Response to Daniel Howes in "Crises necessitate emergency managers" in the Detroit News on April 22, 2011.
A commenter reporting in from (Mt.) Olympus, Michigan has grown giddy breathing in all that anti-public sector gaseous blather. Defending our sacred right to ignore the poor, with the bromide: "Our poor are rich by comparison." This intentionally misleading assertion does not account for what it means to be poor and unemployed, or worse yet mentally ill and/or unemployable in present day Michigan.
Food banks, homelessness, and re-sale shops, all of which now abound, testify to real needs or our neighbors. The new blight and seedy/greedy "licensed to steal" store fronts e.g. the Cash Advance and the Title Loan Outlets are covering the old Main Streets like a black-leafed kudzu.
Then comes Danny Howes: His message, blessed by the billionaire Koch Brothers and "Amen-ed" by the crudely partisan TeaPublicans, is: "The EM law would not threaten democracy if elected officials and those empowered to represent public employees instead trained their finely tuned political antennae on financial reality and charting a path out - because someone has to get the job done."
Howes might have had help developing the physical/mental flexibility to swallow his own tail like unto some mythical beast, when he so twists his flawed analysis of the serious nature of Michigan's "one state depression" into a contorted mis-truth such as his screed of local government: "Boil it all down, and the biggest rap against Michigan's stiffened Emergency Manager law is that it's anti-democratic."
The entire nation is looking on. Michigan has become the focus of dread and awe. Is this what a Republican Majority cowed by a smattering of anti-tax, "we got ours, go get your own" rowdies can do to a powerful state in real trouble?
Lead into the taller Weeds, Howes.
You're taking opinion in this state further to the bottom; in a manner that is so blithely arrogant and condescending that its bitterness, in you opines, cannot be assuaged or sweetened. In fact, Howler Howes, your interpretation of the Emergency Finance Managers' purpose runs 180 degrees to Gov. Snyder's envisioned purpose of that new act: Preventive Help.
"An EM could privatize public services, restructure departments, rewrite supply contracts, assess the affordability of pensions and post-retirement health-care obligations and - the Big Kahuna - reopen collective bargaining agreements."
The Big Kahuna, as Howes so inelegantly labels this crisis, is demeaning to the citizens, first responders, teachers and a fleet of others you give over to the privatizers and the high-fee lawyers-all of whom like bottom feeders, will harvest for themselves much of the savings you pretend to believe will be garnered by this Corporatist Take Over of Michigan's local governmental units.
Remember the top yearly pay allowed for an EFM is limitless, even beyond the salary of the governor. Over 300 EFM's have been "trained" that is run through a crip course. Danny, how many places do you think they will be needed?
There are scores of DetNews regulars who will agree with Howe's assessment: "There would be scant need for a new law empowering state-appointed outsiders to make the hard choices for municipalities and school districts if the people hired to make those choices in the first place actually did their jobs." But agreeing with Howes' pronouncement does not detract that the coming crisis, on top of the current crisis, the crisis created by Snyder's cut off of historic block grants is part of his Retro-Englerite advisers' Rube Goldberg tax-and-shift; the outright giving of approximately $.2.2billions to Snyder's base, the business community stolen from education, the poor, the elders. And what have these businesses done to earn bonanza-this gift outright?. .....That's right, Nothing!
Howes has blackened the reputations and integrity of every local governmental official in the state when he snidely concludes in his delusions and deductions: local governmental officials as a class are slackers: "(T)hey mostly don't," do their jobs properly or professionally. Put down that tarry broad brush.
Howes sees Michigan as diseased. Everywhere he sees, " symptoms of a disease whose cure begins with an honest, disinterested, financially sound assessment of where a locality or school district stands, what its revenue is and how the two can be reconciled free from the push and pull of power politics." Howes' shortsighted criticisms are invalid and decidedly injurious to the Michigan commons.
How over-extended is Howes' logic. He picks the "richest county" in Michigan to use as a dashboard for the state: Oakland Co. Even in the Kingdom of Patterson, roads turn to rubble, snow goes un-plowed, pot-holes do their damaging havoc, but Howes sees a bit of hope (in what may still, yet be a downgrading ) in Oakland's AAA credit rating.
Collectively all of these "incompetents" (as outed and so labeled by Howes) see the emanate dangers and the coming storm: "It is completely understandable for elected officials, union leaders and (semi-informed) members of the news media (caught an MSNBC rant on Michigan's new EM law, lately?) to rail against the apparent anti-democratic hooks of the controversial EM law." But Danny is more knowledgeable than these, more sure of his prejudices, he is, for sure his own favorite "expert". Yet Rachel Maddow has shown light in a very dark corner; Howes obviously must look away.
The problem is in Lansing, Danny. It's the deadhead TeaPublican Legislature, it's their inability to see that things are - actually in an upward trend. The main problem is they're fans and water carriers of A.L.E.C (The American Legislative Exchange Council- a secretive far right/pro-corporate and secret legislative bill mill) and also perennial partisan enemies of unions and public servants. The public reactions will continue. Recall efforts are underway. When 1,000 march in Marquette, even a paperboy knows there's real discontent and change in the air.
If Howes wants to be a cheerleader for Grover Norquist and his anti-civic gaggle of bathtub-drowners and silly "NO TAX" Pledgers, let him go to D.C. and ply, take up, his twisted trade on K Street.
Howes would have us believe its all about lack of money-state revenues. No Danny, it's much more, it's about a culture of greed and resentment from many encouraged to whine rather than participate; People talk radio agitated and refusing to share in the responsibility and obligations of freedom and citizenship.
Gov. Milliken faced similar budget crisis problems; his good faith and belief in people; and a consensus to find real, across-the-board sharing; and even a temporary raise in taxes combo, brought us through former tough times.
Look around, the wide-spread Koch Brothers' coup being rammed through state legislatures across America; represented in part by their paid mercenaries and the front they created, Americans for Prosperity; It becomes clear the Mega Wealthy have an "bum's rush" agenda designed in their favor.
This is an all-out attack on the Middle Class and a usurpation of dreadful opportunity created by a G.W. Bush induced near-Depression-crash of our national economy. For Bros. Koch, Amway, The Wal-mart Waltons, et. al. It has become an prime "disaster capitalist opportunity" to cash in on economic woe to carry out ideological and partisan reprisals and massive "take-backs."
For shame, Howes, in all of this you've become part of the greater problem, not the cure.
Original Post.
Showing posts with label Daniel Howes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daniel Howes. Show all posts
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Kalkaska ! Kalkaska ! Kalkaska ! Remember That Sad Event.
Michigan's Executive Branch is in a flat spin. In politics perception is everything. What has gone on in 3 months of Snyderism has been a total civic disaster: No Jobs, No Jobs, No Jobs.
It's become so bad, so quickly, PR/Spinmeister John Yob has been hired back to patch up the gapping rip in the fabric of the governorship by attempting to interpret Snyder's faux pas (which are highly embarrassing to the office of governor and his party) trying to put things back in a favorable way; The Executive Branch of Michigan is in a flat spin. A stiffly stubborn and defiant Tricky Rick is sure to take it down even further down to failure uncorrected.
Read Daniel Howes column: "Why' overlooked in Snyder budget plan" 3/31/11, and see where Howes points to the failure of Snyder's one word mission: FAIRNESS.
"KALKASKA AGAIN" SHOULD STRIKE REAL FEAR If you will note from the reference (in Repubteach's recent entry Water Cooler entry, the Kalkaska incident was raised by a third party, not Repubteach) Kalkaska is a signal "event." One of those milestones that shook and shaped the direction of the entire Engler Revolution and resulted in major changes in how Michigan schools are financed.
Eventual passage of Proposition A, which rectified many of the problems of school funding, was a direct outcome of the "Kalkaska Moment." Prop A did, for a period, meet the needs of many school districts, especially like those of rural Kalkaska. However, it was flawed. At the same time Prop A failed certian districts such as Rockford. But rather than build on its strengths, certain aggressive partisans during the Granholm years let it languish and fail. This crisis is fed and fueled by the "disaster capitalism" endemic to the demands of a radicalized GOP/Koch Brothers A.L.E.C. playbook.
In 1993 Powerful Corporate Lobbyists Circled Their Wagons The tremendous lobbying pressure from Consumers Power, the Mackinac Center, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, et al, produced classic media scenes like Speaker Paul Hillegonds (drawn away from his children brought to visit daddy in the House Chamber during one of those late-night sessions leading up to the rush to get school funding finished by Christmas Eve 1993. Under great pressure from Business, Hillegonds, called to the House foyer. There he was to be literally surrounded by these business-is-first lobbyists seeking a "good deal cut" into the pending school funding legislation. They surrounded Speaker Hillegonds in the manner wolves surround their quay, intense and demanding.
The outcome of such events,etched a vivid image; and convey something noteworthy of informing novice Rick Snyder as to the historic facts surrounding that crisis: Engler, with all his more than two dozen tax cuts and slick parliamentary/political shenanigans, acted in a very different manner than that of Snyder. JOHN ENGLER POURED MORE MONEY INTO PUBLIC EDUCATION, NOT LESS.
Engler's support for public education was to become much more over time. His generously in the second half of his tenure as governor would be considered, in this new coercive and negativist Teapartisan environment, totally rejected and fervently protested by the tax-haters who have inhabited the party and now the Legislature. Most notably the Know Nothing Leon Dorlet, daddy of the big pink pig metered at the capitol curb for weeks.
DID YOU GET THAT? JOHN ENGLER, THAT ICON OF GOVERNMENT AND TAX CUTS AND TOUGH TALK, ADDED MORE TO THE REVENUES GOING TO EDUCATION.
Yes, the teachers' professional association did pay a price in terms of loss of certain areas of their interests, but good things for Michigan's school children came out of it. Kalkaska's kids got their school up-and-going and from the looks of the present school plant, and newer community facilities built for youths, they have done reasonably well, until Snyder.
Among the lobbyists who haunted the halls of Lansing during this time ('93) was Dick DeVos. This scion to billions was developing his bitter antagonism to public schools even then; he, and wife Betsy, have gone wild subsequently. This divisive coulple has aggressively chosen to become a national scourge; spending millions of their children's hand-me-down inheritance to foster Republican against Republican, division and dissention, bitter rancor in many states; as far west as Utah and in the South in places like Missouri and Virginia.
If you recall, as surely you must, the Dick & Betsy push to pass the 2 to 1 rejected voucher proposal which was DeVos backed had large negative political effects. Their effort helped to undermine the national election for GOP president G.W. Bush by throwing Michigan to Al Gore and leading to Florida and the highly controversial Supreme Court's tragic decision that put GWB in the White House. The voucher campaign also caused Engler and Betsy to fall out with each other. Betsy, most recently, pictures herself arm by arm with Chris Christie of New Jersey, the nation's ponderous bully-boy provocateur and tormenter of public servants and teachers> This is Betsy's latest foray into destructive ideological warfare. Interestingly, The prototype for Christie was John Engler.
Kalkaska! How can any political party call for and support the undermining of public education?
Education in a neighborhood school supported and beloved by the community and guided by the traditional civic-minded school board members, who were often business people and professionals, were once respected and honored.
Not now, and not anymore. These Det/News blogs over the years have contained an unrelenting venom and countless vituperative rants for which the News' editor and his staff are guilty for exciting. These published sentiments reflect a systemic anti-intellectual strand that has destroyed the comrade of the commons and poisoned the politics of our entire state. The hatred and ill-will ginned up here is palpable. Now, at this very low moment, we cannibalize ourselves in our own toxic opines and dark-think.
Dwalt, I have seen what we have done to with "poison politics" to destroy our better selves. We are rank failures in art of good government. In politics, perception is everything. Now 100 and more Kalkasks await a clueless Rick Snyder. (Actually the latest count is over 140) All this as the nation looks on in disbelief and repulsion.
The nation's negative perception of our state's culture will hurt us mightily. Dwalt, you and I will live to deeply regret this outpouring of ideological distemper.
The high hopes and the sincere prayers of Michigan citizens is for a better Michigan, a place of peace and prosperity. But our darkside indulgences are pulling us back. We seem helpless to break ranks and resume the climb upward and onward.
Many of us had hoped what appeared to be a political outsider, clean from our mucky politics of the last decades, would point the way out. A majority of voters hoped Rick Snyder would truly unite us in an honorable and pro-active fashion. But, no, the appetite for "red meat" politics and reprisals has pulled us back and Rick Snyder with us; back toward the pit of our own destruction.
How sad. How disappointing and how hopeless a future for our children we are creating by degrading their public school heritage and children's futures with our mean-spiritedness and corporate greed..
We must repent and re-learn honest compromise and the goodwill evolving from a willing cooperation in our politics and legislation or we lose everything we value.
Original Post.
It's become so bad, so quickly, PR/Spinmeister John Yob has been hired back to patch up the gapping rip in the fabric of the governorship by attempting to interpret Snyder's faux pas (which are highly embarrassing to the office of governor and his party) trying to put things back in a favorable way; The Executive Branch of Michigan is in a flat spin. A stiffly stubborn and defiant Tricky Rick is sure to take it down even further down to failure uncorrected.
Read Daniel Howes column: "Why' overlooked in Snyder budget plan" 3/31/11, and see where Howes points to the failure of Snyder's one word mission: FAIRNESS.
"KALKASKA AGAIN" SHOULD STRIKE REAL FEAR If you will note from the reference (in Repubteach's recent entry Water Cooler entry, the Kalkaska incident was raised by a third party, not Repubteach) Kalkaska is a signal "event." One of those milestones that shook and shaped the direction of the entire Engler Revolution and resulted in major changes in how Michigan schools are financed.
Eventual passage of Proposition A, which rectified many of the problems of school funding, was a direct outcome of the "Kalkaska Moment." Prop A did, for a period, meet the needs of many school districts, especially like those of rural Kalkaska. However, it was flawed. At the same time Prop A failed certian districts such as Rockford. But rather than build on its strengths, certain aggressive partisans during the Granholm years let it languish and fail. This crisis is fed and fueled by the "disaster capitalism" endemic to the demands of a radicalized GOP/Koch Brothers A.L.E.C. playbook.
In 1993 Powerful Corporate Lobbyists Circled Their Wagons The tremendous lobbying pressure from Consumers Power, the Mackinac Center, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, et al, produced classic media scenes like Speaker Paul Hillegonds (drawn away from his children brought to visit daddy in the House Chamber during one of those late-night sessions leading up to the rush to get school funding finished by Christmas Eve 1993. Under great pressure from Business, Hillegonds, called to the House foyer. There he was to be literally surrounded by these business-is-first lobbyists seeking a "good deal cut" into the pending school funding legislation. They surrounded Speaker Hillegonds in the manner wolves surround their quay, intense and demanding.
The outcome of such events,etched a vivid image; and convey something noteworthy of informing novice Rick Snyder as to the historic facts surrounding that crisis: Engler, with all his more than two dozen tax cuts and slick parliamentary/political shenanigans, acted in a very different manner than that of Snyder. JOHN ENGLER POURED MORE MONEY INTO PUBLIC EDUCATION, NOT LESS.
Engler's support for public education was to become much more over time. His generously in the second half of his tenure as governor would be considered, in this new coercive and negativist Teapartisan environment, totally rejected and fervently protested by the tax-haters who have inhabited the party and now the Legislature. Most notably the Know Nothing Leon Dorlet, daddy of the big pink pig metered at the capitol curb for weeks.
DID YOU GET THAT? JOHN ENGLER, THAT ICON OF GOVERNMENT AND TAX CUTS AND TOUGH TALK, ADDED MORE TO THE REVENUES GOING TO EDUCATION.
Yes, the teachers' professional association did pay a price in terms of loss of certain areas of their interests, but good things for Michigan's school children came out of it. Kalkaska's kids got their school up-and-going and from the looks of the present school plant, and newer community facilities built for youths, they have done reasonably well, until Snyder.
Among the lobbyists who haunted the halls of Lansing during this time ('93) was Dick DeVos. This scion to billions was developing his bitter antagonism to public schools even then; he, and wife Betsy, have gone wild subsequently. This divisive coulple has aggressively chosen to become a national scourge; spending millions of their children's hand-me-down inheritance to foster Republican against Republican, division and dissention, bitter rancor in many states; as far west as Utah and in the South in places like Missouri and Virginia.
If you recall, as surely you must, the Dick & Betsy push to pass the 2 to 1 rejected voucher proposal which was DeVos backed had large negative political effects. Their effort helped to undermine the national election for GOP president G.W. Bush by throwing Michigan to Al Gore and leading to Florida and the highly controversial Supreme Court's tragic decision that put GWB in the White House. The voucher campaign also caused Engler and Betsy to fall out with each other. Betsy, most recently, pictures herself arm by arm with Chris Christie of New Jersey, the nation's ponderous bully-boy provocateur and tormenter of public servants and teachers> This is Betsy's latest foray into destructive ideological warfare. Interestingly, The prototype for Christie was John Engler.
Kalkaska! How can any political party call for and support the undermining of public education?
Education in a neighborhood school supported and beloved by the community and guided by the traditional civic-minded school board members, who were often business people and professionals, were once respected and honored.
Not now, and not anymore. These Det/News blogs over the years have contained an unrelenting venom and countless vituperative rants for which the News' editor and his staff are guilty for exciting. These published sentiments reflect a systemic anti-intellectual strand that has destroyed the comrade of the commons and poisoned the politics of our entire state. The hatred and ill-will ginned up here is palpable. Now, at this very low moment, we cannibalize ourselves in our own toxic opines and dark-think.
Dwalt, I have seen what we have done to with "poison politics" to destroy our better selves. We are rank failures in art of good government. In politics, perception is everything. Now 100 and more Kalkasks await a clueless Rick Snyder. (Actually the latest count is over 140) All this as the nation looks on in disbelief and repulsion.
The nation's negative perception of our state's culture will hurt us mightily. Dwalt, you and I will live to deeply regret this outpouring of ideological distemper.
The high hopes and the sincere prayers of Michigan citizens is for a better Michigan, a place of peace and prosperity. But our darkside indulgences are pulling us back. We seem helpless to break ranks and resume the climb upward and onward.
Many of us had hoped what appeared to be a political outsider, clean from our mucky politics of the last decades, would point the way out. A majority of voters hoped Rick Snyder would truly unite us in an honorable and pro-active fashion. But, no, the appetite for "red meat" politics and reprisals has pulled us back and Rick Snyder with us; back toward the pit of our own destruction.
How sad. How disappointing and how hopeless a future for our children we are creating by degrading their public school heritage and children's futures with our mean-spiritedness and corporate greed..
We must repent and re-learn honest compromise and the goodwill evolving from a willing cooperation in our politics and legislation or we lose everything we value.
Original Post.
Rick the Trick Behind the Stick
There is a snide mistruth that underlies the concept of Snyder reversing the state's exemption of pensions from state income taxation.
The concept is the oft used mantra of the Tea Party as applied here: Whose money is it? . To wit: "It's our money." Now Snyder and Engler-holdovers and that political corporatist chameleon, Andy Dillon have put forth the new BIG GOVERNMENT KNOWS BEST redefinition into the mix; "The retirement pensions are OUR MONEY and WE MAY TAKE OUT OF IT WHAT WE WANT because we are the judges of "fairness."
What about Snyder's oft repeated assertion that he's the arbiter of total "FAIRNESS" for all.
Snyder's over 300% tax increase on seniors s not about fairness.
It's about securing the state's largest shift of seniors' personal money to corporations in the history of Michigan. If the people of Michigan allow this MONEY GRAB will it will indeed be "unfair" to the corporate contributors to Snyder and his cronies? Though you may agree with Tricky Rick that it would be simple and efficent.
SNYDER CLAIMS TO HAVE A BIG SOFT SPOT IN HIS HEART FOR POOR SENIOR CITIZENS, YET BEWARE !
If some folks, for elective reasons or out of tough economic circumstances, or other necessity (supporting grown children in financial difficulty) are still at work in places like Wal-mart or McDonald's past normal retirement age, we the BUREAUCRATS OF LANSING now proclaim that unfortunate condition, if out of necessity, is so tragic that we must FORCEFULLY LEVEL THE PAYING FIELD by instituting a whopping new 300% tax increase on those seniors with earned the right to it, and/or were promised delayed compensation/pensions as part of the condition of their willingness to render services.
So ill-prepared and under-calculated is Snyder's scheme that Rick's beancounters ignored and/or overlooked the fact that SOME SENIORS HAVE NO SOCIAL SECURITY AND DEPEND STRICTLY ON LIMITED PENSION FUNDS FOR THEIR LIVING, DRUGS AND MEDICAL CARE, AS WELL AS OTHER LIVING EXPENSES.
Gov. Snyder admited this omission; and promised earlier this week, during a statewide telephone-townmeeting, (held seeking public input and pressure on the legislature to pass his budget package) that he would look into that omitted class of pensioners' dilemma.
The corporate-serving Snyder Team would have us believe that removing $900 million in pension funds piped directly into the business community's cash flow is good for Michigan. NOT SO, NOT SO AT ALL!
Those lost pension dollars pulled from the economy equal a huge loss in broadly spread business opportunity and employment in Michigan. Keeping this money in circulation is now more important than ever, it's ceertainly a big part of the state's service sector.
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION: Every pension dollar in Michigan's pensioner hands spent on goods and services produces $6.49 in economic activity in commerce and business.
How important are pensions to the Michigan Economy. According to the National Institute on Retirement Security: Michigan's "state and local pensions also supported more than 45,000 jobs that paid nearly $3 billion in wages and salaries, nearly $7 billion in total economic output, and nearly $970 million in federal and local tax revenues."
THAT FOLKS IS A REAL CHUNK OF CHANGE !
Cutting into Michigan's retiree pension revenue by $900 million (to fund a corporate tax break) as Rick Snyder has demanded) could result in a stunning loss of economic activity in Michigan in the range of tens of billions of dollars!
Who best knows how to spend their own money: Retirees on limited/capped incomes or BIG GOVERNMENT out of Lansing; Rick Snyder's intent on funneling this LEGISLATED BILLION PLUS WINDFALL to favored business interests?
GOP State Senator Brandenburg (the Harrison Township Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee) said of Snyder: "I want to work with him, I do, but I can't because he (Gov. Snyder) has a $900 million money grab in there, and there's no guarantee that the tax cuts for businesses will generate a lot more jobs."
News reports reveal: "The governor acknowledged that levying the standard income tax on retirement income has very little support among fellow Republicans in the House and Senate."
Perhaps being a beancounter and "one Tough Nerd" leaves one out of the realities of the real world. The Michigan Views Daniel Howes column touched on the heart of Snyder's problem in this regard: Snyder may be a University of Michigan Wunderkind-turned-CEO-turned venture capitalist and he may be a trained accountant, but it's increasingly clear he skipped the communications classes that turn business executives and politicians into their own kind of rock star."
However, again, to frame Howes' phrasing, there are thousands of Michiganders who are out-of-step with this Tough Nerd: "...And they each have their own version of what fresh kind of hell Snyder's Michigan would visit on everything from schools and city halls to economic development and the environment."
It will take more than some "factual concoction of dashboard indicators," using campaign-speak to get the citizens of this state back on the track. "Fairness (as any seasoned union or management bargainer could tell you) is in the eye of the beholder," opines Howes.
"FAIR" for Rick is largely slanted toward his predisposition to favor business and money over people and children's well-being. Nothing fair there! Just the fact that Snyder would turn over 800,000 poor into the vacant space of neglect is stone-cold.
Now, regrettably Snyder is now so far mired the muck of political misrepresentation and mendacity concerning the underlying reasons for his programs and his involvement with the urber-corporate/Koch Brothers/Mackinac Center's "legislative force-feeding of Lansing Tea-Publicans via A.L.E.C. that it may not be possible for him to successfully lead the state.
Rick is way behind the stick.
Original Post.
The concept is the oft used mantra of the Tea Party as applied here: Whose money is it? . To wit: "It's our money." Now Snyder and Engler-holdovers and that political corporatist chameleon, Andy Dillon have put forth the new BIG GOVERNMENT KNOWS BEST redefinition into the mix; "The retirement pensions are OUR MONEY and WE MAY TAKE OUT OF IT WHAT WE WANT because we are the judges of "fairness."
What about Snyder's oft repeated assertion that he's the arbiter of total "FAIRNESS" for all.
Snyder's over 300% tax increase on seniors s not about fairness.
It's about securing the state's largest shift of seniors' personal money to corporations in the history of Michigan. If the people of Michigan allow this MONEY GRAB will it will indeed be "unfair" to the corporate contributors to Snyder and his cronies? Though you may agree with Tricky Rick that it would be simple and efficent.
SNYDER CLAIMS TO HAVE A BIG SOFT SPOT IN HIS HEART FOR POOR SENIOR CITIZENS, YET BEWARE !
If some folks, for elective reasons or out of tough economic circumstances, or other necessity (supporting grown children in financial difficulty) are still at work in places like Wal-mart or McDonald's past normal retirement age, we the BUREAUCRATS OF LANSING now proclaim that unfortunate condition, if out of necessity, is so tragic that we must FORCEFULLY LEVEL THE PAYING FIELD by instituting a whopping new 300% tax increase on those seniors with earned the right to it, and/or were promised delayed compensation/pensions as part of the condition of their willingness to render services.
So ill-prepared and under-calculated is Snyder's scheme that Rick's beancounters ignored and/or overlooked the fact that SOME SENIORS HAVE NO SOCIAL SECURITY AND DEPEND STRICTLY ON LIMITED PENSION FUNDS FOR THEIR LIVING, DRUGS AND MEDICAL CARE, AS WELL AS OTHER LIVING EXPENSES.
Gov. Snyder admited this omission; and promised earlier this week, during a statewide telephone-townmeeting, (held seeking public input and pressure on the legislature to pass his budget package) that he would look into that omitted class of pensioners' dilemma.
The corporate-serving Snyder Team would have us believe that removing $900 million in pension funds piped directly into the business community's cash flow is good for Michigan. NOT SO, NOT SO AT ALL!
Those lost pension dollars pulled from the economy equal a huge loss in broadly spread business opportunity and employment in Michigan. Keeping this money in circulation is now more important than ever, it's ceertainly a big part of the state's service sector.
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION: Every pension dollar in Michigan's pensioner hands spent on goods and services produces $6.49 in economic activity in commerce and business.
How important are pensions to the Michigan Economy. According to the National Institute on Retirement Security: Michigan's "state and local pensions also supported more than 45,000 jobs that paid nearly $3 billion in wages and salaries, nearly $7 billion in total economic output, and nearly $970 million in federal and local tax revenues."
THAT FOLKS IS A REAL CHUNK OF CHANGE !
Cutting into Michigan's retiree pension revenue by $900 million (to fund a corporate tax break) as Rick Snyder has demanded) could result in a stunning loss of economic activity in Michigan in the range of tens of billions of dollars!
Who best knows how to spend their own money: Retirees on limited/capped incomes or BIG GOVERNMENT out of Lansing; Rick Snyder's intent on funneling this LEGISLATED BILLION PLUS WINDFALL to favored business interests?
GOP State Senator Brandenburg (the Harrison Township Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee) said of Snyder: "I want to work with him, I do, but I can't because he (Gov. Snyder) has a $900 million money grab in there, and there's no guarantee that the tax cuts for businesses will generate a lot more jobs."
News reports reveal: "The governor acknowledged that levying the standard income tax on retirement income has very little support among fellow Republicans in the House and Senate."
Perhaps being a beancounter and "one Tough Nerd" leaves one out of the realities of the real world. The Michigan Views Daniel Howes column touched on the heart of Snyder's problem in this regard: Snyder may be a University of Michigan Wunderkind-turned-CEO-turned venture capitalist and he may be a trained accountant, but it's increasingly clear he skipped the communications classes that turn business executives and politicians into their own kind of rock star."
However, again, to frame Howes' phrasing, there are thousands of Michiganders who are out-of-step with this Tough Nerd: "...And they each have their own version of what fresh kind of hell Snyder's Michigan would visit on everything from schools and city halls to economic development and the environment."
It will take more than some "factual concoction of dashboard indicators," using campaign-speak to get the citizens of this state back on the track. "Fairness (as any seasoned union or management bargainer could tell you) is in the eye of the beholder," opines Howes.
"FAIR" for Rick is largely slanted toward his predisposition to favor business and money over people and children's well-being. Nothing fair there! Just the fact that Snyder would turn over 800,000 poor into the vacant space of neglect is stone-cold.
Now, regrettably Snyder is now so far mired the muck of political misrepresentation and mendacity concerning the underlying reasons for his programs and his involvement with the urber-corporate/Koch Brothers/Mackinac Center's "legislative force-feeding of Lansing Tea-Publicans via A.L.E.C. that it may not be possible for him to successfully lead the state.
Rick is way behind the stick.
Original Post.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Detroit News' Manny Lopez has not done his homework again!
Response to a comment posted by Manny Lopez in his link to Daniel Howes piece published on March 13, 2011.
Tricky Rick Snyder said during his mum-on-the-issues, near wordless/explanation-less campaign, "THE STATE HAS A BROKEN SYSTEM OF TRYING TO PICK WINNERS AND LOSERS too often, saying 'This industry is good, this industry is bad.' I've been doing venture capital for a lot of years. I've been picking winners and losers for a living. It's hard work. The government isn't competent to do that work."
Manny Lopez and his editorial klatsch (Eliminate the easy way out, 3/15/11) have the temerity go where "government isn't competent" to go, to pick those whom they fervently desire to make "losers."
Manny's selection of "losers" (those wonderful people who serve and protect us up and down this great state), who are now targeted, under the gun, by Snyder's neo-Englerites and greenpea Legislature) is extremely arrogant and ungrateful.
New legislators are being duped into pushing and complying with the nationwide agenda of the far right corporatist American Legislative Exchange Council, which is funded in large part by the THE BROTHERS KOCH and also is backed by Michigan's billionaire elite: the Dick & Betsy ideologues.
Manny's A OK with this. The loss of state sovereignty and right of self-determination, independent of BIG MONEY CRAFTED LEGISLATION piped into Lansing; being bought and paid for right under his nose, isn't a troubling concern for Manny or the Detroit/Mac Center News.
Making the service people of Michigan "losers" is ignoble and ungrateful. Since when are those who foster outright political reprisal and nasty/aggressive legislative dictatorial tactics; such as are being currently bum-rushed through Michigan's Legislature; thought to the "winners?"
Manny's buddies, citizen-appeal-deaf pro-corporatist cyborgs, may think of themselves as "winners," promoting their anti-public tactics, but their "win" is going to be a tragic loss for Michigan, our children and families alike.
Original Post.
Tricky Rick Snyder said during his mum-on-the-issues, near wordless/explanation-less campaign, "THE STATE HAS A BROKEN SYSTEM OF TRYING TO PICK WINNERS AND LOSERS too often, saying 'This industry is good, this industry is bad.' I've been doing venture capital for a lot of years. I've been picking winners and losers for a living. It's hard work. The government isn't competent to do that work."
Manny Lopez and his editorial klatsch (Eliminate the easy way out, 3/15/11) have the temerity go where "government isn't competent" to go, to pick those whom they fervently desire to make "losers."
Manny's selection of "losers" (those wonderful people who serve and protect us up and down this great state), who are now targeted, under the gun, by Snyder's neo-Englerites and greenpea Legislature) is extremely arrogant and ungrateful.
New legislators are being duped into pushing and complying with the nationwide agenda of the far right corporatist American Legislative Exchange Council, which is funded in large part by the THE BROTHERS KOCH and also is backed by Michigan's billionaire elite: the Dick & Betsy ideologues.
Manny's A OK with this. The loss of state sovereignty and right of self-determination, independent of BIG MONEY CRAFTED LEGISLATION piped into Lansing; being bought and paid for right under his nose, isn't a troubling concern for Manny or the Detroit/Mac Center News.
Making the service people of Michigan "losers" is ignoble and ungrateful. Since when are those who foster outright political reprisal and nasty/aggressive legislative dictatorial tactics; such as are being currently bum-rushed through Michigan's Legislature; thought to the "winners?"
Manny's buddies, citizen-appeal-deaf pro-corporatist cyborgs, may think of themselves as "winners," promoting their anti-public tactics, but their "win" is going to be a tragic loss for Michigan, our children and families alike.
Original Post.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Detroit is Beautiful from Afar...
Detroit Is Beautiful From Afar, Just Don’t Live There - according to some pundits and nay-Sayers
A casual observer sitting on a riverfront bench in Windsor looking across to the skyline of Detroit, unaware of conditions on the ground there, would marvel at the visual appeal and the apparent delight of its location.
How long do you think we can go on ignorantly and stubbornly believing that the implosion of this major U.S. city is not taking place?
In answering this question, it really doesn't matter, conservative or liberal, how you view your ideals or harbor your political prejudices. In Detroit, the American dream has dimmed and may go out altogether. Of course, there have been efforts to reverse the downward trend but they appear to be off-set by such factors as: white flight, the business departures, the departure of the Catholic church from over two dozen parishes, the indifference of the state government, and the systemic corruption and spoils involved in Detroit city governance.
Detroit is not Chicago, with its Magic Mile and its elite condos and row houses in the heart of the that great city.
Walk the deserted streets of the core business district of Detroit at after close of business and pervasively sense for yourself the personal danger you are surrounded by. No one on the streets. The Motor City is not the Windy City.
In recent and very open and honest public comments to columnists and to editorials, a careful reader is finding the ground level noise about what is actually going on in the troubled Detroit core city and in its schools and it isn't pretty.
The angst and despair expressed by Daniel Howes in this column is bone-cutting. Verbally graphic, and long over due.
What About Level of Educational Progress in DPS?
It's altogether possible that there is a pervasive and street savvy sub-culture running through the city's youths. In a place so seemingly hopeless, with so little to cause a child to dream or aspire, there has developed a youth counter-culture that hates what it sees a life confined this wrenched poverty and black-on-black crime, and flatly refuses to play the game other Americans better placed embrace.
When we learn that students in the DPS have a habit of bringing down student achievers and hurling distain and hatred toward those who study and perform well in the classroom (calling them Uncle Tom's and other derisive names, even assaulting them when they get "A's") there's a grievous, oppressive condition afoot. Such a pulling down of students, one of the other, is apparently widely accepted by active student counter-culture. Outcast student populations come to rule the young social lives of younger students, driven by peer pressure, and cause kids to undermine any desire to make better achievement.
It is said that Detroit students did as poorly, or more poorly, on the math testing than if they were guessing. Yes, what if the students purposefully did not properly take the test and simply guessed? That has to be a partial possibility.
Detroit's General Degradation & Its Corrupted Infrastructure Pollutes the Whole
Hopelessness. If money corrupts, then complete hopelessness and endless poverty goes money one further into total despair and eventually open rebellion...Many of the higher values of our nation are build around the American Dream become thusly spurned and ridiculed, believed unattainable from these streets.
What is future the work place prepared for an all "B" DPS student, McDonalds? And beyond that what? Good jobs have left the city. Students are keenly aware of the depressing number of good jobs and limited possibilities for college or trade school remain available to them. Where will the money for tuition, for an ITT institute come from?
When there is no respect for the authority of the teacher, the law enforcement officer, the fireman, the principal or any adult with contact with these youths, then swearing, obscenity, and great verbal and physical disrespect become rampant the situation is out of control.
The disrespect for authority is not limited to "lost" youths, it pervades the comments of so many contributors to these opinion blogs also. It's a cynicism that has no positive bearing on attempting to resolve the multitude of problems at street level. Simply turning on teachers, police, and public officials will not suffice.
The News and the Legislature Believe in Fairy Tales: e.g. Alternative Teaching Credentials
Tell me how a man with great math ability (Let' say one recently cut out of the General Motors Comptrollers Office), a mind like a Einstein or a brain like Hawkins, is going to find suitable conditions and success when he steps in (under Erne Duncan's R2T) to take up a desk and attempt to teach a class of 34 sophomores right in the middle of this kind of blackboard jungle?
There may be cultural differences and solid reasons why the classroom has become this kind of zoo, but no educational program will succeed until the troublemakers are removed, order and respect are completely restored, and attendance is strictly enforced.
Shocking Results of Detroit's NAEP Scores
We are told he school personnel "wept" a the results of the standardized testing for math. What were they weeping about?
Were they weeping over the fact that they had failed to try to do their best to instruct the pupils who got the failing grades?
Were they weeping that the proper materials necessary to achieve the scores by targeted curriculum were not available?
"They were weeping out of creeping despair: 'These results are a signal of a complete failure of the adults in this city to educate its children,' said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, a coalition of big city school systems that usually defends its members," as we read in Amber Arellano's recent column "Detroit hits educational bottom" in the Detroit News on December 08, 2009.
The school personnel are right to be weeping over those "externalities" which the harsh critics of public education have been red tagging Detroit teachers with for decades. The critics mantra, "You teachers can not blame the total environment the students come from for these poor results" you, the teachers, have failed. Don't whine to us about the home conditions and the degradation of the core city. We pay you for a job done. Objections we do not accept.
As Amber points out, "Then there is the usual defeatist Detroit mentality: 'We're different than other cities.'" It is possible that is a true fact? Where does the impetus for that feeling come from, today's street level conditions?
Michigan's Blacks Are Not Achieving Regardless of Location Detroit or Outstate
Actually, it's about black kids all around Michigan. In a real sense African American children's underachievement is a Michigan problem according to Amber's column: "Detroit is not the only poor performer in the state. NAEP scores released earlier this fall showed Michigan's African-American students are essentially the lowest-performing black students in the country after falling for years."
Playing Pin the Blame
There will be a rush to find a way to pin blame. However, there is a real anomaly here. Some of the low scores were from schools labeled "high-performing" NAEP officials ensured test takers "included some of Detroit's highest-performing schools."
The most common response is that there are teachers who do not perform to standards, lots of them. Mind you, we are thinking about teaching elementary school students where the staff is often at least 60 percent women. Do critics mean to say that there are large numbers of women, who have undertaken to teach in Detroit's schools (with all their associated problems and social/economic situations, including treats of assault), who are, of their own violation, not doing the job put before them.
Adults in Detroit Have Failed the Children
Actually, Allando's column doesn't go that far. The critic says, "These results are a signal of a complete failure of the adults in this city to educate its children." The operative phrase here is "the adults in this city." That's very inclusive and does not wrongfully saddle the teacher with the total blame. Even though the old blamespeaking is there, as Michael Casserly, Council of Great City Schools opines, ""If you can't make it as a teacher, you're out."
Note that the under-performing schools included Detroit's much promoted charter schools. Putting a teacher out on the street is simple: At a charter, just find the teacher a box and then find them the door. So let's see the charter's conduct wholesale dismissals in response to the demands of R2T.
Race to the Top is the Super Solution?
We are told that the Race to the Top has the answers. O.K. lets see, we are going to sack a sizable number of teachers and replace them with people with an academic degree. Walk-ins who want to enter these dangerous and unruly failing schools and assume an equal responsibility with professional teachers, to be thrown out the door if they can't get immediate results (R2T's alternative certification) and that's the answer. NO SO.
Again, there's a rush to find a "quick fix" to move the problem off the political stage, off the front page. It is obvious that the stonehearted won't look into the deterioration and neglect, the political frauds, financial scandals, and the "territorial fiefdoms" imbedded in Detroit's present governance and social structure.
There is a reason Detroit's math scores are at the bottom. It's life in inner city Detroit. . No other single factor so strong, so important as the home and the parent(s) along with the spirit of the community in forming the mindset, determining the well-being, the welfare and academic achievement of Detroit's children. Where is the hope for a normal, happy and useful life?
We Know the Profile of the Underachieving in Detroit:
*They are the poor.
*They are homeless or have been foreclosed upon.
*They are on public assistance/welfare or their caregivers are unemployed without sufficient work and income.
*They live largely in urban ghettos.
*They live in high crime areas.
*They are exposed to constant gun violence.
*They are children in homes rife with abuse and neglect.
*They are hungry and go day-to-day without proper nourishment, staggering numbers qualify for free or reduced meals.
*They are the children of children, frequently the off spring of promiscuous mothers, often the mothers were children themselves when they gave birth.
*They live in rundown, dangerous, or condemned housing.
*They go cold in the winter in their own places of abode and often they go to school without proper outerwear.
*They are exposed everyday to the drug culture.
*They are harassed, threatened, and controlled, herded about by gangs. They live in constant despair, terrorized by street crime and shots in the night.
*They are those who have been neglected or abandoned by the houses of worship.
*They grow up in a jobless environment and have no real hope for an adequately paying occupation or a living wage.
*They are in large numbers, teenage boys of color who dropout of school.
*They are unhealthy, too many die as infants, get few vaccinations, little or no pre-natal or insufficient post-natal care.
*They are culturally deprived: living in areas with few good public libraries or free or affordable cultural activities.
*They have very limited access to banner stores such as abound in the suburbs.
*They are often in foster care.
*They have little opportunity to investigate the natural beauty or the beauty and wonders of the out state areas of Michigan, many have never left their neighborhoods, have never seen the open countryside, the dunes, or the Mackinaw Bridge.
*They have juvenile criminal records, often numerous misdemeanors.
*They are truant, or frequently fail to come to school.
*They have few books or educational stimuli in the home.
*They often lack the basic social skills, at age five cannot perform such simple tasks as tying their own shoes, may eat. lap out of bowls without utensils. .
*They are outside the profile sought by the "marketplace entrepreneurials," with the exception of drug pushers.
*They have not received the proper diets as infants, in the early critically formative years of mental development, and may have therefore diminished capacities to learn.
*They cannot move or play freely in their neighborhoods without fear and anxiety.
*They are victims of various kinds of political shams, blamespeaking, and disparaging debates, the flotsam and jetsom of Lansing debate and enduring cynicism.
My God the Children
We aren't getting our minds around these kinds of pervasive problems, because frankly, they appear to be beyond our comprehension and our concern. We have done so little to assuage the decline, we may not be able to reverse the trend.
Detroit is at the bottom and may stay there. That's a sobering thought.
The kinds of efforts and inspiration it takes to overcome the creeping despair could start just as simply as immediately hiring workers to take down the some 80,000 abandoned homes and bringing back paying jobs to the city by commercial investment with a mind to stay the course. Jobs in the city! What a novel thought, in a city where so many individuals don't have cars or means to take them to the far away, outer suburbs where the few jobs there are, are located.
Give the kids something tangible to work toward and a visible goal to achieve "give them hope".
Original Post.
A casual observer sitting on a riverfront bench in Windsor looking across to the skyline of Detroit, unaware of conditions on the ground there, would marvel at the visual appeal and the apparent delight of its location.
How long do you think we can go on ignorantly and stubbornly believing that the implosion of this major U.S. city is not taking place?
In answering this question, it really doesn't matter, conservative or liberal, how you view your ideals or harbor your political prejudices. In Detroit, the American dream has dimmed and may go out altogether. Of course, there have been efforts to reverse the downward trend but they appear to be off-set by such factors as: white flight, the business departures, the departure of the Catholic church from over two dozen parishes, the indifference of the state government, and the systemic corruption and spoils involved in Detroit city governance.
Detroit is not Chicago, with its Magic Mile and its elite condos and row houses in the heart of the that great city.
Walk the deserted streets of the core business district of Detroit at after close of business and pervasively sense for yourself the personal danger you are surrounded by. No one on the streets. The Motor City is not the Windy City.
In recent and very open and honest public comments to columnists and to editorials, a careful reader is finding the ground level noise about what is actually going on in the troubled Detroit core city and in its schools and it isn't pretty.
The angst and despair expressed by Daniel Howes in this column is bone-cutting. Verbally graphic, and long over due.
What About Level of Educational Progress in DPS?
It's altogether possible that there is a pervasive and street savvy sub-culture running through the city's youths. In a place so seemingly hopeless, with so little to cause a child to dream or aspire, there has developed a youth counter-culture that hates what it sees a life confined this wrenched poverty and black-on-black crime, and flatly refuses to play the game other Americans better placed embrace.
When we learn that students in the DPS have a habit of bringing down student achievers and hurling distain and hatred toward those who study and perform well in the classroom (calling them Uncle Tom's and other derisive names, even assaulting them when they get "A's") there's a grievous, oppressive condition afoot. Such a pulling down of students, one of the other, is apparently widely accepted by active student counter-culture. Outcast student populations come to rule the young social lives of younger students, driven by peer pressure, and cause kids to undermine any desire to make better achievement.
It is said that Detroit students did as poorly, or more poorly, on the math testing than if they were guessing. Yes, what if the students purposefully did not properly take the test and simply guessed? That has to be a partial possibility.
Detroit's General Degradation & Its Corrupted Infrastructure Pollutes the Whole
Hopelessness. If money corrupts, then complete hopelessness and endless poverty goes money one further into total despair and eventually open rebellion...Many of the higher values of our nation are build around the American Dream become thusly spurned and ridiculed, believed unattainable from these streets.
What is future the work place prepared for an all "B" DPS student, McDonalds? And beyond that what? Good jobs have left the city. Students are keenly aware of the depressing number of good jobs and limited possibilities for college or trade school remain available to them. Where will the money for tuition, for an ITT institute come from?
When there is no respect for the authority of the teacher, the law enforcement officer, the fireman, the principal or any adult with contact with these youths, then swearing, obscenity, and great verbal and physical disrespect become rampant the situation is out of control.
The disrespect for authority is not limited to "lost" youths, it pervades the comments of so many contributors to these opinion blogs also. It's a cynicism that has no positive bearing on attempting to resolve the multitude of problems at street level. Simply turning on teachers, police, and public officials will not suffice.
The News and the Legislature Believe in Fairy Tales: e.g. Alternative Teaching Credentials
Tell me how a man with great math ability (Let' say one recently cut out of the General Motors Comptrollers Office), a mind like a Einstein or a brain like Hawkins, is going to find suitable conditions and success when he steps in (under Erne Duncan's R2T) to take up a desk and attempt to teach a class of 34 sophomores right in the middle of this kind of blackboard jungle?
There may be cultural differences and solid reasons why the classroom has become this kind of zoo, but no educational program will succeed until the troublemakers are removed, order and respect are completely restored, and attendance is strictly enforced.
Shocking Results of Detroit's NAEP Scores
We are told he school personnel "wept" a the results of the standardized testing for math. What were they weeping about?
Were they weeping over the fact that they had failed to try to do their best to instruct the pupils who got the failing grades?
Were they weeping that the proper materials necessary to achieve the scores by targeted curriculum were not available?
"They were weeping out of creeping despair: 'These results are a signal of a complete failure of the adults in this city to educate its children,' said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, a coalition of big city school systems that usually defends its members," as we read in Amber Arellano's recent column "Detroit hits educational bottom" in the Detroit News on December 08, 2009.
The school personnel are right to be weeping over those "externalities" which the harsh critics of public education have been red tagging Detroit teachers with for decades. The critics mantra, "You teachers can not blame the total environment the students come from for these poor results" you, the teachers, have failed. Don't whine to us about the home conditions and the degradation of the core city. We pay you for a job done. Objections we do not accept.
As Amber points out, "Then there is the usual defeatist Detroit mentality: 'We're different than other cities.'" It is possible that is a true fact? Where does the impetus for that feeling come from, today's street level conditions?
Michigan's Blacks Are Not Achieving Regardless of Location Detroit or Outstate
Actually, it's about black kids all around Michigan. In a real sense African American children's underachievement is a Michigan problem according to Amber's column: "Detroit is not the only poor performer in the state. NAEP scores released earlier this fall showed Michigan's African-American students are essentially the lowest-performing black students in the country after falling for years."
Playing Pin the Blame
There will be a rush to find a way to pin blame. However, there is a real anomaly here. Some of the low scores were from schools labeled "high-performing" NAEP officials ensured test takers "included some of Detroit's highest-performing schools."
The most common response is that there are teachers who do not perform to standards, lots of them. Mind you, we are thinking about teaching elementary school students where the staff is often at least 60 percent women. Do critics mean to say that there are large numbers of women, who have undertaken to teach in Detroit's schools (with all their associated problems and social/economic situations, including treats of assault), who are, of their own violation, not doing the job put before them.
Adults in Detroit Have Failed the Children
Actually, Allando's column doesn't go that far. The critic says, "These results are a signal of a complete failure of the adults in this city to educate its children." The operative phrase here is "the adults in this city." That's very inclusive and does not wrongfully saddle the teacher with the total blame. Even though the old blamespeaking is there, as Michael Casserly, Council of Great City Schools opines, ""If you can't make it as a teacher, you're out."
Note that the under-performing schools included Detroit's much promoted charter schools. Putting a teacher out on the street is simple: At a charter, just find the teacher a box and then find them the door. So let's see the charter's conduct wholesale dismissals in response to the demands of R2T.
Race to the Top is the Super Solution?
We are told that the Race to the Top has the answers. O.K. lets see, we are going to sack a sizable number of teachers and replace them with people with an academic degree. Walk-ins who want to enter these dangerous and unruly failing schools and assume an equal responsibility with professional teachers, to be thrown out the door if they can't get immediate results (R2T's alternative certification) and that's the answer. NO SO.
Again, there's a rush to find a "quick fix" to move the problem off the political stage, off the front page. It is obvious that the stonehearted won't look into the deterioration and neglect, the political frauds, financial scandals, and the "territorial fiefdoms" imbedded in Detroit's present governance and social structure.
There is a reason Detroit's math scores are at the bottom. It's life in inner city Detroit. . No other single factor so strong, so important as the home and the parent(s) along with the spirit of the community in forming the mindset, determining the well-being, the welfare and academic achievement of Detroit's children. Where is the hope for a normal, happy and useful life?
We Know the Profile of the Underachieving in Detroit:
*They are the poor.
*They are homeless or have been foreclosed upon.
*They are on public assistance/welfare or their caregivers are unemployed without sufficient work and income.
*They live largely in urban ghettos.
*They live in high crime areas.
*They are exposed to constant gun violence.
*They are children in homes rife with abuse and neglect.
*They are hungry and go day-to-day without proper nourishment, staggering numbers qualify for free or reduced meals.
*They are the children of children, frequently the off spring of promiscuous mothers, often the mothers were children themselves when they gave birth.
*They live in rundown, dangerous, or condemned housing.
*They go cold in the winter in their own places of abode and often they go to school without proper outerwear.
*They are exposed everyday to the drug culture.
*They are harassed, threatened, and controlled, herded about by gangs. They live in constant despair, terrorized by street crime and shots in the night.
*They are those who have been neglected or abandoned by the houses of worship.
*They grow up in a jobless environment and have no real hope for an adequately paying occupation or a living wage.
*They are in large numbers, teenage boys of color who dropout of school.
*They are unhealthy, too many die as infants, get few vaccinations, little or no pre-natal or insufficient post-natal care.
*They are culturally deprived: living in areas with few good public libraries or free or affordable cultural activities.
*They have very limited access to banner stores such as abound in the suburbs.
*They are often in foster care.
*They have little opportunity to investigate the natural beauty or the beauty and wonders of the out state areas of Michigan, many have never left their neighborhoods, have never seen the open countryside, the dunes, or the Mackinaw Bridge.
*They have juvenile criminal records, often numerous misdemeanors.
*They are truant, or frequently fail to come to school.
*They have few books or educational stimuli in the home.
*They often lack the basic social skills, at age five cannot perform such simple tasks as tying their own shoes, may eat. lap out of bowls without utensils. .
*They are outside the profile sought by the "marketplace entrepreneurials," with the exception of drug pushers.
*They have not received the proper diets as infants, in the early critically formative years of mental development, and may have therefore diminished capacities to learn.
*They cannot move or play freely in their neighborhoods without fear and anxiety.
*They are victims of various kinds of political shams, blamespeaking, and disparaging debates, the flotsam and jetsom of Lansing debate and enduring cynicism.
My God the Children
We aren't getting our minds around these kinds of pervasive problems, because frankly, they appear to be beyond our comprehension and our concern. We have done so little to assuage the decline, we may not be able to reverse the trend.
Detroit is at the bottom and may stay there. That's a sobering thought.
The kinds of efforts and inspiration it takes to overcome the creeping despair could start just as simply as immediately hiring workers to take down the some 80,000 abandoned homes and bringing back paying jobs to the city by commercial investment with a mind to stay the course. Jobs in the city! What a novel thought, in a city where so many individuals don't have cars or means to take them to the far away, outer suburbs where the few jobs there are, are located.
Give the kids something tangible to work toward and a visible goal to achieve "give them hope".
Original Post.
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