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White Teachers Think Pretty Poorly of Their Black Students

by NatalieHilton6 Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bob Somerby draws my attention to a new study about the effect of race on teacher evaluations of students. The authors took advantage of a large dataset that included evaluations of students from two teachers each. They then compared the teacher evaluations of each student based on differences in the teachers’ races.

The chart on the right tells the story. White students didn’t suffer from having a teacher of another race. Expectations of dropping out were the same and expectations of getting a college degree were actually higher. Hispanic students were modestly affected. Teachers of other races thought Hispanic students had a slightly higher chance of dropping out and the same chance of completing college.

But black students were enormously affected. Compared to black teachers, teachers of other races thought their black students had a far higher chance of dropping out and a far lower chance of completing college. Since the baseline expectation of dropping out was 31 percent for black students, a change of 12 percentage points represents a whopping 39 percent increase. Likewise, the baseline expectation of a college degree was 37 percent for black students, so a change of 9 percentage points represents 24 percent decrease.

The authors conclude with this:

The general finding of systematic biases in teachers’ expectations for student attainment indicates that the topic of teacher expectations is ripe for future research. Particularly policy relevant areas for future inquiry include how teachers form expectations, what types of interventions can eliminate biases from teacher expectations, and how teacher expectations affect the long-run student outcomes of ultimate import. To the extent that teacher expectations affect student outcomes, the results presented in the current study provide additional support for the hiring of a more diverse and representative teaching force, as nonwhite teachers are underrepresented in U.S. public schools.

Let’s ask all our presidential candidate what, if anything, they think we should do about this.

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White Teachers Think Pretty Poorly of Their Black Students

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Donald Trump Apparently Wants a Cold War With Mexico

by FaustoMacansh Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has finally explained how he would force Mexico to pay for a border wall, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Basically, the idea is to threaten Mexico with financial ruin unless they pay up:

Trump would also threaten to raise tariffs, cancel visas, and raise visa fees. But if Mexico writes us a big check, all the threats go away and we can be friends again.

Trump didn’t threaten to send troops over the border, but otherwise this is a very Roman Empire approach to foreign affairs. In that sense, it’s reminiscent of his threat to pull out troops from other countries unless they pony up big bags of tribute to pay for protection. Trump really does believe that the biggest, richest, most militarily dominant country in the history of the world is just a poor little waif being taken advantage of by everyone else.

Needless to say, anyone with a handful of working brain cells knows that Mexico would never pay this extortion money. Their voters wouldn’t put up with it any more than ours would. If Trump actually went through with this—which is questionable since it would end up in court on day 2—he’d create a permanent enemy on our Southern border. Just what we need. And Mexico would probably retaliate by encouraging even greater illegal immigration into the US.

What a fuckwit. I really don’t know what we did to deserve this.

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Donald Trump Apparently Wants a Cold War With Mexico

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Helping the Poor Is the Right Thing to Do, But Maybe Not Much of a Political Winner

by DinaRamsey Posted on April 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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I don’t want to make too big a deal out of one comment from one guy, but here’s the response of a minimum-wage worker who got a big increase when Emeryville raised its minimum wage to $14 per hour:

Security guard Kenneth Lofton was among the workers who benefited last year when this East Bay city hiked its hourly minimum wage to nearly $15 for employees at large companies. The jump was almost 70% more than what he used to make in nearby Oakland when he was paid $10 an hour.

….”It’s somewhat better, but not much,” Lofton said Tuesday morning while eating breakfast and manning the security gate at an Emeryville parking lot. “The high cost of living here takes a big bite out of whatever monetary increase you get, so it’s like not getting an increase at all.”

But, he said, “at least they’re trying.”

This is crazy. If Lofton works full time, he’s seeing an increase of $160 per week. Call it $130 or so after taxes. That’s real money. But “it’s like not getting an increase at all.”

Raising the minimum wage—whether to $12, $14, or $15—is the right thing to do. But as a purely political matter, comments like Lofton’s make you wonder if this kind of thing provides any benefits for Democrats. It earns them plenty of annoyance from employers, along with at least some annoyance from consumers who have to pay higher prices, but it’s not clear if this is offset much by increased loyalty from the folks who are helped. Is Lofton more likely to show up at the polls in November because he got a raise? Hard to say.

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Helping the Poor Is the Right Thing to Do, But Maybe Not Much of a Political Winner

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Tech-Shuttle Giant Given the Boot in San Francisco

by RodgerZTDg Posted on April 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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Citing a history of disregard for traffic laws and acrimonious labor disputes, San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency has declined to grant tech shuttle operator Bauer’s IT a permit to use public bus stops under the city’s controversial Commuter Shuttle Program. Bauer’s IT is one of San Francisco’s largest tech bus operators, accounting for 10 percent of the city’s commuter shuttle pickups. Bauer’s IT clients include major Bay Area tech companies such as Twitter, Yelp, Salesforce, and Cisco.

According to a “notice of permit denial” sent from the SFMTA to Bauer’s yesterday, the company repeatedly broke the law by sending large buses down “weight-restricted streets” and stopping at locations not designated for private buses. It also failed to inform the city of ongoing labor disputes with the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters, whose complaints of illegal union busting practices at the company are being heard by the National Labor Relations Board. The Commuter Shuttle Program requires participating companies to maintain “labor harmony.”

In 2013, tech shuttles, a.k.a. “Google buses,” became potent symbols of inequality and gentrification in the Bay Area after it emerged that the posh private vehicles were illegally using public bus stops to pick up workers. The following year, the city launched a pilot program that allowed the companies to use the stops legally for a nominal fee. That program becomes permanent next month, but requires participating companies to reapply for permits. Bauer’s IT could not be reached for comment.

“The SFMTA is enforcing what the City and County of San Francisco is famous for: Recognizing employees’ right to be represented and right to and fair wages and benefits,” said Rome Aloise, the director of Teamsters Joint Council 7, which represents drivers in Northern California. “Bauer’s seems to be just disregarding all of that.”

Does this mean the Twitterati will be tweeting from BART like the rest of us? Not exactly. Bauer’s IT has 15 days to file an appeal, and can then continue to use its stops until the city makes a final decision.

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Tech-Shuttle Giant Given the Boot in San Francisco

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Women’s Soccer Is Raking in Cash. Why Do US Players Get Embarrassingly Low Pay?

by Brendaea Posted on March 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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The latest labor dispute between the World Cup-winning US women’s national soccer team and the US Soccer Federation has illuminated an issue for workers throughout the country: the gender pay gap. On Thursday, five high-profile players filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accusing the soccer federation of gender-based wage discrimination.

“This is the strongest case of discrimination against women athletes in violation of law that I have ever seen,” Jeffrey Kessler, the players’ lawyer, told the New York Times.

Numbers cited in the EEOC filing show just how vast the divide is. Despite projections that the women’s team will bring in $5 million in profit in the coming fiscal year and nearly $18 million in revenue, the players allege that they are paid four times less than their male counterparts. If the women win 20 exhibition matches, the minimum number the team is expected to play annually, they would earn $99,000 each. Men’s team members would earn $352,500 for doing the same—and would earn $100,000 even if they lost all 20.

US Soccer told the Times that it hadn’t seen the complaint and was “disappointed” by the players’ actions.

“It’s just completely unbalanced,” goalkeeper Hope Solo, who has signed on to the action, told Mother Jones in December. “The argument is, well, women should not get paid as much as men, because they don’t bring in as much revenue. We hear it all the time. Our argument back is that we have the best television ratings between the men’s team and the women’s team, and had we gotten more marketing dollars, we would have more ticket revenue.”

Here’s a look at the gender pay gap between the men’s and women’s national teams, according to the players’ complaint.

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Women’s Soccer Is Raking in Cash. Why Do US Players Get Embarrassingly Low Pay?

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Reality Is Bearing Down on Paul Ryan

by DeannaColleano Posted on March 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Lisa Mascaro reports that the honeymoon may be over for Paul Ryan. He only lasted five months:

As Congress is careening toward another budget crisis and the Republican Party is ripping itself apart over Donald Trump’s rise, the man best known as the architect of the GOP’s austere spending blueprint is likely to miss an April 15 deadline to approve a new funding plan for 2017.

He’s been unable to overcome the same resistance from the conservative House Freedom Caucus that doomed his predecessor, and is so far similarly unwilling to use the power of the speaker’s office to force stragglers to fall into line.

….To some, Ryan’s repeated calls for Republicans to “raise our gaze” and his frequent attempts to position himself as the GOP’s deep thinker are starting to give off an air of ivory tower insignificance. Conservatives wonder if he’s still a “young gun” trying to shake up the party. At a Trump rally in Ryan’s Wisconsin hometown of Janesville last week, the crowd booed the mention of his name.

….In many ways, the speaker’s problems are of his own making, the result of a leadership strategy he helped forge to recruit the most conservative candidates to run for office and then, after Republicans won the House majority in the 2010 midterm election, reject almost all of Obama’s initiatives.

Well, it’s still early days. Maybe Ryan is just working slowly and steadily to gain some kind of consensus. More likely, though, the tea partiers aren’t any more willing to compromise under Ryan than they were under Boehner—and that leaves Ryan high and dry. If he can’t convince them to be flexible even during an election year, he obviously doesn’t have much conservative credibility left. Hard to believe.

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Reality Is Bearing Down on Paul Ryan

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Bernie Sanders Has an Interesting Theory About Why the Republican Party Exists

by FrederickBaudin Posted on March 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Rachel Maddow posed an interesting question to Sen. Bernie Sanders during their interview on Wednesday: Would he like to see the Republican Party just disappear? Sanders’ answer was also an interesting one. He didn’t take the bait; instead, he offered an alternative theory—the GOP would disappear if corporate media simply told the truth about the party’s agenda.

Sanders didn’t mean that as hyperbole. By his estimate, the Republican Party would drop to single-digit support if it weren’t for negligence by the press:

I think if we had a media in this country that was really prepared to look at what the Republicans actually stood for rather than quoting every absurd remark of Donald Trump, talking about Republican Party, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the top two tenths of 1 percent, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, a party which with few exceptions doesn’t even acknowledge the reality of climate change, let alone do anything about it, a party which is not prepared to stand with women in the fight for pay equity, a party that is not prepared to do anything about a broken criminal justice system or a corrupt campaign finance system, I think, to be honest with you—and I just don’t, you know, say this rhetorically, this is a fringe party. It is a fringe party. Maybe they get 5, 10 percent of the vote.

“The Republican Party today now is a joke,” he continued, “maintained by a media which really does not force them to discuss their issues.”

Sanders was returning to one of his driving issues over the years—a fervent belief that corporate-owned media was steering democracy off a cliff. In 1979, he wrote an essay arguing that TV networks were “using the well-tested Hitlerian principle that people should be treated as morons and bombarded over and over again with the same simple phrases and ideas” to prevent them from thinking critically about the world around them. He hit those same themes (albeit more diplomatically) in his book, Outsider in the House, arguing that TV news coverage was dumbing down America by inundating viewers with superficial coverage of O.J. Simpson instead of “corporate disinvestment in the United States.” Not surprisingly, when Maddow asked Sanders in an interview last fall what his dream job might be, he quickly blurted out, “president of CNN.”

A corporate media that obsesses over the issues Sanders obsesses over would certainly have some impact on the political landscape. But Sanders’ dismissal of the Republican base seems to miss a far more obvious takeaway. People vote for Republicans not because they’ve been brainwashed, but because they actually like what Republicans like Trump are proposing.

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Bernie Sanders Has an Interesting Theory About Why the Republican Party Exists

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Yet More Obama Tyranny Turns Out to Be Pretty Non-Tyrannical

by JarredMessina Posted on March 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Stanley Kurtz is yet again in a lather about a HUD program called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, the centerpiece of President Obama’s plan to fight housing discrimination:

Federal Tyranny Gags GOP in Hillary’s Backyard

The Obama administration’s AFFH policy has morphed from “mere” massive regulatory overreach into a bald attempt to quash the freedom of speech of its political opponents. The new federal effort to muzzle Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino’s attacks on the Obama administration’s housing policy is very arguably designed to silence public opposition to AFFH, and to remove a potential political time-bomb from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton’s hometown of Chappaqua, in Westchester County, New York is ground zero in the national controversy over AFFH….And now it just so happens that the “Federal Monitor” appointed to oversee the settlement of a court case compelling Westchester to “affirmatively further fair housing” has asked a court to muzzle Astorino.

But here’s a funny thing: Westchester’s problems were caused by a private lawsuit filed in 2006, which it lost in February 2009. It hardly seems likely that Obama had much to do with that. And it seems doubly unlikely that AFFH, which was announced a mere nine months ago, could possibly be “ground zero” for a fight that’s been ongoing for over a decade.

Still, I suppose those are nits. Regardless of when it all started, it’s certainly outrageous for the feds to try to gag an opponent of their policies. This is the kind of thing that—

What’s that? Maybe I should take a look at the federal monitor’s actual court filing? How tiresome. But we’re professionals around here. Let’s see now…ah, here it is on page 55: “Recommended Remedies.” This is what the monitor wants:

a Court declaration reemphasizing the essential terms of the Settlement and issuing findings making clear that none of the terms have been changed and the County’s statements analyzed in Section II of this report are false;
distribution by the County, voluntarily or by order, of the declaration and findings described above to the leadership of all of the eligible communities;
posting the declaration and findings described above prominently on the County website and the removal of press releases inconsistent with the declaration and findings;
unsealing the videotapes of the depositions of, at the least, the County Executive, the Commissioner of Planning, and the Director of Communications, inasmuch as each made or reviewed unsupported public statements that were inconsistent with both the terms of the Settlement and their own sworn testimony; and
hiring, within 30 days of the issuance of this report, a public communications consultant that will craft a message and implement a strategy sufficiently robust to provide information broadly to the public that describes the benefits of integration, as required by Paragraph 33(c)….

Basically, Westchester is under court order to do certain things. They haven’t done them. In fact, county leaders have been loudly and habitually lying about both the consent decree and HUD’s affordable housing requirements for years. So now the monitor wants (a) the actual terms of the settlement to be widely distributed, (b) depositions to be unsealed so everyone can see what county leaders have been saying under oath, and (c) a third-party consultant to craft the court-ordered PR plan, since the county plainly has no intention of obeying the consent decree on its own.

But nobody is being muzzled. As near as I can tell, Astorino can continue saying anything he wants. However, the county, in its official capacity as an arm of the government, is required to carry out the consent decree. In the face of repeated intransigence, the federal monitor is asking the court to force it to do just that.

I like reading The Corner. It’s a good place to get a lot of different conservative opinions on the headlines of the day. But there are a few bylines I routinely skip because the authors are basically unhinged. Kurtz is one of them. Among other things, he was part of the crowd that went bananas about Bill Ayers during the 2008 campaign, and he’s been flogging Obama’s “war on the suburbs” for years. Today’s post is just the latest installment.

Anyway: No muzzling. No gagging. No tyranny. Just a county that refuses to obey a court order and a federal monitor who wants a judge to push harder on them. It’s hard to think of anything more routine.

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Yet More Obama Tyranny Turns Out to Be Pretty Non-Tyrannical

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Conservatives Just Lost a Big Weapon Against the Abortion Pill

by JimmyVRJYun Posted on March 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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The US Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday morning that it had approved updated information for physicians about mifepristone, the drug known as the “abortion pill.” The move is a notable one in debates surrounding reproductive health: Research has consistently shown that the previous FDA regulations for the drug were outdated and ineffective, and anti-abortion lawmakers have long been using that to their advantage by requiring doctors to adhere to the original FDA labeling.

The new labels will list the recommended dosage to be taken as 200 milligrams; the previous dosage was 600. Medical groups such as the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have been recommending that mifepristone be taken at lower dosage for years, because the lower dosage is more effective when used with a higher dosage of a second medication, misoprostol, which causes the uterus to contract. The lower dosage of mifepristone is less expensive for patients, and comes with fewer side effects. Patients can also take the pill up to 70 days after their last period, as opposed to the original 49 days.

As previously reported in Mother Jones, a 1998 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the original FDA regimen failed by the ninth week of pregnancy for one in four women (out of a sample size of 2,100). The abortions were either incomplete or the women were still pregnant. Although the outdated FDA labeling was never unsafe per se, 99 percent of women in the study experienced some negative side effect: nausea, cramps, faintness, vomiting, back pain, and fever.

The label update is a long time coming—the drug was first approved in 2000, and its labeling came from restrictions that were set in France in the 1980s. Anti-abortion groups and conservative lawmakers have used the outdated FDA regimen to restrict access to what abortion providers hail as a safe and simple method for women throughout the country. Arizona, Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas all have laws requiring providers to adhere to the FDA labeling established when the pill first went on the market. Doctors in other states commonly practice “evidence-based” or “off-label” prescribing, meaning they use methods developed by physicians over time after a drug has been put on the market.

According to Molly Redden at The Guardian, the changes could also come into play in state law.

“But in addition to providing clearer guidance to doctors, the change could have the effect of undermining several state laws, supported by abortion foes, that force clinicians to administer mifepristone according to the old regimen that the FDA approved in 2000. The old protocols called for patients to make up to three separate trips to a clinic—one for the dose of mifepristone, one for the dose of misoprostol, and one for a follow-up—rather than a minimum of one, for the mifepristone, in addition to specifying the different levels of medication.”

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement in support of the new labeling, but warned that “there is still work to be done in updating the mifepristone label to reflect the current evidence.”

“For example, while the agency notes rare cases of fatal infections, it is important to note that no specific connection exists between medication abortion and these infections, which can also occur with other obstetric and gynecologic processes and procedures,” the statement reads. “The mortality rate associated with medication abortion continues to be lower than the mortality rate associated with childbirth.”

NARAL also issued a statement, saying the changes “will go a long way towards allowing women to make their own decisions about
their health care, and their futures.”

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Conservatives Just Lost a Big Weapon Against the Abortion Pill

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Watch Donald Trump Defend His Campaign Manager Over Battery Charges

by BettyTuttle Posted on March 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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The first question Donald Trump was asked during CNN’s town hall in Wisconsin on Tuesday was whether he would fire his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with misdemeanor battery on Tuesday for allegedly manhandling a reporter at an event earlier this month. Trump, noting that he is “a loyal person” who defends people who are “unjustly accused,” said Lewandowski would continue to serve on his campaign team.

Watch the whole exchangebelow.

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Watch Donald Trump Defend His Campaign Manager Over Battery Charges

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