Time Again For Some Short Thoughts

In the race for the job of Governor of California, Meg Whitman has been blasting her opponent, Jerry Brown as a jobs killer.  If one checks the record, jobs increased in the state of California under Brown.  Alas, Whitman has no political record, including casting a vote, but she was the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, EBAY.  During her years at the helm, she successfully cut forty percent of the firm's domestic jobs and sent them overseas.  Plus, she actively engaged in some inside trading with Goldman Sachs (remember them?) allowing her to join the ranks of America's billionaires. Too bad we don't live in Missouri, you know, the "Show Me State."

I am really grateful to Senator Lindsay Graham (R South Carolina) for finally offering a solution to our immigration woes.  You see, all we need to do is repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and all will be well.  After all, who needs due process and equal protection?  His rationale. . . it is just wrong to think that just because one is born in the United States one is entitled to citizenship!  Too bad his forebears didn't set this standard for themselves, as South Carolina would have only Native Americans for citizens  today.  I noticed the two senators from Arizona also jumped on this band wagon last week, but with a sudden drop in the polls, "Maverick" McCain has now backed off from his hasty endorsement of the Graham Manifesto.

Thanks to Maxine Waters and Charley Rangel (Democrats in the House of Representatives) for showing a bipartisan spirit by being charged with corruption by the House Ethics Committee. It is nice to know that Democrats are every bit as capable of being on the take as Republicans.  Now if only one of them would make some inappropriate advances toward a Congressional page or two, or get caught sleeping with a staffer's wife, we could really be on the way to a bi-partisan government.

Did anyone take a close look at the Republican solution to our economic woes?   Cut taxes and cut spending.  Not really clear on which taxes and which spending, but there is at least some real historic evidence of the viability of such a plan in a depressed economy.  This was exactly the plan of the Hoover Administration in 1930 and we all know how well that one worked.  On the other hand Obama and the Congressional Democrats, lacking the courage to stop our recession in its tracks, made the same mistake as did FDR in 1937.  Succumbing to the irrational screams from the right, they offered a half measure of economic stimulus and we are now slipping back into a flat economy.  Do any of these fools read their own country's history?

After years of analysis, the historic consensus is that America's Vietnam War strategy ultimately failed because we supported one corrupt government after another in Saigon.  It was impossible to gain enough support among the population of South Vietnam because the people had so little faith in their own political leaders, who were joined at the hip to their American benefactors.  The same may now be happening in Afghanistan.  From the grassroots to the very top of the Kabul administration of Hamid Karzai, this government is sublimely corrupt. How bad must it be if so many in this war ravaged country will turn to the savagely brutal Taliban as an alternative political solution?  Maybe instead of replacing our top commanders we ought to support a complete overhaul of the Afghan government. Fighting and dying for drug lords and sex traffickers should never be part of our military objectives.  Without a massive change in government, Afghanistan will be lost no matter how long we stay. President Obama, can you say "Lyndon Johnson?"

Who would have ever guessed that a weather disaster could topple a government?  But that may be happening in Pakistan.  Completely overwhelmed by the massive flooding along the Indus River, the Pakistani Government is on the verge of collapse.  Believe it or not, but the two outside agencies delivering the most aid to the flood ravaged peasants are the United States Government and the Taliban! I am pretty sure that our motives are truly humanitarian, but when the Taliban called for local Pashtuns to refuse any American aid, I think it became clear that their motives are less than noble. Ironic, the very societies that set us on the path of global warming have turned this phenomenon into an asset for our worst enemies.

And lastly, now that the lunatic fringe of the political right is suggesting that we get rid of the 14th Amendment, does that mean that they now believe that Barack Obama was actually born in the United States?  Is their new strategy. . . well he may have been born here, but he isn't really worthy of being called a citizen, because, well you know, he is. . . Hawaiian!

Questions to Middle Class Republcians

I was thinking that the quickest way to convert a middle class Republican into a liberal Democrat would be to take away his or her job and health insurance.  I wonder how many people who lost their jobs during this recession voted Republican in the 2008 election?  The longest any state is willing to pay-out unemployment compensation is 26 weeks.  It almost took an act of God to get the Congress to extend payments up to 99 weeks last month.  Senate and House Republicans did everything they could to block this bill's passage, claiming that it had to be fully funded or they could not vote for it.  Hmm, too bad they did not apply those same standards to the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and the unfunded trillion and a half dollars appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Same question to Republican voters, now out of work, with no health insurance.  Not one in your party in either House voted for Health Care reform.  They would not even vote to insure that children could not be dropped from coverage!

Then there is the mortgage bubble.  The Bush White House and Congressional Republicans had no second thoughts about de regulating the entire banking system, opening the door for bundled mortgage securities and bogus sub-prime loans.  But when the bubble burst, these same GOP members of Congress voted almost unanimously against any mortgage relief to strapped consumers who had lost their jobs and their homes.  Again, I wonder how many of the recently homeless voted Republican in 2008?

And where were all these debt conscious Republicans in the run-up to the 08 election?  Isn't it funny how none of them were worried about unfunded spending until they were out of office? Hey, I get the politics of this election cycle, which is no different than any election cycle.  No matter what your history might be, once your opponent is in office attack everything that he does.  What I don't understand is why so many people buy into this nonsense when the party out of power stands for nothing that will benefit middle class Americans.  Is it all the race bating in the immigration issue that has your attention?  Are so many working class people willing to sacrifice their economic well being so that gays don't get married and they can still buy AK 47s at their local sporting goods store?

It cannot be the deficit, because the only way to pay that down is to increase taxes for quite a few years.  Unless we eliminate defense spending, Medicare, and Social Security it is fiscally impossible to cut the debt by cutting spending.  Hey there is an idea, get all those pro military Republicans together with all the retired Republicans and propose an actual spending cut that will work.  That would definitely be a day that the Democratic Party would expand by millions.  I remember when Arnold became governor of California and he promised the voter that he could eliminate the state's nine billion dollar deficit by cutting spending and taxes.  Six years later we have a 29 billion dollar debt, the highest ever for any state in the union, but no new taxes.  The state is on the verge of bankruptcy as revenues plummet, but no new taxes.  Way to go Governator.  Looks like you won't be back any time soon.  But then there is the new Republican standard bearer, Meg 'Big Bucks' Whitman.  What is her plan for fiscal salvation in California?  Easy, see the Republican play book for everything. . . lower taxes!  Now that is a good idea for all billionaire California voters, but it is utter nonsense for the rest of us.  I wonder if Meg Whitman is finally going to register to vote this time?

The Tea Party and the Constitution

For some time now I have been watching this semi-populist movement, the Tea Party, gain traction among the right wing of the Republican Party (is that redundant?).  Beginning during the summer of the Healthcare Bill debate, what looked like working class white men and their Medicare receiving parents, became militant activists for just about everything un-Obama.  Leaving out the significant number of people in this movement who are there because of race, that still leaves a great many who now claim that they are Tea party adherents to protect and preserve the Constitution.  Their argument is that the US Constitution has been subverted by latter day revisionists (you know, us liberals) and that it is time to return to its original intent.  OK then, let's take a look at the hallowed document and see if they are correct.

First, and maybe finally, the Patriots who wrote the document included seven articles in the original text.  Seven, not six! So one must assume that the "original intent" of the august body that penned our Constitution was to include everything therein.  Take a look at Article V.  The Framers spent an entire article on the concept of revision.  With all due respect to the numbskulls screaming about intent, the wise men who wrote the document understood that from time to time revisions would have to be made if the Constitution was going to be relevant far into the future.  Thus, the very authors of the Constitution were themselves revisionists. . . uh, liberals. The silly idea that there was ever a constitutionally pristine period where the true essence of the sacred text was in full flower is absurd.

From the beginning our Constitution has been a work in progress.  After all, these very same Framers radically changed the original document in 1791 by adding the first ten amendments, you know, the Bill of Rights. Further, if any of these zealots actually took the time to read the Constitution, they would find that it is riddled with generalities and vague language.  All the way back to the summer of 1787, the attendees at the Philadelphia Convention understood that much of the detail of the new government they were creating would have to be worked out by the people themselves.  So, when it says in Article One Section One, "All legislative power herein granted. . . " we discover that they never precisely define what they mean by the term "legislative power." Again, their goal was to allow each generation to define and apply the text to a new set of issues and problems facing the country, rather than demanding that it always be seen within the context of a fixed place and time.  Think not Tea Partiers?  Then the creation of the United States Air Force is unconstitutional.  Following your logic of strict construction, Congress was given the specific powers, in Article One Section Eight, to "raise and support armies," and to "provide and maintain a Navy."  Nothing there about an air force, let alone Space vehicles!

Then there are some specific political positions that Tea Party enthusiasts have been supporting over the past few weeks and months.  These folks become apoplectic when talking about the native born children of aliens being true American citizens and the establishment of Islamic mosques in New York City and other places around the country.  The cry of protest heard most often about these issues is that they are "un-American."  Oh really? Let's examine these claims in reverse order.  Again, let me quote from the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  It does not say, "excepting Islam."  Thus, in order to carry forth an exclusion of a particular religion from Constitutional protection, the Tea Party is arguing for revision and radical reinterpretation.  Which is exactly what they accuse their opponents of doing.  One would think that if they were actually sincere in their desire to preserve the original intent of the Constitution,  this Sarah Palin led crowd would be taking to the streets to insist that all Mosque construction proceed uninhibited.

And as to the citizenship argument, the Fourteenth Amendment is quite clear too.  "All persons born or naturalized in the United States. . . are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." There does not seem to be any exceptions here either. So what is really going on here. Once we debunk this absurd argument that the Tea Party movement is about preserving the US Constitution, the real objectives of these people become pretty clear.  The Tea Party is little more than a reinvention of a long standing American political tradition, nativism.  The founders of this movement know that there has always been a segment of our population that fears and mistrusts anyone who does not look and speak like them.

They have been with us since before the Constitution was written and they are still with us today.  In the 1850s, they called themselves the Know Nothings.  At the turn of the 20th century they were alive and well within the Populist Party as well as in the Progressive movement. President Woodrow Wilson sung the praises of Nathan Bedford Forest and the racist organization he founded, the Ku Klux Klan, as depicted in the 1914 Hollywood blockbuster, "Birth of a Nation."  In the early 1920s, the Republican Party and our most repressive attorney general ever,  A. Mitchell Palmer, fanned the fires of nativism by tagging Southern and Eastern European immigrants as Bolsheviks.  In 1948, Strom Thurmond and his fellow southern white delegates stormed out of the Democratic National Convention because it opened its doors to African Americans.  Many of these very same white Southerners finally abandoned the Democratic Party when President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1968, the infamous segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace formed the American Independent party and ran for the presidency.  Wallace openly condemned the "pointy-headed liberal elite and their mongrel supporters" for ruining the United States. Now what do you suppose he meant by the term "mongrel?"

In closing, I guess my real problem with the Tea Party is that it is openly opposed to the US Constitution, rather than its most ardent supporters.  I just wish they would have the courage of their convictions and stand up for what they truly believe in.  But then, these people never do.

Why I am a Progressive Democrat

Let me begin by saying that I could easily have been a progressive Republican. Don't laugh my neo-liberal friends, but at the turn of the last century, I would have been an enthusiastic follower of Teddy Roosevelt and his Progressive agenda called the Square Deal.  A few years later I might have been a Wilson Democrat in 1912, but his adherence to a "whites only" style of progressivism would have been problematic for me. But by 1920, the GOP was once again firmly in the hands of the Wall Street Plutocrats, where it has remained ever since.   But let me give credit where credit is due, at its very inception the Republican Party in the run-up to the Civil War was a political association I would have eagerly joined.  Without a doubt, I would have jumped at the chance to join Lincoln, Seward, and Chase in the party founded to end slavery in this country once and for all.  For you non-history buffs, it was the Radical Republican controlled Congress between 1865 and 1868 that proposed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Then in late 1868, over the threatened veto of the Democratic President, Andrew Johnson, Congressional Republicans passed America's first Civil Rights Act, guaranteeing basic freedoms to recently freed slaves throughout the country. Unfortunately, as during the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, the Party of Lincoln was hijacked by the bankers and industrialists of the Bobber Baron Era, and became the promoter and protector of the interests of the upper class. Seems to be a common theme here.

As far as the modern Republican Party goes, if I were a Wall Street investment banker, a hedge fund manager, a corporate CEO, or a lucky inheritor of millions of dollars, I would probably be a latter day Republican. I might also be a member of the GOP were I an evangelical or born again Protestant, as almost all of the white adherents to these religious agendas became steadfast Republicans after the 1973 Roe v Wade decision of the Supreme Court. In other words, since I am not a wealthy white Anglo-Saxon (born-again) Protestant, there is nothing within the confines of this party that speaks to me.

My extended family, probably like most of yours, was rescued from economic oblivion by the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.  The New Deal and its introduction of the modern welfare state in the United States opened the door to the Middle Class for millions of Americans who knew little else other than the drudgery  of being wage-slaves in the industrial Northeast, or tenant farmers in the South and West.  For the first time in American history, the national government took an aggressive stand on the side of America's working class by establishing minimum wage laws, regulating big industrial and financial institutions, and creating an economic safety net to insure a dignified life style for elderly Americans.  For the first time in American history, the federal government did not sit on its legislative hands during an economic depression, but adopted the Keynesian economic policies that laid the groundwork for the greatest economic recovery in the history of the world.

No, I am not a Republican, nor am I a conservative "Blue Dog" Democrat. I am a different kind of hyphenated Democrat, I am a progressive Democrat, you know, a liberal. I am a progressive because it was my wing of the party that was attempting to rally the American people to the impending nightmare of national Socialism during the Depression years. Throughout the 1930s, staunch Republicans, like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were singing the praises of Nazi Germany and preaching isolationism as the appropriate response for the United States, while Europe was disintegrating into a dictatorial hell.  It was the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that muscled the Servicemen's Readjustment Act (otherwise known as the GI Bill) through Congress in 1945, which enabled millions of veterans to go to college, buy a home, and utilize the medical services of the newly established Veterans Department.  Not only did the GI Bill open opportunities for entry into the middle class for millions of American families, it generated enough economic wealth to pay for itself four times over and allow for the modernization of the country's entire infrastructure.

I am a progressive Democrat because one of my few political icons,  President Harry Truman ended the embarrassing policy of racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces.  I am a progressive Democrat because President Lyndon Johnson and progressive Democrats in the Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act over the stern objections of Dixiecrats in the South and chamber of commerce Republicans in the north and west, finally bringing the era of Jim Crow to an end in the South.  I am a progressive Democrat because my party went to war on poverty in 1965 and established Medicare that same year. I am a progressive Democrat because my party waved goodbye to the Yellow Dog segregationist Southern Democrats like Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and John Stennis who were then eagerly recruited by Nixon Republicans in 1968.

I am a progressive Democrat because my political leaders have been leading the fight in national and state legislatures to clean up our environment, make the food we eat and the water we drink safe, protect us from bogus pharmaceuticals and quack medical practices,  insure the safety of consumer goods, and move our country away from the burning of fossil fuels.  I am a progressive Democrat because my party continues to fight for higher wages, and improved working conditions for the weakest among us. I am a progressive Democrat because my party has pushed the Civil Rights agenda in 1968 to protect the social and economic rights of women in the United States.  I am a progressive Democrat because my daughter was not hindered as a consequence of her gender in her education and later in her professional life. I am a progressive Democrat because the Republican Party fought against every one of these reforms.

I am a progressive Democrat because my wing of the party continues to lead the way in even further expansions of Civil Rights for disabled Americans, farm workers, children,  and now for gay and lesbian Americans. I am a progressive Democrat because my party continues to fight to reign in the abuses of unbridled capitalism in our society which enriches the few at the expense of the many.  I am a progressive Democrat because my party refuses to succumb to the bigoted nativism now permeating our culture in the guise of immigration reform.

And finally, I am a progressive Democrat because my party has been fighting against the imperialist and jingoistic elements within our foreign and military policies since the early 1950s.  Remember, it was a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned the American people about the dangers of the military-industrial complex back in 1960, even though his party continues its love affair with huge military budgets and massive subsidies to defense contractors. I would like to say that I am an unmodified Democrat, but it is in the area of American foreign policy that I must vigorously employ the qualifier "progressive" as an adjective before the noun "Democrat."  I am not a conservative or "Blue Dog" Democrat.  I am not interested reaching an accommodation with conservatives on the other side who watered down the Health Care Bill, the Financial Reform Bill, the Energy Bill, and failed to enact a comprehensive and compassionate immigration bill.  Thus, I am a hyphenated Democrat, proud to be progressive, proud to be liberal.

And what about you?  Can you define yourself in terms of real social,economic, and political policies. If you can, you are a thinking American, exactly what the Founding Fathers were hoping for when they created our democratic institutions back in 1787.  If, on the other hand you identify with a political label without being able to articulate a set of principles and beliefs for which that label stands, other than vague platitudes and empty slogans, well then it may be time for you to figure out just who you are!

Let me know what you discover.

To Hell With Politics!

Summer affords me longer stretches of time to opine on issues and events of importance (at least to me). But before I invest any lengthy prose outside my normal streams of consciousness, I must do a little re-treading.  I may be committing academic suicide with an idea that has been percolating for quite some time.  My loyal followers have long suffered through my rants on the need to amend the US Constitution to eliminate the debilitating effects of corporate money on our electoral system.  A system awash in billions of dollars of lobbying and campaign financing cannot long survive as a democracy of the people.  Plutocracy, the rule of the economic elite, was given an incredible boost by the patrician majority on the Supreme Court earlier this year, when it declared that corporations, like real people have First Amendment rights.  The Republican Party, long the cozy bed mate of corporate board members, has jumped at the opportunity to promote USA Inc. Here in California, GOP candidates for governor and a seat in the US Senate are flaunting their great wealth and make no apologies for trying to buy the upcoming election.

My hope for a reformed election process was not helped by the rush Washington Democrats made to join their Republican sty-mates in a money trough feeding frenzy.  Believe me, the crash of '08, and the dismantling of most of our regulatory statutes could not have happened without plenty of Democratic complicity.  The top corporate fund raiser in the 2008 presidential election was not Republican John McCain, but rather the Democratic nominee Barack Obama.  Long ago the great financial and industrial giants of America learned that supporting winners was an easier way to guarantee mega-access in policy making, rather than endorsing a business-friendly candidate who might lose. Thus, Obama's commission on health care reform chaired by the CEO of Aetna Insurance, a major campaign contributor.  Did you really think we would get a public option?  Remember the Administration's roll out of its energy policy?  Drilling in the Gulf and nuclear power are the cornerstones of this "change we can believe in."  Sounds pretty hollow in light of BPs great engineering feat off Louisana's coast.  Oh yeah, BP gave more money to Obama than any other candidate!

So what now?  I think it is time for voters to spend less time worrying about who gets elected.  As long as big money is a legitimate player in the game, voters have little hope for any real reform.  The so-called Tea Part movement, touted by big bucks media corporations as a "populist movement," is anything but.  The brains behind this "grass roots" movement are long-time Washington insiders and corporate lackeys, retired Republcan Congressman Dick Armey, and retired Texas Senator Phil, I love big oil, Gramm.  Using money loving toadies like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to rouse the masses, they have deftly manipulated their none to bright adherents to believe that government, not runaway corporate malfeasance is to blame for all our national woes.  Yeah, that is what we need, less regulation and more unbridled capitalism. Just ask any of the shrimp fishermen in the Gulf states about that one. No, instead it is time for a little economic guerrilla warfare.  My vote may be for sale, but so too is every product being pushed by every corporation now trying to buy our government.  There is a bill before the House to mandate that all corporate campaign spending must be completely transparent.  Right now businesses can disguise their contributions, known as money laundering in traditional criminal enterprises, by donating to organizations like the Chamber of Commerce.  This allows them to remain hidden from consumers who may not like the color of their politics.  Why?  Because they want all your business while they are stealing your government.

As any DEA agent knows in the battle against drug cartels, it is easier to follow the money than it is to interdict the drug trafficking.  Who cares who is running for office, I want to know where their money came from.  Imagine if voters began to use their consumer power to lodge support or displeasure in political choices, rather than relying on the empty political promises of the top fund raisers.  Think it can't work?  Take a look at the state of BP's stock prices.  Don't like the candidate or issues funded by Bank of America or Citibank?  Move your money to a local institution and cancel your big bank credit card.  Tired of giant agribusiness tainted food and multi-national corporate drugs poisoning your kids?  Buy other brands and watch what happens.  Yeah, you know what this is called right?  Economic boycott!  And thanks to the Internet, it is easier than ever before to get the word out about big business behaving badly.  Does anyone here in California actually think that an ex-Ebay CEO and ex-HP CEO are going to bring about any real change? Better to move your trading to Craig's List and buy your printers from Canon if you want to see any real action!

What if they held an election and no one showed up?  No I am not advocating that, at least not yet. But I bet if more of us were willing to get economically rather than politically active, we could see real change, really quickly in the direction of our society.  A fact this not lost on any billionaire board chairman in the United States is the reality that over ninety percent of corporate wealth is created by middle class consumer spending.  We really are the lifeblood of our national economy.  Until there is a real chance for populist progressive change in our political system, maybe we ought to bring about some eco-populism in our buying habits.  GM and Toyota sure got the message.  Anyone up for a boycott of all BP products? As for voting, my new policy is if you take corporate money, you cannot have my vote.  If you made millions or billions in big business, you cannot have my vote.  If you are promoting any positions funded by private capital, you cannot have my vote.  And you know what?  I don't care if you win, because right after I vote I am going shopping! So up yours General Mills!

Passages

Tomorrow is my last day as a full time teacher.  Next Fall I will begin transitioning to the last stage of my professional life. As much as I am looking forward to being a part-time teacher (three classes of AP Government), I must admit to a little anxiety about the impending closure of a major part of my life.  I would think that for most Americans life goes by in three predictable stages.  The first stage, which often seems like the longest, is the nurturing stage.  In fact, this is most often the briefest part of our life-journey.  It seems to be much longer in duration as it is the time in our lives where our deepest emotional imprinting takes place.  The nurturing stage is dominated by parental and educational mentoring.  We are, in effect, being molded for the next part of our journey, the professional stage.  Most important in the nurturing stage is our successful assimilation of a set of personal values along with the accumulation of a body of knowledge that qualifies us for certain opportunities in the second phase of our lives.  However, it is in the nurturing phase that many of us discover the absolute joy of experimentation and play.  For the rest of our lives, most of us will long to revisit those wonderful parts of our formative years.  Some of us, unfortunately, will be so drawn to those magical times that we will never fully commit to the next phase of our lives.  Thomas Wolfe writes about this in his epic tome, Look Homeward Angel, as does Pat Conroy in The Prince of Tides. It seems to me that the great allure of this first phase of our lives is not so much the pleasures of first discoveries, but rather it is the complete absence of any responsibilities for our actions.

For my peers and I, phase two began when we completed our formal educations and embarked on the lengthiest part of our respective journeys, our professional lives. This phase is often mislabeled the "adult" portion of our lives.  I say mislabeled because for most of us there is a transitional period where we are post-adolescents, rather than the fully mature beings we will discover during this, our longest phase.  Perhaps it is in the post-adolescent phase where we confront the greatest dangers of our lives.  For it is here that we continue to experiment and take playful risks, as if we were still our irresponsible first stage selves. But in this stage we find that the consequences of our actions and missteps, can have serious, if not devastating consequences. That which used to be passed off as youthful exuberance is now condemned as conduct unbecoming of an adult.  For most of us, it is here that we set aside our childish ways, and become that which we swore we would never be, facsimile copies of those who nurtured us during phase one.  For sure, none of us ever becomes an actual clone of any one of our mentors, but we become a unique amalgam of all of them, albeit in unequal proportions.

This professional phase is often referred to as our "settling down" period.  Perhaps settling-in would be a better way to put things.  Most of us find and take life partners during this phase, if for no other reason than phase two is so much more difficult than all that preceded it, most of us need someone to share the burdens and responsibilities of an independent life.  If we are lucky, as I have been, we find a partner who completes us and a life's work that sustains us. We also find that much of what seemed to be so important during phase one mattered very little, if at all.  For it is in phase two that we truly make our mark within our various communities.  Further, we discover that the formal years of our educational lives count for very little in comparison with the educational experiences of a life in full.  We come to realize that the absolutes we learned as children inevitably give way to the ambiguities and doubts of the truly enlightened.

Most of us spend upwards of forty to fifty years in this phase of our lives. Looking back, many of us see that this professional phase was divided into two distinct parts. The first, and longest part is our ambition phase.  Here we spend most of our time and energy trying to build an idealized version of what we believe to be a successful life.  Alas, for so many this quest for achievement takes up the lion's share of our professional phase.  I say alas, because so much of our remaining youthful energy is wasted trying to attain things we seldom really need.  All too often, this quest for achievement is driven by a failure to disconnect from our nurturing period.  Seeking the psychological approval of mentors, many of whom are long gone, we are driven by demons who can never be satisfied.  Too many unfulfilled lives are the result of unfinished childhoods, but unlike our earliest years, that which is broken in phase two often remains broken forever.

The lucky among the phase two travelers find that early ambitions are no substitute for the satisfaction of finding our true place among our adult peers.  Some time fairly early in phase two we begin to know, perhaps instinctively, wherein lies our true calling.  Be it humble or exalted, that calling becomes a perfect fit and carries us comfortably to the final stage.  Unfortunately, far too many of us reject this knowledge, and continue to opt for choices which might have pleased some who mentored us, but offer no sense of peace and resolution most ofus have been seeking.  But then, without these disfunctional life choices, what would psychiatrists do for a living?  Some years ago the Chicago-based social commentator, Studs Terkel, wrote a book called Working. In it, Terkel interviewd Americans, average and famous about the career choices they made and the consequences of those choices.  He concluded that somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty-five percent of us are miserable in our jobs. Having commuted for the entirity of my working life, I think he was wrong.  From the looks on the faces of of my fellow commuters, I think Terkel was overly optimistic.  Whatever the true ratio, I am glad to say that I found myself in the smaller group.

Finally, we enter the last phase.  Most people refer to this as "retirement," but I prefer to cll it something else. For me, this will be my reflective phase.  No longer burdened with work-a-day activities, I will be able to reflect upon all that I have seen and all that I have done. I do not dread this period in my life, but enthusiastically look forward to it.  For as my physical skills continue to decline, I find that my mental skills are are becoming more sharply robust.  I know that I am not smarter than I was in my youth, but I am indeed wiser.  I do howver have to work very hard to avoid an affliction that has become the curse of those in the reflective phase, chronic cynicism.  The closer one gets to the end of one's life journey the more one may be disappointed in the fact that all things did not work out.  It takes a great deal of effort to avoid adult-onset anger and bitterness as the reality of one's finite existence becomes all to clear.  But what choice do we have?  Everyone ends the journey with a rucksack full of disappointments, but not everyone wears them around their neck as did the hapless seaman in Coleridge's The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Instead, this is the time where intellect is finally free of physical distraction and the possibility of some degree of real enlightenment becomes attainable. 

So barring some unforseen physicial anomole, I welcome this phase in my life with a warm enthusiasm.  I thank eveyone who crossed my path along the way, even if I cannot remember all of you.  For without all of you, I would not be me.

Some Pre Summer Thoughts

I know that I am showing my age, but I was really saddened last week when Bill Moyers announced that he was retiring from his weekly "Bill Moyer's Journal" show on PBS.  So much of our public airway space is now filled with mindless drivel, it is a real tragedy when an intellectually provocative discussion of the issues falls by the way.  Way back at its beginning, cultural philosophers were warning that with all the potential television might offer, the guys in the network marketing departments might one day carry the day.  Sixty years or so later, the great educator has indeed become the very antithesis of the mind expanding instrument it might have been.  Instead we are drowning in one juvenile spoonful of brain pablum after another.  Even the so-called news programs on commercial television are little more than commercially slick productions of info-tainment.  From shouting Tea Baggers to the Balloon Boy, we are left with the illusion of being well-informed.  So what do I do now Bill?  Let me see, I can flip over to a stimulating match of professional wrestling, jump into yet another version of hunk and hot babe super cops foiling the criminal machinations of stereotypical minority bad guys, or dive into the self-absorbed whining of shallow post adolescents stabbing each other in the back on yet another reality show.  Say it ain't so Bill, say it aint' so!

Speaking of Moyers, sometime in the winter of 2008, Ralph Nader was on "The Journal" and he was asked why he was running for president again.  Didn't he know, queried Moyers, that he was stealing votes from the Democratic candidate and making it easier for a Republican to win?  Without missing a beat Nader fired back that there was so little that was actually different about Democrats and Republicans that his was the only campaign that held out the hope of any real reform.  So, wind ahead to 2010 and listen to the Washington talking heads blather on about financial reforms.  First there is our boy wonder Treasury Secretary, Tim Geitner, who was delivering a blistering attack against the big banks and the SEC for not effectively regulating them prior to the 2008 financial tsunami.  Problem is that Geitner, as the past director of the NYC branch of the Fed enthusiastically supported reducing the role of the SEC while the economy was getting ready to explode.  And now in his incarnation as super-regulator, who does Big Ted choose as his top aide to help him do the job?  Are you ready?  The number two man at the Treasury Department came to government as one of the top executives from Lehman Brothers.  Oh yeah, this week while Goldman-Sachs posted both record profits and record executive bonuses, it was revealed that they were actually betting against their investment recommendations because they knew the economy was about to tank.  Why you might ask were they being so bold?  During the election campaign of 2008, it turns out that their number one most popular campaign to contribute to was. . . Barrack Obama's!  How's that for change you can believe in.

Then of course there are the cries of outrage from the Senate and House Republicans about the Democrats being in the pocket of Wall Street Bankers.  Oops, turns out that the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and his counterpart in the House, perpetual tan-boy, John Boener led all of the rest of the 535 members of Congress in dipping into the money well at Goldmann.  Last week one of my bright AP Government students pointed out that we might be better off if we follow one rule for the upcoming elections of 2010.  His suggestion, vote for anyone who is not a Democrat or a Republican.  Might not be a bad idea.

Finally, on the new immigration law in Arizona.  First, something upon which we can all agree: we cannot, as a nation, move toward extending healthcare and social security benefits for our citizens if these programs become open to the entire world.  Even the richest country cannot pay for that. Thus we need a comprehensive federal immigration law.  The Constitution empowers the national government, not the states to set American policy vis a vis our international borders.  If the Arizona law demonstrates anything, beyond a white backlash in a state that is rapidly moving toward non-white majority status, it is a cry for a sound and workable national policy.  Too bad the demagogues like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs keep getting in the way.  George Bush actually had a workable plan for immigration before the right wing nuts in his party trashed it.  As for Arizona, perhaps a quick look at the 4th Amendment to the Constitution might be in order.  But then it might just be that for many right wing Republicans  in the Grand Canyon state, a law preventing "driving while Mexican" is just what they were looking for.  Anyone heard from the Arizona "Maverick" on this one?

This and That Redux

I cannot think of anything worthy of a full rant, so I am going to run a series of mini-rants instead.  please be advised that the following comments are not in any descending order of importance. Some of these are truly trivial and some quite serious.

With all the hype about Butler Basketball, I was really pulling for Cornell.  Before Cornell played Kentucky it was revealed that the Wildcats coach made more in annual salary than Cornell spent on its entire basketball program!  Oh how nice it would have been for a real college program that recruits real student athletes to have made it to the final four.  Instead we got yet another preview of NBA talent auditioning for their next paying gig.

It sure made me feel great to know that while I am using Facebook, and thus supporting its highly profitable social network, so were the sub-human high school thugs in Massachusetts who bullied that little girl into committing suicide.  Hey Facebook, how about a little moderation of the content?  I cannot see how the media provider is relieved of all responsibility for the content it allows to be published.

While watching the recent child abuse scandals unfolding in the Catholic Church, I find it interesting that the Church's response is to close ranks around the institution, rather than aggressively pursue justice for those who have been victimized.  There is a lesson here for all of us who live among large and often old institutions.  Large bureaucracies rarely purge themselves of corruption and wrong doing, but instead try to insulate their hierarchy from criticism.  Perhaps we Catholics are on the verge of another Reformation. After all, it has been more than 500 years.

Attention all Republicans!  Enough already:  Barack Obama is NOT a liberal.  Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Dennis Kucinich, and I are liberals.  If you are going to criticize the President, then at least be accurate.  Obama is continuing the Bush tax cuts for everyone making less than $250,000.  He has been even more aggressive than Bush was in pursuing the War in Afghanistan.  He NEVER was in favor of a public option in the Health Care Bill. He is the one who ordered the Navy to shoot and kill Somali pirates (the Bush strategy was to allow private shipping companies to pay ransoms).  He is continuing and expanding on Bush's education reform program.  He is aggressively pursuing a policy of off shore drilling and building nuclear power plants.  None of these are even close to being liberal!  Hey why not tell the truth, you don't like him because he is black, has a Middle East sounding name, and was born in Hawaii.  Go ahead say it, you will feel better about yourselves and the rest of us will respect your honesty, if not your sanity.  By the way, I am still waiting for your moral outrage about the members of the Republican National Committee hosting a fund raising event at an LA private strip club.  Not a peep from the usual nuts at Fox News.

Speaking of being liberal, is it radical to suggest that we ought to get our troops out of Afghanistan as soon as possible?  Our latest strategy is to protect the people who grow opium so they will like us better than they like the Taliban.  And the latest from our ally, President Karzai. . . he now says that most of his problems are because of foreign troops being stationed in his country and if we don't stop telling him to root out the corruption in his government he might become a Taliban himself.  This guy makes all those stooges we propped-up in South Vietnam look like mini-Lincolns.  How many American lives need to be lost in support of a government that will fall as soon as we leave?  Just take a look at Iraq today as the sectarian violence and corruption are on the rise as American forces are preparing to leave.  Hmm, I think Saigon is still called Ho Chi Minh city today. Oh well, we sure can build cool monuments to our wars, whether they were worth fighting or not.

My fellow California citizens, to all of you who took advantage of a tax payer subsidized college education (as I did) then why are you now OK with your kids and grandkids paying ten times as much for the same privilege?  With all that our UC and CSU educations did for us, why can't we do as our parents did and support tax increases for higher education?  Maybe there is a reason our parents' generation has been called "The Greatest Generation."  What does that make us. . . The Entitled Generation?  Shame on us.  By the way, for every tax dollar spent on higher education, the state gets back four dollars in productivity and revenue.  Maybe a few less stops at Starbucks and few more dollars for education?

So what do you think?  Are my current students spending this Easter Break studying and preparing for their AP  and Final Exams?  Nah, me neither!

Was James Madison Wrong?

Back in the summer of 1787, in sultry and cholera infested Philadelphia, our Founding Fathers hammered out a seven article document by which we Americans would govern ourselves. Key to its creation were a set of guiding principles woven deeply into this first-ever written constitution.  First, the Founders believed that the recently freed thirteen English colonies were in need of a stronger national government than was created under the Articles of Confederation.  However, that need was in direct opposition to their fear that consolidated political power might lead to an erosion of individual liberties.  That problem seemed to be solved when the basic powers of the new government: making law, executing the law, and adjudicating legal disputes, were isolated from each other by creating walls of separation between the organs of governmental power.  Then they went a step further, giving each separate function of government some direct control over the other two, the so-called checks and balances powers. Finally, the Founders made sure that this new government could not operate as had the English Crown, with absolute power, by limiting the powers of the new national government and forcing it to share power with the states.

A second philosophical principle incorporated into the American Constitution was the adoption of republicanism in both the executive and legislative branches of the new national government.  To a man, the Framers were as suspicious of direct democracy as they were of absolute monarchy. They felt strongly that the people should exercise some democratic controls over the processes of government, but they were equally sure that too much democracy would ultimately lead to "mobocracy."  As fearful as they were that a despotic king would surely trample the rights and liberties of the people he governed, they feared the same outcome would be the inevitable result of government by popular majorities.  Madison called this problem the "wrath of the majority" and warned his fellow representatives that in a democracy there would be no way to protect the rights of anyone in opposition to the popular will.  Since most of the men who participated in the Constitutional Convention were educated, and thus well versed in classical history, any reference to the fall of Athens was sufficient to dampen those who were pressing for more direct democratic control over the new government. So they opted for a national legislature composed of representatives, selected by the people and the states. Further, these representatives would be empowered to make law, regulate commerce, impose taxes, and even declare war, without first having to seek permission from their constituents. Thus a filter was created between lawmakers and the often volatile swings in public opinion. Deliberation, debate, and compromise would trump passion and emotion in the newly created American Congress.  Or so it was thought.

Finally, the Framers of the Constitution of the United States opted for winner-take-all elections, rather than a system that awarded proportional representation.  In Federalist 10, Madison warned that "factions" were the great enemy of republicanism.  Today that word is out of fashion, but political factions are still with us and still pose a threat to the system of government established in 1787.  We just know them by a different name, interest groups. To James Madison,  the most dangerous factions, or interest groups,  were political parties. He knew that parties and all other kinds of interest groups would proliferate in any free society, as the very nature of a free people is to join with other people who share like interests. But he argued that if such groups became too powerful they might be able to seize the organs of government and impose their own narrow values on the rest of the polity. To prevent that potential outcome, or so the Framers thought, American elections would only award those who received the most votes in each legislative district or state. Since there was no prize for coming in second or third, Madison felt that factious parties could only hope to win seats by compromising with other factions and forming large coalitions to win elections.  Thus, factions would exist, but no one faction could ever be strong enough take over the government. The end result would be elected officials who had to appeal to a wide variety of people and interests,and thus be moderate in their values and character.  Once in power, these moderate representatives would then be more likely to compromise with their fellow legislators in governing.

And guess what?  The system worked. . . well sort of. For many of our two hundred twenty one years of living under the Constitution, we have been free of the divisiveness of narrowly ideological factions, or parties, being able to come to power.  Instead we have seen the creation of two large political parties, void of dogmatic ideology, working to build voter consensus to win elections. And to that end, our two major parties were forced to back candidates who appealed to a wide range of ideologues, rather than finding ones who were exactly like them. For decades, the primary criticism of Democrats and Republicans was that neither party actually stood for, well. . . anything.  Exactly right, would say James Madison.  American-style democracy has remained relatively free of the factious rancor that has plagued most parliamentary systems that other countries adopted.  Just like in pre-World War II Europe, the United States saw the creation of extremist parties and interest groups, but here they could never muster enough votes claim legitimacy.  While the Fascists and Nazis were getting their feet in the doors in Europe, they were little more in America than quirky oddities.  Make no mistake, the United States is just as likely to spawn malevolent interest groups as are European democracies, but they can never win enough votes to actually contend for national power.  Thus they remain small, isolated by ideas or region, and for the most part, ineffective in their quest for power.

Every once in awhile extremists have actually seized control of one of our consensus-based major parties.  But that has always led to one of two outcomes: the party ceases to exist or, after losing a number of elections, the moderates in the party regain control. When the so-called High Federalists captured the Federalist party on the eve of the War of 1812, their extreme and even treasonous agenda drove their moderate supporters away and the party was never again able to compete at the national level. In 1860, the pro-slave extremists in the Democratic party guaranteed that the moderate candidate nominated by the Republicans, Abraham Lincoln, would win the presidential election.  It took over half a century for the Democrats to recover from that disaster.  Even when there is wide appeal for an ideological party, like the Populist Party in the 1890s, without a broad-based national electorate, they could not survive.  Ironically, many of their ideas ended up becoming part of the progressive agenda of the early 20th century and were enacted into law.  But unlike the Populists, who never could become more than an economic reform movement of Midwestern farmers, the progressives reached out to the rising American middle class and ended up supporting candidates and issues within both major parties.  From 1904 to 1920, progressive Republicans and Democrats elected a majority of state  and national legislators and executives.

So what then is the point?  Since  1980, when Ronald Reagan opened his presidential campaign in Mississippi making a pre-planned states rights speech to woo the remaining white separatist Democrats to become Republicans, the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and General Eisenhower has been moving further and further to the far right of our political spectrum.  Add to that the modern reality of how much it costs to run an election campaign, and the race to the far right has accelerated even more.  Meanwhile, the Democrats have been trying to find a way to capture the political middle, which explains why President Obama has had such a hard time keeping his own party behind his healthcare agenda. The consensus model, as designed by James Madison and his fellow constitutional authors, was never supposed to be achieved by monolithic and lock-step legislature, but rather through the rough and tumble exchange of ideas and compromises that finally emerge as a viable piece of legislation.  Unfortunately, the modern Republican model of ideological uniformity is not suited to that design at all.  Instead, the party of Lincoln has morphed into an American version of one of those fringe parties that have come and gone over the years.

The further to the right the Republicans go, the more they will continue to alienate the political center that has always run this country.  They almost did themselves in back in 1964 when they allowed Barry Goldwater to hijack the mainstream GOP from the right.  But after that crushing loss to Lyndon Johnson they returned to their centrist values and bounced back. Remember it was Richard Nixon, that crazy liberal socialist, who tried to get a healthcare package much like what we now have through the Congress in 1970.  Today, with the crazies on Fox News and talk radio setting the agenda, Republicans are again heading toward the political trash heap.  Hey, the Democrats had their mental breakdown once too.  In 1972, the party of FDR ran too far to the left and nominated George McGovern who was soundly defeated by Richard Nixon.  But since then, the Democrats have been moving steadily to the center while the Republicans have decided to keep flowing to the right. One can only wonder how much longer centrist Republicans will stand for this?

My guess is that it will not be very long. Back in 1814, the once strong Federalists committed suicide when they threatened secession from the Union.  That mistake led to a fairly long period of one party rule in America. We are now hearing that same rhetoric from the right wing Republican governor of Texas.  One can only survive as the "Party of No" for so long. But for now the Republicans seem content to continue going after a larger and larger share of an ever diminishing and extremist portion of our society.  When a party is down to celebrating the likes of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck as its cadre of intellectual and spiritual leaders, it has traded political ideas for demagogues.  So I guess it may be time to tell the Federalists, Know Nothings, Free Soilers, Anti-Masonics, Populists, Bull Moosers, Dixiecrats, Peace and Freedomers, and American Independents to start making space for the Republicans.  After all, even in Texas there is room in the history books for one more addition on the page of failed parties.

I Miss Chairman Mao!

Without any actual documentation, Julius Caesar was reported to have said, "give them bread and games," in response to one of his aid's fears that the Roman people would not stand for his planned dissolution of the Roman Republic.  Whether or not he actually uttered those words, there is no doubt that Caesar was successful in achieving dictatorial power and forever destroying republicanism in Rome. And he did institute a series of laws providing public food assistance for the plebeian class as well as presiding over an increase in the number of government hosted public spectacles.  Looking at the economic miracle that is the People's Republic of China, one can only surmise that the current communist political elite, despite their rhetoric demanding avoidance all exposure to the decadence of western thought, may have modeled their hybrid national economic model on the Roman Empire.

Oh if Chairman Mao could see them now!  Remember back when the images coming out of China consisted of a sea of humanity all wearing the same dark blue parkas, waving copies of the little red book, and hoisting signs with wonderful slogans like, "Death to the running dog lackeys of imperialist war mongers," and "Death to the corporate stooges of the decadent bourgeois elite?" Back then, the only glimpse of life in China came to us in snippets of state controlled propaganda film of small children singing patriotic songs celebrating the life of Mao, or wave after wave of Red Army soldiers marching in perfect order with bayonetted rifles glistening in the sun.  For those of you too young to remember this, you have probably seen it, albeit in a scaled down version, coming out of Kim Jung Il's North Korea.  How funny is it that so much of American foreign policy, as well as financial resources, was directed at protecting us from Chinese hordes of the Cold War years? And now, when China poses a real threat to our national security, we are bending over backwards to aid them in their quest to dominate the world economies.

Beyond the nonsensical and paranoid rhetoric of the 50s and 60s, we were told that communism would ultimately fail in both China and the Soviet Union, because state controlled economies could not succeed.  Further, the current wisdom of the day preached, capitalism and consumer values would eventually take hold, inevitably leading to democratic political institutions. There was just no way that free markets could be compatible with totalitarian political systems, so we were told.

So let's see. . . the USSR, which stubbornly held to its failing model of a collectivist economy within the confines of a dictatorial state, finally did itself in in the late 1980s.  With all due respect to the Gipper, what killed off the USSR was its inability to deliver consumer goods to its growingly acquisitive population.  Levi Strauss and his denim blue jeans had more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union, than the threat of an unrealistic nuclear weapons shield around the United States.  Reagan's "Star Wars" anti-missile proposals were aptly named, as only a politician reared in Hollywood would believe that such a system was even remotely possible.  Instead, the average Soviet citizen found himself exposed to the economic opulence available in the free west, and the allure of endless five year plans and collective farms was no longer capable of moving the masses to strive on for the workers' society.  In a few brief months in 1989, Soviet-style communism died in an almost bloodless revolt.  The USSR disappeared, and Russia was born. Gucci had replaced the Gulag!

Watching all this with great interest were the Communist Chinese. As China was pressing, like the Soviet Union once had, to become a legitimate player on the world scene, there must have been some trepidation on the part of the Central Committee concerning contamination of their Revolution by western economic values.  For decades, the Chinese, like Kim's North Korea, had brutally enforced a ban on all outside contact.  That worked really well in preserving Chairman Mao's social and political model, but if China was going to grow economically, some changes were going to have to be adopted. Who could have guessed that the answer would be found in marrying Karl Marx to Adam Smith?

The Communist hierarchy in China bet their lives that they could create a successful economic model by dumping a rigidly enforced command economy and embracing a hyper-capitalist one instead.  With breathtaking speed, the Chinese trashed all their five year plans and started building shopping malls.  Capitalism was unleashed and the Chinese people embraced it with open arms.  Here in the West, this decision was greeted with enthusiasm and celebration. The other great communist power was now admitting that scientific socialism did not actually work, and soon, as in Russia, the Chinese people would be demanding democratic political changes too.  After all, as the current wisdom suggested, free enterprise must lead to free politics, right?  Wrong!

Remember Tiananmen Square in 1989?  Remember Tank Man? That was going to be the spark that would bring down communism in China, like Boris Yeltsin's followers did in Moscow.  But when the smoke cleared, the commies were still in power and the young Chinese revolutionaries were running for their lives.  Instead of igniting a nation-wide revolt, the Tiananmen Square event angered the new Chinese middle class because they could not go shopping that day.  Hey, democracy might be nice, but BMWs and Mocha Lattes were, well, better. In less than five years, not one of those puffy quilted blue Maoist jackets could be seen anywhere, and all those red star festooned caps were gone too. The big gamble paid off, and continues to pay off.

So here we are twenty one years later, deeply in debt to the billionaires in China who bank roll our national deficit.  Without firing a shot in anger, China has partnered with the likes of Walmart and other big box retailers to destroy main street USA.  The largest internet company in the world, whose motto is some blather about doing good, is not only doing business with the world's most repressive regime, but actually helping it track down its domestic dissidents. And in 2008 we turned a blind eye to the brutal crackdown on earthquake survivors in China so we would not offend the Chinese government during the Summer Olympics.  Hey America, guess what?  It looks like they won.  The inheritors of Chairman Mao's 1949 Revolution discovered that their most potent weapon was not a stockpile of nuclear weapons, but rather a fat checkbook.  They didn't have to blow us up, they simply bought us.  And now if they want any concessions from the US government, they don't need to rattle any sabers, like the Soviets used to, they just suggest that they might not want to buy anymore of our Treasury bonds.

What do you know, capitalism and brutal dictatorships work really well together.  If only Marie Antoinette had actually had some cake to give to the masses, the French might still have a king!

Deliver US, Oh Lord, From THEM. . .

Having just received my latest edition of Mother Jones Magazine (the Koran for a card-carrying member of the Godless political left), I read the cover story on the latest incarnation of right-wing paranoia, the "Oath Keepers."  Now here is a group that makes the Tea Party and Birther crowds  look like a collection of moderate intellectuals.  Were Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh still alive, I have no doubt that he would be a leading figure in this movement.  They purport to be an association made up mostly of military and law enforcement personnel, whose mission is to protect Americans from assaults on their basic freedoms.  Beyond their re-packaging of the same old militia nonsense that converted McVeigh from a social misfit into a terrorist bomber, the Oath Keepers have revived the pre-Civil War states-rights agenda and included it among their sacred tenets.  Ho hum, just another fringe movement taking advantage of the First Amendment, right?  Maybe not.

These nutballs have themselves convinced that America is on the verge of becoming a martial law imposed police state within the very near future.  In fact, they are predicting that the federal government will begin to move against our cherished rights sometime before the end of this calendar year.  And what, you may ask is the catalyst for the apocalyptic destruction of American liberties?  Is it  a Bin Laden led attack on our homeland?  Is it the final meltdown of our financial institutions?  Is it a pandemic scourge of some horrible virus?  Or is it, as we hear so often, the fear of our huge federal deficits? No, no, no, and no.  It is instead an attack against America from the liberal left, led by, you guessed it, Barack Obama.  And when it begins, Oath Keepers all over the country will refuse to follow any government orders to help enslave us.  In fact, they are planning to rise up and begin a violent revolution to "take back" America and restore our country to the values upon which it was founded. Wow!

And if that is not enough to make you want to stand up and whistle Dixie, the Oath Keepers have begun to receive popular media attention from Fox News's Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs.  Oh well, at least we now know where all those guns ended up that were purchased right after Obama won the 2008 presidential election.  Other than wishing I had purchased stock in Colt Fire Arms last summer, I began to take a closer look at all the ultra-conservative groups that materialized since the election and I think I figured out what is going on.  All this paranoia is not about an erosion of our civil liberties, or a government take over of health care, nor is it a populist reaction to a faltering economy, this is about something much more central to the agenda of the far right.  All of this citizen uprising nonsense is about race.

If you think not, then take a look at two groups of people, those who started these movements and those who have joined.  I defy you to find anyone among the Oath Keepers, Birthers, or Tea Partiers, who are not white.  Yes, these movements are indeed about the Constitution, just not the version we have now.  What these groups want most is a return to a version of our cherished document before the addition of the 14th Amendment.  Again, if you think I am wrong, take a look at the websites for groups like the KKK and the Arian Nations.  You will find the same anti-government, pro-liberty rhetoric now employed by contemporary right wing groups.  But unlike our current batch of gun toting malcontents, the Klan and neo-Nazi organizations are at least honest and open in their hatred for racial minorities.

All you have to do is listen closely to the rhetoric coming out of the Oath Keepers and Tea Party crowd and you can almost hear them dropping in a racial or ethnic slur. But unlike their historic antecedents, the new patrons of white supremacy would lose all their media support if they were to play their race card.  Unfortunately, for them anyway, Obama got elected in 2008, not 1958.  Back then there was not much of a  price to pay for a bigot to let fly the "N" word. Today, unless one is a rapper or Def Comedian, such overt exposure of one's real agenda would be a public relations disaster.  Just ask ex- Republican Senators Trent Lott of Mississippi or Virginia's George Allen Jr. what happened to their political stars after just one racially charged gaff.

Low and behold all this angry and frenetic energy spewing out of the American right now begins to make sense.  It isn't that these people are worried about our Constitutional rights, it is that they are pissed off that they now actually apply to people they have long hated.  For if saving the Constitution were really their agenda, they would have risen up six years ago when the Bush administration began its warrantless wire taps.  Nor is it about the war on terror, as the Obama administration has picked-up right where the Cheneyites left off.  We are still aggressively chasing down and killing Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders whenever and wherever we can find them.  It certainly can't be deficit or debt phobia driving the far right wing, as nary a peep was heard from them as Bush and his big spending pals pushed the country to the verge of economic collapse.  Hell, it isn't even that President Obama is a liberal, which of course he is not.  Any self-respecting liberal, like me, would never sign on to a health care bill that did not include a Medicare-for-all centerpiece.  All the way back to the primary election season, Obama never endorsed such a system, but instead proposed that we could keep our health care system in the hands of private interests. Hmmm, some liberal.

That only leaves one thing, and that one thing is R-A-C-E.  Think about it, first they tried "tagging" Obama by loudly enunciating his middle name, remember?  Barack HUSSEIN Obama.  Then there was the issue of his suits not being adorned by an American flag pin.  Next, they were in a tizzy about the man's citizenship and whether, what, Hawaii counts as a state?  When that failed they claimed that he was actually born in Africa or Indonesia, and that he was a Muslim. Then there was the flap over the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  You know, that uppity black preacher from, well. . . Chicago.  And when none of that worked, they went after Mrs. Obama for blaspheming America when she said she could finally be proud of her country.  How dare she imply that white America ever did anything to make life difficult for racial minorities?

Yup, I think all this is much ado about color.  And the Birthers, Tea Partiers, Oath Keepers, and all their fellow travelers are trying their best to create a 21st century version of DW Griffith's, "Birth of a Nation."  That said, it may be time the rest of us quit pretending that these people represent a legitimate political and economic agenda.  The sooner we can begin to mobilize our forces to really protect our basic liberties and our constitutional traditions from the only real evil force that has ever threatened them, the proponents of extremism and hatred, the better.

BUDDY CAN YOU SPARE ME A TRILLION?

I have been reading quite a bit lately about the causes of our latest economic woes.  Without a doubt, much of the blame must rest upon the shoulders of multi-national banks, Wall Street Investment Houses, and all those Washington politicians, both Republican and Democratic, who thrust their faces into the huge money trough provided by the above mentioned financial giants.  For none of what almost plunged us into a 1930s-like depression could have happened had not our elected officials willingly dismantled most of the economic regulatory system created during the New Deal.  No I am not about to let any of our movers and shakers off the hook, but it is time to take a hard look at some others who were complicit in our economic collapse.  You know--us!

First, you and I elected every one of the members of Congress and all the presidents who marshaled in the era of unchecked capitalism.  Beginning with the Reagan Revolution in 1980, and ending, well it hasn't really ended yet if you look at how many Wall Streeters have been appointed to key economic and political offices by President Obama.  Did anyone with an IQ of more than two digits really believe that fundamental change would result from the political campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain, which amassed over 1.5 billion dollars to buy our votes?  All the real reformers were choked to death by the big money boys early in the primary season and we all just sat back and watched.  And what, now we are shocked by the outcome?  Bigger than ever Wall Street bonuses, huge profits for investment bankers, and no financial reforms of any kind.  Representative democracy does not work if the electorate allows its votes to be purchased by the biggest spender.  Oh yeah, in case you haven't noticed, those same toadies of Wall Street bought themselves the Supreme Court too.  With a 5-4 deregulation majority now firmly in charge, we got to witness the transformation of corporations into real people with full constitutional rights.  Which isn't even close to an earlier decision by the same court that determined that money and speech were the same thing, and therefore equally protected by the First Amendment.

Ah, but today's rant is not just another populist diatribe against American economic elites. For you and I are not just politically complicit in the mess we now find ourselves in, but we own a great deal of the economic blame too. Now before you think I have drunk the Libertarian Kool Aid, let me explain.  In 1973, the year we suffered through OPEC choking off the supply of gasoline to the United States, and while we were watching the televised Congressional Watergate hearings, something very important began to happen to middle class America.  That was the year that our real income stopped growing.  From that year, right up to today, the value of our wages and salaries has not increased. . . at all.  Oh yeah, that was also the last year that top corporate salaries and bonuses averaged from ten to twenty times higher than ours.  Today, while we have not seen any real economic growth in our families, the moguls of Wall Street now make hundreds of times our annual pay.  Can anyone say billionaire?

From 1945 to 1973, thanks to a combination of industrial, rather than financial growth, robust government regulations, a real graduated income tax system, the collective bargaining power of organized labor, and a willingness on the part of the American people to pay their way, we all got wealthier. So what the heck happened?  Beyond neglecting our basic constitutional duties to both send qualified representatives into government, and then monitoring their behavior while in office, we began to substitute personal debt for real income.  One can make a pretty good argument that American consumers would have paid more attention to the stagnation of the middle class, at the hands of the latter day robber barons on Wall Street, had we not been able to convert our homes into ATM machines.  But every time we re-financed our mortgages, or took out a second to buy a boat, a car, or that custom pool in the back yard, a personal choice was made to assume more debt.  No matter how enticing the combination of Wall Street and Madison Avenue made things look, in the end we all were to blame for the great housing bubble.  To put it simply, there would have been no bundled mortgage securities and no credit default swaps if we had been more prudent and less greedy.

But once the bubble burst, the latter day populists, like the Tea Partiers, began to build their constituencies by blaming the evil triumvirate of Big Banks, Wall Street and Washington. The economic conspiracy theory goes as follows:  Americans were tricked into buying sub-prime loans to get into homes they could not afford. Then, they were wooed by consumer advertisements to chase a standard of living they could not afford.  At best, this is about a half truth.  To be sure, predatory lenders were out there and they were aggressively marketing their voodoo lending packages.  But it was always our choice to assume any unwise risk. All the truth in lending laws mean nothing if consumers were so desperate to buy into a materialistic version of the "Good Life," that they did not read the contracts they were about to sign. Certainly, shame on the banks and our political leaders for creating this mess, but shame too on us for blindly going along like so many brainless lemmings.

Imagine where we might be today if we hadn't borrowed to sustain our life styles, but only spent what we were making.  Do you think that we would have stood idly by while a few of us amassed trillions of dollars in speculative wealth?  By 1980 we would have seen that we were actually falling behind economically and the rush to deregulate the financial industry might instead have been a rush to more fairly distribute the great wealth of our country.  Meanwhile the fat cats are laughing all the way to their "too big to fail" bank.  For while our wages went down over the last forty years, our economic productivity went up.  So let me see. . . if I was actually making less, but I was ever more productive, then where did all that wealth go that I created?  See, I knew you would get it.

Time to Throw Some Rocks at the Glass House

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After commenting so freely on all that is wrong with so many other institutions, it is only fair that I take a critical look, and well deserved shots at my own profession, American secondary education.  It is not, as you might think, that I am so parochially loyal to my own place in the educational status quo, that I have avoided turning my acidic prose loose on the outdated and self-serving colossus we call American education.  Nor have I avoided assailing this arthritic relic of the 19th century because I might be chomping down on the very hand that feeds me. Instead, believe it or not, it is because I have been saving many of the criticisms you are about to read for a book I plan to write when I retire.  But then it occurred to me that if I did not get a few things "out there," I could very well go toes north and room temperature (that's die for those of you less crude than me) before I ever get any of this said.  And I do want to go on the record, albeit with a woefully incomplete polemic at this time.

First, after thirty plus years of standing before thousands of college prep teenagers, I have come to the conclusion that my dedicated colleagues and I have done a pretty good job of preparing our students to take their places as citizens and adults in the late 1800s.  Everything about our physical plants and the ways in which we socialize our kids is as outdated as if we were conducting lessons on the intricacies of managing a team of oxen along the Oregon Trail.  Actually, that is an incomplete analogy, as we are also getting our young charges ready to assume positions on Henry Ford's Dearborn assembly line making Model T sedans and coupes.  For while the rest of the post-industrial world is training its young people for life in the 21st century, we are still pretending that our kids need three months off to help their Homesteading parents plant the crops, tend to the livestock, and harvest the autumn bounty. For most American high school students, the school year runs for about 180 days.  At my school, a private Catholic college preparatory institution, we are in session for about ten fewer days than that.  I guess tuition paying Catholic school kids need more time back on the farm than their peers in the public sector.  Most of the secondary students in the rest of the developed world are in session from between 210 to 240 days per year.  When you add that all up over thirteen school years, our kids are behind by as much as three academic years when they graduate from high school.  Can everyone say, "Would you like fries with that sir?"

Then there is the way we structure our classes.  Ringing bells, assigning detention to late kids, sitting them in rows, mandating mind-numbing and tedious busy work, are all excellent ways to get kids ready to go to work in a factory.  Think of this if you will, the vast majority of school discipline problems are related to issues of rules of conformity.  Most kids who are assigned detention, or even suspended, are are in trouble for being late to class, out of their assigned seats, or talking to someone sitting near them.  Truly disruptive or disrespectful behavior is much more rare, even in some of our worst schools. But the model we are using was designed to condition-out any spark of individuality, as that would have been disastrous on a factory assembly line.  Think of it, for thirteen years, American kids cannot use the restroom when they need to go.  Again, a wonderful idea on an assembly line where one missing worker disrupts the entire process, but a useless behavior trait in a post-industrial society.  So we ring bells, kids move, we ring bells, kids sit, we ring bells, kids eat, we ring bells, kids go home.  One hundred years ago, we blew whistles, factory workers came in, we blew whistles, factory workers lined up at their work stations, we blew whistles, factory workers rested, we blew whistles, factory workers ate lunch, we blew whistles, factories workers went home.  They all came to work at the same time, they dressed alike, they were punished for being late or talking during work, and they were conditioned to do the same boring tasks over and over for eight hours a day, five days a week, month after month, and year after boring year.

No wonder a quarter of our American high school students drop out of school every year.  Even the way we evaluate our kids makes no sense any more.  Grades are assigned based on a system of rigidly scrutinized individual mastery of a narrowly defined curriculum.  We call cooperative work "cheating," and punish kids for doing exactly what will be demanded of them in the modern adult workforce.  Since most of the really good jobs awaiting our young people involve highly complex communication and technological skills, a premium in the real workplace is placed on cooperating, rather than isolating.  No wonder so many of our valedictorians can't seem to fit in as adults.  The best jobs of the 21st century are going to demand workers who are highly creative, adaptive to rapid change, skilled critical thinkers, and stimulated by peer interaction.  Think back to your school years and reflect for a moment on all the tasks you were forced to do that rewarded those real-world skills.  You may find, as I have, that your athletic teams and other extra-curricular activities were more nurturing of modern workplace skills than anything you did in the classroom.

As far as rigidly enforced dress codes go, there was indeed a time in American history when a person's attire immediately marked them as working or middle class, as educated or destined for manual labor.  After World War II, when the new middle class fled the cities and factories for brand new row houses in the suburbs, they demanded that schools teach their kids how to look like future members of the managerial class.  Denim pants and shirts were symbols of the manual labor jobs of their immigrant parents' generation, not their GI Bill financed entree into the good life, and so were banned from schools. Thus, we find that an outdated 1940s and 50s social agenda is still being enforced well into the 21st century.  I think it would be fantastic if our shirt and tie school administrators could all take a one-day field trip to some of the top high tech companies to see how modern capitalists actually dress. Plus, it would really be cool to see them all sitting in those ridiculous yellow buses.

Finally, at the risk of violating that over-used adage of always avoiding fouling one's own nest, I have some criticisms of my fellow faculty members around the country.  First, why is it that so many of us are militantly opposed to any kind of performance-based evaluations?  I cannot think of another profession where outcomes are not used in determining whether one moves up, down, or out of a job, other than in education.  Perhaps it is because of the ridiculous way in which most of us are economically compensated.  To make more money as an elementary or secondary school teacher, one must earn more college credits while hanging around for another year.  To put it simply, pay is about units and years. Since most public school districts post their salary schedules online take a look and see if I am wrong.  Actual performance as a teacher has no bearing on salaries, other than in those rare cases where a teacher might actually be dismissed.  It seems that the only way for a talented teacher to move up economically, short of units and years, is to make a transition into administration.  Now there is a great idea, incentivize our best teachers to leave the classroom and take on jobs for which they may have absolutely no aptitude or innate interest.  Which may explain why academic administrations are so dysfunctional in this country.

Oh, but I have so many other items on my educational agenda, but that is enough for now.  Suffice it to say that as I am getting ready to step away from a profession that I love, I am so disheartened as to the limited progress we have made to improve education in America.  In fact, during my tenure within its confines. . hmmm, tenure, now there is a topic for another discussion.

The Candidate From Goldman Sachs

Once again, it is time to dust off an old blog/rant and try again.  In an earlier posting, and among my many gifted AP Government students, I called for the adoption of a new amendment to the US Constitution.  For some time I have been troubled by the ever-increasing influence of corporate interests in our political system.  Not since the Gilded Age, have we witnessed the pluralist democracy established by our Founding Fathers under such an assault.  The moneyed interests in our country, while consolidating more and more of our nation's wealth into their bottomless coffers, have spent billions through their lobbyists and PACs guaranteeing that our elected officials pay heed to their selfish agendas.  But before I go any further in my warning to those of you who would like to see our democratic institutions preserved, let's do a little history.

Between the years 1945 and 1973, the wages of average Americans grew at a rate never before seen anywhere in the world.  Without a doubt, the American middle class was truly born in the post-war years, and for the first time ever, average Americans were able to take advantage of economic opportunities heretofore only available to the privileged few.  Thanks to the progressive administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, restraints were put in place to curb unchecked capitalism, while ensuring that a larger share of capital profits would be shared by the workers who actually created the wealth.  But ours was not a Soviet-style redistribution of wealth.  Hardly, for as more and more middle class Americans were gaining access to the good life, private capital was growing at record rates too.  Indeed, during those same years, the United States set records for economic growth while more of its citizens moved into the ranks of millionaires than ever before. For the first time ever, most middle class Americans owned their own homes, drove two cars, and could afford to send their children to college.

Since 1973, as verified by all credible economists, things have changed.  While American workers' productivity continued to rise, real wages flattened out and have not grown since.  Thus, the economy kept expanding, creating the illusion of a more prosperous society, but for those of us in the middle, we saw no improvements in our standard of living.  Instead, the wealth we were creating was being syphoned off into the hands of a new class of Robber Barons at the very top.  While the rest of us were trying to make ends meet with two full time jobs per family, instead of one as in past years, we witnessed the creation of a super-rich class whose members were now billionaires, instead of millionaires. How, you might ask did this happen, and why were so many of us asleep at the wheel?

Beginning with Richard Nixon in 1972, and carried forth non-stop by both Republican and Democratic administrations right through to, well. . . today, there has been a full-frontal assault on all federal regulations to dampen the influence and accumulation of great wealth.  De-regulation and massive tax cuts for the wealthy were the mantra of the neo-capitalists, as they promised all of us a new and greater prosperity that would "trickle down" to everyone.  To the absolute delight of the Wall Street moguls, effective banking and investment regulations were gutted by the legislators we sent to Washington to serve our interests.  While we were looking the other way, our representatives were stuffing their campaign coffers with cash from their newly enriched patrons.  You see the bankers and brokers cared little about Democrat or Republican, as they threw money at both parties, for it was influence and access that they were buying.  American politics was no longer about issues, but became an OZ-like treasure hunt for the toadies of the economic elite.

But why, you might ask, did we allow this to happen?  First, the economic power brokers took a lesson from the first dictator to install himself in power in the dying Roman Republic, Julius Caesar.  Like Caesar, they gave us "bread and games." For years we substituted toys and trinkets that created the illusion of prosperity, while we were falling further and further behind in real wealth.  Secondly, through their now consolidated media empires, they fanned the flames of divisiveness over issues unimportant to them, like abortion, immigration, evil empires, gay rights.  While we became embroiled in social and religious warfare, the elites in power kept pursuing their only goal, an ever greater share of America's economic wealth.

Thirdly, through their great financial empires the economic elite convinced us that we could indeed join them in prosperity by cashing in on the equity of our homes, rather than expecting any real increases in our wages and salaries.  This was a twofold process that took the eager cooperation of Congress and state legislatures to realize.  First, they created new lending instruments to make it easy for anyone to purchase a home.  That move drove the prices of American homes way beyond their actual value.  Then they made it even easier for us to use our homes as ATM machines, so we could borrow and purchase those things our wages could not actually afford.  After all, their media driven advertisements told us, since the value of your homes will always go up, you can, if you have to, sell your house and relieve yourselves of the mountain of consumer debt you are now building.  In fact, they screamed at us, you end up richer if you go further into debt.  Anyone remember all those ads on TV for zero interest loans, no down payments, and my personal favorite, life-long prosperity through a reverse mortgage?

Meanwhile, thanks to our elected officials, and the well-paid media mouthpieces of the Wall Street billionaires, new kinds of investment opportunities were created to further enrich those at the very top.  Bundled mortgage securities, investment derivatives, and credit default swaps, whatever in the hell those are, were creating billions, on the backs of an ever increasing debt load for the American middle class.  And then, the greatest economic bubble in the history of the world burst and, well, you know the rest of the story, right?  We lost our homes, we lost our savings, we lost our jobs, hell, we lost our middle class. And what about all those wealthy fat cats at the top of the house of cards they created?  Did they lose anything?  Hmm, they got bailed out, they kept their fortunes, and, believe it or not, they just paid themselves record bonuses, and oh yeah, back to the subject of this rant, they got the United States Supreme Court to anoint their inanimate corporations as fully functioning American citizens with First Amendment rights!  Doesn't it make you all  warm and cozy inside to know that not all of us are suffering? Boy, am I glad that poor old Bank of America now has the right to free speech!

You see, the Supreme Court, in its decision in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, removed all restrictions on corporate funding of political advertisement.  Thus, big business can not only lobby the government, and donate to candidates' campaigns, they can now spend all they want to support or defeat candidates in elections.  Since the combined wealth of American corporations is twenty-nine trillion dollars, that's right, TRILLION, do any of you actually believe that we are still a society of one person one vote?  Unbelievably, in his 5-4 majority opinion, Justice Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, said that corporations had been denied their basic rights to free speech and this decision would correct that problem! I guess I missed the fact that up until last week, corporations could not be heard on political issues in America.

So, in a hypothetical election campaign, let us say that a candidate for the US Senate wants to block off shore oil drilling in California, and Chevron and Exxon are unhappy about this.  In the last few months of the campaign they could buy up every single minute of available TV commercial time and flood the airways with negative ads directed specifically at our candidate.  Worse yet, what if a controlling share of a US corporation was owned by a foreign entity, which is perfectly legal.  We could see countries like China and Saudi Arabia determining the outcome of our elections, right there with Walmart and Wells Fargo.  My advice to all of you, if something is not done. . . learn the meaning of the word "plutocracy."

Solution.  A constitutional amendment banning corporate funding of any political activities would block even the pro-big business majority on the Supreme Court.  By the way, that five justice majority was appointed by Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and George W. Bush.  Short of that, it may be necessary for concerned citizens to organize economic boycotts of any corporation that decides to move into electoral politics. For the only "change we can believe in," may, after all, be the change we initiate ourselves.  Perhaps this recession will prove to be the best friend of an endangered species, American democracy.  Those goodies that used to distract us from the economic assault on our political institutions are now all gone.  And with ten percent national unemployment, many of us have the time to take action.  maybe a new generation of reform minded Americans will rise up and shout, "enough." However, if we once again fall back into our complacent LAZBOYs to watch another mind-numbing reality show, I guess I should take comfort in knowing that I will be dead and gone before our legislators, like so many of our athletic stadiums, take on corporate names.  I can almost hear it now, "The Speaker recognizes Representative Citi Bank for a five minute rebuttal. . ."