Thursday Morning Nibbles

Ben Stein does snark so well. I do believe he's left the dark side and rejoined reality. He had to write an article but he wasn't allowed to complain about the rich. This is the result.

Starting MBA's at hedge funds, which are basically gaming enterprises, get paid multi-six figure sums. Starting teachers in the state of Florida get paid $28,000 a year.

Here's what else is new and exciting (or terrible) in money: there is real poverty among the soldiers who fight our wars. There are fist fights to get children into $30,000 a year kindergartens and pre-schools in the right neighborhoods in Manhattan. There are 40 million Americans without health care insurance. There are almost 40 million baby boomers with no savings for retirement. There is a long waiting list for Bentleys at the dealership in Beverly Hills.

There are soldiers' wives selling blood to buy toys for their kids. There is a man selling non-functioning body armor who threw a $10 million Bat Mitzvah for his daughter.

In Brentwood, where the houses start at $3 million, the housewives complain about what a terrible country America is. In Clinton, South Carolina, where the textile mill closed fifteen years ago and there is real hardship, the young men still believe in America and their fiancees at Presbyterian College wait for them while they fight in Iraq.

When I was in school, you had A,B,C,D and failing students. That's just the way it was. We were allowed to be individuals and find what we were good at. People's brains work the same, but different. Some people were good at math, some at English, some at science, some at automotive and some just hadn't found what their purpose in life was. The leader of the across the street gang (they smoked pot and cigarettes, dressed dirty and had bad attitudes) became a conservative lawyer in Houston. Meanwhile, our class president cracked under the pressure and had to drop out of the Air Force Academy. He's also a lawyer in Houston.

Rushes to judgment and an inability to perceive a positive alternate future have doomed more kids to a life of poverty and desperation, as if that were the plan. We need to spend more time, money and attention on kids in the early grades if there is ever to be equality in high school. Expecting kids who were passed along because it was easier than teaching them to suddenly know how to read and study just because they are in high school is foolish and doomed to fail. The discrepancy in achievement scores will not change unless the school system treats all elementary students fairly by ensuring that everyone gets the same education. If parents want more for their little one, they can pay a private tutor. It shouldn't be that the poor should have to hire a tutor to equalize the playing field.

Sick, sick, sick. Absolutely, totally sick. Along with disgusting, immoral and inhumane. There is no punishment that will ever fit this crime.