instead she took it down.

However, a cached version is still available, and I bet it gets even more hits now that the courts have piqued everyone's interest.

Cached English translation: The place to avoid the Cap-Ferret: Il Giardino.

Neither the headline nor the article appears unreasonably inflammatory.

Doudet's main charge is exceptionally poor service. It took numerous complaints to three sets of servers for Doudet to get drinks and an appetizer before her main course arrived.

$2,000 Fine

For her writeup, French Blogger Fined $2,000 for Restaurant Review, Too Prominent on Google.
A blogger eats in an Italian restaurant in southwestern France. She thinks the food is bad, the service even worse, and she writes up a review that is not glowing, to put it mildly.

It's a scenario that plays out daily in the cyberworld. Hair in a dish of pasta? Many would snap a photo and share it on Twitter or Facebook. An insufferable waiter? Blog it out.

But this blogger, a French woman named Caroline Doudet who runs "Cultur'elle," got sued for it by the restaurant Il Giardino. And a judge has ruled that she must amend the title of her piece – because with it the post appears too prominently in Google search results – and that she owes $2,000 in damages.

The judge, according to court documents reported by the BBC, said that her blog, with over 3,000 followers, came up as the fourth result any time someone searched for the restaurant in Google. Therefore, she [the judge] reasoned, the title should be changed so "place to avoid" was less prominent.

Doudet made very good point to the local newspaper Sud Ouest that if bloggers don't have the liberty to write bad reviews, good reviews become essentially meaningless.
Il Giardino a "Place to Avoid"

If for some unexplained reason you find yourself in France, you may wish to mark Il Giardino as a place to avoid.

Any restaurant that would file charges against a blogger instead of apologizing for alleged piss poor service, is not a place I would want to visit.

For its stupid lawsuit, it's highly likely Il Giardino suffers more than it would have otherwise. 

Lawyer Advises Mish "Don't Go to France"

Here's the real place to avoid: France. I have my own experience, as many of you know.

For details, please see Lawyer Advises Me "Don't Go to France"; French Pub Fined €9,000 for Using "Undeclared Labor" after Customers Returned Empties to Bar

Doudet may be out $2,000 but hopefully she makes it up with publicity. I am willing to help. Please check out her site: Cultur'elle. Here's an English Translation of Cultur'elle.

As for me, France is not going to collect a cent.

Outside of purposeful slander, yelling "fire" in a movie, etc., I can say what I want.

France should try that reasonable approach. Instead, France (like Spain) marches at a fast pace down the road to complete internet big brother supervision.

For a synopsis of Spain and Europe in general, please see Internet Free Speech Vanishes in Spain; Most Infamous Law in Internet History; Brussels and Spain Target Google

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : Brace for impact

 

Brace for impact

I would imagine that there are certain situations, perhaps involving the martial arts, where bracing for impact is a good idea.

The rest of the time, not so much. If your car is about to hit a tree at thirty miles an hour, or the jet is about to slam into the wall of the Grand Canyon, it's not altogether clear that tensing all your muscles and preparing to be squashed is going to do you much good at all.

Worse than this, far worse, is that we brace for impact way more often than impact actually occurs. The boss calls us into her office and we brace for impact. The speech is supposed to happen next Friday and we spend a week bracing for impact. All the clenching and imagining and playacting and anxiety—our culture has fooled us into thinking that this is a good thing, that it's a form of preparation.

It's not. It's merely experiencing failure in advance, failure that rarely happens.

When you walk around braced for impact, you're dramatically decreasing your chances. Your chances to avoid the outcome you fear, your chances to make a difference, and your chances to breathe and connect.

       

 

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sâmbătă, 26 iulie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Bad Day for Bad Teachers, Good Day for Kids

Posted: 26 Jul 2014 07:24 PM PDT

This is a guest post courtesy of Richard Berman at the Capital Research Center, under the title A Bad Day for Bad Teachers.

Summary: In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down racially segregated schools because, the court said, they were inherently unequal and they unjustly harmed poor and minority children. Last month, a California court cited Brown v. Board as it struck down multiple state laws, passed at the behest of teachers' unions, which the court said unjustly protected incompetent teachers and unconscionably harmed children, especially the least fortunate.

In a landmark decision that sent shock waves through the educational establishment, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu ruled last month that California's teacher tenure laws unconstitutionally deprive students of their guarantee to an education and to equal rights. "The evidence is compelling," Judge Treu wrote. "Indeed, it shocks the conscience."

In Vergara v. California, nine students sued the State of California, claiming that ineffective teachers were disproportionately placed in schools with large numbers of "minority" and low-income students. Judge Treu agreed and quoted the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that education "is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms."



Nine young people and their families filed suit against California's laws on teacher retention and dismissal, which, they say, protect bad teachers and deprive students of a high-quality education.

The Vergara decision came down less than one month after the 60th anniversary of the Brown decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state and federal laws establishing separate public schools for students classified by the government as "white" and "black."

(In Brown, the Court consolidated cases from Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, and Delaware, as well as the federal jurisdiction of Washington, D.C.) The Supreme Court found that the practice of segregation violated the provision in the U.S. Constitution that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The argument in the current case, Vergara, is that, by forcing schools to favor incompetent teachers with seniority over more capable junior teachers, the rules deprive students of the education that the state constitution guarantees them. Further, because these rules funnel bad teachers to districts with large numbers of poor and "minority" students, those students are denied the equal treatment of the law.

The Vergara lawsuit was backed by Students Matter, a nonprofit educational policy advocacy group funded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch. "The state has a responsibility of delivering an education for the betterment of the child," said Welch. "The state needs to understand that [its] responsibility is to teach children, and teach all of them." Welch's organization recruited the nine students, from several school districts, to serve as the public face of the case.
Astonishingly, the teachers' union response to the ruling was that it was actually an attack on children. "This decision today is an attack on teachers, which is a socially acceptable way to attack children," said Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president-elect of the Los Angeles teachers union. Instead of providing for smaller classes or more counselors, the reformers "attack teacher and student rights."
Welch answered that claim in an op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News in which he described the harm students suffer from bad teachers:

According to the testimony of Harvard economist Dr. Thomas Kane, a student assigned to the classroom of a grossly ineffective math teacher in Los Angeles loses almost an entire year of learning compared to a student assigned to a teacher of even average effectiveness. Students assigned to more than one grossly ineffective teacher are unlikely ever to catch up to their peers.
And far from wanting to attack all teachers, Welch in the same article pleaded with his fellow Californians to reward good teachers:

"Let's offer teachers opportunities for promotions, such as to master teacher, teacher mentor, or department chair, where the skills of a truly excellent, creative educator can reach more children—as well as better pay with incentives for excellence and taking on extra responsibilities or difficult positions."

No less a union friend than Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), whose largest campaign support comes from unions, has bluntly admitted, "Vergara will help refocus our education system on the needs of students." No wonder the teachers' unions made five separate legal efforts to have the lawsuit dismissed on grounds other than the merits of the case.

California teacher union members number some 445,000. Both the California Teachers Association (CTA, an affiliate of the National Educational Association) and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers) plan to appeal the court's decision. Jim Finberg, a lawyer for the two teachers' unions, said that Judge Treu's decision "ignores overwhelming evidence the current laws are working."

Actually, less than 0.002% of teachers in California are dismissed in any given year. Judge Treu noted that, when an effort is made to fire a teacher, "it could take anywhere from two to almost ten years and cost $50,000 to $450,000 or more to bring these cases to conclusion under the Dismissal Statute, and that given these facts, grossly ineffective teachers are being left in the classroom."
Judge Treu concluded that "distilled to its basics," the unions' position requires them to defend the proposition that the state has a compelling interest in the de facto separation of students from competent teachers, and a like interest in the de facto retention of incompetent ones. The logic of this position is unfathomable and therefore constitutionally insupportable.

Seniority vs. Merit

The Vergara decision overturned a LIFO (last-in/first-out) law requiring that teacher layoffs be based on seniority, rather than individual merit. California's Permanent Employment Law required that a teacher be tenured after two years at a school (which, because of an early notice requirement, worked out in practice to 18 months or less). California is one of only five states in which tenure may be received after such a short period. As noted by the blog Voices of San Diego:

Regardless of what we call it, here's how it looks in San Diego Unified. Once they're hired, rookie teachers have to make it through a two-year probationary period, during which they can be dismissed for pretty much any reason.

But because the district has to tell teachers by mid-March whether they'll be invited back for the next school year, the trial period is actually shorter than two years. In the past, the district hasn't been particularly aggressive in the number of probationary teachers it sends away—only about 1 percent wasn't given tenure.

"With such little time, you don't even have enough information to actually consider whether they're an effective teacher," said Nancy Waymack, a managing director for the reform-advocacy group National Council on Teacher Quality.

Compared to other states, California has some of the strongest laws in place to protect teacher employment. The effect of this case may spur action throughout the nation. "Without a doubt, this could happen in other states," said Terry Mazany, who served as interim CEO of Chicago's public schools in 2010-2011. A lawyer for Students Matter said they are already hoping to "engage with policymakers in New York and nationally," and donor David Welch said the group would consider suits in other states (New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Oregon were mentioned as possible sites).

Undue Process

The term "due process" refers to a legal or quasi-legal system that protects the rights of an individual, such as by requiring a trial before a person can be executed. Unions defend the complicated procedures for firing teachers by claiming they amount to "due process" that protects those teachers from arbitrary, unfair treatment. As the Pew publication Stateline reports, "The unions argue that the rules protecting teachers are needed for school districts to attract and retain good teachers and to ensure that employees are not fired for arbitrary or unfair reasons."

But the judge ruled in Vergara that the process has become so cumbersome—that it's become so difficult to get rid of bad teachers—that it deprives students of their rights. He ridiculed the process as "über due process," and observed that California state laws already provide a great deal of protection for government and private-sector employees facing dismissal. "Why," he pleaded, "the need for the current tortuous process" that is mandated only for teachers, a process so unjust, he added, that it was even decried by witnesses called by the teachers' unions?

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal noted an irony at the center of the ruling: "The California Supreme Court had applied the same legal premises to hold unconstitutional funding disparities among districts and one district's decision to end the school year six weeks early owing to a budgetary shortfall. Vergara doesn't break new legal ground so much as apply precedent in a way that threatens the education establishment. It's a case of judicial activism coming back to bite the left."

A permanent job

As noted in Waiting for 'Superman,' a documentary promoting educational reform, one out of every 57 doctors loses his or her license to practice medicine, and one of every 97 lawyers loses his or her license to practice law. Yet, in many major cities, only one out of 1,000 teachers is fired for performance-related offenses. The reason is tenure, or as the unions call it, "permanent status."
Tenure is the practice of guaranteeing a teacher his or her job. Originally, this was a due process guarantee, something intended to work as a check against administrators capriciously firing teachers and replacing them with friends or family members. It was also designed to protect teachers who took political stands the community might disagree with. Tenure as we understand it today was first seen at the university level, where, ideally, professors would work for years and publish many pieces of inspired academic work before being awarded what amounted to a job for life.

At the elementary and high school level, tenure has evolved from the original understanding of "due process" to the university-style "job for life." In most states, teachers are awarded tenure after only a few years, after which time they become almost impossible to fire. The main function of these laws is to help bad teachers keep their jobs.

►One Los Angeles union representative has said: "If I'm representing them, it's impossible to get them out. It's impossible. Unless they commit a lewd act." Unfortunately for the students who have to learn from these educators, virtually every teacher who works for the Los Angeles Unified School District receives tenure. In a study of its own, the Los Angeles Times reported that fewer than two percent of teachers are denied tenure during the probationary period after being hired. And once they have tenure, there's no getting rid of them. Between 1995 and 2005, only 112 Los Angeles tenured teachers faced termination—eleven per year—out of 43,000. And that's in a school district where the high school graduation rate in 2003 was a pathetic 51 percent.
►One New Jersey union representative was even blunter about what his union does to keep bad teachers in the classroom: "I've gone in and defended teachers who shouldn't even be pumping gas."
In 10 years, only about 47 out of 100,000 teachers were terminated from New Jersey's schools. Original research conducted by the Center for Union Facts (CUF) has confirmed that almost no teacher is ever fired in Newark, which is New Jersey's largest school district, no matter how bad a job the teacher does. Over one four-year period, CUF discovered, Newark's school district successfully fired about one out of every 3,000 tenured teachers annually. This is a city where roughly two-thirds of students never graduate from high school.
►In New York City, the New York Daily News reported that "just 88 out of some 80,000 city schoolteachers have lost their jobs for poor performance" over 2007-2010.
Then there were the so-called "rubber rooms" of New York City, which operated until 2010. Teachers who couldn't be relieved of duty would report to these "rubber rooms," where they would be paid to do nothing for weeks, months, even years. According to the New York Daily News, at any given time an average of 700 teachers were being paid not to teach while the district jumped through the hoops, imposed by the union contract and the law, to pursue discipline or termination. (A city teacher in New York who ended up being fired spent an average of 19 months in the disciplinary process.) The Daily News reported that the New York City school district spent more than $65 million annually just to pay the teachers who were accused of wrongdoing. Millions more tax dollars were spent to hire substitutes.

After the embarrassing Daily News story and an exposé in the New Yorker, the union agreed to end the practice of rubber rooms but refused to expedite the dismissal process. Instead of whiling the days away doing nothing, the teachers were assigned to do clerical work and perform other semi-useful tasks.

The problem isn't limited to teachers accused of wrongdoing. The city spends more than $100 million every year paying teachers who have been excessed (i.e., whose positions have been eliminated) but have yet to find jobs.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the ironclad union contract requires that any teacher with tenure be paid full salary and benefits if he or she is sent to the "Absent Teacher Reserve pool." The average pay of a teacher in that pool is over $80,000 a year, and some teachers have stayed in the pool for years. The Journal reports that the majority of teachers in the pool had "neither applied for another job in the system nor attended any recruitment fairs in recent months."

►Things are no better in New York as a whole. The Albany Times Union looked at what was going on statewide outside New York City and discovered some shocking data: Of 132,000 teachers, only 32 were fired for any reason between 2006 and 2011.
►In Chicago, a school system that has by any measure failed its students—only 28.5 percent of 11th graders met or exceeded expectations on that state's standardized tests—Newsweek reported that only 0.1 percent of teachers were dismissed for performance-related reasons between 2005 and 2008. When barely one in four students nearing graduation can read and do math, how is it possible that only one in one thousand teachers is worthy of dismissal? It may well be that most of the city's teachers are good teachers, but can 99.9% of them be good?

Effects of tenure and related teacher "protections"

Modeled after labor arrangements in factories, the typical teachers' union contract is loaded with provisions that do not promote education. These provisions drive away good teachers, protect bad teachers, raise costs, and tie principals' hands.

● The Dance of the Lemons

One of the more shocking scenes in the documentary Waiting for 'Superman' is an animated illustration of "The Dance of the Lemons." This is no waltz or foxtrot. Rather, it's the systematic shuffling of incompetent teachers from school to school. These teachers can't be fired because union contracts require that "excessed" educators, no longer needed at their original school, must be given first crack at new job openings when slots open up elsewhere in the district. Administrators at other schools don't want to hire these bad teachers, but districts are unable to fire them.
What happens? LA Weekly documented just how this process plays out in Los Angeles in a massive 2010 investigation. "The far larger problem in L.A. is one of 'performance cases'—the teachers who cannot teach, yet cannot be fired. Their ranks are believed to be sizable—perhaps 1,000 teachers, responsible for 30,000 children. … The Weekly has found, in a five-month investigation, that principals and school district leaders have all but given up dismissing such teachers. In the past decade, LAUSD officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district's 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance—and only four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000."
Unintended Consequences, a study by The New Teacher Project (TNTP), documented the damage done by this union-imposed staffing policy. In an extensive survey of five major metropolitan school districts, TNTP found that "40 percent of school-level vacancies, on average, were filled by voluntary transfers or excessed teachers over whom schools had either no choice at all or limited choice." One principal decried the process as "not about the best-qualified [teacher] but rather satisfying union rules."

● Thinning the talent pool

One problem related to the destructive transfer system is a hiring process that takes too long and/or starts too late, thanks in part to union contracts. Would-be teachers typically cannot be hired until senior teachers have had their pick of the vacancies, and the transfer process makes principals reluctant to post vacancies at all for fear of having a bad teacher fill it instead of a promising new hire.

In the study Missed Opportunities, The New Teacher Project found that these staffing hurdles help push urban districts' hiring timelines later to the point that "anywhere from 31 percent to almost 60 percent of applicants withdrew from the hiring process, often to accept jobs with districts that made offers earlier."

"Of those who withdrew," the TNTP report continues, "the majority (50 percent to 70 percent) cited the late hiring timeline as a major reason they took other jobs." It's the better applicants who are driven away: "Applicants who withdrew from the hiring process had significantly higher undergraduate GPAs, were 40 percent more likely to have a degree in their teaching field, and were significantly more likely to have completed educational coursework" than the teachers who ended up staying around to finally receive job offers.

● Keeping experienced teachers away from poor children

Another common problem with the union contract is a "bumping" policy that fills schools which are more needy (but less desirable to teach in) with greater numbers of inexperienced teachers. In its report Teaching Inequality, the Education Trust noted: "Children in the highest-poverty schools are assigned to novice teachers almost twice as often as children in low-poverty schools. Similarly, students in high-minority schools are assigned to novice teachers at twice the rate as students in schools without many minority students."

● Bad apples stay

A study conducted by Public Agenda polled 1,345 schoolteachers on a variety of education issues, including the role that tenure played in their schools. When asked "does tenure mean that a teacher has worked hard and proved themselves to be very good at what they do?" 58 percent of the teachers polled answered that no, tenure "does not necessarily" mean that. In a related question, 78 percent said a few (or more) teachers in their schools "fail to do a good job and are simply going through the motions."

When Terry Moe, the author of Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools, asked teachers what they thought of tenure, they admitted that the byzantine process of firing bad apples was too time-consuming: 55 percent of teachers, and 47 percent of union members, answered yes when asked "Do you think tenure and teacher organizations make it too difficult to weed out mediocre and incompetent teachers?"

● The union tax on firing bad teachers

So why don't districts try to terminate more of their poor performers? The sad answer is that their chance of prevailing is vanishingly small. Teachers unions have ensured that even with a victory, the process is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. In the 2006-2007 school year, for example, New York City fired only 10 of its 55,000 tenured teachers, or 0.018%. The cost to eliminate those employees averages out to $163,142, according to Education Week. The Albany Times Union reports that the average process for firing a teacher in New York state outside of New York City proper lasts 502 days and costs more than $216,000. In Illinois, Scott Reeder of the Small Newspaper Group found it costs an average of $219,504 in legal fees alone to move a termination case past all the union-supported hurdles. In Columbus, Ohio, the teachers' union president admitted to the Associated Press that firing a tenured teacher can cost as much as $50,000. A spokesman for Idaho school administrators told local press that districts have been known to spend "$100,000 or $200,000" in litigation costs to toss out a bad teacher.

It's difficult even to entice the unions to give up tenure for more money. In Washington, D.C., school chancellor Michelle Rhee proposed a voluntary two-tier track for teachers. On one tier, teachers could simply do nothing: Maintain their regularly scheduled raises and keep their tenure. On the other track, teachers could give up tenure and be paid according to how well they and their students performed, with the potential to earn as much as $140,000 per year. The union wouldn't even let that proposal come up for a vote among its members, and stubbornly blocked efforts to ratify a new contract for more than three years. When the contract finally did come up for ratification by the rank and file, the two-tier plan wasn't even an option.

● Taking money from good teachers to give to bad teachers

During the expansion of teacher collective bargaining in the mid-twentieth century, economists from Harvard and the Australian National University found, the average, inflation-adjusted salary for U.S. teachers rose modestly—while "the range of the [pay] scale narrowed sharply." Measuring aptitude by the quality of the college a teacher attended, the researchers found that the advent of the collectively bargained union contract for teachers meant that on average, more talented teachers were receiving less, while less talented teachers were receiving more.

The earnings of teachers in the lowest aptitude group (those from the bottom-tier colleges) rose dramatically relative to the average wage, so that teachers who in 1963 earned 73 percent of the average salary for teachers could expect to earn exactly the average by 2000. Meanwhile, the ratio of the earnings of teachers in the highest-aptitude group to earnings of average teachers fell dramatically. In states where the highest-aptitude teachers began with an earnings ratio of 157 percent, they ended with a ratio of 98 percent.

Data from the National Center for Education Statistics, as reported by Education Week, add further evidence to the compressed-pay claim. The Center's stats indicate that the average maximum teacher pay nationwide is only 1.85 times greater than the nationwide average salary for new teachers.

● Locking up education dollars

Much of the money commanded by teachers' union contracts is not being used well, at least from the perspective of parents or reformers. Several provisions commonly found in union contracts that cost serious money have been shown to do little to improve education quality. A report from the nonprofit Education Sector found that nearly 19 percent of all public education spending in America goes towards things like seniority-based pay increases and outsized benefits—things that don't go unappreciated by teachers, but don't do much to improve the quality of teaching children receive. If these provisions were done away with, the report found, $77 billion in education money would be freed up for initiatives that could actually improve learning, like paying high-performing teachers more money.

● Putting kids at risk

Teachers unions push for contracts that effectively cripple school districts' ability to monitor teachers for dangerous behavior. In one case, school administrators in Seattle received at least 30 warnings that a fifth grade teacher was a danger to his students. However, thanks to a union contract that forces schools to destroy most personnel records after each school year, he managed to evade punishment for nearly 20 years, until he was finally sent to prison in 2005 for having molested as many as 13 girls. As an attorney for one of the victims put it, according to the Seattle Times, "You could basically have a pedophile in your midst and not know it. How are you going to get rid of somebody if you don't know what they did in the past?"

The Bottom Line

Too many schools are failing too many children. Americans should not remain complacent about how districts staff, assign, and compensate teachers. And too many teachers' union contracts preserve archaic employment rules that have nothing to do with serving children.

Even Al Shanker, the legendary former president of the American Federation of Teachers, admitted, "a lot of people who have been hired as teachers are basically not competent."

This is what the union wants: To keep teachers on the payroll regardless of whether or not they are doing any work or are needed by the school district. Why? As long as they are on the payroll, they keep paying union dues. The union doesn't care about the children who will be hurt by this misallocation of tax dollars. All union leaders care about is protecting their members and, by extension, their own coffers.

Most teachers absolutely deserve to keep their jobs, and some have begun to speak out about the absurdity of teacher tenure, but it's impossible to pretend that the number of firings actually reflects the number of bad teachers protected by tenure. As long as union leaders possess the legal ability to drag out termination proceedings for months or even years—during which time districts must continue paying teachers, and substitute teachers to replace them, and lawyers to arbitrate the proceedings—the situation for students will not improve.

The Vergara case offers hope, but supporters of better education cannot rely on judges to fix America's schools. Parents and teachers must join together to eliminate teacher tenure systems that protect bad teachers and that divert our best teachers away from many of the students who could benefit most from their skills and experience.
*   *   *
About the Author:  Richard Berman is executive director of the Center for Union Facts. Some of this material appeared previously on the website TeachersUnionExposed.com, a project of the Center for Union Facts. This article originally appeared on the website Labor Watch, and is republished here with permission.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com 

Japan Exports and Trade Balance vs. the Yen; Abenomics in Review

Posted: 26 Jul 2014 01:59 PM PDT

Despite the widely touted success of Abenomics, a few charts will prove success is all hype and no reality. Let's start with a chart of the Yen.

$XJY Yen Monthly



click on any chart for sharper image

The Yen went on a tear from mid-2007 to mid-2011, rising from 80.55 to 132.18. Since then, the Yen declined to and 94.83 and is currently at 98.26. The Yen was in this general area, at times, in 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, and 2014.

One intent of Abenomics was to devalue the Yen to aid exports. How did that work out?

Japan Left Behind

Bloomberg reports Japan's Export-Champ Days Are Left Behind.
The CHART OF THE DAY shows the value of Japan's exports is 23 percent below a March 2008 peak, even as those of South Korea, the U.S. and Germany have grown. The yen has lost 16 percent in value against the dollar since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in December 2012. That hasn't been enough to spur growth in outbound shipments.

Japan's government and central bank have blamed weak overseas demand, especially in emerging markets, for export sluggishness. This weakness is negative for an economy that suffered a blow to domestic demand from an April sales-tax increase.

"Japan is being left behind in the export recovery mainly because Japanese companies accelerated the shift of production abroad when the yen appreciated after the Lehman shock," said Toru Suehiro, a market economist at Mizuho Securities Co. in Tokyo. "The loss of global market presence by Japan's companies, especially electronic appliance makers, is also a factor."

The impact of the move overseas by Japanese companies is striking in the U.S. automobile market, said Suehiro. U.S. sales for Japanese automakers in the six months through June rose 6.2 percent from a year earlier to 3.04 million, according to researcher Autodata Corp. Auto exports from Japan to the U.S. for the same period were down 8.5 percent, according to finance ministry data.
No Export Recovery for Japan (Chart of the Day)



Abenomics Flame-Out

What about exports vs. imports, a measure of trade deficits or surplus? Wolf Richter provides the answer in The Flame-Out Of Abenomics, In One Crucial Chart. Richter reports ...
Abenomics, the new economic religion of Japan, has kept some of its promises: It created inflation while wages stagnated, thus whittling down real incomes, further squeezed by the broad consumption tax hike. It devalued the yen by 25%, thus vaporizing a quarter of the wealth of the Japanese without having to tell them directly. And to make up for the tax increase on consumers, Abenomics elegantly cut taxes for Japan Inc. Grudging respect is due Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for these noble accomplishments.

In other areas, his record is spotty. One of the goals of his policies was to fire up exports by making them cheaper overseas and reduce imports by making them more expensive to consumers and businesses at home. It would crank up Japan's manufacturing sector and lead to a trade surplus that would inflate GDP, make Abe a hero, and save Japan.

Exports and trade surpluses have been vital to the Japanese economy. And reconstituting them has been a cornerstone of Abenomics. But that plan has gone to heck.

Not step by step, gradually over time, but in monthly leaps, whose size surprised even Abenomics-cynics like me. And the Ministry of Finance rubbed it in today when it published the trade statistics for June.

Exports, instead of soaring due to the watered-down yen, dropped 2.0% from a year ago to ¥5.94 trillion. Imports, instead of dropping due to consumers being squeezed by higher prices and stagnating incomes, soared 8.4% to ¥6.761 trillion. The resulting goods trade deficit jumped to ¥822.2 billion.

It was the worst trade deficit for any June ever. It was over four times as bad as last year's "worst June deficit ever." In June 2012, Japan still had a surplus. Historically, June is one of the better months for Japanese trade. But that surplus in June 2012 was Japan's last. What followed were 24 months of relentlessly deteriorating trade deficits. The worst series in Japan's recorded history (far ahead of the second-worst, the 14-month period in 1979-1980).

For the first six months this year, compared to the same period last year, the trade deficit soared 57%!

Here is what the flaming success of Abenomics looks like, boiled down to one chart:



The debacle was spread across the board, starting with its largest trading partner, both in terms of exports and imports, China. Since about one-third of Japan's exports to China get transshipped through Hong Kong, I combine them. So exports to China and Hong Kong edged up 1.6%. But imports from them jumped 10.6%. And the trade surplus in 2013 of ¥57 billion turned into a trade deficit of ¥63 billion. That's a deterioration of ¥120 billion. Even exports to the US, its second largest trade partner, declined 2.7%, while imports from the US rose 6.8%.

The export declines were spread across the largest categories: transportation equipment (cars, trucks, etc., which account for nearly a quarter of all exports) dropped -0.6%; machinery (about a fifth of all exports) -0.4%; electrical machinery (semiconductors, audio-video equipment, batteries, etc.) -5.1%; manufactured goods (steel products, etc.) -0.2%.

And imports rose across the largest categories. Mineral fuels (petroleum, LNG, coal, etc.), which make up nearly one-third of all imports, rose 8.3%.
Spotlight on Energy and Food

In the wake of Japan's nuclear disaster at Fukushima that closed multiple reactors, Japan has been very reliant on energy imports.

A falling yen certainly does not help.

Spotlight on Food

According to the USDA, Japan imports about 60% of its food.

And some of what Japan does produce is contaminated, and will be for thousands of years. See the July 15, 2014 report: TEPCO Failed To Disclose Crops Over 20KM From Fukushima Were Contaminated

Richter notes "[Japanese consumer] purchasing power is down by 3.6% year over year, for all items, including services; Purchasing power is down 5.6% for goods.

Abe wanted higher prices and got them, but not where he wanted them. Abenomics was supposed to help exports (but didn't), job creation (but didn't), manufacturing output (but didn't), real wages (but didn't).

Simply put, Abenomics has been a huge failure from every angle. Yet, economists are in near-universal praise because prices are rising. That's Keynesian idiocy at its finest.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Who's Winning the War in Ukraine? Answer May Shock You!

Posted: 26 Jul 2014 12:58 AM PDT

Here's the question, not of the day, but of the month: Who's Winning the War in Ukraine?

That may sound like a simple question, but it isn't.

That question leads to a second question "In whose eyes?" It also depends on the definition of "war". And it also depends on the definition of "win". And finally it depends on which media source you believe.

Military Aspect

From a military aspect, I have seen reports from both sides. The Western media portrays Ukraine on the march with the rebels surrounded, and losing ground. Is that accurate reporting?

I will let you be the judge. Please consider this video released on Friday.



The caption reads "Всё что осталось от 72-й бригады ВСУ 25.07.2014".

Diving into the details here is my rough translation (interpretation from the video) : "Ukraine's 72nd brigade is now an additional battalion short."

Where the bodies are, I don't know . But that is highly unlikely to be a fake video.

And contrary to Western media reports, my sources have said for a week "various Ukraine forces are trapped, looking for a way to escape to Russia".

Clearly, one of them failed to make it.

Are the Rebels Winning?

In whose Eyes? And what does "winning" mean?

In the eyes of the media, Ukraine is winning. The front page news everywhere you look says Ukraine is winning.

More importantly, the media has lined up behind Ukraine and now 22 US senators are willing to blame Putin and do everything they can to stop Russia.

Senator McCain, as always, is leading the pack.

Pat Buchanan exposed McCain the other day for the war-mongering hypocrite that he is. David Stockman has the details in My thoughts On Pat Buchanan's Brilliant And Incisive Take On Washington's Ukrainian Fiasco.

Senator John McCain's call to arm the ruffians, opportunists, oligarchs and neo-fascists who took power in a street level coup in Kiev is downright lunatic. It causes Buchanan to ask, "Who is the real problem here?"

Propaganda War

When it comes to the propaganda war, McCain and his primary war-mongering ally (none other than president Obama) are clearly winning! The only difference between the two is McCain is a far bigger war-monger than Obama.

Obama is likely to catch up. He usually does.

Energy

Yet, one must step back and ask "What the hell is this war really about?"

Is it NATO? Or is it energy?

I happen to believe both. Starting from that scorecard, please consider my post on Thursday Ukraine Government Breaks Up: Prime Minister Resigns Over "Vital Laws on Energy and Army Financing"; Follow the Money

Synopsis: The Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk resigned and that will lead to early elections in which pro-Russian MPs will be removed from parliament.

In essence, Ukraine will be more pro-NATO. But that's not all.

Biden's Son, Kerry Family Friend Join Ukrainian Gas Producer's Board

Please consider this resignation statement as noted by RIA: "Yatsenyuk also expressed disappointment with Ukrainian parliament's decision to reject a bill that allows the government to hand over up to 49 percent of the country's gas transport system to investors from the European Union and the United States."

In response I said "Follow the Money"

I neglected to report precisely where the money flowed.

The Wall Street Journal has all you need to know with this May headline regarding Biden, Kerry, and Ukraine: Biden's Son, Kerry Family Friend Join Ukrainian Gas Producer's Board.

Who's Winning?

You tell me. Before you do, please define "win".

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes

 
Here's what's going on at the White House today.
 
 
 
 
 
  Featured

Weekly Address: Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes

In this week's address, the President continued his call for our nation to rally around an economic patriotism that says rather than protecting wasteful tax loopholes for a few at the top, we should be investing in things like education and job training that grow the economy for everybody.

The President highlighted the need to close one of the most unfair tax loopholes that allows companies to avoid paying taxes here at home by shifting their residence for tax purposes out of the country. The President has put forth a budget that does just that, and he has called for business tax reform that makes investment in the United States attractive, and creates incentives for companies to invest and create jobs here at home. And while he will continue to make the case for tax reform, the President is calling on Congress to take action and close this loophole now.

Click here to watch this week's Weekly Address.

Watch: President Obama delivers the weekly address


 
 
  Top Stories

"You Are Why I Ran for President in the First Place"

On Thursday, President Obama spoke under sunny skies at the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. He talked about the progress that we've made since he took office and training our workers for a 21st-century economy.

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the economy in L.A.

The President called for a new sense of optimism and collective patriotism in this country: "Cynicism is a choice, and hope is a better choice. And if we can work together, I promise you there's no holding America back."

He also talked about something known as an "inversion." What's an "inversion," you ask? Learn more here.

READ MORE

Apollo 11: 45 Years Later

Forty-five years ago, two American astronauts -- Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong -- landed on the moon's Sea of Tranquility, and Neil Armstrong planted the first footprint on the surface of the moon.

On Tuesday, President Obama invited Buzz Aldrin; Michael Collins, the astronaut who piloted the spacecraft that orbited the moon; and Neil Armstrong's wife, Carol, to the White House. Armstrong passed away in 2012.

President Barack Obama meets with Apollo 11 astronauts.

President Barack Obama meets with Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, right, Carol Armstrong, widow of Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, and Patricia Falcone, OSTP Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs, left, in the Oval Office. This week marked the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. July 22, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

To honor the anniversary, we spent a little time poring over archival footage of the Apollo 11 mission -- and included some of the incredible work that NASA is doing today. We won't spoil it all for you here, but it includes redirecting asteroids around the moon and going to Mars. So, that's pretty cool.

READ MORE

"For Conspicuous Gallantry"

On Monday, President Obama presented the Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Ryan M. Pitts for his unwavering courage in one of the fiercest battles of the war in Afghanistan.

The President presents the Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Ryan M. Pitts.

The President described Ryan's heroic acts during his remarks:

As the insurgents moved in, Ryan picked up a grenade, pulled the pin, and held that live grenade -- for a moment, then another, then another -- finally hurling it so they couldn't throw it back. Then he did it again. And again. Unable to stand, Ryan pulled himself up on his knees and manned a machine gun. Soldiers from the base below made a daring run -- dodging bullets and explosions -- and joined the defense. But now the enemy was inside the post -- so close they were throwing rocks at the Americans; so close they came right up to the sandbags. Eight American soldiers had now fallen. And Ryan Pitts was the only living soldier at that post.

READ MORE

As always, to see even more of this week's events, watch the latest West Wing Week.


 

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Seth's Blog : If you can't sell it, you can't build it

 

If you can't sell it, you can't build it

Architecture students bristle when Joshua Prince-Ramus tells them that they are entering a rhetorical profession.

A great architect isn't one who draws good plans. A great architect gets great buildings built.

Now, of course, the same thing is true for just about any professional. A doctor has to persuade the patient to live well and take the right actions. A scientist must not only get funded but she also has to persuade her public that her work is well structured and useful.

It's not enough that you're right. It matters if it gets built.

       

 

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