At the beginning of the Covid Pandemic, New York officials did not move fast enough. While eyes were on the West Coast, the virus entered the NE from Europe and struck the elderly and compromised.
At the same time, Florida officials were laughing at New York - but what is the reality?
There are a lot of misconceptions floating around about college and student loans.
From my experience, here are some of the truths and myths about the current state of education.
1. Fact - Not everyone is cut out or should go to college. Students who want to explore a career in the service industry - Construction, mechanics, food preparation, etc., should consider alternate schooling. For those with the idea of owning their own business; community college courses in business would be cost effective.
2. Fact - if going to college, you should be aware of the average salary of graduates with that degree, not just the highest potential. Many generic degrees are not worth the loans taken out - specialist degrees are usually more valuable, but again you need to look at the job market 5 years down the road.
3. Fact - an Ivy League or Major College probably will not teach you much more than what you will learn elsewhere. However, the pressure and the connections you make may put you ahead of someone who goes to a different school. Maybe unfair, but real. A liberal arts education at an Ivy League school will get you a better starting salary and more connections, but remember the return on investment may take a decade or more when considering loans.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2018-09-10/how-much-is-a-liberal-arts-degree-from-the-ivy-league-worth
4. Fact - There are loans and there are loans - just like the subprime loan scandals of the 2000's, you can get hooked on loans with high interest - remember, any loan in the beginning is mostly interest up front. The fact that many loans are deferred until you get out of college just postpones the inevitable. Start putting money away to pay off the loans as soon as you can. Even that part time cafeteria job will help.
4. Myth- Student loan forgiveness programs benefit the wealthy. The reality is that the wealthy do not have student loans. Do you think the son or daughter who are heirs to the Johnson and Johnson or Frito Lay empires had any student loans? When you can afford $400K Mercedes and Porsches, do you think 50K a year in tuition is a burden? The logic is that loans go to the people who cannot afford college without them. Unfortunately, these are the same people who do do have the connections to get into good jobs. So even after getting out of college, the majority with a degree and student loans, still have a tough road ahead. There will always be exceptions; however, you have to look at the numbers.
So a serious look at the problem involves:
Until these are looked at we are just kicking the can down the road
Previously I wrote a post on why people resist change.
I have now looked at it from a different way and want to modify my first post slightly.
Not - why can't people change, but why people will not even consider change.
Using the rule of 3's, I will look at the following:
Notice the word "fact" or "truth" does not even enter into these.
Fear - I wrote about fear as part of the process of change. Here I put it first as an obstacle to consider change. Instead of saying to someone "why will you not change?"; maybe the better first statement is "what are you afraid of?" By addressing this fear first, it might be easier to move to #2.
Am I wrong? If you cannot admit that you could be wrong, you never consider anything other than your side of the argument. Science is based on "Here is my idea, prove me wrong." But if no proof is good enough to accept as proof, no one will ever change their mind.
What will convince me? If you can get to the point where you can admit you can be wrong; and this could be by degree, it does not have to be all or nothing, then who do you listen to? What research are you willing to do on your own? What expense are you willing to put out to get the information?
Most people are more interested in staying the course rather then charting a new one. Or at least verifying they are on the right course.
I find this discussion is a good starting point:
There Are 3 Kinds Of Truths In The World - Neil DeGrasse Tyson
I subscribe to a service called "Spot the Station".
This tells you when the International Space Station is visible above you.
Of course you cannot see the space station, but what you see is the sun's reflection off the station. Thus it has to be dark where you are, and the space station has to be in the sun's light.
Usually, you watch it streak across the sky like a plane, but there are no blinking lights and it really moves fast.
Tonight it was very late - 10:44 pm and the text said it would come from the NW and leave to the NW. Now this was strange as how could it leave from where it came? And it would only be visible for 3 minutes.
So I was out there and picked it up but it seemed to be going from NW to NE. But then it just vanished!
What had happened it the reflective light from the sun was eclipsed buy the Earth as the Space Station went around the Earth. What was so bright was still there, just not reflecting the Sun.
A wonderful example or proof, that the Earth is not flat. 😊
Awesome.
People are have lots of ideas, but are not good with Math. This makes the Florida controversy more critical, but that is for another day.
Would you like to have a 5% tax break or a 10% tax break? The 10% of course. What about someone who makes a million dollars? Well they don't need 10%, lets give them just 5%
Okay - if you make $50,000 a year (assuming after adjustments) you will get $5,000 back. Great!
Now the person earning 1 million a year at 5% will get back - $50,000.
Wait - that is the same as you make all year!
Now a person making 10 million a year at 2.5% would get back $250,000.
Don't be mislead by percentages, do ALL the math.
Elon Musk tweeted a meme about how the left has moved more to the left, and he has moved more to the right.
Elon Musk tweets meme about America's political polarization as the left goes farther left.
Well in 2008, the first year in the meme, he was broke - sunk all his money into Tesla. At the time over 150 million. Remember 2008 - the world was in a depression, people were scrambling to save capitalism. His actions were a typical entrepreneur - all in on his vision. No problem with that - just remember that 90% of startups fail, an no-one hears about them..
In 2012, he says he moved closer to the center while the left kept moving left. Maybe because they saw the bailout of the big companies, no banker got punished, and yet millions of people lost their homes. Hmmm.
In 2021 he says he is more to the right and the "left" is even more to the left (of course the "left" and "right" are never defined - it seems to be the extreme right and extreme left). Maybe after 4 years of Trump and the destruction of virtually all they stood for, they dug their heels in - no compromise. BTW- now he is worth 21 BILLION dollars. Hmmm again.
""For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally," Musk tweeted Wednesday. "
Why should it upset anyone? If his goal is to 'authenticate all real humans' on Twitter, then the platform would no longer be left or right, but just a representation of real people.
"If the goal is to ensure that every account is tied to a flesh-and-blood person, the platform will need some way to verify they are real. One possibility is an expansion of Twitter's existing verification program. Currently, to receive a blue check on their accounts, users have to supply a link to an official website that they're affiliated with, an official email address or a government-issued form of identification. Musk could stop short of requiring identification but require that users use their real names."
The problem is even with real people, you could be lying. One term that seems to be in the news lately is projecting. That is, accusing someone of something you yourself are guilt of. In psychology, it used to be an unconscious trait, but now it has ben weaponized like gaslighting. How will Twitter handle this, or are they expecting the "Wiki" effect to police it? How does that stop trolls?
Free speech does not mean unlimited speech. The "free speech" responsibility comes BEFORE it is uttered. I would say it has to be true (or as true and can be discerned) and put out in a positive manner. We need a Hippocratic Oath for speech - first do no harm.
But Twitter's philosophy is not free speech. it is:
"Twitter is reflective of real conversations happening in the world and that sometimes includes perspectives that may be offensive, controversial, and/or bigoted to others."
The problem is that everyone's opinion is not equally valid. And to police it at all is a losing cause. So you need rules BEFORE someone posts, and that usually involves a moderator. So I give Musk a chance to fix Twitter, he did launch and land a spaceship, but I think he will find that science and physics is easier that human interaction, precisely because it is NOT rocket science.
In 2016, then President Obama was trying to nominate a person to the Supreme Court. He was blocked in Congress. Candidate Trump said he would pick form a list of 21 candidates - all vetted through the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. He even said he would nominate a candidate that would overturn Roe vs Wade, not because it is bad law, but because it is what he (Trump) believes in.
The first pick was Neil Gorsuch, one of those on the list. When Justice Kennedy was to retire, Trump added 5 more to the list (of now 20) and on that was Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Some on the original list were certainly not as qualified, but that brings up an interesting question, what makes you qualified? Is it just that you clerked for an existing justice? Ivy League education? Past rulings (if you were in a position for that?)
What about age - since Supreme Court Judges normally serve into their 70's or more, should we not eliminate anyone under 55 in order to allow them to accumulate more knowledge and wisdom?
If Kavanaugh and Barrett were equal; in qualifications, it made political sense to put Kavanaugh in first, seeing as how this would have been politically appealing when Justice Ginsburg needed to be replaced.
In fact, sometimes you do not know the true ability of someone until thy have been on the court for a few years. Many people who lauded John Roberts now criticize him, but maybe he has grown in the position an is able to lead the team - which it is - and act as a damper on some justices who might
Former Preside Trump got to nominate 3 justices (should have been 2 but that is another essay) but were these the best? If Kavanagh and Barrett where some of the best, why were they not part of his list of 21, just a year before? And if Trump had just looked at Conservative nominees, what about Liberal or Libertarian? Or maybe those with no political agenda - would they not make the best judges?
So this argument about someone is not the best, is a non-starter. We already know the person may not be the best, as the best person may never get in the mix.
So we end up with a qualified person, as we have learned from the previous nomination of Harriet Miers. The person being nominated will be questioned on their politics, but not their credentials.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/01/how-the-federalist-society-became-the-de-facto-selector-of-republican-supreme-court-justices.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/19/trump-ill-appoint-supreme-court-justices-to-overturn-roe-v-wade-abortion-case.html
https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/17/politics/trump-supreme-court-list/index.html
Boy - cannot believe over year since I wrote in this blog.....
First on Fox: Lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to "infiltrate" servers belonging to Trump Tower, and later the White House, in order to establish an "inference" and "narrative" to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia, a filing from Special Counsel John Durham says.
Well if you go to the original document
Durham filing of conflict of Interest
When you search this document, you find the words "inference" and "narrative"
However - you do not find the word "infiltrate". Hmmm....
The fact that it is in "quotations" implies that it IS in the filing.
Does not seem to be in the original filing either, where a crime is actually stated.
Durham original filing 9/1/2016
The conservative media has ben all over the NYT for their Palin accusations (Corrected, but I believe all corrections should be on the front page), but I wonder if they will print a clarification in this case.
To quote Steve Martin - "Nah....."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ
What do the destruction during the summer protests, the storming of the Capitol and the Reddit/Gamestop stock attack have in common?
The current mindset that 2 wrongs make a right.
Now there have been many clichés for this:
What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Payback is a bitch
If it is legal, what can't I do it?
They did it why can't I?
Turnabout is fair play.
But one that comes to MY mind - "The definition of Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results."
If we are to progress as a person, a country, a species; we need to stop repeating the same mistakes.
And how far has it gone? This is what did it for me:
Justin Speak, 27, an evangelical pastor in California, and his wife, who recently left her job to raise their children, have made $1,700 off GameStop in the past week. Mr. Speak said that so far they had mainly put the money toward a new bed. He described a sense of frustration at how well those in the financial sector have done since the financial crisis of 2008.
“There’s a catharsis to actually making money off their pain a little bit,” he said of his modest earnings from GameStop. His wife put it more bluntly: “Eat the rich.”
‘Dumb Money’ Is on GameStop, and It’s Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game
I cannot find any scripture reading, that could even remotely justify that attitude.
And for those who think they are only hurting the rich, for every hedge fund losing money, I would bet there is a couple about to retire and cash out their 401k. They might not have the option to wait out a correction. People have been told for years that forget pensions and IRA's. Put you money in the stock market. It will be safe there. The ironic thing is that you don't fix the problem by blowing up the storage room.
If you are looking for a short history of day trading and the problems it was supposed to solve and what it also caused - try looking at this.
Change is inevitable - The old saying should be modified to say "Nothing is certain except death and taxes - AND change". If change is inevitable, why do so many people fight it? If change affects your belief, how do you handle it? Can you handle it? Before I get into a specific example, here is what I think are the 3 main reasons people resist change:
Effort - Change usually requires effort on our part. We don't like to put out more effort. Maybe you are happy where we are. Maybe you are going though some other changes and the effort is piling up. Maybe you put a lot of effort into the LAST change and need a break. In any case, change is going to require some effort. Our goal is to decide how and what type of effort we are going to put into this change. It could be short term, it could be for the rest of our lives. And we may need help.
Loss - whenever there is change, there is the potential for loss. It could be a financial, emotional, time or tradition loss. Now some change involves gain. Taking on a better job for instance. But there is the uncertainty of losing what we have now. The NOW is certain, predictable and already accounted for. Change involves the future, and that brings the potential for loss, even though it might be miniscule in percentage. Humans have an aversion to loss, probably built into our DNA; as the leaders take the chances, while the group as a whole takes it carefully.
Fear - Fear can be paralyzing - it can keep us from moving at all. Fear can take several forms, fear of a loss of purpose, loss of identity, loss of long held beliefs or fear that we have the ability to change. Sometimes, the fear is that the change is so substantial; that our core beliefs might be challenged, and the fear is that we will loose who we are - so we cling to the now and lock off and out any new changes. In the military, they sometimes have to "break" a person in order to build them up stronger. To one degree or another, this "breaking" goes on each time we change, .
There are books on change so I am sure I missed a lot. These three reasons though, seem to be at the heart of why we do not like and resist change. Now, what if change is NOT good for you? What if change is just for change sake? If you wish to face change, and how you are going to honestly deal with it, maybe you should review the three reasons people resist change and seriously examine what your motivation is.
I went back and did a Google Search around the 2016 election looking for the term "stolen election". The majority of hits coming from Democrats right? No, the majority were coming from Republicans BEFORE the election, especially by then candidate Trump, about how the election was about to be rigged and stolen from him.
The majority of Democratic complaints involved voter suppression, including the 300,000 people claimed to be stopped from voting in Wisconsin. In fact people at the time were claiming it was a Republican program to disenfranchise voters. This program the "Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program" was suspended in 2019. Hold that thought.
The President claims to be successful. Well in this case we agree. He is so polarizing that he actually roused the biggest turnout in history. In this sense the Democrats maybe lucked into picking the best person. By picking Joe Biden, they picked the person that would cause the least amount of controversy. He was not Black, or Gay, or a Socialist, or anyone that the Republicans could focus on. He as "Sleepy Joe" the same way a muscle car that was dressed up as stock would be called a "Sleeper" at the dragstrip. And while social media was the avenue of "Conservative" information prior to the 2016 election, it was the same social media along with word of mouth, that spread the anti-Trump meme. I will apologize if I snoozed many of my Facebook friends, not because of pro-Trump listings, but of the incessant anti-Trump posts. But this convinced me that Trump had "released the Kraken", the group of voters who might sit at home and lament the election of someone they did not agree with. The very language that the President used, backfired on him, not just to rouse his base, but to also rouse the opposition. It was not so much that Joe Biden won, it was that the President lost. He alienated and insulted so many people that they were tired and just said "Your Fired".
Now, did the Democrats do things better this time? Did they make sure that people who were shut out from the election vote? Did the elimination of the "Crosscheck" program bring more voters into the system? Did they do a better job of making sure that the people had the right credentials? Did the mail in ballots find a way legally around the blockade that the Republicans set up before? If we could analyze each person we might be able to quantify this. For now, and after the latest Supreme Court Decision (or lack of a decision), it looks like it will be time to end this battle and prepare for the next one.
Now voting by mail will not go away. In fact I predict it will increase with out problems. I believe within 10 years, we will be voting electronically from the safety of our houses, with blockchain security and faster election results than ever before. There is the chance of reduced anonymity. That is to be worked out, but no more so than the lawn sign or bumper sticker on your car. Most voting started out as public proclamations, maybe we will go back to that. But for now what we have is the best system and hats off to the legions of workers who volunteer to keep it that way.
PS - At this time we will not have to deal with this, but if the Texas suit was heard it might have led to the end of the Electoral College. Yes it is in the Constitution but it has been amended before and will be amended again. If you are not in a swing state, your vote basically does not count, or has a much lesser value. If you are in a Democratic State or a Republican state the same applies. Maybe some day we will find the balance between raw vote and the Electoral College, but not today.
I have found arguing with people does not work - their beliefs are so tied with their being that if they let them go they destroy themselves.
Now some beliefs are relatively harmless - like if you are a Patriots fan or believe Ford makes the best trucks, but some are dangerous, like Democrats are going to take away my guns, or that our elections are rigged.
Now I am working on some ideas of my own - egotistical? Maybe.
Some things we can do:
1. Expand fact challenging (not fact checking) Ask people to show you the facts rather than telling them what you think the facts are.
2. Treat conspiracy theory spreaders like criminals - have a nation wide social media ban - like a no fly list for serial offenders - they are really no different than terrorists of the mind. This will require a BIG change to how we look at free speech - i.e. you have the right to free speech but I do not have to be an amplifier for you. Twitter and Facebook are moving in this direction. Of course if they move to a subscription based service, that eliminates any argument against it. Of course doing away with anonymity will help. Getting rid of comment sections on news sites will also go a long way to more civil discussion.
3. Or ditch social media all together - I stopped watching nightly cable shows a long time ago and an enjoying my evenings. I snooze Facebook friends at the slightest political (not philosophical) post.
4. Teach our children to think - easy with some - tougher for others. The funny thing is that for the most part - the younger you are, the less you fall for fake news, but as you get older, even kids who grow up with technology start to fall back - so it may be a psychological not an intellectual issue.
5. Stop reading what Google and Facebook send you - start reading about what interests you. By searching out knowledge for knowledge sake - you will wean yourself of the garbage that is force fed to you.
Of course I must be an optimist to believe any of this can come true.
As Pliny the Elder said (probably not Nelson Mandela) "It always seems impossible until it is Done".
This was a Letter to the Editor I wrote - It was published November 20 in the Waterbury Republican.
We wish we could see into the future, and science and engineering give us a method to maybe do that. It is called a control feedback loop. One you are very familiar with is the cruise control in your car. You set the speed for 65 mph and if you go faster the cruise control will let off on the accelerator and the car will slow down. If it slows down too much then the cruise control will accelerate and bring the car back to the set speed. There are many other examples, like the air conditioner in your house. Each has its own set point; the equilibrium it tries to maintain.Okay - writing this on Friday night - looks like Joe Biden is going to be the next President.
Now while the pundits make their comments and all trash the pollsters I will throw in my 2 cents.
It was not a vote for Joe Biden, it was a vote against Donald Trump. Your Fired!
If not for Covid, Trump probably would have won - maybe. Biden ran the perfect race - kept his mouth shut, for the most part trashed the other side only on facts, and let the President put his foot in his mouth over and over and over - people grew tired of him. They changed the channel. They got what they wanted (tax cut and 3 Supreme Court Justices) and they decided Trump is too high maintenance.
Now why do I say they did not vote for Biden? People hate change - they like stability and what they know. They are like the proverbial frog being boiled; if you change them slowly they don't notice it. That is how they end up buying $1000 cell phones. But they don't like sudden change. That is why even though many conservatives voted for Biden, they also voted for their local Republican representatives. They did not suddenly turn liberal - they just hated the guy who was running the show.
Now here is the problem. After the yelling and the suing and the claims of fraud fade into reality, we will end up with a Democratic President, a Republican Senate (but the skin of its teeth) and a Democrat House (by the skin of its teeth). They will still have to try and solve the trade imbalance intelligently, deal with the fact that the 1% IS killing the middle class, figure out how to handle automation taking people's jobs, understand and try to contain terrorism around the world, put some reigns on runaway technology like genetic engineering and social media (yes - runaway technology) while facing Climate Change and all types of inequality (racial, economic, educational, etc.) just to name a few problems. In other words there is a lot to be done - change is inevitable. If you just kick it down the road it just gets bigger and hungrier. Oh, and did I mention Covid? Instead of kicking its butt, we kicked it down the road - now we are paying the price. Don't believe it is easy or that we are done with it soon either.
So if ANYONE thinks they have a mandate - think again. If we don't realize that we are fighting the same issues and have to work together to solve them...well then we won't just be back where we started, we will be further behind...
Chris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_JF1FCnIOg
Okay, no one is happy with the state of things in the country, much less the world. So how do we fix this?
Well the first thing is to identify some of the issues that we can change and then - change them. I would be boasting if I said I had all the answers, or even could properly identify all of the problems. But let me take a swipe at it.
I think there are several problems we all can agree on.
1. We do not like the idea of politicians being in office for life.
2. We want everyone to pay a fair share of taxes.
3. We do not trust the Internet and Social Media - or do we?
First - the answer to #1 is term limits. But how long would it take and would the results be worse than what we have now?
Second - who decides what is fair? How do you measure how you are doing?
Third - I am part of the Internet -this blog IS part of Social Media - should you even trust me?
In the next weeks I will review all these- one at a time and make some suggestions.
Let's see if you agree with any or all of them.
ChrisZ
