How are we doing today?
The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl. I am not a pro sports fan, but we did TIVO the game today. It is great to watch the game after it was over on very fast forward. All I had to do was watch the top part of the screen to see the score. I have to admit, I cheered every time New Orleans scored. I am a sucker for an underdog victory. In this case I was even more sentimentally in favor of New Orleans not because they beat the Vikings which I think they did to get to the Super Bowl but New Orleans deserves a few breaks.
Anyway, today would have been great except that we also TIVOed "Meet the Press".
In order for a democracy to work well you need to have a relatively well educated electorate, and you need to have an independent and free press so that the electorate can get the facts. Our democracy is not doing well.
Our public education system has been starved so that it can not possibly provide a reasonable education to the American public. There are many reasons for this failure, but I do not have the time today to enumerate them. I should just point out that our capitalist system for some reason does not value in monetary terms the extremely important job of teaching our children.
On the other hand, we do have a press that could be free and independent, but they have become lazy journalists. See a much more elaborate description of the laziness at ich bin ein oberliner. Journalists simply repeat what politicians and other say. Their idea of fair and balanced is to report what someone on the right said and what someone on the left said regardless of the truth of what was said. Many journalists simple regurgitate the talking points of the political parties. The kind of journalism that we need is when the journalist does the research to find the facts and doesn't let the politicians say things that are blatantly false.
Andrea Mitchell came close to doing her job when she interviewed Senator Collins who had given the Republican talking points about how terrible it was to give the underpants bomber the rights he was entitled to under the Constitution (even under President Bush's interpretation of the Constitution). Here is the clip of their interview:
David Gregory, on "Meet the Press" today was so engrossed in the Republican talking point that only United States citizens are entitled to the protections afforded by the Constitution that he assumed them in his question. Fortunately, his guest, John Brennan, President Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser, set him straight. Here is the exchange:
MR. GREGORY: A lot of that criticism is about the handling of the Christmas Day bomber, Abdulmutallab, Abdulmutallab--sorry, it's hard to get that name right. Why was he treated as an ordinary citizen (emphasis added) for even the period of time that he was, providing some information, then getting a lawyer after he was given his Miranda rights?
MR.
BRENNAN: He wasn't treated as an ordinary citizen, he was treated as a
terrorist. He was immediately taken into custody, he was questioned
under the public safety exception as far as Mirandizing an individual.
FBI agents were there on the ground, as well as with customs and border
patrol agents. We reacted very well to that situation. He was then
put into a process that has been the same process that we have used for
every other terrorist who has been captured on our soil, whether they
be U.S. citizens or non-U.S. citizens--Richard Reid, Ahmed Ressam,
Amari and others. They were brought into custody by law enforcement
officials and then treated accordingly. So there was no distinction.
And, in fact, the FBI's guidelines that they use, the FBI Domestic
Investigations and Operations Guide, was the implementation of the
attorney general guidelines that were finalized by Attorney General
Casey in the last administration in December of 2008. That is when
those guidelines were put in place. So the procedures and the
protocols were exactly consistent with what we've done before. Now,
after this incident, the president asked us to take a new look and see
whether or not those processes are ones that we are comfortable with
and whether or not we can enhance and strengthen them. And that's what
we're looking at right now. But those FBI agents and others acted
appropriately. And, quite frankly, I'm tiring of politicians using
national security issues such as terrorism as a political football.
They are going out there, they're, they're unknowing of the facts, and
they're making charges and allegations that are not anchored in reality.
I do not know how David Gregory gets away with calling himself a journalist. We need a lot more work like that of Andrea Mitchell.
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
Because teachers and paid poorly and have less-than-ideal working conditions, people in the communities they serve (like Edina) believe that they aren't truly talented or worth paying. I think their thinking goes like this: If teachers were really good at something, they'd simply get better-paying jobs.
ReplyDeleteOur school board, during negotiations for the 07-09 contract, admitted to our side that they fully expect most of the EPS staff to turn over every five years. This time around (we're still negotiating the 09-11 contract), they said they'd rather pay a $230,000 fine to the state than put that same money toward the contract deal. The board chair also said that if teachers felt slighted because all of the administrators in our district got pay raises and we were asked to take a relative cut "for the good of all," we should just get our administrators' licenses.
Being with the kids - teaching them, knowing them, encouraging them - that's not worth anything but a pat on the head.