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People unknowingly voted against their self interests last year…thinking their interests were about abortion gays and guns.
Little did they know they were voting against their real interests (their children’s future).
I can only hope we can turn the tide soon, or this country will fall further into the arms of despair.
Posted by robin on Nov 26, 2005 at 8:50 AM
No surprise that they (we) vote against our own interests. We are the least educated and least informed population in the free world. Our once independant media now keep us distracted with runaway wives, missing beauty queens, car chases and “reality” TV, our educational system is underfunded and under attack by fundamentalists who see education as a threat to religion.
Even so, Bush lost the last two elections, first put into office by a supreme court decision that itself violated the law, after “winning” Florida through purging voter lists and intimidating vote counters with shipped in protesters, and four years later with the help of computerized paperless voting machines, throwing out 90,000 absentee ballots, throwing out 100,000 thousand registrations printed on the wrong card stock, holding back voting machines in democratic districts to supress the vote, and many other illegal and immoral tactics, all documented and testified to in hearings chaired by congressman John Conyers and available to all who care to read them.
Posted by Kenneth D. Brown on Nov 29, 2005 at 8:52 PM
HURRAY for you, Pete Stark.
Of course, you are completely correct here. The state of the American educational system, its endemic inequality in particular, is threatening our future.
Jan VanDenBerg
Posted by janvdb on Nov 30, 2005 at 9:00 AM
Dear Pete
Who can argue with your case? The policies of the U.S. in the Middle East continue to be calamitous for most of the region and for world harmony. Their toll on America’s already unjust and dysfunctional schools for the poor prolongs the division of this society into corrupted advantaged classes and a hopeless enslaved class.
It has been a long time since anybody outside the Unions can believe that our Democrats promise more justice than the Republicans.
But Pete, what is the case for your religious bigotry? My experience in establishing Head Start and other pre-schools has been that the founders were almost invariably communities of Faith. The best Migrant Head Start network on the East Coast was built by a couple of nuns headquartered in Arlington.
The associations building low-income housing that I have worked with over a lifetime have emerged from Faith communities.
It has not been any derivative of Marxism but a vision of theological Hope that motivated the vast majority of the activists whose initiatives have given schooling, health care and housing to the marginated.
Where I live, the vigorous opposition to the attacks on Iraq has been almost entirely a religious movement.
By what right do you continue the disastrous strategy of impugning their activism and dismissing these people from the ranks of the Democratic Party.
Bush’s theology, like everything else about him, is bush, self-centered, ignorant and disparages the history of Faith. Listen for any memory of Isaiah, Jeremiah, the 9th century prophets, James, Augustine, John of the Cross, Dostoevsky or the rest. Despise his ignorance and indifference. Recoil from his claims to moral acuity. But remember that most of America hears the cry of the poor in religious language and will be enlisted in your war for the children as were the earlier forces against slavery, racial discrimination and labor abuses in formulations sprung from Faith.
Frank
Posted by franko on Nov 30, 2005 at 11:43 AM
Perhaps the Reps don’t consider an investment in education, whether public or college, to be good business.
We invest in enterprises that we think are a) likely to bring us a profit, and b) judged to be acceptable risks.
If the agenda is to elevate the average level of education in the country, the strategy of cutting funding makes no sense. Let me differentiate, by the way, between funding that would go to teachers’ salaries as opposed to money for textbooks and other educational materiel. Paying teachers more, per se, won’t increase the attainments of the youth, and I say that as a teacher myself.
Having said that, if a teacher has to take a second job to make ends meet, it will obviously distract him or her from doing the best job.
Back to strategy. If we didn’t want a highly educated public, because having might actually diminish our potential profitability or lower the market value of our own degrees and qualifications, then cutting funding makes perfect sense.
The question to ask is, who benefits most from these policy decisions? Who is better off in a society where fewer people are critical thinkers or easy learners from text sources? Whose interests are served by making a college education tougher to get? What might those people’s agenda be; their stated agenda but mostly their unstated one.
You invest in the enterprises that you think are in your interest to take a gamble on. Those enterprises that are somehow counter to your interests, you withhold from.
Simple economics. Of course, more than half of economics is psychology, so you can take it from there.
Posted by Kuya on Dec 2, 2005 at 1:25 AM
Yes, ignorance is not bliss, despite former reports.
The same government that determines the minimum wage and the interest rates has elected to be parsimonious with ‘public funds’, chosing to spend them on a war of aggression in the Middle East.
Interestingly, the same policy makers that budget to enhance their own fortunes are in control of the limits set on the low income earners and welfare recipients…if only the poor and their offspring were more sociopathic, they too, could be determining the laws of the land!
Sheesh…workers of the world, unite, eh?
Posted by minerva on Dec 2, 2005 at 4:43 PM
Hi Cannon Fodder…
OK, so this is my own personal worry of the day..
but does anyone else wonder if Darwinsim dictates that the most pedatory among us are the best suited for survival?
You know, the folk that are willing to finance murder to consolidate their own wealth and survival?
You know…the US government, that law enforcement arm of various corporations?
Like the Mafia, but different in that they have an idealistic army of propagandized poor folk to stand behind them and chant ‘Hoo rah’ when they give their speeches…those salaried poor folk that kill people in foreign lands to make the world safer for Capitalism?
( I think about this kind of thing because I was a military brat, so I have no natural affliation to any system but my own gypsy family, lol. Did you notice how my father kept the A bomb from dropping on your heads?....he did air weapon controlling in his spare time, between coaching little league and raising a large family. Now he tells me there was probably no real threat…he never saw any ‘UFO’s” either, in spite of his many years in front of a radar screen….but sometimes the local airforce would test ‘weapons’ at night)
Good thing the average tax payer is getting more utility out of their military by transforming them into low paid mercenaries of Halliburton…
Darwinism? in action
Posted by minerva on Dec 2, 2005 at 5:05 PM
Any Darwinian approach to human society would have to focus upon 1) genocide against competitor nationalities or, if one is too moral to be a genocider, 2) propagation of memes (the idea equivalents of genes) and strengthening them by behavioral example. Of course I think pushing ideas is more the point when dealing with human beings.
For instance, if we rhetorically support protection of rights, a society of fair laws that don’t play favorites among classes or races, personal responsibility for behavior, etc etc, the proper Darwinian approach would be to “plant seeds” verbally and in media and then to nourish them the only way ideas can be nourished, through continued attention and concrete behavior that upholds the idea. To the extent that there’s a conflict between the ideas a person says he holds and the actions he lives out, he cuts the roots away from those ideas and, via his hypocrisy, actually militates against the ideas he says he believes in.
Same goes for the behavior of nations. Do stated values and action harmonize, or undercut each other? If the latter, what does that say about that nation and its values?
Posted by Kuya on Dec 4, 2005 at 9:21 PM
Hence my bitching, lol.
I was innoculated with the virus of human dignity and freedom through the propaganda of my youth, and I watch our news media skate around the kidnapping of foreign nationals, their subsequent torture at local and international jails, all in the name of ‘Democracy’.
Is it really ok for the CIA to act like criminals in the name of the law?
Meanwhile, I buy sweaters for $19.99 at the local stores…even though there are no spinners, mills or garment makers in my area, not to mention breeders of ‘polyesters’, lol.
Darwin had no clue about the sort of nightmare we’d find ourselves in when he was cruising around on the Beagle….
and ‘America’ needs to stop pretending it has the rights on human rights.
Because they weren’t invented here. The seed wasn’t even planted here.
But 200 or so years ago, a couple of guys tried to be idealistic and foisted that obligation on the nation through a few founding documents.
Luckily for you guys though, they only apply to people born in your own latitudes and longitudes…imagine the financial nightmare of giving everyone on the planet those rights?
It’d be a corporate nightmare of wages and pensions and easements.
You might have to close that concentration camp in Cuba if it weren’t for the fact that ‘Democratic rights’ are only conferred on ‘Americans’ ( hey, they barely apply to even you guys…..I watched the Katrina disaster play out, and I wonder about the ‘American’ entitlement , even among your own citizenry. Aren’t you worried?)
What a PR nightmare! What a philosophical quandary!~
Posted by minerva on Dec 5, 2005 at 10:17 PM
Awaiting the behavioural example…..
oh wise ones, lol.
Posted by minerva on Dec 5, 2005 at 10:21 PM
EDUCATION! EDUCATION!
Think about education in this country and how is it a issue of the states. And think of how in most states education is paid by property taxes. Thus the schools in the rich and middle class districts are better funded than those in the lower districts.
At the same time we now know that EDUCATION has a large effect on a persons comittment and knowledge of politics and the political system of the country. By expanding the EDUCATION system to a true equality of opportunity in which schools recieve a per capita value per student thus recieving the same cash value per student and allocating the same amount of dollars to all students EDUCATION can be equalized in a large part.
While some may argue that the rich will just enroll their children in private schools, well yes that might be true, but the proportion of their property taxes that go toward EDUCATION will still go to the public schools and moreover simultaneously all public allocations to private schools will be removed(that is to K-12 public schools will still allocating funds to private universities but with conditions). The force of this will raise the price of private schools dramatically and thus likely put them out of business(yes business they are businesses not schools) and achieve the ultimate goal of integrating students into a sound equal environment.
Now from there the average education an American recieves should increase with the percentage of Americans of all economic levels attending university thus rising dramatically. Upon university study the student becomes more aware of the world around them and the factors that play in our world today and what they could do about it.
The second part of this concept involves the effect this EDUCATION will have on our political system. As the people become better educated(and yes I do endorse a system which would not tolerate drop outs no matter what, thus all Americans becoming at least high school graduates) more persons will realize that the two parties do not offer much too them(as our goals: national health care, ending corporate welfare and crime, etc. usually fall on deaf ears among both parties)and thus increased attention and pressure too these issues which affect inequality will be recieved as the growth of third parties and new ideas grow(I am mainly speaking of the Green party here).
Thanks
If you have any comments questions suggestions on my proposal please submit a response and I will write back to you
Posted by NaderRaider on Dec 6, 2005 at 2:30 AM
Hi minerva,
As for wisdom, I can’t claim any. Hell, I have a hard enough time trying to juggle the complexities of all the stuff that draws my interest.
A shade of ADHD in the genetic mix, ya know…
And as for “behavioral examples” from my country, well, some things I’m proud of America doing, and some I aint. Recently, “aint” is the more frequent sentiment, and in spite of a fairly optimistic habit of thought, I’ve resigned myself to having to wait for the next administration at the soonest for some kind of behavioral examples to show up that would make me smile.
May I ask, are you British? Your spellings and turn of phrase make me ask. If so, like citizens of other rich and powerful countries, you can relate to a little ambivalence regarding your country like I’ve had about mine, yes?
If you’re not British, never mind the silly question.
:-)
Posted by Kuya on Dec 8, 2005 at 2:07 AM
I’m Canadian who has spent about half of my life in the States…so I guess my perspectives are influenced by that circumstance. I am not Anti American…I very much appreciate American ideals, and regret that the present government is besmirching those ideals. I have hope for the furure.
In the mean time, I worry about the imbalances in development and standard of living throughout the world, and wonder how industrializing and consumerizing the planet will affect our childrens future.
I have no special claims to wisdom either, but I have few opportunities for public fretting and speculating and I come here to hear the thoughts of people who are similiarly minded, and who are trying to articulate their concerns about world events.
I guess, thinking of myself as a person with ‘dual citizenship’, I am surprised and worried these days , particularly about lapses in the rule of law and what I think are basic human entitlements ( the Founding philosopher/politicians didn’t call these “Rights” on a whim, I think)
Cheers
I
Posted by minerva on Dec 8, 2005 at 6:53 PM
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Reader Comments
People unknowingly voted against their self interests last year…thinking their interests were about abortion gays and guns.
Little did they know they were voting against their real interests (their children’s future).
I can only hope we can turn the tide soon, or this country will fall further into the arms of despair.
No surprise that they (we) vote against our own interests. We are the least educated and least informed population in the free world. Our once independant media now keep us distracted with runaway wives, missing beauty queens, car chases and “reality” TV, our educational system is underfunded and under attack by fundamentalists who see education as a threat to religion.
Even so, Bush lost the last two elections, first put into office by a supreme court decision that itself violated the law, after “winning” Florida through purging voter lists and intimidating vote counters with shipped in protesters, and four years later with the help of computerized paperless voting machines, throwing out 90,000 absentee ballots, throwing out 100,000 thousand registrations printed on the wrong card stock, holding back voting machines in democratic districts to supress the vote, and many other illegal and immoral tactics, all documented and testified to in hearings chaired by congressman John Conyers and available to all who care to read them.
HURRAY for you, Pete Stark.
Of course, you are completely correct here. The state of the American educational system, its endemic inequality in particular, is threatening our future.
Jan VanDenBerg
Dear Pete
Who can argue with your case? The policies of the U.S. in the Middle East continue to be calamitous for most of the region and for world harmony. Their toll on America’s already unjust and dysfunctional schools for the poor prolongs the division of this society into corrupted advantaged classes and a hopeless enslaved class.
It has been a long time since anybody outside the Unions can believe that our Democrats promise more justice than the Republicans.
But Pete, what is the case for your religious bigotry? My experience in establishing Head Start and other pre-schools has been that the founders were almost invariably communities of Faith. The best Migrant Head Start network on the East Coast was built by a couple of nuns headquartered in Arlington.
The associations building low-income housing that I have worked with over a lifetime have emerged from Faith communities.
It has not been any derivative of Marxism but a vision of theological Hope that motivated the vast majority of the activists whose initiatives have given schooling, health care and housing to the marginated.
Where I live, the vigorous opposition to the attacks on Iraq has been almost entirely a religious movement.
By what right do you continue the disastrous strategy of impugning their activism and dismissing these people from the ranks of the Democratic Party.
Bush’s theology, like everything else about him, is bush, self-centered, ignorant and disparages the history of Faith. Listen for any memory of Isaiah, Jeremiah, the 9th century prophets, James, Augustine, John of the Cross, Dostoevsky or the rest. Despise his ignorance and indifference. Recoil from his claims to moral acuity. But remember that most of America hears the cry of the poor in religious language and will be enlisted in your war for the children as were the earlier forces against slavery, racial discrimination and labor abuses in formulations sprung from Faith.
Frank
Perhaps the Reps don’t consider an investment in education, whether public or college, to be good business.
We invest in enterprises that we think are a) likely to bring us a profit, and b) judged to be acceptable risks.
If the agenda is to elevate the average level of education in the country, the strategy of cutting funding makes no sense. Let me differentiate, by the way, between funding that would go to teachers’ salaries as opposed to money for textbooks and other educational materiel. Paying teachers more, per se, won’t increase the attainments of the youth, and I say that as a teacher myself.
Having said that, if a teacher has to take a second job to make ends meet, it will obviously distract him or her from doing the best job.
Back to strategy. If we didn’t want a highly educated public, because having might actually diminish our potential profitability or lower the market value of our own degrees and qualifications, then cutting funding makes perfect sense.
The question to ask is, who benefits most from these policy decisions? Who is better off in a society where fewer people are critical thinkers or easy learners from text sources? Whose interests are served by making a college education tougher to get? What might those people’s agenda be; their stated agenda but mostly their unstated one.
You invest in the enterprises that you think are in your interest to take a gamble on. Those enterprises that are somehow counter to your interests, you withhold from.
Simple economics. Of course, more than half of economics is psychology, so you can take it from there.
Yes, ignorance is not bliss, despite former reports.
The same government that determines the minimum wage and the interest rates has elected to be parsimonious with ‘public funds’, chosing to spend them on a war of aggression in the Middle East.
Interestingly, the same policy makers that budget to enhance their own fortunes are in control of the limits set on the low income earners and welfare recipients…if only the poor and their offspring were more sociopathic, they too, could be determining the laws of the land!
Sheesh…workers of the world, unite, eh?
Hi Cannon Fodder…
OK, so this is my own personal worry of the day..
but does anyone else wonder if Darwinsim dictates that the most pedatory among us are the best suited for survival?
You know, the folk that are willing to finance murder to consolidate their own wealth and survival?
You know…the US government, that law enforcement arm of various corporations?
Like the Mafia, but different in that they have an idealistic army of propagandized poor folk to stand behind them and chant ‘Hoo rah’ when they give their speeches…those salaried poor folk that kill people in foreign lands to make the world safer for Capitalism?
( I think about this kind of thing because I was a military brat, so I have no natural affliation to any system but my own gypsy family, lol. Did you notice how my father kept the A bomb from dropping on your heads?....he did air weapon controlling in his spare time, between coaching little league and raising a large family. Now he tells me there was probably no real threat…he never saw any ‘UFO’s” either, in spite of his many years in front of a radar screen….but sometimes the local airforce would test ‘weapons’ at night)
Good thing the average tax payer is getting more utility out of their military by transforming them into low paid mercenaries of Halliburton…
Darwinism? in action
Any Darwinian approach to human society would have to focus upon 1) genocide against competitor nationalities or, if one is too moral to be a genocider, 2) propagation of memes (the idea equivalents of genes) and strengthening them by behavioral example. Of course I think pushing ideas is more the point when dealing with human beings.
For instance, if we rhetorically support protection of rights, a society of fair laws that don’t play favorites among classes or races, personal responsibility for behavior, etc etc, the proper Darwinian approach would be to “plant seeds” verbally and in media and then to nourish them the only way ideas can be nourished, through continued attention and concrete behavior that upholds the idea. To the extent that there’s a conflict between the ideas a person says he holds and the actions he lives out, he cuts the roots away from those ideas and, via his hypocrisy, actually militates against the ideas he says he believes in.
Same goes for the behavior of nations. Do stated values and action harmonize, or undercut each other? If the latter, what does that say about that nation and its values?
Hence my bitching, lol.
I was innoculated with the virus of human dignity and freedom through the propaganda of my youth, and I watch our news media skate around the kidnapping of foreign nationals, their subsequent torture at local and international jails, all in the name of ‘Democracy’.
Is it really ok for the CIA to act like criminals in the name of the law?
Meanwhile, I buy sweaters for $19.99 at the local stores…even though there are no spinners, mills or garment makers in my area, not to mention breeders of ‘polyesters’, lol.
Darwin had no clue about the sort of nightmare we’d find ourselves in when he was cruising around on the Beagle….
and ‘America’ needs to stop pretending it has the rights on human rights.
Because they weren’t invented here. The seed wasn’t even planted here.
But 200 or so years ago, a couple of guys tried to be idealistic and foisted that obligation on the nation through a few founding documents.
Luckily for you guys though, they only apply to people born in your own latitudes and longitudes…imagine the financial nightmare of giving everyone on the planet those rights?
It’d be a corporate nightmare of wages and pensions and easements.
You might have to close that concentration camp in Cuba if it weren’t for the fact that ‘Democratic rights’ are only conferred on ‘Americans’ ( hey, they barely apply to even you guys…..I watched the Katrina disaster play out, and I wonder about the ‘American’ entitlement , even among your own citizenry. Aren’t you worried?)
What a PR nightmare! What a philosophical quandary!~
Awaiting the behavioural example…..
oh wise ones, lol.
EDUCATION! EDUCATION!
Think about education in this country and how is it a issue of the states. And think of how in most states education is paid by property taxes. Thus the schools in the rich and middle class districts are better funded than those in the lower districts.
At the same time we now know that EDUCATION has a large effect on a persons comittment and knowledge of politics and the political system of the country. By expanding the EDUCATION system to a true equality of opportunity in which schools recieve a per capita value per student thus recieving the same cash value per student and allocating the same amount of dollars to all students EDUCATION can be equalized in a large part.
While some may argue that the rich will just enroll their children in private schools, well yes that might be true, but the proportion of their property taxes that go toward EDUCATION will still go to the public schools and moreover simultaneously all public allocations to private schools will be removed(that is to K-12 public schools will still allocating funds to private universities but with conditions). The force of this will raise the price of private schools dramatically and thus likely put them out of business(yes business they are businesses not schools) and achieve the ultimate goal of integrating students into a sound equal environment.
Now from there the average education an American recieves should increase with the percentage of Americans of all economic levels attending university thus rising dramatically. Upon university study the student becomes more aware of the world around them and the factors that play in our world today and what they could do about it.
The second part of this concept involves the effect this EDUCATION will have on our political system. As the people become better educated(and yes I do endorse a system which would not tolerate drop outs no matter what, thus all Americans becoming at least high school graduates) more persons will realize that the two parties do not offer much too them(as our goals: national health care, ending corporate welfare and crime, etc. usually fall on deaf ears among both parties)and thus increased attention and pressure too these issues which affect inequality will be recieved as the growth of third parties and new ideas grow(I am mainly speaking of the Green party here).
Thanks
If you have any comments questions suggestions on my proposal please submit a response and I will write back to you
Hi minerva,
As for wisdom, I can’t claim any. Hell, I have a hard enough time trying to juggle the complexities of all the stuff that draws my interest.
A shade of ADHD in the genetic mix, ya know…
And as for “behavioral examples” from my country, well, some things I’m proud of America doing, and some I aint. Recently, “aint” is the more frequent sentiment, and in spite of a fairly optimistic habit of thought, I’ve resigned myself to having to wait for the next administration at the soonest for some kind of behavioral examples to show up that would make me smile.
May I ask, are you British? Your spellings and turn of phrase make me ask. If so, like citizens of other rich and powerful countries, you can relate to a little ambivalence regarding your country like I’ve had about mine, yes?
If you’re not British, never mind the silly question.
:-)
I’m Canadian who has spent about half of my life in the States…so I guess my perspectives are influenced by that circumstance. I am not Anti American…I very much appreciate American ideals, and regret that the present government is besmirching those ideals. I have hope for the furure.
In the mean time, I worry about the imbalances in development and standard of living throughout the world, and wonder how industrializing and consumerizing the planet will affect our childrens future.
I have no special claims to wisdom either, but I have few opportunities for public fretting and speculating and I come here to hear the thoughts of people who are similiarly minded, and who are trying to articulate their concerns about world events.
I guess, thinking of myself as a person with ‘dual citizenship’, I am surprised and worried these days , particularly about lapses in the rule of law and what I think are basic human entitlements ( the Founding philosopher/politicians didn’t call these “Rights” on a whim, I think)
Cheers
I
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