How to Get Unstuck From Being Stuck in the Political Mud

In a recent interview with Bill Moyers, Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, shared that it was not true that President Obama piled on new conditions when he and John Boehner were close to a major agreement on cutting the debt.  Boehner said that Obama didn’t have the courage to move ahead with the agreement.

Geithner indicated that Obama did want to raise more revenues through reforms in the tax code, however there were also several Republican provisions in the agreement that the Boehner knew the President would not accept.  And so we were fed a misrepresentation of the truth regarding Obama’s lack of courage.

Geithner also said that  Obama’s keeping of the Bush Era tax cuts for those individuals who earn 200,000 and couples who earn 250,000, and to cut the Bush tax cuts for the upper 2%  would net One Trillion dollars over 10 years.  It would also leave 97 % of small businesses untouched.  The charge that Obama is going against his promise to not raise taxes on the middle class is untrue.  Likewise that the revenue from an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the upper 2% would be inconsequential is untrue.  And, that he would place a hardship on small business is untrue.  Again, misinformation.

Job creation is another area where we are being given misinformation.  Obama is reported to have a lousy record on job creation.  Not only did Obama navigate the ship of state away from sinking in the stormy seas of the Great Recession, in his 3 ½ years, 4.5 million private sector jobs have been created.  It was said at the time of the crash that it would take 5 years to recoup the job losses from the recession with normal job growth.  Needless to say “normal job growth” was nonexistent. 

He is also criticized for an unemployment rate of 8.2 %.  Had the conservatives not cut 1 million public sector jobs, the jobless rate would be around 7%.  Again, misinformation.

The real issue is, can a democracy exist where misinformation is the norm and not the exception?  What does it say about our political system that we have to resort to “fact checkers” in order to separate the lies from the truths of what is said or written?

People having differing views about issues or opinions about what should be done are one thing.  Differences allow for dialogue, compromise and resolution.  That’s the way things used to be, for example, in the Reagan-O’Neil Era. 

Today the conservative minority tolerates no compromise. Those who have different views are categorized as the enemy and so we have a stalemated political system. We are operating in an ends justify the means mentality.  The conservative action plan is to say or do anything it can to get rid of Obama.  In today’s political world, strategy and tactics trump policy and issues. So where does that leave us?

We are political hostages in our own country.  Conservatives have more loyalty to a Grover Norquist than to you or I.   Discussion, dialogue and decision making are out of vogue.

Thich Nhat Hanh has written “no single tradition monopolizes the truth.  We must glean the best values of all traditions and work together to remove the tensions between them.  If we do, peace will have a chance.” Until we bring such awareness into our political arena, we will remain politically stuck in the mud.

Thanks for stopping by...

Namaste,

Jim

 

"Yes We Can" - No We Won't = Here We're Stuck

When Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, there was excitement and high expectation for creating a government that was honest, and intellectually engaged.  With Obama’s election, there was an excitement about “yes we can” in changing the political culture of Washington and restoring a sense of people working together to address the needs of all of our citizens. There was also a sense of being part of the American dream in that for the first time, we had elected a biracial person, from humble origins, to the highest office in the land. 

On the day of President Obama's Inauguration Speech, leaders of the GOP met and promised to oppose anything that the new president proposed legislatively and otherwise.  This same theme was evident during the 2010 election with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that the Republican’s primary goal was to make him a one term president. So much for cooperation and attempting to change the culture of Washington.    

Nevertheless, Obama still attempted to reach out to those who were determined to ruin his presidency, by working with them to keep the economy from imploding.  He also attempted to work with them around health care and other issues in a desire to address the needs of the American people.  He asked Bob Gates to remain as Secretary of Defense and John Huntsman to serve as Ambassador to China.  Both were republicans.

The derivatives scandal that brought about the loss of jobs, homes, retirement programs and ravaged public education along with community based safety and social services was a carry over from the Bush administration.  In addition, the Bush administration added mightily, through tax cuts and two unfunded wars, to the increasing national debt. Today’s conservative guardians of monetary responsibility have a memory lapse around such facts.

Obama’s stimulus proposals along with the bailing out of the auto industry, were roundly criticized by his opposition. In truth, his efforts are credited, by most economists, as having saved our economy. Also, it was thought by many economists that a larger stimulus packages would have been even more effective. His opposition refused to accept a larger stimulus package.

Many feel that, given the hand Obama was dealt, he did the best that could have been done in light of what he had to work with.  So, when we are told that today’s anemic jobs market was solely created by Obama in the last three and a half years, it is more accurate to assert that the economy belongs to left over Bush influences, Obama’s policies and the conservatives who opposed his efforts.

It should be noted, that at the time of the bail out, it was projected that in order for us to recover the number of jobs that had been lost due to the derivatives scandal, it would require five years of normal growth just to return to the level of employment that was in force in 2008.  After 2008 we had even more people entering the job market.  This should put the complexity and scope of the recovery in some perspective, not to mention what has been happening in the global economy.

Obama’s much criticized focus on health care was based on several factors that seem, again, to be lost to memory. For the past eighty years, nothing had been done to create a cohesive, affordable health care program for the citizens of this country.  For profit health care costs were going through the roof.  More people were going bankrupt due to catastrophic health care costs than for any other reason.  And, to top matters off, there were an estimated fifty million uninsured Americans going to emergency rooms when their medical needs required professional assistance.  This was an expensive way of providing health care and the costs for this were being absorbed by all citizens.  In short, health care was a huge drain on our economy and it needed to be fixed.

The conservatives fought hard to keep single payer and universal health care from happening.  The notion of changing to a non profit “Kaiser Model” was out of the question.  For the average citizen, the kind and quality of government health care that our representatives were receiving was, likewise, out of the question.  So Obama began to make compromises with the drug companies to make something happen.

The conservative’s mantra is that compromise is defeat and compromise is not a part of their vocabulary.  Obama had established a precedent that he was willing to compromise to get something done. Conservatives perceived this as a weakness on his part that has plagued his presidency since the health care debate.     

Finally, the conservative’s dogma is that regulations hamper the “free market.” The fact that for the past 30 years deregulations set the stage for the derivatives disaster and before that the savings and loan scandal matters not to these people.  That fact that Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Bank, is, today, doing the same things that brought about the Crash of 2008 demonstrates that conservatives don’t learn from past mistakes and are back to business as usual.  How many of us would want to relive another 2008?

So, what is the conservative’s agenda?  They do anything and everything they can to weaken government. They do this by cutting funds for programs and jobs. Their rationale for this is that if government doesn’t work, the people will become angry and will embrace the need for limited government.

Conservatives believe that within a culture of limited government, opportunities exist for those with money and power to achieve even more.  We are, in fact, living in a money dominated political world where telling lies is common place and the average citizen is on the outside looking in.  Much of conservative finger pointing at Obama as being responsible for the current debt and slow economic recovery, is cut from this clothe of misinformation.

America is no longer a government of WE the People. Instead we live in a corporate dominated world where money and position can buy politicians and policies to make those who have, even more powerful. We are not just coming to fiscal crisis in the months ahead.  At the rate we are traveling down this fiscal and politically oppositional road, our whole American way of life, as we have known it is being threatened. 

As weak as President Obama is touted to be by conservatives, he did prevent our economy from total collapse.  The economy has become stabilized.  We need to read between the propaganda and the misinformation and think through is our economy better off today that it was when he became president?  

His support of and respect for women, alternative life styles, his policies regarding illegal immigrants, his having kept his word about ending our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, his involvement in eliminating al-Qaeda leadership, and preventing genocide in Libya are all evidence of his leadership.  This and his effort to provide affordable health care for all is not a bad record for someone whose efforts his opposition has attempted to sabotage since his taking the oath of office.

One final question to ponder:  Where would we be today if Obama and Republicans did change the culture of Washington?  Where would our economy be today if, the spirit of cooperation that was evident in Obama working with Bush in transitioning efforts had been carried on with O’Connell and the House Conservatives?  We will never know.

One thing is for certain.  Conservatives don’t seem to understand that our survival as a species has been predicated on our working together.  As social beings our strength lies in our embracing an “all for one and one for all” commitment to one another. The survival of the fittest myth is just that, a myth. 

Thanks for stopping by...

Namaste,

Jim           

It's Up to Us!

I find it difficult to remain quiet when I am confronted with how political pathology is tearing the fabric of our society to shreds. 

Our people are drowning in unemployment, underemployment and underwater mortgages. More of our children are going to bed hungry each night and more families are homeless. Our school systems are crumbling and our children’s ability to become prepared for adulthood is being compromised.

How would we feel if we were out of work, through no fault of our own,  and we were facing the threat of unemployment insurance being stopped because we have been out of work for too long? In the op-ed world such is old news, but for those who are facing these realities, their backs are against the wall.  While they die a little each day, those who created this mess go on with business as usual.

We are being told that in preparing for “senior status” we need to accept less. School teachers, are criticized for earning more in retirement than private sector workers.  The implication of this is that something is wrong about someone working for 35 years and retiring with a 45,000 a year retirement program. A retirement program which requires the retiree to pay an additional 900 per month for medical, dental and vision coverage for the retiree and their spouse.

John Diaz’s Editorial on June 3^rd in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled More Sensible Term Limits, in part discussed robo calls that spew out misinformation on various propositions that appeared on the ballot. He states that “such calls are beyond deception.” In today’s world such dishonesty has become common place.

In truth we are living in an era where the “ends justify the means.”  This is predicated, in part, on people holding onto a political dogma.  Dogmas, it has been written, are “collective conceptual prisons... people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of I know. Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas…every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness.”

The Republican view of how the economy should be run is an example being wedded to a dogma.  Beginning with Reagan’s “trickle down” economy to the present, not one of their economic ideas has worked.  The notion that austerity or that cutting taxes will create jobs is historically untrue. The cutting of taxes during war time is unheard of.  The commitment to not raise revenue, or to compromise with the “enemy” is common place.  Playing “chicken” with the fate of the economy and the welfare of citizens is unconscionable. 

Facts do not change their beliefs.  To Obama’s “yes we can,” conservatives practice “no we won’t.” So we have gridlock.   The problem is that we are all suffering because of such falsehoods and fantasies.

Finally, we are being treated like mindless consumers and not as citizens for whom our representatives are supposedly working.  We are being fed propaganda which is predicated on ‘if we tell a lie often enough, people will begin to believe the lie to be the truth.’  An example of this is that tobacco “is not bad for your health.” Or, after the 2008 sub prime mortgage disaster we don’t need regulations in banking. Or again, government is being too intrusive.  How safe would food, medicines or airplanes be without government?

As the song says “and the times, they are ah changing.”  Where will these changes take us?  Will we wind up a third world country with poverty, poorly educated children, the old eating out of garbage cans?  Or, will we demand something more for ourselves.  It’s up to us.    

 Jim Farwell M.A. / M.F.T.
    farwelljs@yahoocom

Our Democracy Depends on Effective Public Schools

Public schools are an essential ingredient in the survival of our very democratic way of life.  Our rule by informed consent requires that our citizens are able to understand the language that they hear; are able to read and comprehend what they have read; are able to discuss through verbal and written discourse the issues of the day; and, be able to differentiate between sound bites, propaganda, demagogy and the facts of a situation or position.

This essential role of public schools is being undermined by drop out rates that are alarming.  Nearly 30% of all high school students fail to graduate from high school, nation wide.  Of particular concern are those who live, survive and attempt to gain an education in the poverty laden, crime riddled, drug infested, violence prone inner cities of our nation.  In these areas like East Oakland, the drop out rate reaches 50 to 60 percent of our young people.

Many of these future parents and leaders of our nation who live in the inner city cannot understand classroom English. The reason for this is that the language that these children hear in the home and on the street, is not the language that is used in the classroom. As a consequence they are unable to comprehend and retain what they have been presented in class; they are limited in their ability to read and understand what they have read.  They are not able to spell or write a complete sentence, or hold a discussion of much of anything beyond basic social interactions and survival issues on the streets. 

These young people are unemployable and are bound to continue to live in poverty with few if any options open to them.  70% of the children born in such inner city environments are born to illiterate, single young women, many of whom are children, themselves.  Marion Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense League has written:  “These young people are clearly on the path leading from the cradle to prison pipeline.”

So, how has California gone from the finest education state to 48^th in the past 50 years?  Our decline in effective education has been caused by special interest groups and those who are farthest away from the classroom who has adopted one flawed educational fad after another that has failed. These decisions were often predicated on the practice that our educational “philosophy of the moment” was dependent on the next funding source that is available to the educational community. Bill Gates pouring 2 Billion dollars into “small schools” is an example of this.  After 10 years and disappointing results, Gates withdrew from supporting small schools.  Oakland adopted small schools due to Gate’s funding source and, now, is without funding to continue an ineffective experiment.

Another current fad is recruiting college graduates with no training in education, providing them with a 6 week overview of how a district like Oakland operates and then placing these newly recruited graduates in special education and inner city classes.  Would we allow someone with a 6 weeks overview of hospital procedures to practice medicine in the emergency room?  Education needs to be acknowledged as the profession that it is and not something that just anyone can do.

Professional educators who have been trained and are experienced in curriculum, pedagogy, finance, classroom management, evaluating a student’s needs, creating a lesson plan and are aware of the culture in which they find themselves working are the ones who have been excluded from the creation of educational policy.  These are the very people who should be the leaders of any educational reform in this country.  Our survival as a democratic society depends on trained, experienced, professional educators.

Thanks for stopping by…

Namaste,

Jim

How A Dogmatic Agenda Promotes a Dysfunctional Government

More reflections on the world of political issues……

We are living in a dysfunctional and disheartening political environment.  We have a conservative political group, 50% of 1/3 of our government, clinging to a dogma that is holding American citizens hostage in an attempt to bring their agenda to fruition.

What is their dogma?  It is that government is our problem, that it must be neutralized and we need to return to self reliance, reduce the debt and distance ourselves from anything that remotely resembles “socialism.”  Socialism, meaning social security, Medicare and the attitude that we are a country of people who work together for the good of all.

What is their agenda?  It is to incapacitate the functioning of government and to make President Obama a one term president.  Their beliefs and their mission are served by obstructing whatever Obama does in an attempt to address the needs of the American people.  To Obama’s “yes we can” their response is no we won’t. 

To these Grover Norquist certified House members, any form of compromise is viewed as a defeat, particularly in the raising of taxes. In fact, they view anyone who is in opposition to their point of view as “an enemy.”  Their “take no prisoners” approach to government was exemplified when those who were needing an extension of their unemployment payments were held hostage until an extension of the Bush Tax Cuts were agreed to by the Administration.  Such extortion exemplifies the reality that these people put attaining their agenda ahead of meeting the needs of people.

And what are their solutions?   Their solutions are 80 years behind the times.  Unregulated greed prompted the ’29 Crash and was present in the 2008 Crash.  Their idea that “trickle down” economics, lower taxes and austerity are the solution to job creation and stimulating the economy have been historically disproved.  And yet, they persist in these failed myths.

These advocates of non regulation fail to accept that the world is full of Bernard Madoffs, Charles Keatings, Enrons Corporations, and the sub prime derivatives bundlers who have destroyed peoples’ lives and our nation’s economy. It is as if they want to return to business as usual rather than to deal with our need for checks and balances in banking, finance and in business practices.

 

These people preach fiscal responsibility and, with a 9 percent approval rating, profess to be the spokesmen for what the American people need in these financially devastating times.   They refuse to accept any responsibility for their part in increasing our debt.  Their tax cuts while fighting two wars and implementing an unpaid for drug program deepened our debt by trillions of dollars.

And, who is it that conservatives offer as an alternative to a President who has navigated our economically crippled Ship of State through uncharted waters?  We have Michelle Bachmann who believes that a minimum wage of 2 dollars an hour is bad for the economy, and that counseling gay people will help them change their sexual orientation.  We have Mitt Romney whose lack of integrity has become the butt of jokes.  We have Rick Perry who, at best, is a provincial Texas politician.  Herman Cain is painfully Herman Cain.  And  Newt’s tired shtick isn’t anymore believable, now, than it was 20 years ago.  These conservatives’ solutions and candidates for president only affirm their dogmatic and out of touch political views and how their adhering to their agenda continues to promote dysfunctional government.

Thanks for checking in...

Namaste,

Jim Farwell

How Long Can A Democracy Survive Dishonesty?

Moving from educational issues to the world of political issues….

 We live in a political world where the belief is that if you tell citizens something often enough, citizens will come to believe what they have been told is the truth. We were told that tobacco doesn’t harm our health.  The John Kerry Swift Boaters come to mind as do the “birthers” who believe that President Obama was not born in the United States and should not be President. 

What is troubling about this is that it seems that the “facts” or “truth” about something makes little or no difference regarding what some people choose believe.  Obama’s birth certificate won’t necessarily change a “birther’s” view of reality. What is it that makes people hold onto their beliefs, no matter what?  

Speaking untruths or saying anything they want to say, has been justified by many as simply exercising their First Amendment Right to free speech.  For this group, free speech trumps factually verifiable and responsible speech.  

Things have gone so far down this road that we, now, have to rely on “fact checking” services to know if what is being said about a candidate, issue or proposition is accurate.  In fact, we are being warned “voters beware.”  In effect, we are being treated as consumers and not as citizens.

Is this dishonesty something that our country can withstand? And, at what cost?  Do the ends really justify the means?  When George W. Bush told us that we invaded Iraq because they were a threat to our security due to having weapons of mass destruction, the American people believed what they were being told and supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq.  Then we were told that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was not a threat to the United States. A choking sense of betrayal was felt by many.  What made it even more upsetting was the way the administration tried to justify their actions by saying "but we got Saddam Hussein,” as if that justified their misleading the American people.

 In truth, if we cannot believe what we are being told by those who represent us, our trust and confidence in our leaders is destroyed.  Where does such a sense of betrayal leave us?

Our Constitution was written to create a secure structure within which citizens are protected from those who would take away their rights, liberty and jeopardize their welfare.  Within the structure of our Constitution, government is meant to protect us from those who would cause us harm.  Our elected leaders swear to uphold this Constitution and its pledge to the American citizen, so help them God.

 We have those who believe government restrictions deprive citizens from reaching their potentials in life.  Others feel that business regulations are “un-American.” Even after 2008, there are those who insist that we should “let the market correct itself.” The truth is that there are those like Bernard Madoff and before him Charles Keating who only cared about themselves.  Without regulations we have had the Savings and Loan, Tyco, World Com, Enron and sub-prime disasters. 

People’s lives were devastated by these attempts to take advantage of the unprotected.  Jobs, investments, retirement programs and saving were wrenched away from the unsuspecting victims of these deliberate fraudulent acts.  So the lesson is that we do need regulations to safeguard citizens.

 

In time dishonesty rots the very foundation of trust that the Constitution was intended to instill in citizens. If we cannot trust our institutions and our leaders, what are we left to believe or do? To whom are we to turn to find an alternative to the injustices that have been experienced? Might today’s Wall Street protests be a beginning in the process of addressing the dishonesty and injustices that have been experienced by a betrayed Main street?

Might our present economic uncertainty, in part, be due to our distrust in those very institutions that caused our economic disaster in the first place? As the pithy Mollie Ivins might have said, who wants to trust someone who already has screwed us once?

Thanks for checking in.

Namaste,

Jim Farwell

The Need For Teaching Values in Public Schools

Another education fad in today's world is to separate the issues that the child faces in life with the family and on the streets, from what goes on in the classroom. The rationalization for this is that the teacher and school have little or no impact on what is going on in the child's life outside of school. What teachers can have an impact on is what takes place in the classroom around the teaching of the basics and course content.

There are even those individuals who claim that schools should not be teaching values and that values education should only be done in the home. Not only is this inconsistent with Thomas Jefferson's view that schools are the place where the values of responsible citizenship are taught, it begs the question, in the absence of family, where are our children suppose to develop values? Are they to learn them from the streets?

If 70% of inner city children are born to an unmarried woman who is illiterate, unemployable and a child herself, where will these newborns receive their values education? Might not a family living class with a sex education component to its curriculum provide some children with an alternative to an education based on street values regarding sex, marriage and parenting practices?

Many of our children come from living situations where there is a single parent who is working two or more jobs to provide for basic needs; food, clothing, a place to sleep, heat, lights, medical and dental care.

Others come from living situations where parent figures are strung out on drugs, are incarcerated or have simply left the scene all together. If it weren't for our public schools where would children from such life experiences receive stability in life? In the absence of stable family life, public schools are the next available support system to provide our children with safety, food, acknowledgement, support, values and yes, love and hope.

For children from such situations to learn to sit still, to raise their hands to get attention and to trust that their needs will be met often by a stranger, is truly asking a child to take a huge leap of faith. And yet, if there is going to be any semblance of classroom order and safety, this one teacher, along with an instructional assistent, if one exists, are going to have to address all of these issues and more.

Often a classroom teacher is confronted with the reality that the child's family will instructd the child in one way to handle conflicts, while the school system requires another means of handling a conflict situation. I have known family members who will tell the child that if so and so "gets in their face," to get into his or her face. If someone hits you, you had better hit them back.

There is a "street logic" to this counsel. If, on the street, a child did not stand up to someone who was "dissing" (disrespecting them), their lack of retaliation will be considered a sign of weakness and they will be considered an easy mark for repeated confrontations and bullying. Those who do not stand their ground may receive abuse as a constant diet from those with whom he or she would come in contact. In this context, to get back into "someone's face" is a matter of basic survival.

On the other hand, the school cannot tolerate such an approach to "conflict resolution. If this street mentality were to rule the day in a classroom, there would be no semblance of order at all. In truth, in order for the classroom to be a safe place for children to be able to learn, the opposite of this street mentality must be the rule and not the exception.

The difficulty with this different approach to conflict resolution is that it requires the ability for the child to verbalize needs and feelings. For many of these children, their facility with understanding and speaking classroom or "Standard English" is limited. In addition for many of these children to verbalize needs and feelings, in essence their expressing what makes them feel vulnerable is totally foreign to their means of daily survival. Often it takes years of consistent, supportive work within the classroom for these children to be able to "learn" to verbalize their needs, feelings, and wants. Before such a learning process takes place, the child is caught between two worlds, the world of surviving on the street and the world of conforming to the expectations of the classroom.

In order to create a nurturing, safe, supportive and effective learning environment,we need to be conscious of the real life issues that our children and those who work with our children are dealing with on a daily basis. In order to meet the needs and provide for the safety and welfare of our students, we cannot be held prisoner by those who are prejudiced or ignorant about what public schools' address to protect and support our children's development of social and learning skills. And yet, we still have those in politics and those who have a hand in creating educational policies who maintain that the public school is no place to teach values. What do you think?

Thank you for stopping by.

Namaste,

Jim Farwell