Re: “What’s the use of biting your tongue, when the FCC does it for you?”

A few weeks ago, fellow blogger Mia Delarosa shared her viewpoint about the Federal Communications Commission and the regulations deemed necessary by both them, the FCC, and the President. Mia feels that just because people have grown “accustomed” to having television and radio shows bleeped out doesn’t make it any less wrong. She argues that there are programs out there where the very subject material is more offensive than a few curse words. Furthermore, we as Americans hear explicit language all the time out in the real world, more so than we would hear on television even if the FCC didn’t fine for every word. Essentially, I feel that Mia’s argument was rooted in the First Amendment, infringing on the freedom of speech.

While Mia makes some very valid points, I’m going to have to disagree with her on this one. Indeed, every man, woman, and child does have the freedom to express verbally what is on their mind, but that does not mean that every person wants to know it. Just today, actually, I was waiting in line for lunch at a local Chick-fil-a restaurant when a gentleman next to me was telling some anonymous listener on the other end of the phone, “I’m so f***ing sick of putting up with her b******t. If this stupid b**** wants to do that, then f***ing let her. I won’t be there to clean up her f***ing s*** anymore.” And this was in a Christian-based, family-oriented establishment. I was astonished at the lack of decency that this man had. The same goes for television shows or radio programs. Just because it is legal for them to say these things, doesn’t mean that everyone wishes to hear them.

Is the FCC a perfectly run government organization, free of flaws? No, of course not. But I do feel that the work they do is more of a service to our nation than a disservice.

Reforming our Education

When it comes to American society, my biggest pet peeve, and what I feel should be one of our government’s biggest pet peeves as well, is our shoddy education system. There is a group of countries, known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, of which America is a part, to which we always compare ourselves, in an effort to determine progress or regress in terms of education, economics, and other areas of national performance. According to the scale of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, America has consistently ranked behind all of our industrialized country counterparts. At least a dozen European countries’ 15 year-olds, as well as Canada’s, scored better than our teenagers scored.

Why is this? Is it the fault of the students, the teachers, the administrations, or a combination of all three?

It is my firm belief that many errors in our education system are coming from the big guys upstairs. First case in point, “No Child Left Behind.” Simply hearing these words makes my spine tingle. This was by far the worst thing to have happened to our education system in the 234 years that we have been a country. The act, signed into law on January 8, 2002, by former President George W. Bush, is a piece of legislation that gives each state the responsibility of creating a state-wide standard of achievement for their students. This would be fine, except for the fact that state’s funding is based off of the students’ standardized test scores. Therefore, the better the students do on the state’s standardized assessments, the more funding the states receive from the federal government. So where is the problem? The problem then becomes that teachers begin “teaching to the test,” meaning they teach only what they know will appear on the, taking Texas for example, TAKS test, as opposed to teaching a well-rounded curriculum.

A second huge mistake that I feel the men in charge have made surfaced just about a week ago. Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee revealed a plan to fire almost 300 out of about 4,000 teachers in the D.C. school district on the basis of poor student performance. Furthermore, another 729 teachers are essentially being put on probation for the same reasons, informing them that they have one academic year to improve or they will face the same fate. On the surface, I know that Rhee has good intentions trying to hold teachers more accountable for their students’ performance. However, all this will wind up doing, especially for those 700 “minimally effective” teachers, is encouraging them to further teach to the test. Because now, not only does their school’s federal funding rely on these test scores, their own jobs do.

I hope, for the sake of our country, that this new threat from Rhee will end up doing what she hopes it will. Maybe lighting a fire under the butts of these teachers will finally wake them up to the reality of our ailing youth. Then again, maybe neither of these things is the key variable in our equation. For, as the great American writer Mark Twain once said, “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

$1 Trillion and Counting?!?

Today, Congress reached an astounding new level of absurdity. A new ‘emergency supplemental appropriation’ for spending in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose allotment will now bring the grand total spent on these wars over one trillion dollars, has been approved by the House of Representatives. This is unbelievable! For almost nine years now, we have been pouring money, resources, and not to mention human lives, into this meaningless war. Left-wing blogger Joe Sudbay agrees with me in his post today on AMERICAblog. As he writes, “There’s no price tag that can sum up the unnecessary human tragedies.”

Sudbay, who has over 25 years experience in the political arena, knows just how to attract his readers without having to over-embellish. He is writing to the Average Joes out there, who don't like to hear that billions and billions of tax-payer money is going to fuel this trifling war.

Why are we even in this war, let alone still financing it? As Sudbay believes, it is because of “the failed leadership of George Bush and Dick Cheney,” and quite frankly, I couldn’t agree with him more. It was Bush who stormed into Iraq without the approval of Congress or of the United Nations. Isn’t that against the laws of our country? Declaration of war is not something that the President should be able to do so carelessly. And who is there to hold our president accountable? Correct me if I’m mistaken, but doesn’t it say in our Constitution that any citizen may bring suit against the President if he has reasonable cause?

Furthermore, couldn’t we also bring suit against Barack Obama or Congress as well? Don’t get me wrong, I would much rather have Obama in the White House than Bush or McCain, but even the Democrats can get carried away for all the wrong reasons. For, to some degree, isn’t appropriating this enormous sum of money and ridiculous number of soldiers to serve in the hostile environments of the Middle East harmful to the betterment of America? I do not see how gambling with trillions of dollars and millions of lives is taking America in the direction that we all want to go.

Honest Journalism or Political Theatricality?

An editorial by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post got me thinking the other day about the media’s role in politics. As I’m sure we are all aware, there are dozens of TV personalities that claim to be political journalists, people searching for the truth and attempting to make sense of this crazy political state we’re in. There is a part of me that wants to believe every word that these people tell me, however, there remains that small portion of my consciousness that keeps telling me that this is all just an act. Are these ‘journalists’ sticking to their roots and honestly telling it as it is, or are they pawns playing for the parties, who slant their data in favor of their own political beliefs?

Kurtz has been in the journalism field for quite some time now so he obviously knows how to write to American citizens. He uses simple words and avoids concepts that the Average Joe wouldn’t understand. He has an established career in several mediums: newspaper, blog, television, as well as books. Even though it seems that he has the experience backing him, he has a reputation of being somewhat of hypocrite. In his editorial he talks about defining the line between doing honest journalism and just making a name for yourself and your political agenda. Yet, he has been cited on may occasions slanting his writing towards whichever company, PAC, client, etc, is paying him to write. So, how can we sit here and read an entire article about trying to get back to the heart of journalism and news information when we have a prime example of a sell-out right in front of us?

Now, with that said, I do believe that Kurtz has made a very good point. The heart of this article was, I believe, written from a place of true respect for what the institution of the media used to represent. Newspapers and their reporters used to symbolize digging into the verity of the issues, but now it seems that money talks louder than principle. And, as John Stewart points out in this clip, all shows and news outlets are susceptible to falling prey to the influence of the greenback.

Overall, while Kurtz may not have the most reliable track record, he makes a good point that we should all consider.

Congressmen Hard at Work

This week, I read an article posted by CNN Politics that was both very informative and utterly infuriating. Luckily for me, who has been completely out of the news circuit since the spring semester let out last May, it pointed out the main topics of discussion that Congress will be addressing in the coming weeks. But, as it points out, this does not necessarily mean that they will be voting or making any kind of decisions on these topics before they take another MONTH off of work.

This is exactly what frustrates me: why are these people, who receive almost $200,000 annually, allowed to take so much time off when there are such important things to get done? This isn’t just any old ‘Honey-Do’ list. These measures can actually change peoples’ lives, yet our congressmen take weeks and months off at a time. Now, their time off is not strictly for vacationing. For instance, most congressmen will be spending their next breaks "out with the people," a.k.a., campaigning for the November midterm elections.

It just makes me feel so good to know that while I’m working 40+ hours a week, 52 weeks a year at my demeaning, minimum-wage job, our elected officials work a grand total of 150 days per year and still make about 13 times what I do.