Internet Grammar Police in Patrol

One would think these days that someone, anyone would take the time to make sure their “copy” was typo free before posting it on the Internet.  Sure, I know I have had this problem myself, and nothing is more embarrassing to me than to see one of my stories with a typo.  But that’s why I try to make sure I review my stuff time and again.
On the other hand, once I turn it over to the editors I never want to see it again. Which sort of may explain why these stories, carried by “big media” are left with glaring stupid errors.  How much effort would it take to fix them?  Not much, I know, and yet it seems as if the stream of media flotsam just continues to flow like the junk in the lower James River.
So, here are a few dumb media mistakes from one day:
Here’s another error, this time from a Fox News article about Donald Trump responding to the bombing in Belgium.  It might be noted that the media outlets contacted all the candidates by phone and Trump was the first to call back, followed by Ted Cruz, and then Hillary Clinton.  But this is what came out in a story by Howard Kurtz:

“Indeed, Clinton later told MSNBC that some candidates don't understand the important of NATO.”

Should that not be the “importance” of? I am certain that Howard knows his English, but these kinds of mistakes make all of us wonder.  Psychologically, we all tend to fill in gaps or fix typos on the fly. That’s one of the reasons we can read a sentence with jumbled words, providing that the first and last letters are correct. We do it automatically, it’s also one of the reasons typos appear in a document. 
Here’s a mistake from a cutline that went with an Associated Press photograph:

“President Barack Obama hugs outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as he stands with Vice President Joe Biden and his nominee to be her replacement, Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Friday, April 11, 2014, in the Rose Garden f the White House in Washington. The moves come just over a week after sign-ups closed for the first year of insurance coverage under the so-called Obamacare law.(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)”

It’s a simple common error. Someone simply didn’t hit the o key when typing “of.”  No one should be put in prison for such a mistake, but still. It’s an AP photo, and simple everyday spell check ought to have caught it.
Here’s another instance of error, but was this error just a misspelling or were they trying to abbreviate the word “with?”

“President Obama orders his burrito bowl at a Chipotle today before lunch w participants in the working families summit. (Pete Souza/White House photo)”

If saving space is the reason you would abbreviate a word, why on earth would it be such a short word as with?  Cutting out the “ith” save a grand total of three spaces, hardly enough to make it worthwhile.
Here’s another faux pas with a typo, this time reported in The Politico:

“Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush endorsed Senator Ted Cruz on Wednesday. It’s clear that the establishment if doing everything it can to defeat popular New York businessman Donald Trump.”

I suppose in this case, if is not is, unless you want to know the meaning of is, which may be if.
Here’s another example where, perhaps, the word processer got the better of the reporter.

“Let’s be honest with ourselves, right now ISIS is winning this war and will continuing committing utter carnage on our streets on an ever graver and more barbaric scale until they are stopped.

Perhaps making continue into continuing would be okay if the rest of the sentence were changed, but probably not. In this case, having continuing committing next to each other is just confusing.
These kinds of mistakes can be found every day throughout the major media outlets.  No one is exempt from poor grammar, not even me sadly enough.  To me, it’s simply another sign of the country’s sagging values.  Maybe everyone just needs a good editor?  The truth is that sometimes we get in a hurry and are forced to publish something that could use just one more review.
Thank God we don’t apply those rules to the poor logic that seems to abound in most critical pieces printed today.  Is it just me, or can we tell the reporters opinion in most stories published today under the name of journalism?  Whatever happened to “just the facts, ma’am?”  Gee, I think I know how to think for myself without having some talking head muddle the message.

Tax Me? Tax you!

Making ends meet is a difficult thing for the homeowner and also apparently for the City of Colonial Heights. Recently, City Council was toying with the idea of increasing the city’s real estate tax rate in order to pay for some “needed” expansions and improvements.  It sure would be nice if I could just go up to my employer and tell him or her that I needed a new car, or some extra work done on my house, or a new Bose Wave radio and in order to pay for them they need to pay me an extra X amount per week.

In truth, I would have to worry more about keeping my job no less getting the “needed” raise.  They pay me my salary and guess what?  I have to make sure I can live within it.  If my bills, or wants, are more than I bring in, I have to find other ways to make that happen. I have to live within my family budget.  If I don’t have enough cash flow, I can address several options:

1.  Put the wife to work.  Nah, we already have the two income deal going on.

2.  Cut down on other “necessaries.” Well maybe that doesn’t get it because we are addressing “lifestyle” stuff.

3.  Bring in more money.  That amounts to part time jobs and side work of all kinds.  Also, it means we have to do some do it yourself (DIY) projects instead of having real professionals come in to do it, think painting, flooring, minor plumbing fixes, etc.

In truth, the put the wife to work option was never a problem.  She is a hard worker and doesn’t mind, I think, pulling her share of the load.  We like the lifestyle we have and that requires a double income. So option one is a non-starter for us.

Cutting down on other “necessaries” hasn’t proved to be much of a good idea with us either.  We have made some moves one way and another to cut our costs as the past several years have impinged on our income.  For her, she had gone eight years without a raise.  Just recently, my company rebid the contract I work under which resulted in a five percent cut in my pay; I still get to keep 95 percent of it, minus the pieces paid out in taxes to the federal government and the state.  So, we have made strides at cutting down on our monthly expenses.

Bring in more money.  This is a difficult proposition since most extra money requires some kind of extra work.  For me, that isn’t too much of a problem.  I have worked multiple jobs for about as long as I can remember.  I blame it on my father, who often worked three jobs while we Breidenbach kids were growing up.  And now, I find myself in much the same position.  This column/blog is proof of one of my ways to bring in more money, along with the stories I write for the paper and the pictures I take for the paper.  I also use my camera and photo skills to bring in extra money by providing photographic services for different people and groups.  My wife used to have second jobs while the kids were young, since money was in great demand at the time.  But like anything else, times change and she no longer has to work extra jobs—mine do fine in providing the little extras that make life in Colonial Heights seem a little bit better.

So that’s how my family handles budget shortfalls and the city could do much the same.  Here is a look at how those three options might play out for them.

1.  Build more housing and get more people to live in the city. Okay, there really isn’t much more room to build houses, so this option is likely a non-starter.

2. Cut down on other “necessities.”  During the past downturn in the economy the city was proud to be able to keep all of their people working, meaning no one was fired or let go. It was a big deal to administrators as they didn’t have to face drastic measures.  Yet, most other municipalities in the Commonwealth did resort to layoffs.  And, this proposal supports increasing staff, so cutting other staff probably doesn’t make sense anyway.

3. Bring in more money. Well that’s what the potential tax increase is intended to do. But there are more ways to bring in money besides digging into the pockets of residents and home owners.  Many other jurisdictions bring in extra money simply by posting law enforcement on the Interstate highways that run through their land.

Virtually every county south of Colonial Heights posts traffic control officers on both I 95 and I 85. Don’t think so?  Take a nice little drive to South Hill or Emporia and there is always a police presence and they are always pulling someone over for speeding.  My cousin, who used to be a police officer for Greensville County, told me they always have a presence there and that there is an expectation of tickets being written whenever an officer is working the highway.

Now, take a look at Hopewell and I-295, or the million dollar mile as it has been called. Only a very short piece of 295 runs through Hopewell’s jurisdiction, but the city has learned that they can capitalize on speeders there virtually all day long.  Have you ridden on that section of the highway?  Hopewell has nearly a constant presence there, and the city reaps a huge reward for it.

My feeling is, if the city needs that money so badly, why not look there for a boost?  We have a perfect place to do so between the South Park Mall exits and the Temple Avenue exits.  It is a cash cow in the waiting.  Doing something like that makes more sense than digging into the pockets of the citizens, again.

Finally proof that homework is bad for you-I knew it!

No doubt I was the bane of several teachers’ existence when I was in any school.  Once I left school, I locked my thoughts of school work and home work in my locker and teetered out the front door—free at last. 

The idea of doing more school work after school let out was foreign in my mind.  Why on earth would anyone do homework?

I would like to dump all that on the teachers, explaining how good they were in covering the topic during class.  They taught to the slowest learner in those days, or at least I thought they did, and covered the salient points of the lesson at least three and often four times in each lesson.  So, in my mind, going home to reinforce an idea or concept that I picked up in the class seemed like a waste of time.  Besides, my fishing pole was always there and the stream behind my house was always stocked with trout.

No doubt my grades in high school suffered due to my philosophy of ignoring home work.  Instead of the A-B student I probably should have been, I was left on the C-pile and was totally unconcerned.  Even when one of my teachers posted our names and “average” on the chalk board as if that might be motivation, I still didn’t care.

In retrospect, a little extra effort there would have helped me a lot.  But I didn’t see it that way, and to me, most of the time, school was an encumbrance.  Yes, I have long since changed my mind about that, but at the time it seemed like the right course of action.

Even today the idea of homework gnaws at me.  Recently Heather Shumaker’s report about homework wrecking our kids appeared in Salon.com, an online journal.  Shumaker avers that no proof exists that substantiates homework as being a benefit for grammar school students.

Duh-huh!

“There is no evidence that any amount of homework improves the academic performance of elementary students,” Shumaker says in the article.

Well I have to agree with that.  In my gut, I feel this is true, but Shumaker goes further by citing several studies.  In the end, she says, “homework has benefits, but that the benefits are age dependent.”

What does “age dependent” mean?  Age dependent means that most of the homework our youngest students get amounts to busy work and a source for grading samples for the teachers.  It is not very effective in the learning process, and, while it may have some bearing in creating habits, the disruption to the family and the creation of the homework police is more detrimental.

Sure this is my summation (see opinion).  And, given my history as described above, I naturally have a bias.  But still, what good does a math worksheet with 10 add, subtract, divide, and multiply problems serve?  Most kids, by the time they have to deal with that, have already had the numbers thing drilled into their heads.  The multiplication tables, out to 12 or so, are immediately retrievable to most kids, I think.  We spend time reinforcing material that does not require reinforcing.  Do we really believe our kids are so dumb?

I realize I am fighting the current of popular belief here, but to me most homework is busy work.  Most homework, especially in elementary school, benefits only the teachers.  Meanwhile, it creates havoc in homes as parents try to deal with their kids’ reluctance to do homework, and often either “help” or in fact do it themselves.

Still, my experience in school as shown earlier, puts me on a different tack.  Yes, I have been subdued.  I realize that failure to comply with this Draconian practice will end up harming my grades.  So, I guess, I will continue to ensure that my kids “do their homework” despite knowing that the benefit of such is far less than what the Education coalition seems to believe.  That’s how we live today in this round hole-round peg, square hole-square peg, and color inside the lines society.

Add the GOP to list of Animals that Eat their Young

If one were to Google “animals that eat their young” you could access a page on The Week that lists seven animals that are known to do so:  sand tiger sharks, polar bears, spiders, hamsters, parasitic wasps, tiger salamanders, and chickens.  It’s a well-known phenomenon, but judging by the recent actions of the Republican party, I would have to think adding the GOP to this list would be a pretty good idea.

Forget that what the power brokers in the party are actually doing is undermining the process and attempting to influence the people’s choice. That is nothing new to American politics. In fact, that exact same philosophy is one of the main reasons we maintain that archaic system called the Electoral College. The College was put in place by the founding fathers to ensure that the citizens of the good old USA don’t make a colossal mistake and “ignorantly” elect a person who ought not to be elected.

Sort of sounds a bit like what the GOP establishment is trying to do right now.  They would like to upset the apple cart because they don’t like what they are seeing in the two candidates that are vying for nomination:  Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

Sure, the majority of their slings and arrows are aimed directly at Trump, who is the leader and who is the only person who really has a chance to be nominated before the convention. But they don’t like Cruz, either.

Don’t think for a minute if they are successful in getting this whole affair to a brokered convention that they would support either of the two apparent leaders. They would not. What they really want, or at least what Mitt Romney wants, is another shot. I suppose he thinks he would have a better shot at taking down a woman as opposed to his attempt to take down President Obama.

So, in their attempt to make this a brokered convention they have come out stridently against the front runner. They have thrown literally everything they could find at him, including Romney, and are looking for more things to trump up.  The entirety of it sounds like a grammar school playground fight, with all the sound and the fury of a huge battle because things aren’t going the way they want.

And the irony of the whole deal is impressive. How many remember the GOP demanding that Trump sign a contract to support the nominee and not break off and create a third party?  A third party, they suggested, would split the Republican vote and virtually anoint the Democratic candidate, presumably Hillary Clinton. And, yes it would.

So now we hear that some of the GOP would split off and have their own third party candidate. This seems strangely enough exactly like the plot of a stage comedy where you start with one premise and by the end of the play the premise is completely spun on its head. Think Comedy of Errors for instance.

But the election for a President of the United States is not a comedy, despite what other countries must be thinking about our process at this point. Everybody and their sister is out flailing their arms like Robbie the Robot and screaming “Danger Will Robinson.”  And what for?

The proper thing to do is to allow the process to move forward. If you want to dump Trump, the way to do it is to get people out to vote.  The way to get nominated, as Trump has been showing, is to expand the electorate.  Trump is doing his best to get that done. And, so is Cruz.

People are coming out to vote like they haven’t done since, dare I say it—since Ronald Reagan ran for office.

There are other issues that are pretty annoying. But the idea that the electorate is not wise enough to make a proper choice is not one of them. When the founding fathers stuck us with the Electoral College, they had just cause to think that something untoward might happen. The population was ill-educated and not many were well informed.

But today’s population is nowhere near that. Sure, we have people who aren’t college educated, but the majority of people have at least a high school education, and it is insulting for all these leaders to try to override their choices.  The people are speaking and the GOP elite are not listening.

Let the process run. A brokered convention will posit a losing candidate. And, when all is said and done, they need to back the candidate that We the People choose. Not to do so, and then to name someone completely different in a brokered convention, such as Romney, would ensure the end of the GOP.

Chomp away big boys!