by Walter Gray—Politicians Worry More About Themselves, Not Us
Speaking of the difficulty of doing the right thing about pension reform in RI, ex-state rep Timothy Williamson , who chaired a failed special legislative commission on the subject, was quoted in a ProJo article as saying: “The political sense is that, if you do, be ready for a backlash and non-support and even though you’re doing the right thing, the group you’re going after may not agree, and you may not be re-elected.” Williamson, of course, was a rigid disciple of the House leadership so his statement was not unusual. But it did focus on the single most provocative issue facing legislators; their fear of losing. Lacking guts, the commission caved to labor objections and paved the way for the current $6.8 billion pension debt dilemma. The reason: our labor organizations warned of retaliation against individual elected officials if legislation were passed. The unions want taxpayers to pick up the nearly $7 billion dollar tab. But that’s how our state operates.

It’s OK to Encourage Employee Morale

How can I improve a desultory workplace environment, a new supervisor asked “The Job Doc” of the Boston Globe in a letter. He had described a place where workers seemed afraid of their own shadows, had very little interaction, who come in with their heads down and worked that way, and nobody had lunch together. “Doc” told the supervisor she/he had a great opportunity to rebuild and repair the culture. First, “Doc” said, ask questions and observe your department in a non-threatening way. Meet with your employees one-on-one. Ask them what they like and dislike about their jobs. Listen, really listen when you meet with employees. No cell phones, no checking e-mail, no distractions and good eye contact. Second, after those initial steps, ask them what one thing they would change about their work life. Third, ask them for their ideas on how to improve the workplace. Lastly, keep an open door.

State Budgets: Reward Friends, Punish Enemies

When legislators embark on budget creation, they are typically not emboldened by high purposes. Rather, their goal is to reward their families and friends and punish their enemies, broadly speaking. And that’s why the concept of Zero-based budgeting has never gained traction in Rhode Island. It is, however ,getting attention in the Massachusetts state senate where President Theresa Murray is talking about building department budgets from scratch rather than bestowing percentage increases across the board with just a shrug of the shoulders. Zero-based budgeting works best for agencies conceived for and by the General Assembly which were created for a short-range purpose but then seem to hang on. The biggest drawback to ZBB? Nobody is really interested! When Christopher Del Sesto was governor in 1960-62, he wanted to get rid of an architect he didn’t like. When that didn’t work out, he abolished the whole department.

Get the Point?

In any conversation, the dialogue is only half the story, according to a Boston Globe article. Embedded in pregnant pauses, pacing, and fluctuations in a speaker’s tone of voice are signals that hint “I’m not really paying attention” or “I’m feeling down” or “I’m not interested.” Now, Cogito Health, a company in Charlestown, MA is mining the unspoken part of a conversation for insights that could improve people’s health. With technology that analyzes the tempo and syncopation of speech, the company is trying to identify indicators that someone may be at risk of depression or is unlikely to adhere to a plan for managing a chronic disease.

Jobs Advantage Goes to Former Interns

Even though companies say that, on average, they’ll hire 19% more new graduates this year than they did in 2010, some graduates might find that a good portion of companies’ incoming classes are already filled. That’s because companies say that nearly 40% of this year’s entry-level positions will be filled by former interns, according to a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. The numbers are a marked increase from five years ago when only 30% of entry-level hires came from former interns. Companies are essentially trying to take graduates out of the job market before there’s competition for them, the NACE report stated.

Technology Threatens Teachers

Education Technology is replacing Bargaining Rights as the new threat to teachers’ unions, according to a new book by a Stanford University political scientist on trends in education. Author Terry Moe argues the web, fast connections, improved screens and a growing consensus that there are truly superstar teachers. In its review of the book Special Interest, Bloomberg Businessweek says the most reviled institution in America, after banks and oil companies, is probably teachers unions, The NEA and AFT with some 4 million members between them. “Education technology is a tsunami that’s only now beginning to swell,” Moe states. He envisions super-teachers offering world-class instruction from key locations to almost any school in America, an innovation that would obviously reduce the teaching population considerably. Teacher unions have already lodged challenges, political and judicial, to virtual learning, Moe said.

College Learning: In the Eye of the Beholder

Two professors who authored the recent book “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” maintain that studies seem to show that students think they are learning but are not. The authors found that large numbers of the students were making their way through college with minimal exposure to rigorous coursework, only a modest investment of effort and little or no meaningful skills like writing or reasoning. Not surprisingly, the authors wrote in an op-ed appearing in The New York Times, a large number of the students showed no significant progress on tests of critical thinking,
complex reasoning and writing that were administered when they began college and then again at the ends of their sophomore and junior years. About 36% of students in the study who reported spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone still had an average G.P.A of 3.16 – an obvious signal of professorial apathy - or grade inflation.

Tuitions Escalating, Reasons Abound

URI recently announced its annual 8,5% tuition increase, following its annual practice of upping the cody way beyond the Coast of Living Index. These arbitrary boots, heroically endorsed by the Office of Higher Education, never seen to mention cost-cutting efforts, a term as foreign to administrators as the euro. One writer in The New York Times said the reason for increases in tuition is simple: supply and demand. The average increase is in the neighborhood of 1 to 3%. But URI wants to become a “World University” attracting support from students and philanthropists across the globe. Woonsocket be damned seems to be the latest mantra. One assumption is safe, the author contends: colleges spend all the money they can gets their hands on. No administrator or faculty member I know is short of ideas on how to spend more.”

Like, Tweet Dreams

Internet users tap Facebook’s “Like” and Twitters “Tweet” buttons to share content with friends. But those tools also let their makers collect data about the websites people are isiting, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. The so-called social widgets,, which appear atop stories on news sites or alongside products on retail sites, notify Facebook and Twitter that a person visited those sites even when users don’t click on the buttons, according to a study done for the WSJ. The widgets are prolific. They have been added ti millions of web pages in the past year. Facebook’s buttons appear on a third of the world’s 1,000 most-visited websites, according to the WSJ study. Buttons on Twitter and Google appear on 20% and 25% of those sites respectively.

The Score: Public Opinion 18, Catholic Bishops 0.

According to the media, the recent John Jay College study of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church can be blamed on the American culture of the 1960s (its Woodstock’s fault) rather than any peculiar priestly urges for little boys and girls. With they conclusion out of the way, the Catholic Bishops of the United States will now write guidelines to be followed by priests henceforth. A New York Times editorial, Vatican officials say Rome should not interfere with the traditional supremacy of local bishops (except, of course in cases such as in Austrailia where the reigning pope removed a bishop who advocated ordaining women or married men to the priesthood. A Boston Globe columnist said in he critique of the John Jay report that “it wouldn’t have mattered if the creeps had entered seminaries with ‘Abuser’ tattooed on their foreheads, judging by how church bigs dealt with the predators credibly accused by traumatized victims.”

Women Slower to Marry

The Census Bureau reports nearly half of all women between the ages of 25 and 29s have never been married, up from about a quarter of the age group in 1986. Among the changes found in the research is the rising median age of first marriages, which in 1950 was 23 for men and 20 for women. In 2009, it was 28 for men and 26 for women. Divorce rates have leveled off after reaching a high around 1980, the report said. In 2009, about 35% of women 40 to 49 had divorced, down from 40% 1996. First marriages that end in divorce last a median of eight years for men and for women. The median length of second marriages was the same.