Friday, April 30, 2010

A Princess Crisis

Katherine here.

We've been staying at Chris's house and taking care of the kids while he and Christine take a well needed break. They chose to go to Las Vegas where they've been spending their time staying up all the time seeing shows and gambling and doing Las Vegas things. I'm happy for them, but if I wanted a break I would have headed for a beach. It's been an exhausting joy to be with the kids. They are wonderful, but constant alertness wears me out.

In the midst of this happy babysitting I started having a princess crisis. Sammi (five this month) and Brooklyn (three) are princess fanatics. They watch princess movies all the time, read princess books, have princess toys--everything is princess, princess, princess. I understand the marketing and all that--I mean we just got over having everything Hello Kitty and Dora the Explorer. It's basically the same stuff, just pinker.

I'd been doing okay with all the princess pretending and singing--Brooklyn can really belt out "It's a Whole New World." I knew about most princesses already-- the traditional lovelies like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and some of the newer ones like Jasmine and several other ethnic beauties whose names I can't remember. I'd been raised on the need for a handsome prince to rescue me and take care of me and Mom wasn't sure what to do when I left college un-rescued and went to work. It's only one aspect of me that hasn't matched various ideals she set up that I didn't fulfill.

Anyway, yesterday a feminist rage (pretty rare for me) boiled inside when the second round of Disney's The Princess and the Frog played on while I knitted the sleeve of a sweater. I found myself paying attention and as the movie ended I was angry when Prince Nevine rescued Tiana. I'll explain.

The Disney version of this story stars its first Afro American princess who begins as a waitress working two jobs a day to fulfill a dream she shared with her father to own a great restaurant in New Orleans. She saves every penny and is ready to give the real estate bankers her down payment when they up the price. At the same time, a talking frog appears and asks to be kissed and she does so to get the last money needed for her dream.

The kiss backfires and Tiana (the princess to be) becomes a frog and wanders the Bayou with the prince frog, a trumpet playing alligator, and a firefly named Ray I liked a lot despite his bad teeth. The goal is a return to humanhood and along the way almost everyone tells Tiana that she needs to stop working so hard and she should wish more and love more. They want her to wish on the star Evangeline and mock her when she finally gives in but foolishly wishes for help with her restaurant.

I was saddened when the firefly died. I liked him and it reminded me of the death of the ant in Honey I Shrunk the Kids (I wept over that the first time). There's lot of voodoo and chasing around--usual good guy frog versus bad guy Shadow Man kind of stuff.

In the end, Tiana realizes that loving the prince frog (in frog form) is all that matters. The frogs marry and kiss and now that Tiana is a "real" princess they both become human. The prince buys her restaurant and they fix it up together. The alligator even plays the trumpet at the new place.

What an awful message to send to little girls--especially our Sammi and Brooklyn. The movie says that hard work and a dream of your own is misguided. Wishing on stars and waiting for love and having a man help you with your dream is what is needed. I wanted to puke.

I took Brooklyn aside to talk to her about this because she is the most obsessed and her current behavior has large traces of princess behavior. For example, last night, she wouldn't go to bed unless she wore a princess dress to sleep in. When Christine called to say goodnight to the girls, she told me to let B. go for it--it wasn't worth the fight she would put up and she slept in a dress that did not look comfy to me and I'm big on comfy at bedtime. The princess had won the battle.

As I tucked her in, I asked what it is she likes about princesses. B. said, "They get pampered." I countered with Cinderella and Tiana and all their hard work towards their dreams and she said, "They are only exceptions." She's three.

I rarely get upset about stuff like this, but I am upset. Franny had an amazing day at work not too long ago where she planned an event for Mrs. Obama's mentees in the DC area to visit the Supreme Court. They all spent the morning with Justice Ginsberg who told the high school women that they needed to fight to retain their rights because case after case is being presented that all whittle away at women's rights. Franny was thrilled and wept and said it was one of the five most important days of her life.

Franny works 80 hours a week for her dream to exist. When she wants pampering and needs pampering, she knows how to get that too. She does not need a male to make her life work as yesterday's princess movie suggested. I believe she's where she is because the world she grew up in and the family she grew up in believed you had to work hard and open doors to get where you want to go. She was raised to be an independent person, not a princess.

I can't wait for the princess phase to end with our grandgirls. Looking back, I wish the Dora the Explorer period was still in full swing. Dora wanting learning and knowledge. Princesses just want rescuing and that's a recipe for victimhood--just ask Tess.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Beam Me Up Scotty

There are a lot of things about Colorado Senate Bill 191 (yet another attempt to solve the problems facing education by revamping the way we evaluate teachers) to like. It has amped up the dialogue about education and, even though a lot of that dialogue seems ill-informed to me, any dialogue is better than none. It really does attempt to tie salary to student performance in a reasonable fashion. Instead of just looking at the end score of whatever new version of ITBS, or CSAP (pick your acronym), the proposed legislation intends to start with entrance scores for each student to more fairly assess individual GROWTH. Colorado's last four governors, all distinguished, well-intentioned men with fundamental disagreements, managed to all agree on and endorse the proposal.

There are little things that concern me. The idea that principal salary will be more closely tied to student performance on tests has engendered all kinds of visions of over-zealous, paranoid, and slow-witted principals showering their poor faculties with one lame faculty inservice after another in a lock-step, quotidian march to insure themselves another notch on the salary schedule. The reason teacher evaluation doesn't work now is because the ones charged with the task, that is public school admnistrators, aren't up to the task. I've worked with dozens of administrators in my career and, with a few notable exceptions, they are not a particularly bright group. I'm sorry, but truly great teachers rarely leave the classroom to become administrators. Administrators are by and large composed of individuals with undistinguished classroom credentials. Which is to say that most of the principals and assistant principals that have done my evaluations over the past 35 years wouldn't know good teaching from bad teaching if it crawled up and bit them on the ass.

But the main thing that concerns me is the whole idea that education is in a state of crisis and that the main thing we can do to alleviate that crisis is to get rid of bad teachers. It is like a conservative saying that tort reform will solve the problems of health care. It just ain't the case.

It seems to me there are three indicators conventional wisdom points to as evidence that something needs to be done to fix education: persistently low test scores, relatively high drop out rate, and a disparity of achievement between ethnic groups. I certainly agree that those are signicant problems that our country needs to address, I just don't agree that they prove a failure of education. Maybe they show a failure of the family.

I'm not a statistician, but I remember reading somewhere that as the size of a sample increases, the lowest standard denominator falls proportionately. When I took the SAT my senior year at Loveland High School, less than a third of my graduating class joined me. Now the percentage of Loveland graduates taking the SAT approaches 90. Guess what? The median score on the SAT for Loveland grads in 2010 is lower than the same score in 1966. Does that prove a crisis in education, or an all-american success story in the marketing of higher education?

That does not diminish the seriousness of the problem. But it does suggest that simply getting and retaining better teachers will be no more effective than our eight year long experiment with No Child Left Behind has been. NCLB was touted as an educational panacea and now we are touting a new educational panacea to replace the last panacea that didn't, as it were, pan out.

And then The Denver Post has the gall to call the Colorado Education Association "intractable" for not whole-heartedly endorsing the proposal. As is my want, I read the supposedly "intractable" position written by CEA's president. Instead of an irrational rant against the legislation as the Post would have me believe, I found a reasonable argument supported by fifteen (I counted them) statements of fact. Obviously, the Post defines as "intractable" anyone who stubbornly uses facts to support a position opposed to the Post's.

Okay, I will give the legislation the benefit of the doubt. Maybe getting rid of bad teachers will make everything better. So what are we talking about here? Jefferson County Schools has around 4000 teachers. For this to truly impact student achievement, there must be thousands of bad teachers we have to get rid of and replace with, according to Mike Rosen, one of the millions out there just chomping at the bit to get into the classroom. I'm probably overstating. You know, not being fair and balanced. Maybe there are just a thousand, or five hundred, or one hundred, or a dozen. Maybe I'm being intractable, but I just don't see how this is going to do much to cinch up the Race to the Top money that Governor Ritter is so hot for.

Now I'm really being cynical, but I believe the thinking behind Senate Bill 191 at its most basic is anti-union. Let me hasten to add that I have never been particularly impressed by the NEA or the CEA. I don't believe their number one priority is student achievement, nor do I think it should be. But I would suggest that teachers and their unions have done more to promote the welfare of young people in this state and country than all of their detractors put together.

Class size. Funding. Great teachers. Higher salary. Support from Higher Ed. Family counseling. Giving teachers the credit they ALREADY deserve. All of that has to happen to put our children in a position to have them profit from the high caliber education already being offered in every school and classroom across this country.

Let us have no more of this Captain Kirk leadership.

"Scotty, I need warp speed in thirty seconds or the Enterprise will be destroyed!"

"But Captain, the dylithium chrystals have been contaminated and won't give us the power we need."

"I don't have time for your excuses, Scotty. GET US OUT OF HERE!"

"I'll do the best I can with what I've got, Jim."

Teachers have been doing the best they can with what they've got for as long as parents have been sending their kids off to school.

So for all you educational critics out there. In the words of John Stewart, "Go fuck yourselves."

Monday, April 19, 2010

The "Loyalty Oath" Scandal

It is almost impossible to read a newspaper or watch a news broadcast without having to endure yet another analysis of Tea Party anger. Well, let me give you and example of liberal anger. In the Post a few days ago (4/17/10), in place of Tina Griego's beautifully written and admittedly liberal story telling, was a polemic from Newt Gingrich and Jim Garlow raging at the "decidedly leftist world view sold in too many classrooms."

In support of this conservative talking point, Gingrich and Garlow warn us to be watchful of a Supreme Court case to be heard on Monday (today) which has "the potential to strike a ferocious blow for--or against--religious liberty on university campuses."

Wow! A Supreme Court case! Leftist (not just liberal) campuses! Religious liberty in danger!

It seems that California's Hastings College of Law has told a local chapter of the Christian Legal Society (CLS) that they cannot require members to sign a statement affirming their Christian faith. The CLS, outraged, sued the school for violating its First Amendment rights. Since the U.S. Court of Appeals has supported the school's position and the 7th Circuit has supported the opposite position in a similar case, the issue is going to the Supremes. Let me predict that the CLS is going to be vindicated by John Roberts and his cronies.

Gingrich and Garlow loudly assert that Hastings College's position proves the unchecked leftist bias dominating college classrooms all over the country. I'm sorry, but I just don't see how they got from the CLS's oath of affirmation dispute to the domination of university classrooms by leftist proselytizers. Even if the Hastings College official who put a stop to the affirmation was a raving anti-Christian, how does that translate to the classroom?

Hastings College argues that all students on campus must be eligible for all organizations. The CLS and evidently Gingrich and Garlow as well, unable to handle the possibility that a non-Christian might join up and, worse yet, might be elected to a leadership position, saw this ruling as deeply biased against people of faith. It is apparent that Gingrich and Garlow simply don't believe the college's all-inclusive argument. For example, they cite as absurd the idea that the Young Democrats on campus might sign up a republican or libertarian and, GASP, elect that apostate to some high office.

They're right. It is absurd. That's why the other 69 organizations on the Hastings College of Law campus don't ask their prospective members to affirm their faith, or politics, or sexual persuasion. If I were a student at good old Hastings and I wanted to join the SCUBA club even though wild horses couldn't get me to actually go in the water, I wouldn't expect to have to commit to a lifetime fidelity to water sports. Why should I have to commit to Christianity if, for some reason (a girl in Contracts belonged?), I decided to join the CLS?

It seems to me that the real issue here is why does the CLS ask its members to sign such a document? Isn't it redundant? Why would a non-Christian want to join in the first place? I've heard their parties suck.

The thing that makes me mad is that the Supreme Court is going to spend time arguing over this idiotic complaint. Talk radio will work up their angry listeners into an even greater frenzy. John Boehner will get white with rage, thereby losing his tan. John McCain will say some random thing. And Sarah Palin will charge some group a hundred grand to listen to her talk about it.

I agree that the majority of college classrooms I know about tend to be liberal. But when I read through the faulty logic and downright dishonesty of Gingrich and Garlow's essay, I can see why there is a preponderance of liberal professors. They're more reasonable and less prone to paranoid fantasies like the leftist, anti-Christian conspiracy on college campuses.

Friday, April 16, 2010

THE RETURN TO DEPRESSION ECONOMICS - Paul Krugman

When Franny was born in 1980 she was joined by a whole raft of other faculty brats. C. Fite gave birth to Justin. Colin McNamee entered the fray, as did Beau Simmons. Faebian Baker had a little girl and so did Sarah Nesmith. Our friends outside of school also started breeding like rabbits and so did the people in our neighborhood.

Let us say for the purposes of illustration that all of these new parents decided to get together to form a baby sitting co-op, volunteering to take care of one another's children as a way to guarantee a certain amount of freedom and to save money to boot.

If we had been clever enough to do that we would have created a little economy that would function much like the macro-economic reality that we all inhabit. Let us say that our co-op had a membership of about 100 families. A co-op of that size would need some rules and regulations to insure that everyone did their fair share of the babysitting duties. We would have to set up a governing board of some sort. To make sure everything was fair and manageable the board would probably issue coupons of a sort (lets call them "diapers") that the co-op members could use to trade services. One diaper would be worth one hour of babysitting. If everyone was allotted the same number of diapers our co-op could be reasonably sure that everyone would share and profit equally in the baby sitting swap.

As long as co-op members need baby sitting and as long as there are other members willing to do the baby sitting, things run smoothly. However, we might discover that the demand for baby sitting fluctuates, creating some periods when the demand for baby sitting doesn't fulfill the needs of all the members who are willing to sit. We might discover, for instance, that the need for baby sitting is seasonal. People would rather go out and party during the summer, so they might tend to save their diapers over the winter in order to have more to spend during the summer. The only way to accumulate additional diapers is by baby sitting, but since people are saving their diapers in the winter, baby sitting jobs are hard to come by. To make matters worse, this dearth of baby sitting jobs is self perpetuating. If you see that your neighbor is hording diapers, you might be tempted to horde diapers yourself so that before long the amount of diapers in the system dries up and the whole diaper based economy slows down. Economists call that situation a recession.

It is important to note here that the baby sitting recession is not caused by anything in particular. The quality of baby sitting is fine. On paper there are no systemic problems. No one is trying to corner the diaper market. There is just a scarcity of diapers basically because there is a scarcity of diapers.

There are ways to fix this problem. Impose some inflationary rules that make diapers acquired in the winter worth less in the summer thereby making people think twice about hording them. But the simplest and most effective way to fix this diaper recession is for the governing board to print some more diapers and put them in the system. That way people will not be so hot to horde them to guard against scarcity.

Paul Krugman uses this baby sitting analogy as a starting point to explain not only our current economic crisis, but also a whole history of similar crises from the Great Depression to the current day. The analogy keeps getting more elaborate as the crises accumulate, but for economically challenged readers like me it provides a remarkably lucid explanation of situations characterized by a complete lack of lucidity.

If you have been keeping up with your reading about our current economic situation, Krugman's book doesn't offer any explanations you haven't heard before, but it does provide a detailed trip through past recessions in Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, the USA, England, Ireland, etc. According to Krugman's analysis each of these recessions were addressed and ultimately solved through the same method as the baby sitting crisis: The immediate injection of capital into the system in order to increase demand.

That is why his book is titled The Return to Depression Economics. If we look at economics as a debate between supply siders (The Milton Friedman/Ronald Reagan folks)and demand siders (John Maynard Keynes, et. al.), we can see that during times of recession the most effective fix is to inject money into the system. In fact, if we just took a trillion dollars and buried it like so much gold to be discovered around the country the resultant "gold" rush and all the other economic activity that such a rush would engender would be sufficient to jolt an economy out of recession.

Of course, Krugman goes even farther to say that supply side thinking is a "crank" solution that only appeals to the wealthy, but has no real effect on the economy as a whole. In fact, the biggest threat to our current economic malaise, according to Krugman, would be if we lost our political will to pour money into the system because of its unpopularity with ranting supply side radio personalities and the uninformed electorate who listen to them and instead tried to curtail government spending. That would duplicate what happened to Japan a decade ago and leave our country wallowing in a double dip recession that might last indefinitely.

Krugman has been very loud and clear in criticizing Obama and Secretary Geithner for not going far enough with the bail out. He is convinced that our system needs a bigger injection of cash and it seems that government is the only entity capable of an injection of the size needed. Obama is betting that he is wrong. We all hope Obama wins the bet.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

The Girl Who Plays With Fire - Stieg Larsson

I think the reason Catholicism counts on guilt to give it a raison d'etre isn't because Catholics have more restrictions placed on their behavior. The list of ridiculous dos and don'ts is roughly equivalent in all Christian variations. But because Catholics disobey all their deeply held beliefs with impunity and then feel guilty about the transgression. Of course that guilt drives them to another transgression which creates more guilt and so on. At least that how it has always worked with me.

There are all kinds of things I like to do that fill me with guilt. Watching any television that is not news or sports related is a big source of guilt for me. If I go on a hike that has no vertical gain in elevation, I feel I have to atone for my sin with a tougher hike the next day.

I can spend an entire day sitting in the living room reading Toni Morrison, or Paul Krugman's latest tract and call it a day well spent. But if I did the same thing with a mystery--and I do, I do--I feel the need to go work in the garden, or mow the yard, anything to allay the feeling that I have just wasted a day.

I finished The Girl Who Plays With Fire a couple of days ago and I am happy to report that it is every bit as compelling as Larsson's first novel in the series, The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo. But as much as I loved it, I don't have much to say about it. I think that is where the guilt comes in. Larsson manages to weave fascinating plots set in idyllic sounding Nordic locations and he makes sure that the bad guy(s) always get their just deserts. More than that, Larsson has created Lisbeth Salander, computer whiz, troubled youth, genius goth, a character you can't help rooting for. Put Salander in any situation and it will become the stuff of great fiction.

I remember a heated discussion about Indiana Jones in my first AP class. They wanted more interesting plots rather than these dreary discussions about character. My response was that the only thing that mattered in Raiders of the Lost Ark was Indiana Jones, the character. Plot was and is totally beside the point.
That's what is so compelling about mysteries, especially Larsson. In fact when he tries to move the plot through dialogue the narrative comes to a screeching halt. To see how to move plot with dialogue read Richard Price (Clockers, Freedomland, Samaritan, et. al.)

In Joe Picket, C. J. Boxx has created one of my favorite characters, but Lisbeth would eat Joe up and spit him out. The other mystery writer I enjoy is John Burdett (Bangkok Eight, Bangkok Tatoo). Burdett's main character--I wish I could remember his name-- leads the reader on a great ride through the insane traffic, drug and otherwise, of Bangkok, but Lisbeth would hold her own once she got used to the territory.

Reading Larsson's novel is a lot like riding a great roller coaster. You can't help but be thrilled and you can't wait for the next ride. The third segment of Larsson's trilogy comes out in May.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Weight Loss

Katherine here.

One of my favorite movie scenes is from Notting Hill. It's the birthday scene and all the characters are vying for "a very good chocolate brownie" by sharing their pathetic lives and whoever has the most pitful story wins the prize. Though I think I'm supposed to root for the woman paralyzed after a car accident and unable to ever have babies, I always root for the Julia Roberts movie star character because she's been on a diet since she was ten. I can relate.

I was a skinny and athletic kid. I was a fat bookworm after puberty hit. I read a book a day and ate a pan of fudge a day. By the time I was a freshman I weighed almost two hundred pounds.

My mom rescued me through bribery. She offered me anything I wanted if I'd lose the weight. I wanted the newly invented bikini--horrible at my starting weight, but potentially cool if I lost the weight. I figured I'd look just like a blond Annette Funicello.

Mom told me to hang on for a week while she figured out how to approach the weight loss we both needed. She spent the week recording TV exercise shows onto a reel-to-reel tape recorder and writing a contract for me to sign. She agreed to exercise with me and provide healthy meals and I agreed to exercise with her and only eat what she gave me.

I started Mom's regimin in the spring of my freshman year and entered my sophomore year at a 125 pounds. It was like being reborn--good stuff happened. Mom and I abided by that contract until I left for college.

I no longer use the approaches to food or exercise Mom started over forty years ago, but I'm still constantly working to maintain my weight at 125. I gain and lose five pounds over and over again to do that. I've been doing it a lifetime.

Right now I'm working on my newest five pounds. This particular poundage is the result of a nasty sprained ankle that took a frustrating eight weeks before I could really begin working out on it and it's still not close to 100 percent. I can barely run for heaven's sake and running is what gets the pounds off the quickest.

My lack of exercise was compounded by a delicious new experience in life. During my immobile eight weeks I woke slowly, drank coffee and read the paper slowly, and left to go coach my teachers without a sense of rush or urgency. It was way cool and it's been very hard to give it up the last two weeks as we've returned to the gym and the rushing around in the morning to get there. Anyway--immobility did me in and I've just begun to attack this current extra weight.

Since I've done this so often and for so long, I decided my expertise might be worth sharing. So here are 13 ways of looking at Weight Loss

1. Visit the butcher shop. I always go to Tony's and I order a pound of hamburger. Mel (my favorite meat guy) reaches into a chilled display case and scoops up the beef and puts it on a mound on the scale. Then I look seriously at that pound of meat. I think about it while Mel wraps it up in brown paper. When he hands it to me, it feels heavy. Then I think about where I could get that pound of meat off my body. It wouldn't be easy to get that mound off of me or most folks. It's really important to see and feel what a pound is when I decide to lose weight. Losing ONE pound is monumental and I'm always elated over losing ONE pound.

2. Don't get on the scales too soon. It takes me a while before I'm sure I've lost one pound. Sometimes a month. I can tell because of how my jeans feel and how my belt buckles.

3. Realize losing real weight takes time. Aim for a pound a month. Losing one pound permanently (not just shedding water weight) is hard. I'm ecstatic for one pound in a month. If I do better, time to think about a non-edible reward.

4. Bribe yourself. Mom raised me on bribery and now I bribe myself. I'll be looking for a new belt in Jackson, Wyoming this coming July.

5. Think like Sisyphus. Losing weight is like Sisyphus in Greek mythology rolling his rock up a hill eternally. He chose to enjoy it and beat Zeus. It's better to get a mindset that likes the gym and veggies rather than resisting the necessary weight loss regimens (more activity and better calorie counting).

6. Think about fitness rather than fatness. Fitness leads to weight loss. Weight loss doesn't necessarily make you fitter. I'm trying to regain my ability to run 5 miles happily and lift weights that need ankle support. That'll make hiking in the Tetons and on Kauai this summer fun and not ardorous.

7. Read some sort of book about eating, exercising, aging--something body centered. Phillips' Body For Life made me a weight lifter and Weil's Healthy Aging added a daily 2 mile walk to my work out to fight off Alzheimers. Once I even read Carmichael's book on training Lance Armstrong and decided that was too fit for me. Anyway, reading something new in the body world makes me think in terms of my body while I'm struggling to renew my physical and nutritional habits.

8. Make resolutions. Nothing big and not about pounds. Resolving to lose five pounds doesn't do much. Resolving to eat more veggies is possible. For me, anyway.

9. Don't count, avoid. I don't count calories or carbs or anything. I know most experts suggest this. It just makes me neurotic. Instead, I practice general avoidance tactics. I avoid fats. I avoid white foods. I avoid sweet stuff. I avoid large portions of meat. I avoid sodas. I avoid a lot of foods, but I also eat and drink whatever I like now and then. Moderation doesn't make me crazy.

10. Try the push up challenge. Ironically this is something I count. Scott Hastings (former NBA player and local Nuggets broadcaster) does the push-up challenge every spring. He does 10,000 push-ups in a month. It's about 300 a day. I did it the first time after my mastecomy and before Franny's wedding before I was cleared to lift weights. It's a great way to get the upper body in shape even if you do them on your knees like I do. I'm working up to starting soon. I've gotten as high as 256 one day last week, but I couldn't move my arms the next day. I'm shooting for May for this year's challenge.

11. Look happy. Perception determines reality. If you pretend to be happy doing all this weight loss stuff for a while, it's not long before it is real. Look happy and soon you'll be happy. This works for lots of things besides weight loss.

12. Drink water. Obvious. All the experts say to, but it's hard for me to do and I have to remind myself. Lots of water.

13. Remember the 12 week rule. A sociology professor once taught me that it takes 12 weeks to make a change in your life. You can undo that change in a week. That's weight loss.

That's it for now.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Thanking Mike Rosen

I suppose we should all be grateful to Mike Rosen for his eagerness to educate his frequently confused readers. A few weeks ago he enlightened teachers about the fine points of free market economics ("Teaching teachers about pay," The Denver Post, March 17, 2010) and just today he offered a lesson about the business world ("Meaning of laissez faire," The Denver Post, April 8, 2010) You can tell how the need for these little lessons frustrate poor Mike by some of the word choices he uses. He laments "dunderheaded" legislation "pouring" out of the Democratic legislature. He demeans a "self-described executive" who had a hard time following Rosen's argument in a March 25 column ("Democrats against business").

Rosen goes on to relate how he explained to the "confused businessman" the logic behind his argument. He ended this little story by concluding that "The confused businessman must be a Democrat." Honestly, how does Mr. Rosen manage to put up with all this confusion from his dull minded (Read: Democratic) readers?

I'm going to put myself in harm's way by admitting that I frequently am at a loss after plowing through Rosen's ad hominem arguments. I would prefer it if he would resort to facts rather than name calling when putting forth his opinions and puzzling conclusions.

For instance, he explained to the "confused businessman" above that the work sharing program laid out in Senate Bill 28 would cost the state more than the alternative: simply laying off a smaller number of workers. Why? Because the couple of people who might be laid off without the bill and paid unemployment insurance would have an incentive to quickly find new jobs to replace their lost pay, while the 20 or so workers who would get less hours and less pay in the job sharing proposed by SB 28 would presumably have little incentive to find better paying jobs with a full work week. That may or may not be true, but the fact that I am less than convinced by this argument doesn't make me a dunderhead. It just makes me someone who would like to hear arguments couched in data and statistics rather than conservative talking points.

Rosen also states as fact that under a work sharing program, an employer would be getting fewer hours and less productivity from his best workers. But in a world without SB 28 the lucky employer could just lay off his "least-efficient" workers (you know, the ones Rosen alludes to earlier who would have an incentive to go out and get another job), thereby insuring the quality of his product. This also might be true. It also might be a crock. My problem with Rosen (my problem with all conservative pundits) is that he writes and talks as if he was the incontestable bearer of meaning on whatever subject he happens to be analyzing. Since he apparently has no data to back himself up, has it ever occurred to Mr. Rosen that he might be wrong and SB 28 might be just what the doctor ordered? An admission like that would make a column I would love to read.

He makes other assertions that lose me. The problem with Democrats he says is that they believe they can save the economy by meddling with it. This is crazy he asserts because an "international market economy . . . is far too complicated for any collection of bureaucrats to understand or control." That might be so, but then who is able to understand and/or control it? Even Mr. Rosen would have to agree, (well, maybe not) that the laissez faire thinking deregulation bred in our market economy the last decade or more didn't work. Does he really think that more of the same is the way to go?

He ends his argument with two points, one a complete fiction, the other a refusal to face reality. His fiction says that by spending hundreds of billions of dollars and accumulating trillions in debt, Obama and the Democrats have accomplished "pitifully little." I have two problems with that statement. First, the idea that Obama and the Democrats (sounds like a great punk band) are solely responsible for the economic spot our country is in is patently absurd. Second, for every economist who thinks "pitifully little" has been accomplished I can supply two who assert the opposite and credit Obama and the Democrats with saving the economy.

His second point is that as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Colorado's Tri-County Health Department spent $10.5 million to promote "healthy eating and physical activity." Rosen loudly asserts that one would have to be crazy to believe that spending money on health concerns would have any appreciable effect on our economy. Well Mike, put me down for not being in my right mind. I think it was $10.5 million wisely spent. By the way, scores of doctors and economists agree with me.

I can't wait for your next piece. I love being educated.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Catching Up

When I was a kid in Estes Park, Easter week was my favorite time of year. It was even better than Christmas. It was a special time because I was the head altar boy at Our Lady of the Mountains catholic church and the whole week was spent getting ready for all of the beautiful services that were about to take place. We would have rehearsal with Father Sanger after school for the entire week leading up to Palm Sunday. I had to teach the newly appointed thurifers how to properly carry the incense holder (there is an impressive name for the incense holder, but along with losing my faith I've also lost a lot of the latin). I rode herd on the new acolytes, admonishing them about spilling wax on the carpet in the sanctuary. After years in the altar boy business, I already had all of the latin responses memorized and I could get around the sanctuary with my eyes closed.

Palm Sunday was always a beautiful ceremony and I remember our house decorated with the palms my mother, grandmother, and aunt collected on that day. I was always dropped off early so I could serve morning masses for all of the different priests who happened to be visiting and Father Sanger always gave me a ride home late after I had helped him clean up after services.

I served mass every day of the week leading up to Holy Thursday (Maundy Thursday). It was a beautiful candlelit ceremony with glorious vestments and the entire female population of my family anchoring the choir. Good Friday was solemn and sober and I remember always being overwhelmed by Christ's sacrifice. I should hasten to add here that I was not overwhelmed in a sadomasochistic Mel Gibson way. It was much softer than that. Mostly I was taken in by the gorgeous pageantry of the whole thing. Midnight mass on Holy Saturday was filled with the same wonder. Easter Sunday always seemed a little anti-climactic to me. The service was during the morning. People were dressed to the nines. I was comfortable doing my altar boy schtick, but I guess I was too burned out from my liturgical fortnight of practice and perform to appreciate the wonder of the resurrection. Mostly, I was ready to go home and score some chocolate bunnies and eggs.

And even more important, Easter Sunday was the last significant event to check off before the end of school and the beginning of summer. Talk about a resurrection.

Easter is different now. Nowadays I am surprised when I see ashes on good catholic foreheads on Ash Wednesday. When I was a kid, Lent never surprised me. Father Sanger was a kindly if ineffectual man who taught me to ski and fish and chase mice from behind the confessional. If he ever wanted to get underneath my cassock I didn't know about it. But now, instead of talking about the redemption Christ offered all of us, the church is busily spinning facts to work a redemption for its increasingly tarnished reputation. Seriously, when you think of the catholic church (I know I'm supposed to capitalize that, but I refuse), do you think missionaries and martyrs, or do you think pedophiles and molesters? Too bad. The church I have chosen not to believe in used to be a bastion of morality and temperance. Nothing lasts.

Now I just focus on things in the news that consistently amaze me. I think I'll make a short list.

1. The Denver Post's transmutation into The Rocky Mountain News. The editorials are getting more and more strident and snarky. In an editorial last Wednesday ("Health care hit didn't take long" March 31, 2010)the paper cites a few corporations (AT&T, Deere and Company, 3M. among others) who warned their employees that the new health care legislation, because one of its provision reduces the tax break that companies offering employee health coverage receive, would probably result in workers getting laid off and higher prices to consumers. Then the paper went on to blast Representative Henry Waxman, a democrat from California, for demanding that these companies show some hard data, facts, and figures to justify these measures. The editorialist said that Waxman was "politicizing" the debate by attacking industry. I guess I'm stupid, but it seems to me that The Denver Post is the entity doing the poliiticizing in this particular instance, especially when further investigation shows that all of this brouhaha was purely speculative. In fact, the decreased tax break would represent at most 1% of the gross budget of any of these companies. Since states have been spending the last year or so trying to absorb budget shortfalls vastly greater than that, it seems reasonable to assume that AT&T, through some MBA smartness, could figure out a way to survive their lost tax break without sticking it to consumers and employees. In other words, this was all just a tempest in a teapot and to the best of my knowledge the Post was the only news outlet that even bothered to talk about it.

2. Against my better judgement, I watched Bill Maher the other night and was surprised to see that Bill was being reasonable. He wasn't calling names; he made no random attacks on organized religion; he seemed to realize that Obama got what it was possible to get (no public option, alas) and it was time to move on. His panel had his usual two liberals and one conservative and, like all of his panels, spent the entire evening interrupting each other and not listening to a thing anybody had to say. The conservative guy put on the typical conservative "I-Know-Something-You-Don't-Know" grin and interrupted every speaker with some completely unsubstantiated certainties that health care would bring our country down. When Maher mentioned the Congressional Budget Office's projections, the conservative asshole simply dismissed the CBO and anyone who would actually give it any credence as ludicrous.

The CBO has been around since 1974 and since that time has been an integral part of every legislative action in Washington. All bills are filtered through the CBO to assess any impact, unforseen or otherwise, on the budget. According to my reading, their predictions are as accurate as any other similar organ on Wall Street.

As I understand it, the argument against the CBO in this particular instance rests on the idea that many of the facets and stipulations of the complex bill will never come into fruition; therefore, the bill will be a budget buster. If that is the case, why do we have a CBO? Wouldn't we save money just to abolish it and instead just use the projections of the Republican National Committee? Their prudent use of money is, after all, well established.

The CBO is comprised of an impressive list of economists and business gurus (is that an oxymoron?). They look at the way things are and assess the impact any new legislation might have on that picture. They do it in a bi-partisan way. They seem to be the only game in town.

To give you an idea of the CBO's accuracy, it predicted that President Bush's tax cuts way back in 2000 would result in a 1.8 trillion dollar deficit. They were right. The chances are excellent that they are right again.

3. I was recently blown away by an article in The Atlantic ("Man versus Afghanistan" April 2010). It was a typical analysis of the situation that spoke to the morass we find ourselves in, but also offered some real possibility of hope. The thing that fascinated me the most was the idea that the Afghans (Afghanistan has the highest illiteracy rate in the world) really have no idea why we are there. They don't keep up with The New York Times and they hardly ever read The Drudge Report. They don't know about the history of our involvement in the region. They only know that we are invading their country. Also, given the fact that life expectancy in Afghanistan is 44 years, we are trying to talk reason to a country and an insurgency populated mainly by illiterate 17 year olds. I've never fully comprehended that situation before now.

4. Play Dates! I saw a report somewhere that talked about the phenomenon of youngish parents setting up play dates for their children. I guess that means that parents go out and find friends for their kids to play with instead of letting them wander over to the playground, or the back alley to make connections of their own. I think that is appalling! I remember three year old Franny sitting on the sidewalk in front of our new house in our new neighborhood yelling "Friends! I need friends!" It worked and I didn't have to do anything except smile and love her. I don't know if she still employs that method, but she always seems to have plenty of people who like to hang out with her. Youngish parents take note.