A lot of people are now saying the government should take over the cleanup efforts. I don’t think this is a bad idea. But I wonder, since BP is on the hook for footing the cleanup bill, will the company be required to compensate the government should it take over?

I imagine the answer is yes, but I’m gonna look into it anyway. Update later.

UPDATE

From Joshua Keating writing at Foreign Policy:

In 1990, in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act, which amended the Clean Water Act to give the president vastly expanded authority to respond to oil spills. Previously, precious time was often lost as authorities waited for the company responsible to mobilize its resources. Now, if an oil spill is of “such a size or character as to be a substantial threat to the public health or welfare of the United States,” the president has the authority to “direct federal, state, and private actors to remove or arrange for the removal of the oil” or even destroy a leaking vessel.

Then came Hurricane Katrina, which exposed how tangled chains of command could prevent federal authorities from responding effectively to a natural disaster. The National Response Framework developed after the storm gives the federal government authority to coordinate the response by public and private actors to “nationally significant incidents.” The Obama administration has declared the Gulf spill “nationally significant,” but has so far allowed BP to take the lead in coordinating the response.

This doesn’t address the original question of compensation (which I’m still looking into), but I thought it was an interesting enough bit of legalese. Still looking into compensation and also whether the government would be better equipped to handle the cleanup. Check back.

Thinking on that got me thinking on my own political lean. I lean left, but it’s more complicated than that. I’m not a down the line Democrat nor a Firedoglake liberal nor libertarian nor progressive nor socialist nor fascist nor vegetarian. I’m more localized.

What I got from Wood’s book is that I sympathize with Madison and Hamilton. At face value, it sounds contradictory: Madison believed in government as umpire, no more, no less; Hamilton believed in a fiscal-military state, what Wood describes as pretty much our current government.

So now I’m trying to figure on how to reconcile the two, how to say I’m a Hamilton-Madison small-d democrat with “what’s that now” tendencies.

I like the idea of government as an assertive parent, the kind who’s not gonna do your laundry and make your bed, who makes you mow the lawn and help around the house to earn your keep, who’s not gonna snoop in your room so long as you understand it’s their house, who’ll make you lunch when you’re in a bind but don’t bank on it becoming a regular thing, who, when you get a job, asks you to pitch in on electric/water/utility, who speaks with you straight-up about taking too long in the shower and leaving the lights on in unoccupied rooms, who explains why these are problems, who will fix the locks on the door if someone tries to break in, who let’s you have people over so long as they don’t wreck the place and asks how long they plan on staying, who doesn’t care what you wear but asks that your carry yourself well, who’s not gonna tell you what to eat but explains why you need to eat well, who’ll recommend a doctor so long as you make the appointment, who hears you out when someone’s grinding at you and will get in that person’s face if you want them to but won’t if you don’t, who sets rules but is willing to revisit them.

Not a mommy or daddy, ma or pop, mother or father, madam or sir. A parent.

But I also like the idea of government as the roommate whose name’s on the lease. The kind who keeps to himself but is cool to watch the game with, who shares food without expecting retribution, who pays his rent and expects you to pay yours, who looks after vacancies so you don’t get assed-out, who let’s you know if he’s gonna have people over and expects the same courtesy, who won’t let those people in your room, who locks the front door, who’s up front with you, who listens to your needs (shower in the morning? Done) and is rational about meeting them (jersey shore marathon on apartment’s only TV during March Madness? Let’s talk), who mediates between you and the landlord, who has your back but not unconditionally.

Not a best friend nor drinking buddy nor gym partner nor co-worker. A roommate.

I’m still wrestling, but good to throw paint at the canvas. Send thoughts.

Well, ABC News correspondent and interim host of This Week Jake Tapper listened to Rosen and elected to team with Politifact.com to monitor falsehoods on This Week. In honor of the inaugural effort, I’ve decided to do a running diary of the first show a la ESPN columnist Bill Simmons (who lifted the format from sportswriter and poker commentator Norman Chad, who probably sourced it from Plato).

10:01 – Ah, poor Jake Tapper, guy gets called up and rejuvenates a floundering franchise only to have ABC trade for a Wizards-era MJ in Christiane Amanpour and send Tapper back to the White House D-League come August.

Build your stock, JT, maybe NBC will grab you off the blocks in four months when David Gregory’s still scared of posting up on Meet the Press.

10:01 – Tapper’s lisp kills me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s hard to think of anyone with a lisp as being anything but pleasant. Tigger had a lisp.

10:03 – Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) is already on the ideological kick: “The question I think to present is ‘Do judges like this—or candidates like this—approach judging on the basis of each case presenting its unique facts and law and being decided strictly on that basis rather than with the judge coming with an ideological position.”

Translation: We struck out on the John-Roberts-umpire-invoking Sotomayor, so here’s hoping Obama tosses a meatball and picks Cass Sunstein. Regardless, we’re gonna filibuster. Nee-ner-nee-ner-nee-ner.

10:03 – Tapper with an early jab, asks what role the constitutionality of the individual mandate will play in the hearings.

10:04 – Kyl waves it off and says you can’t ask a nominee about a hypothetical case that could come before the Supreme Court. True. Looks like Kyl was listening to Sotomayor last summer, after all—even though she had to repeat herself so many damn times.

10:04 –Kyl now playing politician, watering down his stance on the nominee into kindergarten-speak, I mean, common sense. He makes it sound like there’s a recipe book for every possible Supreme Court case.

How Kyl pictures SC decisions: Scalia to Ginsburg, “Well, the Constitution says a dash, but I think that’s more of a pinch.” Ginsburg to Scalia, “The founders’ definition of dash is our definition of pinch.”

10:05 – Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) doing like Randal in Clerks II and trying to take the impartial stance back: “What you want is somebody who will follow the law, not make the law.” Dems continue to play little brother to the GOP and inherit the Republicans’ hand-me-down talking points.

10:05 – Schumer cites his support of Dubya’s judicial nominees as a show of nonpartisanship, as opposed to a show of the left buckling under the GOP majority that it was. He then pouts about Dubya’s judges duping him by making law, not following law as they said they would. Makes one wonder, Was Schumer the brainiac who doped into doing the head cheerleader’s homework all through eighth grade just so she’d say hi in the hallway?

10:05 – Schumer doesn’t think the GOP will filibuster. This is like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football.

10:06 – Schumer’s hoping Obama nominates someone who can be the left’s Roberts, someone to rally a majority (i.e. sway Kennedy) to see his/her way.

10:07 – Tapper pulls a Kyl quote from an April 10, 2008 Senate speech denouncing the use of filibusters.

10:08 – Kyl won’t say he won’t filibuster. He’s still sore about Dems filibustering nominees in 2001, brings up Obama’s attempted filibuster of Alito. And with that we turn to Politifact: Kyl is…correct!

Obama to George Stephanopoulos on January 29, 2006:

”I will be supporting the filibuster because I think Judge Alito, in fact, is somebody who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values”

According to Politifact, “The next day, Democrats failed in their attempt to filibuster on a vote of 72 to 25, with Obama joining 24 other Democrats on the losing end.”

10:10 – Tapper asks Kyl if he will filibuster immigration reform should Harry Reid bring a bill to the Senate floor, quotes Kyl as saying in Yuma, Arizona, town hall meeting that “Republicans will use the opportunity to filibuster.” Kyl denies quote. Fact-check!

From the Yuma Sun on April 8, 2010, Kyl said:

“My guess is (immigration reform) won’t have the votes to pass, but political promises have been made to key constituency of the party that is in power. Republicans will use the opportunity to filibuster…”

10:11 – Time for international relations talk with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gibbs.

10:12 – Clinton says it’s been a good week for American foreign policy, cites the START treaty with Russia. Does not cite Karzai’s back-stabbing or Netanyahu’s nuclear summit no-show or Qatari diplomat’s security scare.

She then says Iran’s antagonism only buttresses the administration’s nuclear policy. Seems like they’re trying to equate Ahmadinejad with Kim Jong-il. Could work but dangerously dishonest.

10:16 – Clinton: U.S. isn’t worried about China’s nuclear capabilities. “We’ll be stronger than everybody in the world as we always have been.” Plus China’s not gonna bomb a country that owes them $755 billion. This isn’t Goodfellas.

10:17 – Jonathan Tepperman had a good article in Newsweek last year about nuclear armament.

”Nuclear weapons change all that by making the costs of war obvious, inevitable, and unacceptable. Suddenly, when both sides have the ability to turn the other to ashes with the push of a button—and everybody knows it—the basic math shifts. Even the craziest tin-pot dictator is forced to accept that war with a nuclear state is unwinnable and thus not worth the effort.”

How I see it, nuclear weapons are a reality. Truman opened up Pandora’s Box, and the world has to live with the consequences. I agree on reductions, but there’s never going to be a complete eradication of nuclear weapons. And despite what Senators McCain and Kyl say, Obama gets this because Gates gets it. Per the Nuclear Posture Review, the US maintains the right to exercise the nuclear option.

10:18 – Clinton: “We don’t believe the threat from nuclear terrorism comes from states. Our biggest concern is that terrorists will get nuclear materials.” The concern’s not China and Russia.

As stated in the Nuclear Posture Review:

”In coming years, we must give top priority to discouraging additional countries from acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities and stopping terrorist groups from acquiring nuclear bombs or the materials to build them. At the same time, we must continue to maintain stable strategic relationships with Russia and China and counter threats posed by any emerging nuclear-armed states, thereby protecting the United States and our allies and partners against nuclear threats or intimidation, and reducing any incentives they might have to seek their own nuclear deterrents.”

10:20 – Clinton: “The threat of nuclear war, nuclear attack, as we grew up with in the Cold War has diminished; the threat of nuclear terrorism has increased.”

10:20 – Clinton’s eyes widen as Tapper asks what advice she gives Obama on a Middle East peace plan. Says she doesn’t share advice she gives the president. “Our goal remains the resumption, the relaunch of negotiations.” What are the odds she resurrects the restart button she had for Russia?

10:21 – Love Gates’ eyebrow raise upon calling Karzai a “political leader.” Gonna look for that in an episode of Lie to Me with Tim Roth’s character saying “You see, that’s such BS that even he can’t believe what he just said.”

10:24 – I’m okay with Gates playing down the Wikileaks video. When I watched it, I couldn’t tell if the guy peeking around the corner was setting up a camera or an RPG. So on the initial strike, it’s tragic but understandable. The shooting of the van, however, was bullshit as was the chop-licking over whether the wounded man would pick up a weapon, giving cause for further engagement.

The best reaction I’ve read on the matter comes from The New Yorker’s George Packer:

”This isn’t Abu Ghraib, or the rape atrocity in the Triangle of Death, or the Haditha massacre. The Apache crews make a series of bad judgments—some of them understandable, like mistaking the photographer’s long lens as it pokes around the corner of a building for an RPG; others much less defensible, like firing repeatedly at a van that has stopped to pick up a wounded man—but they aren’t shooting indiscriminately like in a free-fire zone. The video is important because it shows the kind of tragedy that is absolutely inevitable in wars likes the ones America has been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but especially in urban Baghdad: where a journalist and a militiaman can appear indistinguishable, where a gunner surrounded by noise and heat high in the sky will fail or choose not to look for complicating details in the scene far below, and where a van taking away a wounded man might be a legitimate target if it were a military vehicle in a conventional war. Those who say that incidents like this have been common in Iraq and Afghanistan are not wrong. The military’s claim that the soldiers followed their rules of engagement is probably not wrong either (though the attempted cover-up invites suspicion). Anyone who sends young troops into war should expect them to kill innocent people by mistake, and to crack jokes about the people they’ve killed. This doesn’t make them war criminals, or even moral monsters. Nor is it the whole truth about them, or about the war. But it’s a truth, and it should be seen.”

10:25 – Clinton says a whole bunch of nothing on the Supreme Court matter. Helpful reminder that she remains a politician.

10:25 – Tapper channels Mark Halperin and asks if Hillary was in awe of Obama’s ability to pass health care reform or saw partially as a victory for Hillarycare. She slaps it away nonetheless.

10:26 – Commercial break! Time to prep for Sam Donaldson’s face. It’s not a mask, it’s not a mask…

10:33 – And we’re back. George Will’s up first. Wonder if he and the Donald share a barber?

10:35 – Cokie Roberts just punched George Wills in the balls for editing history in his favor with regard to fights over Supreme Court nominations. The eyeroll finish might be better than Carlos Boozer staring down Serge Ibaka after posterizing him last week.

10:35 – Arianna Huffington says there will be a fight so long as Obama nominates anyone short of Liz Cheney. Hmm, histrionics anyone?

10:35 – Oh, God, Sam Donaldson! The Face, it haunts me! It’s like even his hair was injected with Botox. And his political assertions are just as lifeless.

10:36 – Syfy should give Sam Donaldson and Geraldo Rivera a show together.

10:37 – Cokie Roberts doesn’t want another appellate judge for a nominee, prefers someone with “life experience.” Wonder if she’s been reading Ezra Klein.

10:37 – The Face wants another Earl Warren.

10:37 – Arianna wants to clone Elizabeth Warren. As well-spoken and scary-smart as Warren is, I feel like Scalia and Thomas would steamroll her in a debate while gnashing on the cookies she baked them.

10:39 – How are the roundtable members not wetting themselves when looking at The Face?

10:40 –And finally someone invokes the Civil War upon talking about the nullification of health care reform. Natch!

10:41 – Sam Donaldson has just become the voice of reason: The idea of a fair Supreme Court judge is in the eyes of the beholder.

10:42 – Donaldson again, says Justice Stevens was a moderate Republican when appointed and evolved from there.

Fact-check: True! Stevens quote from a 2005 speech at Fordham University:

”Learning on the job is essential to the process of judging”

10:43 – Arianna brings up Liz Cheney while talking about Obama’s bipartisanship, in case anyone forgot she’s a liberal.

10:43 – Donaldson just got assed-out after saying he doesn’t think there will be a fight over the nomination. The Face is all over the board!

10:44 – Cokie Roberts reminds me why political analysts matter. She says Democrats will bring up immigration reform to force GOP’s hand and, in turn, win the Hispanic vote.

10:45 – Arianna with the obvious: It’s all about the short-term electoral gain. Isn’t it always? Isn’t that why reform is always so incremental?

10:45 – Now Tapper introduces a whole segment on Liz Cheney. Fear-mongering never fails to win attention.

10:45 – I agree with George Will that it’s fair to ask whose side Karzai’s on. Karzai is a political opportunist who was put into power as a show of good faith but has failed in consolidating that initial power.

From an August 9, 2009, article in the New York Times Magazine:

”With the overthrow of the Taliban, the ethnic Tajiks who made up the bulk of the Northern Alliance considered themselves the victors. At the Bonn Conference held in Germany in December 2001 to create the future Afghan government, the Northern Alliance Tajiks demanded and got the most important ministries. Given Afghanistan’s demographics, everyone knew they needed an ethnic Pashtun as president, and Abdullah Abdullah, who was then with the Northern Alliance, pressed the case for Karzai. He seemed the perfect choice at the time, Abdullah recently told me: a Pashtun from a landed family in Kandahar, known to the Northern Alliance through years of jihad and then various peace processes. ‘After fighting all those years against the Taliban, who were a southern Pashtun movement,’ Abdullah told me recently, ‘for the north to push for someone from the south was breaking the ice and a milestone that we could build a future on.’”

But after a car accident in which an American truck killed five people outside Kabul, the Afghans began to turn on Karzai:

”Whom could he trust? All he could do was begin recasting the play, substituting Pashtun jihadi commanders for non-Pashtun ones. He began to surround himself with the former loyalists of his old friend Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. This was the same commander whom the Americans named, in 2003, as a ‘specially designated global terrorist.’ This was the man who had recently declared himself an open ally of Al Qaeda. But while Karzai’s new cohort might still have had loyalties to Hekmatyar, they could at least be organized, disciplined and trusted to a certain extent.

The riots woke Karzai up to the fact that, in choosing not to have a political party, he had completely isolated himself. He had no constituency. He had thought he could be a symbol of unity for all Afghans, but even a Mandela or a Gandhi needed a party or a grass-roots movement. Karzai had little more than his own family and weekly video conferences with President George Bush. So the Pashtun jihadis gradually became his constituency and insurance policy.”

10:47 – The Face grabs the day’s keenest political insight when discussing Karzai: “He weird in many respects, but many world leaders are.”

10:47 – Seconds later Arianna tries to one-up The Face with this: “But, Sam, we do have an alternative…to get out.”

10:49 – Watching Cokie Roberts and George Will talking down to Arianna is fun. It’s like watching Hot Sauce take on a local talent in an And 1 mixtape.

10:49 – Arianna: “I’m glad I let George talk.” Truth.

10:50 – Cokie Roberts and The Face get in a few last words about stabilizing Afghanistan and we’re out. Not gonna comment on the In Memoriam segment or the Sunday Funnies. Sorry, everyone.

Final thoughts: I’m wiped but less scared of The Face (patting myself on the back for restraining from making the obvious pun). Fingers crossed for “The Face and the ’Stache.” No joke.

For the sake of clarity and concision, I’ll use ”Hispanic” as the blanket term for members of the Hispanic/Latino minority.

Ah, yes, the question of race. While there remains no consensus definition of race nor even the criteria to identify racial aspects, the U.S. government has decided that “Hispanic origins are not races,” as noted on the 2010 Census questionnaire. (Disclosure: I am half-Ecuadorean, half-white and declared as much in filling out my questionnaire.)

As to what qualifies as a race, the government includes the following:



I’ll leave alone the dismissive tone of “Some other race” for the linguistically inclined, and ask that you restrain the urge to clamor, “But one could simply write in Hispanic as ‘Some other race.’” Sure, one could—I did, as did 40% of Hispanics on the 2000 Census form who “represented 95% of all the 15.3 million people in the U.S. who did so.”

Unfortunately, even that manual measure poses no solution. According to a 2002 report published by the U.S. Census Bureau, starting with the 1940 Census, enumerators have been instructed to classify Hispanics as White “unless they were definitely Negro, Indian, or some other race.”

Question 8 on the form does account for Hispanics as people of certain origin, but to what end? Does Question 8 adequately reconcile the omission of Hispanics in Question 9, or the sweeping of Hispanics into the White race in the processing of Question 9?

One could presume that the omission is negligible as answers to Question 8 and Question 9—asked since 1970 and 1790, respectively—are each used “to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination provisions, such as under the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.”

However, while Question 8 provides “data to help plan and administer bilingual programs,” Question 9 has a far deeper impact on America’s political landscape.

”Race is key to implementing many federal laws and is needed to monitor compliance with Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. State governments use the data to determine congressional, state and local voting districts. Race data are also used to assess fairness of employment practices, to monitor racial disparities in characteristics such as health and education and to plan and obtain funds for public services.”

Therefore, although Hispanics number more than 15% of the total U.S. population, this growing minority casts no consequential shadow on the electoral map.

For instance, a municipality like Santa Cruz County, Arizona, in which Hispanics represent 80.6% of the population, would be counted as white majority. Therefore, the majority Hispanic residents of Santa Cruz County would not receive adequate aid that Hispanic populations nationwide need, such as education reforms to close the achievement gap that currently finds only 58% of Hispanics graduate from high school, or the institution of federal programs that would offer workforce development to close the economic gap, in which the “customer service and retail industry is the largest employer of Latino workers (12% customer service and 14% retail); yet Latinos make the lowest wages in these industries because they predominantly occupy the bottom of the career and wage ladder.” To count Hispanics as whites—who represent the affluent side of the achievement and economic gaps—would ignore the persistent problems that hobble Hispanics’ socioeconomic growth, which would in turn impair America’s growth as Hispanics are projected to account for a quarter of the total U.S. population by 2050.

According to Maria Teresa Kumar, executive director of the Hispanic civic organization Voto Latino, the measures keeping Hispanics from being properly counted as a group separate from whites “risks leaving a mistaken impression that they enjoy certain socioeconomic opportunities we associate with whites in this country when in reality [Hispanics] are near the bottom in areas like education and upward mobility.”

The negative impact of this miscount has been evidenced in another racial group not explicitly listed on the 2010 Census questionnaire: Arabs. According to Time, “Arab immigrants a century ago petitioned the Federal Government to be categorized as white to avoid discrimination. Today, Arab-American leaders realize how much that move has cost their community in terms of federal aid and legal clout.”

As it stands, the 2010 Census will further disenfranchise Hispanics by disallowing them proper representation. Without accurate representation, Hispanics will continue to be denied necessary resources.

As individuals, Hispanics will be counted, but for the Hispanic community, does that count?

The state dug its ditch back in 1978 with the passage of Proposition 13, a voter initiative that knee-capped the state’s ability to accrue significant revenue from property taxes. And with the current housing crisis shrinking property values, the piddling revenue that property taxes do provide continues to dwindle into obscurity, stretching the budget gap.

Not that any of the main gubernatorial candidates are willing to do much about it. . The Democratic nominee, current state attorney general and former two-term governor Jerry Brown, has vowed that “in this time of recession … there will be no new taxes, unless you the people vote for them.” (It should be noted that as governor Brown opposed Prop. 13, calling it “a can of worms,” but after it passed with 65% of the vote, he agreed to follow voters’ orders, championing himself a “born-again tax-cutter.”) Both leading GOP nominees, former eBay CEO and political tyro Meg Whitman and one-term state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner, have advocated further tax cuts in hopes that they will stimulate the economy and spur hiring.

California’s economic potholes need filling, not politicians and the populace digging in their heels.

Unfortunately for Californians, the current candidates would rather be elected than effective, catering to voters as opposed to serving up their own menu.

Read more at The Politicizer.

You know the rules — coin a pithy, reductive phrase that somehow encapsulates the multitude of events, trends, triumphs and calamities of the past 10 years. If you can also rope in some of the big personalities and consumer obsessions, that’s a bonus.

Had I brainstormed more thoroughly, I might have proposed something that integrates both “Hope” and “Snuggie.” But then that ignorantly excludes any terms that evoke “Calamitous” and “Cadillac.” A handle that begins with the lower-case “i” seems at once cheeky and cliche, as does simply an ellipsis. Time‘s 2006 Person of the Year seems to have antiquated flashes of postmodernism. Yet to summarize the most appropriate aspect of the past decade is to at once appear to pay homage to Time and to parody it. That said, I hereby decree it the We (nee Me) Generation.

I’ll allow that a repeat of the Me Generation was a possibility with all the navel-gazing that the Internet’s innovations has provided. But it is precisely this infatuation with ourselves that has led to we. To put it crudely, we have come to gaze at each other’s navels. The onslaught of online communities such as Facebook and MySpace and Twitter has digitized Jane Jacobs’ sidewalk to one on which we all tred. We are each public actors.

An example: In previous decades, had I chanced upon Mr. Segal’s article I might have allayed my aggravation by arguing it over with those nearest me. I would have been limited to physical proximity. Should I have chosen to stretch my audience I might have called someone somewhere and violated their ear. I would have been limited still.

We are no longer limited. We can sound off without need for selection. We can say to no one what we are thinking and receive replies from someone (anyone) somewhere (anywhere). In isolation, I can grit my teeth about an article of bemusement yet find myself immersed in debate with others abroad. I can become a we with others unlike me, others I can’t see, others I’d otherwise never meet, others who don’t know me. Yet there remains “we.”

We connect. We can participate in a distant revolution. We can communicate without regard for language. We can see the Great Wall from our New York office. We can see our New York office from the Great Wall. We can witness death and feel helpless together. We can witness a miracle and feel hopeful together. We connect. Ours is not a world removed. Ours is a world unto itself, unto ourselves.

Those for whom being frugal entails ordering a Venti extra-hot, because it lasts longer. Those for whom exculpating themselves of their greenback gluttony requires displays of everyman qualities, or rather lack of displays, e.g. sans tie, sans superfluous jewlery, but never sans rhapsodies on the virtues of America’s workforce.

Today Mary Bruce at ABC News reports on Education Secretary Arne Duncan telling America’s colleges and universities that their education departments “are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom.” Fine. Probably true. But not for the reasons the former head of the Chicago public schools goes on to outline.

My girlfriend’s a teacher and based on my proximity to the situation and despite my bias, her schooling did nothing to prepare her for the job of an undignified babysitter who, rather than endeavor to enact a non-profileration treaty on run-on sentences, is faced daily with juggling 17-year-old high school freshmen who can’t read and an administration that turns a blind eye to classroom overcrowding (at one point ten students had no desks).

According to Duncan’s informal survey of “hundreds of teachers”, the most glaring injustices are:

“First, most of them say they did not get the hands-on practical teacher training about managing the classroom that they needed, especially for high-needs students. And second, they say [they] were not taught how to use data to differentiate and improve instruction and boost student learning.”

Despite citing that the predominant problem teachers face is classroom management, Duncan conveniently buries the underlying problem by blaming higher-learning institutions for not preparing would-be educators in high-needs classrooms for a career akin to that of a prison guard.

Mr. Duncan, the problem is not that these teachers have not seen Dead Poets Society and Freedom Writers ad nauseam. The problem is not a lack of “classroom readiness” and poorly funded and poorly organized local mentoring programs for new teachers. If the latter was the problem, open a bar down the street from the school and every Friday afternoon you’d have your solution. The problem is that nothing can prepare a teacher for experiencing a class of students block the door and turn off the lights in a classroom then pelt her with textbooks, as happened at a Brooklyn public high school not long ago. The problem is that nothing can prepare a teacher for being physically threatened by a student–one who has already served time in juvenile hall, no less–and learn that reporting the incident to the administration is met with the equivalent of letting a wound dry in the wind and care not whether something blew in. The problem is that nothing can prepare a teacher for a school that does nothing. The problem is that nothing is being done to solve the problem.

A final formulation: “Those who can’t, won’t.”