Gluttony and Temperance

Absorbing it all so that there's none left.

That's gluttony in the short. And that's what the United States of America - a country that comprises 5% of the human population yet consumes a full 20% of its non-renewable resources - is. We are the very definition of gluttony.

Read that again with me, please.

My country makes up 1/20th of the people in the whole world.

But we take in 1/5th of its resources.

The non-renewable kind.

Consumed. Complete. Swallowed. Done. Finished. Taken in and not-replaced.

That is, we take in four times per person, on average, what everybody else in the entire world does. This includes food. And clothing. Electronics. Cars. Gas. Oil. Electricity. Water.

These are resources that others can't use.

This leads to malnourishment, starvation, disease.

Death.

Because we can't be temperate in our insatiable appetites?

How do we avoid this trap of selfishness? How can  we still live well and assure that others do as well? That's a serious question that we need to wrap our minds around.

Seriously.

We need to stand up for the REAL heroes!

Oh, those poor, fragile multi-millionaire multinational corporate executives! Who will save them from the ridiculing of Oliver Stone? How can their brittle and heroic egos survive such a crushing? How can they truly enjoy their hard-earned million dollar Christmas bonuses? They worked very hard at making sure those third-world employees didn't rise up and demand living wages. Do you know how many women they've had to chain up at their work stations? All those armies don't come for free, you know!*

image from http://osocio.org/message/make_child_abuse_slavery_and_neglect_a_thing_of_the_past/

*Real Facebook response. I'm tired of all Americans/Christians standing up for immorality. Give it a rest, already. Poverty is the enemy.

Helen Thomas, Palestine, Israel, and Going Back Home

Helen Thomas just quit. Which is fine by me. Not for the reasons that it’s good with many of her detractors. I’m a fan of strong, intelligent women that voice the plight of the oppressed. And that’s what Helen Thomas was. And I would say still is. I am fine with her leaving her post in the White House Press Corps because she has done her time, and now she should be allowed to freely speak her mind (even if she was the rare one doing so in the face of the presidents or their lackeys and we will now miss that beat).

What she said that caused her a bit of a trolley is that Israel should go back home to Poland, Germany and the US. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the context which she had in mind in speaking that way. First, Thomas has a thing about empires occupying other lands (which she makes a note of whenever she got a chance at the WH in regards to Iraq and Afghanistan). And that is exactly what has been happening in this section of the MidEast for the last sixty years.

Secondly, the state of Israel is running a pogrom of their own against the Palestinians. The situations of which were so inhumanely horrible, the events that we are all rightly recalled to never forget, the huge, mechanized ethnic cleansing that European Jews were forced into roughly three generations ago, are being repeated and conveniently forgotten by those same people whom were attacked in the first place.

The victims are now the victimizers. This is tragic human history, an epoch that continually turns again and again. But saying that doesn't excuse the state of Israel for its crimes against humanity.

The Holocaust was a large-scale setting (a horrible exaggeration) for what Zionists are putting the Palestinian people through now. Instead of using trains, they’re using bulldozers. Instead of establishing ghettos, they’re instituting blockades . Instead of gas chambers, they arm settlers*.

Many Palestinians may *say* that they want to wipe Israel off the map, but Israel is *actually* wiping Palestine off the map.

As per the flotilla, it would be best if Palestinians and their allies (and certainly their governing bodies) practiced non-violence. They would certainly win more support for their side if people could see how they are being victimized.

But then again, I would like for MY government to practice non-violence - as well as Israel. And if you send soldiers to attack a boat flying another nation’s flags in the high seas, why shouldn’t you expect to get attacked? That’s a bit like forcefully entering someone’s house and complaining that they shot you.

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*Those very same settlers, in turn for cheap property, are turned into agents of the state. I blame the state and those that blindingly support the state for that action. Brother should never be turned against brother.

Being Nickel and Dimed to Death

We're still fighting for basic affordable housing here in Chicago. But as I was finishing up Barbara Ehrenreich's masterful Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, I was struck by how this is all just right under the noses of most middle class and upper class Americans. The problem is, we're so struck blind by the sheer blindingly awesome affluence and its shiny objects are that we disregard those who have sacrificed, in Ehrenreich's terms, for our gain. Hopefully, these selections will convince you of the utmost need to read through and study this brilliant and yet sadly hilarious book, this sidewinder's undercover tale.

The problem of rents is easy for a non-economist, even a sparsely educated low-wage worker, to grasp; it's the market, stupid. When the rich and the poor compete for housing on the open market, the poor don't stand a chance. The rich can always outbid them, buy up their tenements or trailer parks, and replace them with condos, McMansions, golf courses, or whatever they like. Since the rich have become more numerous, thanks largely to rising stock prices and executive salaries, the poor have necessarily been forced into housing that is more expensive, more dilapidated, or more distant from their places of work. Recall that in Key West [one of the locations where Ms. Ehrenreich had moved for a short stint to find work and lodgings among the working class], the trailer park convenient to hotel jobs was charging $625 a month for a half-size trailer, forcing low-wage workers to search for housing farther and farther away in less fashionable keys. But rents were also sky-rocketing in the touristically challenged city of Minneapolis, where the last bits of near-affordable housing lie deep in the city, while job growth has occurred on the city's periphery, next to distinctly unaffordable suburbs. Insofar as the poor have to work near the dwellings of the rich--as in the case of so many service and retail jobs--they are stuck with lengthy commutes or dauntingly expensive housing.

If there seems to be general complacency about the low-income housing crisis, this is partly because it is in no way reflected in the official poverty rate, which has remained for the past several years at a soothingly low 13% or so. The reason for the disconnect between the actual housing nightmare of the poor and "poverty," as officially defined, is simple: the official poverty level is still calculated by the archaic method of taking the bare-bones cost of food for a family of a given size and multiplying this number by three. Yet food is relatively inflation-proof*, at least compared with rent. In the early 1960s, when this method of calculating poverty was devised, food accounted for 24 percent of the average family budget (not 33% even then, it should be noted) and housing 29 percent. In 1999, food took up only 16 percent of the family budget, while housing had soared to 37 percent. So the choice of food as the basis for calculating family budgets seems fairly arbitrary today; we might as well abolish poverty altogether, at least on paper, by defining subsistence budget as some multiple of average expenditures on comic books or dental floss.

When the market fails to distribute some vital commodity, such as housing, to all who require it, the usual liberal-to-moderate expectation is that the government will step in and help. We accept this principle--at least in a halfhearted and faltering way--in the case of healthcare, where government offers Medicare to the elderly, Medicaid to the desperately poor, and various state programs to the children of the merely very poor. But in the case of housing, the extreme upward skewing of the market has been accompanied by a cowardly public sector retreat from responsibility. Expenditures on public housing have fallen since the 1980s, and the expansion of public rental subsidies came to a half in the mid-1990s. At the same time, housing subsidies for home owners--who tend to be far more affluent than renters--have remained at their usual munificent levels. It did not escape my attention, as a temporarily low-income person, that the housing subsidy I normally receive in my real life--over 20,000 a year in the form of a mortgage-interest deduction--would have allowed a truly low-income family to live in relative splendor. Had this amount been available to me in monthly installments in Minneapolis, I could have moved into one of those "executive" condos with sauna, health club, and pool.

Ok, as much as I want to transcribe the next part--about the paltry rise in wages over the prosperous nineties, despite the incremental growth in wealth for the companies that are not raising wages--I should skip to the end and save myself the CTS and yourself the unfettered privilege of reading this work on your own.

According to a recent poll conducted by Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based employment research firm, 94 percent of Americans agree that "people who work full-time should be able to earn enough to keep their families out of poverty"** [Makes me wonder who the other 6% of monsters are]. I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" is the secret of success: Work hard and you'll get ahead" or "It's hard work that got us where we are." No one
ever said that you could work hard--harder even than you ever thought possible--and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.

When poor single mothers had the option of remaining out of the labor force on welfare, the middle and upper middle class tended to view them with a certain impatience, if not disgust. The welfare poor were excoriated for their laziness, their persistence in reproducing in unfavorable circumstances, their presumed addictions, and above all for their "dependency."... But now that government has largely withdrawn its "handouts," now that the overwhelming majority of the poor people are out there toiling in Wal-Mart or Wendy's--well, what are we to think of them? Disapproval and condescension no longer apply, so what out-look makes sense?...

The appropriate emotion is shame--shame at own own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on--when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently--then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life... As Gail, one of my restaurant coworkers put it, "you give and you give."

Someday, of course... they are bound to tire of getting so little in return and to demand to be paid what they're worth. There'll be a lot of anger when that day comes, and strikes and disruption. But the sky will not fall, and we will all be better off for it in the end.

*For reasons for this, may I humbly suggest you watch Food, Inc.? Now?

**"A National Survey of American Attitudes toward Low-Wage Workers and Welfare Reform," Jobs for the Future, Boston. May 24, 2000.

The Global Warming Denier's Anthem

Actually, most deniers I know tend to say a lot of gibberish, so even though I suppose they're making sense to themselves, really all this video needs is a few angry mentions of Al Gore.

If you can't view it (ie, you're reading via Facebook notes), click here.

A Modest Proposal for All Those Trying to Enter America

It appears that with every problem in these United States that we have, every time a resourceful citizen dreams up a possible and viable solution to a fundamental problem of the peoples (be it health care, economic prosperity, national safety, job retention, or problems in the bedroom with a member of the fairer sex), another road-block is thrown onto the streets. That roadblock is called "illegal immigrants." They apparently are the reason that we cannot afford childcare, welfare, health care, nor, apparently, Bel Aire.

Now, I know the answer that you are thinking to that ultimate question. We should run over those roadblocks and their children. They aren't even supposed to be there anyway. And that is a good answer, four years ago, when we could afford Expeditions and H2's. But this is a new, ecologically-friendly Depression-lite era, and unless you have a chipper in front of your Prius, that thinking just will not do justice for this day. We need a bold and creative plan of action that will once and for all solve the problem of too many immigrants.

Now you will notice that I did not say, "the problem of the immigrants." That wording is too broad. It does not tell you what it is that is wrong with immigrants. For surely not everything about immigrants (nor immigration) is amiss. Most reasonable men (and some of the more reasonable women folk) will agree that at least a small amount of new blood is good for the soil of our country. Who else will work crappy jobs for piss pay? The un-Americans, that's who!

So, we do not need to completely plug the holes, but rather to control the flow of foreigners coming into our land, dating our sisters, and eating our children. I, fortunately for you, dear reader, have thought long and hard for many, many minutes about this thingymabobby.

It has struck me that the path to legal immigration and citizenship is wholly unlike the path that our forefathers took in founding this wonderful nation. George Washington never had to take a test that asked who George Washington is. No, the Washingtons worked the fingers of their slaves to the bones and threw tens of hundreds of thousands of voluntary military men into the range of fire for the right to be called a citizen of the United States of America (or, as it was called in the time, "America: F**k yeah!"). True heroes opened up the borders of what we would define as our God-given rightful land by heart-wrenchingly creating and then breaking peace treaty after peace treaty, raping, declaring war on, and/or enslaving brown-skinned people from

Our new visitors need to demonstrate that they have the same heart that our great forefathers did. It seems to me that very few, if any, of the recent migrants who have darkened our shores (be they via the Pacific, Atlantic, or Rio Grande Oceans) have raped, murdered, mangled or so much given a smallpox-infested blanket to an Indian. Obviously, there aren't enough Indians around for large-scale genocide in these times (Oh, the old glory days...), but that will in fact open up the stakes, for they will understand that they are being hunted down and will go into hiding.

The practicalities would work out as thus: by lottery we will choose, say, 2,000 "undocumented" immigrants for short visa stays per month. Within that month, they are expected to unload, pay their respects to the great centers of our nation (the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell, Wasilla, Savannah plantations, etc.) and then commit random acts of genocide on the Indian population.

However, if the foreigner has the ability to import a boat load of free laborers upon his or her arrival, that will also prove his or her character. The new arrival will not need to undergo the month-long process, but will be granted immediate citizenship upon arrival and a recitation of The Pledge of Allegiance (preferably with bombs bursting in air in the background). I mean the new arrival who owns the boat and the laborers, not the laborers themselves. They will each represent 2/3's of a person.

One perceived side-effect for this ultimate solution would be that there will be fewer casinos. Not to worry, since the gaming centers run on reservations may be staffed by Natives, but are not owned by Natives. Although, for nostalgia's sake, I'm sure you will be greeted by a tall, dark and handsome man wearing loincloth and carrying a tomahawk and peace pipe -- just like the Iroquios, Mohawk, or Fighting Illini.

That is, if you are a citizen.

Weekend Links We Like to Link to - Inauguration & Palestine edition

• Wonderful pics of Inauguration Day via the Boston Globe. Numbers 3 & 5 give a wow visual to the crowds. But I was more awed/floored/taken by the pics 19 and 23. Which means, yes, I did cry. Again.

• Among all the hubbub, it was good to see friends who supported and voted for Obama keep their cool about them and just throw a few words of moderation out there. In addition, I did a post on the other site about this social-psychological status called elevation, which I think a lot of people erroneously view as either idol-worship or momentum for change. It is neither, but it can still be a watershed moment (pun not intended).

• My wife's friend is studying in Jerusalem now, expecting to leave shortly (long story). She told us about how the Palestinians were basically trapped - that all of the jobs and money was outside of their encamped neighborhoods but that they could not leave those areas. Now, I'm no fan of terrorism, but I think I can see where the seeds of extremism and violence are sown, and this scenario can't be good for anyone. As Jenn said via Facebook, I don't think they'd put this story ("Inside the World's Largest Prison") in a US paper, which is too bad, because a lot of people are missing something in their anti-terrorism (and anti-Muslim) rhetoric. Pray for the peace of the Middle East.

Weekly Links We Like to Link to: Election Day

One of the biggest, ahem, distortions of the McCain campaign that's ticked me off (but in a laughable sense) is that Obama is a socialist or that his policies are socialist. McCain knows that that isn't true in the least, but that hasn't stopped him and his campaign from attacking him as such - even though his running mate strictly "shared the wealth." It's just a stupid call, it's distortive, it's divisive, it's a bastardization of truth and of the work of governance. Let's just cut to the chase, eh?

Eugene Cho lets us know who he's voting for, without directly saying it. And I love this car:



Millenials, I don't know what to say... I was born at the tail end of the "Gen X" era, so it's not like I'm all that separated from this generation, but I can't help but feel that they are the most coddled and spoiled one ever. But then I have to consider that we are both products of the most divisive generation ever. Boomers were the first generation to not just defy their parents (who hasn't), but to openly and disrespectfully do so. Ayers was part of a generational seismic shift and merely spoke for his confused times when he said, "Kill all parents." Millenials are like the youngest children from that generation, and like most youngest children, they see more primarily than the others the hypocrisy of their parents, who ask us to trust them now that they've well broached the age of 35 and have left us all with massive debt (that we're still adding to) while burning resources at premium rates.
Hopefully, that wasn't just a rant (that too, of course) but may give some perspective to this:

"Gen Y" or "The Millennials" Gets Wake-up Call with Economic Crisis- ...and Have Little Faith Either Presidential Candidate can Halt the Economic Meltdown

Weekend Links We Like to Link to: The All Videos Edition

Author and Native Sherman Alexie on Stephen Colbert. One of the best non-enlightening interviews (well, maybe indirectly enlightening. I wonder how few Americans are aware of the smallpox-soaked blankets distributed during the Trail of Tears) I've seen/read in a long time:

View here if not working.

And, in the interest of non-partisanship and equal time to the other side, The Daily Show. Here they are with a brilliant, although quite late, send-up of the really insipid attacks that certain Republicans and rabid anti-Obamaites have made against community organizers:

click here if not working.

Jared Diamond of the intriguing Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse books (about the rises of certain civilizations over others, and the fall of others) on sustainability here (sorry, can't figure out how to embed player). For smaller version, and more context, go here. Note: I haven't read Collapse so I'm not sure myself how he would define the collapse of civilization (as he does early on in referencing Bosnia and Rwanda), but my guess is that it may have something to do with genocide. The fall of the civilization, however, according to him, is not nearly the same as the extinction of its people - yet he refers to one people group that did die out and five points that lead to such extinction. So, I'm also curious how he feels Colombia is near this fall.
It's just something that I'm thinking about doing an article on...

And finally, elections are two days away. Everybody knows who I'm gonna vote for. As for you, you can vote however you like.



Make no doubt about it, these middle school kids know their stuff better than most adults (especially those who aren't voting). This cat has the lyrics.

We educate those we care about.

From Jason Linkins, live blogging the debate at HuffPost.

Let me ask you: Can you remember a debate in which some moderator did not bring up poor math/science scores? Schieffer says the problem is an "obvious" one. Seems to me that it's not, considering that it keeps coming up, again and again. Here's the truth: America is best in the world at education the students that America WANTS to educate. When you exclude the children that no one cares about educating, U.S. scores exceed the world by every measure. Now, who are the kids that no one wants to educate? Well, I'll put it this way: there's a reason that hearing John McCain call education a "civil rights issue" sets my hypocrisy alarm off.

Personally, I'm not saying that McCain's in the wrong on this one. Or Democrats, Republicans, teachers, teacher unions, principals, Congress, presidential administrations (although I despise NCLB). But I think he makes a great point. The students that we don't care to educate are the ones with the crappiest education. We are failing, failing, failing in urban schools and specifically with minority and impoverished students (which would include many rural districts as well). This is evident in the way that the teachers are overworked until they are spent and either leave early (often for greener pastures), retire from classroom teaching, or continue to deaden their senses (there are, of course, remarkable people who stay on and enlarge their profession and everyone benefits. But few and far between...). Pressure is everywhere put on already burdened teachers - especially new teachers who have and then waste all this energy. It's just not sustainable.

What we need is a full-frontal attack. Not regulations that have elementary teachers constantly teaching to the test for most of the year (the ramifications will be evident when our inner city schools - which are already behind - produce more students who were not taught to think during those formative years); not shutting down schools to start from scratch (at least not necessarily, and certainly not as a threat); not blaming teachers/parents/principals/students. Solutions to these problems could be as simple and yet effective as running clinics like those run by the Harlem Children's Zone that teaches parents how to raise their kids so that they would have the best options (their so-called Baby College is a series of early education workshops for parents where they teach clear and proven skills like, "Read regularly to your kids," and, "Spanking the children teaches them to use force to resolve differences" and "Put your child first so that she will succeed"). We need to do simple stuff like open more urban (and rural) preschools and doing early intervention. How about encouraging corporations and small businesses to sponsor high schools (not, in any case, exclusively, but as one of many)? How about introducing students to various levels of thought and industry in a hands-on method early on? Empowering churches, synagogues, mosques, non-profits, etc. to do more direct and unified community outreaches (after-school programs or homework assistance, for instance) that are less sectarian and more pro-student.

And then there's the money. Many urban (and rural, for that matter) school buildings are run-down and the teacher-to-student ratio is 1:30 in Chicago (sometimes much, much higher). You invest in that you truly care about. In Chicago we are losing 400 million dollars that should be set aside for schools each year to pet projects for industries (TIFFs). Our future is being flushed down the toilet so that Trump and Boeing will consider doing a few more years worth of business in the city and so that developers will keep having unfettered access to clear out the poor. That is bad business. That is bad economics. That is bad humanity.

The children of poor and minority families are suffering because we don't care enough to put them as high enough of a priority. And that's a shame on all of us. All. Of. Us.

Intentionality and theology of eradicating poverty

Today is Blog Action Day. I was not aware of this day nor its principal action: Fight Poverty. And I'm pretty sure there's a billion ways to talk about this. I could write about how about one half of the world lives on less than two dollars a day. I could talk about the fact that no matter how you try to spin it, two dollars a day is barely sufficient for life no matter where you are. I could talk about how few people get to live the life of luxury that even someone as "poor" as I do lives (I mean, we just bought two computers this year, we have instant access to medical care, we have at least some line of credit, we have clean and running water, our baby is healthy and well-fed and will most likely make it through to the age of three...), I could talk about the fact that though our economy is hitting the sink it really, really effects still-developing countries, I could talk about how many children die of starvation everyday, I could try to convince you to play Save the Planet app of Facebook because then at least you may do something...

Indeed, I could talk about all these things, and they are all tangible things. But I'm not so much into guilt as into motivation. I kind of want make it personal and tell how my mind has changed in the last few years.

It's not that I've never cared before. I would try to help the homeless around me. I would occasionally send money to distant places as a result of a tragedy. I became a teacher specifically for the poor and minorities in my city. These were good things and I'm not knocking them at all, but my faith wasn't at the center of my activities. I did them because I thought God wanted me to do them, sure, but I would have felt guilty if I hadn't. There was no real correlation between my faith and my (sporadic at times) deeds.

What I've discovered since then is not that God wants to bring us all to be with him in heaven forever, so forget about the earth, and you can forget about the poor (eventually), but that God is making plans to bring heaven down to earth. He is restoring all of the heavens and earth to the wonderful way it was at Creation. Lion lays down with the lamb, wipe away every tear, etc. What I discovered is that it is integral to God's mission - through Jesus - to feed the poor, heal the sick, and not just a part of God's mission on the way out of this world.

There is that old adage, Charity begins at home. We've tried to be intentional about that. For us, that means being informed about greater patterns in the world, about being involved in a local level, about welcoming people into our homes (sometimes to stay), about partaking in conversations and trying to gather and spread information that's useful, about making meals, about raising our daughter as a just and kind person. It is about being generous with what we have while preparing groundwork to be even more generous.

I have a lot of debts that we're trying to pay down. Having loads of debt (if this recent economic downturn is teaching Americans one thing, I hope it's this) keeps us from collecting wealth. And those of us with generous hearts, I think, should be gathering wealth to spread it. I think part of the problem is, we wait for the uber-rich, the two percent of the population who hold an ill-proportionate amount of the world's wealth in their hands, to do the work of ending poverty and sharing their wealth. Yet, with few exceptions (think the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), the wealth consolidate their wealth. There's certainly more reasons to do this than I could possibly fathom, and they're all not selfish reasons at all. The thing to learn from this, however, is:

1. We cannot wait for a fraction of a percentage of the world's population to do our work for us.
   
2. Everyone who reads this blog has the ability - somehow and in some way - to generate and share resources.
3. Make sure that the ways that we share our resources are sustainable and beneficial. In other words, giving a man a fish is fine, but it only lasts for a day. Teaching that man to fish is also good, but it may be your job to help build a road to the lake, to clean the lake and make sure that fish can survive and thrive in it, to check for bacterial and poisonous levels in the lake and lower them, to teach the man to clean, gut and cook the fish, etc. Not only on an individual basis (the one man) but as a part of a larger campaign.
4. We play parts in this larger campaign. We cannot afford to spectate nor to all do the same task. We have different talents, different areas of expertise and different passions. Let's use them to eradicate poverty in unity, not conformity.

Weekend Links I Like to Link to - Two Things You Should Never Mention at a Dinner Table Edition

via MarkO:
Teaching Boys and Girls Separately
Yeah. Separate but not equal? Actually, cheap shot aside, it sounds like a good idea, though I think it needs some modification. For instance, the gender roles need to go. And same sex classes may be good for periods of time, but generally speaking, for social reasons, boys and girls need to mix.
'Cause that how the real world works.

The evangelical Christian pollsters at Barna released a study finding that "November Election is Obama's to Lose". What I found interesting (well, one of the things I found interesting) is that I would probably still fit into their category of born-again evangelical but I would be in the small minority (less than 10%) that is going to not vote Republican this year.
What I have noticed is that even though the evangelical movement is making tremendous strides in consciously moving and being active in social justice causes (thanks in no small part to Bono. Could you have imagined that ten years ago?), many who would otherwise lean towards Obama are hesitant because they see abortion as a make-or-break issue. The mantra still being pushed is that if a politician will not protect the lives of the most-underrepresented and vulnerable, then how can he or she claim to represent our rights or to be socially just?

And, to tie the two together:
I thought that both the racism and the sexism evident in the recent (and hopefully completed) Democratic primaries were just off the charts. Although I will not argue about who had it worse, I think it ludicrous and insulting the charge by supporters of Clinton's campaign that Obama was demeaning and sexist towards their candidate. So far, my impression of that charge are that he ran and won when it was clearly her turn to win it all. But Obama did not do the Clinton '08 campaign in; the Clinton '08 campaign did the Clinton '08 campaign in.
Having said all that, the mainstream media (and especially the all-talk cable news outlets - Fox chief among them) should be very much ashamed of themselves. The truth is, they had to find subtler ways of attacking Barrack for his race (the scary preacher, anyone?) while they could largely go unpunished for making these lewd and disturbing comments about Hillary's sex. Notice:



It's no secret that I am not a fan of the way that Hillary ran this campaign (although, to her credit, IMHO she would make a better president than any Republican contender and her tactics were not as slanderous or injurious as, say, the Willie Horton ads of the '80s) and am certainly not a fan of the bitterness that the supporters of either Democratic presidential hopeful have towards the other (did somebody say Geraldine Ford?), but, please, wrong is wrong. And this is definitely wrong.


h/t to Eugene Cho for this one.

Education Links We Like to Link to

I wanted to have an Education Week about a month ago, but that quickly fizzled into an education post that I never got around to amending or serializing. So, in an effort to broaden all of our horizons, I offer the second Education Links Post, which will more-or-less periodically appear as a special edition Links We Like to Link to." Please, for your reading and enlightening pleasure:

Small Kids, Big Words:

Timmy [a pre-K student] insists he didn’t hear [the thunderstorm last night]. No one believes him, but he stands his verbal ground. “I didn’t want to hear it and so that is why I didn’t listen,” he says.

Molly, who’s four, adds, “I guess he was ignoring it.”

It is, of course, always cute when small kids use big words. But a growing body of research and classroom practice show that building a sophisticated vocabulary at an early age is also key to raising reading success—and narrowing the achievement gap. At schools like Lee Academy, teachers are overcoming the age-old habit of speaking to young children in simplified language and instead deliberately weaving higher-level word choices into preschool and primary grade classrooms.

Moral Dimensions of Educational Decisions:
The essential place of values-rich curricula in the public schools:

There is a widely held notion that public schools (which, of course, most students attend) should not teach values. In effect, schools do. Moreover, there are next to no significant decisions a school administrator or classroom teacher can make that do not have a normative dimension...

Schools are under considerable pressure from the community to focus on academics, which in effect means serving the utilitarian, economic futures of pupils. Parents, school boards and news media that push for higher academic achievements are not seeking to turn the students into scholars but to equip them to compete in the marketplace (and in the competitive college admissions arena) by teaching them math, writing skills (memos, not poetry), foreign languages and so on.

In contrast, schools are, and ought to be, concerned with human and social development, ensuring graduates are able to work out differences with others verbally and nonabusively; to walk in the other person’s shoes; to resist temptations to act in unethical ways; and to care about higher purposes than self. Many curriculum decisions reflect the balance those who run schools and education systems strike between these two competing set of values, the academic and the social....

[W]e do not always keep in mind that all selections of books and other materials to be used in teaching students reflect a choice of values. Take, for instance, the Civil War. It can be taught as a grand struggle for liberty and equality; as a political strategy for keeping the union together; as a tragic failure to resolve differences without mass killing and enormous suffering; or something else. Whatever we choose reflects our values and helps transmit them to the students.

Education decision makers are understandably reluctant to view these issues as involving normative choices because framing the decisions in this way forces the question: Whose values are going to be taught? Instead, decisions often are deliberated and made on other grounds, such as “this textbook is highly recommended by …” Furthermore, modifications to curricula are made in terms of “we need to give more room to …” rather than openly reviewing the normative implications that all books, narratives, songs, plays and course outlines have.

What do teachers want?:
Teachers Speak on the Profession, Unions, and Reform (pdf):

Today’s teachers have different expectations than teachers in the past, and they expect different things from their professional lives. Yet, they recognize the problems that undermine their profession, including job lock, weak evaluation and reward structures, and too much bureaucracy. With reformers pushing hard for change and teachers unions holding tight to tradition, teachers are caught in the middle, unsure of how their profession should change but very aware that it needs to.

Teachers see problems with their unions as well. For example, many say that the union sometimes fights to protect teachers who really should be out of the classroom. But teachers still see the union as essential, and they value the union’s traditional role in safeguarding their jobs. New teachers are more likely today than they were in 2003 to call unions “absolutely essential.” And many teachers would like to see their unions explore some new activities, especially some of the ideas associated with the “new unionism” agenda, and take the greater role in reform, but not if that comes at the expense of the union’s core mission.

The fluid environment presents both challenges and opportunities for education leaders and policymakers. Teachers unions may claim a deep loyalty from their members but the relationship seems to be based mostly on the practical benefits that the union provides.

And...
Racist Attitudes Challenged at Alabama School

A south Alabama town that was the inspiration for the setting in Harper Lee's book "To Kill a Mockingbird" is finding itself as the backdrop for a real-life legal case involving allegations of racism at school....

The parents [who filed the suit] say black students who got into fights with white students were given off-campus suspensions for longer periods of time while white students were given shorter in-school suspensions. They also said black students were disciplined for minor dress code violations like untucked shirts and for violations that weren't even in the code, such as loose or missing buttons.

The lawsuit also describes an incident in which a student was being teased by white classmates who called her a "black monkey." The student told the white teacher, who responded by saying "sit back down because you do look like a black monkey," the suit claims...

"There are policies and practices that serve to criminalize youth and push them out of classes - primarily children of color," [ACLU Attorney Catherine] Kim said.

(Jasdye's note: What's sad is that this is the only case like this that I've heard about. If you add on the fact that black students are labeled for Special Education at a rate of 2:1 that of Latino and White students [Click here for related story on the disparity in Florida] - and 4:1 students of Asian heritage - than this could be just about Anywheresville, USA. Sadly, even in Chicago.)

All links provided by the Public Education Network Newsblast (via email).

weekly Links We Like to Link to - Memorial Day Edition

Actually, there's absolutely nothing memorial or memorable about this one. Just trying to buy some time until I can put up some substantial, earth-shattering posts...

Is Bill Clinton out of his c.p. mind? I'm sure he could name several other presidential candidates who have been just as or more disrespected than his wife. Hint:
And, as some of my students have pointed out, in order to get respect, you gotta give respect.

Looks like the market might help to right things after all. Too little, too late without some more intervention, though. Let's get together and make SUV's a thing of the past. It's a luxury item we can no longer afford.
h/t to Scot McKnight

Also courtesy of Scot McKnight, "Minor Leaguer Traded for Ten Bats." I didn't think that this sort of thing actually happened. Good thing I never went pro.

And Eugene Cho has a good post on the current exploitation and human trafficking epidemic, starting with this Radiohead video.

Human Rights Abus... Neglect

My wife informed me that today is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights day. And that sound like a subject that I want to be a part of - not human rights abuse, but the unity and awareness of the abuse of our basic rights in a hopeful and hope-filled effort to flush out such evil.

Generally speaking, though, when I think of human rights (certainly now in my progressivism), I think of human rights abuse. One goes along with the other like macaroni and cheese. However, the problem with acknowledging rights abuse is that rights abuse is done by the powerful and the abusive. (I contend that the powerful aren't always abusive, just mostly - and often efforts to stem or reverse the tide of their own abuse may work towards salving consciences, but rarely really end their power-abuse.) In other words, the few.

Which is fine in that it abdicates me of direct responsibility. I can blame, for instance, that US government, which has long tolerated, enabled and empowered terrorist and dictator tets-de-state that support what we supposedly support, or that basically condemns poor black men on sight to lives of poverty, inaction, crime and imprisonment. Or local governments for putting the desires of the wealthy (condominiums, attractive streets) over the needs of the poor (affordable housing, displacement of homeless).

The right to a fair and speedy trial, the right to legal representation, a right to vote, a right to withhold property, the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom from torture... these are all important and should be fought for and over.

But personally, you, are and Sally and Jon are not directly responsible for these. These are political acts and can only be addressed through political means. There is a need to address something a bit more holistic, a bit more directed at - and hopefully worked from - the self. Particularly myself.

This should be my mantra: If every human being is made in the image of God, then every human being is equally precious, equally lovely, equally valuable. Every human should drink. Every child should eat. Every village should be resourced.

Put in these terms, this is personal. It's easy for me to get upset at George Bush and his cronies (ant the lax Senate that allows them to do so) for detaining anyone - let alone US citizens - without a fair trial or actual charges and terrorizing "information" or "confessions" out of them. What's harder is for me to consume less, discipline myself more, get out of debt sooner, get off my arse earlier and DO something - namely partner with and provide access to those resources for those who are in need of food and water.

Help me, Lord.

Gas Guzzling

This whole idea of a gas-tax holiday is incredibly stupid.

Remember the rations of World War II? Remember reading about and viewing the call-to-sacrifice that the US asked of its patriotic citizens? Now, we're being told that gas is at an all-time high (well, the prices, obviously. The gas quantity itself... notsomuch), we should get some temporary relief. As if this period of gas gagging is just a little hump, like last year's was. Or the year before that. Or the one before that - dating to when gas was jumping up to 1.25 a gallon and we all thought we would die and that maybe our cars should start operating off of garbage like the DeLoreans of the future.

The problem is that there is only so much oil in the world. And instead of aggressively looking for solutions and cutting back our dependence on Big Gas, we buy up big SUV's, guzzle gas like we're pledging, buy at Wal-Mart like we need to, and demand for someone to relieve us a flipping 5% at the pump. It's not built to last.

What doesn't bother me is the Republican's pandering. You kind of expect that. What bothers me is Clinton's so-called response. She talked about her long-term plans as if they were gonna make a difference in about twenty years or so, but let's wait til later. Let's wait til we're after the point of necessity. It seems that she doesn't understand the severity of it. And worse, like one of Jack Nicholson's signature characters, she's sure that we can't handle the truth.

She does argue that her plan is different than, say, McCain's in that the gas companies will be taxed on their surplus of profits. Again, not ecologically sound. But, if that don't float your boat, so to say, take former Clinton staffer George's account...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Economists say that's not going to happen. They say this is going to go straight into the profits of the oil companies. They're not going to actually lower their prices. And the two top leaders in the House are against it. Nearly every editorial board and economist in the country has come out against it. Even a supporter of yours, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, calls it pointless and disappointing.

Can you name one economist, a credible economist who supports the suspension?

CLINTON: Well, you know, George, I think we've been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven't worked well for the middle class and hard-working Americans.

So, what I hear you saying, Senator, is that the current administration got us into this hell-hole because they listened to experts, and not because they're bull-headed ideologues who would not take suggestions from experts - and oftentimes would deliberately remove them from influence. Gosh, thanks for clearing that one up.

CLINTON: From the moment I started this campaign, I've said that I am absolutely determined that we're going to reverse the trends that have been going on in our government and in our political system, because what I have seen is that the rich have gotten richer. A vast majority -- I think something like 90 percent -- of the wealth gains over the last seven years have gone to the top 10 percent of wage earners in America.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But can you name an economist who thinks this makes sense?

CLINTON: Well, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to put my lot in with economists, because I know if we get it right, if we actually did it right, if we had a president who used all the tools of the presidency, we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.

Now, look, I have long-term plans too. I mean, it's a misnomer to say this is all that I'm doing. It's not. I have a comprehensive long-term energy plan that would go right at dependence on foreign oil. We've got to undermine this incredible addiction that we have. We use more foreign oil today than we did on 9/11. That is a disaster for America.

So, the solution is to use more, nationally-found gas? To once again destroy our land to find enough gas to last a few months? To hold off on attempting anything substantial now in an effort to attempt everything at once at a later yet-to-be-determined-time and then hope that nothing goes to pot at the 11 1/2 hour? To plan for the future by ignoring the nearly-present right now?

Brilliant!

It reminds me of a scene from The Simpsons Movie, where President Arnold Schwarzenegger has to choose between five harrowing, life-altering scenarios, all laid out for him in manuscript form. The man who presents the options asks him, as President Arnold places his finger on the middle one, if he would at least peruse the options. The President says, "The American people voted for a leader, not a reader."

I had no idea that would be a description for a progressive presidential candidate this year. I thought that was the area for the neocons.

Ready for the Audacity of Hope?

It seems that we're not quite there yet. Not only does Obama need to (and so far, has failed to, and will probably continue to fail to) secure the all-so-important Bigot Vote, but he also needs to win the War of the Low Signals.

Quotes from the Time article:

In his 1991 book, The Reasoning Voter, political scientist Samuel Popkin argued that most people make their choice on the basis of "low-information signaling" — that is, stupid things like whether you know how to roll a bowling ball or wear an American-flag pin. In the era of Republican dominance, the low-information signals were really low — how Michael Dukakis looked in a tanker's helmet, whether John Kerry's favorite sports were too precious (like wind-surfing), whether Al Gore's debate sighs over his opponent's simple obfuscations were patronizing. Bill Clinton was the lone Democratic master of low-information signaling — a love of McDonald's and other assorted big-gulp appetites gave him credibility that even trumped his evasion of military service.

The audacity of the Obama campaign was the belief that in a time of trouble... the low-information politics of the past could be tossed aside in favor of a high-minded, if deliberately vague, appeal to the nation's need to finally address some huge problems. But that assumption hit a wall in Pennsylvania. Specifically, it hit a wall at the debate staged by ABC News in Philadelphia — viewed by an audience of 10 million, including a disproportionate number of Pennsylvanians — that will go down in history for the relentless vulgarity of its questions, with the first 40 minutes focused exclusively on so-called character issues rather than policy. Obama was on the defensive from the start, but gradually the defensiveness morphed into bitter frustration. He kept his cool — a very presidential character trait — and allowed his disdain to show only when he was asked a question about his opponent's Bosnia gaffe. "Senator Clinton deserves the right to make some errors once in a while," he said. "What's important is to make sure that we don't get so obsessed with gaffes that we lose sight of the fact that this is a defining moment in our history."...

[Obama's] point, and Bill Clinton's, is indisputable: there is a need for a big election this year...
But Obama is going about it the wrong way. "After 14 long months," he said in his concession speech, "it's easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit for tat that consumes our politics..." What's wrong with that, you might ask? It's too abstract, too detached. Too often, Obama has seemed unwilling to get down in the muck and fight off the "distractions" that are crippling his campaign. Obviously, this is strategy — his appeal has been the promise of a politics of civility (and as a black man, he wants to send low-information signals that he is neither angry nor threatening). But what if, after ABC had enabled the smarmy American-flag-pin question from an "average citizen," Obama had taken on George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson directly, "Why aren't you guys wearing pins? Why isn't Hillary?" Indeed, this was Clinton's strategy in an earlier debate, upbraiding her questioners from MSNBC — and it may have turned the tide in her favor in Ohio and Texas.

Another article (this time on the division within the Democratic Party between those with a post-secondary education and those without and, in general, about demographics) by David Brooks here.

Regarding the Wright controversy (which I still don't understand how people so far removed from the situation as to never having attended an African American church or trying to understand the ideas and justifications for the Black Power movement can even begin to condemn - not to mention the fact that many conservative White pastors say largely the same thing [Pat Robertson, for example] for different reasons), Bill O'Reilly and Newt Gingrich are still continuing to drag that cat out and toe and extol the Fox News Party Line. I was bothered by the fact that, on "The Daily Show", Jon Stewart pretty much let Newt have his ridiculous and racially-ignorant say. Yet Hillary Clinton, on O'Reilly's own Fear-Mongering Factor, pretty much put him in check and played him like an accordion.

Don't get me twisted. Obama all the way. He'd still be the best option for this country, especially in terms of our international appeal. And that is absolutely crucial during this time of the so-called War on Terror. Strengthening our ties and the livelihood of developing nations throughout the world will make our job easier, as it will be harder to recruit new blood to the terrorists cause, because there will be nothing to justify that way of life/death/killing. His reluctance to support a federal gas-tax is also promising (even if it's political suicide) that his plans for the future are sustainable; that we should stop worrying about the rising cost of energy and instead start thinking about changing how we do things (cf., this Stephen Colbert interview with James Howard Kunstler).

But it just may be the more politically savvy (if not exactly trust-worthy) Clintons who may win the fight against the McCain power play.

Sadly.

h/t for the Time and Times articles to Scot McKnight

oh. And there's this:

Weekly Links We Like to Link to - Kansas, Hippies, and Early-Early Education

• Carry On, Wayward Synthesizer. A ten year old girl plays everything but the vocals at a keyboard recital. Better, I must say, than even I would at my advanced age.
  

• Our planet. Our resources. Our present. Our future. Our grandchildren's future. Their grandchildren's future. Too much to change. Not enough time to get it right now. Why should we bother? (NYT. May require registration. h/t to Scot McKnight.)

Some choice selections:

For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do...

Wendell Berry... argued that the environmental crisis of the 1970s... was at its heart a crisis of character and would have to be addressed first at that level: at home, as it were. He was impatient with people who wrote checks to environmental organizations while thoughtlessly squandering fossil fuel in their everyday lives — the 1970s equivalent of people buying carbon offsets to atone for their Tahoes and Durangos. Nothing was likely to change until we healed the “split between what we think and what we do.”...

For Berry, the deep problem standing behind all the other problems of industrial civilization is “specialization,”... Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: we’re producers (of one thing) at work, consumers of a great many other things the rest of the time, and then once a year or so we vote as citizens. Virtually all of our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another — our meals to agribusiness, health to the doctor, education to the teacher, entertainment to the media, care for the environment to the environmentalist, political action to the politician.

As Adam Smith and many others have pointed out, this division of labor has given us many of the blessings of civilization. Specialization is what allows me to sit at a computer thinking about climate change. Yet this same division of labor obscures the lines of connection — and responsibility — linking our everyday acts to their real-world consequences, making it easy for me to overlook the coal-fired power plant that is lighting my screen, or the mountaintop in Kentucky that had to be destroyed to provide the coal to that plant, or the streams running crimson with heavy metals as a result.

• Some of these ideas have been flowing through my head for the last year (regardless of the fact that I now have a daughter that we are trying to raise well and intelligently). The Chicago Tribune has an article about recent childhood development findings and the value of early intervention for toddlers and pre-schoolers. It's worth a read and reminds me of Jonathan Kozol's contention that middle- and upper-class kids will always have a clear (and, to be honest, unfair) advantage over their poorer counterparts because they will have received intense education from an early age, whereas most minority and poor students in the US will enter school largely unaware of the relationships of letters, social relationships, or certainly the process of schooling.

My side of the argument is that we need to give parents the tools to raise their children right. The more we take kids away from the parents of the poor, the more that raising children will become the government's (and teachers') jobs. And that is a disservice to everyone involved.

It's Earth Day. Please Don't Eat Our Planet.

The Golden Arrow.

Click here if the file above doesn't work. h/t to Eugene Cho.

Speaking of stuff and our wanton buying and wasting of massive amounts of ultimately and quickly disposable crap, I was thinking of what to do with that Jumpstart-the-Economy check that most of us will be getting in about a month or so and what to do with it. The design of this waste of taxpayers' future selves (and, yes, our children's and grandchildren's too) is to give us more money so that we may spend more money, so that our businesses will once again flourish and again, us with them. That would make a lot of sense... if you had a third grade education.

But neither our economy, nor businesses, nor international corporations work as simple as that anymore - if they ever did. But this is not the time nor the place to launch into another tirade about how our "goods" are manufactured overseas and how such a disproportionate percentage of the profits from the purchase of said "goods" goes to a small percentage of overly-wealthy executives who most likely won't funnel the money back to the US either. Yeah, not the time.

But this is what I suggest that we do (and I'm hoping to persuade my wife of this. Not that she'd be against it. I just haven't brought it up yet [the worst way to blog, btw]): Use those 600, 1200 or so dollars and start climbing ourselves out of debt. Because the money that is being thrown away on debt is really a cornerstone issue of why we are in so much financial trouble to begin with. Not only is our economy based on the theory and practices of consumption, but it has become a victim of consumption. Our monies and resources are being used up and spit out into the great flaming garbage piles of the world.

So, maybe, while we're waiting for that little bonus check to come in (really, a parody of what a losing CEO of a Fortune 500 would get in a dreadful year) we should contemplate how we can begin consuming (and throwing away, and polluting, and destroying our economy and thinking) less and how we can contribute more to a more sustainable (right, the buzz word right now) way of living and doing things.

My God, I'm starting to sound like a hippie.

Happy Days Are Here Again

1)
Suicide rates in the US Army are at a high. A 26 year high. That's since shortly after Vietnam, early in the Reagan years, during the height of the Cold War.

That's when I was in school, learning to jump underneath my desk to protect me from the almost inevitable nuclear blast and its radioactive after-effects.

Last year, there was "a significant relationship between suicide attempts and the number of days deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops were participating in the war effort," according to the Washington Post article.

Now, only a quarter of the suicides (about 100 in all) were of those deployed in Iraq. But still, the growing strains this is taking on our military, our troops, our economy (the cost is gAstronomically high to maintain this effort), not to mention the cost we've battered on the Iraqis... I just think it all adds up to one enumeration:

Get our troops out now!

But, that's just my opinion. (How about Iraqi bloggers? They have opinions. too, interestingly enough.)

2)
You know, despite all the hoopla, I was just not caring either for or against President Hugo Chavez. In some respects, honestly, I at least admired his chutzpah, standing up against big oil consumerist America while selling it big oil.

But this new call to end term-limits for Venezuelan presidents is... familiar. Like I've heard these words before: "It's not that I want to enthrone myself"... "This is a transfer of power to the people"... private property owners risked confiscation if their operations "damaged" communities... Critics charge that by creating federal districts and giving new power to the communal councils, the populist president seeks to bypass governors and mayors and extend his personal power.

Yeah, Cuba and China all over again. Not to mention countless Central American and African despot rulers who started out with similar people-based promises.

Thank God this one's rule is over in eight years.

3)
Idjits. Gotta love 'em. And their vote.


In The Know: Candidates Compete For Vital Idgit Vote