ATTN: Bonini, Reigle, La Mar Gunn, Lawson, Pettyjohn, Hocker, Hudson, Smyk, Lopez, Miro, Ramone, Short, Grey, Dukes, and Collins! Your Candidate Is A Racist and So Is Your Party! You Still With Them? IF SO, Don’t Expect To Stay With Us, You Racist!!!!! Get The Hell Outta’ Here !!!

 

My original plan for this article was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.

This week I’d planned to propose new steps to cut red tape and taxes, and make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire.

Because I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it.

I’ll be talking a lot more about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead.

But today, I want to address something I hear from Americans all over our country.

Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election.

It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States.

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.

He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.

His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

In just the past week, under the guise of “outreach” to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in insulting and ignorant terms:

“Poverty. Rejection. Horrible education. No housing. No homes. No ownership.

Crime at levels nobody has seen… Right now, you walk down the street, you get shot.”

Those are his words.

Donald Trump misses so much.

He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field…

The vibrancy of black-owned businesses…Or the strength of the black church… He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive…And he certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color.

It takes a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” The answer is everything!

Trump’s lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.

But what he’s doing here is more sinister.

Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters.

It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be.

This is what I want to make clear today:

A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military.

If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?

Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself – that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere.

After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says.

But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.

Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him.

When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants.

Their applications would be marked with a “C” – “C” for “colored” – and then rejected.

Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed.

The pattern continued through the decades.

State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And let’s not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called “Birthers.”

He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn’t really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black President.

In 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for President with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.

And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.

Oh, and by the way, Mexico’s not paying for his wall either.

If it ever gets built, you can be sure that American taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

Since then, there’s been a steady stream of bigotry.

We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn’t be trusted to do his job because, quote, “He’s a Mexican.”

Think about that.

The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage.

Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

To this day, he’s never apologized to Judge Curiel.

But for Trump, that’s just par for the course.

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name “white-genocide-TM.” Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.

His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on a white supremacist website.

The Trump campaign also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. They only dropped him under pressure.

When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.

And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones.

Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t.

He suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there’s absolutely no evidence of that.

Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over.

His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on.

This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel.

It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.

Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”

This man wants to be President of the United States.

I’ve stood by President Obama’s side as he made the toughest decisions a Commander-in-Chief ever has to make.

In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership… clear thinking… and calm judgment… because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death.

The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors.

Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.

It’s another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.

Now, some people will say that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention.

But look at the policies Trump has proposed. They would put prejudice into practice.

And don’t be distracted by his latest attempts to muddy the waters.

He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth… but we know where he stands.

He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country.

He’d abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you’re born in the United States, you’re an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, “anchor babies” and should be deported.

Millions of them.

And he’d ban Muslims around the world – 1.5 billion men, women, and children –from entering our country just because of their religion.

Think about that for a minute. How would it actually work? People landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now.

But in Trump’s America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, “What is your religion?”

And then what?

What if someone says, “I’m a Christian,” but the agent doesn’t believe them.

Do they have to prove it? How would they do that?

Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution.

Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.

Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It’s the so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. It would be a cruel irony if America followed its lead.

Don’t worry, some will say, as President, Trump will be surrounded by smart advisors who will rein in his worst impulses.

So when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will be there to convince him not to.

Maybe.

But look at who he’s put in charge of his campaign.

Trump likes to say he only hires the “best people.” But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode of the Apprentice.

The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – “Let Trump be Trump.” To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO.

To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published:

“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”

“Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield”

“Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.”

That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further.

Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: “this is what I need more of in my campaign.”

Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone.

This spring, he railed against Paul Ryan for, quote “rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.”

No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces “ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas.

Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’”

Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”

The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”

The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

This is part of a broader story — the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders,Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi.

Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race — that’s who Trump wants by his side.

The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In fact, Farage has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs.

Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee.

Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embrace pro-Russian policies.

He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and of giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe more generally.

American presidents from Truman to Reagan have rejected the kind of approach Trump is taking on Russia.

We should, too.

All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before.

Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.

On David Duke’s radio show the other day, the mood was jubilant.

“We appear to have taken over the Republican Party,” one white supremacist said.

Duke laughed. There’s still more work to do, he said.

No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves “racialists.” White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists.” The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right.” But the hate burns just as bright.

And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. Don’t be fooled.

There’s an old Mexican proverb that says “Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.”

We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that.

He says he wants to “make America great again,” but his real message remains “Make America hate again.”

This isn’t just about one election. It’s about who we are as a nation.

It’s about the kind of example we want to set for our children and grandchildren.

Next time you watch Donald Trump rant on television, think about all the kids listening across our country. They hear a lot more than we think.

Parents and teachers are already worried about what they’re calling the “Trump Effect.”

Bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants.

At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of “Build the wall!” and “Speak English.”

After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, “They see it in a presidential campaign and now it’s OK for everyone to say this.”

We wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in our own homes. How can we stand for it from a candidate for president?

This is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. It’s a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this.

Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits and told any racists in the Party to get out.

The week after 9/11, George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims “love America just as much as I do.”

In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew – Barack Obama is an American citizen and “a decent person.”

We need that kind of leadership again.

Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying “enough is enough” – including a lot of Republicans. I’m honored to have their support.

And I promise you this: with your help, I will be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For those who vote for me and those who don’t.

For all Americans.

Because I believe we are stronger together.

It’s a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we’ve ever seen.

Just look at our fabulous Olympic team.

Like Ibtihaj Muhammad, an African-American Muslim from New Jersey who won the bronze medal in fencing with grace and skill. Would she even have a place in Donald Trump’s America?

When I was growing up, Simone Manuel wouldn’t have been allowed to swim in the same public pool as Katie Ledecky. Now they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates.

So let’s keep moving forward together.

Let’s stand up against prejudice and paranoia.

Let’s prove once again, that America is great because is America is good.

Thank you, and may God bless the United States.

Why You Can’t Make Ends Meet

You should be making $18,000 more a year right now.  And would, except for the inequality put in place  beginning with the trickle down policies of Ronald Reagan… now more appropriately called “tinkle” down economics… 

The bottom get pissed on.

The heavy line shows where you would be if the average rate of growth from across the years ’79 to ’10 were applied evenly.  The lighter line shows the reality….

99% of us are all earning an average of $18,000 less than we should be…  So how does this break down?

Average household incomes grew by 53.4 percent from 1979 to 2007. But that didn’t break down equally:

• The bottom fifth of households saw their income go up by 29.2 percent, well below the 53.4 percent average.
• Income for the middle fifth of households grew by a measly 19.7 percent.
• But how did people a little higher up, but not at the very top, do? A little better, but still below average: households between the 81st and 90th percentiles—so in the bottom half of the top fifth of the income ladder—had just 39.1 percent income growth. Again, well below that average of 53.4.
• So how far up do you have to go before you hit the average? The 91st to the 95th percentile almost got there, with 53 percent average growth. But they fell just short. Households between the 96th and 99th percentile seriously exceeded 53.4 percent, though. They had average income growth of 78.1 percent.
• That’s nothing compared to the top 1 percent, though: Their income grew by 244.7 percent, close to five times the average.

It is clear that most of the overall income gains from 1979 to 2007 bypassed the vast majority of American households. As such, their living standards are lower than they would be had these gains been shared more broadly.

Ways To Share More Broadly.

A.  Raise the Minimum Wage:  $10.10 is a start.  

B.  Organize More (and throw out ineffective current bosses) Unions. Override All State Laws Outlawing Unions.

C.  Reduce Wage Theft:  charging workers for uniforms, drinks, food, supplies. Cheating on overtime.

D. Tax the top 1% appropriately…  Include Capital Gains as income. Tax Corporations at the same rate as individuals. Raise the top marginal percents to these levels…

• Over $1 billion in income…  tax rate of 60%
• $500 million to $1 billion in income  = 55%
• $100 million to $500 million in income  = 50%
• $50 million to $100 million in income =  45%
• All the rest: no change….  

On top of this, allow all money put into capital improvements, to be deducted dollar for dollar. (Capital improvements require building things).  The rational is that if you put that money into capital improvements, you are improving this nation as much as if you were directly paying taxes to it.  Perhaps more so.

This can be done, but it must be done with a Democratic Executive, and over 60 Democrats in the Senate (or change the filibuster rules), and a fully Democratic House.  That is what has to happen for any change.  If it doesn’t happen then Americans rightly get what they deserve for being stupid.  Because we all know that Republicans are quite happy with the very fact that you ARE making $18,000 less than you should and quite happy that they are the ones receiving it, not you……. 

It wasn’t supposed to go that way. And it shouldn’t go that way….. 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally! Relief From Benghazi

To those who’ve been  insufferable to all others… Ha, ha. Treat yourselves..   Number 37,449.

(And if anyone wants to know the next fact up the trivial ladder of relevance it is this….)

Number 37,450:  The Hittites domesticated asses, horses, cows and raised honey bees.

Graduation Rates Soar, No Thanks To Common Core

Colin Powell’s think tank just pegged graduation rates nationally at 80%. A new record.  That is 77% for males, 84% for females… This is marked for 2012… (our data ranges 2 years behind, even in this day of instant access…)

Data is broken down for states…..

Delaware, the best place to live in America, has an overall graduation rate of 78% that year… Broken down it goes like this:

77% American Indian  (65)

90% Asian (87)

71% Hispanic (71)

73% Black (67)

82% White (84)

71% Economically Disadvantaged (70)

65% Limited English (57)

56% Physical disabilities (59)

The national averages are included in the parenthesis… As can be readily seen, it is those damn white people that are bringing our state down!  Nice job, Blacks.  Way to push our team forward….

Now don’t let anyone tell you this success is from Common Core… These graduates in 2012, walked into first grade in 2000… Common Core wasn’t even a wet dream back then.  Common Core didn’t begin planning stages until 2010, and the very first pilot clases were rolled out in the 2012-2013 school year….  And even today, we still don’t know what we are doing…

If anything, this is somewhat of a vindication of No Child Left Behind….. This would be the first class that across its entire lifespan (more or less), was under the tutelage of teachers faced with penalties for not striving to succeed…  It is impossible to tell, since a myriad of other factors are in play, and there was no isolation or scientific process to weed out all other possibilities. Any one of those could be the big one, which was that due to the recession during this age group’s high school years,… staying in school was really the “only” practical option available….

Every parent who has had a child already undergo the Smart Balance Assessments or the PARCC, knows this graduation rate will plummet as soon as Common Core goes into effect… They see it in their child:  “Boy, I can’t wait to quit school and get away from all this ridiculous boring bullsh\t !”  Instructions for Common Core are harder to understand than Mandarin calligraphy…. At least one can learn Mandarin calligraphy. Common Core is a fluctuating standard that can be shifted either up or down upon a whim… depending on whether the power that be, “like” your child.

So we need to celebrate this graduation milestone, and be grateful that for whatever the cause, more children than ever stayed in school all the way… Then immediately after our cheer, we need to call every legislator we can think of, and cajole, demand, or plead they abandon Common Core before it destroys something great which is working…

You don’t tinker with something that is working….

It never comes out better…..

 

 

Why 2014 Matters and What You Can Do About It

Across our landscape there are very few pivotal landslide elections.  When they happen they create a new dominant party for a long time…

I can only think of four… FDR’s first two terms and Ronald Reagan’s two terms. Both set in motion a new philosophy and new institutions to enforce the continuation of that policy long after their respective deaths…

(Clinton’s 2nd term would almost qualify but its effect was squandered on Monica Lewinsky…  Doubt that? And you  just told me you are not from the South, Great Plains, or the mountainous West.) ..

Here are maps of what we are talking about…..

The philosophy espoused by those of the heavily blue maps  lasted from 1933 to 2001.  A nice span of 68 years…   The philosophy espoused by those in the heavily red maps, overlaps a little, but most would say it is the primary driver of most policy today, which give it a lifetime stretching from 1981 to today… A lifespan so far of 33 years…

Today, we are consistently divided…..

Which kind of explains our current Federal government, now doesn’t it?  Actually it has never been more clear…

For your life to get better, we have to stop supporting equal government… Where both sides are balanced and nothing ever, gets down…  Currently in the House, there are radical new changes that will forever change America as we know it…  It can’t get passed the Senate …

Currently in the Senate, there are radical new changes that will forever change America as we know it… It can’t get passed the House….

2014 will be a pivotal year for several reasons.

A) There is no cap on how much can be spent.

B)  Voter turnout is consistently low.  So advertising will be the worst ever, meaning every vote that switches carries more weight.  Every voter who gives up in disgust, and does not vote, gives up that much more of a percentage on deciding the total vote…

C) Wealth will outspend the poor this year.  Wealth has the money;  80% of the population is unable to write a check to either political party….

D)  Both parties’ policies are streamlined into clear agendas.  One party (with money) is for policies that help the 1% do better and pay for them by hurting the 99%… The other party is for policies that help the 99% do better, and pays for them by hurting the top 1%….

E)  Because of the politics of doing business, all those media outlets in charge of telling you the news and sometimes the truth,  cannot in good conscious, tell you the truth anymore…   They simply can’t risk getting pushed off the buying spree…..

You have to choose who to help:  the rich or poor, and you have to vote,  no matter what obstacles they throw up in your way….   you must remember that those obstacles are there for a reason, and will remain there until we get either an all blue, or all red America showing up in Wikipedia on election day..  Because those obstacles are there solely to protect the losing parties advantage in an effort to keep America from going all blue…

This raising of the cap also means, that  if you are a CEO  planning an ad campaign that will be kicking off from late August through a holiday December… your ads won’t register with audiences until the day after election… Save your advertising money.   There is no way you can compete for airtime against someone who will pay any price to get his ad on the air…  Save your money…

My personal experience is that over the past two elections, the non political people I know mentally tuned out of ads… Ads no longer work.  What does work is the personal connection of  talking to real people…  There were almost no  campaign ad buys in 1932 or 1936.  And there were campaign limits on money spent in both 1980 and 1984….  Primarily both those sweeping groups of elections were decided upon word of mouth….

I used to get mad at conservative talk shows, until I realized there were only the same 5 people calling in…  Out of 3 million people…  Were they shills?  I don’t know but their voice prints were consistent.  Occasionally someone thinking the talk show was real would call in, but it was rare…

Fight apathy. This is where you come in… If you read this, you probably will look at the ads too… Your job is to interpret the ads to all you know as nothing more than  billionaires blowing smoke out of their orifices like they are lavishing in a Bangkok bordello.   These ads don’t correspond to real life.   People don’t hate their neighbor because they have an Obama or Romney sticker on their care… 99% of us say… “Oh, whatever”  ..  “Who gives a shit? Hey! Can you tell me where you bought your truck?”

The point is that all those red states are not all red deep inside… There are a lot of blues there too, at least 30% in the most red, and often in populous states, up to 49%….  Human beings living in those states have a lot more clout than some clever ad that simply makes up stuff around a table and then pretends it it true, using actors, and trying to crush the airwaves with massive volume before the fact-checkers get the messages out calling it all bunk..

It is We, The People versus They The  Billionaires.   It is a game of Monopoly in its final rounds and we only own a monopoly on the yellow squares on the back side…   Our only hope left  is that we get to shuffle the stack the Chance cards every time we vote…   And if you don’t want to go through this all over again in two more years, with more unlimited funding  in 2016, you need to make sure that despite $4 billion being spent this mid term election, it does zero good to the Koch’s or anyone else…

If we can get a Blue House, we will have a blue Senate, and we can move forward with a blue president…. it’s almost worth dying for.

It’s all about word of mouth…  And be nice… Republicans aren’t  bad people anymore than Democrats, and when you talk to them realize you probably look as weird to them, a they do looking right back at you.  And trust me, if you read the news and blogs you would already  know that  the majority of Republicans are looking for something new.  They just don’t know what. And should  you need a shot of hope?  Cast your eye on these  electoral maps which are of the elections just before the ones above  when the massive tidal waves made their landfall…..

Things can change quickly when everyone individually just gets fed up that things are not going their way… At 99%, the numbers are in our favor…

But it is all about you. Now get out and  start talking. Tell the truth…  Be nice.

I wonder if we could get 2 million to show up for a march in DC against billionaires buying out our elections?  We could, but  it would take some work, but  that would be a very effective message  against an unmatched $4 billion being spent to prevent democracy.

Our message would be real, with real people.  Their’s as fake as Mr. Ed….. (that is who David Koch looks like I think; compare the chins)…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Lie That Our Schools Are Failing

 

Graphic courtesy of Yes Magazine

With scores going up in every category, how do they contort that into saying education is failing? It’s not…

Here is how it is done. This same trick was tried last year by Harvard, Mark Murphy and Jack Markell and is used every time they say Delaware’s SAT’s are below national average..

Duh, we test every student. Very few other states do…..

So we are hurting our children by making Draconian reforms that were never needed in the first place… If a foreign government was hurting our children as is Common Core, we’d be at war now.

What The Bottom Half Can Teach Us

This data came from here.

What trends can we learn from the bottom…

To start bottom up, rank them how they vote politically.

• Nevada  .. a swing state.
• New Mexico — Democratic, but with a huge percentage of native American population.
• Mississippi — Republican
• Louisiana, Arizona, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, — All Republican.
• California — Democratic with a huge Central American population.  In people it probably represents more than all the above so far.
• South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Idaho,  all extreme Republican.
• Kentucky, always Republican but now may be swinging.
• Oregon — Democratic
• Alaska, Michigan — now Republican
• Florida — historically always Republican though leaning to swing lately with new voter registration.
• North Carolina — Republican, rapidly pulling away from everything Democratic
• Montana — Republican values but lately a swing state.
• Hawaii — Democratic

(I should note that in case one didn’t previously look at the charts, they should know the worst at settings ones children up for success, is ranked on top starting with Nevada, and the educational levels get better as one goes down the list until he reaches America’s midpoint, which is just after Hawaii if one come up from the bottom.)

But see any trends?

Obviously Republican states do not do well here.  Could this be a coincidence?  If so it would be odd.  That states known for their blueness are all above average when it comes time for kicking their kids out the door, and states known for their redness, are really sending their children out ill prepared…

Now in my observation, it is too hard to pinpoint this on a political party.  Those things morph to get votes.  There has to be something bigger associated with the Republican Party, but not officially a part of it.

The culprit is the belief and practicing of austerity.  Austerity when based on evidence, does not work.  True believers counter that the opposite of austerity is Socialism.  I don’t think Socialism can be so narrowly defined as setting ones children up for success.  And that is what this is about.  Taking care of ones children is not socialism.  It is a duty.  Funding the educational process is a duty required I think by every state.  Every state deserves to have their children do well.

The practitioners of austerity have dominated the argument far too long.  Our children have suffered for it.  If one wants to practice austerity, it needs to happen in areas other than education. As a society we must decide this once and for all.

The idea that one will cut taxes just to cut taxes and make all things fall in line,  cannot apply to education.  Educational funding must be maintained at a consistently adequate level, and if revenue comes up short, then let the wealthy pay more…  This idea of cutting those very essential services and means for future growth so our elite can have more pocket change, needs to stop.

Austerity may have its place, somewhere.  But it certainly does not belong in education as this chart well shows.   All those states which champion austerity, are those very states bringing DOWN America’s academic excellence…

Austerity is nothing more than society’s choosing to button down, and stuff its money into a mattress instead of investing somewhere else and earning additional income or interest off of it… Only in this case, society has chosen the 1% to be its mattress…  Now imagine a mattress actually demanding that we feed it money.  Preposterous?   Well that is exactly what has happened to American society since Bush took over after Clinton. We have willingly obeyed its orders…

This chart of states ranked by their ability to send their children out into the world and be successful, better than any other indicator I think, shows the folly of following any austerity type of program, but especially when it comes to setting up our children for success….

1) It doesn’t help anything. 2) It hurts and makes us worse off.

If You Thought Southern Republicans Were Really Dumb, You Were Right

Tennessee just received a bill to eliminate Daylight Savings time and never change the clocks back or forth.  Then, it’s sole sponsor, amended it to make Daylight Saving permanent, never changing after this spring….. At least as written however, the bill keeps all of Tennessee on Standard Time forever.

This is exactly the perfect example of Republican self-centered thinking.

A. I thought of this; it is a good idea.

B. Because I thought of it, others who suffer are inconsequential.

C. Since only I matter, if it seems good to me, it must be good for the entire world..

D. I wonder why no one else was smart enough to ever think of it before. They aren’t geniuses like me..

E. Of course there will be glitches; someone else will just work around them… just tell someone to stop whining, and get to work and fix those glitches.

This bill has already made it through its first committee hearing with a recommendation of passage.  It would exempt Tennessee from daylights savings time.

Let’s look at the  repercussions.. Something Republicans have yet to do…  Currently we are in winter.  Tennessee has its eastern third in the Eastern Time Zone, and the remaining two-thirds is in Central Time.  One of Tennessee’s cities, Bristol, is half in Virginia, and half in Tennessee.  The state line runs right down their main street…

Winter:  Let’s take 12 noon.   The time in Virginia is 12:00.  The time across the border  through the Eastern third is 12:00 noon. Cross into Central and the time falls back to 11:00.  Memphis is at 11:00.  Across the Mississippi, Arkansas is at 11:00.  Kentucky to the north is synchronous with Tennessee, and the states to the south are likewise synchronous to Tennessee.

Summer:  Tennessee stays on standard and the rest all change to Daylight Savings time….  The Eastern Seaboard and Virginia were at 12 and jump to 1:00 pm… Eastern Tennessee stays at 12:00 pm making the left side of Bristol’s main street one hour earlier than the right side of main street.  Church times, radio broadcast time, and television times would all have to be broadcast in two time zones…

One third of the way across Tennessee and the clock jumps back to 11 am, making a two hour difference between Nashville and the Eastern Seaboard, or on the same timezone as Southeastern Oregon…. The Eastern Kentucky to the north will be clocked at 1:00 pm,  Tennessee will be 12:00 pm across that border… Western Kentucky, also in the Central time zone, but on Daylight Savings, will be at 12:00… Across the border in Tennessee it will be 11:00 am…. The same scenario will take place on the Southern Border as well. Alabama and Mississippi will be one hour ahead of Tennessee.  To go north from northern Mississippi into southern Tennessee, you drop back an hour in time.  To go south, you jump forward an hour in time.

Memphis will be 11:00 as well…. But get this… when you go west across the bridge into Arkansas, you will have to jump ahead for the daylight time there will be 12:00.  For travelers that is rather mind boggling to go west and advance one’s clock an hour….

Just imagine the confusion for the Tennessee Titians…. “When are they playing again??? Darn, I missed the first hour of the game”

And since Memphis is the hub of Fed Ex. every package flies through there, imagine all the confusion of everyone tracking their package deliveries… “Oh wow, it will get here soon, what,  it went backwards in time. No wait, it just jumped ahead two hours?”

It opens up a lot of weird possibilities.  Flying from Richmond through Nashville to Little Rock, you  take off, drop back two hours, then jump ahead one hour.

There will be counties in Kentucky and Alabama bordering the time zones where if you go catty corner down one road you change 2 hours.  If you go down another, you change one hour..

And this will not be like changing from Philly to St. Louis, where the sun is actually later so 4 o’clock there seems like 4 o’clock back home… This will be like changing your watch and continuing your business.  Oh, its four am. Time to go to Tennessee.  Oh wow, the sun comes up at 3:00 am here…”

The point of this whole exercise, is not so much to make fun of Tennessee.  But to illustrate the reasoning that is indicative of all Republicans… It is how Mitt Romney thought.  John McCain thought.  Lindsey Graham thinks, ..Mitch McConnell thinks.  John Boehner thinks. Eric Cantor thinks. and of course in Tennessee,  with its Big Head Todd and the Monsters….

The idea that thinking an idea makes it brilliant. and ignoring the entire universe because of how ones idea fits into reality, never once even crossed ones little mind….. (Such as “lets shut down government and hold the debt ceiling hostage until they agree to abolish Obamacare.”)

The rest of America is tired of playing these games.  We are tired of being run by stupid little insects.  America’s middle class has lost so much money by having leaders who think really dumb things, and even think they believe in them too.  The middle class’s own lack of personal wealth, own shaky retirement, own job insecurity,  is due to idiots playing games with our lives, like this jerking off time, all the while thinking they are making great gains for civilization…

Simply because hey, it was their idea….It must be great.!!!

By now we should all be tired of playing their games.  I am. Aren’t you?.

Give Me A Ticket For An Airplane; John Carney Forgets To Sign Important Letter

That letter was this one.  Signed by 100 House Democrats and 4 Republicans to say they support the peaceful effort being under taken by John Kerry in Iran, and that unlike the others (mostly bitter old Republican and apparently John Carney) who want Iran nuked  to show their support for Israel, and afterwards pursue any diplomatic solution, those undersigned instead, prefer the pursuit of a peaceful solution over that of a warmongering one.

Carney did not sign it.  On Monday we will try to determine if he was AWOL on some hiatus, far, far away from performing his governmental duties, or, if he is trying to snuggle up to the Republicans by pretending to be one, at least being too cozy and timid to ruffle their feathers…

Both are odd.  Both question his capacity to represent Delaware in the United States Congress.

If someone says do you agree with me, please sign this letter, usually the failure to sign it, means you do not agree with them, is that correct?  So the assumption whether correct or erroneous, has no other choice than to be that John Carney doesn’t want the peace plan in Iran to work… He supports the Likud.  The radical Israeli’s who want war all the time.

Here are excerpts from the letter, followed by what John is really saying to us by not signing it….

“As Members of Congress—and as Americans—we are united in our unequivocal commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”….

Unbelievably, John Carney is not.

The proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East would threaten the security of the United States and our allies in the region, particularly Israel.

Unbelievably, John Carney thinks it does the opposite.

At present, however, we believe that Congress must give diplomacy a chance. A bill or resolution that risks fracturing our international coalition or, worse yet, undermining our credibility in future negotiations and jeopardizing hard-won progress toward a verifiable final agreement, must be avoided.…

Unbelievably, by not signing, John Carney thinks we should bomb Iran before we negotiate.. As if one held up another at gunpoint, asked for his money, shot him then took it anyway.

We remain wary of the Iranian regime.

Apparently John Carney isn’t.  He must expect them to be nuked out of existence any day now.

We believe that robust diplomacy remains our best possible strategic option, and we commend you and your designees for the developments in Geneva. Should negotiations fail or falter, nothing precludes a change in strategy. But we must not imperil the possibility of a diplomatic success before we even have a chance to pursue it.

John Carney, like those in the despicable other party, think diplomacy is overrated and that only force can be the method  used.  That vision killed Americans in Iraq.  It is killing Americans in  Afghanistan.  It is a dumb vision, and every knowledgeable person has denounce that war-mongering posture with Iran.  That posture has only one motive behind it:  to force Israel to independently bomb Iran and then let America protect Israel from retaliation.

John Carney’s  not signing moves him over to the Republican plan which prefers to  antagonize Iran instead of negotiate with it.  Such an idea for lack of better words,  is just stupid.  Stupid as would be Japan’s  thinking it should torpedo the battleship Missouri as it steams into Tokyo for the signing of the end of hostilities… It is just plain stupid and John Carney apparently fell for it.  If he falls for this, what else will he fall for?

Delaware needs someone who is not stupid, representing us in Washington….

Power Plant Synopsis; Brief and To The Point

It is Newark’s decision.

They do not need to kow tow to the State of Delaware.
They do not need to kow tow to Govrenor Markell.
They do not need to kow tow to Alan Levin.
They do not need to kow tow to the Delaware Chamber of Commerce.
They do not need to kow tow to the University of Delaware.
They do not need to kow tow to the AFL-CIO.
They do not need to kow tow to the DE Building & Construction Trades Council.
They do not need to kow tow to the editorial board of the Wilmington News Journal.
They do not need to kow tow to Al Mascitti on WDEL’s Morning with Al Mascitti.
They do not need to kow tow to Polly Sierer new mayor of Newark.
They do not need to kow tow to Vince D’Anna, head of the mysterious Polly Sierer PAC….

Their responsibility is strictly to those mostly silent residents living within the Newark’s City limits.

Those people who have to put up with outlandish noise.
Those people who have to breathe 64,482,304 Bq’s of radon over today’s 10 Bq’s of radon PER HOUR falling down across their cars, lawns, and pets across the town.
Those people who will die of lung cancer over the next 75 years… because of this decision……

That is who you are responsible to… Them and only them. If the residents of Newark are going to be taking a bullet for someone… at the end of 75 years, do any of the above rate high enough to be granted such an honor?