Sunday, June 01, 2008
Quick

Sunday Mail

It’s the curriculum

While questioning those grim results on the recent middle school Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) in social studies, we might also question why the Georgia Department of Education directs that fully one-third of our seventh graders’ social studies curriculum be focused on sub-Saharan Africa—at the expense of China, India, the Middle East and all the rest of Asia, and even Arab North Africa.

According to the CIA World Factbook, China and India—alone—have thrice the population of sub-Saharan Africa and generate many times its GDP. And China, India and other Asian economies continue to develop at rates that will only increase their relative importance in coming decades. Yet some public middle school curricula in Georgia were actually revamped last year to de-emphasize the study of these Asian nations in favor of sub-Saharan Africa’s. Whatever tangential agenda is thereby being served, it shortchanges students, SPLOST [special-purpose local option sales tax] taxpayers, and ultimately our nation’s future in an increasingly competitive world.
    
Also, social studies remains the most plausible venue for adolescents to become acquainted with economic principles and market systems that will dominate their adult lives and decide their nation’s economic well-being. But what serious effort is being expended in this direction?
    
Education officials now reviewing all that went wrong with the CRCT social studies tests have this fresh opportunity to review curriculum.
 
 —Ron Goodden, Smyrna

Helping the hookers

(Regarding “In Atlanta, Pricey Prostitution is OK,” News & Views, May 25): Decriminalization of prostitution removes exploitation of girls by pimps who are far worse offenders against society (legally, morally and spiritually) than almost any other group of criminals except the police, who entrap not just prostitutes but a whole host of others under the horrendous practice of “undercover, plainclothes” agents. Entrapment is by any reasoning worse than the prostitution they seem to want to stop. I do not see how one kind of criminality (entrapment by the police) can be better than another (prostitution).

One warning: If this “trade” should be decriminalized, it must not be taxed. If it is immoral, decriminalizing it does not make it moral and therefore legitimately taxable. Those in the trade, when in it for economic reasons, should be helped to find other ways to keep body and soul together.

—Mike Woodward, Atlanta

Ramage responds: I do not support decriminalization, which would make prostitution an unregulated industry. I support legalization. Like any other business, it should be legalized to prevent employer abuse of employees, unsafe working conditions and (unwanted) abuse of customers, etc. I am not aware of the morality of any enterprise as a determining factor in whether it is taxable. If that were the reasoning behind taxation, we would be collecting taxes on all vices and making all virtuous enterprises tax-exempt, which would put the government in the odd position of having a vested interest in the promotion of vice (which raises some interesting questions about the legalization of other traditional vices, like drinking and gambling).

It’s not Iraq, it’s the lying

It’s not just the war and occupation of Iraq that the anti-war protesters complain about, (“Iraq: It’s West Berlin, Not Vietnam,” News & Views, May 11), it’s the lies told to drag us into a costly war that we may not have needed, without our consent or our consideration.

The war we needed was in Afghanistan, the Hindu Kush, and the border region along Pakistan. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration had other priorities. They were so eager to rush into Iraq as to rob the resources from the Afghanistan Theater of Operations (TO), thereby leaving that job unfinished.

With the hindsight of history, we now know the lies Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson told to justify the undeclared war and invasion of South Vietnam. The anti-war protesters are complaining about the repeating pattern of our presidents telling us whatever they think is believable to justify wars they wanted, sometimes even before taking office.

Before LBJ was president or vice-president—while he was still Senate Majority Leader—he wanted the United States military in Vietnam. Once Kennedy was out of the way, Johnson became president and contrived to drag us into a disaster of his making.

The contrivances of the Bush Administration are similar. The current administration conceived the decision to invade Iraq before it took office. Paul Wolfowitz, assistant secretary of defense, wrote the original decision/plan while he was a sub-cabinet officer in the administration of George Bush the Elder. When George the Elder failed re-election, they shoved the plan into the bottom of someone’s drawer, to come out again eight years later when George the Younger—through some hocus-pocus that is still subject to debate—came into office.

In other words, the first Bush administration wanted to invade Baghdad and occupy Iraq; however, Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf, and most of the Joint Chiefs, didn’t cooperate. Therefore, Wolfowitz and his cohorts needed to wait until the Elder’s second term to clean house of internal dissenters, in order to activate the “plan.”

Consequently, the Younger’s administration spent its first year biding time and waiting for excuses to finish what they believed should have happened during the Elder’s administration, and, as they believe, would have reassured George the Elder’s re-election.
The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks gave the Younger’s administration a convenient excuse, the fact that Osama Bin Laden, the people responsible, and all the evidence was in Afghanistan notwithstanding.

It isn’t the war that the protesters are protesting, it’s the lies.  Like the philosopher once said, “Meet the new boss … same as the old boss … we won’t get fooled again !"

—L.W. Calhoun, Atlanta

Editor’s Note: Calhoun’s “philosopher” is Pete Townshend of the Who.

Biofuel for thought

 
As Congress debates our energy future, biofuels have begun to receive a black eye. But it’s important to note that not all biofuels are the same, and we can have food and fuel at the same time. The one biofuel that shows exceeding promise for long-term sustainability is biodiesel. For example, biodiesel from non-food crops, such as camelina, preserve America’s food supply. Farmers can rotate camelina on land currently growing cereal crops, or on marginal lands where traditional crops are too input-intensive or uneconomic to grow.

Biodiesel also reduces greenhouse gas emissions. It not only has the highest energy balance of any commercial liquid fuel, but also has a 78 percent life-cycle carbon dioxide reduction. In 2007 alone, biodiesel’s contribution to reducing greenhouse gases equaled the removal of 700,000 passenger vehicles from America’s roadways.

Georgia produces around 3 million gallons of biodiesel every year. That’s a small sum when compared to our nation’s energy needs. But biodiesel is an important—and growing—piece of our energy independence solution.

Whatever Congress decides in our national debate over our energy future, I hope it will consider the vital role alternative fuels such as biodiesel play in securing clean and sustainable energy independence.

—State Sen. Cecil Staton (R-Macon)

CLARIFICATION

Though Gov. Sonny Perdue might well have some power to “keep Davis off the gurney” (“Should Troy Davis Be Executed?,” News & Views, May 25) by asking the pardons and paroles board to reconsider Troy Davis’ predicament, it is the board (appointed by the governor), not the governor himself, that ultimately has the power to commute Davis’ sentence to life in prison rather than death by lethal injection.

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