Tea Party, Specter of Beck makes USDA and NAACP Cave. Can we get any Lower?

Over the last few days we've heard plenty about former USDA regional director Shirley Sherrod's firing over a speech she gave about an event some 24 years ago which was recently doctored by a Right Wing blogger to appear racist, but turns out to have actually been about reconciliation.

When slimy Tea Party defender and Acorn nut Andrew Breitbart's "expose" appeared on his blog "Big Government", accusing Sherrod of making racist remarks at a long-ago NAACP meeting, heads which should have remained clear in the face of the dubious evidence took to exploding left and right. 

This whole process has been fascinating--the doctored tape, the rush to judgment--not just by Sherrod's bosses but by her friends in the NAACP, the complete and total turn-around when the entire tape was revealed, the reluctant then abject apologies, and finally, the icing on the cake:  The ludicrously manipulative indignation for the poor woman's plight by the likes of Glenn Beck, whose specter hung like a pall over the entire affair. 

I've seen and heard it all now (including Keith Olbermann's brilliant, scorching Special Comment last night). 

I've watched the interviews with Shirley Sherrod and mightily felt her pain.

I watched Tom Vilsack's apologetic press conference and didn't doubt for a moment his sincerity. 

I watched Andrew Breitbart apologize to no one, since, as he says, his actions were against the NAACP because they dared to attack the Tea Party.

Here's what bothers me most about the whole thing:  Governmental department heads, and possibly the White House, made the decision to fire this woman within three hours of finding out that Glenn Beck was going to talk about her on his show that day.  

This Glenn Beck:

 And this Glenn Beck:

And this Glenn Beck:

What have we come to, we Americans in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, when even our duly elected government officials, leaders of the most powerful government on earth, stalwart defenders of the Constitution, cower and cave in the presence of a daffy TV bozo?

I don't believe President Obama had anything to do with the firing of Shirley Sherrod, but he has everything to do with the cowardly, doggedly clueless climate surrounding every department under his wing.

Keith Olbermann said it best:

Mr. President, please stop trying to act, every minute, like some noble, neutral figure, chairing a government of equal and dispassionate minds, and contemplative scholars. It is a freaking war out here, and the imagined consensus you seek is years in the future, if ever it is to be re-discovered.
This false consensus has gotten us only the crucifixion of Van Jones, and a racist gold-shilling buffoon speaking from the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th Anniversary of Dr. King's speech, and now it has gotten us Shirley Sherrod. And your answer is to note a "disservice" and an "injustice."
Sir, get a copy of the Michael Douglas movie "The American President." When you get to the line where he says "I was so busy keeping my job, I forgot to do my job" — hit the rewind button. Twenty times. "Fired up?" "Fired up?" Anybody? Anybody?

What does it take for us to be fired up?  This perversion of American politics has to come to a screeching halt.  We're not all blithering idiots--at least not yet.  So who's afraid of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann and the All Powerful Tea Party?  Not me and not you, but I'm not feeling any better about it.  We don't count.  When the government and the press kowtow to the likes of those dangerous buffoons, they become nothing more than powerless sidekicks.   That's just nuts.

So really--what does it take for us to be fired up?  The media clowns are taking over the country and millions of us are watching with fascination and dread.   Our pathetic attempts at dissent are nothing more than annoying flea bites to the all-powerful.  It's time for the heavy artillery.  It's time for some leadership from President Obama.   He has to be made to understand that it can only come from him.  He has promises to keep, and we can't let him forget them.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact


Ramona

It's Jobs and then it's Jobs and after that it's Jobs

Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation's total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America's total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income re-concentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.

Each of America's two biggest economic crashes occurred in the year immediately following these twin peaks—in 1929 and 2008. This is no mere coincidence. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing.

Robert Reich, The Nation, July, 2010 

 The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of off-shored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the Scaling Bank of the U.S. and make these sums available to companies that will scale their American operations. Such a system would be a daily reminder that while pursuing our company goals, all of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability—and stability—we may have taken for granted.
 Andy Grove, How America Can Create Jobs

Despite all the perks we've been giving to corporate America, it's not at all clear that the private sector will ever again create enough decent jobs to support a middle class society in this country. Right now the economy is supposedly growing, but employment isn't. So what is growing? Well, the obscene bonuses and pay packages of corporate America and Wall Street --- the only growth that counts for our financial elites.
We're at a critical point in the jobs crisis. Nearly 30 million of us don't have jobs or have been forced into part-time jobs. It's not like there's no work to do. We have millions and millions of kids to educate. We desperately need to slash our energy use--and with an army of workers, we could weatherize every home and business in the country. Our bridges and roads will take decades to repair. We need to build an entire national system of efficient public transit.
When Wall Street is in trouble, we come to the rescue with trillions in bailouts. We've poured hundreds of billions more into two wars. But when it comes to investing in our people to get needed work done, we can't seem to summon the will or find the cash.
 Les Leopold, Why All the Idiocy about Unemployment?

The consensus, no matter who says it and why, is that American manufacturing industries are no longer of Americans, by Americans, or even for Americans.  It's beyond a worrisome rumor, it's an established fact:  American manufacturing, compared to manufacturing world-wide, fills a niche no bigger than the size of an ant farm box.

Let's face it, the people in charge of keeping Americans working are not just incompetent or oblivious, they're the next best thing to the enemy.  The public sector is beyond just aiding and abetting the private sector, they're right down in the trenches with them.  Such a cacophony from Big Money, from the Right Wing, from  the keepers of the status quo.  Who could blame the people in charge for lending them an ear?

You kidding?  We could!  We should!  A whole lot of us DO!


A vast army of domestic terrorists bamboozled us, flimflammed us, fleeced us and left most of us bound and gagged, yet, incredibly, some truly wacky others are still begging for more.  Millions of real people are out of work, yet there are still millions of people (some of whom also fit into that out-of-work category) who can actually say the words "out-sourcing" and "off-shoring" without gagging or even flinching.  Many of them sip tea while repeating the words they've been brainwashed by the terrorists-in-gray-flannel-suits into saying:  "We don't want no stinkin' government in our lives".

Well, yes--we do.  We want a government that looks like a New Deal, acts like a New Deal, and actually IS a New Deal.  We want a works program.  We want a PWA, a WPA, a CCC.   We want a jumpstart because we're in serious trouble, I mean Trouble, that's Trouble with a capital T.

We need a Harry Hopkins, a powerful social worker for the masses, someone who cares more about people than about bottom lines.  Someone who won't stop talking, no matter who is trying to do the muzzling.  ( I see Elizabeth Warren in that role.)

We need a dedicated labor advocate.  I nominate Robert Reich.  (See above.)

We need an Eleanor Roosevelt, a conscientious, eloquent reformer who can  work with a cabinet bombarded on all sides by naysayers, greed-meisters, and relief-haters.  Michelle Obama could grow into it--she has the brains, the guts, the heart.  And who better than Michelle to convince her husband he needs to be our FDR?

Oh, and by the way:  We need to tax the hell out of the filthy rich and make them pay.  Then we need to spend what they're forced to fork over on social programs and American outlets for gainful employment.

Tax and spend, that's the ticket.  (Note that I can say that without even once gagging or flinching.)   This is an emergency.  Business as usual is not an option when the country is in crisis.  Rapid response is required.  Set up the triage teams and give them their assignments in this order:

1. Jobs
2. Jobs
3. Jobs.

And remind anyone who objects to the methods of care that we're in the midst of an emergency and they need to shut the hell up.

Ramona

Independence Day II - I can hardly wait

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." ~ Samuel Adams

Somewhere along the way we stopped calling our most popular summer holiday "Independence Day" and went simply with "The Fourth of July".  We love our Red, White and Blue, but this is the day we pull out all the stops.  Flags fly everywhere, the stars and stripes adorning everything from porches to paper plates to Uncle Sam hats to the holiday advertising pages of every newspaper.  Flags dress floats and bicycles and baby carriages in every parade in every little town in America.  

We love this day--the day to remember our liberty, our exceptionalism, our prosperity.  Those were the days, weren't they?

So what happened?

Not to be a downer on our very favorite day of the year, but I can't shake the feeling that "independence" is one of those words we're starting to look back on with nostalgia.   Does anyone even care that we're not independent anymore?

Our dependence on foreign oil and on anti-American big business and on the production and importation of goods from dubious nations across the globe is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they declared us an independent country and gave us our working papers. 

It started on July 4, 1776 when 56 men signed a paper declaring a dissolution of the 13 united states of America from England, the mother state.  Eleven years later, in 1787, a constitution, the wording hard-fought and brainstormed to death, became the law of the land.   The signers mulled over the first paragraph, realizing, I'm sure, that it needed some oomph if people were actually going to understand the motives behind it. 

They didn't start off with, "WE, the wealthy landowners, in order to keep our fiefdoms going. . .", or "WE, the 39 undersigned, in order to preserve our station and ensure a healthy profit margin. . . ".  

No, they began it like this:

WE, the people. . .of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America  

It all came out of a yearning for independence so strong an entire country was created, and in the course of a couple of centuries we became a model for democracy throughout the world--a force to be reckoned with.  You couldn't find a prouder nation anywhere.  We were going places.

That was then. 

Today, it's one of those days when the sun is warm, the breeze is balmy, and the shade of the old oak tree brings a delicious coolness.  A lemonade day.  A day for feeling good. The parade is about to start and there is no more beautiful flag in the world than the American flag.

So tomorrow we'll begin again.  Toward a more perfect union.  Toward more than just a day of domestic tranquility.  Toward an independence we, the people, promised to preserve.

Ramona

Get this straight, Corporate Pimps: There ARE NO JOBS!

How many times does this have to be repeated:  There are 15 million unemployed in this country, with 6.8 million chronically unemployed.

Most of them spend their days looking for work.  When they hear about the possibility of jobs, they'll stand in long lines just waiting for a chance at an interview.  They would rather stand in line for a job than stand in line for an unemployment check, but the check is a lifeline when there are no jobs.

Most of them have families who are suffering because there are no jobs.

Most of them had good jobs before the Republicans and turn-coat Democrats took up the phony cry about good wages killing us all and turned the entire country over to Big Business, who in turn thanked us all for bending over and kissing their asses by sending our jobs to corrupt slave wage countries.

They rub salt in the wounds by expecting us to buy those sweatshop goods at whatever price they tag them.  They're cheaply made and cheap to produce--facts not in the least reflected in the dazzlingly audacious price tags.  Talk about chutzpah.

They scream bloody murder because people aren't buying enough but they'll kill every chance American workers might have to earn enough to pay for their pirated booty. (Again with the chutzpah.)




And now the final slap in the face:  The Republicans in the Senate (and one Democrat, Ben Nelson) voted against an unemployment benefits extension.  Two reasons, according to them:  They don't want to add to the enormous deficit they created in the first place, and they don't want to be giving unemployment checks to people who would otherwise have to be out finding a job.

What hogwash.

Never mind that there are at least five people clamoring for every available job, including those jobs that only old people and teenagers used to take:  Fast food flippers, car washers, Walmart greeters. . .what's next?  Shoe shiners and apple sellers?

The real reason--as perverse and cold-blooded as it can get--is that the Republicans don't want the Democrats to have any kind of an edge that might win them the majority again in November.  The bastards are fighting for their political lives and using the already miserable and downtrodden as pawns

So let's say the Republicans win back the majority in November. (A likely prospect, given the baffling inattention of their followers and the woeful inability of the Democrats to fight against our domestic enemies.) What will they do to improve the lives of all our displaced American workers?  What kinds of jobs will they create?  Will the poor get richer and the rich get poorer?  Will all our troubles be over?  Will happy little bluebirds fly?

* La
** La la
*** La la la. . .

I'm waiting. . .

Ramona

The Lunatic Fringe is No Longer Amusing. Let's get Serious.

The collapse of the economy in the Great Recession gave us the starkest, most painful evidence imaginable of the failure of laissez-faire economics and the destructive force of the alliance of big business and government against the interests of ordinary Americans. Radical change was called for. (One thinks of Franklin Roosevelt raging against the “economic royalists” and asserting that “we need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer.”)

But there has been no radical change, only caution and timidity and more of the same. The royalists remain triumphant and working people are absorbing blow after devastating blow.

Bob Herbert, "When Greatness Slips Away",  NYT, 6/21/10

_____________________________________

Bob Herbert has been my favorite doom-sayer for a while now.  Every bit of doom and gloom coming off of his little portion of the paper confirms and solidifies my own feelings of the permanence of America's rack and ruin.  Together we wallow in our weariness and grief, but we don't enjoy it.  Not even a little bit.  That's about the only positive thing I can say about it.

We're also not alone by any means.  I can say that positively, too.  There are a lot of us who recognize a river of no return when we see one, and there are some of us who might even know how to turn this sorry ship around, but our voices are being drowned out by the lunatic fringe shouting crazily for another exciting ride down the rapids.

There's no getting around the fact that we're being hijacked by a loud-mouthed group of know-nothings and evil-doers.  They really, truly want to get us back to the dark days of Bush/Cheney.  They want to give what's left of what we laughingly call a "government" over to the Private Interests, making it a total surrender, and they want to make it happen now.

The crazy thing is some of them don't even know that's the plan.  They get out there and shout for Obama's head and for the destruction of all things liberal/progressive/socialist/communist/Marxist/Leninist/Rooseveltist/
Steinbeckist/MLKingist/WalterReutherist/FlorenceNightingalist/GoldenRulist and think they're doing their part to save the country!
 
They listen to people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and Dick Armey (who know they're talking nutty but like reaping the rewards), and Michelle Bachmann (who apparently doesn't, but reaps anyway), gathering their assigned weapons of anger and hatred, heading out to the battleground without ever recognizing that the real enemies of the state are the generals at their backs.
 
 

 
We're hearing well-paid Republican men and women in powerful governmental positions telling 15 million out-of-work folks that the solution to their problems is to get off the unemployment dole and go get a job.  Some of those same out-of work folks, even the ones who know there ARE no jobs, march with the tea partiers and vote Republican.  In some circles that's called masochism.   I wouldn't care if it was strictly their problem--even masochists need a crazy kind of love--but their actions are affecting us all.  We don't want to have to feel their pain.
 
Unrepressed anger and the attendant vicious stabs at any kind of remedies are hallmarks of the rest of them.  It's the Gong Show/Jerry Springer mentality, except this is real reality, with consequences. 
 
Chris Hedges, in a scary-fascinating piece on the "American Psychosis", writes:

  "Our culture of flagrant self-exaltation, hardwired in the American character, permits the humiliation of all those who oppose us. We believe, after all, that because we have the capacity to wage war we have a right to wage war. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are deemed ugly, ignorant or poor, should be belittled and mocked. Human beings are used and discarded like Styrofoam boxes that held junk food. And the numbers of superfluous human beings are swelling the unemployment offices, the prisons and the soup kitchens. 


It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt."

We have to stop pretending that what is happening in our country is a cyclical blip in our journey toward  glory.  We're being destroyed from the inside by our own citizens, and our real enemies couldn't be happier.  They don't have to lift a finger.  All it takes for them is patience.

Our goal is a government working toward the common good, and a free press that recognizes their role in achieving it.  Our responsibilities as citizens and voters is to make sure our government works for us.  We do that by taking our voting rights seriously and choosing our leaders judiciously. 

If it's true that senatorial-candidate-from-nowhere Alvin Greene got 60 percent of the primary vote in South Carolina simply because people didn't know who they were voting for, then lord help us, we're doomed.  Something tells me we're not in the '30s anymore.  We actually do have something to fear besides fear itself.

Ramona

Tom Friedman wants me to take the fall for BP. I'm not going to do it.

Thomas Friedman has a buddy who works in the pentagon and wants to take the blame for the BP oil crisis.  The guy, Mark Mykleby, wrote a letter to the editor of the Beaufort Gazette in South Carolina, saying “I’d like to join in on the blame game that has come to define our national approach to the ongoing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This isn’t BP’s or Transocean’s fault. It’s not the government’s fault. It’s my fault. I’m the one to blame and I’m sorry. It’s my fault because I haven’t digested the world’s in-your-face hints that maybe I ought to think about the future and change the unsustainable way I live my life. "

Mark has reluctantly come to the conclusion that we use too much oil and that's why the Gulf is in such a mess.  His solution is to ride bikes to work and plant gardens and. . .something something something.

Tom Friedman thinks his buddy Mark is on to something, as he tells us in his NYT piece:  "I think Mykleby’s letter gets at something very important: We cannot fix what ails America unless we look honestly at our own roles in creating our own problems. We — both parties — created an awful set of incentives that encouraged our best students to go to Wall Street to create crazy financial instruments instead of to Silicon Valley to create new products that improve people’s lives. We — both parties — created massive tax incentives and cheap money to make home mortgages available to people who really didn’t have the means to sustain them. And we — both parties — sent BP out in the gulf to get us as much oil as possible at the cheapest price. (Of course, we expected them to take care, but when you’re drilling for oil beneath 5,000 feet of water, stuff happens.)"

What's this "we" business?  I didn't do any of those things.  (And neither did any of the people I know who just plod along and do their jobs and worry about keeping a roof over their heads.)

I'm getting ready in a few minutes to go hang a load of dark clothes on the clothesline.  Tomorrow I'll wash whites and lights and hang them out if the sun is shining.  If it isn't, I'll wait to wash until the next day.  I have a dryer but the wind and the sun do the job in a much more satisfying way. 

Nearly every light socket in our house is fitted with CFL bulbs.  The ones that can't take them are on dimmers.

We drive a car that gets at least 33 MPG in the country, which is where we live.  It's our only car.

We burn wood in our high-efficiency stove as much as we can so as not to have to use our propane glutton of a furnace.  We close off half of our house in winter and leave it unheated.

We recycle and compost and wash out our zip-lock bags and use them over again.

When we use paper plates, they're paper and not plastic.

I watch "Living with Ed" and find lots to think about when I'm not ROTFL. (Love that guy!)

I'm still not good at remembering to take my own grocery sacks in to the store, but that doesn't mean I'm letting BP off the hook.  Uh uh.

I'm not the paragon of virtue when it comes to living Green, but I'm to blame for the BP oil mess like a sweat drop in a river is to blame for downstream flooding.  As I write this, the Census Bureau clock says the US population is 309,500,735.  If all 310 million of us dripped sweat into the river, we wouldn't raise that river one inch.  Yet you KNOW if we stand there long enough, it's gonna be our fault that somebody upstream messed up and caused the dam to break.

My kids didn't go to school to learn how to cheat people, as Friedman suggests.  What college teaches that?  (They didn't go to Wall Street or K Street or Easy Street, either.  That gladdens my heart no end.)

 And what kind of mindset thinks building a workforce in Silicon Valley might have been the answer to our collosal, unending unemployment problems?  We need to build goods from start to finish in the US, not assemble electronic gadgets with Chinese components.

Okay, people stupidly bought houses they couldn't afford, but somebody else aided and abetted.  They didn't hold guns to those bankers' heads in order to get their loans. 

And nobody but BP made the decision to deep-drill without giving a thought to safety and repairs.  No hoi polloi were involved in the decision to look the other way while British Petroleum went about their dirty business unimpeded.

Now that the inevitable oil crisis is upon us, every pol and pundit has a solution.  More regulation.  Less regulation. A definite reduction of our dependence on foreign oil, and more oil production in the U.S.  Wind, sun and water as alternatives.  Forget wind, sun and water and go with nuclear.

Here's my humble contribution to the discussion:  Bring back the trains, you idiots!  Tell the truck lobbies and car manufacturers to shove it.  One train engine dragging even a paltry dozen cars takes 12 or more gas-guzzling trucks off the roads.  With passenger trains, it's a multitude of automobiles off the highways.   Was I the only one horrified when our government stopped subsidizing the railroads and let them die a slow death?  Couldn't everyone see where that was going to lead?  More trucks, more cars, more roads, more road repairs, more dependence on oil, more and more pollution and the associated illnesses.

In time, as the railroads declined and air freight proved to be too expensive, freeways sliced through cities and divided neighborhoods.  They created traffic jams and brought us unprecedented air and noise pollution.  Trucks are now the bullies of the road and whatever the trucking lobbyists want the lobbyists get.

A local example:  Here in Michigan our Mackinac Bridge is a toll bridge.  A few years ago it was running in the red, succumbing to constant repairs, since Michigan has the highest weight limit on trucks in the nation (164,000 pounds on 11 axles--more than double most states' limits). So someone suggested raising the tolls on trucks.  Boy, howdy, what a stink!  They threatened a boycott of the entire Upper Peninsula, the eastern portion of which can only be reached by that bridge.  We're poor here--and needy.  That's all it took.  They raised the rates on cars, instead, and now we're paying $3.50 one way instead of the $2.00 we paid just a few years ago.  And repair crews and lane closings have become permanent fixtures on our beautiful bridge, thanks to overloaded trucks. 

Our beautiful Mackinac Bridge, complete with resident maintenance equipment.

Michigan's roads are the worst in the nation, thanks to those behemoth trucks traveling our byways and an auto industry abhorrence of rapid transit.  The state's idea of a solution?  Raise gas taxes to pay for road repairs.  Someone even said out loud that the reason we need the trucks is because we don't have a good rail system in Michigan.  So. . .one-two-three, all together now:  That's because you morons tore up the tracks and scrapped the trains!  You had it once.

When they pulled up the rails--the rails that once took us and our goods speedily, efficiently to where we needed to go--and turned the rail beds into hiking trails, I finally gave up all hope and went into the mourning phase.  Railroads, our beloved national identity, became nothing more than sources of scrap metal.  Every now and then we hear squeakings about a return to trains, but really--how likely is that when they would literally have to start building the system from scratch? (And, adding insult to injury, buying the steel from China, since we don't produce enough of it anymore to rebuild anything of any consequence.)

So, back to taking the blame for BP and that now-permanent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.  I won't do it.  We do love our selfish indulgences in this country, and we most surely have to learn to curb our impulses and look at the impact on life beyond tomorrow, but to even mention them in the same breath as BP in order to dilute that vile corporation's crass and criminal actions . . .   I'd just like to slap you silly, Friedman and friend.  Get ahold of yourselves.  We don't have time for this.

Ramona
*
*

The Kalamazoo Promise: How did Obama miss this?

[I’m] here tonight because I think that America has a lot to learn from Kalamazoo Central about what makes for a successful school in this new century.  (Applause.)  You’ve got educators raising standards and then inspiring their students to meet them.  You’ve got community members who are stepping up as tutors and mentors and coaches.  You got parents who are taking an active interest in their child’s education -- attending those teacher conferences, yes, turning off the TV once in a while, making sure homework gets done.

President Obama, Kalamazoo Central High Commencement Speech, June 7, 2010

Kalamazoo, Michigan is currently home to an unprecedented experiment in economic development. Announced in November 2005, the Kalamazoo Promise guarantees full college scholarships to potentially every graduate of the Kalamazoo Public School district. Behind the scholarship program is an economic development agenda that seeks to revitalize the city and the region through a substantial investment in public education. It is an unorthodox approach and one that is drawing attention throughout the United States. If the return on investment in human and economic terms is high enough, the Kalamazoo Promise could serve as a new model for community revitalization and change the way policymakers think about K-16 education.

Upjohn Institute:  Research related to the Kalamazoo Promise

____________________________________

Something amazing is going on in the Kalamazoo (MI) public schools. Every student who graduates from their schools is eligible to receive a fully or partially paid scholarship to a Michigan public university or community college of their choice. The scholarships aren't based on need, or on highest grade point average, or on ethnic background, or religious persuasion, or on fantastic essays, or on how many clubs they joined throughout their school years.  It's based on location, length of time in the schools, and a minimum 2.0 GPA.  Every child within the Kalamazoo School District boundaries is potentially eligible to receive some help for secondary education.  No strings attached.

The donors for this project insist on anonymity, and I find that refreshingly admirable--I do--but if, after reading about this program, there's one instance where curiosity is nearly killing the cat, this is it.  Who is paying for this? Is it the Upjohn Institute, disseminators of the Kalamazoo Promise information?  Is it Western Michigan University, the evaluators of the project?  Is it the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which, according to the Upjohn info, is funding an initiative called Investing in the Success of the Kalamazoo Promise, "to strengthen the outcomes of the scholarship program by investing in its evaluation and research infrastructure, and deepen community engagement"?  Or is it all of the above, plus a whole lot of other "nice people"?  (The most Upjohn will say about the donors.)


As the self-designated Protector of All Education Public and Free, I'm necessarily suspicious of private interests sticking their noses into our schools.  (One look at the Texas textbook miasma is enough to prove my point.) Their agendas are usually highly suspect, falling in line with their time-honored principal of Total Destruction of Public Education, that Dirty Communist/Socialist Plot to Capture and Brainwash our Precious Commodities.  


So I've looked pretty carefully at the Kalamazoo Promise, and if there is an agenda other than giving their kids a chance at success which may then come back to the community ten-fold,  I can't find it.  I have to admit, it's pretty amazing.


The project is so amazing, in fact, it came to the attention of the White House and the Department of Education as they looked for the one high school in the country where President Obama would be delivering his first high school commencement address.  High School seniors from all over the country were invited to write essays and send in videos presenting their case for winning the honor. (Kalamazoo was one of only two public school districts to race past the 1,000 or so entries and make it into the final six.)

Incredibly, happily, Kalamazoo won.  Here is Katie Couric's segment on the Promise:



And here is the essay:

Kalamazoo Central is a diverse, dynamic and dedicated community of students and staff committed to our district’s mission:  Every Child, Every Opportunity, Every Time. We challenge ourselves to take more AP classes (an increase of 221% in 4 years); we involve ourselves in our community through activism such as PeaceJam; and we take classes such as aviation technology and construction trades that prepare us for careers and college.  Our relationships with teachers and staff empower us all to form a united bond and a belief in our end goal:  changing the world through education.  Since 2006, 91% of all Kalamazoo Central graduates have attended college, affirming a college going culture in a vibrant community of 1700.  The Kalamazoo Promise—free college tuition for all—gives us the opportunity to achieve our college dreams. Our superintendent phrased it best:  

“If you’re looking for a community where going to college is a birthright, then Kalamazoo Public Schools isn’t it; but, if you’re looking for a community trying to send a whole host of students to college, then Kalamazoo Central is a model of that success.” 

We no longer merely hope for a future; we are confident that we are the future.

Considering that our fine Republican legislature decided to cut the Michigan Promise College Scholarship, a $3,000 lifeline for some 100,000 students, as a way of sticking it to higher Public Education in the guise of Saving Our Budget, the success of the Kalamazoo Promise is even more noteworthy.  Which leads me to wonder why President Obama didn't even mention it during his commencement speech.

He lauded the community and the parents and the students, and they truly deserved it--they're truly great--but  The Kalamazoo Promise is big.  It is life-changing.  One thing is leading to another, and  "Promise Zones" are popping up all over the place.  It is a welcome shot in the arm for the chronically ailing Public Education.  How about a little rah-rah from our top Public Servant?  It's right there in the essay:  Free college tuition for all.  It just jumps out at you, doesn't it?  So why wouldn't he want to talk about one of the very reasons why these kids (and their parents and their teachers and their administrators) have worked so hard to get  ready for college placement?  A golden opportunity to give a shout-out to the people who got this thing going, who are keeping it going, and who don't give a care about tooting their own horns.  That in itself is pretty earth-shaking. (I'm guessing they're not politicians.)

June 14 - (Disregard all that I said above about Obama missing an opportunity to praise the Kalamazoo Promise.  He did it, and did it well, and I completely missed it, both in listening to his speech and reading the transcript later.  Mea culpa.  My good friend Ramona (Yes, there are two of us) gave me the quote in the comments below.  Thank you, friend.  I hate it when I'm so obviously wrong, but I would hate it even more if I didn't have a chance to fix it.)

Ramona
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It All Comes Down to Loyalty

For a nation that can’t stop bragging about how great and powerful it is, we’ve become shockingly helpless in the face of the many challenges confronting us. Our can-do spirit was put on hold many moons ago, and here we are now unable to defeat the Taliban, or rein in the likes of BP and the biggest banks, or stop the oil gushing furiously from the bowels of earth like a warning from Hades about the hubris and ignorance that is threatening to destroy us.    Bob Herbert, NYT, 5/31/10

  Just as we saw in Wall Street's devastating economic disaster and in Massey Energy's murderous explosion inside its Upper Big Branch coal mine, the nastiness in the gulf is baring an ugly truth that We the People must finally face: We are living under de facto corporate rule that has rendered our government impotent.

Thirty years of laissez-faire, ideological nonsense (pushed upon us with a vengeance in the past decade) has transformed government into a subsidiary of corporate power. Wall Street, Massey, BP and its partners — all were allowed to become their own "regulators" and officially encouraged to put their short-term profit interests over the public interest.    Jim Hightower, Alternet, 6/2/10

There was a time when America was known for its greatness.  We were a prosperous country with an upper class that put its riches back into the American economy.  Our middle class, our vast majority, was vibrant and full of life.  Our poor were always with us, but our homeless and hungry weren't so overwhelming in numbers that our shelters and our food banks couldn't keep up.

There was a time when anyone who wanted a job could find one.  Fathers could earn enough to take care of an entire family, and mothers, if they chose, could stay home and care for them.

There was a time when we built factories on American soil and produced goods and made steel and planted crops in such abundance that we not only sustained ourselves, we were actually able to export the remainder.

There was a time when, if we could have looked ahead, we would have had enough sense to be ashamed of what we have become.

What a waste.  All that hard work, all those years of working together to build an America we could all be proud of, and look where we are.

Every day in every way I resent the hell out of the people who put us here.  I've lived through the good times and I've lived through the bad times.  I've watched as greed and selfishness and yes--disloyalty--have eroded  a workable system that had been in place since the aftermath of the Great Depression, and is now plummeting us back into a reprise of those same dark days.

Big business is running our country into the ground.  Big business doesn't care because big business is global now.  If they lose here, they'll gain somewhere else.  Big business has no shame and they have no sense of loyalty.  They live big here because they can.  They can because there are enough Americans who will watch their backs and circle the wagons whenever they think big business is being attacked.  Since the days of their most exalted hero, Ronald Reagan, capitalism at all costs has been hammered into their pointy little heads.  (Never mind that, thanks in large part to the bleatings of their most exalted hero and his most vociferous followers, a good number of their capitalist pals have taken their booty offshore and have completely abandoned ship.)

The Republicans, the Tea Partiers, PalinCorp, Fox "News", the Right Wing pundits, and certain of the DINOs are working hard to distract us from the increasingly obvious truth:  Big business has run amuck and is destroying us.

Why those people feel the need to defend those Terminators is beyond me, but they're apparently going to defend them to the death of us. The mainstream media, either by intent or shortsightedness or fear of ratings, is big into aiding and abetting the Destroyers of All Things American.  Even C-Span, the seeming last bastion of objectivity, is turning right just when we need them to stay focused.  More and more, they highlight the rightward-leaning, and seem to delight in covering everything Tea Party as if they were an actual political party and not simply an angry mob whose only solution to this mess is to pump up the anger.

Defending the status-quo encourages the undermining of our economy.  There is something decidedly ludicrous about that claim to want to "take our country back". The only ones who want to go back to that are the ones who made (and are still making) obscene bundles of cash off of our collective misery.

If they really wanted to take our country back they would be fighting against the disloyal, dishonorable corporations that chose to build factories outside America using foreign slave labor in corrupt, unregulated countries rather than  live by the necessary rules and pay decent wages and benefits.

They wouldn't be waving the American flag while chanting "Drill, baby, drill".

They wouldn't be buying into the corporate lie that all things public, including health care, Social Security and schools, should be privatized so that corporate interests can have the control and keep the profits.

They wouldn't be so bent on electing people who despise the very idea of good, all-encompassing government but wouldn't mind collecting a paycheck while they're attempting to destroy it.

If those people had any sense of loyalty toward this country, they would, instead, be climbing out of that comfy bed they've made with the worst of Big Business and think twice about railing against anyone wanting to put a stop to the most destructive, out-of-control business practices this country has seen since we let this same thing happen in the 1920s.

It all comes down to loyalty.  Do we privatize or do we keep "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people".  Every member of Congress pledges this Oath of Office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

 Every time we say the Pledge of Allegiance we pledge loyalty to these United States.

Some of us actually mean it.

Ramona
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Anti-government candidate: Oxymoron or Just Plain Moron?

At his 1981 inauguration, [Ronald Reagan] voiced his simple revolutionary credo: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."  That remark was prescient, although not in the sense that Reagan intended. His naive faith in the private sector's capacity to regulate itself, along with his disdain for many of the necessary functions of the modern state, allowed cronies and crooks to flourish. Inept government, corrupt government and cynical government became severe problems during his tenure, leaving fiscal wreckage that remained for many years after he returned to private life.                  Joe Conason,  "Reagan without Sentimentality"

Hope for the corporates, change for the workers--
and downhill ever since.

It's one thing to want to win a spot in congress in order to change the government.  Wanting better government is a fine and noble calling, and more power to ya'll.  But it takes colossal chutzpah to go after a job where your salary and perks are paid for by the same people whose government you're out to destroy.

We have a government in place, for better or for worse, because we the people are doing our share to keep big government going.  Big government is big because we are a big country.  We've seen what happens when big government is undermined and/or watered down.  It becomes tasty carrion for Big Vultures to feed on, and they won't stop until they're down to bloody bones.

Rand Paul, the libertarian running for a Republican senatorial seat in Kentucky, tells his Tea Party followers, "Capitalism is freedom, we've come to take back our government".  That kind of Gekko talk is building momentum among the Limbaugh/Beck/Palin/ crowd, even though they haven't yet explained what it means to "take back our government".  Take it back to when?  And give it to whom?  Which of the Tea Party heroes is equipped to get us out of this mess?  How will Smaller Government do it?

Last week Sarah Palin backed Clint Didier, a Washington state Tea Party candidate for senate who calls the federal government "a predator" and sees public spending as a "Marxist utopia".  I'm betting Palin, in her rah-rah speech, forgot to mention that over the last 15 years the rabidly anti-government Didier has collected almost $300,000 in Federal farm subsidies.  I'm betting neither one of them consider that little gift from the tax-payers an entitlement. 

At the supposed heart of all the anti-government caterwauling is our astounding deficit.  The truth is, it is totally astounding.  Even I, a complete ignoramus when it comes to budget numbers, know a monster  when I see one.  It's terrifying.  So when those Tea Party greenhorns yak on about how they're going to change things, I want to know exactly how they're going to do it.  What magic plan do they have for altering the course of this out-of-control projectile called SOL America and bringing it back down to earth?  Give it over to private industry?  Isn't that how we got here?  So if not private industry, what's left?

Oh, anti-G people, you're not gonna want to hear this, but. . .

Big government.  They looked the other way when the marauders were laying waste, and now they're left to rebuild our villages (after they've cleaned up a massive oil disaster perpetrated and perpetuated by those same interests who would love to be joining you in your crusade against authority).  They're going to have to do it by re-regulating, by in-sourcing, by creating life-sustaining jobs for Americans, and by assisting the people most affected by the economic downturn.  If that means smacking down a few bankers or forcing corporations to play fair, it won't be the end of the world.  The big guys got greedy and they blew it.  Now they have to play nice.  We can't have people out of work and out of food and out of homes and out of options.  This is America.

 We the people have to take top priority, and you the Tea Partiers have to get your priorities straight.  You can't, for instance, still have control of your taxes once you've paid them.  (If we could, mine would go to free clinics and food banks and homeless shelters--those socialistic necessities now currently swamped and overwhelmed because of America's refusal to end its love affair with Corporatist Bad Boys.)

If you've got gripes, join the club. We've all got gripes. But be mindful that your Tea Party movement, giving succor to the vicious, paranoid rantings of the Limbaughs, Becks, Bachmanns and Palins of the country, also eggs on the hate groups, trained and ready and itching for a reason to do bodily harm.

Do us all a favor and think about who you're actually choosing to run things around here. If your candidate's main qualification is a clever way of expressing his or her hatred for the government, just remember--in America that would be you.

Ramona
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The Battle for Public Schools - Kids? What kids?

On C-Span's Washington Journal, the question this morning was "Should Public Schools receive a bailout?"  The majority of the callers said no.   I don't know where these people live--offshore, maybe--but My God.  I've lived a good long time, as my creaking joints are so keen on reminding me, but how long do I have to go on being amazed and chagrined that even now, even in the 21st century, forces from the dark side are still working on getting us out of the edjamacation business?

(By the way, what's the matter with C-Span?  Am I the only one who's noticing a definite Republican bent to their questions, their newspaper choices, and their programming?  The C in C-Span stands for Conservative these days.  Their idea of Fair and Balanced is moving suspiciously closer to the Fox's lair. That's a pity.)

These days we're looking, talking and acting more and more like some comic's version of a third world country, but so far we've kept the mercenaries at bay when it comes to our most sacrosanct obligation--basic education for all.  The Right Wing in our country have been beating their gums for eons now about the need to turn public schools over to private interests, but so far we've been able to brush them off like the nasty little gnats they are.

They can't rightly come out and admit that their idea of absolute nirvana is a wholly-privatized, for-profit, non-regulated society, so they latch onto the one guaranteed button-pusher:  taxes.  They use the threat of more taxes going to unworthy (read "socialist") causes as their reasons for denying every kid a chance at the American dream.  They know their audience well.  Dreams are for suckers when it comes to doling out their tax dollars.  Who wants to pay more taxes for anything?  Not we.  Cut the funding!  Kill the unions!  Minimum wage for teachers!  Pack those kids into the classrooms!  No free lunches!  Leave no child behind except yours!

 Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote a piece that found its way into the Wall Street Journal, (yes, truly) in which she makes the plea for more government funding.

According to a survey of more than 80% of school districts by the American Association of School Administrators, 275,000 teachers and other school staff will receive pink slips. It's not that these schools will educate fewer children, or that students won't need the personnel and programs that will be cut. But the cuts could rob an entire generation of students of the well-rounded education they need and deserve. Class sizes will swell, and students will lose important classes and programs, such as art, music, physical education, Advanced Placement classes, and counseling and intervention programs for those who need the most help.

Nowhere does she use the word "bailout", but the headline shreiks it.   It's a convenient word--it suggests we taxpayers have a choice.  Should we or shouldn't we keep funding our schools?  Will we or won't we bail them out?

Bail them out from what?  Ourselves?  Our neglect?  Our contempt?   What a sorry state we're in if the best we can do for our schools is to threaten to put them on the auction block if they don't behave. 

The funding for public schools should never be in question.  If you want a voice in how schools use taxpayer funds, fine--do it from within, at the local level. Work hard to make the schools better.  Give the kids a chance. Our education system is being bullied and battered, and in the end it's the kids who take the blows. (Ironic, isn't it, that it's the Family Values mob doing the bullying?  And, as with all bullies, they're not about to pick on somebody their own size. )

Ramona