Chips Off the Old Block
I recently heard a press reporter tell the following story. I don’t recall her name or the town she was talking about, but I almost cannot believe what she said happened.
She was writing about teens in an affluent suburban community, buying and consuming liquor. At one point in her investigation, she became aware of a party at the home of a teenager, where alcohol and drugs would be available. The party began with about eight kids and quickly grew to about eighty teenagers partying into the night, drinking, popping pills and turning the house into what could pass for a downtown bar. The police raided the house, arresting most of the underage drinkers.
At the police station where the kids were held, their parents were called to come and get their children who would be facing various charges related to their illegal consumption of alcohol and drugs. The reporter described the reaction ofthe parents as a combination of outrage at the police for arresting their kids and anger at their children for getting caught instead of fleeing the house as some of the partygoers had done. She said only one parent took a kid to task for being at the party and drinking.
When she wrote her story about the party, the parents’ behavior and the teenage drinking that was going on in the town, she was subsequently bombarded with hate mail and threats against her and her family.
So the next time you hear someone blame the decline of morals, ethics, family values, or whatever constitutes decency on broken homes, fatherless children, minorities on the dole, or the unemployed being people who just don’t want to work, think about this well-to-do town with its good schools, fine houses, church-going families and the kind of example its parents are setting for their children. These are the kids who will grow up thinking the law is not for them to worry about, except how to circumvent it for their own gain. These are the kids for whom whatever money can buy is their entitlement even at the expense of the rest of society. These are the kids who will make up the next generation of greed and corruption that will enrich them while bringing our economy to its knees. These are the kids who will become the new Madoffs, spawn the next Enrons, buy their way into office and graduate to the companies of K Street to own our government.
And we, their parents, will have helped create them.
Try the Crow, It’s Delicious
I’ve been a New York Giants football fan for more years than I care to admit but nothing like my daughter, Lizzy, who is a fan/addict (pronounced fanatic). I was delighted to be able to take her to see the Giants defeat the Patriots four years ago (at considerable risk to my aging body since she could not resist taunting New Englanders before, during and especially after the game) and to get tickets for her and her sister Laura to see the sequel yesterday.
But I digress from the menu, which today is crow, the result of a blog I wrote about a year ago, titled The Giant Hobgoblin. In it, I spared no statistic, anecdote or sarcastic remark to make the case that Tom Coughlin, the Giants head coach, should have been fired instead of having his contract extended. And as late as the end of last year, it seemed many others had leapt upon this bandwagon, as the team appeared headed for the ignominy of once again failing to make the playoffs under what I was convinced was Coughlin’s inept leadership.
We now know different. Very different.
As the Giants completed a run of six consecutive wins culminating in yesterday’s Super Bowl victory, virtually every commentator, most of them ex-players and head couches, attributed this success to the coaching of Coughlin (and, of course, the exceptional play of Eli Manning). And clearly, the players themselves have great respect, if not love, for their coach. Nobody spoke of Coughlin’s strategic planning, which I think still remains quite conventional and without much innovation. But all heaped praise on his ability to instill unity and determination at times when the frustration of loss after loss would likely undo most any other team. The term “mental toughness” often described what Coughlin preached to motivate egos that under other leadership (need I mention Rex Ryan?) would crumble into petulance and whining. And some observers made the very salient point that Coughlin’s two Super Bowl wins came four years apart not with a consistent group of players but with very different rosters, albeit still having a dramatically improved Manning leading the team on the field. As it turns out, these two accomplishments are more difficult and maybe even more valuable than strategic cleverness.
So today, I am eating crow and enjoying it. At the end of the game, Lizzy actually “high fived” Manning or as Laura texted me, “She touched him!” I’d do the same for Coughlin.
From the Mouths of Boors
As hopefully welcome relief from my anti-Republican rants, this one is about pro football, more specifically Rex Ryan, coach of the New York Jets.
Last week, Ryan, whose mouth is arguably the biggest thing in the Jets’ locker room, said that his quarterback calling a time-out at one point during the Jets loss to the Patriots was “the stupidest call in the history of football.” If so, then last night, Ryan calling (or allowing his defensive coordinator to call) a full blitz on the play that resulted in the Jets’ loss to the Broncos, was football history’s second stupidest call.
With just over a minute left in the game and the Jets leading by a field goal, the Broncos had moved the ball 75 yards to the Jets 20-yard line mostly on the running of Tim Tebow, and faced third down and four yards to go for a first down. Ryan, reputed to be a defensive genius, either called or agreed with, a defensive play that had eight of the eleven Jets committed to charging directly at Tebow, which under the circumstances, ranks among the dumbest of dumb coaching decisions.
The only plays against which the Jets’ blitz could have been effective, maybe even as a long shot in causing a turnover, would have been a pass or a handoff. But as everyone in the stadium knew, Tebow would not do either, since you don’t let a poor passer pass when he doesn’t have to, nor do you have your best runner hand off to someone else. As everyone knew, Tebow would run, since at worst, if he’s stopped or even loses a few yards, they could still kick the field goal to tie the game. At best, if your opposing coach operates on theory that aggressiveness is a substitute for intelligence, they might blitz, leaving no one to stop your runner if he gets past the line of scrimmage. Twenty yards later, Tebow was in the end zone with the winning score, barely touched by a Jet defender.
The Jets, being the more talented of the two teams should have been willing to play overtime rather than open themselves up to the obvious play that could and did beat them. A non-blitzing run defense would more likely have stopped Tebow, forcing the field goal or at least keeping him from scoring a touchdown. Seeing the Jets total commitment to the blitz, Tebow simply ran outside it, effectively leaving no one between him and the end zone.
The only thing worse than Ryan’s coaching mindlessness was his mealy-mouthed commentary after the game. Having called out his quarterback for a bad decision the week before, he wasn’t man enough to take even the slightest responsibility for his own blunder. He blamed the loss on his players’ mistakes. Meanwhile, as Ryan dissembled, his quarterback stood up and admitted to having played poorly, allowing the Broncos to stay close enough to win.
(As a matter of full disclosure, I am not a disgruntled Jet fan. I just really dislike big-mouthed and gutless incompetence.)
Ryan says he’s not in the game “to kiss Bill Belichick’s rings.” He should reconsider. At least his mouth would be shut while he does.
A Chicken in Every Pot
As tempting as that may sound to the increasing number of Americans living in poverty, if Congress made it a law, it would probably be judged by the current Supreme Court as an unconstitutional attack on those of us who can afford steak.
But now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the challenges to the new healthcare law, the constitutionality of which is being attacked primarily based on its requirement that everyone purchase health insurance or pay a fine, I am, with admitted ignorance of both constitutional law and the workings of the court, ready to write my opinion.
First, should the federal government have the right to mandate that people must buy a product they might otherwise not want? Clearly, state governments have that right, for example in requiring car owners to buy automobile insurance. And the Constitution does indeed distinguish between areas of governance in which the federal government cannot legislate, leaving many matters solely to the discretion of each state. So I assume that if the court rules the healthcare federal mandate unconstitutional, each state could individually still require (or not) the purchase of health insurance, as is the case in Massachusetts (much as Mitt Romney might deny it). This might be an acceptable solution, were it not for the chaos that would ensue.
It seems to me the federal government already has the right to force people to pay for (that is, buy) things they might not want. You pay for social security whether you want it or not, which is economically necessary if the program is to work, just as mandated healthcare insurance makes it possible for those who cannot afford it to ultimately pay for health care they now get free in hospital emergency rooms as well as allowing those with pre-existing medical problems to get health insurance otherwise denied them,. (Ironically, the law requires free care for indigents which is paid for via taxes largely by those who may never want or need the benefit.) I understand the distinction that the healthcare challenge is based on the questionable concept of mandating that people buy the product of a privately owned entity (an insurance company) and that the precedent thus set might one day require all citizens to buy a Ford if it were deemed in the national interest that the Ford Motor Company sell more cars. But at the end of the day, I think adjudicating the healthcare mandate as an issue of commerce is a constitutional copout.
I believe the fundamental purpose of our Constitution (my minimal familiarity with the Federalist Papers notwithstanding) is to define a government with the obligation and power to protect its citizens’ basic human rights under the headings (written into the Preamble) of justice, tranquility and general welfare while protecting our personal liberty from the encroachment of the government itself. For me, the question should always be what is (or is not) a basic right and how much individual freedom should we forego to insure such a right? This covers everything from the minor consideration of allowing government to deprive us of the liberty to drive our cars any way we wish, forcing us to stop at red lights in order to protect the rights of others, to such major issues of allowing government to force us to give up not just a little liberty, but in effect our lives, by ordering a drafted citizen to charge a machine gun nest in defense of our national interest.
In the case of health care, I think effective medical attention is a basic right of every citizen (part of that quaint little idea of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) and that if mandating that every citizen buy insurance to access health care is the only effective way to pay for it, then requiring everyone to buy such insurance (or pay a penalty if not) becomes a reasonable compromise with our liberty.
I suspect I know four Justices who will agree with me and four who will not, in which case it may all depend on Justice Kennedy. And that’s about as unconstitutional as things can get.
But that’s another story.
Truth and Consequences
I recently read a comment that “the truth is always complicated.” I couldn’t disagree more. I think the truth is generally clear, concise, and basically simple. It’s the consequences of a usually obvious truth that are often complex, creating confusion and in too many cases, the opportunity for ideologues to pervert the truth, often propagating outright lies to enhance their causes.
I have never studied economics. But I’ve heard and read enough to believe that there are basic economic truths even if usually buried in characteristic jargon, Greenspan double-talk (the modern standard of obfuscation), or the lies that support many anti-social and anarchic political agendas. So, following are what I think are some apparent truths and consequences of our current economy and some of the untruthful commentary about it.
Truth: Growth comes only from demand for goods and services. Demand comes only from people spending their own money on their own needs at their own discretion and/or the government spending people’s money (taxes) to provide necessary services they cannot provide for themselves. The consequences of this truth are (1) both individuals and the government borrow money, individuals to live a reasonably good or better life than their income at the time allows (mortgages, car and college loans, credit cards, etc.) and the government to fulfill its obligations (national defense, law and order, education, equal opportunity, etc.) while keeping taxes on people as low as possible, (2) both borrow too much for bad reasons, mainly to gratify themselves through unaffordable luxuries or conspicuous consumption, build unnecessary and inefficient government institutions, and impose geopolitical and military hegemony on the world, and (3) we have engaged in an ongoing socio-political dialog on these issues since the founding of our nation, a debate that has now become vicious, libelous, slanderous demagoguery promoted by a mindless media about how much and for what purpose should people and the government borrow. The current spate of lies (or at best, stupidity) that has resulted are (1) that increasing taxes on the wealthy and closing corporate tax loopholes will inhibit job growth, and (2) that a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution will foster good economic policy. The wealthy do not create demand with their riches, since there is a limit even to luxuries one can consume while their investments produce no demand, and the only economist who would support a balanced budget amendment would be an unbalanced one. A government that cannot borrow is a government that cannot govern, which is exactly what the Tea Party and a growing number of their Republican sycophants want.
Truth: In a recession with its resulting unemployment (leaving aside who caused it and why), the only antidote is to build demand, which can most effectively be done by the government borrowing and spending to support the unemployed and to create jobs to put them back to work. The complicating consequences are how much unemployment insurance is enough, how much additional debt the nation should incur, and on what should the money be spent. The lies (or at best, ignorance) that are generated in this debate are that (1) unemployment insurance encourages people not to seek work, (2) corporate leaders will have greater confidence in our economic future if we reduce deficits without increasing their company’s taxes (what Paul Krugman calls “the confidence fairy”) and will therefore invest in creating jobs, (3) defense spending, Social Security and Medicare should be untouchable as sources of reduced government spending, and (4) cutting government and its spending is the most important priority in restoring our economic well being. Yes, I’m sure some people game unemployment insurance and don’t deserve it but certainly not the tens of millions who were working productively a few years ago and now are not. Besides, unemployment insurance is the surest way to spur immediate demand, since this money usually has to be spent to survive. And the only reason a company hires is to produce more in response to increased demand, which has little to do with how much confidence the CEO has in the future. We could significantly reduce our deficits by capturing the untold billions of dollars wasted in defense, Social Security and Medicare. Finally, those who are shouting the loudest about budget deficits and the national debt are those who hate government and its programs, particularly those that help the poor and disadvantaged. And the political leaders who cater to their anti-government rhetoric don’t really care about how deficits will impact our children and grandchildren. They care about wealth and power while they care nothing for the welfare of the nation.
One last truth and consequence: The surest way to drive us from any form of recovery from this great recession back into the dreaded “double dip” is for the government not to spend more on job creation, the only viably sustainable way to greater demand and growth. Government spending did not create the great recession. Only government spending will prevent it from recurring and taking most of the global economy down with it. If that happens, the size of the national debt won’t matter, not to cringing Democrats too frightened to debate it or to the Tea Party and the Republicans who are more and more cravenly beholden to its moronic commitment to anarchy.
But as usual, I have devolved into an anti-Republican rant (although there are plenty of Democrats who join them out of liberal arrogance, moral cowardice and/or their own style of idiocy) when the point I wanted most to make is that truth, whether in economics or more importantly in morals and ethics, is usually not hard to discern. Within the context of our culture, we can pretty much understand right from wrong and arrive at what should be a nearly universal acceptance of basic truth. Unfortunately, the all-too-human truth is that the seven deadly sins usually seem to overwhelm righteousness. In government, the so-called art of diplomacy probably provides more examples than economics of temporizing with truth to avoid having to deal with it. Our sad history of supporting (or at best, tolerating) murderous dictators in the name of our “national interest” merely scratches the surface.
But that’s another rant.
The Forsaken
It may have been Jesus who cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But today it would not be surprising to hear it from Jews in Israel.
This is a country that was once enthusiastically supported by the West, at least grudgingly admired by many others, and which occupied the high ground not just militarily but also morally against its enemies. Today, it is not unusual to hear it described as an international pariah not just by those who seek its destruction but also by many who once held it high esteem. As virtually all recent surveys have shown, in the court of world opinion, Israel has practically become a criminal.
What happened?
In my opinion, the problem began with a populace that lost its pioneering and purposeful spirit, much the same as has happened over the years in America. Being an Israeli or an American once meant you stood for a national determination to persevere against great challenges, whether posed by nature or the antipathy of others; it stood for a belief in democracy and a willingness to endure sacrifice and if necessary danger to defend itself; it stood for your belief in the freedom of self-determination balanced by respect for the rights of others. In Israel, as well as America, much if not all of these values have been lost or diluted by extremist political and religious factions, concerned only with their own radical demands without regard for the common good.
In Israel, this has led to a dangerous belligerence that has morphed from a previously healthy commitment to principles based on a fierce determination to survive but nonetheless promote humanistic values consistent with Judaic tradition into something far less admirable, far more contentious, and usually self-defeating. Today, it has become an unhealthy attitude that anything Israel does to protect itself is warranted by the long history of anti-Semitism which admittedly continues to be promoted, among other ways, by the demented denial of the Holocaust by Muslim fundamentalists and the more lethal launching of rockets into Israeli territory. These attacks with intent to kill, while clearly unacceptable and certainly requiring an armed response, actually resulted in the unleashing of military force that only served to allow Israel’s enemies to portray it as a murderer of innocents in an almost hysterical zeal to respond to provocation. The growing incompetence of Israel’s military planning and execution (witness the public relations fiascos of their large-scale attacks on Lebanon and more recently their bumbled boarding of the vessel Mavi Marmara) has become disastrously coupled with the government’s increasing arrogance in failing to pave the way for their actions by making its case before the world. The irony is that in every instance, this can be done in no uncertain and fully justifiable terms, instead of their apparent position that any defense of Israel is warranted a priori requiring no explanation. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent willingness, in fact eagerness, to become a tool of Republican partisanship against President Obama by undercutting his policies in a mindless address to an equally mindless Congress is the latest example of an Israeli foreign policy driven by hubris and lacking the slightest sense of the importance of world opinion.
Last year, at the invitation of Uriel Reichman, the greatly and rightfully admired founder and head of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), an Israeli university, I made a presentation in Israel that argued the need for them to promulgate a unequivocally consistent statement of its policies according to the simple premise that if Israel will say clearly what it will do, and will then do exactly what it says, it can yet regain its lost standing in the world, which will do as much or more for its security than their ad hoc military actions which now result in a backlash of anti-Israeli propaganda and dangerously growing hatred. At the time, I did not suggest such a policy, but at the risk of incurring the enmity of Professor Reichman and his colleagues (not to mention my many relatives in Israel) and the likelihood of being overly simplistic (which in this case might indeed be a benefit), I suggest the following, which I believe is rational and reasonable and therefore difficult to deny, and in fact, since there is little really new in it, probably coincides with much of what most people in Israel actually believe is the right course:
- Any entity — state, NGO or otherwise — that does not recognize Israel’s legal legitimacy as a nation and/or whose policy is that Israel should cease to exist by military or other means, is an enemy of Israel and will be treated as such.
- Israel considers its territory as established by its boundaries before the Six-Day War in 1967 in addition to the territories of the Golan Heights, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip that it has since annexed and/or currently controls. While the Gaza Strip has been governed by Palestinians since Israel’s withdrawal, Israel nonetheless considers it part of its territory.
- Territory annexed or controlled by Israel since 1967 is subject to negotiation but such negotiations must result in (1) the recognition of Israel’s legal rights to statehood and renunciation of any policy calling for an end to the state of Israel, and (2) guarantees against first-strike military attacks on Israel by or from the state to which land will be ceded, whether Syria or a new Palestinian state.
- Israel supports the creation of a new Palestinian state to include all of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank, this and other issues subject to negotiation with a de facto government of Palestine, which for purposes of negotiation must be unified between Hamas and Fatah.
- Until such time as new agreements consistent with the above have been reached, Israel considers any incursion on its current territory, military or otherwise, as a threat to the security of Israel and will be responded to accordingly.
- Israel stands ready to negotiate peace agreements with any of its neighbor states as it has done with Egypt and Jordan. In any event, Israel will meet in good faith and/or take action to defend itself according to the precepts above.
If Israel makes such a policy repeatedly clear to the world community and unwaveringly uses it to guide its decisions and actions, internally to deal with extremists within its own counsels as well as those outside its borders, then a coherent, effective and globally acceptable response, including military action, is possible for virtually any threat to the nation’s security, from rabble rousing at the Syrian boarder, rockets from the Gaza Strip or Lebanon, up to and including the potential or actual development of nuclear weapons by Iran.
It will require unselfish leadership concerned with the welfare of the country instead of its own political power. Admittedly, there is little enough of that in America. But unlike America, Israel’s survival is at stake. It may not be its own worst enemy but it is unfortunately giving aid and comfort to all of them.
Babbling Brooks
I have now and again cited David Brooks, whom I read in The New York Times and see on PBS news, for sometimes reaching absurd conclusions, such has his apparent approval of Donald Trump as a political gadfly, as well as other occasional rationalizations of pro-Republican idiocy. Actually, I have some sympathy for his analytic contortions as he bends over backward toward the social, economic and political right, since I must admit that the institutional left rarely offers much as an acceptable and/or practical alternative. Even the brain-dead leadership of Boehner and McConnell doesn’t make it palatable to endorse the likes of Reid and Pelosi (although she is the only one among them who shows any courage of an occasionally responsible conviction). What annoys me about Brooks is that while he seems very bright and well informed, he often lapses into pseudo-intellectual babble about psychological, neurological and sociological subjects, drawing illogical or at best “blue sky” conclusions.
But on Friday, he hit a very important nail on many temporizing, cowardly heads. I quote his column in its entirety:
By now you have probably heard about Hamza Ali al-Khateeb. He was the 13-year old Syrian boy who tagged along at an anti-government protest in the town of Saida on April 19. He was arrested that day, and the police returned his mutilated body to his family a month later. While in custody, he had apparently been burned, beaten, lacerated and given electroshocks. His jaw and kneecaps were shattered. He was shot in both arms. When his father saw the state of Hamza’s body, he passed out.
The family bravely put video evidence of the torture on the Internet, and Hamza’s martyrdom has rallied the opponents of President Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist regime. But, of course, his torture didn’t come out of nowhere. The regime’s defining act of brutality was the Hama massacre in 1982 when then-President Hafez al-Assad had more than 10,000 Syrians murdered. The U.S. government has designated Syria a state sponsor of terror for 30 consecutive years. The State Department’s Human Rights Report has described the regime’s habitual torture techniques, including pulling out fingernails, burning genitals, hyperextending the spine, bending the body around the frame of a wheel while whipping the victim and so on.
Over the past several weeks, Bashar al-Assad’s regime has killed more then 1,000 protesters and jailed at least 10,000 more, according to Syrian human rights groups. Human Rights Watch has described crimes against humanity in the town of Dara’a, where boys have been mutilated and men massacred.
All governments do bad things, and Middle East dictatorships do more than most. But the Syrian government is one of the world’s genuinely depraved regimes. Yet for all these years, Israel has been asked to negotiate with this regime, compromise with this regime and trust that this regime will someday occupy the heights over it in peace.
For 30 years, the Middle East peace process has been predicated on moral obtuseness, an unwillingness to face the true nature of certain governments. World leaders have tried sweet-talking Syria, calling Bashar al-Assad a friend (Nancy Pelosi) or a reformer (Hillary Clinton). In 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy invited Assad to be the guest of honor at Frances’ Bastille Day ceremonies — a ruthless jailer celebrating the storming of a jail.
For 30 years, diplomats and technocrats have flown to Damascus in the hopes of “flipping” Syria–– turning into a pro-Western, civilized power. It would be interesting to know what they were thinking. Perhaps some of them were so besotted with their messianic abilities that they thought they had the power to turn a depraved regime into a normal regime. Perhaps some of them were so wedded to the materialistic mind-set that they thought a regime’s essential nature could be altered with a magical mix of incentives and disincentives.
Perhaps some of them were simply morally blind. They were such pedantic technocrats, so consumed by the legalisms of the peace process, that they no longer possessed the capacity to recognize the moral nature of the regime they were dealing with, or to understand the implications of its nature.
In any case, their efforts were doomed. In fact, the current peace process is doomed because of the inability to make a categorical distinction. There are some countries in the region that are not nice, but they are normal — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. But there are other governments that are fundamentally depraved. Either as a matter of thugishness (Syria) or ideology (Hamas), they reject the full humanity of other human beings. They believe it is proper and right to kill innocents. They can never be part of a successful negotiation because they undermine the universal principles of morality.
It doesn’t matter how great a law professor or diplomat you are. It doesn’t matter how masterly you sequence the negotiations or what magical lines you draw on the map. There won’t be peace as long as depraved regimes are part of the picture. That’s why it’s crazy to get worked into a lather about who said what about the 1967 border. As long as Hamas and the Assad regime are in place, the peace process is going nowhere, just as it’s gone nowhere for lo these many years.
That’s why it’s necessary, especially at this moment in history, to focus on the nature of regimes, not only the boundaries between them. To have a peaceful Middle Ease, it was necessary to get rid of Saddam’s depraved regime in Iraq. It will be necessary to try to get rid of Qaddafi’s depraved regime in Libya. It’s necessary, as everybody but the Obama administration publicly acknowledges, to see Assad toppled. It will be necessary to marginalize Hamas. It was necessary to abandon the engagement strategy that Barack Obama campaigned on and embrace the cautious regime-change strategy that is his current doctrine.
The machinations of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are immaterial. The Arab reform process is the peace process.
While I agree wholeheartedly with Brooks’ commentary in this case, it does however lack even a hint as to how to accomplish the list of “necessities.” Surely he is not suggesting that the way in which we got rid of Saddam (a pre-emptive war based on false pretexts and incompetent planning) was acceptable either in strategy or execution. And I have no idea (and I suspect neither does he) what it means to “marginalize Hamas.” Nor does he even mention Yemen. In any event, even if you don’t start from the premise of what Brooks calls “universal principles of morality” and rather accept that moral judgments can be relative rather than absolute, for all issues, there are nevertheless lines on the scale of moral acceptability that need to be drawn and that when crossed require certainty, courage and commitment to right the wrong.
Beyond the Western temporizing that has supported the depravity of Middle Eastern regimes, and its impact on the continuous ineffectiveness of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, that’s the larger message I took from the Brooks that yesterday flowed crisp and clear.
Guns, Butter and Teachers
In the days of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, we had much discussion about whether America could afford both “guns and butter” which meant our ability to fund a war while providing social services for those in need. Today, with our economy having been plundered by the greed, corruption and incompetence of banks and investment houses, with the government pouring money borrowed against the future into trying to rebuild our middle class while maintaining some semblance of social responsibility for the poor (at least on the Democratic side of the Congressional aisle), we worry more than anything else about the nation’s dangerously growing debt. In neither era does education rank very high on the list of concerns about which we are willing to spend very much money.
Maybe that’s why we are so dumb as not to recognize “the high cost of low teacher salaries” which is the title of an article written by Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari, founders of 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving our children’s education. They offer a startlingly simple insight and conclusion with which even the most hawkish government budget cutter would have trouble arguing. I reproduce it below because I think it should be read and hopefully thought about by everyone:
When we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefit plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.
And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.
Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.
We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates. This will take some doing.
At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible.
So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet. For Erik Benner, an award-winning history teacher in Keller, Tex., money has been a constant struggle. He has two children, and for 15 years has been unable to support them on his salary. Every weekday, he goes directly from Trinity Springs Middle School to drive a forklift and Floor and Décor. He works until 11 every night, then gets up and starts all over again. Does this look like “A Plan,” either on the state or federal level?
We’ve been working with public school teachers for 10 years; every spring, we see many of the best teachers leave the profession. They’re mowed down by the long hours, low pay, the lack of support and respect.
Imagine a novice teacher, thrown into an urban school, told to teach five classes a day, with up to 40 students each. At the year’s end, if test scores haven’t risen enough, he or she is called a bad teacher. For college graduates who have other options, this kind of pressure, for such low pay, doesn’t make much sense. So every year 20 percent of teachers in urban districts quit. Nationwide, 46 percent of teachers quit before their fifth year. The turnover costs the United States $7.34 billion yearly. The effect within schools — especially those in urban communities where turnover is highest — is devastating.
But we can reverse course. In the next 10 years, over half the nation’s nearly 3.2 million public school teachers will become eligible for retirement. Who will replace them? How do we attract and keep the best minds in the profession?
People talk about accountability, measurements, tenure, test scores and pay for performance. These questions are worthy of debate, but are secondary to recruiting and training teachers and treating them fairly. There is no silver bullet that will fix every school in America, but until we solve the problem of teacher turnover, we don’t have a chance.
Can we do better? Can we generate “A Plan”? Of course.
The consulting firm McKinsey recently examined how we might attract and retain a talented teaching force. The study compared the treatment of teachers here and in the three countries that perform best on standardized tests: Finland, Singapore and South Korea.
Turns out these countries have an entirely different approach to the profession. First, the governments in these countries recruit top graduates to the profession. (We don’t.) In Finland and Singapore they pay for training. (We don’t.) In terms of purchasing power, South Korea pays teachers on average 250 percent of what we do.
And most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvement is needed, the school receives support and development, not punishment. Accordingly, turnover in these countries is startlingly low. In South Korea, it’s 1 percent per year. In Finland, it’s 2 percent. In Singapore, 3 percent.
McKinsey polled 900 top-tier American college students and found that 68 percent would consider teaching if salaries started at $65,000 and rose to a minimum of $150,000. Could we do this? If we’re committed to “winning the future,” we should. If any administration is capable of tackling this, it’s the current one. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan understand the centrality of teachers and have said that improving our education system begins and ends with great teachers. But world-class education costs money.
For those who say, “How do we pay for this?” — well, how are we paying for three concurrent wars? How did we pay for the interstate highway system? Or the bailout of the savings and loans in 1989 and that of the investment banks in 2008? How did we pay for the equally ambitious project of sending Americans to the moon? We had the vision and we had the will and we found a way.
This not a tale told by some union flack, trying to protect teachers’ jobs regardless of their inabilities. It is a very simple, and I believe undeniable proposition that our children’s education will be only as good as our teachers, who will be only as good as how well we compensate and support them.
I hope we all remember this when the next imbecile in Congress, a state capitol, a city government or on a local school board starts ranting about cutting teachers’ salaries.
No Trump
Isn’t it time for the media to stop giving a second’s worth of time or an inch of space to Donald Trump as a candidate for president? Is there no idiocy that our so-called journalists will not pursue for a headline?
Trump has no intention of actually running for president and is simply using the media to further his never-ending public relations campaign on behalf of himself. (Duh!) As stupid as his social, political and economic comments invariably are, neither he nor the media can possibly be so clueless as to think that even the dysfunctional Republicans will nominate him, nor so dumb as not to realize that his obvious egomaniacal inability to deal with criticism (witness his scowling anger at the predictable jokes about him made at the recent White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, an event where roasted personalities are the main dish) would end his run before the first caucus has caucused. His personal life, especially his finances, cannot withstand even the most cursory examination.
He is an inveterate liar about the one thing he trumpets the loudest — his business success. He doesn’t make money “the old fashioned way.” He inherited it — a multimillion dollar real estate fortune left to him by his father, which he has built into far larger holdings using other people’s money, most if not all of which he would be hard pressed to repay. He hates The New York Times because they periodically run articles that deny his claim of being “a billionaire many times over.” As even the smallest of businessmen knows, your net worth is the sum of what you own minus what you owe. The Times often reminds us that while Trump may indeed have billions in assets, he also has billions in debt. His net worth is nothing near what he claims. And the only reason the banks bailed him out of bankruptcy some years ago is that he owed them so much money which in fact he couldn’t repay, they in turn couldn’t afford to write off their bad loans to him. That’s probably still true today, which explains why he will never release any independent accountant’s analysis of his personal balance sheet.
Personally, he is so crass and lacking in class that he makes the bourgeoisie seem like royalty. He would look better if he shaved off that imbecilic hair-do and wore one of those flat, hard-edged toupees you often see lying on the heads of guys who can’t afford a good one. Not even his tailor-made suits and shirts nor his silk ties can hide the fact that he is simply a slob. A friend of mine who sat at a dinner table with Trump at an event a few years ago listened to him speculating whether he should bother to marry the woman to whom he was very publicly engaged since, as he pointed out to all within earshot, he was already getting plenty of sex from her and marriage would only make it harder for him to see all the other women who want him. (It reminded me of the joke about some bimbo offering Trump oral sex and him responding, “That’s great for you but what’s in it for me?”)
Politically, his flip-flopping makes Mitt Romney look intractably consistent. Trump was a Democrat before he was a Republican, pro-choice before he became anti-abortion, and a big fan of President Obama before he declared him among the worst presidents ever. And these are just among the most obvious of his Tea Party pandering changes of mind. I’m sure a little research would reveal many more changes but certainly no mind.
Contrary to David Brooks’ ridiculous comments about Trump, claiming that he taps into people’s very real and understandable concerns and concluding that he wouldn’t want to live in a country that didn’t have someone like Trump, I believe Trump represents much of what has become wrong with America — a society that more and more worships wealth and notoriety regardless of whether or not it creates anything of value and celebrates pure selfishness and greed regardless of their immoral consequences, with a media that endorses it in this case by giving credence to the moronic ranting of a hypocrite.
I know of no self-respecting Republican who takes Trump seriously. Republicans have proven themselves willing endorsers of ignorant, loud-mouthed, demagogic candidates, but most of them seem to wish Trump, and the media coverage of him, would just go away. On this, if little else, I agree with them completely. Although the one good thing about giving Trump the publicity he so desperately seeks is that every time he opens his mouth, at least a few more people realize what an asshole he is.
Finally, I am not unaware of the irony that at the end of the day, Trump has suckered me. Having begun with the premise that nobody should give him any time of any day, I have wasted the better part of a morning on him. As my mother would say, “Feh!”
Of This and That
I expect it from men, but few things look and sound more ugly than a loud-mouthed woman wearing a baseball cap, bellowing with raucous laughter in a sports bar.
Most members of Congress seem so dumb because they are.
The current state of American democracy makes the best case for other forms of government.
Do the people running the New York Yankees realize how bad it looks, game after game, to see all those ridiculously overpriced field level seats glaringly empty.
Of all the stupidity rampant in the coverage of personalities by the American media, nothing these days out-trumps Trump.
In the American version of “The King’s Speech,” Geoffrey Rush would be teaching Barack Obama to stop dropping his “g”s and slurring his words to sound more folksy; to get rid of that arrogant tilt to his upraised chin; and to eliminate the almost constant use of the word “my” as in “my administration” or “my cabinet” or “my agenda” or “my whatever.”
You can learn more about baseball from one game broadcast by Bobby Valentine and Orel Hershiser on ESPN than from a whole season of babbling by Tim McCarver on Fox.
I think Sarah Palin speaks her mind, what little there is of it, but does Michele Bachmann really believe the crap that comes out of her mouth?
It’s hard to imagine two less inspiring congressional leaders than Harry Reid and John Boehner.
When it comes to professional sports, hitting a baseball may be the hardest feat; football the most dangerous to your health; basketball the most overrated by putting acrobatics above accuracy; soccer the most demanding of acting ability; car racing, track and field, tennis, golf, swimming and diving among the most repetitious; but no sport is more difficult, requiring a greater level of skill, energy, strength and dexterity, with more excitement per second than ice hockey.
And to conclude with something having nothing to do with sports or politics, the reason we love dogs so much is that they’re the only members of a family (certainly including me) that’s never a pain in the ass.