Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Manners Decline in the South
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Kim Kardashian Divorce: 'This was not an easy decision'
At London's Daily Mail, "'This was not an easy decision': Kim Kardashian files for divorce from Kris Humphries after just 72 days of marriage (that's $250,000 earned every 24 hours)."
Saturday, October 29, 2011
How Taxes Destroy Liberty
Read this essay, from Myron Magnet, at City Journal, "On Tyranny and Liberty."
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Occupy London Protests Close Down St. Paul's Cathedral for First Time Since World War II
It seemed a gesture of Christian tolerance when a clergyman at St Paul’s Cathedral told police to allow anti-capitalist protesters camped outside to continue their demonstration.
But the alliance appeared to be faltering yesterday as St Paul’s closed for the first time since the Blitz, claiming it had no choice because of the dangers posed by the growing numbers on its doorstep.
As the Rich Go, So Goes Much of the Economy
An amazing report:
During the past three recessions, the top 1% of earners (those making $380,000 or more in 2008) experienced the largest income shocks in percentage terms of any income group in the U.S., according to research from economists Jonathan A. Parker and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen at Northwestern University. When the economy grows, their incomes grow up to three times faster than the rest of the country's. When the economy falls, their incomes fall two or three times as much.
The super-high earners have the biggest crashes. The number of Americans making $1 million or more fell 40% between 2007 and 2009, to 236,883, while their combined incomes fell by nearly 50%—far greater than the less than 2% drop in total incomes of those making $50,000 or less, according to Internal Revenue Service figures.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Childhood Being Eroded by Modern Life
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, the group of academics, teachers, authors and charity leaders says children’s wellbeing and mental health is being undermined by the pressures of modern life. They urge the Government to address a culture of “too much, too soon” in Britain.I'll take the consumerism over this decrepit nanny statism. Kids should spend more time with their families, or, well, if they have families, and I mean in the traditional sense of a mother and father, with regular employment and good values. Given what we saw with the London riots earlier this year, it can't be said that those prerequisites are firmly in place in Britain.
This includes a ban on all forms of advertising aimed at the youngest children, the establishment of a play-based curriculum for infants and a public information campaign warning of the dangers of screen-based entertainment.
The comments came five years after many of the same experts sent similar letter to the Telegraph that criticised politicians and the public for failing to allow children to develop properly at a young age. It led to a debate on the state of childhood in Britain and coincided with the publication of Labour’s Children’s Plan — a policy document covering all aspects of young people’s lives.
But the group, which includes Philip Pullman, the children’s author, Baroness Greenfield, the Oxford University neuroscientist, Lord Layard, emeritus professor of economics at the London School of Economics, and the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Rev Tim Stevens, claims that the “erosion of childhood in Britain has continued apace since 2006”.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
The Desperation-of-Deprivation Myth
Just go read it all.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
'Descent Into Evil'
What makes the present such a frightening time is that a number of nightmarish phenomena that we had thought consigned to the dustbin of history are reappearing. Rioters in the streets. Burning buildings. Plunging markets and the threat of depression. The scent of socialism in the air.
Who, as of, say, 1989, could have imagined that in barely 20 years, what was then known as the Free World could sink so far?
What we are seeing in London and other English cities is an outpouring of evil. To try to explain evil as the result of something else is almost always a mistake.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
'I don't call it a riot... I call it an insurrection of the masses of the people...'
Not surprisingly, BBC is now apologizing for suggesting that the bloke might have been involved. See Telegraph UK, "London riots: BBC apologises for accusing Darcus Howe."
We are witnesses the Mad Maxification of society in the early 21st century.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
The Collective Pathologies of Postmodern America
'I Love Rich People'
We hurt ourselves by envying, over-taxing and slandering the rich. Anti-wealth public policies will only persuade independently wealthy Americans to shut down their businesses, stop hiring and retire early to their hammocks in the tropics. On the other hand, if we “love” the rich, we will receive the love back in the form of ample jobs, loans, innovations and investments.Come to think of it, I'm amazed at how infrequently we hear this argument. A great essay. (Via Linkiest.)
Monday, August 1, 2011
The Myth of the Extraordinary Teacher
The kid in the back wants me to define "logic." The girl next to him looks bewildered. The boy in front of me dutifully takes notes even though he has severe auditory processing issues and doesn't understand a word I'm saying. Eight kids forgot their essays, but one has a good excuse because she had another epileptic seizure last night. The shy, quiet girl next to me hasn't done homework for weeks, ever since she was jumped by a knife-wielding gangbanger as she walked to school. The boy next to her is asleep with his head on the desk because he works nights at a factory to support his family. Across the room, a girl weeps quietly for reasons I'll never know. I'm trying to explain to a student what I meant when I wrote "clarify your thinking" on his essay, but he's still confused.Keep reading to get to the myth of extraordinary teachers, although I'll add this part:
It's 8:15 a.m. and already I'm behind my scheduled lesson. A kid with dyslexia, ADD and anger-management problems walks in late, throws his books on the desk and swears at me when I tell him to take off his hood.
The class, one of five I teach each day, has 31 students, including two with learning disabilities, one who just moved here from Mexico, one with serious behavior problems, 10 who flunked this class last year and are repeating, seven who test below grade level, three who show up halfway through class every day, one who almost never comes. I need to reach all 31 of them, including the brainiac who's so bored she's reading "Lolita" under her desk.
I just can't do it.
I understand that we need to get rid of bad teachers, who will be just as bad in small classes, but we can't demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.Actually, I'm not even sold on the idea of "really bad" teachers. Some aren't that great and probably shouldn't be teaching. I can think of a couple of professors at my college who have absolutely no social skills, and hence have a hard time reaching a comfortable or appropriate level of interaction with their students. But I also often hear reports about how such-and-such teacher changed some student's life. It's that level of interaction that gives meaning. The students I'm able to help most are generally those who take the time to break from the routine of just showing up. I'll be there to help students, inside the class and out. I'm especially thankful when students make an effort to attend office hours and share with me their own challenges or difficulties. That's when I can assess what needs to be done, and I can design some kind of extra program of help or attention, from either myself or other resources on campus. But all those stories Ms. Herman shares about her students, well, I have some as well. It's the inside of education that's not always known or understood. A lot of this is economic disadvantage, but a lot is just the way things are, that not every student who comes to us turns out as a Ph.D. candidate to Harvard. You make a difference where you can, helping students to learn and move forward. And hopefully you get a little recognition in return, even if it's just a well-needed thank you for your efforts.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
On Making Love and Having Sex
Today there is no doubt that we tend compulsively to think in terms of object, function, or mechanism whenever we consider the incalculably human. Love is something to be “worked at” like a problem in mathematics that must be solved for the sake of its practical application. Friendship is called a “support system.” A Pascalian terror before the cold immensity of the universe is excessive “stress,” as if one were absorbing too much force for the mental “structure” to distribute and resolve successfully. For post-structuralists, a novel or a poem is only the manifestation of an “abstract model.” Wisdom is a kind of “flexible adaptability.” Desire is libidinal “tension” which must be “discharged.” And what was once called “making love,” an expression that however glibly it was employed still retained the implication of a genetic mystery, is today airily dismissed as “having sex,” a phrase which seems to concede in the direction of honesty but really betrays our attitude of therapeutic mechanism — like having an enema, a check-up, or an operation. Sex is an excellent way of running the machine.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Santa Ana Enclave Tops Orange County In Proportion of Single-Parent Households
I grew up in Orange, the city next door, and spent a lot of time in this part of Santa Ana as a kid. There's a street graphic at the Times' article. Here's the intersection at Main and 17th Street. My buddies and I used to skateboard at that building across the street, where that blue "for lease" sign is located. The flowerbeds are banked (or they were banked, until the property owners installed a brick perimeter around the flowers to thwart the skaters):
Turning right, I head South on Main Street. A couple of blocks up a see throngs of people congregating, near a bus stop and in front of an insurance office. Traffic slowed and I rolled down the window to snap a photo. A Latino man was working as a sign-spinner. He ducked down when I raised my camera. Probably an illegal alien making some money under the table:
Driving West now, across Broadway, an accountant's office:
The neighborhood is a migrant enclave, which helps explain the large number of single-parent households:
Although Orange County has the lowest proportion of single-parent households in Southern California, Santa Ana stands as the highest in that category, with 12,023, or 16%. Laguna Woods, a small city in South County, has the fewest, 21, or 0.2%.There's a lot of poverty here as well. At the corner of Durant and Washington, a local Head Start center:
The roots of this anomaly can be found in Santa Ana's decades-long history as a magnet for immigrants.
This part of the county was converted from orange groves to single-family housing to apartments, said G.U. Krueger, a housing expert in the area. Now, Santa Ana is one of the most densely populated cities in the country.
Michael Ruane, director of the OC Community Indicators Project, which studies trends in the county, said Santa Ana has always stood out statistically because of residential overcrowding, high school dropout rates and the educational level of adults.
But it's also one of the least expensive areas in the county.
"That's why you would live there, or have to, or be unable to move from there," he said.
Heading East, Willard Intermediate School (discussed at the Times) and across the street a Mexican civil rights history mural:
Laura Arreola, 43, may be one of those people. She's lived in various apartments off Parton Street for 14 years. All of her four children have attended schools in the area, where empty strollers sit on overgrown lawns and dusty toys spill onto the sidewalk.Another mural, on Washington across from the school. This one records the promise of education to lift kids out of what looks like is some kind of desolation:
Merchants hawk fried pork bellies and produce from white trucks that serve as gathering points for children. In this tract, more than three-quarters of the households include children.
But the only open space in the neighborhood is the local school, Willard Intermediate, which serves as the de facto park. Children also play in alleyways and the church's patio [nearby St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church].
A couple of kids and either their grandmother or another older caregiver. It was about 4:00pm. School's out for summer and a lot of parents were still out working. The woman was speaking Spanish:
Despite the glum statistics at the Times, I didn't see a lot of social disorganization. There was very little graffiti on the walls. This batch below was few and far between:
Monday, May 9, 2011
How Long Will it Take for Jobs to Come Back?
Looking ahead, an open issue is whether the recession will leave scars that prevent a return to jobless rates that were considered normal just a few years ago. A striking feature of today’s labor market is the rise of long-term joblessness. The average duration of unemployment is now almost 40 weeks, about twice what it reached in previous recessions. The long-term unemployed may well lose job skills and find their future prospects permanently impaired. But because we are in uncharted waters, it is hard for anyone to be sure.Actually, one of my favorite writers of all is Victor Davis Hanson. A classicist and military historian, he's also unmatched on political and social commentary on issues ranging from culture to farming to immigration. See his essay from Saturday, "Thoughts on a Surreal Depression":
Here in Fresno County, in the heart of California’s San Joaquin Valley, the official unemployment rate in February to March ranged between 18.1 and 18.8 percent. I suspect it is higher in the poorer southwestern portions, especially near my hometown of Selma, about two miles from my farm.My dad moved to Fresno in the mid-70s and I graduated from Fresno State in 1992. If you ever want to get the feel of what it must have been like during the Great Depression, take some country drives around the Central Valley --- in towns even more remote than Selma --- and you'll be taken back into your own Grapes of Wrath experience. The Democrats make this bad enough, but it's a statist anti-entrepreneurial regulatory stranglehold that's killing employment and the quality of life for large segments of society. I'm noticing it even in parts of the O.C., where unemployment was less than 2 percent in 2000. Hope for the best, I guess, but prepare for the worst.
Since 2000 we have both lost jobs and gained people, and the per capita household income is about 65% of California’s average, the average home price about half the state norm.
In some sense, all the ideas that are born on the Berkeley or Stanford campus, in the CSU and UC education, political science, and sociology departments, and among the bureaus in Sacramento are reified in places like Selma — open borders, therapeutic education curricula, massive government transfers and subsidies, big government, and intrusive regulation. Together that has created the sort of utopia that a Bay Area consultant, politico, or professor dreams of, but would never live near. Again, we in California have become the most and least free of peoples — the law-biding stifled by red tape, the non-law-biding considered exempt from accountability on the basis of simple cost-to-benefit logic. A speeder on the freeway will pay a $300 ticket for going 75mph and justifies the legions of highway patrol officers now on the road; going after an unlicensed peddler or rural dumper is a money-losing proposition for government.
The subtext, however, of most of our manifold challenges here in the other California are twofold: we have had a massive increase in population, largely driven by illegal immigration from Latin America, mostly from Oaxaca province in Mexico, and we have not created a commensurate number of jobs to facilitate the influx.
I often ask business people on the coast why there are not more industries in places like Selma other than agricultural related work that is locale specific. I would sum up their responses as something like the following: Our workforce does not have the educational and linguistic skills to justify, in global terms, the amount of wages and benefits necessary to employ them, hence jobs are mostly in service and government. Software engineering, computers, or Silicon Valley-like industry are out the question. But apparently so are large manufacturing jobs, despite an abundant workforce. As I understand employers, they seem to suggest that steel pipe, electrical wire, or radios would not be better manufactured or fabricated here, and yet still cost two to three times more than a counterpart assembled abroad.
In addition, they believe that the state government would look upon any employer of a large industry not as a partner that would alleviate unemployment and lessen county expenditures, but more or less a sort of target to regulate, advise, lecture, and chastise, both to justify the expanding government regulatory work force and to achieve a fuzzy sort of social justice. There are, of course, large plants and businesses here, but hardly enough to absorb the thousands entering the work force.
The result is about one in five adults is not working in the traditional and formal sense. A morning drive through these valley towns confirms anecdotally what statistics suggest: hundreds, no, thousands, are not employed. Construction is almost nonexistent. Agriculture is recovering, but environmentally driven water cut-offs on the West Side (250,000 acres), increasing mechanization, and past poor prices have combined to reduce by tens of thousands once plentiful farm jobs.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
The End of Family Practice
This is one more of those reports on the decline of traditional America, at New York Times, "Family Physician Can’t Give Away Solo Practice." It's Dr. Ronald Sroka in Maryland, who's been in practice for 32 years. He was looking to sell the practice, but no buyers. Sheesh, he couldn't give it away:
He tried to sell his once highly profitable practice. No luck. He tried giving it away. No luck.RTWT at the link. And there's a video as well, at NYT's homepage.
Dr. Sroka’s fate is emblematic of a transformation in American medicine. He once provided for nearly all of his patients’ medical needs — stitching up the injured, directing care for the hospitalized and keeping vigil for the dying. But doctors like him are increasingly being replaced by teams of rotating doctors and nurses who do not know their patients nearly as well. A centuries-old intimacy between doctor and patient is being lost, and patients who visit the doctor are often kept guessing about who will appear in the white coat.
The share of solo practices among members of the American Academy of Family Physicians fell to 18 percent by 2008 from 44 percent in 1986. And census figures show that in 2007, just 28 percent of doctors described themselves as self-employed, compared with 58 percent in 1970. Many of the provisions of the new health care law are likely to accelerate these trends.
“There’s not going to be any of us left,” Dr. Sroka said.
When my wife and I moved to Orange County, in 2000, to get resettled for my new job at LBCC, we ended up looking through a big fat book of doctors who were part of our Blue Cross HMO. We picked a doctor just by the sound of his name, and we've been happy ever since. It's been just like the family doctor we had as kids. The doctor gets to know you. He's friendly and even offers his own personal counseling if necessary. It feels like the old days.
Yet it's been quite different with the pediatricians. Our oldest son was 5 when we moved down here from Fresno, and the first doctor we found --- also looking in the HMO physicians catalog --- was a prick. When my son was referred to a specialist for breathing problems, we ended up going with the new doctor, who had a large practice in Newport Beach, with about a half-a-dozen doctors. We're still visiting that office. Our youngest son is 9 and he's had a couple of different doctors from that medical group, but for a while it was just one women who was a specialist on learning disabilities. She helped us with some attention issues my son was having, and it worked out really well. But it's definitely a crap shoot if you don't have good references. You're picking names out of a book and ending up with these fancy, modern multi-physician practices where you'll be lucking if the doctors remember your kids' names. It's a nightmare, frankly, especially with a baby. So I can relate to this story about Dr. Sroka in Maryland. It's just him at the office. Unless he has some other local doctors to fill in for him on call he's screwed. That's why no one wanted to buy his practice. Here's the quote from NYT:
Indeed, younger doctors — half of whom are now women — are refusing to take over these small practices. They want better lifestyles, shorter work days, and weekends free of the beepers, cellphones and patient emergencies that have long defined doctors’ lives. Weighed down with debt, they want regular paychecks instead of shopkeeper risks. And even if they wanted such practices, banks — attuned to the growing uncertainties — are far less likely to lend the money needed.That's interesting. It shows again how social changes --- especially affluence and the pursuit of leisure --- have influenced the way coming generations view traditional occupations.
In any case, what can you do I guess?
More later ...
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Portugal Seeks Financial Bailout From European Union
LISBON—Running out of money and paralyzed by a political crisis, Portugal said Wednesday it would ask the European Union for a financial bailout—setting up a crucial test of the bloc's emboldened efforts to contain its sovereign-debt crisis.The country's been running continual budget deficits for thirty years and chronic unemployment is a way of life for large segments of society. Portugal's a basket case --- and a case study in where today's progressive left will take the U.S. under Democrat Party spending and taxing programs.Portugal is the third nation in the 17-member euro zone to turn to its peers for help, and one that has long been seen as a firewall between small economies whose bailouts are painful but manageable and large economies—like Spain—whose infection would set the crisis on a far darker course.
After days of pressure in financial markets, Prime Minister José Sócrates told Brussels authorities Wednesday that he needed help, and late that evening broke the news to his countrymen in a televised address.
It has appeared inevitable for weeks. Portugal has struggled to raise cash from wary financial markets, and its persistent deficits are draining state coffers.
Politics are at a standstill: Two weeks ago, Mr. Sócrates's government collapsed after parliament rejected his latest bid to rein in Portugal's budget. Mr. Sócrates had adamantly refused to countenance a bailout. Wednesday night, he said he had no choice.
"It is time to assume the responsibility to the country," Mr. Sócrates said in his speech. "It is in the name of national interest that I tell the Portuguese people that we need to take this step."
See, "Government Shutdown Showdown: Obama, Republican and Democratic Congressional Leaders 'Narrow the Issues': Obama Meets John Boehner, Harry Reid at White House in Bid to Facilitate Spending Deal." And all the latest budget news at Memeorandum.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
'Antiwar' Protesters Call for Revolution in U.S. — Nationwide ANSWER Rallies Ignored by Mainstream Media Organizations
After arriving at the protest, we began to notice a trend in the message of the day. The message was transitioning back and fourth between ‘Anti-War, and ending the occupation of Iraq’, to a ‘blatantly obvious and proud Communist/Socialist revolutionary’ message. Threats of taking to the streets, with directives to become ungovernable and to mimic the revolutions spreading across the Middle East and North Africa were prominent in the speeches, most of which were given by radical left wing socialist activists and organizers.Rebel Pundit argues for a media cover-up of the revolutionary agenda, but that's pretty much standard operating procedure. Some of the first days of the Wisconsin budget protests saw the exact same comparisons between the U.S. and the Middle East (Mubarak), although it was mostly bloggers that brought the news to the wider audience. Last year's pro-immigration march in Phoenix was dominated by communists calling for revolution and the destruction of nation-state borders. I specifically highlighted mainstream coverage of the march at the Arizona Republic and the Los Angeles Times. They treated the event, with dishonest reports and photos of children protesters, etc., as a "civil rights" march. Meanwhile, we've got leftists who continue to insist that revolutionary agitation --- not to mention the left's global anti-Israel campaign of annihilation --- is "imaginary" and the product of a "persecution" complex. It's thus all around us, the lies and subterfuge relentlessly grinding away at the basic fabric of society, warping young minds with anti-American, pro-Holocaust propaganda. Add on top of this the growing black bloc movement of anarchist violence, which despite the "anarchist" label is really about state destruction to prepare for the communist takeover, and folks can get a pretty good picture of the current revolutionary agenda on today's progressive left. Also reporting: Another Black Conservative, The Blast, Left Coast Rebel, and Weasel Zippers.There was clearly no intent on anyone’s behalf at the rally to cover up their radical views. However, in each case of the local mainstream media coverage, (CBS 2 News, NBC 5 News and ABC 7 News) it appears there may have been a deliberate intent to conceal this prominent message, that was delivered loud and clear by the protesters and speakers, or perhaps they decided to just simply ignore it, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed. In ABC 7 Eyewitness News’s coverage, they didn’t even mention the words; socialist, communist, or revolution once. However our footage reveals this was a prominent and consistent theme present during the entire march, and to no one’s surprise, considering the radical ties of those who organized it.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Chris Wragge, CBS 'Early Show' Anchor, Gets Hot On-Air Fantasies for Actress Vanessa Hudgens
Hudgens is 21 years-old and fabulous, but see Greg Hengler, "CBS Anchor Entertains Pornographic Fantasies of H.S. Musical's Vanessa Hudgens":
40-year-old Chris Wragge, anchor for CBS's "Early Show," could not restrain his pornographic fantasies from the family-friendly, national network television show. As you will see and hear, he tries to move on quickly after drinking a nice cold glass of stupid.