MONETARY HISTORY CALENDAR February 28-March5

FEBRUARY 28

1856 – BIRTH OF WOODROW WILSON, 28TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.” (1911)

MARCH 3

1863 - LEGAL TENDER ACT PASSED
Congress authorizes the Government to print no more than $400,000 million Greenbacks to pay for the Civil War. This was interest-free and debt-free money. The Lincoln Administration didn’t want to borrow money from corporate banks to pay for the war.

1865 – NATIONAL CURRENCY ACT AMENDED BY CONGRESS
The act amended the National Currency Act of 1864. State banks were no longer permitted to issue bank notes (currency).

1884 – JULLIARD V. GREENMAN ( 110 U.S. 421 ) SUPREME COURT DECISION
US Supreme Court ruling upholding the legality of US Government issued money (Greenbacks) created following the Legal Tender Acts of 1862 and 1863. The Court ruled that the government possessed the authority under the Constitution to issue a national currency and that that currency could be used to pay debts.

2003 - WARREN BUFFET, SECOND RICHEST PERSON ON EARTH, IN HIS ANNUAL LETTER TO BERKSHIRE HATHWAY SHAREHOLDERS
“Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction."

MARCH 4

1789 – US GOVERNMENT UNDER NEW CONSTITUTION BEGINS OPERATION
The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation as the overarching legal document of the nation. The new Constitution provides the federal legislature the power “[t]o coin money [and] regulate the value thereof.”

MARCH 6

1926 – BIRTH OF ALAN GREENSPAN, CHAIRMAN OF THE US FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
"I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said." In a speech to the Economic Club of New York, 1988

1933 – PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT ISSUES EXECUTIVE PROCLAMATION 2039 DECLARING A BANK “HOLIDAY”
The “holiday” meant that all banks would be closed from March 6-9 to prevent further runs. Bank failures were a result in earlier speculative investments and banks loaning out more money than they actually possessed (fractural reserve). When too many people came to a bank at the same time wanting their deposits, the banks collapsed since they lacked sufficient assets. The bank “holiday” was meant to restore confidence in the banking system.

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Why this calendar? Many people have questions about the root causes of our economic problems. Some questions involve money, banks and debt. How is money created? Why do banks control its quantity? How has the money system been used to liberate (not often) and oppress (most often) us? And how can the money system be “democratized” to rebuild our economy and society, create jobs and reduce debt?
Our goal is to inform, intrigue and inspire through bite size weekly postings listing important events and quotes from prominent individuals (both past and present) on money, banking and how the money system can help people and the planet. We hope the sharing of bits of buried history will illuminate monetary and banking issues and empower you with others to create real economic and political justice.
This calendar is a project of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee. Adele Looney, Phyllis Titus, Donna Schall, Leah Davis, Alice Francini and Greg Coleridge helped in its development.
Please forward this to others and encourage them to subscribe. To subscribe/unsubscribe or to comment on any entry, contact monetarycalendar@yahoo.com For more information, visit http://www.afsc.net/economiccrisis.html

Protect Workers' Rights Rally in Columbus - February 26

Teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public service employees joined with students, environmentalists and other citizens from across Ohio on Saturday, February 26 to rally in support of maintaining collective bargaining rights. The rally was the latest mass action over the last several weeks at the State House in Columbus organized against passage of Senate Bill 5. The roughly 500 people at the rally heard from a dozen speakers, mostly those representing public employees, talk about how the current $8 billion state budget deficit is being used as a pretext to eliminate the power of people in public unions to bargain collectively for wages and benefits.

I was one of the non-union speakers who addressed the crowd (the only person representing a religious organization) – focusing on the need to maintain unity despite our separate organizations and issues as well as to understand and work to link the immediate threat to collective bargaining with the larger issue of corporations wielding never-intended political power to influence elections and govern. Referencing the Wisconsin Wave, a new campaign to develop a broad democratic/self-governing platform (including the call for greater election integrity and an end to corporate personhood) I urged those in attendance to consider developing a similar platform in Ohio and to support the national effort, led by Move to Amend, to abolish corporate constitutional rights.

Among those in the crowd were several people from other parts of the state AFSC has worked with over the years – including Friends from Athens on democracy issues, student organizers in Columbus on antiwar issues and social workers from Columbus on affordable housing issues.

Also in the crowd was a brother and sister, Margo Kernan and Charlie Koester, from Akron whose mother Margie Koester, member of the Akron Friends Meeting, recently passed away. Margie was a longtime AFSC volunteer who rarely missed an AFSC organized or supported march and rally for peace or justice in Akron or DC. In small but noticeable letters on the edges of their “Defeat Issue 5” signs were written “Hi Mom!” “We’re here because of the issue but also because of her,” they said. “She’s here today in spirit.”

A march was held following the rally. It circled the State House grounds. Those on the streets and drivers in passing cars showed their support for worker rights with thumps up signs and a din of honking horns.

p.s. The one picture of people holding the “We the People” sign was held in front of a statue of former President and Ohioan William McKinley on the statehouse grounds. During his 1896 election for President, McKinley’s campaign manager, Marc Hanna, said, “There are 2 things important in politics. The first is money. I can’t remember what the second one is.” This captures well the fact that government increasingly has been captured by large monied and corporate interests — with agendas including eliminating worker rights and programs supporting people who don’t donate (or invest) to political candidates.

Using Gas Prices to Forecast the Unemployment Trend

Previously, we found that the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. can be used to forecast what the U.S. unemployment rate will be about two years ahead in time.

Since then, gasoline prices have been rising pretty significantly across the U.S. and are predicted to rise even further, so today, we're presenting a tool based upon our analysis that you can use to anticipate what the jobs situation will be like two years from now.

To find out, enter the latest average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. into the tool as well as the most recently available value for the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, which lets us take inflation into account, and we'll project what the U.S. unemployment rate will likely be two years from now.

Now for a quick word of caution. The correlation between gas prices and the unemployment rate is positive, but is only of low-to-medium strength, which you can see in the spread of the data points about the trend line in our chart showing the correlation.

Basic Investment Information
Input Data	Values
Average Price of a Gallon of Gasoline
Most Recent Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) Value

Projected Unemployment Rate
Calculated Results	Values
Projected Unemployment Rate

What that means is that while higher gasoline prices do generally translate into a higher unemployment rate two years into the future and lower gasoline prices translate into lower unemployment rates, the actual unemployment rate two years from now can be significantly different from what the tool forecasts.

As such, our tool is best used to anticipate the general trend in the unemployment rate rather than the specific unemployment rate.

For example, using the default data for our tool, which takes the average retail price of motor gasoline in the United States from 21 February 2011 and pairs it with the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) from January 2011, our tool projects that the unemployment rate will be about 8.3%, which is lower that the 9.0% unemployment rate reported in January 2011, suggesting a mild improvement from now until then.

However, if average gasoline prices rise quickly to exceed $3.50 per gallon across the nation, as they already have in California, our tool would project that no significant improvement in the U.S. unemployment rate will take place over the next two years.

Previously on Political Calculations

• Correlating the Price of Gas and the Unemployment Rate


• Why Are Americans Driving Less?


• How Much Does Your Commute Cost You?


• Should You Move Closer to Work to Save Commuting Costs?


• How to Save Money on Gas, Without Driving Less


• How Much Are Higher Gas Prices Really Hurting You?


• Should You Trade in Your Gas Guzzler?


• Is It Worth the Drive?


• Do Hybrids Really Save Money?


• How Much Do You Pay in Gas Taxes?

TESTIMONY AT PEOPLES BUDGET HEARING

February 24, 2011 / Cleveland, Ohio
Greg Coleridge, Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee

Increasing tensions in Ohio, other states and in Washington, DC between maintaining vital social and economic services and reducing budget deficits and debts appears irreconcilable. But are they? Not if our vision and understanding expands beyond the narrow construct we’ve been conditioned to accept – which has been reinforced by a distracting corporate media, an educational system designed to nurture the status quo rather than critical consciousness, and by either unaware or corporate-influenced public officials.

Three “off the table” solutions at the federal level to the economic and human crisis need to be placed on the table – for good.

1 Slash funding for military. The military/war budget consumes roughly 59% of the funds Congress can vote on. This includes a dizzying array of Cold War-era military weapons systems; more than 700 empire-reinforcing bases and installations world-wide; military aid to prop up dictators and regimes – many of which are now being challenged by popular democratic uprisings; and hot wars and occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and to a lesser extend Yemen. Hundreds of billions of dollars could be saved – to be reinvested in economic conversion of our weapons plants, to balance the budget, to spend on vital social and economic needs, and to reduce taxes.

2 End the most destructive and debt-increasing federal subsidy of all – the license given to banks to print money. All other government subsidies pale in comparison to the subsidy the federal government has provided to banks for most of our nation’s history – the right to print money, which is loaned back to us and which must be repaid with interest. We the People should print our own money – debt and interest free – as stipulated in the Constitution. This would allow us to save roughly $200 billion alone this year in interest payments. It would also permit us to spend money to address vital needs without having to go into debt. Rep. Dennis Kucinich is set to reintroduce the National Emergency and Employment (NEED) Act – which calls for the government to print federal money to address the $2.2 trillion the American Association of Civil Engineers says is needed in infrastructure repair and billions more needed to address education and health care services.

3 Increase taxes on the superrich. Economist and Professor Richard D. Wolff computes that the 2.9 million High Net Worth Americans whose investible assets totaled $12.09 trillion in 2009, if taxed at just 15%, would have yielded more than total government borrowing of $1.7 trillion in 2009. Obama’s stimulus program would have required no deficit, no borrowing, and no additional taxes for 99% of US citizens. The same could be done for this year. There would be no need to even tax the earnings of the top 1% -- just the investible assets.

It’s time to discuss these options – those that would make our priorities more sane and humane. They would also increase democracy – of our own money system and of people and nations abroad.

50 States Rally TOMORROW / Wisconsin Wave of Resistance

Wisconsin Solidarity Rally
Saturday, February 26, Noon
Ohio Statehouse

Tomorrow, in cities across the nation, including Columbus and every state capital, people will come together to stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin and rally to Save the American Dream. Teachers, nurses, firefighters, students, police officers and others protesting in Wisconsin have occupied the Capitol building and streets of Madison for the past nine days, and now their protest is going national.

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Issue 5 and similar bills in other states to remove collective bargaining is not at root about saving money or balancing budgets. The core issue is the right of people to organize — the Constitutional right of freedom of association — against corporate power and rights and for justice and dignity. It’s one piece of the struggle to End Corporate Rule.

The Wisconsin Wave of Resistance is making this connection.
http://www.WisconsinWave.org

Their Statement/Call follows. They are collecting signatures from people across the state.

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CALL FOR A WISCONSIN WAVE OF RESISTANCE

the WISCONSIN WAVE Against Corporatization and Austerity and for Democracy and Shared Prosperity

We recognize the rising Wisconsin wave of resistance to corporatization and austerity and call on our fellow Wisconsinites to join it.

For more than a century Wisconsin was America’s laboratory of democracy. Big Wisconsin Ideas, like barring corporate electioneering, workers’ rights protections, and the conservation ethic, have inspired Americans everywhere to push their state governments in a more progressive direction. But Wisconsin is not immune to the forces that often threaten social progress. For every elected official who channels grassroots energy and calls us to the higher ground, there’s a politician who wants to steer us off the cliff. For every “Fighting Bob” La Follette, there’s a “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy.

Today, Wisconsin’s democratic tradition faces the greatest threat it has ever known. Governor Scott Walker, operating at the direction of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), is using the financial crisis caused by Wall Street speculators as an excuse to impose devastating cuts to public services. The WMC agenda is shameless. They intend to shift the tax burden even further away from major corporations and onto the rest of us. Their agenda is undemocratic. They would protect themselves from voters by lowering Wisconsin’s voting rights guarantees to those of Alabama and Mississippi. Their agenda is heartless. It has no place in it for the needs of Wisconsin’s youth, our poor, our disabled, or our unemployed at this time when their needs are greatest. The WMC-Walker agenda would destroy everything that once made Wisconsin great: a robust educational system; safe, high paying jobs; and a clean environment available for enjoyment by all people.

But as in other grim times throughout our state’s history, concerned Wisconsinites are rising up to defend our way of life. This diverse group of individuals, which includes everyone from college students to factory workers to small farmers and businesspeople, is uniting behind the common-sense principle that the wealthy few who caused the financial crisis are the ones who should pay for it. This rising Wisconsin Wave of protest insists that:

* Our state government must guarantee a fully funded public sector including education, health care, human services, transportation, public safety, and vital regulatory agencies.
* Taxes on large corporations and wealthy individuals should be returned to reasonable levels in order to solve the state’s fiscal crisis.
* The state must respect the rights of workers to organize unions and bargain collectively.
* Initial budget priorities must be established through public participation instead of closed door meetings between public officials and special interest lobbyists.
* Voting rights must be expanded, not limited, to insure that every Wisconsinite can take part in our democracy.
* Wisconsin deserves government of, by, and for the people, not the corporate elite; corporations have no constitutional rights and may not buy our elections or government.

This Wisconsin Wave is a force independent of political parties and partisan elected officials. It is an awakening of Wisconsinites independent of --but not exclusive of-- whatever other political, union, faith, or organizational affiliations we each might have.

To the giant corporate interests that currently dominate our state, we say that we will not stand by and watch you destroy Wisconsin’s democracy, Wisconsin’s economy, Wisconsin’s schools, and Wisconsin’s communities. We will not pay for your crisis. We will organize. We will march. We will non-violently resist your policies and overcome your agenda.

To our fellow Wisconsinites we say simply, “join us.” Join the Wisconsin Wave of resistance against corporatization and austerity, and for democracy and shared prosperity for all: http://www.WisconsinWave.org

Anti-US Fervor in Hollywood

With massive popular uprisings sweeping many of the most politically-repressed nations of the world, Americans are looking toward the upcoming weekend with a mixture of both fear and dread because it's time, once again, for the annual Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards ceremony to be televised.

The primary reason for that is because the Academy Awards ceremony has increasingly become an unbearably abysmal viewing experience over the past decades, as Hollywood feels compelled to produce a spectacle that, well, is doomed to flop, even by our much lower critical standards for award shows.

But another reason why is because of the anti-American political bias of many of the movie stars, producers and directors whose achievements in 2010 will be celebrated this Sunday evening, 27 February 2011, beginning live at 5:00 PM Eastern Time on the ABC television network with hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway. Because nothing makes for more a more dreadful viewing experience than some highly talented movie stars seeking to exploit the worldwide platform they've been given to show off how much they care about the ongoing tragedy of "fill-in-the-blank," which could be fixed if only Americans cared as much as the movie stars did and demonstrate by their willingness to go far over the allotted time they've been given for accepting their award. Assuming they get through thanking the laundry list of people who worked on their movie that pretty much only they know....

But then we wondered whether Hollywood has a financial motive for being so apparently anti-American? We've previously found that anti-U.S. movies tend to flop badly at the U.S. box office, but what about overseas film markets? How do those anti-U.S. movies do in those foreign box offices?

We decided to find out! We went back and identified the most anti-U.S. movies that Hollywood has produced in recent years to see how they did in both their domestic U.S. market and in foreign theaters. We then narrowed our selection to consider only movies set in contemporary times, the issues related to which foreign audiences would most closely recognize and to which they would presumably be most receptive to sitting through a 90 minute long anti-U.S. screed.

The obvious candidates then turned out to be the anti-"War on Terror" movies that have been produced since 2006. The chart below shows how these movies performed and the domestic U.S. and foreign box office, which we then compared with each movie's estimated production costs.

What we find is that in all but one case, the 2009 Best Picture-winning Hurt Locker, none of the films presented in our chart above earned back their production costs from their U.S. box office receipts. Meanwhile, only two films earned more in the U.S. than they did overseas: Stop Loss, a critically-praised but audience-hated movie that was only released in a dozen countries, limiting its foreign earning potential and The Kingdom, the most politically-neutral of all the films we identified, which perhaps explains its success at the U.S. box office.

Overall, the combined box office take from domestic and foreign box offices was enough for four of the nine films to make back their production costs and for another two films to nearly do so.

Anti-U.S. Film Domestic U.S. and Foreign Box Office Take
Movie	Release Date	Total Box Office	U.S. Box Office Percentage	Foreign Box Office Percentage	Comments
Stop Loss	28 March 2008	$11,207,130	97.4%	2.6%	Released in over 12 nations. Largest foreign box office in Australia ($135,000).
In the Valley of Elah	14 September 2007	$29,541,790	22.9%	77.1%	Released in over 47 countries. Largest box office take in Spain ($3.046 million) but near tie in France and French-speaking Northern African nations ($3.014 million). Combined total accounts for one fifth of total box office.
Redacted	16 November 2007	$782,102	8.4%	91.6%	Released in over 13 countries. Most popular in France and French-speaking Northern African nations ($363,766, or 47% of total box office.)
The Kingdom*	28 September 2007	$86,658,558	54.9%	45.1%	Politically neutral. Released in over 60 nations. Largest box office in United Kingdom ($5.8 million).
Rendition	19 October 2007	$27,038,732	36.0%	64.0%	Released in over 50 countries, largest box office in United Kingdom ($5.3 million, or nearly one-fifth of total box office.)
Lions for Lambs	9 November 2007	$63,215,872	23.7%	76.3%	Released in over 92 countries. Largest box office take in Italy ($8,321,849, or over one-eighth of total box office).
Home of the Brave	15 December 2006	$499,620	10.3%	89.7%	Released in 4 countries. Largest box office in Spain ($203,079, or over 40% of total box office).
Green Zone	12 March 2010	$94,875,650	36.9%	63.1%	Released in over 53 countries, largest foreign box office in United Kingdom ($8.2 million).
Hurt Locker	26 June 2009	$49,230,726	34.6%	65.4%	Best Picture Winner for 82nd Academy Awards. Released in over 48 countries, biggest foreign box office in Japan ($7.8 million).
Total	N/A	$276,391,622	34.2%	65.8%	* Total Omits The Kingdom's Box Office Results

Omitting The Kingdom as a control sample, given its political neutrality, we find that the remaining eight anti-U.S. films earned a combined U.S. and foreign total of $276,391,622, with $94,620,951 (34.2%) coming from the U.S. box office and the remaining $181,770,671 (65.8%) from outside the U.S. In simple terms, Hollywood earns roughly two dollars overseas for every one it makes in the U.S. for these anti-U.S. movies.

The combined total of the estimated production costs for these eight films is $243,292,000. With the total box office take of these movies being $276,391,622, we find that Hollywood did indeed make a profit on these films, earning $33,099,622, or just shy of a 12% profit margin when compared to their estimated production costs.

It seems that Hollywood does indeed has a pretty large financial incentive for being so anti-American. Who knew that good old-fashioned greed could help explain Hollywood's political posturing?

U.S. vs Canada: Suicide Edition

How does the United States and Canada compare with one another where each nation's number of suicides each year is concerned? Sure, the nations share a 3,145 mile-long border (that's 5,061 kilometres for our Canadian readers), but as either Americans or Canadians can tell you, what happens on one side of the border can be very different from what happens on the other.

We'll first consider the total number of cases each year for each nation where the cause of death was determined to be the result of self-inflicted injuries.

In looking at this first chart, we see that since 2000, the U.S. appears to have a rising number of suicides, while the trend in Canada appears to be relatively flat in comparison.

That comparison doesn't take the differences in the size of the population of either country into account, much less how the population for each might be changing over time, so we'll next consider the so-called "suicide rate" for each country - the number of suicides per each 100,000 individuals of population, which will directly address this issue.

Here, we find that on whole, both trends we observed in the earlier chart appear to hold. We also observe that both the United States and Canada sees a similar rate of suicides each year, with Canada averaging 11.5 suicides per 100,000 people and the U.S. averaging just a bit lower at 11.0 suicides per 100,000 people in the years from 2000 through 2007.

So on the whole then, the U.S. and Canada would appear to be very similar to one another where deaths caused by self-inflicted injuries are concerned. If Canada's population were identical to the United States, it would likely see the same number of suicides each year, or actually a bit more than that, given its slightly higher suicide rate.

Things change dramatically however when we consider the methods by which people in the U.S. and Canada have committed suicide in the years from 2000 through 2007.

Here we find that Canada's much more restrictive gun laws significantly changes the preferred methods by which Canadians commit suicide compared to the U.S., where firearm-related self-inflicted injuries represent the majority of suicides. We observe that compared to Americans, Canadians appear to substitute the methods of hanging and suffocation, poisoning and other types of self-inflicted fatal injuries for the use of firearms.

But note that they only exchange the method of suicide - the suicide rate data between the two nations clearly demonstrates that Canada's more restrictive gun laws do little or nothing to affect the number of Canadians who successfully act to end their lives in any given year.

Consequently, we find that the restrictions that a nation might place on gun ownership by its citizens very likely do little or nothing to affect the number of suicides that take place within the nation.

On a final note, we also find that the use of firearm-related death figures that includes firearm-related suicides by gun control advocates is highly misleading. As we can see in the analysis above, the number of suicides a nation will experience in any given year is effectively independent of the use of firearms and any restrictions it has for firearms.

With that being the case, we find that gun control advocates using such figures may be considered to be deeply dishonest. And that's the best case interpretation of this situation. In the worst case interpretation, they could quite legitimately be considered to be monsters, as they would appear to be very much in favor of seeing thousands more people hang or poison themselves when committing suicide, which would be the nearly inevitable outcome of the restrictions they seek to impose upon others.

If perhaps they had chosen to stick with using homicide data, which we'll look at soon, they would have more credibility. But then, they've apparently made other choices.

Actually caring about people just doesn't seem to be among those choices.

Data Sources

Centre for Preventing Suicide. Suicide in Canada: Numbers, Rates, and Methods. 2000-2003. Accessed 20 February 2011.

Statistics Canada. Suicides and Suicide Rate, by sex and by age group. CANSIM Results. Table 102-0551. Deaths and mortality rate, by selected grouped causes, age group and sex, Canada, annual, 2000-2007. Accessed 20 February 2011.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control. WISQARS Database. 2000 to 2007. All Races. All Hispanic Origin. All Sexes. Accessed 20 February 2011.

The Math They Forgot or, More Likely, Were Never Taught

According to standards adopted by the California State Board of Education in December 1997 and reposted again in June 2009, secondary school students in the state's public education institutions are expected to take and pass Algebra sometime between the 8th and 12th grades. In achieving that standard, graduates from the state's high schools should be very well prepared to enter college ready to do well because of the role of Algebra as a "gateway" class - one that establishes a solid foundation of basic learning that is a prerequisite for supporting the kind of higher level learning that is highly valued by employers.

So how well are California's public high schools doing at achieving that standard, which the state adopted over twelve years ago and reaffirmed less than two years ago?

One way we can find out is to see how much remedial learning of Algebra is taking place at the state's community colleges. Here, students who attend the state's community colleges are much more likely to have also graduated from the state's public high schools, unlike students who might attend the state's top-tier public universities, which draw top students from California and around the world. As such, California's community college students would represent how well the state's public high school's are doing in satisfying the state's minimum standards needed for students to be prepared to enter college.

Dayna Straehley of the Press Enterprise, a newspaper serving the southern Californian counties of Riverside and San Bernandino (aka "the Inland Empire"), reports:

High schools think they're preparing students for college, but when many graduates get there, they have to take remedial classes, Inland educators say.

Statewide, about 90 percent of California's community college students need remedial math and 75 percent need remedial English.

Almost 96 percent of first-time freshmen must take remedial math, and 82 percent must take remedial English.

It's not just precalculus or even algebra that students haven't mastered. Some high school graduates need remedial arithmetic, according to the community colleges.

At Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa, 97 percent of new students need at least one pre-collegiate class, said Cheryl Marshall, vice president for instruction.

As with any government-operated system, the bureaucrats who run it are quick to find excuses:

Students need remedial math for various reasons, Riverside City College math instructor Pamela Whelchel said. Some learned algebra and geometry or even calculus in high school, but didn't study or review for the placement test. Some students forgot the math they once knew.

RCC student Fadi Dib, 19, said he took Algebra 2 in high school but needed a refresher in the subject. He was working elementary algebra problems in Whelchel's math lab recently.

"Math, if you don't keep practicing on it, you'll forget it," Dib said.

Whelchel said the class is comparable to high school Algebra 1, which California expects students to master by the ninth grade.

Chris Contreras, 21, one of her students, remembered the Algebra 1 he took in high school as way easier than the work he was doing recently in RCC's math lab.

Student Chris Contreras may have a point, in that compared to high school classes, which are taught over an entire school year, an Algebra 1 class at the college level would be completed in 16 weeks or less. However, since he would have had previous exposure to the material in high school, that faster pace should not have presented a significant burden. Unless he hadn't been adequately exposed to the kind of math that would be included as part of a college-level Algebra 1 class in the first place.

Which brings up another good question: Is the kind of Algebra being taught in high school different from what's taught in college? As Straehley finds, perhaps it is:

States tell high schools what to teach, so students can pass standardized tests required by No Child Left Behind, which set federal requirements for school testing. But those requirements have been academic minimums, not what students need to succeed in college.

Daniel Martinez, Riverside Community College District's associate dean of institutional research, said California's high school standards just don't line up with college expectations.

The "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" was former President George W. Bush's "signature" achievement in education. Unfortunately for Californians, that federal law had no impact upon the setting of the standards for math to which public secondary schools in the state of California are required to comply. As we've already revealed, those standards were set in 1997, nearly four years before "No Child Left Behind" even became federal law. We also see that they were not altered as a result of the federal law, which we confirm in the standards being reposted, without change, in 2009.

Could it then be a problem of miscommunication between state-run bureaucracies? Perhaps the state's public secondary education schools are unaware of what they really need to be teaching the students attending their institutions so they don't require remedial education if and when they reach a college campus.

Or perhaps not:

The University of California puts out documents of what it expects of college freshmen, but she said high schools have paid little attention. Schools have been forced to focus on state requirements and No Child Left Behind.

So we find that the real standard for math that California's public high school students need to achieve by the time they reach college isn't some mysterious secret known only to an elite sect who dresses in funny hats and robes. Somehow though, despite knowing what the real standards should be, the state's public secondary schools are so busy doing other things that they can't be bothered to adapt to their customers (aka "students") real needs. Somehow, they would appear to be claiming, doing that would render it impossible for them to satisfy the state Board of Education's low requirements for math education as well as the No Child Left Behind federal law which, we've already seen, never affected the state's standards for math education in the first place.

We're not exactly sure how acting to ensure that their students can perform the kind of math at the higher standard actually required at the college level would make it impossible for the school to comply with a lower standard for math education, but perhaps that's something California's educators learn in the graduate education schools they attend as they seek to become fully credentialed.

Now, how does their ability to apply quantitative reasoning skills, like the ones that are supposed to be taught in high school Algebra classes, compare to nearly every other post-graduate major in non-education-related fields again?...

References

California State Board of Education. Mathematics Content Standards for California Public Schools, Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. Adopted December 1997, Reposted 9 June 2009.

Ranking School Smarts by Major, Updated

Are engineers really smarter than business students? How do people studying the social sciences stack up against those studying physical sciences? And where exactly do the people who presumably plan to teach children for a living fit into the relative smarts picture?

Sure, it would be nice to use good old-fashioned IQ-type tests to resolve these questions once and for all, but maybe the next best thing is to compare the performance of students who are required to take the GRE (the Graduate Record Examination) as a prerequisite for entering into a graduate school to pursue a Masters degree.

Here, we can measure school smarts by considering how the students taking the GRE's various component exams, which are designed to assess the prospective graduate student's Analytical Writing, Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning skills performed on each GRE component. We can then compare the relative performance of students in different majors according to the average results recorded for each graduate major program that the GRE-takers declared they intended to enter.

The dynamic table below reveals the GRE results by major recorded for 2007-2008. Just click the table's column headings to sort the data in the table from either high to low, or again to sort the data low to high, according to the selected column heading category. (Note: The dynamic sorting feature will only work if you've enabled JavaScript on your web browser, and then only if you access the dynamic table directly on Political Calculations - like our tools, it won't work on sites who simply republish just our RSS feed!)

Average GRE Scores by Intended Graduate Major, 2007-2008

Category	Intended Graduate Major	Analytical Writing	Verbal Reasoning	Quantititative Reasoning
Arts & Humanities	Arts - History/Theory/Criticism	4.7	537	565
Arts & Humanities	Arts - Performance/Studio	4.3	489	551
Arts & Humanities	English Language/Literature	4.8	561	550
Arts & Humanities	Foreign Languages/Literatures	4.6	532	571
Arts & Humanities	History	4.7	542	554
Arts & Humanities	Other Arts & Humanities Major	4.8	567	599
Arts & Humanities	Philosophy	5.0	590	635
Business	Accounting	4.1	440	591
Business	Banking and Finance	4.2	461	715
Business	Business Administration/Management	4.1	438	559
Business	Other Business Major	4.0	436	588
Education	Administration	4.2	426	520
Education	Curriculum/Instruction	4.3	459	543
Education	Early Childhood	4.1	420	498
Education	Elementary	4.2	440	522
Education	Evaluation/Research	4.3	451	531
Education	Higher	4.5	464	547
Education	Other Education	4.2	439	528
Education	Secondary	4.5	484	576
Education	Special	4.1	430	502
Education	Student Counseling/Personnel Services	4.2	426	498
Engineering	Chemical	4.1	470	718
Engineering	Civil	4.1	458	698
Engineering	Electrical/Electronics	4.1	459	725
Engineering	Industrial	4.0	440	705
Engineering	Materials	4.3	493	726
Engineering	Mechanical	4.2	472	724
Engineering	Other Engineering	4.4	495	714
Life Sciences	Agriculture	4.1	455	583
Life Sciences	Biological Sciences	4.4	489	629
Life Sciences	Health and Medical Sciences	4.2	446	551
Other	Architecture/Environmental Design	4.3	474	606
Other	Communications	4.4	471	530
Other	Home Economics	4.2	434	499
Other	Library/Archival Sciences	4.5	537	541
Other	Public Administration	4.3	454	515
Other	Religion and Theory	4.8	542	587
Other	Social Work	4.1	429	465
Physical Sciences	Chemistry	4.3	486	678
Physical Sciences	Computer and Information Sciences	4.0	462	696
Physical Sciences	Earth, Atmospheric and Marine Sciences	4.4	495	634
Physical Sciences	Mathematical Sciences	4.4	501	732
Physical Sciences	Natural Sciences	4.0	470	596
Physical Sciences	Physics and Astronomy	4.5	531	735
Social Sciences	Anthropology/Archeology	4.6	534	565
Social Sciences	Economics	4.5	504	708
Social Sciences	Other Social Science Major	4.3	464	526
Social Sciences	Political Science	4.7	525	585
Social Sciences	Psychology	4.4	471	544
Social Sciences	Sociology	4.5	489	545

Overall, we find that engineers are indeed much smarter than business majors where quantitative reasoning skills are involved, but only have a small advantage where verbal reasoning skills come into play and are on a nearly even keel for analytical writing ability. Meanwhile, we find that students of the physical sciences outclass their social science peers in quantitative reasoning, but that the social scientists beat them in verbal reasoning and analytical writing ability.

But perhaps most distressingly, the students pursuing graduate degrees in education-related fields, who presumably either teach or plan to teach children for a living, dominate the lowest performing half of the table for both verbal and quantitative reasoning skills.

That probably says quite a lot about the state of education in America today. Especially if we're relying upon people who are among the least capable of applying verbal and quantitative reasoning skills to teach those same skills to America's children.

Previously and Next on Political Calculations

We originally considered this topic in our post Ranking School Smarts by Major, our first look at the relative performance of students from different majors on standardized graduate school admission tests, which summarized 20 years worth of data spanning the years from 1962 through 1982. Comparing those older results with the results that we're presenting today reveals that not much has changed where the relative abilities of individuals entering education-related graduate programs in the nearly three decades since are concerned.

That's especially distressing given that public school systems and education schools have emphasized satisfying stronger credential requirements for teachers, especially to teach subjects like math and science.

If you follow the links in the paragraph above, you'll find that they all consider the state of education credentialing in California, which has had a very active program to increase the percentage of "fully credentialed" public school teachers in that state for well over a decade. Tomorrow, we'll look specifically at the state of mathematics education in California's secondary schools, as it relates to how well the state's increasingly "well credentialed" teachers are doing in preparing their students for the academic challenges they would face in attending college.