Taking Note

The Beginning of the End of Racial Affirmative Action?

What is the larger meaning of yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down New Haven’s denial of promotions to white firefighters because few minority applicants performed well on a qualifying exam?  In the short run, the ruling is likely to intensify scrutiny of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, whose Second Circuit court decision in the case supporting the city was overturned.  But in the long run, the Supreme Court’s ruling has important implications that go beyond Sotomayor’s nomination – and even beyond employment discrimination law.  Strictly speaking, Ricci v. DeStafano involved Title VII of the Civil Rights Act – which governs job discrimination – but the Court’s ruling adds to the clouds looming over the larger enterprise of affirmative action in higher education and elsewhere.

The Ricci case was a difficult one.  On the one hand, it seems unfair that the white fire fighters who studied hard for the exam and did well saw the rules changed – and their hard work dismissed – because not enough minority firefighters did well.  On the other hand, no one should want the top ranks of New Haven’s firefighters to be almost exclusively white; and the pencil and paper tests largely used to determine promotions didn’t seem like the best way to recognize leaders.  (According to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent, almost two-thirds of municipalities now use “assessment centers,” institutions that simulate real-world situations, in deciding on promotions.)

A Serious Business

The thrilling escape from his Taliban kidnappers by New York Times correspondent David Rohde, the release from an Iranian jail after months of detention and trial of NPR and BBC contributor Roxana Saberi, and North Korea’s imprisonment for nine years at hard labor of Current-TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee are reminders that choosing to cover what are among today’s best stories around the world is a very serious business. I use “business” advisedly because so much of the attention around journalism today is about the reduced resources to fund it. What the Rohde-Saberi-Ling-Lee cases underscore is that the thugs, theocrats, and autocrats couldn’t care less who is paying the reporters they manhandle. It is the very considerable threat journalism represents to these regimes and movements that make them ready to use whatever means they can—including murder, in the case of the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl—to block the gathering of news.

            When the Iranian leadership moved to shut down the protests against the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of their first steps was to limit foreign reporting, refusing to renew visas, expelling the resident BBC correspondent, and ordering remaining journalists to stay away from demonstrations. The triumph of “citizen” reporting distributed via Twitter and YouTube provided glimpses of what was happening. But the cumulative impact of professional coverage was drastically reduced. At last count, the Iranians had arrested forty journalists, including several who had written for Western publications, and were holding one reporter with British/Greek nationality. Iran’s ayatollahs, like their counterparts elsewhere around the globe, may claim spiritual or doctrinal supremacy, but they are terrified of what reporters can do to their power.

Obama Undercuts Leverage on Climate Enforcement

In attacking congressional Democrats' provision for tariff penalties against goods from countries that do not curtail their emissions of greenhouse gases, President Obama may be holding progress against global warming hostage to the shibboleths of Washington's free-trade lobby.  No agreement to reverse global warming will be effective without enforcement against those countries that refuse to implement emissions limits.

The Battle Over Biologics Begins

Drug companies have been allowed to introduce generic versions of traditional pharmaceuticals since 1984—saving the U.S. health care system an estimated $734 billion over the last ten years alone. But there currently is no regulatory pathway for creating generic versions of “biologics”. Unlike traditional, small-molecule pharmaceuticals, biologics such as  Avastin, a drug used to treat cancer, are protein-based and include monoclonal antibodies, growth factors, immune modulators and other molecules that are derived from living matter or manufactured by cells. Currently, brand-name biologics account for approximately 15 percent of total U.S. prescription drug sales—and they are growing in importance.

Little wonder that President Obama is determined to try to bring generic biologics to market.

Why don’t we already have generic versions of these popular drugs? One reason cited for the holdup is that biologics are more complex than small-molecule drugs and that it’s virtually impossible to create an exact replica (a so-called bioequivalent) of a pioneer biologic drug. The “follow-on” version of a biologic can be very similar to the branded drug but it might be manufactured a bit differently or might have slightly different side effects in certain patients. That means the approval process for follow-on biologics will involve more testing than is normally done for generic versions of small molecule drugs like antidepressants or heart drugs.

Obama, Reagan, and the Media Glow

Barack Obama has "enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either of his two predecessors," according to the analysis of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. That is not really surprising. Bill Clinton's early months were chaotic, mainly because his White House staff was weak and his personality, while engaging was, well, untidy. George W. Bush scrambled into office after a contested election that left more than a residue of bitterness and fatigue all around. A better measure of comparative coverage for Obama so far is with Ronald Reagan. Both administrations were/are led by charismatic and popular men with a clear vision that sharply differs from the presidents they replaced, who were from opposing parties and left economies in a mess and crises in Iran and Afghanistan.

Public Optimistic on Obama’s Economic Plans

We’ve obviously got a long way to go to economic health in this country. But new Pew Research Center data show that by 65 percent to 28 percent the public is optimistic about the effect of Obama’s policies on economic conditions. And despite considerable concern about the budget deficit the public is also optimistic, by 55 percent to 36 percent, that Obama’s policies will bring down the deficit in the long run.

In the same survey the public gives 55-39 approval to the $800 billion stimulus plan that the conservatives denounced as a fearsome waste of money. And by 73-23 they say they approve of the government spending billions of dollars “to substantially increase spending on roads, bridges, and other public works projects.”

Who Is Really Suffering Most from the Recession?

The headlines about the current recession have tended to focus heavily on what many find a particularly alarming fact: December 5, 2008, The Boston Globe: "Losing Jobs in Unequal Numbers"; January 1, 2009, USA Today: "Men Losing Jobs at Higher Rate than Women in Recession"; April 3, 2009, Los Angeles Times: "Recession Hits Male Workers More."

In the USA Today article Barbara Hagenbaugh explains that "women are holding onto their jobs more than their male counterparts in the recession as the types of jobs women hold generally offer more stability, albeit at less pay." She goes on to cite data to prove that point, "In the year since the recession began in December 2007, the jobless rate for men rose from 4.4% to 7.2%. At the same time, the jobless rate for women rose from 4.3% to 5.9%." In the Boston Globe article, Robert Gavin notes that "1,069,000 fewer men are working than a year ago. 12,000 more women are working." In the Los Angeles Times piece, Greg Burns says that economist Mark Perry explains the problem for men as being a result of the fact that the "recession started with a crash in the housing market, and construction is about as male-dominated as it gets: 88% . . . . Manufacturing also took a dive: It's 70% male. The male bastions of the financial-service sector got whacked too: Testosterone-heavy trading desks ain't what they used to be, post credit crunch. Meanwhile, practically the only major sectors holding their own are education and healthcare, which run 77% female combined. . . . [Moreover,] since 1981, women have earned far more bachelor's degrees, collecting 135 for every 100 awarded to men."

Charters Deserve a Role, But Not Center Stage

It was no surprise that Education Secretary Arne Duncan picked a Newark charter school for his first “official” visit to New Jersey in early June.  Having previously announced that charter school expansion and support would be one of the four legs to the Obama Administration’s education reform, why not drive the point home by celebrating the well-earned reputation of the North Star Academy?  Its students have been doing noticeably better than their neighborhood peers who attend Newark Public Schools.  Yes, there are charters that deliver dramatic results, but so far we don’t have strong evidence that they are a big part of the answer to the yawning achievement gap.

A recently-completed analysis of how charter school students perform in five of New Jersey’s largest cities suggests that charters should be encouraged, but they do not deserve the emphasis Secretary Duncan gives them.

The following table aggregates demographic and student performance for Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Trenton, and Camden and for the 30 charter schools that served students resident to those cities during 2007-08.  Elizabeth, the fourth largest of New Jersey’s “Big Six” cities, is not included because it does not have any operating charters.

Aggregated students in charter and district schools in Newark,
Jersey City, Paterson, Trenton, and Camden

* ”FRL” for Free and Reduced Lunch students; “A-Al” for African-American; “SE” for Special Education; “LEP” for Less English Proficient,” “P/AP ASK3” for Proficient and Advanced Proficient on 2008 3rd grade language arts test; and “P/AP ASK8” for Proficient and Advanced Proficient on 2008 8th grade language arts test.

Move on Health Care Reform Now (and Don’t Forget the Public Plan!)

The battle is underway over President Barack Obama’s ambitious plans to reform our health care system. And conservatives are thinking of every way they can to stall and eviscerate such reform.

One conservative argument is that, given our serious economic problems, we just can’t afford an ambitious undertaking like health care reform. But the public isn’t buying that argument. The public said in the latest Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll by 59-37 that, “it is more important than ever to take on health care reform now,” rather than “we cannot afford to take on health care reform now.”

If conservatives fail to stop action on health care reform, their backup plan is to weaken it as much as possible. The chief focus of these efforts will be elimination of a public plan option to keep insurance companies honest and provide a low-cost alternative. But the conservatives have a problem here too: The public strongly supports the inclusion of such an alternative as part of health care reform. The same poll found that 67 percent of the public supports creation of a “government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance plans,” compared to just 29 percent who are opposed.

World economy bric-a-brac

The natives are restless.

This past week the leaders of four of the world's largest "emerging" economies--China, India, Brazil, and Russia, a collective "BRIC"--met in Yekaterinberg to launch a drive for a more diversified global monetary system that would loosen Washington's grip on world finances.

In the week ahead, the United Nations will host a General Assembly "summit" on the global economic crisis, the brainchild of the Assembly's Sandinista president, to give the 172 member states that had not been invited to the G-20 economic summit in April a say in the reform of the imploded world economy.