Do athletics bring down the US?

Super Bowl Sunday is as good a time to talk about the US education system as any, considering how the road to professional football is paved with academic underperformance for countless young students who grew up thinking the sole purpose of school was to field a football team.

Ever since statistics comparing the academic performance of US students with those of other advanced industrialized nations have been publicized I’ve theorized about the reasons — and how else to do that than compare the relationships between schools and sports in the US with these other nations? The difference is fundamental: in Europe, for example, schools and athletics are kept separate, whereas in the US schools are literally training grounds for university athletic programs, which are in turn training grounds for professional leagues.

This is not to say that Europeans aren’t athletic. In fact, in sports that are typically played internationally they are generally superior to American athletes, and only in sports that are traditionally American — football, basketball, baseball, for example — do Americans excel. The difference is that in Europe wannabe athletes find sports opportunities outside of schools, generally with clubs in their communities in the beginning. In Europe, schools are for one thing: academics. In the US, it’s schools that provide these opportunities — and in the US, these opportunities create a destructive distraction to a school’s mission.

Without the resources to do any serious research to support my belief, in the 1980s I nevertheless conducted a simple survey of the entire student body at a primary school, grades 1-6, in rural Moore County, with the help of the school’s principal (who was a friend). The survey consisted of two easy questions: What do you like about school, and what do you dislike about school?

In a nutshell, here’s what the survey revealed: the older children got, the less they liked the stuff school was about. In the early grades, kids liked subjects — arithmetic, reading, social studies — and disliked gym and anything that didn’t involve learning. By the sixth grade, as they looked ahead to junior high and high school, kids were favoring the social aspects revolving around sports and listing academic subjects among their dislikes. It was easy to understand why. In our society, athletes were heroic, and academic achievers were ignored (at best). In schools, athletes were revered, not spelling bee winners. In local newspapers, high school football stars were featured in articles, not honor students. What impressionable mind wouldn’t aspire to that?

For many students, classes are annoying, something to endure while going to school, and even serious students can be distracted by the trappings of athletic events. There are rallies for playoff games, but none for final exams. Is it any wonder, then, why American students don’t fare well against their foreign counterparts, considering that they don’t take school seriously?

What comes before Pre-K?

Pre-Kindergarten, or Pre-K, as it is known, is another excessively politicized education program that’s made its way to the pubic conversation. An early education program aimed at three- and four-year-olds, Pre-K focuses on social, physical, emotional, and cognitive development. On Jan. 28, 2014, President Obama proposed Universal Pre-K in his State of the Union address. It’s a political issue because, as usual, it’s impossible to agree on how to pay for it and whether or not the Federal Government should even be involved.

What continues to be overlooked is the fact that education begins at birth, and that in its first three years of life a child essentially learns how to learn. It’s in these three years that the parents’ role is most critical — and today fewer and fewer young parents are equipped with the proper skills to nurture their children and prepare them for even Pre-Kindergarten.

It would be inspiring to hear a president acknowledge the importance of a child’s first three years, to make young parents aware that if they want their children to succeed in school and in life, they need to play an active role in their most developmental years by reading to them and letting them see how much they enjoy reading, by providing them toys that develops their imaginations and keep them engaged, and by limiting their exposure to television and other media that encourages passivity. They must instill in their children the importance of inquisitiveness, and reward curiosity rather than discourage it. They must send their children to school not only ready to learn, but eager to soak up knowledge.

Barack Obama is exactly the President to use his bully pulpit to bring this issue to the public’s attention, and Michelle Obama is exactly the First Lady to make it her mission. The Obamas have two years left in office and almost certainly a lifetime of service ahead. If they took up this cause, they could change America for the better for as far into the future as the eye could see.

Worthwhile links:

Your Baby’s Brain

Healthy Beginnings

Are we smart enough?

According to National Geographic, every hour the sun beams more than enough energy onto Earth to satisfy global energy needs for an entire year. It’s almost impossible to comprehend a virtually limitless supply of energy.

There was a time when we thought oil was a limitless supply of energy, but of course most of us know better now. More recently, natural gas is being touted as the answer to our energy prayers. Neither is, of course, and both are finite. That’s not to say the energy from our sun is infinite, but it will surely outlast us and then some.

Think of what solar energy brings to the table. It’s clean. It doesn’t affect the composition of the atmosphere. It’s just about everywhere, and it doesn’t have to be pumped or dug up out of the earth. Best of all, once collection systems are in place, it’s virtually free.

Perhaps this is why we haven’t harnessed the sun to its fullest potential. Existing energy companies just do not see how they can corner the market on sunshine. You and I can’t sink an oil or gas well, but we can install solar panels if we wanted, and then we could thumb our noses at energy corporations.

This is not something the energy corporations want, which explains their expensive dual campaign to both entice us to remain loyal to fossil fuels and to discredit global warming and climate change. Natural gas means jobs and energy security (no it doesn’t), and There is no consensus among scientists about global warming (yes there is).

What’s at stake ranges from increasingly violent weather events to our ability to produce the amount of food we need to feed the world to a sustainable water supply to the disappearance of coastal cities and communities in the US and whole countries elsewhere to the future of humanity itself.

Are we smart enough to harness the full potential of the sun? Of course we are, but are we wise enough? Of course there are many among us who have been ready for a long time, but the obstacles have been insurmountable thus far. It’s cheap oil, greed, and political stupidity that have been in the way of progress. It’s corporate money that has had the attention of our elected officials, not a public that should be united around something as sensible as solar energy but remains strangely silent. It’s an education system that leaves most Americans clueless about the Earth’s amazing natural processes.

If we ever wonder where we came from, we need only to look upward toward the sun, because without the star we revolve around, nothing that’s ever taken place on this Earth would have occurred. And if we wonder what will sustain us into the future, the answer is the same: the sun.

An open letter from a former young invincible

Except for the usual childhood illnesses and the occasional cold, I was never sick. I’d never broken a bone or suffered anything worse than a sprain. I smoked on and off, more off than on in my adult life, maybe a third of my years all told. I had insurance when it was provided by an employer who offered it, but when I was self-employed I could never afford the premiums so I didn’t think much about it.

Not until I reached 60 anyway. When someone told me I might be eligible for VA health care benefits, I decided to check into it, and sure enough — because I was a Vietnam-era vet (barely) and fell below a certain income level, I was indeed eligible. So sign up I did, and in 2003 I had my first thorough physical since I enlisted in the air force back in 1961.

Aside from elevated blood pressure and a fasting blood sugar reading barely above 100 that categorized me as a type-two diabetic (probably pre-diabetic in today’s lingo), I was in fairly good health. Because I was a fairly physical full-time job at the time, my weight was good, and except for some annoying back pain I thought my luck was holding out — a middle-aged invincible by now.

I had checkups faithfully for a few years, all the while insisting that I could manage my blood pressure naturally. It wasn’t terribly high anyway, and I figured some of the homeopathic things I’d read about would keep it under control. For that reason I declined BP meds. But after a few years I stopped making appointments, and after I retired (at 62), I started putting on weight. By this time I was into natural healing, and I figured I’d manage my blood sugar and blood pressure with supplements and diet — even though I wasn’t monitoring my blood sugar and BP and therefore had no idea what they were.

What was happening inside my body in the years I wasn’t under a doctor’s care was this: my lungs were losing some capacity, my blood pressure was creeping upward, and my blood sugar was getting out of control. I also didn’t realize that I the weight I was putting on was due mostly to fluid retention. I was suffering heart failure, and I didn’t know it.

When I finally went back to the VA for a checkup in 2012 (I’ll skip the bizarre event that got me to make an appointment), first thing they did was assign me to the diabetes clinic, where I got onto a regimen of meds. Seems my fasting blood sugar reading at the physical was almost off the charts, so the first priority was getting that under control.

Next came scheduled appointments with the pulmonary and cardiology clinics, with the eventual diagnoses cardio pulmonary obstructive disease and heart failure (with a 20-percent heart-functionality) respectively. However, the final treatment regimen wasn’t determined until I had my first and only heart attack.

So here I am today — on oxygen and five kinds of BP meds, two kinds of insulin, and at the moment confined to the house. My heart functionality is down to 15 percent, and there’s no positive prognosis. When I was an inpatient, one doctor promised I could last a year or more. Another said I might still have a few. Whatever the case, I’m ready — and I have no one but myself to blame for my fate.

Of course everyone should take care of themselves — it goes without saying. But everyone should have insurance — even the so-called “young invincibles.” No, you might live most of your life without developing cancer or a crippling injury at a young age, but you won’t know what’s going on inside your body that could lead to a chronic disease that might make you wish you were dead when you hit your late 60s.

Today, there’s no reason in the world a person can’t enjoy their senior years in reasonably good health — providing they do the routine maintenance along the way. If you think you don’t need insurance until you get older, you will almost surely discover that when you get older it will be too late to do much good. Today regular checkups are part of a good insurance plan — and from what I understand checkups and preventive care are provided free under Affordable Care Act plans.

When you’re in your 20s or 30s, you don’t think much about what your life will be like after 60. Well, I don’t suggest you sit around and obsess over it, but I do promise you that 60 will arrive sooner than you think. I’d be enjoying a decent quality of life in my old age had something like Obamacare been available when I was a young invincible. So to all you young invincibles out there — sign up now, and don’t wind up like me.

Perception is everything

I don’t know if the Republican Party coined the term “compassionate conservatism” for its platform in 2000, but Bush the candidate promoted himself as a compassionate conservative during the campaign for the presidency. In the years since a lot of Republicans have embraced the concept and branded themselves as compassionate conservatives.

They compound their claim on compassion by publicly affirming their Christianity, often declaring the United States to be a Christian nation, condemning every effort to maintain the separation of church and state, as required by the Constitution.

But their policies and actions say they are anything but compassionate.

It’s a matter of public record that Republicans would defund or dismantle every US public assistance program, from SNAP (food stamps) to Medicaid to WIC (a food and nutrition program for Women, Infants & Children and anything else intended to feed, warm, and shelter those of limited means or who’ve fallen on hard times. They would do away with Medicare and Social Security to again leave senior citizens at the mercy of the free market, which has no mercy. They would restrict or even kill unemployment insurance, leaving workers who lose their jobs with no way to provide for their families. Some among them even propose requiring children to clean school bathrooms in exchange for a free lunch.

Conservative candidates promise to do these things when they campaign for office, and when they attain office they do their best to enact these policies — all the while maintaining their concern for the poor. “They should work,” they say, but they do nothing to create jobs. “Government doesn’t create jobs,” they insist, but not only does government create jobs, it funds necessary infrastructure projects that provide jobs. They oppose government assistance programs at the same time that they oppose raising the minimum wage.

The Jesus of their faith did not preach callousness toward the poor, the children, the meek. These are people Christ ministered to. If conservatives have compassion, it is toward those I have not mentioned here so far — the rich. It’s as if they have no idea what it means to be a Christian. Conservatives have defined themselves by their stated beliefs and actions, and there’s nothing compassionate about them. By that same standard, they are not Christians.

Here’s me griping about the ACA

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that in America today enough money is being spent on existing health insurance, Medicaid, and all other sources, to cover every American fully in an all-inclusive group insurance plan.

Read single payer, if you wish — universal health insurance, Medicare for all, whatever floats your commie-hating boat. But if I’m right — and dollars to donuts I am — explain to me why this doesn’t make sense. Explain to me why it’s so crucial, for instance, to enrich private insurers and their stockholders at the expense of poor Americans. Explain why it’s so important to confuse consumers with an assortment of plans when everyone has an equal right to complete care no matter the illness, no matter where they live.

There are many in the progressive community who found fault with the American Care Act because it failed to reform health insurance in the way health insurance needed to be reformed. As a compromise, it failed to compromise between any two approaches. It was more of the same with a few protections and twists added. In the first place, it retained the employer-based insurance system — a model so admired that no other nation in the world has ever adopted it. And do you know any employers who just love the chore of providing insurance for their workers?

Progressives have actually advocated for universal health insurance since forever — single payer, Medicare for all, whatever. Regressives, of course (AKA conservatives) preferred the status quo, which leaves people at the mercy of private companies. So how would one compromise between those two approaches? Why, a public option, of course. But notice how that never even made the debate. This would allow people to choose if they wanted to control their own destinies or leave it up to an unhealthy alliance between corporations and employers.

Free of real innovations but full of unnecessary complications, ACA was offered up to Americans, and of course like vultures waiting for an orphan fawn to drop dead, Republicans pounced on the glitch-riddled rollout. A handful of reforms make Obamacare somewhat noteworthy — bankruptcy protection, no denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, inclusion for twenty-somethings on their parents policies, for instance — but at the end of the day there will still be people who are uninsured or under-insured.

I’m going to go out on another limb here by saying I won’t live to see the day when the US joins the rest of the world’s industrialized democracies to provide health care to all its citizens. For my part, I’m lucky enough to be eligible for health care through the VA — and at this late stage of my life I’m availing myself in particular of their cardiology care, which is first-rate. If every American had the kind of care available to me, this government health care, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

New survey tells us what we already know

A recent survey confirmed what we already know: the income gap is slowing growth. Progressives have been making this argument for a long time, but as persuasive as the logic is, it falls on deaf GOP ears in Congress. The logic, of course, is that spending drives an economy, and that sluggish spending translates to a sluggish economy.

A comprehensive solution, which would ultimately close the income gaps between the various “castes” in America, will almost certainly be impossible to achieve. However, raising the minimum wage to a level that would lift everyone above the poverty line would increase the spending power of millions of Americans and give the economy a boost. This would reduce the level of safety-net spending and spur hiring, which in turn would reduce spending on unemployment.

Despite being a win-win for America and Americans, Republicans are hardly likely to follow this course. Why? Probably because Barack Obama is still president, despite Mitch McConnell’s best efforts to limit him to one term. As has become clear, Republicans won’t do anything to make themselves look halfway effective if there’s any chance it will make Obama look better.

The potential tragedy here is that come Election Day in 2014, not enough voters will have connected enough dots to make smart decisions at the polls. Obviously giving Democrats solid control of both houses of Congress would get things done, but good luck with that, America.

MSNBC: Gutless

No one misinterpreted what’s-her-name when she compared the national debt to slavery. Slavery is bondage, involuntary servitude. Slaves were brought to the Americas in chains and subjected to the most inhumane conditions. Many people today are sensitive to the word, as we all should be in their behalf.

So on a recent MSNBC show, host Martin Bashir vented against this vile woman, and wouldn’t you know, he was “resigned” from the network. Till now, MSNBC has been a counter voice to fake news network Fox, but his treatment at the hands of the network suggests that MSNBC wants to draw viewers from Fox so bad that it’s willing to become them.

This is unacceptable. Contrary to the Republican mantra that the press is liberal, there are few progressive voices among the mainstream media. At best they’re “objective,” bending over backwards to remain neutral to the point that they fail to report anything of substance (for if the did, the reporting would indict the right wing). At worst they’re outright arms of the Republican party, like Fox easily mistaken for a GOP publicist.

MSNBC hosts occasionally play clips of remarks of Fox hosts and guests, and it’s almost always ugly, uncivilized vitriol. Bashir’s commentary about what’s-her-name was not only rare for its anger, it was deserved.

Is the ACA roll-out as bad as the Iraq war?

I’m not exactly tickled pink by how the Affordable Care Act website rolled out, and I’m not thrilled that the president is spending so much time on the defensive for what was clearly a botched procurement process. But I’m irritated as hell by the Republican response, which is echoed loyally by the so-called liberal media — especially since Democrats cooperated to help fix things when the Medicare Part D debut was similarly afflicted.

Here’s the headline from this weekend’s USA Today that inspired this post: “Health law shakes presidency.” It had me remembering how the last presidency wasn’t similarly shaken by the war that was launched for no legitimate reason. You know — the one to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist and to punish Saddam Hussein for having had nothing to do with 9/11 . . . the one that was going to pay for itself and be over in a few days.

I’m damn sure not going to forget that Bush’s war cost thousands of young Americans their lives and who knows how many Iraqis. I’m not going to forget the trillion or so dollars it cost us, and the recession it steered us to. I’m not even going to forget the failure to heed intelligence that might have allowed 9/11 to happen. I’m simply not going to stop believing that Bush and Cheney and several members of their administration are guilty of some serious crimes.

The tipping point: 2047?

Despite the fact that various media have been discussing the tipping point lately, we’re not talking about it enough — certainly not in places where the tragically uninformed spend their time. (For a refresher, click on the hot link above.) It’s possible to find some encouragement in the results of a Google News search for “tipping point,” although you won’t find much from the mainstream media.

One team of scientists, however (as reported in The Globe And Mail), has conducted a study that suggests 2047 might be D-Year — that is, the year when climate change may become irreversible.

I won’t be around to see it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t suffer the misery of the run-up. I used to love summer, but no longer. The way it is now, I can’t wait for summer to be over. Temperatures are higher, and of course so is humidity, since warmer air can hold more moisture. The springs I used to enjoy have become marred by violent weather, and only fall remained reasonably pleasurable.

Until this year. So far it hasn’t been terrific, and for all practical purposes it’s over. We haven’t had weeks of dry, mild days under a canopy of crisp blue. Fall colors are dull, and foliage season started too early, had an indefinable peak, and overall promises to be a washout, resulting in only a bumper crop of dead leaves. If winter is more tolerable because it’s not as frigid, there’s a flip side to this minor blessing: it isn’t getting cold enough to kill off an assortment of insects. Furthermore, warmer winters don’t rule out the possibility of major snowstorms.

Tipping point notwithstanding, most people don’t get excited about climate change because of phrases like “by the end of the century.” This leaves people thinking they won’t be affected — as in “Hell, I won’t be around on Oct. 31, 2113 when the shit hits the fan.”

This of course is short-sighted and selfish on the face of it, and it ignores the reality of the changes already underway. Yesterday’s Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast might be tomorrow’s super-tornado in Tennessee, or the next crippling drought in America’s breadbasket. How many of those can we afford?

Climate change is not an overnight phenomenon — and because the changes are slow, each generation may be adjusting to a new normal — until we reach the point when people are forced to migrate because conditions have become intolerable.

Even if we were to magically reverse the trend overnight, probably no one alive today would live to experience what I called “normal” when I was young — the seasons we wrote songs about.  But completely ending our use of fossil fuels is magic beyond anyone’s comprehension, so I think it’s inevitable that we reach the tipping point.