School choice, part two

As a resident of Henry County, I’m supposed to be outraged and angry at this woman. After all, she had the audacity to fake residency in order to get her teenage son into our county’s schools. So she stole my tax dollars, I guess. 

But when you consider she’s taking her kids out of Clayton County’s schools, maybe she deserves a medal. 

You remember Clayton County, right? With a school board that made the Keystone Kops look effective, it was the first district nationwide to lose its accreditation since 1969. Which means, besides being a laughingstock, the district’s students could lose out on scholarship opportunities, among other things. 

Wait, it gets even better. 

The AJC recently reported that Clayton county schools may have been inflating grades at an astonishing rate. More than 73% of Clayton’s students failed the state’s End of Course Test (EOCT) in Biology, 76% in Geometry. That’s pretty pathetic. Whats worse? more than 30% of students who got A’s in those classes failed the EOCT.

So what’s a caring parent to do? Well, if you’re AJC education columnist Maureen Downey (whom I could devote an entire blog to), you just stick it out with your school. Because, after all, some public schools are good, and some private schools are bad. So even though your school system happens to be a pathetic joke, you should still support it, since, after all, the Brookwoods and Lassiters of the state are good. 

So the woman I mentioned above was convicted. She now has a felony on her record, 5 years probation, 100 hours of community service to work and more than $2000 in fines to pay. 

All for the dastardly crime of caring about her child’s education. 

Perhaps the ones on trial should be those who forced her hand in the first place by mismanaging a school district and allowing bad teachers to inflate grades at a ridiculous rate.

Joining the ranks of the employed

I’m happy to report that I am now employed. Sure, it’s not the full time gig I’ve wanted, but in this market, I am very happy to get into a great station with a great group of people. 

As anyone who is looking for a job knows, it’s tough out there. Exponentially so when you’re in my business (broadcasting/media). Since leaving the Atlanta metro area is out of the question for me (due to personal/family considerations), it made my job search even harder. 

Despite many media outlets (numerous local stations as well as several national ones including Turner), everyone was either in a hiring freeze or cutting staff. And whenever people get laid off, it increases the talent pool. 

Atlanta is a funny media market. Unlike LA or New York, people tend to stay here. It seems like many people have families in the area, or are raising families themselves. It’s a place where people are unwilling to leave.

I was lucky. But it was also a learning experience for me.

I now know and believe in the power of networking. As the old axiom goes, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And the more people you know, the more likely you’ll find an opening. People tend to hire the familiar, and if you come recommended by a mutual friend, you’ll stand out from the scads of resumes filed in HR.

So if you’re looking for a job, get out there. Meet people. Attend networking meetings. Go on informational interviews. And when you’re hired, pay it forward — help out others.

I’m still not where I want to be professionally. But I do think this new position and company will give me a chance to grow, try new things and stand out. I’m really excited, and really thankful.

A-Roid?

Color me shocked. 

Arguably one of the best players in major league baseball, Alex Rodriguez, apparently tested positive for steroids in 2003. 

Excuse me whilst I greet this news with a big fat yawn. 

In fact, the only thing that does surprise me is that more players didn’t test positive prior to 2005 (when MLB instituted more stringent testing and penalties for drug use). 

Baseball, like any other professional sport, pays for results. If you can’t produce, you’re not going to get paid millions of dollars. And not to worry, they’ve got dozens of kids younger (and cheaper) than you that are itching for a chance to take your place. 

So if there’s a drug that can help you recover faster from injury or improve your on-field performance, wouldn’t you consider taking it? How about if your boss tells you it’s prohibited…..but they don’t test for it and if you get caught, you’re not really going to get punished. 

For those still on your high horse, consider the following 3 scenarios: 

1. You’re 25 years old. Solid player for the AA or AAA affiliate club. You may even have had a September call-up or two. Problem is, you can’t seem to get your numbers up. Your hitting coach tells you to bulk up if you want a chance at the bigs. Scouts say you have “warning track” power. The team drafted some 18 year old phenom at your position that everyone says is a lock to make the bigs in a couple years. At 25, you know you’re starting to hit your prime as a player. But no matter how many supplements you take or how many hours you spend in the gym, you just can’t hit the ball any farther. You know that you’ve got a year or two max before you’re a never-will-be, some guy destined to jump from minor league club to minor league club, making $30,000 a year and never get a chance at the millions you could earn in the show. If only you could add 20 more feet to your home run swing……

How does that bottle of Winstrol look now? 

2. You’re a player in the bigs. Admittedly, you’re not the best on your team, but it’s been a nice career so far. You signed a nice contract for $5 million that’s coming up at the end of the season. You’re in your early 30s, and you know you’ve got one more big contract before you’re on the downside of your career. Problem is, you’re not 22 anymore. Over 162 games, you feel it more and more. That knee you tweaked in game 20 still hurts. Your shoulder’s got something wrong with it. And it’s affecting you. You’ve lost a couple miles on your fastball and your curve doesn’t break like it did in the spring. To make matters worse, that kid they just called up has been lights-out in the pen. Already, the sportswriters and radio guys have been asking when the manager will put him in the rotation and take you out. If you only could get rid of those nagging injuries, you could finish the season on a solid note and still attract one good, last contract. 

Still want to rule out Deca on principle? 

3. You’re a superstar. Widely considered one of the best players of your generation. Perennial all-star. Multi-million dollar contract, endorsements out the wazoo. Heck, you’ve got movie stars and pop singers calling you up for dates. But you could be better. You could be known as one of the all-time greats. A guy who gets his number retired. A guy who, when dads bring their sons to Cooperstown, gets pointed out while dads say “let me tell you about the day he…..” You know your fellow superstars are taking something. You hear the jokes in the locker rooms. You see the guys swap chemists names at the All-Star game. Because of their use, maybe they’re creeping up on you. You don’t always win the home run title anymore. The MVP went to some dude from Houston who pops steroids like candy. Your legacy is at stake. What do you do? 

Ok, maybe you can’t sympathize with #3. Don’t blame you. 

Ultimately, the blame is with the athlete. It’s his choice whether to take performance enhancers or not.

But let’s not forget who created the atmosphere that tactitly gave approval for steroid use. When we point fingers at A-Rod, Raffy Palmerio or Mark McGwire, let’s not forget Bud Selig or the general managers who turned a blind eye and cashed in when their players started cranking out homers at an unreal pace. Let’s not forget the managers who allowed shady clubhouse guys unfettered access to their team. Let’s not forget the media who bought into the “Bash Brothers” and drooled over Sammy Sosa’s and McGwire’s home run battle. And let’s not forget us, the baseball fans, who didn’t wonder how Bret Boone or Brady Anderson all of a sudden turned into studs, just as long as they kept our teams in the playoffs.

And let’s not think that these testing practices have eliminated performance enhancements. Sure, they’re going to catch all the guys who are too desperate or stupid and keep on using the old formulas. But the cheaters always find ways around the tests. Baseball Prospectus’ Will Carroll has a great article about a conversation with one of those dopers. A must read.

An open letter to Maureen Downey

Dear Ms. Downey: 

You were so close. Really, you were. In your most recent post on the AJC opinion blog, you recounted a frustrating event where a public school administrator refused to allow your children into a class because, basically, he/she could. 

That event was, in educator parlance, a “teachable moment.” It was a brush with a system that treats our children like numbers, caring more about moving them through and out of the system than actually what’s in their best interest. 

Schools can’t afford to brush off parents as irrelevant, irritating and uninformed. They can’t ask parents to hold bake sales, chaperone class trips and organize field days and then deny them a meaningful voice in their children’s education.

I wouldn’t pull my kids out of public school because they didn’t get the teacher I wanted — I’m aware of the many pressures on principals, and can recall only one other time in 16 years that I even met with a principal about one of my children. But I left the principal’s office that day feeling that she valued absolute control more than parental goodwill, and that she preferred parents be seen and not heard. For the rest of her tenure, I kept my distance and my tongue.

Like I said, so close. 

I’m going to assume that if you get poor service at a restaurant, you’re not going to return. After all, there are plenty of restaurants out there that would be more than happy to take your money. And I doubt you’d make excuses for your rude waiter while you tip him 20% (“Oh, he’s under a lot of stress, there’s a lot of people here tonight.” “I’m sure it’s the kitchen’s fault the food was cold.”). 

The good news is that most waiters and restaurants provide a decent, if not pleasant, experience. After all, if you’re not happy, they’re not getting paid. 

So why would you make excuses for a rude principal and continue to support the system that perpetuates that type of attitude? Again, I doubt you value your dinner more than you value your kids. But the current education system we have today only serves to incentivize such poor behavior. That principal’s got a job for the rest of his/her life (with a pretty decent paycheck and awesome benefits) if he/she wants it. The “dearly loved” teacher you wanted to teach your kids gets paid the same if he/she just goes through the motions. 

Oh, I know. I know.  ”Private doesn’t equal better.” Everyone with half a brain understands that. But we’re not talking about private vs. public. We’re talking about competition — where bad schools go out of business and good ones can’t stop expanding. Where schools can’t rest on their laurels or assume students will keep coming back — who knows what that new school down the street offers?

I don’t know if vouchers are the answer. Maybe some combination of vouchers and tax credits would work. After all, public schools still have to provide education for special needs and other students that private schools don’t have to accept.  

But I do know that competition and choice help the consumer. Had you a choice of two or three other schools in the area that you could take your tax dollars to, rest assured that school administrator would have been a lot more ameniable to your request. And maybe that beloved teacher would have made more than the other teachers in the building.

Until you realize this and try and figure out a better solution than “I really wish….” you’re only perpetuating the system that put your kids in a different class than you wanted for no reason. 

But you’re lucky if that’s your biggest concern. After all, it’s not like your kids have to walk through metal detectors and sit in classes that are nothing more than glorified babysitting every day. Pity the parents who are forced to send their kids to terrible, failing schools only because of where they live.

Fairness Doctrine redux

Admittedly, I don’t remember much about news/talk radio prior to the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. I was much more interested in listening to Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli or whatever kind of pop/rock dreck that we teenagers listened to in the late 80s/early 90s. 

But that’s the point. AM radio was basically non-existent. Opinion-based talk radio was impossible. After all, if you bring up a controversial subject, the GM was obliged to bring in whatever yahoo objected for “equal time.” Talk about some boring radio. And who would want to deal with random people asking for airtime, interrupting your programming and putting people to sleep? Much easier to put on some big band or those awesome classified radio shows you can still hear in small markets. 

The elimination of the fairness doctrine caused an explosion on AM radio. Rush Limbaugh is the king of this format, but there are hundreds more broadcasting locally and in syndication. Listeners flocked to the format, increasing advertising dollars, allowing those stations to hire more people in production, sales and journalism. For the purposes of transparency, I am one of those.

The vast, vast majority of these on-air hosts are conservative. PhD candidates could probably make several studies why. But for some reason, despite valiant attempts, liberal talk shows for the most part have failed miserably. 

So, as many good liberals will do, instead of trying harder, they want to simply shut talk radio down. 

According to The Politico, on Bill Press’ talk show (one of the liberals who appear to be successful), Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow (D, natch) decried the one-sided nature of talk radio and intimated that hearings are in the works to attempt to get “some accountability and standards put in place” on the AM dial. 

It’s been a while since I read “1984″ or “Animal Farm,” but that sounds a tad Orwellian to me. 

When the Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press, broadcasting wasn’t even a thought. I’m no mindreader, but if there was a “Thomas Paine Show” back then, I’m guessing that the First Amendment would have extended to broadcast. But that didn’t happen, so the Communications Act of 1934 created the Federal Communications Commission to oversee broadcasting. While it serves an important purpose by ensuring broadcasters don’t overlap signals, it’s gone after free speech, mainly against so-called “shock jocks” for public indecency. Since broadcasters are using “public airwaves” to deliver its product, the argument goes, the FCC can censor speech in the best interest of the public. Nevermind that newspapers deliver their product using public roads, but I digress.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the democrats in the House and Senate say they’re not interested in re-instating the Fairness Doctrine. But since Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have become their punching bags, it’s hard to take them at their word.

To be fair, Limbaugh, Hannity and their compatriots have made it easy on them. After all, to get listeners, one has to be controversial. And filling 15 hours of airtime per week isn’t easy. So it’s a simple task to take their most controversial comments (usually out of context) as red meat to their constituents.

But one has to wonder — why does the Fairness Doctrine only apply to radio? After all, television also uses the public airwaves. Yet we’ve not heard any cry to censor the inflammatory rhetoric of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Instead he’s hailed as our generation’s Edward R. Murrow. 

Regardless, talk of reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine is nothing more than attempt at censorship, a rollback to the days prior to 1987 and the death of AM radio. 

The talent would survive by moving to satellite or Internet. But cheering for the death of Limbaugh and the like is short-sighted. Realize that power is cyclical, and the democrats would be setting a precedent that would be all to easy for the republicans to pounce on once they return to power. And is that really what we want? 

Besides, the ultimate censorship is in your hands. After all, if you don’t like what you’re hearing, there’s probably a bevy of choices out there for you.

As for Stabenow, I’m sure her motives are nothing but pure. It’d be awful cynical of me to believe that being married to a bigwig from liberal network Air America would have anything to do with her outrage.

Seriously…this is insane.

(h/t to Glenn Beck and Mark Belling)

A couple caveats: First, climate change is real. It happened long before we got here, and it will continue to happen when we’re long gone. If it were not for global warming, Seattle, Chicago and Canada would be under feet of ice and we could walk from LA to Vladivostok. Anthropomorphic (or human-caused) climate change is minor, at best. 

Second, there’s nothing wrong with energy efficiency or alternate fuels. Taking ourselves off of fossil fuels is a smart idea, and I’m all about buying efficient appliances, weatherstripping and generally saving energy. After all, it makes no sense to pay for energy you don’t necessarily need. 

But when I read stories like this, I have to laugh. The New York Times has a feature on people who have ditched their refrigerator in order to be environmentally “responsible.” 

Read that again. People are getting rid of their refrigerators to be more “green.”

Understand that referigeration is probably one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. It allowed people to store perishables safely for longer periods of time. It allowed women more free time — certainly easier to shop for food once a week instead of every day — and helped put them in the workplace. It cut down on the number of food-borne illnesses and helped people experience a variety of foods they once thought of as exotic treats. And hey, without it, we couldn’t have the awesomeness that is the Swanson’s Salisbury Steak TV dinner.

So what’s the trade-off? According to Rachel Muston, one of the no-refrigerator crowd profiled….

Ms. Muston estimated that her own fridge, which was in the house when they bought it five years ago and most likely dates back much longer, used 1,300 kilowatt-hours per year, or produced roughly 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide — the same amount from burning 105 gallons of gasoline. And even a newer, more efficient model, which could have cut that figure in half, would have used too much energy in her view.

So buying a new fridge would produce the same amount of carbon as 52 gallons of gas. 

52 gallons. That’s one gallon a week. 

One gallon a week to ensure your kid’s milk is fresh through the expiration daye.

One gallon a week to make sure you’ve got dinner if you don’t have time to go to the market. 

One gallon a week for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s or a cold beer. 

So, you ask, what does Ms. Muston do to keep perishables fresh? Well, she’s got a cooler. What does she use to keep the cooler…cool? A couple frozen 2-liter bottles of water. But how about fellow-non-fridger Beth Barnes? Well, she uses ice from her office’s ice machine. 

Wonder what kind of carbon footprint that ice machine makes. 

Dig deeper in the story, and you start seeing the real reason these people are unplugging their appliances. Environmental blogger Deanna Duke: 

said that taking a stand for or against unplugging has become “a badge of honor” for those on either side. “It’s either ‘look how far I’m willing to go,’ or ‘look how far I’m not willing to go,’ ” she said. 

You see, it’s a badge of honor. The same reason why the Toyota Prius hybrid outsells the Honda Civic hybrid — the Civic looks just like its gas-only version, while the Prius is distinctive. 

It also seems to be guilt. According to one blogger quoted in the story: “Refrigerator lust is one of the things driving huge energy-use increases in the developing world.”

Yep. It’s a sin to want refrigeration. 

That’s certainly a nice thought in a developed, rich western nation, where a refrigerator is a common appliance. I wonder how that dog would hunt in a third world nation or even a rural village in Poland (where only 3% of the population has refrigerators).

It’s easy here to consider a necessity like a refrigerator as a sin. We don’t have to worry about where our next meal will come from or if we’ll have enough to feed our family. We can spend our times worrying about our carbon footprint. We can blog about excessive consumption on our laptop computer lying on our soft bed with the TV in the background in a well-lit room. We don’t have to worry about random brownouts or walk miles for clean water. 

But I’ll hand it to these environmental crazies. At least they’re trying to practice what they preach. They have passion, misguided as it is. Unlike some people like, oh, say, Al Gore, who continues to amass a huge carbon footprint and justify it by paying indulgences in the form of carbon credits.