When circumstances convinced me several months ago that the time to leave El Paso had come, I moved to Denver. While the body can move intact, though, the spirit lags behind. Thus, the mental transition from the Rio Grande Rift to the Rockies has taken some time. Finally, a full understanding of why I had made that instinctive move came home, in the tale of how two cities – El Paso and Denver – fared on election night.
In El Paso, 24% of eligible voters – fewer than 1 in 4 – went to the polls. They voted to repeal benefits to same-sex partners of city employees, a policy affecting perhaps a couple of dozen people. They elected Dee Margo to replace Joe Moody, one of the state’s finest young legislators. Two out of three voters in my old home precinct on the west side voted a straight Republican ticket. Margo was one of 22 net gains for Republicans in the state house, bringing that body to a near two-thirds majority that promises to roll back health care reform in the State with the highest number of uninsured people in the nation, get tougher on crime (read build more prisons), and lower taxes in the face of a 25 billion dollar deficit. Good luck with that.
In Denver, 54% of eligible voters went to the polls in a more progressive mood. A constitutional amendment that would have granted “personhood” to a human zygote was defeated, as were three tax rollbacks that would have gutted state and local government. An initiative for opting out of federal health care reform also lost. All 9 state house seats and all 5 state senate seats for Denver remained in Democratic hands. Statewide, Republicans did take control of the House by a margin of one representative, who won by fewer than 300 votes, but the Senate survived with a Democratic majority. Denver, and the rest of the state, elected a Democrat as governor, over a Republican who saw Denver’s bicycle rental program as a UN conspiracy, and a third party candidate (Tom Tancredo) whose career has been built by demonizing immigrants. And in the closest high-profile race in the nation, Michael Bennett prevailed over tea-party favorite Ken Buck to help keep the US Senate in Democratic hands.
While Texas bleeds red, Colorado remains ambivalently purple. As El Paso languishes in a regressive political coma, Denver at least has a political pulse.
I’ve joined the Democratic Party of Denver and already have found myself chair of its Public Policy Committee. I wrote the position papers on the party’s web site that I would like to think helped defeat the ballot initiatives that would have been so destructive. Last Tuesday afternoon, I was one of hundreds of volunteers who went door-to-door to get out the last minute vote for Michael Bennet. In the end, he won by about 5 votes per precinct. I would like to think that I helped make that difference in my small plot of the political universe.
To all my activist friends who remain in El Paso to fight the good fight, my affection for you is exceeded only by my admiration. Those of us who have lived through tsunamis before know that the tide will turn eventually. Joe Moody, or someone like him, will return to the legislature in time, and at some point Texas will, of necessity, see that government must be more about “we”, less about “me” , and nothing at all about “tea.” For now, though – and probably for at least the next two years – the political picture in the Lone Star State is not going to be pretty.
Texas is the state of my birth, and El Paso was my adoptive home for 19 years, giving me experiences and friends that enriched my life forever. I will never forsake the state nor forget the city. I will fly the Texas flag from my hi-rise apartment in downtown Denver every March 2nd and April 21st. But for now, I just need to be in a place where I can get a little more political oxygen.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
You need us, Mr. Gibbs
President Barack Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, has hurt my feelings. He claims that the “professional left” doesn’t give the President enough credit for what he has accomplished – dwelling instead on what he hasn’t been able to get done. They won’t be satisfied, according to Gibbs, until we have Canadian-style health care and abolish the Pentagon.
I confess that, like Gibbs’ by his own admission, I too watch too much cable news, including what I suppose constitutes a healthy dose of the “professional left.” But unlike Gibbs, I hear the President being credited all the time with what he has been able to accomplish in the face of fierce Republican opposition and resistance from not a few Democrats.
Barack Obama wasn’t my first choice for the Democratic nomination, but when he won it, I went all out to help him win in the general election. When he made health care reform his top priority I cheered, made phone calls, and wrote thousands of words in support. Then, I swallowed my disappointment when he caved into pressure to drop the public option in order the get the bill passed, and supported with reluctance the final severely flawed product. Yes, a Canadian-style health care is exactly what many of us wanted, but we didn’t abandon the President when he abandoned us on that issue.
I have applauded the President’s draw-down of troops from Iraq, but watched with dismay as he has ramped up the war in Afghanistan. But never have I, or anyone I know, including any member of the “professional left,” ever advocated the dismantling of the Pentagon. That is a hyperbolic charge of the type I would expect from the unthinking right wing of the political spectrum instead of the spokesman for the President whom I’ve loyally supported.
This kick in the stomach to the President’s political base comes, admittedly, at a bad time for me. Yesterday, in Colorado where I now live (at the headwaters, if not the full rift, of the Rio Grande), my chosen candidate for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, Andrew Romanoff, lost to Michael Bennet, the incumbent senator appointed to the office two years ago because of his millionaire status and money-raising power. Bennet had never been elected to any office, while Romanoff had been a four-time state representative and speaker of the Colorado House.
Bennet raised three times as much money as Romanoff, mostly from corporate PACs and lobbyists. Romanoff took no money from PACs and raised over 90% of his money from the citizens of Colorado. Romanoff supports a single payer health care system and opposes the huge tax breaks that help give Big Oil its humungous profits. Bennet voted with bank lobbyists against legislation that would keep banks from getting too large to fail, and with oil interests to keep the tax subsidies they don’t need.
Despite the fact that Romanoff clearly stood for the principles we thought we were electing Barack Obama to stand up for, the White House intruded itself into Colorado politics by endorsing and campaigning for Michael Bennet. Now, the Obama administration is saddled with a Democratic candidate in Colorado, like its favored candidate in Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln (who certainly did her part to see that we couldn’t get anything resembling Canadian style health care) – both of whom stand a good chance of losing two Democratic senate seats in November.
Let me make it clear that I will vote for Michael Bennet, and that I hope Blanche Lincoln prevails, because losing those two senate seats to Republicans will only harden the degree of gridlock in Washington. And I’m sure I’ll be voting for Barack Obama in 2012. But I won’t work for any of these candidates the way I worked for Andrew Romanoff.
I am proud to support President Obama, and applaud his real accomplishments. I am not, however, about to refrain from constructive criticism, and don’t appreciate being insulted by his spokesman when I do. Canadian-style health care? You bet. Dismantle the Pentagon? Don’t be silly.
You need us, Mr. Gibbs and Mr. President. How about showing us a little of the respect that you have lavished in a well-meaning but obviously futile effort to win over your actual opponents.
I confess that, like Gibbs’ by his own admission, I too watch too much cable news, including what I suppose constitutes a healthy dose of the “professional left.” But unlike Gibbs, I hear the President being credited all the time with what he has been able to accomplish in the face of fierce Republican opposition and resistance from not a few Democrats.
Barack Obama wasn’t my first choice for the Democratic nomination, but when he won it, I went all out to help him win in the general election. When he made health care reform his top priority I cheered, made phone calls, and wrote thousands of words in support. Then, I swallowed my disappointment when he caved into pressure to drop the public option in order the get the bill passed, and supported with reluctance the final severely flawed product. Yes, a Canadian-style health care is exactly what many of us wanted, but we didn’t abandon the President when he abandoned us on that issue.
I have applauded the President’s draw-down of troops from Iraq, but watched with dismay as he has ramped up the war in Afghanistan. But never have I, or anyone I know, including any member of the “professional left,” ever advocated the dismantling of the Pentagon. That is a hyperbolic charge of the type I would expect from the unthinking right wing of the political spectrum instead of the spokesman for the President whom I’ve loyally supported.
This kick in the stomach to the President’s political base comes, admittedly, at a bad time for me. Yesterday, in Colorado where I now live (at the headwaters, if not the full rift, of the Rio Grande), my chosen candidate for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, Andrew Romanoff, lost to Michael Bennet, the incumbent senator appointed to the office two years ago because of his millionaire status and money-raising power. Bennet had never been elected to any office, while Romanoff had been a four-time state representative and speaker of the Colorado House.
Bennet raised three times as much money as Romanoff, mostly from corporate PACs and lobbyists. Romanoff took no money from PACs and raised over 90% of his money from the citizens of Colorado. Romanoff supports a single payer health care system and opposes the huge tax breaks that help give Big Oil its humungous profits. Bennet voted with bank lobbyists against legislation that would keep banks from getting too large to fail, and with oil interests to keep the tax subsidies they don’t need.
Despite the fact that Romanoff clearly stood for the principles we thought we were electing Barack Obama to stand up for, the White House intruded itself into Colorado politics by endorsing and campaigning for Michael Bennet. Now, the Obama administration is saddled with a Democratic candidate in Colorado, like its favored candidate in Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln (who certainly did her part to see that we couldn’t get anything resembling Canadian style health care) – both of whom stand a good chance of losing two Democratic senate seats in November.
Let me make it clear that I will vote for Michael Bennet, and that I hope Blanche Lincoln prevails, because losing those two senate seats to Republicans will only harden the degree of gridlock in Washington. And I’m sure I’ll be voting for Barack Obama in 2012. But I won’t work for any of these candidates the way I worked for Andrew Romanoff.
I am proud to support President Obama, and applaud his real accomplishments. I am not, however, about to refrain from constructive criticism, and don’t appreciate being insulted by his spokesman when I do. Canadian-style health care? You bet. Dismantle the Pentagon? Don’t be silly.
You need us, Mr. Gibbs and Mr. President. How about showing us a little of the respect that you have lavished in a well-meaning but obviously futile effort to win over your actual opponents.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
A Better Way Forward for UTEP
In the first post in this series, I questioned the rationale for the push to make UTEP a Tier One university. In this second post, I will offer a constructive view of the best way forward for UTEP, in the form of a six-point strategy.
1. Recognize that Tier One status is unachievable for the foreseeable future
It sounds nice, stokes the ego of administrators, and makes politicians look good, but the truth is that even a dedicated push toward Tier One status is very optimistically at best, a decade or more away for UTEP. In every category established by legislation enabling the state’s seven emerging research institutions to achieve National Research University status, UTEP lags behind Texas Tech, the Universities of Texas at Dallas and Arlington, and the University of Houston. UTEP’s research budget would have to double, its output of PhDs at least triple, and its endowment income increase many fold for it to be recognized as a credible Tier One University.
2. Accept that Tier One status is not necessarily the best type of University for El Paso
Even if Tier One were achievable, would it really be that good for El Paso? A Tier One University is highly focused on research, with as many resources as possible channeled toward graduate education and research productivity. That means that funds for undergraduate education take second priority to everything that supports the research effort. It means that faculty are recruited for their ability to obtain research grants instead of their interest in teaching. New faculty at Tier One universities expect high salaries, light teaching loads, and large start-up funds for their research.
To keep teaching loads light and undergraduate expenses low, undergraduates at Tier One universities are subjected to larger class sizes, many of which are taught by part-time faculty. Since mentoring undergraduate researchers is costly both in time and money, faculty are less inclined to direct research projects for undergraduates who survive the first two years of depersonalized education.
Furthermore, community outreach is the lowest priority of an institution focused on raking in as much research funding as possible. Attention to local problems and circumstances is proportional only to the extent that those issues are of interest to national granting agencies. The current emphasis on border security and bioterrorism plays nicely to UTEP’s current strengths, but once the fashions in research funding shift, the Tier One university will shift its focus accordingly.
3. Aspire to become a National Research University with a dual commitment to education and research
Universities are a great asset to the communities in which they are located. They stimulate the local economy and provide enhanced employment and educational opportunities. They promote diversity, raise social awareness, and provide cultural enrichment. This is especially true of major research institutions, which play a particularly important role in stimulating the local economy. For all these reasons, a research university of national stature would be a tremendous asset to El Paso, and should be pursued.
Not all research universities, however, are in the top tier. Most of the benefits cited above are achieved just as well by universities below theTier One level. Some of these objectives, in fact, are better achieved at the Tier Two level. MIT and Caltech are Tier One universities that contribute less to social awareness and cultural enrichment than Boston College or Cal State – Pomona, Tier Two universities in their same respective communities.
UTEP should certainly aspire to be a player on the national stage, including a major research contributor. It deserves to compete with its six sister institutions for the state funding that can be leveraged to lift it to a higher level. But that level doesn’t have to be Tier One. UTEP should aspire instead to be the model of a National Research University committed to excellence in both education and research. It should, in short, aspire to be a great Tier Two university.
Don’t expect your legislator or local elected official to run on a platform of making UTEP an excellent Tier Two University. And don’t expect UTEP’s administration to concede that Tier Two is the best fit for El Paso. “Tier Two” simply doesn’t have the same pizzazz, nor provide the same ego gratification, as “Tier One.” But “National Research University” not only sounds good but is an accurate description of what is both achievable and desirable for UTEP.
To make UTEP an even greater regional asset, the aspiration for national research achievement should be coupled with a dedication to excellence in education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. This merges the classical roles of the university as a place where learning accompanies scholarly exploration, and the student is taught not only what is known but how to approach the unknown.
An aspiration such as this means that faculty will have to be recruited not just for their proficiency in research but for their commitment and ability to teach. The best of those faculty will not only be excellent classroom instructors, but skilled at the one-on-one mentoring that undergraduate research projects require.
Involvement of undergraduates in research is something that UTEP has long done well, though the increased pressure for research productivity has lately made inroads into this commendable effort. Those inroads should be reversed, and the commitment to undergraduate research should be elevated to a higher status and rewarded as it once was. The deplorable loss of the three biology professors who devoted themselves equally to research and education, as described in the first post in this series, should never happen at UTEP again.
4. Tighten admissions criteria, but partner with EPCC for maximize student access to higher education
UTEP has to raise its standards for admission, so that students are accepted who are ready for college, able to take advantage of a more rigorous course of study that will promote their ultimate success. Stronger students are faster learners and are better able to take advantage of undergraduate research opportunities. The net effect of admitting stronger students to begin with is a higher retention rate and greater success for UTEP’s students in graduate and professional schools, or whatever else they undertake. This will enhance the reputation of UTEP, raise its stature, and make it more appealing to students of higher quality, thus perpetuating a positive feedback cycle of stronger applicants, higher academic achievement, and greater long-term success.
UTEP’s administration has long justified its open-admissions policy on grounds that it enhances access to higher education. This argument is faulty on two scores. First, admitting more students that fail at a higher rate does neither the student nor the community any good. Secondly, the open-admissions policy at El Paso Community College (EPCC) ensures that every student is given a chance to succeed in college. Late bloomers, students not yet adept in English, and those needing remedial instruction in reading, writing, and math have the opportunity to begin at EPCC, which is better geared to provide the support that these students need. EPCC really is “the best place to start” for many students. UTEP should stop competing with EPCC for freshmen and sophomores, and work harder at ensuring a smooth transition for EPCC students who demonstrate their ability to do college work.
UTEP’s imposition of higher admissions standards doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that UTEP has to become as selective as Tier One universities. Many of the region’s high school graduates who couldn’t get in to Harvard or Princeton or the University of Texas at Austin nonetheless make stellar students, and UTEP should welcome them from the start. A Tier Two university will do fine with Tier Two high school graduates. But even a Tier Two university will falter if half of its freshmen don’t make it through their sophomore year of college.
5. Engage with the community and enhance public outreach
UTEP does a decent job now of pursuing projects and supporting programs that directly affect the lives of El Pasoans. This should be intensified. Because of their need to concentrate their attention and resources on basic research, Tier One universities tend to live up to their image as ivory towers apart from the real world that surrounds them. Universities below Tier One but attuned to their regional environment, as UTEP traditionally has been, are great assets, particularly in a community characterized by relatively lower incomes and educational attainment.
UTEP can be a force for positive change in several areas of particular importance to El Paso. One is in K-12 education. The Collaborative for Educational Excellence that partnered UTEP’s Colleges of Education and Science with both master and aspiring teachers in the region’s school systems was a major effort to link the expertise of college faculty with the dedicated efforts of teachers at the K-12 level, where a love for learning and a habit of academic success has to first be ingrained. Social science research, with the insights it can provide into the unique features of life in an urban, bicultural, bilingual community, should be another priority. Public safety and criminology, public health, and Borderland culture are also areas where UTEP has an opportunity to involve the community not only as subjects, but as benefactors, of its research efforts.
None of this is to diminish the importance of basic research. Even at universities below Tier One, basic research should be at the heart of a university’s mission, not only because knowledge for its own sake is a virtue, but because the practical applications of research can never be completely foreseen. But a major university with a regional emphasis can afford to combine its basic research mission with programs of practical importance and benefit to the community in which it resides, in a way that a Tier One institution seldom can.
6. Start acting like a mature, major university
If UTEP is serious about becoming a major university on the national stage, it should leave behind the trappings of the regional college it once was.
This includes first and foremost, discarding the outmoded and archaic administrative policies geared toward the lower-keyed demands of a primarily teaching institution. Most major state universities have established non-profit corporations to efficiently serve the particular purchasing, accounting, personnel, and travel needs unique to their research communities UTEP should follow suit.
From the beginning, UTEP’s administration has failed to appreciate the importance of reliable funding for Graduate Teaching Assistants at competitive stipends. UTEP loses many excellent prospects who would otherwise come to El Paso because they can get more financial assistance elsewhere.
Emblematic of UTEP’s lack of maturity is its quaint practice of having thousands of undergraduates walk across the stage to shake the President’s hand in graduating classes now grown so large that three separate commencements on the same day are needed to get everyone through the ritual. Most universities the size of UTEP or larger hold commencement ceremonies at the College level, where the number of students and time required to honor them can be kept to a manageable level.
El Paso is blessed with beautiful weather most of the year, making an outdoor baccalaureate service for all graduates in the Sun Bowl on a spring evening or winter afternoon an appropriate and memorable experience. The commencement speaker would only have to give one address (instead of the three now required), and the entire UTEP community could enjoy a final group ceremony that doesn’t stretch on for hours. Then, each undergraduate could receive his or her diploma in smaller ceremonies restricted to the College (Liberal Arts, Engineering, Science, etc.) in which their degree is earned. This is the way it’s done in the big time.
SUMMARY
Under President Natalicio’s leadership, UTEP has moved from its regional position as the descendant of Texas Western College to a position of being competitive as a research university on the national stage. At the same time it has tried to retain its regional focus and strong commitment to undergraduate education. Both are worthy objectives that will serve El Paso well, if a balance between the two can be achieved. The point of this post and the one preceding it is that no such balance can be retained if UTEP’s singular objective is to become a true Tier One University. On the other hand, UTEP is fully capable of become a nationally competitive university with a dual commitment to education and research. It needs to become more selective in the students it admits, and recruit faculty with a dual commitment to teaching and research. Its commendable outreach efforts should not only be continued but expanded. And it should adopt the administrative procedures and academic practices of mature, major universities.
The legislation that seeks to boost UTEP and six of its sister universities in Texas to national research status implicitly recognizes that Tier One is out of reach for all of them (with the possible exception of the University of Houston) for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, it seeks to help them all strive toward the next level of at least regional prominence in education and research. UTEP should pursue the opportunities made available by that legislation with vigor. Proclaiming itself on the road to Tier One, however, is neither accurate nor necessary for becoming a home town university of which El Paso can justly be proud.
1. Recognize that Tier One status is unachievable for the foreseeable future
It sounds nice, stokes the ego of administrators, and makes politicians look good, but the truth is that even a dedicated push toward Tier One status is very optimistically at best, a decade or more away for UTEP. In every category established by legislation enabling the state’s seven emerging research institutions to achieve National Research University status, UTEP lags behind Texas Tech, the Universities of Texas at Dallas and Arlington, and the University of Houston. UTEP’s research budget would have to double, its output of PhDs at least triple, and its endowment income increase many fold for it to be recognized as a credible Tier One University.
2. Accept that Tier One status is not necessarily the best type of University for El Paso
Even if Tier One were achievable, would it really be that good for El Paso? A Tier One University is highly focused on research, with as many resources as possible channeled toward graduate education and research productivity. That means that funds for undergraduate education take second priority to everything that supports the research effort. It means that faculty are recruited for their ability to obtain research grants instead of their interest in teaching. New faculty at Tier One universities expect high salaries, light teaching loads, and large start-up funds for their research.
To keep teaching loads light and undergraduate expenses low, undergraduates at Tier One universities are subjected to larger class sizes, many of which are taught by part-time faculty. Since mentoring undergraduate researchers is costly both in time and money, faculty are less inclined to direct research projects for undergraduates who survive the first two years of depersonalized education.
Furthermore, community outreach is the lowest priority of an institution focused on raking in as much research funding as possible. Attention to local problems and circumstances is proportional only to the extent that those issues are of interest to national granting agencies. The current emphasis on border security and bioterrorism plays nicely to UTEP’s current strengths, but once the fashions in research funding shift, the Tier One university will shift its focus accordingly.
3. Aspire to become a National Research University with a dual commitment to education and research
Universities are a great asset to the communities in which they are located. They stimulate the local economy and provide enhanced employment and educational opportunities. They promote diversity, raise social awareness, and provide cultural enrichment. This is especially true of major research institutions, which play a particularly important role in stimulating the local economy. For all these reasons, a research university of national stature would be a tremendous asset to El Paso, and should be pursued.
Not all research universities, however, are in the top tier. Most of the benefits cited above are achieved just as well by universities below theTier One level. Some of these objectives, in fact, are better achieved at the Tier Two level. MIT and Caltech are Tier One universities that contribute less to social awareness and cultural enrichment than Boston College or Cal State – Pomona, Tier Two universities in their same respective communities.
UTEP should certainly aspire to be a player on the national stage, including a major research contributor. It deserves to compete with its six sister institutions for the state funding that can be leveraged to lift it to a higher level. But that level doesn’t have to be Tier One. UTEP should aspire instead to be the model of a National Research University committed to excellence in both education and research. It should, in short, aspire to be a great Tier Two university.
Don’t expect your legislator or local elected official to run on a platform of making UTEP an excellent Tier Two University. And don’t expect UTEP’s administration to concede that Tier Two is the best fit for El Paso. “Tier Two” simply doesn’t have the same pizzazz, nor provide the same ego gratification, as “Tier One.” But “National Research University” not only sounds good but is an accurate description of what is both achievable and desirable for UTEP.
To make UTEP an even greater regional asset, the aspiration for national research achievement should be coupled with a dedication to excellence in education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. This merges the classical roles of the university as a place where learning accompanies scholarly exploration, and the student is taught not only what is known but how to approach the unknown.
An aspiration such as this means that faculty will have to be recruited not just for their proficiency in research but for their commitment and ability to teach. The best of those faculty will not only be excellent classroom instructors, but skilled at the one-on-one mentoring that undergraduate research projects require.
Involvement of undergraduates in research is something that UTEP has long done well, though the increased pressure for research productivity has lately made inroads into this commendable effort. Those inroads should be reversed, and the commitment to undergraduate research should be elevated to a higher status and rewarded as it once was. The deplorable loss of the three biology professors who devoted themselves equally to research and education, as described in the first post in this series, should never happen at UTEP again.
4. Tighten admissions criteria, but partner with EPCC for maximize student access to higher education
UTEP has to raise its standards for admission, so that students are accepted who are ready for college, able to take advantage of a more rigorous course of study that will promote their ultimate success. Stronger students are faster learners and are better able to take advantage of undergraduate research opportunities. The net effect of admitting stronger students to begin with is a higher retention rate and greater success for UTEP’s students in graduate and professional schools, or whatever else they undertake. This will enhance the reputation of UTEP, raise its stature, and make it more appealing to students of higher quality, thus perpetuating a positive feedback cycle of stronger applicants, higher academic achievement, and greater long-term success.
UTEP’s administration has long justified its open-admissions policy on grounds that it enhances access to higher education. This argument is faulty on two scores. First, admitting more students that fail at a higher rate does neither the student nor the community any good. Secondly, the open-admissions policy at El Paso Community College (EPCC) ensures that every student is given a chance to succeed in college. Late bloomers, students not yet adept in English, and those needing remedial instruction in reading, writing, and math have the opportunity to begin at EPCC, which is better geared to provide the support that these students need. EPCC really is “the best place to start” for many students. UTEP should stop competing with EPCC for freshmen and sophomores, and work harder at ensuring a smooth transition for EPCC students who demonstrate their ability to do college work.
UTEP’s imposition of higher admissions standards doesn’t and shouldn’t mean that UTEP has to become as selective as Tier One universities. Many of the region’s high school graduates who couldn’t get in to Harvard or Princeton or the University of Texas at Austin nonetheless make stellar students, and UTEP should welcome them from the start. A Tier Two university will do fine with Tier Two high school graduates. But even a Tier Two university will falter if half of its freshmen don’t make it through their sophomore year of college.
5. Engage with the community and enhance public outreach
UTEP does a decent job now of pursuing projects and supporting programs that directly affect the lives of El Pasoans. This should be intensified. Because of their need to concentrate their attention and resources on basic research, Tier One universities tend to live up to their image as ivory towers apart from the real world that surrounds them. Universities below Tier One but attuned to their regional environment, as UTEP traditionally has been, are great assets, particularly in a community characterized by relatively lower incomes and educational attainment.
UTEP can be a force for positive change in several areas of particular importance to El Paso. One is in K-12 education. The Collaborative for Educational Excellence that partnered UTEP’s Colleges of Education and Science with both master and aspiring teachers in the region’s school systems was a major effort to link the expertise of college faculty with the dedicated efforts of teachers at the K-12 level, where a love for learning and a habit of academic success has to first be ingrained. Social science research, with the insights it can provide into the unique features of life in an urban, bicultural, bilingual community, should be another priority. Public safety and criminology, public health, and Borderland culture are also areas where UTEP has an opportunity to involve the community not only as subjects, but as benefactors, of its research efforts.
None of this is to diminish the importance of basic research. Even at universities below Tier One, basic research should be at the heart of a university’s mission, not only because knowledge for its own sake is a virtue, but because the practical applications of research can never be completely foreseen. But a major university with a regional emphasis can afford to combine its basic research mission with programs of practical importance and benefit to the community in which it resides, in a way that a Tier One institution seldom can.
6. Start acting like a mature, major university
If UTEP is serious about becoming a major university on the national stage, it should leave behind the trappings of the regional college it once was.
This includes first and foremost, discarding the outmoded and archaic administrative policies geared toward the lower-keyed demands of a primarily teaching institution. Most major state universities have established non-profit corporations to efficiently serve the particular purchasing, accounting, personnel, and travel needs unique to their research communities UTEP should follow suit.
From the beginning, UTEP’s administration has failed to appreciate the importance of reliable funding for Graduate Teaching Assistants at competitive stipends. UTEP loses many excellent prospects who would otherwise come to El Paso because they can get more financial assistance elsewhere.
Emblematic of UTEP’s lack of maturity is its quaint practice of having thousands of undergraduates walk across the stage to shake the President’s hand in graduating classes now grown so large that three separate commencements on the same day are needed to get everyone through the ritual. Most universities the size of UTEP or larger hold commencement ceremonies at the College level, where the number of students and time required to honor them can be kept to a manageable level.
El Paso is blessed with beautiful weather most of the year, making an outdoor baccalaureate service for all graduates in the Sun Bowl on a spring evening or winter afternoon an appropriate and memorable experience. The commencement speaker would only have to give one address (instead of the three now required), and the entire UTEP community could enjoy a final group ceremony that doesn’t stretch on for hours. Then, each undergraduate could receive his or her diploma in smaller ceremonies restricted to the College (Liberal Arts, Engineering, Science, etc.) in which their degree is earned. This is the way it’s done in the big time.
SUMMARY
Under President Natalicio’s leadership, UTEP has moved from its regional position as the descendant of Texas Western College to a position of being competitive as a research university on the national stage. At the same time it has tried to retain its regional focus and strong commitment to undergraduate education. Both are worthy objectives that will serve El Paso well, if a balance between the two can be achieved. The point of this post and the one preceding it is that no such balance can be retained if UTEP’s singular objective is to become a true Tier One University. On the other hand, UTEP is fully capable of become a nationally competitive university with a dual commitment to education and research. It needs to become more selective in the students it admits, and recruit faculty with a dual commitment to teaching and research. Its commendable outreach efforts should not only be continued but expanded. And it should adopt the administrative procedures and academic practices of mature, major universities.
The legislation that seeks to boost UTEP and six of its sister universities in Texas to national research status implicitly recognizes that Tier One is out of reach for all of them (with the possible exception of the University of Houston) for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, it seeks to help them all strive toward the next level of at least regional prominence in education and research. UTEP should pursue the opportunities made available by that legislation with vigor. Proclaiming itself on the road to Tier One, however, is neither accurate nor necessary for becoming a home town university of which El Paso can justly be proud.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
A Nuanced View of Tier One for UTEP
For over two years now, the easiest throwaway line in El Paso politics has been an enthusiastic endorsement of UTEP’s drive to become a Tier One university. As a former faculty member and department chair at UTEP, I have an intimate acquaintance with the issue. My experience at UTEP, as well as at other, actual Tier One universities, has left me with a more nuanced view of what the University and the politicians who control its fate ought to be striving for.
The Great Leap Forward
Make no mistake – I strongly endorse UTEP’s drive to become a university with a strong research focus. Not only does this provide a more envigorating environment for students, it stimulates the local economy and enhances the community in all the ways that the politicians say it will.
I was recruited to chair the Department of Biological Sciences in 1991, with a mandate to move that Department in a more modern direction. This was all part of a visionary plan by UTEP’s recently new President, Diana Natalicio, to move the university beyond its roots as primarily an undergraduate teaching college. UTEP had only two doctoral programs at the time, with a third (in Psychology) in the works. The infrastructure for research was marginal, and administrative practices were cumbersome and inefficient for competitive research efforts.
The Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality
Biology was slated to get the fourth doctoral program at UTEP, leveraged by a large grant from the National Institutes of Health that created the Border Biomedical Research Center. From the beginning, it was clear that UTEP’s administration had a poor understanding of what it would really take to transform a slow-paced, regional, undergraduate institution into a truly competitive research university. Over a decade of momentum was wasted while UTEP, lacking anyone prior to the present Provost who had been an administrator at a Tier One institution, gradually came to grips with what it would truly take to achieve the status of a national research university.
As one example, the budget for Graduate Teaching Assistants – an indispensible tool for recruiting quality graduate students and easing the teaching loads on faculty driven to compete for research grants – remained level in the College of Science from 1994-1999, when the big push for more doctoral programs was underway. In addition, purchasing, personnel, and other procedures remained archaic and unresponsive to the needs of researchers, who required the ability to get supplies quickly and recruit people with specialized skills.
Today, the picture has improved dramatically. An unprecedented building program is vastly expanding the infrastructure for research at UTEP, and administrative attitudes and procedures are much more enlightened about what it truly takes to advance to the next level. But the rhetoric from UTEP and politicians alike continues to outstrip the reality.
UTEP’s Place in the Race to the Top
The minimal traditional definition of a Tier One University is one at which research funding exceeds $100 million dollars per year. In 2008, the latest year for which information is available from the Coordinating Board for Higher Education in Texas, UTEP was receiving about $48 million for research annually. This is barely 9% of what the University of Texas at Austin took in, and less than the research budget for UT-Arlington ($50M), Texas Tech ($53M), or the University of Houston ($84M).
Other characteristics of Tier One include a substantial number of doctoral programs, a large endowment, and highly selective admissions standards for undergraduates. While UTEP’s doctoral programs have multiplied rapidly, it still lags well behind other Texas state universities below Tier One. UT-Austin conferred 890 PhDs in 2008. Comparable numbers were 262 by the University of Houston, 221 by Texas Tech, 153 by UT-Arlington, and 61 by UT-San Antonio. UTEP awarded only 35 doctoral degrees that year, less than 4% of the figure for a true Tier One institution, and only an eighth of the number awarded by the University of Houston, not yet considered a Tier One University.
UTEP’s administration clings to the notion that it can become a Tier One institution while maintaining essentially an open admissions policy (allowing anyone with a high school diploma and minimal academic credentials to enroll). UTEP’s acceptance rate is close to 90%, meaning that 9 out of 10 students who apply are admitted – a large percentage of whom are not ready for college, as indicated by the massive number of “developmental” sections of English and math offered, at a level so elementary that they don’t earn college credit. UT-Arlington, UT-San Antonio, Texas Tech, the University of Houston, and, of course, UT-Austin all have more selective admissions standards than does UTEP. Resources directed at remedial instruction are obviously not available for the support of research.
The argument being made here is not that UTEP is a weak university, unworthy of higher aspirations. On the contrary, seeking a larger role in the nation’s research effort is a worthy goal, and UTEP has made significant strides in that direction. And in fairness, UTEP has been on this track for a lot shorter time than institutions like the University of Houston and Texas Tech, so it makes sense (and is no indictment) that UTEP has a long way to go. But that is the real point. UTEP is nowhere near ready for prime time at the Tier One level, and won’t be for at least a decade. Administrators and politicians who talk as though Tier One is just around the corner are not only implying an overly-optimistic time line, but are short-circuiting a thoughtful discussion on what the university’s ultimate objective ought to be.
The Nature and Cost of Tier One
A Tier One University in the United States is one in which research is the supreme mission of the institution. Undergraduates are attracted to them by their status, and tend to do well because they are preselected for success; but undergraduates are far less important to such a university, and are accorded a smaller proportion of its resources, because graduate education and research are its priorities.
Research and graduate education are very expensive. All Tier One universities have therefore come to rely excessively on federal granting agencies, like the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and NASA, to foot the bill. The research grants awarded by those agencies are extremely competitive, so faculty are recruited for their ability to get grants, not teach undergraduates. They tend to come from Tier One institutions themselves, where teaching loads are light and undergraduates are the lowest priority. They arrive at their new faculty appointments expecting to have minimal teaching duties, concentrated at the graduate level. They also arrive expecting large start-up funds and commanding high salaries.
With fewer faculty available for teaching undergraduates, and with more money being poured into the graduate and research programs, undergraduates are turned over to low-paid part-time instructors. Thus, at a Tier One university, in the sciences and other basic courses like math and English, undergraduates will seldom encounter a full-time faculty member until well past their freshman year. That trend at UTEP is well underway – in 1992, over 70% of freshman biology courses were taught by full-time faculty members. This coming fall, full-time faculty have been assigned to only 20% of those courses.
The pressure to perform in research is relentless at a Tier One University, as would be expected of an institution dependent on highly competitive grants for its financial viability. In the late ‘90s, three professors in Biology received a national award for their creative design of freshman biology labs. All of them had active, funded research programs, but not at a level deemed high enough by a new Dean of Science bent of demonstrating his toughness, so two were denied tenure and the third left the university in disgust. Three of UTEP’s finest teachers were replaced by higher-priced professors who expected to have as little contact with undergraduates as possible.
A Matter of Semantics
Recognizing the different criteria used by different parties to define a Tier One university, the language of the legislation that seeks to boost seven state universities in Texas to the next level avoids the term “Tier One” altogether, referring instead simply to “National Research Universities.” This strategy implicitly recognizes that true Tier One status for most of the state’s universities will be out of reach for a long time to come.In the meantime, it is well and good for all of them to strive toward a more vigorous research posture, without necessarily striving for an unrealistic goal.
This common sense approach, conceived by State Senator Judith Zaffarini (D-Laredo), principle author of the legislation, is routinely disregarded by UTEP’s administration and El Paso politicians, who continue to talk about achieving “Tier One” with little understanding of what a true Tier One university is like and what it will take to get there.
What Does El Paso Want Its Hometown University to Be?
“Tier One” sounds nice. It feeds the ego of administrators, and provides politicians with low-risk, feel-good rhetoric. But is it really what El Paso needs?
If and when UTEP becomes a bona fide Tier One University, most high school graduates in El Paso will not be able to go there, and those that do get past the high selectivity barriers of a Tier One institution will see relatively few of the university’s prestigious professors until they get into graduate school.
UTEP’s admirable record of engaging undergraduates in research will decline, as the relentless emphasis on research productivity will make professors increasingly reluctant to devote any time or resources to undergraduates that could lead to more research productivity (hence research dollars) by directing that focus to graduate students and post-docs instead.
UTEP’s admirable ability to focus on Border issues will probably survive to a significant degree, but even that will be compromised by the pressure to chase after the dollars available for the latest trends and fashions in research – “translational” research and bioterrorism being the current examples in biomedicine.
Undergraduate education in most core courses will be relegated to very large sections taught by part-time faculty or foreign teaching assistants with a marginal ability to speak English. And certain experiences formerly available to undergraduates at UTEP – one of the features that made an undergraduate education at UTEP an exceptional experience – will be a thing of the past, as the drive for research dollars crowds out the ability to be innovative at the undergraduate level and to focus on individual students.
In the second part of this series, I will offer my constructive suggestions for what UTEP should become, as an alternative to the overblown drive toward Tier One.
The Great Leap Forward
Make no mistake – I strongly endorse UTEP’s drive to become a university with a strong research focus. Not only does this provide a more envigorating environment for students, it stimulates the local economy and enhances the community in all the ways that the politicians say it will.
I was recruited to chair the Department of Biological Sciences in 1991, with a mandate to move that Department in a more modern direction. This was all part of a visionary plan by UTEP’s recently new President, Diana Natalicio, to move the university beyond its roots as primarily an undergraduate teaching college. UTEP had only two doctoral programs at the time, with a third (in Psychology) in the works. The infrastructure for research was marginal, and administrative practices were cumbersome and inefficient for competitive research efforts.
The Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality
Biology was slated to get the fourth doctoral program at UTEP, leveraged by a large grant from the National Institutes of Health that created the Border Biomedical Research Center. From the beginning, it was clear that UTEP’s administration had a poor understanding of what it would really take to transform a slow-paced, regional, undergraduate institution into a truly competitive research university. Over a decade of momentum was wasted while UTEP, lacking anyone prior to the present Provost who had been an administrator at a Tier One institution, gradually came to grips with what it would truly take to achieve the status of a national research university.
As one example, the budget for Graduate Teaching Assistants – an indispensible tool for recruiting quality graduate students and easing the teaching loads on faculty driven to compete for research grants – remained level in the College of Science from 1994-1999, when the big push for more doctoral programs was underway. In addition, purchasing, personnel, and other procedures remained archaic and unresponsive to the needs of researchers, who required the ability to get supplies quickly and recruit people with specialized skills.
Today, the picture has improved dramatically. An unprecedented building program is vastly expanding the infrastructure for research at UTEP, and administrative attitudes and procedures are much more enlightened about what it truly takes to advance to the next level. But the rhetoric from UTEP and politicians alike continues to outstrip the reality.
UTEP’s Place in the Race to the Top
The minimal traditional definition of a Tier One University is one at which research funding exceeds $100 million dollars per year. In 2008, the latest year for which information is available from the Coordinating Board for Higher Education in Texas, UTEP was receiving about $48 million for research annually. This is barely 9% of what the University of Texas at Austin took in, and less than the research budget for UT-Arlington ($50M), Texas Tech ($53M), or the University of Houston ($84M).
Other characteristics of Tier One include a substantial number of doctoral programs, a large endowment, and highly selective admissions standards for undergraduates. While UTEP’s doctoral programs have multiplied rapidly, it still lags well behind other Texas state universities below Tier One. UT-Austin conferred 890 PhDs in 2008. Comparable numbers were 262 by the University of Houston, 221 by Texas Tech, 153 by UT-Arlington, and 61 by UT-San Antonio. UTEP awarded only 35 doctoral degrees that year, less than 4% of the figure for a true Tier One institution, and only an eighth of the number awarded by the University of Houston, not yet considered a Tier One University.
UTEP’s administration clings to the notion that it can become a Tier One institution while maintaining essentially an open admissions policy (allowing anyone with a high school diploma and minimal academic credentials to enroll). UTEP’s acceptance rate is close to 90%, meaning that 9 out of 10 students who apply are admitted – a large percentage of whom are not ready for college, as indicated by the massive number of “developmental” sections of English and math offered, at a level so elementary that they don’t earn college credit. UT-Arlington, UT-San Antonio, Texas Tech, the University of Houston, and, of course, UT-Austin all have more selective admissions standards than does UTEP. Resources directed at remedial instruction are obviously not available for the support of research.
The argument being made here is not that UTEP is a weak university, unworthy of higher aspirations. On the contrary, seeking a larger role in the nation’s research effort is a worthy goal, and UTEP has made significant strides in that direction. And in fairness, UTEP has been on this track for a lot shorter time than institutions like the University of Houston and Texas Tech, so it makes sense (and is no indictment) that UTEP has a long way to go. But that is the real point. UTEP is nowhere near ready for prime time at the Tier One level, and won’t be for at least a decade. Administrators and politicians who talk as though Tier One is just around the corner are not only implying an overly-optimistic time line, but are short-circuiting a thoughtful discussion on what the university’s ultimate objective ought to be.
The Nature and Cost of Tier One
A Tier One University in the United States is one in which research is the supreme mission of the institution. Undergraduates are attracted to them by their status, and tend to do well because they are preselected for success; but undergraduates are far less important to such a university, and are accorded a smaller proportion of its resources, because graduate education and research are its priorities.
Research and graduate education are very expensive. All Tier One universities have therefore come to rely excessively on federal granting agencies, like the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and NASA, to foot the bill. The research grants awarded by those agencies are extremely competitive, so faculty are recruited for their ability to get grants, not teach undergraduates. They tend to come from Tier One institutions themselves, where teaching loads are light and undergraduates are the lowest priority. They arrive at their new faculty appointments expecting to have minimal teaching duties, concentrated at the graduate level. They also arrive expecting large start-up funds and commanding high salaries.
With fewer faculty available for teaching undergraduates, and with more money being poured into the graduate and research programs, undergraduates are turned over to low-paid part-time instructors. Thus, at a Tier One university, in the sciences and other basic courses like math and English, undergraduates will seldom encounter a full-time faculty member until well past their freshman year. That trend at UTEP is well underway – in 1992, over 70% of freshman biology courses were taught by full-time faculty members. This coming fall, full-time faculty have been assigned to only 20% of those courses.
The pressure to perform in research is relentless at a Tier One University, as would be expected of an institution dependent on highly competitive grants for its financial viability. In the late ‘90s, three professors in Biology received a national award for their creative design of freshman biology labs. All of them had active, funded research programs, but not at a level deemed high enough by a new Dean of Science bent of demonstrating his toughness, so two were denied tenure and the third left the university in disgust. Three of UTEP’s finest teachers were replaced by higher-priced professors who expected to have as little contact with undergraduates as possible.
A Matter of Semantics
Recognizing the different criteria used by different parties to define a Tier One university, the language of the legislation that seeks to boost seven state universities in Texas to the next level avoids the term “Tier One” altogether, referring instead simply to “National Research Universities.” This strategy implicitly recognizes that true Tier One status for most of the state’s universities will be out of reach for a long time to come.In the meantime, it is well and good for all of them to strive toward a more vigorous research posture, without necessarily striving for an unrealistic goal.
This common sense approach, conceived by State Senator Judith Zaffarini (D-Laredo), principle author of the legislation, is routinely disregarded by UTEP’s administration and El Paso politicians, who continue to talk about achieving “Tier One” with little understanding of what a true Tier One university is like and what it will take to get there.
What Does El Paso Want Its Hometown University to Be?
“Tier One” sounds nice. It feeds the ego of administrators, and provides politicians with low-risk, feel-good rhetoric. But is it really what El Paso needs?
If and when UTEP becomes a bona fide Tier One University, most high school graduates in El Paso will not be able to go there, and those that do get past the high selectivity barriers of a Tier One institution will see relatively few of the university’s prestigious professors until they get into graduate school.
UTEP’s admirable record of engaging undergraduates in research will decline, as the relentless emphasis on research productivity will make professors increasingly reluctant to devote any time or resources to undergraduates that could lead to more research productivity (hence research dollars) by directing that focus to graduate students and post-docs instead.
UTEP’s admirable ability to focus on Border issues will probably survive to a significant degree, but even that will be compromised by the pressure to chase after the dollars available for the latest trends and fashions in research – “translational” research and bioterrorism being the current examples in biomedicine.
Undergraduate education in most core courses will be relegated to very large sections taught by part-time faculty or foreign teaching assistants with a marginal ability to speak English. And certain experiences formerly available to undergraduates at UTEP – one of the features that made an undergraduate education at UTEP an exceptional experience – will be a thing of the past, as the drive for research dollars crowds out the ability to be innovative at the undergraduate level and to focus on individual students.
In the second part of this series, I will offer my constructive suggestions for what UTEP should become, as an alternative to the overblown drive toward Tier One.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
I'm Tired
Whichever side of the political spectrum you align yourself with, you doubtlessly get forwarded commentaries from friends and family on the other side of the spectrum. Most of the time, these amount to little more than diatribes worthy of a quick “delete”. Occasionally, some come in with a glimmer of thought and the suggestion of a possibility for finding common ground. What follows is one such commentary, with my responses paragraph-for-paragraph in italics.
I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.
No one is advocating that wealth be spread to people who don’t have his work ethic. When the term is used, it refers to lessening the gap between the ultra affluent and those who for complex reasons largely not of their own choosing are ultra poor. Societies in which that disparity grows too large ultimately falter – the French monarchy prior to the revolution being a case in point.
I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the
bubble help them with their own money.
A mixture of good and bad points here. Have his taxes really gone up? Mine haven’t. We’re just adding to our national debt, because politicians don’t have the courage to raise taxes to pay for what we are spending. The implicit criticism of those who bought homes beyond their means is fair. “left-wing congress-critters” is a pejorative term – the type of generalization that betrays a conversation-ending bias. Freddie and Fannie Mae were not blameless in the collapse of the housing market, but they had far less to do with it than all the mortgage-bundling, excessive leveraging, exotic derivatizing, and reckless investing (including in the failure of their own instruments) perpetrated by the banks that both republican and democratic administrations allowed to grow too large, and a wall street culture of greed that administrations of both parties allowed to go unregulated. Why isn’t he tired of those?
I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Christian people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela.
I’m no great fan of Michael Moore, but I’ve never heard him say that America is bad, just that some of the ways we do things – like our dysfunctional deliver of health care and a profit-at-all-costs mentality – are wrong. The remainder of the paragraph is a diatribe without foundation. The greatest threat to freedom of speech and the press in this country in recent years has been the Patriot Act, which was rammed through Congress by the Bush administration with the complicity of both parties. Our greatest threats won’t come from Zimbabwe, China, Mexico, or Venezuela, but from caving in to our own fears and the voluntary relinquishment of the civil liberties on which our nation was founded.
I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.
Islam, like Christianity, is a multifaceted religion. The examples referred to are of course deplorable. He reads about them daily because Muslim extremests capture the headlines, while the vast majority of Muslims who do believe their religion is one of peace, and who live their convictions, don’t make headlines for doing so. Those atrocities don’t take place in the large Muslim communities of Detroit and Chicago, for example. It should also be noted that Muslims don’t have the corner on atrocities in the name of religion. It hasn’t been that long ago that Serbian Christians made a concerted effort to wipe out Muslims in Bosnia, and only a few centuries since Christian women were hanged for being witches by other Christians in North America. One assumes that he was (or would have been) tired of reading about those as well.
I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U.S. Senators from Illinois.
If the writer’s point is that race still matters, I can’t disagree. Affirmative action, in its original version, was never intended to make race a sole criterion. To the extent that it does become the only thing that matters, I agree that it shouldn’t. I think that the majority of Americans of all races wish that race didn’t matter. It is a difficult subject to talk about, much less do something about. All of us need to keep trying to find a way to have that dialog, and that includes getting past certain barriers of “political correctness.”
The writer's paragraph above is a good example of a lot that is wrong with our contemporary political dialog. It moves seamlessly (without the benefit of even a period) from a valid point about affirmative action to the completely unsubstantiated allegation that there is a “tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children.” I don’t know of a single person, minority or not, in or out of the ghetto, who condones a culture of violence. To the extent that our government policies deal ineffectively with violence and irresponsible parenthood, we need to change them, but change them on the basis of facts instead of unsubstantiated attitudes.
I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a
black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.
I don’t see President Obama’s “arrogance” in advocating for universal health care coverage or taking measures that in all likelihood prevented a total economic collapse in this country, and possibly worldwide. The extent to which government should be the instrument of public policy and social change is a legitimate subject for debate. Assuming that a particular policy indicates “arrogance” ipso facto is just another one of those conversation stoppers that gets in the way of rational discourse. As for Condi Rice, she is an accomplished woman, but the bottom line is that 9/11 happened on her watch, after she had received warnings, admittedly veiled and probably “inactionable,” but a bunch of dots that she failed to connect nonetheless. That doesn’t mean I hold her personally responsible, or that I consider her “arrogant,” but I would suggest that if the term applies to Obama, it could apply to her with as much justification.
I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful; that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.
For the record, I believe the following: Every presidential inauguration in my memory has been excessive, but they’re paid for mostly from private funds, so as far as the taxpayer is concerned, it’s a mute point. I think that everyone, including both Republicans and Democrats, should engage in physical exercise, and that it isn’t a waste of time. Military records don’t impress me one way or another, unless there is hypocrisy involved. President Bush, to my knowledge, was not hypocritical about his, and he was unfairly treated by the media. Landing on an aircraft carrier in a navy jet and proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” was grandstanding, however. John Kerry is a genuine military hero, which can and has been amply documented. Sarah Palin is demonstrably unqualified to be President, but I thought Obama did not yet have enough experience in 2008 either, so I voted for his opponent in the primary in my state. People are switching to Fox news because they hear from that network what they want to hear. I listen to MSNBC because it favors my bias. I try to remember, however, that it is biased; and I listen to Fox and CNN to get a different biased view (from Fox) and a more neutral view (from CNN).
I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.
I agree with the spirit of this comment, noting only that once we pay them money to feed our voracious appetite for oil, it is no longer our money, but theirs to do with as they please. I do wish that we didn’t have to buy their oil.
I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.
Who told him he couldn’t debate the fact of global warming? He can debate it all he wants to, as far as I’m concerned. As a scientist, I can say with conviction that the data clearly indicate a long term trend toward a planet that is warming at a rate being accelerated by human activity. There are ways to mitigate global warming without lowering living standards, and in some ways by actually raising them. Let’s have that discussion.
I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.
Drug dependence causes practically irreversible changes in the brain. To that extent, drug addiction is a neurological condition. No, there is no giant germ that forces a person to become addicted. There are social circumstances (not restricted to the ghetto) that promote it, and genetic predispositions that make some people more susceptible than others. But no one forces anyone to overeat, and there are genetic predispositions which lead some people to become overweight more than others, with considerable cost to society, but we don’t put them in prison for it unless they steal to eat. It is in the best interest of all of us not to demonize health issues that have a complicated mix of physiological and social causes. That doesn’t mean that we tolerate the destructive consequences of those conditions – drug-induced crimes, whether from cocaine or alcohol, should not be tolerated. In the long run, however, society will be better served at lower cost if we find a way to treat the conditions by addressing the social causes, dealing scientifically with the physical causes, and striving to rehabilitate rather than punish abusers of any substance. Finally, I don’t think anyone should be harassed for never having tried marijuana, anymore than those who have, should be.
I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare,or who serves honorably for three years in our military.... Those are the citizens we need.
Aside from the implicit assumption that an unspecified fraction of undocumented aliens (my attempt at a semantic compromise)are living on welfare or crime – which studies show constitute a much smaller fraction of undocumented aliens than of American citizens – this paragraph has some sensible suggestions for a path to citizenship with which I can readily agree.
I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years and still are? Not even close.
Any paragraph that begins with a pejorative term like “latte liberals” signals the reader that the writer is more interested in labeling than in thinking. Which is too bad, because the point of what followed the demeaning opening phrase merits consideration.
The term “latte liberal” is both ignorant and insulting. It’s ignorant because it makes the implicit assumption that liberals share a particular lifestyle that justifies turning a noun into an adjective to brand them. On its face, it is ignorant because it’s patently untrue; not every liberal likes lattes anymore than every conservative likes beer. I’ll bet dimes to donuts, in fact, that quite a few lattes are sold wherever the tea partyers congregate, just as many of my liberal friends like beer and stock car racing. The term is insulting because it is judgmental, linking a dietary preference to a political persuasion that the writer clearly abhors. He has a right to dislike lattes and disapprove of liberals, but making an unsubstantiated link between two things that have no cause-effect relationship shows only an intent to demean rather than enlighten.
On the substantive question of trashing the military, I have no idea who he thinks is doing that. Yes, there were those in the Vietnam era who condemned the soldiers along with the conflict. I did not agree with that then, and don’t now. The writer notes correctly that when people go to war, bad things happen. Those of us who criticized the military for allowing Abu Ghraib to happen are no less patriotic than the writer, and no less respectful of the vast majority of our military men and women who serve with honor, integrity, and courage. The fact of the matter is that Abu Ghraib has done more to recruit for and revitalize the terrorist cause around the world than anything, and it deserves to be condemned for the disaster it has been to our national image and our example of what a just society should be. The larger picture is that when a nation makes the decision to go to war, it has to know that a lot of innocent people, as well as combatants, are going to be killed, and atrocities are going to occur on both sides. Those of us who condemned the invasion of Iraq before it happened did so with the certain knowledge that bad things would happen, which they did. Was the cause worth it? The world may be better off without Saddham Hussein, but were all the lives and debt incurred by our nation and inflicted on theirs worth the price of buying them the right to engage in a civil war? We can disagree over that, but to condemn the war does not constitute trashing the military.
So here's the deal. I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt.Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.
Fair point. If we could have avoided the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, our cause would have been venerated even more by the rest of the world.
I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois, where the "Illinois Combine" of Democrats has worked to loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet.
Is someone really telling him that their party has a corner on virtue? I’ve never claimed that mine does. As for bipartisanship, the logic of the point the writer is trying to make is obscure. If it is that one-party politics provides a fertile field for corruption, I agree. Which would seem to be an argument for two or more healthy political parties. Which would require government to be bipartisan, in order to get anything done.
I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.
Well said.
Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.
Just when the writer is about to make a good point, he slams us with another pejorative term like “poverty pimps.” It is clear that he has a fondness for alliteration, but a decidedly lesser commitment to clarification.
I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.
Again, well said.
Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.
I am too, but for different reasons. We need to work together so that our worst fears for the future don’t come true for either of us.
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.
Thank you, Mr. Hall, for your service to our country. In my opinion, the cause you fought for was not in the best interest of our nation, but it was not your place to question the cause, once in uniform, and I honor whatever sacrifices you made in carrying out your duties.
I also respect your service as a state legislator. As such, you surely know that making public policy is complicated, and that in a pluralistic and democratic society where we all have a right to express our point of view, our views are frequently going to be in conflict. Those views do not deserve to be demonized, or ridiculed by facile and pejorative labels, or be dismissed or demeaned by either side. You have raised a number of valid points worthy of intelligent and tolerant discussion, which I would welcome.
I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.
No one is advocating that wealth be spread to people who don’t have his work ethic. When the term is used, it refers to lessening the gap between the ultra affluent and those who for complex reasons largely not of their own choosing are ultra poor. Societies in which that disparity grows too large ultimately falter – the French monarchy prior to the revolution being a case in point.
I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the
bubble help them with their own money.
A mixture of good and bad points here. Have his taxes really gone up? Mine haven’t. We’re just adding to our national debt, because politicians don’t have the courage to raise taxes to pay for what we are spending. The implicit criticism of those who bought homes beyond their means is fair. “left-wing congress-critters” is a pejorative term – the type of generalization that betrays a conversation-ending bias. Freddie and Fannie Mae were not blameless in the collapse of the housing market, but they had far less to do with it than all the mortgage-bundling, excessive leveraging, exotic derivatizing, and reckless investing (including in the failure of their own instruments) perpetrated by the banks that both republican and democratic administrations allowed to grow too large, and a wall street culture of greed that administrations of both parties allowed to go unregulated. Why isn’t he tired of those?
I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Christian people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela.
I’m no great fan of Michael Moore, but I’ve never heard him say that America is bad, just that some of the ways we do things – like our dysfunctional deliver of health care and a profit-at-all-costs mentality – are wrong. The remainder of the paragraph is a diatribe without foundation. The greatest threat to freedom of speech and the press in this country in recent years has been the Patriot Act, which was rammed through Congress by the Bush administration with the complicity of both parties. Our greatest threats won’t come from Zimbabwe, China, Mexico, or Venezuela, but from caving in to our own fears and the voluntary relinquishment of the civil liberties on which our nation was founded.
I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.
Islam, like Christianity, is a multifaceted religion. The examples referred to are of course deplorable. He reads about them daily because Muslim extremests capture the headlines, while the vast majority of Muslims who do believe their religion is one of peace, and who live their convictions, don’t make headlines for doing so. Those atrocities don’t take place in the large Muslim communities of Detroit and Chicago, for example. It should also be noted that Muslims don’t have the corner on atrocities in the name of religion. It hasn’t been that long ago that Serbian Christians made a concerted effort to wipe out Muslims in Bosnia, and only a few centuries since Christian women were hanged for being witches by other Christians in North America. One assumes that he was (or would have been) tired of reading about those as well.
I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U.S. Senators from Illinois.
If the writer’s point is that race still matters, I can’t disagree. Affirmative action, in its original version, was never intended to make race a sole criterion. To the extent that it does become the only thing that matters, I agree that it shouldn’t. I think that the majority of Americans of all races wish that race didn’t matter. It is a difficult subject to talk about, much less do something about. All of us need to keep trying to find a way to have that dialog, and that includes getting past certain barriers of “political correctness.”
The writer's paragraph above is a good example of a lot that is wrong with our contemporary political dialog. It moves seamlessly (without the benefit of even a period) from a valid point about affirmative action to the completely unsubstantiated allegation that there is a “tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children.” I don’t know of a single person, minority or not, in or out of the ghetto, who condones a culture of violence. To the extent that our government policies deal ineffectively with violence and irresponsible parenthood, we need to change them, but change them on the basis of facts instead of unsubstantiated attitudes.
I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a
black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.
I don’t see President Obama’s “arrogance” in advocating for universal health care coverage or taking measures that in all likelihood prevented a total economic collapse in this country, and possibly worldwide. The extent to which government should be the instrument of public policy and social change is a legitimate subject for debate. Assuming that a particular policy indicates “arrogance” ipso facto is just another one of those conversation stoppers that gets in the way of rational discourse. As for Condi Rice, she is an accomplished woman, but the bottom line is that 9/11 happened on her watch, after she had received warnings, admittedly veiled and probably “inactionable,” but a bunch of dots that she failed to connect nonetheless. That doesn’t mean I hold her personally responsible, or that I consider her “arrogant,” but I would suggest that if the term applies to Obama, it could apply to her with as much justification.
I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful; that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.
For the record, I believe the following: Every presidential inauguration in my memory has been excessive, but they’re paid for mostly from private funds, so as far as the taxpayer is concerned, it’s a mute point. I think that everyone, including both Republicans and Democrats, should engage in physical exercise, and that it isn’t a waste of time. Military records don’t impress me one way or another, unless there is hypocrisy involved. President Bush, to my knowledge, was not hypocritical about his, and he was unfairly treated by the media. Landing on an aircraft carrier in a navy jet and proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” was grandstanding, however. John Kerry is a genuine military hero, which can and has been amply documented. Sarah Palin is demonstrably unqualified to be President, but I thought Obama did not yet have enough experience in 2008 either, so I voted for his opponent in the primary in my state. People are switching to Fox news because they hear from that network what they want to hear. I listen to MSNBC because it favors my bias. I try to remember, however, that it is biased; and I listen to Fox and CNN to get a different biased view (from Fox) and a more neutral view (from CNN).
I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America, while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance.
I agree with the spirit of this comment, noting only that once we pay them money to feed our voracious appetite for oil, it is no longer our money, but theirs to do with as they please. I do wish that we didn’t have to buy their oil.
I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's, and if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.
Who told him he couldn’t debate the fact of global warming? He can debate it all he wants to, as far as I’m concerned. As a scientist, I can say with conviction that the data clearly indicate a long term trend toward a planet that is warming at a rate being accelerated by human activity. There are ways to mitigate global warming without lowering living standards, and in some ways by actually raising them. Let’s have that discussion.
I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.
Drug dependence causes practically irreversible changes in the brain. To that extent, drug addiction is a neurological condition. No, there is no giant germ that forces a person to become addicted. There are social circumstances (not restricted to the ghetto) that promote it, and genetic predispositions that make some people more susceptible than others. But no one forces anyone to overeat, and there are genetic predispositions which lead some people to become overweight more than others, with considerable cost to society, but we don’t put them in prison for it unless they steal to eat. It is in the best interest of all of us not to demonize health issues that have a complicated mix of physiological and social causes. That doesn’t mean that we tolerate the destructive consequences of those conditions – drug-induced crimes, whether from cocaine or alcohol, should not be tolerated. In the long run, however, society will be better served at lower cost if we find a way to treat the conditions by addressing the social causes, dealing scientifically with the physical causes, and striving to rehabilitate rather than punish abusers of any substance. Finally, I don’t think anyone should be harassed for never having tried marijuana, anymore than those who have, should be.
I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers," especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"? And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare,or who serves honorably for three years in our military.... Those are the citizens we need.
Aside from the implicit assumption that an unspecified fraction of undocumented aliens (my attempt at a semantic compromise)are living on welfare or crime – which studies show constitute a much smaller fraction of undocumented aliens than of American citizens – this paragraph has some sensible suggestions for a path to citizenship with which I can readily agree.
I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years and still are? Not even close.
Any paragraph that begins with a pejorative term like “latte liberals” signals the reader that the writer is more interested in labeling than in thinking. Which is too bad, because the point of what followed the demeaning opening phrase merits consideration.
The term “latte liberal” is both ignorant and insulting. It’s ignorant because it makes the implicit assumption that liberals share a particular lifestyle that justifies turning a noun into an adjective to brand them. On its face, it is ignorant because it’s patently untrue; not every liberal likes lattes anymore than every conservative likes beer. I’ll bet dimes to donuts, in fact, that quite a few lattes are sold wherever the tea partyers congregate, just as many of my liberal friends like beer and stock car racing. The term is insulting because it is judgmental, linking a dietary preference to a political persuasion that the writer clearly abhors. He has a right to dislike lattes and disapprove of liberals, but making an unsubstantiated link between two things that have no cause-effect relationship shows only an intent to demean rather than enlighten.
On the substantive question of trashing the military, I have no idea who he thinks is doing that. Yes, there were those in the Vietnam era who condemned the soldiers along with the conflict. I did not agree with that then, and don’t now. The writer notes correctly that when people go to war, bad things happen. Those of us who criticized the military for allowing Abu Ghraib to happen are no less patriotic than the writer, and no less respectful of the vast majority of our military men and women who serve with honor, integrity, and courage. The fact of the matter is that Abu Ghraib has done more to recruit for and revitalize the terrorist cause around the world than anything, and it deserves to be condemned for the disaster it has been to our national image and our example of what a just society should be. The larger picture is that when a nation makes the decision to go to war, it has to know that a lot of innocent people, as well as combatants, are going to be killed, and atrocities are going to occur on both sides. Those of us who condemned the invasion of Iraq before it happened did so with the certain knowledge that bad things would happen, which they did. Was the cause worth it? The world may be better off without Saddham Hussein, but were all the lives and debt incurred by our nation and inflicted on theirs worth the price of buying them the right to engage in a civil war? We can disagree over that, but to condemn the war does not constitute trashing the military.
So here's the deal. I'll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt.Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.
Fair point. If we could have avoided the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, our cause would have been venerated even more by the rest of the world.
I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois, where the "Illinois Combine" of Democrats has worked to loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's cabinet.
Is someone really telling him that their party has a corner on virtue? I’ve never claimed that mine does. As for bipartisanship, the logic of the point the writer is trying to make is obscure. If it is that one-party politics provides a fertile field for corruption, I agree. Which would seem to be an argument for two or more healthy political parties. Which would require government to be bipartisan, in order to get anything done.
I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.
Well said.
Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.
Just when the writer is about to make a good point, he slams us with another pejorative term like “poverty pimps.” It is clear that he has a fondness for alliteration, but a decidedly lesser commitment to clarification.
I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.
Again, well said.
Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.
I am too, but for different reasons. We need to work together so that our worst fears for the future don’t come true for either of us.
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.
Thank you, Mr. Hall, for your service to our country. In my opinion, the cause you fought for was not in the best interest of our nation, but it was not your place to question the cause, once in uniform, and I honor whatever sacrifices you made in carrying out your duties.
I also respect your service as a state legislator. As such, you surely know that making public policy is complicated, and that in a pluralistic and democratic society where we all have a right to express our point of view, our views are frequently going to be in conflict. Those views do not deserve to be demonized, or ridiculed by facile and pejorative labels, or be dismissed or demeaned by either side. You have raised a number of valid points worthy of intelligent and tolerant discussion, which I would welcome.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
A Public Option for Student Loans – What a Concept?
The parallel could not have been more obvious, nor more totally ignored.
On Tuesday, President Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which includes provisions that cut banks out of the student loan program. This very large market has been subsidized wastefully by taxpayers for years, bloating the profits of banks and diverting vast amounts from actually benefiting students.
"We shouldn't be providing billions in taxpayer-funded giveaways to private banks. We should be providing an affordable, accessible college education to every American." That’s what the President said in signing the bill.
Substitute “health insurance” for “banks”, and “health care” for “college education”, and the statement would read “We shouldn't be providing billions in taxpayer-funded giveaways to private health insurance. We should be providing affordable, accessible health care to every American."
Congress finally woke up and realized that a middle man is totally unnecessary in getting loans from the federal government to students. When will it wake up and realize that a middle party is totally unnecessary in getting health care from the federal government to any citizen who needs it?
If cutting out subsidies to banks will redirect $68 billion to students, think how much money could be redirected to health care by applying the same reasoning. Under the health care reform legislation, billions of dollars in tax credits will be given to lower and middle class individuals so they can buy private health insurance that currently siphons off a third of the payments into profits and executive bonuses.
While it’s true that the new legislation will eventually limit the private health insurers’ profit margins to 15-20%, this is still over twice as much as overhead for Medicare costs. In other words, the public option would enable the redirection of a tremendous amount of taxpayer funds directly to health care by having a public option available.
Notice that no proclamation of an impending Armageddon accompanied elimination of the banks from the student loan program. Of course there were Republicans who protested that too many bankers would lose their jobs, as opposed to helping students, once the profligate subsidies to banks were eliminated. That’s like saying that eliminating the subsidies to private insurance companies for Medicare Advantage plans will cost jobs in the insurance industry, instead of saving the lives of patients.
No, the ramifications of reforming the student loan program went largely ignored. There were no cries of alarm about the federal takeover and socialization of student loans, despite the obvious parallel with public financing for health care. The Congress managed to do the right thing, without a single Republican vote.
Is it really so hard to believe that this Congress could actually pass a public option for health care if it really set its mind to it?
On Tuesday, President Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which includes provisions that cut banks out of the student loan program. This very large market has been subsidized wastefully by taxpayers for years, bloating the profits of banks and diverting vast amounts from actually benefiting students.
"We shouldn't be providing billions in taxpayer-funded giveaways to private banks. We should be providing an affordable, accessible college education to every American." That’s what the President said in signing the bill.
Substitute “health insurance” for “banks”, and “health care” for “college education”, and the statement would read “We shouldn't be providing billions in taxpayer-funded giveaways to private health insurance. We should be providing affordable, accessible health care to every American."
Congress finally woke up and realized that a middle man is totally unnecessary in getting loans from the federal government to students. When will it wake up and realize that a middle party is totally unnecessary in getting health care from the federal government to any citizen who needs it?
If cutting out subsidies to banks will redirect $68 billion to students, think how much money could be redirected to health care by applying the same reasoning. Under the health care reform legislation, billions of dollars in tax credits will be given to lower and middle class individuals so they can buy private health insurance that currently siphons off a third of the payments into profits and executive bonuses.
While it’s true that the new legislation will eventually limit the private health insurers’ profit margins to 15-20%, this is still over twice as much as overhead for Medicare costs. In other words, the public option would enable the redirection of a tremendous amount of taxpayer funds directly to health care by having a public option available.
Notice that no proclamation of an impending Armageddon accompanied elimination of the banks from the student loan program. Of course there were Republicans who protested that too many bankers would lose their jobs, as opposed to helping students, once the profligate subsidies to banks were eliminated. That’s like saying that eliminating the subsidies to private insurance companies for Medicare Advantage plans will cost jobs in the insurance industry, instead of saving the lives of patients.
No, the ramifications of reforming the student loan program went largely ignored. There were no cries of alarm about the federal takeover and socialization of student loans, despite the obvious parallel with public financing for health care. The Congress managed to do the right thing, without a single Republican vote.
Is it really so hard to believe that this Congress could actually pass a public option for health care if it really set its mind to it?
Monday, March 22, 2010
“A Decisive Step Forward”
At 8:45 pm MDT last night, the House passed unchanged the Senate version of the health care reform bill, allowing it to go straight to the President for his signature. At 9:30 pm, the House passed a new bill aimed at fixing the more objectionable parts of the Senate’s version. Since all the fixes have to do with funding issues, the bill will be taken up under the Senate’s rules for “reconciliation,” which limit debate to a total of 20 hours, meaning no filibusters and no need to get a 60-vote supermajority. Only 51 senators are needed to pass a reconciliation bill, and more than that number have signed a letter committing themselves to do so. Health care reform will thus become a reality.
“This is not radical change,” as President Obama said, “but it is a decisive step forward.” Since I have been writing this blog, that is what I’ve been advocating – some sort of step away from the dysfunctional state of health care in our country, which provides health care for those who can afford it, much less to no care for those who can’t, and a rapacious, profit-making health insurance industry dependent on the illnesses, injuries, and misfortunes of others.
Notwithstanding predictions to the contrary by the more hysterical opponents of health care reform, it looks like the sun is going to rise after all in the east this morning; as I write this, day appears to be dawning over the Franklin Mountains outside my window. Furthermore, my guess is that democracy as we know it will still be operating throughout the day, and the harsh heel of totalitarianism will not be felt by nightfall, or tomorrow, or any day in the foreseeable future – at least not just because over 30 million Americans who currently do not have health insurance will eventually be able to get it.
In case you missed the 10 hour ordeal on C-SPAN yesterday (since UTEP and Kansas got knocked out of the NCAA tournament in its early stages, I didn’t have anything else to watch), those things about the end of freedom and democracy were actually stated on the floor of the House of Representatives. Then, in a twist that I found highly ironic, one opponent after another, stepped up to the microphone to announce, in these precise words, “I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks in opposition to this flawed health care bill.” In what was obviously an orchestrated event to delay the proceedings as long as possible, the Republicans came in waves, using the same wording over and over. Precisely. Just like robots. Like in Orwell’s “1984.”
This week the Senate will take up the reconciliation bill, to fix the unsavory aspects of its version of the legislation that it had to include in order to get the 60 votes before. Be warned that this will not be easy or pretty. The Senate has the capacity to turn any common-sense measure – anything that is good for all the people and not so good for the privileged few who have bought their way to influence – into a messy and still flawed piece of legislation. But this time, it’ll be a lot more fun to watch, knowing that the pompous righteousness of Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the heightened self-importance of Olympia Snowe (R-ME), the self-conscious agonizing by Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and the blatant extortion by Ben Nelson (D-NE) will have no effect. We don’t need your votes any more, thank you very much.
So we could be in for another week or two of tortured rhetoric and chest pounding. Hopefully, the worst of the opponents – the protestors who cursed and spat upon elected representatives of the people on Saturday – will crawl back under their rocks. Maybe some of the aforementioned senators, now freed from their ability to thwart the course of history, will return to being the statesmen that some of them once were. In any event, while the final buzzer hasn’t sounded, no amount of fouling by the opposition is going to alter the final outcome.
Health care reform – highly flawed, inadequate, and imperfect as it is – will finally come to the United States of America.
“This is not radical change,” as President Obama said, “but it is a decisive step forward.” Since I have been writing this blog, that is what I’ve been advocating – some sort of step away from the dysfunctional state of health care in our country, which provides health care for those who can afford it, much less to no care for those who can’t, and a rapacious, profit-making health insurance industry dependent on the illnesses, injuries, and misfortunes of others.
Notwithstanding predictions to the contrary by the more hysterical opponents of health care reform, it looks like the sun is going to rise after all in the east this morning; as I write this, day appears to be dawning over the Franklin Mountains outside my window. Furthermore, my guess is that democracy as we know it will still be operating throughout the day, and the harsh heel of totalitarianism will not be felt by nightfall, or tomorrow, or any day in the foreseeable future – at least not just because over 30 million Americans who currently do not have health insurance will eventually be able to get it.
In case you missed the 10 hour ordeal on C-SPAN yesterday (since UTEP and Kansas got knocked out of the NCAA tournament in its early stages, I didn’t have anything else to watch), those things about the end of freedom and democracy were actually stated on the floor of the House of Representatives. Then, in a twist that I found highly ironic, one opponent after another, stepped up to the microphone to announce, in these precise words, “I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks in opposition to this flawed health care bill.” In what was obviously an orchestrated event to delay the proceedings as long as possible, the Republicans came in waves, using the same wording over and over. Precisely. Just like robots. Like in Orwell’s “1984.”
This week the Senate will take up the reconciliation bill, to fix the unsavory aspects of its version of the legislation that it had to include in order to get the 60 votes before. Be warned that this will not be easy or pretty. The Senate has the capacity to turn any common-sense measure – anything that is good for all the people and not so good for the privileged few who have bought their way to influence – into a messy and still flawed piece of legislation. But this time, it’ll be a lot more fun to watch, knowing that the pompous righteousness of Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the heightened self-importance of Olympia Snowe (R-ME), the self-conscious agonizing by Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and the blatant extortion by Ben Nelson (D-NE) will have no effect. We don’t need your votes any more, thank you very much.
So we could be in for another week or two of tortured rhetoric and chest pounding. Hopefully, the worst of the opponents – the protestors who cursed and spat upon elected representatives of the people on Saturday – will crawl back under their rocks. Maybe some of the aforementioned senators, now freed from their ability to thwart the course of history, will return to being the statesmen that some of them once were. In any event, while the final buzzer hasn’t sounded, no amount of fouling by the opposition is going to alter the final outcome.
Health care reform – highly flawed, inadequate, and imperfect as it is – will finally come to the United States of America.
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