Was He Really That Bad? – Dubya was not the worst president

His name alone is enough to make some cringe. George W Bush elicits some of the strongest negative reactions of any president in my lifetime, which, granted, has not been that long. My father is a die-hard Democrat and I haven’t seen him get so red-faced angry since the Reagan years. The Rolling Stone declared Bush the worst president back in 2006. In a History News Network poll 61% of historians ranks Dubya in last place. There is even an entire website dedicated to promoting the “fact” that George W Bush is the worst president ever.

Is this a far assessment of poor ol Dub? According to Thomas Fleming it isn’t. There have been many greats (not that Bush necessarily belongs with them either) who have made some huge missteps.

from Wall Street Journal

Is Mr. Bush worse than John Adams? When a shooting war at sea started between the United States and revolutionary France in 1798, Honest John wrote a letter to George Washington, offering to resign so that George could resume the job. How’s that for presidential leadership? Meanwhile, Adams had kept Washington’s cabinet officers on the job, although he loathed them. He finally fired them in a fit of hysteria, which made them wonder if he had lost his mind.

Is Mr. Bush worse than Thomas Jefferson in his second term? Rather than build a decent navy to deal with the British — who had a habit of boarding American ships on the high seas and forcing kidnapped sailors into semislavery — Jefferson declared an embargo on all trade with England and the rest of Europe. The American economy came to a horrific standstill; smuggling became New England’s chief industry. Someone described the embargo as “cutting a man’s throat to cure a nosebleed.” Nonplussed, Jefferson quit, telling only James Madison, his secretary of state, who was de facto acting president for the last year of Tom’s term.

James Madison, who officially succeeded Jefferson in 1808, made presidential passivity into an art form. “Little Jemmy,” as they called him in New England, watched while 4,500 British troops disembarked from their ships, marched to Washington, D.C., and burned the White House, the Capitol and almost everything else worth torching. You can’t do much worse as a war leader than that performance.

Woodrow Wilson? When World War I exploded, Irish-Americans objected to his pro-British tilt. Wilson responded that ethnics like these loudmouthed micks were “pouring poison into the veins of our national life,” alienating the largest voting bloc in the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, as a Southern-born pol to his wingtips, he segregated almost all employees of the federal government.

Next, Wilson talked Congress into declaring war on Germany on the assumption that we would not have to send a single soldier to France. Before the war ended, we had 2,000,000 troops overseas, and in three months of fighting lost 144,000 men.

Elected by seven million votes thanks to the electorate’s loathing for Wilson, Warren G. Harding confessed to reporters that he was not up to the job. He told one newsman that he wanted to make the U.S. tariff higher than the Rocky Mountains to help Europe’s industries recover from World War I. The appalled reporter realized the president had one of the biggest issues of the era exactly backward.

Harding had a concealed box at the Gayety Burlesque Theater where he spent many afternoons and nights. In the leftover hours he concentrated on poker and trysts with a blonde named Nan Britton — reputedly in a closet off the Oval Office — while his appointees looted the federal government.

Is Mr. Bush worse than Roosevelt in his second term? Re-elected by a massive majority, FDR wanted to pack the Supreme Court with Democrats. Congress, dominated by members of his own party, wasted a year wrangling over the bill and ultimately rejected it. Meanwhile, FDR’s intemperate remarks about greedy businessmen wrecked confidence and triggered a semireplay of the Great Depression in 1937. The Republicans made massive gains in the 1938 midterm elections. FDR was rescued from an exit even more humiliating than Jefferson’s by World War II, which he used as an excuse to run for a third term.

Worse than Jimmy Carter, the self- proclaimed Washington “outsider” who presided over the most horrendous stagflation in our history? As his poll numbers sank, Mr. Carter had the temerity to lecture citizens on their “crisis of spirit.” His approval rating had plummeted to 22% when Ronald Reagan defeated him. Let us skip Bill Clinton. He and Bush are too contiguous; proximity makes comparisons inevitably rancorous.

Jefferson also pursued the idiotic policy of employing unseaworthy gunboats to defend our shores. John Adams much debated Alien and Sedition Acts could be seen as worse than the Patriot Act. Of course we shouldn’t forget the 100,000 plus American citizens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent interned in camps by order of FDR during WWII. Let us not forget Woodrow Wilson’s blatantly racist presidency. The KKK did march in his inaugural parade.

Of course all of these presidents I’ve mentioned are generally considered some of the most successful. What about the bottom of the pack? Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan should be recognized for their limp administrations. Both presidents attempted to placate the slave south, Pierce with the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Buchanan with his doughfaced actions made war between the states unavoidable.

In my opinion, one of the most ineffective presidents has to be Andrew Johnson. He eeks out ahead, or behind, Grant who failed to act during the Panic of 1873 and who’s administration was racked with scandals. The hard line with the ex-Confederacy, maybe a bit too harsh, taken by Lincoln was reversed by Johnson. Johnson pardoned former plantation owners and returned their lands. This led to the effective continuation of slavery in share cropping. Johnson’s refusal to negotiate a more moderate settlement with Radical Republicans gutted the Reconstruction of its teeth. Johnson’s stubbornness put race relations in a pit they would not begin to climb out of until the 1960s. Jim Crow laws, disfranchisement of legal voters, horrible numbers of lynchings, the rise of the Klu Klux Klan, and other crimes happened because of Andrew Johnson’s atrocious management.

George W Bush’s actions are hard to compare with things some past presidents have done. I’m not saying history will vindicate Bush, but we should really look at all the facts before we label him the worst. Bush was mediocre at best and at worst the best of the inferior presidents.

Smarten Up – A few thoughts on student accountability

Clay Burell posed this question on his blog: should teachers focus on covering a wide variety of subjects or go in-depth on a few?

One teacher had this response:

A student who took AP World History the year after I had her for a grade nine European history class came to me during lunch and said the AP teacher lectured every class, and nobody was learning anything. (He told me he hated it, but he had to, because he had to cover 5,000 years for the AP Exam.) They wanted to come to me during lunch so they could understand it coherently – as narrative, cause/effect, the Great Story. It had little to do with technology. To me, it had more to do with active versus passive learning.

If a teacher “delivers” something to me, s/he did all the heavy lifting. All I did was sit there, possibly napping, and have it dropped in my lap. If the teacher lets me deliver, I have to do the lifting. I can’t fake that.

Some people enjoy lectures. I do, but it takes a certain kind of teacher to hold my interest. Usually that teacher is one who questions students during their lecture, pulling information out of us, keeping students invested. We have too many standards. Plain and simple. Teachers feel like they are forced to rush through material to cover everything, giving their students at least a chance at a guess of filling in the right bubble. Get back to leaner standards linked to assessments based on the students ability to use what they’ve learned analytically and comprehensively. It’s not about knowing the Battle of Hastings was in October of 1066, but why that event is important and how to explain that to someone.

One commentator, a preschool teacher, put how we need to reform how our children learn best:

Shouldn’t the primary focus of our school system be to foster learning by encouraging students in building their own knowledge? Wouldn’t this set up individuals for a more successful future with the ability to guide their own learning and seek answers to questions on their own? I was a successful student throughout school, but the majority of the content that I was able to memorize at the time is lost to me now.

A Done Deal – US Treasury to increase ownership in Citigroup

We can stop saying if, and even when, in regards to the government takeover of Citigroup holdings. The government will now control 36% of Citigroup. This deal is considered a test model for more bank takeovers.

from NY Times

In its most daring bid yet to stabilize Citigroup, one of the nation’s largest and most troubled financial institutions, the Treasury Department announced on Friday that it would vastly increase its ownership of the struggling company.

After two multibillion-dollar lifelines failed to shore up Citigroup, the government will increase its stake in the company to 36 percent from 8 percent.

As part of the deal, Citi will shake up its board so that it has a majority of independent directors, Richard Parsons, the bank’s chairman, said in a statement. The change had been something federal regulators had already been pursuing, according to people close to the deal.

Under the deal, Citibank said that it would offer to exchange common stock for up to $27.5 billion of its existing preferred securities and trust preferred securities at a conversion price of $3.25 a share, a 32 percent premium over Thursday’s closing price.

The government will match this exchange up to a maximum of $25 billion of its preferred stock at the same price. In its statement, the Treasury Department said the dollar-for-dollar match was intended to strengthen Citigroup’s capital base.

The government of Singapore Investment Corporation, Saudi Prince Walid bin Talal, Capital Research Global Investors and Capital World Investors have already agreed to participate in the exchange, Citibank said in a statement. Existing shareholders will own about 26 percent of the outstanding shares.

Citibank also said that it would record a goodwill impairment charge of about $9.6 billion write-down because of deterioration in the financial markets.

The transaction, which does not involve putting more government cash into the bank, will not increase the amount of Treasury’s investment in Citigroup, the Treasury said. The portion of the preferred securities that are not converted to common shares will be placed into new trust preferred securities, Citi said, with an 8 percent annual return.

The bank will also suspend dividends on its preferred shares and its common stock.

“This securities exchange has one goal — to increase our tangible common equity,” Citi’s chief executive, Vikram Pandit, said. “This transaction — which requires no additional investment from U.S. taxpayers — does not change Citi’s strategy, operations or governance. Our clients and partners will not be affected and will continue to receive the high level of service they expect from Citi around the world.”

The Obama administration deliberately stopped short of securing a majority or controlling interest in Citigroup, but will probably come under intense pressure to take a much larger role in shaping the bank’s direction. Taxpayers, after pumping more than $45 billion into the bank, will now become Citigroup’s single largest shareholder.

The move is one of the most drastic steps federal officials have taken to prevent the collapse of an institution deemed “too big too fail,” as its downfall could send shockwaves through the global markets. The government also took a major ownership stake in the American International Group, and seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last September. So far, none of those deals have worked out well.

The administration has tried to keep the banks in private hands and tried to stamp out talk of nationalization. But Citigroup’s plunging share price and its desperate need for capital made it almost inevitable the government would have to raise its stake.

The deal is expected to serve as a model for other financial institutions. Other major banks could find themselves in a similar position in the coming weeks if a new “stress test” shows they do not have sufficient capital, or the right amount of common stock, to appease regulators. Administration officials say they will convert the government’s existing preferred stock investments into common shares and, if necessary, make additional investments to stabilize the banks.

The Citigroup deal tries to address a potential shortfall of common stock, which investors and regulators now demand. With the conversion of preferred shares to common shares, the government’s stake will rise to 36 percent from 8 percent, giving taxpayers more risk, but more potential for profit if the company recovers.

I guess all those nationalization debates on the blogosphere are moot at this point. Its happening people.

Drills – On learning the basics before mastering the game

A lot of education professionals abhor standardized tests. “Our kids will be taught to the tests!”, some say with disgust. Is that entirely bad? An article by Dan Winters at Edweek says not necessarily.

from Edweek

Creativity and the Fundamentals

One of the criticisms I’ve come across about accountability measures based on standardized tests goes something like this: If we assess students based on standardized tests, teachers will “teach to the test”, which when translated, means drill and kill, followed by rote memorization and robotic hypnosis while all creativity is thrown out the window. Here’s another one of those false dichotomies that is propagated throughout the educational kingdom.

When I think of creativity and flair on the basketball court, one of the first players that comes to mind is Pete Maravich. He was one of the most creative and flamboyant players of his day and age. No one would accuse him of being boring or stale in his approach to the game.

However, the funny thing is, when reading his biography, I noted that his dad, a high school and college basketball coach, instilled in Pete the necessity of learning and practicing the fundamentals until they were second nature. He performed session after session of ball handling drills that helped him master the basics. Indeed he was fanatical about practice, repetition, and drill. The end result is that he was able to create and ad-lib because he had mastered the fundamentals of the game.

Bringing this back to education, I value students who can think critically and reason with complexity and synthesize information in order to create, and produce new products, but this can only be accomplished by students who are masters of the fundamentals of language, math, and subject matter content. I think the debate would be furthered by a “both/and” mentality as opposed to an “either/or” mentality.

Finally, I’m thinking of classrooms with teachers who get the most remarkable results on standardized tests and those classrooms are lively places with rich interaction and student enjoyment. It’s just that those teachers are also attuned to the building blocks of academic success and don’t allow their students to miss out on these critical components of learning. Our standardized measures are not the ends that we seek, but I contend that they are a requisite means toward those ends and we are justified in pursuing those goals, measuring them, and expecting all students to achieve them.

There isn’t anything wrong with “teaching to the test”. Would anyone accuse an MIT professor of teaching to the test if they taught their students the information and skills they thought were important in meeting their standards? No. Would you try to force your child to play Beethoven on their violin before they’ve got a grasp on their scales? No.

Rather than dismissing standards as forcing teachers to stifle creativity, let’s recognize that the right standards can be a helpful tool. Instilling our children with the basics will allow them to create their own music. Of course that does not mean our standards and means of assessment don’t need to be reformed first. Uncomplicated basic standards need to come first. Tests that assess how our children apply those basic skills, rather than if then can just pick A,B,C, or D, must follow.

The moral of the story: a little practice never hurt anyone

You’ve Got to Have an Opinion on the Matter – Obama speech views

As I promised here are some other views on Obama’s address last night.

Wall Street Journal says Obama’s words on big government don’t sync with reality

One, two, three from hopeful but skeptical responses from The New Republic

The Moderate Voice asks, “Is Obama now center-left?”

Reason throws in their two cents

Politico tells us what Obama really meant last night

Vodkapundit and Althouse try a little live blogging, though it’s a little late for the live part.

And if you missed it you can always check out the Maine View.

Practice Makes Perfect – Obama’s confidence speech

Last night President Obama gave sort of a runner up to the State of the Union Address. I attempted to watch the entire speech, but I only made it until 9:30. Hey you get up at five every morning and take care of a toddler and a sick pregnant wife! All that damn standing and clapping really slowed things down. Sit down Pelosi and let the man speak. (Did anyone notice how hard she clapped when Obama mentioned healthcare reform? I thought Pelosi’s hands were going to shatter.)

Thanks to those magic internets, I read a full transcript of the speech. It’s far too long to analyze the whole thing piece by piece. Overall I enjoyed it. Obama countered a lot of his critics.

from CBC News

As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by Presidents Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government — I don’t. Not because I’m not mindful of the massive debt we’ve inherited — I am.

For those who have accused Obama of pushing a federalist big government agenda here’s his reply. Government isn’t the answer to all of our problems. This time, however, it has to be whether we like that or not. Most of us don’t want the government in our business. Obama is right though, failure of the government to act in some way would have led to us to a much worse place.

He gave historic examples as well of how government intervention helped private enterprise rather than shackling it under nationalization.

from CBC News

From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the Moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.

In each case, government didn’t supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive.

There was a lot of reassuring language in the speech. Reminders of other hardships we have overcome and how Americans can accomplish anything were peppered throughout the address. This is not about helping banks, Obama said at one point, but helping people. Invoking Churchill, Obama did not shy away from tough talk either.

from CBC News

I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer. This time, CEOs won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.

With yet more abuse exposed this morning, these are some powerful words. Words the President needs to stand behind if he wants confidence to rise and outrage to stay at a low boil and not bubble over.

Though I’m eager to see what sorts of health care reforms will be proposed, I’m going to skip ahead to the education reforms Obama spoke of.

Obama addressed the problem of high school dropout rates and low college completion rates. I agree with his no nonsense words the need for a student to graduate high school. “Dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country — and this country needs and values the talents of every American.” Obama highlighted two important things here. You cannot cannot CANNOT hope to get anywhere in this country without a high school diploma. Even a factory job our fathers could have gotten straight out of high school is out of reach to someone with just a high school diploma. Students too need to take a little responsibility in their futures as well.

It pleases me greatly that Obama recognizes reform cannot be achieved by simply throwing money at the problem

CBC

But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform. That is why this budget creates new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success. We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools.

True reform and success will come from changing the way we do things in schools. Tenure and teacher pay raises linked to teacher performance are necessary. I still support charter schools and believe that they provide another important piece to the education puzzle, but not the only solution. Invest in programs that work, dump those that don’t. That’s some great common sense (and that’s not sarcasm.) I am expecting some more concrete reforms and for Arne Duncan to fill his damn cabinet.

I’ll post some other bloggers analysis later.

Maybe We Don’t Have It So Bad – The European side of the crisis

A few weeks ago I wrote about the simmering populace of Europe. The economic crisis had spurred riots throughout the continent. Well things haven’t gotten better. The situation has taken a dangerous nosedive. You think we have it bad. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet kid.

from The Moderate Voice

You think it’s bad here in the US of A?

Take a look at our friends across the pond – and across France and Germany – where you get to those great “emerging markets” that captured the world’s imagination after the fall of Communism. From about 1995 to the early 2000s, the story of growth in places like Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and the Baltic nations was nothing short of astonishing. Many of these nations were even able to join the elite European Union and share in the great common market.

Oh, the good old days.

Well, they’re done. Kaput.

And now European leaders are asking the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail out the nations of Eastern Europe for a cool sum of $500 billion. This isn’t to bail out Eastern European banks. It’s to bail out Eastern European NATIONS.

In many ways the crisis in Eastern Europe mirrors ours: too much debt and speculative growth in real estate and retail, especially in Latvia and Estonia. Look at the debt ratios of some of these countries. They make the Asian crisis in 1997 look like child’s play.

Added to this was the complex problem of currency exchange, where millions of Poles and Hungarians and Czechs were encouraged to convert their debt into Swiss francs – low interest rates enticed borrowers to eschew the zloty and the forint for the stable Swiss currency. But, like resetting adjustable rate mortgages in the US, the Swiss-based mortgage rates have gone up, as have defaults in Poland. What’s worse, the Swiss franc is actually in danger of collapse as a result of Switzerland’s investments in Eastern Europe.

It’s as if Eastern Europe was a giant sub-prime market, and the resulting carnage is taking out the venerable banks of Western Europe.

So, yeah, we’ve got it bad here. But things are actually quite a bit worse in Europe, where they have to contend with multiple governmental positions (the ECB can only dictate continental policy so much without pushback from individual creditor nations). And the Euro, the pride and joy of the new European economy, will likely face devaluation vis-a-vis the dollar. (Which is a reason why concerns over a devaluing dollar at this point are unfounded – what would the dollar devalue in relation to?)

This will get worse before it gets better. I’m not trying to be an alarmist here. This is just the truth. How bad will it get? Are we on the brink of something like 1848(the Year of Revolutions)? Keep watching!

Education Crazy Talk – What direction should ed policy go?

This morning I read this article at Change.org. The piece by Alaskan teacher Doug Noon rips Arne Duncan’s education policy to shreds. Noon is mostly skeptical of Duncan’s reliance on standards, accountability, and teacher incentives to improve our schools.

from Change.org

His program is doomed. It’s doomed because it’s aimed at the wrong target, and it can’t be fairly implemented. With test scores as the standard of excellence, very few teachers will be “incented” to apply themselves. We know that standardized tests measure students’ backgrounds more than real learning. And we know that students with special needs require more time and attention than the achievers. We also know that, due to the fact that poor and affluent people tend to live in different neighborhoods, some schools serve more challenging populations than others. None of that is a matter of chance.

Test scores should be a standard of excellence. Without standards how can we know where are, who needs extra help, and who can be given more challenging work. The way we test those standards is flawed. Specifically multiple choice exams. Life is not multiple choice. Life is applying what you have learned to any given situation. A little example. In preparation for grad school, I took the GRE exam last summer. I didn’t study or practice. At this point one understands you either get these type of tests or you don’t. I scored a 1020 on the multiple choice sections, an average score. On the written section I scored a 5.0, the upper 27th percentile. Now that’s a big discrepancy in my scores. It demonstrates the unevenness between multiple choice and open-ended assessments in gauging what a student has actually learned.

Standards are still important. That much of NCLB I agree with. It places the wrong kind of standards on schools. Multiple choice questions are not good measures of applied knowledge. They are only good measures of how good one can memorize.

First we need to simplify our standards. Students should have more open-ended questions. The questions would show whether or not the child actually had a grasp of the concepts being tested. This will also push students to do more than just show up and receive a C.

I’d like to make my case for Outcome-based Education. If I sound a bit ignorant on the subject I apologize. I’ve only just started researching it. OBE recognizes all students are capable of improvement, some faster or slower than others. All can succeed, regardless of class, race, gender, or ability. It doesn’t matter if the district is poor or “challenging”. That is no excuse for failure in teachers or students,(though Noon seems to think is an excuse for poor teacher performance. If I’m wrong let me know Doug). I have simplified OBE a great deal, but I urge readers to look into in greater detail as I am.

LDH Another Look – Was I wrong about Linda Darling-Hammond

After a recent post on Linda Darling-Hammond not joining Arne Duncan’s Department of Education team I received a comment about my stance on Darling-Hammond.

Change.org education writer Clay Burell said this in response to a recent post.
Re: LDH as “status quo” – Derek, you bought the spin. She advocates reforms across the board, just in directions different from privatization and union-busting. Search “Linda DarlingHammond” tags on my blog and you’ll get a lot of links to learn just how misleading the media “status quo” label was.

I went back and read Clay’s posts on Linda Darling-Hammond, as well as some others. After reading a wider variety of opinions on the woman and words from Darling-Hammond herself I feel I can make a more educated opinion of her.

Some have accused LDH of being against student and teacher accountability. I could find no reference in the pieces I read to Darling-Hammond either being for or against teacher accountability. From what I have read she seems to be focused more on student performance. I still am a firm believer that things like tenure, raises, and bonuses should be linked to teacher performance. Since the only way to measure teacher performance is student performance, the two must be coupled. It would improve my opinion of Darling-Hammond ten-fold if she was as well.

I agree with her assessment of our school standards system.

from Gotham Schools

Darling-Hammond said her vision draws on the examples of countries like Finland, Sweden, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada, which outperform America on international tests and which she said do a list of things wtih their schools that America doesn’t. One is that they use better tests, with more open-ended questions, less multiple choice, and more personalization by individual schools.

Though she didn’t endorse national standards, she did praise Finland et al for having “leaner, fewer, higher, deeper” standards than our 50 states. She did say that all students should be asked to meet the same high expectations.

I think we need to have some sort of national standard. This would be the only way to ensure all students would meet the same high expectations. This does not mean there cannot be local personalization cannot happen. What problems children are solving don’t matter as much as that the problems prove they can use certain knowledge to reach their conclusions. Give multiple choice the axe. Multiple choice represents the 20th century, the lever pulling, button pushing past. We need to evolve into the 21st century.

Linda Darling-Hammond is a proponent of just the kind of tests and standards we need.

from The Quick and the Ed

Darling-Hammond has spent a lot of time studying the teaching and testing systems of high achieving industrialized countries and likes them better than ours. Among other things, she says, they teach fewer topics in greater depth; focus more on reasoning skills and applications of knowledge rather than on coverage of content; and rely heavily on open-ended questions “that require students to analyze, apply knowledge, and write extensively,” in contrast to US tests that “rely primarily on multiple-choice items that evalute recall and recognition of discreet facts.”

Given the growing consensus that well-crafted performance assessments would represent a big step towards teaching students the higher-order thinking skills that they need today (Darling-Hammond points out that US students score lower on problem-solving that their international counterparts), this would be a smart investment–and a refreshing change from the Bush administration’s hear-no-evil, see-no-evil stance on test quality.

As I said earlier, this is the way we need to move. Show students what they learn has a practical application, that solving the problem is more than just knowing the answer. Outcome -based education people!

Well Clay, maybe Linda ain’t so bad after all.

Boston Traffic – Or how I learned to expand my vulgar language

My New England readers are probably family with the twisting insanity of driving anywhere near Boston. That labyrinth of aneurysm bursting paved cow paths is the bane of anyone who has to travel in Bean Town. All of my milltown profanities, usually buried deep within, spew forth even at the thought of those poorly planned streetlights and one-way roads to Hell.

Consider my anger when I read this story from Reason

Baby on Board

February 23, 2009

Jennifer Davis’s contractions were 3 minutes apart, and her husband John was trying to get her to the hospital before she gave birth. But the roads of the Greater Boston area were clogged at rush hour, so they asked a state trooper if they could drive in the emergency lane. He said they could as long as they kept their hazard lights on and only did it when traffic was stalled. A second trooper spotted them, but as soon as they told him their story he let them continue. A third trooper wasn’t as understanding. He not only told them to stop driving in the emergency lane, he gave them a ticket.

Words cannot fully express my absolute shock and disgust. I’ll keep it brief so that I really don’t go off. Shame on you Mass State Trooper! Have you no compassion or a brain to think outside of the strict sense of the law. Clearly not. I hope you loose your job. Such ignorance should not be tolerated!

Flame me all you want readers about how I don’t know how hard it is to be a law officer bla bla bla. I don’t care. I want officers able to make good judgement calls, not Judge Dread.