March 7, 2012-- Hadarat Nashim

While Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu debate the fate of the Middle East--whether or not and when to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities--back home in Israel another kind of war is being waged: the one about the role of women in an increasingly ultra-orthodox religious environment.

A number of recent incidents there have brought this to full public attention. Ironically, not unlike here in the United States where Rick Santorum, Rush Limbaugh, all the Republican presidential candidates, and every GOP senator with the exception of Olympia Snow have signed on to limit medical coverage for women's access to contraception. (Note--no one is talking about not having medical insurance pay for vasectomies.)

In Israel, so similar to what transpired recently in the U.S. Congress, at a women's health and Jewish law conference, women were barred from speaking from the podium; ultra-orthodox men spat on an 8-year-old girl who they deemed was immodestly dressed (this could have meant her skirt ended only at mid-calf); the chief rabbi of the army air force resigned because the army refused to give in to his demands that religiously-orthodox soldiers should be allowed to opt out of participating in army-sponsored events where women were allowed to sing on stage, including singing the national anthem; posters appeared all over the city depicting the Jerusalem police chief as Hitler because he instructed bus lines with mixed male and female seating to drive through orthodox neighborhoods; and vandals blacked out the faces of all women whose images appeared on publicly displayed advertising posters.

This movement even has a high-toned new phrase--hadaret nashim, which is Hebrew for "the exclusion of women"-- and it is being hotly debated.

The ultra-orthodox, or Haredim, who deny the legitimacy of the state of Israel--to them it will not exist until their version of the Messiah appears--have nonetheless becoming an increasingly powerful force in the Israeli government. Without their support in the Knesset, Netanyahu would not have the votes needed to have been elected prime minister. Their influence derives from their high birth rate (on average ultra-orthodox couples have seven children) and as a result now number more than one million in a total population of 7.8 million.

In addition, the Haredim do not contribute proportionately to the Israeli economy, nor do most of their young people serve in the military. Also, the government offers direct per-child subsidies to large families, which constitutes a huge burden on Israeli taxpayers. And since the community places Torah study above all other activities . . . allowable only for men, few have have jobs and thus the unemployment rate for men is over 60 percent.

Sharia is coming to israel and orthodox Jews, not Islamists, are leading the effort. Though they haven't yet gotten around to calling women who use contraception prostitutes and sluts.

March 6, 2012--Tax Pledge

Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform and is so influential that some have called him our 101st senator. As evidence of that power he has gotten almost every Republican member of Congress to sign a no-new-taxes pledge.

In his new book, Debacle: Obama's war On Jobs, he claims that Obama has already raised hundreds of billions in taxes and if reelected will raise them by trillions (yes, trillions) more.

His current favorite GOP candidate for president, Mitt Romney, claims that Obama has implemented 19 new taxes. Both Norquist and Romney fail to note that Obama supported and signed legislation to cut hundreds of billions in payroll taxes, agreed to extend the Bush era tax cuts for at least two more years, and included hundreds of billions of dollars of tax cuts in his stimulus plan.

Indeed, if reelected, Obama wants to extend the Bush tax cuts but only for individuals making less than $250,00 per year though he would cut taxes further for middle-income people. But in regard to the claim that he has already raised taxes 19 times, here are the facts from PolitiFacts.com about all nineteen:

Items that are clearly taxes, and that are already in effect

• Increasing the federal excise tax on tobacco. Obama signed legislation raising taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products soon after taking office; that money goes to pay for children's health insurance programs. The law went into effect in 2009.

• A 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services. This tax is narrowly targeted at tanning bed users, but it is still a tax. This took effect July 1, 2010.

• Increasing corporate taxes by making it more difficult for businesses to engage in activities that reduce their tax liability. This appears to refer to the closing of a half-dozen existing exemptions and credits relevant only to large international corporations. (We wrote about this recently.) While this is a provision targeted narrowly at big conglomerates -- and while it’s popular as a way to keep deep-pocketed countries from sheltering excessive amounts of income -- our experts said it does count as a tax increase. Obama signed the bill into law on Aug. 10, 2010.

• Imposing an annual fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs, based on each company’s share of the total market. While some industry-specific levies are intended to help foot the bill for regulatory processes, this one is more of a revenue raiser for the more general goals of the health care overhaul. It took effect on Jan. 1, 2011.

Items that are clearly taxes, but which are not yet in effect

Listed in chronological order of date they will take effect:

• Increasing the hospital insurance portion of the payroll tax from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent for couples earning more than $250,000 a year, or $200,000 for single filers. Takes effect Jan. 1, 2013.

• Applying the 3.8 percent hospital insurance tax to investment income for couples earning more than $250,000 a year, or $200,000 for single filers, for the first time. Takes effect Jan. 1, 2013.

• A 2.3 percent excise tax on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices. This is a narrowly targeted tax, but still a tax (and will likely be reflected in consumer prices once it begins). Takes effect Jan. 1, 2013.

• Raise the 7.5 percent adjusted gross income floor for the medical expenses deduction to 10 percent. People who would have qualified for the deduction this year would pay more. Takes effect Jan. 1, 2013.

• Annual fee levied on health insurance providers, based on each company’s share of the total market. Same logic as the levy on branded drug companies cited above. Takes effect Jan. 1, 2013.

• Limiting the amount taxpayers can deposit in flexible spending accounts to $2,500 a year. While the Obama camp says this provision is intended in part to stop abuse of the system, our experts consider it a tax because it increases taxable income. Takes effect Jan. 1, 2013

• Eliminating the corporate deduction for prescription expenses for retirees. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, certain employers were not only "qualified to receive a subsidy equal to 28 percent of covered prescription drug costs for their retirees," but the employer also was entitled to an income tax deduction for the subsidy. The idea behind providing both a subsidy and a tax deduction was to reduce taxpayer costs for the Medicare drug plan by encouraging companies pay their retirees’ costs, but the way it was structured was criticized by some as double-dipping. No matter the justification, our experts agreed it was still a tax hike. It takes effect Jan. 1, 2013.

• Increasing taxes on health insurance companies by limiting the amount of compensation paid to certain employees that they can deduct from their taxes. According to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, this will be effective for compensation paid in taxable years "beginning after 2012, with respect to services performed after 2009." Once again, this is narrowly targeted at health care company executives -- not a popular group -- but it’s still a tax.

• A 40 percent excise tax on employer-provided "Cadillac" health insurance plans costing more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. Takes effect Jan. 1, 2018.

Items about which there is no consensus over whether they’re taxes

• Reduce the number of medical products taxpayers can purchase using funds they put aside in health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts. The definition of which items qualify and don’t qualify for flex spending plans seems to us to be more like the kind of decision made by regulators than lawmakers responsible for writing the tax code.

• A mandate for individuals to buy health insurance and for employers to offer it to their workers. This one is a doozy, because the answer is crucial to the court case that challenges the entire health care law. Because the courts will ultimately decide whether the federal government is levying a tax on people who can afford health insurance but choose not to buy it -- or whether the government is simply using the tax code to enforce a criminal penalty, as some critics of the health care law say -- we won’t take a side on this question.

Items where there is a strong argument that they are not taxes

• Exclusion of unprocessed fuels from the existing cellulosic biofuel producer credit. This provision -- which is already in effect -- was included in the health care bill even though it has nothing to do with health care. Though its inclusion as an unrelated item suggests that revenue-raising is the primary intention, it was actually intended to fix a legislative oversight.

According to the House Rules Committee, then controlled by the Democrats, Congress in 2008 "enacted a $1.01 per gallon tax credit for the production of biofuel from cellulosic feedstocks in order to encourage development of new production capacity for biofuels not derived from food source materials. Congress is aware that some taxpayers are seeking to claim the cellulosic biofuel tax credit for unprocessed fuels. … The provision (in the health care bill) would limit eligibility for the tax credit to processed fuels."

Beyond the question of whether it simply corrects an error, it can be argued that this provision is not a tax since "there’s no logic requiring that unprocessed fuels qualify for tax credit. If this is a tax increase, then one should, presumably, treat as a tax the fact that fountain pens are not eligible for a tax credit, as they could have been, but weren’t included in this tax credit." (The change has already taken effect.)

• The health care law’s "medical loss ratio" provision. Insurance companies will be required to spend either 80 percent (in the individual- and small-group market) or 85 percent (in the large-group market) of the money they receive from premiums on medical care and health care quality improvement, rather than on administrative costs. The provision took effect in 2011. The intention behind this provision is to shape how insurers spend premium dollars, making it more quality regulation than a revenue-raising tax.

• A $50,000 penalty per non-profit hospital if they fail to meet new "community needs assessment." This falls into the same category as the previous item -- a provision intended to regulate insurers’ practices rather than generate revenue.

• Increased penalty for purchasing disallowed products with health savings account, to 20 percent. This is a penalty for a violation, not a tax.

It’s worth pointing out that a number of these provisions are quite narrowly targeted, and some are likely popular among the public, such as those aimed at health-care executive compensation and tax-shelter strategies by billion-dollar multinational corporations. By contrast, as we have noted, the most expansive of Obama’s tax policies went the other direction, reducing taxes for 95 percent of working families.

And a final note: The president doesn’t have the authority to raise taxes on his own. He can only do so with the consent of Congress, which is what happened in each of these cases.

Our ruling

Of the 19 provisions Romney is citing, we conclude that 13 may be reasonably defined as taxes (though of those, only four are already in effect). Of the remaining six provisions Romney cites, we find two that are subject to disagreement and four that are probably not taxes at all. So, more than two-thirds of the 19 provisions Romney cited are pretty clearly taxes, but many of them are narrowly targeted at groups from tanning-bed users to health company CEOs.

On balance, we rate the statement Half True.

In addition to the Politifact analysis, the Norquist-Romney claim that Obama has cut $500 billion from Medicare is a distortion of the truth--"Obamacare" cuts that amount over ten years from the projected increases in the federal cost of Medicare. The cuts are really savings and will be the result of reducing abuse, inefficiencies, and abuse--not from cutting benefits as the Republicans have been charging. In fact, the Obama plan increases Medicare benefits such as closing the donut hole for prescription drugs--a significant cash savings for seniors.

So much for the facts. Though PolitiFacts did not assign dollar amounts to Obama's new taxes, in total, even including those that are not taxes, the bottom line is less than $100 billion in new "taxes."

March 5, 2012--Achievement Gap

On Friday, Morning Joe again devoted an entire show to education. It is commendable and remarkable that they have done this periodically because hardly anyone in the public square is paying any serious attention to education. That is expect for governors such as Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, and Scott Walker who have been demonizing teachers unions as the sole cause of the nation's education failures.

Oh yes, they have one other thing in common--political ambition.

Morning Joe covered familiar ground--the role of governors in improving public schools (participating were Connecticut's and Maryland's); education reformers such as former Washington, DC superintendent Michele Rhee and the chair of the board of Communities In Schools; and union representatives, including AFT president Randi Weingarten. And, yes, a 4th grade math teacher from Newark. His contribution was to point out that his students do not have enough money to buy pencils and, from his $50,000 a year salary, has been buying and distributing them.

He was of course making a bigger point--that a school district such as Newark which spends nearly $17,000 per student per year should be able to do a lot better.

The other guests' bigger point was that we have to (1) spend more money than at present; (2) "empower" teachers; and (3) employ "authentic accountability" methods to determine who are and aren't effective teachers.

Lost entirely in the discussion was anything about about what actually goes on in classrooms and the gathering evidence that the achievement gap between rich and poor students is expanding rapidly. Nor was there any conversation about the relationship between the two--how affluent children are taught in school (and prepared at home to achieve) and the instructional methods that are being employed.

Recent studies have shown that though the gap between white and black students has been narrowing the divide between poor and more privileged students has been widening.

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites. (See linked New York Times article.)

These data are clear and disturbing.

Equally disturbing is the fact that educators have been aware of this for decades but have spent too much of their time, as they did on Morning Joe , asking for more money (when there is no evidence that money is the solution) and blaming unions for protecting ineffective teachers. In some districts unions are indeed a problem, more devoted to protecting incompetent members than the fate of their students, but weakening teachers unions is also not the silver bullet. Throught the south teacher unions are weak and schools are among the worst.

Again, what has been missing in the debate is a close look and critique of what is actually going on in classrooms. Over the years there has been much methodological innovation. Some of it even rigorously evaluated and, in the process, we have learned a lot about what doesn't work and what does when it comes to teaching low-income students--white low-income students as well as those of color.

Success For All, as one example, is a proven approach to teaching reading, and if it were to be widely adopted would do much to close the literacy achievement gap. The resistance to do so stems from educators who believe they know best what's good for their students. There is a professional reluctance to emulate other people's methods, even if they have been proven to be more effective than what is going on in individual classrooms, schools, and districts.

And when there is a movement to gravitate toward common methods, often the decision is made at the state level and the methods imposed are of dubious value. In Florida, to cite one case, the Education Department pressed all schools to adopt Math Connects as the state-approved approach. This in spite of the fact that there was little independent research that showed it to be effective. The only evaluations were those few sponsored by the for-profit company, Macmillian/McGraw-Hill, that developed and licensed the system.

And so Florida's school children continue to languish near the bottom in math achievement in comparison to other states. This is not the result of unions protecting incompetent teachers or lack of money. It is because of irresponsible leadership that grasps at one unproven panacea after another while excuses and finger pointing continue and students and the nation are the sad losers.

March 2, 2012--Day Off

I will resume on Monday.

March 1, 2012--Hot Yoga

We have friends here and in Maine who are always slipping off to sessions of hot yoga. When we ask them about it, they speak ecstatically.

Up to now, I thought that this meant they did their thing in a hyper-heated studio. The extra-hot heat, they universally say, is not enervating but allows them to get loose and to contort effortlessly into all sorts of double-jointed positions that are beyond my imagining much less attempting.

But, now, not to doubt the reports of any of our friends, the bad-old New York Times is blowing the whistle on a very different kind of hot yoga. Yoga that leads to sex with the instructor. (See linked article.)

They begin by citing one recent example of improper behavior--John Friend founder of Anusara Yoga taking sexual advantage of his prominent position in the yoga field who announced he is stepping down as the leader of one of the world's fastest-growing versions of yoga so he can engage in "self-reflection, therapy, and personal retreat." To cynical me, all very yoga-sounding.

But deeper in the article the ever-thorough Times , in the weekly decidedly non-gossipy Science Section, claims that from its beginning in medieval India, modern, or Hatha yoga began as an offshoot of Tantra and that at its heart Tantra seeks "to fuse the male and female aspects of the cosmos into a blissful state of consciousness." Again, to the cynical part of me, though this too is yoga-sounding, at least it is derived from the spiritual origins of yoga. Far from what apparently goes on in John Friend's ashram.

Tantric cults were often steeped in symbolism and who knows what else. According to the Times again, one Tantric text encouraged devotees to "revere the female sex organ" and enjoy "vigorous intercourse."

Hatha was devised as a way to speed up the Tantric agenda. Its various poses, deep breathing, and simulated sex acts were used to hasten "rapturous bliss."

But about 100 years ago, the founders of yoga as we now know it did what they could to purge Hatha yoga of its Tantric "stain," concentrating instead on improving fitness and health.

That sounds good to me. But obviously not to Mr. Friend, who, by his practices, appears to be a yoga fundamentalist, wanting yoga, at least for him, to be returned to its Tantric roots.

February 29, 2012--Leap Second

February 29th is my favorite quadannual day. Actually, it's the only day that comes around just once every four years.

Thus, technically, it is called an intercalary day [from Latin intercalārius , inter (“among”) + calō (“call out, proclaim”)] or bissextile day (also from the Latin, annus bissextilis, "leap year," literally, "the twice sixth-day").

It offers presidential candidates one more day to campaign since it always occurs during a presidential election year (not that we need more campaigning); stores have special Leap Day sales, following hard on the heals of Presidents Day; and, as time moves inexorably along, it slows down the aging process in that one's birthday during Leap Years includes one more day for denial.

Since for me, age has already done some of its inexorable thing, during much earlier Leap Days, when social life was very different than now, I looked forward to the tradition that on these days women were sanctioned to take the initiative in regard to dating and even making marriage proposals. As a shy and socially-inept adolescent and young adult I sat by the telephone on February 29ths from dawn to dusk. This waiting would suggest--quite accurately--that I usually had to hold on until the next Leap Year to revive feelings of potential attractiveness.

Inserting an extra day in the calendar every four years or so (more about the "or so" in a moment) is to compensate for the astronomic reality that earth's solar year is not 365 days but rather about 356 and a quarter days. But as with most things astronomical, things are not that simple.

For example, some exceptions to the Leap Year rule are required since the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. so 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Similarly, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be.

Therefore, in a duration of two millennia, there will be 485 leap years. By this rule, the average number of days per year will be 365 + 1/4 − 1/100 + 1/400 = 365.2425, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds.

Got it?

There's more, including a recent battle among scientists about one or-so second. As the New York Times reported, at a recent conference in Geneva, 700 delegates from 70 nations debated whether or not to abolish the leap second:

Unlike the better-known leap year, which adds a day to February in a familiar four-year cycle, the leap second is tacked on once every few years to synchronize atomic clocks--the world's scientific timekeepers--with Earth's rotational cycle, which, sadly, does not run quite like clockwork. The next one is scheduled for June 30. . . .

The United States is the primary proponent for doing away with the leap second, arguing that the sporadic adjustments, if botched or overlooked, could lead to major foul-ups if electronic systems that depend on the precise time--including computer and cellphone networks, air traffic control and financial trading markets--do not agree on the time.

Abolishing the leap second ''removes one potential source of catastrophic failure for the world's computer networks,'' said Geoff Chester, a spokesman for the United States Naval Observatory, the nation's primary timekeeper. ''That one second becomes a problem if you don't take it into account.''

While they battle it out, from habit, this Leap Day you'll find me wondering if the phone will ring and . . .

February 28, 2012--Romney in Public; Palin in Private

Desperate to appear likable, not the poster child for the one percent, Mitt Romney, perhaps on the brink of losing today's Michigan primary, has taken to talking about his Michigan roots and to make himself look and feel like a regular guy.

You've heard about his liking for the trees in Michigan, but here is the full context, with all the appliquéd ya's and dropped g's:

I was born and raised here. I love this state. It seems right here. Trees are the right height. I like seein' the lakes. I love the lakes. There’s something very special here. The Great Lakes, but also all the little inland lakes that dot the parts of Michigan. I love cars. I grew up totally in love with cars. It used to be, in the fifties and sixties, if you showed me one square foot of almost any part of a car, I could tell you what brand it was, the model, and so forth. Now, with all the Japanese cars, I’m not quite so good at it. But I still know the American cars pretty well and drive a Mustang. I love cars. I love American cars. And long may they rule the world, let me tell ya.

In response to a Freedom of Information request, the State of Alaska last week released more than 17,000 emails that Sarah Palin either wrote or received during her last two years as Governor of Alaska. Most are routine, but a few reveal, as private emails often do, especially those that are dashed off, the "real" Sarah Palin.

"I'm just beat down on this one. I am tired. The opponents have succeeded on the drive towards our personal bankruptcy, and have divided my family,"

"One has to be single, wealthy, or corrupt to function in this political system."

"Any idea how they knew to find me at Fred Meyer [grocery store] yesterday while I sold Girl Scout cookies? The scout leaders wouldn't have told them."

"Would you [Tod] pray for our strength. And for God to totally turn things around. Enough is enough. May we see victories and feel His hand of mercy and grace."

And after learning about an impending ethics complaint, to adies she wrote--"Unflippinbelievable. I'm sending this because you can relate to the bullcrap continuation of the hell these people put the family through."

Who sounds more unflippinbelievably authentic? Romney or Palin? Not even close.