A quarter loaf of SB 797

SB 797 passed the assembly and will go back to the Senate for concurrence in amendments. This is good news, though it would have been better if compromises hadn't had to be made. I've talked about this bill several times before. I haven't cared this much about a piece of legislation in some time.

Bisphenol A is a chemical used in making clear, hard, pretty much shatter-proof bottles to sell food and beverages in. It is also a synthetic hormone that, among other things, affects development of sexual parts in fetuses and behavior in toddlers. Look at this Wikipedia article on it and scroll down to the Previous Studies section for a list, a long list, of bad stuff it does to people.

This bill would ban the use of bisphenol A in food or beverage containers intended for kids 0-3, except for containers of dry or liquid formula. I have no idea why that amendment was put in. Well, I have an idea, my usual guess in these cases, which is that lobbyists for businesses with a financial stake in it made their case successfully to legislators who have only been in office a couple of years and don't know anything, and besides, they're contributors.

I'm not a chemist, and I don't know what manufacturers would have to sacrifice to take it out of all food and beverage bottles. Maybe transparency. Maybe cost. Maybe non-bisphenol A bottles break easier. But the dangers of infants drinking synthetic hormones seems so great that we need to put up with the industrial sacrifice, no matter what it is.

Of course, I'd like to see bisphenol A taken out of all food and beverage containers, but this quarter loaf is better than none.

The attorney general of Connecticut asked manufacturers a couple of years ago to voluntarily stop using it in baby bottles. Six agreed, and they should be noted and commended:

• Gerber 
• Avent America, Inc 
• Evenflo Co. 
• Disney First Years 
• Dr. Brown 
• Playtex Products, Inc.

I'd like to see a list of those that didn't.

Even more, I'd like to see SB 797 pass the state senate, maybe even with formula bottles unexempted.

SB 797 is out of the inactive file

Just got my weekly child care legislative update, and one of my hobbyhorses has jumped the fence. Assembly Member Bradford has filed a Notice of motion to remove SB 797  from the inactive file. This is really good news. As I've said again and again and again, bisphenol A is a dangerous chemical that should be banned from food containers. I hope this means it has a chance of passing. I regret, though, that baby formula bottles were exempted.

Good on Bradford.

More bad stuff about bisphenol-A

Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a weak estrogen that is used in making plastics for many food containers. It leaches out into the food and "interfere(s) with hormone biosynthesis, metabolism or action resulting in adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological and immune effects in both humans and wildlife." They cause all sorts of sexual problems in frogs. I've talked before about it increasing aggression in toddler girls. Now a study has shown it may cause breast cancer when they grow up.

SB 797 is a bill that would ban BPA in most food containers intended for children's use. It passed the Senate. It failed on a floor vote in the Assembly but was granted reconsideration. It was placed on the inactive file at the request of Assembly Member Torrico. All the medical groups were for it, and all the industry groups were against it. Guess who won. Unless a miracle happens, control of BPA in food containers in California is dead.

We have decided as a state that the fact that this chemical causes behavioral changes and changes to sexual organs in children and cancer in adults is not important enough to inconvenience manufacturers of food containers or to make them use more expensive ingredients. Our democracy in action.

As H.L. Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." I can't find the exact quote, but he also said something like, Democracy is the system under which the American people, having millions of adult White males to choose from, including many who are handsome and some who are wise, choose a Calvin Coolidge to be their president. It is as though a man were were faced with a sumptuous banquet and turn his back on it to snatch flies out of the air and put them in his mouth. Or something like that.

Letting community colleges give BAs

Assemblyman Marty Block, of San Diego, has raised the idea of letting community colleges give bachelor's degrees, possibly starting with a few subjects at a few community colleges. The point is that they can give them cheaper than the CSUs can, and the CSUs don't have enough capacity for all the people who want BAs.

This reminds me of the progression from CSCs to CSUs. The system originally had community colleges issuing AAs, state colleges issuing BAs, and UCs issuing doctorates. Then state colleges started issuing doctorates, ostensibly because the UCs didn't have the capacity for all our doctorate-seeking students, and they became CS universities

I don't see any reason not to do this. And if they need a pilot program to start off, I'll recommend child development at any of a dozen community colleges up and down the state.

Somebody like Tri-C EC should get in touch with Mr. Block and start some actual legislation.

Update. Assemblyman Marty Block is preparing legislation to do just that. Good for him.

Initiative to ban divorce in California

I guess you could call him a gadfly. John Marcotte voted against Prop 8 last year, and now he says if marraige is so damned sacred, let's prohibit divorce. So he has gotten approval to gather signatures for an intiative to do just that, the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act.

No party to any marriage shall be restored to the state of an unmarried person during the lifetime of the other party unless the marriage is null or voidable, as set forth in Part 2 of Division 6 of the Family Code (which discusses incest and bigamy)

Go for it, reductio ad absurdum.

Bisphenol A causes human male sexual problems, too

According to a study reported in the Washington Post, high doses of the chemical in food containers that would be banned for children's food containers by SB 797 cause various kinds of sexual problems in adult humans. This had previously been shown in animals ("including infertility, weight gain, behavioral changes, early-onset puberty, cancer and diabetes"), but there was always a chance that it was different for humans. Now we know. They looked at factories in China. "The men handling BPA were four times as likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction and seven times as likely to have difficulty with ejaculation."

Let's see: BPA is a synthetic estrogen. How could putting that into their bloodstreams affect boys and men?

It has been detected in 93% of a sample of the US population. Now we  have to find out how low a dose is dangerous, so we know how much of a problem that is.

SB 797 failed in the assembly. Member Perez moved to reconsider, and Member Torrico requested that it be placed on the inactive file. It may not technically be dead, but Eric Idle is about to strike.

As I said when talking about the link between BPA and aggressive behavior in toddlers, all the health groups are for SB 797, and all the business groups are against it. Does that remind you of anything?

Whoring for ARRA money: SB5X-1

I know it's a good idea over all, but it still seems a little unseemly for California to change its considered education policy for money.

SBX5-1 has passed the senate and is in the assembly. It permits tying teacher salaries to student achievement. As a state, we don't believe in tying teacher salaries to student achievement. It's just too hard a problem for professional educators to solve, although we will have to do so. As I said before, it should be possible to figure out the influence of individual teachers by handing the problem to statisticians. Let them gather whatever data we need and do a regression analysis (i.e., do magic).

But there's no good reason to think the legislature and CDE will do it right, so this bill amounts to agreeing to degrade our system for cash. Bend over and grab your ankles, Uncle ARRA has some money for you.

Child development resources

If you're interested in child development, especially in California, there are a couple of resources I would recommend you subscribe to:

• CDPI Bulletin. In addition to their wonderful fall forum, budget workshop, and spring institute, CDPI puts out an email bulletin that's full of interesting ECE stuff. Sign up at the link.
• Paul Miller, of Kidango, has an email list for Early Education in the News. Sign up here.

Worst initiative nominee: Mandatory Christmas music in schools

Merry Susan Hyatt and her brother David Joseph Hyatt have received permission to gather signatures for an initiative (PDF) that would require California public K-12 schools to "provide opportunities to its pupils for listening to or performing Christmas music at an appropriate time of year," with parental notification and an opt-out form.

In other words, they want to make parents fill out and return a special form if they don't want their kids hearing at school that Jesus Christ, the King, has come.

This is the sort of issue where creating the initiative indicates a severe personality disorder; signing it indicates a character defect; but circulating the petitions just means you get a buck or two per signature, and you could give a shit less what it's for.

My favorite part, where mischief might come, is Section 52711

52711. As used in this article, "Christmas music" includes, but is not necessarily limited to, carols, songs, and instrumental works whose subject matter relates to the celebration of the Christmas holiday or to the season during which that holiday is observed.

So Christmas music is music that relates to Christmas, or winter, or not. I can see other religions demanding that Christmas music include Jewish music, or Islamic music. I imagine mandatory Islamic hip-hop, rapping for the glory of Allah. And I can't wait for the Satanists to demand music by Black Sabbath.

Or an atheist principal could say the school is satisfying the regulation by playing Jingle Bells and Winter Wonderland.

On the other hand, I don't mind Christmas music at all, even in schools, maybe especially in schools. I would mind having it and it only required, but I'd just as soon routinely play the songs of every normal religion (that's pretty much all of them, but you'd want to keep out the ones that do human sacrifices or orgies, and the financial scams).

I think whether people believe in God or don't is a genetic or epigenetic accident, so we should treat belief as we treat homosexuality or left-handedness. It's one of the normal ways people are wired, and we can't hold it against them that they have a false belief. In fact, there is probably some evolutionary advantage to the group to have some theists and some atheists. And besides, listening to Joy to the World isn't going to turn somebody into a Christian. I grew up listening to it, and I'm about as serious an atheist as you're going to find.

We added Kwanza to our school celebrations; we should add Diwali and Beltane and Eid al Fitr anybody else's celebration, and play all their religious songs, and not have opt-in or opt-out, just a routine noticing of how some of us celebrate. You don't have to believe the words to like the music.

I extend this to crèches in public squares. When a big chunk of our population have a celebration of their big holiday, why not let them do part of it in the park? Or even a small chunk. Christians can have crèches on public property if I can have a maypole, and if everybody else gets to hold their celebrations there, too, Diwali, and Beltane, and whatever. We should let them have their Christian Pride event in December, and we'll have our Gay Pride event in June on the same grounds

I'd exempt from this privilege any religion that severely outrages public decency, such as child sacrifices, but I'm not sure how to make it so my view of what is outrageous prevails. I would probably be more inclusive than some people and less than others.

So my solution is to ride the pendulum. Become increasingly lenient on what we'll allow until it gets to be a problem, and then scale it back until it starts to chafe. Rinse. Repeat. That could be a general law of how to deal with social issues.

Our grown-up governor

When the governor vetoes a bill, he sends a veto message to the Assembly or Senate. When he vetoed AB 1176, involving infrastructure financing districts in San Francisco, he sent the following:


Arnie's PR whore says it's "a weird coincidence," and who are we to doubt?

UPDATE: When I looked at the above graphic on a different computer, the words are not clear enough to read if the paragraph is small enough to fit right to left. The issue is that the first letters of the lines spell out
F
u
c
k

Y
o
u

Your taxes at work.

On the other hand, it's nice to see politics being personal rather than ideological once in a while. The more I think about it, the more I wish politics were more individual. It's good to see politicians loosen up a little, and it's a darn site better than lying about death panels. The joke is a little juvenile, but I don't mind a little obscenity once in a while, just as I don't mind a good fart joke now and then, though I would never make one among strangers.

Moving sex offenders away from us

Florida has a law that prohibits registered sex offenders from living within a certain distance from schools, churches, and child care centers. In Orlando, some people are using this to evict some 100 offenders from a trailer park by putting a child care center next door for the express purpose of making the sex offenders move.

I agree that we shouldn't let Luther Lector move in next door to a preschool, but this is going too far. They've served their time, and our responsibility now is to keep them from doing it again, not punishing them again just because we can.

The Gay Agenda

The other day a TV was tuned to Fox News where I was having lunch, and bits of it flitted in and out of my head as I ate. Some buffoon was going on about the Gay Agenda in our schools, and it occurred to me that there really is a gay agenda, for our schools and for our legislatures. Here it is, the gay version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, except this one is real. Read on to see what they are trying to do.

Diabetic kids in child care

A child care center in Fort Wayne, Indiana will pay $10,000 damages and $10,000 fine for telling the parents of a 6-year-old with Type I diabetes that she couldn't go on summer field trips unless accompanied by a parent or a medically trained professional. The center said they did say that, but it was more related to a peanut allergy.

But now, as a result of the complaint and subsequent investigation, Pine Hills agrees to evaluate all children with diabetes and make reasonable accommodations for their condition, which could include supervising and monitoring children while using blood glucose tests, according to settlement documents.

The child care center will also provide training to its staff, according to the documents.

Parents of children with diabetes will also have responsibilities under the terms of the settlement – they will need to provide Pine Hill with a completed medical management plan, signed by the child’s doctor; a completed physical exam form; and information regarding all equipment, food and substances not provided by the child care that are necessary to meet the medical management plan.

I have mixed feelings about cases like this.

My head is roiling with a longer post on the nature of rights and how that should affect public policy, but I don't want to throw it up piecemeal, so for now I'm just going to say that  I sympathize with both sides.

Signings and Vetoes

Arnie signed three and vetoed two bills I was following.

Signed:

• AB 595 Puts background checks for foster parents at about the same level as regular licensed child care providers. Seems like a good idea.
• AB 1368 Requires that small family home providers have someone qualified in pediatric first aid and CPR on site at all times. It is already required for centers and large family homes. Seems like a good idea.
• SB 702 Requires that employees of health clubs and such who work in an ancillary child care center be TrustLined. Seems like a good idea.

Vetoed

• AB 627 This one dealt with nutrition requirements in licensed programs. It seemed pretty innocuous to me. The veto message said

... this bill would create pressure to add Proposition 98 General Fund resources to the Child and Adult Care Food program when funding for so many other education programs has been cut. It is simply not possible to initiate a new program in a fiscal environment such as this.

• AB 769 This would have given a CPS-level priority for state preschool to kids whose parents are in the judicial system. I agree with Arnie's veto message, that it would take child care away from other worthy recipients who were the intended target of this program.

Worst state law nominee: Oklahoma

From Lynn Harris in Salon, beginning November 1, doctors who do abortions will have to fill out a 34-item questionnaire and send it to the State Department of Health. Some of the questions are:

• Date of abortion 
• County in which abortion is performed
• Age of mother
• Marital status of mother 
• Race of mother
• Years of education of mother
• Number of previous pregnancies, live births, miscarriages and induced abortions, and what methods were used, what prescription drugs were taken
• Why the abortion was sought
• Insurance coverage and payment method
• What kind of information was provided to the woman

Harris points out that the questions seem designed more as political research in how to make abortion illegal than sociological research in how people behave.

Then, because the state of Oklahoma is so committed to open government and full disclosure of all information, they will post it on their website, not in aggregate but as individual records of abortion. They say it doesn't violate anyone's privacy rights because the names aren't posted, but in a small town, that information would be enough to identify any woman who had an abortion.

This is another example showing that what they really want to do is punish women who have more (or different) sex than they do.

Japan to introduce child care allowance

Next June,  Japan will begin giving citizens a child care allowance. The legislation is for $289 a month, but for the first year it will be half payments.

Hate crimes and speech crimes

The House of Representatives has just passed a new  hate crimes bill, adding gays to the list of victims covered.

I have to say I'm against hate crime laws. It's too much like making thoughts illegal. I'm pretty much a first amendment absolutist, and I think punishing people for the actual crime (e.g., the beating) rather than the intent (because the victim was gay, black, white, whatever) is enough.

I'm even more against hate speech laws. While it is in very bad taste to call someone a (insert vilest ethnic or sexual slur you can think of), it shouldn't be illegal. That's what being a first amendment absolutist means, protecting vile speech.

If given a choice between allowing the nastiest speech I can imagine versus protecting the feelings of someone from being called a whatever, I'll allow the hateful speech every time. That's 'allow' in the legal sense of not putting somebody in jail for it; citizens have every right to shun a bigot, or to shout him down, or boycott him, but not to put him in jail. Stupid and evil thoughts and words are constitutionally protected. That's why Fox news is still in business.

Best politician nominee: Henry Waxman

Henry Waxman is one of the two best members of the House of Representatives. (The other is Barney Frank.) It should be enough to say that he was one of a couple of people most responsible for mandatory nutrition labeling on food products and for smoking bans in airplanes and federal buildings, which led to smoking bans nationwide.

Impeach Arnie? Nah.

Via Calitics, Governor Schwarzenegger said he would refuse to sign any  bills untill the legislature passed water legislation. It turns out that it

is a felony to seek to influence a legislative vote by means of bribery, promise of reward, intimidation or other dishonest means.

"While politicians are certainly allowed to express their disagreements in any way they find productive, they are not allowed to refuse to perform their sworn duties in order to force the legislature to accept policy positions," Torrico wrote. "And public officials are specifically prohibited from the kind of direct 'horse trading' in which a government official agrees to take, or not take, a certain action in exchange for a specific vote."

In the background a few Democrats are mulling whether this rises to the level of an impeachable offense. I don't think so. I think it's ordinary politics and is certainly not worth the hassle and distraction an impeachment trial would bring. I hope it's just a reporter stirring up stuff.

Bisphenol A and aggressive behavior in 2-year-old girls

A study says that mothers with higher blood levels of Bisphenol A while pregnant give birth to daughters "who were more likely to have aggressive and hyperactive behaviors than children of women with lower BPA levels, especially if higher exposure was seen earlier in pregnancy."

Boys did not seem to be affected.

This is the chemical that (California bill) SB 797 would ban in children's food containers (except in liquid infant formula containers, for some reason). It passed the state Senate in June, but it failed in the Assembly in September. A motion to reconsider was granted, but Assembly Member Torrico put the fill on the inactive file.

All the health groups are for SB 797, and all the business groups are against it. In other news, the sun rose in the East this morning.