As a former teacher, I am appalled at nearly nationwide assaults being waged on our educational systems, largely by Republican governors and legislatures. Apparently, they no longer recognize that basic education is a fundamental human right.
Like medical care, they maintain that you are only entitled to what you can afford. Consequently, schools with large proportions of students from poor homes, appear doomed. These schools, which are those failing to provide even minimum requirements for the students, are challenged to remain open, let alone improve their performance. It’s another example of the effect of small-minded greed that has grown to represent the “conservative” movement.
How can the same people who whine about citizens who make little contribution to our society think that the solution is to reduce educational opportunities for the poor- the one thing that offers them a chance to succeed?
It’s also another example of ignorance of our nation’s history. Our success during the first 200 years can largely be attributed to our free educational system for ALL our people.That set us apart from most other countries, giving us a competitive advantage through an educated workforce. Our failure to maintain that edge can be blamed for the weak economy we have developed during the last 30 years.
Here’s a current example “Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey prides himself on his bluster and relishes the attention it garners in conservative circles beyond the state. He jumped the shark last month, suggesting he might defy the State Supreme Court if it orders him to make up a $1.6 billion shortfall of education financing that disproportionately punishes poorer districts and their students. ”
I wonder how long old-time Republicans will allow this takeover of their party by foolish, greedy people. It bears little resemblance to the party of Eisenhower- and should be soundly rejected by all voters in 2012.

In traditional sculpture, the artist often started with a block of a solid medium such as wood or stone and removed portions of it to create a “new” object- like this:

Is it possible to create objects using words? You might think of stories, books, etc. but I have 3-dimensional objects in mind. Here are some examples:

An artist extended my idea with this incredible animation:
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Here’s the latest interview with the biggest dreamer in DC.
Key Points:

• Education isn’t a right
• Medical care isn’t a right
• People can organize but bargaining must be voluntary- on both sides (this is clearly a union-busting position but he won’t admit it)
• He wants to return to a time before 1913 when we had no income tax- (and no unions or workplace safety laws- but we did have child labor and many other violations of basic human rights!)

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.] MSNBC Interview March 9, 2011

President Obama is betting on Big Business to re-elect him- although they didn’t the first time! This is not good news for those of us who voted for him at least partly as a rejection of the Bush administration’s pro-business actions.
We have several strong indicators of this change:

• His compromises on the Healthcare Law, which favored Big Insurance
• His appointment of William Daley as Chief of Staff
• His “compromises” with the GOP in the Lame Duck sessions- especially accepting the “Bush” tax cuts
• His call for businesses to tell him which regulations are “stifling growth”
• His order to the EPA to NOT do their job (a common practice of Bush )
• The latest indicator is a planned visit to the Chamber of Commerce- a known proponent of Big Money

These developments are signals of “business as usual”, not the change that we supported and thought Barack Obama represented. They mean we are in the untenable position of waiting for one of the 2 major parties or a third party to nominate a viable candidate who will support an agenda that favors the majority of American citizens, not JUST the wealthy.

This post is prompted by the latest revelations about the trampling on our rights that the FBI has conducted for several years.

A new report released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), shows that the FBI’s violations go far beyond what has been reported.
FBI reports to the citizen-run Intelligence Oversight Board during the years 2001-2008 consistently reveal investigations of abuse that often have not been reported to Congress or the Department of Justice as required

In 2008, Bush revoked the IOB’s right to refer violations to the Attorney General, and eliminated the agency’s requirement to report quarterly to the IOB.

I’m alarmed by the lack of knowledge so many people have about the abuses carried out by Dubya’s administration and plan to continue to expose those that are well documented.

The complete report is HERE
A dissenting report from Wallison is HERE
An answer to the Wallison report is HERE

The entire list of Majority conclusions is HERE.

We have a summary of all the Majority conclusions HERE.

Following is a summary of the Majority conclusion regarding Ethics:
We conclude there was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics.
The integrity of our financial markets and the public’s trust in those markets are essential to the economic well-being of our nation. The soundness and the sustained prosperity of the financial system and our economy rely on the notions of fair dealing, responsibility, and transparency. In our economy, we expect businesses and individuals to pursue profits, at the same time that they produce products and services of quality and conduct themselves well.
Unfortunately—as has been the case in past speculative booms and busts—we witnessed an erosion of standards of responsibility and ethics that exacerbated the financial crisis. This was not universal, but these breaches stretched from the ground level to the corporate suites. They resulted not only in significant financial consequences but also in damage to the trust of investors, businesses, and the public in the financial system.
For example, our examination found, according to one measure, that the percentage of borrowers who defaulted on their mortgages within just a matter of months after taking a loan nearly doubled from the summer of 2006 to late 2007. This data indicates they likely took out mortgages that they never had the capacity or intention to pay. You will read about mortgage brokers who were paid “yield spread premiums” by lenders to put borrowers into higher-cost loans so they would get bigger fees, often never disclosed to borrowers. The report catalogues the rising incidence of mortgage fraud, which flourished in an environment of collapsing lending standards and lax regulation. The number of suspicious activity reports—reports of possible financial crimes filed by depository banks and their affiliates—related to mortgage fraud grew 20-fold between 1996 and 2005 and then more than doubled again between 2005 and 2009. One study places the losses resulting from fraud on mortgage loans made between 2005 and 2007 at $112 billion.
Lenders made loans that they knew borrowers could not afford and that could cause massive losses to investors in mortgage securities. As early as September 2004, Countrywide executives recognized that many of the loans they were originating could result in “catastrophic consequences.” Less than a year later, they noted that certain high-risk loans they were making could result not only in foreclosures but also in “financial and reputational catastrophe” for the firm. But they did not stop.
And the report documents that major financial institutions ineffectively sampled loans they were purchasing to package and sell to investors. They knew a significant percentage of the sampled loans did not meet their own underwriting standards or those of the originators. Nonetheless, they sold those securities to investors. The Commission’s review of many prospectuses provided to investors found that this critical information was not disclosed.
THESE CONCLUSIONS must be viewed in the context of human nature and individual and societal responsibility. First, to pin this crisis on mortal flaws like greed and hubris would be simplistic. It was the failure to account for human weakness that is relevant to this crisis.
Second, we clearly believe the crisis was a result of human mistakes, misjudgments, and misdeeds that resulted in systemic failures for which our nation has paid dearly. As you read this report, you will see that specific firms and individuals acted irresponsibly. Yet a crisis of this magnitude cannot be the work of a few bad actors, and such was not the case here. At the same time, the breadth of this crisis does not mean that “everyone is at fault”; many firms and individuals did not participate in the excesses that spawned disaster.
We do place special responsibility with the public leaders charged with protecting our financial system, those entrusted to run our regulatory agencies, and the chief executives of companies whose failures drove us to crisis. These individuals sought and accepted positions of significant responsibility and obligation. Tone at the top does matter and, in this instance, we were let down. No one said “no.”
But as a nation, we must also accept responsibility for what we permitted to occur. Collectively, but certainly not unanimously, we acquiesced to or embraced a system,
a set of policies and actions, that gave rise to our present predicament.

from AlterNet:

Actually, the Social Security program is projected to run a surplus in every year of the next decade, adding more than $1.3 trillion to its trust fund, as people with access to the Social Security Trustees Report know.

Here’s the SSA site:

The complete report is HERE
A dissenting report from Wallison is HERE
An answer to the Wallison report is HERE

The entire list of Majority conclusions is HERE.

from the New York Times

Following is a summary of the Majority Conclusions:

Last week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, after reviewing thousands of documents, issued a report, which explained the causes of the financial unraveling, the role of government and the banks, and the aftershocks of the crisis. The 10-member commission, however, split along party lines, with the six Democrats voting to adopt the report and its findings, and the four Republican members issuing two dissenting reports.

On NPR, Keith Hennessey, one of the Republican commissioners, said that the disagreement could perhaps be boiled down to one statement in the majority report: “We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable.” Mr. Hennessey said that sentence “is, if not the key difference, one of just a very small number” of differences between the majority and the dissenters.

The report’s conclusions are HERE. This is a summary of the conclusions of the Majority:

• We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable.

• We conclude widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision proved devastating to the stability of the nation’s financial markets.

• We conclude dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemicallv important financial institutions were a key cause of this crisis

• We conclude a combination of excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency put the financial system on a collision course with crisis.

• We conclude the government was ill prepared for the crisis, and its inconsistent response added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.

• We conclude there was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics.

• We conclude collapsing mortgage-lending standards and the mortgage securitization pipeline lit and spread the flame of contagion and crisis.

• We conclude over-the-counter derivatives contributed significantly to this crisis

• We conclude the failures ot credit rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.

There are many competing views as to the causes of this crisis. In this regard, the Commission has endeavored to address key questions posed to us. Here we discuss three: capital availability and excess liquidity, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs), and government housing policy.

…it is the Commissions conclusion that excess liquidity did not need to cause a crisis. It was the failures outlined above—including the failure to effectively rein in excesses in the mortgage and financial markets—that were the principal causes of this crisis.

We conclude that these two entities contributed to the crisis, but were not a primary cause. Importantly, GSE mortgage securities essentially maintained their value throughout the crisis and did not contribute to the significant financial firm losses that were central to the financial crisis.

The Commission concludes the CRA was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the crisis.

My personal summary of the commission’s findings:

1. Irresponsible behavior by all financial-related private enterprise caused the crisis
2. Lack of action by the Federal Reserve and the government allowed the crisis to occur

I’m tired of all the negative talk about one of our most successful institutions, Social Security. For ideological reasons, some people hate the program. Generally, these are wealthy people who have no need for the program nor friends who need it. This page is intended to summarize the current situation.
I found this recent editorial useful: Raising False Alarms.

The alarmist rhetoric should cease. Americans have enough economic problems to worry about without being petrified that their Social Security benefits will be curtailed.

and this one: Third Way Comes Clean

Third Way would have us shore up Social Security’s finances with a package that is two-thirds cuts and one-third revenue increases. They must have known this is just a wee bit unbalanced, especially for a capital “D” Democratic think tank like theirs, because they feel the need to justify it throughout the paper. They explain that we need to free up the revenue from Social Security for other purposes

I liked David Walker when he said (as have many others) we didn’t have an immediate crisis with Social Security and we could fix the long-term shortfalls with mild corrections. Now, apparently his Boss, Peter Peterson, has told him to tell a more alarming story. To facilitate that objective, they have formed a new group to watch for- “Comeback America Initiative” (CAI), which is funded by- well, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, of course.
in Aug., 2010, Walker told the Chamber of Commerce “the United States government tells you and I on our Social Security statements and in reports issued each year that those are assets and that you can count on them. And so on one hand they… want to tell us we can count on them, and I believe we can because they’re backed by the full faith of the United States government, guaranteed principal and interest, but on the other hand they don’t want to call them a liability.”
I repeat- he said “I believe we can because they’re backed by the full faith of the United States government, guaranteed principal and interest”.
If he believes that, as I and many others do, why does he now say there is no backing for the trust fund…?
The official SSA statement on this issue is here: SSA Trust Fund FAQ

Far from being “worthless IOUs,” the investments held by the trust funds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U. S. Government. The government has always repaid Social Security, with interest. The special-issue securities are, therefore, just as safe as U.S. Savings Bonds or other financial instruments of the Federal government.

This article provides more information: Attack Wall Street, Not Social Security

The Congressional Budget Office’s projections show that the program can pay full benefits until the year 2044 with no changes whatsoever

After working on my family genealogy for several months, I realized that the Pratt/Pratte side had been MUCH more successful than the Dotson side for many generations. The difference is striking in the Wikipedia pages for the two surnames. While several dozen persons of note are listed under Pratt, only 10 are shown under Dotson- and 5 of those are athletes. When I searched for “Dotson famous people” through Google, the first result was a man who murdered six people. Furthermore, it was difficult to find really significant individuals in the first several pages of search results.

As happens often, one result piqued my interest and diverted me from my initial quest. I noticed an American author named Dotson Rader. Well, his surname isn’t Dotson but at this point, I’ll take anything. Upon closer investigation, I discovered he is about my age but has lived a much different life than I. This article from 1975 People Magazine, Ruth Ford & Dotson Rader: A December Mistress-Muse to May gives an idea of how he has chosen to live. He is now a writer for Parade Magazine and has conducted interviews with most of the biggest Hollywood stars.