Monday, April 7, 2014

Jeb Bush the poster-child for privatizing of public education, not a candidate for the White House

It was the matriarch of the Bush family, Barbara Bush, who told the world, "We've had enough Bush's in the White House!"
On the same weekend, just past, when the Bush family gathered to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of George Herbert Walker Bush's presidency, and when George W. Bush unveiled his portraits of world leaders in his presidential library, former Governor of Florida, bilingual (English and Spanish) Jeb Bush tells the world that he will announce  by the end of this year whether or not he will make his own run for the presidency, making him a third Bush to seek the Republican nomination in three decades.
There are so many reasons why, given his "pedigree" and the deplorable state of the Republican party, that he would be pursued as a "winning candidate" for that party to take back control of the government, for all the  business, corporate and uber-rich folks who pour their money into the Republican coffers, through both super-pacs, and now, with the latest Supreme Court decision taking the limits off private donations to political candidates, directly into the campaigns.
He is not tainted with even a hint of scandal, as is Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie; he is not "shop-worn" like some of the other potential candidates, having remained out of politics, officially since leaving the governor's mansion in Florida. And, for some of his potential supporters, like the president of Netflix, who believes that all education in America will be delivered in a manner similar to his current business model, and will therefore be another commodity purchased by individual consumers for their children who will receive that education in the privacy of their computer cubicles in their own homes, Jeb Bush, as governor, has laid the groundwork for such a dystopia already in Florida.
Charter schools, vouchers, and the ancillary building blocks for privatizing of elementary and secondary education are so far advanced in Florida that advocates for public education call that state the "model" for their concerted efforts to thwart the movement that is obviously heavily funded by all of those people who believe, as strongly as if it were their religion, perhaps even stronger, that privatizing everything will produce generations of young voters who will know nothing about a public sector, unions, the right to fair employment standards, and something some of us still like to call the "public good".
Reports from advocates of public schools like Diane Ravitch, indicate that teachers in many charter schools, and also schools supported by vouchers of public funds, pay their teachers less than is required by public schools, provide larger classes, fewer benefits, and resist all attempts at public accounting, pleading that as private corporations, they ought not to be subject to public audits, even though they are spending public funds.
Education historian Diane Ravitch says the privatization of public education has to stop. As assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush, she was an advocate of school choice and charter schools; under George W. Bush, she supported the No Child Left Behind initiative. But after careful investigation, she changed her mind, and has become, according to Salon, “the nation’s highest profile opponent” of charter-based education.
On this week’s Moyers & Company, she tells Bill Moyers, ”I think what’s at stake is the future of American public education. I believe it is one of the foundation stones of our democracy: So an attack on public education is an attack on democracy.” (from Bill Moyers and Company website, March 28, 2014)
As the diplomatic and charismatic governor of Florida, Jeb Bush could be, and by some is, considered the political leader of the movement to privatize public education. For that reason alone, we deem him a danger to the democracy of the United States and issue a warning to all Americans who might be thinking of supporting his candidacy for the White House.
Individual competition among parents to seek the best college education for their children makes them a susceptible and vulnerable market for all forms of advertising deployed by the "privatizing" movement. What is left out of the marketing campaigns is monumental.
Charter schools refuse to accept children with special learning needs, or those who struggle to learn, of those who would, because of their special needs, lower the test scores of any schools in which they are enrolled. It is not rocket science to see that such a process already divides the society, at a very early age, the formative years, into those who are considered "acceptable" and those who are deemed "beneath" those who are acceptable. Charter schools students will, inevitably, pass through twelve years of elementary and secondary education without having to associate with peers who struggle much harder to learn the same curriculum. They will already be exposed to a "sanitized" culture in which they are "gated" from the "lesser" children. And their parents will pour their public education dollars into the profit-centred bank accounts of the large educational corporations whose primary, if not sole, purpose is to generate profits, not to education students.
Already on the market in the United States, something called K-12.com, I selling "seats" to naïve parents for their children to enrol in "home schooling" through a laptop, provided by the corporation selling the enrollment. Fewer teachers than are really necessary monitor the students' performance, and those students whose parents have fallen for this "seduction" of the most simplified method of educating their children are deprived of all of the important, even we would argue, essential ingredients of public education, the rubbing shoulders with a complete range of students from all backgrounds, cultures, incomes, racial and ethnic origins, and only through such a process can and will the students in public schools gain an appreciation of the real country of which they will become an integral part.
Social layering through privately operated corporate schools will also inevitably promote a curriculum that turns a blind eye to those subjects considered anathema to the private corporations and their funding executives; into that list would go subjects like the history and contribution of the labour movement, the history of racism, the theory of evolution (in some two dozen states already, creationism is the preferred curricular offering to evolution which those states deem to be untrue). Sanitizing both the classroom environment (from students with learning difficulties) and the curriculum (from topics considered ideologically repugnant) in order to generate profits for the corporations who run the schools will effectively erode all the best and the worst elements of the democracy, similar to the erosion of the culture from those racial elements deemed inappropriate in the Third Reich.
Creeping private takeover of the public education system is a monster against which all forces need to be mustered, if the movement is to be stopped before it takes over the United States education system. And, as a first step in that push-back, the rejection of Jeb Bush as a candidate for the Republican nomination for the White House, is necessary. Should he decide to run, there is little likelihood that his circle will permit a full public debate on privatizing of public education, for which his governorship is best known, in Florida.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Self-sabotage, part of the culture of Toronto Maple Leafs this year?

There are so many ways to approach the post mortem of the Toronto Maple Leafs' self-inflicted termination of their 2013-14 season, last night.
Facing a steep climb from behind, after losing either straight games, they continued to play "shinney" as if they were demonstrating how the game was played back on the ponds and the outdoor rinks of their youth. Passing the puck consistently to the sticks of opponents ready, willing and able to take possession and make something happen, like goals for their team, seems so easily diagnosed and yet, for this team, so difficult to correct.
Call them give-away's, turn-overs, mental lapses, failed concentration, lack of anticipation of what the opponent is about to do, or even mis-judgements, these gifts to opponents wearing shirts of various colours, emanating from various cities, irrespective of their standings in league statistics or their reputations as winners or losers, this year's version of the Toronto Maple Leafs has inflicted to many mistakes on itself (themselves) as to make one wonder about the wisdom of the new president of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Tim Liewicki's pointing to the "pecking away" by the Toronto media as the principle cause of the self-inflicted outcome.
To be sure, there is a giant microscope focused on the game wherever and whenever the Maple Leafs take to the ice, poised with open and energized keypads, ready to eviscerate these players whom the scribes and fans love to hate, and also hate to love. Scrutiny under a public microscope, however, in an age dominated by social media when anything and everything nasty, vitriolic and even scurrilously libelous can and is broadcast throughout the twitter-verse, ought to have given rise to some basic principles of how players are to filter these barbs.
And while there have been several unfortunate injuries, (Bolland, Clarkson, Bernier and Lupul all come to mind) the barrage of some 50 shots at relatively competent goal-keepers every game for nearly all 80, would tend to point to a burn-out component with both Bernier and Reimer. Defence, like editing, or practising, or the daily grind of physical training out of sight of cameras, fans, media and even coaches is the "grunge" part of the game, necessary but certainly not generative of anything close to applause. Scoring after having let your opponent get a one or a two-goal lead, and demonstrating "character" to bring the team out of such holes, in some Cecil B. deMille fashion, may be good for a few ego strokes, but it is not a strategy for consistent success. It is analogous to studying for a few hours immediately prior to a substantial examination and 'getting lucky' on the choice of questions and "skimming through" to a pass grade. Homework, including the building of good work habits, and  bringing a solid and unreserved commitment to one's own improvement linked in demonstrable ways to the development of each of one's teammates, will always trump last-minute histrionics, no matter how successful they may look in the short run.
Sometimes, coaches, too have to develop their skills and their techniques with different personalities in different cultures, in different social climates, in order to engender their players' respect, even their commitment to the style of play preferred by the coaching staff. Unfortunately, from the outside, (and none of us really knows what goes on behind the closed doors of the team dressing and meeting rooms, on the team planes and buses), it appears that there is a disconnect between the current head coach and the team. Randy Carlyle, a former Norris Trophy winner when he played defence for the Maple Leafs, in another era, has had success coaching in previous assignments in the NHL, even winning a Stanley Cup in Anaheim, under then General Manager Brian Burke. Born and raised in Sudbury, Carlyle, however, seems to have been 'in over his head' with this group of players. Does he fail to grasp a more complex regime than "sticks and carrots" to execute his "classical conditioning" model of learning? That kind of teaching and learning system may have worked when he was a player, but today's players are much more sophisticated, more nuanced, even more evolved than to be programmable with "sticks and carrots", as players in a time when coaches could be and were dictators, potentates and even both good and bad cops. There is a gap between the learning strategies that worked over the last half century and what can and will work today. While most of his public comments have been restrained, when he has been disappointed and/or angry with the performance of his players, so too has his praise and support of those who demonstrated exceptional leadership, creativity and superior motivation been muted, even arguably neutral. In private, he may be the most supportive coach many of these players have had, (doubtful!), yet in public he has been typically "Canadian" in his reserve of applause.
And this is not only Carlyle's choice. It, unfortunately, is a Canadian trait, to restrict praise, and to inflict critical judgement on those for whom one is "responsible" and over whom one has authority.
We are not merely a parsimonious nation of money-pinchers; we are more seriously a "Fort-Knox" of emotional and psychological reserves, never to be dispensed lest we appear to be favouring the American model of excessive and effusive praise. The line on "Last Man Standing" from Tim Allen's character, just this week, expressed the American realization that American kids don't know much, but rank highest in the world in "self-esteem".
However, clearly, withholding compliments in order to generate "character" is, by definition, a self-sabotaging strategy of leadership, coaching and the development of what in the male world is known as "bonding". While males have and will continue to build relationships through sarcasm and irony and even some cutting "dissing", there has to be a foundation of trust, respect and reciprocity in that exchange. Unfortunately, using a self-sabotaging method of "sticks and carrots" to generate performance, as is done in too many corporate workplaces, (given the serious paucity of both learning and experience with diverse methods of generating performance among leaders in the corporate world, given the high premium placed on generating profit in the short run) has been replicated in so many periods and games in the hockey season now ending for the Maple Leafs.
While "X's" and "O's" on a white board are important, linked to curved lines of pre-planned plays, in specific situations, these instructions too will fall on deaf ears when the trust and credibility and mutual support of those expected to carry out the designed play has been marginalized throughout the relationship.
While it is not a specifically hockey "critique", this little blurb is intended, not as a "sop" or a pandering to the "left" as it will be inevitably judged by the likes of aardvarks like Don Cherry, it is intended to recognize the implicit truth that men also need encouragement, support and compassion from their leaders and their executives and that when that is a "given" in any relationship, including those between professional sports coaches and their players, the results on the "playing field" whether of hardwood, grass, clay or ice, will inevitably improve for the professional reputations of both players and coaches.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Evander Kane: "Every little thing becomes a big thing"...playing in Canada....

It was Evander Kane, black member of the Winnipeg Jets NHJL hockey team, while commenting on the filing of a civil suit demanding damages for an alleged "assault" last summer, in which the Vancouver police investigated and found insufficient evidence to lay charges, who expressed his view of Canada so succinctly:
“Playing in the Canadian market, every little thing becomes a big thing,” he added Thursday. (By Canadian Press, in National Post, April 3, 2014)
While Kane's public statement may have originated from a public relations consultant, and may be little more than "fending off further questions from reporters," like jokes, it has a kernel of truth that Canadians are often unprepared to acknowledge.
We are a country of micro-managers, whose fixation on how our public servants spend their expense accounts is much more important than the decisions they make on behalf of all Canadians. We, to our collective embarrassment, consider the accounting to be sacred, while the policies and the future direction of the country pale in comparison to our collective myopic fixations.
There is truth in the adage "the devil is in the details" and this is especially true when the lawyers are involved, as they have become so predominant in the last few decades. Insurance policies that restrict coverage fill the filing cabinets of too many offices and homes, tilted toward the advantage of the insurance companies, and away from the client. Legislatures continue to pass legislation based on  public complaints that are too often knee-jerk responses to some horrible even and not a reasoned and researched response to the long-term implications of specific product design and manufacture. One such example, details such an example, in the current edition of The Atlantic, in which the writer outlines the consumer protection legislation for playground equipment for children that restricts all risk-taking, preferring a sanitized and risk-free environment, including rubber flooring for climbing equipment that has not resulted in fewer injuries, but rather an increase, in spite of the "perfection" of those equipment floors.
She cites a playground in Great Britain, generated by a public campaign against this kind of sanitized "play" opportunity that generated a fenced in area complete with various cast-away items, including a fire pit in which children play unattended, with purposeful loiters hanging back to ensure that no child really does suffer injury. These attendants, however, remain very distant and as uninvolved as possible, giving the children the opportunity to swing on a rope from one side of a creek to the other bank, provided they hang on and make it, otherwise they fall into the water, without injury or danger.
The movement behind "risky" playgrounds emerged following the Second War, based on the  belief that if children were going to witness the blitz, they were going to have to develop adaptive skills through play that involves risk. Imagine the outcry if such a playground movement were to find its voice in a current Canadian city! The proponents of such a movement would be immediately tabbed as criminals endangering the lives of children by their ideas.
Similarly, the rise in court cases based on the pursuit of damages, (and of course legal fees) has prompted many family practitioners in medicine to remove from their practice all deliveries of newborn babies, simply because the insurance premiums for that procedure are too high, and only ObGyn specialists can afford it.
Recently, I learned of a case of an elderly woman who purchased some new washroom facilities, hired a private contractor to install the equipment, only to learn that given the size and scope of his business, he felt he did not carry enough liability insurance for the job, sub-contracted the job to a larger plumbing company, who, upon receiving a call to repair in the mistakes made in their install, presented him with a substantial bill as well as an "emergency call fee" to the elderly woman for their fix of their own mistake.
This piece is not to say that the man pursuing Evander Kane in a civil suit was or was not injured. We do not know the answer to that question. This piece is focused on the Kane comment that every thing small becomes big in Canada, and, by inference, we too often lose sight of the "big picture"..
Recently, I was in a conversation with a local real estate broker about the urgent need for additional inventory in the condo sector in one city. We both agreed on the evidence that supports the need. He then explained that a few land-owners were holding onto their land and buildings clinging desperately to their state as owners who refuse to convert their apartment buildings to condo's thereby capping the city's development, while preserving the private interests of the hand-ful of land-owners.
When I envisaged a new way of developing a condo project, complete with self-contained and self-regenerating eco-friendly water and sewer components, and thereby not dependent on the city's existing infrastructure, he shook his head, and wondered out loud if he could risk involvement in such a project, because it so threatened the status quo, and he did not want to bruise his platinum reputation in the industry, complete with its attendant political correctness and implied conventionality. On the way out the door, he joked, "Nothing like trying to change the world!" as if to say that such a proposal, even in its incubator and discussion stage were so "big" that it would change the world, when really all it would do, while providing a new bank of condo's, would turn the city's face, head, mind-set and heart toward the future, in balance with its already deeply embedded fixation on the past, and, with the requisite brain-trust in urban development that balances the "old" with the "new"...a change with which this successful professional was dubious about becoming associated.
Evander Kane, a highly successful and respected professional hockey player has, perhaps innocently and even naively, hit the nail on the head in describing the Canadian culture, and we are all indebted to him for his off-the-cuff remark, as we continue wearing out blinkers that protect our eyes from the "big picture."

Mob "justice" threatens us all

Call it revenge; call it mob-mentality; call it street 'justice' gone awry; nevertheless, what happened in Detroit, after a young boy stepped off a curb into the path of an oncoming truck qualifies as brutality, criminality, impatient injustice and extremely dangerous.
The driver of the truck, while attending to the injured boy, obviously not having left the scene of the accident, and not having made any attempt to escape the disclosure of the full facts in the incident, and we might also assume feeling extremely distraught about what had just happened (most of us would, if we found ourselves in his shoes), was mobbed and beaten into critical condition with severe head injuries by a neighbourhood mob.
We found the story in the Vancouver Sun, obviously the editors of that paper thought and believed, as we do, that the story is another sign of the kind culture we are living in and, to be blunt, it is not, from this picture, a pretty scene. We include an excerpt here for verification.
A suburban Detroit man was in critical condition Thursday with severe head injuries after a neighbourhood mob beat and kicked him when he stopped to check on a 10-year-old boy who stepped from a curb into the path of his pickup.
The 54-year-old man, whose name was not released, was being treated at a Detroit hospital as police scoured the east side neighbourhood where he was attacked Wednesday afternoon. The boy, David Harris, was expected to recover from his injuries, according to Desmond Key, who said he was the 10-year-old's uncle.
The driver — who lives just north of Detroit in Macomb County's Roseville — wasn't at fault in the accident, said Detroit police Sgt. Michael Woody.
"A preliminary investigation shows the kid stepped off the curb in front of him," Woody said. "No way he could have stopped in time." (By Corey Williams, Associated Press, in Vancouver Sun, April 3, 2014) Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Motorist+stopped+after+striking+Detroit+critical+from+beating/9698270/story.html#ixzz2xtvCyGVt
Why would we include this story in our list of 'what we need to know' items?
Simply because any one of us could have been, and could easily become this driver. Compounding his angst over the mishap, the mob took control of the scene, and probably will never be discovered, charged and convicted of their criminality. Meanwhile, he remains in critical condition in hospital suffering from head injuries inflicted by those who seek "uber-justice", who seek to place their own imprint on the story from their misguided, jaundiced and dangerous need for power.
Their actions, those of the mob, come out of a social culture that places less and less trust in our institutions, including the law enforcement component of those public institutions, and 'takes the law' into their own hands. Impatient with a "due process" based on a social contract that withholds judgement of guilt, in fact suspends guilt until proven so through habeas corpus (everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty) by a process that includes a full investigation, a full review of the facts, a court-room presentation of those facts and a final verdict from either or both a judge and jury, they seek and impose their own 'sentence' of physical brutality immediately upon entering the scene, and impulsively upon making their own 'judgement' of the facts as they see them.
Once having taught a group of students in a program known as "police foundations" I encountered a similar mentality among the students when I attempted to present the issue of "keeping an open mind" upon entering a scene to which they had been assigned. Objectivity, detachment, neutrality and mental, emotional and physical composure being those qualities required of the law enforcement officers when entering any situation to which they have been called, were among the most difficult qualities to gain the comprehension, apprehension and emulation of those students in what has become known as a 'for-profit college'....where the students are much more funding sources than learners. These students, sadly and even tragically, were intent upon making an instant judgement of guilt, taking control of the presumed guilty and writing the most sketchy report, in order to establish their "credibility" with their future commanding officers that, if they were to hold to their view, would become more dangerous to public safety and security than if they had never entered policing profession.
There are important aspects of the "street culture" that warrant preservation; the good Samaritan archetype is a good example of the inverse of this story, and could well statistically outnumber cases like this; another example is found in  the many stories of reaching out to comfort victims by bystanders in a crisis to those in jeopardy, including fires, hurricanes, and even those heinous shootings where innocents are victims.
This story brings those empathy-compassion-comfort outpourings into even greater relief. And, in doing so, prompts the question, "What has happened to generate this story?"
Sociologists and criminologists will compile stories like this, including their frequency and severity, to determine if indeed we are moving toward a more callous and indifferent culture, and, in the long run, will likely find that we are not, based on the statistical data. However, to that man suffering in the hospital from those head injuries inflicted by those thugs, the academics' conclusions will be little comfort. Politicians will give another 'shout-out' to increased sentences, minimum mandatory sentences, and even more incarcerations of these young men (and we all know it was men and not women who committed this crime)...and the public will wring its hands, (in the manner we are doing here) and go on about their business without anything substantive occurring to prevent a future similar, if not even more dangerous, incident. A small few might take up the cause of public safety for people in a similar situation as this driver, but it will garner tepid support, if any. (Laws have been passed previously to exempt doctors from law suits if and when they assist in roadside auto accidents. They are known as the "good Samaritan" laws, made necessary by ungrateful recipients of such care, when something went wrong with the victims' recovery.
Stand-your-ground laws, in many U.S. states, make it both feasible and even encouraged, for people to carry weapons, and if and when they feel under threat, to shoot in self-defence. And rather than seeing the number of states in which those laws have been passed fall, the number is growing. So, while fighting terrorism around the world, the United States is fully engaged in encouraging and developing an armed criminal mind-set that seeks its own 'justice' outside the legal process.
When the courts and the legal framework that supports each person's innocence until it can be fully disproven, beyond doubt, are insufficient to satisfy this "mob" justice, and when one who tragically strikes a young child in an instant when the child steps off a curb into the path of a vehicle is not safe from mob violence, then who is safe on the public streets of this or any other city?
I once listened to a young man tell a story of having 'sent a message' to his friends 'on the inside' (of the prison system) to pound out every day an incoming person who had been convicted of a sex crime against a young girl (a heinous and indecent act in the first place) so that he would get another "message" from those among whom he originally lived, a sort of uber-justice inflicted by civilians who no longer believed in the integrity and the validity of the judicial system. I was horrified and frightened upon hearing the story, and remain convinced that these young men who inflicted serious injuries to this driver were "schooled" in the same street-classroom as the person telling the story just recounted. And as these stories grow, we all face a prospect of a society in which the mob takes more control, requires more public money to repress and to remediate, and one in which the safety of our "innocence first" principle erodes.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

"War 101," by General H.R. McMaster, guest on Charlie Rose

Sometimes, from the left, we are quite disdainful of the U.S. military. We accuse the "Pentagon" of being overly bureaucratic, filled with sycophants, bowing scrupulously to their superiors, devouring a huge portion of the national budget, and exploding bombs into homes where women and children are innocently murdered, in their massive offensive attacks with their secret drone-borne missiles.
Linking the military to the "national interest" has, for most of my adult years, been but a faint equation, written in pastel chalk on the walls of my mind, easily washed away, with the latest foray into a foreign country and reports of casualties, both foreign and American, that seemed quite antiseptic and detached, and therefore hardly human, in the manner of the reports of their deaths.
While it may be an "instrument of death", there are also signs that, to totally dismiss the military as an instrument of national interest, would be naïve in the extreme and foolish especially in the breach.
Last night, for the first time in my life, I actually spent the better part of an hour listening to General H.R. McMaster, talking to Charlie Rose, on PBS, about his observations, reflections and insights about the nature of future wars.
In the course of the discussion, we were reminded that 'we may not be interested in wars, but wars are interested in you' (from Trotsky). And we were referred to Napoleon, the military strategist who developed the strategy that one does not attack an enemy where he is strong, but rather from behind where he is weakest. We were also treated to a buffet of approaches to the difference between counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, words that for most of us have merged into one. As a military scholar who studies war, McMaster reminded us of the danger of the "silver bullet" approach to military initiatives, and sounded a clarion call for a varied and diversified approach to all conflicts, that, regardless of the text-book theories currently extant, those in the field still had to make decisions about how to deploy a range of options, in order to effectively subdue the enemy.
Speaking of the future of warfare, McMaster, while acknowledging the new technologies, including cyberwar, drones, and the clinical aspect of fighting from afar, pointed to the need for ground troops, in order to sustain whatever had been accomplished by these more sophisticated weapons. He also urged his listeners to think not merely of "defence" but also of "offense" in the future where there are clearly both state and non-state actors  intermingled wreaking havoc in order to better establish their aims.
People go to war for three reasons, according to McMaster: fear, honour and interest.
And, throughout history, wars have continually brought out both the  best and the worst of the human species. Those of who us literally hate physical conflict of any kind, and would prefer all disputes to be settled, as most agree do all military engagements eventually, by negotiation, mediation, arbitration and verbal legal arguments.
As an outsider, reflecting on my encounters, through books, magazines, newspapers and radio and television only, never from combat itself, it would seem that while Americans go to war out of what is too often alleged as national interest, there is a good deal of both fear and honour also involved, and while the former may be at the front of the headlines, the latter two are not too far back in the shadows. One quote, from an Iranian, in the discussion about what some perceive as an Iranian attempt to foment conflict in the Middle East for an extended period, in order to better establish increased power and influence in the region, is especially memorable. McMaster referred to an Iranian who spoke to him once using these words: You Americans are like a chicken; you make a lot of noise and a lot of bluster, but you lay only one egg. On the other hand, we Iranians are like a bunch of fish; we move silently and quickly through the water and we lay millions of eggs.
Sometimes, it is important to know more than what weapons are available to an enemy. It is obviously highly important to know how the enemy thinks, operates, speaks and perceives the world, and their enemy. In the next several decades we are likely to be spectators (hopefully not participants) in a drama that sees if and how the Americans "counter" the Iranian schools of fish, while she extricates herself from whatever reality and self-perceptions she has about being a chicken, blustering and making a lot of noise in a world increasingly influenced the various schools of sharks that today would have to include the Iranian ally Putin.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Siphoning public money for privatized schools analogous to Putin's siphoning IMF money for a 40% gas hike in Ukraine.

Money, the currency of business transactions, is or has already, morphed into the most potent weapon in political conflict.
"What took you so long to make such an astounding observation?" you say.
Well, there are signs beginning in the United States, for example, that the public school system is now on the auction block. Private corporations are vying for students through slick marketing campaigns that endorse charter schools, voucher schools and even on-line home schooling schemes.
There is already a reported gap between the range of students with access to public schools and to charter schools, with the later accepting only those students without learning disabilities. Since marketing drives the American economy, why would those siphoning public funds for their private corporation profit want to contaminate the process by including students who require more individual attention (labour and wages intensive) and who are more likely to produce less favourable results in terms of graduation rates.
Additionally, with the private corporation-run schools, (and Florida is allegedly the state whose schools have been almost taken-over by the private sector, where former Governor Jeb Bush leads the foray on behalf of the privatization of schools) the curriculum is naturally leaning to the "right" while covering the required basic skills on the math, science, technology and testing fronts. So there is  a serious danger to the institution of the public school, that historic institution that some  would argue is the cornerstone of democracy because it is open to all, and exposes all to every sector of the society, in a working relationship that cannot be duplicated in a race to the bottom line, the inevitable goal of all corporations. And also, the capacity to restrict public accountability of the way the dollars (most of them public dollars) are spent, because private corporations are not subject to public auditing requirements as public schools are, means that those corporations can hire "teachers" with fewer qualifications, without union support, and subject them to working conditions that no self-respecting professional teacher would accept in the public education system.
So we can see the confluence of negative influences coming to a perfect storm, in the future viability of the public school system, in the U.S., thereby assuring the political and religious "right" that they will produce future voter-clones for the Republican Party. And, those votes will have been indirectly purchased with  public dollars siphoned from the public treasury and poured into the private corporations that run the schools and design and deliver the curriculum.
And of course, that curriculum will  omit teaching the benefits of the many historically successful and valid public programs in literacy, head start, food stamps, and after-school programs, not to mention the obvious advantage of preserving and growing the melting-pot component of a culture that accepts and values children and families from all backgrounds. So, in effect, these corporations are, with impunity, cutting the resource base of the public schools so that eventually, they will have bought control of the education system in the U.S. while also garnering substantial profits for their shareholders.
In the United States, literally everything is for sale!
And in the geopolitical arena, we now watch Putin raise the price of natural gas going to the Ukraine by some 40%, pleading that Ukraine owes a debt for previous gas, but really targeting that money that was just allocated to Ukraine by the International Monetary Fund, thereby siphoning off dollars committed by IMF members in good faith to Ukraine, in order to line the pockets of the Russian cleptocracy that has already demonstrated its capacity to get rich under the Putin-economics.
"Monkey see, monkey do" is a trite phrase that easily and accurately describes the parallel.
Citizens United, the court case that permitted the Supreme Court in the United States to unleash a mountain of private cash into the political process, merely took a little longer and was a little more complicated than the Putin freeing the gates of the profits of natural resource sales to his inner circle.
There might be some who will be offended by the comparison of the United States with the prevailing pattern in the new Russia, but there are obvious and dangerous parallels.
And what is missing from both systems, although slightly more masked in North America is the participation and influence of an informed, activist and independent electorate.
What we are watching in  both arenas, and in many other venues with different characters and different circumstances, is the death of democracy. It is a mere shadow of what it once was, and what it could become again. The people in power, in both "faux democracies" and in blatant dictatorships, demonstrate disdain for the public needs, the public aspirations and the public good while they serve their own personal self-aggrandizement.
And we are increasingly see that model emulated in the private and professional lives of too many of our citizens, whose public interest is overshadowed by their pursuit of their own private interests.
What used to be called the "public good", something that most could and would agree was essential to the free and open operation of a democracy, is atrophying in the face of an over-wheening amount of cash in the hands of very few, being deployed in the service of the needs of those corporations controlled and owned by those few hands.
And taking back the economy and the governance that sustains this choking of the public institutions, including the libraries, the hospitals, the schools and even the security and military operations (now largely under contract in the U.S. to private contractors who are not accountable for their use of public funds) will be a long and arduous process for which we are not generating a cadre of committed workers, most of them preferring the quick-buck in the most lucrative sectors of the private economy.
And, of course, the restriction of access to the voting booth through newly imposed requirements on voters, (in the name of public security and the prevention of phoney and unproven voter fraud) is just another flank in the all-out militaristic campaign to take control from the ordinary people and put it squarely and permanently in the hands of the new plutocracy...everywhere.
It is not only revolting to watch this melodrama unfold; it makes some of us very angry that we are nearly impotent to stop the cultural and political tsunami of the rich into every corner of our lives, and the lives of our children and grandchildren.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

UN report on global warming and climate change...will we waken to the challenge?

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has attempted, once again, to awaken the world's leaders, and people, to the dangers of global warming and climate change. Some reports indicate that the word "risk" is included 240 times in the report, indicating that the panel which reviews and reports on a multitude of scientific research studies, is "taking the gloves off" in an attempt to  bring all of us to a focused and concentrated series of actions to stem the tide of emissions that are already baked into the global climate system, and to prepare for the conditions that are becoming more imminent....almost as if the planet were becoming "more pregnant"....only this time not with new life but with serious threats to many needed staples for life. Papers, television news reports and even more planned conferences are detailing the report's contents in their unique manner. Here is a small segment from the Los Angeles Times on today's date:
Global warming threatens food and water supplies, security and economic growth, and will worsen many existing problems, including hunger, drought, flooding, wildfires, poverty and war, says the report by hundreds of scientists from 70 countries.
"Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change," panel Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said at a news conference in Yokohama, Japan, where the 2,500-page assessment was presented.
As the Earth warms, snow and ice are melting, rainfall is shifting, heat waves are growing more intense and water supplies are being strained. Plants and animals are moving to cooler areas, and in a few cases, have gone extinct because of climate change, the report says.
Oceans are rising and growing more acidic, hurting marine life and threatening coastal residents with more destructive storms. By century's end, climate change could displace hundreds of millions of people and cause trillions of dollars in damage to the world economy, the scientists say.
One of the panel's most striking new conclusions is that rising temperatures are already depressing crop yields, including those of corn and wheat. In the coming decades, farmers may not be able to grow enough food to meet the demands of the world's growing population, it warns. (By Tony Barbosa, LATimes, March 31, 2014)
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-0401-climate-change-20140401,0,1584240.story#ixzz2xckasqFC
It is no comfort to realize that while some countries have made some progress in stemming the rising tide of carbon emissions, the world has not taken this issue seriously, has not even agreed on the facts, and has continued to pursue a global market economy of capitalism without the requisite regard for how that system has, is and will continue to impact the lives of every living creature, including humans. We have not taken a "stewardship" position on the earth, air, water and land and their relationship to our survival. We have not adopted a sacrificial position in order to provide a healthy world for our grandchildren. We have collectively and almost proudly declined the options that would reverse the trend on emissions, accept the details of this and many other reports and "put our collective house in order".
And yet, there are glimmers of change in technology, and in some food production, that are attempting to turn this threat into a new opportunity. Our question is whether the corporate world that is so steeped in its own processes, even with the more recent restrictions imposed by government, can and will finally see and accept that their own futures are no secure, nor are the futures of their workers, (including their most senior executives, and their descendents), not to mention the future supplies of their processes and their respective impacts on "our" rivers, lakes, oxygen supply and even our food supply.
We have, in the west, preached an ideology of individualism, as if that were the road to personal success, including education and employment. We have almost literally omitted from our indoctrination of our youth the notion of a collective responsibility. "He's not heavy, he's my brother" were the words to a once famous popular song, without the spreading of that perspective into the far reaches of our culture.
And yet, it is still possible that as the awareness of the growing dangers seeps into our individual and our collective consciousness, that we might begin to see our glaring inter-dependence, our-shining examples when our compassion stretched us out of our comfort zone, and when we discovered our better angels, a legacy from which we will have to draw both inspiration and practical approaches if we are to confront our own darkness and accept our own hubris and make the changes that both that confrontation and that acceptance require.
We cannot lie our way out of this dilemma.
Although we will try, we cannot buy or sell our way out of this dilemma either.
We cannot push the details off for another generation or two, and expect them to do our work.
We cannot deny the facts in the water, on the land and in the air that threaten life in so many ways.
We cannot avoid the truth that there is no national interest more pressing than our collective global, planetary interest.
And we cannot discharge even the most basic and meagre responsibility to preserve life and the supports such preservation requires, by sticking our heads in the sand.
The next few months and years will determine whether we have crossed a threshold from which there is no escape, or whether together we will reverse our thirst and thrust for and pursuit of individual success and replace it with a collaborative and sustained effort to take this threat seriously.
This choice is not one that can be left to another generation; it is here re-defining our existence today!