Immigration, School, Segregation, Identity

January 9, The New York Times carried an article on a special school in Minneapolis. This school was a charter school. Part of movement in education that publicly funds schools that run by independent no governmental school boards the Minneapolis school is one that caters to immigrants, and the children of immigrants. The school in question is the International Elementary School, a charter school of about 560 pupils. The International school has a partner high school and middle school. The story of these schools is a perfect illustration of the immigrants identity struggle and the importance of the school in American society as well as the issue of segregation.

The Times article is only two pages long, which i think is a shame. The issues that the school and the thought behind it present are extremely important in a number of ways. The first of these is the way the schools allow for the retention of an immigrant identity that runs counter to the traditional model of immigrant assimilation.

The curriculum at the Twin Cities International Elementary School, and at its partner middle school and high school, is similar to that of other public schools with high academic goals. But at Twin Cities International the girls say they can freely wear head scarves without being teased, the lunchroom serves food that meets the dietary requirements of Muslims, and in every classroom there are East African teaching assistants who understand the needs of students who may have spent years in refugee camps. Twin Cities International students are from Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan, with a small population from the Middle East.

Amid the wave of immigration that has been reshaping Minnesota for more than three decades, the International schools are among 30 of the state’s 138 charter schools that are focused mostly on students from specific immigrant or ethnic groups. To visit a half-dozen of these schools, to listen to teachers, administrators and parents — Somali immigrants who are relatively new to Minnesota, as well as the Hmong and Latinos who have been in the state for decades — is to understand that Ms. Warsame’s high educational aspirations for her children, and her fears, are universal.

These two paragraphs effectively lay out the basic differences between the schools that are designed to accommodate the traditional identities of the immigrants. For example the girls continue to wear a headscarf which is a practice they might give up due to peer pressure. Children are not known for being amazingly tolerant of outsiders and those that dont have the right clothes or pop culture knowledge. The schools also take into account special dietary needs, something public schools fail to do. Both of these are specific examples of links to a traditional culture that simply would not exist in a public school.

Beyond these cultural links the education that the children are receiving is, according to the Times, actually maintaining the traditional cultural values of their immigrant identities.

Another father, Jelil Abdella, talked about how it saddened him that his two grown children, who had attended large district schools, did not know how to speak Somali.“They’re neither American, nor Somali,” Mr. Abdella said.

As a newcomer, he said, he was too busy going to school and earning a living — driving a taxi, cleaning floors, working in a factory, picking blueberries — to supervise their educations closely.

“I don’t want to make the same mistake with my younger children,” he said. “I want them to keep the good things we used to have back home — respecting their parents, helping each other, respecting their elders.”

The times goes on to provide a concrete example of this dual identity and traditional culture in action. They use a class debate over the merits of Barack Obama versus John McCain. The take away from this example was not that Obama's policy would be better or that McCain was a better CiC but instead that his age was the most valuable asset,

Yaqub, wearing a dark suit for the occasion, rose again. “John McCain is old,” he said. “It is better to be old.”

At the International school, where elders are revered, even Ridwa was silenced.

The school has managed to maintain even more than the traditional reverence for elders. It has also encouraged another key link to traditional identity, language. The children at the international school are maintaining the language of their ancestors.

At their meeting, the parents talked of the importance of speaking English at school — and Somali or Oromo at home. At other charter schools, Hmong refugee and Latino parents expressed the same wish, the difference being that they want their children to speak Hmong, or Spanish, at home, the other difference being that many of their children are already so Americanized that they are learning their parents’ languages in school.

By maintaining the language, ideals, and traditions these immigrant children may do something that has not been common among previous generations of immigrants to this country, maintaining a healthy dual identity as Somali-Americans or Hmong-Americans etc. This necessarily raises some serious questions about what it means to be American and the consequences of immigrant groups that may not be interested in assimilating into greater American society.

Progressive policies encourage the links to traditional heritage among immigrants. At the same time though we must consider whether separate schools for those who wish to retain their heritage are the best way to go. I think ideally we would want these children to be able to attend a public school along side non-immigrant children that allows them to maintain their heritage. After all we are supposed to be encouraging diversity in education. Are we really promoting diversity if we allow each race or ethnicity to form their own community separate from the others that teaches values and ideals different from each other? The key benefit from diversity comes with the interaction of different view points and backgrounds. It opens up your mind to new ways of thinking. The non-immigrant children may actually be losing an important influence by not interacting with these immigrant children and vis a versa.

I think maybe im just troubled by the "seperateness" of the school. The school itself is based in part on a rejection of American culture. I just cant help but feel that that rejection will set these kids apart in there future. whether thats going to be good or bad im not sure and its possible that im overstating this as all of this could be easily sorted out in the great mixing bowl that is college. The part of culture being rejected is not really even a positive part in my opinion but lacking an interest in many of the same childhood and pop culture experiences can definitely set someone on the path to outsiderness.

The reaction of conservatives to this practice is most likely negative. I can easily picture them complaining that the immigrants are insufficiently grateful for the bounty that America has bestowed upon them and that they need to learn to be proper Americans and not "foriegners". America is no 1 and if they don't understand that they can just leave.

We would not need to have this type of discussion or envision the conservative view if we were able to sufficiently broaden the idea of what it means to be an American. We just finished an election where one of the candidates ran on the idea that their side was winning in the "real" Virginia and where plenty of people were charged with insufficient patriotism. I don't think the immigrants discussed in the story have an insufficient love of this country. Its clear from the text that they do love and consider themselves to be Americans.

The story of America is the story of immigration and its really sad that much of the story involves the elimination of the immigrants traditional heritage. Hopefully we can find a way froward so that schools like the International School are not necessary for immigrants and minorities to maintain their traditional cultural heritage and identity alongside their American one.

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Making Electric Cars Viable

The reason that electric cars have not been widely available is because the battery technology for them has not been present. The auto companies have been insufficiently motivated to develop the technology as long as they could make money on the SUVs and other gasoline based vehicles. Both of those things have changed in recent years. New Battery technology is making electric cars into a viable option. The price of gasoline skyrocket briefly illustrating the problems with relying to heavily on that form of power.

The race to get the first economicly viable electric car to market may make or break the big three auto companies. Gm has put all of its chips on Volt.

The Prius, like the Honda Civic and forthcoming Honda Insight, is a parallel hybrid that uses both an electric motor and a gasoline engine to drive the wheels. The Volt, on the other hand, is a series hybrid. Like the Prius, it's got an electric motor and a four-cylinder gasoline engine, but the engine merely charges the 16 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery as it approaches depletion. Electricity alone turns the wheels. The Volt is designed to travel 40 miles on a single charge, meaning most drivers will never burn a drop of gasoline. GM is still butting heads with the Environmental Protection Agency over the Volt's official fuel economy rating, but GM execs tell us the Volt is good for 100 mpg or more.

The important fact here is that the Volt gets 40 miles per charge. If we want to measure it as a true electric vehicle than we should only look at the electric battery. 40 miles is not enough for long trips like trips to baseball or soccer tournaments. Its not enough to get from SB to dodger stadium. Yes on average people wont be driving more than 40 miles per day but trips of 40 miles or more are not an uncommon occurrence. This is where the infrastructure comes in.

“What will determine the market is not going to be how far your battery can go, but how far your infrastructure is spread so power is available,” said Shai Agassi, the chief executive of Better Place.

Those 40+ mile trips would entail pulling off the freeway to swap out batteries at a gas station. The infrastructure for a swap out style system is already in place across the country. The only issue is the cost of the swap for new batteries. If the cost is more than 5-10 dollars for new batteries you can see the problem. Long trips where you have to pull over 4 times will end up costing more than it would to make the trip using a gas based car. i suspect that that would have a psychological impact on the consumers.

If the battery could deliver 100 mile range i imagine the problem of distance travel would be largely erase. You would very rarely have to swap out your batteries on a trip. How the economics of this would all work out is anybodies guess. I suspect though that the car companies could find a way to make it work.

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Even Bad People Deserve Good Lawyers

The NYT has a piece up on the upcoming confirmation of Erik Holder as Attorney General. This piece focuses on the increased opposition from Republicans in the Senate who are "concerned" about the clients that Mr. Holder represented while in private practice. They seem to believe that there will be conflicts of interest so great that it prevents Holder from doing his job. Now we will put aside the fact that this comes from the GOP the party of corporations, big business, and corruption. Let sexamine exactly what the GOP is alleging here about lawyers role in society, the criminal justice system, and civil dispute resolution.

From the Times,

“We’ve had eight years of an administration that turned a blind eye to corporate criminals,” said Terry Collingsworth, a Washington lawyer who is suing Chiquita over the Colombian protection money and is facing Mr. Holder in the case. “We need someone with his level of experience and cachet to clean up the Justice Department. Yet I do have a concern and I sure hope that he doesn’t carry over his corporate defense practice into his approach to the job and how he handles these types of cases.”

When the National Football League was facing a legal and public-relations disaster in 2007 over a dogfighting scandal involving the Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, it turned to Mr. Holder to help navigate the maelstrom and represent the league. The pharmaceutical giant Merck tapped him as its lawyer in a Medicaid overbilling case that ended in a $671 million civil settlement. And Rod R. Blagojevich, the now-impeached governor of Illinois, picked him, albeit briefly, to investigate for the state a controversy over a casino development and its possible ties to organized crime.

Already, Mr. Holder’s brief association with Mr. Blagojevich has drawn scrutiny from Republicans, who are waging a more spirited campaign against Mr. Holder’s nomination than many had anticipated. Until now, most of the scrutiny has focused on controversies during the nominee’s time as deputy attorney general at the end of the Clinton administration, particularly his role in the pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich.

In responding to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Holder made no mention of a 2004 announcement in which Mr. Blagojevich introduced him as a “special investigator” under a $300,000 contract with the state.

The appointment fell through, and Mr. Holder’s aides said his failure to mention the episode had been an oversight that was soon corrected. But some Republicans said they were troubled by the omission. Three Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee — Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Cornyn of Texas and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa — sent the governor’s office a Freedom of Information Act request last week seeking documents on the aborted agreement.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, sharply questioned Mr. Holder’s character and political independence in a speech last week on the Senate floor. Mr. Specter told reporters Friday that he wanted to see more information about Mr. Holder’s private practice, to assess whether he was up to the job of attorney general.

I am sure they are very excited about the Blago link. These Republicans were untroubled by the incompetent people who have filled every executive department under Bush. They were untroubled by the mess created at the DOJ under Bush where the law was bent and malformed to suit their purposes. They were perfectly fine with the unqualified lawyers and severely skewed priorities. Instead they have been full throated supporters and enablers of Bush and his ridiculous legal policies. Now they want to come out and attack Holder for representing clients who need a defense.

I have a big problem with those who attack defense lawyers. Under our system of laws everyone is entitled to a defense. Murderers and Rapists and Corporations are all entitled to a defense. This means that someone must be there to defend them. Someone has to do that. Our system cannot function without a proper defense. Otherwise those who were forced to become involved in the system would have no confidence in its ability to meet out justice. If you were accused of a crime you did not commit yet everyone thought you had you might not end up with a competent defense without good lawyers to defend you.

Even those people who have in fact committed crimes deserve a defense. In those cases we can keep the system honest. Make sure the prosecution proves their case Beyond a reasonable doubt and that they did not violate the laws to do so. Unless those accused of misdeeds can have a good defense the prosecution will simply run over the innocent as well as the guilty.

I differentiate lawyers who defend the guilty from ad execs or people like mark penn because corporations are not entitled to a good public image. we might function better if the general public was not being sold on a rehabbed image of an amoral corporation.

Everyone is entitled to good defense. If the republicans succeed in killing the Holder nomination because he represented some big corporate clients it would be a blow to our very foundation of justice.

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Senate Dems Still Back Bush

There are a certain set of individuals in the Senate who back the decisions made by president Bush on matters of torture and "enhanced interrogation" and those people happen to reside on the senate intelligence committee. The two highest profile members of this torture backing group are Diane Feinstein (D) California and Jay Rockefeller (D) West Virginia. As two members who have always been aware and approving of the Bush intelligence schemes they most certainly meet the level of complicity and conspiracy in the torture crimes. It is not surprising to see them coming out against the Obama pick for CIA head when that person is seen to represent a break from the type of programs and way of doing business they are familiar with.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said today that she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.

“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director,” Feinstein said. “My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”

The choice of Panetta was seen as a sign that Obama considered it more important to have a steady political hand and astute manager at the helm of the agency, rather than someone with deep operational experience.

In picking Panetta, Obama risks raising anew questions about the politicization of the CIA, a concern cited by leading congressional officials.

A senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the senator “would have concerns” about a Panetta nomination.

Rockefeller “thinks very highly of Panetta,” the aide said. “But he’s puzzled by the selection. He has concerns because he has always believed that the director of CIA needs to be someone with significant operational intelligence experience, and someone outside the political realm.”

The problem with having people who have an extensive operations background in charge is that they are more likely than not going to have some issues with the torture regime of the last eight years. That is, hopefully, the reason that the Brennan candidacy fell through. There are probably some Clinton people available who have been out of the agency for the last eight years but they would be returning to a place much changed since they left with the reorg after 9/11.

DiFi and Rockefeller have never been too concerned about Presidential choices in the past considering the confirmation of Porter Goss, George Tenet, and Michael Hayden, as well as Mike Mukasey, Robert Mueller. They claim that only a person with field experience inside the agency can do the job? Steve Benen answers that,

Turf battles notwithstanding, the more complaints I hear about Panetta at the CIA, the more I find the concerns underwhelming. Feinstein and Rockefeller feel snubbed? Given their recent track record, I don't much care. The head of the CIA should come from within the agency? At least six recent CIA chiefs didn't. Panetta doesn't have a background in national security intelligence? Nonsense, as White House chief of staff and an ISG member, Panetta dealt with the very sensitive intelligence on a daily basis. Indeed, he learned very well precisely how to process intelligence to help the president see the big picture.

If we start with a premise that Obama wanted to find a credible, experienced manager, who's dealt with intelligence but remains untainted by the Bush-era scandals, Panetta starts to look like an ideal choice.

Far from being ineffective because he lacks field experience Panetta looks like he will bring a great deal of Washington know how to the table. He understands budget fights and the political machinations of washington and can assure the CIA gets its share of money and credit while also keeping the agency in line. If the two honorable senators who have come out against this pick want to cover their torture supporting asses this is not the way to go. They should simply stay quiet and hope everyone forgets about their maleficence.

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Is there a price for obstructionism?

Steve Benen has a post up regarding the failure of the GOP to consider moderating after its heavy rejection at the ballot box this year. The post progresses as you might expect with a quote from a moderate followed by the absolute rejection of that quote my the rest of the GOP. What is interesting though is the update,

Post Script: The Times piece added, "It remains to be seen how aggressively Republicans will try to wield the filibuster threat. They have recently signaled they will fight Obama's economic recovery plan if it moves too quickly. But there are political risks if the GOP is seen as obstructionist at a time when voters are clamoring for economic relief and change."

Maybe, but that risk existed in the last Congress and Republicans didn't care. And if the GOP leadership is convinced that it has to be even more conservative to win in the future, their embrace of obstructionism may be unaffected.

To say the Republicans did not care is an understatement. Here is a chart produced by Nate Silver at 538 to show the progression of the filibuster over time.




As you can see the filibuster and the cloture vote have exploded in the most recent congress. The GOP was also decimated in the most recent election. The problem is that they did not lose this election in any part because of the obstructionist tendencies they displayed. The framing of the filibuster is such that the media reports it as a failure of the Democrats to get enough votes to pass a bill. This has essentially raised the threshold for passing legislation from 51 votes to 60 votes. Yglesias explained the dynamic perfectly last year,

It seems, though, that the GOP has decided that if they use filibusters to obstruct congressional action that the press will keep reporting this in a "congress fails to do X" kind of way rather than a "GOP obstructionism" kind of way, which makes filibusters a win-win for Republicans.

The evidence points to the idea that there is in fact very little to no price being paid by the GOP for obstructing the Democratic senate. The biggest threat that the obstructionist Senators face is that they fail in their reelection bids but the Dem gains were so great in the last election it is hard to imagine that the GOP continues to lose more senate seats next time around based on obstructionism. The most obstructionist senators are coming from the most conservative states so the odds of them getting tossed out is not very high.

The conservatives are going to continue on the obstructionist path until something changes to stop them. The options for that are basically two fold. the first is to simply get rid of the filibuster all together. The argument for this is that the passing of legislation already has enough road blocks to keep the bad legislation out. I am dubious about this especially because of the recent passage of the FISA bill but its not like the filibuster was effective in stopping that. it seems like it is only employed to stop things progressives might actually like.

The second option is to require that the GOP actually filibuster. Currently they just announce that they are filibustering something and Reid treats it as a real filibuster. Instead we might like to see the GOP up there reading the phonebook for 48 hours and reenacting Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. That would change the media reporting to the actual filibuster instead of the failed vote for cloture. As added bonus it would be entertaining as hell.

Of course now that we have a Democratic president the Republicans might be a little more wary about blocking popular legislation. As long as the focus is placed on the failure of the dems and Obama to do anything about our situation the Republicans can continue to block to their hearts desire without any price.

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