Paul Soglin: Waxing America

British Government Disavows Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat

Today the British Government disavowed Sacha Baron Cohen, and peerless Kazakh journalist, Borat-- I think. (my observations in italics):

British Ambassador to Kazakhstan Comments on Sacha Baron Cohen

Paul Brummel, new British ambassador to Kazakhstan, has made some comments today, January 31, at a press conference in Almaty, responding to a question on British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen who often performs as a fictional Kazakh journalist, Borat, Kazakhstan Today reports.

I wonder who was the Kazakh journalist questioning the ambassador.

In particular, the ambassador has said that "what Sacha Baron Cohen is trying to do is not to represent Kazakhstan in a bad light through his eccentric antics, but to show prejudices still existing in the British society." It is first of all directed against the British themselves, Mr. Brummel said.

"(Borat)... is not to represent Kazakhstan in a bad light through his eccentric antics" Oh? I wonder what he would say if he was trying to portray them in a bad light?

"trying to show...prejudices still existing in British society."  If he was trying show British prejudices, wouldn't Borat focus on British dental hygiene or the Queen's pocketbooks rather than Kazakhs drinking camels milk? or golfing with goats heads? Ok, polo, not golf.

Mr. Brummel said that "we should think more about how vague are ideas of the British about what is Kazakhstan and how little they know about it. It is our common task: for me as for a diplomat and for you as journalists to show to the British and to the Western community what is Kazakhstan in 2006 and how much it is different from how Borat is presenting it," - he said.

Huh?

In his view, "looking at Borat, anyone who has the slightest idea about what is Kazakhstan will for sure realize that this character has nothing to do with Kazakhstan."

I think this story was written by Borat.

No Wisconsin 'Conceal and Carry' Handguns

Fortunately, the Wisconsin Assembly barely mustered the votes necessary to sustain Governor Doyle's Veto of the Conceal and Carry bill. From The Capital Times:

Assembly Fails to Override Gov's Veto on Concealed Weapons Bill

By Anita Weier

The state Assembly failed today to override Gov. Jim Doyle's veto of bill that would have allowed Wisconsin residents to carry a concealed weapon with a permit in most cases.

The vote was 64-34, two short of the two-thirds majority required. The Senate approved the override Thursday on 23-10 vote.

Two Democrats who had voted for the bill when it originally passed changed their votes. They were Rep. John Steinbrink of Pleasant Prairie and Rep. Terry Van Akkeren of Sheboygan.

Steinbrink issued a written statement saying he had heard from a large number of constituents on both sides of the issue.

From a city where we average about 3 homicides a year for the last twenty years, a big thank you to the Assembly Democrats who voted "no," especially to the two who switched after hearing from their constituents, the Senators who voted "no," and the tireless effort on the part of the Governor and his staff (Go Shawn!)  who worked to sustain the veto.

Another special thank you is in order to all of the professional law enforcement officials, hunters and gun owners who joined with health care workers and professionals raising their voices with pleas for sanity.

Teachers Strike in Madison: Thirty Years Later II

After posting Teachers Strike in Madison: Thirty Years Later which came on the heels of The Capital Times article 30 years of clout: MTI's John Matthews and the '76 teachers strike, I came across a Neocon attack post in the Ann Coulter mold, from a woman at the University of Wisconsin.

The student takes me to task for my assertion that:

All studies have shown us that there are three variables that affect the quality of education. They include money, which translates to classroom size; the quality of the faculty; and parental involvement....

She then goes on to refer to a report that concludes:

McDade 's analysis of scores from tests taken at the high school level by all Wisconsin students shows that socioeconomic factors such as poverty and local property wealth are better predictors for student achievement than school district expenditures. That is, high school students are more likely to score better on the state's standardized test if they live in school districts with fewer poor students and higher property values than students who live in higher-poverty, lower-property value districts.

Now, if I was to criticize my own comments, I should have led off with citations and quotes from David Rusk (yes, the IZ David Rusk).  Our UW critic is certainly correct and would find a companion in Rusk who queries:

Why does where a child lives shape the child’s educational opportunity?   It’s not how much the school board spends.   It’s who the child’s classmates are...

...My own studies have found that, for every one percent reduction in the percentage of a poor child’s classmates that are also low-income, on average, that child’s test scores will increase two- to three-tenths of one percent.   In other words, moving a low-income child from a low-income school where 80 percent of classmates qualify for a free lunch to a middle-class school where only 20 percent of classmates qualify for a free lunch will, over time, yield a 12-18 percent improvement in the child’s test scores.   The results are even more dramatic in terms of high school graduation rates, continuing on to college, and other measures of lifetime opportunities.

Take two districts with the same per student expenditure, but District A has a student body 30% below the poverty level, and District B has a student body at 50% below the poverty level, and District A will consistently outperform District B.   

Poverty counts. There is no question that poverty levels determine educational outcomes.

Now lets get back to the issue:  if you want to improve the quality of education in a school ,what are the items that need addressing?

McDade and the UW student think that by more demanding graduation requirements we will close the gap.  Good.  How?  By pixie dust?  A magic wand?  Wishing won't make it so.

It will take three elements: money, quality of the faculty, and parental involvement.

By the way, the correlation between poverty and academic performance may be stronger than the correlation between per student expenditure and performance, but it does not reverse the obvious: the districts that spend more get better results.  Of course, the districts with the highest levels of poverty usually have the fewest financial resources, the oldest, most dilapidated schools, and the most dated equipment.

Abstinence Groups Get 25% Of Bush HIV/AIDS Funds

Science and reality are once again trumped by a Bush Administration that asserts:

If you did not buy into our concepts of morality and faith, you will die.  We say this realizing that not only will you die, but that we endanger the entire human race from the scourge of AIDS.  We say this knowing that there are more effective ways of combatting the spread of AIDS than our narrow religious-driven programming.

The Associated Press reports:

Abstinence Groups Get 25% Of Bush HIV/AIDS Funds

President Bush's $15 billion effort to fight AIDS has handed out nearly one-quarter of its grants to religious groups, and officials are aggressively pursuing new church partners that often emphasize disease prevention through abstinence and fidelity over condom use.

Award recipients include a Christian relief organization famous for its televised appeals to feed hungry children, a well-known Catholic charity and a group run by the son of evangelist Billy Graham, according to the State Department.

The outreach to nontraditional AIDS players comes in the midst of a debate over how best to prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The debate has activated groups on both ends of the political spectrum and created a vast competition for money.

Conservative Christian allies of the president are pressing the U.S. foreign aid agency to give fewer dollars to groups that distribute condoms or work with prostitutes. The Bush administration provided more than 560 million condoms abroad last year, compared with some 350 million in 2001.

...Religious organizations last year accounted for more than 23 percent of all groups that got HIV/AIDS grants, according to the State Department. Some 80 percent of all secular and religious grant recipients were based in the countries where the aid is targeted.

Among those winning grants were:

-Samaritan's Purse, which is run by (Billy) Graham's son, Franklin. It says its mission is "meeting critical needs of victims of war, poverty, famine, disease and natural disaster while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ."

-World Vision. The 56-year-old Christian organization is known for its TV appeals - some with celebrities such as game show host Alex Trebek - that asked people to support a Third World child.

-Catholic Relief Services. It was awarded $6.2 million to teach abstinence and fidelity in three countries; $335 million in a consortium providing anti-retroviral treatment; and $9 million to help orphans and children affected by HIV/AIDs. The group offers "complete and correct information about condoms" but will not promote, purchase or distribute them, said Carl Stecker, senior program director for HIV/AIDS.

-HOPE. The global relief organization founded by the International Churches of Christ recently brought comedian Chris Rock to South Africa for an AIDS prevention event. AIDS grants support HOPE in several countries.

-World Relief, founded by the National Association of Evangelicals. It won $9.7 million for abstinence work in four countries.

For prevention, Bush embraces the "ABC" strategy: abstinence before marriage, being faithful to one partner, and condoms targeted for high-risk activity. The Republican-led Congress mandated that one-third of prevention money be reserved for abstinence and fidelity.

Condom promotion to anyone must include abstinence and fidelity messages, U.S. guidelines say, but those preaching abstinence do not have to provide condom education.

..."This drive for abstinence is putting a lot of pressure on girls to get married earlier," said Dr. Abeja Apunyo, the Uganda representative for Pathfinder International, a reproductive health nonprofit group based in Massachusetts.

"For years now we have been trying to tell our daughters that they should finish their education and train in a profession before they get married. Otherwise they have few options if they find themselves separated from their husbands for some reason," Apunyo said.

An AIDS-program pastor in Uganda explained his abstinence teaching to unmarried young people.

Secular activists say it is not realistic to expect all teenagers to abstain from sex and that teenagers also should be taught how to protect themselves.

U.S.-backed programs have spread abstinence and faithfulness education to more than 13 million people in Uganda, according to the State Department. Officials promote the nation as an "ABC" model, with its HIV infection rate down by more than half in a decade.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said that on a tour of Uganda in January he saw pro-abstinence rallies and skits praising Bush, and U.S.-supported groups conducting house-to-house testing, care and counseling.

"The good news about the faith-based groups is not only the passion they bring to the work but it is the moral authority and the extended numbers of volunteers they can mobilize to get the word out," Smith said.

But Smith believes the administration is wrongly supporting some nonprofit groups. He and several other congressional conservatives wrote to Bush and the U.S. Agency for International Development, contending that several large grant recipients were pro-prostitution, pro-abortion or not committed enough to Bush's abstinence priorities.

The letters followed a briefing last year by Focus on the Family, run by Christian commentator and Bush ally James Dobson. The group's sexual health analyst, Linda Klepacki, said even some religious groups emphasize condoms over abstinence.

"We have to be careful that the president's original intent is being followed where A and B are the emphasized areas of the ABC methodology," she said.

Dominatrix, Cosmopolitan, and Dead Old Men

Dominatrix Acquitted in Bondage Death

A dominatrix was acquitted of manslaughter Monday in the death of a man who prosecutors say suffered a heart attack while strapped to a replica of a medieval rack.Barbara Asher, a 56-year-old woman who called herself Mistress Lauren M, was also cleared of dismemberment...Michael Lord suffered a heart attack in .... a bondage session.

Asher had her boyfriend chop up the body of the 275-pound retired telephone company worker, and they dumped it behind a restaurant in Maine, prosecutors said. His remains have never been found.

Besides the death of Nelson Rockefeller * , all this reminds me of a Cosmopolitan article from the 1970's. Let me do my best to recreate it:

Ten Fabulous Pointers If You Have An Affair With a Married Man.

6.  If He Has a Heart Attack While Having Sex, Call An Ambulance: Don't hesitate to call the ambulance.  You will not be able to handle the matter yourself.  Some women try to dress their dead lovers and place him on the couch or even get him down to the street.  Have you ever tried dressing someone else, let alone a 200 pound corpse?  It just won't work and even if you can get his shorts, shirt, trousers, and jacket on, it will not look right. And you still havent fixed his tie.

Eventually law enforcement will figure it out. Then you have to confront the revelation that he died on top of you in an extra-martial affair, and that you are cold and heartless for failing to call the ambulance.

People will call you cold and selfish.

Call the ambulance.  Then all you will be called is a 'slut' and that doesn't hurt as much, in fact, it will probably bring you more suitors.

*Rockefeller details:

When he collapsed of a heart attack, Megan Marshak was pinned underneath him. She had to struggle to get out. He was naked. It was not known that he had a mistress. For these reasons, she was reluctant to call the ambulance. Instead, Megan Marshak called her girlfriend, who lived nearby.

The girlfriend walked over, arrived, saw the naked former Vice-President sprawled on the floor, and then she and Megan Marshak had a discussion about what to do about this.

Finally, fully one hour after Nelson Rockefeller had collapsed, the girlfriend called the ambulance. Megan Marshak did not make the call.

When the ambulance arrived, Nelson Rockefeller was still barely alive. However, he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Thoughts on Public Education and Right Wing Foolishness

Did you ever notice:

• Supporters of vouchers and so-called 'school choice,' disproportionately send their children to private or suburban schools where the per-pupil expenditures are the highest.
• "Choice schools" do not have nearly the numbers of special education children as public schools.
• With corporate America clamoring for 'pay of performance,' executives of failed companies walk with mutli-million dollar bonuses while no one ever suggests doubling the salary of a stellar $30,000 public school teacher.
• George Bush acknowledges that in professional baseball the teams with the most money can afford the best facilities and the best players and are more likely to win but, he can't figure out why delapidated schools, children living in poverty and poorly paid teachers produce poor results.
• As we spend a smaller and small proportion of our gross national product on education, our students are getting dumber.
• Added 1/30/06 at 4:37 PM:

If you ever take the time to visit the websites of the expensive, Eastern prep schools (such as Choate, Andover, Exeter etc.), you’ll find that they speak to the quality of education offered by noting their small class sizes, low teacher-student ratios, highly educated teachers, etc.   

Overture Not for CTM

The demise of CTM Madison Family Theater (formerly Childrens' Theater of Madison), a community- based theater group with forty years of history in Madison, should not come as any surprise. In fact, its demise was ordained from the moment the concept of the Overture Center was advanced.

I have tremendous respect for my friend Corkey Custer, the President of CTM, but he is just plain wrong in saying that the financial problems which forced the closing of the theater company were independent of Overture. There is no question that better management of CTM might have forestalled the demise of CTM, but short of a massive infusion of cash, it was inevitable.

In the simplest terms, Overture is not the old Civic Center.  The Madison Civic Center was designed to bring balanced programming to the Madison community within a realistic budget. 

In part, that meant hosting touring versions of Broadway shows, concerts, dance and comedy. It served as a less than perfect home to dance companies and the symphony.  It was also a nutruring place to grow and house community-based theater, which included CTM and the Madison Rep.

Financially, the facility was structured to balance a reasonable taxpayer subsidy, with rents affordable to the local performing arts organizations.

Overture is a different facility in concept and cost. It was first designed as a symphony hall for classical music and dance, then for stage productions, and finally for community theater. There is nothing wrong with that, so long as it is understood that it does not serve the purposes and goals of the Madison Civic Center.

Halfway through the design and development period for Overture, when the costs first went from $50 million to $100 million, and then to over $200 million dollars, it was realized there was no way the resident companies could afford to perform there.  That is why the Overture Fund for the Perfoming Arts was established as a grant of $25 million that was to be matched to create an endowment of $50 million.

Into this stepped CTM, and then the curtain came down:

To maintain Overture there must be a steady stream of Broadway shows like last year's Phantom of the Opera. If those shows sell out, there are very few recreational or entertainment audience dollars left for the local community theater companies.  Certainly not the ticket sales they need to survive in Overture.

The cost of the 'hall' in Overture is more, particularly when moving from the small, almost intimate Isthmus Playhouse to the larger Capital Theater.  When CTM was told of how it would be moved from the Isthmus to the Capital Theater fashioned from the old Oscar Mayer, they were told it would be 400 seats, then 800 seats, and it finally opened with 1200 seats. The Rep will not have as serious a problem but will still face similar issues as it moves its productions to the newer, larger venue.

The cost of productions also go up in the new Overture.  This is no longer small theater, this is big stage production, and to attract audiences, everything costs money.

The content itself changes.  There was no way the old Christmas Carol could be produced in the Capital Theater as it had been in the old Isthmus Playhouse.  As the years go by, whatever remains of community theater in Overture will be significantly different from what we have seen in the past.

Finally, the extrordinary fundraising that went into the Overture Performing Arts Fund took away from the abilty of companies like CTM to maintain their regular fund drives.

What is done is done.  The Oscar Mayer Theater is gone. The Isthmus Playhouse is gone.  People like me have to accept that and move on. It means that if we want to support community theater, both to nourish young performers, technicians and writers, as well as enjoy the content, community theater needs a new home.  The Bartell is a good start, but it is not as good as what we had.

There is another alternative but I find it unacceptable.  Find a source of an additional $25 million to provide the kind of endowment to keep CTM and the other small companies in Overture.  I find that unacceptable for two reasons.  First, we have already seen what large sums of money can do to change the content and fare in terms of the balance between the performing arts in a community. Secondly, it does not solve the problem of providing adequate and appropriate space for CTM.  Just as CTM and the Rep had to share the Isthmus with each other and others, they would have to do the same at Overture.

Enjoy the touring Broadway musicals and the big name middle-of-the-road concerts.

Frank Lloyd Wright in Racine, Chicago and Madison

Racine's Journal Times ran a story this week about  Bob Hartmann and Frank Lloyd Wright: Wright in Racine

Bob Hartmann’s fascination with Frank Lloyd Wright’s work started in 1950, when his father packed the family in their gray 1947 Buick Roadmaster sedan, and headed to Racine to see the new SC Johnson Research Tower. His father made weekly, work-related trips to Racine from their suburban Milwaukee home, and had decided that the family should see this new building....


Hartmann: “From then on, I was just hooked, and I started picking up books. I remember the book which I absolutely loved, but which I could not afford, Frank Lloyd Wright and 60 Years of Living Architecture (New York, Horizon Press, 1959). I would look at it in the Milwaukee Public Library, when I was beginning to develop my design skills. I was fascinated with his drawings. It seemed to be that was the way things should be designed, but they were not.”


The highlight of his time in Madison came in the late 1960s, when there was yet another attempt to build Frank Lloyd Wright’s fabled Monona Terrace design...

...“[We] went up to Taliesin on a cold November day in 1971,” Hartmann recalls. An apprentice showed perspective drawings he had made. “I said, ‘I can turn these into presentation drawings, for newspaper, storefronts, and spot ads for local TV. I made three color renderings of first phase of the proposal.

“I recall the night that Wesley Peters came in from Spring Green to make a presentation to the city council. He was extremely complimentary of my drawings. He made a presentation to the city fathers, and they were unbelievably rude and cantankerous, with the exception of then-Alderman Paul Soglin. When the item came up on the referendum it was overwhelmingly defeated. Then the entire project went back on hiatus. It did not come back until Soglin was mayor [in the 1990s]...

Hartmann's drawing of the Civic Auditorium was published in the newspaper December 7, 1971..
Photos (c) Mark Hertzberg

It is nice of Bill Hartmann to separate me from the other participants at that rancorous meeting, though Ali Ashman, Eugene Parks, Dennis McGilligan, and Jan Wheeler were most cordial and respectful that evening. 

I grew up a few blocks from Robie House in Chicago.  Whenever our family drove by, there was a certain reverence and awe that filled the 1952 green Chevrolet.  When I attended Hyde Park High School our walk from school back home through the University of Chicago campus took us by Robie House.  When no one was looking we hoisted ourselves up on the south wall to get a better look at the courtyard and the interior.

When we moved to Highland Park, I was exposed to more of Wright.

In Madison, I was astounded by the proximity to Wright's legacy, accompanied by the disdain for him, and ultimately the downright meanness and ignorance of some of my colleagues on the Common Council.  I was twenty-six years old at the time; most of my colleagues were over forty and some well into their sixties.  The meeting was a joke. A brilliant architect, Wesley Peters, affording the city what many believed to be the last hope to build one of Wright's greatest works, was ridiculed by Neanderthals who could not distinguish an auditorium from a basketball court, and who argued about the width of seats.

Eventually, Wright, Peters, Montooth and Tony Putnam prevailed as the city came to its senses.

Wright designed a boathouse for Madison around 1906.  The site at the foot of King Street at Lake Monona is still available for its construction.

Maybe the recent decision to restore the Wright-designed home on Butler Street will provide the necessary impetus as Ron McCrea wrote Saturday, January 21, 2006.                  

A Boost For A Wright House

One of Madison's hidden architectural landmarks, the 1903 Lamp House at 22 N. Butler St. designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright for his chum Robert "Robie" Lamp, has changed hands and may gain a much-needed restoration if the stars of downtown development line up.

The house, tucked behind other buildings on Butler Street, is a diamond in the rough. The courtyard in which it sits is overgrown, the pavement and terrace buckled, the brick exterior covered with dingy white paint.

And there is a third-floor enclosure plopped on top of the original roof garden that Wright designed for Lamp's enjoyment. Lamp, one of Madison's first travel agents and insurance agents, liked to sail and he could see both lakes from the garden.

Kazakhs Hunt for 'Radioactive Dollars'-Borat Denies Everything

This story is not self-explanatory:

Kazakhs Hunt for 'Radioactive Dollars'

Kazakhstan is on a nationwide hunt for dozens of "radioactive dollars" circulating in the country's financial system.

The Kazakh central bank said in a letter to financial institutions the radiation level of the U.S. dollar notes was 100 times above normal. A Kazakh citizen brought them into the country in November, it said...

"(The dollars) pose a direct threat to people's health," said the letter, obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

It was not clear how the money, nearly $4,000 in 100-dollar and 50-dollar bills, got contaminated.

The Soviet Union used Kazakhstan, a vast Central Asian state, the for many decades as a testing ground for nuclear weapons after it detonated its first plutonium bomb in 1954.

Waxingamerica has emphatic denials from Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) that he had nothing to do with the contamination, recently working on his film project,. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby .

For More on Borat:

Borat: Sacha Baron Cohen-An Olddate

New York Times on Key Sacha Baron Cohen-Borat Story: GOT KUMIS???

Sacha Baron Cohen Under Attack from Kazakhstan: Ann Coulter Speechless

Petroleum Culture

Barry Orton, by day a mild mannered University of Wisconsin professor, but, in moonlight, the fearless editor of Waxingamerica, sent me a link to a UW law school prof blogging under the pseudonym "Oscar Madison": The Columnist Manifesto: Dinosaur Bones:

What was the most powerful industry was in 19th century America? The one that had the largest impact on the way the country grew and on the lives of ordinary people? The one that employed the largest workforce? The one that caused the most injuries and was involved in the most litigation? The one that had the most political clout?

Yup, it was the railroads. And look at them now.

In the 20th century, the railroads were eclipsed by the oil-automotive complex. In the 20th century, what was good for General Motors was good for the country; but in the 19th, what was good for the Union Pacific Railroad Co. was good for the country...

...The first war was metaphorical. The oil-and-auto industries didn't drive railroads into obscurity because cars and trucks were a "better" product or more efficient, but because ...massive public subsidies were pumped into road-building after World War II, in something close to a conscious effort to transform the U.S. into a car-based suburban society. Capitalism is like that. Industries reach and maintain dominance, not by playing "free market" better than their competitors, but by playing political power better.

But there have been real wars too. Nations have always fought wars to promote their leading industries. One of the reasons the Iraq war is so stupid is that the oil-and-auto industry is so 20th century. If the Middle East had no oil, our government would be about as interested in that region as it now is in Africa. In 50 years, look for our wars to be fought on behalf of Microsoft and the pharmaceutical industry -- probably in third world countries that give sanctuary to intellectual property "pirates."

The development of the rail industry, and subsequently the automobile industry, and then the airline industry, was fueled by massive government handouts, accompanied by theft and corruption.  Military needs led to public lands dedicated to the railroads, and later to the Interstate highway system (It was built for National Defense), as well as the development of bigger and better engines, vehicle,s and airplanes, all fueled by petroleum.

All this reminded me of a recent Boston Globe editorial, Better Than Petroleum:

...Both higher gasoline taxes and tougher fuel-efficiency standards would help push automakers to find the best long-term alternatives to gasoline...

...Whether cars of the future are powered by hybrid gas-electric motors, ethanol, or hydrogen fuel cells, they will have to be lighter. Achieving weight reductions without compromising safety by greater use of lightweight, high-strength metals and other materials will be crucial. In the fall, the US Department of Energy and the US Council for Automotive Research agreed on a five-year, $70 million research program in this area. The nation's engineers ought to be able to design cars that are both efficient and safe. If they cannot, engineers in Asia or Europe will.

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

It is really quite simple. There are demonstrable instances where the so-called 'free market' does not respond without massive public subsidies, particularly when it comes to technological advancements in transportation.  I doubt that the $70 million will be enough. I don't mind paying the price.  I do mind bogus arguments about free enterprise and capitalism that fail to recognize that corporate America is sustained with massive handouts.