Tuesday August 21, 2001
Fast-food Toy Recalls Increasing
The New York Times reports: “Each year, McDonald’s distributes 1.5 billion toys worldwide, more than Hasbro or Mattel. And McDonald’s and its fast-food competitors together give away nearly a third of all the toys distributed in the United States. But as restaurants give away more toys, and as the toys have become more sophisticated, an increasing number of the freebies are being recalled. There have been a total of five recalls of giveaway toys by four different fast-food companies this year, a record for a single year. In the last eight months, recalls by fast-food companies have been nearly four times those of traditional toy makers, including a boat, a compass and a toy bug called Look for Me Bumblebee. Since 1999, American fast-food restaurants have issued eight recalls involving 33.3 million toys. The traditional toy industry issued 65 recalls involving 41.7 million toys over the same period. Link to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Paper Takes on Highway Patrol
The St. Pete Times took on a tough topic, the performance of the Florida Highway Patrol. “In the past 10 years, its performance has nose-dived. Drunken driving tickets dropped 39 percent, speeding tickets 40 percent. Arrests, down. Stolen cars recovered, way down. While grieving families begged for answers, fatal crash investigations dragged on interminably. Last year, nearly seven out of 10 were not completed in the time the patrol’s own regulations consider reasonable. Over the past two decades, for reasons big and small, the leaders of the Florida Highway Patrol have lost control of their officers and have lost sight of their mission. A Troopers’ after-hours work can be a liability. Some officers padded their work reports or clocked more hours at lucrative side jobs than they did on duty. Troopers spent far less time on road patrol.”
What a great idea to check the indicators of job performance for cops, including ticket writing, response time, and after hours work.
See the full story.
More States Adding “Do-Not-Call” Lists
Stateline.org found a good story: “Seven states — Texas, Colorado, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, and Wyoming — have adopted do-not-call laws in the past six months. Connecticut, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, New York and North Carolina created do-not-call lists last year. Florida was first to adopt a do-not-call law in 1998. Marketers say the measures aren’t needed, but they are popular with consumers. Wisconsin’s consumer protection offices have gotten more than 1,000 calls from citizens asking to be added to a do-not-call list, and that state has not even implemented one yet.
How does your state’s system work? How many people are signed up? How do marketers get around it? What, if anything, happens to marketers who violate the law?
Stateline.org says, “About 139,000 Floridians have paid $10 to join the list. Florida gets 500 to 900 complaints per month and has taken about 75 enforcement actions. Staff time to handle complaints is the program’s greatest expense, followed by technology costs. This fall, Florida consumers will be able to sign up online which will save printing and mailing costs.”
Keith Fotta, president and CEO of Gryphon Networks, a Massachusetts company that sells software to telemarketers to help them comply with the maze of state laws, said do-not-call laws “create a challenging picture for the telemarketing industry. But the technology is there for telemarketers to easily and automatically comply.”
Federal rules say telemarketers may not call people who have asked to receive no more calls from a particular company. The rules require sellers to maintain their own do-not-call lists of those who don’t want to be contacted by phone. Consumers who receive “more than one telephone call within any 12-month period by or on behalf of the same company in violation of the regulations,” may be able to take private action against that company.”
Who Earns What?
The SFGate took a look at city salaries and found some surprising sums.
Girls College Expectations Rise
A sociologist said yesterday that more boys and girls want a college education, but girls’ expectations have grown more dramatically in the past two decades. Sociologist John Reynolds of Florida State University in Tallahassee. He spoke Monday at the American Sociological Association meeting in Anaheim, Calif. Reynolds reported comparative findings from surveys of nearly 3,000 15- and 16-year-olds, done in 1979 and again in 1997. In 1979, 40% of boys expected to complete a college degree, compared with 37% of girls; in 1997, 66% of boys aimed for a degree, vs. 75% of girls. The biggest influence on students’ education plans is their parents’ level of education, Reynolds says. Full USAToday story
Special Education Lawsuit
The State of California has finally ended a 20-year legal battle over how to fund special education. In the past, local governments have claimed that the state did not come close to paying the costs of special ed. Owen Waters, consultant for the districts’ Education Legal Alliance, said at least 30 other states have similar special-education funding disputes and are interested in California’s settlement.
USA Today says: “In claims and lawsuits filed beginning in 1981, school districts claimed they were not given sufficient money to pay for all the special-education services the state required. The bill, which Davis and the school districts announced last fall as part of a settlement, gives districts $520 million to pay past costs of providing special-education services and $100 million a year for ongoing costs. “This is a landmark agreement,” the Democratic governor said in a taped statement played for reporters. “No longer will special education be forced to funnel money from other programs.” To pay for past costs, districts will get $270 million in this year’s budget, plus $25 million a year for 10 years beginning this year. They will also get $100 million a year beginning this year for current costs.”
This is a powerful and controversial topic. How much should local government have to spend to educate a child with very special needs? What obligation do we all have to educate a child?
Some cities now have extraordinary costs teaching big influxes of immigrant children with severe disabilities. How do they pay for those costs? States simply do not reimburse. How many students are in special education programs now? What sort of disabilities qualify?
You will be surprised at how many children are getting special education with mild reading disabilities or behavior problems. On one hand, it is great they now get special attention. On the other hand, where else could that money be well spent?
The San Francisco Chronicle says: “In California, for example, about 600,000 children, 10 percent of the state’s student body, are enrolled in special education programs. Because federal law requires a learning plan tailored to each student’s special needs, whether that plan requires a tutor or a raft of books in Braille, the system is the most expensive piece of the education budget.”
