Breaking the cycle of poverty … education

The quickest way to become more financially self-sufficient is to get a job that pays well.

Education plays a big part.  Right now, we’re not doing very well at that, especially in our cities, where unemployment and poverty are highly concentrated. 

Now a big reason for unemployment and poverty in our cities is lack of jobs, period.  Employers have been chased out by high taxes, ridiculous regulations, city corruption, union rules, and an increasingly unskilled and undereducated pool of workers.    

The public school systems in those cities are at the heart of many of those issues.  First, because they suck enormous sums out of city budgets, which puts more pressure on the remaining tax base; second, because they are failing to educate their students properly, leading to a poorly trained workforce; and third, because it’s hard to convince potential employees with children to take jobs where they will have to put up with bad schools. 

It would seem that improving the public school system would yield positive economic benefits. 

But defining the situation that way is part of the problem.  Politicians think in terms of the “public school system” – which to them means facilities, equipment, administrators, teachers’ salaries and work conditions.  So they think in terms of more funding to build better facilities, add more administrators and teachers, increase everybody’s pay, and dump more money into school budgets.

Left out of all this are students and the quality of education they’re actually getting. 

Most city schools in particular and many public schools nationally aren’t doing a very good job of educating students.  Some colleges and universities now have to provide remedial reading courses to incoming freshmen to make up for what their high schools failed to do.  Our students generally lag the world in math and science.  Some students who might once have been classified as functionally illiterate are allowed to graduate from our high schools.  

You can blame social promotion run amuck or the desire of teachers to avoid hurting students’ feelings or incurring the wrath of parents, but the result is the same.  And it’s not just limited to city public schools; the same dumbing down process is taking place all over the country. 

Honestly, we’re becoming a pretty dumb nation.  Nobody wants to acknowledge that.  

Yes, computers and the Internet now make it possible to learn anything about everything, yet both have also fostered an intellectually lazy class of kids increasingly dependent on them for even the simplest tasks.  There’s no reason to learn – or for that matter teach – how to arrive at an answer when you can push a few keys and the answer appears.  There’s no reason to learn or teach spelling or grammar when software will catch your errors.  Why do your own research for a report when someone has probably already published it online? 

As such, many of today’s students don’t have fundamental skills like simple arithmetic, reading, writing, and critical thinking when – and if – they graduate from high school.

It’s not for lack of aptitude that they’re undereducated.   They are plenty smart; just not well educated.  And that’s because we’re too content with the status quo.   

One reason we accept mediocrity in education is because to demand achievement is to appear heartless and cruel to the less fortunate or “intellectually gifted” among us.  So we continually lower the bar for what is an acceptable education, instead of pushing for better.  Why?  We do it primarily to boost the self-esteem -- and political loyalty -- of key constituencies politicians and special interest groups favor: those they feel need extra support and assistance to compete on the mythical “level playing field.”       

And also to take the heat off of teachers and administrators in areas that continue to underperform.  

But has any specific group proven to be less capable of learning than others?  Are urban kids inherently dumber than suburban kids?  Are black kids genetically unable to reach the same levels of knowledge as other groups?  Does someone’s household income determine their IQ?

I don’t think so. 

So I have no patience with those who automatically cast groups into lower educational expectations just because of their economic status, their location, their race, or their ethnicity.  It may make it easier for some to justify poor or indifferent performance, and to create new classes of “victims” who need special assistance, but it’s nonsense at best and more likely a not-so-subtle form of paternalistic elitism.     

If we truly want everyone in America to have the equal opportunity to succeed, then everyone needs to have an equal education.  To determine if they have, we must employ national standardized testing. 

We also need to reduce the power of local and state school boards in determining curricula and set a national curriculum for all schools – a curriculum that would guarantee that all students nationwide at least cover the same basic subjects using the same basic texts.

That doesn’t mean there can’t be local nuances, like teaching state history, but the core subjects of math, English, and science need to be taught the same nationwide, using the same lesson plans, as a rigidly enforced baseline.  And then have the results measured the same.     

The long term goal should be to remove the institutional differences in what’s being taught – and how – in our public schools. We need to make certain that a kid who earns a diploma from Camden High has at least the same basic knowledge and literacy as a kid who graduates from Coral Gables High.  

And the only way you can insure that is by applying equal standards, measuring success objectively, and setting hard and fast milestones that students and teachers need to pass. 

It also means stopping the pattern of feeding false hopes and expectations. 

It starts with grading.  Grades in many elementary, middle and high schools today are meaningless.  That’s because too many teachers give out “A” s like M&Ms – which is why graduating “with Honors”  doesn’t mean what it once did.   

Inflated grades may make parents beam but they do a real disservice to the kids who get them.  When those kids graduate and are confronted with how little they really know, it will be devastating; far worse than had they been told the truth years before, when there was still time to correct their weaknesses.     

When I was a kid in New Jersey, we had the “Iowa Tests” near the end of certain school years.  In Florida, we had the Florida Senior Placement Test near the end of your senior year.  Both objectively scored you on how well you tested in math, language and other areas.  The Iowa Tests went a step further and showed how you ranked against their multi-state averages. 

As I recall, no one was outraged that their little darlings had to endure these tests.  No one I know ever protested the way the tests were structured, the questions used, or the ultimate results. 

Consequently, I can’t understand why everybody gets their panties in a knot when something like nationwide standardized testing is proposed today.  There are statewide tests already; this would just be expanding the scope to take in the whole country.  Yet any movement toward a national standardized test process to measure student and teacher performance is fiercely opposed by teachers, unions, and even parents in many areas, as was the case with the ill-fated No Child Left Behind program. 

So you have to wonder why.   And I think we all know the reason. 

They’re afraid to face the reality national tests might reveal.

In terms of the fundamentals, too many high school graduates can’t read or write very well.  Without a calculator or computer many more lack basic math skills; we’re not talking factoring for square roots here – just the basics.  Like, say, determining whether 20% off the original price is a better deal than $15 off with a coupon.  You know, stuff they’ll encounter every day.          

While parents might be stunned, employers know this already.  And have for years.   

A couple of years ago I had to show a recent Boston University graduate – an honors grad in high school – how to determine what 15% of something was.  She honestly did not know that 15% was the result of multiplying by .15 because she didn't understand the basic concept of "percent."

Then there are the poorly written and sometimes unfathomable cover letters and e-mails I get from recent college grads looking for a job.  I feel embarrassed for many of them.  

These aren’t isolated instances.   Just ask employers.  We’ve all had similar experiences.

What can we do to fix this? 

First, we have to pull off the blinders and see where we really are.  As a nation, we have to embrace periodic, standardized testing over the objections of the teachers, teachers’ unions, and parents. 

The tests have to be truly standardized – the same test for everyone – on math, English, and science for starters.  After all, if an inner city, suburban, or rural black, white, Hispanic or Asian kid graduates from high school they’ll be competing for a job – or a slot in college – against kids from other races and backgrounds, not just the same type of people they went to high school with. 

The first time out will be rough.  The tests themselves will be attacked as unfair, insensitive to cultural differences and not a real measure of what students know or how well teachers are performing. 

That’s all bullshit.  It’s also self-serving rationalization; something we’ve had quite enough of.

There are plenty of committed students who want a good education.  There are excellent, competent teachers prepared to deliver that to them in every state and city in the country.   Many parents go above and beyond to push their kids to learn and succeed. 

So this isn’t about them.  It’s about the others. 

The ones who will whine the most will be those who have something to hide. 

Administrators and teachers already know if their students are getting a good education.  They also know who has been cooking the books all along to make some school averages better than they really are.  Or those simply “teaching to the test” to prep students on the same questions they’ll face, without explaining the underlying concepts.  (Or worse yet, correcting answers for students while they are taking their tests—which has been documented.)

They also know who the good teachers are, who is really doing their job, and whose students are performing the best as a result.   At the same time, they know which teachers suck at their job, do the absolute minimum, and should be fired before they do any more damage. 

They aren’t stupid.  Those who are confident about what they’re doing and are playing by the rules won’t like the tests, but they’ll accept them.  Those who fear the probability of a bad outcome will fight them tooth and nail.  And of course the teachers’ unions will do whatever they can to water down the tests, and the ramifications of the results.

The simple truth is this: nobody really knows what today’s students and teachers are doing, or how well anything is working.  Nobody knows if the billions spent on public education are making any difference.  Nobody knows if kids today are getting the education we all think they should.    

That’s why we need nationwide standardized testing to see where we all stand.  The reality is that unless you know where you are, you can’t begin to address what needs to happen.

And if you don’t set a bar in the first place, how do you know? 

If we’re serious about giving people an equal opportunity to succeed and lift themselves out of a perpetual low-income situation, we have to provide everyone with access to the same quality standard education regardless of race, ethnicity, income, or location.

We shouldn’t let anyone stand in the way of that goal.      

Breaking the cycle of poverty (Part 1)

There’s no magic bullet.   But a lot of excuses.

Lack of good-paying jobs.  Teen pregnancies.  Breakdown of the family.   A culture of violence.  Lack of education.  And of course, not enough money spent to help the poor escape poverty. 

There are plenty of reasons why people are poor.  Not a lot of solid solutions to change that. 

Also, we need to remember that "poverty" in America is a very relative thing.  Nobody starves for lack of food here, nor dies for want of medicines and medical treatment just because they are poor. In fact, our sense of "poverty" is far removed from what poverty is in most of the rest of the world. That's not to say there are no poor people here; just that our poverty is not usually a life-or-death situation.

In America, we equate poverty with low income.  "Poverty" is the emotional buzzword.  In reality it's just shorthand for people earning below a government-set income level and getting public assistance; those in "poverty" here aren't clothed in rags and out with begging bowls.   

Our politicians approach the issue of poverty from ideological perspectives, which is part of the problem. 

The Democrats are overly idealistic about the inherent desire of the poor to take advantage of “opportunities” to improve their situation.  Democrats see poverty as a temporary setback that can be remedied and overcome pretty quickly if you push enough money and training to the poor.  They believe much of the problem can be solved by educating the poor about birth control, the benefits of staying in school, improving everyone’s self-image and esteem, giving incentives to businesses to hire the poor and providing alternatives to becoming engaged in violent activities.    

To Democrats, we need to take care of the poor in the meantime and give them a respectable safety net they can use while they pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and move ahead in society.  And no one should be made to feel bad about taking advantage of government benefits in the process.  

Republicans are also overly idealistic about the desires of the poor.  They think the poor want to move out of poverty through their own efforts, and are victims of overly paternalistic – bordering on soft racism – policies that provide second-rate educations, and also disincentives to getting a real job.  The villain in education is low expectations – social promotions, lowered standards, and teachers more intent on building student self-esteem than effectively teaching fundamentals like reading, math and science.  And to Republicans, many misguided programs make it financially more attractive to stay on government benefits than to work hard, get a real education, get married, and escape poverty.     

To Republicans, we simply need to raise the bar across the board, and eliminate disincentives holding back the poor.  Of course we’ll still need a safety net in place for the old, the sick and the disabled, but we shouldn’t tempt otherwise able-bodied people to rely on the safety net.

You couldn’t have two more divergent perspectives on how to solve poverty.  The only common ground the Republicans and Democrats have is that they are both wrong. 

Poverty is not a temporary situation.  There’s nothing you can do right away that’s going to have an immediate payoff.  The only thing that can be done is to try to break the cycle of poverty now, so that down the road you’ve helped to minimize institutionalized poverty in future generations.   That means treating underlying problems, not just trying to deal with symptoms.  Often that also means facing up to some hard truths most would rather not bring up. 

You also can’t be overly idealistic.  At least with the current generations.  People who grew up in poverty, and then begat children into poverty, who in turn begat more children into poverty are probably too far gone.  You can try to modify their behavior, but you’re not going to change it in the short term.    

You might have a chance with their children or grandchildren – if they’re young enough – and if you start now to shape their behavior and beliefs before they fall into the cycle of poverty. 

The parents are probably a lost cause.  They’ve likely been raised on public assistance and really don’t know any other way of living.   We just have to accept that we’ll be supporting the parents and grandparents until they die, much the same way we are now. 

Now any honest attempt to break the cycle of poverty will always be politically unpopular.  Too many interest groups maintain their power and prestige on being “champions” of the poor.  If we were ever able to effectively break the cycle in any meaningful way, they wouldn’t have a power base.  No one would pay any attention to them.  They’d start running out of “victims” to showcase. 

I’m thinking Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, La Raza, and others.  To each of them, their respective constituencies always need the most help. 

So, before I go any further, I need to interject race, and point out the elephants in the room. 

We’ve often heard that there are more whites are on public assistance than blacks or Hispanics.  That is true, in a purely numeric sense.   So it’s not just the cycle of poverty in “urban” areas that we need to address; it’s also that same cycle in Appalachia and other rural environments. Generations of whites – and blacks and others – have been in the same unbroken cycle. 

So don’t think only in terms of inner-city blacks and Hispanics.  Also consider white kids in rural Florida living in a trailer with their 20-year-old mom, with five siblings from four fathers, and an occasional “uncle” recently released from Raiford.   That’s the face of generational poverty, too. 

However the statistics do point out a serious racial divide.  While roughly 38% of the recipients of public assistance are white and about the same percentage are black, whites account for about half the population of the U.S., while blacks account for about 12%.  This means that the percentage of the total white population on public assistance is about a quarter of the percentage of the black population. 

Poverty is a white and black and Hispanic problem, no doubt, but a much, much higher percentage of people in the black community are on public assistance than any other group.  That’s not to make an inference on character or ability, nor is it racist – it’s just statistics.

We can waste time on trying to figure that anomaly out and come up with all kinds of justifications and rationalizations.  The truth is – it doesn’t matter “why” or require us to come up with special programs to address each racial group or sub group; we just need to recognize that it exists. 

If you’re poor, healthy, of working age yet wholly dependent on public assistance, and we don’t want your children to follow the same path, it makes little difference whether you’re white, black, Hispanic, South Asian, or Aleut.  Generally the same stuff needs to happen. 

And everything is linked. 

The seeds of long-term poverty often start at birth.  A single mother in her teens is most likely going to drop out of school and end up in poverty for the rest of their life.  Their kids are statistically destined to repeat that pattern.  So we have to stop that, not with more education about birth control – teens know all about birth control and it’s readily available at any age.

The sad fact no one is willing to confront is that many teens who get pregnant want to get pregnant, either to become “adults” or because they don’t see anything wrong with it. 

We have to make teen pregnancy socially unacceptable and medically impossible.  You can’t stop teens from having sex – we all know that from personal experience – but we can and should stop them from having babies, whatever that takes. 

If you want to use government money for improving society, push the extremists out of the way and fund development of a safe contraceptive that can be administered once – to either males or females, I don’t care – and stay effective for up to five years. 

When you turn 13 you get it, like it or not.  The hope is that when you’re 18, you might be better equipped to make more rational decisions. 

I don’t want to leave the boys out of this.  After all, it takes two.  Any pregnant teen should have to turn over the name of the father to assign financial responsibility for the child’s future needs.  This would have an immediate effect on the rate of contraceptive use by males, and take the bragging rights out of the baby-momma epidemic in a flash. 

All this needs to be coupled with social pressure.  I may disagree with Mayor Bloomberg on his food-police nonsense, and bans on big sodas, but he’s on the right track with his most recent ad campaign against teen pregnancy.  If you haven’t seen it, click here.

We need to start making the point that bearing children is a not a “right”; it’s a privilege with a lot of back end responsibility attached.  If you’re not up to the responsibility, don’t have a child.   

Furthermore, if you are addicted to crack or meth, are in and out of jail, demonstrate a reckless disregard for your children’s safety, or ever put your own kids up for sale the state should move in and take your children away forever.  And I mean forever. 

I wouldn’t be opposed to mandatory sterilization in special cases. 

I am continually sickened by news stories about the abuse inflicted on kids by sociopaths who exercised their “right” to have children.   It’s heart breaking.  Then there are those who try to peddle their kids to the highest bidder.  This morning I learned that some 22-year-old jackass offered to sell her two kids – one 10 months old; the other 2 years old – to raise money to bail her boyfriend out of jail.   The other day another woman was caught trying to market her kids to a known pedophile. 

Just because someone is biologically able to bear children doesn’t automatically grant special privileges to do whatever they want with them.  Or to ignore them and hand them off to a parent or grandparent to care for them.  Or to expect society to support people who repeatedly show a wanton disregard for their own offspring.

That’s cold and perhaps cruel to say, but until we get a grip on babies born to teens and others totally incompetent or ill-equipped to raise children, we won’t be addressing one of the root causes of long-term poverty in this country. 

More to come … next, the role of education. 

If you want to fix American politics … first fix the primary system

If you’re as perplexed with American politics as I am, we need to address the current primary system that determines the final Republican and Democrat candidates for President.

Right now it’s a game.  A crazy game, run by crazies.  It’s completely irrational and illogical. 

Because of arcane rules and mindless tradition we give disproportionate power to states and voting blocs that aren’t in the slightest stretch of the imagination representative of the voting public at large.  

Our current primary system might as well been designed by Jerry Springer or championship wrestling.  Primaries don’t so much pick good candidates as they do “champions” for some point of view or another.  Abortion.  Immigration.  Same-sex marriage.  Gun control.  English as the official language.  School prayer.   Teaching Creationism.  Whatever.       

People running in the primaries know this stuff doesn’t make a damn bit of difference in the everyday lives of ordinary citizens.  But they also realize these give a woody to certain interest groups.  And those groups really turn out to vote in primaries and donate big to campaigns. 

Competency to actually be President, and manage the country well, doesn’t seem to matter. 

So instead of a system where the most competent, articulate and rational win after thoughtful consideration of their ideas, we get a sideshow where someone can be a complete clown bereft of any practical ideas, spout the silliest nonsense about irrelevant issues, and still manage to win a bunch of primaries. 

As long as they mobilize their respective extremists, of course. 

The winners are typically far out of the mainstream  of what most Americans believe.  The edge usually goes to the most polarized and divisive able to rally a statistically small number of like-minded extremists.  Most Americans don’t vote in primaries anyway, so the hardcore tend to tip the scales. 

The face-to-face debates have devolved into bitching, name-calling, back-biting and outrageous claims and half-truths designed to make the other participants appear evil and untrustworthy.  It’s all theatrics as they play to the crowds.  We’re just missing someone breaking a folding chair over their opponents’ heads, or bitch-slapping each other.  Roadrunner cartoons have more civility and substance. 

However, the real mayhem starts with the state primaries.  That’s when the true loons emerge.  And when people who have no more in common with you and me than we do with a Chinese aviator get to start the crazy train rolling. 

Many times this happens in states that – except for their primaries – would otherwise be a blip on the national scene.  Yet when they have a primary, the media and pundits gush all over them.  Everybody looks to them to see the “trends”; to see who has the best “ground game.”  Who is excelling at “retail” politics?

Potential candidates spend millions to woo a relative handful of voters.  To show they’ve got “momentum.”  But mostly so they can get more money from their donors to stay on this dysfunctional merry-go-round.  More money to waste on making them a celebrity, in other words. 

In the end, it’s lots of sound and fury signifying nothing.  It doesn’t mean squat. 

For example, who really cares who wins the Ames Straw Poll or Iowa Caucus? 

Iowa is not like the rest of the country.  The total population of Iowa is a little more than 3 million; it’s 30^th in state populations in the U.S.  There are – what – maybe 500-1000 black people in the entire state?  The biggest city in the state only has a population of about 207,000. 

So a bunch of pasty-white people from there standing around in a high school gym is not representative of who is going to turn out and vote in the rest of the country.  Or what the hot-button issues are for the rest of the country.  Farm subsidies and ethanol might be big for Iowans; not so much for the rest of us. 

Yet every election cycle we see potential candidates going door to door, sitting in coffees shops, and blathering on about meeting Iowans’ needs and supporting their parochial “values”  to first win the straw poll and then the “caucus.” 

Seriously, who cares?  This meaningless campaigning only boosts media spending in Iowa, fills rooms in hotels you wouldn’t stay in on a dare, and gives a financial lift to every hayseed diner in the state. 

Maybe Jed and Clem in their bib’alls and John Deere hats having a cup of joe at the coffee shop of the Dew Drop Inn make for good TV.  Breathless reporters from the East clearly hang on their every word.  That these yokels like this candidate or that because they promise to keep sorghum prices high, and keep prayer at high-school football games, doesn’t mean diddly to me, nor to most other Americans. 

Certainly, Jed and Clem and their Iowa ilk are entitled to their opinion, and I respect that.  Should we let them have a disproportionate influence on who gets to run for President?  Absolutely not. 

And thank God for that. 

Otherwise, we’d have had Michelle Bachmann (Ames Straw Poll) or Rick Santorum (Caucus) running for the Republicans.  If you think Obama handily beat Romney, just think what he would have done to Bachmann or Santorum.  It would have been a landslide victory of epic proportions. 

Yes, witchy, twitchy, far-right extremist Michelle won first in Iowa, and uber-Catholic Santorum also won.  

Could you honestly see either as a serious national candidate?  Now you may agree with a few of their positions, but do you think either was qualified for the office?  Would you want to see them imposing their ideas on the rest of us?  Iowans did. 

Apparently quite a few others thought Santorum was a good choice, too – at least according to primary results.  He won 11 primaries and garnered about 3 million votes in the process.  Not to beat up on Santorum, but his views are so outside the mainstream he’s not an outlier as much as an alien from a galaxy far, far away.  He makes Carrie Nation look like a wanton libertine. 

There is absolutely no way in Hell he could have won the Presidential race.  But he was able to win primaries. Why?  Because the radical far right came out to support him and everybody else stayed home.

And that’s the biggest flaw in the primary system.  You can play small ball on extremely narrow issues that appeal to a relative handful of people.  If you can get them excited enough – or fearful enough – to put down their Moonpies and RC Colas, skip Duck Dynasty or Here Comes Honey Boo Boo for a few minutes, and turn out to vote, you can win. 

God help us.  But that’s how we end up with a former community organizer and do-nothing first-term Senator competing against a socially and politically awkward guy for the most powerful job in the world. 

The job should go to the best qualified.  Not the best at playing the game. 

So what’s the solution?

Instead of the state-by-state primaries, have one primary nationally, on one day.  Like national elections, you’d have to be a registered voter and you could only vote once.  That means on primary day you’d have to choose to vote in the Republican primary or the Democrat primary – or a third party if it could qualify – for the candidate of your choice.  You couldn’t vote in more than one. 

You could have debates for each party in advance.  But there would have to be a threshold for participation – you’d have to get 3 million validated, unique signatures for your candidate across the country to make the cut.  If you fall short of that, you’re out of the debates and off any ballots.

The winners for each party would be set, immediately, and for far, far less than they now spend. 

The media in every state will scream because of the loss of revenue.  So will all the mom and pop hotels, motels and diners in the middle of nowhere.  You won’t have TV crews and talking heads camped out in East Jabip, North Dakota to “take the pulse of the heartland.”  No more meet-and-greets in diner coffee-klatches.  No more “we’re here in the living room of Mabel Plotz in West Chitlin Switch, West Virginia to get her impression of the candidates.”   No more “comeback kid” analogies.  No more “big Mo” references.  And no more meaningless photo ops in someplace you never heard of. 

Candidates will have to run national campaigns based on issues relevant to the whole country, instead of pandering to purely parochial interests.  This refreshing change might mean that they would finally have to deal with substance that affects us all, and we might get candidates worthy of the office.

One can only hope. 

“I’m not a dictator … I’m the President”

Yeah.  Right.  Thanks for clearing that up.

I know I’d been wondering for some time if he knew the difference.   I’m still not sure.

In case you missed it, that’s a quote from Obama the other day.  I couldn’t make this stuff up.  NBC.com even headlined their front page with “’I am not a dictator’ says Obama.”

It reminded me of Nixon’s famous “I am not a crook. “  And Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman …”  

You just know when they made those statements they knew they were trying to skate by on some technicality or goofball rationalization. 

In Obama’s case, maybe he simply “misspoke,” as they say these days.  Because I honestly believe that way down deep he wishes he had complete dictatorial powers.  “President” is not grand enough to encompass what our Nobel Prize-winning Chief Executive’s ego wants to do.  Perhaps “Your Excellency” or “Your Highness” would sound better to him than a plain old “Mr. President.”   

Or maybe we could have some extended title like “Master of the Universe, Sovereign of the Free World, Protector of the Planet Earth, Supreme General and Admiral of the Armed and Unarmed Forces, and Most Important Person of the United States of America.”

Yeah, that might work.  

I know I sometimes seem to be constantly bashing Obama.  In truth, he fascinates me in a strange sort of way.  It’s like getting sucked into watching someone running a shell game; you think it’s inevitable he’s going to lose at some time but he never does.   Not unless he wants to so he can jack up the bet.       

Honestly, Obama is like that.  In a perverse way, you have to admire how Obama is so gifted at shifting blame, avoiding responsibility and never dealing with any real problems.  Still, people who should know better praise his leadership on “tough” issues, when he’s yet to deal with any.

Monarchs often use what’s called the “royal we” when they are talking about themselves.  Obama doesn’t use that convention, even though he apparently believes “ L’Etat c’est moi.”  He prefers to talk about himself, his favorite subject; he never tires of saying I, me, my, and mine.   

However, he does like using the phrase “most people” when he’s really just talking about himself and his administration.

So, he’ll say something like “most people know I came to the table with a very fair and balanced approach to solving this problem, a solution most people approve of wholeheartedly.” And “most people know this is the right thing to do.”  What he’s really saying is that his solution – in his opinion, which is the only one that matters – is the only solution.  Because it’s his solution.   So there. 

What’s amazing is nobody ever asks him what he’s basing his “most people” claims on; does he have some secret stash of data that tells him alone what the public thinks, believes or agrees or disagrees with? Is he talking about a true majority of the population, a mere plurality, or what?  He can’t be basing it on polling data because the real “most people” in the polls think the government has a spending problem and that it needs to cut spending.  He doesn’t. 

Up to this point he’s been like a gypsy playing poker with blind people.  Everybody at the table – especially the media – trusted him and believed whatever he said.  So of course he’s always won. 

That’s beginning to change.  There are whispers in the media – not just from the Fox side – that maybe, just maybe, he hasn’t been playing on the up and up all the time.  In fact, he’s been caught in some whoppers recently.   

Like when he said sequester was the Republicans’ idea; Bob Woodward pointed out it was Obama’s idea from the get go.   Then there have been all of Obama’s hyperbolic statements about the potential effects of sequester.  The economy was going to tank.  Thousands of teachers, firefighters and police would lose their jobs.  TSA workers would be cut, causing long delays at airports.  Parents with kids in Head Start would have to find alternate day care.  Border security and defense would be compromised.  There was even some reference to cut backs in milk for babies.   

A guy from the Education Department claimed some teachers in West Virginia were already getting pink slips because of the impending sequester.  When the media found out that wasn’t true, it got reported rather widely, which was unusual for a press so deep in the tank for Obama for much of his reign. 

Now there’s widespread belief that Obama’s doom and gloom projections might, just might, have been a tad overblown.  Maybe it was a case of crying wolf once too often, for the public tuned out early on and has never come back; in one recent poll three out of four Americans said they weren’t that worried about the sequester.  His request for $680 billion in new taxes by “closing loopholes” for the wealthy also fell on deaf ears.   

His multi-state campaign to put pressure on Republicans was a PR failure.  Nobody budged.  Media types weren’t even that jacked up, either; some started producing even more stories questioning his assumptions and end of the world scenarios. 

Obama must be baffled.  He’s always won before. 

Maybe he’s finally discovered he doesn’t have the dictatorial powers, or the ability to mold public opinion, he thought he had. 

Perhaps that’s why he let slip that quote about not being a dictator. 

His next big hurdle is only a few weeks away, when a bill needs to be passed to continue funding the government.  Then he faces another debt ceiling fight in May.

He trotted out all the scary stuff he had for the sequester debate.  What’s left?  I don’t know how you top what he’s put out there already.  And that wasn’t enough.  So what’s next?   I shudder to think. 

One thing to keep in mind:  he doesn’t take losing well.  And sometimes – like someone running a shell game – he might let you win just to raise the stakes on the next play.  Or, as some have suggested, he might use sequester to make the most painful cuts he can to prove his point and further discredit Congressional Republicans in advance of the bigger issues of funding the government and the debt ceiling. 

I don’t put it past him.  He plays a long game. 

But if he fails again – and the public shrugs off his next round of horror stories and turns on him, which is also possible, his dreams of absolute power will be at an end. 

Stephen King once wrote about what he called the “big bug movies.”  He said the flaw in their horror factor was that  they scared you until you saw the 10-foot spider or whatever.  After that moment, it wasn’t nearly as frightening any more.   To keep people on the edge of their seats you were forced to keep stepping up the size of the spider, and sooner or later people got bored and lost interest.   

Obama should have thought about that before he pulled out all the stops on something that’s little more than a rounding error in our Federal spending. 

If he wants to be a dictator, he’s going to have to get better at it.