March 3, 2019: Savaging The Schools, Educated and Informed, Paying Attention

A friend of mine, Deb Del Zoppo, posted this on Facebook.  As a resident of Michigan she is appalled by what Betsy DeVos is proposing to due to our public schools. Here is what she had to say:

The school voucher system proposed by Education secretary Betsy DeVos does not mean you can choose any school you want your kid to go to. It means the public education program will be dismantled. Pay close attention when voting during the midterm elections!

If your child has an IEP (individual education plan for students with special needs), kiss it goodbye.

If you have a job in special-education, if you're a special education teacher, physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech pathologist, a para, a teacher's aid, or an ESL (English as a second language) teacher, you'll go first.

House Bill 610 makes some large changes. Inform yourselves. This bill will effectively start the school voucher system to be used by children ages 5-17 and starts the defunding process of public schools. The bill will eliminate the Elementary and Education Act of 1965, which is the nation's educational law that provides equal opportunity in education. ESSA is a big comprehensive program that covers programs for struggling learners, advanced and gifted kids in AP classes, ESL classes, classes for minorities such as Native Americans, Rural Education, Education for the Homeless, School Safety (Gun-Free schools), Monitoring and Compliance, and Federal Accountability Programs.

The Bill also abolishes the Nutritional Act of 2012 (No Hungry Kids Act) which provides nutritional standards in school breakfast and lunch.

The bill has no wording whatsoever protecting Special Needs kids, no mention of IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), and FAPE (Free Appropriate Public Education). Some things ESSA does for Children with Disabilities:

-Ensures access to the general education curriculum.
-Ensures access to accommodations on assessments.
-Ensures concepts of Universal Design for Learning.
-Includes provisions that require local education agencies to provide evidence-based interventions in schools with    consistently underperforming subgroups.
-Requires states in Title I plans to address how they will improve conditions for learning including reducing incidents of bullying and harassment in schools, overuse of discipline practices and reduce the use of aversive behavioral interventions (such as restraints and seclusion).
Please call your representative and ask him/her to vote NO on House Bill 610 (HR 610).

Thomas Jefferson and the other founders of this republic knew the importance, in a republic, of an educated and informed electorate.  For these reasons Adams wrote into the Massachusetts constitution--which is still in effect--that the state must support education, and must be the underpinning of Harvard and other universities.  For these reasons Jefferson prided himself most for his role in establishing the University of Virginia.  For these reasons the founders gave us the First Amendment's Press Freedoms.  This administration is working day and night to erode and, finally, destroy the safeguards of these institutions.

Thank you, Deb, for your enlightened post.  You've done your homework, now we must do ours.

"An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh. 

Impeach and Imprison. 

February 22, 2019: DeBoss and VanScandal, Preying on Veterans, Kleptocracy American Style

“Who better to run a scam than a product of SCAMway?”

                          ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

In a recent op-ed piece written in The New York Times, education secretary Betsy DeVos was called out for exploiting America's veterans. (1) DeVos is a product of private education, principally Dutch-Reformed parochial schools and a champion of the privatization of our educational system. She is married into the DeVos family, of SCAMway fame, who have worked assiduously over the years to savage public education in Michigan where they have managed to bring the state's public schools down to the level of Alabama. She is also the sister of America's most notorious mercenary, Eric Prince of Blackwater fame. Scum stick together.

It is no shock, then, to find her catapulted by a toxic mix of campaign contributions and political philosophy into the cabinet to head the Department of Education. If anyone could make a pig's breakfast of public education it would be one who has never spent a day in the public schools. Just ask the good people of Michigan. Knowledge and experience are disqualifying in this administration. Ergo: our principle ignoramus Betsy DeVos.

The G.I. Education bills that our congresses have passed are hallmarks of the postwar era, opening doors and creating opportunity for millions of returning veterans. To the SCAMway mentality, however, opportunity runs in another direction. To the stench that surrounds our Caesar Disgustus, opportunity lies not with opening doors, but with plundering the public domain. In this case, steering public funds into private for-profit coffers. The article cites the post 9/11 funds passed under 'Ol Two-Cows and renewed in 2017 under tRUMP's signature being undermined by the Education secretary and her minions.

“Despite robust objections from three dozen national veterans and military service organizations, Secretary DeVos has elected to eviscerate student protections and quality controls for colleges—particularly for the often low-quality, predatory for-profit colleges that target veterans in their marketing schemes.” (2) This is pure DeVos, reflecting actions that the family, through campaign contributions and leadership positions within the Republican Party, have imposed upon Michigan. Actions which have devastated public education in Michigan. In Michigan, a state with which I am familiar, public money to the tune of over a billion dollars in state taxes are annually diverted to private religious and for-profit operations. Accountability is nearly non-existent producing a system wherein public schools are rapidly deteriorating as students flee to private concerns over which there is nearly no accountability. The impact has been harsh, as noted in previous posts, with the experience in Muskegon Heights being a notable example. (3)

“Why are veterans the targets? Because for-profit colleges milk a federal loophole that allows them to count G.I. Bill benefits as private funds, offsetting the 90 percent cap they otherwise face on their access to taxpayer-supported federal student aid. Two dozen state attorneys general have said this accounting gimmick—known as the '90/10 loophole'--'violates the intent of the law.' (4)  It should also be noted that the funds in question are G.I. benefits, which would include housing stipends and the like, not only federally backed student loans but also grants, putting private fingers directly into the public till.

“Hundreds of for-profit schools are almost entirely dependent on federal revenue, and if the 90/10 loophole were closed, they would be in violation of this federal regulation. Taxpayers, in other words, are largely propping up otherwise failing schools.

“In December, a damning Department of Veterans Affairs internal audit estimated the risk of G.I. Bill waste exceptionally high at the for-profit schools, which received 81 percent of improper G.I. Bill payments. The report highlighted the deceptive advertising campaigns aimed at veterans and warned that the government will waste $2.3 billion in improper payments over the next five years if changes are not made to reel in the abuse.

“Overall, for-profit colleges have vacuumed up nearly 40 percent of all G.I. Bill tuition and fee payments since the post-Sept. 11 G.I. Bill was introduced. Eight of the 10 schools receiving the most G.I. Bill subsidies since 2009 are for-profit college. Six of those eight have faced government legal action for defrauding students.” (5)

Has our intrepid secretary moved to reign in the abuse? Of course not—for she and her family are the very authors of it.

Instead, as Schmeling and Wolford note, “through several scandalous appointments, Ms. DeVos has largely delegated policymaking and enforcement to members of the for-profit college industry, who are now her aides.”(6), citing the appointment of an executive of Career Education –a for-profit chain to a senior position within the Department of Education. Career Education had “just settled with 49 state attorneys general to cough up half a billion dollars for defrauding students.” Moreover, “(A) top deputy worked at the same chain and at a second chain facing multiple government investigations. A third, whom Ms. DeVos hired to run the department's enforcement unit, disappeared a crop of investigations into his former employer and several other large for-profit colleges. When news reporting brought scrutiny to this corruption, Ms. DeVos simply shifted the aide to the federal student aid office.” (7)

DeVos is now fighting efforts by defrauded students to gain recourse under the law. Additionally, “she eliminated a rule requiring career colleges to prove their graduates can get a job, even after being warned by the department's Office of Inspector General that the rule was necessary to protect taxpayer funds.

“This week,” continue Schmeling and Wolford, “Ms. DeVos's aides will meet in Washington with a panel (many representing for-profit colleges) to push forward proposals that would weaken over half a dozen regulations that govern college quality. Some changes, for instance, could leave students learning largely on their own from self-help YouTube-style videos and allow the companies responsible unfettered access to a spigot of taxpayer funds.

“The department's Office of Inspector General, following the V.A.'s lead, conducted an investigation of Ms. DeVos after she reinstated the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, which had been discredited. In a stunning ethical breach, a senior aide to Ms. DeVos fabricated letters of support from other accreditors, which quickly exposed the lie.” (8)

None of this comes as a surprise to anyone familiar with the origin of the family fortune, for SCAMway was built as a pyramid scheme designed to gather millions—indeed billions—in wealth from the backs of hundreds of thousands who could be depended upon to answer the siren song of greed. By structuring its labor costs to ensure profit—much as the 'house' in any casino cannot lose money—and by offering products in such quantity and usually inferior to marketplace competitors, SCAMway distributors almost always found themselves with a basement full of unsold product, stripped of friends and surrounded by angry families. DeBoss and VanScandal, passing the costs down the rat-line, suffer no liability and happily danced to the bank. Fraud, in other words, mated with greed, became the formula for success.

Add to this the parochial penchant to view all others—particularly the secular society—as the enemy and you get the toxic mix that is Betsy DeVos.

All of this is known by our Caesar Disgustus. He knew what are the consequences of putting one such as Betsy DeVos in charge of overseeing our educational institutions. He knew that DeVos will work assiduously to aide the for-profit educational industry in its plundering of the public domain. That was the intent. Drain the swamp into the White House, and let the plunder begin.  Kleptocracy, aping the Russian Oligarchy, American style.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

__________________

1. Schmeling, James. Wolford, Carrie. “DeVos vs. Student Veterans” The New York Times. Thursday, February 19, 2019. Page A23
2. Ibid
3. See: June 29, 2015: Tragical Michigan Tour, Deep Runs the Rot, Pure Mississippi”. Especially the section “Stop Five” about the Muskegon Heights School District taken over and then abandoned by a private for-profit operation.
4. Op. Cit.
5. Ibid
6. Ibid
7. Ibid
8. Ibid

August 3, 2015: To Bob Steiner, Civilizing the Barbarian, Very Least I Can Do

 

“It takes eighteen years and thousands of dollars to civilize the barbarian.”

                         ----from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

In my case it took a bit longer.  About this time forty-nine years ago I went to work for a pharmacist in downtown Grand Haven.  His name was Bob Steiner and he owned and operated a pharmacy located directly across the street from Hoffsteder’s news stand at the corner of Washington and Third Street.  Washington is Main Street in downtown Grand Haven at the foot of which lies the old Grand Theater and the bleachers for the musical fountain, proudly proclaimed at the time to be the world’s largest. 

Bob was, none of us could imagine at the time, one of a dying breed of businessman.  He owned and operated a once thriving establishment, one of two downtown druggists, and was a well-connected member of the community establishment, prominent in the local Chamber of Commerce.   Already feeling the pressure from the newly established shopping centers cropping up along the newly re-built U.S. Highway 31, Bob was one of the principle movers who worked to renovate the threatened downtown business district by getting other business owners behind the projects to build the new fountain as well as a project to heat the sidewalks downtown in the winter so as to make walking main street a more safe and pleasant experience.  Bob was a man about town, a man of property and standing, and a man who had connections and knew how to use them.  He was also a staunch conservative and a Republican.

This, for some reason, did not jaundice his view of a young lad from “the other side of the tracks” who, at the age of 17, he brought into his employ.  I took the job, at 65 cents an hour, having worked most of the summer at a Drive-In Theatre then managed by my uncle but, with it being seasonal employment and the summer being short, I knew I needed a job for the winter.  So it was that I found myself working at Steiner’s Pharmacy in the late summer of 1966 until April of 1967, during my senior year in High School.

Through the course of the ensuing months Bob, who worked nearly all the hours the store was open rarely filling his position with an assistant pharmacist would, while reacting to a newscast on a television he would occasionally watch, offer an opinion.  His views would reflect ones that would most closely fall near those expressed by Barry Goldwater or Bill Buckley, both of whom he held in high esteem.  This, after a time, would elicit a response because Bob, I soon found, was looking for a response—indeed a spirited response.  We soon found ourselves in a protracted discussion, if not debate, for my views were nearly diametrically opposed to his.  This, I was to discover, was not to be a liability for conservative though he was, he was also a man of reflection, discernment, tolerance and civility.  I discovered, all too late and to my own personal loss, that I didn’t appreciate his wisdom and his guidance nearly enough.

For you see that despite our divergent standing the community, despite our differences in political philosophy and economic standing, Bob nevertheless reached out and took this young lad in hand, however his reluctance and his immaturity.

One Saturday morning in March of 1967, as the war in Viet Nam was nearing its crescendo in terms of the numbers of troops that were to be at any one time committed and, subsequently, the draft of young men into the service, I just reaching my 18^th birthday reported for work. 

“Joe”, Bob called out from the Dias overlooking the store from which he could survey the operation while he was filling prescriptions, “what are you going to do after you graduate?”

For a moment I thought he was asking if I were going to stay at his pharmacy.  I hated the place, the pay was a pittance, about half the federal minimum wage at the time, and I was eager to leave.  “I’m not sure” I replied.

“Are you going to college?”  he asked.

“I’ve applied to Grand Valley”, I answered, “but I haven’t heard back from them”

“Have you applied anywhere else?” 
 
“No” I confessed.  I had not.  The truth was that I had graduated dead center at place number 199 of the 400 who graduated in my class.  This was, in part a consequence of graduating from a parochial grade school and being put into industrial arts classes during my freshman year in High School.  I hated it and was bored by it and my grades reflected it.  Not until later, during my last two years when the school administration, after administering the Iowa Tests put me into more advanced classes that my grades began to improve.  I had made the ‘honor roll’ a few times in the last two years but it didn’t raise my overall grade point average above the absolute mean.  Nevertheless I had filled out an application because my friend Johnny Hierholzer, with whom I had been a classmate dating back to second grade at St. John’s Lutheran and who, being a neighbor living just around the corner had, along with his parents, pressured me into obtaining an application and sending it in.  Johnny was hoping I would be accepted and we could commute together to school as we had previously walked together from the old neighborhood to school.  He had better grades, I had my doubts.  Visions of the rice fields of Indochina beckoned.

The next Monday afternoon, after finishing a day at school, I reported for work at the drug store. I was counting the cash in the till when I heard Bob’s voice from his perch overlooking the floor.  “When you finish with the register, I want to see you in my office” he commanded.

Oh shit, what have I done now? I thought.  After having counted the cash in the register I proceeded back to his office, located behind a door to the right of the pharmaceutical counter and leading both to his office and the stairwell down to the basement. I finished with my clerical task, made sure there were no customers to wait on and then proceeded to the doorway leading to his office making sure not to go in too far so that I could hear if anyone entered the store.  Stopping short, Bob began to speak.

“I’ve got a friend at the College”, he began.  “He’s a good friend of mine.  His name is Mr. Putnam and he’s the head of the admissions department at Grand Valley.  You have an appointment to meet with him on Wednesday morning at 9AM.  I want you to go to the principal’s office at school tomorrow and tell him that you won’t be in school on Wednesday, that you are going up to the college to meet Mr. Putnam.  Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Good.  Now if you don’t make that appointment on Wednesday morning I will not be a happy man, do you understand me?

Again I nodded.

“Now go back on the floor.”

I did as I was told.  I went up to the college on Wednesday morning full of hope but also full of trepidation.  Surely, I thought, my grades wouldn’t be good enough.  This school was a tough place I had heard.  It hadn’t received its accreditations, so it was flunking kids out left and right, tough standards, hard place.  What if my grades aren’t good enough, what if god knows, I get accepted here, how would I afford it?  I had no money and the job certainly wouldn’t support funding college.  What if I simply failed?  To say that things were precarious is an understatement.

I arrived at the college, found the admissions office, and was instructed to take a seat and wait for a few moments.  I expected some underling to emerge but, to my surprise, out came the director himself.  He introduced himself saying that he had heard some good things about me. What followed was a personal tour of the campus as the director took me from building to building describing the facilities, the hopes for the newly established college (now university), and what they were looking for in student recruitment.  Finally, after a couple of hours, he brought me back to his office.

“How about it?  Do you want to come here?” he asked.

“I don’t think I can afford it, my family doesn’t have much money and won’t be able to contribute anything.  I’m the oldest of six children and there isn’t much to go around”.  I replied.

“I can fix that” he said.

“How?”  I asked incredulously.

“A combination of student loans and grants.  We can make this happen.  How about it?” 

“O.K.” I replied.   I couldn’t believe it.

When I reported for work that afternoon Bob asked me how it went.  I told him that I had been accepted, still not truly believing it.  A smile crossed his otherwise humorless countenance. 
 
A few weeks later I moved on.  Johnny’s mother, then a secretary in the office of the W.T. Grant department store, had arranged an interview with the manager of the store.  In due course I landed a new job.  I never got around to appropriately expressing my appreciation or properly thanking Bob for his efforts. Full of stiff-necked pride and not properly socialized, I simply moved on.  He was a mentor to me before I knew or understood what mentoring was; indeed sometimes it takes longer than 18 years to get the barbarian out of the child. It does, I have come to understand, indeed take a village.

Bob is gone now, as are so many who have influenced my life.  I am ashamed to admit that I treated him shabbily, for here was a friend in the truest sense of the word; one that saw some promise in the boy and did everything he could to secure a place for him. These columns are his testament as well as mine, and although I know he would find little agreement with the opinions expressed herein he would readily befriend the soul that animates these pages. 
 
Thank you Bob Steiner, I know it is too late, but Thank You nonetheless. It is the very least I can do.  

 

 

                                                                                                                                 

 

 

 

 

May 1, 2015: The Republic of Heaven, Laugh With the Sinners, Invisible Man

 

“I don’t believe in the Kingdom of heaven; I believe in the Republic of Heaven”

                                    -----from the ‘Quotations of Chairman Joe’

Several years ago I was working at a facility that builds railroad cars.  Working on a third shift security detail, one finds that one has a lot of time on one’s hands.  Accordingly, one of my co-workers, a man named Robert, and I would frequently engage in conversations ranging across the spectrum from current events, to politics, to philosophy and religion.  A devoutly religious man, Robert asked me in the course of one of the conversations: “I believe in the kingdom of heaven, so do you, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t”, I replied.

“What DO you believe in then?” he asked incredulously.

“I don’t believe in the Kingdom of Heaven, I believe in the Republic of Heaven”, said I, an answer that evoked a nervous laugh from my companion.  “In the modern age how could it be otherwise?” I continued, “The idea of a kingdom violates modern sensibilities, it rings hollow in the modern ear”.

“But the Bible”, protested Robert.

“Yes, the Bible,” said I, “and whose version are we talking about?”

“The King James version”, said he.

“A book sanctioned by a king…case closed.  That heaven should be described therein seems a bit self-serving don’t you think coming as it did at the dawn of the age of ‘Divine Right’. The monarch is claiming his legitimacy as divinely ordained and the confusion becomes complete.  No, to the modern era in which nearly every government on the face of the earth from constitutional monarchies and authoritarian regimes to parliamentary democracies to federations call themselves ‘republics’, or ‘democratic republics’.  In the modern age how could paradise be seen as otherwise?”

I was only being half facetious in my reply, for I had been given a glimpse of paradise among the ‘elect’ in parochial school; the prospect of spending ‘eternity’ with these people...

I’d rather laugh with the sinners

Than cry with the saints

The sinners are much more fun”    ----Billy Joel “Only the Good Die Young”

Jimmy Carter was quite right to sever his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention over the church’s positions on women’s rights and the place of women in human society.  There are other equally compelling reasons, I was to learn under the tutelage of my schoolmasters, including the war against natural history, reason and science and, at times, the contemporary historical record itself. There are a lot of counterproductive lessons taught in the American Madrasa, not the least is a sense of worthlessness (see Luther’s Small Catechism); but it was the overriding blind adherence to ‘doctrinal authority’ and the treacherous undercurrents of resulting intolerance that was most unsettling.  I entered this institution a bright, wide-eyed, confident and curious young lad, with a voracious appetite for learning. I emerged from the administrations of my parochial tutors timid, withdrawn, and badly prepared for what lay ahead. 

Accordingly I was assigned to the industrial arts classes upon entering the public school system, complete with courses in “General Math” instead of algebra.  During my first year in the Grand Haven public school system I was given the battery of aptitude and knowledge tests known then as the ‘Iowa Tests’.  Sometime late in my freshman year in high school I was called into the counselor’s office and told that they were changing my curriculum.  Over the course of the next three years I would take algebra and geometry, English literature and other advanced courses but the damage had been done.  The requisite background in mathematics simply wasn’t there, and there was no time to pass through the required classes in time to take calculus, physics, or chemistry.  I could do what I could to get as much out of the experience as time would allow, but I decided to study history and government given that I was more prepared in those fields and wouldn’t lag so far behind.    

As a sophomore in High School I found myself in Mrs. Madigan’s world history class.  Timid and withdrawn I found myself singled out as Mrs. Madigan would read my exam essays (yes 75% of my exams were essays) to the class, a practice my instructors would repeat in college and graduate school.  I could write, but I couldn’t speak having spent 9 long formative years doing my level best to be the ‘invisible man’. So began my journey that led me down the path of historical research and inquiry.

In order to recover the boy left behind, I found it necessary to likewise sever my ties with mother church; for I am a Camfield and a Kaye, and the sounds of the ‘farm’ beckon me. (1)  Accordingly, I have left the not-so-nurturing arms of mother church for it is no place for a wide-eyed, confident and curious young lad. Nor is it a refuge for an intellectual bohemian; for the wanderer and his shadow.
_______

1. See previous posts “November 15, 2010: Northwest of Custer, The Farm, Damn Democrats” and “November 5, 2011: Return to Custer, A Word About the Word, Pigs Breakfast”

 

 

 

 

 

April 29, 2015: Epitaph, Medieval Portal, In The Hands of Fools

"The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams.
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams.
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams,
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
When silence drowns the screams." (1)

    ----King Crimson "Epitaph" from the album "The Court of the Crimson King"

The lessons taught were most assuredly wrong.(2) The American Madrasa, the Christian version of same as practiced here in the United States, teaches a select history. The Crusades, for instance, were venerated as is, for some unknown reason, the works of the historian Gibbon. Reading Gibbon’s "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" I discovered that not only does Gibbon NOT say that the empire collapsed because the people had strayed from their newly established Christianity; but it was in part because of the adoption of the new religion and the resulting loss of the martial spirit that the empire declined. Moreover, his account of the later Crusades were a marked contrast from the version presented to us by our intrepid schoolmasters. Indeed the Crusades were an act of remarkable barbarity; not on the part of the Muslims, (Saracens as they were then known) but on the part of the Christians themselves.

Gibbon had this to say about the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. "In the pillage of public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and silver, rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity of Tancred. A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians; resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could mollify, their implacable rage; they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre; and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemic disease. After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion; yet we may praise the more selfish lenity of Raymond, who granted a capitulation and safe-conduct to the garrison of the Citadel." (3)

This is but a sample of the atrocities committed during the course of the seven crusades yet we are led to believe that these ‘savage heroes of the cross’ who were guilty of everything from pogroms against the Jews as they made their way East toward Palestine, to roasting and eating young children, to wholesale slaughter, were champions of righteousness. Clearly the man at the head of the class had not read his Gibbon nor, for that matter, much else. When my headmasters moved on to ‘higher’ callings lessons were hardly learned. The name given to our sports teams went from the ‘Royals’ to, I was later to discover, the ‘Crusaders’.

"And you don’t count the dead
when God’s on your side" -----Bob Dylan "With God on our Side"
Every education is an abbreviation of sorts of the long collective memory. Part of this is by necessity for one cannot, for instance, review every book ever written. But some of it is by design, intentional, and every institution does it. From omitting inconvenient truth to downright falsification a version of history emerges that at some point reaches a certain common denominator defined as our "collective misunderstandings" or, as Voltaire so succinctly put it "the lie commonly agreed upon". And if your instructor hasn’t done his homework, hasn’t brought a measure of curiosity to his profession and is, in effect, an intellectual slacker you won’t get exposed to much more than the standard fare. 

The public schools hew pretty much to the standard fare, especially teachers of History and Social Studies for they tend to be the coaches of the sports teams and that is their true interest in life. Accordingly they work to stay the proverbial one chapter ahead of the student. The parochial schools, however, present us with an entirely different beast.

At base, religious doctrine teaches that man in inherently flawed and evil. It follows from this that nothing human can be trusted, particularly that attribute that best separates him from the beast in the field: reason. By this ‘logic’ it follows that faith always trumps reason, and because this is so reason and its handmaiden science are approached with the utmost suspicion. Accordingly any scientific ‘theory’ this side of gravity itself is viewed as a mere intellectual curiosity at best, or at worst a downright assault on the revealed word of god. Increasingly confronted by inconvenient truth, the parochial retrenches finally presenting Darwin and Einstein to the class between clenched teeth explaining that we need to know these things only because we will be expected to know them when we go on to later public instruction. So badly do the parochial schools function as transmitters of science and natural history that the Grand Rapids, Michigan, public schools at one time were providing the area parochial schools with math and science teachers; a practice later ended by a Supreme Court ruling that such a practice violated the separation of church and state. The experiment was, however, an albeit brief admission of the incapacity of these institutions to provide instruction in these fields. In my particular case, nearly a third of the day was consumed in Bible instruction, memorization, and recitation. Math instruction, such as it was, lagged far behind. Science consisted mostly in the study of birds, and then relegated to only a couple of hours a week. So bad was it that when instructed to present a science ‘experiment’ to the class, we were at a loss, we had no idea where to turn, where to begin. One poor soul, presented the class with a standard highway road map. The inference is quite clear, one is led to the emerging technological and informational age through a medieval portal; as the ‘Generation of Swine’ emerged into the dawn of adulthood through the doors of a "New Frontier".

"Between the iron gates of fate
The seeds of time were sown
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known.
Knowledge is a deadly friend
If no one sets the rules.
The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools." (1)

Knowledge, like technology and indeed government is fundamentally amoral. It can be used for moral or immoral purposes. It can save lives or it can kill millions. It can save our environment or it can lay waste the planet. It is what we make of it. There is a condition in every society that sociologists call ‘cultural lag’; a condition whereby the society in question lags behind technological and cultural evolution. How far the society lags behind depends upon how well-versed and prepared it is to apprehend and, it is hoped, direct the advances of knowledge and technology. We are a nation and a society that functions under an 18^th century political constitution, increasingly heeds the siren call of 19^th century economics, and has yet to learn the awful lessons of the great wars of the last century. To wrap our arms about the complexities of the issues, to meet the environmental, economic, political and technological challenges before us, simply cannot be done by a people lost in space and in time. As long as we elect to put these people at the head of the class our fate is in the hands of fools.

I have left Act I for involution and, Act II, mired in complexity....

"Confusion will be my epitaph.
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying,"

As I speak the old pubic elementary school that was closed two years ago is being re-opened by something called the "Covenant Academy". Public dollars turned to vouchers transforming a public facility into another American Madrasa. Some of the billion or so dollars that the state is now investing in these institutions.

"Yes, I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying".... (1)

____________

1. King Crimson, "Epitaph" from the album "The Court of the Crimson King" http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/kingcrimson/epitaph.html

2. See posting dated September 20, 2014 for another account on the shortcomings of parochial education.

3. See Gibbon, Edward. "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Vol. VI, methuen & Co. LTD, London 1912. AMS Press, New York. Pages 323-324.

April 23, 2015: Corporate Shills, The Untold Story, A Question of Trust.

"The Clintons have been nothing but corporate shills"
                                        —From "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

The New York Times published an article today written by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire entitled "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company" . The article, here reproduced in part, outlines some of the Clinton dealings with international corporations as they act in the interstices of international corporate interests and intrigue, international political relations, the Clinton foundation and the national interests of the United States. Here then is the article as it appeared in the ‘Times’:

"The headline in Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: ‘Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.’

The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.

But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian miningindustry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.

Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.


As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.

The New York Times’s examination of the Uranium One deal is based on dozens of interviews, as well as a review of public records and securities filings in Canada, Russia and the United States. Some of the connections between Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation were unearthed by Peter Schweizer, a former fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and author of the forthcoming book "Clinton Cash." Mr. Schweizer provided a preview of material in the book to The Times, which scrutinized his information and built upon it with its own reporting.

Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavilyon foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.

In a statement, Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign, said no one "has ever produced a shred of evidence supportingthe theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation." He emphasized that multiple United States agencies, as well as the Canadian government, had signed off on the deal and that, in general, such matters were handled at a level below the secretary. "To suggest the State Department, under then-Secretary Clinton, exerted undue influence in the U.S. government’s review of the sale of Uranium One is utterly baseless," he added.

American political campaigns are barred from accepting foreign donations. But foreigners may give to foundations in the United States. In the days since Mrs. Clinton announced her candidacy for president, the Clinton Foundation has announced changes meant to quell longstanding concerns about potential conflicts of interest in such donations; it has limited donations from foreign governments, with many, like Russia’s, barred from giving to all but its health care initiatives. That policy stops short of Mrs. Clinton’s agreement with the Obama administration, which prohibited all foreign government donations while she served as the nation’s top diplomat. Either way, the Uranium One deal highlights the limits of such prohibitions. The foundation will continue to accept contributions from foreign individuals and businesses whose interests, like Uranium One’s, may overlap with those of foreign governments, some of which may be at odds with the United States.

When the Uranium One deal was approved, the geopolitical backdrop was far different from today’s. The Obama administration was seeking to "reset" strained relations with Russia. The deal was strategically important to Mr. Putin, who shortly after the Americans gave their blessing sat down for a staged interview with Rosatom’s chief executive, Sergei Kiriyenko. "Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20 percent of U.S. reserves," Mr. Kiriyenko told Mr. Putin.

Now, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine, the Moscow-Washington relationship is devolving toward Cold War levels, a point several experts made in evaluating a deal so beneficial to Mr. Putin, a man known to use energy resources to project power around the world.

"Should we be concerned? Absolutely," said Michael McFaul, who served under Mrs. Clinton as the American ambassador to Russia but said he had been unaware of the Uranium One deal until asked about it. "Do we want Putin to have a monopoly on this? Of course we don’t. We don’t want to be dependent on Putin for anything in this climate". (1)

Should Democrats be concerned? Absolutely. With a recent Quinnipiac University poll showing Hillary Clinton with the backing of 60% of Democrats and her nearest potential rival Vice President Joe Biden registering in at a paultry 10%,(2) it increasingly appears that she will face nearly no serious obstacle to her party’s nomination.

But all should not be well in the Clinton camp, as Chris Cillizza observed today in the Washington Post’s ‘The Fix’, "Hillary Clinton has a baggage problem". (3) Quoting very recent articles such as:

"There's this from the New York Times: "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company."

This from the Post: "For Clintons, speech income shows how their wealth is intertwined with charity."

And this from Politico: "Hillary Clinton struggles to contain media barrage on foreign cash."

Cillizza questions whether the country is ready for another scandal train that was the Clinton years, and make no mistake about it the melodrama that forced itself upon the consciousness of the nation from Monica to Whitewater; from Travelgate to Vince Foster, has taken its toll on the political house of Clinton. Check out, writes Cillizza, " the new Quinnipiac University national poll. More than six in ten (62 percent) of voters said Clinton has "strong leadership qualities." In that same sample, however, less than four in ten (38 percent) said that Clinton was honest and trustworthy. A majority (54 percent) said she's not honest and trustworthy, including 61 percent of independents.

That's a remarkable set of findings -- and speaks to the divided mind the public has about the Clintons broadly and Hillary Clinton specifically. There's a widespread belief in her capability to do the job she is running for. There's also widespread distrust in her personally. People admire her but don't know if she's honest." (3)

 And therein lies the rub, for this is at the heart of the current ongoing investigation not only into the tragedy at Benghazi but her use of a personal private server for her email while serving as secretary of state. Not illegal at the time but against her own policy directives while she was at the helm of the State Department. Given the pig’s breakfast that the Clintons have always made of their personal affairs, finances, and governmental connections questions are going to emerge demanding answers. With growing revelations and questions surrounding the administration of the Clinton Foundation and its relationships, the disappearance of thousands of emails while she was Secretary of State casts new aspersions on the veracity, indeed the integrity, of this candidate. What is certain is that the Clinton record of parsing and dissembling has always been evident; and the Clintons have never been entirely forthcoming.

　
______

(1).http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0

(2). http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-rubio-lead-2016-us-election-poll-110848806.html

(3).http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/04/23/hillary-clintons-baggage-problem/?wpisrc=nl_fix&wpmm=1 

September 20, 2014: Most Assuredly Wrong, See For Myself, One Chapter Ahead

“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school

 It’s a wonder I can think at all”        
                             ----Paul Simon “Kodachrome”

“I’ve discovered later in life that, with the possible exception of basic reading and mathematics, most of what I was taught was most assuredly wrong."
                           ----from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe".                                              

Nineteen years ago I found myself substitute teaching in what is now called a “middle school” (formerly a Junior High) a class in sociology, which had become the format for teaching a combination of sociology, history and government.  In the course of the conversation a rather perceptive student opined that he thought that schools were nothing but indoctrination centers.  I was a bit taken aback by the observation, but I recalled reading in my history that the French Minister of Education proclaimed at the end of the 19^th century, as the state had wrested nearly complete control of education from the church, that “now we will make good nationalists of them”.   I found myself unable to mount an effective reply and simply nodded in agreement.  It is hard to see it in any other way.

 From making ‘good christians’ to making ‘good nationalists’ the educational system is designed to meet the demands of a certain agenda, whatever that agenda may be.  It may be parochial, or it may be public, but whatever it’s agenda it is certain to entail the adoption of some belief system leading to the veneration of certain established institutions otherwise known as the “Box”.  To think outside the “Box” is to risk heresy, ending in certain chastisement, marginalization or outright banishment.  To that end, certain forces are at work to see that the material is presented in an ‘acceptable’ if not official manner.  In the United States, agencies like the Texas authorities comb every textbook to see that they meet their preconcieved ideas of what the true history and governance of this country is, reflecting true ‘American’ values.  It is like that in every country. And so atrocities, betrayals, chicanery, and outright mendacity are expunged from every textbook leading the young to believe that theirs is a ‘chosen’ lot in life be it Divine Providence or the ‘Manifest Destiny’ of the nation into which one is born.

 I first became aware that something may be amiss when I visited the “Farm” in my youth.  In previous posts (see “Northwest of Custer” and “Return to Custer”) I have mentioned that visits to my grandparents were seen by the ‘folks’ as much as an opportunity to teach as it was a time of reaquaintence.  During one such visit my great Uncle Lionel closely questioned me concerning what they were teaching at my parochial school.  I could tell by his body language and the nature of the questioning that he was dismayed if not appalled.  It was the complete rejection of Natural History, I would later come to appreciate, as well as the implied war on science that he could not sanction. I returned to school with, I think, a greater peripheral vision but when I answered a ‘science’ question stating that the world was 4 billion years old, I was not only marked down but singled out for reprimand.

 And so began my long questioning of what were presented to me as established ‘truth’.  I remember the tirades against the forces of ‘evil’ prominent among them were the works of Marx and Nietszche.  I began to suspect the interpretation and, when I emerged from my ‘studies’ later in life, the first thing I did was purchase a copy of every work still in print by these two writers  I just had to see for myself.

 As I suspected, what was presented to me so authoritatively turned out to be a mere characterization of their works, betraying a blinding ignorace of what these people were trying to say. I suspected, even as a boy, that perhaps the truth was more encompassing, now I found myself face to face with the genuine article and it was revealing.

 Nietszche in his work “Thus Spake Zarathustra” has the protagonist coming from the mountaintop and dispensing his newly formed observations concerning the human predicament to anyone who will listen.  Soon he gathers a group of followers who take his every utterance as nearly Divine Revelation.  Zarathustra becomes uneasy, continually protesting that “I have not been understood”.  Finally, in exasperation he warns his followers that one should not be about the business of erecting monuments lest one be slain by a falling statue.  And so it is.  Every writer, every thinker, must be painfully self conscious.  Every philosopher or theologian must be continually vigilant lest he be laid waste not only by his opponents but by his very adherents. 

 Nietsche warned his readers that he was not the answer, but possibly only a steppingstone in the long quest for truth.  “To disagree with him and to know why”, as Kaufman his translater would so succinctly and aptly put it, is the real challenge facing every reader.  It is the real challenge and the real pleasure in reading any great work. To critique it instead of blindly and submissively accepting or rejecting is the great treasure. By reading such works with such an approach one can engage in a kind of dialogue with the greatest minds of humankind.  But alas, that is not how one is taught to read in any school I’m familiar with.

Indeed it gets worse.  I am currently near the end of reading Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” I found a complete set of this work at a bookstore in Winder Georgia and had to lay my hands on it.  This was another work held up as testament for the need to follow the ‘straight and narrow’.  Gibbon, we were told, was one of the truly great historians. He wrote, we were assured, that the reason the Roman Empire fell was that the people no longer followed the true religion and that decadence had finally been the undoing of the great historical experiment.  If only the Romans had been faithful to the Church….. I discovered reading this work that my suspicions were well founded for Gibbon wrote no such thing.  True enough, the empire fell from within as the people no longer felt it was worth defending against the barbarian hordes and in fact hired the barbarians as mercenaries to defend the empire for them.  So it was, to a great degree, a loss of faith but it was a loss of faith in the efficacy of the state, not a religious question.  To cast the fall of the Roman Empire as a theological question, stemming from a growing ‘degeneracy’ and loss of a moral compass, is to greatly strain the historical record.

 In fact, I was to discover later, that was precisely the theological cunundrum confronting St. Augustine.  How could it be that the Empire began to unravel soon after the adoption by the state of Christianity as the state religion.  For Christians everywhere this was the great paradox.  Augustine did his best to explain it away but Gibbon, I was later to learn, never made the attempt. 

 So began my introduction with historical criticism creating as it did a lifelong passion for the subject.  Entering the public schools I was likewise harranged by my instructors concerning the shortcomings of so-called ‘heresies’.  Nietzche never got much attention in the public schools largely because they aren’t fixated with his “god is dead” proclamation, but Marx—considering the “Cold War” at the time—got more extensive, if not less biased treatment.  There were classes in Marxist “Dialectical Materialism” and “Historical Determinism” and, of course, his wild prognostications were always fodder for ridicule. We even held a “Communist Classroom” in our “American Problems” class in High School as a way of demonstrating what school may have been like behind the Iron Curtain.  We each had to choose a ‘Russian’ name, and sit ramrod staight and salute when called upon.  I took the name of Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov a point lost on my peers as well as my instructor.  

 By reading Marx I discovered many more dimensions.  First his historical analysis as to the orgin of modern Capital and his statistical discription of Capitalism in Dickensonian England are worth reading simply because they are so accurate, a point the ‘folks’ back at the farm impressed upon me all those years ago.    Of all the criticisms leveled at Marx no one takes umbrage with his economic analysis.  Engles has been widely criticised for his methodology, not so Marx who was the better historian and economist.  Secondly, there is the Marxist Theory of Alienation, a part of his thinking so far reaching and so penetrating so as to be at the very foundation of his philosphy.  The alienation of man, town from country, rich from poor, even from himself lies at the very foundation of the moral—yes moral—outrage that permeates his work.  In the eyes of Marx the Capitalist, by appropriating a portion of the fruits of a man’s labor, steals not only his wealth but his personhood.  He is expropriating part of the very ‘selfhood’ of the laborer. This is a deeply penetrating part of Communist ideology, as formulated by Marx, but wholly ignored in the treatment of it—if the subject gets any serious attention at all—by our schoolmasters and schoolmarms. 

 Back in college we were tasked with reading the ‘historical novel’ “The Sotweed Factor” by John Barth.  It is an 800 page tome cast in Colonial America (Maryland as I recall) which we had to read for one of our weekly book quizzes.  In it the Protagonist teaches school for a short period of time observing that the mark of a good instructor is to always be one chapter ahead of his students. I soon began to suspect that my instructors were running the race only a mere chapter ahead of me.

 And so it is. It’s not simply that my instructors in a parochial primary school were passing along theologically driven characterizations, its that none of them, be they private or public, primary or secondary, or even university level had ever read their material in the original (or translations of same).  In high school history and government tend to be taught by the coaches of the sports teams, meaning that they majored in physical education in college and minored in the subject at hand.  This means that they rarely got much past the required ‘survey’ classes in college, putting them precisely one chapter, more or less, ahead of the class.  That’s why Americans have no idea what a Communist is, let alone a Socialist, or Fascist.  They have no idea the difference between an authoritarian regime and a dictatorship, let alone between a democracy and a republic.  This is why the Teabaggers can characterize our President as a socialist, a communist and a fascist, all in the same sentence.  And this is why most Americans don’t know that the words “Capital” or “Free Market” never appear in the founding documents but the word “Regulate” or varients of it, do.