The Longterm Social Effects of this Crisis

The greatest long term effect of the Spanish Flu pandemic in the early 20th century was its effect on World War I. It hit Germany and Austria before it hit France and England giving the Allies early advantages and the Allies eventually won the war. This flu is often considered the "forgotten" pandemic because there was so much else going on in the world at the time, not just a World War but other major illnesses also hit the world around the same time: yellow fever, diphtheria, cholera and typhoid.  History classes often overlook the diseases of this era because of the war. The Spanish Flu lasted 36 months and killed 50 million people. We all hope this pandemic won't be as devastating. At the writing of this sentence, the world is at three million and counting.

The long term effects I am talking about in this post are the social ones. The Spanish Flu left people with a lingering lack of trust in strangers. Strangers carry disease. This lead to isolationism and xenophobia giving way to fascists like Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Of course, there were other factors, like a horrendous war, but the flu contributed to it. Anti-Semites have long linked Jews to the plague. Hitler famously referred to them as "racial tuberculosis" in "German lungs."  Such vile terms were more effective with the memory of the Spanish Flu fresh in their memory. .

It is impossible from this vantage point to predict the long term effects of COVID-19 on our society. Most lasting societal changes usually come as a surprise. Henry Ford had no idea that the mass production of cars would lead to more teenage pregnancies and air pollution. Did the flood of boys without fathers after World War II bring us rock and roll?  Did Roe v. Wade help bring us low crime rates decades later due to the lack of unwanted children? These are thought experiments. Let's do it, a COVID-19 version.

Celebrity: Celebrities have been showing us who they really are in this crisis. Maybe we'll finally stop making otherwise stupid, careless and mega-privileged people famous. Maybe we'll be more selective on who gets to be famous or perhaps put them on a lower pedestal. Of course not all celebrities are so bad. The smart ones know how to control themselves and shut up. You notice that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt haven't stuck their feet in their mouths, but the hyper-narcissists and morons surely are.

• Ellen DeGeneres (aka Queen of Nice) compared her quarantine to being in a prison while she lives in a beachfront palatial mansion 
• Evangeline Lily urged people to ignore social distancing rules and isolation using terms like "Marshall Law" on Instagram which she obviously doesn't understand nor know how to spell. 
• Actress Jaimie King released a video thanking the virus 
• Gwyneth Paltrow is tweeting about what the best dildo to use during isolation, selling them as well. Some poor warehouse worker is risking his/her life to get someone a dildo. 
• Sam Smith tweeted the stages of his meltdown while he had to deal with isolation in his $15 million London mansion
• NBA player Ruby Gobert touched a bunch of mics at a media event as a joke. A few days later, he tested positive.
• Gisele Bundchen posted a picture of herself in front of a tropical waterfall meditating.
• High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens suggested that people dying is "like, inevitable."
• Bette Middler is figuring out what her appliances do, no joke.

While many of their fans are living in tiny apartments, some of them under duress ... we get a crash course in how crudely unequal our society is. Our doctors, who keep us alive, don't live this way. Entertainers do. Will income inequality become an even bigger issue after this crisis?

Entertainment: When next year's television shows roll out, will they be including the pandemic in their story lines?  Do we want them to? Do you prefer them to have more of an escapist quality? Will we get to see the family on "This Is Us" in social isolation ... where will the plot line come from. We get to watch them binge watch other shows and argue ... not so fun.

Concert venues will be devastated by this crisis.Our days of hanging shoulder to shoulder in the dark listening to our favorite bands jam may be a thing of the past. They will be the last businesses to be allowed to open and for all we know, may not be allowed to fill them in like they used to.  This means that entry and/or beer will be more expensive ... I cried a little bit while writing this.

Environmental: Quarantine is only a few weeks old and already we see the environment recovering. Factories are idle, planes are grounded and commuters are staying home. We have cut carbon emissions worldwide by 8% and energy use is down in some places by 25% of last year. Some cities are reporting seeing constellations for the first time in decades. With the city streets desolate, wild life is returning to some areas that haven't seen them in decades. We will return to our old ways soon enough but this quick recovery might really inspire people to change. Stay home, use less, use mass transit, telecommute ... these are easy to do for some of us. We might just get into the habit.

Cities around the world have closed more than 1,000 miles of streets to cars for the use of bicycles. How much of that is going to be permanent? Seattle has already announced that 20 miles of their new bike only roads will be permanent. If the locals like it, it will stay. So if this is happening in your area. Contact a politician to keep it. They are probably desperate to find ways to make citizens happy right now.

Hate: Hate crimes are already a lot higher for anyone that looks Chinese. Trump hasn't helped with this. "Go back to China," "Kung Flu" and "Wu Flu" are all things being said to and about people from Far East origins. Hate will only subside until we get rid of the creep in the White House, but it will never go away permanently. The protests in Michigan and other states have been organized by white supremacy groups. Many of the people showing up don't even know this. I hope this is all temporary, but isolation breeds contempt and xenophobic (the evil twin of isolationism) is not far behind. I fear these people will get more powerful the longer this quarantine lasts. Here is a list from the Anti-Defamation League of anti-Asian incidents in America since this crisis began.

Sporting Events: Maybe we'll have standing ovations for doctors, scientists and other essential workers during our sporting events rather than for the military. Instead of players wearing khaki to honor the troops, maybe they will wear smocks to honor the real heroes, and not those who make invasions possible. We live in a violent nation, with a violent past. It would be nice, if our priorities could finally change.

Parades: Maybe our parades will celebrate these essential workers as well.

The Work Place: A lot of mangers are going to realize after this is over that remote employees are quite productive. I have been doing it for twelve years now and it has its distractions but compared to the distractions of being in the office, it is nothing. No one is coming into my office to talk about the game or the weather, and I have no commuter traffic to stress me out.  Telecommuting is the way to go. Those who can do it, will. Office spaces will become like empty warehouses, and food delivery, during work hours, will spike to new heights. This is not going away.

Teachers: The only real distractions, for a lot of us, these days is that kids are at home. Will there be more respect for our teachers now that many parents had to teach their own kids and they getting first hand knowledge how difficult their angels really are to teach? or how difficult teaching actually really is? I'm guessing that the snow day will no longer exist now that we know teaching can happen remotely. Teachers should have a national strike in the Fall, demanding more pay.  We'd all freak to think that we'd have to have our kids home anymore after this Spring and cave immediately. 

Essential Workers: Will people have more respect for essential workers? I am not talking about me, someone who supports a hospital's software system. But those who bring us food, stack shelves, drive trucks and buses. They are not staying home and they are keeping us alive. I am guessing once this is over, we will go back to paying them badly and not providing them health care. That's the America I know. Hopefully, I am wrong. But with scum like Trump and his loyalty cult in charge, I don't see how change for the essential worker could be possible. Can you imagine how bad it would be without Obamacare (aka the ACA)? And yet, Trump is still busy trying to repeal it. I'm guessing (and hoping) that Medicare For All will get a big boost from this crisis, but I have been very wrong about this type of thing in the past. I did predict a landslide victory for President Gore.

Trade: Isolation will raise its ugly head again. I am expecting that domestic manufacturing will make a comeback. We still have factories in the US now, but not like in the past. I expect factories, mostly with robotic workers, will increase. Buying American will give people a sense of security and consumers will pay more for that feeling ... but not a lot more.This come back will be short.lived. Businesses will find new and creative ways to trick people that something is made domestically and eventually, they will forget all about this.

The Economy - What industry will recover? Will people go to gyms anymore now that they know how easy it is to do the trainer thing on-line. I want to know how my favorite restaurants are going to survive this. Restaurants have such a thin profit margin. How could they possibly survive this? I have a friend who is a contractor who did two hours of work in April, doing a training on Zoom. The state of Vermont used that as a reason to reject him for a small business grant. You think quarantine has been crazy, the recovery is going to be completely nuts.

After the Spanish Flu, if you had the flu and survived, this gave you economic benefits over others who had not. At this point, we don't know if having COVID-19 makes you immune. If this does end up being true for COVID-19, I could imagine that anyone that works with the public would have the advantage in a pre-vaccine economy.

Privacy: Those in charge know that when we are in crisis, we are more likely to accept power grabs... think of the Patriot Act after 9/11. Some authoritarian countries are using this crisis as justification to monitor their citizens. I can imagine this will get worst before it gets better. Expect more invasion of your privacy. It will be justified under the moniker of public health.

New Cold War: Will this crisis spark a new Cold War with China. Should they pay for their negligence in the matter of the spreading of the virus and the lack of openness? As soon as healthcare workers started getting sick, they should have told the world about it. There was a three week period that we could have stopped this pandemic or at least saved many lives. Perhaps they should reimburse the world, but they won't so why push it? It also sets an awful precedence, especially with the recent discovery that the Spanish Flu started in Kansas. If we push this, they may just close their doors to the world. You think a world where is China is open is a bad thing, wait until they shut their borders!

Politics: Maybe we'll stop electing politicians who are ignorant of science. Germany elected a Chancellor that has a PHD in Chemistry who wrote her thesis on quantum chemistry ... the US elected a President who doesn't understand and rejects evolution. Guess which country has been better prepared for this crisis?  Perhaps the Republican Party's war on science will finally come to an end.

Trump missed a golden opportunity. Great presidents emerge in the midst of great crises. FDR with World War II and The Depression, Lincoln in the Civil War ... we remember them as great leaders for taking us forward. We barely remember Hoover and Buchanan ... because they faltered. This disease's second wave will be hitting us badly right around the time of the presidential election. Hopefully, people will remember Trump's disastrous performance and lack of leader while they go into the polls. 

The countries doing the best during this crisis are the countries with the strong safety nets: Germany, South Korea and Taiwan. The countries with libertarian bents, the US and the UK, are fairing badly. Will we learn from this lesson? COVID-19 is the first truly global event in human history. Perhaps it will make the world closer.  It is hard to be believe when yahoos with guns are storming statehouses.But maybe this crisis will just scare enough people to move us along on this matter. Government can be a good thing with the right people in charge.

Hindsight 2020 - May 2019 Edition

Can we agree, you and I, that whomever gets the Democratic nomination, will have our support? We will not support a third party candidate whether they are a Green, Libertarian or Independent. The goal is to not have Trump as the president. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will not be perfect. They will have something in their past that we don't like. They will have a stance that we disagree with.  We know this. The key thing we have to keep reminding ourselves is that on their worst day, they are still better than Trump on his best day. In the 2000 election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes in Florida (and Pat Buchanan and Harry Browne received 17,484 and 16,415 respectively), which led to claims that Nader was responsible for Gore's defeat. Same thing happened in 2016 in state like Michigan, Ohio and Penn. If you are in a solidly blue state like California or Vermont, vote third party all you want. But if you are in a red or purple state (a swing state), you better go with the Democrat. If you don't, then you are voting for Trump by not voting for his only viable opponent ... plain and simple.

The books are closed on fundraising in the first quarter of the year. Trump leads the pack with over $30 million in his coffers.  Sanders, Warren and Harris have $20.7 million, $16.5 milli0n and $13.2 million, respectively. Don't dismay. This makes sense. The Democrats have a very competitive primary while Trump is an incumbent. Once the Dems are down to one candidate, there are many people like me, who will then donate. We have 22 candidates fighting for the same pool of money right now.

All but five candidates have qualified for the first Democratic debate Mike Gravel, Wayne Messam, Seth Moulton, Michael Bennet and Marianne Williamson. The first set will be on June 26th and 27th in Miami. A candidate will need to either have at least 1 percent support in three qualifying polls, or provide evidence of at least 65,000 individual donations from a minimum of 200 different donors in at least 20 states.

It is too bad we couldn't have all of these candidates as president and have them concentrate on their expertise. Inslee would be the environmental president, Booker would be the gun violence candidate, etc. We are very lucky to have such a great field of candidates. They are the most diverse group of candidates ever assembled. Why shouldn't they be?  We are America. We are a nation of immigrants and the candidates should reflect that. Not only in race and gender but in sexual orientation, religion, experience and age.  I love it. This is truly a big tent and a political junkie's dream. 

Announcing:

Ex-VP Joe Biden: He enters the race as a behemoth and on the top of the polls, but this is only because of his name recognition. Once the general public get to the know the other candidates, he will plateau. Once Joe starts opening his mouth and making those gaffs that we know him for, his numbers will drop. We've seen this before, Biden running for President, it is not a pleasant sight. Biden is from Delaware (born in Scranton, PA), was a US Senator for 36 years and Vice President under a very popular president Obama. In 1972, shortly after first being elected Senator, both his wife Neilla and daughter Naomi died in a car crash while Christmas shopping, Biden has a lot of baggage, particularly for liberal voters. The two big ones (1) his treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings and (2) his support for mass incarceration. He might have peaked already. I don't think we'll have a Joe Biden presidency.

US Rep. from California, Eric Swalwell: He was born in Iowa where his father was Chief of Police in a smallish town, Algona. His family moved to California when Eric was young. He's been in Congress since 2013. He has probably been the most outspoken anti-Trump voice in Congress. That is the only reason I have heard of him. Five Thirty Eight published a story of how he could win. He pledged to ask a woman to be VP on his ticket. He recently wrote an Op Ed for US Today about gun control and the NRA.

US Rep. from Massachusetts, Seth Moulton: He was born in Salem, MA to a secretary and real-estate attorney. He went to Harvard for undergrad (physics) and grad school (business and public policy). He is an ex-marine officer and lead one of the first platoons that entered Baghdad in 2003. Here is where he stands on five issues. Does it surprise you that the ex-marine wants to increase funding to the State Department?  If Gabbard is the dove candidate, then Moulton is the hawk.

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: He was born in New Delhi, India while his father (who is from NJ) was working at the Indian embassy. His mother is a Polish Jew who survived the Warsaw Ghetto and is a school librarian. His family has political roots. His father worked for VP Hubert Humphrey and his grandfather for FDR. He's been a Senator since 2009. Before that he was the Denver Superintendent of Schools and the Chief of Staff to Denver Mayor Hickenlooper (who is also running for President). He is also the brother of NY Times editorial page editor James Bennet, who has recuse himself from editorializing on the campaign.

Drop-outs and not-running:
Ex-governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, is not running for President. He is going to focus on helping Virginia Democrats.

Our Field:
We have a field of 22 now.

Booker has raised over $5 million in the first quarter of 2019 and 80% of the contributions are from first time contributors. That usually means he is attracting the young and/or tapping into something that everyone else is missing. He also introduced the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act that would require a bond hearing for all detained immigrants.

Klobuchar has raised over $5 million as well with 85% of it coming from donors giving $100 or less. She reintroduced the Americans Giving Care to Elders Act (AGE) to give relief to people supporting elderly members of the families.

Mayor Pete got some bad press when Buzz Feed published a story about gentrification in South Bend. He appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers. He does seem to be tapping into the hope and change phenomenon that none of these other folks are.

Bernie released Medicare For All bill. According to 538, he is doing better this time around in regards to media coverage, polling, fund raising and endorsements. Not having the spectre of Hillary in the race might explain that. He is calling for the reduction in defense spending to help pay for his programs which I love to hear. 

Warren raised $6 million in the first quarter with the average donation being $28.  Impressive! She also has the largest campaign staff among the 22 candidates.She released a Corporate Tax Plan and a plan to eliminate student debt.

Delaney announced a National Service and Climate Corp Plan for young people that has four tracts: 1) military service, 2) community service, 3) infrastructure and 4) climate corp.Also, he wants to create a Department for Cybersecurity lead by a cabinet level Secretary. He recently revealed his platform on mental health.

Harris is concentrating on California and the South rather than the traditional NH and IA.She reintroduced the Rent Relief Act to help renters recoup some of their expenses, if their rent is over 30% of our income.

Messam appeared on NPR's On Point and on an independent podcast called The Trail.

O'Rourke: Two of his top advisers left his campaign once he hired Jen O'Malley Dillon, Obama's old campaign chair, to run his campaign. He seems to be fizzling. Other than standing on tables and counter tops, he hasn't really done a lot.

Inslee appeared on Pod Save America for an interview (see below). He seems like a great candidate, but I am not sure how his "climate change is the #1 issue" goes over in middle America. I agree with him but I don't think he can beat Trump with this message. He also participated in the March for Science.




Castro says that he will create a department within the Department of Justice, just to investigate racial discrimination by police. He probably won't win the endorsement of the policemen's union.

Hickenlooper wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, apparently stating that he opposes both massive regulation and socialism. He said, “I’m running to save capitalism.” If he is looking for more exposure, perhaps he should write for publications that aren't entirely behind a pay wall. He did appear on Pod Save America. He kinda looks like a used car salesman.

Ryan introduced a bill that would require the Department of Justice to train law enforcement  in de-escalation.

Gabbard was recently called the best Democratic candidate by former Rep Ron Paul. He said she was "the best chance to bring about peace." His endorsement may be a good enough reason to move her down in my rankings.

Yang: To demonstrate Universal Basic Income (UBI), he is going to give two families in NH and IA $1,000 a month to show how it works.  I volunteer my family if he expands this to Vermont. 

Gravel doesn't really want to be President. He wants to qualify for the debates and push the debate to the left. Check out this Vice report. He's kind of a nut. He's a 9/11 truther. He should probably be ignored.

Power Rankings:
We have 22 candidates, soon to be 23 with Mayor de Blasio soon to declare that he is running. If I had to rank the Democrats in order of my personal preference, I would do so in the following manner:
Warren
Harris
Booker
Buttigieg
Sanders
Biden
Inslee
O'Rourke
Hickenlooper
Klobuchar
Delaney
Swalwell
Castro
Gabbard
Moulton
Messam
Ryan
Bennet
Yang
(I probably won't vote if the people below get the nomination)
Gravel
Gillibrand
Williamson

This is expected to change. 

Hindsight 2020 - March 2019 edition

Before I say anything the 2020 election, let us give thanks to the president. Thank you, Mr. Trump for setting a new precedent for presidential power. Traditionally, Congress has the power of the purse. Congress consistently told him "no" about funding the building of a wall on our southern border, but he is choosing to ignore it giving us a new tier of presidential power. We will surely remember this when a Democratic president takes over. We can declare emergencies also. If Congress refuses to fund the Green New Deal or the Medicare For All ... we say "Emergency" and pull out the funding reserved for disasters and invasion for our pet product.  Thank for having the foresight for giving us this power.

Trump's 2020 campaign has started collecting data on three Democrats, according to Politico: Booker, Warren and Harris. We look like we have some front runners at least in their minds.

Back to the issues: About those issue, David Leonhardt in the NY Times suggested that the issues don't matter much in the Democratic primary. Why? Because the candidates (12 now I believe), mostly agree with each other. So we should primarily be concentrating on one thing: Who can beat Trump?  He says that Sherrod Brown and Kamala Harris are the standouts.But they are all out there, still talking about the issues. You may or may not agree with them, but every single one of them is better than Trump. If you say that both parties are to blame for our awful political situation, then you are just announcing to the world that you haven't been paying attention for the last 30 years.

The Republican party is still the party of global warming denial, maintaining the status quo on health care and billionaire tax cuts. By the year 2050, there may be no maple syrup production in Vermont and no wine grapes growing in California, but yet, a border wall is the emergency. I think the existential and economic crisis of our environmental situation is the real emergency. How silly of me!

I would love another president, like Obama, that would make the right wing extremist freak out. This generally means we are going in the right direction as a society. So a Jewish, Hispanic or a Black Woman as a president would be a really good thing then we can watch every scumbag pundit on Fox "News" heads explode.

Announcing this month:
Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders: Bernie was the dark horse candidate in 2016. He enters this race as one of the front runners, if not the front runner. At this point, they could all be chasing him if he gets the momentum that he did last time. He is 77 years old which for many makes him too old. Is this ageism or simple practicality? The presidency is a very stressful job so his health is something to take into consideration, but health and age are not the same thing. His VP candidate should be chosen wisely because of this. He has two scandals behind him: (1) his wife's problems with Burlington College and (2) the sexism in his staff during the 2016 campaign. Hopefully, both of them don't weigh too heavily in the general voter's minds. If you think about him running against Trump, these "scandals" are minuscule compared to anything Trump has accumulated in only two years in office. As a Vermonter, I like Bernie and I have voted for his for both Rep. and Senator. I also voted for him in the primaries in 2016. I have met him twice. I disagree with him on a lot (particularly on economics), but I know him as an honorable and honest person. I vote for him because I trust him. He represents us well. He'd be a fine president. Jamelle Bouie in NY Times, says that Bernie is the only candidate so far that has a clear and comprehensive message on foreign policy, something he lacked during the 2016 campaign.

Bernie has the passion without details while Warren has details but is lacking in the passion. This makes me think that among the two further left candidates, Bernie is more likely to beat Trump, but far left is still going to be tough to win in the general election.

South Bend Mayor, Pete Buttigieg: In last month's Hindsight 2020, I didn't mention Pete Buttigieg (pronounced Buddha judge), who is the two term mayor of South Bend, Indiana. What's a mayor of a city of 100,000 people doing running for president? Good question. One thing to point out, he has more experience in government than Trump did when he became president. He is another Rhode Scholar, an Afghanistan war veteran and is openly gay. Just on that last sentence alone, he is a better candidate than Trump. I've heard him speak a view times in the past few weeks and I like him, a lot actually. But the key question here is: will the general public vote for a gay man? a married gay man? It is hard to believe he'd win the general election.

New York Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand: She is very pleasant and personable. If you have watched Colbert at any point in the past, you may have seen her on one of his shows. She was conservative in her past, but has claimed to be reformed. She appears to me to be an opportunist and a hypocrite.When she talks about important issues she comes off as being quite trite. When sexual assault accusations came out about Senator Al Franken, he asked for investigations into the allegations and she lead the charge to throw him under the bus. Now that much worse allegations have come out about Lt. Governor of Virginia, Justin Fairfax, she is calling for an investigation. Not sure why Al Franken didn't get this respect. She is a lightweight and I wouldn't turn my back on her.

Governor of Washington Jay Inslee: He is the current governor of the state of Washington and used to be a member of the US House of Representatives. His campaign is the only one so far to have his campaign headquarters fully based on the West Coast. He is from humble stock with his mother being a clerk at Sears while his father was a high school counselor and football coach. His big issue is the environment which makes him appealing to me. Can a relatively unknown like this defeat a sitting president? Since that President is Trump, perhaps, yes.  Clinton did it to Bush and Bush (the first one) was a half decent President.

Marianne Williamson: She is a new age spiritualist author from Houston and is often called Oprah's "spiritual adviser." I don't take her very seriously and unless I see something that makes her qualified to run this country, I am not going to mention her again.

Those still not declared yet:
Former VP Joe Biden, former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, Governor of Montana Steve Bullock, former Governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper, former Governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, Rep. from Massachusetts Seth Moulton, former Rep. from Texas Beto O'Rourke, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Mark Warner, Senator from Virginia.

The rest of the field:
Cory Booker: I have notice that eight of my friends, on Facebook, are following Mr. Booker. One of them is a staunch Republican so I know this doesn't mean much, other than he probably has the most name recognition in the Democratic field right now, among those who have announced. He made a visit to Iowa in February and is hiring staff in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He is trying to draw a distinction between himself and his competition stating that they haven't run anything and while he has run a major city, Newark. He has released a plan to reduce housing costs.

Kamala Harris: California's primary has been moved up early this year. This gives a distinct advantage to Ms. Harris. She has visited Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada in February. She advocated for universal childcare and has proposed the LIFT act to assist struggling middle class families.

Amy Klobuchar: The Senator from Minnesota raised $1 million within 48 hours of announcing her candidacy which is pretty impressive. She is the only candidate that is positioning herself as a moderate. She may do well if Biden stays out of the race. If he does enter the race, his name recognition alone may overshadow her.

Elizabeth Warren: While Bernie talks about blowing the system up and rebuilding, she talks about restructuring the system from within. She has proposed a universal childcare program.and a family leave act. She is a policy candidate, which may have a lot of appeal to someone like me, but many voters choose based on personality and the "would I like to share a beer with this person?" question looms bad for her. If I were voting on domestic policies alone, she may have my vote.

Julian Castro: He plans on visiting all 50 states during his campaign. I'm looking forward to seeing him here in VT if he lasts that long. Maybe he should just come on over when he is pounding the pavement in New Hampshire. Since we're overwhelmingly for Sanders, I doubt if we'll see him.

Tulsi Gabbard: If you are looking for the peace candidate, she might be your candidate. She has come out strong against US involvement in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is an interesting fact about her. Her net worth is only $208,504.00. This is really amazing since she lives in a very expensive state, Hawaii.

John Delaney: Because he declared so early, he has already visited all 99 counties in Iowa. He is another moderate candidate who has gotten accolades from even conservatives like George Will who in a November 2018 opinion piece in the Washington Post, stated that Democrats should consider a moderate like Delaney to defeat Trump. While having a background in business might not appeal to the left in the Democratic party, it may be gold in the general election. He is pro-business but he still stands in all the right places on the issues that Democrats care about: health care, the environment and education etc.

Andrew Yang: He is another candidate I am not taking too seriously because he has no government experience, but it seem like others are. Rolling Stone Magazine puts him at #17 among 27 candidates (published in mid February 2019) which is not great but is higher than Delaney or Gabbard. So I will keep him on my radar.

Talk to you next month.

Trump Log #58: Manafort-Cohen Week

I hope everyone enjoyed Manfort-Cohen week, I know I did.

US healthcare costs as a percentage of GDP is about 18%. This is extremely high, much higher than other industrialized countries. It increases at a faster rate than inflation which is alarming. But something good happened recently, for the year 2017 in remained relatively flat. This should be bigger news, good news. If Trump actually Tweeted about it, maybe they'd cover it. But if he did that, he might have to admit to something ... that the ACA is working. Obamacare, while still imperfect, is basically working. It is controlling cost better than anyone expected. This percentage is increasing again, up to 18.2% but it is increasing at a lower rate. Perhaps if we left the ACA alone or maybe improved it a bit, instead of trying to repeal it, it might actually work. Not with the leadership we have now though.

In hindsight, President Obama may be remembered as an even better president than we originally saw him as while he was in office. History might remember him as that one who was sandwiched between two of the nation's worst. Obama's administration was virtually scandal free with zero indictments during his time in office.

Two years into the Trump administration, the Mueller investigation has come up with over 100 different charges, against over 30 people and three companies. 25 of the people are Russian and they will probably never to be extradited. More is expected to come. This week two of the closest people to him were brought to justice. Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, was found guilty of eight counts of tax fraud, bank fraud, etc. Ten counts were thrown out because one juror refused to vote guilty on them. Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight similar criminal charges. He is cooperating and will get leniency. Under oath, he admitted that the president had committed felonies. 

The only thing that would make this a better week, is seeing Trump escorted out of the White House in chains. We can only hope. Hope and change!

Trump Log:
Monday 8/20/18 - The Trump administration has lost three court cases in the last three days in regards to how they are running the EPA. (Source: Washington Post)

Tuesday 8/21/18 - Remember ex-EPA director Pruitt's $43,000.00 phone booth? Records show that he used the phone only once for a five minute call to the president. You think your phone bill is high! (Source: Washington Post)

Wednesday 8/22/18 - Trump's own lawyer, Michael Cohen, states, under oath, that the president has committed felonies. (Source: Washington Post)

Thursday 8/23/18 - It has been awhile since Trump has mentioned Africa on Twitter. The silence was broken on 8/22 when he came to the defense of farmers in South Africa ... "white farmers." The ambassador post to South Africa, one of the largest economies in Africa, has remained empty for almost two years (the entirety of Trump's tenure). (Source: Washington Post)

Friday 8/24/18 - Three years ago, Congress created an academic support fund to assist schools with issues like mental health of students, art, music and technology. Trump's Secretary of Education, DeVos, wants schools be able to use these funds for guns. (Source: New York Times)

Saturday 8/25/18 - Trump takes a photo with one of the leaders of QAnon. How a leader of a crazy group of conspiracy theorists has so much access to the US President, no one seems to know. (Source: Slate).

Sunday 8/26/18 - One of the few remaining decent Republicans passed away this week, John McCain. One of Trump's aides wrote up something really nice about him for the President to Tweet, but Trump rejected that and tweeted something else  ... he didn't say anything about McCain, just expressed condolences to his family. (Source: Washington Post)

Prior Trump Logs:
Issue # 1 - posted November 15th, 2016
Issue # 2 - posted November 22nd, 2016
Issue # 3 - posted November 29th, 2016
Issue # 4 - posted December 6, 2016
Issue # 5 - posted December 12, 2016
Issue # 6 - posted December 19, 2016
Issue # 7 - posted December 26, 2016
Issue # 8 - posted January 3, 2017
Issue # 9 - posted January 10, 2017
Issue #10 - posted January 17, 2017
Issue #11 - posted January 24, 2017
Issue #12 - posted January 31, 2017
Issue #13 - posted February 7, 2017
Issue #14 - posted February 14, 2017
Issue #15 - posted February 21, 2017
Issue #16 - posted February 28, 2017
Issue #17 - posted March 7, 2017
Issue #18 - posted March 14, 2017
Issue #19 - posted March 21, 2017
Issue #20 - posted March 28, 2017
Issue #21 - posted April 5, 2017
Issue #22 - posted April 11, 2017
Issue #23 - posted April 18, 2017
Issue #24 - posted April 25, 2017
Issue #25 - posted May 2, 2017
Issue #26 - posted May 9, 2017
Issue #27 - posted May 16, 2017
Issue #28 - posted May 23, 2017

Issue #29 - posted May 30, 2017

Issue #30 - posted June 6, 2017
Issue #31 - posted June 13, 2017
Issue #32 - posted June 20, 2017

Issue #33 - posted June 27, 2017
Issue #34 - posted March 12, 2018
Issue #35 - posted March 19, 2018
Issue #36 - posted March 26, 2018
Issue #37 - posted April 1, 2018
Issue #38 - posted April 8, 2018
Issue #39 - posted April 15, 2018
Issue #40 - posted April 22, 2018
Issue #41 - posted April 29, 2018
Issue #42 - posted May 6, 2018
Issue #43 - posted May 13, 2018
Issue #44 - posted May 20, 2018
Issue #45 - posted May 27, 2018
Issue #46 - posted June 3, 2018
Issue #47 - posted June 10, 2018
Issue #48 - posted June 17, 2018
Issue #49 - posted June 24, 2018
Issue #50 - posted July 1, 2018
Issue #51 - posted July 8, 2018
Issue #52 - posted July 15, 2018
Issue #53 - posted July 22, 2018
Issue #54 - posted July 29, 2018

Issue #55 - posted August 5, 2018
Issue #56 - posted August 12, 2018
Issue #57 - posted August 19, 2018 

Trump Log #36: Which Cabinet Secretary is Your Least Favorite?

Who is your pick for worst Trump Cabinet Secretary? The HUD secretary that hates public housing, the Education secretary that knows nothing about education, the global warming denying EPA director or the Interior Secretary that thinks he's the Energy Secretary. Too close a call! I posted this question to my Facebook friends and there was an overwhelming lean against Betsy Devos, the Secretary of Education.  This is probably because of all the teachers I am friends with.  In her interview on 60 Minutes, she states that she hasn't yet visited any "failing schools." No need to look much further there.

Monday 3/19/18 - We have further proof that the president doesn't quite get that he is not in the private sector anymore. He has been requiring staff to sign non-disclosure agreements for not only their time in his administration but afterward. Apparently, he is not familiar with the First Amendment. (Source: Washington Post)

Tuesday 3/20/18 - My pick for worst Cabinet Secretary: Zinke. (Source: Washington Post)

Wednesday 3/21/18 - Trump continues to ignore the advice of his advisers. The more confident he feels, the more he is going to do continue to ignore them. Problem: he shouldn't feel confident yet. (Source: Washington Post)

Thursday 3/22/18 - As an ex-English Composition major I find this particularly egregious. Communications from this administration is riddled with spelling mistakes. A clear sign that they don't give a shit. (Source: Washington Post)

Friday 3/23/18 - Trump's new national security adviser, John Bolton, chairs the Gladstone Institute, an organization that puts out fake news and drums up hatred towards Muslims. This is our third national security adviser in a little over a year. Hopefully, his tenure is as short as the others. He's a scary man. (Source: The Intercept)

Saturday 3/24/18 - Are you ready for some more wars? This time with much larger and more powerful countries like Iran and North Korea. Bolton is a hawk on both of these fronts. (Source: NPR)

Sunday 3/25/18 - How low is the bar set for this presidency? Today, a porn star is talking about an affair with the president, how she was paid for silence and how she felt "threatened" if she didn't comply ... and no one seems to give a shit. I remember during the Clinton years when news of his infidelity broke, people's heads seemed like they were going to explode. The insanity of our president has been normalized.  (Source: Politico)

Prior Trump Logs:
Issue # 1 - posted November 15th, 2016
Issue # 2 - posted November 22nd, 2016
Issue # 3 - posted November 29th, 2016
Issue # 4 - posted December 6, 2016
Issue # 5 - posted December 12, 2016
Issue # 6 - posted December 19, 2016
Issue # 7 - posted December 26, 2016
Issue # 8 - posted January 3, 2017
Issue # 9 - posted January 10, 2017
Issue #10 - posted January 17, 2017
Issue #11 - posted January 24, 2017
Issue #12 - posted January 31, 2017
Issue #13 - posted February 7, 2017
Issue #14 - posted February 14, 2017
Issue #15 - posted February 21, 2017
Issue #16 - posted February 28, 2017
Issue #17 - posted March 7, 2017
Issue #18 - posted March 14, 2017
Issue #19 - posted March 21, 2017
Issue #20 - posted March 28, 2017
Issue #21 - posted April 5, 2017
Issue #22 - posted April 11, 2017
Issue #23 - posted April 18, 2017
Issue #24 - posted April 25, 2017
Issue #25 - posted May 2, 2017
Issue #26 - posted May 9, 2017
Issue #27 - posted May 16, 2017
Issue #28 - posted May 23, 2017

Issue #29 - posted May 30, 2017

Issue #30 - posted June 6, 2017
Issue #31 - posted June 13, 2017
Issue #32 - posted June 20, 2017

Issue #33 - posted June 27, 2017
Issue #34 - posted March 12, 2018
Issue #35 - posted March 19, 2018

Republicans May Be More Disgusting Than Originally Projected

I didn't think it was possible, but it seems that the Republican Party might be more disgusting than I had originally imagined. Once there was a time where you could find a Republican or two and say he/she was one of the good ones, but the days of Jim Jeffords and John Chaffee are long gone. Non-scumbag left this party long ago, if you are still in this party, guess what? You are one of the scumbags. Their tax plan passed in both the House and the Senate with only Republicans voting for it (yes, even John McCain). If you need more examples to prove they are scumbags, there are plenty.  This is just the latest example.

If you are a Republican Governor, local politician or simply a GOP voter, your hands are not clean here. Being merely a member of this party is compliance. You are not just part of the problem, you are the problem. If you don't know what I am talking about, please turn of Fox "News," check out any reputable source of media and emerge from your bubble. After your head emerges from your ass and you figure out how much you are hurting your fellow Americans, maybe then you will realize that you delusions are patriotism are just that.

Their latest tax plan gives massive tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. The idea behind trickle down economics is that the upper echelon of our society would transfer this tax savings to the rest of us by reinvesting in our economy. The problem with this is it does not work. If you were alive in the 1980's, you know what I am talking about. The neighborhood I grew up in was devastated by trickle down economics. The word "homeless" did not exist before the 1980's. The wealthy do not reinvest this influx of money, they mostly don't even notice it. Why? Because they are wealthy. If you are a billionaire, getting a few extra thousand dollars means nothing to you. There is no incentive for them to reinvest into the American economy or to spend it. All I can think of now when I hear trickling down is the rich piss all over the poor. This is exactly what they are doing with this tax bill. If you wanted to stimulate the economy, you would give the middle class a tax cut.

Do you remember when Republicans were concerned about deficits? The next time they bring up the deficit as a concern, please remember they are lying their fucking asses off. The last Republican President declared two unnecessary wars and implemented Medicare Part D while cutting taxes, and their current douche-bag-in-chief will be approving this tax bill which is predicted to add $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years. They are increasing some taxes in this bill ... guess who is getting hurt?  Teachers and students. Since the 80's, the Republicans have making it harder and harder for the poor and working class to get an education in this country. Why?  I used to have a theory that they wanted to keep us ignorant, for the ignorant are easily manipulated. Also, if the poor can get student loans easily, who will join the military and fight their bloody, profit-making fucking wars. Not their kids. I used to right this theory off as paranoia, but as the old saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean no one is out to get you."

Back when my wife was a public pre-school teacher, she spent a good part of the summer looking for deals on supplies for her classroom. We'd drive around to garage and yard sales, looking for books, blocks and rocking chairs, you name it. I used to complain, shouldn't the school or the parents be paying for supplies. But that just doesn't happen does it? She used to say she wouldn't be able to do her job without the supplies. The one good thing was that teachers used to be able to declared up to $250.00 of unreimbursed expenses on their taxes. Since the average public school teacher spends from $500 to $600 on supplies, this certainly helped. No more. Under the House's tax bill, this write-off is completely eliminated. Those lavish spending teacher will have buckle-up, because those millionaires really need their tax break. There is an offshore account that is need of more padding.

Graduate students are getting hit as well.  Many grad students work for universities (teaching classes, etc.) For reimbursement, they get their tuition paid. That payment will now be taxable. So if your tuition would have been $40,000.00, you will now have to count that as income and be taxed on it. This means that some students will not be able to go to graduate school. Welcome to the brain drain. We need more people going to grad school, not less.

The middle class will be particularly hurt by the fact that we won't be able to write off our state taxes anymore. If you live in a state that has high state taxes, this is really going to hurt. I am sure it is no accident that these are also traditionally Democratic states (blue states) like New York and California.

The mandate for the Affordable Care Act will be illuminated. This is just another step in the destruction of this law. The mandate is how we pay for the ACA, because it forces healthy people to buy into the system. If you think of fire insurance, it doesn't work if only people who have fires pay for it. The healthy pay for the non-healthy. By eliminating the mandate, it is going to be even harder to pay for the ACA.  The loss will probably be made up for by the taxpayer ... hence, more deficit.

This is not conservatism.  Eisenhower was our last conservative president and if the Republican Party was producing politicians like him, I'd might even be a Republican. This is not reform. Reform makes it easier to file your taxes. This is just a greedy money grab for the wealthy. This is a gift to their base, the ultra-rich with elimination of the estate and alternative minimum tax. They are shitting on the middle class and wiping their asses with the poor. That is the modern Republican. Please join me in voting against them at every possibility.

The War on Science ... From the Left

I've considered myself a liberal most of my adult life. As soon as I knew the difference, I have leaned left. Most of the stuff I see going on with the right wing of American politics is difficult to take, stomach or comprehend. The right wing assault on science, in the forms of creationism or climate change denial, is particularly alarming. But I find this far more alarming when the assault on science comes from the left. The idea that the progressive left is the friend to science is a myth. Many of them are as anti-science as the conservatives and an argument could be made that they have been more effective in squashing science because they do it from within (as teachers, bloggers or journalists) as opposed from above (politicians and businessmen).

1) Genetically Modified Foods (GMOs) are safe. Here in Vermont genetically modified foods have to be labeled even though there is no proof that they are dangerous in any way. Labeling it is harmless and, I guess, people have a right to know what is in their food, but many people assume that it must be bad if it is labeled. My friends on the left often refer to it as "franken-food," yet genetically modifying food has been going on for thousands of years by selective breeding. The strawberries you buy in the supermarket look and taste nothing like wild strawberries. Now that we do such selective breeding in a laboratory by altering plants on a genetic level, it is scary to some. It is a common trope among my liberal friends that anything natural is safe and mad-made is not, but there is no science behind this. Because GMOs are still reasonable new, research continues. If you don't eat them because you think that they need more research that is fair. But to outright claim that they are dangerous is pure conjecture and not science, and sometimes it is just paranoia.

2) Vaccines don't cause autism and are overwhelmingly safe. In all, vaccines have brought seven major human diseases under some degree of control: smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, yellow fever, whopping cough, polio and measles. They have saved millions of lives. In 1998 a study was published in Great Britain that claimed a link between autism and vaccinations. It involved only 12 children and not only contained falsified data but severe conflicts of interest. It has been discredited and its main author lost his license, but this idea is still around and endorsed by some very famous people, most of them on the left. In 2017 already, ten states have reported measles outbreaks with over 60 deaths. The majority of the people affected were unvaccinated. The measles vaccine is not 100% effective, so some vaccinated will die if they are surrounded by the unvaccinated. Even as the evidence of vaccine safety piles up, so does the number of non-vaccinated. According to a number of articles I have read in the Washington Post and Mother Jones, this belief isn't higher among liberals but has broad belief across the political spectrum. I find this hard to believe. This week alone, I have had seen three of my friends on Facebook post something stupid about vaccines. So perhaps it is just me. I've never see any such thing from anyone that I'd consider conservative. Creationism and global warming denying yes, but my conservative friends have vaccinated all their children.

There was once a time in this country where the American university was a bastion of free speech. This time is over. When places like Middlebury College (here in Vermont) or UC Berkley erupt in violence over speakers visiting, we have to start asking the question: Is the left any better than the right? We used to be the adults in the room!  You don't fight bad ideas by squashing speech. You fight bad ideas with good ideas. If there is bad science in Charles Murray's "The Bell Curve," you prove it with good science.

If you only listen to speech that you agree with, then you are just guilty of confirmation bias as an anti-vaxer or global warming denier that scours the Internet looking for articles that justifies their beliefs. Liberals are supposed to know better. Having an open mind means letting it all in (within reason), evaluating, culling ... embracing the good stuff and rejecting the bad ... repeat repeat repeat.

Seatbelts on School Buses

Recently, a school bus in Chattanooga, Tennessee crashed causing the death of five children. This is a tragedy. You don't hear stories about deaths on school buses very often. When I do, I wonder, why don't school buses have seat belts? This seems like a no-brainer. Like many things, when you dig deeper, it is more complex than that. 

Currently, the US has five states that require seat belts on school buses (California, New York, Louisiana, Florida and New Jersey). Considering that lists of states, I am guessing that the rest of the country is going to follow. When I google this question, the big thing that does come up is the cost. It costs from $7k to $10k to add seat belts to a school bus. A lot of school districts are already strapped for money.

One of the arguments against this is that school buses are already very safe. Only four children die on school buses each year while 500 die during the same travel time in automobiles. It is also safer than walking to school which is what I did as a kid. I got into all kinds of trouble on my trek to school each morning. Why are school buses so safe? For one, school buses are driven slowly and usually, by a better driver. Also, cars tend to maintain a distance from a bus, I know I do, even when it is not required of me. School bus seats are also very padded and high. If a younger kid is thrown, chances are they will hitting the back of another seat's thick padding. This helps with quick stops, but not with rollovers. The chances of a bus rolling over is very unlikely. Spending money to prevent something that isn't a problem is hard to justify. In hindsight, I am sure the parents in Chattanooga probably feel that it would be a good investment.

Also, there are some logistical problems. If there is an accident, how difficult would it be to get kids out of the bus? The older kids would be fine, but the younger ones would need assistance. If there is a fire or a gas leak, you want to exit quickly. Try getting a bus load of preschoolers to take off their seats belts and exit a bus in a timely fashion, especially during the mayhem of an accident. Sounds messy. I would also imagine it would be difficult finding a one-size-fits-all belt.  Since shoulder belts are the only seat belts that are effective, you'd have to get one that would fit preschoolers comfortably and safely as well as high school students. You don't want a child to be strangled by a belt that is intended to save them.

Who enforces the seat belt use? You can have them on the bus but that doesn't mean that every student is going to use them. Does the driver or bus monitors have to guarantee that every student is wearing them before the bus takes off? How much work is this? Is this going to slow down traffic and increase the liability of the driver and/or monitor? What about the 6th grade boys (there is nothing more obnoxious than an 6th grade boy) who want to use their seat belts as weapons or nooses? It almost seems like seat belts would be more a problem than a solution.

Like most things labelled a "no-brainer," this is not one. I came up with more and more issues, the more I thought about this issue. I talked to one teacher and one bus driver before writing this. I am sure that there are others that disagree with them, but they seems right to me. We are better off without them.

Trigger Warning: This Blog Post May Cause Some Pansies to Whine

In grad school I took a class in "The Teaching of Literature."  It was a fine course, the only problem with it was that the professor was obsessed with racism. It should have been called "Teaching Racism in Literature" because that was her only concern, it seemed. One of our assignments was designing a lecture and teaching a class on a work of literature. My work was Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness which I chose because I was interested in narrative structure, particularly in works of literature that had an unreliable narrator. I was planning on writing my graduate thesis on the subject so every class I took, I tried to work that into my projects. I did my lecture, about a half hour, and got some great feedback from my fellow students. The only feedback I got from the professor was that I "didn't mention racism." This was maddening of course because, I do agree that racism is an important subject in colonial literature like The Heart of Darkness, but it is not the only aspect of the book. If you talk about the narrative structure for a half hour, you could easily not bring up racism. This story has become my anecdotal reason for the problem with American liberal arts education ... the American left are really fucking it up.

It is becoming more and more difficult to be left wing in America. I am left wing, aka a liberal, meaning that I do believe in the ideals of being liberal, but I am not so sure anymore about the movement. People who call themselves liberal are getting more and more annoying ... and some of them ... seem outright insane. The eyes are not only not on the prize but have turned inward. The self-righteous a-hole has replaced the selfless hippie as the poster child of the left. Protests are cliques. Discourse has become therapy. Education is becoming a politically correct circle jerk. I used to be proud to say that I was on the Left.  I am still proud, I cling to the ideas, but not so much to the movement. The latest madness: trigger warnings.

Triggers warnings are statements that some professors are being asked to put on syllabi on certain works of literature and/or film warning students of their content. An example would be a warning that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contains racism or that The Great Gatsby contains domestic violence. Apparently, this started to accommodate students with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Stressful events in books and films can trigger trauma in the victims of PTSD. But I would think that if you had PTSD and you were attending a college course, shouldn't you go in prepared that perhaps everything you read or view could contain a trigger? If the trigger warnings stopped with PTSD, it wouldn't be so absurd, but being extended much further. 

The first problem I have with this is that knowledge comes from being challenged. You go into college believing the world to be a certain way and you are challenged to think something else. You shouldn't be prepared or warned for this challenge. You should be knocked over the head with it. College is the place where the world should be in your face challenging your every fiber of belief.  If it makes you cry or scream so be it, you are young, you will get over it. Students at Oberlin College, University of California (Santa Barbara), University of Michigan, Rutgers University and George Washington University among others have asked for trigger warnings to be put on syllabi. When I was in college we asked our colleges for really stupid things too. It was a great learning experience to be told NO. College is a great place to mature. 

This brings me to my second point, what kind of pansies are we bringing up in this country? Huckleberry Finn was read by slaves. That's right some of them could read! Their victimhood (violence, rape, racism etc.) is far greater than any of us had to face. Mark Twain toured the country with other abolitionists reading his work. Former slaves attended these readings. If they didn't need a warning, you shouldn't either.  Regardless of how traumatic your experiences have been, it pales in comparison to these people. The first step to higher learning ... get over yourself.

My third point is where I really lose patience with the left. Labeling anything, however well intentioned and innocuous is censorship, even if you are doing so only on a syllabus. You are changing the perception of the reader. If you label The Merchant of Venice with a warning of anti-Semitism, the reader is going to read it differently than if you didn't see that label. In doing so, you are altering the experience of the reading, tainting the discourse and worst of all, destroying the text. You are putting your perceptions of the text over the readers. If I am warned that Mrs. Dalloway contains a suicide, I am going to reading it expecting suicide on every page. You might as well rename trigger warnings, spoiler alerts. A trigger warning ruins this book for all the readers, just in case, there is someone in the class that was traumatized by suicide. The left is usually against censorship, unless it is the left that is censoring, then they are fine with it. Actually, they are gleeful in their righteousness.  Stamp an R on that movie, stamp an M on that video game ... the left know better than you do on what you and your kids can be exposed to. This is what the left spends their time on. You really have to wonder how the left will respond when a right winger comes along and demands a warning on a Leaves of Grass because of their homo-phobia or on Things Fall Apart because of their xenophobia. No, that isn't allowed. Censorship is only allowed when the left does it!

Where does this lead? Warnings on syllabi surely will lead to warnings on books. The pansies will graduate and wander into a bookstore with their new expendable income. They might buy a book that has sexism in it and they weren't warned about it (insert dramatic music here). Bookstores, Amazon and libraries will have warnings on books. Once there is a rating system on books, then publishers will publish for the rating. Presently Hollywood test screens films and will often send them back to the director saying they need more sex to get the R rating or remove a word or two to get the PG13 rating. Is this where publishing is going? 

I am grateful that most professors are fighting this.This is where the strength of tenured positions come in. Young untenured professors are afraid to fight this because they fear retaliation. Freedom to pick and chose what is in your course and how to approach the subject, should be in the teachers hands ... not the students. If you fear being challenged as a college student, perhaps college is not the right place for you. If you can't handle Huck's racism, you are probably not ready for the workforce and world outside your campus.

The Bubble Wrap Generation Goes to College

A while ago, I mentioned in a blog post that one of the reasons that I haven't reproduced was the environmental impact of having a child. But as a I mentioned in that posting, that was a minor reason. The major reasons were much more personal: financial and health. When we weighed the options, the joy of having a child were outweighed by the others. The environmental impact of having a child was piled on as another good reason. Another minor reason that I can pile into the mix is that I don't like how children are reared these days. Too many parents are over-protective. Of course, this not a good reason not to have kids, because no matter when you have a child, there are going to be other parents with styles that are incompatible with yours. I am sure many wouldn't like mine, if I had one.

The definition that the Urban Dictionary has for the Bubble Wrap Generation is very different from the one I use.  I use the term to describe parents that are so protective of their children that they might as well cover them in bubble wrap before they leave the house. This is prevalent in the suburbs where the family is wealthy enough to have at least one parent without a full-time paying job. These are the kids that don't leave the house without knee pads and that aren't allowed to do anything without adult supervision. When I was school age boy, I remember running around our neighborhood without any adult knowing where I was. Yes, I did get hurt sometimes and, yes, I did scrape a knee and bump my head a few times, but these were learning experiences. I healed and I learned. The thing that I learned the most was independence. How to talk my way out of a fight and how to be creative in our play. I am not sure the kids whose summers are filled with soccer camps and play dates are getting this.  Since this parenting style has been going on for years, we can see the affect this has had on them.

I have heard these parents referred to as helicopter parents. They are called this because they hover over their children. I am hearing more and more anecdotal evidence that the Bubble Wrap Generation is somewhat pathetic adults. I recently heard a story from a friend who is a professor on the West Coast that is sometimes contacted by their adult student's parent about grades. These are adult students employing their parents to fight their battles for them. This amazes me. I wouldn't have done this in high school, never mind college. This is a new phenomenon and not the first time I hear it, averaging about one student a year, I am told.

It is not just happening in college. At a prior job, someone showed up at a job interview with a parent. This was a huge red flag to not hire this person.  If they are so dependent on their parents, what kind of worker are they going to be in a professional setting? Probably not a very good one. Also, I heard another story from a teacher friend who was training a student teacher and asked for her to fill out some paper work. She said that her mother always filled out these forms for her. My friend told her, well now that you are an adult and are getting married yourself, you need to fill these out on your own.

Some might say that since I am childless that I shouldn't be commenting on parenting. I reject this notion, obviously. This would be like saying that if you don't own a gun then you don't have a right to complain about gun violence. How people bring up their kids has an affect on everyone, not just their families. If takes a village to raise a child, then that village has every right to complain about shitty parenting skills. That village, also, is quite good at correcting it. I am glad to say that my professor friends have refused to deal with the parents of a adult students, but will only deal with the student directly regardless of who is footing the tuition.

I realize that people love their kids and want to protect them, but wrapping the kid in bubble does no one any good.  As a taxpayer, I am expecting the future generation to carry my generation when we retire, not to ask us to do their paper work.

Luck and the Marshmallow

I don't believe in luck, not much anyway.  I used to have a track coach in high school that used to say in his speech before our meets, "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. You've been preparing all week, now is your opportunity." If we succeeded, we were not lucky, but because we had worked at it.  In any competition, unless dice are involved, very little has to do with luck. It actually has to do with training or practice. Life is a lot like this. Life is more like chess than it is like craps.

I have a great situation for employment at the moment. I work for one of the greatest entities on the planet, a world renowned organization known for intellectual prowess and philanthropy. I work out of my home, telecommuing.  I enjoy my job, I have no commute and I am paid well. I get a little annoyed when I am told that I am lucky.  I have this position from working extremely hard for a very long time. I have worked many jobs lots of them with low pay, long hours and on off-shifts. I approached everyone of them as a learning experience even working the loading dock and coaching high school track. They were an opportunity and a stepping stone to something better. I put myself through college by working these crappy jobs sometimes with obnoxious bosses and awful working conditions. I partied some in college, but not as much as others. I always had a paper to write, a program to code or a textbook to read. I have always had my eye on a long-term goal as opposed to short-term gratification. Now, here I am. I am goals met, feeling gratified. So don't tell me that I am lucky. Prior to my last job, I had been laid off four times in a row. I saw the layoffs coming so I left my last position for my current position, an organization known for having a lot of money and not laying anyone off.  That wasn't luck but planning or as my coach used to say "preparation."

The concept of long term goals over immediate gratification isn't a new one, but it is obviously not for everyone. According to the Marshmallow Study, it is something we learn at a very early age and it is one of the biggest determinations of success.  The study, done at Stanford University in 1960's and 70's, took 32 preschoolers (16 of each gender) and offered them a treat now or a treat later (15 minutes). The treat would be a pretzel, a marshmallow or a cookie. The kids were told that if they waited for the treat later, they would get two. They repeated this a few time increasing the reward and the time interval each time. They made note of which students choose what and followed up on them years later.  By 1990, the delayed gratification students had a higher average SAT scores. Later follow up showed the delayed gratification groups to have better police records, lower BMI's, more financial success and education.  The delayed gratification group scored better, as an average, in every aspect of life.

I hope there is a student reading this right now, who is in the middle of writing a difficult paper or struggling with some a difficult concept in school. The student is taking a break from their studies and on the net looking for a distraction.  He/She is looking out the window at the beautiful spring weather and thinking of hanging it up. They have a friend urging them to go to throw a ball around or head to party or bar.  I say to you: hang in there, it will pay off. You get plenty of marshmallow later if you don't eat it now. Luck has nothing to do with it.

In Defense of Rudeness

Back in the 1990's, I was one of the few people I knew, outside of work, that was on the internet. I had to carry a beeper and often got called in the middle of the night, to assist clients with software problems. Some of them were in Europe, some local, I had to spend hours resolving some of their issues. Sometimes I spent the entire night working and then had to go into the office the next day. I had a dumb terminal that I connected to the mainframe at work via a modem and from there jumped onto the client's systems. The first time I ever connected to a web page, it was all text which you had to tab from hypertext to hypertext to navigate around the page. It all seems so raw now and yet, sometimes it seems like the good old days when only the geeks were on-line.

Because I was somewhat of an early adopter, I figured out a lot of the social concepts and rules of the internet long before a lot of the less technical people I know did.  So when everyone else I know ended up getting on-line ... well, their initiation could get quite irritating at times. Sometimes I would get emails that are written entirely with THE CAPS LOCK KEY ON, which is not only difficult to read but on the net, it means that you are yelling. So you have to politely explain this to them. This usually works. One person I know, who got on-line for the first time in 2004 or so, took a very long time to figure out what Spam was. She would forward me her Spam telling me, I thought you would find this interesting. So not only did I have to deal with my junk mail, I had to deal with hers. What made it worse, she would sign me up for "deals" and give out my email to spammers. She also would send me jokes or warnings some of which have been out on the net so long that I am sure I saw them when I was new to the net.  I asked her in person and via email many times to stop. "If you want to send me an email to converse with me and see how I am doing, please do so but please stop sending me stuff that isn't written by you." But this did not work. After my polite requests were ignored many times, I decided to be rude. I sent her a scathing email in response to a fairly offensive joke she sent me about Southerners. Magic happened!  She stopped sending me crap.

I try not to be rude, at least not as a first response, if someone continually doesn't listen to your polite plea ... I let 'er rip. When someone ignores your politeness, it is okay to be rude back to them.people should listen to you when you are polite.  Fair warning, being rude or sending an angry email rarely ends well.

I am beginning to feel this way about politics, particularly when it comes to the environment and science in general.  Republican resistance to science has gotten so bad that I have told some local Republicans, people I like and respect, that I will not vote for them because they are a Republican even if they are not a nut. I used to vote for a person regardless of their party, no longer. I tell them that their party has to get a clue about science or they need to change parties, until then, I am going to vote for the opposition and possibly even donate. I have even gone so far as tell Republicans to get off my land, that politicians with an (R) at the end of their name are not welcome.

Democrats are not perfect on science either, but the difference is significant. In 2008, when asked during a Republican debate if any of them didn't believe in evolution, three of them raised their hand. This is just embarrassing as an American. If Republicans are going to be so stupid to put people like this as a candidate for the most powerful position on the planet, why should we be polite with them? It seems obvious to me politeness is not working. I normally choose to be civil, but when civilization itself is at stake, the stakes are too high. In the past two years, 80% of America's counties have requested aid for national disasters.  New York City is now looking at a Holland style seawall because their once-a-century flood has happened twice in the last three years. During this year's Republican Convention, head moron Romney laughed at President Obama for wanting to use government to heal the Earth (like most other civilized nations are doing now).  Romney received applause. This is what we are dealing with. People are so stuck in their own bubble that they disregard evidence and logic and applaud for (and unfortunately, vote for) someone who reinforces their ignorant beliefs. Democracy is scary sometimes. If it wasn't better than all the alternatives, I'd be joining the revolution. Until I see some significant change on this front, I am going to be as rude as my mood allows to any Republican I feel like. They pretend to be concerned about their children's future and they ignore global warming, for shame.

How did we get here?  The United States used to lead the world in our vigor for science.  We invented the internet, we landed on the moon, the telephone, the phonograph, mass production ... these amazing feats are American. Some say it began in 1918 with William Jennings Bryan's "The Prince of Peace" speech where he began to blame Darwinism for the moral decay of America. The speech had legs and ultimately lead to the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. Some say it started much more recently, during the American involvement in the Vietnam War, President Nixon announced a supersonic transport program, when his science advisers came out against the program, he fired them all. This set a precedent in that if you don't like what science has to say, just ignore the science. A similar situation arose during the Reagan Administration over Strategic Defense Initiative. Wherever it some point, someone figured out that preying on people ignorance and/or fear of science can get you elected. As ignorance of science grows, the effectiveness of this type of politics does as well.  

I am pleased with the results of this year's election. It gives me some hope that the Republicans may get the message, but the margin of victory was too small.  How many more storms will it take before the tide turns more towards reason?  Perhaps, I don't have to be rude ... mother nature is being rude for me.