From the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s latest survey ofmanufacturing activity in the South Atlantic (District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia):
Manufacturing activity in the central Atlantic region firmed somewhat in September, following three months of contraction, according to the Richmond Fed’s latest survey. The seasonally adjusted index of overall activity edged higher as positive readings for shipments and new orders offset the negative reading for employment. Modest improvement was also evident in most other indicators. Capacity utilization turned positive, while backlogs and delivery times remained negative but improved from their August readings. Moreover, raw materials inventories grew at a slightly slower pace, while growth in finished goods was unchanged.
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Looking ahead, assessments of business prospects for the next six months were more optimistic in September. Contacts at more firms anticipated that shipments, new orders, backlogs, capacity utilization, and vendor lead-times would grow more quickly in the months ahead.
The National Academy of Social Insurance explains why many of the things that people think they know about Social Security are wrong. Put differently, the insurance program was “built to last” and is sustainable provided elected officials in Washington choose to sustain the system.
Along comes the Obama administration with the Race to the Top, and the pattern on the rug gets clearer. It tells cash-strapped states that they can compete for federal funding, but only if they open more privately managed schools (where few teachers have any job protections), only if they adopt national standards that have never been field-tested, only if they agree to evaluate teachers by student test scores, and only if they are ready to close down low-performing schools, fire the principal and staff, and call it a turnaround.
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Race to the Top seems to have catalyzed a national narrative, at least among the mainstream media. The good guys open charter schools and fire bad teachers. The bad guys are lazy teachers who get lifetime tenure just for breathing and showing up. Most evil of all are the unions, who protect the bad teachers and fend off any effort to evaluate them. Anyone who questions the headlong rush to privatization and the blind faith in standardized testing will be smeared as “a defender of the status quo” who has “no solutions.” Even if all the “reformers'” solutions are destructive and stale, even though they consistently have failed to produce better education, the reformers never think twice about their palette of “solutions.”
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