Latest News and Comment from Education

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Daily Kos: Bus tour with teacherken - we end in Kansas

Daily Kos: Bus tour with teacherken - we end in Kansas:


Bus tour with teacherken - we end in Kansas

Cross-posted from Education Votes of the National Education Association (please visit), for whom I am served as an embedded blogger aboard the Stop the Greed Agenda Bus Tour of Patriot Majority USA
When I say "we: it is because on Friday both buses, the one I was on in the East and the one that had been traveling the West, caught up with one another in Topeka, the state capitol, and then finished the tour at a union hall in Kansas City.  Oh yes, and Bill Burke and some others first went to Wichita, to the headquarters orf Koch Industries, founded by Fred C. Koch, father of the Koch Brothers Charles and David, who are the perpetrators of the Greed Agenda.
In Topeka, we set up outside the Kansas State Capitol
IMG_1077
to hold a press conference and deliver a letter to Gov. Sam Brownback asking him to break his ties with the Koch Brothers and end his support of the Greed Agenda.
Please continue below the squiggle


Do most polls understate Obama's pull among Hispanics?

That is one question explored by Nate Silver in this post, which starts by exploring new polling data out of AZ that shows Obama marginally ahead.
In the post, Nate explains why he thinks that is unlikely, but then drills down more deeply, noting that the poll in question conducted bilingual polls.  He then writes:
Polling firms such as Latino Decisions that have conducted interviews in Spanish have shown Mr. Obama with a larger advantage among Hispanic voters than those which interview in English only. The most recent Latino Decisions poll, for example, had Mr. Obama ahead 72-20 among Hispanic voters. This poll is not an outlier; other polling firms that have conducted Spanish-language interviews have found similar results.
He notes that some think this offset because those who speak only Spanish or who are inclined to prefer to speak Spanish are less like to vote.   Here I might disagree -  I have a brother-in-law who grew up speaking Spanish at home and not learning English until he began school, but his family has been in Northern New Mexico for several hundred years.  I also note that one can arrive in the states from Puerto Rico, know next to no English, and still be entitled to vote, because someone born in PR is a natural-born citizen.But Nate to his credit goes further, as i will explain beneath the squiggle.