Day: December 6, 2016

Closing Thought–06Dec16

On Homeschooling……

I have been against homeschooling from the get go…..but I have been reconsidering the possibility…..I have seen what “Common Core” is doing to my granddaughter…it is nothing more than tests and evaluations….the students are not learning just prep work for tests.

This is not the way to get a good well rounded education.

But there are some, mostly idiots, that blame all on teachers……the GOP has had a hard on education since the late 1980’s……their accusations are a pure myth……

Until about 1980, America’s public schoolteachers were iconic everyday heroes painted with a kind of Norman Rockwell patina—generally respected because they helped most kids learn to read, write and successfully join society. Such teachers made possible at least the idea of a vibrant democracy.

Since then, what a turnaround: We’re now told, relentlessly, that bad-apple schoolteachers have wrecked K-12 education; that their unions keep legions of incompetent educators in classrooms; that part of the solution is more private charter schools; and that teachers as well as entire schools lack accountability, which can best be remedied by more and more standardized “bubble” tests.

What led to such an ignoble fall for teachers and schools? Did public education really become so irreversibly terrible in three decades? Is there so little that’s redeemable in today’s schoolhouses?

Source: The Myth Behind Public School Failure by Dean Paton — YES! Magazine

And the myths spread by morons will likely get much louder with Trump’s pick for SecEd…….it is a dismal turn……

Betsy DeVos May Complete The Big Money Takeover Of Our Nation’s Schools

…what DeVos represents in a very great sense is how rich people’s grip on the nation’s public education system has reached a choking point. No doubt, education policy led by Trump and DeVos will differ from the previous administration, but what’s staying the same is how wealthy private interests will strongly influence policies. Grasping this essential truth matters a lot in the “nasty” politics of education today, where the real debate is not so much about charters and choice as it is about who is in control.

The concept of education for profit is slinking itself through the system to become the rule of the land……

If the American Dream is still alive – the one that includes a good job and a house with a yard, kids, and a two-car garage – you can see it taking shape in Wake County in the heart of the state of North Carolina. Signs of surging prosperity are everywhere this morning as I make my way to West Lake Middle School in Apex, NC, on the outskirts of Raleigh.

What were once sleepy two-lane country roads are now teaming with impatient commuters, school busses, and mini-vans. New housing developments, shopping centers, and office buildings are transforming the rolling Piedmont landscape

Source: Tar Heel Heist: How the Charter School Industry is Hijacking Public Education | Alternet

If you truly care about your child’s education then I would suggest that you watch these developments closely….you could be next.

I read on……… op-ed written by a homeschooler……

Homeschooling is going mainstream. There are more resources than ever before. If you’ve considered homeschooling, there’s never been a better time to start.

Homeschoolers are a diverse bunch. Our teaching approaches and learning philosophies vary. Our politics run the gamut and our visions of education reform differ greatly. Yet, despite these contrasts, homeschoolers are remarkably similar. I recently asked a large, eclectic group of homeschooling parents why they chose this education option for their children. Key homeschooling features like “freedom,” and “time,” and “flexibility,” and “individualization” were common drivers for all.

Source: It’s a Great Time to Be a Homeschooler | Foundation for Economic Education

If I were younger and this was happening to our educational system then I would have probably homeschooled my daughter….she would have gotten a better education than she would have got from Common Core….I thank the spirit that I did not have to make that decision…..

Thoughts?

“HUD”

Nope…not a misspell of the movie starring Paul Newman…..this one stands for “Housing and Urban Development”……

It appears that PEOTUS Trump has made his pick for this agency…..a person that earlier said that he was not qualified for a cabinet post and has said that he is not sure why he ran for president…..that person is Ben Carson……

Ben Carson is Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The president-elect made the announcement Monday morning, praising the retired neurosurgeon’s “brilliant mind,” reports Politico. “We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities,” said Trump. Carson, 65, has never held public office, but he has said his own experience growing up in poverty in Detroit would give him insight into this role. In his previous public comments on federal housing, he has criticized the Obama administration’s efforts as “social engineering,” notes the New York Times. In particular, he wrote an op-ed last year criticizing an anti-segregration rule and comparing it unfavorably to federal busing.

“I am honored to accept the opportunity to serve our country in the Trump administration,” said Carson, who became one of Trump’s most prominent backers after dropping out of the GOP primary race. In the role at HUD, Carson “will be enlisted to serve as Trump’s unofficial envoy to African-Americans,” says the Washington Post, even though, as with the 2015 op-ed, he appears to hold positions at odds with groups such as the NAACP. While some critics wonder why someone with a background in health would be a fit for public housing, an analysis at the Atlantic takes note of a growing consensus that housing is, in fact, a public health issue, especially in terms of children.

Someone is smoking some stiff stuff!

I still do not understand why he, Trump, keeps picking people that obviously do not have an ounce of experience in the fields he is putting them in……since Carson was a doctor I would understand him as surgeon-general or the head of HHS…..but HUD?

Yet another conspiracist in the cabinet…..looks like it is gonna be a long 4 years.

Looky Looky Who Wants To Be A Czar

We have been watching as Pres.-elect Trump has been meeting this person and that….he is in search for key positions within his new government…and then there are those charges of nepotism…you know using his kids and family to load up the government positions….personally I think he is smarter than that….but there is one person in his family that might be a good choice.

The position is the new “climate czar” and the person is his daughter…..say what?

Politico is out with an interesting feature on Ivanka Trump that points out she might be the first “first daughter” in history to eclipse the first lady in influence. But perhaps the most intriguing part of the story is that it says she is planning to make climate change one of her “signature issues.” While the president-elect considers the issue to be mostly bunk, Ivanka Trump disagrees, and a source tells Politico that she’s already planning on how to make use of her public profile to push the issue. “If she can pull it off, her advocacy could come as a bit of solace to fearful Americans,” writes Annie Karni. She adds that nobody is closer to Donald Trump than Ivanka, who remains in relatively good standing in elite liberal circles.

Meanwhile, an analysis at the New York Times might also soothe fears of those who think a Trump White House will be disastrous in terms of progress on global warming. The gist of the piece by Eduardo Porter suggests that even if Trump reneges on last year’s Paris accord and kills Obama programs such as the Clean Power Plan, the momentum toward cleaner energy is impossible to stop. He cites a report by the Breakthrough Institute that suggests the importance of international treaties may be overstated when it comes to reducing carbon. The takeaway: “As long as [Trump] keeps the nation’s nuclear power plants online, continues tax incentives for wind and solar energy, and stays out of the way of the shale energy revolution, ‘the US might outperform the commitments that the Obama administration made in Paris,'” say the researchers.

Would she be a better choice?  It depends…she will have her daddy’s ear and she thinks the climate change is a coming problem….it should work out for the better.

She has taken to meeting with Al Gore on the climate thingy….maybe she is serious…..

Ivanka Trump is meeting Monday with climate change activist and former vice president Al Gore.

The President-elect’s daughter, who reportedly wants to make global warming one of her signature issues, will meet with Gore at Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to transition spokesman Jason Miller.

Source: Ivanka Trump to meet with Al Gore | TheHill

Of course all this is speculative until he announces his choice….but it is a damn sight better than one of the toads that hates science.

Thoughts?

Donald Trump’s Infrastructure Plan

I have been doing a mini series both pro and con on Trump’s big deal for the infrastructure…..it is an ambitious plan at that but I do not see it being viable without some sort of tax increase….

This piece is critical of his stated plan for the infrastructure…..it is the con side of the debate…..

The plan suffers from five fatal flaws:

  1. The plan would push state and local governments to use equity capital that can cost 300 percent to 500 percent more than capital raised through traditional municipal bonds.
  2. The plan would provide no support for thousands of critical maintenance and reconstruction projects.
  3. The plan would raise taxes on middle-class Americans in the form of high-cost tolls and other user fees necessary to satisfy the 10 percent to 14 percent annual returns demanded by equity investors.3
  4. The plan would leave behind rural communities and smaller cities and towns that are not large enough to generate sufficient toll or other user fee revenues to satisfy equity investors.
  5. The plan would not meaningfully increase total economic activity, employment, or real wages.

Source: How Donald Trump’s Infrastructure Plan Fails America – Center for American Progress

Our infrastructure is one small glitch from a disaster…..I am all for improving the system….but I do not believe this is the answer to the coming problem….

The problem as I see it……his plan will crap all over the GOP stable of “small government”….but then he would not be first….would he?…..

Democracy and Democracies in Crisis

I have been negligent in my studies and research on the condition of the world and its policies….I will try to be more vigilant in the future…..but in my defense….American politics is fascinating at this time….but I am sure that it will pass.

With the rise of right wing ideology across the world….could the idea of democracy be in trouble?

If democracy is in trouble then what is driving the opposition to such a noble end?

Democracy today is facing greater challenges than at any time since the fall of communism a quarter of a century ago; greater than at any time, in fact, since the dark days of the 1970s when Daniel Patrick Moynihan, writing on the occasion of the U.S. bicentennial in 1976, said that “democracy is where the world was, not where the world is going.”

In retrospect, we know something that Moynihan couldn’t have known at the time—that the fall of the military government in Portugal in 1974 and Franco’s death in Spain the following year had initiated what Samuel Huntington was later to call “the third wave of democratization,” which was the most far-reaching process of democratic transition in the history of the world.

Source: Democracy and Democracies in Crisis | World Affairs Journal