California Sen. Kamala Harris takes to the opinion section of the Washington Post with an op-ed proposing higher pay for teachers, paid by the federal government:

The United States is facing a teacher pay crisis. Public school teachers earn 11 percent less than professionals with similar educations. Teachers are more likely than non-teachers to work a second job. In 30 states, average teacher pay is less than the living wage for a family of four.

That is a rapid fire series of half true or partly true statements. I think it may be true that some jurisdictions are facing a “teacher pay crisis”. There is no such crisis in Chicago. In Chicago the starting pay for a teacher is twice the median individual income and higher than the median family income. The average teacher pay is over $80,000 a year, significantly higher than the median family income. That’s for a nine or ten month school year, leaving time for a teacher to take a second job during the summer if desired.

Additionally, pay doesn’t tell the entire story. Here in Chicago teachers retire after 30 years (or less, depending) at three-quarters pay, something which people who are not public employees can only dream of.

The way you determine the market clearing price for anything, whether it’s a Chevy or a teacher, is by how many are left over at the asking price. Here in Chicago we do not have a problem attracting qualified applicants. Basically, there’s a waiting list. Draw your own conclusions.

She continues:

As president, I will make the largest federal investment in teacher pay in U.S. history. We will fully close the teacher pay gap during my first term, and provide the average teacher a $13,500 raise.

Here’s how it will work:

Under my plan, the federal government will immediately make an investment in every state to provide the first 10 percent of funding needed to close the teacher pay gap. Then we will support states to do their part: For every $1 a state contributes to increasing teacher pay, the federal government will invest $3, until we fully close the teacher pay gap. States will be required to maintain their investment over time, and increase that amount to cover their share of wage inflation.

Under prevailing pay rules in every school district I’ve ever heard of, the worst teacher at a given pay grade and step receives the same wage as the best. The teacher from the worst and least selective education school in the country receives the same pay as a teacher from the best education and most selective education school in the country in the same grade and step. Seniority is the primary determinant.

As far as I can tell the primary effects of her plan will be to reward states that underpay teachers while enormously increasing federal spending. That’s assuming Congress attaches no additional strings to the program. Short version: I’ll be paying for Los Angeles’s educational system.

Shorter version: the bidding war has begun!

In his column today in the New York Times David Brooks draws what I think is a reasonable conclusion:

Democrats might approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest self-examination. It’s clear that many Democrats made grievous accusations against the president that are not supported by the evidence. It’s clear that people like Beto O’Rourke and John Brennan owe Donald Trump a public apology. If you call someone a traitor and it turns out you lacked the evidence for that charge, then the only decent thing to do is apologize.

I do not believe such apologies will be forthcoming. I don’t believe anyone will back down from their previous positions. That would require a certain degree of grace, something sadly lacking in our national discourse. Democrats will continue to proclaim Trump a traitor, albeit possibly less loudly. Republicans will declare victory and vindication.

Grace would require penitence commensurate with the exaggerated accusations. The major media outlets have devoted more than 2,200 hours to coverage of something that didn’t happen. It would also require grace in victory which would mean a quieter acceptance. I don’t think the parties are capable of either.

Mr. Brooks continues:

The sad fact is that Watergate introduced a poison into the American body politic. Richard Nixon’s downfall was just and important, but it opened up the mouthwatering possibility that you don’t need to do the hard work of persuading people to join your side. Instead, you can destroy your foes all at once through scandal.

Politics since Watergate has been defined by a long string of scandals and pseudo-scandals — Iran-contra, Whitewater, Valerie Plame, Benghazi, Solyndra, swift-boating. Politico last year compiled a list of 46 scandals that were at one time or another deemed “worse than Watergate.”

The nation’s underlying divides are still ideological, but we rarely fight them honestly as philosophical differences. We just accuse the other side of corruption. Politics is no longer a debate; it’s an attempt to destroy lives through accusation.

The political media, especially on TV, now has a template it can apply whenever a scandal looms into view, to hook viewers into the speculative story line. According to the Tyndall Report, the three main broadcast networks made the Russia collusion investigation the second-most-covered news event of 2018, trailing only the Kavanaugh hearings, another scandal.

All the players slip into their assigned roles. Straight reporters are doing good, hard work. But the flow of information is not fast enough to keep up with 24/7 programming, so you get this toxic deluge of raw speculation.

which is something I’ve been saying for decades but I think he’s being far too exculpatory of his peers. It isn’t “the American body politic”. It’s American journalism. A whole generation entered journalism for a chance at real power—taking down a president you despise, becoming a hero, and being portrayed by Robert Redford in the movie adaptation. Now it’s become a bad habit, still being pursued by journalists who are too young to remember Watergate (but who studied it in J-school).

The price is being paid in the form of loss of credibility, attendant viewership, and lost jobs but the rest of us are also paying. What can substitute for not being able to trust what’s being reported?

I realize that there are multiple views of the entire question of presidential obstruction of justice. I have some questions. We now know there was no underlying crime. Assume it in fact is possible for the president to obstruct justice without bribing someone or acting in some other way not within his constitutional powers. How likely is it that Trump obstructed justice?

Here’s the second question. If there was no underlying crime, is it even possible for the president to obstruct justice without bribing someone or acting in some other way not within his constitutional powers?

Those aren’t rhetorical questions. I really want to know.

Speaking of the business model being the problem, the editors of the Washington Post also return to a subject about which they’ve written before—the treatment of Uighurs in China:

A sizable body of evidence, including statements from those who managed to flee, suggests the 1 million or more detainees are not free in any sense and are paying a dear price. By these accounts, the camps are a brazen attempt by China to commit cultural genocide against the Turkic Muslim minority in the region, including ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others, stamping them into the mold of the majority Han Chinese.

Adrian Zenz, a lecturer in social research methods at the European School of Culture and Theology in Germany, who helped expose the camps and earlier estimated more than a million had been detained, said March 13 that he has updated the total internment figure to up to 1.5 million people. He said, “There is virtually no Uighur family without one or more members in such detention.”

In the best case China is run by the Han Chinese for the Han Chinese. In the more likely case it’s run by the ruling cadre for the ruling cadre. It’s an ethnic state like Finland or Hungary. 90% of its people are Han Chinese. In a country as huge as China that means that more than 100 million people are fundamentally impediments.

The editors of the Washington Post helpfully point out that Facebook’s newly-discovered emphasis on privacy isn’t getting off to a very good start:

The company disclosed last week that it had exposed hundreds of millions of users’ passwords to its employees in plain text. The mishap, a question of carelessness rather than third-party sharing, is a reminder that the data debate is as much about protection as it is about privacy.

The KrebsOnSecurity blog first reported the flaw in Facebook’s system on Thursday. Facebook says no one outside the company could access the passwords, and there is no evidence its employees abused the vulnerability, which it detected in January during a security review. Still, the error is glaring: Storing passwords in an unreadable format is Security 101. It is standard practice for Facebook. And yet the company missed the problem for years. Facebook says the issue occurred not through its normal login system but through other mechanisms that unintentionally captured passwords, such as error logs.

Facebook’s lapse may not have violated any rules in the United States because the passwords were available only internally and no known harm has resulted from the mistake. But that is precisely the reason a privacy law must pay attention to data protection.

The only law that would really help is one that would outlaw Facebook’s business model. Its business model is to sell personal data. No amount of tinkering around the edges will change that.

Laws might induce Facebook to start observing ordinary and elementary security measures, however. Not retaining passwords online in plain text would be a good start.

I wonder if it has occurred to Democrats that the 2020 presidential election and, in all likelihood, that in 2024 will be conducted under the rules that prevail now? In other words, even if there is a groundswell of public opinion supporting the abolition of the electoral college, something I find unlikely, it would take too long to come into effect in 2020.

The primary caucuses and elections start taking place in February. Between now and then isn’t a lot of time to amend the constitution.

The president’s political opponents have, not unexpectedly, turned from collusion with Russia to obstruction of justice, in their arguments relying heavily on colloquial definitions of “obstruction of justice”. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1503 “obstruction of justice” is defined as an act that “corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice”. That only applies to judicial proceeding not to executive branch actions and, particularly, not to the president.

Can a president be indicted for obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional authority? I do not believe he can or should. The first line of defense against abuse of presidential power should remain impeachment.

Attorney General William Barr has released a four-page summary of the final report of the Mueller investigation. Lawfare has provided a copy here. Here’s a quick summary of Mr. Barr’s letter.

1. The investigation did not find evidence that the Trump campaign “joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election”.
2. The Mueller investigation did not draw a conclusion on whether the president or his election campaign had obstructed justice, instead leaving that determination to the AG.
3. Mssrs Barr and Rosenstein have concluded that there is not evidence to “establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense”.
4. In light of the public interest in this matter, the AG and his office are determining how much of the report to release to the public.
5. That process will be completed ASAP and will take relevant statutes governing grand jury testimony, etc. into account.

In this country we have no finding intermediary between guilty and innocent, no “not proven”. That is just about as close to an exoneration as we’re likely to get. That should be the end of the matter. It won’t be. This subject will continue to be up in the air for the duration of Trump’s term and beyond.

I look forward to additional informed commentary on Mr. Barr’s letter and, ultimately, the Mueller report itself.

Since similar stories have been in the news recently, I have a question to pose. Who is the biggest goat in the story of the multiple crashes of Boeing 737 Max 8s? Boeing or the Federal Aeronautics Administration?

IMO it’s the FAA by a mile. Not that Boeing has covered itself with glory. But I think of Lennie Pike’s line in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World: “Everybody pays taxes. Every businessmen who lie, and steal, and cheat from people every day, even they pay taxes”. We expect a certain amount of laxity, testing the boundaries from businesses. In the final analysis it will always be caveat emptor.

But the FAA has a heightened responsibility to promote flying safely. Its very purpose is to convince the public that it’s safe to fly. If it can’t do that, it shouldn’t exist at all.

But when unsafe aircraft are allowed to fly, unsafe drugs are prescribed to patients, unsafe food allowed to be sold to consumers, reckless banks become insolvent, yes, we should blame the companies but we really need to take the FAA, the the FDA, the DoA, and the OCC to task. They’re not there to be friends with the companies they’re supposed to regulate.

The biggest villain in the Deepwater Horizon story wasn’t BP; it was the Minerals Management Service, notoriously in the pocket of the companies it was supposed to be regulating.

Note that I’m not arguing against regulation or that we can always trust corporations. I’m just pointing out that it takes substantial vigilance to ensure that government agencies do their damned jobs. That doesn’t just happen automatically.