I have always maintained that the current crop of Republicans in Congress rely on the American people's ignorance and apathy to get into office. If average citizens realized half of the crap that Republicans try to pull while in office, I don't think they would even be as popular as they are now - which is not saying much.
There is no better proof of that than this current flap in Arizona regarding a so-called "religious freedom" bill. The legislation in question would allow business owners to choose not to serve homosexuals based on "sincerely held religious belief".
To her credit, Governor Jan Brewer decided against sending her state back to pre-Civil Rights Act America and vetoed the bill. True religious freedom, a positive right that does not include the freedom to discriminate against others, has been protected.
My point is not to harp on the legislation in question, however. The arguments against such an execrable bill should be self-evident enough that there is no need for me to outline them. Instead, the focus of my attention is the phenomenon of similar bills proposed in Kansas, Missouri and Mississippi being tabled or deferred after the Arizona legislation was vetoed by Brewer.
I highly doubt that it's a coincidence that we're suddenly seeing such similar bills proposed by state Republican politicians. We've known for a while that the GOP has an impressive network through which talking points and the current legislative agenda is disseminated - it's called talk radio and ALEC. If Tucker Carlson says, as he did recently after Brewer's veto, that the effort to kill the anti-gay legislation is "fascism", that is the talking point that Republicans everywhere will soon be spewing on the news and in the halls of Congress.
What is striking, however, is the fact that a little "sunlight" - the American people discovering what Republicans were trying to do and working to stop it - is all it took to stop anti-gay discrimination from being codified into law.
Let that be a lesson to those who claim that their vote "doesn't count" or that staying home on election day won't have a real impact on this country.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Friday, February 21, 2014
The Value of Education
I'm finally reviving this blog after months of letting it gather dust in one of the forgotten corners of the internet. Although I have plenty of homework to do (I'm a college student), I just have so much to say about so many things that I can't help but continue to post. So look for more articles in the coming days.
An article in Time this month contains a laudatory article on a new type of high school that has opened in Chicago (I believe). Students attend this school for six years instead of four, completing the usual amount of high school and then two years of college. The idea is that they leave school with both a high school diploma and an associate degree, thus increasing their odds of finding a job.
The school itself is a joint effort between IBM and the public school system to produce more students in "STEM" (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) professions, which should bolster the economy and help low-income students at the same time.
I must admit that I have mixed feelings. As someone who has been on the wrong end of the hiring pool, I can certainly understand and appreciate the need to help graduates find work. Although computer science (my major) is a field with any number of opportunities, I quickly found that there just aren't that many jobs for a recent graduate with an associate degree - especially when you are unfortunate enough to finally graduate....in the middle of the Great Recession. The requirements for most programming jobs I've seen begin with at least a Bachelor degree level of education, if not graduate school level.
The article mentioned that a third of job openings could be filled except for the "skill gap" phenomenon - the fact that recent graduates supposedly don't have the training or skills necessary for entry-level positions. I would counter that it is becoming increasingly hard nowadays to find a job in your chosen profession - not just supposedly "soft" degrees like English literature or philosophy, but even technical degrees - without going to graduate school, which is ridiculous.
On the other hand, I'm a bit put off with the idea of pushing the "STEM" professions over everything else. I certainly understand that those in "STEM" careers are usually the innovators who bolster the economy and keep the country running. Where would we be without our engineers and mathematicians?
However, perhaps certain students don't want to be an engineer or scientist. It could be that they don't have the science or math skills necessary for such professions. It could also be that their passions lie in examining literature or creating art. Are we really going to tell such students that they have to abandon their passions to become more "marketable" or to help the economy?
I understand that finding a job and making good money is not as easy for philosophy or English majors. Some graduates may not find jobs in their field and move on to something else. Alex Trebek, for example, was a philosophy major in college. For the part thirty-odd years or more, he has been hosting various game shows - the most popular of which, of course, is Jeopardy!.
If we are serious about telling our children that college affords them the opportunity to pursue their passions, however, we should allow them to actually do that instead of pushing them into more convenient careers!
It is also true that artists and musicians possess major cultural value. Classical Greece is known just as much - or more - for its beautiful poetry, sculpture and art as it is for its feats of engineering. In my opinion, the difficulty artists and musicians often have in finding well-paying jobs says less about them - and their profession - than it does about our society.
One of the more bitter ironies of our age is the fact that higher education is pushed extremely hard: "if you want to earn more money, you've got to go to college and earn a degree!". The statistic that college graduates earn twice as much (or more) than high school graduates is continuously pounded into the brains of students like a drumbeat.
So students "do the right thing" and go to college, eventually earning a degree only to find that a four-year degree is increasingly not enough nowadays. Many of the best entry-level positions require a Master's degree or even higher before you will even be considered.
I applaud efforts like the school featured in Time that seek to fix such discrepancies, but I question whether they're pushing students into fields in which they don't have the ability or skills to survive. At the same time, I wonder whether the problem of finding well-paying work post-graduation is less an economic issue than a flaw in our educational system.
An article in Time this month contains a laudatory article on a new type of high school that has opened in Chicago (I believe). Students attend this school for six years instead of four, completing the usual amount of high school and then two years of college. The idea is that they leave school with both a high school diploma and an associate degree, thus increasing their odds of finding a job.
The school itself is a joint effort between IBM and the public school system to produce more students in "STEM" (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) professions, which should bolster the economy and help low-income students at the same time.
I must admit that I have mixed feelings. As someone who has been on the wrong end of the hiring pool, I can certainly understand and appreciate the need to help graduates find work. Although computer science (my major) is a field with any number of opportunities, I quickly found that there just aren't that many jobs for a recent graduate with an associate degree - especially when you are unfortunate enough to finally graduate....in the middle of the Great Recession. The requirements for most programming jobs I've seen begin with at least a Bachelor degree level of education, if not graduate school level.
The article mentioned that a third of job openings could be filled except for the "skill gap" phenomenon - the fact that recent graduates supposedly don't have the training or skills necessary for entry-level positions. I would counter that it is becoming increasingly hard nowadays to find a job in your chosen profession - not just supposedly "soft" degrees like English literature or philosophy, but even technical degrees - without going to graduate school, which is ridiculous.
On the other hand, I'm a bit put off with the idea of pushing the "STEM" professions over everything else. I certainly understand that those in "STEM" careers are usually the innovators who bolster the economy and keep the country running. Where would we be without our engineers and mathematicians?
However, perhaps certain students don't want to be an engineer or scientist. It could be that they don't have the science or math skills necessary for such professions. It could also be that their passions lie in examining literature or creating art. Are we really going to tell such students that they have to abandon their passions to become more "marketable" or to help the economy?
I understand that finding a job and making good money is not as easy for philosophy or English majors. Some graduates may not find jobs in their field and move on to something else. Alex Trebek, for example, was a philosophy major in college. For the part thirty-odd years or more, he has been hosting various game shows - the most popular of which, of course, is Jeopardy!.
If we are serious about telling our children that college affords them the opportunity to pursue their passions, however, we should allow them to actually do that instead of pushing them into more convenient careers!
It is also true that artists and musicians possess major cultural value. Classical Greece is known just as much - or more - for its beautiful poetry, sculpture and art as it is for its feats of engineering. In my opinion, the difficulty artists and musicians often have in finding well-paying jobs says less about them - and their profession - than it does about our society.
One of the more bitter ironies of our age is the fact that higher education is pushed extremely hard: "if you want to earn more money, you've got to go to college and earn a degree!". The statistic that college graduates earn twice as much (or more) than high school graduates is continuously pounded into the brains of students like a drumbeat.
So students "do the right thing" and go to college, eventually earning a degree only to find that a four-year degree is increasingly not enough nowadays. Many of the best entry-level positions require a Master's degree or even higher before you will even be considered.
I applaud efforts like the school featured in Time that seek to fix such discrepancies, but I question whether they're pushing students into fields in which they don't have the ability or skills to survive. At the same time, I wonder whether the problem of finding well-paying work post-graduation is less an economic issue than a flaw in our educational system.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Hostage Taking
Imagine this scenario: a criminal has cloistered himself in a building somewhere and taken hostages. A negotiator is dispatched, but a hostage is killed when, for whatever reason, the police fail to accede to the criminal's demands.
The criminal is eventually captured, but he blames the dead hostage on the police: "You didn't meet my demands. I had no choice but to kill a hostage." he says with a shrug.
That's essentially the scenario that is playing out right now in Washington. The Republicans have decided that they're so serious about their goal of repealing so-called "Obamacare" that they are willing to shut down the government if the president does not kowtow to their demand to defund health care reform.
So whose fault would it be if the government is eventually shut down due to such intransigence? Why, President Obama, of course!
So said Marco Rubio recently during an interview with Sean Hannity.
Setting aside hostage-taking politics for a moment, there has been, for what seems like quite a while now, an 'Opposite Day' strategy among some Republicans to blatantly deny reality. They want to shut down the government over "Obamacare", but such a shut down would be Obama's fault. Waterboarding is OK, because it's not really torture, but "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques". Osama was caught on Obama's watch, which means that Dubya should be given credit.
It's like some members of the Republican party collectively suffer from cognitive distortion, defined by Wikipedia as "gross reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs". It's Republicans' world; we just live in it.
The $64,000 question is this: how long will the American people put up with being taken hostage by an increasingly radicalized Republican party?
The criminal is eventually captured, but he blames the dead hostage on the police: "You didn't meet my demands. I had no choice but to kill a hostage." he says with a shrug.
That's essentially the scenario that is playing out right now in Washington. The Republicans have decided that they're so serious about their goal of repealing so-called "Obamacare" that they are willing to shut down the government if the president does not kowtow to their demand to defund health care reform.
So whose fault would it be if the government is eventually shut down due to such intransigence? Why, President Obama, of course!
"Well, the one who's threatening to shut down the government is the president and his Democratic allies. What they're basically saying is, unless the budget funds Obamacare, they won't support it. They're basically saying that, unless we fund Obamacare, they are willing to shut down the government.... [I]t's their insistence on continuing to pour money into this broken and failed experiment that is threatening a government shutdown, not us."
So said Marco Rubio recently during an interview with Sean Hannity.
Setting aside hostage-taking politics for a moment, there has been, for what seems like quite a while now, an 'Opposite Day' strategy among some Republicans to blatantly deny reality. They want to shut down the government over "Obamacare", but such a shut down would be Obama's fault. Waterboarding is OK, because it's not really torture, but "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques". Osama was caught on Obama's watch, which means that Dubya should be given credit.
It's like some members of the Republican party collectively suffer from cognitive distortion, defined by Wikipedia as "gross reshaping of external reality to meet internal needs". It's Republicans' world; we just live in it.
The $64,000 question is this: how long will the American people put up with being taken hostage by an increasingly radicalized Republican party?
Sunday, August 4, 2013
The Party of the 'Little Guy'
From an excellent op/ed article written by Dana Milbank:
Source: The GOP Flips the Script on Obama
The Republican party's sudden shift to the party of the 'little guy' is nothing short of amazing.
Let's remember that this is the party that opposes regulation of any kind, opposed Wall Street reform, and constantly fights against people who work for a living (labor). In fact, most Republicans are quick to label as "Socialist" anything that smacks of even being moderately disapproving of big business.
Now the party of Donald Trump, Mitt Romney and the Koch brothers is suddenly positioning itself as the party of "joe six-pack"?
One just can't help but be astounded at the sheer chutzpah.
An aspect of this situation that Milbank did not address in his column is this: the fact that the sudden shift from a party of the rich and powerful to the party of "the little people" is less about genuine concern for the poor and more about cynical politics.
Republicans are desperate to do whatever they can to defund so-called "Obamacare" before it takes effect next year. So single-mindedly focused are they on this goal that many of them are willing to risk major political blowback by shutting down the government if Obama does not cave to their demands - a tactic that even uber-conservative Charles Krauthammer denounced as crazy in a recent column.
Unfortunately, Republican efforts to defund and/or discredit "Obamacare" are not going so well; there have been encouraging signs that health reform is actually working extremely well in those states that are already implementing changes: in Washington, Oregon and Maryland, insurance premiums are turning out to be lower than expected.
Sources: Medical Daily
Washington Post
Republicans are left with few alternatives, so that means falling back on a tried-and-true tactic: throwing everything at Obama and seeing what sticks. If that means crying crocodile tears about the poor being screwed over in favor of the rich, in an attempt to discredit a federal program that will benefit the poor by allowing them to purchase health insurance, so be it. Destroying"Obamacare", it seems, is more important than, you know, actually giving a damn about the "joe six-packs" of the country.
“The president claims his economic agenda is for the middle class. But it’s actually for the well-connected,” Paul Ryan, the GOP’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, wrote this week in USA Today, rejecting Obama’s latest proposal for a corporate tax cut. “There’s no doubt that it works well for them. But for the rest of us, it’s not working at all.”
Ryan, in his brief commentary, protested that Obama is “interested in tax reform for corporations — but not for families or small business.” He further accused Obama of implementing health-care and regulatory policies that favor big businesses and big banks.
That’s rich.
Source: The GOP Flips the Script on Obama
The Republican party's sudden shift to the party of the 'little guy' is nothing short of amazing.
Let's remember that this is the party that opposes regulation of any kind, opposed Wall Street reform, and constantly fights against people who work for a living (labor). In fact, most Republicans are quick to label as "Socialist" anything that smacks of even being moderately disapproving of big business.
Now the party of Donald Trump, Mitt Romney and the Koch brothers is suddenly positioning itself as the party of "joe six-pack"?
One just can't help but be astounded at the sheer chutzpah.
An aspect of this situation that Milbank did not address in his column is this: the fact that the sudden shift from a party of the rich and powerful to the party of "the little people" is less about genuine concern for the poor and more about cynical politics.
Republicans are desperate to do whatever they can to defund so-called "Obamacare" before it takes effect next year. So single-mindedly focused are they on this goal that many of them are willing to risk major political blowback by shutting down the government if Obama does not cave to their demands - a tactic that even uber-conservative Charles Krauthammer denounced as crazy in a recent column.
Unfortunately, Republican efforts to defund and/or discredit "Obamacare" are not going so well; there have been encouraging signs that health reform is actually working extremely well in those states that are already implementing changes: in Washington, Oregon and Maryland, insurance premiums are turning out to be lower than expected.
Sources: Medical Daily
Washington Post
Republicans are left with few alternatives, so that means falling back on a tried-and-true tactic: throwing everything at Obama and seeing what sticks. If that means crying crocodile tears about the poor being screwed over in favor of the rich, in an attempt to discredit a federal program that will benefit the poor by allowing them to purchase health insurance, so be it. Destroying"Obamacare", it seems, is more important than, you know, actually giving a damn about the "joe six-packs" of the country.
Friday, August 2, 2013
The Republican Party At Work
Although we're much better off now that we were, say, this time four or five years ago, our country is still facing a number of very important issues both economic and domestic. But never fear - the Republican party has been hard at work trying to fix these problems in Congress!
...Or not.
I've said this before, and I will continue to harp on it: Three years ago, John Boehner couldn't stop talking about "jobs, jobs, jobs" while laying out his party's agenda for the upcoming legislative session:
Source: ABC News
Republicans handily won the midterm elections in what was almost universally seen as a "red tide" of opposition against Obama's agenda. Thus, everyone lived happily ever after because the Republicans worked their little butts off to create jobs for unemployed Americans, right?
Nope. Instead we got self-inflicted economic wounds:
Scariest Business Stories of 2011: Debt Ceiling Standoff
Sequestration Impact
Meaningless votes to repeal so-called "Obamacare":
Source: NBC News
Attempts to name bodies of water after Ronald Reagan:
Source: The Hill
Warring against women on several fronts:
Rape
Pay equity
Gender Roles
Abortion
...as well as endless hearings on what have proven to be non-scandals:
MSNBC
Ladies and gentlemen, the GOP at work. With a record like this, it's a wonder to me why anyone would want to vote Republican.
...Or not.
I've said this before, and I will continue to harp on it: Three years ago, John Boehner couldn't stop talking about "jobs, jobs, jobs" while laying out his party's agenda for the upcoming legislative session:
“This speech is about jobs…because this coming election is about jobs,” Boehner told the welcoming campaign crowd in his home town. “It’s about the jobs that were promised to the American people by the current administration, and never delivered. It’s about the jobs our economy should be creating right now, but isn’t creating, because of the policies coming out of our Congress. It’s about the jobs our children deserve in the future, but may never have because Washington is burying them in a legacy of debt.”
Source: ABC News
Republicans handily won the midterm elections in what was almost universally seen as a "red tide" of opposition against Obama's agenda. Thus, everyone lived happily ever after because the Republicans worked their little butts off to create jobs for unemployed Americans, right?
Nope. Instead we got self-inflicted economic wounds:
Scariest Business Stories of 2011: Debt Ceiling Standoff
Sequestration Impact
Meaningless votes to repeal so-called "Obamacare":
Source: NBC News
Attempts to name bodies of water after Ronald Reagan:
Source: The Hill
Warring against women on several fronts:
Rape
Pay equity
Gender Roles
Abortion
...as well as endless hearings on what have proven to be non-scandals:
MSNBC
Ladies and gentlemen, the GOP at work. With a record like this, it's a wonder to me why anyone would want to vote Republican.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Doubletalk
This post is dedicated to my wonderful cousin Heather in North Carolina, of whom I'm proud to be associated because she stands up for the same stupidity that I try to address on this blog.
One doesn't know whether to shake one's head and laugh, or cry.
During the North Carolina gubernatorial race, Republican candidate Pat McCrory was asked how many anti-abortion bills he would sign as governor. "None" he quickly replied.
Then North Carolina Republicans came into power in a big way, earning a majority in the state legislature that Republicans hadn't held since Reconstruction.
You'd be forgiven if you thought that the legislative agenda that followed was all about small government conservatism. Instead, the Not-So-Grand Old Party has had a field day doing everything from trying to establish a state religion to banning nipples. No; I'm not making this up.
But perhaps most egregious of all, besides the onerous voter ID bill Republicans passed (the subject of a blog post to come), is Senate Bill 353.
Originally a bill concerning motorcycle safety, Republicans shoehorned abortion restrictions into the bill hoping that voters would be either too dumb or too uninformed to tell the difference. The bill passed the legislature (naturally) and headed for Governor McCrory's desk.
The man who claimed during the debate that he would not sign any abortion restrictions into law promptly approved the motorcycle bill, abortion restrictions and all.
http://tinyurl.com/lkysmue
That action in itself would be cause for understandable outrage among North Carolina voters - McCrory went back on a rather clear and distinct promise he made to not sign abortion restrictions into law.
Perhaps more egregious, however, is the way in which McCrory is trying to spin the situation:
"This law does not further limit access, and those who contend it does are more interested in politics than the health and safety of our citizens."
Ah, the old "it's for the health and safety of women" dodge! McCrory and his Republican cronies would have us believe that they cared so much about women's health that they shoehorned abortion restrictions, which impose overly strict regulations on abortion clinics that will likely shut them down, into a motorcycle bill and passed them on to the governor.
There's a word for people who promise one thing and then do something completely different.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
A Big 'Screw You' to Texas Women
Following an eleven-hour filibuster by state representative Wendy Davis, and protests numbering in the thousands, Texas Republicans finally passed their restrictive anti-abortion bill, which is supposed to close all but five of the thirty-six Planned Parenthood clinics in the state.
How the legislation was passed is instructive of the underlying agenda:
Texas Republicans voted early Wednesday to move forward with new abortion restrictions, after limiting testimony at a public hearing, refusing to consider Democratic amendments and imposing strict security precautions to prevent disruptions from protesting abortion-rights supporters.
(Emphasis mine)
Source: Washington Post
The irony is striking. Republicans are usually the first to emphasize accountability and "consensus of the governed". That was partly the basis of their opposition to so-called "Obamacare" in 2009: Democrats have "pushed through" the legislation despite the fact that the American people "didn't want it".
Yet when it comes to unpopular legislation that harms women's health, Republicans are suddenly very, very concerned with making sure that We The People (whose opinion they claim to value more than almost anything) don't get a chance to speak out.
It just goes to show something that I've slowly begun to realize in the past five years: you can tell when Republicans are lying by simply looking to see if they are talking.
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