A Must Read

A huge public thank you to Paul Krugman for his outstanding defense of academic freedom in Monday's New York Times. As an untenured professor and regular blogger, I am eternally grateful that he -- at least -- gets it.

He is absolutely right about the risks of letting this kind of behavior go by--

"... less eminent and established researchers won’t just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they’ll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble.

What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed."

Now if only UW-Madison Administration would take such a stance.

Ed Deform and Neoliberalism

People are comparing Egypt and Wisconsin. The link? Neoliberalism. Tattoo the word on your arm. Look at the entire ed deform program in the context of neoliberalism. Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" is the bible ed deform resisters. Paul Krugman on Friday referenced Klein's groundbreaking work. Now if only Krugman would tie the  string to the ed deforms and tell people that charter schools are the battering ram of neoliberal assault on the public school system. Leonie Haimson's husband, Michael Oppenheimer, teaches at Princeton with Krugman. Michael should whisper sweet anti ed deformer words in his ear.

Confused about the Democratic Party support for ed deform? The Clintons are classic neoliberals and the rest of the party is in step.

Confused about why the UFT/AFT/MulGarten crew won't put up a defense? They too are neoliberals, who are close relatives of neocons. That was why Vera Pavone and I titled our review of Richard Kahlenberg's "Albert Shanker: Tough Liberal" Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon. We could easily have called it "Ruthless Neoliberal" but didn't want to confuse people who think neolineral is a modernized version of classic American liberalism when it is exactly the opposite.

Union leaders like Weingarten differ from the anti-union neoliberals in that they feel unions should exist - naturally - but in limited format - in support of the government/corporate state more than the membership. But of course they support the concept of unions - look how well they have done as leaders who misdirect the energies of the members. That is why Weingarten is helping find ways to get rid of teachers. See NYC Educator: A Fine Day for a Sellout

With the myriad of anti-teacher crap pervading the headlines, AFT President Randi Weingarten thinks it's a good time to discuss faster ways to fire us

If things ever get sticky just watch where they stand.

What is neoliberalism?

Yves Smith at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/al-jazeera-on-egypts-revolt-against-neoliberalism.html  has the links:

In his Brief History of Neoliberalism, the eminent social geographer David Harvey outlined “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.”

Neoliberal states guarantee, by force if necessary, the “proper functioning” of markets; where markets do not exist (for example, in the use of land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution), then the state should create them.

Guaranteeing the sanctity of markets is supposed to be the limit of legitimate state functions, and state interventions should always be subordinate to markets. All human behavior, and not just the production of goods and services, can be reduced to market transactions.

And the application of utopian neoliberalism in the real world leads to deformed societies as surely as the application of utopian communism did…..

KRUGMAN ARTICLE BELOW THE FOLD

Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

By PAUL KRUGMAN



Published: February 24, 2011

Here’s a thought: maybe Madison, Wis., isn’t Cairo after all. Maybe it’s Baghdad — specifically, Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence.


As many readers may recall, the results were spectacular — in a bad way. Instead of focusing on the urgent problems of a shattered economy and society, which would soon descend into a murderous civil war, those Bush appointees were obsessed with imposing a conservative ideological vision. Indeed, with looters still prowling the streets of Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, the American viceroy, told a Washington Post reporter that one of his top priorities was to “corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises” — Mr. Bremer’s words, not the reporter’s — and to “wean people from the idea the state supports everything.”
The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein’s best-selling book “The Shock Doctrine,” which argued that it was part of a broader pattern. From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.
Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011, where the shock doctrine is on full display.
In recent weeks, Madison has been the scene of large demonstrations against the governor’s budget bill, which would deny collective-bargaining rights to public-sector workers. Gov. Scott Walker claims that he needs to pass his bill to deal with the state’s fiscal problems. But his attack on unions has nothing to do with the budget. In fact, those unions have already indicated their willingness to make substantial financial concessions — an offer the governor has rejected.
What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.
For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process.
And then there’s this: “Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).”
What’s that about? The state of Wisconsin owns a number of plants supplying heating, cooling, and electricity to state-run facilities (like the University of Wisconsin). The language in the budget bill would, in effect, let the governor privatize any or all of these facilities at whim. Not only that, he could sell them, without taking bids, to anyone he chooses. And note that any such sale would, by definition, be “considered to be in the public interest.”
If this sounds to you like a perfect setup for cronyism and profiteering — remember those missing billions in Iraq? — you’re not alone. Indeed, there are enough suspicious minds out there that Koch Industries, owned by the billionaire brothers who are playing such a large role in Mr. Walker’s anti-union push, felt compelled to issue a denial that it’s interested in purchasing any of those power plants. Are you reassured?
The good news from Wisconsin is that the upsurge of public outrage — aided by the maneuvering of Democrats in the State Senate, who absented themselves to deny Republicans a quorum — has slowed the bum’s rush. If Mr. Walker’s plan was to push his bill through before anyone had a chance to realize his true goals, that plan has been foiled. And events in Wisconsin may have given pause to other Republican governors, who seem to be backing off similar moves.
But don’t expect either Mr. Walker or the rest of his party to change those goals. Union-busting and privatization remain G.O.P. priorities, and the party will continue its efforts to smuggle those priorities through in the name of balanced budgets.

The Tide Will Rise

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is out for more than money. He's out for blood. He won't quit until he drives a stake through the hearts of public employee unions in the Badger State. That much is clear.

How this current saga will end is anyone's guess. The amazing protests that have taken over the Wisconsin State Capitol and downtown Madison might wear down, if not Walker, the few moderate Republican state senators remaining. Or the GOP might try to eliminate collective bargaining without needing the "Wisconsin 14" -- the Senate Democrats who have crossed the Illinois border to prevent a vote on the budget bill -- by pulling the collective bargaining provisions out as separate legislation (which would require only 17 senators present; there are 19 Republicans). The outcome? A general strike perhaps. Wisconsin unions and Democratic lawmakers have already publicly agreed to accept sizable concessions on health benefits and pensions as demanded by Walker and the Republicans -- on average, an 8 percent cut in public workers' take-home pay -- which would severely cripple the state economy.

The Governor has said that this is about balancing the budget, not destroying unions. Few believe him of course, especially given his track record as Milwaukee County Executive, but that's what his talking points tell him to say. I don't believe him the same way I don't believe that congressional Republicans are serious about the budget deficit and national debt. Walker's first action as governor was to propose and enact corporate tax cuts equivalent to the cost of the cuts he is now seeking to impose upon public employees. Congressional Republicans pushed for the same thing, the extension of Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, which added nearly one trillion dollars to the national debt. Republicans are making these fiscal crises worse and are attempting to balance the budget on the backs of public workers, making cuts to programs like food aid for poor pregnant women and women with children, but refusing to ask those with means to sacrifice one whit.

Wisconsin Democrats and union leaders have rightly drawn a line in the sand when it comes to the elimination of collective bargaining rights (over anything other than wage increases below the rate of inflation). Whether you like them or not, Americans have the right to organize and join unions and employees ought to have the right to come together and collectively bargain wages, benefits and working conditions. This right is outlined in the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights. Republicans, however, have succeeded in convincing too many working families that their brothers and sisters in the public sector are the enemy.

As Paul Krugman eloquently writes in the New York Times (2/21/2011), the preservation of unions is also a matter of balancing political power.

For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.
.....
But Mr. Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain.
.....

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence.

Why average Americans are willing to give selfish corporations and capitalist greed a pass, but demonize other working folks is beyond me. Why must so many Americans embrace a race to the bottom rather than the notion of a rising tide? Jealousy of wages and benefits that unionized workers have won for themselves has turned to rage as the economy has soured, even though it is often based on bad information (public employees in Wisconsin make LESS in wages and benefits than their private sector counterparts). That rage can turn in one of two directions -- it can become productive or divisive. The likes of Scott Walker and Republican bankrollers, such as Koch Industries, are counting on the latter.

As an alternative, those oppressed workers, primarily in the private sector, could choose to organize themselves as their public-sector brethren have done to better their lot -- or take political action to strengthen social supports, job training opportunities, and demand greater equity in U.S. tax policy. Or they can choose to embrace a "Life Sucks" mantra. "I suffered [a job loss/salary cut/reduced benefits], so those other working stiffs should have to suck it up, too." But why demand blood from a stone? If one is serious about shared sacrifice, why not demand reasonable concessions from public workers, along with tax reforms to close corporate loopholes and higher tax rates or income tax surcharges on millionaires?

Such concessions from public employees can be achieved through the collective bargaining process, both at a local as well as at a state level. Look what Vermont achieved in 2010 under a Republican Governor by working with unions. Walker's approach was to unilaterally propose something and refuse to negotiate or even discuss it with public employees. Nice guy that, Mr. Walker. But he can't be all bad because, after all, God talks to him. Indeed, his approach sets him apart from some other freshman Republican governors, including Iowa's Terry Branstad, Michigan's Rick Snyder, and Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett. California Governor Jerry Brown (a Democrat), running a state with far worse budgetary problems, won't resort to union busting either.

From the Wall Street Journal (2/18/2011):

"We're going to go negotiate with our unions in a collective-bargaining fashion to achieve goals," the Republican governor [Michigan's Rick Snyder] said in an interview. "It's not picking fights. It's about getting people to come together and say here are the facts, here are the common-ground solutions."

Former Clinton Labor Secretary and Berkeley public policy professor Robert Reich argues
that rising income inequality is at the heart of our nation's and our states' fiscal challenges:

So the problem isn’t that “we’ve” been spending too much. It’s that most Americans have been getting a steadily smaller share of the nation’s total income.

At the same time, the super-rich have been contributing a steadily-declining share of their own incomes in taxes to support what the nation needs — both at the federal and at the state levels.

The coming showdowns and shutdowns must not mask what’s going on. Democrats should make sure the public understands what’s really at stake.

Yes, of course, wasteful and unnecessary spending should be cut. That means much of the defense budget, along with agricultural subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare.

But America is the richest nation in the world, and “we’ve” never been richer. There’s no reason for us to turn on our teachers, our unionized workers, our poor and needy, and our elderly. The notion that “we” can no longer afford it is claptrap.

From an education policy standpoint, have teachers' unions always been on the right side of the issues? Of course not. The Wisconsin Education Association Council is an example of one that has been slow to change as compared with other NEA affiliates such as the neighboring Illinois Education Association and many state AFT chapters. Walker's election finally got WEAC to read the tea leaves and advance a proposal to embrace a number of school reforms rather late in the game. That said, I fully and wholeheartedly support the current organizing efforts of WEAC and its right to represent Wisconsin teachers at the bargaining table.

But this is bigger than education and teaching. There is a larger agenda at play here. Republicans have effectively sought to create a wedge between working people -- a divide and conquer strategy that exploits the economic turmoil and uncertainty currently gripping this country. At the same time, they are pushing an anti-tax agenda with two purposes in mind -- (1) to give huge tax breaks to corporate interests and the wealthiest Americans, and (2) to bleed the public sector dry and reduce the size of government regardless of the impact on the poor and elderly. The result: historic income inequality in the United States.

Too many Democrats are complicit for failing to see the forest for the trees and for allowing Republicans to set the narrative. (President Obama's proposed 50% cut to the Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is a case in point.) Progressives need to take the elephant by the ears and shake some sense into it. We need leaders who will tell it like it is and propose policies to move America forward, not backwards. My hope is that the activism and energy present in Wisconsin will be channeled productively and over the long haul, not just to fight anti-union crusades, but also to build a state and nation that aspires to greatness, excellence and prosperity for all of its people -- from those at the top to the weakest and most vulnerable amongst us.

The tide will rise.

Another Texas "Miracle" Dashed

 Ed activists have been on the case of the Houston so-called miracle that vaulted Rod Paige into the national spotlight under George Bush only to find out that there was massive cheating going on. It's too bad that Paul Krugman, who with every column nails the scams and crooks running their jive through the political economy doesn't make the connection to the ed scam artists.

Today he gets closer but doesn't close the deal in an article about the Texas economic "miracle."

These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.
Wait — Texas? Wasn’t Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn’t its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that “we have billions in surplus”? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.
And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting — the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending — has been implemented most completely. If the theory can’t make it there, it can’t make it anywhere.
How bad is the Texas deficit? Comparing budget crises among states is tricky, for technical reasons. Still, data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggest that the Texas budget gap is worse than New York’s, about as bad as California’s, but not quite up to New Jersey levels.
The point, however, is that just the other day Texas was being touted as a role model (and still is by commentators who haven’t been keeping up with the news). It was the state the recession supposedly passed by, thanks to its low taxes and business-friendly policies. Its governor boasted that its budget was in good shape thanks to his “tough conservative decisions.”
Oh, and at a time when there’s a full-court press on to demonize public-sector unions as the source of all our woes, Texas is nearly demon-free: less than 20 percent of public-sector workers there are covered by union contracts, compared with almost 75 percent in New York.

Krugman concludes with:

Right now, triumphant conservatives in Washington are declaring that they can cut taxes and still balance the budget by slashing spending. Yet they haven’t been able to do that even in Texas, which is willing both to impose great pain (by its stinginess on health care) and to shortchange the future (by neglecting education). How are they supposed to pull it off nationally, especially when the incoming Republicans have declared Medicare, Social Security and defense off limits?
People used to say that the future happens first in California, but these days what happens in Texas is probably a better omen. And what we’re seeing right now is a future that doesn’t work.

Read it all here

If we could only get Krugman to take a hard look at how the future of ed deform won't work either before there is barely a shell of teacher unionism left.

And let me say right here, no matter how deep my criticisms of the people leading our union I feel teacher unions could be the major defense against the onslaught against children - yes, policies that keep kindergarten children from being allowed to play. That is why my hostility towards teacher union leaders is so great - they have walked on the other side of the line.

Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.

Krugman and Carr Columns in NY Times: Did Zombies Eat Waiting for Superman Director Guggenheim's Brain?

“I think so many people are seeing business and how it is conducted in the abstract that they have no idea about how these decisions play out.” - From David Carr's column, NY Times

This quote could also be applied to the abstract concepts being pushed by the ed deformers - I must have heard the word "choice" a hundred times at last week's PEP (I'm still working on the video) over  PS 20K being undermined by allowing Arts and Letters to expand from a middle school to K-8, thus competing for the same kids PS 20 serves in the very same building. So what if PS 20 kids have to eat lunch at 10:30?

My favorite NY Times columnist Paul Krugman (When Zombies Win) and business columnist David Carr in (A Lesson on Wall Street Failure) have two interesting and intersecting articles in the NY Times today that touch on many of our core issues.

First Krugman:

When historians look back at 2008-10, what will puzzle them most, I believe, is the strange triumph of failed ideas. Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything — yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever.

Krugman is talking economics, not education. Wouldn't we love for him to take a hard look at the free-market fundamentalist ed deformers. The zombies with their vast propaganda machine lined up against teachers certainly seem to be winning (though once we have our film "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" out the tide will turn- I'm always the optimist.)

Carr touches on one of the Zombies in chief, Davis Guggenheim who made the propaganda film we are responding too.

It’s awards season again, and critics and the academy members are deciding on their top film picks of the year. But in many corners of the business community, the issue is already settled: “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” is the year’s must-see film.
On Wall Street and on Silicon Valley office campuses, in hedge fund boardrooms and at year-end Christmas parties, it seems you can’t have a conversation without someone talking about the movie that finally lays bare America’s public education crisis. [Sure David Carr - don't let the Zombies eat your brain by believing the manufactured chrisis.]
“Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” is one thing that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg agree on, Rupert Murdoch talks about to anyone who will listen, David Koch of Koch Industries promotes, and Paul Tudor Jones and many of his hedge fund brethren work to support. 

More Krugman extracts (with my notations linking to ed deform)

people who should have been trying to slay zombie ideas have tried to compromise with them instead. And this is especially, though not only, true of the president.  [Obama has gone way beyond zombie ideas on ed deform.]

...President Obama, by contrast, has consistently tried to reach across the aisle by lending cover to right-wing myths. [CHECK]

...And how effectively can he oppose these demands, when he himself has embraced the rhetoric of belt-tightening? [Ed Deform is all about belt tightening - go after teacher salaries and disparge class size as a factor.]
Yes, politics is the art of the possible. We all understand the need to deal with one’s political enemies. But it’s one thing to make deals to advance your goals; it’s another to open the door to zombie ideas. When you do that, the zombies end up eating your brain — and quite possibly your economy too.  [And eating your public education school system too.]

Back to Carr

“Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” follows five children and their parents as they run a gantlet to gain access to high-performing charter schools because the alternative — the public system — is a complete disaster. The film has caught the imagination of the business community because it represents a reckoning for public education and its chronic failures, making the very businesslike case that large school systems and the unions that go with them must be replaced by a customized, semi-privatized education in the form of charter schools. 

 Carr echoes Krugman when he says:

Which is odd when you think about it. If you are looking for an American institution that failed the public, made resources disappear without returning value and lacked accountability for its manifest sins, the Education Department would be in line well behind Wall Street.

By now, the notion that business is a place built on accountability and performance should be as outdated as the one-room schoolhouse. Ask yourself, what would happen if American public schools were offered hundreds of billions in bailout money? [HMMM- maybe lower class size to match private schools?] One outcome is not in the cards: its leaders would not end up back at the trough so quickly, sucking up tens of millions in bonuses as Wall Street has.
If the captains of American business are looking for a holiday movie, I have another suggestion for them. I’m not talking about “Inside Job,” which is a scabrous take on the well-documented story of how the American economy was nearly tipped over by business greed and incompetence [We must try to get the director, Charles Ferguson, to look at the ed deformers].

Nah, I’d buy them a bucket of popcorn and sit them in front of “The Company Men,” a moody and elegiac feature film starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper as businessmen who have a moment of clarity about how American business lost its soul.

As executives at GTX, a fictitious multinational corporation involved in the transportation business, among other endeavors, they watch as many of their colleagues are laid off to meet inflated earnings targets and as numbers get ginned up to keep the stock price growing and potential acquirers at bay. And then their turn comes.

At that point, “The Company Men” becomes a film about the loss of privilege: Porsches are sold and driven away, access to the private golf club is denied and suburban mansions go on the market. But the movie delivers, over and over, a message that far from being a center of American know-how and ingenuity, much of modern business is now preoccupied with goosing the share price and tricking up the year-end bonus — about getting over by getting by. 

all the energy and resources go into the kind of financial engineering that creates quarterly numbers that Wall Street buys into.

“They are responding to the needs of the market, to the institutional investors — the large mutual funds, the money market funds,” he said. “And when you think about it, that implicates all of us because we are all investing in the market one way or another.” 

 And the takeaway is:

“I think so many people are seeing business and how it is conducted in the abstract that they have no idea about how these decisions play out.”

 But Carr doesn't make a strong connection between the bullshit of WfS with the rest of the on-target stuff he is talking about.

Both Krugman and Carr articles are at Norms Notes: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/

Krugman's universe

Some horrible people say that economists (particularly theory types) suffer from physics-envy. I would not say that, in public anyway, 'though as envies go it could be worse. Not content with suffering such insults, Paul Krugman has just published a paper (though written in 1978) providing the long awaited unification of trade theory and inter-stellar travel.

THE THEORY OF INTERSTELLAR TRADE

PAUL KRUGMAN, Economic Inquiry Volume 48, Issue 4, pages 1119–1123, October 2010

This article extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.