“The Avenue in the Rain,” oil on canvas, by the American painter Childe Hassam. 42 in. x 22.25 in. Courtesy of The White House Collection, The White House, Washington, D. C. Image courtesy of The Athenaeum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
People in some states complain that the liquor stores and bars won’t open on election day. So, try the next best thing, or the better thing, and read some poetry.
What works of poetry, or literature, or visual arts, strike you as appropriate for the U.S. election day? Which works would be most useful in school classrooms, to teach our young people about voting, how to vote, and why it’s important?
U.S. Flag Code urges the flag be flown at every polling place on any election day. Be sure to compliment your poll judges if the flag is up. You may fly your flag at home, too.
District 15 for the Texas State Board of Education covers 77 counties in Texas’s northern Panhandle. It’s oil (Midland), cotton, Texas prairie and small towns, and lots of schools, and some surprisingly good colleges and universities.
Texas State Board of Education District 15, TFN image – “District Overview District 15 is huge, covering all of northwestern Texas. It is also arguably the most Republican SBOE district, giving more than 74 percent of the vote to Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential election and more than 70 percent to Gov. Rick Perry in the 2010 gubernatorial race.”
It’s a district where science plays a big role, and should play a bigger one. The 15th includes those lands in Texas where the Dust Bowl got started, where unwise plowing based on inaccurate readings of climate contributed to one of the greatest man-made natural resources disasters in all of history. It’s the home of Texas Tech University, where members of the chemistry faculty created a wine industry based on the chemistry of grape selection and fermentation, and where geologists learn how to find oil.
This area leads Texas in wind power generation, a considerable factor in the state that leads the nation in wind power generation.
In short, science, engineering and other technical disciplines keep this area economically alive, and vital at times.
Of the two candidates, Democrat Steve Schafersman is a scientist, and a long-time, staunch defender of science education (what we now cutely call “STEM” subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). If the race were decided by a test in STEM subjects, Schafersman would be the winner. Schafersman lives in Midland.
The GOP candidate in the race is religiously anti-science, Marty Rowley of Amarillo. As a good-ol’-boy, former pastor, he’s got a lot of support from the usual suspects. Rowley’s views on science, technology, engineering and mathematics run contrary to the business and farming interests of his entire district. Do his supporters look to the future?
Do you vote in Midland, Lubbock, Amarillo, Dalhart, Abilene, San Angelo, Dallam County, Tom Greene County, Cooke County or Montague County? You need to vote for Steve Shafersman. Do your children a favor, do your schools a favor, and do your region of Texas a favor, and vote for the guy who works to make education good.
Shafersman is the better-qualified candidate, and probably among the top two or three people with experience making the SBOE work well, in the nation. He deserves the seat, and Texas needs him.
“The Avenue in the Rain,” oil on canvas, by the American painter Childe Hassam. 42 in. x 22.25 in. Courtesy of The White House Collection, The White House, Washington, D. C. Image courtesy of The Athenaeum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
People in some states complain that the liquor stores and bars won’t open on election day. So, try the next best thing, or the better thing, and read some poetry.
What works of poetry, or literature, or visual arts, strike you as appropriate for the U.S. election day? Which works would be most useful in school classrooms, to teach our young people about voting, how to vote, and why it’s important?
Another great episode of “Mr. Deity.” (Yeah, I’m several episodes behind. Don’t even get me started on catching up on “The Wire.”)
Every parent will empathize with the problem here, letting the kids do things on their own so they can grow up, and then seeing again just what it is they actually want to do . . .
Watch all the way through. The best stuff is in the fund raising plea at the end.
Former President Bill Clinton campaigned in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District for Christie Vilsack a few days ago — this ad puts his tour in 30 seconds.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
It’s extraordinary to consider with just three weeks until Election Day, but Mitt Romney’s central argument to voters has been exposed as a total fraud.
Greg Sargent added, “Let’s recap what Kessler has discovered here. The plan that is central to Romney’s candidacy on the most important issue of this election — jobs — is a complete sham. This is every bit as bad — or worse — than Romney’s claim to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain, or his vow to cut spending by eliminating whole agencies without saying which ones, or his refusal to say how he’ll pay for his tax cuts.”
Obama’s budget NOW creates 12 million jobs in the next four years, according to projections. Romney? He stretches it out to ten years, but reduces the job creation, so it’s 2.5 times as long to get the same number of jobs. Say what? Romney’s plan reduces the number of jobs created by cutting the rate at which they are created.
Mitt thinks he’d have a better chance of become president if he was Latino. In the first video of the Actually… series Rosie Perez explains why it will take more than being Latino for Mitt to win the election.
When lies go unchecked, we all lose. Actually.org spreads the truth, because the truth matters—even in politics. Our team calls ’em like they see ’em, and we hope you’ll support the truth by sharing Actually.org videos before Election Day.
Actually… is a partnership between American Bridge and JCER. Schlep Labs is a project of JCER. Actually… was produced by Amy Rubin at Barnacle Studios http://blog.barnacle.is
From the Truman National Security Project, a video featuring testimony from veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan especially, questioning whether Mitt Romney has what it takes to be Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces:
The Truman Project’s blog lays out the case for President Obama’s election with respect to his initiatives on behalf of veterans. As much as I would prefer to see those positive achievements emphasized, campaigns don’t really allow much time for careful, thoughtful explanation.
Will there be any effect from this advertisement? What do you think?
Reuters: “Swing state ad from hawkish Democrats hits Romney on foreign policy” – “There are more than 20 million American veterans, 15.8 million of whom cast ballots in the 2008 election cycle, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Many veterans live in states key to Obama’s re-election, such as Ohio, where there are more than 900,000 veterans, according to Department of Veterans Affairs data.”
Mike Breen, North Hampton vet, speaks out with Truman Project; Seacoastonline; [From the article]: Contrast that with the “dead silence” at the Republican National Convention on the topic of the troops, and [New Hampshire Attorney General Phil McLaughlin] said the positions of the two candidates could not be more clear. “It’s as though (to Republicans) there were no Iraq. It’s as though there were no Afghanistan. It’s as though there were no veterans,” he said.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Despite the few details he leaked in the Denver debate — which contradict almost everything he and his campaign had said earlier, not to mention the GOP platform — Mitt Romney offers not much in the realm of a program to do better than President Obama in economics, in pulling the nation out of our economic doldrums. Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman explains:
Winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman – Tavis Smiley Productions image
As many people have noticed, Mr. Romney’s five-point “economic plan” is very nearly substance-free. It vaguely suggests that he will pursue the same goals Republicans always pursue — weaker environmental protection, lower taxes on the wealthy. But it offers neither specifics nor any indication why returning to George W. Bush’s policies would cure a slump that began on Mr. Bush’s watch.
In his Boca Raton meeting with donors, however, Mr. Romney revealed his real plan, which is to rely on magic. “My own view is,” he declared, “if we win on November 6, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back, and we’ll see — without actually doing anything — we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.”
Are you feeling reassured?
In fairness to Mr. Romney, his assertion that electing him would spontaneously spark an economic boom is consistent with his party’s current economic dogma. Republican leaders have long insisted that the main thing holding the economy back is the “uncertainty” created by President Obama’s statements — roughly speaking, that businesspeople aren’t investing because Mr. Obama has hurt their feelings. If you believe that, it makes sense to argue that changing presidents would, all by itself, cause an economic revival.
There is, however, no evidence supporting this dogma. Our protracted economic weakness isn’t a mystery; it’s what normally happens after a major financial crisis. Furthermore, business investment has actually recovered fairly strongly since the official recession ended. What’s holding us back is mainly the continued weakness of housing combined with a vast overhang of household debt, the legacy of the Bush-era housing bubble.
By the way, in saying that our prolonged slump was predictable, I’m not saying that it was necessary. We could and should have greatly reduced the pain by combining aggressive fiscal and monetary policies with effective relief for highly indebted homeowners; the fact that we didn’t reflects a combination of timidity on the part of both the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, and scorched-earth opposition on the part of the G.O.P.
But Mr. Romney, as I said, isn’t offering anything substantive to fight the slump, just a reprise of the usual slogans. And he has denounced the Fed’s belated effort to step up to the plate.
For more than a year Romney’s been pushing tax cuts as a solution to everything. It’s rather late to back out of that now.
Tax cuts can’t stimulate the economy — we tried them for 8 solid years, and they crashed the economy. One can make a great case that the Obama economy is not soaring because he agreed to extend the tax cuts, in return for getting about half of the stimulus we needed. At some point, people hurting in this economy will realize that they can’t benefit from a tax cut if they aren’t paying huge taxes, and they aren’t paying huge taxes if they are unemployed.
Tax cuts cannot be revenue neutral. They hurt deficits. For months Romney’s been talking about defense spending and tax cuts that add between $5 trillion to $7 trillion in to the deficit. If he wishes to argue that deficits hurt, he’s in trouble. If Obama argues that deficits should be used to help people, Romney will be unable to make the math work on his plan if he tries to reply.
Economic theory isn’t with Romney. Can he make that big of a snow job on voters? Even if he does, the economy won’t take it.
Now’s a good time to beef up on the high school economics most of us took, or the college class we took. Can you see any way to make an austere, Spain-style economy work in the U.S. without putting us into a death spiral?
Our best bet to get the economy growing at a fast enough pace to create jobs for the unemployed, and create jobs for new graduates from high school and college, is to get a Congress that will vote for employment bills instead of making legislative gridlock.
Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, 2012 – from US Atlas
On almost every issue, Powell runs circles around Cantor. In debates, for example, Powell challenges Cantor to explain his votes to extend perks to Congressmen, while shorting the pay of active duty military and veterans — to no avail, Cantor won’t explain. What could he say?
Especially, what could Cantor say to a decorated veteran like Powell?
No, this isn’t the Welsh former soccer player Wayne Powell. The Welsh Powell would probably represent Virginia better than Cantor, too, but he’s still managing Leamington FC, last I heard.
During the last weeks of this campaign there will be debates, speeches and more ads. But if I could sit down with you in your living room or around the kitchen table here’s what I’d say:
When I took office we were losing nearly 800,000 jobs a month and were mired in Iraq. Today I believe that as a nation we are moving forward again. But we have much more to do to get folks back to work and make the middle class secure again.
Now, Governor Romney believes that with that even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy and fewer regulations on Wall Street all of us will prosper. In other words he’d double down on the same trickle down policies that led to the crisis in the first place. So what’s my plan?
First, we create a million new manufacturing jobs and help businesses double their exports. Give tax breaks to companies that invest in America, not that ship jobs overseas.
Second, we cut our oil imports in half and produce more American-made energy, oil, clean-coal, natural gas, and new resources like wind, solar and bio-fuels—all while doubling the fuel efficiencies of cars and trucks.
Third, we insure that we maintain the best workforce in the world by preparing 100,000 additional math and science teachers. Training 2 million Americans with the job skills they need at our community colleges. Cutting the growth of tuition in half and expanding student aid so more Americans can afford it.
Fourth, a balanced plan to reduce our deficit by four trillion dollars over the next decade on top of the trillion in spending we’ve already cut, I’d ask the wealthy to pay a little more. And as we end the war in Afghanistan let’s apply half the savings to pay down our debt and use the rest for some nation building right here at home.
It’s time for a new economic patriotism. Rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class. Read my plan. Compare it to Governor Romney’s and decide for yourself. Thanks for listening.
Kennedy’s speech at Rice University, “We Choose to Go to the Moon,” was on September 12, 1962. That was also the ninth anniversary of his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier. She let him go out of town to talk rockets?
It is said God looks out for drunks and babies; can we make a case that our government works better with more drunks in elective office? David Frum discusses. (I actually have some thoughts and experience in this area . . . when to find time to discuss?) There’s a video there, but not in a format I can embed here easily — go see.
New studies on colony collapse disorder affecting especially commercial beehives suggests insecticides, and substances related to insecticides, may be hammering our bees; worse, EPA has known about it, but kept quiet. Reported readably in New Yorker, 50 years after that magazine serialized a book named Silent Spring. Rachel Carson’s Ghost joins Santayana’s Ghost pacing America, nervously, as if to awaken us all . . .
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
Error: Please make sure the Twitter account is public.
Dead Link?
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
