Monthly Archives: January 2010

Cellphones, Texting And Kids

There’s a debate going on in the Pandora household – Is it time to let the kids have cellphones, and if we let them have cellphones should we let them text?

First, is everyone sitting down? Okay, here it is. I do not have a cellphone. Now, everyone take a deep breath and I’ll explain. There really isn’t a specific reason for my not having a cell phone. I just never bought one. And while there have been times having a cellphone would have been handy, those situations were never drastic enough to make me take action. Also, as a stay-at-home mom my time during the day is spent, well, mostly at home. Go on, you can laugh now. (FTR, Mr. Pandora has a work cellphone.)

But now the issue has come up in relation to my 15 and 12 year old – mainly my 12 year old daughter since my 15 year old could care less about talking on a phone or texting.

Everybody still with me, or are you still stuck on the fact that I’m a mutant?

I have several concerns about kids with cellphones. First, imo, kids should only have cellphones for their parent’s convenience. What that means is if kids aren’t answering their parent’s calls then the cellphone should be taken away. It’s a privilege, and should be treated the same way as the keys to the car. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been with parents who are beside themselves because they can’t reach their kids on a device they primarily bought to be able to reach their kids. Another little wrinkle that I’ve witnessed – many times – is how often kids have called their parents to tell them where they are only for the parents to discover that their kids were lying. Yeah, I know this has been going on well before technology, but there’s no denying that cellphones have made the “I’ll tell my parents I’m going to the library, and then meet you at the party” ploy a lot easier. I even know one parent who went so far as to track their child’s whereabouts via a GPS program on their cellphone . Not sure how I feel about that, but I’m leaning towards if you’ve reached the point where you’re tracking your child whereabouts through GPS, perhaps you should consider grounding them.

My second concern is the drama, fighting and bullying taking place through the technology. And while I may have trouble getting my son to talk, I can’t shut my daughter up. I’m really not complaining about this, she is a fount of information, most of it harmless, but some of it quite disturbing. This is the way it seems to go: Person A has a problem (real or imagined) with person B. Begin texting. Person A then recruits others to their side and they join the texting war. Sometimes person B forms their own posse, but sometimes not.

I realize that these sort of arguments have always taken place, but what concerns me is how they are now taking place silently. Two kids yelling horrible things at one and other attracts attention. Saying the same vicious things through texting remains under the radar, and many of these attacks are fueled by kids unknown to the victim. In many ways texting has become the bully’s new playground.

I witnessed this tactic this past summer. Two 13 year old girls had an argument. The texting began, only one of the girls put together a network of support that swamped the other girl. And what started out as an argument over something stupid, and typically childish, ended with explicitly sexual name calling and rumors which quickly spilled onto FaceBook. When the adults finally got wind of what was going on one little girl was already devastated. And while this may be likened to nasty messages written on the bathroom wall, the shear volume of the attack isn’t so easily scrubbed away.

Another little cellphone “game” that disturbs me is the “let’s take an embarrassing picture of someone and post it everywhere.” Again, most of these pictures are harmless and silly, but some are not.

So, I have a dilemma. In many ways joining the modern world would make my life easier. In others, I would have to take on more work by keeping a vigilant tab on what’s going on in the silent world of finger tapping. A part of me knows this is inevitable, and a part of me resents the technology that makes the secretive world of teenagers more secretive.

So… any thoughts, ideas… or recommendations for which cellphone plan I should consider? Or are you still shaking your head and saying, “Pandora doesn’t own a cell phone? How is that possible?”

Limbaugh Doubles Down On Teh Stupid

Oh Rush Limbaugh, you never fail to disappoint (and I do mean disappoint). Limbaugh is still pushing some conspiracy theory that President Obama is going to steal money intended for victims of Haiti. A caller from my hometown challenges him and he manages to keep up the stupid, with a nice dose of misogyny thrown in.

Today, a woman named “April” from Paducah, KY called into Limbaugh’s show and asked where he got the “cojones” to make such statements. Limbaugh insisted that he never meant to discourage private donations to Haiti, but stood by his remarks that Obama will try to exploit the disaster for political gain:

RUSH: No, I’m not evading it at all. If I said it I meant to say it, and I do believe that everything is political to this president. Everything this president sees is a political opportunity, including Haiti, and he will use it to burnish his credentials with minorities in this country and around the world, and to accuse Republicans of having no compassion. […]

CALLER: [A]re you implying that the Huffington Post as the one and only resource that I [read]? I even watch Fox News once in a while.

RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. I’m not implying that. … What I’m illustrating here is that you’re a blockhead. What I’m illustrating here is that you’re a closed-minded bigot who is ill-informed. … And if you had listened to this program for a modicum of time you would know it. But instead you’re a blockhead. You’re mind is totally closed. You have tampons in your ears. Nothing is getting through other than the biased crap that you read.

Thank you, April from Paducah! The president will accuse Republicans of having no compassion, so don’t give money to Haiti? I’m trying to understand the logic here.

Washington Times: Obama Has Passed More Cuts Than Bush

I know, what you’re thinking: Delaware Liberal is linking to the Washington Times? Has the world gone mad? The Washington Times did a study of the budget under Bush and Obama and found that Obama was able to push more budget cuts through than Bush did.

President Obama notched substantial successes in spending cuts last year, winning 60 percent of his proposed cuts and managing to get Congress to ax several programs that had bedeviled President George W. Bush for years.

The administration says Congress accepted at least $6.9 billion of the $11.3 billion in discretionary spending cuts Mr. Obama proposed for the current fiscal year. An analysis by The Washington Times found that Mr. Obama was victorious in getting Congress to slash 24 programs and achieved some level of success in reducing nine other programs.

Among the president’s victories are canceling the multibillion-dollar F-22 Raptor program, ending the LORAN-C radio-based ship navigation system and culling a series of low-dollar education grants. In each of those cases, Mr. Obama succeeded in eliminating programs that Mr. Bush repeatedly failed to end.

…

By comparison, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Mr. Bush won 40 percent of his spending cuts in fiscal 2006 and won less than 15 percent of his proposed cuts for 2007 and 2008.

I think it’s a lot easier to talk about budget cuts in the abstract but when it gets down to actually cutting programs it’s much more difficult. Programs always have their proponents who will fight to save them because it brings jobs to their district. Budget cuts can have real consequences for them. Also, I doubt Obama will get any credit from the media or the born-again fiscal conservatives.

In the long run, we’re going have to figure out how to fix our budget. The deficit will be a drag on the economy in the long term.

Delaware To Appeal Sports Betting To SCOTUS

In what I would call a surprise decision, the Markell administration has announced that it plans to appeal the sports betting decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gov. Jack Markell says Delaware will appeal restrictions on it sports betting lottery to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Markell and his aides said Thursday that the state expects to file its appeal by the end of the month.

The earlier court decision blocked Delaware from operating single game bets, which is thought to bring in much more revenue. Delaware lost pretty decisively in the last court decision, I wonder what arguments they are planning to present in the appeal. Assuming SCOTUS takes the case (a big if), this case will be very closely watched. Think of the case as Delaware v. the NFL.

The Brown Campaign is Over.

So, besides their racist hatred of our nation’s first black President, the supposed freedom loving Teabaggers got their start in opposition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the bailouts of both the banks, AIG and the auto industry. They screamed “stop the bailouts!” They screamed that it was their money. A new moment of populist fervor was sweeping the country, and we were led to believe that the Republicans were the ones to lead this populist uprising.

It will be interesting to see how defending the banks will be seen as populist.

Democrats believe President Barack Obama’s proposed, $90 billion tax on big banks will box in Republicans, giving them the choice between siding with the bankers or breaking with the GOP’s antitax base. If so, Republican Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown has taken the bait. His Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley, embraced the bank tax and spent the day goading Brown to take a stand. […]

Responding to The Wall Street Journal, the Brown campaign said this evening, “Scott Brown is opposed to higher taxes, especially in the midst of a severe recession. Raising taxes will kill jobs. Martha Coakley’s tax-raising policies will make it harder to get our economy back on the right track.”

So Republicans will have us believe, that in a moment of populist fervor which they hope to lead back into power, that the politically smart thing to do, in a close election, is to defend the banking industry.

I Was Wrong: Republicans Do Have New Ideas

Marco Rubio is the Republican Senate candidate in Florida who is cleaning Crist’s clock. He’s a darling to the Tea Party/Club for Growth set. He proposed an interesting idea for fixing the economy – suspend Congress.

Last night on CNBC, Marco Rubio, a right-wing Republican running for US Senate in Florida, told host Larry Kudlow about his “solutions to the high unemployment” and economic recession. Rubio chafed at responding with any actual ideas, policies, or solutions. In fact, Rubio proposed that if he were elected, he would call for “a two year recess or something” so no laws or reforms could be enacted:

KUDLOW: If you were elected Senator, what would you do about the 10% unemployment rate, which may or may not be 10% if and when you get in? But, what are your general solutions to the high unemployment and worries about the economic recession?

RUBIO: Well the problem is the people in Washington don’t understand what’s causing it. They think that Presidents and Senators are job creators and they’re not. The job creators are people who have access to money, whether it’s their own or borrowed, who use that money to open up a new business or expand an existing one. And they’re not doing that right now because of the tax chaos and all the regulatory chaos and all of this uncertainty created in Washington DC. Perhaps the most stimulative thing they can do right now is take a two year recess or something.

So, I was wrong there are some new ideas out there. Vote for me, I want a paid vacation is a fresh and new electoral strategy! I hope more Republicans adopt it.

What Sort Of Scum Would Profit Off The Haiti Disaster?

If you answered credit card companies you’d be correct.

As a massive human tragedy unfolds in Haiti, relief organizations are soliciting credit-card donations through their hotlines and websites. About 97 percent of these donations will actually make it to the designated organizations — but the other 3 percent will be skimmed off by banks and credit card companies to cover their “transaction costs.”

Thanks to this hidden fee, American banks and credit card companies are making huge profits — somewhere in the neighborhood of $250 million a year — off of people’s charitable donations, according to a Huffington Post analysis.

They are truly disgusting, and I’m all for regulating them to the point where they can’t use the bathroom without a permission slip from the government.

Add to this that some of “these fees [for charities] are far greater than the marginal cost of the online transaction.” No wonder everyone hates them. That said, I just might have to take Capital One up on one of their never-ending mailers since:

One notable exception to the rule in this country is Capital One bank. Through its “No Hassle Giving Site”, the bank waives transaction costs for holders of its Visa or MasterCard cards, so that 100 percent of people’s donations goes to their chosen charity.

As it should be.

Thursday Open Thread

Open thread time!

Because Katrina response was so great:

According to multiple sources, Obama last night called George W. Bush and formally asked him to participate, along with Bill Clinton, in humanitarian relief efforts for Haiti — in the same vein that Bush’s father and Clinton did following the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. Bush 43 said he was ready to do whatever was necessary. A formal rollout of the Clinton/Bush 43-led relief effort will take place as early as tomorrow afternoon, but possibly not until the weekend, as the administration doesn’t want to take any attention away in the next 24 hours from search and rescue efforts. For Bush 43, this is his first real public effort since he left office; it’s an opportunity to begin establishing his post-presidential legacy, especially on an issue like disaster relief, which remains a scar on his presidency.

No word yet on whether Bush has asked Michael “Brownie” Brown for his advice on disaster relief.

Because that answer worked so well before…

I have to admit this is pretty good stuff from Glenn Beck. Recalling Katie Couric’s famous 2008 question to Sarah Palin about which newspapers and magazines she reads, Beck tonight asked Palin who her favorite Founding Father is. She gave the identical painfully awkward response: “All of them.” To which Beck replied, “Bullcrap” — and pressed her to answer.

Her actual answer:

“You know, well, all of them, because they came collectively together with so much … so much diverse and so much diversity in terms of belief, but collectively they came together.”

She eventually said, “And they were led by, of course George Washington.”

Will she accuse Beck of asking “gotcha” questions now?

Legislative Post-Game Wrap-Up/Pre-Game Show-Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010

According to the Legislative Record, nothing happened yesterday.

Of course, in the case of the House of Representatives, we know that committee meetings took place.

So, El Somnambulo, you may ask, why does the record not reflect this? Glad you asked as it gives me yet another teaching opportunity. Yay!

Once the House breaks for committee meetings, it often does not come back into session at the end of the day. Hence, committee reports are not read into the record then. Hence, officially, nothing happened. However, the ‘legislative day’ is different from the ‘real’ day. When the House comes back into session today, they will still be on yesterday’s business. Thence, the committee reports will be read into the record before the legislative ‘change of day’. Which is why, hence or thence, my two pence say this makes sense.

There’s another less harmless reason why the ‘legislative’ day extends into the next day, and it happens fairly frequently. Roll call is taken for each legislative day. Any time during that legislative day, you can be marked as ‘present’. If you’re a legislator who doesn’t attend a given day’s session, you can still be marked ‘present’ the next day if they haven’t ‘changed’ the legislative day yet. Legislators get a per-mile travel allowance, and it’s based on (a) the round trip distance to and from their house to Legislative Hall, times (b) the number of days that you are in attendance. So, you can still get mileage for a day that you missed by simply being marked present the next day before the legislative day has changed. Many legislators will say “Marked Present-No Mileage”, and, in fact, legislators sometimes get to Dover for committee meetings after the House has adjourned, and that’s legit. However, a few still don’t bother to show up on committee days but get the mileage allowance anyway. Plus they get a better ‘attendance’ record than they deserve.

OK. For those of you still awake, time to go to today’s preview. Of most interest to me is what’s not on the House agenda today. Since no bills were worked in the House on Tuesday, one would have expected the same agenda, plus maybe a few additions, to be before the House. However, two bills that I criticized in my Tuesday preview have been removed from the agenda. Both SB 60 and HB 252, castigated extensively right here, no longer appear on the House agenda. Not sure why, but I know that my influence, if any, is more of the reverse barometer type with the legislators, so there’s no cause & effect between what I wrote and their removal. Still, it’s encouraging.

Rep. J. J. Johnson’s HB 284, described right here yesterday, is on the agenda, and would seem like a ‘no-brainer’.

Also, a bill sponsored mostly by the Middletown area below-the-canal delegation, HB 30, which would increase the ‘voluntary school assessment fee’ (isn’t that an oxymoron?) on developers to help pay for school construction costs, is on today’s agenda.

In other news…the Senate lives! There is actually one, count it, one, bill on today’s agenda. Rep. B. Short’s HB 202 is designed to protect policyholders in the event of any liquidation of a life and/or health insurance company. A good bill, IMHO. Good thing we also have such an effective Insurance Commissioner to enforce th…ruh roh.

The Haiti Disaster Brings Out Teh Stupid

We’ve already heard about the disgusting statements of Pat Robertson about the Haiti earthquake disaster. Rush Limbaugh also couldn’t help making an ass of himself about the Haiti crisis.

On his radio show yesterday Limbaugh said the earthquake in Haiti will play right into Obama’s hands by allowing him to play up his “compassionate” and “humanitarian” credentials, and that the President will use this crisis to “boost his credibility with the black community.”

As if that weren’t enough, Limbaugh also pivoted off a caller who complained about Obama directing the public to the White House website to find charitable organizations operating in Haiti to promote a conspiracy theory that finding these charities via the White House website puts your money at risk of not reaching Haitians.

Limbaugh also seems to feel we’ve done enough already for Haiti: “We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

The U.S. gives 0.9% of our budget to foreign aid. The biggest recipients are in the Middle East: Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan. The GDP of Haiti (2008) is $6.95B, the GDP of the U.S. is $14.2T. Haiti has a per capita income of $400/year. It’s desperately poor, but Limbaugh resents the pennies we send there, I guess.

Fox News followed Limbaugh’s lead in turning this into some kind of political issue. Faux News ran the president’s statement on Haiti word-for-word with this headline “Pres. Obama Reacts to Haiti Earthquake Faster Than Christmas Bomber.”

They do realize that no one died in the attempted Christmas underpants bomber attack, right?

The mainstream media, like the good little sheep they are followed right in Limbaugh’s footsteps.

Elected in part out of revulsion at the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, Obama now finds himself confronting an even more devastating and complex humanitarian crisis.

And, adding irony upon irony, the racial context of New Orleans is writ large in Port-au-Prince. Katrina cost George W. Bush what little standing he had among moderates in his own party in part because the shocking images of suffering in New Orleans were so racially imbalanced.

Now the Obama administration’s competence and compassion will be tested in a similar racial context—and with a much worse infrastructure. Obama and his aides understand all of this. The president was out early today with a strong statement about American efforts to deal with the aftermath of the devastating Haitian earthquake.

Shorter Newsweek: Obama has to respond because the victims are black. They are just saying it in a nicer way than Limbaugh did.

R. I. P. Teddy Pendergrass

The soul singer who first burst onto the scene with Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, and was one of the greatest stars ever to come out of the TSOP Sound of Gamble & Huff, has passed away at the age of 59.

Here’s an interview with Teddy talking about his accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSE6QQUHUME&feature=related[/youtube]

And here’s why we can’t let this passing go without remembering his singular voice:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Ni7LGXW7g&feature=related[/youtube]

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes-“If You Don’t Know Me By Now”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itUrjWNGnZQ&feature=related[/youtube]

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes-“Wake Up Everybody”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HPAgiVdILo&feature=related[/youtube]

Teddy Pendergrass-“Love TKO”

Scott Brown: Tea Party Who?

Conservative centerfold and MA-Sen candidate Scott Brown now says he’s never even heard of the Tea Party movement.

On Wednesday, Republican senate candidate Scott Brown told reporters in Massachusetts that he was “unfamiliar” with the “Tea Party movement,” despite receiving the endorsement of a key national Tea Party group which is currently raising money for his campaign to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

…

Late this evening, TPM Reader NM alerted us to the fact that Brown’s official campaign Flickr stream contains photographs of the candidate addressing Tea Party groups on the campaign trail only months ago.

Here is video of him addressing a Tea Party in Worcester, MA:

So Scott Brown is definitely ready to throw the Teabaggers under the bus if he thinks that will help him get elected, despite the Tea Party rhetoric that these principles are the ones that the majority of Americans support. If Scott Brown is successful next week, he’ll join the other conservatives who ran as moderates and not as hard right ideologues, Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell. The candidate that ran as a proud Tea Parties, Doug Hoffman in NY-23 lost a Republican seat.

The national attention isn’t really helping Brown all that much either. He’s announced that he will vote against health care reform in the Senate despite voting for a similar measure in Massachusetts but can’t really explain why.

Markell Names Widener Dean to Probe Bradley Fiasco

In a move that absolutely had to be made, Gov. Markell has announced an investigation into the systemic failures that enabled Dr. Earl Bradley to abuse children under his care for years. The Governor has appointed Widener Law School Dean Dr. Linda Ammons to head the probe.

From Jeff Montgomery’s News-Journal article:

Allegations date to at least 1999, police have confirmed, with as many as 100 or more potential victims. Police also are examining his record in years prior to 1999.

Court documents show that some doctors and police were aware of accusations and complaints against Bradley for years, but investigations never led to arrests or a search warrant, or formal complaints to the state’s Board of Medical Practice.

The Governor emphasized that this review will in no way jeopardize ongoing legal proceedings. From the press release:

Markell made clear that Dean Ammons’ review must not and will not jeopardize the current prosecution in the Lewes pediatrician case or the Attorney General’s ongoing investigation of whether anyone violated the current reporting requirements under the existing statutory scheme.

“Not only must we ensure a successful prosecution in this case, we must have, and Dean Ammons will help provide, real answers to how and why the system failed and a roadmap to protect our children going forward,” Markell said. “While the Attorney General will prosecute the laws that were broken, this independent review will help decide whether we have the right laws, processes and procedures in place for the handling of future child abuse and sexual exploitation cases.”

The Governor’s office also has listed items to be investigated in this probe:

1. Professional reporting requirements for suspected incidents of misconduct and the enforcement thereof;

2. Professional licensing requirements, procedures and enforcement, including comprehensive background checks and procedures for on-going review;

3. Medical standards and protocols around proper pediatric care and the publication thereof to ensure that doctors, medical staff and parents have clear guidance;

4. The sufficiency of outreach efforts regarding reporting requirements, so that those with legal obligations to report questionable behavior do so;

5. Proper communication and coordination between law enforcement agencies, professional regulators and the medical community;

6. Ensuring that adequate services are provided for the protection and treatment of children suspected of being sexually abused in order to protect them from further harm.

This massive failure of a state system rivals, if not eclipses, what happened at the Delaware Psychiatric Center. There were safeguards in place that should have prevented this had agencies and individuals done what was required of them. A comprehensive probe into why the State failed these vulnerable children is absolutely essential to make sure that the system is fail-safe and to rid it of anyone who failed to exercise their responsibility to protect our most vulnerable. No politics, no whitewash.

Today was a good start, but it is only a start.