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Donald Trump’s Regulatory Revolution

The president has fully delivered on this campaign promise
By Diane Katz, Geopolitical Intelligence Services
March 8, 2018 Updated: March 10, 2018

While election conspiracies and dossier whodunits are front-page news, mainstream media hardly covers the dramatic shift in regulatory policy during President Donald Trump’s first year.

However, this is another campaign promise that Trump has fully delivered on. His predecessor’s unparalleled rulemaking has almost stopped completely, and most of the signature regulatory initiatives implemented under former President Barack Obama have been blocked or rescinded. By almost any standard, the pace of reform is impressive.

Candidate Trump repeatedly vowed to cut regulation “massively” and to “remove the anchor dragging us down.” Indeed, independent estimates peg the private-sector cost of U.S. regulation at more than $2 trillion annually, more than income tax collections each year.

The Obama administration alone increased the nation’s regulatory burden by more than $122 billion annually. Combined with the red tape imposed during the administration of President George W. Bush, regulatory costs have increased by at least $200 billion annually during the past 15 years.

The benefits of regulatory reform are numerous and well-documented. In a recent report on “The Growth Potential of Deregulation,” the Council of Economic Advisors conservatively estimated that excessive regulation cost the United States an average of 0.8 percent of gross domestic product growth per year since 1980.

President Donald Trump cuts a red tape tied between two stacks of papers representing the government regulations of 1960 and the regulations of today after he spoke about his administration’s efforts in deregulation, at the White House on Dec. 14, 2017. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

A Challenge to the Status Quo

Trump did well despite the office of the president’s limited authority to modify regulation under the U.S. Constitution. The White House cannot countermand regulatory directives by Congress, although the president appoints agency heads who exercise latitude in rulemaking priorities. Presidents can also guide agency action through executive orders, “guidance” documents, and budgeting.

But reform is hindered by the immensity, complexity, and lethargy of the federal regulatory apparatus. A simple repeal requires adhering to administrative procedures, such as analyzing alternatives and presenting justification for public notice and comment. Litigation is rampant and protracted.

Ultimately, however, reform is difficult because powerful forces favor the status quo. That is, regulation is a political spoils system by which various special interests impose their will on the public and profit from government favor. That makes the Trump administration’s deregulation efforts an epic struggle. Every way in which the White House presses its reform agenda challenges the legitimacy of the existing regulatory regime.

The Achievements

For this reason, Trump is pursuing a multifaceted reform agenda. For example, he has reversed his predecessor’s use of executive power by revoking the “guidance” dictating that transgender students have the right to use public restrooms that match their gender identity.

Likewise, Trump issued exemptions from Obama’s far-reaching contraceptive mandate that required employers to offer health insurance coverage for all contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including medications and devices that may act as abortifacients, as well as sterilization procedures.

As part of a broader effort to scale back Obama’s substantial array of global warming programs, Trump announced the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, Obama had signed as an executive agreement on April 22, 2016.

The president’s authority to appoint the heads of executive branch agencies (under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution) is among the most effective, although the power to dismiss imprudent administrators may be even more potent. Of particular significance was the appointment of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Pruitt has proposed the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Obama’s costly climate change initiative. He likewise is leading the effort to rescind Obama’s Waters of the United States rule, which imposed a new definition for the waters the federal government can regulate under the Clean Water Act. The broad definition, if enacted, would infringe on property rights and override the role of states in water stewardship.

In addition to initiating a variety of other regulatory repeals, Pruitt halted the EPA’s manipulation of judicial review with a directive to end the agency’s “sue and settle” scheme. For years, EPA regulators worked in concert with advocacy groups to engineer legal settlements resulting in more stringent regulation by precedent than it could have enacted following the formal rulemaking process. Similarly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ended the Obama administration’s practice of funneling billions of dollars in settlement funds to left-wing allies.

Republican Ajit Pai, a career official of the Federal Communications Commission appointed by Trump as its first Indian American administrator, also slashed red tape. The commission reversed the 2015 “net neutrality” rule (formally titled the Open Internet Order), which subjected internet service providers to regulations crafted decades ago for telephony.

Slashing Red Tape

However, the process of regulation is so ingrained in the political system that it’s not always possible to shift into reverse.

The administration inherited 1,985 regulations in the rulemaking pipeline, 966 in the proposal stage and 1,019 in the final stage. The administration’s new Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions reflects the withdrawal of 635 previously listed rulemakings, another 244 regulations rendered inactive, and the delay of 700 rulemakings. The agenda also commits federal agencies to cutting future regulatory costs to the private sector by $9.8 billion.

Nonetheless, federal rulemaking slowed dramatically in 2017, with the Trump administration issuing two-thirds fewer regulations in its first year (1,209) than the administrations of both presidents Barack Obama (3,356) and George W. Bush (3,233). The number of “major” rules, those anticipated to cost the private sector $100 million or more annually, numbered just 32 in Trump’s first year, compared to 73 under Obama and 51 under Bush.

Executive Orders

The president has also issued a variety of executive orders (EOs) and presidential memoranda directing agency administrators to take specific regulatory actions. Signaling a major change in energy policy, for example, the president directed agency officials to expedite requests for approvals to construct and operate the Dakota Access Pipeline, and to invite TransCanada to resubmit its application for construction and operation of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Two other executive orders are intended to have a direct and substantial impact on the extent of future rulemaking.

EO 13771 directs agency officials to identify for repeal at least two existing regulations for every new regulation they promulgate and White House officials have even raised the goal to eliminating three regulations for each new one issued. The order also calls for a budgeting process to manage regulatory costs, and prohibits any increase in the total incremental cost of all regulations unless required by law or advised by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Regulation is a political spoils system by which various special interests impose their will on the public and profit from government favor.

The regulatory budgeting established in EO 13771 is intended to inject economic discipline and rationality into rulemaking. If agencies are compelled to restrict the costs imposed on the public, they must engage in a type of rolling retrospective review of the vast accumulation of rules that comprise more than 185,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations, up from 138,000 in 2000.

From the administration of President Jimmy Carter forward, agencies have been directed by the White House to conduct some form of regulatory look-back. But absent a fixed numeric or budgetary target, as called for in Trump’s order, there has been little accountability and thus past initiatives have largely failed to reduce regulatory costs.

Reform Task Force

EO 13777 directs the head of each regulatory agency to designate a Regulatory Reform Officer to oversee the implementation of regulatory reform initiatives and policies within the agency. Under the order, each agency must establish a Regulatory Reform Task Force to evaluate regulations and recommend those appropriate for repeal, replacement, or modification. By directing agency staff to control costs, sound regulatory practices are internalized.

The creation of the regulatory task force is intended to broaden the search for regulations that eliminate jobs or inhibit job creation; are outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective; impose costs that exceed benefits; are insufficiently transparent to meet the standard for reproducibility; or implement executive orders and other presidential directives that have been subsequently rescinded or substantially modified.

More to Come

As significant as Trump’s actions have been to date, a great many reforms remain unfinished and numerous legal challenges are undecided. But the president is obviously undeterred, telling the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “We have undertaken the most extensive regulatory reduction ever conceived.” Hyperbolic though that may sound, this administration has already delivered significant, tangible reforms and is certain to deliver more.

Diane Katz is a senior research fellow in regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation and a guest expert at Geopolitical Intelligence Services. This article was originally published by GIS Reports Online.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.


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link love

linklove5326On this lovely Friday afternoon, I’m popping in to bring you a few links for your weekend! I know it’s an extremely small list, but next week’s should be longer.

Also, I wanted to let you know that I’ll be tweaking a few things on my blog over the weekend (mostly my categories), so if at any point something doesn’t work quite right, don’t be alarmed. I should have everything adjusted by tomorrow afternoon :)

Margaret from Floral & Frayed wrote a great candid guide to making the switch to gluten free.

An interview with one of my all-time favorite designers.

Yosemite. Simply stunning.

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Review: Queer Virtue by Rev. Elizabeth M. Edman

Elizabeth M. Edman is an Episcopal priest and a lesbian. These two aspects of her identity are stitched into her very soul; they are vitally important, essential aspects of who she is as a person and how she moves about in the world. In Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity, Edman argues that Christianity is inherently queer: it “ruptures” the binaries of life and death, human and divine. Edman also argues that the queer path and the Christian path are not so different from one another. In fact, they are incredibly similar. Both paths involve the discernment of an identity; the reaching out to others and forming of community, despite the risks involved; and the navigation of scandal. Both paths also require that we participate in supportive communities, fight for justice, and “look to the margins” to help those who are less privileged than we are.

As a lesbian who was raised Catholic and who struggled to merge these two identities, Queer Virtue really resonated with me. In this book, Edman affirms, validates, and lifts up queer people. She celebrates queerness; her pride in and love of the queer community is palpable on every page. I loved this. Reading Queer Virtue was an absolute joy. It left me with a sense of hope and several ideas to ponder.

It was refreshing to read about the ways that queer people can benefit Christianity, rather than the other way around. Edman proposed several strategies that progressive Christian communities might adopt in order to become more authentic and hospitable. She advises progressive Christians on how to have healthy pride in their Christian identity and on how to come out as Christians. Most of all, she impresses upon the reader that identifying simultaneously as Christian and as queer makes absolute sense.

Queer Virtue is intelligent, well written, and heartfelt. Edman is honest and forthcoming about her experiences and shortcomings, and she speaks with compassion and a deep understanding of the ways in which queer people have been and are still being hurt by Christians. Queer Virtue is an excellent read for LGBTQ+ people struggling with their faith, for Christians wishing to open up their community to all people, or for anyone interested in Christianity or queerness.

Note: I received a copy of Queer Virtue through a LibraryThing giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

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Metaphorosis: Best of 2016

Metaphorosis: Best of 2016

Beautifully written speculative fiction from Metaphorosis magazine.

The best science fiction and fantasy stories from Metaphorosis magazine’s first year. Mysterious languages, unusual dogs, solitude, alien communications, and magic.

  • The Demon in the Page – Joshua Phillip Johnson
  • Heard – Elise Forier Edie
  • In Dew and Frost and Flame – Vanessa Fogg
  • The Heresy Machine – Gerald Warfield
  • Gathering Dust – Meryl Stenhouse
  • So, You’re In an Alternate Universe – Jeremy Packert Burke
  • Solomon and the Dragon’s Tongue – Molly Etta
  • Spoiler: She Leaves Him – Jack Noble
  • The World’s Secret Heartbeat – Aatif Rashid
  • Whalesong – L. Chan
  • How to Survive a Fish Attack – Kato Thompson
  • My Dog is the Constellation Canis Major – Jarod K. Anderson
  • The Sea Bank of Svalbard South – Octavia Cade

On sale as of 1 February 2017 at Amazon and other retailers.

Leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon!


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Category Archives: dopey Hillary Clinton

Clinton promises to renew U.S. leadership

Clinton promises to renew U.S. leadership –

It seems Hillary Clinton does not have a clue. There is no war in Iraq. There is a military presence and there is an expected troop withdrawal which will take place as soon as the Iraqi government takes over the roles being performed.

The bombings that continue are the work of two factions or a third party that wants the conflict to arise.

Considering that Clinton agreed to the incursion in the first place her comments really are two-faced – and this woman is to be the Secretary of State? What an outright joke.


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Letters, by Several Eminent Persons Deceased. Including the Correspondence of John Hughes, and Several of His Friends, with Notes Explanatory and Historical. by John Duncombe, in Three Volumes the Second Edition, with Additions .. Volume 3 of 3

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Tag Archives: accepting my flaws

Learning to Live at Age Forty

Instead of losing the sweet joy of youth, I’m learning to love life more at age forty than I did at age twenty. Part of the passion and zest in my life comes from embracing who God made me to … Continue reading

Posted in Encouragement | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment


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Wishbone Napkin Rings

I’m always looking for cool and unique ways to set our table for different occasions, all the way down to how I set up my napkins which is why i love this craft so much. I’ve heard of people taking necklace charms and tying them around napkins and I love the idea. I saw this Jennifer Meyer wishbone necklace on the Barneys website and thought it would be PERFECT for a Thanksgiving place setting… but let’s face it – no one in their right mind would pay 1,200$ for a napkin ring, so I improvised. I had roasted a chicken this past weekend (will do a post on that after Thanksgiving) and set the wishbone aside for this craft.

I cleaned the wishbone really well and waited until the next day to make sure it was totally dry. Then I simply spray painted it a metallic gold (only because we have gold china, you can paint it whatever color matches your tablescape) and then gave it a quick spray with a gold glitter. Let it dry over night just to be extra safe.
 I rolled up my napkin and just pinched the napkin in it (as seen in the first picture) and then played around with a couple other ideas (in the pics below). I actually think it looks pretty cool just sitting on the plate… I love the idea that everyone at the table gets to take it with them and make a wish. Playing on the “wishbone charm” idea, I also pinched the wishbone into the opening on a gold jump ring. Then I just added it to a piece of twine and wrapped it around the napkin for a little more casual look.


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Ham and Fingerling Potato Hash

This is one of the side dishes that I made for our Thanksgiving last year, a hash made with beautiful fingerling potatoes and ham. Sometime the simplest dishes are the best tasting ones, and this is one of those dishes. On Monday I’ll be doing a big post all about how I made our turkey (hint it involves lots of butter, wine and a cheesecloth!), how to make homemade stock for your gravy, how to make the gravy and my mom’s stuffing recipe so make sure you check back for that! I’ve also tagged some of my past posts in the Thanksgiving section at the top of the page if your looking for more recipes or crafts for the big day next week.

Cut 1.5 lbs fingerling potatoes in half and place them in a saucepan. Fill with enough water to cover the potatoes and then bring to a boil over high heat, reduce to a simmer and cook until you can pierce the potatoes with a fork (about 10 minutes). Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking, dice into 1/2″ thick cubes and set aside. Melt 3 tbsp unsalted butter in a cast iron skillet (you can use a non-stick skillet but the hash won’t brown as well) over medium heat. Add 1 small onion that’s been finely chopped and cook until softened (about 4 minutes). Add 1 cup finely diced cooked ham, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp black pepper and 2 tsp fresh rosemary  and mix well. Add the potatoes back into the skillet and cook the hash until well browned, about 10 minutes.

To get the printable version of this recipe, click on the picture below and print in your browser in the size you prefer.


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Zanu PF victim recounts horror attack

A Guruve opposition activist who was allegedly abducted by Zanu PF supporters who wanted him off his farm for defecting to Joice Mujuru’s ZimPF has recounted the horror he endured at the hands of marauding ruling party zealots.Obert Mutasa was rescued by fellow ZimPF members from the marauding Zanu PF supporters led by war veterans who had camped at his Dunavety farm and held him hostage for the greater part of last Sunday.

His rescue, however, had casualties, with Retired Brigadier General Agrippa Mutambara being heavily assaulted together with other party members and had to be admitted at a private hospital in Harare for treatment.

Mutasa yesterday recounted his ordeal, saying about 500 Zanu PF supporters first came to his farm and vowed to eject him. They claimed the farm belonged to the ruling party.

“They were about 500 of them who came on Tuesday. They vowed to eject me from the farm for supporting Mujuru,” Mutasa said.

“On Sunday, about 300 of them came, with national and Zanu PF flags and camped at my farm. They locked me in my house from around 6am. I called the police from Guruve and they came two hours later. As soon as the police arrived, the Zanu PF supporters released me from the house.”

He added: “The police, led by the officer-in-charge, one Mugoro, then told me that they were leaving since I had been released from the house. I pleaded with them to first disperse the Zanu PF supporters who were singing and armed with machetes, knobkerries and various other objects. The police refused to disperse them, saying it was a peaceful protest and they had the right to do that.”

“I asked him if they had been cleared to protest, but the police officer told me that the law only required them to notify the police, not seek permission. I asked him if they had notified them, they told me that they did not but it was not a crime since they were peaceful. I then requested to get into their car and leave the farm for security reasons, but they refused.”

Mutasa said as soon as the police left, his problems mounted. This time he was not locked into the house, but was surrounded by about 17 armed men while others were being addressed by one Dzerengende, who is war veteran.

“I heard him saying they should have beaten me. I then phoned my party’s provincial leader Brigadier Mutambara to tell him of my situation. He then came in the company of Titus Manyika, Matthias Dzangarame, Maz Manokore, and others. They passed through the police seeking escort, but the police again refused, asking them to go and rescue me on their own,” he said.

They came and tried to negotiate with them, but they were all assaulted with bicycle chains, stones, machetes and other objects. I managed to escape and ran to Engineer Mubaiwa’s land cruiser vehicle which was parked outside the gate, with the Zanu PF supporters in hot pursuit. I managed to get into the car and escaped, but they smashed the rear window of the car.”

Brigadier Mutambara and crew were later rescued by the police, who then drove them in their car and later gave them letters to facilitate medical treatment.

“But at the police station, the police kind of detained them before they eventually released them. The matter was reported under case number RRB2720419 and 2720420 in Guruve. I have secured a court order to have them evicted but I fear for my life and I can’t go back there because they have been threatening to abduct me,” Mutasa said.

Mutasa reported the matter to Bindura police.

National police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba could not be reached for comment yesterday.
After the matter was reported, President Robert Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba accused the ZimPF members of stage-managing their attack in order to discredit Zanu PF.

He said the ZimPF officials went to interfere with Zanu PF supporters who were going about their business.

But ZimPF spokesperson Jealousy Mawarire yesterday hit back at Charamba, accusing him of being inconsiderate and reckless.
“George is not a trained detective who can dispute police findings on this particular issue. The police details who attended to our supporters were clear on who instigated the violence, brutally assaulted them and was therefore liable for their injuries,” Mawarire said.

“The 234 forms filled in by the police at Guruve are clear on who assaulted our supporters. The police noted in the forms that, ‘the victims were assaulted by Zanu PF supporters at Dunavety Farm’ and the police further requested medical officials to attend [to our supporters] and fill in the attached affidavit”.

He added: “It is, however, clear now, after Charamba’s rants, that the violence was planned from the highest Zanu PF office, which is the party presidency because if it wasn’t so, Charamba would not have been called to conjure the violence stage-managing spin that he threw around with amateurish exuberance yesterday.

“Charamba is not the Zanu PF spokesperson. The fact that he shares the same surname with the police spokesperson Charity Charamba does not also mandate him to speak on behalf of the police or masquerade as a detective inspector.


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Category Archives: Animated Gifs

Q & A with mangatron: Big ones, Small ones, and any in-between?

The post title is a joke from the Full Metal Panic manga, specifically the second one. I believe its volume 03, when Sousuke worked in a video rental store. I bought that manga in a US Army base bookstore back in 2006 when I returned to Germany, hence why it’s rather special to me. Except for the part where I left it in Germany.

If you read my last post, you’ll find I’m in favor of small, sporadic posts instead of once-a-blue-moon big posts, and to continue that, there are much questions going about that my PM inbox at the Animesuki forums cannot contain. Seriously, I have to empty that almost twice a season XD So today I’m going to tackle a question that has arisen a number of times the past 3 seasons: Who is that girl in your avatar?

Q: Okay, it’s been going on for awhile, but why the bouncy avatars?

A: It’s a fairly recent thing. I’m not really known for it, but as usual something happened and it ended up being a habit. It all started with the Anime version of Astarotte’s Toy, and Lotte’s well endowed mother. Specifically, episode 05. And I made it no secret my love for my Queen, but I had the fun idea to take it a step further by placing her in my avatar, perhaps a first for a mature woman such as her XD

The avatar that started it all

Of course, it made a heavy impact: at the time, my “lolitron” nickname was as prevalent as ever, then all of a sudden a bouncy woman resides in my avatar space? Shortly afterwards, I never failed to receive a PM/visitor message about “Who is the girl(yes she has been called a girl) in your avatar” during this time, and I thought “Oh, there’s not many viewers for this show, maybe I can recommend a lot to it” and I proceeded to pounce on any chance I can get to animate her screen time.

The second Mercelida avatar from episode 09

From that point, I have had a “big” avatar since. If there wasn’t a new pair of big ones that week, the avatar remained. The best part: I have had so many PM’s about questions of what series my avatar came from, and I have directed them to the appropriate thread, thus making them watch a series they never would have had it not been for my avatar. Thus, the story of my bouncy avatars, why I continue to use them, and why it remains the #1 PM I get XD

Just some of the avatars I’m responsible for since Spring 2011:

This one deserves special mention. My favorite, one that lasted for almost a month, and the most controversial avatar I have used that brought smiles and a headache to mods and regular members alike, which was also responsible for making me clean out my PM inbox twice: R-15’s Chief-chan.

Up next, is… actually, I think I should finish that tutorial first. I was also hoping to resume 7DA afterwards.

Kyoukai Senjou No Horizontal episode 01: nice hairdo!

I just wonder, is my country’s language really that good for magic attacks?

Throw this in with one of those that I knew absolutely nothing of prior to airtime. In fact, that Fall 2011 Anime Chart didn’t help with it’s picture of choice.

Thanks to CrowKenobi, mod extraordinaire at Animesuki, I saw the magazine scans and fell in love with Kimi-chan this series. Though my less than noble reasons are laughable, this episode was quite a fun enough ride that I ended up falling in love with a girl I hadn’t seen before (but heard a lot of years ago).

Where’s the nose?

First of all, Sensei (Makiko-chan!). Honestly I think she was nicely animated throughout the ep, and she got nice curves too 😀 As I mentioned earlier her voice was instantly recognizable, which I became a fan of after Mahoraba finished its run. Not to mention she tied her hair into a nice tail there (although I cringed when she cut pieces off lol). Not to mention she knows her stuff and seems smart, definitely my goddess.

Ahem to the actual episode, while I do find it funny that reactions across the web are very much mixed, I guess it is justifiable for first timers who didn’t read accompanying descriptions that should have been included wherever the heck they downloaded it from. I honestly understood what I was getting into by reading what was described as a “dictionary sized synopsis”, not to mention I hadn’t known this was a novel or a manga or a game even, I really thought this was Sunrise pulling something out of their hat. But what’s the surprise, novels seem like the new adapation nowadays. Not that I have a problem with that, as I don’t read novels, so that gives me a rather fresh anime experience.

I swear she’s got rocket boosters in that hair.

Now about the actual ep, I really like the action, if merely because it was centered around Sensei, but it did well enough in my opinion to keep me glued. Of course my bias is due to my enjoyment of the girls in bodysuits, but that’s to be expected.

And that grin 🙂

The other nose-less anime (Code-E) I thought of. The reason why this came to mind was that this aired when my translator days were winding down, and a fellow fansubber I know worked on this series.

And the gifs:

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai episode 01 avatar gifs

And that blog-specific episode opinions will go up sometime later…


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Some evidence that incentives for good teaching can work

In a new NBER Working Paper, Thomas Dee and James Wyckoff report:

Teachers in the United States are compensated largely on the basis of fixed schedules that reward experience and credentials. However, there is a growing interest in whether performance-based incentives based on rigorous teacher evaluations can improve teacher retention and performance. The evidence available to date has been mixed at best. This study presents novel evidence on this topic based on IMPACT, the controversial teacher-evaluation system introduced in the District of Columbia Public Schools by then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee. IMPACT implemented uniquely high-powered incentives linked to multiple measures of teacher performance (i.e., several structured observational measures as well as test performance). We present regression-discontinuity (RD) estimates that compare the retention and performance outcomes among low-performing teachers whose ratings placed them near the threshold that implied a strong dismissal threat. We also compare outcomes among high-performing teachers whose rating placed them near a threshold that implied an unusually large financial incentive. Our RD results indicate that dismissal threats increased the voluntary attrition of low-performing teachers by 11 percentage points (i.e., more than 50 percent) and improved the performance of teachers who remained by 0.27 of a teacher-level standard deviation. We also find evidence that financial incentives further improved the performance of high-performing teachers (effect size = 0.24).

You will find the paper ungated here.

Are you prepared to go to next logical step and support significantly higher public ed budgets to attract and retain sufficient high quality teachers?

I argue for just that in Launching the Innovation Renaissance.

Are you prepared to keep spending more and more and more WITHOUT a promise of doing anything better?

Are you prepared to go the next step and advocate much stronger, more universal use of dismissal threats with a much higher number of dismissals?

You'd have to pay me more to deal with coworkers who cannot be fired.

That is a huge factor.

Probably you need both. It just has to be objective and not create a culture of paranoia.

Why "objective"? Most professionals work under extremely subjective conditions. We can be fired simply because the manager doesn't like the cut of our jib, on any single day, every day of the year.

Managing and firing based just on objective numbers is the sign of really bad management. (The one real exception is sales, and even then a sales manager has to consider soft things like customer management.)

That is an unacceptable standard for public school teachers and would probably result in lots of unfounded terminations and "friend" hires, which doesn't serve the students.

Probably would be acceptable and probably wouldn't do what you suspect, although that wouldn't necessarily not serve the students.

But the good news is we don't have to be just as dumb only differently dumb as we have been. You could hire friends and then if you didn't meet the standards you and your friends get fired. Again, the good news is we don't have to even figure out how to do that.

My boss can already fire me for "unfounded" reasons and replace me with his "friend." Yet he hasn't.

Most of the adult world in America functions this way. Certainly the well-paid professional class does.

Now add 30 objective data points on your job, now add that you do a job that is always in high demand at tens of thousands of firms all over the country, now add that we could grade and trade and simply move teachers and kids around without firing anybody to try to find an optimum mesh of expectations and personalities.

Nah!!! sounds hard.

Now add Ratemyprincipaldotcom with "this mo'fuka is so nepotistic!"

Two things:
1. The inability to rely on any undesigned order keeps us in chaos.
2. I just can't see the problem, probably because I don't have the join a team gene.

"Most professionals work under extremely subjective conditions. We can be fired simply because the manager doesn’t like the cut of our jib, on any single day, every day of the year. "

Why is this a good thing that should be replicated in the teaching profession?

"Now add 30 objective data points on your job,"

Bad data is bad data, even if you have a large data set.

Actually not.

"Why is this a good thing that should be replicated in the teaching profession? "

Obviously, noone is saying it is. In fact, we are saying the opposite. We are saying that non-education managers would kill for the low-hanging fruit of objective performance data that education leaves rotting on the ground.

And that's for dumb stuff like signing up cell phone customers. Not the livelihoods of our children.

First, there seem to be people that are so far in their own bubble that they are surprised that jobs exist where you can be fired on any day. These people may be so insulated from the real world that they don't realize that, despite the ability to instantly fire workers, millions of workers are not instantly fired every day for petty reasons. In fact, team-oriented workers hate having dead-weight that they have to work around, so the working environment is better in places where people can be let go easily.

Second, if teachers want to be treated and paid like professionals, they should get the other side of being professionals -- at-will employment instead of a job being an asset that you cannot lose without a court case.

Finally, anyone thinking that the way the teaching profession works is the good way that the rest of the economy needs to emulate is probably too far gone to discuss things with.

How is that the next logical step? All the research implies is that higher quality teachers should be paid more than lower quality teachers. That could be accomplished by paying low-ranked teachers a lot less, high-ranked teachers a lot more, or both. Overall I fail to see how the research is anything but agnostic to the aggregated average teacher pay.

Doug, paying high-ranked teachers substantially more is not a complete solution. Assuming there are a fixed number of teaching positions, schools can be improved either by increasing quality of existing teachers or replacing low quality existing teachers. The total solution then is pay commensurate to results in addition to a minimum standard. It should be apparent that paying negative dollars for negative quality would not be a desirable result even if it were mathematically equivalent to paying high dollars for top performance.

Seems like you are saying the same thing as Doug, who never suggested paying negative dollars.

"That could be accomplished by paying low-ranked teachers a lot less, high-ranked teachers a lot more, or both."

It isn't enough to pay teachers in accordance with their effect on students. Assuming a market in which teachers are paid exactly what they are worth, the system still ends up with teachers throughout the spectrum of effectiveness. Paying a low (negative) price for low (negative) quality doesn't seem to suggest (to me) that high quality will emerge.

Assuming teachers are mis-matched, they would tend to find their correct value somewhere else.

Also, the better teachers could "buy" students from the not-as-better teachers.

OMG yes. Just think how many teachers with gigantic brains we could attract if we paid them $100,000, nay, $200,000 a year!

There is no shortage of good teachers willing to work at current pay levels. The secret to retaining good teachers is giving them majority white-Asian schools to teach in. This is the biggest not-so-secret secret in education.

You don't think we'd get smarter teachers if we paid $200,000 per year? Or you don't think IQ matters in job performance?

I'm saying the problem in attracting and retaining good teachers is not the pay.

You could pay teachers per student that they maintain a high standard of value-added for, and as such many schools could easily conceivably have several teachers earning more than $200k/yr.

The problem is we can't change anything.

Again, in 3 months time you matriculate from English/Chemistry/Physics/etc. classes with 25 students to 250 students. What happened? You suddenly got a huge frontal cortex?

We'd get them for about five minutes.

Smart people don't flock to teaching because smart people figure out quickly that teaching in today's schools is a bad job.

Has dealing with kids ever been a good job? Why do we want smart people in this job? We want people who can't help but love kids.

That is a substantial problem with this kind of discussion, as was noted elsewhere on the comments thread. If you reward people who are good teachers, but you misdefine what good teaching is, you accelerate the problems.

Don' what I'm saying.

That's why I propose grade and trade. If the grade is wrong, the trade will compensate.

If I'm understanding your system right, I think it's one of any number of radical changes that could improve the system. But won't, of course, happen, which you know.

There's two dimensions to this: (a) ease of job and (b) remuneration.

You are saying good people would flock to teaching if the task is made easier (i.e. easy to teach students). Sure.

The other approach is to pay them better to motivate them to teach well in spite of difficult students.

And difficult students should pay more to the teachers. Again, I don't know why this is brain surgery. You have 12 years of observational evaluation before you ship these people to prison. It shouldn't be hard to keep discipline records. You just have to figure out how to let teachers "draft" students and trade.

I think letting students and teachers select each other could be a really good model. You would need to fix a few things first, like taking away grades, because otherwise all the students pile onto the teacher that gives easy As.

This would still work for special needs kids. There are teachers, believe it or not, that enjoy working with special needs kids.

Once this selection process starts you have established a market, and then you use money to fill the gaps where needed.

You will get teacher retention at a higher rate in schools where the family culture is such that the family does a bunch of the work for you. That's the same in any job, the job is easier if you don't have to do all of it.

But you won't necessarily retain the best teachers this way, because making teaching easier is not what will motivate the best teachers. The best teachers are very selfish -- they get a kick out of doing their job well, like other professionals. And for teachers, that means teaching a kid something he would never have been able to understand without the teacher's help, something no one thought he'd ever get. The superstar engineers are the ones who want to build the bridge over the biggest chasm, hit the moon, etc. They may never do any of that, but that's who they are. Same with teaching. That doesn't mean they want to teach kids from rough households or anti-academic family traditions. What it means is they want a teaching environment that lets them teach, and then they'll take the kid who can't read and teach him to read, and the white-Asian kid who can and teach him Euclid (or whatever).

Worked with a man in a majority Mexican-American district (all) where most were second language English speakers. He was teaching a group of them higher level math -- stand and deliver idea, if language is an impediment then the kids who want to be excellent can still get there with math. He was teaching pre-algebra and algebra. The superintendent ended the program.

Sure put him on the short-timer's calendar to retirement. .

I deal with engineers who speak almost no English. They are Chinese. They aren't even really better at math but they are less distracted and in a Ricardian trade comparative advantage sense they still end up focusing on math. I suppose the Indians would do the math if they didn't speak better English. Again, it's amazing what we do once we get out of public schools- a lot of it what people tell us can't be done that we manage to do at even higher levels when it is even harder.

This is a good argument against enormous salaries for any position, no?

I don't know what you are referring to, but I'm for nearly infinite potential pay for teachers.

Is there some evidence that incentives for good governance can work?

I'd love to run the experiment- as long as I get to bring the incentives with me.

Did they take into account the cheating that was detected in more than a few school during that time.
"When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?"

This is the correct answer. There can be no real effect observed when there is so much (50%-80% of classrooms) cheating is going on. The only way to really increase quality is to have entry level salary comparative to the private sector in particular fields. To make this work, you would also need high turnover. Get rid of the bad teachers quickly and keep the good ones.

We can't stop cheating in schools?

Time to pack it in.

How do we define and identify the bad teachers and the good ones? How many are "bad?" Where are we going to find more-skilled replacements?

"Where are we going to find more-skilled replacements? "

Why assume they need replacing instead of life-long learning and retraining? The rest simply get paid according to their value and if they can make more money elsewhere they can move on.

In addition to cheating you also have unbalanced classrooms. My principal can place 5 special needs students in my 8th grade class while the principal's buddy gets zero special needs kids in her class. This happens all the time.

The administrators are a big part of the problem.

Okay, what part of what I want to do gets in the way of the need to stop that?

Above someone claims that kind of thing might happen if schools did things the way everyone else manages to do things.

But if it already happens...

"... incentives based on rigorous teacher evaluations..."

Bad idea. Formal employee appraisal systems don't work anywhere and never have... despite vast experience & experimentation with them in big corporations, smaller companies, government, and the military.

Such evaluation/appraisal systems are always highly subjective in the formal criteria specified for employee performance, and in the judgments by individual supervisors. They also ignore the variable system/environment that employees must work within... but have no control over. Government school teachers in particular -- typically labor in byzantine bureaucracies, irrational rules/policies and incompetent upper management.

Sorting teachers are not the problem; bad management is the problem.
Most American schooling/education is ultimately managed by politicians.

But this study says they do work. Also they are based in this case mainly on objective measures (test results from one year to the next).

See Megan's comment above. Does it hold if there was widespread cheating? What if is a not uncommon phenomenon in schools offering incentive pay?

Grade and trade.

Teachers are damn near fungible...or if they aren't we are doin' it wrong.

Every objection is all so frickin' hysterical in light of reality. E.g. "we can't just let teachers move around because we can't make space for them!" I spent half my life in a tin can trailer. We already do about 3x of what "grade and trade" would do, we just don't admit it to ourselves.

I spent all 6th grade in a trailer, and from then on there were always trailers. Now, because of creative (i.e. illegal) financing, schools are Taj Mahals. The problem is all intransigence.

By the way, Michelle Rhee's war on the economic basis of Washington D.C.'s black middle class (easy government jobs) is having major demographic repercussions: as blacks leave D.C., there's a white baby boom going on, with the percentage of white babies born in D.C. up 34% in just the last 3 years.

Once upon a time, the great enterprises focused on hiring the best people so they would not need to figure out how to fire people.

The Federal government was a big innovator by removing hiring from the political crony method and adopted a "scientific" method of civil service exams and investigations of character.

When I was a kid in public school in the 50s and 60s, teachers were leaders in upping the standards just as they had been for my parents.

I have had no kids, so I observe the debate from a distance, but since Reagan, "government employees" are always the problem, so it seems they will never be the leaders in addressing the changing needs of society, and the people in charge of improving the education system are not educators but politicians or industrialists or bookkeepers or equipment suppliers.

The method of improvement to the process that is the latest to fail is to test the students to see if the right teachers were hired. That is like hiring a lot of people to operate lathes and milling machines and then using test gauges on the production just before a huge batch is being shipped to customers to decide of the employees should be kept or fired.

The stupidest idea is to hire people with absolutely no knowledge of machining on the assumption that they will come up with new ways to make parts, say using a milling machine instead of a lathe to produce a long round part.

The federal civil service developed an outstanding, scientifically-validated civil service exam in the mid-1970s, but the Carter administration through it out in January 1981 in the Luevano capitulation because the PACE test had disparate impact on blacks and Latinos. They promised a new non-disparate impact test would be developed real soon now, but a third of a century later, we're still waiting:

Well that's stupid, but not as stupid as making performance on a standardized test the main criterion for hiring federal jobs.

You could do a hell of a lot worse. There is literature on the factors that affect job performance and IQ is at the top of the list.

Read the article and learn about the alternatives. It's not a question of only relying on tests, it's a question of being able to use tests, just as Harvard looks for test scores and GPA and other factors.

Some departments, such as State, have devised their own test, but many just rely ever more heavily on resumes. One consequence is that the average age of federal new hires has gone up considerably.

The country would be better off with explicit racial quotas for blacks than with these kind of muddles.

Grade and trade.

I don't get this pervasive hostility to a standardized test? What's wrong with that?

Or are you saying the tests were badly set? If so, it's an argument for a better test question set; not just opposing performance measurement.

It is just a poor predictor of overall performance. Would you believe that in Canada they don't even use standardized tests as part of the college admissions process?

I don't mind test performance being used as _one_ factor of many, but just as almost no private employers rely primarily on a test to target their hiring, I don't think we should do that with government jobs. Even in the case of highly technical work, like programming, employment history and the ability to work on teams, meet deadlines, etc. are usually an important part of the vetting process. What I think government jobs could use more of are performance measures once the person is hired.

You know what is a poor predictor of success? Graduation. It's like grading a programmer on his ability to market and ship a product.

Student value-add is easy compared to anything the private sector has to do.

Standardized tests are a useful tool for evaluating individual students' strengths and weaknesses. They are not a useful tool for evaluating teacher performance.

Why not?

The tests are standardized so you can compare apples-to-apples.

So testing doesn't work at all? Then why do we do it?

Non-standardized tests are also known as tests made by teachers.

I never understand the mentality behind comments such as yours. I suspect it is "the way we do it now doesn't work." I agree.

What I want is choose your own adventure. I'd choose standardized math tests for my kid. They could be administered off-campus. Then I check and see what teachers create the best value-added on math at my kids level and just beyond. Then I want that teacher. None of the fact that we don't allow anyone to do that today changes how I feel about the ideal solution.

The problem is that no reasonable method has been determined to identify good teaching. Standardized tests are just how to identify who is getting kids to memorize set skills. That's not teaching or educating.

What does it mean to "memorize a skill"?

"Tests measure nothing!"

I think it was Matt Yglesias who said that teaching to the test is exactly what you want for some things like literacy.

Then it is time to pack it in.

The thing is, it is.

The problem with value added measures is that they don't *exactly* capture the teacher effect.

A kid does a standardised test and does badly. If he has rich parents they can send him off to tutoring and next year he posts a good score - but noone can say how much was the effect of tutoring, how much was the effect of the teacher. If he has poor parents then they can't send him off to tutoring.

That's one of the reasons why all the high quality teachers are in the richer schools - the parents pay for extra help, or are more able to give extra help, if the kid is doing badly and that gets confounded with the teacher effect. Meanwhile, teachers in the poor schools get disproportionately fired for being low quality teachers.

Grading teachers within a school or maybe a district would solve that problem, then?

Also, maybe you can more reliably give the teachers credit for scores that drop. Unless they stopped jthe tutoring after the improvement the year before...

Since when does anything have to be exact?

You have 30 students. Do you know how often a private sector factor gets 30 data points? I'd say you are taking drugs, driving in cars, and doing almost everything else that risks your life every day that never got 30 statistical data points.

Has anybody checked whether these kind of incentive systems have disparate impact on black teachers? The black voters of Washington fired Michelle Rhee's boss Mayor Fenty for her being mean to black teachers, so the political evidence, along with the last 50 years of social science, suggests that better systems of evaluation and reward will leave black teachers on average with the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

Grade and trade. Judge blacks versus blacks. Etc.

Why, for example, would we not want "Affirmative Action" for a black teacher teaching a large number of black students?

Why wouldn't a black teacher be, all else measured equal, marginally more effective for teaching black students?

I'd suspect they would be marginally more effective. And until white teachers completely crowd out black teachers by being paid less you probably need black teachers for white students too.

What is the problem? People act as if we control everything so they can't imagine a change that entails just letting go of things that we already don't really control anyway.

So, you collect the data. Then you compare the test results to the value-added of the black students and white students. Then you handicap the black teachers back to par. All of this is done by people who show, more or less, they aren't blatant racists and it is plenty good enough and is way better than what we are doing today where racism and cronyism hide behind vagaries like assignments, student assignments, crappy committee assignments, etc. At least then a teacher claiming racism could just pull out a sheet of paper with their numbers.

"Why wouldn’t a black teacher be, all else measured equal, marginally more effective for teaching black students?"

The problem James S. Coleman discovered in 1966 is that all else isn't, on average, equal: the white-black IQ gap is a major issue holding back mean black teacher effectiveness.

While doing the Coleman Report of 1966, James Coleman found that teachers' IQs had an impact on much children learned. Unfortunately, this meant that black teachers, especially black male teachers, tended to be worse for students than white teachers. Since black teachers were much of the basis for the black middle class, he suppressed this finding in the Coleman Report. He apologized for his violation of scientific ethics a couple of decades later.

Documentation here:

Did it account for character education, for example? I could almost care less of how many BS factoids my kid learns (excepting of course, by definition, how to think logically and mathematically, etc.). I could point to a bunch of Youtube videos of black male teachers who I'd love my kid to have as a teacher even if they were marginally worse at spouting trivia.

I don't want Obama deciding what teachers to hire and fire whether he's doing it wrong or (in his mind) right.

Hell, I could say the exact thing about graduate school professors. Give me one unimpressive guy who gives a shit over all the impressive a-holes who I lose ground with every time I interact with them.

I can imagine two types of incentives (surely there are more). One type works on reserves while the other works on development (another could work on matching- if a teacher has no reserves and cannot be developed maybe they need to be "re-matched"). For example, it may be hard to just have a good teacher or a poor performer do better for different reasons. A good teacher that has reserves like staying later to plan lessons or giving individual attention to students early in the morning (how I passed my 3rd grade timed math tests) these could be tapped by the right incentives. Development incentives could be longer-term and could also be partially placed at the feet of the principal.

You don't want it to be like academia where failure to develop an employee is deemed a success.

You don't have to pay a person more to stay after to help students. If you do that, in fact, what you are going to get is a whole system set up around it, with teachers bickering over how to fill out the time cards for it and whether Mrs. S got more than Mrs. G did for whatever.

What schools have to do is let good teachers teach. They don't want them staying after or coming early -- I got dressed down for opening my doors before school hours. And they don't want teachers planning their lessons, they want to hand them federal Common Core standards packaged in Houghten Mifflen curriculum you just follow along with like those old recordings where the kid reads along with the tape and it goes "bing" when you have to turn the page.

If the schools were ever entirely successful in producing the kind of teachers they consider good teachers, we'd have no good teaching going on in the public schools at all.

No, you pay the teachers to increase average and individual value-adds, though you never over-incentivize anything at the expense of everything. Paying them to stay late would be stupid. Don't do what I'm saying.

To generalize, as either Deming or Drucker (or surely both) said, any time you have an indicator and incentive, you have a counter indicator and incentive. You can even over-reward as long as you have an indicator to identify the selfish bastards.

If I were to walk into a school this morning and moon the principal, that would be better than what the dys-regulation we are currently doing:
"...that’s still just a tiny fraction of the roughly $100 billion in his budget (much of which the government direct-deposits into the bank accounts of schools, whether they deserve the money or not). "

"where will we find replacement teachers?!?"

Well, for a job that usually requires a degree, 40-50% of teachers leave in their first five years, so obviously what we are doing today ain't fer shit. That is worse than attrition at a typical company for which you don't toss your degree (e.g. if you are no longer a teacher, what good is your education degree?). We'd have to try hard to do any worse.

We can't possibly figure out how to grade teacher performance doing the actual job...but the tests they take towards their education college degree are fine.

What are we doing here people?

Most teachers are women, so I expect they leave to start families. Also, there are only so many white/Asian middle class school districts to go around. If you haven't landed in one by then, you are probably burned out after five years attempting to educate the uneducable.

The Atlantic article you linked and the cited studies work very hard to avoid inadvertently stumbling onto an answer.

The next step is to get rid of public schools and increase competition.

Value-added modeling (VAM) is a useful and statistically valid method for exploring questions such as what proportion of the variance of student outcomes is attributable to school-level factors vs. classroom-level factors. It provides reasonable estimates of the value associated with general factors such as the marginal benefit of a year of teacher experience beyond the first three years or the marginal value of additional years of teach teacher training and the like.

When aggregated across several years, it can provide a somewhat reliable indication of between-teacher differences in the outcomes measured by the associated tests.

However, these models are nowhere near reliable enough to provide a useful estimate of between-teacher differences in outcomes on a class-by-class or year-by-year basis. By extension, they provide no useful feedback to the teacher for improving performance.

They are completely useless for predicting how a given student is likely to be affected by a choice of teachers, even if the criterion of interest is simply performance on a given standardized test.

It is notable that in the study cited the measure of quality went well beyond VAM. When heavily augmented with more comprehensive methods, such as direct observation, there may be a useful role for VAM, but it can at best play a small role.

Given what we know about contracts and incentives in complex mutli-task settings (e.g. Feltham and Xie, 1994), it would be more than a little surprising if incentives turned out to be very effective for improving the quality of teaching.

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Call for Papers – Innovative Technologies for the Marine Transportation System

From the Executive Director of the Committee on the Marine Transportation System (CMTS):

“A friendly reminder that the deadline to send abstracts for the upcoming Resilient MTS conference is nearing.  We expect that the deadline may be extended a bit.  Please forward this information to your staff and stakeholders.  Sincere thank you!

“We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the upcoming TRB-CMTS conference, “Innovative Technologies for a Resilient Marine Transportation System” to be held June 24-26, 2014, at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC.  Persons interested in submitting a paper or presenting relevant research should submit an abstract of 300 words or less by 28 February. We sincerely appreciate if you would forward this information to your innovative technology and resiliency experts and to interested stakeholders.

Further information:  Call for Papers

Sincere regards,

Helen A. Brohl”

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How to Galvinize Wakefield

Galvin Middle School - Wakefield, MAThe campaign to sell the town of Wakefield a new Galvin Middle School is already gathering steam and is likely to continue unabated through the May Annual Town Meeting and beyond.

It’s going to be a hard sell. With a $74,740,254, price tag, building a brand new, state-of-the-art middle school is going to require the town to pass a debt exclusion under Proposition 2½. That will mean a $175 bump on the average homeowner’s annual property tax bill.

But not to worry. I can offer some tried and true, surefire strategies for “educating” taxpayers and convincing even the stingiest among them to fork over more dough. Unlike building a new school, my advice is free – and I trust you’ll find it worth every penny.

First, try to state the cost in terms that even average people can understand. As often as possible, use the “It’s only a cup of Starbuck’s coffee a week” analogy, or some variation thereof. Take it from me, Starbucksnothing appeals to the taxpayer more than the old “It’s only a cup of coffee a week” routine. Hey, there’s a reason it got to be a cliché.

Accuse those who disagree with you of wanting to “throw children to the curb.”

Blame the condition of the schools on selfish senior citizens who resist tax increases. Paint the elderly as immature, ignorant and out-of-touch.

Inform your 75 year-old retired neighbor that a debt exclusion will increase his taxes only for the next 20 years. Assure him that unlike an override, it’s not “forever.”

When addressing opponents, flatter them that they raise really good points and assure them that you really, honestly, truly do understand that some people can’t afford it – and then proceed to lecture them on why they should vote for it anyway.

School hallwayRemind your opponents that, unlike them, you take pride in your community and are willing to spend money to prove it. Accuse those who disagree with you of “negativity.”

Point out to skeptics that debt exclusions and overrides are part of Proposition 2½ and were put there for a reason. Don’t mention that provisions for “underrides” are also part of Prop. 2 1/2. No sense giving them ideas.

Allow your children to get involved in the campaign. Nothing comes more naturally to middle school kids than holding political signs and composing letters. Why stand in their way?

Suggest that anyone calling for a different approach is living in the past.

Remind the voters that the state will be providing half of the funds for the new school and if we don’t approve the debt exclusion, some other town will get “our” money. It’s us or them.

I think you’ll find these time-tested strategies to be persuasive in winning the hearts and minds of voters.

No need to thank me. It takes a village, after all.

[This column originally appeared in the February 23, 2012 Wakefield Daily Item.]

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2 Responses to “How to Galvinize Wakefield”

  1. Thanks Mark. I’ve added a link to this on the website of Citizens for Limited Taxation’s Proposition 2½ section:

    Chip Ford
    Director of Operations
    Citizens for Limited Taxation

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5 moments when 'Stranger Things 2' was perfectly channeling Harry Potter

Burdened with destiny!
Burdened with destiny!
Image: mashable composite/warner bros/netflix

Stranger Things pulls from a known library of classic ‘80s movies, but it's also a classic story of a ragtag team of scrappy heroes fighting the battle of good versus evil. That's a tale as old as time —and the secret behind some of Hollywood's most successful and resonant stories.

There are a lot of things you'd compare Stranger Things to before Harry Potter, but Season 2 has the kind of similarities that won't escape an observant Potter fan. They're not terribly obvious references, but that's what makes them even more fun to spot and appreciate.

Devil’s Snare

Hopper gets caught in the tangled roots (arms?) of the shadow monster below Hawkins, and it starts to wrap around him like the Devil’s Snare that Harry, Ron, and Hermione encounter in the first Harry Potter book. Hey Hopper, did you try sunlight?

Will's visions

Image: netflix

Once he’s host to the “shadow monster,” Will isn’t entirely himself. "It's like I feel what the shadow monster is feeling, see what he's seeing," Will says. He can see and feel the monster alongside his own consciousness, the same way Harry can sense Voldemort’s emotions and see into his mind. But at least Harry didn't use the term "now-memories."

A horcrux among us

Speaking of Harry's connection to Voldemort, Will being host has some nasty side effects, like the beginning of episode 6 when his in agonizing pain because people from the lab tried to ignite the Mind Flayer's underground lair. He says it hurts "everywhere," but there's no physical indication of pain; the worst pain Harry experienced in the series was in book five during the battle at the Department of Mysteries:

And then Harry's scar burst open. He knew he was dead: it was pain beyond imagining, pain past endurance –
He was gone from the hall, he was locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that Harry did not know where his body ended and the creature's began. They were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape...Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again...

This sounds unpleasant! But the secret, as Harry learns and Will needs to figure out, is love.

The angry young man

So troubled.

So troubled.

Image: Netlflix

Not that Harry was ever anywhere near Billy, but Max describes her brother as “angry all the time” – the same words Harry uses to describe himself in the film version of Order of the Phoenix. Billy makes book 5 Harry look like a walk in the park.

A vaporous villain

During the finale, the season's underwhelming de facto villain, the Mind Flayer, leaves Will’s body in a cloud of ominous black smoke. You know who else did that? VOLDEMORT, and he sure as hell came back. At least Will fared better than Professor Quirrell...for now anyway.

Stranger Things 2 is now streaming on Netflix.

WATCH: This scene from 'Stranger Things' is straight out of 'X-Men: First Class'

Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint api production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fvideo uploaders%2fdistribution thumb%2fimage%2f82697%2faca0161d 5b40 40e2 9316 3f3327e6805c


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Commission Waiver Policy

While the company covers the cost of the conferences, which are expected to be in excess of $500 per rep, each rep agrees to waive one monthly residual commission to attend.

The company policy is as follows:

  • The company will apply the “last” *Qualified* sale submitted by the rep to the waiver

Or if there are no *Qualified* sales available at that time:

  • The company will apply the next *Qualified* sale submitted by the rep to the waiver

(*Qualified* sale is any sale after the Reps First Sale)

How to Attend, without any sales applied to the waiver prior to the Conference.

Being that we want everyone to attend the conference, which will cost the company over $500 per attendee, and knowing that there is still more than 6 weeks left in the summer to make sales, if the Rep does not have a *Qualified* sale to apply to the waiver for registration, the rep may deposit $200 with the company and attend the conference. When the Rep has a second sale (which Qualifies for waiver) submitted to the company, the $200 deposit will be refunded to the Rep. This deposit will be held on account, until a second sale is applied to the waiver, at any time in the future.

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Pasta with Coriander Mint and Cashew nut Pesto

March 5, 2018mayurisjikoni

Sun, Sand and Sea

   For the past couple of days I’ve been spending some relaxing and fun time with my family at Watamu. Watamu is a small coastal town just outside Malindi. We’re here to celebrate my aunt’s(foi, bua) 90th birthday which is today. Yes, you read right, 90th. I decided to treat all my 3 aunts to a foot and arm massage at the spa run by Medina Palms. As I was filling in the form of questionnaires for her, when I came to the part of if she’s taking any medication, she says very sadly ‘ yes, the doctor has prescribed Vitamins and Iron pills. Write that down”. So I go but that’s good for health and they only ask if you’ve got health issues. Basically, at 90 she’s healthy, walking without a stick and has all her natural teeth intact. I seriously hope I have her genes. It’s after a very long time I’m spending some rest and relaxation holiday with my family. All of them couldn’t make it, but we’re 13 of us, the youngest is 30 and the oldest is 90.

   Beaches in Kenya are so clean, whitish sand and blue seas. We’re all catching up on news, gossip and coming events. Daily walks on the beach, swimming, eating and drinking and some more drinking! We have lots of small traders selling souvenirs, clothes, trinkets etc on the beach. One of traders is selling turtles which are entirely made of driftwood, discarded rubber slippers and nails. They look so cute. They are also selling small sharks and crocodiles but I found the turtles look the best. How innovative!

   The #134th theme for FoodieMonday/Bloghop group was #Pasta Sauce, which had to be something different and not the normal tomato and white sauce. This theme was chosen by me. Last week was very very hot and enjoying any hot spicy food was out of the question. Hubby and I were craving for a plate of pasta so I decided to make pesto sauce. This pesto is different from the the classic one. I used what is readily available in Mombasa. I’ve used fresh coriander, mint, cashew nuts and garlic. Warm pasta with pesto is a filling and satisfying meal.

Check out the recipe for this simple and yet delicious pasta with coriander, mint and cashew nut pesto.

Watamu, Kenya … Indian Ocean
Very innovative. Turtles made using drift wood and olde rubber slippers.

Serves 4

For the pasta:
3 cups boiled pasta
1½ (about 250g) cups mushroom chunks
½ cup cooked sweet corn
1 tsp garlic paste
2 tbsp olive oil
½ – ¾ tsp salt

for the pesto:

1 cup cashew nuts
½ cup chopped fresh coriander
½ cup fresh chopped mint
3-4 cloves of garlic
¼ – ⅓ cup olive oil
1-2 green chilis
½ tsp salt or to your taste
½ tsp coarse pepper powder

For serving:

some parmesan cheese

Preparation of the pasta:

  1. Heat oil in a wide pan over medium heat.
  2. Add garlic paste and saute it for a few seconds.
  3. Add the mushrooms and stir fry till they are just done and not overcooked.
  4. Add corn, pasta and salt.
  5. Mix well and take the pan off the heat.
To prepare the pesto:
  1. Roast the cashew nuts lightly in a wide pan till they become light pink in color.
  2. Chop the cashew nuts into chunks.
  3. Add the nuts, mint, coriander, chilli, garlic, salt and oil into a food processor.
  4. Process the ingredients to a coarse paste.
  5. Remove from the food processor into a container.
  6. Add pepper and mix well.
To serve pasta:
  1. Add pesto according to how much you want to the pasta.
  2. Mix well.
  3. Sprinkle some parmesan cheese over it and serve.
  • Add more olive oil to the pesto if it appears dry.
  • Add garlic and chilis according to your taste.
  • I usually boil pasta according to the instructions on the packet. I add a bit of olive oil after they are done so that they do not stick to each other.
  • Add vegetables of your choice to the pasta.
  • Use leftover pesto for sandwiches or add to your salad.
You may want to check out the following pasta sauces:

Pasta with roasted tomato and red pepper sauce
Pasta with Spinach Sauce
pasta with butternut squash
pasta with mushroom sauce
Sending this recipe to the following event:

  • Poonam Bachhav

    March 5, 2018 at 3:42 pm

    I love the way you cook your food with the available ingredients di…your version of pesto sauce looks tempting and sounds very flavorful. Hugs to your aunt and convey my regards on her birthday !

  • Sujata Roy

    March 6, 2018 at 7:26 am

    Pesto with roasted cashew nuts sounds delicious. Bookmarking the recipe. I have to try it soon.

  • firsttimercook

    March 6, 2018 at 11:17 am

    I just love the way of using all the fresh ingredients available at your side.
    This sauce looks so tempting di 👌😊

  • thegalnxtdoor

    March 6, 2018 at 12:09 pm

    I've always wanted to make pasta with coriander pesto, but never got around to it. Your version looks so good, I want to try it out immediately!

    March 6, 2018 at 6:53 pm

    I just loved this Pesto along with Kriti's for the beautiful way to use natural ingredients!A wow post!

  • veena krishnakumar

    March 9, 2018 at 12:21 pm

    This pesto edition is super. Pesto with coriander sounds yumm!!

  • Anonymous

    March 9, 2018 at 7:16 pm

    My spouse and I stumbled over here different website and
    thought I may as well check things out. I
    like what I see so now i'm following you. Look forward to looking at your
    web page for a second time.

  • Lathi L

    March 9, 2018 at 11:39 pm

    Coriander, mint and cashews.. incredible…I can imagine how awesome the flavor be

  • Shobha

    March 10, 2018 at 1:58 am

    Lovely variation of ingredients for pesto sauce.. will surely give it a try too.

  • Mallika Bhandary

    March 10, 2018 at 8:54 pm

    Coriander pesto sounds perfect as it is one herb that is always found in an Indian kitchen! Genius and wonderful!

  • Give Me Some Spice

    March 11, 2018 at 1:06 pm

    Your version of pesto sounds so tasty. I must try it soon. It's lovely to read about your family and your aunt. Watamu sounds like a lovely place to relax. I have been to Mombasa and Malindi but never Watamu. I love listening to stories about all these coastal towns as most of them have mysteries and amazing folklore.

  • Sujitha Ruban

    March 11, 2018 at 1:16 pm

    This is a different way of preparing pesto with handy ingredients.. Can feel the aroma of the pesto and pasta.. Inviting idea Mayuri ji..

  • Anonymous

    March 12, 2018 at 5:14 pm

    This was a simple dish to make. Very different to the usual pasta dishes I usually make. It has a lovely fresh taste to it. And my two year old kept on asking for more! So definitely a hit with my family.

  • Kriti Singhal

    March 13, 2018 at 7:29 am

    This looks super delightful and so innovative! 🙂 I have never imagined pesto with corriander leaves… Awesome share!

  • Preethi Prasad

    March 18, 2018 at 5:12 am

    Corriander pesto looks so good. Freshly made pesto adds nice flavor and colour to the pasta.Beautiful share!!

  • Aruna

    March 28, 2018 at 1:40 am

    More more to your aunts, Mayuri. At 85, my father has not one of the chronic ailments and I hope I inherited those genes too.

    Those turtles, they are just so cute.

    Ever since I discovered Pesto a couple of decades ago, it is my go-to sauce for pasta and you have absolutely nailed it!

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• 674. Black Forest Trifle

    July 19, 2017mayurisjikoni

    Delish and Evil Theme: No bake Desserts BM#78 Week 3 Day 3 When I saw so many dark ruby red cherries at the market and in the supermarket, I was tempted to bake a black forest cake. Basically a Black Forest cake, is layers of chocolate cake, kirsch soaked cherries, grated chocolate and whipped cream. Kirsch(kirsch wasser) is a spirit made from tart cherries. I would have loved to bake this cake or gateau as its called. However, my family would have probably thrown me out with all the dessert I’m making for the past few days. Remember I mentioned in the last dessert post that I was looking for brownies. Well, its for this dessert. Since I couldn’t bake the cake(who will eat it??)…

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Michael Wise
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EMAIL mwise@mcdonaldhopkins.com

PHONE 216.430.2034

WATCH: Meet Mike Wise

Connect with Mike

Mike is the Co-Chair of the firm’s Energy Practice Group and prior Chairman of the Firm’s Government and Public Finance Group. Mike has extensive experience working on gas and electricity related issues. He is also working directly with a number of advanced / renewable energy companies on finance and regulatory issues. Mike's practice includes oil and gas issues, particularly as it relates to shale opportunities.

Prior to joining McDonald Hopkins, Mike was the Director of Governor Taft’s Regional Economic Development Office in Cleveland, where he was the senior liaison between the Cleveland business community and the Governor. While at the Governor’s office, Mike worked on securing state funds for local projects ranging from infrastructure improvements to tax credits for job creation to capital improvement projects for the region. He was involved in numerous major public/private partnerships. Mike continues to assist clients in financially engineering their projects with the assistance of public support.

Mike is also a former member of the Ohio General Assembly and the former Co-Chair of the Cuyahoga County Republican Party. He served on the Republican State Central Committee and has acted as Special Counsel to the Ohio Attorney General for the last 11 years. He currently also serves as a trustee in Chagrin Falls Township.

Mike earned his J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in 1990. He attended Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and received a B.A., with highest honors, from Grove City College in 1984.

Representative Cases/Matters

  • Represents a national oil and gas driller with respect to government issues and land rights.
  • Represented an advanced energy company in regards to its FERC permits for an installation off the coast of New Jersey.
  • Represented a start up company in regards to its FERC and Army Corp permits for river installations.
  • Obtained a new Final Rule regarding tire registration for a distributor.
  • Represented a consortium of coal companies in securing a federal appropriation.
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  • Representation of a major steel manufacturer with respect to a $250 million dollar federally guaranteed loan.
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  • Representation of a coalition of Fortune 1000 companies with respect to a legislative initiative to mitigate asbestos exposure.
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  • Representation of a shale E&P with focus on legislative, regulatory, and water issues.
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Without Meat and Dairy Farmlands Could be Reduced by 75%

Without Meat and Dairy Farmlands Could be Reduced by 75% | Meat Your Future

Ditching meat and dairy is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the most comprehensive analysis to date on the impact of agriculture on the planet.

Animal agriculture is (by far) the largest anthropogenic user of land on the planet –with at least 30% of the ice-free surface of the planet dedicated to livestock (per the UN FAO).

And this recent study, published earlier this month (June 2018) in journal Science, found that, by eliminating meat and dairy, we could feed the world while reducing global farmland by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined.

This is an urgent existential issue, because we are already in the midst of what scientists have concluded is the Sixth Mass Extinction in Earth’s biological history. And, the leading driver of this precipitous loss of species is the destruction of natural habitats due to human activities like animal agriculture.

This problem is more than sufficient, by itself, to justify the need for a mass global shift away from animal foods as fast as we possibly can. But there happens to be numerous other converging environmental problems in which our dietary choices play a huge role.

As lead researcher behind the study, Joseph Poore of Oxford, said: “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use…. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.”

In addition to these environmental crises that require an urgent shift away from animal foods, a balanced vegan diet also happens to be very healthy and withdraws support for the mass suffering and death currently imposed upon countless billions of vulnerable animals. We can’t think of one good reason, for any of us with autonomy and access to basic food options, to not be vegan.

So, if you haven’t already, please familiarize yourself with these important issues, do whatever you can to help raise awareness among others, and go vegan.

*Full Citation to Referenced Study: J. Poore and T. Nemecek. Reducing Food’s Environmental Impacts Through Producers and Consumers. Journal Science. 2018 Jun.; 360 (6392) 987-992.

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Guedel airway

Gue·del airway

oropharyngeal airway used to ensure airway patency during general anesthesia.

Arthur Ernest, U.S. anesthetist, 1883–.
Guedel airway - rubber oropharyngeal airway.

Gue·del air·way

(gū-del ārwā)
Oropharyngeal airway used to ensure airway patency during general anesthesia.
References in periodicals archive ?
Bag and mask ventilation with a Guedel airway in situ was difficult and oxygen saturations could not be maintained above 75% with a two-anaesthetist technique.
Insert a Guedel airway and ventilate the patient manually with a face mask while waiting for more experienced help.
After loss of consciousness bag-mask ventilation was attempted which was difficult, requiring a Guedel airway and two-person technique.
Contract awarded for call for quotes for the supply of guedel airway size 000
The subject of this call for quotes is the supply of guedel airway size 000.
2]O) which did not improve after Guedel airway insertion.
60 Oropharyngeal airway Guedel airway (Mayo-tube): sizes medium and large 8
Laryngeal mask airway vs face mask and Guedel airway during pediatric myringotomy.
The bite-block tube can be inserted in the same way as a Guedel airway.
The data were collected by the anaesthesiologist performing the case and included: demographic, surgical and airway assessment details, efficacy of facemask ventilation (Guedel airway not required, Guedel airway required, Guedel airway plus jaw thrust required, failure to ventilate), ease of ProSeal LMA insertion (number of attempts), aetiology of failed insertion (failed passage into pharynx, malposition, ineffective ventilation), ventilation success (SP[O.
nasal, guedel, LMA, ETT, and also to insert when appropriate nasal and guedel airways.
Contract award: provision of tracheal cannulas - Speaking Valves - Guedel airways - fastening straps for tracheostomy and intubation probe - mandrels intubation - gauges - swabs non sterile single use


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May 2017

- " A Short Song on every Path..." -

For a long time, I had thought that the tall birch tree between Hamfelde and Basthorst, two villages near Hamburg, would be a good a motif for me. With its lively branches dancing in the wind, this tree drew my attention whenever I passed it. On a nice day in May I painted it and then visited my friend Ute in Reinbek.

Like in old student days in Berlin, prints by Gauguin, van Gogh and Paula Modersohn-Becker adorn her walls today. She loves art, literature and France as I love painting, writing and traveling through the world. “Don’t you want to show me your new painting?" Ute asked whilst we sat at the beautifully laid table in her garden. Looking at my sketch book, her eyes glowed in a familiar way: “Ah yes, you always liked trees! I can remember exactly the big palm that you painted in our shared flat next to your tiled stove – from the floor to the ceiling.” – Flashback! There it was again in front of me, my old room with the palm, the large bay windows, my hammock across the room, the many green plants, my two zebra finches, the antique desk and a certain postcard on the wall above it.

“Yes, I remember – and now, finally, I know why I painted this birch tree!” – Ute looked at me in surprise. “You still know my uncle Ernst, don’t you?” I began. “He taught me a vagabond song, when I was 6 or 7 years old, which I have never forgotten. And do you remember the postcard on my wall at that time, the one with the two old men under a birch tree? I bought it for myself in my first semester at university because it reminded me of this song. Yes, and when I painted this birch now, it is definitely a throwback to the postcard from way back then. A subconscious chain of association, so to speak!” Ute’s cheeks revealed a dimple from the left and right. “You cannot be serious,” she laughed. “You've just made that up.” I shrugged, put on an ‘everything-is-possible’ look – and then gave in. “Yes, I think you’re right,” I said, “but it’s somehow musical, my birch tree.” And then I spontaneously sang my uncle’s unforgotten song to her.

> order magnetic bookmark motif  ' My birch tree '


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For the Reader

Dear Reader,

I cannot thank you enough for giving my books a try. It is why I write. Without a reader, a writer is nothing. I hope my books have brought you joy, made you think, supplied laughter, dampened your eyes and given you hope. If so, I have succeeded. I wish you all the best.

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Old Home Week

I’ve been waiting for our hobo Black-headed Grosbeak to ride the Spring Migration rails through town, and he finally showed up. We saw him northbound last April, and heading south in September. He’s only around for a day or two, and I might have missed him but we had (people) visitors in town, and I’d taken a day off and consequently was enjoying a leisurely breakfast on a weekday when one of the Visitors said “hey!”, or something along those lines. Looking outside the dining room window, there was our Grosbeak.

Black-headed Grosbeak

This time, just the man version. Last two visits it was a lady and a gent, so he must have said something wrong and now she’s had it with him. I had hoped that they might have logged our feeders as a reliable way-station on their long journey, much as we do with Casa de Fruta on drives down Interstate 5 to LA, or Knights Ferry on trips to Yosemite. Third time’s a charm, so I expect now to see the Grosbeak stopping by sometime in the third week of September. They spend the winter in Mexico, in the same area where the Monarch butterfly winters. I just learned that they are one of a few birds that can eat the Monarch, which has self-defense toxins. Apparently they have to wait 8 days in between eating Monarchs, to allow the toxins to clear. How do they know 8 days have passed? I just planted milkweed to attract Monarchs, so this will provide even more incentive for the Grosbeak to return.

The other cool bird thing that happened this weekend involves the Dark-eyed Junco. We’d been seeing a pair hitting the backyard feeder pretty hard lately, which isn’t normally their thing. The Junco likes to forage on the ground, so it was an unusual sight to see them among the lollygagging Finches who dominate the feeders. But late yesterday afternoon, as we were at leisure on the backyard deck, the Resident Expert noted some particularly noisy birds in the underbrush. They looked like little sparrows, but were hanging out with two Juncos. Then we saw the adults feeding the little birds. New Juncos! The juveniles are a lot of fun to watch, as they’re not particularly great at flying yet, and still rely on their parents for food. But in all other respects they represent the typically busy and enthusiastic demeanor of the Junco.

Junco familyWe also have a Chestnut-backed Chickadee family going in a nest box in the backyard, but the young ones are taking their time fledging. The parents have been zipping in and out of the nest box non-stop for a week or more, presumably bringing food back to the nest. They’ll probably take their first flight this week, while we are at work, busily attending to our responsibilities so that we can bring food back to the nest.

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