Latest revelation of incompetence and dishonesty among professionals: nuclear launch officers cheated on proficiency tests; do we properly evaluate ANYONE?

There are huge numbers of highly competent people in all professions--so why do less competent people so often rise to the top?

Why do our most crucial professions fail to root out incompetence and dishonesty?

For years the evidence has been accumulating that we don't properly evaluate teachers and doctors and police and judges. What I'm wondering now is if ANYONE in ANY job or profession gets effectively evaluated.

Why is this such a widespread problem?

Because politics matters more than competence in almost every venue--not just in schools.

What can we do about it? We can start in our schools, giving real educations, and teaching young people to rely on their abilities instead of manipulating people and situations. And we need to teach the value of honesty and a job well done.


Major General Michael Carey was dismissed for conduct unbecoming
US nuclear launch officers suspended for 'cheating'
Beth McLeod
BBC News
16 January 2014

Thirty-four US Air Force officers in charge of launching nuclear missiles have been suspended over accusations that they cheated in proficiency tests.

The air force said some staff had texted answers to the routine tests to others, while others had known about the cheating but failed to report it.

The ranks involved range from 2nd lieutenants to captains.

The allegations emerged during investigations into alleged drug use by personnel at other bases.

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said the cheating had involved officers based at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, and related to a monthly test all nuclear missile staff must take.

"Some officers did it," she said of the cheating. "Others apparently knew about it, and it appears that they did nothing, or at least not enough, to stop it or to report it."

Illegal gambling

Ms James said it was "absolutely unacceptable behaviour" but that the security of the nuclear programme was not in doubt.

"This was a failure of some of our airmen. It was not a failure of the nuclear mission," she said.

The 34 officers have had their security clearance revoked and the entire team in charge of overseeing missile launches will be re-tested.

A further three officers have been suspended for allegedly possessing recreational drugs.

It is the latest scandal to hit the air force and nuclear missile force.

In August, a nuclear missile unit at Malmstrom failed a safety and security inspection, leading to a senior security officer being relieved of duty.

And in May, it was reported that 17 officers in charge of maintaining nuclear missiles were sidelined over safety violations at Minot Air Force base in North Dakota.

In October, the general in charge of America's long-range nuclear missiles, Maj Gen Michael Carey, was sacked, with officials citing a "loss of trust and confidence".

It later emerged he had engaged in conduct "unbecoming of a gentleman" during a work trip to Russia in July.

Gen Carey's removal came days after the Navy sacked Vice-Adm Tim Giardina, second-in-command of the US Strategic Command, over illegal gambling.

Strategic Command oversees everything from America's land-based nuclear missiles to space operations governing military satellites.

US nuclear programme scandals

October 2013 -
Maj Gen Michael Carey, a two-star general in the 20th Air Force, is sacked after accusations of drunken misconduct
October 2013 -
US Navy Vice-Adm Tim Giardina is removed as deputy head of US Strategic Command and investigated for illegal gambling
August 2013 -
the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base fails a safety test, and its commander is relieved of duty
May 2013 -
The US Air Force temporarily strips 17 officers at Minot base in North Dakota of their nuclear watch authority following a poor grade in a missile launch test.
October 2007 -
The air force relieves several officers of their duties after a B-52 bomber was mistakenly flown across the US loaded with nuclear-armed missiles

Inside a School Where Teachers Pack Heat

Jonesboro superintendent packing heat?

Inside a School Where Teachers Pack Heat
A year after Newtown, schools still debate whether guns in the classroom make kids safer.
By Nicholas Kusnetz
Center for Public Integrity
Dec. 16, 2013

It wasn't quite cold enough to need a vest on a recent Texas morning, but Matt Dossey was wearing one anyway. Made of heavy canvas, the vest might have concealed a pistol. There was no way to tell. Perhaps that was the point.

Dossey is superintendent at Jonesboro Independent School District, which serves a tiny community in the rolling Texas scrubland north of Austin. In January, the district decided to arm a select group of staffers with concealed weapons.

Jonesboro straddles the border between Coryell and Hamilton counties; it's more than 15 miles to the nearest sheriff's department. The town is unincorporated, and has no government or police. If someone were to attack the school, Dossey said, no one's coming to protect the kids—not quickly, anyway.

Dossey was standing inside the school cafeteria, where students motored around a room decorated with harvest-themed paper cutouts. The district was hosting a pre-holiday Thanksgiving dinner, when parents join kids for a school lunch of turkey and stuffing. Looking around the room, Dossey, who hadn't taken off his vest, said the new policy adds a layer of security that most everyone in town is happy with.

"If somebody walked in that door and opened fire," he said, "we would have a chance."

Ever since Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, last December, school districts and state governments have searched for better ways to protect students. Lawmakers introduced hundreds of school safety bills. Many called for arming more security guards or for arming teachers. Others went the opposite direction, tightening gun laws.

In Monroe, Connecticut, just nine miles from Sandy Hook, residents supported a range of expensive measures. The town, which spreads out from a village green between two white-steepled churches, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading buildings and hiring school resource officers, town cops who are posted at schools. The move is largely in step with what happened statewide. Lawmakers passed sweeping legislation in April that included gun controls, such as expanded background checks and mandates for school security. The Legislature also funded millions of dollars in infrastructure grants and tightened state law covering guns in school so that only active or retired law enforcement officers can serve as armed guards.

"I don't believe a teacher would just kill a kid right there. I've walked up in front of a kid who had a gun. I know how it feels."

Texas, on the other hand, has not appropriated money to school security and is not creating mandates. Jonesboro is one of about 70 districts to arm staff since Sandy Hook. This year, the Legislature encouraged more to do the same, passing a bill that created a state-run training program that will allow districts to designate staff as "school marshals," an entirely new class of law enforcement (districts must pay the costs).

At first glance, the disparate approaches appear simply to reflect a stereotypical divide between two regions of America with their own closely held views of guns and their place in daily life. But a closer look shows that what's happened in Jonesboro and Monroe also reflects a broader set of beliefs about the role of government, about local control, and perhaps most importantly, about taxes...

Maryland school's zero-tolerance policy reversed: safety requires honesty and common sense from administrators and board members

See all posts re zero tolerance.

The safety issue requires officials to use a little common sense. They should never play politics with this issue, as was done in my school district, Chula Vista Elementary School District, during its Libia Gil-Lowell Billings years with board members Pam Smith, Larry Cunningham, Bertha Lopez, Patrick Judd and Cheryl Cox. These officials made a mockery of school safety.

In Maryland, a rare reversal of suspensions for two lacrosse players
By Donna St. George
Washington Post
April 28, 2012

The search was a surprise. The high school lacrosse team in Easton, Md., had boarded its bus when the principal and other administrators arrived, announcing that gear bags would be checked. A tip had come in about athletes carrying alcohol.

Near the front of the bus, Graham Dennis, then a 17-year-old junior, asked whether he should remove the pocketknife he always used to cut and tighten strings on his lacrosse stick. It was tucked inside his oversized duffel bag, along with cleats, pads, socks, duct tape and medical supplies.

That question — to which he says he gave little thought — set off a year-long odyssey in school discipline that ended this month with a rare outcome: The state stepped in and reversed a local school board’s decision on student punishment.

In a unanimous ruling, the Maryland State Board of Education expunged the disciplinary records of two lacrosse players suspended from school after the search in April 2011.

The state board also raised questions about a decision to call the police on Dennis, who was led away in handcuffs for having two small knives. His teammate Casey Edsall, also a 17-year-old junior, was suspended for having a lighter, used to seal the frayed ends of strings. School officials deemed it an explosive device, his family said.

“This case is about context and about the appropriate exercise of discretion,” the state board said in its ruling — stressing that knives and lighters do not belong on campus but that Talbot County school officials went beyond their own rules in punishing the students.

It was a blow to the get-tough culture of zero tolerance that has taken hold in U.S. schools in the past 20 years. And for Maryland, it is another moment in the discipline spotlight. In February, the state board drew wide notice for proposals to reduce suspensions and require districts to remedy racial disparities. A vote is expected within the next few months.

“What we’re seeing is that Maryland is stepping up in a leadership role and putting common sense back into discipline,” said Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights group.

On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the decision culminated an often-frustrating quest for the two families involved. Along the way, they received crucial support from the lacrosse team’s assistant coach, who is also commander of the homicide unit of the Maryland State Police.

But the case came as both players were on the brink of college applications, which ask about disciplinary history. One teenager did not apply to certain universities, thinking the offense would take him out of the running. The other wrote detailed explanations and hoped for the best.

“It kind of destroys your reputation,” Dennis said. “People think there is more to the story than what you’re saying.”

...In written arguments, the school officials had agreed that the knives were meant for repairing lacrosse equipment but said their presence posed a danger to students and staff members...

“We consider bringing a knife to school one of the most serious offenses that a student can commit,” the officials said. The case reflects continuing tension about tough rules intended to keep students safe. Critics say they often go too far and don’t make schools safer. Supporters say that strong lines need to be drawn and that too much discretion can lead to preferential treatment.

The school system in Talbot County, with 4,500 students and a long stretch of Maryland shoreline, does not have policies that call for zero tolerance. Its rules give leeway to first offenders, allow for discretion by educators and see suspension as a last resort.

Both teenagers say the principal at first told them not to worry, that the issue would be addressed at school the next day. Bring home a win, Dennis recalled Principal David Stofa saying after the search.

Then, according to the families, a school system administrator intervened.

Dennis and Edsall were asked to step off the bus. Parents were summoned. Dennis was suspended 10 days, with a recommendation for expulsion, and Edsall was suspended one day. A police officer drove Dennis to the station, where he was fingerprinted and booked for possession of a deadly weapon.

Laura Dennis arrived at Easton High on April 13, 2011, confused about why her son was in trouble. He always carried tools to fix his stick. It did not make sense, she thought.

“I’m sorry,” she recalled a school administrator telling her, as the administrator explained that Graham had to be suspended. There was no choice.

“I’m sorry,” she recalled a police officer telling her, as the officer explained that he had been asked by an administrator to make the arrest.

Laura Dennis spent the first of many nights reading everything she could find on the Internet about school discipline and the code of conduct in Talbot County. A few days later, she pressed the issue at her son’s hearing: Where was zero tolerance written into the code of conduct? Why couldn’t she find it?

The administrator left the room, she said, and returned to say that it was not a policy — only a practice — so it did not have to be written down. Her son missed two weeks of school, three lacrosse games and a tournament. He grappled with uncertainty about whether he would be expelled or sent to an alternative learning center. He faced criminal charges, which his family said took a month, a lawyer and some strategizing to be dismissed.

“It affected his outlook on absolutely everything,” Laura Dennis said. He told his parents that he would drop out if he were moved from Easton High School.

“I questioned who I was,” Graham Dennis recalled. He felt labeled as a criminal, he said — and ripped away from his team and school. “That was my lowest point.”

Joe Gamble, the assistant lacrosse coach, had stepped up quickly to make the players’ case. Gamble, the state police homicide commander, was in the bus the day of the search, and his statement was quoted in the state school board’s 12-page opinion...

We should have listened to disgruntled ex-employee before explosions at Massey mine in West Virginia

Usually it's only the disgruntled ex-employees who will tell the truth about an institution. Those who are still employed are usually afraid to talk, or they have convinced themselves that it is right to protect wrongdoers.

Ex-Massey Miner: Safety Gripes Led To Firing
by Howard Berkes
NPR
June 7, 2010

A former Massey Energy coal miner has filed a federal whistle-blower complaint, claiming he was fired after complaining about unsafe conditions at two Massey mines in West Virginia, NPR News has learned. One of the coal mines is Upper Big Branch, where an explosion killed 29 workers April 5.

Ricky Lee Campbell's complaint says he repeatedly told his supervisors about failing brakes on the coal shuttle cars he drove at the Slip Ridge Cedar Grove mine.

The 24-year-old from Beckley, W.Va., also spoke to a newspaper about unsafe conditions at Upper Big Branch, where he worked until shortly before the accident. And he provided information in the federal investigation of the blast.

Campbell spoke to the newspaper on April 7. A week later, he was given a five-day suspension "subject to discharge" and then fired April 23. He then filed the whistle-blower complaint with the Labor Department, contending that his persistent safety concerns, his media interview and his role in the federal probe prompted his termination...

Mine blast: Coal Boss Don Blankenship got $33 million but ignored safety in West Virgina mine where 25 killed

My question: were these workers represented by a union? It seems not. This is exactly the kind of work that cries out for unionization.

Coal Boss Don Blankenship Cast as Cavalier About Worker Safety in Lawsuits
Investors Also Critical of Massey CEO's 'Extravagant' Pay, Perks
By MATTHEW MOSK and ASA ESLOCKER
Apr. 8, 2010

As more details continue to surface about the checkered safety record of the Massey Energy coal mine where 25 workers perished Monday, the lavish lifestyle and allegedly cavalier attitude of the company's controversial chief executive, as described in lawsuits and corporate documents, are now coming under intensifying scrutiny.

Coal Boss Don Blankenship: If you take photos, "you're liable to get shot."

One miner who worked in Massey mines most of his 25-year career said working for CEO Don Blankenship was "like living under a hammer. It's all about the bottom line, we all know that." The miner, who would only agree to speak with an ABC News reporter if his name was not used, said Blankenship believes in "stretching the men to the limit … they want every ounce out of the men that they can get."

The public record describing Blankenship's bottom-line approach is long, much of it laid out in a series of investor lawsuits filed against Blankenship and his company, and in SEC documents submitted by a Wall Street investment house that made a failed bid to take control of Massey Energy four years ago. In these records, Blankenship was repeatedly criticized for both his approach to safety, and for what one investor called his "extravagant" package of pay and perks.

In just one year – 2005 -- Blankenship was paid $33.7 million in compensation, according to a 2008 lawsuit...



In Mine Safety, a Meek Watchdog
By MICHAEL COOPER, GARDINER HARRIS and ERIC LIPTON
New York Times
April 10, 2010

The Mine Safety and Health Administration was created almost 35 years ago, after deadly explosions at a Kentucky mine, with a mission to conduct more inspections of the nation’s mines and enforce safety standards more strictly. It was strengthened four years ago, after more disasters.

But it remains fundamentally weak in several areas, and it does not always use the powers it has.

The agency can seek to close mines that it deems unsafe and to close repeat offenders, but it rarely does so. The fines it levies are relatively small, and many go uncollected for years. It lacks subpoena power, a basic investigatory tool. Its investigators are not technically law enforcement officers, like those at other agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.

And its criminal sanctions are weak, a result of compromises over the 1977 Mine Act that created the agency. Falsifying records is a felony, for example, while deliberate violations of safety standards that may lead to deaths are misdemeanors...




West Virginia disaster: Will Congress take on coal mining companies?
Mining companies have been slow to adopt new safety requirements. Critics say the West Virginia disaster shows that Congress needs to step in. The industry says it needs clearer guidance.
By Mark Guarino, Staff writer
Christian Science Monitor
April 7, 2010
Chicago

The deaths of 25 coal miners in West Virginia Monday in what is considered the worst mining accident in a quarter century is raising questions about whether a congressional overhaul of mine safety four years ago went far enough.

The Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act, passed in 2006 in response to a disaster in Sago, W.V., that killed 13 miners, was intended to improve miner safety by mandating the installation of preventive and emergency technologies.

But Massey Energy Company, the company that owns the Upper Big Branch South Mine in Whitesville, W.V., where Monday’s accident happened, has been leveled numerous fines for environmental and safety violations in recent years.

Moreover, only 14 percent of mines have complied with MINER Act requirements to install improved communications systems.

This suggests that the MINER Act is not thorough enough in leveling consequences for mining companies or for establishing a timeline for coming to compliance, say several experts. The result is that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) – the federal agency charged with monitoring coal companies and making them comply with safety standards – essentially has its hands tied.

“The record of [the Massey mine] is problematic, and it may be the [MINER Act] needs an additional amendment...




No signs of life heard in West Virginia mine
Jon Hurdle
Reuters
Wed Apr 7, 2010

MONTCOAL, West Virginia (Reuters) - Drills broke through into a stricken West Virginia mine early on Wednesday but rescuers detected no sign of the four miners missing since an explosion killed 25 people in a major U.S. mine disaster.

The rescue teams banged on pipes at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, but heard no response from the men, Governor Joe Manchin told reporters.

Hopes were dimming that the men would be found alive after Monday's blast, the largest U.S. mine accident since 1984.

...Questions have been raised by experts and observers about Massey's safety record and the laws governing the mining industry. Mining has always been dangerous, but 2009 was the safest ever for U.S. miners, with 34 deaths, according to federal data, 18 fewer than 2008.

Massey's accident rate fell to an all-time low in 2009, the sixth consecutive year its safety record was stronger than the industry average, the company said on its website.

But Upper Big Branch Mine has had three fatalities since 1998 and has a worse-than-average injury rate over the last 10 years, according to federal records. Ellen Smith, editor of Mine Safety and Health News, said the mine has been repeatedly cited for safety violations.