04 May 2011

Intelligence for Dummies: Keep Your Mouth SHUT

If these guys were really so smart they would have issued a press release as follows:

While we were hopeful of getting a large amount of intelligence, it looks like Osama was prepared for us. He was a smarter adversary than what we had anticipated. Apparently at the first sign of our invasion, they threw all the hard drives into battery backed up microwave ovens and burned entire cabinets worth of files and faxes. It looks like most of the intelligence we had hoped to have gained was wiped out.

Instead, we've given notice to every Member of Al Quaida, "Change your plans, move, retrench, regroup, because we have your number."


DUMMIES

15 April 2011

How New Logic Sows Distrust

     We've all seen the reports, how it turns out that the supposedly 38 Billion in cuts is in all actuality only 352 Million in cuts.  When asked, they all shrug it off because as politicians, they've gotten used to using new math and new wording that is coached in political terms and quite frankly if used by any of us, would probably get us in a great deal of trouble.
     The way they see it is that they should have increased spending by an inflation adjusted 38 Billion, but instead cut the imaginary, never proposed, never passed into law, budget of 2011 by 352 Million.  To you and me, ordinary citizens, well that's a 352 Million dollar spending cut, to the politicians it's a 38 Billion dollar cut.  
     Once we find out the truth, does this lend more or less trust, not only in the Government, but also the Media itself that reports these "facts" without bothering to explain to the people what it really means.  Am I to believe that these reporters really don't know what's going on?  I'm a part time pundit and I know what's going on, these guys do this for a living!
     Now, Obama's new proposal is to "cut" 4 Trillion, not by cutting spending, but instead by cutting things like our ability to deduct the Mortgage Interest we're paying on our homes, (In other words, tax increases! - I'm sure this will do wonders for the Housing Market).  Even his plan of "cutting" 3 dollars for every 1 dollar in tax increases, doesn't quite add up, because the cuts are not really cuts, but instead the cuts are actually slowdowns in spending.  However, even with the slowdowns in spending, his budget calls for increases in Government spending from 25% of GDP today to well over 40% by 2050!  This represents another problem in the form of Hauser's Law, throughout the entire history of the IRS, the Federal Government has NEVER been able to collect more than 20.9% of GDP in Taxes!  Even when the top rates were 80%.  To top it off revenue usually averages under 19% of GDP.  Again, they don't know this stuff?    So they're lying to us, AGAIN.
     Even Ryan's Plan of "cutting" 6 Trillion, REALLY only cuts about 400 Billion the first year, by not implementing Obama Care and not renewing the failed Stimulus Plan.  Every year after that there's still growth, taking the budget from 3.5 Trillion to nearly 5 Trillion in 10 years, vs a Trillion dollars more in Obama's plan.  So where's the 6 Trillion in cuts?  It's the difference over 10 years between the Republicans Debt Ridden spending plan, vs Obama's INCREDIBLY debt ridden spending plan, NEITHER OF WHICH eliminates the deficit, though SUPPOSEDLY Ryan's plan will get us to a balanced budget in 10 years, but not before adding Trillions more to the National Debt.
     Is it any wonder that more and more Americans turn to the new Media like Glenn Beck, the Blaze, Rush and others?  How do we proceed with an "honest conversation" when the very words they use to describe what they're doing are in all actuality lies?  
     We need to demand HONESTY from our politicians and we need to stop the idiotic tendency that people have of saying that you "can't talk politics and religion" because we're afraid that someone will be offended.  What's the point of having the right to free speech if we can't and won't exercise it?  At the same time we need to grow up and stop getting angry at people because they disagree with us on one point or another.  We need to realise that everyone has a different point of view and no 2 people are EVER going to fully agree on everything.  Only once we start demanding HONEST and open dialogue with each other, will our politicians who are a reflection of us, will begin to have an honest and open dialogue with us in return.  In the meantime, when you hear that the "Republicans" want to starve people, and the "Democrats" want to bankrupt us, we need to do our own research and find out what the real truth is, because unfortunately, neither side will tell us the honest truth.

12 April 2011

Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System


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Posted on Apr 10, 2011
Photo illustration by PZS based on an image by Lin Pernille Photography
A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.
Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.
Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don’t want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.
“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job. Up until very recently, the principal of a school was something like the conductor of an orchestra: a person who had deep experience and knowledge of the part and place of every member and every instrument. In the past 10 years we’ve had the emergence of both [Mayor] Mike Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy and Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy, both created exclusively to produce instant principals and superintendents who model themselves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such ‘academies’ accredited? What quality of leader needs a ‘leadership academy’? What kind of society would allow such people to run their children’s schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a brilliant mechanism for undermining the school systems, instilling fear and creating a rationale for corporate takeover. There is something grotesque about the fact the education reform is being led not by educators but by financers and speculators and billionaires.”
Teachers, under assault from every direction, are fleeing the profession. Even before the “reform” blitzkrieg we were losing half of all teachers within five years after they started work—and these were people who spent years in school and many thousands of dollars to become teachers. How does the country expect to retain dignified, trained professionals under the hostility of current conditions? I suspect that the hedge fund managers behind our charter schools system—whose primary concern is certainly not with education—are delighted to replace real teachers with nonunionized, poorly trained instructors. To truly teach is to instill the values and knowledge which promote the common good and protect a society from the folly of historical amnesia. The utilitarian, corporate ideology embraced by the system of standardized tests and leadership academies has no time for the nuances and moral ambiguities inherent in a liberal arts education. Corporatism is about the cult of the self. It is about personal enrichment and profit as the sole aim of human existence. And those who do not conform are pushed aside. 
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“It is extremely dispiriting to realize that you are in effect lying to these kids by insinuating that this diet of corporate reading programs and standardized tests are preparing them for anything,” said this teacher, who feared he would suffer reprisals from school administrators if they knew he was speaking out. “It is even more dispiriting to know that your livelihood depends increasingly on maintaining this lie. You have to ask yourself why are hedge fund managers suddenly so interested in the education of the urban poor? The main purpose of the testing craze is not to grade the students but to grade the teacher.”
“I cannot say for certain—not with the certainty of a Bill Gates or a Mike Bloomberg who pontificate with utter certainty over a field in which they know absolutely nothing—but more and more I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect,” he added. “In less than a decade we been stripped of autonomy and are increasingly micromanaged. Students have been given the power to fire us by failing their tests. Teachers have been likened to pigs at a trough and blamed for the economic collapse of the United States. In New York, principals have been given every incentive, both financial and in terms of control, to replace experienced teachers with 22-year-old untenured rookies. They cost less. They know nothing. They are malleable and they are vulnerable to termination.”
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