James Zogby: In Crisis, Romney Reveals Neo-Con Tendencies

James Zogby: In Crisis, Romney Reveals Neo-Con Tendencies:
I was in the Middle East when the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the Consulate in Benghazi were attacked by extremist mobs resulting in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other U.S. personnel. The reaction among Americans living abroad and many of our friends in the region was a combination of profound sadness and sheer horror.

If you are an American who travels to the Arab World, you know that all is not well with the U.S.-Arab relationship. After decades of policies that resulted in trauma and tragedy for many Arabs, there is a deep East-West political divide. There have been too many insults and too much pain -- inflicted both ways. We remember the bombing of the Embassy in Beirut, American hostages held in Lebanon, and the horrors of 9/11. Arabs remember the toll of the long war in Iraq, the disgrace of Abu Ghraib, the dismantling of Palestine, and U.S. support for Israel's devastating assaults on Lebanon and Gaza. We have become targets and scapegoats for each other.

What this tinderbox of raw emotion didn't need was a provocateur playing with matches. But that was precisely what happened. The recipe for disaster brought together some extremist religious groups across the Middle East with a penchant for exploiting angry and alienated youth looking for a target for their anger, and some American Islamophobes who were deliberately working to provoke outrage.

Americans abroad knew exactly what the Cairo Embassy staff were doing when they initially put out a statement denouncing the grotesque anti-Muslim video. They were attempting to save lives and save American honor by making it clear that while our nation celebrates the freedom of speech, we know enough to be outraged by those who abuse that freedom.

The situation escalated. The Cairo Embassy was breached and a terrorist group attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, murdering Ambassador Stevens. Americans watching from the Middle East believed that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton struck exactly the right tone when they forcefully condemned the anti-U.S. riots and the murderous attack and demanded that the Libyan and Egyptian governments act swiftly and decisively to fulfill their obligations.

But when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and some of his supporters leapt into the fray, attempting to use the tragedy to score political points, we were troubled and embarrassed. What we had heard from the White House did not match Romney's description of the "disgraceful way that the Obama Administration's first response was... to sympathize with those who waged the attacks," and his accusing the President of "apologizing for America's values." And when the Chairman of the Republican Party echoed these charges, tweeting "Obama sympathizes with the attackers," and a leading GOP Senator chimed in, attributing the attacks to "President Obama's failure to lead and his failed foreign policy of appeasement and apology," we became deeply concerned.

What is clear is that this Republican assault was not a spur of the moment off-hand verbal gaffe. Rather it was a coordinated attack that reflected a consistent mind-set shaped by the neo-conservative critique of President Obama's Middle East diplomacy and, I might add, diplomacy in general.

The world, as seen by the neocons, is one of black and white absolutes. We, Americans, are good, inherently good. And our goodness is measured not by what we do, but who we are. Our goodness is ordained to confront evil and is destined to triumph. But our victory is assured only if we remain resolute, because our enemies take advantage of any display of weakness. For that reason, neocons maintain that we do not negotiate with evil -- hence diplomacy is eschewed in favor of military strength and "resolve."

This mindset defined policy during the first term of George W. Bush and led to repeated debacles, foreign policy blunders, and a severe erosion of American standing world-wide.

The first order of business for the new Obama Administration was to attempt to repair this damage--but with every step he took in this direction, the neo-conservatives went apoplectic.

When the new president announced his intention to close Guantanamo and to end torture, he was condemned as naïve and "apologizing for America." Much the same greeted his efforts to try diplomacy with Iran, set markers aimed at restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, end the war in Iraq, and engage in a dialogue with the Arab and Muslim Worlds.

The resistance to the President's efforts had not come from abroad, but from determined opposition at home. In the aftermath of Obama's historic speech in Cairo, while the president was still abroad, I debated a number of GOP leaders and was stunned by their refusal to give him the space needed to improve our image in and our relationship with the Arab and Muslim Worlds. Their attack lines were the same as we heard from Romney this week -- "Obama appeases terrorists," "he apologizes for America," and his weakness and lack of resolve makes us vulnerable to attack.

The reasoning behind this line of attack is simple -- neo-conservatives do not believe in diplomacy or "soft power." What they do believe in is our inherent goodness, our resolve, and the use of overwhelming military power to secure our objectives. To make clear his embrace of this mindset, on Wednesday, Romney outlined the principles that would guide his foreign policy.

"We have confidence in our cause in America...We stand for the principles our Constitution protects. We encourage other nations to understand and respect the principles of our Constitution, because we recognize that these principles are the ultimate source of freedom for individuals around the world...and [we demonstrate] resolve in our military might."

I was still overseas when I first read these words, and didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the infantile narcissism they reflected. I'm not sure that the rest of the world knows that our Constitution is "the ultimate source of freedom" everywhere. And I worry that the neocons whose recklessness brought such tragedy in the last decade are making a comeback in the person of Mitt Romney.

If this week demonstrated anything, it is that we live in a dangerous and volatile world that requires a steady hand and thoughtful leadership to get us out of the mess we're in. What we do not need is more of the very same ideological clap-trap that got us into this mess in the first place.

Which USA do you work in ?

Which USA do you work in ?:
When it comes to getting a job, the USA has bifurcated into two employment worlds, the digital world and the brick and mortar world.
The brick and mortar world is everything you physically touch. Its manufacturing. Its retail sales. Its distribution. Its construction. Etc.
The digital world is everything defined by what you find on computing devices. It can be on your desk, in your hand or in the cloud.
What has happened is that the brick and mortar world has had every bit of intelligence that can be sucked out of it completely removed.  Any information that can be created, identified or recognized is being captured in as automated a process as possible and delivered to “big data” or even small data databases in the cloud. What used to require some intelligence at the brick and mortar work place has been seeded and ceded into the cloud.
Every smart company wants to become smarter and the way to do that is not by asking their employees to communicate  orally or in writing to management, its by automating everything.
When Starbucks introduces Square, its not to make their in store employees do more, its to simplify the process involved in serving customers and to allow them to spend more time on improving the customer experience.
The problem for those  who work in brick and mortar is that as the intelligence is sucked out of the job. The intelligence required to do the job is reduced. Yes, you still have to be good at what you do. But you can  be great at customer service or great in a factory line with out a college education. The competition for jobs that don’t require degrees has pushed down the wages paid for brick and mortar jobs as well. When there are no specific skills beyond basic people and communication skills required the job pool competing for any openings expands considerably. Forcing down wages. Leaving more unemployed unemployed.
The other unfortunate part of working brick and mortar is that as intelligence is moved out of of physical locations it also reduces the number of jobs available.  Have you ever seen a cashier at an Apple Store ? Unemployment is sky high in the brick and mortar world.
Thats not to say there aren’t some bright lights in this area. As the intelligence of the factory is sucked up from the floor the cost of labor falls and makes manufacturing in the US more competitive. Hence we are seeing some manufacturing return to the US which is of course a good thing
In the other world, the digital world, the non-brick and mortar world, there is  negative unemployment. Thats right there are far more jobs than there are people to fill them.
If you just look at the unemployment rate for recent college graduates its 6.8pct. My guess is that if you take out Sports Management majors and a few other “I did this for passion and not a job” majors (Sorry had to get that in there ), that rate might be under 5pct. That is close to full employment for college graduates and even non college graduates that had the foresight or luck to learn the skills required to get a job in the digital world.
Everything of intelligence is being moved into the cloud. There is not one business process that you can think of that makes sense to put in the cloud that hasn’t been written as an app. I get dozens of proposals for these types of apps every WEEK.
The explosion is due to the fact that digital entrepreneurship is experiencing a renaissance. Why ? Because with a Laptop, a SmartPhone, a broadband connection and an account on Amazon Web Services or one of their competitors, if you understand technology and are willing to work your ass off, you have everything you need to start a cloud based company. Everything.
I don’t know the exact numbers but it wouldn’t shock me if thousands of these companies are being formed every month.
And those cloud based service companies are hiring, hiring, hiring.  You would be hard pressed to find a single example of one of these companies that is not looking to hire more smart people. Experience not required.
That giant sucking sound you hear is the sound of intelligence being sucked from the brick and mortar locations into smart applications in the cloud licensed or owned by the companies that own the brick and mortar locations.
The best news is that with online educational resources coming on, and im not talking about the for profit schools, Im talking about FREE educational resources, anyone with the focus and inclination and access to a pc on the net has a chance to  learn a digital skill that can be of value to these new digital companies and allow you to change worlds.
What is my solution ?  I will tell you what I told my alma mater Indiana University and the University of North Texas committee that I am on. Every junior and senior should hold open at least 1 class in each of their junior and senior years for job skills training.
The university should make those classes fungible. Meaning each year the range of job skills classes is defined by the needs of employers in the global marketplace.  If they change every 2 years. Great. Employers will be thrilled and so will students who will be able to find jobs. If they change every year. students will have broader skill sets. Which also makes employers happy.
Companies struggle to keep up with all the changes the latest in digital technology requires. Train people and they will hire them.
The university should also make those classes available for high school seniors. If they can test in , let them.  It will allow smart kids to do smart things and get smart digital jobs. And who knows, they just might change their mind and go to IU or North Texas or be happy grabbing a great job. Either way the school has done something good.
Trust me if Sports Management Majors were good at Pig Latin (And if you think im talking about Igpay Atinlay, you probably could have benefited from a class like this ), they could get far better jobs than they are getting today. When they get them.
Who is upset ? Professors and administrators  at universities.  Why ? Because some of the classes they have taught for years would be replaced by newbie classes. I personally think a little change in the culture  at schools is a good thing. Stop building and taking on debt and invest in new and relevant courseware. But that is me.
I’ve had a lot to say about Education and you can find my blogs on the subject here .

Doonesbury 7/28/2012 for Jul/28/2012

Doonesbury 7/28/2012 for Jul/28/2012:

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Jeffrey Laurenti: Fluff and Fact on Obama's 'Global Leadership'

Jeffrey Laurenti: Fluff and Fact on Obama's 'Global Leadership':
Barack Obama opened his State of the Union address this year by ticking off claims to four major accomplishments in the global arena. Three of them his political foes could not factually contest -- ending his predecessor's war in Iraq, eliminating Osama bin Laden, and starting the phase-out from Afghanistan. But they furiously challenge the overarching achievement he asserted: that his policies have "made the United States safer and more respected around the world."

"More respected"? Conservatives are furiously seeking to discredit his claim. Mitt Romney's top foreign policy advisors regularly pillory the president for being "comfortable with the decline of America in the world" (John Bolton) and prone to "naiveté and weakness" (Richard Williamson). America's global dominance is at risk because "this president does not want America to be the leader," says Richard Grenell, the Romney campaign's foreign policy spokesman until homophobic conservatives forced his ouster.

Something as intangible as the credibility of "leadership" seems hopelessly unprovable. But the Pew Research Group's release last week of hard data on public opinion across 21 countries, representing a majority of the world's population and power centers, provides some solid metrics to judge Obama's impact on America's global leadership.

"Global Opinion of Obama Slips," Pew headlined its report summary. And sure enough, Obama's numbers are down compared to the confidence expressed in his leadership in his first year in office. Country by country, Pew documents an inexorable fall in Obama's ratings, which have plunged an average -- are you ready -- six percentage points worldwide since 2009. People's attitudes toward the United States have also dipped concomitantly, by a median five percentage points.

But whatever the disappointment in Obama, the public in every country but embittered Pakistan is far more enthusiastic about Obama's global leadership than about George Bush's four years ago. In fact, world confidence in Obama averages, at 50 percent (and a stratospheric 82 percent among Europe's biggest powers), an astounding 32 percentage points above Bush's rating. (Pakistanis churlishly now rate Obama at the same 7 percent as they did Bush.)

Awkwardly, Governor Romney essentially vows to resuscitate Bush's foreign policy, which seems certain to resurrect the worldwide hostility to American purposes that so hobbled the United States in the last decade. As a country, favorable attitudes toward the United States are currently an average of eight percentage points higher than they were at the sunset of the Bush administration. Among our most crucial allies, the large West European countries that have been indispensable partners militarily, politically, and financially in such crisis situations as Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, and now Syria, support for the United States is now 20 points higher.

The policy issues on which world publics see Obama as a disappointment cannot offer much solace to his conservative critics at home. His biggest failure, it seems, has been in delivering action on climate change, on which he dropped an average 34 percentage points across countries surveyed (and 49 points in Western Europe).

The second biggest area of disillusionment has been on the expectation that he would deal "fairly" with both Israelis and Palestinians. On average only 18 percent of respondents now expect him to do so; the comparable level of expectation in his first year was 46 percent. (Fortunately for Obama, 60 percent of his voters at home still think his Mideast policies are fair to both sides.)

On both of these issues, Obama's conservative opponents have fought his initiatives tooth and nail, and are baying for confrontation with our allies.

They also vehemently insist on U.S. freedom of action to wield deadly military force without regard to the United Nations -- which turns out to be the third area of global disappointment in Obama: the deflated expectation (45 percent in 2009, 29 percent now) that he would rely on international approval for use of force. A foreign policy elite that sneers at U.N. Security Council regulation of armed force as "Mommy, may I?" is bent on renewing Bush-era antagonisms.

For all the disappointments, Obama still enjoys far higher international public support than do leaders of other major powers. He bests German chancellor Angela Merkel throughout Europe and in Germany itself (87 percent confidence in him versus 77 percent in her).

In Arab and Muslim countries, however, Obama has poorer ratings than the deceptively invisible U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. In Egypt, where at a crucial moment Obama pressed 30-year president Hosni Mubarak to retire, his ratings stand at 29 percent positive, 69 percent negative; Ban is rated positively by 36 percent. In Jordan, confidence in Obama stands at 22 percent, and in Ban at 42.

Between Obama and Russia's Vladimir Putin, however, there's no contest. Putin is poorly rated virtually everywhere. Americans view him negatively by a 2-to-1 margin, Germans and Britons by a 3-to-1 margin, Italians and Poles by a 4-to-1 margin, and the French by an extraordinary 8-to-1 margin. Even in Arab and Muslim countries, Obama's positive rating is nearly twice Putin's.

Of course, the most important number for any politician is how he's viewed by his own voters, and 69 percent of Russians profess confidence in Putin's handling of international affairs -- a number that makes for interesting context when we talk about influencing Russian policy on Syria. Oh, did I mention that 61% of Americans in Pew's survey reported confidence in Obama's handling of international affairs?

That's a better rating than Americans give Obama for his overall job performance, which is the number that really counts for reelection. With the American public dispiritingly uninterested in foreign policy this year anyway, conservatives should stick to the economy, stupid.

Much as his partisan opponents might want to paint Obama as a star-crossed Jimmy Carter, that dog just won't hunt. It's Governor Romney's determination to reprise the foreign policy of George Bush that terrifies many Americans -- and most of the world.

Romney is an idiot

The Miseducation of Mitt Romney: Diane Ravitch

Mario Tama/Getty Images
Republican candidate Mitt Romney participating in a 6th grade class at Universal Bluford Charter School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 24, 2012.

On May 23, the Romney campaign released its education policy white paper titled “A Chance for Every Child: Mitt Romney’s Plan for Restoring the Promise of American Education.” If you liked the George W. Bush administration’s education reforms, you will love the Romney plan. If you think that turning the schools over to the private sector will solve their problems, then his plan will thrill you.

The central themes of the Romney plan are a rehash of Republican education ideas from the past thirty years, namely, subsidizing parents who want to send their child to a private or religious school, encouraging the private sector to operate schools, putting commercial banks in charge of the federal student loan program, holding teachers and schools accountable for students’ test scores, and lowering entrance requirements for new teachers. These policies reflect the experience of his advisers, who include half a dozen senior officials from the Bush administration and several prominent conservative academics, among them former Secretary of Education Rod Paige and former Deputy Secretary of Education Bill Hansen, and school choice advocates John Chubb and Paul Peterson.

Unlike George W. Bush, who had to negotiate with a Democratic Congress to pass No Child Left Behind, Romney feels no need to compromise on anything. He needs to prove to the Republican Party’s base—especially evangelicals—that he really is conservative. And this plan is “mission accomplished.”

Romney offers full-throated support for using taxpayer money to pay for private-school vouchers, privately-managed charters, for-profit online schools, and almost every other alternative to public schools. Like Bob Dole in 1996, Romney showers his contempt on the teachers’ unions. He takes a strong stand against certification of teachers—the minimal state-level requirement that future teachers must pass either state or national tests to demonstrate their knowledge and/or skills–which he considers an unnecessary hurdle. He believes that class size does not matter (although he and his children went to elite private schools that have small classes). Romney claims that school choice is “the civil rights issue of our era,” a familiar theme among the current crop of education reformers, who now use it to advance their efforts to privatize public education.

When it comes to universities, Romney excoriates Obama for the rising cost of higher education. He claims that more federal aid leads to higher tuition, so he offers no new federal funding to help students burdened with debt. His plan does not mention the fact that tuition has increased in public universities (which enroll three-quarters of all students) because states have reduced their investments in higher education and shifted the burden from taxpayers to students. Romney will encourage private sector involvement in higher education, by having commercial banks again serve as the intermediary for federal student loans, an approach Obama had eliminated 2010 as too costly. (Until 2010, banks received guaranteed subsidies from the federal government to make student loans, while the government assumed nearly all the risk. When the program was overhauled by the Obama Administration, billions of dollars in bank profits were redirected to support Pell Grants for needy students.) To cut costs, Romney encourages the proliferation of for-profit online universities.


The Romney education plan says that no new money is needed because more spending on schools will not fix our problems. However, he proposes to dedicate more taxpayer money to the priorities that he favors, such as vouchers, charter schools, and online schools. He also wants more federal money to reward states for “eliminating or reforming teacher tenure and establishing systems that focus on effectiveness in advancing student achievement.” Translated, that means that Romney is willing to hand out money to states if they eliminate due process rights for teachers and if they pay more to teachers whose students get higher scores on standardized tests and get rid of teachers whose students do not.

In making the case for vouchers—which provide government funding to pay the tuition at any private or religious school that parents choose—Romney exaggerates the evidence; indeed, some of his claims are simply false. He points to the D.C. voucher program, which began in 2004, the first program to use federal tax dollars to subsidize private-school tuition—as “a model for the nation.” He asserts that “After three months, students [in the D.C. voucher program] could already read at levels 19 months ahead of their public-school peers.”


This is flatly wrong. A Congressionally-mandated evaluation of the D.C. program found that students with vouchers made no gains in either reading or math. As the report stated, “There is no conclusive evidence that the OSP [Opportunity Scholarship Program] affected student achievement.” Romney claims that 90 percent of voucher students graduated from high school, as compared to only 55 percent in the low performing public schools of D.C. But here he exaggerates. The federal evaluation of the program said that 82 percent of the students receiving vouchers graduated from high school as compared to 70 percent of the students who applied to the voucher program and were not accepted. This is a respectable gain, but nowhere near as large as the numbers Romney cited. Because students who enter a lottery tend to be more motivated than those who do not, reputable social scientists usually compare the outcomes of those who won the lottery and those who did not.

Paradoxically, Romney’s campaign takes credit for the fact that Massachusetts leads the nation in reading and mathematics on the federal tests known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But Romney was not responsible for the state’s academic success, which owes to reforms that are entirely different from the ones he is now proposing for the country. Signed into law a full decade before Romney began his tenure as governor in 2003, the Massachusetts Education Reform Act involved a commitment by the state to double state funding of public education from $1.3 billion in 1993 to $2.6 billion by 2000; to provide a minimum foundation budget for every district to meet its needs; to develop strong curricula for subjects such as science, history, the arts, foreign languages, mathematics, and English; to implement a testing program based on the curriculum (because of costs, the state tested only reading and math); to expand professional development for teachers; and to test would-be teachers. In the late 1990s, again before Romney assumed office, the state added new funds for early childhood education.

Romney’s plan, by contrast, is animated by a reverence for the private sector. While little is said about improving or spending more on public education, which is treated as a failed institution, a great deal of enthusiasm is lavished on the innovation and progress that is supposed to occur once parents can take their federal dollars to private institutions or enroll their child in a for-profit online school. Massachusetts attained success by raising standards for new teachers, not by lowering them. Nor did Massachusetts eliminate teacher tenure, that is, the right to a hearing for experienced teachers before they can be fired. Higher education, we are assured, will flourish when “innovation and skill attainment” matter more than “time in classroom.” Put in plain English, the last sentence is claiming that higher education will become more affordable when more students enroll in online universities, most of which are low-cost and for-profit. Of course, online universities are cheaper; they have no capital costs, no library, no facilities, and minimal staff. Some are under investigation for fraud because of their methods of recruiting students; they have fended off federal regulation by a heavy (and bipartisan) investment in lobbying.

The Obama administration’s first response to Romney’s proposals was to scoff and say that Obama’s K-12 policies had the enthusiastic support of prominent conservative Republican governors, such as Chris Christie of New Jersey and Susana Martinez of New Mexico. Unfortunately, this is true. Apart from vouchers and the slap at teacher certification, Obama’s Race to the Top program for schools promotes virtually everything Romney proposes—charters, competition, accountability, evaluating teachers by student test scores. If anything, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been as outspoken on behalf of charters and test-based accountability as Mitt Romney. And, like Romney, Duncan has disdained the issue of reducing the number of students per teacher.

Romney’s proposal for private-school vouchers is red-meat for the right wing base of the Republican party, especially evangelicals. Vouchers have been the third rail of education politics since Milton Friedman proposed them in 1955; they have been put before the voters in several state referenda and have been consistently rejected. As a general rule, the public does not want public money to support religious schools. And many religious schools are wary about accepting public money and the regulations that eventually are tied to it. But in the past few years, vouchers have been revived by state legislatures in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Louisiana without resorting to popular vote.

The results are already troubling. In Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal’s education reform legislation was enacted in mid-April, the new law declares that students in low-performing schools are eligible to take their share of state funding to any accredited private or religious school. About 400,000 students (more than half the students in the state) are eligible, but only some 5,000 places are available in the state’s private and parochial schools. When the state posted the list of participating schools, the one that registered to accept the largest number of voucher students was the New Living Word School, which offered to enroll 315 of them. But its current enrollment is 122, and it has no facilities or teachers for the new students, though it promises to erect a new building in time for the beginning of the school year this fall. Most of its instruction is delivered on DVDs.

Another school, the Eternity Christian Academy, which currently has 14 students, has agreed to take in 135 voucher students. According to a recent Reuters article, students in this school

sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains “what God made” on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.

The pastor-turned-principal explained, “We try to stay away from all those things that might confuse our children.” Some of the other schools that have been approved to receive state-funded vouchers “use social studies texts warning that liberals threaten global prosperity; Bible-based math books that don’t cover modern concepts such as set theory; and biology texts built around refuting evolution.”

The Reuters reporter described the Louisiana law as “the nation’s boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.” Next year, all students in Louisiana will qualify for a voucher to take courses from private vendors or corporations offering courses or training. Expect a boom in new education businesses in Louisiana.

What Governor Jindal is doing sounds like a template for the Romney plan. With no increase in funding, all the money for vouchers and private vendors and online charters will be deducted from the state’s public education budget. Governor Jindal and Mitt Romney should explain how American education will be improved if taxpayer dollars are used to send more students to sectarian schools and to take their courses from profit-making businesses and online schools.

In the vision presented by Mitt Romney, public dollars would flow to schools that teach creationism. Anyone could teach, without passing any test of their knowledge and skills and without any professional preparation. Teachers could be fired for any reason, without any protection of their freedom to teach. In some states and regions, teachers will be fearful of teaching evolution or global warming or any controversial issues. Nor will they dare to teach books considered offensive to anyone in their community, like Huckleberry Finn.

And candidate Romney should explain how privatizing the way we school our children will further his goal of “restoring the promise of American education.” “Restore” suggests a return to the past. When in American history did the for-profit sector run American schools? Which state ever permitted it until the advent in our own time of for-profit charter corporations and for-profit online corporations? Which founding fathers ever railed against public education? John Adams, that crusty conservative, said this:

The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.

Restoring the promise of American education should mean rejuvenating public schools, not destroying them.

Age of Ignorance

Age of Ignorance: Charles Simic

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Fairgoers cheer for Sarah Palin while she appears on the Sean Hannity Show at the Iowa State Fair, August 12, 2011

Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. It’s no use pretending otherwise and telling us, as Thomas Friedman did in the Times a few days ago, that educated people are the nation’s most valuable resources. Sure, they are, but do we still want them? It doesn’t look to me as if we do. The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit.

An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country. Most of our politicians and their political advisers and lobbyists would find themselves unemployed, and so would the gasbags who pass themselves off as our opinion makers. Luckily for them, nothing so catastrophic, even though perfectly well-deserved and widely-welcome, has a remote chance of occurring any time soon. For starters, there’s more money to be made from the ignorant than the enlightened, and deceiving Americans is one of the few growing home industries we still have in this country. A truly educated populace would be bad, both for politicians and for business.

It took years of indifference and stupidity to make us as ignorant as we are today. Anyone who has taught college over the last forty years, as I have, can tell you how much less students coming out of high school know every year. At first it was shocking, but it no longer surprises any college instructor that the nice and eager young people enrolled in your classes have no ability to grasp most of the material being taught. Teaching American literature, as I have been doing, has become harder and harder in recent years, since the students read little literature before coming to college and often lack the most basic historical information about the period in which the novel or the poem was written, including what important ideas and issues occupied thinking people at the time.

Even regional history has gotten a short shrift. Students who come from old New England mill towns, as I have discovered, have never been told about the famous strikes in their communities in which workers were shot in cold blood and the perpetrators got away scot-free. I wasn’t surprised that their high schools were wary of bringing up the subject, but it astonished me that their parents and grandparents, and whoever else they came in contact with while they were growing up, never mentioned these examples of gross injustice. Either their families never talked about the past, or their children were not paying attention when they did. Whatever it was, one is confronted with the problem of how to remedy their vast ignorance about things they should have already been familiar with as the generations of students before them were.

If this lack of knowledge is the result of the years of dumbing down of high school curriculum and of families that don’t talk to their children about the past, there’s another more pernicious kind of ignorance we confront today. It is the product of years of ideological and political polarization and the deliberate effort by the most fanatical and intolerant parties in that conflict to manufacture more ignorance by lying about many aspects of our history and even our recent past. I recall being stunned some years back when I read that a majority of Americans told pollsters that Saddam Hussein was behind September 11 terrorist attacks. It struck me as a propaganda feat unsurpassed by the worst authoritarian regimes of the past—many of which had to resort to labor camps and firing squads to force their people to believe some untruth, without comparable success.


No doubt, the Internet and cable television have allowed various political and corporate interests to spread disinformation on a scale that was not possible before, but to have it believed requires a badly educated population unaccustomed to verifying things they are being told. Where else on earth would a president who rescued big banks from bankruptcy with taxpayers’ money and allowed the rest of us to lose $12 trillion in investment, retirement, and home values be called a socialist?

In the past, if someone knew nothing and talked nonsense, no one paid any attention to him. No more. Now such people are courted and flattered by conservative politicians and ideologues as “Real Americans” defending their country against big government and educated liberal elites. The press interviews them and reports their opinions seriously without pointing out the imbecility of what they believe. The hucksters, who manipulate them for the powerful financial interests, know that they can be made to believe anything, because, to the ignorant and the bigoted, lies always sound better than truth:

Christians are persecuted in this country.

The government is coming to get your guns.

Obama is a Muslim.

Global Warming is a hoax.

The president is forcing open homosexuality on the military.

Schools push a left-wing agenda.

Social Security is an entitlement, no different from welfare.

Obama hates white people.

The life on earth is 10,000 years old and so is the universe.

The safety net contributes to poverty.

The government is taking money from you and giving it to sex-crazed college women to pay for their birth control.

One could easily list many more such commonplace delusions believed by Americans. They are kept in circulation by hundreds of right-wing political and religious media outlets whose function is to fabricate an alternate reality for their viewers and their listeners. “Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces,” Sidney Hook said once. No doubt. What we have in this country is the rebellion of dull minds against the intellect. That’s why they love politicians who rail against teachers indoctrinating children against their parents’ values and resent the ones who show ability to think seriously and independently. Despite their bravado, these fools can always be counted on to vote against their self-interest. And that, as far as I’m concerned, is why millions are being spent to keep my fellow citizens ignorant.

First Gray Wolf in 80 Years Enters California

First Gray Wolf in 80 Years Enters California:
Following years of dedication on the part of conservationists to reintroduce the animals to their native habitats, things are looking up as the first gray wolf to be seen in California in nearly eight decades is spotted.

Jared Bernstein: Pesky Brother-in-Law: Christmas Edition

Jared Bernstein: Pesky Brother-in-Law: Christmas Edition:

Hear those jingle bells in the distance? It's a sleigh coming up the drive, led by that chubby, jolly, old... conservative brother-in-law.

What with Christmas upon us and the family coming around, it's time for the next edition of what to do when that pesky brother-in-law, or aunt, or whomever, hits you with so many Fox canards that you can't even enjoy your new iPod.

[Earlier editions: here, here, and here.]

I like those flat tax plans from Perry, Gingrich, and the rest of them... those guys really get what wrong with our crazy tax system!

Response: Yeah, those plans do sound simpler than the current mess, that's for sure -- but I'm afraid they're not as simple as you might think. Or as fair. (Dramatic pause, as your audience looks up expectantly from their figgy pudding.)

First off, if we really want everyone to pay one tax rate and we set that rate so as not to lose a lot of revenue, a lot of people's taxes could go up. Remember old Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan... sounds pretty flat, right? Well, over 80% of taxpayers faced higher payments under his flat tax plan. And the ones with the biggest breaks on these flat plans are the richest taxpayers. Rick Perry's flat tax lowers tax payments for multi-millionaires by a cool $1.5 mil.

Now look, we all know every tax change is going to have winners and losers, but I don't think most people want to whack the middle class so the rich can do a lot better

What's that? You're willing to trade a little more on your tax bill for simplicity?

I hear you but here's the problem. Flat taxes can end up being more complicated than they sound. They often work like national sales taxes -- like in Europe, just a straight 20%, say, on what you buy. But in those cases, they usually exclude basic necessities so now you have to keep track of that, and fight over what get exempted.Next, to make sure you avoid the Cain problem of some people paying more, both Perry and Gingrich proposed that you could either pay the flat tax or stick with the current system. So, guess what? Now you get to figure out your tax bill both ways so that you can figure out which is cheaper. That sure doesn't sound simpler to me.Anyway, you know what makes the system we have complicated? It's not the different rates. If that's all it was you could just look your income up in a set of tax tables, find your liability, and be done with it in literally seconds. And that would be true whether we have one rate or a hundred rates.What complicates things are all the exemptions, credits, and special privileges for different types of income. For a lot of people, you pay a higher rate for money you earn teaching children, like Aunt Debbie does, than for money you make when you sell a stock. That's both unfair and too complicated.So I say let's add simplicity and fairness by just taxing every dollar as a dollar no matter who earned it on which day of the week. And keep the progressive rates in place, so everyone can pay their fair share.

You liberals love Social Security, but everyone knows it's a dinosaur program, about to go extinct. None of you kids are ever gonna see a dime from it, so you might as well drop it.

Response: That's a mistake a lot of people make, bro, but it's simply not true. In fact, the folks who keep the books on this point out that for about the next 25 years, Social Security can pay full benefits. After that, it will be able to pay 75% of scheduled benefits. And by the way, even with that reduction, those benefits will be higher than they are today (that's because they're scheduled to go up over time, so even with the reduction, they'll be higher than today's).

Still, you've got a point--there's not enough retirement security in America. The real dinosaur in the room, unfortunately, is the guaranteed pension. Fewer and fewer jobs provide that anymore -- it's all 401(k)'s, where you get to bet your future on the stock market-good luck with that these days (note heads nodding in affirmation). In fact, if you think about it, the only guaranteed pension you can depend on is... wait for it... (dramatic pause)... Social Security! And believe it or not, a lot of conservatives want to turn Social Security into a stock market plan-(shake head despondently, with pity for those who don't get what a bad idea this is...).

So we've got to mend it so that it can pay full benefits, not just 75% over the long-term horizon. One thing to keep in mind is that the funding shortfall of the program is just about equal to the high end part of the Bush tax cuts--the part that just goes to households about $250K and that's supposed to expire at the end of 2012. So fixing the program in perpetuity shouldn't be that hard a lift.

And there's other stuff we could do. Did folks know that the tax to fund the program only hits salaries up to $110,000? That means that if you make a million bucks, about 90% of your salary is tax free when it comes to the payroll tax that funds Soc Sec. That ain't right.

So rest assured, with some smart, fair tweaks, the program will be around for many Christmas's to come. The bigger concern is that Social Security on its own won't provide enough income to provide a comfortable retirement for a lot of folks. But it's still a solid foundation for folks to build upon, one that we should be sure to make more solid for generations to come.

This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.

Dan Kennedy: Why Liberals Should Be Rooting for Romney

Dan Kennedy: Why Liberals Should Be Rooting for Romney:

I come neither to bury Mitt Romney nor to praise him. Instead, I hope to persuade you that you should be rooting for Romney to win the Republican nomination for president. And yes, by "you" I mean liberals who are planning to vote for Barack Obama in 2012.

Now, I realize this proposition is counterintuitive. However reluctant Republicans seem to be about getting behind their supposedly inevitable standard-bearer, most Democrats and independents understand that Romney is by far the strongest of a remarkably weak Republican field.
If Obama's re-election is all that matters, then of course it would be better for the president to take on a divisive figure like Newt Gingrich, the latest anti-Romney flavor of the month among conservative Republicans. Needless to say, Obama supporters would be beside themselves with joy if the Republicans were to nominate an even more flawed candidate like Herman Cain (who could be gone by the time you read this), Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann.
Romney, unlike most of his Republican rivals, is a credible candidate with real management experience in both the private sector and in government. You can picture him as president without breaking into a cold sweat. As governor of Massachusetts, he was a competent leader who did some good things (most notably on health care, as you may have heard) and some bad (demagoguing against same-sex marriage). Until he started running for president midway through his sole four-year term, he was moderate, pragmatic and results-oriented -- everything today's Republican Party is not.

I realize this is not a good week to try to make a case for Romney. His lying ad about Obama was repulsive in its cynicism -- but no more so than his flogging of Perry for taking pretty much the same position on immigration that Romney himself did a few years ago.

Yet if Romney fails to win the nomination, it could be disastrous for the country, for the Republican Party and even for the Obama presidency. Let me take these one at a time.

1. It would be bad for the country. Nearly three years into the Obama era, the economy is still in miserable shape. With Europe collapsing as a result of the debt crisis afflicting Greece and Italy, and now spreading to other countries, we could very well be heading into another recession in 2012.

Obama's bold-if-not-quite-bold-enough steps in 2009 -- the stimulus package, the bailout of the financial and auto industries and related measures -- may very well have averted a 1930s-style depression. But that's of little comfort to millions of Americans who are out of work, stuck with bad mortgages and angry. Obama could lose his re-election bid even to the likes of Gingrich or Perry if things get worse. If they get much worse -- well, would you want to bet against Bachmann or Ron Paul if the unemployment rate hits 15 percent?

My point is that Obama could lose no matter who his Republican opponent turns out to be. Given that obvious fact, do you really want to take a chance on Obama's losing to anyone other than Romney?

2. It would be bad for the Republican Party. The party of Lincoln -- not to mention Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush -- has become a destructive force in recent years, wedded to discredited ideas such as tax cuts for the wealthy and climate-change denialism. Above all, today's Republicans are devoted to destroying Obama, echoing their sex-obsessed persecution of Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

In the long run, the implosion of one of our two major parties benefits no one. The American form of representative democracy works best with an effective governing party and a responsible opposition. If Republican voters nominate Romney, it would send a signal to John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell, as well as their Tea Party allies, that they're sick and tired of their relentless, self-serving obstructionism.

3. It would be bad for the Obama presidency. Despite my fears that even a fringe candidate could beat Obama if the already-ailing economy collapses, it is more likely that the president wouldn't have to break a sweat in dispatching Gingrich, Perry or Bachmann. And that wouldn't bode well for a second term, as Obama wouldn't earn a mandate so much as have one handed to him.
Given Romney's incessant pandering, I may be too optimistic in hoping that an Obama-Romney contest could play out as a serious conversation about our country's future. But a boy can dream, can't he?

Romney currently finds himself in an impossible position: he's widely described as the inevitable nominee, yet the Republican Party's right wing -- its dominant wing -- loathes him. This week the New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed Gingrich -- no surprise, but a complication for Romney given how crucial the Granite State is to his chances.

The prospect that the president may face an extreme, supposedly unelectable Republican may seem enticing to those hoping for a second Obama term. As always, you should be careful about what you wish for.

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM:

WELL THERE’S YOUR PROBLEM

Submitted by:

DavidJ3d

Sen. Harry Reid: Affordable Care Act Helps Women

Sen. Harry Reid: Affordable Care Act Helps Women:

When I was a kid, I thought I was a lot tougher than I was. My mother taught me that if you acted like you could handle yourself, then you could. But sometimes that meant enduring unnecessary pain.

My family could not afford to see a doctor and had to confront health needs alone.

Several families like mine have endured illnesses simply because they could not afford medical evaluations, making early detection or prevention of them difficult.

A report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finds last year's health insurance reform is already changing this.

Preventative care has become much more affordable. For Medicare beneficiaries, the cost burden of services -- such as mammograms, colonoscopies and blood pressure checks -- has been lifted entirely.

This year, more than 17 million seniors have received preventive measures they desperately needed, without copayment, deductibles or coinsurance, according to HHS. And an additional one million seniors have received free wellness visits.

This is particularly great news for women. More women have struggled with chronic illnesses than men.

In 2009, the Commonwealth Fund found that more than half of women delayed or avoided preventive care because of cost concerns. Even moderate co-pays for preventive services such as mammograms or pap smears have deterred women from visiting a doctor.

Yet chronic diseases, which account for 75 percent of the nation's health spending, are often preventable. The Affordable Care Act is helping women -- young and old -- avoid the onset of illness and improve their quality of life.

In its report, HHS announced new guidelines that will ensure women of all ages receive preventive health services at no additional cost. HHS's announcement follows a report by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine that included fundamental preventive services are a basic health need of all women.

Starting in 2012, new health insurance plans will not only put money back in the pockets of women, but they will cover a wider net of preventive care services, such as Human Papilloma Virus DNA testing, HIV screening and counseling, FDA-approved contraception, breastfeeding support and domestic violence screening and counseling.

Too many women like my mother lacked the preventive services they needed to stay healthy because of cost concerns. It's up to us to make sure today's women know about the benefits available to them.

HealthCare.gov is a great resource for anyone looking to learn more. And the Department of Health and Human Services Web site provides great guides, too.

In a country as great as ours, no one should be forced to struggle without medical coverage because of an illness that could have been detected and treated.

This blog comes from MomsRising.org and CustomFitWorkplace.org and presents innovative ideas to strengthen 21st Century American families through public policy, business practice, and cultural change.

James Peron: F.A. Hayek Against the Conservative

James Peron: F.A. Hayek Against the Conservative:

Glenn Beck told his audience that Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom was the "best thing you can read." The book shot up the Amazon bestseller list instantly as Beck's cult-like followers rushed out to buy it.

Beck was unaware that Hayek's friend, and sometimes sparing partner, John Maynard Keynes, also called it a "grand book" and said he found himself "in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement." The New York Times said this book, by the Nobel Prize winning economist, is one of the staples of the conservative Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party and Glenn Beck would do well to educate themselves as to Hayek's actual view in his essay, "Why I Am Not a Conservative." Conservatives concentrate on Hayek's opposition to state socialism, but have little understanding of his radical classical liberal ideas and ignore his opposition to conservatism. Hayek saw himself as a liberal, in the classical sense of the word. And, while Keynes differed greatly from Hayek's views on economics, Keynes saw himself in the same ideological camp as his friend. Hayek was "not averse to evolution and change" and said that when "spontaneous change has been smothered by government control, it [liberalism] wants a great deal of change." This, he argued, was in conflict with the "conservative attitude" which was a "fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such." Hayek said his position "is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead." Conservatives focus on Hayek's distrust of centrally imposed, top-down change. Meagan McArdle, for instance, invoked Hayekian theory to claim, "changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage... might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning." This confuses Hayek's opposition to imposed change with opposition to all change. Hayek's view was that for a new social order, or social rules, "To become legitimized... [they] have to obtain the approval of society at large -- not by a formal vote, but by gradually spreading acceptance," much the way that same-sex marriage has gained support. This is particularly true when the change recognizes a "conflict between a given rule and the rest of our moral beliefs." Then we "can justify our rejection of an established rule." For example, when denying same-sex couples the right to marry conflicts with our acceptance of equality of rights before the law, we can justify changing the laws on marriage according to Hayek's insights.

Hayek warned that conservatives, however, "are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rates to whatever appeals to the more timid mind."

Another difference between Hayek and conservatives is he saw order emerging from voluntary interactions of people, while "Order appears to the conservative as the result of the continuous attention to authority." The conservative, he said "feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change 'orderly.'" Hayek believed in the rule of law, with government powers strictly limited to general rules of social order. Contrast this with a conservative who "does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not be too much restricted by rigid rules." Hayek warned that the conservative is "less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them" and said "he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people."

Hayek saw conservatives as lacking principles but not "moral conviction." He wrote, "The conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions," but "has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions." Hayek's liberal social order allows people of differing convictions the freedom to pursue their own values. The joking response to conservatives, "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married," actually encapsulates Hayek's view of a liberal society, which allows people of different views the freedom to pursue their own values. Those who oppose erotica are free to NOT buy it, those who oppose abortion are free to shun abortions, those who oppose gay marriage don't have to get gay married!

It is here that Hayek's liberalism is most clearly in opposition to both conservatism and socialism. "I sometimes feel that the most conspicuous attribute of liberalism that distinguishes it as much from conservatism as from socialism is the view that moral beliefs concerning matters of conduct which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere of other persons do not justify coercion."

Conservatives invoke supernatural claims to justify intransigent opposition to change, not so with Hayekian liberals.

"The liberal differs from the conservative in his willingness to face [human] ignorance and to admit how little we know, without claiming the authority of supernatural forces of knowledge where his reason fails him. It has to be admitted that in some respects the liberal is fundamentally a skeptic -- but it seems to require a certain degree of diffidence to let others seek their happiness in their own fashion and to adhere consistently to that tolerance which is an essential characteristic of liberalism."

Hayek's wrote, "What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different spheres which ought not to be confused."

Hayek never feared evolutionary change in society, nor believed religious values sufficient reason for using power of the state to prevent change. Hayek, the intransigent opponent of socialism that Beck and conservatives admire, also saw himself equally opposed to their conservative agenda, something conservatives ignore at their peril. More confusing for these so-called admirers of Hayek would be the fact that Hayek opposed their conservative agenda for precisely the same reasons he opposed socialism. But that, I suspect, is a brew too strong for the so-called Tea Party.

Paul Abrams: "Before the Next Election": The Overlooked Phrase in Perry's Treason Accusation

Paul Abrams: "Before the Next Election": The Overlooked Phrase in Perry's Treason Accusation:

Rick Perry (R-TX), the Republicans' flavor of the day before they embrace the more marbled beef of Chris Christie (R-NJ), told Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke that he would be committing "treason" if he "printed money prior to the next election," and that, if he dared come to Texas after committing such an act, he would be treated "ugly."

While the Beltway was, properly, taken aback by the not-too-subtle physical threat to Bernanke by a sitting governor who aspires to be president, they all overlooked Perry's time qualifier, "before the next election." That ought to dispel any doubt that the Republican Party will prevent an economic recovery so that they might win the next election.
Presumably, if Bernanke launched QE3 (the means to expand the money supply) after the election, it would not be treason, and Bernanke could go to Texas without fear for his life or health.So, what was Perry really getting at? It seems clear that Perry was warning Bernanke not to improve the economy before November 2012 because it might help President Obama's re-election chances. That is, they will prevent 14 million Americans from getting jobs. They will make millions more family members suffer. And, they will express outrage that anyone even suggested that that is what they are doing. It was one of these authentic, unscripted moments in which the candidate said what he really believed. Indeed, he began his answer to the voter question about the Federal Reserve by stating he did not want to address it. But, could not stop himself. Robert Gibbs is absolutely correct. The Republican Party will keep millions of Americans from having jobs, a payroll tax cut, and unemployment insurance so that the economy will suffer, just so the President will have a more difficult time winning re-election.

Their frontrunner just said so. There is no other plausible (or implausible) explanation for qualifying his outrageous accusation and implied physical threat against Chairman Bernanke with an election-related timeframe.

So, Mr Gibbs, you have the "smoking gun." Use it as evidence. Use it often.

COUNTDOWN to SHUTDOWN

COUNTDOWN to SHUTDOWN: "

'Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.'

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

The government shutdown might happen this Friday - and let me emphasize the word 'might'. It's quite clear that the assholes who act as spokesmen for the 'party of Abraham Lincoln' haven't yet made up their minds whether or not a shutdown will benefit them politically. It didn't in 1994, but they seem to think that it might work this time around. Back in '94 there was little publicity involving what was about to happen. Seventeen years later they're not being as clumsy. They're out there on the talk show circuit in droves this morning, bracing the public for the storm on the horizon, chanting their silly mantra:

'How can the Democrats allow this to happen?'

We'll know soon enough if the propaganda has the desired effect. My guess is that, like in '94, this is going to blow up in their clueless faces. I certainly hope so. Watching the utter implosion of the Republican party is an absolute joy that is difficult to put into words. I can barely contain myself.

I hate to be seen as a cheerleader for the Democrats, I really do. I often feel like I'm in a restaurant and the waiter is asking me, 'Would you like a nice cool glass of donkey piss to wash down that juicy plate of elephant shit you've ordered, sir?' Our choices these days are sparse - no question about it. But when everything has been sliced and diced, I feel that am left with no choice but to side with the Dems. The alternatives are too depressing too even think about. 'Stick with Tweedle-dee', I tell myself, 'Tweedle-dum is brain-damaged.' He's also a bit of a pervert.

Or think of it this way:

'Hmm....Which record shall I put on the ol' turntable - 'Go Away, Little Girl' by Donny Osmond, or 'Sugar Sugar' by the Archies?'

The choice is very easy, but hardly satisfying - While 'Sugar Sugar' may rock - barely - it's not going to send me into the clouds. Unfortunately, those are the kind of choices we're faced with these days.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed
Most peculiar, Mama!

-John Lennon

At least the Democrats - some of them - still understand the truism that we're never going to get our 'fiscal house in order' until the people and corporations who have more money that they know what to do with are taxed at the rate they should be. The economy will never recover as long as the tax burden is placed on the back of the poor and middle classes. And please, don't shoot back at me that tired old myth that the poor do not pay taxes. Everyone pays taxes. Remember that the next time you pay $4.31 for a $3.99 pint of Nicolai Vodka.

FUN FACT:

I paid more in taxes last year than General Electric. You did, too.

And then there's that nasty subject of defense spending. Do you want to know why I love Bernie Sanders? Because he seems to be the only human being in Washington with the guts to say (or the sense to say) the unspeakable truth that no one else has the courage to say: We spend way-too-much of our national treasure on weapons of mass destruction. You know! Those things we took out Saddam Hussein for possessing that he never even possessed? If our representatives only had the foresight to understand this, a lot of the problems that plague the body politic would vanish. Not only that, we could reinvest in our infrastructure - and that would translate into jobs - lots and lots of them. It would also mean a long overdue renaissance for the middle class. But that's never going to happen. The chances are pretty good that your congressman or woman is bought and paid for by the military industrial complex.

Instead, the conservatives of both parties would rather privatize Medicare and Social Security. Instead of investing in our badly neglected infrastructure, they want tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy. Good luck, America.

The Republicans are telling us that they wish to 'restore fiscal sanity in Washington'. The only problem is that their proposals are beyond insane. The lunatics have not only taken over the asylum, they're writing the fucking prescriptions. Line up for your medications, boys and girls!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

This excellent article by Robert Reich was posted this morning on that horribly subversive, commie-loving website AlterNet:

Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich, ASAP!

Just one of many reasons why I love this site!

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