As we noted last Wednesday, the election season is upon us. Today, Tuesday, nowhere will that be more apparent than in the special election for U.S. House being held in Florida's 13th district, in the area around Sarasota.
While many in the media have already been saying things like 'this election will offer clues for 2014', as most of the honest political media has already admitted, no matter who wins, the special election won't really be a bellwether for either party for the rest of 2014. Most of the national media is insiting this race will simply be a test of the party's strategies surrounding Obamacare. That said, it's almost guaranteed that no matter who wins the race, that candidate's party will ignore the facts, and claim the victory in Florida is a sign of things to come the rest of the year.
The facts so far as we have them don't say much.
Even though Sink is taking a slight lead into today, and she has a solid lead in early voting, she's made it clear throughout her campaign she's a moderate on many issues. In a district that's traditionally voted for a moderate Republican, her position is hardly a surprise. Her counterpart, Republican David Jolly - a former DC lobbyist with a troubling history - has been making a desperate attempt to appear moderate as the election has drawn to a close, even going to so far as to alienate the National Republican Party who have made it clear they don't approve of Jolly's sudden moderation.
In short, Republicans appear willing to shoot their own candidate in the foot, and politically take his legs out from under him if he won't march to the beat of the extremist drum. Frankly, that may be both the craziest and most honest thing the GOP has done in quite some time.
In contrast, Alex Sink's absence from one of the largest events in Florida on Monday shows that Democrats also still know how to shoot themselves in the feet with those who may be on the fence about supporting them.
The event on Monday was the massive march in Florida's state capitol of Tallahassee to call for changes to Florida's disastrous 'Stand Your Ground" law. That law has, in a manner of speaking, blown the legs of Florida's gun rights supporters completely off. In multiple different cases, the law has been twisted, both against those who were shot - like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis - as well as those who held the guns, like Marissa Alexander and Michael Giles.
While there are still many calling for the law to be scrapped completely, many more seem willing to accept the idea that the law won't likely be overturned. Many of those marchers say the law should be fixed, changed, and made more just, if it can't be eliminated altogether.
That idea of fixing what you can, making progress where you can, finding common ground and moving forward is an idea Alex Sink has supported in other areas of governing previously. However, she was nowhere near the protest Monday. She didn't even issue a press release stating her support for the efforts of those marching for a just and positive change.
We know for those of our readers in Florida this doesn't exactly leave you with a great decision to make today: It's a choice between a fraudulent and craven Republican in Jolly who's obviously pandering for whatever votes he can scrape together, and in Alex Sink a Democrat who has chosen to be low-profile, instead of courageous enough to boldly come out in favor of changing an unjust law.
That, in a nutshell, may be the most likely part of the Florida race that's duplicated elsewhere this year - desperate pandering from Republicans, with muted stands on every issue from Democrats.
If those dynamics are what's copied in other elections later this year, both major parties may just be shooting themselves in the feet come this fall.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Testing The Limits Of America
Even as the patience of our neighbors was tested this weekend by our staff cheering for our favorite men's and women's college basketball teams, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, we thought about another kind of test, the SAT, and the news announced last week that the exam was changing once again.
While the test was adjusted in 2005, the adjustments made nearly a decade ago are effectively being wiped out next year, making the essay optional once again, while ending the penalty for wrong answers.
As a staff with children, and led by a former college professor, education has always been an important topic to us - and one that we think much of the media gets wrong. While the biggest unaddressed problem with education in America remains the growing disaster of the Student Loan Crisis, the lack of investment in our public schools nationwide has also become a major problem - in large part due to the age of austerity that's been imposed on America by Republicans in Congress.
Still, as Chris Hayes and other education and testing experts pointed out last Friday, the SAT test, along with its competitor, the ACT, has unfortunately become ubiquitous as a shortcut for often overburdened college admissions boards. This latest version of the SAT nominally is supposed to put the test more in line with the basic sets of skills American high school students should be graduating with, instead of the kind of obscure vocabulary lists the current SAT has focused upon for many years.
The real problem with the test, however, along with many of America's current educational standards, is that neither are currently preparing students for the world they face beyond high school. What's worse, in an American economy already suffering from the greatest economic inequality since the 1920s, the SAT has become a defacto test of a teenager's family income - not the meritocratic appraisal it claims to be.
It gets worse.
As Bloomberg Businessweek Economics Editor Peter Coy confirmed last October, the SAT and ACT tests have in fact become barriers to post-high school education for many Americans. Poor scores today keep students from receiving the ever-dwindling number of grants and scholarships. As the tests have become a massive crutch for colleges of all types, poor SAT and ACT scores now may also prevent community and junior colleges from accepting students for more skill-based post-secondary education, like the training needed for traditional blue-collar jobs like plumbers, electricians, and factory line workers.
That lack of post-high school education, teamed with the appalling lack of critical thinking skills has become standard in American K-12 education - thanks in large part to 'No Child Left Behind'. As such, the less educated American workforce has become easier to take advantage of by management, especially in standard blue-collar jobs, as Lydia Depillis confirmed over the weekend.
That less educated, less informed populace has also become easier to scare about union influence over the last twenty years, thanks to the nearly omnipresent right-wing media, and the greatest propaganda victory radical right-wing ideology ever won.
Events in the real, post-high school work world, however, may be shifting both schools and tests like the SAT and ACT back towards reflections of more applicable academic standards.
Those events include both the recent effort by Volkswagen to unionize their own manufacturing plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the announcement on Friday from Ford, that they'll move truck production back to a union shop in Ohio from a non-union shop in Mexico.
Global companies want workers who can think originally and critically, and apply that knowledge to their work. If the SAT, ACT, and U.S. educational standards don't match up to that demand in the real world, there shouldn't be any confusion by American parents and students as to why those companies won't bring more jobs back to The States.
While the test was adjusted in 2005, the adjustments made nearly a decade ago are effectively being wiped out next year, making the essay optional once again, while ending the penalty for wrong answers.
As a staff with children, and led by a former college professor, education has always been an important topic to us - and one that we think much of the media gets wrong. While the biggest unaddressed problem with education in America remains the growing disaster of the Student Loan Crisis, the lack of investment in our public schools nationwide has also become a major problem - in large part due to the age of austerity that's been imposed on America by Republicans in Congress.
Still, as Chris Hayes and other education and testing experts pointed out last Friday, the SAT test, along with its competitor, the ACT, has unfortunately become ubiquitous as a shortcut for often overburdened college admissions boards. This latest version of the SAT nominally is supposed to put the test more in line with the basic sets of skills American high school students should be graduating with, instead of the kind of obscure vocabulary lists the current SAT has focused upon for many years.
The real problem with the test, however, along with many of America's current educational standards, is that neither are currently preparing students for the world they face beyond high school. What's worse, in an American economy already suffering from the greatest economic inequality since the 1920s, the SAT has become a defacto test of a teenager's family income - not the meritocratic appraisal it claims to be.
It gets worse.
As Bloomberg Businessweek Economics Editor Peter Coy confirmed last October, the SAT and ACT tests have in fact become barriers to post-high school education for many Americans. Poor scores today keep students from receiving the ever-dwindling number of grants and scholarships. As the tests have become a massive crutch for colleges of all types, poor SAT and ACT scores now may also prevent community and junior colleges from accepting students for more skill-based post-secondary education, like the training needed for traditional blue-collar jobs like plumbers, electricians, and factory line workers.
That lack of post-high school education, teamed with the appalling lack of critical thinking skills has become standard in American K-12 education - thanks in large part to 'No Child Left Behind'. As such, the less educated American workforce has become easier to take advantage of by management, especially in standard blue-collar jobs, as Lydia Depillis confirmed over the weekend.
That less educated, less informed populace has also become easier to scare about union influence over the last twenty years, thanks to the nearly omnipresent right-wing media, and the greatest propaganda victory radical right-wing ideology ever won.
Events in the real, post-high school work world, however, may be shifting both schools and tests like the SAT and ACT back towards reflections of more applicable academic standards.
Those events include both the recent effort by Volkswagen to unionize their own manufacturing plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the announcement on Friday from Ford, that they'll move truck production back to a union shop in Ohio from a non-union shop in Mexico.
Global companies want workers who can think originally and critically, and apply that knowledge to their work. If the SAT, ACT, and U.S. educational standards don't match up to that demand in the real world, there shouldn't be any confusion by American parents and students as to why those companies won't bring more jobs back to The States.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Poking The Bear
As the week ends, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in DC is going on - or as Jonathan Chait called it this year, "the Republican 'Hunger Games'."
We did think for half a second about covering that insane event today, but we realized we'd already discussed clowns and cowards yesterday. We also don't think anyone needs more hate in their lives. We'll let you read the news accounts of media folks who had to be there in our expanded edition later today, if that's something you feel you absolutely must do.
What might actually help you today is a bit more clarity, especially on the fast moving story surrounding Ukraine, the Crimean region of Ukraine, and Russia.
On Thursday, President Obama and Russian President Putin spent another hour on the phone, continuing to discuss diplomatic solutions. Both the United States and the European Union have begun leveling sanctions on Russia for their invasion. For what it's worth, those sanctions seem to be primarily leveled at some of the wealthier, more powerful members of the Russian oligarchy. If anyone can have influence over Vladimir Putin, they may be able to.
The fact is, however, any sanctions the West makes towards Russia can't really be all that effective. Anyone who says otherwise - as the right-wing media has been doing for much of this week - is ill-informed and doesn't really know what they're talking about.
As professional oil trader Dan Dicker noted Thursday, the idea being bandied about by the right-wing, of drilling for oil and natural gas and shipping it to Europe from America is absurd. Not only is the cost astronomical, but the sheer amount of Russian-generated natural gas that Europe uses, that currently goes through the pipeline system in Ukraine, can't possibly be replaced long-term by anyone who doesn't have a direct pipeline system to Europe.
As we noted on Monday, the cold truth about this entire conflict is what the people of Ukraine - including the people in the Crimea - really want to do.
For their part, the legislators in the Crimea did pass a call for a referendum next week, on whether they should stay as citizens of Ukraine or become citizens of Russia. As President Obama reminded Putin and the rest of the world, however, that referendum vote by just the Crimean populace would not be legal, either under Ukrainian law or international law.
That said, President Obama and Western leaders may want to pay close attention to a recent survey, reported in the Washington Post yesterday by political scientists Grigore Pop-Eleches and Graeme Robertson.
In short, when asked what the people of Ukraine and Crimea considered their homeland, the answers were stark and revealing. Most Ukrainians are proud of their young nation, regardless of where they're from. The glaring exception was the people of Crimea, who thought of themselves as Crimeans first. They didn't really even consider themselves Russians.
We still think sanctions from the U.S. and EU are the right thing to do, at this point, as is the continued push for diplomatic efforts by Sec. of State Kerry and President Obama. That said, anyone looking at the facts can clearly see - those sanctions are like swatting the nose of a bear with a newspaper.
Meanwhile, what we said on Monday remains true: Regardless of what any other nation does, the people of Ukraine, including those in Crimea, will be the ones who ultimately must make the final decisions about their own futures.
We did think for half a second about covering that insane event today, but we realized we'd already discussed clowns and cowards yesterday. We also don't think anyone needs more hate in their lives. We'll let you read the news accounts of media folks who had to be there in our expanded edition later today, if that's something you feel you absolutely must do.
What might actually help you today is a bit more clarity, especially on the fast moving story surrounding Ukraine, the Crimean region of Ukraine, and Russia.
On Thursday, President Obama and Russian President Putin spent another hour on the phone, continuing to discuss diplomatic solutions. Both the United States and the European Union have begun leveling sanctions on Russia for their invasion. For what it's worth, those sanctions seem to be primarily leveled at some of the wealthier, more powerful members of the Russian oligarchy. If anyone can have influence over Vladimir Putin, they may be able to.
The fact is, however, any sanctions the West makes towards Russia can't really be all that effective. Anyone who says otherwise - as the right-wing media has been doing for much of this week - is ill-informed and doesn't really know what they're talking about.
As professional oil trader Dan Dicker noted Thursday, the idea being bandied about by the right-wing, of drilling for oil and natural gas and shipping it to Europe from America is absurd. Not only is the cost astronomical, but the sheer amount of Russian-generated natural gas that Europe uses, that currently goes through the pipeline system in Ukraine, can't possibly be replaced long-term by anyone who doesn't have a direct pipeline system to Europe.
As we noted on Monday, the cold truth about this entire conflict is what the people of Ukraine - including the people in the Crimea - really want to do.
For their part, the legislators in the Crimea did pass a call for a referendum next week, on whether they should stay as citizens of Ukraine or become citizens of Russia. As President Obama reminded Putin and the rest of the world, however, that referendum vote by just the Crimean populace would not be legal, either under Ukrainian law or international law.
That said, President Obama and Western leaders may want to pay close attention to a recent survey, reported in the Washington Post yesterday by political scientists Grigore Pop-Eleches and Graeme Robertson.
In short, when asked what the people of Ukraine and Crimea considered their homeland, the answers were stark and revealing. Most Ukrainians are proud of their young nation, regardless of where they're from. The glaring exception was the people of Crimea, who thought of themselves as Crimeans first. They didn't really even consider themselves Russians.
We still think sanctions from the U.S. and EU are the right thing to do, at this point, as is the continued push for diplomatic efforts by Sec. of State Kerry and President Obama. That said, anyone looking at the facts can clearly see - those sanctions are like swatting the nose of a bear with a newspaper.
Meanwhile, what we said on Monday remains true: Regardless of what any other nation does, the people of Ukraine, including those in Crimea, will be the ones who ultimately must make the final decisions about their own futures.
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