Thursday, December 10th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

First published at The Huffington Post on December 9, 2009.

One of my closest friends, a brilliant, gifted, dedicated teacher at California State University, Los Angeles, was recently informed that because of budget cuts she is to be laid-off. In my conversations with her over the past few months (she knew this might be coming) something became very clear to me.  It would appear that “we the people” of California would rather take money out of the pockets of the most important and egregiously underpaid professionals in our society than pay a little more in taxes.

Teachers in California are being forced either off the payroll entirely or are being given so few classes to teach that they will need to find other work to supplement their already abysmal salaries. With unemployment in the Los Angeles area topping 10%, this is a sorry prospect for them indeed.

So rather than hit up the wealthiest Californians and most successful California businesses (like the oil companies) for a little extra dough they’d never miss, our representatives in Sacramento along with the Govenator are hacking furiously away at the public school system and other vital social services as if every well-off Californian has made it clear that they are unwilling to have their taxes increase by even the smallest amount.

I‘ve lived in California my entire life. I do well and don’t pay much state income tax (never have), yet I watch year-after-year as a supposedly liberal state congress led by a usually centrist governor fight and wrangle as they allow education and social services to suffer at the effect of budgetary deficiencies. Does anyone making more that a teacher’s salary in this state really think it’s fair for those worse-off than they are to carry the burden of our current economic downturn?  Obviously our lawmakers do, but they’re not representing me in this, that’s for certain.

This isn’t just about dollars and cents or teachers’ salaries, either. Along with cuts to education come  higher fees and fewer classes offered to students who can barely afford their current curriculum. It will cost them far more now and take a great deal more time to graduate. These people are the future wage-earners of the state. It doesn’t take an economist to tell you that the higher one’s level of education, the higher one’s earnings tend to be. It’s a no-brainer. People who earn more pay more in taxes and spend more in the economy. This is good for Caaleefoarneea, Arnold!

But for those who are in charge, raising taxes on the oil companies or the wealthiest businesses and  individuals in the state (and there are a great many of them) is entirely out of the question. Even though young teachers who have recently entered the teaching profession are losing their jobs. Even though Education graduates have no prospects whatsoever as they exit even the best universities with high honors. Even though everyone is in agreement that a well-educated populace has a positive effect on absolutely every aspect of the quality of life of a community.

Every state in the country is suffering along these lines. Many are much worse-off than California because they don’t have a ridiculously wealthy mother-lode of residents and companies to even consider tapping.   Schwarzenegger has the magic wand in his thick fingers that could readily alleviate all the financial woes the state currently faces.

The California Legislature needs to stop catering to the greedy, ivory tower residents that would put the likes of Meg Whitman in the governor’s mansion. They need to stop punishing the people at the bottom and in the middle with regressive tax schemes and unconscionable budget cuts by representing everyone in this state, not just their peers.

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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 by admin.

Cenk Uyger makes a great case for the latter here:

The Irrefutable Stupidity of Sarah Palin 

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Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

I’ve long been a current-events junkie. This is an addiction that for many years was very easily and efficiently maintained by staying up on the news through a couple of reliable sources, such as  through the  online versions of The LA Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal as well as National Public Radio. My main areas of interest are world events, entertainment, business, and Washington politics, pretty much in that order.  I don’t watch cable news or local news, but, oddly enough, I know a great deal about what’s being reported on television, primarily because of online sites such as Media Matters, Think Progess, and The Huffington Post to name a few.

While this has given me a great deal more insight and understanding as to why so many people are ill-informed and/or misinformed, it has given me a rash as well.

In the old days I was blissfully unaware of the positions held by pseudo-journalistic personalities such as Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck, and Scarborough, and I was also largely oblivious of those I might tend more to agree with like Olbermann, Maddow, Cooper, or Brown.  For me, getting my news fix had nothing to do with the people presenting the news except in terms of a particular reporter’s expertise (such as NPR’s Cokie Roberts reporting on the Supreme Court).

There was a time when if someone told me something crazy like they “don’t trust the United States Census”  I would have fallen slack-jawed and silent with no ability to comprehend how anyone could have come up with the strange idea that the US Census could be something to be feared. In this case in particular, the person’s census statistics haven’t changed in any significant way since the last census 10 years ago, so their answers on the current census would be largely the same. Even so, the Census had somehow become something to be feared. Now that my awareness has been expanded to include television news, I no longer wonder how a person gets such a harebrained idea, because after being indoctrinated in the ways of disinformational media the answer is obvious. “You read Drudge or watch Fox News on a regular basis, don’t you?”

So while I appreciate that I no longer wonder about such things, I find myself in a constant state of perturbation over the unbelievable level of intentionally misleading “news” with which people of limited intelligence are bombarded every day. So do I thank the aggregators and online watchdogs for keeping me informed about what the dark side is up to (known thine enemy and all that) or blame them for my inability to resist watching Glenn Beck’s “education” rally or Ann Coulter’s latest hate-strewn interview? Seriously, those  two make me want to hurl my PC through the window, but I can’t stop myself from watching them, and just as I start to calm down, them what would keep me informed heat up another spoon of the stuff for me to mainline.

I know I’m not alone in this. I can tell from the comment sections of those same infuriating posts that this is wearing many of us down. The irony is that even as  I complain about people like Beck and Coulter getting far too much airtime, positing that if they weren’t given so much attention they wouldn’t be able to sway the sheep so easily, online news outlets are giving them more attention, and I, in turn, am giving them MY attention. And it doesn’t stop there. I occasionally am so outraged that I forward the link to my friends and colleagues, giving those same people who should be ignored even more attention!

I understand that we must remain vigilant against intolerance, fear, hate, and prejudice. I am thankful that I know what the real “evildoers” look like and that I know what they have to say, however, I have long been aware of the Ku Klux Klan and I don’t need to see interminable video of their cross-burning  events to maintain that awareness. I further understand that it’s my responsibility to filter what I allow in to my perception on a daily basis, but when The Huffington Post chooses to put headlines like: “Commandant Beck Not Joking Anymore”  on the front page, I find it easier to  look away from a bad car crash on the highway.

I know there’s a great deal of interest in this sort of thing just judging from the sheer number of comments such a post will garner, but it bothers me that news sources I’m addicted to which I expect to maintain their poise and position above the fray, sometimes fall victim to sensationalizing a story with its headlines, or worse, running a piece merely because of its outrageousness (such as anything Rush Limbaugh has to say).

I’m not in any way suggesting content be eliminated, but just as in the old days of newsprint journalism, certain stories deserve Page 1 status and others belong just before the Sports Section. For legitimate news, this continues to be a better rule of thumb than the TV news mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

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