THE TRUTH ABOUT SPANX | ‘CNN’S GOT PROBLEMS’ | WHAT’S IN YOUR WATER ( BESIDES WATER )
THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE
A TROUBLING NEW LOAD FOR AMERICA’S STUDENTS By Joy Resmovits
FEBRUARY 2, 2014
02.02.14 #86 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: Checking in on the Union... Bill to Nowhere JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: Is Your Tap Water Killing You? Q&A: Larry King HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE
Voices ON THE COVER: SHUTTERSTOCK/AJT (BOOKS); FROM TOP: BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL; SAKI KNAFO
CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Thanks to Pope Francis, Revolt Against the Global Super-Rich Is Underway
GREAT EXPECTATIONS How the Common Core became everyone’s favorite punching bag. BY JOY RESMOVITS
DAVID MACMILLAN: As a Reformed Creationist, I Hope Bill Nye Doesn’t Underestimate Ken Ham QUOTED
Exit STYLE: Spanx Are Literally Squeezing Your Organs THE THIRD METRIC: Why 2014 Will Be the Year of Mindful Living TASTE TEST: The Best Spinach Dip for Your Super Bowl Spread MUSIC: Dog Ears TFU
DETAINED AND CONFUSED “We don’t know how they work. It’s so random.” BY SAKI KNAFO
FROM THE EDITOR: Cracks in the Core ON THE COVER: Photomagic
for Huffington by Troy Dunham and Wendy George
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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Cracks in the Core N THIS WEEK’S ISSUE, Joy Resmovits looks at how our new national education standards came to be, and explains why the system is only now showing cracks. The Common Core State Standards Initiative set out to make sure American public school students are learning the proper skills to help them compete in a global economy. This meant establishing guidelines for schools in every state — from placing a greater emphasis on fractions and fluency in arithmetic to assigning more non-fiction texts. “The standards were quietly drafted and implemented over
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the last five years by a relatively small group of experts and officials around the country and with limited public input,” Joy writes, noting that only about a third of Americans are even aware of the Common Core. “This meant the process went fairly smoothly — initially, creators were able to secure the backing of 48 governors, from red and blue states alike.” Now that the program has been implemented in 45 states, however, it has drawn critics of all stripes. Some say the new standards are too rigorous, others say they’re not rig-
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
orous enough. Some argue that the federal government was too involved in developing the standards, while others feel the states should have had more say. Just last weekend, the board of the New York State teachers union unanimously withdrew its support for the Common Core as it currently stands. “It had all happened fast,” Joy writes. “Maybe, in hindsight, a little too fast.” In our Voices section, Canadian politician and journalist Chrystia Freeland posits that 2013 was the year a revolt against our society’s plutocrats began. We as a culture, she writes, are finally recognizing income inequality as a critical political issue, thanks in part to Pope Francis’ critique of an “economy of exclusion.” “You see it in the U.S. in the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York, in California Governor Jerry Brown’s successful tax increase on the rich; in the emergence of Elizabeth Warren as one of her party’s leaders,” Freeland writes. Elsewhere in the issue, Rebecca Adams brings attention to a pressing women’s health concern: the
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dangers of Spanx, whose iron grip could lead to compressed bowels and blood clots. Based on her conversations with a gastroenterologist, a dermatologist and a
It had all happened fast,” Joy writes. “Maybe, in hindsight, a little too fast.” chiropractor, Rebecca lays out everything you should know before slipping on a piece of shapewear. And finally, as part of our continued focus on The Third Metric, we explain why 2014 will be the year of mindful living.
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BEHIND THE SCENES Tap here for a timelapse video showing how the cover of last week’s issue unfolded.
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‘ A YEAR OF ACTION’
President Barack Obama called for “a year of action” in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, saying he was willing to rely on executive authority and move forward without Congress to address economic mobility and inequality. “Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do,” he said. Obama announced a series of proposals, including a $10.10 minimum wage for federal contract workers and a government-backed private retirement savings plan. He concluded his speech with an emotional tribute to Sgt. First Class Cory Remsburg, who was injured in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb on his 10th deployment. Lawmakers from both parties gave Remsburg an extended standing ovation.
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STORM PARALYZES SOUTH
A few inches of snow on Tuesday brought activity in cities across the Southeast to a halt, leaving students stranded in schools overnight and cars abandoned along highways. In Atlanta, people described six-hour commutes for drives that normally take 30 minutes. Several governors in the region declared a state of emergency and asked people to stay home if at all possible.
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BILL TO 3 NOWHERE
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SAME LOVE
House Republicans on Tuesday passed anti-abortion legislation that would push insurance companies not to cover the procedure. The bill would prohibit insurance policies sold via new Obamacare state exchanges from covering abortion, impose tax penalties on small businesses that purchase plans for employees that include abortion coverage, and disallow the District of Columbia from using its own local funds to cover abortion care for low-income women. More than 80 percent of regular insurance policies have covered abortion for years. The bill is not expected to make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President Barack Obama has said he’d veto it.
Thirty-three couples wed at the Grammy Awards on Jan. 26, as rap duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis performed their hit “Same Love” with Mary Lambert. The diverse group included gay, straight and biracial couples. They were married officially by talk show host and performer Queen Latifah, who was authorized by Los Angeles County to perform the ceremony and signed the marriage certificates. After the rings were exchanged, Madonna took the stage to sing her 1980s song “Open Your Heart.”
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Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s former president who was ousted in a military coup last year, appeared in a soundproof cage at his criminal trial on Tuesday in Cairo. He has been charged with crimes related to prison breaks in the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak. Egyptian state TV, the only media outlet allowed in the courtroom, called the glass cage “the hero of today’s trial” for keeping the peace. According to reports, when he was finally allowed to speak, Morsi challenged the court’s authority to try him and insisted he was still the president.
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XLVII THAT’S VIRAL THIS WEEK WE IT’S WAY TOO LEARNED THAT EASY TO MESS UP THERE’S ONE THING YOUR KIDS... YOU SHOULD NEVER PUT IN YOUR WATER...
The Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos will face off in Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday. The teams can expect cold weather — and possibly snow — at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The 2014 matchup is especially noteworthy, as the Broncos’ Peyton Manning and the NFL’s top-rated offense will face off against Richard Sherman and the NFL’s top-rated defense. The 12-year age gap between the Seahawks’ Russell Wilson and Manning is the largest ever between quarterbacks in Super Bowl history, and the Seahawks team includes the first legally deaf NFL offensive player, fullback Derrick Coleman.
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
A LOT OF YOU ARE ADDICTED TO THE OCEAN...
THERE’S A TON OF FOOD YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO EAT...
AND FARTING COWS ARE TICKING TIME BOMBS.
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JASON LINKINS
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GETTING AWAY WITH IT IN WEST VIRGINIA OU KNOW, if I were to walk out of my office right now with a couple of cans of spray paint and a ball peen hammer, and set about vandalizing the local Citibank branch across the street, those actions would carry some natural consequences. It’s pretty much a given that I’d be arrested
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on the spot, earn a no-brainer arraignment, and get convicted in a fairly open-and-shut case. I’d have to make legal and financial restitution, and maybe do a little time. I’d certainly be stripped of a lot of privileges. It would be really hard for The Huffington Post to continue to extend the courtesy of continued employment to me. My life, in other words, would get a lot harder to live, and deservedly so. Those sorts of actions bring a
Work continued around storage tanks at Freedom Industries storage facility in Charleston, W. Va., on Jan. 13.
Enter dose of unwanted misery to a lot of hard-working people. Of course, it’s an entirely different matter if I were to say ... poison the entire Gulf of Mexico through my negligence. Or, say, destroy the global economy, through actions that only in the most charitable terms could be called “negligent.” For that sort of destruction, the wheels of justice grind much slower and with a greater degree of indifference. I guess the difference between getting brought to justice and getting away with it entirely boils down to whether you were willing to dream big. A question, then: Were the folks at Freedom Industries dreaming in sufficiently large terms when they allowed their uninspected chemical storage tanks to poison the West Virginia water supply? Looks like we are going to find out. The big news this week in l’affaire Freedom Industries is that the polluter has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. You wouldn’t be faulted if, at first blush, the receipt of that news tweaked your schadenfreude gland just a little bit. After all, bankruptcy is bad, right? It’s preferable not to be in bankruptcy, one imagines. And to
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a certain extent, that is true, so for a second, you feel like maybe Freedom Industries is getting some dose of just desserts, having to file for bankruptcy protection. But the operative word here, of course, is “protection,” and as it turns out, Freedom Industries needs a lot of it. According to the Charleston Gazette, which broke the news on Jan. 18, the company “owes $3.6 million to its top 20
For a second, you feel like maybe Freedom Industries is getting some dose of just desserts, having to file for bankruptcy protection.” unsecured creditors,” as well as “$2.4 million in unpaid taxes to the Internal Revenue Service,” dating back to 2000. (The IRS has multiple liens on Freedom Industries property as a result.) Bankruptcy protection halts the process of payback to creditors — which include you and me, per the IRS. As Bloomberg Businessweek’s Paul M. Barrett — who has done all sorts of spadework on Freedom Industries — reports, it’s now up
Enter to a “bankruptcy judge to sort out whose claims go first.” On top of all of these past debts now come the potential legal liabilities that arise, as a natural consequence, of having put the lives of 300,000 people at risk through incompetence. Some 20 lawsuits against Freedom Industries have already been filed. As Barrett notes, Chapter 11 isn’t just helping Freedom Industries shelter-in-place against the claims of creditors and plaintiffs — it’s allowing the company’s lawyers to float a particularly unique theory about who is really to blame for the Elk River chemical spill. The company’s bankruptcy attorneys, led by Mark Freedlander of the Pittsburgh office of McGuire Woods, used Chapter 11 to float a theory designed to ease Freedom’s liability: “It is presently hypothesized that a local water line break [caused] the ground beneath a storage tank at the Charleston facility to freeze in the extraordinary frigid temperatures in the days immediately preceding” what Freedlander delicately termed “the incident.” Freedom further hypothesized
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that “the hole in the affected storage tank” was caused by “an object piercing upwards through the base” of the tank. Maybe the court will accept this theory, maybe it won’t. One hopes that one thing the court
It would be useful to know more, but that would obviously put Freedom Industries’ well-honed competitive edge in jeopardy, so pertinent public health information must necessarily be denied.” will take away from the discovery of this steel-penetrating “object,” however, is that Freedom Industries really can do a bang-up onsite inspection of its facilities when feeling inspired. Unfortunately, this is the first time since 1991 that the spirit has moved the company to do so. More broadly, the strategy here is to shift the responsibility for the spill from Freedom Industries to American Water Works Co., which runs the local water utility and is a “co-defendant in
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many of the liability lawsuits.” For its part, American Water Works has responded to this accusation by insisting that Freedom’s game here is nothing more than an attempt to maintain its grip on “those parts of the business that it deems valuable, abandoning the rest, taking the going concern value from the debtor, and leaving the debtor and its many creditors ‘holding the bag.’” That sounds about right, actually! Bankruptcy protection turns out to be just one way Freedom Industries is sheltering itself. As the Charleston Gazette reported, the “company told investigators that the Crude MCHM that leaked also contained a product
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called ‘PPH,’ according to state and federal officials.” And what is PPH, exactly? Does the acronym for this special bonus poison in the water stand for “Pretty Potentially Harmless” or “Probably Poisonous Hell?” Well, here’s where we find ourselves in one of those “those would say don’t know and those who might know won’t say” situations: Freedom Industries disclosed the information to state and federal regulators on Tuesday morning, but health impacts of the chemical remain unclear, and Freedom Industries has claimed the exact identify of the substance is “proprietary.” The good news, I guess, is that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the
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Shelves at supermarket chain Kroger remain empty after running out of water in Charleston on Jan. 10. An unknown amount Crude MCHM contaminated the public water system for potentially 300,000 people in the state.
Enter “information thus far indicates that PPH is probably less toxic than Crude MCHM.” The bad news is that “data about the potential health effects” of PPH are “very limited.” It would be useful to know more, but that would obviously put Freedom Industries’ well-honed competitive edge in jeopardy, so pertinent public health information must necessarily be denied. Chances are it will take less time to figure out the nature of this surprise addition to the West Virginia aquifer than it will to unwind all of the legal complications surrounding Freedom Industries. These entanglements threaten to withhold, if not deny, justice to the hundreds of thousands of West Virginians whose lives were put at risk by Freedom Industries neglect. Fortunately for residents of the Mountaineer State, they have a brave statesman in their corner, in the form of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who said, empathetically, “You feel like everyone’s turned against you.” Ha ha, just kidding! Manchin did say that, but he wasn’t actually addressing his constituents — he was addressing his donors! Per The New York Times:
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But in Washington on Wednesday, among friends at an event sponsored by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, West Virginia’s junior senator and former governor, Joe Manchin III, was preaching a familiar gospel of an industry under siege by overzealous regulators.
What is PPH, exactly? Does the acronym for this special bonus poison in the water stand for ‘Pretty Potentially Harmless’ or ‘Probably Poisonous Hell?’” “You feel like everyone’s turned against you,” he said. He assured his audience that he would continue to fight back against proposed new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on coal, quoting the state motto in Latin: “Montani semper liberi” — “Mountaineers are always free.” Some freedom industries are freer than others, I guess.
Q&A
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Larry King on Why He Thinks His Old Employer Is in a Bad Way “CNN’s got problems... I don’t know what they’re gonna do.”
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Above: Larry King poses at the TA3 TV studio in Bratislava, Slovakia, in September 2011. Below: King at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., in April 2013.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW, VISIT HUFFPOST LIVE
DATA
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Is Your Tap Water Killing You? More than 300,000 West Virginians were left without water after a chemical used in coal processing contaminated their drinking water. Though residents (except for pregnant women) have been given the all-clear that the water is now safe to drink,
water pollution remains an all too common problem in many American communities. If there’s something off, follow this guide to see what contaminants could be polluting your water. If you suspect something’s wrong, contact your local water utility.
SOURCES: EPA, WATER QUALITY ASSOCIATION. PHOTOS: TILFELDIG/STOCK.XCHNG; HUMUSAK2/STOCK.XCHNG
My Water... ...tastes metallic or bitter and looks... BLUE OR GREEN
DARK BROWN OR BLACK
...has no taste or color, but smells.... LIKE BLEACH
SWEET
...has no taste, smell or color but.... I HAVE A RASH OR IRRITATED SKIN
REDDISH OR ORANGE
It may contain...
NOTE: TESTING IS THE ONLY WAY TO KNOW FOR SURE IF THERE ARE CONTAMINANTS IN YOUR WATER
I HAVE OLD METAL PIPES
HEADLINES
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The Week That Was CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AP PHOTO/ERIC RISBERG: JONATHAN FERREY/GETTY IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK; SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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Half Moon Bay, Calif. 01.24.2014 Nic Lamb begins to tip off his board during the third heat of the first round of the Mavericks Invitational big wave surf contest. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Tegucigalpa, Honduras 01.24.2014 Workers hang a banner of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez at the “Tiburcio Carias Andino” stadium where the inauguration ceremony was held. Hernandez, of the ruling rightwing National Party, took office for a four-year mandate on Jan. 27. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Sasayama, Japan 01.25.2014 Six-month-old boar cubs run during the annual Boar Race Festival, which is held to promote boar meat, the city’s speciality. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Tongi, Bangladesh 01.26.2014 Bangladeshi Muslims arrive on an overcrowded train to attend the World Muslim Congregation. Muslims joined in prayer on the banks of a river as the world’s second-largest, annual Islamic congregation ended. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Telford, England 01.26.2014 A competitor crawls through a tunnel during a Tough Guy Challenge, which has been described as “the toughest race on Earth.” PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Paris, France 01.26.2014 The performing troupe of the Tagou Martial Arts School of Henan practice during the “Nuit De La Chine” rehearsal at the Grand Palais. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Shamli, India 01.22.2014 Samia, 25 (whose name has been changed to protect her identity), is seven-months pregnant as she sits for a photo. According to her, on Sept. 8, 2013, three of her neighbors, who she had known for eight years, barged into her home and took turns raping her. Riots between Muslims and Hindu Jats broke out at the end of August and lasted until the beginning of September. More than 55 people were killed, hundreds were injured, at least six women were reportedly gang raped, and almost 50,000 people fled to relief camps in the immediate aftermath. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Qionghai, China 01.27.2014 A woman sells fish at a market in China, where people are preparing for the Spring Festival, the Year of Horse, which falls on Jan. 31. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Los Angeles, Calif. 01.25.2014 Fans arrive before the start of an NHL outdoor hockey game at Dodger Stadium between the Los Angeles Kings and the Anaheim Ducks. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 01.18.2014 A dog named Caique wears a hat and shirt on Arpoador Beach. Caique’s owners say they like to dress him up for dog parades and that they enjoy pedestrians taking his picture during his daily walks. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Havana, Cuba 01.26.2014 A young man on skates holds onto a moving bicycle. Leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean arrived in Havana last weekend to participate in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC, summit. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Kiev, Ukraine 01.25.2014 An Orthodox Christian priest prays in front of riot police near protesters’ barricades. Ukraine’s Interior Ministry has accused protesters in Kiev of capturing two of its officers as violent clashes resumed in the capital, and anti-government riots spread across Ukraine. Tap here for a more extensive look at the week on The Huffington Post. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Voices
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Thanks to Pope Francis, Revolt Against the Global Super-Rich Is Underway
2013 WAS THE YEAR the rise of the plutocrats made it to the top of the international agenda. Witness the remarkable consensus at the year’s end of the world’s centers of faith, power and mon-
ey: Pope Francis published an apostolic exhortation criticizing the “economy of exclusion,” U.S. President Barack Obama named income inequality as the most important issue of our time, and New York, the global capital of the plutocracy, elected a mayor who won by attacking the “tale of
Pope Francis attends his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square on Jan. 22, 2014, in Vatican City.
Voices two cities” the metropolis lived through during the political reign of its incumbent billionaire boss. This recognition that surging income inequality is an urgent political problem marks an important shift. That’s because the widening gap isn’t a new story. Income inequality in much of the world has been rising for three decades. But until the 2008 financial crisis, and the global recession which it triggered, there were some plausible ways to deny — or at least to hope — that the rise of the 1 percent wasn’t a problem. The strongest argument was that even though those at the very top were pulling away from everyone else, people in the middle and even at the bottom weren’t doing too badly either. Globalization and the technology revolution, the story went, hadn’t only created the vast fortunes of the 0.1 percent, they had improved the lives of the 99 percent with more and less expensive goods and services. That thesis was partly a chimera, magicked into being by the consumer credit bubble which created the temporary illusion of middle class prosperity. But
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this explanation was also powerful because it was partly true — familiar goods from cars to t-shirts are cheaper and longerlasting than ever before, and all our lives have been transformed
You see it in the U.S. in the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York... in California Governor Jerry Brown’s successful tax increase on the rich; in the emergence of Elizabeth Warren as one of her party’s leaders.” by the internet and mobile communication. Once the credit bubble burst, though, our wonderful new devices and consumer goods weren’t enough to mask the other reality of the big economic transformation of our time — the hollowing out of middle class incomes and jobs. It is this fact — that, in a time of abundance, middle class incomes are stagnating and employment is anemic — that has transformed rising income inequality from an academic issue into a political one.
Voices And that is why 2013 was the year the revolt against the plutocrats began. Make no mistake — this is a powerful and consequential political moment, which is being felt across the western industrial democracies and whose impact is only beginning. You see it in the U.S. in the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York, and, just as significant, his blessing by the Clintons at his inauguration; in California Governor Jerry Brown’s successful tax increase on the rich; in the emergence of Elizabeth Warren as one of her party’s leaders; and in the despair of leading Republican thinkers, like Frank Luntz, who believe the left has won the national argument on income inequality. You see it in France in the new 75 percent tax on the super-rich. You see it even in Switzerland, long the discrete home of the world’s money, which has passed a law giving shareholders a binding vote on CEO compensation. For anyone who cares about democracy — and that should be all of us — this populist backlash is deeply reassuring. One of the big fears prompted by the economic rise of the plutocrats was that they would inevitably
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capture political power, too. It is, after all, hard to disagree with Louis Brandeis’s warning, at the height of America’s first Gilded Age, that “we can have democracy in this country, or we can
In democracies, the electoral math is ultimately denominated in demographics not bank balances.” have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Today, Brandeis may again be turning out to be right, but not in the way he had feared: rising plutocratic economic might has certainly led to an attempt to gain political sway, but it isn’t working very well. Instead, the plebes are fighting back. There’s an arithmetic inevitability to what’s happening — money can buy political voice and encourage the cognitive capture of the political elite. But in democracies, the electoral math is ultimately denominated in demographics not bank balances. Any politically free system which cannot economically deliver for
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the vast majority of its people — and, today, that means our own — will be challenged. The big question for 2014 will be how the plutocrats respond. Some are still in denial. Today’s economy is going so well for those at the very top that it can be hard to see how badly it is working for those in the middle and at the bottom. That blinkered vision is exacerbated, ironically, by the sense of personal virtue and personal
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achievement felt by so many of today’s super-rich. This is not the fading aristocracy of Downton Abbey, barely hanging on to the spoils accumulated by its ancestors. Many of today’s plutocrats made their own fortunes, and they have the pride and the self-confidence that comes with that accomplishment. They believe they have contributed to the common good to boot, which is why the complaints of the 99 percent feel to them not just bewildering and threatening, but also unjust. It’s no surprise that the angry 99 percent and their public
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Former President Bill Clinton, left, speaks as Mayor Bill de Blasio, center, waits to take the oath of office on Jan. 1, 2014, in New York.
Voices champions have little sympathy for this bruised amour-propre. The prevailing sentiment is closer to the mood the last time income inequality soared and the masses fought back. The plutocrats didn’t like it then much, either. To which FDR, born to wealth but leading the charge to create a more inclusive capitalism, replied: “We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.” It may be that today, as in the 1920s and 1930s, a bitter political fight between the economic winners and losers is inevitable. But it would be better for everyone if the plutocrats join in the effort to create capitalism that works for all us, rather than resisting it. For one thing, in today’s competitive global economy, the countries and communities that succeed will be the ones that keep their homegrown plutocrats, and attract more of the right kind from elsewhere. The
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stagnant middle class won’t be revived by an exodus of the super-rich — what it needs is an entrepreneurial elite which has chosen to share. In an age when both capital and capitalists are global, that’s a tall order. But in the long run, it will be in the best interests of the plutocrats, too. In the 1920s and 1930s, it was those economic
The stagnant middle class won’t be revived by an exodus of the super-rich — what it needs is an entrepreneurial elite which has chosen to share.” elites who compromised with the rest of society, as they ultimately did in North America and western Europe, who fared best. Compare their fates with their cousins who were defeated by communist revolutionaries, or who won the pyrrhic victories, and selfexile in gated communities, of the super-rich in Latin America. We may need our plutocrats, but they need us, too. Chrystia Freeland is a liberal member of the Canadian parliament.
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As a Reformed Creationist, I Hope Bill Nye Doesn’t Underestimate Ken Ham
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T’S RARE TO SEE A PROMINENT scientist agree to a public debate with someone from the creation science movement. Giving equal time to both sides might be a foundational principle of American dialogue, but it paints the issue as more of a controversy than it actually is. That’s why it surprised a lot of people when Bill Nye, scientist and TV personality, agreed to debate the president of Cincinnati’s Creation Museum, Ken Ham. ¶ Even so, it’s not hard to see why Nye has chosen to engage creationism directly. The most recent polling shows one in three Americans still won’t accept that all living things evolved from a common ancestor.
Ken Ham, founder of the nonprofit ministry Answers in Genesis, poses with an animatronic dinosaur at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., in 2007.
Voices Creationism may be pseudoscience, but its grip on the American public is hard for a science educator like Nye to ignore. This debate is more than academic for me. I grew up steeped in creationism. I was homeschooled with creationist curriculum, my family took us to creationist conferences, and I was deeply proud that I knew the real story about evolution and the age of the earth. I was taught there was absolutely no way the universe could be explained without creationism. Evolution was a fairy tale based on faith; creation was good science. I was taught that Christianity wasn’t consistent without creationism... that all “Bible-believing Christians” rejected evolution and long ages in favor of a six-day creation and a global flood. My proudest teenage achievement was mowing lawns to earn $1,000 so I could help build the Creation Museum. My donation earned me lifetime free admission, a polo shirt, and my name engraved in the lobby. I wrote back and forth with many prominent creationists and hotly debated origins with anyone who dared argue in favor of evolu-
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tion. On two occasions I even wrote featured articles for the Answers In Genesis website... a high honor for Teenage Me. I’m writing all this because I don’t know many people who were as far into the creation science movement as I was and came out of it. After graduating high school, I went on to college and got my Bachelor’s degree in physics; I now work in energy
My proudest teenage achievement was mowing lawns to earn $1,000 so I could help build the Creation Museum.” regulation. Despite four years of physics, it still took me a long time before I actually came to understand evolution, geology, and cosmology. Now, I’m always learning, always finding out new information, always excited. Because so much of what I’d been taught was flatly false, I had to re-learn practically everything about biology, geology, and the history of science. I’m amazed by the amount of evi-
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TODD WILLIAMSON/INVISION FOR THE HUB NETWORK/AP IMAGES
Voices
dence I systematically ignored or explained away, just because it didn’t match creation science. Bill Nye may not understand just how difficult it is for people who were raised like me to abandon creationism. Creationism isn’t just one belief; it’s a system of beliefs and theories that all support each other. We believed that unless we could maintain confidence in special creation, a young planet, a global flood, and the Tower of Babel, we’d be left without any basis for maintain-
DAVID MACMILLAN
ing our faith. This false dichotomy makes creationism strong. As long as people think the foundation of their religious faith depends on denial of science, it takes incredible energy to make them question the simple explanations given by the creationist movement. Ken Ham claims creation science keeps people from abandoning Christianity, but it usually works in the opposite direction. Learning the history of creationism freed me to examine the evidence for evolution. I wouldn’t claim to know everything about the Bible, but I do
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Bill Nye speaks on stage at “Hub Network’s First Annual Halloween Bash” on Oct. 20, 2013, at the Barker Hanger in Santa Monica, Calif.
Voices know Ken Ham’s insistence on “biblical origins” is as phony as the rest of creation science. I had never known creationism was only invented a scant 50 years ago (six-day-young-earth creationism was never a fundamentalist dogma until the 1960s). I had never known that most Christians accepted the Bible’s creation account as deliberate allegory many centuries before scientists even knew the earth revolved around the sun. I hope Bill Nye doesn’t underestimate creationists. Between their strident religious confidence and the way they painstakingly dumb-down and oversimplify evidence to fit into 6,000 years, people like Ken Ham can be tough nuts to crack. We were raised with false ideas about biology, geology, and history itself. Relearning all these things from the ground up is a tall order to begin with; the influence of religious dogma only make it that much more difficult. In a debate like this one, demonstrating even the most elementary facts about evolution and the age of the universe would be a great success. Creationism has spread an in-
DAVID MACMILLAN
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credible amount of misinformation over the past half-century. I hope Nye can cut through the accumulated falsehoods and teach about the actual evidence. I want people to be free to learn, free to understand, free to explore the fantastic mysteries of the universe without being tied down to phony dogma that wasn’t even part of Christianity until the last fifty years. I want children to
Despite four years of physics, it still took me a long time before I actually came to understand evolution, geology, and cosmology.” learn how to trust the scientific method... and, even more importantly, how to use the scientific method so their creativity and imagination won’t be wasted trying to defend pseudoscience. The universe has so much more to offer than could ever fit into a few thousand years. David MacMillan works in energy policy in the Midwestern United States.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES; CHRISTOPHER POLK/GETTY IMAGES FOR NARAS; CARLOS OSORIO/ GETTY IMAGES; ANNE SUMMERS; AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE, FILE
Voices
QUOTED
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“ Somehow, I don’t think getting fit will make people forget you’re a wonton alcoholic [sic] and drug addict.”
— HuffPost commenter westersund
“ It’s weird and sucks that I robbed you.”
on “Rob Ford Clearly Believes Losing Weight Will Fix Everything”
— Macklemore
in a text to Kendrick Lamar, after beating him for Best Rap Album at the Grammys
“ If there was a war on women, I think they won.” — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday
“ Great, another reason for women to ignore me...”
— HuffPost commenter chet31
on “This Ultimate G Vibrator Promises ‘ThirdLevel’ Orgasms”
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QUOTED
I’m very, very depressed. — Quentin Tarantino,
on Gawker leaking the script of his potential next project
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“ Being kind is the best publicity that money can never buy.”
— HuffPost commenter Tom_Brock
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AP PHOTO/LAURENT CIPRIANI; GETTY IMAGES/STOCKFOOD; AP PHOTO/IGOR YAKUNIN
on “Rick Harrison Of ‘Pawn Stars’ Responds To Letter From Little Boy With Autism In Most Awesome Way”
“ I am not sure, but I don’t bloody know them.”
— Anatoly Pakhomov,
mayor of Sochi, Russia, where the Olympics will take place, on whether there are gay people in his city
“ I’ve never met a potato dish I didn’t like.”
— HuffPost commenter kevinbr38 on “The New Potato Dish Everyone (And We Mean Everyone) Will Love”
WENDY GEORGE (CHILD); SHUTTERSTOCK/AJT (BOOKS)
02.02.14
#86 FEATURES
THE CORE
ARRESTED IN AMERICA
THE CORE
Behind the Program That Could Revolutionize America’s Public Schools BY JOY RESMOVITS
THE CORE
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SHORTLY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, Arne Duncan made a glib remark about the Common Core that quickly blew up. ¶ Speaking before a gathering of state schools chiefs, the secretary of education dismissed growing opposition to the new national set of learning standards, saying “white suburban moms” were rising up against the Core simply because its more rigorous tests meant they were being told “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.” The riff wasn’t all that different from Duncan’s usual words of support for the Common Core. He often says states have “dummied down standards” and insists officials need to tell students the truth about just how smart they are. But as soon as he named “white suburban moms” as part of the problem, his refrain became the gaffe heard ‘round the mom-blogger world. The pointed phrasing fed into parents’ bubbling anxiety about the Core, more fully known as the Common Core State Standards Initiative, an education push that aims to make sure students across the United States are learning the skills they need to succeed in a global economy. In recent months, as schools began teaching and testing students on the new standards — and telling families
PHOTOGRAPH BY WENDY GEORGE
about their plans — what started as an effort by officials to remake American education has become a favored punching bag of pundits and parents alike. Duncan repeatedly apologized for his “clumsy” handling of the Core’s opponents that day in November, but he maintained he wasn’t sorry for the sentiment — that holding children to higher expectations and being honest about what they do and don’t know is important. The Core is supposed to do just that. The Common Core differs from the current educational standards system in that there is no current system. Each state sets its own learning standards, and those get translated through thousands of districts and schools and teachers. The Core is supposed to unify this patchwork of efforts not only across states, but across the country. And contrary to popular belief, it’s not a curriculum:
BRYAN BEDDER/GETTY IMAGES FOR TIME
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School systems and teachers can choose their own instructional materials, as long as students know what the Core says they should know by year’s end. Students will learn less content, but more in-depth, coherent and demanding content. In other words, students should know fewer things, but they should know them better. The Core encourages teachers to move away from memorization and to ask students to show their work. In math, it means emphasizing such things as learning fractions and fluency in arithmetic. In reading, it means
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more nonfiction texts — recommendations range from historical speeches from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Winston Churchill to more instructional reads such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Recommended Levels of Insulation” and FedViews, by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. It asks even younger students to respond to books and articles by making inferences based on evidence, rather than their personal feelings. Overall, it should yield fewer lectures and more conversations. Teachers across the country are already incorporating the standards into their lesson plans, changing things like the order and structure of their classes to corre-
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan upset mothers last year when he said “white suburban moms” don’t like the Core because it is too rigorous for their kids.
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spond with this vision. If implemented effectively — that is, if the standards actually reach the classroom and teachers are given the materials, training and support they need — the Core will dramatically change what it means to be a student in American public schools. Its supporters hope it will create more effective teachers and, in the long run, help the U.S. improve its international educational standing after a decade of stagnation. They say this new education paradigm could also be game-changing for the U.S. economy, as American schools begin to teach lessons in sequences similar to those of higher-performing countries around the world, such as Finland and Singapore. Yet it appears that after three years of relative quiet, the initiative is poised to become a political football, both imperiling its implementation and potentially undermining any good its supporters think it could do. What’s at stake is the classroom experience and outcomes for over 40 million kids, as states and local school districts find themselves caught in the middle of this debate and continue to face troubles transitioning to a com-
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plex new system. In New York, the transition has been so rocky that after months of prodding education commissioner John King to do a better job helping teachers adapt, the state’s teachers union’s board of directors last weekend unanimously voted “no confidence” in King over his handling of Common Core. The board also withdrew support for Common Core as it has currently been implemented by the state.
What started as an effort by officials to remake American education has become a favored punching bag of pundits and parents alike. “White suburban moms”-gate showed just how much more scrutiny the initiative is getting these days. Detractors across the political spectrum have associated the Common Core with, at various points, “zombies,” “Hitler” and “vampires.” Some Republican officials who helped create the standards are having trouble holding down support as their constituents argue the Core represents yet another way for federal officials to micromanage their lives. Right-wing organizers are channeling this anger into a campaign to take down the Core. Earlier this
AP PHOTO/ KENTUCKY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, AMY WALLOT
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month, FreedomWorks posted an action plan to fight against the standards, a campaign that will culminate with a march on Washington, D.C., this summer. The American Principles Project plans to spend at least $500,000 on the cause, Politico reported. Meanwhile, proponents of the Core also face grounded concerns from academics, parents and some left-wing politicians about the true rigor of the standards and the limits they could place on higher-performing students. New attention to the Common
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Core is admittedly overdue, and the vitriol perhaps inevitable. In a sense, the initiative was conceived in a political vacuum: The standards were quietly drafted and implemented over the last five years by a relatively small group of experts and officials around the country and with limited public input. This meant the process went fairly smoothly — initially, creators were able to secure the backing of 48 governors, from red and blue states alike. But in the three years since states began adopting the standards, the political landscape around education has changed to reflect the overall polarization of
Terry Holliday speaks with the media after being announced as the new Kentucky commissioner of education in 2009. Kentucky became the first state to adopt the Common Core in 2010.
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partisan politics. The Core’s most high-profile supporter, President Barack Obama, was reelected. But during the 2012 campaign, his opponent branded the Core as a federal overreach, pushing Obama to walk a fine line between bragging about it and falling prey to those sensitivities. “We’ve convinced nearly every state in the country to raise their standards for teaching and learning,” Obama said in one debate, but he was careful never to mention the Common Core by name. At the state level, new governors and legislatures took office and found they had inherited their predecessors’ ideas about how to educate their children — ideas they didn’t necessarily agree with. The Common Core has yet to be tested in a big way. To understand where the initiative goes from here, we have to go back to where it started, and recover some of the history that’s often lost on newcomers to the debate. To do that, The Huffington Post spoke to key players responsible for the Core’s creation and adoption to find out exactly how we got here. Think fewer zombies, and much more bureaucracy.
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CORE BEGINNINGS Terry Holliday had a problem. That’s what the Kentucky schools chief thought as he sat in an auditorium filled with governors and state school leaders in the Chicago Airport Hilton one day in April 2009. His legislature had told him he needed to write new learning standards that ensured students
Students will learn less content, but more indepth, coherent and demanding content. In other words, students should know fewer things, but they should know them better. were more prepared for higher education or careers — a process that could cost as much as $3 to $5 million per subject — but his budget had been slashed. How could he possibly satisfy the law? As he munched on pasta and salad, Holliday focused on the meeting. High-ranking employees of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers — organizations that represent officials involved in the process of setting education standards — were giving presentations. Both hit on an attractive idea: Instead of states developing standards on their own, why not pool resources and
COURTESY OF CHRIS MINNICH
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work on the project together? The standards, in reading and in math, would be developed by the nation’s foremost experts, the students of Kentucky would be able to compare their academic performance to their peers in other states, and Holliday would save money. The more he thought about it, the more the idea appealed to him. A year later, Kentucky would be the first state to adopt the Common Core. The idea of creating a common set of educational standards wasn’t new. For decades, officials have bemoaned the fact that it’s possible for a fourth-grader who lives in Arkansas to be considered proficient in math — only to be told he’s failing when he moves across the border to Missouri. This inconsistency makes it hard to compare student performance across the country. It also illustrates just how fuzzy states’ measures of proficiency can be. Duncan often points out that the No Child Left Behind Act, the decade-old law that tied school performance to federal funding, let states set their own, often unimpressive, expectations. Over the last 50 years, federal officials, advocates and governors have tried to create national standards in fits
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and starts (the Clinton administration’s Goals 2000 project is one notable example), but each fizzled. Yet somehow the Common Core didn’t lose steam. The idea had lately come up again various education circles, memorably in a November 2007 CCSSO meeting in Columbus, Ohio. As the group’s president, Chris Minnich, recalled, “States were saying, ‘we’re being compared against each other and if we have lower expectations in our states, that doesn’t help us.’ Chiefs said, ‘No state should have lower expectations than another.’” And like Kentucky, several states were facing a mandatory update to their learning standards. One chief raised the idea of working on them
“States were saying, ‘we’re being compared against each other and if we have lower expectations in our states, that doesn’t help us,’” said CCSSO President Chris Minnich (pictured) of initial discussions about Common Core.
COURTESY OF DAVID COLEMAN
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together. At the time, Minnich only expected an informal group of about 10 states to join in. But a series of meetings organized by CCSSO combined with simultaneous efforts by outside groups ultimately led to a level of buy-in that far surpassed his expectations. Government officials meeting in airport hotels weren’t the only ones thinking about these problems. In New York, college buddies David Coleman and Jason Zimba had created — then sold — the Grow Network, a startup that sought to make the results of tests under No Child Left Behind inform teachers’ instruction. Coleman recalled they were shocked to discover in their research that learning standards tended to be so scattershot and cumbersome that it was almost impossible for a teacher to convey them to her students with any depth. Existing learning standards, he felt, were simply a laundry list, a product of school-board politics. Coleman, now president of the College Board, and Zimba, a former Bennington College physicist, went to work on a seminal paper for the Carnegie Foundation that called for “math and science standards that are fewer, clearer, high-
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er.” Directors at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation saw the paper and were impressed by its ideas. They funded some of Coleman’s work — and eventually dropped as much as $75 million on what would become the Common Core. Around the same time, Janet Napolitano, then the Democratic governor of Arizona, became the chairwoman of the National Governors Association. She created “Innovation America,” an effort that ultimately led to a task force set on catching U.S. students up to their international peers. It enlisted the help of CCSSO and other education organizations, and
Current president of the College Board, David Coleman, was among those who called for higher learning standards.
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produced a paper with five education policy recommendations for governors. One was to “upgrade state standards by adopting a common core of internationally benchmarked standards.” The task force considered that single recommendation the key to all the others, and members formed an advisory board that drew on expertise from organizations including the College Board and the testing company ACT to make it happen. That group became known as the Common Core State Standards Initiative. At meetings held throughout the country between June and September 2009, Zimba and Coleman joined teams of writers from various universities, public schools and education departments to develop the standards. A “validation committee” composed of experts was assembled to audit the results. But who would use them? And would anyone pay attention? BUY-IN FROM THE GOVS As it turned out, most governors were interested. At that pivotal 2009 Chicago meeting when the Common Core was presented to schools chiefs and governors, a consensus easily emerged.
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“There was a lot of discussion among the chiefs that it was the right thing to do,” Holliday, the Kentucky schools chief, said. No one from the federal government attended that meeting, he added, emphasizing that the adoption of the Core was, at least initially, a state-led effort. “It was just a concern in the audience among chiefs that if we didn’t do something to
If implemented effectively... the Core will dramatically change what it means to be a student in American public schools. pull together and raise expectations, the economy would take a big hit because we wouldn’t be able to keep the well-paying jobs here,” he said. Sonny Perdue, then Georgia’s Republican governor, was particularly vocal about the need for common standards. His students had posted some of the lowest ACT scores that year. Perdue told Dane Linn, who worked for the National Governors Association, that allowing states to set learning standards at different levels was inherently unfair. Perdue was convinced of the need for common standards, and he wanted to get other governors on board.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
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Fellow Republicans like Tom Luna, the elected schools chief of Idaho, voiced their support at the meeting, as did Illinois schools chief Chris Koch. At one point, Eric Smith, then the head of Florida’s schools, asked CCSSO and NGA to send around an agreement that would allow states to opt into the process of creating new standards. Lucky for Smith, that document already existed. Minnich and Linn passed around a “Memorandum of Agreement” they had written hoping that governors and
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schools chiefs would sign on. The memo committed states to participate in the process of developing common learning standards, but specified that the standards would remain voluntary. The meeting itself was fairly uncontroversial, Minnich said. He heard “really very few arguments” against the Common Core. In a body that represents 50 states and their varying internal politics, there is rarely broad agreement about anything, but by day’s end, 48 states had signed on — all but Alaska and Texas. A few months later, the project got a sudden boost from the
Thengovernor of Arizona Janet Napolitano created “Innovation America,” an effort that ultimately led to a task force focused on catching U.S. students up to their international peers.
THE CORE
federal government. Shortly after Obama’s inauguration, the new president launched the Race to the Top competition, which let recession-addled states vie for billions in extra stimulus funding in exchange for agreeing to certain education reforms. Early drafts of Race to the Top guidelines required states to agree to implement the Common Core standards if they wanted to get the money. But even at the time, Linn knew that heavy-handed federal involvement in a primarily state-led project could be the Core’s political undoing: He anticipated rightwing critics would point to Race to the Top and allege states had only signed onto the Core in exchange for funding, handily connecting that sequence of events to a tea party narrative about a socialist and micromanaging government. So NGA and CCSSO representatives lobbied the Education Department several times to get the Common Core standards adoption requirement cut from Race to the Top guidelines. The feds didn’t exactly back off, but they did remove the term “Common Core” from the guidelines, requiring instead that states adopt “college- and career-ready standards.” The ad-
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ministration also allocated $350 million in stimulus cash to fund the development of tests aligned to the Common Core. As expected, even the lightened federal fingerprint would come back to haunt the Core’s proponents. Last April, a group of eight
In a body that represents 50 states and their varying internal politics, there is rarely broad agreement about anything, but by day’s end, 48 states had signed on — all but Alaska and Texas. right-wing U.S. Senators including Kentucky’s Rand Paul wrote a public letter lashing out against the Common Core and seeking to end the disbursement of Race to the Top funds. “While the Common Core State Standards Initiative was initially billed as a voluntary effort between states, federal incentives have clouded the picture,” they wrote. THE WRITING PORTION OF THE TEST But first the standards needed to be written. Over a few months starting in the summer of 2009, as governors and schools chiefs sought the input of their school boards, Coleman, Zimba and other
AP PHOTO/JOHN MILLER
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experts worked on reading and math committees to actually write the standards. They started by examining international education systems and researching what it meant to be “college ready.” Then they determined precisely what an American high schooler should know upon graduation. From there, they went backwards, mapping the standards from 12th grade down to kindergarten. While existing standards were inconsistent, the Core dictated that all 12th graders would be expected to do things like
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“demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics.” High school seniors would also have to know how to multiply matrices in math, and graph atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over time. The writers of the Core especially wanted students to understand the logic, reason and narrative language of math. Some of the biggest fights they had centered on the question of whether kids really needed to learn how to divide with remainders, or
Tom Luna, the Republican schools chief of Idaho, voiced his support for common education standards in 2009.
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
THE CORE
memorize multiplication tables. (In the end, the Core says they must know both.) Throughout the writing process, they solicited feedback from teachers. At one point, the math standards writers met with a group of teachers from across the country to discuss a draft. “When we entered the room, we noticed the entire walk was covered with strips of paper,” Linn wrote in a chapter of a recently
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published book about the Common Core. “The teachers had literally cut up all the standards and reordered them where they thought they made sense.” Content experts also looked at each draft, and the writing teams used their comments to revise the standards further. State officials and national organizations affiliated with the effort also had input, while outside experts conducted their own reviews. The writers incorporated all these opinions, at the same time striving to prevent the Common
Last April, Rand Paul (pictured) was among a group of eight right-wing U.S. senators who wrote a public letter lashing out against the Common Core.
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Core from becoming yet another laundry list unfocused and impractical learning standards. Some of the standards’ writers recall pushing back on certain details, pointing to what they saw as the strongest research and evidence on what knowledge and skills students need to succeed. In March 2010, the standards writing group released a draft to the public. They didn’t know what to expect. “Nobody thought it would be the sort of national news that it is now,” Minnich recalled. They analyzed 10,000 public comments pulled from a website they had set up and revised the standards yet again with that feedback in mind. More than half of the comments came from educators, but only 20 percent came from parents. In June of that year, CCSSO and NGA released the final Common Core State Standards at an event in Suwanee, Ga. In the end, they accomplished exactly what they had set out to achieve: Through good luck, good timing, the support of the federal government and a long-held desire among governors to get it done, they had created the country’s first set of shared ideas for what students need to know and when.
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Some states were enthusiastic about the Core’s potential — proud of a process they had engaged in for years. Others went along to comply with their Race to the Top promises. One by one, 45 states signed onto the finished Common Core, with Minnesota just adopting the reading portion.
Some of the biggest fights they had centered on the question of whether kids really needed to learn how to divide with remainders, or memorize multiplication tables. (In the end, the Core says they must know both.) The last of these states to sign on did so by the middle of 2011. It had all happened fast. Maybe, in hindsight, a little too fast. “Part of me wishes it had taken a little bit longer so ... everyone could have had a deeper understanding of what this was,” the NGA’s Linn said. CORE IN TROUBLE Several states have rolled out the new standards — often quietly — and teachers across the country are already teaching to them. Jennifer Wilson, a math teacher in Mississippi, said she loves the flexibility the Core gives her, and added that her classes are more
WILLIAM B. PLOWMAN/NBC/NBC NEWSWIRE VIA GETTY IMAGES
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engaging. Instead of trying to cram dozens of math concepts into a semester, she can go deep on the basics so that her students truly understand math, rather than just how to compute equations. “Geometry unfolds differently for kids” under the Core, she said. “They never know what they’re going to figure out. They’re not looking at their watches waiting for the bell to ring.” States including Kentucky and New York are now testing students based on the standards. Because the Common Core is supposed to be harder and more demanding, those tests have shown major drops in proficiency rates from previous years. In New York, fewer than one-third of students were found to be up to Common Core English Language Arts standards in the 2012-2013 school year — down from 55 percent on non-Core aligned tests the previous year. Policymakers predicted this drop, but faced with lower scores and higher expectations, some parents and politicians have started to object to the Core on a number of counts. Even some Core supporters have pointed to the abrupt New York score drop
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as reason to slow down implementation, particularly the use of new exams. American Federation of Teachers union president Randi Weingarten recently called Common Core implementation “far worse” than that of Obamacare, and has said New York City teachers weren’t given a thorough Core-aligned curriculum before their students were first tested on the standards. As more states start piloting Common Core-aligned tests this year, debates about the federal
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union, recently said the rollout of Common Core was worse than that of Obamacare.
AP PHOTO/OTTO KITSINGER
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government’s role in education are further politicizing the standards’ adoption. Critics argue the federal government is reaching too far into schools and setting kids up for failure. Some worry that by concentrating more effort on purely academic — as opposed to vocational — pursuits, the standards won’t serve the thousands of students who drop out of high school each year. Oth-
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ers have voiced concerns that the Core will continue to burden poorer students, who can’t afford luxuries like extra study guides and tutors to help them absorb its tougher teachings. And Sandra Stotsky, a University of Arkansas professor emerita who served on the Core’s validation committee, has raised concerns that the Core simply aims too low. The fight against the Core is spreading. In November, an upstate New York mother organized a Common Core protest day, ask-
Earlier this year, Idaho’s Republican Governor Butch Otter (pictured) pledged to press on with implementing the Core, despite the negative response from his base.
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ing parents to keep their kids home from school. The Baltimore County teachers union filed a grievance against its board over Common Core implementation. A few months earlier, a Maryland parent was thrown out of a school board meeting for protesting the standards. Tea party groups including the American Principles Project have organized their members against the Core, and conservative radio personality Glenn Beck has called it a product of extreme leftist ideology.” These critiques puzzle the Core’s proponents. “This whole agenda, the Common Core, is pretty much a Republican agenda,” said Holliday, the schools chief of Kentucky, an Independent. “I find it interesting when some factions of the Republican Party push back so hard on this work.” In early January, Idaho’s Republican Governor Butch Otter pledged to press on with implementing the Core despite the negative response from his base. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. But the pushback has led to reflection on the part of some of the Core’s creators. It seems that by not involving enough stakeholders on the front end, they opened
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themselves up to much of the current criticism. “There should have been a deeper state-level engagement in terms of their communities,” said Minnich, the CCSSO president. “The discussions may not have been deep enough.” Most Americans weren’t informed about the process as it happened, and they still aren’t. Ac-
Through good luck, good timing, the support of the federal government and a long-held desire among governors to get it done, they had created the country’s first set of shared ideas for what students need to know and when. cording to a Gallup poll last fall, only 38 percent of the populace had ever heard the term “Common Core State Standards.” Perhaps a more deliberately public debate could have avoided some of the attacks that now threaten to undermine what was meant to be a promising change, a reform Arne Duncan called “the single greatest thing to happen to public education in America since Brown v. Board of Education.” Joy Resmovits is an education reporter at The Huffington Post.
The Private Jail That Locks Up Law-Abiding Immigrants
ARRESTED
AMERICA
in
BY SAKI KNAFO ELIZABETH, N.J. —
In his 24 years in the United States, Oscar Campos mostly stayed out of trouble. He worked hard, paid his taxes and took care of the rent and bills months in advance, so that he wouldn’t have to worry about the basics when his landscaping business slowed down for the winter. He went to church every Sunday — the same church where he married his wife 23 years ago. His idea of excitement involved stirring some melted chocolate into his coffee and catching a particularly titillating episode of Caso Cerrado, Telemundo’s answer to Judge Judy. His mild manners served him well. Born in Mexico, he slipped across the border to San Diego in 1989 and continued to elude immigration authorities until 1995, when he tried to enter the country a second time after a visit with his parents and was caught and deported. He returned to the U.S. a year later, once again crossing the border illegally. But over the next decade, as first the Bush and then the Obama administration ramped up the detention and deportation
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAKI KNAFO
of undocumented immigrants, he grew increasingly fearful that he hadn’t seen the last of the immigration authorities. He hadn’t. Last December, officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Campos in the parking lot of an office building in central New Jersey and brought him to the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility, a converted warehouse in the industrial swampland near Newark Airport. Every year, some 400,000 people pass through immigrant detention centers like this one. They make up the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. prison population. The Elizabeth detention center, which holds up to 300 detainees at a time, is part of a nationwide system of immigrant lockups that have drawn criticism over the last five months, as activists in the immigration reform movement, frustrated by a lack of progress in Congress, have called on Obama to
Previous page: Some immigration activists and experts blame the rise of immigrant detentions on the political influence of companies like Corrections Corporation of America a major operator of private prisons, including the Elizabeth facility (pictured) where Oscar Campos is detained.
ARRESTED IN AMERICA
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HUMBERTA CAMPOS
Many in the movement are especially upset that the administration is locking up and deporting people like Campos — taxpaying parents of American children who pose no obvious threat to public safety.
use his executive powers to stop the detention and deportation of undocumented people. Last month, the facility made news when eight demonstrators were arrested after blocking a road to the building, joining scores of other protesters who have been arrested at similar rallies around the country since September. Although these demonstrators have been calling for an end to all deportations, many in the movement are especially upset that the administration is locking up and deporting people like Campos — taxpaying parents of American children who pose no obvious threat to public safety. “Deportations are breaking up families at a cost to taxpayers and at the risk of emotional and mental damage to young people
who won’t forget how their parents are treated,” said B. Loewe, an organizer with the National Day Labor Organizing Network, one of the groups that orchestrated the Elizabeth demonstration. “Imagine what it’s like to go to bed at night knowing that the president has your dad in jail for no one reason other than that he came to this country to make sure you had a better life.” Eight demonstrators were arrested after blocking access to the Elizabeth detention center in December.
In his 24 years in the U.S., Campos has worked hard, paid his taxes and raised his American family.
ARRESTED IN AMERICA SINCE ARRIVING IN OFFICE in 2009, Obama has pushed for legislation that would allow most of the country’s 11.7 million undocumented immigrants to remain here legally. But with a faction of House Republicans refusing to concede to the demands of reformers, the president continues to oversee the deportation of about a thousand immigrants each day, insisting that he has no choice but to enforce the law as it’s written. Between 2005 and 2012, the rate of deportations doubled, and although it declined in the last year for the first time during his tenure, Obama has already overseen nearly 2 million deportations, outpacing any other president in U.S. history. As deportations have increased, so have detentions. In 1994, the government detained 82,000 people. By 2011, the most recent year for which data are available, according to the Department of Homeland Security, that number had climbed to 429,000. Some immigration activists and experts blame this rise on the political influence of companies like Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, a major operator
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of private prisons, including the Elizabeth facility and other immigrant detention centers around the country. In the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration shifted responsibility for immigration enforcement from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to the newly created
Activists in the immigration reform movement, frustrated by a lack of progress in Congress, have called on Obama to use his executive powers to stop the detention and deportation of undocumented people. Department of Homeland Security (Immigration and Customs Enforcement calls itself the “principal investigative arm” of DHS). Accordingly, private prison companies began boosting their spending on lobbying efforts aimed at influencing prison policy and securing government contracts. By the end of the decade, Congress had adopted a law requiring ICE to keep an average of 34,000 people in detention at a time. As immigration officers worked to meet this “bed quota,” as the policy is known in Washington, the private prison industry profited. Between 2005 and 2012, CCA and The GEO Group, Inc., another giant
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in the private prison business, more than doubled their revenues from immigrant detentions, according to securities filings examined by The Huffington Post in 2012. Steven Owen, the senior director of public affairs for CCA, said the company would not comment on government policy, but argued that the company’s facilities offer better conditions than county jails, which are also used for immigrant detentions. “Our professionals are deeply committed to treating those entrusted to their care with fair-
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ness, dignity and respect,” he said. “We also understand and appreciate that our services are one of a number of solutions being considered and implemented by the government,” he added. One recent evening, sitting at a plastic table in the visiting room, Campos spoke about his time at the center through an interpreter. A small man with a neatly clipped mustache and a gentle manner, he said he spent his days watching TV, reading the Bible, exercising, talking with other detainees and worrying. He’d bonded with one of his cellmates, a Romanian father of two who had learned to speak Spanish fluently during his
Eight protestors were arrested after blocking access to the Elizabeth detention center in December.
ARRESTED IN AMERICA eight-month stay in the lockup. Campos didn’t have any complaints about the facility — though perhaps, as he suggested, this was because his physical state was not at the top of his list of concerns. He was depressed and fearful, preoccupied with the question of whether he’d ever be reunited with his wife and children. When he spoke about them, his voice cracked and he looked away. He said he felt guilty for subjecting them to such an ordeal. The Elizabeth detention center houses up to 300 undocumented immigrants at a time. Campos described his children as hard workers and good students, but he acknowledged that his youngest son, Erwing, 11, has been struggling in school since the day of the arrest. “He’s confused,” Campos said. “He doesn’t understand why I’m here.” Campos is there in part because of an uncharacteristic risk that he took on the morning of Dec. 3. He was driving his wife to a routine visit with immigration authorities, as he did every month. As far as he knew, the authorities were either unaware or unconcerned that he’d returned to the country after being deported nearly two
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decades ago, but they were aware of his wife, Humberta, who had also reentered the U.S. illegally after being deported, and were allowing her to stay in the country as long as she checked in with them on a monthly basis. On most of those trips, Campos parked at the back end of the lot, as far as possible from the office
“ Deportations are breaking up families at a cost to taxpayers and at the risk of emotional and mental damage to young people who won’t forget how their parents are treated.” and the agents inside. But on that particular morning he was running late, so he drove right up to the entrance to the building, where anyone could see him. A half hour passed as he waited for Humberta to emerge from the office, and then an hour. He began to wonder what was taking so long. Suddenly a van pulled up behind him, blocking his way out of the lot. He noticed the tinted windows, and that’s when the thought occurred to him: “It’s over.” He was arrested and brought to the lockup in Elizabeth. Rosa Santana, an immigrant rights advocate with First Friends, a group that organizes visits with
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detainees at the Elizabeth center and other facilities, said it’s hard to know why the authorities detained Campos when they did. “We don’t know how they work,” she said. “It’s so random.” Harold Ort, a spokesman for the New Jersey branch of ICE, said that ICE considered Campos a priority for removal because of his 1995 deportation. The agency is focused on the removal of “convicted criminal aliens, recent border crossers and immigration fugitives who have failed to comply with final orders of removal issued by the nation’s immigration courts,” he said. ICE is still reviewing the case, he added, noting that the agency “exercises prosecutorial discre-
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tion on a case-by-case basis.” Derek DeCosmo, the attorney who represents Campos and the vice chairman of the New Jersey chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, questioned the fairness of detaining Campos instead of requiring him to report to an immigration office on a regular basis, as his wife is required to do. “You’re talking about a deportation order that is 18 years old,” he said. “In those last 18 years, what have you done here? You have had three kids born here. You’ve started your business. It’s a business you’ve paid taxes on. ICE might say he broke the law and is absconding, but from Oscar’s perspective, that’s out of line.” DeCosmo stressed that the decision is especially puzzling given that all three of Campos’ children
The Elizabeth detention center houses up to 300 undocumented immigrants at a time.
ARRESTED IN AMERICA were born in the U.S. In 2011, the Obama administration released a memo urging federal officers to avoid detaining and deporting otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants, especially young people and parents of children who are U.S. citizens. This directive was reaffirmed recently by the newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who said in a Dec. 12 letter, “in my view, immigration enforcement must be focused first on those who pose a threat to our national security, public safety and the integrity of our borders,” rather than “low-priority” individuals who generally obey the law. DeCosmo said he still meets many detainees who seem to fit the low-priority profile outlined in the Obama memo. “When something comes out of Washington, it doesn’t make its way down to the local office right away,” he said. “You’re dealing with bureaucracy.” Earlier this month, DeCosmo filed an application with ICE requesting a stay of removal for Campos. He hopes that ICE will allow Campos to remain in the U.S. until his oldest son, Oscar Jr., turns 21 in July, at which point Oscar Jr. will be eligible to
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apply for permanent residency status for his father. DeCosmo said he expects the government to make a decision soon. In the meantime, the Campos family is trying to draw attention to Campos’ case.
He was depressed and fearful, preoccupied with the question of whether he’d ever be reunited with his wife and children. When he spoke about them, his voice cracked and he looked away. He said he felt guilty for subjecting them to such an ordeal. One morning last week, Campos’ wife and children drove two hours from their home in Bridgeton, N.J., and held a prayer vigil and rally with some of their church friends in the falling snow outside the Elizabeth center. A church deacon and retired police detective named Arnaldo Santos led them in the Padre Nuestro, the Lord’s Prayer. Santos said he was certain Campos was just the type of person whom Obama’s memo was meant to protect. “I was a detective for over 20 years,” he said. “I’m a good judge of character.” Saki Knafo is a general assignment writer at The Huffington Post.
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STYLE
Spanx Are Literally Squeezing Your Organs BILL HOGAN/ CHICAGO TRIBUNE/MCT
BY REBECCA ADAMS
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Exit HATE SPANX because even though they look so good under your clothes, sometimes midwedding I’ll be like, ‘I feel so nauseous,’” actress Jennifer Coolidge once said. “They’re so tight, who knows what you’re cutting off?” Turns out, that star was on to something. While we can all relate to the aforementioned pain and suffering, most of us have no idea about the health ramifications of shapewear. Are we hurting our bodies in the name of smooth garment lines? We spoke to gastroenterologist Dr. John Kuemmerle, dermatologist Dr. Maryann Mikhail and chiropractor Dr. Karen Erickson to find out.
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WHEN YOU WEAR SHAPEWEAR, YOU’RE COMPRESSING YOUR ORGANS. Shapewear couldn’t do its job if it wasn’t tight. Unfortunately, this leaves your stomach, intestine and colon compressed, which Dr. Kuemmerle says can worsen acid reflux and heartburn. Restrictive clothing can also provoke erosive esophagitis. Your digestive tract is also affected, explains Dr. Erickson. The intestines are supposed to contract and move food along, but when they’re compressed over a long period of
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It’s like putting these giant rubber bands around your upper thighs and tightening them when you sit.” time, the flow of digestion is stifled. “It’s like when people eat a huge meal and then unbuckle their jeans,” Dr. Kuemmerle says. This damage, though not permanent, can lead to unpleasant symptoms like abdominal discomfort, bloating and gas. Another hallmark of shapewear? Shallow breath. When you inhale, your diaphragm expands and your abdomen flares out, Dr. Erickson says, but shapewear restricts this movement and decreases the excursion in respiration. THAT INCLUDES COMPRESSING YOUR BOWELS. Those with functional bowel disorders and irritable bowel syndrome should wear shapewear with caution. “In someone who has weakness down below and a tendency towards incontinence,” Dr. Kuemmerle explains, “increasing intraabdominal pressure can certainly provoke episodes of incontinence.” Dr. Erickson also notes that there can be a tendency for those wearing shapewear to not to want to go to the bathroom. “You’ve got all of this pressure on your bladder from the shapewear pressing
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down,” she says. “If you postpone urinating, it can cause stress incontinence, where you leak, or it can exaggerate stress incontinence with people who already have it.” YOU CAN DEVELOP TINGLING, NUMBNESS AND PAIN IN YOUR LEGS. Sitting in shapewear can lead to a reversible condition called meralgia paresthetica, which is when the peripheral nerve in your thigh is compressed. This leads to tingling, numbness and pain in your legs, all of which can come and go or become constant. “It’s like putting these giant rubber bands around your upper thighs and tightening them when you sit,” Dr. Erickson says. (She’s also seen this condition in those who wear too-tight pantyhose and pants.) This rubber band effect can also decrease your circulation and lead to blood clots. When you sit in shapewear, Dr. Erickson explains that those genetically prone to varicosities can develop varicose veins and lymph congestion, which manifests as swollen ankles. YOUR MUSCLES WILL SUFFER IF YOU RELY ON SHAPEWEAR FOR GOOD POSTURE. “Shapewear is not a substitute for having strong muscles,” Dr. Erickson
says. It’s important to develop muscle tone, because it’s those muscles that hold your posture in perfect alignment. Many people use shapewear as a crutch to avoid using those muscles, Dr. Erickson says. And don’t be fooled into thinking that shapewear works like a medical back brace. “Shapewear’s a little different in that it’s not therapeutically designed — it’s cosmetically designed,” she explains. PLUS, SHAPEWEAR CAN CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT PRONE TO INFECTIONS. Shapewear is occlusive, meaning it traps moisture and anything else under it, which predisposes shape-
The launch of Haute Contour by SPANX in 2009 in New York.
Exit wear wearers to both yeast and bacterial infections. Dr. Mikhail says that the most common infection she sees is folliculitis, since bacteria often gets trapped among hair follicles and causes red pussfilled bumps. “Usually folliculitis can be easily treated with topical antibiotics,” she says. “But recurrent infections may develop antibiotic resistance, meaning they get harder and harder to treat.” Dr. Mikhail notes that the risks are higher in overweight individuals, diabetics and those who sweat excessively. LIKE EVERYTHING IN LIFE, IT’S IMPORTANT TO EXERCISE MODERATION: DON’T WEAR THEM TOO OFTEN. “Everyone I know owns shapewear — it’s kind of a miracle,” Dr. Erickson admits. “But I think we want to be mindful to not wear it on a day-in and day-out basis.” It’s not a problem if you wear it for an evening or a special occasion, she says, but it’s not a good idea to wear it daily and sit in it for hours on end. If you’re exhibiting any of the aforementioned symptoms, all three doctors recommend avoiding shapewear until the issues are completely resolved.
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LASTLY, CHOOSING THE RIGHT FIT IS KEY. There are so many different types of shapewear out there. You should pick the right style, but you also need to pick the right size, Dr. Erickson says. “You really want to pick shapewear that actually fits you,” she explains. “You want it to do its job, but you don’t want to get something so small that it’s damaging you.” For example, shapewear
Shapewear couldn’t do its job if it wasn’t tight. Unfortunately, this leaves your stomach, intestine and colon compressed.” that goes up to your bra line isn’t a good idea for those with acid reflux or heartburn, as that area is particularly sensitive for people predisposed to those conditions. A good way to tell if your shapewear fits correctly? “It’s not cutting in anywhere,” says Dr. Erickson, who recommends trying out different brands and materials. “All it really does is smooth out the rough edges and you can easily get in and out of it without a struggle.”
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Why 2014 Will Be the Year of M Mindful Living BY CAROLYN GREGOIRE
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INDFULNESS, IT SEEMS, is having a moment. 2013 saw a significant spike of interest in holistic health and mindfulness practices like yoga and meditation (not to mention a number of celebrities and CEOs hopping on the mindfulness bandwagon) and it’s a trend that will likely continue to gain momentum in 2014.
Exit “What the culture is craving is a sense of ease and reflection, of not needing to be stimulated or entertained or going after something constantly,” Soren Gordhamer, founder of the Wisdom 2.0 conference, told The New York Times. “Nobody’s kicking out technology, but we have to regain our connection to others and to nature or else everybody loses.” Ahead, we breakdown why 2014 will be the year of mindfulness. TRENDSPOTTERS ARE GOING ALL IN FOR 2014. According to JWT Worldwide, one of the world’s largest marketing communications brands, 2014 will be characterized by a movement toward mindful living. A number of the items on JWT’s “100 Things to Watch for in 2014” list reflect a growing interest in mindfulness — that is, the cultivation of a focused awareness on the present moment — and mindful living was named one of 10 trends that will shape the world in 2014 and beyond. “Mindfulness is part of a much larger trend we’ve been observing called mindful living,” Ann Mack, director of trendspotting at JWT, told The Huffington Post.
THE THIRD METRIC
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“It’s kind of a counter-trend to the past decade of overly stimulated, ADD-afflicted, tech-saturated culture that we’ve been living in. What was once the domain of the spiritual set has filtered into the mainstream as more people are drawn to this idea of shutting out distractions and focusing on the moment.” Related trends forecasted on JWT’s 2014 list include “survival
It’s kind of a counter-trend to the past decade of overly stimulated, ADD-afflicted, tech-saturated culture that we’ve been living in.” of the focused,” “rage against the machine” — a movement characterized by a fear and resentment of technology and desire for more human experiences — and mindfulness in the classroom. But just because mindfulness has been labeled a trend, don’t expect the movement to fizzle out any time soon. “[Mindful living] has staying power, because our world is only going to become more saturated
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with technology, and therefore people have to find ways to counteract that,” says Mack. “We’re reassessing our relationship with technology. Over the last decade, we’ve allowed technology to rule us. Now we’re trying to be more mindful in the way we use technology and find more balance.”
KRISTIAN SEKULIC/ GETTY IMAGES
PEOPLE ARE GOOGLING IT LIKE CRAZY. It’s a movement that began gaining steam in 2013, making headlines around the web — from Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that he was taking up Transcendental Meditation to the University of Wisconsin’s groundbreaking finding that mindfulness meditation actually alters gene expression in the body — and searches for the term soared on Google. MAJOR CORPORATIONS ARE GETTING ON BOARD. Silicon Valley may be at least partially responsible for turning mindfulness from a niche New Age practice to a pop culture buzzword. In November, a New York Times Magazine cover story profiled the “hunger to get centered” and influx of mindfulness practices in the tech world and beyond.
“It seems counterintuitive, since technology is perhaps the biggest driver of mindlessness and distraction... but the drive to mindfulness is becoming more prominent in places where tech immersion is more prominent,” says Mack. “A lot of Silicon Valley companies, for instance, are banning technology during meetings in an effort to reign in focus.” Google even offers its employees a program called Search Inside Yourself (SIY), a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training program. ChadeMeng Tan, the program’s founder and author of “Search Inside Yourself,” told The Huffington Post that mindfulness can help
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build compassion, which can be beneficial to not only individuals and community, but also to corporate bottom lines. “The one thing [that all companies should be doing] is promoting the awareness that compassion can and will be good for success and profits,” said Tan. LEADERS ARE IDENTIFYING THEMSELVES WITH IT. A number of high-powered executives — from LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner to the late Steve Jobs to Oprah — have touted meditation as their secret to success. Even several years ago, you’d never expect to hear a billionaire hedge fund founder admit to meditating daily, but it’s becoming a lot more common. “Meditation more than anything in my life was the biggest ingredient of whatever success I’ve had,” Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio claimed, while Oprah has said that meditation helps her to create her best work and best life. SCIENCE HAS PROVEN IT’S WORTH THE HYPE. Mounting research on the physical and mental health benefits of
[Mindful living] has staying power, because our world is only going to become more saturated with technology, and therefore people have to find ways to counteract that.” mindfulness has contributed to and helped to legitimize this growing interest in meditative practice. Recent studies have linked mindfulness with emotional stability and improved sleep, increased focus and memory, enhanced creativity, and lower stress levels, among a host of other positive health outcomes.
Oprah has touted meditation as one of the secrets to her success.
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TASTE TEST
The Best H Spinach Dip for Your Super Bowl Spread BY KRISTEN AIKEN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAMON DAHLEN
HUFFINGTON 02.02.14
ERE AT HUFFPOST Taste, dip is a priority. A party isn’t worth its salt if there’s no dip, whether it’s cheese fondue at an upscale get-together or chili cheese dog dip at a football party where your buddies paint their bare chests and hurl their bodies down a queso-covered Slip ‘N Slide. It’s tough to play favorites when one has a love this deep for dip, but we can say without hesitation that we’d happily live on spinach arti-
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TASTE TEST
Exit choke dip alone. While it’s always better homemade, there are storebought versions that we’ve always wondered about. We gathered eight of the top brands for a blind taste test to put our minds at rest. There’s one thing these eight dips all have in common — spinach. They do not, however, all contain artichoke (get your acts
together, food brands!). Keeping this in mind, we corralled a group of editors to rank them. The results ranged from “Life cannot get more perfect than this” to “Thin, watery, sour. Seafoody?” We don’t want you to toe this fine line uninformed, so we’re sharing these ever-important results with you.
As always, this taste test was in no way influenced by the brands included.
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CEDAR’S
TOSTITOS
TRADER JOE’S REDUCED GUILT
CIOLO
T.G.I. FRIDAY’S
TRADER JOE’S, REFRIGERATED
LA TERRA FINA
TRADER JOE’S, FROZEN
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MUSIC
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Dog Ears
In which we spotlight music from a diversity of genres and decades, lending an insider’s ear to what deserves to be heard. BY THE EVERLASTING PHIL RAMONE AND DANIELLE EVIN
PORTER WAGONER
CITY AND COLOUR
LOUIE AUSTEN
Country-gospel showman Porter Wagoner was born in central Missouri in 1927. By his early 20s, Wagoner was doing radio spots, and soon after he signed with RCA Records, netting several country chart toppers. A soldier of the Grand Ole Opry since 1957, Wagoner also made a name for himself on television by the ’60s as host of The Porter Wagoner Show. The broadcast became a 21-year outpost for rising talent. Collaborations include Clint Eastwood, Pam Gadd, Tammy Wynette, Red Sovine, and George Jones. Accolades include induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2002, four Grammy Awards, and three CMAs. With decades of classics to collect, get the 1956 title “A Satisfied Mind,” from The Essential Porter Wagoner.
City and Colour, founded in the early aughts, is the brainchild and nom de plume of Canadian soundscapist/ multi-instrumentalist Dallas Green (Alexisfire). Among the rotating cast are guitarists Dante Schwebel and Daniel Romano, drummers Dylan Green and Doug MacGregor, bassists Jack Lawrence and Scott Remila, and keyboardist Matt Kelly. Collaborations include Ron Sexsmith, Spencer Burton (Attack in Black), and the late producer Dan Achen. Accolades include a 2009 Juno Award for Songwriter of the Year. With over a dozen releases to date, grab ahold of “We Found Each Other in the Dark,” from City and Colour’s 2011 gem Little Hell, produced by Alex Newport (Death Cab For Cutie). A satisfying fix of melody and sweetness.
Lounge magnetar Louie Austen was born Alois Luef in Vienna soon after the curtain closed on WWII. Austen, classically trained, served as a jazz crooner on the cabaret scene for decades before making his mark in electronic music. In 1998, he was discovered by composer/producer Mario Neugebauer, and at the hit of Y2K issued his debut with Neugebauer at the helm. Austen entered the international spotlight with a flambeur cameo in the 2007 Oscar-winner The Counterfeiters, and continues to amass a bounty of work counting over 20 releases to date. Collaborations/shared stages include Peaches, Gonzalez, Joyce Muniz, Gunne, Patrick Pulsinger, Phonique, and Melnyk. The feisty sophisticate constantly tours the world. Discover “One Night in Rio,” from his 2006 project Hear My Song.
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes GENRE: Country ARTIST: Porter Wagoner SONG: A Satisfied Mind ALBUM: The Essential Porter Wagoner
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes GENRE: Alternative ARTIST: City and Colour SONG: We Found Each Other in the Dark ALBUM: Little Hell
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes GENRE: Dance ARTIST: Louie Austen SONG: One Night in Rio ALBUM: Hear My Song
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MUSIC
BRUNO MADERNA
BOMBINO
BO CARTER
Avant-electro composer/conductor Bruno Maderna was an illustrious 20thcentury soundmaker. Born in Venice in 1920, Brunetto the wunderkind took to the violin by the age of 4, segueing into conducting during boyhood with performances at the legendary La Scala as a tween. On Fascist orders, he toured Europe as an example of nationalism. Maderna went on to attend Milan’s Verdi Conservatory, Rome’s Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia, as well as the Venice Conservatory. After WWII, he made his bones with the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, a think-tank of modern music. By the mid-’50s, Maderna and colleague Luciano Berio co-founded Studio di Fonologia Musicale in Milan and RAI’s Incontri Musicali. He was later chief conductor of the RAI in Milan. Credits include Public Opinion, Death Laid an Egg, Noi Cannibali, The Temptress, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Collaborations include Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez. Gian Francesco, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The maestro passed away in 1973. Visit this modernist’s pool of sonics with “Reflection in the Night,” from the 2010 collection Arte.
Singer/songwriter/guitarist Bombino (a.k.a. Goumar Almoctar) was born in Niger at the hit of the ’80s. Cut from Tuareg cloth (a nomadic people), the desert-dweller was raised amidst uprisings and suppressions. His family fled to Algeria, then Burkina Faso, in his tweens, where he picked up guitar, a symbol of Tuareg freedom. Upon returning to Niger in 1993, young Goumar held fast to his dream, recording with his band Tidawt. Soon after releasing his solo debut in 2004, he found himself in the company of Keith Richards and Charlie Watts for a remake of “Hey Negrita.” By the late aughts, guitar was banned in Niger and unrest led to the execution of two of his bandmates, sending Bombino into self-imposed exile. By 2010, the sand had settled in peace and Bombino returned home, welcomed back by the local sultan, and has since recorded with Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) and toured the States. Discover “Assalam Felawan (Peace to You),” from Bombino’s 2011 Agadez.
Delta bluesman and picker Bo Carter was born Armenter Chatmon in 1892 on a Mississippi plantation. He was raised in a musical home, his father a fiddler, mother a singer/guitarist, with brothers Sam (bass), Lonnie (fiddle), and Harry (piano) filing out the lineup. Bo later became the leader of legendary blues outfit The Mississippi Sheiks, which included his brothers and vocalist/guitarist Walter Vinson. Carter’s tracking debut in 1928 supporting Alec Johnson elevated his in-demand reputation during the 1930s, leading to a solo career marking over 100-plus recordings. Best known for his suggestive titles “Banana in Your Fruit Basket,” “Pin in Your Cushion,” and “Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me,” Carter showcased his earnest gifts in blues classic “Corrine Corrina.” By 1935, he became visually impaired but continued to play music as well as farm for the rest of his life. Affiliations include stints with Charlie McCoy and His Mississippi Hot Footers and The Mississippi Blacksnakes. Carter succumbed to a stroke in 1964. Listen to the ribald classic “Please Warm My Weiner,” from the Bo Carter Vol. 3 (1934-1936) collection.
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes GENRE: Avant-Electronic ARTIST: Bruno Maderna SONG: Reflection in the Night ALBUM: Arte
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes GENRE: World ARTIST: Bombino SONG: Assalam Felawan (Peace to You) ALBUM: Agadez
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes GENRE: Blues ARTIST: Bo Carter SONG: Please Warm My Weiner ALBUM: Bo Carter Vol. 3 (1934-1936)
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Most Republicans Say Government Aid to the Poor Does ‘More Harm Than Good’
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Rich Man Calls Rising Income Inequality ‘Fantastic’
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MAN READS HIS OWN OBITUARY IN NEWSPAPER
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Liver Transplant Patient Brings Vodka to Hospital
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GameStop Robber Calls Ahead to Make Sure Call of Duty Is in Stock
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Woman Injured by Falling Porcupine
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Behold, Shrimp Mayonnaise Doritos
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TURNS OUT THOSE MINI-CARS ARE ACTUALLY PRETTY UNSAFE
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10 New UK Reality Show About Welfare Is Dubbed ‘Poverty Porn’
Texting Makes You Walk More Crookedly, Study Finds
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