Cast doubts on all virus death numbers

A couple of Native American tribes in South Dakota set up checkpoints going into their reservations. These traffic stops on US and state roads require tests for the coronavirus before proceeding. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) demanded that if the checkpoints weren’t removed in 48 hours there would be legal action.

The tribes declined her request, saying it interfered with their efforts to protect those who live on the reservation. There is quite a concern already – the Navajo nation in Arizona has been hard hit by the virus compounded by most homes not having running water and the health system for natives being seriously underfunded for decades.



Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community talks about a Washington Post article about how desperate the nasty guy is to reopen the economy. He then discusses the corporate view of things. They’re not worried about the safety of workers – the workers whose physical distance needs will be compromised by showing up (and that doesn’t include the management making these decisions). Besides, with unemployment this high there will be others willing to take the job if existing workers refuse to come in or get sick.

What they’re worried about is legal liability, of being sued by workers who get sick. I’ve mentioned this before. Dartagnan sees one way out of the problem – follow guidelines on how to keep workers safe. These used to come from the CDC, but the nasty guy squashed their report. I thought of another solution – don’t open until it’s safe.



Laurie Garrett, who has written about plagues, tweeted her White House contacts say there will be two tactics used to reopen America and get the nasty guy reelected.

1. Cast doubts on all virus death numbers and try to get Americans to disbelieve their health departments and the CDC reports.

This is top level gaslighting. Some in the virus task force are already starting to do this. Yeah, declare the count too high when many people see evidence the count is too low.

2. Use Executive Orders to “create demand” for certain manufactured good by outlawing some products and mandating the purchase of replacements.

An example is to ban truck rigs more than ten years old, forcing truckers to buy new rigs. Another is to ban electrical equipment from “foreign adversaries.”



The blog Calculated Risk discusses finance and economics. After the jobs numbers for April were posted last Friday this blog displayed four charts showing the economy collapsing.

One of those charts is one I saw after the Great Recession. In its new form it gives an indication of what we’re in for. The chart shows a dozen recessions starting with the one in 1948. For each one it shows the percent of job loss from the previous employment peak and continues the line until the job numbers finally match and exceed the peak before the recession.

The shortest return to pre-recession levels was the one in 1980, which was about 10 months. Alas, there was another recession in 1981 and that one took about 2½ years to rebuild the workforce. The 2001 recession took four years to rebuild, the Great Recession took more than six years. The chart only shows the huge drop in this year’s employment, down 14% in two months, more than twice the drop of the Great Recession and significantly faster than any of the other recessions.

This is going to take a while.



Quote of the day:

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.
~~Herman Melville, Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs (1854)

Hyunsu Yim tweeted about the success that South Korea has had controlling the virus. But there was a new cluster of cases traced to a gay nightclub. There isn’t much LGBT visibility in the country (meaning it isn’t very welcoming of LGBT people). So this news means gays are being threatened and it could become deadly.



Joan McCarter of Kos reports that when the Senate created the CARES Act, in which a half-trillion went to bail out corporations and $300 billion when to “small business” loans (much gobbled up by not small businesses) the GOP senators did not ask how to pay for it. But now that the House is writing a bailout for the people – direct payments, unemployment help, rental and mortgage help, and student loan help, at least – those GOP senators are suddenly screaming about how to pay for it and the need to cut Social Security. Of course they did. We knew this was coming.



Walter Einenkel of Kos reports on a new study showing all the money the Gates Foundation spent on education reform was a bust.

One of the myriad problems with billionaires like Bill Gates pouring tons of money into reshaping our education system is that people like Bill Gates are not educators. They rarely have even a small amount of education in what education is and should be.

The Gates Foundation money was spent mostly to force legislation to force taxpayer money away from traditional public schools. In that effort was to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students.

The Foundation spent $215 million and required school systems (taxpayers) to spend $575 million more. Short answer: It didn’t work. Slightly longer answer: This wasn’t philanthropy because Gates was making the world better for rich people.

They did plan for the pandemic

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued revised executive orders. The stay at home order continues to May 15. One should wear a mask in an enclosed public building (like a grocery store). On the other hand, garden stores may reopen and lawn services may resume work (I won’t tell her my lawn service came on Monday). Golf courses may also open, though a golfer is not allowed to rent a cart.

In response the GOP majority legislature hastily met to pass a couple bills on party line votes. One was to rescind the law that gives the governor emergency powers. The other was to create a COVID-19 oversight committee. Both bills will, of course, be vetoed by Whitmer. The GOP doesn’t have enough votes to override. So, good job guys, in getting all these legislators together so they can infect each other and send the virus back to their home districts.

Michigan’s official death count from COVID-19 has now passed 3,000.



I did a grocery run today, mask in place. I guess uneventful. The weather was warm enough I could do some work in my garage.



Moscow Mitch got his Senate to pas another rescue bill. It was necessary because the $350 billion in the previous bill to provide loans to small businesses ran out of money in two weeks. It probably has goodies for rich people even as Democrats got help for hospitals. The House has now passed it and it’s on to the nasty guy.

Shortly after the Senate passed it Moscow Mitch started saying, that’s it. No more rescue bills. The federal deficit is getting too big. Democrats and business leaders said that a great deal more money is needed to keep the economy going.

Hey, Mitch, the deficit is bothering you? Gosh, this is certainly a curious time for your sense of bother to kick in. There’s an easy fix. Rescind that tax scam bill you pushed through a couple years ago.

But Moscow Mitch, senator from Kentucky, didn’t stop there. He started talking about no longer wanting to fund a “Blue State Bailout.”

Nikki Haley of South Carolina piled on tweeting that states should have planned for a rainy day such as this. She disagreed that states should be bailed out. Taxpayers shouldn’t pay for mismanaged states.

That prompted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (and many others) to observe:

Let’s talk about fairness, Mitch.

NYS puts $116 billion more into the federal pot than we take out.

Kentucky TAKES $148 billion more from the federal pot than they put in.

But we don't deserve help now because the 15,000 people who died here were predominately democrats?

So in normal times blue states are bailing out red states. And when the crunch comes in a few blue states, red states refuse to help them out. Thanks for the explanation.



Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reports that Bill Barr, head of the department formerly known as justice (I like Sumner’s phrase!) has said that if states don’t relax public restrictions on the nasty guy’s timeline Barr will take them to court.



Back in 2016 a group of students in the Detroit Public School Community District sued the state saying they have a right to a basic minimum education. Which they were not getting. At the time the state controlled the district through a financial manager.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has finally heard and ruled on the case. Yes, students do have a right to a basic minimum education. It will be interesting to see what the GOP state legislature does with that ruling.



Jenn Budd is a Senior Border Patrol Agent turned immigrant rights activist. She tweeted:

Don’t think for one moment this Administration did not prepare for a pandemic. They did, just not the way you think they should have. They planned how to eliminate immigration, bankrupt the states, line their pockets and usurp the Constitution. THAT’S THE PANDEMIC PLAN!

If it was incompetence or error, they would have changed course by now. They have not. This is the plan. It is exactly what they want to happen. Including sending more of your tax dollars to their rich friends, letting those in detention and prison die of #COVID19, etc.

When challenged that the nasty guy didn’t want to have an economic depression Budd added:

I don’t think Trump did, but he is not running most of this show. The intent is to dismantle the institutions, which is what they are doing. Trump is not smart enough to do any of this on his own.

Helen of 5Calls tweeted in response to a comment that the poor, mostly people of color, are hurt more by this combination of pandemic and economic collapse:

Yes! To accomplish these objectives, it will take all of us/citizens working alongside the Democratic leaders. We must work diligently (& now) to end citizen united, break up our state's ALEC groups, educate voters about AND eradicate ALL KOCH network ppl from every level of gov.

Then she quotes from How to Sweep Dark Money Out of Politics:

The right recognizes something that few on the left recognize: that campaign finance law underlies all other substantive law. In other words, no matter what you care about – climate, women’s rights, abortion, taxes, healthcare – it all comes back to who pays for elections.

Helen then tweeted tips for resisting the Trump regime:

* Stay aware and engaged. Don’t wait until events directly affect you. They will.

* Stay united. Don’t turn on other Americans, avoid Us v. Them. Ally with other groups.

* Keep recording and sharing facts. Don’t let reality be rewritten. Share, save, and archive.

* Join a group or movement. Show that we outnumber them.

* Keep going. They will keep going to wear us down and convince us they are the good guys. Don’t give up or give in.



The nasty guy is making sure there aren’t enough tests for the virus to allow reopening public events. Testing is *much* worse in Brazil. That prompted David Perry to quote from a Washington Post article and comment on it:

“The ones who know the truth are the gravediggers.”
Well that is going to reverberate in my ears for a while.

Some good news: Publix grocery store chain has pledged to step in to help the food supply chain mismatch. Many food producers are geared to selling to restaurants which aren’t buying much anymore. Shifting to sell to grocery stores and food pantries is difficult. So many farmers are using milk as fertilizer and not harvesting crops. Publix has promised to step between farmers and food banks in a big way – helping with 43,000 gallons of milk and 150,000 pounds of produce in the first week.



And a laugh:
The governor of Georgia says restaurants will reopen next week. So here’s a brief video of a waitress practicing the skills she’ll need in this time of distancing.

Look good or actually educate

David Akadjian of the Daily Kos community explores the crisis in higher education. The well known symptoms are higher tuition and record student loan debt as well as lower graduation rates. The fix, according to one narrative, is that universities should be run more like a private business.

A coalition of students at the University of Cincinnati (enrollment of about 46K in 2019) studied the ways it was being run like a private university. Their report is titled Boldly Bankrupt, a play on the UC marketing campaign of Boldly Bearcat. The report shows who benefits – management, administrators, athletics – and who doesn’t – students and faculty. While the report is specific to UC these issues exist at a majority of universities.

Nearly every state has shifted costs to students. Lower state funding and tuition goes up. Schools are encouraged to be open to market forces and competition. But that creates a race to the bottom. Money is shifted to athletics, which has a high status but loses money. Undergrad programs are used as cash cows to fund graduate programs and research, which increases school ranking. Full time faculty are replaced with poorly paid adjuncts. There is a push to online courses, which are both cheaper and less effective. Athletic directors and top administrators are overpaid.

The students see a discrepancy between how UC presents itself to the public and how it actually functions. Education is pushed aside for things that make the school look good.

Faculty are caught in performance-based budgeting. A college is given a revenue target, say $7 million. If it exceeds that it gets more money. If it makes for example $5 million, it is considered to have a deficit – even if it costs only $4 million to actually run the college. Failure to meet the $7 million target results in a debt at the start of the next year. A college is required to cut its expenses even though their expenses are already less than their income. College deans never stay long – they can’t function under such a budget model.

The students in the Boldly Bankrupt team suggests fixes. See students as more than their tuition money. Create a democratically run student union to be a check on administrative power. Don’t have the governor appoint the Board of Trustees, rather allow students, faculty, and citizens elect them.

Commitment to generosity

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has a post nearly every weekday about what the candidates for president have been doing – at least those that make the news. McEwan won’t endorse for quite a while now (if at all) though she expresses what she likes and doesn’t like about the candidates. Since I’m looking for a candidate that will build community, I’m paying close attention to what she says (she’s for building community as I am). Here is one of her posts.

Though the reason why I’m talking about this one isn’t because of what McEwan said, but because of what is in the first comment. Aphra Behn, a leader in the Shakesville community, posted a long description of Elizabeth Warren’s plan for debt-free college. The money comes from her Ultra Millionaire tax. It goes to grants to pay 100% for students from households under $100,000, partially for households above that, to no assistance for households above $250,000, the 5%. The comment includes what Behn thinks are the good and bad points of such a plan.

Of course, there was pushback to Warren’s idea. A tweet from Philip Klein said:

Cancelling debt is tremendously unfair to those who paid theirs off.

Twitter user Prison Culture Returns replied:

I find this astonishing. It took me 20 years basically to pay off my loans. I would be more than happy to make sure that younger folks don't have to spend 20 years paying theirs off. I don't want to live in the same kind of selfish society that Klein wants.

There were, of course, a lot of other comments similar to Klein’s. That prompted McEwan to post about it:

It would change millions of people's lives for the better.

And yet, I have seen so many perplexingly bitter responses from people who have indebted themselves to attend college, rejecting Warren's proposal outright. Their argument is essentially: *Why should someone else get for free what I had to pay for?*

It's a familiar line of thinking, of course. It's conservatives' central grievance with the social safety net and their gripe with robustly funding government welfare of any sort.

To see self-identified progressives regurgitating this ungenerous, parsimonious crap is truly disappointing.

I will tell you why I think someone else should get for free what I did not: Because it's the right thing to do. Because there is no moral value in having to struggle. Because it does not build character; it just makes life harder and limits opportunities.
...
We have decisions to make about our national priorities, and those decisions start with a commitment to generosity. We can't leave the world better than we found it if we are too stingy to allow the next generation to have anything we didn't.

There were a lot of comments to McEwan’s post. A few of them.

From Lady Blanchester

To me, saying that everyone should have to pay off their student loans because I had to pay off mine is akin to saying drowning people shouldn't get live preservers because I somehow managed to stay afloat without one. Throw out the live preservers!

Alittletiefling described a cousin who lives in Ontario, which is also cutting social services for the poor. He lost jobs and his loans are being called in. Now he can’t retrain, can’t move out of a nasty rooming house, can’t get government assistance because it’s been slashed, can’t afford to eat.

Verucaamish explained some tax policy. The GOP tax cut = $2.3 trillion. For about 2% of that we can double the budget for Department of Education and Department of Housing and Urban Development. We spent $700 billion on bailing out banks in 2009. For only $300 billion more we could have bailed out every single person whose mortgage was under water.

Consistently, the federal government has chosen to spend vast amounts more on supporting billionaires than keep people in their homes and ensuring quality education.

Marissa123 said she has massive student loans and there is no way she can pay them off. She worked her way through grad school doing 2-3 jobs, but still made only $10K a year. That doesn’t cover living expenses.

Heather T added:

Oh, and that whole "Struggle = Morality" thing? Is also often rooted in Christian supremacy and its related concepts of martyrdom.

Lady Robusta added:

There are so many things we have government pay for that end up benefiting some individuals more directly, but nevertheless benefit society as a whole enough to make it worthwhile. Student debt relief would be one of these. Public education is the classic example: I don't have children, but I don't mind AT ALL paying taxes for public schools, because I want an educated society. Another example: About half of long-term elder care is paid for by Medicaid, yet it would be absurd to say that this is "unfair" to people who die suddenly and don't get the "benefit" of living in a nursing home at the end of their lives.

Loan forgiveness would benefit the entire economy, and would be a massive economic equalizer between people who had parents who could pay for their college or pay off their loans for them, and people who did not have parents who could do those things.

mcbender wrote:

There are times when I really think that sentiments like "I've got mine, fuck you" and "misery loves company/suffering builds character" may be the key dividing line in today's politics (versus, say, "I suffered and want nobody else to go through that").

FloraFlora added:

I said this on Twitter the other day: look, the NATURE of fixing problems, except when you happen to magically be prescient enough to see every problem coming and avert it (which is never) is that the problem happened at least one time. Every time we fix a pothole, someone probably bumped through it, and maybe their axle was damaged. Every time we make a new rule about lettuce safety, it's likely because we realized there was an e-coli problem, and likely that was because a bunch of people got sick. Every time we abate asbestos from buildings, we do so knowing that we want no MORE people to die of cancer from a known carcinogen, but some people already did.

We know student loan debt is a problem for individuals and for the society as a whole. Now that we know that, let’s fix it.

Stories untold

We’ve heard a lot from the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. A slight revision: we’ve heard a lot from the white students. I appreciate what these students have been doing to stir the national consciousness with their Never Again campaign. But they’re not the whole story. Out of more than 3,000 students 11% are of color. And they say it is time to hear their stories.

So they’ve started posting Stories Untold and saying why their voices matter.

Many of these students are from neighborhoods that have a lot of violence. They want the movement to be about more than guns in schools. They want to include minority communities.

The number of police on campus has increased. The students of color feel less safe. They recognize the intersection between gun violence, police violence, and immigration enforcement. Mass violence is not the only gun problem.

Voices should not be silenced.



Another way our media is failing us. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville posted a headline from the Washington Post: “Should you worry about trade? Some Americans will feel pain from China more than others.” McEwan and her army of commenters tell us all the ways this headline is wrong.

* We’re all going to feel pain.

* But even if it were only “some” Americans, it is disgusting to imply that if you don’t feel the pain, no need to worry about anyone else.

* We’ve been told that the economic insecurity of rural white America (a garbage narrative) was a big reason why they voted for the nasty guy. This article says I don’t need to care that the trade war might make things worse in rural white America.

* This headline implies the trade spat began in China and not with the nasty guy. The spat doesn’t have to happen.



Oklahoma teachers are on strike. The legislature offered a pay raise. The teachers said not good enough. We need new textbooks and our schools need lots of repairs. They’ve started tweeting pictures of the state of their textbooks. One shows a history book without a cover. The book says the current president is George W. Bush.

After Donald

Leonard Pitts, Jr., columnist for the Miami Herald thinks we should be thinking about what we do after Donald Trump. If Trump wins in November then head north until you see moose.

If Trump loses, don't just sigh in relief over the dodged bullet. The forces he is riding won't disappear after his defeat. They didn't disappear after Sarah Palin. We don't want to see what kind of monster those forces unleash in four years. Time to tackle them.

1. Confront economic insecurity. These people are struggling. The trickle down economics seems to evaporate before getting very far.

2. Confront ignorance.

The less you know, the more fearsome and confounding the world can seem, and the more susceptible you are to the authoritarian figure who promises to make everything all right again. Education must be rescued from the anti-science, anti-history, anti-logic, anti-intellect agendas of conservative school boards around the country.

3. Confront bigotry. It doesn't go away if you ignore it.

4. Confront fear. We're in

an era wherein the majority feels itself, its position and prerogatives, under siege by the ascendance of various minorities — racial, religious and sexual. So it becomes ever more important to find strategies that help us to locate in one another our shared humanity.

3. Confront apathy. Vote.

The victims are children

Over the last six years there have been four emergency managers in quick succession for the Detroit Public Schools. There were also two more a few years before the current block. The last few have tended to stay only 18 months because after that the elected school board can show the manager the door, but if he leaves before then the governor can appoint another one and reset the clock.

So, how are they doing? With that amount of time, the DPS system should be humming along just fine. Well, no.

The DPS system enrollment is about half of what it was and the budget has gone from a slight surplus to $170 million deficit and more than $2.1 billion of debt. The education the students get is no better. Some of the student drop is because students are fleeing the system. Some of it is inflicted by the state, which put the worst 15 schools under an Education Achievement Authority, and those also haven't improved.

The latest emergency manager has been in office for only a short time. As he was being introduced to the public he said he would be opening up the budget and looking for places to cut. Gee, why didn't someone think of that six years ago?

The Metro Times has a good story about the whole sorry mess. From all the shenanigans, it seems the state wants the city school district to fail. I couldn't possibly think of why.

How we got into this mess is part 1 of the story. I read it when I was in midtown Detroit and picked up a copy. I didn't realize there was a part 2 until I got onto the Metro Times website to provide you with a link to part 1. Both parts were written by Curt Guyette of the Metro Times staff.

The topic of part 2 is simple: What to do about it?

Michigan school funding from the state is mostly per pupil. Which means as the enrollment in DPS schools drops the state funding drops. According to Peter Hammer, economist and law professor of Wayne State University, that means there is no way the emergency manager can succeed. The more he cuts, the more students flee, the less income he has to work with. The job outline as defined by state law means the EM cannot deal with the root problem of insufficient funding from the state. Hammer says if the state intended to eliminate traditional public schools it would have been hard to create a better method to do so.

Legislators have been pushing the idea of school choice, that if DPS doesn't shape up students will choose alternate schools that are better. One little problem with that grand idea. The charter schools available to Detroit students are no better than the public schools. Part of the reason is that the state legislature has refused to enact any accountability of charter operators. The state hands out cash without any oversight. And legislators don't seem to be in any hurry to change that.

There are a variety of coalitions talking about how to fix Detroit schools. There are local, state, and national justice groups looking at what to do. There is much discussion of whether the board should be appointed or elected. But many of the changes suggested by these groups have been tried. And failed. That means the root problem isn't a governance issue. It is a funding issue. Unless the state legislature fixes that issue (and they're the only ones who can) Detroit schools will not improve. I can come to only one conclusion: The state legislature wants Detroit schools to not be able to educate Detroit's youth.

Many of these legislators represent the highly religious western part of Michigan. These lawmakers no doubt use lots of Christian references when they speak. I wrote a post three years ago showing how un-Christian it is to set up a tax structure that perpetuates poverty.

Steven Singer wrote about his experiences as a middle school teacher near Pittsburgh. He says he deals with a lot beyond what is in the textbooks and curriculum. That includes neighborhood violence. If he doesn't deal with at least the emotional fallout, kids don't learn. He actually enjoys dealing with all this extra stuff. He is quite annoyed with one aspect: If he can't fix some of these insurmountable problems because of a lack of tools his job is on the line. And speaking of violence, Singer wrote:

Keeping public schools defunded and dysfunctional is also a form of violence. Promoting privatization and competition when kids really just need resources is also cruelty. Pretending that standardized curriculum and tests are a Civil Right is also savagery.

It’s called class warfare. Its most prominent victims are children. Its most active soldiers are teachers. And we’re on the front lines every day.

Need to feel a sense of power

An article in Between the Lines is about filmmaker Cevin (pronounced as a “K”) Soling and his new documentary The War on Kids about the pervasive bullying in our schools. As he filmed he began to understand a major part of the problem is the education system itself. It has to do with the way we've designed schools and that cannot be reformed.

All those programs to relieve and prevent bullying? They don't work and are wrong about the reasons for bullying. The It Get's Better project (I'm reading the book now) started by Dan Savage? Great idea, but telling kids it gets better later lets us off the hook about fixing the problem they're experiencing now. The targets aren't just the sexual minority kids. Banning bullying for being gay and the kids will be bullied for something else.

This is the problem: Going to school is compulsory. That makes the school autocratic. That deprives students of nearly all rights and of their voice. Students need to feel some sense of power over their own lives and when deprived of that they bully. And the worst bullies are teachers and administrators.

Pecking away at public institutions

Raul Gardea wrote an editorial for Next New Deal which was reprinted in Truth-Out. He talks about "Corporate Education Reform" in which big corporations and foundations are pushing various ideas, methods, resources, and technologies in education because they and their cronies will make big profits from them. Gardea is disappointed that a Democratic administration has bought into these ideas, especially high-stakes testing, in which the fate of teachers and schools is dependent on student scores on standardized tests. A big result of the emphasis on tests is a widening achievement gap. Suburban moms can make sure their children get the best. Poor urban moms are too busy working two and three jobs to be engaged in her children's education.

It really is all about money. Merit pay, standardization, union-busting, school closures, austerity budgets, unregulated charters, all coupled with persuasive messaging and the endorsement of both major political parties means corporate reform will make a few people very rich at the expense of equity and inclusiveness. Education is just another avenue where the profit motive has been pecking away at the remains of public institutions that we spent decades building.

The solution is to ignite progressive populism and switch from ideology to pragmatism. Alas, Gardea doesn't go into how to accomplish that.

Unable to challenge power

At the end of May I wrote a big post on Power. I find there is one more section to add to it. I had written that Power is maintained through laws, by oppressing those who don't recognize that the powerful are supposed to be in charge, and by enlisting others to support their oppression. I see that I missed one key part.

A Power will make sure others are unable to challenge their power.

An example of this is the tax laws in Alabama that are designed to make sure the schools for black students are underfunded. Black children who aren't educated grow up to adults who are able to take only the menial jobs and are no challenge to the corporate tycoons.

Newsweek has an article about another aspect of this Power preservation. The article by Anna Bernasek, discusses the ways we are underfunding our public schools nationwide and the consequences that has for us as a society.

The article mentions the support the elderly get from government ($27K per person from all levels of gov't and 41% of the federal budget (including Social Security and Medicare). In contrast each child gets $12K and most of that comes from state and local budgets in the form of education. The federal budget has only 10% for children. Fortunately, the article spends very little time on the argument that if the elderly weren't so greedy the kids would be just fine. The proper solution, not mentioned much, is that the rich aren't being taxed enough.

Some of the support kids need and don't get: Nutrition assistance, health care, a place to live, education. And education is the biggest one.

Some claim that if we don't deal with the federal deficit our children will inherit a mess. But if we skimp on our children's education they won't be able to deal with the mess.

In one of my protests over the last month one of the leaders remarked that Wayne State University in Detroit used to get 75% of its budget from the state of Michigan. Now it gets 25%. It has become a private school. Many student in Detroit can't afford it. This article and others are full of cuts to all levels of education and the soaring debts students now carry.

This is why I am putting underfunded education under a discussion as a way to prevent challenges to Power:

Back in the 1960s and 1970s [California's] residents mightily benefited from low-cost college education. Without huge student debts, students were free to experiment with new ideas and start their own businesses. The rise of Silicon Valley as a place of innovation, creativity, and risk taking, coincided with two generations of students going to college in California for next to nothing. That might have been tougher to pull off had they been saddled with a $100,000 or so in student debt.

Another aspect of this is companies no longer train their workers. They assume the worker is already trained -- on the workers dime. Without that training employees can't get into the higher-paying jobs.

So a student either can't afford to go to college or has so much debt the emphasis must be on fitting into the current power structure to pay off the debt rather than doing something radical and innovative that might challenge the power structure.

Social Security and other services are designed so that current workers support retirees. The young support the old. Yet, the young are provided fewer resources to enable them to do that.

I've gone back to the original post on Power and updated it.

On to another aspect of Power: The Demos Policyshop highlights a study that showed as inequality increases, trust in strangers declines.

This decline in social trust begins a downward spiral. Bo Rothstein and Eric Uslaner note in a fabulous paper for World Politics, "The best policy response to growing inequality is to enact universalistic social welfare programs. However, the social strains stemming from increased inequality make it almost impossible to enact such policies."

A lack of trust means the rich see the poor as takers and the poor see the rich as selfish. A study found that "upper class individuals were, more likely to break driving laws, take goods from others, lie in a negotiation, cheat and endorse unethical behavior." Which belies their claim that money equals morality.

My dad sent me a link to a video of Cenk Uygur posted on Upworthy. Does money influence politics? Sheesh, what a question! Of course, it does. That's why rich give money to campaigns. But do you know to what degree? The video reported on at a study that compared how closely the last five Congresses listened to their various constituents, how thoroughly they did what the rich, middle class, and poor asked them to do. The rich always had their requests filled. The poor -- never. The middle class? Only when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. And only enough to get the middle class to shut up.

I have mentioned several times, though maybe not on this blog, that while it is obvious the GOP is my enemy, trying to institute policies I profoundly disagree with, I am not convinced the Democrats are my friends. Another part of this video provided more evidence they are not. One finding was that the Democrats -- not Republicans -- most closely did what the rich wanted. The rich are able to play the two parties as Good Cop -- Bad Cop. Those GOP people are really out there. They won't do anything for you. So vote for the Dems because they will (even though it is just a few crumbs while they give us everything we want).

I don't do Halloween, especially the part about handing out candy to kids. I did, however, wore by Charlie Brown shirt to the college on Tuesday (Halloween party) and to the Ruth Ellis Center on Wednesday. "So you're Charlie Brown!" "No, I stole his shirt." A couple women offered to hold footballs for me.

So I look for something else to do during the time the kids go door-to-door. This year I ended up at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea to see the play Vast Difference. That's a pun on the vas deferens and (as a reviewer said) if you want to know more Wikipedia can help. It was a comedy about manhood. The small crowd did quite a bit of laughing.

I mention all that here because my first choice for the evening was to see the documentary Inequality for All by Robert Reich. Alas, the last showing at the one movie theater showing it was at 1:30 yesterday afternoon. I did hear about the movie when it was released, especially the interview in which Reich said that the rich would be richer if they invested in the middle class, which would in turn buy more of whatever product made them rich. So why scrimp on that investment? Reich couldn't explain that one.

But I can. The 1% isn't after money, though huge piles of it is mighty nice. No, the rich want power and all that money enables them to get power.

Difficult to teach

Hurricane Katrina gave New Orleans a chance to replace its not very good public school system with charter schools. Andrea Gabor in Newsweek has a report on how well that is working. A big problem is that the state method of evaluating what is an effective school and what isn't is based on the percentage of kids that head to college. Should all kids aim for college? What about the ones who would be so burdened by debt and stuck in low-paying jobs that college wouldn't be an economic gain? What about the ones who aren't college material or are aiming for careers, such as carpenter, where college isn't a help? The state emphasis on college admissions means high schools geared towards these other students are deemed to be failing, even if the students learn a respectable trade.

Another big problem is that charters can expel the "difficult to teach." And no one keeps track of whether another school, charter or not, takes them in.

A third problem is most of these charter schools are regimented. Teachers are burnt out in just a couple years. Students have no fun. They have no opportunity to explore what their future might be like. They are treated to one-size-fits-all. Is that what we really want?

Christopher Dickey, also in Newsweek has found another education issue. Don Moore, associate professor of University of California, Berkeley, says that elite colleges and universities are much more lenient in their grading. Back in 2001, 90% of Harvard students graduated with honors. What this means is rich kids get higher GPAs than poor kids. That gives the rich a boost when applying for elite jobs, and widens inequality.

Rescue but for a profit motive

I've been saying for some time that health care and education should not be subjected to the profit motive. My first post about it was back in 2008. Both are distorted by the bottom line, meaning decisions are made for other than robust health and comprehensive education.

Paul Buchheit of Common Dreams lists eight areas, including health care and education, where the profit motive, also known as privatization, are creating disasters in public life. I'll list them here with a bit of explanation. I'll let you read the original article for details and stats.

Health Care. Ours is the most expensive in the world. Yet the most cost effective care in American is Medicare. One wonders why the salaries of CEOs of health systems are over ten times the salary of the Medicare administrator. Add in stock options and income can be over 300 times as much.

Water. Privatized systems charge 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewage service. These companies make huge profits.

Internet. National systems, such as in South Korea have internet systems that are 200 times faster for half the cost.

Transportation. Privatized systems come with fare increases and elimination of unprofitable routes, leaving some riders without access. Bus drivers face longer hours at reduced wages.

Banking. Compare the deceit and depravity of Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America, with the solid performance of the publicly owned Bank of North Dakota. Yeah, a socialist bank in a red state.

Prisons. The goal should be to rehabilitate prisoners and gradually empty jails. But business is too good. Private prisons are worse in violence within, rehabilitation efforts, and prison conditions.

Education. Charter schools have not shown to be better, and have teachers with less experience and pay. The emphasis shifts to education as assembly line.

Consumer Protection. Privatized consumer protection means no consumer protection. A recent example is that Texas fertilizer plant explosion that hadn't been inspected for 25 years.

As summed up by US News, "Private industry is not going to step in and save people from drowning, or help them rebuild their homes without a solid profit." In order to stay afloat as a nation we need each other, not savvy businesspeople who presume to tell us all how to be rich. We can't all be rich. We just want to keep from drowning.

The first comment was that the author forgot the private funding of Elections.



Britain is considering a bill that would require Parliament to get public feedback (permission?) before privatizing a service. In spite of the ideology of "private sector efficiency," public services tend to be better quality, lower cost, and more accountable. I think the disconnect is those who want to privatize claim market efficiencies which don't materialize because the new business is a monopoly.

Why do we hate our kids?

A correction to yesterday's note about Costa Rica. The accidental legislation wasn't about gay marriage, but gay civil unions. Which, according to many of the voices I've heard, is bad enough. One step at a time.



And some places in Latin America aren't as nice to gays as Costa Rica (never mind Argentina). A bill in Peru's Congress would have provided penalties for those convicted of assault of gay people. It was voted down.



Massachusetts is starting work on a public accommodations bill for transgender people. This allows me a chance to review what public accommodation includes. I've normally thought of it as access to hotels, restaurants, and stores without discrimination. But it also includes health care facilities, lodging (including campsites), places serving food, all forms of retail, places of public gathering (such as convention centers), places of public display (such as museums), places of recreation (such as zoos), public ways (such as streets), service establishments (such as funeral parlors), transport facilities (such as trains and train stations), professional services (doctors), places of government (polling places). Quite a list!



The ball-and-chain we attach to our graduating seniors (in the form of debt) makes some people wonder why we hate our kids. Alas, I don't remember who said that.

It appears Oregon is going to do something about that. The state legislature has approved a pilot project for a plan to allow students to attend public universities without tuition or loans. In exchange, students would pay the gov't 3% of their paychecks over the next 25 years. That's significantly less than what current graduates are paying. The money would go into a fund to pay the way for future students. Why should banks make a profit from education?

One small detail to be worked out. Startup costs will be about $9 billion to pay for students until the first ones start earning a paycheck.

Black Thursday

My goodness! This is getting so old and so annoying!

The Michigan legislature certainly has been busy during their lame-duck session, though I wonder what their hurry is because in January the state House and Senate will still be GOP controlled and the GOP governor isn't going anywhere. But it was dispiriting to listen to the Michigan news from the NPR station in Ann Arbor on my way home from teaching.

The House passed a Right-to-Work bill this afternoon and the Senate followed this evening. All during the fall campaign while a state amendment requiring union bargaining was on the ballot Gov. Snyder played coy and said he wouldn't give his position on a Right-to-Work bill though he would rather the legislators would not touch something so divisive. But now that the election is over and the lawmakers are in the process of passing it the Gov. is all, "Bring it on! I'll sign it!"

For those who are wondering, the name of the bill is a euphemism. What they mean is "the right to work without being forced to pay union dues." And that translates to gutting unions. What GOP lawmaker isn't for that? This is a bill that benefits only the 1%.

In the comments Howie says it quite well (in part):

"Right to work" = right to low wages.
"Right to work" = right to no benefits.
"Right to work" = right to unsafe workplace environment.
"Right to work" = right to no job security.

I add: Right to work = be lucky you have a freakin job.

It is good to see union people put up a good fight at the Capitol today, though they were working alongside Tea Party people working for what the unions were working against. Huffington Post has pictures of the protestors who have been in the Capitol ever since the GOP leadership announced the bill was on a fast track. The protests were unruly enough that the police closed the building. But the Dems got a judge to reverse that order and the protesters streamed back in.

Oh, the GOP was just getting started.

Also likely to pass (and already through the Senate) is a bill to allow health providers, facilities (hotels?), and insurers to refuse to serve based on religious objections. Any guess on a big target? Yup, gay people. And those who want an abortion.

To make that second part perfectly clear the Senate passed a separate series of bills to prohibit the upcoming health care exchanges of the Affordable Care Act from including coverage of abortion in basic policies, meaning such coverage must be purchased separately. And this is after the same state GOP refused to set up a state-run exchange, telling the feds to run it for us. Yup, they're saying we don't want to run the exchange, but any exchange in Michigan must play by our rules.

And they still aren't done.

Next up is a series of bills on education. Over the last year the state set up a "statewide" school district and took over the 15 worst schools in Detroit. I can see -- sort of -- why this might be necessary. But suddenly the GOP wants to expand that concept, even though it has been functioning only since September and results are unproven. A big problem with the system is that there is no local school board for parents to complain to. There are other bills in the package and I don't understand them all. I'll only say that if the GOP is backing them the intended goal is to gut the quality of education in the state (except for their kids). Gut education? Peasants don't need no stinkin education!

Union busting. Denial of service for religious reasons. Education busting. Busy session indeed.

I wonder if the GOP in Michigan saw the results of the last election (though the state Senate wasn't up for election and the GOP in the House lost seats, but not their majority) and began to panic. Perhaps they are thinking: How much of our agenda can we impose on the state before they boot us from office? And you can be sure what's left of the unions will work hard to make that happen.

On the national scene: Boehner is being blasted for giving away too much in his opening offer to avoid the fiscal bluff.

I just want them to grow up or go away. At least consider someone (anyone!) beyond the 1%. Yeah, I know, not likely, not soon.

And to finish off the day…

A bullied gay teen committed suicide in Fenton, a town I drive past when I visit my parents. School officials say there were no reports of bullying. Commenters say there had to be at least someone on the faculty or administration who knew about it. And did nothing.

Formal, sterile, and academic

As schools ponder the difference between "instruction" and "learning" and faces with standardized tests that demand the first and not the second, they have to eliminate one little thing that gets in the way -- a child's curiosity. Here are some ways to squelch curiosity, provided by Terry Heick in an article on Alternet:

* The teacher decides what is to be learned when and how.

* Insist there is one right answer. Focus on that, not the questions or the process of getting the answer.

* Make sure learning technology sticks to firm boundaries. And YouTube doesn't.

* Use collaboration to avoid individual thought and reflection.

* Avoid art, music, or physical movement.

* If there is no data showing a teaching method works, don't use it.

* Keep lessons formal, sterile, and academic. Certainly don't use family traditions, cultural legacy, and individual talents.

* If it is not planned, it is play. If it is play, it isn't learning.

* Focus only on the standards.

* Be careful not to show your own curiosity.

Back in chains

In a speech before a predominantly black audience, Joe Biden said the GOP policies would "unchain Wall Street" and "put you all back in chains." Yup, the GOP squawked about slavery. But there is an important point that Biden may not have intended, and the GOP missed.

Yes, the GOP policies are working to make sure blacks can't vote. Those policies have the greatest economic hit on black communities. Drug laws are causing more havoc on black communities.

And more blacks than whites are in prison. The privatization of prisons has meant those companies are looking for more sources of revenue -- such as selling prison labor. Yup. Blacks back in chains.



Terrence Heath reports on an analysis of Paul Ryan's plans for Medicaid. He notes these things:
* Medicaid is not the problem. Overall health care costs are the problem.
* Medicaid is not just for the poor. It is important to many middle- and working-class Americans.
* The cuts to Medicaid do not lower health care costs. They shift costs to those least able to afford them.
* Cuts to Medicaid are as unpopular as those for Medicare. Democrats compromising with the GOP do so at their peril.
The rest of Heath's post documents the pain the Ryan cuts would generate.



Government has declared the economic crash was nobody's fault and aren't pursuing prosecution. But there is evidence of crimes. The perps may not face jail, but we could make them face continued public humiliation.
* Repeatedly parade their crimes in public.
* Repeatedly count up their billions in ill-gotten gains and compare to the human misery they caused.
* Publicize details of dirty deals and disdain for clients.
* Make them pay millions to defend themselves in the court of public opinion.



Here are five things the rich get out of the government they claim they want to shrink.
* Security: A lot of what the police do is focus on crimes against wealth. Business keep the police focus on homeless, unemployed, and drug users to make sure these groups don't take their anger out on the wealthy.
* Taxes and regulations: The gov't is doing all it can to make tax avoidance, customer fleecing, and reckless polluting legal.
* Research and infrastructure: Long term research takes too much time for corporations focused on quarterly profits, so the gov't does it. Corporations take advantage of roads, ports, power grids, communication networks (including satellites) built and maintained by the gov't. Education, paid for by the gov't, trains the chemists, chip designers, and programmers, engineers, and analysts that corporations need.
* Corporate welfare.
* Disaster recovery: Most of the expense of oil spills are paid by the gov't. There is also financial bailout for those too big to fail.



Tony Danza (yes, the TV star) spent a year teaching 10th graders in Philadelphia, apparently for a reality TV series. He lived to write a book about it, due out next month. He wrote an article in USA Weekend, which comes with the Sunday Free Press. One thought from the article: Every time the school's budget is cut the students get the message that education is not important.



Every August Beloit College releases a Mindset List which looks at culture through the eyes of those entering college. It began as a way to tell faculty about outdated references. It is now used as a way of keeping track of the changing worldview of the young. Now that I teach college students I probably should pay attention. Examples:

They have had to incessantly remind their parents not to refer to their CDs and DVDs as “tapes.”

For most of their lives, maintaining relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world has been a woman’s job in the State Department.

Women have always piloted war planes and space shuttles.

My readership in Russia has apparently collapsed. A couple weeks ago I was getting more than 200 hits a week from Russia. Then suddenly it dropped to 20-35 a week. No idea why. My readership this week includes USA, Britain, Russia, Germany, India, Canada, Ukraine, China, Australia, Venezuela, Netherlands, and Thailand.

Making schools fail

An idea that's been tossed around frequently is that American schools are failing. That prompted Bush's No Child Left Behind and Obama's Race to the Top.

But is it true?

An article in Mother Jones looks at that question (I haven't read the Mother Jones article, only David Dayen's comments on Firedoglake). At Mission High School (town not named) the 925 students hold passports from 47 countries. The majority of students are Latino, African American, and Asian American. Nearly 3/4 are poor. In spite of all that 88% were accepted in college and the school improved Latinos' test scores more than any other school in the district. Suspensions have skyrocketed nationwide, but dropped significantly at Mission High. This is a failing school? According to test scores, yes.

So what is going on?

Corporations see schools as a profit center. And to wrest them away from government -- or to prove that government can't do anything right -- they have to "prove" that schools are "failing." One happy byproduct of that claim is that teachers can't do anything right and their union should be busted.

I see one more piece to the puzzle, which comes from my reading about systems of power. One aspect of the way a system of power stays in power is to convince those in its control is that it is supposed to be that way. Controlling the education of youth -- or simply making sure they get a lousy education -- is a way of making sure that message gets across.

Many commenters said the best way to improve education? Reduce class size.



Next week is the GOP convention. The Dem convention is the week after. And the silly season has already begun. Already I'm tired of the mess. So I will probably comment very little on the whole thing until it is over. You know my views of the GOP. Their shenanigans won't change, they'll only get louder. I haven't said as much about the Dems and I'll sum up my views of them this way: They say the right things in their party platform (especially about gays). Whether they do the right thing or are too beholden to corporate masters is another question entirely. I'm very much against the GOP. That doesn't mean I'm for the Dems. But I'll vote for them to keep the GOP out of power.

Homework?

Rasaan Turner was part of the 2012 High School Apprentice Class at the Detroit Free Press. This past Sunday he wrote an essay about the education he got from the Detroit Public Schools and his doubts about how well it prepared him for college.

Algebra consisted of worksheets and crossword puzzles. So he is taking an online math class. His Spanish teacher went on maternity leave and the substitute showed American movies in Spanish and passed out worksheets suitable for the 6th grade. He felt let down by his English class -- only three novels in all of high school? He wrote:

I never felt pushed to do my absolute best. Any homework I received was done before I left school, I never studied and I never took notes. There was no need.

I teach in a college in Detroit. I haven't checked how many of my students went through the DPS system. But it has left me wondering. Is Rasaan's experience why some of my students don't do homework?

What mean "we," Kemosabe?

I'm back to reading Terrence Heath's blog. He doesn't post often, but many times what he says is insightful. From a month ago is a post about who we are. First of all, is there a "we"? The way GOP members act, there isn't. How we define "we" determines what kind of country we want. Yeah, this election is about the size of government. But it is also about whether we are in this together or not.

One way to define "we" is to ask how much I am willing to do for someone else. Am I willing to seek justice for someone not related to me? Put another way, am I willing to care for someone else's child? School teachers do it all the time. Firefighters too (Andrew Leonard knows what that's all about). And school teachers and firefighters are getting cut. Do we limit "we" to a household? A neighborhood, town, state, or nation? I'd even dare say it -- does "we" encompass the world? There are some problems that only get solved when "we" work on them together -- local schools are at one end of the definition of "we" and global warming at the other.

Heath goes on to quote Ezra Klein about how health care and education are similar to each other and different from everything else.

* Both are heavily subsidized by the gov't. Klein makes clear gov't subsidy doesn't send their costs out of control. The gov't subsidizes because the costs are already out of control. Because…

* A consumer can't say no to health care and education expenses. You can wait to buy a house or even not buy one. Same with a car. Health expenses don't wait. Neither does a child's 18th birthday.

* Market discipline doesn't work because the customer can't simply walk out of the store.

If we relied completely on the market then we would have to tell more people than we as a society are comfortable with they can't have the health care or education they need.

We can do it together. We should do it together.

If you're not old enough to know that strange word I used in the title, Wikipedia can help.

The students suffer for a long time

I've heard several reports this weekend about the student debt crisis. This is one of them. I think they all came from the announcement that the amount of student debt now exceeds all credit card debt and is north of $800 billion. Yup, we're closing in on a trillion. A report from the show Marketplace on NPR considers the consequences of so much debt: student move in with parents -- which means they aren't renting apartments or buying houses, they aren't buying furniture or wide screen TVs. The economy takes a hit.

Part of the problem is the federal government providing fewer grants to students. Part of it is the cost of education (something like 25% of a middle class annual income where it used to be 4% probably about the time I went to college). And part of it is for-profit education.

Jeff Bryant of Campaign for America's Future takes a look at the for-profit education scam. Yeah, these institutions graduate -- some -- students who get jobs and pay off their education loans and become productive members of society. But the whole thing seems to be a method to suck dollars out of the federal treasury and leave students with mounds of debt. The institution gets paid up front, the student suffers for a long time. This student debt is now being bought and sold just like mortgages were a few short years ago. The debt load is unmanageable for most students and many are about to default. And we know what happened when mortgages defaulted.

Amazing, the people sucking dollars out of the gov't are the ones saying the gov't should be smaller.