The Chinese are coming...

And, well, it could be worse...maybe...

I've been skimming through a book by Dambisa Moyo called *Winner Take All.*  She's an international economist with great credentials--from Nigeria I think.  

Her book sounds the alarm about China's systematic effort to garner commodities and basic resources for the sake of its own growth and prosperity.  One would think that all countries do this to one degree or another.  I'm sure the CIA (and other agencies) have in-depth studies about the issue.  But according to Moyo no other country or group of countries is putting forth the kind of single-minded, long range effort that China is.  Her concern is that China's ambitions will ultimately create resource strains throughout the world that will lead to horrendous conflicts of one kind or another over oil, land and water, etc.  

But despite that message & most interestingly, it seems to me that her book is largely an *apology* for China's policies.   China goes into host countries and by Western capitalist standards greatly overpays for resources, labor and access to resources.   In Africa, for example, China makes a practice of hiring as much local labor as is feasible for a project.   The net result is that while the U.S. has a net positive regard in some of the poorest places on earth, China is viewed with *much* more favor by a couple of orders of magnitude.  

The thing is, even in ostensibly private enterprises, the hand of the Chinese government is deeply involved in coordinating economic outcomes in accordance with policies set by the government.   The thing is, also, it works pretty well.  In the space of a decade China has created a middle class of 300,000,000 people and cut the poverty rate from 80% to 16%.   And as far as I know (and perhaps someone knows better), the Chinese Commies don't have the reputation of cooking the books the way the Soviets did in the FSU.    Even where the Chinese state doesn't formally own major enterprises, the degree of regulatory control arguably amounts to de facto state ownership.   

Based on a few news reports and Mankell Henning's novel, *The Man from Beijing,* my highly impressionistic & not particularly well-informed view is that the Chinese ruling elite is notably unstupid in that they are aware that the existence of the nouveaux riche and the growth of inequality and corruption are problems they have to deal with.  Also, there seems to have been a sort of groping toward the rule of law.  Human rights activists continue to live in peril of prison or worse,  but they are there and active.  

I believe the Chinese people fear their government, but it is also the case that the Chinese government is beginning to fear its people.  Most Chinese identify themselves as belonging to a single race--the Han Chinese.    If you look at the variety of physical types throughout the country, that becomes almost as absurd as the notion that the all the nominally white people in the U.S. somehow belong to an identifiable & unitary "white race."   The Han Chinese are patriotic about being Han Chinese to the extent that it makes the government nervous.     Han Chinese tend to believe they have a civilizing mission toward peoples like the Tibetans & that they are ingrates and rebels for seeking independence.   I recall that the government sought to dampen down patriotic Han Chinese fervor in the wake of some clashes between Tibetans and Chinese.   

I would like to believe that the Chinese will one day evolve into a genuine democracy with guarantees of human rights & without relinquishing the progressive features of their economic arrangements.   Well, it would be nice.  

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

God and Hartshorne...

Writing what follows, I'm not trying to convert anybody, or to annoy my atheist and agnostic friends--I'm mostly just thinking out loud, as it were, for my own amusement (and ideally for anybody who happens to read it).   The only evangelical impulses I might have would be directed toward political right-wing Christians and Moonies, but they irritate me too much for me to carry out such impulses.  

Any way I saw a new edition of a collection of essays by Charles Hartshorne at the library and checked it out--it's called *The Zero Fallacy*  The title refers to the view in process philosophy to the effect that there is nothing in the cosmos that is really "nothing"--that is, everything that is actual in the cosmos has a form of subjectivity--is in fact, alive.   

But I won't pursue that.  Rather I wanted to take up Hartshorne's view of God.  He takes very seriously Whitehead's idea that God is the "fellow sufferer"--that God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, but that God humbly suffers everything that his creatures endure--and also all their "enjoyments."  Hartshorne infers an interesting ethic from this doctrine.  It is important that we as individuals avoid suffering for ourselves and that we also try and help others avoid suffering as well--because if God is God and is the Ultimate Good we do not want to God to suffer any more than necessary (as finite creatures, it is inevitable that we will in fact suffer, oh, a fair amount).  It may seem extremely obvious that we should avoid suffering, but a casual glance at history suggests that there has been *a hell of a lot* of avoidable suffering.   And another philosophical aspect of this notion is that the dilemmas generated by the arguments around self-interest vs. altruism are avoided.  Of course, none of the foregoing is very convincing if you don't share the worldview in the first place & as I say, I'm not going to try and convince anybody.  

Hartshorne had considerable faith in democracy and the decency of ordinary people, but in his later years he came to regard humanity as a threat to itself and to the whole natural world.  

Hartshorne, BTW, was not a Christian.  He was a Unitarian-Universalist and his views of God in a general sort of way approximated those of Reformed Judaism.  (I also think of Isaac Bashevis Singer's).    

Here's Wikipedia on Hartshorne:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hartshorne   Although I have my own criticisms of a couple of Hartshornean notions, my cursory  glance at the criticism section in the Wikipedia article led me to conclude, "mere trifling and piffle," as Nero Wolfe might have put it.  

Hartshorne lived to be a 103 YO.   He was an amateur orinthologist of no mean achievement.  One of his last works was a philosophical study of bird song, entitled, *Born to Sing* in which he provided the final answer as to why birds sing:  it's because they are happy.  

R.  

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Fw: Trotskyites for Romney

Some of you (you know who you are) may be semi-amused by the referenced article below.  Back in the day when I was a Trotskyist, I was wounded when I read about James Burnham and his apostasy from the Socialist Workers' Party & his espousal of technocratic capitalism in the wake of his new-fangled theory of managerial capitalism.  I guess I had the notion that exposure to Trotskyist ideas was not only an inoculation against Stalinism & Stalinist turncoatism a la Whitaker Chambers, but also against reactionary politics in general.   I was realistic enough to know that some Trotskyists  might turn away and become mere liberals--a distinction without much difference for our more sectarian comrades, but still...(Um, I should note here for the benefit of those who may not be up on the finer points of left wing splinter group politics that the Socialist Workers Party was the major Trotskyist organization in the U.S. from the 30's onwards.  The SWP was a
split from the Communist Party after the conflict between the follower's of Trotsky's ideas and the followers of Stalin's "ideas" erupted into open intra-Party warfare. As CPers I knew never tired of reminding me, Trotsky lost.  Some of them liked to make jokes about pick axes that I thought were in poor taste.)

Sadly, I was wrong.   Burnham, for example, went on to become an important contributor of Buckley's rag, *National Review* & was regarded by Buckley as the the conservative movement's leading intellectual at the time.   Wikipedia notes that some regard Burnham as a founding father of neoconservativism.  

And before I was a Trotskyist, I was an adherent of the Young People's Socialist League, i.e. a YPSLer, the youth section of the the Socialist Party U.S.A.--the party of Norman Thomas.  (Also, referenced in the article below.)   As a YPSLer, I regarded myself as a kind of American Fabian socialist, a position rather disdained by those in YPSL who were more Marxist in orientation.  

In fact, I believe I had a tendency to think of bringing socialism to the U.S. by a kind of stealth operation--much the way the Eagle Forum has tried to bring creationism and religious education to public schools by means of stealth candidates for school board and the like.   (Even die-hard Stalinists want the masses to consciously believe the stuff they are trying to promote--me, at the time--I tended not to care--I just wanted the masses to accept passively what I thought was good for them...)  So, becoming a Trotskyist was actually a move toward a more democratic outlook.  In any case, my views at that time were based on a complete misunderstanding of the British Fabian orientation.   They weren't trying to fool anybody--they just wanted to downplay the significance of labels and party affiliation and get to, you know, substance.) 

In any case, as the article notes, both YPSL and the Socialist Party U.S.A were the beneficiaries of a split in the Socialist Workers' Party between the majority faction led by James Cannon and a minority faction led by Max Schactman.   Schactman and many of his followers wound up leaving the SWP and many did join the Socialist Party U.S.A. and/or YPSL.   (Schactman differed from the the majority Trotskyist position in that he believed that the Soviet setup was not a "degenerated workers' state" but an altogether new and reactionary formation that he described as "bureaucratic collectivism" and as such was actually inferior to bourgeois democratic capitalism.  You can see where that's headed:  not only toward systematic right wing anti-Communism, but also the anti-Soviet stance of "cold war liberalism.") 

It is true that many of the figures who passed first through Trotskyism and then became Schactmanites ultimately did become some form of conservative.  And so did some who skipped the Schactmanite stage.  To me, that raises an interesting question.  It seems that secular intellectual conservatives do not have much of an intellectual matrix of their own in which to incubate.  It's only after exposure to the relatively holistic & global & philosophical kind of thinking one can find in Marxism that they were capable of developing a more or less systematic conservative worldview.  (Other secular philosophical views, such as they might be, did not have any determinated political effects or else were hostile to the kind of "totalizing" thought found in Marxism.)  My point is that perhaps Trotskyism did supply a disproportionate number of conservative and neoconservative intellectual "turncoats"--but that's merely because they came out of a tradition of
systematic political thought.   Orthodox Communists (aka Stalinists) perhaps did not produce as proportionately many conservative intellectuals because they were a tribe of "vulgar" Marxists not as given to systematic thought in the first place.  

There emanates from Raimondo's article, cited below, a very faint odor of some kind of conspiracy theory--or maybe better put, an insinuation that Trotskyism somehow is especially morally tainted and prone to generating neoconservative warmongers such as those foreign policy advisors surrounding Romney at present.  Well, however many of those folks who may have been Trotskyists in their youth (Irving Kristol and Wolfowitz), they sure as hell aren't now.   And erstwhile Trotskyists I have known ran the gamut from being anarchist libertarians to continuing on in Trotskyism, to taking up plain old liberalism, to, in one case, a Tory admirer of Maggie Thatcher and Sarah Palin who also very much dislikes Mitt Romney.   I can even imagine that Raimondo has become slightly possessed of that old timey Stalinist spirit that used to lead to cries of "Trotskyite wrecker"  

It should be noted that Russ T., who forwarded the link to the article to me, *is* an erstwhile Trotskyist & that his comments are tongue-in-cheek--perhaps with a wistful undertone of *if only it were so*--that is, that these fellows indeed really were Trotskyists, hellbent on a secret agenda of "permanent revolution."  

(It was once suggested to me that perhaps George W. Bush was recruited to the Young Socialist Alias (youth section of the *Socialist Workers' Party* while at Yale.  A Trotskyist who happened to be in on that conversation said, nah, that would be something that the Progressive Labor Party would do.  Progressive Labor was the party with the Maoist franchise at the time.  They *were* in fact, given to stealth tactics.)  

But be that as it may, the  Dark Knight and Avatar of the True Neoconservative spirit, Dick Cheney--he sure didn't need no stinkin' Trotsky--or Mao--to be who *he* is...

R. 
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

----- Forwarded Message -----
>From: "Russtea
>To: roygg9@yahoo.com
>Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 4:29 PM
>Subject: Trotskyites for Romney
>
>
>
>Finally Comrades, we are sooo close to taking power.....
>
>Click here: Trotskyites for Romney by Justin Raimondo -- Antiwar.com
>
>

Chavez wins re-election in Venezuela...

And by a comfortable 14 point margin.  As the article below points out, Chavez was facing a competent and credible opponent, leading a (for once) unified opposition.  Contrary to the mouthings of certain Republicans, this election really should seal Chavez's legitimacy.   Chavez engages in quite a bit of anti-American bombast--& there is no doubt he hates neoliberal colonialism--but I believe his using anti-American rhetoric to talk about neoliberalism  is mostly for domestic consumption.  It is regrettable though.  Even if the Obama Administration wanted to be nice to Chavez, there is no politically feasible way that it could.  

And to put it somewhat flippantly, his canoodling with Russia, Iran and China is merely an effort to find friends in a largely unfriendly world--rather like Israel did with apartheid South Africa. 

Now I know brain-dead "movement conservatives" and Tea Party types have little use for nuance and will never read this, but I can't help myself:   

Despite his friendship with Fidel Castro and the symbolic redshirts of his supporters, Chavez is not a Marxist.   He himself has so stated and contrasted himself explicitly with Fidel.   He belongs to a mostly unheralded but real tradition of Christian socialism.  (Although I would not be disturbed if he *was* a Marxist.  In any case, I tend to hold with the early Niebuhr that Marxism is a Jewish or Christian heresy..."misguided Children of Light" as Niebuhr describes the hard Communist position.  (In the early part of *The Revolution Will not Be Televised* there is a scene in which Chavez in a conversation with the filmmakers alludes to his reading of Sartre--at that point I was ready to conclude that if Chavez is a mere caudillo, he is a "good" one).  

But to expand the article below a little:   The 2002 coup attempt against Chavez had to do with his government's efforts to get more control of the giant oil company, PDVSA.  Although nominally owned by the state, the company was actually ran for the benefit of Venezuela's long ruling oligarchs.  

Here's the article: http://www.france24.com/en/20121008-venezuela-hugo-chavez-elected-third-term-socialist-president-henrique-capriles

And if you want to get down in the weeds about Venezuela's economy during the Chavez years, here's economist Marc Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/venezuelas-economic-recovery-is-it-sustainable

And for an earlier assessment: 

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela_update_2008_02.pdf

Chavez now has the chance to consolidate his "Bolivarian" socialist revolution.  Whether or not he succeeds in that task, this election was important because Chavez has been the lynchpin for  the govenments that have come out of *genuine* democratic and grassroots politics in all of Latin America. 

Chavez is a cancer survivor.  If he has to step down because of health before he has completed four years of his six year term, it will be necessary for new elections to be held early.  

But whatever happens after Chavez is gone, even most of the opposition agrees there will be no going back to the old oligarchic pseudo-democracy.  

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

As Jesus says, "They have their reward..."

I have long felt the Marxist notion of "class struggle" as the master narrative of history is simplistic and too reductive of too many complexities to be "true"--at least not without a bunch of qualifications.  But how else to explain why the super-rich like Romney and his billionaire supporters engage in the kind of politics that they do?  They must feel under threat from below with an urgency that makes little sense to many of us proles.  Utopian politics aside, we would all like to be substantially better off than we are, and those in a condition of real deprivation vis a vis U.S. standards obviously feel that with the most intensity.  But no substantial number of people anywhere is ready to take to the streets with pitchforks--or Saturday night specials--to overturn the existing order.  And under current conditions I have difficulty imagining any organization with the will and resources to prompt a sufficient number of the masses to do so in a way that would threaten the position of  Romney & sons, et al. (or is it "et alia?") 

Any way, David Atkins writing in Digby's Hullabaloo below reaches a conclusion that may or may not be explanatory 

digby 9/03/2012 04:00:00 PM Comments (5)

 
Eric Cantor insults workers everywhere

by David Atkins

Eric Cantor tweets:

Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.

As a small business owner who understands that my value to society is no more than that of a teacher, and who knows that my activism does far more for humanity than the smattering of jobs and economic activity my business creates, I would like to be the first to tell Eric Cantor to go to hell.

Nor is Eric Cantor the first to make statements in this vein today.

What the GOP is doing this Labor Day is akin to thanking weapons manufacturers on Memorial Day. It's sick, disrespectful and little more than tonedeaf plutocratic jingoism. It's not enough for them to own all the power and the money, crushing everyone underneath them. They want to be loved for it.

Fat chance.

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

May the symmetry be broken...because it is...

But don't tell Ramesh Ponneru of the National Review & Bloomberg News...In the link below he writes what purports to be a parody of excessive partisanship, apparently on the part of both sides, but nevertheless aimed a bit more at the left/liberal, IMAO...(I'm thinking of the remarks about that one cable news channel...)

I would not address the one or two conservatives on this list in quite such a caustic & personal tone, but his fictional ranter otherwise expresses what is pretty much my opinion of the current Republican Party & conservative movement leadership, and as such is as close to absolute objective truth as it is possible to get in politics.  Moreover, it is difficult for me not to believe that a conservative who entertains the same sentiments toward the left/liberal side is either in bad faith or totally delusional.  

Ponneru evidently believes that both sides ARE morally equivalent in holding to such firm views & partisanship is a BAD thing.  But IMAO that it is only a bad thing when it is done by the Right.   Doubtless, he would be cute and suggest that I'm simply proving his point.    But like ALL partisans on the Right he is simply WRONG.

Taking refuge in pseudo-objectivity is a common tactic on the Right & affirming a position that is somehow "above politics" is a hallmark of that politics that tends toward the fascistic...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-20/i-m-right-you-re-wrong-and-other-political-truths.html

R.   

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Dystopian thoughts on American Politics...

I would be happy for Obama to win in November & I would be overjoyed if the Democrats retained (and expanded) their grip of the Senate & ecstatic if they recaptured the House.  Even so, that would a triumph of the Politics of the Lesser Evil.  

So if Romney won't release his tax returns & loses the election because of that & similar reasons,  that would be a Good Thing, but all that happiness, joy & ecstasy I cited is at base mere relief.  

Because Republican policy positions ALONE, the contradictions, outright lies & red herrings therein SHOULD lead an informed electorate to turn out at rates exceeding 70% and deliver a defeat that renders the Republican Party, at least in its present form, as extinct as the brontosaurus. 

I am irritated that candidates seem to win or lose on the basis of personal foibles (short of actual criminality)--or even on the basis of acts of virtue that have nothing to do with their qualification for office or the adequacy of their policy positions.  

(I think of George Bernard Shaw, a professed socialist.   Through his plays he became a very wealthy man.  At one point he came in for quite a bit of criticism from his comrades because of his feud with the British tax authority about how much money he owed in taxes.   George's reply was that until the UK became socialist, he would not pay one red cent in taxes beyond what he legally owed.  Okay.  There's obviously some naked self-interest there, but George had a point.  I don't doubt that there are legal ways Romney could have gone 10 years without paying any taxes--he should either release the returns if that's the case or else refuse on a somewhat elaborated principle of some kind.  Privacy could be a good enough reason, but he needs to say why a principle of privacy is not only important for him, but for society in general. Why would I give good advice to the enemy?  Well, my advice might work for someone, but I'm pretty sure it would backfire somehow in Romney's hands.  Also, the chance of a politician learning of my good advice is approximately the same as that of the proverbial snowball in the Bad Place)  

One good target for blame is the so-called "independent voter."  Studies have shown that these are primarily people who are not particularly interested in politics--or who really dislike politics, but regard voting as an onerous duty, and who usually wind up voting for the same party each time--in other words, not really independent in the sense of being truly above party preferences.  They are also inclined to be "low information" voters, and even when they are interested in an issue, what they know about the issue is often wrong.  I remember one blogger-activist from 2004 describing his effort to convince a caller to vote for Kerry.  The caller was just such an "independent" and was convinced beyond reason that George Bush was a strong environmentalist.    I can only surmise the caller had heard in passing  the Orwellian descriptions the Bush Administration conferred on its anti-environmentalist positions (Clear Skies, Healthy Forests, etc.) and those descriptions had become fixed in the caller's mind--or it could be the caller simply heard pundits babbling in the background about the environment & George Bush and got the association stuck in her mind.  

I'm sure there are sociological & other reasons the independent voter could or should be forgiven, but here's what scares me:   ever since Reagan was elected--& maybe going back to the Goldwater campaign--the Right Wing has single-mindedly pursued, by any means of persuasion available, the destruction of the social safety net--in fact, any government function or agency that purports to serve the common good & replace them all private institutions whose primary purpose is to protect and promote the power and welfare of the super-rich.   

In fictional narratives, a strong villain is relentless.  In this real world narrative, the strong villain is equally relentless.   

I believe Obama is going to win this one & stave off The Worst--although I wouldn't bet the mortgage money.  

But some day, some combination of political circumstances, voter misinformation & apathy, bad weather--whatever--is going to allow the election of a President & some like-minded turkeys in Congress who *believe* in The Worst & people will wake up a few years later without social security, medicare & possibly without the right to vote or the right to join a union, no access to a decent education & the list could go on and on...

To use a phrase I saw on FB, it's the "long con" of the Republican Party.  

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Re: Gov. Goodhair (of Texas) relents, accepts reality

I didn't know that about the ACA. Maybe that's why the same states that say they won't expand Medicaid are also refusing to create the Exchanges (forcing the Feds to create Exchanges for them) -- Federal dollars are available to create the Exchanges.

Interesting about TX. I had heard that the TX Hospital Association was up in arms about his position -- and they usually have a lot of political clout. They were expecting their unreimbursed costs to go down dramatically under the ACA.  They like the ACA.

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 7, 2012, at 11:34 PM, Roy Griffin <roygg9@yahoo.com> wrote:

Apparently, any way.   Eliot Spitzer had the woman who is administering the State of California's implementation of the ACA on his show a few weeks ago.  At one point she said something interesting:   Once a state accepts *any* money through the ACA, it cannot legally refuse the Medicaid expansion--or something similar to that effect. 

That's likely a ball hidden in some deep weeds, but the below does seem to suggest that Texas will be getting the full monty version of the ACA.  

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/07/1117597/-Rick-Perry-budgets-with-Medicaid-money-he-said-he-d-reject 

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Gov. Goodhair (of Texas) relents, accepts reality

Apparently, any way.   Eliot Spitzer had the woman who is administering the State of California's implementation of the ACA on his show a few weeks ago.  At one point she said something interesting:   Once a state accepts *any* money through the ACA, it cannot legally refuse the Medicaid expansion--or something similar to that effect. 

That's likely a ball hidden in some deep weeds, but the below does seem to suggest that Texas will be getting the full monty version of the ACA.  

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/07/1117597/-Rick-Perry-budgets-with-Medicaid-money-he-said-he-d-reject 

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Re: Blows against public education in California and Louisiana

I'm sorry to hear about what is going on w charter schools. We had a very different experience. In fact, we were founders of a charter school.  But first, let me say that almost nothing upsets me more than the idea of my tax dollars being diverted to private schools. That's another rant . . . And what is going on in LA is a disaster!

After living in multicultural Los Angeles for 12 years, I found myself living in a largely white enclave in CT w two small children. Wanting them to grow up in a diversified environment, we sought out an elementary public multicultural magnet school in New London, CT. The school was regional, drawing students from 12 towns, and located in a more urban area. The student population was designed to reflect the ethnic diversity of the region, in the same proportions. Admission is through a lottery, based only on race; white applicants from the burbs have the least competition. (BTW: this school was NOT formed to satisfy any desegregation problems. It was formed because some parents got together and thought it was a good idea--something charter/magnet schools make possible.)

We were happy w it. It's test scores were not great (because the population was so diversified, including recent immigrants), but as long as my kids' scores were good, they were learning what they needed, academically. Classes were small, and both of my kids had true bi-lingual ed (Spanish) starting in kindergarten.  The school was primarily run by teachers, with a a lot of parent involvement.

When they were close to finishing, a bunch of us got together w some faculty from Conn College, and petitioned the state to start a multicultural charter middle school, modeled on the elementary school. It was an involved process. We found a very dynamic director and were really happy w it, until about the time my second child finished (The director was leaving, and a coupe took place. But that's another story.) This school was run by a parent-teacher-director board. The school is over ten years old now, and has a new director now who is supposed to be pretty good.

I know these schools reached some kids who would not have made it in the regular public schools--and some of them are now in college. I also think all of the kids benefitted from mixing all of the races and economic levels -- at least I hope so. My youngest took some kind of test in late middle school that measured ethnic identification, and she scored fairly high on African American! :-). She does have good social instincts and neither of them seems to give race a second thought.

And they are both Dems--one more passionate than the other.

Long story, but this is a topic close to my heart. I do understand how these schools can also be abused by those who want to profit from them. . . But they can also work.

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 6, 2012, at 11:07 PM, Roy Griffin <roygg9@yahoo.com> wrote:

I would not necessarily want to question the competence & good faith efforts of every single charter school and whatever group of supporters it may have, but the charter school movement as a national movement is mostly a stalking horse for privatizing public education, using commercially developed standards that are more molded by the bottom line & local prejudices than by educational outcomes--but still funded by taxpayer dollars.   And I believe this is true, even if the charter school is still actually part of a public school district.  

Here's one instance reported in Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/05/1117114/-How-to-Destroy-a-Top-Notch-School-District-Open-a-Charter-School 

In a rather clear example of Naomi Klein's notion of *Disaster Capitalism,"*after Katrina, Louisiana chose to solve its public school problems by a massive effort to implement charter schools in New Orleans and throughout the state.  

So here's some raked muck concerning Louisiana's project:  http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/2011/07/gulen-charter-schools-in-louisiana.html

Certainly, the Louisiana public schools were not the best to begin with--but I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the spirit of localism that pervades U.S. ideas about education & which also infects the charter school movement at the root.   

Minimally, at least, I would like to see a core national curriculum developed and applied throughout the country. 

In my more extreme moments, I sometimes assert I would like to see the nation's educational  system run by a powerful rigid bureaucracy headquartered in DC, and run by mostly by teachers & with a minor advisory role for parents--but otherwise insensitive to them and the local communities.  I think I'm mostly joking.  Most of the time.  

In any case, charter schools are an inadequate or pseudo-solution to most of the large issues in public education.  

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Blows against public education in California and Louisiana

I would not necessarily want to question the competence & good faith efforts of every single charter school and whatever group of supporters it may have, but the charter school movement as a national movement is mostly a stalking horse for privatizing public education, using commercially developed standards that are more molded by the bottom line & local prejudices than by educational outcomes--but still funded by taxpayer dollars.   And I believe this is true, even if the charter school is still actually part of a public school district.  

Here's one instance reported in Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/05/1117114/-How-to-Destroy-a-Top-Notch-School-District-Open-a-Charter-School 

In a rather clear example of Naomi Klein's notion of *Disaster Capitalism,"*after Katrina, Louisiana chose to solve its public school problems by a massive effort to implement charter schools in New Orleans and throughout the state.  

So here's some raked muck concerning Louisiana's project:  http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/2011/07/gulen-charter-schools-in-louisiana.html

Certainly, the Louisiana public schools were not the best to begin with--but I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the spirit of localism that pervades U.S. ideas about education & which also infects the charter school movement at the root.   

Minimally, at least, I would like to see a core national curriculum developed and applied throughout the country. 

In my more extreme moments, I sometimes assert I would like to see the nation's educational  system run by a powerful rigid bureaucracy headquartered in DC, and run by mostly by teachers & with a minor advisory role for parents--but otherwise insensitive to them and the local communities.  I think I'm mostly joking.  Most of the time.  

In any case, charter schools are an inadequate or pseudo-solution to most of the large issues in public education.  

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Know-Nothing Thuggery...

Apparently the gunman who shot and killed six  Sikhs in Wisconsin today had a 9/11 tattoo.   Law enforcement is calling it a case of "domestic terrorism" rather than a "hate crime."  I suppose there are good reasons for such fine distinctions.  And few facts seem to be available as yet.  

But those that we have in hand strongly suggest that the gunman went on a murderous spree in the belief that he was killing Muslims.  Of course it was a hate crime, or domestic terrorism--whatever--even if he *had* killed Muslims, but my anger is supplemented with an additional dollop of pitiless contempt for the kind of vicious ignorance that was operational in this murderous thug.  

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Contra Cruz

 Here's Paul Sadler, the Dem who will face Ted Cruz in November.  He won a runoff against Grady Yarborough, a black Democrat.  http://sadlerforsenate.com/where-i-stand/

Sadler has the good-ol'-boy Texas bullshit down pat.  In this case, I have to say, that's a plus.   He was a pretty conservative Democrat from East Texas but he has, like Obama, (mostly) "evolved."  This is a *very* hopeful thing.  He has, unlike many Democrats, figured out that if you run as a faux Republican against a real Republican, the real Republican will win almost every time.  On the down side:  I don't think he has got a pot to piss in--that is, he got no money.   (Sadler is also trying to pander to the artificially induced public anxiety about the national debt--Democrats *still* need to get over that.)  

I believe that if he got a big enough infusion of that Jewish-Commie-banker-Illuminati-George-Soros-type cash, he could actually beat Cruz, but I'm not too optimistic.  Guess I will check out what (if anything) Moveon.org (or AVAAZ) is planning to do about the race.  One thing:  complaints about "outside money" and "outsiders" intervening in the election won't mean jackshit, given what came in to support Cruz. 

Writers in Daily Kos have been reduced to hoping that a good many conservatives will simply stay home on election day because they don't want to vote for anybody with a Hispanic surname.  (Hah!  And lose a chance to vote against that...black guy)

I can't document what follows off the top of my head, but I know it can be done because insurance companies do something similar all the time:   If  Tea Party policies supported by the likes of Ted Cruz were actually enacted, the real world effects would mean 100's of thousands of people dying prematurely, many of them children.  

In my less charitable moments, I feel that the rich thugs, their enablers,  and the politicians who are their avatars, who promote such vicious policies taint the very air by breathing it.  

I get most of my news from the Internet and so I only saw this a few minutes ago on the Burnt Orange Report (BOR) blog:  The *Austin American Statesman*  ENDORSED Ted Cruz in the runoff between Cruz and Dewhurst.   Why?  Because Dewhurst is "as interesting as a jar of sand" and knows it, so he was ducking the media and this pissed off the editorial writers of the *Statesman*--who then blithely endorsed the political thug Cruz.  (See "enablers," above).  

R.  
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/--

Gun stuff...

I read the *Guardian* online--a UK newspaper described as "centre left" (socialist-Communist by U.S. political standards--prolly milquetoast by any other). In any case, the Guardian seems willing to give the other side an occasional voice. In the wake of the Colorado shootings, one such voice was that of someone named Tammy Bruce, who affirmed the necessity for a well-armed, law-abiding polite citizenry. I have heard this sickening argument on this side of the pond so much, I nearly dismissed her argument w/o further ado. But then she cited evidence--per Ms Bruce, in *another* Colorado shooting a few years ago at a church, an armed civilian with a concealed gun permit took out a gunman before he was able kill no more than two church members in his efforts at random mass murder. I have argued in the past that I did not know of any incident in which an armed civilian who happened to be present had ever stopped or limited a mass killing with firearms--but here was contrary evidence. But then I wondered-- why haven't the gun lobby folks made more of this incident? I googled and it turns out that much has been made of it--but not as unambiguously as Ms Bruce did. The "civilian" was an ex-cop named Jeanne Assam & she was acting as a volunteer security guard that day. There were also two volunteer male security guards, also armed, who drew their weapons but who froze for some reason... I wonder what would have happened if, say, there had been 20 armed civilians present...Good chance the gunman would have been stopped all right...an equally good chance that some would have frozen & that some would have shot wildly and killed or wounded many in the crossfire... Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

Going dark on email & FB & my new bumpersticker

The computer I normally use has problems.  This computer & my mobile are slow and/or unstable.  So little from me until I get an overhaul.  Erndure as best you can.

I like my new bumpersticker:  Compassion is the best revenge.

So.  Be nice to me or I will feel compassion for you.

R.

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Re: Nerd joke...

Ha ha. I actually get it! 

On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 7:11 PM, Roy Griffin <roygg9@yahoo.com> wrote:

So a Higg's walks into a church. The priest sees him and screams, "Blasphemy! Get out!"
The Higg's replies, "If you don't let me in, you can't have mass" 

---Stolen from a fellow named Mark Banister from somewhere on the Internet...

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Nerd joke...

So a Higg's walks into a church. The priest sees him and screams, "Blasphemy! Get out!"
The Higg's replies, "If you don't let me in, you can't have mass" 

---Stolen from a fellow named Mark Banister from somewhere on the Internet...

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

So far out he scares even me--but he knows lotsa math

Jack Sarfatti also strongly advises us to read *How the Hippies Saved Physics*

http://www.starpod.us/2012/06/29/stealing-warp-drive-from-the-gods-the-men-who-would-build-prometheus-starpod-us-interviews-jack-sarfatti/#.T-9ZoHBu3ce 

There may be a smaller subset of the already small set of genuinely Unidentified Flying Objects that actually are alien craft, but by and large they behave rather more like gigantic poltergeist phenomena--or maybe the playful ghosts of great sulphur bottom whales or even brontosauri (no reason why astral cetaceans & dinosaurs couldn't fly, is there?)...

I'm just sayin'

R.  

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

"Chavismo" and right wing backlash in Paraguay

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre85o07u-us-venezuela-election-chavez/ 

Per the headline in the above article:  No and yes.  Political leaders always disappoint their followers and so  also political movements.  But it doesn't necessarily mean the gains of "Chavismo" won't survive, nor does it necessarily mean that the Movement won't continue in one or more various forms, perhaps merely as influence or under another name.    The Movement may also be considerably less tied to the fate of one man than the name "Chavismo" suggests...Tying the fate of the "Bolivarian Revolution" to the fate of Chavez the individual may be the result of wishful thinking on the part of its opponents...

I continue to be irritated by how mainstream media casually refer to Chavez as a "strong man" or a "dictator."   He has repeatedly won election after election--elections that were judged by international observers as fair and free--and certainly as fair and free as any held south of the U.S. border in recent historical memory--and mebbe fairer than a couple just north of the U.S. border  (Interestingly, George W. Bush observed that just becuz somebody wins an election don't mean he aint' a dictator, or words to that effect) 

Questions have been raised about the Chavez government's "clampdown" on the media, particularly with regard to some of the TV stations.    An informed opinion on that issue should first require a viewing of the movie, *The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"   An Irish film crew was making a documentary about Chavez that would have consisted largely of their following Chavez around in the course of his daily routine as President.  But they got caught in the middle of the abortive coup by right wingers and were for a time trapped in the Presidential palace with Chavez and members of his government.  If you think Fox News is bad, you oughta see what the anti-Chavez TV stations were doing leading up to and during the coup.  In this country, the bigwigs of *any* TV station that did that stuff would be (and should be) put on trial for treason--losing their broadcast licenses would be much less than a tap on the wrist. 

---Roy G. 

And Russ T. cites this story (his comments follow):  

Click here: Paraguay's new president starts naming Cabinet, tries to avert diplomatic backlash - The Washington Post 

Yeah, you might remember Fernando Lugo from the Oliver Stone DVD "South of the Border".  As in the case of the 2009 coup in Honduras, it appears to have been triggered by what we call land reform, but which the ruling families call an attack on the Hacienda System, the bedrock institution of society.

Presciently, in the early years of this century when Populist governments came to power all across Latin America, Fidel Castro predicted that within ten years half of them would revert back to the Conservatives.  Here's what set the Paraguay coup in motion, as per WAPO:

"Lugo's impeachment trial was triggered in part by an attempt by police to evict about 150 farmers from a remote, 4,900-acre (2,000-hectare) forest reserve, which is part of a huge estate. Advocates for the farmers said the landowner, a politician, used political influence to get the land from the state decades ago, and say it should have been put to use for land reform.

Six police officers, including the brother of Lugo's chief of security, and 11 farmers died in the clash last week." 

--Russ T. 

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http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Re: Greek Fascists et al

As for "independents," it is my belief they don't exist, but are actually just attention-seekers. I have yet to meet an "independent" who hadn't already made up their minds. They get completely catered to and even interviewed on television: their 15 minutes/seconds. . . I'm just wondering what phenomena causes them to congregate more in some states than in others.  :)

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 15, 2012, at 12:01 PM, Roy Griffin <roygg9@yahoo.com> wrote:

Below are several responses to "Greek Fascists et al" 

Below some I have responded to the responses

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

---

From: Francis Yates <kate_the_petal@yahoo.com>
To: Roy Griffin <roygg9@yahoo.com>
Sent: Friday, June 8, 2012 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: Greek Fascists et al

I have no difficulty at all believing that poor houses will someday exist. 

Foodlink used to deliver hundreds of pounds of food to low income highrises like the one I call home and they did so twice a month.  Over the course of a year it dwindled to one delivery consisting of rotten fruit and veggies and a few expired cans of this and that.  Now no food arrives.

Several local churches used to have monthly drop offs of clothes that were in amazing condition and many still had price tags attached.  With the ongoing spread of bedbugs in high rises, the clothing is no longer allowed.

We used to have charitable groups arrange for blood pressure checks once a month, diabetic counseling and yearly flu shots.  That, too, is gone.  If I live another ten years, I expect this place and others like it to effectively become poor houses.  HUD money that once poured in is diminished and consequently so is needed maintenance.  Ceiling panels are missing  in spots throughout the building and rather than being repaired in reasonably good time, buckets are now placed under the leaks for weeks at a time.  Mildew is becoming an issue.  I was told that kitchen fans are no longer being replaced and though rain and snow come in through the windows, no plans are being made to replace them.

At the moment only one of our two elevators is operational with 15 floors to accommodate.  By law only one is required to be operational.  Imagine how long the wait must seem if you need an ambulance crew to get to you.

But all is not lost.  We still have a big screen TV and WII games galore.  I guess that takes some peoples' minds off the fact that they are hungry. 

Yes, there will be poor houses disguised as low income senior buildings.

Did you know that many folks who deal with mental illness are allowed only $20 cash a month?  The last week of every month my next door neighbor borrows $5 to get through the month.  He likes to ride the bus to the downtown library to get a stack of free DVD's and then have a Big Mac.  I give him $10 so he gets fries and a shake too.  He always pays me back and always borrows again. 

There will be poor houses and work houses.  Maybe making minimum wage at WalMart with no benefits and 12 hour shifts is just one step away from ye old work house!  Many, many folks are working 12 hour shifts.  Illegal alien farm workers have done so for decades and their children work right along with them.

Kate

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Wiki has entries on "poorhouses" and "workhouses" that provide detailed information about those institutions.  I believe Kate is right in that the spirit of "lesser eligibility" continues to haunt modern efforts to ameliorate the condition of the poor and the disabled.  "Lesser eligibility" was the principle that any recipient of public aid or resident of a poorhouse would receive less than whatever the lowest prevailing wage was.  In practice,  parishes and local governments found that it was often necessary to go beyond this principle to avoid actively starving people to death--at least in those places where people cared about starving the poor.  

There is a proposal in Congress to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour on the grounds that the minimum wage in 1968 had the equivalent purchasing power of a $10/hour wage today & was sufficient to raise the recipient above the poverty line--which the current wage of $7.25 does not...In many places, I doubt $10 an hour would do the trick.  

It is clear to me that whatever the minimum "living wage" is, it should also be the floor for income-assistance programs such as social security and disability & should be tied to a realistic cost-of-living index.  

In Texas I believe it is also true that residents of state MHMR facilities only get $20 in spending.  The elderly and disabled who live in the community, and who are not their own payee,  often are also limited in what monies they get for personal care, but they at least have a clearer path for appealing for relief through Adult Protective Services.  

R. 

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Response from Russ Taylor: 

And here's another little noticed story:
(Do the Chilean people know about this?)

What's behind Obama's new military base in Chile?  

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Nevertheless,  when I think about Romney and I want to defend Obama.  What I would like to think is that to the extent that Obama ratifies such expansion, he is doing so to pre-empt attacks from the Right & probably *welcomes* attacks from the Left because they help make his case with the so-called Independents (whom I think are mostly either a) completely mythical  b) unavowed and/or undecided Republicans and Democrats,   c)  really don't know their *ss from a hole in the ground, or d) all of the above (somehow).   

But building such a base, however  innocuous in appearance, continues the long term trend of the U.S. expansion of global military power that has been going on since WW2--I believe Rachel Maddow's book, *Drift* deals with this.   Chalmers Johnson in his work on U.S. imperialism makes the point that U.S. foreign policy since WW2 is de facto expansionist.  It doesn't matter which political party is in power or who is President.  There is some kind of institutional drift toward one sort or another of imperialism and the official centers of power are unable or unwilling to stop it.  I'm not sure the struggle against this tendency can be combated at the level of national electoral politics.  Seems to be a matter of the dark side of the American political id expressing itself through the military bureaucracies...

One difficulty is that the people of the U.S. continue to be convinced of either a)  the consistent moral supremacy of every act taken by the U.S. vis a vis other counties  b) the realpolitik necessity of whatever the U.S. does, or c)  both a and b    (For a "Christian" nation, the people of the U.S. seem oddly unconvinced that the doctrine of Original Sin applies to them...

As far as the Presidency goes, right now I just can't see any alternative to "lesser evilism"--unless you reject electoral politics altogether.   But building a grassroots movement at the level of local government and in some Congressional districts seems possible and practical.  (That is to say, a movement for economic democracy and what I would express as non-imperial internationalism, such as is practiced by the Scandanavian countries...) 

R. 

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