Education:

The Jeffersonian dream of an educated electorate has never gained much traction in the U. S. A report in today's New York Times discloses that U. S. students continue to grossly under achieve on literacy tests. According to Sam Dillon,

girls outperformed boys by far, most decisively at the eighth-grade level, where 41 percent of them achieved proficiency, compared with 20 percent of boys. The racial achievement gap narrowed slightly, with black and Hispanic students’ writing improving a bit more than did whites’.

At this point in America's history, it is difficult to understand why we are not dissatisfied with 90 percent proficiency levels, while instead we are coasting along with considerably less than half that level. Is it any wonder that so many wanna be home owners were duped into signing loans they couldn't begin to fathom?

The literacy of America's decider: "My mom used to say, 'The Trouble with W'—although she didn't put that to words." — George W. Bush, Washington, D. C., April 2002. (And it used to be Lincoln who was held up as proof that anyone could grow up to be president!)

The Fraud of Competition:

Republicans love to assert that competition is the cure-all to keep the cost of everything low. Then why is it that, as Paul Krugman points out on today's Op-Ed Page of The New York Times, "the United States has the most privatized [health care] system, with the most market competition—and it also has by far the highest health care costs in the world"?

80,000 Jobs Lost in March:

Still don't think we're headed into a recession? Ask the people who lost those jobs. The unemployment rate now stands at 5.1 percent. The real kicker is that the figures exceed expectation, and that has economists and planners worried. (See the Times' article.)

Today in history: Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, TN. He was only 39 years old.