Macpinion

SUCKERS "R" US

2007-03-21T03:21:00.000-07:00

By

Tom Molloy

In my opinion, middle class Americans are being screwed by their government. Over the next few months, I intend to write a series of blogs concerning the “Screwing of America”. The focus of this blog is the lousy health care system we have, the reasons we have it, and what we can about it.

Our elected representatives are bought and paid for by those special interests that contribute to their campaigns. Although many middle class Americans are aware of the power of special interests, most have lapsed into a state of apathy. The attitude seems to be: “You can’t fight city hall”.
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I just read a synopsis of a three-year old World Health Organization report that evaluates the delivery of health care in participating countries. According to this report, France is the best in the world at delivering health care to its citizens and Italy is in second place. The UK is 18th and the United States is 37th. Yes, you read it right, 37th. This report presents an array of medical facts and figures. Some of these, such as infant mortality rate, life expectancy, and post-operative infection rates are easy for a layperson to understand. No country received a perfect score. WHO found deficiencies in every country’s delivery of health care, but when you compare the US delivery to the delivery of the top five countries, it is embarrassing.

We are the richest country in the world and we are rated 37th in the delivery of health care. Why aren’t we in first place? There are two serious impediments to our ability improve the delivery of health care. First, there is the insurance industry which makes billions in profits from providing health insurance. Second, there are the right wing ideologues who fanatically oppose any further government involvement in health care. The right wing disinformation campaign has led Americans to believe government involvement in health care leads tO failure.

The insurance industry pours money into congressional coffers to maintain the status quo. Mind you, this is perfectly legal. Corporations can legally contribute to political campaigns. I am told that there is a legal distinction between a campaign contribution and a bribe, but I have difficulty distinguishing between the two. It all boils down to:”You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. The middle class had better start scratching because the eight wingers are giving away the country to the super rich at bargain prices.

It is a national disgrace that 46 million Americans do not have health insurance and no one knows how many others have inadequate health insurance. I believe we are the only industrialized nation that does not have universal health insurance. Middle class Americans are increasingly finding themselves without health insurance and live in fear of the day illness strikes One of the leading causes of bankruptcy in our country is inability to pay medical bills

Whenever a representative proposes any government intervention to give all Americans access to quality health care, the right wing ideologues, willful or unwitting shills for the insurance industry, swing into action. The Fox News talking heads launch a disinformation barrage. They immediately hurl the ugliest words in their lexicon at the proponent. “Socialist” and “liberal”, they cry!” For right winger ideologues, this ends the argument.

But for those of us who are too obtuse to see the nexus between socialism and the proposal (That is to say, we know the definition of socialism), they whip out anecdotes. It seems that almost everyone at Fox News knows someone who has been subjected to horrendous treatment at some medical facility in Europe or Canada. The Fox News talking heads tell us how hordes of Canadians, distrusting their system, escape to seek treatment here. I have gone out of my way to ask Canadians how they like their health care system. They express satisfaction with it. Many Europeans and Canadians think we are barbarians because we don’t have universal health insurance.

The ideologues, somewhat disingenuously, aver that everyone in America has access to health care. They do and they don’t. When illness strikes, the uninsured frequently have to avail themselves of a hospital emergency room. Typically, unless it is a matter of imminent life or death, they leave the emergency room with the minimum treatment necessary so they can see their private physician. They might also leave with a diagnosis and a prescription. They definitely get a whopping bill. If they need surgery or prolonged treatment, they can try one of the hospitals or clinics that treat the indigent. Good luck with their open heart surgery.

Here is a true anecdote. I lived in Germany for three years. One morning I went to throw out the garbage. I got my foot got caught in a crevice in the thick ice on the road and fell with my ankle stuck in the crevice. It turned out I had to have surgery to repair the ankle and had to stay in the hospital for 8 days because my doctor was afraid blood clots could develop. From the ambulance ride to the hospital until day I left the hospital, I received outstanding care. I was in a two-person room that was comfortable and squeaky clean. The doctors, nurses and technicians were thoroughly professional and the food was remarkably good.

When I got the bill, I was astounded. The total was $2600 My US insurance covered the cost. They did ask for an itemized bilk and got a lecture from the German administrator about how wasteful itemization was. She said it was too expensive to itemize. She explained there were two basic charges; surgery and hospital stay. A day’s hospital say was a fixed price. There were three categories of surgery, each with a fixed price.
I am not an accountant, but it sounds as if great savings could be wrung from such a system.

One evening in Germany, my wife had a nose bleed which wouldn’t stop. We went to the local hospital emergency room and they stopped the bleeding, but the doctor suggested that my wife be transported to the big Munich Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital for tests. She spent about five days and the treatment was fantastic. The cause of the bleeding turned out to be nothing serious. The total bill was about $1200

But, we the right wing bombards us with negative comments about such health care systems. As for government involvement, in some European countries, the governments are the insurer and you can choose any doctor you want. In other countries, the government is the insurer and provider of health care. In these latter countries, generally choice of doctors is more limited.

Let’s look at the heath care delivery system from the perspective of the Europeans and Canadians. Why wouldn’t they jump at the chance to adopt our system that costs twice as much and excludes a large number of their citizens?

Wake up, America!

The War against Terrorism

2006-12-22T18:17:00.000-08:00

by

Tom Molloy

A Red Herring Beginning to Smell like Rotten Fish

The attack on 9/11 was a wake up call, but we are still asleep. Instead of punishing the terrorists and their supporters, we are punishing ourselves.

Our President declared war on terrorism and then initiated actions that were more detrimental to the United States than to the enemy. It’s as if we are puppets and the terrorists are pulling the strings.
This so-called war on terrorism is a red herring. It will lead to our defeat, not to victory over the terrorists.

Let’s review the record. In response to 9/11, we occupied Afghanistan and we created a massive homeland security apparatus. We declared victory in Afghanistan, a country in which we may be bogged down for the next century. Our claims of victory are belied by mounting casualties and calls for more troops and more money. As for homeland security, we have spent billions of dollars and have learned that, no matter how much money we spend, we are still vulnerable. We haven’t even scratched the surface of our vulnerability.

Then there is the invasion of Iraq, a fiasco of colossal magnitude, costing around half a trillion dollars. I really don’t understand why we invaded Iraq. Whatever the rationale, the war in Iraq is an enormous financial burden. Moreover, this war is not making us more secure; on the contrary, Iraq has become a breeding ground for terrorists.

The common thread among our actions in response to terrorism is that each one costs a lot of money—money we don’t have. We are spending money as if it were confetti and, if we don’t stop hemorrhaging money; the value of the dollar will approximate that of confetti.

So after spending enormous amounts of money, what have we accomplished? Are there fewer terrorists? No, there are more. Are we in less danger of being attacked by terrorists? No, many experts think that we are in greater danger of a terrorist attack than we were before we declared war on terrorism. Moreover, anti-Americanism is rife in every corner of the world.

We have little or nothing to show for the massive amounts of money we have spent. According to some economists, we are on the road to insolvency and according to others we have already arrived.

There isn’t enough money in the world to protect us against terrorism. I have no doubt that Al-Qaeda is jubilant that we are spending so much for little. Terrorism will not be defeated by our money, but by resolute, decisive, draconian action.

The day we spent the first extra dollar on homeland security after 9/11 was the day that we started to lose the war. The very fact that we are diverting billions of dollars from important needs to establish an enormous security apparatus is a major victory for the terrorists. Education, health care, and defense are being short –changed while we flush money down the toilet.

Uncle Sam has become Uncle Sap. Is there some moral imperative that says we have to permit ourselves to be abused by these cheeky bastards? Or, are we moral cowards because we won’t face up to what we have to do to rid ourselves of this scourge called terrorism?

Up to this point, Hollywood has not been writing the script for the war on terror; Riyadh, Damascus, and Tehran have. Our declaration of war was an acceptance of an invitation to play by their rules. We don’t need “no stinking war”. It’s time for us to rewrite the script.

The new script should read like this:

The United States of America wishes to make the following announcement.

The war on terrorism is over. We have won.

We simply will not tolerate any more terrorist attacks. We will bomb the snot out of any country that supports terrorism.

In the event of another terrorist attack, we will annihilate entire cities in the country that supported the attack. (We will not employ nuclear weapons. There are some marvelous new weapons in our inventory that you really don’t wan to meet)

In the event that we do not know which country funded the act of terrorism, we will bring devastation to all those countries that are suspect. Our reaction will be swift and sure. There will be no warnings or negotiations. There will be only devastation on a scale that the world has never witnessed.

Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria are now funding terrorists and insurgents in Iraq. They will desist immediately or they will cease to exist. If their governments do not comply with our wishes, citizens of these countries should evacuate the cities or they will die.

Forget threats and talk of oil embargos. We simply will not put up with you or your crap anymore.

We regard citizens of countries that support terrorism as enemy combatants.

We now urge countries that trained terrorists to eliminate them before they become the cause of your destruction.

Have a nice day!

2006-12-16T23:58:00.000-08:00

Iran Back in its Box

By

Tom Molloy

Iran has been a pain in the ass since the 1970’s and is now in the process of becoming lethal. I have been reading so-called experts’ comments about Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. There seems to be a consensus among the experts that there is no viable military option to thwart Iran’s entrance into the nuclear club. Although most experts recommend diplomacy and, if necessary, sanctions. I get the impression that few, if any, believe that diplomacy or sanctions will be effective.

Our sanctimonious European allies, taking the word "peace” in vain, have forged lucrative business connections with Iran. They accuse us of being warmongers. Could it be that these paragons of rectitude are just greedy, short–sighted profiteers? At any rate, we can’t count on many of our European allies to support any aggressive policy toward Iran. With respect to the Russians and Chinese, they have profitable commercial ties with Iran and are not all interested in severing these ties. It is obvious that the UN Security Council is not gong to take any action strong enough to deter the Iranians from developing nuclear technology

Although I am not an expert on Iran, I spent about a year and a half there before and during the revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. I was impressed by the determination and resolve of those who overthrew the Shah. I also came away with the impression that Khomeini and his disciples were nuts.

The issue is not just what Iran intends to do, but what it is doing. Iran is providing total support to the Shiites in Iraq. That is to say, it’s complicit in killing American soldiers. The Bush administration seemingly chooses to ignore this problem.

In my opinion, the time for action has come. I disagree with the experts about the possibility of a viable military solution. In fact, I think there is an obvious military option that will put Iran back in its box. Just who am I to disagree with experts? I am someone who thinks that, if we listen to the experts in this instance, we are going to lose the war on terrorism. I think it’s important to stop the Iranians now. These guys are resolute, defiant and demented. They are supporting all forms of terrorism and sooner or later they are going to fund a devastating terrorist attack on the United States.

Given the resources, think how easy it would be to shoot down a dozen planes in one day with shoulder fired missiles or to plant ten nuclear suitcase bombs in the downtown of 10 major cities. The guys running Iran hate us and they have the money to express this hatred in unspeakable ways. Now they are developing nuclear weaponry and our response is to engage in illusory diplomacy. No one believes that diplomacy per se will effect the desired changes in Iran’s behavior. These lunatics are going to going to bring about a terrorist act that is going t make 9/11 a footnote in the history books. Unless Iran knows that failure to change its behavior will result in awesomely severe consequences, diplomacy is a fool’s errand.

One of President Bush’s often stated bromides for continuing the Iraq campaign is: “We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” This is one of the cardinal tenets of the administration’s disinformation campaign. The implication is that the bad guys can’t spare 20, 50, or 100 guys to come over here and cause trouble. This, of course, is nonsense. I would accuse Bush of demagoguery, except that I really think he is dumb enough to believe what he is saying. We are not going to get a solution to the Iranian problem from an administration that thinks we are winning in Iraq.

The Iranians have turned the tables on us. The United States, the greatest power on earth, is desperate for crumbs from the negotiating table while the Iranians feast on our impotence. There is something very wrong with this picture.

What is the solution to the Iranian problem? How about overwhelming, devastating brute force? Let me suggest one option for the use of military force that would work.

Give the Iranians a list of instructions (note: instructions, not requests) and tell them that if they fail to comply with these instructions, we are gong to destroy a city (name the city) on a given date. Suggest that they evacuate the city. Tell them that, after this demonstration of power (no nuclear bombs, thank you), we are going to give them a week to comply. Lack of compliance will result in the loss of anther city each week. The catch is that we will not announce in advance which city will be the “City of the Week.” It will just be “Now you see it; now you don’t”. Inform the Iranians that any act of reprisal on their part will result in annihilation of their country. Iran will either comply with our instructions or there will be no more Iran. There will just be millions of people inhabiting piles of rubble. We might rename the country “Rubblestan”.

Can you imagine the entire Iranian urban population abandoning the cities? Total chaos. The Iranian government will cease to exist. The last thing on their minds will be developing nuclear weapons. If they want to be martyrs, let us help them on their way. They had better put in an order to paradise for a lot of virgins.

Now I ask the experts, “Is this a military option that will work? Damn right it will.

And just what will the rest of the world say? Most nations, including our Western and Asian allies, will hem and haw. You see, according to their rules, we must wait for Iran to take out a dozen of our cities with suitcase nuclear weapons before we react. Nevertheless, after the initial shock, I think these nations will feel a sense of relief that the Untied States assumed a leadership position. They will also feel a sense of relief that the United States has begun to enforce the “Pax Americana.”

In short, we have to make terrorism clearly inimical to Iran’s interests. As long as they think terrorism is in their interests, they will continue to support it. For the sake of my grandkids, the time has come to beat the snot out of these guys.

Arab-Israeli Conflict: Let's End It

2006-12-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

By

TOM MOLLOY

I have always been a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist, but it sometimes appears as if Israel is leading us around by the nose. I wonder if we were consulted before the recent invasion of Lebanon? I assume we were. If so, did we give our consent? Are we nuts? If we weren’t consulted or didn’t give our consent, are we letting Israel know in no uncertain terms that this aberrant behavior is unacceptable?

I don’t think this invasion of Lebanon was Israel’s finest hour. I don’t understand exactly what Israel wanted to gain from this stunt. At any rate, every country in the world assumes that we were complicit in this lunacy and we share the opprobrium equally with Israel. Whatever else the invasion was or wasn’t, it was a tremendous public relations coup for Israel’s opponents.

The Arabs vilify the USA because it is a strong supporter of Israel, but the USA does more to help the Palestinians financially than they do. It appears that Arab governments are more interested in exploiting the tension between the Israelis and Palestinians to divert attention from the lassitude, venality, corruption, and gross incompetence of their own regimes. I do not believe that these governments really desire a resolution of this conflict any more than Al Capone wanted an end to prohibition.

This whole Arab-Israeli conflict has become tedious and onerous for the United States. The world perceives us as supporters of Israel and enemies of the Palestinians. We should move heaven and earth to ensure that the Israelis and Palestinians reach a fair agreement. We must ensure that neither side obtains an unfair advantage over the other.

The time has come for Israel to sit down with Palestinians and reach an agreement. Unfortunately, Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist and refuses to negotiate. The Palestinians have a knack for choosing bad leadership. The worst enemy of the Palestinians is not Israel; it’s their own leadership. Arafat turned down the Clinton plan cold. This plan was close to being as good as it gets. The Palestinians launched the Intfada. There was no chance that the Intifada would succeed in changing Israel’s position. No Israeli government could give the appearance of giving into to terrorism. Killing Israelis was just an end it itself. It may have been gratifying to the Palestinian hoi polloi, but by the end of the Intifada, the per capita income of the Palestinians had plunged from about $3500 to $300.00. The Palestinian people bore the brunt

The Palestinian people, seemingly ever in pursuit of misery, then elected Hamas to govern them, thereby ensuring further impoverishment. The United States and other Western countries, not thrilled at the prospect of funding Hamas, an avowedly terrorist organization, drastically cut funding for the Palestinians.

Reportedly, a good deal of the money the US and European nations contributed to the Palestinians over the years was diverted by venal officials and squirreled away in foreign bank accounts. I have read that Arafat himself (a salaried civil servant) had socked away a princely sum. While the Palestinian people did without, the leadership gorged itself at the foreign aid trough. Mrs. Arafat’s shopping sprees in London became legendary. Reportedly, the money spent during one shopping spree far exceeded Arafat’s annual salary.

Israel has to either destroy the power of Hamas or compel Hamas to negotiate. Hamas is currently conducting frequent rocket attacks on Israel. In my opinion, Israeli responses to these attacks have been too feeble to dissuade Hamas from making these rocket attacks. Presently, Israel is responding proportionately to terrorist attacks. A rocket lands in Israel and Israel reacts by destroying a military facility or killing a Hamas leader or two. Each side is using enough force to irritate the other side, but not enough to dissuade the other side from using force. In fact, each application of violence strengthens enemy resolve and provokes the other side to employ more violence. This approach to the application of violence is futile.

Israel has the power to force Hamas to stop the attacks. It is time that Israel used this power. I would suggest that, to dissuade Hamas from using violence, Israel will have to engage in cumulative, disproportionate response (CDR). How does CDR work? First, Israel will have to divide up Palestinian occupied territory into large destructible units (LDUs) consisting of contiguous residences, factories, bridges, roads, power plants, schools, hospitals, shops etc. Israel should show the LDUs to the Palestinians and explain that each act of violence will result in the total destruction of one or more LDUs. If a suicide bomber kills 15 Israelis, Israel should respond by destroying a disproportionate number of LDUs--perhaps, the equivalent of a third of a city. The Palestinians have to understand that each terrorist act results in devastation. Of, course, the effect is cumulative. It won’t take the Palestinians long to figure out that, if they continue to launch terrorist attacks, they will be sitting on a pile of rubble. This would exert intolerable pressure on Hamas to negotiate.

At the same time, Israel has to be prepared to negotiate and reach an agreement. We should insist that the Israelis make a fair agreement with the Palestinians. Ultimately, this conflict has to end. It enormously complicates our relations with countries in the Middle East. We should, if necessary, dictate the terms of the agreement to the Israelis.

ENGLISHCIDE

2006-10-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

By

TOM MOLLOY

I hope I am not becoming a curmudgeonly old fuddy-duddy, but the misuse of language by some media professionals irks me. Specifically, I am accusing some Talking Heads of attempted Englishcide. Talking Heads make their living through the use of the English language. One would think the networks and local stations would insist on proper English usage.

TV’s Talking Heads are seemingly engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate our mother tongue. The Talking Heads on the local stations are the worst offenders, but those on the network and cable news programs are not far behind. Bring back Walter Cronkite!

I am going to point out three of the most common weapons in the arsenal of the Talking Heads assaulting my mother tongue.

1. Misuse of Copulative (Linking) Verbs.

When I was in elementary school, my 5th grade teacher, Sister Mary Tarcissia, introduced us to copulation (grammatical, not physical). We learned that some verbs, called copulative or linking verbs are followed by adjectives rather than adverbs.

Examples:

ADJECTIVE ADVERB

The food smells delicious. (The food smells deliciously).

John is becoming handsome. (Jack is becoming handsomely)

Jack grew weary. (Jack grew wearily

Even the hard-core Talking Heads probably wouldn’t utter any of the sentences with the adverbs because, aside from incorrect, they just don’t sound right.

However, there is one copulative verb that Talking Heads frequently abuse. Look at the short dialogue below.

Mary: How are you today?

Talking Head: I feel badly.

This usage seems to be growing. Does it sound familiar? The Talking head erroneously used a copulative verb followed by an adverb. Talking Heads who want to put on airs tend to use it. They radiate a sense of one-upmanship as they roll the /ly/on their tongues. Ironically many of these offenders are prone to utter sentences such as:

He plays bad.

When I hear someone say “I feel badly”, I ask,”Did you hurt your hand? ”This generally evokes quizzical looks.

2. Misuse of Pronominal Objects of Prepositions.

This increasingly common error usually occurs with the substitution of the fist person singular subjective pronoun “I” for the objective pronoun “me” Talking Heads who commit this atrocity often seem to have an attitude. It’s as if they are defiantly saying: “I’s got English and you doesn’t. ”

Occurring less frequently is the substitution of the third person subjective pronoun “he” for the objective pronoun “him” Those who maim English in this way apparently think that subjective pronouns don’t sound as sexy as objective pronouns. Maybe there is a metaphor here in the preference for objective pronouns. After all, it is the subject who has to initiate action: The object just has to sit back and receive it. Below are examples of these erroneous usages.

ERRONEOUS: Talking Head: It was a shock for Jack and I to hear the rumor that Bill O’Reilly is a closet Marxist.

CORRECT: It was a shock for Jack and me to hear the rumor that Bill O’Reilly is a closet Marxist.

ERRONEOUS: Talking Head: This was a great opportunity for he and I to tour the White House.

CORRECT: This was a great opportunity for him and me to tour the White House.

The objective of a preposition in English should be in the objective case.

3. Misuse of Conditional Sentences.

I have noted that some of my friends from such states as Wisconsin and Minnesota habitually use “would” in both clauses of unreal conditional sentences. I am not sure whether to label this as an error or as a feature of a dialect. At any rate, this usage is not standard educated English. This usage is also rampant among Talking Heads when they ad lib. I think Talking Heads should stick to Standard English.

NON-STANDARD: I would have come if would have told me.

STANDARD: I would have come if you had told me.

4. Closing Comments: I haven’t researched this, but my general impression is that schools of journalism are competing with schools of education to recruit the academic bottom feeders. I think many Talking Heads would benefit more from elementary school than a school of journalism. Of course, because of the massive and inexorable dumbing down of the curricula in our schools, copulative verbs, object pronouns and conditional sentences may now be taught in graduate school rather then 5th grade. Based on news reports, it appears that teachers are now enthusiastically teaching physical copulation to their eager students. How times have changed! News reports have not mentioned grammatical copulation.

I just discovered Fox and Friends, the Fox Network early morning show. I was going to assess their usage of the English language, but I became captivated by the vacuous comments made by the three Talking Heads who moderate the show. You can almost hear the air whistling in one ear and the other. I have to watch them again. I may do a separate piece about that show,

A Perspective on the Abortion Imbroglio

2006-10-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

By

Tom Molloy

Abortion is one of the most contentious issues of our time. The two camps, the Right to Life and the Right to Choose, can seemingly find no middle ground. Each camp believes it occupies the moral high ground. If any issue sparks another civil war in America, it could be abortion.

The Right to Choose Camp has so far won the legal battle. The Supreme Court in the Roe vs. Wade decision discovered in the Constitution a woman’s right to privacy and right to choose. I can’t find any reference to either of these rights in the Constitution, no matter how many times I read it. I am brimming with admiration for the perspicacity of the justices who were able to find these rights in the Constitution. Quite a feat of legerdemain. Bravo!

At any rate, although the justices found a woman’s right to choose and right to privacy legally pivotal in deciding the abortion issue, these rights are not logically germane to the legitimacy of abortion. Not being a lawyer, I am not trained to decipher the hidden nuances in the Constitution. Therefore, I am not going to make many comments about the decision. Suffice it say that the decision reeks of what I call “Shuddabinism.” According to this legal, activist doctrine, if a judge thinks a right should be in the constitution but isn’t, the judge rules the missing right is now constitutionally protected. After all, it shuddabin in the Constitution. I believe a woman’s right to choose and right to privacy are products of “Shuddabinism”.

But let’s forget the law and hold abortion up to the light of logic. I had the good fortune to have a course in logic taught by a brilliant Jesuit. I realize that logic is not a la mode, and I risk being called an anachronism the by hip deconstructionists. Be that as it may, when you apply logic to the Roe Vs Wade decision, the inanity of the decision becomes manifest.

When we apply logic, we don’t begin with the rights of the woman who wants to abort; we begin with the rights of the fetus. The key to the abortion issue is the answer to the question, “When does the fetus become human--at conception or some time during the gestation period?” If the answer is “at conception”, then, ipso facto, the Constitution protects its right to life. Neither a woman’s right to choose nor a woman’s right to privacy are germane. Killing another human being, unless it is in self-defense, is a criminal act.

If the answer to the question is that the fetus is not human at conception, but becomes human sometime during gestation, we must ask other questions. The first question: “Does the human potentiality of the fetus grant it, from the moment of conception, the constitutional right to life?” I would argue that the human potentiality of the fetus would certainly suffice to extend to it the constitutional right to life.

If one argues perversely that the human potentiality of the fetus is not sufficient to extend to it the constitutional right to life, at what point in its development does it become human life and enjoy the constitutional right to life?
I think the answer is “at conception”.

These are the questions to ask to apply logic to the problem. I would argue emphatically that the fetus is human at the moment of conception. If it isn’t human, what is it? The fetus is a stage in human development.

You may not agree with my conclusion; nevertheless, this is the logical framework in which the legitimacy of abortion can be discussed. In this logical framework, we did not once invoke a woman’s right to privacy or her right to choose. Neither concept is relevant to the logical examination of abortion. Ultimately, a fetus either has the right to live or it doesn’t. There is no need to invent special rights for the mother.

In fact, the logical time for a woman to exercise her right to privacy and her right to choose is before she engages in sexual activity that can result in pregnancy. Yes, I know that rape victims can’t exercise these rights, but rape victims are a very small percentage of women who have abortions. Most abortions are performed because they are expedient.

As you have divined, my personal conviction is that the fetus is a human being and its life is constitutionally protected. However, although I am opposed to abortion, I am also opposed to passing laws to ban it. Too many people, not all of them monsters, do not believe that the fetus is a human being whose right to life is constitutionally protected.. Passing laws banning abortion will just create tens of thousands of “criminals”. Law or no law, women will continue to have abortions. Let God judge them. We really don’t need to add inmates to our prison population. Punishment is not the answer. I think those of us opposed to abortion should try to convince our fellow citizens that it is a vile practice.

Let's Put Iran Back in its Box

2006-10-08T16:18:00.000-07:00

Tom Molloy

Iran has been a pain in the ass since the 1970’s and is now in the process of becoming lethal. I have been reading so-called experts’ comments about Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. There seems to be a consensus among the experts that there is no viable military option to thwart Iran’s entrance into the nuclear club. Although most experts recommend diplomacy and, if necessary, sanctions. I get the impression that few, if any, believe that diplomacy or sanctions will be effective.

Our sanctimonious European allies, taking the word ‘peace” in vain, have forged lucrative business connections with Iran. They accuse us of being warmongers. Could it be that these paragons of rectitude are just greedy, short–sighted profiteers? At any rate, we can’t count on many of our European allies to support any aggressive policy toward Iran. With respect to the Russians and Chinese, they have profitable commercial ties with Iran and are not all interested in severing these ties. It is obvious that the UN Security Council is not gong to take any action strong enough to deter the Iranians from developing nuclear technology

Although I am not an expert on Iran, I spent about a year and a half there before and during the revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. I was impressed by the determination and resolve of those who overthrew the Shah. I also came away with the impression that Khomeini and his disciples were nuts.

The issue is not just what Iran intends to do, but what it is doing. Iran is providing total support to the Shiite insurgents in Iraq. That is to say, it's complicit in killing American soldiers. The Bush administration seemingly chooses to ignore this minor pecadillo. If the American people understood that the Iranians are responsible for the deaths of so many of our sodiers, they would demand that the administration do something. This administraton's hugely successful strategem has been to divert attention from problems by changing the subject.

In my opinion, the time for action has come. I disagree with the experts about the possibility of a viable military solution. In fact, I think there is an obvious military option that will put Iran back in its box. Just who am I to disagree with experts? I am someone who thinks that, if we listen to the experts in this instance, we are going to lose the war on terrorism. I think it’s important to stop the Iranians now. These guys are resolute, defiant and demented. They are supporting all forms of terrorism and sooner or later they are going to fund a devastating terrorist attack on the United States.

Given the resources think how easy it would be to shoot down a dozen planes in one day with shoulder fired missiles or to plant ten nuclear suitcase bombs in the downtown of 10 major cities. The guys running Iran hate us and they have the money to express this hatred in unspeakable ways. Now they are developing nuclear weaponry and our response is to engage in illusory diplomacy. No one believes that diplomacy per se will effect the desired changes in Iran’s behavior. These lunatics are going to bring about a terrorist act that is going to make 9/11 a footnote in the history books. Unless Iran knows that failure to change its behavior will result in awesomely severe consequences, diplomacy is a fool’s errand.

One of President Bush’s often stated bromides for continuing the Iraq campaign is: “We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” This is one of the cardinal tenets of the administration’s disinformation campaign. The implication is that the bad guys can’t spare 20, 50, or 100 guys to come over here and cause trouble. This, of course, is nonsense. I would accuse Bush of demagoguery, except that I really think he is dumb enough to believe what he is saying. We are not going to get a solution to the Iranian problem from an administration that thinks we are winning in Iraq.

The Iranians have turned the tables on us. The United States, the greatest power on earth, is desperate for crumbs from the negotiating table while the Iranians feast on our impotence. There is something very wrong with this picture.

What is the solution to the Iranian problem? How about overwhelming, devastating brute force? Let me suggest one option for the use of military force that would work.

Give the Iranians a list of instructions (note: instructions, not requests) and tell them that if they fail to comply with these instructions, we are going to destroy a city (name the city) on a given date. Suggest that they evacuate the city. Tell them that, after this demonstration of power (no nuclear bombs, thank you), we are going to give them a week to comply. Lack of compliance will result in the loss of another city each week. The catch is that we will not announce in advance which city will be the “City of the Week.” It will just be “Now you see it; now you don’t”. Inform the Iranians that any act of reprisal on their part will result in annihilation of their country. Iran will either comply with our instructions or there will be no more Iran. There will just be millions of people inhabiting piles of rubble. We might rename the country “Rubblestan”.

Can you imagine the entire Iranian urban population abandoning the cities? Total chaos. The Iranian government will cease to exist. The last thing on their minds will be developing nuclear weapons. If they want to be martyrs, let us help them on their way. Supposedly, martyrs, after killing women and children, are rewarded with a gift of 72 virgins upon their arrival in paradise. I suggest they crank up production of vrigns; they may need a lot of them..

Now I ask the experts, “Is this a military option that will work? Damn right it will.
And just what will the rest of the world say? Most nations, including our Western and Asian allies, will hem and haw. You see, according to their rules, we must wait for Iran to take out a dozen of our cities with suitcase nuclear weapons before we react. Nevertheless, after the initial shock, I think these nations will feel a sense of relief that the Untied States assumed a leadership position. They will also feel a sense of relief that the United States has begun to enforce the ”Pax Americana.”

Unfortunately, the Muslim nations will probably continue to believe that we want war with Islam. Many don't seem to recognize that a lot of people who call themselves Muslims are trying to kill us. I keep hearing from Muslim friends that the terrorists are not good Muslims. Well, I 'll let Muslims sort out who the bad guys and good guys are.. Meanwhile, I advocate killing anyone, Muslim or otherwise, who is trying to kill us.

IT'S THE STUPID TEACHERS, STUPID

2006-05-05T10:27:00.001-07:00

TOM MOLLOY

There is a mass of evidence that our primary and secondary schools are colossal failures in educating our children. I can't begin to present the evidence here, but to readers who want an overview of the scope of the US education disaster, I recommend reading "Inside American Education" by Thomas Sowell and the "Conspiracy of Ignorance" by Martin L. Gross.
To me the most shocking revelation is not that our schools are failing to educate the average student, but that the academic achievement of our best and brightest lags so far behind that of the best and brightest of other countries.

When my two sons were in elemenatry and secondary school, they would often bring home notes from school administrators and teachers. The cheery notes with happy faces couldn't hide the fact that semi-literate teachers infested the schools. I used to be appalled at the numerous grammatical errors. Often I would correct the errors in red ink and send the corrected copy back to the originator. Not surprisıngly, I never received a word of thanks or any feedback whatsoever. Then one evening at a PTA meeting, the PTA president, herself a practitioner of fractured English, told me that the faculty and administrators were "indigent" at my corrections. I told her it was the parents, not the teachers, who should be "idignant" because there were so many illiterates on the faculty. Then, I suggested that, if the PTA were doing its job, it would be insisting that illiterate teachers be removed from their positions.

The educationist establishment, in moments of candor, admits there are problems with the quality of schools. In fact, it wages a brilliant disinformation campaign, asserting that the principal problem is the lack of sufficient money to achieve excellence. Yet, when we compare results of our public schools with those of parochial schools with a lot less money, the "money" argument seems to dissolve. Comparing public and parochial schools, one might argue that the amount of money is inversely proportional to the degree of success. The Washington D.C. schools are a fiscal black hole, sucking in scads of money per student with little or nothing to show for it. If money were the key to success, the typical graduate of the Washington D.C schools would be a Rhodes scholar. In reality, the typical graduate lacks the literacy skills to fill out a job application without assistance.

Fellow citizens, I am convinced that the poor quality of our schools is primarily attributable to the overall poor quality of teachers. I believe a self-serving educationist establishment, consisting of the teachers' unions, university education departments, and school district superintendants is threatening our democracy and our prosperity by perpetuating a teacher certification system that vitually ensures academically handicapped teachers. To be certified, would-be teachers have to subject themselves to the intellectual debasment of hour after vacuous hour of education courses. Everyone with a room temparature IQ who has taken an education course knows that these courses are a sham.

Students majoring in education are the academic bottom feeders. Their average SAT score is well below that of students with other majors. They are the academic dregs. How can we expect our schools to produce academic excellence when so many of the teachers have never attained any academic distinction?

So, why does the educationist establishment insist that would-be teachers subject themselves to ed courses--a compendium of half-baked theories, psycho babble, anti-intellectualism, egalitarian mischief, mutlicutural schlock and disasterous pedagogical fads--in order to achieve certification? There are two reasons: Money and money. First, ed courses are a cash cow for the universities. Because of the lack of serious content in ed courses, university education departments can offer these sterile courses to dullards. Universities deliberately set very low standards for education majors so they can tap into this lucrative, but illicit market. That is, they extract tuition out of students who, were it not for the low standards, would be asking,"Lettuce on that burger, sir? Second, the requirement to take these junk courses deters smart individuals from becoming teachers. For academically gifted indivduals ed courses are an outrage. The insipidness of the course content and the intellectual torpor of fellow students combine to deter intellectuals from pursuing a career as a teacher. This deterrence creates an artifical teacher shortage, forcing teacher salaries up.

If you have an MA in mathematics from MIT, you can't get a job teaching high school without taking the required number of education courses. Yet, in many states, the teacher with 18 or 21 hours of "mathematics for teachers" (the appelation "for teachers" is code for "dumbed down") courses, is considered qualified.

One can be fooled by glitzy catalogs of courses offered in education departments. Look at the following three graduate courses offered at a university near my home:

Advanced Approaches to Interdisciplinary Learning
Social Policy for Families and Children
Instruction in Early Childhood and Elementary Education

If you are impressed with these pretentious titles, let us recall that many of the students who take and pass these courses are semi-literate. They are the ones who graduate and write ungrammatical, unintelligible notes to parents. The lack of substance in ed courses is the reason that dullards take refuge in this intellectual wasteland. One dirty little secret about ed courses is that graduate ed courses are no more diffucult than undergraduate ed courses. You can get an MA in education without ever having taken a single undergraduate course. All the courses are bullshit. There is no beginning and no end, no real corpus of knowledge. Try taking graduate courses in chemistry, mathematics, Latin or most other academic disciplines without having taken undergraduate courses.

Perhaps the real tragedy is that many of the would-be teachers have never experienced the sublime joy that comes from studying the great works of history, literature, economics and philosophy; have never gained an insight into the pure wonder of mathematics and science; and have never experienced the thrill of speaking in a foreign language. The very concept of academic achievement is alien to many of these would-be teachers. To them school is drudgery.

To be sure, many of the would-be teachers lack the mental acumen to enjoy inellectual pursuits, but those who do have the acumen are victimized by the requirement to take stultifying ed courses. While would-be teachers are studying such weighty topics as how to cut out paper dolls and how to arrange a bulletin board, they are unable to study the ideas of humankind's greatest thinkers.

The time has come to clean up the mess and close all education schools and departments of education. I suggest we offer amnesty to all professors of education rather than punish them. We could also offer them vocational training so they could learn some useful skill. Some of my friends have suggested reeducation camps to rehabiliate these imposters. I disagree. I think we should treat these culprits with compassion despite the horrific legacy they have bequathed us. Years ago I coined the following definition of a professor of education: "One who can take a bikini idea, and bundle it in a snowsuit so no one wants to look anymore".

Let's establish meaningful certification standards for teachers.. Elementary school teachers should be required to obtain a real liberal arts degree. Secondary school teachers should be required to have a degree with a minimum of 40 semester hours in their subject area.

To thwart the inevitable diploma mills that would proliferate, teachers should be required to take a State certfication exam to confirm their knowledge.

All newly hired teachers should be on probation for a year. Those who demonstrate pedagogcal excellence would be retained; the others should be dismissed. I estimate that given high standards, the attrition rate for newly hired teachers would exceed 50 percent.

If we don't act to energize our schools, our children are going to be flipping hamburgers, digging ditches, doing laundry, and cleaning yards for the affluent Indians, Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans, who do have schools that produce excellence.

2006-04-24T11:25:00.001-07:00

Stereotypical Stereotyping

TOM MOLLOY

Recently, at a social event, I overheard a heated conversation among three casual acquaintances. The topic was racism. Two of these individuals were deploring racism and posited that the economic and social problems experienced by minorities in this country were attributable to this phenomenon. The third, while not denying that racism was a factor, was adamantly arguing that problems of minorities were primarily attributable to their own “flawed” value systems. The dissenter conceded that some whites had negative feelings about blacks, but argued that this reaction sprang at least partially from the fact that blacks committed a disproportionate share of violent crimes. The other two now closed in for the kill. Our dissenter had let his guard down and the other two mauled him. They loudly accused him of stereotyping. In the rarified atmosphere inhabited by the politically correct crowd, stereotyping is not just a logical fallacy: it’s a mortal sin beyond redemption. Our two PC champions verbally flagellated the offender, savagely branding him a racist. The gist of their argument was that the dissenter had engaged in racial stereotyping and was, ipso facto guilty of racism. Up until this point, the dissenter had been holding his own, but the racism charge shook him. He slinked off to lick his wounds.

The two victors sanctimoniously congratulated themselves on their triumph over racism. I decided not to intrude on their celebration, but I realized their victory was based on a logical fallacy. Frankly, I was intimidated. I didn’t want the racist epithet hurled at me. Being considered a racist these days is not socially acceptable. In polite society racism is considered, thank heavens, decidedly “uncool.”

The dissenter may or may not have been a racist, but, in my opinion, nothing he said merited this appellation. He had not, in fact, engaged in stereotyping. Rather he had made a generalization that blacks committed a disproportionate number of violent crimes. Notwithstanding his intentions in making this generalization, it is either true or false. Our two PC warriors found this generalization repugnant and truth or falsehood were irrelevant to them. In the PC world there are some truths that are not to be spoken or are to be denied. Just try commenting that men have more upper body strength than women and the PC warriors will pounce on you, accusing you of stereotyping and sexism. If you feebly utter, “But it’s true” you will infuriate the PC disciples. Throwing the truth in their face is like holding up a crucifix to a vampire.

If one disagrees with the PC crowd on some aspect of race, they immediately label the dissenter a racist. The accusation itself carries with it a presumption of guilt and social stigma.

A sage friend of mine cautioned that one should never talk about racism; one should write about it. He averred that it was easy to misquote speech, less easy to misquote the written word.

At any rate, whether out of maliciousness or ignorance, people frequently misuse the term “stereotype.” I am of Irish stock and I have read any number of times that Irish Americans are much more likely to become alcoholics than Italian Americans. This is not stereotyping; it is generalizing. Again, the truth or falsehood of this generalization is not dependent on the intentions of the one making it. It is true or false on its own merits. According to this generalization, given a population of 1000 Irish-Americans and a population of 1000 Italian-Americans, one would expect to find more alcoholics in the Irish-American population. Stereotyping, given this generalization, would be to assume that any Irish-American you meet is an alcoholic.

I am a liberal, but the proclivity of my liberal friends to abuse the term “stereotyping” annoys me. Of course, one must be circumspect about accepting a generalization made by any advocacy group, but a generalization does not a stereotype make.

Our dissenter made the generalization that blacks were responsible for a disproportionate number of violent crimes. His two opponents seized on this generalization and erroneously labeled it “stereotyping.” Lamentably, even if the dissenter had been able to prove the validity of his repugnant generalization, the odds are that his opponents would still have accused him of “racist stereotyping.”

What ever happened to the requirement that undergraduates take course in Logic?

Let's Win One For a Change

2006-04-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

<>LET’S WIN FOR A CHANGE
<>
<> by

Tom Molloy

Apparently, Iran is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite feeble protestations from the United States and its allies. In the era of digital communication, the Iranians have extended the medial digit to us. Our less than courageous response has been to sic the UN Security Council on them. This is like asking for a time out and signals our lack of resolve, emboldening them even more.

“Leaks” to the press indicate that the US is considering military action. The assumption is that we would bomb the facilities that contribute to Iran’s nuclear weapon capabilities. Some analysts say that our bombing would be relatively ineffective because the facilities are so deep underground that they are impervious to bombing. These analysts say this negates any military option. If they are right, Iran will succeed in developing nuclear weapons.

I submit that permitting these madmen to have nuclear weapons is unthinkable. I am not a military expert, but I will tell you that, not only is there a military option, there is military option that will solve the immediate problem and achieve the objective of preventing Iran from possessing nuclear weapons.

The time for vacillation, negotiations, and lamentations has passed. The time has come to teach Iran that a 21st century mentality trumps a seventh century mentality. The Iranian government needs a lesson in humility. <>

As lesson number one, we should immediately announce the name of an Iranian city that we will annihilate with incendiary bombs in two weeks. If the Iranians get cute and put western hostages in this city, we should announce that we will eliminate the chosen city and another city, which will remain unnamed until its destruction. It will be “Now you see it, now you don’t.” Can you imagine the chaos and anarchy that would ensue from an announcement that an unnamed city would be annihilated? The entire urban population would suddenly migrate from the cities to the inhospitable country side. There would be insufficient food, water, and shelter. Iran would quickly become ungovernable. Anarchy would prevail. The state would dissolve.

Developing nuclear weapons would no longer be a priority. Survival would be the all-consuming goal.

We could teach the Iranians and others who are inclined to harm us that, when you give us the middle finger, we break your finger off and shove it up you ass.

Let’s win one for a change.

MORALE

2006-03-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

MORALE

One Man’s Perspective

Tom Molloy

<>
Introduction. <>

In 1997 I was a federal employee working in Germany. One evening I was watching the news on Armed Forces TV. The opening of a new recreational facility at a military facility in Europe was being reported. An officer made a brief speech and stressed how much this facility would contribute to the morale of the soldiers.

Coincidentally, I had just finished reading several thought provoking articles on the subject of morale, gaining an insight into the nature and complexity of this phenomenon. I don’t want to make too much of the officer’s postulation of a cause and effect relationship between the recreational facility and solider morale. His statement was probably more wishful thinking than an attempt at a well reasoned argument for the construction of the facility. Nevertheless, the idea that showering soldiers or employees with goodies will raise their morale is prevalent. In fact, you can’t bribe people to have high morale. Morale can’t be bought. Leaders are much more likely to raise unit morale by setting high standards and ensuring that their employees have the means to meet them.

All leaders want their units to have high morale, but based on discussions with many leaders over many years, it became evident to me that most leaders don’t really understand the nature of morale. They are not quite sure what to do to raise morale in their own units. Pay raises? Improved fringe benefits? Better Christmas parties? Incentive awards? More flexible working hours? Although employees will gladly accept whatever goodies the boss wishes to dispense, goodies themselves do not necessarily ensure high morale.

What is morale?

Morale is “attitude towards work.” We define morale as high or low. Members of a unit with high morale

-- Consider themselves winners and resent the presence of losers in their ranks. <>
-- Censure any member who brings discredit on the unit.
-- Are among the best in the world at what they do and they know it.
-- Express admiration for their leaders. <>
-- Brag about the accomplishments of colleagues. <>
-- Have a very low rate of absenteeism. <>
-- Require virtually no supervision. <>
-- Cooperate with one another. <>
-- Do their jobs even when the boss isn’t looking. <>
-- Display a relaxed camaraderie.
-- Make suggestions for improvement. <>
-- Voluntarily come early and stay late.

ASPECTS OF MORALE

Morale and happiness are not the same.

Supervisors often confuse the concepts of morale and happiness. Morale and happiness are two different things. Some happy employees have poor morale and some have high morale. Some unhappy employees have high morale and some have low morale. Years ago I worked with a woman who appeared to be one of the happiest people I had ever met. She was always cheerful and went out of her way to help everyone. For example, one day I mentioned to her that I had to stop by the IRS office on the way home to pick up a form. After lunch she handed me the form. She had taken her lunch hour to get me the form. In her leisure time she did volunteer work in the community. <>

Then one day I became her supervisor and discovered that happiness didn’t translate into a good attitude towards work. She was a project officer and her project was languishing. I discovered that this woman was happiest when she did no work. Her morale (attitude towards work) was terrible. Moreover, the morale of the employees in her project was also terrible. Her lack of leadership had created a cauldron of boiling resentment. One of the key deficiencies in her leadership was a refusal to deal with two employees who produced poor product. They were like two parasites sapping the strength of the unit.

I also had a woman project officer whose personal life was a shambles. She had just undergone a punishing divorce and was involved in a vicious custody battle for her children. Happy she was not. Yet, her attitude towards work was excellent. She took solace in staying busy and was enormously productive. The employees in her project had high morale. She set very high standards for them. They had achieved unit cohesion. They knew they were producing excellent material. They knew they were an elite group. Each and every member of the unit pulled his/her weight. They could rely on one another and their leader.

Elitism is the cornerstone of unit morale. <>

Elite units tend to have high morale because members take pride in their membership. They develop camaraderie, cohesiveness and loyalty to one another and their leaders. In the early 80s I spent a lot of time changing planes at the Atlanta airport. I had numerous conversations with graduates of army, air force, and marine basic training. There was an almost tangible difference between the attitude of the marines and that of the members of the other two services. In a nutshell, marines radiated self-assurance. They clearly felt that they had undergone a warrior’s rite of passage and had gained entry into an elite group. In general, members of the other two services were just glad basic training was over. Quite a few actually complained that basic training wasn’t hard enough. <>As far as, I know in that early stage in their careers, the soldiers in all three services receive equivalent pay and benefits, but the difference in morale was almost tangible.

Units have to earn high morale.

High morale can’t be bestowed on a unit or its members. A leader must set the stage so that unit members can become the best at what they do. By implication, this means that those who are not among the best can’t remain as unit members. When a leader stands before a mediocre unit and pronounces them an elite group, he isn’t fooling anyone. Unit members know unit deficiencies. Such pronouncements by leaders engender cynicism, the antithesis of morale. The leader must set high standards and relentlessly enforce them. The unit must adopt a culture of excellence.

The unit must rid itself of employees who don’t meet standards.

Unit leaders must ensure that poorly performing employees do not remain in the unit. Unless a weak employee has some decisively and clearly remediable problem, the unit leader must protect the culture of excellence and rid the unit of the employee. Particularly in soft skills jobs, poorly performing employees tend not to improve. I don’t think I ever saw a truly bad instructor become a good one, although I have seen good ones become better ones. In a number of instances, I have seen compassionate supervisors spend a great deal of time coaching bad instructors without achieving results.

Money and goodies can’t buy morale.

Give people enough money or goodies and they will do ALMOST anything. There is no doubt that money motivates people to do things. While money may motivate people to do something, it doesn’t raise morale. If someone were to pay me a million dollars a year to shovel shit out of animal cages at the zoo, I would do it, but my attitude wouldn’t be very good. Generally, soldiers in elite military units receive a few extra dollars every month. But if you spend any time with elite units, you know that money is a minor factor in their morale. Poorly paid soldiers who have high morale are willing to die if necessary. High paid mercenaries tend to be less willing to die. They often avoid a real fight. People may work hard to earn money, but they can have lousy morale.

Good leadership (not just good management) is essential for high morale.

Unit members must have confidence in their leaders. The leaders must be leaders, not just by virtue of their rank, but by earning the respect and admiration of unit members. A poor leader can quickly destroy unit morale. If the adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” applies to a leader, replace the leader. Familiarity should breed admiration. A good leader who inherits a unit with poor morale can take a long time to raise morale. Employees in units with low morale tend to be cynical. Cynicism is a comfortable cocoon and it is difficult to dislodge employees from it. The environment in the cocoon is risk-free. Employees sit in the cocoon and take pot shots at management. If you don’t trust anyone, you will not suffer any more disappointment.

Leaders of units with high morale are vulnerable. Perversely, leaders of units with high morale are very vulnerable. Peers and superiors envy them. Unit members also tend to be envied. Envy is a vicious enemy. Insecure bosses feel threatened by subordinate supervisors receiving too much praise. High ranking US military officers, renowned as paper pushers, not warriors, have expressed their envy by urging the elimination of the Marine Corps and Special Forces. I personally suffered from the envy engendered by building an elite unit. My boss was openly hostile. Finally, after giving me an outstanding appraisal, he assigned me to a non-supervisory staff job at the same grade level, but with few responsibilities.

Leaders have to keep lines of communication open with unit members. This is a truism. Yet, so many bosses are “too busy” to maintain a dialogue with their subordinates. One wonders why so few people in leadership positions actually do keep open the lines of communication.

During my almost 40-year career as a federal employee, I evaluated many English language training programs (ELTPs) around the world and spent about three and half years at overseas locations evaluating technical training. High morale was not the norm. I encountered hordes of disgruntled employees. They clamored to tell me what was wrong. Some had reached such a state of frustration that they were no longer trying to improve their unit; they were trying to get revenge on their bosses. By far the most common complaint was that management didn’t listen to employees.

This complaint was usually easy to verify because many of the suggestions I made to improve the ELTPs came from the instructors and first-line supervisors. When senior management complimented me on my perspicacity, I took perverse delight in disclosing that these “brilliant” suggestions emanated from their own employees. With few exceptions, this disclosure evoked no apparent response from senior managers. One big exception occurred in a Central European Country when I was briefing my findings to a Deputy Minister of Defense and his ELTP staff. He reacted by angrily rebuking his staff. He pointed out how ludicrous it was to pay big bucks to a foreign consultant to act as medium for transmitting information from employees to managers. He ordered all of his ELTP managers to spend a minimum of 30 minutes during the next month to solicit suggestions from each employee. He said he wanted a summary of each session signed by the supervisor and the employee. The ELTP chief was to initial each summary.

CONCLUSION

<>The ideas presented in this article are not by any means the last word on morale. One can view morale form many different perspectives. I just hope that he reader finds some of these insights beneficial.

DOD Merit-Based Pay Initiative

2006-02-24T20:30:00.000-08:00

The New DOD Merit-Based Pay Initiative
The Joke's on America

Tom Molloy

In this article the term DOD includes Army, Navy and air Force employees as well as those employed by the Pentagon.

I was a federal employee for almost 40 years. Contrary to the mythology that emanates from presidents, cabinet secretaries, political appointees, many congressional representatives and senators, the vast majority of federal employees with whom I came into contact worked very hard. I was in a professional job series and my colleagues and I consistently worked 10 or more hours per day without compensatory time or overtime pay. Often my job called for travel and we were generally required to travel on weekends (our time) and received no extra pay. I am not complaining. We accepted this as the normal state of affairs. We also learned to ignore politicians denigrating the federal bureaucracy. For some reason or other, bashing federal employees is a form of macho demagoguery that gets votes. According to the mythology, the typical federal employee is lazy, ignorant, inept, apathetic, whining clock watcher who can’t be fired. Republican politicians are particularly prone to promulgate this mythology and many ordinary American citizens believe it.

Several months ago I found myself on an airplane seated next to a retired executive, who had held a very responsible position in a large corporation. He was vehemently opposed to government waste (i.e., all forms of welfare for the poor, but not tax deductions for business lunches). He was convinced that federal employees were goldbricks. I didn’t try to argue with him. It would have been nugatory. However, when he paused for breath, I remarked that it was shame that social security checks always came late and for the wrong amount; Medicare kept screwing up payments to doctors; and so many letters and packages were lost in the mail. He looked at me quizzically and said he had been lucky because he didn’t have such problems. I said neither had I. I added that we were fortunate because the federal employees taking care of us were the few who weren’t inept and lazy.

He will go to his grave muttering imprecations against federal employees.

From what I gather, when you cut through the hype, the goal of the new DOD performance-based pay initiative (PBPI) is to shape up the good-for-nothing DOD civilian employees. The PBPI is replacing a system that certainly needed improvement, but was not the disaster that demagogues proclaim it to be. It is an urban legend that federal employees can’t be disciplined or fired. Managers can and do discipline and fire employees. The benighted or malicious who claim that federal employees can’t be fired are simply uninformed. As a supervisor, I learned that the deck was stacked in my favor. Given a few months, I could have fired anyone I supervised, irrespective of their level of job performance.

As I understand it, under the new systems individuals will get no annual pay increase unless they meet certain “objective” standards. To the uninformed, a group that apparently includes Secretary Rumsfeld, this DOD initiative will ensure that the beleaguered American taxpayers get full value for their money. But, folks, there is one problem that is a show stopper. The premise for a merit-based pay system is the ability to render an objective evaluation of each employee’s performance. This premise is a fantasy. No one knows how to objectively rate job performance for employees in soft skill jobs—those jobs in which judgment, discretion, creativity, tact and initiative are so important. In a word, this whole gut-wrenching implementation process is bullshit.

I have had some humbling experiences with the elusive goal of developing “objective” soft skill performance standards. In the 1980’s the Department of the Air Force initiated a new appraisal system for its civilian employees. The goal was to establish objective performance standards for each civilian position and base the annual appraisals on employee adherence to the standards. Easier said than done. In my organization there was some enthusiasm for this initiative. However, we soon realized that none of us knew how to develop such performance standards for our cadre of professional employees. The AF told us that we would receive training in the preparation of performance standards.

Sure enough, a colleague and I were sent to a three-day workshop to receive the required wisdom. Upon our return, we were to be the performance appraisal gurus who could provide guidance to our colleagues. I was an enthusiastic supporter of the new initiative. The workshop leader was a very charismatic ex auto industry executive, who was reportedly an expert in performance measurement. The first day we discussed the deficiencies of the current appraisal system and the hypothetical benefits of the new appraisal system. On the morning of the second day, we were divided into several groups and assigned the task of developing objective standards for a secretary. By the end of the day, we had merged the input of each group into a single product. Our expert praised our performance standards and showed us how close they were to the actual performance standards of his secretary.

Up until this point, I had, as is not my wont, kept my counsel. I now felt compelled to speak out. The “objective” performance standards we had produced were crap. I asked the expert if he honestly

Tracked the average number of typos, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, format errors his secretary made per page?

Calculated the average time it took his secretary to retrieve a document from the files?

Knew the percentage of documents his secretary misfiled?

Kept track of the percentage of telephone calls his secretary directed to the wrong office?

Counted how many times a quarter his secretary failed to exercise proper (objective?) tact?

Tracked the number of times his secretary took a few extra minutes for breaks or lunch?

Calculated how many words per minute his secretary typed?

His answer was evasive and I told him that, in my opinion, anyone who actually measured a secretary’s performance by such standards was an anal-retentive nut and couldn’t keep secretaries long enough to learn their names. He responded to my ad hominem attack in kind. He pompously informed me that he was the expert and implied that I was just a humble functionary privileged to be in his presence. I responded that I now had some inkling of the reason for the decline of the American auto industry. A puerile exchange, to be sure, but I had a feeling of catharsis.

The next day we were again divided into groups and told to produce objective performance standards for a hypothetical first-level supervisor. To make a long story short, the standards we produced were far from being objective. We produced performance standards heavily dependent on the judgment of the rater. That is to say that our “objective” performance standards were as objective as the German Democratic Republic was “democratic”.

I had anticipated that our expert would show us how to fashion our crude attempt into an objective performance measure. Instead, to my chagrin, he suggested a few trivial changes and blessed our standards. I left this workshop with feeling of uneasiness because, having had the benefit of this workshop, I was supposed to show colleagues how to write objective performance standards.

After this fruitless workshop, I began to read about performance standards and learned that no one knew how to develop objective standards for soft skill jobs. One author (I forget who) summed it up succinctly: “In soft skill fields, the supervisor is the standard.”

This limitation notwithstanding, every supervisor of civilian employees in the DAF was told to shut up and prepare “objective” performance standards. We gave it our best shot and the new system was implemented. Despite the fact that the standards were subjective, the new system was tolerably efficient.

The advocates of this new performance evaluation package had advertised it as a muscular, kick-ass, 500 pound gorilla. When the customers opened the package, they found an emaciated monkey. Nevertheless, despite its imperfections, the system worked reasonably well. Annual appraisals were rendered. Employees were given awards, promoted, downgraded or fired. All the while, the usual chorus of demagogues relentlessly portrayed the federal service as rife with goof offs; screw ups, and goldbricks who are immune to being fired. Of course, there are inefficiencies in the system. But anyone who has recently taken a commercial flight, rented a car, had cable TV problems or dealt with an insurance company can tell you that the private sector also has some inefficiencies.

I am certainly not opposed to a system that truly rewards merit. The problem is that the technology to objectively evaluate merit in soft skill jobs doesn’t exist. When you promise employees to deliver an objective system and deliver a highly subjective one instead, employees become cynics. My civilian friends working for DOD, have told me that the cynicism has already begun. There are few true believers. These veteran employees recognize bullshit when they see it. They fear that the new system will be worse than the one it replaces. <>

Many DOD civilians are in the unenviable position of having a military boss (MB) who knows little or nothing about their job. The reason for this phenomenon, which in the private sector is generally regarded as managerial lunacy, is officer bloat. There are far more officers than needed to fill the combat and combat support positions that are normally considered military jobs. DOD assigns the large number of excess officers to jobs that would normally be performed by civilians. To be successful, the incumbents of these jobs should have a level of expertise many MBs simply don’t have. This creates the bizarre scenario of professionally ignorant MBs supervising civilian experts. This daffiness wreaks havoc throughout DOD. There is a double whammy. Not only do MBs generally perform miserably in these mid-level and senior management positions, they also block access of qualified civilians to these positions. The MBs come and go like drive by shootings. The civilians learn that the basic operating principle is “a uniform trumps all civilian experience and knowledge”. The word “morale” elicits snickers from civilian employees in the clutches of an ignorant MB. In DODland, you will find the world’s greatest cynics.

Ironically, many of the problems with the current appraisal system spring from the failure of transient MBs to comprehend it and use it correctly. Under this new PBPI system, these ignorant, sometimes arrogant, MBs can, with the stroke of a pen, deprive civilian subordinates of significant income. Ignorant MBs often resent the best and the brightest civilians, who are living reminders of their own ignorance. To avoid ego shattering encounters with the best and brightest, they shun them. They tend to ally themselves with the unit’s dullards, who often have developed sophisticated ass kissing skills in order to survive.

If Secretary Rumsfeld wants to fix a problem, the infestation of MBs unqualified for their jobs would be a good one to tackle. This problem is the source of many of DOD’s legendary inefficiencies. Imposing another faddish appraisal system on the civilian employees is a sham.

The best and the brightest civilians I know fear that the dullards are going to emerge victorious under the new PBPI system. They predict that the dullards will not only survive, but will thrive. When you have an ignorant boss, the worst offense you can commit is to be right. Ask General Shinseki.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME

2006-02-11T13:10:00.000-08:00

<><>A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME
<>ON MY WAY THROUGH LIFE

<>Tom Molloy
<>

<>
<>Perhaps, the funniest incident I have ever witnessed took place on a lovely Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1960. The afternoon began as an ordinary one. Ted and Jack (*see footnote), two of my college classmates, and I went to the gym on campus to play basketball. After a few hours of hard-nosed, take-no-prisoners games, we were exhausted. We went to Jack’s room where we discussed the world’s problems. I recall that Jack, who was a glib SOB, gave an eloquent apologia of Fidel Castro, explaining that he was not really a Marxist. It turns out that Jack was wrong, but, as you will see, that is not why he is most remembered by me. No one gave a shit how Jack thought about Castro, anyway. Jack excused himself and went into the bathroom to take a shower.

No sooner did the water start running than there was a knock on the door. I opened the door and there stood Jack’s mother, father and luscious Deborah, Jack’s almost fiancée. It was a no-notice inspection staged by Jack’s mother. Typically as soon as Jack’s mother entered a room, her penetrating, rapacious eyes swept the room looking for imperfections. Her eyes could talk and they always told Ted and me that we were two of imperfections she would like to remove from Jack’s life.

<>Several months before this inspection, Ted had managed to totally fluster Jack’s mom. He was in the bathroom when the Grand Dame came to inspect Jack’s room. He happened to have several condoms in his pocket. The Muse of Mischief inspired him to a bit of deviltry. He left several condoms in plain view in the bathroom. After he exited, Jack’s mom entered to conduct her inspection of the bathroom. <>When she came out of the bathroom, her demeanor had changed markedly. She was unusually taciturn and distracted. She was like a deflated balloon. She muttered something about an appointment and left. Jack was stupefied. She had never left without a few truculent remarks about Jack and his low class friends. <>

I don’t think Jack ever did find out about Ted’s condom caper. Had he known, he might have beaten the snot out of Ted. At any rate, the condom cure didn’t last. The next time we saw Jack’s mom, she was as belligerent as ever. <>

Jack’s family was patrician. Although they were Irish Catholic, they out wasped the wasps. Dad tried to be a regular guy, but Mom was an insufferable snob. Mom did not approve of Deborah, a very smart, pretty, red-blooded, Irish Catholic girl of middle class background. Evidently, Mom didn’t think red blood and blue blood should mix. She kept telling Jack that Deborah was a Jewish name and that Deborah must be a descendant of one of those Jewish sailors in the “Spanish Amato”. In Mom’s mind even a slight whiff of Jewishness ipso facto disqualified Deborah as potential bride. The rest of the world, captivated by the vivacious, charming Deborah, wondered what she saw in Jack. <>

During lulls in our sterile, forced conversation, Jack’s ribald shower medley boomed out of the bathroom. Suddenly the bathroom door flew open and there stood Jack holding his pecker as if it were a machine gun and spraying his guests with imaginary bullets. It was quite a scene. For a moment Jack stood riveted, buck naked, holding his “peckermatic”. During this moment there was absolute silence in the room. <>Then came the piece de resistance. His mother, in her best “let’s-pretend-nothing-has-happened” manner, asked, “How are you, Jack”? as he beat a hasty retreat back to the bathroom. That ripped it. I exploded with laughter. I laughed so hard I thought I was gong to expire on the spot. Jack’s dad had the traces of a smile and Deborah, poor Deborah, was trying to stifle her laughing, but in the end she too was swept way by it. Ted had left the room, but I could hear his raucous laughter in the hallway.

Jack’s mom stood ashen-faced. <>She then slowly and deliberately denounced Jack’s friends who had led him astray and bemoaned the fact that he associated with girls who were sluts. Deborah and I couldn’t stop laughing during this denunciation. <>

That was a long time ago.

<>During the year after graduation, I saw Jack, Deborah and Ted a few times. One night at a bar on 86^th Street in New York City, we decided to baptize Jack to cleanse his soul of the ghastly sins of attempted matricide and patricide with his “peckermatic”. We formally held down a reluctant Jack and baptized him with a pitcher of beer, naming him “Gunner.” I attended Gunner’s wedding to Deborah before this young 2^nd lieutenant shipped out for

Vietnam

. A few months later Gunner was dead. I never saw Deborah again, but I hear she died in 1999. I saw Ted a few times over the years, but he also died in 1999.

*The names have been changed in this anecdote, but the events are real to the best of my recollection.

Junk Justice

2006-02-04T21:26:00.000-08:00

Jail’em, Jail’em, Jail’em

TOM MOLLOY

I have no background whatsoever in criminology or law enforcement, but I think the sentences meted out to nonviolent offenders in the United States are absurd. From what I read, the United States incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other nation. It is our apathy that permits our judicial system to continue this indefensibly extravagant practice. It’s time to rise up and urge our legislators to adopt a rational paradigm for punishment of nonviolent offenders. <>

Let’s look at the concept of incarceration. What is the rationale for incarcerating people? Incarceration can serve four purposes: to punish, to rehabilitate, to deter and to protect society
.
<>PUNISHMENT. There is no doubt that restricting people’s freedom of movement and freedom of association by putting them in prison is a harsh form of punishment. What is doubtful is whether locking up nonviolent offenders is a cost-effective form of punishment. Reportedly, it costs between $15K and $30K per year to keep an individual in prison. There are many ways to punish nonviolent offenders without putting them in jail. Take the recent cases of the corporate executives whose greed caused so much pain to so many people. In no way do I wish to belittle the enormity of their crime, nonviolent though it may be. Nevertheless, it doesn’t follow that incarceration is necessary or desirable. Greed and hubris led them to commit their crimes. Ergo, an appropriate punishment might consist of impoverishment and humiliation. I suggest the measures below would provide suitable punishment at very little cost to the taxpayers.

Strip the offenders of financial assets,

Compel them to work at menial jobs for minimum wage (e.g., dishwasher, restroom attendant),

Allow them no other income,

Force them to live in a government-run open bay dormitory,

Provide a kitchen where they must prepare their own meals,

Charge a monthly fee to defray the cost of lodging and the small staff that monitors their behavior,

Enforce a strict curfew,

Assign each lodger chores for the upkeep of their lodging facilities,

Limit their leisure time and recreational opportunities, and

Incarcerate only those who don’t conform to the rules.

ALTERNATIVELY, a very cheap, but fearful punishment would be the following:

Impose an appropriate fine if one is warranted.

Sentence nonviolent offenders to report at designated times to an auditorium where they will sit for a specified time on specified days without eating, drinking, smoking, talking, sleeping etc.

At the discretion of the court, permit offenders to read approved materials after they have served one third of their sentences.

Charge offenders a fee to defray the cost of their punishment.

One instance in which prison as a punishment was ludicrous was the Martha Stewart case. What point was there in sending her to prison? After imposing a suitable fine, a judge could have sentenced her to report to the auditorium seven nights a week from 1800 to 2200 for six months and six nights a week for an additional six months. I believe this form of relatively inexpensive punishment would be highly effective. The very thought of having to spend several hours an evening in state of irksome boredom makes me shudder. Only offenders who didn’t comply with these rules would be sentenced to terms in prison.

REHABILITATION

The generally high recidivism rate indicates that rehabilitation is not a very good argument for incarceration. Apparently, the prison experience brutalizes some nonviolent young offenders who, had they not been in prison, would probably never have another encounter with the law. They emerge from prison bitter, hardened criminals. If we emptied our prisons of nonviolent offenders, we might apply part of the monetary savings to establishing rehabilitation programs for violent offenders.

DETERRENCE

Deterrence value of prisons depends on the degree of reluctance of individuals to repeat the incarceration experience. One of the factors that diminishes the deterrence value of prison is the generally low IQ of habitual offenders. They simply don’t anticipate the consequences of their actions. They live in a world of incomprehension and ambiguity. The much reviled, but nonetheless seminal book, The Bell Curve* contains a marvelous explication of the nexus between IQ and criminality. The more intelligent the inmates, the less likely they are to be imprisoned again. Either prison has rehabilitated or deterred them or they have simply become more masterful practitioners of crime.

PROTECTION OF SOCIETY.

Incarceration, expensive though it may be, effectively protects society from rapists, armed robbers, muggers and murderers. They can’t hurt us while they are locked up. Society may not wish to take a chance on alternative forms of punishment for these predators. We don’t feel comfortable unless they are removed from society. When we consider the corporate financial criminals and Martha Stewart, I don’t think any of us would have felt threatened if they had been sentenced to an alternative form of punishment.

The prison imbroglio now has a new aspect: prison entrepreneurs. Perversely, corporations rather than the state have taken over the management of some of our prisons. Prisons have become a business and prison inmates are a commodity. All things being equal, the greater the number of inmate-hours, the greater the corporate profit. If I were the CEO of a prison management corporation (PMC), I would be lobbying legislatures to pass laws that would send more people to prison and lengthen their sentences. Longer sentences and criminalization of behavior lead to increased profits. If farting in public were to be criminalized and achieve the status of a felony, we could lock up offenders for years. Prison management corporation stockholders would reap the benefits of felonious farting. Again if I were CEO of a PMC, I’d be lobbying to make, parking violations and spitting on the sidewalk felonies. As felonies, these two crimes could be profit leaders. As CEO of a PMC, I would also lobby for reduced sentences for violent offenders. Violent offenders are relatively less profitable and a royal pain in the ass. They require a great deal of expensive supervision because they are uncooperative, unrepentant, irrational, surly, and downright dangerous to warehouse. Prison guards who supervise the violent offenders are under constant stress. They live in fear of becoming victims of sudden, unprovoked act of violence. The stress results in a high rate of expensive turnover among the guards. In my position as CEO of a PMC, I would lobby to incarcerate jaywalkers and litterers for extended periods. They require much less supervision. They are profit leaders.

As CEO, my goal is to make a profit for my shareholders. The larger the prison population, the greater my profit. A little payola and a few favors to the right legislators can work wonders. With any luck we can create new felonies. For example, we might sentence people who fail to wash their hands after going to the bathroom to 10 years in prison for reckless endangerment of public health.

<>Ain’t free enterprise great?

*Most of the press attacked the Bell Curve as racist. I read it twice and I did not find any racist content. The press had a field day destroying straw men. I found the Bell Curve to be very upsetting and depressing because it pointed out that we have social problems that do not lend themselves to simple solutions proposed by liberal or conservative politicians.

THE JOY OF BAITING

2006-01-10T02:56:00.000-08:00

TOM MOLLOY

<>I confess that I am an incurable, unreformed baiter. My wife thinks of baiting as putting people down. I think of it as giving people the chance to be amusing. I am not going to define “baiting” because from the examples below it will be clear what the term means. Let m share some of my baiting adventures with you. <>

Geographic Mischief: When people hear that I spent two years in Somalia, their curiosity often leads to questions. The most frequently asked question is, “Where is Somalia?” A few months ago, two elementary school teachers asked me this question at a social gathering. Earlier in the evening, these two had expressed their revealing opinion that IQ test scores were meaningless. People who have high IQ scores generally don’t disparage these tests. The stage was set. The temptation to bait was irresistible. I looked around and the coast was clear because my wife was nowhere in sight. To tell the truth, I was rather irked that two teachers, even those with a low IQ, didn’t know where Somalia was. I responded that Somalia was bordered by France in the North, Paraguay in the East and Latvia in the West. They nodded appreciatively. An acquaintance wincing at my specious geography looked at me as if I had lost my mind. A few minutes later our two aspiring geographers retreated into the crowd. I winked at him and walked away. <>

Bagger Baiting: Once in a while I like to enliven the supermarket experience. When we buy gallon containers of water, the bagger usually asks, “Would you like your water in a bag? I usually answer, “No, thank you”. But when I have the urge to bait, I answer, “No, don’t put the water in a bag, leave it in the bottles. Those plastic bags leak.” The baggers’ reactions vary from ignoring the dotty old fool to giving explanations in baby-talk. <>

THOSE WHO LIVE BY THE SWORD……........................................

If you engage in baiting, you must be prepared to get as good or better than you give. The next two baiting episodes illustrate this point.

<>So Much for Dumb Blonde Jokes. A few years ago, on the checkout line at the supermarket, I discovered that I had forgotten my debit card at home. Fortunately, I had my checkbook. I handed the check to a very pretty young blonde cashier. She said she needed my phone number to write it on the check. I told her that I didn’t give out my phone number because women fought to get it and besieged me with phone calls. She didn’t bat an eye. In a very professional manner, she replied that she really had to have my telephone number. I gave it to her. As she handed me the receipt, she leaned towards me and whispered, “I promise I won’t call you.” Ouch! <>

Flight Attendant’s Revenge. Years ago on an Eastern Airlines flight, the flight attendant (at that time called a stewardess) served me a piece of chicken that had a sickly grey pallor. I called the flight attendant back, pointed out the ghastly appearance of the chicken and remarked to her that I would like to see the chicken’s autopsy report. The attendant replied, “Sir, there’s no need for an autopsy report. It died of fright when it saw what was sitting in your seat. Pow!

<>Two personal favorites:

Baiting the Boss: In the early 90s I traveled to several countries in the Far East with my boss, a brilliant man, who was a very inexperienced traveler. We finished our visits and took a long, tiring, overnight flight to Hawaii, where we were scheduled to spend two days being debriefed. We got off the plane and headed towards the baggage claim area. As we passed a currency exchange booth, I said to my boss, “If you don’t have any local currency, you had better get at least $100 worth of “luaus”. He thanked me for my solicitude and headed to the exchange booth window. It’s a good thing he had a sense of humor.

<>General Baiting: Several months ago I found myself seated next to a retired general on a plane. He was a great conversationalist. I really enjoyed our discussion of current events. At a lull in the conversation, he said that, once beverage service began, he would like to offer me a beer. At this point I received an inspiration from the Baiting Muse. I replied, “General I’d love a beer, but the medicine I take for blood pressure doesn’t mix well with alcohol. I told him that several months ago, the last time I drank beer, I became insanely aggressive and attacked a man. I added that I had bitten part of the man’s ear off. They hadn’t made him a general for nothing. He immediately concluded that it would be best if I had a soft drink instead. Much to the general’s chagrin, when the flight attendant asked what I wanted to drink, I told her the general had offered me a beer and I would take him up on his kind offer. I can’t describe the look on his face. He muttered something about rest room and started to get up. I burst out laughing and explained that I been putting him on. <>

And life goes on as I strive to become a master baiter..

The Red Herring Called Training, Rx for Iraq

2006-01-07T03:32:00.000-08:00

<>THOMAS MOLLOY

<>

<>I spent forty years in the field of training and let me tell you that there is something fishy about the Bush administration’s statements about training Iraqi soldiers to replace our soldiers. The premise is that, as we train Iraqi soldiers, our troops will gradually turn over the responsibility for the defense and security of Iraq to the Iraqi government. It sounds like a logical approach, but I smell a rat. I am not implying deceit. I don’t think that the administration really understands the nature of the problem.

<>In my experience, when job performance is not satisfactory, management’s first thought is that employees need training. Paradoxically, in my opinion as a professional trainer, training is rarely the required remedy. The typical causes of poor performance generally don’t spring from a lack of training.

Most of my experience was in the field of English language training. However, I spent about three and a half years overseas involved in technical training. I worked as a USG quality assurance monitor (QAM) of technical training provided by US contractors to foreign military personnel in various maintenance specialties. I spent 24 months in Country X and 18 in Country Y. In both cases the training was provided to support the country’s acquisition of a major weapons system. In country X, the training program was very successful. When the graduates reported to their operational units, their job performance met or exceeded expectations. In country Y, the program was a failure. Most of the graduates failed to meet expectations when they reported to their units. I found myself drafting letters to the contractor complaining of the poor performance of the graduates. After receiving several letters, one of the contractor senior managers sat me down and told me I was being unfair. He said that I witnessed the performance test given at the end of training to assess the qualifications of candidates. He was right. Most of the candidates were able to perform their required tasks. Those who were unable to perform were either eliminated from the program or recycled for additional training. Poor performers were not passed on to the operational units. Yet, paradoxically, the units were complaining that they could not perform required maintenance because of the poor performance of the majority of the graduates from technical training. The units were desperate and began to request that their personnel be given additional training.

Senior management seemed to think the solution to the problem was the requested additional training. Another training specialist and I wrote a point paper to explain that more training was not the solution to the problem. The initial training itself was demonstrably successful because the graduates were able to perform the required tasks. The problem was that the value system of the candidates didn’t mesh with program goals.

Most of the trainees told me that they had entered the program because of a lack of job opportunities. Economic necessity compelled them to get a job. The fly in the ointment was that they regarded blue collar work as beneath them. It wasn’t that they couldn’t perform the work; they didn’t perform the work because it was disgraceful for them to do so.

I suspect that the current insufficiency of Iraqi military units arises from factors other than training. The pontification of high ranking USG officials and of Fox News analysts notwithstanding, I suspect that training, while it must be accomplished, is not the principal impediment to Iraq’s fielding self-sufficient military forces.

So just what is preventing the Iraqi armed forces from achieving self-sufficient combat readiness. After all, we train American soldiers and deploy them in months. Some Iraqi units have been in training for three years. The American people are asking why it takes years to train Iraqi soldiers? Are the Iraqis stupid? Are the trainers incompetent? I suspect that neither is the case. I would bet that the Iraqis, given an equivalent amount of training, can perform all the standard tasks required of soldiers just as well as their American counterparts.

As I understand it, the problem is not that the Iraqis can’t hit what they are aiming at; it’s that they are not firing their weapons. Not hitting what you aim at can usually be remedied by training. Not firing your weapon indicates a lack of will to engage the enemy. This lack of will is symptomatic of poor morale. It is the same phenomenon that accounts for the sometimes enormous disparity in combat effectiveness between two equally trained combat units.

Patriotism is one element of morale. When we Americans hear our national anthem, it is an emotional, even euphoric, experience. We feel pride, gratitude, love of country. When we stand among 50,000 fellow Americans at a sports event and listen to the national anthem, we are all Americans. For that moment at least, no one cares where your ancestors came from or what your religious affiliation is. We feel an overpowering sense of unity.

When Iraqis hear their national anthem, I doubt that they feel the same emotions. Iraqi society is fragmented into family, tribal, ethnic, and religious groups. Primary allegiance is to these sub-groups. Civil war looms as a possibility. Exhorting an Iraqi to fight for his country might very well elicit the response, “What country?” Right now Iraq is an experiment

Unless the desired outcome is many tribal armies rather than a national army, the focus has to shift from teaching them how to fight to giving them the will to fight. Training per se will not necessarily give Iraqi soldiers a will to fight and die for their hypothetical country. Training answers the question “how”; it doesn’t answer the question “why”.

I believe the answer lies in creating elite Iraqi units. Elitism is a powerful motivator. Elite groups such as the Navy Seals, the French Foreign Legion, the Army Rangers and various US marine groups are marvelous warriors. They have that “je ne sais quoi”. Call it morale, spirit de corps, unit cohesiveness, or camaraderie, it creates formidable warriors. These men risk their lives to retrieve the body of a dead comrade and carry him for miles through inhospitable terrain in a harsh climate. Iraq doesn’t need hordes of uniformed men unwilling to fight for what may prove to be an imaginary country; it needs elite soldiers who kick ass. Whether they love their country becomes almost irrelevant. They will fight for one another. Soldiers in the French Foreign Legion don’t fight “pour la France”. Rather, they fight “pour la Legion”

The greatest pitfall in this approach is succumbing to the temptation for a quick fix. You can’t bestow morale on units; they have to earn morale by becoming elite. That is, they really have to excel. You can’t con them into thinking they are the best. Attempts to con them into feeling that they have achieved elitism create cynicism, the very antithesis of morale.

Elitism has to start at the top. The commanders of these units have to be the best and the brightest. They have to be the type of leaders with whom familiarity breeds admiration rather than contempt.

I may be wrong, but I don’ think so. You can't expect soldiers to die for a nation that isn't yet a nation. They have to have another reason.

US Foreign Language Deficit (Part 2 of 2)

2006-01-02T02:25:00.000-08:00

- Working Assumptions

-- In view of the rickety FLT infrastructure in the United States, I am going to propose an all out war on the language expertise deficit. There are two basic assumptions inherent in my proposed approach. First it is assumed that, given the critical elements cited above, during four years of secondary school, students can achieve a fairly high level of proficiency in the target language. Second, it is assumed that most extant university FLT programs could not produce the number and quality of graduates that we require. Thus, there are two phases in my proposed approach. The first phase involves the establishment of FLT programs in secondary schools; and the second the establishment of university level enhanced
FLT programs.
- Recommendations (Phase I). The United States Government (USG) should establish an Interagency FLT Task Force to

-- Canvass federal agencies to ascertain their projected (eight to ten years out) requirements for foreign language experts.

-- Establish a network of FLT centers (FLTCs) on the secondary level (ninth through twelfth grades) throughout the US to create a pool of potential language experts to meet projected requirements. In concept, these FLTCs would function somewhat like charter high schools.

--- FLTC students should take

<> ---- Normal college preparatory courses, but, during each of the
four years, should have a minimum of five hours per week of training in the target language.

<> ---- A supplementary (i.e. in addition to the five hours) course in
reading newspapers and periodicals in the target language during their junior year

< > ---- A supplementary (i.e., in addition the five hours) area studies course during their senior year. This course should be given in the target language and should provide a broad overview of the geography, history, economy, religion, and political systems of the country or area in which the target language is spoken. <>

---- One-month of intensive (six hours per day) training in the target language during the summer after the ninth, tenth and eleventh grades. <>

-- Work out a formula with the various states to jointly fund these FLTCs.

-- Establish rigorous standards for admission into the FLTCs. Those selected for admission to these schools should have a high score on the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) language aptitude test, a high IQ, a strong academic background and a high level of motivation.

-- Provisionally select for admission students meeting these standards.

-- Require provisionally admitted students to successfully complete a one-month intensive (six hours per day) preparatory course in the target language in order to earn final admission into the ninth grade. Those demonstrating a lack of aptitude and /or motivation should be eliminated from training before entering the ninth grade in the FLTC.

-- Eliminate from the FLTCs students who fail to demonstrate that they possess the aptitude and/or motivation to become highly proficient in the target language.

-- Provide full scholarships to those earning admission.

-- Chooose language instructors who are highly qualified native speakers or Americans who approximate native speaker proficiency.
- Recommendations (Phase II). The Interagency Foreign Language Task Force should

-- Ideally, establish a national university to train the FLTC secondary school graduates to near native proficiency or, alternatively,

-- Work with various universities to develop programs suitable for training the FLTC graduates to near native proficiency.

-- Grant full scholarships to those secondary school FLTC graduates who

--- have demonstrated the potential to achieve near native proficiiency

--- agree to work for the federal government as a military member or a civilian employee for a minimum number of years.

-- Require students to major in the target language and minor in area studies. <>

--- Area studies should consist of in-depth courses on the history, economic and political systems, geography, and religion(s) of the country or area in which the target language is spoken.

--- All area studies courses should be taken in the target language.

--- Students should also be required to take at least one math course, one science course, and two other liberal arts courses in the target language.

-- Require students to perform internships during the summer to put their language skills to use in a real world environment.

--- Students should serve their internships in the country in which the target language is spoken. <>- General Recommendations. The knowledgeable reader will have noted that the approach above is more of concept than a plan. To transform this concept into a plan would be an enormous (and expensive) undertaking. The plan would have to encompass: budgeting: establishing the physical training facilities; selecting students; recruiting, screening, and hiring instructors and managers; adapting and developing curricula; developing academic standards; setting up an evaluation system; creating an achievement and proficiency testing system; and developing policy and procedural guidelines.

-- Below are recommendations for the planning and implementation of both phases, <> --- The foreign language proficiency testing instruments developed by DLIFLC and FSI should be used both to measure student proficiency in the target language and to evaluate the success of the FLTCs.

--- Experts from DLIFLC and FSI should participate in the Interagency Foreign Language Task Force. These two organizations are uniquely suited to this type of endeavor because they are repositories of expertise in language instruction, curriculum development, testing, and training evaluation and management. <>- Alternatives. Implementation of both phases of the FLT program outlined above would be an enormous undertaking. It would provide FLT on a scale far beyond anything ever attempted in the United States. It goes without saying that training on such a large scale would also be expensive. In my forty years of federal service, I don’t think I ever met a bean counter who would be inclined to approve such a program. It is the “Cadillac” plan. Are there cheaper alternatives to train Americans to a near native proficiency in foreign languages? I don’t think so.

--- Clone DLIFLC/FSI. One alternative might be to establish a DLIFLC or FSI clone. As pointed out above, these institutions, given the constraints under which they must operate, produce excellent results, but their graduates generally do not possess anything near native proficiency. They don’t produce “Cadillacs”; they produce “Chevies”. Some of the “Chevies” eventually morph into “Cadillacs”. It is not only time constraints that prevent these institutes from producing “Cadillacs”. The type of student is also a factor. Their typical students do not have a background in target languages such as Arabic and Korean. The chances are that they had never studied these languages prior to entering DLIFLC. If a DLIELC/FSI clone were expected to produce “Cadillacs: it would have to establish high entry standards or greatly extend the duration of the FLT. With respect to entry standards, students would have to already be “Chevies”. Given that the current FLT infrastructure produces a limited number of “Chevies”, it would still be necessary to establish FLTCs on the secondary or university level. With respect to extending the duration of training, I would guess that an extension of several years would be necessary.

--- Financial Incentives. Another alternative would be offering some kind of financial incentive to encourage students to study foreign languages in high school and college. This may be a worthwhile endeavor, but the typical high school and college foreign language programs won’t produce graduates with the high level of proficiency required. This approach would be more likely to produce a large number of “Edsels”, some “Chevies” and very few “Cadillacs”.

---- If the financial incentive approach should be adopted, the degree of success would depend on how incentives were meted out. Incentives would have to be meted out based degree of language proficiency, not on the number of courses “successfully” completed. The definition of successful course completion differs greatly from professor to professor and from institution to institution. Fiscal prudence would dictate that financial aid be tied to the level of target language proficiency achieved as measured by DLIFLC proficiency tests. Given the current FLT infrastructure, very few “Cadillacs” would be produced.

----Trying to train the masses to a high level of proficiency in a foreign language would be a wasteful extravagance. If the United States is going to invest money in FLT, it should get a return on its investment. If a choice must be made between investing in the delivery of a little FLT to a lot of students or a lot of FLT to a few students, our national interests dictate that we opt for “lot to a few” than “a little to a lot”. The “few " should be composed of those students with levels of aptitude and motivation sufficient to achieve near native proficiency in the target language. We don’t need several million graduates whose level of Arabic is sufficient to utter the Arabic equivalent of such phrases as “Me want soup.” We need several thousand who can function at a level of Arabic sufficient to interrogate prisoners, interpret technical conversations, translate complex documents, and negotiate treaties, <> --- There is yet another alternative. Rather than spending a lot of money to train Americans, the USG could employ native speakers born in the United States or abroad. Superficially, this appears to be an ideal solution because, assuming a sufficient number of native speakers can be found, it is relatively cheap and it eliminates the long lead time required to train native English speakers to the required level of proficiency in the target language. Upon closer scrutiny this solution loses some of its luster. The following drawbacks probably render this approach no more than a partial solution:

---- Native speakers born in the United State generally do not receive their education in the native language and do not possess the high level of proficiency required. True, in one sense they are native speakers but their level of proficiency in the language tends to be limited to what I would call “domestic” Arabic or Persian. Moreover, they don’t read books, magazines or newspapers in the language. Also, even where there is some programming available I the target language, they tend not to watch these programs. They generally prefer programs in English. As one might expect, they generally don’t possess a great deal of knowledge about their countries of origin. In a word, their linguistic competence has been limited by their linguistically poor environment.

---- While native speakers born and educated abroad often have the required skills in the target language, frequently they lack the required English language proficiency. We are then confronted with the problem of providing them with English language training. There is also another fly in the ointment. It may be impolitic to say so, but one must always wonder, when push comes to shove, whose side such native speakers are on.

---- Native speakers born abroad and those born in the United States are likely to have relatives or close friends in the country of origin. Some foreign intelligence services wouldn’t hesitate to use these relatives as leverage to compromise our native speakers. - Approach vs. Plan. The informed reader will have noted that the two-phased approach outlined above is a concept more than a plan. I leave the planning, the hard part, to others. Developing a comprehensive plan would be a daunting enterprise. Just the thought of getting cooperation from various participating federal agencies and states is enough to intimidate even the most competent bureaucrat. <>

- Rome is burning. Let’s put away the fiddle.

US Foreign Language Deficit (Part 1 of 2)

2006-01-01T10:42:00.000-08:00

<>Tom Molloy

- The purpose of this article is twofold: to emphasize the gravity of the foreign language expertise deficit in United States intelligence agencies and to propose an approach to eliminate this deficit. All opinions expressed in article are my own.

<>- Gravity of Deficit.

<>-- I am going to begin by making some comments on the grave consequences of the foreign language expertise deficit. I am then going to question the competence of senior officials in the intelligence community who presided over the degradation of foreign language expertise. My remarks are, to say the least, presumptuous because I can claim no expertise in the intelligence field. If you were to ask me whether I have any experience that qualifies me to critique the intelligence community. My response would be, “No, but I can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

<>-- One keeps reading that the diminution of foreign language proficiency in the intelligence community has degraded our intelligence gathering capability. To a layman, given the fact that most people who intend to do us dirty conspire in languages other than English, it appears self-evident that foreign language expertise is a vital component of intelligence gathering. It is stupefying that the intelligence community so devalued foreign language expertise as an asset that it let our pool of foreign language experts dwindle to such a dangerously low level. The ordinary citizen has to wonder who’s minding the store. Intelligence experts, at least those on cable TV news shows, confess that our infatuation with technology together with decreased funding led to a reduction in the cadre of language experts. Apparently, the import of the language expertise defict, obvious to any amateur who reads spy novels, was revealed to the intelligence professionals by the apocalyptic intelligence failure manifested on 9/11.

<>-- Although I claim no expertise in the intelligence field, I do claim to be an expert. My expertise is language training. I worked for almost 40 years as an instructor, manager and consultant in the language training business. For 38 of those years, I worked for the Defense Language Institute English Language Center (DLIELC). I have experience in every aspect of language training. I have taught English and several foreign languages. I have also served in various DLIELC management positions and did consulting on language training program management in over twenty foreign countries and for several major corporations. In this paper I am going to play the consultant and give unsolicited advice to the intelligence community

<>-- Technology can search out and record an Al-Qaeda member’s phone call, but as far as I know, it can’t reliably interpret what was said. To close the loop, we still need a low tech component: someone proficient in Arabic. Moreover, I suspect that human agents, fluent in Arabic, who hobnob with the indigenous population of Damascus, are potentially worth their weight in satellite photos. Although I have never worked in the intelligence field, based on my long experience as a federal employee, I just know that there were some junior intelligence officers who said to their bosses, “You know, boss, we keep recording and filing the conversations of suspected terrorists. Don’t you think we should have someone who knows Arabic listen to these conversations?” And I just know that these courageous junior officers did not engage in such impertinence with impunity. Somewhere in their performance evaluations appear such notations as, “Needs to be more of a team player.” or “Has youthful enthusiasm, but lacks wisdom from experience.”

<> -- I know that the 9/11 commission, composed of distinguished individuals, identified the dearth of foreign language expertise in intelligence agencies as a significant problem, but exonerated the chiefs of any blame. Reportedly, the goal of the commission was to ascertain what mistakes were made so we could take measures not to repeat them in the future. The goal was not to crucify those who made the mistakes. On the one hand, this “amnesty” is entirely understandable. It is difficult to elicit cooperation in an investigation if the officials in the agencies under investigation believe they are going to be crucified for telling the truth. On the other hand, the consequences of this “amnesty” don’t bode well for the nation. We are leaving in the corridors of power chiefs, who among other derelictions, didn’t ensure that there was a sufficient cadre of foreign language experts to successfully conduct intelligence operations. Instead of accountability, we have exhortations to incompetents to behave competently from now on. Something like: “Because mommy loves you, she’s not going to punish you this time for burning down our house with daddy and all your brothers and sisters inside, but I must ask you, in the future to be more careful where you play with those infernal incendiary devices you keep building. Give mommy a kiss goodnight and say your prayers before going to bed.”

<>-- I can’t help but think that 9/11 might have been another ordinary, run-of-the mill day if our intelligence community had possessed the language expertise necessary to interpret communications by suspected terrorists as soon as they were intercepted. Conceivably, at this very moment, there are transcripts awaiting translation or prisoners awaiting interrogation that have information about the plans for another major act of terrorism.

<>- Current State of Foreign Language Training (FLT) in the

United States

< -- Overview. There is probably no satisfactory quick fix which will yield a pool of experts in such languages as Arabic, Farsi, Tajik and Uzbek. Producing a sufficient number of foreign language specialists to make up the deficit will take years. In bookstores one sees foreign language instruction materials with such titles as : ”Learn Russian While You Drive to Work”, ”French in 30 Days”, “Arabic in 20 Minutes a Day”. Some of these materials are quite useful, but one has to be quite gullible to believe that one can achieve a significant degree of proficiency in such a short time. In fact, achieving a high level of proficiency in a foreign language requires years of study and practice. It generally takes four to six years to train a highly motivated individual with superior language learning aptitude to a high level of proficiency in languages such as Arabic or Korean.

<>--- A successful FLT program contains the following critical elements:

<>---- Institutional seriousness of purpose manifested by rigorously
enforced high standards and a consequent high level of academic attrition. <>

---- Elitism. Students selected for admission must have both high motivation and superior language learning aptitude. <>

---- Excellent instruction. Instructors must possess academic qualifications, but more importantly, they must excel in delivering instruction in the classroom.

<>---- Lots of training time. There are no short cuts, no nostrums, and
no miracles. Talent, time and dedication are required.

-- The goal of intelligence agencies should be to have a pool of foreign language experts whose level of proficiency is native or near native. After forty years in the language training field, it is my considered opinion that the US does not now have the infrastructure to produce the number and quality of language experts the nation requires. Neither secondary, nor university nor USG-conducted FLT are adequate to meet the nation’s need for foreign language experts. The intelligence community requires “Cadillacs", and the current infrastructure produces many “Edsels”, some Chevies” and very few “Cadillacs”.

--- Secondary Level. In Europe a great deal is accomplished in FLT on the secondary level. Many secondary school students graduate with a fairly high level of proficiency. In US secondary schools, the quality of FLT is generally abysmal an relatively few students study a foreign language. To be sure, there are exceptions, but, on the whole, expectations are low and few serious demands are made of students. No one really expects students who study French in high school to become proficient in French. Hopefully, the student who successfully completes high school French is able to utter a few mispronounced greetings in the language, knows that Paris is the capital of France, can show the location of France on a map, knows that the French eat snails, and knows that the French really love us, but have difficulty showing it. Recently, at a social gathering, I asked several secondary school foreign language (Spanish, German, French) teachers why proficiency expectations were so low. One of them explained that the goal of FLT was to bring the students to an appreciation of cultural diversity. I didn’t get a chance to pursue this intriguing concept, but I can’t help wondering if, in the cultural diversity appreciation paradigm, achieving a high level of proficiency somehow lessens one’s appreciation of cultural diversity. The cultural diversity appreciation paradigm sounded to me like a rationalization for low standards. In the course of the evening, I did learn that my survival French was superior to the French spoken by the French teacher. Therein may lie one of the reasons for the low FLT standards.

<>- University Level. With respect to the current quality of the FLT in universities, I have no recent first-hand knowledge of the quality of this training. I have not been in a foreign language class in a university since the early 1980s. Expectations were very low. However, during my career in the ELT field, I had the opportunity to interact with many individuals who had majored in foreign languages. Based on these contacts, I believe that many Americans with a BA in German or French do not speak these languages as well as the typical German or French college prep school graduate speaks English. It is my opinion that proficiency standards for US university students may be lower than those for French or German high school students. That is to say, that the typical graduate who majored in a foreign language is not the solution to our problem. With respect to the variety of foreign languages offered, there are very few universities which offer Arabic or Farsi as a major and fewer still that offer even a single course in Uzbek or Pashto. From the national security perspective, French is nice, but Arabic and Farsi are a must. Some universities are reputed to have outstanding FLT programs. The universities that make such a claim should have the opportunity to demonstrate their competence during the implementation of the approach outlined below.

-- USG Language Schools. Among USG foreign language schools, there are two that are particularly noteworthy: The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) in Monterey CA and the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Washington D.C. These institutions provide intensive FLT for periods of time up to a year or more. The number of weeks of training depends on the difficulty of the target language. Italian, for example is classified as a relatively easy language for speakers of English to learn and Korean is classified as among the most difficult. Hence, the length of the Korean course is approximately twice that of the Italian course. Given the time constraints under which these institutes operate, they produce excellent results. Nevertheless, their graduates generally do not possess anything near native proficiency. They don’t produce “Cadillacs”; they produce “Chevies”. Some of the Chevies eventually morph into “Cadillacs”. It is not only time constraints that prevent these institutes from producing “Cadillacs”. Another constraint is that, with reference to the target language, the typical student enters these institutes as a “tabula rasa”. They have no prior training in the target language. <>

To be continued.

My Brushes with the Educationists Final Part

2005-12-31T09:51:00.000-08:00

STANDARDIZED TESTS

<>The recent emphasis on accountability in education is the nemesis of the educationists. Legislatures, despite the vociferous protests of the educationist establishment, are imposing a requirement for students to take standardized tests at certain points in their schooling. The educationists claim that these tests are detrimental to student learning. They maintain that they have to devote too much class time to prepare students for these tests and have too little time to teach critical thinking. If one didn’t know better one might believe that this argument is persuasive. After all, critical thinking is vital to success in life. But this seemingly cogent argument is a canard. The fact is that it isn’t possible to teach critical thinking. It belies egalitarian orthodoxy, but critical thinking is a function of intelligence. The more intelligent individuals are, the greater their faculty for critical thinking. That is not to say that intelligent people always exercise their ability to think critically. Emotional factors are frequently impediments to exercising this faculty. Stupid people can’t and don’t think critically. One can enhance the ability of intelligent people to think critically by teaching them such subjects as mathematics, science and logic to give them the tools to think critically. One can also stress the importance of exercising this faculty in life, but one can’t teach dullards to think critically any more than one can teach a pig to fly. A good many of the teachers in the classroom today are themselves incapable of critical thinking. <>

Having made the argument above that one can’t teach critical thinking, it is necessary to point out that, to the educationist, the term critical thinking doesn’t mean the same thing as it does to laymen. It is educationese code for brainwashing. Teaching critical thinking means shaping student attitudes to conform to educationist orthodoxy. The goal is to ensure that students have the correct (not critical) attitudes about multiculturalism, diversity, abortion, the environment etc. The critical thinking of the educationists is the antithesis of true critical thinking. This perversion of language typifies totalitarian educationist dogma. It is reminiscent of the linguistic perversions of such titles as, “The People’s Republic of China” (an oligarchic totalitarian state) or the “German Democratic Republic” (neither democratic nor a republic). <>I

t’s true that standardized tests don’t measure the educationist version of critical thinking.
They do measure proficiency in mathematics, reading, geography, history etc. More and more these tests are incorporating a component to measure writing skills. Why in the world would educationists object to tests that measure these important academic skills? I believe that there are two reasons: Rejection of accountability and repudiation of academic achievement.

<>Rejection of Accountability

<>Accountability is anathema to the educational establishment. The results of these tests permit citizens to make painful comparisons. They can compare the results of individual teachers, schools, or school districts. The average parent doesn’t want to hear alibis. Just try telling a parent,

“Your son scored in the 10^th percentile. I wouldn’t be concerned just because he can’t read at grade level and can’t do simple math. None of this really matters because your son is one hell of a critical thinker! Go ahead ask him what he thinks about saving the whales. Besides, if he can’t get into college, there is always an education department somewhere that would welcome him. He will be able to use his critical thinking skills as a teacher.”

<>
Repudiation of Academic Achievement. <>

It seems bizarre to talk of teachers and repudiation of academic achievement in the same breath. However, when one reflects that academic achievement has not been the forte of the typical teacher, the seeming incongruity vanishes. How do teachers who have never achieved academic distinction lead their students to academic excellence? The short answer is that they don’t. Many teachers, never having experienced the joys of mastering an academic subject, simply do not comprehend the delights of intellectual pursuits. To many teachers schoolwork is pure drudgery. It is almost inconceivable to them that there are individuals who love academic pursuits. Academic subjects such as mathematics, science, English, history etc. are bad memories for them. The typical teacher and guidance counselor are more likely to belittle than praise students who devote themselves to scholarship. To expect these teachers to imbue their students with a love of academic pursuits is almost cruel. It’s like asking a homeless man to describe his house.

TEACHERS

<>
There are, of course, superior teachers, but contrary to the precepts I was fed in my education classes, they aren’t dullards. I was privileged to attend a parochial high school that fielded a veritable teacher all-star team. As I recall, none of these teachers had taken a single education course. In the view of educationists, this splendid cadre of teachers lacked the qualifications to teach in public schools. How ironic! I particularly remember my freshman algebra and Latin teachers. These men were not educationist hacks; they were scholars who instilled in me a life-long love of their subjects. Their passion for their subjects was contagious. When I entered high school and found out I was going to study algebra and Latin, like it or not, I was less than thrilled. Actually, I had wanted to go to the local public high school with my friends. Thanks to the wisdom of my parents, I wound up in this excellent parochial school. Within weeks, owing to the excellence of my teachers, I started to develop love for academic pursuits. <>

I have spent a lot of time around teachers and have swapped tales with them about experiences in education courses. We have shared many a good laugh about the inanity of these courses. Contrary to the educationist point of view, superior teachers are highly intelligent. They work in hostile environments in which intelligence is viewed with suspicion. Intelligence spawns ideas and ideas can refute the intellectual rubbish that comprises educationist orthodoxy. <>
I think back to the days when my children were in school. Both of my sons, for one reason or another, generated a lot of notes from teachers. Sometimes, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read these notes. They were often full of grammatical errors and misspellings. On several occasions, I mentioned these bouts of illiteracy to principals and vice principals, but the only reaction I got was a formulaic assurance that Mr. or Ms. So-and-so was a consummate professional. I got the message that literacy was not a skill required of teachers because they were professionals. I think one must be a member of the inner sanctum of educationists to comprehend this wisdom. I was tempted to request a teacher who was a literate amateur rather than a professional illiterate, but one learns not to exhibit intellect in the land of the dullards. If you have ever let a loud fart in church, you can begin to understand the horrendous nature of this faux pas. The educationists will forgive you anything—ignorance, apathy, stupidity--but not intellect. I also fondly remember the newsletter that was published by the middle school attended by one of my sons. It was chock full of errors in grammar, syntax, and spelling. I used to delight in editing each issue with a red pencil and mailing it to the principal, who never thanked me for my editing. One of the highlights of each issue was an article by the principal. I could see why he was the boss, because, in a profession notorious for its illiteracy, the principal was the grandest illiterate of all.

One of my sons, who had a vocabulary superior to that of most of his teachers, once used the word “meretricious” in a paper he wrote for a sophomore English class. When I reviewed what he wrote, I told him that the word “meretricious” came from the Latin word ”meretrix”, which means ”prostitute.” When my son got the paper back from his teacher, she had penciled in the margin,” Is this really a word?” After class my son told the teacher that it was indeed a word and it came from the Latin word for ”whore.” Boom! Major incident. I was called to school and informed by a humorless vice principal of my son’s barbarous behavior. I concurred that he might have made a better choice of words, but I didn’t think he should be suspended. When I tried to divert the issue to that of an English teacher whose vocabulary was deficient, I was given the old “She is a professional.” Can you imagine complaining about an accountant who couldn't add a column of numbers and being told not to worry because the guy is a “professional?”

<>
Then there was the high school algebra teacher (Call me, coach) of the son of one of our neighbors. “Let’s all learn this stuff together”, was reportedly his opening exhortation to his students. According to our neighbor’s son, the students left coach in the dust. One has to live in Texas to understand the reverence with which coaches are viewed. Their mystique pervades the educational establishment. Reputedly, they can teach any subject. An ordinary garden-variety math teacher may require years of preparation to teach mathematics on the secondary level, but not coach. No siree bob.

THE HEROS

<>
The school in which I served my two-year sentence as a social studies and Spanish teacher was an intellectual wasteland. The school had a terrible reputation, which it richly deserved. A fair share of the students was on probation--not academic probation, the other kind. Few of the students seemed to have any aspirations or dreams and many of the faculty members had long since left their aspirations and dreams at the door of this school. “All ye who enter here……..”

Yet, even in that dispirited institution, there were a handful of gifted teachers who really cared. Every day they battled against the demons of ineptitude and apathy that haunted the place. One of these teachers, a retired NYC fireman, served as my informal mentor. The most valuable single lesson he taught me was that you could not “outtough” our students. They knew more about the dark side of life than we would ever know. Many had been abused and brutalized. They had no family life and had had to fend for themselves since they were babies. There was no threat we could make or carry out that would faze them. My mentor taught me that, with respect to imposing classroom discipline, I could not rely on the system or the school administration. I had been briefed by a vice principal that disruptive students were to be sent to the office of the guidance counselors. My mentor told me that, if I ever had to send a student to a guidance counselor, I would have lost the war. He taught me that the key to classroom discipline was mutual respect. No educationist gimmicks, no manipulation would work. He pointed out to me that the students would not respond to armchair psychoanalysis, but they would respond to respect. He advised me to make a written pact with the students on the first day of class. He gave me a copy of a pact he had made with one of his classes. This pact contained rules of behavior for both the teacher and the students. For example, one of the obligations of the teacher was to never belittle a student. One of the obligations of the students was to never talk when the teacher or another student was talking. After negotiations with the students on the first day of class, the students and I signed the pact. This pact turned an unruly mob into a law-abiding community. Peer pressure forced the students to conform to the covenants of the pact. The pact I concluded with my students amounted to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. It began, “The teacher is the king and his students are his subjects However, students have certain rights that the king must respect.” Even though I was recognized as the king, I was also bound by the pact.

<>It is ironic that I can’t think of one thing I learned in an education class that really helped me in the classroom, but I learned a great deal from a retired NYC fireman who had nothing but disdain for the educationist establishment. It is also ironic that none of my education professors could have survived a week in the school in which I taught. My students would have run these officious pretenders out of the classroom. Perhaps we should replace the educationists in our universities with retired NYC firemen.

And so forth…….

My Brushes with the Educationists Part 2

2005-12-30T16:55:00.000-08:00

<>By
<>

Tom Molloy

<>
2. THE TEACHING CERTIFICATE RACKET

As far as I know, in most states, to obtain a permanent teaching certificate, one has to run a gauntlet of tedious education courses. In these courses, one gets lots of sterile, “how”, but no “what”. In practice, most of the “how” is puerile balderdash. The "how” that has merit could be easily condensed into a short course. I can’t believe that I sat in classes in which I was expected to participate in discussions on bulletin board management and effective use of stick figures on the chalkboard. Lamentably, pursuing the educationist curriculum is a zero sum game. While one takes oodles of hours of junk education courses, one is not taking courses in mathematics, foreign language, history, philosophy, chemistry, and physics. Ironically, one must abandon educational pursuits to take education courses. Education is the only field I know in which the more “professional” courses one takes, the more disadvantaged one is in one’s profession. It is as if each education course appends barnacles to the mind, creating a drag on the intellect.

<>In my opinion, increasing education course requirements does nothing whatsoever to improve teacher competence. When you add zero to zero ad infinitum, you still wind up with zero. The very first day I stood in front of a class I knew I was good at it. Being a cocky young smart-ass, I repeatedly told my graduate advisor of the low esteem in which I held education courses. As part of the graduate program, he had to come and observe me teach a few times. It really stuck in his craw that this young upstart, who belittled education courses, could tame an unruly pack of teenagers and have them eating out of his hand. Not only did I excel in the classroom; I didn’t conform to the educationist paradigm. I used sarcasm; I insisted on excellence, I made students memorize material. Perhaps my most serious breach of educationist protocol was to proclaim to my students that in my classroom I was the king and they were my subjects. We established a constitutional monarchy. I stole this scene from one of my high school Latin teachers, a magnificent teacher, who, naturally, used to make his pronouncements in Latin. Egalitarianism wasn’t part of my pedagogical repertoire. Moreover, my advisor knew that I knew that, for all of his junk degrees, he couldn’t emulate my performance. My homeroom class, composed mostly of students awaiting their 16^th birthday, the legal age of expulsion, would have eaten his lunch. <>

My graduate advisor was basically a decent sort so the only price I paid for my flippancy was a little nitpicking. For example, in one instance, I began a question to the class by saying, “Does anyone know………? Well, to a layman this might seem a reasonable query, but to an educationist this was a mortal sin. You see, the theory was that you asked questions only to individuals, not to the class as a whole. This was supposedly a control mechanism so ten students didn’t shout out the answer at once. As educationist rules go, this was not a bad one. However, in my case, my students had been conditioned to raise their hand if they knew the answer. I would then call on one student to answer—not always one who had raised a hand. I would not have tolerated anyone shouting out the answer. When my graduate advisor counseled me about this alleged transgression, I instinctively realized that I had to let him win one. I decided to keep my big mouth shut and acted contrite.

If I were hiring a history teacher and there was a choice between an individual having 60 hours of history on his transcript and another having 30 hours of history and 30 hours of education courses, all things being equal, I certainly would hire the teacher most knowledgeable in history. In my opinion, education courses not only don’t add value; they debase one’s intellect. Nevertheless, the educationists have a lock on the system. In general, unless one is willing to prostitute one’s intellect by taking these mind-numbing courses, one can’t obtain a teaching certificate. In the parlance of “educationese”, a qualified teacher is one who has taken the critical mass of education courses. Individuals with an MA in mathematics from MIT are not considered qualified teachers unless they subject themselves to the intellectual abasement of education courses. The educationists have rigged the system so that an education major with 18 or 21 hours of “mathematics for teachers” is considered more qualified than our MIT graduate with an MA in mathematics is. Any course labeled “for teachers” is code for “dumbed down.” To me the great mystery is whether educationists really believe that education courses have any relation to pedagogical competence. Could anyone really be that stupid? Or, or are education courses just a profitable racket?

<>Whatever the purity of educationist intentions, this ludicrous, monopolistic system yields juicy benefits for teachers. It creates an artificial shortage of “qualfied” teachers. The formula is simple: shortage=demand=higher pay. If only plumbers had it so good! Can you imagine what a windfall it would be for a few plumbers if the government were suddenly to mandate that, in order to practice their trade, plumbers had to have 30 hours of art history courses? Not only would those few plumbers with these credentials reap a bonanza, but so would university art history departments. I submit that art history is to plumbing as education courses are to teaching. The difference is that, although art history courses are not germane to plumbing, they at least have substance. After taking these courses you actually know something. Not so for education courses.

<> COMPLICITY OF UNIVERSITIES

<>Universities benefit enormously from the education course bonanza. Education departments tap a lucrative source of income that is not available to other departments. They have a monopoly. Other departments generally don’t accept dullards for admission. This leaves education departments with an exclusive right to the dullards. (After all, don’t dullards make the best teachers?). There is a lot of money in “them there” dregs. For those who think that everyone should go to college, education departments are the ultimate answer. Education departments welcome dullards with one hand while they pick their pockets with the other hand. These departments are the last resort for students who have no intellectual aptitude. They graduate teachers who are barely literate or numerate. In education departments the almighty dollar has usurped academic excellence. Are universities really that venal? You betcha! Newly minted teachers graduate financially and intellectually impoverished, waving their junk degrees—degrees that offer no guarantee of basic literacy. The whole system is a colossal sham. University administrators should be ashamed of themselves. They are extracting money from their victims and, in return, giving nothing of substance. This isn’t tuition; it’s a form of extortion.

<>Education departments are also cauldrons of nefarious ideas; to name a few: The whole language method of teaching reading, bilingual education, the New Math, self-esteem "uber alles", egalitarianism--all are concepts which are or were cherished by the educationists. Admittedly, I don’t sit around reading educational journals, but I can’t think of one measurable improvement in pedagogy that issued from education departments in the 20th century. There have been lots of fads and lots of old ideas warmed over and served in a casserole of new terminology, but where is the demonstrable, irrefutable evidence of progress in pedagogy? Today’s fad is tomorrow’s bad idea; today’s flashy new term is tomorrow’s discarded cliché. Do education departments today really turn out teachers equipped with skills superior to those of yesterday? What would Socrates say?

<>While I was taking education courses, I coined a definition of a doctor of education; to wit, “A doctor of education is someone who takes a bikini idea and puts it into a snow suit so no one wants to look at it anymore.” Still works for me.

The great tragedy ensuing from the monopoly of the educationists is that individuals who would like to be teachers in order to engage in intellectual pursuits are dissuaded from this vocation because they are compelled to subject themselves to the humiliation of education courses. Take the young chemistry graduate who is passionately in love with his subject. In order to share his passion as a high school teacher, he has to run a gauntlet, being pelted by intellectual garbage hurled at him by educationists. This hazing of the mind is too high a price to pay for many young intellectuals. The educationists are effectively purging the teacher ranks of intellectuals. Only the dullards will remain. This is a sure-fire way to ensure that academic achievement is delegitimized. It’s working.

To be continued

My Brushes with the Educationists Part 1.

2005-12-30T12:23:00.000-08:00

Tom Molloy

<>PART 1.

INTRODUCTION

<>My first contact with the educationists came after I graduated from college. During my college years, I hadn’t taken any education courses, although I had heard rumors about their inanity. I had never given any serious consideration to being a teacher. Towards the end of my senior year, I began looking for a job but my 1A draft status made me an untouchable. I was beginning to become desperate. By chance, a friend told me of a school district on Long Island that would hire any “warm body” that walked through the door. I walked through the door and I was hired on the spot. Not only did they hire me, but a couple of months later I received a 3D draft classification in the mail. It turns out that anyone desperate enough to work in that misbegotten school was a vital national asset that couldn’t be drafted. <>Of course, there was a downside. I discovered that I would have to obtain a temporary teaching certificate in order to begin teaching in the fall. I was required to take nine semester hours of “graduate” education courses during a summer session and to continue taking three hours per semester ad infinitum until I had accumulated the zillion hours necessary to obtain a New York State permanent teacher’s certificate. As I recall, the titles of the three summer “graduate” courses were something like: Adolescent Psychology, General Methodology, and Methodology of Teaching Social Studies.

EDUCATIONIST PRINCIPLES

<>Naively, I showed up for my first education course full of enthusiasm. By the end of the first hour of class, thanks to the insipidness of my professor and my classmates, my enthusiasm had hemorrhaged, leaving me totally drained. I felt like an alien. The course content was vacuous and many of my classmates were dullards. During that monotonous summer, I learned that each professor had pet principles, which, to an outlier like myself, appeared to be nothing more than pure drivel. As the professors propounded these principles, I kept expecting them to wink, but they didn’t. Most of the principles were so self-evident that one wondered why they were material for a graduate course; others were so absurd that one just wondered and wondered. To cite a few examples of the absurd:

<>Principle # 1. Students who have difficulty learning make the best teachers because they understand the difficulties being experienced by their students. One professor used to pronounce this principle to console those of my classmates who had difficulty comprehending the banal contents of the course. Had I believed this schlock, I would have been left in a terrible quandary. You see, in all humility, I must confess that I never had much difficulty learning and ipso facto I would have been forever consigned to the ranks of the less gifted teachers. If this principle were true, I was one of the few in the class not destined for greatness. Indeed, many of my classmates had a great deal of difficulty learning. Those multiple-choice tests based on the reading of a few pages of trivia really bamboozled them. Had I subscribed to this principle, I would have envied them their dullness. Yet, somehow the thought of undergoing a lobotomy that would confer on me the precious gift of difficulty in learning (i. e., superior teacher status) never appealed to me.

<> Principle # 2. Never use sarcasm with the students. There was a dress code in the “graduate” education department. All male students were required to wear a coat and tie to class. Students who failed to comply were marked absent. You see, a coat and tie had a unique place among the educationists. The education establishment was very touchy on the subject of professionalism because there were those in the academic world who knew that the educationists had no corpus of knowledge that would merit the appellation “professional”. Wearing a coat and tie created the illusion of professionalism. On the first day of class, the professor challenged one of my few intelligent classmates because he wasn’t wearing a tie. My classmate responded, “A monkey could pass an education course if he wore a tie to class. The hard part would be for him to tie the tie.” The professor misinterpreted this bald statement of fact as a sarcastic comment. He responded by delivering a diatribe against sarcasm and enjoined us never to use sarcasm in the classroom. He railed against the devastating effect sarcasm had on the self image of students. I found this emotional outburst disconcerting. It belied my experience. I recalled that some of my most effective high school teachers and college professors were masters of sarcasm. In fact, I had always prided myself on being pretty good at sarcasm, but, in this alien world, sarcasm was taboo. Allegedly, the use of sarcasm deflates the egos of students. I found this rationale rather silly. It took me a while to discern the real rationale for the proscription against sarcasm. As I adapted to the educationist environment, it dawned on me that principle number two was actually a derivative of principle number one. You see, to use sarcasm, one has to be more intelligent than a turnip, but such a relatively high IQ is rare in educationist circles. If one were to use sarcasm, it would be tantamount to confessing that one was too intelligent to be a good teacher. That is to say, in educationist circles, sarcasm is apostasy because by using sarcasm one renounces one’s status as a dullard.

<> Principle # 3. The purpose of education is to instill correct attitudes, not to impart information. Academic achievement is elitist. Here I am paraphrasing. No single professor explicitly stated this principle. I derived this principle as an amalgam of the snippets of wisdom dispensed by several professors. Viewed from the perspective of the self-interest of the teaching profession, this principle panders to the teacher candidates, very few of whom come to education courses either sullied by information or guilty of academic achievement. One must applaud the success of the educationists in shaping the educational establishment to fit this principle. Our secondary students can recite the correct attitudes on saving the whales, cutting down trees, and building nuclear power plants. Many may not know that whales are mammals, that trees produce oxygen, or that a nucleus is part of atom, but attitude--they can give you attitude all day long. There is nothing as edifying as observing a group of teenagers sitting in a circle, picking their pimples, and reciting slogans about the evils of nuclear energy. It’s a tribute to their teachers that they can recite the correct attitudes without ever having to endure the tedium of studying physics, chemistry, or biology. The real triumph of attitude over information can be witnessed every day in our fast food restaurants, where high school graduates brimming with attitude, require pictures on the keys to operate a cash register. We all have our favorite stories about getting change when the registers go down.

<> Principle # 4. Everyone should attend college. It seems paradoxical that a professor could advocate that all students attend college while maintaining that academic achievement is elitist. This apparent paradox vanishes when one realizes that the educationist vision of college is not of students engaged in the elitist pursuits of history, philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and physics. No, their vision of college is a place where advanced attitudinal training takes place. Students, who had already been inculcated with the correct attitude about mundane subjects such as whales, trees, and nuclear energy could now have their attitudes molded in such advanced areas as affirmative action, multiculturalism, sexism, abortion, and feminism. These professors were egalitarians. According to their orthodoxy, all people were literally created equal. In their mind, the only variable in academic success is opportunity. Of course, opportunity is an important variable in one’s academic aspirations. It’s no secret that George W. Bush isn’t equal and didn’t get into Yale based on his stellar academic performance. Yet, most of us believe that intelligence also plays a role. To some of my professors, the idea that intelligence was a factor in an individual’s academic success was heresy. It became apparent in just a few class sessions why these professors disparaged the value of intelligence. <>Despite having suffered severe indigestion trying to stomach my first three doses of education curses, I embarked on another course during the fall semester. This course gave me even more severe indigestion. I spent so little time in this course that I don’t even remember the name of it. It was awesomely awful. After a few sessions I just stopped going. The irony is that I think my escape from this course earned me a grade of “incomplete”—which, according to the rules, would eventually become a failing grade. I have never asked for a transcript, but I presume I actually failed an education course. I may very well be the only individual to have failed an education course in the 20^th century. If there is a “Dunce of the Millennium Award”, failing an education course may very well make me a candidate. <>There was very little substantive content in the dreary education courses I endured. They were a triumph of form over substance. A good deal of the course content was either common sense or nonsense wrapped in glitzy, high-sounding terminology. Two terms that readily come to mind are “horizontal articulation” and “vertical articulation”. I was counseled by my academic advisor that my “vertical articulation” (ability to get along with superiors and subordinates, i.e., students) was satisfactory, but my “horizontal articulation” (ability to get along with peers) needed improvement. How would you like to be told that your horizontal articulation was out of whack? Pretty heavy stuff—sounds a lot worse than not getting along with your peers. The truth is my advisor was right. I prided myself on not getting along with most of my classmates. I was something of a snob. I confess I looked down on “graduate” students who disdained intellectual pursuits. I had teamed up with the few other literate students to form a clique that was despised as elitist by the dullards--faculty and students alike.

To be continued.

A War Almost Lost

2005-12-29T17:03:00.000-08:00

<>By
<>

Tom Molloy

Whenever President Bush tries to justify our invasion of Iraq by saying that we are fighting terrorists “over there” so we don’t have to fight them on our own soil, it causes me to shudder. I wonder if the President is naive enough to believe this or if he is trying to con the American people.

Experts tell us there are cells of terrorists in the USA that are now planning to cause massive destruction in our country. The government has reacted to this omnipresent threat in two ways: First it has greatly expanded and consolidated intelligence gathering capabilities. Second, it has expanded the size and scope of our security forces in order to protect our vital installations from attack. I submit that these measures are necessary but insufficient. If we stake the survival of our civilization on these two measures, we are deluding ourselves. Our intelligence gathering will never achieve perfection and we will never be able to protect every potential target.

The war in Iraq, whatever one’s feelings about it, can hardly be considered a measure to stop terrorist attacks from being planned and executed against targets in the United States. President Bush seems to assume that the terrorists can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

One congressional committee after the other keeps discovering that, no matter how much money we spend, we still seem vulnerable to terrorist attacks. There are so many modes of attack. Two examples of highly destructive weapons: small nuclear bombs or shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. It is doubtful that we can prevent these weapons from being smuggled into the United States and even more doubtful that we can protect every potential target against them. Given the weapons, a reasonably bright group of 12-year olds could plan and execute attacks.

The terrorists have an infinite number of targets from which to choose, but our resources to defend against attack are finite. If we were to enlist every American into our intelligence or security services, we still wouldn’t have the manpower to defend every potential terrorist target. Given our vulnerability, I don’t know why the terrorists haven’t attacked us again since 9/11. However, I think it is dangerous to equate “haven’t attacked us” with “couldn’t attack us.”

The Bush administration tells us that the war against terrorism is going to be a long one. This prediction is based on the sanguine presumption that we are going to win it. Yet, Hollywood is not writing this script; Tehran and Damascus are. I can guarantee you that their script doesn’t depict us as the winners. I suspect their script envisions a relatively short war that brings down Western civilization.

If nuclear bombs were to explode tomorrow morning in 10 or more major US cities, I don’t think the President could appease the American public by stating that the “War on Terrorism” was just going to take a little longer than he had thought and that he was sending 50, 000 more troops to Iraq to fight them ”over there”.

The razing of 10 major cities along with the ensuing horrors would be so grotesque that even Dick Cheney might be compelled to admit that we had suffered a setback in the “War on Terrorism”. The average citizen would realize that we had just lost the “War on Terrorism” but I suspect the administration spin would be that the attack was the last desperate act of a group on the point of extinction.

Imagine the scenarios in the devastated cities: A total breakdown in law and order; citizens fighting one another for scraps of food, water, and medicine; massive looting; the dead rotting in the streets; rampant disease; abandonment of infants, the old and infirm--a scenario too horrible to contemplate, but if we don’t contemplate it, we are going to be forced to live it.

It’s not that our enhanced intelligence and security capabilities are totally nugatory, but reliance on these inadequate measures as our first line of defense against terrorism indicates a national “death wish”. Some morning we will wake up dead, complicit in our own suicide.

I believe that there is one way we might win this war. The Achilles heel of the terrorists is their dependence on their patrons for support. They can’t support their terrorism habit by working part time in a car wash. Weapons and explosives, particularly nuclear bombs and shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, are expensive. Without patrons, the terrorists would be hard pressed to commit acts that cause massive casualties.

Every day, while we wage war in Iraq, politicians denounce the nations that are patrons of terrorism. For one reason or another, these nations feel that their support of terrorism is in their interests. Despite our protestations about their support for terrorism, they thumb their noses at us. Simply stated, the time has come for us to make it clear to them and the rest of the world that their support of terrorism is no longer in their interests. We must make it clear they are in danger of losing their thumbs and their noses.

My fellow Americans, we have to make a decision. Are we going to meekly wait to be slaughtered or are we going to defend ourselves? Right now we are biding our time until a massive terrorist attack brings us to our knees. We are deluding ourselves. We are waiting for a Deus ex Machina ending, the sound of bugles as John Wayne comes riding over the hill with the cavalry.

Admittedly, the “doomsday” strategy I am going to suggest is not for the timid, but the time for timidity has passed. Life–long friends have chided me for even thinking about this strategy.

STRATEGY

The United States of America should issue the following proclamation:

1. Nations and individuals supporting terrorism against the United States and its interests must cease their support immediately: (List names)

2. Effective immediately, the Unites States regards all citizens of countries that support terrorism as enemy combatants.

<>3. With respect to terrorism, the United States has adopted the doctrine of disproportionate response. That is to say, the response of the United States to any act of terrorism or intended act of terrorism will be to devastate entire towns or cities of the patron states with non-nuclear weapons. <>

4. The United States, in the interests, of showing states supporting terrorism the error of their ways, will give a demonstration of the future consequences of supporting terrorism. <>

5. The town of_________________ located in ______________________will cease to exist in 15 days (incendiary, not nuclear, weapons will be used). It is suggested that evacuation of this city commence immediately.

6. Should the government of (targeted country) decide to install foreign hostages in the targeted town, the United States will annihilate not only this town, but will also wipe out a major city on the same day. The name of the second city will not be announced in advance. It will simply be “now you see it; now you don’t.”

<>7. The United States will hold the targeted countries, in the absence of proof to the contrary, responsible for each and every act of terrorism against the United States. If there is no clear connection between a minor act of terrorism and one of the targeted countries, we will randomly pick one of these countries and devastate several of its cities. A major act of terrorism will result in the total destruction of the targeted countries. There will be no investigations, no hearings, no negotiations; no appeals; there will just be devastation. <>

8. Effective immediately the United States will assassinate individuals known to be supporting terrorism.

9. The United States has no intention of losing the ”War on Terrorism” and will take whatever measures are necessary to eliminate terrorists and their patrons.

<>10. The United States urges citizens of the targeted states to change their governments before their countries are annihilated.

Most readers will have recoiled at the thought of destroying cities and killing so many “innocent" people. There are two points I would like to make. First, whether or not we kill people will depend on the acts of their governments. Second, I lived many years in the Middle East and I can assure you that many of these “innocent” people would rejoice if Americans were slaughtered in a nuclear attack. Many, who would never dream resorting to violence themselves and who loudly condemn violence, felt a twinge of delight on 9/11 because long-suffering colleagues had finally taught the West a lesson. And I remind you that virtually all main stream Muslim leaders refused to categorically denounce 9/11.

Most Westerners feel that, when the stakes are so high, we can reason with people. You can’t reason with Islamic (or any other) fundamentalists any more than you can reason with a virus. We may dissuade patron nations from supporting terrorism by instilling fear of annihilation, but it is fear, not reason that will determine their response. The inexorable logic of this strategy notwithstanding, I myself have moral qualms about advocating it. I just wish I knew if my qualms spring from moral fortitude or moral cowardice. As for morality, if we don’t take action, we won’t be alive to discuss ethical nuances.

I know we are not going to adopt this strategy? We are meekly going to await our fate. We are going to die knowing that our cause was just, but not just enough to do what is necessary to win. Because of our failure to defend ourselves, our losing isn’t an option; it’s a certainty.

How ironic! Ignorant fanatics are preparing to obliterate the resplendent legacy of DaVinci, Mozart, Aquinas, Kant, Shakespeare, Bach, Dante, Cervantes, Beethoven, Einstein, and Keats.

The barbaric legacy that is going to triumph sanctions stoning women to death for adultery and killing innocent rape victims to restore family honor. It preaches hatred and promises suicide bombers eternal bliss for killing innocent women and children.

<>Throughout history barbarians have brought down great civilizations and, I fear, they are about to do so again.

<>Aw shit!

Useful Poor

2005-12-28T21:13:00.000-08:00

THANK HEAVENS FOR THE POOR
by
TOM MOLLOY

In the early 1960’s we had never heard of the War on Terrorism or War on Drugs, but in March 1964, President Johnson, in a stirring speech, declared the War on Poverty. At that time I was a Peace Corps volunteer (PCV). I and most of my fellow PCVs were euphoric that the United States would be the first nation in history to successfully eradicate the scourge of Poverty. We were young, optimistic, and passionate. Well, my optimism fled with my youth, my passion is somewhat dampened and Poverty is thriving. Since our defeat in the war on Poverty, the term “liberal” elicits derisive reactions from a large segment of the American people. “Liberal” is defined in the rightwing vernacular as “a godless socialist who foments class warfare”. Had someone told me in 1964 that the term “liberal” would evoke such rancor in US politics or that the United States would be the only Western industrial democracy not to have eliminated Poverty, I would have been incredulous.

Instead of eliminating Poverty, we have become dependent on it. Most of us (80 to 85%) have a relatively high standard of living at least in part because our working poor provide cheap labor. Think of the consequences of raising the minimum wage to a living wage. Suppose, over a period of time, we doubled or even tripled the minimum wage and also provided health insurance to all the working poor. Whatever the other consequences, the working poor would join the ranks of those earning a living wage. A good part of the cost would be passed on to more affluent consumers in the form of price increases. A hamburger, a plane ticket, a hair cut, a car---all would cost more.

In fact, in Europe, where the “common good” is a social ideal and poverty is considered a social aberration, wages are generally sufficient to keep wage earners out of poverty. More affluent Europeans accept paying higher prices for goods and services. In America, the ideal of “rugged individualism” has trumped the common good.

In recent electoral campaigns, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans made the elimination of poverty a major issue. To be sure, the Democrats timidly made pro forma proposals for palliative increases in the minimum wage and lamented recent tax cuts, pointing out they disproportionately benefited the wealthy. The right wingers preach the mystical powers of the free market to reduce the number of the working poor. According to their paradigm, the free market is a panacea and tinkering with wages of the poor is anathema. Nonetheless, when it comes to the rich, the right wingers have a tendency to disregard free market principles. A steady stream of tax breaks cascades out of Congress, gushing into corporate coffers and the pockets of the rich. Judging by the tax breaks dished out to the rich, it appears that making money is not an incentive per se, the rich have to be given special incentives to make money.

The cynicism that is the handmaiden of aging has replaced my youthful optimism. I am almost ready to believe that the reason that Poverty exists on such a large scale in America is that the elimination of Poverty would disrupt the lives of the affluent. I am not just talking about economics here. The least disruptive consequences might be the ensuing price increases for goods and services.

The most disruptive impact of eliminating Poverty might be on finding recruits for the all-volunteer military. The majority of enlisted recruits are from low-income families. They join the military to improve their lot in life and many of them do so.. If it weren’t for a large pool of economically disadvantaged young men and women, the enlisted ranks of the military would have to be filled by conscription.

The French use their Foreign Legion to do their dirty work. After all, foreigners are expendable. We use our economic underclass to do our dirty work.

Woe to the politician who proposes any scheme to draft the sons of middle and upper class “patriots’. Their patriotism consists of wrapping themselves in the flag and bombastically extolling the valor of the poor kids dying to preserve the standard of living of the rich kids. Many of our hawkish fat cat patriots, whose sons are the future power brokers, passionately support our invasion of Iraq. If it were their sons dying in Iraq, I suspect their ardor for this war would quickly wane. President Bush speaks of the nobility of our soldiers in Iraq and openly weeps at the mounting casualties. I don’t presume to question his sincerity, but if serving in Iraq is such a noble endeavor why aren’t his daughters there soaking up some nobility?