SM1'S BLOG 4 U: One Citizen Speaking...

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

One Citizen Speaking...

PROGRESSIVES: ACADEMIC EXCUSES FOR BLACK PROMISCUITY OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE -- LACK OF UNION JOBS?
California education is a joke ... and no amount of spin can justify the poor performance of California teachers ...
Was Embassy Closure an Expensive Public Relations Campaign?

PROGRESSIVES: ACADEMIC EXCUSES FOR BLACK PROMISCUITY OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE -- LACK OF UNION JOBS?

Posted: 13 Aug 2013 05:29 PM PDT

Sometimes I wonder about the socialist infiltration of educational institutions, and the socialist rhetoric used to justify the progressive socialist democrat agenda …

Notice how the study’s author suggested that the decline of stable, unionized full-time jobs with health insurance and pensions is the proximate cause of declining marriage and other social ills. Considering that there are far fewer union members than non-union members in the United States, one must wonder about the validity of this study as the sample size was ridiculously small, and the individual cohorts in sub-segments even smaller.

Perhaps I would have been more comfortable if the author talked about the disappearance of stable full-time jobs instead of inserting “union” into the conversation. Or did not carry forward the current union meme of attacking Wal-Mart and other big box stores by stating: “Increasingly the jobs available to those without a college degree are service-sector jobs, many of which are short-term and/or part-time and lack benefits.” The next result of which appears to make this study description read like union propaganda and the justification for the unionization of service sector jobs.

Read it for yourself …

Love and Work Don’t Always Work for Working Class in America
The decline and disappearance of stable, unionized full-time jobs with health insurance and pensions for people who lack a college degree has had profound effects on working-class Americans who now are less likely to get married, stay married and have their children within marriage than those with college degrees, a new University of Virginia and Harvard University study has found.
The research, “Intimate Inequalities: Love and Work in a Post-Industrial Landscape,” will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York City on Aug. 13 at 10:30 a.m.
“Working-class people with insecure work and few resources, little stability and no ability to plan for a foreseeable future become concerned with their own survival and often become unable to imagine being able to provide materially and emotionally for others,” said Sarah Corse, an associate professor of sociology in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences and the study’s lead author. “Insecure work changes peoples’ non-work lives.”
The study was conducted through direct interviews and surveys with more than 300 working- and middle-class men and women in the U.S. The study participants were white, African-American, Asian and Latino, between the ages of 18 and 70, and with a range of educational histories. They were married, single, divorced, cohabitating and widowed, as well as being biological and adoptive parents and non-parents.
The researchers found, generally, that educated middle-class workers are better able to recover from the destabilizing effects of insecure work than the working class, and therefore can seek and find stability in relationships.
“Marriage is becoming a distinctive social institution marking middle-class status,” Corse said.
People who are living in an unsecure and unstable situation have difficulty being trustful of possible partners because of the risk of betrayal, noted Harvard sociologist Jennifer Silva, Corse’s co-investigator, who earned her sociology Ph.D. at U.Va. They also find it difficult to meet material or financial obligations and may feel that the emotional and psychological commitment required by marriage is too great a demand on top of other challenges.
“Marriage has lost its relevance as a marker of adulthood,” said Silva, author of the book “Coming Up Short: Working Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty,” to be published in August by Oxford University Press.
People with college degrees, however, tend to work in stable jobs with better incomes allowing for the emotional and material commitment of marriage and having children within marriage. Middle- and upper-middle class people, as a result, express high expectations for their marriages, centering on self-fulfillment, deeply engaged parenting by both parents and psycho-emotional awareness. They also “insure” themselves against marital complacency, conflict and dissolution through private material and emotional “investments,” such as therapy and special “date nights,” Corse said.
According to Corse and Silva, wages for the non-college-educated have fallen dramatically in the United States as manufacturing work has been outsourced to other countries, greatly reducing the number of high-paying union jobs with good benefits.
Increasingly the jobs available to those without a college degree are service-sector jobs, many of which are short-term and/or part-time and lack benefits, they said.
“These are foundational changes in the labor market for the working class and they broadly affect people’s lives,” they said. “Our interviewees without college degrees expressed feelings of distrust and even fear about intimate relationships, and had difficulty imagining being able to provide for others.”
College-educated middle-class workers, with material, cultural and intellectual resources, are more resilient, however, when faced with the effects of possible insecure work in tough times, and therefore are more able to commit to marriage and to planning families.
Source: Love and Work Don’t Always Work for Working Class in America

Bottom line …

Look for stories in the progressive mainstream media citing this “study” – a survey actually – to justify the increasing unionization of service sector employers such as Wal-Mart or the demand for a so-called “living wage.”

If the author was honest, she may have noted that socialism features the collective over the individual and that marriage, like employment, is an individual choice that cannot be explained or excused by collective reasoning. In the case of marriage, why marry when your peer-group neither values marriage nor shames inappropriate relationships. As for education, perhaps one should have stratified the data by degrees – since most of the non-science degrees are merely pathways to mediocrity in government, education, and other progressive-dominated areas. As for unions, has anyone noticed that the teachers unions are turning out functional illiterates. Here in California, 40% of more students are underachieving in science, math, English, and social studies. So where is the union benefit to our children in return for those well-paid union jobs with healthcare and pensions?

This is nothing but tripe – progressives stroking progressives to advance their toxic socialist agenda. And, if one were to look closely, it was the author who employed class rhetoric by dividing Americans into college-educated and non-college-educated groups; even though a large-enough sample of the non-unionized trades might produce contrary results.

In the final analysis, it is not the group dynamic – it is individual responsibility and choice that matter. And, studies like this one only provide protective coloration for bad behavior, bad choices, and the inability of workers to rise above working for others into the ranks of the entrepreneurial class. How does one even begin to account for the dysfunction of workers operating in a unionized government environment?

-- steve

California education is a joke ... and no amount of spin can justify the poor performance of California teachers ...

Posted: 13 Aug 2013 02:32 AM PDT

I think noted comic Argus Hamilton has it 100% right – “Californians were furious Friday over test scores that show drastic drops in student test scores in English and math. The opinion of the education establishment is unanimous. The only thing that will solve this problem is a twenty percent bump in teachers' pensions.”

Here is the happy spin from the State School’s Chief …

State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Releases 2013 STAR Results – Statewide scores slip slightly amid budget cuts, transition to Common Core

Scores on the annual Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) assessments slipped by a fraction of a percentage point this year as schools dealt with ongoing budget reductions and the transition to the Common Core State Standards, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today.
Students managed to hold on to the vast majority of gains posted over the last 11 years, with a majority of students statewide continuing to achieve at the proficient or advanced level in mathematics and English-language arts. Only one student in three achieved proficiency in 2003, the year that the STAR tests became fully aligned to the former state content standards.
Torlakson also noted that schools across the state continued to deal with the effects of years of budget cuts and financial uncertainties throughout the 2012-13 school year. Led by Governor Brown, voter approval of Proposition 30 in 2012 averted $6 billion in further cuts to education budgets.
The California Standards Tests, the major component of the STAR program, were given to approximately 4.7 million students in grades two through eleven in 2013. Students attain one of five levels of performance for each subject tested: advanced, proficient, basic, below basic, and far below basic.
The 2013 STAR results show that a significant achievement gap continues to exist for African American, Hispanic/Latino, low-income, and English-learner students, compared to their peers.
Statewide, 51.2 percent of students posted a score of proficient and above in mathematics (Table 1), which was 0.3 of a percentage point lower than last year.

Translation: In mathematics -- 48.8% of students were deficient.

In English-language arts, 56.4 percent of students scored proficient and above, 0.8 of a percentage point lower than in 2012.

Translation: In English – 43.6% of students were deficient.

In science, 59.1 percent scored proficient and above, 0.4 of a percentage point lower than the 59.5 percent achieved in 2012.

Translation: In Science – 40.9% of students were deficient.

Students showed gains in history-social science, with 49.4 percent scoring at least proficient, an increase of 0.6 of a percentage point over last year's 48.8.

Translation: In History-Social Science – 50.1% of students were deficient.

Full results can be found on the California Department of Education (CDE) Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Results Web page.

STAR Results for 2013 - Year 2013 (CA Dept of Education)

Administrators, Teachers, and Unions are failing the students of California …

What multi-billion dollar enterprise should accept a failure rate of 40% – 50% without making drastic changes in personnel and business models? This are abysmal scores that cannot be easily explained away with “happy talk” and a false comparison with last year’s numbers.

There is little or no doubt in my mind that California schools are rife with corruption. Everything from playing politics and pandering to special interests at the Board of Education level, to the acceptance of gross incompetence at the school level. Primarily to blame for the huge budget shortfalls are ambitious building programs that serve the special interest developers, purchasing programs that purchase unnecessary and unusable supplies, and the great increases that are flowing to the unions in terms of pension and healthcare contributions.

Californian’s should demand that all union dues be suspended and no contributions made to any union health or pension fund unless the children drastically improve their scores – and I am not talking about dumbing down the tests or tolerating the cheating that seems prevalent elsewhere in school systems. I am talking about a court-appointed monitor to investigate and supervise education in the State of California – much as was done for the State’s prison system.

It is time to switch to school uniforms, deal harshly with discipline problems (and not the zero tolerance crap when some child points a finger and goes bang-bang at another student.) Public employees and their unions should not be allowed to “own students.” Students should be given vouchers to give tax money directly to the schools that have a record of performance. Be they public, parochial, or private. No more political activities on school property or using children as political tools. No more teaching anything other than traditional reading, writing, arithmetic, history, civics, and motivational achievement. No overt sexualization of students. No revisionist history. Building a dual track system that recognizes that not every student will be going to college and offers a trade alternative. In my junior high and high school we had a wood shop, metal shop, printing shop, drafting shop, and electric shop. Enough training to use all of the basic tools and to never fear simple household repairs. In high school this should be extended to useful trades and turn out students ready to work.

Bottom line …

Our dipshit governor, governor moonbeam – and his controlling wife – need to realize that speeches will not prepare students to compete in a global economy. Hell, most of them can’t even compete in their own neighborhoods. This slavish pandering to the corrupt unions must end. Education is not a joke – and I am educated enough to know that a 50% graduation rate means 50% of the students are NOT graduating and have a bleak future. Time to hold parents and politicians responsible for the next generation.

The educational system has turned out a decade or more of functional illiterates who can’t read, can’t add and subtract without a calculator, and can’t write a book report without cutting and pasting copy from a Google search.

And, we should no longer import additional illiteracy into the schools. Side-tracking students until they are proficient and performing at grade level before mainstreaming them into schools and reducing all students to the lowest common denominator. And while we are at it, how about rewarding the best and brightest with additional time and attention rather than trying to change a low-achiever into a mediocre achiever.

-- steve

Was Embassy Closure an Expensive Public Relations Campaign?

Posted: 13 Aug 2013 01:04 AM PDT

Following the deliberate lies told about the 9/11anniversary attack on Benghazi, President Obama and his cadre of fellow travelers appears to have lost all credibility when it comes to official pronouncements …

U.S. embassies in Muslim world reopen amid still-murky threats
Eighteen of the 19 U.S. embassies and consulates reopened Sunday after being shut down for a week across the Islamic world because of a terrorist threat. Even as the diplomatic posts inched toward normal operations, and as Muslims celebrated the end of the holy month of Ramadan, questions lingered about how pressing the danger had been and whether the threat had yet passed.
The U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, the same nation from which a threat from an al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula earlier this month spurred the State Department to close its facilities, remained closed.
And the U.S. consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, initially among the consulates open after U.S. officials announced that an unusually high number would be closed, remained shuttered indefinitely. U.S. officials evacuated personnel there Friday after receiving “specific threats.” The nature of those threats or who they aimed at remains unclear. A worldwide travel warning to Americans overseas remains in place through the end of August.
In Yemen, some government officials are dubious about the threat posed to U.S. facilities. A Yemeni official claimed earlier this week that the country had thwarted an al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula plot to take over cities and oil and gas installations in the eastern province of Hadramawt.
Yet other Yemeni government spokespeople, noting that the Islamist group maintains a foothold in the province, publicly pushed back against such claims. They said that the militant group lacks the intention or capability to launch such a plot.
A high-ranking Yemeni security official speaking on the condition of anonymity told McClatchy that the claims of a foiled plot had no basis in fact. That source bemusedly attributed media reports about imminent terror strikes to a single official’s comments, which he cast as a misguided attempt at shifting public opinion in the face of increasing and unpopular American drone strikes.
Indeed, Yemen has remained at a relative normal – except for increased security measures that sent spy planes over the skies of Sanaa and flurry of apparent drone strikes to points farther afield. The most recent drone attack killed at least two suspected militants in the southern province of Lahj Saturday evening.
Read more at: U.S. embassies in Muslim world reopen amid still-murky threats | McClatchy

Bottom line …

As citizens, you know our country is in trouble when you can’t trust the President of the United States, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and the United Nations Ambassador to the United Nations to tell the truth to the American public. Deliberately lying to the American people – and then engaging in a cover-up to hide the people and events associated with a terrorist attack.

Time to clean the Washington cesspool and demand that Congress take action or face the consequences in the 2014 congressional election cycle.

-- steve