Military Spending v. Educational Spending

As April 15 looms large, consider checking out the website of the National Priorities Project, to see how the government's spending your money. For example, you may be enraged/horrified/shocked to know that $.30 of every $1 goes to military/defense, and $.037 of every $1 goes to education.

This to me makes a lot of sense, in an evil Bush-whacked sort of way. Our broken public education school system is set up to raise our children to be illiterate and ill-informed non-thinkers required to wear uniforms to attend school (like they do in Philadelphia), say the Pledge of Allegiance, and sing the Star-Spangled Banner.

Then those same school children grow up and are faced with limited job opportunities because they have not been taught critical thinking skills, or much of anything at all. Even if they're prepared for it, they can't afford college because it's too expensive, even with financial aid. Wal-mart down the street's not paying a living wage, and all of the mom-and-pop stores that do have been driven out of business. And their school couldn't afford computers, let alone textbooks, so they never really learned too much about them, or how to read very well. So they sit back and realize that they have been taught nothing except how to wear a uniform, salute the American flag, and sing the national anthem.

Then the military recruiter who has been given their name, address and phone number by the school system -- a nifty new federal law -- calls, and perhaps they realize that they're part of the new underclass that is being trained from elementary school (even without ROTC) to join the military. So they join up, where their lack of critical thinking skills is actually an asset, because they can obey their commanding officers without thinking too critically about the rightness of those commands. Or that they're being told to walk into battle with unarmored vehicles.

In any case, perhaps they won't question it when the military sends them halfway across the world to kill or be killed in the fight to protect the administration's interest in oil.

This sounds about right to me. Sure explains why we spend 10 times as much on the military as we do on education.

A Rose by Any Other Name

Because I clearly don't have enough to do, I'm trying to come up with a new pen name, for when I finish writing my first book. "Jodi _____" just doesn't have quite the "hot new novelist" ring to it that I might hope (though I am attached to it, as far as names go).

The best new name I've come up with is "J.B. Vanderslice." A little bit quirky, a little cool, and well, I like the whole initial thing. Other possibilities:

J.B. Huckleberry
or
j.b. huckleberry
j.b. manion

I also considered going with "Jodi Allyson," which encompasses the fake middle name I gave myself when I was young (after the camp counselor I had a crush on). But then, I thought that, well, there's already the incredible Dorothy Allison, and she's also a lesbian, and they'll probably think we're, like, sisters or something.

Whatever.

Title IX: Good News/Bad News

The Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision yesterday holding that Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in schools and colleges, protected whistleblowers from retaliation. Plaintiff Roderick Jackson had coached the girls' basketball team in a Birmingham, Ala., until he spoke out about the inequities between the girls' and boys' programs. Then he was dismissed.

"Retaliation against a person because that person has complained of sex discrimination is another form of intentional sex discrimination," wrote Justice O'Connor in the majority opinion.

Well, umm, yeah... duh. Doesn't that seem obvious? But in the Bush-whacked world that we live in, and in the often surreal rulings of the Court regarding discrimination claims, I take nothing for granted. (Too often, the Court seems to ignore what I see as obvious discrimination in its race-blind or gender-blind law-making.)

In any case, this is good news for us all, since it's teachers and administrators who are often in the position to complain about sex discrimination in boys' and girls' programs, and this protects them from retaliation when they do speak out. Read the full New York Times article about it. Or the full opinion, Jackson v. Birmingham Bd. of Ed.

The bad news is, as always, the twisted, evil policies of the Bush administration. (And while you may think that the use of the word 'evil' is hyperbole, I assure you, it's not. The policies of this administration are being put in place to guarantee the endless future institutionalization of straight, white, American, male privilege. Be scared. Be very, very scared.)

The particular injustice I'm talking about is the new Department of Education (of Postcards from Buster infamy) policy modifying the criteria used to monitor school compliance with Title IX. With the new policy, schools can use the results of email surveys to undergraduate students to show that there is "insufficient interest to support an additional varsity team for the underrepresented sex" to show a "presumption of compliance."

That means that schools can now use surveys that, no doubt, thousands of students delete or ignore, to show that there is no interest in a particular women's program. Plus, how can women be interested in sports that they may have never had the opportunity to play in high school, like lacrosse or crew or soccer? This policy just reinforces the historic discrimination that girls continue to face in their elementary and high schools, like Coach Jackson in Alabama.

And, it shifts the burden to women students to prove that the school does not provide equitable athletic opportunities. This is a radical change from 20 years of policy guidance from the Department -- 20 years that have made Title IX effective.

Disgusted? I am. It's precisely because of Title IX's effectiveness that record numbers of girls are involved in athletics today, that we have vibrant professional women's tennis and golf tours, that we have a pro women's basketball league. They are the result of the equity in athletics that has begun to come about from Title IX.

And we still have miles to go is going to make it. According to the Feminist Majority, currently, young women make up 53 percent of the student body in Division One colleges and universities, but they receive only 41 percent of the athletic opportunities, 36 percent of the athletic budgets, and 32 percent of the recruitment budget.

Read the full letter from the Dept. of Education or a good article about it from the Feminist Daily News.

Good News for Non-Traditional Families in PA

The Superior Court of Pennsylvania ruled yesterday that a lesbian cannot be denied the legal right to visit the daughter she helped raise with her former partner based on speculation that ongoing animosity between the two would damage the 11-year-old. This is great news for same-sex couples with children in Pennsylvania, which also permits second-parent adoption. Read the press release issued by Lambda Legal, who handled the case, or the full opinion.

Dumb Move at Air America Radio

I don't often listen to Air America Radio, the newish progressive/lefty radio station. I prefer NPR's brainy/academic take on the world. But when I did, the only show I ever tuned into was Unfiltered, with morning hosts Lizz Winstead, Rachel Maddow and Chuck D. They often had interesting things to say and guests that you'd never find elsewhere. (Full disclosure: I know Rachel from my college days, though we have not spoken in more than a year.)

So I think it's a particularly sad commentary on the world today that Unfiltered is being canceled and replaced by... Jerry Springer. It's like a cruel joke.

Here's the (edited) email I sent to express my discontent:

To the corporate decisionmakers at Air America Radio:

It's a stupid move to cancel Unfiltered, and you should rethink it. Critical thinking skills are a scarcity in radio and television these days, and the hosts of Unfiltered have them. They have the ability to analyze and critique news and politics -- something that is increasingly rare.

Lizz Winstead's voice and commentary was a big loss for the airwaves when she left the show earlier this month. Rachel Maddow and Chuck D are voices of reason and sense in a world full of soundbites.

Lastly, at the risk of sounding essentialist, Unfiltered was, for once, a show with an openly lesbian host and -- shock! -- a man of color! -- instead of the typical buffet of straight white men. Replacing Unfiltered with Jerry Springer is a sad commentary about the future of media in the United States.

With the cancellation of Unfiltered, you've lost my ears.

If you're peeved, let the folks at Air America Radio know. Can't hurt.

Things I Will Miss When I Have a Full-time Job

with regularish hours in an office that is not in my home:

Working in my pajamas
The randomness of the day set mostly by my imagination and the real or perceived parameters of the Law School Experience
Working on my couch
Listening to my parner type on her laptop as I type on mine in our shared office
Looking out the window at my grassy knoll/ugly driveway
Watching the 10 robins congregate at the grassy knoll for a mid-morning tea-and-worm party
Breaking to go food shopping in the middle of the day
A full refrigerator of Fresca

Grandma on Terri Schiavo

Grandma: "Why oh why can't they give her some ice chips?"

Me: "Well, grandma, I think it would defeat the purpose of removing nutrition and hydration."

Grandma: "But I'm not talking about hydration. Just a few ice chips. To keep her mouth wet."

New Shoes for Work?

When I was down in Boca with Grandma, we went to her favorite shoe store, and I saw these shoes. I thought, "Wow, they'll be great for my new job! They say hip, and fun, yet still conservative enough to be a mule. Perfect with a casual black pants suit."

Apparently, they do not say that at all. According to my friends and partner, they say, "Mental patient off her meds." Or, "Too much lead paint as a child."

They all agree that I can't pull off these shoes. And sadly, I think they're right. I'm more Ellen-DeGeneres-wannabe than umm, whoever might wear these shoes. So I continue to be in search of a style. I'm determined to find one before my first day of work in September. I am a woman on a mission. Watch out.

Happy Birthday massagelady!

It's massagelady's birthday today, so I am officially dedicating this post to her. In her honor, given her spirit and commitment to her own and other people's physical and mental health and well-being, I recommend you check out Kripalu, which is a really terrific and relaxing place. (I've actually never been there, but plan to go ASAP.) I also recommend the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, particularly their upcoming workshop with Pam Houston.

First Crush

Do you remember your first crush? I was just thinking about mine. Her name was Darla Hughes. She was tall and thin, and had blonde hair. That makes her sound like some sort of blonde bombshell, but she wasn't. She dressed plainly, sort of in a Talbots/LL Bean/Lands End kind of way. I remember her hair as really straight and dry, sort of straw-like, as if it had been dyed one too many times. She was the music teacher at my elementary school when I was in fifth grade.

She played the tuba. She taught me how to play the flute. She had really smiley eyes, and was nice to me, even though I think I probably pretty much sucked. (The flute was really not my instrument.) But my heart got broken at the end of the year when the school board laid her off in a last-hired-first-fired frenzy.

My other first crush was the boy who lived across the street, Marc Falkin. I think he's a lawyer now. He was very cute and 1 year older than me, which was a big deal when you're 6. He had a little white electric convertible car and would take me for rides around the block. I was his eye candy. But one day he said something that made me mad, and I bit him. I'm not sure, but I think I bit him on the neck, vampire-style. Though we remained friends (he had my favorite toy, Lite-Brite), things were never the same after that.

Tax Code Gotcha Down?

Then consider submitting a comment to the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform.
(Thanks to HRC for their mass e-mail on this.)

The panel is particularly interested in hearing comments on the following topics:

1. Aspects of the tax code that are unfair. (Oh, where to begin? Maybe try and give poor people a break? Stop discriminating against people who can't or don't want to get married? Amend the definition of "spouse" to include same-sex couples?)
2. Goals that the panel should try and achieve. (Hmm. Something modest, like stop pandering to big business?)
3. Unnecessary burden you face because of the tax code's tortured logic. (Like how it doesn't let me deduct medical expenses unless they are more than 7.5% -- a nice, round number -- of my adjusted gross income, whatever that is?)
4. Specific examples of how the tax code distorts important personal/business decisions that you make. (Like, oh, encouraging me to find a nice boy to marry?)

While I have no faith or confidence in the president (sort of like the Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences and President Summers), this seems like a fun exercise. If I were a professor, I'd make it an assignment for my students. What better way to participate in our (ahem) democracy than telling our government what we think? I think that if people interacted with their elected officials more, they might pay more attention to who they elect. For me, at least, the federal government always seems sort of other-worldly. Out there in the distance doing something that I don't quite understand, in a way that seems to have little effect on my life.

Except that it does. All of those bumbling idiots on C-SPAN voting yea or nea in ways that mess up my life and hurt the people and communities I care about. I wish someone would call for a confidence vote in this country because I'm pretty certain that the government -- the whole lot of 'em, Democrats and Republicans -- would lose.

More importantly, I wish that the media would report on a daily basis what happens in Washington. Not the Daily Presidential Photo-Op, but what actually goes on in the House or the Senate or the Supreme Court. What do they do all day? Why don't we spend more time talking about what our government does with its time and precious resources?

While I don't believe that my comments will have any impact on the tax reform, I like writing to the peeps in DC and telling them how much I think they're screwing things up. It does have a little "if a tree falls in a forest" feel to it -- I don't really think anyone's listening -- but then I think about the 4 women from New Jersey who badgered and prodded and begged and pleaded until there was a 9/11 Commission. And I think, maybe, if enough of us do that, things might change.

Email your comments as a Word attachment to comments@taxreformpanel.gov. They're due by 5 pm on March 18, so get writing!

RIP, Charlie the Tuna

Taken from the Greenpeace website regarding limiting the consumption of seafood due to elevated mercury levels:

Fish Consumption Advisories

These advisories are intended for women of childbearing age and small children.

Developing fetuses and small children are especially susceptible to health impairment from elevated mercury levels.

However, if other people wish to reduce their exposure to mercury, they should also generally adhere to these advisories and also work to reduce mercury pollution at the source.

Fish that are low in mercury and can be eaten in moderation:

Abalone (farmed), Anchovies, Butterfish, Calamari (squid), Catfish, Caviar (farmed), Clams, Crab (king), Crawfish/crayfish, Flounder, Haddock, Hake, Herring, Lobster (spiny/rock), Mackerel (Atlantic), Mussels (farmed), Oysters, Perch (ocean), Pollock, Salmon (wild), Sardines, Scallops, Shad, Shrimp, Sole, Sturgeon (farmed),Tilapia, Trout, Whitefish

Eat sparingly (less than six 6 oz servings a month):

Carp, Cod, Crab (dungeness), Crab (blue), Crab (snow), Mahi Mahi, Monkfish, Perch (freshwater), Skate, Snapper, Tuna (canned, chunk light)

Avoid (less than three 6 oz servings a month):

Bluefish, Croaker, Halibut, Lobster (American/Maine), Rockfish, Sea Bass, Sea Trout (Weakfish), Tuna (canned, white albacore), Tuna (fresh)

Do not eat:

Grouper, Mackerel (king), Marlin, Orange Roughy, Shark, Swordfish, Tilefish

Sources used for this recommendation:

Natural Resources Defense Council,
Mercury Policy Project, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration

Scott Petersen and the Death Penalty

As massagelady wrote to me in an email, "Spring break is over. Get blogging already." So blogging I am.

San Mateo, Calif., Superior Court Judge Alfred Delucchi followed the recommendations of the jury and sentenced Scott Peterson to die by lethal injection. Of course, Peterson's actions were heinous: he killed his pregnant wife.

But when are we, as a "civilized" country, going to stop executing people? According to Amnesty International, 84 percent of the executions in the world in 2003 were carried out by four countries: China, Iran, the United States, and Viet Nam. That's good company we are keeping, huh?

The governments of the United States executed 65 people in our names in 2003, the most current year in which data is available. (Saudi Arabia only executed 50. ) Iran, on the other hand, executed at least 108, many in public. I wonder if we would be more or less likely to abolish the death penalty in all of our states if we made the executions public. Would we have a sense of outrage at the taking of life?

I understand the knee-jerk reaction of wanting someone dead who has killed your loved one. My cousin was murdered many years ago, and for a long time, I wanted her murderer dead. I wished the death penalty on him many times over. The 9 years he did in jail did not seem like enough of a punishment; he was free, and my cousin never lived past 12.

But I have come to believe that we must move beyond that initial anger, difficult as it is. It is our moral imperative to stop our governments from killing more people in our name. Of course, there is the procedural issue of even-handedly applying the punishment of execution: the primary indicator of who receives the death penalty is the individual's race: African-American men are something like 9 times more likely to be executed by the state than their white counterparts.

But there is this: each person is more than the worst thing she does. By allowing our government to execute individuals in our names, we become a society that believes that, for certain individuals, they are no more than they crime they commit. When we execute people, we lose hope in our collective humanity, and our ability for change. This doesn't seem to me to be the hallmark of a developed nation.

The other issue regarding Peterson's sentence specifically, is the emphasis the judge put on the "killing" of his "unborn child," who he noted "never had a chance to draw a breath." As a pro-choice woman, the rhethoric of the "unborn child" seems dangerous to me here. It leads us down the road of more legal protections for the "unborn child" (aka, the fetus), and less protection for the pregnant woman carrying that baby to make decisions about her health and life.

Dresses v. Pants

Grandma and I have been on the go since the lobster dinner. (Yes, the lobster was good. It's hard for me to consider any lobster bad, except for when it's a whole lobster (not just tails) and it's a female and they have the eggs inside that are all smeary greenish-black and icky. In the words of dear Grandma, "Blech.")

Hmm. Is that sexist, to not like the female lobsters for their reproductive smeariness? Maybe if I were taught from a young age to like the green-black goo, I would love it. Anyway.

Yesterday we went shopping for 7 hours. 7 hours! I do not like shopping, and I especially do not like it for 7 hours. But it was very sweet to watch my grandma, whose favorite food is ice cream, enjoy her ice cream soda during a brief break. She was in what can only be described as some sort of tantric trance. And then we went to dinner at a fancy-ish restaurant. I wore pants and a silk top, which prompted the following observations from grandma:

Grandma: "Is that what you're wearing?"

Me: "Yes."

Grandma: "Don't you ever wear dresses?"

Me: "No, not really."

Grandma: "I love dresses. They're my favorite. I hate pants. Blech."

Me: "I like pants. I don't really like dresses."

Grandma: "Yuck. Blech. I hate pants. They remind me of boys."

Which is not to say that Grandma hates boys, but rather, that she hates girls who wear pants and so, in her mind, look like boys. Her way, my guess, of expressing disapproval for her pant-wearing, woman-loving granddaughter in her own special passive-aggressive sort of way. The thing that I never understand about this line of thinking is that if a woman is wearing pants, or has her head shaved like I did before law school, or doesn't wear makeup or shops in the men's department, and considers herself a woman, why do we (societally) say that she "looks like a man"? Why don't we see her as a woman who wears men's clothes? And historically, do we have any sense of who the women who cross-dressed were? Was it only women who were lesbians trying to pass as heterosexual couples? Any books to recommend on this topic?

P.S. To answer massagelady's question, Grandma (sadly, in my opinion) does not have The Clapper. However, she does have a brand new cane that meets the contours of her palm in a wonderful, hi-tech kind of way.

Live from Boca

Sorry not to have posted in so long. That week before spring break always kicks my butt.

So, now I'm down in Boca Raton, Fla., visiting my 82-year-old grandmother. This is, on the one hand, very special and fun. I love my grandma and she has generally been very supportive of me. On the other hand, she can be, umm, very difficult. Very difficult. Really. Very difficult.

For example, when you say something she doesn't like, she ignores you. It's as if you didn't open your mouth at all.

Last night's conversation at the Early Bird Special at a restaurant in Boca:

Grandma to me: You're going to have the lobster tail.

Me: Actually, I really would like the scallops.

Grandma: You like the big scallops? (They were sea scallops, for those wondering.)

Me: Yes.

Grandma: Blech. (She really makes this noise.) I don't. I only like the small ones. You're going to have the lobster.

Me: I don't want the lobster. I want scallops.

Grandma: No, you'll have the scallops. With a baked potato.

Me: I don't want a baked potato. I want the mashed sweet potato. And I want scallops.

[waiter comes over]

Grandma: We'll both have the lobster tail....