First Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

.
1. Although Bob Herbert seems to jump around quite a bit, he is basically addressing only three problems = infrastructure, poverty/education, and the cost of war (including both the human cost and what economists would call the “opportunity cost” of not employing the same resources on other pressing problems). The question = has Bob Herbert even addressed all of the important problems facing our nation including one which should probably have made the Top Three, if not No. 2 or even No. 1???

2. Does Bob Herbert’s call for more infrastructure spending, which is the traditional call whenever the economy is languishing in order to provide a stimulus, come too late since the economy seems to be picking up???

3. If infrastructure spending on Bob Herbert’s “highways and bridges” is so important, then why do we see President Obama proposing infrastructure spending on high-speed Bullet Trains instead???

4. Why did Florida reject President Obama’s $43 billion Tampa-Orlando Bullet Train that would have competed on an 85-mile run with airlines and an Interstate??? [NB: 85 miles is almost the 94-mile distance between Philadelphia and NYC.]

5. Why did California’s Governor “Junior” Brown break ground 1/6/2015 on President Obama’s $68 billion San Francisco-LA Bullet Train that will compete with 90-minute air travel by providing a 3-hour rail experience???

6. Why was California’s current Governor Jerry Brown (since 2011) known as “Junior Brown” during his first incarnation as California Governor (1975-1983) when his father was California Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown (1959-1967)??? Whom did they “sandwich” as California Governor 1967-1975???

7. Does Bob Herbert understand the issues of poverty and education???

8. If he does, why was he one of the infamous 43 media superstars who turned their backs on $84 billion of PRIVATE funding to provide tutoring and mentoring K-12 for 10 million inner-city children with a guarantee of college tuition -- when he and each of the other 42 media superstars knew that a single news item by any one of them might well have been enough to prevent the courts from “flushing away” the rights of the inner-city children in “the segregated toilet” -- the terms used in correspondence with the 51 inner-city clergy who were supporting the children to describe how judges order their opinions which they know are diametrically opposed to well-settled law NOT to be published AND NOT to be cited in order to avoid affecting the rights of First-Class American Citizens???

9. Does Bob Herbert view inner-city education and the poverty it perpetuates as a problem of Sociology or a problem of Education???

10. Can we “move the needle” on poverty/education without addressing the Sociology = the pervasive lack of a positive role model whom the inner-city child worships (which, unfortunately, usually has to take the form of a volunteer tutor or mentor who becomes a surrogate parent)???

11. Why does every purveyor of easy solutions such as school choice (which we have studied several times does NOT improve the overall situation), shun the “heavy lifting” that is required to actually “move the needle”???

12. Will President Obama’s 1/8/2015 proposal to make the nation’s Junior Colleges free (provided that academic courses are fully transferable to four-year universities and that vocational training actually leads to jobs) “move the needle” on poverty???

13. If the inner-city high school graduation rates across the country, despite statistical tricks, are really single digits, how are we going to get our inner-city children into position to qualify for President Obama’s free Junior Colleges???

14. Would putting President Obama’s “real” academic courses and “effective” vocational training programs into high schools be a better solution, since high schools are already free???

15. Or would we still be stymied by the sociological reality that most inner-city children will drop out long before they reach the “real” academic courses and “effective” vocational training programs???

16. So what (ref Q-1) is our nation’s problem that was overlooked by Bob Herbert but that should probably have made his Top Three, if not No. 2 or even No. 1??? [NB: I am NOT dissing any of the three problems he did select, since he could have expanded his book to cover four problems if, for example, infrastructure spending had to be bumped out of the Top Three.]

[Since at the moment we have our once-a-quarter five-week gap that permits a Second Short Quiz, stay tuned re Q-16. (A hint = what are the differences between an old-fashioned pension plan and a Sec. 401(k) plan, and is one of those differences a nearly-universal psychological inability to save for the future, which might mean that in order to be humane, the 5 states that currently permit assisted suicide for terminal illnesses causing great pain, will have to expand their criteria to include the Oriental Honor Tradition that one MUST commit suicide when s/he becomes a burden to others???)]