You Do the Math

In an earlier post, Hell-o, Old Fart, I commented on his article, American Winter clearly defines what poverty looks like, and reflected on my experience in Detroit. 

This morning, I read  an article in The Tennessean*. I was struck by the statistics -- 

"Of the 935,317 public school students in the state in 2012, nearly 60 percent were considered economically disadvantaged." 

-- and the comment that followed: " Studies show that children who come from poverty tend to be less prepared for the rigors of school."

Flashback to the Rotary Club luncheon in my earlier post and the (paraphrased) comments of Dr. Eddie Green, then interim Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools: 

“On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. A child coming to school, his last meal, lunch the day before, is thinking about lunch, not math or reading. Many of our children arrive at school on Monday morning, their last meal was lunch the previous Friday. They are not prepared to learn. 

“ On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. Children come to school in winter without coats. Their bodies shiver a good portion of the morning until the warmth settles in. Before the last bell rings, those same bodies again shiver, in anticipation of the trip home.

“On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. When squad cars fill the street corners adjacent to their school while a drug bust takes place, the school is in lockdown. No learning takes place.”

In Detroit at that time, 1996, the Detroit Public School system had almost 160,000 students, with 40% drop out rates before ninth grade. 

In 2013, the numbers in The Tennessean tell me that, Today, in Tennessee, over 550,000 students are at risk due to poor performance that can be directly attributed to poverty, a condition in which hunger is but one of many symptoms. 

Ms. Giordano’s article raises many questions. Among them, 

• What are the future prospects for a state when it puts so little value on the well-being of its children? Can we put a number on that? 
• What are the future prospects for a state where legislators proudly announce they support cutting funding of vital services like SNAP programs (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), literally guaranteeing their state's children will go hungry? Can we put a number on that?
• What are the future prospects for a state when, knowing how poverty impacts performance, its political leadership attacks teachers , citing them as the cause, and takes actions to drive them from their schools and to discourage future teachers from considering Tennessee as the place to teach?

I won't ask you for a specific number. Suffice it to say, the amount would be staggering. I will, however, point to some statistics that reflect the outcomes of such myopic policies over time:

The United States is:

16th out of 23 countries in literacy proficiency

21st in numeracy proficiency

14th in problem solving in technology-rich environments **

NUMBER ONE in Prison Population and Incarceration Rates ***

                         Adolescent Birth Rate****

Until voters (YOU) realize that their (YOUR) current legislators are part of the problem, the attacks on the poor, on women, infants and children, on teachers and on the elderly will continue. It is time for voters (YOU) to learn -- and to act in their (YOUR) own best interests, for their (YOUR) better futures and for a better future for their (YOUR) state.

*Tennessee schools see hunger in eyes of many students

Every district has pockets of poverty http://www.tennessean.com/article20131104/WILLIAMSON/311040024                      Maria Giordano mgiordano@tennessean.com 

** http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults-rank-below-average-global-survey-basic-education-skills#ixzz2jh2h5WHv 

*** http://www.savethechildrenweb.org/SOWM-2013/#/58/ 

All the above stats are attributable to poverty. All of them are outcomes of benign neglect. All of them are also correlate with the despicable actions of politicians.

Thank you, Karen Pickering

Thank you, Karen Pickering, for your contribution to the Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/12/australia-america-inequality-guns-healthcare?CMP=ema_565#start-of-comments

The views you express from your vantage point are in keeping with the views that many Americans hold as well. Currently, we are suffering from a disease confined for the most part by geography, political affiliation and values. This disease was first seen decades ago by a group of very attuned Republicans who, over thirty or more years, consciously and with intent nurtured its development (read American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips).


Much has been taken out of our systems to ensure that over time ignorance would abound and the leadership of exalted figures would prevail, at all levels of government and within such seemingly obscure groups as boards of education. These innocuous groups are rewriting the text books for millions of children, altering history and science to fit their dogma.


To this day, we spend more than five times what China spends on military and more than the next 16 nations combined, all of whom are allies or bit players. (http://jmalgeri.blogspot.com/2013/10/so-many-complexes.html)

We spend less on our children than those same nations who, like China, India, and even Kenya are increasing spending to grow and nurture the health, education and overall well-being of their children. They see their actions as INVESTING in the future.

Corruption is rampant here, with politicians shills for corporations, working for their personal benefit at the expense of the nation's future. It is time again for Americans to say "enough is enough" and take our country back. We have a history of doing that, and it is once again time we reassert our rights.

The Light is Better Over Here

There’s a story about a fellow leaving a bar late at night. As he walks through the parking lot to his car, he sees a guy on all fours, moving first one way, then another, his hands moving from spot to spot in front of him.

“You all right?, “ he asks, “Something wrong?”

“Yeah”, the guy replies, “I lost my car keys.”

“Maybe I can help. Where’d you drop them?”

The guy points toward an area yards away from where they are. “Over there,”he says.

“Then why are you crawling around over here/”, the man asks.

“The light’s better over here.

That, my friends, is a metaphor for the Republican approach to cutting the budget.

The problem really is over there, some distance away. In the budget game, it’s  a decade or more away. Social Security is not bankrupt. And any problems with it long term are easily dealt with, if action is planned and taken sensibly. Medicare is in trouble, long term, but cutting its benefits is undermining the contract we made with our citizens, present and future.

These programs are labeled ‘entitlements’ as if entitlements is a pejorative term, They are entitlements – because the people who had monies taken out of their paychecks for decades did that so they would have the services they need when they need them. They paid for them – they’re entitled.

Even if there was need for financial adjustments, there is plenty of money to go around. If we cut waste. Now, let’s see if we can agree on where the waste is – what’s wasteful and what’s not.

Let’s look at defense spending. We’re coming off the second of two wars that cost lots of money and made lots of money – for a few Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Pratt & Whitney,  Halliburton, the list goes on.

It cost lives as well, hundreds of thousands of lives (over 8,000 US military, over 601,000 violent deaths for just the first three years in Iraq alone)  . It brought us an entirely new and HUMUNGOUS security infrastructure, threatened our privacy rights and militarized local and state police forces and national guards.

Our $700 BILLION defense budget is coming down, to just over $500 BILLION, still more than the TOTAL combined budgets the next 16 nations, most of whom are our allies, and some six times China’s budget.

Further, what it’s buying us is more military equipment, arms we’ll never use because the nature of warfare has changed, and that equipment is obsolete.

Let’s talk another time about Government programs that can be cut deeply and sensibly, were it not for the fact that the companies involved are major contributors to our legislators.

The best way to make sure we’re looking at ALL options is simply to look at the Cabinet posts:

Agriculture

Commerce

Defense

Education

Energy

Health and Human Services

Homeland Security

Housing and Urban Development

Interior

Labor

State

Transportation

Treasury

Veterans Affairs

Attorney General

Hell-o, Old Fart: A post to http://musingsofanoldfart.wordpress.com

Hell-o, Old Fart,

I just found your blogs as I was googling The Power of Habits and came across your post. Since then, I have been reading your other posts, heading toward the most recent. When I am caught up with the current posts, I’ll go back to the first one I found and backtrack. Seems like a plan.

I just finished reading your post, American Winter clearly defines what poverty looks like. I feel the need to commence a dialogue with you starting with it as the basis. Other posts will inevitably follow, as you are a terrific writer with compelling insights, and the thought of dialoguing with you is delightful.

I live in Tennessee, where the most uncaring among us all seem to work in the same industry: politics. With child poverty over 20%  statewide and near 50% poverty in pockets like Memphis, one would think that elected officials would be working overtime to resolve the issue, if only for the horrific long-term trends it portends. Instead, they cry out for cuts in vital programs and the need for austerity.

Study after study points out the link between poverty and poor performance in school. Study after study link poor performance in reading in third grade to school dropout rates and further correlates to the increase in prison populations. Yet, the budget takes priority. 

in the late ‘90s, Dr. Eddie Green, interim Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools,  spoke to an audience of well-to-do Rotarians in adjacent Troy, MI. He began by saying (I paraphrase here), “On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. A child coming to school, his last meal, lunch the day before, is thinking about lunch, not math or reading. Many of our children arrive at school on Monday morning, their last meal was lunch the previous Friday. They are not prepared to learn. 

“ On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. Children come to school in winter without coats. Their bodies shiver a good portion of the morning until the warmth settles in. Before the last bell rings, those same bodies again shiver, in anticipation of the trip home.

“On any given day in the City of Detroit, no education takes place. When squad cars fill the street corners adjacent to their school while a drug bust takes place, the school is in lockdown. No earning takes place.”

In 2013, in cities and towns across the nation, no learning takes place, for many of the same reasons and more. To them we add mass shootings.

Poverty kills. It kills bodies, minds and spirits. What it doesn’t kill it damages beyond repair. When the numbers of poor reach the tipping point, where barely adequate social nets no longer hold together, the people perish. Fortunately for many, they do so out of sight. Statistics on a page.

To Your Health! Dump the LDLs, Drop Pounds, enjoy life!

In February, I had a procedure to place four stents in my arteries. In June, I went for a check up with my internal medicine doctor and told him about the stents. He referred me to a lipid specialist. Long story short, the specialist drew blood samples and sent them to a lab that specializes in measuring lipids.

Three weeks later, I returned for a consult to review the numbers. I had a fair number of measurements in the red and yellow categories, high and intermediate risk ranges respectively. In the high range was LDL-P, which is explained better by others.*  As he explained it, there are two concerns with lipids; the number, which in my case was1842;    and size. For that, he asked me to imagine I was opening a kitchen wall cabinet door and lipids were falling out like balls. If the balls are like basketballs, it’s fine. Mine, he said, we golf ball size and they are the ones that cause plaque build up.

He recommended Niaspan, a slow acting version of niacin. Regular niacin, he told me, causes a severe flush on the skin, like a sunburn, so people don’t like to take it. Niaspan  doesn’t have that effect, or when it does, it’s tolerable.

I returned just under five months later for a repeat blood test and follow up. All the red and yellow  indicators were now green. The LDL-P score, 887, well in the desired range of <1000.  

Two things had happened in the intervening months. First, I read the book, Wheat Belly, which details the deleterious affects of wheat on the human body. The author, William Davis, MD, spells everything out in detail (if you’re interested, buy the book or get it from your library), with separate chapters for wheat and cardio, wheat and diabetes, etc. In my case, I went right to the cardio and discovered that the way wheat is processed by the liver, it generates tiny LDLs. That was one terrific piece of information.

Wheat, he said,  is in everything. It’s in bread, of course, and in cake (aargh! I love chocolate cake). It’s also in frosting -- and in processed foods of all types. Manufacturers like it because it’s an appetite stimulant. I didn’t know that.

Second, I found out how much Niaspan costs, over $200/month. That’s a deal breaker! To get my niacin at a reasonable cost, I went to Costco and bought 150 count bottle of over-the-counter SLO_Niacin for around $10. I take one in the a.m. and another at night. Let’s see that’s 2.5 months worth in a bottle. Over the five months, that’s two bottles (around $20) instead of five fills (over $1,000). I take the pills with food and a baby aspirin, and rarely do I experience the flushing. When I do, it’s tolerable and short lived.

Consider reading the book if you have any of the following issues. A chapter on each is in the book:

Wheat and Obesity

Wheat and Celiac Disease

Wheat and Insulin Resistance

Wheat and the Aging Process

Wheat and Heart Disease

Wheat and the Brain

Wheat’s Destructive Effect on the Skin

Buy the book new, Buy it used, Buy it on Kindle -- or borrow it from your local library.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1609614798

* http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-vi  Scroll down to #8.

So Many Complexes

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower 

President Eisenhower's original draft included Congress but he felt he had spent so much of his energy fighting the military that he didn't have the wherewithal to take on congress, too. 

I use this photo to drive home the magnitude of our expenditures on things military. Here's another way to look at things from a current perspective: http://world-defece-review.blogspot.com/2013/01/top-10-largest-air-forces-2013.html 

Nation TOTAL AIRCRAFT: TOTAL HELICOPTERS:

1) US AIR FORCE                           15293                   6665

2) RUSSIAN AIR FORCE              4274                   1426

3) CHINA                                         2743                       96

4) INDIAN AIR FORCE                1962                     559

5) IRAN AIR FORCE                     1858                     800

6)NORTH KOREA                         1667                     237

7)PAKISTAN AIR FORCE            1531                     589

8)TURKISH AIR FORCE             1512                     570

9) UNITED KINGDOM (UK)         1412                     367

10) JAPAN                                      1252                     258

No country is a threat to us. We are a threat to MANY. That’s just wrong!

Of the top 10 largest air powers, we rank number one, with TOTAL AIRCRAFT:15293, TOTAL HELICOPTERS:6665; China has 2743 AIRCRAFT and 96 HELICOPTERS. Of the other nine, 7 are our Allies (maybe not friends, but allies). 

Look also at the number of countries whose air forces use US MADE planes, many of them sold/given to them on credit to keep our military-industrial complex (MIC) going. 

Let’s put our military spending in perspective. We’re spending some $700 million/year on defense. That's $2,222 for every man, woman and child (assuming 315M population). 

We spend 13% less (only $1943 for every man, woman and child) on K-12 education. Does it make sense to you that we spend more per person to 'defend' each American than we do to educate them? Especially when we have no 'enemy' with war capacities anywhere near our own, and where the combined forces of ourselves and our allies dwarfs any other possible combination? 

We are spending money on equipment that will fill more desert sands without EVER having flown a combat mission -- at the expense of our children and their futures.

Post Script:

President Eisenhower cited the Military-Industrial-Complex. I have given this a lot of thought as I work on my documentary on the scam of prescription drugs. I am looking at the Pharmacy-Congressional complex (they rigged Medicare Part D). 

There's also the Agri-congressional complex, the healthcare-congressional complex, the insurance-congressional complex, the education-congressional complex, the Big Oil-congressional complex, the transportation-congressional complex, the list goes on. After I complete this documentary, I will tackle yet another congressional complex. Have a preference? Let me know.

Because They Can

Observations: Because They Can

As fledgling businesses grow to behemoths, their understanding of the world changes. Their world view evolves. They come to realize that, over time, they become immune from the normal mores of society. They realize that they can do things that lesser corporations could never do. Soon they take bold, brash and often illegal, immoral and amoral steps -- because they can.

Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein reportedly believes he’s just a banker ‘doing God’s work’ as he ravages the global financial system. Goldman influenced the writing of a letter giving financial speculators the right to deal in commodities. The result was, in 2008, when the global harvest of wheat was the highest in history, speculators drove the price of wheat futures so high there were food riots in over thirty impoverished nations. They did that because they could.

After the 2008 market collapse, as people across the nation were furloughed from their jobs, and financial institutions were supported by bailouts, Goldman Sachs and others handed out million dollar bonuses -- because they could. All the while, politicians and the media were decrying the earnings and pensions of teachers, and canceling union contracts, also because they could. Valid contracts in one industry,

illegitimate in another. Go figure.

Governments do the same. The Bush administration waged war because they could. The NSA spies on the world because they can, and they bring along their collaborators, experts in communications, social media, and the traditional media as well. Now they all do things because they can.

Look at the US budget and you’ll find plenty of collaborators: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing at the top. Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, and construction, engineering contractor Bechtel don’t even make the top 20 list.

Look at the media corporations and the way they support the military industrial complex. Interviews on media news center on ‘experts’, those special people who know all about the myriad relationships in conflicting nations like Syria. They easily and confidently espouse the many reasons for US intervention in Syria while failing to disclose that they are board members of the major contractors that benefit from such conflicts.

http://public-accountability.org/2013/10/conflicts-of-interest-in-the-syria-debate/

In healthcare, the immoral and devious actions of PBMs (Pharmacy Benefit Management companies) are finally surfacing, and not enjoying the scrutiny. For a couple decades, these pariahs of prescriptions have hidden their financial wizardry from their corporate clients, to the tune of Billions per year and growing. How is it that industry leader Express Scripts profits have grown from $250 million a decade ago to $1.8 billion on the 12 months ended in June*.?

PBMs negotiated with the government for, and received, “an amendment requiring the government to keep the PBM’s incentives and spreads confidential.”* How could they do that? Size matters. Money Matters. Both buy influence. Why did they do that? Because they can. It is only when Americans finally take notice, and then take action will we be able to say ’You can’t.”

*

http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/10/news/companies/pbm-pharma-management.pr.fortune/index.html