Measuring Trump - Stolen from Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune

Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune wrote a column today setting the benchmark for measuring whether or not President Trump (I am still struggling with that title.) is making America great again.

I have stolen the figures and reposted them here.  Zorn writes:

Some of the facts and figures are up-to-date; others are a year or two old but reflect the most current available research. Sources and links are available here. And though in some cases presidents have very little influence on the numbers, they often get the credit or blame for how the numbers move.

• Public approval of Donald Trump: 40 percent
• Public approval of Barack Obama: 58 percent
• Unemployment rate: 4.7 percent
• Civilian labor force participation rate: 62.7 percent
• National average price per gallon of regular gasoline: $2.33
• Consumer confidence indexes: 113.7
• Annual inflation rate: 2.1 percent
• Median U.S. household family income: $53,889
• Percentage of the nonelderly U.S. population without health insurance: 10.4 percent.
• Poverty rates: Adults, 13.5 percent; children, 19.7 percent.
• National average 30-year fixed mortgage interest rate: 3.96 percent.
• National debt: $19.96 trillion.
• Annual federal budget deficit: $441 billion (2.6 percent of the gross domestic product)
• Financial markets: Dow Jones industrial average,19,732.40; NASDAQ, 5,540; Standard & Poors 500, 2,264.
• GDP growth rate: 3.5 percent
• Teen birth rate: 22.3 per 1,000 female teenagers
• Out-of-wedlock birth rate: 43.4 per 1,000 females
• Abortion rate: 14.6 per 1,000 females
• Number of federal prison inmates: 189,316
• Overall number of adult prisoners: 6,741,400 (about 2.7 percent of the population)
• Violent-crime victimization rate: 372.6 per 100,000 persons
• Average temperature of the world's land and ocean surfaces: 58.69 degrees Fahrenheit
U.S. high school graduation rate: 83.2 percent
• U.S. monthly international trade deficit: $45.2 billion
• Immigrants living in the U.S. illegally: 11.1 million
• Abusers of opioid drugs, including heroin: 12.7 million

To follow along, you can regularly visit The Trump Baseline

Courage vs Ratings

The ESPYs are awards handed out by ESPN to athletes or teams for a variety of accomplishments.  They give awards for things like Best Comeback of the Year, Best Upset of the Year, Male Athlete of the Year, Female Athlete of the Year, etc.

One award, the Arthur Ashe Courage Award is "presented to the sports-related person(s) or team, irrespective of gender or sport contested, adjudged to have made the most significant or compelling humanitarian contribution in transcendence of sports in a given year."

This year, they are presenting that award to Caitlin Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, for her courage in transitioning from a man to a woman.

Okay.  That takes a lot of courage.  But I think there were more deserving candidates.  For my money, Lauren Hill should receive this award.  For those who don't know Lauren's story, she was a freshman college basketball player who died of brain cancer. But instead of allowing the cancer to deny her dream of playing college basketball, she fought it, and in the process, helped raise over a million dollars for cancer research.

Here is an excerpt from her Wikipedia biography:

"Born in Greendale, Indiana, Hill's battle with cancer became public when the NCAA agreed to allow Mount St. Joseph to play Hiram College two weeks prior to the original game date so Hill could play. The location of the game was also originally moved from Hiram's Price Gymnasium to Mount St. Joseph's Harrington Center so that Hill would not have to travel the over 300 miles from Cincinnati to Hiram. However due to public interest in the game, it was later moved from the 2,000 seat Harrington Center to the 10,250 seat Cintas Center on the campus of Xavier University.  She raised US$1 million for pediatric cancer research with a Cincinnati telethon for The Cure Starts Now Foundation. The Foundation has raised US$1.1 million thus far.<sup>"

I watched Lauren be interviewed multiple times.  I watched her live her dream of playing college basketball.  She was humble, she was honest and sincere, and she knew she was going to die.  It would have been easy to walk away and do nothing, to wallow in self pity, but Lauren chose to make what time she had left matter. She was one of the strongest, most courageous people I have seen.  Her bravery deserves to be recognized.

So why did ESPN choose Caitlyn Jenner instead?  

I suspect it has everything to do with ratings.  Jenner's transformation is big news, the Vanity Fair cover photo damn near broke the Internet. But here's the thing, while I agree that Jenner's coming out was brave, it was a choice. Jenner is an adult who made a choice to go public about his gender identity.  Lauren was a young woman who had no choice in her fate and she faced her coming death by devoting her remaining time to helping others. That is the ultimate courage. 

That is why I won't be watching the ESPYs this year. I want them to know that while ratings may be the blood that sustains television, in this case, recognition of true courage is more important.</sup>

 

Repainted History: With a Happy Face

Not too long ago, I blogged about the Koch Brothers using their money to provide right wing dogma-driven curriculum to cash strapped schools.

Now conservatives in the Jefferson County Colorado school district are attempting to rewrite history to emphasize more conservative values. 

The proposed curriculum would “promote patriotic material, respect for authority, and the free-market system,” the Denver Post reports. “In turn, the panel would avoid material about ‘civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.’ (Slate.com)

So I guess the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement and the plight of Native Americans would get short changed, regardless of their importance to the history of our country.

What would they get instead I wonder? The beauty and clearly moral purpose of manifest destiny?  The greatness of the robber barons of old?  The brilliance of George Bush and Ronald Reagan in dealing with 9/11 and the Communist Bloc?

If anything gives me hope, it is reports that students walked out of class in protest of the proposal.  According to the Associated Press, "[h]undreds of students walked out of classrooms around suburban Denver on Tuesday in protest over a conservative-led school board proposal."

"I don't think my education should be censored. We should be able to know what happened in our past," said Tori Leu, a 17-year-old student who protested at Ralston Valley High School in Arvada.

Using political power to rewrite history in order to influence the opinions of future voters isn’t just wrong, it’s immoral.  In fact, it is exactly the kind of thing Stalin did all the time. And just because you are a rich conservative capitalist and not a Communist dictator doesn’t change that.

And if for no other reason that it is funny, let’s watch this clip from John Stewart showing just what conservative dogma/teaching leads to:

 

The Daily Show
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UPDATE: Air Force Reverses Course

It would seem that the Air Force has seen the light and pulled an Immelman turn on forcing enlistees to say "So help me God" as part of their oath.  As I reported before, an Atheist airman who wanted to reenlist was being denied the opportunity to do so because he refused to use that phase in his oath.

From the Air Force statement on the change:

WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- The Air Force has instructed force support offices across the service to allow both enlisted members and officers to omit the words “So help me God” from enlistment and officer appointment oaths if an Airman chooses.

In response to concerns raised by Airmen, the Department of the Air Force requested an opinion from the Department of Defense General Counsel addressing the legal parameters of the oath. The resulting opinion concluded that an individual may strike or omit the words “So help me God” from an enlistment or appointment oath if preferred.

“We take any instance in which Airmen report concerns regarding religious freedom seriously,” said Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James. “We are making the appropriate adjustments to ensure our Airmen's rights are protected.”

Since I called out the Air Force for denying airman the religious freedoms that they were swearing to protect, it is only right that I congratulate them on making this injustice right.

Click here to read the entire Air Force statement.

Here is my original post: Quick Hits: Now with Military Grade Irony

Quick Hits - Now with Military Grade Irony

You have got to be kidding me.  

An airman in the U.S. Air Force wants to re-enlist but the Air Force won't let him.  It isn't because he isn't a good soldier.  He didn't commit a crime. He hasn't done anything wrong, he just refuses to sign or say an oath containing the phrase "So help me God."

You see, he is an Atheist.  And up until October 30th of last year that was fine, you could omit that phrase.  But since that date, a change to Air Force Instruction 36-2606 demands that all enlistees swear the complete oath including the phrase "so help me God".

That same enlistee's oath also requires them to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;" and makes them promise to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same;".

Allow me to quote from that same Constitution the enlistees are swearing to protect, Article XI to be exact:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." [emphasis added]

Now, if an Atheist refusing to sign an oath including the phrase "So help me God" isn't bearing true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, then I don't know what is.

And what religious zealot made the change in the first place?  They do know that this is America and that freedom of religion includes freedom FROM religion, right?  I guess not.

Only in the military...

Do Unto Others

It is no secret that big business doesn’t like unions.  In fact, they have spent billions of dollars supporting the campaigns of candidates who are anti-union.

But what business doesn’t seem to understand is that if they treated their employees well, if they recognized the importance of a vibrant, viable middle class, then unions wouldn’t be necessary.

Case in point, let’s look at the very real difference between grocery store chain Market Basket and the McDonald's Corporation.  Both are suffering from employee dissatisfaction, both have been the targets of work stoppages but for very different reasons.

McDonald’s workers have been staging strikes to protest wages and the employment practices at the restaurant chain.  In response to these strikes, some of the employees have allegedly been retaliated against by their employer.  Many of those employees have filed complaints and as a result, McD’s finds itself on the wrong end of an important rulingthat could help bolster the case for unionization of its employees. 

In 43 complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB found that McDonalds, not just its franchise owners, are responsible for how workers are treated.  That means that they are partially liable for any awarded damages in the allegations of wage fraud, retaliatory firings etc.

If McDonald's paid a living wage, if they provided benefits and generally treated their employees better, do you think they would be suffering strikes and labor complaints?  I don’t think so, and to illustrate my point, let’s look at the troubles at Market Basket.

They too are suffering from work stoppages and protests.  Shelves are empty and the company is losing millions of dollars.  Here’s the twist - all this is happening not because they treat their employees poorly, but because they have historically been treated well thanks to the recently ousted CEO Arthur T. Demoulas.  They are protesting because the board of directors of the family owned grocery chain fired Arthur T. for being too good to the employees. 

They are protesting because they want him back. 

Why?  Because starting employees make more than minimum wage, long time managers can make six figure salaries, there were regular bonuses, and the company matched 15 percent of the employee’s salary for their retirement fund.  At Market Basket, an experienced cashier could make as much as 40K a year.

On top of that Arthur T. was visible.  He actually went to the stores, knew the employees (and often their relatives) by name. In other words, he treated the people who had made him and his family members multimillionaires with respect.

What has helped endear Arthur T. to workers proved to be a sticking point for shareholders, as he apparently hasn’t been running the company at the expected level of ruthless corporate efficiency. As the Globe’s Adrian Walker wrote, the generosity of Market Basket’s profit-sharing program particularly irked some board members. In one instance back in 2008, Arthur T. made sure the company made up for a loss of $46 million that the profit-sharing fund suffered during the economic crisis.

It’s no wonder that employees such as Tom Trainor, a district manager of 37 stores who was fired on Sunday, have taken to thinking of Arthur T. as a storybook character. “He’s George Bailey,” Trainor told the Washington Post, invoking the hero of It’s a Wonderful Life. “He cares more about people than he does about money.” [Slate.com]

Let’s be clear, before these protests, the company wasn’t in any trouble, it was doing well.  Everyone was making money.  But the board wants to make more money, and they want to do it by talking the cash out of the pockets of its workers.  And they are, and have been, willing to fight tooth and nail to get as big a slice of the profit pie as possible.

Considering the board’s decision last year, led by Arthur S., (Arthur T.’s cousin, a rival heir to the company who now controls the company’s board) to funnel an extra $250 million of Market Basket takings to its nine family shareholders, it’s easy to see why workers are concerned that they may get short shrift in the shakeup. (The We Are Market Basket website and Facebook page has been compiling a steady list of evidence to that effect.)

This isn’t the first time Arthur S. has tried wresting control of Market Basket from his same-named cousin. An ugly legal battle raged last year in which Arthur S.’s side of the family, who control 50.5 percent of the company, tried to grab some $1.5 billion in payouts on top of the $500 million they’d made in the past decade, according to Globe columnist Adrian Walker. These intra-family fights go back decades. Back in 2000, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly described the Demoulas vs. Demoulas saga as follows: “One family. Ten years. $800 million. More than a dozen lawyers. One witness on the stand for 17 days. One case that wouldn’t end. … [It] was a monster, a modern-day Hydra: every time one evil head would be severed, two more would sprout in its place.” [Slate.com]

Why do we need unions?  Because greed has become more than commonplace in the boardrooms of corporate America, it has become the prevailing creed under which these companies operate.  Rich isn’t rich enough.  The only good money is more money.  And the workers who make that wealth possible are no more important than the share croppers of old. They are expendable. Their poverty is their problem and the food stamps and welfare they need to survive is paid for by you and me, the taxpayer.

When the tax rates for the very rich were between 70 and 90 percent, it made sense for those people to invest their money in their workers and their companies, but with the loop holes and historically low tax rates they now enjoy it makes it easy to keep that money for themselves.

That is why we need unions, because even the good executives can’t stop the culture of greed that now dominates big business.  And if they can’t survive, if responsible CEO’s like Arthur T. can’t keep their jobs, then who besides a union is left to protect workers and their livelihoods.

Just Say No to Koch in School!

Let’s just say, for arguments sake, that you are a dyed in the wool Republican.  I’m not talking an old school Eisenhower Republican; I’m talking a true right-wing libertarian, Fox News watching, Glenn Beck loving, free market, trickle down economics Republican.

And then, for the fun of it, I told you that the Teamsters and the Service Employees Union had gotten together and are sponsoring a business class for high school students, taught by your local high school teacher in your local high school.  And what if that class focused on the importance of unionization to the economic future of America?

And for the icing on the cake, at the end of the class, the students got paid with scholarships etc.

Would you be comfortable with that?  (If you are such a Republican, I suspect you just popped a nitro tablet to fight off the angina.)

Well my hardcore Republican friends don’t worry.  It is actually just the opposite of what I described.  It is, instead, the very right wing Charles G. Koch Foundation and they are buying their way into schools to teach the anti-regulation, free market dogma that mirrors the Tea Party libertarian view of the world.

That’s right folks, the hardcore right wingers at the Koch Foundation don’t like the fact that kids go to college and start thinking, so they are trying to indoctrinate them before they get there through a subsidiary organization called Youth Entrepreneurs.

“Lesson plans and class materials obtained by The Huffington Post make the course's message clear: The minimum wage hurts workers and slows economic growth. Low taxes and less regulation allow people to prosper. Public assistance harms the poor. Government, in short, is the enemy of liberty.”

And this it isn’t just the interpretation of the Huffington Post.  Emails obtained from the program’s open Google group (thanks guys!) make the true intent of the program is clear.

“…the current structure of the program began to take shape in November 2009, documents show, when a team of associates at the Charles G. Koch Foundation launched an important project with Charles Koch's blessing: They would design and test what they called "a high school free market and liberty-based course" with support from members of the Koch family's vast nonprofit and political network. A pilot version of the class would be offered the following spring to students at the Wichita Collegiate School, an elite private prep school in Kansas where Koch was a top donor.

"First, the Koch team chose its mascot: a golden eagle holding a knife in its beak. They also assigned each other nicknames: Ol' Mucky Terrahawk, Mighty Killer, Big Gay Mule, Midnight Bandit and the Erratic Assassin. The group dubbed itself the "Wu-Teach Clan.

"Over the next six months, members of the Wu-Teach Clan exchanged hundreds of emails with one another and with Koch lieutenants. They hashed out a strategy to infiltrate public schools after surveys showed that the wealthy prep school students largely failed to absorb their libertarian message.

"The emails show that Charles Koch had a hands-on role in the design of the high school curriculum, directly reviewing the work of those responsible for setting up the course. The goal, the group said flatly, was to turn young people into "liberty-advancing agents" before they went to college, where they might learn "harmful" liberal ideas.” [HuffPost]

Here are just a few of the “falsehoods” that the YE group wanted to dispel with students:

·         Rich get richer at the expense of the poor

·         FDR/New Deal brought us out of the depression

·         Government wealth transfer programs help the poor

·         Private industry incapable of doing functions that public sector has always done

·         Unions protect the employees

·         People with the same job title should be paid the same amount ...

·         Minimum wage, "living wage," laws are good for people/society

·         Capitalist societies provide an environment for greed and materialism to flourish

Hey, this is a long article and I’m not going to run through the entire thing.  The bottom line is this.  The Koch Foundation is targeting woefully underfunded school districts that are desperate for any infusion of cash or free curricula with right wing propaganda designed to shape the student’s ideology so that it more closely reflects their own. They aren’t teaching kids to think, they are attempting to indoctrinate them into the extreme political right-wing.

And it doesn’t have to stop after high school.

 

“A student can take the YE course in high school, participate in the YE Academy to earn scholarship money and then use that money to pay for a degree from a Koch-funded university. So it isn't just a relatively small but growing high school program offered in Kansas and Missouri. It's part of a larger mission.” [HuffPost]

YE isn’t about the students, its mission is creating a political future that serves to protect the wealth of the elite to the detriment of the rest of us. It is about securing the future of those with money and power.  It is, simply put, class warfare designed to ensure that the robber barons of today continue to pillage the economy of tomorrow.

Full Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/16/koch-brothers-education_n_5587577.html