A rainy Sunday — one where you might curl up with the papers and coffee. Except that this morning’s NJ has a “Special Report” called Are You Better Off? Have you read it? I did — pretty much word for word and what a mess this is. Starting with the conceit that the financial problems started in January 2009 and largely undermined by that throughout the pieces, I’m pretty sure I didn’t learn anything. And don’t get me started on the piece that picked two “right-leaning” economists and two “left-leaning” economists that largely left the “right-leaning” ones alot of cover behind a political start date, rather than the start date of the recession. But hey — maybe I missed something.
Yesterday’s Marketplace program was focused on poverty. Most of these stories were completely riveting. If you are pressed for time, be sure to try out the simulator that challenges you to see if you could live off of $438/week and listen to Tough Choices: How the poor spend money for a genuine eye-opener. Then ask yourself how often the issues of America’s poor have been addressed in the current Presidential campaign (or any other campaign, really).
And this is just appalling — The Littlest Missionaries: A New Christian Plot to Invade Public Schools. Using kids — students — to setup and/or extend ministries in schools. For adults, this is completely off limits, but the kids don’t have any limits on this kind of thing. From the article (and you should read the whole thing:
In a tactical sense, religious fundamentalists in America appear to have taken a page from the same book. The constitution and the law prohibits adults from, say, establishing ministries within public schools aimed at proselytizing to the children during school hours. But a growing number of religious activists have come to realize that it’s technically legal if they get the kids to do their work for them. OK, so religious proselytizing is not the same thing as running drugs – but manipulating kids to exploit legal loopholes isn’t pretty wherever it happens.
This tactic has been tested and deployed in a great number of situations already in schools across the country. Right now, a large group of fundamentalist organizations and church denominations is making a big bet that they will be able to pull it off on a national scale, starting in 2013.
Appalling. We have whole schools where kids are struggling with academic achievement and yet here we have these people who don’t care about that — just about adding to their rolls.
If you are interested in the ideas of the Green Party and Libertarian Party candidates for President, yesterday’s All Things Considered featured a small debate between Dr. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.
Last, this story from the Joe Biden campaign trail made me cry.
What interests you today?