NPR reports: 1/24/05

Listened to Morning Edition today. Right now listening to Talk of the Nation.

Looks like lots of people endured a terrible storm this weekend. Right now they are reporting 16 deaths, but earlier it was 14. There was over 1 ft. of snow in most places, even New York City. Wow.

George Bush. Ownership Society. Don't get me started. Interesting PR angle on this: do you think of social security reform as introducing "private accounts" or "personal accounts"? If you think first of private accounts, then GWB's PR machine has not worked on you yet. If you think personal accounts, score one for the Bushies. The White House is trying to change the rhetoric here so the discussion about social security reforms does not scare old people ("seniors"), a big conservative base. When seniors get scared, says the street, republican heads roll. NPR did a great job interviewing David Wessel from the Wall Street Journal, and they did not take sides. The interviewer asked very fair questions that helped define what "ownership society" is supposed to mean. It means no more "government will take care of you"-type benefits. It means giving people more choices and more responsibility thusly: people will buy their own insurance, they will maintain and manage their own retirement accounts, etc. The government will help those of lesser means through tax credits. Wessel pointed out both the upside and the downside of this kind of thing. Also he pointed out that Bush talks a lot about the upside, and rarely mentions the downside risk for average folks. He also said that the White House's agenda was to keep the social security "crisis" in the news to galvanize supporters, but that others were working to show that the problem is not a crisis -- a problem, yes, but not a crisis. There may be a crisis sometime in the future, but it will be many many years before that happens. Both republicans and democrats are taking this stance, because the crisis talk is scaring their senior voters, and the politicians are beginning to really sweat. Wessel traced the history of the ownership society idea to Clinton's welfare reform, and said that Bush is widening it to cover many situations. Democrats fear the erosion of the social safety net that keeps the poor from becoming even poorer. The report did not come down in favor of one side or the other on the debate. I have often heard that the WSJ is biased against the left, but Wessel seemed very fair minded about the issue, and dealt with facts on both sides.

Sounds like things are going right down the toilet in Iraq. The reports sound horrible. Hope they can vote ok. Talk of the Nation is dealing with this issue today. Sounds like there are terrorists that are really trying hard to keep voters away from the polls. Sad.

Nice eulogies of Johnny Carson today. I never watched his show. Not a late night person.

Great story on Mel Levine, a doctor challenging the assumptions about American kids' learning disabilities. Works out of UNC (?), and runs an organization called All Kinds of Minds studying kids' brains and making recommendations on how to best educate people of varying abilities. His basic premise is that everyone learns differently, and therefore we should talk about an individual's strengths and weaknesses instead of labeling and walking away. To help children struggling to learn, Dr. Levine first names the child's strengths and weaknesses, then helps them formulate a plan to overcome the weaknesses. He's trained over 23,000 teachers so far, and has a contract to train 20,000 more in New York City on how to stop labeling and start naming each weakness, then addressing each weakness with an action plan. Labeling restricts freedom, makes the problems seem insurmountable, results in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy and makes the child feel somehow defective. By enumerating issues, he can give each child a plan to overcome them. Levine is trying to create a "humanitarian movement" -- the idea is that people would know themselves, so there would be a lot less mental illness due to people trying to be something they are not. People would then track to their strengths and not fight their natural inclinations, and end up happier and fulfilled in their work. Go Mel!! You got the right idea, and I admire it. I wish he could analyze me!!