Morning Fog

Employers, Employees, And Privacy

In my region, some parents are seeking to force state officials to release the effectiveness-evaluation data the state has collected on school teachers.  I don't suppose that's just happening around here; I feel sure that if it's happening here it's going on elsewhere in the country, too.

The parent featured here, one Brian Davison, contends that "parents have a right to know" how their kids' teachers are "performing," and that such information would be valuable and useful (presumably so that every "caring" parent could go to bat to switch his kids out of a class taught by a low-scoring teacher).

On the other hand, arguments against releasing these evaluations center on the fact that they may provide an incomplete picture of how well a teacher performs.  Indeed, the state itself, after gathering this data, has chosen not to use it as a basis for its actual evaluation of teacher performance.   The problems are obvious.   And what does an assessment of student scores on various tests in different fields of knowledge really tell us about a teacher's performance?    

Further, and even more obvious (though apparently not to Mr. Davison and his like-minded cohort), are factors involving the clay being molded, such as intelligence, home environment, and upbringing.  A teacher may teach very well, but may have a group of kids who are less capable than others of learning. 

Beyond these pedagogic factors, though, I find myself searching for the correct answer (regarding making teacher scores public) in the privacy implications. .   An employer's evaluation of how an employee does a job is a matter between those two parties, and not a business that ought to be public knowledge. And such information should be equally as private for public sector employees as for the private sector. 

We rely upon managers and supervisors, in either case, to deal with their employees, to assess their work, and to determine when it falls below acceptable standards - and to protect the privacy of the process.  But if we should wish to make it even more difficult to recruit good teachers, by all means, let's make their personal performance evaluations public.  And to be fair, let's also require publication of everybody's work evaluations, in all walks of life.  Mr. Davison no doubt would be happy to offer up his.

Anything else is vigilantism.   Loudoun County, Virginia, where this episode is playing out, was recently pegged in one survey as the nation's wealthiest.  With wealth, however, does not necessarily go education or wisdom. 

 

No "Water's Edge" In Iran Policy

Forty-seven Republican U.S. Senators have published an open letter to the government of Iran, warning them that any agreement they reach with the Obama administration requires, and may not receive, Senate confirmation.

This is, to say the least, an "unusual" approach in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, where the tradition, if not the law, has always been for the executive branch to lead in developing and conducting policy, while the legislative branch has input to the process as it develops, and of course the Senate ultimately must ratify any formal agreements. Foreign policy was always the point where domestic political wrangling was supposed to stop, and bipartisanship took over.  The axiom is (or was): "politics stops at the water's edge."

But we don't have a shred of bipartisanship any longer.  Last week the House had to demonstrate that; now it seems the Senate must.  The GOP Senators involved would suggest that their action is justified because the President is working to reach an agreement on his own terms.  (This may be called the "he hit me first!" defense, familiar to five-year olds all over the world.)  But that is exactly what we expect Presidents to do. 

So is there a "right" and "wrong" here? 

The President, for his part, presumably can foresee that any agreement reached faces a difficult path toward ratification.   So why would he even attempt it?   Because he believes that policy with Iran - the major and most stable power in the Middle East after Israel - needs to be reset; that nothing has resulted from years of attempts to punish and isolate Iran; and as I suggested elsewhere, that ultimately Iran's nuclear ambitions won't be deterred, and may be strengthened, by our unyielding insistence on dictating terms to them.  

Whether or not one agrees with that interpretation of U.S.-Iran relations, I can't see any motivation for Obama's effort other than his view that it's in long-term U.S. interest.   In other words, he's not doing it just to irritate Mitch McConnell.   

On the other hand:  Republicans may detest the policy, but their opportunity to affect things comes with the ratification process.  They aren't telling the Iranians anything new by reminding them any agreement might face difficulty in the ratification process.  They've been very vocal all along that they would like to continue treating Iran as a pariah state.  The purely political nature of the Senators' letter seems still more clear when we consider that only the Senators of one party are involved, and of course that it was made public. 

So, politically motivated most definitely.  The Senatorial Gang of 47 hopes to make Obama's task more difficult; they may also hope that, by trying to derail the process now, they can avoid being put in the position of fighting to kill an agreement that may in fact look appealing to many voters, during the fast-approaching election campaign season.

I enjoyed Obama's remark that the Senate-minority action appears to support armed conflict.  That points out the ironic reality that our esteemed Senators are looking to get in bed with the Iranian mullahs (I mean politically of course). 

 

 

Do Terrorist Symps Have Rights?

I was just reading the tale of a teen-ager being arrested for assisting a slightly older acquaintance to travel to Syria to join ISIS.  Elsewhere in the news, we've all seen the various reports of the Department of Homeland Security intercepting people, some of them as I recall American citizens, and preventing them from travel to Syria or Iraq. 

It's true that this seems a good thing from the standpoint of our security.  But sometimes, it's fun to play devil's advocate.  So let me do so here:

First: In very short order, those who want to go to Syria to join up will become much more wily about hiding their tracks, and no longer so easy to find.  Surely, intercepting the earlier ones, and boasting about how we caught them, will accelerate that learning process.   So in the long run, might it not be better to let them go, but garner identification, including facial recognition, and maybe fingerprints, so as to find and track them when they return to the U.S. 

Second:  Some of these would-be soldiers of Islam are reportedly U.S. citizens by birth.  If so, is it really legal to stop them from traveling?  I understand it may be something we need to do for security reasons, but that hasn't always sufficed as a justification for rights violations.  Admittedly, perhaps I need to do more research in the finer points of the law that governs this.  I know there are some extraordinary measures included.

Yet if there are those in this country (I'm not one of them) who were concerned about a drone strike killing a U.S. citizen who was actively fighting with al-Qaida, aren't there probably those who would decry this interference in a citizen's right to leave the country when he wants, and travel where he wants? Golly, where IS the ACLU when you don't need them, anyway?  

   

More Bad Deals For Consumers

Our saga of customers getting shoddy treatment (see "Net Neutrality" and "Time to Stop with the SCoPs") continues today on The Tin Lizard (A Sweet Airfare Deal For the Airline, Part I). 

The I's of March - Israel and Iran

Plenty has been written about Benjamin Netanyahu's address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress yesterday, but on the serious side, I like David Ignatius's analysis - in brief it is simply that the Israeli PM raises some serious points that can lead to a better agreement with Iran, if one is to be had. 

Personally, I believe it's a fool's errand, in the long run, to think we can prevent other nations from "getting the bomb," but if they're going to get it, we should be on cordial diplomatic terms with them if possible -- and that's the crux of what Obama is doing.

Beyond the finer points of negotiating with Iran, however, there's quite a mixed brew of "angles." Some are noted below, with my take.  

• Does Netanyahu go by "Bibi" because he fears being referred to as "that nothin' yahoo"* instead?   (I suspect so.  But he may deserve the second appellation because of his unyielding hard line on such issues as settlements.)
                                     *(Note this is "yahoo" in the Swiftian sense, long "a".)
• Is his willingness, in a fit of pique, to make this end-run to supporters in Congress an insult to President Obama?  (Yes, but both of them will get over it.)
• Isn't the PM being rather high-handed in assuming he, or we, can dictate to Iran?  (Of course.  U.S. diplomacy - especially when influenced by Congressional interest in an issue -- does this all the time, usually with negative consequences.) 
• Is it true that Bibi's main motive is to help himself win the upcoming election in Israel?  (I don't doubt that a bit; for any politician, winning an election is far more important than foreign policy realities.)

Well, none of those is really too serious, but here's one that is:   This whole episode clearly demonstrates a fundamental issue with our Israel policy, namely, that we can't step back and consider our policy toward the near Middle-East region because everything tends to be skewed to an "Israel first" approach.  That flaw is like a turd in a punchbowl -- it attracts all the attention, and it isn't very healthful.  It would be preferable if our Israelocentric citizens and their supporters in Congress could identify more readily with the broader U.S. interest. 

Time To STOP With The SCOPs

Here's the second of several reports that drove home the extent to which it seems the rights and expectations of the "average Joe" are under assault on multiple fronts:  "Private Police Carry Guns and Make Arrests...." 

This report from the Washington Post reminds us of the rapid growth of privately-employed cops.  It's particularly concerning in Virginia, where the law allows anyone to apply to become a "special conservator of the peace," or "SCoP," get a permit, a badge, and a weapon, and head out on the streets to police people's behavior and even to make arrests!

Our concerns about security in American society have run rampant in recent years, with concerns about terrorism, a seeming rise in crime (notwithstanding statistics indicating the opposite in some categories), and an inchoate sense of concern for our well-being that is probably due to the fact that every day we can read a fresh report of someone setting new precedents in wacko/violent/inhuman crime.

In the "national capital area," as our metropolis is sometimes called, it's well known that we already have a surfeit of security forces.  Not only are there three different states (let's count the District as one of those!), but about three times that number of counties, and cities, each typically with its own police force, highway patrol, and sheriffs to boot.   Add in the forces that nearly every federal government agency here has (e.g. National Parks Police, National Capitol Police, .... ).  And like most parts of the country, there are a host of private security forces protecting apartment complexes, shopping centers, gated communities.   Not just banks, but even ordinary stores nowadays, may have their own security personnel.  (Maybe that's not entirely new; in the mid-1960s when I lived briefly in the Dundalk area of Baltimore, the local Burger King had an armed guard!).

But with SCoPs we may have gone too far.  The fellow featured in the Post article may be a fine exemplar of the breed - he is a former cop, he hires himself out as a police force of one to a handful of residential communities, he considers himself a role model and community leader who helps supplement the real police force.  That's all well and good.  I can understand the desire on the part of property owners to have a security presence more immediate than the harried police force; I can understand, too, that Mr. Youlen may indeed relieve some of the pressure on police to handle minor rule infractions and free them up to take care of more serious matters.

But there are far too many questions.  There is little or no supervision of the licensing of these SCoPs; can anyone be assured that every one of them handles himself as professionally as Youlen says he does?  What does the power of "arrest" mean - can one of these guys pull me over to accuse me of speeding in a street that runs by his neighborhood?  There have been complaints when some of them have gone off the rails.   Do the residents of these communities agree in the leases/condo rules to be policed by the unpolice?  

Lawmakers are now considering requiring increased training for them, but this seems hardly sufficient.   I'd suggest they should not be armed, should not have badges that say "police,"  and should not have arrest powers. 

The existence of SCoPs, whose numbers in Virginia have doubled in the past 10 years, should awaken us to the need to look far more closely at even the security forces we are more accustomed to - the guys at the bank, the mall, the federal office building - they all meet a need, and no doubt 99.5% of them perform their durites responsibly.  But do we really know what their authority over us is?

Net Neutrality - A Level Playing Field In A Tilted World?

It's been a depressing sort of day today.  The weather doesn't help - light snow turning to freezing rain and sleet which is expected to continue well into the night and tomorrow morning; gray skies; and the daytime high once again below freezing, in an area where 48 or 50 degrees would be normal this time of year.

But then, practically wherever I looked, I found yet another case in which consumers are being taken for a ride, or citizens being denied basic protections of law, by the unscrupulous and greedy.-- banks, airlines, hotels, rent-a-cops, and others.

I'll explore several of the specifics in future posts, but want to begin today on the seemingly positive side, with the issue of "net neutrality."

I'm heartened by the recent FCC decision. It seems glaringly obvious to me that the internet has indeed become a utility, albeit not a traditional but a new one.  As such, it should quite naturally be subject to a degree of government oversight and regulation. 

It's actually true that Al Gore did not invent the internet.  But neither did the big service providers who are now fighting for the right (in effect) to uncontrolled pricing.      

Those who would argue that point, pleading instead for self-regulation, or scoffing at the need for any regulation, are of course those who stand to profit big from sticking their hands in your pocket.   And though I'm heartened by the FCC's stand, I'm very disheartened by the realistic expectation that the profiteers will largely succeed in rolling back the FCC's ruling, even if they have to lie to do it.  (Current ads in favor of what we might call "net discrimination" claim the future, under neutrality, hold "billions" in new taxes.  In fact, no new taxes are proposed.) 

It's disheartening, too, to realize the extent to which we the people continue to accept getting the short end of the stick, buying into such nonsensical concepts as trickle-down economics, or the disingenuous notion that consumer businesses are motivated by providing the consumer what he/she wants. 

(Hey, aren't you loving the pachyderm insurance folks who tell us they started their business just so they could give us more service for less money?  What Samaritans they!) 

Oh, and a final blow to our self-esteem as consumers should be that "neutrality" is just a buzzword.  It sounds good, but it disguises what's at stake. The "neutrality" battle didn't originate from either side's desire to offer consumers low prices.  The cynic's view:  It's a fight between two mammoths - the companies that create "content" and those who deliver it - over who will have the right to plunder our bank accounts first.

That said, I still think the FCC is on the right track.