Sometimes conservative talking heads promote a story without taking any time to see if the moral of the story fits their narrative. An excellent example of this comes from Allen West website editor-in-chief, Michele Hickford, who recently penned an article titled 'Liberals start screaming: Chick-fil-A restaurant owner does the unimaginable to his employees'.
Apparently Hickford believes that all liberals think Chick-fil-A is "AWFUL" and wants to know how liberals can explain the actions of one franchise owner who, instead of laying off his employees during a 5 month renovation, kept paying them.
The first explanation for this action is money. If the owner, Jeff Glover, had laid off his entire staff he would have seen a significant jump in his unemployment rate. It should also be noted that if his 50 workers had found other employment before the renovations were complete, Glover would have had to train a new staff, which is costly and has a negative impact on service. The resulting loss of customers would be felt by the location for months. In fact, some experts suggest laying off staff costs more in the long run. Perhaps Glover did the math and determined it would be cost effective to pay his employees not to work.
But when did conservatives start celebrating organizations that pay people to sit around? They certainly don't think welfare is something to cheer about despite the value it adds. Even when the entity paying people not to work was another private company, like the auto workers jobs bank, the conservative reaction was anything but reverence.
Of course it should be noted that what drew the ire of "liberals" regarding Chick-fil-A was not that they are a Christia- based organization or that they closed their doors on Sundays, but rather their position towards same sex marriage, which not only runs counter to the majority of Americans, but also doesn't match with the views of 61% of young Republicans.
Back when the discussion was about minimum wages at fast food restaurants, conservatives were the first to point out that the franchisee was an independent business; yet for some reason, this logic has been tossed out the window to imply that Jeff Glover and his staff and the corporate heads of Chick-fil-A are somehow one in the same. Did anyone ever ask Glover his position on same sex marriage? Given that his facility is located in Austin, which is not only the most liberal city in Texas but one of the most liberal cities in the U.S., it's certainly possible that Glover doesn't agree with his corporate bosses.
Having said that, if Glover does represent the best of what Chick-fil-A has to offer, conservatives may be disappointed to know that while a typical Chick-fil-A employee earns $7.96 per hour, Glover pays new employees $11 per hour with full time staff earning approximately $3,600 per month. According to the conservative media, these sort of wages were supposed to ruin the fast food industry as the price of a sandwich would quintuple overnight. Yet somehow Glover manages to run a successful operation using the Chick-fil-A price structure and pay his employees something in the neighborhood of a living wage without having to live in a cardboard box himself.
Perhaps the question Hickford really should be asking is, how can conservatives explain why they believe a guy who gives people money not to work, isn't outspoken against the LGBT community, and pays well above industry standards represents an organization they apparently love that does none of these things?
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Republican education policy is idiotic
Titan of industry, Henry Ford, once said “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.” For an example of a group that has proven to ironically learn nothing from their past mistakes one need look no further than the race for the Republican Presidential nomination.
For instance, many of the candidates believe that fixing the public education system starts with eliminating teachers’ unions. The problem is that not only does eliminating unions not lead to better outcomes, data show that the states with the most union teachers actually preform better than those with the lowest rates of union educators. Despite this reality, some still complain that unions have too much power; yet if you follow the money you will see that corporations, not unions, are the ones with burgeoning influence having outspent unions 15 to 1 in the last election cycle.
This sort of spending gap is why, despite not improving educational outcomes, corporate charter schools continue to expand. It's why, in spite of worse results, the number of "virtual schools" is increasing. And it's why, even though studies have found that "there seem to be few apparent benefits of school of choice", nearly every Republican Presidential candidate supports it. The reality is that you'd be hard pressed to find a battle over the past decade between rich corporations and teacher unions where the unions won.
Of course attacking teachers’ unions is hardly the only tool in the Republican education reformers bags of "mistakes". They also strongly believe in tying teacher’s wages to the test scores of their students. The idea being that money will motivate all of the good-for-nothing lazy teachers to put in a little effort. For a group of people who claim to support capitalism, this is an embarrassingly antiquated position.
Years of studies have shown that, not only is money not a good motivator, but that the sort of tactics Republicans support can actually have "devastating motivational effects" on most teachers. The reality is that merit pay for teachers has been tried and failed numerous times and the research done by psychologists, economists, and sociologisst has found over and over again that in professions like teaching this idea is a colossal waste of resources.
In fact the science on what not to do when attempting to motivate employees like teachers reads like a check list of Republican education reform ideas. Despite the fallacy of schools full of ineffective teachers, reformers have made firing bad teachers a core policy for improving education. Data show that this fear of losing their job leads to "less energy and drive to complete daily tasks".
Even though reports suggest that there is already a teacher shortage and that nearly 50% of educators leave the profession in the first five years, Republicans continue to look for ways to pay teachers less, which has been proven to "hinder motivation and performance".
In spite of studies that show "unleashing (an employees) imagination, ingenuity and creativity resulted in their contributions to the organization being multiplied many times over", Republican legislatures across the country continue to give educators less and less freedom in the classroom.
Regardless of studies that show the value of organizational and communal collaboration to student achievement, Republicans continue to push a rudimentary corporate-based competition model.
But even if the Republican carrot and stick reform ideas did motivate teachers, the gains would be minimal at best since all of these plans address the symptoms while ignoring the root cause of the purported "broken" education system. The one thing Republican education reform proposals never include is a way to boost teachers’ skills. Professional athletes have reached the pinnacle of their profession, yet every day they meet with a coach that evaluates their performance and works with them to get better.
Imagine the results a school could get if it employed "coaches" that could help teachers implement new curriculum, coordinate with staff to develop and distribute highly effective lesson plans, review teacher performance and provide feedback for improvement, and interact with other coaches to identify and integrate the latest ideas.
If the objective is to increase student achievement then asking teachers to independently add this sort of research and personal development to a work week that already consumes 53 hours of their time is an awful idea. Expecting results without providing any resources or training is only a good plan if your goal is to make your staff look incompetent.
Unfortunately it seems that the people who are the most outspoken about how to improve education are also the least educated on the best methods of eliciting improvement. The good news is that, come next year when most of these Republican Presidential candidates are unemployed, there will still be plenty of jobs available in education. While this will likely mean a big drop in pay and an increase in days on the job, the way reformers tell it any idiot can be a teacher, which is great since the ideas these candidates have presented to "fix" education can only be described as idiotic.
For instance, many of the candidates believe that fixing the public education system starts with eliminating teachers’ unions. The problem is that not only does eliminating unions not lead to better outcomes, data show that the states with the most union teachers actually preform better than those with the lowest rates of union educators. Despite this reality, some still complain that unions have too much power; yet if you follow the money you will see that corporations, not unions, are the ones with burgeoning influence having outspent unions 15 to 1 in the last election cycle.
This sort of spending gap is why, despite not improving educational outcomes, corporate charter schools continue to expand. It's why, in spite of worse results, the number of "virtual schools" is increasing. And it's why, even though studies have found that "there seem to be few apparent benefits of school of choice", nearly every Republican Presidential candidate supports it. The reality is that you'd be hard pressed to find a battle over the past decade between rich corporations and teacher unions where the unions won.
Of course attacking teachers’ unions is hardly the only tool in the Republican education reformers bags of "mistakes". They also strongly believe in tying teacher’s wages to the test scores of their students. The idea being that money will motivate all of the good-for-nothing lazy teachers to put in a little effort. For a group of people who claim to support capitalism, this is an embarrassingly antiquated position.
Years of studies have shown that, not only is money not a good motivator, but that the sort of tactics Republicans support can actually have "devastating motivational effects" on most teachers. The reality is that merit pay for teachers has been tried and failed numerous times and the research done by psychologists, economists, and sociologisst has found over and over again that in professions like teaching this idea is a colossal waste of resources.
In fact the science on what not to do when attempting to motivate employees like teachers reads like a check list of Republican education reform ideas. Despite the fallacy of schools full of ineffective teachers, reformers have made firing bad teachers a core policy for improving education. Data show that this fear of losing their job leads to "less energy and drive to complete daily tasks".
Even though reports suggest that there is already a teacher shortage and that nearly 50% of educators leave the profession in the first five years, Republicans continue to look for ways to pay teachers less, which has been proven to "hinder motivation and performance".
In spite of studies that show "unleashing (an employees) imagination, ingenuity and creativity resulted in their contributions to the organization being multiplied many times over", Republican legislatures across the country continue to give educators less and less freedom in the classroom.
Regardless of studies that show the value of organizational and communal collaboration to student achievement, Republicans continue to push a rudimentary corporate-based competition model.
But even if the Republican carrot and stick reform ideas did motivate teachers, the gains would be minimal at best since all of these plans address the symptoms while ignoring the root cause of the purported "broken" education system. The one thing Republican education reform proposals never include is a way to boost teachers’ skills. Professional athletes have reached the pinnacle of their profession, yet every day they meet with a coach that evaluates their performance and works with them to get better.
Imagine the results a school could get if it employed "coaches" that could help teachers implement new curriculum, coordinate with staff to develop and distribute highly effective lesson plans, review teacher performance and provide feedback for improvement, and interact with other coaches to identify and integrate the latest ideas.
If the objective is to increase student achievement then asking teachers to independently add this sort of research and personal development to a work week that already consumes 53 hours of their time is an awful idea. Expecting results without providing any resources or training is only a good plan if your goal is to make your staff look incompetent.
Unfortunately it seems that the people who are the most outspoken about how to improve education are also the least educated on the best methods of eliciting improvement. The good news is that, come next year when most of these Republican Presidential candidates are unemployed, there will still be plenty of jobs available in education. While this will likely mean a big drop in pay and an increase in days on the job, the way reformers tell it any idiot can be a teacher, which is great since the ideas these candidates have presented to "fix" education can only be described as idiotic.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Planned Parenthood might not exist if not for archaic conservative policies
Looking for any opportunity to make abortions illegal, conservative politicians and media outlets are seizing on a recent series of videos of Planned Parenthood staff discussing the sale of fetal tissue and organs. While the conversations certainly come across as callous and disturbing, at this point there is no proof of any illegal activity. The reality is that the business of donated organs and tissue is a gruesome endeavor, and those tasked with harvesting these items are doing difficult yet important work that saves lives.
If the investigations prove that Planned Parenthood illegally sold fetal organs or tissue, then the organization should be fined and those in charge should be punished. Removing all federal funding for an organization whose main business provides the less fortunate valuable assistance is perhaps more callous than anything Planned Parenthood has done and certainly not in line with penalties doled out to other organizations that receive federal tax dollars. For example Duke Energy which receives over $898 million in subsidies (nearly twice the federal funds allocated for Planned Parenthood) is not only the second largest polluter in the U.S. but they also illegally dumped tens of millions of gallons of polluted waste water into a tributary that provides some North Carolina residents’ drinking water. All told, they pled guilty to nine violations yet no action was taken on Capitol Hill to limit their corporate welfare.
Medicare fraud steals tens of billions of tax payer dollars per year, yet one of the largest cases of fraud ever perpetrated didn't lead to a removal of federal funds for the company. In fact, conservatives cared so little about these unlawful acts that they elected the company’s CEO, Rick Scott, as governor of Florida.
This hypocrisy suggests the concern over potentially illegal activities at Planned Parenthood is just another attempt by anti-abortion advocates to chip away at a woman's constitutional rights.
Of course if the goal is simply to reduce the number of abortions in the U.S., congress should consider removing funds for another program that has been proven to increase both teen pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases - abstinence-only education. U.S. taxpayers have spent over $1.7 billion since 1982 on this program that actually promotes the very behaviors it is meant to prevent. Despite this failure, the majority of Republican presidential candidates would expand the program while congress recently expanded abstinence-only education spending by 50%.
Imagine if we used this conservative logic on something like gun rights. Does anyone think it would be a good idea to issue all 13 year olds a loaded gun with an unlimited supply of ammunition then refuse to show them how to properly use it? Would it really make any sense to tell these same kids that they can't use this gun they've been given until they get married to someone who has also never been educated in how to use a gun? Would the U.S. be a better place if these kids were taught that they are only allowed to use their gun for self-defense because using the gun for pleasure is immoral? It's pretty easy to see why abstinence-only education is so awful once you consider just how important being educated is when it comes to something like owning a firearm.
Or consider the argument that gun advocates make when anyone suggests restrictions to gun ownership. They'll point to the failure of government restrictions on alcohol and drugs. They'll also claim that no matter how many rules you put in place preventing people from owning a gun, those who want to get a gun will find a way to get a gun. History shows us that this is also the case with outlawing abortion as many who claim to be "pro-life" are trying to do.
Rather than preventing abortions, making it illegal just moves the practice underground. Fetuses will still be aborted, except now the rate of death increases significantly for the women involved. Additionally all of the organs and tissue that were being legally used to save lives will now be disposed of or sold on the black market. Such opportunities to make money off of aborted fetuses might actually lead to more abortions. The reality is that just like prohibition and the war on drugs, criminalizing abortion will have a negative impact on all Americans.
In the end the biggest problem is that conservatives don't understand the goal of Planned Parenthood and its supporters. No one wants more abortions. The goal is to give people the tools they need to "promote family planning and healthy, responsible reproductive and sexual behavior". For as much attention as is given to abortions, the reality is preventing unplanned pregnancies accounts for more than ten times as many of the services provided at Planned Parenthood as preforming abortions.
The decision to engage in sexual activity or have an abortion is not a decision women take lightly. The least we can do as a country is make sure that women get all the information possible to make this an educated decision. Unfortunately, the policies that conservatives support subjugate women's rights and make the dissemination of this information exponentially more difficult. If only conservatives realized how their actions ironically increase the need for institutions like Planned Parenthood.
If the investigations prove that Planned Parenthood illegally sold fetal organs or tissue, then the organization should be fined and those in charge should be punished. Removing all federal funding for an organization whose main business provides the less fortunate valuable assistance is perhaps more callous than anything Planned Parenthood has done and certainly not in line with penalties doled out to other organizations that receive federal tax dollars. For example Duke Energy which receives over $898 million in subsidies (nearly twice the federal funds allocated for Planned Parenthood) is not only the second largest polluter in the U.S. but they also illegally dumped tens of millions of gallons of polluted waste water into a tributary that provides some North Carolina residents’ drinking water. All told, they pled guilty to nine violations yet no action was taken on Capitol Hill to limit their corporate welfare.
Medicare fraud steals tens of billions of tax payer dollars per year, yet one of the largest cases of fraud ever perpetrated didn't lead to a removal of federal funds for the company. In fact, conservatives cared so little about these unlawful acts that they elected the company’s CEO, Rick Scott, as governor of Florida.
This hypocrisy suggests the concern over potentially illegal activities at Planned Parenthood is just another attempt by anti-abortion advocates to chip away at a woman's constitutional rights.
Of course if the goal is simply to reduce the number of abortions in the U.S., congress should consider removing funds for another program that has been proven to increase both teen pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases - abstinence-only education. U.S. taxpayers have spent over $1.7 billion since 1982 on this program that actually promotes the very behaviors it is meant to prevent. Despite this failure, the majority of Republican presidential candidates would expand the program while congress recently expanded abstinence-only education spending by 50%.
Imagine if we used this conservative logic on something like gun rights. Does anyone think it would be a good idea to issue all 13 year olds a loaded gun with an unlimited supply of ammunition then refuse to show them how to properly use it? Would it really make any sense to tell these same kids that they can't use this gun they've been given until they get married to someone who has also never been educated in how to use a gun? Would the U.S. be a better place if these kids were taught that they are only allowed to use their gun for self-defense because using the gun for pleasure is immoral? It's pretty easy to see why abstinence-only education is so awful once you consider just how important being educated is when it comes to something like owning a firearm.
Or consider the argument that gun advocates make when anyone suggests restrictions to gun ownership. They'll point to the failure of government restrictions on alcohol and drugs. They'll also claim that no matter how many rules you put in place preventing people from owning a gun, those who want to get a gun will find a way to get a gun. History shows us that this is also the case with outlawing abortion as many who claim to be "pro-life" are trying to do.
Rather than preventing abortions, making it illegal just moves the practice underground. Fetuses will still be aborted, except now the rate of death increases significantly for the women involved. Additionally all of the organs and tissue that were being legally used to save lives will now be disposed of or sold on the black market. Such opportunities to make money off of aborted fetuses might actually lead to more abortions. The reality is that just like prohibition and the war on drugs, criminalizing abortion will have a negative impact on all Americans.
In the end the biggest problem is that conservatives don't understand the goal of Planned Parenthood and its supporters. No one wants more abortions. The goal is to give people the tools they need to "promote family planning and healthy, responsible reproductive and sexual behavior". For as much attention as is given to abortions, the reality is preventing unplanned pregnancies accounts for more than ten times as many of the services provided at Planned Parenthood as preforming abortions.
The decision to engage in sexual activity or have an abortion is not a decision women take lightly. The least we can do as a country is make sure that women get all the information possible to make this an educated decision. Unfortunately, the policies that conservatives support subjugate women's rights and make the dissemination of this information exponentially more difficult. If only conservatives realized how their actions ironically increase the need for institutions like Planned Parenthood.
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