Republican Messiahs

Listening to the debate in Congress and in the states, it has become clear that the Republicans have developed a messianic complex.

Democrats, in general, seem to believe that they were elected to do the job of making the country or state run smoothly and efficiently. During the campaign they tell us the way they think things should work. Once they get to the capitol they do what they can to make things work that way, but when push comes to shove it's more important to have the country continue to function than to get their way.

But that's okay, because a broad swath of progressives, moderates and independents voted for Obama and the Democrats in the 2008 election. It was obvious that all the people who voted for them didn't expect or want Obama and the Democrats to carry through on every single promise they made during the election. They sent Democrats to Washington to clean up the messes that Bush and the Republicans had made of the economy, the wars in the Middle East, international relations, and so on.

On the other hand, Republicans and especially Tea Partyers like Michele Bachmann seem to go to Washington with the delusion that they're doing the bidding of the people who voted for them if they ram through every crazy notion that ever spilled from their lips.

Bachmann is perfectly willing to let the US government default and lose our AAA bond rating. Or she pretends that nothing bad would happen, and all we really need to do is pay off creditors like the Chinese government, Wall Street, and wealthy individuals who bought treasury bonds, and stiff FAA flight controllers, USDA inspectors, and Social Security recipients.

Republicans won the House in 2010 not because the American people wanted the things the Tea Party was promising. They won because the people who voted for Obama in 2008 stayed home, and many independents were angry about the poor state of the economy (caused by Bush's errors) and the bailout (engineered by Bush) and bought into the rhetoric of the Tea Party. There were a lot of protest votes.

In 2000 Bush lost the popular vote 47.87% to 48.38% (winning 271-266 electoral votes). In 2004 Bush won by 50.74% to 48.27% (winning 286-251 electoral votes). In 2008 Obama beat McCain 52.92% to 45.66% (winning 365-173 electoral votes).

Clearly Obama and the Democrats had a much wider margin of victory in 2008 than Bush and the Republicans did in the 2000 and 2004 elections. For the first eight years of the century Republicans pretended that they were granted a huge mandate and were entitled to do absolutely anything they felt like. In 2006 and 2008 they were trounced by Democrats, who received an obviously much larger mandate.

But if the Republican House victories in 2010 indicated that the American people wanted massive budget cuts and no change in the debt ceiling, why didn't the Democrats' much larger victories in 2008 indicate that Americans wanted single-payer health care? Why are marginal Republican victories always mandates, and solid Democratic victories aberrations?

This country was founded on the basis of compromise, coming together for the common good of the people. The founding fathers didn't all speak in one voice, and they made serious compromises to make sure this country got started in the first place. Compromises like allowing slavery -- which had essentially been outlawed in England since 1701.

Obama has been running the country from the middle. He gave up on single-payer health care and instead accepted a plan like Romney's in Massachusetts, a plan that Bob Dole -- who deep-sixed Clinton's health care initiative -- supported. He accepted Republican insistence on extending Bush-era tax cuts. And on and on. Attempts to portray him as radical and liberal are simply lies. He's right down the middle of the road on just about everything -- much to the annoyance of many Democrats.

And that's not a ploy to get reelected. That's how all politicians should operate: work together to get the job done and the best deal for the greatest number of people.

Americans in general are disgusted by politics. They hate it when politicians promise something and don't deliver. But they hate it more when politicians can't even do their basic job and keep the country or state functioning properly.

Republicans elected to Congress are not messiahs anointed by god to enforce Grover Norquist's will on the country by throwing us down the rathole of default. They were hired by the American people to keep the country running smoothly.

They need to get on with it.

The Times They Are A Changin'

I've been coaching tennis this summer with a very diverse group of instructors. Most of them are much younger than me and are in college or just starting. A few were my tennis students long ago and have since grown up and are now teaching with me after having played high school varsity tennis.

Over the course of the last few weeks, I have attended several of their grad parties. At one of these parties, in honor of my friend Ben, something crystalized for me that I had been thinking about for awhile. Ben is Chinese and has several Chinese friends who were all at the party. Two of his closest friends are Penny (also Chinese) and Sam (from India). Ben, Penny, and Sam are all tennis instructors with me this summer. Sam and I were chatting as we watched Ben and some of his friends play Foosball.

"I've never seen so many Asians standing around a Foosball table before," Sam remarked. They all laughed and I turned to look at him.

"You're Asian," I stated
"Well, I guess so...South Asian," he replied.

Later at the party, Penny told me about this web site and showed it to me on her iPhone.

High Expectations Asian Father

Her friends (also all Chinese) chimed in and said it was exactly what their fathers were like as well. I began to notice at subsequent social gatherings and during tennis lessons how Ben, Penny, and Sam were all very relaxed about race. In fact, they weren't simply relaxed...they were decidedly not PC at all. I've noticed this in school as well. Towards the end of the year, I overheard the following conversation.

"Hey, Marcus, I can hear you all the way around the corner," Tim (a white student) said, "it must be because you are black."
"Black people are loud," Marcus replied, "It's because of all that friend chicken and watermelon."

We hear stuff like this all the time and it's mostly done just to get a rise out of the staff. But after a conversation with Ben, Penny, and Sam, I think it's more than that.

"We just don't care," Sam said. "We're more open about this stuff. People are what they are."
"I actually don't like being Asian," Ben remarked, "In most photos, I look too Asian."
"I hate what Chinese culture did to my dad," Penny added, "He's an absolute asshole."

I'm sure part of this is your typical teenage apathy but I have to say I was shocked at some of what they were saying and, after some reflection, it was a pleasant surprise. Racism ends when no one cares anymore about epithets. Certainly when there is actionable hate behind them, we still have problems.

Like the gay issue, young people today are shaping a very different view of race. It's not framed in the classic PC vs. Bigot debate. It's completely different. New rules are being written every day and many people across the entire spectrum of debate on race are going to be metaphorically hit in the head with a shovel.

I don't think they are going to be able to handle it.

Not Good

I have to say I disagree with the recent federal court ruling that struck down Michigan's affirmative action ban. Affirmative action was necessary in the past but honestly is no longer needed. Back when it was a good idea, the power of the state to enforce biased hiring practices was suspect. This is no longer the case.

If you sit and really think about it, having a ban on hiring practices based on race actually works to the favor of those who want more diversity. If a company decides to not hire someone because they are black, for example, the state can get up their ass with a tweezers for discrimination. In other words, you can't refuse to hire someone because they are black as well as hire them because they are black.

Supporters of affirmative action argue that it gives people of diversity more opportunities. I say that it's another way of avoiding the real problem which is our education system and, more importantly, our culture in general. We do indeed live in a society of entitlement largely pushed by the mass media as well as the symbolic interaction of our daily lives. Having affirmative action makes this worse and gives the true believers another reason to hate the government. We need less of those reasons.

Currently, California, Washington, Nebraska and Arizona have banned affirmative action. I think California's wording should be a model for how to move forward on this issue.

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

Now that's civil rights!

High Taxes?

Take a look at this chart.

Oh...really? I thought that US Corporations where woefully overtaxed compared to other nations.

Here's a nice breakdown of the table if you are interested.

And to think I actually believed some of the lies about corporate taxes. I was even willing to give the captains of industry the benefit of the doubt. Fool me once...

What Do You Want Him To Do...Pull Your Car Around For You?

A few days ago, President Obama called on Congress for a much bolder plan to reduce the deficit. He asked for double the amount of reduction ($4 trillion dollars) that is currently being discussed. This was in line with the Bowles-Simpson plan from last December. The GOP response?

Nope.

They only want $2 trillion in reduction.

I'm trying very hard to find the logic in what they are doing but I can't. In all honesty, I feel for John Boehner He's a good guy but he simply doesn't have the votes because his party has been hijacked by true believers. Like the socialists who believe in their utopia, the Tea Partiers have their own unicorn fart land and they are not budging from attempting to realize their warped dream. The word "compromise" isn't in their fucking vocabulary. Part of me thinks they would love it if the government defaulted on its loans so then it could be destroyed and everything could then be privatized. They may yet get to realize their dream.

Rick Ungar breaks this down quite nicely over at Forbes.

What Boehner likely understands – better than those who he is supposed to be leading – is that the GOP is permitting the fundamental change, long at the heart of the conservative cause, to vanish into thin air and that it is happening in the name of protecting corporate subsidies that are the very antitheses of a free market economy – another of the inviolate tenets of conservative policy.

I've been saying that for the last couple of weeks. At least Ungar has an explanation to my confusion.

I don’t know about you, but I can only think of one other explanation – fealty to the wealthy corporations and wealthy individuals who keep your Republican leadership rolling in the campaign cash so they can remain in their powerful jobs.

I fear we are witnessing one of the most perverse and dangerous games our leaders have ever embarked upon. I’m stunned by the sheer audacity of these elected officials so ready to play chicken with the financial lives of so many simply to benefit a very few.

And yet people keep supporting them. As Maher said the other day, I get the 1 percent that support the GOP. What I don't get is the other 99 percent. No doubt, this is one the greatest achievements in propaganda in the history of the world. A very small (and wealthy) group of people have convinced a very large group of people that anyone who makes up the the entire left half of the political spectrum (as well as the 25 percent to the right of center because, let's face it, they're RINO pussies) are actively working to destroy our country when in reality the complete opposite is true.

The GOP has a chance here at very serious entitlement reform but they are letting in slip through their fingers. Even Krugman admits that Obama is out GOPing the GOP. So far the markets are acting like the debt ceiling will be raised and there will be a deal. I guess I'm not so sure.

Uncertainty Unhinged

Oh, I'm sorry, did I say rich? I meant "job creators." Yes. That's actually a prevailing theory on the right...that Obama's rhetoric towards Wall Street has been so hostile that is has created an uncertainty in the business community because he called them fatcats once and they're still suffering from some sort of jobs creating disorder...like he burst into the bathroom while they were trying to pee and now they can't go at all.

When did the business community become so sensitive that we have treat them like some rare and exotic animal? Don't startle them or they'll fly away! We need to sooth them so they can nest here and lay their magic eggs full of jobs.

And that's the end of all this uncertainty bullshit. Thanks again, Bill!

Submissive?

Listen to this quote from Marcus Bachmann, husband of GOP presidential hopeful, Michele Bachmann.



I'll leave the jokes about how Marcus Bachmann is so clearly gay to the stand up comics.

Of course, my first reaction to this was to question whether or not this was a voice inside my head:) After I realized (like so many other voices) that it was, in fact, real, I thought about something that Ms. Bachmann said a while back. In a speech to congregants of the the Living Word Christian Center in 2006, she stated that she pursued her degree in tax law only because her husband had told her to. “The Lord says: Be submissive, wives. You are to be submissive to your husbands,” she said.

So, does that mean that if she is elected she will start homosexual re-education camps for the barbarians?

More importantly, if she is submissive to her husband, won't that mean that he is the actual president? And an unelected one at that!

Bachmann's Oath

To become a candidate for president in the Republican Party, you are expected to take half a dozen oaths to assuage the doubts of fanatical special interest groups. These range from Grover Norquist's extortionary pledge to not raise taxes, to the anti-abortion pledge Rick Santorum is exercised over, to Michele Bachmann's recent marriage pledge.

Bachmann is taking heat for taking the pledge because it implies that blacks were better off as slaves:

“Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.”

This ignores the fact that slaves were often forbidden to marry, were told who to breed with, and were often used as sex toys by their masters. Slave families were split up and children sold like calves. The pledge is full of other nonsense that has no bearing on anything, such as married couples having better sex and "robust ... childbearing is beneficial to ... security." Yes, we can screw ourselves silly to foil the terrorists!

All these pledges serve only to prevent our legislators from properly carrying out their official duties by a form of blackmail.

The only pledge members of Congress should make is the oath to uphold and defend the Constitution that they take when they assume their office. Any other oaths are a conflict of interest that places their true loyalties in question.

Murdoch's Empire Crumbling?

The phone hacking scandal in England took an abrupt turn when Rupert Murdoch's son announced that the News of the World is being shut down. The British tabloid has been accused of hacking the voice mail accounts of numerous people, from royals (reporter Clive Goodman and PI Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for this crime), to kidnapped children, to victims of the Underground bombing of 2005, to family members of soldiers who died in Afghanistan. There are also allegations that police were bribed in the affair and that the paper interfered with a murder investigation involving employees of the paper, a matter which the police chose not to prosecute because of their fear of the paper's power.

What's surprising is that Murdoch decided to shutter the entire paper, rather than sack the individuals who actually committed the crimes. This seems to be a move to offer a sacrificial goat in order to get what he really wants: the British pay television company British Sky Broadcasting. He's trying to buy the broadcaster, but is meeting opposition from those who think Murdoch has too much power in the media.

These crimes have been swirling around for years now. Earlier this year Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's press secretary, former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, resigned from that position earlier this year because of questions raised again this past January (he resigned from the paper in 2007). According to The Guardian, Coulson will be arrested tomorrow.

What does this British scandal have to do with the price of coffee in America? It shows a blatant disregard of the law and ethics in the management of News of the World, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox Broadcasting, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, etc. These practices have been going on for 10 years, and it's inconceivable that Murdoch knew nothing.

Politicians in Britain walked in fear of News of the World, and even Conservative PMs are rejoicing in its demise. In Fox News Murdoch has successfully created a media outlet in which truth is subservient to political machinations; those who watch Fox are the least well-informed news consumers. With The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch is able to shape and perhaps control the financial markets. With News of the World he has demonstrated he knows no shame, has no ethics and has outright contempt for the law.

Which brings us to the age-old question that must be asked of all men at the top of corrupt enterprises: what did Murdoch know about this scandal, and when did he stop knowing it?

Brooks Hits A Grand Slam

Well, David Brooks has done it again. His latest column works as a nice book end with the Cohen piece from two days ago.

That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

No shit. But why?

The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name.

Well, the name of their theory should be called the "You're Wrong and Stupid" theory as that is largely the only concept in which they are capable of working. That and rich corporations are Jesus.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities.

Yep. Every climate change scientist is an apocalyptic nut. Any person who is smart and a liberal is a condescending and arrogant elitist trying to force his opinion on the poor, sweet and innocent conservative whose ignorance is purely imagined by the fascist progressive. Please ignore the profoundly ignorant things conservatives say as they are really the fault of Katie Couric.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms.

Either with us or agin' us! Liberals/Progressives=all bad and Hitler.

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency.

Well, their ideology dictates that fucking people over is enlightened self interest.

The good news is that Americans (based on several polls) want taxes raised, want to end subsidies (which distort the market just as much as taxes), and will undoubtedly now blame the right for any problems that result from a possible government shut down.

In other words, a very massive turn out at the polls next November. So please, do continue...:)

The Wisdom of Youth (Part The Second)

I informed Michael, my tennis student today, that most of you don't believe that he exists. His response?

"Well, isn't that just trying to prove you wrong...just like I said?"

We can learn much from the youth today.

Cult or Gang? You decide!

Not long ago I urged Markadelphia to swear off accusing conservatives of belonging to a cult. I said the cult meme wasn't really very accurate, the Republican weren't all that monolothic and dogmatic, they actually were more tribal or clannish, and so on. Imagine my chagrin when Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote an opinion piece reiterating Mark's thesis.

I still don't go along with the cult idea. The Republican Party likes to think of themselves as a band of revolutionary firebrands or guardians of an ancient and noble trust. But they're more like a criminal gang that sees its influence slowly leaking away as new people move into the neighborhood.

They've still got a mean streak a mile wide, and aren't afraid to bust a lot of heads to get what they want. They don't mind smashing up the store fronts of our economy to keep the protection money flowing to the oil company capos. And they're perfectly willing to kidnap the opposition's debt ceiling and hold it hostage, even if it'll bring the whole neighborhood down around their ears when the mob from Beijing comes to collect their cut.

A Fourth of July Voice Inside My Head

I find it highly amusing the deep need that some have for me to comment again on Kevin Baker's site. A couple of them email me every new post that he puts up. Odd, considering each one essentially torpedoes the "voices in my head" bit.

Take this latest one, for example.

First of all, huh? I've never heard of this. I love the 4th of July and celebrate just like everyone else. And what a fine example of adolescent behavior we have here as well. So much for claiming to be "adults."

No, stupid fucking liberals, I fucking will not shrink from embracing the beauty and freedom encased in our Celebration of Independence.

Wow. Nice 8 year old boy with a temper tantrum drawing at the end as well, "voice" in my head.

Happy 4th everyone!

The July Invasion

It's summer and it's hot: the perfect time to go to an air-conditioned movie theater and chill out for a couple of hours. Later this month Cowboys and Aliens, with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, will hit the theaters. From the trailer it looks like a typical alien invasion flick, with plenty of explosions, along the lines of Independence Day, or TV shows like Falling Skies and V.

Last year Stephen Hawking raised some eyebrows when he said that humans should avoid drawing attention to ourselves, because interaction with aliens would turn out poorly for us. Others, like skeptic Michael Shermer, pooh-poohed the idea that aliens are dangerous. Shermer says evil aliens are a "myth" and we have nothing to worry about.

So, how likely is it that there are planets like Earth, and that there are intelligent aliens living there, that those aliens can travel between stars, and that aliens will come here?

These days astronomers are finding Earth-sized planets at an amazing clip. Since its launch in 2009 the Kepler telescope has identified almost a hundred earth-sized planets, hundreds of super Earths (rocky planets bigger than earth), and many hundreds of gas giants like Neptune and Jupiter.

Kepler orbits the sun in the same orbit as Earth, trailing millions of miles behind us. The telescope is pointed at a small patch of sky in the area of the constellations Cygnus, Lyra and Draco. Kepler detects planets when they "transit" their stars. That is, when the planet comes between its parent star and Kepler. A planet transiting its star reduces the star's observed brightness ever so slightly. The amount of light blocked roughly indicates the size of the planet. Results are often verified by examining the tiny wobble that the planets cause in the star's position, to give an estimate of the planet's mass. (Stars actually orbit their planets too, but the amount of motion is relatively small.)

For Kepler to detect the planet, it has to be in a very particular orbit around its star: it must be orbiting its star in the same plane in the direction of us and Kepler. The odds of that happening are, uh, astronomically small. Which means that if we're detecting hundreds of planets by their transits around the hundred thousand or so stars we're observing, there are probably many, many thousands more that we can't see because their orbits are in a different plane.

So now we know there are almost certainly billions of planets out there, and that planets similar in size to Earth are probably very common. What we don't know is how many of them have atmospheres like ours, and how many have life, and how many have intelligent life. Astronomers like Frank Drake have tried to calculate this, with his famous Drake Equation. The honest truth, though, is that we have no way of knowing what values to assign to the terms of that equation.

So, is Hawking justified in fearing that aliens would be dangerous? His basic thesis:

“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Shermer represents the other view:

I am skeptical. Although we can only represent the subject of an N of 1 trial, and our species does have an unenviable track record of first contact between civilizations, the data trends for the past half millennium are encouraging: colonialism is dead, slavery is dying, the percentage of populations that perish in wars has decreased, crime and violence are down, civil liberties are up, and, as we are witnessing in Egypt and other Arab countries, the desire for representative democracies is spreading, along with education, science and technology. These trends have made our civilization more inclusive and less exploitative. If we extrapolate that 500-year trend out for 5,000 or 500,000 years, we get a sense of what an ETI might be like.

Shermer is being naive. Even if we posit that galactic civilizations advance socially and morally, not every group or individual will be so enlightened. We have plenty of examples today of dictators who murder their own people, oil companies that turn countries like Nigeria into a swamp of toxic oil residues, and criminals who traffic in sex slaves -- even in our own country.

Any galactic civilization capable of interstellar travel would have the technological wherewithal to give small gangs of thugs or even one individual the capacity to drive our entire civilization into the stone age. Given a base on the moon, we could do this ourselves. With lunar mass drivers (electromagnetic catapults) we could bombard terrestrial cities with rocks that would strike with the force of an atomic bomb (as described in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

And even if an alien civilization is truly benign, the discovery of its existence could have a very destructive effect on the fragile psyche of humanity. If we detected an alien spacecraft heading our direction, reactionary elements on Earth could very well bring about Armageddon before the aliens even got here.

So Hawking is right that we shouldn't be intentionally sending radio signals into the void. It's very unlikely that anyone will pick them up, but we certainly shouldn't be trying to draw any attention to ourselves. At least, as long as we have no means to protect ourselves from a space-faring civilization. Why take an unnecessary risk?

But it seems doubtful that any alien civilization would bother coming to Earth. If they have the capacity to travel between stars, there's nothing here that they couldn't get in their own solar system, or a closer one, with less effort. It would be far easier for them to terraform other planets and moons in their own solar system, or build their own habitats in space from raw materials in their asteroid belts or the moons of gas giants. No matter how you slice it, they'll never be able to send enough colonists to other solar systems to relieve their own population pressures; in the end they'll have to learn how to live within the means of their own solar system or perish. The only ones that would come here would be small groups of explorers, exploiters, or people with an ax to grind.

But still and all, Earth is the only planet we've got. We should be very careful with it.

What Would Ronald Reagan Do?

Well, it's pretty easy to find out.

Ghost of Gipper looms over GOP

More importantly, what does his top economic guy say now?

Americans Support Higher Taxes. Really.

Get the message yet?

The Wisdom Of Youth

Before our match yesterday, one of my tennis kiddos (Michael) arrived early for our match. Since it was extremely hot, I told him to hold off on warming up and sit in the shade for a while. We started chatting a bit about Wimbledon and at a lull in the conversation he asked me if I was into politics. The inner me chuckled.

As I do with every student, I asked him what he thought. Nearly all students are more interested in talking than listening. The first words out of his mouth?

"I want you to know that I'm a Democrat. It seems that all the Republicans are about these days are trying to prove people wrong."

Out of the mouths of babes...

Models of Efficiency

A central dogma of conservative ideology is that private corporations and capitalist moguls are the best at what they do. They deserve gargantuan paychecks because they make it rain money for everyone else.

Let's see how that how that plays out for two sports franchises: the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Green Bay Packers.

The Dodgers recently filed for bankruptcy. How did one of the sports' most vaunted teams fall so low? Two words: Frank McCourt.

McCourt bought the team from NewsCorp (Fox) in 2004 for $430 million. McCourt made his wife, Jamie, CEO. The couple separated in 2009, during the playoff season. After the Dodgers were eliminated she was fired as CEO and filed for divorce.

Forbes valued the Dodgers at almost $800 million in 2010, an increase in value obtained largely by jacking up ticket and concession prices year after year. But now McCourt has bankrupted the team in order to pay off his divorce settlement. Another scandal involved the charitable Dodgers Dream Foundation, which was run by Howard Sunkin, one of McCourt's cronies who helped with his divorce. Sunkin's salary was $400K, a quarter of the foundation's entire budget.

McCourt, a prototypical high-flying capitalist Master of the Universe, has driven the Dodgers into the ground. He used the team's TV deal as a private piggy bank to pay $150 million for his wife's divorce settlement. He let his personal problems bankrupt a national icon.

On the other hand, we have the Green Bay Packers. Named the "best sports franchise" by ESPN The Magazine, the Packers have fans all around the country.

The Packers are a non-profit public corporation. Over 100,000 people hold the 4.7 million shares of Packer stock. The president is the only paid executive. The other members of the oversight committee provide their services gratis. In short, the Packers are the closest thing you can get to a government-run pro football team.

Green Bay is not a big town, but it manages to field a team that can win national championships. Cities with 10 times the population are told they're too small a market for professional sports franchises.

The Packers should be the model for all major-league sports franchises. Most every other team in the country has threatened to pick up and go to another city if the city or state doesn't pony up a billion dollars for a stadium. A stadium where there'll only be 13 four-hour home games a year. Given the average life-span of a stadium these days is only 20-30 years, this is not a good deal.

The Vikings are begging for a stadium in Minneapolis. Vikings owner Zygi Wilf claims they need one because the Metrodome is old and doesn't have the right facilities for luxury boxes. I might be inclined to build a stadium for the Vikings if they were organized like the Packers, and were certain to stay in town forever. But why should we pay a billion dollars for a stadium where millionaire CEOs can watch millionaire players toss a ball around for a billionaire owner? To add insult to injury, those luxury boxes are paid for by corporations, which will claim them as expenses and deduct them from their taxes. So I get to pay for the stadium and for the CEOs to watch it in sybaritic comfort.

Worse, if Wilf pulls a McCourt and bankrupts the Vikings, the team could be taken over by the league and sent to another higher-bidding city, leaving us with a billion-dollar white elephant.

I'm sure the Packers have their problems. But private corporations like Frank McCourt's Dodgers by their very nature are rampant with nepotism, cronyism, corruption and backroom deals. The slavish devotion conservatives pay to guys like Frank McCourt, Donald Trump, Donald Keating, Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay and the like makes no sense if you're interested in efficient, well-run corporations that do well for their shareholders.

Conservatives insist that government is inherently inefficient, wasteful, filled with cronyism and corruption. But as we've seen over and over again, private corporations are just as prone to these ills.

The difference is that with government we choose who's running the show. We have the right to see what's going on. And when we watch the process we see how messy and noisy and annoying it is. Because everyone gets their say, and government officials have to listen. Or we fire them in the next election.

Corporations don't work that way. They can hide all their dirty laundry beneath a veil of secrecy, so we don't see all the ugliness. The CEO dictates his decisions and fires any dissenters. The board of directors -- the only constraining force on the CEO -- is composed of other corporate CEOs who are only too happy to rubber-stamp the CEO's decisions, knowing that he will in turn rubber-stamp their decisions because he serves on their boards.

Only occasionally, as with Frank McCourt, is the veil of secrecy ripped away, when their greed and stupidity outpace their capacity to cover it all up.

So, which is more efficient? Frank McCourt's personal Dodgers fiefdom? Or the Green Bay Packers' non-profit public corporation?

About Time

Most of the time, I get nauseated when the left bitches about President Obama. They really have no fucking clue what kind of country we live in today. For the most part, this is especially true when they whine about the president not being tough enough.

But today, I have to say, I was very happy to see the president call the right on their bullshit during his press conference today. The position the right has taken on taxes is so ludicrous that it's embarrassing given reality. Thankfully, most Americans are not with them.

Politifact has an iPhone app, b to the w, which is pretty mega and only $1.99.

And check out this poll.

26 percent blame President Bush, 25 percent blame Wall Street, 11 percent blame Congress and just 8 percent blame President Obama. In all honesty, this poll is just about the right distribution for blame. The other 30 percent could probably be a variety of other sources including the American people themselves.

All of this tells me that the doom and gloom about the president and the Democrats losing in 2012 is terribly short sighted. Most Americans aren't buying the narrative that the GOP and other parts of the right are peddling. It doesn't add up. They simply don't have any solutions for our problems and it's very clear that their past efforts have completely failed.

All they really have left is the media which they fake scorn every chance they get. Without them, I doubt anyone would pay attention to what anyone says on the right. They'd have their own little world where they could blow bowels about fake problems and the rest of us can get on with actually making this country a better place.

Uncertainty

There's been a lot to talk lately about how President Obama's economic policies are causing uncertainty. This is the reason conservatives are pointing to when defining our sluggish economy. Stirring up phantom fear is nothing new for them so it's not surprising to me whatsoever. And I still can't figure out how less regulation is going to help our economy to take off after less regulation nearly destroyed it. The facts are there. Some people don't want to listen.

But if you want to talk about the unknown, here is an article for you that I save from late last year. It also explains how less regulation was (and still is) a large part of our problem.

The banks in this group, which is affiliated with a new derivatives clearinghouse, have fought to block other banks from entering the market, and they are also trying to thwart efforts to make full information on prices and fees freely available.

Really? I wonder why?

Banks’ influence over this market, and over clearinghouses like the one this select group advises, has costly implications for businesses large and small, like Dan Singer’s home heating-oil company in Westchester County, north of New York City.

This fall, many of Mr. Singer’s customers purchased fixed-rate plans to lock in winter heating oil at around $3 a gallon. While that price was above the prevailing $2.80 a gallon then, the contracts will protect homeowners if bitterly cold weather pushes the price higher.

But Mr. Singer wonders if his company, Robison Oil, should be getting a better deal. He uses derivatives like swaps and options to create his fixed plans. But he has no idea how much lower his prices — and his customers’ prices — could be, he says, because banks don’t disclose fees associated with the derivatives.

“At the end of the day, I don’t know if I got a fair price, or what they’re charging me,” Mr. Singer said.

But wait...I thought that the free market took care of every one.

The marketplace as it functions now “adds up to higher costs to all Americans,” said Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates most derivatives. More oversight of the banks in this market is needed, he said.

Wait...huh? More regulation? That can't be possible!!! I'm afraid I don't understand.

I thought that in the free market we had a choice about all this stuff and this article not only says that we don't but members of these private banks set the rules and make the choices for us.

Well, at least I can rest comfortably knowing that Dodd Frank is in place and the GOP, ever the supporters of the middle class working man, will make sure that fairness rules the day.

Mr. Gensler wants to lessen banks’ control over these new institutions. But Republican lawmakers, many of whom received large campaign contributions from bankers who want to influence how the derivatives rules are written, say they plan to push back against much of the coming reform.

Or not.

The simple fact that no one knows how far and deep the derivatives market goes is an uncertainty that should be scaring more people. But since there's a lot of money involved and everyone's rich, there's no way it could be their fault if anything goes wrong again.

No fucking way.

Too Fucking Good!

This just popped up in comments down below in my post regarding Clarence Thomas. I decided to bring it out front because it's just that good!

Even without the other shenanigans in his home town, the Citizen's United decision and Ginny's organization allow Thomas to collect an unlimited amount of cash from corporations under the guise of his wife's salary and "foundation" income. If it looks like a payoff, and smells like a payoff, it is a payoff.

The guy doesn't say anything during oral arguments, doesn't ask any questions, doesn't have an ear for language, and his clerks seem to write all his opinions for him.

He says he doesn't like the adversarial back and forth of the courtroom, but that's exactly what trials and courts are about. He seems to be deathly afraid of putting his foot is his mouth and seeming like he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He simply doesn't belong there.

The only reason he's there is that foolish Democratic Senators let the Republicans guilt them into putting an unqualified and incompetent judge on the Supreme Court.

Mega!

Time to Go Buh Bye

I think it's time for Clarence Thomas to either recuse himself from some cases or step down as a Supreme Court justice. He's not fooling anyone anymore. A recent article in the New York Times illustrates this further.

His involvement with Harlan Crow should be more than enough but what's really insulting to the nation's intelligence is Virginia Thomas-wife of the justice. Ms. Thomas is an unabashed Tea Party activist who regularly raises money for their causes. She founded a group called Liberty Central and on their web site she is described as "a fan of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Laura Ingraham and other talk radio hosts. She is intrigued by Glenn Beck and listening carefully."

But hey, Ginny ain't on the SC, her husband is...so there is no way that he's biased, right?

How Would You Choose?

There's a pretty easy way to tell the difference between me and the current incarnation of the conservative movement in this country. If my only two choices were John Huntsman and Dennis Kucinch, I'd vote for the former. This is assuming I must choose. Now, given a choice between Barack Obama and Michele Bachmann, who do you suppose the right would vote for if they had to choose?

If you had to choose, who would YOU pick?

Not only does the answer speak volumes about who is more open minded but it also torpedoes the "both sides" argument.

Unions and Corporations: Not So Different

Mark included a comment from Jim in his recent post that got me thinking

"Jim: I agree that a materialistic culture and uninvolved parents are part of the problem, but it's pretty discouraging (although not surprising) to hear a teacher blithely dismiss the massive problems with union cronyism, self-interest, protection of terrible teachers, and total unconcern with educational outcomes."

The attitude Jim ascribes to teachers depicts perfectly the libertarian attitude of business.

(First order of business: you cannot argue that unions are somehow more corrupt than corporations. Enron, Wall Street and the crash of 2008, and hundreds of other examples indicate no sector of human activity is immune to corruption.)

Business is rife with cronyism (CEOs now all sit on each other compensation committees, which is why CEO salaries have skyrocketed faster than their workers' salaries in the last 30 years). Business leaders hire their sons, brothers, wives, pals and cronies all the time. Somehow that's all okay because, well, it's business.

The libertarian ideal is "enlightened self-interest." Self-interest is the lynch-pin of libertarian ideology. Nobody does anything for altruistic reasons in the money-grubbing world of the Rands Ayn and Paul. Why should union worker be any different?

Terrible businesses constantly battle regulations, which is how we protect society from corporations that have unsafe working conditions, release toxins and industrial waste into the environment that affect the health of us and our children, create unsafe products that hurt those that use them, and so on.

And businesses are totally unconcerned with broader societal outcomes resulting from their output: Pepsi and McDonalds create products that actively harm the health of the American people by making us fat, dumb and diabetic. Oil companies and car companies conspire to produce and fuel machines that pollute the air in our cities, killing people with emphysema, heart attacks and asthma. Cigarette companies make products that they know without doubt cause lung cancer. Power companies burn coal containing mercury that gets into our lakes and river, that we know causes irreparable damage to unborn children.

Yet these corporations are held up as noble captains of industry while unions are reviled as scum. Why is it right for corporations to be totally driven by self-interest and profit, and totally wrong for unionized teachers to have those same motivations?

When you come right down to it, unions are basically corporations run by the workers themselves, rather than some wealthy elite. Union workers are selling their labor for maximum profit, exactly the same way that oil companies sell gas.

Why all the hate for unions if they are, at their core, exactly the same as corporations except that they are investing their blood, sweat and tears instead of their capital? Why shouldn't they get as much as they can? That's just business, after all.

I just don't get American workers. So many are deathly opposed to unions, yet unions are really no different from corporations, except that they work to make the workers wealthier instead of the owners. Most American hourly workers suffer under a third-world serfdom, rather than the egalitarian European model.

Are Americans just afraid to buck the companies for fear of retribution? Is all the brave anti-union rhetoric really just them buckling under to corporate overlords who rule by some divine right of kings? People seem to think that hourly workers don't deserve to make a decent living.

It just doesn't make sense. Unions are made up of the workers. They can ultimately control the union, since the union is them. In most corporations the vast majority of hourly workers have no say. Workers don't have a vote in how the company runs at all. The only control they have is to quit. And in this economy, that's no control at all.

Only when hourly workers are united in unions do they have enough power to control their own fates, when they have enough power to make the corporations deal with their concerns. (This is of course different for certain kinds of high-demand, high-skill salaried workers like managers, marketers, and engineers, who often rise through the ranks to eventually run corporations.)

Why are so many Americans satisfied with being wage slaves? Where's their gumption? Where's their enlightened self interest?

The Conversation (Part The Third)

Wrapping up my conversation with Jim.

Mark: I took a day or so to think about this thread and re-read the comments as you asked and basically I'm more confused than ever. On the one hand you say that it's OK to disagree with you yet on the other hand you seem very offended if I do so. On the one hand you say " I'm tired of being the target for your bashing of some generic conservative stereotype you've created in your mind" and then bring up Sowell and say "It's helped me understand why liberals think the way they do." That seems contradictory. Thomas Sowell is a monumentally biased source when it comes to examining things of this nature. It would be the same thing if I used Howard Zinn as an example and said it would help you to understand how conservatives think.

I've thought about what you said regarding my arrogance and I think the problem is neither liberal or conservative. It may just be who each of us are as people. I thought of a way to best illustrate a key difference between us.

Ann has shared stories of how much of a handy man you are around the house and in general. I don't have much experience nor expertise in doing things like this and if we were to ever build something together I would not in the least bit be offended if you said things like "Think bigger...you're not using your spatial intelligence....look at it from this angle...." Or even "you're spouting (the carpentry version of) dogma." You have a greater knowledge and expertise in this area so I think it's fine for you to say them. I, however, have a greater knowledge set and experience in the area of education. So, when I said the things I did I was hoping you would think similarly as I would if we were building something.

I was wrong about this because you were offended and I apologize. I also wrongly assumed that because of our discussion (last October when I was in town) about Juan Williams being fired from NPR that you were weary of people that were offended all the time at everything and that people should just be free to say what's on their mind. Again, my mistake and I apologize for assuming things that I shouldn't have assumed.

Obviously, I still want to be your FB friend and I enjoy your other posts just as much if not more so than the political ones. I still laugh when I see an iPad and think about your women's hygiene joke post. Some of helped me a great deal spiritually and I thank you kindly for them. So, I guess until a I get some clarity and out of respect for your wishes, I will not comment on your political threads so we can hopefully avoid any misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

Jim: Mark, thanks for your engagement on this and your desire to not create conflict.

I think this misunderstanding does go to who we are as people -- we see things differently, and come to different conclusions. We have different ideas about human nature, the size and role of government, unions, corporations, individuals, and families; how free or controlled the economy should be; how to balance individual initiative and responsibility with compassion and justice.

Your analogy about carpentry is both helpful and unhelpful. We can't really debate whether an angle is 90 degrees, or whether a certain spacing of joists will carry a given weight load. But we can debate how to best design a deck, what it should look like, what you want it to accomplish, how much it should cost, or even how to build it once you have the plans.

But you pretty consistently argue as though there is only one right answer -- yours -- on education, the economy, unions, welfare programs, corporations, tax policy, and on and on. And anyone who disagrees with you can only disagree because they're not as educated, informed, or open-minded. What you communicate is that anyone who is intelligent and thoughtful will have to come to the same conclusions you do. You treat every subject as though your opinions and perspectives are obvious, factual, and indisputable -- like whether an angle is 90 degrees. But intelligent, thoughtful, and open-minded people can (and do) disagree widely about education, taxation, government power, social policy, and any number of things.

You need to be able to accept that my disagreement with you cannot simply be chalked up to ignorance, blindness, naivete, or ideological rigidity. I could just as reasonably say the same things about your disagreeing with me. But all that does is reinforce self-perceptions of wisdom and goodness, and let us think that people disagree with me only for bad reasons. That's what I mean when I talk about arrogance. It's arrogant to say "I'm the expert on education; I have the right insights and answers, and anyone who is intelligent will agree with me."

I would bet that I know the Bible better than you and most people. Yet I'm not offended that people disagree with me about it or interpret it differently than I do. Different people see things differently - it's simply a fact of life. What's offensive is when someone tells me that I have no good reason to disagree with their interpretation; that my understanding of Scripture is only based on ignorance, foolishness, or blind partisanship. That's what you consistently do in discussions on any number of issues. There's no room for honest disagreement based on different ways of looking at things.

Which leads me to the Sowell thing. It's frustrating that you have decided without even five minutes of research that because Sowell is a conservative he is incapable of presenting opposing views fairly. You admit you haven't read the book, so you clearly can't know what you're talking about. But once again, you've declared yourself an expert on this, so you don't even need to look at the reviews or a book synopsis. Sowell is simply beneath you. If you could step outside your partisan corner, you'd discover that the book I recommended is a well-regarded, scholarly analysis of the roots of modern political conflict in which Sowell examines source writings from some of the greatest economic and moral philosophers from all over the spectrum. Maybe you've read Sowell's opinions pieces and feel he's too partisan? You do realize it's possible to disagree with someone and still present their ideas fairly? I haven't read much of Sowell's op-ed work, but I am willing to accept that people can write in a differently based on the setting and format.

For someone who claims to be an expert on education and aspires to be an educator, the uninformed dismissal of a work you've prejudged to be unworthy of your consideration is discouraging and a little inexplicable. I regularly read people I know I'm going to disagree with. Isn't that supposed to be part of having an open mind -- of learning?

And the great irony of it is that Sowell does a great job of highlighting those different values, goals and outcomes people work towards in society -- rooted in different ways of looking at life. Sowell is not trying to say one is better than the other. They're just different. But understanding those different ways of looking at society, family, government, community, the economy, education, justice, etc. keeps us from becoming locked into thinking that "my way is best and everyone who is smart and good will agree with me." I suggested the book not to get you to agree with me or to make you read a liberal-bashing screed (why would you think I would, anyway?), but to help you understand why conservatives disagree with you, and why it doesn't mean they're stupid, uninformed, naive, foolish, or close-minded.

In any case, I appreciate your response and your apology, and I'd like to think that we can still be friends -- if there really is a basis of mutual respect to build on.

So, what did I take away from all of this? The first two things are entirely non political.

Whenever I am in a situation where my knowledge is lacking, I defer to the person who knows more about the subject. Jim does indeed know more about handy man work and would have no problem if he called me out on speaking with a misinformed tongue. But that's who I am not who he is. This means that I was really lacking empathy.

And regardless of where you are politically, some people don't like it when someone knows more than they do. I've had the same type of discussions with people on the left. If they quickly realize that I know more about a subject and I point out the deficiencies in their argument, they react as Jim did. I have no problem saying, "I can't speak to that subject because my knowledge is lacking." Others like Jim can get insecure about someone with a greater knowledge base and then become offended quickly. Clearly with Jim, I hit a nerve...one that he is insecure about. Again, this demonstrates a lack of empathy on my part and I should've realized to massively alter the way I communicate if I want to get my point across.

Odd, of course, because I thought he was tired of everyone being offended by everything. But I still take the blame for that because it's never a good idea to assume especially with subject matter like this.

The very frustrating part of all of this is by blowing a bowel the way he did about my conservative propaganda comment he is absolved from responsibility of saying something short sighted. In the deleted comment, one of the things I said centered around the fact that when you talk about unions, cronyism, and bloated bureaucracy, that's GOP dogma 101. There's no other way to describe it. Sorry, folks, but he has to take ownership of those words and by characterizing me the way he did (as some of you do all the time) it takes advantage of my natural tendencies as a liberal. I'll sit back and think about...wondering..."Hmm, maybe I am that way." If I then admit it, that absolves him of making an asinine statement like that and the problem was really me all along.

Essentially, if I call you on your BS, then you can just say that I am arguing with the voices in my head. It's quite a clever avoidance and denial tactic but it doesn't change the fact that they are your words. With Jim, notice how the conversation quickly became about me personally and the lack of honesty in his statement was long forgotten. This is the game playing that I have grown quite tired of as it wastes time and doesn't solve the problem which, in this case, is very important.

So, it's a fine line that I have to walk. I will try to be empathetic and likely consider alternative ways of communication with those who are like Jim. At the same time, however, I'm not going to ignore blatant propaganda out of fear of being personally attacked. The last time this sort of thing was ignored or treated lightly we ended up...well...where we are now.

The Conversation (Part The Second)

Continuing the FB discussion with my friend Jim.

Mark: Well, it's your page which means I have no say in what you keep or delete so no offense taken whatsoever. Let's see if we can look at this from another angle. Take a look at this story.

Teacher Blogged About 'Rat-Like' Students

In one posting on her blog she called her students, "out of contol," and "rude, lazy, disengaged whiners."

How exactly do the unions, bureaucracy and political cronyism cause this? What this women describes happens quite often in classrooms. While I find some of the things she said a bit harsh, she's mostly on the mark. This is what teachers have to deal with every day, Jim. Every day. The origin of this problem is a much larger problem with our entire society. It's a failure of parents, community leaders, schools, and peer groups. This is what happens when you allow the mass media to socialize your children.

Go to a school and ask young people to tell you...honestly...if they think they could win American Idol. You will be shocked by the answer. This is what they have been brought up to believe is LIKELY to happen. We have become a quite a bizarre culture when people think that the solution to their problems is winning the lottery.

So, when you characterize the education system in the way you do, you miss key points. Referring me to Sowell is simply further proof that you have embraced an ideology which excuses, encourages and falsely justifies dismissing any liberal point of view. This isn't arrogance on my part but encouragement to continue the work that you are doing in your community.

Essentially, the key problem with education is our overly indulgent society. We don't recognize the importance of education anymore. It's the Michael Jordan Generation. Yesterday, Jim put this video up on his FB wall.



"We want to pay you millions of dollars so we can avoid solving our problems." The last minute and a half or so is the MJG exactly. Until this changes, "failing" schools are going to continue to fail. Of course, he doesn't see this connection.

Jim: Mark, you are again missing the point. The point is not the article about schools, or what's going on in schools. If you'd tried to fairly read what I actually said, you'd see that we share a lot in common. But you are quick to misrepresent and then dismiss any viewpoint with which you disagree. It's lazy, simplistic, dishonest, and arrogant, and it makes discussion impossible.

And now you assert that I've embraced an ideology which dismisses liberal points of view -- because I read a book by Sowell? What is more illiberal than dismissing a book one hasn't read with an easy ad hominem attack? "Oh, it's by Sowell. I already know what it says." Who has the closed mind?

Yet you've decided that I'm the unthinking doctrinaire. And it's obvious that's what you've thought for a while, given your usual dismissal of anything that doesn't validate your views, and your unwillingness to even try to understand why people think differently from you -- you already know why. They can't have arrived at their beliefs through thoughtful analysis or reason; people who disagree with you are simply unthinking dupes and narrow-minded ideologues.

You don't shout people down with a bullhorn like the street-level illiberal thugs, but the effect is just the same.

Since you really believe that I've embraced an ideology which justifies dismissing liberal views (ironic, given that's what you're doing to me), then there really is no point in further discussion.

I'd like to be your friend, but friendship is based on trust and respect -- neither of which you have for me.

Mark: I don't think that about you at all, Jim. I really don't. You have focused in on the criticisms and ignored the compliments. Please go back and read the positives and weigh them accordingly with the other points. I would also urge you to read these words.

I do agree that there are problems with unions, bureaucracy and cronyism. But that is only a part of a much larger problem. Liberal and progressive points of view do have merit and I think you need to ask yourself if Sowell would accept any of them. Honestly, he wouldn't. I have read him extensively and it's frustrating to me that you would use him as an example for parameters that you are quite clearly beyond.

I can't stress this enough. Without you, a community would be lost. That's how much of an effect that someone like you can have in what ails our society!

Jim: Mark, that is exactly and clearly what you communicate. Go back and re-read your comments. The compliments mean little when what you repeatedly express is arrogant dismissal, scornful disdain, and the most uncharitable reading of what I write. I don't recognize hardly anything I believe in the words you put in my mouth. I'm tired of being the target for your bashing of some generic conservative stereotype you've created in your mind.

I have a hard time thinking of a situation in which you have taken seriously the appeals like this which I've made to you -- appeals to step outside your wordlview and try to fairly understand and interact with others who disagree with you. I've not said liberal points of view are without merit; you are the one who is incapable of granting that conservative views can have any merit. You consistently communicate that conservatives only hold their positions through ignorance, apathy, selfishness, and naivete. You've just told me that in this discussion, in fact.

I'm being defensive, or intemperate? You've told me that if I thought harder and looked more broadly at issues, if I studied as you have, then I could come to the insights you've reached. But since I haven't (which you know, how?), I'm only capable of spouting GOP dogma. Again, your assumption is that any thinking person who looks at an issue will agree with you. It's hard to imagine a more disrespectful, dismissive, arrogant response.

Until you can demonstrate any willingness to understand, fairly articulate, and respectfully interact with opposing viewpoints, I'm not interested in discussion. The door is open anytime you want to walk through it on those terms.

I had one more response after this which he has since responded to and I will put them both up tomorrow.

The Conversation (Part The First)

I have two friends that are evangelical ministers. The first one is my friend from the gym (Edward) and the other is a guy named Jim. Jim is married to my first ever girlfriend and lives in a different state. He and I are Facebook friends and we often have political debates. He is very, VERY conservative and I've noticed our debates usually follow a similar pattern as they do here.

This is a real drag for me because I'm far less obnoxious on FB than I am here and I really like the guy. I have made a concerted effort to be as fair minded as possible but I've sadly come to the conclusion that when someone (liberal or conservative) knows less about a subject AND is very passionate about it, look out! That's when things become seriously FUBAR.

We recently had a debate about education and, as it usually does, I pointed out some of his BS and the conversation degenerated from there. What's even more odd is that he has told me several times (on FB and in person) that he is sick and tired of people being offended by everything. He couldn't stand it, for example, when Juan Williams got fired over his airplane comment. Being PC is not his thing yet he still reacted the way he did when I was critical of him.

The whole conversation was very confusing so I figured I'd share it with all of you and hear your thoughts. The topics in education that are raised are reason enough to copy and paste it. In addition to being a "voice inside of my head," I think it is very illustrative of several things which I will comment on as we go along. Jim's posts are in blue and mine are in red because I'm a communist who wants to pollute children's minds with leftist views and propaganda meant to destroy the very fabric of our culture.

He started with this post followed by a  link.

Jim: As Albert Shanker, the late, iconic head of the UFT, once pointedly put it, 'When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.'

The Failure of American Schools

The failing schools meme is getting quite tiresome to me. Nearly all of the examples given aren't fully illustrative of the various complexities involved with the challenges in education today. Worse, they ignore the success stories because they don't fit the narrative.

Mark: There's a much larger issue here than just the go to whipping boy of unions. The way our children are being socialized has been over run by the corporate owned mass media. With many parents checked out for a wide variety of reasons (good and bad), educative and community leaders can't compete with the glitter of materialism. As an educator, I know I lose every time against LeBron James and Beyonce. Until parents and community leaders re-assert themselves as the primary agents of socialization, union problems won't matter.
That's why what you do in your community is so important, Jim. You and I are on the front lines. Now we need more people like us to make it better!

Jim: I agree that a materialistic culture and uninvolved parents are part of the problem, but it's pretty discouraging (although not surprising) to hear a teacher blithely dismiss the massive problems with union cronyism, self-interest, protection of terrible teachers, and total unconcern with educational outcomes.

Please also note that charter schools operating with the same demographic mix and social realities of public schools have produced embarrassingly better outcomes.

Mark: Of course they have because the parents are more involved. Parents that send their kids to charter schools are the same ones that put in the effort. That's why I've always been supportive of home schooling because the parents are pro-active. Honestly, we need more of it.

I think your example here is an outlier although there are problems with unions. The biggest one is tenure. I also support the president and Secretary Duncan in their efforts with Race to the Top and CORE. Under performing teachers need to be fired immediately.

In the final analysis, though, it comes down to parent and community involvement. Our children's school works well because people are involved.

Not so bad so far but I could tell from past experience that once I pointed out to him the fact about charter schools, things weren't going to go well. Someone else in the thread also pointed out that fired teachers in public schools sometimes end up in charter schools. Being wrong=big no no!

Now we get to the good stuff.

Jim: And key roadblocks to the parental involvement which contributes to to academic success are intransigent unions, self-serving politicians, and a bloated educational bureaucracy. There will always be a percentage of dysfunctional families or disengaged parents. The current failing system discourages and disenfranchises the parents who could be involved and making a difference in their kids' success. And that failing system is set up to protect the interests of unions, politicians and bureaucrats who rabidly attack any attempt to change the status quo.

Mark: Well, now you are slipping into conservative propaganda and I'm going to have to disagree with you that this is the totality of the problem. Unions discourage parent involvement? That's simply not true. Ask a few teachers if they find themselves doing more parenting these days. Ask them what they think about that

Again, I will agree that unions have problems and tenure needs to go. I will also wholeheartedly agree that more money is not the answer. We need the right people willing to put in the time with the right attitude which is looking at themselves like overpaid missionaries and not underpaid teachers. Have you examined the efforts of the president and the education department?

Jim: Mark, I can't take you seriously when you respond with silly comments like "You're slipping into conservative propaganda." You're hearing what you want to hear and filtering my comments through your own biases.

You say in one breath that unions and politics are part of the problem, but then turn around and say that getting rid of them wouldn't make any difference. That's incoherent. If you really believe that we'd have the same problems in education without self-serving unions, political cronyism, and entrenched bureaucrats, then there's no point in talking.

After this, I left a comment which I regret not cutting, pasting and saving because he deleted it.  The gist of the comment centered around how schools would look without unions, how I was tired of union bashing, and how he should try to not narrow his focus so much and look more at the complexities of the situation. He then sent me a FB message which said this.

Jim: Mark, I deleted your last comment. You clearly communicated that your positions have been arrived at through careful thought, open-minded investigation, and big-picture thinking (like most liberals), while my positions are merely small-minded, single-focus repetitions of "conservative dogma." You've not even attempted to fairly read what I wrote, but simply read it through the filter of your own preconceived biases. This has become par for the course.

I'm not offended that you disagree with me; it's that your disagreement is consistently unlined with an arrogance which says I would agree with you if only I thought a little harder and expanded my vision. There's no ground for friendship or even working together from that starting point. You tell me you respect me and what I do, but you consistently interact with me as though I'm an ignorant fool who can't have arrived at his positions through thoughtful reflection.

I'm telling you this because I like you and seem in many ways like a genuinely good guy. But your intellectual arrogance, uncharitable reading of what I post, and cavalier dismissal of differing viewpoints are rude and offensive. It makes it hard to have any kind of relationship other than that of a sparring partner, which I'm not looking for.

We're coming at issues from different starting points. I suggest you read Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" if you haven't already. It's helped me understand why liberals think the way they do. It would help you understand how conservatives think, so you might be less likely to dismiss, disdain, and scorn their viewpoints because they're different from yours.

Ah, Sowell. He had to come up, didn't he? I also knew that things were going to get worse when I started talking about the corporate owned mass media. I'll never for the life of me understand how people have mixed capitalism and Christianity. Any sort of attack on corporations is considered heresy. It's fucking nauseating.

I'll have the rest of the conversation up tomorrow.

Sunday Blessings

I wanted Georgia to be known as a state that was friendly and welcoming to people. And while I absolutely believe in the rule of law and that people should be here legally, I think we should be hospitable and kind and compassionate. There’s a real legitimate worker shortage where there is a real fear and perception that Georgia is probably not a state to be seen in if you’re of a different color. And I don’t think that’s what Georgia wants to be known as.

---Former Governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue,Republican

Between now and the next year, as we go to solve this problem, everybody knows there’s going to have to be a compromise on some sort of revenue increases. Grover’s old news. It doesn’t matter what he says, it doesn’t matter what he wants.

---Senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, Republican

Praise Jesus, they are out there after all. I am happy to be wrong and if this sentiment continues it may be more often...which means I might not have much to bitch about, right? Hope springs eternal!

Three Dogmas that Don't Hunt

Trickle-down economics. The war on drugs. Private health insurance. These three staples of conservative dogma have been tested for decades and have all failed to deliver on their promises.

Trickle-down economics is the theory that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will create jobs. It didn't work in the 80s when Reagan introduced it (and George H. W. Bush dubbed it "voodoo economics"), and it didn't work in the 2000s when George Bush introduced his tax cuts for the wealthy. In fact, some of the most prosperous times we had were in the 50s and 90s, when tax rates were higher than they are now.

The reason tax cuts don't create jobs is that corporations don't create jobs just to be nice. They do it to make money. And for the last 30 years it has been cheaper to create jobs in China, Singapore, Malaysia and Viet Nam. The only way jobs will be created in the US is to even the playing field, by raising the standard of living (and wages) in Asia, or by wage and benefit laws (as Europe does), or by restricting free markets in some way (which China and other Asian economies do), or by lowering the standard of living (and wages) in the United States.

The Republicans have been working to drive US wages down for years, and their efforts are now bearing fruit.

Employers constantly complain that immigration desperately needs reform because they can't find employees to do grunt work for slave wages, or high-skill labor for slave wages.

They have pretty much destroyed most private sector unions, and now they're working on public employee unions. They're hard at work destroying unions in the last sector of manufacturing where the US actually has a healthy export market -- aircraft -- with this Boeing flap.

Driving down wages in the US is ultimately foolish. This is the most desirable market in the world because we're so consumer driven. But if our workers aren't making any money, they can't consume. That's why Henry Ford starting paying his workers fair wages -- he realized that people had to make enough money to buy his cars.

Most of the people running American corporations today aren't like Henry Ford. Most of them didn't actually start their businesses. They either inherited the wealth (like the Koch brothers and Donald Trump), or they're just hired gun CEOs. The Fords of today are guys like Bill Gates, who happens to think that rich people don't pay enough taxes.

The war on drugs is another failed boondoggle. Declared by Richard Nixon in 1971, it involved military action in foreign countries where drugs are produced, drastically increasing prison sentences for drug offenses in the US, and even confiscating assets of people merely suspected of (not convicted of) drug crimes.

It has been an absolute failure. Our prisons are full. Mexico is practically a failed state because the criminals smuggling drugs into the US run rampant there. And drug use is unabated. We learned the lesson with Prohibition, why are we so dim-witted on drugs?

Lastly there's health care. The United States almost had socialized medicine in the 1950s. But many corporations at that time decided to provide health care as a fringe benefit, a cheap (at the time) recruiting tool. Since then, health care costs have been rising much faster than the general rate of inflation.

Countries like Sweden, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand spend much less than the United States on health care. They all have socialized medicine, and all have higher life expectancy rates. Some claim that this is due to more homogeneous populations and cultures, but that's wrong: Canada, Australia and New Zealand are immigrant nations like the United States, with a majority European ancestry, plus small indigenous populations and a wide variety of other ethnicities.

Some people blame rising health care costs on expensive new technologies. The odd thing is, similar technologies have increased productivity and reduced costs in all other industries in the United States. You would think that better imaging would drastically increase diagnostic accuracy and efficiency. New non-invasive arthroscopic surgical techniques have revolutionized orthopedic medicine: patients who underwent procedures that put them in the hospital for weeks 20 years ago now walk out the same day.

With all those advances, how can modern medicine be so much more expensive (in real terms and in terms of percentage of GDP) than it used to be?

The two big reasons are the health insurance model, and the health insurance companies themselves.

Insurance is just the wrong idea. Health care isn't like getting hit by a hurricane -- everyone will use health care, no matter how healthy they are. We all need immunizations and regular medical checkups, we all come down with colds, we all sprain our ankles, we all have children (or were once children). We all face the same dangers from epidemics like swine flu or E. coli outbreaks. The vast majority of us will have some kind of disease or require some kind of treatment for a non-trivial ailment, and the sooner we discover our problems the cheaper they are to deal with. And we all get old.

It behooves us all for everyone to be healthy -- sick coworkers cause us more work and cause employers to lose money. So it just makes sense to pool our resources to fund our common health care, the same way we pool our resources to fund fire and police departments. Certain individuals use the police and fire departments more than others, but we all contribute the same (unless we abuse those services).

But health insurance is a big business, and a very profitable one. These companies suck up a third of all our medical expenditures, and they're pure overhead. A bunch of useless corporate fat-cat bureaucrats, they decide who lives and who dies. And, like any big business, the only consideration is how much money they'll make. If denying coverage to those who need it most means a 20% boost in profits, that's what's gonna happen.

So, why do these three ideas retain so much currency among conservatives even though they haven't worked in 30 or 40 or 50 years? To quote Deep Throat from the Nixon era: follow the money.

Uh Oh

Tom Donohue may want to consider offering a more thorough explanation for this recent comment-a message for Tea Party folks who may vote against raising the debt ceiling.

We'll get rid of you.

Spokesman for Donohue say it was meant as a joke but it doesn't sound very funny ha ha to me. More importantly, this illustrates a very large crack that may be expanding between the business community and the Tea Party.

I've always said that one thing I share in common with some Tea Partiers is their disdain for big business and bail outs. If they played up this angle more instead of the otherism and paranoia about government, they might have me in their camp a little more.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out with the vote on the debt ceiling this summer and then with the election next year. If the business community does spend money to "get rid of these people" I think we'll see a fine example of who really runs this country.

Two Pieces

I've been struck by two pieces of writing lately. The first is a local fave of mine named Myles Spicer. On the whole, he and I are pretty well aligned when it comes to seeing clearly what so many miss.

The mantra of Republicans and conservatives has always been to bless the private sector and urge government to "get out of the way, and let capitalism work." Great! Then where are the jobs?

A question I recently asked and got rigid ideology for an answer. I'm still asking. We had tax cuts and no regulation. Look what happened.

Conservatives claim that government interference, especially taxation, is impeding our recovery; they just have no basis in fact. There is nothing at all that is preventing, obstructing, retarding or impeding American business from creating jobs ... except American business itself.

And why would they? They have a ton of money and are doing well without hiring. The best part, though, is that they can blame the government which results in a continued shift to privatize everything. I can't believe they say this with a straight face when 375, 000 public sector jobs have been lost since 2008 and hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs have been added since that time.

Spicer's best lines though, are about the "uncertainty" canard.

If you think today's environment is "uncertain," you did not live in the Depression. You missed World War II. You forgot about the times when mortgage rates got up to 20 percent. You skipped the turmoil and discontent of the Vietnam War. In fact, in the context of history, today's times are more tranquil and predictable than most. "Uncertainty" is a cop-out.

Actually, it's more than a cop out. It's part of the overall (and total) bullshit narrative that the invisible hand will take care of all of us. I'm wondering if Adam Smith would still offer the same views he does if he had to deal with the derivative, CDO, or credit default swap.

David Brooks sums it up quite nicely in his latest column.

The Republican growth agenda — tax cuts and nothing else — is stupefyingly boring, fiscally irresponsible and politically impossible. Gigantic tax cuts — if they were affordable — might boost overall growth, but they would do nothing to address the structural problems that are causing a working-class crisis.

Republican politicians don’t design policies to meet specific needs, or even to help their own working-class voters. They use policies as signaling devices — as ways to reassure the base that they are 100 percent orthodox and rigidly loyal. Republicans have taken a pragmatic policy proposal from 1980 and sanctified it as their core purity test for 2012.

A perfect summation. It is continually amazing to me that these middle class voters fall for their garbage when they make policies that adversely affect them.

Brooks and I part ways, however, when he lists four things we need to do to get this country moving again. It's not that I don't agree with them. In fact, I think they are all excellent ideas and I would support them wholeheartedly. Clearly, his bias prevents him from seeing that there is someone who is attempting to pull from all four of those baskets: President Obama.

The president has reformed health care and embraced the recommendation of Bowles Simpson regarding entitlement. He fervently supports ECFE and many other education initiatives. He passed a financial regulation package that is trying to break the unholy alliance between business and the financial sector. And he wants to overhaul immigration so it supports bringing in high quality human capital. So, I guess Brooks is an Obama supporter? He doesn't really sound like it most of the time.

Brooks is right when he says we all know what needs to be done. We aren't getting there because the central tenet of one side's ideology is to NOT think outside of the box. Until they can get past that, is there any point in even trying to find consensus?