What IS the world coming to?
The rhetoric in Schiavo case
I WISH I could see something good or noble in the political and media circus over the sad fate of Terri Schiavo -- such as a nation's willingness to focus its attention on one person's life or death. No doubt, some people trying to keep Schiavo, or her body, alive are driven by sincere humanitarian passion. But, mostly, this spectacle has been a sickening display of cynicism and fanaticism.I'm not a doctor; unlike some legislators, I don't even -- to quote Representative Barney Frank's memorable quip -- play one on C-Span. I do know that according to every credible source, there's no such person as Terri Schiavo anymore. Her cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that governs consciousness, was destroyed 15 years ago by oxygen deprivation during a cardiac arrest. What remains is a body in a vegetative state, capable of physical reflexes including random eye movements, meaningless sounds, and facial contortions that may look like smiles or frowns.
Loved ones often wishfully mistake these reflexes for signs of awareness; no one blames Schiavo's parents for clinging to such hopes. Far more blameworthy are the know-nothing activists, politicians, and pundits who tout video clips of Schiavo as proof she is fully conscious. These clips of Schiavo exposed in her pathetic state strike me as a far worse indecency on television than Janet Jackson's exposed breast.
What's worse, the media's complicity in all of this has been ghoulishly irresponsible. They of all people have access--easy access--to any and all FACTS about this case. They could have (and should have) read every legal document filed on this case, every doctor's opinion, every statement made by EVERY witness, but instead they have focused solely on those accounts that tell the most sensational, disturbing and frightening account of what has happened and is happening to Terri.
Let's leave aside for a moment the legal and constitutional issues. What's truly striking is the volume of hysteria and misinformation from Schiavo's so-called supporters.
There have been outlandish assertions that Schiavo can communicate and even talk, despite findings to the contrary by her doctors and court-appointed guardian. Miraculously recovered patients whose condition was in no way comparable to Schiavo's -- such as Kate Adamson, who was unresponsive for 70 days and was misdiagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state -- have been paraded on TV. A neurologist with right-to-life affiliations and limited expertise opined, without a medical examination or tests, that Schiavo may be minimally conscious -- a claim one staunch conservative, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan of the American Council on Science and Public Health, dismisses as ''politically generated junk science."The rhetoric flies high, with comparisons to Nazi Germany, concentration camps, and executions; with cries of ''death by starvation" (is it ''death by suffocation" to take a patient off a respirator?), ''murder," and ''medical terrorism" -- that last one from House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Mind-bogglingly, some protesters have likened Schiavo to Jesus. Her husband Michael, who wants her feeding tube removed, has been compared to wife-killer Scott Peterson. On the website of the conservative National Review, writer Kathryn Jean Lopez railed at the feminist groups' lack of outrage that ''a man -- and his male lawyer and doctor -- backed up by a male judge, is cutting off his wife's food." We live in bizarre times when a conservative chides feminists for not acting like professional male-bashers.
Sensing better watch out or I might start referring to him as "THE Donald."
I can't possibly excerpt it properly, just go read it, it's superb and if you read his description of camp 2, and Scalia's opinions, you have where I stand on the Schiavo case.
Lee nails it (with some help from Instapundit Glenn).
Glenn said:
But I do think that process, and the Constitution, matter. Trampling the Constitution in an earnest desire to do good in high-profile cases has been a hallmark of a certain sort of liberalism, and it’s the sort of thing that I thought conservatives eschewed. If I were in charge of making the decision, I might well put the tube back and turn Terri Schiavo over to her family. But I’m not, and the Florida courts are, and they seem to have done a conscientious job. Maybe they came to the right decision, and maybe they didn’t. But respecting their role in the system, and not rushing to overturn all the rules because we don’t like the outcome, seems to me to be part of being a member of civilized society rather than a mob. As I say, I thought conservatives knew this.
Honestly, this issue has put me in a position where I seriously doubt I’ll ever vote Republican again. I might just have to bite the bullet and vote for the Libertarians in protest. I became a Republican because I believed in limited government, states rights, and a strong military. Since 1994, when the GOP took over the House, they’ve crapped all over two of those principles.
It's a sad sad time for our Republic and the party I thought I could trust not to succumb to the Randall Terry's of this world. But hey, I'm a big enough person that I can admit when I'm wrong. Horribly. Tragically. WRONG.
I hope Tom Delay goes down in flames and takes Randall Terry with him.
Read it and weep, and I'm not saying that sarcastically. It is truly tragic and hopefully, eventually other young women will learn from her case--that is after everyone calms the hell down.
The lost lesson of Terri Schiavo
Terri and Michael Schiavo for more than $6.8-million. The jury found that Terri had been the victim of substandard medical care that caused, in part, her coma. The jury also found that Terri was partly at fault and the verdict was reduced accordingly, to about $2-million. I was the lead trial lawyer for Terri and Michael.I have followed from afar the saga of the Schiavo family since the trial. The battles over whether to disconnect Terri's life support have been extensively covered in the media. What has not been widely reported is the cause of Terri's coma.
By all accounts, Terri was a fine young woman. She had a good job, a good marriage and many friends. Most who knew Terri, however, were unaware that she was sick. Terri suffered from an eating disorder known as bulimia nervosa, commonly called bulimia. The disease causes its victims to overeat ("binge") and soon thereafter vomit ("purge"). The cycle of binging and purging is extremely dangerous. The human heart, to work properly, requires a balance of the body's electrolytes. Vomiting can upset the electrolyte balance and cause abnormal heart rhythms that can lead to heart attack. That is what happened to Terri. One night, Terri purged, which caused her potassium level to drop low enough to cause a heart attack. Before fire rescue arrived and took her to the hospital, Terri's brain had been deprived of oxygen for long enough to produce catastrophic brain damage.
Read on, and watch your daughters closely.
This makes me want to cry. Here we are arguing and losing friends over a woman who's in a vegetative state--a woman who has had every chance in the world to have her case pleaded--and here is a woman with kids, a grandchild parents, etc... who is very much alive, awake and willing to take her chances, and who has had no such chances, and where are we? Where are the pundits? Where is the President and Congress?
How about a "Kianna's Law?"...if our solons have exposed themselves to criticism by taking up the Schiavo case, it should be focused not on their motives but on their inconsistency and lack of proportion. To wit: If Terri Schiavo deserves emergency federal intervention to save her life, people like Kianna Karnes deserve it even more.The 44-year-old Mrs. Karnes -- mother of four and grandmother of one -- is not brain-damaged. And the possibility (albeit remote, at this point) exists that she could return to a fully normal life. But she will almost certainly die in the near future as long as the federal government continues to deny her treatment for the kidney cancer that has by now spread throughout her body.
What makes Mrs. Karnes's predicament so depressing is that two different developmental drugs have shown great promise for several years now against this once near-untreatable disease. But not only has the Food and Drug Administration not moved with dispatch to approve the drugs, it has begun imposing new testing requirements that make it all but impossible for their developers -- Bayer and Pfizer -- to provide them to terminal patients on a "compassionate use" basis.
The problem here is the FDA's unethical -- and let us stress, unscientific -- insistence on gathering information about drugs by way of "blinded" placebo-controlled trials, in which a subset of study patients are knowingly denied the new treatment and in some cases denied access to any active treatment at all. This may be moral with an antihistamine; it's certainly not with treatments for a terminal disease. What's more, it's entirely unnecessary. We already know what happens to most cancer patients who don't get treated. They die. We generally know, on average, how long that will take.
So placebo groups are entirely unnecessary to prove significant anti-cancer activity, as the yet-unnamed Bayer (BAY 43-9006) and Pfizer (SU 11248) compounds have already done. Yet the FDA is mandating an unethical placebo trial for the Bayer drug. (The Pfizer drug is at least being tested against another form of care, albeit one that's already all but certain not to work as well.) A deadly follow-on effect of the placebo fetish is that it gives companies a disincentive to run compassionate use programs for unapproved drugs. That's because companies won't be able to satisfy FDA demands to enroll patients in placebo trials if patients know they can get the drug for sure (instead of running the risk of getting a sugar pill) through compassionate use. Hence Mrs. Karnes's deadly predicament.
"If the only alternative is death, then for God's sake let 'em have the drug," says Mrs. Karnes's father, John Rowe, who himself survived leukemia only by getting himself into a clinical trial where he could get another investigational therapy (Gleevec, since approved). Who could disagree?
Anyone in Congress care to step up before THIS poor woman dies, before this "life" ends without trying "all means necessary?"
This requires little introduction:
Indeed, back in 1999, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush signed into law an advanced directives bill that would have allowed husband Michael Schiavo to make the decision to remove Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube.
I'm gonna puke.
The media is NOT GIVING YOU THE FACTS!
Before I go on, let me say that as harsh as I sounded in my post, I am heartbroken for TERRI. If you want to blame anyone, blame her parents' lawyers because they agreed to the following:
- To allow the court--NOT THE HUSBAND AS THE MEDIA WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE--to decide whether to sustain her life. They agreed to let the court be her guardian in the case precisely because neither they nor her husband truly knew or could prove what she wanted (he-said-she-said).
- To present the evidence they presented, in the original case and in the first (and subsequent, by the way) appeals, none of which (by the way) included ANY of the crap (slanderous some of it) you are hearing on TV, about Michael, about her comments, her behavior in the hospice, etc...
Please, for the love of God, the law, and our blessed Constitution, please go to the timeline of her situation and READ THE COURTS' opinions, in particular the appeals court decision. They did not (as you have been told) "refuse" to hear the evidence/affidavits you are hearing about, THEY WERE NEVER PRESENTED!
I'm sorry, but you just cannot come back again and again and again with "new" evidence (unless it really is "new" as in fraudulently or scurrilously withheld from you by someone on the other side). How do we know that the parents (or more likely, their clearly incompetent lawyers who relied on, well, I'm not sure what--hope perhaps) didn't run around looking for people willing to sign affidavits saying a whole number of things because they "believe" in the cause of life.
Again, I am not wishing her dead! I wish the decision could be changed, but only because I wish it, not because I think she was "railroaded" (as Vinny says). The state isn't depriving her of due process WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF HER PARENTS! Please read the opinions! The original decision and the appeals court decision clearly state that the parents AGREED to allow the state to make the final decision!
Now, the Federal judge has said--a good conservative judge by the way, highly regarded by one and all on both sides--that she has not been deprived of due process.
So again, I ask you, what's undue? What's unfair here, other than her situation in and of itself?
It may sound horribly cold given the stakes, but all that means is that we who care about life need to step up and say so from the git go. The parents needed to REFUSE to allow the court to make the desicion. They did NOT.
Oh, and by the way, you will learn (perhaps to your surprise) if you bother to read the FACTS, not just blogs or other people's "commentary," (even Rush who I adore, but who is not always right), is that the parents had JUST AS MUCH TO GAIN if Terri died and Michael divorced her. If he did, they would get the money, so even if he disconnected the tube, he could not remarry without losing the money. Bet you didn't know that because you're too busy reading the hot-and-bothered opinoins of people emotionally charged by the media--the only ones making boatloads of money out of this bullshit.
In fact, what the parents and Michael had agreed was that they would take any leftover money and donate it to a charity that would make the most sense given what had happened to Terri.
Just ask yourself--if you were Michael Schiavo, how would you feel being lynched by the media, the right-to-lifers, the President, etc... if you were totally INNOCENT of everything? I have to wonder because if you read the court's opinions, and tune out all those blond "nurses" and others who are loving their 15 minutes of fame now, you will see a very different picture of the man. The mere fact that he has a new woman in his life and two kids is not enough to indict his position.
I realize this differs from my previous assessment of him, but even I can admit to being wrong on certain points. I began this argument purely on the basis of states rights and separation of powers. Now, having read the opinions in detail, I have to say, I feel even more strongly that as horrible as it may be, there is no legal remedy for this situation other than Judge Greer overturning his own original decision (or the appeals court doing the same). It's not even up to Michael Schiavo, really, it's NOT.
And the most egregious LIE is that he sued to restrict the parents' visitation. He did NO SUCH THING. If you read the opinions, you will see this.
Get the facts people. Run me up the flagpole as being mean, cold, etc...but use another argument for how to get her back on life-support other than this tabloid bullshit that's going around. If you can come up with one that is legal, call the President forthwith. I'm not holding out hope though.
The guardian was the court, not her husband. Even the so-called "legal experts" are getting this wrong on TV.
OK, here's proof that I'm not a mouthpiece for the Bush administration, Tom Delay or the Religious Right.
I think this whole Terri Schiavo thing is disgusting, truly SICK.
I realize I sound like I'm going against "life," but I'm not as much as I'm going against what our side CLAIMS to be against, which is JUDICIAL ACTIVISM.
It's pretty simple: I DO NOT WANT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BOSSING THE COURTS AROUND! I don't care if I "agree" emotionally with the cause they are trying to promote or not. If I support it now, I have to support it when it's a left-wing-nut President and his left-wing-nut cronies trying to get some last minute court intervention to save some traitor-terrorist-spy simply because he's of a cute ethnic "oppressed" origin or some shit.
This case has been heard in court 19 times! Evidence was presented, doctors were interviewed, the parents had their chance to make their case and--as the King of Siam would have said--"etcetera, etcetera and so forth!"
Is it sad that there's a shred of doubt as to what this woman's wishes were/would be? Sure, it's TRAGIC, but what would be more tragic by FAR would be (further) dilution (or as I call it, "crapification") of our Constitution, a document I hold very dear (and I thought Conservatives did as well). There is NO WAY that this woman has been denied due process, none whatsoever. There is no ground for the Federal Government to stand on here. Under what authority are they demanding that the court do anything? Their commerce powers or their war powers? Anyone?
Rick Santorum has impressed me this week as the biggest imbecile we have allegedly representing "our side." If it is true that he said that the Congress sent the courts a demand and they refused, then all I can say is the guy better brush up on his separation of powers! Moron, total idiot, and I hate that because he makes the rest of us who voted Republican in the last elections look stupid too.
This is a tempest in a teapot if I ever saw one. Why Terri? Why now? Why is this so much more pressing than, oh, the fact that millions upon millions of illegal immigrants are streaming across our borders every year, and our President--when asked today about how he and the leaders of Mexico and Canada plan to deal with this-FORGOT to mention the most important criterion for entry: LEGALITY! He said (and no, I'm not making this up--transcript not available yet, if it is later and I have time, I will post) that we have to make sure those "migrating" across the border (so now they are flocks of GEESE are they?) are not terrorists or criminals, but rather decent hardworking people. Is it me, or did he leave out ILLEGAL? I highly doubt he's hoping we'll lump them in with "criminals" (even though we will and do). I'm pretty sure that's a nice way of kissing both the left and right's asses, and it sickens me.
And all the while, we are supposed to be distracted by Terri Schiavo's feeding tube and what the Pope, the Bible, Randall Terry (ASSHOLE) thinks of it all?
Am I heartless and cold? Do I not weep for this woman's parents in my heart? Sure, a little, but to be honest--as the mother of a daugther who would like to think she'd put the memory of her daughter's all-too-brief life to better purpose--I can't fathom why these parents aren't out there stumping against bulemia--the eating disorder that put their precious daughter in the state she's in now. If she weren't making herself puke to be thin, and weren't abusing her body left and right, her heart would not have failed, and she would be fine right now. No one is talking about this, least of all her parents. I'm not suggesting they blame her, I'm simply saying if they can't save her (and it's clear that they can't, not legally) then they ought to try to save someone else's kid.
Instead, they are using the media, the courts, the tax payers' money to tug at our heartstrings and push our political buttons, and I'm sorry, I resent the hell out of them for that. So while I pity them a little, I'd like to give them a piece of my mind as well.
As for the husband, honestly, I think he's a piece of work too. Why is he so hot-and-bothered to kill her? He swears it's her wish to die, but he can't provide anything more than his word and he has tons of reasons to have her gone. Are we supposed to believe that after all these years, a commonlaw wife and two kids, he's still so devoted to Terri that he wants to honor her wishes? What if her care were FREE? I want to know what he'd do then--if her parents were gazillionaires, and they said "We'll take over from here Michael," would he be pushing this so hard? I'm gonna guess NO.
NEVERTHELESS, the law is the law, and we MUST RESPECT IT. If we do not, we risk more than Terri's life. We risk our entire Republic as we know it. If you support what the President did, and hope the government breaks the law to save her, picture this: A world in which the government runs the courts--tells them exactly what to do, when to do it and for whom. Yes folks, picture any South American country, because that's what we will soon become. We're well on our way culturally and linguistically, the only thing left to fall is our system of laws, and I for one don't want to go down without a fight.
Take your pick: Save Terri, kill the Constitution. Not a tough choice for me.
Oh boy does this bring back bad memories.
In fact, when John Depetro talked about the topic during his show on WRKO the other morning, I felt compelled to call in with my story. Admitedly, I don't know all the details of this case, but I would be willing to bet that the story being dished by the parents of the kids, the school and the cops has as many holes in it as the Big Dig!
I can picture the kid who was allegedly "not involved" in the snowball incident. I can picture him "asking" Marie Needs to move her car. I can see his face and hear his tone, and I wasn't even there and don't even know him. I can just imagine how "polite" he probably was wasn't, and I can imagine how scared and angry and frustrated she was when he asked (even if he was polite).
If this kid was not involved and saw her so upset, why didn't he offer to help her? Why didn't he approach her and ask her if she was OK, especially if she was hit in the face with a snowball as she alleges she was (in one account I heard on the radio)? Tell me, is it wise, or even nice to approach someone who's obviously in a freaked-out state demanding that they do anything? Even I wouldn't have done that.
What I do know is that Marie Needs isn't talking to the media. Her lawyer is advising her not to--he doesn't want the case tried in the media, and he's right. The only trouble with that is (as I learned the hard way in our situation), by trying to retain her privacy and protect her case, she's allowing the media to carry only the accounts of those only too willing to tell their story--the kids, parents and schools. What I also know is that their version is going to make her out to be a deranged parnaoid lunatic. I know, because I've been there, and all I can say is, being accosted by kids--kids who are supposed to respect their elders, who are supposed to fear consequences, who don't do either--can be so terrifying that you can be driven to become the "deranged lunatic" they accuse you of being.
But wait! There's more...Apparently, some "documents" are missing.
Bruce has some interesting theories about why that might be.
I hate to admit it, but I'm getting the same tingly feeling I had when it started to come out that we'd found evidence that the UN really is as corrput and amoral as I've always known they were.
Bruce over at mASSBACKWARDS has some great "dirt" on the Big Dig that raises some very interesting questions.
(HINT: "Diversity" hires may have played a role in the lack of "oversight" that resulted in the many leaks in the tunnels (never mind the cost overruns)
Go. Read. Now.
I'm no William Safire by any means, but I like to think I have a clue about the English language. Apparently, many people (most it would seem) don't and yet they work overtime butchering the English language in an obvious effort to sound like they invented it. What other reason could they possibly have for insisting on using the mouthful "myself" when they should simply say "me?"
Similiarly, why use "I" instead of "me" every time one needs to refer to onesself in a sentence?
Examples:
"If you need help with anything, contact John or I and we'll be happy to assist you."
"Erin and myself were put in charge of negotiation and we botched it completely." (could have come from the "Apprentice" no doubt out of the mouth of one of the college grads who are walking advertisements for not bothering to spend the money to send your kids in the first place).
(In response to the question "Who was there?") "Bob, Jane, Pete and myself."
AAAARGH! Is anyone else hearing the verbal equivalent of fingernails on the blackboard?
Our kids are graduating from High School and College able to tell you what a horrible imperialistic genocidal and cruel nation we live in, but they can't refer to themselves in the first person singular without tripping over their own tongues.
Yesterday I posted an article about the state of our education system, and luckil, Murel still reads this site and responded.
I said:
I wonder if we will every wake up to the disaster that has become our public education system (which seems to exist solely for the purpose of perpetuating its own existence and not for its intended purpose of educating our children).
And Murel responded:
Oh, the schools have other purposes: 1) a bottomless well into which to throw tax revenues; 2) a free (which means "taxpayer-subsidized") venue for ideologues to indoctrinate captive audiences into hating their parents' values; 3) a beating zoo set up to provide bullies with targets who, left to their own volition, would not enter a building that contained obvious hoodlums looking for marks; 4) a warehouse for children to allow parents to entertain the fantasy of delegating their childrearing to schoolteachers; 5) a refuge for mentally ill control freaks who, unable to domineer their fellow adults, meet their self-esteem needs by lording it over captive schoolchildren herded into the schools by the law (and therefore ultimately at the barrel of a gun); and 6) a dating service for child molesters.Or maybe that's just my own negativity dripping out again. It does seem, however, that collectively the appropriate sense of mission seems to be lacking (killed, perhaps, through stifling and irrelevant adminstrative protocols). Schools perversely drive out the teachers with the right vision of their mission and what we get reflects what's left when they flee.
It's about time!
Trophy Overload
When the 950 boys and girls of the Lower Merion Little League in Gladwyne, Pa., gather later this month to practice for their spring baseball games, their coaches will impart a few timeless lessons. Seven-year-olds will learn to catch. Nine-year-olds will work on throws from the outfield. Eleven-year-olds will get tips on stealing bases.But coaches may also have to prepare kids for a new lesson: Don't expect a trophy just for showing up.
Like many kids' sports organizations across the U.S., Lower Merion has handed out trophies to every participant for the past six years. But this weekend, league president Steven Rosenberg will seek his board's approval to give awards to top finishers in league playoffs -- and to no one else over the age of nine. His argument: Kids now expect a pat on the back even when they haven't really tried. "What we're doing to these kids, it's wrong," says the 40-year-old marketing consultant. "We're softening them up."
I wonder if we will every wake up to the disaster that has become our public education system (which seems to exist solely for the purpose of perpetuating its own existence and not for its intended purpose of educating our children).
Until we start questioning the wisdom of the Holy Cows of small class size and school-as-social-welfare-institution we will face the stupidfication (my own word) of America.
Teacher can't teach
ver the past half-century, the number of pupils in U.S. schools grew by about 50% while the number of teachers nearly tripled. Spending per student rose threefold, too. If the teaching force had simply kept pace with enrollments, school budgets had risen as they did, and nothing else changed, today's average teacher would earn nearly $100,000, plus generous benefits. We'd have a radically different view of the job and it would attract different sorts of people.Yes, classes would be larger -- about what they were when I was in school. True, there'd be fewer specialists and supervisors. And we wouldn't have as many instructors for youngsters with "special needs." But teachers would earn twice what they do today (less than $50,000, on average) and talented college graduates would vie for the relatively few openings in those ranks.
What America has done, these past 50 years, is invest in more teachers rather than better ones, even as countless appealing and lucrative options have opened up for the able women who once poured into public schooling. No wonder teaching salaries have just kept pace with inflation, despite huge increases in education budgets. No wonder the teaching occupation, with blessed exceptions, draws people from the lower ranks of our lesser universities. No wonder there are shortages in key branches of this sprawling profession. When you employ three million people and you don't pay very well, it's hard to keep a field fully staffed, especially in locales (rural communities, tough urban schools) that aren't too enticing and in subjects such as math and science where well-qualified individuals can earn big bucks doing something else.
Why did we triple the size of the teaching work force instead of paying more to a smaller number of stronger people? Three reasons:
parents think their children will be better off, despite scant evidence that students learn more in smaller classes, particularly from less able instructors. Second, the institutional interests that benefit from a larger teaching force, above all dues-collecting (and influence-seeking) unions, and colleges of education whose revenues (tuition, state subsidies) and size (all those faculty slots) depend on their enrollments. Third, the social forces pushing schools to treat children differently from one another, creating one set of classes for the gifted, others for children with handicaps, those who want to learn Japanese, who seek full-day kindergarten or who crave more community-service opportunities.
Nobody has resisted. It was not in anyone's interest to keep the teaching ranks sparse, while many interests were served by helping them to swell. Today, we pay the price: lots of money spent on schooling, nearly all of it for salaries, but schooling that, at the end of the day, depends on the knowledge, skills and commitment of teachers who don't earn much and cannot see that they ever will.
Compounding that problem, we make multiple policy blunders. We restrict entry to people "certified" by state bureaucracies, normally after passing through quasi-monopolistic training programs that add little value. Thus an ill-paid vocation also has daunting, yet pointless, barriers to entry. We pay mediocre instructors the same as super-teachers. Though tiny cracks are appearing in the "uniform salary schedule," in general an energized and highly-effective classroom practitioner earns no more than a feckless time-server. We pay no more to high-school physics or math teachers than middle-school gym teachers, though the latter are easy to find while people capable of the former posts are scarce and have plentiful options. We pay no more to those who take on daunting assignments in tough schools than to those who work with easy kids in leafy suburbs. In fact, we often pay them less.
Instead of recognizing that today's 20-somethings commonly try multiple occupations before settling down (if they ever do), then making imaginative use of those who are game to teach for a few years, we still assume that teaching is a lifelong vocation and lament anyone who exits the classroom for other pursuits. Instead of deploying technology so that gifted teachers reach hundreds of kids while others function more like tutors or aides, we assume that every classroom needs its own Socrates.
Despite all that, and to their great credit, most teachers are decent folks who care about kids and want to help them learn. But turning around U.S. schools and "leaving no child behind" calls for more. It also requires passion, brains, knowledge and technique. Federal law now demands subject-matter mastery. Such qualities are hard to find in vast numbers, however, especially when the job doesn't pay very well. Yet fat across-the-board raises for three million people are a pipe dream. (Adding $10,000 plus benefits to their pay would add some $40 billion to school budgets.)
Maybe we can't turn back the clock on the numbers, but surely we can reverse the policy errors. With hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs now turning over each year, at minimum we should insist that new entrants play by different rules that reward effectiveness, deploy smart incentives and suitable technology, compensate them sensibly, and make skillful use of short-termers instead of just wishing they'd stay longer. And this time let's watch what we're doing.
Do you think "Just" comes in flavors? Maybe Strawberry and Blueberry? Hehehehe.
GOP seeks to redistribute highway funding
WASHINGTON -- When Congress begins debate this week on a $286 billion transportation bill, Republican leaders plan to try to change how federal highway funding is distributed to eliminate what they see as unfair regional disparities.House majority leader Tom DeLay is leading the effort to tie how much a state receives for road projects to how much drivers in that state pay in federal gasoline taxes, a change that would likely result in a smaller share of federal highway funds for parts of the Northeast and the West, and more for the South.
"It's a tremendous unfairness that has been going on in our highway system," DeLay, a Republican from Texas, has said.
While studies show that Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire pay more in federal taxes of all types than they get back from Washington, highway and transit spending are two of the few parts of the federal budget in which the Northeast has historically taken in more than it pays out in taxes. That situation has long angered Southern lawmakers.
Between 1957, when Congress first imposed a federal gas tax to pay for highway construction, and 2003, Massachusetts received $1.49 for every $1 residents paid in gas taxes at the pump, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
In the same period, Rhode Island got $2.25 for every gas tax dollar it sent to Washington.While Massachusetts is now close to an even exchange, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, and New York still receive far more from Washington annually for roads and transit than they pay into the highway trust fund.
And to those who whine that it's unfair "payback" for the Kerry/Kennedyites and their treatment of the President and the GOP in general, I'd ask them to consider the fact that throughout the 90's when Clinton was rewarding the NOrtheast for its support and "punishing" those who were aginst him, they never complained.
How the worm turns (not a typo)
I can't possibly add to what my Dad had to say about this column by Oliphant:
I normally never read Oliphant's column as he is one of those bow-tied far left librals like Colmes-- but note his comments re Bush. Why can't some of these liberals realize that a man can be down-to-earth, friendly, homey and careless with his pronunciation and still be SMART, whereas haughty, superciliously educated people can be stupid?
Here's the comment in question. What's funny is how oblivious Oliphant is to his own intellectual snobbery:
The one person who got it right at the ceremony was a former partner in the Texas Rangers at the dawn of the steroid era -- President Bush, who was the ninth speaker and noted the lineup metaphor. The president correctly observed that the most important point was not that Robinson was the first, but that the intensity of his huge character made it work and changed his teammates, baseball, and the country. The still-amazing story, Bush said, ''shows what one person can do to hold America to account."
Where have I been? Well, hanging out in the local Children's Hosptial with poor Emma who was sooooo sick it was scary. She caught a really nasty bug called "rotavirus" which is so common, your average can of Lysol contains ingredients to kill it. Nevertheless, most kids will catch it before they are two, and unlike adults (who merely have a day or two of bad gas or diarrhea), they get really ill. In fact, 600,000 children worldwide DIE of this virus each year, and in this country, 50,000 will be hospitalized, one of of forty of those who catch it in the first place.
Guess what? We were the one in forty. Emma got so dehydrated in such a short time, she had to go to the ER and get an IV. It took two days to confirm the diagnosis which meant two days worrying that it was something else--something worse perhaps--and then it took two more days to get her hydrated enough to go home. Today is the first day she's been "healthy" since a week ago this past Sunday, thus the lack of posting.
The good news is she's on the mend. The bad news is, she lost 5% of her body weight--weight she couldn't afford to lose. So now (unlike most American parents) my focus has to be on getting her to gain. It's ironic isn't it? I have a child who eats the way you'd hope all kids would--she loves fruits, veggies, lean meats, yogurt and whole grains. She doesn't much like sweets, high-fat foods or junk in general. Add to that the fact that she eats portions proportional to her size (i.e., tiny) and you have an uphill climb in the weight-gain department.
Anyway, that's why posting has been so light, and it's also why I will now do a rapid-fire set of micro-posts because while I haven't been writing, I HAVE been reading, and there's some stuff you won't want to miss.
Check this!
Who Wants to Play Goalie?Now that Amherst has been eliminated from the NESCAC title chase, this story can be told without compromising the team's positional status. Back in January, during their regular season game with Trinity, goalie Josh F. was injured early in the game with his team trailing 1-0. Under normal circumstances and in consideration of a significant injury, some teams would have opted for a back-up goaltender to relieve the injured player. Not for Amherst and not for Josh. He refused to come out of the game with his injured shoulder not only because he wanted to stay in and help his team but also because Amherst had no real back-up goaltender!
A second goal immediately after the injury had Coach Jack Arena questioning whether or not he should let Josh continue to play but as the game went on he got stronger and eventually Amherst rallied to win the game. But what about the back-up goalie?
Earlier in the season the Lord Jeffs lost one rostered goalie to a personal break from school and their other goalie left campus for personal reasons at the end of the semester. "We were praying that nobody got hurt," said Arena. "Every night we would dress one of the players who was a little nicked up as the back-up and prayed Josh could stay healthy. We actually have a defenseman we would use if we had to who has some past experience and practices as a goalie, so we have two, but it's not the way you want to fill out your roster on game night."
So do frontline players now have a bit more respect for the guy standing between the pipes? "Absolutely," exclaimed Arena. "Nobody wants to draw the short straw and I remember looking down at our back-up the night Josh went down at Trinity and he was white as a ghost at the thought of having to play in the goal."
Amherst enjoyed a successful season, which ended in the quarterfinal round at Bowdoin by a 6-4 score. Kudos to Josh F. for hanging tough and carrying a load that was truly only his to bear for his team to have a shot each and every night. And to the guys who dressed as the back up on the bench — thank Josh for hanging in there every night and encourage the coach to find at least one other "real" goalie for next season. Otherwise, if you are a bit nicked up you may be watching Josh to learn how the equipment goes on some night.
Yup, that's MY bro!
Where do I begin?
This story is the kind I tell when people ask me if I'm worried that my daughter will miss out on the "socialization" that goes on at school. I usually have to tell one like this to follow my acidic "Thanks, but no thanks" shorter response, which is usually met with the blank stare of incomprehension.
For those of you who aren't following this story, here's the scoop: Milton Academy is a prestigious prep-school South of Boston. About a week ago, five hockey players there were expelled after having been caught receiving oral sex from a 15 year-old girl in the locker room. The girl was simply sent home, but not expelled.
Local prosecutors are trying to decide whether or not to charge the five boys with rape because the girl was underage, and the school says the girl was defacto "coerced" simply by virtue of the male:female ratio present in the locker room at the time.
The whole situation makes me want to vomit. OK, now that I've brought you up to speed, the only way I can adequately express my frustration and revulsion is to fisk the latest article on the subject:
Milton Academy cites more sex cases
Parents to be told of a third episode
By Donovan Slack, Globe Staff | March 3, 2005An investigation at Milton Academy has turned up a third oral-sex session between a 15-year-old sophomore girl and varsity ice hockey players at the prestigious prep school, according to a school letter to be sent to parents today.
In the newly discovered episode, two hockey players and another 15-year-old male student requested and received oral sex from the girl in a boys locker room on Sunday, Jan. 23, the letter says. The school had previously reported that on Jan. 22, the same group engaged in the same sex acts in a boy's dorm room and that on Jan. 24, the hockey players, joined by three teammates, received oral sex again from the girl in the boys' locker room.
The school also reported a fourth episode to authorities yesterday, this one at a downtown hotel room, according to a state official briefed on the report. The same girl and two of the same hockey players allegedly attended a birthday party Feb. 12 at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel, where some guests engaged in sex acts, said someone who has spoken with students at the party and a school official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
When I went to prep-school (boarding private school up here in the frozen north), we were watched like hawks! I can't think of a time when we could have gotten away with what these kids have already gotten away with. And even if we had, getting expelled would be the least of our worries. The shunning that would have gone on from our peers, the fingers pointed at us (the girls anyway) and the jeers of "SLUT, slutslutslutslutbagwhore!" would have been deafening! So I have to ask, WHERE THE HELL WERE THE ADULTS????
I'm just referring to the incidents when the kids were on school grounds, but what about this hotel stuff:
In the hotel room incident, parents of a female student, a good friend of the 15-year-old girl, rented the suite for their daughter's birthday so she could have a sleepover while the parents stayed in an adjoining room, said the father of the friend, who spoke on the condition that his name would not be used to protect his daughter's identity.
And in what alternate universe is sleeping nextdoor a deterrent to your teenager doing ANYTHING? Has he never heard of kids sneaking out of their own homes at night, never mind hotel rooms? But as if that isn't bad enough, it gets better:
The parents went out to a restaurant for dinner, as did the girls, three of whom are Milton Academy students, the father said. When the parents returned to the hotel at about 10:50 p.m., they found the girls had returned earlier and had boys in their room, at least one of whom was drinking beer, he said.
The father warned the girls that the boys would have to leave by midnight, and he said he asked the boy with the beer to leave.So he finds boys there, and what does he do? He tells all of them but one that they can STAY but have to be gone by midnight? He doesn't consider the fact that one of them was already breaking the law by drinking underage a red flag for all of them? This was his DAUGHTER in there with them, what concerned him more, being embarrassed and "uncool" or protecting her? What--if any--intelligent thoughts went through his pea-sized brain as he pondered how to handle the situation? Was he thinking like a guy or like a father of a teenage girl--a CHILD under the law. (Gee, a good lawyer could, if they wanted to, sue the father for entrapment given the girl's "proclivities," matters not that he knew what they were, he allowed a bunch of boys to be in a bedroom with his daughter and other underage girls doing God-only-knows-what behind his back).
Add to that the fact that he was willfully disregarding the rules of the school itself--that boy/girl BEDROOM visits are strictly verboten-- and by allowing these visits in the first place, he was flouting the rules of the school--rules the parents of the other students explicitly support and pay to have enforced by the way--in the kids' faces! Again, seems the other parents have a case if they want to sue this asshole for endangerment of a child or contributing to the delinquency of minors!
Some time that night, guests at the party, attended by the 15-year-old girl and two varsity hockey players, engaged in sex acts, according to the school official who spoke on condition of anonymity and to the person who spoke with students at the party. The father, however, while acknowledging that he and his wife were not aware of everything that went on that night in his daughter's hotel room, denied that any sexual acts had occurred.
This is ridiculous. These parents are morons, and if this is happening with the degree of frequency it seems to be happening all over the country with kids this age, so are lots of parents.
The other sad thing is that only the boys are being punished. In fact, the school says they "coerced" the girls in these instances. Really? Why? Because the girls are underage? Because there were multiple boys around and only one girl doing the "deed?" So if her girlfriends sat around and watched or did it too it would not have been coercion? What about peer pressure, from both genders? Couldn't we just as well determine that the boys were "coerced" by IT? After all, what boy is going to refuse oral sex freely offered by a girl his own age while his buddies look on? Seems to me it would take as much courage to refuse to accept as it would for the girl to refuse to oblige in the first place, right?
The real story here isn't that this stuff is happening. My reaction to that is "DUH!" The real story is WHY it's happening. It's simple really. Take the most powerful man on the planet, add one young intern, subtract morals, ethics and consequences, add a dash of semantics ("I did not have 'sex' with that woman, Miss Lewinsky", with "sex" being the operative word) and a hefty dose of publicity = BRAND NEW MORES!
Wake up American parents. Stop trying to be your kids' "pals." Risk that they'll "hate" you or think you "uncool." Stop pretending that it's OK if everyone else thinks so, and stop pretending that your kid isn't succeptible just because she (or he) is a "good" kid who gets "good" grades. When you don't think something is a big deal, it's not that hard to squeeze it in between soccer practice and the math quiz. There won't be stress or other indicators to alert parents or other adults in the vacinity, so you won't just "know" that it's your kid doing it either. Assume they are if you want to be safe, and make it clear that you do NOT approve. Then, take active steps to prevent your kid (or any other kid they hang with) from doing these kinds of things when you can. If you're lucky (really lucky) your kid will make it to adulthood with her (or his) reputation, honor and disease-free status intact (never mind illegitimate-child-free).
But since I can't trust parents to do any of this (or schools for that matter), I'll just take care of my daugther myself, thanks very much.