Today is the start of a new year, at least according to the traditional western calendar.
As I’ve ranted previously in this space, January 1 is an odd place to celebrate this dividing line. But, while there are several other demarkation points that would make more sense (April? Maybe September), my irrational thoughts won’t change things, so let’s move on.
Ok, so we’re all cycling through a big mix of emotions in dealing with a pandemic and our social isolation. Concern, frustration, depression, enjoying time with family (alternating with feelings around too much time with the family), boredom, and more.
For me, one that has been frequently rising to the top over the past few weeks is anger. Angry because I’m more convinced than ever that this crisis didn’t need to play out the way it has. It didn’t have to be this bad, and getting worse.
The United States Institute of Peace is one of the many organizations in the city I had heard of but never knew much about. I had certainly seen their headquarters that opened in 2011 since the building is strikingly different from the many imposing, pseudo Greek and Roman-style government structures that dominate the federal section of DC.
Anyway, recently I had the opportunity to take a photowalk through and around the building. On this page are a few of the images I made and more are in this gallery.
If it’s true, this is one of the saddest stories I’ve read in a long while.
For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.
The Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade were eligible for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program in the 2012-2013 school year.
The worst part of all this is that most of our “leaders”, like the writer of this article, view this situation as an educational problem, not a major deficiency of our larger society.
The Obama administration wants Congress to add $1 billion to the $14.4 billion it spends annually to help states educate poor students. It also wants Congress to fund preschool for low-income children. Collectively, the states and federal governments spend about $500 billion annually on primary and secondary schools, with about $79 million coming from Washington.
No! You don’t spend billions on helping to “educate poor students”. Poor test scores (which, of course, is what these people mean by “education”) are not the primary problem here, and only one symptom of the far larger issue.
Instead, you work to change the situations that cause so much poverty in what is supposed to be an “exceptional” country, according to all those super patriotic politicians.
We spend money on improving communities and rebuilding our rapidly deteriorating infrastructure, especially public transportation. Provide funds to develop clean energy and other forward looking industries. And rewrite policies to support small and medium businesses, where the real job growth potential is, instead of providing welfare for giant corporations.
Unfortunately, we’ll spend at least the next two years arguing over trivial crap while largely ignoring the growing poverty and other elephants in the room.
You’ve probably never heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – and that’s by design. TPP is “is a secretive, multi-national trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement.”
The governments involved, and the hundreds of corporations who are helping to write the provisions, want us to know as little as possible before it becomes law.
Fortunately, enough information about the contents has leaked to offer a good, if very chilling, picture of how the package “would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and hinder peoples’ abilities to innovate.”
Because supporters of TPP are worried about the backlash that would result if more people had a good look at the provisions, they are pushing Congress to pass a “fast track” bill for this and similar trade agreements.
If passed, the “Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act” would give over to the executive branch much of the exclusive constitutional authority over trade policy that Congress is supposed to exercise. Sponsors of the bill claim that this process “provides greater transparency and gives Congress greater oversight of the Administration’s trade negotiations.” But in fact, fast track does precisely the opposite, ensuring that there’s even less transparency and less democratic oversight over trade negotiations, while making it easier for Big Content to impose its wish list of draconian copyright provisions on the US and its trading partners through secretive trade pacts.
Read the facts that are known about TPP and the efforts to force it’s provisions into American law. Then join the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups in demanding that Congress “stand up for your digital rights and preserve our constitutional checks and balances in government.”