Black men in America have problems with self-control, self-respect, the ability to interact properly in society. I want to believe that morons like this are in a tiny minority. I cannot in good conscience agree.

My local paper is full of violent crime stories accompanied by pictures of black men young to old

My national new media sites, all of them, are full of black men behaving badly, to the point of guns and gunfire being used practically in every instance.

I see this crappy behavior in my classrooms. I see it on the local news media, and national. I have observed it consistently and continually happening in my 65 years of passing through.

I do not understand. 

Blacks argue that they are only a couple generations removed from slavery, lynchings, de-humanizing treatment, banned from facilities, voting booth, yet allowed to die in our wars. They argue it takes time to establish family values. 

How long must we all wait? There aren't going to be any black men around to establish these values. Our prisons overflow with black men. Our courts overflow with cases involving black men. 

Anyone out there have any suggestions?

 Or is this all just me?

The letter I'm still waiting for:

My Congressional reps at both federal and state level send me a letter informing me that there were X votes for or against a bill and that in turn is how he/she voted, in line with the people he/she represents, as their employee, and not because of what he/she actually thought of the bill.

One of these days.....

March 9, 2017:

In response to a writer's letter to our metro newspaper reference a discussion over repairing and building high school football stadiums, I offer the following. The write said he didn't have a stake in the outcome.

--Well, if you are a taxpayer, you do have a stake. These young people and those that follow them will be taking care of you in your advanced years, your retail clerks, cooks, waiters, drivers, lawyers, doctors, plumbers. You better have a stake in how they turn out.

Time to re-think public education from top to bottom. Clearly, based not just on PISA (look it up) scores, but on general malaise in our society, we are failing to adequately educate our young. Districts consistently complain about not having enough funds. I say enough.

Proposals:

1. Get off the agricultural education cycle and extend the current 170 school year length to 230 days. Massachusetts school year is 190 days and rated among the best if not the best k-12 ed. systems in the country, for a reason.

2. Dissolve all varsity sports programs starting in middle school. Convert all sports to intramurals, and require every student, no matter physical status, to participate in at least two sports annually starting in 7th grade. The lessons being learned on the playing fields that adults have raved about since Spartan times, still exist. However, only a handful of students are being exposed to them. Why not all?

3. Eliminating traveling sports in general and football in particular is needed. SC school busses are antiquated and unsafe as documented by this paper and our employees in the legislature. It's heretical in the South to talk about banning football, I know, but hear me out. Only a handful of any school's students qualify for varsity sports, thus leaving the majority of the student population on the sidelines for the rest of their lives, literally. Club sports exist for those parents and students who have special skills and the inclination to want to play at such levels. Fine. Parents can pay for that out of their pocket, not mine. Schools would save thousands of dollars by halting football programs. No stadiums, light bills, parking, insurance, equipment costs, to save a few. Field can be converted to soccer, the international sport, and used for intramural programs. This Friday night tradition doesn't have to be about 16 year olds risking injury and concussions. The last two can occur in any sport, but let's reduce the risk.

4. No student gets out of third and eighth grades without being able to read, write, communicate at those levels. That simple.

5. Special needs students usually have until age 21 to graduate. Expand that time frame to all students. Some actually need it. The correlation is that starting ages probably should be higher as well, especially if the home environment wasn't conducive to a good start. Remove the social stigma of being held back, and graduating at an older age. The idea is to graduate educated, not just graduate. Principals and supts. love to brag about grad. rates. How about we start bragging about education rates?

6. High schools need to be equally college and vo-tech track. Not all students are oriented towards nor want to attend college, at least not right away. We need educated plumbers, tradespersons, etc. My plumber gets $75 just to ring my doorbell. Students need to know about these options. Thankfully, many high schools run such programs now.

Worrying about the number and quality of h.s. stadiums is anachronistic, 20th century thinking. World is moving pretty fast. We don't want to run alongside playing catch-up. We want to, we need to lead. Our system prevents us from doing so. ----------------------------------

I've always wondered if the situation were reversed, and millions of Americans had poured illegally into its southern neighbors' countries illegally, if they would have been treated properly and welcomed.

I lived in AZ for 20 years and observed first-hand the results of our porous borders. An enormous Border Patrol budget. State-wide school district budgets busted beyond repair, due to the need to hire bi-lingual employees for the front office, classroom aides, bus drivers, parent night translators, and the expense of sending every notice home in two languages. This process of course ignored the Eastern European, Africa, Middle East, and Asian immigrants and their language needs. But, what the heck. Thanks to a mid 1970s Supreme Court ruling, no student regardless of status can be turned away from a U.S. public school. Hang the cost, sign 'em up.

The environmental damage alone has been and continues to be catastrophic. One can follow the immigrant trail to the border simply by following the litter of water bottles, food wrappers, old sandals, backpacks, and you name the trash, just sitting out there in a once pristine desert. No one cares. It's the one area that matches South Carolina-a near-completely trashed landscape.

All we have ever asked from immigrants is to come legally, live in peace, assimilate, and do no harm.
There are entire neighborhoods in Phoenix and Tucson where no American flag can be found on display, very little English is spoken, and the local stores are awash again in bi-lingual signs of just two languages.

AZ is a right to work state. Wages are incredibly low there, held down by the flood of immigrants looking for work and willing to do anything, because whatever job they take, it pays far better, without benefits, than anything they had elsewhere. No one else in AZ who worked to educate themselves, can earn a decent living as a result.

Hospital ER's overflow with non-English speaking, non-citizens. The wait, can be hours. The bills for all that treatment are tacked on to the bills of those patients with insurance, primarily U.S. citizens. Hospitals don't provide services for free. They're going to get their fees from somebody.

I am not impressed at all with local immigrants, especially illegals, who are worried about their status. If you broke our laws to get in here, you should be worried. That's because you are a law breaker.

Come in peace, assimilate, learn English, do no harm. Taking out either citizenship or legal work papers is the best way to assimilate. Hiding and crying and dodging our laws and protesting is not the way to make yourselves welcome. We are a nation of immigrants, millions of whom actually went through a rather severe vetting process. You want to live here, then assimilate. Learn English. Become a citizen. Pay your fair share of the freight. We don't need any more freeloaders.

Schwendler's list of ponderings:

I think $4B for a new naval destroyer is ridiculous. I don't care what its capabilities are.

I think the Berkeley riots say a lot about our failed education system, from K-16. An invited speaker wasn't allowed to. Hooligans used the protest as an excuse to rampage through the area destroying ATM machines, storefront glass, set fires, act the complete fool. It's a bad sign, that our young react in such a way to those with different opinions, who aren't even allowed to express them first.

I think Mr. Bannon needs to be fired/removed from all manner of U.S., state, and local government in any and all capacity. Guy is dangerous.

I think Ed. Dept. nominee Besty Devos is the wrong pick, done purely for patronage purposes. She has never worked in the field, she is an advocate for charter schools and thus against the very public education process she will be in charge of, and the MI charter school system she was such an advocate and supporter of, has been by all accounts a dismal failure. My U.S. senator, Tim Scott, is endorsing her, most likely because of her $49k campaign donation to him. This, is SOP in Washington.

I liked our president's visit, on the quiet, to Dover to honor a returning soldier who gave his life for us. Two hours with the family, no fuss. He gave the order for the mission, and he met with a grieving family who lost their son as a result. Tough, very tough.

I think building a Wall is dumb.

I think shutting down our immigration system for 120 days to take stock and make changes make sense. I don't think the method was correct, but announcing plans to do so would have invited every terrorist with 8k miles to come on in before the gates closed.

I think other nations' leaders are starting to get a handle on our president. Telling the head of Mexico to get his gang/drug cartel problem under control was absolutely correct. The overall message being sent is, it is no longer business as usual.

The start of this administration appears, on the surface, to be eerily similar to Ronal Reagan's. He too wanted to take us back to a simpler allegedly better time. Trump is advocating many of the same steps Reagan did, tax cuts, defense spending, etc. Interesting.

I think it's good for the country that we change party administration every few years. Since the three branches of govt have all but abandoned Checks and Balances, it's all we have left.

Trump's SC nominee is 49. Now there's a branch of govt that cries out for term limits. 17 years seems about right, and gone by age 75, period.

I think the vast wasteland of television has ruined this country's people.

I know I am tired of paying ever-higher prices for products by companies owned by billionaire sport team owners who overpay spoiled pampered athletes outrageous salaries, while our teachers and nurses and others struggle.

I think I understand how our culture functions.

Let's review:

Traitor Jane visits N. Vietnam, mingles with its soldiers, and has her picture taken sitting in the seat of an anti-aircraft gun that is used to shoot down our soldiers. Our country takes no action against her, ostensibly since war was never actually declared by Congress as decreed in our Constitution. No big deal.

General Betrayus (Petraeus) has an affair outside his marriage and leaks classified information to his mistress. He retires as a four star general with little to no punishment, just some public embarassment a la Bill Clinton, and is in the running for a Cabinet post in the incoming administration. No big deal.

Hilary Clinton uses a home-based private email server to mis-handle, allegedly, over 30,000 emails, more than a few of that number containing classified information. No big deal.

Army private now Chelsea Manning, after a taxpayer funded sex change operation, is locked up for something like 30 years for releasing hundreds of thousands of classified documents. This apparently IS a big deal, because little privates are the only people in our govt. who should know better. Big Deal.

The Deplorables as usual must toe that line. Only the Little People pay taxes. If you think you are somebody, or your company is pretty big, you can do, say, go wherever and whatever you want, and the Law will look the other way.

Got it.

In response to a FB posting that listed pretty much all of our errors and mis-steps over the last 75 years or so, then asked why we would want to return to former Greatness, I replied with the following.

Wow. America is not perfect. Well, I'll be darned. Who knew?

Let us review the immigration statistics for all 207 countries. Oh, look, more people want to come to America, and less want to leave, than any other place on the planet. What a shock. 

Maybe it's because of the freedoms we offer, the opportunities, the lifestyle to be whomever one wants to be, the ability to improve one's life and take care of one's family. Our warts and our mistakes are out there for all the world to see and discuss and rage against and point fingers at. At least we allow that, heck, we encourage it. 

Try speaking out against the ruling governments in: Turkey, Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and all the countries ending in stan, N. Korea, Vietnam, China, etc., etc. Dissent is either not allowed at all, or tightly tightly controlled. 

So many firsts in our political system this last national and state election alone. You can look up the "Firsts" elsewhere. Folks of all backgrounds, sexual choices, and religions were elected to various levels of our govt. This is known as inclusion, and it's a good thing. 

The Dulles Brothers/Eisenhower foreign policy of the 1950s has set up the world as it is today. Our own confused unclear national foreign policy has perpetuated it to a certain extent. Interfering in the internal affairs of other countries was thought to be the best way to insure American dominance for the second half of the 20th century. What we overlooked, was that 1) countries tended to take offense at our approach; and 2) all our foreign aid, Peace Corps, Voice of America, Exchange programs, and others, led to the improvement and independence of many, many countries around the world. Not all of them chose to be associated with Western principles of individual freedom of speech, religion, and life itself.

Pointing out our faults is putting our country's existence out of context. No country, no empire, has ever, ever been perfect. More countries have modeled their constitutions and forms of govt after us, than after any other type, period. Communism and monarchy are proven failures. Utopia doesn't work, and neither does Socialism nor Fascism. I think our country has, in just over 240 years, gotten a hell of a lot more right, than wrong.

I am aware of its warts and its mistakes, and I am also aware that despite its missteps, people are still willing to dig tunnels, hang on to a floatable object, swim, stowaway, do whatever it takes, to get in here, so they too can have a better life than from whence they came. We must be doing something right.