We can’t afford to cut education

In her op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle, “We can’t afford to cut education“, Barbara Bush cites some depressing statistics about the Texas education system.

• Texas ranks 36th in high school graduation rates
• An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma
• We rank 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.
• We rank 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.

Ms. Bush pleads for Governor Rick Perry and the state legislature “to do everything they can to protect our students.”

Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry fires a six shooter filled with blanks as NASCAR driver Colin Braun looks on at an event in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, April 15, 2010.

Governor Rick Perry, on the other hand, thinks everything in Texas is just fine. On his website, Gov. Perry brags about how well the Texas education system has done under his leadership. His view is an interesting spin on some of the facts as he talks about increased enrollment but says nothing about graduation rates. He alludes to High Ranking with respect to SAT scores but doesn’t cite any data. He talks about how Texas teacher’s salaries have increased without saying anything about how low they still are. All that means is they were ridiculously low before the increase.

Now, given the current budget shortfall which may be as much as $27 billion, Gov. Perry and the republican-led state legislature are proposing $4.8 billion (that’s right, billion) in cuts from the education system over the next two years.

Furthermore, Gov. Perry is embroiled in a battle over federal aid for education and is refusing $830 million because of a provision authored by Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett that will require the funds actually be used for education. Rep. Doggett added this provision “to prevent Perry and the Texas Legislature from repeating their move last year when they used $3.2 billion in federal stimulus funds to balance the state budget and avoid depleting the state’s so-called ‘rainy day fund’ rather than bolstering education.”

Gov. Perry likes to talk about Texas as an example of the Tea Party Republican utopia of low regulation, low taxes, pro-business policies, and tough, conservative spending decisions. And, as I wrote here, these policies have indeed made Texas a leader in things like the number of uninsured and the amount of toxic chemicals we release into the water. But these same policies caused us to lag in important areas such as education and literacy.

The only way I can make some sense of this mess is to infer Gov. Perry wants an uneducated voter base as the uneducated are easier to control and manipulate and less likely to question his ludicrous positions.

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

The quote

“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.”

is commonly attributed to John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) from a letter to the Conservative MP, John Pakington (March 1866).

Mill, a British philosopher, economist and civil servant, was a strong proponent of utilitarianism, the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its
usefulness in maximizing utility and minimizing negative utility, i.e. the
moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome.

If you assume that stupid people are conservatives, recent events are more explicable. It is stupid to

• Continue to allow the privatization of profits but insist on socializing the losses (bailing out Wall Street)
• Complain about the Federal Government being too involved while simultaneously wanting the Federal Government to be involved in social issues you believe in.
• Support the Axis of Evil (stupid people, Republicans and corrupt Democrats) that demand tax breaks for the uber-rich under the mistaken belief the benefit will somehow trickle down to the average worker.
• Support economic policies that allow corporations to take tax dollars in the form of bail-outs and then take advantage of tax policies that support outsourcing jobs overseas while simultaneously complaining about unemployment in the U.S.
• Complain about the national debt but then declare the vast majority of the budget off-limits (don’t touch defense, social security or Medicare/Medicaid).
• Continue to subsidize the oil & gas industry while complaining that gas prices are too high and alternative energy is too expensive.
• Support politicians that are trying to bust the unions while the average CEO makes 300 – 500 times as much as the average worker.
• Continue to give up civil rights in the name of security while all we really lose is freedom (Patriot Act, Homeland Security, TSA, etc.)
• Continue to believe in the myth of Ronald Reagan who raised taxes and exploded the debt.

If you examine the outcome of any of these policies, they would all be judged immoral. To me, another Mill quote provides the only plausible explanation:

“It is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.”

 

Is Fracking just another Hidden Oil Tax?

In a controversial ruling, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission sided with Pioneer Natural Resources in a case in which a home owner claimed a nearby fracking operation contaminated the home owner’s well.

Fracking, the subject of the movie Gasland, is a contentious process used by the oil & gas industry to improve the yield of wells, especially natural gas wells.

While out with friends last night, the subject of fracking came up. Since this was a fairly liberal group, I was surprised when one of the women adamantly claimed fracking done properly and with the right oversight was a very low risk operation and that Gasland is just a bunch of B.S.

The environmentalists, on the other hand, proclaim fracking as just another corrupt practice with drastic consequences such as:

• contamination of ground water
• migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface
• generation of contaminated waste

There is even one reported case where a water well allegedly contaminated by fracking had enough natural gas in the water that it could be burned. Since I grew up in northeast Ohio, I can attest to the fact that water can be polluted enough to burn. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland actually caught fire.

One red flag is the Halliburton Loophole, an exemption in the 2005 Bush/Cheney Energy Act which exempts fluids used in the natural gas extraction process of Hydraulic fracturing from protections under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and CERCLA. It created a loophole that exempts companies drilling for natural gas from disclosing the chemicals involved in fracking operations that would normally be required under federal clean water laws.

So, is this just the case of a business moving ahead with technology in order to be more efficient or is it corrupt corporations chasing profits and the environment be damned…?

Texas is #1…in Uninsured and Pollution

Texas is #1 but I’m not talking about the Longhorn football team. The Texas Legislative Study Group has released this year’s report, Texas on the Brink, a report on the state of the State, the fifth biennial edition of a project initiated by now-retired El Paso Sen. Eliot Shapleigh.

While Gov. Rick Perry likes to portray Texas as a business Utopia with below average unemployment and brags about his “commitment to strengthening Texas’ competitive jobs climate“, the report highlights the costs of Perry’s 10+ years in office.

According to the report, Texas is #1 in the:

• Percent of Uninsured Children
• Percent of Population Uninsured
• Percent of Non-Elderly Uninsured
• Amount of Carbon Dioxide Emissions
• Amount of Volatile Organic Compounds Released into Air
• Amount of Toxic Chemicals Released into Water
• Amount of Recognized Cancer-Causing Carcinogens Released into Air
• Amount of Hazardous Waste Generated

And, of course, Texas is also #1 in the Number of Executions.

As citizens of Texas, are we supposed to be proud of being #1?

There are rumors Perry wants to run for president in 2012. Under his stewardship, Texas has been a testing ground for many of the policies the current Tea Party Republican politicians advocate. During his State of the State address, Gov. Perry proposed consolidating or suspending non-critical state agencies in order to make state government more streamlined and efficient. One has to believe he would propose similar policies at the federal level.

During his 2010 re-election campaign, Gov. Perry endorsed the Tea Party and what it stands for and the Tea Party has gone on record that it thinks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should be reigned in. I guess Perry thinks the EPA is one those non-critical agencies that should be suspended to make government more efficient.

Without the EPA, corporations would be free to revert to old policies of polluting the atmosphere and releasing carcinogens into our air and water, all in the name of creating a more competitive jobs climate.

Look at the big picture. Sure we all want to address unemployment but do we really want to go back in time where pollution was unchecked and corporations were free to run sweat shops?

Walker improperly fired security workers

An arbitrator has ruled that when now Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker, was a Milwaukee County executive, he improperly fired 25 courthouse security guards and replaced them with private guards from Wackenhut, a company involved with controversy involving improper behavior.

The arbitrator ruled the guards must be reinstated and given back pay which will cost almost half a million dollars.

Wackenhut, who received over a million dollars under a contract where they replaced the county security guards, are alleged to be involved with Animal House antics while supposedly guarding the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Reports of:

Drunken brawls, prostitutes, hazing and humiliation, taking vodka shots out of buttcracks— no, the perpetrators of these Animal House-like antics aren’t some depraved frat brothers. They are the private security contractors guarding the US embassy compound in Kabul.

Scott Walker, like many politicians recently elected, may be good at getting elected but the real question is whether he is doing what is right for the state of Wisconsin.

Unions have their own set of issues but they have a place in our society. The best result is usually when there is a balance of power, just like we have between the three branches of the federal government. Unions are necessary to the average working man to balance the power of governments and corporations.

The Oceans, they are a-Changin’

Don’t have time to elaborate but check out the podcast Changing Climate Means Changing Oceans on NPR’s Science Friday.

As a SCUBA diver, I have seen some significant changes in the ocean and this podcast gives some reasons why.

Unions-are they still the right answer?

My dad and I argued all the time over unions. He was for them, I questioned why they existed. That was in the late 1960s. I was 12 years old.

He would explain to me about what it was like to grow up during the depression. How the labor unions helped the average working man.

My dad was born in 1922, just before the Great Depression. His family was upper middle class with a long history. My grandmother’s house was in her family since before the Civil War. Up until the depression. They lost a lot. My dad quit school at the age of 13 to go to work for the city’s water department digging ditches by hand to pay off the family’s water bill.

He would tell me how there were people waiting alongside the ditch… waiting for someone to not be able to continue so they could step in and take the job. Others offered to do the same work for less pay. It was a desperate time.

According to my dad, the labor unions changed all that. They stood up for the working man so he could get “an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work.” They didn’t allow the company to replace someone just because they’d found someone else who would work for a penny an hour cheaper. The unions required companies to treat their laborers with some dignity and respect.

But dad, I would say. That may have been true in the past but things are different now. We have laws to protect workers and the unions have just turned into another “big business”. They are out more for themselves and collecting dues than actually representing the “working man”.

Maybe, he would say, but “I don’t ever want it to be the way it was…”

So now we’re looking at Wisconsin where the new Governor  Scott Walker is blaming the public unions for the state’s budget shortfall and putting forth a sweeping proposal to cut the benefits and collective-bargaining rights of public workers. And the irony is the average working man is supporting the proposal.

I can understand some of this as unions haven’t always been the best representative of labor but I hesitate to blame them for everything. As with the Detroit car companies, it is the leaders, i.e. the CEOs and the politicians, that have mismanaged companies, cities and states for which they were responsible. A series of bad decisions and questionable strategies and probably some cronyism have been made but the leaders don’t pay the price, the average worker does.

I don’t necessarily believe the unions have all of the answers but I do think it is time for the leaders to accept their share of the responsibility and work with labor to come up with a win-win solution.

I have some thoughts on labor’s responsibility, too, but I’ll save that for a later post. In the meantime, let me know what you think? Should we abolish unions and collective bargaining or should we hold our leaders accountable?

Can you selectively ignore science?

It must be hard to be religious and try to figure out which parts of science are true and which parts are out-and-out lies. In a comment to an article on The Economist, Why don’t Americans believe in global warming?, Polydamas wrote:

It seems to me that belief in creationism or Intelligent Design must effect the attitudes of many Americans to science in general. If you grow up being told by your parents that what you’re taught in school about evolution is wrong, or a deliberate lie, then it’s hardly surprising that you’d be quick to discount other uncomfortable scientific evidence. If your science teacher is already part of one liberal conspiracy, then why not two?

Many people who have trouble accepting evolution will go to their doctor at the drop of a hat if they don’t feel well. For some inexplicable reason, they are willing to accept the science behind medicine but rebel against evolution or global warming. The inconsistency is hard for me to understand as my viewpoint aligns well with Richard Dawkins who states in his book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution:

If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worse than ignorant, they are deluded to the point of perversity. They are denying not only the facts of biology but those of physics, geology, cosmology, archaeology, history and chemistry as well.

I think of myself as open-minded and willing to examine another’s point of view but Dawkins articulates my dilemma with trying to understand some of these other people’s viewpoints.

Assuming the science has gone through a reasonable, peer-reviewed process, I have to assume it is basically correct. This is the case with evolution and climate science. We can argue about details on the edge but the core propositions have been proven beyond any doubt.

As Dennis Miller would say, I don’t want to go off on a rant here but how can people sit at a computer which couldn’t be built without an in-depth understanding of physics (semi-conductors, quantum effects), chemistry, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, software engineering, etc., and then use that computer to post something on the Internet about evolution being false or global warming is just a hoax. The evidence is all around that science is an understood process.

As someone smarter than me said, “Luckily science is true whether you believe it or not.”

So, help me understand. Let me know why or how this conflict can continue to exist.

Texas State Board of Educaton May Have to Join the 21st Century

According to Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s criticism of the Texas social studies curriculum may force the Texas State Board of Education to reopen the standards for a rewrite. As they say in the report:

Texas combines a rigidly thematic and theory-based social studies structure with a politicized distortion of history. The result is both unwieldy and troubling, avoiding clear historical explanation while offering misrepresentations at every turn.

The changes approved in March of 2010 (see Texas Education Board Approves Conservative Curriculum Changes By Far-Right) were the result of the far-right faction of the board imposing their will.

Let’s only hope Texas can come out of the dark ages and join the renaissance. Things do seem to be improving. It took the Catholic Church a 1000 years to accept the fact the earth wasn’t the center of the universe.

Tea Party is Anti-War…Who would have thunk it…?

A friend of mine just sent me the article, Tea Party Voters Worry About Afghan War Price Tag from anitwar.com written by the Afghanistan Study Group which the web site says is a bipartisan ad hoc group of public policy practitioners, former U.S. government officials, academics, business representatives, policy-concerned activists and association leaders concerned with the Obama administration’s policy course in Afghanistan and to a more limited degree, Pakistan.

The article says conservatives are highly concerned about the high cost of the war in Afghanistan and think we should reduce and/or eliminate our troops there. I hope the fact they object to the cost but not the morality is simply an artifact of the way the poll was conducted…

Though I tend to agree, I am more concerned with how we exit the conflict. When I was running a company, our philosophy was that if one of the employees promised something to a customer, we would try to honor that committment to the extent we could without breaking any laws. Our thought was we could fire the employee but at the time, he represented the company to the outside world and we had to act to keep the respect we had earned.

Afghanistan presents a similar dilemma for the current administration. G. W. Bush, with his shoot now, figure it out later, philosophy was also the major representative of the U.S. By his cowboy actions, he caused a major disruption in Afghanistan and inserted the U.S. into the game being played between Pakistan and India. Now that Bush has been “fired”, we’re left to pick up the pieces.

The dilemma for us is to figure out how to exit Afghanistan without it looking like we don’t support the changes necessary for the common people to believe the U.S. isn’t the enemy. I hope some very smart people are working on this and come up with a better solution than one of my employees when she said “they’ll just have to muddle through it…”