Gayle wrote the following piece on Sunacom.com. To also read an interesting story about Croydon's own Bardo Project read the Story on Sunacom.com.
School Well Water Update
Health Officer Steve Cunningham reports that the well used by the school, town hall and Croydon Congregational Church is 45 years old, of unknown depth, and that the water system is maintained by certified water system manger, Pathways Consulting in Lebanon NH.
Steve Cunningham performed his own tests after flushing the system, and sent the water to the NH DES Laboratory, the only federally certified lab in NH. From the test results, Cunningham had the following recommendations:
"In spite of the negative results recently, the issue of a lack of free chlorine should be addressed. The town should be assured that sufficient chlorine went throughout the system. I would suggest a re-treatment of the well with a chlorine concentration of 50ppm or one gallon of sodium hypochlorite 5.25% bleach for 1000 gallons of well reserve, a NH recommendation. If our well is 500' deep, one gallon for the well, the immediately surrounding water bearing substrate, and the water system would be about right. Then testing for both free and total chlorine should be done over the next several days to determine the presence of free chlorine and chlorines compounds.
"If, by some chance, water is still considered to be chronically contaminated two solutions present themselves. First is to install a treatment system (liquid chlorine insertion would probably be simplest). Second is to connect the well at the Morse House (after testing) and disconnecting the school's well.
"I would also suggest allowing the schoolchildren to use the water for hand washing followed by use of an alcohol base hand disinfectant."
Go to Sunacom.com to view the rest of the story.
To my knowledge the problem has not been resolved. We pay a good portion of the SAU budget of over 600,000 dollars to the SAU what is the point of paying all of these tax dollars if the SAU does nothing for Croydon. Last year the cost of the SAU went up dramatically for Croydon yet we are getting less services in return.
Cathy
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
A Funny Research Finding - Going Green? You are more likely to steal!
The following story appeared on the Rotman School of Management website.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Buying green can be license for bad behaviour, study finds
Toronto, October 6, 2009 –Those lyin’, cheatin’ green consumers.
Just being around green products can make us behave more altruistically, a new study to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found.
But buying those same products can have the opposite effect. Researchers found that buying green can lead people into less altruistic behaviour, and even make them more likely to steal and lie than after buying conventional products. Buying products that claim to be made with low environmental impact can set up “moral credentials” in people’s minds that give license to selfish or questionable behavior.
“This was not done to point the finger at consumers who buy green products. The message is bigger,” says Nina Mazar, a marketing professor at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and a self-admitted green consumer. “At the end of the day, if we do one moral thing, IT doesn’t necessarily mean we will be morally better in other things as well.”
Mazar, along with her co-author Chen-Bo Zhong, an assistant professor of organizational behaviour at the Rotman School, conducted three experiments. The first found that people perceived green consumers to be more cooperative, altruistic and ethical than those who purchased conventional products. The second experiment showed that participants merely exposed to products from a green store shared more money in a subsequent experimental game, but those who actually made purchases in that store shared less. The final experiment revealed that participants who bought items in the green store showed evidence of lying and stealing money in a subsequent lab game.
But are people conscious of this moral green washing going on when they buy green products and, more importantly, the license they might feel to break ethical standards? Professors Mazar and Zhong don't know – and look forward to exploring that in further research.
The complete study is available at: http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/newthinking/greenproducts.pdf .
For the latest thinking on business, management and economics from the Rotman School of Management, visit http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/NewThinking .
The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is redesigning business education for the 21st century with a curriculum based on Integrative Thinking. Located in the world’s most diverse city, the Rotman School fosters a new way to think that enables the design of creative business solutions. The School is currently raising $200 million to ensure Canada has the world-class business school it deserves. For more information, visit http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca.
-30-
Ken McGuffin
Manager, Media Relations
Rotman School of Management
Voice: (416) 946-3818
E-mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Buying green can be license for bad behaviour, study finds
Toronto, October 6, 2009 –Those lyin’, cheatin’ green consumers.
Just being around green products can make us behave more altruistically, a new study to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found.
But buying those same products can have the opposite effect. Researchers found that buying green can lead people into less altruistic behaviour, and even make them more likely to steal and lie than after buying conventional products. Buying products that claim to be made with low environmental impact can set up “moral credentials” in people’s minds that give license to selfish or questionable behavior.
“This was not done to point the finger at consumers who buy green products. The message is bigger,” says Nina Mazar, a marketing professor at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and a self-admitted green consumer. “At the end of the day, if we do one moral thing, IT doesn’t necessarily mean we will be morally better in other things as well.”
Mazar, along with her co-author Chen-Bo Zhong, an assistant professor of organizational behaviour at the Rotman School, conducted three experiments. The first found that people perceived green consumers to be more cooperative, altruistic and ethical than those who purchased conventional products. The second experiment showed that participants merely exposed to products from a green store shared more money in a subsequent experimental game, but those who actually made purchases in that store shared less. The final experiment revealed that participants who bought items in the green store showed evidence of lying and stealing money in a subsequent lab game.
But are people conscious of this moral green washing going on when they buy green products and, more importantly, the license they might feel to break ethical standards? Professors Mazar and Zhong don't know – and look forward to exploring that in further research.
The complete study is available at: http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/newthinking/greenproducts.pdf .
For the latest thinking on business, management and economics from the Rotman School of Management, visit http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/NewThinking .
The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is redesigning business education for the 21st century with a curriculum based on Integrative Thinking. Located in the world’s most diverse city, the Rotman School fosters a new way to think that enables the design of creative business solutions. The School is currently raising $200 million to ensure Canada has the world-class business school it deserves. For more information, visit http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca.
-30-
Ken McGuffin
Manager, Media Relations
Rotman School of Management
Voice: (416) 946-3818
E-mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Correction SAU meeting Thursday - Newport
Just a reminder there is a SAU Meeting on Thursday.
When Jim ran for the school board he ran on the platform of being more open with the community about the schools finances. Shortly after Jim was elected to the School Board, Jim asked Jim Vezina Newport School District Business Administrator for an electronic form of the finances so he could post it on the Croydon website. Jim Vezina has failed to give that information to Jim after repeated requests.
Newer posts appear below this post. This post will be at the top for four days to remind the community about the school board meeting.
Quote of the Day - "As for money, the relationship between it and effective schools has been studied to death. The unanimous conclusion is that there is no connection between school funding and school performance." -- Brookings Institution scholars John Chubb and Terry Moe, 1990
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Big Government Understands Big Education is bad for Education
The following piece appeared on one of my new favorite websites Big Government.com. Be sure to visit the Big Government website to see the embedded video. Teachers' unions are only concerned about themselves and an agenda they are not concerned about what is best for our children.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Teachers’ Unions Block Reform For Their Own Benefit
by Kyle Olson
Earlier this year Robert Chanin, the recently retired general counsel for the National Education Association, discussed the effectiveness of teachers unions at a gathering in San Diego:
Despite what some of us would like to believe, it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child.
NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.
You can see that portion of his 20 minute speech here:
embedded by Embedded Video
Chanin’s honesty was, in a way, refreshing. For too long the NEA, as well as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have been hiding their intentions behind the guise of student advocacy, using children as human shields to block criticism.
But the truth is that the NEA and AFT are huge national labor unions with political agendas and have a great deal of influence with state and national lawmakers. NEAexposed.com and AFTexposed.com are designed to bring attention to those facts.
It’s important for the American people to understand how they use that power to obstruct desperately needed educational reforms, particularly those involving school choice and increased teacher accountability. They fear reform will threaten their guaranteed clientele of students and job security.
The unions’ militant strategy is putting them at odds with leaders of both political parties. Many Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have joined Republicans in calling for fundamental changes in education.
Last year NEA members stood in silence at their national convention when Obama called for merit pay. This year they booed Education Secretary Arne Duncan when he called for more teacher accountability.
But political isolation only increases their determination.
Consider their position on charter schools, the independent public schools. The unions tried to kill charters in their infancy, but now that it’s clear they’re here to stay, the NEA and AFT have a new strategy.
They’re recruiting charter school teachers as members, so charter schools will be plagued with the same labor upheaval that has damaged so many traditional schools. The goal is death by infiltration.
There are many other examples of union anti-reform efforts. The NEA recently contacted every U.S. senator, suggesting political retribution if they voted to reauthorize the District of Columbia’s successful Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher initiative that helps inner-city children escape failing schools.
In Detroit Public Schools, the Detroit Federation of Teachers threatened to strike when the emergency financial manager called for teacher merit pay and an end to the seniority system. The manager and union currently have another month to go in a two-month extension of bargaining talks.
In Wisconsin, the NEA is using its clout to block legislation that would allow teacher evaluations to be linked to student performance. Obama won’t provide education stimulus dollars to states that refuse to link the two, but that doesn’t bother the union.
Reasonable leaders from both parties are calling for changes in education, while the unions are using their political muscle to defend an outdated system. It’s time for the American people to demand education policies that benefit students, not the self-serving teachers unions.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Teachers’ Unions Block Reform For Their Own Benefit
by Kyle Olson
Earlier this year Robert Chanin, the recently retired general counsel for the National Education Association, discussed the effectiveness of teachers unions at a gathering in San Diego:
Despite what some of us would like to believe, it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children. And it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child.
NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.
You can see that portion of his 20 minute speech here:
embedded by Embedded Video
Chanin’s honesty was, in a way, refreshing. For too long the NEA, as well as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have been hiding their intentions behind the guise of student advocacy, using children as human shields to block criticism.
But the truth is that the NEA and AFT are huge national labor unions with political agendas and have a great deal of influence with state and national lawmakers. NEAexposed.com and AFTexposed.com are designed to bring attention to those facts.
It’s important for the American people to understand how they use that power to obstruct desperately needed educational reforms, particularly those involving school choice and increased teacher accountability. They fear reform will threaten their guaranteed clientele of students and job security.
The unions’ militant strategy is putting them at odds with leaders of both political parties. Many Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have joined Republicans in calling for fundamental changes in education.
Last year NEA members stood in silence at their national convention when Obama called for merit pay. This year they booed Education Secretary Arne Duncan when he called for more teacher accountability.
But political isolation only increases their determination.
Consider their position on charter schools, the independent public schools. The unions tried to kill charters in their infancy, but now that it’s clear they’re here to stay, the NEA and AFT have a new strategy.
They’re recruiting charter school teachers as members, so charter schools will be plagued with the same labor upheaval that has damaged so many traditional schools. The goal is death by infiltration.
There are many other examples of union anti-reform efforts. The NEA recently contacted every U.S. senator, suggesting political retribution if they voted to reauthorize the District of Columbia’s successful Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher initiative that helps inner-city children escape failing schools.
In Detroit Public Schools, the Detroit Federation of Teachers threatened to strike when the emergency financial manager called for teacher merit pay and an end to the seniority system. The manager and union currently have another month to go in a two-month extension of bargaining talks.
In Wisconsin, the NEA is using its clout to block legislation that would allow teacher evaluations to be linked to student performance. Obama won’t provide education stimulus dollars to states that refuse to link the two, but that doesn’t bother the union.
Reasonable leaders from both parties are calling for changes in education, while the unions are using their political muscle to defend an outdated system. It’s time for the American people to demand education policies that benefit students, not the self-serving teachers unions.
The Greatest Country in the World does not have Enough Skilled Workers
How is it that the greatest Country in the world does not have enough skilled workers to meet the needs of employers? We spend between 90,000 to 168,000 tax dollars to educate one child in the K-12 system. How is this not enough money to adequately prepare a child for college so he can get a degree to prepare him for a skilled job in America? Perhaps this is a key to the answer.
The following piece appears on foxnews.com.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Even as Layoffs Persist, Some Good Jobs Hard to Fill
Associated Press
Sunday, October 04, 2009
In a brutal job market, here's a task that might sound easy: Fill jobs in nursing, engineering and energy research that pay $55,000 to $60,000, plus benefits.
Yet even with 15 million people hunting for work, even with the unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, some employers can't find enough qualified people for good-paying career jobs.
Ask Steve Jones, a hospital recruiter in Indianapolis who's struggling to find qualified nurses, pharmacists and MRI technicians. Or Ed Baker, who's looking to hire at a U.S. Energy Department research lab in Richland, Wash., for $60,000 each.
Economists say the main problem is a mismatch between available work and people qualified to do it. Millions of jobs with attractive pay and benefits that once drew legions of workers to the auto industry, construction, Wall Street and other sectors are gone, probably for good. And those who lost those jobs generally lack the right experience for new positions popping up in health care, energy and engineering.
Many of these specialized jobs were hard to fill even before the recession. But during downturns, recruiters tend to become even choosier, less willing to take financial risks on untested workers.
The mismatch between job opening and job seeker is likely to persist even as the economy strengthens and begins to add jobs. It also will make it harder for the unemployment rate, now at 9.8 percent, to drop down to a healthier level.
"Workers are going to have to find not just a new company, but a new industry," said Sophia Koropeckyj, managing director of Moody's Economy.com. "A fifty-year-old guy who has been screwing bolts into the side of a car panel is not going to be able to become a health care administrator overnight."
It's become especially hard to find accountants, health care workers, software sales representatives, actuaries, data analysts, physical therapists and electrical engineers, labor analysts say. And employers that demand highly specialized training — like biotech firms that need plant scientists or energy companies that need geotechnical engineers to build offshore platforms — struggle even more to fill jobs.
The trend has been intensified by the speed of the job market decline, Koropeckyj said. The nation has lost a net 7.6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Yet it can take a year or more for a laid-off worker to gain the training and education to switch industries. That means health care jobs are going unfilled even as laid-off workers in the auto, construction or financial services industries seek work.
"So we have this army of the unemployed" without the necessary skills, Koropeckyj said.
Sitting in his office overlooking the Clarian Health complex, Jones leafed through some of the applications he's received. One came from a hotel worker who listed his experience as, "Cleaning rooms; make beds, clean tubes, vacuum." Another was from a fitness instructor whose past duties included signing up gym members.
Many of the jobless seem to be applying for any opening they see, Jones said.
"You just don't have the supply to fill those particular positions," he said of the more than 200 "critical" jobs he needs to fill at Clarian, including nurses, pharmacists, MRI technicians and ultrasound technologists.
Contributing to the problem is that in a tough economy, employers take longer to assess applicants and make a hiring decision. By contrast, "in a healthier economy, you don't wait around for the perfect person," said Lawrence Katz, a professor of labor economics at Harvard.
To be sure, employers in most sectors of the economy are having no trouble filling jobs — especially those, like receptionists, hotel managers or retail clerks, that don't require specialized skills.
But as more jobs vanish for good, the gap between the unemployed and the requirements of today's job openings is widening. Throughout the economy, an average of six people now compete for each job opening — the highest ratio on government records dating to 2000.
Sifting through applications for jobs at the U.S. Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state, Baker said he sees "people that have worked in other areas, and now they're trying to apply that skill set to the energy arena."
"Unfortunately, that's not the skill set we need."
The jobs opened up after the lab received federal stimulus money to research energy-efficient buildings. Baker needs employees with backgrounds in city management and a grasp of the building codes needed to design energy-efficient buildings. Yet even a salary of $140,000 for senior researchers isn't drawing enough qualified applicants.
Baker said he's getting resumes from well-educated people, including some from information technology workers who want to enter the green-energy field. But he said it could take a year to get an unqualified employee up to speed on all the building codes they need to know.
"We're running out of people to train" new employees, he said. "We simply cannot attract enough (qualified) people."
The lab has hired a recruiter for the first time to fill dozens of positions. Rob Dromgoole, the recruiter, is going so far as to make cold calls to college professors. He's also visiting academic conferences to pitch jobs.
The trend has left jobseekers like Joe Sladek anxious and frustrated. Sladek's 23 years in the auto industry haven't helped his efforts to land a job in alternative energy since he was laid off a year ago.
As a quality control engineer for auto supplier Dura Automotive Systems Inc. in Mancelona, Mich., he made about $75,000. Sladek would review technical reports to make sure the factory's auto parts matched the specifications of clients like General Motors and Toyota.
He hoped to parlay that experience into a similar job at a factory making windmill blades or solar panels. Several factories were hiring, and Sladek landed a few interviews. But he never heard back.
At PricewaterhouseCoopers in Chicago, there's a shortage of qualified applicants for management jobs in tax services, auditing and consulting. Rod Adams, the company's recruiting leader, said huge pay packages on Wall Street siphoned off lots of business school graduates earlier this decade.
"That made our pipeline more scarce," he said.
Some of the openings at PricewaterhouseCoopers pay around $100,000 and don't even require graduate degrees — just specialized accounting certifications or other credentials.
Formerly successful bankers or hedge fund managers don't necessarily qualify.
"We've gotten a lot more resumes, but they haven't been the right people," Adams said.
The following piece appears on foxnews.com.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Even as Layoffs Persist, Some Good Jobs Hard to Fill
Associated Press
Sunday, October 04, 2009
In a brutal job market, here's a task that might sound easy: Fill jobs in nursing, engineering and energy research that pay $55,000 to $60,000, plus benefits.
Yet even with 15 million people hunting for work, even with the unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, some employers can't find enough qualified people for good-paying career jobs.
Ask Steve Jones, a hospital recruiter in Indianapolis who's struggling to find qualified nurses, pharmacists and MRI technicians. Or Ed Baker, who's looking to hire at a U.S. Energy Department research lab in Richland, Wash., for $60,000 each.
Economists say the main problem is a mismatch between available work and people qualified to do it. Millions of jobs with attractive pay and benefits that once drew legions of workers to the auto industry, construction, Wall Street and other sectors are gone, probably for good. And those who lost those jobs generally lack the right experience for new positions popping up in health care, energy and engineering.
Many of these specialized jobs were hard to fill even before the recession. But during downturns, recruiters tend to become even choosier, less willing to take financial risks on untested workers.
The mismatch between job opening and job seeker is likely to persist even as the economy strengthens and begins to add jobs. It also will make it harder for the unemployment rate, now at 9.8 percent, to drop down to a healthier level.
"Workers are going to have to find not just a new company, but a new industry," said Sophia Koropeckyj, managing director of Moody's Economy.com. "A fifty-year-old guy who has been screwing bolts into the side of a car panel is not going to be able to become a health care administrator overnight."
It's become especially hard to find accountants, health care workers, software sales representatives, actuaries, data analysts, physical therapists and electrical engineers, labor analysts say. And employers that demand highly specialized training — like biotech firms that need plant scientists or energy companies that need geotechnical engineers to build offshore platforms — struggle even more to fill jobs.
The trend has been intensified by the speed of the job market decline, Koropeckyj said. The nation has lost a net 7.6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Yet it can take a year or more for a laid-off worker to gain the training and education to switch industries. That means health care jobs are going unfilled even as laid-off workers in the auto, construction or financial services industries seek work.
"So we have this army of the unemployed" without the necessary skills, Koropeckyj said.
Sitting in his office overlooking the Clarian Health complex, Jones leafed through some of the applications he's received. One came from a hotel worker who listed his experience as, "Cleaning rooms; make beds, clean tubes, vacuum." Another was from a fitness instructor whose past duties included signing up gym members.
Many of the jobless seem to be applying for any opening they see, Jones said.
"You just don't have the supply to fill those particular positions," he said of the more than 200 "critical" jobs he needs to fill at Clarian, including nurses, pharmacists, MRI technicians and ultrasound technologists.
Contributing to the problem is that in a tough economy, employers take longer to assess applicants and make a hiring decision. By contrast, "in a healthier economy, you don't wait around for the perfect person," said Lawrence Katz, a professor of labor economics at Harvard.
To be sure, employers in most sectors of the economy are having no trouble filling jobs — especially those, like receptionists, hotel managers or retail clerks, that don't require specialized skills.
But as more jobs vanish for good, the gap between the unemployed and the requirements of today's job openings is widening. Throughout the economy, an average of six people now compete for each job opening — the highest ratio on government records dating to 2000.
Sifting through applications for jobs at the U.S. Energy Department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state, Baker said he sees "people that have worked in other areas, and now they're trying to apply that skill set to the energy arena."
"Unfortunately, that's not the skill set we need."
The jobs opened up after the lab received federal stimulus money to research energy-efficient buildings. Baker needs employees with backgrounds in city management and a grasp of the building codes needed to design energy-efficient buildings. Yet even a salary of $140,000 for senior researchers isn't drawing enough qualified applicants.
Baker said he's getting resumes from well-educated people, including some from information technology workers who want to enter the green-energy field. But he said it could take a year to get an unqualified employee up to speed on all the building codes they need to know.
"We're running out of people to train" new employees, he said. "We simply cannot attract enough (qualified) people."
The lab has hired a recruiter for the first time to fill dozens of positions. Rob Dromgoole, the recruiter, is going so far as to make cold calls to college professors. He's also visiting academic conferences to pitch jobs.
The trend has left jobseekers like Joe Sladek anxious and frustrated. Sladek's 23 years in the auto industry haven't helped his efforts to land a job in alternative energy since he was laid off a year ago.
As a quality control engineer for auto supplier Dura Automotive Systems Inc. in Mancelona, Mich., he made about $75,000. Sladek would review technical reports to make sure the factory's auto parts matched the specifications of clients like General Motors and Toyota.
He hoped to parlay that experience into a similar job at a factory making windmill blades or solar panels. Several factories were hiring, and Sladek landed a few interviews. But he never heard back.
At PricewaterhouseCoopers in Chicago, there's a shortage of qualified applicants for management jobs in tax services, auditing and consulting. Rod Adams, the company's recruiting leader, said huge pay packages on Wall Street siphoned off lots of business school graduates earlier this decade.
"That made our pipeline more scarce," he said.
Some of the openings at PricewaterhouseCoopers pay around $100,000 and don't even require graduate degrees — just specialized accounting certifications or other credentials.
Formerly successful bankers or hedge fund managers don't necessarily qualify.
"We've gotten a lot more resumes, but they haven't been the right people," Adams said.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Something to Ponder - If it Walks Like a Duck
I have never been a good writer. I always thought someday I would like to write a book, but the fact is I am a crappy writer. I went to public schools and yes people in public schools do learn to write but I never was required to write much in public school or when I went to college or grad school. But I digress, the piece below is not only well written but well thought out. The following piece appears on the American Thinker. I of course agree with the sentiments of the writer.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Sympathy for the Devil
By Robin of Berkeley
October 01, 2009
How concerned should we be about Obama? Is he a potential dictator with a weird cult following who could destroy this country?
To put it more bluntly, does Obama have the potential for inflicting evil on us? Or, if he's a puppet, are the ones holding the strings malevolent?
These may be the most crucial and urgent questions of our times. Is Obamaphobia a legitimate reaction to an angry president with a vendetta, surrounded by psycho czars? Or is the imagination running amok?
Given that I have a stack of books on my desk about evil, let's take a look at how the experts define it.
Dante: Evil is the "sins of the wolf;" an inner black hole so vast that nothing will fill it.
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: "Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, and destroy innocent others -- or using one's authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behavior."
Philosopher Hannah Arendt: She coined the term the "banality of evil," after Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann was pronounced normal by psychiatrists.
Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: "Evil people are chronic scapegoaters."
St. Augustine: Evil is "an essential nothingness."
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "An absence of light; shade; no essence."
Goethe: Evil is "to render invisible another human consciousness."
Baudelaire: "The Devil's cleverest wile is to convince us he doesn't exist."
John Milton: "A tortured soul who makes others dance to the music of his own despair."
But to discern evil, we need to go beyond the guidance of the experts. We must decide with our own eyes, ears, and nose, whether a person passes the "stink test."
Humans possess an extraordinary sixth sense -- our intuition. St. Jerome called intuition, "synderesis:" an infallible God-given ability to distinguish between good and evil.
Yet, we're told not to trust our gut because it's not nice to be judgmental. In these politically correct days, where everybody is good, even terrorists, we're supposed to dismiss our intuition, shove it underground, lest we offend anyone.
Thus, if Obamaphobia gives us insomnia, headaches, or the heebie jeebies, it's all in our heads. We're being paranoid.
But isn't this how the Soviets dealt with dissidents? The leaders labeled them paranoid, and then had their fiendish psychiatrists forcibly drug, shock, and hospitalize them.
As the expression goes: you're not paranoid if someone is following you.
Criminologist Gavin De Becker, in his seminal work, The Gift of Fear, urges us to never ignore our intuition. Most of the time, victims sense that their attacker is a threat but ignore this inner knowing.
De Becker's wise words:
Can you imagine an animal reacting to the gift of fear the way some people do, with annoyance and disdain instead of attention? No animal in the wild, suddenly overcome with fear, would expend any of its mental energy thinking, "It's probably nothing." . . . We, in contrast to every other creature in nature, choose not to explore -- and even ignore -- survival signals.
I think that deep down most of us know who is good and who is evil -- who will bring joy and who will usher in disaster.
Because many of us have been touched by evil at some point in our lives. And it changes you; it pierces your soul. Because you behold something so startling it leaves you breathless: that there are people, sometimes in your own family, who wish you harm.
People ask me how I could go from Left to Right so quickly, and I've written about the main factors. But, now that I contemplate evil, I realize I left out the pivotal reason.
It's because I saw evil up close and personal starting from a young age. And when you're exposed to danger when you're little, and you don't push it away or blame yourself, something essential in you is altered; you're able to see what many others conceal.
I saw this darkness first in the devilish laughter of my brother when he realized we were alone in the house and he could terrorize me.
And I saw it again in my middle school, where the liberal experiment of forced busing unleashed a torrent of hate and mayhem. When roars of "f---cking white bitch," and assaults and fondling were as commonplace as English class.
And after I moved to squalid New York City in the late 70's, and lived through the reign of Mayor Dinkins, I saw it in the uncontrolled assaults on the citizen's bodies and souls.
I saw it on the streets of Berkeley when, on a perfect, blue sky day, a man smiled that same devilish grin before he mugged me, breaking my nose and blackening my eyes.
And when a friend glossed over my mugging because the assailant was black ("He's a victim too,"), I saw evil there.
I've seen it professionally in the face of the man who molested all five of his children; and in the visage of his wife, who chose to stay with him and was pregnant once again.
And now that I'm writing for American Thinker, I see it in some of the trolls, although not all of them. Some are just jerky people who write drivel like, "I just wasted five minutes of my life," and "You're a fake."
No, I'm talking about the people who post comments aimed not at disagreeing or offering an alternative viewpoint. They're designed to destroy my humanity.
They can't defend Obama, so they go after me. They call me paranoid or narcissist. They accuse me of throwing my dead parents under the bus. Or of betraying my Jewish ancestors by embracing other religions, like Christianity.
Or this bile: the person who wrote that she/he's glad I'm writing because it's therapeutic, since obviously I'm psychologically disturbed and could be a danger to society.
Fortunately I'm a therapist so I know who these people are. I can diagnose them a mile away. I've worked with them before, although each time, they chill me to the bone.
Having some hate spewed in my direction, I think of Sarah Palin and the wilding she endured.
And I think she resigned because, when her church was torched, her body ogled and threatened, and her children debased, she looked into the face of evil.
She saw something so dark and blood curdling that she did what any God fearing, God loving person would do: she put up her hands, yelled "Stop," and got out of there as fast as she could.
Because evil is the most dangerous of the toxins. It can harden, and infect, and change a person before he or she knows it. Evil desecrates the places inside that are holy and sacred.
More and more, each day, I smell the stench of wickedness. It's omnipresent in our government, and it's spreading like wildfire throughout the land, threatening everyone in its path.
M. Scott Peck so eloquently captures the consequences of evil in high places: "The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society."
We have a man who has been privileged with the greatest honor, the Presidency, and what does he do? Does he demonstrate an ounce of gratitude or humility?
No, he betrays us in the most profound way possible: by not protecting and defending us.
Obama is doing to the American people just what his caregivers did to him when they dragged him around like a rag doll, and exposed him to a pervert like Frank Marshall Davis. Now Obama's a rage doll who's throwing us to the wolves.
People claim Obama isn't a serious threat because his personality is not like Mussolini or Che. He doesn't have the fire in his belly to be a true dictator.
But I will share with you a surprising truth I learned after working in the child abuse field: severe neglect is even more traumatic than serious physical abuse (not sexual abuse, though). People can be mortally wounded by crimes of omission.
Abuse is terrible but at least the abuser cares enough to pay attention, to know the child is alive. With neglect, the people who should care, don't give a damn; leaving the child abandoned and unguarded in a perilous world.
What worries me the most about Obama is this: the part of him that should want to shield us from harm seems chillingly absent.
The economy is tanking -- Obama laughs. We are accumulating crippling debt -- he and the other Democrats go on a spending spree.
Millions take to the street for a peaceful 9/12 march. He doesn't notice. We oppose the government controlling our lives, especially health care, but he rams legislation down our throats anyway.
Our allies have started to realize that Obama doesn't care about them either. He snubs Gordon Brown, returns a statue of Winston Churchill (how disturbing is this?), and insults the Brits with DVDs and iPods. He betrays the Poles and the Czechs, and leaves Israel hanging from a limb.
Obama does have sympathy for the devils, though, the Chavez's and Castro's of the world. Maybe he views them as brothers, fellow victims of the monstrous United States. Perhaps Obama is all Vive le Revolucion.
There are endless red flags, aren't there? The covert government of antisocial Czars; the cozy ties to Bill Ayers, maybe George Soros. And who knows what else, because Obama's private world has been hermetically sealed.
So is this what am I saying: that President Bare Heart is at the helm, with a bunch of loose cannons possibly running the show? That he's giving a wink-wink to miscreants both here and abroad?
That the New Weird Order is starting to unhinge the already unbalanced, and bring new, vulnerable people, into its fold?
That Obamaphobia is real, and we ignore it at our peril?
Yes.
But don't listen to me. Don't listen to anyone: not the mental midgets who call you "racist;" not your brother in law who says you're nuts; not the Talking Heads who paint you as stupid trash.
Pay attention to no one, to nothing, except the light of truth revealing itself to you.
"Truth crushed to the earth will rise again:" William Cullen Bryant
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Sympathy for the Devil
By Robin of Berkeley
October 01, 2009
How concerned should we be about Obama? Is he a potential dictator with a weird cult following who could destroy this country?
To put it more bluntly, does Obama have the potential for inflicting evil on us? Or, if he's a puppet, are the ones holding the strings malevolent?
These may be the most crucial and urgent questions of our times. Is Obamaphobia a legitimate reaction to an angry president with a vendetta, surrounded by psycho czars? Or is the imagination running amok?
Given that I have a stack of books on my desk about evil, let's take a look at how the experts define it.
Dante: Evil is the "sins of the wolf;" an inner black hole so vast that nothing will fill it.
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: "Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, and destroy innocent others -- or using one's authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behavior."
Philosopher Hannah Arendt: She coined the term the "banality of evil," after Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann was pronounced normal by psychiatrists.
Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: "Evil people are chronic scapegoaters."
St. Augustine: Evil is "an essential nothingness."
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "An absence of light; shade; no essence."
Goethe: Evil is "to render invisible another human consciousness."
Baudelaire: "The Devil's cleverest wile is to convince us he doesn't exist."
John Milton: "A tortured soul who makes others dance to the music of his own despair."
But to discern evil, we need to go beyond the guidance of the experts. We must decide with our own eyes, ears, and nose, whether a person passes the "stink test."
Humans possess an extraordinary sixth sense -- our intuition. St. Jerome called intuition, "synderesis:" an infallible God-given ability to distinguish between good and evil.
Yet, we're told not to trust our gut because it's not nice to be judgmental. In these politically correct days, where everybody is good, even terrorists, we're supposed to dismiss our intuition, shove it underground, lest we offend anyone.
Thus, if Obamaphobia gives us insomnia, headaches, or the heebie jeebies, it's all in our heads. We're being paranoid.
But isn't this how the Soviets dealt with dissidents? The leaders labeled them paranoid, and then had their fiendish psychiatrists forcibly drug, shock, and hospitalize them.
As the expression goes: you're not paranoid if someone is following you.
Criminologist Gavin De Becker, in his seminal work, The Gift of Fear, urges us to never ignore our intuition. Most of the time, victims sense that their attacker is a threat but ignore this inner knowing.
De Becker's wise words:
Can you imagine an animal reacting to the gift of fear the way some people do, with annoyance and disdain instead of attention? No animal in the wild, suddenly overcome with fear, would expend any of its mental energy thinking, "It's probably nothing." . . . We, in contrast to every other creature in nature, choose not to explore -- and even ignore -- survival signals.
I think that deep down most of us know who is good and who is evil -- who will bring joy and who will usher in disaster.
Because many of us have been touched by evil at some point in our lives. And it changes you; it pierces your soul. Because you behold something so startling it leaves you breathless: that there are people, sometimes in your own family, who wish you harm.
People ask me how I could go from Left to Right so quickly, and I've written about the main factors. But, now that I contemplate evil, I realize I left out the pivotal reason.
It's because I saw evil up close and personal starting from a young age. And when you're exposed to danger when you're little, and you don't push it away or blame yourself, something essential in you is altered; you're able to see what many others conceal.
I saw this darkness first in the devilish laughter of my brother when he realized we were alone in the house and he could terrorize me.
And I saw it again in my middle school, where the liberal experiment of forced busing unleashed a torrent of hate and mayhem. When roars of "f---cking white bitch," and assaults and fondling were as commonplace as English class.
And after I moved to squalid New York City in the late 70's, and lived through the reign of Mayor Dinkins, I saw it in the uncontrolled assaults on the citizen's bodies and souls.
I saw it on the streets of Berkeley when, on a perfect, blue sky day, a man smiled that same devilish grin before he mugged me, breaking my nose and blackening my eyes.
And when a friend glossed over my mugging because the assailant was black ("He's a victim too,"), I saw evil there.
I've seen it professionally in the face of the man who molested all five of his children; and in the visage of his wife, who chose to stay with him and was pregnant once again.
And now that I'm writing for American Thinker, I see it in some of the trolls, although not all of them. Some are just jerky people who write drivel like, "I just wasted five minutes of my life," and "You're a fake."
No, I'm talking about the people who post comments aimed not at disagreeing or offering an alternative viewpoint. They're designed to destroy my humanity.
They can't defend Obama, so they go after me. They call me paranoid or narcissist. They accuse me of throwing my dead parents under the bus. Or of betraying my Jewish ancestors by embracing other religions, like Christianity.
Or this bile: the person who wrote that she/he's glad I'm writing because it's therapeutic, since obviously I'm psychologically disturbed and could be a danger to society.
Fortunately I'm a therapist so I know who these people are. I can diagnose them a mile away. I've worked with them before, although each time, they chill me to the bone.
Having some hate spewed in my direction, I think of Sarah Palin and the wilding she endured.
And I think she resigned because, when her church was torched, her body ogled and threatened, and her children debased, she looked into the face of evil.
She saw something so dark and blood curdling that she did what any God fearing, God loving person would do: she put up her hands, yelled "Stop," and got out of there as fast as she could.
Because evil is the most dangerous of the toxins. It can harden, and infect, and change a person before he or she knows it. Evil desecrates the places inside that are holy and sacred.
More and more, each day, I smell the stench of wickedness. It's omnipresent in our government, and it's spreading like wildfire throughout the land, threatening everyone in its path.
M. Scott Peck so eloquently captures the consequences of evil in high places: "The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society."
We have a man who has been privileged with the greatest honor, the Presidency, and what does he do? Does he demonstrate an ounce of gratitude or humility?
No, he betrays us in the most profound way possible: by not protecting and defending us.
Obama is doing to the American people just what his caregivers did to him when they dragged him around like a rag doll, and exposed him to a pervert like Frank Marshall Davis. Now Obama's a rage doll who's throwing us to the wolves.
People claim Obama isn't a serious threat because his personality is not like Mussolini or Che. He doesn't have the fire in his belly to be a true dictator.
But I will share with you a surprising truth I learned after working in the child abuse field: severe neglect is even more traumatic than serious physical abuse (not sexual abuse, though). People can be mortally wounded by crimes of omission.
Abuse is terrible but at least the abuser cares enough to pay attention, to know the child is alive. With neglect, the people who should care, don't give a damn; leaving the child abandoned and unguarded in a perilous world.
What worries me the most about Obama is this: the part of him that should want to shield us from harm seems chillingly absent.
The economy is tanking -- Obama laughs. We are accumulating crippling debt -- he and the other Democrats go on a spending spree.
Millions take to the street for a peaceful 9/12 march. He doesn't notice. We oppose the government controlling our lives, especially health care, but he rams legislation down our throats anyway.
Our allies have started to realize that Obama doesn't care about them either. He snubs Gordon Brown, returns a statue of Winston Churchill (how disturbing is this?), and insults the Brits with DVDs and iPods. He betrays the Poles and the Czechs, and leaves Israel hanging from a limb.
Obama does have sympathy for the devils, though, the Chavez's and Castro's of the world. Maybe he views them as brothers, fellow victims of the monstrous United States. Perhaps Obama is all Vive le Revolucion.
There are endless red flags, aren't there? The covert government of antisocial Czars; the cozy ties to Bill Ayers, maybe George Soros. And who knows what else, because Obama's private world has been hermetically sealed.
So is this what am I saying: that President Bare Heart is at the helm, with a bunch of loose cannons possibly running the show? That he's giving a wink-wink to miscreants both here and abroad?
That the New Weird Order is starting to unhinge the already unbalanced, and bring new, vulnerable people, into its fold?
That Obamaphobia is real, and we ignore it at our peril?
Yes.
But don't listen to me. Don't listen to anyone: not the mental midgets who call you "racist;" not your brother in law who says you're nuts; not the Talking Heads who paint you as stupid trash.
Pay attention to no one, to nothing, except the light of truth revealing itself to you.
"Truth crushed to the earth will rise again:" William Cullen Bryant
A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley.
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