Policy and Politics
tfk | June 3, 2007On Friday, I got an email from KU's new safety alert system, implemented after the Virginia Tech shootings. About 15 minutes later, I got another telling me:
UNIVERSITY POLICE HAVE COMPLETED A COMPREHENSIVE SEARCH OF CAMPUS IN RESPONSE TO AN UCONFIRMED REPORT.
THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF ANY THREAT AND EVERYONE ON CAMPUS IS ADVISED TO RETURN TO NORMAL OPERATIONS.
In my humble opinion, they should have waited those 15 minutes rather than sending out this meaningless warning. I want to point out before you even read this that it was a completely false alarm:
SAFETY ALERT
KU PUBLIC SAFETY HAS…
tfk | June 2, 2007Creekstone Farms wants to test every steer they slaughter for mad cow disease. The USDA, under pressure from larger meatpackers, says they can't:
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they…
tfk | June 1, 2007Less than a week before a G8 meeting at which Tony Blair tried but failed to get the major industrialized nations to commit to major greenhouse gas cuts, George Bush announced his own climate change conference. The Guardian writes that this action "threw international efforts to control climate change into confusion." In addition to the G8 summit, this summer will bring a UN conference that will create the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Bush officially withdrew the US from that protocol early in his term in office.
This is far from the first time that President Bush has created his own…
tfk | May 31, 2007One of the best ways to illustrate the growing societal consensus on global warming is the reaction of businesses. An alliance of conservation groups, car makers, utilities and industrial manufacturers is backing a system of cap and trade which would reduce allowable carbon emissions over several years, and create a market in efficiency and carbon reduction. The new owners of a utility in Texas scrapped plans for new coal plants and will replace those plans with low-emissions plants which will sequester carbon dioxide and extract energy from coal more efficiently. Other Texas utilities are…
tfk | May 31, 2007Shorter Sam Brownback: Science and theology don't conflict, but when they do, science is wrong.
Even shorter Sam Brownback: Vote for me. I'm the real conservative.
What fun we had when Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo and Mike Huckabee distinguished themselves from the pack of Republican candidates for the presidency by declaring that they didn't believe in evolution. Many were surprised that only 3 out of the legion of candidates took that bold stand against science and empirical evidence.
In today's New York Times, Kansas Senator and protector against manimals Sam Brownback is trying to walk…
tfk | May 29, 2007The question of how to cut our production of carbon dioxide grows more urgent every day, and the focus tends to be on new sources of energy. Increased efficiency tends to get lost in the mix, even though it's the easiest and most readily implemented approach.
Improving the carbon efficiency of buildings by 25% would produce one of seven "wedges" of carbon reduction needed to let atmospheric carbon dioxide level off. Doubling fuel efficiency of cars from 30 to 60 miles per gallon would have the same effect.
Carbon efficiency can be boosted many ways, from simple steps like turning off…
tfk | May 28, 2007On this day when we remember our war dead, it's worth looking back at the when and the how of the 3455 US military fatalities in Iraq, 100 of them soldiers from Fort Riley. Rates of woundings and fatalities in Iraq show the same pattern, a sharp rise in fatalities and woundings since roughly last November. There is too little data to attempt to determine whether the escalation since January has changed the trend. Daily fatality rates are higher than the levels during the invasion itself – the era known as "major combat operations."
In the time before the "Mission Accomplished" speech on…
tfk | May 25, 2007The purchasing power of the minimum wage has dropped to the lowest level in 50 years, but a bill passed yesterday will bring some relief to working Americans at last. The hike $5.15 per hour to $7.25 over two years will provide an income of around $15,000 per year (depending on overtime and time off). The current minimum wage provides an annual income around $10,700, only $500 more than the poverty line for one person. The new minimum wage is enough that one person could keep a family of two above the poverty line (though not by much).
This means that fewer Americans will have to rely on…
tfk | May 23, 2007The New York Times and Paul Decelles point out that wingnut Kansas Board of Ed. member Kenneth Willard is running unopposed to be president of the National Association of State Boards of Education. Willard's faults include voting for and strongly promoting the atrocious science standards last year. He beat Jack Wempe and Donna Viola in last year's elections.
Paul Decelles explains the problem:
Willard says that his disagreement with Darwin has nothing to do with the association's work. And personally if I felt that Willard could be impartial and genuinely interested in education, OK.
But…
tfk | May 23, 2007The Star's Buzz blog reports:
According to the AP, President Bush plans to rally support for the war by citing intelligence reports that have Osama bin Laden ordering "a terrorist unit to hit targets outside Iraq, and that the United States should be first [hit]."
At some point, we were "fighting them there so we don't have to fight over here," a silly argument that only gets sillier when combined with the claim that they are perfectly happy to do both. If they are planning to fight us elsewhere, shouldn't we get out of Iraq and prepare for that attack? Better yet, prevent it?
We're…
tfk | May 22, 2007From The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Vol.1: The Path to Power by Robert A. Caro, describing Herbert Hoover's response to the Great Depression (beginning October 29, 1929):
In December, 1929, he had said, "Conditions are fundamentally sound." In March, 1930, he said the worst would be over in sixty days; in May, he predicted that the economy would be back to normal in the Autumn; in June, in the midst of still another market plunge, he told a delegation which called at the White House to plead for a public works project, "Gentlemen, you have come sixty days too late. The Depression is over."…
tfk | May 10, 2007Fulfilling the hopes of many, the Board of Education named Alexa Posny to be the Commissioner of Education. Dr. Posny will replace Bob Corkins, the woefully unqualified commish installed by the previous Board. This undoes the last of the major damage done by the previous Board.
Posny was the deputy to the widely respected Commissioner preceding Corkins. While working for the Department of Education, she took particular responsibilities for special education and NCLB compliance, issues she's been working on at the federal Department of Education since being passed over for Corkins.
Her…
tfk | May 9, 2007Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet will kick off their Speaking Science tour tomorrow in Kansas City, in the Stowers Institute auditorium at 4 pm. It should be a fun event and a good chance for science advocates to start a discussion about how to communicate science to nonscientists.
Nisbet and Mooney kicked the discussion off with their article in framing in Science and the associated op-ed in the Washington Post. There was a vigorous debate online about those articles, what it means to "frame" science, and what framings might be useful.
Missouri recently fought back a state law forbidding…
tfk | May 8, 2007Barack Obama Otold the Detroit Economic Club that "the auto industry is on a path that is unacceptable and unsustainable" because of its fuel inefficiency and the high costs of health care for employees and retirees. He proposed to let the government take on some of those costs if the industry would produce more efficient vehicles.
On one hand, this is a politically smart exchange. Detroit claims that these healthcare costs are the reason why they are losing out to Toyota in sales, in fuel economy, and arguably in quality and design. There is little doubt that those costs are high,…
tfk | May 4, 2007A smart question asked and unanswered in last night's Republican Presidential debate was "What do you like least about America?"
Blue Tide Rising summarizes Mitt Romney's non-answer, and poses a followup:
If the GOP and it's candidates can't identify the problems, how can we reasonably expect them to solve them?
This is exactly right. People sometimes act like the act of criticizing is unpatriotic on some profound level. If you watched the recent Bill Moyers Journal on the media in the runup to war, you were reminded how that rhetoric was used to suppress dissent between 9/11 and March 2003…
tfk | May 3, 2007The legislation, which is identical to a bill working its way through the Senate, would allow federal prosecutors to pursue charges against people who were exercising a federal right and were attacked based on sexuality, sex or physical disability. As it stands, the prosecutors can only step in when the victim was attacked on the basis of race, color, religion or nationality.
The right wing is predictably incensed at the possibility that anti-gay violence would be given the same scrutiny that racial violence has been given since the 1960s. They claim that this bill would interfere with the…
tfk | May 2, 2007Greenberg Quinlan Rosner polled 1000 Americans and got some encouraging results. Three in ten respondents chose stopping global warming by reducing dependence on fossil fuels as the most important threat, above student performance, business competitiveness and retirement security. Only reducing healthcare costs did better, pulling only three percentage points more support.
Majorities of Americans feel we're lagging the world in developing "clean, alternative energy" (13% think we've fallen behind, 40% think we're falling behind), and 64% of the public thinks we need to "immediately" move…
tfk | May 2, 2007Reed Cartwright found out that a vital ecological research facility may be closed. The Savannah River Ecological Laboratory is operated by University of Georgia on land owned by the US Department of Energy. The DoE had a plutonium processing facility there, which is now closed. The unpopulated areas surrounding the facility has always been used for ecological research since the DoE started operations, and the site was designated as a National Environmental Research Park in the '70s.
The ecological research was initiated because the DoE wanted a way to evaluate the risks and dangers of…
tfk | May 1, 2007Following his promise to veto funding for the occupation of Iraq, President Bush sent the Iraq supplemental back to the Hill. While majorities of citizens and members of Congress increasingly feel that the continued presence of the United States makes no sense, the President expressed other concerns. After vetoing the bill, he explained "It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing."
Which, I suppose, is why we'll never, ever leave.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi government, the one which the president insists will stand up so our soldiers can stand down, is taking a…
tfk | May 1, 2007The civil engineer who saw fit to rewrite the conclusions of Interior Department scientists, and who sent confidential documents to a virtual friend on an online role-playing game, has resigned. This was part of her clever ploy to escape Congressional questioning. They can't over see her work if she isn't working for the government anymore!
Ms. MacDonald was deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, giving her responsibilities for overseeing implementation of the Endangered Species Act, among other things. In that capacity, she altered the scientific conclusions of agency…