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Tom Friedman --warmongering billionaire racist

My gut-level reponse to Tom Friedman, the flat earth, globalist, pro-war, Arab-hating NY Times journalist whose latest column appears in today's Oregonian, is similar to that of Jonathan Schwarz of A Tiny Revolution:

"I try not to read anything by Thomas Friedman, because his writing tends to make me wish I were dead."

Chris Floyd elaborates:

"Friedman proposes -- seriously, one assumes, for surely nothing is more serious than Tom Friedman in full cry -- that we 're-invade' Iraq with 150,000 more troops...and this time really do a number on those recalcitrant tribes, do whatever 'is necessary to crush the dark forces in Iraq' and pound some sense into them, or at least some obedience, with our big 'iron fist.' (This is, after all, the only thing that Arabs understand, right? No doubt Tom has read The Arab Mind,  Raphael Pataki's reduction of fellow human beings to abstract ciphers bound up in a hive mentality -- an outdated, outmoded, outlandish spasm of hidebound 'Orientalism' that has long been required reading not only for war-of-choicemongers like Friedman but also for Pentagon brass and officers in the field.)"

But there's more  to the Friedman story than simple warmongering racism.   Friedman is also a "classist".     As David Sirota points out,  Friedman is a "billionaire",  who married into one of America's richest families:

"Far from the objective, regular-guy interpreter of globalization that the D.C. media portrays him to be, Friedman is a member of the elite of the economic elite on the planet Earth. In fact, he's married into such a giant fortune, it's probably more relevant to refer to him as Billionaire Scion Tom Friedman than columnist Tom Friedman, both because that's more descriptive of what he represents, and more important for readers of his work to know so that they know a bit about where he's coming from."

And that, more than his journalistic prowess (such as it is), explains his unwavering defense of "globalism" and his apparent disdain for American workers, or, as Sirota puts it, "...using his column to legitimize some of the worst, most working-class-persecuting policies this country has seen in the last century... ."

It also explains why reading Tom Friedman makes Jonathan Schwarz wish that he "were dead."

Nina Bell is one of the more than 8700 who have signed the NCLB petition

Recent local signatories to the petition urging Congress not to reauthorize NCLB include Neigborhood Schools Alliance members Nicole Breedlove and Ruth Adkins, PPS teacher and frequent Blue Oregon commenter Sid Leader, and Executive Director of Northwest Environmental Advocates, Nina Bell.

Nina Bell's opposition to NCLB apparently stems from her dissatisfaction with Portland's TAG programs, particularly the ACCESS program at Northeast Portland's Sabin School, where her 13-year-old son is a student.  Her solution?  She home-schools her son part time.

Now parents bitching about TAG is nothing new.  My son hated his TAG pull-out program back in the early 90's (and no, I never said a word about it.  I have mixed feelings about TAG.)  But what, you're probably wondering, does TAG have to do with NCLB?  Here's what, according to the Tribune article:

"But TAG parents generally worry that with so much attention paid to closing the achievement gap, their gifted kids will get lost in the shuffle and remain unchallenged, unmotivated, even drop out."

I wrote as much in this post about NCLB "intentionally" leaving some kids behind:

"In order to raise test score passing rates, which is what NCLB is all about, it's best to ignore the top achievers and to forget about the hopeless cases altogether.   In other words, leave them behind!"

That means TAG students. 

And speaking of test scores, here's a post from Jim Horn's excellent (and thoroughly anti-NCLB) Schools Matter site with an article explaining why the Finns have the best educational system in the world.  Unlike the high-stakes and punitive testing required by NCLB, in Finland

"...there are no nationwide exams or big final tests. It is a system of continuous assessment by a mixture of monthly tests and teacher evaluations."

Gee.  What a good idea.

Adams Yes! Giusto? He's gotta go!

If you don't like Sam Adams' proposal for a "sliding scale" business tax, you can vote him out of office next time around.  That's how a representative democracy is supposed to work. 

But I like his idea.  In fact, I think it could apply just as well to the property tax should voters ever get rid of Don McIntire's Measure 5.  Then you wouldn't hear the whining about old people on fixed incomes being forced out their homes by ever rising real estate valuations coupled with the demand for more property tax money to fund schools, parks, and libraries. 

The issue is a simple one --tax fairness.  And a fair tax is a 'progressive' tax, normally associated with the graduated income tax.  But there's absolutely no reason why the notion of graduated taxation couldn't apply to business or property taxes.  Even Adam Smith believed that the rich should be taxed at a higher rate. 

In Oregon, unfortunately, true progressive taxation seems to be an alien concept.

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Bernie Giusto, the Multnomah County Sheriff, is a different story.  Sure, he too can be voted out of office for his obstinance and refusal to work with the elected representatives on the Multnomah County Commission, the policy makers who decide how much money is allocated to county law enforcement and corrections.   But that's not likely to happen without Giusto commiting some heinous crime or blatant act of moral turpitude.

My question is this, and it's an obvious one:  Why is the sheriff's job an elected position in the first place?   I mean, we don't elect the Portland police chief, do we?  That's the Mayor's decision.  The same ought to be true of the county sheriff.  Let the chair of the county commission, with the advice and consent of the other four commissioners, decide who should become sheriff.

If that were the established procedure, you can be sure that by now it would be "Bye Bye Bernie."

End NCLB now! Why haven't YOU signed?

These locals have signed the petition urging Congress not to reauthorize No Child Left Behind.  So why haven't you?

-Amanda Fritz, candidate for Portland City Council.

-Neighborhood Schools Alliance members Steve Kayfes (now Jefferson PTSA President), Jeanette Fruen, Nancy Smith, Lynn Schore, and Steve Linder.

-Joanne Yatvin, PSU School of Education, who also penned this satirical anti-NCLB letter-to-the- editor.

-And these area residents whom I don't know: Daphne Bethel, Allen Koshewa, Sarah Greenstein, Patricia Braunger, and Kathleen McMahon.

Here's an added incentive.  Sign the petition and send in $10.40 to sponsor a full page ad in the New York Times.  I'm not certain, but the ad will probably list your name.

By the way, you can also post a comment (or rant) along with your name.  Here's one that caught my attention:

"Why aren't the Democrats demanding its repeal? I just don't understand. Now Hillary Clinton wants a nationwide standardized test. Someone clue the woman in."

And maybe they ought to clue in members of the Portland School Board as well, none of whom has signed the petition.  Yet.

I forgot.  I also signed.  Number 188.

Thanksgiving? Or a day of atonement?

I know that today bloggers and columnists feel obligated to wish everyone a perfunctory "Happy Thanksgiving!"   But...

What are we thankful for?

"That the world's great powers achieved 'greatness' through criminal brutality on a grand scale... ."?

Read the rest of Robert Jensen's "No Thanks to Thanksgiving" here.

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You gotta like Steve Duin's angle, though.  He thanks specific people for their contributions to society.  Like--

• Tom Civiletti, for continually bringing the rare combination of reason and civility to the peevish scrums on the blogosphere.
• Keith Olbermann, for the most impassioned rants of the election year.
• Dan Meek, ... for giving a damn.

It makes you think that Duin voted Democratic.  And for campaign finance reform.

Happy Thanksgiving!

End NCLB now! Sign the petition!

I know that most people don't pay close attention to education the way I do.  But take my word for it --No Child Left Behind, the catchy title appended to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is a bad law badly in need of a thorough rewriting.  Or outright repeal! 

Or, don't take my word for it.  Just read the arguments on this petition asking Congress to vote NO! on reauthorizing NCLB.  Here are a few of my favorites: 

--Assumes that competition is the primary motivator of human behavior and that market forces can cure all educational ills.

--Allows life-changing, institution-shaping decisions to hinge on single measures of performance. [ aka standardized tests]

--Emphasizes minimum content standards rather than maximum development of human potential.

--Neglects the teaching of higher order thinking skills which cannot be evaluated by machines.

--Drives art, music, foreign language, career and technical education, physical education, geography, history, civics and other non-tested subjects out of the curriculum, especially in low-income neighborhoods.

--Rates and ranks public schools using procedures that will gradually label them all "failures," so when they fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress, as all schools eventually will, they can be “saved” by vouchers, charters, or privatization.

The initial version of NCLB indeed provided for vouchers, a provision ultimately removed to gain the support of Democrats like Ted Kennedy.  But the thrust of the law is still toward privatization --through charters, choice, and punitive sanctions designed, I believe, to undermine the institution of public education.

Worse, putative defenders of public schools, members of the Portland School Board, for example, use the mandates of NCLB to justify lax transfer policies and further choice options which inevitably hurt low income neighborhood schools.   

Lastly, many researchers believe that NCLB's goal by 2014 of "proficiency" --quite narrowly defined as reading literacy and math numeracy-- for all students is an impossible dream.  Richard Rothstein, for example, has written a long --70 pages long-- analysis of the proficiency goal.  He calls proficiency an 'oxymoron':

"There is no date by which all (or even nearly all) students in any subgroup, even middle-class white students, can achieve proficiency. Proficiency for all is an oxymoron, as the term 'proficiency' is commonly understood and properly used."

Read the entire paper if you have the time.  If not, just ponder the petition's list of accusations against NCLB.  (Here's another version with linked explanations,)

Then, click the button.   Act now, and sign the petition against reauthorization of NCLB!

Milton Friedman and the proliferation of right wing think tanks

My two brothers --the older a liberal, the younger a conservative-- have recently suspended their e-mail squabble over guns and gun control for the weightier issue of global warming.

The elder sent along a message recently about the link between rising temperatures and malaria epidemics, which the younger says we can easily combat with DDT, except that the damned environmentalists won't let us.  Well, ....

Here's the thing.  Checking out the links to highland malarial epidemics in Kenya and the use of DDT, I stumbled across a couple of startling facts: The pro-DDT faction, the people pushing for market forces to deal with both global warming and malaria, are mostly from right wing --or more precisley, libertarian-- think tanks.  And the number of such think tanks are proliferating. 

In fact that's the stated goal of an organization I had never heard of -- the Atlas Economic Research Foundation:

"With a modest $4 million dollar budget in 2003 and a staff of eight, Atlas Economic Research Foundation is on a mission to populate the world with new 'free market' voices. In its 2003 review of activities, quaintly titled its 'Investor Report,' Atlas boasted that it worked with '70 new think-tank entrepreneurs from 37 foreign countries and several states of the U.S.'... ."

The revival of free market/libertarian thinking in this country can be attributed to the work of one man, Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist who was himself a "senior research fellow" at the conservative Hoover Institution from 1977 until his death four days ago. 

You can look at Milton Friedman and his influence on American social policy in two ways.  One is typified by this remembrance of Friedman as a visionary and "freedom fighter."  The other is how I  remember him --as the guy who had no use for government or "government schools" (even though he was a product of one), and as the man who championed vouchers and "freedom" of educational choice. 

Then there's his dalliance with Chile's Pinochet:

"Friedman defended his relationship with Pinochet by saying that if Allende had been allowed to remain in office Chileans would have suffered 'the elimination of thousands and perhaps mass starvation . . . torture and unjust imprisonment.' But the elimination of thousands, mass hunger, torture and unjust imprisonment were what was taking place in Chile exactly at the moment the Chicago economist was defending his protégé."

Greg Palast wrote back in 1998 that the so-called "Chilean miracle" --coined by Friedman and praised by Ronald Reagan-- actually drove Chile into bankruptcy:

"Pinochet did not destroy Chile’s economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, a gaggle of Milton Friedman’s trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatised the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatised 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.

"Freed of the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country took a giant leap forward … into bankruptcy and depression. After nine years of economics Chicago style, Chile’s industry keeled over and died."

Fortunately, in my view, Friedman's libertarian free market theories appear to be on the wane.  The recent election provides some evidence of that.  Here in Oregon, for example, the effort to shrink government with spending limits --Measure 48-- was soundly defeated, while many local tax measures for schools, libraries, and greenspaces passed easily.

Unfortunately, the free market think tanks that Milton Friedman helped inspire are still with us, working harder than ever to affect social and economic policy in this country.

And that, in my view, is not a good thing.

 

 

Why schools should be locally controlled but broadly funded

I find it fascinating that a group searching for ways to help cash-starved school districts with capital construction, a group with representatives from the legislature, K-12 education, home builders, and Stand for Children,  has come up with these two rather meager proposals --a tax on development, and the use of lottery funds. 

Lottery funds?  As in state-sponsored gambling?  That's hardly the broad-based source of revenue one would wish for.  Or at least I would wish for.  But then Stand for Children  always seems to be arguing for a bigger cut of the state lottery for schools. 

I'm all for broad-based school taxes.  I'm also strongly in favor of local control of educational decision making.  Unfortunately funding and control are often conflated.  But surely, as far as funding goes, we can do better than the lottery (which should be abolished!) 

Let me explain my thinking.

Why should schools be locally controlled? 

Because people in Prineville and Burns, for example, are more likely to see the value of funding agricultural education or promoting chapters of Future Farmers of Amerca than the people who live in Portland.  And urban districts, like Portland, are much more likely to stress the importance of assimilating, say, Haitian or Laotian students into the local culture.

Why broadly funded? 

Because of the disparity of property wealth between districts.  Students should never be denied adequate educational facilities (or good teaching) because of where they live.

The problem is that outside money often comes with strings attached (NCLB, for example.)   That's why Texas school districts took to calling themselves independent districts, as in the Houston Independent School District.  They didn't want the feds telling them what to do.  Ironic, given that Houston in particular was the model for the highly intrusive No Child Left Behind legislation.

The problem with that thinking is that even local money, primarily from the property tax, goes to schools, or in the case of Portland, even other districts, over which the taxpayer has little direct control.  In fact, most local money comes from people with no school-aged children.  But frankly, who cares?   If  one sees public education as a vital government service and as part of the infrastructure of a civilized and enlightened society, where's the problem?

Unless of course you swallow the argument that we live in an era of scarce public resources and therefore demand strict accountability for how your precious tax dollars are spent. 

That's all hogwash.  First, we have accountability through democratically elected local school boards with open meetings.  And the cry of "scarce resources" is merely a cover for the unwillingness to pay, with taxes, for the services that provide for the common good.

Here are my ideas for tapping into revenue that, unlike the Lottery, is truly broad-based:

• First, get rid of the kicker, both corporate and personal.  Oregon is alone in refunding tax money based on faulty economic estimates.
• Raise corporate taxes and close corporate tax loopholes.
• Raise personal income taxes on the wealthiest Oregonians, the ones who benefited from the Bush tax cuts. 

That's state revenue.  But what about the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal money now squandered in Iraq?  It should go to education.  Without strings attached!  Nothing is more important for national security than a well-educated populace.  Therefore I propose:

• First, the abolition of NCLB and its ridiclulous testing mandates.  And its sanctions.
• Then (after we get out of Iraq) passing sane legislation --the Dems are now in control, aren't they?-- allowing block grants to states for help in funding schools, both for capital and operating expenses.

There's your broad-based funding for schools.

Israel's Lieberman calls for the assassination of Hamas leaders

That's Israeli deputy prime minister Avigdor Lieberman, not our own newly independent Senator 'Holy' Joe Lieberman.  But who knows?  Maybe the staunchly pro-Israel Joe Lieberman has been whispering in Avigdor's ear. 

Avigdor Lieberman's call for "Hamas leaders to be sent to paradise" is reminiscent of Ann Coulter's famous line about Arabs after 9/11:

"We should invade their countries, assassinate their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."

It's a wonder Ann Coulter wasn't appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs to shore up support for Bush's hardline anti-Arab foreign policy.

That's why Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert elevated Lieberman to deputy prime minister --"to shore up a shaky coalition government" in the wake of the disastrous war in Lebanon.  If Lieberman's position on dealing with Hamas and the Palestinians "shores up" Olmert's "shaky" government, then maybe the appointment of Coulter could have averted the recent Republican electoral defeat.

It's been reported here that Olmert himself has approved the killing of of Hamas' political leaders, a report that, although unconfirmed, sounds plausible:

"The Sunday Times describes the move as a 'change in tactics' but it is actually nothing of the sort. Israel regularly 'liquidates' supposed militants, often killing innocent civilians ('collateral damage') in the process."

The report calls Lieberman a crackpot, "a man who could sensibly be described as Israel’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."  Or as Israel's Ann Coulter.

The new Democratic majority is eager to extract us from the quagmire of Iraq.  It remains to be seen if the Dems provide any leadership on the ongoing tragedy of the Israeli -Palestinian conflict. 

But don't hold your breath.  Remember, Joe Lieberman's back, as is Hillary Clinton, two of the many Senators who do the bidding of the American Israel Public Afffairs Committee.

Ruminations on the Eastside I-5 tunnel

Yesterday I posted a comment on Ron Buel's  Blue Oregon piece about the proposal to bury the Eastbank section of I-5, saying that getting rid of the hideous Marquam Bridge and redirecting North-South traffic to I-405 (Kari Chisholm's alternative) was a great idea. 

I also mentioned that then-City Council member and now Congressional transportation guru Earl Blumenauer opposed messing with the freeway when the Council seriously considered moving it away from the riverbank.  It turns out, thanks to stumbling across this post by Portland Transport's Chris Smith, that my memory was fairly accurate. 

Smith's post links to this Oregonian article by Randy Gragg, who chronicles the long history of freeway politics in Portland.  In the late 80's, the activist group, Riverfront for People, agitated to move the freeway.  It came down to a vote over a direct access Southbound ramp to I-5 for the Eastside industrial district:

"Despite pretty pictures of bold new development between the then-newly rising Oregon Convention Center and OMSI, the City Council voted to build the ramp, 3-2. The deciding vote: then-city commissioner, now-Congressman Earl Blumenauer."

The ramp was never built.  Vera Katz wanted the money for the Eastside Esplanade.  The bottom line is that we're still stuck with the urban freeway bottleneck of the Eastbank I-5.  And the hideous Marquam Bridge. 

Building and expanding freeways, especially in urban areas, is a fool's errand.  Freeways create, rather than relieve, congestion.  As I said yesterday, the fewer of them the better.  That's why I approved Kari's idea of simply taking out the Marquam Bridge/Eastbank section of I-5. 

Gragg's piece does cite the recommendations of PSU's Nohad Toulan who favors the tunnel approach to fixing the I-5 bottleneck.  Toulan dismisses the critics who raise the specter of another Boston "Big Dig" here in Portland:

"To those for whom a tunnel conjures images of the Boston's wildly over-cost Big Dig, Toulan counters that the city of Cairo, Egypt, built a four-lane, two-mile tunnel 90 feet underground beneath the ancient pyramids -- on time and on budget.

" 'Tunneling is one of the fastest-improving technologies in the world,' he says. In an urgent tone, Toulan argues, 'We must deal with the totality.' "

I remember decades ago seeing signs here in Portland that demanded "No City Freeways!"  I didn't fully understand the signs then, but  I sure do now.  City freeways don't work!  So whether it's a tunnel or the simple demolition of that ghastly section of urban I-5, I'm for it. 

As Toulan said, "We must deal with the totality!"   Unless we want Portland to become a smaller version of Houston or Los Angeles, in other words, we need to think big and plan boldly.