And Joe Scarborough says she's not a journalist?
Well, I guess Joe should know about NOT being a journalist!!
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Well, I guess Joe should know about NOT being a journalist!!Check this out !! One small step for humankind !!
Hey Folks -
I don't watch the Joe Show, but someone tipped me off about this.
At least one active media person (Mika Brzezinski) has scruples (will she get canned?). Watch how the two monkeys give her a hard time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkhK2VU32qo
- Uke Man
I don't watch the Joe Show, but someone tipped me off about this.
At least one active media person (Mika Brzezinski) has scruples (will she get canned?). Watch how the two monkeys give her a hard time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkhK2VU32qo
- Uke Man
Friday, June 29, 2007
Twisted Media
Hey Folks –
Here we have a great illustration of how the “mainstream” press, the “responsible press” (as opposed to bloggers ) spreads their irresponsible “mainstream” propaganda.
In the cartoon above Hugo Chavez is being sculpted from an oil-can-shaped stone, perhaps correctly suggesting that his country’s oil resources are responsible for his international importance or impact.
However, it is further indicated that the emergence of Chavez as someone to deal with comes as a result of the destruction and discarding of “FREEDOM,” “RIGHTS,” and “LIBERTIES.” Indeed, the title of the “sculpture” is inscribed: “TYRANNY.”
Well, freedom, rights, liberties, and tyranny – like love – are often in the eye of the beholder.
As I have said before, previous to Chavez 80% of Venezuelans lived below the poverty line. The 20% on top have long enjoyed the freedom and liberty - indeed the right – to tyrannize the rest of their countrymen, in part at least by playing footsie with foreign investors. Chavez is a threat to that.
In other words, working to improve freedom, rights, and liberties to the degraded 80% of Venezuelans is seen by some as “TYRANNY” !
Ramirez’ cartoons always reflect the right-wing-business-corporate-fascist line. Look at the fine print there by his name: “INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY.”
So much for responsible, mainstream media.
- Uke Man
Here we have a great illustration of how the “mainstream” press, the “responsible press” (as opposed to bloggers ) spreads their irresponsible “mainstream” propaganda.
In the cartoon above Hugo Chavez is being sculpted from an oil-can-shaped stone, perhaps correctly suggesting that his country’s oil resources are responsible for his international importance or impact.
However, it is further indicated that the emergence of Chavez as someone to deal with comes as a result of the destruction and discarding of “FREEDOM,” “RIGHTS,” and “LIBERTIES.” Indeed, the title of the “sculpture” is inscribed: “TYRANNY.”
Well, freedom, rights, liberties, and tyranny – like love – are often in the eye of the beholder.
As I have said before, previous to Chavez 80% of Venezuelans lived below the poverty line. The 20% on top have long enjoyed the freedom and liberty - indeed the right – to tyrannize the rest of their countrymen, in part at least by playing footsie with foreign investors. Chavez is a threat to that.
In other words, working to improve freedom, rights, and liberties to the degraded 80% of Venezuelans is seen by some as “TYRANNY” !
Ramirez’ cartoons always reflect the right-wing-business-corporate-fascist line. Look at the fine print there by his name: “INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY.”
So much for responsible, mainstream media.
- Uke Man
Thursday, June 28, 2007
It's an insane world!!
Hey Folks -
Here's a good case study of why the world is so screwed up!! This entire story is one insane contradiction after another.
A Holywood starlette with - I'm told - a drug problem visits Peru (where most people can't read Chinese characters) carrying a bag sold as a "fashion accesory" by the Capitalist country of Communist China.
The bag is (as the article states) "emblazoned with a red star and the words 'Serve the People' printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan," but Mao wasn't really "into" fashion. Moreover, the "Communist" government running China is responsible for ending Mao's Communist government and replacing it with the market-driven system now threatening to beat the West at its own game. Worse, Capitalism's most famous political slogan ISN'T "Serve the People"! "Buyer beware" maybe, but NOT "Serve the people."
That's Madison Avenue not the Maoist Road.
Then we have the "pain" caused by a slogan nobody could read on a small bag carried by one tourist in Peru. Moreover, the pain-inflicting phrase is "Serve the people." Now who wouldn't be pained by such sentiment ? It's almost as bad as if David Hasselhoff visited Italy wearing a lapel pin that demanded, "Make the trains run on time!" Golly, THAT would cause a stir !!
Also presented is the view that the pain is caused by the reminder of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. But nothing is mentioned of the nasty military government it opposed or of Alberto Fujimori (our country's good pal) who opposed the insurgents but eventually fled the country to avoid criminal prosecution by his own people.
Finally, the stamp of approval to this hodge-podge of contradictions is given by a "human rights activist," supposedly a lefty, right? Well, George Bush claims he's for human rights, too. Talk is cheap.
- Uke Man
Cameron Diaz apologizes for Maoist bag
June 25, 2007 Associated Press
LIMA, Peru -
Cameron Diaz apologized Sunday for carrying a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru.
The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated "Shrek" films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes on Friday carrying an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan.
The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some world capitals, but in Peru the slogan evokes memories of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency that fought the government in the 1980s and early 1990s in a bloody conflict that left nearly 70,000 people dead.
"I sincerely apologize to anyone I may have inadvertently offended. The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China and I did not realize the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan printed on it," Diaz said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.
On Friday, one prominent Peruvian human rights activist said Diaz should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories.
In Sunday's statement, the star of "There's Something About Mary" said the purpose of her visit was to participate in a television show that celebrates Peru's culture. The actress has been in Peru as part of "4 REAL," a Canadian TV production that focuses on young community leaders around the world.
"I'm sorry for any people's pain and suffering and it was certainly never my intention to reopen what I now know is a painful wound in this country's history," she said.
Diaz also spoke of Peruvians' beauty and warmth and said she wished "for their continued healing."
Here's a good case study of why the world is so screwed up!! This entire story is one insane contradiction after another.
A Holywood starlette with - I'm told - a drug problem visits Peru (where most people can't read Chinese characters) carrying a bag sold as a "fashion accesory" by the Capitalist country of Communist China.
The bag is (as the article states) "emblazoned with a red star and the words 'Serve the People' printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan," but Mao wasn't really "into" fashion. Moreover, the "Communist" government running China is responsible for ending Mao's Communist government and replacing it with the market-driven system now threatening to beat the West at its own game. Worse, Capitalism's most famous political slogan ISN'T "Serve the People"! "Buyer beware" maybe, but NOT "Serve the people."
That's Madison Avenue not the Maoist Road.
Then we have the "pain" caused by a slogan nobody could read on a small bag carried by one tourist in Peru. Moreover, the pain-inflicting phrase is "Serve the people." Now who wouldn't be pained by such sentiment ? It's almost as bad as if David Hasselhoff visited Italy wearing a lapel pin that demanded, "Make the trains run on time!" Golly, THAT would cause a stir !!
Also presented is the view that the pain is caused by the reminder of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency. But nothing is mentioned of the nasty military government it opposed or of Alberto Fujimori (our country's good pal) who opposed the insurgents but eventually fled the country to avoid criminal prosecution by his own people.
Finally, the stamp of approval to this hodge-podge of contradictions is given by a "human rights activist," supposedly a lefty, right? Well, George Bush claims he's for human rights, too. Talk is cheap.
- Uke Man
Cameron Diaz apologizes for Maoist bag
June 25, 2007 Associated Press
LIMA, Peru -
Cameron Diaz apologized Sunday for carrying a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru.
The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated "Shrek" films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes on Friday carrying an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan.
The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some world capitals, but in Peru the slogan evokes memories of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency that fought the government in the 1980s and early 1990s in a bloody conflict that left nearly 70,000 people dead.
"I sincerely apologize to anyone I may have inadvertently offended. The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China and I did not realize the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan printed on it," Diaz said in a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press.
On Friday, one prominent Peruvian human rights activist said Diaz should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories.
In Sunday's statement, the star of "There's Something About Mary" said the purpose of her visit was to participate in a television show that celebrates Peru's culture. The actress has been in Peru as part of "4 REAL," a Canadian TV production that focuses on young community leaders around the world.
"I'm sorry for any people's pain and suffering and it was certainly never my intention to reopen what I now know is a painful wound in this country's history," she said.
Diaz also spoke of Peruvians' beauty and warmth and said she wished "for their continued healing."
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Wal-Mart!!! - Make war on your employees? Expect retaliation !!
Hey Folks -
Is anyone (besides Wal-Mart bigwigs) surprised that theft is up at Wal-Mart ?? Hey! you treat your employees like trash (but have them meet periodically to chant praise to the company's benevolence), and what do you get?
Close down Mom & Pop operations, drive out local manufacturing (to save a nickel in China) and put people out of work; what can you expect?
Use a business model that ensures desperate workers for the company and an ever-growing number of displaced workers forced to take low-paying jobs who can't afford anything other than Wally-World's "everyday low prices," and what do you get?
Demonstrate a ruthless disregard for the humanity and rights of others if they stand in the way of personal enrichment, and what do you get?
No surprise here !!
We'll always have organized crime, a la Tony Soprano; but this increase in theft isn't coming from the "criminal element" (so, don't send out the Bat Signal). It's coming from the people.
Under capitalism corporations constitute legal organized crime. The system works hard to keep regular folks from recognizing that and, for the most part succeeds. Nevertheless, when things get bad enough, the people react to the pain whether they can analyze it or not.
Theft is one reaction. It's self-defense. It's to be expected. Wal-Mart has grown rich stealing from its workers, its customers, and the tax-payers. Turn-about is fair play.
- Uke Man
Theft Rising at U.S. Wal-Mart Stores
Wednesday June 13,
By Anne D'Innocenzio and Marcus Kabel, AP Business Writers
Wal-Mart Struggling With Rising Loss From Shoplifting and Employee Theft at Its U.S. Stores
NEW YORK (AP) -- Shoppers at Wal-Mart stores across America are loading carts with merchandise -- maybe a flat-screen TV, a few DVDs and a six-pack of beer -- and strolling out without paying. Employees also are helping themselves to goods they haven't paid for.
The world's largest retailer is saying little about these kinds of thefts, but its recent public disclosures that it is experiencing an increase in so-called shrinkage at its U.S. stores suggests that inventory losses due to shoplifting, employee theft, paperwork errors and supplier fraud could be worsening.
The hit is likely to rise to more than $3 billion this year for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which generated sales of $348.6 billion last year, according to retail consultant Burt Flickinger III.
Flickinger and other analysts say the increase in theft may be tied to Wal-Mart's highly publicized decision last year to no longer prosecute minor cases of shoplifting in order to focus on organized shoplifting rings. Former employees also say staffing levels, including security personnel, have been reduced, making it easier for theft to occur. And a union-backed group critical of the retailer's personnel policies contends general worker discontent is playing a role.
Wal-Mart declined to offer any explanations for the rise in losses, but denied it has cut security staff and said employee morale is rising rather than falling.
Although Wal-Mart declined to reveal any details, analysts suspect Wal-Mart -- which for years had a theft loss rate that was half that of its peers -- is getting closer to the industrywide average. Theft is a big problem for all retailers, costing them $41.6 billion last year, according to a joint study released Tuesday by the National Retail Federation and the University of Florida. The study found that the theft rate as a percentage of sales ticked upward slightly to 1.61 percent of sales in 2006 from 1.60 percent in 2005.
Whatever the cause, such theft -- which late founder Sam Walton once called one of retailers' top profit killers -- adds one more challenge when Wal-Mart is already struggling with sluggish sales at its established stores due to an overall economic slowdown as well as its own stumbles in its home and apparel merchandising strategies.
Eduardo Castro-Wright, president and CEO of Wal-Mart's U.S. store division, briefly acknowledged the theft problem in a mid-May conference call with analysts. He cited shrinkage as well as increased markdowns and higher inventory for dragging down first-quarter profit margins.
"We are concerned about shrinkage and are investigating the cause and are taking steps to correct it," Castro-Wright said. Company officials won't comment on those countermeasures.
The company also said in a June 1 filing with federal securities regulators that the gross profit margin for its Wal-Mart Stores segment fell by 0.1 percentage points in the first quarter due in part to "higher inventory shrinkage."
John Simley, a Wal-Mart spokesman, declined to elaborate. He would say only that the company's theft losses as a percentage of sales is "better than our industry peer groups."
Analysts say it's significant that the company has publicly disclosed that theft is becoming a problem. "It is getting to the point of being material," said Richard Hastings, vice president and senior retail sector analyst at Bernard Sands. Securities regulations require companies to alert shareholders to significant corporate developments that could affect the value of their holdings.
Such pilferage as a percentage of sales has been declining since the mid-1990s as retailers have invested in new technology such as closed circuit TVs, according to Richard Hollinger, professor of criminology at the University of Florida.
About 47 percent of the dollars lost came from employee theft, while shoplifting accounted for about 32 percent, according to the National Retail Federation report. Administrative errors account for 14 percent, while supplier fraud accounts for 4 percent. The remaining 3 percent is unaccounted for.
In one of the more brazen employee thefts, a man wearing dark clothing and a ski mask entered a Port Clinton, Ohio, Wal-Mart store in January at midnight unnoticed by employees and stole $45,000 from the store safe. The store's night manager, Dana Walker, 30, was later arrested for the crime. He became a suspect because he knew the combination to the safe, police said.
The company's vociferous critic WakeUpWalMart.com, funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers which has for years tried to organize the retailer's workers, publicized the company's decision last year to relax its zero-tolerance policy on shoplifting. The new policy seeks prosecutions of first-time offenders only if they are between ages 18 to 65 and steal at least $25 worth of merchandise.
That change may have emboldened some folks to shoplift, said Mark Doyle, president of Jack L. Hayes International, a retail consultancy on loss prevention.
WakeUpWalMart.com and some former employees said Wal-Mart may also have been trying to appease complaints by some police departments that its stores tied up police with too many shoplifting calls. Wal-Mart has denied that.
Wal-Mart also may have been spooked by worries about lawsuits from wrongful death, unlawful imprisonment and other legal issues related to aggressively chasing down shoplifters. In March, Wal-Mart agreed to pay $750,000 to the family of a suspected shoplifter who suffocated to death as loss prevention workers held him down in a parking lot outside a store in Atascocita, Texas. The shoplifter died in August 2005 in a parking lot, according to published reports.
The change in policy came at the same time the company began using more part-time workers -- in part because of a new scheduling system that matches staffing more closely to peak shopping hours -- and shifting security personnel, analysts and critics say. That has left the discount chain without an experienced and loyal staff to monitor what's strolling out its back and front doors, analysts and some former employees supplied by WakeUpWalMart.com said.
"The business is being run by bean counters. I am shocked at the Spartan level of staffing," said Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resources Group. He added, "There are also morale issues. Workers feel that the company is taking care of itself."
While Wal-Mart denies that it has cut anti-theft jobs overall, it said it has adjusted staffing to put more personnel in stores in high-crime areas and fewer in stores with less trouble.
However, Dan Meyer, a former district loss prevention supervisor for several Wal-Mart stores in New Jersey, disputes that. Meyer, who said he accepted a buyout last fall after almost 12 years with the company, said Wal-Mart reduced the number of loss prevention staff in each store last year and redesigned their jobs in a way that was less active and more administrative.
"That's why shrinkage is up," he said.
Meyer said he averaged 13 apprehensions a month during most of his time at Wal-Mart. That number dropped to three to four a month in the months before he left last October. Meyer said his totals dropped because there were fewer security staff and less support from his managers for aggressively rooting out theft.
WakeUpWalMart.com has linked rising theft to its claims that the company offers skimpy pay and benefits. Wal-Mart also faces a class-action lawsuit alleging female workers were passed over for men in pay and promotions.
"I am not the type to steal, but because we are so mistreated, when I saw things I just didn't do anything," said Gina Tuley, a former Wal-Mart bakery worker, who quit her job at the Seagoville, Texas, store in March. A big complaint was that her hours had been cut, reducing her take-home pay.
Wal-Mart defends its pay as competitive and its health care coverage as better than most retailers, and has denied gender discrimination.
Simley said an April survey of employees that showed rising job satisfaction suggests Tuley's attitude does not represent most Wal-Mart associates.
Even so, several former associates said in interviews that their bonuses have declined because of the rise in inventory losses. Wal-Mart's Simley disputes these claims, saying theft reduction was dropped from the bonus formula about a dozen years ago. It was Walton's idea to tie associates' bonuses to their stores' pilferage levels to give them a vested interest in keeping theft in check.
Tuley said her bonus last year was $300, down from $800 the previous year.
Still, she said, "People would walk out with bags of merchandise ... I heard the alarms go off and people wouldn't even look," she added.
Business Writer Marcus Kabel contributed reporting for this story from Springfield, Mo.
Is anyone (besides Wal-Mart bigwigs) surprised that theft is up at Wal-Mart ?? Hey! you treat your employees like trash (but have them meet periodically to chant praise to the company's benevolence), and what do you get?
Close down Mom & Pop operations, drive out local manufacturing (to save a nickel in China) and put people out of work; what can you expect?
Use a business model that ensures desperate workers for the company and an ever-growing number of displaced workers forced to take low-paying jobs who can't afford anything other than Wally-World's "everyday low prices," and what do you get?
Demonstrate a ruthless disregard for the humanity and rights of others if they stand in the way of personal enrichment, and what do you get?
No surprise here !!
We'll always have organized crime, a la Tony Soprano; but this increase in theft isn't coming from the "criminal element" (so, don't send out the Bat Signal). It's coming from the people.
Under capitalism corporations constitute legal organized crime. The system works hard to keep regular folks from recognizing that and, for the most part succeeds. Nevertheless, when things get bad enough, the people react to the pain whether they can analyze it or not.
Theft is one reaction. It's self-defense. It's to be expected. Wal-Mart has grown rich stealing from its workers, its customers, and the tax-payers. Turn-about is fair play.
- Uke Man
Theft Rising at U.S. Wal-Mart Stores
Wednesday June 13,
By Anne D'Innocenzio and Marcus Kabel, AP Business Writers
Wal-Mart Struggling With Rising Loss From Shoplifting and Employee Theft at Its U.S. Stores
NEW YORK (AP) -- Shoppers at Wal-Mart stores across America are loading carts with merchandise -- maybe a flat-screen TV, a few DVDs and a six-pack of beer -- and strolling out without paying. Employees also are helping themselves to goods they haven't paid for.
The world's largest retailer is saying little about these kinds of thefts, but its recent public disclosures that it is experiencing an increase in so-called shrinkage at its U.S. stores suggests that inventory losses due to shoplifting, employee theft, paperwork errors and supplier fraud could be worsening.
The hit is likely to rise to more than $3 billion this year for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which generated sales of $348.6 billion last year, according to retail consultant Burt Flickinger III.
Flickinger and other analysts say the increase in theft may be tied to Wal-Mart's highly publicized decision last year to no longer prosecute minor cases of shoplifting in order to focus on organized shoplifting rings. Former employees also say staffing levels, including security personnel, have been reduced, making it easier for theft to occur. And a union-backed group critical of the retailer's personnel policies contends general worker discontent is playing a role.
Wal-Mart declined to offer any explanations for the rise in losses, but denied it has cut security staff and said employee morale is rising rather than falling.
Although Wal-Mart declined to reveal any details, analysts suspect Wal-Mart -- which for years had a theft loss rate that was half that of its peers -- is getting closer to the industrywide average. Theft is a big problem for all retailers, costing them $41.6 billion last year, according to a joint study released Tuesday by the National Retail Federation and the University of Florida. The study found that the theft rate as a percentage of sales ticked upward slightly to 1.61 percent of sales in 2006 from 1.60 percent in 2005.
Whatever the cause, such theft -- which late founder Sam Walton once called one of retailers' top profit killers -- adds one more challenge when Wal-Mart is already struggling with sluggish sales at its established stores due to an overall economic slowdown as well as its own stumbles in its home and apparel merchandising strategies.
Eduardo Castro-Wright, president and CEO of Wal-Mart's U.S. store division, briefly acknowledged the theft problem in a mid-May conference call with analysts. He cited shrinkage as well as increased markdowns and higher inventory for dragging down first-quarter profit margins.
"We are concerned about shrinkage and are investigating the cause and are taking steps to correct it," Castro-Wright said. Company officials won't comment on those countermeasures.
The company also said in a June 1 filing with federal securities regulators that the gross profit margin for its Wal-Mart Stores segment fell by 0.1 percentage points in the first quarter due in part to "higher inventory shrinkage."
John Simley, a Wal-Mart spokesman, declined to elaborate. He would say only that the company's theft losses as a percentage of sales is "better than our industry peer groups."
Analysts say it's significant that the company has publicly disclosed that theft is becoming a problem. "It is getting to the point of being material," said Richard Hastings, vice president and senior retail sector analyst at Bernard Sands. Securities regulations require companies to alert shareholders to significant corporate developments that could affect the value of their holdings.
Such pilferage as a percentage of sales has been declining since the mid-1990s as retailers have invested in new technology such as closed circuit TVs, according to Richard Hollinger, professor of criminology at the University of Florida.
About 47 percent of the dollars lost came from employee theft, while shoplifting accounted for about 32 percent, according to the National Retail Federation report. Administrative errors account for 14 percent, while supplier fraud accounts for 4 percent. The remaining 3 percent is unaccounted for.
In one of the more brazen employee thefts, a man wearing dark clothing and a ski mask entered a Port Clinton, Ohio, Wal-Mart store in January at midnight unnoticed by employees and stole $45,000 from the store safe. The store's night manager, Dana Walker, 30, was later arrested for the crime. He became a suspect because he knew the combination to the safe, police said.
The company's vociferous critic WakeUpWalMart.com, funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers which has for years tried to organize the retailer's workers, publicized the company's decision last year to relax its zero-tolerance policy on shoplifting. The new policy seeks prosecutions of first-time offenders only if they are between ages 18 to 65 and steal at least $25 worth of merchandise.
That change may have emboldened some folks to shoplift, said Mark Doyle, president of Jack L. Hayes International, a retail consultancy on loss prevention.
WakeUpWalMart.com and some former employees said Wal-Mart may also have been trying to appease complaints by some police departments that its stores tied up police with too many shoplifting calls. Wal-Mart has denied that.
Wal-Mart also may have been spooked by worries about lawsuits from wrongful death, unlawful imprisonment and other legal issues related to aggressively chasing down shoplifters. In March, Wal-Mart agreed to pay $750,000 to the family of a suspected shoplifter who suffocated to death as loss prevention workers held him down in a parking lot outside a store in Atascocita, Texas. The shoplifter died in August 2005 in a parking lot, according to published reports.
The change in policy came at the same time the company began using more part-time workers -- in part because of a new scheduling system that matches staffing more closely to peak shopping hours -- and shifting security personnel, analysts and critics say. That has left the discount chain without an experienced and loyal staff to monitor what's strolling out its back and front doors, analysts and some former employees supplied by WakeUpWalMart.com said.
"The business is being run by bean counters. I am shocked at the Spartan level of staffing," said Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resources Group. He added, "There are also morale issues. Workers feel that the company is taking care of itself."
While Wal-Mart denies that it has cut anti-theft jobs overall, it said it has adjusted staffing to put more personnel in stores in high-crime areas and fewer in stores with less trouble.
However, Dan Meyer, a former district loss prevention supervisor for several Wal-Mart stores in New Jersey, disputes that. Meyer, who said he accepted a buyout last fall after almost 12 years with the company, said Wal-Mart reduced the number of loss prevention staff in each store last year and redesigned their jobs in a way that was less active and more administrative.
"That's why shrinkage is up," he said.
Meyer said he averaged 13 apprehensions a month during most of his time at Wal-Mart. That number dropped to three to four a month in the months before he left last October. Meyer said his totals dropped because there were fewer security staff and less support from his managers for aggressively rooting out theft.
WakeUpWalMart.com has linked rising theft to its claims that the company offers skimpy pay and benefits. Wal-Mart also faces a class-action lawsuit alleging female workers were passed over for men in pay and promotions.
"I am not the type to steal, but because we are so mistreated, when I saw things I just didn't do anything," said Gina Tuley, a former Wal-Mart bakery worker, who quit her job at the Seagoville, Texas, store in March. A big complaint was that her hours had been cut, reducing her take-home pay.
Wal-Mart defends its pay as competitive and its health care coverage as better than most retailers, and has denied gender discrimination.
Simley said an April survey of employees that showed rising job satisfaction suggests Tuley's attitude does not represent most Wal-Mart associates.
Even so, several former associates said in interviews that their bonuses have declined because of the rise in inventory losses. Wal-Mart's Simley disputes these claims, saying theft reduction was dropped from the bonus formula about a dozen years ago. It was Walton's idea to tie associates' bonuses to their stores' pilferage levels to give them a vested interest in keeping theft in check.
Tuley said her bonus last year was $300, down from $800 the previous year.
Still, she said, "People would walk out with bags of merchandise ... I heard the alarms go off and people wouldn't even look," she added.
Business Writer Marcus Kabel contributed reporting for this story from Springfield, Mo.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Gay Straight Karma
Hey Folks -
Here's the first part of an article printed in its entirety farther below:
SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian hotel popular with gay men has won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals and lesbians, officials and the owner said Monday.
Now, I'm not for exclusion; and while I understand the desire to freely be oneself without putting up with people who aren't open and accepting, I don't think separation is a satisfactory solution (and, for me, the "I don't care about heterosexuals or lesbians" attitude of the hotel owner is too close to the attitude of many who discriminate against gays).
However, having said that, I'm glad this has happened.
For some time now I've argued that if homosexual marriage could be outlawed by a majority vote of a state's citizens, then heterosexual marriage could be outlawed by the same method. Places like Wyoming and North Dakota, among others, have small populations. If enough gays relocated there, the tables could be turned.
Of course, that's only "on paper" or "on a logical basis," and when has legal precedence or logic overcome prejudice and fear? My brother, the lawyer said, quite rightly I believe, that if gays were able to gain a majority and pass such a law, it would be declared unconstitutional. Australia must be a bit different than its American cousin.
In any case, perhaps this development down under will goad more people into recognizing the impropriety of discriminating against any group of people - and if they won't come to their senses on the basis of open-minded brotherhood, then maybe on the basis of "what goes around comes around."
- Uke Man
Gay Aussie hotel wins right to ban heterosexuals, lesbians
by Justine Pellegrino Mon May 28, 5:26 AM ET
SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian hotel popular with gay men has won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals and lesbians, officials and the owner said Monday.
The Peel Hotel in Melbourne won an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to prevent insults and abuse directed toward gays in its bars and nightclubs, owner Tom McFeely told AFP.
"The hotel predominantly markets itself towards homosexual males, towards gay men and we want to protect the integrity of the venue as well as continue to make the men feel comfortable," McFeely said.
"When large numbers of heterosexuals or even lesbians are in the hotel that changes the atmosphere and many gay men can feel uncomfortable."
The landmark decision by a civil tribunal gives the establishment -- which does not offer accommodation -- the right to refuse entry to people considered a threat to the safety and comfort of its patrons.
Helen Szoke, the chief executive of the Victoria state government's Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, said the Peel Hotel's gay clientele had experienced harassment, hostility and violence.
"(They) also have felt as though they've been like a zoo exhibit with big groups of women on hens' parties coming to the club," she said.
McFeely said his aim was not to ban all straight patrons and lesbians but to limit their numbers so gay men could freely express their sexuality.
He said he expected a backlash from other patrons, but added: "I'm not worried about it because to be frank I don't really care what heterosexuals or lesbians think.
"My main motivation is to protect my gay male customers and I realise heterosexuals and lesbians may be upset. but I don't care about that.
"We are open at 8.00pm and we go all the way through till the morning. We have two dancefloors -- it is a nightclub environment."
McFeely said it would be easy to sort out desirable gays from undesirable straights and lesbians.
"It is particularly easy to implement with the females 'cause that is pretty obvious.
"With the heterosexual males, if they identify themselves as that at the door, or indeed we question their behaviour in the venue and if they come across as being heterosexual, then we will simply ask them to leave if the behaviour is unappropriate."
Human rights group Liberty Victoria supported the decision, vice-president Michael Pearce said.
"There are numerous places where heterosexual people can go," he said.
"I think what (the tribunal) has said is that there aren't that many places where gay people can go and meet without the risk of being harassed or vilified, and that they are entitled to have their own spaces to do that in."
Here's the first part of an article printed in its entirety farther below:
SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian hotel popular with gay men has won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals and lesbians, officials and the owner said Monday.
Now, I'm not for exclusion; and while I understand the desire to freely be oneself without putting up with people who aren't open and accepting, I don't think separation is a satisfactory solution (and, for me, the "I don't care about heterosexuals or lesbians" attitude of the hotel owner is too close to the attitude of many who discriminate against gays).
However, having said that, I'm glad this has happened.
For some time now I've argued that if homosexual marriage could be outlawed by a majority vote of a state's citizens, then heterosexual marriage could be outlawed by the same method. Places like Wyoming and North Dakota, among others, have small populations. If enough gays relocated there, the tables could be turned.
Of course, that's only "on paper" or "on a logical basis," and when has legal precedence or logic overcome prejudice and fear? My brother, the lawyer said, quite rightly I believe, that if gays were able to gain a majority and pass such a law, it would be declared unconstitutional. Australia must be a bit different than its American cousin.
In any case, perhaps this development down under will goad more people into recognizing the impropriety of discriminating against any group of people - and if they won't come to their senses on the basis of open-minded brotherhood, then maybe on the basis of "what goes around comes around."
- Uke Man
Gay Aussie hotel wins right to ban heterosexuals, lesbians
by Justine Pellegrino Mon May 28, 5:26 AM ET
SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian hotel popular with gay men has won the right to refuse entry to heterosexuals and lesbians, officials and the owner said Monday.
The Peel Hotel in Melbourne won an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act to prevent insults and abuse directed toward gays in its bars and nightclubs, owner Tom McFeely told AFP.
"The hotel predominantly markets itself towards homosexual males, towards gay men and we want to protect the integrity of the venue as well as continue to make the men feel comfortable," McFeely said.
"When large numbers of heterosexuals or even lesbians are in the hotel that changes the atmosphere and many gay men can feel uncomfortable."
The landmark decision by a civil tribunal gives the establishment -- which does not offer accommodation -- the right to refuse entry to people considered a threat to the safety and comfort of its patrons.
Helen Szoke, the chief executive of the Victoria state government's Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, said the Peel Hotel's gay clientele had experienced harassment, hostility and violence.
"(They) also have felt as though they've been like a zoo exhibit with big groups of women on hens' parties coming to the club," she said.
McFeely said his aim was not to ban all straight patrons and lesbians but to limit their numbers so gay men could freely express their sexuality.
He said he expected a backlash from other patrons, but added: "I'm not worried about it because to be frank I don't really care what heterosexuals or lesbians think.
"My main motivation is to protect my gay male customers and I realise heterosexuals and lesbians may be upset. but I don't care about that.
"We are open at 8.00pm and we go all the way through till the morning. We have two dancefloors -- it is a nightclub environment."
McFeely said it would be easy to sort out desirable gays from undesirable straights and lesbians.
"It is particularly easy to implement with the females 'cause that is pretty obvious.
"With the heterosexual males, if they identify themselves as that at the door, or indeed we question their behaviour in the venue and if they come across as being heterosexual, then we will simply ask them to leave if the behaviour is unappropriate."
Human rights group Liberty Victoria supported the decision, vice-president Michael Pearce said.
"There are numerous places where heterosexual people can go," he said.
"I think what (the tribunal) has said is that there aren't that many places where gay people can go and meet without the risk of being harassed or vilified, and that they are entitled to have their own spaces to do that in."
Monday, June 25, 2007
Which is worse? The venal lies they feed us? Or our docilely making a meal of them? We'll throw up eventually, don't you think!!?? - Maybe not...
Hey Folks -
Here's the rant from Circus of Cool at Comfest. It seemed to be well-received. It does best if read in time with a slow, dark jazz piece - such as "Monk's Mood."
- Uke Man
I’ve lived a while – long enough
And it’s lookin’ like this place that looked so great
is a dollar short – and a day or two late..
If I’d known that,
I’d’ve lived a wilder life,
Mr. Eubie Blake.
Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing.
That’s why they never tell the kids what’s what;
They’d lose it, and quit shopping
Like there really WAS no tomorrow and
The credit card really WAS a shark.
No … can’t tell the kids.
They wouldn’t believe it anyway.
What with everyday low prices at Wal-Mart
There’s stuff that needs to be owned.
NEEDS to be owned.
Here, in W’s OWNER SHIP society !!
Oh, Captain, my Captain!!
The Owner Ship,
She’s runnin’ on impulse power, Cap’n.
The dilithium crystals are … DEAD.
And in the armory on the hill
Where the Shining City sits,
The American dream is dead
Killed by stupid, greedy shits.
Ronald Reagan’s dead
and I don’t care
And asshole Milton Friedman’s there!!
Hovering in the fog and filthy air.
And round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The USA has seen its day.
And as Malcolm would say
The chickens are roosting;
There’s hell to pay
And no amount of smashing queers
and single moms and brothers with the mark of Cain
Will EVER make your kingdom-come again.
The dilithium crystals are DEAD.
And in the armory on the hill where
The Shining City sits,
The American dream is DEAD
And flown
And round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, the lone
and level sands stretch far away.
Here's the rant from Circus of Cool at Comfest. It seemed to be well-received. It does best if read in time with a slow, dark jazz piece - such as "Monk's Mood."
- Uke Man
I’ve lived a while – long enough
And it’s lookin’ like this place that looked so great
is a dollar short – and a day or two late..
If I’d known that,
I’d’ve lived a wilder life,
Mr. Eubie Blake.
Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing.
That’s why they never tell the kids what’s what;
They’d lose it, and quit shopping
Like there really WAS no tomorrow and
The credit card really WAS a shark.
No … can’t tell the kids.
They wouldn’t believe it anyway.
What with everyday low prices at Wal-Mart
There’s stuff that needs to be owned.
NEEDS to be owned.
Here, in W’s OWNER SHIP society !!
Oh, Captain, my Captain!!
The Owner Ship,
She’s runnin’ on impulse power, Cap’n.
The dilithium crystals are … DEAD.
And in the armory on the hill
Where the Shining City sits,
The American dream is dead
Killed by stupid, greedy shits.
Ronald Reagan’s dead
and I don’t care
And asshole Milton Friedman’s there!!
Hovering in the fog and filthy air.
And round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The USA has seen its day.
And as Malcolm would say
The chickens are roosting;
There’s hell to pay
And no amount of smashing queers
and single moms and brothers with the mark of Cain
Will EVER make your kingdom-come again.
The dilithium crystals are DEAD.
And in the armory on the hill where
The Shining City sits,
The American dream is DEAD
And flown
And round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, the lone
and level sands stretch far away.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Do unto others - with God on your side
Hey Folks,
It's difficult for me to think anybody could embrace "American Exceptionalism" (the notion that this land was ordained by God as a moral beacon - slavery notwithstandin). But apparently it is a fantasy clutched firmly to the bosom of many or most Americans.
Check out this NPR commentary on the topic:
http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/popup.php?id=10659960&type=1&date=02-Jun-2007&au=1&pid=31612441&random=5164561260&guid=0009EC9736C6058F5E02519761626364&uaType=WM,RM&aaType=RM,WM&upf=Win32&topicName=Opinion&subtopicName=Commentary&prgCode=WESAT&hubId=-1&thingId=10659959&tableModifier=&mtype=RM
- Uke Man
It's difficult for me to think anybody could embrace "American Exceptionalism" (the notion that this land was ordained by God as a moral beacon - slavery notwithstandin). But apparently it is a fantasy clutched firmly to the bosom of many or most Americans.
Check out this NPR commentary on the topic:
http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/popup.php?id=10659960&type=1&date=02-Jun-2007&au=1&pid=31612441&random=5164561260&guid=0009EC9736C6058F5E02519761626364&uaType=WM,RM&aaType=RM,WM&upf=Win32&topicName=Opinion&subtopicName=Commentary&prgCode=WESAT&hubId=-1&thingId=10659959&tableModifier=&mtype=RM
- Uke Man
Friday, June 22, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
COMFEST TIME !!
Hey Folks,
It's COMFEST TIME - this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday !!! It's something !! Check it out!!
Here's the Show Schedule: http://www.comfest.com/schedule.htm
And here's the Welcome by Steve Abbott, from the Program; it tells it like it is!!! Check it out, and come by and be a part of it.
- Uke Man
Welcome to the
2007 Community Festival!
It’s a place and time where you can kick back for a few hours or three full days, soaking up the vibe of an enviable exercise in participatory democracy.
Volunteer committees work for most of each year to attend to the thousand details involved in making this annual event come true: organize vendors, seek out and schedule bands, arrange permits, organize activities for children, collect ads, produce a program, and contract for a range of services ranging from safety and sanitation to utilities and sound. And this isn’t half of it. It’s a big job, but to celebrate the ideals that shaped the first ComFest in 1972, it’s worth it.
Who is ignorant of the past remains forever a child. —Cicero
The spirit that produced that ramshackle street party was shaped by the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s, the antiwar movement of the ‘60s and early ‘70s, and the success of the first Earth Day in 1970, when over 20 million people nationwide participated in actions demonstrating that people wanted their "leaders" to take action on environmental issues. Those grass-roots efforts showed that everyday people, working together, could not only stimulate political action but improve social relationships as well.
The first ComFest took shape when a handful of political hippies who had already formed, among other things, a free medical clinic, a food co-op, a tenants union and an alternative newspaper, pulled off a big street party at the convergence of East 16th and Waldeck Avenues in the OSU area. OK, it was a couple of street barricades, a bunch of card tables staffed by service groups, a few children’s activities, four beer taps, some great local bands, and regular and high-test brownies at the Yippie table.
That first festival was tense. On opening morning, police arrested several community antiwar leaders, including a few ComFest organizers, and they were hunting down others. They swept through the festival area hoping to locate them. Released on bail, one returned to 16th Avenue, took the stage and urged the crowd to continue its resistance to the war.
The communal work that brought that two-day event together produced a festival celebrating a form of "extended-family values." People with similar interests, but doing different things, united around a common belief: Everybody does better when everybody does better.
The following year’s ComFest had a lot more booths and a lot more people. The early video production group Datagang gave people the opportunity to experiment with video equipment and techniques. Saturday night ended with a transcendent set by the incomparable Rahsaan Roland Kirk—the Columbus native and jazz innovator’s last show in the city—and the crowd dancing to the refrain of "Volunteered Slavery."
Thirty-five years on, cooperative progressive values are imbedded in the principles of ComFest (on page 9). ComFest volunteers believe that, to the greatest extent possible, people should control the decisions and the tools that shape their lives. Within ComFest, the larger decisions are made by the group in open meetings. Smaller decisions are reviewed by the entire group. The entire process is guided by the bylaws of the not-for-profit organization created to ensure ComFest’s continued operation.
You might say, "So what?" It’s a fair question, especially in a culture and political system that tout freedom as the ultimate value. But the difference between what they say and how they operate challenges the very spirit that formed and fostered this incredible event.
They do everything possible to shackle us to things. The consumption-driven demands
of a capitalist system ignore the organic elements of life on this planet. The legal requirements that corporations maximize profits for investors do not consider the harm that occurs in the relentless drive to increase financial wealth. When every resource, human and natural, is treated as a tool in the service of material acquisition, the true value of each is diminished.
You say it’s money that you need
As if we’re only mouths to feed —The Arcade Fire, "Intervention"
Our economic and political systems, whatever advantages they offer us, sell freedom with a hidden price: an expectation that we become passive observers to the exercise of real power. The wealthy believe we should participate economically but not politically, that we should channel our energies—our ability to influence the forces that shape our lives—into the purchase of things that give us the illusion of control.
So we seek bigger houses/vehicles/ TVs and smaller computers/cell phones, lots of gadgets we can manipulate at will. And not surprisingly, our focus on diversions further isolates us, physically and psychologically, from others.
MTV, what have you done to me? —The Arcade Fire, "The Well and the Lighthouse"
We’re not unaware of our powerlessness. We vote to bring troops home from an unnecessary and disastrous war, but our leaders ignore us or waffle on decisive action. We agree that the health care system is broken, but our leaders cringe before the insurance cartel. We sit gridlocked in traffic and oil prices continue to climb, but our leaders keep their faces pressed to the cowboy boots of their petroleum pals and mumble that alternatives aren’t cost efficient. We complain about all of this to each other, but we flounder in our dissatisfaction.
You take what they give you
And you keep it inside —The Arcade Fire, "Intervention"
But rather than confronting those responsible, or uniting and channeling that frustration into political organizing and action that will call those responsible to act in our interests, we distract ourselves with entertainments and turn the anger on each other. To escape our sense of powerlessness, we numb ourselves with "reality" TV and the soulless envy created by celebrity culture. Told we are free, we pretend that our freedom to consume and to bury ourselves in bling and trinkets will make us feel better.
ComFest has survived in the face of cultural and political forces that every day gravitate against our collective welfare. In putting this annual party together, we reassert the belief that together we can produce decent jobs and fair wages, health care that cares for everyone, housing that is affordable, peaceful relationships with others, and food that doesn’t undermine our health. We believe that self-interest is best realized through what’s in everyone’s interests. And we believe that it’s valuable to celebrate struggles and successes.
Between our primitive survival instincts and a relentless drumbeat of advertising and empty political rhetoric, we don’t need any encouragement to think only of ourselves. What we need is recognition of our common humanity and the inescapable fact that we are all linked inextricably. Our shared effort produces a commonwealth.
We believe in things
We’re told we can not change
Why shouldn’t we?
Why shouldn’t we? —Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Why Shouldn’t We"
Ultimately, ComFest is as much an idea as it is a place and event, a way of seeing what can be when people decide to abandon fear, embrace hope, and work together. It’s a vital and vibrant idea, one that says today you can kick back, relax, soak up the sun and good vibes, and dream a little. Each of us contains seeds of change. Plant, them, nurture them, and bring their possibility to reality. Make something happen. And then come back here next year and celebrate it. That’s worth looking forward to.
—Steve Abbott
It's COMFEST TIME - this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday !!! It's something !! Check it out!!
Here's the Show Schedule: http://www.comfest.com/schedule.htm
And here's the Welcome by Steve Abbott, from the Program; it tells it like it is!!! Check it out, and come by and be a part of it.
- Uke Man
Welcome to the
2007 Community Festival!
It’s a place and time where you can kick back for a few hours or three full days, soaking up the vibe of an enviable exercise in participatory democracy.
Volunteer committees work for most of each year to attend to the thousand details involved in making this annual event come true: organize vendors, seek out and schedule bands, arrange permits, organize activities for children, collect ads, produce a program, and contract for a range of services ranging from safety and sanitation to utilities and sound. And this isn’t half of it. It’s a big job, but to celebrate the ideals that shaped the first ComFest in 1972, it’s worth it.
Who is ignorant of the past remains forever a child. —Cicero
The spirit that produced that ramshackle street party was shaped by the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s, the antiwar movement of the ‘60s and early ‘70s, and the success of the first Earth Day in 1970, when over 20 million people nationwide participated in actions demonstrating that people wanted their "leaders" to take action on environmental issues. Those grass-roots efforts showed that everyday people, working together, could not only stimulate political action but improve social relationships as well.
The first ComFest took shape when a handful of political hippies who had already formed, among other things, a free medical clinic, a food co-op, a tenants union and an alternative newspaper, pulled off a big street party at the convergence of East 16th and Waldeck Avenues in the OSU area. OK, it was a couple of street barricades, a bunch of card tables staffed by service groups, a few children’s activities, four beer taps, some great local bands, and regular and high-test brownies at the Yippie table.
That first festival was tense. On opening morning, police arrested several community antiwar leaders, including a few ComFest organizers, and they were hunting down others. They swept through the festival area hoping to locate them. Released on bail, one returned to 16th Avenue, took the stage and urged the crowd to continue its resistance to the war.
The communal work that brought that two-day event together produced a festival celebrating a form of "extended-family values." People with similar interests, but doing different things, united around a common belief: Everybody does better when everybody does better.
The following year’s ComFest had a lot more booths and a lot more people. The early video production group Datagang gave people the opportunity to experiment with video equipment and techniques. Saturday night ended with a transcendent set by the incomparable Rahsaan Roland Kirk—the Columbus native and jazz innovator’s last show in the city—and the crowd dancing to the refrain of "Volunteered Slavery."
Thirty-five years on, cooperative progressive values are imbedded in the principles of ComFest (on page 9). ComFest volunteers believe that, to the greatest extent possible, people should control the decisions and the tools that shape their lives. Within ComFest, the larger decisions are made by the group in open meetings. Smaller decisions are reviewed by the entire group. The entire process is guided by the bylaws of the not-for-profit organization created to ensure ComFest’s continued operation.
You might say, "So what?" It’s a fair question, especially in a culture and political system that tout freedom as the ultimate value. But the difference between what they say and how they operate challenges the very spirit that formed and fostered this incredible event.
They do everything possible to shackle us to things. The consumption-driven demands
of a capitalist system ignore the organic elements of life on this planet. The legal requirements that corporations maximize profits for investors do not consider the harm that occurs in the relentless drive to increase financial wealth. When every resource, human and natural, is treated as a tool in the service of material acquisition, the true value of each is diminished.
You say it’s money that you need
As if we’re only mouths to feed —The Arcade Fire, "Intervention"
Our economic and political systems, whatever advantages they offer us, sell freedom with a hidden price: an expectation that we become passive observers to the exercise of real power. The wealthy believe we should participate economically but not politically, that we should channel our energies—our ability to influence the forces that shape our lives—into the purchase of things that give us the illusion of control.
So we seek bigger houses/vehicles/ TVs and smaller computers/cell phones, lots of gadgets we can manipulate at will. And not surprisingly, our focus on diversions further isolates us, physically and psychologically, from others.
MTV, what have you done to me? —The Arcade Fire, "The Well and the Lighthouse"
We’re not unaware of our powerlessness. We vote to bring troops home from an unnecessary and disastrous war, but our leaders ignore us or waffle on decisive action. We agree that the health care system is broken, but our leaders cringe before the insurance cartel. We sit gridlocked in traffic and oil prices continue to climb, but our leaders keep their faces pressed to the cowboy boots of their petroleum pals and mumble that alternatives aren’t cost efficient. We complain about all of this to each other, but we flounder in our dissatisfaction.
You take what they give you
And you keep it inside —The Arcade Fire, "Intervention"
But rather than confronting those responsible, or uniting and channeling that frustration into political organizing and action that will call those responsible to act in our interests, we distract ourselves with entertainments and turn the anger on each other. To escape our sense of powerlessness, we numb ourselves with "reality" TV and the soulless envy created by celebrity culture. Told we are free, we pretend that our freedom to consume and to bury ourselves in bling and trinkets will make us feel better.
ComFest has survived in the face of cultural and political forces that every day gravitate against our collective welfare. In putting this annual party together, we reassert the belief that together we can produce decent jobs and fair wages, health care that cares for everyone, housing that is affordable, peaceful relationships with others, and food that doesn’t undermine our health. We believe that self-interest is best realized through what’s in everyone’s interests. And we believe that it’s valuable to celebrate struggles and successes.
Between our primitive survival instincts and a relentless drumbeat of advertising and empty political rhetoric, we don’t need any encouragement to think only of ourselves. What we need is recognition of our common humanity and the inescapable fact that we are all linked inextricably. Our shared effort produces a commonwealth.
We believe in things
We’re told we can not change
Why shouldn’t we?
Why shouldn’t we? —Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Why Shouldn’t We"
Ultimately, ComFest is as much an idea as it is a place and event, a way of seeing what can be when people decide to abandon fear, embrace hope, and work together. It’s a vital and vibrant idea, one that says today you can kick back, relax, soak up the sun and good vibes, and dream a little. Each of us contains seeds of change. Plant, them, nurture them, and bring their possibility to reality. Make something happen. And then come back here next year and celebrate it. That’s worth looking forward to.
—Steve Abbott
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Winnie the Gate-Keeper, "Treat 'em like mushrooms."
As a journalist (gate keeper) in South Africa, Churchill said that it would be terrible to report British troops had been defeated in a battle when actually they hadn't; but that it would be even worse to report a British defeat that HAD occurred. So much for trusting in the "Gate-Keepers."Blogs and Joe Hallett
Hey Folks -
A while back Joe Hallett wrote a column in the Columbus Dispatch knocking blogs. More recently on NPR an author harped on the danger of the internet; it's undercutting the authority of "mainstream media" our culture's "gate keepers," he says; and he trusts the gate keepers (like the Columbus Dispatch) to tell us what we need to know. That's good enough; we don't need to be confused by know-nothing web-talkers like me.
Well, if one believes that the major networks, Fox, CNN, PBS; clear channel talk, NPR, and conservative to moderate-right newspapers/news services are all we need, fine. But that doesn't make it for me.
Listen to the NPR story at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11131872
Part of Mr. Hallett's column follows my Open Letter to him below.
- Uke Man
Dear Mr. Hallett,
I haven’t studied blogs (I haven’t made an effort to talk with blogmakers), but I nevertheless feel qualified to suggest a few things.
1. I believe you are right about numbers of readers on individual blogs being relatively small, but if you add all the readers of blogs that offer views divergent from the status quo Republicrat or Demican or Businessprenure "lines" presented in the “mainstream” press, the disparity narrows.
2. I’m not precisely sure of what you meant by “get their politics,” but it could imply that readers simply read and incorporate whatever the media feeds them. And presently they get much more of their mind-washing (their "politics"?) from the newspapers rather than blogs.
Newspapers and blogs can both be used that way, but I think it’s actually radio and TV that do the lion’s share of feeding the uncritical what they are supposed to think. Such a function, whoever provides it, is not an honorable activity, however – not in a democracy. Moreover, the traditional media isn't necessarily to be trusted anymore than blogs.
3. If, instead you meant getting (first hand) and reporting factual information relevant to politics, then certainly most blogs don’t do that. That doesn’t mean, however, that blogs “are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs.”
Everyone is an ideologue (whether they know it or not). I went to the two sites you held up as better blogs. Both are clearly ideological. The Dispatch is ideological. Maybe the editorial board at your paper would claim that they allow their reporters complete freedom to dig independently into anything, find the facts and report them and their meaning without political consideration (i.e. without "twisting" anything). I can’t believe, however, that any newspaper does that. I don't see how ANYONE can honestly think so.
So, we come to the real point and value of blogs (and, at the same time, the largest threat to the status quo). Most blogs are not created to pursue investigative reporting. They exist to give people a chance to publish INTERPRETATIONS of the facts presented by the “mainstream” media (and others); interpretations that do not appear in the mainstream. That is what motivates bloggers, and what frightens those whom Dispatch editorialists have, for years, called “opinion makers.”
As with the invention of the printing press and the contemporaneous Protestant Revolution, blogs are revolutionary. The people cannot be kept as quiet as before; they cannot be as easily guided by the mysterious priests with their secret, authoritative understanding of the truth inscribed in a Latinate Bible (unintelligible to the common man) nor can they be as easily guided by the official "politics" handed down by the culturally designated "opinion makers" (who are supposedly to be taken as gospel ??). The official line and talking points of those with the capital to own and propagate them have less of a monopoly; Blogging gives the people the means to “publish” their own truths without having to get past the "gate keepers."
Don’t think so? Why then does China insist on controlling the net? Why have our troops been ordered to stop blogging? Hmmmmmmmmmm . . .
Moreover, the fact that I and other bloggers don’t do hands-on investigative reporting has no bearing on the value of what we publish. As you know, before we went to war, based upon the “facts” we all had studied, I urged the Dispatch to oppose the war. Based on those same “facts,” the Dispatch decided to support going to war. I rest my case.
I hope you will reconsider your view of blogs. There are, as with everything, negative aspects, but I don’t believe that all of your recent criticisms are valid.
Yours - Tom Harker
From your column:
"On the matter of political blogs, Schultz and I were in lockstep. Their importance is overblown and their readership, although growing, still is a fraction of those readers who rely on newspapers to get their politics.
Little original reporting comes from political blogs. Exceptions in Ohio include rightangleblog.com and its counterpart on the liberal side, buckeyestateblog.com, whose authors at least make an effort to talk with newsmakers. Mostly, though, political blogs are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs such as www.dispatch.com/politics."
A while back Joe Hallett wrote a column in the Columbus Dispatch knocking blogs. More recently on NPR an author harped on the danger of the internet; it's undercutting the authority of "mainstream media" our culture's "gate keepers," he says; and he trusts the gate keepers (like the Columbus Dispatch) to tell us what we need to know. That's good enough; we don't need to be confused by know-nothing web-talkers like me.
Well, if one believes that the major networks, Fox, CNN, PBS; clear channel talk, NPR, and conservative to moderate-right newspapers/news services are all we need, fine. But that doesn't make it for me.
Listen to the NPR story at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11131872
Part of Mr. Hallett's column follows my Open Letter to him below.
- Uke Man
Dear Mr. Hallett,
I haven’t studied blogs (I haven’t made an effort to talk with blogmakers), but I nevertheless feel qualified to suggest a few things.
1. I believe you are right about numbers of readers on individual blogs being relatively small, but if you add all the readers of blogs that offer views divergent from the status quo Republicrat or Demican or Businessprenure "lines" presented in the “mainstream” press, the disparity narrows.
2. I’m not precisely sure of what you meant by “get their politics,” but it could imply that readers simply read and incorporate whatever the media feeds them. And presently they get much more of their mind-washing (their "politics"?) from the newspapers rather than blogs.
Newspapers and blogs can both be used that way, but I think it’s actually radio and TV that do the lion’s share of feeding the uncritical what they are supposed to think. Such a function, whoever provides it, is not an honorable activity, however – not in a democracy. Moreover, the traditional media isn't necessarily to be trusted anymore than blogs.
3. If, instead you meant getting (first hand) and reporting factual information relevant to politics, then certainly most blogs don’t do that. That doesn’t mean, however, that blogs “are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs.”
Everyone is an ideologue (whether they know it or not). I went to the two sites you held up as better blogs. Both are clearly ideological. The Dispatch is ideological. Maybe the editorial board at your paper would claim that they allow their reporters complete freedom to dig independently into anything, find the facts and report them and their meaning without political consideration (i.e. without "twisting" anything). I can’t believe, however, that any newspaper does that. I don't see how ANYONE can honestly think so.
So, we come to the real point and value of blogs (and, at the same time, the largest threat to the status quo). Most blogs are not created to pursue investigative reporting. They exist to give people a chance to publish INTERPRETATIONS of the facts presented by the “mainstream” media (and others); interpretations that do not appear in the mainstream. That is what motivates bloggers, and what frightens those whom Dispatch editorialists have, for years, called “opinion makers.”
As with the invention of the printing press and the contemporaneous Protestant Revolution, blogs are revolutionary. The people cannot be kept as quiet as before; they cannot be as easily guided by the mysterious priests with their secret, authoritative understanding of the truth inscribed in a Latinate Bible (unintelligible to the common man) nor can they be as easily guided by the official "politics" handed down by the culturally designated "opinion makers" (who are supposedly to be taken as gospel ??). The official line and talking points of those with the capital to own and propagate them have less of a monopoly; Blogging gives the people the means to “publish” their own truths without having to get past the "gate keepers."
Don’t think so? Why then does China insist on controlling the net? Why have our troops been ordered to stop blogging? Hmmmmmmmmmm . . .
Moreover, the fact that I and other bloggers don’t do hands-on investigative reporting has no bearing on the value of what we publish. As you know, before we went to war, based upon the “facts” we all had studied, I urged the Dispatch to oppose the war. Based on those same “facts,” the Dispatch decided to support going to war. I rest my case.
I hope you will reconsider your view of blogs. There are, as with everything, negative aspects, but I don’t believe that all of your recent criticisms are valid.
Yours - Tom Harker
From your column:
"On the matter of political blogs, Schultz and I were in lockstep. Their importance is overblown and their readership, although growing, still is a fraction of those readers who rely on newspapers to get their politics.
Little original reporting comes from political blogs. Exceptions in Ohio include rightangleblog.com and its counterpart on the liberal side, buckeyestateblog.com, whose authors at least make an effort to talk with newsmakers. Mostly, though, political blogs are echo chambers for ideologues to comment on and twist what they've read in the morning newspaper or on newspaper blogs such as www.dispatch.com/politics."
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
I should have known !!
Hey Folks -
I feel bad. Not long after I posted the article directly below - along with my sarcastic comments - I discovered that poor old Tomoji had been victimized by (who else?) the grubby, "so called" press (the "mainstream" press, the "gate-keeper" we're supposed to trust [as opposed to bloggers who "twist" things- see the forthcoming posting] ).
According to Keith Olbermann, Tomoji - who may have said what Reuters reported - also said that he was "sorry," that he had "lived too long"; a much deeper, human, and perceptive comment than the news service reported.
The comment, however, didn't fit well with the Disneyesque cultural demand for saccharine cheerfulness - forgodssake!! Think of the children!!!
Worse, it undercuts the war on booze and smokes.
Good for Tomoji !!
If I get to Tokyo, I'll buy him a drink.
- Uke Man
I feel bad. Not long after I posted the article directly below - along with my sarcastic comments - I discovered that poor old Tomoji had been victimized by (who else?) the grubby, "so called" press (the "mainstream" press, the "gate-keeper" we're supposed to trust [as opposed to bloggers who "twist" things- see the forthcoming posting] ).
According to Keith Olbermann, Tomoji - who may have said what Reuters reported - also said that he was "sorry," that he had "lived too long"; a much deeper, human, and perceptive comment than the news service reported.
The comment, however, didn't fit well with the Disneyesque cultural demand for saccharine cheerfulness - forgodssake!! Think of the children!!!
Worse, it undercuts the war on booze and smokes.
Good for Tomoji !!
If I get to Tokyo, I'll buy him a drink.
- Uke Man
Monday, June 18, 2007
Ukrainian Shepherd claims it's the nightly sex
Hey Folks -
Isn't it a Queen song that asks, "Who wants to live forever?" Well, Tomoji Tanabe does. I bet he was never in a rock-n-roll band !!! Bet he never read Gulliver's Travels either:
Japanese teetotaller named world's oldest man at 111
Mon Jun 18
TOKYO (Reuters) - An 111-year-old Japanese just named the world's oldest man said he owed his longevity to steering clear of alcohol.
"I don't drink alcohol -- that is the biggest reason for my good health," Tomoji Tanabe told reporters on Monday. He also told media he does not smoke and likes a glass of milk a day.
Asked how much longer he wanted to live, the besuited Tanabe, a former local government worker, said simply: "I don't want to die."
Tanabe, who lives with his 66-year-old son and the son's wife in Miyakonojo, about 900 km (560 miles) southwest of Tokyo on the island of Kyushu, met the city's mayor to receive a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records recognizing him as the oldest man.
But he has some years to go to equal his female compatriot Yone Minagawa, 114, who is listed by Guinness as the world's oldest person and also lives in Kyushu.
A former shepherd in Ukraine, Hyrhory Nestor, also claims that title, saying he celebrated his 116th birthday in March.
The Japanese are among the world's longest-lived people, with 28,395 people aged 100 or above in Japan at the end of September last year, according to the Health Ministry. Researchers have attributed the phenomenon to factors including healthy diet and tight-knit communities.
If you ask someone why they died young, they say nothing - a much wiser explanation than those usually extracted from those achieving super-age.
So, how long before Tomoji's testimonial appears in "The Watchtower" or in MADD pamphlets exhorting temperance? Hell, I bet Tomoji never ate Twinkies, shredded wheat, or oatmeal either, but do we have anyone organizing Mad Mothers Against Oatmeal ??
I bet he never drank Ovaltine either!!
Just because he's old doen't mean he knows why he got there; and it shouldn't be assumed that it's a good thing that he IS there - as Freddie Mercury and Jonathan Swift have pointed out (and as his aged children may have thought as well).
Henny Youngman once said that he'd read a book claiming alcohol was a health threat and that he should give it up! Then he thought of his mother who had lived to the age of 93. She had enjoyed a pint of whisky every day of her life.
So, he quit reading.
I don't figure on living long enough to get my mug on Willard Scott's Smucker Show for Centenarians so I can claim my longevity's the result of worshiping Baal, regular use of marijuana, monthly ingestion of gravel, and obsessive thumb-sucking.
Since that opportunity is unlikely, I'm putting my hope in the Ukrainian shepherd and his sheep.
- Uke Man
Isn't it a Queen song that asks, "Who wants to live forever?" Well, Tomoji Tanabe does. I bet he was never in a rock-n-roll band !!! Bet he never read Gulliver's Travels either:
Japanese teetotaller named world's oldest man at 111
Mon Jun 18
TOKYO (Reuters) - An 111-year-old Japanese just named the world's oldest man said he owed his longevity to steering clear of alcohol.
"I don't drink alcohol -- that is the biggest reason for my good health," Tomoji Tanabe told reporters on Monday. He also told media he does not smoke and likes a glass of milk a day.
Asked how much longer he wanted to live, the besuited Tanabe, a former local government worker, said simply: "I don't want to die."
Tanabe, who lives with his 66-year-old son and the son's wife in Miyakonojo, about 900 km (560 miles) southwest of Tokyo on the island of Kyushu, met the city's mayor to receive a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records recognizing him as the oldest man.
But he has some years to go to equal his female compatriot Yone Minagawa, 114, who is listed by Guinness as the world's oldest person and also lives in Kyushu.
A former shepherd in Ukraine, Hyrhory Nestor, also claims that title, saying he celebrated his 116th birthday in March.
The Japanese are among the world's longest-lived people, with 28,395 people aged 100 or above in Japan at the end of September last year, according to the Health Ministry. Researchers have attributed the phenomenon to factors including healthy diet and tight-knit communities.
If you ask someone why they died young, they say nothing - a much wiser explanation than those usually extracted from those achieving super-age.
So, how long before Tomoji's testimonial appears in "The Watchtower" or in MADD pamphlets exhorting temperance? Hell, I bet Tomoji never ate Twinkies, shredded wheat, or oatmeal either, but do we have anyone organizing Mad Mothers Against Oatmeal ??
I bet he never drank Ovaltine either!!
Just because he's old doen't mean he knows why he got there; and it shouldn't be assumed that it's a good thing that he IS there - as Freddie Mercury and Jonathan Swift have pointed out (and as his aged children may have thought as well).
Henny Youngman once said that he'd read a book claiming alcohol was a health threat and that he should give it up! Then he thought of his mother who had lived to the age of 93. She had enjoyed a pint of whisky every day of her life.
So, he quit reading.
I don't figure on living long enough to get my mug on Willard Scott's Smucker Show for Centenarians so I can claim my longevity's the result of worshiping Baal, regular use of marijuana, monthly ingestion of gravel, and obsessive thumb-sucking.
Since that opportunity is unlikely, I'm putting my hope in the Ukrainian shepherd and his sheep.
- Uke Man
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Pan's Labyrinth
Hey Folks - Real world horror and fantasy – the Spanish Civil War and a fantasy world; fairy tales as a way to understand our difficult reality.
The reality: resisting fascists in 1944, the year I was born, and the failure of the allies to do what was morally required and the gruesome consequences of that.
The fantasy: ugly insect “fairies” in an ugly underworld.
Interesting thoughts on the nature of fantasy as being really no different from religion or politics in the sense that all are “conceits” rather than concrete realities – or that ALL are equally realities, in a non-objective, “spiritual” sense.
“The entire world we live in is fabricated. . . these imagined conceits [that we call “real”] can create such horrors.”
“Monsters were created by mankind to explain the universe around them and when we became civilized, the universe within us.”
"Horror and fantasy saved my brain from this torment [caused by early religious teaching]"
Yes, Folks, this crazy world - the largest part of it - is just a "conceit," a creation of our mind in order to tame the anarchic universe in which we live.
Give a listen to a Fresh Air interview with the creator of "Pan's Labyrinth"!!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10266161
And watch the movie, too!!
- Uke Man
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Father's Day 2007
Hey Folks –
It’s been ten years since my father died. I miss him. He was quite a man.
I knew him before he acquired polio, but I don’t remember him that way. He always walked with crutches and braces as far as I remember. But even so, he was the toughest, strongest, most honest, intelligent, and honorable man I ever knew.
The metal superstructure never slowed him down – no more than did his hat. He worked, drove, enjoyed his pontoon barge, made friends, and helped thousands of the less competent souls around him throughout his life.
Dad didn’t need “help”; he helped others. He helped Grandpa and Grandma (as he had since his youth – Grandpa was a bit of a dreamy idler). When my best school pal’s parents kicked him out, Dad took him in and treated him like his own. When the hotshot father-next-door (supposedly a former “Paratrooper”) was giving me a dose of undeserved shit to show off for his kid, Dad took him on, and ended the brief confrontation by threatening to wrap his crutch around the guy's head (Dad really WAS a WW II Sea Bee; he knew the most efficient way to bend aluminum around anything – craniums included – the “paratrooper” bailed out).
A major thing he did for me – besides providing a broadly extraordinary role model – was to set my mind free. Raised Catholic (Dad converted), I was full of all the fears that all Catholic kids get crammed into their heads at school (at that time, via the Baltimore Catechism).
One time on vacation, visiting Protestant Grandpa and Grandma, on a Friday, Grandma was innocently frying bacon for breakfast. I LOVE bacon, and the aroma was driving me nuts - because it was FRIDAY, and I couldn’t eat meat.
When my Dad figured out why I was agitated (if I ate meat on Friday, it would be a mortal sin, and I’d go to hell), he told me I COULD eat the bacon, and I WOULDN’T go to hell.
Well, there you have it: the Pope on one side and my Dad on the other; delicious bacon on one side and austere doctrine on the other. It was easy. I went with the old man!!
Of course, for a while I suffered occasional pangs of doubt and thoughts of flame, but that was the beginning of the end of thought control for me. As one eighth-grade friend later said to me, “What you need is discipline!!” To which another replied, “They’ll never discipline Harker!!”
I think that last statement is right. It’s been true so far at least, and I owe that to my dad.
Most of what I am I owe to him.
- Uke Man
It’s been ten years since my father died. I miss him. He was quite a man.
I knew him before he acquired polio, but I don’t remember him that way. He always walked with crutches and braces as far as I remember. But even so, he was the toughest, strongest, most honest, intelligent, and honorable man I ever knew.
The metal superstructure never slowed him down – no more than did his hat. He worked, drove, enjoyed his pontoon barge, made friends, and helped thousands of the less competent souls around him throughout his life.
Dad didn’t need “help”; he helped others. He helped Grandpa and Grandma (as he had since his youth – Grandpa was a bit of a dreamy idler). When my best school pal’s parents kicked him out, Dad took him in and treated him like his own. When the hotshot father-next-door (supposedly a former “Paratrooper”) was giving me a dose of undeserved shit to show off for his kid, Dad took him on, and ended the brief confrontation by threatening to wrap his crutch around the guy's head (Dad really WAS a WW II Sea Bee; he knew the most efficient way to bend aluminum around anything – craniums included – the “paratrooper” bailed out).
A major thing he did for me – besides providing a broadly extraordinary role model – was to set my mind free. Raised Catholic (Dad converted), I was full of all the fears that all Catholic kids get crammed into their heads at school (at that time, via the Baltimore Catechism).
One time on vacation, visiting Protestant Grandpa and Grandma, on a Friday, Grandma was innocently frying bacon for breakfast. I LOVE bacon, and the aroma was driving me nuts - because it was FRIDAY, and I couldn’t eat meat.
When my Dad figured out why I was agitated (if I ate meat on Friday, it would be a mortal sin, and I’d go to hell), he told me I COULD eat the bacon, and I WOULDN’T go to hell.
Well, there you have it: the Pope on one side and my Dad on the other; delicious bacon on one side and austere doctrine on the other. It was easy. I went with the old man!!
Of course, for a while I suffered occasional pangs of doubt and thoughts of flame, but that was the beginning of the end of thought control for me. As one eighth-grade friend later said to me, “What you need is discipline!!” To which another replied, “They’ll never discipline Harker!!”
I think that last statement is right. It’s been true so far at least, and I owe that to my dad.
Most of what I am I owe to him.
- Uke Man
Friday, June 15, 2007
Looking for sense in all the wrong places
Hey Folks -
Almost everything we ever hear about education is just so much crap. To understand that, you have to give up any notion you might have that the point of school is to educate children - especially ALL the children.
The goal is in no way to get everyone thinking about and dealing well with the practical, aesthetic, academic, psychological, political, economic, and other realities of life. If one thinks it is, then the columnist's words below, while changing nothing, appear to be sensible commentary. They aren't.
I've placed my comments (in red) here and there within the article.
- Uke Man
HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHERS MISS THE MARK, SAY PROFESSORS
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Columbus Dispatch
By Pat Smith
The American College Testing Program found that two-thirds of professors say students are "poorly" or "very poorly" prepared for college-level work, whereas roughly three-fourths of teachers think students are well-prepared. This charade is not restricted to colleges and high schools. High schools make the same accusations against middle schools and junior highs; which deny the charges while casting them down, in turn, upon the elementary schools.
It seems that everybody would like every student to show up at each and every level performing with Lake Woebegone, above average skills.
The disconnect is substantial in all subjects: Seventy-six percent of high-school English teachers think their students are well-prepared for college work, whereas only 33 percent of professors think so. In reading, the gap is 72 percent to 36 percent; in math, 79 percent vs. 42 percent; and in science, 67 percent vs. 32 percent. In other words, students appear to be no better prepared than those in previous years, despite all the attempts to improve their performance. It is not clear from this article, but it appears that the "data" suggesting that students are not any better prepared is purely anecdotal. Worse, the purported "conclusion" is based solely on the "data" provided by the professors. The conflicting "data" provided by teachers is totally discounted.
Can anyone honestly defend this selective use of the "data"? If it makes sense to take what the professors say as determining, then don't we have to accept the highschool teachers' condemnation of middle/junior high teachers, and then their condemnation of the elementary teachers? And then their condemnation of parents and pre-schools?
All of that is just self-centered scapegoating; none of it is sensible.
One key finding is that college instructors want students to have a solid grasp of fundamentals (Obviously, secondary teachers "want" that, too), whereas teachers favor exposing them to broader areas (It's not acknowledged by the columnist that secondary teachers teach ALL the students, not just the ones who will choose to go on to college. Naturally, teachers' approach will be more general than the professor's narrower agenda). For example, in English and writing, college instructors place more importance on basic grammar and usage skills, with many expressing frustration that freshmen often can't write a complete sentence. Many freshmen drop out of college; many should not have gone in the first place. The "data" doesn't report the numbers of freshmen who can't write a complete sentence. How many write quite well? How many semi-literate state representatives serve in Ohio? Remember Cooper Snider?
Employers are in substantial agreement with professors about the knowledge and skills that high-school graduates should have (and now we come to the crux of the matter: what EMPLOYERS WANT), and the impetus to align standards with real-world needs (i.e. business's wish list: intelligent, hard-working, long-suffering, multi-talented, high school graduates who function as college graduates on Bangladeshi wages) is coming from business (as you would expect) and governmental leaders (in the pocket of business), not educators (who deal with REAL children in the REAL world, not in the world of WHAT BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENTAL LEADERS WANT).
A second ACT report reveals that even students taking a full array of college-prep courses -- the core curriculum -- and receiving good grades are not well-prepared for college (according to professors??? Perhaps if you asked highschool teachers, they'd tell you that many of their students shouldn't go on to college. But YOU tell their parents that!). Among ACT-tested 2006 high-school graduates who took these courses, only a fourth are likely to earn a C or higher in English composition, algebra, biology and social-science courses (Taking the ACT doesn't mean one actually GOES to college. What are the percentages of those who finish the first year of college?) . Nearly 20 percent could not expect such grades in any one of the courses. While more students are taking the recommended core curriculum and getting better grades, they (what percentage? ) still aren't doing well in college. So what do Mr. Finn and Ms. Smith suggest? Flunk the little shits? Well, maybe. But if the professors are so upset, they should have their "institutions" raise the entry standards. If the students are so uneducated, don't let them in.
What the hell, high schools could start turning away middle schoolers who aren't up to snuff; and middle schools could start turning away kids who aren't up to snuff, and then elementaries could start turning away kids who are not up to snuff. In no time at all we would develop a critical mass of dispossessed people large enough to support a revolution that would send Mr. Finn et.al. and his business/governmental "wanters" skipping!!
ACT faults grade inflation, teacher quality and students who are not ready for high-school work (what the hell does THAT mean? Yeah, the middle schools didn't do the job [oh, but I've already said that, haven't I]), noting that English teachers spend one-third of their time reteaching skills and algebra and biology teachers, one-fourth. A third report indicates why this might be so.Does it REALLY show WHY this might be so? Or does it just say the same thing over again in a different way? That is, students are not prepared because they don't get prepared; their excuses are: they don't do the work required (prepare) and they think they (15 to 18 year olds) are better judges of what they should be studying than their "boring" teacher is.
Could there be a different reason? One related to our disparate social/economic structure? or to the normal curve's interference with the Lake Woebegon phenomenon?
The 2006 High School Survey of Student Engagement again finds high-school students doing little preparation for classes, with 40 percent spending only five or fewer hours per week on homework. In addition, half of all students surveyed report being bored in class every day because of a lack of interesting (75 percent), relevant (39 percent) or challenging (32 percent) material. Apparently Ms. Smith feels their pain.
Yet the ACT emphasizes that students are capable of handling rigorous work (of course they are; some of them; which ones?) and congratulates high schools that provide it, including Dublin Coffman and Scioto, Gahanna Lincoln, Hilliard Davidson, Pickerington Central and Thomas Worthington. Do the special education, severely handicapped, and severe behavioral students at these schools "handle rigorous work"? Would the professors rate THEM as prepared for college. Does that not matter, but disadvantaged urban and rural kids who don't measure up constitute an indictment?
Ohio's leaders cannot just grapple with how to fund public education but must also demand greater clarity about what we expect and we are getting for our tax dollars.
Ohio's "leaders" are responsible for the sad mess we have now, and - like King Knute - they (and Ms. Smith) can demand all they want, but nothing ever changes because they are not playing with a full deck. They want something for nothing; they want what they want, and they think they can get it by "demanding" it.
Well, you can't get something for nothing, and when you demand something for nothing, you get NOTHING for nothing.
Mr. Finn shouldn't be surprised if over the last ten years schools haven't given him what he has demanded. Mr. Finn and Ms Smith can't get what they want by crossing their arms and stamping their feet any more than King Knute could stop the waves by frowning at them!!!
- Uke Man
* * *
For ACT Reports: www.act.org/path/policy/index.html.
Pat Smith, a former teacher and past president of the Worthington and state boards of education, served as executive assistant for educational policy in Ohio's Office of Budget and Management.
patsmith10@sbcglobal.net
