Yearly Archives: 2003

w Funds Effective Reading

This entry was posted in bush Capitalism Education Federalism on by

In today’s weekly radio address w tells us about his admin’s record in supporting the No Child Left Behind Act. Next year’s budget proposes a cool $1.1 billion for effective reading programs. That seem like a pretty large sum at first glance but then reality sets in.
In 2001 there were 46,906,607 students in public schools. So that $1.1 billion works out to a little over $23/student. Perhaps enough to buy 1/3 of a textbook each. I’ll bet, though, that the money comes with the usual federal hooks: do it this way or you will not get the money.

Late Night Reading

This entry was posted in Late Night Reads on by

The Invisible Adjunct reviews Kipnis, Against Love, and finds her “firmly on the side of the labor and managerial practices of corporate America”.
Fox’s fair and balanced coverage of the California gubernatorial debate presented by Body and Soul.
Digby has a lot of good stuff over the last couple days, but doesn’t he always. Since the EPA whitewash and the Saudi-bin Laden evacuation flight should not be swept under the table go read this post first.
Good Night!

What’s Your Ranking?

This entry was posted in Economics on by

We are used to hearing about the richest person in the world or the 50 richest in the US. We are not used to seeing where we fit in on a worldwide basis.
You can now get a pretty interesting perspective on this at the Global Rich List. You should probably use your household income divided by the number of folks in your household since they use total world population to calculate where you fit in.
Let’s say you are a relatively new school teacher, married, single income, no children making about $32,000/year you will find out that your per capita income of $16,000 puts you in the top 10% on a world wide basis.
Yea, I know that the standard of living can dramatically affect the utility of your income but it is still pretty sobering.
Via The Fifty Minute Hour.

The Next Revision

This entry was posted in bush Iraq US Foreign Policy War on Terrorism on by

Well, I just needed to read for a bit more and one answer to the last post’s question pops right up. Per US Arms Control Chief John Bolton:

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was justified in part because Saddam Hussein retained scientists capable of building nuclear weapons, Washington’s top arms control official said Thursday.

Atrios interprets it this way:

Now, it appears that the real danger wasn’t that Iraq had WMDs or that they had WMD programs it’s that the sought to have WMD programs.

Bolton presented this revision yesterday. I presume the administration wants to see how this flies before determining how much emphasis to put on this in the Sunday speach.
This may also mean that the expected Kay report looks weak even to the bushies.