A few thoughts on the VA-07 and Cantor's primary defeat

I meant to cross-post this here when I published it several weeks ago on my education blog and at Blue Virginia. Ooops. Well, for the readers of my much less popular blog, here were my thoughts on the VA-07 and Eric Cantors' primary defeat.

Yesterday, David Brat defeated Eric Cantor in the Republican primary election for the congressional seat in Virginia's 7th district. I live in the 7th district. I happen to also be married to a Randolph-Macon college professor--that is where Dave Brat is a college professor and also where Jack Trammell--the Democratic candidate.

Because I have statistics homework to finish, I don't have time to put my thoughts together in any sort of cohesive manner. So here they are in all of their in-cohesive glory:

• First of all, a bit of an I told you so. Many of our national pundits keep saying that "No one saw this coming." While this is certainly unexpected, I wouldn't say "no one say it coming." Instead I would say that the national media, like Eric Cantor's campaign, did not see it coming. Many locals did see it coming. Even I wrote a post two years ago that summarized Cantor's vulnerability (though I published the post several months later.) And a month ago  local bloggers were still emphasizing Cantor's unpopularity. And so was I:

I have long said that Cantor is not popular in his district, just a Republican. Pass the popcorn, indeed. #VA07 #EricCantor
— Rachel Levy (@RachelAnneLevy) May 11, 2014

• Second, while certainly, Brat's victory is somewhat about immigration (and let's face it, bigotry)--a component of Brat's campaign platform is anti-immigrant, that was not the beginning or the end of why Brat won.

• As I said here, Eric Cantor is notoriously unpopular in his district. He's not accessible to his constituents and he doesn't much care about them. He takes them for granted, treating them like a rich uncle you have to have dinner with occasionally if you want to keep receiving the checks, only in this case it's votes. He's a Republican in a very conservative district which up until now had no challengers. That's all.

• Say what you will about his political and economic views, and I think we all know that I don't agree with the vast majority of them, but Dave Brat is accessible and he hit the pavement during this campaign. He is happy to sit and explain his views to you, no matter who you are, in great detail. He will talk to anyone who will listen--whether at Estes, the Randolph Macon dining hall, at lunch time or on a campaign stop. He met with any group that asked and entertained any question that was asked. And remember, he is a teacher; it's his job to explain.

• Furthermore, driving around the area of the 7th district where I live in recent months, I have seen clusters of Brat supporters waving signs and chanting--I've seen them in Hanover where I live, in the city of Richmond, and in Chesterfield. All of the kids on my sons' soccer team know who David Brat is because they have driven past these clusters and asked their parents, "Who is Dave Brat and why does he want to fire Cantor?" I know I have had this conversation several times with my own children. At this point, they probably know more about this primary than the national media did.

• While Dave Brat actually talked to the constituents he was courting, Eric Cantor's campaign was sending out glossy mailers and putting up posters and lawn signs. That's it: mailers and lawn signs. Otherwise, he kept his distance from the little people. When you actually talk to and listen the people you are hoping to represent, it makes a difference. As political science professor and Associate Dean Lauren Bell said, "to borrow from Roll Call's assessment of Oklahoma Democrat Mike Synar's 1994 loss in the primary, Eric Cantor's loss tonight demonstrates that 'there's a limit to the number of times you can tell your constituents to go screw themselves' "

Quoting Roll Call 1994: Cantor's loss proves "there's a limit to the number of times you can tell your constituents to go screw themselves." — Lauren C. Bell (@rmcpsci) June 11, 2014

• The national media seems to be conducting themselves a lot like, well, the Cantor campaign. They don't do any research or talk to people who actually write about or live or vote in the places their covering. This is a problem that applies not just to this topic but to so many others (ahem, education reform).

• Eric Cantor vastly outspent David Brat. Organizations such as like the Bold Progressives are right to see this as a sign that Big Money is not necessarily destined to win. Leftist and populist progressive Democrats did very well in recent primaries.

#Cantor loss shows big money can be defeated! Now defeat House Repubs in Nov http://t.co/McNbsxVPxb #VA07 #UniteBlue pic.twitter.com/MIv3d8W7nD — BoldProgressives.org (@BoldProgressive) June 11, 2014 

• While David Brat is more accessible, and is anti-elitist, anti-NSA, and anti-Wall Street corruption, he is also anti-government. In other words, he is no Elizabeth Warren. At the root, he is a true believer in the magic of the free market. He was especially against Cantor because Cantor is a crony capitalist and crony capitalism impedes a truly free market.

• Progressives, rather than getting stuck on complaining about how awful the Tea Party is and how depressing it is a candidate to the right of Cantor won, support and give money to the progressive candidate in this election, Jack Trammel.

• How great is it that the race in the VA-07 is between two liberal arts college professors, teachers, who read and write books. Think about that for a minute.

• ONE MORE THOUGHT (added later): I don't have numbers on this but Virginia has open primaries and I know a few Democrats and Independents who voted for Brat simply in protest of Cantor. As I said, no one in the 7th likes Cantor.

January 13, 1982

January 13, 1982

Blizzard snow

dances down

in droves.

The girl putters                       about

outside, aimless,

studying the blanketed landscape

of sidewalks, trees, shrubbery, houses, power lines.

The remnants of ambition: a 1950’s storybook snowman

are abandoned, unrecognizable,

the figure quarter-finished.

Subsequent snow angels are strewn about

on slates, left unpunctured

by dive-bombing

twigs and footsteps.

Perhaps she’ll amble half a block down

to the flat white expanse of the schoolyard

where a mass production could take place.

Cold starts to burn

red on her cheeks.

Wet iciness seeps

into her cheap boots and jacket

that look

but aren’t waterproof.

The grayness is shading darker.

The promise of outside projects fade

to dreary malaise and tedium.

There is busy work homework to do.

Her neighbor waddles over

and breaks the silence:

An Air Florida crash.

The plane slid off

the 14^th Street Bridge,

right into the river.

But, some survived right? 

Only five

Couldn’t they just swim

to the bridge?

The water was freezing.

A man jumped in

to save people.

A stewardess survived.

Couldn’t the plane have landed on the bridge?

What about those seat cushions that turn into “flotation devices,” or the slide that comes down from the rows of seats with the red-lettered EXIT sign? Didn’t they just slide off and swim to shore?

Guilt for the indulgence

of boredom creeps in.

Snowman and angels fade away.

She turns around and heads inside,

unable to get the image out of her head

of people drowning, trapped in a sky

bus banging on the windows,

converted to stone.

Why I Stand with Wisconsin Workers

(This has been cross-posted at my education blog: All Things Education.)

Since Madison, Wisconsin is burning as I blog, I must to take a moment to support teachers unions and unions in general. And I want to explain that support. Despite my own teaching and union/non-union experiences, I don't think I understood and appreciated the role of unions until just recently. These two pieces, one by award-winning Maryland social studies teacher blogger Kenneth Bernstein and the other by California English teacher blogger David Cohen, helped me to understand the importance of unions.

My parents and their parents before them, were not wealthy, but nor were they workers, unionized or otherwise (although my maternal grandfather's father was very active in the railroad telegraphers union in Illinois). My father's parents were the children of Eastern European immigrants and owned a stationary store in Brooklyn, New York. My maternal grandfather worked as a chemist for Montgomery Ward and then as a manager for an automotive parts company in Chicago, Illinois, and my maternal grandmother was a homemaker and worked as at the Hadley School for the Blind.

Besides being born white in America, my parents were lucky to have attended two of the best known public high schools in the country; my mother went to Glenbrook in Northbrook, Illinois, and my father to Stuyvesant in New York City. My mother had college-educated parents and the luck of her zipcode (though not if you ask her as she hated the suburbs) and my father had parents who, though relatively uneducated themselves, greatly valued education. My parents went on to attend outstanding public universities--my mother, the University of Wisconsin and my father, Brooklyn College. They met while they were in graduate school at the University of Michigan.

After finishing, they moved to Washington, DC, where my sister and I grew up and attended public schools, so that my father could take a job as a lawyer with the federal government, where he has spent most of his career--primarily as a civil rights lawyer at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and then as a litigator and energy efficiency regulation counsel at the Department of Energy. My mother had been a linguist but couldn't find a job in her field (her specialty was semitic languages--she was a generation early on that one).  After learning about my father's work at HEW and watching him in court, she went to law school and became a labor, civil rights and school finance lawyer. I imagine they could have gone to work for any white shoe law firm they wanted to, but they gladly chose civil and public service. While we weren't rich, we lived a comfortable middle class life.

Among other topics they discussed at the dinner table, I definitely recall my parents grumbling about corruption and obstructionism in unions, but they always believed in their importance. When I went to work for DCPS, I was ambivalent about joining the Washington Teachers' Union--I really didn't know much about unions. Despite some of her negative associations, my mother informed me I should join, that it was the right thing to do. Even then, I never developed union pride; for one, I certainly didn't enjoy funding WTU President Barbara Bullock's collection of fur coats and silver candlesticks.

I found my experiences with "management" much more pleasant and reasonable when I taught in public schools in Albemarle County, Virgina, a right-to-work state, but I don't think that had anything to do with not being unionized or not having collective bargaining power. And I did join the Albemarle Education Association chapter of the Virgina Education Association. I can't say they ever did anything directly for me, but nor did I have the need to ask them to. Many other teachers I've spoken to have described the organization as both toothless. I imagine they feel that way since teachers' salaries in Virginia are approximately five thousand dollars below market, being especially low where I live and have taught in Central Virginia. But at the very least, the VEA serves as a good resource for educators and lobbies to improve the working and learning conditions for teachers and students.

I always took for granted my middle class upbringing, which is becoming less and less possible, as middle class wages decrease and expenses increase. With all that's going on in Wisconsin, I have come to appreciate that my parents and I have been able to live a comfortable middle class life because of what labor unions fought for in the first place: fair compensation, safe working conditions, and a decent standard of living in exchange for a job done. Their fight increased wages and other forms of compensation, such as benefits and pensions, and improved working conditions for all of us.

That's why I attended the Rally to Preserve the American Dream in Richmond, Virginia, this past Saturday (pics thanks to Virginia Organizing  here) and that's why I will continue to fight for the working and middle classes and for the poor to get out of poverty. Does that mean I think that unions are uniformly or inherently "good"? No. Does that mean that I think that people who don't do their jobs should be able to keep them? No. But I don't have blind faith in the free market, either. Unions serve as a check on unfettered capitalism, and capitalism has certainly been recently unfettered. Unions are the only bulwark right now between fascist capitalism and regulated capitalism. Without the unions, we will have no middle or working class at all, only a few powerful rich and many, many poor.

The more progressive Democrats can't don't this alone, however. Traditionally more conservative members of the working and middle classes must stop voting against their own economic self-interest. Instead of asking "why should others get decent wages and healthcare insurance when we don't?" they need to fight for such basic themselves, like yes, Obamacare, and stop allowing themselves to be the lackeys of tax-dodging, overseas-job creating corporate interests who are doing nothing to advance working peoples' quality of life. Furthermore, while I have been heartened to see neo-liberals such as Obama, Duncan, and some DFER types speak out in support of the right to collective bargaining, they are in part culpable for the attacks on America's middle and working classes and their unions. Neo-liberals and centrist Democrats, their rich patrons, and their mouthpieces in the media have been busy embracing disastrous and crude education reform policies such as those of Michelle Rhee and thoughtlessly bashing teachers and their unions in the process. In doing so, they have weakened the Democratic party and middle and working classes as a whole, emboldening Republican leaders such as Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and Rick Scott and their oligarch overlords, with their ruthless free market ideology, to make a well-orchestrated and dangerous grab for power.

It's time for neo-liberals to do what's best for children and their families by changing course on their wrong-headed education policies. To do this, they must end their collaboration with corporate-sponsored union busters. You can't do what's best for our nation's children if you're crushing their parents and teachers in the process. If neo-liberals really want our children's futures to be bright, then they must fight for a quality of work and home life that will make that possible. Unions, for all of their imperfections, do that.

The Virgina Legislature Joins in the GOP's War on Women

The Republicans (plus two democrats) in the Virginia Senate have decided to join in the National GOP's war on women. Tomorrow, the VA Senate will vote on SB924, which just passed the House 67-32. The bill would effectively eliminate access for Virginia's women to clinics that perform first trimester abortions by forcing such clinics to adhere to the same regulations as hospitals do. This, of course, is not necessary as such clinics are already sufficiently regulated.

If this effort seems like it's coming out of nowhere, that's because it is. The amendment was slipped in. According to NARAL Pro-choice Virginia:

This bill would require the Board of Health to issue regulations for hospitals, nursing homes, and certified nursing facilities. As originally written, the bill has nothing to do with abortion. Unfortunately, anti-choice Delegate Kathy Byron (R-Campbell County) offered an amendment changing the definition of hospitals to include “facilities in which five or more first trimester abortions per month are performed.” 

If you think the bill is being sent from the GOP-dominated House to the Dem-dominated Senate to die, think again. As reported in the Virginia Politics blog:

Two conservative Democrats who oppose abortion -- Sen. Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William) and Sen. Phillip P. Puckett (D-Russell) -- said Tuesday they plan to support the measure, in a chamber where Democrats hold a 22 to 18 majority. Their votes would raise the possibility of a 20 to 20 tie. A tie would be broken by Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R), who supports regulations.

And then Governor McDonnell will be ready and waiting to sign it into law. Because he and other anti-choicers want to "ensure that all outpatient surgical centers are treated the same, in order to ensure the health and safety of our citizens." I see, they want all outpatient surgical centers to get equal treatment. Or, maybe it's because Virginia Republicans are such big fans of excess regulations. No, no, it's because they want to keep women who get abortions safe. Yes, that's it.

Puh-lease. The Virginia GOP (plus two Democrats) wants to shut down these clinics because they provide first trimester abortions, and probably because they provide contraception, too. Only, they don't have have the balls to admit it.

I am squarely pro-choice, but I can understand why people are against abortion. I would guess that the vast majority of women who choose to have abortions hate abortion. But I agree with Hilary Clinton when she says that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. Ruth Marcus's piece in response to House Republicans' assault on family planning  applies here: When those clinics are shut down, many Virginia women will not only lose access to the contraception that prevent abortions in the first place, but to general reproductive health care. Furthermore, without access to contraception, rates of pregnancies will increase and so will unsafe abortions. I would have so much more respect for anti-abortion crusaders if they actually worked to prevent abortions from having to happen in the first place, but they don't; they work to promote ineffective sex education programs, to limit access to contraception, to decimate women's healthcare services, and to keep abortion unsafe, frequent, and illegal.

As my uncle always says about American politics, "You have two choices. You can have the Democrats in your wallet or the Republicans in your bedroom. I'd rather have the Democrats in my wallet." So would I, Uncle Roger. So would I. Since Republicans are already raiding our middle and working class wallets to fund tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, I say to Virginia Senators:

Get the hell out of my bedroom and while you're at it, stay away from my uterus.

Contact your senator now and tell them to oppose SB924.

Publish or Perish

(This has been cross-published at All Things Education.)

I got an essay accepted at truthout. Yay! I wrote about the Obamas' decisions regarding the education of their children and President Obama's statements about that decision in the context of his administration's education policies. (A recent excellent and comprehensive review of Obama's promises on education in contrast to his actual policies can be found here.)

"Mr. President, We Want Your Children's Education, Too" went through many, many drafts and I was very pleased when it was accepted by the first place I sent it. (An aside about the writing/publishing process: Almost all of my publications had been submitted to targeted publications I know well.) I submitted the piece back in November 2010, but the editor I corresponded with warned me it would be probably a while. It happened to come out on January 9, 2010. At first, I was ashamed of its publication date, given it was the day after the shootings in Arizona; it didn't seem to be an appropriate time to be so critical of the Obama administration.

But then I found out that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was butting (yet, again) into D.C. Mayor Gray's DCPS Chancellor selection decision, urging him to permanently appoint Rhee right-hand woman and Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson, of whom he's "huge fan," and in the process by-pass a 2007 DC law which requires a rigorous review process including consulting a panel of teachers, parents, and students. Duncan also dangled the possibility of taking back Race to the Top money the District was awarded if his wish were not granted.

Besides registering my disgust with Duncan's confirmation that Race to the Top is nothing but a bribery scheme, with his interference in local affairs, and with his spitting in the face of transparent and democratic governance, I'll repeat one of the same questions I asked in the essay: If Duncan and his boss are such "big fans" of the reforms and "progress" in D.C.P.S., why do they not send their own children to them?

To those who tell me to mind my own business: Point taken. I'd be happy to. Just as soon as Obama/Duncan change course on the policies that are undermining the quality of my children's education and just as soon as, of course, they mind their own business.

UPDATE 1/20/11: A reader was puzzled about this sentence from the truthout piece:

My DCPS past, warts and all, has made me a different person than I would have been had I gone to a place like Sidwell, different in a way that seems lesser to my current eye. 

Reading it out of the context of the rest of the piece, I can see that the sentence is confusing and needs a re-write. Given the stance that I took, most readers probably knew what I meant, but I hardly want to assume that readers "probably know what I mean." Rather, I want them to know what I mean because my writing is clear. I can't go back and fix it in truthout (and there was never an interaction with an editor about clarity or wording where this might have come up) but just to be clear, what I meant was that:

My DCPS past, warts and all, has made me a different person than I would have been had I gone to a place like Sidwell. Had I gone to a place like Sidwell I think I would have been different in a way that seems lesser to my current eye.

Readers, if you ever see something that gives you pause or puzzles you or that you think may be factually incorrect, even if it's a simple typo, by all means, let me know. I value your feedback and pushback.

Vaccines & Science Revisited: Watch the Pharmaceutical Companies

A little over a year ago, I wrote a series of blog posts about vaccines and science. In honor of the Wakefield studies officially being found fraudulent (there's a decent post at the blog Modern School--with links!--about the study's history), I am reposting them, but with a few updates.

Since my original posting of those, I have grown more skeptical of medical studies, particularly as they are increasingly being funded by pharmaceutical companies and reviewed by outside, for-profit review boards. Given the severe conflicts of interests inherent in such arrangements, I hardly have confidence in the truths of the outcomes of these studies. Secondly, the findings of Dr. John Ioannidis (fyi: the task related to this post that took me the longest was spelling this guy's name correctly), which I highly recommend checking out, have also increased my skepticism. Ioannidis is not so much critical of the scientific process as he is critical of what happens to the scientific process in the contexts of medical treatments, academia, and our own (too high) expectations of what science can tell us.

That being said, it is the corrupting forces of money, fame, and politics on the scientific process that has caused my skepticism; my faith in science has not diminished, not because I think it's some kind of magic, but because it's the best process we've got for uncovering a few truths about the world around us. After all, Ioannidis is a true scientist in the sense that he wants to make the process more pure, truthful, and skeptical. How very scientific of him.

UPDATE I: I was cleaning up my delicious bookmarks this morning and came across this article, also by Carl Elliot, from the Chronicle of Higher Education on the phenomenon of medical industry "thought leaders," who are medical doctors paid by pharmaceutical companies to talk to other doctors about "research" findings. I meant to include it yesterday, but had forgotten about it.Take a look.
 
UPDATE II: Just out for a run, I realized I forgot about another article pertinent to this. (That's what I get for hitting "PUBLISH POST" so impetuously). Here's an article in Vanity Fair about drug trials and how they're increasingly being done in unregulated zones, not to mention on poor people, overseas.


(photo by flickr user jmaklary)

It's All About the Corporate Benjamins, Baby: Education, a.k.a., My 2010 Year in Review Post

(This has been cross-posted at All Things Education.)

During 2010, thanks to the work of Lawrence Lessig and Chris Hedges, I became much more aware of the unhealthy corporate influence in American democratic institutions. I put aside my creative writing to launch a series of posts on my more general blog on the topic. I wrote about corporate money in politics and government, after which I took a break to write about the VA-07 congressional election, writing, and journalism, and to start a blog dedicated to education. I've intended to regularly update my food blog, as well, but the best laid plans. . .

Right before the Christmas holiday, I completed a piece about Teach For America, which I am hoping will be published somewhere bigger (not likely, I know). In the meantime, I was going to use winter break and the grandparental child care that comes with it to write, blog, publish, write, blog, publish. However, as I tried to organize my thinking about the present and future of journalism, of writing as a profession, of teaching as a profession, of public education, and of efforts to reform education, the topics all swirled together to form a toxic sludge of anxiety that, helped along by my kids' germs, rendered me existentially and then physically ill. As miserable as it was, being sick forced me to take a step back and ignore all of it for a number of days. From this pause grew a less fevered end-of-year collection of thoughts about the confluence of corporate influence and public education.

I am vulnerable to conspiracy theorizing about what's currently happening in the name of education reform, and I understand why others are, too--I think, in fact, that democracy benefits from this type of push back. Are the reforms of wealthy and politically connected individuals harmful to the institution of public education? I have said on my education blog and continue to say: yes, that in many cases they are. But are those folks sitting around together and villainously hatching some grand scheme to bring down public education? No, that's way too simplistic of an explanation for what's going on. Furthermore, I'm doubtful that describing problems with their efforts in terms of a conspiracy is productive. The problem with talking like a conspiracy theorist, even if there's at least some truth to what's being said, is that you're likely to be dismissed by the very people you need to be taken seriously by. In that vein, it is equally hysterical and irresponsible to cast teachers and teachers unions as the villainous "deep-pocketed" (ha!) root of all of our nation's problems or even as the root of our education system's problems, or as sitting around conspiring to ruin children's lives because they only care about the "adults." Unfortunately, these seem to be prevailing narratives these days.

Teachers' unions may defend some people who don't deserve defending and they may make mistakes, and yes, there are educators out there who aren't doing their jobs and yes, teachers need fair and rigorous evaluations, but as a group, teachers and their unions are not responsible for how our society has failed us over the past year. Did teachers unions cause twenty-seven plus percent of America's children to live in poverty? No. Have teachers and their unions driven up heath care costs? Do they deny coverage and care to our the most vulnerable among us? Nope. Did teachers and their unions cause our economic system to melt down? No, that was another group of professionals. Did teachers and their unions go start costly and futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did teachers and their unions create a criminal justice system that disproportionately and often unjustly imprisons poor people and minorities? No, they aren't behind such travesties. Did teachers and their unions fail to recognize the impending dangers of climate change and then sabotage legislation meant to lessen the havoc it's going to reap? No. It's not been teachers or their unions that have done all of these things, but our political leaders, policies, and system. And who is now clearly behind those? Not a bunch of middle class educators, but business, financial, industrial, and corporate interests.

While I don't believe that there is some evil master plan being hatched by the likes of DFER (Democrats for Education Reform), Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Waltons, their influence is unhealthy, undemocratic, and dangerous. Teachers unions and organizations like the National Education Association at least are accountable to the systems and large numbers of people they represent, systems and people whose work and studies will be most affected by the reforms being brought. Whom do DFER, Gates, Broad, and the Waltons represent? To whom are they accountable? Were they elected? Since when should a handful of unelected, extraordinarily wealthy people be entrusted to represent the interests of millions of poor, working, and middle class people?

Two of the most egregious examples of corporate influence in education are in higher education. As there is less public funding of public universities, wealthy patrons such as the Koch brothers are stepping in to establish "institutes" that put out research and teachings that serve not the interests of citizens, but the interests of the industries they own. In medical schools and schools of public health, much research on drugs and treatments traditionally funded by public monies is now funded and supervised by the very pharmaceutical companies who stand to reap profits from their successful trials.

In K-12 education, there are not as many cases of such overt conflicts of interest, but I'm afraid we're moving in that direction.  Gates, Broad, and the Waltons support market-based reforms that would include mayoral takeovers, vast expansion of charter schools (which are public schools that can be run in some instances as private institutions), the de-professionalization of teaching, and CEO-like leadership of schools and school systems, and they are pouring money into the system to see such reforms actualized. Influential organizations with deceptively neutral-sounding names such as right-wing ideologue Jeanne Allen's Center for Education Reform directly promote privatizing our public education system. As they already have in New York City Public Schools, test prep companies such as Kaplan (which is owned by the pro-corporate education reform Washington Post) stand to make millions from the new education reformers' policies which rely heavily on standardized tests.

As public schools are being told by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to do "more with less" and as school budgets are being reduced and reduced and stimulus money runs out, with no enthusiasm for alternative means of raising revenues, the private sector is stepping to fill in the gaps often with strings attached, shaping our education system to their liking, whether its largesse benefits its supposed recipients or not. What's about to happen in Los Angeles Unified School District is only the tip of the iceberg.

An example of private takeover of public schools already in progress is in DC. The DC Public Education Fund is privately run on private donations with no public oversight, and very little of the money that's raised goes directly into the D.C. Public Schools' budget or is dispersed by those appointed to run the schools; yet, the fund directly influences outcomes in public schools. For example, the organization funded IMPACT, DC's controversial new evaluation system, teacher bonuses, as well as the infamous new contracts with teachers. During the negotiations, then-Chancellor Rhee stated that if she wasn't going to be around later, a.k.a., if Adrian Fenty didn't get re-elected, that the money raised for the teacher contracts would go, too. That is a clear example of private interests using private money to influence public elections and public policy. When public money is used to fund public schools, such blackmail can't take place, at least not legally. Much more democratic would be for the wealthy individuals who are behind such efforts to be taxed appropriately with the tax revenues funding social and educational programs vetted by democratically elected and appointed officials.

The Gates Foundation and the DC Public Education Fund have their hands in many places, and surely, not all of them are harmful to public education, but when I read Gates's thoughts and ideas about education, for example in these interviews about teaching in Parade and Newsweek, I'm horrified. (I'm also horrified about what such coverage means about the state of education journalism, but that's another story.) Not only has Gates not been elected or appointed by an elected official, he speaks simplistically and ignorantly about education even just at the level of basic facts, and his ideas have not been shown to work or improve the systems they impact.

While Eli Broad is no right-wing ideologue, his private education foundation and school leadership training centers have profound impacts on the public systems they're meant to reform. This New Yorker article about Eli Broad's influence in the Los Angeles art world is very instructive on Broad's approach to philanthropy. Broad has good intentions and interesting ideas, enlarging the arts scene in LA and making art exhibitions more accessible, for example. But he doesn't simply give money directly to art institutions or entrust the experts with funding; rather, he has to own and control the institutions, even if that means promoting poor practices or destroying the institutions. I can only imagine that a similar dynamic occurs in the Broads' education philanthropies.

If Gates, Broad, the Waltons, and the hedge funders behind DFER weren't rich, would they be listened to? Why are they being listened to now? Why are such a small group of extraordinarily wealthy individuals allowed to wield so much power and control over education policy? This is at the expense of democracy. Obama has rightly stated grave concerns with the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. Why is he not concerned with big money in our public education system? Why does he, in fact, welcome it? Is corporate influence any less problematic in the halls of our schools than it is in our halls of government?

One need not launch ad hominem attacks, speak of ethical dilemmas, or list the hypocrises of these education reformers. All Americans, regardless of political affiliation and educational ideology, can agree that our great nation was founded on the ideals of democracy. Corporate money and influence in our public democratic institutions, especially in our public schools, corrodes and corrupts our democracy. Anti-democratic forces are un-American. A healthy democracy requires a well and publicly financed, equitable public education system. Unfortunately, that's not what the Obama administration and the particular education reformers they throw their support behind are going to produce. Unchecked private and corporate influence in our public education system is as big a threat to our democracy as the unchecked corporate influence is in our political system. In fact, they are one in the same. Our public schools should no more belong to Gates, Broad, Bush, or any DFER member as they do to any taxpayer and any citizen; it is from them we must take our country, our democracy, and our schools back.


UPDATE 1/6/11: Too bad I didn't see this brilliant piece by writer Joanne Barkan before I posted this. I could have saved myself the trouble--it's a much better, more comprehensive piece on the problems with education philanthropy than anything I have ever written. Read it in Dissent Magazine or in truthout.

On False Equivalencies, Dichotomies, and Golden Ages in the Media

Still taking a much needed break from the behemoth in the room that is corporate influence. . .

When I first heard about plans for The Rally for Sanity and/or Fear, it kind of annoyed me. What's it about? What's Jon Stewart trying to do? Do we really need another rally? Mobilizing thousands of people--for what? The explanation that it was going to be a "festival" didn't squelch my grumpiness, either. Then why call it a rally?

Upon my neighbor's recommendation,  I watched Jon Stewart's speech and I thought: Okay, he did a good job with that; I enjoyed hearing what he had to say. I liked what I saw and what I heard from folks who had gone. But still something nagged at me about it. Although his speech was stirring, he looked rather undignified. I know, I know, when does Jon Stewart actually look dignified? But there is an authoritative dignity in how he metes out criticism, regardless of party affiliation or views, of those he satires, and I admire him for that. His rally undermined my high estimation of him. To me, he's not the guy who is supposed to organize or host the rallies; rather, he's the guy who is supposed to critique them.

When the more lefty pundits responded to his rally and the statements he made with the criticism that he was making false equivalencies between the right-wing television media, such as Fox News, and the left-wing television media, such as MSNBC, although it was not my particular quibble, I thought they had a legitimate point. As Bill Maher said, "two opposing sides don't necessarily have two compelling arguments."

After defending himself against the criticism, Stewart agreed to an interview with Rachel Maddow, which was quite lengthy, so I won't reflect on all of it, but one thing he did say was that he organized the rally in response to what he sees as the false dichotomy the media portrays between, for example, red states and blue states, and that what he hoped to bring attention to were the real problems, for example, of corruption and of deception. This is exactly what I like about his show and what I think he compromised--he should have known better than to expect to maintain that message during and after such a rally. Of course, then Stewart went on to make more false equivalents, this time between Republicans' seeing President Clinton through rose colored glasses and the Democrats' viewing Reagan much the same way. "Come on, you hated these guys," Stewart chided. No you come on, Jon, were the Iran-Contra hearings really the same as those of impeachment?

As  I was pondering the death of journalism and my own role as a blogger and writer after reading this article in The New York Times Magazine and this one in the Columbia Journalism Review, this op-ed by Ted Koppel came out in The Washington Post, entitled, "Olbermann, O'Reilly, and the death of real news." I think I was kind of bemoaning the same thing in this post about the death of true print journalism. But I realized after watching Olbermann's response that just as there was no golden era of television journalism, there probably was no golden era of print journalism, either.

Come to think of it, as I explained in my comment (scroll all the way down) on Ted Genoways's "Death of Fiction" piece in Mother Jones, I'm usually suspicious of false golden era claims or what I sometimes call "the kids today. . ." complaint. Conditions change, perspectives change, technology innovates, and transitions occur, but human nature and the need to write and report stay the same. In his response to Koppel's piece, wise lowkell over at Blue Virginia was able to express way better than I could, especially at 9:21 on a Friday night, how this is all coming together here and now.

On that note, good night and good luck.

UPDATE I: I forgot to mention this excellent article in the Atlantic by Michael Hirschorn about what happens to facts as they go through internet reports and social media.

UPDATE II: I'm waaay too sleepy to write coherently about this seven-year-old article in the Columbia Journalism Review that I just read about journalism and objectivity, but I will say for now that man, is it good and man, is it still relevant. If only anyone had or would follow author Brent Cunningham's proposals. Unfortunately, we're more entrenched than ever in a journalistic culture that includes major holes in coverage, lazy reporting, balancing coverage (as opposed to truthful coverage), and dearth of varied perspectives, aka, economic diversity, in newsrooms. But, hey, that's what happens when investigative journalism is not funded or valued as an integral part of a healthy democracy. 

From Writer to Blogger to Writer

I have been quite busy with my education blog, but I wanted to take a break to write here about writing, a.k.a., the reason I started this blog in the first place.


Recently,  I was a guest blogger on Valerie Strauss's blog on The Washington Post website, "The Answer Sheet." I sent her this, the original post, a critique of Michelle Rhee's tenure as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. 


Valerie wrote back and said it was "terrific" and that she wanted to run it. Yay! After a day or so she wrote back to let me know that she still wanted to run it but that her editor said it was too long and needed to be cut and reorganized. I agreed, given the context and audience. Since I was tired of looking at the thing and knew she could do a much better job than I could of molding it to fit her particular blog, I let her do the edits.


The final version of the revised piece came out more strident and less contemplative than the original post, as it should have been, but the experience caused me to do some thinking about writing, blogging, voice, and what my goals are.


When I started this blog, my purpose was to self-publish and get feedback on my writing, to hone my craft, same with the food blog, just that the topic merited its own blog. I got good feedback on the writing, but many told me, including my own mother, that the posts were too long. One friend asked me if I could provide cliffs notes. Valerie's editor was essentially saying the same thing. As I've sent my education blog around to education people, I've gotten some additionally similar feedback, for example, one guy told me the posts should be "shorter and punchier."


This feedback is right on, for blogging, but when I started this blog I had no intention of becoming a blogger, per se. I just wanted to work on being a writer. On her own blog, education journalist Dana Goldstein discusses what it means to be a blogger and a writer in the digital age. I thought it was she who said (I can't locate the sentence now), "why can't blogging just be called writing?" Indeed. But I have come to realize that I should be writing in one way for my blog and in other ways for other publications.


This article in The New York Times Magazine explores the world of online journalism and blogging (and I just discovered another good one on the same topic in the Columbia Journalism Review). One line that really resonated with me was, "Opinions posted on blogs are cheap. Great journalism is expensive.” That's basically what I was trying to say in this post on journalism. For me, though, I am blogging to become a writer. It's so challenging to get anything published right now for reasons I won't go into here--blogging keeps me writing, publishing, and keeps the discouragement at bay that the constant stream of rejections bring. 


But blogging is cheap, or rather, uncompensated, and I can't go on doing it indefinitely. People say, "do it for yourself," or as Ted Genoways, the infamous editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review, spat at writers last winter, "Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood." I agree with that in principal, but one has to eat. Does that mean only independently wealthy or comfortable people can afford to write? Is that fair? What will that do to the richness of our country's body of journalism and literature?


I suppose I could move to Norway where, I read in McSweeney's Issue 35, writers are heavily subsidized by the government. I found, though, that the stories in that Issue 35 collection (and perhaps that collection wasn't representative) were rather, well, boring. Is that what comfort and security do a country's body of literature? Does the system in the U.S. weed out the crap and publish only work with the most vital sense of urgency?


I don't know. In the meantime, I'll keep writing, and blogging, until I either can't or won't any longer. 

Eric Cantor is a Threat to Democracy

On Monday, October 25th, a Louisa County, Virginia, voter and Democrat named Jon Taylor showed up with some members of his family to a local Louisa coffee shop, Solid Grounds, to attend an Eric Cantor campaign event (see event invite below). Eric Cantor is his congressional representative (VA-07) and he and some friends of his had RSVPed for the event.

They wanted to talk with their congressional representative about his campaign and about his policies. They ordered their coffee and sat down. The police came in once and asked Mr. Taylor to move his car, which was adorned with campaign material of Cantor's Democratic opponent Rick Waugh, from a metered public parking spot. Mr. Taylor produced his receipt. The officers left and returned later, and a combination of the police, the coffee shop owner, and Cantor's advance man asked him to leave. Jon Taylor ended up out on the street being roughly slammed against a car and then to the ground by three policeman as they arrested him and charged him with trespassing, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. The officers charged some of the other Dems there similarly.

 There are a few different versions of what happened. There's Jon's account, on the blog Blue Virginia. There's an eyewitness account, also on Blue Virginia, by Lewalta Haney. There's coverage on MSNBC's The Ed Show. There's a sad excuse for a story about it in The Richmond Times-Dispatch. The Daily Kos features a bit from all of these, including the video Jon Taylor's son took of his father's arrest. Eric Cantor's campaign declared that, "this was a clear attempt [by Taylor] to disrupt the meeting. The voters of Virginia are going to reject this thuggery." When I called Cantor's campaign office--he is also my congressional representative--to voice my discontent about this incident, I was essentially told the same thing by the woman I spoke with.

Now, I'm sure these folks weren't there to give Eric Cantor a Progressive Representative of the Year Award, but this is how the democratic process in a representative democracy works. You decide to run for office, you get some signatures to get on the ballot, you debate your opponents, and you go around and talk to the voters that you're going to represent. You talk to them, you answer their questions, and then they decide who to vote for.

At this point, although I don't agree with it, I am not asking Eric Cantor to change his philosophy of government. I accept we have different views. I am asking him to honor the democratic process that he agreed to be a part of when he decided to run for office. Even though he is morally reprehensible and even though he is owned by corporations, until yesterday I still had faith that he believed in at least a tepid democracy and that he would uphold the democratic process. That he would say, even if they don't agree with me, my constituents are allowed to hear what I have to say about where I stand and they are allowed to ask me questions; I work for them. Even Eric Cantor, I thought, has some small amount of respect for the democratic process.

Eric Cantor is supposed to a leader in our democracy but Eric Cantor is a traitor and a threat to American democracy. Eric Cantor is a coward. Eric Cantor is a tyrant. I weep for any citizen who would hand over their voice in our national legislature to someone who would so denigrate democracy's basic tenets. But most of all, I weep for the democracy that Eric Cantor would see destroyed.

Check out my new education blog!

Hello loyal readers!

This is a quick note to let you know, in case you didn't already, that I have started a separate blog dedicated to education. It's called All Things Education, inspired by the name of the N.P.R. program All Things Considered, which reminds me of the show's theme song, which reminds me of my mother preparing dinner on weekday evenings, which I am doing as I type.

In any case, I have copied and pasted and accurately dated all of my education-related posts from this blog to that blog and have so far posted four new pieces, including An Introduction: "My New Education Blog!," "What I Read About About Waiting for Superman," "On the False Manifesto," and "Follow-Up to 'On the False Manifesto': What about RE:FORM SCHOOL?"

Please read and if you think it's worthwhile, subscribe and suggest to your education-interested friends, family, and co-workers.

Thanks for your support.

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)