The world and our nation have permanent underclasses – people with little wealth and few opportunities for education or upward mobility. Their attempts to draw attention to their needs are often met with contempt or repression. Continue reading WE CAN END PERMANENT UNDERCLASSES
Category Archives: justice
THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ECONOMY
What if our economy could grow so rapidly as to greatly increase the amount of money, goods, and services that are available – a good thing, right? What if one result of that growth is that the future economy has no place for you – not so good? These are more than hypothetical questions for millions of people around the world. Businesses are making more products with fewer employees and lower wages. In the US, corporate profits have doubled since 2000 but inflation adjusted household income has dropped from $56,000 to $51,000. After tax corporate profits are up from 5 percent of American GDP to 11 percent – a record high level. Simultaneously employee compensation has dropped from 47 percent of GDP to 43 percent. Continue reading THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ECONOMY
SUPREME COURT LOGIC
In decisions about Obamacare the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government can levy a tax on individuals who do not purchase health insurance and that it can require employers who do not provide health benefits to pay a penalty (tax). Only a few months later the court ruled that business owners who profess religious objections to some forms of birth control can opt out of that particular portion of coverage without paying a penalty.
Reductio ad absurdum is a Latin phrase that the Court’s Justices surely encountered in their introductory logic classes. It is a method of showing that a decision or argument is absurd because it gives rise to ridiculous or unworkable conclusions. Their decisions imply that five of the justices may have been napping during logic classes. Continue reading SUPREME COURT LOGIC
NO MONEY FOR A RAISE?
Wages, taxes, the role of unions, and a new term, “income inequality” spark lively and sometimes angry discussions across our state and nation. There are people working more than one low wage job who still qualify for food stamps and can’t support a family. Others can’t find even a minimum wage job. Some of our leaders say that developing higher levels of skill and education will bring higher wages, a true statement but an unsatisfactory answer to those who are underpaid to do necessary work. The work of those who prepare and serve fast food is honest work done by honest people who deserve a living wage. The same can be said for those who mop the floors of the schools, pick the peaches that I hope to eat soon and mow the grass along the highways. Continue reading NO MONEY FOR A RAISE?
COMMON CORE STANDARDS
Apparently taking their cue from right wing talk radio and Fox News pundits, leaders of the North Carolina Legislature have begun an assault on the Common Core Standards for education. Some want to repeal the standards which our school systems have been working to implement since they were adopted in 2010 by you know who – the North Carolina Legislature.
What better way to finish demoralizing underpaid and underappreciated educators than to give them the monumental job of organizing to achieve specific goals and then, at the last minute, repeal the goals? The Republicans in charge at the legislature often argue that government should be more efficient and productive, like a successful business. Today it is those legislators, not the educators who need lessons in successful business practices. The idea that we can greatly improve (or damage) education by adopting a set of standards is foolishness. It is the actions taken to achieve the goals that will make a difference. As Russell Ackoff, a renowned professor from the Wharton School of Business put it, “The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems. The only managers with simple problems are those with simple minds.”
For many years we have known that the educational achievement of American students is lagging behind the achievement of students in many other developed nations. Since public education is largely a responsibility of states, not the federal government, the National Governor’s Association commissioned a project to study the situation and make recommendations. It was strongly supported by governors from both parties and the funding was mostly from the private sector – especially from businesses and foundations which were concerned that American graduates were not prepared for the jobs of the future (or even the present). Educators, psychologists, business leaders and other qualified people worked for years to produce the Common Core Standards which were then adopted voluntarily by 46 states. Only after this was done did the federal government begin to use the standards too.
The Common Core Standards specify very little about curriculum (books, teaching techniques etc.) In fact, the standards anticipate that there will be variance across the country in that regard, and that there may be variance from one classroom to another based the unique styles of individual teachers or the needs of students. If there is to be standardization of curriculum or teaching techniques, it would be done by states or school districts.
How should those of us who are not educators think of the standards? I see them as mileposts for each student to pass on the journey of preparation for successful employment after high school or for college. That was also the goal of the National Governor’s Association and of the private organizations that paid for much of the research on which the standards are based.
One state, Kentucky, has led the way in implementing the standards and more recently they have begun testing to measure how they are doing. The bad news is that their educational performance still lags behind other nations. The very promising news is that in two years their test scores rose 2 percent while their high school graduation rate rose 6 percent. It is too soon to attribute that progress to the common core standards but certainly they can take pride in the achievement.
Edward Deming, who is often credited with introducing scientific process improvement as a business practice, said “Management by numerical goal is an attempt to manage without knowledge of what to do.” It is vital for legislators to understand that. The Common Core Standards provide a yardstick with which we can measure progress. They should be used for planning and improvement, not for appraisal of individual performance. Repealing them will leave educators no generally accepted and standardized measurement and will take away their ability to compare results from various school districts and teaching methods – leaving us in a situation where policy changes will be based on opinion rather than data. Replacing them with state standards will take away our ability to compare our results with other states and will present new opportunities for politicians to insert their personal biases into educational policy. That is the opposite of good business practices.
Rather than taking the goalposts off the field, the legislature can be most helpful by doing its own job – not the jobs of the educators. There is massive evidence that children, especially low income children, do best in nations that provide high quality public pre-schools. The legislature should study how best to create and fund that service. Many legislators (in both parties) want performance-based pay for educators. If that is the case, legislators and school boards must provide management education for whoever will do the performance appraisals and the ongoing communication and coaching throughout the year. Successful performance appraisals don’t surprise people – they are merely summaries of discussions that have been ongoing. They are based on multiple job expectations, not on the results of a single test.
The most critical factor in business success is hiring the right people. That means that we need to provide adequate salaries. We have some great teachers who are terribly underpaid. We have lost some great teachers who had to leave their chosen profession in order to adequately support their families. The legislature can help by funding salaries comparable to professions requiring similar levels of education, skill and stress.
So, legislature, what’s it going to be? Will you choose a businesslike approach to improving quality or more tampering based on the opinions of talk show hosts?
IF WE VOTE WE WIN
“If we vote, we win.” I have heard that statement several times from earnest sounding first time candidates for public office. It is not as catchy, but I would modify their slogan to say, “If we are well informed and vote, we win.” We are fortunate to live in a republic where that is true, but it only matters if citizens accept the responsibility of selecting good candidates for public office.
Have you heard it said that, “We have the best government that money can buy.”? That is a cynical but too-often true statement. How did it happen? Perhaps we have become the best voters that money can buy – and if so, that is an even greater concern. Our national worship at the altar of profit and greed has led us to allow corporations and the extremely wealthy to influence us to an extent that threatens the existence of government by and for the people.
Our Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have all the same rights as individuals and that unlimited political spending is a “free speech” right, thereby allowing unlimited amounts of anonymous money to be used to influence our votes and our opinions on issues. There are even ways for big donors to claim charitable tax deductions for their contributions to organizations whose purpose is to convince us that we should vote the way the wealthy donors want us to vote. Their money hires marketing experts who seek ways to link their goals to our personal values and religious convictions – and it works. Special interests like petroleum companies, agribusiness, and the extremely wealthy fund immense advertising (propaganda) campaigns to convince us of their viewpoints without disclosing that they are behind the advertisements.
There are two things we can do to take control of our government. First, be as well informed as we can be. And second, ignore the advertising – all of it. An ad may say that it was sponsored by an organization with a high sounding name. Don’t trust it. It was probably paid for by someone with a lot of money who wants to influence you – someone who is working for their interest, not yours. To be well informed we should pay attention to our few legitimate, fact based news media and we should ask our questions directly of candidates in public forums. We should also trust our own instincts on issues. Most of the time, deep down, we know what is right. After we have done those things, then we will be ready to vote.
Will we trust ourselves or will we trust what the propaganda machines tell us? The propaganda machines of the Communist and Fascist powers of the 20th century demonstrated that if you say something often enough, many people will believe it despite any amount of evidence to the contrary. The propaganda machines operating in the USA today are run by special interest groups and corporations. They are very good at what they do and they often persuade both voters and government to ignore facts – the same facts that corporations take into account in their own planning. One example of this is the debate about climate change. Well documented scientific research tells us that human use of fossil fuels is contributing to climate change and that sea levels are rising as a result of that. Special interest groups, including fossil fuel companies, have run massive campaigns to convince us that it is not true. They have influenced our government so much that the State of North Carolina is removing information on the subject from their websites. The State also made it illegal for coastal planning agencies to project changes in sea level greater than the continuation of historical trends. That suits the needs of coastal real estate interests, supports re-building coastal roads that have been wiped out by storms and suits the needs of energy companies. But there is one business interest group that needs to evaluate the facts realistically. That is the flood insurance industry. Insurance companies are changing their risk zones and drastically raising insurance rates because they know that climate change and sea level rise are real.
How has government responded? Initially there was at least one intelligent response – to get the government out of the business of subsidizing flood insurance in high risk areas. But recently, after strong pressure from coastal real estate interests, the government has resumed heavily subsidizing insurance. The insurance companies and the real estate interests and the owners of coastal property will all do well and when the damage is done to their property, it will be repaired through insurance that was subsidized by taxpayers and by the national debt.
How can the same government that denies climate change and sea level rise also be the one that subsidizes higher insurance premiums made necessary by the projected rise of sea level? The answer is that the corporate propaganda machines have made it all seem very reasonable. That is just one example of big money influence on government policy. You can find many more if you look for them. We know it is wrong but we the voters elected the people who did it. There are other elections coming. If we are well informed and if we vote, we will win.
PUBLIC POLICIES AFFECT OUR INCOMES
Nine of the ten US States with the highest median household incomes voted for a liberal in the last presidential election. The only outlier among the high income states was Alaska. At the other end of the income scale, nine of the ten US States with the lowest median household incomes voted for a conservative. The only outlier was New Mexico. The same tendency is apparent when all states are considered. 80% of the states with household incomes above the US median voted for President Obama. 67% of states with incomes below the US median voted for Mr. Romney. For convenience I’ll go with the conventional names and call the more liberal states “blue” and the more conservative states “red”.
Reading down the list of states by income, it is clear that the leaders are blue states with moderate to liberal policies at the state level. In general they are the states which spend more on social safety net programs and public education. They also tend toward the moderate or liberal part of the spectrum on social issues like same sex marriage, abortion, and immigration reform.
Reading up from the bottom of the list of states by income, you will find red states that spend less on social safety net programs and public education. And they tend toward the conservative end of the spectrum on same sex marriage, abortion and immigration reform.
How can these patterns be explained and what can be learned from them? Here are some ideas. By focusing their resources on assuring good public education and access to health care for everyone, including those with low incomes, the blue states develop strong work forces that attract good paying jobs. Some will argue that many jobs have moved to the low-tax environments in the red states and there may be some truth in that. It should be noted that many businesses that talk about such relocations are not only seeking low taxes. They are seeking low wages. If there has been movement of jobs to red states, it appears to have perpetuated their low wage environment rather than improving it.
The relatively liberal social policies of the blue states seem open to more people regardless of sexual orientation or immigration status; and some people looking for such openness also have the economic and intellectual means to start businesses that create economic growth. They gravitate to places where their lifestyles and freedom are respected – bringing economic growth that benefits everyone. If my thinking is wrong, then how would one explain that blue state residents clearly have higher incomes?
It is our tradition to be a nation with regional cultural differences and that will certainly continue. And it has also been our tradition to learn from each other’s successes and failures. In 1789 North Carolina created the first State operated university. Other states saw how well the idea worked and copied it. Cincinnati created the first paid fire department in the US in 1853. The idea succeeded and was copied across the nation. Today hardly anyone thinks of public universities or fire departments as liberal or conservative ideas. They are simply accepted as ideas that work well and that contribute to the success of everyone in the community.
It is time once again to look across state lines and see which public policies are producing the best results. Blue states are leading the nation in median income, educational attainment, and life expectancy. Red states are leading in poverty-related problems including divorce, adolescent pregnancy, and shorter life expectancy. Low funding of education and safety net programs are not producing good results. Restrictions on the personal freedoms to control one’s own body and to marry the person of one’s own choice do not contribute to the success of a state or its citizens.
It’s time to look carefully at what works and what doesn’t and then move ahead with public policies that enhance personal freedom and encourage success. With that attitude and all of our other advantages, North Carolina can become the economic envy of the nation. Two things are required if we are to achieve that. First, we must pay attention to the management and effectiveness of our public policies – stop tearing down public institutions and government and begin making them more creative and efficient. Second, we must study what works (whether a “liberal” or “conservative” idea) and adopt the public policies that lead to success.
There is no question about our ability or our resources. We can be as great as we choose to be. The important questions are about our willingness to abandon hard line ideologies in favor of doing the things that produce the results that we want. Those choices will be made by voters. Without the willingness to adopt successful public policies we can be thankful for our friends in Mississippi. They will assure that we don’t finish last.
BUILDING NATIONAL PRIDE
I am thankful for my nation and the opportunities that it provides. My pride however is in need of repair. After hearing similar sentiments from others, I have written some thoughts about how we might build pride and trust.
Nations succeed as long as the great majority of people willingly support their government. The truth of that can be seen across the span of history and it is visible today from undemocratic China to democratic socialist Scandinavian nations and capitalist democracies like those in North America and Western Europe. National and cultural pride contributed to the success of each of them. Another reason why people unite as a nation is to respond to a natural disaster or some other crisis or threat. This positive part of human nature can quickly become apparent when it is needed and it serves to make national trust and pride even stronger. Examples of these positive qualities abound in American history.
Those same positive qualities can be manipulated to unite people in vilifying and attacking others. In Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany, and the Japanese Empire of WWII nationalism and pride were turned toward dominance and exclusion of others. Nazis, for example, united most Germans by blaming Jews and communists for economic problems. Similar techniques have sometimes been used in the US to unite a political majority by vilifying ethnic and religious minorities. One of mankind’s great attributes, our desire to unite in times of crisis, can also divide us into warring clans that threaten our very survival. When the people of a nation mistrust and mistreat each other, national trust and pride are quickly eroded.
Once we define ‘other’ citizens within our nation as enemies, it is only one additional step to conclude that, “The end justifies the means.” Dishonesty becomes a way of getting people to support what a leader perceives to be “right”. Subterfuge and deception become acceptable means of defense against imagined and ambiguous and threats. Mistrust grows. The divisions within a nation become more sharply defined. Somewhere along the way, the goal shifts from building the nation to destroying the opposition. That seems to describe the USA today and it is rapidly eroding our pride and trust.
When President Kennedy proposed that we land on the moon by the end of the 1960’s the nation took up that challenge and succeeded ahead of schedule. We were proud and we trusted our government to manage the work. The same could be said of great successes such as Social Security, the Hoover Dam, and the Interstate Highway system. Today the sense of pride, optimism and confidence to do great things has waned; and instead our national energy is directed toward internal conflict.
Some steps toward building national pride would be to replace deception, partial truth, and manipulation of government processes that are the current norm with integrity, openness and equal application of laws and standards to all of us. Integrity requires much more than not telling lies. It requires intentionally communicating the whole truth; a task that is difficult when the subjects are laden with emotion. Integrity also requires listening to learn what we do not know and to understand the perspectives of others. In our discussions of social and political issues we must hold ourselves to those standards. Only then will we be able to hold our leaders to them too.
The list of reasons why people mistrust government seems unending. Elected leaders manipulated information to the extent that voters don’t know what or who to believe about Social Security, taxes, health care, bank bailouts, and climate change. They misled us into the Vietnam War and the second Iraq War; used the FBI to spy on political opponents; and deceived us about spying on both Americans and foreign governments. Because of these experiences, many Americans mistrust our government regardless of which party is in power. Misleading the public with statistics and facts that have been twisted to make a point is like pouring acid on our national pride. It destroys trust. No matter how strongly one believes his cause is right, the end does not justify the means.
In the USA that most of us want to believe in and support, laws and standards will be applied equally and fairly to all of us. But most priests who molested children did not go to jail or register as sex offenders. The FBI Director who illegally spied on union and civil rights leaders was not prosecuted. Demonstrators who went to the North Carolina Capitol to peacefully protest new voting rules and failure to expand Medicaid were arrested and jailed. Shortly thereafter, a North Carolina judge visited Washington DC to protest the closing of war memorials during the government shutdown. He physically removed barricades that blocked entrances (destruction of government property) and bragged about it. He was not arrested or disciplined in any way. That inequity damaged confidence and pride for other Americans.
We can and should build our national pride and confidence; beginning by expecting truth, integrity, and the same standards for all of us as we continue creating a more perfect union. Our pride does not arise from already being perfect. It comes from working together to make what is good in our nation even better. We can do that if we will.
WHY NOT THE BEST EDUCATION?
My initial reaction to the recent performance of the Randolph County Board of Education was disbelief. They seem to want what is best for students and for the schools but how did people with good intentions make such a mess? There are, perhaps two underlying problems. One is that a majority of Board Members became so confident that they know what is good and right that they felt justified in imposing their personal values on students and faculty. The other is that a majority have become so complacent in accepting “how things are” that they are not attending to “how things could be”. There can be a happy ending to this story when the whole education team is working together toward a shared vision of excellence. First, here is a review of recent problems.
One Board Member defied the US Supreme Court, the Constitution and the advice of the Board’s legal counsel by offering sectarian prayer over the public address system prior to high school football games. That created a distraction from the School System’s responsibilities rather than advancing the cause of excellence in education. It does matter that some fans don’t want to be forced to hear his prayer in order to see a football game at a public school. Perhaps with good intentions, he imposed his beliefs and values on everyone in attendance and put the School System in a very difficult position.
In a separate matter, one parent complained about a book (The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison) on a suggested reading list given to her 12th grade son. The school system staff followed their established policy; inviting the parent to specify her concerns, then convening two teams of professional educators to reconsider the appropriateness of the book. Both teams affirmed that the book should remain in school libraries and on the recommended reading list. It had been carefully selected for sound reasons.
The Board of Education voted to overrule its teachers, librarians and administrators by not only removing the book from the reading list but removing it from school libraries. It won the national book award and is considered an American classic by most scholars but board members explained imposing their views on students, professional educators, and the executive team by describing the book as “filth” and “…of no literary value…”.
The 12th graders who received the reading list would within a few months be deemed sufficiently mature to join the armed forces, go away to college, sign contracts and vote. Great literature can help them think through their own values before they are faced with the immediacy of important life questions. A majority of the Board of Education, much like their colleague who imposed his religious views on everyone attending football games, enforced their personal views of a book and thereby deprived students of an opportunity to think for themselves about American culture and literature.
The Board’s responsibility is to create an educational system which enables students to study, think, and come to their own conclusions. Instead, they appear to prefer indoctrinating students with their own beliefs and values. After local and international outcries over their action, the Board reversed themselves but offered minimal explanation and no apology to staff or students. Despite clear recommendations provided to the Board by the review teams, one Board member blamed the staff for not providing adequate advice. Why would English teachers and librarians want to work for a Board which does not trust them to choose books?
Robert Kennedy, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, said “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” We need that attitude among our Board of Education. The Board’s role is to establish broad vision, strategies and policies; to select the executive leadership; and to support them in their work. The Board should distinguish their responsibilities from those of the staff by leading on issues such as, “What policies and governance practices are followed in nations that have the best educational outcomes?” “Which of those ideas would work well here?” “What resources are needed and how will we provide them?” “How will we prepare students for lifelong learning and coming to their own conclusions about the important issues of their lives?” “Why will the best teachers want to practice their profession in our school district?”
We should not be satisfied with what we have done in the past – not because it was bad; but because we need to do better. Our target should be public education as good as the best in the world because that is what our children deserve and because anything less will eventually produce a second class nation. Rather than school prayer or their opinions of individual books, we should hear from our Board of Education about their plan for excellence including educational strategies, projected human and financial resource requirements, recruitment, retention, nationally competitive salaries, facilities, a budget sufficient to provide classroom supplies (so teachers don’t have to purchase their own) and even the option of year-round school for students who are aiming for the stars. If the Boards and the public give our school systems the encouragement and support that they need and deserve, we will be thrilled with the great results that our students achieve.
YES, WE HAVE NO MAGIC
Yes, we have no magic
“I can’t really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and discouragement about the government.” It may surprise many readers to learn that this quotation is from former President Jimmy Carter.
At the time when we elected President Carter, trust in government was very low. We had experienced the Watergate scandal which forced President Nixon to resign from office for spying on political rivals. His schemes included an “enemies list” of opponents to be targeted with IRS audits or malicious prosecutions. His predecessor, President Johnson, made up stories about attacks on American forces in order to justify the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that allowed him to start the Vietnam War. We also learned that the FBI had been tapping the phones of civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King. There was suspicion that President Kennedy’s assassination was part of some conspiracy. There were plenty of justifications for mistrust of government.
“I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.” Those were promises that President Carter made. And to the best of my knowledge, he kept them. He dealt with an energy crisis by urging us to become more energy efficient. He talked about national initiatives to develop wind and solar power. His fiscal policies were disciplined, leading us away from the deficit spending of the Vietnam era and toward a balanced budget. He championed zero based budgeting which meant that no government agency would get money next year just because they had it this year. He offered leadership toward building our nation at home and keeping us out of wars.
It seems that voters want to hear about painless solutions to national problems from candidates who have magical cures for whatever ails the nation. In the very next election, the voters chose easy money and the cheerful countenance of President Reagan. He created economic stimulus by cutting taxes without cutting spending, leading us along the path to our current massive deficits and debt. He wanted to overthrow the democratically elected Sandinista party government of Nicaragua but congress forbade that. President Reagan then secretly sold arms to Iran (which had been holding our citizens hostage) and used the off-the-books proceeds to finance Contra rebel insurrection in Nicaragua. We became accustomed to disclosures of covert actions that congress never authorized. Since then, we have fought two wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, all paid for with borrowed money and American blood. Many Americans suspect the Bush-Cheney administration of making up the evidence for the second Iraq war, just as President Johnson did for Vietnam.
We have recently learned (through illegal disclosures) that the FBI, NSA, and CIA are running immense espionage programs, some directed at our allies and American citizens. The principal government response is to try to prevent disclosure of information rather than to honestly examine the proper role of government. Big financial institutions are suspected of improper influence on elected officials and regulators who created the opportunity for the 2008 financial meltdown – and with good reason. Deregulation of campaign finance is allowing the very wealthy and the biggest businesses to pay for massive campaigns to influence voters, often drowning out the voices of citizens, science and reason and subverting the “one man, one vote” principle.
As in 1976, when President Carter was elected, the mistrust of government is palpable; and the people are divided between left-leaning and right-leaning ideologies. Here is a more recent quotation from President Carter, “I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.” That may not be the best politics but it is the best public service.
My hope is that regardless of ideology we will elect candidates who insist on integrity. Even if we disagree with their conclusions, their statements should always be factually true and above reproach, never designed to mislead us. If that is to happen, the candidates will need the courage to make voters uncomfortable by telling us things that we do not want to hear. We will need to learn, for example, how our spending for health care and defense compares to other nations and then decide how much we are willing to spend. Whatever we spend, we will have to decide who is going to pay enough taxes to collect more than we spend, so that we can begin paying down our debt. It will be our responsibility as voters to turn down any smiling faces who tell us that they have magical ideological solutions to our problems. Perhaps we have learned by now that they don’t exist. President Carter jokingly also said, “I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.” Candidates who mislead us with smiles and magical ideologies will drown us all if we continue to swim with them.