Word: dismissiveness
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...President Obama has wisely identified teachers’ pay scale as a main determinant of teacher quality. Currently, teachers’ compensation is largely based on their seniority. After teachers gain tenure at a school, their salary steadily increases over time, and they become nearly impossible for administrators to dismiss. This system discourages teacher effort by removing the financial incentive to work harder. Furthermore, college graduates who might otherwise pursue a career in education are discouraged by the fact that greater effort does not result in a commensurate reward. This accommodation pleases teachers’ unions and their members...
Franken's counsel thought otherwise. On Friday, the panel heard arguments about a request from Franken to dismiss the case altogether because, they argued, Coleman failed to prove that there were enough improperly rejected ballots to close Franken's 225-vote margin. The court is expected to rule on that motion soon. In the meantime, Franken's team has been trying to prove that flaws in the state's election system were the exception, not the rule. He is also attempting to get about 800 absentee ballots tossed into the final tally, most of which are from counties...
...permitting the federal funding of medical research involving the destruction of human embryos (“Stem Cells to get Federal Funding” news story, March 9). The judgment by the author that the previous arrangements imposed “onerous restrictions” on research seemed to dismiss out of hand the moral good which the now lapsed rules sought to promote. The article did not mention a second executive order, which is intended to unfetter science from restriction by any narrow political ideology. These two acts are intimately linked. What then is the “ideology?...
...That's a real problem. Obama recently released his 2010 budget outline, which addresses those larger issues. He also pledged a new framework for additional earmark reforms for 2010. But it's lame for Obama's aides to dismiss the 2009 budget as leftover business from the Bush era. He's the President. He wasn't elected to ignore the leftover business from the Bush era. He ought to be taking heat for punting - not only on the earmarks, but on the other $402 billion worth of government spending. But his critics, from McCain on the Senate floor to Maureen...
Father Dan Madigan, another Jesuit expert on Islam, doesn't deny that it's easier to justify a choice for violence with the Koran than with the Christian Gospel. But Madigan says attempts by Catholics to "claim the moral high ground" fall flat. "The idea that [Christians] can dismiss Muslims as inherently more violent doesn't stand up to historical scrutiny, whatever the justifications we might have given for our wars and our massacres." Even more to the point, says Madigan, a Georgetown University professor of theology with a Ph.D. in Islamic religion, it is counterproductive for Christian leaders...