She's not going to get over it

A retired teacher friend on Facebook whom I met 14 years ago as a blogger (I've never met her face to face and don't even know where she lives) has thrown down the gauntlet.  She's not going to get over Trump's election, she plans to rechannel her efforts to her representatives and senators to make sure they are voting as she wishes.  I left her a comment.

"That's probably a good idea. That's what conservatives did in 2009 and managed to get a number of seats changed in 2010 and 2012, although Republicans in Congress ignored them. At the state level Republicans control the majority of state houses probably as a result of the so-called Tea Party and Glenn Beck's 9-12 groups and reading clubs. The average American voter is running on what they learned in civics classes in high school if they even teach that in the 21st century. In classes I attended in 2010 we learned about the differences and importance of Supreme Court picks to determine if we had a real constitution or a plastic constitution. Also learned some history which has been pretty much covered up since even the 1920s. What a shock to some people to learn the origins of the KKK, lynchings and Jim Crow (Democrat party) and that it was the Republican administrations that led the fight for Civil Rights even in the 1960s. The biggest advantage was meeting like minded, lovely people after being demonized for so long. Some things were discouraging, like learning how committees at the local level for both parties control just about everything and don't want starry eyed newcomers upsetting their comfortable spots. You'll find out the same in your city, county and state elections. Our government at all levels is only quasi-representative. We elect a board at our church, or elect a school board, or a library board, or we answer to a team at work, and so forth. If we don't participate at some level of committee or board, our voices aren't heard. By the time of the election, it's too late. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2008 primaries against Barack Obama. But the popular vote didn't matter--it was number of primaries."

It seems women still need a lot of help

Several years ago I attended a meeting at church that mixed us all up so we weren't sitting with our friends.  I was at a table with a middle age father and his middle school daughter.  Making small talk I was asking her about her school subjects and interests.  Her father quickly jumped in.  She loved math and science--had been her great love from the beginning--but the way math was being taught was so confusing she dropped out of the component around 8th or 9th grade for something else (don't recall what that was).  Even back in the 80s I was helping with special summer workshops for high school girls to direct them toward STEM (through the veterinary and agriculture departments at OSU). It was hard to get their attention as they fussed with their hair and make up and squealed while in little cliches.

If you read her advice carefully, it is to treat women in STEM differently so that you can pour them into the pipeline so they don't leave by the time they are ready for the top positions. 

"I think that every individual brings a different perspective to the table. It doesn't matter whether it's men or women. The more diverse group you have at the table, the more diverse the perspectives and the viewpoints, and that really helps one build solutions and products that reach a broader group. You're able to build a product that's more connected to the real world, because the real world is very diverse. Your organization and your team have to look as diverse as the real world."

". . . Most tech companies don't have a gender-diverse leadership. Even if we increase the pipeline, we lose a lot of women when they reach a certain stage in their career, due to a number of reasons. Companies need to look deeply within their culture to understand why that happens, and provide the mechanisms needed to retain and grow a diverse leadership team.
Women deal with life events differently, and most organizations don't provide the support they need to deal with life events and keep growing in their careers. There should be a way to get them back and engaged in the workforce."

On the one hand she wants diversity and different perspectives, on the other hand she says gender doesn't matter.  Which is it? A diverse team in which women have been taught since toddlerhood that their biology doesn't matter?  You can cut it off, rebuild a vagina, pump in some hormones, and you'll have a woman created from a man--who will wear a wig and lots of make-up and pretend to be a victim?

http://www.technewsworld.com/edpick/84321.html

College aid

I think I've found the cause of the college cost bubble: the parental financials. Required until student is 26. I heard Patrick Madrid (radio talk show) discussing the work that goes into that and couldn't believe it. He has 11 children, so I figured he would know, but I looked it up anyway. If they can infantilize college students until they are 26 making mom and dad responsible, why not charge anything they want and call the balance "financial aid?" 

 

Very different than "my day." I got married before my senior year in college and when Dad gave me away on that lovely September day, he also said I was someone else's responsibility. Oddly enough, the University of Illinois also decided I was an Indiana resident, because my husband was paying out of state tuition. We got that tuition problem reversed on appeal, but when I decided on graduate school, I had to borrow it from dad and pay it back. I think I even paid interest.

 

 http://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10202

 

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2016-01-21/4-tips-for-families-navigating-college-financial-aid-amid-divorce

 

 

 

An apple a day, unless it's organic

I don’t specifically buy organic because it is so commercialized (even has special support from USDA). Organic farming uses pesticides, and more of it.  It's just a different kind. What Americans of lower income level really need is better access to food so they can eat healthier. There’s no lack of calories! I would just love to see churches supplying vans to drive people to supermarkets so their money would go further. Food pantries are great and we have many, but even walking to or taking the bus they are a long trip for many elderly and disabled who can’t work here in Columbus. Mt. Morris, IL where I grew up has a wonderful little food pantry Loaves and Fish in the basement of the Brethren church. Volunteers work very hard to keep it going. I think gardeners also donate fresh produce in the summer. Both my brother in law and my high school friend Lynne volunteer there.

More on bathrooms, toilets and sex

Now we'll be getting protests about bathrooms and transphobia. Fewer than 1% actually have gender confusion. If you go back and look at what was happening in 2012 when Obama still preached traditional marriage you see this was being cooked up by the unelected federal bureaucracy--don't remember if it was the Department of Education or HHS. Progressivism doesn't work without victims, so as the gay lifestyle became more accepted, they had to find a new cause. After transgenderism it will be man boy love (aka pedophilia).

The big government over reach into forcing small churches, clubs and schools to spend millions on bathrooms was not about disorders, or testicles that didn't develop right, or boys who grow breasts. We're talking about the executive branch grabbing authority he didn't have to coerce 99% of the population into accepting a disorder, dysfunction or fantasy as reality. If he can do it for this disordering of nature, why not others? Not sure why erasing the differences between men and women is so critical for socialists and progressives, but I suspect it has something to do with the book of Genesis and the foundation of Judeo-Christian culture.

Repeal and replace

 85% of Americans had health insurance in 2008 either through private employers, federal and state employers, Medicare, Medicaid, VA, BIA, SCHIP. Some people didn't want insurance; some were young and thought they didn't need it; some didn't apply for what was available. Then the heavy hand of government came up with a plan that forced every citizen to purchase a product, threatened them with fine or jail if they didn't, and violated the religious values of many. [For those calling Trump a fascist, what do they think this was?] I doubt that Obamacare was ever intended to work, it was so flawed and so expensive. October 2016 prices released during the campaign showed an increase of 22% for midlevel plan. The rates were artificially low at the beginning to lull Americans into accepting more government control.

Kay, a CPA friend, reminded me: "Democrats want the billions of tax write offs that businesses get for providing insurance, and the additional billions in taxes that the rest of us don't pay because it's a non-taxable feature of employment. In Obama’s eyes and his party of socialist/progressives, all those taxes belong in Washington to be redistributed after bureaucrats and lobbyists get their share. "

 I believe the latest figure is 11% are uninsured. The main reasons low income people do not buy it is they say it is too expensive.  All that to go from 15% to 11%.  Big whoop.  With all those smart people and policy wonks, you would think that they could have found a way to insure those who needed it. . . except that wasn't the purpose.  It was power.

 

Seven insights about Mainline Protestants

Rodney Stark is a terrific writer, and he has a new book, The Triumph of Faith. "[It] explodes the myth that people around the world are abandoning religion. Stark marshals an unprecedented body of data to reveal that the world is more religious than it’s ever been—and why everyone gets the story wrong." Although 95% of Congress checks the box for Christian (90%) or Jewish (5%), for the general public it's between 75-80%.  Meanwhile the churches that built this nation, that supported the great 19th century causes, are struggling to survive. Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists (UCC), Anglicans, Lutherans, etc. are struggling to stay alive with aging congregations hanging out banners about diversity and inclusiveness--something young people can get by joining an athletic club or chess interest group. Other churches have exploding congregations.

(1) “Protestantism is as strong as ever in America—only the names have changed.”

(2) “Not many years ago, a select set of American denominations was always referred to as the Protestant ‘Mainline’ … Today that designation, though still commonly used, is out of date; the old Mainline has rapidly faded to the religious periphery, a trend that first was noticed more than forty years ago.”

(3) “Some religious institutions—but not all—fail to keep the faith. In an unconstrained religious marketplace, secularization is a self-limiting process: as some churches become secularized and decline, they are replaced by churches that continue to offer a vigorous religious message. In effect, the old Protestant Mainline denominations drove millions of their members into the more conservative denominations.”

(4) “The wreckage of the former Mainline denominations is strewn upon the shoal of a modernist theology that began to dominate the Mainline seminaries early in the nineteenth century. This theology presumed that advances in human knowledge had made faith outmoded… Eventually, Mainline theologians discarded nearly every doctrinal aspect of traditional Christianity.”

(5) “Aware that most members reject their radical political views, the Mainline clergy claim it is their right and duty to instruct the faithful in more sophisticated and enlightened religious and political views. So every year thousands of members claim their right to leave. And, of course, in the competitive America religious marketplace, there are many appealing alternatives available.”

(6) “Even though so many have left, most of the people remaining in the former Mainline pews still regard the traditional tenets of Christianity as central to their faith. As a result, the exodus continues.”

(7) “Many liberals have attempted to make a virtue of the Mainline decline, claiming that the contrasting trends reflect the superior moral worth of the Mainline… Meanwhile, the Mainline shrinks, and conservative churches grow.”

From the review at Juicy Ecuminism by Joseph Rossell

Only jobs reduce poverty

The percentage of children in middle childhood (6 through 11) living in low-income families (both poor and near poor) increased from 42% in 2009 to 44% in 2015. The Obama years. Even one parent employed or having married parents reduces childhood poverty. http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_1173.html

Let's get on to the jobs, Mr. President. It's for the children. 

National Center for Children in Poverty chart

Why is this important to know? Because after one month, President Trump and Congressional Republicans are being blamed for the failures of the last 8 years. More breakfast and lunch programs do not solve this problem. Regulations that tied up small businesses (our job creators) and insurance that prevented businesses from hiring created the slowest recovery since the Depression of the 1930s, which was also slowed down by ineffective government rules and regulations. The percentage of the population in poverty hasn't changed since the "War on Poverty" began over 50 years ago. One reason is the government continues to raise the bar because middle class bureaucrats and state poverty employees who earn very good salaries would lose their jobs if poverty were actually reduced or eliminated.

Although the "about us" at the NCCP website reports it is a nonpartisan, public interest research organization, its affiliation is with Columbia. Left of center like all university policy centers. The reports for 2015 children are divided by age beginning with infants and toddlers, but the overall poverty rate reported is 45%. I personally think this is exaggerated because NCCP would have no reason to get grants or publish or influence policy if they actually succeeded in making a difference. Also, most of these policy centers do not report the transferred (from us--there are 123 programs) income like SNAP, section 8, TANF, EITC, school meal programs, home repair and heating, scholarships, Medicaid, etc. which for non-employed or low-income parents can add anywhere from $20,000-$60,000 value to their non-incomes. If these make no difference in the lives of poor children, why does Congress continue to raise it or lose their elections? 

Be prepared for "mean old Republican" memes floating around the internet and pumped up on Washington Post or NYT. Be prepared for liberal churches to open the NT to Matthew 25 and club you with it.

Aging with fads, as seen on Facebook

Monday Memories--moving the books out

My friends and I compare notes on how we're doing in clearing out the clutter. Three are planning moves to retirement apartments; we're not there yet, but we want to do some rearranging. Our photo albums are taking over the house--I think I counted 70! We did a massive sweep about 11 years ago, but it all came back.  Before I got sick in January, I'd started on the books again, and then last week renewed the effort.  The books have been rounded up and herded into the garage, tied with some twine, and Christmas ribbon, but there's not much change on the shelves. They'll go to the church, the cancer resale shop, the public library, our son, and the sailing books we'll take to the lake next time to see if a neighbor wants them.  A lot of cookbooks went this time.  That's unusual for me, but they were mainly just hanging around to remember the good times.  I have in that stack a 12 volume set of the Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery that I bought one week at a time at the grocery store in the 1960s, and many Taste of Home Annuals. If you are looking for a new set of that encyclopedia, it goes for about $2,000 according to Amazon, or about $40 used.  I think there are volumes in my set that are "new."  I wrote a Thursday Thirteen blog about my cookbooks in 2006.  

Then I decluttered in 2009 about 8 years ago. Shelves looked pretty good, but still tight.

Another set (tied in red ribbon in the photo) is the Famous Writers school of writing, 3 volumes plus an annual. I found them at a used book store about 20 years ago when I was doing more writing, but never really used them. Lots of famous names. According to Wikipedia, as many as 90% never finished the course, so perhaps this was from a disgruntled student. There was eventually a law suit. But I think there should be 4 volumes.  Going through the architectural journals I found an annual that included some places we've been like Thorncrown Chapel.

The bookshelves with all those titles removed, still very full.