Once a Leader, U.S. Lags in College Degrees

In perhaps yet another sign that the USA is in decline other than perhaps militarily, the New York Times reports that growing gap between the rate at which college degrees are being completed in the United States compared to other countries threatens to undermine American economic competitiveness. I suspect the Bible thumpers and far right demagogues secretly welcome this trend inasmuch as it requires an ignorant populace to further religious fundamentalism and to provide a fertile atmosphere for loonies like Sarah Palin and other darlings of the GOP base. Sadly, far too few people seem to care. The USA is squandering billions and billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan even as the nation's infrastructure crumbles, millions of citizens go without preventive medical care and college becomes less affordable for more and more students. Yet the self-anointed super patriots continue to delude themselves in believing that the USA is better than every other nation. I'm sorry, but something is seriously f*cked up with this picture. Here are highlights from this disturbing story:
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The United States used to lead the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now it ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.
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“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, warned at a meeting on Capitol Hill of education leaders and policy makers, where he released a report detailing the problem and recommending how to fix it. “To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education.” While access to college has been the major concern in recent decades, over the last year, college completion, too, has become a leading item on the national agenda.
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Canada now leads the world in educational attainment, with about 56 percent of its young adults having earned at least associate’s degrees in 2007, compared with only 40 percent of those in the United States. (The United States’ rate has since risen slightly.)
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While almost 70 percent of high school graduates in the United States enroll in college within two years of graduating, only about 57 percent of students who enroll in a bachelor’s degree program graduate within six years, and fewer than 25 percent of students who begin at a community college graduate with an associate’s degree within three years.
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The problem is even worse for low-income students and minorities: only 30 percent of African-Americans ages 25-34, and less than 20 percent of Latinos in that age group, have an associate’s degree or higher.
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The group’s first five recommendations all concern K-12 education, calling for more state-financed preschool programs, better high school and middle school college counseling, dropout prevention programs, an alignment with international curricular standards and improved teacher quality. College costs were also implicated, with recommendations for more need-based financial aid, and further efforts to keep college affordable.
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I suspect teaching creationism as science is not something found in international curricular standards. More and more, the rest of the world must be laughing at the USA. What's ironic is that the Christianists whine about too much emphasis on self-esteem in our schools, and yet the nation suffers from that same problem: too much self-esteem with no basis to support it.

Obama's Gulf Oil Speech Bombs

From the reviews that I have read, it seems that I am not alone in viewing President Obama's speech last night on the Gulf oil catastrophe as a dud. First, the speech was about a month or more too late in coming. Moreover, Obama tried to make the case that the federal government had been aggressively in charge from the get go when anyone who has watched the news daily knows that BP has been the one incompetently calling the shots and doing its best to keep the news media from being able to fully report on the disaster. In short, Obama seems to have only underscored that he's not the leader that Americans had yearned for. He's a follower and only starts to get engaged when things have passed the stage of being fully f*cked up: health care, DADT repeal, energy policy - the list goes on and on. Typically, once engaged he can give a mollifying speech, but last night fell flat. Especially since the media was simultaneously running coverage showing that NONE of the oil companies involved in offshore drilling had a competent emergency response to a major oil spill. Indeed, they all had more or less the same useless plan with the only variance being in the cover on the "plan" and how much detail was aimed at media and PR response. Obama has been in office two years now and this status is totally unacceptable. For the reality in the Gulf, first these highlights from the Mobile Press Register:
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Oil will likely continue to wash onto Alabama's coast through Monday, according to a forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Persistent winds have pushed the oil slick closer to the Alabama-Mississippi chain of barrier islands and the Florida Panhandle.
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Saturday, the Alabama Department of Public Health expanded its warning against swimming in coastal waters. People should avoid swimming in the Mississippi Sound west of the Dauphin Island Bridge and in Bayou St. John, Cotton Bayou and Old River in Baldwin County.
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Health officials had previously warned against swimming in Alabama's Gulf of Mexico waters off Baldwin and Mobile counties and in Mobile Bay waters at Fort Morgan. In the bay, numerous areas of oil sheen ranging from the size of a baseball field to the size of a tennis court dotted the surface Saturday afternoon. The sheens appeared on both sides of the ship channel to the north of Middle Bay Lighthouse. There were reports earlier in the day of a large amount of emulsified oil floating in that area of the bay, though none was seen during a late afternoon cruise.
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The economy of the Gulf Coast is dying - along with marine and wildlife - as Nero, I mean Obama fiddles in Washington. The government response has been incompetent, and I suspect this disaster will be Obama's Katrina: too little, too late. Here's highlights from the Huffington Post on the President's speech:
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Obama really, really wants to stop the oil spill. And he really, really wants to hold BP accountable for the damage they've done. And he really, really wants the Gulf Coast to come through this hardship and he really, really wants to wean us from our dependency on foreign oil, and oil in general. But "really, really wants" is not a plan, and only the bitterest and most brain-dead of political opponents would have presumed, going into tonight, that Obama had not yet properly sentimentalized his opinions on any of those matters.
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And yet, basically what we got, in spades, was sentiment. To be sure, it was no doubt deeply felt. And for all anyone knows, there may be, already codified, a whole series of plans in the works related to stopping the oil gusher, cleaning the gulf coast, and implementing a new series of energy policies. And they may be great plans! But if you were hoping that some of that stuff would be revealed on actual teevee cameras, in prime time, well, you were S.O.L.
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Some good news, I guess, is that Ray Mabus has been given oversight of a Gulf Coast Restoration Plan and that Michael Bromwich will be the new head of the heretofore terrible regulatory agency known as the Minerals Management Service. It may also cheer you to learn that if all goes according to plan and all the lobbyists in the world drop dead tomorrow and legislators stop behaving like a bunch of politically-compromised ass-clowns, BP will be forced to pay for the damages and the Gulf Coast will be restored.
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I think you can swap out the references to energy and add back references to health care, and we can all take a trip down memory lane, to the time we all wondered why Obama wasn't out there, actively pushing for something specific in the arena of health care reform. Right down to the "I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party" part, which basically commits Obama to a lengthy period of Chuck Grassley jacking himself off as the Republican Party returns with the idea of doing nothing that even remotely looks like it might be helpful to his Presidency.
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One very specific action Obama could have taken tonight was to make it clear that BP's ongoing clampdown on the media attempting to cover the oil spill was not to be tolerated and must end immediately. Didn't even merit a mention!
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How do you spell failed presidency? That's what it seems we are getting. But for Sarah Palin on the ticket, I suspect that even with his insanity, McCain now looks to have been a better choice to a number of folks.

More Rotten Fruits of GOP Policies

Even as the members of the Congressional GOP continue to do all they can to delay and undermine Barack Obama's efforts to get an economic stimulus package passed by Congress, the fruits of the GOP's failed economic and deregulation obsession continue to come home to roost in the form of more lost jobs and struggling companies. Despite the deteriorating situation, the GOP's cut taxes mantra seems to be all they know how to parrot. Of course, many in the Christianist base regularly oppose any government programs that would help the unfortunate or down trodden - something I find hard to reconcile with alleged Christian beliefs. As the Washington Post is reporting, yesterday was a blood bath in terms of job cuts and unless something is done quickly to turn the situation around the downward spiral will continue. Also to be considered in this country is the fact that loss of a job also frequently means that one loses health care insurance as well. Here are some highlights on the latest bad news which seems to mean nothing to today's GOP:

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The nation's employers, including some of its largest and most sturdy, announced plans yesterday to slash more than 55,000 jobs, a staggering one-day toll that highlighted how quickly layoffs are accelerating and how widely misery is spreading throughout the labor market.

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The cuts extended to companies that were once considered bright spots in the U.S. economy. Construction equipment maker Caterpillar, whose business last year was bolstered by strong exports, said it would cut 20,000 jobs. Pfizer, one of the giants of a health-care sector that had until recently seemed immune from the downturn, said it would cut 8,000.

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In all, 22 of the 30 companies that are part of the Dow Jones industrial average have announced job cuts since the economy took a nosedive in October. Analysts say they've been surprised by just how quickly those cuts have added up. The number of people receiving unemployment insurance benefits now stands at 4.6 million, the highest level since 1982.

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"These are not just numbers on a page," President Obama told reporters at the White House yesterday, as he urged Congress to pass his economic stimulus package. "These are working men and women whose lives have been disrupted. We owe it to each of them, and to every single American, to act with a sense of urgency and common purpose."

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The job cuts announced yesterday "are the predictable consequence of a quickly unraveling economy affecting all sectors and segments of the workforce," said Lawrence Mishel, the president of EPI. "Unfortunately, the rise in unemployment we've already had may only be halfway to where we're heading."

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While layoffs by big names attracted the most attention yesterday, workers at thousands of smaller firms are losing their jobs as well. Small companies with 1 to 49 employees shed 281,000 jobs in December, according to a report released this month by payroll services firm Automatic Data Processing. Medium-size firms with 50 to 499 employees cut 321,000. Large companies with more than 499 workers lost 91,000.

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For the next six months, many economists do not expect the pace of layoff announcements to let up much. "There is nothing in the economic tea leaves that suggest someone is going to be hiring. This is a broad-based economic slump. From pharma to industrial to housing to telecommunications, every aspect of this economy is in a free-fall," said Richard Yamarone, director of economic research for Argus Research in New York. "There is no safe haven."