Education on the Campaign Trail

I can’t recall a presidential race that did not involve candidates stumping for better schools, more pay for teachers, and excellence in education. And yet candidates never really have a clue as to what’s wrong with the educational system.

Our present curriculum is almost a hundred years old, and it’s based on the eighteenth century philosophy that a student can learn everything that is knowable (a bit ludicrous in today's world). Hence, we have a supermarket mentality to curricula. Students walk down aisles each day, sampling a bit of this and a bit of that—one hour for math, one hour, for English, one hour for history, and so forth. Research indicated long ago, however, that the human brain does not assimilate much information when inundated with multiple disciplines in a short period of time.

Having been an educator for twenty years earlier in my career, I certainly think teachers are underpaid, but discipline is the number one problem in our classrooms. The response of school boards is to make our aspiring teachers take two or three psych courses in college and then have them student teach for a single semester before declaring they are ready to handle any student who walks into their classrooms. It’s a travesty.

We can also blame our educational mindset on Sputnik, the Soviet satellite launched in 1957. America panicked, and to keep up with the Russkies, we emphasized math and science and never looked back. The result has been several generations that are still reading and writing at a seventh grade level by the time they graduate from high school.

But you won’t hear any of this on the campaign trail.

Picture: Public Domain

Healthcare vs. Voodoo

I went to the doctor’s this morning for a sore elbow. I was told to give a urine specimen.

“Huh?”

“We’re now conducting drug screening on all our patients,” the nurse explained.

“Why?” I asked. “I’ve been coming here for years. I’m not a junkie.”

“To make sure that our patients aren’t self-medicating.”

“What’s this going to add to my bill?” I asked.

“Lab fees range anywhere from $200 to $800.”

“For a urinalysis?”

“Yep.”

Health insurance has skyrocketed enough without my having to pay for the illegal actions of others. Most good decongestants, for example, have been taken off the market because they’re being used to make meth by adolescent boneheads.

I took my sore elbow home and rubbed it with Sportscreme.

Healthcare is a big topic this election cycle, but before we put all of the blame on insurance and drug companies (and they are indeed a big part of the problem), let’s look at doctors’ fees, too. The doctor that charged me $35 for an office visit a few years back now charges me $150 for a fifteen minute “Hi, how are we feeling today?” We? He’s feeling just great, I suspect, because he’s going to make $3,000 in a single day.

As far as doctors justifying their enormous fees because of the high cost of medical school, let’s have a little reality check. Physicians pay their medical school loans off quite nicely, thank you, and all the doctors I know in my town are real estate speculators or land developers who make millions on the side. (And the greedy bastards overbook anyway.)

We pay teachers very little for trying to shape our children’s minds for seven hours a day. For a fifteen-minute exam, we pay doctors what a teacher makes for that entire seven hours.

Voodoo is looking better and better. Chicken bones are cheap.

Picture: Public Domain

State of the Union Speech: Bushed for the Last Time

George W. will for the seventh and last time—thank the good Lord—report on the State of the Union tonight. Each one of these speeches has caused my muscles to tense, has made me feel that my government has somehow been taken from me.

I knew we were in trouble nine years ago when Bush didn’t know what “subliminal” meant and pronounced it “sublibdibal.” How did such an inarticulate man become leader of the free world? Along the way, he has tried to make jokes about his poor grammar and use of language, but I don’t find his jibes funny at all. If a president cannot master his speech, then I must question whether he can master his thoughts. Bush is clearly master of neither. He has tripped over his tongue a thousand times and chuckled at the most inappropriate moments (such as when talking of the death penalty), revealing a clear discomfort with his audience. He usually cannot stand up straight at a news conference, always leaning on the podium. An unscripted Bush is a Bush waiting to fall into a pit of jumbled vowels and consonants, a Bush who is not quite sure of his message.

The PBS series Frontline did several shows on the Bush presidency, and the consensus of the producers was that Bush was groomed to run for the White House by men such as Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz (the architect of the current Iraq War), Richard Pearl, and others of the same ilk. Rove wanted permanent Republican rule, while Wolfowitz wanted a permanent U.S. presence in the Middle East (something he’s advocated since 1991). They knew they had someone who would be the perfect puppet, but there's nothing more dangerous than a leader who thinks he’s in charge. Cheney has always been the de facto president, someone who installed his own people, without Bush's awareness, at key "chokepoints" within the government so that nothing could happen without his knowledge.

Bush has been the butt of endless cartoons and impressionists for obvious reasons. To use the words of Shakespeare, he is a man full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Paradoxically, he has, through sheer ignorance, proven to be the most dangerous man in the world.

Picture: Public Domain

Viva, Niagra: The Melodious Side of Erectile Dysfunction

I just might shoot my TV screen the next time those smiling musicians start singing “Viva, Viagra!” Yeah, they all just go down to the local feed store with their guitars, drums, and stand-up bass and start singing about how happy they are because they’re going to have sex with their wives. Horny but happy thanks to the little blue pill.

It’s a ridiculous commercial and makes me contemplate monastic life rather than the joys of connubial bliss. Are we actually to believe that this outpouring of melody is spur-of-the-moment? It’s no different than if I said, “Hey, guys, let’s go down to the courthouse and throw pickles at lawyers and judges.” The scarier scenario is that these men may have taken time to write the song and carefully planned its performance. File this under the heading of GET A LIFE, FELLAS. Pluck in the privacy of your own home.

Well, whoopee for them. I don’t care if they’re about to get lucky or not. Over the falls with ‘em! Viva, Niagra.

Picture: Public Domain

Aunt Pippi Addresses the Current Economic Crisis

My Aunt Pippi decided she would take on the current economic crisis brought on by a bad housing market, overextended credit, and high gasoline prices. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, lowered interest rates three-quarters of a percentage point this past week. Pippi had a different idea. She raided her thirty-year-old penny collection and went to a shopping mall, where she put a penny on the hood of every car in the lot. (Feisty ole gal.) She now carries a bag of pennies everywhere she goes and places a copper Lincoln on newspaper stands, gumball machines—any public surface where people might see it.

“One cent isn't going to go very far,” I told her, “although it’s a nice sentiment.”

“Sentiment be damned,” she said, belting back a shot of Jack Daniels. “Finding a penny is considered good luck. I’m spreading hope, not wealth. Hope is the best economic stimulus package there is. If people feel they’re luck is gonna change, then it will.”

I couldn’t argue the point. Wall Street reacts more to fear and optimism than actual market conditions on any given day. The same goes for our lives. We get what we expect. Maybe that’s why Aunt Pippi is ninety-four years old.

Picture: Public Domain

New Orleans and the 2008 Presidential Race

A lot of politicians running for office came to New Orleans to announce their candidacies or hammer a few nails before driving back to the airport and leaving the Crescent City far behind. Jimmy Carter spent significant time here. George Bush did not. He didn’t even know how to hold a hammer, grasping it right beneath the claw, where there’s no leverage.

If New Orleans is slowly being rebuilt, it is because of the tenacious spirit of its citizens, not because of photo ops by Republicans or Democrats. Billions in FEMA money is still tied up, so when I watch people in the lower ninth ward put their lives back together one clapboard and doorframe at a time, I know what this country is all about: perseverance and the willingness to have a go at it with whatever is available. We carry on, our lives held together with bailing wire, hope, and depleted savings accounts.

New Orleans always had its problems, but it doesn’t deserve neglect. Most neighborhoods are still trying to “come back,” and much of the city is still blighted. Mass transit has still not been re-established in all areas, many schools remain closed, and the city’s largest hospital for the poor has been condemned as uninhabitable.

You would think that rebuilding New Orleans would be a consistent topic in the televised debates of both parties. A million people were displaced, an infrastructure destroyed, a hundred thousand homes flooded. A proud population now lives across the nation because of Hurricane Katrina, finding work where it can. And if the economy is tanking around the country, think how hard it’s hitting the Big Easy. (Picture: Public Domain)

Asteroids, Comets, and a Tequila Sunrise

Things don’t look good for Mother Earth, sports fans. Many scientists say that if we don’t start to reverse global warming within the next ten years, it’s lights out—and don’t call the electric company to get the power turned back on. (Oh well, we don’t seem to care as long as we get the kids to soccer practice.)

And then there’s nuclear war. Every nation wants a radioactive toy to play with these days, although I don’t know why. Even limited nuclear exchanges, as nincompoop generals refer to them, will send radiation into the atmosphere across the globe. Chernobyl has sent cancer rates skyrocketing in Europe as far north as Scandinavia, and rates are expected to stay high for the next twenty-five years. A tequila sunrise should be imbibed, not seen on the horizon.

And then there are those pesky little rocks and comets tumbling through the solar system. The one in the pic is named Mathilde. Another, called Apophis, will come within 18,000 miles of earth in 2029. But the problem is that these chunks of ice and iron-nickel are hard to detect, and not many folks are looking for them except the scientists featured on The Discovery Channel, and they seem to have limited political clout. It is entirely possible, say scientists, that an asteroid or comet might be headed straight for earth and not be detected until three months before impact.

It’s always the unforeseen that gets us in the end. We could address the problem today, but we’re too busy watching Mitt Romney’s hair and Britney’s bottom. But somewhere out in deep space, there’s a gray, cratered rock the size of Manhattan, and it may be looking to put earth into the side pocket like a wicked cue ball … in its own sweet time. Just ask the dinosaurs. They’ll tell ya.

Picture: Public Domain

Personal Injury Attorneys and Ice Cream ... or The Ambulance Chaser and the Wrong Number

True story, with names changed to protect the morons. The case details have likewise been modified.

So this ambulance chaser gives out my number by mistake to 3,500 clients in a class action suit against an ice cream parlor that allegedly sells vanilla ice cream that melts too fast and causes clothing damage and "freezer burn" on the skin.

But people are—pardon my bluntness—stupid. I tell the first sixty-two callers looking for Redd Fingle and Associates that they have the wrong number.

“Are you sure?” someone asks.

“Yep. I live here. This is my personal number.”

“So Redd isn’t there?”

“No.”

“But it says in the letter from Redd that this—”

“It’s the wrong number.”

“So this isn’t the law offices of Redd Fingle?”

“No. Sorry, fella.”

“Okay, I get it now.” Pause. “Do you know when Redd will be back?”

I hang up.

I decide to leave a new greeting on my voicemail and then take the phone off the hook. My message says, “This numer, 555-5555, is not the number of attorney Redd Fingle. Please consult directory assistance and refrain from leaving a voicemail. Thank you.”

I check my voicemail two hours later. It’s full. Twenty-five callers have left messages, such as:

1) “Redd, this is Dianne Blubberstein. Give me a call about my case.”

2) “Is this the law office of Redd Fingle?”

3) “Hello? Hello?”

4) “Yes, I’m calling about my case, and—Bobby, get the hell off your sister right this minute! Sorry, Mr. Fingle. As I was saying …”

5) “Redd? You there, Redd?”

And then there are the persistent folk of this world, the ones who figure that sheer hard work will get the job done. They call, and I tell them they dialed the number correctly but that it’s not the law office of Redd Fingle and was given out by mistake. Thirty seconds later, the same person calls back, speaking in a rather tentative tone, and says, “Um, is Redd Fingle there?”

“No, ma’am. Like I told you just now—this is not a law office.”

Pause.

“Well, um, do you happen to know Redd?”

“No, ma’am. We don’t socialize. Had a falling out last year.”

I finally figured out what to do, however. I picked up the phone and said, “Law offices of Redd Fingle. How may I help you?”

“Can you tell me about the ice cream case?”

“Yes, sir. Everyone will be awarded a million dollars.”

“Really? Redd said I was gonna get me about five grand.”

“Well, the judge was in a really good mood,” I said. “His wife dropped the adultery suit.”

“When do I get my money?”

“2048.”

“Huh?”

I hang up. People want money. I continue to get several dozen calls every day and send daily emails to Redd threatening legal action. It's ironic that he is trying to collect damages for people who have allegedly been harmed, but he seems unconcerned that I can't use my telephone anymore. No wonder people make jokes about lawyers.

My ex-wife was sued by an ambulance chaser once after she tapped the bumper of the car in front of her while going three miles an hour. The woman in front got out and said she was fine. Two weeks later, she was wearing a neck brace and taking seven pain killers, claiming that she was also suffering from “loss of enjoyment of life,” the legal term for not being able to have sex. Redd Fingle wasn’t her lawyer, which was a good thing. He would have probably given out our number, and I guarantee the lady would never have seen her $68,000.


Picture: Public Domain