Posts Tagged 'Koch Brothers'

“Enemies Foreign And Domestic” 

Published April 10, 2017 on Society , Politics 1 Comment
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Jean Piaget, one of the foremost experts in the field of children’s learning explained that in some “there is an absence of the desire to find logical justification for one’s statements, and … an excess of subjective and affective relations at the expense of genuine logical implications.” This describes the stage of development of children from roughly the age of 2 to 8 which seems to perfectly fit the mentality of Donald Trump. There are people who have been deemed “anti-Copernicans”, people who believe that humans continually create the universe via their own consciousness of it. We are now being hustled into the alternative universe of Trump who creates new realities and new universes on the fly as they suit his purposes. The venom of his ambition pulls on the loose threads of the body politic capitalizing on fear and uncertainty, exploiting ignorance. No matter what Trump says, lost jobs are not coming back to the United States but only the products of those absent industries make overseas where there is cheaper labor to exploit.

The Trump assault on health care, for example, is an attempt to drag life as it is lived by many people into a “new world”, a dystopian world of alternatives to the truth and reality as lived by millions of people who cannot otherwise afford health care — a “Let them take aspirin.” version of health insurance to which some are now belatedly awakening. What we are watching unfold with this administration is a total reversal of social gains made over many years for affordable and universal health care, a better and cleaner environment, and better educational opportunities for all children across the population — in short, a more humane society. It now seems the entire social contract so hard-won since the Great Depression and the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt is under assault. We have gone from the keen intellect of Jack Kennedy to an incurious narcissistic individual who can barely articulate two consecutive logically related sentences.

In these intervening years since Jack Kennedy, we have not evolved so much as we have begun to devolve politically and morally. We are engaged in unnecessary warfare in countries around the world where there is no demonstrable threat to this country but where there are lucrative opportunities to use and sell advanced weaponry or to provide access to petroleum resources. We have forgotten President Eisenhower’s warnings about the powerful military industrial complex. We are subject to what Francis Fukuyama characterizes as “a rent-seeking elite, who make use of their political connections to capture the state and use state power to enrich themselves.” The Trump cabinet is populated almost exclusively with such types and they are using state power to their own advantage. 

As a nation, as a people, Americans must come to grips with what is underway and decide what kind of country this is and what it is going to become before the dystopian tide overwhelms us. Are the American people ready to surrender their constitutional rights to an authoritarian government just to get even with people they don’t like? Does the public understand what kinds of people the president has surrounded himself with? Do they comprehend the consequences of appointing Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court for the rest of his life? Do people understand the monstrous conceit and sociopathy of this president and how vulnerable that renders him to the manipulation and machinations of his motley crew and others, perhaps not only Americans but foreign actors who would like to control American policy abroad? What do we as a nation stand for?

When I was commissioned as an Air Force officer I swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic” for life. I never thought then I would live to see the day when the “domestic” part of that oath would loom in my consciousness. With revelations of Trump’s dealings and behavior in Russia lurking and ready to be disclosed I wonder where it will lead us. With politicians, national and state, assaulting the Constitution daily looking for means to subvert, undermine, or outright override its provisions  we cannot pretend that this is a benign moment in our history. It has been reported that the Koch brothers have commissioned a rewrite of the constitution even as they are meeting with Trump.  The time to stand up and be counted is now lest those who are on a mission to create a different country succeed.

More is More

Published February 9, 2015 on Schools 3 Comments
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ec      When immigrants and refugees from Eastern and Southern Europe immigrated to the US in the late 1800s and early 1900s found work and could provide for a family the education of their children became the first priority. These people knew the value of education from experience and provided it sometimes at great sacrifice. In fact, they demanded it and insured that their children understood its importance. All of these people had felt the inequality imposed by inherited wealth and property. The social capital of the ruling classes in Europe was an intolerable burden for the rest of society to bear and that’s why my grandparents and millions of other American’s grandparents and great-grandparents fled Italy, Poland, Ireland and nearly every other European country. For these immigrants education was liberation, it was freedom, it was dignity, a path to a life as middle-class families. Enormous sacrifices were made to put kids through college and university where they became professionals in medicine, law, education, and science. It was the “New World” indeed. It was the embodiment of the “American Dream”.

Here we are a century and a half later facing a relentless political battle to deny that dream, to denigrate public schools, to destroy the education system that made attaining the dream possible. Empty arguments like third grade retention are employed to mask the real intent of the so-called reformers. Their arguments sound like they know what they are talking about but, in fact, they are  meaningless. They want total control over school budgets to use as carrots on a stick to force compliance with their dictates. The ultimate mission of these foot soldiers for the ultra-wealthy is to destroy and privatize the strongest most important force in a democracy – education. Those being served by these soldiers want social control and there is no better way to achieve that than to determine how the society is educated.  How better to control people as adults than by controlling their childhood education? This is why totalitarian regimes throughout history have always taken control of education from madrasas to universities. To obtain the finished product you desire you have to control the production line from start to finish. You must control to achieve control.

Control and destruction of public education is a large factor in right-wing thinking at all levels. The Kochs “give” money to hundreds of colleges and universities. The Kochs even have their own guy at the University of Kansas who previously worked directly for them who is now Chairman of their endowed, “Center for Applied Economics”. This guy conducts seminars and conferences and publishes “helpful” articles – he’s their boy. The Kochs are also helping him pay his legal bills as he tries to shield himself from disclosure of the extent of their support. Is education important to these people? You bet it is, they want to control it and they would rather you not know the extent of their influence over State legislatures who are deeply influenced (and controlled) by campaign contributions and promises of placement on the national stage. How about a steak dinner and free drinks? Or even better, an all expenses trip to a ALEC seminar for you and your spouse being held at a lovely island resort? Whatever it takes.

If aliens from outer space flew in, took over Washington DC, and began to dismantle government we would be outraged. We would be engaged in a counter revolution within hours. The same is happening except the aliens aren’t from outer space they are home grown, an ideological ISIS in three piece suits. Sadly the threat is being met by the public with passivity because they don’t know what’s at stake. It’s time to wake people up and have them smell the influence and the consequences. The “reformers” are relentless in their quest for “more” of everything including your schools. The motto is: “Only More Is More!”

Susana’s Trojan Horse

Published January 25, 2015 on Schools 1 Comment
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Here we go again, more of the relentless pursuit of public education, public school teachers, and the future of New Mexico’s children. The Governor’s empty meme about ending social promotion is intended to appeal to an audience that knows nothing about teaching and learning. Holding kids back is not educating them — it is humiliating them and nothing more. Public humiliation of children is not and never was, a proper or true pedagogical method. Although devoid of valid educational content third grade retention is a useful Trojan Horse. And, like that legendary ruse it is hollow and full of danger. Grade retention creates more resentment than any positive educational outcome, it is simply antedeluvian, so why do it? If reading by third grade is some sort of holy grail, and there is no objective proof that it is, then the proper response is to determine why a kid isn’t learning and deal with that. Grade levels are arbitrary, they are merely inventions for administrative convenience. Everyone, including the Governor and her nominee for Secretary of Education, learns at her own rate – obviously a bit slowly in some cases perhaps but with proper pedagogy she can learn.

This war on education that has nothing to do with improving public schools. It has only one objective – privatization. No Child Left Behind, Common Core, charter schools, one Trojan Horse after another. Test this, test that, tests and more tests to no end but to prove public schools are failing. Failing what? Failing to put money in the pockets of the so-called reformers like Rupert Murdoch and the Koch boys. It is nothing less than creating a crisis and offering a solution to it; exactly like starting a fire, pretending to be putting it out, and attracting a lot of public attention. What better way to put wannabe presidential hopefuls into the public eye than to label them education reformers?

While it is true public education could stand thorough and thoughtful discussion, that doesn’t justify the perfidy expressed by today’s self-identifying Republican reformers. The motives, as separate from objectives, are first and foremost profit and secondly – self-promotion. The desired objective – social control by way of dumbing down the public. If you can create a population with few or weak critical thinking skills, they become easy to manipulate. How better to achieve this than by controlling public education and turning it into an assembly line producing the compliant “good” citizens you need. Does this seem totally paranoid to you? Think again. Fox “News” is a good example of this manipulation.

Certainly a well educated thoughtful citizenry would not be willing to go along easily with destroying social security, health care, public safety, safe food, and safe consumer products. A thoughtful activist population is anathema to the relentless quest for profit and accumulated wealth. Consider that the richest of the rich already pay little or no taxes while the middle-class bears the burden. Wealthy individuals and corporations can stash their wealth off-shore because they are “smarter” than the general public and they have the best tax advisors money can buy. In their view, only suckers pay taxes. And, if you can really dumb people down they won’t even notice they are being used as lackeys. Make sure they can buy (on credit) snowmobiles, motor homes, huge screen TVs, one new gadget after another that no one needs – keep them distracted, keep them entertained and they will be willing happy campers. Temporarily lower gasoline prices and people will run out to buy large gas-guzzling pick-up trucks. Stimulus and response. The drones will keep making their installment payments and the cash will flow into offshore accounts. If people can’t make their payments repossess the goodies and sell them to someone else. It’s all good.

Once the “reformers” have their tentacles wrapped firmly around whatever it is they want, the chances of the public regaining it are slim to none. That includes public education because the ultimate objective is privatization and nothing to do with educating children. While billionaires are drooling behind the curtains providing campaign funds, their shameless lackeys are out beating the drums and promoting themselves as educational reformers on the backs of children. It doesn’t take much really, a little vigorish here and there, a thousand here a thousand there, and soon it’s real money – but peanuts actually compared to the possible return-on-investment. Schools, teachers, national education organizations have been forced into a rear guard war against a monster machine that intends to roll over them in the endless quest for profit on the one hand and self-promotion on the other. Never mind the consequences for the American social contract. (Or what’s left of it.)

Public education is vulnerable. Governors and other politicians with presidential ambitions have put schools in a free-fire zone where nothing is logical or sacred. Politicians with no background or experience as educators use issues like third grade retention to draw attention to themselves. The Trojan Horses are being rolled through the gates. Stop them now or lose public education.

Looping Ms Skandera

Published January 17, 2015 on Schools Closed
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In computer programming loops are repetitive iterations of the same operation used to carry out specific tasks. The computer having no brain and no sense of monotony simply repeats the script ad infinitum until a particular condition is satisfied. The New Mexico legislature seems to be in some kind of incarnation of the loop phenomenon. We have been running the Skandera loop for going on five years now, over and over again and with the same result. It’s an interesting question to ask about people who keep repeating the same action, using the same information, producing the same result, but thinking the next time the result will be different.

Skandera, after five years has yet to be confirmed by the Legislature as New Mexico’s Secretary of Education. What’s up with this? Who is getting what out of it? Five years ago this individual was presented to fill a crucial position for which she has no professional credentials. Here we are entering her fifth year holding the job of Secretary of Education without legislative confirmation but being paid on the order of $125,000.00 a year. How do things like this happen? Well, how about political ambition and political agendas? Skandera came to New Mexico following the first Gubernatorial election of Susana Martinez. It was noted at the time that Skandera was suggested by out-of-state donors to the Martinez campaign.

A professional political appointee and foot-soldier in the anti-public education movement, Skandera previously served former Florida governor Jeb Bush who fancied himself as a school reformer but who failed miserably at that task and only succeeded in alienating teachers. Skandera is a gift that keeps on giving who came to us courtesy of the current Governor’s billionaire campaign contributors including, in her first run, $10,000.00 directly from the Koch boys and $1.3 million from the Republican Governors Association which itself was gifted with $1 million also from the Kochs.

Isn’t it ironic that Skandera could not be hired as a classroom teacher in a New Mexico public school? The New Mexico requirements for a teaching certificate at the elementary level are:

1.  A Bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited college or university.

2.  30 to 60 semester hours in an Elementary Education program including student teaching.

3.  6 semester hours of credit in the teaching of reading if you entered college or university after 8/1/01.

4.  A minimum of 24 semester hours in one teaching field such as mathematics, language arts, reading, history, and so forth.

A starting teacher, having met the qualifications above makes on average $32,000.00. Skandera has not met these minimum qualifications and yet is paid 4 times what a qualified starting teacher is paid. Consider for a moment the inversion of values expressed in this distortion. Consider also how insulting and demoralizing it is to be evaluated by a political operative who is less qualified and less experienced than you are.

When I first wrote about this nomination nearly five years ago the issues were the same as today except that we now have a record of the disastrous consequences of Skandera’s tenure. That first article was in March 2011 and here we are in January 2015 with no resolution of this continuing travesty. Skandera’s damage to New Mexico’s public education from Gestapo-like raids on elementary schools to brazenly over-riding the PEC, validating charter schools championed by rent-seeking political hacks, and a lot of time on the public stage around the country, indeed even internationally, are her only achievements. Her beating the drums for privatizing public education are all a matter of record. I said then and I’ll say again, “Approving Ms. Skandera’s appointment will be a step backward.” Since then Ms. Skandera and the Governor have been thumbing their noses at the children, the public, educators, and legislators. What’s behind this?

For openers, public education is a soft target and there’s lots of money to made privatizing. Witness the many Republican governors across the country who are pursuing this same agenda.  And, that isn’t the only issue, 3rd grade retention is also merely a convenient non-issue a cudgel to pound on the public’s consciousness. The most important aspect of the entire 3rd grade retention business is to realize it has absolutely nothing to do with authentic teaching and learning. The ultimate pay-back is  privatizing public education. Privatization is the holy grail of the relentless Right-Wing jihad against teachers and public schools nationally.  Rupert Murdoch expresses his interest in public education by describing it as a $500 billion “opportunity”. The public needs to not forget it’s their tax money that created the public education system these sharks are salivating for.

Also in this equation and not to be discounted is Ms. Martinez having set her ambitions on national prominence and maybe even a place on the Republican presidential ticket, a fantasy that beggars the imagination. In this she is much like other deluded Republican wannabes who will do whatever it takes to be chosen. Since she has little else to brag about she has to win this Secretary of Education battle else she’ll be riding off into a sunset of well deserved irrelevance like Rick Santorum. The stakes are high in this game and the children be damned.

The NM Senate has an obligation to the public, to teachers, and to school children to not punt this time but to act bravely, with integrity, and regard for the people and children of New Mexico. The New Mexico State Constitution is on their side as it clearly and unequivocally states, the Secretary of Education must be a, “qualified, experienced educator.” Skandera is neither – case closed.

End of loop.

Emanuele Corso’s essays on politics, education, and the social contract have been published at  NMPolitics, Light of New Mexico, Grassroots Press, World News Trust, Nation of Change, New Mexico Mercury and his own – siteseven.net. He taught Schools and Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he took his PhD. His BS was in Mathematics. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force’s – Strategic Air Command where he served as a Combat Crew Officer. He has been a member of the Carpenters and Joiners labor union. He is presently working on a book: Belief Systems and the Social Contract. He can be reached at ecorso@earthlink.net

The Is and Isn’tness of Public Education

Published October 18, 2014 on Schools 2 Comments
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The Is and Isn’tness of Public Education

It’s not about children, people and it’s not about education. It’s about profit. Don’t let anyone, including Arne Duncan, tell you otherwise. The Rupert Murdochs, the Koch boys, the Michael Moes and other billionaires wouldn’t be stuffing vast sums of money into political campaign coffers unless they expected a commensurate ROI. There’s a public money jugular out there and investors are salivating. As Moe himself recently explained, “We see the education industry [my emphasis] today as the healthcare industry of 30 years ago.” He is referring to the American healthcare industry which can’t climb beyond 26th place out of 30 countries, and where the cost of an MRI can range anywhere from $335 to $2844.

The Oxford dictionary definition of industry is “economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture of goods in factories.” Schools as factories, children as raw materials to be manufactured into goods as a form of economic or commercial activity? Does that fit your definition of education?

In the US, monied interests have always exerted influence on public education, but much more directly now that investors are salivating for access to an “industry” of government-enabled testing and corporatized alternative schools. Billionaires are financing political campaigns and candidates, placing operatives in key administrative positions in state education departments. Listen to Rupert Murdoch: “When it comes to K-through-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.” Who is desperate?

Education reform is now the big target after healthcare. In both cases, equating education and healthcare with industry, humanity is displaced by venality. Education is being drowned in an alphabet soup of meaningless, cleverly contrived names depicting cleverly contrived meaningless programs. No Child Left Behind and Common Core are about business models, not about children. The case of Washington State recently losing its federal carrot for not conforming to Duncan’s Dictates gives lie to any pretense that this is about children learning. Kids in Washington are learning alright, but without the onerous evaluation regimens and pointless methodologies, such as the “counting up” method of subtraction taught in Common Core schools. To their credit, many more states than Washington are pushing back and putting children first.

This IS About Children

Because there are no easy procedural, political, or curricular solutions, public education has been an easy sell for simplistic solutions since colonial times. There are, however, at least three non-simplistic, fundamental reforms which could be implemented to good effect given the courage and determination to carry them out. The first involves innate learning ability, the matter of recognizing basic intelligence. Politicians won’t talk about differences in innate ability because parents vote, and all their children are wonderful and above average. Also because of social and political taboos, educators will not risk alienating parents.

It is just common sense to acknowledge that some children learn faster than others. Some will learn math, reading, or science faster than their classmates. This is no different from a child being a better first baseman than his or her classmates. Schools do talk candidly about athletic skills and, more importantly, they discriminate on that basis without reprisal. It’s a different story altogether, however, when it comes to intellectual ability. No matter what cleverly marketed standard academic achievement tests are applied to children across the board, holding teachers to the charade is fundamentally dishonest. It is unfair to teachers and, even more so, to students who are thus denied appropriate individualized approaches to learning.

The artifices of grade levels from first to twelfth could be done away with and replaced by individualized growth levels and programs allowing for the cognitive and motivational differences between children. This would be true “no child left behind”- every child could ascend at his or her own rate and motivation – there would be no contrived “behind”. Children should not have to suffer the indignity of being held back simply because the system could not do better at serving them. It’s adults who are failing not children.

Second, we seldom hear discussions about how public schools are organized even though school organization is a key factor in their lack of success. Simply put, the wrong people are running schools, and it’s an inverted hierarchy that has crippled education for years. Schools need to be organized around teachers and students, not overpaid and over-empowered bureaucrats. Teachers should determine, according to set standards, curriculum, the evaluation of learners and faculty, and school policy. Administrators should exist to serve the teaching staff – serve being the operative word.

The third reform involves parents. Parents must be held to account for their children’s interest and motivation in the process of schooling. Teachers with classrooms full of students cannot be held responsible for matters essentially parental. It does indeed take a community to fully and truly educate children, and the process starts at home.

The process of schooling cannot be replaced by testing, nor by demonizing teachers or allowing parents to transfer their responsibilities to schools. Thanks, but no thanks, Arne, you are wrong, tragically wrong about all of this. Kids in too many schools are spending their time learning to take tests with real education taking the hind seat, if any seat at all.  When education is drained of its humanizing values and reduced to meaningless rote Pavlovian response, we are creating a nation of sheep.

No matter how you slice it, this present “reform” movement is not about children. It’s about money and most importantly, that is what has to change.

“ … comes the Revolution.”

Published August 9, 2014 on Society 3 Comments
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The Economist recently published an essay asking, “What’s gone wrong with democracy?”. Why has Democracy run into trouble and what can be done to “revive” it. What’s “wrong” with Democracy is not limited to economics. American Democracy, such as it is, is long overdue for scrutiny. When a state supreme court chief justice claims the 1st Amendment only protects Christians and the US Supreme Court declares corporations are entitled life forms, more is wrong than a just few aberrations. It’s a movement and not a good one for Democracy.

Democracy and Capitalism are not compatible ideologies – they are, in fact, antithetical. Democracy is about human beings, Capitalism about money. Democracy is about equality, Capitalism is about inequality. The former asks for cooperation the latter demands competition. There are consequences to this dichotomy; one economist called it the “Great Gatsby curve” where upward social mobility is thwarted by inequality. It’s telling that the criticism of Piketty’s, Capital in the 21st Century, has been feeble at best.

Democracy is a political belief system while Capitalism is an economic belief system posing as a religion. As John Foster Dulles once remarked, “For us there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who are Christians and support free enterprise, and there are the others.” Capitalism and Democracy are antagonistic. This isn’t complicated. Capitalistic success eliminates equality, establishes market hegemony, while redefining venality and greed as virtues. Democracy, on the other hand, binds a population into a sense of common good antithetical to the “whatever it takes” ethos of Capitalism.

Economist piece does not address the right-wing oligarchy’s attack on American Democracy lead by business-centric organizations such as ALEC, funded by wealthy underwriters such as the Koch boys and assisted by venal rent-seeking politicians. High on the ALEC agenda is curtailing voting rights. What better way to strangle democracy? As Nobel economist, Joseph E. Stiglitz pointed out, “in a system of one person one vote 100% of the people are supposed to count.” The right to vote can be and is being extinguished with gerrymandering and new voter ID laws at the state level. The voice of Democracy will be silenced when big money has its way.

A social contract is the essence of a society, which is to say it provides the generative syntax, the grammar of social conduct. All social contracts rest on foundations of social beliefs which, unlike religious beliefs, are tangible, provable, life as it is experienced on a daily basis. Traffic lights turn red and everyone is expected to stop. When the lights turn green we go. We believe others will respect the meaning of the lights because that is a covenant of the social contract. If drivers generally ignored this contractual requirement mayhem would result. Corporations shipping profits overseas to evade their fair share of taxes is clearly a violation of the “common good” social contract.

The goods of democratic social life lie in the commons. Greedy plundering of those commons is depredation and the core values of democracy – equality and cooperation – are destroyed. When this has happened historically people rebel, those in control become fearful, the social contract morphs into social control, and the soul of a society is stilled. Why is the US DOD funding Project Minerva, a large academic study, according to its summary documents, of “domestic situations … in the USA where the local population was seen from the military perspective as threatening the established balance of power and influence, and challenging law and order”? Is the recent militarization of police forces across the country an anticipation of social disorder?

The social contract in any society is large and messy. In spite of being riddled with contradictions and conflicts social contracts do manage somehow work. But when contradictions accumulate, disenfranchisement and inequality erode social bonds. Elected officials now take to television to chastise people who want to see a higher minimum wage – people who work 40 hours a week but can’t feed themselves let alone a family. Candidate for Senate Karen Handel of Georgia believes minimum wage laws should not even exist. The United States is a country where a basketball player earns $30 million a year against $43,000 a year for a firefighter who risks his life to save lives and protect property. Which service does the society value most? How does anyone morally justify $26.7 billion in bonuses for financiers who oversaw the destructive financial collapse that caused incalculable losses to pensioners and small savers across the country who have no recourse and no way to recover?

There is social contract theory and there are social contracts as they are lived. Contradictions add up they accrete, they harden attitudes and perceptions of social and economic injustice. Ultimately there are no longer shared perceptions or shared interests to bind the contract. Modern Dickensian squalor consists of people being forced out of their homes because of financial circumstances they have no control over or, as in the case of Detroit, the water supply is cut off to people’s homes because they can’t pay their utility bill.

Bernie Sanders points out, “There are more Americans living in poverty today than at any time in our nation’s history, the middle class is disappearing and we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income in the world.” Relegating large numbers of people to the “poor door” slides society towards incivility and rebellion. When the middle class is reduced to poverty and their vested interest in an orderly society is no longer viable, they will revolt. They always have. What has gone wrong with Democracy is that it has been conflated with Capitalism. The notion of American exceptionalism has been rendered false. We are, after all these years, still struggling to meet the challenge of our Constitution –  “to form a more perfect union.” The outcome is yet uncertain. As an old friend of mine used to say, “comes the Revolution!”

Barbarians Within the Gates

Published March 28, 2014 on Society 3 Comments
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From the start the human race has been at odds with itself struggling between two distinct polarities – barbarity and civilization, the Yin and Yang of of human nature and experience. This polarity has forever been the root struggle between evolution and devolution, between community and savagery, civilization and barbarity, decency and vulgarity. Naked apes evolved materially from stone axes to swords to nuclear weapons, from animal skins to three piece suits and private jets. Wardrobe styles and technology changed but not base instincts. We are simply well-dressed technologically advanced apes.

While Arizona legislators are busying themselves with prohibiting undocumented  persons from using public toilets, a Baptist pastor in Troy, New York, is giving away AR-15 semi-automatic rifles for church attendance saying: “This is exactly what we have always done for the last 2000 years since Jesus walked the shores of Galilee.” Baptists handing out rifles for 2000 years! Jesus walking the shores of Galilee with an AR-15! Even religion has been highjacked and far from ministering has served to exacerbate becoming itself an expression of barbariity. This kind of madness cannot be made up.

The polarities of the human condition have not changed. Barbarians are still among and within us starting wars of conquest, grabbing wealth, asserting social and political domination. Aggression takes the form of unrelenting insatiable greed. Daily life remains a struggle between the quest for a humane civilized world versus those whose quest is social control, accumulation of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and disregard for the human condition.  Virgil’s 1st C BCE observation that for some there is an unrelenting quest for “empire without end” remains as true today as it did then.

We must ask, where do today’s barbarians want to take the world? What kind of future do they envision? Do hungry children and sickly elders without health care populate Paul Ryan’s visions of the future? Is this the stuff his dreams are made of? The barbarians argue that government, which many of us believe to be of the people, for the people, and by the people, has no business helping people, even the least fortunate among us. What kind of unmitigated gall does it take to publicly assert income inequality does not lead to the destruction of a society when history is one story after another of civilizations falling to exactly that dynamic. In matters of civil liberty as defined by the Constitution and Bill of Rights and with no foreign nation threatening us, elected and not-elected officials cast aside the guarantees of our foundational documents with secret judicial tribunals to make us “safe” from ourselves, locking people up without due process. Our democracy is fast becoming illusion and delusion.

There’s more of course, the list could go on. We could examine the motives of the billionaires funding long lists of so-called foundations, institutes, think tanks, political action committees, ad nauseum functioning as destructive propaganda machines. A well funded all out assault on the American social contract is underway striking at voting rights as well as social programs. If the coalition of Koch funded organizations were a separate country we would have declared war on them a long time ago. Daddy Koch worked for Joe Stalin, one of the evil butchers of all time, and made a fortune doing so; his money is a gift that keeps on giving, a case of inherited moral infantile paralysis. The barbarians are at the gates with an abundant army of insecure moral cripples desperate for attention and recognition to do their bidding. But why? Why now? To what end?

This country is already in dire straits conducting endless purposeless wars around the globe, wars which will never yield “victory”. Purposeless because the underlying motives are never what is publicly declared. The obvious purposes lie in sustaining a powerful arms industry and petroleum interests. We intervene because we don’t “like” one side or the other, we violate the rights of the indigenous people to self-determination to further global ambitions of powerful economic interests, wasting our national treasure, sacrificing our young men and women while reducing our once thriving middle-class to servile and semi-servile status scraping by to make their monthly payments.

While the roles of the unemployed grow so does the number of lobbyists per legislator in the Nation’s capital – something on the order of 20 per legislator at last count. America is for sale in Washington DC where legislators and lobbyists can relive themselves without looking over their shoulders. There are many among us in positions of power who are morally still swinging through the trees.

Envy – American Style

Published March 8, 2014 on Society 1 Comment
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The New York Times “Sunday Review” (March 2nd, 2014) published a genuine forehead-slapping essay, “The Downside of Inciting Envy”, by Arthur C. Brooks, a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute one of the many Koch propaganda mills. What came immediately to mind, when I read it, was Sessue Hayakawa’s speech as Colonel Saito in “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. Without a trace of irony, Saito advised his British prisoners of war, ”… be happy in your work”. I saw this film as a college freshman and never, in 57 years, had I given it as much thought as on reading the Brooks essay.

What Brooks actually said is, “be happy in your poverty people”, otherwise you will experience a “downside”. Be happy in your impoverishment and disenfranchisement. Perhaps his sponsors are worried the natives are becoming disgruntled and restless but they are also misreading the anger and resentment. The apparent discord is not necessarily directed towards other people’s wealth, it is more likely resentment over the destruction of their American dream, resentment over being driven into poverty – a new world where a college diploma is more about crushing debt than about upward mobility.

Without missing a beat, Brooks’ essay includes the standard pitch for privatized education, tax rules that favor the wealthy so they can “spark hiring”, and “recalibrating the safety net” such that people will be “happy” in their low-paying dead-end jobs. The author chastises and, not incidentally, insults those who disdain dead-end jobs arrogantly calling those jobs a crucial “first step”. Excuse me, but a “dead-end” is not a first step, Mr. Brooks, it is, by definition, a “last step”.

The author is plainly concerned, as are his patrons, with the possibility of “class” retribution or even revolution by those who perceive the game as “rigged”. If 70% of a population perceive a game as rigged it probably is rigged. What fool wants to play in a rigged game?

Let me suggest how “envy” is properly applied to today’s rigged game. Envy, of course, has to do with the desire to have or possess what others have. In this case “envy” has to do with opportunity more than material goods. The opportunity game is what should not be rigged. In a civilized viable society opportunity and access to resources must be equitably distributed, health care, for example, cannot not be a game of chance based on social class. To want these equalities of opportunity is not a “destructive social comparison”, as Mr. Brooks would have us believe, it is historically foundational to the human condition and, even more importantly, to a democratic society.

The mild form of “revolt” by Americans Mr. Brooks fears is merely asking a question as opposed to begging it, as Brooks makes the theme of his essay. Brooks seems to think he can perform bank shots with fallacies, using circular arguments and slogans such as “destructive social comparison”. Sorry, but we aren’t falling for that. When people can’t put food on their tables after 40 hours of work, it isn’t fantasy — it’s reality and no amount of bloviating around the point is going to make it otherwise. If Mr. Brooks wants us to share his “joyful mission of freedom, opportunity and enterprise for all” then his American Enterprise Institute is going to have to educate itself about shared consequences from shared enterprise for everyone. The words “share” and “everyone” are the operative terms.

The Betrayal of New Mexico Public Education

Published February 18, 2014 on Schools 1 Comment
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Betrayal is an interesting word with many connotations. Generally the word is taken to mean the violation of some form of contract, trust, or confidence – a breech of faith. In my opinion, the children, parents, and teachers of New Mexico were betrayed by the passing on of Hanna Skandera to continue her odious mission in the office of Secretary of Education.

Skandera is a gift that keeps on giving who came to us courtesy of the current Governor’s billionaire campaign contributors including $10,000.00 directly from the Koch boys and $1.3 million from the Republican Governors Association which was gifted with $1 million also from the Kochs.

Skandera, lacks even the most basic of qualifications for the position she holds, the authority she wields and she is paid $125,000.00 a year – more than any classroom teacher could ever dream of earning. Is it ironic that Skandera could not be hired as a classroom teacher in a New Mexico public school? The New Mexico requirements for a teaching certificate at the elementary level are:

1.  A Bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited college or university.

2.  30 to 60 semester hours in an Elementary Education program including student teaching.

3.  6 semester hours of credit in the teaching of reading if you entered college or university after 8/1/01.

4.  A minimum of 24 semester hours in one teaching field such as mathematics,language arts,reading, history and so forth.

A starting teacher, having met the qualifications above makes on average $32,000.00. Skandera has not met these minimum qualifications and yet is paid 4 times what a qualified starting teacher is paid. Consider for a moment the inversion of values expressed in this distortion. Consider also how insulting and demoralizing it is to be evaluated by a political operative who is less qualified and less experienced than you are.

Skandera was a foot-soldier for one of the major proponents of for-profit public education, Jeb Bush and his coterie of “reformers”, coming as she did from Florida where teachers have been harassed and made miserable to the point of resignation. Many well qualified and dedicated Florida public school teachers quit rather than endure the harassment. Of course Bush doesn’t know anything more about education than do his minions – what they do know is that public education is a soft target and there’s lots of money to made privatizing it.

School teachers are not known to be hard line activists and teaching results are not linear with regard to children’s ages and individual abilities across a school population thus making teachers held to so-called “objective standards” vulnerable. There is, of course, no such thing as a “standard” child but standardized tests are rationalized as ammunition to attack teachers. Also, teacher unions are not famous for weeding out their weak and incompetent colleagues. A quick look at New York City’s infamous  “rubber rooms” confirms that, so there is plenty of blame to go around. Teachers unions desperately need, as do unions such as carpenters and plumbers and electricians do,  to weed out incompetence. This would require in-union testing and rating just as journey-men carpenters have to pass their union’s internal testing regimes. The resulting ratings are unassailable.

However, no matter how you calculate the situation, destruction of public education and replacing it with for-profit assembly lines is clearly not the answer to the question of school reform nor are major initiatives with clever propaganda-like, dissembling names such as  “No Child Left Behind” which have been exposed for the scams they are. Our current President and his hoops playing buddy  are just as dangerous and have been as harmful to public education as Republicans. Neoliberals are like Trojan Horses welcomed within the gates of civility but containing barbarians.

While Republican Senator Mark Moores of Albuquerque considers the day a victory for Skandera it is, at the same time, a terrible and tragic loss for the children and their families, our dedicated teachers, and the schools and communities of New Mexico. They have all been betrayed and at great cost to the embattled social contract which requires children to be educated by and for the community — not by corporations. The future of public education in New Mexico has been betrayed as well and the only apparent solution is an unrelenting effort to unseat Martinez and her gang and send the carpet-baggers packing in the next election. It can be done – it must be done.

Atlas Slugged

Published February 7, 2014 on Society 1 Comment
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Poor Atlas. He never knew what hit him. There he was holding up the world wondering how he got involved in this train wreck of simplistic political social philosophy. Even that word, “philosophy”, was beggared, blind-sided, misappropriated, knocked for a loop. Where did it come from? How did it happen to him of all deities? “Give me a break!” he muttered struggling with his burden. “I’m supposed to be holding up the world, for Pete’s sake.” And so it was that poor Atlas got slugged into lending his good name to the title of a simple-minded fairy tale wherein there are easy answers to every complex problem, where working-class people are depicted as low life slugs looking for easy money. A veritable door stop of a book, a mighty tome glorifying greed to be ingested, digested, and regurgitated by right-wing makers and shakers; a fairy tale for wannabe Titans of the universe.

The book, Atlas Shrugged, lies somewhere between a right-wing bodice ripper and a biblical journey into a science fictionalized promised land; a 1668 page celebration of greed and selfishness ingested by  socially, morally, and intellectually challenged true believers living and hiding in their own magical secret valleys seeking justification and reinforcement for anti-social instincts. The lesson of the book seems to be, inequality is justice manifest for the self-appointed select few. The book, by the way, is required reading for Paul Ryan’s staffers. Makes you wonder.

Funded by such socially enlightened billionaires as Charles Koch, the Cato Institute generates essays similar to the novel’s manifesto. For example, “Thinking Clearly about Economic Inequality” in which it is claimed “There is little evidence that high levels of income inequality lead down a slippery slope to the destruction of democracy and rule by the rich.” That kind of intellectual rubbish falls under the rubric of preaching to the choir and could have come straight out of Atlas Shrugged. In this case the choir being the billionaire sponsors and a chorus of minions based on a score by Ayn Rand. It’s more fairy tale telling believers what they want to hear while collecting a fat paycheck for doing so. Opportunity equality is and has always been a foundation stone of the democratic social contract, of a free and equitable society.

When 1% of the population controls the economy, opportunity as a belief in the social contract disappears. Further, when the 1% works tirelessly at social control to limit voting rights, to undermine and destroy public education, limit access to social welfare such as food stamps and health care the slippery slope inevitably becomes increasingly steep and ever more slippery. There comes a moment, sooner or later, when people believe they have no stake in the society, no future, no faith, no loyalty, and no reason to maintain it.

The President has called inequality the “defining issue of our time” and indeed it is even if I’m not certain it was more than a good sound bite. The problem is, however, that speachifying without delivery engenders cynicism and cynicism is the most corrosive of all social dynamics. To those who are blind to this verity there will, sooner or later, come a reckoning. Increased police power and presence may forestall the inevitable but it will not, in the end, prevent it. Members of the police and military are, after all is said and done, part of the 99% as are the increasingly large numbers of people with guns.

As has been the case throughout the history of human civilization this same drama has played out time and again. Just like the US, Rome made war all over its known world extending its empire beyond its capacity to sustain its own civil society. Ultimately the Romans failed as did many civilizations before and after them. Why is this such a difficult lesson to learn? Is it hubris or stupidity? Or both? There are no magical valleys in which to hide in real life. As a wise person once cautioned, be careful what you wish for – you may get it. If seekers want to read something lengthy let me suggest Toynbee’s, A Study of History; when they get to the end they’ll actually know something, something of value with which to calibrate their moral compass.

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