by WALTER BRASCH With the nation’s unemployment rate hovering about 10 percent, recent high school graduates are escaping reality by going to college, and college grads are avoiding reality by entering grad school. The result is that it now takes an M.A. to become a shift manager at a fast food restaurant. Colleges have stayed ahead of the Recession by becoming business models, where students are “inventory...

There is a wonderful spring-fed swimming pool a short drive from our mountain retreat that even during the dog days of summer is refreshingly cool. The regulars who congregate there include a half dozen folks in their seventies and eighties. Most are widows. The only guy is a retired Air Force fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran. The gals include two retired school teachers and a librarian. All are moderates,...

FOR THOSE WHO CAME, BUT COULD NOT STAY While you and I were being born, growing “in the little bread oven”… as it was often said back then… there were other little babies across the world, suddenly thrust into real ovens, and they were not allowed to grow any more. Don’t tell me that that is the past and none of our concern. This is in cellular memory, and we are here to make certain that we speak for...

it’s not like in the film Amadeus, wherein the dunderheaded Emperor pettishly snaps to Mozart about his newest composition, “Too many notes, too many notes.” The Emporerr didnt know what he was talking about. But, a sizeable group of people in the USA do know when there are Too many laws, Too many laws! I have been thinking for some time when our local congressman asked us to help find docs...

Was this tragedy waiting to happen? Are Anders Behring Breivik’s murders another brutal manifestation of the hysteria that started building up post 9/11? George W. Bush and his team in the White House began an era of hatred and revenge, and have added enough fuel to create confusion and fire to last a few decades. We can still see widespread smoke, if not flames, in the West and elsewhere. Was the fire...

As the Asian stock market is about to open and our elected Feds on all sides have not come to final terms about an USA budget plan/deficit reduction/credit extension, et al, that is either stepped or aboslute, it may be that damage comes to other nations, not only our own. The deadline-darers seem to have set aside that there is far more at stake than they themselves and their parties. We all are at stake. And,...

A state government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation may be coming to a state near you. If you like your laws drafted and passed by corporate politicians for the corporations which own them, apparently you can call ALEC to arrange it. A secret group, until now, whose sole purpose is to diminish your rights in favor of corporations has been exposed here. If you like tobacco, oil,...

Your moment of geek For the first time since it was discovered by humans in 1846 the planet Neptune has completed an orbit around the sun.

Gary Mason began his column in Thursday’s Globe and Mail by reminiscing about the good old days: Once upon a time, getting money to attend university in Canada was easy. There were non-repayable grants available from the government, and there were lots of good paying summer jobs. But times have changed. The governments which nurtured the baby boomers now insists that the next generations are going to...

Yesterday, National Public Radio (NPR) reported that around 60,000 teachers got a pink slip this week in the United States. We can debate the reasons for the layoffs but, in the final analysis, in the race to balance federal, state and local budgets these teachers were expendable. As my readers probably already know, I am an engineer in a sea of teachers in my family. I know some of the personal costs involved...

From the current debate over whether a college education is worth the price in money and time for every American child, a memory seven decades old arises as testimony to the life-changing difference those four years used to make for generations born to immigrant parents. The teacher’s name, improbably, was Mr. Crabb. His grim face rose from a stiff rounded collar anchored by a pinched tie. His suits,...

Three years ago on June 22nd, American comedian, social critic, actor and author George Carlin died at the age of 71 from heart failure at a Santa Monica, CA hospital. He had a wickedly twisted yet objective take on life, politics, religion, and the English language. He understood the darker side of human nature and was always ready to explain life to his audiences from his uniquely critical perspective. Carlin’s...

Yaakov Kirschen, Dry Bones This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

If Republicans understood what was going on behind the scenes with the U.S. military they’d probably blow a gasket. As Nicholas Kristof notes, the armed forces are downright liberal and socialist, which is to say that in many respects they represent the antithesis of contemporary Republicanism. First of all, they are a huge melting pot that draws soldiers, sailors and airmen from diverse backgrounds,...

Today is the day of the great Palin Email Dump. Reporters and pundits will pour over as many words as they can read hoping to find something scandalous, salacious, controversial or at least interesting. Their findings and interpretations will flood the media and the blogosphere for days. Was that Anthony Weiner I just heard breathing a sigh of relief? Much of what has been, and will be, said about Palin...

I wrote a TMV post on 4/22/11 “Who Needs an Education Anymore” wherein I questioned the value of a college education in the 21st Century. Many other people have been thinking along the same lines for even longer, and in greater depth and clarity. An excellent post on this topic was published today by long-time blogger Charles Hugh Smith on his very informative and thought-provoking blog “Of...

Why are there so many poor, unemployed, uneducated and socially dysfunctional people in the U.S. – once the undisputed wealthiest and most advanced nation on earth? The U.S. has a huge number of demoralized, disengaged, and disheartened people. The recent economic news is nothing to celebrate when it may indicate a deeper economic and political crisis to come. On an average or median per capita basis, the...

by Walter Brasch It isn’t cheap to attend a high school prom. Emulating Miley Cyrus, Megan Fox, or any celebrity that People magazine naively believes is one of the 50 most beautiful people in the whole wide world, is an avalanche of expenses that could easily exceed the cost of a year’s supply of beer for a college freshman. Americans spent about $6.6 billion on proms in 2008, according to the...

Seems that it is not as unusual as some would have us think

I may not agree on a philosophical, emotional, political or economic basis, but as a practical matter, we simply have to eliminate all discretionary domestic spending, and drastically reduce Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. This may lead our nation quickly to a corporate feudalism. But if there are no plausible alternatives to the declining status quo, we might as well embrace dystopia and make the worst...

I get to see Ezekiel Isaac Malekar at least twice a year. A pleasant person wearing a kippah, Malekar is a permanent invitee at many Indian government’s national functions, including the birth and death anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi at the Gandhi Smriti, in the heart of New Delhi, where Gandhi was assassinated in 1948. Sitting next to a Maulvi, a Muslim teacher/scholar, Malekar recites passages from...

It seems that when it comes to the Middle East, President Obama can’t win. With blistering criticism from Israelis over his assertion that peace talks with the Palestinians be based on the 1967 borders, this article from Samidoon of the Palestinian Territories rips into Obama as insincere about wanting justice for Arabs, and criticizes America for long favoring Arab despots and Israel. For Samidoon,...

The factoid, from the June Harper’s Index, sent my blood pressure north and my fingers to the keyboard: Amount of federal money that went to National Public Radio in 2010: $2.7 million To Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University: $446 million WTH?

Douglas Blackmon: In the first sentences of an opinion issued last week by the state Supreme Court, Chief Justice Carol Hunstein declared without qualification that the Georgia Charter School Commission was illegal because of an “unbroken … constitutional authority” existing since the adoption of the 1877 Constitution giving only “local boards of education” the power to create k-12 public schools....

Jared Loughner, who killed six and wounded thirteen in the January 8 assassination attempt on Congresswoman Giffords, had a troubling and well documented history of mental and emotional disturbance. An upcoming competency hearing is scheduled in court to determine his ability to stand trial. More than 200 emails have now been released as well as other records from his time at Pima Community College. A pattern...