After Spending Freely, Liberal Town Faces Fight on Frugality

The New York Times covers my town's local election.

Sleeping pill use linked with increased risk of death, study finds

French Parenting

Why French Parents Are Superior
While Americans fret over modern parenthood, the French are raising happy, well-behaved children without all the anxiety. Pamela Druckerman on the Gallic secrets for avoiding tantrums, teaching patience and saying 'non' with authority
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577196931457473816.html

Why American Kids Are Brats
And their parents might be getting just what they deserve
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/10/why-american-kids-are-brats/#ixzz1m1NnTsWp
http://ideas.time.com/2012/02/10/why-american-kids-are-brats/

3 Surprising Reasons to Give Up Soda

http://health.yahoo.net/experts/eatthis/3-shocking-soda-facts

OCCUPY WALL STREET & Policy blog postings

Protesters Against Wall Street

NY Times Editorial

Listen to the 99 percent: What Occupy Wall Street is saying to the nation

States Adding Drug Test as Hurdle for Welfare

It is interesting, these are all issues I was blogging about in the Spring for my Policy class. I've posted some my article reviews/comments of below:

Of The 1%, By The 1%, For The 1%

by Joseph F. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair

The issue raised in this article is how “the upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent.” 25 years ago those figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. The author points out that “the more unequal a society is, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend on common needs. The rich don’t need government benefits - they can buy these things for themselves.”

This situation can perpetuate itself leading to more and more disparity in the future. We need only need to look to what is happening in Arab world right now to see what can happen when “a fraction of the population controls the lion’s share of the wealth.” With this in mind our nation needs to ask itself if this is the direction it really wants to go in?

The last main point of the article is that Alexis de Tocqueville noticed long ago that Americans had “self-interest properly understood” in that they understood that paying attention to everyone’s self-interest or the common welfare, is beneficial to their own well-being.

Basically when the nation is better and more secure, it is better for the top 1%, more stable markets etc.

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NO ONE REALLY WANTS SMALLER GOVERNMENT, COMMENTS ON PAUL RYAN’S BUDGET

Reading “The Radical Gradulism of Paul Ryan,” http://budget.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=235261 about the budget proposed by the House Budget Chairman just reiterated to me those on the right always seem to stay on message no matter what the current political or economic environment. They will alway have a drive for lower taxes, no regulations on business and smaller governments and see every national success or failure as an example of why we need, you guessed it, lower taxes, a laissez-faire view of the business sector and smaller government. Never mind that the government and deficit both grew under their watch during W. Bush’s two terms.

The truth is that people on both sides of the aisle want the government to come down strongly behind the issues that they feel are most important.

“What the Ryan budget offers instead is a gradual, manageable change of course that might allow us to continue to experience the kind of growth and stability we have seen since the Second World War.” Strange does columnist Yuval Levin mean the growth and stability that were made possible by a large middle class, a strong safety net, strong unions, government regulations of the corporate sector that characterize the post war era?

“A plan that sought to address our fiscal problems by raising taxes far higher than this historical norm—as Ryan’s detractors on the left would have to do, though they are loath to say so—would almost certainly yield weaker growth, and therefore have a harder time restraining the growth of the debt.” As I discussed in my last post from a few weeks ago, statistics show that we currently have a historically low tax rate, so it could be raised and still not be “far higher than this historical norm.”

I may have missed it, but in this article and in what I have heard from the right the military budget is left in tact. Another area that the right never looks into cutting is the cost of enforcing morally driven laws against consensual activities, the cost of police enforcement of prostitution laws, tax revenue lost from the illegality of gambling and the cost of imprisoning non-violent drug users. A closer look at the war on drugs reveals that after 40 years and $1 trillion was deemed as failing to meet any of its goals. Think about how much one trillion dollars is, “If you started a business when Christ was born and lost $1 million a day, it would still take another 700 years before you lost $1 trillion,” REPRESENTATIVE PHIL CRANE.

Beside Rand Paul, his dad, and at best one million actual libertarians, no one is actually for less government, they are just for government doing less to help issues they don’t care about, and more for their issues, on the right, moral and law and order issues, strong military that stimulates the economy and helps America have an empire that keeps foreign markets safe for our business interests, or helps open new ones, as opposed to the left wanting the government to focus on trying solve societies ills and inequalities.

------------------------------

I was not able to find one specific issue that moved me but looking at a number of issues I noticed a real disconnect concerning the amount of money our nation spends on its military, the high rate of profits our corporations have continued to earn despite the recession and the lack of money we have to fund our public programs and jobs that are leading to the need for so many cutbacks and lay-offs.

In last Sunday’s Star Ledger I read articles with headlines like, “Next fight: Contracts for state workers. Talks expected to be ‘pretty ugly’” where state employees are afraid to anger Gov. Christie because they don’t want to vilified in the way he did to teachers. Also “Energy Department staff to face cuts ...” “Budget ax poised in Millburn district” schools, and “Laid off Newark cops are moving on.”

Yet one can still find headlines like “Pentagon requests its largest budget: $553 billion” where the Pentagon is asking for its 14th year in a row of spending increases even with the winding down of the Iraq War. We do not have money for teachers and cops and blame welfare queens, pensions and the stimulus package for our national debt but some how the cost of our two wars at over $1,153,594,999,999 at 11:15 AM today and counting (1) is not brought into the conversation? So it seems there is plenty of money for war.

Looking at the corporate world over the last year most aggregate economic indicators are up, the GNP (2) has gone up the last five quarters, the top three stock exchanges NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX all show growth in their trading volumes over the last 52 weeks (3). The financial papers are littered with headlines such as:

“U.S. Corporate Profits Surge” - The Wall Street Journal (4)

“Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter” - The New York Times (5)

“U.S. corporate profits rise most in 25 years “- MarketWatch (6)

Still many want to cut federal and state employees like social workers, teachers and police, stating that this will free up funds to help our economy grow. Like all other areas of human endeavor public jobs contracts are far from perfect and there is much room for improving on abuses like “double dipping” holding two state jobs and getting pensions from both, large buyout clauses in some higher level state administrators and board members, and other areas like pensions and tenure can be looked at with new eyes and made more responsive to success in the work place.

The facts that these conflicting headlines bring to light point not to a lack of finances in America but a lack of interest in helping those in need and a choice to use hard economic times for many Americans as an excuse to push forth an anti-middle and working class political agenda that has been in the works since the 1960’s.

LINKS

(1) Cost of War http://costofwar.com/en/

(2) GNP http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=231&page=3&count=100

(3) NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX trading volumes over the last 52 weeks http://research.scottrade.com/qnr/Public/Markets/Statistics

(4) “U.S. Corporate Profits Surge” - The Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703956604576110612955564394.html

(5) “Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter” - The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/economy/24econ.html?_r=1

(6) “U.S. corporate profits rise most in 25 years “- MarketWatch http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-corporate-profits-rise-most-in-25-years-2010-03-26

===========================

Many conservatives and libertarians only value private sector jobs as if they are superior to public sector jobs, as if the morgages and rents, goods and services and college educations they pay for do not help strenghen our ecomony as private sector job It is as if they believe only jobs that increase their profit margins are valid, and those that serve the interest of the middle class and in turn the nation as a whole are without value. During a recession where affluent Americans profits are rising, middle class job killing legislation and budgets cuts do not appear to be the best way help those actually feeling the pains of this recession to lift themselves up to a better future.

Especially jobs that help lay the foundation for a strong middle class, jobs in education and public safety. A strong, financially secure and educated middle class is imperative to having a functioning democracy, and many of these current conservative and libertarian ideas such busting unions and ending free public education (“Education, like any other service, is best provided by the free market” ) run completely counter to what has made America the strongest nation in world.

Picture a senario where you already have high unemployment and very few good jobs where you do not need a college education. Then cut police jobs and make our cities less secure, you cut jobs in education which makes it harder to educate our children and in turn harder for them to go to college and get good jobs. Now not only have good middle class jobs that are within the grasp of poor and working class people been eliminated, you add a percentage of those formerly middle class laid-off people the ranks of the needy.

The short term gains from many of these cuts will be drastically over shadowed by the harm they are doing to society’s ability to produce citizens with highly employable skills. Those on the right look to the corporate world where one can raise their profit margins by laying off employees and see no reason not to apply the same logic to essential public jobs all so they can have more money by lowering their taxes.

National debt more than tripled from 900 billion dollars to 2.8 trillion dollars during Reagan's tenure.

There is not less money in America, their is less money available to the middle class.

http://www.lp.org/platform

Eisenhower

"Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

There is a jelousy on the part of many who work in the private sector, they see their jobs being cut, they see pensions as a thing of the distant past which they came along too late for, and they have not gotten rich in the corporate world and see public workers making as much as they do with more benefits and they have been told that they are lazy union workers who do not deserve to be well compensated.

So rather than unionize fight for the jobs in their own industry, or complaining about paying 1.99 for a bottle of coke when it costs 18 cents to make

(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_it_cost_to_make_a_bottle_of_coca_cola) and being angry about the exorbitant bonuses that corporate executives are paid with your money, being angry that they make their profits of the back of that usury usurious mark up,

many in the public are so brainwashed that they hate those in the same boat as they are and worship those above them, those who control how society is set up and do infinitely more to keep them in their troubled possition than those next to them, one step ahead or behind them in the pecking order of financial success in this nation.

People would rather have a dream of becoming rich than a reality of being secure.

Veblen pointed out. The poor don't want to fight those above them, they want to be like them. http://www.bolenderinitiatives.com/sociology/thorstein-bunde-veblen-1857-1929/thorstein-bunde-veblen-leisure-class-author/critic-may-ha

Putting an End to Arsenic in Our Food Supply

‘Brain-eating amoeba’ claims second victim this month

Great, any more stuff the world wants to add to the list of things parents have to worry about?

SOY AND DAIRY: HEALTHFUL OR HARMFUL?

The Down-Low on Dairy & Soy: Magic Bean or Tragic Bean? Both have good and bad qualities, moderation is the key. Despite what most grandmothers would have you believe your body does not need dairy products, you can live fine without them. "The FAO/WHO developed the Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score, a method of measuring protein values in human nutrition. Eggs, milk, and soy all score a 1.0, the best possible. Beef scores .92 and peanuts score .52." This statistic shoots down the importance of eating beef to getting enough protein.

Lying

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

By Patty Dow, M.A., Life Coach and Parent Educator

It is a loaded word and carries all kinds of moral judgment about the perpetrator. It leaves parents feeling embarrassed or deceived when they realize that their young children are doing it. Often times, parents notice "lying" in their children for the first time around age three. You ask your child a question about school and some wild tale comes out of his or her mouth. You confront your child about the missing cookie, only to be met by denial. In this month's Parenting Tip, I'd like to put some perspective on the subject of lying in young children.

First, let's look at this phenomenon from a developmental perspective. Most children, by age three, are able to carry on conversations. They have learned that there is a give and take in communication and that when they ask questions or make statements, they get responses from others. However, they have only been conversing for a few months. Someone asks them a question, the rule is, they reply. Sometimes they say the first thing that comes to mind. This is not deliberate and malicious lying, but to them, carrying their weight in the conversation.

The next developmental pieces of this puzzle are cognition and retention level. At ages three and four, children do not have a well developed sense of time and they don't always retain information from things that happened earlier. They may legitimately not remember what happened in school TODAY. You ask? They make it up (following the rules of communication - a question requires a response), or give you a blank stare! Sometimes, the things they make up are things that they have heard others say. Again, not malicious or intentional, but it's what comes to mind and they heard someone else say it, so why not?

Frequently, children blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality. They have fantasies in which they catastrophize, or romanticize, sometimes to meet an emotional need that they have. When my daughter, Courtney, was born, we already had a dog named Timber. He was petrified of her and barely began to come near her when she was old enough to throw a ball. Other than those occasional games, he avoided her like the plague. When she was 3 ½, we sadly had to find a new loving home for him because we had to move to a place where animals weren't allowed. When Courtney was 4, she would tell people about her wonderful relationship with her dog and what fast friends they were. She would dreamily tell people, "Timber would follow me everywhere and come over and put his head in my lap while I was watching TV." Lie? Well, definitely not the truth, but somehow, it was to her! Did it harm anyone? Nope. So what did I do? I let it go. As she got older (she is now 21), I told her anecdotally and she got a kick out of it. If your child is blurring fantasy and reality in a way that doesn’t matter, let it go. If your child is blurring fantasy and reality in a way that matters, you don't have to attack or insist. You can gently insert the facts as they tell stories about their lives.

Next, let's look at the intentional side of lying. From fairly early on, we learn that lying a) gets us what we want and b) can act as a form of protection when we fear the disapproval of others. One of the most important things parents can do is MODEL. How many of us use "white" lies; you know… stretch the truth just a little bit? Sometimes we think our reasons are legitimate - we don't want to hurt someone's feelings, or we want to avoid a scene of some type. I am not passing judgment, but it is important to remember that if you value honesty and want to pass that onto your children, they will pick up on it when adults lie to others. Young children are still very concrete in their thinking. They do not distinguish one type of lie from another. They think, "Mommy and Daddy told So-and-So this untrue thing, so it must be okay for me to do the same." Then they try it and get reprimanded for it. It doesn't make much sense in their minds and it hardly seems fair.

The last thought I want to leave you with, is that when your child lies, it isn't directly targeted toward you - it's not PERSONAL. Even if your child is lying intentionally, this is a sign that your child is having difficulty with something, NOT doing it TO YOU! S/he might be having trouble accepting disappointment, or might be very concerned about letting you down. Does this mean that parents don't address it? No, but you will probably have better results in the future if you address it empathically, non-emotionally, and matter-of-factly. Let your child know that you value honesty and that it is okay to make mistakes. Have a discussion and see if you can get to the source of the lie. If you come down too hard on your child, it will probably leave him or her scared. This, in turn, can lead to more lying and a breakdown in communication.

Patty Dow, MA
Life Coach/Parent Educator

Post from My Social Work Policy Class Blog

Chart shows low tax burden for rich

I was unable to attach the chart to this post so please click on the link below and take a minute to view the chart. “Blue areas represent a historically low tax burden for a specific income level, while red areas represent a historically high burden.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110316/ts_yblog_thelookout/chart-shows-low-tax-burden-for-rich;_ylt=AgzGIvwZ3WbYBe.37rqXmqzCw5R4;_ylu=X3oDMTQ1czQ4ZmMwBGFzc2V0A3libG9nX3RoZWxvb2tvdXQvMjAxMTAzMTYvY2hhcnQtc2hvd3MtbG93LXRheC1idXJkZW4tZm9yLXJpY2gEY2NvZGUDbXBfZWNfOF8xMARjcG9zAzQEcG9zAzQEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNjaGFydHNob3dzbG8-

The chart basically shows that despite the repeated claims from the lower taxes crowd that taxes are extra ordinarily high, and that the country is broke due to the pensions of greedy public workers like fire fighters, police officers and teachers, the tax burden on Americans is actually lower for the vast majority of Americans thank it has been 50 years.

The wealthy are being allowed to keep more of their money compared to any time in the last 100 years except for brief periods around 1930 and 1990. With this in mind it appears that our federal government’s shortage of funds may be due to the lack of funds being brought in by taxes and not solely public workers pensions, or over spending on social programs. The high cost of our military actions, and all other governmental costs have not been counteracted by the trickle down effect historically low tax rates over the last quarter of a century. Lower taxes have not caused the affluent to create new businesses and in turn new jobs at a rate that has any significant affect on our overall economy.

Basically the current tax rate is low compared to what it was durning the post WWII economic boom under Eisenhower, and even lower than it was during the Reagan Era. The lower taxes mantra reminds me of the concept of Manifest Destiny, no matter what gains its adherents achieve, the only acceptable next step is more, more tax cuts now, more land then, an insatiable appetitive for more that accepts no compromise.

Jan. 24th, excerpt from "Laughter," by Deng Ming-Dao

"... We are too often in a rush for our children to grow up. It is far better for them to fully live each year of their lives. Let them learn what is appropriate to their time, let them play. And when their childhood is spent at adolescence, help them in a gentle transition. Then their laughter will continue to resonate with cheer and hope for us all."

Fear the Mind Wanderer

Letting your mind wander is a major cause of unhappiness

San Fran bans toys in some fast-food kids meals

Drug experts say alcohol worse than crack or heroin

America really needs to reexamine it's views on alcohol as being the "okay way to get intoxicated" while criminalizing healthier ways, resulting in millions of people being sent to jail, thousands of people being killed in the illegal drug trade, and billions of dollars being wasted on the war on drugs and incarceration.

Youth Soccer Slaves

I saw this last documentary last week, didn't really raise my view of humanity.

Agents are getting Sub Saharan African families to pay them to take their teenaged boys to Europe to be seen by pro soccer scouts and either dumping them in Morocco and just keeping the money, or getting them to Europe and abandoning them if they do not get signed. To the point where whole youth teams have been abandoned after playing in tournaments in Europe. There are approx 20,000 young African footballers that are stranded, most from families without the means to get them home.

Preggers vs Boozers

Whilst reading the first few chapters of my Social Work text book I am surprisingly learning all kinds of things about pregnancy, like fetal alcohol syndrome is the number one cause worldwide for mental retardation. Also alcohol is tied with heroin for the most negative fetal effects caused by commonly used recreational drugs. So don't listen to the old lady who tells you oh in my day we all had a few drinks and are babies were no worse off for it.

Kids Have Trouble Paying Attention? Video Games May Be to Blame

My friend's band for kids "StarFish" gets props from AOL:

Best New Family Road Trip Music

The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it click link for full article

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

MEMORY TRICKS FOR BUSY OLD BRAINS

CA shares rock bottom in U.S. reading scores

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/03/24/MNCH1CKMAA.DTL