So Amazing!

My father needs to find these people and join, immediately. Robert Goulet. Robert. Goulet. The last time I was this proud of St. Louis was when we won the World Series.

Furloughs in Hawaii: Platinum or not-so-platinum?

So Hawaii, like many states, is having a massive budget crisis. In education, states have chosen from a variety of alternatives in order to deal with the deficits. Some have laid off teachers under seniority and some have laid off teachers using other criteria(which may not be super platinum in it's own ways, HT: Courtney). Other states have used across-the-board salary reductions or just cut funding to specific programs.

Hawaii chose something a bit different: they decided to shorten the school year by having seventeen (yes, seventeen) fewer days of school annually through 2011 using furloughs. I haven't heard of another district using this specific approach when it comes to education. Personally, this seems like one of those too-perfect-for words examples of putting the interests of adults ahead of the needs of children. Adults get to keep the same amount of pay(proportionally) and get more days off while children receive less learning time (in a state with one of the shortest school days and years) and parents must scramble to figure out what to do with their kids seventeen days of the year they hadn't planned to. And now there are some lawsuits saying that the new contract is illegal and the Governor is evil blah blah blah.

So that's the background. Here's a few quick hits.

• Multiple friends of mine have posted on facebook pictures from a "teach-in" protest(with celebrities!) at the state capitol and are blaming the governor for the fact they can't be with their kids. This is completely disingenuous. The contract that cut out seventeen days was ratified by teachers by 81% to 19%. That means that the people protesting have already spoken (with their pocketbooks) and said that preserving the status quo (in pay, their responsibilities, class size) is more important than learning time for their students.
• Speaking of going back on their word, let's go back a couple years. In April 2007, Hawaii teachers voted on a contract (good summary article) that would give across the board raises (11%) for teachers, require only one year of teaching before tenure, and required mandatory randomized drug testing. That contract was also ratified by large margins (61%). Almost immediately after the contract vote, the union announced that their interpretation of random drug testing was that if someone was suspected of being under the influence, they could be tested. The governor, and now they are in court, still fighting two years later. Meanwhile, teachers have been receiving the raise that was part of the contract for the entire time (I'm not sure about the one year-tenure thing).
  

So what does all this mean? Personally, it suggests to me that neither the union nor the teachers they represent negotiate in good faith. Once you agree to something, you are legally obligated to follow through on it. It's impressive that no one stands up and says, "Hey buddy! You voted in favor of this! If this is so bad for the kids, why didn't you just take a pay cut or announce layoffs?" I personally think furloughs are a poor policy solution when it comes to education, but as a practical matter, they do solve the budget issue. But what I consider galling (and highly un-platinum) is the completely disingenuous behavior of everyone involved. Welcome to life in Hawaii.

Update: As soon as I posted the previous version of the post, I regretted using the word, "jackass" to describe some people who I believe are being hypocritical. My bad and I apologize. Completely non-platinum and this is me owning it.

A Platinum Nobel Prize Winner

We've all received news by now that President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize and the general surprise that's followed, but recent announcement of 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences award winners Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom is apparently causing a stir in the economic profession. Williamson won for his work in New Institutional Economics, and Ostrom for her work on the theory and practice of institutional economics. Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.

According to economist Steven Levitt, author of best-seller Freakonomics,

the economics profession is going to hate the prize going to Ostrom even more than Republicans hated the Peace prize going to Obama. Economists want this to be an economists’ prize (after all, economists are self-interested). This award demonstrates, in a way that no previous prize has, that the prize is moving toward a Nobel in Social Science, not a Nobel in economics.

He says this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that his colleagues would find it unpopular. I don't know what 'circles' Levitt travels in, but news of Ostrom's receipt of the award has generated quite a positive reaction from the scholars I know. Ostrom isn't mainstream and therefore, according to Levitt, would ruffle the feathers of the economic community because (1) she is not well-known, and (2) apparently isn't enough of an economist for him.

Read Paul Dragos Aligica's article at Reason about her. He and many other scholars, ecstatic about Ostrom's winning the prize, have been very vocal about their reactions. AP quotes Dragos here:

"Until her work, the thinking was, 'let the state intervene,'" said Paul Dragos Aligica, a political scientist at George Mason University. "'If you leave it to individuals to do whatever they want, resources will be depleted.' But she said `hold on' and found that's not the case." Aligica wrote his doctorate under Ostrom's guidance.

Not all the Nobel Prize announcements have been confusing or disheartening.

Platinum Traveling

So I apologize for not posting for quite a while. I honestly just haven't had much to write about. Happily, I am on vacation this weekend and traveled to Chicago to see some friends of mine. KM and CS have a great apartment in Wicker Park (yes, that Wicker Park for all you movie buffs out there) and both seem to be doing great in their new respective lives. Seeing as how I've spent the weekend traveling, I thought I'd remark on a platinum and not-so platinum travel moment I had this weekend.

Platinum Packing
For those of you that know my family, you'll know that they are atrocious at packing. Since I was a child, it's always been a more stuff=better mentality when it comes to packing for any kind of trip, be it for a day or a week. The results of this were cramped cars, lots of time spent packing/unpacking, and my family never really being forced to think about what we wanted to do (and therefore needed to pack) on trips. Not surprisingly, my family is also not good about cleaning out old crap we have in our house. Having seen the houses of my relatives, and most importantly my grandparents, I'm tempted to use Psych 101 to describe this as the "Depression Conception of Packing/Storage." DCOPS means that you want quantity over quality and that you hold onto things you have no reason to because "You never know when they could be useful."

I, at least in my adult life, firmly reject this way of thinking. I pack light and think strategically about what are the most likely things I'll be doing on any given trip. I don't check baggage and I don't eat or drink before or during travel for the most part. These are all things that will slow you down. I can pack for just about any weekend trip (and most other trips) in less the 20 minutes. I keep a bag of toiletries packed for just this purpose (including a ziplock bag for TSA). All in all, I'm able to travel about as efficiently as a business traveler, despite having far less practice.

On the home front, I periodically (about once a month) go through all of my paperwork and throw out/shred anything I don't honestly need. All of my bills and paperwork from banks are sent to me paperless via email. I give away/throw out crap that I don't need or doesn't fit me anymore. Being someone who has the attention span of one of my third grade male students, I know that I like to move around and am not likely to stay in one apartment or city for more than a year or two. Staying lean and mean makes it easy for me to do that. Caveat: I'm not saying that how my parents or relatives live/pack is bad; I'm saying it doesn't work for someone with my lifestyle and desire to control my living space.

Metro Non - Platinum Behavior
Anyone who has used public transportation (or probably any kind of transportation) for any period of time can tell you that there are norms for behavior. Don't stand on the left on the escalator. Let people get off the train/bus before you try to get on. Don't play your music loud enough so other riders can listen to it. There are honestly a million of these and the more you ride public transit, the more you learn some of the more nuanced ones, like realizing that where you should stand on a train can be determined based on how long it is till your stop (stand in the middle the of the train if you've got a long way to go so that you don't get in the way of those getting on and off in the interim). But there are few norms of behavior in these situations that are easier to comprehend and follow than "Don't fight."

On Friday night, I was on the metro heading over to a friend's and saw a fifteen (not kidding) girl fight going on at L'Enfant Plaza. I heard it as I came up the escalator from downstairs. A bunch of black girls were arguing and talking very loudly. Being Friday night and a strategically located Metro station, there were a pretty good number of people on the platform, all watching from the corner of their eyes. The arguing continued to escalate until the girls began throwing punches and a scrum ensued (the fight started right as the train was pulling in). Two things were striking: 1) It didn't look as though anyone was going to look for a train attendant or police officers (who should have been there, given this particular station is known for this sort of thing) and 2) The very fact that people were around seemed to agitate the girls more. As many have said before me, no one wants to be the punk, even if it means getting your ass kicked in the meantime. It, along with the other fights I've seen on a metro (see drunk white guys at 2:30 am later that night) are some of the most depressing things I've witnessed in my adult life. Maybe it's because I'm a sissy, but it's incredibly sad to see people fight out of sheer boredom.