Category: Culture

  • Stop! in the name of love…

    Sea of Roses
    Sea of Roses
    Valentine’s Day makes us contemplate the meaning of love

    Some people wonder how to stay with a war hero husband. Of course when your spouse is on the front you are afraid of loosing him or her.  It is easy to feel the potential loss as ever deeper and growing true love.  The fear of loosing him or her, may actually grow your commitment to be there for your spouse, and to love your spouse with all your heart and soul.  You care for and love your spouse so very, very, very much.

    Later you are so glad that they survived, so thrilled that they came home with out loosing life or limb.  You are so happy when they come home to you and your kids.

    Veterans returning home.
    Veterans returning home.

    Trouble is that if he or she is suffering from a severe case of PTSD, your life will change as well.  PTSD when expressed in a volatile and dangerous way is contagious.

    Here is a true story:

    A man, a vet came home from the war.  He was such a lovely, intelligent and charming man.  When he was conscious, that is.

    When he wasn’t conscious, he turned into a hurtful, brutal and dangerous man.

    In fact, because he was from a very good family, he was raised with the believe that a woman should be protected and cherished.  He had many sisters and was raised to be protective of them as well.  When he fell in love a deep calling rose up in him and he knew that he could be good for something, he could be a hero caring for his little woman.  Even after all the atrocities he had witnessed during his service.  He could protect that this lovely and shy girl who would be his bride.

    The lady was raised in a Christian home and as a proper women who would love and cherish her husband. She was raised to believe that a husband and wife were bonded in the commitment to make marriage not just a holy sacrament, but also to obey and honor her spouse and support him in every possible way, in sickness and in health.  And she was raised to support her husband’s growth in his career and standing in the community.  In short a lovely and very proper woman.

    And, OMG, it really worked. They started life together and enjoyed it fully, they worked hard, and bought a little home.  They planted a garden and had common hobbies. He took her to romantic dinners, and was very proud of his “little woman.”  They were very much in love and looked forward to a bright future with a lovely family.

    What she had not realizes when they had this whirlwind romance, was that somehow during their romance, he didn’t experience any of the symptoms of the PTSD he had sustained in the war.  His parents and siblings thought the young woman was a blessing in all their lives.

    Then after they married he experienced some stress at work and the PTSD that the woman knew nothing about returned. The trouble is, when you are married to a man who has PTSD, no matter how many flowers you receive, no matter how many declarations of love you received, no matter how sincere these declarations actually are, the man may turn on a dime.

    With a nightmare, with some trigger you were unfamiliar with, you might get hurt, beaten, strangled and severely physically compromised.  The emotional pain is insufferable. A proper women may try coping mechanisms that they are taught. This woman tried to cope with the danger and pain by praying.  She forgave him, she loved him, and she was determined to stand by her man.

    The praying really did help her to keep her calm, but it didn’t keep her safe.  Eventually she ended up in the hospital with a severe cut in her head, bruises all over her body, and she needed to get stitches so quickly to stop the severe bleeding, that she ended up with 27 stitches on her shaved skull without anesthesia.

    Love alone is not enough.  So if you have a good reason, a wonderful reason to love a man, a mighty and wonderful man. and he hurts you.  Stop, in the name of love!  Stop.  Stop pretending it will get better, stop thinking that it is your fault. Stop. Stop the lies that keep you bonded to such an unhealthy situation.

    Get help!!! Help is out there, and you can be free of an abuser. Even if you know that it is not his fault that he experienced such terrible hardships and pain. It is not your fault either and you don’t have to deal with it on your own.

    PTSD is recently acknowledged as a potential result of war engagement. But if you are just a kind woman who loves your man, you may need some serious help to keep you and the children safe.  Love alone will not heal this potentially dangerous condition. And, as many people found out, the constant stress and danger of living with an unpredictable, hurtful, disrespectful man, causes the spouse PTSD as well.  Unfortunately  it is contagious.

    So get help.  He needs therapy.  There are some forms of therapy that are promising.  But while he is in therapy, you and the kids may have to watch out for your own safely.  The lady in the story eventually knew that she had to leave him, so he would not turn into her murderer.  She did this after he held her at knife point of a long kitchen knife for 1 and 1/2 hours talking like a crazy man, wondering aloud if his pain would stop, if he killed her. She finally realized that it was her god given duty not to help him ruin his life entirely.  She realized that she could best help him by being away from him.

    The shock of loosing her helped him.  He got therapy for PTSD and after 10 more painful years, he slowly got better.  He told her that he was glad for both of them that she had left when she did.  By leaving him she helped him to stop the negative spiral he was on.  The loss of her and her love woke him up to the fact that he had a serious problem. Before she left him, he thought “she was the problem.”  He thought if she was kinder, or more strong willed, or funnier or not as afraid of him, or not as angry, he would not have had to punish her all the time.

    He told her that he strongly believed he may actually have killed her eventually, if she didn’t leave him.   A study in 2015 showed that 94 percent of women killed by men were murdered by someone they knew. Of the victims who knew their offenders, 62 percent were wives or other intimate acquaintances of their killers.

    On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men.1

    1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been victims of [some form of] physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime.  More

    Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is get away from someone you love.   For the rest of us, who are in a wonderful and happy relationships that works or can be nurtured into working, we may wish to support those who are not so lucky.  Support the National Coalition Against Family Violence

  • Good Guy Billionaire: Who is Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg?

    Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg
    Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg

    Ms. Priscilla Chan is a former grade school teacher and a recent medical school graduate training to become a pediatrician.  She has a strong commitment to health and put’s her wealth toward the common good. Her parents came as refugees to seek a better life.  Now she is one of the top Billionaires who is committed to make life better for everyone.

    In an interview with Today, Priscilla Chan recalled: “If you’re the first generation to go to college, sometimes you don’t realize your potential until others point it out.”  For her, those individuals were her public school teachers, whom she credits for “getting me excited about learning.”   Priscilla spoke Cantonese growing up, learned English in school and life, and studied Spanish to server her patients better.

    Her commitment to health is genuine and unsurpassed.  She met her husband Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard where they were first class mates and later they dated.  They dated for 10 years before deciding to get married to form their family.

    She and her husband donated $600 Million dollars through her charity organization CZI to create a Biohub together with University of California at San Francisco, Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley, which will be headquartered next to UCSF’s Mission Bay
    campus in San Francisco.

    She is an amazing woman who is one of the best examples of what America genuinely stands for.  Immigrants who seek a better life and in turn make life for the rest of Americans a better place.  Thank you Ms. Chan Zuckerberg for sharing your big heart, brilliant mind, and wealth for the greater good.

  • Charter School Fraud is rampant and proven and now we have dubious DeVos

    Estimated Enrollment Trends in Full-Time Virtual Schools. (National Education Policy Center)
    Estimated Enrollment Trends in Full-Time Virtual Schools. (National Education Policy Center)
    The National Education Association expresses deep concerns

    A recent study provided that only 41% of Cyber Schools were deemed “academically acceptable.”  The graduation rate on private Cyber Schools was less than half of that of brick & mortar public schools.  So why is the new head of education so interested in providing an easy platform of proven tax dollar theft?

    This is not “liberal hysteria”  this is a genuine concern based on real facts.

    California

    Jessica Calefati of the San Jose Mercury News provided in-depth research about the for profit company K12 Inc. which lead to a $168.5 Million settlement with California. There are proven claims that the Virginia-based Charter School manipulated attendance records and overstated its students’ success.  The SJMN stated in its article: “Harris’ office found that K12 and the 14 California Virtual Academies used deceptive advertising to mislead families about students’ academic progress, parents’ satisfaction with the program and their graduates’ eligibility for University of California and California State University admission.”  Over a twelve year period the fraudster charged the State of California $310 Million dollars.

    Despite these findings the Atlantic Monthly reports:

    “DeVos invested in the online charter-school operator K12, which targeted the growing home school market. But K12’s overly expansive business model made it both significantly less profitable and more prone to regulatory and operating deficiencies than smaller, less ideologically driven competitors. K12 still trades below its IPO price from 2007. K12 was one of dozens of companies originally backed by Michael Milken’s ambitiously named Knowledge Universe, as part of an expansive effort to revolutionize education.”

    Pennsylvania

    Account Neal Prence, 61, admitted guilt in defrauding the government by helping with illegal accounting practices.  AP reported that Nicholas Trombetta, 61, acknowledged using the school’s money to fund a lavish lifestyle, including buying a Florida condominium, homes for his girlfriend and mother and a jet airplane, while socking most of the money away for retirement.  Trombetta used Avanti Management Group, the National Network of Digital Schools and other companies Trombetta also created to perpetrate the scheme.   The fraud was uncovered thanks to the tireless work of the FBI.

    What seems surprising is that despite the fact that they absconded admittedly with $8 Million dollars the maximum sentence the law allows is:  “The law provides for a maximum total sentence of 100 years in prison, a fine of $3,250,000, or both for Trombetta and five years’ imprisonment, $250,000, or both for Prence. Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the actual sentence imposed would be based upon the seriousness of the offenses and the prior criminal history, if any, of the defendant. Assistant United States Attorneys James R. Wilson, Robert S. Cessar and Stephen R. Kaufman are prosecuting this case on behalf of the government.”    More

    Ohio

    Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow lost appeal to allow the state to audit the attendance of their online charter school.  The Columbia Dispatch reported on November 13, 2016:  “ECOT could not substantiate nearly 60 percent of full-time students were getting the minimum 920 hours of “learning opportunities” required by the state, meaning the state could ask the school to repay more than $60 million of the $106 million it received in state funding last year. Eight other smaller e-schools also were unable to justify their reported enrollment totals.”   It seems House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville, was not worried about ECOT or Ohio’s other online schools potentially defrauding Ohio.  He simply excused their behavior by saying:  “There are always two sides to the story.”  His comment implies that there may be many more sides than that. Why would a House Speaker support Ohio citizens being defrauded?

    These are only very few examples.  Now with DeVos and her side kick Jerry Fallwell Jr. in charge of “education” we can be sure there will be many more major thefts.  We are now in the era that US founders wanted to avoid:

    It is 49 words in Article I of the Constitution.

    “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

    And the Congress is working feverishly on abolishing the oversight office of ethics to aid the business interests of their now fellow leaders. Here is a great link to a speech Walter M. Shaub, Director, U.S. Office of Government Ethics, gave at the Brookings Institute in January 2017.  Link

  • Under the DeVos administration how will our kids meet their best friends?

    Best friends are found in schools
    Best friends are found in schools

    Most people’s best and oldest friends are from our early schools days. DeVos is known to take the life long pleasure of socialization so that if a child or parent signs in online for 1 minute the “privateering school” seems legally is entitled to steal tax payers money.  If tax dollars earmarked for education go to pay for private homes of girlfriends instead of education, it should be wrong.  But DeVos disagrees and the GOP gives her free reign to create theft rings.  More

    Eli Broad who sponsors the best and most high performing charter schools in the country tried to stop her plan to defraud the public much like her brother Eric Prince did with his billions Dollar thefts in war of Iraq with his privateering military company Blackwater. To this day Eric Prince finds it offensive that people hold him accountable as to how he spent taxpayers money. Eric Prince said in recent interviews in an Alt-Right media company that he should not be accountable because the missing Billions and Billions of dollars were spent in a “private” military company and therefore he should not have to disclose the where the missing money went nor where it is now.

    The only lesson the public can learn is how bottomless the sense of entitlement has become under our dysfunctional government that provides no oversight and no accountability of how and where our rapidly disappearing taxes and pensions has become. Unrepentant thieves have overthrown the government. DeVos will be a disastrous example of self righteous thievery of billions of taxpayers money due to funneling American public funds into “private” pockets. Another billion dollar heist is underway and sanctioned by Paul Ryan and McConnell. No wonder they want to silence the voices of reason.