i've heard it said: these are not the acts of good people

i've heard it said: these are not the acts of good people
is it
something we can capture this essence of existence
it is a question
without an answer 
remember that stoic kant as he wrote about imperatives
analytic and synthetic
a priori 드드드드 dadadada
manifestations of mental trips
so who's concerned about falling down
stairs and ladders and firemen and bopping 
wars in the streets plundered a port  a post
eriori far  aday -electric the big b & brass
off such dark little-blue_lines
a year ago - who remembers
memories of mimiiics - oh -
mimicry - hush - 0b0 ; it' si ' oh - him/of course
dead - the country
biomimicry everything dead
blues removed distance outside
present, but we all must know - no - now - it good 
             of the damned usele s s points
important one of the most
important d's the big D's that 's
so wasted in the european world             of education
we {'ve} all heard it @lynchinredgood
stand up b   ow out was woke
methods of mannerisms
that IS the sense of hearing we know of from our illustrious
natural wizards
leading the operational
charge camouflage
pattern design industrious victorious
merit merit merit! what great word chants ^ tariff*3! isysysay with exclamatory magnificence
magnanimous malevolence reveng(e)nce
everybody rejoice
signature ~ the very best ~ and that other is so bad
lousy ledgerers
big problem death up there in ladderterritory 
SHOO u̷n̷h̷i̷n̷g̷e̷d̷ ̷t̷h̷r̷e̷a̷t̷s̷ fears upris{ign}  ting
war at wards municipality 
faroffborders impervious laughnolaugh silence @ incompetent
big blue cities
fire men!women! where are the heroes of my childhood
indecent at lasting = fasting Ю путин 
nor strange remorse
loyalty fealty senility
some say, at least that,
's what i heard
                     say   

The Affordable Care Act: Back to Reality

Nine Republican Wisconsin State legislators are threatening to arrest any federal officials who try to implement a federal health insurance exchange in the state.  This development prompted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial staff to declare, "What's next: Firing on Fort Sumter?"

Evidently that's just what the next step is intended to be.  Yet even ultra-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia knows better.  "There is no right to secede," Scalia recently wrote.

Gov. Walker finally announced his administration will not be presiding over the implementation of a health exchange for Wisconsin because for one he's against it and two it will cost Wisconsinites too much.  The specific details on how the exchange would cost Wisconsin more than not having them is unclear and diametrically opposed to what the intention of the exchanges is designed to be.  The exchanges are supposed to be designed to save buyers of insurance money by providing more choices to access.

Similar exchanges are currently used by public employees through the Employee Trust Fund (ETF) in Wisconsin. Through the ETF, public employees choose an insurance plan that fits their needs and based on the contributions they would like to make.

It seems obvious that all citizens of Wisconsin should have access to a similar exchange. 

While concern over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is understandable given the nation's inherent distrust of monarchical rule, the ACA is anything but a government takeover of health care.  In fact it is more or less a buy-in to private insurers.

A look at the finer points of the law clearly illustrate how the whole framework of the law is based on conservative and capitalist notions including the provision that everyone buys in.  The so-called individual mandate holds every citizen responsible for his/her own health insurance.  The individual mandate is an attempt to stop people from not purchasing insurance only to show up sick in an emergency room with no way of paying for care.

Although many people may dread the idea of being encouraged toward buying health insurance in lieu of a cash penalty, the people who shouldn't be complaining about the individual mandate are those who agreed with Mitt Romney that there are certain people who don't pay for services.  Likewise, emergency room professionals know all too well the sheer numbers of people who carry no insurance yet expect emergency care.  The ACA's individual mandate hopes to lessen that problem which in turn could lower health care costs.

Below I've tried to highlight some key provisions in the ACA:

Stage 1 (in effect now)
• Outlaws worst health insurance abuses including denials based on preexisting conditions for children (adults in 2014).
• New standards for insurance, such as allowing young adults to stay on parents policies until they are 26.

Stage 2 (goes into effect 2014)
• Expand BadgerCare (Medicaid) to almost all low income Wisconsinites.
• Create competitive health marketplace to guarantee coverage to everyone who does not have good insurance at work.
• Require Members of Congress to buy the same plans offered to everyone else in the new marketplace.
• Strengthen Medicare for Seniors.

 Stage 1 Reforms:
Insurance Practices Outlawed now under the Affordable Care Act
• Preexisting condition exclusions (kids now/everyone in 2014) (see below for a list of preexisting conditions)
• Lifetime limits
• Dropping coverage after a person gets sick
• Excessive insurance industry profits and overhead (80-85% of your premium dollars must be spent on medical care, not profits)

The Affordable Care Act guarantees
• Preventive care coverage (ex: Mammograms, checkups, etc) with no cost sharing (co-pays, deductibles, etc)
• Young adults can stay on parents policies until age 26
• Preventive care without cost sharing for seniors on Medicare

Health insurance companies hold the right to deny any coverage for people who may have been diagnosed under previous care with any one of the following medical conditions.  These are called Preexisting Conditions and this list is not exhaustive:
• Diabetes
• Arthritis
• Heart Disease
• Obesity
• Asthma
• Cancer
• Stroke
• High Blood Pressure
• Hypertension
• Stress disorders
• High cholesterol
• Kidney disease
• Alcohol and drug abuse
• Hepatitis
• ADHD
• Adjustment disorders
• HIV/AIDS
• Alzheimer’s
• Angina (Chest Pain)
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• Pancreatitis
• Dermatomyositis
• Emotional disturbances
• Emphysema (Lung disease)
• Major organ transplant

Sami’s Story
“My 7-year-old son, Sami, suffers from a disease that causes tumors to grow all over his body. Sami’s treatments could not continue if we hit our insurance policy’s life time limit. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies can no longer impose lifetime limits or deny health coverage to children like Sami with preexisting conditions. We can’t go back to being on our own against the insurance companies.”
--Tracy, Appleton, Wisconsin

Remy’s Story
“I own a small café. Over 20 years ago I beat cancer, but ever since then no insurance company would sell me a policy because my cancer is called a preexisting condition. Starting in 2014 under the Affordable Care Act, no insurance company will be allowed to discriminate against me because I’m a cancer survivor.”
--Remy, Pepin, Wisconsin  

BBC Captures the Brutality of Extreme Right Hate Groups in Poland and Ukraine ahead of Euro 2012

This is a broadcast called Stadiums of Hate recently released by the BBC. Reporter Chris Rogers and cameraman Jon Hillyer present video and commentary after witnessing devastatingly nefarious acts of extreme racism, abuse, antisemitism, and barbaric violence. Sol Campbell advises not to attend the football matches but instead watch from home.
The new radical right movement in Ukraine and Poland paints a worse than ugly picture of what we very well could see develop here in the States. The footage captured by the BBC in the buildup to Euro 2012 is shocking and brutal. The new great (as in widespread and massive not as in good or beneficial) movement of our time is a call to nativism and nationalism. And it's scary stuff. The interviews and chantings are chilling, the video footage purely wicked and reprehensible.

If the video below doesn't work, try here.

Panorama - Euro 2012 Stadiums of Hate from Rosiboj on Vimeo.

Frightening glimpses of what could be at Euro 2012. Now extend the imagination just a bit.

Just imagine if this type of violent movement were to spread to America, if it has not already, where there are more guns than people. It's more likely than many of us wish to acknowledge. Investigate similar hate groups in the US by visiting the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Cultivating Fear in America: Human Rights Watch

Grace Meng and fellow researchers at Human Rights Watch have published a report detailing the widespread abuse of immigrant women in the farming industry. The jobs themselves entail enduring harsh physical conditions and just down right tough work. For women the report details the additional stress of rampant threats, and fear mongering, and outright physical abuse, sexual harassment and rape.

The report also indicates that many of the women never report the crimes for fear of reprisal, deportation, and lack of support.

The report concludes with detailed actions we can take to help.  Recommended actions include encouraging Congress to pass the Senate version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization bill (S. 1925) or similar legislation that strengthens the U-visa and other protections for immigrant victims of sexual violence, including farm-worker women and girls.

Ron Johnson voted against this legislation.

The bill passed the House rather sheepishly with bitter partisan division and only after impassioned testimony by representatives like Gwen Moore.

Rep. Gwen Moore (D) of Wisconsin recounts her own history of
being sexually assaulted as a child, then raped as a young woman,
at a press conference on Capitol Hill to push for an unrestricted
reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act on May 16.

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP PHOTO

Find this invaluable and disturbing report about female immigrant farmhands here.

Rick Santorum's moral delusions

Here's an article that cuts to the heart of all of this nonsensical conservatism. Thank you, Steve Chapman.

Where's the evidence of a 'decaying culture'?
January 08, 2012|Steve Chapman

Why is Rick Santorum running for president? Because America is in trouble and he knows why.

Faith and family are under attack. "Moral relativism," he warns, is breeding "aberrant behavior." Gay rights advocates are bent on "secularization." Liberals have brought about a "decaying culture."

Santorum insists that gay marriage will destroy the family, "the very foundation of our country." Lamenting the scandal of pedophile priests, he wrote in a Catholic publication: "When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

It's a familiar line of argument among religious conservatives, and it has the virtues of clarity, simplicity and plausibility. But there is one notable weakness in his case: a mass of evidence that amounts to a thunderous refutation.
Santorum takes it for granted that religious belief, at least of the Christian variety, is a powerful force for moral behavior. That's not apparent from looking at this country.

He thinks America has been on a downhill slide for many years, thanks to feminism, gay rights, pornography and other vile intruders. But where is the evidence that the developments cited by Santorum are producing harmful side effects?

In the past couple of decades, most indicators of moral and social health have gotten better, not worse. Crime has plummeted. Teen pregnancy has declined by 39 percent. Abortion rates among adolescents are less than half of what they were.
The incidence of divorce is down. As of 2007, 48 percent of high school students had engaged in sex, compared to 54 percent in 1991. What decaying culture is he talking about?

It sounds obvious that when people practice a religion that preaches strong morality and responsible conduct, they will behave better than people who follow their own inclinations. But what is obvious is not always true.

America is a good place to judge the value of faith in promoting virtue. There is a great deal of variation among the 50 states in religious observance — and a great deal of variation in social ills. It turns out that religiosity does not translate into good behavior, and disregard for religion does not go hand-in-hand with vice. Quite the contrary.

Consider homicide, which is not only socially harmful but a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Mississippi has the highest rate of church attendance in America, according to a Gallup survey, with 63 percent of people saying they go to church "weekly or almost weekly." But Mississippians are far more likely to be murdered than other Americans.

On the other hand, we have Vermont, where people are the most likely to skip church. Its murder rate is only about one-fourth as high as the rest of the country. New Hampshire, the second-least religious state, has the lowest murder rate.

These are no flukes. Of the 10 states with the most worshippers, all but one have higher than average homicide rates. Of the 11 states with the lowest church attendance, by contrast, 10 have low homicide rates.

Teen pregnancy also tends to follow a course precisely the opposite of what Santorum preaches. Almost every one of the most religious states suffers from more teen pregnancy than the norm — while the least religious ones enjoy less.

What impact does gay marriage have on how kids handle sex? Massachusetts, the first state to legalize it, has less teen pregnancy than the country as a whole.

Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire and Vermont, which have also sanctioned same-sex unions, are also far better than average.

Does gay marriage undermine the health and stability of heterosexual marriage? Not so you can tell. Massachusetts has the nation's lowest divorce rate. Iowa and Connecticut are also better than most. Vermont and New Hampshire are about average. In the Bible Belt, by contrast, marriages are generally more prone to break up.
Santorum presents himself as a man of faith who insists on confronting stark facts that many people would rather ignore. In fact, in his indictment of tolerance, individual conscience, sexual freedom and secular morality, he is not telling truths but spinning sanctimonious fairy tales. American culture is not sick, and Santorum is no healer.

Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board.
schapman@tribune.com

Recall Walker!

Slowly rowing down the river of life

It's a modern day mystery how some people conservatively cling to notions of antiquity known as mythology.  Religious myths will eventually lead to the third world war.

As our minds erode into paranoid ideological pictures of good and evil, our religions alienate and divide us with purely fictional dogma.

Who's Government Funded?; More Shared Sacrifice: Students Bear Burden; Jury's out for Professors; Massive Debt? Thank GW Bush; Bluffing out Confessions

It's hard to tell which party represents the average workers and which party receives the average workers' votes. It's a bit mind boggling when a 57 year old disabled veteran on Social Security, receiving Veteran's Insurance, and receiving meals-on-wheels votes republican. That's called voting against one's own self-interest and it happens all of the time especially since many of the folks who benefit from government social programs don't believe that they are receiving government assistance.

Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University found precisely that. In "Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era" Mettler uncovered that large percentages of people receiving government assistance actually believed it was not government assistance (e.g. the guy with the "Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare).  Turns out that's not so rare.

===========================================================

So we're all in this together.  That's true if "together" has semantically shifted and now means the poor are screwed.  The burden of the sacrifices pushed for in Washington by the tea baggers and republicans are again targeted at a minority class who receive assistance that accounts for a negligible amount of government spending: graduate students.

Even though the Prez wants more access to higher education, he's willing to waive the nominal amounts spent by the fed on interest accrued on graduate student loans as part of the cuts in the recent debt discussions and compromise.  Even though Pres. Obama seemingly fought with little effort, these cuts are purely republican reductions.  Republicans are forced to cut to any social programs that benefit citizens because they are unwilling to raise more revenue or cut military spending.  The cuts to student aid will save the government $18 billion over the next ten years.  And it will mean graduate students will be spending a lot more time at their parents' homes.  Another very good reason why parents of graduate students should be voting against republicans.

===========================================================

Also in higher education, a new study found that socioeconomic equity in America is but a myth.  The evidence is in the pudding of elite colleges and universities.

For many years the one thing America really had going for it, one advantage over the rest of the world, was the higher education sector.  Poor, rich, minority, majority - the level playing ground was the university setting.  That is quickly evaporating.  The costs associated with higher education are rising making equity in higher education a thing of the past.

===========================================================

Evidently professors are too liberal to serve as jurors and the Nevada Supreme Court agrees. 

===========================================================

Thanks to Lori Montgomery for this article devoted to the causes of our current debt crisis.  If there are people you know who think Obama is responsible for the mess we're in, get them a copy of this article; it's more articulate than anything in the Wisconsin State Journal.

===========================================================

Almost last but not least is this fascinating study on false confessions.  Saul Kassin and Jennifer Perillo of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice instructed a group of university students that they were taking part in a test of their reaction times.  The students were asked to press keys on a keyboard but not to push the ALT key because depressing the ALT key would cause the computer to crash and all of the data to be lost.

The computer, in fact, was designed to crash no matter which keys were pushed.  When this happened, the student was accused of pushing the illicit key.  When prodded to confess, a quarter of the students confessed to pushing the error causing button when in actuality only one student had pushed the ALT button.

"Results suggest that the phenomenology of innocence can lead innocents to confess even in response to relatively benign interrogation tactics."

============================================================

Religion, terrorism, and name calling

Contradictions are interesting.  We all have them.  Perhaps you know someone who is anti-abortion but cheers when a missile strike destroys a convoy in Afghanistan carrying innocent people as well as a suspected terrorist.  Or someone who claims to be a Christian and yet lives a life of sheer excess.  Perhaps you know someone who lays claim to atheism yet won't step on a crack for fear of damaging his/her mother's back.

All of these instances are contradictory to the core belief system.  The mistake that is often made when contradictions such as these are observed is to label any of the people who practice them as hypocrites. Name calling is a convenience meant to eliminate any necessity to understand something in greater detail.  The easiest action to perform is to label something by naming it.  The act of naming something implies that there is understanding of that thing.  By calling the people who commit suicide bombing attacks "terrorists" and "evil" the government instills in the public opinion a certain level of understanding.  The public associates these groups as malevolent in reaction to the names themselves assigned to the entities.  The larger problem with this type of propaganda is that for many people there is no further investigation to uncover why or the underlying reasons for people to use themselves as weapons of destruction. 

What is an act of terrorism anyway?  If the US or one of its allies kills a thousand innocent civilians, is it an act of terrorism?  What is meant by the concept of evil?  Is invading a sovereign nation evil?  Is it evil to kill someone without cause?  These are nebulous terms and the meanings can shift from one person to the next or depending on which country is carrying out the action.  So understanding them is arbitrary.


God and the religious
One objection to the argument that a benevolent god exists is the presence of terrible unnecessary suffering of innocent life in the world, or what is commonly referred to as the problem of evil (here's that thorny concept yet again).  H.L. Mencken once said, "[y]ou can never underestimate a human being."  Imagine the most malicious action, crime, or offense someone could perform and you'll find thousands who have and thousands who have committed much worse crimes against humanity and/or against nature - many times in the name of religion. 

The religionist has no explanation for this.  What's surprising is how many Christian apologists use the same tactic to address the problem of unnecessary suffering.  They try to explain away the problem by describing god as having a motive for allowing innocents to suffer that's so utterly complicated we mortals cannot possibly understand.  It's an absolutely disastrous counterargument because the whole premise of Christianity, and Judaism and Islam, is to develop a "relationship" with the Lord.  It seems to be a daunting obstacle to not understand why an omnipotent, omnipresent, benevolent super-being would allow the hideous crimes of mass genocides, fraternicides, rape, child molestation, torture, senseless acts of brutality, the slow death of malnutrition, etc. when this omnipotent creature could blink and the level of pain reduced substantially without much impact on our relationships with it.

Just a slight reduction in the amount of pain that innocent people suffer through wouldn't create too much of a problem, would it?  People could still have an option to choose to love god or not.  But unfortunately this doesn't happen.  The only cases where pain and suffering have been diminished is when people intervene, many times religionists but not predominately so and definitely not exclusively.   

In this case the fact that so often the counterargument to the problem of unnecessary suffering is of the same nature from a variety of people is an indication that some very effective indoctrination is taking place.  Obviously philosophers and thinkers far more intelligent than the writer of this entry have thought about these issues and argued over these issues for hundred of years.  They came up with a pat answer that has been passed down form generation to generation without much question.   Through a sleight-of-hand naming trick religionists are playing the same game as politicians using the words "terrorist" and "evil". 

(The most interesting position that I have heard was from a Muslim who argued that allah is everything.  Allah is wicked and good.  But Allah never promises to be only benevolent.  Interestingly from that standpoint there may as well be no allah or god because a supernatural being becomes irrelevant.  On the other hand, if there is a god that creates suffering, there's no guarantee that the afterlife will be pleasurable.  It is just as likely that eternity will be filled with torment.)   

The answer to the problem of evil doesn't address the problem with any further level of understanding.  Using "god" and "evil" and the "nature of god" as concepts that have no pinned down definition causes inconsistencies that cannot be reconciled.  These concepts in the end exist as arbitrary notions without value and without meaning.  What god wants becomes devoid of any actual significance because god becomes an unknowable conceptual device.

This all begs the question: What's the problem with there being no god?  It might straighten out a lot of conflict in the world if people just accepted the idea that religion is myth.  Then we can get on with tackling the real problems that our children are going to inherit from us if they live that long. 

Let's stop arguing and fussing about this god or that god and this religion or that religion.  Let's be rid of the whole idea altogether.   Perhaps then we can address the tangible issues like the environmental devastation people are inflicting on the Earth, the inequality of wealth, education, justice, and health in the US and globally.  Afterall, a stitch in time saves nine.

Marx called religion the opiate of the masses.  It's time to get rid of one of civilization's sedatives, plenty others left.  Get rid of religion and go get involved in the real world.

So let's all get involved.  If you have any ideas on how to get more involved in addressing our global problems, please post them online.  Let's get the ball rolling by getting rid of one cause for so much division and war.

Some places to start: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/getinvolved/
http://www.kiva.org/about/microfinance
http://www.house-of-love.org/
http://www.bbbs.org/site/c.9iILI3NGKhK6F/b.5962335/k.BE16/Home.htm

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An Alternative to Competition

In a later blog entry, I will set out an argument for why competition is actually harming innovation and productivity.  But in today's entry, I'd just like to post a brief word about it.

There is a plausible alternative to competition in a classroom setting.  That is cooperation and collaboration.  Rather than calling on one person to answer a question, call on groups to answer questions.  A teacher ought to inspire a hunger for learning and a desire to solve problems by communicating with others.  It's a positive approach that can become effective with practice and will instill longer retention rates.  Teaching should revolve around authentic learning experiences not fabricated examinations. 

Are religious fundamentalists damaging public education?

In 1989, Wisconsin passed Wisconsin Act 336 that established the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP).  Wisconsin was the first state to offer parents a choice of either staying at a public school or taking a voucher in order to pay for private education.  The program had its participation capped at 15% of the population of Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). The legislation set up a voucher program for low income families at 175% the national poverty level or below to attend non-sectarian private schools.  In the 2010-2011 school year, 20,996 students (based solely on 3rd Friday head count) were enrolled in 102 participating schools that were predominantly religious. 

Studies have indicated that voucher programs do not achieve statistically better results than their public school competitors.  According to the Department of Public Instruction, the WSAS results are worse than MPS's. At the same time, they are sapping needed money away from MPS.  At best the research and current literature are inconclusive about consistent results.  And data does not track students from the time they enroll to the time they leave.     

Funding
Every year, funding for the next year is based on the 3rd Friday head count.  Private schools collect their vouchers based on this count.  Invariably, teachers in MPS prepared for the 4th, 5th, and 6th weeks of the school year because then there would be a sudden surge in enrollment.  This practice takes place every year in every MPS school.

The students that arrive later in the year are welcomed to secular public classrooms that cost them no additional money.  At the same time, if the student had been kicked out of a private voucher school, the school keeps the $6,700 that the MPCP had paid as part of the 3rd Friday count.  The best data would trace the student from the beginning of the year until the end of the year regardless of mobility.     

This funding structure leads to a plethora of problems for MPS.  In my eight years as an elementary and middle school teacher at two different schools, it was rare to have a text book for each child.  We made do; we learned to share.  In order to ensure there was paper in the classroom, teachers asked parents to make  donations, still teachers paid out of pocket for most supplies, even in the high-achieving, effectively run schools.  As the population of voucher students rises each year this funding scenario grows worse for MPS.

The funding for many of the institutions that receive vouchers is also much higher because they charge tuition and have wealthy contributors.  The type of investment that the billionaires in the religious right have made on private schools is the type of investment that should be made in every school for every child.  Private voucher schools have intensified income inequality in education.  Conservative fundamentalists are pushing the voucher agenda all over the country selling it as reform that works.  In Milwaukee, the lobbying by religious groups swayed the debate and by 1998 private religious schools were added to the list of participating private schools.  Now rather than tax dollars designated for public education, the money goes to religious education.

Parental Involvement
When Howard Fuller became a strong advocate for MPCP, he leaned hard on the idea that it was a way to get parents involved with their children's education.  The main message to parents was and is that they should have a choice.  One of the lead cheerleaders for MPCP in Wisconsin is Leah Vukmir.  "The voucher program has caused dramatic improvement in the public schools," Vukmir explained. "As a result of choice and competition, there are more opportunities for students."  The biggest problem with this idea is that the programs provide opportunities for a small percentage of the student population whose parent(s) were already highly involved in the child's life.  In many cases these are students who would perform equally well had they attended their local neighborhood school.  Thus, the voucher program removes high achieving students from public schools.  As a result test scores at MPS schools drop and achievement overall drops because high achieving students often act as the role models at the school.

Special Education Needs (SEN)
Private institutions are under no mandate to provide individual education programs (IEP) for students with special needs (SEN).  Because of this many students do not receive the services they would had they attended a public school.  What does happen is that, for example, speech therapists by law are required to provide services.  A student who is not registered at the MPS school where a speech therapist works, but is instead enrolled at a private institution, may still receive services from that speech therapist.  When the therapist could be spending time with students that are actually enrolled in his/her school, the therapist m,ust attend to the needs of the private school student.  Not only is this a disservice to the members of the public school, but it also means that taxpayers are paying for services in addition to the voucher.

As the voucher cap increases, the results will be that MPS will become the school district for all of the challenging kids that get kicked out of the private schools.  Eventually the population in MPS will be entirely of those students who can't afford private schools, don't have parents who are involved in the decision making, or don't function well in the traditional educational setting.   

Focus of Teaching
Additionally, the focus at schools is increasingly about competition.  The competition is only comparable in data - test scores.  So, everyone is preparing for testing, all year long.  The authentic learning experience will no longer exist if education becomes driven by the capitalist notion that competition leads to improvement.  This is an obvious obfuscation but regardless, in education competition leads nowhere.  Students need to learn how to work together in order to solve problems rather than vying against each other.  Cooperation and collaboration ought to become far more important skills than competition.

While all of the finagling over money and cap limits is taking place, sectarian schools are quietly taking tax dollars and teaching children biblical myths; some go so far as to to teach that the bible is the word of god, that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that evolution is not science-based but only a hypothetical theory.  To many forward-minded people, the idea that our tax dollars are funding children to be proselytized would be hard to accept and unfathomable in a developed country, after all this is not Saudi Arabia.  But the religious right have successfully focused the attention on the failing public school system not on the content or learning provided by the private religious schools.

The religious right have dominated the debate and are succeeding in forcing their agenda on parents, especially in urban districts.  The cost of all of this is that public education is being damaged irrevocably.  The gap in educational attainment between the poor and the wealthy is increasing and vouchers contribute to that crisis. 

What do you think?  Are religious fundamentalists damaging public education?

                                     ==============================================
Read more about it and decide for yourself:
http://dpi.wi.gov/sms/choice.html

http://dpi.wi.gov/oea/mpcp/results.html

http://www.newcoalition.org/Article.cfm?artId=18915

http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED462502.pdf

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5512/as_milwaukees_economy_fails_how_can_public_schools_succeed/        

http://www.scsba.org/voices/Milwaukee%20Voucher%20Program%20Info.pdf

http://www.progressive.org/rc032911.html

http://thirdcoastdigest.com/2011/05/walkers-expansion-of-school-choice-moves-forward/

David Prosser Sucks, Leah Vukmir Blows

I was recently reminded of an episode from Family Guy in which Lois Griffin runs for mayor of a small town. At first she provides detailed and well considered answers to questions.  She explains everything very thoroughly, and bores the pants off the townspeople.  Her son then explains to her that the undecided voters are the dumbest in the country.  So she resorts to short answers often non-sequiturs, such as “9/11” and “terrorists”.  She easily wins the election.

Sound bites rule the information age.  The essential ability to possess today is agility – the ability to react quickly, what Bill Gates calls “velocity”.  Gathering sound bites means putting our celebrities on the spot, getting them to say something that could be misconstrued, and then applying a snippet of what they said as a general principle describing them. 

How a reporter frames his/her questions is more important than prior research and preparation for an interview.  Let’s say you want to interview David Prosser.  And you want to be able to come up with a catchy way to characterize him without getting yourself sued.  So you frame the question.   

“(Former) Justice Prosser, let’s say you have a soda and you want to drink it through a straw, what would you need to do in order to get the soda up through the straw and into your mouth?”

“I don’t understand the relevance of that question.  What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, sir, it’s just to loosen things up.  What do you do? Do you suck on the straw?"

“Sure, I suck.  That is how you utilize a straw.”  And now Mr. Prosser has provided us with great fodder for a sound bite just by a little editing.  Like this, “David Prosser admits he sucks.  The verdict is in, David Prosser sucks.”

Another method of gathering sound bites is to ask questions and deduce the answers.  In this method you may not get a precise match but you can reconfigure your conversation to arrive at the conclusion you had predicted.

“Ms. Vukmir, do you know how to whistle?”

“Excuse me, well, sure”

“I don’t, could you tell me how?”

“Put your lips together and blow.”

“Is that what you do to whistle?”

“Yes, I do.” 

“So, do you blow?”   

“Excuse me?”

“Thank you, Ms. Vukmir”  

And thus we have the sound bite we need.  “The stunning report that Leah Vukmir admits she blows.”

This is quite a useful propaganda tool that has been exploited for years by dictators and corporations as advertising.  The ruthless nature of propaganda has been utilized, especially since the First World War, by various cultures for various reasons.   In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler explains in great detail how to manipulate the populace using propaganda.   As R.W. Jepson explains in Clear Thinking:

“Such an ambitious, far-reaching aim could only be accomplished by seizing and monopolizing all the means for the dissemination of propaganda—platform, hoarding, press, radio and cinema: and once in undisputed possession of all these, Hitler proceeded to turn on and keep running a steady and constant stream. 

He tells us himself the ways in which he hoped to achieve his end, and they can be briefly summarised thus:

(1) driving home by endless repetition, a few simple points, and using catchy slogans or war-cries;

(2) playing on the herd instinct, and appealing always to groups or to the mass—never to individuals;

(3) avoiding rational argument, and concentrating on securing instinctive reactions, especially to the primary feeling of fear.”

 With the incredibly vast amounts of money pouring into political races these days, it will become more and more difficult to find substantive debates or discussions.  Instead we will hear more about “socialism” and “higher taxes is stealing” and “public employees are getting rich off of you, the taxpayer” and “glass doesn’t need to be recycled, there’s sand everywhere”, etc.

So, grab your hats and cover your mouths folks, campaign mode is all day every day all year long.