Bridges of Wayne county

Everyone loves a good fight, so this story about the battle over a new bridge between Detroit and Windsor is irresistible fun. I spent a few days in Michigan last month, more stories to come when the election season is over. The picture here is taken of the existing Ambassador bridge from the Windsor side.

Infrastructure 

They aren’t building that 

Michigan is getting a swanky new international bridge. Canada is paying

Sep 29th 2012 | DETROIT | from the print edition

THE governor of Michigan, Republican Rick Snyder, will happily admit to being “one tough nerd”. The former accountant needs to be, as he has been waging a battle to push ahead with a new bridge between the United States and Canada. Called the New International Trade Crossing (NITC), it will connect Detroit and the town of Windsor in Ontario. [More...]

Unions and the election

With friends like these…

Republicans are getting tougher on unions. But so, too, are Democrats

Sep 22nd 2012 | CHICAGO, NEW YORK AND PHILADELPHIA | from the print edition

Piece by Rosemary Ward, with contributions from Chicago.

DELORES BOWIE and Audra Traynham, members of the Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ, work as caretakers in office buildings in Philadelphia, the largest city in Pennsylvania, a pivotal swing state. But on this Tuesday, 50 days before the election, they are knocking on doors in South Philadelphia to register people to vote and to remind them, as they put it, why “we need to keep Obama”. A week before the election, the two women will send postcards to everyone they canvassed reminding them to vote. [More...]

The teachers' strike in Chicago

Fighting irrelevance with fire

Sep 14th 2012, 18:39 by N.L. | CHICAGO--ONLINE ONLY

IMPROVING America’s schools is no easy task, but in recent years the school-reform movement has made great strides and there is growing agreement about what it takes to make a great school. The tired arguments of the past are finally being put to rest. Much as we would like to say that the key is something simple like charters, or smaller classes, or different testing, or fewer mediocre teachers, or more motivated parents, or less poverty, in fact there is no silver bullet. A system this stagnant requires changes on many levels.

The boffins at the Urban Education Institute (UEI) in Chicago have written an exemplary book on school improvement. They looked at 100 elementary schools that showed progress in attendance and test scores over a seven-year period, and 100 others that did not. They argue—with quantitative data—that five essential pillars are needed to build a great school. These are: effective school leadership, collaborative teachers (with committed staff and professional development), parent-community ties, a student-centered (and safe) learning climate with high expectations, and ambitious and demanding instruction.

The teachers in UEI's home city of Chicago are striking, leaving 350,000 children out of class. The unions say they only want the best outcome for the students. But this cannot be true. This is because their demands (to have a role in the hiring and firing of teachers and to weaken or delay plans for improved teacher assessment) essentially kick away at two of the UEI's five essential pillars for great schools. [MORE...]

Zero sum games

Chicago’s schools

Zero sum games

A politically embarrassing strike

Sep 15th 2012 | CHICAGO | from the print edition 

THE arguments had been rumbling on for months. But negotiations between the city of Chicago and its teachers’ union finally came to an end on September 9th. Just a week after the city’s children returned from their long summer break, their teachers began their first strike in Chicago for 25 years. About 25,000 teachers have stopped work, keeping 350,000 pupils out of school.

The mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is now in an unenviable position. Improving Chicago’s disastrous school system, where four in ten children fail to graduate, is one of his main priorities. In negotiations over a new contract for teachers, his demands have been reasonable. He wants the school day lengthened to seven hours for elementary children, for teachers to work 38 weeks a year, and to be able to introduce differentiated pay. This is a mix of performance-based pay and extra pay for working in jobs that are hard to fill and for taking leadership roles. In return for all this, teachers have been offered an average salary increase of 16%, costing $320m over the next four years. Which, given the state of city finances and a deficit in the school system of $1 billion, will be a squeeze. [More...]

Winning women

The campaign 

Battle of the sexes 

The tussle for women’s votes is a defining feature of the election race 

Sep 15th 2012 | CHICAGO | from the print edition

THE signs of battle have been apparent for much of the year. First, a flurry when a candidate’s wife was described as having “never worked a day in her life”; then a storm when a student was called a “slut” for saying her health-care plan should include free contraception; and finally the arrival of new phrases in the political lexicon such as “legitimate rape” and “mandatory transvaginal ultrasound”.

In some ways the bitter battle over women voters should come as no surprise. In 2008 Barack Obama won the female vote by 13 points (56%-43%). His opponent this time round, Mitt Romney, needs to do much better than John McCain if he wants to win. Women outnumber men at the polls (by 10m at the last election), turn out to vote in higher percentages (60% versus 56% in 2008), and tend to vote Democratic. Mr Obama’s comfortable edge with women is still apparent, but looks a bit weaker now (53%-43%, according to our YouGov poll). Moreover, Mr Romney’s edge with men is eroding either all, or most, of this lead, depending on the poll. [More...]

School's out...

Chicago’s schools
Zero sum games 

A politically embarrassing strike

Sep 15th 2012 | CHICAGO | from the print edition

THE arguments had been rumbling on for months. But negotiations between the city of Chicago and its teachers’ union finally came to an end on September 9th. Just a week after the city’s children returned from their long summer break, their teachers began their first strike in Chicago for 25 years. About 25,000 teachers have stopped work, keeping 350,000 pupils out of school.

The mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is now in an unenviable position. Improving Chicago’s disastrous school system, where four in ten children fail to graduate, is one of his main priorities. In negotiations over a new contract for teachers, his demands have been reasonable. He wants the school day lengthened to seven hours for elementary children, for teachers to work 38 weeks a year, and to be able to introduce differentiated pay. This is a mix of performance-based pay and extra pay for working in jobs that are hard to fill and for taking leadership roles. In return for all this, teachers have been offered an average salary increase of 16%, costing $320m over the next four years. Which, given the state of city finances and a deficit in the school system of $1 billion, will be a squeeze.

Over the past eight years Chicago teachers have done well, securing raises averaging 7% a year with no changes to their terms. The main sticking points now are teacher evaluations, compensation and the rehiring of teachers who have been laid off. These last two issues are the most significant hurdles (Mr Emanuel would like schools to be able to hire the best teachers, not the most recently-fired ones). But to keep the strike legal, the unions must insist that it is about nothing more than pay and benefits. [More...]

Two wheels good...

Transport in cities 

Vive la révolution 

A cycling renaissance is taking place in America

Sep 8th 2012 | CHICAGO | from the print edition

MORE and more Americans are taking to the road on two wheels. Between 1977 and 2009 the total number of annual bike trips more than tripled, while the bike’s share of all trips rose from 0.6% to 1%. Commuting cyclists have also increased in number, with twice as many biking to work in 2009 as in 2000

Cities are increasingly vying to be bike friendly. Among them, Chicago wants to become the most cycle-friendly large city in the country—and has said it will build over 30 miles of protected cycle lanes this year. At the moment it ranks fifth, according to Bicycling magazine. Ahead of it are Washington, DC, Boulder, Colorado, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon. And cycling is growing fast in all these cities, as it is in New York and San Francisco. [More...]

Wikipedia wars and the 2012 election

Short  but interesting: Paul Ryan's Wikipedia page has faced such severe "edit warring" that as of September 8th, it appears it has been necessary to bar edits from everyone but administrators. This level of protection (indicated by a gold lock on the Wikipedia website) is a fairly unusual state of affairs a spokesperson at Wikipedia says, but is unlikely to be permanent.

Surprisingly, pages on Obama, Biden and Romney have a lower level of protection (silver lock on website)--although Mr Ryan is a relatively new arrival on the ticket so one might expect a flurry of attention to his page. The Atlantic has a nice piece about the edit wars on the page.

At any given time on Wikipedia about 1,000 to 1,500 pages have some level of protection. 

A quick look at the history suggests arguments over various things including this paragraph:

"On August 13, 2012, Ryan denied profiting from information gleaned from the meeting on 18 September 2008 when Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, then treasury secretary Hank Paulson and others outlined their fears for the banking sector. His office said he had no control over the trades.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/13/paul-ryan-sold-shares-banking-crisis"

And, briefly, for I am writing this at great speed. It appears there is a disagreement over this paragraph which describes how well Ryan's speech was received. If my reading of the Wikipedia page history is correct, this paragraph has been inserted and removed a number of times.

"The speech was well received by the convention audience and praised for being well-delivered,^[181][182] and it was also criticized as being misleading on multiple points by the Washington Post, the New York Times,^[183] the Associated Press,^[184] and Factcheck.org,^[185] and by individual opinion writers at many other media outlets.^{[186][187][188]"}