Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Cheney Turned Down for Radio Offer

Recently I wrote here at Demockracy.com that former Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed for the deanship of Liberty University but that that institution was arguably too backward even for him.

I have “reported” elsewhere that Cheney screwed up a Halliburton job-interview debacle because he took a Viagra by mistake instead of a Valium and had an orgasm when the woman HR officer shook his hand.

“This was most unfortunate,” the former Vice President told me in an exclusive interview on Funk & Wagnell’s porch, “and I in fact did not get the job, and furthermore it made my pacemaker run amok.”

Later, Cheney attempted to job network with Condi Rice in what essentially turned into a sizzling date. (“You had me at ‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen,’” he told  her.) His pills were still mixed up, however, causing him to take Valium that night instead of the Viagra and fall asleep just as he attempted to kiss her.

“She’d put me to sleep before, playing Mozart on the damned piano, but this was ridiculous,” Cheney said.

It is not well known, but he was next turned down by the KAWG radio station (AWM stands for Angry White Guy) because he never shuts up even for the commercials and besides, the airwaves already have a big fat jerk who wants our President to fail.

In the latest turn of events, he appears to favor Monster.com as both rich in listings and apropos in name. Friends of Cheney, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified a shortlist of job openings on the web site for which he expects to apply:

• FINANCIAL EXPEDITOR. U.S. arms manufacturer operating in Burma, the Congo, Zimbabwe, the Middle East, and East Los Angeles seeks disreputable mediator and agent provocateur with extensive expertise in how to lie, cheat, grease palms, blackmail, waterboard, terminate with extreme prejudice, and otherwise coerce friendly despots into lucrative weapons and construction contracts. Ideal position for cons, ex-cons, neocons, Def-Con 3 personalities, action-hero icons, and Connie Francis. Drop résumé behind loose brick at Soldier of Fortune office building and chalk-mark with an X.

• FOREST FIRE LOOKOUT. Private security company seeks Senior Forest Ranger with the kind of high-level clout that can marshal the massive resources required to divert forest fires and wildfires from expensive homes to middle and lower-income neighborhoods. Minimal weapons skills required include the ability to shoot trespassers in the face with a shotgun. Experience in culling wildlife a definite plus. Shoot your CV to our Monster.com inbox.

• FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY FOR EX-VEEPS! What kind of watch did Mickey Mouse wear? A Spiro Agnew watch!  Are you a self-starter and a sleazy, lying former Number Two? Do you hate nattering nabobs of negativism as much as we do? Despise pusillanimous pussyfoots? If so, you’ve got what it takes! The sky’s the limit in this North American sales management position in charge of revitalizing the Dirty Time Company, former manufacturer of Spiro Agnew watches. We have now reinvented ourselves, and it goes without saying that we have outsourced our wristwatch factory to China—where virtual slave labor combined with cheap lead-based coating guarantee LIMITLESS $$$$ COMMISSIONS for our chief sales executive. If you are executive sales material, soon even Batman will be wearing a Spiro Agnew watch. Next…all of America…then France…who knows? IT’S UP TO YOU!! If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the watch.

• THE SULTAN OF BRUNEI requires a Court Buffoon for His amusement. White House experience preferred. Free housing and harem of abducted Caucasian women provided. Two-month probation period to demonstrate you can make His Highness laugh—or else. Apply to His Fragrant Worshipfulness, P.O. Box 1, Brunei Darussalam.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? A Free Choice? Making the Case for American Workers

Over the past week, there has been substantial media coverage of the public rancor over A.I.G. bonuses, the Obama administration’s ballooning deficit spending, and Timothy Geithner’s plan to buy up toxic debt. And while Washington’s economic policies certainly deserve to be on everyone’s minds, there is another issue that could affect millions of workers that is getting far less play in the news but definitely a lot of heated debate among union leaders, corporations, and Congress—“card-check” voting.

Its official name is the Employee Free Choice Act and it would amend the National Labor Act of 1935 to essentially make union organization much easier for workers. The legislation would allow workers to form a union if a majority signs pro-union cards and would forgo the current practice of secret ballot elections. Other provisions would impose binding arbitration when employers and unions fail to reach a contract after 120 days and would substantially increase fines on employers who jeopardize union activities.

Proponents of the plan are many Democrats and large unions (including AFL-CIO and SEIU) who say that the current restrictions for unions put their members’ rights at a disadvantage. Many advocates for the change in the law, such as the union coalition Change to Win, say that private voting encourages intimidation and coercion of companies’ employees who wish to unionize. The act would also encourage a speedier and more thorough process in contract disputes and would triple the damages imposed against companies who do not adhere to union standards.

There are many opponents of this measure—both corporate and political—who view this legislation as an ends-to-justify the means type of regulation. The Chamber of Commerce has been very outspoken in its disapproval of the Act and notes that it could disenfranchise both parties (employers and workers) in the long run.  Under the proposed new rules, union organizers would be under no obligation to notify their employers that they are going to launch a union drive.  In addition, the “card check” policy would abolish secret-ballot elections even if many workers wish to have them. Also, in the instance that the companies and the newly formed unions fail to reach an agreement within a limited time frame, a federal government arbitrator must step in to mediate the contract so that a deal is reached—even if the outcome is not ideal for either party.

On Tuesday, Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) said he would oppose the union “card-check” measure and, without his support, the legislation would likely fail in the Senate. Noting that he may very well be the “deciding vote,” Specter, who was the only Republican to vote for cloture in the previous Congress, says he is against the Act because it “will result in further job losses.” Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Costco, and several other large corporations agree. (It should be noted that Specter faces a stiff primary challenge from his right flank in 2010.) Whole Foods CEO John Mackey told the Washington Post on Sunday that the binding arbitration clause is “not the way we normally do things in the United States” and that allowing workers to organize without a secret ballot “violates a bedrock principle of American democracy.”

While corporations certainly are justified to feel threatened by this Act, ultimately, the workers are the ones who should receive some long overdue benefits. While Specter may consider the legislation a possible hindrance to labor and Mackey even deems it un-American, the rebuttal should be what is more beneficial to the labor movement than empowering workers and what is more American than appealing to the government for the rights of its citizens? According to Change to Win, low-wage workers only earn 83 cents on the dollar of what they were earning 35 years ago. What’s more is that Pennsylvania State University’s Poverty in America Project concludes that “in 2003, almost 25% of the nation’s counties had low per-capita incomes below one half the national average or less, high unemployment, low labor force participation rates, and a high dependency on government transfer payments-all measures of economic distress.” Most of these counties are located in areas with a relatively low levels of union penetration, such as the Deep South.

According to MSNBC, the vote on the EFCA might get pushed back to 2011 and  the Obama administration will be “quietly” happy since they support it but don’t really have the energy to fight for it at the moment. However, if this bill does come to vote and fails in the Senate, then compromised legislation will undoubtedly be pushed through that could do more harm than good for both employers and employees. To avoid that from happening, corporations worried about the Employee Free Choice Act should reach out to their employees and hold forums where both parties can speak their minds and try to understand each other’s positions. One of the reasons this issue has become a Congressional matter is because many large companies have at times failed to look out for the interests of their workers and put fiscal profits ahead of human capital. If these large corporations truly want to temper these regulations, then they must have an open dialogue with their employees and offer some solutions such as health care, transportation vouchers, child care benefits, higher wages, organizational tranparency, and more employee input into the decision-making processes of the organization. The only way to curb workers’ desire to unionize is to provide similar financial and non-financial benefits under a corporate business model. And, with low-wage workers who are unionized ultimately earning an average of 44% more than their non-union counterparts, even in these hard economic times it going to be a hard bargain to sell non-represented workers anything short of that improvement.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? The Evolution of Demockracy

As our loyal readers have undoubtedly noticed, Demockracy has a new and improved design. However, there’s more than meets the eye. While this new design is the most obvious of recent upgrades, it is only one of our ongoing efforts to constantly improve the site based on feedback from our writers and loyal readers. Some of the changes in recent months include defining our mission and vision and focusing on more in-depth content, adding a commentary section to display regular columns and other political commentary, bringing on an art editor who contributes a weekly political cartoon to the main page, moving toward a regular cycle of publishing featured articles and most commentaries at the beginning of each week, initiating our first podcast, and a starting a new satire column.

The most recent changes have included an initial redesign of the site to incorporate more of a magazine feel. Within this new and improved design, we have incorporated more ways for writers and users to interact with the site through our new “connect with Demockracy” feature. This feature includes a link to our own Facebook group, a Twitter feed, a direct link to submit original material to the site and contact one of our editors, and  a more seamless way to connect to our RSS feed and email list to help keep our loyal readers up to date on all new Demockracy content.

As we move forward, we plan to implement more improvements to the site. Some of these ideas include:

• Interviews with Policymakers
• Monthly Podcasts
• Original Video and Photography (ideally satire)
• New Columns

We would love any feedback from writers and readers. Among other things, we’d like to know:

• What do you like?
• What other features should we add?
• How should we best leverage Web 2.0 tools (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to make the site more interactive?
• What type of content would you like to see more of?

Every suggestion will be considered seriously as we move forward. Because of our non-profit model, it is paramount that all change be organic and incorporate feedback from everyone who enjoys the site. We are thus committed to rapid cycle improvement and a process of plan, test, evaluate, and, when deemed worthwhile, implement.

Please leave your thoughts below and/or send a personal note to our editors.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Scapegoats, Red Herrings, and Zombie Banks

The last 10 days has been anything but roses for the Obama administration. While the AIG bonuses are largely irrelevant in the whole scheme of things, they are a symptom of a potential larger problem facing this administration.

The AIG Distraction–How does it play in Connecticut?

When news first broke about the shenanigans at AIG that were allowable because of bonus restrictions being stripped from the bailout bill, the White House pointed a finger at already embattled Connecticut Senator, and member of the Countrywide VIP Club, Chris Dodd.  Because Chris Dodd, like Chuck Schumer and most of the congressional delegations of New York and Connecticut, is easily influenced by the Wall Street hacks, Dodd was an easy scapegoat.  To Dodd’s much maligned credit (pardon the pun), he and others would be hard pressed to be anything other than such friends of Wall Street when such a large percentage of their constituents are so reliant on Wall Street for their bread and caviar.

However unscrupulous Dodd may or may not be, there was a little fact about this story that the Obama administration apparently forgot to mention. It was their men, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, who had lobbied Dodd to strip the bonus restrictions in the first place. Senator Dodd, of course, was quick to point this out. While Geithner, Summers, and team have had barely two months to formulate a response, their ineptness to even get out of the batter’s box lately makes one wonder if Obama may have sacrificed the wrong lamb when it came to tax issues. It sure seems now that Timothy Geithner may have been a better fall guy.

What’s the Dilemma Guys?

When AIG isn’t being blamed for all of our current troubles, it’s the lobbyists. The Obama administration’s response to this situation seems to be an insistence on having it both ways. They claim the “change” mantle and a new way of doing things in Washington, but yet at the same time, they are finding that it is virtually impossible to field a competent staff to address the unparalleled challenges facing our country without hiring at least some experts who have spent some time lobbying. Virtually all of those who have had previous government experience have spent at least some time in some lobbying function. “The rotating door” is alive and well and will take decades to remedy. While efforts at stopping this trend in the long run are noble ideas, suddenly stopping this trend to hire those without any type of lobbying experience means that you de facto are eliminating most of those who have any previous top-level government experience. Of course, new blood is surely needed, but to staff the entire upper strata of government with neophytes in this current environment makes little sense. Therefore, while lobbyists may be good bogeymen to go with the AIG executives, they seem to be the least of our worries. The bigger issue seems to be an utter lack of political will on behalf of the Obama administration and many in the United States Congress.

Socialists and Communists, Oh No!

Just as no Democrat could go to China during the Cold War (Dick Nixon of course could), it seems that no Democrat can muster up the political will to do what is right–temporarily nationalize several of the larger banks. This is something that has been called for by many liberal (in the economic, free market sense) economists and publications such as The Economist. This is anything but a fringe idea.

Instead, Tim Geithner announced today that the government will form “public-private partnerships” to help out the banks. The problem with this approach is is that many economists seem to doubt that the private sector will in fact buy much of these assets.  In fact, the plan basically entails the government subsidizing private investors to buy bad assets. If the assets are in fact undervalued (as Geithner is betting the farm on), then the private investors will make it rich off of Uncle Sam’s dime.  (Of course, this would also likely mean the economy would likely start rolling again and millions of jobs may reappear–presto!) However, if the assets are not really undervalued, as Paul Krugman speculates, then these private investors will simply walk away from the losses. It seems to be more of the same–the public bearing the risk with investors reaping most of the benefits. It certainly sounds good for Wall Street–the Dow was up 500 points today!

To Geithner’s credit, he also mentioned today that there must be new regulations put in place that stop the same moral hazards that got us into this mess in the first place. The problem is that these regulations seem to be something to eventually get around to in the future. In the meantime, more of our tax dollars are going to prop up zombie banks, without much control over where the money goes. In other words, the same people who got us into this mess are still running the same companies under the same set of rules that existed for the last decade. Plus, we’re giving them more money to boot! Does anyone see a problem with this?

Is it possible that the Obama administration cannot possibly do what is economically necessary because of a fear of being called socialists? For God’s sake, they were called socialists during the entire election season and still won in a landslide. If anything, this was a landslide of socialism. You might as well own it if it what is necessary for national economic recovery. As a free marketer and University of Chicago grad, I, of course, am not a big fan of long-term government interruption of the markets. However, I also am not a fan of zombie banks being propped up by the government. The best economic (although apparently not political) solution seems to be obvious. These banks need to be temporarily taken over, divvied up, sacked of most management, and sold off once solvent again. If this is not done, we risk the chance of a lost decade similar to what Japan faced in the 1990s. Temporary nationalization sure beats a decade of no growth.

But instead, the Obama administration, lead by friends of Wall Street within the administration and Congress, apparently plan to do what’s best for the executives and what seems to be politically palatable. However, like it or not, if the economy fails to rebound in a few years, the Obama administration will be blamed for it. It’s as simple as this. They must do what’s necessary to turn around the economy, no matter what labels it may lead to. They must be bold. They must be independent. They must shed away fears of socialism and embrace what’s right. Because, in fact, showing that companies that fail will not be allowed to survive is anything but socialism. It is the true nature of the free market. Without such consequences, we encourage moral hazard and the adverse behavior that have plagued our markets in recent years. Those who make bad decisions must be held accountable for their actions. Those who fail must be allowed to fail so that there is room for the new best ideas to flourish. Every so often it is necessary to flush out the waste to achieve new growth. Sometimes government is the only entity with the buying power to successfully flush out this waste while avoiding complete economic collapse.

It is not the ideal situation. But it is the best worst option in these worst of times. It is about time the Obama administration be honest with the American people and do what’s right for everyone, not just for those in Manhattan and Connecticut. It’s time for the best economic solution for the future of our country, even if it’s not the best short-term political decision. This is what real leadership would entail. This is what real change would look like.

Springtime for the Taliban: Afghanistan Needs a New Model

Perhaps the biggest disappointment to come out of eight years of American intervention in Afghanistan is the apparent inability of the Afghans themselves to decide what they want to be when they grow up.  Sure, that sounds like an average dose of lip service in this climate unless you consider the UN definition of “a failed state.” Afghanistan currently ranks seventh on the Failed State Index (FSI), a sort of Unfortunate 500 for dysfunctional nations. Somalia and its happy band of pirates is number one. For the purpose of perspective – out of a total of 177 UN recognized countries.

Previous US administrations somehow came upon the idea that the American model of a democratically elected government in a highly secular and tribal chunk of real estate was just the thing “to bring peace and stability to the region.”  Where have we heard this wistful speech before?  Probably somewhere between “winning the hearts and minds,” and if all else fails we’ll carpet bomb the daylights out of them until they come to their senses.  How does a country with a little more than 250 years of civility conclude that one system fits all, that it is the right system, or if it is even that useful of a system?  More importantly, is it exportable?

The US has spent more time in Afghanistan than was invested in all of World War II and Korea combined. To date, the Afghan government has made little progress toward establishing anything close to a stable government.  The country continues along the same path of sectional violence, the US led coalition now morphed into the role of neighborhood cop.  A great unifying tactic if it wasn’t for the body count.  The State Department meanwhile pushes the importance of elections and parliamentary process, which totally ignores the traditional power structures of Afghan society; those that encompass family ties, community obligation, and whichever interpretation of Islam that gets practiced in the neighborhood.   All eyes are told to look to the West.  Perhaps a better answer lies much closer to home:

Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future.

–Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 1920.

Kemal (Ataturk was added later – something like ‘Father of the Turks’) had just made a pretty remarkable set of announcements.  They included:

• The end of the Ottoman Empire.  Well, it was almost dead before World War I anyway.
• The abolishment of the Caliphate.  (Political authority under Islam.)
• The formation of the secular Republic of Turkey.
• The unacceptable state surrounding British occupation.

And the need for the Armenians in the east and the Greeks in the west to relocate elsewhere. There was no place for Orthodox Christianity in the new Republic.

About the Man

Mustafa Kemal was born in Salonika (now part of Greece) in 1881.  Most of his early history has been revised so often that most versions lack credibility. Raised in the Muslim faith, a product of military schools, he later served with great distinction as a Lt. Colonel and division commander at the battle of Gallipoli, orchestrating one of the greater defeats the allied forces suffered in the First World War.  A great fan of the West and particularly The Enlightenment (having been assigned to Paris and the Balkans at varying points), he also fully embraced the potential power of the media, using newspapers (often his own creations) extensively in his nationalist pursuits.  Above all, he believed that the only way to save Turkey from complete partition by the allied powers was to establish a modern, secular republic.  In his words, “Islam and civilization are a contradiction in terms.”

The Background

Things were going badly on the western front for the British and French in World War I.  Russia was taken out by both the Nationalist and Bolshevik revolutions.  Britain’s attack at Gallipoli, (Australian and New Zealand forces, ANZAC) was aimed at knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the war.  Instead it turned into a rout.  Britain then tried to turn the Arabs (with T.E. Lawrence’s deft assistance) against the Turks, promising them an Arab state for their trouble.  Naturally that was a lie, the one apparent constant in British colonial policy.  The Allies won the war, the Ottoman Empire was partitioned by the Treaty of Sevres creating what today are known as Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and of course, Iraq.  The Sultan was left in Istanbul as a British puppet and Kemal fled to Ankara with plans to turn Anatolia into his new republic. He was able to deceive the British and the Arab world just long enough to consolidate his forces in Anatolia, a process pushed along by his creation of opposing media outlets.  The Arab world believed he was fighting to preserve the Sultan and the Caliphate, the British assumed that his services were already on the colonial payroll.  By the time the British realized his intentions, they were already outgunned, out-manned and out maneuvered. In 1923, they signed the Treaty of Lausanne ending hostilities.  The Republic of Turkey was born.

Much of the internal struggle dividing Islam and adding fuel to sectarian violence seems to surround the Caliphate, which is best described as both a person and a thing. One of the chief splits in Islam, the chasm separating Sunni and Shi’a communities is based on the interpretation of Muhammad’s successor as sole authority on Islamic law. Each side accuses the other of being usurpers in a centuries long dispute over who has the right to read the mind of a dead prophet.  Many political and social issues in Islam today fail to achieve any real clarity while the two camps continue to hold on to conflicting interpretations of religious doctrine.  This is further complicated (or exasperated) by the very notion of Islamic Law, a shadowy domain where the words of the prophet Mohammad somehow hold credence with something as innocuous as the local traffic code. By all accounts it is an archaic system, one reminiscent of The Inquisition, but accepted in many quarters of the Muslim world.  Judging its validity is not the point, accepting its existence is, for the idea of belief is not validated by the structural framework of a society, though it is that very framework that accelerates the rift.  Kemal argued that Islamic Law was part of the “nomadic Bedouin custom,” totally unsuitable in the development of a complex, modern society.  That is difficult to argue against given the global interaction of nations today.  Countries like Egypt and Israel have both found it necessary to operate parallel courts to accommodate issues of marriage and personal conduct, but not civil law.  Religious law as the fundamental tenet of a nation is little more than locking the door and keeping the key.  All social, educational, and political exchange stops. No common ground is allowed to exist on this dogmatic, unilateral dead-end street.  America was founded on the premise of religious persecution elsewhere, that in turn, sanctioned by the state.  The road to modernity through democratic ideals couldn’t traverse the murky ground of theological interpretation. Noted historians, Will and Ariel Durant once stated that “the Bible is a great book, a great tale, but if you had to live by it, you’d go crazy.” Then again, modernity may be our point, not the point.

Constantinople (Istanbul) had been the official seat of the Caliphate since about 1514.  The last recognized Caliph was Abd al Majid II who with his family was exiled to Paris following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey.  Kemal found this action necessary in order to create an Islamic republic based on civil law, not theology.  This was naturally viewed as an extreme form of heresy, particularly in the Sunni Arab world, complicated further by the establishment of language laws that reverted Arabic to second class status in both government and religious proceedings, though some laws were moderated later. In itself, this was an offshoot of his policies on nationalization, but it also played into his desire to create a literate, inclusive society.  Again, in opposition to fundamentalism which he saw as “a way of promoting intellectual stagnation” by authorizing religion to define social progress, including the very function of government itself.  Oddly, the Caliphate seemed to end there.  Saudi Arabia did not attempt to re-establish it at Mecca, undoubtedly since it would threaten their position as an absolute monarchy, and it was only briefly claimed by the Taliban following the Soviet departure from Afghanistan.

Kemal was brilliant in many ways, but he was no saint.  His orchestration of the Armenian exodus was as brutal as any forced deportation.  He stacked the military with believers in his own cause and seemed more than willing to arbitrate disputes at the gallows.  Within Turkey he was seen as both savior and despot; in the fundamentalist world, a Doenmeh (a closet Jew), an alcoholic, a homosexual, a womanizer and a heretic – personal attacks that continue long after his death.  The real truth is as clouded as the newspapers Kemal himself used to create.  Yet today, Turkey remains a somewhat stable republic in the middle of one of the most volatile regions on earth.  Not perfect, but functional.

Lessons for Afghanistan

The opportunity for a more progressive society in Afghanistan was probably lost shortly after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. In the vacuum that followed, the same Mujahedeen we once funded became the Taliban we now hunt.  Instead of rebuilding schools and infrastructure, promoting education and a sense of inclusion, we simply walked away, leaving the task largely to under-funded NGO’s and a lot of wishful thinking. The Taliban, falsely claiming the right to the Caliphate sought to force an Islamic state on the people of Afghanistan as an alternative to both communist autocracy and western indifference – two models of what they saw as a similar dysfunction.  The United States supplied much of the fodder for the Taliban position by reinforcing beliefs that Islam alone would see to the needs of the Afghan people, faith having been the sole unifying factor over ten years of Soviet occupation.  Education should have been the tool of choice to defeat a return to fundamentalism, not merely the establishment of a western leaning central government, manufactured primarily as a base for US influence in the region. No one seemed interested in the greater investment in literacy, the real slayer of despotism, secular or political, and the one indispensable ingredient in democracy. Afghanistan claims a 28% literacy rate among men, women an even more dismal 12%; Turkey, 87% overall.  The Taliban know this and they fear a literate populous far more than anything our armories can ever produce.  But we can’t export a system if nobody can understand the instructions.

Turkey’s example may be a harsh one by American standards, but it allowed the time necessary to go from a shooting war to the process of nation building in a realistic time frame. That element of time is probably what has always hampered American foreign policy, the impatience inherent in the very system we seek to sell.  Any parent will tell you that it takes twenty years or so to educate and develop a child into an adult.  Americans tire of foreign intrigue as quickly as they tire of presidents.  This lack of continuity is not only a result of the fickle nature of American politics in general, but the bad decisions orchestrated by a system in constant flux.  We don’t even bother to apologize since the person that set the policy is never around to finish it anyway.  When Kemal died in 1938 from chronic liver disease, he left behind a far more literate society than he inherited.  Right or wrong in his methodology, he did bequeath them the tools necessary for choice, the one thing the fundamentalist camp can never accept.

The question for Americans is whether we can endure a long-haul assignment, one that begins with security and ends with an informed society, one that just might decide that our model isn’t their model.  That’s the risk of intervention.  If US policy is confined to simply destroying the Taliban, then we’ve already lost this one.  If something else is on the table, this would be a pretty good time for a new President and a revamped State Department to explain just what that might be.

Putting the ‘I’ in AIG Contractual Obligations

AIG is letting us know that our bailout cash is apparently going to be used to pay bonuses. Democrats are up in arms trying to shift the attention away from themselves. What did they think was going to happen when they gave money to a company that was mismanaging its money to the point of going bust?

AIG’s excuse is that the bonuses are contractual. That makes sense if it is business as usual. However, when you receive bailout money, legal obligations should be renegotiated.

I blame this squarely on the government for thinking they had to bail all these companies out without making sure that the money was going to be put to good use. Where are the taxpayers’ contractual obligations?

Black Students in California: Asking the Big Questions

Many years of substitute teaching in two states, all grade levels, and more subjects than I can easily remember have left me with two dominant impressions. The first is of the difficulties black students face in the educational system. The second is of just how difficult it is to discuss their difficulties.  So when the California Board of Education created an “African American Advisory Committee” to tackle the question of why black students are not performing as well as others, I was pleased to see it take on perhaps the most vexing topic in education today, although not overly optimistic as to the progress it might make.

The new committee’s problems started before it even came into being, as an outside critic decried the implicit suggestion that this was a “black problem” and a Board member, former University of California regent Ward Connerly, criticized a “segregated approach to educating black kids” that was “goofy to be doing this at this point in American history.”  But still, even that noted affirmative action opponent felt obliged to concede that “we do have a problem” and support the motion which ultimately passed unanimously.

One obvious ground for pessimism about the committee’s prospects is the relative failure of past efforts. The ink wasn’t dry on the paperwork before people were talking about an infamous past attempt to grapple with the issue – the Oakland school district’s 1996 plan to garner the same assistance for its black students already available to foreign language-speaking students by declaring that African-Americans also spoke a separate language, which it called “Ebonics.”  While that fiasco is not likely to be repeated, a San Francisco Examiner story published shortly after the committee’s establishment serves as a reminder of other potential blind alleys still out there.

The Examiner reported that while blacks constituted but 12.5 percent of students in San Francisco’s public schools, “half the students who face disciplinary action belong to this ethnic group,” a phenomenon some School Board members attributed to “cultural incompetence” and “racial discrimination” on the part of school staff.  This issue has a history in the city.  In the past, some have called for school disciplinary measures to be applied equally across racial lines; in other words, the percentage of suspensions or expulsions should be the same for each racial/ethnic group.  No such drastic proposals emerged this time, though.  Instead one organizer suggested the “need to make their curriculum more engaging for students whose out-of-school reality involves poverty, violence and family crises” and a consultant to the superintendent reportedly thought “students simply need a challenge” and spoke of schools failing to give “them academic rigor.”

While you can hardly fault anyone for opposing racism or supporting academic rigor, these comments from individuals who probably have not spent much time in classrooms in recent years displayed book learning but little understanding of the nature of the difficulties today’s African-American students actually encounter.  Certainly San Francisco’s teachers’ union president Dennis Kelly was having none of it, arguing  that “to the degree that it’s racism, I think it’s subconscious racism.”  And given that 84 percent of the city’s voters recently supported an African-American for president and the city’s teachers are probably as liberal as the electorate as a whole, this seems a reasonable assertion.

But Kelly went further, suggesting that in actuality “some teachers avoid disciplining black or Hispanic students for fear that they would be accused of prejudice.”  And while these remarks would surely be deemed impolitic in some circles, statistics readily at hand suggest that not only does the reported discipline inequality in San Francisco’s schools reflect something larger going outside of school walls, but in fact it’s actually significantly worse out there: while blacks make up but 7 percent of the city’s total population, the Examiner reported that “60 percent of San Francisco Juvenile Hall inmates were black, according to the Juvenile Probation Department.”  (Nor is this a local problem.  While a remarkably high – by world standards – ratio of one of every 31 adult Americans is in prison, or on parole or probation, for African-Americans, the ratio is one in 11.)

Given the extreme sensitivity of the topic, let me make myself as clear as possible.  My point in raising these statistics is not to suggest that today’s black students have brought their problems on themselves but to suggest that they run much deeper than proposed solutions like greater “cultural competence” or a more “engaging curriculum” can reach.  Nor do I mean to imply that the history of racism in America is irrelevant.  Not only is it relevant, so is the history of American slavery, even though no one living today has ever experienced it.  But as Robert  Moses, a leader of the southern voting rights struggle of the 1960’s, put it in his 2001 book, Radical Equations: Math Literacy and Civil Rights, “what young people are up against today is less clear than the raw racism of segregation laws and the Ku Klux Klan.”  And the solutions are correspondingly more difficult to formulate and enact.

And as far as being out of touch with the realities of today’s schools, there’s no disgrace in that; it can happen to anyone.  Civil rights veteran Charles E. Cobb confessed that when Moses approached him to co-author Radical Equations with him, “I had not been involved with public schools for years and while visiting them … it seemed as if I had traveled to another world,” as he watched a mother attack a Chicago teacher in a hallway, and talked to one kid as “another kid walked up behind him and hit him in the head with a brick or something.”  But useful proposals are not likely to come from people who are out of touch.  If we were to mandate that the same percentage of “A”s and “F”s be given to each racial group, we obviously would have done nothing to eliminate any actual educational gaps, but some of the solutions floating around these days have about that much depth.

So if we’re serious about finding a solution to the problem, we probably shouldn’t just nod along when someone raises the racism of the teaching staff or the cultural irrelevance of the curriculum as prime barriers to Black students education in 2009, any more than we would if someone advanced the idea that if they’d just stop listening to gangsta rap they’d be on their way to academic success.  Anyone who’s seen the television series The Wire and considered its portrayal remotely realistic surely has a visual take on the statistics.  And if you want one in print, there’s Los Angeles Times reporter Miles Corwin’s And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City High School Students.  The 2001 book provides a memorable and chilling view of the extraordinary challenges confronting black students even in one of the few all-minority “gifted” public high school programs in the country.  The best friend of one of the book’s students was killed in 9th grade.  Another, who discovered the body of her murdered brother when she was nine, drops out after having a baby.  A third left home at 13 after her mother cracked a broom handle across her back. A fourth has been sexually abused by her step-father.  And there’s more – and these are the kids who succeeded!

And even for many of those whose parents manage to get them into suburban schools, the problems will not necessarily end at the city line.  The late John Ogbu, a Nigerian-born U.C. Berkeley Anthropology Professor, wrote his 2003 Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement as a result of a request to assess the reasons that the Grade Point Average of black public high school students in Shaker Heights, a relatively affluent Cleveland suburb with a school system considered one of the best in Ohio, lagged more than a full point (out of a possible four) behind that of white students.

Ogbu recognized that Shaker Heights blacks, whose wealth and income was higher than the average Ohio black family, was still was significantly lower than that of their white neighbors, but he felt that while this could explain a great deal of the grade gap, it did not explain it all.  So he turned to social characteristics, or “community forces,” as he describes them — “the ways minorities interpret and respond to schooling” to look for explanations, while making “no assumption that community forces are the only cause of, or play the most important role in, the academic gap.”  In taking that approach, not even his African birth would immunize him from criticisms of blaming the victim.

Over the course of thirty five years studying the public school education of minorities in the US, Ogbu had become persuaded of the importance of the distinction between “voluntary” and “involuntary” minorities within American society.  Voluntary minorities are immigrants who arrive in this country in search of a better life.  Involuntary minorities include Blacks brought here as slaves, Native Americans whose continent was taken from them, and Mexicans living in areas subsumed by the United States.  When the nineteenth century European ancestors of some Americans were arriving to seek the American Dream, the ancestors of today’s African-Americans were living the American nightmare of slavery and their descendants would live through another century of segregation.

Ogbu was not surprised, then, to discover a fundamental ambiguity in the attitudes of the parents he was studying who often struggled to get their kids into the school system, yet fundamentally still did not trust it.  He frequently found their belief in the value of education only “abstract,” because “many generations of a lack of connection between school success and success in adult life probably resulted in skepticism about the real value of schooling.”  As a student put it, “there were laws simply to oppress Black people” so “Black people came to believe that it was always good, you know, if you could find some way, just somethin’ small, you know, just to annoy society.”  Kids would tell him that doing well in school would be “acting white,” a phenomenon Ogbu had previously encountered in studies of sectors of the British working class.

And, of course, education theory being a field with a higher quotient of hooey than most any other, he ran up against notions like one scholar’s critique of the “protocols of attentiveness found in Eurocentric teaching styles,” leading him to mutter about theoreticians of a black culture in which “students are not expected to pay attention during class!”

Although critics who ought to know better have characterized him as conservative, Ogbu’s theories are actually considerably more radical and thoroughgoing than those who claim to treat the educational and social situation of African-Americans as a social phenomenon yet tend to look for individual culprits close at hand, such as teachers with low expectations or racist administrators.  After all, what does Ogbu’s concept of “involuntary minorities” lead us to when considering the case of contemporary black students’ difficulties but a recognition of the continuing importance of the manner in which their forbears arrived in this country, in other words the ongoing relevance of nineteenth century slavery to daily life in twenty-first century America.

Obviously, the California Board of Education’s new committee has its work cut out for it.  From personal experience I know all too well that the mere mention of some of the topics I’ve discussed here can set some people’s eyes to rolling, as can proposals of the level of effort needed to properly deal with the problem.  For instance, if I suggest that I’ve been in first and second grade classes where a five or six-to-one adult-to-student ratio is probably needed to keep all of the kids in the action, the immediate response is likely to be that something like that is not within the realm of possibility, so it’s simply not to the point to talk about it.   (And, by the way, I’m not talking teacher-to-student ratio; the adults might also be student teachers, aides, or even parents or other volunteers.)   Yet my contention is no more or less true whether or not there’s any likelihood of such a ratio being effected.  And the fact that a full employment economy and true universal health care may not appear to be on the horizon does not change the fact that policies of this magnitude are what are needed to adequately improve the life situations of many black students whose academic travails are under consideration.  They do, after all, spend most of their lives outside the classroom dependent upon the fortunes of the adults around them.  And the size of the problem cannot be whittled down simply to match the size of the cure deemed politically possible.

And, since this committee is convening in California, let’s note that as recently as Sept. 2000, Governor Gray Davis signed the UC Slavery Colloquium Bill, which promotes research and publicity on University of California campuses on the topic of reparations for slavery.  So while they may be about as remote a possibility as a program for a true full employment economy, the consideration of a program to direct adequate additional educational resources toward all of slavery’s descendants would hardly be off the point.  Because, although it may be all that we’re likely to get, a couple of more sensitivity training courses sure aren’t going to do the trick.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Trust No Republican, Agent Mulder

Knock, knock. “Mulder, you there?”

“No one here but the FBI’s most unwanted.”

“OK, I see you hunkering down there. What is it this time? Flying nuns? Extraterrestrial recipes for luscious layer cakes?”

“Stop. You’re making me horny and hungry. But is it an X File, you’re wondering. I’ll let you judge for yourself, Scully. The truth is out there. Take a peek through those unbelieving glasses of yours.”

“Hmm. OK. So you’re investigating Rush Limbaugh. For what—babbling acrimoniously without a license?”

“He may be speaking in tongues, Scully. No, laugh if you will, but I did some cross-checking with an old X File. See? One of the great Unsolved Histories is the story of the ancient Mayans and why they essentially disappeared around 900 AD. In Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto the collapse of the ancient Mayan world is a metaphor for the chaos of the present day, our world of impending ecological and moral disaster.”

“So? What’s that got to do with Skinner’s shiny scalp? Mulder, your unending search for the truth has become a dangerous obsession that has hurled you into a dark occult world of your own making, alienated you from the Bureau, and forced me to constantly sound like the ‘No’ queen of the GOP. I see the parallel, but, yes, why is it an X File?”

“I guess I would say ‘why are you the nattering nabob of negativism?’ My point is, the Death figure to the Mayans has returned to visit us in the here and now, Scully. It’s right here in the file, and we never saw the connection. The ancient Mayans were thought to have slowly gone deaf and unable to function when for some unknown reason the surrounding jungles became infested with howler monkeys. But it wasn’t howler monkeys, and they didn’t go deaf—not exactly, anyway. It was what the Mayans called Ouagadahagghh Limbagghhh which, loosely translated, means ‘big fat jerk.’ The legendary jungle monster, Scully, the boogieman of the Guatemalan rain forest. According to legend, the creature frightened many to death with its loathsome appearance. The rest it assaulted with relentless, deranged hate speech until the victims committed suicide. Here. Look at this drawing of the thing.”

“Oh, my God!”

“See the family resemblance?”

“Mulder, it looks exactly like Rush Limbaugh. It can’t be.”

“It’s him, Scully. The monster is back. The evil is returned.”

“I can’t accept that, Mulder. It flies in the face of all my—oh, my God!”

“What is it you see?”

“The page of his quotes. He is evil incarnate. Listen to this: ‘Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.’”

“There’s more, Scully—a lot more. ‘You commit a crime, you’re guilty.’”

“I’m not sure whether that one is evil or just criminally stupid. Let’s see what else. ‘Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the twentieth century.’”

“Ugh.”

“And this one: ‘He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act…this is really shameless of Michael J. Fox.’”

“God, I feel sick. Here’s what he said about Abu Ghraib, Scully. It’s my personal favorite. ‘I’m talking about people having a good time, these people—have you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow some steam off?’”

“Mulder, we have to stop this entity before it destroys us all. [Sniff] Do you smell smoke?… Cigarette-smoking man! Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”

[puff-puff] “Now, now, is that any way to greet your savior? Come now, Agent Mulder, [puff] don’t look so disgusted. I didn’t come here to spoil your little party. I came here to warn you.”

“Get on with it before we all choke, you lizard-skinned chimney.”

[Pause] “Very well. [puff]. For many years now the members of our secret group have attempted in coordination with the aliens to produce a viable human-alien hybrid [puff puff]. As you know, we failed with you, Agent Mulder. Nevertheless, we need to keep you around. Enough distractions have hindered our efforts to the extent that making a martyr out of you could potentially become disastrous. [puff] Anyway…we recently discovered that a renegade and highly dangerous alien hybrid was produced many centuries ago, unbeknownst to us. I am instructed to inform you that the renegade hybrid is Rush Limbaugh. You must let us deal with him in due course. Please do not approach this entity.”

“Why not?”

“It knows who you are, Agent Mulder, and it wants you to fail. [puff puff] It wants you to fail, it wants the truth to fail, and it has many sinister friends. Friends in the GOP [puff] who make my associates and me look like boy scouts.”

“That I find hard to believe.”

“Trust me this one time. Stay clear for the time being. And trust no Republican, Agent Mulder.”

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? The Invisible Homeless

Last Sunday three thousand people packed the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. A concert? A high profile speaker? A trade show? None of the above. Instead, it was a group of Tri-state residents eager to capitalize on the increasingly dismal housing market. Packing the convention center, they placed bids on foreclosed homes at prices 70 percent below their former values.

What made this auction so remarkable wasn’t the turnout, but who turned out. While these auctions have typically attracted house flippers, real estate investors, and the occasional curious buyer, this time it brought in a new demographic—the protester. With New York state home foreclosures up 64% in January from the previous month, buyers looking for affordable housing for themselves had to withstand the objections of recently evicted homeowners. “Evictions are a crime! It could be your house next!” they chanted as the auctioneers sold over a thousand properties, one by one.

With 1 in every 54 homes currently being foreclosed on in the U.S. (2008’s statistics are up 225% from 2006’s), there are certainly a lot of vacant properties that can go at great bargain rates. But what about the families who formerly lived in those homes? What happens to them? Where do they go?

Although the housing crisis kick-started this economic crisis, the realities faced by these displaced Americans are only now coming to light. Some homeowners who are having trouble hanging onto their mortgages have resorted to renting to those who have already lost their homes. Still others plagued by the bad credit that bankruptcy brings or the financial woes of lost wages, are obliged to stay in shelters. However, in many cities shelters are at maximum capacity and families are forced to rent cheap motel rooms. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that in California, one of the states hardest hit by the housing crisis, residents are packing motels just as fast as the state’s budget cuts are shutting down vital social services. In Anaheim, there are over a thousand families living in motels and, with nearly 24,000 foreclosures in California this February alone, there are certainly thousands of other homeless Californians looking for shelter at a cheap nightly rate.

At the same time, people who don’t have the means to spend several hundred (or even thousands) of dollars a month on a one-bedroom shelter have had to become more creative. In Miami, Max Rameau has founded Take Back the Land, a foundation that matches families with empty, foreclosed homes. Rameau pairs people with houses that they can squat in until the local government, bank, or police interferes. He defends his actions by asserting that, “It’s morally indefensible to have vacant homes sitting there, potentially for years, while you have human beings on the street.”

In Los Angeles and Sacramento, tent cities have become the norm. Forty miles outside of LA, local officials designated a patch of land last year for a handful of displaced families to set up temporary housing. Today, it boasts several hundred people. In Sacramento, there are 2,000 homeless, with 300 of those individuals setting up a tent city nearby. With people in the capital city losing their homes and jobs at an alarming pace, this shanty town has several dozen new people take up residence each day.

While the Obama administration has set forth a housing plan to help troubled owners, it hasn’t presented any solution to the escalating number of displaced Americans. While it is certainly important to lower rates and adjust payments for those struggling to pay their mortgages, there also needs to be a plan for the people who are jobless and homeless already. Hopefully, the stimulus’s infrastructure initiatives will employ people who have lost their jobs, help them get back on their feet, and eventually put them in a financial position neccessary to find a permanent residence. However, the federal government does not have the pulse of every town, city, and state’s particular problems, nor can they.

In order to stave off this crisis,  local governments must step in and confront homelessness not as fringe social problem but as a critical issue that directly or indirectly affects all their residents. States like California and New York cite budget shortfalls for their inability to do more, but even if they are strapped for cash, they must prioritize some funding to help those who have lost their homes. If they don’t, then they will inevitably bear the burden in a more indiscreet way: Schools will have to feed more hungry children on free-lunch programs, non-profit institutions that depend on local tax breaks will have to stretch their resources to house and clothe the needy, and hospitals and health care clinics will certainly see more people fill their emergency rooms with non-emergent health problems as these homeless individuals struggle to stay healthy in a stressful and sometimes unlivable environment. The federal stimulus money presents an opportunity for states and cities to provide temporary housing, food, and other benefits before this housing emergency completely debilitates communities. Local governments must find some way to institute comprehensive plans that offer shelter—and dignity—to those who have lost theirs.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Hillary’s Trip to Asia: A Foreign Policy Reality Check

President Obama ran his election campaign on a slogan we all now know – “Change We Can Believe In.” However,  I have always been skeptical of Obama’s ability or commitment to bring fundamental change in US foreign policy. Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s February trip to Asia, as well received and heavily covered as it was, has only confirmed my skepticism. Here’s why.

First, while Clinton’s words in Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and China were a departure from Bush’s simplistic might-makes-right foreign policy, they weren’t too different from the foreign policy followed by her own husband, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan (you get the idea). Obama’s foreign policy “change” appears to be a return to how the US has conducted foreign policy since World War II. That is, we work cooperatively within the UN, NATO, and other alliances; we engage other countries diplomatically; we don’t declare preemptive wars; we promote a certain type of economic model; we support nuclear non-proliferation; etc.  While this is undoubtedly better than George W. Bush’s foreign policy, it doesn’t look like a fundamental foreign policy shift. Nor does it bode well for those optimistic that President Obama will base his foreign policy on human rights, as many had hoped for during the campaign.

Admittedly, I did start out happy with how Clinton was conducting herself during this trip. She discussed relevant issues in the countries she visited and met with officials, students, and  activists. People seemed to be generally impressed with and charmed by her performance.  However, after following her trip for a while, I began to feel like it was just that–a performance. She was saying what she needed to say (and not saying what she needed to not say) depending on where she was, and her priority was selling the US, President Obama, and herself to officials and the public. This was sorely needed after eight years of George Bush, and while she showed her serious professional side as well as a softer personal side, Clinton is a seasoned, hard-nosed politician who surely understands the realities of being the only global superpower’s top diplomat. Realpolitik rules. Mushy sentimental support for human rights does not guide international relations or foreign policy. Clinton did after all vote against a Congressional bill to ban the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas because it would make her look weak on terrorism (her new boss supported the ban). 

The dissonance of her message was most jarring when comparing her speeches in Indonesia to those in China. She wooed and flattered her Indonesian hosts by talking up their democratic government, their thriving and diverse civil society, and the inclusive positive example they show to the Muslim world. China was another matter. Before she even arrived, Clinton emphasized that human rights concerns would not interfere with major issues like the economic crisis and global warming. She curbed her earlier harsh criticism of China’s human rights record in favor of other topics (which, to be fair, were not much easier to confront). While implying human rights are a marginal issue was not music to the ears of human rights advocates, it is consistent with US foreign policy historically. Human rights have had their place when they support US policy, but are always easily swept aside when they don’t. So far, the Obama administration doesn’t seem to offer a change from this realist worldview.

This is not to say that changes are not likely on the horizon. Obama is certainly charting a different course than George Bush did. His early choices about China, Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria indicate a new tack, and he is making a concerted effort to clean up the US image in the world’s eyes. Human rights may be more important to President Obama than many previous US presidents, but Clinton’s stance in China makes it clear that they will not be the guiding principal of his foreign policy. The US participation as a mere observer at the recent UN Human Rights Commission and its boycott of the UN Conference on Racism also show that Obama’s administration is wary of treading new ground in the defense of human rights.

So then what is Obama’s guiding principle for his foreign policy? Not surprisingly, it appears to be essentially the same as every other US president–to protect and promote American interests abroad. This definition clearly leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Obama has pledged deeper and more sustained diplomatic engagement with allies as well as enemies–even Iran! Cuba! Venezuela!–in an effort to forge constructive relationships across the globe. As a caveat to this policy, Obama has explicitly said he will act in such a way only if it is in America’s self-interest.

Fair enough. This is the president’s job, and the reality is that US foreign policy probably will never be guided by any principle other than American self-interest. I understand this, and though it sounds amoral and opportunistic to my ears, I understand the necessity, and benefit, to advance a flexible foreign policy in an effort to engage with as many other countries as possible. And, in reality, should it be any other way? Maybe what Obama is offering is the best we can hope for when it comes to US foreign policy. George Bush’s presidency clearly demonstrated the pitfalls of having a foreign policy that stubbornly brooks no opposition to its moral certainty. Any moral justification can be abused by those in power–even a commitment to human rights or democracy or freedom. (Such a commitment to worldwide democracy is in fact one of the guiding principles of both idealist foreign policy, put in practice historically by those such as Woodrow Wilson, and modern neoconservatism under President Bush.) Promoting and protecting American interests abroad can be abused too, but at least it is an honest selfish justification for how our government behaves overseas. Protecting American interests is perhaps all the president should commit to, and if he (or one day she) is willing to keep as many channels of communication open with friend and foe, this may be the best long-term strategy. To expect anything more just may be naive, unrealistic, and unfair.

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