Warren and other members of TARP oversight protest tax breaks

This is outside my areas of expertise, but I an sufficiently annoyed to share this.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

American International Group Inc.'s recent $20 billion quarterly profit was almost entirely because of an inappropriate tax break the government-owned insurance company continues to receive, according to four former members of the watchdog panel that oversaw the financial crisis bailouts. 

The break allows AIG to count its past net operating losses against future taxes. That amounts to a "stealth bailout" of a company that received about $125 billion in taxpayer money, said the former appointees to the Congressional Oversight Panel for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program..... 

Warren, who is running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, was joined by former panel members Damon Silvers, Mark McWatters and Kenneth Troske in saying the tax break gives the illusion of significant profitability at the company. 

The profits benefit AIG's private stockholders and allow the company to pay higher executive compensation, the TARP panel members said.

A second report by Andrew Ross Sorkin states:

The tax benefit is notable for more than simply its size. It is the result of a rule that the Treasury unilaterally bent for A.I.G. and several other hobbled companies in 2008 that has largely been overlooked. This rule-twisting could deprive the government of tens of billions of dollars, assuming the firm remains profitable..... 

(A)ccording to longstanding tax laws, if a company files for bankruptcy or is taken over, it loses the ability to use its net operating losses. A.I.G. would fit that profile perfectly: on the verge of bankruptcy, the federal government took control of A.I.G., exchanging its bailout billions for shares in the company. The government — taxpayers — still own 77 percent of the company, down from 92 percent three years ago..... 

(T)he government — desperate to increase revenues — is missing an easy stream of guaranteed taxes from a company that taxpayers bailed out. Sure, the tax bill might hurt the price of A.I.G.’s stock price in the short term, but if Mr. Benmosche does his job right, the company won’t have to post fantasy profits.

Clearly AIG followed a high risk investment strategy in the past, and clearly the result was a massive crash. Apparently now the Obama administration is bending tax rules in ways that will result in larger bonuses for the managers of AIG and that will lead to higher prices for AIG stock, thus benefiting its private stockholders. Don't such increased financial returns tend to encourage the same excess risk taking that got us into this problem in the first place?

Apparently the tax benefits will also extend to General Motors and other companies that were bailed out after the 2008 crash.

To Rick Santorum: Really?

Santorum is quoted on the evening news as saying that President Obama should not have apologized for the accidental burning of Korans. Really, one should not apologize for a deep insult to another's religion simply because it was not intentional. I suppose if Santorum backed the car out of the garage inadvertently running over a neighbor, he would not apologize. I wish that people would wait to anger here until the investigation of the incident is complete and we know what actually happened.

According to The Washington Post:

Asked Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” how his faith fits in with his ideas about governing, Santorum said he disagreed with the “absolute separation” between church and state outlined by Kennedy in a 1960 speech. 

Santorum said reading the speech made him want to “throw up.”

Really, Santorum wants to go against two centuries of separation of church and state in the United States. I suppose since he is a Catholic he wants the United States to follow all the decrees of the Pope. In similar fashion, he would apparently be willing to live in a nation following Mormon precepts if Mitt Romney is elected, or to the precepts of Obama's church. And why is he campaigning against a long dead president, assassinated in office, who is the first Catholic to be elected president?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.The First Ammendment to the Constitution

Believing that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.
Thomas Jefferson

WP also reports that Santorum "described President Obama as 'a snob' for focusing on the importance of a college education". Really? Santorum himself has three degrees from state universities, including two graduate degrees. The article continues to quote Santorum:

“There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor to try to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.”

Obama worked in community development, and I suspect knows more about the strength and virtue of people who not have had educational opportunities than Santorum ever will. Certainly I learned more about real working people as a Peace Corps Volunteer than I did at home or in my other work after college. And on the face of it, Obama is far more accepting of the differences among people than Santorum who would force his views on marriage, procreation and sexual relations on everyone.

But who said that the only reason to go to college is to get a job? A college education should make a better citizen, a more informed voter, and a richer life.

Incidentally, it seems that college graduates are also more likely to practice their religion than non-college graduates.

What has changed?

I have been reading The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan by Gregory Feifer. Among other things, the book describes the provision of weapons to Afghanis by Russians, Americans, Pakistanis, Iranians, Saudis and Chinese during what was clearly a civil war. No one seems to have asked the United Nations if doing so was permissible.

I am watching the news as I write this, and apparently no one is willing to supply the people of Syria fighting against the Assad Government with weapons without some kind of multilateral authorization. The Russians don't seem to see any problem in supplying arms to the Assad Government.

What has changed? Was support for the anti=government participants in Afghanistan in the 1980s only due to the Cold War? It would seem that the people fighting against the Assad Government's troops are at least as worthy as the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

What are Virginia Legislators Thinking Of???!!!

The Virginia legislature is considering a bill that would require transvaginal ultrasound examinations for any woman seeking an abortion. Apparently the woman would not have to look at the scan results. Click here or here for more information.

Source: Mayo Clinic

Of course, a doctor and patient may determine that this procedure is appropriate for medical reasons, such as detection of potentially health threatening abnormalities. There is no possible reason that the state would be justified in requiring this procedure to be used for all women considering abortion. This is clearly an attempt by political activists to require an invasive procedure to discourage woman from seeking abortion or harassing women who do seek abortions.

Politicians don't make sense to me

Rick Santorum seems to think that energy consumption is a good per se. That is simply not true. It is better to have an energy efficient house than to pay more for heat and air conditioning to have the same comfort level in a house with poor energy efficiency. It is better to travel in a well tuned car getting good gas mileage than to travel in a gas guzzler with no advantage in safety or comfort. Energy is something that you pay for and use in order to achieve some end. If you can achieve the same end using less energy, that is all to the good. Moreover, there are external costs to using energy. Greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global warming which it a grave problem for future generations. Consumption of oil and oil products makes our balance of payments problem worse while increasing our dependence of foreign governments that control oil exporting countries.

A unnamed  White House official apparently thinks that the Congress has already passed the only important legislation for 2012. How about the federal budget for the fiscal year that starts in September 2012? That budget debate will define the way the government operates for a year. It is especially important because that budget debate will be the opening shot in determining the capabilities of the military after the ends of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in view of Arab Spring. It will also be significant in terms of the federal deficit, and thus the rate of growth of the economy, the rate of growth of the federal debt, and such things as the balance of payments deficit.

An unnamed Republican spokesman seems to think that small businesses generate employment. They also destroy jobs. The concern is the net employment growth rate.

For the U.S. private sector, the BDS show that the average annual gross job creation rate over the 2000-2005 period is 16.4 percent of employment and that the average annual gross job destruction rate over the same period is 15.1 percent. Hence, the net employment growth rate for the U.S. private sector in any given year is accounted for by some establishments growing at a high rate while another group of establishments are contracting at a high rate.  [CES pdf]

If you look at the local strip mall, whenever you see a new business occupying one of the buildings, it is because a business that once occupied that space is now gone. 

Mitt Romney Dropping Out Four Years Ago

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Mitt Romney is seeking to provide a narrative that will bring him to the Presidency, and that narrative is different than the one he presented four years ago.

Although he has spent four or five years running for President spending tens of millions of dollars of his own money in the process, although he successfully ran for and was Governor of Massachusetts, and although he is the son of a man who also ran for President himself, he would have you believe he is not a politician primarily interested in political office.

Although he was a vulture capitalist, making a huge fortune as CEO of Bain Capital which was in business to make money for its owners and investors, he would have you believe that as a businessman he was good at creating jobs and that those skills would transfer to creating jobs from the White House.

Although he has never run an organization of nearly the size and complexity of the U.S. Government, and although he does not have experience getting legislation through the U.S. Congress, he would have you believe that he has the experience required to be a good President.

Like the other candidates, he is also busy seeking to disrupt the narratives that the other candidates (at least those who are polling well) are seeking to use to support their own chances for election.

It is of course half a century since television changed the nature of political campaigning. When the nation was founded, those who wished to be president felt that it would have been inappropriate to be seen as seeking the position, waiting to be drafted for the job by colleagues who knew them well. Lincoln was elected president on the basis of long, closely argued speeches in which he laid out clear arguments supporting his beliefs about the needs of the country and the way to satisfy those needs: transcripts of his speeches were published widely in the newspapers of the day. Since the 1960s, campaigning is done in sound bites for an audience with the attention span of a gnat, focusing on the emotions of the viewer rather than the viewer's intellect. I would prefer Lincoln's approach, or lacking that Washington's which at least had the virtue of creating less sound pollution.

A Modest Proposal

I propose that news programs do not air commentary or debates until it has been fact checked and that lies, errors and misstatements be identified during the broadcasts. I am tired of the so called "balanced" approach in which people are allowed to say anything they want if only there is someone else "from the other side" saying anything he wants.

Of course, breaking news would be covered. Stations would roll footage of tsunamis and earthquake damage, street fighting, and election results. What would be delayed would be commentary on trends and forecasts.

What would we lose? We would have to wait for a couple of days to see a political debate? We would have to wait a couple of days to hear someone opine over the Middle East, China's economic development, or the debt crisis; if its worth listening to, its worth waiting for the facts to be disentangled from opinion, guesses, and untruths. Truthiness is not enough.

It would probably be wise for the programs to record and fact check several times as much as they plan to broadcast in order to get enough material worthy of airing, at least until the talking heads got to the point that they limited themselves to things that they were reasonably certain were correct.

What if he had Perry's Brains and Paul's looks?

There is an old story of a very smart man (variously George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Groucho Marx, and Albert Einstein) sitting next to a beautiful women. She remarked that they two could have wonderful children with his brains and her beauty. He replied, but madam, what if she had your brains and my beauty.

In the South Carolina primary buildup, a number of voters remarked that it was too bad that they could not clone a candidate with all the better characteristics of each of the four actually running. But what if they got a candidate with all of the bad characteristics:

• Someone who thought like a very rich man with no understanding of what life is like for the rest of us, nor much sympathy for those in need.
• Someone with the kind of ethics that might see him disciplined by the Congress and eventually driven out of office, someone who would accept huge payments from a failing mortgage firm (one that would help drive the financial system into crisis and the nation into a Great Recession), sleeping around during his serial marriages and cheating on his sick wife, willing to close down the government to make a political point.
• Someone with a Christian fundamentalist viewpoint that would alienate most of America, and who would be a super hawk getting us into military entanglements we can not at the moment afford, someone who admits he can not be elected president but advises Republicans to vote for him anyway.
• Someone who would espouse libertarian views, especially on the economy, that would be seen as extreme by most voters.
• Like two or more of the current candidates, someone who flip-flops on issues according to what sells in the electoral marketplace, with no discernible governing philosophy, with no discernible understanding of foreign policy, with no military experience and with no experience suggesting he could run a huge enterprise such as the federal government.

Obama has spent several years learning how to do a really hard job. Do we want to start all over again with someone who would have to learn how to lead the administration, the government and the nation?

Incidentally, I have always like Groucho Marx, especially since my father won the jackpot on his quiz program, You Bet Your Life some 60 years ago.

On the Congressional Debacle

I see the Republicans are trying to take the money needed to stimulate the economy, not out of the pockets of millionaires, but rather from the pay of our troops, the Veterans Administration people trying to heal the wounded soldiers, the air traffic controllers, the public health offices of the Center for Disease Control, and postal workers. They seem willing to shut down the government this weekend if they don't get their way. I hope you don't need your social security payment for Christmas shopping!

I read that "A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Wednesday found Obama dramatically expanding his advantage over Mitt Romney to 8 percentage points, up from a 1-point deficit in early November, and leading Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich by 13 points." Do you wonder why?

Truthiness and Republican Economics

I just heard a Republican spokesperson seeking to cast doubt on government stimulus programs by saying that there had been two stimulus packages and the economy is still in bad shape. One would hope that the Republicans would understand enough about the world to recognize that:

• The economy could also be in worse shape now had we not had the earlier stimulus.
• The Democrats had wanted larger stimulus packages but the Republicans in Congress forced less than the desired packages.
• The worst economic crisis in a couple of generations was never likely to be resolved in a few years, and is evolving rather well.
• There are a lot of things that influence the economy, such as public mistrust caused by the Congressional inability to agree on economic policy or anything else, the price of oil, the continuing problem of underwater housing values and the weakness of European demand for U.S. exports; the stimulus package can only have a partial effect.
• The calculation of needed economic stimulus and the prediction of the impact of such stimulus is at best a process of approximations.
• The stock market is actually doing pretty well since its low in 2008, indicating a fair amount of investor confidence that the economy is on the right track.

See my last comment on the truthiness of opinion. Of course, the claim that stimulus packages don't work may be something that the Republicans don't believe but think will be effective in gaining votes. Lets make sure that is not true.

The real problem is of course that without more stimulus, the economy is likely to stall and we are likely to have more unemployment and more underemployment than we might otherwise have. That would also mean that the government's income from future taxes would be less, leading to more need for future stimulus, more government debt, and more economic uncertainty.

Are the Inmates Running the Asylum?

I have been thinking a lot about the decision by the UNESCO General Conference to admit Palestine to membership, the campaign leading to that vote, and the aftermath. The whole scene makes me wonder if the inmates are running the asylum.

One argument made by the United States delegation against admitting Palestine to full membership in UNESCO was that so doing would be detrimental to the Israel-Palestine peace process.

• The idea that Palestine becoming a member of an organization whose very purpose is the promotion of peace would be detrimental to the peace process seems unintuitive.
• This is especially true since Palestine already has observer status with UNESCO, so that its representatives are present in UNESCO's deliberations and hallways, may speak, and have all the rights of a member except voting rights. As a member, Palestine will now have one among 196 votes in the General Conference. That doesn't seem much of a threat.
• UNESCO has a budget which is less than a quarter of that of my local school board for a global program seeking to advance peace through promotion of education, science, culture and communications. How much harm could be done by Palestinian membership in such a small organization?
• The one way that this would certainly become detrimental to the peace process would be to make a big deal of the admission. The United States delegation promptly made a big deal of the admission in the Executive Council, in the General Conference and in the aftermath of the vote.

Are the inmates running the asylum?

Another argument that the U.S. delegation used is that the decision about Palestinian membership in the United Nations family of organizations should be made in the venue of the United Nations itself. The U.S. position was that UNESCO was acting prematurely as Palestine had not been admitted to UN membership.

• The Constitution of UNESCO is supposed to have been written in the U.S. State Department and when UNESCO was created the United States had enormous influence on its form and functions. That Constitution specifies that "states not members of the United Nations Organization may be admitted to membership of the (UNESCO) Organization, upon recommendation of the Executive Board, by a two-thirds majority vote of the General Conference." Many other specialized agencies of the United Nations family allow membership of countries that are not members of the United Nations.
• The United States delegation to the United Nations was simultaneously vigorously seeking that the United Nations should not consider the application of Palestine for membership; it had announced that it would veto consideration of the application if it came to the UN Security Council.

Are the inmates running the asylum?

The United States, immediately following the vote announced that it would withhold all funding from UNESCO. Since the United States provides 22 percent of the assessed contributions to UNESCO in addition to making voluntary contributions to fund specific projects, this has caused a financial crisis for the UNESCO secretariat. The basis for this action is a law which "prohibits U.S. contributions to any affiliated organization of the United Nations or to the United Nations if they grant full membership as a state to a group that does not have internationally recognized attributes of statehood." Thus, the government is in the position of holding that Palestine is not a state.

• The United States, with bipartisan agreement, supports a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; is that not in conflict with the idea that Palestine is not a state?
• Most of the countries in the world recognize Palestine as a state. More than two thirds of the member states voting in the UNESCO General Conference voted to admit Palestine as a member state.
• The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which the United States has ratified and cited in supporting the application by Israel for United Nations membership,  states that "The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a ) a permanent population; b ) a defined territory; c ) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states." It apparently has been argued simultaneously that Palestine is not a state because its boundaries with Israel are not agreed upon, and that Israel is a state in spite of the fact that its boundaries with Palestine have not been agreed upon.
• If boundary disputes are sufficient to deny statehood, how about the disputes among China, India and Pakistan over Kashmir? Does anyone think that they are not states? Should the United States withhold contributions to any UN organization that admits one or more states having boundary disputes?

Are the inmates running the asylum?

When the decision was announced that Palestine would be accepted as a member state:

• The Palestinian authorities, who have still not ratified their accession document and assumed the membership that they fought for, announced that they would go on to seek membership in 16 more UN agencies, then announced that they would not do so, and then announced that they might do so.
• The Obama administration sought membership on the UNESCO Executive Council in spite of the statement that the U.S. would withhold its contributions to UNESCO, and was elected to a four year term.
• The Israeli government announced that it would sanction Palestine by withholding the transfer of the Palestinian taxes from the Palestinian authority; it then reversed the decision when the Israeli Defense Forces said that that transfer was necessary to Israeli security.
• The Obama administration argued that it strongly supported UNESCO, that UNESCO programs were important to U.S. foreign policy, that cutting off voluntary contributions to UNESCO would damage U.S. interests in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that it would withhold both assessed and voluntary contributions from the organization.

Are the inmates running the asylum?

While the Arab League condemned the government of Syria for human rights abuses, UNESCO retains Syria on its Executive Board. It is the Executive Board that first accepted funds from Equatorial Guinea to establish a prize in the name of President Obiang, then reversed itself on the basis of Obiang's human rights record; the prize controversy won't go away. Now UNESCO is accepting a $2 million voluntary contribution from the Government of Gabon; according to Amnesty International, "Titularly a republic, Gabon's government is a centralized, autocratic presidential bureaucracy where power is distributed largely through patronage."

Are the inmates running the asylum?

The inmates from King of Hearts

p.s. King of Hearts was a very memorable film!

Sometimes it is best to admit lack of certainty, collective wisdom is often better than that of the individual

Barack Obama, Christina Romer and Lawrence Summers
 during a news conference in Chicago, November 24, 2008.

I recently heard Ron Suskind talking about President Obama's advice from his economic policy team in 2009. He described Obama as using his considerable skills unsuccessfully in an attempt to obtain a consensus from the very capable economists. If economists of that quality could not agree on the details of a policy that would be both feasible and useful, what do you think is the likelihood that any of the lawyer-politicians now running for office has the right answers for the economy based on thorough understanding of economic theory, historical data and professional modelling and analysis? Right! Probability vanishingly small!

What then are the Republican candidates doing? They are pretending to know more than they do, and they are playing to the prejudices of the factions of their parties that they need to secure the party nomination. This probably tells us more about the failings of our popular democracy than about the politicians themselves.

Image Source: Frugal Cafe

Clearly we need to get people back to work, increase the rate of growth of the economy, reduce the federal debt, improve the balance of international trade and payments, and deal with the aftermath of the housing bubble and with the personal debt crisis. Clearly it is going to take time to get out of this mess.

Clearly the international context counts. The European politicians seem far to likely to screw up the economy of the Euro zone and lead the world into another depression. The Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, Russians and other nations are seeking to increase their economic productivity and are likely to succeed and in doing so to change the balance of the global economy.

The last thing we need is for a repeat of the debacle of the Congressional debate on the debt limit increase of last summer. I think it is time for the politicians to admit that they might not individually have the right answers to the world's economic crisis and begin to negotiate in good faith to find some kind of balanced approach. It is probably more important to act than to find the best solution. The ideal is the enemy of the good. It is certainly important for our political leaders to show that they are cooperating to find a good path through the economic thickets, and thereby to build public confidence in the economic future. Lack of confidence can be self-fulfilling.

A Modest Proposal on Mid East Peace

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

According to the Guardian of Tuesday, November 1, 2011:

Internet services in the West Bank and Gaza have come under "sustained attack" by unknown hackers in multiple locations, according to officials. 

"There has been a sustained attack since the morning from many sources in many countries," said Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib. "It is deliberate and continuous."...... 

The telecoms minister, Mashour Abu Daqqa, told Reuters that "all Palestinian IP addresses have been exposed to a focused, organised attack from abroad. I think this is organised by a state".

The Government of the United States is seeking to deny membership in the United Nations to Palestine, apparently primarily on the basis that the territory it claims is largely militarily occupied by another country. The United States is apparently ready to use a Security Council veto to prevent Palestinian membership.

Would it not then be logical for the United States to bring the cyber attack on Palestine to the Security Council as an Act of War and to propose United Nations sanctions on the attacking nation?

Oakland police succeed where Iraqi insurgents could not

The Oakland Police fractured the skull of a two time Iraq veteran as they tried to squash a formerly peaceful protest. This is totally unacceptable!

People in the News

Steve Jobs

We are all grieving for Steve Jobs who died way too early. Still, in a life too short by decades, he revolutionized the personal computer a couple of times, the tablet computer, the cell phone, the movie industry and the music industry while building one of the world's largest and most valuable company. He was the illegitimate son of a Syrian Muslim graduate student father and American woman graduate student.

Barack Obama is not only President, but the certain candidate for the Democratic party for a second term. He has passed legislation to stimulate the economy and prevent a new depression and to reform our governmental system of health care financing, finished the war in Iraq, oversaw efforts that have killed Bin Laden and decimated Al Qaeda, led the free world in assistance that has led to the overthrow of Gaddafi and seen democratic revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt overthrow their undemocratic governments, allowed gays and lesbians serving in the military to stop lying about their identities, stimulated governmental support for science, technology, education and the infrastructure, and moved to reinforce integrity in government science. He is the son of a polygamous Kenyan Muslim graduate student father and American woman student.

Herman Cain is currently the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for President. He is  a syndicated columnist, and radio host. He is the former chairman and CEO of Godfather's Pizza and a former chairman (Omaha Branch board 1989–91), deputy chairman (1992–94) and chairman (1995–96) of the board of directors of the  Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Before his business career he worked as a mathematician. He is an African-American. His mother was a cleaning woman and domestic worker, and his father worked as a barber, janitor and chauffeur.

Paul Nurse has just left his job as President of Rockefeller University to move to England to assume the job of President of the Royal Academy. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his scientific work. British, he immigrated to the United States and lived here for some seven years. He was the illegitimate son of a woman who was herself illegitimate. He was raised by his grandmother and grandfather (both also illegitimate) who pretended to be his biological parents.

I wonder how much talent this country wasted in the past through prejudice against foreigners, Muslims, Africans, African-Americans and the offspring of unmarried parents? I wonder how much we are wasting now by equally stupid prejudices?

Perhaps we need to amend the Constitution

Perhaps the demonstrations by Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements will lead to amendments to the Constitution. A couple that might be considered:

• Organizations are not people and thus organizations don't have human rights. Members of organizations must enjoy freedom of speech, but organizations don't speak and so don't enjoy freedom of speech. Members of organizations vote, but organizations don't vote and so don't enjoy rights to participate in the political process.
• Money is not speech. The very rich and the rich organizations don't have human rights to spend unlimited amounts of cash to influence public opinion and voter behavior.
• One person, one vote calls for the United States to undo the Constitutional provisions introduced to protect slavery and to induce small colonies to join the United States. Those reforming the Constitution might consider giving the federal government the control of elections rather than the states, introducing means to prevent  gerrymandering, and even making electoral districts for senators based on numbers of people rather than state boundaries.

On the other hand, one-person one-vote might not be the end-all be-all. Maybe wiser, more informed and smarter people should have more weight in voting that more foolish, more ignorant and less intelligent people. We actually have the testing capability now to test for these attributes of voters. Of course, in the past voter tests were very badly misused and politicians are probably no better now than the racists who used voter tests in the past to disenfranchise blacks.

Political activism comes from the current zeitgeist of malaise

Picture source

I suspect that the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street movement are symptoms of the same underlying situation.

I don't think most Americans fully understand the current social and economic situation and I am sure that Americans don't agree about what to do about it, but I think the following are determining the zeitgeist:

• We are in the midst of what has been called the Great Recession
• Unemployment is high
• People have lost a lot of what they thought of as their saving when the housing bubble burst and when the stock market dropped like a rock
• Many homes are under water, their mortgages greater than their current value
• The politicians in Washington seem more interested in making points against each other than in helping the public; neither the public nor the rating agencies trust them to do the right thing
• The politicians in Europe are squabbling about the financial crisis there, and no one trusts them to do the right thing to resolve it
• If either the United States or Europe gets it wrong, we might see a global depression
• Globalization has undermined many aspects of the U.S. economy; the rust belt is visible
• The rise of economies in China, India, Russia, Brazil, and other countries means that the United States, which produced about half the world's goods and services in 1845, produces a much smaller portion today and the portion is likely to continue downward
• The rich are getting richer, the poor are staying poor, and the middle class is getting poorer; the trend is decades old
• Wall street seems not to care at all about main street
• America is no longer the place of upward mobility, there is less upward mobility here now than in many European nations
• We are in a couple of wars that most Americans want to end, they are draining our economy, and neither party seems to care enough about what the public wants to push to get out
• Most electoral districts are safe for one party or the other, politicians seem always to get reelected, and they dance to the tune of the most radical of their supporters -- the ones willing to get out and push for their positions
• Elections are dominated by big money, politicians spend too much time and effort seeking money for reelection, and the deep pockets have too much influence through their lobbyists

So people want change. They communicate with others who not only share their malaise, but who share their political ideology. 

We have seen Arab Spring in the news, and the idea is spreading that public demonstrations and political networking can bring change.

I would guess that the movement will not succeed in changing the fundamental processes that are leading to all these things which both people!

Picture source

The Sources of Islamaphobia in Modern America

This video accompanies Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America, a new report from The Center for American Progress. I quote from the website:

(The) network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to influence politicians’ talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric.

And it all starts with the money flowing from a select group of foundations. A small group of foundations and wealthy donors are the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America, providing critical funding to a clutch of right-wing think tanks that peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam—in the form of books, reports, websites, blogs, and carefully crafted talking points that anti-Islam grassroots organizations and some right-wing religious groups use as propaganda for their constituency.

Some of these foundations and wealthy donors also provide direct funding to anti-Islam grassroots groups. According to our extensive analysis, here are the top seven contributors to promoting Islamophobia in our country:

• Donors Capital Fund
• Richard Mellon Scaife foundations
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust
• Russell Berrie Foundation
• Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund
• Fairbrook Foundation 

Altogether, these seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009—funding that supports the scholars and experts that are the subject of our next chapter as well as some of the grassroots groups that are the subject of Chapter 3 of our report.

This is an important report, drawing attention to the impact of a small group of well financed people in creating a climate of hate and fear in this country which has the potential to pervert national policy. Islamaphobia takes us back to to a worse time characterized by the unreasonable prejudice against Japanese, German and Italian Americans during the World War II. It is a continuation of the heritage in this country of prejudice against Hispanics, Jews, African-Americans, immigrants, and Indians.

Something I missed: Texas School Board Attack on Social Sciences

 
Earlier this year 15 elected members of the Texas School Board balderized the draft standards for the teaching of social studies in Texas schools. More.....

Check out the PBS Need to Know program on the balderization.

School text books are written to help teachers teach to the standards, and since the Texas-wide school system is the largest in the country, textbook publishers work hard to assure that their books fit the Texas standards. Other school districts across the country, with a variety of standards, to some degree are stuck with books written to satisfice the Texas School Board and its standards.

A letter signed by 800 historians, the vast majority teaching at universities and many in Texas universities wrote an open letter protesting the action pushed by the right wing majority of the School Board. I quote:

Those of us who teach and conduct research in colleges and universities have grown concerned, however, that social studies curriculum standards in Texas do not meet student needs. We also believe that the Texas State Board of Education has been derelict in its duty to revise the public school curriculum. In short, recent proposals by Board members have undermined the study of the social sciences in our public schools by misrepresenting and even distorting the historical record and the functioning of American society.

Some of the problematic revisions that they have proposed include:

• Weakening the study of constitutional protections for religious liberty that keep government out of matters of faith;
• Minimizing the struggle of women and ethnic minorities for equal and civil rights;
• Striking Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political changes since the 1700s; and
• Excluding an important historical figure from Latin America because some board members did not recognize him

I have in the past posted my concerns about the balderization of curricula in the evolution and climate change curricula, and the effort to change social science curricula to suit a conservative ideology is equally or more worrisome. I want the best available knowledge of economics, sociology, anthropology, political science and history used to inform the school social science curricula, not the most correct conservative ideology!

Fortunately, the mathematics curriculum is not subject to this revisionism, and there is a national mathematics curriculum available from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Perhaps we should seek to have as many school districts as possible subscribe to a national curricula in science and to a national curriculum in social studies and history so that they will outweigh the Texas school system in the decision making of the text book publishers.

The International Science and Mathematics Study looks at student performance in 41 countries, based on a very large sample of students. I quote from an article on U.S. student performance in these tests:

In short, the tests showed U.S. fourth-graders performing poorly, middle school students worse. and high school students are unable to compete. By the same criteria used to say we were "average" in elementary school, "we appear to be "near the bottom" at the high school level. People have a tendency to think this picture is  bleak but it doesn't apply to their own school. Chances are, even if your school compares well in SAT scores, it will still be a lightweight on an international scale.

1. By the time our students are ready to leave high school - ready to enter higher education and the labor force - they are doing so badly with science they are significantly weaker than their peers in other countries.
2. Our idea of "advanced" is clearly below international standards.
3. There appears to be a consistent weakness in our teaching performance in physical sciences that becomes magnified over the years.

I suspect that a major reason for this poor performance is that too many school districts accept second rate education for their students, having underpaid teachers in inadequate facilities teaching to poor curricula and weak standards. Perhaps we need real national standards and serious national testing, and a system that holds all U.S. school systems and U.S. school boards accountable for the education they provide their students!

Boycott Hershey Chocolate

I quote from an email from SEIU describing a situation that I find unacceptable:

Once upon a time, unionized workers packing chocolate at the Hershey company in Pennsylvania made $18 to $30 an hour.

Today, the company relies on a "cultural exchange" program that asks foreign students to pay up to $6,000 to come to America to work for $8 an hour to work at a companies like Hershey and experience what its like to live in America.

Then, when they arrive, "program fees" and rent are deducted from their salaries to the point many are unable to recoup what it costs to obtain their visa.

SEIU is collecting money to support a strike of the current crop of foreign workers.

http://action.seiu.org/hershey-students

I propose to boycott Hershey products until this practice is stopped. I invite any readers to join me.