Tannishblog

Today’s Washington Post has a lengthy article on a local area charter school recipient of a Gates Grant. The details are interesting. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation "doesn’t give all that much money to a school just because it’s good and they want to make it better," according to the article. Instead "They give money to the school because it’s an exemplar and they want to have it reproduced." In the case highlighted by the Post, several tough administrative conditions, dubbed "Deliverables," are tied to the money.

That’s good, right? Some kind of return of investment is needed to ensure the money is not wasted. We’re talking education, the foundation of a nation’s GNP, and the single most important indicator of successful children. A system needs to be in place to monitor the effectiveness of the grants, and to hold recipients responsible for the money.

Does anyone besides me note "what’s wrong with this picture?" Why must it be the providence of a charitable foundation to overhaul the educational system in the world’s richest nation? Isn’t the government supposed to be supplying funds for education?

Here’s a thought exercise: According to the US Census Bureau 2000 statistics, Eight million children were enrolled in nursery school or kindergarten, 33 million in grade schools, sixteen million in high schools, and another fifteen million attended college. That’s 72 million school aged children and young adults attending classes in 2000. We can assume the number has grown a bit since then, but working with that number and the current cost of the war in Iraq, we can see that if we had used that money for education reform, we could have spent over $4,800 per student.

Not very much, you think? We’re talking about 72,000,000 students! And that doesn’t take into consideration the needs of the at-risk student population.

If we factor only the college aged demographic (15 million), the resulting expenditure would rise to over $23,000 per student. compare that with the average cost of college this year, as provided by FinAid.org, of $26,304 for out of state students, and we can see that for the price of an un-winnable, economically indefensible, and politically irresponsible war, we could pay almost a full year’s tuition for millions.

Instead, we finance an astronomical increase in the value of Dick Cheney’s Haliburton portfolio. Talk about priorities!

Thanksgiving dinner wound down last night, and conversation resumed. A comment was made about cigarette smokers and soon we began discussing the ways various municipalities were using laws to curb smoking in public places. The overall tone was of acceptance. We are all non-smokers.

I piped up in my usual devil’s advocate, buck the trend style, that as a former puffer, I felt the trend was discriminatory. Americans are free to kill themselves if that’s what they want. The rebuttal (weak, I thought) was of the dangers second-hand smoke. Being the host, I felt unusual restraint and let the conversation turn. What I wanted to point out is how free non-smokers are to not frequent establishments that smokers prefer, to not associate with others who smoke if the habit is bothersome.

I wanted to point out that Americans need to get back to a culture of acceptance, inclusiveness and compassion of others. We’ve lost whatever meager gains we’ve made over the past fifty years toward a society modeled after a core belief in religious freedoms and the attendant mentality of acceptance of diversity. (Placeholder for deleted political dig.) As a Buddhist, I feel we need to remember the teachings of our founders during this weekend of National Pride.

Remember the "Great Melting Pot ™?" I’ve often quipped it’s more like a chunky stew, but lately it seems more like and oil-and-water mix. We need to get back to basics, get back to a compassionate, people-centric world of open minds, open hearts, and the understanding that others will do what we wish they wouldn’t - and that’s alright, too.

Make sure you rest up today and eat plenty of protein tonight. Come midnight Black Friday begins. No, the stock market won’t crash. This year at midnight several shopping center management companies plan to beat Wal-Mart to the punch by opening malls at midnight.

It was inevitable that corporate greed succumb to such madness. Likewise some less introspective Americans will validate the move by shopping all night after stuffing themselves past the point of sleeping. Wal-Mart, being the epitome of American values, is fast becoming the first retail monopoly ever, and the hundreds of companies affected by the behemoth are going to spend a long sleepless month watching the numbers.

What is at stake here is not just lining of company bank vaults. In my eyes, after working for two decades in retail, I see Wal-Mart as a beast that will - if unchallenged - ultimately destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the retail and manufacturing industries. The irony is many of these people are shopping at Wal-Mart, unable to see what’s coming. Being relatively low income workers themselves, they focus on the one thing that works for the company: under-cutting competitors pricing. Needing to save money, they help to ensure a cataclysmic implosion of retailing nation wide. No. I’m not exaggerating.

Wal-Mart is a predator. That’s how it does business. Sam Walton was very shrewd to envision a business model that, to date, hasn’t been beat. Like many businessmen, his concern was not to better the lives of Americans by offering them less expensive goods, but to make money. In that, he excelled. But is money the end-all of business? Do the means justify the ends? What will happen if all those displaced retail employees find themselves forced by the job market to apply and work for Wal-Mart? Everyone knows that the company pays little and workers enjoy almost no benefits, while being forced to work schedules that may conflict with their ability to raise families.

Business, as all human ventures, is about people. Money should be viewed as a perk, a reward for servicing people. But that Victorian concept has no place in our economics-is-everything philosophy of markets. Wal-Mart is not alone in this type of thinking, but it is the best at it, the most ruthless in it’s pursuit of money over humanity. That type of thinking may help our economy (which, even while ignored by our current political focus on warfare, running idle, still grows somewhat), but it does nothing for the people. Please keep this in mind as you partake in the Annual Retail Feeding Frenzy.

I came late to the realm of American politics. Like most of my generation’s lost souls of middle class mediocrity, drugs and other gratuitous pursuits were more important. Such was the mind set of youth in the seventies and eighties: Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll. All that changed for me in 1999 with my first look at George W. Bush’s infamous smirk. Immediate antipathy. The ascendancy of the humanitarian-impaired Bush Dynasty is a by-product of willful political ignorance of people like me. America still suffers that disease. A wide swath of the population turns it’s back on a broken political system in disgust, thereby ensuring continuity of our electoral dysfunction. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

One thing I’ve learned in my crash course in American spin-doctoring, is that one party rule is bad for America. In the Democratic post-mid-term euphoria, I’ve already heard rallying talk of getting a Democrat in the oval office, thereby completing the coin flip and having the other party rule all branches of government. I cannot suspend disbelief enough to think this would be any better than what we have just corrected. I’m convinced that the Democrats and an organization are just as corrupt as the Republicans, that when given the ropes our Progressives will as surely hang themselves as the Regressive party has done.

No. A functioning government is one that is forever at it’s own throat, eternally vying for gain in a volatile struggle of debate and (dare I say it) compromise. (As a side note, I believe that 2007 will be the year our congress will actually work again.) We need the bickering, the whining, and all other symptoms of a dynamic-yet-polar, barely civil consensus to disagree vociferously. That is how the American system works.

That is why I will seriously consider our emerging candidates carefully - even the Republicans.

Now that the Democrats have come from behind and beat the odds, the hard work is before them. They now have to back up their rhetoric with action. Meanwhile the Dems are now at the mercy of their own brain trust. They better have some ideas or the next president will be Republican.

The lame duck congress will work fast to do further harm, in the guise of national security, to further their ideological baggage. Their time is running out. No quarter this time.

 While the President is still relevant, his perception of relevancy is in play as to how he chooses to act: if he feels overrun by the new congress, he will push right wing motions to counterbalance. This way, when congress balks Republicans can whine that congress doesn’t want to play nice. If the president feels he’s been treated fairly by congress work will get done. Since Mr. Bush is already a lame duck and since he has no other elections to worry about, he’ll likely want to look at the big picture and start worrying about his legacy. As things now stand the history books might be hard on him.

Regarding the presidential legacy and the Democrats in congress, much work needs doing. Given this, I think that 2007 is the year that the government will finally work again. For the life of me, I can’t think of a single item of progress enacted by congress in 2006. Can you?

Get to work, people!

Being an early riser afforded me the honor of being the first in my precinct to cast my paper ballot. At 6:12 this morning I fed the cards into the reader. No touch-screen for me…

Here in the hinterlands of the Southwest coast of Lake Michigan, in the County of Cook, the Blue Party rules. Notwithstanding the added political clout that money brings to the Red Party, we are mostly content with cooler colors. Not that the Blues are innocent of the same temptations that so pervade the Reds on a national level recently - far from it - still, we are happy where we stand.

This year there area few other colors available to choose. The Green Party is getting some traction in Illinois, and I applaud their efforts. It’s not easy being the outsiders. The governorship is a three way race this year, both Red and Blue have dirty fingernails, so aren’t easy to recommend, too mired in their prospective machines for my liking. So I chose Green instead.

At the county level, mostly a mystery to most voters, I think, because little air time is given to local candidates, a couple of Greens are available to choose as well. Out of ignorance of the local issues and the candidates stances, I vote Green there, too. Here’s why:

Lately our national congress has been lax in oversight of the Iraq debacle, of outrageous spending and waste, and of the behavior of many of the personalities in government. This is because the Reds control all three branches of federal government and because they can’t resist behaving like spoiled children on holiday. For the past few years debate has been dead in the hill. Debate is the heartbeat of a healthy Democratic process. Without the tug-of-war of polite argument a nation has no right to call itself either a Democracy or a Republic.

How, then, to defibrillate our nation’s heart again? By offering more choices of political parties. Imagine a congress made of three or four viable, competitive political affiliates, each with a voice commensurate with the fickleness of the voting public. Less chance of one-party rule, less chance of the resulting authoritativeness we’ve been experiencing. Parties would be forced to (gasp!) compromise, form alliances and (gasp again!) work together to further the will of the many instead of the power of the few.

Isn’t that what we’re all about in this country?

I’ve been impressed with the systems in Europe and in Israel of a multi-party congressional aggregate. This provides more flexibility on behalf of representation, and gives smaller voices a chance to be heard. In our current system, the small voices are easily shouted over. I’d live to see that become reality, however unlikely it seems. Because of this, I vote Green even if I don’t know how they stand. If enough people try this, the Greens will gain traction and (hopefully) become a force. Perhaps other fringe groups will also make gains. They can greatly change how our government works just by being big enough to gain a few seats.

So: Gimme some choice! I want more parties available to me, so I can better vote my conscience instead of forcing it to fit into someone else’s.

Maybe I should entitle this post, "Why We’re Going To Lose This Election." I don’t want to jinx anything, but I feel we progressives are missing something essential.

We have no leader.

Republicans love to ridicule us because we are still - this late in the election cycle - wringing our hands and whining about how bad things are. They’re right. We have no focus beyond complaining. Whom do we have to lead the growing ranks of the Disenchanted? Can someone please stand up, take a stance against Conservative Demagoguery, and lead us? At least take the chance and try…

I once thought Howard Dean to "have the right stuff." Then I pondered on the ability of Wesley Clark to push forward. Both these gentlemen know a fight when they see one. As I write this, I cannot envision anyone having the "chutzpah" to deliver impassioned challenges to the status quo. Write me if I’m missing something…

That’s one thing the Republicans have that we need, someone brash enough (or so full of himself that he can’t envision losing) to plant his feet and shout, "Charge!" Unless and until we find this brave person, we will continue to falter. Unlike the Conservative majority, we Progressives are too mired in reason to suspend disbelief regarding our capacity to fail. Because of this, we have refrained from taking a much needed stand against this administration. Because of this, we’ve lost already; sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

That’s the catchphrase of the Progressive agenda, the moniker of the upcoming election.

For those dwindling few who think America’s rightful place in the world is slave master, resource hog, global polluter and creator of global poverty, the Republican party is awaiting your hard earned money. Don’t expect any change back. All monies and other resources are being funneled into the fewest bank accounts as possible - and it won’t be yours.

For the rest of the yawning, too-slowly awakening populace, there is a growing chance to change course. The damage already done cannot be reversed until generations of progress ensue. For six short years, we have steered the course of History toward the brink of self-immolation, toward the undermining of long-held systems of belief that has kept our species advancing toward global coexistence. It will take most of the rest of this century to correct the changes wrought by the unscrupulous among us, the politically self absorbed, the criminally greedy.

We begin by shouting "Enough!" First, we categorize infractions. Much has been written about our current administration, little to the good. Then we do something about it.

One man in Baltimore has written his Citizen’s Bill of Impeachment. While many others attempt to utilize the system to foment change, I can’t help but ponder the necessity of another American Revolution to throw out the garbage in Washington and rebuild. I’m not alone in that thought. As the adage says: "Desperate times call for desperate measures." I ask you: Are you desperate enough?

Scanning the broadcasts of Blather Radio yesterday I first heard about the latest marriage of airplane and building in New York City. Although this morning we know who was in the unfortunate craft, we didn’t then. As I listened to the radio host take callers I couldn’t help noticing the vacuity of speculation. The callers - and the host’s - responses ranged from "Oh my God!" to "Whose that stupid?" What really struck me was when the announcer recapped the story, saying: "…Nobody knows what happened except for the incident having scared the heck out of America." He intimated by this the possibility of it being another terrorist attack. Bullshit!

Who’s scared. Beyond the normal reaction of those in the building or on the ground nearby, is anyone really thinking terrorists are so dumb as to try the same stunt twice? They’re not. Does anyone think they would be so desperate to hijack the first plane they can - in this case a small personal aircraft - and ram it into an apartment building? What significance is that? What kind of symbolic gesture would that make?

I switched the radio off then. How incredibly ignorant of the media to even suggest such an accident is terror related. Unfortunately, planes have been known to ram into building before 9/11. No one made a big deals out of those. Perhaps the coincidence of it being the eleventh day of a month was too much to resist, or the fact that it was again in New York. Foolish.

Are Americans really that fearful, or is the media blowing smoke. I have no doubt that the powers-that-be are trying their best to manipulate the public through fear. That is obvious. Fear is a great motivating factor of the human psyche.

Now, thought, we know the owner of the plane was a baseball player. How American can you get? Surely he’s no terrorist. While the circumstances remain mysterious, at least that specter has evaporated. Now we can get back to being scared of real things like the rise in health care, under-education, national bankruptcy, the morphing of the middle class into the working poor. If we must fear, those are sound choices for concern.

As I follow the Mark Foley "Innocence Lost" tour, I get curious about what the Fighting Keyboarders are typing. I try not to rail against the furious in Right Blogistan. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to resist.

My first foray led me to a site called Passionate America which took the stance that the MSM is doctoring data in the form of minor edits to published Foley emails. We’re talking punctuation, here. This pundit’s big question is - writ in red, no less - "Who Altered Foley’s Emails?" Let me be the next to say, a missing apostrophe does not a conspiracy make, fool! It seems the larger issues of congressional sexual misconduct and the attendant hypocrisy by a member of the Caucus of Missing and Exploited Children are too much for this little mind.

The good Captain, celebrating his third blogiversary, (Congrats!) goes after speaker Hastert for his hand-off approach to a hands-on situation. One for the record books: I agree with the Captain: boil ‘em in oil, those foul beastians who look askance who pretend it will go away! (Okay, so I missed pirate-talk day. Whatever.) The Captain is casting wide for expulsion of Speaker Hastert for doing nothing since last year. 

Malodorous Michele sharpens her scalpel on the whole issue. She condemns Mark Foley easily enough, but is carefully avoiding casting her net too wide. She can’t avoid altogether the possibility of a complicit GOP, but no names are offered. How adroit.

There is a time and place for attacking the Dems and the MSM. Now is not that time. Parents need assurance that their kids are safe on Capitol Hill. If Beltway GOP elites can’t understand this, they are beyond hope.

Then there’s LGF, the site you love to hate. A loud silence is heard from that quarter, as the only mention of Mark Foley is circular link to the email- altering non-question. No scathing editorial about ethics, protection of children… nothing. I guess the whole thing is okay with them. Such a little thing couldn’t distract them from their focus in terror 24/7/365.

Next, onto Freeperland followed by a careful washing of hands. A quick search of the word "Foley" small results. A blurb about how the President is "Disgusted," and a notion about how ABC News is (apparently to some) playing up the story in a possible effort to "make up with the Democrats," after taunting them with the 9/11 docudrama thingy. Next up, a scathing attack against the NY Times for - get this - running over a Republican:

For the Times’ editors, sexual perversion in political Washington is always a sideline issue. Nothing has changed at the Times; they will run with a sex scandal only if they can run over a Republican. This morning, they glance over Congressman Foley’s alleged behavior, move on to their target, and totally ignore that a watchdog group and members of the media may have let children remain at risk.

Just how free is this republic lately?

That’s about all I can stand of the polluted waters of Right Blogistan. It sometimes amazes me how quick we humans are to defile each other. While I believe Mr. Foley escaped the worst of possibilities by his quick resignation, and I believe much needs to be done in congress with a pervasive look-away attitude toward their peers (both parties), it nevertheless amazes me how quickly the carrion dogs feed.

This reminds me of an important moral lesson I learned from my cat: Don’t Shit Where You Eat. Humans, I’m reminded once again, tend to do that.