From: an article at The New York Times By DAVID LEONHARDT

How much do your kindergarten teacher and classmates affect the rest of your life?

Economists have generally thought that the answer was not much. Great teachers and early childhood programs can have a big short-term effect. But the impact tends to fade. By junior high and high school, children who had excellent early schooling do little better on tests than similar children who did not — which raises the demoralizing question of how much of a difference schools and teachers can make.

There has always been one major caveat, however, to the research on the fade-out effect. It was based mainly on test scores, not on a broader set of measures, like a child’s health or eventual earnings. As Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, says: “We don’t really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes.”

Early this year, Mr. Chetty and five other researchers set out to fill this void. They examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who had been part of a well-known education experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s. The children are now about 30, well started on their adult lives.

On Tuesday, Mr. Chetty presented the findings — not yet peer-reviewed — at an academic conference in Cambridge, Mass. They’re fairly explosive.

Just as in other studies, the Tennessee experiment found that some teachers were able to help students learn vastly more than other teachers. And just as in other studies, the effect largely disappeared by junior high, based on test scores. Yet when Mr. Chetty and his colleagues took another look at the students in adulthood, they discovered that the legacy of kindergarten had re-emerged.

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.

Go read the whole article at The New York Times

Steve Novick at Blues Oregon has written several articles on Measures 66 and 67. Here is a few excerpts to help those working at Deschutes County Fair booth counter the right wing distortions:

From the the Federation of State Tax Administrators’ web site , there are 27 other states that have higher top corporate profits tax rates than Oregon does.  In 19 states the flat rate is higher than our 6.6%; in 8 other states there are graduated rates with the “top tier” being above 6.6.  There are 18 states that have higher rates than the 7.6% new permanent profits tax rate on profits above $10 million. We will be tied for 18^th (and 19^th and 20^th) with two other states, Idaho and New Mexico.

Another is the affect the Measures will have on small business owners:

The myth that Measure 66 targets “small business owners.”  Now, I have previously explained that according to the Legislative Revenue Office, 93% of the state’s small business owners are not affected by Measure 66.  Another 5% are affected but do not make most of their money from a small business. They would include, for example,  Jeld-Wen executives who own rental properties and report the income from the rental property as “business income.”  This leaves 2% of small business owners that (a) are affected by Measure 66 and (b) actually make their living from a ‘small business.’ And that is using a definition of ‘small business’ which includes all partnerships, S-corps and LLCs – including, for example the Stoel Rives law firm.

And

The claim that taxing incomes of $250,000 or more is an attack on “small business owners” is exactly the claim that John McCain made against Barack Obama for endorsing higher taxes on – again – families making over $250,000 a year.  That claim wasn’t just debunked by the Obama campaign, or Citizens for Tax Justice. It was thoroughly debunked by a pretty mainstream source – CNNMoney.com.

Here’s what CNNMoney.com had to say on October 17, 2008:

In speech after speech, presidential candidate John McCain hammers on the claim that his rival Barack Obama will raise taxes on many small businesses …

But there are three main problems with McCain's charge …

First, it relies on a broad definition of what counts as a small business, including everyone who files a Schedule C, E and F.

But most people who file those forms don't run a business for a living: Those forms are also used to report income from freelance and consulting work, real-estate rentals, and most other non-salary sources.

A more realistic definition of small businesses turns up far fewer firms ...

Second, even using the broad definition of small business that McCain likes, very few owners would see their own taxes rise … Out of 34.7 million filers …98.6% … would be unaffected by Obama's proposed rate hike.

Find: More articles by Steve Novick a Blue Oregon

And I also suggest you check out articles by Chuck Secketoff at Blue Oregon Executive Director and a founder of the Oregon Center for Public Policy

Go to Strengthen Social Security to find out more.

From: Common Dreams

Double Dividend: Make Money by Saving Nature

by George Lakoff

From: the Puget Sound Business Journal

From: Business Insider Clusterstcok

Reminder, The Deficit You're Freaking Out About Is Bush's Fault

Gregory White and Kamelia Angelova

President Obama's administration has been blamed for reckless spending that has put America into its debt hole. But in reality, much of that spending emanates from policies of President Bush, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The chart presents the ugly truth.

From: Reader Supported News

James Clay Fuller nails it:

"The billionaire corporation officers couldn't come up with serious reductions in automotive fuel consumption for 40 years. Corporate bigwigs have yet to figure out how to make banks profitable without creating periodic worldwide economic disasters, and have failed over almost 40 years to make any progress whatever in preventing and/or cleaning up major oil spills. People who pay themselves well upward of a million dollars a year say they simply can't find a way to seriously reduce their pollution of our environment.

But it took only about four months to design and set up an efficient system for taking over the American electoral system at all levels, from municipal to national.

On January 21, 2010, the day the Supreme (now Extreme) Court under John Roberts declared that corporations and the very rich had a right to speak louder than the rest of us during campaigns, it was immediately clear that representative democracy in this country would be a thing of the past. The rich, already enormously powerful, were going to own the system outright.""

Go read the whole article: Corporate Election Machine Fires Up

From: The Washington Post

From: the Berkley Blog

Steve Shortell, dean of the School of Public Health

The news of health care reform has settled down, but the work in making it work has not. There are some serious challenges ahead. The new law promises to bring more people into the U.S. healthcare system, so it’s even more important to find better ways to keep people healthier, deliver higher quality medical care, and curb the growth in health care costs.  We’re going to see changes in the health care market and a greater focus on value.