In the runup to the Michigan and Arizona primaries, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum told a crowd that President Barack Obama wants everyone to go to college.
He punctuated that claim with "What a snob!"
In Santorum's view, the president is a snob for wanting people to get a college education. The desire to make college more accessible somehow disses good, solid, hard working Americans who have skills instead of a college education. Not only that, but college education is delivered by liberal professors. Few things in life are as dangerous as liberal professors.
Santorum actually said about Obama, "I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his."
I always wonder if Republicans who spout this kind of nonsense really believe it or are just employing whatever attack they can find against a Democratic incumbent. With Santorum, I'm sure it's the latter.
You see, Santorum holds an MBA--Master of Business Administration, one of the snobbiest graduate degrees available--as well as a law degree. Santorum is an educated man, not a skilled, hard-working American. Of course, Santorum managed to avoid indoctrination by those dangerous liberal professors; he was obviously not remade in Barack Obama's image.
Neither was I. I’m a few years older than Obama and finished my college education before he started his. And I sort of agree with Santorum that Obama is wrong about making college more accessible. But that’s because I don’t he’s suggested a plan that’s bold enough.
The plan I’ve promoted for several years is free college education at public universities for anyone who graduates from high school with a B average or better. Anyone who wants to go to a private college has to find the money for it.
So I may be a snob twice over, but I know something about today’s world that Rick Santorum doesn’t know. I know that more and more American jobs require at least an Associate’s degree. A high school diploma is no longer the price of entry for most jobs. To get a job in any sort of technical field, such as medicine or information technology, you absolutely must have a bachelor’s degree.
Because hiring managers at so many American companies are apparently snobs. And no presidential candidate is going to change their minds.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Chain of Custody's Weak Link
As clearly as if it was yesterday, my first experience with drug testing is still etched in my memory. And not only because I had to use the women's restroom.
The independent lab where I had to, um, provide a sample was having problems in the men's room. A female lab tech took me to the women's room, opened a stall, poured some dye into the toilet bowl, and then handed me a cup.
I'm not going to replay all of her instructions, but she was quite adamant about the "chain of custody." After providing my sample, I had to seal the cup, initial the seal. hand the sealed cup to her (after exiting the stall) so she could put the cup in a bag. I then had to seal the bag and we both initialed the bag.
In the drug testing world, chain of custody is a pretty big deal. They made sure there were no weak liks in the chain. And this was back in 1988.
So when I heard that Ryan Braun of the Major League Baseball's Milwaukee Brewers got his substance abuse suspension overturned because of sloppy chain of custody, I chuckled. Then I looked up the details.
Instead of operating its own testing labs, Major League Baseball contracts with a lab in Montreal. Instead of maintaining a staff responsible for collecting samples at ballparks and getting them securely to Montreal, Major League Baseball ships the samples via Federal Express.
I'm pausing here for dramatic effect.
Samples of bodily fluids are collected and tested to determine whether players will be allowed to continue playing and drawing outrageous salaries. Those samples are picked up by anonymous "collectors" and shipped via the same company that delivers books, computer parts and running shoes to my door.
I understand that FedEx uses state-of-the-art tracking technology and can often pinpoint exactly where your shipment is at any time. But that's a pretty weak link; once you hand a box containing urine samples to a FedEx employee who deals with thousands of parcels a week, I think you've given up the ghost on "chain of custody."
Then there's this from ESPN.com:
As has occurred in some other instances? Are you kidding me? Urine samples which can determine somebody's professional fate sit in this bozo's basement not just once, but in some other instances? Talk about the weakest link in the chain.
In 1988 I was trying to get a consulting gig that paid $25 per hour. I wasn't part of a union and I didn't have a lawyer. But that testing lab used strict procedures to ensure that it could prove precisely where my urine was from the moment I sealed the container to the time that container was opened for testing.
You would think the major leagues would use procedures that are at least that strict. You would think that the major leagues would be extra cautious because they're always dealing with a pretty feisty union representing all major league players. You would think they would be careful because drug testing results could potentially ruin any player's career.
But in some instances, at least, you would be wrong.
The independent lab where I had to, um, provide a sample was having problems in the men's room. A female lab tech took me to the women's room, opened a stall, poured some dye into the toilet bowl, and then handed me a cup.
I'm not going to replay all of her instructions, but she was quite adamant about the "chain of custody." After providing my sample, I had to seal the cup, initial the seal. hand the sealed cup to her (after exiting the stall) so she could put the cup in a bag. I then had to seal the bag and we both initialed the bag.
In the drug testing world, chain of custody is a pretty big deal. They made sure there were no weak liks in the chain. And this was back in 1988.
So when I heard that Ryan Braun of the Major League Baseball's Milwaukee Brewers got his substance abuse suspension overturned because of sloppy chain of custody, I chuckled. Then I looked up the details.
Instead of operating its own testing labs, Major League Baseball contracts with a lab in Montreal. Instead of maintaining a staff responsible for collecting samples at ballparks and getting them securely to Montreal, Major League Baseball ships the samples via Federal Express.
I'm pausing here for dramatic effect.
Samples of bodily fluids are collected and tested to determine whether players will be allowed to continue playing and drawing outrageous salaries. Those samples are picked up by anonymous "collectors" and shipped via the same company that delivers books, computer parts and running shoes to my door.
I understand that FedEx uses state-of-the-art tracking technology and can often pinpoint exactly where your shipment is at any time. But that's a pretty weak link; once you hand a box containing urine samples to a FedEx employee who deals with thousands of parcels a week, I think you've given up the ghost on "chain of custody."
Then there's this from ESPN.com:
According to one of the sources, the collector, after getting Braun's sample, was supposed to take the sample to a FedEx office for shipping. But sources said the collector thought the FedEx office was closed because it was late on a Saturday and felt the sample wouldn't get shipped until Monday.I'm pausing again for dramatic effect.
As has occurred in some other instances, the collector took the sample home and kept it in a cool place, in his basement at his residence in Wisconsin, according to multiple sources.
As has occurred in some other instances? Are you kidding me? Urine samples which can determine somebody's professional fate sit in this bozo's basement not just once, but in some other instances? Talk about the weakest link in the chain.
In 1988 I was trying to get a consulting gig that paid $25 per hour. I wasn't part of a union and I didn't have a lawyer. But that testing lab used strict procedures to ensure that it could prove precisely where my urine was from the moment I sealed the container to the time that container was opened for testing.
You would think the major leagues would use procedures that are at least that strict. You would think that the major leagues would be extra cautious because they're always dealing with a pretty feisty union representing all major league players. You would think they would be careful because drug testing results could potentially ruin any player's career.
But in some instances, at least, you would be wrong.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Contraception Conversations
It was one of those awkward conversations that I wish I would have handled differently. The subject of birth control came up, and I actually asked the girl I was dating at the time, "We are using birth control, aren't we?"
Yeah, I know.
She chucked and patted my hand. "Don't worry, sweetie," she said, "I've got it taken care of."
That long-ago conversation, which took place at a time when condoms weren't sitting out on the shelves in the Personal Care section of your local Wal-Mart, came roaring back to my consciousness when the nation's media recently started talking about contraception. A lot.
The excuse for the eruption of contraception conversation was a rule created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--yes, Obamacare--requiring religious organizations to cover birth control pills without copay for employees. Oh, that's for employees of such entities as hospitals and universities that receive federal money and employee people who are not members of the religion. It's a rule that's a matter of law in several states, and it's something many Catholic hospitals and universities just follow as policy.
But America's Catholic bishops were geared up and waiting for the announcement of the rule and executed a well-organized campaign against it, including personal statements and suggestions that parishioners lobby their Congressmen and Senators. According to the bishops, this was an unprecedented attack on religious freedom.
Republicans became Catholics in a heartbeat, including the Southern Baptists, because nothing gets a Republican's heart racing like an attack on religious freedom. Just ask the Muslims who wanted to build that community center in Manhattan.Even better, getting the nation talking about contraception, especially birth control pills, gets into an area that some Republicans have been quietly pushing for a while now.
By "quietly pushing," I mean they don't talk about it on Fox and Friends.
That doesn't mean they're not serious about it. Republicans in some states are trying to amend state constitutions to say that life begins at conception. Since the birth control pill works by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the wall of the uterus, these Republicans say the birth control pill is essentially a form of abortion, which they want to outlaw in all cases.
In case that's too subtle, let me spell it out: Some Republicans want to outlaw birth control pills. Period.
American bishops have their own reason for deciding to pick this particular fight on contraception and, really, they still have to answer for decades of child sexual abuse by parish priests before I will give their moral outrage any merit. And polls suggest that most parishioners choose their own path on contraception.
But the Republicans are serious, and they're in this for the long game. They want to abolish contraception. If they get their way, that conversation I had so long ago will never be repeated by anyone. For all the wrong reasons.
Yeah, I know.
She chucked and patted my hand. "Don't worry, sweetie," she said, "I've got it taken care of."
That long-ago conversation, which took place at a time when condoms weren't sitting out on the shelves in the Personal Care section of your local Wal-Mart, came roaring back to my consciousness when the nation's media recently started talking about contraception. A lot.
The excuse for the eruption of contraception conversation was a rule created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--yes, Obamacare--requiring religious organizations to cover birth control pills without copay for employees. Oh, that's for employees of such entities as hospitals and universities that receive federal money and employee people who are not members of the religion. It's a rule that's a matter of law in several states, and it's something many Catholic hospitals and universities just follow as policy.
But America's Catholic bishops were geared up and waiting for the announcement of the rule and executed a well-organized campaign against it, including personal statements and suggestions that parishioners lobby their Congressmen and Senators. According to the bishops, this was an unprecedented attack on religious freedom.
Republicans became Catholics in a heartbeat, including the Southern Baptists, because nothing gets a Republican's heart racing like an attack on religious freedom. Just ask the Muslims who wanted to build that community center in Manhattan.Even better, getting the nation talking about contraception, especially birth control pills, gets into an area that some Republicans have been quietly pushing for a while now.
By "quietly pushing," I mean they don't talk about it on Fox and Friends.
That doesn't mean they're not serious about it. Republicans in some states are trying to amend state constitutions to say that life begins at conception. Since the birth control pill works by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the wall of the uterus, these Republicans say the birth control pill is essentially a form of abortion, which they want to outlaw in all cases.
In case that's too subtle, let me spell it out: Some Republicans want to outlaw birth control pills. Period.
American bishops have their own reason for deciding to pick this particular fight on contraception and, really, they still have to answer for decades of child sexual abuse by parish priests before I will give their moral outrage any merit. And polls suggest that most parishioners choose their own path on contraception.
But the Republicans are serious, and they're in this for the long game. They want to abolish contraception. If they get their way, that conversation I had so long ago will never be repeated by anyone. For all the wrong reasons.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Race for the Flip-Flop
Today the Susan G. Komen Foundation pulled a 180 on its decision to defund Planned Parenthood. The Komen organization was no doubt swayed by the scathing blog post I wrote just the other day.
Although SGK regrets the furor that was kicked up by its original decision to disqualify groups under any type of investigation, the group might not actually restore funding to Planned Parenthood. You can read the official SDK statement here and make up your own mind. The key phrase has to do with the criteria for locking funding; under the newly revised policy, "disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political."
That's a pretty obvious admission that the "investigation" into Planned Parenthood is a political move and nothing more.
No word about the status of SGK money going to Penn State University, which is currently under criminal investigation. Oh well.
Hopefully this whole mess has taught SGK that basing its policies on political pressure leads nowhere good. And maybe, just maybe, they learned that a lot of us hate mixing politics with cancer research policy. See, cancer don't care if you're right wing, left wing, or independent.
Cancer health care dollars shouldn't care either.
Although SGK regrets the furor that was kicked up by its original decision to disqualify groups under any type of investigation, the group might not actually restore funding to Planned Parenthood. You can read the official SDK statement here and make up your own mind. The key phrase has to do with the criteria for locking funding; under the newly revised policy, "disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political."
That's a pretty obvious admission that the "investigation" into Planned Parenthood is a political move and nothing more.
No word about the status of SGK money going to Penn State University, which is currently under criminal investigation. Oh well.
Hopefully this whole mess has taught SGK that basing its policies on political pressure leads nowhere good. And maybe, just maybe, they learned that a lot of us hate mixing politics with cancer research policy. See, cancer don't care if you're right wing, left wing, or independent.
Cancer health care dollars shouldn't care either.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
For the Political Agenda, not the Cure
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization has stepped in a big pile of PR trouble. Trouble of its own making. Officially, the organization has ended grant support for Planned Parenthood because that organization is currently under investigation by Congress.
SGK recently changed its policy on handing out grants; no group under investigation by any level of government gets money now.
PP is under investigation simply because Republicans in Congress are convinced that PP uses federal money to pay for abortions. The perfect example of their belief came last April when Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, declared on the Senate floor that performing abortions is 90 percent of the organization's work.
His direct quote? "If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that's well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."
When people living in the real world pointed out that abortions account for about THREE percent of PP's activities, Kyl's office issued the political spin of the decade. The office issued a statement saying Kyl's "remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions."
Not intended to be a factual statement. Okay.
What does that have to do with the SGK folks? They recently hired former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, a well-known abortion foe, as their Vice President for Public Policy. It may be a coincidence that the biggest policy decision SGK made after hiring Handel was shutting off the money flow to a target of right-wing ire. But I doubt it.
The sad part of this episode is that it fits in with SGK's tendency to put effort into things that have no relationship to the fight against cancer. Or finding the cure. SGK is the organization that has trademarked the phrase "for the cure" and has sued anyone who innocently tried to use it. I'm sure women dealing with breast cancer were gratified to know that dollars donated to SGK were being spent on that kind of legal action.
I haven't given money to SGK for years now. I give to the American Cancer Society. Through my participation in Relay for Life, I've come to know people in the local ACS office, and I know this: They care about cancer patients. Period. Political and legal crap is just that -- crap. You got cancer? ACS has programs to help. They're funded through donations.
Want to donate to a group focused on battling cancer and helping cancer patients without other agendas? Click the button in the top right corner. Let Karen Handel and Susan G. Komen find donations somewhere else.
SGK recently changed its policy on handing out grants; no group under investigation by any level of government gets money now.
PP is under investigation simply because Republicans in Congress are convinced that PP uses federal money to pay for abortions. The perfect example of their belief came last April when Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, declared on the Senate floor that performing abortions is 90 percent of the organization's work.
His direct quote? "If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that's well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."
When people living in the real world pointed out that abortions account for about THREE percent of PP's activities, Kyl's office issued the political spin of the decade. The office issued a statement saying Kyl's "remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions."
Not intended to be a factual statement. Okay.
What does that have to do with the SGK folks? They recently hired former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, a well-known abortion foe, as their Vice President for Public Policy. It may be a coincidence that the biggest policy decision SGK made after hiring Handel was shutting off the money flow to a target of right-wing ire. But I doubt it.
The sad part of this episode is that it fits in with SGK's tendency to put effort into things that have no relationship to the fight against cancer. Or finding the cure. SGK is the organization that has trademarked the phrase "for the cure" and has sued anyone who innocently tried to use it. I'm sure women dealing with breast cancer were gratified to know that dollars donated to SGK were being spent on that kind of legal action.
I haven't given money to SGK for years now. I give to the American Cancer Society. Through my participation in Relay for Life, I've come to know people in the local ACS office, and I know this: They care about cancer patients. Period. Political and legal crap is just that -- crap. You got cancer? ACS has programs to help. They're funded through donations.
Want to donate to a group focused on battling cancer and helping cancer patients without other agendas? Click the button in the top right corner. Let Karen Handel and Susan G. Komen find donations somewhere else.
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