Green eyeshade type person needed from Cherriots 3rd subdistrict

Care to examine the money closely? Image by spike55151 via Flickr

Cherriots needs a new budget committee member for its Budget Committee.

A real problem is that they've got this thing set up so that you have to live in Cherriots subdistrict 3. Sad -- there's no good reason to run a transit district board by subdistricts, much less a budget committee. So even if you are the God of Accounting and are dying to volunteer, you must live in the 3rd subdistrict. Dumb.

But, be that as it may, if you do live in the 3rd subdistrict (see map) of Salem-Keizer Transit (Cherriots) and you've got some facility with figures and you want to don your green eyeshades and help keep the bus system's budgeting process on the straight and narrow, this is your chance. If you're interested or want to know more:

Contact Linda Galeazzi or see the website link below for a booklet about the budget process and expectations of the budget committee (pdf file):

Linda Galeazzi, Administrative Secretary
General Manager’s Office, Salem-Keizer Transit
(503)588-2424 ext 2328

A respite from politics

Image by Sbocaj via Flickr

Well, the election is all over but the crying --- whether of the "winners" or the "losers" remains to be seen. Good luck to all those who won office, and better luck next time to those who did not ... though not winning office in these times might actually have been the better luck.

Anyway, now that those are done, let's talk about something much more important and pleasant: growing food right here in Salem:

Garden Resource Connections @ Marion Polk Food Share

Thursday, May 20th, 2010 from 5-7pm – (Organized the 20th of every month)

Come get seeds, plant-starts and seed potatoes for your garden. Meet our Garden Council and other gardeners to learn what to do in your garden this month. If you have seeds or starts to share, bring those along. Trade what you can’t use for something else, and help a fellow gardener grow food.

If you use facebook, please befriend Marion-Polk Food Share and rsvp to the resource connections event here.

How to make red-light cameras work for safety instead of just revenue?

Red-light running is a serious problem. Yesterday I was at an intersection and saw a truck blow through a red light just like the very first one in this disturbing video:

And a LOVESalem friend has been dealing with some very serious and scary health issues after a couple lawyers plowed into her. And yet, society's response has been lame -- installing red-light monitoring cameras has been a bust, actually increasing accidents (as people who would otherwise have gone through suddenly slam on the brakes and get rear-ended).

There have been a number of studies showing that cities are using red-light cameras as revenue sources rather than safety measures, tweaking the yellow light to increase revenue, which normally is shared with a private contractor who maintains the camera setup. Not only is this cynical municipal response to a real threat disgusting, it also worsens the problem because the it persuades people that the traffic laws are only about cash, rather than safety -- which is the heart of the problem.

What should we do instead? Do we really want cameras at every intersection? What can we do about this threat if not? Is there any way we can make people see that red-light running is as bad as drinking and driving, which has declined a lot since MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) made it notorious.

One thing I know for sure: We need a better insurance system in two respects:

1. A better health insurance system so that anyone creamed by a red-light-running driver doesn't get creamed even worse by their health insurance company (if they are lucky enough to be insured), and

2. Universal auto liability coverage through a pay-at-the-pump insurance premium. In other words, instead of having the widely ignored coverage (which upward of 12% ignored even in the good times -- imagine how much that's gone up now), we need a single state collision insurance fund that pays out whenever a driver causes someone else to experience a loss, paid for with a small premium on gas at the pump. This way, we get 0% uninsured drivers, which eliminates a huge part of the problem, which includes our current screwy system of making the people who do follow the law and carry insurance also buy insurance against the risk of other people not doing so (uninsured motorists' coverage).

Right now, as this is written, there are scores of people driving around in Salem with no insurance, and some without a license at all. They typically have no assets. What they should have is to pay into the insurance fund whenever they gas up their car, so that if they hit somebody, that person is protected, regardless of whether they're employed or insured themselves.

Now that you've voted, one more thing

So many beautiful fruiting trees (like this plum) do well in Salem. Image via Wikipedia

You did vote, right? Shameful how few people have. These spring elections are a problem -- low turnout elections create a systematic bias in favor of incumbents, and spring elections create a systematic bias in favor of low turnout. Hmmmmm, no wonder they persist.

Anyway, now that you have presumably voted, there's another bit of community activism to take care of: Sign up with these folks, either to register a tree or vine for harvesting or to take part (and to take some of the haul!).

Neighborhood Harvest of Salem

To volunteer: contact Amy Barr at abarr@salemharvest.org or go to http://salemharvest.org

To register a tree [or grape vine, or berry bushes . . . ]: go to http://salemharvest.org or contact dyates@salemharvest.org with questions.

. . . The program isn't a bad deal for volunteers either because they get to share the bounty they pick. So far the list of volunteers includes five neighborhood leaders and 15 harvesters, but the group is looking for more. Many of the cities with similar programs end up with more fruit trees than volunteers can pick. The Portland group, for example, has 515 trees on its list.

"The number of trees that get registered is astounding," she said.

That's why leadership is critical, Clark-Burnell explained. She helped start the group with friends, and they now work under the nonprofit group Friends of Salem Saturday Market. They need more people who will help organize harvest parties, scout sites and collect the food for the pantries, she said. Harvest parties will begin in July with the start of the cherry season.

What neighborhoods get in return might be more than fruit.

Organizers said the Portland Fruit Tree Project helps build a sense of community where neighbors work together to feed the hungry in their area, care for neighborhood trees and share the harvest. . . .

And major props to the organizers, local heroes all!

WORD: The price of private health insurance

These are what patient records look like in a system where health takes a back seat to insurance company profits. Image by fsse8info via Flickr

How much would you pay to keep your private health insurance instead of a single-payer system? A thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars?

How about $350 billion? . . .

Driving this high cost is overhead - plain old ponderous paperwork generated by our private insurance system - to the tune of $350 billion a year. Make no mistake: This money does not pay for health care. It pays for administrators, accountants, billing clerks and benefits managers to transfer our money to health care providers. . . .

It all adds up - to $350 billion.

Clearly filtering our dollars through private insurance companies squanders a lot of money (one dollar out of every three to be exact) before it gets to real-world health care. These losses would evaporate if the U.S. adopted a single-payer system. Mind you, single-payer systems still have administrative costs, just $350 billion less than we have now.

Let's see how $350 billion in paperwork compares to other costs.

It is more than we spend on immigrant health care ($40 billion), defensive medicine ($60 billion), and health insurance fraud ($72 billion) -- combined. It is more than we spend on medications ($261 billion), obesity-related diseases ($144 billion), tobacco-related diseases ($168 billion) or alcohol-related diseases ($96 billion). It's more than we spent on the Afghanistan war ($179 billion). It's more than the annual interest on our national debt ($224 billion).

And it's more than the extra funding needed for comprehensive health care for all Americans ($225 billion).

Curiously, one of America's own single-payer systems, the Veterans Administration, takes care of the sickest patients with the best results at the lowest cost with the highest patient satisfaction in the nation. Can life without private health insurance paperwork be all that bad? . . .

Overdue still probably too little, too late

Image via Wikipedia

but it's a start: Cherriots is proposing a fare increase, with the basic adult fare for a one-way trip slated to go from $1.25 to $1.50 and most every other fare increasing by a corresponding amount.

The only interesting change is for the adult daypass to go from exactly the cost of two rides to the cost of two rides plus a quarter ($3.25).

The more interesting question is whether the Cherriots board has recognized that what they really need is a well-thought-out policy on fare increases so that it's not a big flap all the time -- if they thought through their policy on fares and farebox recovery and recognized the tie between fares and the minimum wage, they could spell out for everyone the conditions that would trigger a fare increase and then we wouldn't have the problem we have now, which is fares too low for too long, dragging the system down into unusability (no weekend service, little late-night service, route cuts).

Ideally transit is entirely fareless --- but until there's public support for that, riders have to pay enough to convince property owners that the system merits ample funding. Right now, Cherriots has allowed itself to get into a social service mode, thinking of its service as providing an option for people with no other options (and, therefore, high resistance to fare increases). That's nice, but it winds up hammering the riders anyway, as their bus service disappears when property owners refuse to pony up, in large part because the fares don't keep up.

So this increase is a step in the right direction if it leads to having some funding to restore some of the routes and times recently cut back -- but if it's just a random stab at an increase (rather than part of an overall fare strategy) or just-enough-increase to keep up with fuel and labor costs, then it's probably not going to cut it. We can hope that this is just the first increase of several that will be needed to get more funding from voters to pay for getting back to a functional, 7-day bus system, a critical service for a sustainable city.

What you missed by not being a "Friend of Salem Saturday Market"

. . . some awesome homemade goatmilk gelato, some even more wonderful goat cheese, and a really pleasant, fun, and educational visit to a small family farm in a beautiful, bucolic setting in Dallas, Ore.

Next up (but only for members of Friends of Salem Saturday Market): buffaloes!

For everyone, here's some events coming:

There will be a class every Saturday. Check back for updated schedules!

June 5 - Bike Valet Service opens for the season Free!

June 12 - Knit in Public Day Free!

August 7 - Chefs @ The Market: David Rosales of La Capitale Free!

September 25 - Book Exchange Free!

About that "the Earth is cooling" jive you keep hearing

The "temperature anomaly" is the amount by which the 12-month running average temperature exceeds the average of temperatures from 1951-1980 -- so we're approaching 70/100ths, or 0.7C, just since 1980 alone . . . and to my eye, that curve isn't getting shallower, and it's sure as hell not declining.

"What's wrong with the system, and why can't it be fixed?"

Image via Wikipedia

This is part of the hidden costs of the factory/competition model that forces little boys into a model more suited to little girls, groups all kids by age into cohorts that have nothing to do with their actual developmental progress, and damages all children.

We force very young children into academics too early and create a sense of failure in many of them, permanently crippling them for life. On top of that, we waste years infantalizing teens, keeping them in a passive receptor mode when they could be bursting with life and creativity and guiding their own education. We need an overhaul desperately.

Elementary schools need to become much more highly staffed and much less regimented; there have to be enough adults in close contact with every kid that every kid can be helped to win at the critical tasks on a schedule that works for them, not for their mythical cohort. No homework, no grades, just building learning capacity and proficiency. More art, more music, more play, and much more foreign language instruction. Introduction of reading based on each child's readiness. No separate math or science classes -- math and language recognized as different faces of the same task (describing the world and sharing ideas), and woven together -- quantitative descriptions of things woven together with non-quantitative ones from the very start, with increasingly complex quant tools provided just as increasingly sophisticated words are provided naturally, as needed.

The goal should be to "graduate" kids from elementary school on their own developmental timeline -- with this graduation occurring when the child has the capacity to begin directing his/her own learning and his/her parent(s) are ready to sit down with the school and develop a contract for their future learning and goals: what skills will they acquire, what vocations will they be equipped to pursue, and how will they gain those abilities.

Middle school is then one or two-year transition to this student/family led model of schooling; high school is the complete expression, with much higher student-teacher ratios (to prevent lectures and other forms of educational malpractice from occurring).

Don't ALL kids deserve an individual education plan?

Why do we only require schools to consider the individual needs of the "learning disabled?" And aren't many "learning disabilities" simply the result our prior failure to treat children as individuals in the first place?

Or, I suppose we can just keep trying to hammer kids through the standard slots we've defined, like square pegs and round holes, all for the convenience and benefit of the adults and the bus drivers -- and pay the costs such as these below:

. . . Don Austin, sitting in a Hennepin County jail cell, was 15 when he decided he wanted to learn to read — really, really wanted to learn.

In April 2008, he stole a car and caused an accident that killed a woman. He spent the next 20 months locked up in Hennepin jails while the court system worked out whether he would be tried as an adult.

While he waited to go to trial, Austin was supposed to have the same six-hour school day as any other Minnesota child, including two hours of special education. Instead, for much of that time, he got just an hour a day.

In jail, literally captive, Austin fell in love with reading. For the first time in his life, he asked if he could spend more time in class. Minneapolis Public Schools' answer: No.

"He was asking his teacher to let him go to school," said Amy Goetz, founder of the School Law Center in St. Paul and Austin's attorney. "It's incomprehensible that he would be asking for education and not getting it."

. . . Minnesota spends 3.7 times as much per prisoner as it does per public school student. According to census data, the state has the 20th-highest juvenile incarceration rate in the nation, with 259 of every 100,000 children imprisoned.

The National Council on Disability, a federal agency, estimates that 30 percent of children in the juvenile justice system have learning disabilities. Other studies put the figure as high as 70 percent. Poor, minority children are particularly at risk.

About 15 percent of the general population has some kind of neurological disorder that makes reading, writing, processing instructions and other tasks difficult without specialized support. Someone with dyslexia, for instance, can't understand written words the way other students do.

Children with such learning disorders usually are as smart as their peers. Some have another disability, such as attention deficit disorder, autism or behavioral disorders.

More than half of state's jailed juveniles are learning disabled
In Minnesota, more than half of incarcerated juveniles have some kind of learning disability, according to the PACER Center, and a third of incarcerated children have a persistent mental health issue, as opposed to 14 percent of all kids.

Kids in the juvenile justice system are twice as likely to have been abused, and 75 percent qualified for free- or reduced-price lunch, vs. 39 percent of students statewide.

"They often feel frustration and isolation in school," explained Lili Garfinkel, coordinator of PACER's Juvenile Justice Project. "They often have few friends; many are bullied; and they may 'act up' to cover the fact they are unable to participate as equals in their classroom.

"They may not have the language or social skills to navigate appropriate interactions in school," Garfinkel noted. "The behaviors may be serious enough to cause them to be suspended truant, or, in more serious cases, expelled. By not attending school, however, they become further behind and overwhelmed."

Girls with unaddressed learning disabilities often act out by withdrawing, while boys can become defiant or aggressive, experts say. Making things worse, some learning disabilities are accompanied by communication problems and poor comprehension.

"Such characteristics cause children with disabilities to appear 'uncooperative,' 'disrespectful,' 'angry,' and 'irritable,' and act to increase the likelihood that these youths will have negative encounters with the juvenile justice system," a 1995 study found.

The cycle is particularly pernicious for African-American boys, who frequently end up in alternative schools; few of them graduate.

"Almost always when you look at their records, you see kids who were turning over tables in the fourth grade when it was time to read," said Goetz. "As they feel their education program is a failure, they act out. They spill out into the community. Kids like Don feel helpless and hopeless, and there are all those temptations out there."

Once a learning disability has been diagnosed, a student often ends up with a formal plan for services known as an Individualized Education Program, or IEP. School administrators are legally obligated to follow a student's IEP unless they go through a complicated process involving the student's parents to change it. . . .

And a little child shall lead them

Image by v i p e z via Flickr

This girl's got more sense than almost every other person in this story. Getting a valuable, basic skill to do work that can't be done via datalink, while avoiding crippling debt? Smart, very smart.

College is way oversold in this country and, as a result, has come to mean less and less. Which causes the next round of inflation, pretending that teachers all need masters degrees, etc.

The best rule for students coming of age from now on is simple: Know how to grow your own food or be necessary/useful/helpful to those who do. The more abstractions fill your education, the more you are setting yourself up to compete with every single smart person on the planet for work. Be warned.

Helping a client the other day, I saw the seamy side of student loans. Client took a $2500 student loan in 1980; with interest ($5500) and late-charges and fees ($2000), client is now looking at $10 grand of completely unshakable debt, debt that survives bankruptcy, disaster, recession, and probably nuclear war.