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.
Monday, October 5, 2009
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.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
Main Stream Media Finally Catching On - Teachers' Unions are Bad for Education
The following piece appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The media is waking up will more Americans wake up too? The government has given the unions essentially monopoly control over public education. Until the money follows the child and not the institution we will see flat or declining results in public education. It is time for legislators to stop pandering to the unions and special interests groups and put our children first.
Quote of the Day - "As we all learned from the sorry experience of state-sanctioned bureaucracies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, decentralization is crucial to both freedom and excellence." -- Mayor Jerry Brown, on why he opposes unionizing Oakland, California's charter schools.
Happy Birthday Mom
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
How Teachers Unions Lost the Media
By RICHARD WHITMIRE AND ANDREW J. ROTHERHAM
Quick: Which newspaper in recent editorials called teachers unions "indefensible" and a barrier to reform? You'd be excused for guessing one of the conservative outlets, but it was that bastion of liberalism, the New York Times. A month ago, The New Yorker—yes, The New Yorker—published a scathing piece on the problems with New York City's "rubber room," a union-negotiated arrangement that lets incompetent teachers while away the day at full salary while doing nothing. The piece quoted a principal saying that union leader Randi Weingarten "would protect a dead body in the classroom."
Things only got worse for the unions this past week. A Washington Post editorial about charter schools carried this sarcastic headline: "Poor children learn. Teachers unions are not pleased." And the Times weighed in again Monday, calling a national teachers union "aggressively hidebound."
In recent months, the press has not merely been harsh on unions—it has championed some controversial school reformers. Washington's schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, who won't win any popularity contests among teachers, enjoys unwavering support from the Post editorial page for her plans to institute merit pay and abolish tenure.
Editorial pages of major papers nationwide have begun to demand accountability for schools, despite objections from vested interests. Since the Obama administration took an unexpectedly tough line on school reform, the elite media response has been overwhelmingly positive.
"All the reforms unions oppose—charter schools, testing, accountability, No Child Left Behind, performance pay—have been around for a while now and the disasters the unions predicted have not come to pass," said Richard Colvin, who runs the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media in New York. "The unions are out of touch and are courting irrelevance."
Teachers and administrators who once relied on a steady stream of critical stories about charter schools (which they see as competitors) now witness a flow of laudatory articles. Fly-by-night charter operators still get their comeuppance in the press, but these days reporters are just as likely to profile the high-performing charters saving thousands of inner-city children from near-certain academic death . . . and then to ask why regular public schools can't do the same.
"Through the growing list of high-profile success stories, like KIPP [charter schools], the public is starting to understand that reform is actually possible," says Joe Williams, a former journalist who is now executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. "That's a big deal," argues Mr. Williams, "because the hopelessness that marred previous reform eras took a lot of people's eyes off the prize."
This new attitude in the press has little to do with the media and everything to do with changed public opinion. Parents are familiar with headlines about the educated work force in the U.S. falling behind international competitors. The public, for the most part, no longer sees school accountability measures as a plot to harm public schools. Indeed, according to a recent poll by the journal Education Next, almost three in four Americans support a national test for students.
Plus, as school reform moves from the abstract to the concrete, reporters have more to write about. Take charter schools as an example. For years, they were a messy story for reporters. Of the 4,600 charter schools around the country, most do no better than comparable traditional public schools. Some, in fact, do worse.
But that's not why charter schools are changing the education conversation. Among those schools, roughly 300 high-performing charters have emerged to accomplish something once thought impossible. They take low-income urban students previously viewed as a lost cause and turn them out college-ready. The success of these charters shows that being born black or Hispanic in poverty to poorly educated parents won't necessarily lead to bad educational outcomes. Good teaching might be able to overcome all of these factors. And if charter schools can close the education gap, why not traditional public schools?
How the teachers unions are answering that question explains much of the negative backlash against them. Recently, when the Baltimore education establishment witnessed a highly effective charter school blossom in that city, the union—saying it was responding to complaints from teachers at the school—forced the union-represented school to pare back its longer teaching hours, a key ingredient of its success. The resulting press coverage was brutal: In an editorial called "Don't fix what works," the Baltimore Sun noted that the teachers union "[lost] sight of what's important—the kids."
One of the aforementioned New York Times editorials was prompted by the teachers union's strong-arming of the New York Legislature to outlaw any use of student test scores in evaluating teachers for tenure. (Several states have similar bans, and right now just a few states use data on outcomes to evaluate teachers.) Unions are asking the public to believe that teachers should never be judged on their effectiveness. Even if the media were in the tank for the unions that would be a tough sell.
Of course, in the past it was difficult to measure teacher performance. But now, as a result of data collected under No Child Left Behind provisions, it is easier to figure out which teachers are succeeding. "Data and results are challenging an industry that was traditionally driven by hope, hype and good intentions," says Jane Hannaway, the director of education policy at the Urban Institute. Ms. Hannaway argues that in the long run these emerging databases may be the most important dividend of today's school accountability policies.
The press loves to write about numbers because data make stories easier to quantify. But as more and more journalists—and Americans in general—learn that barely half of minority students complete high school in four years or that only about 15% of low-income students earn a college degree within nine years of starting high school, they're realizing the gravity of the nation's educational problems.
"It's always been hard to get rid of bad teachers," says Linda Perlstein, public editor for the National Education Writers Association. "But now people are realizing it doesn't have to be—especially at a time they're hanging onto their own jobs with their fingertips."
—Mr. Whitmire is immediate past president of the National Education Writers Association. Mr. Rotherham writes the blog Eduwonk.com.
Quote of the Day - "As we all learned from the sorry experience of state-sanctioned bureaucracies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, decentralization is crucial to both freedom and excellence." -- Mayor Jerry Brown, on why he opposes unionizing Oakland, California's charter schools.
Happy Birthday Mom
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
How Teachers Unions Lost the Media
By RICHARD WHITMIRE AND ANDREW J. ROTHERHAM
Quick: Which newspaper in recent editorials called teachers unions "indefensible" and a barrier to reform? You'd be excused for guessing one of the conservative outlets, but it was that bastion of liberalism, the New York Times. A month ago, The New Yorker—yes, The New Yorker—published a scathing piece on the problems with New York City's "rubber room," a union-negotiated arrangement that lets incompetent teachers while away the day at full salary while doing nothing. The piece quoted a principal saying that union leader Randi Weingarten "would protect a dead body in the classroom."
Things only got worse for the unions this past week. A Washington Post editorial about charter schools carried this sarcastic headline: "Poor children learn. Teachers unions are not pleased." And the Times weighed in again Monday, calling a national teachers union "aggressively hidebound."
In recent months, the press has not merely been harsh on unions—it has championed some controversial school reformers. Washington's schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, who won't win any popularity contests among teachers, enjoys unwavering support from the Post editorial page for her plans to institute merit pay and abolish tenure.
Editorial pages of major papers nationwide have begun to demand accountability for schools, despite objections from vested interests. Since the Obama administration took an unexpectedly tough line on school reform, the elite media response has been overwhelmingly positive.
"All the reforms unions oppose—charter schools, testing, accountability, No Child Left Behind, performance pay—have been around for a while now and the disasters the unions predicted have not come to pass," said Richard Colvin, who runs the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media in New York. "The unions are out of touch and are courting irrelevance."
Teachers and administrators who once relied on a steady stream of critical stories about charter schools (which they see as competitors) now witness a flow of laudatory articles. Fly-by-night charter operators still get their comeuppance in the press, but these days reporters are just as likely to profile the high-performing charters saving thousands of inner-city children from near-certain academic death . . . and then to ask why regular public schools can't do the same.
"Through the growing list of high-profile success stories, like KIPP [charter schools], the public is starting to understand that reform is actually possible," says Joe Williams, a former journalist who is now executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. "That's a big deal," argues Mr. Williams, "because the hopelessness that marred previous reform eras took a lot of people's eyes off the prize."
This new attitude in the press has little to do with the media and everything to do with changed public opinion. Parents are familiar with headlines about the educated work force in the U.S. falling behind international competitors. The public, for the most part, no longer sees school accountability measures as a plot to harm public schools. Indeed, according to a recent poll by the journal Education Next, almost three in four Americans support a national test for students.
Plus, as school reform moves from the abstract to the concrete, reporters have more to write about. Take charter schools as an example. For years, they were a messy story for reporters. Of the 4,600 charter schools around the country, most do no better than comparable traditional public schools. Some, in fact, do worse.
But that's not why charter schools are changing the education conversation. Among those schools, roughly 300 high-performing charters have emerged to accomplish something once thought impossible. They take low-income urban students previously viewed as a lost cause and turn them out college-ready. The success of these charters shows that being born black or Hispanic in poverty to poorly educated parents won't necessarily lead to bad educational outcomes. Good teaching might be able to overcome all of these factors. And if charter schools can close the education gap, why not traditional public schools?
How the teachers unions are answering that question explains much of the negative backlash against them. Recently, when the Baltimore education establishment witnessed a highly effective charter school blossom in that city, the union—saying it was responding to complaints from teachers at the school—forced the union-represented school to pare back its longer teaching hours, a key ingredient of its success. The resulting press coverage was brutal: In an editorial called "Don't fix what works," the Baltimore Sun noted that the teachers union "[lost] sight of what's important—the kids."
One of the aforementioned New York Times editorials was prompted by the teachers union's strong-arming of the New York Legislature to outlaw any use of student test scores in evaluating teachers for tenure. (Several states have similar bans, and right now just a few states use data on outcomes to evaluate teachers.) Unions are asking the public to believe that teachers should never be judged on their effectiveness. Even if the media were in the tank for the unions that would be a tough sell.
Of course, in the past it was difficult to measure teacher performance. But now, as a result of data collected under No Child Left Behind provisions, it is easier to figure out which teachers are succeeding. "Data and results are challenging an industry that was traditionally driven by hope, hype and good intentions," says Jane Hannaway, the director of education policy at the Urban Institute. Ms. Hannaway argues that in the long run these emerging databases may be the most important dividend of today's school accountability policies.
The press loves to write about numbers because data make stories easier to quantify. But as more and more journalists—and Americans in general—learn that barely half of minority students complete high school in four years or that only about 15% of low-income students earn a college degree within nine years of starting high school, they're realizing the gravity of the nation's educational problems.
"It's always been hard to get rid of bad teachers," says Linda Perlstein, public editor for the National Education Writers Association. "But now people are realizing it doesn't have to be—especially at a time they're hanging onto their own jobs with their fingertips."
—Mr. Whitmire is immediate past president of the National Education Writers Association. Mr. Rotherham writes the blog Eduwonk.com.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Charles Arlinghaus Nails it Again
The following piece appears in the Union Leader. I really do not think the average joe is aware of how fairly government employees are compensated or aware of their outstanding pensions which is constitutionally protected and paid for by taxpayers. Dare I say overcompensated.
Quote of the Day - "Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned." - Milton Friedman
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Charles M. Arlinghaus: State employees are not shortchanged
By CHARLES M. ARLINGHAUS
The biggest issue in state government right now is the struggle between state employees and the governor. The details about state employee compensation and its impact on the state budget are not often discussed, and this leads people to make assumptions that may or may not be accurate.
We must do something about the cost of state employees because they are the lion's share of the cost of having state government, we're told. The exact cost is hard to track down, but in 2008 the state employed about 12,000 people who make an average of $42,000, for about $504 million in salary cost. Add to that some additional people not included in the list of 12,000, a raise in 2009, increased pay step levels, and salaries still total less than $600 million.
The largest other employee cost is medical insurance. In New Hampshire, medical insurance had been growing rapidly. From 1999 to 2004, premiums paid for state employee medical benefits increased by about 20 percent a year -- from $49 million to $117 million. During the Benson administration, the state switched to self-insurance to try to better control costs, as many large companies do. As a result, premium growth slowed dramatically to about 7 percent each year. Medical coverage cost $156 million in 2008. At the old rate of growth, it would have been $80 million higher.
If we add together salary costs, health insurance and a few other items such as retirement contributions and retiree health costs, the total is around $800 million in an annual budget of around $5.7 billion -- about 14 percent of the total. Mind you, it may be a smaller percentage than people often think, but $800 million is nothing to sneeze at.
While its growth is not nearly as fast as state government itself, the state employee work force is still growing. Between 1998 and 2008, the number of filled permanent positions increased by 16.7 percent -- about 1,600 additional employees. The state budget in the same time period increased by 85 percent -- about $2.3 billion.
It is true that at one time the average state employee made less than the average citizen. That's no longer the case. From 2003 to 2008, state employee average pay increased from $33,600 to $42,500 -- about 4.8 percent per year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that average pay in 2008 in all occupations in the state was $42,600. In 2009, a pay raise sent state employee pay past the state average.
So salaries are almost exactly average, but benefits are much higher. Private sector insurance is much less generous and involves higher co-pays than the typical state government plan. Even among state government plans, New Hampshire's is among the most generous. According the National Conference of State Legislatures' annual survey, only one state has a higher total cost, and it has significantly higher cost-sharing.
Family coverage costs about $20,800 for a state employee here compared to the national average of $12,700. The NCSL also estimates that average cost-sharing is 18 percent of that total, but only 2 percent in New Hampshire. So it costs taxpayers about $10,000 more per state employee than average.
In New Hampshire, this is a conscious decision. State employees have chosen to forgo higher pay in exchange for a more generous health insurance policy. Even so, an employee with family coverage has salary and medical benefits that are a good 20 percent higher than the average worker in the state.
There is much consternation over the possible layoff of 750 state workers. Yet history suggests that most of those workers could be rehired relatively quickly. Despite attractive pay and benefits, state government is not an unchanging monolith. Each year an average of 1,100 employees leave state service. Combined with the regular growth in the total number of employees and the creation of temporary positions, it means about 210 new employees are hired each month.
The state has been in the middle of a nominal hiring freeze for more than a year, but that doesn't stop positions from being filled. The freeze only applies to general funds, which cover fewer than half the employees. Even then, exceptions are granted. For example, during the four months of 2008 covered by the freeze, 71 exceptions were granted. In addition, another 100 or so other positions were filled. Combined with temporary and seasonal positions, about 1,000 people were hired in those four months.
Government has to be mindful of state employees both to ensure it attracts a dedicated work force and to make sure it isn't overcharging taxpayers. A look under the hood of state government suggests that we certainly aren't shortchanging the workers. But it also shows that 86 percent of the cost of government lies elsewhere and needs the same tough scrutiny that contracts are undergoing.
Charles M. Arlinghaus is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in Concord.
Quote of the Day - "Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned." - Milton Friedman
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Charles M. Arlinghaus: State employees are not shortchanged
By CHARLES M. ARLINGHAUS
The biggest issue in state government right now is the struggle between state employees and the governor. The details about state employee compensation and its impact on the state budget are not often discussed, and this leads people to make assumptions that may or may not be accurate.
We must do something about the cost of state employees because they are the lion's share of the cost of having state government, we're told. The exact cost is hard to track down, but in 2008 the state employed about 12,000 people who make an average of $42,000, for about $504 million in salary cost. Add to that some additional people not included in the list of 12,000, a raise in 2009, increased pay step levels, and salaries still total less than $600 million.
The largest other employee cost is medical insurance. In New Hampshire, medical insurance had been growing rapidly. From 1999 to 2004, premiums paid for state employee medical benefits increased by about 20 percent a year -- from $49 million to $117 million. During the Benson administration, the state switched to self-insurance to try to better control costs, as many large companies do. As a result, premium growth slowed dramatically to about 7 percent each year. Medical coverage cost $156 million in 2008. At the old rate of growth, it would have been $80 million higher.
If we add together salary costs, health insurance and a few other items such as retirement contributions and retiree health costs, the total is around $800 million in an annual budget of around $5.7 billion -- about 14 percent of the total. Mind you, it may be a smaller percentage than people often think, but $800 million is nothing to sneeze at.
While its growth is not nearly as fast as state government itself, the state employee work force is still growing. Between 1998 and 2008, the number of filled permanent positions increased by 16.7 percent -- about 1,600 additional employees. The state budget in the same time period increased by 85 percent -- about $2.3 billion.
It is true that at one time the average state employee made less than the average citizen. That's no longer the case. From 2003 to 2008, state employee average pay increased from $33,600 to $42,500 -- about 4.8 percent per year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that average pay in 2008 in all occupations in the state was $42,600. In 2009, a pay raise sent state employee pay past the state average.
So salaries are almost exactly average, but benefits are much higher. Private sector insurance is much less generous and involves higher co-pays than the typical state government plan. Even among state government plans, New Hampshire's is among the most generous. According the National Conference of State Legislatures' annual survey, only one state has a higher total cost, and it has significantly higher cost-sharing.
Family coverage costs about $20,800 for a state employee here compared to the national average of $12,700. The NCSL also estimates that average cost-sharing is 18 percent of that total, but only 2 percent in New Hampshire. So it costs taxpayers about $10,000 more per state employee than average.
In New Hampshire, this is a conscious decision. State employees have chosen to forgo higher pay in exchange for a more generous health insurance policy. Even so, an employee with family coverage has salary and medical benefits that are a good 20 percent higher than the average worker in the state.
There is much consternation over the possible layoff of 750 state workers. Yet history suggests that most of those workers could be rehired relatively quickly. Despite attractive pay and benefits, state government is not an unchanging monolith. Each year an average of 1,100 employees leave state service. Combined with the regular growth in the total number of employees and the creation of temporary positions, it means about 210 new employees are hired each month.
The state has been in the middle of a nominal hiring freeze for more than a year, but that doesn't stop positions from being filled. The freeze only applies to general funds, which cover fewer than half the employees. Even then, exceptions are granted. For example, during the four months of 2008 covered by the freeze, 71 exceptions were granted. In addition, another 100 or so other positions were filled. Combined with temporary and seasonal positions, about 1,000 people were hired in those four months.
Government has to be mindful of state employees both to ensure it attracts a dedicated work force and to make sure it isn't overcharging taxpayers. A look under the hood of state government suggests that we certainly aren't shortchanging the workers. But it also shows that 86 percent of the cost of government lies elsewhere and needs the same tough scrutiny that contracts are undergoing.
Charles M. Arlinghaus is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank in Concord.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
I thought everyone know about this video - video proves opponents correct
By now you may have seen the video of children singing praise to Obama in NJ schools. I actually saw this video earlier in the month and thought others had too. Now I almost wish I bought attention to the video back than, but I digress.
If the video had been about Bush the Left would have been in an uproar. With regards to Obama's policies substitute Bush and say would it be okay if Bush had try to do the same thing. Look at the policy and situation and not the person to decide if it is right or wrong. Heck if the children sung "We wish you a Merry Christmas" in this video the ACLU would be knocking on some doors.
The following piece appears in the American Thinker.
Quote of the Day - “The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief” - Jacques Ellul
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
September 26, 2009
NJ video proves Obama's school-speech opponents right
William Tate
The video of New Jersey teachers drilling schoolchildren to chant paeans to "Barack Hussein Obama"--adult Obamatons training impressionable children to become little Obamatons--proves that conservatives were right to oppose Barack Obama's nationwide speech to school children.
No, Obama didn't try to convert them on particular policy decisions when he spoke to students earlier this month, but no thoughtful person believed he would. Despite attempts by the Democrat Party's Big Media wing to portray opponents as paranoid, we didn't send kids to school wearing aluminum-foil hats to prevent Obama's broadcast from filtering into their brains--although I have suspicions that the sportscaster at MSNBC may have worn such a contraption during the Bush years.
But what was apparent then, and the New Jersey video proves now, is that Obama's unfettered direct access to students was part of an effort to inculcate a cult of personality about Obama. After all, Obama was elected primarily because the media worshipped at the cult they created around him. Well, that and about a billion of George Soros's dollars. 'Hope' and 'change' being no substitute for an actual platform.
The real motive behind Obama's school address was demonstrated by the infamous 'lesson plan' developed by the Department of Education, which asked students to write about how they could help Obama. That instruction was eventually deleted after word of it leaked out and large segments of the public protested, but other, blatant cult-of-personality instructions remained in the lesson plan:
*Teachers may post in large print around the classroom notable quotes excerpted from President Obama’s speeches on education.
*Based on these excerpts, what can we infer that the president believes is important in order to be educationally successful?
*Teachers may ask students to think of the following: Why does President Obama want to speak with us today? How will he inspire us?
*Teachers might conduct a 'listening with purpose' exercise based on the following ideas: personal responsibility, goals, and persistence. Teachers might ask pairs of students to create a word bank... to increase retention and deepen their understanding of an important aspect of the speech.
*Teachers... could focus students on quotations that either propose a specific challenge to them or that inspire them in some meaningful way. Students could do this activity individually, in pairs, or in groups.
*Is President Obama inspiring you to do anything? Is he challenging you to do anything? (Emphasis added.)
Much of the lesson plan specifies class discussion in front of the students' teachers. How much of that classroom discussion was directed by the same sort of teachers who were organizing the students in that New Jersey video? Do you have any doubts about how those discussions went?
This even as the Obama administration's profligate spending bankrupts the students' futures.
The New Jersey video, showing teachers teaching kids to sing paeans to "Barack Hussein Obama," has been described as bone-chilling. Some have said that it evokes nightmarish memories of Hitler youth, others have observed that it reeks of the adoration drummed into Chinese youth for Chairman Mao.
To this journalist, it called up other memories, not so much from the pictures, but of the rote chant. "Mmm, mmm, mmmm, Barack Hussein Obama." Voices drone on and on. I couldn't help but think of a single voice some years ago, monotonously urging his followers to drink the Kool-Aid.
William Tate is an award-winning journalist and author
If the video had been about Bush the Left would have been in an uproar. With regards to Obama's policies substitute Bush and say would it be okay if Bush had try to do the same thing. Look at the policy and situation and not the person to decide if it is right or wrong. Heck if the children sung "We wish you a Merry Christmas" in this video the ACLU would be knocking on some doors.
The following piece appears in the American Thinker.
Quote of the Day - “The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief” - Jacques Ellul
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
September 26, 2009
NJ video proves Obama's school-speech opponents right
William Tate
The video of New Jersey teachers drilling schoolchildren to chant paeans to "Barack Hussein Obama"--adult Obamatons training impressionable children to become little Obamatons--proves that conservatives were right to oppose Barack Obama's nationwide speech to school children.
No, Obama didn't try to convert them on particular policy decisions when he spoke to students earlier this month, but no thoughtful person believed he would. Despite attempts by the Democrat Party's Big Media wing to portray opponents as paranoid, we didn't send kids to school wearing aluminum-foil hats to prevent Obama's broadcast from filtering into their brains--although I have suspicions that the sportscaster at MSNBC may have worn such a contraption during the Bush years.
But what was apparent then, and the New Jersey video proves now, is that Obama's unfettered direct access to students was part of an effort to inculcate a cult of personality about Obama. After all, Obama was elected primarily because the media worshipped at the cult they created around him. Well, that and about a billion of George Soros's dollars. 'Hope' and 'change' being no substitute for an actual platform.
The real motive behind Obama's school address was demonstrated by the infamous 'lesson plan' developed by the Department of Education, which asked students to write about how they could help Obama. That instruction was eventually deleted after word of it leaked out and large segments of the public protested, but other, blatant cult-of-personality instructions remained in the lesson plan:
*Teachers may post in large print around the classroom notable quotes excerpted from President Obama’s speeches on education.
*Based on these excerpts, what can we infer that the president believes is important in order to be educationally successful?
*Teachers may ask students to think of the following: Why does President Obama want to speak with us today? How will he inspire us?
*Teachers might conduct a 'listening with purpose' exercise based on the following ideas: personal responsibility, goals, and persistence. Teachers might ask pairs of students to create a word bank... to increase retention and deepen their understanding of an important aspect of the speech.
*Teachers... could focus students on quotations that either propose a specific challenge to them or that inspire them in some meaningful way. Students could do this activity individually, in pairs, or in groups.
*Is President Obama inspiring you to do anything? Is he challenging you to do anything? (Emphasis added.)
Much of the lesson plan specifies class discussion in front of the students' teachers. How much of that classroom discussion was directed by the same sort of teachers who were organizing the students in that New Jersey video? Do you have any doubts about how those discussions went?
This even as the Obama administration's profligate spending bankrupts the students' futures.
The New Jersey video, showing teachers teaching kids to sing paeans to "Barack Hussein Obama," has been described as bone-chilling. Some have said that it evokes nightmarish memories of Hitler youth, others have observed that it reeks of the adoration drummed into Chinese youth for Chairman Mao.
To this journalist, it called up other memories, not so much from the pictures, but of the rote chant. "Mmm, mmm, mmmm, Barack Hussein Obama." Voices drone on and on. I couldn't help but think of a single voice some years ago, monotonously urging his followers to drink the Kool-Aid.
William Tate is an award-winning journalist and author
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