Saturday, May 24, 2014

Would you buy a Housing Development from this Crowd?

"Contribute or Else"- A history of land use/politics in Marinwood

Cameron Case and Walter Dods explain the casual nature of the Marinwood Association. It was essentially a group of self-appointed residents that claimed to represent the community whenever there was a crisis. Former CSD Director Walter Dods explains that Susan Adams forced "contributions" to the Marin Collaborative from Marinwood CSD and Marinwood Association. Now through the recent revelations from the the five "Friends of Marinwood Village" (Kathy Gaines, Cameron Case, Jon Hammond, Bruce Anderson and Robert Pendolay) that not just a few hundred dollars was donated.

In fact $3000 came from the CSD and $2000 from the Marinwood Association.  We found in September 2013, that the Marinwood Association had less than 20 paid members and did no accounting.

It begs the question, "how did the Marinwood Association, with no assets, and a few members come up with $2000 to "give" to Susan Adam's Marinwood Village Collaborative?   Did it come from an outside source? Why?

Bruce Anderson, former CSD director and Vice President of the Marinwood Association surely knows....

Bruce Anderson

Saturday Night Movies:

The Beast Inside from Drew Christie on Vimeo.

Max Cooper - Supine from Tom Geraedts on Vimeo.

Audax Alpine Classic from Nathan Kaso on Vimeo.

THE LAST MEMORY (short film) from Oliver Latta on Vimeo.

Texas Six from Victory Journal on Vimeo.

One Hour of San Diego Surfing Time Collapsed: San Diego Study #4 from Cy Kuckenbaker on Vimeo.

Portrait of my grandfather : 80 and still cycling from Florent Piovesan on Vimeo.

Ulrich Forman - I Got You from Garnier/LeGallo on Vimeo.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Friday Night Music: Cream, Easy Rider, Buffalo Springfield the Byrds

Privacy: Can we convince five strangers in a bar that we were old friends?

A New Parking App That's Virtually Guaranteed to Stir Up Controversy

A New Parking App That's Virtually Guaranteed to Stir Up Controversy

MonkeyParking lets users bid for street parking spaces occupied by other drivers

[Editor's Note: One of the "genius ideas"of smart growth planners is to remove parking and/or increase parking rates and fines to drive up the costs of automobile ownership and encourage transit.  The free market comes to the rescue with this new app.  Is anyone surprised? ]
Say you've been circling around downtown for 20 minutes, hunting for a street parking spot — and failing. At that point, you can keep circling, give up and find a garage, or vow never to take your car into that part of the city again.

In San Francisco and Rome, at least, there’s now another option, and it's decidedly controversial. With MonkeyParking, an audacious new mobile app from Italy, you can bid for a parking spot already occupied by somebody else. Here’s how it works.
Requesting parking (screenshots via MonkeyParking
To find parking options, you first drop a pin on the map to broadcast your request for spots nearby and then select how much you’re willing to pay — currently the options start at $5 and go up to $20. People who’ve listed their parked cars on the app will get a notification that someone wants their spot. At that point, they can either accept the bid right away, wait a bit to see if there are higher bids, or ignore it completely if they’re not ready to leave.
In San Francisco last month, MonkeyParking co-founder and CEO Paolo Dobrowolny rented a car to personally test out the service. He put out a request for parking in the SOMA district and offered $5. His bid was promptly accepted by someone who'd been getting ready to leave work. From this sample scenario, you can imagine, say, people listing their parked cars as they prepare to leave a restaurant or the gym.  
Responding to bids (screenshots via MonkeyParking
The app, currently only available for iOS devices, launched in San Francisco last month and in Rome about ten days ago. Though the app is not taking any commissions during this beta stage, eventually the business model is to take a percentage of successful bids.
So far, MonkeyParking has triggered no shortage of backlash — there are complaints that it’s partial to the rich, that it would encourage parking spot "squatters," that it, quite frankly, creates shady profits off public property. 

Dobrowolny is unfazed. He argues MonkeyParking doesn't broker parking spaces themselves,  but rather the valuable information that somebody is just about to leave a spot. In other words, the meters will still be fed, but the app gives parked drivers an incentive to sync up with drivers desperate for a spot right now.
This sort of parking space optimization, Dobrowolny argues, can reduce the time people spend circling the blocks, and as result, cuts down on traffic, fuel consumption, and pollution as well.

Dobrowolny thinks his team will also be able to enforce fair behavior. They'd observe for suspicious patterns —  i.e. the same person is engaging in the same actions in one space in a short timespan — and remove the "cheaters." Once more data is available, they can also regulate users with a rating system. 

While the bidding system certainly favors those with more money to spare, it’s also how MonkeyParking plans to gather data on how much various parking spaces are really worth at different times of the day. With that information, Dobrowolny says MonkeyParking could, for example, run an algorithm that automatically generates bids. 
A map of MonkeyParkers near San Francisco's Financial District on May 21, 2014 (screenshot via MonkeyParking app) 
MonkeyParking is still taking shape and there’s a lot more fine-tuning to be done. Dobrowolny says that compared to earlier iterations of the app tested in Rome over the last year, the current approach is getting much more user engagement — about 65 percent of people who downloaded the app are listing their cars on the map. But he says not all of those people are following through and accepting bids just yet.

Last week, MonkeyParking launched a "contest" that lets people vote for the next city to get the service. So far, New York City has the most votes, followed by Boston, and then locations dispersed around the world.  

Meanwhile, both the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office and Municipal Transportation Agency are still trying to figure out how to respond. A spokesperson for the SFMTA says they're "assessing the concerns and determining the most appropriate approach." And according to a spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office, evaluating the legality of this service will be a long-term process. 

At this rate, MonkeyParking could gain traction before confronting any real efforts at regulation — that is, assuming the parking space "hand-offs" transpire as smoothly as users will expect it to. Knowing how unpredictable road and traffic conditions can be, that's hard to guarantee. 

Larkspur Landing Meeting and Rally on KTVU

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Larkspur Station Area Plan. Over 700 residents spoke out against Reckless Housing Scheme

Dick Spotswood: Fairfax housing flap is not Tea Party politics

Dick Spotswood: Fairfax housing flap is not Tea Party politics

VOLUNTEERS recently gathered almost 1,000 signatures in Fairfax to overturn the town's new zoning ordinance. That law, subsequently repealed by the Town Council, would have permitted building 142 housing units in the community's downtown.
In a town with barely 2,000 registered voters, that's a substantial outpouring against what some perceived as enabling excessive concentrated growth.
While there are two sides to debate over the zoning law's merits, few dispute that town staff and the council majority were deficient in effectively communicating their message.
The large number of signatures on the referendum petition is revealing about those opposing urbanization of the east side of Marin.

These folks are occasionally labeled by some high-density housing activists as "Tea Partyites." That slam doesn't wash.

Fairfax is Marin's most politically left-leaning municipality and one of California's most progressive towns. It would be amazing if there are 20 Tea Party members in the whole place.
A leader behind the referendum is former Fairfax mayor Frank Egger. Over four decades on the Town Council, Egger earned a reputation as one of the North Bay's most progressive elected officials.
Then there's Bob Silvestri. He was the speaker at Saturday's gathering attended by almost 425 residents upset about Larkspur's SMART Station Area Plan. The Mill Valleyan is at the intellectual center of efforts to thwart regional agencies' efforts to encourage "transit-centered" high-density housing.

Silvestri, who spent most of his professional career as an affordable housing developer, is a certifiable progressive on most issues.

There are some conservatives opposing the regional agencies' housing initiative, but the effort to retain Marin's small-town character is locally based and nonpartisan. Similarly, there are both liberal Democrats and big business-oriented Republicans backing high-density development.
The demonization that most citizens opposed to densification are Tea Party acolytes is just spin. While it's fair to disagree with those wishing to preserve small-town Marin, this stunt quickly collapses under examination.

How to Spot a Liar/ Body Language Secrets

Minnesota Fights Back "Smart" Growth: Turning the Twin Cities Into Sim City


Turning the Twin Cities Into Sim City

The Metropolitan Council's plans include making sure there is a proper mix of races and incomes in each suburb.

May 19, 2014 7:03 p.m. ET
Wall Street Journal

Here in the Twin Cities, a handful of unelected bureaucrats are gearing up to impose their vision of the ideal society on the nearly three million residents of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro region. According to the urban planners on the city's Metropolitan Council, far too many people live in single family homes, have neighbors with similar incomes and skin color, and contribute to climate change by driving to work. They intend to change all that with a 30-year master plan called "Thrive MSP 2040."

The Met Council, as it's known here, was founded in the 1960s to coordinate regional infrastructure—in essence, to make sure that sewers and roads meet up. Over the years, its power to allocate funds and control planning has expanded. Now, under Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton—who appointed all 17 current members—the council intends to play Sim City with residents' lives.

Thrive MSP 2040 is part of a nationwide movement called "regionalism." Regional planning of infrastructure is important, of course. But regionalism, as an ideology, is about shifting power away from local elected officials and re-engineering society on behalf of "equity" and "sustainability." According to regionalist guru David Rusk, author of the book "Cities Without Suburbs," federal programs that promote regionalism should strive to produce "racially and economically integrated and environmentally sustainable regions."

While minority residents have been streaming into the Twin Cities' suburbs for the past 15 years, the Met Council wants to make sure there is a proper race-and-income mix in each. Thus it recently mapped every census tract in the 2,800 square-mile, seven-county region by race, ethnicity and income. The purpose was to identify "racially concentrated areas of poverty" and "high opportunity clusters." The next step is for the council to lay out what the region's 186 municipalities must do to disperse poverty throughout the metro area.

The council has provided few details, beyond noting that it will emphasize construction of low-income housing in "higher-income areas." But the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development—the source of the $5 million planning grant used to fund the racial mapping—says that mapping is intended, in part, to identify suburban land-use and zoning practices that allegedly deny opportunity and create "barriers" for low-income and minority people. Under its forthcoming "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" rule, HUD will provide communities with "nationally uniform data" of what it views as an appropriate racial, ethnic and economic mix. [Editor's Note: Marin County entered into an agreement with HUD and is currently implementing its plan especially in Marinwood-Lucas Valley due to Susan Adam's advocacy]

Local governments will have to "take meaningful actions" to further the goals identified.

The Met Council has declared that "transit-oriented development" will be the guiding principle of regional development. To this end, the Thrive plan instructs the region's municipalities to consider "travel modes other than the car at all levels of development." The strategy has two parts. First, the council wants all future housing and economic development within "easy walking distance" (one-half mile) of major transit stops—primarily in the urban core and inner-ring suburbs. There tax dollars (mostly from people who live elsewhere) will be lavished on high-density housing, bike and pedestrian amenities and subsidized retail shops.

The Thrive plan also will pour public funds into mass transit while virtually ignoring congestion relief on highways. The Twin Cities region is projected to have just $52 million available annually from 2014 to 2022 for highway congestion relief, according to the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Yet the Met Council intends to spend at least $1.7 billion on a single light-rail project, with more rail transit to follow.

The Thrive plan's most radical element may be to evaluate all future development policies through the "lens" of climate change. Over time, this could give the council a license to dramatically remake the entire metro area.

One former member of the Met Council told me that in the not-so-distant future local governments seeking approval of a new sewer line may first have to meet onerous "carbon footprint" dictates. The council apparently views herding people into dense urban conclaves and restricting their use of cars as the key to reducing greenhouse gases. Yet an exhaustive report by McKinsey & Co. in 2007 found that neither driving less nor densification is necessary and that technological advances, such as fuel-economy improvements, can achieve sufficient reductions.

Regional planning is on the march in other states. Leading examples include "Plan Bay Area" in the nine-county San Francisco Bay region and "Seven/50" in southeast Florida. The movement is getting a strong assist from the Obama administration, which is aggressively promoting such plans through new HUD rules and grants like the one awarded the Met Council.

So far, Twin Cities-area mayors and city councils have not mounted organized resistance to the Thrive plan. Yet even officials in inner-ring suburbs such as Brooklyn Park, which hope to benefit from light rail, are troubled by the plan's aggressive densification provisions. Many officials in outer-ring counties such as Scott and Anoka worry their communities will disproportionately shoulder the plan's costs while getting little back in infrastructure and public services. Fearing retaliation, many local officials hesitate to speak out against a Met Council power grab that will undermine their ability to direct their own communities' future.

Once implementation begins, however, Twin Cities residents will likely realize that Thrive MSP 2040's centralized decision-making and Orwellian appeals to "equity" and "sustainability" are a serious threat to their democratic traditions of individual liberty and self-government. Let's hope that realization comes sooner rather than later.

Ms. Kersten is a senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis.
Copyright 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Even Santa Monica Citizens are in an UPROAR over the "Manhattanization" of their City.

Santa Monica City Council scraps Bergamot Transit Village plan

The victory for slow-growth advocates comes as the city finds itself in the midst of a growth spurt
Critics decried the 7,000 new daily car trips the mixed-use project was expected to generate
Following community outcry and a successful referendum campaign, the Santa Monica City Council has rescinded a controversial development agreement for one of the city's largest projects.
The Bergamot Transit Village — a 765,000-square-foot office, residential and retail development near a coming Expo Line rail stop — was narrowly approved in February after years of debate. But when council members were forced to decide Tuesday between putting the project's fate on the ballot or repealing the development agreement, they voted 4 to1 to kill the plan. Two council members abstained.
"The only way to negotiate effectively for the best possible developments for our community is to sometimes be willing to say no," said Councilman Kevin McKeown, who voted to ax the agreement. "With the successful referendum drive, Santa Monica residents forced the council majority to say no."

A Hines representative Wednesday said the property owners had no comment on the council vote.
At the City Council meeting and in statements after the vote, elected officials condemned the divisions the project has generated within the community.
Former Mayor and now Assemblyman Richard Hershel Bloom (D-Santa Monica) weighed in Wednesday, saying that "fear-mongering, misinformation and even bullying around development issues in Santa Monica are reflected in the decision to kill this project and have left our city with a black eye."
Councilwoman Gleam Davis — the lone official to change her vote — said she feared that putting the development agreement on the ballot would invite "bloodletting."
And Councilman Bob Holbrook, who abstained from the vote, characterized the rhetoric about the project as "extremely nasty" and argued that some change was inevitable.
"The vast majority of activists want zero" growth, Holbrook said. "They don't want another car, they don't want another person in Santa Monica."
Neighborhood groups and activist organizations united with unusual quickness and force to fight the Hines project.
Former City Council candidate Armen Melkonians created an online platform called and used the website to help sign up volunteer signature gatherers for the referendum campaign. Santa Monica for Renters' Rights, the city's only major political party, and Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City came out in support of the referendum.

Collectively, campaign organizers managed to gather enough signatures to qualify a referendum on the project. City officials said more than 13,500 signatures were collected, though the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder's office stopped counting once it had verified 6,800.

The victory for slow-growth advocates comes as the city has found itself in the midst of a growth spurt. As of late last year, officials said more than 30 projects in the pipeline could add nearly 3 million square feet in new residential, office and retail space.

The Hines 26th Street project was slated to fill an old Paper Mate pen factory near the Bergamot Station Arts Center. It was the largest development in a list of recent projects compiled by the city in November. McKeown said he could not think of a bigger project in the city's recent history.

Proponents said it would add necessary housing next to transit and presented a better option than leaving the space vacant or allowing the land owners to eventually reoccupy the abandoned site.

Operation "Save my Butt" 12 days to the Election.

Help Friends!!!  Things are getting desperate at my campaign headquarters.  Early polling shows that 80% of the  voters in District One have "no confidence" in my leadership.  The ingrates. These ignorant voters don't appreciate my finer qualities, like..uh..  Anyhow, we are going to change all that.  My new image is the "kinder, gentler, supervisor".  I may even try listening like Damon Connolly.  It won't kill me for a few weeks.

When I get re-elected my first duty will buy a few more of these $370,000 "peacemaker" tanks for our Sheriffs department like the one I bought last year. You never know when Marin may need military force to protect itself from citizens. 

So now that Damon Connolly wants to play "nice guy who listens", I have developed a killer strategy.  I will beat him to a pulp with the singing nun routine. 12 days to go.

Remember to vote by June 3rd.  Damon can't be elected without your vote.

See the story in the Patch about the tank HERE.

Ambrose: Abandon the Common Core immediately

Ambrose: Abandon the Common Core immediately

People protest at the Common Core Education Forum at Ward Melville High School on Nov. 12, 2013. A Common Core forum is scheduled for Tuesday in Huntington Station. (Credit: Newsday / Thomas A. Ferrara)
People protest at the Common Core Education Forum

Common Core is a brave, new issue that maybe hasn't come your way yet, and so let's sum it up. It is a mathematically weak, humanities-jabbing, ideologically inebriated, innovation-squashing, sparsely tested and therefore unproven scheme to dramatically change the educational lives of tens of millions of American children in grades K-12. You might want to study it some.

If you do, you will find that many of those defending it with teeth-bared animosity not only are amiss in the kinds of tests they want thrown at students, but could not themselves pass a test on what this thing is really all about.

Some make it sound, for instance, as if there was loads of grassroots discussion as states figured out new English and math evaluation standards meant to ensure students could handle college or jobs before graduating from high school. That's false.
It's true that states were concerned about too many having low standards and wanted to do something significant about the decades-long issue of students not matching up with those in other developed countries. But Diane Ravitch, one of the country's most highly respected education experts, notes there was "minimal public engagement" as the work on a single standard was mostly done by a non-profit group called Achieve Inc., along with the National Governors Association.

The cheerleaders then say Common Core was wholly voluntary with the 44 states that signed on, which is also false unless by "voluntary" you don't count bribes to make a state says "yes" and punishment if it says "no." The Obama administration played a huge role here, giving millions to the agreeable states and delivering swift kicks when a state like Indiana decided it wasn't going to participate, after all. In that case, said the government, you will again be subject to the accountability costs of the No Child Left Behind education law.

The next mistake of some Common Core advocates is to say most opposition comes from tea-party, ultra-conservative ignoramus types. On top of the bigotry, what we have here is a failure to notice opponents like Ravitch, who has noted there is no empirically reliable information on how this vast new project will affect our children. Other critical experts whose names I first ran across in a single article on the subject: Andrew Porter of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, who says Common Core standards are not the kinds of standards found in countries that do better; Tom Loveless, a Brookings Institution fellow who says the standards will do little to nothing to boost achievement; and James Milgram, a Stanford professor who is highly critical of Common Core math standards.

One other place where Common Core advocates get things wrong is in saying states do not have to adopt the recommended curriculum. They mostly do if they want their students to do well on the tests and their teachers to squeeze through their own evaluations. And sadly, these recommendations include pushing arts and classical literature to the side, major doses of unlettered progressivism and material that's inappropriate for targeted age groups.

The argument here is not solely between liberals and conservatives. Many mostly liberal teachers unions aren't overly happy with Common Core and some big-name conservatives and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are delighted. I hope those conservatives were not impressed by dubious promises of how Common Core would improve our economy and that they did not somehow believe it was representative democracy at work when most state legislatures did not even vote on states adopting the program, leaving acceptance to bureaucrats.

What everyone might focus on right now is how implementation is proving a massive, expensive headache in some parts of the country; that once the implementing is done, change will be difficult; and how state and local educational creativity could then go poof.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Dick Spotswood: Unorganized, homeowners have little political clout

Dick Spotswood: Unorganized, homeowners have little political clout

Posted:   05/18/2014 04:00:00 AM PDT

Dick Spotswood writes a weekly column on local politics for the Marin Independent... (Robert Tong)

WHEN IT COMES to political influence over county affairs, insiders know that the Marin homeowner isn't a particularly powerful player. That's counterintuitive because the almost 100,000 individual homeowners easily compose the largest group of voters in Marin elections.

What homeowners don't have is a continuing voice in how the county is governed.
There are few neighborhood representatives who follow daily actions of the Board of Supervisors, county commissions or obscure supervisor-appointed ad hoc committees that have real power.

If homeowners want control over their destiny regarding zoning, development, traffic and taxes, they need to do what every other sophisticated group does — organize. Until they learn this lesson, they will continue to be amazed when elected officials ignore their desires.

To learn how political muscle is exercised look at public employee unions, cyclists, environmental advocacy groups and larger businesses including the Realtors.
They understand that the key to political clout is organization. They have members who pay dues and have professional staff or passionate volunteers who follow every governmental action.

During elections, they bestow coveted endorsements. Many make campaign contributions. Between balloting, they are in constant contact with supervisors, their aides and sympathetic county staffers.

Few homeowners perform these tasks or even understand their importance. It's not that Marin has corrupt county officials. They are actually a cut above the statewide norm. The dilemma is that, like politicians everywhere, they and an often ideologically minded county staff need to be constantly reminded whose interests come first.

Marin's public employees have leaders who understand the process. After all, the continuing prosperity of their members depends on electing their bosses, county supervisors, and then ensuring they honor pro-labor campaign commitments.
Marin cyclists present another textbook example of successfully understanding the civic process. Small in numbers, their impact is great. They stay on top of bike-related issues, mobilize their members to appear at meetings and understand lobbying is about educating decision makers.

Compare those politically influential groups to homeowners. Other than the occasional activist motivated over a hot issue, regular folks have no one who follows county initiatives, much less maintains constant relationships with county supervisors.
Homeowners do have impacts on town governments where campaign money isn't as critical. It's easier to follow specific issues in smaller communities. City council members are far more closely in touch with their constituents. If homeowners have any clout, it's at city hall.

That's why unincorporated areas like Strawberry have many frustrated residents and just across the freeway Mill Valleyans feel empowered.

Homeowners need to do three things: organize, recruit and support neighborhood leaders and finally, to take an action.

Understand that even many small individual contributions given collectively are not forgotten by politicians.

A tried-and-true way for homeowners to influence civic affairs is to join their local neighborhood association. If one doesn't exist in your community, start one. Print a letterhead and you'll learn a lesson long known by many seemingly powerful groups. Politicians pay attention to organizations, no matter how tiny, that focus on their actions.
Once that's accomplished, neighborhood associations should band together within their town or unincorporated district. Their next move — something that's rare — is then allying with similar groups in adjacent towns.

That's how influence is accumulated. Those who understand the drill are players. Those who don't find they have little influence.

Operation "Save My Butt". 13 days until Voting Day.

"Those darn IBEW workers!   They sent an attack piece against Damon Connolly for supporting MEA yesterday. You'd think they'd check with me.  I support the MEA too. Now I have to go out in public a sing a little song to keep everyone off my back.   I am used to thinking on my feet though.  Boy, did I ever fool my neighbors about the Marinwood Priority Development Area, I created on August 7, 2007."
"We could have built 1500-4500 housing units if they didn't find out about my plans to urbanize Marin"

At least I passed the Housing Element.

Damon Connolly wants to be our new District One Supervisor. He thinks Marinwood-Lucas Valley got way too much housing and promises to work towards a true community solution.  
Remember to Vote June 3rd!

Farmageddon-Movie Trailer. Organic Farming under Attack

Farmageddon - Movie Trailer from Kristin Canty on Vimeo.

Are Common Core Standards Actually Data Tags?

Peter Greene Headshot  From Huffington Post
Don't think of them as standards. Think of them as tags.

Think of them as the pedagogical equivalent of people's names on Facebook, the tags you attach to each and every photo that you upload.

We know from our friends at Knewton what the Grand Design is -- a system in which student progress is mapped down to the atomic level. Atomic level (a term that Knewton lervs deeply) means test by test, assignment by assignment, sentence by sentence, item by item. We want to enter every single thing a student does into the Big Data Bank.
But that will only work if we're all using the same set of tags.

We've been saying that CCSS are limited because the standards were written around what can be tested. That's not exactly correct. The standards have been written around what can be tracked.

The standards aren't just about defining what should be taught. They're about cataloging what students have done.

Remember when Facebook introduced emoticons? This was not a public service. Facebook wanted to up its data gathering capabilities by tracking the emotional states of users. If users just defined their own emotions, the data would be too noisy, too hard to crunch. But if the user had to pick from the Facebook standard set of user emotions -- then Facebook would have manageable data.

Ditto for CCSS. If we all just taught to our own local standards, the data noise would be too great. The Data Overlords need us all to be standardized, to be using the same set of tags. That is also why no deviation can be allowed. Okay, we'll let you have 15 percent over and above the standards. The system can probably tolerate that much noise. But under no circumstances can you change the standards -- because that would be changing the national student data tagging system, and THAT we can't tolerate.

This is why the "aligning" process inevitably involves all that marking of standards onto everything we do. It's not instructional. It's not even about accountability.
It's about having us sit and tag every instructional thing we do so that student results can be entered and tracked in the Big Data Bank.

If you are in a state that "dropped" the Core, here's one simple test -- look at your "new" standards and ask just how hard it would be to convert your standards/tags to the CCSS standards/tags. If it's as simple as switching some numbers and letters, guess what -- you haven't really changed a thing, and your data is still ready to be tagged and bagged.
And that is why CCSS can never, ever be decoupled from anything. Why would Facebook keep a face-tagging system and then forbid users to upload photos?

The test does not exist to prove that we're following the standards. The standards exist to let us tag the results from the test. And ultimately, not just the test, but everything that's done in a classroom. Standards-ready material is material that has already been bagged and tagged for data overlord use.

Oddly enough, this understanding of the CCSS system also reveals more reasons why the system sucks.

Facebook's photo-tagging system is active and robust. Anybody can add tags, and so the system grows because it is useful. On the other hand, their emoticon system, which requires users to feel only the standardized Facebook emotions, is rigid and dying on the vine because it's not useful, and it can't adapt.

The CCSS are lousy standards precisely because they are too specific in some areas, too vague in others and completely missing other aspects of teaching entirely. We all know how the aligning works -- you take what you already do and find a standard that it more or less fits with and tag it.

Because the pedagogical fantasy delineated by the CCSS does not match the teacher reality in a classroom, the tags are applied in inexact and not-really-true ways. In effect, we've been given color tags that only cover one side of the color wheel, but we've been told to tag everything, so we end up tagging purple green. When a tagging system doesn't represent the full range of reality, and it isn't flexible enough to adapt, you end up with crappy tagging. Look! It's a purple apple! And that's the CCSS.

It's true that in a massive tagging system like this, a big test could be rendered unnecessary -- just use all the data that's pouring in from else. Two reasons that won't happen:

1) While our data overlord's eyes were on the data prize, their need for tagged and connected data opened the door for profiteering, and once that stream is flowing, no Pearsonesque group will stand for interfering with it.

2) High stakes tests are necessary to force cooperation. To get people to fork over this much data, they must be motivated. We've seen that evolution in PA, as the folks in charge have realized that nothing less than the highest stakes will get students to stop writing the pledge to the flag on their tests and teachers to stop laughing when they do.

Decoupling? Not going to happen. You can't have a data system without tagging, and you can't have a tagging system with nothing to tag. Education and teaching are just collateral damage in all this, and not really the main thing at all.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Operation: "Save my Butt". It needs a whole lotta saving. 14 days to go before Voting Day

 "I destroyed opposition to my plan to urbanize Marin by labeling them all NIMBYS and Racists. Still they are after me.
Am I the last person in Marin that cares about the community?"

It's been a tough year for me as the incumbent District One Supervisor, as I have been fighting San Rafael Councilperson and former Vice Mayor, Dixie School District President Damon Connolly.  It seems his strategy of listening to the community and finding solutions is working.  After twelve years of my rule, you'd think everyone would obey me blindly. Now my support is down to a sorry bunch who want me to continue their gravy train.

"I think everybody in District One will vote for Damon Connolly."

Now I am in big trouble and I need your help.  We have 14 days to win this thing and I need some help at the mud slinging fortress.  It is time to spread rumors and gossip.  Let the mud slinging begin.

"I can't wait to build these high density homes along Las Gallinas and have a trolley car run down the middle.  We will be so sophisticated and chic,  like Europe, San Francisco or Portland, Oregon. We will destroy ugly suburban sprawl in District One, even if the rich communities in Marin won't do this.  I got 70% of all affordable housing for unincorporated Marin"

"Who are these Citizens who say I can't make their lives better!?  The nerve!"

Senator Steinberg not happy with low gas prices

By Dennis Wyatt Contributing Editor

POSTED April 16, 2014 9:57 a.m.

"Higher prices discourage demand."

Those four words uttered by State Senator Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento back in February in support of his proposal to slap a carbon tax on motorists at the pump pretty much sums up the California Legislature's contempt for commuters, farmers, the working man who needs his truck to ply his trade, minimum wage workers, farm workers, as well as the working-class that's struggling from paycheck to paycheck.

Actually we are already paying the tax indirectly. The state currently taxes for emissions on gasoline sold from Valero, Chevron, Shell and other oil companies. That tax is passed on to consumers at the pump. Economists estimate it at an effective tax rate of 12 cents a gallon that is collapsed into the non-tax portion of the retail price paid per gallon.

The morally upstanding state senate leader who waited until three of his political cronies were either convicted or indicted on corruption charges to stop blocking minority party efforts to suspend them believes his buddies at the oil companies that grease political campaigns will reduce the price per gallon accordingly. That will happen about the same time Sacramento politicians emulate Mother Teresa instead of Al Capone.

Steinberg believes if another 15 cents per gallon is slapped on the 41.75 cents you currently pay per gallon in taxes that you will cut back your driving and therefore reduce greenhouse emissions.

Anybody gullible enough to think Steinberg and his buddies filling their vehicles with gas paid by the taxpayers will cut back their driving? Or how about the rich folks that keep lining the campaign pockets of Steinberg & Co? Think another 15 cents a gallon is going to stop them from driving imported Italian sports cars that get 7 miles per gallon?

Steinberg isn't too sure that 15 cents per gallon will be painful enough for you. So his proposal includes jacking the tax up to 24 cents per gallon by 2020.

So where will the $3.6 billion annually that Steinberg wants to siphon out of your pocket go?

First, he wants a third or $1.2 billion to go to subsidy public transit. High speed rail, in case you are wondering, qualifies as public transit.

As for the other two-thirds, he wants it to fund a state earned income tax credit for families making $75,000 or less a year. The obvious question is how does that reduce greenhouse emissions or help clean the air?

But more importantly does Steinberg have any idea of who populates California? The median household income for the state is $61,400. That means more than half of the state's population would qualify for money from a state earned income tax credit that's capped at $75,000 and financed by gasoline taxes. And guess who in California proportionately drives and/or consumes more fuel per mile? There are two primary groups. There are low-income workers who tend to drive older cars that are more often than not gas hogs. The others are those desperately trying to hold onto a middle class lifestyle by commuting longer distances. They do so either to secure somewhat better paying jobs or, if they work in the Bay Area, to find a place where they can actually live on $70,000 a year.

The end result would be the majority of Californians would be paying a tax that would then be redistributed in part back to them.

If Steinberg is worried about the financial health of Californians making less than $75,000 a year shouldn't he simply try his best not to raise taxes?

That, though, goes against the grain of politicians like Steinberg.

It wouldn't allow the state to hire a small army of rank-and-file bureaucrats to essentially monitor the taking of money from struggling taxpayers, skim money off the top for their salaries, and then return pennies on the dollar to them. The state also wouldn't be able to exert even more control over your day-to-day life and your ability to survive independent of government help through dubious transfers of wealth.

Remember the good old days when wealth transfer through the tax code was the equivalent of taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor? Now they want to tax the poor to put them more on the financial edge. Then once a year they'll give part of the money back to them so they can buy bread and milk to feed their families and purchase shoes for their kids. It effectively cultivates the illusion that the government is critical for many families to survive financially.

Perhaps more families would be better off if Steinberg and his buddies stop thinking about more ways to take money out of our collective pockets in a bid not to provide essential government services but to reengineer the market, spending patterns, and personal habits.

This column is the opinion of Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Courier or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Redevelopment Resurrection?

Redevelopment Resurrection?
Jerry Brown signals the return of abusive local agencies in a limited form.

23 May 2014

Sometimes the right things happen for the wrong reason, such as when California governor Jerry Brown signed budget legislation in 2011 to shut down the state’s ham-fisted redevelopment agencies. Brown’s opposition to redevelopment had nothing to do with fidelity to private-property rights or disdain for eminent-domain abuse; it was a fiscal expedient to find money in a tight budget year. The agencies had siphoned 12 percent of the state’s budget annually from traditional public services—public education, firefighting, and the like—and directed it toward local economic-development projects. They also distorted local economies, subsidized developers, and abused property owners. Now that the state’s budget outlook has improved at least superficially, the agencies could make a comeback.
Over the last three years, Brown vetoed several bills that would have revived the redevelopment agencies in one form or another. Earlier this month, though, the governor unveiled his revised May budget, which suggested a much brighter fiscal picture. Officials are now talking about how to squirrel away surpluses and pay down debt. And theredevelopment agencies’ supporters are stepping up efforts to resurrect their favored program.

Formed by a 1940s-era law designed to channel money into urban slums, redevelopment agencies became a means for cities to subsidize tax-generating auto malls, hotels, and shopping centers—especially after 1978’s property-tax-limiting Proposition 13 curbed the locals’ ability to raise taxes on homeowners and businesses. Here’s how it worked. The agencies would declare an area blighted and then float bonds to pay for new infrastructure in the targeted neighborhood. The “tax increment”—the growth in property-tax revenues following the creation of the project area—would be used to pay off the debt. Cities gained tax revenue from the new shopping centers and hotels.

The controversies surrounding redevelopment came to a head in 2005, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London that local governments could use eminent domain for “public benefit”—even if that benefit happened to enrich private developers. (In California, redevelopment agencies often grabbed properties to help developers build tax-generating projects that would fill their coffers.) After Kelo, more than 40 states passed at least modest reforms to check eminent domain’s excesses. But the Golden State’s idea of “reform”—shepherded by the League of California Cities and the California Redevelopment Association—was a ballot initiative merely restricting eminent domain in residential neighborhoods.

In 2010, redevelopment supporters passed another initiative, this one protecting the agencies’ funding from being raided by the legislature. Brown outsmarted them by simply shutting down the agencies over the objections of most Republican lawmakers, who, despite their property-rights rhetoric, argued that the move was an assault on local control. But earlier this year, Brown said he could support expanded use of Infrastructure Financing Districts (IFDs)—projects that used the same tax-increment financing mechanism as the defunct redevelopment agencies, but with tighter restrictions and for a limited number of projects. IFDs can wield eminent domain, but they require the consent of other affected bureaucracies. Under the old redevelopment arrangements, cities could create an RDA and swipe tax dollars from other agencies at will. So the IFDs offer protections for other government agencies—but nothing for property owners. Brown has no objections to them, as long as revenues for public schools and other traditional public services remain untouched.
Meantime, an attorney with the law firm of Rutan & Tucker has filed a state initiative that would revive the old redevelopment regime, with even fewer limits. The measure would repeal the agencies’ elimination, remove past caps on debt limits, broadly expand blight definitions, and reduce affordable-housing requirements. Though some cities support the measure, many political observers suspect it is really intended to prod recalcitrant Democrats into restoring the redevelopment agencies in some form.

Redevelopment’s foes worry about these efforts to revive the program, but their voices are mostly absent from the public debate. When California voters have heard about RDAs lately, it’s usually from figures like Tim Donnelly, a Republican assemblyman and gubernatorial candidate from the Southern California mountain town of Twin Peaks. Donnelly had been sharply critical of Brown—not for trying to revive redevelopment, but for shuttering the RDAs in the first place. (Donnelly backed away from his RDA support after it became an issue in the campaign.) In all likelihood, redevelopment will come back in the form of expanded Infrastructure Finance Districts. Brown has been forthright about his intentions, and unless the economy collapses again, Californians should have no reason to expect a change of heart from the governor. The big question is what will happen after Brown finishes his final term. That’s when California will need to have a real debate about redevelopment