In yesterday’s post America’s Recession in Manufacturing Could Be a Boon To World Consumers, I laid out some of the more sorrowful aspects of the U.S. education system, and how the Trump administration is doing everything in its power to hasten its demise.
The reminders of this pitiful phenomenon are everywhere, though some of them actually make us smile, like the photo here.
Americans enjoy the rights to peaceful assembly and free speech that are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the right to bear arms that is protected by the Second. But are these limitless?
This thug is brandishing a weapon designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest possible period of time in a public institution (a state capitol building), i.e., he’s threatening people’s lives in order to enforce his viewpoint on gun control laws. That’s not free anything; it’s terrorism.
It’s not often I quote U.S. military commanders, but this statement from now-deposed Defense Secretary James Mattis is excellent.
It’s interesting how many data points are aligning in U.S. politics, starting with the destruction of public education, including content from this article:
• Making broad cuts to public education and the surrounding programs that help students learn. In President Trump’s budget, the administration zeroed out the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which provides $1.2 billion to districts across the country for after-school programs that support students and working families. This funding serves more than 1.6 million students participating in these programs. (more…)
Everywhere we go we hear this joyous refrain: The U.S. economy is doing great! And it’s true if you’re wealthy, heavily invested in the stock market, which was up ~30% last year. Just be glad you’re not a farmer or a factory employee, or anyone else in the working class.
From CNN Business:
America’s manufacturing downturn isn’t letting up. Factory activity contracted for the fifth consecutive month in December, registering a worse drop than expected.
Later today, the Trump administration will announce that it has loosened restrictions on the use of landmines, rolling back an Obama-era policy that restricted the use of landmines to the Korean Peninsula. The new policy is expected to allow the U.S. to use landmines anywhere in the world.
It’s said that at the center of every good joke there is a core truth. Here, as we see the Trump legal team struggling with one pathetic defense tactic after another, it appears that their answer lies in more excuses, not better ones. It’s like, “We lose money on every sale, but we make it up on volume.”
This article describes how the U.S. Treasury Secretary continues to insist Trump’s tax cuts aren’t blowing up the national debt, even though this is clearly untrue. A couple of points: (more…)
No, it’s almost the precise opposite. Geneticist David Suzuki reminds us that, in science, most of our ideas will ultimately prove to be incorrect.
As sobering a thought as that may be, however, we need to consider where we’d be in the absence of science, i.e., a world driven by superstition and innuendo.
Then we have to think about the pure evil required to systematically remove science from policy-making. (more…)
Well, let’s put all this into perspective. Trump partially paid for this by kicking 700K hungry people off food stamps. “Partially” is a key word there, however; it saved a whopping $1.32 billion, or 0.11% of war spending.
As I wrote yesterday, I recently had the good fortune to meet Jonathan Jarvis (pictured at left), 18th Director of the U.S. National Park Service under Barack Obama.
I thought readers would be interested to know that he now teaches at the University of California at Berkeley, and while he remains heavily involved in improving people’s experiences with our nation’s parks. He runs the UC Berkeley Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity, which: (more…)
