Been travelling today.

College grads are losing ground on wages. This isn’t good. We need higher wages, living wages for everyone.

Prolonged unemployment is causing and will continue to cause long lasting damage to our society. Everyone is affected. Everyone!

I don’t get it. If children are our future and we, all, believe that children are the foundation of tomorrow then why are we short changing the most important gift that we can give to our children – their education?

BTW, I don’t care if the president backed down on when he would schedule his speech to Congress. I really don’t. We need jobs now. Not tomorrow or next week. Why couldn’t the Republican candidates debate an hour later or two hours earlier? Why couldn’t the president give his speech today and not next week? I don’t care about these macho contests. I care about jobs. Tomorrow we will have another jobs report. I suspect that this is going to be mediocre – with 60,000 – 75,000 jobs added. We need 10 times that much every month for more than two years in order to put 25 million workers (unemployed and underemployed) back to work in jobs that they want at wages that can truly support them. Shame on the media for pushing this non-story and why isn’t the media showing us a daily segment entitled – JOBS???!?!?

Vermont and Connecticut are still struggling with recovery.

For some reason auto sales went up last month. Who would have thunk? I’ll take any economic good news.

From PA:

* Libya: “The transitional government of Libya’s triumphant rebels decided Thursday to extend by up to a week the deadline given to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his remaining fighters to surrender, but the fugitive leader rejected the ultimatum and raged at his enemies in a new broadcast that called for the country to be ‘engulfed in flames.’”

* Better, but still too high: “Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 409,000, the Labor Department said, still pointing to a jobs market struggling to find strength, but well short of a recession signal.”

* Iraq: “Under increased pressure from the United States, an Iraqi crackdown on Iranian-backed Shiite militias has helped produce a previously elusive goal: For the first time since the American invasion of Iraq, an entire month has passed without a single United States service member dying.”

* Maybe someone should do something: “The Obama administration downgraded its forecast for economic growth Thursday, predicting turmoil in the economy will likely keep unemployment above 9 percent through next year’s election.”

* On the other hand, the federal budget deficit will run “20% lower than expected this year.” Tea Partiers will be celebrating the Obama administration’s progress on deficit reduction, right?

* Counter-terrorism: “On a steady slide. On the ropes. Taking shots to the body and head. That’s how White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan described al-Qaida on Wednesday as he offered the first on-record confirmation that al-Qaida’s latest second-in-command was killed last week in Pakistan.”

* The White House’s new “We The People” online petition initiative looks pretty good.

Tags: Economy, Education, Environment by ecthompson md
No Comments »

Really, really busy at work. It is trauma season. Here’s today’s roundup from Steve Benen:

• If Speaker Boehner’s budget bill were to somehow reach the White House, President Obama would veto it.

• That probably won’t matter, since the Boehner bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today, can’t pass the Senate. (If it fails to pass the House tomorrow, this is a moot point.)
• Dems will try to ensure the Boehner bill doesn’t manage to pass thanks to support from a few Blue Dogs: “House Democratic leaders will be whipping votes against a GOP plan to raise the debt limit and slash federal spending, the office of Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the minority whip, said Tuesday.”
• Still trying to clean up the Republicans’ FAA fiasco: “Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee filed legislation Tuesday that would fund the Federal Aviation Administration without cutting grants for rural air service, which has produced the hold up that led to FAA workers being furloughed.”
• A downgrade in U.S. debt would automatically add $100 billion to the deficit that Republicans pretend to care about.
• Making it harder for those without jobs to get a job: “Hundreds of job opening listings posted on Monster.com and other jobs sites explicitly state that people who are unemployed would be less attractive applicants, with some telling the long-term unemployed to not even bother with applying.”
• In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R) is forcing voters to get ID in order to participate in an election and making it harder to get ID.
• On a related note, Katrina Vanden Heuvel takes a closer look at the GOP’s “state-by-state crusade to disenfranchise voters.”
• Pat Buchanan apparently thinks alleged mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has some worthwhile ideas. How Buchanan remains a pundit in good standing baffles me.
• Senate Republicans refused to allow a vote on Goodwin Liu’s judicial nomination. Gov. Jerry Brown (D), however, wants him on the California Supreme Court.
• The Wealth Gap: “The wealth gap between whites and minorities has risen to a historic high, according to new census data analyzed by the Pew Research Center, as the collapse of housing prices more severely affected the net worth of African American and Hispanic households.”
• Boehner said President Obama blew up the Grand Bargain talks by moving the goalposts. Even Republican sources admit the Speaker’s lying.
• Kaplan Inc. sure does get sued a lot.If this were fiction, I’d consider it too far-fetched. Alas, it’s real: “A revenge plot so intricate, the prosecutors were pawns.”
• Remember when House Republicans vowed to the nation, “We will fight efforts to use a national crisis for political gain”? It was in the 2010 “Pledge to America” platform. In fairness, I suppose I should note they never promised they wouldn’t create a national crisis for political gain, so maybe this doesn’t count as a straight-up broken promise.

Tags: Budget, Congress, Education, Media, Obama administration, Party Politics by ecthompson md
2 Comments »

• Mitt Romney has proved himself to be the Republican front-runner by pulling in $18.25 million. He still seems to be confused about whether the Obama administration made the economy worse or not because he’s flip-flopped.
• I don’t understand the country’s conniption over the Casey Anthony verdict. Some people were simply apoplectic. We need to get a grab on reality. We need to be upset over Republicans’ refusal to renew the debt ceiling. We need to be upset at the fact that Republicans are refusing to stimulate job growth which would ease the symptoms of this economic slowdown for millions of Americans. We need to focus less on the sensational trials and more on the fact that jobs are being shipped overseas and wages are stagnant and have been for more than 20 years.

• Huge dust storm envelops Phoenix. The airport was shut down for over an hour. Now, that’s a dust storm.
• Mentally deranged man is being detained for mental health evaluation after threatening to kill the President.
• When I was on the air regularly, there are times when I was talking and it seemed to me that I was not as engaged in what I was talking about as I should’ve been. I think the same thing happen to Republican presidential candidate and former Senator Rick Santorum. He stated, on-air, that “they (the Obama administration) created only 240 million jobs.” Misspeaking is not his only problem. The problem is that his error was pointed out and he doggedly stuck to it. He didn’t realize that he was off by a factor of 100. The total number of jobs in the United States is only about 130 million. Our population is only 311 million. To me, the take-home lesson is be aware of the facts and if you make a mistake correct it.
• To everyone who follow sports, it was clear that Roger Clemens had taken some sort of performance enhancing drug. Yet, he sat in front of Congress and simply lied. Now, his trial for perjury begins. I think it is a separate question whether drugs should or should not be allowed in professional sports. The question is should you be able to sit in front of Congress and lie like Jim Carrey‘s character in the movie Liar Liar.
• America’s education system is in a sad state of affairs. Many students are not learning the information that is necessary to make them successful in this hyper-competitive, technology-based society. So, it is extremely disheartening to find out that over 150 teachers and principals in Atlanta have been caught up in a cheating scandal. As a reflex, I would like to take the side of the hard-working teachers and principals, but there really is no excuse. I understand they’ve been put under increased scrutiny and pressure and have not been given the resources to adequately complete their tasks, but there is no excuse.
• American businesses are sitting on cash. A lot of this cash could be used to expand business and hire workers but it isn’t happening.

• A study by the Labor Department was supposed come out four years ago. This study was supposed (may need a subscription) to look at workers who have lost their jobs and have been “retrained” to qualify for higher paying jobs. I’m not sure we need to study. I think it is pretty clear that once a middle-aged worker loses a manufacturing job the majority of these workers end up in the service sector which cuts their pay approximately in half.
• A new study questions whether too many angioplasties are performed in United States. All I know is if I’m having chest pain and I have other signs and symptoms of a heart attack I want an angioplasty by a qualified cardiologist because that could save my life. Also, when you have a patient that comes back to the ER with recurrent chest pain and you can’t find an etiology and cardiology is finally consult it and finds a mild coronary artery lesion should they stent that as the possible problem for the chest pain? I’m just asking.
• The online magazine Mother Jones has a section of a huge graphic called Capital Gain which simply asks the question of whether Congress can really represent the American people. With the median net worth of American families being approximately $120,000 and the median net worth of the members of Congress being $912,000. In our general population one and 22 Americans are millionaires. In Congress, nearly half of every congressman is a millionaire. The combined net worth of the top 10 members (richest members) is $2.8 billion. All 10 of these members voted to extend the Bush tax cuts. So, does Congress represent us?

So what articles are you following? So what’s on your mind?

Tags: Business, Congress, Economy, Education, Elections, Environment, Healthcare, Sports by ecthompson md
9 Comments »

Kelley Williams-Bolar

Just a couple of items:

• I know that the progressive thing to do is to talk about the riots in Egypt. I’m sorry, I’m not an expert on Egyptian politics, but my friend Brian Katulis at the Center for American Progress is an expert. He’s laying down his insight.
• It is no surprise to me that any objective panel would find that Wall Street may have violated federal securities law. The whole mortgage-backed security debacle was dependent upon two critical deceptions – first, someone had to be set up with a loan that was bigger than they needed. This was done in a variety of ways, but the most commonly used was the adjustable-rate mortgage. So, the home owner would sign up for an adjustable-rate mortgage and would either refinance the house or sell it within a couple of years in order to avoid paying the high mortgage payments. Secondly, the banks needed to securitize these mortgages and then sell them to pensions and municipalities who could only invest in very safe AAA rated bonds. As we now know, many these bonds weren’t even BBB in quality. The Ponzi scheme depended upon this type of deception. Thankfully, somebody’s paying attention.
• Gross Domestic Product grew at a higher than expected rate. I was ready for some good news and I guess this is it.
• Finally, I wanted to take just a minute to talk about Kelley Williams-Bolar. Ms. Bolar is a 40-year-old woman who was sentenced to 10 days in jail after it was discovered that she used a fraudulent address in order to get her kids into a better school system. Now, I think it is admirable to try to get your kids into a better school system. As a matter fact, I think it is a parent’s duty. I know that this is being done hundreds of thousands of times across the country, yet I don’t know of anybody else going to jail for it. With the overcrowding of jails I’m not sure that this is a jailable offense. But, being thrown in jail for 10 days is not the most egregious aspect of this case, in my opinion. For some reason this is a felony. This mother of two now has a felony on her record. She is trying to become a teacher’s aide, has been taking some sort of classes. She may not be able to get a teacher’s license because of this felony conviction. This simply isn’t right.

Tags: Economy, Education, Foreign Affairs, Legal by ecthompson md
5 Comments »

Every president since Eisenhower has talked about education and how it is important in moving America forward. Many of the presidents passed “major initiatives” supporting education. Measuring the effects of these initiatives is somewhat difficult. One of the best examples is president George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. President Bush increased annualized spending per student and increased testing. The question is did that help education? Are our kids learning more? I don’t know. We can download test scores over the last 40 years. This shows a general trend towards an increase in the test scores. In theory, this should be good. This should be good… unless the teachers are now teaching to the test.

If you look at an annualized change in federal spending per student, as a whole, Democrats spend more than Republicans. I’m not sure what this says. I know that during the 1950s President Eisenhower pushed education in something he called “dynamic conservatism.” He established a cabinet level position for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Out of all modern presidents, Ronald Reagan spent the least. Ronald Reagan called the Department of Education (established under President Carter) a “new bureaucratic boondoggle.”

All I know is it doesn’t seem that any president since Eisenhower has really gotten their arms around education (with the possible exception of LBJ). There’s a recent story in the New York Times which noted that the fastest supercomputer in the world now belongs to China. This distinction is something that America has held for many years. On one hand, I believe that the rest of the world targeting America have caught up. On the other hand, I don’t think we are running the race as hard as we did in the 1940s and ’50s and ’60s, when we were deathly afraid of the Soviet Union. I just know it doesn’t seem to matter who’s president. We need to do better. Any politician who stands up and tells you we need local solutions to our education problem does not understand where we are. This a national problem. Our national security depends on our producing smart young men and women. Solutions to global warming won’t just spontaneously happen. Somebody’s going to have to think about it. Somebody’s going have to come up with an innovative solution. The country that figures out how to use energy more efficiently and becomes less dependent on oil will lead in this century. I don’t know much about you, but I prefer leading to following.

(Some of the facts in this post come from the book, Presimetrics.)

Tags: Education by ecthompson md
6 Comments »

Emptywheel has highlighted a series of articles that I agree needs more discussion.

From Emptywheel:

Tim Noah’s great series on the causes of income inequality got a lot less attention during its second week than its first week. So I thought it worthwhile to focus on what he concluded was causing the dangerous new income inequality in America.

Here’s how he described the relative importance of each of the causes of income inequality he looked at:

Here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation, an admittedly crude composite of my discussions with and reading of the various economists and political scientists cited thus far:

• Race and gender are responsible for none of it, and single parenthood is responsible for virtually none of it.
• Immigration is responsible for 5 percent.
• The imagined uniqueness of computers as a transformative technology is responsible for none of it.
• Tax policy is responsible for 5 percent.
• The decline of labor is responsible for 20 percent.
• Trade is responsible for 10 percent.
• Wall Street and corporate boards’ pampering of the Stinking Rich is responsible for 30 percent.
• Various failures in our education system are responsible for 30 percent.

Most of these factors reflect at least in part things the federal government did or failed to do. Immigration is regulated, at least in theory, by the federal government. Tax policy is determined by the federal government. The decline of labor is in large part the doing of the federal government. Trade levels are regulated by the federal government. Government rules concerning finance and executive compensation help determine the quantity of cash that the Stinking Rich take home. Education is affected by government at the local, state, and (increasingly) federal levels. In a broad sense, then, we all created the Great Divergence, because in a democracy, the government is us.

Here’s Noah’s installment on executive pay, in which he argues that things like technology make it easier for entertainers and top execs to maximize their pay, while deregulation allowed the banksters to command huge salaries.

And here’s the one on educational problems. Largely, Noah describes, the problem is that K-12 education isn’t preparing students as well for today’s job market as it used to. In addition, between college costs and the removal of incentives (like the draft) to stay in school, educational attainment stalled for a number of years. As a result, the value of a college education is much greater, so those without a degree do worse by comparison.

I don’t think that these articles really stress the constant pressure that conservatives have put on government to cut taxes. The pressure directly impacts our schools. (more later)

Tags: Domestic Issues, Education by ecthompson md
30 Comments »

I have been one to caution students on education. Education is great, but you have to focus more than ever. If you would like to teach 8th graders but you want to get your PhD in education from Harvard, you might want to re-think your plan. Four years of college followed by a Masters and then a PhD at Harvard will cost well over 200,000.  The average teacher salary is about $42,000. It will take forever to pay that off. On the other hand, majoring in education at a good in-state school should cost less than $25,000. Now that can be paid off in a reasonable amount of time. My point is to carefully think through your opinions.

Recent unemployment numbers clearly show that education pays.

From Calculated Risk:

Click on graph for larger image

This graph shows the unemployment rate by four levels of education (all groups are 25 years and older).

Note that the unemployment rate increased sharply for all four categories in 2008 and into 2009.

Unfortunately this data only goes back to 1992 and only includes one previous recession (the stock / tech bust in 2001). Clearly education matters with regards to the unemployment rate – but education didn’t seem to matter as far as the recovery rate in unemployment following the 2001 recession. All four groups recovered slowly.

So far this year, the group with “less than a high school diploma” has recovered a little better than the more educated groups – although the unemployment rate increased for all four groups in August.

Click on Graph for larger image

And here is a graphic from the BLS based on 2009 data: Education pays …

This shows the unemployment rate and the the median weekly earnings by eight levels level of education.

The higher the education, the lower the unemployment rate – and the higher that median weekly earnings. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean that “education pays”, because there is also a cost (both the actual cost and the opportunity cost), but in general education probably does pay (besides it is fun to learn).

Tags: Economy, Education by ecthompson md
1 Comment »

• We’ve seen over and over again that disadvantaged inner-city youths can be turned around and pointed in the right direction. They need motivated parents and motivated teachers. This was the essence of the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program). In Chicago, the Urban Prep Charter Academy has proven exactly the same thing. All 107 students in their graduating class are preparing to graduate high school and are going to college. Getting good grades is all about hard work and dedication from students, teachers and parents. Everyone was accepted to college! This is an outstanding achievement.
• We need more jobs.
• Where’s Dawn Johnsen? Barack Obama made several recess appointments but for some reason she was not included. Why not?
• I’m not sure what exactly is the matter with the Catholic Church. Several years ago, at the beginning of the Bush administration, there was an outbreak of news in which Catholic priests were molesting young children. This was thought to be an isolated “American” problem. Well, it appears the problem is by far more widespread than the Catholic Church had let on. I don’t understand why the Catholic Church did not get ahead of this problem five years ago. I don’t understand how you let the current Pope get embroiled in this awful behavior, moving accused priests from parish to parish and not removing them from the church and not protecting children. Molesting children is bad enough but at a school for the deaf? This is sick.
• The Tea Partiers are going to have a “conservative Woodstock” in the hometown of Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Searchlight, Nevada, which is as big as you think it is, is the destination for the party.
• Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who replaced Hillary Clinton as New York’s junior senator, seems to be invincible or maybe untouchable. There’s been a string of Democrats and Republicans who said they were going to run against her, only to drop out before seriously entering the race.
• The craziness continues from the tea baggers. There’s been a string of violence and vile behavior by those who opposed health-care reform. Now it appears that Congressman Anthony Weiner received a package full of white powder at his office. This is wrong on so many levels, I don’t know where to start.
• Quinnipiac has just released a poll on exactly who these tea partiers are. They are exactly who we thought they were — ultraconservatives.
• The relatively small school at Butler made it into the Sweet 16, then the Elite Eight and now the Final Four. They have defeated Kansas State University. This team is playing really good basketball. Unfortunately, what used to be my Cinderella favorite North Iowa University (since they knocked off Kansas) has been knocked out of the tournament. Outstanding.

Watch the video:

Artist: Atlanta Rhythm Section
Tune: So into You

Tags: Education, Music, Party Politics, Religion, Sports by ecthompson md
2 Comments »

Really tired. Spoke at a rally after work. Need to pass healthcare reform now. Call your congressman.

• Russian secrets are for sale.  This is very scary.

From Political Animal:

• Israel: “The discord between the United States and Israel over Jewish building in East Jerusalem deepened Tuesday with Israeli officials rejecting demands by Washington and expressing anger over the public upbraiding of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the Obama administration. On a day of scattered — although, in spots, fierce — disturbances by Palestinians in East Jerusalem, news emerged that Israel was moving ahead with a second building project there.”
• Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East and South Asia, had a nuanced answer for the Senate Armed Services Committee on DADT repeal, but he acknowledged for the first time that “the time has come” to consider scrapping the existing policy.
• Don’t expect interest rates to go up any time soon: “The Federal Reserve on Tuesday repeated its pledge to hold interest rates at record lows to foster the economic recovery and ease high unemployment.”
• Nice to see a boost in consumer sentiment, for a change.
• Words of wisdom from Attorney General Eric Holder to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science.
• Important piece on U.S. Central Command and the “Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” that is jeopardizing U.S. standing in the Middle East.
• There’s a fascinating tale behind the gun used at the Pentagon shooting two weeks ago. The madman, John Patrick Bedell, was able to get the gun without a background check — which would have prevented the sale — at a Las Vegas gun show, taking advantage of the gun-show loophole.
• The burden of higher-ed costs on students and their families in California is pretty extraordinary.
• And demonstrating the kind of dignity we’ve come to expect from House Republicans, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) spoke on the House floor today and said the health care reform legislation should be eaten … and then “passed.” Stay classy, Louie.

Tags: Congress, Education, Israel, Mess O'Potamia (Iraq/Iran/Israel/Palestine) by ecthompson md
No Comments »

I like this rule.

From HuffPo:

New Rule: Let’s not fire the teachers when students don’t learn – let’s fire the parents. Last week President Obama defended the firing of every single teacher in a struggling high school in a poor Rhode Island neighborhood. And the kids were outraged. They said, “Why blame our teachers?” and “Who’s President Obama?” I think it was Whitney Houston who said, “I believe that children are our future – teach them well and let them lead the way.” And that’s the last sound piece of educational advice this country has gotten – from a crack head in the ’80′s.

Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It’s just too easy to blame the teachers, what with their cushy teachers’ lounges, their fat-cat salaries, and their absolute authority in deciding who gets a hall pass. We all remember high school – canning the entire faculty is a nationwide revenge fantasy. Take that, Mrs. Crabtree! And guess what? We’re chewing gum and no, we didn’t bring enough for everybody.

But isn’t it convenient that once again it turns out that the problem isn’t us, and the fix is something that doesn’t require us to change our behavior or spend any money. It’s so simple: Fire the bad teachers, hire good ones from some undisclosed location, and hey, while we’re at it let’s cut taxes more. It’s the kind of comprehensive educational solution that could only come from a completely ignorant people. (more…)

Tags: Education by ecthompson md
No Comments »

The Board of Education in Texas has long been a place were conservatives beat their conservative agenda into the heads of our youth. Now, this is taking ideology too far. This is simply wrong.

From TP:

The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

– The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

As the nation’s second-largest textbook market, Texas has enormous leverage over publishers, who often “craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers.” Indeed, as The Washington Monthly has reported, “when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas.”

Tags: Education by ecthompson md
3 Comments »

I really like this. Students have gotten the shaft in this country for 30 years. Reagan raised student loan fees and interest rates. The states followed and it has been open season on students ever since. Why is tuition so ridiculously expensive?

From CNN:

A movement born of $1 billion in budget cuts to California’s state university system has blossomed into a nationwide protest, as students and professors in 33 states will challenge administrators and state lawmakers to ante up.

Most of Thursday’s demonstrations will focus on cuts to state-funded colleges and universities, which supporters say drive up tuition, limit classes and make higher education unobtainable to many.

A blog called Student Activism said in a Twitter update that 122 events are slated from coast to coast — most on campuses, and some at state capitals.

Dissatisfaction, anger and an uncertain future have led professors and students to call for a day of action to defend education. (more…)

From LAT:

A day of passionate protest against education funding cuts attracted thousands of demonstrators Thursday to generally peaceful rallies, walkouts and teach-ins at universities and high schools throughout California and the nation.

From Los Angeles to New York and from San Diego to Humboldt, students, faculty and parents at many schools decried higher student fees, reduced class offerings and teacher layoffs in what organizers described as a “Day of Action for Public Education.”

“We are paying more to get less of an education. That’s why I’m out here today to protest against that,” said Cal State Long Beach art education student Jessica Naujoks, who joined an estimated 2,500 others at a campus rally there.

There were reports of some trouble in Northern California. Demonstrators blocked access to UC Santa Cruz and smashed the windshield of a car, triggering denunciations of such violence. At UC Berkeley, fire alarms were pulled in some classroom buildings, interrupting lectures. But statewide, no arrests were reported by early evening. (more…)

Tags: Domestic Issues, Education by ecthompson md
6 Comments »

I have been travelling and my blog has been giving me the finger over the last couple of days. I think that we have the issues solved.

• Gave a talk at DRI yesterday. I think it was well received. I didn’t hear any snoring.
• Luger dies in Vancouver. Very sad. You shouldn’t die playing a sport.
• Huge offensive has been launched in Afghanistan. I think that the media has done a very poor job informing us about what’s at stake in Afghanistan and why Obama has decided to stay in Afghanistan. This is just the opposite of what happened in the run up to the war in Iraq.
• It appears that a school secretary was fired for speaking Spanish to some parents. I sure hope that this story is wrong.
• So is the Healthcare Summit on or off? The White House has sent invitations to key Congressional leaders for this summit. It still isn’t clear that the Republicans will participate. At least it isn’t clear to me.
• Polar ice cap is getting worse.
• American seems to be souring on Palin and the Tea Baggers.
• There was a university school shooting. This time no students were injured. The shooting occurred at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Three people are dead.
• Washington Post chief political guru David Broder wrote one of the worst columns that I have read in the last four or five years. The whole column is one big delusion about how politically great Sarah Palin is. C&L and Glenn have a few words to say about Broder and Sarah the Great. I can only add Jon Stewart’s thoughts below:

Tags: Afghanistan, Education, Environment, General, Healthcare, The Daily Show, Virginia Tech Shooting by ecthompson md
3 Comments »

As our incomes decrease and our expenses increase, our politicians say that they are on our side, fighting for us, but then they are the guys who are giving tax breaks to big business. These same politicians are the ones who are asking us to work harder. Yet we still vote these knuckleheads in office. We just don’t get it. It ain’t about us. It is about them, the big guys with their multi-million salaries and two or three or four houses.

From C&L:

It’s hitting the fan in California as students protest the grotesque 32% hikes in their college tuition.

Angry students at the Davis, California, branch of the University of California refused to vacate the school’s administration building Thursday evening in a show of defiance and protest over a 32-percent undergraduate tuition hike instituted by the California Board of Regents earlier in the day.

About 50 students remained in the building, which was supposed to close by 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET), UC Davis spokeswoman Claudia Morain told CNN. At one point, as many as 150 students were at the building protesting the tuition increase, she said. She said she hopes campus police can resolve the issue without the need to make arrests.

CNN affiliate KCRA captured footage of students outside the building shouting, “Who’s university? Our university!”

Nearly 400 miles south and hours earlier, hundreds of students marched and chanted against the increase while outside the UCLA building in Los Angeles where regents met to vote on the hike.

Protesting students and others say the increased tuition will hurt working and middle-class students who benefit from state-funded education. But officials argue that a fee increase and deep cuts in school spending are necessary because of a persistent budget crisis that has forced reductions across California’s state government.

California is in bad shape and it’s only to get worse.

Tags: Economy, Education by ecthompson md
1 Comment »

I have only recently gotten into Carlos Mencia. He is fall on the floor laughing funny. This is his “rap” song “Dee, Dee, Dee.”  Funny and true! (I posted this a couple of years ago but it is funny enough to be re-posted. Re-sized video.)

Mencia - Dee, Dee, Dee [ 3:26 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Education, Fun, Music by ecthompson md
No Comments »

There is no better spokesperson for the value of education than President Barack Obama, but Conservatives, already in a frenzy, want no part of it. “Brainwashing!” they shout. It’s sad to see so many Americans divorced from reality. Tony Perkins has not read any data on preventing teens from dropping out of school. Talking to high school kids is too late. Everyone with a high school education knows this. Oh, and I guess he just missed the president’s push to improve our schools.

From TP:

For the past few days, conservatives have been freaking out over President Obama’s upcoming speech to schoolchildren on the first day of school. Though Obama’s speech will be about “persisting and succeeding in school,” the right wing is claiming it is about “school indoctrination” just like “what Chairman Mao did.”

On Fox News this morning, NPR’s Juan Williams defended Obama’s effort as “innocuous,” saying that “on the face of it, it seems to be almost patriotic…you should hear the president speak about the value of education, staying in school, hard work.” But Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wasn’t convinced that the speech would be benign. To buttress his argument, Perkins asserted that “the president really hasn’t pushed any educational reform issues yet in his administration”:

PERKINS: It is unprecedented in the fact that there’s a worksheet attached with this, that there’s homework involved here. And Juan has to admit that the question of write a letter to yourself on how you can help the president does raise some questions as to whether or not he could have gotten into the policy issues. The president really hasn’t pushed any educational reform issues yet in his administration. He’s been busy with other controversial things. But you know, going to elementary kids to talk about drop out. What about high school kids? That is a little — it raises some questions.

Tags: Education, Obama administration by ecthompson md
2 Comments »

Although I will have the whole show up on my blog soon, I wanted to post my interview with Rep. Susan Fisher.  She has done a great job representing North Asheville.  We talk about the budget woes.  We talk about alternatives to cutting services.  We also discuss some the bills that she has introduced in the House.  We talk about a bill called “Healthy Youth” which is an excellent bill on accurate sex education.  This is an excellent interview.  Enjoy.

You can contact Susan Fisher through her web site at www.electsusanfisher.com or through her legislative office in Raleigh.

The Errington Thompson Show - Rep. Susan Fisher [ 20:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Education, Podcasts, Rep. Susan Fisher, State and Local Politics by ecthompson md
No Comments »

I’ve recently had the opportunity to read two of Malcolm Gladwell’s books — Outliers and Blink!  These are two of the best books that I’ve read in a very long time (that don’t deal strictly with politics). Outliers is a book about success.  The author takes the premise that we’ve been fed over the last 30 or 40 years, that successful people work harder and are smarter than the rest of us and says he doesn’t believe that premise is true.  He then, through a series of examples, begins to convince us that people who are highly successful have opportunities that are not available to the rest of us.  Why were the Beatles so successful?  Why do most professional hockey players have birthdays between January and April?  Why was Bill Gates so successful?  Why do affluent kids do better in school than poor children?  The common thread in all of these situations is opportunity.

Not only is this book is very well written, it is also highly entertaining and informative.  I believe that the information in this book can be used by parents to do a better job at raising their own kids.

Below is a nice interview that Malcolm Gladwell did with CNN.  Watch the video:

Tags: Books, Education by ecthompson md
2 Comments »

Tags: Education, Healthcare, Rep. Susan Fisher, State and Local Politics by ecthompson md
No Comments »

There is so much to say about President Bill Clinton’s campaigning with Barack Obama. After listening to Bill Clinton, I think about his presidency…how close to greatness he truly was, and yet he didn’t make it. I then look at Barack Obama and wonder if he has all of the necessary tools to be a truly great president. He has the crisis. Only time will tell. This is a great rally. Enjoy!

Tags: Economy, Education, Election 2008 by ecthompson md
No Comments »