American citizen to be tried as an American citizen

Today the Justice Department announced that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will be tried in civilian court for his alleged acts of terror at last week's marathon that left three dead (four if you count the police officer he and his brother murdered a few days later) and almost 200 injured. This has angered some on the right who wanted him to be charged as an enemy combatant terrorist. This should not be an issue. Sadly, in 2013, some elected officials who have taken oaths to protect and serve have a problem with an American citizen being treated like an American citizen.

He's a US citizen, protected by the Constitution. End of story. He wasn't a combatant in the theater of war, he is accused of committing a single violent act of terrorism on the streets of Boston (again, excluding the shootout with police as the brothers tried to make their escape). There are many rights in the US Constitution, including the right to a jury trial in front of your peers. While we may decide what actions or crimes are worthy of a jury trial or just trial by a judge, we don not have the right to strip American citizens of their rights because we don't like what they have done. We are America. We don't stick up for the principles the terrorists supposedly hate by abandoning them the millisecond our own personal safety is threatened.

We start down the slippery slope of deciding citizens are not protected by the rule of law because the are accused of doing something especially heinous we open Pandora's box. When we start calling citizens "enemy combatants" we start to give up everything that the Bill of Rights were written for. It may seem harmless now, only using a reduced justice system, outside our legal system, where the right to defend yourself is minimized, on enemy combatants or terrorists as we know them now, but it is not hard to see some future administration come in with different or varied criteria as to what is a terrorist act and possibly strip anyone who does not agree with the government of their due process rights.

Terrorists need to be treated as the common criminals that they are.  Don't elevate them to some special kind of special super special enemy warrior status. "Terror networks" aren't that much different that the criminal enterprises that are and prosecuted under RICO (except perhaps for more civilian deaths). If the civil justice system is good enough for the mafia, it is good enough for Tsarnaev.

As to the questioning without Miranda for intelligence, all it means, at worse, is that prosecutors may be prevented from using whatever he may tell them against him when his trial starts (fruit of the poisonous tree). There already is plenty of other evidence to lock him up for three lifetimes. A fourth lifetime won't make much of a difference.

Education is not one size fits all

Attached is the retirement letter of a 40 year teacher who laments how the education system is failing our children with reforms that demean teachers. Coming from a family of teachers, I can see his point. While the current reforms may be great for burnt out teachers who mail it in, and can excel in the reform system of teaching to the test now in place, it must be maddening for those who went into teaching for the love of sharing what they have learned with younger generations.

I had some wonderful teachers when I went to school in the 1970s and 80s (and more than a few duds). For the ones that simply phoned it and taught to the test there were others who conveyed their love of the materials they were teaching us to get us interested in the discussion. Almost 30 years after high school, many of the details are long gone, but I still remember the hobbit English teacher, explaining the Hobbit trilogy and Mice and Men (that may have been for a different class) or the social studies teachers who used drawings on the blackboard to bring life to the industrial revolution. I recall classes that let us wander with reports, classes that would be so much better now with much easier access to information that can be obtained almost instantly.

I used to believe "No Child Left Behind" was enacted with good intentions and what we see now, such as teaching to the test, are unforeseen consequences. Now I wonder if what we are seeing today WAS foreseen and is exactly what the proponents of this law wanted. Already we are seeing our college graduating students chained to jobs because they need to pay back soul crushing college debt unable to speak out for fear of losing that necessary job. However, they realize they have been wronged. The next generation won't.  

My children are in school now and while I believe their teachers are dedicated and creative, I have seen them teaching to the test. And while they are still at an age where they don't really question what they learn, I fear they never will. Worse, I feel they will not let them learn the basics that will allow them to do followup reading when they are older. I may never have read, for example, a series of books about Theodore Roosevelt as an adult if I wasn't entranced by stories of him as a child battling asthma and boxing in the White House when I was in school. We can only hope that true reformers step in to teach our children how ideas are developed and tested and aren't dissuaded  by those who profit from the status quo before it is too late. 

And before you get the wrong idea, standardized testing isn't the problem - teachers should be held to some level of accountability and a simple basement standard may only be found through standardized tests. It is taking the concept of standardized testing too far that has created an inflexible system that doesn't really accomplish anything, aside from giving corporations,  such as the standardized testing companies, looking to make money over making sure our children are educated, a nice pay day. And we can't lay all the blame on the test companies without first looking at ourselves. After all we wanted this, didn't we? Oh we may have had good intentions, making sure all our children were equally educated, but this has devolved into something more, as things usually do when money is involved.

We spend our time cramming students with testing strategies and other efforts to improve a child’s ability to do well on a standardized test. We all want to see our town with a high score; that means we have  a ”good school system.” Not only will our housing values go up, but so will our property taxes, which coincidentally finance the schools, thereby providing them with more money - a vicious circle that benefits homeowners, municipalities, bankers and realtors, but not necessarily our children.   if you’re in a “good system.” It means that others will want to move to your area because of your “good school system.”

More troubling though, is the the though that this inflexibility is what the powers that be want -- a citizenship without the ability to question what they are told, without the ability to think of alternatives, to not even know how to question which is what this inflexibility is leading to. We are willingly and silently indoctrinating and conditioning our children to think there is nothing better than America.  Shame on us all for simply selling off what was the greatest experiment in human history to the highest bidder.

Gun safety

I guess it is a step in the right direction that in the wake of Aurora and Newton, the Senate has finally come to an agreement requiring background checks of gun buyers. However this is a feel good, not really do anything solution. Sure it will help keep felons from getting guns, but what good are those laws when the lawful owners then leave their weapons unsecured? In addition to background checks, maybe gun buyers should also pass a safety check.

Driving a car, a potential deadly weapon, requires a written test AND a driving test to demonstrate you know enough to earn a license to drive. A rifle, also a potential deadly weapon and whose sole purpose is to fire a bullet at something, does not. Am I the only one who thinks that is nuts?

Gay marriage debate

Now the social conservatives who want to take away our freedoms are looking at other religions to justify their opinion that homosexual marriage should be illegal. First, let us take every religious reference to marriage out of the discussion (you can argue that churches perform weddings and the state performs the marriage or whatever gets you through the night or at least this blog). Then tell me how this is any different then laws preventing blacks and whites from getting married a half century ago? It is not. It is bigotry no matter how you want to slice it and it is disgusting (the article also wanders into a discussion that says women belong back in the kitchen but I will skip that for now).

 

I don't care what the Koran says. I don't care what the Bible says. They aren't the laws of this land. I don't care how people want to live in their own private lives (and if that includes multiple wives then God bless that poor soul, one is enough for me). And I am tired of the red herring about procreation; widowed elderly couples marrying, for example, aren't going to have a baby at 65.Why are people so worried about what other people are doing with their bodies in their personal lives. Be a true conservative and get the government out of peoples' bedrooms. Life is too short to deny somebody else happiness.

The definition of marriage has constantly been evolving. The idea of marrying for love is relatively new, marriage used to be more political, with matchmakers (or whatever) pairing couples up based on dowries or other needs of the communities. My mother's parents met each other through friends in the very late 1920s, instead of through the Jewish community they lived in via their parents approval as was expected in those days (those darn trolleys that could take kids out of the 'hood). They eloped for love instead of entering relationships with people other people, such as their families, chose for them in 1933. That was almost as radical as gay marriage is today according to the stories I heard as a child.

You want to live like a social conservative? Go ahead. I'm not stopping you. However if your views infringe on the liberties of others that is YOUR problem, not theirs. You don't like abortion? Don't get an abortion. You don't like same sex marriages? Don't get married to a person of your own sex. How hard is that?

To much time is being taken over worrying about what other people in their private lives.This country has REAL problems, such as a run away deficit, infrastructure problems, an education system that is preventing talent from reaching their full potential due to cost or lack of funding and many others. Stop with this nonsense already.

Hyprocrisy

My brother-in-law is a New York City employee looking forward to his 50th birthday next year. Why do you ask is he looking forward to hitting the half century mark? Because, as a union employee who will have worked for the city over 30 years by then (he started in the good old days of the early 1980s when you could still make a good living without a college degree), he will be able to retire on a full pension and sit at home for the next 17-20 years while the rest of us continue to toil. Good for him. However, I am amazed at his attitude regarding taxes and biting the government hands that feed him.

He recently posted the greatest layoff letter ever on his Facebook page. To summarize, it was a layoff notice by an "employer" stating he had to fire staff due to the increased cost of ObamaCare and he reduced staff by laying off the owners of every car in the parking lot with a pro-Obama bumper sticker. My brother-in-law approved that letter, saying how we need lower taxes. I remarked how ironic it was that a government employee, living high on the government teet, would feel that way, noting that less taxes in general would mean less money for government employees, even those with tenure and not too far from retirement .

He responded that less spending requires less money, and less money means less taxes. He feels that if we cut spending, and cut the civil service workforce, which he noted would directly affect him in a negative manner but it IS the right thing to do. Fair enough, but then the conversation shifted over to government waste, noting that three qualified well paid employees could EASILY do the job of ten current employees in his department. Again, I'll take him at his word from this. I've dealt with enough antiquated union rules to not doubt this is true. In many instances I feel the rules are there to just add payroll (and union dues) regardless whether those jobs are needed or those rules are still necessary. However, I'm not talking about -- I am talking about hyprocisy.

Now, acknowledging that if I still lived in New York I, as a tax payer, I would be awfully annoyed I would be giving somebody money every year to someone starting at age 50 (basically our prime earning years) to NOT work, one who I might add could easily work another 15 to 20 years,  while cutting money to pay a teacher to teach over paying someone who  to stay home (ignoring I live in a state where a retired state employee can get a new state job and still get a pension), I questioned what does the waste of Civil Service protection keeping seven extra employees employed have to do with shifting the burden of uninsured patients from the taxpayers who fund ERs (law says hospitals have to treat regardless of ability to pay) to employers who don't offer health insurance?  

Pointing out our conversation had drifted to lowed taxes, he responded that creating a workforce that would be 30% the size but more efficient... saving taxes. He used the example that Walmart pays a certain wage and benefit package and people take the job.. nobody is being dragged into the stores and made to fill out the applications but after weeks they all complain (jobs are scarce, etc. supply/demand). Of course what he failed to acknowledge was: 1) Walmart has been cutting their workforce too, leaving many stores under serviced with customers unable to take their business elsewhere as Walmart has become a defacto monopoly in many areas and 2) that in states where Walmart is the largest employer, Walmart employees are the states' largest number of recipients of federal subsidized Medicaid and Food Stamps due to wages and arbitrary scheduling that make it impossible for those employees to currently afford health insurance. That is tax dollars paid by all of us to subsidize Walmart's business practices I don't think that the Walmart daughters coughing up a few dollars (for them) to cover their share will bankrupt them, do you?

At this point I remembered I was arguing with someone who had drank the Fox Kool-Aide (I already knew I was the "liberal" in my family) as he shifted the argument to how much he pays in taxes, that they are too high, noting that at one time his goal was to earn what he now pays in taxes. Faulty logic. His first mistake was noting what he pays in dollars, not what he pays as a percentage of of his income. If you think the federal tax rate is high now, I told him, look at what the rates were when our fathers were our ages. If you run the actual dollar numbers (referring to your goal from decades ago was to earn what you now pay in taxes) through an inflation calendar you would discover what we pay (ignoring we live in Nassau and NJ, the land of high property taxes) is not as bad as you think, I reminded him. 

He then opinionated that if only the Walmart workers had a higher moral compass they wouldn't need assistance, pointing out that the starting salary for a NYPD officer, falls well below the limits for WIC, earned income credit and SNAP, implying that officers/cadets who take take full advantage of these benefits have a poor compass because they don't pay those benefits back when they finally make enough money to not need the extra assistance. I reminded him that those cadets aren't taking "advantage" by taking WIC etc, they take it because they don't earn enough otherwise to, I don't know, eat? and that I pay taxes for welfare, food stamps, unemployment etc as insurance so that the benefits will be there if I need that. Being poor has nothing to do with a moral compass. 

On the other hand paying wages too low to live on does. In that case, the city is just as bad as Walmart using my federal tax dollars to subsidize the cadets. There's something wrong when someone working a full time job can barely support themselves. And, though I didn't point this out as I really didn't want to start WW3 in my family, one could argue that all the benefits he received from the city via his union could be equated with the welfare benefits the low paid cadets receive and that the low paid cadets repaid the benefits they received when paying taxes on their eventual higher salaries, something the Walmart workers probably will never be able to do. Not that heirs of Sam Walton seem to care. What do they know about meritocracy and receiving rewards for good work? Their financial success was guaranteed as soon as they received their inheritances (God forbid we put an inheritance tax in place to prevent an aristocracy from forming but that is another blog post).

I remember when my goal was to make $10 an hour, of course that was in 1985 when I was making $3.75 an hour (a bit above the then minimum wage) and was just finishing high school. Times change, and so do our expectations. I found the census for 1940 and saw what my grandfather, a bank executive, made that year. After running it through an inflation calculator I saw how low his salary was -- which explains in part why they lived in a 4th floor walkup in Brooklyn without a car. We pay more dollars because we make more dollars and I like having a house, phone, multiple cars and other items my grandparents would have considered a luxury. 

He then complained that he knows a lot of people, himself included, who opted for lower wages (much lower than comparable private sector positions) to gain benefits. His argument was that if benefits are given out to everyone, then pay will be the only deciding factor and companies can then use public sector wages as a standard instead of the other way around (NYC civil service law has provisions that an in-house title CANNOT pay more than 80% of private sector.. and they include benefit packages which are usually considered as 30 - 40% of total wages). As an example, he pointed to city electricians using a section of the law to gain equity with private sector wages because of the huge disparity... jump forward 8 years, they received a 77% wage increase but lost 23 annual days and pay their own medical ... overall they gained about 15% in salary but if they should get sick for an extended period that gain would be gone in a flash.... making choices. Well, gee. Welcome to the private sector.  

Basically, he was  arguing that Unions got too greedy. I agree to an extent. Certain work rules regarding job titles and duties that may have made sense in 1953 don't make sense in 2013. On the other hand, Walmart's low wages make the argument for unions; imagine if the union fervor of the early 20th century existed today. Even though Walmart is low skill, they would be pretty screwed if everyone struck at once. For them its all about money not the customers or employees and if they saw their bottom line was being affected they might react with higher wages or more employees. Unfortunately, in many places in this country the customers don't have the option of striking Walmart so the money will keep rolling in.

Going back to the waste, there is a lot of blame to go around for that but basically, like the debt, we are living through the consequences of labor/ social peace of 50-60 years ago where all parties kicked the problem down the road. Nobody cared about needed reforms. The result is that in the last decade or so government pay and benefits has exceeded the private sector. My wife, who works in the NJ court system, can point to many lawyers applying for what used to be high school diploma jobs in the court because the money is better than the private sector and I know that can not last, especially now that we are in a global economic market. But that is another argument

My other grandfather was a NYC school principal in the 1950s and 60s, retiring just after the teachers' unions "won." He was telling me in the mid 80s that while he understood the necessity of the teachers unions to curb the principals' powers that the pendulum had already swung too far left. Add on another 30 years, along with previous tax cuts, and here we are, the public sector being a superior place to work over the private sector for many at the same time you have people like my brother-in-law, a man who has done well on the government payroll, arguing to cut the ladder behind him now that he has gotten his. Complete hypocrisy.

I am not saying I like ObamaCare (I feel it is a big windfall for private insurance companies), and I can see his point about making choices, but I don't see why a union employee is upset over someone in the private sector having to offer a 10th of what his union has given him. I think it is marvelous that he gets great health benefits. I think it is hypocritical of him to say that no one else should have them because NOW he wants taxes and spending to be cut. If he put his actions where his mouth was, he would be working until 70 like the rest of us (which he will of course, he will be able to make much more money in the private sector with the engineering skills he learned from the city, even without a college degree).

Wealth inequality is as high as the years before the Great Depression. That only ended when we taxed ourselves like nuts for WW2 and then to build the post-war infrastructure that made us the most powerful nation in the world and whose legacy we are barely holding onto as we starve our schools, roads, power lines etc. of needed capital. Yes, the tax rates of the mid 20th century were insanely high, but they have been cut many times they hit their peak. Tax rates today are low, enough with the idea that a few cents or dollars more for Obamacare will destroy the country. 

Finally, happy minus 50 years to first contact with the Vulcans on a ship paid for by tax dollars but re-purposed by a private scientist.

Mom or rocket scientist?

It is 2013. The women's lib movement was decades ago and many adults, especially those in their mid 40s and younger, don't have any real work-life experience with the major discrimination women suffered years ago. Oh sure, some of us heard stories from our mothers about how the choices when they were young were to become wife and mother, or a teacher, a typist or some other low level job if outside the house. And there are still plenty of instances where there are glass ceilings for women in both blue collar and white collar offices, especially if they are working mothers, both actual and social, no matter how high in the company they may reach. In my working life spanning almost 30 years at this point, I have worked for many male and female bosses including, at one point, for a then Fortune 500 company where our CEO/President was a woman and, for the most part, have never seen women discriminated against, especially in recent years. Therefore, I am amused about the snit among some over an obituary for a female 88 year old rocket scientist who passed last week, started off with a comment on her cooking skills and being a great mother, despite the family noting that was how they wanted the obituary to start for personal reasons.

Maybe it is a generation thing, but I don't know many people my age, male or female, who worry about being defined by their careers. For many of my peers the bigger concern is a work/life balance, though that view may be due to the people I work with and befriend. Mrs. Brill sounded a lot like a woman of her times, who associated her life with her family over her work, even though her work is what she is remembered for on the national and world stage. Married in the early 1950s, she followed her husband around the country for his work, while she took time away from hers to not only go where he went but to raise their children. And it strikes a cord with me as her story sounds a lot like my mother's, a woman who started as a traditional wife and then moved on to better things. 

Back in the 1950s, a woman's role was, for the most part, standing by her man, running the home and raising the family, even if they had dreams of doing more. My mother was one of those women and she made a point of telling my brothers, sister and I that her dreams of being a geologist were put aside due to the times and how wonderful it was that that was changing (this was the 1970s). She often spoke how envious she was of her sister-in-law, about a decade younger, who came of age at the right time and was able to have a meaningful career. My mother told us several times the story of how when she went to Brooklyn College in the mid 1950s, one professor accused her of taking a seat from a man because he speculated she just wanted to meet boys, despite already being engaged to my father. This was not the case for my aunt a decade later. As a result, like many women of her day, my mother became a teacher, quitting for a time to raise children, before returning to the work force. However, due to her lack of education in the sciences, and other circumstances, she was unable to follow her passion.

However, my mother eventually was able to be more than a mother and teacher, finding meaningful volunteer work in several organizations, becoming quite prominent in one of them, and may have been remembered for that if she had died when still young. But that was decades ago and declining health forced her to step away from most of those activities over a decade ago. Now, as my mother nears the end of her life, with many of her friends and former colleagues already gone, she will be remembered as a mother and grandmother by the only people who will really care.

Finally, my grandfather (my mother's father) had his obit in the NY Times almost 30 years ago. And while I don't recall if he wrote it himself (it was one of the ones you had to pay for)  he definitely had final say. Therefore, I imagine Mrs. Brill did too. And if that was the case, then it was she who thought being a wife and mother was more important than being a rocket scientist and that was how she wanted to be remembered.

Oh, more thing ladies still upset that the obit started with Mrs. Brill's homemaking skills. As I noted above it is 2013. Please stop acting surprised when I answer the phone mid-day and tell you my wife is at work. Some of us men are house husbands while others work from home (like I do) some or all week days. Stop asking for her when the call could easily apply to either of us (I also take messages so saying thank you and hanging up before I can even ask what the call is about is kinda rude).

her story sounds a lot like my mother's, a woman who started as a traditional wife and then moved on to better things. My mother made a point of telling my brothers, sister and I that her dreams of being a geologist were put aside due to the times and how wonderful it was that that was changing (this was the 1970s). When she went to Brooklyn College in the mid 1950s, one professor accused her of taking a seat from a man because he speculated she just wanted to meet boys, despite already being engaged to my father. She eventually was able to be more than a mother and teacher and may have been remembered for that if she had died when still young. But now, as my mother nears the end of her life, with many of her friends and former colleagues already gone, she will be remembered as a mother and grandmother by the only people who will really care.

her story sounds a lot like my mother's, a woman who started as a traditional wife and then moved on to better things. My mother made a point of telling my brothers, sister and I that her dreams of being a geologist were put aside due to the times and how wonderful it was that that was changing (this was the 1970s). When she went to Brooklyn College in the mid 1950s, one professor accused her of taking a seat from a man because he speculated she just wanted to meet boys, despite already being engaged to my father. She eventually was able to be more than a mother and teacher and may have been remembered for that if she had died when still young. But now, as my mother nears the end of her life, with many of her friends and former colleagues already gone, she will be remembered as a mother and grandmother by the only people who will really care.