Washed It!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and tea party champion Sarah Palin appealed Saturday to a vast, predominantly white crowd on the National Mall to help restore traditional American values and honor Martin Luther King’s message. Civil rights leaders who accused the group of hijacking King’s legacy held their own rally and march.

While Beck billed his event as nonpolitical, conservative activists said their show of strength was a clear sign that they can swing elections because much of the country is angry with what many voters call an out-of-touch Washington.

Palin told the tens of thousands who stretched from the marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the grass of the Washington Monument that calls to transform the country weren’t enough. “We must restore America and restore her honor,” said the former Alaska governor, echoing the name of the rally, “Restoring Honor.”

Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008 and a potential White House contender in 2012, and Beck repeatedly cited King and made references to the Founding Fathers. Beck put a heavy religious cast on nearly all his remarks, sounding at times like an evangelical preacher.

“Something beyond imagination is happening,” he said. “America today begins to turn back to God.”

Beck exhorted the crowd to “recognize your place to the creator. Realize that he is our king. He is the one who guides and directs our life and protects us.” He asked his audience to pray more. “I ask, not only if you would pray on your knees, but pray on your knees but with your door open for your children to see,” he said.

A group of civil rights activists organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton held a counter rally at a high school, then embarked on a three-mile march to the site of a planned monument honoring King. The site, bordering the Tidal Basin, was not far from the Lincoln Memorial where Beck and the others spoke about two hours earlier.

Sharpton and the several thousand marching with him crossed paths with some of the crowds leaving Beck’s rally. People wearing “Restoring Honor” and tea party T-shirts looked on as Sharpton’s group chanted “reclaim the dream” and “MLK, MLK.” Both sides were generally restrained, although there was some mutual taunting.

One woman from the Beck rally shouted to the Sharpton marchers: “Go to church. Restore America with peace.” Some civil rights marchers chanted “don’t drink the tea” to people leaving Beck’s rally.

Sharpton told his rally it was important to keep King’s dream alive and that despite progress more needs to be done. “Don’t mistake progress for arrival,” he said.

He poked fun at the Beck-organized rally, saying some participants were the same ones who used to call civil rights leaders troublemakers. “The folks who used to criticize us for marching are trying to have a march themselves,” he said. He urged his group to be peaceful and not confrontational. “If people start heckling, smile at them,” Sharpton said.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s delegate to Congress, said she remembers being at King’s march on Washington in 1963. “Glenn Beck’s march will change nothing. But you can’t blame Glenn Beck for his March-on-Washington envy,” she said.

Beck has said he did not intend to choose the King anniversary for his rally but had since decided it was “divine providence.” He portrayed King as an American hero.

Sharpton and other critics have noted that, while Beck has long sprouted anti-government themes, King’s famous march included an appeal to the federal government to do more to protect Americans’ civil rights.

The crowd — organizers had a permit for 300,000 — was a sea of people standing shoulder to shoulder across large expanses of the Mall. The National Park Service stopped doing crowd counts in 1997 after the agency was accused of underestimating numbers for the 1995 Million Man March.

It was not clear how many tea party activists were in the crowd, but the sheer size of the turnout helped demonstrate the size and potential national influence of the movement.

Tea party activism and widespread voter discontent with government already have effected primary elections and could be an important factor in November’s congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative races.

Lisa Horn, 28, an accountant from Houston, said she identifies with the tea party movement, although she said the rally was not about either the tea party or politics. “I think this says that the people are uniting. We know we are not the only ones,” she said. “We feel like we can make a difference.”

Ken Ratliff, 55, of Rochester, N.Y., who served as a Marine in the Vietnam War, said he is moving more in the tea party direction. “There’s got to be a change, man,” he said.

Beck seeks help restoring traditional American values; Sharpton tries to keep King dream alive

If Marine Lance Cpl. Kevin Oratowski was intimidated about briefing three visiting generals as he headed out on another overnight patrol chasing the Taliban, he didn’t show it.

“We’re ready to go,” the 23-year-old from Camp Pendleton said brightly, his enthusiasm seemingly undimmed by the fact that he had spent most of the last 60 days in the heat, danger and uncertainty of Helmand province.

A few hours later, he was dead from a Taliban roadside bomb.

As the three generals watched the next day, Oratowski’s casket was loaded aboard a C-130 to begin its journey home. The cargo plane lumbered down a runway that didn’t exist just a few months ago and lifted heavily into the southern Afghanistan sky.

Next to the runway, earthmovers pushed mountains of gravel for other construction projects at the base here, projects to expand the “footprint” of the Marines as they settle in for a long battle for Helmand.

A year since the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan began with battalions of Marines descending on the Helmand River Valley, optimism about a quick defeat of the insurgents after early small-scale routs has given way to more sober assessments.

As the death toll steadily climbs, the top Marine warns that it could take as long as five years to defeat the Taliban and help the Afghan government establish a credible presence.

The massive assault in February on the Taliban-run town of Marja has not lived up to the U.S. prediction that it would prove a “tipping point” for the province. Two battalions of Marines are still assigned to protect Marja, but Taliban fighters spread messages of terror at night and plant bombs, killing Marines and villagers.

The provincial and national governments provide only a trickle of services. The vaunted “government-in-a-box,” a promise to establish a government in Marja as soon as the fighting stopped, was largely a flop.

“I think Stan McChrystal over-promised in regards to government-in-a-box,” Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway said, referring to the Army general who was then the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Even as President Obama talks of beginning a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan next July, in Helmand, the talk is of “trend lines” and “metrics” rather than a quick knockdown.

In a series of meetings with Marines of all ranks, Conway said he expected Marines — whose numbers have doubled, to 20,000, in Helmand in the last 14 months — to be here until 2014 or 2015. Be prepared for a second or third tour, he said.

“We’re still going to have to convince these people who are fighting us that we are the strongest tribe,” Conway told several hundred Marines just minutes after the C-130 with Oratowski’s casket departed.

Conway and other senior officers say they remain confident of ultimate victory. It is a confidence born of the Marines’ experience in Iraq’s Anbar province, which in 2006 was branded as a lost cause by a Marine intelligence report but within two years was considered an example of the U.S. ability to defeat a ruthless insurgency.

“I’m an inveterate optimist,” Conway said in an interview at the end of his Helmand trip. “I found things better than I would have expected based on [media reports] and on intelligence I’ve been reading.”

The Western military has lately been touting the success of pinpoint special-operations raids targeting midlevel Taliban field commanders, particularly in the south.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said this week that coalition and Afghan troops had conducted thousands of raids that it said had fostered “a growing sense of distrust” among the Taliban, heightening the fear of spies in their midst.

The Taliban, of course, paints a much different picture. In a statement this week, spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi boasted of expanding influence in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the insurgency’s spiritual home.

“Helmand is … a great example of the defeat of the enemy,” Ahmadi said in a statement posted on the movement’s website. “An example of this is the Marja operation, in which thousands of [Western] and Afghan soldiers took part. They made it sound as if World War III had started, but now they are ashamed to even mention the name of Marja, due to their disgraceful defeat.”

Marines in Afghanistan prepared for a long haul

Just days after U.S. auto safety regulators stepped up a probe into the risk that more than 1 million Toyota Corolla and Matrix vehicles could stall because of defective electronic engine control units the Japanese automaker announced a recall of the vehicles.

Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. said Thursday that it would recall 1.13 million 2005 to 2008 model year Toyota Corolla and Corolla Matrix vehicles sold in North America to address a problem with an electronic component called an engine control module that may have been improperly manufactured. No other Toyota or Lexus vehicles are involved in this recall.

This latest action brings the number of vehicles Toyota has recalled in the last year to about 10 million worldwide, a figure that is now approaching the total number of vehicles that will be sold by all manufacturers in America this year. The quality issues have hurt the automaker’s once sterling reputation for reliability and dependability and affected it sales position. Through the first seven months of this year, Toyota’s U.S. market share has dropped to 15.2% from 16.3%, dropping it to third place in the U.S. auto market behind No. 1 General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co.

Toyota has been plagued by a rash of quality problems involving faulty gas pedals, floor mats, brakes, electronic stability control systems, steering systems and other defects.

In the Corollas, Toyota said there is a crack that may develop either at various points on or in the component. When this happens, the check engine light may go on and the driver may experience harsh shifting. The engine might not start and in some instances the engine can stall while the vehicle is being driven. Toyota said there are three unconfirmed accidents alleged to be related to this condition, one of which might have resulted in a minor injury.

Toyota plans to replace the module on all of the recalled vehicles at no charge to owners. It will mail notice of the recall to owners starting in the middle of September. People will be told to bring their cars to dealers as replacement parts become available. Owners who have already experienced the problem and paid for the repair will be instructed on how to collect reimbursement.

People with questions can go to http://www.toyota.com/recall and or call Toyota at (800) 331-4331.

On Wednesday, safety regulators began an engineering analysis of stalling in Corolla and Matrix cars.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had received 26 complaints of vehicles stalling when it opened a preliminary evaluation in November. It reported 163 complaints when it opened the engineering analysis.

“The engine can stall at any speed without warning and not restart,” NHTSA said on its website.

jerry.hirsch@latimes.com
Toyota recalls Corolla, Matrix models due to an engine defect

Most reports about seasonal influenza cite an average of about 36,000 deaths in a typical season, but that number is both too high and grossly misleading, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

The actual average is a little over 23,000, the agency reported in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. But even that figure is misleading, the report added, because the actual numbers have ranged from as low as 3,300 deaths up to nearly 50,000 over the last 30 years. The period covered in the analysis goes up to 2007 and does not include last year’s H1N1 influenza pandemic.

“There is no average flu season,” lead author Dr. David Shay of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases said in a news conference. The number of deaths “can vary dramatically” from year to year, Shay said.

The number of deaths in a given year depends on a variety of factors, including how long the flu season lasts, how many people get sick and who gets sick. But by far the most important factor is the strain of flu that predominates in a given season.

When an H3N2 strain predominates, the number of deaths typically is about 2.7 times higher than in years when an H1N1 strain predominates. Researchers are not sure why that is, but it occurs at least in part because the H3N2 virus mutates more rapidly. “Even if you have been sick with it in the past, you are more likely to get a subsequent infection,” Shay said. It also tends to make more older people ill.

Shay noted that the 36,000 figure that is frequently quoted was an average for the decade of the 1990s, when H3N2 predominated in most years.

During the 30 years covered by the study, nearly 90% of flu-related deaths occurred in people over the age of 65, about 10% in those ages 19 to 64 and about 1% in those under the age of 19. That was one thing that was dismaying about the recent swine flu outbreak: The majority of deaths linked to it occurred in the two younger age groups.

Shay noted that there is no way to tell before a flu season begins — or even a few weeks into the start of the season — which strain will predominate. “Flu really is unpredictable,” he said. The best way to protect yourself, he added, is to follow the CDC’s recommendation and get vaccinated every year.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com
Figures on flu deaths are misleading, usually too high, CDC says

Revamping teacher evaluations with the goal of helping instructors improve has become an urgent priority in the nation’s second-largest school district, Ramon C. Cortines, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said in an address to administrators Wednesday.

Cortines said the district will develop and adopt a “value added” method that determines teachers’ and schools’ effectiveness based on student test scores. And he told a packed Hollywood High School auditorium that he’s committed to using these ratings for at least 30% of a teacher’s evaluation. The plan would require the consent of the teachers union.

In a later interview, Cortines also said he was disappointed that California lost its bid Tuesday for $700 million in federal Race to the Top school improvement grants. L.A. Unified’s share would have been $153 million.

But the district also learned late Tuesday that it will receive $52 million in unrelated federal grants.

Overall, the veteran educator, who has led five school systems and plans to retire in 2011, used his 30-minute speech to celebrate progress at various schools, including Hollywood High, and challenge educators to do more.

Linking student test scores to individual teachers became an especially heated topic after The Times published a series of stories based on a value-added analysis of teachers and schools. The Times also plans to publish this month a database with the rankings of about 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers.

“It is critical that we look at multiple measures to support our employees,” Cortines said, and “how value added fits into our overall strategy.”

The district plans to publish such data about schools “once this information has been validated,” but not the scores for individuals. “Supporting all employees is about creating a culture of collaboration and trust,” he said, echoing recent comments by his deputy, John Deasy.

Cortines talked later about being part of a five-member state delegation that met with federal evaluators for the Race to the Top funding bid.

“I was grilled, no doubt, on bringing the bargaining units along” on accepting test scores as part of evaluations, he said.

The winning state applications all scored at least 440 on a scale of 500; California fell 17 points short, and union buy-in could have put it over the top. But evaluators most consistently dinged the state for an out-of-date student data system. That problem alone cost it 14 points.

Rapidly and fully funding a better data system has long been a sticking point between state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wasn’t won over by O’Connell’s proposals to pay for such a system.

The state also consistently lost points for perceived shortcomings in developing and evaluating principals, and its plans for turning around persistently low-performing schools.

Cortines said some evaluators seemed to favor aggressive approaches, such as closing schools, that have a mixed record.

But L.A. Unified will receive another competitive federal grant, aimed at troubled schools, that was scored by state evaluators.

L.A. Unified was initially shut out because the state’s scoring system gave the district virtually no chance against smaller school systems. But the state Board of Education agreed to reconsider. This week, the board lowered some award amounts to others, and federal officials released funds previously held in reserve.

The biggest beneficiary will be five schools under the purview of L. A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. His nonprofit, which runs 15 schools within L.A. Unified, qualified for more than half of the $52 million; he personally lobbied the state board on the matter.

Five other district schools will split the balance.

Cortines had wanted some of this money for Fremont High, where he’d ordered all staff to reinterview for jobs, resulting in massive turnover. Fremont, however, won’t receive money because its test scores, although very low, have improved too much to qualify.

As he concluded his address, the superintendent lost his composure as he expressed thanks to those assembled for the opportunity to work with them. He stopped, unable to continue, and the audience responded with a 45-second standing ovation.

howard.blume@latimes.com
L.A. schools chief says district will adopt ‘value added’ approach