Category: Politics As Usual

‘Saving’ our schools

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

charters

Remember, money “invested” by hedge funders in education “reform” almost doubles its value in tax credits over ten years! So when they start talking about how much they care about the kids, keep that in mind:

Remember how some of us were saying that as soon as the “shock doctrine” of manufactured budget crises put the fork in any hope of reviving Philadelphia’s public schools in any way, that the vulture capitalists would be diving in to pick over the carcass?

Don’t bother, they’re here. In fact, they’re everywhere, they’re everywhere! When we weren’t looking, someone apparently decreed that Monday, Sept. 30, 2013, shall be hereby known as Crush A Teacher Day in the city of Philadelphia.

It only takes $50,000 to participate!

On Monday, wealthy donors interested in the future of public education will gather for a two-day conference at the Union League: “All of the Above: How Donors can Expand a City’s Great Schools.”

Attendance is restricted to those who make $50,000 in charitable donations per year. One might hope, given the apocalyptic state of Philly’s resource-starved public schools, that they are here to plot a campaign to reverse deep state budget cuts — or, at the very least, to cut a check to rehire some laid-off school counselors.

Instead, they will meet with self-described school-reform activists who want to move yet more students out of the same “government schools” they have defunded and into privately-managed charters — and even straight-up private schools. The entirely broke School District of Philadelphia estimates that each student who attends a charter costs it an additional $7,000. That existential fiscal challenge posed by charter expansion will not, it seems, be on the agenda. Nothing about the sector’s rampant corruption and lack of state or local oversight either.

The cast of characters includes some of the usual suspects: Jeremy Nowak, who caught a fever during his brief tenure as head of the William Penn Foundation, and the only way he can scratch it is with more cowbell corporate education reform, and something that calls itself Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust), that is basically funded these days by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates.

Critical thinking skills

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I was saying to a friend this weekend that many people simply can’t understand really complex situations, so they’re rather hear the wrong (but easy to understand) explanation than the accurate one. Because the accurate one makes them feel stupid.

And then last night, another friend said that a lot of human brains didn’t evolve to handle critical thinking skills as the world got more complex.

Which current events would seem to confirm.

Silver lining?

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Dean Baker:

If the dollar is no longer the preeminent reserve currency, then countries will dump much of their dollar holdings, pushing down its value in currency markets.

A lower valued dollar will cause exports to soar and imports to plummet, creating millions of new manufacturing jobs. Millions more jobs would be created in other sectors due to the multiplier effect. This could well bring us back to full employment — a goal we may not otherwise achieve until the next decade.

Does this mean that all good people should be cheering for a debt default? Not quite. First, the financial market fallout will not be pretty. It’s hard to say exactly what would happen because it is uncharted territory. It would be best not to explore this terrain.

However the other reason is that there are no guarantees about the dollar losing its status as the reserve currency. Remember, we’re hearing this from people who couldn’t even see an $8 trillion housing bubble, their knowledge of the economy is not especially reliable. It is entirely possible that we go through the financial crisis associated with a debt default and the dollar still ends up being the world’s preeminent reserve currency. In that case we get the pain but no gain.

So we are probably best off if there is no default. But we should remember; if the dollar loses its status as a reserve currency as a result of default, that’s a good thing.

Colorado flooding and political hypocrisy

~ susie

Rep. Cory Gardner, teabagger and slimeball!

As you may have heard, the impending government shutdown means that Colorado flood relief has been delayed. Or has it? Charlie Pierce:

Gee, that sounds bad. Good thing the local pols are on the case.

Sens. Mark Udall (D) and Michael Bennet (D) and Rep. Cory Gardner (R) introduced legislation on Wednesday to lift a $100 million cap on emergency highway repair. Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) told the Denver Post about 200 miles of Colorado highways were damaged or destroyed in the flooding, and that at least 50 bridges need to be repaired.

Wait. What? Who? Cory Gardner? The Cory Gardner? The guy who only two months ago was such a blithe fellow?

Gardner: I want to do anything and everything I can to stop Obamacare from destroying our health care, from driving up increases in costs. Whether that’s through the continuing resolution, I want to defund everything that we can…

Rosen: There’s a political concern that if the Republicans stand their ground on this [repealing Obamacare], they are going to be blamed for shutting down the government.

Gardner: Well, I think if the government gets shut down, it’s going to be the President’s decision to do so. I believe that we don’t need to shut down the government because we ought to just lift this health-care bill out of the way and let America work.

The guy who a month before that was happy to crash the debt ceiling if that’s what it took because, you know, freeeedooommmm?

Gardner told KFTM’s John Waters Monday that he sees the upcoming extension of the debt ceiling as an “opportunity to reduce the size and scope of government, and how we can require opportunities to look for savings, look for cuts, and what we’re going to do to grow the economy through common sense tax reform. I think there’s great opportunities for us to get back on track.”

But first, gimme the money I need so I can get re-elected.

Let the invisible hand clean off your porch, Cory.

These are not serious people. Not in any way.

‘Worse than Bush’

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

http://youtu.be/W9zT1WG5RKs

Hell, even most bloggers won’t call Obama a liar. It’s as if they think he’s reading them, and they don’t want to hurt his feelings. Fortunately, Sy Hersh doesn’t have such delicate sensitivities:

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn’t take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as “the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist”.

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an “independent” Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. “The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,” he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.

“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],” he declares in an interview with the Guardian.

“It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn’t happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.

He isn’t even sure if the recent revelations about the depth and breadth of surveillance by the National Security Agency will have a lasting effect.

He is certain that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden “changed the whole nature of the debate” about surveillance. Hersh says he and other journalists had written about surveillance, but Snowden was significant because he provided documentary evidence – although he is sceptical about whether the revelations will change the US government’s policy.

Go read the rest. It’s refreshing to hear from a journalist who isn’t maneuvering to get his face on teevee.