This is one of the best descriptions of why bullying exists to a much greater extent in an educational environment as opposed to the professional world that I have read in quite a long time:
People often think bullying is a result of kids being kids. Its not. Its a direct result of placing them in the school system with its rules and authority apparatus. If you placed adults in an identical environment you would end up with bullying as well.
One of the main differences between school and the adult world is, in school if kids fight they will both be punished. You will often hear “I dont care who started it”.
In the adult world, whoever attacks is guilty of assault and the other person can defend themselves and will not be punished at all.
In the adult world, if someone is annoying you, you can get up and walk out. In school, you are essentially a prisoner.
Also, the school staff has to see with their own eyes an act of bullying. If a teacher sees a student punch another student, they will likely do something. If a student tells a teacher they were punched nothing will likely be done.
In the adult world, courts believe the testimony of victims.
Bullies are just kids who are using the system to their advantage. And thats only human nature. To stop bullying, what needs to change is the system so bullies are no longer rewarded and encouraged by it.
This was always my belief as I went through the public system and if you know me, you know how much I love the public school system.
I think the perspective one has to take is that you never ever start a fight but don’t be afraid of finishing one. That probably has a tendency to have some consequences but sometimes you have to let your kid take a stand while still trying to teach them violence isn’t always the answer.
It wasn’t really surprising to hear that home sales declined nationally in December 2009 as the First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit were set to expire and right on cue, Congress extended them to people who have signed a contract by April 30, 2010 on a new home (and closed by June 30, 2010).
I know we are looking to purchase a home relatively soon and hopefully everything should get wrapped up quickly so I don’t think this deadline will be an issue for us. For those of the homeowners who may have already owned a place in the past three years, there is also a rebate for them but it is a little less than the $8,000 rebate for first time buyers.
The official name of the tax credit is “The Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009” which has been extended into this year has established a tax credit of up to $6,500 for qualified move-up/repeat home buyers (existing home owners) purchasing a principal residence after November 6, 2009 and on or before April 30, 2010 (or purchased by June 30, 2010 with a binding sales contract signed by April 30, 2010).
The federal income tax credit for homebuyers has been extended and expanded to now include homeowners who wish to “move on” after 5 years of living in their current property, as well as first-time homebuyers.
First-time homebuyers, or those who have not owned in the last three years, can receive up to an $8,000 tax credit
Homeowners who have lived in a current home consecutively for 5 of the past 8 years can receive up to a $6,500 tax credit
Income limits are now $125,000 for singles, $225,000 for married couples
For more information, feel free to visit http://bit.ly/5D6mKg and review the 2010 Homebuyer Tax Credit details or check out a whole number of different places that have same information available..
“When faced with two choices, simply toss a coin. It works not because it settles the question for you, but because, in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for.”
Obviously my roommate Brian will argue me on this because that is all he likes to do on every argumentative statement. Oh well, he is still considered a Poster Boy around here.
What happens to an excessively drunk man who had a blood-alcohol level more than four times the legal driving limit and was looking for a fight? Well since he was in Philadelphia, he found that fight was physically assaulted, had his head smacked into the concrete floor, tossed into a metal garbage can and then beaten up some more — and all of that by two uniformed Philadelphia Police Officers.
According to the report:
Police charged Foley with harassment, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and resisting arrest; in August 2009, a judge acquitted him of those charges. Foley filed a complaint with the Philadelphia Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division (IAD). In November 2009, IAD sustained one charge against Corcoran for not filing a Use of Force Report. But IAD decided that Foley’s charges against Corcoran could not be proven.
In January 2009, just three months after Foley’s arrest in Old City, Corcoran punched a wheelchair-bound man in the face while on patrol in Grays Ferry. That man, too, ended up in the hospital. In that case, IAD found Corcoran’s use of force justified.
In this case, you have one side that clearly would have a motive to alter the truth of what possibly could have happened that night and then you have two other parties (the two witnesses and unrelated to the victim) who have absolutely no reason to do so.
There are three ways to think about what happened in Old City that Halloween evening: The first is that the cops’ version of events is accurate, and LeeAnne Mullins and I — who know neither each other nor Foley — either lied about or misinterpreted what we saw. The second is that it’s an aberration, which just so happened to occur outside this newspaper’s office and, consequently, drew the paper’s attention — to put it another way, perhaps it was blown out of proportion. The third is more troubling: What if this case was unique only in that it took place in front of patrons and tourists and celebrants and, yes, reporters — people who aren’t used to seeing cops behave this way? What if this behavior isn’t unique at all, it just usually happens in the city’s shadows, away from the public eye?
As you go on to read the rest of the story, it gets even more disturbing because when you have the city citizens wondering who they should turn to in cases of emergency when it is members of their very own Police Department who are committing these crimes.
“I was exclaiming, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,'” a witness testified. “Like, can you do something? Call the police. They’re already here.”
The scary thing throughout this whole ordeal is that it just not the Philadelphia cops at blame here; there are similar types of actions occurring all over the country without much act of accountability by their respective Police Departments or the judicial system. The United States has become such a nation of fear and continues to move towards an authoritative state where there is literally no one left to question the authority and those in power continue to get away with whatever they want.
Prior to reading the report, a very good friend of mine who currently goes to school in Philadelphia told me,
The cops sat us down after a snowball fight last night, saying inappropriate things. It was messed up.
I have known him for over nine years now and he is not one to comment on every issue that decides to come up so when he actually does, I make sure to listen because it definitely carries weight and authenticity.
I wrote about an incident just over a year ago titled “We Live In A ‘Police’ State” that talked about police brutality of a particular case in California. While power trips are to be almost expected by those in positions of power, especially those uneducated, what shocks me most is the lack of condemnation by fellow police and especially public officials.
How are the people supposed to trust a system to protect them when that very system is the one attacking them?
I have left this photo until the end of those with a weak stomach. It is a picture of the victim mentioned above in the Philadelphia incident.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD: This cell-phone picture captures Michael Foley toward the end of his encounter with Officer Kevin Corcoran on Oct. 31, 2008, in Old City.
Really makes you wonder when this type of stuff happens in public, what these guys are doing to the people when there isn’t a crowd around them and when they aren’t in the public eye. Let your voices be heard and make sure these types of police brutality doesn’t go unheard.
A half-century after Jackie Robinson’s history entrance into baseball — the number of black players is at the lowest level in almost 20 years at a mere 8% in the sport. This is a look at the racial breakdown of four sports (not including hockey).
