Overflow, 11 August, 2018 ... Bob Nelson
1) Red, and Ready to Flip
2) The Marines Didn’t Think Women Belonged in the Infantry. She’s Proving Them Wrong.
3) New Horizons Spacecraft Sees Possible Hydrogen Wall at the End of the Solar System
4) Trump Used Racial Slur During ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ Former White House Aide Says
5) Ferguson underdog, outspent by more than 12 to 1, topples prosecutor who handled Michael Brown shooting
6) Cables Detail C.I.A. Waterboarding at Secret Prison Run by Gina Haspel
7) DeVos Ends Obama-Era Safeguards Aimed at Abuses by For-Profit Colleges
8) LeBron's radically different vision for public education is what we need
9) A growing majority of Americans agree: Health care shouldn’t be a business.
10) Charlottesville's first black female mayor: 'We’re not a post-racial nation'
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From the NY Times :
Yes, a majority of Americans find Trump repulsive. But more important, his policies are not popular.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers walks to a closed meeting of House Republicans on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on June 20, 2018.
Erin Schaff for The New York Times
It was titanic when the Speaker of the House, the Democrat Tom Foley, lost his seat in Eastern Washington State in 1994, a takedown that heralded a long winter for his party outside of coastal and urban enclaves.
So if an epic upset happens again in that same district, as seems possible after Tuesday’s primary, it will be because of party-flipping voters who haven’t given Democrats a sniff in a generation’s time. History is lurking again in the West.
I caught up with the potential giant-killer in Washington’s Fifth Congressional District, the Democrat Lisa Brown, just after the shame of Helsinki, when President Trump sided with the tyrant Vladimir Putin over his own country. While others were talking treason, Brown was sticking to basics in meetings with farmers and small-town residents.
“Health care insecurity — that’s the number one concern, a very big deal,” she said. “And then, you really notice the enthusiasm of women. I’ve been doing a lot of doorbelling, and the gender difference stands out.”
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From the NY Times :
The Marines Didn’t Think Women Belonged in the Infantry. She’s Proving Them Wrong.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff/The New York Times
First Lt. Marina A. Hierl watched a dozen Marines charge toward human silhouettes made of paper atop a nearby hill. Despite the early hour, the troops’ armored vests and camouflage uniforms were soaked with sweat. She stood back as they scrambled up the rocky incline, shouting and firing rifles.
“Push left,” she said after the squad completed its mock attack and assembled around her, gulping from canteens as they awaited feedback. “And make sure you’re communicating.”
It was a fairly routine instruction to Marines training for war, coming from a lieutenant in a role familiar to the men: a young, college-educated officer who had little experience but had direct oversight of their lives.
But Lieutenant Hierl is the first woman in the Marine Corps to lead an infantry platoon — a historic moment for a male-dominated organization that had fiercely opposed integrating female troops into combat, something that still unsettles many within the ranks.
That dynamic has been playing for months inside Echo Company, a group of 175 Marines and Navy sailors recently sent to the Northern Territory of Australia for roughly six months of training exercises and to act as a response force for the Pacific region.
Lieutenant Hierl is one of four platoon commanders in Echo Company. Her presence, first eyed with skepticism, appears to have been quietly accepted.
Thirty-seven women have attended the Marines Corps’ Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, Va., for 13 weeks of combat evaluations and mileslong hikes carrying heavy loads. Only two women have passed.
Of those two women, only Lieutenant Hierl has been given a platoon of roughly 35 men to lead.
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From Gizmodo :
New Horizons Spacecraft Sees Possible Hydrogen Wall at the End of the Solar System
The New Horizons spacecraft, now at a distance nearly four billion miles from Earth and already far beyond Pluto, has measured what appears to be a signature of the furthest reaches of the Sun’s energy—a wall of hydrogen. It nearly matches the same measurement made by the Voyager mission 30 years ago, and offers more information as to the furthest limits of our Sun’s reach.
"We assume there’s something extra out there, some extra source of brightness,” study author Randy Gladstone from the Southwest Research Institute told Gizmodo. “If we get a chance with New Horizons we can maybe image it.”
Scientists took a 360-view of this ultraviolet emission using New Horizon’s Alice instrument. When they looked into the distance away from the Sun, they saw an added brightness to the signal. This could be from hydrogen particles beyond the Solar System interacting with the furthest reaches of the solar wind, creating what appears to be a boundary in the distance, according to the paper published this week in Geophysical Research Letters.
The Voyager probe measured a similar signature three decades ago. Recent re-analysis demonstrated that Voyager’s scientists probably overestimated the signal’s strength. But once the Voyager data was corrected, New Horizon’s results looked almost exactly the same.
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From the NY Times :
Trump Used Racial Slur During ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ Former White House Aide Says
Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
President Trump frequently used the word “nigger” while he was the host of the reality television show “Celebrity Apprentice,” and there are tapes that can confirm it, according to a new memoir by one of Mr. Trump’s former White House advisers, Omarosa Manigault Newman.
The claims, based on hearsay, are among the more explosive and unverified ones that Ms. Manigault Newman makes in the book, “Unhinged.” It was first reported by the British newspaper The Guardian , which had an early copy.
Ms. Manigault Newman also claims that Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law tried to buy her silence by offering a $15,000-a-month contract; that the president secreted a tanning bed into the White House residence; that Mr. Trump described his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, as “ditsy”; that he once chewed up a piece of paper to avoid having it collected by presidential record-keepers; and that he routinely comments on women’s looks.
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From the LA Times :
Ferguson underdog, outspent by more than 12 to 1, topples prosecutor who handled Michael Brown shooting
J.B. Forbes / St. Louis Post-Dispatch
On Tuesday night, Robert McCulloch’s 28-year tenure as St. Louis County prosecutor came to a sudden, unexpected end.
In a Democratic primary election, McCulloch got trounced 57% to 43% by Wesley Bell, a city councilman from the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo.
You might remember McCulloch. For a brief moment, on Nov. 24, 2014, he was the most-watched law enforcement official in America.
That night, eastern Missouri was bracing for violence as McCulloch announced that a grand jury had declined to indict police Officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown after a struggle in the city of Ferguson.
Wilson is white. Brown was black. Protesters had wanted Wilson charged with murder, and a riot ensued when he wasn’t. McCulloch, who is white, defended his office’s handling of the case while chiding the public for not pushing for substantive social change after past racial traumas.
“How many years have we talked about the issues that lead to incidents like this? And yet, after a period of time, it just fades away,” McCulloch, a Democrat who had been in office since 1990, said in announcing the grand jury’s decision. "I urge everyone who was engaged in the conversation, who was engaged in the demonstrations, to keep that going.”
McCulloch, 67, got his wish.
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Since this is my state I probably have more interest than most. It was a stunning upset and with it a message was delivered.
Congratulations to Wesley Bell.
In other news Prop A was defeated. This is a major news story. Prop A would have made Missouri a ''right to work'' state. The people of Missouri saw it for what it is and defeated it 66% to 33%..
Apparently, Missouri isn't as paleolithic as I had thought.....
We left the stone age a decade or so ago.
Oh... I didn't see anything in the news.
Is there an ETA for attaining the 21st Century?
You can tell by vote that we seem to have arrived in the big 21.
That's great!
Now... if we could just get a few more... or at least drag all the states out of the 19th...
From the NY Times :
Cables Detail C.I.A. Waterboarding at Secret Prison Run by Gina Haspel
Doug Mills/The New York Times
In late November 2002, C.I.A. interrogators at a secret prison in Thailand warned a Qaeda suspect that he had to “suffer the consequences of his deception.”
As interrogators splashed water on the chest of the man, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, he pleaded that he was trying to recall more information, according to a newly released C.I.A. cable. As he cried, the cable reports, the “water treatment was applied.”
The “water treatment” was bureaucratic jargon for waterboarding, and 11 newly released top-secret cables from the time that Gina Haspel, now the C.I.A. director, oversaw the base provide at times graphic detail on the techniques the agency used to brutally interrogate Qaeda captives. Agency leaders and officers were racing to uncover what they feared were large-scale plots against the United States in the chaotic months and years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
As the chief of the base, Ms. Haspel would have written or authorized the cables, according to Tom Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, a research organization at George Washington University. The cables, obtained by the archive in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, were redacted to eliminate the names of interrogators and C.I.A. officers involved.
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From the NY Times :
DeVos Ends Obama-Era Safeguards Aimed at Abuses by For-Profit Colleges
Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos formally moved Friday to scrap a regulation that would have forced for-profit colleges to prove that the students they enroll are able to attain decent-paying jobs, the most drastic in a series of policy shifts that will free the scandal-scarred, for-profit sector from safeguards put in effect during the Obama era.
In a written announcement posted on its website, the Education Department laid out its plans to eliminate the so-called gainful employment rule, which sought to hold for-profit and career college programs accountable for graduating students with poor job prospects and overwhelming debt. The Obama-era rule would have revoked federal funding and access to financial aid for poor-performing schools.
After a 30-day comment period, the rule is expected to be eliminated July 1, 2019. Instead Ms. DeVos would provide students with more data about all of the nation’s higher education institutions — not just career and for-profit college programs — including debt, expected earnings after graduation, completion rates, program cost, accreditation and other measures.
“Students deserve useful and relevant data when making important decisions about their education post-high school,” Ms. DeVos said in a statement. “That’s why instead of targeting schools simply by their tax status, this administration is working to ensure students have transparent, meaningful information about all colleges and all programs. Our new approach will aid students across all sectors of higher education and improve accountability.”
But in rescinding the rule, the department is eradicating the most fearsome accountability measures — the loss of federal aid — for schools that promise to prepare students for specific careers but fail to prepare them for the job market, leaving taxpayers on the hook to pay back their taxpayer-backed loans.
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From the Guardian :
LeBron's radically different vision for public education is what we need
The Trump administration is proposing to cut funding for programs that can provide all children, not just the rich and a lucky few, the education they deserve
Jason Miller/Getty Images
It’s become fashionable for celebrities and the ultra-rich to start charter schools or make philanthropic gifts with the aim of remaking our “failing” public schools.
Mark Zuckerberg, for example, gave away $100m to schools in Newark, New Jersey, which was largely squandered on consultants.
The rapper Pitbull founded a charter school in Miami. It is run by a for-profit charter management company which was under federal investigation in 2014.
The Gates Foundation invested hundreds of millions in revamping teacher evaluation systems, which failed to boost student achievement.
But this July, basketball player and philanthropist LeBron James broke with this tradition and brought nationwide attention to community schooling in Ohio. The purpose of community schools is to turn the school into the anchor of the community and educate the whole child: children’s social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development. The evidence-based approach has recently been under assault by the Trump administration, whose proposed budgets would eliminate all federal funding for these types of programs.
Last week saw the opening of I Promise School , a district-run public school in Akron, Ohio. It is the brainchild of James’s foundation and the city’s public school district. The first student body is made up of 240 third- and fourth-graders who are reading a year or two below their grade level.
Rooted in a “trauma-informed” approach , I Promise students are privy to social-emotional learning and a hands-on Stem-based curriculum as well as an assemble of wraparound services: free breakfast and lunch, a Chromebook, bicycle, and an extended school day and year. Upon graduation from high school, their college tuition to the University of Akron is waived . Their parents also have access to a food pantry, GED program and job placement services .
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From the NY Times :
A growing majority of Americans agree: Health care shouldn’t be a business. They’re finally coming around to the idea that it can and should be a public good instead — something we can all turn to when the need arises.
The favorite right-wing argument against Medicare for All — the most popular approach to universal, publicly financed heath care — is that it’s too expensive. More on those costs in a moment. But first, we should note that our current health care system is actually the most expensive in the world by a long shot, even though we have millions of uninsured and underinsured people and lackluster health outcomes.
This is partly because a lot of that money doesn’t go directly toward keeping people healthy. Instead it goes to the overhead costs required to keep businesses running. These include exorbitant executive salaries, marketing to beat out the competition, the labor-intensive work of assessing and denying claims and so on. None of these would be a factor in a single-payer, Medicare for All system. Taiwan and Canada both have single-payer systems, and both spend less than 2 percent of total expenditures on administrative costs — and so does the United States’s current Medicare program. By contrast, private insurers in the United States spend as much as 25 percent on overheads.
But the most important way Medicare for All would save money isn’t by slashing administrative costs. It’s by using the power and size of the government, like other countries around the world currently do, to negotiate favorable terms with drug companies and service providers. There’s a reason a CT scan costs $896 in the United States, but only $97 in Canada.
And what about the sticker shock factor — the dramatic rise in government spending to accommodate such a program? Medicare for All would transfer all payment responsibility to one public agency (as opposed to a bunch of private companies), and that act of combination produces the big price tag that conservatives use as a cudgel. But while this would be more expensive for the government, it wouldn’t be for ordinary Americans. The money would be raised through progressive income and corporate taxes and end up costing most people less than their current health care. And coverage would be comprehensive and universal, meaning nobody would ever be unable to afford the care they need.
Pursuing Medicare for All would come with its own set of dilemmas: Eliminating an entire industry won’t be easy, and we’ll face plenty of political resistance and calls for half-measures. But if we want actual universal coverage, and we want it to be affordable and high-quality, Medicare for All is the only way forward.
I do appreciate what others have donated and tried to do, sadly it just didn't work.
To me this makes a hell of a lot of sense. When is the US going to understand that the children are our future. Why do teachers have to have massive strikes to gain a salary increase.
We can spend over $700 billion a year on the DOD but our education system doesn't produce enough STEM graduates to fill the positions in he real world...How many of these kids could be the next STEM graduates.
It's very simple, K...
The movers and shakers in America do not send their kids to public schools.
So... there is no reason to spend any money on public schools.
Sad but true. Having lived in countries other than the U.S. I've seen what and how those countries deal/treat teachers and students. They make the U.S. look like it's in the stone age.
Finland is usually at the top of education results. They completely overhauled their system a few decades ago. One of the important moves was... closing all the private schools. They figured that if the movers and shakers had to send their kinds to public schools... then they would see to it that those schools got the means they need.
Duh.
From the Guardian :
Charlottesville's first black female mayor: 'We’re not a post-racial nation'
A year after white supremacists marched through the liberal city, Nikuyah Walker says the left needs less talk and more action
A year ago, white supremacist groups marched with torches through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. The city reacted by electing its first black female mayor, Nikuyah Walker, 38, a fierce critic of how city officials had handled last year’s far-right protests.
An independent, Walker ran under the campaign slogan “Unmasking the illusion”. She argued that Charlottesville’s Democratic politicians had failed to do enough to tackle systemic racism and economic inequality, and that it was time for a deeper change.
Walker spoke to the Guardian about her policy agenda, what it was like growing up black in Charlottesville, and why she believes Democratic politicians “don’t know how to reform systems”. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How much did witnessing neo-Nazis marching in the streets change the city’s willingness to tackle systemic racism?
There have been many calls to return to normal … and I often have to say: ‘The normal for black, Hispanic, or low-income white people in this city is not a normal they want to return to.’
I had someone tell me in a recent conversation that “I think it’s important for the city to just make sure that the streets are paved and the bushes are trimmed and trash picked up on time”. Well, if that’s all you have to worry about ... I’ve never had that luxury, and many others have never had that luxury.
What changed was that people were faced with the fact that we’re not a post-racial nation.
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