Tag: schools

My First Book Review

Maybe you knew — and maybe you didn’t — but I like to read. The nice people over at BlogHer asked me to take part in their BlogHer Book Club review-cluster (somebody needs to think of a word to describe dozens of reviews of one book) on Jean Kwok’s semi-autobiographical novel, Girl in Translation. Just want to jump to my review? It’s called “Nobody in America Lives Like This,” Except They Do. I’ve already spawned a spoilers discussion!

There’s a new “Book Reviews” category. Don’t know if you’ll see more in it yet, but I’m leaving myself the option.

Update: per comment from P.D., they are now “Book Events.”

In Closing: yes, there are jobs making clean tech, in China!; on higher education; Judge realizes that you are not your IP address (just one fatal flaw in pretty much every online ID scheme proposed); I think there will be some mighty surprised people in a couple of weeks; UPS’s safest driver; disenfranchisement; you are not a storm-chaser, get your butt to cover!; screw austerity; Senator Dean Heller; looking forward to this book!; I [heart] Amazon; what do soap and school vouchers have in common? (heck, I talked about vouchers within my first 10 posts); on McJobs; must be nice to be that lucky every day (what? you don’t suppose they are manipulating the system, do you?); and the Black Hole.

Tucker and Shorties vs Evil

Inspirational Story of the Day: Teen disappointed that he didn’t make the soccer team, so he loses 60 pounds and deadlifts 308 pounds. There are lots of things you can do if you want to badly enough.

Um, Yeah: I can see where meeting a co-worker in such a place might be bothersome. Just say “but it’s the Wall Street Journal! I thought it was business news!” if you get caught reading that at work.

Hi-Ho Silver! Away!: Now might be a good time to sell?

That’s a Good Point: Charity and God may go well together, but not always.

What Would Your Doctor Do?: Say no to nudie-scanners.

Let’s just put all this economic news in one spot: First, we’ve got payroll numbers, which are “rising” but at too slow a pace. Campaign for America’s Future reminds us that “it’s the economy, stupid” and “Americans want government to play a larger role in economic recovery.” Because big business doesn’t give a damn; after all there’s an entire rest of the world to exploit. Tiger Beatdown has a nice item on the ongoing class war that nobody [wealthy] wants to talk about. Meanwhile, more and more families are feeding their families with help from food stamps. Inflation is going to make things even worse for those of us who aren’t millionaires. Tim Iacono points out that the savings rate is even worse that we think. Teen joblessness may reach record levels this summer — which means expect idle teens to find ways to get into trouble. People are defaulting on their student loans. But hey, at least small businesses are borrowing money; maybe they’ll actually hire people.

How interesting: So with gas prices what they are and our nation importing oil, American oil companies are exporting more oil than they sell here! And best of all they are sucking down American tax dollars at the same time!

Even Shutting It is Controversial: Yucca Mountain. I guess some good padlocks aren’t sufficient, eh?

Fortune is Right: What good is a consumer protection agency that can’t protect? If Congress waters down consumer protections, or Elizabeth Warren doesn’t get to head the CFPB, you will know that our lawmakers have sold our souls to the banksters that ripped us off.

Susan’s Got a Point: It is called “special education” for a reason.

Eric Holder’s Vow is Worthless: Back in 2009 he vowed to stop raids on medical marijuana facilities (yeah, I’m no HuffPo fan, but the only better link was NYT). But I guess whatever forces really control the War On Drugs Used By Poor And/Or Brown People told him how stuff is: his office has warned states that they will prosecute anyone they think they can prosecute for medical marijuana. Never mind what the people think. Their opinion only counts on election day, after all.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Marie Osmond celebrated her wedding to her third husband… who just happened to have been her first husband. She even got to recycle her original wedding gown. Thanks, NutriSystem!

Canibal Shorties

Pesky Government Regulations: Saved lives.

A question of scale: Nope, not toys. It does make you wonder how big a quake caused this.

Tell me why we do this every Spring and Fall again: Not even cows like Daylight Savings Time.

They say they want to save money, then they prevent us from doing it: comparative effectiveness review and Medicare.

Doin It Live!: Public database for safety complaints.

Seriously?: Apparently I live in a dangerous Spring Break destination. Sorry, I’m not feeling it. Oh, I should probably say something about the Sahara closing down in a couple of months, but I’ll let Steve do it.

I love seeing a genuine economist say this: “Ayn Rand Is Full of Crap.” He has to point out that she wrote fiction.

That’s a real diet buster: It’s easier than you might think to eat a 2000 calorie meal at In-N-Out.

We’re off to a great start: 31 Most Ridiculous Quotes of 2011 So Far.

A New Political Party?: The People‘s Party.

Granny’s gonna live longer anyway: on the demographics of the employed and unemployed.

So Be It?: We may have added 222,000 private sector jobs last month, but massive government budget cutting may delete 710,000 old jobs. Can we afford that kind of budget cutting?

Wasn’t Universal Failure the Goal?: 82% of public schools may eventually be “failing,” even ones that by every other measure perform well. That’s what happens when “better” is your only goal.

A Nobel Winning Economist Isn’t Good Enough: for the Federal Reserve.

Flashbang: Potentially deadly against cops, deadly against suspects, deadly against the innocent.

She’s baaaaaack!: Sharron Angle.

Confused: If terraists can allegedly turn the oxygen masks in a plane into a weapon, why can’t terraists do it from their seats?

Only in Vegas: Ladies and gentlemen, the Chip Monk.

Connecting the Dots

Today, the SEC announced fraud charges against a third banker for selling worthless and non-existent mortgages to Colonial Bank, leading to its collapse. This is on the heels said executive confessing to conspiracy and being sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Most reporting on “mortgage fraud” centers on one of two themes: Joe Average knew perfectly well he couldn’t afford the house and lied to get the mortgage in the first place; or robosigning was a just an unfortunate oversight caused by the sheer volume of foreclosures and nobody could reasonably predicted a problem. Both infuriate me. The first was only a small fraction of the foreclosures we have, and the second is merely a cover-up for the real mortgage fraud.

Let’s start from the beginning.

  1. The buyer is told by an unscrupulous mortgage broker that he indeed does qualify for a mortgage, even though the mortgage broker knows that within 3 to 5 years, this buyer will have to refinance or go into foreclosure.
  2. Some buyers — mostly minorities — are pushed into sub-prime mortgages despite the fact that they qualify for a better deal. They are at higher risk of foreclosure from day one and the mortgage broker knows it.
  3. In some cases, a bait-and-switch occurs at the closing table. Either the documents presented are not what was promised, or only the first few pages reflect what the buyer was promised. The rest of the huge stack of paper the buyer must sign is at a higher rate or with worse terms.
  4. The mortgages are sold to trusts, banks, insurance companies, pension funds, investment firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They have been fraudulently represented as “performing” — that is, paying every month and likely to continue. Sometimes, these loans change hands multiple times. This is particularly true in an environment where some financial institutions have failed.
  5. The original bank is now just the servicer, and they have every incentive to add fees, post payments late, deny short sales, deny mortgage modifications, and push the homeowner into foreclosure.
  6. Meanwhile, in violation of the laws of every state in the union, they have failed to report the new mortgage holder at the county recorder’s office. After all, that costs money. Instead, they put together a private company to keep track of who owns what: MERS stands for Mortgage Electronic Registration System. The banking industry insists that this is fine, the law is quaint, this is the way everybody does things now, so the courts need to just accept it. Courts in several states have disagreed. Just because everybody goes above the speed limit doesn’t mean you won’t get a ticket.
  7. The homeowner knows he is in trouble. He calls to ask about a mortgage modification. He is fraudulently told that they won’t even consider it unless he stops paying for 3 months. When the 3 month mark comes, the homeowner is in default and the foreclosure process is begun; it’s a race to see whether the modification or the foreclosure finishes first.
  8. Default is where the robosigners finally come in to play. They have stacks and stacks of documents, some of which need to be fabricated because originals were shredded to hide fraud.
  9. I would be remiss if I did not point out that in some cases, banks are foreclosing illegally:  they foreclose on the wrong home, they foreclose without legal standing to do so, they foreclose in violation of a bankruptcy order, they foreclose on a member of our military who is serving overseas.
  10. In the fallout, some financial institutions fail.
  11. The banks turn around and sell the properties at absurdly low prices, sinking property values. In any other industry, they would face charges of dumping.

And there you have it. Robosigners and “people who should have known better” are only a very small part of the mess we now face.

Cross-posted at The Moderate Voice.

In closing: the center is further left; “don’t expose our law breaking trade secrets!”; odd recall; on austerity; women‘s issues; tied hands; seriously??; Pac-Man was supposed to be for girls; I’ve got a soft spot for VW, but this is not likely to be my next car; glad they can agree on something; Superman‘s citizenship and other issues; what are we hiding?; fix it; Matt Damon; and a picture:

Mulholland Shorties

Was I Wrong About Rahm?: He’s not even sworn in yet, and he’s announced that something he wants to do is enlarge a good old-fashioned public works project! Granted, it’s just bike lanes, but it will put people to work and help other people get around when it’s done.

Food Insecurity is just a fancy word for Going Hungry: Here’s a viewpoint from somebody who once had to endure it. It turns out there are a lot of issues in play.

So You Want to be a Revolutionary: This man wrote a book about non-violent revolution. There’s a link to the PDF, which is credited with change around the world.

Income Inequality: When people in other nations notice it, it’s bad. If that has too many words, this one has lots of pretty pictures. Here’s more.

Release the Hounds: An Indiana Deputy Attorney General suggested using live ammunition on protesters in Wisconsin. Thankfully, he didn’t have the authority to order such a thing. But sanity did prevail: he is now unemployed on the grounds that a man in his position must demonstrate civility.

Speaking of Shafting the People who Teach Your Kids: Providence just sent lay-off notices to each and every teacher. They will decide later who actually gets the axe. Way to promote morale! And just a reminder, the average teacher in Wisconsin makes less than the Wisconsin median income.

Your Insurance Company Believes in Global Climate Change: Because 2010 was one of the worst years for climate disasters ever! That would include things like storms. Oh, and I sure hope those of you in San Francisco enjoy the expected snow.

Too Big to Fail is Too Big to Exist: Seriously, even people from the Fed say so.

Making the Situation Worse: Banks are moving branches from poor neighborhoods to wealthy ones — despite laws requiring them to serve the entire community. In this vacuum, payday lenders and check cashing businesses spring up out of need. And did you know that one in nine banks is in danger of collapse?

Some People Have Never Heard of the First Amendment: Some people think you can outlaw “shariah.”

Who Knew: It turns out Americans like having clean air and water.

Priceless: It turns out you can download sheet music of the classics for free. Mozart’s copyright rights are long since expired.

Truth in Comics: Drew and Bors.

Can we Stop Calling it the Party of Lincoln?: It turns out President Lincoln would disagree with almost everything the current Republican party stands for.

They Really Would Prefer All Women were Pregnant: No word on whether they think we should be allowed to wear shoes.

Plastic Tubes and Pots and Pans, Bits and Pieces: Kids need to do more science.

Batshit Crazy: Qaddafi.

The Only Evidence that I am “Moderate”: I’m clearly somewhere between these two crazy extremes. Honestly, I think of myself as left of center. You know I think that the banks are the root cause of much of our current economic woes, but it would be childish to assert that “Wall Street causes all bad things.”

Placebo: Dogs just want to please their masters. That’s why drug sniffing dogs only have an accuracy rate of 44%. That rate drops to 27% when the person in question is Hispanic.

Lily the Pink: Or, Who Knew Moldovans Drank So Much?

Advice for Democrats: Stop using the Republican’s terminology! I want to scream every time i hear one of you talk about the “death tax” or “tax reform” or “Obamacare” or “Social Security reform.” For pity sake, all these things have names that don’t admit that their way of looking at it is correct!

What Happens When This One Pops?: College textbook price bubble.

Too Mad to Write about Politics

Seriously. If I write about any of the crap spewing from Washington — whether from Congress, Timmy Geithner, or our gutless President who is more conservative than Nixon or Reagan — I’m likely to say something regrettable. So here’s what some other people have to say. As it is, I use a little more salty language than normal, so deal with it.

Here’s something on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. You know, the group of fatcat businessmen that President Obama was begging to create jobs? What a bunch of “greedy fucks.”

Here’s what an 11 year old girl has to say about Gitmo. Notice where she admits that some of her information may be biased? I have hope for the critical thinking skills of the next generation, somewhat less hope that the War on Terror will ever end.

There’s a lot to be said about Egypt today. How about we start with a picture:
Bill Day

But really, this sums up my thoughts well.

There’s really a lot to say about the Anti-Woman forces calling themselves “Pro-Life”, but I’ll let Nancy start the parade. Remember, HR3 has a much wider reach than most people know. That’s even before we start talking about conscience clauses that would allow ignorant ******* to turn people away whose pregnancies can kill them. That’s before we talk about the fact that if these ******** had their way, women whose “babies” would be born with fatal birth defects would be forced to carry that corpse to term, endure dozens of well meaning people asking “Is it a boy or a girl? Have you picked a name??”, go through all the complications of pregnancy including the possibility of death in labor, all so some ******** can pretend he — and I do mean HE — is preventing abortions. People who think that is acceptable can rot in hell. Republicans want to cut family planning too, so we know they don’t really give a damn about preventing abortions.

Here’s something on states declaring bankruptcy to get out of paying people the retirement funds they were promised — and remember, state employees pay no Social Security taxes, so those pensions may be all they’ve got.

Speaking of bankruptcy, here’s something on how the bankruptcy “reform” of a few years back contributed to the foreclosure mess.

Nobody seems to remember that almost all regulations are put in place to protect somebody. Of course it’s dumb to say that regulations are automatically “job killing.” If the people whining about “job killing” gave a shit about jobs, maybe they wouldn’t be trying to cut and gut jobs programs! Here’s an urgent message for our elected officials: JOBS are still the number one issue on Americans’ minds. Put people to work, and some of the other problems — national deficit, social security, foreclosures — might start to fix themselves.

But this one really makes me mad. Ornery has it right when he calls the move to cut emergency funding for heating in the middle of a colder than average winter “so fucking tone deaf it boggles my fucking mind.” Heaven forbid we should raise taxes on people making, say, a million dollars a year when we can just freeze Granny to death! Who needs a death panel when you’ve got a blizzard? Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot!

See how mad I am, and all I’m really doing is quoting other people? Over the weekend I promise to have something happier to say… about something.

In Closing: Kafka-san; tip of the iceberg?; junk fees and foreclosure; too lazy; secret air travel; pot of gold; is it snarky if it’s true?; the status quo is bad; on conservatives and the Bible; city-states; zero tolerance means zero thinking; vaccinate; the budget.

Follow-Up Thursday

HR3: “Ok ok, we’ll take that word out if you’re going to get pissy about it. Damn feminists and liberals! We’d better get some concessions in return!” It’s still a bad bill that should not become law.

Banking Corruption: Oh yeah, JP Morgan knew Madoff wasn’t quite legit, problem? Elizabeth Warren still needs to head the CFFB, and to hell with Timmy Geithner. Did you know that the highest paid guy at Bank of America is still Angel Mozilo? The same guy whose business practices cost B of A billions of dollars last quarter alone?? It sure would be nice if someone would enforce the law regarding foreclosure fraud.

I felt a disturbance in the Force, as if a million wingnuts’ heads exploded and were suddenly silenced: The Obama administration is investigating whether the Health Insurance Reform bill can be used to require insurers to provide — not just cover, but provide free — contraceptives and family planning services!

On the Tea Party: Excuse me, I seem to have fallen into some alternate universe where George W. Bush is talking sense, and more or less agreeing with Howard Dean. Does the letter J exist in this universe?

On the Economy: Google got 75,000 job applications in one week because the economy is soooo good, right? At least demand for temps is up (pro tip: I’ve gotten job offers working at temp agencies; they’re a good way to earn a little money, get your feet wet, and maybe end up in a working interview!). On the whole, the employment situation is still “a lighter shade of gray.” The number of people using food stamps is up 14% from last year. So yeah, there’s a teensy disconnect between Wall Street and Your Street.

Will of the People: We want alternative energy, and the jobs we hope will be created by it, and the lower power/fuel bills, and just maybe the cleaner world. This is one of those “excuse me, the center is way off there to the left” moments.

On Education: You know, maybe teachers would do a better job if they had a decent curriculum to work from! Oh, now that’s crazy talk; everybody knows a really good teacher re-invents the wheel every semester…..

In Closing: Republicans hate puppies; they hate the environment too (Nixon was a dirty hippie!!) homeless shelters sometimes break up families; anchor babies; Weird Al; China; and VW is trying to win me back after making the Jetta look like ass:

Blog for Choice

It’s that day again.

As it turns out, “abortion foes have high hopes for new Congress.” And their hopes do not stop with overturning Roe V. Wade.

If the So-Called Pro-Life movement gave a darn about life, they would not have accosted this man and his wife, who were arguably having the worst day of their lives already.

If the So-Called Pro-Life movement gave a darn about life, they would already have tossed out the minority among them that think it is acceptable to enforce their opinion with terrorism: vandalism, violence, and murder in the name of politics.

If the So-Called Pro-Life movement gave a darn about life, they would embrace reforms that benefit children, such as universal health coverage for minors, and programs that would promote family stability (such as, oh I don’t know, jobs??) for born-already-Americans.

If the So-Called Pro-Life movement wanted to reduce the number of abortions — and even somebody like me has to think there are places and populations where it might be to high — they would take steps to ensure that unwanted pregnancies and birth defects are prevented. They would try to prevent sexual assaults in their community. They would support widely available birth control. They would want to improve the environment. They would want to make healthy food more available than junk food.

The truth is that the “It’s A Baby!” crowd is anti-sex, anti-woman, anti-free-will.

In Closing: standards; mindfulness; multi-layered WTF; and where will they find the money?; ok we agree; Howard!; maybe, maybe not; lies revisited; scanners.

Homework

There has been much wringing of hands over the “Achievement Gap,” which is “observed disparity on a number of educational measures between the performance of groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability, and socioeconomic status. The achievement gap can be observed on a variety of measures, including standardized test scores, grade point average, dropout rates, and college-enrollment and -completion rates.” [Emphasis mine]. One of the specific goals of NCLB was to measure and close this gap once and for all — a noble goal, even if the methods are questionable.

Now, I am far from the first person to point out that homework can make the gap worse, but let me give you some concrete examples.

Imagine a high school student. He arrives home, and his Mom is waiting for him thanks to a flexible work schedule. He gets a snack — teenage boys are universally always hungry — and sits down to work on homework for several classes. At one point he needs help with his foreign language work; Mom studied that language and certainly knows enough to help him through grammar and vocabulary. Later he uses internet resources to find a news article for another class. At one point he is stumped by a science problem. While Mom doesn’t know the answer, she suggests that it’s a topic that doesn’t change a lot and might be in Dad’s college biology book. When Dad arrives home shortly, he is able to help the student with mnemonics, or clever ways to remember all that information. Later, Mom cooks a healthy dinner, and later still everybody goes to bed at a reasonable hour.

Now let’s look at all the obstacles he did not have:

  • He didn’t worry about getting home from school safely, nor about his safety in his upper-middle class neighborhood
  • There was plenty of nutritious food in the house
  • He did not have to supervise the homework of younger siblings
  • He was not responsible for housework, such as starting dinner before Mom and Dad got home
  • Someone was there to keep him focused on the task at hand when necessary
  • He did not need to be at an after school job to help the family finances
  • He had all the resources to do homework, such as pencils, paper and reference materials
  • His parents were college educated and could in fact help when he had trouble with homework
  • His parents could afford tutoring services if they were necessary
  • He had access to a computer and high-speed internet
  • His parents were both willing and able to see to it that his physical and academic needs were taken care of.

It’s clear to see why homework is sometimes just one more academic obstacle.

In Closing: on the economy; on being ripped off; on Medicaid; on honesty and civility and history; on the free market; on climate change; lost wages; and oops.

Revisiting the BAMTOR Principle

Banks Always Make Their Own Rules, and this has been a banner week for demonstrating it!

You’ve heard of course about the lady who arrived at her second home to discover new locks and all her stuff missing, including her late husband’s ashes, right?

What about Deutsche Bank agreeing to pay a bunch of fines for helping wealthy Americans dodge their taxes?

Arizona and Nevada are both suing Bank of America over loan adjustments, and the Nevada AG has evidence that B of A has engaged in massive deceptive trade practices.

In California, Wells Fargo has been forced to admit that “pick a payment” was a bad idea and strongarmed into modifying a whopping 15,000 homeowners (sounds much more impressive if you say $2 billion in mortgages, doesn’t it?).

Meanwhile, the federal agencies that should be regulating the banks and protecting the citizens are protecting the banks from the citizens. The Federal Reserve has actually blocked new foreclosure regulations.

Even MarketWatch suggests that the banks have pulled on over on all of us.

We don’t just need rules for Big Banks, we need them to be forced to follow the law. Put a few bankers in jail, and I imagine the rest will be more likely to resist criminal activity.

In Closing: less American Pie; when Pat Robertson says to decriminalize pot, you know the War on Drugs is a failure; duh; security threat; Schneier; look, there’s never going to be a “get out of the security line free” card, so stop wishing for one!; gee, whoda thought?; good idea, wish somebody thought of it during the Clinton Administration; and idiot motorists drove through wet cement, getting stuck and delaying a project that would have been open in time for Christmas until probably Easter. Hope they’re real proud of themselves.