Page 4 - Dinuba Sentinel 4-18-19 E-edition

Opinion
In My OpinionTitle
A4 | Thursday, April 18,, 2019
Fred Hall - Publisher Rick Curiel - Editor
To provide some perspective for the rationale for this column, I must advise
you that it is being written on the morning of 15 April—tax day! There is nothing which focuses the mind more than having to sign the check and realize just how much money one has invested in the operation
of this hyper-bloated government
of ours. Any sane individual will question whether the bureaucrats are making better use of all this money than those of us in the private sector. I.R.S. Collections are staggering and the Democrats want more to give away in wasteful social programs and special interest support.
How did we ever get to the point that, in total, taxes take almost half of what we earn? Let’s take a look at the scam and how it’s perpetrated.
Next to a “sin tax” levied on alcohol or cigarettes, the easiest tax increase to get or bond issue to pass would be for our often-dysfunctional educational system. Tell the voters that it’s for the schools and will
help back-fill a shortage of funds to adequately educate our children in modern facilities, which will replace the run-down schools which are currently in service.
Truth is, if you’re like most of us, you have children or grandchildren attending the impacted school
or college and can’t find yourself possibly being so cold hearted as to turn down such a simple request. After all, it’s only a few more dollars a year and we’ve been taught, year after year, how important a proper education is to the future of our youngsters.
Factually, in view of the recent “pay to play” scandals involving colleges it gives one a reason to be skeptical of the educational complex and deserves a helluva lot closer inspection of where our taxpayer dollars are truly going. By the way, in this recent scandal it appears that the colleges themselves will not have to pay a price for the quasi-sanctioned cheating that was taking place right before their eyes. Perhaps because
so many of the programs currently
in place for scholarship money or assistance are little more than a scam of our generosity.
Perhaps we should “follow the money” and see if it is being wisely and prudently spent. Every marker which we have examined indicates that is not necessarily the case. As one would do with any business, let’s examine how the ever increasing funding is being used.
During a recent poll charting school activity from 1970 to 2010, researchers discovered the growth of students amounted to 8.6 percent, while the growth of non-teaching staff (administrative) burgeoned
by 130 percent. This is punctuated by little growth in actual teaching personnel. FordhamFoundation found that “states could have saved more than $24 billion annually if that increased/decreased the employment of administrators and other non- teaching staff at the same rate as students between 1992 and 2009.”
Even with the spending of all that money, test scores and graduation
Guest Column
Fred Hall
rates show little evidence of improvement despite this explosive growth of non-teaching positions.
The largest segment of that increase in administrative and non-
teaching positions was for teacher aides—employees who work in the classroom, giving students individual attention, often children with special needs.
It is my absolute conviction that we should eliminate Federal oversight and regulation of education and educational curriculum to wit.
The passage of laws like the Disabilities Education Act and the Bilingual Education acts contributed significantly to the greater need for teachers’ aides.
A study by Fordham University discovered that a higher number of teacher aides generally corresponded to a greater presence of children with individualized education plans. That study also concluded that special needs kids are not the only reason for increased personal. It notes that “during roughly the same time period, schools were further burdened with obligations to provide special programs and services for youngsters with drug issues, health challenges, sex-and-sometimes- pregnancy, homelessness, and a host of family challenges.”
It just seems that so many of these so-called “challenges” fall within
the purview of a parent and not our school system.
We’ve produced a whole generation of the “everybody gets a trophy” youngsters who were dropped on
the ground at the finish line by
our educational system, untaught, insecure and unable to compete in any sort of global market. They have been told they are perfect in every way and see no reason to adapt to the reality of the world as it truly
is. Somebody lied to them along the way to protect their precious feelings. Competition around the world may not have gotten the message about how special our kids are.
The only realistic fix for a problem such as this is to improve the entire system. Investment should be made in those who are doing the actual teaching and not in people whose main function is administrative or oversight. Our schools should not be considered a social experiment. Curriculum should be structured to provide children with an education, which will help them to compete in a world that is inherently competitive. Nothing is to be gained by all
the politically correct crap being espoused by academics throughout high school and college.
Spend money on things that will pay dividends and teach true worldly survival skills!
But, as always, that’s only one man’s opinion.
Fred Hall is publisher of the Dinuba Sentinel.
Guest Column
MDemocrats are promoting infaticide
illions of Americas were sickened and appalled in For today’s socialist Democrats, recent months as the left- wing governor of New January 22, 1973 should be a national York signed legislation authorizing abortion up holiday, possibly as a replacement
to the moment of birth. Governor Cuomo’s fellow Democrats cheered lustily as his pen met paper. Similarly, the Democrat governor of Virginia who claims to be a physician and who ridiculed African-Americans while in medical school, spoke casually of allowing an infant to die after delivery as he endorsed legislation in his state which would have permitted abortion after birth! Not to be undone in their rush to embrace infanticide, all but three Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted to reject a bill that would have saved the lives of babies who survived abortions.
As a physician myself and as a father, I can only feel shame for my adopted country where such barbaric actions could take place and where one of our major political parties embraces abortion as a holy sacrament, the all-important ritual of what can only be called a death cult of human sacrifice. Today’s Democrats would make even the Aztecs blush.
The sorry saga of abortion in the United States can be traced to the cultural nihilism of the late 1960s, which led a number of states to liberalize their laws against abortion. Let us recall that under President John F. Kennedy, abortion was a crime in all fifty states. California Governor Ronald Reagan agonized and agonized over signing the Beilenson Therapeutic Abortion Act in 1967. He finally signed it, very reluctantly
and regretted it for the rest of his life. He never envisioned that it would be used to allow abortions for almost any reason a psychiatrist or other mental health “professional” could dreamup. NewYorkfollowedin1970.
However, January 22, 1973 was the true day that should live in infamy for anyone who believes in the sanctity of innocent human life. On that day, seven justices on the U.S. Supreme Court – many of them senescent fossils from the Roosevelt and Eisenhower eras – usurped the role of fifty popularly-elected state legislatures and imposed their vision of abortion law on the nation through an abomination called Roe v. Wade. Legislating from the bench, Justice Harry Blackmun constructed a complicated framework of trimesters (which he admitted were “arbitrary”) to declare that the so-called “right to privacy” is “broad enough” to encompass
a woman killing her unborn baby. It is interesting to note that the “right to privacy” does not actually exist. It is found nowhere in the United States Constitution. Nowhere.
It’s one of those things, as President Trump would say that “they just make up.” And, this invented “right” has cost the lives of 60 million unborn Americans over the last forty-five years, which is about equal to the entire population of Italy. Think of the contribution those 60 million souls would have made to our country and to the world, in terms of math, medicine, science and technology, theatre, the arts, and yes, even politics. Their contributions alone to the Social Security system might have made the program solvent!
Dr. James Veltmeyer
for Thanksgiving. However, even
the Roe v. Wade decision is not anywhere sufficient to satisfy the radical extremists who now control the Democrat Party. Roe only permitted unrestricted abortion in the first trimester but accepted some state limitations in the second and third
trimesters. Today’s Democrats want abortion for any reason, at any time, up to the moment of birth and even after birth. This is indeed the insane agenda of a Party that is completely off the rails.
Of course, the Democrat Party, which is largely funded
by the abortion industry and Planned Parenthood ( which sells the body parts of aborted babies in a particularly gruesome fundraiser ) wants people to believe this is just
a matter of women’s rights. Of course, at least half of the
60 million abortions in this country terminated the lives of baby girls. Women themselves are largely victims of the very profitable abortion industry as they are lied to repeatedly
to prevent them from understanding the true consequences of their actions and the dangers abortion poses to women’s health, both physical and mental. As a physician, I can state categorically that abortion poses a greater risk to women than delivery, even if it is a complicated delivery or a deformed
or disabled child is involved. With the technologies available today, an unborn baby can survive on its own at five months and there is almost never a threat to a mother’s life by carrying a baby to term.
The socialist Democrats have come full-circle, from a
time when abortion was illegal and considered a horrendous crime under their party heroes, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, to today when they cheer Andrew Cuomo and Ralph Northam in signing or endorsing abortion to
the moment of birth or after. In adopting their radical pro- abortion program, the socialist Democrats are just one step away from actually forcing abortions on women as they have done for years in Communist China to enforce their draconian “one-child”policy. EspeciallyifAlexandriaOcasio-BigMouth decrees that future population growth (except through illegal immigration) be stopped as it might contribute to “climate change.”
After all, coercion is what socialism is all about. And, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Queen Alexandria are just contemporary examples of history’s greatest despots who seek power and control over the rest of us who, once our firearms are confiscated, will be unable to resist.
Dr. James Veltmeyer is a prominent La Jolla physician voted “Top Doctor” in San Diego County in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017.
Do women get to be experts?
Was that sexist? Did he treat me that way because I’m a woman? Or would everything that just happened be exactly the same if I were a man?
Those are familiar questions for women. For as many times
when you can know for sure you’ve experienced sexism, there are so many more times when you can’t be sure — but you wonder. For me right now, most of the questions are coming from my
new job. I’m in grad school for sociology, but I’m an avid hiker and backpacker when I’m not studying. I decided to take a part time job at an outdoor gear retailer.
I am a woman, I am short, and I look a decade younger than my age.
I’m used to all of the usual nonsense solo women backpackers get: people think we aren’t safe in the woods alone, or well- meaning men assume we can’t lift our own backpacks and offer to help, or they ask if we’re just like Cheryl Strayed, the woman who wrote about her 1,000 mile solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in her bestselling book Wild.
Mostly it’s not offensive. It just gets old.
Now that I’m in a position to advise all levels of hikers, from novice to expert, on their gear, I suspect my gender plays into my interactions in another way. I can’t prove it, but I suspect that the advice I give would be trusted more if I were a man.
As a sociologist, I know that people interpret my behavior
in relation to their expectations of a woman’s gender role. I’m expected to be nurturing. If I step out of line, I become “shrill” or “bossy.”
Womanhood becomes a real drag when I’m in roles I am qualified for and my expertise is questioned in ways it would not be if I were a man.
Jill Richardson
Masculinities scholar R.W. Connell
found that middle class men express their masculinity through expertise and knowledge.
It’s not true that nobody will ever see a woman as an expert. Nor is it true that all men are seen as experts. It simply means that because expertise is seen as a “masculine” trait, we find it easier to believe a man is an expert than a woman is one.
And when we do this, we don’t see ourselves as sexist. Although our impressions of other are colored by the biases we all hold about
race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, and so on, they feel so natural that we don’t think we are biased at all. When people are biased but unaware of their biases, it makes it very difficult to discuss or change those biases.
When I advise a customer that the gear they’re buying is unsuitable for the hike they’re planning, or that the hike they are planning will be unpleasant at best and dangerous at worst, they often don’t believe me.
Do I just look like a silly little girl who couldn’t possibly provide expert advice about backpacking? Or would they equally blow off a man giving the same advice? I’ll never know.
Being a woman doesn’t just mean experiencing clear-cut, obvious instances of sexism. It also means constantly wondering if you would have been treated with more respect if you were a man, then wondering what the heck to do about it — and most of the time, doing nothing at all.
Distributed by OtherWords.org.
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