Smooth Pebbles

E.J. Dionne on the Arne Duncan choice

E.J. Dionne makes an interesting observation about Obama's pick of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.

Because Duncan gets along with teachers unions but is also seen as a reformer, his selection was interpreted as a politically shrewd, split-the-difference choice. But that is not the whole story. Lurking behind Obama's talk about getting beyond ideology and stale disputes is an effort to undercut the success that conservatives have enjoyed in framing arguments that leave Democrats and liberals at an automatic disadvantage.

To declare that the only test of a politician's commitment to reform is a willingness to break with unions creates a no-win choice for Democrats. They must either betray long- standing allies or face condemnation as the captives of special interests.

Obama, said Diane Ravitch, an assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush, is trying to "break out" of a definition of reform drawn almost entirely from "the Republican agenda." That agenda focuses on "being tough on the unions, offering more choices, and pushing for more accountability." While reformers of all stripes support accountability, this list actually constrains the options for those who would improve the public schools.

Duncan has already made clear that he refuses to abide by the conventions of the current education debate. When the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal and pro-labor think tank, circulated an education manifesto that focused on expanding the services for poor children available at public schools, Duncan signed on.

This seems to me a sharp-eyed take. Obama's effort to be post-partisan, as it were, is not merely an attempt to split differences or accommodate both sides of an argument. He seeks to change the terms of the argument, just as he did in both the primary and general elections.

Rumblings and worries about Obama's FDA options

As Obama solidifies his teams on science, education, and environment, attention -- and not a little worry from the drug industry -- is turning toward his hunt for a new FDA commissioner. The WSJ Health Blog reports that the FDA Commissioner Coalition, which is heavy with groups financed by the drug industry, appears increasingly concerned that Obama will appoint outspoken critics of drugmakers and the FDA, such as Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Steven Nissen or Baltimore health commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, who is heading Obama's FDA assessment team.

While the coalition prominently talks about the need for an FDA chief who can withstand some kinds of outside pressure, there’s no mention of an ability to withstand pressure from industry. Yet undue industry influence is at the heart of concerns from both parties in both houses of Congress, from FDA officials, from doctors and many medical researchers.

A copy of the Coalition's letter (to Secretary of Health Designate Tom Daschle) can be found at Pharmalot.

Encouraging sign that government may be going all empirical on us

Atop other Obama appointments, this is one I suspect America's scientists will welcome. From the Washington Post:

Report: Holdren to Lead White House Science Policy

By Joel Achenbach

President-elect Obama will announce this weekend that he has selected physicist John Holdren, who has devoted much of his career to energy and environmental research, as his White House science adviser, according to a published report today.

The Obama transition office would not confirm Holdren's selection. Last night, asked by The Post to comment on the science adviser search, Holdren responded by e-mail that he would be unable to comment because of his work with the Obama transition team.

The report today appeared online at ScienceInsider, a news blog published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Holdren served as president of AAAS in 2006.

More at Politico.com, Science, and Discover, and Dot Earth.

World of Warcraft -- Obama hires where others fear to tread

I don't play no stinkin' video games, but this is odd enough to be interesting Boing Boing reports, in two different posts, that

a) Some employers are apparently discriminating against World of Warcraft players on the grounds that their heads are always within the WoW and not fully in this one (a stance that some WoW players agree with),

but

b) Obama is apparently NOT one of those employers, as he hired at least one WoW player -- Kevin Werbach (aka Supernovan Jenkins to WoWers -- to head his FCC transition team.

I'm not brave enough to speculate on what this means.

Technorati Tags:
World of Warcraft, Kevin Werbach

Is Obama for real on health-care reform?

It appears Obama is going to make a health-care system overhaul a top priority in his first year.

from the Tribune:

"The time is now to solve this problem," Obama said at a Chicago news conference where he announced that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle would head his health-care team. "It's not something that we can sort of put off because we're in an emergency. This is part of the emergency."

And as many have pointed out, his selection of Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services shows serious intent as well.

This should be quite interesting to watch. As Obama pointed out, the current recession, which can seem an argument not to take on health-care reform, is also a good argument for doing so. People are losing health-care access along with their jobs, and runaway health-care costs are adding extra strain, and more by the year. Probably just as important is Obama's recognition that the first year is the time to get big things done -- and his seemingly sincere conviction that the combination or rising per-capita expenditures and a growing number of un- and underinsured is a deadly serious problem and a blight on the country. Yet to get something done that is both truly reforming -- in the sense of a recognizable reshaping -- may well be the most difficult and ambitious thing he hopes to accomplish.

Except for maybe education reform ... on which more later.

Why we still need newspapers

From Knight Science Journalism Tracker:

Phil. Inquirer: Four part series disembowels the Bush White House version of the EPA

Many reporters have dived pretty deep into the legal and regulatory changes wrought at the EPA in the last eight years and into the scientist-administrator Stephen Johnson who imposed them at the behest of the George W. Bush administration... But no other newspaper that the Tracker knows of has torn into the agency with as thorough, focussed and full-hearted a pummeling as seen in the Philadelphia Inquirer for four days this week. ....

Sometimes it’s good to let one’s anger show and these reporters do. The pace, enthusiasm, and rhythm of the prose is like that of a flogging of a misbehaving crewman in an old Royal Navy sailing ship.

Oh, that Lucky Jack should have such luck.

Tom Friedman on (not) bailing out Detroit

I frankly don't know what the right call is on bailing out Detroit. On one hand, smart people are saying that not doing so could dangerously deepen the recession. On the other, if business idiocy had a three-strikes policy, these companies would be doing life. While going to school in Ohio car country in the late 1970s, I got a glimpse of the pain that area felt when the industry collapsed because it failed to adjust to a world that wanted smaller, better cars; tremendous unemployment rates, lots of idle people, most of them decent as hell, wishing they had something constructive to do. It was a monumental failure and a ghastly betrayal.

That the auto industry would repeat the same mistake (again, multiple times) so soon and so spectacularly almost defies belief. Do these people deserve another shot? Should we fool ourselves they can learn enough to turn these companies around? Evidence suggests otherwise. Their failure to learn brings to mind that Simpsons episode in which Bart -- or is it Homer?-- keeps reaching for a treat even though he gets shocked every time. Incapable of even the simplest conditional learning.

Anyway, Friedman, whom I often find a bit hard to take, frankly, articulates nicely here the sense that trying to save these companies would be throwing good money after bad:

Our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

I'll be deeply surprised if he's wrong.

Pebble collection

A few that keep slipping out of my hands:

It's All in Your Head -- Sally Satel, in the Wall St Journal, on a recent study showing about half of American doctors use placebos in practice. Satel, who wrote an interesting piece NY Times Magazine piece a while back on her search for a kidney donor, also has an interesting piece on a Senate bill designed to allow states to reward organ donors.

PhamaLot on Pharma's Influence on the Media.

On a related note, a Columbia Journalism Review piece on Science Reporting by Press Release

Andrew Sullivan on The AP's Cowardice.

Hospitals Fail to Take Basic Steps to Stop MRSA’s Spread, from the Wall St Journal's Health Blog. MRSA -- the antiobiotic resistant germ -- killed my uncle on October 1. Man had survived being shot down and crashing in Vietnam, but was no match for MRSA.

Boing boing on awareness after decapitation

Mouse bites snake to death. I also watched a video where a wild pig turned tables on a lioness and butted her till she ran away ... but I can't find it now.

I better stop there.

Technorati Tags:
Sally Satel, Big Pharma, Columbia Journalism Review

Both Obama and McCain computers were hacked - Newsweek

Wow. From Newsweek:

At the Obama headquarters in midsummer, technology experts detected what they initially thought was a computer virus—a case of "phishing," a form of hacking often employed to steal passwords or credit-card numbers. But by the next day, both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: "You have a problem way bigger than what you understand," an agent told Obama's team. "You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system." The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: "You have a real problem ... and you have to deal with it." The Feds told Obama's aides in late August that the McCain campaign's computer system had been similarly compromised. A top McCain official confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the campaign's computer system had been hacked and that the FBI had become involved.

Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps' policy positions—information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration. The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents. (Obama technical experts later speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.) A security firm retained by the Obama campaign took steps to secure its computer system and end the intrusion. White House and FBI officials had no comment earlier this week.

The Lightning Rod - The Atlantic (November 2008)

Michelle Rhee

photo by David Deal, from Atlantic Monthly

To my surprise, one of the most-read posts on this mostly-science blog is "Are Teachers Profesionals of Public-Service Workers?", which looked at a NY Times Magazine piece on school reforms by Paul Tough. Tough now has Now there is a piece by Clay Risen* in the current Atlantic Monthly about perhaps the country's most notable school reformer, Washington D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who is aggressively pushing reforms -- higher-paid, non-tenured teacher contracts among them -- on the D.C. school district.

The nut graf is below. Catch the whole thing at The Lightning Rod:

Since her arrival, in the summer of 2007, Rhee, just 38 years old, has become the most controversial figure in American public education and the standard-bearer for a new type of schools leader nationwide. She and her cohort often seek to bypass the traditional forces of education schools and unions, instead embracing nontraditional reform mechanisms like charter schools, vouchers, and the No Child Left Behind Act. %u201CThey tend to be younger, and many didn%u2019t come through the traditional route,%u201D says Margaret Sullivan, a former education analyst at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. And that often means going head-to-head with the people who did.

Rhee, responsible not to a school board but only to the mayor, went on a spree almost as soon as she arrived. She gained the right to fire central-office employees and then axed 98 of them. She canned 24 principals, 22 assistant principals, and, at the beginning of this summer, 250 teachers and 500 teaching aides. She announced plans to close 23 underused schools and set about restructuring 26 other schools (together, about a third of the system). And she began negotiating a radical performance-based compensation contract with the teachers union that could revolutionize the way teachers get paid.

.

*attribution corrected 11/09/08, with apologies to Mr. Risen.