Fighting the Corporate Dragon: We Need Solutions, Not Just Presentments

I continue to read about corporate influence in American democratic institutions and I continue to be alarmed. Most recently I read three articles, all in truthout. In "The Perfect Storm" Robert Reich describes how our democracy is turning into a plutocracy: "We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy." In "Juraissic Ballot: When Corporations Ruled the Earth," Rebecca Solnit, a California-based writer and activist, compares corporations to dinosaur-like monsters:

"We call these monsters corporations, from the word corporate which means embodied. A corporation is a bunch of monetary interests bound together into a legal body that was once considered temporary and dependent on local licensing, but now may operate anywhere and everywhere on Earth, almost unchallenged, and live far longer than you."

Finally, I read Chris Hedges weekly essay, and this week's was entitled "The World Liberal Opportunists Made," which makes the case that the liberal class has done failed and died:

"The lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, which looks set to make sweeping gains in the midterm elections, is the direct result of a collapse of liberalism. It is the product of bankrupt liberal institutions, including the press, the church, universities, labor unions, the arts and the Democratic Party. The legitimate rage being expressed by disenfranchised workers toward the college-educated liberal elite, who abetted or did nothing to halt the corporate assault on the poor and the working class of the last 30 years, is not misplaced. The liberal class is guilty. The liberal class, which continues to speak in the prim and obsolete language of policies and issues, refused to act. It failed to defend traditional liberal values during the long night of corporate assault in exchange for its position of privilege and comfort in the corporate state. The virulent right-wing backlash we now experience is an expression of the liberal class’ flagrant betrayal of the citizenry."

I'm feeling a wee-bit down about all of this. Perhaps I should stop reading these truthout writers or perhaps I should try reading them with more skepticism. But I don't want to put myself in the position of not reading stuff because it's too hard to hear or because it's too dark or too complex. I want to face what's wrong, but I also want to try to fight for what's right in a productive way.

In "What If? So What?" on truthdig via The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson says that there was only so much that the liberal class, embodied by Obama, could do to push the liberal agenda, and that while "nothing would have been more satisfying than an FDR-style progressive blitz that set the nation on a path toward being stronger, fairer and more prosperous" that Obama and his administration are constrained by certain economic and political realities.

So what are the solutions, then? Because paired with descriptions of the problem, we need solutions. Otherwise, we are accepting, as I fear Hedges is doing, defeat--in this case, defeat of a liberal society and of democracy. At least in the essays cited above, Reich and Robinson offer none. To find one from Hedges, I had to go back to his first essay that got me started down this road, to find this:

"All resistance will take place outside the arena of electoral politics. The more we expand community credit unions, community health clinics and food cooperatives and build alternative energy systems, the more empowered we will become."

Solnit offers more actionable solutions in her depictions of how the people of Richmond, California, many of whom are poor, have latched onto "The Phantom of Democracy" and have organized themselves and fought the Chevron oil company's incursions. She also describes how groups around the world are "acting locally and thinking globally" to fight for ownership of their communities.

We must all act locally and think globally, take ownership of our communities as communities and as citizens. And we must not let corporations do that for us, for they will not act in our best interests, but in their own.

It's All About the (Corporate) Benjamins, Baby: Politics & Government

The most commonly recognized type of corporate influence in American democratic institutions is in politics. I recall learning in Mrs. McCarthy's US Government class at DC's Wilson High School that special interest groups or PACs (Political Action Committees) wielded a certain amount of influence. It wasn't until the past couple of years that I realized how many of these are funded by corporations. Furthermore, it has become impossible to successfully run for office without gobs of corporate money. It has oft been said that the media is the fourth branch of government. That idea needs updating: corporations and their lobbyists, including conglomerates with holdings of media companies, now make up the fourth branch of the U.S. government. And it looks like the new branch on the block may increasingly be pulling the strings of the other three branches.

In my post about the death of journalism, I rather pooh-poohed this essay by Naomi Klein entitled "How Corporate Branding is Taking over America" as sensationalist and conspiracy-theory crazed, but I really shouldn't have. I am, I admit, late to the party here (or perhaps now I'm the conspiracy-theory crazed one). Klein was right to point out that while George W. Bush was criticized for incompetence and "acts of destruction," that he was very effective in privatizing many essential functions of government. It's true that Obama marketed and branded his campaign better than many ad campaigns for popular products do. I agree with her that,

"This preference for symbols over substance, and this unwillingness to stick to a morally clear if unpopular course, is where Obama decisively parts ways with the transformative political movements from which he has borrowed so much. . . . Another way of putting it is that Obama played the anti-war, anti-Wall Street party crasher to his grassroots base, which imagined itself leading an insurgency against the two-party ­monopoly through dogged organization and donations gathered from lemonade stands and loose change found in the crevices of the couch. Meanwhile, he took more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate, swallowed the Democratic party establishment in one gulp after defeating Hillary Clinton, then pursued 'bipartisanship' with crazed Republicans once in the White House." 

Obama didn't only take money from Wall Street, but, according to Mother Jones,  from corporations such as BP as well. I don't feel as strongly as Klein and Chris Hedges do (an essay by Hedges started me down this path of blog posts about corporate influence in American democratic institutions). For example, I assume, perhaps naively, that Obama preferred not to take money from corporations, but that his m.o. was to get into a position of power first, no matter with whose money, and then fix things from the inside. The only problem is that "fixing things" has become next to impossible. This Vanity Fair article gives some insight into what Obama's presidency grapples with.

If the most recognized type of corporate influence is in government and politics, then corporate money in Congress seems to be the most easily identifiable manifestation of corporate influence in American politics. Members of Congress routinely take enormous sums from corporations to fund their campaigns--just take a look at this Campaign Cash Seating Chart in the September/ October 2010 issue of Mother Jones.

In a 5-4 ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, the Supreme Court allows corporate money to flow unchecked into campaigns. Another less publicized case, previous to the Citizens United one, Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life did essentially the same thing. According to The New York Times, the Roberts court is the most conservative and corporate-friendly Supreme Court justice we've had in decades. One of the principal themes of Jeffrey Toobin's recent profile in The New Yorker of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is that the Roberts Court is looking to get rid of one of the primary reforms of the Roosevelt era: government regulation of our economy. As New York University Law Professor Barry Friedman and SCOTUS expert Dahlia Lithwick tell it in this recent piece in Slate, what's particularly dangerous about the Roberts Court is how sneaky it is in hiding its conservatism as it chips away at U.S. citizens' fundamental rights.

And that's only what the three "official" branches have been up to.

According to this recent article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, prominent members of the unofficial fourth branch of government, Charles and David Koch, who are the almost sole owners of owners of the Wichita-based oil conglomerate Koch industries, have been funding organizations that advocate for lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and less oversight and regulation of industry, as well as funding ones that fight health care reform and economic stimulus programs. They fund Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Tea Party organizations and training sessions, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, as well as many other conservative and/or pro-corporate organizations. One former Koch adviser cited in Mayer's article was quoted as saying,

"They're smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves." 

Just as in the Civil War when mostly poor non-slave-owning men were drafted to fight for the Confederacy, it looks like middle and working class white people are allowing themselves to be the lackeys of the powerful, rich, and corporate, even as they are railing against that kind of influence. Although Mayer shows that billionaires, like George Soros, who fund more liberal causes are more transparent and less likely to fund studies and programs that are only self-serving, she still makes the case for the increasing danger of politics, politicians, policies, and programs being bought and sold by a few wealthy individuals.

Matt Taibbi also wrote about the Tea Party with a focus more on its followers than on funders, but he came to a conclusion similar to Mayer's: "The Tea Party today is being pitched in the media as this great threat to the GOP; in reality, the Tea Party is the GOP. What few elements of the movement aren't yet under the control of the Republican Party soon will be, and even if a few genuine Tea Party candidates sneak through, it's only a matter of time before the uprising as a whole gets castrated, just like every grass-roots movement does in this country. Its leaders will be bought off and sucked into the two-party bureaucracy, where its platform will be whittled down until the only things left are those that the GOP's campaign contributors want anyway: top-bracket tax breaks, free trade and financial deregulation."

Now, what to do about all of this? I agree with Chris Hedges that it's not just the G.O.P. and Tea Partiers who are responsible for the current state of affairs, but the Democratic Party too. Lawrence Lessig, a Berkeley law professor, is one of the leaders in the fight against corporate money in Congress. His organization, Fix Congress First is doing good work. The Fair Elections Now Act could also help get us out of this pickle. Finally, Hedges's giving Ralph Nader a voice in his essay is a nod to the idea of moving beyond our two-party system. I don't think that we were quite ready for it in 2000 and the idea that there was no real difference ideologically between Al Gore and George W. Bush was wrong and ended up causing a great deal of harm. But now members of both parties seem equally beholden to corporate interests, neither party has halted the privatization of government functions or adequately upheld the idea that the government, while flawed, is the best institution we have to maintain our democracy and represent the needs and rights of the American people.

The solution may be to move beyond our two-party system, to divide into neo-liberals, liberals, greens, social democrats, moderates, conservatives, neo-conservatives, right-wingers, and the like.  But would this even work? Is our two-party system also "too big to fail"? Are we too deep in what Taibbi describes as "an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change"?

Unfortunately, this won't happen in time for the upcoming mid-term elections. For now I feel I've been thrown a small bone. In my congressional district, the 7th of Virginia,  Eric Cantor is facing two challengers: a Tea Party candidate named Floyd Bayne and a Democrat, Rich Waugh, a former social worker who has said that he has taken no corporate money. Is this maybe what we could consider a step in the right direction? I hope so.

Rick Waugh, you have my vote.

(photo from Public Citizens photostream on flickr)

It's All About the (Corporate) Benjamins, Baby

People across the political spectrum are talking about getting corporate money out of politics. I've come to realize, though, that corporate influence is ubiquitous throughout American institutions--it's not just in politics. It can seem tricky to figure out who is funding what, but once we get past the misleading maze of independent- and beneficent-sounding organizations, it's pretty simple: the pool of wealthy people and companies have shrunk down to a few mega-conglomerates and uber-rich individuals. What's been more tricky for me to figure out is how my behavior as a voter, as a citizen, and as a consumer can counter this corporate takeover of American institutions.

A facebook friend recently posted this essay by Chris Hedges. Hedges states that, "There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the arts, religious institutions, and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be considered democratic. The intent, design and function of these institutions, controlled by corporate money, are to bolster the hierarchical and anti-democratic power of the corporate state. These institutions, often mouthing liberal values, abet and perpetuate mounting inequality. They operate increasingly in secrecy. They ignore suffering or sacrifice human lives for profit. They control and manipulate all levers of power and mass communication. They have muzzled the voices and concerns of citizens. They use entertainment, celebrity gossip and emotionally laden public-relations lies to seduce us into believing in a Disneyworld fantasy of democracy."

Hysterical and doomsday-toned pieces like this often turn me off because they are dire to the point of making me feel utterly hopeless, i.e., we're all screwed, so why bother? I understand, though, that such a style can often demonstrate the actual direness of a situation and can light a fire beneath readers. No matter the style, I couldn't help but think that Hedges' piece had an enormous grain of truth to it.

Corporate takeover of American democratic institutions and the development of an American ruling oligarchy is one the defining issues of our democracy's time, if not the defining issue. With this as an introduction, I plan to write a series of blog posts about increasing corporate power over American democratic institutions. Let's just hope, although Hedges might claim otherwise, that it's not the final challenge to face our dying democracy.


(photo by flckr user PaDumBumPsh)

My Adventures with The Coffee Party

This is a tale I meant to tell months back, but the best laid plans. . .

Last spring, I joined the Coffee Party after questioning the effectiveness of my spending all day calling my representatives, signing petitions, and sending prefab e-mails developed by various organizations and non-profits. (And believe me, a person could spend ALL day doing this. I know because it's one of my top writing procrastination tools: I'll finish my novel after I stop the feeding of chicken feces to cows, prevent babies from being born with hundreds of chemicals in their blood, and help the nine tortured elephants that urgently need me.)

I participated in tele-training, organized a meeting at Ashland Coffee & Tea, tried to recruit people, suffered through my husband's dubiousness about the whole thing, and worked in earnest on starting a local Coffee Party chapter. There were six of us at the first meeting and I had received e-mails expressing interest from many more. We came up with our key issues which were: civil rights, health care reform, education, and too much corporate influence in our government. It was very exciting. I was part of something HUGE!

But then, during a second meeting, I got into a debate with an off-duty member of the Ashland Police Department (I actually know him from around town--we've compared notes on running workouts) about the veracity of Glenn Beck's "journalism," particularly as they surrounded the912project and claims of Obama's socialism. The CP representative for the state of Virginia interjected to say that we were both "right." I didn't think too much of that.

Then, during a tele-debriefing of that meeting I got told that I was being "too confrontational" and not focusing enough on the central piece of the Coffee Party platform: civility. (The lady from LA with the New York accent, talking about taking down Henry Waxman, however, supported me.) And that the best thing I could do was to tell Eric Cantor that I was here and that I was ready to be civil (oh yeah, that will make him change his tune). When I explained to the next CP higher up for the state of Virginia, who was very empathetic, that I didn't think that a non-political political movement would be effective, she responded that many Coffee Party people felt otherwise. "Some people think we should be political, but some people don't." "But aren't you a political, albeit, supposedly non-partisan movement?!?!" I wanted to scream. I mean civility is a worthy type of comportment, but it's not a stance.

The last straw was the CP's use of the pseudo-scientific "Coffee Sphere," which I had drafted my quantitatively-gifted and -trained husband to explain to them was an inaccurate and faulty crap-o-meter. You can read that exchange here. The Coffee Sphere remains in use as tool by the Coffee Party and claims to be "Reflecting America's views: the 15-minute issues barometer to ignite dialog and educated actions."

I continue to be in touch with some of the fabulous people I met at the initial meetings, and I hope that the Coffee Party is successful. Besides their use of the Coffee Sphere, I think they're doing good work, and I appreciate the way that the Coffee Party has gotten so many people to be politically active in a way they hadn't previously been before. But being a part of that organization just wasn't for me.

Since then, I have returned to firing off the prefab e-mails and receiving a daily piece of mail from Eric Cantor saying that I may be rest assured that he will keep my views about health care reform and the saving of the sea turtles in mind. Some of the organizations I think are doing great work are: Media Matters, MoveOn, CREDO, Bold Progressives, ColorOfChange, Change.org, Fix Congress First, American Rights at Work, DC Vote, Rethinking Schools, TrueMajority, Repower America, and Green America. Check them out!

From NCLB to RaTTT

Just as I love Mondays, I love back-to-school time with its promise of a fresh start, return to structure and routine, and feeling of possibility. Come Wednesday, and February, I usually feel otherwise, but that's a different story. My family is personally having a great return to school, but back to school for me also means back to writing and thinking about education, and I continue to feel discouraged by Obama's education policies.

One of my least favorite of the current administration's initiatives in education is Race to the Top, for which eighteen states and D.C. were named finalists. A few weeks ago, nine of those states (Hawaii, Rhode Island, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, New York, and Florida) and D.C. were awarded a total $3.4 billion. Under Bush, we got NCLB. (No Child Left Behind), which I liked to call No Child Left Untested. There were some positive things about NCLB, for example, it forced school systems to pay greater attention to the education of ELL (English Language Learner) and SpEd (Special Education) populations, and it forced educators to document and pay more attention to achievement gaps among different groups of students, sorted, for example, by race. However, NCLB caused standardized tests to become the centerpiece of the public school curriculum, with much less emphasis on critical and analytical thinking and writing, scientific inquiry, rich experiences with literature, arts education, physical education, and conflict resolution.

Now, we have Obama's Race to the Top, which I like to call Race to the Flop or RaTTT. There are several education academics who don't like RaTTT, either. For example, Dan Willingham, University of Virginia cognitive psychologist and author of Why Don't Students Like School? says it's a doomed bribery scheme, not much of a change from NCLB, and that it's based on ideas that fail to take scientific evidence into account. In these two blog posts, UCLA education professor Mike Rose talks about the flaws of RaTTT as a policy: Part I and Part II. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan seems like a good guy and I think he means well, but according to this New Yorker profile his background in education before working for Chicago Public Schools consisted of helping out in his mom's after school program. Really? Does that qualify him to run a major public school system and then to be secretary of education? Oh, I forgot, according to the same profile, Duncan was a good basketball buddy of Obama's, and he has an MBA, so those must be his qualifications. Now, don't get me wrong, I like Obama. He's a good man and the best president we've had in a long time. But he doesn't know squat about public education and he's outsourced the top education job in his administration to someone who knows only a smidgen more than he does.

The criteria for winning RaTTT funding includes allowing school districts to take over failing schools, improving curriculum standards, encouraging school innovation (meaning lots more charter schools), and retaining the best teachers possible. I don't disagree with these goals, or with the "ends" of Race to the Top. Mostly what I disagree with is the how, the "means."

I think we should have national standards, but they need to be thoughtful and superior to what they'd be replacing. So far, I don't see much evidence of that. Dr. Willingham says that the new standards are solid, but that they neglect to include the crucial step of how they will be achieved. In these other Washington Post blog posts (Part I and Part II), Willingham talks about what else is missing from national standards.

I am not anti-charter school. I think it's good to have some public school alternatives for students who aren't successful in more conventional public schools. I have considered sending my own children to charter schools (and would in the future), and I have considered teaching in them. I can understand why people would want to form them if they feel that they can't get a decent education at their neighborhood schools. But most charter schools can pick and choose their students and can expel them easily, and often families have to provide their own transportation. We should really focus on improving our neighborhood schools first and ensuring that all children have a reasonably close neighborhood school option first.

I don't disagree that the model of teacher seniority and permanent job security needs reform. I, too, think that teachers should be laid off when there are budget cuts based on quality rather than seniority. And teachers should be paid more and be provided with better working conditions. I also don't disagree that many of the current evaluation systems are seriously flawed. But on what basis should teacher salaries be raised, and how should we measure teacher effectiveness? On what basis do you decided quality? Furthermore, how do you classify a failing school? The answer to this, according to Duncan and the architects and supporters of Race to the Top is: test scores, test scores, and test scores. Dr. Willingham says this is a terrible idea and I agree. Test scores mostly tell you about the students who are taking the tests, and not much about who is teaching them. When I taught in public schools, there were certain evaluation criteria that I didn't make, like high test scores, but there were other ways that my administrators had of observing and giving me credit for being a decent and hard working teacher. Now, it seems like some of the new evaluations, such as IMPACT in DCPS, proceed just as the previous instruments did in that they contain arbitrary and ridiculous criteria, such as putting standards up on the walls, but they don't give administrators some space to get beyond the superficial and arbitrary.

This article in the New York Times describes how RaTTT has interacted with the institution of teachers unions. After reading this, I kind of thought, well, maybe these "reformers" have something, maybe I'm just being obstinate in my thinking, maybe I just have a bad attitude. And, yes, I guess that teachers and their unions should join 'em if they can't beat 'em. If this is the way the ship is sailing, maybe educators should climb aboard and make the best of it rather than give up. Maybe they should take a deep breath and understand that this is just a passing fad, hang on to their principles and their concept of quality education until leadership with smarter and deeper thinking comes along and puts our education system on the right track. I'll just hope for that. I'll hope that soon we can get back to focusing on the art, science, craft, and trade of educating, to reforms of quality and substance, that we'll get out of Arne Duncan's RaTTT race, out of the rat race that I, for one, went into teaching to get away from. Let's just hope that Duncan and his groupies don't do irreversible harm before it's too late.

(photo by flickr user Kate's Photo Diary)

Fare Thee Well, Dear Summer

We went to day camp, art camp, theater camp, science camp, and had swimming lessons. We went bowling, roller skating, biking, and to the library. We played pick-up dodgeball, kickball, soccer, and baseball. We played legos and we read books and magazines. We wrote in our journals (though not as often as we should have). We played board games and we played cards. We went to the Carter Park Pool so many times that the mention merits its own sentence. We went to a Flying Squirrels game, and we visited the Science Museum, the Children's Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. We went to Three Lakes Park and Nature Center and the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. We traveled to DC, Charlottesville, New Paltz, Lake George, Cooperstown. We witnessed and participated in the wedding of two of our very best friends. We drove all the way down and across the state of Pennsylvania. We hosted family and friends from out of town. We drank gallons of water. We frequented the produce stand and the farmer's market. We ate tons of tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, green beans, peaches, peppers, greens, and more tomatoes. We slept until 7:00 am, 8:00 am, and sometimes even 9:00 am. We said farewell to old neighbors and welcomed new ones. We lost a few teeth, scraped some knees, and suffered our fair share of mosquito bites. We turned 34, 37, 7, 7, and 3.5. Two very happy boys went to Kings Dominion for the very first time to mark the occasion.

We had a glorious summer, but now it's time to get back to the classroom and back to our other work. Camp Mama (and Papa, though he was fairly busy teaching and researching) is closed for the school year. We will re-open on June 17, 2011.

Submissions, rejections, and meta-lit mag pieces

One of the secrets to becoming a good writer is to be a good reader: to read widely, deeply, and constantly. Although it can work both ways, in general the nonfiction that I read informs the content of what I write, while the fiction and poetry informs my craft. Sometimes, however, simple functional texts can influence my writing.

This past fall, I went on a major submitting spree, which meant I was reading lots of writers' guidelines, so many, in fact, that the format inspired imitation and I coughed up my own (mock) writers' guidelines and got them published in Defenestration.

Submitting work feels goooood. I get a rush every time I hit "send" to e-mail work, click on "submit" to an online submission manager, or mail a stack of yellow 9 x 12 envelopes from the post office. Unfortunately, most of what goes out comes back in: a few months after my submitting spree, the rejections started pouring in. I read and save every single one.

Some rejections are short, but personal and thoughtful. Some are longer form letters, but are thoughtful and encouraging, nevertheless. The next tier down are form letters also, but are shorter--direct but diplomatic. My least favorite come printed on post-it size pieces of paper that are wrapped in 8 x 11 sized offers to purchase subscriptions to the rejecting publication at a "special writers' " rate. (Ooooooo! I get the special writers' rate! I'm in!) The kicker is that they are mailed in the same SASE I provide for a response, so not only am I paying for the transport of my own pithy rejection, I am paying to receive a solicitation, as well. This is kind of like telemarketers charging callees for the phone calls. I understand that these publications are desperate to stay afloat and that the world of literature and ideas needs them, and I want to support them (most of the time I purchase or read at least one issue before I submit), but that's just plain tacky. Anyhoo, after reading so many rejections, I felt moved to compose a (mock) rejection letter of my own, published recently in swink magazine.

Now, to figure out how to get my more serious stuff published. These "Ten Rules for Writing Fiction" found in the guardian.com have gotten me started as did this provocative piece in Mother Jones by VQR editor Ted Genoways. (My comments are found on the third page--I try not to limit my procrastination-fueled nitpicking to facebook!)

Thanks for reading!


(photo by Mike Atherton, flickr username: Sizemore)