February 2012
69 posts
Scott Walker's New Defense: Recalling Me Hurts Children & the Elderly →
motherjones.com
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday morning, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker trotted out a new talking point as he defends himself from a well-organized recall campaign hoping to oust him from office. In a nutshell, Walker said: Think of the children! Think of the seniors!
How ironic. In his first budget, Walker slashed public education funding by $800 million to $900 million. Walker and his administration have also sought to cut Medicaid funding, in effect booting more than 50,000 low-income families from the program, better known as BadgerCare Plus. The $9 million price tag for his recall election pales in comparison to the cost-cutting now pinching some of Wisconsin’s students and some of its most vulnerable citizens.
“No matter how many punches we take, we don’t give up — we get up. We fight back. We move forward. We come out on the other side stronger than before.”
—President Obama, talking to UAW members.
Why Do Innocent People Confess? →
nytimes.com
The New York Times has a fascinating piece on the phenomenon of false confessions:
If you have never been tortured, or locked up and verbally threatened, you may find it hard to believe that anyone would confess to something he had not done. Intuition holds that the innocent do not make false confessions. What on earth could be the motive? To stop the abuse? To curry favor with the interrogator? To follow some fragile thread of imaginary hope that cooperation will bring freedom?
Yes, all of the above. Psychological studies of confessions that have proved false show an overrepresentation of children, the mentally ill and mentally retarded, and suspects who are drunk or high. They are susceptible to suggestion, eager to please authority figures, disconnected from reality or unable to defer gratification. Children often think, as Felix did, that they will be jailed if they keep up their denials and will get to go home if they go along with interrogators. Mature adults of normal intelligence have also confessed falsely after being manipulated.
False confessions have figured in 24 percent of the approximately 289 convictions reversed by DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project.
Sweet Illusions
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
Ryan Adams. Sweet Illusions.
“I learned a long time ago to stop questioning life. I believe that everything that’s thrown at us we’re able to handle, and there’s a reason for it. I have yet to figure out exactly what the reason for this is, but I don’t question that. I’ve always stood up for what is right. Today is about everybody who’s been wrongly accused, and everybody who’s ever had to stand up for what is actually right. Today isn’t about me, it isn’t just about one player – it’s about all players. It’s about all current players, all future players and everybody who plays the game of baseball.”
—Ryan Braun. He did an outstanding job at his press conference today. His complete statement is here.
“If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”
—Eisenstadt v. Baird.
Play
University of Wisconsin Professors Explain ALEC's Expanding Role In Public Education →
bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com
Julie Underwood, dean of UW’s School of Education, and Julie Mead, professor in the School of Education, studied education-related legislation developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is a conservative group that develops “model legislation” to be implemented at the state level. After noticing that nearly identical bills were being presented in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio (states with Republican Governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures), the professors decided to look further into the influence the group has over legislation related to public education.
ALEC’s interest in education is ambitious and multifaceted, and includes promoting dozens of model acts to its legislative members (Ladner, LeFevre, & Lips, 2010). Proposed bills seek to influence teacher certification, teacher evaluation, collective bargaining, curriculum, funding, special education, student assessment, and numerous other education and education-related issues. Common throughout the bills are proposals to decrease local control of schools by democratically elected school boards while increasing access to all facets of education by private entities and corporations.
“The facts are the facts and what has occurred here is beyond the pale in terms of lack of transparency and secrecy. Appearances are everything and Wisconsin has prided itself one generation after another on openness and fairness in doing the right thing. And to be frank we have seen everything but that in the way this case has proceeded”
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Judge J.P. Stadtmueller, to Wisconsin Republican lawmakers in the trial over redistricting maps. Background info here and here.
This morning, Judge Stadtmueller told the GOP lawmakers they could have until 5:30 today to consider redrawing the maps. As Charles Pierce explained “This is the court telling these clowns to redo the maps, and fast, or else face a judgment that’s going to make them all look like fools and throw the state’s politics into a minor kind of chaos.” Alas, Republican lawmakers failed to redo the maps.
“The issue, for Republicans, is not just that Santorum would lose in November. It’s that he could be a drag on House and Senate candidates as well. Imagine, say, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) trying to explain to his constituents why someone who doesn’t fully understand women’s participation in the workforce should be president.”
—Eugene Robinson, Rick Santorum Could Take Republicans Down With Him
“Despite a growing number of studies showing that charter schools, financed with public money and operating in 40 states, are often worse than traditional schools, the state and local organizations that issue charters and oversee the schools are too hesitant to shut them down. That has to change if the movement is to maintain its credibility.”
—The New York Times, Shuttering Bad Charter Schools
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
—Hemingway.
