Families connect to Flat Daddies while Soldiers are away

Some families have resorted to using life-size cutouts of their soldiers to maintain contact during the long deployments. This story is all the more heart-wrenching when you realize that these are National Guard, which never should have been deployed overseas.

The Maine National Guard is giving life-size from-the-waist-up pictures of soldiers to the families of deployed guard members. Guard officials and families say the cutouts, known as Flat Daddies or Flat Soldiers, connect families with a relative who is thousands of miles away. The Flat Daddies are toted everywhere from soccer practice to coffee shops to weddings.

“The response has been unbelievable,” said Sgt. First Class Barbara Claudel, director of the Maine National Guard’s family unit. “The families just miss people so much when they’re gone that they try to bring their soldier everywhere.”

...

Ms. Campbell said that her youngest daughter thought the idea was odd at first, and that their dog, Speckles, used to bark at the Flat Soldier, but that both are now used to it.

“At first, it can take you aback, but it never did for me,” Ms. Campbell said. “I just felt like her presence is here. The Flat Soldier does provide comfort, and we’ll take it any way we can.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/us/30daddy.html?ex=1159848000&en=cb3d4a34b1209f53&ei=5087%0A

We owe it to our soldiers and the National Guard to only deploy them when absolutely neccessary, and to tell them the truth when we do. We also need to do all that we can to get them home safely and to take care of them and their family's needs.

The Bush Republicans in Congress show a profound disrespect for our soldiers and National Guard. They mouth the words "support our troops", but this is just another lie they tell.

Bush Republicans don't support the troops. They send them into harm's way based on lies. They vote against pay raises, housing, and medical care for the troops. They give massive tax cuts to the privileged few whose children rarely serve. And Bush Republicans refuse to acknowledge the mistakes of judgement made or make the course correction the generals recommend.

The relationship between Bush Republicans and the troops is like that of a deadbeat dad supporting his children. Yes, he loves them, and occassionally does something right, but most of the time he neglects them. He doesn't spend the money he needs to to see they are taken care of, nor does he take the responsibility for taking care of them himself. But he's outraged by the idea that he doesn't support them adequately.

The Bush Republicans, like deadbeat dads, simply have no idea what it means to really support the troops. It starts with telling the truth, and really paying the cost of your decisions. Their kind of "support" is all talk, and no walk.

Honor the Troops. Tell the Truth.

Can Israel do no wrong?

I keep hearing more and more of this "the Left hates Israel" nonsense. Fascinating!

This has got to be on the latest wacky right-wing-world talking points memo somewhere. "Must split the left by hammering on Israel's right to exist, right to defend itself, right to engage in any military action against any target they choose... just like the USA!"

There is a wide span of political viewpoints within the American Jewish community, and the Israeli Jewish community, just like in America. There are peaceniks and kill-em-all hawks and a lot of people in between.

There were significant Jewish protests when Israel overreacted in Lebanon lately. Many of the targets they bombed were not legitimate military targets, and the internationally recognized principles of proportionality and recognized military value were not followed.

As I've stated before, and as Israel just found out, bombs do not solve terrorism. Bombs ultimately create more terrorists by encouraging recruitment. This overreaction in Lebanon is not going to hurt Hezbollah as much as it helps them in the future, as more regular ME folks see injustice done with their own eyes.

We need to deal justice in the world where ever we get involved, and we need to use our diplomatic clout to hold Israel to a measured, just intervention whenever one is called for. This means allowing for some criticism of Israel, and not slavishly agreeing that every time they break wind it smells sweet.

A balanced approach is nothing like the "Israel/America can do no wrong" approach one hears from the right wing these days. Interestingly enough, this is exactly the stand promoted by the very strong lobbying group AIPAC. A recent article by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt describes the state of America's foreign policy, and the strong influence AIPAC has had on it.

http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011

Root Causes of Crime and Poverty

Certainly kids should learn right from wrong, both at home, in school, and in community and social activities.

Certainly kids should expect to work hard and join society, and not expect government to do everything for them.

But I believe you are very much out of touch with reality if you believe that these simplistic ideas will solve crime and poverty.

The kids and adults involved with crime, drugs, and the like are very much aware of the difference between right and wrong. They are very much aware of the exact laws they are breaking, and the likely outcomes. They are likely even more aware than those who don't regularly break the law.

The kids and adults involved with crime don't expect government to do everything for them. They are aware of programs, the shortage of funds, and the incredibly long waiting lists. They know, realistically, that most of these programs are only a small help to them.

What is happening is that kids and adults are making choices that make the most sense for themselves in the environment they live in.

Crime is always hiring. No good jobs? No jobs that pay enough to make the rent? People choose to sell some drugs on the side, or cause a few cases to "fall off the truck" and join the black market part-time. Or they take a cash-money, no-withholding job in the grey market, exploited by employers who use undocumented workers and shoddy safety practices. They lose out on important protections and can become disabled.

People make these choices for their own self-interest, to feed their families, clothe their children, and get back and forth to work.

Pale moralizing by the privileged few, with stable homes, low crime neighborhoods, and lots of family and community resources isn't going to change their choices.

What will change their choices is their chances of getting caught and the availability of good paying jobs that provide a realistic alternative to crime for making ends meet.

Their chances of getting caught are raised by having an adequately funded and staffed police department. Republican cuts to LGA have deeply impacted the Minneapolis police force's ability to enforce the laws.

The availability of good jobs is a long-term problem that needs to be addressed on a regional and national level. The job creation promised from tax cuts for the wealthy has failed to materialize. Oh, there are some service sector jobs, but you cannot feed a family and pay the rent on McDonald's pay.

Instead, many companies have moved manufacturing operations offshore, paying foreign workers pennies on the dollar and avoiding expensive responsibilities to worker safety. Other companies have avoided tax responsibilities by moving their headquarters offshore, dodging taxes. Many people will never be able to do highly-skilled knowledge-worker jobs, and the migration of these low skilled manufacturing jobs overseas is a deep insult to their needs.

Crime and poverty are long-term systemic, environmental problems. These are problems that simply cannot be addressed on a personal basis as a question of moral fiber and the knowledge of "right and wrong".

There are very few choices made in the world today that would not be made by any of us in the same situation. Anyone who denies this reality has likely never been hungry a day in their life.

If we really want to change crime and solve poverty, we must change the environment that creates them.

Paying the Costs of Immigration

The idea that rural Minnesota can continue to be a monoculture, with the advantages of shared language, religion, background, and expectations is being challenged year by year. Small towns are being asked to assimilate even very diverse cultures such as the Somali. While most residents of small towns are seen as neutral, there have been strong negative (as well as strong positive) reactions to this migration.

Somali are attracted to the TC area partly because there is already a large population of Somali here. Originally they were attracted here by jobs and experienced refugee workers. But there is a secondary migration happening to smaller, more rural communities. Somalis, like most of us, look for smaller, safer communities with good schools.

Republicans need to take a close look at the migration patterns of immigrants, and decide if bigotry or tolerance is the better approach to their own coming immigration crisis.

The following is from an interesting, ongoing study about immigrant migration patterns and their integration into smalller and smaller communities in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

// More recently, many Somalis have begun to settle in smaller cities and towns around southern Minnesota and western Wisconsin. This secondary diffusion is creating an "immigration hinterland" that increasingly resembles the ethnic make-up of the Twin Cities. The Somalis have been drawn by meat processing plants (and other industries that do not require advanced English language skills) in small Minnesota cities such as Rochester, St. Cloud, Owatonna, Faribault and Marshall, and in the town of Barron, in northern Wisconsin. Somalis have racial, cultural and religious gaps in these previously monoethnic rural towns, much greater than Latino meatpackers before them. //

http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/somali.html

Immigrants will work for lower wages than Americans, they organize in unions less often, they report on-the-job injuries less often. These make them "better workers" to the meat-packing plants. We need legislation that mandates wage parity for Americans and immigrants, so that Americans can compete fairly for jobs.

There is a valid question of who pays the costs for immigration. The costs for integrating immigrants into our communities and into our school systems are substantial. Disruption, the need for translators, culture clashes, religious customs... all these follow immigration.

For example, compare the costs for students in Lakeville, 97% white, and Minneapolis, 40% white. There are substantial costs for ESL and ELL classes. These costs drive up the per-pupil costs in Minneapolis significantly.

I think we need to add immigrant population, education, and assimilation to the issues considered by the LGA formula. Smaller communities are fooling themselves if they think these issues and costs are not going to hit them too.

Minneapolis LGA Cuts "Katch" Republicans

I'm sorry to hear that Katch received a beating while campaigning. Perhaps if the teens had jobs they'd have been working. Perhaps if their parents had jobs and their schools were funded, the kids be studying for the SATs instead of hanging together looking for trouble.

Republican candidate Katch just reaped what the cut-and-gut Republicans have sown for the past six years. The best thing Katch and Lilly could do is to convince their fellow Republicans to stop starving government and give us back the hundreds of police that recent LGA cuts have defunded.

These LGA cuts are on the order of $30 MILLION per year, every year. They were enacted by the Republican mania with tax cuts. The cuts have effectively defunded and deactivated the gang strike force, in direct contradiction to recent bald-faced lies by Republicans.

Perhaps if we had the gang strike force back working instead of being cut by the Republicans, we might have a chance to be on top of gang violence, instead of having to focus on emergency calls and playing catch-up all the time.

But Republicans will continue with the farciful claims that it is "liberals and welfare" causing the problems, as good-paying jobs disappear and funding for police dries up.

Crime is always hiring. Keep cutting police and jobs, and I guarantee you crime will go up.

MN GOP Prefers Making Copies to Fighting Crime

As the race for Senate heats up, Republicans are making hay over delays in getting information they requested from Amy Klobuchar's office. After Tim Pawlenty flew around the state recently to hand-deliver a press release about a program that couldn't be voted on until after his term ends, Minnesota Democrats requested information from Pawlety's office about his travel.

In response, Republicans revealed that the plain-stationery, unofficial email requests for information they'd made from Klobuchar's office were actually from the Minnesota GOP. There is no law requiring requestors to reveal their organizational affiliations. They make strong complaints that these requests for information have been delayed for almost a year.

"We've been waiting 11-and-a-half months and counting on some of our stuff," Walton said. "These are all public records. They're not giving us complete information, not giving it in a timely manner and they've outright rejected a number of requests."

[...]

Asked how much has been spent to comply with the requests, Kamp said no specific records have been kept, since the county cannot bill for it. The only cost to the committee has been a 25-cent-per-page copying fee, he said.

Cahill said cost isn't a factor in compliance but added that the copying fee "doesn't begin to cover the cost."
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/local/15374131.htm

But wait just a minute! Are we so sure about not being able to charge for the research? After all, more than 700 pages have already been provided, and at $0.25 per page, that's dirt-cheap research for the Republican Party. Isn't there something in the data practices law to keep organizations from tying up our scarce resources on frivolous research? IANAL, but I believe there is.

The responsible authority or designee shall provide copies of public data upon request. If a person requests copies or electronic transmittal of the data to the person, the responsible authority may require the requesting person to pay the actual costs of searching for and retrieving government data, including the cost of employee time, and for making, certifying, compiling, and electronically transmitting the copies of the data or the data, but may not charge for separating public from not public data. However, if 100 or fewer pages of black and white, letter or legal size paper copies are requested, actual costs shall not be used, and instead, the responsible authority may charge no more than 25 cents for each page copied.
http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/stats/13/03.html

What this comes down to is Republicans secretly tying up resources in our law enforcement agencies for political gain. We should charge each and every public employee hour spent to pull this information together back to the Minnesota GOP, as an object lesson in not wasting public resources.

As much as they complain about wasting the taxpayer dollar, this is exactly what they are doing with their far-reaching request for information from Klobuchar's office - a Captain Ahab sized fishing expedition.

I'd prefer our prosecutor's office to be prosecuting the 10,000 felonies they get each year, rather than making copies of every lunch receipt for the past umpteen years. But apparently the Minnesota GOP prefers making copies to fighting crime.

Real Men Pay Their Taxes

Job Creation through Wage Suppliments

Some parts of Minneapolis are beset with crime. They also suffer from high unemployment. Are these related? What can we do about it?

Unemployment is clearly related to crime. When you can't find a job, crime is always hiring. When McDonald's minimum wage won't make it, selling something else will. This is a case of putting food before morality. When the baby is hungry, the baby has got to eat. Bigger matters of morality can wait until after dinner.

There are those, self-righteous and self-satisfied, surrounded by all the world has to offer, in the richest country in the world, who are quick to question the morality of those who turn to crime. These people have never been hungry, or slept out wondering if they would be able to get the kids in out of the rain this week. Clearly, crime and unemployment are related.

What can we do about it? We know how to create jobs. We need to apply our best thinking to make sure people have jobs, can get training for jobs, and that those jobs pay enough to keep them out of the criminal market.

When the black market pays more for labor, workers will go there, as long as the risk is low enough and the rewards high enough. And Republican policies of starving government and starting foreign wars have defunded our police and first responders - making the risk of entry into the black market lower than ever.

What's cheaper? A small wage subsidy, or paying to keep a criminal locked up all year?

One method that has not been widely tested but deserves a try is wage subsidies. These are basically payments to an employer or employment agency that suppliment the market wages of a worker.

We could set up government funded employment agencies that pay, say, $2/hour over the minimum wage. These workers would be hired out, on short-term contracts, to local businesses at minimum wage. Minnesota would open up it's health, life, and disability insurance pools to these workers.

What's the downside? Workers get better wages, employers get low cost workers, and the government creates jobs, saving money on warehousing prisoners.

It's a heckuva lot better use for our taxes than a new stadium.

Why do they hate public schools so much?

Why do Republicans want to dismantle the school system so badly? Because they tried to control what the students were taught in public schools, and they failed.

Their arguments against evolution were successfully rejected. Their fight to include creationism as an option is a rearguard action. Their fight against sex education failed. Their poisoning of public sex ed with bad facts is a rearguard action.

Their main thrust right now is to defund public eduction by giving it failing grades in NCLB. They grade the entire school on the basis of the weakest student, and they defund programs that support that student. NCLB then gives the school a bad grade, and parents pull their children.

When enough parents pull their children, they will have enough votes to get funding for religious schooling, and charter schools under religious control.

It’s a brilliant plan. You have to give them that. Evil and brilliant in a “Pinky and the Brain” sort of way. The idea of “grading” the schools, tripping them up on funding, and then “failing” them is almost perfectly ironic.

It is all about discrediting and defunding the public school system, because that system cannot be used to indoctrinate the young with their political and religous message. If the public school system taught creationism as a theory, and was mum about sex, we would have more money for schools than you can shake a stick at.