In case you were wondering:
Judith Sheindlin makes $47 million a year. She works 52 days a year.
You may know her as “Judge Judy,” the TV hangin’ judge on CBS.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Friday, May 30, 2014
Thursday, May 29, 2014
“I’ll just be a minute….”
Gettin’ beautiful, circa 1920s:
Sometimes form goes off the trail as it tries to follow function….
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Teacher diversity, wake up call....
We don’t have enough African American/Hispanic/Asian/Native American
teachers in our schools.
Students of color make up nearly half of our school populations. That
percentage is growing.
About 82 per cent of public school teachers are white, according to the Center for American Progress.
Anybody can learn from any good teacher, and we have a couple million of
them.
But how many students of color go through their elementary and
secondary school years without seeing a teacher who looks like them?....without
having a role model or mentor who looks like them?
At the time of the breakthrough 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education,
there were about 82,000 black teachers in America’s public schools. Ten years
later, 40,000 black teachers and black school administrators had lost their jobs, as communities started to dismantle their separate black and white school
systems.
And by the way, a recent study
by the American Sociological Association finds that white teachers “evaluate black students' behavior and academic potential more
negatively than those of white students.”
The problem of racial
segregation in public education hasn’t been fixed yet….
p.s. ….and by the way, I did a Google search for
“black teacher white students picture” and I could not readily find one….
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Monday, May 26, 2014
Thank you for your service to our country.
To all American veterans and our armed forces on active duty:
Thank you for your service to our country.
Our flag! Long may she wave!
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Bill, the Duke, and Billy
Here’s a somewhat off-the-wall offering from Duke Ellington and Billy
Strayhorn, maybe not their best work but you gotta admit it has some unique
elements….
OpenCulture.com dug up this 1957 collaboration that Billy and the Duke
believed was a celebration of the art of William Shakespeare.
I leave it to you to discern the connections, to your own satisfaction.
Even if you don’t really get their salute to the Bard, it’s pretty good
listening….
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Cost IS a part of health care decisions….
Some doctors and medical professionals are acknowledging that
consideration of cost must be part of our society’s rational steps to reform
health care.
More explicitly, some doctors and medical professionals are starting to talk about bringing cost, effectiveness and benefits into play, from a societal
perspective, in making decisions about health care and what should be covered
by health insurance.
Look, let’s call it as it is: if you’re Bill Gates, you can afford any
medical treatment you can ever want, regardless of cost or benefit
calculations.
If you’re not, it’s a different story—if you’re a poor, 102-year-old
guy with heart problems, leukemia and advanced renal disease, it makes sense
for you to get pain medication, but it really doesn’t make sense for your health
insurance to pay for triple bypass heart surgery.
Viz., the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association have announced that they
would begin to use cost data to assess treatment guidelines and performance
standards.
We have to start talking more candidly about effective health care that
we can afford—both costs and benefits—and about a health care system that can
be sustained by our society.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Bessie, won’t you please come home?
Does it bother you when friends wantonly say things like “French cows
just don’t get it” and “Cows in France can’t appreciate good music”?
Just click here: A concert in the field....
As you know, William Congreve, the English Restoration poet, wrote this
in 1697:
“Music has Charms to sooth a savage Breast . . .”
Yeah, the original phrase was “breast,” not “beast”….
Anyway, that’s just a literate set-up so I can say:
“Forsooth, the jazzmen’s music doth verily transfix the curious
milkcow….”
OK, check out the video again, those cows are diggin’ it….
Maybe cows are tuned in to Ray Charles and Basie and Kenton and Ronstadt
and “Walk across the fire . . . “
Maybe cows are playing “Name That Tune” as they shamble down the slope
of the far meadow….
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Monday, May 19, 2014
Your tax dollars “at work”….(part 2)
Last year state and local governments handed about $80 billion in tax
breaks and other financial incentives to private companies, in highly competitive
efforts to attract “new business operations” and “more jobs.”
There’s really no evidence that these government subsidies to
corporations have any enduring positive paybacks—short-term or long-term—for the
states and cities involved.
The “industrial development” funding is a high-profile political
gimmick in many cases, and in all cases it’s pretty much a bald giveaway to the
companies.
Why do taxpayers tolerate this misuse of public funds?
See this report from the Council on Foreign Relations, using New York
Times data.
Government officials claim that they’re spending the money to attract
new jobs to their jurisdictions, but there’s really no serious accountability
for the companies—often the touted job creation never happens, or lasts only a
short time.
In case you’re wondering, $80 billion is about 7 per cent of
state/local tax revenues, so you can figure that 7 out of every 100 dollars you
pay in taxes is being handed over to big and medium-sized companies that are
looking for the freebies, like low-interest construction loans, tax forgiveness
or land that’s been improved at public expense.
The report mentions: “In many . . . industries, subsidies have less
influence on location decisions; manufacturers, in particular, require local
networks of suppliers and employees with specialized training. Local
governments usually lack the sophistication to negotiate successfully with big
companies, so they end up subsidizing businesses that would have invested in
the state regardless.”
It’s a good bet that your local Industrial Development Authority is
pretty much wasting your money.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Either high school is easier or….
OK, this little item really isn’t a shocker….
….but I think we should try to make sure that truth doesn’t become
boring or irrelevant.
Were you an “A” student in high school in the 1960s? If so, you weren’t
lost in the crowd. In his online New York Times offering on May 6, David Brooks
mentioned that only about 1 out of 5 high school graduates who went to college in
1966 could boast an A or A- average.
A recent UCLA survey finds that 53 per cent of college freshmen have high
school grades in the same range.
Now, sure, there ARE a lot of smart kids out there….but college
freshmen in general just didn’t get that much smarter in the last 50 years,
y’know? No matter what the report card says….
Friday, May 16, 2014
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Global climate change is happening now
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is going to disappear.
It’s been an “uh oh” week for the doctrinaire climate change deniers:
A NASA glaciologist issued a stark report confirming that the eventual
loss (melting) of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) “appears unstoppable.”
I think this is worth caring about for several reasons, not least of
which is the confirmation that global climate change and global warming is
actually happening now, and, ummm, it’s “global,” that’s world-wide, it’s
everywhere, you can’t buy a desert island to escape it….
The WAIS contains about 528,000 cubic miles of ice, enough to raise the
worldwide ocean level by about 4 feet when it’s all melted. That’s
catastrophic. Just as an example: in Bangladesh, about 10 million people live
on coastal land that is less than 3 feet above sea level.
The NASA scientist and his colleagues are estimating that it could take
several centuries for the last vestige of the WAIS to melt into water.
I think the highest importance of this report is the inevitability
part. NASA says that warming trends and changes in ocean currents that were
noticed as early as the 1950s, along with destabilizing elements of the seabed under
the ice, are combining to make the eventual loss of the WAIS “unstoppable.”
This is the cruel reality of some elements of the ongoing global
climate change: it’s already true that some of the destructive changes can’t be
reversed or stopped.
We have to get busy around the world working on technological, economic
and policy changes that can slow down all the other elements of global climate
change.
This is the only planet our grandchildren will have to live on.
If we don’t do something about dangerous climate change, we won’t do
anything about it.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Top of the charts in 450 BC
The ancient Greeks did a lot of
things right, of course, and let’s not forget that there was music even before
there was iTunes and jazz and amps and 600-watt speakers….
You wanna hear what was on the
Greek Hit Parade 2,500 years ago?
Try this exotic offering from
Open Culture.
I
assume you just tried it. That was David Creese, a classics scholar at the University
of Newcastle, playing an authentic melody on the 8-string “canon” (like a
zither).
Maybe
you weren’t snapping your fingers, but I bet you were intrigued….
Now, mind, this is the kind of stuff they played to warm up the audience at performances of plays by that Aeschylus guy....
....I’m not trying to suggest that
you should stop listening to Eric Clapton….
Monday, May 12, 2014
Saturday, May 10, 2014
“. . . led by donkeys . . .”
At the outbreak of World War I,
Britain had a relatively small professional army (247,000 men). Close to half
of them were stationed overseas throughout the British Empire.
Thus, on the home island in
August 1914, Britain’s generals mustered about 150,000 men to be the British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) that crossed the English Channel, to join the French
in fighting the German attackers.
Within three months, that half
of Britain’s professional army was gone. Most of the men in the BEF were dead.
p.s. Britain’s total WWI casualties:
673,375 dead and missing, 1,643,469
wounded
Reference:
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States,
1492- Present (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005), 360.
See
also:
Friday, May 9, 2014
The wisdom of George Washington
"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
George Washington (1732-1799)
Y’know, the cherry tree thing is probably bogus….
Think about getting ready, now, to be a resistor in future, when the
temptation comes your way.
Think about asking yourself: what does the highest bidder really want?
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Let’s focus on the deadbeats….
More than 8% of Americans are delinquent in paying their federal income
taxes.
A recent piece on Yahoo Finance revealed this troubling data point. It
ticks me off, because I always pay on time.
Hey, I get it, it's possible to make a mistake in filing your tax
return, and there are some folks who deliberately underpay and wait to get
caught.
OK, we’ll always have late payers, but 8.2 percent seems unconscionably
high for "delinquent collections in process." Think of it this way:
if you know 12 people, there’s a decent chance that one of them hasn’t paid all
of his taxes.
The IRS has 100,000 people on staff, you’d think they should be keeping
the delinquency rate lower. After all, our government borrows money to cover unfunded
expenditures….
And by the way, that Yahoo story mentioned that 70% of IRS employees
got a bonus last year. Nice work if you can get it....
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Can you say “phony juice label” ?
I think this is in the category “Grownups are doing this? Seriously?”
Are you pretty sure that the Food and Drug Administration is defending
your best interests?
The Supreme Court of the United States is now pondering its ruling in
Pom Wonderful vs. the Coca-Cola Co., 12-761.
Too bad the high court doesn’t have a “Bullshit” stamp, ‘cause that
would come in handy on this one.
Look, this is just so grotesquely and disgustingly silly,
I’ll try to
do this quickly:
The savvy marketers at Coke are selling a beverage labeled “Pomegranate
Blueberry Flavored Blend Of 5 Juices.” The label prominently features a large
pomegranate….but, uh oh, only half of 1 percent of the contents is pomegranate
and blueberry juice, about 99 percent is apple or grape juice, and there’s some
other trace amount of juice.
So, in fact, it’s “Apple And Grape Juice With A Tiny Amount Of
Flavoring From 3 Other Juices.”
Pom Wonderful, which sells a more bona fide pomegranate juice beverage,
is suing Coca-Cola for false advertising claims.
Coca-Cola says its label is fully compliant with federal Food and Drug
Administration regulations.
What’s the biggest thing that’s wrong here?
The FDA regulations that allow Coca-Cola to routinely sell an ordinary
product with a massively deceptive label.
Whose interests is the FDA defending?
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
How many patriots didn't have guns?
Here’s a Fractured Fact in American history:
Quite a few of the colonists didn’t have guns.
Try to imagine a Revolutionary War scene, or a “Last of the Mohicans”
scenario, that doesn’t include every able-bodied male walking around with a
flintlock musket or pistol.
Surely, soldiers in organized units were generally pretty well armed—although
in 1776 Gen. Washington complained to the Committee of Safety in Pennsylvania
that militiamen were reporting for duty without muskets.
Historian Thomas Verenna says colonial American probate records suggest
there were roughly only about 5.4 guns for every 10 people in 1774—gun ownership varied among the
colonies, in Pennsylvania the number was closer to 3 guns for 10 people.
Guns were expensive, and colonial manufacturing capabilities were
limited.
Today, a distinct minority of households have firearms. The Pew Research Center said last year that only 37% of households reported having a gun. In 1973, the percentage was 49%.
The percentage is dropping. I think that’s a good thing.
p.s. I searched online to find an
illustration of a “Revolutionary soldier” or a “colonial patriot” without a
gun, but I couldn’t find one
Monday, May 5, 2014
The art of Ezra Pound
“I stood still and was a tree
amid the wood . . .”
American expatriate poet
This exquisite fragment stopped me from passing over one of Pound’s early
works, it’s an arresting image that can focus your imagination in several
directions….
I choose to react to this insight:
I am one, I can be among many, I can transform myself, I can be one….
From “The Tree” in Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound, Michael King,
ed., New Directions Publishing, 1982.
Spotted on this blog: A Year Of Being Here
Sunday, May 4, 2014
American middle class isn’t No. 1….
Steadily worsening income inequality and wealth inequality in the
United States has made the American middle class poorer—it’s no longer the most
affluent middle class in the world.
For example, the after-tax incomes of the Canadian middle class have
surpassed that of their American counterparts.
Lower income families in Canada,
Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands are better off than those in
America.
The details were compiled by the New York Times, based on income data from LIS, a group that maintains the
Luxembourg Income Study Database.
Median per capita income in the
U. S. has stayed about the same for the last 14 years (after adjustment for
inflation), that is, no real growth.
Here’s how the Times explains three
specific elements of the withering of American middle class affluence:
“First, educational attainment
in the United States has risen far more slowly than in much of the
industrialized world over the last three decades, making it harder for the U.S.
economy to maintain its share of highly skilled, well-paying jobs.
“A second factor is that
companies in the U.S. economy distribute a smaller share of their bounty to the
middle class and poor than similar companies elsewhere.
“Finally, governments in Canada
and Western Europe take more aggressive steps to raise the take-home pay of
low- and middle-income households by redistributing income.”
Our government and our political leaders are not taking care of The
American Dream.
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