ProgressOhio

Our family decided to make an occasion of it yesterday -- celebrated Claire's birthday with lunch at Latitude 41 (yummy, local food in an elegant setting), then on to Vets' Memorial, which Claire still remembers as the ACT staging area in 2004, when she was in charge of sending people out all over the west side that cold, rainy day. I think it was good to have a sunny day filled with positive experiences to superimpose on that bitter memory. As for me, I associate Vets' Memorial with the Eddie Bauer Warehouse sales staged there years ago (the girls always refused to come with us to those affairs -- back then they said it was one more place full of mulch colored clothes only parents would like!).

 Today was different for all of us. Claire wondered aloud if she would cry (voting for John Kerry made her tear up because the election mattered so much).

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal today shows how the issue of education can be twisted to blame our public schools and then offer them no help at all:

The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation's greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain.

The WSJ breaks it down to the school voucher system to be the "golden ticket" to educational success.  The editorial goes on to praise school choice programs in D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program which is a federal initiative and Philly EdisonLearning a private company run effort.   The numbers behind the success?

A recent Department of Education report found nearly 90% of participants in the D.C. program have higher reading scores than peers who didn't receive a scholarship...

The number of students performing at grade level or higher in reading at the schools managed by private providers increased by 6.1% overall compared to 3.3% in district-managed schools. In math, the results for Edison and other outside managers was 4.6% and 6.0%, respectively, compared to 3.1% in the district-run schools.

These figures are made to sound exemplary, but the gains are marginal at best.  Then the Journal paints Obama and the Democratic Party as threatening to kill those "successful programs" at the bequest of "uniformed teachers unions."  To top it off, the editorial points out the fact that the Obama's send their kids to expensive private schools, not willing to wait for fixes to public education.

Not only is the articles evidence shortsighted (kids respond well to good schools that are safe and have excellent resources) but it is out of touch with reality.  The issue of improving public education cannot afford to be sidestepped.  The Democratic Party is in favor of increased federal funding, improved teacher salaries and more early childhood education, where the real differences are made in closing the achievement gap.  While vouchers and school choice systems can help with certain students, its not a magical solution, and its most certainly in need of standards reform and better accountability standards (even the Ohio Grantmakers Forum, a large school-choice support agrees on pg 37-42 in "Education for Ohio's Future").  The WSJ is missing the point on the debate about public education... there is no one size fits all solution and shallow observations about Obama's children prevents the real issues from being discussed.

Yesterday at noon, union veterans gathered at Memorial Hall in downtown Dayton. This event was one of a number around the country that marked the kickoff of the AFL-CIO's new Veterans' Council.

In addition to mobilizing leaders at the top to develop a national strategy to make sure veterans' voices are heard this year, and mobilizing grassroots union veterans to get involved to protect veterans' interests, the Council marks its kickoff with the debut of a tv ad featuring IBEW member and Vietnam Navy combat veteran Jim Wasser.

John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, spoke at the veterans' event in Dayton today, as did Mark Ayers, President of the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, Vietnam veteran, and chair of the Veterans Council. Other speakers included Joe Rugola, President of the Ohio AFL-CIO, and Wes Wells, Executive Secretary of the Dayton-Miami Valley Labor Council, whose son is currently serving in Iraq.

Why isn't the Veterans' Council supporting John McCain, who served in Vietnam, instead of Obama, who was never in the military? Material from the Veterans' Council says:

We support the candidate who has the strongest record in standing up for working people’s and veterans issues. Obama supports seriously reforming our nation’s broken health care system. McCain does not. Obama supports ending tax breaks for companies who send jobs overseas. McCain does not. Obama supports full funding for the GI bill and increased funding for veterans health care. McCain does not.

We've got a great one-minute video of John Sweeney speaking at the event, as well as two union vets talking about John McCain available from the Ohio Labor 2008 YouTube site.

With gas topping four dollars a gallon nationally this week, and everything getting more expensive – from milk and bread to health care – even people who thought they were safe are feeling the pinch.

It's time to get involved in building a government that's accountable to the people, and an economy that works for all -- and labor is taking the lead. Steve Gliebe, a union worker at Cooper Tire & Rubber in Findlay, says, "My paycheck might be looking the same, but it's shrinking. I'm not saving any money – everything I make goes right back out."

Around the state of Ohio, as we see more and more people relying on food stamps or the charity of their neighbors to get by, it's clear that there is a serious problem. This hardship doesn't come out of thin air. We can trace it back to a Washington policy of coddling Big Oil – a policy that John McCain plans to continue if we make the grave mistake of electing him President. For example, he would give the top five biggest American oil companies $3.8 billion worth of tax breaks. His plan to suspend the gas tax has been unanimously declared intellectually bankrupt by economists, and it could cost our nation 300,000 highway construction jobs.

It's time to speak out against the backwards Bush-McCain ideology of government concern for corporations at the expense of citizens. It's time to demand a real plan for a better future, and some relief for working people struggling to make ends meet. To this end, union activists demonstrated in Columbus and Cincinnati yesterday and Sandusky today, and they'll continue to demonstrate across the state in the coming days. Keep your eye out for coverage of those events in the media and on this blog.

 Unless we all work together now to turn our country around, Steve says, "We're all going to be poor."

Multiple Ohio blogs have posted entries in a foreign language today:

• American Pink Collar (French)
• Bad American (Polish)
• bitter-girl :: musings (German)
• Blogesque (Korean)
• Blue Bexley (Dutch)
• Blue Ohioan (Korean)
• Bring Ohio Home (Czech)
• Bring Ohio Home (German)
• Buckeye State Blog (Italian)
• Glass City Jungle (Hungarian)
• Gloria Ferris (Spanish)
• Ohio Daily Blog (Croatian)
• Pho's Akron Pages (Vietnamese)
• Plunderbund (Redneck)
• Rowsey Blog (Spanish)
• The Chief Source (Spanish) at The Point
• The Daily Bellwether (French)
• Tim Ferris (French)
• Writes Like She Talks (Portuguese)

And it's been noted that maybe, to some people, surfing from blog to blog and being unable to understand most of the posts (until you go here for the translation of each one) proves the point that Ohio and maybe even the United States should standardize, through legislation, the language most of us use and which is already being used by the state and federal goverment: English.

Why would we want our governments to do that?

Because everything we try to read otherwise is pretty incomprehensible and that's exactly what we want to avoid. It's torture to stare at something and not have any idea whatsoever as to what it says, what it argues, what it tells you to do, what it tells you not to do.

Sounds logical, right?

Wrong.

Why? Why is that logic wrong?

Because those of us reading this blog and those blog posts are primarily native English speakers. Of course blog posts in Polish, German, Croatian, Korean and so on look like gobbledyguck to us.

So what's the point of this little demonstration?

To non-native English speakers, blogs - and so many other forms of communication that native English speakers take for granted - look like nonsense. How does it feel, going to the most familiar places you know on the Internet to gather information about the day, about issues and policy that matter, about breaking news and urgent messages, and find that the shoe is on the other foot: you can't understand a word, you can't glean even the essense of what's being communicated?

What kind of humans would legislate torturing literally hundreds of thousands of fellow Ohioans that way?

Here's a list of the Ohio state senators on the State and Local Government and Veteran Affairs Committee, which appears to be the one that has HB 477 right now. Please contact them and let them know how you feel about HB 477.

Gary Cates (R)
Chair

Teresa Fedor (D)
Ranking Minority Member

Democrats:

John Boccier

Tom Roberts

Republicans: 

John Carey

Robert Schuler  

Bill Seitz  

Mark Wagoner  

I was so four-letter word nervous that I had to sit on my hands!! See where writing letters to the editor, op-eds AND BLOGGING can get you!? Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me along the way, and that includes several folks at Progress Ohio - not the least of which are Dave Harding and Brian Rothenberg who have been very supportive (and toughened me up!).

No less than Ellen Goodman and the time, money and effort of the Shorenstein Fellowships at Harvard have examined the "new gender gap in news media and the Internet." Why? Because people often ask about why there seem to be more male political bloggers than female.

Other bloggers, including well-known female political bloggers like Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, don't see the disparity:

There's plenty of sexism in the blogosphere, don't get me wrong, with a strong dose coming from the right wing and an even stronger dose coming from the "why don't you link to me" crowd on the left. But this "there are no women in the blogosphere" whinge is deeply sexist and insulting to those of us with two X chromosomes who work all day at this and what we've managed to achieve. And none of these articles have included the perspective of any of the women listed above, or those of other successful female bloggers like Digby, Pandagon, TalkLeft or Taylor Marsh.

Today, Catherine Morgan of Informed Voter posted a list of more than 100 women political bloggers and blogs. It's completely nonpartisan (I'm there, Lisa Renee's Liberal Common Sense is there, and so is Mary Katherine Ham of Townhall and Michelle Malkin) and includes many new to me. Big kudos to Morgan for putting this list together. I don't think I've ever seen one like it before.

Dipping deeper into the sea of blogs? This list is another good place to test out the temperature.

Cross-posted at Wide Open and Writes Like She Talks.