Category: Media and Culture,

Flint’s Children Suffer in Class After Years of Drinking the Lead-Poisoned Water

On By peanutgallerynhIn Environment,, Local Interest,, Modern Parenting,, Schools,Leave a comment

The contamination of this long-struggling city’s water exposed nearly 30,000 schoolchildren to a neurotoxin known to have detrimental effects on children’s developing brains and nervous systems. Requests for special education or behavioral interventions began rising four years ago, when the water contamination became public, bolstering a class-action lawsuit that demanded more resources for Flint’s children.

…The percentage of the city’s students who qualify for special education services has nearly doubled, to 28 percent, from 15 percent the year the lead crisis began, and the city’s screening center has received more than 1,300 referrals since December 2018. The results: About 70 percent of the students evaluated have required school accommodations for issues like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, also known as A.D.H.D.; dyslexia; or mild intellectual impairment.

…Pediatricians here caution against overdiagnosing children as irreparably brain damaged, if only to avoid stigmatizing an entire city. 

…The suit accuses the school systems of violating federal and state laws, including the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, by failing to identify students who could qualify for special education services, by failing to provide the mandated instructional services to those who do qualify and by punishing children for disability-related behavior.

Students were denied assessments for education plans or behavioral intervention plans, and then were segregated from their peers, secluded and restrained, repeatedly sent home from school, expelled or arrested, the lawsuit said.

…The district ignored her pleas to accommodate his A.D.H.D., which his pediatrician said was exacerbated by elevated lead levels.

…Bethany Dumanois, who has taught in Flint for 25 years, works two jobs to keep teaching because she said she cannot abandon children whose discolored, rash-covered skin and chunks of exposed scalp haunt her. In the earlier days of the crisis, she spent class time addressing questions from her students about whether they would die from the water like their class lizard, a bearded dragon, did.

…Instead of investing in more teachers, social workers and special education aides, she said the district had pushed laptop computers and iPads, “just jumping on any bandwagon, trying to sugarcoat what’s happening with these kids.”

On a recent night at a local restaurant, Ms. Pascal, the 23-year Flint teaching veteran, vented over the “injustices everywhere.” The district adopted a new reading program with no money to buy the instructional materials. She had been asked to identify a handful of her students for a new behavior support program, but wants to include all 21.

She thinks about quitting, but said she refuses to leave another vacancy for the district to fill.

Flint’s Children Suffer in Class After Years of Drinking the Lead-Poisoned Water – The New York Times

sigh…

Gillibrand demands hearing following release of ‘Afghanistan Papers’

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Military,Leave a comment

Senior U.S. officials knowingly lied to the public for years about the country’s progress in the conflict.

,,,U.S. officials on numerous occasions acknowledged a lack of understanding, strategy and progress in the war.

The officials acknowledged the problems in private interviews conducted by a watchdog across the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations.

They also described a purposeful disinformation campaign for the public, meant to make discouraging statistics look like the U.S. was winning the war.

Gillibrand demands hearing following release of ‘Afghanistan Papers’ | TheHill

sigh…

Trump’s expected executive order to define Judaism as a ‘nationality.’

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Religion,Leave a comment

In doing so, the department said it would rely on a definition of anti-Semitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. That definition includes “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” applying a double standard to Israel by requiring of it “behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” and comparing “contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

…Trump’s executive order will also use this sweeping definition, which some have criticized as overly broad and an effort to block legitimate criticism of Israel or support for the Palestinians.

…“This executive order, like the stalled congressional legislation it is based on, appears designed less to combat anti-Semitism than to have a chilling effect on free speech and to crack down on campus critics of Israel,” Ben-Ami said in a statement.

…“The order’s move to define Judaism as a ‘nationality’ promotes the classically bigoted idea that American Jews are not American.”

…“We don’t have established religion in America, and the state weighing in on the definition of Jewishness is dangerous,” Waxman said. “That’s the same as what it means to be Christian or Muslim. It comes back to the First Amendment.”

Trump’s expected executive order on campus anti-Semitism draws praise and concern – The Washington Post

hmmm

Michigan State Rep Barred From Speaking After ‘Vagina’ Comments

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Domestic Affairs,, Local Interest,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Brown, a Democrat, argued that her Jewish faith allowed for therapeutic abortions when the mother’s life is in danger without regard to length of pregnancy.

“I have not asked you to adopt and adhere to my religious beliefs. Why are you asking me to adopt yours?” she said. But what came next is what got her in trouble: “And finally, Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but ‘no’ means ‘no.'”

…She defended her use of the word “vagina,” saying it is the “anatomically medically correct term.”

“If they are going to legislate my anatomy, I see no reason why I cannot mention it,” she said according to the Free Press.

“Regardless of their reasoning, this is a violation of my First Amendment rights and directly impedes my ability to serve the people who elected me into office,” Brown added.

…”Byrum, D-Onondaga, caused a disturbance on the House floor Wednesday when she wasn’t allowed to introduce an amendment to the abortion regulations bill banning men from getting a vasectomy unless the sterilization procedure was necessary to save a man’s life,” the Detroit News reports.

Michigan State Rep Barred From Speaking After ‘Vagina’ Comments : The Two-Way : NPR

hmmmm

A Federal Judge Orders Sweeping Changes To Bond Hearings In Boston Immigration Court

On By peanutgallerynhIn American Injustice System,, Boston,, Domestic Affairs,, Granite State,, Local Interest,, Money, Class, and Poverty,, The Americas,Leave a comment

Saris ruled that asking an undocumented immigrant who is eligible for bond to prove why they are neither a flight risk nor a threat to the community violates the individual’s due process.

Moving forward, the burden of proof will be placed instead on federal immigration officials, similar to how bond hearings are decided in criminal court proceedings. 

Saris additionally ordered immigration judges to consider alternative conditions to detention, like GPS monitoring and orders of supervision that require regular check-ins with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A Federal Judge Orders Sweeping Changes To Bond Hearings In Boston Immigration Court | WBUR News

hmmm

Lessons of the Kamala Harris campaign

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

One, know and establish your political persona before you get in.

…Harris promised a focus on racial issues with an implicit suggestion that Barack Obama, the first African-American president might have been too timid here. By this fall, there appeared to be no focus — race or otherwise.

…A candidate can alter, modify or change a position or two, but the overarching message has to be consistent and coherent.

…Two, when you get that moment in the limelight, be ready to capitalize on it and move on.

…Three, a campaign [organization/staff] matters.  A staff is — to an extent — a mirror reflection of the candidate. [Which makes the Peanut Gallery curious why the Hill singled out her sister and not her stuff in the rest of the paragraph.]

…There is no doubt the political bar is a little higher for women — and more so for minority candidates.

It’s hard to cite this as the major factor in Harris’s collapse: In the past three presidential elections, twice the Democratic nomination went to an African-American, Barack Obama, the other to a woman, Hillary Clinton.

Lessons of the Kamala Harris campaign | TheHill

Yup.

…Also can we stop any talk of nominating sitting Senators to VP or cabinent positions. Enough already. They need to stay where they are.

Active Shooter Drills May Not Stop A School Shooting — But This Method Could

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Schools,Leave a comment

A new comprehensive report from the U.S. Secret Service underlines the agency’s previous findings that there is one safety approach that does work: threat assessment, as part of a comprehensive program of social and emotional support for students.

…Rory, 7, is on the autism spectrum and has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

…After seeing Rory’s reaction, Dianne says she doesn’t think any kids should have to participate in drills like these.

“Fair enough,” says Melissa Brymer of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. “But an emergency can happen at any point in a school day.”

Brymer believes these drills can save lives, but as one recent study from Ball State University found, there’s little evidence to prove that.

…According to the report, 83% of the attacks were over in five minutes or less. And 68% of the schools already had a lockdown procedure in place — making it the most common security measure among schools in the report. 

…Schools need a much more comprehensive approach, emphasizing “multidisciplinary” prevention in the years, months and days before a student actually shows up at school with a weapon.

…She defines threat assessment as a proactive approach in which schools “identify students who are doing concerning behavior or may be in distress and getting them the help they need before they even resort to violence as an option.”

One common source of distress, according to the report, is bullying and ostracism.

…Over a decade ago, the Secret Service conducted a small study in which it talked to “bystanders” — students who had heard warnings from a fellow student before a planned attack. In six cases a shooting was prevented, and in a further nine cases a shooting happened.

In the bystander report, students who came forward told investigators they did so because they had a strong relationship with at least one adult at the school and they thought their concerns would be taken seriously. Students who did not come forward said that they thought the school would not take appropriate steps or they would get in trouble themselves.

Active Shooter Drills May Not Stop A School Shooting — But This Method Could : NPR

hmmm

George Skelton: Kamala Harris should have never run for president

On By peanutgallerynhIn Chick Stuff,, Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Race,Leave a comment

“The hard truth: Harris was a weak presidential candidate [emphasis: Peanut Gallery],” Duran wrote. 

Harris excelled in California politics because she’s part of a home state Democratic cabal, an insiders’ machine. But that machine doesn’t work outside California. [emphasis: Peanut Gallery]

…She hadn’t yet established herself in the U.S. Senate. And she hadn’t exactly excelled in her previous job as California’s attorney general.

…After being elected to the Senate in a 2016 cakewalk [emphasis: Peanut Gallery]…

…Harris’ lack of money was just a symptom of her failed presidential bid, not the root cause of its demise.  [emphasis: Peanut Gallery] Her downward slide in polls destroyed the confidence of potential campaign contributors in her ability to win, drying up the money flow. But the plunging poll numbers resulted from her inability to connect with voters.

And she couldn’t connect with voters because of the core weakness in her candidacy: a lack of cohesive strategy and clear [personalized message].

…The campaign was confident she would win the votes of African Americans in South Carolina and from fellow Californians. [Without much basis for that other than the color of her own skin, that incomplete thinking was an insult people of ALL backgrounds. Whoever thought she could have California liberals without actually being a liberal hasn’t seen too many campaigns.]

…Anyone who watched Harris as attorney general could have predicted this outcome. She refused to take positions on any state ballot proposition. Her excuse was that the attorney general writes the official ballot titles and summaries, and she didn’t want to appear biased. But that was nonsense. She was trying to avoid making political enemies, especially among law enforcement. [Which is understandable but not very courageous or principled. And it sure as shit doesn’t leave much room for paving a clear path forward.]

…“This is my third presidential campaign and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly.” [This indictment doesn’t actually mean that she personally is difficult to work with but it does mean her top brass were. Like a President and their administration, the buck for that ultimately rests with her.]

George Skelton: Kamala Harris should have never run for president – Los Angeles Times

sigh…

Oh, and her refusal to shake hands and do selfies was cast by her campaign as a security decision. The Peanut Gallery believes wholeheartedly that there were indeed threats to her safety, threats a candidate who was not a woman and a POC would never have had to endure. The Peanut Gallery has also seen a lot of campaigns and a lot of Secret Service people in action and firmly believes this was a cop out and excuse for lazy and/or California style campaigning. The Secret Service are damn good at their job and they weren’t going to let anything bad happen to her. Basically this is the job she was asking for and reality is the place she was running for it. It’s harsh but true but she need to woman up or get out of the way. If Barack could manage to do selfies, shake hands, and bend down to talk to children she could too.

If you are too good to speak to early state voters (and make no mistake, this is how the campaign presented her) then you do not deserve to be in the running for the job.

Colin Reed: Kamala Harris and I were both very wrong about her candidacy

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

It is true that campaigns require resources to remain competitive, but running out of money is a symptom – not a cause – of more serious political ailments.

Colin Reed: Kamala Harris and I were both very wrong about her candidacy – Here’s why | Fox News

No, Colin, making accurate political predictions isn’t that hard at all. You just need to step out of the echo chamber and look at the big picture.

Salient points about fundraising being a symptom rather than a cause and how little KH would bring to the ticket as a VP nom though!

Trump-China trade war: The industries hurt by US tariffs

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, East Asia,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

Farmers in some US states are being forced into plowing their crops under — effectively burying them under soil in fields — as there is not enough room to store them in storage facilities, and they are unable to sell their products thanks to Chinese tariffs, Reuters reported last week.

All grain depots and silos are almost full, meaning farmers have to find their own storage solutions or allow their crops to rot. Neither option is particularly palatable.

…Manufacturing activity in the US slowed to a six-month low in October, with industry figures citing future protectionism and widespread uncertainty as major reasons for the slowdown.

“For the consumer, the tariffs are for the most part still an abstract idea, but for manufacturers they are real, and a big problem.”

Trump-China trade war: The industries hurt by US tariffs – Business Insider

hmmm

A Reminder That ‘Fake News’ Is An Information Literacy Problem – Not A Technology Problem

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Schools,Leave a comment

Children are taught to regurgitate what others tell them and to rely on digital assistants to curate the world rather than learn to navigate the informational landscape on their own. Schools no longer teach source triangulation, conflict arbitration, separating fact from opinion, citation chaining, conducting research or even the basic concept of verification and validation. In short, we’ve stopped teaching society how to think about information, leaving our citizenry adrift in the digital wilderness increasingly saturated with falsehoods without so much as a compass or map to help them find their way to safety.

…[Silicon] Valley has doubled down on technological solutions to combating digital falsehoods, focusing on harnessing legions of “fact checkers” and turning to Website and content blacklists, algorithmic tweaks and other quick fixes that have done little to turn the tide.

…How is it possible that the nation’s most prestigious scholars and scientists at preeminent research institutions and universities could all suspend their disbelief and blindly believe that an anonymous Twitter account claiming to be a secret society “resisting” their government was everything it claimed to be without the slightest bit of verification?

…Algorithms can help citizens sort through the deluge of information around them, identifying contested narratives and disputed facts, but technology alone is not a panacea. There is no magical algorithm that can eliminate all false and misleading information online.

To truly solve the issue of “fake news” we must blend technological assistance with teaching our citizens to be literate consumers of the world around them.

Societies must teach their children from a young age how to perform research, understand sourcing, triangulate information, triage contested narratives and recognize the importance of where information comes from, not just what it says.

…A more information literate society would likely bring with it considerable economic harm to today’s viral-obsessed social platforms that thrive on digital falsehoods, meaning there will be considerable resistance from Silicon Valley to a more information literate society.

A Reminder That ‘Fake News’ Is An Information Literacy Problem – Not A Technology Problem

hmm

Errrr… Senator?

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

It is the accepted truth of Silicon Valley that every problem has a technological solution.

Most importantly, in the eyes of the Valley, every problem can be solved exclusively through technology without requiring society to do anything on its own. A few algorithmic tweaks, a few extra lines of code and all the world’s problems can be simply coded out of existence.

Sadly for the Valley’s technological determinists, this is far from the truth.

A Reminder That ‘Fake News’ Is An Information Literacy Problem – Not A Technology Problem

I’m just going to park this here to refer to when the desire to give a certain Senator shit for simplistic solutions to complex problems (that require actual humans to solve!) comes up.

How To Tell When Someone Else Tweets From @realDonaldTrump

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

 This proved particularly challenging during version one of the Trump administration, when press secretary Sean Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus, and alt-right interpreter Steve Bannon all had yet to be ousted. Along with advisor Kellyanne Conway, they all likely took a spin on Trump’s Twitter account at some point.

…Though he may be adept (enough) at Twitter, Trump isn’t known for being tech savvy. About two years ago, The New York Times noted that Trump “has no computer in his office (a staff member brings in a laptop to show him videos) and asks aides to print his emails for consumption the old-fashioned way.” This means that any time you see an image or video attached to one of Trump’s tweets, our good friend Dan was almost certainly the mastermind.

…Trump generally dictated tweets to his assistants during the work day, but would send out his own missives during down time. According to a different report from Trump’s first weeks in the White House, at around 6:30 pm he generally heads back to the residence to mainline cable news until sometime after midnight. So it’s relatively safe to assume that any text-only tweets coming out of @realDonaldTrump in the evening (assuming, of course, he’s not off at a rally) were typed by the man himself.

The morning, however, is when Donald Trump truly shines. Usually up by around 6 am ET or so, the president can often get a good three or four hours of Fox News under his belt before he has to go pretend to listen to the daily intelligence briefing at 10. 

…If it’s text-only and sent between 6 pm and 10 am, Donald Trump probably did the tweet.

…If it looks like it was written by the Flowers for Algernon guy after the meds start wearing off, Donald Trump probably did the tweet.

Donald Trump does not know how to thread his tweets. He certainly seems to understand that it’s a thing people do, since at some point over the last year, he started using ellipses to indicate that he wasn’t quite done yet.

Trump does not, however, seem to know that replying to his own tweets would connect his thoughts in chronological order for him, which makes for some incredible disembodied half-thoughts.

Scavino has a knack for adopting Trump’s latest mannerisms, though, and the ellipses is no different. That’s why the real tell is the threading—Scavino can’t bring himself to not take advantage of the site’s features.

…If the tweetstorm consists of a series of disconnected nonsense, Donald Trump probably did the tweet.

How To Tell When Someone Else Tweets From @realDonaldTrump | WIRED

hmmm