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Islamo-fascism and the "ownership society": Framing the issues, Republican-style

Now we have Donald Rumsfeld blathering on about the "fascist" threat that must be taken seriously, or welcome back Adolf Hitler! 

Those Republicans.  They'll say anything to get your vote.

As I wrote yesterday, equating Islamic extremism, even if you believe it directly threatens all of Western ciivilization, to World War II fascism is worse than absurd.  It's a cynical and calculated PR ploy by the Republican Party to stave off defeat in the upcoming midterm elections through fear and intimidation.  It's a classic attempt by right-wing politicos to "frame the issue."

The use of the specter of  Islamo-fascism brings to mind Bush's attempt to "frame" Social Security privatization with the phrase "ownership society."  You remember that.  All Americans should see themselves as "investors" in the great engine of national  productivity.  It was even claimed without much dissent that most American citizens were invested in the stock market.  Thus private accounts for social security and medical savings accounts made perfectly good sense. 

Problem is, it wasn't true.  Not even close. 

A report from the Economic Policy institute, a portion of which was just released, says (and here I quote Marie Cocco's column announcing the report):

"For all the popular fascination with Wall Street greed and glory, investment wealth is still a distant dream on Main Street: In 2004, more than half of all U.S. households held no stock at all. That includes stocks held indirectly in mutual funds and in 401(k) retirement accounts. And almost two out of three households that did own stock held portfolios valued at less than $5,000."

So let's do the math.  According to my calculations, only 17% of U.S. households at best have anything approaching substantial holdings in the stock market.  That's a far cry from "most."  In fact, it's an outright fabrication.  A lie. 

Fortunately, not many people believed Bush's sales pitch for privatizing Social Security.  But people keep pointing to the stock market as a measure of of the health of our economy.  I say it's a measure of the health of the economy only for the very wealthiest among us.

And then there's health care, and the push for medical savngs accounts, which again only the very wealthiest would be able to take advantage of.  The reality is that most people now, especially in the middle class, hold on to their jobs for the health insurance benefits they provide.  Not just for the wages.

Health care is a huge issue, easily the most pressing one on the domestic front.  Over at Blue Oregon, coincidentally, an interesting discussion arose following a piece by Steve Novick questioning the health care bona fides of Oregon's Senator Gordon Smith.  Kari Chisholm hit the health care nail on the head with this comment:

"Here's the thing: It's simply not enough to jack up spending on health care for the poor. I mean, that's FINE and GOOD - but it doesn't solve the structural problem with our health care system.

"If health care inflation is something like 17% annually, but overall inflation is only something like 3% annually, then that means that health care is consuming an ever-increasing share of the economy.

"To put it even more simply, if health care spending at, say, the local school district is going up 17% a year, but overall revenues only go up 3% a year, then one of three things will happen: Either we find a way to bring health care spending under control, we jack up revenues (taxes) to pay for it, or health care eventually consumes 100% of the budget -- no teachers, no buildings, no books."

Doing something about health care is what we should be talking about.  Not Islamo-fascism. 

Politicians aren't people, says Measure 45 backer!

Here's the exact quote from an op-ed piece by Paul Farago, a "spokesman" for Restore Oregon's Term Limits Committee, AKA Measure 45:

"Editors at The Oregonian, however, apparently aren't concerned about what Oregonians think and have favored politicians rather than the people time and time again."

Careless writing, you say?  More like sloppy thinking, I say, which is characteristic of the entire notion of term limits.  After all, the Oregon legislature is pretty much a "citizen" governing body already.  Legislators are paid a pittance, certainly not enough to live on (unless you pull a Billy Dalto scam.)

Limiting terms is supposed to solve the problem of "career politicians" --who apparently are not real people-- ruining our lives.  In reality what term limits will do is turn the legislature over to business and other special interest lobbyists to come up with schemes to really ruin our lives. 

Now that is not a comforting prospect.  Not to me, anyway.

Once again: Fascism, American style

Last week, Portland's own Thom Hartmann challenged rabid warmonger Frank Gaffney on his use of the term Islamo-fascism.

This week he followed up with a piece published on the Common Dreams website.

What's his gripe?  Hartmann, like me, believes that throwing around a volatile term like fascism is both dangerous and misleading.  It's dangerous because it provides another in a long line of glib justifications for the use of military force in the Arab world.  And it's misleading in that, as an ingenious sleight of hand, it redirects attention away from the real fascist threat facing this country --the policies of the Bush Adminsitration.

As I've argued before, and as Hartmann argues now, fascism as envisioned by Benito Mussolini is properly defined as merger of corporate and government interests, not as the threat of a Muslim caliphate in the Middle East or, as Gaffney and Bush would have us believe, Islamic rule of the entire world.  That's theocracy, not fascism.

Mussolini's fascism --after all, he invented the term-- is quite different:

"Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled 'The Doctrine of Fascism' he wrote, 'If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.' But not a government of, by, and for We The People - instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.

In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he  dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the 'Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni' - the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like John Boehner and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government." 

I argued as much back in December of 2004, and again in July of 2005, in which I pointed out an article from the Project for the Old American Century called  "14 Points of fascism".   That had Bush written all over it. 

Progressives have long had a problem with the use of the term Islamo-fascism.  Take Katha Pollitt of The Nation, for example:

"What's wrong with "Islamo-fascism"? For starters, it's a terrible historical analogy. ... 'Islamo-fascism' conflates a wide variety of disparate states, movements and organizations as if, like the fascists, they all want similar things and are working together to achieve them. ... 'Islamo-fascism' looks like an analytic term, but really it's an emotional one, intended to get us to think less and fear more."

The last point about "fear" is pretty much what I meant when I called the use of the term Islamo-fascism an "ingenious sleight of hand." 

As with all things Bush, it's more about politics than policy.

Charles Krauthammer is truly insane!

Yeah, I know.  I've used the title before --"Rick Santorum is insane!"-- but Charles Krauthammer is seriously disturbed. Or ideologically bent.  Take your pick.  I should've added his name to yesterday's post about the delusionals who actually see some hope in Bush's policies in the Middle East.

Here's what he said in today's Oregonian column:

"Realistically speaking, the point of this multilateral exercise cannot be to stop Iran’s nuclear program by diplomacy. That has always been a fantasy. It will take military means. There will be terrible consequences from such an attack. These must be weighed against the terrible consequences of allowing an openly apocalyptic Iranian leadership from acquiring weapons of genocide."

I'm not the only one who took note of the column.  Alternet did too:

"But I’m happier still that Krauthammer (and Max Boot and Mark Steyn and the rest) are hysterical xenophobes whose analyses have no relationship with fact."

Speaking of facts, here's one unknown to at least 99% of the American public -- the U.S. of A. built Iran's first nuclear plant.  And supplied it with "weapons grade uranium":

"The U.S. provided the reactor when America was eager to prop up the shah, who also was aligned against the Soviet Union at the time. After the Islamic revolution toppled the shah in 1979, the reactor became a reminder that in geopolitics, today's ally can become tomorrow's threat."

Come to think of it, didn't America also supply Saddam Hussein the means to gas the Kurds, for which we're now holding him --and him alone-- accountable?  At the very least, the U.S. denied any knowledge of the attack, which as we now know, was a big fat lie.

You can file those under the iron "law of unintended consequences".

Shouldn't Elliott Abrams be in jail?

The irony couldn't be more glaring.

The man convicted for his role in selling weapons to Iran to support the contras in Nicaragua is now a key advisor to George W. Bush on Middle East policy:

"Bush's choice of Elliott Abrams as his top Middle East expert and the administration's point man in the current war speaks volumes about the president's own views on 'global democracy' and Middle East affairs."

This is a guy who once connived with Israel to provide arms to a country later pronounced a charter member of the "axis of evil".   Now he's probably working with Israel on plans to blow Iran off the map and plunge the United States into a true "global" war.

Are there any sane people out there with names other than Bill Kristol who don't believe American Middle East policy under the second Bush Administration has been anything but an unmitigated disaster? 

And the pugnacious Reagan era "war criminal" --Abrams-- is a key architect of that policy:

"If one U.S. official were to be blamed-aside from the president, vice president, and secretary of state-for the U.S  government's disastrous stance with Israel in the recent war, it would be Elliot Abrams. Perhaps more than any other member of Bush's foreign policy team, Abrams embodies the administration's zealous, ideological, and dangerously delusional vision of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East."

When he worked for Reagan, Abrams was staunchly anti-communist.  In the Bush Adminsitration, he is zealously pro-Israel.  He "...undercut the administration's 'road map' to peace because he thought it demanded too much of Israel."   He compared Ariel Sharon to Winston Churchill.  And in 2000, prior to his appointment by Bush, he wrote this: 

" 'Strengthening Israel, our major ally in the region, should be the central core of U.S. Middle East policy, and we should not permit the establishment of a Palestinian state that does not explicitly uphold U.S. policy in the region... .' "

But here's the capper.  Abrams, at least according to Tom Barry, is something of a religious fanatic, particularly regarding the nexus of Judaism and Israel:

"A radical separatist, Abrams argues that Jews should not date or attend    elementary schools with non-Jews. According to Abrams, 'Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart-except in Israel-from the rest of the population.' "

Hey, I say.  Everyone's entitled to their own religious views.  But no one should be "entitled" to make foreign policy on my behalf based on those views. 

More bad news: Charter schools flounder!

First the "good" news for charter school advocates, from Mark Schneider, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics:

" 'On average, they're not doing harm,' Schneider said of charter schools."

Whoopee!

On the other hand, they're not doing any better than traditional public schools.  In fact, they're doing worse!

"Tuesday's report said fourth-graders in regular public schools scored an average of 5.2 points better in reading than students in charter schools on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress test. Students in traditional schools scored an average of 5.8 points better in math."

Because the Bush Administration couldn't get vouchers through Congress,  it pushes the next best thing -- charter schools.  Under No Child Left Behind, public schools which don't make Adequate Yearly Progress on math and reading tests can be converted to charter schools.  Charter schools are publicly-funded alternatives to neighborhood schools.  Like vouchers, they drain resources from the public system.  And like vouchers, the money is redirected to schools that are often operated by private entities. 

Here's a suggestion.  If charter schools attract students --actually the parents of those students-- because they are "largely free from education regulations", why not reduce the red tape and administrative obstructions in all public schools, rather than a "select" few?  In other words, why not apply the charter model to the whole system?

Otherwise, forget the whole idea.  The charter school movement is divisive,  it undermines neighborhood schools, and, to date, it hasn't lived up to expectations.   So why bother?

For those of you who get off on hierachical linear modeling and linear regressions, here's the original study.  But proceed with caution unless you're a true statistical geek.

Bad news for privatizers: the public likes its public schools!

The results are in from the 38th annual Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup Poll on The Public's Attitude toward Public Schools.  And whaddaya know?  Despite what you hear from public school bashers, the approval of local public school performance is as high now as it has ever been in the 38 years of the poll. 

That's not what we've been told since the publication of A Nation at Risk during the Reagan years.  Our schools are supposedly in crisis, and the public is steadily losing confidence in them.

• Conclusion VI. There has been no decline in public support for
  public schools. Approval ratings remain high and remarkably
  stable.

Here are some of the other significant findings: 

• Conclusion I. The public’s strong preference is to seek improvement through the existing public schools. Policies shaped with this fact in mind are most likely to gain public approval.

• Conclusion III. The closer people get to the schools in the community, the higher the grades they give them.

• Conclusion VII. Support for vouchers is declining and stands
  in the mid-30% range.

• Conclusion IX. There is near-consensus support for the belief
  that the problems the public schools face result from societal
  issues and not from the quality of schooling.

• Conclusion X. The public is aware of the link between adequate
  funding and effective schooling and understands that
  current funding levels are a challenge for schools.

Here's the spin on the poll from one of the more outspoken public school critics, Hoover Institution fellow Chester Finn:

"Peeking through the pro-establishment phrasing of
these survey questions are millions of Americans who
want something very different from what the current public
school system is delivering."

"Peeking" through?  "Pro-establishment" phrasing?  C'mon, Chester Finn. What's it going to take before you admit that you and your views are out of step with mainstream America?  A whack upside the head with actual data?

It's time for you to call off the jihad against public education!

The premeditated war

Like others who have challenged Israel's government, Guardian columnist George Monbiot has been denounced as an "anti-semite and an apologist for terror", most recently for this piece claiming that Israel's invasion of Lebanon was "premeditated", not merely a reaction to Hezbollah's provocations.

A subsequent piece corroborates the charge of premeditation, citing the Seymour Hersh New Yorker article:

"Israel, his informants told him, 'had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah – and shared it with Bush Administration officials – well before the July 12th kidnappings.' One US government consultant revealed that Israeli officials visited Washington earlier in the summer 'to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear."

In the wake of the war, widely considered an Israeli failure, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has decided to postpone plans to dismantle "some" Jewish settlements in occupied  Palestine.  So much for the fruits of war, which Monbiot says could have been avoided entirely if Israel had done the things that should have been done long ago.  Foremost among them was this:

"First, stop recruiting enemies, by withdrawing from the occupied territories in Palestine and Syria."

That's been my advice all along.

Wacky Mommy sets the O straight

What set Wacky off?  This editorial in today's Oregonian, probably the part that said:

"Meanwhile, various factions of adults stay consumed with adult-centered issues such as who's right, who's wrong, who's in charge, who's to blame and who set up the school for failure last year (or 20 years ago)."

I confess those "factions" include me as well as Wacky Mommy, a "future" Jefferson parent --if the school survives (she also wrote this.)  Why me?  Cuz I'm a member of the Neighborhood Schools Alliance, that's why.  And I've written a lot on this site about the sorry leadership of a district which, after a "national" search, could only come up with Leon Dudley as "the" man to save Jefferson High School.

Give me a break!

Here's my take on the idiocy of the O's editorial.  First, there's no way that someone with Dudley's background and "baggage" will ever succeed in this community.  Forget about the test scores and the credit card investigation.  No one with a documented  record of alienating rather than empowering teachers should be considered an "educational leader."  These are public schools, for godssake, not the Marines.

Secondly, the district, or at least the influential voices and decision makers within it, don't want Jefferson to succeed.  They want to shut it down.  But they can't.  There are too many community activists who avidly support Jeff, and many of those are African-American activists.  If Vicki Phillips were to arbitrarily close the school before draining it of its remaining students, we'd likely see a replay of Watts 1965 in North and Northeast Portland.

And that brings up the third issue.  Why is Jeff losing its students?  School choice and open enrollment, that's why.  But the O's editorial hacks had the temerity to demand that Jeff must "rise or fall on its own merits."   What merits?  Test scores?  The ignorance of the media is breath-taking.  And it plays right into the hands of the Phillips-led school free marketers who know that Jefferson will never have the test scores of the district's jewel, Lincoln.  Not unless, through some miracle, all of those rich white kids transfer to Jefferson.

God forbid if Ron Saxton, former school board chair, is elected Governor and rams through his truly idiotic plan for open enrollment across district lines.  We would then witness a massive exodus --think of the Israelites fleeing Egypt-- of Portland's best, brightest, and wealthiest students to the even wealthier and whiter schools in Lake Oswego and West Linn.

That might improve the basketball programs in West Linn and Lake Oswego.  But it surely won't improve the schools "left behind."

The dishonesty of Dave Hunnicutt

Oregon's own Dave Hunnicutt, he of Measure 37 infamy, is dispensing advice at the first annual national convention of Americans for Limited Government. 

How, asked one attendee, do you get issues like extending property rights to "resonate" with voters?

"It's simple, Hunnicutt says. Use straightforward themes."

That's pretty funny considering that Hunnicutt wasn't exactly "straightforward" in pushing Measure 37 back in 2004.  You may recall how the Family Farm Preservation PAC played a prominent role in the campaign.  Family farmers?  Not quite:

"State financial records, though, show that small family farmers contributed virtually nothing to the Family Farm Preservation political action committee that bankrolled Measure 37. Most of the money came from timber companies and real estate interests that stand to profit if, as many here expect, large tracts of forests and farmland are unlocked for development."

It turns out that Hunnicutt created the "family farm" PAC himself:

Dave Hunnicutt, head honcho of Oregonians in Action, fronts a pro-Measure 37 group called the Family Farm Preservation PAC, which doesn't really exist outside the pages of the Oregon Voter's Pamphlet. Here's what the Corvallis Gazette-Times says about it:

"Ironic, therefore, that the measure would be funded by the Orwellian-titled 'Family Farm Preservation PAC,' when only the farm bureaus of Deschutes, Jackson and Josephine counties, with 2003 combined gross ranch and farm sales for $113 million, support it. The other 15 farm bureaus, representing about $2.2 billion in farm sales (including Benton County's $90.7 million) oppose it."

If that's what Hunnicutt means by "straightforward", he needs a new dictionary.