Potpourri of Current Issues

There certainly is a lot going on in the news of late.  I'll touch on a few current items in smorgasbord fashion.  Your observations are more than welcome in response.

The NFL has completely fumbled the domestic violence issue.  They've made it quite clear their first inclination was not to do the right thing, but to do the expedient thing and sweep it under the rug if possible.  That didn't work so now the commissioner is promising a committee that will come up with some policy recommendations at some indeterminate point in the future.  That doesn't sound like a solution but more like a management/public relations strategy to sidetrack things and let the air out of the problem until it's off the front page.  A decisive boss would have said that if anybody does that they are suspended without pay for a year for the first offense.  To be sure, this issue is a lot bigger than pro football.  The visibility of the NFL is just what is focusing the news media's attention, and it shouldn't be up to them to decide what society is going to do about this widespread blight.  Law enforcement should be taking this issue over.  Punks who beat up women and children should go to jail.  District attorneys should be prosecuting people left and right for this type of behavior and judges should be throwing them in the slammer for considerable lengths of time if they are convicted.  We don't leave it up to McDonald's to decide how to "discipline" an employee of theirs if he/she robs a bank.

At the California Republican fall convention this past weekend gubernatorial nominee Neel Kashkari tried to rebrand the party as one that cares for the poor.  He tried the tired mantra that minorities and working folks don't like the Republicans but would if the GOP would just get its message out.  Sorry Neel, but the GOP is dying in California precisely because people DO understand its message all too well.  Hostility to minorities (read the quote from the convention vendor woman in the linked article), tax cuts for business and the rich, and service cuts for the poor and middle class just don't sell all that well to the 99 percent.

The bombing campaign against the Islamic State barbarians in Iraq continues and will likely accelerate in the weeks ahead and be expanded to Syria.  The hard part seems to be to get anyone interested in facing them on the ground.  Everybody seems to think something needs to be done but nobody wants to do it.  It's also unclear whether the bombing campaign will hurt the jihadis by thinning their ranks or help their recruiting efforts by giving them the opportunity to portray themselves as standing up to Western imperialism.  The only thing reasonably clear is that our disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the event that destabilized the country and set this cancer in motion.

It was good to see huge rallies in New York and around the world for action on climate change this weekend.   This follows close on the heels of the announcement that greenhouse gas emissions last year increased another 2.5 percent.   A U.N. environmental conference gets under way Tuesday, with much hand-wringing but little action anticipated.

With the 2014 midterm election six weeks from tomorrow, the latest prognostications seem to indicate a slight edge for the Republicans to wrest the Senate majority from the Democrats, who currently hold a 55-45 advantage if you count the two liberal independents who caucus with the Dems.  2008 was a good year for the Democrats, and that year's seats are the ones up for re-election this time.  Democrats therefore have a lot more seats at risk in usually-Republican states this time around.  Still, the GOP is not doing as well as they anticipated, even in some very red states like Kansas.  I wouldn't be surprised to see Harry Reid hold onto his position as majority leader.  I'll have more detail on the election in upcoming posts.

     

Teachers

I'm re-posting this commentary from Robert Reich's blog.  The former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor says it like it is.   

Robert Reich:

"Every time I hear someone dump on public school teachers I think of my sister, who I’m now visiting in Massachusetts. She’s been teaching high school English for years, and is so dedicated that despite a life-threatening illness she still gives her students everything she has. (She dashed off minutes ago, cutting short our breakfast in order to advise some of them on a extra-curricular project.) My sister isn’t all that unique. With few exceptions, the public school teachers I’ve known over the years are among the most committed people I know, working long hours for relatively little pay on one of the most important tasks of our society – educating our children. Yes, the tenure system has to be reformed, and a few teachers aren't doing a good enough job. But these aren't the real problem. Our public school teachers have become scapegoats for a system that’s underfunded, underequipped, underappreciated, and overwhelmed."

Steve's post script:

Nobody goes into teaching to get rich.  People become teachers because they like kids and want to dedicate their lives to helping them learn and grow.  So, what gives?  Well, the correlation between parental income level and their children's academic achievement is nearly absolute.   The larger the poverty-level population grows the greater the societal and educational dysfunction that mirrors it.  We must tackle income inequality in a serious way if we want this to improve.  It's not teachers unions or the latest fad educational theory that is to blame or is the solution.  Parents who value learning, model responsible life choices and insist on achievement are the solution. 

I'm Done with Football

I like football as much as the next guy.  I played as a senior in high school and have attended five or six pro games, including home games for the LA Rams, Kansas City Chiefs and San Diego Chargers.  I've gone to quite a few major college games, at USC, UCLA, Fresno State, and even one at Syracuse.  I've usually attended one or two community college games a season here in Visalia to see the College of the Sequoias Giants.  I played in fantasy football leagues for about six years.  The last few years I haven't paid much attention to pro games until the playoffs, but I've been a regular for Ohio State games on television and most of the bowl games too.  But I'm taking the plunge this year.  I will be paying no attention to football.   

That's because of the increasing evidence of serious brain injuries associated with football.  The massive class action lawsuit and payout by the NFL is the tip of the iceberg.  It seems recurrent concussions and resulting dementia have been pretty common and are now coming out in the open.  Junior Seau's suicide and donation of his brain to research provided a watershed moment and an undeniable wake up call about what's been going on.

I just can't patronize a sport that is so destructive to people anymore.  It's worse than the ruined knees, for brain injury robs a person of who they essentially are, and it doesn't get worse than that.  I haven't paid any attention to boxing and am repelled by the anything-goes cage fighting and "mixed martial arts" combats too.  That sort of thing is reminiscent to me of the Roman Colosseum, a reversion to primitive bloodletting.  But football has a lot of redeeming qualities: the grace of the receivers, the strategy, the teamwork, the cat and mouse of play selection and defensive anticipation.  But it's all undone when too many young men become the equivalent of drooling octogenarians in their forties and fifties.  I can't countenance my time, attention, support and money going to advance that cause. No game is worth that, and until they find a way to truly protect the brain from that kind of abuse they're just going to have to get along without me.