What I said, only not as well

Image via WikipediaSam Smith nails it again on the link between the economy and education. Hint: It's the opposite of what nearly every pundit says.

The Obama con of the week

Barack Obama has joined with the National Association of Manufacturers in a program to provide a half million community college students with training for manufacturing jobs. Said Obama, "If you're a company that's hiring, you'll know that anyone who has this degree has the skills you're looking for. If you're a student considering community college, you'll know that your diploma will give you a leg up in the job market." Obama also cited improving education quality as key to new jobs.

The problem with this is that – both historically and at present – such an argument is misleading.

For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gives this assessment of manufacturing jobs:”Overall employment in this sector will decline by 9 percent as productivity gains, automation, and international competition adversely affect employment in most manufacturing industries. Employment in household appliance manufacturing is expected to decline by 24 percent over the decade. Similarly, employment in machinery manufacturing, apparel manufacturing, and computer and electronic product manufacturing will decline as well. However, employment in a few manufacturing industries will increase. For example, employment in pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing is expected to grow by 6 percent by 2018; however, this increase is expected to add only 17,600 new jobs.”

Further, since the recovery began, businesses have only spent two percent more for employees while 26% more for equipment and software to help to replace them.

The truth is that education doesn’t improve jobs; education improves if the jobs are there. The long term problem with urban public education has been the lack of jobs for its students. Everyone in the system – students, parents, teachers – understand this and reacts accordingly.

Sam Smith, The Great American Political Repair Manual, 1997:

Educational systems rise and fall in response to the economy they serve. A dramatic example occurred at the beginning of World War II. During the Depression years there was an assumption that many of the jobless were either too dumb or too lazy to find employment. After Pearl Harbor, however, such assumptions collapsed. America needed everyone and in schools, factories, and the military the allegedly uneducable suddenly were able to learn.

Today there is an assumption that many of the urban jobless are either too dumb or too lazy to find employment. But unlike during World War II, this assumption is not being tested because we simply don't need everyone any more. Instead we have let the social triage of race and class takes its course.

To be sure, there are plenty of over-bureaucratized, unimaginative, and just plain incompetent city school systems, but reforming them would be infinitely easier if students, administrators, teachers and parents knew there was going to be an economic pay-off at the end. When fifty percent of a city's welfare recipients have a high school diploma, there is a strong hint that something is very wrong other than the educational system.

Further, the word gets around. Politicians and the media may have abstract fantasies about the value of education; kids tend to be a bit more realistic.

So the most important first step towards a better urban school system is a better urban economy.

The Problem in a Nutshell

Gates's threats below are like the raging meth addict telling the clean and sober crowd that, if they don't get with the program and start doing a lot of meth soon, they're going to die of boredom or something.

Boy, talk about "American Exceptionalism," as in "refusal to recognize the reality that every great society in history that became musclebound and impoverished itself to support military empire crashed not long after." A smarter nation would look at the graph above and think "hmmmmm, maybe the many know something that the one doesn't."

Gates threatens America's allies
Jason Ditz, Anti War - Speaking in his final policy speech, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates blasted NATO, predicting a “dim if not dismal” future if the other member nations didn’t become dramatically more hawkish and commit more money and troops to its assorted conflicts.

The comments come after a public lashing earlier this week by Gates for a number of specific member nations, including Poland and Germany, for their lack of involvement in the illegal war against Libya. He also demanded that Spain, Turkey and the Netherlands start launching strikes on ground targets in the nation.

Gates warned if the other nations didn’t follow America’s lead in contributing more weapons, money and personnel to the alliance’s assorted wars, which by and large are simply America’s assorted wars, they risked “irrelevance.” For many of the nations, this irrelevance will seem not just the preferable choice, but the only choice.

Earth Overshoot Day: A day we all need to start marking carefully

Image by DonkeyHotey via FlickrProbably the most important day of all each year to note.

(Warning: Resources available to support life on planet shown are far more limited than they appear. Do not operate while drunk or under the influence of intoxicants that encourage ignorance of these limits, like economics.)

Splitsville: Another cost of commuting

Image via WikipediaSalem suffers more from auto commuting than any place I've lived in a life filled with new addresses. There are two principal problems from the practice for Salem:

1) The people who live in Salem and work elsewhere drop out of participation in our community almost entirely. They don't serve on boards and committees or any of the other things we need from adults -- they wave off any suggestion of that by pointing to their grinding commutes up and down I-5.

2) Similarly, the many people --- like a certain Governor --- who take a Salem job but consider themselves too refined or hip to live here wind up sucking up resources and contributing nothing to our community. Basically, the only thing inbound commuters want from Salem is free parking. They don't shop here, join here, recreate here or do anything but take money out of the community and impose the costs of their auto-dominated view of the world, where the only thing that matters is how quickly they can get in and out with their gelt.

They also impose higher costs on the state as a whole, because children of divorce are unhealthier and cause a lot more problems:

Indicators: Costs of Commuting

Slate - This week, researchers at Umea University in Sweden released a startling finding: Couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are 40 percent likelier to divorce.

A survey conducted last year for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, for instance, found that 40 percent of employees who spend more than 90 minutes getting home from work "experienced worry for much of the previous day." That number falls to 28 percent for those with "negligible" commutes of 10 minutes or less. Workers with very long commutes feel less rested and experience less "enjoyment," as well.

Long commutes also make us feel lonely. Robert Putnam, the famed Harvard political scientist and author of Bowling Alone, names long commuting times as one of the most robust predictors of social isolation. He posits that every 10 minutes spent commuting results in 10 percent fewer "social connections." Those social connections tend to make us feel happy and fulfilled. . . .

One of Salem's gems: A message from One Fair World (474 Court St.)

Another unsolicited plug for one of Salem's unique treasures:

The sun has arrived, and our garden pots and other outdoor items will help you make the most of it. We have kites, mats, windchimes, and more. Come visit us to find that perfect addition to your summer.

Pottery from Cameroon

Through our friends at Ten Thousand Villages we can offer this charming pot from Cameroon, with a pair of friendly, terra cotta chameleons pearched on its lip. These pots are made at the PRESCRAFT pottery center in Bamessing-Nsei, which provides a sustainable living for more than 70 artisans, while running a reforestation project with local farmers. You can learn more about this project at the PRESCRAFT and Ten Thousand Villages websites.

Another great idea from Sam Smith

Image by takomabibelot via FlickrSmith, author of "The Great American Political Repair Manual" and other gems, provides this:

Now that a federal judge has ruled that corporations can make campaign contributions directly, how about a national organization for those who will refuse to vote for any candidate who accepts such contributions? - Sam

We should get on it!

Coming soon to Oregon

Like Michigan, Oregon is bankrupting itself with "tuff on crime" sentencing policies that take discretion away from judges and give it all to prosecutors, who seek to shinny up the greasy pole by collecting as many scalps as possible, all the better to run for higher office with.

This is where this kind of thing leads -- a state gutting schools to pay for more prisons:

School superintendent asks governor to make school a prison

Dear Governor Snyder,

In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.

One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.

Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!

Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.

Respectfully submitted,

Nathan Bootz, Superintendent, Ithaca Public Schools

The evil of the "Health Insurance" mafiosi

There are no words to fully capture the evil of the health insurance gangsters who have worked tirelessly to line their pockets at the expense of the rest of us, producing things like this: forcing people to hold bake sales and benefits to help pay for the medical costs of accident victims.

Two things to note:

1) Cars are deadly weapons. Inattention, fatigue, zoning out, cell phone conversations (hands free or not) -- all these things can make you a murderer or a person guilty of disfiguring and maiming someone else.

2) The suits in the insurance industry, every last one, should tremble at the thought that there might be a just God in Heaven. For, if so, they will all fry in Hell for eternity for conspiring feverishly to preserve our "free market" health care financing system, where the only "free market" is for those with the cash to pay their bills.

As on the Columbia, so too here in Salem on the Willamette

Image via WikipediaThe Highway Lobby just never met a huge boondoggle it didn't love. Everything described above in that story to the tune of around $4 billion (liar's budget before overruns start) is proposed for Salem's new third auto bridge too, liar's budget about $600 million.

They're sure hoping you won't mind paying tolls even as gas prices are peaking over $4 and will never drop again for any sustained period (unless the economy collapses even further due to high gas prices) -- and they also hope you won't notice that people are driving less, not more. And that fewer and fewer young people bother with cars in the first place.

Why we must amend the Constitution to abolish Judicially Invented Corporate Personhood

Image by vj_pdx via FlickrThe Right in this country loves to whine about "judicial activism" whenever there's a decision that they don't like -- forgetting entirely that, in the whole history of the United States, nothing compares to the judicial activism of a former railroad president who was serving as chief clerk for the US Supreme Court and who, with the issue never briefed or argued, inserted a "headnote" (a shorthand synopsis of a point of law) into a case where the point of law in question --- whether corporations had the rights guaranteed to persons under the 14th Amendment --- was never even discussed, much less decided.

This cataclysmic and radically destabilizing notion wildly metastasized throughout the 20th Century, to the point where now, the US high court is best described as the "Supreme Court, Inc." -- happily willing to see even fully innocent people executed, but ever solicitous for the needs of corporations.

This is why we need a pro-human movement all over America, to amend the Constitution to reject the bizarre concept that a corporation . . . a fictitious legal being that consists, essentially, of nothing but a pile of money . . . has the rights of real persons.

Sam Smith nails it:

Judge puts another nail in constitutional coffin

Alternet - Reagan-appointed federal Judge James Cacheris just ruled that corporations have a constitutional right to contribute money directly to political candidates.

Today’s decision extends beyond the egregious Citizen United decision because Citizens United only permits corporations to run their own ads supporting a candidate or otherwise act independently of a candidate’s campaign. Cacheris’ opinion would also allow the Chamber of Commerce and Koch Industries, for instance, to contribute directly to political campaigns.

If today’s decision is upheld on appeal, it could be the end of any meaningful restrictions on campaign finance ­ including limits on the amount of money wealthy individuals and corporations can give to a candidate. In most states, all that is necessary to form a new corporation is to file the right paperwork in the appropriate government office. Moreover, nothing prevents one corporation from owning another corporation. Thus, under Cacheris’ decision, a cap on overall contributions becomes meaningless, because corporate donors can simply create a series of shell corporations for the purpose of evading such caps.

Although the corporate media will deny this, assuming the Supreme Court backs this decision, it will be absolutely accurate to describe America now as a semi-fascist state.

Sam Smith, 1990 - The S&L solution has the hidden goal of moving America towards increasing financial oligopoly. The government is prepared to guide, assist, regulate and tax to accomplish this goal. This sort of economic policy has been seen before in fully developed form and it has a name: fascism, described by Mussolini biographer Adrian Lyttelton as "the product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly." As Italian fascist economic theorist Alfredo Rocco put it, such an economy "is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the state."