Month: April 2015

Why, all of a sudden, does it appear so many people of means (you know, the rich guys) have become involved in “education reform”? Could it be that there is big money to be made there? Think of the huge publishing contracts for standardized testing materials, standardized national curricula, teacher retraining courses, charter schools, you name it. Where there is big money involved, such as America’s education budget, you will naturally find the big money people.We should ask: how much thought has been given to the research, the unbiased research, indicating that none of this “education reform” has produced any better results than our own public school system?

A couple of unidentified Iowa voters made a pertinent comment relating to Hillary Clinton’s apparent lock on the Democratic nomination for president. They are worried that “a perfunctory nominating contest might not stir enough enthusiasm … to power a victory for the eventual nominee in 2016.” In other words, a ho hum primary is not likely to bring out more than the most loyal base. The Iowans might be right. Clinton’s dominant starting position, plus her less than energizing “here I am” announcement, portends another 2010- and 2014-type election where progressive voters, both Democratic and Independent simply stay home.

Is it any wonder big money tech moguls like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer, and Eric Schmidt all want to import more H1B workers? Imported workers can be paid less, they demand less from their employer, and are tethered to the firm that recruits them, thus safe from being lured away by competitors. The problem, and this is one the folks at the top could care less about, is that every job taken by an H1B worker is a job not available to an unemployed American. H1B is a great program for India and some American multinationals, not so much for unemployed American engineers.

Like so many others, Graham Stokes (April 15, 2015) bemoans the attention paid to endangered species of fish in the current drought crisis. Of course, people and the food they eat for survival are more important than any smelt, salmon, steelhead, or sturgeon. Certainly! But are they? Are people really more important than the animals of the earth? Consider what happens when we have destroyed all the natural habitat for wildlife and they become extinct. Will the human animal be next?

Thanks to Bruce Tinsley (“Mallard Fillmore” on the comics page) we now have a new demographic: the “lazy and apathetic community.” Laziness and apathy. Guess who he is talking about.

Attention members of Congress: the TPP is being written and no one is at the table to represent the interests of the American public. The multinationals are there, the same folks who brought us NAFTA. They are there with their lawyers, but you are not. You have no way of knowing what kinds of goodies they are cooking up because everything is being done in secret, behind closed doors. There is a reason for this secrecy. If its provisions were made public in advance, no one who pays attention would ever allow America to be saddled with another NAFTA-type agreement, and this one is likely to be even worse. Do we want multinational corporations to be above national laws and immune from any regulation that might diminish their gross profit? The degradation already caused by the extraction industries (such as Occidental petroleum in Ecuador, oil and gas companies all over the world, even the proposed Keystone XL pipeline) and the economic damage to small farmers and businesses will pale compared to what has already resulted from NAFTA. Congress will have no opportunity even to review the agreement in its final form until it is presented to the President for signature. And the only way you can prevent America from being obligated under the agreement is to deny the President the Fast Track authority he wants. So, step up! Vote Fast Track down and give TPP a thorough congressional analysis, debate, and vote.

Apparently the compulsion to disrespect Obama is so ingrained in the Republican consciousness they need to continuously make up things so there will always be some mud to throw. For example, the Iran nuclear talks, (although they involve several sovereign nations besides America,) are currently providing plenty of red meat for the mud-throwers, such as the attempt by two recent letter writers to characterize Obama as another Neville Chamberlain following the latter’s Munich meeting with Adolf Hitler prior to World War II. Such a comparison only indicates a profound ignorance of history. Iran today cannot in any way be compared to prewar Germany. And the nations negotiating with Iran are hardly equivalent to a weak and unprepared Great Britain standing alone against Hitler in 1939. But that doesn’t matter. Republicans will throw anything they can get their hands on at Obama if for no other purpose than to continue the flow of insults. Even if they don’t make sense.

“Religious freedom” is the sheep’s clothing. Anti-gay bigotry is the wolf within.