THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR

Yesterday, Dr. Cornel West and Travis Smiley appeared on the Morning Joe Show on MSNBC.   The discussion was of the class of poor in America that has fallen between the economic cracks and the 22% of American children that are born into and living in poverty.  They made the point that the poor are either ignored or blamed for the economic crisis that the United States is now facing.  

Social programs for the poor are being targeted for cuts as a means of bringing our budget under control.   The Republicans would do away with MEDICAID, food stamps, Aide to Dependent Children, support for women’s health clinics and financial support for public schools in the poorest neighborhoods. 

To compound this problem Democratic legislators are not vocal against or openly defiant in opposition of the cuts.  

Dr. West and Mr. Smiley are adamant that the social support network not only be maintained, but increased, in order to assist this demographic to move into the middle class and become self supporting.

The problem is real, but the answer is not as simple as maintaining and increasing social programs for the poor – though this surely needs to be done.

Being among the poorest in America is a self-fulfilling prophecy.   The days are long gone that a high school graduate, much less a high school drop-out, could make a living wage in a factory or mill.  All jobs today that pay a living wage require some degree of education beyond the high school level.  

Children from the poorest neighborhoods and rural communities are often in unstable home environments; environments void of education enrichments, and a parent or parents that do not value, or are unable to contribute to, the education of their children.   Many of these children are street wise and pose problems in school.  

The reputation of these lower performing public schools tend not to attract, in most cases, the best and the brightest teachers and administrators.  Many of the students in these schools are socially deficient and some are outright dangerous.  The conditions in most of these schools are substandard and school boards and parents tend to be unsupportive of teachers and administrators.   It is a lose-lose situation for teachers.

The following is a clip posted by a student in a village school in Alaska.   As you can see these schools can pose a difficult environment for teachers and administrators.  This clip takes a minute or two to load and the first half minute is bizarre before you see the school scene, but it is an eye opener and worth viewing to the end.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/fwh9lxc4HcY?rel=0

I will not go into, on this post, the problems faced by the classroom teachers in the difficult venues; and I will note that there are many qualified and dedicated women and men who choose to serve these young people despite the hardships.

But the fact remains; without education beyond the high school level, the parents and the children of these parents are destine to remain on and require social programs to survive. 

If we are to solve the self-sustaining culture of the poor, we must have extensive social programs for poor parents that will include training for the parents, child care and comprehensive and well funded preschool, elementary and high school curriculums aimed specifically at the cultural and social environment of the student.   

Education is the only answer to lift people from the role of poverty.  

Poor people did not cause or bring about the economic decline; this was the results of rich people willing to increase their wealth at any cost.   When attempting to repair the economy the cause must be acknowledged and dealt with.   For Republicans, blaming the poor and cutting social programs amounts to a smoke and mirror attempt to divert attention from their complicity and to avoid breaking their social contract with the rich.

the Ol’Buzzard

GUN LAWS

There was a discussion on Up with Chris Hayes Saturday morning on gun control.   A reporter that attended the recent NRA convention in St Louis commented that most of those in attendance were old white men; and from conversations he overheard the consistent theme seemed to be that these men needed to be armed because at some time in the future they would have to defend themselves from some imaginary threat.   The liberal consensus on the program seemed to be that the people at the convention were afraid of the rise of minorities and saw that as a threat to their way of life. 

I don’t necessarily agree with that.   I have known many men who rode around with NRA stickers on the back window of their trucks.   None of them were afraid – but all of them entertained a fantasy of Armageddon: a time of a breakdown of law and order when they could emerge, regardless of their age or lack of physical prowess, with their guns blazing to become the hero and powerful leaders of their imagination.  In this scenario they all see themselves as the gun slinger that young girls would cling to (note: in their fantasies they do not liberate the old ladies in the rest home, but the young girls in the college dorms.)

Many of the people that go into police work are of the same ilk.   In high school  they were the prey of the alphas and as marginal students were lost in the back of the room; but with a badge of authority and a gun on their hip they achieve the longed for identity of macho.  The permission to carry a gun and the authority to shoot transforms the sexually insecure male into an alpha want-to-be.

Now, here we intersect with the Concealed Carry and Stand Your Ground Law.   Thousands of would-be alphas are walking around armed looking for a chance to live out their fantasy of being feared and admired because of their ability and readiness to kill with a firearm. 

In the old 1950 novel Battleground when a recruit would call his rifle a gun the DI would make him grab his crotch with his left hand and hold out his rifle with his right hand and repeat “This is my rifle and this is my gun – this is for fighting and this is for fun.”  I truly believe that gun mania is a substitute for lack of sexual prowess.

  

In the military I was on the station pistol team and qualified to compete at All Navy competition, but could not attend because of deployment schedule.  I was awarded both expert rifle and expert pistol ribbons.   I do not have a concealed carry license and do not need one.  I know the difference between my rifle and my gun and don’t need to carry one to compensate for the other. 

the Ol-Buzzard

RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE

In case you haven't seen it.

Rube Goldberg machine world record.

I love this stuff
the Ol'Buzzard

A BUZZARD EGG OMELET #11

Happy Easter

All right, I get it.   A twelve year old girl was impregnated by…..  and had a baby that three hundred years later was declared a god at the Council of Nicaeae.    The religion that formed from this following venerates human sacrifice and proudly displays the icons of the event (a human being cruelly tortured to death through crucifixion) as its logo.   Even more disturbing, to me, is that some sects of this religion practice ritual cannibalism, claiming to actually eat the flesh and drink the blood of this two thousand year old dead individual during their communion.  

All of this I have grown up with and, though bizarre, have come to accept as part of the culture.  

But the thing that I don’t understand is the egg laying rabbits.

Really – egg laying rabbits?

   

I’m just asking?

The Ol’Buzzard

DANGER, DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

The biggest threat to America is not al-Qaeda or Moslem fundamentalist or home grown terrorist: The biggest threat to American Freedom is the blatantly partisan United States Supreme Court.   The latest ruling of The Court allows police officers to conduct strip searches at their whim.   Along with all the other totalitarian rulings they have confirmed over the last decade that have eroded personal freedom and privacy, this last one moves our country further toward a police state. 

The Republican Party, with their elite 1% base, their lunatic Tea Party fringe and fundamentalist Christian theocrats, have systematically tried to dismantle social programs and limit individual freedom of choice and privacy – while at the same time proposing religious restrictions that move our government toward a theocracy.   While picking and choosing the tenets of the Constitution they agree with they have blatantly ignored major articles and provisions that do not conform to their world view of big business and God centered governance.   They constantly threaten amendments to the Constitution that would drastically change our Republic for now and the future.   

This is fine; the Republican Congressmen and Senators are duly elected by the people, and like the President have a right to their Political beliefs, and as such have a right to legislate their agenda.

However, here is the rub:  The Judicial branch is designed by the Constitution to be an impartial and non partisan watchdog that can bring extreme legislations from either party back to the central meaning and intent of the Constitution.   The Supreme Court should be the neutral body of government that guards the freedom and basic human rights of the individual.  

Terrorist have the ability to only destroy limited targets within our population; but, the United States Supreme court has the ability to destroy a nation of free men and women and move our country toward a version of George Orwell’s 1884 – and this is the future that I fear. 

And if some government agency is reading this, as according to the Supreme Court they have the authority to do:
I'm watching you
Watching me
Watching you
the Ol'Buzzard

SEX EDUCATION IN SCHOOL

I am a staunch proponent of teaching Sex Ed in school (Sunday Schools.)  

I offer this clip for education and enlightenment. 

 

Wanda Sykes could be arrested in fourteen states.

and I could also.

the Ol'Buzzard

THE PERILS OF APATHY

Occupy protest

Politicians live in a parallel universe of 1984 where their priorities are to legislate their own agendas.   Nothing ever gets done for the average man unless the masses rise up in visible protest to a point that the politician fear for their jobs.   

There would have been no move to integration without the protest of the sixties; and the Vietnamese war would not have ended when it did without the anti-war protest.

Not all protest are constructive: the Tea Party protest of the past decade has driven the Republican Party to the extreme right.   This is a perfect example that even small minorities can sway politicians if they are visible and loud enough.   

The Occupy protest is now getting the attention of the politicians.   The government, through the police departments of state and city regimes, is moving forcefully against the Occupy protesters, as was done against early demonstrators.  The difference is that now police have new powers to spy on citizens without oversight. 

If you haven’t read George Orwell’s 1984 – you should; and if you have read it in the past, you should read it again.

Without the story line – the following are excerpts from 1984:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The enemy of the moment always represents absolute evil.

If all others accepted the lie which the party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became true.   Who controls the past, ran the party slogan, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version.  A great deal of the time you were suppose to make them up out of your head.  

What was most important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leadership worship.

The aim of the high is to remain where they are.   The aim of the middle is to change places with the high.   The aim of the low, when they have an aim – for it is an abiding characteristic of the low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives – is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.

It was still true that men were not equal in their native talents and that functions had to be specialized in ways that favored some individuals against others. 

Imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations – not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive. 

In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance.

DOUBLE THINK: (reality control) Though shall not kill, but glorification of war heroes

NEW SPEAK: Designed to diminish the range of thought.  If it is not in your vocabulary- you can’t express it – if you can’t express it you can’t think it – if you can’t think it you can’t accomplish it.  

MINISTRIES

Ministry of Peace: concerns itself with war.

Ministry of Truth:  concerns itself with lies.

Ministry of Love:  concerns itself with torture.

Ministry of Plenty: concerns itself with starvation.

INGSOC: The Government ( There are striking similarities to the policies of the Republican Party.)  INGSOC, like religion, successfully manipulated the mind to the point that a person believed opposite of what was true.

The essential act of the party is to use conscious deception while retaining firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.   To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any facts that has become inconvenient…

The proles ( citizens) are only intermittently conscious of the war.   When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening.  It is in the ranks of The Party and above all of the Inner Party, that the true war enthusiasm is found.

We know that no one ever seized power with the intention of relinquishing it.  Power is not a means; it is an end. 

We are all proles

the Ol'Buzzard