In a Q & A at a law school in Florida, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gives his take on why the Court was right in its recent decision on corporations and free speech. What I find interesting is Thomas gives a little history on how the limiting of speech by corporations started in the first place. He states,

“…the history of Congressional regulation of corporate involvement in politics had a dark side, pointing to the Tillman Act, which banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in 1907.”

“Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Senator Benjamin Tillman. “Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.”

It is thus a mistake, the justice said, to applaud the regulation of corporate speech as “some sort of beatific action.”

Interesting, isn’t it? In the fear over the corrupting influence of lots of money, some folk haven’t even considered the corrupting influence of regulating speech.

I welcome all comments on Justice Thomas’ comments. No ad hominem arguments are allowed. Substance only please.

You can read the full story here.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

One item in Pres. Obama’s State of the Union address hasn’t gotten a lot of air time since:

“… let’s tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years — and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.”

My initial response was, “Are you out of your ever-loving mind?!”

After digesting and contemplating this idea for a while, I’ve replaced “ever-loving” with something stronger.

Do we really need another giveaway in this country? Is there something we haven’t hocked to China yet?

Let’s look at three reasons this is a terrible idea.

1) One of the reasons college costs so much these days is financial aid keeps going up.

Wait, isn’t it the other way around? Yes and no. It’s a cycle, a little dance they do. Colleges know that if they raise prices, aid will just go up. Grants will grow, and if they don’t people can borrow a little more. So financial aid increases, then the colleges can raise prices again.

Promising that you’ll never have to pay off your full loans will only make that worse.

2) Making college “more affordable” will further encourage people to go to college who really aren’t cut out for it.

Government alone isn’t at fault here, but more and more people think of college as simply the next level of education after high school. And anyone who suggests that trade schools are a good alternative is usually viciously attacked.

Everyone isn’t cut out for college. Every job shouldn’t require a college degree.

And supply and demand says sending more people after the same product will increase the price of that product.

3) We give away enough.

We give money and food to the poor. We have housing assistance. We have health care for the poor and many want to expand that to everyone. Now we want to make a college education an entitlement? Where will it end?

It’s time for the “gimme” mentality to stop. People need (on a deep, fundamental level) to make their own way. Helping people in need is one thing. Making sure everyone has anything they could desire is something else entirely — something toxic.

It’s time we say, “Enough!”

And it’s time we tell Mr. Obama that the American people aren’t his piggy bank for whatever project crosses his mind. Our Constitution lists the responsibilities and prerogatives of the federal government; we need to obey it. I know he used to teach it, but I wonder if he ever read it.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

The latest decision by the Supreme Court on allowing corporations to pay for campaign advertising directly out of their treasuries instead of from their political action committees, has generated more heat than light in the debate. I have linked below what I think is a sane response from law professor Jonathan Turley, who indicates that either way this decision was not a no-brainer. Turley indicates that Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion and Justice Steven’s dissent are both excellent and convincing arguments.

Jonathan Turley on the SCOTUS Decision

Moreover, in an editorial in The New York Times, Linda Greenhouse rightly points out that President Obama was not right when he said in his State of the Union address that the SCOTUS overturned a century of law. (Frankly, that Mr. Obama would take a shot at the Court when they could only sit there mute, and knowing that the court would not respond publicly, was a small and immature moment for the President.) The issue in reality was a statute that was obtuse and complex. The other important point to make is that while corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, they are still prohibited from directly contributing to politicians.

As I said in a post last week on this issue, I do not know what the right decision is here constitutionally, but Turley is right that it is quite a difficult decision, and that perhaps the answer here does not lie in going after the money, but in going after how campaigns and elections are run in the first place.

In a free society we are all able to express our views in reference to decisions of law even though few of us truly know it well, but let’s stop all the talk about a corrupt court turning back a century of precedent. The only time anyone brings up precedent, they only do so when it suits their argument. The same people are free to discard it when they don’t like the nature of what has preceded.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve surely heard that the GOP won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat putting the Democrats one vote shy of a filibuster-proof super-majority.

The big question is what will happen with the healthcare reform bill(s). So far the options seem to be:

1) The House can pass the Senate bill as-is.
2) The Senate can employ the “nuclear option” and pass a conference bill with 51 votes.
3) The whole thing could die and go away as it did in the 90’s.
4) The whole thing could start over with a GOP that can demand to be involved.

I fear we’ll get 1 or 2. I deeply hope we get #4.

I really don’t want #3. There are a lot of reasons why healthcare reform went away for more than a decade after the death of HillaryCare, but it was a mistake. It’s not one we want to repeat.

Even if I don’t get everything I want in reform (which is almost certain), Congress could do some real good if they’d drop the bickering, posturing, and ideological wishlists and tackle those issues most Americans can agree on.

We can get more people insured and lower the cost of insurance if we open up interstate insurance markets. We can create a pool for those who have problems getting health insurance that isn’t a “public option.” We can come down on those who look for a loophole to drop insurees after they get sick. We can reduce the cost of providing medical care by instituting some basic tort reforms.

We can improve our health care system without turning it upside down or making it an arm of the federal government. And we need to Congress that’s exactly what we want.

Maybe now they’ll listen.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

Yesterday’s election of a Republican Senator in Massachusetts to the seat held for many years by the late Ted Kennedy has been referred to as “the shot heard round the country,” and as a “kick-mass” election. Was last night’s upset a massacre in Massachusetts? Hardly… but what happened last night should be an obvious warning that both Democrats and Republicans need to heed, though they probably won’t.

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These are my thoughts for the 2^nd Sunday after the Epiphany, 17 January 2010. The Scriptures for this Sunday are Isaiah 62: 1 – 5, 1 Corinthians 12: 1 – 11, and John 2: 1 – 11. This is also “Human Relations Sunday”.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – please post your comments there

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I didn’t realize that there was a song entitled the “The Good Stuff” or that Kenny Chesney wrote it. But I had heard something with the words “good stuff” in it and I went “looking” for it on the Internet. Then I connected the words that I had heard from a television commercial with his song. This doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the song or country and western music for that matter. But it does have a lot to do with the theme for this Sunday being Human Relations Sunday and the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As it happens, the anniversary of Dr. King’s death in Memphis is Easter Sunday this year, April 4, 2010, and I will be at the Dover United Methodist Church (Location of church) to lead the services. “Nathaniel Bartholomew” will be presenting part of the message; hopefully John Wesley and the woman at the well will join him in the celebration of the Resurrection. More details will come in the next few weeks. If you have not read either “Where were you on April 4, 1968?” or “On this day”, then please do so. It will give you some idea of my thoughts for this particular Sunday.

When you read the history of the Memphis sanitation workers strike, you will find that it wasn’t just a strike for better wages or better working conditions; it was also a strike for dignity and respect.

During a heavy rainstorm in Memphis on February 1, 1968, two black sanitation workers were crushed to death when the compactor mechanism of the trash truck was accidentally triggered. On the same day in a separate incident also related to the inclement weather, 22 black sewer workers had been sent home without pay while their white supervisors were retained for the day with pay. (http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/memphis-v-mlk/ )

On February 12^th, 1375 workers (sanitation workers and other Department of Public Works employees) went out on strike for job safety, better wages and benefits, and union recognition. At the time of the strike, workers were paid $1.70 per hour and were asking for $2.35 per hour; the city’s offer was a 5% hourly increase (or 8-1/2 cents).

It was this strike that brought Dr. King, rather reluctantly, to Memphis. But he understood that racial equality was very much tied to economic equality, so he came to Memphis. When you consider what has happened to the economy over the past few years, you have to wonder if people really care about equality of any kind.

Banking organizations argue that they are too big to fail and come begging for Federal money to save them. And both the present and the past administrations have blindly given them the money that they have requested. But all this has apparently done is to reinforce the notion that the rich can have what they want and the poor must suffer. The one single aspect of the economy over the past ten years or so is that the gap between the rich and the poor, those with and those without has gotten bigger and it looks like it will continue to get bigger.

And yet we continue to say that we are a Christian nation, committed to the ideals that Christ taught us some two thousand years ago. What happened to the money changers in the Temple? It was well known that they and the tax collectors routinely ripped off the common folk, charging exorbitant exchange rates and demanding more fees than were required or reasonable. Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple to show his anger with their behavior. Yet, it seems as if we merely put guards around our financial system and told the bankers to keep on doing what they have been doing.

When Martin Luther King came to Memphis in 1968, it was for equality, economic, social, and racial justice. Looking back over the past forty-two years, I am not entirely sure that we have changed that much.

Anytime there is a discussion of raising the Federal minimum wage, the conservatives hold true to form and say that this will destroy small businesses and they are opposed to the idea. But, from a business standpoint, what good does it do to allow big businesses to pay exorbitant salaries and bonuses to the upper level executives while the workers are struggling? It is time; in fact, it is long overdue that our discussion focuses on a living wage, not a minimum wage.

I wrote about the living wage back in 2006 when I gave the message “What If?” In it I noted that the city council of Chicago had voted to require Wal-Mart and other similar stories to pay their employees a living wage of $10.00 per hour with an additional $3.00 per hour in benefits by the year 2010. Wal-Mart replied that they would pull out of the Chicago market rather than do such a thing. Businessmen always seem to think that paying the employees a little bit more will do more harm than good, yet many companies have no problem giving upper level management ridiculously large bonuses.

I suppose that earning the minimum wage is alright if you can find a place where you can get by on $290 a week or $15,080 a year. Current Federal poverty guidelines state that the poverty line starts at $10,830 for one person, $14,570 for two persons, and $18,310 for a family of three (2009 Federal Poverty Guidelines). But the Federal guidelines don’t consider where you live or how many people are in your family.

Consider the following fiscal data for where I live in the state of New York. (The following data is from http://www.livingwage.geog.psu.edu/states/36/locations)

The living wage shown is the hourly rate that an individual must earn to support their family, if they are the sole provider and are working full-time (2080 hours per year). The state minimum wage is the same for all individuals, regardless of how many dependents they may have. The poverty rate is typically quoted as gross annual income. In this data, it has been converted to an hourly wage for the sake of comparison. Wages that are less than the living wage are shown in red.

Read the rest of this entry »

I love C-SPAN! I have for years. I am one of those eggheads that love to watch interviews and listen to political round tables.

And now C-SPAN’s chief executive, Brian Lamb has written a letter to the leaders of Congress asking that the deliberations over health care reform be televised. During the presidential campaign, then Senator Obama promised greater transparency in government as a club to beat the Bush Administration over the head with saying, among other things, that health care deliberations would be televised. Lamb has called upon the Democrats to make good on their promises. He writes,

“President Obama, Senate, and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every American.”

C-SPAN’s request, of course, will not be granted. The last thing that Congress wants before the American people is the detailed revelation of corrupt compromise and special interest catering that is the current health care bill. The one lesson to be learned from Capitol Hill’s health care reform back room dealings is that the Senators who held out the longest got the best deals for their states. My one Democratic Senator who supported health care reform early on, didn’t bring home any bacon for my state.

Candidate Obama promised greater transparency in government. He was not the first candidate to make that promise and he is not the first president to break it. Nancy Pelosi promised that her Democratic Congress would be the most ethical and transparent in history, never mind all the closed door meetings and all those in Congress who are ethically compromised. Why let facts get in the way of campaign promises?

There seem to be two eternal truths in the history of politics in a democracy– first, politicians make all kinds of campaign promises on which they never deliver, and second, in every election there are voters who actually believe them.

The first truth is never a surprise. The second truth continues to reveal how gullible many voters are, either because of blind partisanship, or sheer naivete.

The voter must always remember that the primary purpose of most campaign promises is to get elected– nothing less– and certainly nothing more.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

I am working on a number of projects right now, all of which deal with science, education and science education in some manner, shape or form. First is the “book” project. Entitled “Science and Education in the 21^st Century: A Contrarian View”, it is a look at science, science education and topics that we all need to have some understanding about as the new decade begins and for years beyond. I outlined this book in the piece “A Not So Modest Proposal”.

Second is a more personal piece in that it deals with the relationship between science and religion. I have said it countless times before but it bears repeating, when you say that you are a scientist today, people automatically believe that you do not or are incapable of believing in God. And if you say that you are a Christian today then many will say that you cannot possible accept the physical evidence about this world. Because I am both a scientist and a Christian, I find it hard to accept either argument and think that to do so demeans both and limits any discussion about what the future might bring.

And finally there is this piece about the relationship between education and the economy. In all three projects, the key point is that this country, this society, is exceptionally dumb. Being dumb doesn’t mean that we are stupid or illiterate. It just means we haven’t a clue what’s going on nor do we have any idea of what to expect when tomorrow comes or what to do when the unexpected does come.

Oh yes, we are a literate nation but all that means is that we can read. There are two definitions of literacy. The first is the most commonly understood one, the ability to read. But literacy also means that we are able to understand what we read and we are able to utilize the information that we read. And this is something that, in my own opinion, we are unable and incapable of consistently doing.

This is illustrated in a number of ways. First, there is the ever increasing evidence that we don’t know or understand what we were required to learn when we were in school. One-quarter of American high school students could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed the freedom of speech and religion and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900 (“Clueless in America”). Our reliance on technology assumes that we understand reading, writing and arithmetic. However, we forget it is humans who program that technology.  It doesn’t teach or require us to think.  It has given us a false sense of being an educated and knowledgeable society.

Our inability to understand what we have read also comes across in our understanding (or lack thereof) of religion. While we routinely proclaim this nation as a Christian nation, we do not know what books of the Bible are in which section, we don’t know (or most of us don’t know) what the Gospels are or that Paul was not one of the twelve disciples. We proudly proclaim that it is written in the Bible that “God helps those who help themselves” and seem unaware that this quote is not in the Bible and that it is most often attributed to Benjamin Franklin.

Even though it has been demonstrated that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction nor was there any connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, most people still insist that there were weapons and there was a connection. We are willingly to accept such notions (along with several other more bizarre conspiracy theories that developed during the last Presidential election) simply because we are more willing to trust the source or we are guided by fear. Our lack of literacy also is evident by the inability to see beyond the horizon of tomorrow and imagine what the consequences of our actions will be for future generations (as if we ever could).  We allow others to tell us what the “truth” is and refuse to search for that “truth” ourselves.  We have become a lazy nation.

We also have a surprisingly inability or lack of or desire to see other points of view. To see and listen to other points of view does not necessarily mean that your views will change; what it does mean is that you can think from the other side of the issue and develop a solution that resolves the problems without strife or resentment. It is a process sorely missing in this country today.  We have become an ugly nation in our inability to see the other side of the issue and would rather demonize people who have a contrary view point.

We are faced with any number of problems facing us as we look into the next decade. There is the terrorism problem, which we seemingly want to combat with more terror. Would it be too much to assume that removing hunger and sickness from the world might actually solve the problem? Or is it that we just like sending our youth off to die in foreign lands for reasons that were lies in the first place?

There is the global energy crisis which we first wish to deny even exists and then, which we want to solve with more crude oil, even though the actual supply of oil is decreasing. There is the global climate change problem, which most people want to say is a false problem but that is because they are 1) unwilling to think it through and 2) are willing to let others tell them how to think. The evidence is there but we are unwilling to accept it.

We could respond to the energy crisis and the global climate change problem if we would think seriously about alternative energy resources. But to think outside the box is something this country is not able to do (as if drilling for more oil tomorrow will save the problem today).  We are losing the competitive edge in innovation and creativity to China and other countries.  We have forgotten that this country lead the world in developing the technology that we have today.  We have become a mediocre nation, willing to sit on the accomplishments of the past without looking to what we can do to ensure a future that keeps us ahead of the rest of the world.  There will come a day when the people of this country will suddenly realize that we are not the power we once were.  What do we do then?

Unless we find some way and some way quick to think outside the box, the coming decade is going to be a very rough one. As we watch the glaciers in Greenland and Norway recede, we can keep telling ourselves that global climate change is a conspiracy. As we keep creating electronic gadgets that take pictures and send them around the world but not know where we are sending them or where they are coming from, as we create social networks where we can keep up to date with the various failings of sports and entertainment superstars, we wonder why our children are not learning in school and why they can’t write a coherent sentence or don’t know the history of this country.

As we distort the history of this country, as we distort the meaning of the Bible, the Qur’an and the Torah, we have to wonder why we are engaged in countless and seemingly endless wars in far-off lands. And one day we will wake up and wonder what happened to the youth of this country.

As laws are written to protect us from terrorism, we wonder why we have no personal freedoms left.  We are becoming a totalitarian nation without knowing it as our freedoms are chipped away bit by bit.

It comes down to this. Borrowing a quote from Marilyn Ferguson that I wrote down many years ago, our freedom is not found by choosing a destination but rather a direction but we must choose that direction, not let someone else choose it for us. And should we choose a path that has no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.

Thomas Jefferson, who is so often quoted by those who would seek to limit the intellect and freedom of so many, wrote in a letter dated January 6, 1816, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

The agenda for the coming decade is fairly clear. Our educational system must be substantially and quickly fixed. It is slowly approaching the breaking point after which no repair is possible. If our educational system is not fixed, then it will be impossible to create new solutions to the present problems and it will be impossible to even envision solutions for problems that we don’t even know about.

We need to put more money into human needs and less money in creating a sense of false security. If workers in this country are working and being paid living wages and salaries, not minimum wages that require two or three jobs just to get by, the productivity of this country will rise. The conservatives of this country spout the mantra of less taxes will create jobs but what has happened to the jobs in this country? What has happened to the productivity of this country under this mantra?

Let’s try something different. Let’s make sure that the workers get the money, not the rich and powerful. Let’s put the money into workers’ hands, not just trickle down to the people (which never did seem to work anyway).

And let’s work to make working conditions in other countries safe and productive; let’s make sure that the workers overseas are paid equitable wages as well. Why do people from other countries seek work in this country? Because it is a whole lot better than anything that is in their country.

The immediate response for many is going to be that this is too much. It will cost too much and people will lose. The only people who will lose already have too much and too many people at the bottom of the social scale have already lost.

It is time to stop and think; to look around and realize that we have to change our direction right now. It is a complicated and complex situation that we have created and it will take more than simple solutions to fix. This coming decade can be one of the greatest in the history of the planet but right now it has all the markings of being the worst and the last this planet will have.

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Cross posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left (comments are welcome but should be posted to the “Thoughts” blog

Sen. Harry Reid has inserted into the Senate health care reform bill language making it against Senate rules to even consider over-ruling the medical board his bill will create.

That doesn’t make the board completely all-powerful, but it means you have to get 66 Senators to agree (to a rule change) before you can even bring up the topic of over-ruling the board. Elected officials, representatives of the people, will be unable to control the bureaucrats.

Do you object to this? I have a hard time believing even liberals are ok with such an anti-democratic notion. If you have a problem with this, today is the day to call your senators and tell them.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

An Anglican priest has created controversy in suggesting to his congregation that it is OK for the poor to shoplift in order to get what they need to feed themselves and their families. (Read the story here.) He has been roundly criticized for his comments and rightly so. Of course, he advised that people only steal from big businesses instead of small ones because, as he noted, the cost of the shoplifting would ultimately be passed on to the consumer. How magnanimous of him.

Now before I suggest what should be obvious– that his advice is plain wrong and dangerous– let me say that not only should Christians have great sympathy for those who find themselves in desperate situations, but the church should do everything possible to assist those in need. I am well aware that in the current economic situation, theft has increased. Some of it, to be sure, is the kind of theft perpetrated by thugs who do not need a poor economy as an excuse, but there are those who have resorted to stealing because they have been unable to find honest work in order to provide for their families. I have encountered some of those individuals personally. Especially in this Christmas season when some parents are facing the inability of providing even a modest Christmas for their children, the temptations are surely great.

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Yea, I thought about naming it something more seasonally appropriate but this piece has nothing to do with Christmas but everything to do with the classroom.

It seems as if the Federal Government wants to give local school districts a very large amount of money to improve education but it is tying it to teacher evaluations and teacher performance. Now, I am all for monies being poured into the local schools. Lord knows, they need it (in my state of New York, the governor announced today that school funding and many other agencies would be cut by 10% to stave off the impending financial doom facing the state). But, tying the money to teacher evaluations and teacher performance is not going to do it.

It isn’t that teachers shouldn’t be evaluated but the present evaluation models favor teachers who “soften” the material. In many school systems, you are considered a great teacher if the parents don’t complain and all the students are getting good grades. Knowledge of the subject and teaching students how to think have absolutely nothing to do with how well one is evaluated.

I know that there are teachers out there who are excellent and who get good reviews but they are the exception to the rule. In 1986, the National Science Teachers Association made an effort to identify such teachers but I don’t know if there have been any follow-up studies in this regard.

What I do know is this – with the present “No Child Left Behind” legislation, we spend most of our time testing our students and we test them at the wrong time. If we decide to use teacher performance as the criteria for funding, then those tests are going to increase in number and value for the evaluation process.

When I wrote about the crisis in science and mathematics education in 1990 (see “The Crisis in Science and Mathematics (1990)”) I identified two articles in the Wall Street Journal that pointed out the fallacy of that approach. One of the articles mentioned at that time discussed the abuse that occurred. The abuse in that instance was that one instructor not only taught her students the test, she gave them the test to study and practice on. The pressure was on the teacher to have her students succeed and her solution was to give the students the test before hand.

The present approach will do nothing more than make that more common place. We are already wasting valuable parts of the school year with the tests mandated by the NCLB legislation and more time as the teachers teach their students how to take those tests.

We know where success in the classroom lies; we have seen it in the past. It is the involvement of the student in the learning process. This means more than simply memorizing fact after fact but applying the facts to situations and using situations to obtain the facts. It means teaching students how to think critically in relation to the subject being taught. This is not something done only or solely at the higher grade levels either; there is ample research data to support the statement that students in the early elementary grades (and even kindergarten) can take an active role in learning.

First, let’s differentiate between teaching and learning. Teaching is a directed experience, from the teacher to the student. Learning is two-dimensional and interactive. We do a lot of teaching these days but there isn’t much learning taking place. Our students are able to do well on all the exams they take because they have been taught how to take the exam. But have they learned anything? I doubt it.

There is nothing more curious than a two-year old; yet, many high school seniors have no curiosity. What happened to it? The learning process took it away. And I am reminded of the song by Supertramp, “The Logical Song”.

Please don’t tell me that our students are some of the most technologically literate people on the planet. Oh yes, they know how to “tweet” and set up a Facebook account; but does that help them write literate sentences and think creatively? I can guarantee that it doesn’t.

Do the majority of the American people really understand the issue behind climate change and intelligent design? Not really. And why should they? Schools haven’t dealt with critical thinking issues (and may be afraid to) so we are not equipped to determine the validity or credibility of any claims; which would go a long way in explaining why people buy footpads to clean the toxic chemicals out of their bodies.

The evidence is there to say that our schools aren’t working (see the reference to “Clueless in America” in my piece “The Bottom Line”). Our schools are broken (Bill Gates said that they were obsolete) and desperately need to be fixed. BUT NOT IN THE MANNER THAT IS BEING PROPOSED!

I would like to think that there is a quick and easy way to measure how well students are learning and how well teachers are doing their jobs. Unfortunately, there isn’t. The only way you are going to know if a student has learned the material is to watch them use the material later, not three weeks after it was taught. And the only way that we will ever know if the teachers have done their jobs properly and effectively is a long time after the job is over.

Let’s start by making sure that our teachers know the subject and know how to teach it. Subject mastery without pedagogical mastery is meaningless when it comes to teaching. The record also shows that the excellent teachers are the ones who have been in teaching through all the hard times and the good times. The 1986 NSTA study showed quite conclusively that the excellent teachers had been in the classroom for long periods of time.

But we often times move such teachers into administrative posts and take them away from what they are good at. Second, it is becoming quite clear that many who could be excellent teachers are leaving the field because of the way education is run and the pay that they receive (see the comment to my piece “Have we learned anything?”). A radical thought would also be to revamp the pay scales of many school systems so that it is the teachers who receive the major salaries and not the administrators.

Then, we have to make sure that our classes are equipped, not for today’s situations, but for tomorrow’s situations. We need to make sure that the most recent computers with the most recent software are in our schools today and in all of the classrooms, not just one classroom shared by all the students. But many of these schools don’t even have computers in their classrooms because the wiring is inadequate for the load. We should rightly spend some of the money on new buildings, but let’s build them to be useful in terms of energy and space, not just a copy of a tried and true blueprint from the past.

Let’s make sure that the classroom sizes are reasonable. As a chemist, I can make the argument for no more than 24 in a lab for safety reasons (and nothing scares an administrator more than the threat of a law suit because of safety problems). But we also know that lab-oriented courses don’t exist in many high schools and that administrators routinely increase the number of students in a classroom to compensate for the lack of teaching staff due to cost-.

The best learning occurs on a one-to-one basis. It seems reasonable to assume that if you increase the student to teacher ratio that learning will be reduced. Monies allocated to school systems should and must go to teacher salaries, teacher preparation, and classroom materials.

Our textbooks are often outdated and lab equipment, if it exists, is limited in scope. The one thing that we learned from the 1960s was that classes equipped to do experiments showed real gains and the gains slowed when the funding was cut off.

The problems with American education are not going to be fixed overnight. They are not going to be fixed with new school buildings if what goes on in those buildings is the same old, out-dated policies that went on in the old school buildings. The problems are not going to be fixed if the monies given to school systems get lost in bureaucratic overhead and administrator salaries.

And let’s face it, school systems located in wealthier districts are going to have to start sharing their funds with school systems in poor districts. I know that there are going to be a lot of screams with that particular statement because no one in an effluent district wants to even think about the other districts. And that is the problem; they don’t want to think.

We will not win the war on terrorism with guns and fancy weapons; we will not win the war on poverty and homelessness with platitudes and food banks. We will win the battles when we can think of new solutions that involve everyone. Right now, we are losing the battles, not because the “other side” is greater but because we think that the only way to win is the same old ways that once worked. They may have worked once but they don’t now and until we come up with new solutions, fostered by educational processes that focus on thinking and problem solving rather than rote memorization of countless facts the battles we fight, will never be solved.

In the meantime, I am suggesting that everyone buy their children and grandchildren copies of “Trivial Pursuit”. That will be the best study guide they have for school in the coming years. It might even put curiosity back into learning.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left

My pick for the goofiest Christmas stunt of 2009 comes from the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, who are using the Christmas story from Luke 2 to encourage people to participate in the 2010 census.

They have published a poster (below) that states, “This is how Jesus was born… Joseph and Mary participated in the census… Don’t be afraid.” (More commentary below the picture.)

Some have referred to this ad campaign as blasphemous. I don’t think it is at all. The word “blasphemy” is thrown around too casually today. I simply think the idea is ludicrous. Does the “brain trust” behind this really want to draw the parallels between Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus and the current 2010 census? I say, let’s be bold and draw all the logical implications out of the story!

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In this Christmas season, the blogosphere is once again posting thoughts back and forth on the so-called “war on Christmas.” I posted something on it myself last week. But I have been wondering how serious Christians square the radical and even subversive nature of the gospel with what seems to be our theologically trite observance of the yuletide season.

Here is my question– Why isn’t the celebration of the birth of the Lord of the World not considered to be politically subversive? Is it because Christianity has become domesticated on account of the fact that we Christians have been domesticated? Does that mean, therefore, that all our holy days have been domesticated? If the vast population truly understood what it meant for Jesus to usher in his kingdom that is reordering this world, would those persons want anything to do with Christmas carols and gift giving? If the rulers of this world could truly comprehend what kind of peace Jesus has come to bring, apart from their power and influence, would they welcome this child to Bethlehem?

King Herod understood better than we do, the subversive nature of Jesus’ birth, which is why he sought to kill the newborn king. Those in power will always act in their interest to retain such power. This is not only true in a dictatorship, but also in a democracy where politicians will put off difficult votes until after the midterm elections and leave their campaign promises by the wayside once the people have cast their votes.

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Here are my thoughts for the 2nd Sunday in Advent, 6 December 2009. It is as much a political piece as it is an Advent piece.

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For whatever reason, the thoughts that I had about this piece never quite came together like I thought they would. But the words of John the Baptizer, written in Luke, still echo in my mind and I wonder if it is even possible to fill all the valleys and make the crooked roads straight.

Of course, if you have read my previous pieces, “Pound Gap, VA” and “Who Is the Messenger?”, then you know that I have seen the valley filled and roads made straight. The pictures of the Pine Mountain after it was cut are posted at http://strata.geol.sc.edu/Appalachian/PoundGap/Appalachian_galleryPoundGap1.html.

The things that I have come to understand with my encounter with this construction are that 1) it took a lot of work to fill the valleys and straighten the road and 2) things changed because it was done. The landscape of that area of Letcher County, Kentucky, is not the same as it was (and that may have been why it took so long for me to realize that I had been there once before).

The changes in the roads did make it easier for those passing through to get through the area. I cannot speak to the changes in the ecology of the area or if it did make driving for the area residents any easier. It made it perhaps a little easier for those who drive through the area to ignore the small towns and hollows where the people lived.

But when John the Baptizer was wandering the hills and valleys of the Galilee, he was making it easier for the people to know that the Messiah was coming. He was making it easier for everyone to see the Salvation of God. In a day and age when so many people were forgotten by society, the Baptizer’s voice told them there was a way.

But in today’s society, it seems that we have regressed to the time before the Baptizer’s call. It seems as if we think that one human life has no meaning. We are faced with war and we answer with more war. We are faced with a crisis in healthcare and we answer with politics and platitudes. The number of hungry families, not individuals but families, increases almost everyday, our food banks are stressed, the number of people without jobs is almost at an all-time high and all we have done over the past twenty years is give money to those who have money and hope that they will share it with others. We are not interested in making the rough way smooth, we are not interested in getting the people trapped in the valleys out nor are we interested in the hearing the voice which cries out in the wilderness.

We are a society in which the only individual we will show any interest in is one who is rich and famous and who has committed a grievous error of judgment. We are fighting a war in Afghanistan and we are apparently committed to sending more troops there. But we care very little that we do not have the manpower for this operation and that we are sending troops back for their 3^rd or 4^th deployment; we care little about the rising number of suicides among our troops because of the stress of these continued deployments and redeployments; we care very little for the effect that this has had on the families of the troops. And the evidence is there that we don’t care about the troops when they come home. The number of homeless veterans is on the rise. Our troops have become a throw-away commodity in a throw-away society. We use them until they are no longer useful and then we thrown them away in hopes of finding new replacements.

The answer to the problem is not the draft or invoking the call for national service. We tried both and both have failed (of course, calling for the people to go out and shop in the name of national security seemed a little ludicrous at the time as did giving them $250 to spend when the $2000 mortgage was due).

How can we say that sending more troops is the answer when it didn’t work in Viet Nam and we know what has happened to foreign armies fighting in Afghanistan in the past? How can fighting more war help those who are oppressed by corrupt governments and war lords? And why, why does this country insist on propping up those corrupt and oppressive governments? Why do we train their troops when they will use the training against the people in their country who oppose the government, not the terrorists who fight us?

More troops, more money spent on armaments, more time spent supporting corrupt and oppressive regimes will only lead this country deep into the valleys where it is impossible to escape. And while we are spending more money and time trying to find our way out of that morass, more and more innocent people are lost.

And it isn’t just the civilian population of Afghanistan that suffer. There are 38 conflicts presently in process around the globe.

The United Nations defines "major wars" as military conflicts inflicting 1,000 battlefield deaths per year. In 1965, there were 10 major wars under way. The new millennium began with much of the world consumed in armed conflict or cultivating an uncertain peace. As of mid-2005, there were eight Major Wars under way [down from 15 at the end of 2003], with as many as two dozen "lesser" conflicts ongoing with varying degrees of intensity.

Most of these are civil or "intrastate" wars, fueled as much by racial, ethnic, or religious animosities as by ideological fervor. Most victims are civilians, a feature that distinguishes modern conflicts. During World War I, civilians made up fewer than 5 percent of all casualties. Today, 75 percent or more of those killed or wounded in wars are non-combatants.

Africa, to a greater extent than any other continent, is afflicted by war. Africa has been marred by more than 20 major civil wars since 1960. Rwanda, Somalia, Angola, Sudan, Liberia, and Burundi are among those countries that have recently suffered serious armed conflict.

War has caused untold economic and social damage to the countries of Africa. Food production is impossible in conflict areas, and famine often results. Widespread conflict has condemned many of Africa’s children to lives of misery and, in certain cases, has threatened the existence of traditional African cultures.

Conflict prevention, mediation, humanitarian intervention and demobilization are among the tools needed to underwrite the success of development assistance programs. Nutrition and education programs, for example, cannot succeed in a nation at war. Billions of dollars of development assistance have been virtually wasted in war-ravaged countries such as Liberia, Somalia, and Sudan.

From http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/index.html

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Every Christmas season we endure the “holiday wars.” Should sales clerks say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas?” Should Christmas trees on public property be called “holiday trees?” Should schools have Christmas break or winter break? I could give more examples, but you know where I am going here.

Each year both sides in this “war” get all bent out of shape in attempting to control the language of the season, because in any argument terminology does make all the difference. Frankly, I think both sides are a little silly. Those who want to change the language of the holiday forget the elephant that is in the room. They can call it a holiday tree if they want, but the only reason that it is standing in the rotunda of the capitol is because it is Christmas. A sales clerk can wish me a happy holiday, but the only reason I am standing in line having purchased things for people they really do not need is because it is Christmas. The public schools can refer to it as winter break all they want, but no one is off school because it is cold and snowy outside.

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This Congress keeps producing healthcare reform bills that try to pay for themselves via some reduction in Medicare payments. Those cuts will probably not happen, but conservatives decry them anyway, just in case.

What’s the big deal about cutting Medicare? Let me explain using round numbers and oversimplification.

Let’s set up the situation. Besides having to pay for whatever supplies are used on them (e.g., drugs, bandages), patient fees also have to cover things like the light bill, payroll, and rent as well as a reasonable operating margin (aka profit, which every business must have to survive).

Say a clinic sees 100 patients a day. Each patient’s fees need cover 1% of that overhead on top of whatever went into their actual care. Let’s just say that comes out to an average of $100 per patient per visit.

What if Medicare says they’ll only pay $90? The clinic’s options are try to cut costs, see fewer Medicare patients, see more patients, or cost shift.

The first option is a continual process in any business, and belt tightening happens in the medical field as much as anywhere, but that will only get you so far. Some physicians take option number two — which hurts Medicare patients — but in some specialties too many patients are on Medicare to make that a viable option.

Seeing more patients may allow the facility to pay its bills, but it puts more stress on the staff and the patient — if a doctor normally sees 5 patients an hour, upping it to 8 makes him work harder and means each patient gets less time with the physician. That’s bad.

That leaves us with option #4 — cost shifting. If it takes $100/patient visit to pay the bills, and if a chunk of your patients don’t pay that, you must make that money somewhere else. Let’s say charging your non-Medicare patients $110/visit will cover expenses. It’s not nice, but what can you do?

Now let’s say the large insurance companies say they’ll only pay $100. What happens?

The patient with neither Medicare nor insurance must now pay $130 so the clinic can pay its bills.

This is the state of things today. These proposed further Medicare cuts would take the reimbursement down to $80. Who’s going to make up the difference?

You.

Some of you will pay more at the doctor’s office and/or in insurance. Some of you will wait longer to have a shorter visit with a very busy doctor. And some of you will have to find a new doctor after yours can’t pay his bills and closes his doors.

Taking money from Medicare to pay for health care reform is simply cutting off your nose to spite your face.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

Thank you, Robert Reich, for finally telling the truth about what the Democrats want to accomplish:

“…[Y]ou, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people…you’re going to have to pay more. … And by the way, … if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die. …

Also I’m going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid – we already have a lot of bargaining leverage – to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents.”

Now wasn’t that easy? I don’t know why Pres. Obama and his pals won’t just be honest with the American people like that.

Story is intrinsic to our existence. Indeed, story is our existence. Life is an attempt to understand the narrative or narratives that makes sense of who we are or what we are about. It is not necessarily easy, however, to understand our narratives truthfully. We human beings are masters of twisting and turning the story in order to deceive ourselves in reference to what our narratives mean. We like determining the meaning of our story; and we will invent cover stories if need be in order to be the arbiters of our narrative.

For me, one of the most discouraging things about politics is the obvious attempt by politicians to twist the political narrative to their advantage. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties are currently experiencing deep divides within their respective Party (which I think is a good thing). But in order to control the narrative, representatives from each Party utter virtually the same talking points that insist the other side is narrow-mindedly monolithic while their own divisions are not really such; they simply demonstrate the diversity within their ranks that the other side refuses to allow. Tea Party supporters are planning to go after Republicans who have not touted the pure party line, while the MoveOn.org crowd target heretical centrist Democrats who have stepped outside the fold of liberal political orthodoxy. Both Parties point to the intolerance of the other side while ignoring the obvious dogmatism of their own. Both sides are reminiscent of the words of Jesus who condemned people for focusing on the splinters of others while they remained oblivious to the two-by-four protruding from their face. There are countless other examples, such as the current Administration refusing to take the blame for anything, spinning the presidential narrative by indicting the previous Administration every chance it gets; and the Republican Party in response spins the political story by diminishing the continual impact of actions by the previous Administration on current problems.

The main focus in telling the political narrative is accomplishing one’s goal while retaining or gaining power. When this happens, it is no longer critical that one tell the narrative truthfully. A truthful narrative is important only insofar that it serves one’s political ends. When the truth does not accomplish one’s goals, it can simply be discarded, or at the very least, twisted into a hybrid of something deceptive.

For Christians, this is unacceptable. We have a moral obligation to tell our narrative truthfully. This is not necessarily easy. All of us struggle with the same failings and shortcomings as those in political office. But let us make no mistake that the most important thing in making sense of our story is not justifying our existence as it is, but understanding what it means to live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The goal of narrative interpretation is to tell the truth of who we are and what we are about. For Christians, the gospel story does not affirm us as we are, but it calls us to more than we are. That can only happen when we are willing to acknowledge the truth, no matter how painful it might be.

While I do believe it is possible for Christians to serve Christ in political office, I wonder how long they would be in office if they insisted on telling the political narrative truthfully because of their commitment to the Lordship of Christ in all areas of life, including politics. The fact that there are Christians who have made a career out of politics makes me wonder what kind of narrative they have decided to embrace.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

Want a foretaste of life with government-run health care?

“A government task force said Monday that most women don’t need mammograms in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50 — a stunning reversal and a break with the American Cancer Society’s long-standing position. What’s more, the panel said breast self-exams do no good, and women shouldn’t be taught to do them

….the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government panel of doctors and scientists, concluded that such early and frequent screenings often lead to false alarms and unneeded biopsies, without substantially improving women’s odds of survival.”

“Unneeded biopsies” translates to “costly tests.”

I did a quick sample of our current breast cancer patients. Almost a fourth of that sample were under 50. Of those women, the youngest – a 30-year-old woman – had the most advanced disease.

Is this panel saying those women don’t actually have cancer and can go home? No. It’s saying there is insufficient benefit in finding and treating these cases with respect to the overall cost.

And the medical community is aghast. The chief medical officer of the ACS says, “the [task force] is essentially telling women that mammography at age 40 to 49 saves lives; just not enough of them.”

That’s exactly what they’re saying. One or two or two thousand lives have to be weighed against the good of “society.”

Right now these are non-binding government recommendations. They can make women’s lives more difficult, of course – some insurance companies will decide to follow those recommendations, and their customers who want a mammogram will have problems getting one.

But if we change, as Obama et al want, to a single-payer system, their recommendation will be law. If your doctor thinks, as many do, that these recommendations are utterly insane, you still won’t be able to get the test you need. It’s happened in Britain, and it can happen here.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

I begin this piece by asking what you plan to do at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Will you stop to pause and remember the significance of that time some ninety years ago? Will you stop to pause and perhaps hear the bells of the church tolling in remembrance of those who have fallen in wars long ago and perhaps even recently? Or perhaps you will stop to pause and wonder why the bells are not ringing or why the people are more interested in the sales taking place and what they can get at low prices for Christmas this year.

How many people will recognize that the reason for this day has nothing do to with the economy but with a promise that we, as a nation, would remember those whose service insured our freedom today? Some will say that is what Memorial Day is about but when Memorial Day comes about, all we will probably hear about is the start of summer sales that come with Memorial Day. How is it that we have become so cavalier in our attitudes about military service and war?

I am the grandson of an Army officer who served in World War I and up until 1944. Had medical reasons not forced his retirement, my grandfather was scheduled to command a regiment that landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on 6 June 1944.

I do not know what my grandfather thought about war, even as I read and reread the diary he kept from his embarkation to France and his service in France and Belgium and during the period between the two World Wars.

There was a somewhat casual comment made in one entry that his outfit had been attacked with poison gas – “We’ve been gassed. “ And while he had pictures that showed the horrors of war, he very seldom mentioned such horrors in what he wrote in this diary.

In part I know that his diary served more as a draft of the reports that he would file as the company adjutant for I see essentially the same phrases in his diary that appear in the official history of the regiment. So, I don’t know how he really felt. Even his entry for this day some ninety years ago doesn’t speak of peace, joy, or relief (see My Grandfather’s Diary Entry for this day, 11 November 1918) but the comment that if the armistice had not been signed, they would have completed the planned attack for that day.

And while I cannot speak to his thoughts on the nature of war and what he saw and what he experienced, I do know that we don’t want to be exposed to the horrors of war today. We have sanitized war so much that civilians killed are listed as nothing more than collateral damage. We have no idea, only estimates, of how many civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan these past eight years. We want our wars to be like a video game, where points are scored for the damage done and the number of people killed; where there is no blood and no pain. We do not want to know that war is, in essence, a real-life horror film with real blood and real deaths, with pain that is real and which is inflicted on many, not just one.

I am also the son of an Air Force officer who served in the Pacific theater during World War II and throughout the 50s and 60s. I do not know what he thought about the things he saw in the Pacific in the 40s or his thoughts on the wars fought in Korea or Viet Nam. The only time he spoke of the deaths in World War II was a passing comment about the number of casualties that we would have incurred had we invaded the Japanese home islands instead of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What I remember about that singular comment was the relief in his voice that we did not invade the islands.

I grew up on many Air Force Bases where B-52 bombers and Titan II missiles were based. Their presence was an almost constant reminder that our country lived under a blanket of fear from nuclear attack and that vigilance was necessary for peace. The one thing that we did not perhaps know or perhaps did not care to know was that any nuclear attack and the almost certain retaliatory attack would leave not only this country but this globe totally ruined and uninhabitable for thousands of years to come. Perhaps it was fortunate that the only thing that kept this country and the former Soviet Union from attacking each directly during those contentious days was the knowledge that an attack by one country on the other would lead to mutually assured destruction of both countries and the world. This constraint against nuclear war in the 1950s and 1960s was known as MAD and there never has been a more aptly coined acronym.

Those who have read this blog know that I am opposed to war and that I cannot see the problems of the world being solved through war or violence. (And, for those who offer bumper-sticker responses please use something other than “War hasn’t solved anything except …”)

The problem is that we have become comfortable using war as a tool to solve problems and we think that we can live in a world where war is a dominant part of the culture. We just make sure that we are not reminded of its financial costs or its costs in human terms, the dead and wounded, those with broken minds and spirits.

And too often, those who speak out against war, who call for non-violent solutions to the problems that we face, who call for responses other than to send our youth off to foreign lands and perhaps die for a cause that they do not understand are apt to be called unpatriotic and opposed to this country.

I would have continued the tradition of my father and my grandfather and joined the Air Force when I graduated from college in 1971. I understood what a life in the military was and what you were called to do first. But I also saw a military constrained by political forces far more than any other time in this country’s history.

Let’s face it – there has never been a war that wasn’t driven by political forces. Mao Zedong is quoted as saying “Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”

From the days of the Korean War, it has been politics that has controlled this country’s thoughts about war. It has transformed military service from an honorable expression of service for one’s country into simply being a mercenary force designed to serve the purposes for short-sighted and self-serving politicians. Our military is sent to fight without a clear-cut mission or an understanding of the people with whom they will interact. Our lack of knowledge about the lands and people where we send our troops makes the “The Ugly American” more and more a truth than fiction.

When the time came, I chose not to go, not to follow in the footsteps of my father and grandfather. My argument wasn’t against the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, or the Marines; my argument was against the draft and a political policy that clearly limited what our service personnel could and could not do. But, as far as the draft was concerned, I was lucky. I had medical problems that precluded my being drafted into the Army and I was able to avoid service in Viet Nam. One of the great unanswered questions in my life is what I would have done if I had received an induction notice. Would I have gone to Canada; would I have enlisted in the Air Force and tried for OCS? What would my parents have said and done? Those are questions that I did not have to answer.

I was lucky; I had options available to me. Others were not so lucky and we now know that the draft policies of this country during the Viet Nam war were designed to supply the large number of bodies that the generals said were needed to win the war. They are the same words we hear today from our generals with respect to Afghanistan.

Our youth do not have to worry about the draft today. Personally, I think that is a good thing. If the military is to be what it is supposed to be, it must be a volunteer army; that is the heritage of this country and, if you will, an embodiment of what this country stands for.

There was a period of time when I counseled students to seek a life in the military. I recognized that, for some, it would provide the discipline they needed for life. For some, it would provide opportunities that they may not see otherwise. And for many, it would provide the funding for college that would enable them to get a college degree. And for some who were interested in becoming a physician, such options were important because it cut the cost that they, the student, would have to pay.

But I was counseling for service in peace time, not war, and in retrospect, that was probably a mistake. The military has and should always be focused on war and the prevention of war. The military has never done well in peace time. I saw such comments in my grandfather’s diary when he was serving during the period between the two World Wars.

Following the two World Wars, we down-sized our military and told our veterans that they were on their own. We promised the veterans of World War I bonuses but when the time came to pay them, we reneged on the deal. Fortunately for the veterans of World War II, we gave them the G. I. Bill and enabled them to get the skills necessary to resume a civilian life. But since then, we have cast aside our veterans, shunting them to side and into the darkness where no one can see them.

Yet, we continue to tell our youth that military life will give them what they need, the training and the funding for life after they have given their country the early part of their youth. For the lucky ones, this may be true. But for too many, it is only a hoped for reality and not what they find when they come home.

The issue, the problem is that we expect our soldiers, sailors, and marines to prepare for two mutually exclusive situations, a peace-time situation and a war-time situation. We do not prepare those who serve for this dichotomy nor do we help with the transition afterwards. The violence that destroyed Fort Hood last week will erupt on another post or another base or on a ship somewhere in the middle of the ocean because of this conflict.

There will always be a conflict between the duties of a soldier and the desires of someone who enlists for the future because those two futures are many, many times exclusive. The exclusiveness of this is even more today because it is complicated by an age-old axiom and the by-product of societal thought.

Even with the lessons handed down from generation to generation, we still fight our current wars using the previous wars’ tactics. Our casualty rates in the Civil War were high because both armies used tactics that assumed that rifles being used were as inaccurate as the ones used in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. But the technology of 1860 was far ahead of the technology of 1810 and it showed in the increased number of casualties. There were those who saw the carnage and wondered if there was some sort of manageable peace solution possible. But, by then, it was too late for any sort of negotiated settlement and Grant recognized that the only way to win was to eliminate the Confederate armies.

Ironically, it was after one of the bloodier battles that Robert E. Lee offered his quote that it was fortunate that war was so terrible or we would grow very fond of it. But it seems that in today’s world we have grown very fond of it, as we have sanitized and hidden the blood of war.

But now we are faced with an entirely different type of war, no matter what it is called. And, even with the lessons of Viet Nam, we still haven’t learned that you cannot defeat a population with huge armies, especially when those huge armies are viewed as conquerors and not liberators. You would have thought that that we would have finally understood another quote from Chairman Mao, “the guerilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” But we haven’t and we are now paying the price for our ignorance.

If our military is to succeed, it must understand its mission and its goals. The military can not be an instrument for the implementation of an unclear vision or poorly stated mission statement. And it must have the resources to fulfill the vision as well. But such a statement, such a vision, and those resources must come from the politicians and the people.

This is unfortunately something this country has not done or is doing now. This country, which so willingly cheers its military personnel as they go off to war, quite easily ignores those soldiers, sailors, and marines while they serve and when they come home. Many of our enlisted personnel have families, yet because of the current pay structure are eligible for food stamps and similar benefits. (It is interesting to note that those who argue for a strong military also call for a reduction of these same benefits. Perhaps if their efforts were directed towards the men and women of the Armed Services and the people of this country instead of the contractors back home, we could have strong military, one in which people would be glad to join.) We ask our military to serve without question but then to disappear quietly into the background so that they can be forgotten when they come home.

On this day, we must first resolve that we will not see war as the first but only the last option in resolving problems. On this day, we must resolve that we will understand who our enemy is and what they fight for. Let us also resolve to remove the causes of war — poverty, hunger, homelessness, lack of medical care – before fighting other people. And let us resolve that when the fighting is done and our military come home, they truly can come home, that this country will honor our commitment to their service and not cast them aside to be quickly forgotten.

George Clemenceau once said, in effect, that war was too important to leave to soldiers. (There are many who say he meant generals but there are several variants.) But if we forget the soldiers, then we make it easy to not think about the cost of war.

War is perhaps at times unavoidable. I cannot help but think of Patrick Henry’s comment during his “give me liberty” speech that war was already on the doorsteps of our fledging nation and that it was inevitable that we would fight. If we must fight, so be it. But let us fight for reasons that are clear and just, not ideological and self-centered. And if we must fight, let it because there were no other options available; war should never be the first option in any conflict.

We should be doing two things today. We should not be spending time and money on ourselves. Rather, we should be spending time remembering those who served. And then, we should be spending time and effort to work inside and outside the military to develop answers that do not require violence to solve problems; we should be spending time and effort finding ways to build up people and nations, not destroying them.

So I ask, “What will you be doing today?”

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left

There’s lots of bad stuff going on in the world today. A natural worrywart would have a feast wigging out over what is happening in the world and right here in the good ole’ U.S. of A. How many times I hear people speaking of the good old days, of simpler times when life wasn’t so complicated, when it was safe to let children run free in public and when everyone supposedly went to church every Sunday.

I dissent from such a view. There is no such thing as the good ole’ days. It is a myth constructed by people with amnesia who have forgotten or have chosen not to remember the problems and perils of earlier days. Allow me to offer some evidence:

-An estimated 20% of American children live in poverty today. More lived in poverty in 1900 and an estimated 20% lived in orphanages because their parents couldn’t afford them.

-In the nineteenth century the age of sexual consent in several states was nine or ten.

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Why do conservatives and Republicans oppose health care reform?

(A brief summary for sharing with your friends.)

The objection is common: When millions are without health insurance and far too many people are driven to bankruptcy by their medical bills, why do Republicans want to maintain the status quo in health care?

The answer is simple…

And it’s at My Three Cents

Yesterday’s elections results are now being spun by both political parties to their advantage. Most Democrats are minimizing losing two governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, while Republicans are hailing their victories as a shot across the bow at Democrats in Congress and President Obama. In truth, both sides are overplaying their hand, which should not be surprising. Nevertheless, Republicans have reason to be happy today, though their celebration should be guarded, and Democrats ought to be concerned, although they are hardly on the path to minority party status.

The first lesson that politicians should have learned a long time ago but have not, is that, contrary to popular political mythology, elections are never mandates from the American people. Yes, there are those partisans on both sides who want their party to ram their agenda down the collective throat of the country come hell or high water, but most voters are not so ideologically driven. For the most part, elections are not expressions of confidence in someone or one group of politicians as they are a no confidence vote in those who fail to get elected. The reason the Republicans controlled all facets of government up until 2006 was because the American people lacked confidence in the Democratic party to govern. In 2006, we began to see the public’s lack of trust in the Republicans. Thus, the 2008 election that swept the Democratic party into the White House along with bigger majorities on Capitol Hill, was not a show of support for those elected as much as a no-confidence vote in those who had been in office. Change elections are really a “get rid of the bums” kind of event. Yes, I know that there were more than a few, particularly young people, who were part of the “Obama Messianic Movement,” but most supporters of President Obama are more realistic and down-to-earth. Unfortunately, what has happened in the last year is that the Democratic party, newly in power, has assumed, on account of their hubris, that the American people have given them a mandate for their agenda, for their political program. Such an extreme approach to governing is starting to result, ever so slowly in another “get rid of the bums” election now directed at the other side of the aisle.

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The other day I posted “How Ironic” to alert you all to what was happening at Butler University.  It was announced over the last two days that the University was dropping its lawsuit (see “Butler Drops Suit Against Student Blogger”) against the anonymous student blogger.  But it was also indicated that there was still the potential for Butler University to seek some sort of administrative action against Jess Zimmerman, the student in question.

It is interesting to read what the University’s attorney said and what the University actually did and what they propose to do.  In a world where we claim to have such a thing as academic freedom, it apparently means that one is free to write or say whatever you want just as long as it supports authority, be it governmental or academic in nature.

It was also interesting to read the next article (right after the Butler announcement) about the VA and its handling of education claims for veterans.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left

I was driving down I-35 one afternoon when I saw a billboard that made the key to health care reform crystal clear to me.

As much as we need to deal with health insurance portability, pre-existing conditions, and the millions of uninsured, the biggest problem — the one we absolutely must address — is rising health care costs. Every health care system in the industrialized world is struggling with this. No plan — be it a “public option,” a co-op, or single-payer — can survive long-term without finding a way to contain costs.

And this billboard made the key to cost containment clear.

What did it say?

Visit My Three Cents to find out.

You may or may not know that I am a participant in “The Clergy Project” and its Evolution weekend project (www.evolutionweekend.org).  But this is not the reason for this particular post.

Jess Zimmerman is a junior at Butler University who wrote some blog articles that were critical of the treatment of his stepmother who was removed as Chair of the Butler University School of Music.  In what was perhaps an attempt to intimidate him, his father’s (Michael Zimmerman, founder of the Clergy project) contract as the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Science was not renewed.

The story about what is happening can be found at Inside Higher Ed (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/16/butler#) and The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stu-kreisman/student-blogger-shut-down_b_325370.html).  You can also read Jess’s take on this amazing story – and view all documents associated with the case, and lots of press coverage, including a piece written by Clergy Letter Project member Matt Young on Panda’s Thumb – in Jess’s blog at www.akadoe.blogspot.com.

Now, I find it interesting that the administration claims that they are not suing Jess Zimmerman but rather the anonymous blogger who wrote the critical pieces.  Jess has acknowledge that he did in fact write the pieces so the claim that the blogger is anonymous is somewhat weak.

Whether you support Butler University in their claims and subsequent actions, the fact remains that the university has sought to stifle free speech and open dialogue.  It is rhetoric that sounds amazingly like much of what has transpired during the past eight years when we were told that anyone who spoke out against the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan was working for our country’s enemies. 

I am taking this opportunity to encourage you to first read the pieces cited above and make your own decision.  Then I am encouraging you to go to www.ipetitions.com/petition/butler and sign the petition in support of Jess Zimmerman.

Here is what I posted as a comment to my signature:

It is ironic that a school founded by an abolitionist would engage in the same sort of activities that many who opposed abolition used themselves to shut down free speech in the early 1800’s.

A university, any university, is a symbol of learning and inquiry. To work against free speech is to work against that which a university, any university, stands for.

The administration may not like the light in which it stands at the moment but that is the nature of freedom. Those who seek to hide in the darkness will die in the light.

Butler University must open its activities in this matter to the public and withdraw its suit against Jesse Zimmerman.

There is also a Facebook page for support (search for Friends of Jess Zimmerman).

And then tell your friends.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left

Up until a couple of years ago, I was a big fan of divided government, that is, one political party in the White House and the other party in charge of Capitol Hill. But then something happened– I caught a strange virus. I started to believe that having only one party in power might prove to be very productive for our government and, therefore, by extension the American people. So, we had six years of Republican rule in both the legislative branch and the executive branch of government. Now we currently have the Democrats in charge. In watching both parties going wild with total power in their hands, I write this post to publicly repent of my wayward ways. I have returned to the true faith of believing once again in divided government and the holy process known as gridlock.

The Founding Fathers of the country believed strongly in checks and balances because they knew that human beings, even decent ones, could not be trusted with too much power. The problem is those checks and balances are threatened and seem to basically disappear when there is a majority party with all the power and a minority party with none. The fox ends up watching the hen house.

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That is the question raised in light of Lord Christopher Monckton’s speech last week in Minnesota.

That is a position that some on the left who want a larger global agenda trump US sovereignty would claim.  At the center of the debate is the 2nd clause of Article VI of the US Constitution which reads:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

So does an international treaty such as Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty trump the Constitution.  In a word, no.

In Reid v. Covert the Supreme Court in 1957 wrote in the majority opinion that:

There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result. These debates as well as the history that surrounds the adoption of the treaty provision in Article VI make it clear that the reason treaties were not limited to those made in "pursuance" of the Constitution was so that agreements made by the United States under the Articles of Confederation, including the important peace treaties which concluded the Revolutionary War, would remain in effect.  It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights - let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition - to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions. In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined.

There is nothing new or unique about what we say here. This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty.

If there is case law more recent than this that nullifies this, please let me know… I’m not a legal scholar by any stretch of the imagination.  I do note troubling trend of jurists referencing international law in their decisions, which I don’t think has any place in federal or state case law, but the meme that a treaty will supersede the US Constitution does not bode true from what I’ve read so far.

Now will a treaty signed by the President and ratified by the Senate trump state law?  That’s a different issue, and it would appear that yes it could.  Under the Marshall Court in the majority decision in Gibbons v. Ogden states:

This opinion has been frequently expressed in this Court, and is founded as well on the nature of the government as on the words of the Constitution. In argument, however, it has been contended that, if a law passed by a State, in the exercise of its acknowledged sovereignty, comes into conflict with a law passed by Congress in pursuance of the Constitution, they affect the subject and each other like equal opposing powers.

But the framers of our Constitution foresaw this state of things, and provided for it by declaring the supremacy not only of itself, but of the laws made in pursuance of it. The nullity of any act  inconsistent with the Constitution is produced by the declaration that the Constitution is the supreme law. The appropriate application of that part of the clause which confers the same supremacy on laws and treaties is to such acts of the State Legislatures as do not transcend their powers, but, though enacted in the execution of acknowledged State powers, interfere with, or are contrary to, the laws of Congress made in pursuance of the Constitution or some treaty made under the authority of the United States. In every such case, the act of Congress or the treaty is supreme, and the law of the State, though enacted in the exercise of powers not controverted, must yield to it. (emphasis mine)

So with that in mind the treaty referred to by Lord Monckton (or any international treaty for that matter) is troubling.  One section that Lord Monckton seemed to be refer can be found on pg. 18-19:

38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following:

(a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.

(b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change impacts, including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, (c) a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions.

(c) The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; (c) a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange.

As with any bill or treaty the devil is in the details, and I’m leery about any international agreement.  Based on who President Obama surrounds himself with I’m troubled by how it may be implemented.  So with that in mind I’d encourage you to contact your Senator to discuss let them know that it’s ratification would not be in the best interest of the United States.

HT: Chicago Blues Girl for pointing me to a copy of the treaty.

Originally cross-posted on Caffeinated Thoughts.

Two unrelated articles that flickered across my screen today have got me wondering if we’re being had.

Let’s review the recent history of the health care reform debate: After watching Washington spend billions screwing up the bank bailout and the stimulus, large numbers of the public told their Congressmen they didn’t want any kind of publicly managed health care. The House thumbed their nose at this, but the Senate (whose members are not gerrymandered into office) responded by dropping any kind of public option from consideration.

This is in spite of the fact that the public option has been clearly documented as the preferred road to get us to that holy grail of American liberalism, single-payer health care.

But what if they gave us something so bad that we begged for a public option — or even a single-payer system?

Now let’s look at those two articles.

The Wall Street Journal points out that, as expected, the Bauchus bill has income based subidies on health care insurance in the “exhanges.” So someone who makes $50,000 per year will pay more for a given health insurance policy than someone who makes $30,000. It sounds logical, but it can bite you in the butt:

“Think about a family of four earning $42,000 in 2016… CBO says a mid-level “silver” plan will cost about $14,700 in premiums, of which the family will pay $2,600—since the government would pay the other $12,100. If the family breadwinner … then gets a raise or works overtime and wages rise to $54,000, the subsidy drops to $9,900. That amounts to an implicit 34% tax on each additional dollar of income.”

That’s quite a reward for your hard work!

The second piece, in the Denver Post, repeats something I’ve heard a few times in recent weeks: The proposed penalties for not having insurance are actually cheaper than buying insurance. So those who want to save some money will be better off paying the fines until they’re sick and then buying insurance — which they can’t be denied under the new law.

So the feds get the fine money until you get sick. Then the insurance company, which hasn’t been getting your premiums, gets the burden of paying your bill. Which makes premiums go up for everyone playing nice and buying insurance before hand, and some insurance companies will probably go bankrupt. Who wins? The government.

And as the cost of health insurance sky rockets, people will demand action, and government will decide that the problem in this situation is the insurance company — that it would be much more efficient to take the middle man out of this system.

This summer, America all but blew a collective gasket at Congress and told them to back down on the public option. Liberals don’t like it when the masses don’t follow their all-wise lead. Would they try to get their revenge — and their way — by making us ask for what we loudly rejected?

Yeah. What do you think?

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

Today is Blog Action Day 2009. To date, I’ve participated in Blog Action Day, but this year I can’t.

The hysteria over global warming “climate change” is ridiculous.

Our planet might be getting warmer. Human behavior might be influencing that warming. Destroying our economy with Kyoto might reduce far future warming 1%.

But since the warming trend appears to have stopped, since Mars is also warming, and since reduction in fossil fuel use by the West will only make them cheaper and easier to get for India and China, perhaps there are other issues we should focus on.

There are people in this world today without clean water, lacking access to simple medical treatments, and living in constant fear of their neighbors’ barbarism.

We can actually do something about these problems! So should we spend billions on fighting global warming that may not be real, may not be a real problem, and may not be fixable, or should we spend the billions on clean water, stopping malaria, and helping children live to adulthood?

I vote for the latter.

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Related:
Christianity & the environment: 7 principles
7 principles and 1 hot topic

Crossposted from My Three Cents

Sarah Palin has piece that was published this morning for National Review, and she opens by stating, “Petroleum is a major part of America’s energy picture.  Shall we get it here or abroad?”  This follows a Facebook post regarding the desire of Gulf oil producers to replace the dollar in pricing oil with a different currency.

The answer, she writes at National Review, is to drill:

Given that we’re spending billions of stimulus dollars to rebuild our highways, it makes sense to think about what we’ll be driving on them. For years to come, most of what we drive will be powered, at least in part, by diesel fuel or gasoline. To fuel that driving, we need access to oil. The less use we make of our own reserves, the more we will have to import, which leads to a number of harmful consequences. That means we need to drill here and drill now.

We rely on petroleum for much more than just powering our vehicles: It is essential in everything from jet fuel to petrochemicals, plastics to fertilizers, pesticides to pharmaceuticals. Ac­cord­ing to the Energy Information Ad­min­is­tra­tion, our total domestic petroleum consumption last year was 19.5 million barrels per day (bpd). Motor gasoline and diesel fuel accounted for less than 13 million bpd of that. Meanwhile, we produced only 4.95 million bpd of domestic crude. In other words, even if we ran all our vehicles on something else (which won’t happen anytime soon), we would still have to depend on imported oil. And we’ll continue that dependence until we develop our own oil resources to their fullest extent.

Those who oppose domestic drilling are motivated primarily by environmental considerations, but many of the countries we’re forced to import from have few if any environmental-protection laws, and those that do exist often go unenforced. In effect, American environmentalists are preventing responsible development here at home while supporting irresponsible development overseas. (read the rest)

Palin is right.  For the sake of our economic and national security we need to unshackle our ability to develop the God-given natural resources that we have here at home.  We can develop and access these resources in environmentally friendly ways providing a transition to a cleaner fuel alternative.  So my answer to her question is, “drill, baby, drill.”  Let’s get it from within our own borders.

It would be the common sense approach, which is why Washington won’t likely go for it.

Cross-posted at Caffeinated Thoughts

A great editorial from Bernd Debusmann.

HT: Dave Black

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

An article in the Daily Mail Online, dated October 14, details the exploits of a woman “addicted to abortion.” Irene Vilar has admitted to having fifteen abortions in a seventeen plus years period of time. She has written a book on her experience entitled, Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict.

Her exploits have created quite a stir, including a controversy within the pro-choice community itself. If one is truly pro-choice, how does one condemn this woman’s actions over the years? Yet, at the same time, is anyone with any kind of moral conscience completely comfortable with her decisions? Does abortion addiction reveal the extremely flawed logic of the pro-choice view or is it completely consistent?

I would like to hear from those persons who consider themselves pro-choice. How do you respond to this women and her many decisions to terminate her pregnancies? I would also like to hear from those who are pro-life. What do you make of Vilar’s experience and the current debate on abortion?

I invite all to respond. Let’s make sure that we keep the discussion civil.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

It’s increasingly PC to spit on the memory of Columbus and his intrepid band of explorers. After all, you can’t “discover” a place that already has people in it! And then introducing them to disease, slavery, and colonialism simply ruins all chances of having a Hallmark holiday in your honor.

But I think ol’ Chris is unfairly getting the shaft. Here are three reasons Columbus should get historical amnesty and I should get the day off.

1) He may not have been the first guy on the continent, but he was the first guy to tell everyone else about it.

It doesn’t matter if Squanto or Erik the Red were here first. They didn’t tell anybody.

2) The moaning about the wretched treatment of the indigenous peoples tends to make the pre-Columbus Americas sound like the Garden of Eden when in fact they were just as horrible to each other as everybody else is.

Yes, Europe introduced them to guns, but before that they were happily beating each other’s brains in with clubs and tomahawks. We unintentionally exposed them to various diseases (and no doubt got a few in return); sorry. My daughters do that to me all the time! Slavery? Europeans didn’t exactly introduce the concept.

3) Neither Squanto nor Erik the Red had the foresight to found the US. Ok, neither did Columbus. But the latter’s actions did directly lead to our existence.

While the loss of the US wouldn’t have ended the world, it would have certainly postponed some very important advances such as electricity, airplanes, spaceflight, and the polio vaccine, not to mention the defeat of Nazi Germany. I say, yay for anything that led to the creation of the US.

I’m not campaigning for Columbus’ sainthood, but it’s time we give the guy a break. No one in history is as pure as the driven snow, but Columbus changed the world, and it’s worth honoring his memory.

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crossposted from My Three Cents

When I heard that Pres. Obama had been given the Nobel Peace Prize, so many thoughts ran through my head:

7. We’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.

6. Al Gore’s prize is no longer the committee’s biggest embarrassment.

5. His reward for throwing Poland and Israel under the bus.

4. Maybe I’ll win next year.

3. This actually makes sense for a man who’s written two memoirs before his 50th birthday.

2. The final piece of evidence that the Peace Prize is either a purely political statement or a complete joke.

1. He deserved to win! For his tireless work on … on … on …

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

Periodically throughout the day, I have been reading the ponderments of many on the left and on the right, in editorial and on the blogosphere, concerning the announcement that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. I have read many thoughtful reflections from people who believe the president is a good choice and from those who do not. While there has been some name-calling and demagoguery on both sides, I have read many reasonable reflections from people who simply disagree. I have also been interested that for many it is not all that clear what the qualifications should be for those who win the prestigious award.

But I have been wondering what those persons think who simply do not care much about the Nobel Peace Prize nor who gets it. I count myself as one of those persons. I find this whole subject to be completely uninteresting. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that because I have no interest in it, that such an award is unimportant nor a waste of time. There are all kinds of important things in life that some people just don’t care about. But I just cannot seem to work up a whole lot of interest in today’s news. Indeed, this post is coming so late in the day because I have had a difficult time motivating myself to write it. I just don’t care.

But I am writing this because I think it might be interesting to ponder some thoughts from the apathetic. I suppose for me (and this is personal, of course) I have never been much interested in awards. I have received some honors in my life for which I am grateful to those who thought of me. I have also served on a few committees that have granted awards. Those individuals whom we honored deserved what they received, although I found myself irritated at times with other committee members who attempted to complicate the process, and who frankly took themselves and their own views too seriously, and felt that the giving of the award was more about the statement they were making to everyone as opposed to the person who was honored.

Thus, as one who apathetically ponders the moment, I wonder why I cannot work up more enthusiasm for a prize that is awarded every year by five people in Norway. Perhaps at some point in my life before they bury me, I will come to figure out the significance of all this and actually join future discussions on future recipients; but for now, I will only say one thing because it is the appropriate response, even if I find this whole thing to be somehow beside the point…

Congratulations, Mr. President.

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Cross-Posted at Allan R. Bevere

The recent arrest of fugitive and film maker Roman Polanski for fleeing before being sentenced for raping a fourteen year old girl thirty years ago, is another reminder of the lack of a moral compass that is continually displayed by so many in the Hollywood community. It is a shock, but it is not a surprise.

Here is a man who committed a heinous crime against a young and innocent girl and never served time for that act. Now many of his colleagues in the Hollywood community are acting as if Polanski is now the victim because of his arrest in Switzerland. Whoopie Goldberg said that while Polanski committed rape it was not like “rape, rape.” (Huh?) Jack Lang a film maker referred to Polanski’s actions toward the fourteen year old as a “so-called crime.” (How does Lang feel about NAMBLA?) Actress Debra Winger referred to the authorities as Philistines (Does she even know who the Philistines were?) and stated that Polanski’s arrest was exploiting the world of art. (Yeah, right! Arresting a child rapist will definitely lead to the censorsing of television and films.) Another Hollywood “Rhodes Scholar” stated that Polanski was arrested like a “common terrorist.” (No… he was arrested like a common fugitive.) Woody Allen (whose credibility on sexual behavior is hardly to be trusted) is one of 138 artists who signed a petition protesting Polanski’s arrest.

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This started with a discussion on the Chemical Education Discussion List (CHEMED-L) about what the internet will do and is doing to traditional colleges (to see the discussion go to http://mailer.uwf.edu/listserv/wa.exe?S1=chemed-l and enter “Will the Internet Kill Traditional Colleges” in the search for string box).

It was pointed out by one individual that the Internet has been with us since August 6, 1991 and every freshman entering college this year has never lived in a world without the World Wide Web (for other revelations about this year’s incoming freshman class see, “Mindset List for the class of 2013”). It was also noted that these students often understand the latest technology implicitly while older generations struggle to with it. Today’s freshmen class is in a comfort zone with technology while many college faculties have to move out of theirs. (“Will the Internet Kill Traditional Colleges” – Irv Levy, Chemical Education Discussion List, 23 September 2009).

My response was

But what is the students’ comfort zone? Granted, they have had this technology since "day 1" but does that mean that they can use it? From my perspective, students who use instant messaging and twitter their lives away cannot write complete sentences or use the proper rules of grammar. They may be comfortable with the technology but not for the uses that perhaps only we see.

And they come to our classes with the notion, especially at the freshman/introductory level, that the class will be a version of what they have done in high school. And, for the most part, it is copy what the teacher says, do the problems in the book, and write it all down for the test.

Most of the students have the capability to take photos with their cell phones but very seldom do they take photos of the work they do in the lab for inclusion in their lab reports.

They willingly accept what they read on the Internet as the "truth" but do not understand the verification process. In my assignment on academic integrity, I routinely get statements that one individual who won a Nobel Prize was guilty of fraud (based on an incomplete page somewhere and a congressional investigation that was later repudiated). (The assignment is at An Assignment on Academic and Scientific Integrity.)

From our standpoint, the academic world, there are great opportunities for this technology but all that has been done is move drill-and-practice from paper on a desktop to the video screen. The key thing about many of the current on-line colleges is that they are not accredited and their courses only transfer to other schools in the same corporation. The reason that so many administrators in the schools where we work want to move to an on-line presence is that they see the success of the on-line schools and the large number of students that are enrolled in such schools. They are not concerned about the delivery methods or what happens to the students after they graduate.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was in a discussion with a local community college about teaching there and it seemed like every other question they asked was about my ability to teach chemistry courses on-line.

I said that I thought there was no problem with the lecture and there is a lot that you can do in that regard. But I also pointed out that I didn’t think that you could do laboratory work on-line or "at home" for safety, legal, and educational reasons. There are plenty of ways to simulate the laboratory on-line but that is not the same thing as doing the lab and we want the students to have the experience manipulating the materials as well as looking at the materials. You cannot get that experience moving a mouse to open and close a stopcock.

What we, the academics, have to do is create ways to expand the on-line presence. Many years ago, I wrote a paper about how two elementary school classes could collaborate on a science project (see Was Eratosthenes Correct? A Multi-class science Project).

When I wrote it, the only means of communication were by regular ("snail") mail and telephone. Then the Internet was "born" and other means of communication were created. As I noted in the "Eratosthenes" piece that is exactly what happened in the measurement of the earth project.

We have to beyond simply putting PowerPoint presentations on-line and setting up our exams so that students can take them anytime they want. We must also put in an interactive mode - setting a time to meet and chat with the students, to hear what they are saying, not merely read what they type.

Many of us already do that, it is called a classroom.

What is happening in terms of on-line instruction is a mirror of what is happening in society. Society wants their children to be educated but they want the education to come at a low cost. They do not want their students challenged but then they wonder why there is no creativity.

I hate to say it but there will be an on-line presence in our colleges and unless we find ways to put the creativity back in the classroom, be it on-line or through a real-time physical presence, it will be what it is now, not what it can be.

Since that was posted to the CHEMED list, I have had an opportunity to read a book by Bill Moyers (Moyers on Democracy). I respect Bill Moyers because he is honest and his principles have always come first. Trained as a Baptist minister, he went to work for Lyndon Johnson in the 1950’s and then through the 1960’s. But when the conflict between his soul and his call to duty (which many called the Viet Nam War), he left Washington and began his career in journalism. This book highlights several of the speeches he has given over the past twenty years. This includes the speech that he gave on 15 November 2006 to the cadets at the United States Military Academy. But I am looking at his comments on education at the moment.

In his message to the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (March 3, 2007) he said,

Educational Testing Service recently concluded that a perfect storm is brewing, with our colleges and universities right at the center of it. Three powerful forces are converging: wide disparities in skill levels (reading and math), widening wage gaps of seismic proportions, and sweeping demographic shifts of more people with less education and fewer skills. If we don’t confront these changes with new thinking and new policies, we will find it difficult to sustain a vibrant middle class. The American dream of decent jobs and livable wages could vanish in our time.

To read these words from a man who grew up in Depression-era Texas and for whom college was the escape, is to read words that echoed in the discussion about the Internet. As I pointed out in my note to the CHEMED list, administrators want on-line courses because they are cheaper and a more efficient means of presenting information. Let’s ignore the fact that many of the on-line schools that we hear so much about are not accredited by the same agencies that sanction regular colleges and universities. They are bringing in the students and that is all that administrators desire to know.

But what are they learning. Again, as I noted in my note, many on-line classes are nothing more than drill-and-practice lessons transferred from paper to video screens. And while many instructors have transformed their lectures from overhead projectors to Power Point presentations, the informational process is still read the book, copy the problems that the instructors gives you (whose answers may be in the back of the book) and recall all that information for the next test. And many book publishers are simply transforming the textbook materials into on-line presentations. And if there are errors in the book, those errors are likely to be found in the on-line course. (And often times, the on-line material is prepared by a programmer who knows little or nothing about the course material so he or she is not in a position to determine if there are any errors in the material.)

The problem is our use of the Internet merely mirrors what we do in the classroom. The driving force behind the development of on-line courses and on-line colleges is to eliminate traditional costs, i.e., the classroom costs. And this makes it easier for administrators to justify cutting teaching positions and increasing the workload of those who survive the cuts while still maintaining hefty salaries for themselves

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How things can change a mere 9 months:

What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls - Rasmussen Reports™

Few nations are as generous with their time and money as the United States, but right now Americans are a suspicious bunch.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. Thirty-six percent (36%) are Very Angry.

Despite the high level of political anger last year that helped fuel President Obama’s election, 59% say the current level of political anger in the country is higher than it was when George W. Bush was president.

A lot of that anger is directed at the people who are spending billions and billion of dollars of taxpayer money. That helps explain why members of Congress have now surpassed corporate CEOs to hold the least favorably regarded profession in the country.

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Cross-posted: Ron’s Bloviating

When I was young I remember my grandfather (when he was alive) and my grandmother telling me stories of how everyone in the United States sacrificed for the war effort during WW II– enduring regular and scheduled blackouts, saving tin, and making do with what had been rationed. They felt it important to sacrifice for a cause greater than themselves and their daily routine.

I highlight those memories only to ask a question: What has happened to the notion of sacrifice in America? After 9/11, when the World Trade Center lay in ruins, then Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani told us that as a people, the best way to fight terrorism was to go to the movies, and then President George W. Bush motivated us to go shopping. The way to fight terrorism it seemed was through consumerism– greed that would put Al Qaeda back on its heels.

In reference to the current health care debate, President Barack Obama is doing exactly the same thing. He keeps promising health care for everyone that will be better than what we have currently, that will not cut medical care, that will drive down costs, and that will not cost the average consumer a dime in new taxes; and it will not raise the already out-of-control deficit. Not only does no one who has seriously studied the issue believe this, but it is the same mantra we continue to hear from politicians in both parties– we will give you everything and it will cost nothing– except for the rich, of course, because we hate them.

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In the anthology God, Truth, and Witness, church historian Robert Wilkens argues that Constantinianism was not a program engineered from the halls of power, but rather it was a grass roots movement from the people of the Roman Empire. In making his case, he gives an account of the episcopacy of Ambrose of Milan, who lived a generation after the death of Constantine I. He contrasts Ambrose’s episcopacy with that of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, who lived a century before Ambrose. As bishop Cyprian’s dealings were exclusively with the church he over sought. The church in Carthage was “a city within a city– whose life moved by its own rhythms independent of the society at large: regular worship, caring for the poor, widows, orphans, the sick; burying the dead; visiting prisoners; welcoming Christian visitors; the inevitable petty squabbles of a small community” (p. 76). Those involved in the political machine of Carthage knew Cyprian, but the only encounter he had with the authorities was when the emperor decreed that all Christians who refused to offer sacrifices to the gods were to be executed, bishops first.

In contrast, Ambrose found himself in a situation where bishops, to quote Harold Drake, “became players in the game of empire” (p. 73). In 300, the Emperor Maximian moved his imperial court to Milan. By the time of Ambrose Milan was an important imperial town, and after the emperor, Ambrose found himself “the most important public figure in the city. This was the new role for a Christian bishop” (p. 76).

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Jimmy Carter says those who oppose the president are racists. Nancy Pelosi says those who oppose the president are assassins.

CNN says they’re bad at math.

CNN Money has an article that initially appears to be about preparing for retirement. But it starts out trying to refute the notion that Social Security will soon be out of money, and it seems the only explanation for that is health care reform.

Huh?

Really. What do we keep hearing about health care reform? “Medicare’s broke, Medicaid’s broke, and Social Security’s broke, so why …”

So here comes CNN:

“‘Can I count on Social Security to be there?’

You can. Despite what you may hear about the system going broke, the funds from workers’ payroll taxes will cover all retirees’ payments until 2016 even if no changes are made to the current program. After that the Social Security Administration can cover full benefits until 2037 by cashing in its Treasury bonds from the Social Security trust fund. And when the bonds run out, income from payroll taxes would be enough to cover about 75% of payments for decades.”

This is supposed to reassure us?

1) 2016 is 7 years away. That’s really not that long, folks.

2) Cashing in Treasury bonds? We’re broke! We can’t pay our bills now, and we’ve been stealing borrowing from Social Security for years.

3) 75% of payments? For 100% of retirees? Something’s not adding up. You mean we’re going to have to cut benefits or cut beneficiaries? That sounds like another conversation we’ve been having — rationing health care.

I don’t think the fiscal strength of Social Security is something any retiree should count on, and it’s certainly no defense for federalizing our health care system.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

There are many political catch-phrases that have become useless in modern politics– phrases like “the politics of fear,” “the politicizing of whatever,” “the culture of corruption.” But perhaps the most useless political phrase of all is the high-sounding but irrelevant phraseology of “speaking truth to power.”

Many years ago, philosopher Alasdair McIntyre wrote the wonderful book, Whose Justice, Which Rationality, in which he argued that all conceptions of justice and rationality presuppose a tradition that give them definition. Likewise, the notions of “truth” and “power” are not universal terms which everyone understands; rather they too presuppose a tradition, a context, a narrative, that make them intelligible.

So, why is it that the church in America today cannot speak truth to power? The reasons are two-fold: First, the vast majority of Christians in America have accepted the Constantinian notion that the primary political task of the church is to rule, to be in charge. What that means at the very least is that Christians are to play a prophetic role in the political court of Washington DC. Second, it means that most Christians have accepted the modern dichotomies of left/right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican.

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This was supposed to be a piece questioning the motives of those who marched in Washington last weekend. At best, they have a selective memory; at worst, they are representative of days past when the police set the dogs on the children in Birmingham, state troopers beat the marchers on the Edmund Pettis bridge outside Selma and a church with four little girls was bombed during Sunday services.

Let me first say that I am in agreement with them about the nature of government but probably for a whole different set of reasons. There is a limit to the size of any organization, be it a government in general, a government agency, or even something like a church.

When you do not know the people who are the beneficiaries of the work that you do, your organization may be too big. But if one were to ask me “how big is too big?” I am not sure that I would have an easy answer.

The problem for those who marched last weekend is that, at least from my viewpoint, they see any government as too big. It is one thing to cry out against big government and its associated cost but where were these people when the deficit was being run up during the previous administration’s watch? And what will many of these people do if they achieve their goal of no federal medical insurance program and they turn 65 and there is no Medicare, a government-run program?

What are they going to do when the water that they drink and the air that they breathe is so polluted that drinking the water or breathing the air poisons the body? How are they going to travel if there are no air traffic controllers to make sure that planes don’t crash into each other while taking off, landing, or going from point A to point B? It would be nice to know that our money is safe and protected as well.

And what will they do when we must contract out our military obligations to firms like Xe (formerly known as Blackwater)? Who will pay the contractors?

The cry of so many of the people in that march was that government was too big but what parts are they going to cut? For sure, the cries of the Republicans over the years have been to cut social programs but the two biggest bureaucracies in the government are the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security. If there is waste in the Education Department, how much waste is in the Defense Department?

There has to be a government and it seems logical to me that it be a federal government. The whole rationale for the Constitution was that a confederation of states, independent in thought and mind, wouldn’t work. But if a government is to be of the people, by the people, and for the people, it must be responsive to the needs of the people.

In one sense, I agree with the protestors who marched last weekend. The government does not respond to the needs of the people. Whatever form the healthcare reform bill takes, it will be thousands of pages long and filled with paragraphs that will bedazzle and baffle even the most experienced legal scholar. And buried in the countless paragraphs will be money spent, not on healthcare reform, but on pet projects of representatives and senators, otherwise known as “pork” and all but designed to benefit political benefactors in their districts.

It is one thing to say that monies are needed in a district to fix the roads and repair the bridges. Lord knows, the road in front of my house could use some work and maybe, just maybe, with the money in the stimulus bill, it might get done. But no one on our street is a major campaign donor and there are some of us who have opposed some of the local politician’s pet projects, so I don’t think we will get the money any time soon.

And while these people are protesting any attempts to reform the healthcare process in this country, they are probably also calling for more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. With the fighting in that country seemingly endless in nature and with the number of dead and wounded seeming to increase, it would only be logical to say that if I don’t care if someone lives or dies in this country because of illness, why should I care if they live or die in some far-off land. And we have already gone on the record that we really don’t care for our veterans when they come home.

It appears that there will be a report out this week (if it hasn’t already gone out) indicating that many of our military leaders wonder what our strategy, what our goal in Afghanistan is. It also appears that there will be some sort of report this week stating that we need to raise the number of troops in that part of the world. Those two points suggest Viet Nam all over again. But they also ask another question.

Where are they going to get the troops? We can forget the draft. If we were to reinstate the draft, it would have more and bigger loopholes than the ones presently in the tax code. So, we must recycle our troops, our strained and exhausted troops! It turns out that a tour in Iraq is different from a tour in Afghanistan, and you are not exempt from being sent to Afghanistan just because someone has done a tour or two or three in Iraq.

But what do we care? We are safe and sound at home as long as the fighting is somewhere else. I hope that those who are against any type of social programs in this country but want to send our troops overseas make sure that their sons and daughters are sent off to front-line duty. Let’s make sure though that they don’t get some sort of cushy jobs in Indiana or Alabama.

I truthfully pray that all our military personnel come home, safe and unharmed with no lingering effects from combat and scenes of death and destruction or watching their friends, buddies and comrades die.

But we, the people of this country, need to know that the policies of the last administration are still in place and no one will ever see the pictures of dead soldiers and marines killed in some far-off land. And there will be no one to welcome the bodies of those killed when they arrive at Dover Air Force Base at midnight. And no one responsible for sending those young men and women overseas will be there when the family has to bury their child and they receive the flag that draped the coffin and they receive the thanks from a grateful nation. It seems to me that such thanks are hollow thanks.

Why did I name this piece Tarawa? Because Tarawa was one of the first of many bloody engagements that would mark the war in the Pacific and the pictures of dead and dying Marines on the reefs of that island were so shocking that the War Department didn’t want them published. They didn’t want them published because to do so would be to show people what war was like. We tried to do the same thing with Viet Nam but when the bodies started coming home in increasing numbers it became impossible to deny the truth. But we have done so in Iraq and we have “sanitized” the war to make it safe. But war is not safe; war is not clean. But war is not safe; war is not clean. War is too dangerous and too dirty for the truth of war to be hidden or kept from the people.

What I want is a government that can tell the truth to the people and the people will know that it is the truth; I don’t want my children or grandchildren fighting in a war in a far-off land for a cause that was invented and twisted and then long ago forgotten. I don’t want to worry that my wife or mother or I might have our healthcare cut off when we get sick because it will put a dent in some insurance companies profit margin.

I want a government that is of the people, for the people, and by the people. I want a government that cares for its people all of the time. What I want is a government that cares for its people, its healthy and its sick, its rich and its poor, its soldiers and its civilians.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left

In the health care reform debate, we keep hearing that we must control costs. And then no one offers a method for actually getting and keeping costs down.

In all the states and foreign nations that have achieved universal coverage, not one has been able to keep health care costs under control, and most systems are operating under deficit spending or are rapidly approaching that point.

I have already written about some of the sources of rising health care costs, but I’d like to look at a couple here.

Defensive Medicine
Many doctors order more tests than they need to cover their butts in case of lawsuits. We cannot reform our health care system without addressing tort reform. Texas instituted tort reforms a few years ago that have been largely successful. Other states have had similar successes. I was encouraged that the President mentioned this in his address to Congress, but then he put a long time trial lawyer lobbyist in charge of “examining” the situation. The tort lottery has to change if we want to get health care costs under control.

Free Health Care is Expensive
The second major issue in medical costs is that it’s free.

No, it’s not free for the doctor or hospital. It’s not free for the insurance provider. But it is largely free for the user — the patient. We neither know nor care what it really costs; we just know we paid our copay and got whatever we wanted.

If I pay my $25 copay, I don’t ever have to know whether the actual cost of the visit/procedure was $200, $2000, or $20,000. Why does that matter?

Free Oil Changes
Do you know how much it costs to get your regular oil change? I do. And if my bill isn’t what I expect, I want to know why. If the closest garage charges too much, I go down the street.

But would I if my car insurance paid for the oil change? Probably not. I’d never even see the bill.

Consider two questions:
How much would your car insurance cost if it paid for your oil changes?

How much would an oil change cost if you didn’t pay for it out of your own pocket?

Competition as Cost Control
The biggest problem with health care costs is the patient’s apathy toward the cost of procedures. I recently had an ultrasound scan. I just went where my doctor told me.

If I was responsible for more of the cost, I would have gotten on the phone. If a hospital five miles away did the same procedure for $200 less, I would have insisted on going there.

And if I was interested in how much the procedure cost, both of those hospitals would be as well. Hospitals, whether for-profit or non-profit, have to have customers to stay open. If their customers become cost-conscious, so will they.

Creating Cost-Conscious Consumers
We could all decide to become cost conscious in our health care, but frankly that’s not going to happen as long as someone else pays for it.

We need to change our approach to insurance. Our health insurance should work more like our car insurance. It should be catastrophic coverage — cancer, heart attacks, car accidents — rather than covering every conceivable procedure.

If I had to pay for every visit to the pediatrician out of my pocket, he would have an incentive to keep his costs low. Yes, we might not visit quite as often, but we’re still going to take care of our kids.

Catastrophic Coverage
The key here is catastrophic insurance. Most health insurance covers a wide variety of procedures. Many states require insurance to cover all kinds of things, including therapeutic massage, fertility treatments, and birth control.

Instead, we should have insurance that only covers real emergencies. All of those other things drive up the cost of insurance. If we decrease what we expect health insurance to do, we will decrease how much we pay for it.

And all of the money that we don’t spend on insurance can now go into our paychecks or, better, into a pre-tax health savings account (HSA) that would be used to pay for non-catastrophic health care.

Reform Now
Some will say this is too drastic. It’s drastic, but it’s not as damaging as pumping trillions of dollars into an ever expanding health care sink hole.

Some will say this would take a long time. They’re right.

We can start tomorrow, though, with two very important things:

1) Universal coverage with catastrophic insurance. We can create this quickly and easily within the existing system, and we can get everybody taken care of so that no one will ever go bankrupt because of an illness again. Those who can’t afford even this insurance can get help from the government or from somewhere else.

2) Tort reform, as Texas has shown, can turn things around quickly. Start there, and you will at least slow the rise of health care costs and stop the practice of defensive medicine.

After that, we can move toward a different approach to health insurance using HSAs.

Just This Once
There are those who think the only solution to our social problems, including this one, is government. Well, we tried Social Security; it’s going broke. We tried Medicare; it’s going broke, and what really works — the drug benefit — is one of the few things that the government has ever done that came in under cost estimates because of free market principles. We tried welfare; after decades and trillions of dollars, we tried some conservative solutions and finally made a dent in the problem.

Just this once, can we try the small-government solution to a social problem first? The big-government approach will always be there. But given the results in every other country that has taken that road, I think we owe it to ourselves and the next generation to think out of the box and give real cost containment a shot.

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Related: Healthcare Reform: Meeting in the Middle

Recommended reading: How American Health Care Killed My Father

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

This Psalm has always been framed and displayed in our home to remind us of who is our shield, our refuge, and our hope.  God is our protector and provider.  He is our ever present help in time of trouble.  I think it is apropos to read Psalm 91 as we remember 9/11.  We need not be afraid when we rest in the shelter of the Most High God.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only look with your eyes
and see the recompense of the wicked.

Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—
the Most High, who is my refuge—
10 no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
no plague come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder;
the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

“Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
When he calls to me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation,” (Psalm 91:1-16, ESV).

HT: K-Love Morning Show Blog

Cross-posted at Caffeinated Thoughts

In the President’s big speech, I heard nothing that would really address health care costs. Our government has proven unable to contain costs with Medicare or Medicaid. Health systems in Massachusetts, Maine, and Washington, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan have all failed to contain health care costs.

But there is one place where the US government has been able to control medical expenditure: the Indian Health Service.

Our government provides single-payer health care for many Native American tribes, and they have simple plan for cost controls: Don’t get sick after June.

Quite simply, the government allocates a certain amount of money, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. After that, if you’re not “dying or about to lose a limb,” you’re not going to get much care.

Ok, this isn’t really a scheme for cost control. It is, however, a good example of what can happen when goverment is too involved in your health care.

Is there no way to tackle the rising cost of health care?

Tomorrow.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

Britain and Canada aren’t the only countries with some kind of universal health care program. What else is out there?

The French health care system, lauded by many around the world, is based on a public insurance that is funded by employee and employer. “The working population has twenty percent of their gross salary deducted at source to fund the [health care] system.” 20%. Just for health care. But that might be worth it to create a sustainable universal health care system.

But it doesn’t. The French health system is continually in the red. People have begun buying supplemental insurance to cover what the government won’t. They pay doctors much less than we do. None of this is keeping costs down. This is not a system we want to immitate.

Germany, on the other hand, has no government system. Their health care is financed solely through insurance companies, for-profit and otherwise. Everyone is required to have insurance, the premiums for which are deducted as a payroll tax. And “health care costs … are among the most expensive in the world.” I don’t think this is one to immitate.

“Japan has a system that costs half as much and often achieves better medical outcomes than its American counterpart. It does so by banning insurance company profits, limiting doctor fees and accepting shortcomings in care that many well-insured Americans would find intolerable. … Health care in Japan — a hybrid system funded by job-based insurance premiums and taxes — is universal and mandatory, and consumes about 8 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, half as much as in the United States. … But many health-care economists say Japan’s low-cost system is probably not sustainable without significant change.”

They also experience the long waits, lack of emergency care, and shortage of specialists. Let’s not immitate them either.

But there’s good news! I finally found a government health care program that seems to keep costs under control. Run by our government! More on that tomorrow.

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Crossposted from My Three Cents

I supposed I could have entitled this "My, how things have changed" but I would much rather you thought about what follows and its implications for the present time.

The death of Ted Kennedy and the retrospective on PBS on the Kennedy brothers got me to drag out my beaten and falling apart copy of The Making of the President - 1960 (Theodore White).  This was one of the first books I ever purchased and I made sure that I had copies of the books he wrote about the Presidential elections in 1964, 1968, and 1972.  The series that he wrote offers an insight in the ways that politics have changed from the mid-1950’s.

But the reason for this little piece is what Theodore White wrote about the Republican Party in Chapter 3:

Now that the Democrats have captured the liberal imagination of the nation, it is forgotten how much of the architecture of America’s liberal society was drafted by the Republicans.  Today they are regarded as the Party of the right.  Yet this is the Party that abolished slavery, wrote the first laws of civil service, passed the first antitrust, railway control, consumer-protective, and conservation legislation, and then led America, with enormous diplomatic skill,out into that posture of global leadership and responsibility we now so desperately try to maintain.

The fact that all this has been almost forgotten by the current stylists of our culture is in itself significant.  For until this century and down through its first decade the natural home party of the American intellectual, writer, savant and artist was the Republican Party.  Its men of sate and diplomacy were, as often as not, thinkers and scholars;; and it is doubtful whether any President, even Wilson or the second Roosevelt, made the White House so familiar a mansion to writers and artists as did Theodore Roosevelt (who, indeed, was also one of the founders of the Author’s League of America).

I do not believe that either political party today can make any claim, whatsoever, on the political heritage of this country.  And it is fair to say that the political rhetoric that is taking place today is, at the least, an embarrassment to the heritage of this country.

It is just something to think about.

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Cross-posted to Thoughts From The Heart On The Left

Today President Obama has a message for our school children. Many school systems will carry his message, others will not. I have no problem whatsoever with the President of the United States speaking with our children and I will explain why; but first, some prior thoughts.

First, the hoopla over the President speaking to the nation’s school children is just one more example of what I keep harping on time and time again– the rank hypocrisy of the political right and the political left. When President George H.W. Bush addressed school children in 1991, the left was in a tizzy over his supposed attempt at the “brainwashing” of America’s youngest. The right thought the left was being paranoid. So, here we are in September of 2009 and the roles are reversed although the script is the same.

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