American Truths (Updated)

If we are going to have a country at all, there are some things we should agree on. There are some self-evident truths about America and the world that ought to be delineated and canonized* so that when opposition to those agreed upon truths "rear their ugly heads" we can be confident they will be corrected.

We, alone and with others, have corrected some in the past, and they have been accepted to such a point that to favor or posit them now would seem ridiculous. They are truths. American truths. Things we as Americans hold true. Not coincidentally, most of the world does as well.

Some of these American truths have made their way out of American wars, social upheaval, advances in science and technology, archaeology, and paleontology, physics, law and life. Some of the most accepted I will list here, then we will see which ones are now loudly and frighteningly under attack.

Self-Evident American Truths:

• Slavery was immoral
• The earth is round
  
• Women should vote
• So should black people
• Blacks and whites should be able to marry
• The universe is really old
• Hitler was very, very bad
• It's good the Union prevailed in the Civil War
• Nazis are assholes
• There is no difference in potential between races
  
• Communism failed
• Medicare is Socialized Medicine
• VA is Government Run Health Care
• Private health insurance provides no social good (since it can be done cheaper by the government)
• The rich are getting richer
• Evolution is theory, like gravity, and they are both real
  
• The poor are getting poorer
• We owe China like, a lot of money
• Poor people in America die of hunger and lack of health care
  
• You don't heckle the POTUS in the Chamber
• Gay parents are like your parents--warts and all

Okay. You right-wingers may argue with a couple, but you'd be wrong, so shut up. Indeed, that is the point here. There are things on this list that are being challenged, and it needs to stop. Stupidity ought to be unAmerican.

Anyone comparing our President to Hitler should get arrested. Or at least beat up by a progressive. A big, gay, progressive. There is nothing Obama is proposing that is in any way similar to Hitler or Hitler's policies. Hitler, you see, was a fucking psychopath and murdered millions of people, many because they were Jewish. He was nothing like Obama, who seems pretty stable. And Obama is a Democrat, not a Nazi. Google it. Hitler was bad, America fought him in WWII, we defeated him with the help of some of our greatest generals and soldiers, the whole country sacrificed and rationed, and no American president should have to tolerate being compared to Hitler. That's an American Truth. Assholes.

Insurance companies exist to make money, not provide health care. Anyone who says otherwise (not that anyone has) is wrong, or stupid, or lying. Medicare proves that a government run "single payer" can be far more efficient delivering the commerce of health care than insurance companies, something like 30% operating cost versus 4% or something astounding like that. Anyone who can't see that insurance companies have to charge more so they can pay for commercials, and planes, and bonuses, and CONGRESSMEN, and hookers (okay, maybe not hookers. NOT!!) are just blind, or stupid, or get their money via an insurance company. It's an American, capitalist truth!

The universe is old, and Earth is too. It's in the billions, not the thousands. We are related to monkeys. And fish.

*Update: I've had a good response from this post, though there's a quibble.  The quibbler (who I love) doesn't like the word "canonized" because it is too Catholic. I agree, so here are some options: declared, adjudged, held, lauded, extolled, exalted, glorified, and last, proclaimed.  Those were from Synonym.com.

Feel free to add your own in comments.

Obama's Foes Are Filled With Unmitigated, Dangerous Hate

As a Jewish-atheist-human I find the Nazi insignia very hateful. So hateful that I think it should be classified as hate speech.

Since we can't arrest these morons for stupidity, maybe we can arrest them for a hate crime?

These racist, homophobic, born-again idiots who think Obama is a communist and a fascist and a traitor, all at the same time, need to be reined in, and fast.

Where are the Republican grown-ups? Is that an oxymoron?

h/t Sully the Stoner

What Were We Thinking?

My friend Tracy turned me on to this: Hippie-redneck Joe Bageant lays the blame for our predicament right at our feet. I think he is right.

The Entertainment Value of Snuffing Grandma

A nation of children roots for the Mafia

By Joe Bageant

Every day I get letters asking me to weigh in on the healthcare fracas. As if a redneck writer armed with a keyboard, a pack of smokes and all the misinformation and vitriol available on the Internet could contribute anything to the crap storm already in progress. Besides that, my unreasoned but noisy take on this issue is often about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. None of which has ever stopped me from making a fool of myself in the past. So here goes.

There ain't any healthcare debate going on, Bubba. What is going on are mob negotiations about insurance, and which mob gets the biggest chunk of the dough, be it our taxpayer dough or the geet that isn't in ole Jim's impoverished purse. The hoo-ha is about the insurance racket, not the delivery of healthcare to human beings. It's simply another form of extorting the people regarding a fundamental need -- health.

Unfortunately, the people have been mesmerized by our theater state's purposefully distracting and dramatic media productions for so long they've been mutated toward helplessness. Consequently, they are incapable of asking themselves a simple question: If insurance corporation profits are one third of the cost of healthcare, and all insurance corporations do is deliver our money to healthcare providers for us (or actually, do everything in their power to keep the money for themselves), why do we need insurance companies at all? Answer: Because Wall Street gets a big piece of the action. And nobody messes with the Wall Street Mob (as the bailout extortion money proved). Better (and worse) presidents have tried. Some made a genuine effort to push it through Congress. Others expressed the desire publicly, but after getting privately muscled by the healthcare industry, decided to back off from the idea. For instance:

* Franklin Roosevelt wanted universal healthcare.
* Harry Truman wanted universal healthcare.
* Dwight Eisenhower wanted universal healthcare.
* Richard Nixon wanted universal healthcare.
* Lyndon Johnson wanted universal healthcare.
* Bill Clinton wanted -- well we can't definitely say because he made sure that if the issue blew up on him, which it did, Hillary would be left holding the turd. Is it any wonder that woman gets so snappy at the slightest provocation? First getting left to hold the bag on healthcare, then the spots on that blue dress.

So why did American liberals believe Obama would bring home the healthcare bacon? Because they live in an ideological cupcake land. It's a big neighborhood, a very special place where "Your vote is important," and "by electing the right candidate, you can change our beloved nation." Most of America lives in that neighborhood, even though they've never personally met. It's a place where the shrubbery and flowerbeds of such things as "values" and "hope" bloom. Hope that our desires coupled with the efforts of a good and decent president can affect "change." Evidently these voters never heard the old adage, "Hope in one hand and piss in the other, and see which one fills up first."

UC Against Privatization Of Public Education, Plan Walkout

UC Faculty Walkout - September 24
In solidarity with students and staff
In defense of public education in California

Under the cover of the summer months, UC administration has pushed through a program of tuition hikes, enrollment cuts, layoffs, furloughs, and increased class sizes that harms students and jeopardizes the livelihoods of the most vulnerable university employees. These decisions fundamentally compromise the mission of the University of California. They are complicit with the privatization of public education, and they have been made in a manner that flouts the principle of shared governance at the core of the UC faculty's capacity to guide the future of the University in accordance with its mission.

On September 24, in solidarity with UC staff and students, faculty throughout the University of California system will walk out in defense of public education.

Please indicate your support using the signature form at the top of this page.

Organizational questions: ucfacultywalkout@gmail.com

Join the Facebook group.

Follow updates on our blog.

Teachers next? Yes we can?

h/t Schools Matter

Friday Cartoon Fun: September 11 Remembered Edition

Obama's Education Speech: Reactions

A High School Teacher Responds to Obama’s Speech to Students

Obama’s Back-to-School speech deserves commentary on many points. Here I am going to simply mention some telling assumptions that are laced through the presentation.

The President, of course, gets some points for talking about how students must accept responsibility for their own achievement. Though fundamental, this is hardly new. The elephant in the room is – achievement… for what? What is the real purpose of an education – a public education – in America 2009?

1) Obama talks about getting a good job as a major goal of going to school: “You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You are going to need a good education for every single one of those careers”.

The idea that America today is full of good jobs, waiting for each year’s crop of graduates has been exploded many times. Here’s one from Gerald Bracey, for years a harsh critic of the notion that America’s schools are failing:

From On Education, Obama Blows It, by Gerald Bracey:

I have not the expertise to address the merits of President Obama’s speech to Congress on the issues of the economy. I do claim some expertise on education. He blew it.

He accepted the same garbage that the propagandists, fear mongers such as Lou Gerstner, Bill Gates, Roy Romer, Bob Wise, Craig Barrett and many others—God help us, Arne Duncan?--have been spewing for years.

Obama said, ”Right now, three quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma, and yet just over half of our citizens have that level of education. Scary, huh? Not really. This statistic was a favorite of ex secretary of education of education Margaret Spellings, about whom we can all express a sigh of relief that the operative word is, “ex.”

If you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics stats on job projections, it is almost true (but not really) that what Obama said is right. But there are two hugely compromising factors that make this statistic much less fearsome that it first appears:

1. The definition of “more than a high school diploma” is a weasel phrase, an incredibly slippery statistic. It does not mean a B. A., an Associates Degree, nor even a year of on-the-job training. The BLS projects that the overwhelming majority of jobs to be created between now and 2016 will require “short term on the job training.” That’s one week to three months.

2. The “fastest-growing occupations” account for very few jobs. For every systems engineer, we need about 15 sales people on the floor at Wal-Mart (and we have three newly minted scientists and engineers for every new job in those fields). The huge job numbers in this country are accounted for by retail sales, janitors, maids, food workers, waiters, truck drivers, home care assistants (low paid folk who come to take care those of us who are getting up in years), and similar low-trained, low-paid occupations. Note that I did not say these people are “low-skilled.” As Barbara Ehrenreich showed after she spent two years working in “low-skilled” jobs, there really is no such thing (see her Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America).

Art

For artists everywhere, especially Lu, Josh, Robin, and Pat, my four favorite artists.

From the lovely Brazen.

Thursday Bonus Cartoon Fun: What A Dick Edition

Thursday Cartoon Fun: A Nation Of Morons Edition

Get Schooled (It's A Commercial For Kids)

So, this screengrab is from the Get Schooled site and it clearly blames teachers for poor student outcomes, right there in the first paragraph. This is how Obama has decided to fix education -- blame the teachers.

He then says teachers need to help you be successful and reach your potential. That's a great idea!! Why hadn't anyone ever thought of that before! It's so, you know, no excuses! Just make your teacher make you successful and reach your potential! And if they don't, we'll fire 'em, shut down the school, and make you kids stay longer! Of course, the TFA teacher will only stay 2 years, because they end up hating it. But, hey, they are motivated in the beginning!

And in paragraph 3 he seals the deal; he actually says "Some...teachers...don't make the grade..."

So, kids, if you don't do well, you can now blame your teacher, says your president.

You kids should ask your president what he plans to do to eliminate poverty, because you and I know that when you don't eat, or when you have to take care of your brothers and sisters because your mom has 3 jobs and can't make it home, it makes school just a bit less important than your survival.

Tell your president, and governor, and representatives that you want the government to focus on reducing poverty, the actual reason for the achievement gap. Tell them you want universal healthcare. Tell them you want your little sister to go to a good pre-k program where she can get the basics to be ready for kindergarten, where in these NCLB times, kindergartners will be tested.

Everyone knows many parents need to do much more, and we know most of the problems kids have come from outside school. We know this, it has been researched, yet we don't seem to believe it. Or if we believe it, we have decided there is nothing we can do about it. So we have moved on--moved on to teachers and schools (not school administrators though. Hmmmm?)

We also know that real, single payer health care is the only way to reduce health care costs and increase coverage. We know this, but we refuse to do it.

There are lots of things we seem to know, but don't do. It's the What's The Matter With Kansas problem; people acting against their own self-interest.

Those who blame the teachers instead of policy makers and administrators, or who blame Lindy Englund instead of Rummy and Cheney, or who blame the polar bear and not the idiot zoo-goer who wanted the picture up close, are dooming us to a society more fractured and stratified than it is now. Unfortunately, it seems the majority (or maybe it's just those in power?) hold themselves blameless, therefore, education, and society, are doomed. Doomed, I tell ya!

We are being held by the gaping jaws of a polar bear and wondering why we are bleeding.

Arianna Fights For Kids

Arianna Huffington understands that what ails education is what ails society--poverty, the original gateway calamity.

The Story That Made Me Tear Up My Prepared Speech at a Big Education Conference

I was scheduled to give a speech at the Get Schooled conference on education reform yesterday, sponsored by the Gates Foundation and Viacom. My speech had been perfectly trimmed to fit the allotted time, and already loaded in the teleprompter.

Then I read Erik Eckholm's moving story in the New York Times on the surge of homeless schoolchildren caused by the epidemic of home foreclosures. The story was accompanied by a photo that haunted me.

It showed 9-year-old Charity Crowell, of Asheville, North Carolina whose family's home had been foreclosed on. As recounted by Eckholm, Charity had picked out the green and purple outfit she would wear on the first day of school, while vowing to bring her grades back up from the Cs she got last spring when her parents lost their jobs and car and the family was evicted and forced to move into a series of friends' houses and then a motel -- and now a trailer, from which they are also facing eviction.

I've already been thinking a lot about the human cost of the millions of foreclosures taking place across America. But after I read this article, I dug deeper into the impact of foreclosures on schoolchildren. And I wanted to communicate the sense of urgency I felt to the thousand people gathered at the conference, including Bill and Melinda Gates, Deputy Secretary of Education Tony Miller, New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein, and Stephen Colbert, who emceed the event. So I decided to scrap my planned speech and talk about the crisis.

We don't have the current numbers of homeless school children. The latest national data we have is from last spring, when there were over one million schoolchildren who were homeless. But since last spring, two million more jobs have been lost, and home foreclosures have continued to rise at an epidemic pace. How many of the million homes that have received foreclosure filings in the last six months included school age children?

We have anecdotal evidence from school districts like San Antonio, which has enrolled 1,000 homeless students in the first two weeks of school -- double the amount as at the same point last year.

We live in a country that, one year ago this month, came together with a sense of national emergency, and bailed out banks that were "too big to fail."

Shouldn't we also be living in a country that can come together right now and bail out schoolchildren that are too small to be allowed to fail before they have been allowed to succeed?

"I couldn't go to sleep," 9-year-old Charity said of her last semester. "I was worried about all the stuff." As a result, she often fell asleep in class.

"Insurance Exchange"? WTF?

Someone explain what an "Insurance Exchange" is, seeing as how Obama will apparently tout it this evening...

Now, if you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange – a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It’s how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it’s time to give every American the same opportunity that we’ve given ourselves.

Matt Taibbi: Where Are The Crazy Police?

Matt Taibbi exposes yet another horror:

Goldman Sachs has developed a tradable index of life settlements, enabling investors to bet on whether people will live longer than expected or die sooner than planned. The index is similar to tradable stock market indices that allow investors to bet on the overall direction of the market without buying stocks.

Spokesmen for Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

via NYTimes.com.

In reference to the above, Taibbi wonders:

But even beyond that… what the fuck??? This feels like financial innovation as practiced by Josef Mengele meets the Zucker Brothers; not just evil, but wacky evil. I don’t even want to think about what happens when Goldman Sachs suddenly has a large financial stake in the premature deaths of a bunch of old people. Where are the crazy police? Where is the crack federal crazy squad with the big butterfly net? I don’t know about betting on anyone’s life expectancy, but I think I’d like to bet on whether or not this idea ends well.

Professor Reich Explains The Public Option

Quote Of The Day: Matt Taibbi

Without a public option, any effort at health care reform will be as meaningful as a manicure for a gunshot victim.