Sunday, November 14, 2010

Few things I worry about..

People who know me personally can definitely tell that I'm saddened by midterm poll results cause of my liberal leanings. The verdict isn't a surprise and in a way it didn't hurt as much as I expected. Politics aside, looking at the demographic and landscape there're few things which are really detrimental for America's progress and prosperity in the next decade.

Contempt of educated people
One trend among voting demographic which I think disturbing is the contempt of educated people. They call them and deride them as elitists. As per this demographic, a common man with common sense will be a better legislator than a college educated person. I've a message for people with no High school diploma or GEDs. If you had completed your education, then you 'd have better judgment of people. You might also have learnt about evolution, climate change and also realized that medicare is a govt run organization. Yes, your legislator might be a corrupt man, but sending a person who dropped out of college or high school wouldn't do any better. Sarah Palin serves a good example for this.

Lack of Science and Math Education
When I first came to this country, one of the things which astonished me is the choice of majors available for college students which do not exist in India. Apart from Science, Engineering, Medicine, Business and Law there're so many liberal arts majors like advanced communications, linguistics, anthropology, sports medicine, event management et al. In a good economy, all these graduates landed in a job. But now there're no jobs. Don't get me wrong, schools need teachers with liberal art degrees to teach languages, history et al. But in this economy who exactly needs a fresh Graduate with 'Advanced Communications' major.

Mean while India and other countries are producing engineering graduates like an assembly line All of them might not make quality tech employees, but US is loosing a competitive edge which made it a superior power.

There's a facebook group by name '87x/59(1+x)=(18*7x)*(67-x)...fuck this, I'm going to be a stripper'. This shows how many kids are afraid of math and hate it. The way these kids are taught at school should change. Math and science can be made interesting and these two are vital for nations' supremacy in the knowledge based economy.

Xenophobia
SB 1070 bill of Arizona was partially blocked by federal judge luckily. If not it would've became mandatory for AZ police stop any person for a 'reasonable doubt' and ask for proof of residence. With that Jan Brewer got elected as governor in this election. I wonder how many of AZ citizens saw her only debate on TV. And how many people might realize that this SB 1070 draft was first written at a prison industry conference.

Yes illegal immigration is a problem, no body denied it. Republicans enjoyed the cheap labor for two decades and now they're crying foul. US is a land of immigrants and they contributed to country's prosperity as much a citizens. Remember how many European scientists immigrated to USA and put the Science and Technology on fast track. Problem with this anti immigrant rhetoric is that legal and aspiring immigrants like me are suffering with excess scrutiny and constant visa hassles. I'm not gonna quote any numbers but it's fact that legal immigrants contribute to the economy like any other citizen.

As I mentioned above, not enough US students are graduating with Science and Tech majors. If country drive away smart immigrants, it's a loss for country and gain for India and China. But myopic senators like Grassley are on a mission to pass bills to drive away non-immigrant tech workers from the country.

Welfare
Last week I read this new article about black women with 72% unwed rate. It seems that black women couldn't find a ideal black man to marry and settle down.

To quote a line from the article 'The drug epidemic sent disproportionate numbers of black men to prison, and crushed the job opportunities for those who served their time. Women don't want to marry men who can't provide for their families, and welfare laws created a financial incentive for poor mothers to stay single.'

This welfare should stop. I don't want to pick any race but this is a menace. Again from the article 'Children of unmarried mothers of any race are more likely to perform poorly in school, go to prison, use drugs, be poor as adults, and have their own children out of wedlock.' As you can see, this is a vicious cycle and it should be stopped. If not, this changes the social fabric of the whole next generation.

Women's perception should be changed about two things.
-->It's OK to live on welfare.
-->It's necessary to have kids to even if you don't have means to support them.

Homophobia
By any measure, US respects it's fallen soldiers than any other in the world irrespective of their religion and color. The other day I saw a news report about a hate group 'Westboro Baptist Church' who protest at soldiers funerals. They say, God is killing U.S. troops because our country tolerates homosexuals. This just blew my mind. I'm not sure, how exactly these groups come to these conclusions and where they get funding. Their home page is 'godhatesfags.com'

There's another story of this creepy Asst Attorney General of Michigan who just got fired. Andrew Shirvell stalked and bullied Chris Armstrong, student body president of Univ of Michigan. Andrew started a blog by chrisarmstrong-watch.com. To his defense, this tool says that he's just exercising his first amendment rights. Attorney General Cox didn't fire him for a while as he's a afraid of alienating his conservative base and donors. Just think about it for a second, a state's asst Attorney General bullying a college kid just cause he happened to be gay. As I see it, I think it's just matter of time when Shirvell comes out of his closet.

People like Sarah Palin
Apart from posting (who's the actual writer) fear mongering and mind numbing notes on her facebook page Sarah Palin is also good at throwing red meat to her base. Last week I saw Sarah addressing a christian school on TV. It's pretty much usual fare with her power dressing (read seductive), DWTS with Bristol Palin, inauguration (not necessarily her) yawn... Then she started talking about a state legislation which bans sweets at school and how that law is a totalitarian. As per Sarah, parents should decide what kids should eat and not the government.

I'm no fan of government, but in this case government knows better than many oblivious parents. I've seen parents smoking inside their car with kids and I can assume that what happens at their homes. Obese parents who weigh 450 lbs and get drunk in the morning don't know better than government.

Sarah if you'd known better, your under age daughter wouldn't have got knocked up. It could be a reason that you might've taught her 'abstinence only education' rather than safe sex. And we would've been saved from this on and off wedding drama from Alaskan soap opera.

Women like michele bachmann, christine o'donnell and sharron angle (who didn't get elected fortunately) are other examples of leaders on wrong path with huge following. Their base thinks that these women represent them, the common people of America.

With all these tea party candidates in Senate and house, it's interesting and frightening to see what kind of bills they'll legislate.

Peace

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