News Cut: June 5, 2009 Archive

Five at 8 - 6/5/09

Posted at 7:55 AM on June 5, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

Still sinking

Posted at 8:28 AM on June 5, 2009 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

The nation's unemployment rate was released this morning. It's now at 9.4 percent, higher than economists (who never seem to get it right) had expected. Add in all the people who've given up looking for work (question: who has this luxury? If you give up looking for work, what your plan?), and the rate is 16.4 percent.

The worse the economy gets, the better for Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart announced this morning it's going to add 22,000 jobs. The giant retailer is holding its annual shareholders meeting today. It's available via Webcast and should be particularly enjoyable for anyone who regularly follows Up With People.

Comment on this post

Riding the rails

Posted at 11:17 AM on June 5, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

One of the reasons I don't mind getting stuck at railroad crossings is it helps remind me that the economy isn't completely stuck. And sometimes you see interesting cargo, like today in South St. Paul.

There were dozens of them. They're windmills from Suzlon, a company based in India with no manufacturing facilities in the U.S. So by the end of the train, I realized it's the economy in India that's not entirely stuck, and I found myself wondering what the unemployment rate in this country would be if we still manufactured things here. For all the talk about "green jobs" from alternative energy in this country, a lot of them aren't jobs based here, apparently.

Comment on this post

Test score headlines

Posted at 11:55 AM on June 5, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Schools

I've written in the past that school test results often seem to be described in overly rosy terms.

The headline of the Minnesota grad standards test results today seems like one such occasion: Latest school test scores show improvements

The reality? Only 57 percent of Minnesota 11th graders who took the math test passed. And fewer than half are proficient in math.

"Like last year's reading results, this year's math results are another clear indication that if we raise expectations, more of our students will accept the challenge and meet those expectations," Minnesota Education Commissioner Alice Seagren said in her news release.

Eight percent more, perhaps. That's the increase from last year in the percentage of 11th graders declared "proficient" in math. And that number is only 3 percent for black students.

This year was the first year the tests were supposed to determine whether a student would graduate, and we were told the results would be better because the tests "matter" this year. Wouldn't we have expected a bigger improvement if the previous scores were blamed on students not taking the test seriously?

But improvement is often in the eye of the beholder. Here are some tables from the department's press release. You decide.

You may recall that "proficiency" wasn't determined until after officials saw how well -- or how poorly -- the students did.

And most officials in politicians figured they would do poorly. So they removed the test results as a grad requirement.

What headline would you write about these scores?

Comment on this post

Whose fault?

Posted at 1:20 PM on June 5, 2009 by Bob Collins (18 Comments)

A jury verdict against Duluth-based Cirrus Design is likely to reignite the product liability vs. personal responsibility debate.

According to MPR's Elizabeth Stawicki, Cirrus and the University of North Dakota have to pay $14.5 million to the families of James Kosak and Gary Prokop. The suit claimed the organizations didn't properly train the two to fly in bad weather ("instrument meteorological conditions" or IMC). Their plane crashed not long after take-off from Grand Rapids in January 2003 for a flight to St. Cloud.

"By all appearances, one day of in-flight training on how to fly the airplane in bad weather conditions was skipped, " Attorney Phil Sieff said when the lawsuit was filed in 2006. "We believe it would have given him the tools to avoid the crash. If you agree to provide four days of training, you do it. We think there was a very specific identifiable failure to train this guy as they said they would."

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the pilot had undergone flight training from Cirrus when he bought the plane just six weeks earlier, but his completion certificate specified he shouldn't fly in "instrument" weather conditions.

According to the NTSB, the pilot received a weather briefing before leaving Grand Rapids and was told it would be marginal. (See narrative). And the NTSB blamed the accident on the pilot. "Contributing factors were the pilot's improper decision to attempt flight into marginal VFR conditions, his inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions, the low lighting condition (night) and the trees," the official report said.

The verdict may add to another debate in aviation circles: Whether the Cirrus Design airplanes are too much airplane for relatively inexperienced pilots.

At the end of 2008, according to a Cirrus owners group, there had been 44 fatal accidents with 88 fatalities and 13 serious injuries, and 29 survivors. More than 4,000 models of the airplane were flying.

The organization also points out that "all but one of the 28 probable causes determined by NTSB accident investigations lists pilot causes." It said the large number of crashes in which pilots inadvertently flew into bad weather "suggests that the increased situational awareness in a Cirrus SR2X was not sufficient to help those accident pilots escape bad weather encounters. And the IFR-in-IMC accidents suggest a lack of proficiency with flying in challenging weather." The question: Whose fault is that?

But the majority of fatal accidents involving a Cirrus plane, involved experienced pilots. The only Cirrus accident in which the pilot had fewer than 150 hours of flight experience, was the New York crash with New York Yankee pitcher Cory Liddle.

His family is suing Cirrus, too.

Comment on this post