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Friedman pulls a Broder

Insufferable columnist Tom Friedman agrees with the insufferable David Broder that sanctioning torture should NOT be prosecuted as the crime that it clearly is under both international and domestic law.  He therefore applauds Obama for saying that the torture policy crafted by the Bush administration was a "mistake", not a crime warranting investigation and prosecution.

In short, Obama is doing precisely the right thing.  Friedman's reasons?  Prosecuting Bush would "rip the country apart."  Friedman also argues that Al Qaeda is such "a unique enemy" that it remains "undeterred by normal means."

What does that mean?  As near as I can tell, it means that any detainee associated with Al Qaeda deserved to be tortured, and to hell with the laws and international treaties that prohibit it.

Glenn Greenwald begs to differ: 

"Obama is currently and simultaneously advocating these positions:

* Bush officials ordered torture.

* Torture is a crime.

* Nobody is above the law.

"Unless you're David Broder, Fred Hiatt, Peggy Noonan or Tom Friedman, those premises of Obama's, as a matter of logical reasoning, all necessarily lead to one conclusion (hint:  it's not:  'This is a time for reflection, not retribution')."

I prefer Greenwald's logic to Friedman's 'tortured' reasoning. 

The most consistent critic of Obama's refusal to acknowledge torture as a crime has been Rachel Maddow regular and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.  Turley has said that not only is torture a crime, but that there is no option but to investigate and then, if evidence warrants, to prosecute those responsible for initiating the torture policy. 

Obama's "tortured" politics

The case for investigating the torture of 'detainees' and prosecuting those responsible is clear and irrefutable.  Here's U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak in an interview with Glenn Greenwald:

"The United States of America is a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture from 1984, which clearly contains the obligation to make torture a criminal offense under domestic law... . ...

"...whoever practices torture shall be brought before an independent criminal court and be held accountable. That is, the torturer, him or herself, but also those who are ordering torture practices, or in any other way participating in the practice of torture. This is a general obligation, and it applies to everybody; there are no exceptions in the Convention."

Those opposed to "looking backward" call the prosecution of war criminals --e.g. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld-- a political exercise in vengeance.  David Broder in today's Oregonian, for example, asks of the Obama administration:  "Do they now go back and investigate or indict their predecessors?

No, he says:

"That way, inevitably, lies endless political warfare. It would set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into political or criminal vendettas. That way lies untold bitterness -- and injustice."

"Policy disagreements?"  No, David Broder.  The authorization of torture is no simple policy disagreement.  It's a criminal violation of both domestic and international law.  The United States is obligated to investigate and then, if evidence of criminal wrongdoing is found, prosecute those responsible.

There is no morally acceptable alternative.

So what's Obama afraid of?  The collapse of bipartisanship?  What bipartisanship?  The Republicans will oppose Obama no matter what he does, so why bother with the charade?

I think the real issue for Obama is the fear of these guys, nominally Democrats, but otherwise quite conservative on most of the issues that matter to Obama (health care is a big one.) 

My advice to Obama is to do the right thing.  Let the Congressional committees hold their hearings on torture.  Let the justice department investigate.  If it comes to it, allow without objection the appointment of a special prosecutor. 

In other words, Mr. President, take the moral high road.  Ignore the 'advice' of the insufferable David Broder*. 

*(Glenn Greenwald, who may be the best online columnist/blogger out there, called Broder's op-ed piece a "truly wretched screed":

"The very same pundits and establishment journalists who today are demanding that we forget all about it, not look back, not hold anyone accountable, are the very same people who -- like Broder -- played key roles in hiding, enabling and defending these crimes."

Piracy and karma

In many respects I consider Obama "Lincolnesque" in his politics, and I mean that in a good way.  Just as Lincoln threaded a centrist path between the radical sentiments of Republican abolitionists and the reactionary venom of Democratic secessionists, Barack Obama has chosen, almost in emulation of Lincoln, centrist policies criticized by the both the left and the right. 

Lincoln was a master politician, in a way that most would say redounded to the benefit of the country.  One day Obama may be regarded as Lincoln's equal --a cautious politician keeping the best interests of his country foremost in mind.

However, although it's too early in his career to know, I fear, along with many other leftists, that Obama has placed politics, in the baser sense of the word, above sound policy.

Consider the pirates of Somalia.

In a thoughtful piece on Obama's reaction to the attempted hijacking of an American ship and the abduction of the ship's captain, Jeremy Scahill asks three key questions about the killing of the Somali pirates, the second of which concerns:

"The political decision to kill them in light of long term potential consequences... ."

The immediate consequences have been clear.  Somali pirates commandeered four more commercial ocean liners since the killings, and assaulted another American vessel as well.  Call it what you will, but actions have consequences, many of them unintended.

Gunboat diplomacy invites karmic payback.

The phrase "political decision" is more intriguing.  Scahill implies that the "decision" may have been prompted by criticism from the right that Obama is "weak on terror."  What the Obama administration decides to do with the fourth pirate, now in U.S. custody, may be more revealing about the motives for Obama's decision.  Will he be sent to Guantanamo? Bagram?  Or will he be tried openly in criminal court?

That decision may tell us more about the nature of Obama's "Lincolnesque" political strategies.

Let me be clear that I reserve judgment.  Like Lincoln, who seldom spoke in open reaction to his critics, Obama may well be working behind the scenes to ensure his policies succeed. 

We'll see. 

Fraud on Wall Street

You may have read Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz' NY Times op-ed piece (carried in today's O) on the futility and foolishness of the Obama/Geithner plan to "recapitalize" banks at the expense of taxpayers.  If so, you probably recall his dire assessment:

"What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a 'partnership' in which one partner robs the other. And such partnerships — with the private sector in control — have perverse incentives, worse even than the ones that got us into the mess."

Ersatz means artificial.  In other words, Obama and team are propping up a system of phony, or bogus, capitalism.

But it's worse than that.  William Black, the featured guest on Friday's Bill Moyers Journal* (where else?), said what happened on Wall Street to plunge the economy into crisis was the result of deliberate fraud by the banks and investment houses. 

That's fight --fraud.  Deliberate fraud:

BILL MOYERS: I was taken with your candor ... to hear you say that this crisis we're going through... is driven by fraud. What's your definition of fraud?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Fraud is deceit. ... And as a result, there's no more effective acid against trust than fraud, especially fraud by top elites, and that's what we have.

BILL MOYERS: In your book, you make it clear that calculated dishonesty by people in charge is at the heart of most large corporate failures and scandals, including, of course, the S&L, but is that true? Is that what you're saying here, that it was in the boardrooms and the CEO offices where this fraud began?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Absolutely.

Now you can dismiss Black as a paranoid crank.  Before you do, however, you'd be wise to read the entire transcript and Black's  compelling description of "liars loans" and the complicity of ratings agencies in convincing investors that they weren't being "swindled." As it turned out, they were.  Clearly.

Black has an impressive resume, not only as Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, but also as one deeply involved in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980's.  He served as chief litigator for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, as counsel to the Office of Thrift Supervision, and as deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.

He knows what he's talking about.

If that's not enough,  just read his book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

*(In my last post I was critical of PBS.  But public television redeems itself every Friday evening by airing Bill Moyers Journal.)

PBS sabotages single payer

While Howard Dean draws "a line in the sand" and asks the public to pressure Congress to include a Medicare-for-all option in health care reform legislation, PBS --the "Corporation" for Public Broadcasting-- used Frontline to suggest that for-profit private health insurance companies were fully capable of handling the demand for universal health care.

If that sounds fishy, well, it is.  T.R. Reid, the writer of the Frontline documentary, "Sick Around America", had argued the opposite --"don't let health insurance companies profit from selling basic health insurance."

Unfortunately, Reid's bottom line recommendation was edited out of the final product.  He refused therefore to appear on camera, and says he will not work for Frontline again.

" 'We disagreed, and we parted ways,' Reid says."

The Los Angeles Times called the show "hazy", saying that it offered "...little in the way of solutions, or even hope."  And Physicians for a National Health Program wrote a letter to Frontline decrying its failure to "address a single payer option." 

Now you know why. 

Just last week, Thom Hartmann voiced similar opinions to Reid, arguing let private for-profit insurance companies offer "boob jobs" and guaranteed "private rooms" in hospitals. Just don't allow them to profit from basic health care.

As the legislative debate over health care heats up, we'll have to wait to see what happens.  But with the insurance companies at the table, I fear it's unlikely that single payer will be given serious consideration. 

Netanyahu's ploy

From Uri Avnery in TiKkun:

"FROM THE beginnings of Zionism, its leaders have known that their vision necessitates a large measure of make-belief. It is impossible to take over a country inhabited by another people without disguising the aim, diverting attention, hiding the acts on the ground behind a screen of flowery words.
...
"BUT DECEIVING, like dancing the tango, takes two: one who deceives and one who wants to be deceived.

"Netanyahu believes that Obama will want to be deceived. Why would he want to quarrel with Israel, confront the mighty pro-Israel lobby and the US Congress, when he can settle for soothing words from Netanyahu? ...

"Is Obama ready to play, like most of his predecessors, the role of the deceived lover?"

As I've written before, what America does is more important than what the anti-peace Israeli government does.  So what will Obama do?

For those interested in the long term prospects for settled relations in the Muslim world, as we all should be, Avnery's piece is not only worth reading, it's a "must read."

Worth reading: "Why Obama is wrong about our schools"

But first, from David Marshak, long a critic of No Child Left Behind and "obsessive" testing:

"...when it comes to education, President Obama is a hypocrite. He sends his own kids to a progressive, child-centered school. The school enrolls 1097 students in 13 grades, about 100 per grade. It’s small and personalized. It focuses on its students as whole persons.

"You don’t hear anything like this kind of language coming from Obama or Arne Duncan when it comes to education policy."

Schools which hold teachers strictly accountable for student test scores --that's pay for performance, isn't it?-- are anything but child-centered.

The piece worth reading, "Why Obama is wrong", was written by Los Angeles teacher Randy Childs, a member of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, a union affiliated with both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.

Childs accuses Obama of neoliberalism, intent on foisting market-based reforms on America's public schools:

"Tellingly, just hours after making his speech on education, Obama proclaimed himself a 'New Democrat,' identifying himself with the conservative faction of his party--the very people who have championed charter schools, merit pay and other attacks on teachers in the name of 'school reform.' "

"New Democrat" means neoliberal. 

Take charter schools, for example, Obama's favored "reform":

"Charter schools have become Corporate America's most successful method of introducing privatization and market-style competition into public education. That's right--the same free-market dynamics that have wreaked havoc in the fields of health care, housing and high finance are coming to education.

"Supporters of charter schools describe them as laboratories of pedagogical innovation. In practice, most 'high-performing' charter schools cherry-pick students and families that are already enjoying academic success and dump the children they find inconvenient to teach back into the mainstream public school system."

And then there's "merit pay", based on the supposed superiority of private sector employment practices, the underlying assumptions of which have never been thoroughly, or even cursorily, examined.  Childs writes:

"Plus, there's a very simple problem with the logic of 'performance pay' for teachers. There is no honest scientific method by which 'excellence in the classroom' can be quantified."

He's got that right.  And for that, perhaps Randy Childs deserves a boost in pay --"merit pay", if you will.

(NOTE:  Childs' piece is published on the Socialist Worker website.  I don't know if Childs is a Marxist/Communist/Socialist, but the very fact that his criticism of Obama, at least on education policy, is carried on a "socialist" website should acquit Obama of the charge --the latest by Iowa Republican Charles Grassley-- that his policies are fundamentally socialist.)

Setting the record straight on education "reform"

Several days ago I wrote about the "myths" in Obama's education speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

It seems that the speech also included some exaggerations and falsehoods. 

According to factcheck.org, Obama's claim that the high school dropout rate has "tripled" in the past thirty years is simply wrong.  In fact, the dropout rate has "declined by a third." 

And Obama's stated goal "of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world" by the year 2020 has already been reached.  Or almost reached:

"...in terms of bachelor's degrees, we're nearly there. The U.S. is already second only to Norway in the percentage of adults age 25 to 64 with a four-year degree, and trails by just 1 percentage point."

Obama also promised to put more money into charter schools.  In my earlier post I wondered why, considering that charters typically perform no better than traditional neighborhood schools in terms of student achievement.  But there's also a dark side to charter schools that seldom reaches the public ear.

Consider this news from Atlanta involving the vaunted KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter school organization.  It seems that some parents of students at KIPP South Fulton Academy are angry about "excessive punishment" related to the the school's "high expectations for conduct."  The parents have threatened to pull their students from the school. 

Rumors have long circulated about KIPP's "shunning" of students with typical middle school behavioral problems.  A related issue is KIPP's high attrition rate, which critics say largely accounts for its high test scores. 

Here in Portland, a new audit  of charter schools raises questions about their value to improving public education. Not only does the district audit show a "mixed" result for the impact of charters on improving student achievement, it also reports that charters serve fewer low income or minority students than traditional public schools.

More significantly, the audit warns of an adverse impact of charters on neighborhood school enrollment.  It says specifically,

"If charter school students attended their neighborhood school at the same rate as other children living in their neighborhood, an estimated 31 additional teachers could be assigned to PPS schools."

As I've said before on many occasions, charter schools are not the reform we need to improve public education. 

Reactions to Obama's education speech

Harsh reactions, from people who know something about schools.

First up, via Education Notes Online, is San Franciscan Caroline Grannan:

"Boy, is President Obama confused. ...

"And what’s with the praise of charter schools, President Obama? Charter schools have been around for 16 years now. Some are great, some are disasters and the rest are all along the range in between – just like traditional public schools. As has been amply documented, charter schools overall do not outperform traditional public schools, despite having numerous advantages over them (including massive financial bounty from billionaire private philanthropists and the avid support of a series of public-school-disparaging presidents)."

NYC Educator has come to "despise" Obama, aka President "Merit Pay":

"I just finished grading 105 college essays written by my juniors. Can I tell you how many of those essays were about alcoholism, child abuse, sexual abuse, sickness, mental/emotional illness and other horrific things these kids have to endure every day? And now President Merit Pay wants to add another hour or two a day to their schedules because he thinks that will help them become better educated?"

And speaking of poverty, Tauna Rogers points to a report by Arizona State's David Berliner, who argues that

"... out-of-school factors related to poverty are the major cause of the achievement gap that exists between poor and minority students and the rest of the student population."

So why then is Obama scapegoating teachers and traditional public schools?  Maybe it's because, as Leonie Haimson writes, "Obama’s education advisers seem to be free-market nudniks."

(I don't know what a "nudnik" is, but I get the free market reference.  Well said Leonie!)

And that brings me to the most scathing criticism of Obama's education policy, from Tom Eley on the World Socialist Web Site.  (And what's with that?  I thought Obama was the "socialist'?)

Eley says:

"It was an ugly little speech, saturated with jingoism, free market boosterism, and moral hectoring. Obama offered not so much as a nod to the classical, universalistic, understanding of education—the cultivation of young minds in the arts and sciences toward a fuller, richer life in the service of society and humanity as a whole.

"Instead for Obama, 'the future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens.' The purpose of education is to prepare a new generation of hyper-exploited, but patriotic, workers. According to Obama, the educational system needs 'to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world.' "

Eley goes on to say:

"...the humanities—art, music, literature, and history—'don't' matter' in the competition with other nations. Indeed, by developing critical, cultured human beings, the arts tend to cut against the wretched labor competition Obama champions."

 

As I said, harsh criticism, indeed.  And from my perspective, well 'merited' criticism.

The O's Rick Attig drinks merit pay Kool-Aid

From Rick Attig's blog:

"As refreshing as it was to hear President Obama, in his first major speech on education, call for teacher merit pay, a longer school year, more charter schools and reducing the dropout rate, it was discouraging to compare the president's rhetoric with the reality in Oregon.

"Here, with the teachers' union powerful grip on the state's Democratic majority in Salem, there is no serious discussion about merit pay or expanding charter schools."

That eerily echoes Betsy Hammond's side bar in yesterday's O, the one where she referred to Oregon voters as "swayed by expensive campaigns by the Oregon Education Association" in their rejection of "pay for performance" ballot measures.  How does she know if voters were "swayed"?  Maybe they're just smart.

Teacher --and union-- scapegoating for the supposed "failure" of public schools has become all too common a theme in the media. 

It's good to read, in that same sidebar, that Washington is one of the few states that doesn't allow any charter schools.  But then again, according to Hammond, that's all due to "opposition from the state teachers' union."

Here's a question for Attig:  If the teachers' union in Oregon has such a powerful grip on state legislators, why does Oregon allow charter schools?