The (Not So) Latest
12/11/09: Students Fed Unsafe Food
An investigation by USA Today revealed that millions of American K-12 students are being fed meat that does not meet the safety and quality standards of most fast food places.
Every day, 31 million students purchase and consume meat donated to the schools by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). But much of this represents suppliers' bottom-of-the-barrel leftovers. The chicken served in cafeterias often comes from "spent hens," egg-laying birds that have been abused so long they are near death anyway, often diseased and certainly not tasty. Kentucky Fried Chicken refuses to buy such chicken meat, as does Campbell Soup Company. Meat from "spent hens" is usually used for pet food, but the USDA puts this chicken meat in K-12 cafeterias across America. Beef served in schools is subjected to less inspection and lower standards than that served in Burger King or Jack in the Box.
Key paragraph from the USA Today article:
[Professor J. Glenn] Morris, who used to run the USDA office that investigates food-borne illnesses, says the department's purchases of meat that doesn't satisfy higher-end commercial standards are especially worrisome because the meat goes to schools. It's not just that children are more vulnerable to food-borne illnesses because of their fledgling immune systems; it's also because there's less assurance that school cafeteria workers will cook the meat well enough to kill any pathogens that might slip through the USDA's less stringent safety checks.
In 1993, burgers sold by Jack in the Box caused an E. coli outbreak that killed four children and sickened hundreds more. After the lawsuits that followed, Jack in the Box greatly increased their safety inspection requirements, and they found that the cost of doing this was trivial: less than one penny per pound of beef. Other fast food chains quickly followed suit. But the USDA has not.
But hey, you may be thinking, it's not like anyone is forcing the kids to eat this stuff, right? They can just bring their own food.
Last month it was reported that a middle school in North Carolina is suspending students caught bringing in outside food. The principal claims this has nothing to do with the money schools make by selling cafeteria food to students. The principal claims it's a nutritional issue.
Yes, it sure is.
12/11/09: Time Warner Dumps AOL
For the last few years, we have asked youth-rights-supporters to boycott the anti-youth AOL. In the years since, Time Warner's association with AOL has cost them so much money they have now divorced themselves from AOL. We are, of course, happy to end our boycott of the remaining Time Warner brands as we continue to boycott AOL.
12/2/09: Cevin Soling on "The Colbert Report"
Once again we see that while Stephen Colbert may play a closed-minded wacko, he is one of the few TV hosts allowing Americans to hear a youth-friendly voice.
Check out Monday's interview with Cevin Soling:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c |
| Cevin Soling | |
11/25/09: Youth Rights Day Declared
With Youth History Month 2009 behind us, do you have to wait a whole year again for a day marked off from the calendar to celebrate youth? No. You need only wait half-a-year.
The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) has declared April 14 Youth Rights Day.
On April 14, 2010, I wonder what will be the big story in the mainstream media. Will it be youth denied the basic right to walk down a sidewalk? Or the media's own biases against youth? Or could the big headline that day possibly be "Middle-Aged Teabagger Whines about Paying Taxes Again"?
I love NYRA immensely. But do they really think they can get America's attention the day before Americans' income taxes are due?
Actually, this could work. If NYRA focuses on youth subjected to taxation without representation, some reporters may recognize this as a fresh angle on the usual tax story.
But if the media had that much sense, that much interest in fresh stories, and that much ability to recognize that youth are as important as other people, the media would not now be going out of business, one newspaper at a time, with news-consumers growing up looking to friendly, amateur blogs for their information rather than professional, but often hostile, news media.
We'll see on April 14 if our mainstream media have gotten any smarter.
11/11/09: Ageist "Study" Exposed as Fraud
Recently, Strategic Vision LLC released a survey supposedly proving that high school students are stupid. Their "scientific" survey of Oklahoma students revealed that 77% could not name America's first president and more than half could not even name our current two major political parties. The media, showing no skepticism, jumped at the chance to run more stories snickering about how dumb kids are.
Strategic Vision would have gotten away with it had their "findings" not caught the attention of Ed Cannaday, who spent years working in public schools before he became an Oklahoma State Representative. Concerned about education in his state, Cannaday took a closer look at the survey and found many details downright implausible, such as one out of ten students naming the two major parties as Republican and Communist. "Given the dialog of today, if they had said Republican and Socialist, then maybe," explained Cannaday. "But Communist? That's just not something that you throw out there any more. I don't think Sarah Palin even used that term."
The scientific method demands that study results be reproducible. So Cannaday set out to check those results. He had all the high schools in his district give students the Strategic Vision survey questions as a test. If Strategic Vision had honestly surveyed a random sample of those students, the results should have been the same.
They weren't.
Cannaday's results were far more positive for youth, far more plausible, and far more likely to be ignored by the media.
In Cannaday's test, 98% of students correctly named George Washington as the first president, much more than the 23% claimed by Strategic Vision. 95% correctly named the two major parties. And 81% identified Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence (Strategic Vision claimed only 14% could).
Youth get slandered often. But once in a while, the truth slips out.
11/11/09: New Content
We've extended our page on Youth History to include the exciting story of Louis Braille.
9/27/09: Rapist Polanski Arrested at Last
Saturday, authorities arrested filmmaker / rapist Roman Polanski. This is a great moment for child victims. Unfortunately the media, through bias or timidity, is whitewashing his crimes and bringing him sympathy he does not deserve.
Many reports are simply describing him as having pled guilty to statutory rape, leaving many to assume he's some Don Juan who simply forgot to check ID. What they leave out is that Polanski drugged the 13-year-old victim with Quaaludes (a tranquilizer) and yet she still said "no" and made an effort to fight him off as he sodomized her.
Prosecutors gave Polanski a generous plea agreement, allowing him to plead guilty to only statutory rape while prosecutors dropped the charges of forcible rape, unlawful imprisonment, giving drugs to a minor, and other charges.
Having accepted that generous offer, Polanski then changed his mind and fled the United States, living in French luxury these past 32 years. Despite his cowardly crime and his refusal to take responsibility for it, Hollywood has continued to give him lucrative jobs (no surprise to our readers) and even awards. When he flew to Switzerland this weekend to accept another film award, Swiss authorities finally grabbed him.
We can only hope he will soon be extradited to the United States and finally given the punishment he deserves. Over 32 years, his debt to society has accumulated much interest. Time to start paying.
More details here.
8/17/09: Give 'em Hell, Hillary!
In a public forum in the Congo, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked what her husband, former President Bill Clinton, thought of a recent trade deal. Her response, described by some critics as cranky, was to my ears quite beautiful:
Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not the Secretary of State. I am. So, you ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I'm not going to be channeling my husband.
Any youth advocate would have to cheer because the insulting question they gave Ms. Clinton was typical of the insulting questions thrown at American youth constantly. Every time a child or teenagers does something that gets him interviewed by a reporter, we always hear the question, "What do your parents think of this?" a question rooted in a line of thinking that goes, Only adults are important and only adults' opinions really matter, so when the news-maker is young, we must ask about related adults rather than about the newsworthy youth.
Thank you, Hillary, for standing up and denouncing such insult.
8/7/09: New Content
Thursday, John Hughes passed away. Though the filmmaker had been retired for years, his impact on youth culture is still felt, and we will miss him. In his honor, we have posted a look at John Hughes's pro-youth impact.
And John, if I ever get to walk past those pearly gates, I will certainly call your name.
6/14/09: Secret Abortions
Salon recently featured an excellent article on the dangers of abortion parental-consent restrictions: "I helped Teenagers get Secret Abortions." We've now added it proudly to The Pro-Youth Pages links page. You must read it.
5/27/09: New Content
Obama just announced his first pick for Supreme Court Justice. It's not good. Judge Sotomayor has shown hostility toward youth rights, so much so that she was willing to betray the First Amendment. Check out our article on Sonia Sotomayor.
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