Caroline Calais -- Democracy in Americas

Get rid of bilingual education – please. Here in Texas, 60 percent of all high school students that have been classified with having limited English proficiency (LEP), have been attending U.S schools for five years or more. Experts thinks the reason to LEP is that students have gotten poor bilingual- or English as a second language instruction in earlier grades, or that they often are forced to change schools when their family move around. I think we should look at bilingual education in itself as the source. Reports done in New York  conclude that children qualified more rapidly for mainstream classes if they came from English as a second language program, than they did when they came from bilingual one.

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”Regeringen utgår från att folk som är sjuka är lata”, skriver Lotta Gröning med stark indignation. Tja, do you know what,  från den här sidan av Atlanten ser det ut som regeringen har rätt. Det är ingen hemlighet att antalet sjukdagar, mellan år 1998 och 2002, ökade med 76 procent, och att svenskarna i slutet av 1980 talet, när sjukersättningen var 90-100 procent, stannade hemma ifrån jobbet 26 dagar per år. Så om svenskar inte är lata så är de i alla fall bortskämda, för hur förklaras det annars att bara 14 procent stannade hemma ifrån jobbet 1955?  Idag är Sverige det hälsosammaste landet i Europa, endast 20 procent av männen röker och Sverige har den lägsta andelen överviktiga människor och den lägsta alkohol konsumtionen.

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Is Lori Drew, the 49-year old Missouri mother accused of driving 13-year old Megan Meier to suicide, a cyberbully? She posed as a teenage boy and sent nasty messages via a MySpace account, among other things telling Megan the world would be a better place without her. Many people think not. “I have concerns about the term cyberbullying being applied to this situation” says Nancy Willard, a former lawyer and executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use to New York Times. “Cyberbullying usually occurs between peers. It is not this kind of situation”.

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Robert D. Putnam, a Harvard professor in Public Policy, finds that ethnic diversity is increasing in most countries. The reason: Immigration. And it is not a good thing, he points out, at least in the short run as immigration and ethnic diversity challenges social solidarity and inhibit social capital. Evidence from the US shows, for example, that trust is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, and friends fewer in ethnically diverse neighborhoods (Putnam, E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century). Just look at the Dallas suburbs Farmers Branch and Carrollton. In 2007 the city of Farmers Branch decided to not rent apartments to people without proof of citizenship or residency. English also became the city’s official language, and the Police could apply to participate in a federal program that enabled them to check the residency status of suspects in custody and to initiate deportation proceedings. Past Saturday the city of Carrollton followed, and newly elected mayor Ron Branson has promised to get rid of the city’s illegal immigrants.

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With gas prices soon at $4 gallon, oil at $120 barrel, and a world oil supply soon depleted, I had hoped Senators Clinton and McCain would have suggested a real energy policy – instead they settle on a gimmick. For by agreeing on the suspension of the federal gas tax during the summers high peak driving season, both candidates show how little they care about our energy problem. It also points out how desperate Hillary Clinton is to win Indiana and North Carolina.  Come on! The European Union, taking climate change, the increasing dependence on fossil fuel and rising energy prices into account, has already put a comprehensive energy policy into place. Here we look to save consumers $30 this summer, or $70 if you believe Mrs. Clinton’s figures!

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I don’t know what it is but the more I see of Hillary the less I trust her. I am not alone. 53 percent of the Americans share my opinion says a recent Gallup poll. And in Pennsylvania, a Pew research survey done in early April found that of 1,000 respondents 29 percent said they had a very negative opinion of Sen. Clinton, compared to 15 % for Sen. Obama and 12% for Sen.  McCain.  Hillary Clinton still won the Pennsylvania primary, but the question about her trustworthiness is troubling. 

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The pack at Wall Street is running scared (again), and it really makes me wonder – don’t those guys have a single original thinker among them? Obviously not and it all has to do with hormones. Yes, you heard me right. Hormones associated with stress, sexual development and aggression explains the irrational group behavior associated with market bubbles and crashes.  This is at least what two British researchers found in a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. But it might make sense, it was for example, the strange behavior of traders during the dot-com boom that inspired John Coates, a senior research fellow at Cambridge, to look at the link between hormones and trading.“I began to think that the people involved in this insanity were under the influence of some drug”, he says. “When it was all over, they were like people in a hangover. They couldn’t believe they had bought some Net company with no earnings, no interest plan and lost all of their savings”.

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Det är männsikors attityder om marknad, arbete och risk-tagning som bestämmer ett lands ekonomiska prestation, inte skatter eller arbetsmarknads regleringar, det säger ialla fall Edmund Phelps, nobel pristagare och ekonom på Columbia University. Och han får medhåll. En rapport om entepreneurship från Massachusetts baserade Monitor Group visar till exempel att attityder  förklarar 40 percent av variationen i start-up företags ekonomiska framgång.

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Is the Obama tide turning Texas Blue? It looks like it. Record numbers of Texans are hitting the ballot, and Obama raised, in January, 179,000 dollars more than McCain. And in the highest presidential fundraising zip code in the state, 75025 in Dallas, donors gave Mr. Obama seven times more money than they did to Mrs. Clinton.  “Obama and President Bush have similar thoughts on education”, Allen Burns, an Allen financial analyst says, “while Mr. Obama rightly criticizes Mr. Bush for under-funding No Child Left Behind, both men understands the fundamental importance education plays in competing with countries like India and China”. Mr. Burns also points to the policy connection between Mr. Obama and Texas republicans. “Governor Rick Perry is leading a multibillion dollar effort to build up Texas’ research and development capacity, Obama is speaking strongly about beefing up R&D nationwide to invigorate business. We Texans can’t depend forever on cheap business costs and the petrochemical sector”. 

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Is the Democratic convention heading for a Florida 2000 showdown? With the nomination being determined by superdelegates, or the outcome of a fight over two state’s right to cast delegates’ votes, that might well be the case. And it is not good news.  This year’s contest has electrified voters and record numbers are now showing up at the polls. “We have already surpassed the total early-voting numbers for both the 1996 and 2000 elections” says Scott Haywood, spokesman for Texas Secretary of State Phil Wilson, “at this point, it is a record”. Also a welcome change.  In the 1996 U.S presidential election 49 % of the voting-age population went to the polls, mirroring the election of 1924 when a majority of eligible voters also abstained. In the 2000 presidential election 50.7 % decided to cast their vote.

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