Letters, 2012, Into the Home Stretch, July 19, August 22, August 29, September 2

 

Two letters to the editor in the July 14 Register-Guard demonstrate how Fox News and company control the minds of their loyal viewers and listeners.

Lois Oleson wants President Obama to turn over his birth certificate, “hidden” records from his university years, his “legal” Social Security number, and how he received his college aid because (according to her) he applied as a foreigner.

Marcia Maclaine paints President Obama a tyrant. According to her, liberal government is the enemy of the people. She asserts that the president “demonizes the successful and makes impossible promises to the gullible. He has borrowed this country so deeply into debt that generations of Americans still unborn will be buried under it.” Does she know about our huge wealth inequality gap? That from 1932 to President Reagan in 1986 our highest marginal income tax rate varied between 50 to 91%? How much public debt Reagan and the two Bushes racked up? Must we genuflect to the Koch brothers and billionaires of their ilk, say: “Do what you will. Decide my future, the fate of our country, the existence of our planet.”

To win elections, corporate oligarchs direct the public’s anger about the consequences of their selfish actions at institutions and opposition leaders that strive to benefit society. They lie. They demonize. It resonates, with the hate-filled radical Right base and with many people who would be hard pressed to name four Twentieth Century U.S. presidents.

Printed July 19, 2012, in the Register-Guard

***

Marcia Maclaine answered back.

***

As I watched C-SPAN recently the Huffington Post reporter made a stunningly revealing statement.

After she had made the tedious plea for Mitt Romney’s income tax returns, a caller asked her why President Obama had paid taxes on only part of his income.

She replied, “I’m not really familiar with Obama’s taxes.”

There it is. The conservative needs to be examined through a microscope while the socialist get a pass.

Maybe it’s time we do a little research on the man who’s running our country. The mainstream media won’t do it. Read his books, look into the backgrounds of his advisers, let’s see his college transcripts and thesis (never mind, he won’t release those).

Don’t blindly assume that because the socialist calls him a Democrat, he must be the best choice. If he gets a second term he will fulfill his promise to fundamentally transform America – and it won’t be into something better.

Mark Kontny hated Bush’s Patriot Act (letters, July 21), so why would he support a man who not only embraces it but expands it? Harold Titus opined that I can’t name four 20^th century presidents (letters, July 19).

I was born during the Truman administration and can name not only every president after him but every one before him.

More importantly, what do George W. Bush and my memorization abilities have to do with mistrusting a socialist president who changes duly passed laws by executive order in the hopes of improving his re-election chances?

Marcia Maclaine

Printed September 2, 2012, in the Register-Guard

***

It wasn’t just me that opposed the foreign-born Socialist’s opponent and party. Heavens-to-Betsy! The mainstream socialist media!

***

People who vote Republican Party candidates these days into public offices should have conversations with their consciences.

Massive voter disenfranchisement of citizens who vote mostly Democratic,

especially in the swing states Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin, indicates a party dishonest to the core.

Allowing individuals who live mostly on investment income (interest, dividends, capital gains) to be taxed at a lower rate than people who live on a salary indicates a party that doesn’t represent most Americans.

The wealth gap between the very rich and the rest of us has become as

extreme as it was just before the Great Depression. The top marginal personal income tax rate between 1932 and 1986, as high as 94% and never lower than 50%, corrected that. It has been 35% for the past 12 years! Republican politicians refuse to raise it. They want to lower it!

“In 2011, corporate profits hit their highest level since 1950. … This

hasn’t translated into wage growth or more purchasing power for workers.” – Pat Garofalo.

“According to the Social Security Administration … the average paycheck for working Americans fell again – down over 1% to $26,364 a year. That’s the lowest level it’s been in 11 years.” – Thom Hartmann. Yet Republicans want to cut Medicaid, food stamps, and the minimum wage!

“People of all persuasions lie, but the right has a whole institutional structure of lying that has no counterpoint of the left.” – Paul Krugman.

“There are those who tell the truth. There are those who distort the truth. And then there’s Mitt Romney.” – Eugene Robinson.

“These days, it seems as if there’s not a fact that can’t be ignored,

rejected, or altered if you throw enough cash at it.” – Michael Winship. Does it bother you that not one Republican Party politician or conservative letter writer has condemned the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that permits billionaires to determine most of the content, the quantity, and the frequency of TV political ads?

“The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United

States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.” – Jia Lynn Yang.

“Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible.” – Robert Parry.

The GOP blames Obama for current unemployment, “failed policies,” and massive debt. They refuse to acknowledge the huge carry-over of destructiveness caused by the Bush administration. They say nothing about their unprecedented use of the filibuster in the Senate and their current control of the House of Representatives. “When Republicans like Romney and McConnell talk about the bad economy – they’re bragging!” – Thom Hartmann.

Nearly everything requiring legislation that the Obama administration has proposed after the Recovery Act and the Affordable Care Act became law they have thwarted.

This election is about morality, justice, opportunity to achieve, and conscience. What could be more important?

Printed August 22, 2012, in the Siuslaw News

***

Two local hard-heads had to differ.

***

This is in response to the letter of Aug. 22, “Truth Gap.” The only thing in his letter I would agree with is his last paragraph.

“This election is about morality, justice, opportunity to achieve and conscience.” What could be more important?

The only thing I would add is honest, but where in the world would you find all of this in the Obama, Biden Administration or the Democratic party?

Erich Baumann

Printed August 29, 2012, in the Siuslaw News

***

I’m really getting tired of answering letters such as “Truth Gap” (Aug. 22). Suggesting that “Republicans should have conversations with their consciencies” and calling the Republican Party “dishonest to the core” is more horse manure.

The primary problems today with the United States are twofold: astronomic debt and alarming unemployment coupled with diminishing number of jobs.

Our debt has climbed in the last three years from $5 trillion [wrong] to a current total debt of $16 trillion. In those last three years, President Obama was in charge, President Obama’s words about hope and change have not worked.

On unemployment, in the last 42 months of an Obama Administration, the level is now over 8 percent, and 44 of the 50 states have recorded a sharp increase in unemployment. Of particular note, in the 18- to 25-year-old category, the rate has reached 12.4 percent, and many young Americans, including many college graduates, have had to move back into their parents’ homes. [Which Republican think tank provided these “facts’?]

Finally, the number of jobs available in our country has declined sharply in the last three years of President Obama’s term, except in the government sector.

My conscience is clear and I am supporting the Romney/Ryan ticket.

Joseph A. Raffeto

Printed August 29, 2012, in the Siuslaw News

This correction appeared in the Sept. 1 Siuslaw News paper.

In Joe Raffeto’s letter, “Jobs and Debt” Aug. 29, one of his personal statements was changed due to an editing error. The sentence should have read: “Our debt has climbed in the last three yeas $5 trillion to a current total debt of $16 trillion.”

***

At the Democratic Club’s October meeting I gave a presentation about how in 2004 John Kerry had probably been robbed of carrying Ohio and, consequently, winning the Presidential election. I was greatly concerned that the same thing would happen to President Obama.

After the election I came upon this article on truthout.

***

At around 11:25 pm EST on election night, Karl Rove knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Minutes earlier, Fox News called the key battleground state of Ohio for President Obama, sealing his re-election. But as the network took live shots of jubilant Obama supporters celebrating their victory camped outside the Obama re-election headquarters in Chicago, Karl Rove began building a case against the call his employer network had just made.

Rove explained that when Fox called Ohio, only 74% of the vote was in showing President Obama with a lead of roughly 30,000 votes. But, as Rove contended, with 77% reporting according to the Ohio Secretary of State office, the President’s lead had been slashed to just 991 votes.

“We gotta be careful about calling the thing,” Rove said, “I’d be very cautious about intruding in on this process.”

Rove was supremely confident that the numbers coming in from Ohio throughout the night that favored President Obama weren’t indicative of who would win Ohio when all the votes were ultimately tabulated by the state's computers. With a quarter of the vote still out there, Rove was anticipating a shift to the Right just after 11 pm, which, coincidentally, is exactly what happened in 2004.

That year, John Kerry and the entire nation were watching Ohio just after the 11pm hour. Florida had just been called for George W. Bush and according to the Electoral College math whoever won Ohio would win the election. And considering that exit polls from the state showed John Kerry with a substantial lead, there were a lot of tense moments for Karl Rove and the Republicans that night.

Then the clock struck 11:14pm, and the servers counting the votes in Ohio crashed. Election officials had planned for this sort of thing to happen and already contracted with a company in Chattanooga, Tennessee called SMARTech to be the failsafe should the servers in Ohio go down.

As journalist Craig Unger lays bare in his book, Boss Rove, SMARTech was drenched in Republican politics. One of the early founders of the company was Mercer Reynolds who used to be the finance chairman of the Republican Party. SMARTech’s top client was none other than the Bush-Cheney campaign itself and SMARTech also did work for Jeb Bush and the Republican National Committee. And it was Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, who ensured that SMARTech received the contract to count votes on election night should the servers go down, which they did at exactly 11:14pm.

Sixty long seconds later the servers came back up in Ohio, but now with vote rerouted through SMARTech in Chattanooga. And, coincidentally, Bush’s prospects for re-election were suddenly a lot brighter. The vote totals that poured into the system from SmartTECH's computer in Chattanooga were flipping the exit polls on their head. The lead Kerry had in the exit polls had magically reversed by more than 6%, something unheard of in any other nation in the developed world, giving Bush the win in Ohio and the presidency for another four years.

Unger further explains in his book that the only independent analysis of what happened in Ohio was done by Richard Hayes Phillips and published in the book, Witness to a Crime. Phillips and his team analyzed more than 120,000 ballots, 127 polls books, and 141 signature books from Ohio’s 2004 election.

Phillips found zero irregularities in vote totals from all the counties that reported results before the servers crashed at 11:14pm. But of the fourteen counties that came in after the crash connected Ohio's election computers to SmartTECH's computers in Chattanooga, every single one of them showed voter irregularities - that all favored George W. Bush.

For example, consider Cleveland’s Fourth Ward. In 2000, Al Gore won 95% of that ward's vote. But in 2004, the county reported its results after the 11:14 pm crash, and it showed that Kerry had only won 59% of the vote – a 35% drop without any explanation. There were several other abnormalities across Ohio’s post-server crash that delivered the state to Bush.

John Kerry never protested the election and to this day, these 2004 voter abnormalities have never been addressed.

So the question is: on election night this year, when Karl Rove was protesting the call his network had just made in Ohio, was Rove anticipating a wave of unpredicted vote totals to swing the election back to Mitt Romney after a statewide server crash, just as had happened in 2004?

Perhaps. He did make the point that the race was about to drastically narrow according to the Secretary of State’s office. And as The Free Press reports, a number of odd similarities with 2004 began occurring in Ohio this year just after the 11pm hour once again:

“Curiously, the Ohio Secretary of State’s vote tabulation website went down at 11:13pm, as reported by Free Press election protection website monitors, and mentioned by Rove on the news. This was one minute earlier than the time on election night 2004 -- when Ohio votes were outsourced to Chattanooga, Tennessee -- and then the vote flipped for Bush…This time, the Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) vote tabulation site went down as on election night as well. In his rant on Fox, Rove argued that Fox News should not confirm Ohio for Obama until votes came in from the southwest Ohio GOP strongholds of Delaware, Butler and Warren counties and suburban Cincinnati. It was after the crash of the secretary of state’s site in 2004 that improbable vote totals came in from Republican counties in southwest Ohio – particularly Butler, Clermont, and Warren counties. These three counties provided more than Bush’s entire Ohio victory margin of 119,000.”

Only this time, when the servers came back up, the votes never flipped. President Obama’s lead held and he went on to win, while Karl Rove - and Mitt Romney - watched in slack-jawed amazement.

We know there was a parade of Conservative talking heads in the days before the election predicting a landslide victory for Mitt Romney. Is it because they lived in a bubble, lacking pollster Nate Silver’s facts and arithmetic that actually showed the President winning in a landslide? Could it be that Rove’s election night freak-out was just a result of this same Election Day ignorance held by all Republicans? Or was Rove genuinely shocked by what he was seeing because he knew the fix was in, just like in 2004, and there was no way President Obama was going to win re-election?

And if that’s the case, why did the plan to steal the election not work?

Here’s where the story gets really interesting.

Just a few weeks before Election Day, the hacktivist group Anonymous issued a video statement against Karl Rove. Anonymous is notorious for numerous cyber actions against the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the Recording Industry of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and even the Church of Scientology.

In the video released prior to Election Day, Anonymous warns Karl Rove that he’s being watched. “We know that you will attempt to rig the election of Mitt Romney to your favor,” a black-robed figure in a Guy Fawkes mask says in the video. “We will watch as your merry band of conspirators try to achieve this overthrow of the United States government.”

The figure then warns Rove that Anonymous is “watching and monitoring all your servers,” and goes on to say, “We want you to know that we are watching you, waiting for you to make this mistake of thinking you can rig this election to your favor…If we catch you we will turn over all of this data to the appropriate officials in the hopes that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Then, just two days after Election Day, as the Republican Party was in full-blown despair and Karl Rove was trying to figure out what went wrong, Anonymous released a press statement claiming it did indeed prevent an attempt by Rove to steal the election for Mitt Romney.

The statement reads, “We began following the digital traffic of one Karl Rove…After a rather short time, we identified the digital structure of Karl’s operation and even that of his ORCA. This was an easy task in that barn doors were left open and the wind swept us inside.”The “ORCA” that Anonymous is referring to in the press release is a massive, high-tech get-out-the-vote system created by the Romney campaign this year that will keep tabs on potential voters and coordinate with operatives to target who has and hasn’t voted yet on Election Day.

Romney’s Communications Director Gail Gitcho bragged about how sophisticated ORCA is saying, “At 5 o’clock when the exit polls come out, we won’t pay attention to that. We will have had much more scientific information based on the political operation we have set up.” In other words, ORCA will know who won Ohio better than any exit polls.

But, according to Anonymous, ORCA had nothing to do with getting out the vote and everything to do with rigging the vote.

“We coded and created, what we call The Great Oz. A targeted password protected firewall that we tested and refined over the past weeks. We placed this code on more than one of the digital tunnels and their destination that Karl's not so smart worker bees planned to use on election night.”

Anonymous alleges these “digital tunnels” were leading to servers in three different states. The release goes on to detail what happened on election night as Rove’s operatives attempted to access these tunnels. “We watched as Karl's weak corrupters repeatedly tried to penetrate The Great Oz. These children of his were at a loss-how many times and how many passwords did they try-exactly 105.”

“Karl’s speared ORCA whale was breached, rotting with a strong stench across his playground, unable to be resuscitated,” claims Anonymous.

So might this have really been the reason for Karl Rove’s shock on election night? Under the guise of sophisticated get out the vote operation, had Rove and the Republican Party actually built up a massive system to steal the Ohio election, just like in 2004, only to have it thwarted at the last minute by a group of computer hackers?

If this is true, then the implications are enormous and could take down the entire Republican Party and finally wake Americans up to the fact that our privatized vote system is shockingly flawed and insecure.

In their press release, Anonymous concludes, “We have a warning for Karl – sail again at your own peril. We may just put all the evidence into a tidy little package and give it to a painfully bored nemesis hanging out in a certain embassy in London” (Hartmann and Secks 1-3)

Work cited:

Hartmann, Tom and Sacks, Steve. “Anonymous, Karl Rove and 2012 Election Fix?” Originally, The Daily Take, November 19, 2012. Net.

***

Tom Hartmann added the following:

You need to know this. There are major implications for our elections if recent claims by the hacktivist group Anonymous are indeed true. Last week – Anonymous issued a press release boasting that it successfully blocked an attempt by Karl Rove to steal the election on Election Night. For weeks leading up the election, Republicans have been hyping up a get out the vote system known as ORCA that would have played a big part in Mitt Romney winning the presidency. But Anonymous claims that ORCA wasn't meant to get out the vote, but instead to steal the vote. The hacktivists say they discovered Rove's plot months before the election and learned of the inner workings of ORCA and how it was created to rig the vote in three battleground states. Thus, Anonymous says it built a firewall on Election night that blocked ORCA from manipulating vote totals. That might explain why Karl Rove appeared so shocked on Election Night when Fox News called Ohio for President Obama. Regardless of whether or not Anonymous' claims are true – and if they are true, then evidence should be released - there are still serious problems with our privatized vote system. – Nov. 19, 2012

Letters, 2012, Standing with Obama, March 14, March 24, March 26, May 23

 

Letters, 2011, Allusions to Books, Films, August 20, September 27, October 7, 8, 13, 15, 19, October 24

Sometimes what I see in a movie theater causes me to want to write. What I read that runs counter to what I have learned from personal experience can evoke a written response. What I have written in my first historical novel and literary works that I have had my eighth grade English students read may provide factual basis for arguments I wish to make. Such was the case with this post’s letters.

***

In 1963 civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered in Jackson, Mississippi. That event is noted briefly in “The Help,” a movie about the exploitation of black house maids by racist white middle and upper-class housewives living in Mississippi’s capital.

People of my generation were in their late twenties or early thirties during that pivotal year in our nation’s history. It was no coincidence that most of the folks that watched the film in the local theater the Sunday my wife and I attended had gray and white hair.

I am concerned that younger people, having little or no knowledge of the civil rights struggle of the late 1950’s and the 1960’s, will never see the connection between the white ruling class’s hatred and persecution of blacks at that time and what we are presently experiencing. I speak of the vilification, exploitation, and legislative punishment of our middle and lower economic and social classes by large corporate interests and their legislative lackeys – the Republican Party and certain corporate-bought Democrats.

To squeeze every advantage out of the powerless and near powerless, those controlling the levers of autocratic power must make themselves (and others sympathetic to their agenda) believe that their victims are undeserving of civilized consideration.

This has been a practice the origins of which began before the writing of history.

I urge all folks here in Florence whose hearts are not calcified to view this

remarkable film. There have been times in our history when status-quo injustices are quite suddenly no longer tolerated. Necessary change happens when enough of our citizens, their hearts pierced by inequities, demand it.

        Printed August 20, 2011, in the Siuslaw News

***

I was especially incensed with the film and book Waiting for Superman. Back in May I devoted almost an entire Florence Area Democratic Club meeting to a discussion of the Republican Party’s attack on public education and advocacy of charter schools. Here is the announcement of that meeting.

***

The Florence Area Democratic Club will meet Saturday, May 7, at 11 a.m. in the Siuslaw Public Library’s conference room. Members will receive and analyze information about proposed changes in public education promoted by advocates of charter schools, standardized tests to evaluate teachers, merit pay, and the firing of “bad” teachers. Such proposals were popularized by the recent documentary “Waiting for Superman” and are supported by President Obama’s “Race to the Top” education funding program.

***

The discussion was a disaster. I had planned to have the members discuss too many categories. I hadn’t anticipated that their limited personal experience with public education would restrict them substantially in what they had to offer. I made the mistake initially of asking them to tell briefly what they thought about public schools. Oh, they had their opinions. Their opinions kept coming non-stop. One person would say something that caused another person to want to veer off the track of discussion that I wanted followed. They went all over the place – seven yards wide and one inch deep. The overall result was a miss-mosh of blather. None of the categories I had hoped to examine received a cogent airing.

I had written for myself a detailed outline of the points I wanted to present. A week after the meeting I emailed my outline of all the points to the members. I suspect that the length of the outline persuaded most to decline to read it.

According to Diane Ravitch – an assistant Secretary of Education under President Bill Clinton, a research professor of education at New York University, and a historian of education – this was the message of Waiting for Superman, the book and film.

American public education is a failed enterprise. Its problem isn’t money. Schools already spend too much.

There are major obstacles.

Teachers unions – – contracts define specifically everything

that can happen in a school

Teacher tenure – hard to get rid of poor teachers

Nobody’s job or career is heavily dependent on school performance.

Current school personnel are generally not interested in making large-scale changes in what they do.

Failing public schools follow the same strategies year after year.

Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions.

Students drop out because the schools fail them. They could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers.

They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones.

Extend the school day and the school year.

The only hope for many children is escape from public schools to charter schools.

Here were the discussion topics I had hoped would broaden the club members’ perspectives.

What is an excellent teacher?

How well can a principal evaluate a teacher?

What should be done about “bad” teachers?

Should student performance, school performance, and teacher effectiveness be measured primarily by standardized test results?

Should teachers be paid based on merit rather than by a salary schedule?

Are “poor” teachers the prime reason why certain schools don’t meet expected standards?

Here was Ravitch’s criticism of the book/film.

Film does not present the successful side of public education

No successful public school teacher or principal or superintendent appears

      There is no mention of any successful public schools

      There is no mention of union activities to mentor struggling teachers and how unions               counsel such teachers out of the profession

       There is a constant drumbeat on the theme of public school failure

Film gives misleading statistics – misuse of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) information

Facts about charter schools:

CREDO study evaluated student progress on math tests in half of the nation’s 5,000 charter schools.

        17% were superior to a matched traditional public school.

        37% were worse.

        Remaining 46% had gains no different from public schools.

Guggenheim, the film’s producer, paid no attention to charter schools run by incompetent leaders or corporations concerned mainly about making money.

Charter chains were mired in unsavory real estate deals.

Charter school students were getting lower scores than neighborhood public schools.

Charter principals were indicted for embezzlement.

Charters blurred the line between church and state.

Charter leaders were paid $300,000-$400,000 a year to oversee small numbers of schools and students.

Successful charter schools featured in the film are heavily subsidized by philanthropists.

The film claimed that teachers are the most important factor in determining student achievement.

Can overcome disadvantages of poverty, homelessness, joblessness, poor nutrition, absent parents, etc.

Consensus of high-quality analyses:

Teachers account statistically for around 10-20% of achievement outcomes.

Teachers are the most important factor within schools.

About 60% of achievement is explained by nonschool factors:

students’ backgrounds, families, income.

The film skirts the issue of poverty and other handicaps.

Shows only families that are intact and dedicated to helping their children succeed

No reference to the many charter schools that enroll disproportionately small numbers of children who are English-language learners or have disabilities

Poverty is the “single biggest correlate with low academic achievement.

Children who grow up in poverty get less medical care, worse nutrition, less exposure to knowledge and vocabulary, and are more likely to be exposed to childhood diseases, violence, drugs, and abuse.

They are more likely to have relatives who are incarcerated.

They are more likely to live in economic insecurity, not knowing if there is enough money for a winter coat or food or housing.

This affects their academic performance. They tend to have lower attendance and to be sick more than children whose parents are well- off.

The film 

        claims that public schools can’t get rid of bad teachers.

        claims only 1 in 2,500 teachers loses his or her teaching certificate

        doesn’t mention that 50% of those who enter teaching leave within 5 years, mostly                   because of

            1) poor working conditions

            2) lack of adequate resources

            3) stress of dealing with difficult children and disrespectful parents

Some teachers “fire themselves’; others are fired before they get tenure.

The film is a “powerful weapon on behalf of those championing the ‘free market’ and privatization. The charter schools and testing reform movement was started by “right- wing think tanks like the Heritage foundation” for the purpose of destroying public education and teachers’ unions.

II believe that President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program is not an improvement of George W. Bush’s “Leave No Child Behind.” It Invited states to compete for $4.3 billion. To qualify to compete, states had to agree to evaluate teachers by student test scores, award bonuses to teachers based on student scores, permit more privately managed charter schools, “turn around” low-performing schools by such methods as firing the staffs and closing the schools

Emphasis is upon testing, accountability, and choice

It is ill-advised

It goes even beyond No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in its reliance on test scores as the ultimate measure of educational quality.

It asserts that teachers alone – not students or families or economic status – are wholly responsible for whether test scores go up or down

Teachers rightfully feel scapegoated for conditions that are often beyond their control. They see these measures as an attack on their profession.

Drilling children on how to take tests

        discourages innovation and creativity,

        punishes divergent thinking,

        prioritizes skills over knowledge

Endless hours devoted to test preparation deaden students’ interest in school.

Curriculum will be narrowed even more than NCLB because of the link between wages and scores.

***

By September I was ready to express in print my disdain for Waiting for Suoerman and the political motives behind charter schools.

***

Tom Brokaw (Opinion, Sept. 23) needs to delve first into the specifics of reactionary public education “reform” before espousing his celebrity opinion.

Epitomized by the recent documentary, Waiting for Superman, opponents of public education – principally the Republican Party and large corporate interests -- have emphasized superior student achievement test results in specific foreign countries. They have blamed American school teachers, administrators, and teachers unions for our nation’s unfavorable ranking. They advocate certain “reform” measures that would simultaneously destroy faculty unity and individual job security and impede student academic development. They have promoted charter schools to benefit private enterprise interests.

They say that the damage done to students by poverty can be overcome by “great” teachers. Simple? Simplistic!

A student is prepared to learn when he is well-fed, well-rested, and fully supported by two parents engaged in his educational development. These critics do not connect the decline of student achievement scores with the increased difficulty middle-class families experience trying to remain economically functional. They say nothing about the loss of decent-paying jobs and unremitting unemployment. They do not mention that more than 20 percent of our nation’s children live in poverty!

Finland is currently ranked number one in student achievement. Finland’s teaching force is completely unionized. Finland rarely tests its students, its national curriculum is broad-based (not restricted to the basic skills of reading and math), and fewer than 5 percent of its children live in poverty.

        Printed September 27, 2011, in the Register-Guard

***

In the fall I announced to the club members the publication of my first historical novel, Crossing the River, a narrative of the experiences of combatants in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, events that began the American Revolution. I saw correlation of elements in the book with our nation’s current governance.

***

When General Thomas Gage sent 700 elite redcoat soldiers off to Concord, Massachusetts, April 19, 1775, to seize and destroy illegally stockpiled gunpowder and weaponry, he was utilizing force to attempt to quash provincial disobedience. At stake was the issue of who should govern, who should have the power to determine how the people of the province were to exist.

Massachusetts was an English colony, a possession, a capital asset. The land and its people were profit-making resources. The King and Parliament were willing to wage war to preserve their power to dictate.

Periodically, oppressed people, unconscionably exploited, attempt to take away that power. Dictators fall, revolutions occur, corrupt political parties are voted out of office, corporate behemoths are broken up or vigorously regulated.

Our century’s Lexington and Concord time has arrived. We, the people, must wrest the power to govern away from our greedy capitalists and their bought politicians, who profess to own us. Like King George III, our rulers are determined to maximize their power to exploit. We must be vigilant; we must be vociferous; we must support courageous demonstrations like Occupy Wall Street. We must neither permit ourselves to be deluded by dishonest characterizations and deliberate falsehoods nor be fearful nor be divided in purpose by social, racial, ethnic, or religious wedge issues. We must win back the Constitutional levers of governance designed for us by our forebearers and then utilize them to generate the blessings that a free, empathetic nation bestows.

        Printed October 7, 2011, in the Yuba City Appeal Democrat

October 8, 2011, in the Siuslaw News and Seattle Times

October 13, 2011, in the Eugene Weekly

October 15, 2011, in The World

October 19, 2011, in the Coast Lake News

***

And, again …

***

In my historical novel Crossing the River, a distraught Massachusetts mother, reacting to the maiming and killing of militiamen and British soldiers April 19, 1775, exclaims: “The ambition-driven wickedness of callous men!”

Today?

David and Charles Koch, Rupert Murdock, the Walton family, Thomas J. Donohue, Karl Rove, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Ben Nelson, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News lineup.

Universal, single-payer health care? Hell no. Preserve the planet? No. Shut down our out-of-control war machine? No. Assist the indigent, the elderly, the disabled? No. Adjust our system of capitalism so that ordinary people may earn incomes more commensurate with the value of what they produce? No.

I wonder which side my former Orinda CA English students -- those 13 and 14-year old, bright-faced innocents whose sensibilities were aroused reading The Pearl, To Kill a Mockingbird, Black Boy, Flowers for Algernon, and The Diary of Anne Frank -- take?

Are we that stupid, are we that selfish, are we that malleable that we would allow greedy capitalists and bought, dissembling politicians destroy our children’s future? Hear the “occupy” protesters, speaking for me, shout emphatically, “No!”

Printed October 24, 2011, in the Register-Guard

Note: The RG editor took out the “Donohue,” “Nelson,” “Walker,” and “Kasich” names in the third paragraph and changed the wording of the first line in the last paragraph.

 

Letters, 2011, Fighting the Party of No, February 23, March 14, 15, May 7, May 24, July 16, July 29, 30

The beginning of 2011.

Nobody in the Florence Area Democratic Club was willing to take on the job of Chair. I decided to do it for two more years resolving not to serve a year longer.

The Republicans now controlled the House of Representatives. McConnell’s use of the Senate filibuster would no longer be necessary. “The Party of No” could now stop everything beneficial that Obama and the Congressional Democrats wanted to pass. How could this have happened?

***

To garner enough votes to service the wants of corporate America and the very rich, Republican leaders must exploit universal weaknesses of character. The avaricious? The authoritarian rule-maker? The get-off-your-lazy-duff critic? Check. How to convince working class men and women that scapegoats, not unregulated capitalism, have deprived them of the “American Dream”? Magnify fear, channel anger, vilify. Convince them that servicing the needs of ordinary people is tyrannical governance. Turn reality on its head.

Eric Alterman (The Nation, Feb. 3): “Conservatives are floating the notion that states should be allowed to declare bankruptcy to escape their pension obligations.” They want to destroy public employee unions, “just about the only institutions with sufficient financial and organizational muscle to make a difference in close elections.”

The Far Right’s second-prong attack scapegoats public employees, living high (erroneously) on their wages and benefits.

William Rivers Pitt (truthout.com, Feb. 18): “Wall Street doesn’t have to sacrifice, the ‘defense’ department doesn’t have to sacrifice, insurance companies don’t have to sacrifice, banks don’t have to sacrifice, but you absolutely have to eat a pay and benefits cut, right?”

Enter Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, one step ahead of the Republican governors of Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and Florida.

Claiming the need to cover a state budget deficit that he himself created providing corporate tax breaks, Gov. Walker wants to pass legislation that would substantially reduce public employee benefits and collective bargaining.

Thousands of public employees have been protesting in Wisconsin’s capital. Rush Limbaugh’s take: “Whiners! … Freeloaders! … You’re on the side of the protesters or on the side of the country.” Baloney.

Printed February 23, 2011, in the Siuslaw News

***

The GOP was now threatening to shut the government down. Read this information about government shutdowns.

***

(from Wikipedia)

Under the separation of powers created by the United States Constitution, the appropriation and control of government funds for the United States is the sole responsibility of the United States Congress. Congress begins this process through proposing an appropriation bill aimed at determining the levels of spending for each federal department and government program. The finalized version of the bill is then voted upon by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. After it passes both chambers, it proceeds to the President of the United States to sign the bill into law.

Government shutdowns tend to occur when there is a disagreement over budget allocations before the existing [appropriations] cycle ends. Such disagreements can come from the President – through vetoing any finalized appropriation bills they receive – or from one or both chambers of Congress, often from the political party that has control over that chamber. A shutdown can be temporarily avoided through the enactment of a continuing resolution (CR), which can extend funding for the government for a set period, during which time negotiations can be made to supply an appropriation bill that all involved parties of the political deadlock on spending can agree upon. However, a CR can be blocked by the same parties if there are issues with the content of the resolution bill that either party has a disagreement upon, in which case a shutdown will inevitably occur if a CR cannot be passed by the House, Senate or President. Congress may, in rare cases attempt to override a presidential veto of an appropriation bill or CR, but such an act requires there to be majority support of two-thirds of both chambers.

***

WASHINGTON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Senior U.S. Senate Democrats slammed Republicans on Sunday for a “reckless” threat to shut down the government amid deepening political posturing on both sides over federal spending and the budget deficit.

The House of Representatives voted on Saturday to cut federal spending by $61 billion through September. But the Republican measure will likely die because Democrats who control the Senate oppose it and President Barack Obama vowed to veto it.

Obama has outlined his own plan for less-severe spending cuts in 2012, and has warned that tightening the belt too much too soon could harm the slow economic recovery.

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer criticized House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell over talk among some Republicans that they would rather shut down the government than relent on their spending cut demands.

“Unfortunately Speaker Boehner seems to be on a course that would inevitably lead to a shutdown ... That’s reckless,” [Democratic Senator Chuck] Schumer said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

“We have said shutdown is off the table ... Boehner, Mitch McConnell, other Republican leaders have not taken it off the table when asked, and there are lots of people on the hard right clamoring for a shutdown.”

With the government funded only through March 4, the government could run out of money if lawmakers fail to act, but both sides have been urging compromise. That was seen as the likeliest outcome, even by one of the House’s new breed of small-government, deficit-slashing freshman Republicans.

..

The House bill is more than an effort to cut the deficit. Republicans are also trying to use the budget process to starve government programs such as healthcare and regulation of Wall Street and the environment that they have long opposed.

Republican Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, downplayed the shutdown scenario on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program.

“We’re not looking for a government shutdown, but at the same time we’re also not looking at rubber stamping these really high, elevated spending levels that Congress blew through the joint two years ago,” Ryan said (Drawbaugh 1-3)

Work cited:

Drawbaugh, Kevin. UPDATE 1-Gov't Shutdown Threat Looms over U.S. Budget Fight.” Reuters, February 29, 2011. Net. https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-budget/update-1-govt-shutdown-threat-looms-over-u-s-budget-fight-idUSN2018563820110220

***

The GOP has always been the enemy of labor unions. In the following letter I highlight their intention to damage severely public employee unions.

***

You have to wonder about Republican Party office holders like the spate of recently elected governors that are presently hell-bent on destroying public employee unions. Coming out of their mothers’ wombs, they absolutely missed out inheriting the empathy, honesty, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I gene! Team players for our morally corrupt multi-national corporations, which don’t give a damn about 98 percent of our citizen’s physical, mental and economic well-being, our country’s economic stability, world peace, and our planet’s very existence, these politicians are motivated solely by monetary gain and the rush of political combat and the attainment of dictatorial power.

You have to wonder just as hard about the working class people and seniors who vote these sociopaths into office. How the GOP and their media mouthpieces play them! Paul Krugman observes: “A large segment of the population … is completely impervious to rational argument and the presentation of evidence. In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.”

Has the enemy among us finally triumphed? Is the outrage manifested in Wisconsin a turning of the tide? We’ll know very soon. Will the President and Senate and House Democrats cave to draconian GOP budget cut demands? Or will they say to Boehner and McConnell, “Shutting the government down and its cruel consequences are entirely on you”?

Printed March 14, 2011, in the Register-Guard

March 15, 2011, in The World

***

Virginia Conley called me to compliment me on the above letter. We had communicated several months before. She lives in Eugene and is 90. A former school teacher, she is a very strong liberal activist. She taught an “open classroom” that encouraged students to think critically. She does not approve of how schools teach students now. George Myers and Ron Preisler complimented me via email.

In the next letter I expressed some hope that voters might be waking up to Republican Party chicanery.

***

How encouraging it is to see registered Republicans criticizing Republican congressmen at their town hall meetings for having voted for Rep. Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan.

I say “encouraging” because it demonstrates that not everything economically and socially detrimental to middle and underclass Americans is being transformed in the minds of the susceptible into examples of “fiscal responsibility,” “free enterprise job creation,” “the protection of taxpayer wallets,” and “the destruction of welfare dependency.”

Most Americans recognize the value of Social Security, Medicare, and the need for some sort of safety net. More and more citizens are conscious now of the huge wealth discrepancy in this country, even though many don’t know yet how that came to be. They know that multi-national corporations are making huge profits, are not creating jobs in this country, and are paying little or no corporate taxes.

It takes a terrible recession, perhaps, and an outlandish deficit reduction plan to wake people up to the fact that the right-wing media machine’s fact-reporting and Republican officer holders’ repeated use of loaded word frames like “job killing” and “job creating” are so much smoke-and-mirrors barn sniffle.

What we have in common, regardless of party affiliation, is the desire for fairness and honesty.

        Printed May 7, 2011, in the Siuslaw News

***

I submitted the following letter to the Register-Guard. It was not printed, maybe because of its sarcasm. The World newspaper in Coos Bay printed it.

***

Let us thank our lucky stars that we have the Republican Party on the job making certain that America is the greatest country ever.

Not only are newly elected GOP governors and Republican-controlled legislatures in states like Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and Florida putting high-living public employees in their places while helping out profit-deprived corporations like Koch Industries. They are passing legislation that will bring the hammer down once and for all on systemic voter fraud!

No longer will we be having 80-year-olds who get around using walkers in assisted living facilities voting two or three times under different names. And thank heaven that clever inner-city minimum wage workers -- using public transportation to get to work to wait tables or clean hotel rooms -- won’t be traveling to two or three voting places. And those college students! How dare they vote twice – once at the voting place near where they and their parents live and again hundreds of miles away near where they go to college!

Not having a driver’s license or passport or not having a birth certificate handy is pretty suspicious!

George W. Bush’s Justice Department discovered that 38 cases of voter fraud resulting in 13 convictions took place nationwide between October 2002 and September 2005. Heck of a job laying out the problem, W.!

Count on high-minded Republicans like Karl Rove to know whom to target.

        Printed May 24, 2011, in The World

***

The Congressional Republicans were going “into overdrive” to destroy the idealistic but cautious, accommodating-minded President. I kept writing letters, therapeutic to a degree, consciously defensive, as if I could change obdurate minds, at least validate what like-minded liberal readers believed.

***

World Public Opinion quizzed news consumers in 2010 and found that Fox News viewers were significantly more likely to be misinformed than those who get their news from other sources.

“In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.” – Paul Krugman.

“A lie gets half-way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Winston Churchill

Too many Republican Party supporters believe that socialism is terrible, big government is tyrannical, corporations are over-regulated and overtaxed, global warming is a hoax, tax cuts grow the economy, Social Security and Medicare are driving us to financial ruin, labor unions are blood-suckers, Muslims are especially dangerous, capitalism is the way of all things, etc. They make these assertions convinced that what they have chosen to believe is fact.

People are entitled to their opinions. Opinions expressed in public, however, should be supported by actual facts.

Republican Party operatives are counting on being able to persuade enough low-knowledge, independent voters to believe that Obama and the Democrats are to blame for the terrible economy. Never mind that GOP senators did everything they could the first two years of Obama’s presidency to derail everything the Dems tried to pass in Congress to take corrective measures. They are saying, “See? Awful economy. Obama’s been in charge. Case closed.” This is like a corporation, wanting to privatize a fire district, setting on fire a bunch of houses, then slitting the tires of the department’s fire trucks and putting sand in their gas tanks, and afterward saying, “See? The fire department never came out to put out this terrible fire! We’ll do much better. Trust us.”

        Printed July 16, 2011, in the Siuslaw News

***

Garry Kelly, Lu Herr, and Wende Jarman complimented me. Wende had Rep. Arnie Roblan read it while he was getting a haircut in her barbershop.

***

What angers me more than hearing Speaker of the House John Boehner say repeatedly, “The American people want ______” (fill in the blank with any GOP agenda objective), is a talking head TV “journalist” championing “shared sacrifice” and “reasoned compromise.”

The middle class and the poor have been taking it on the chin economically from thirty years. Wages have remained stagnant. Decent-paying jobs are gone, performed now by cheap overseas labor. Multinational corporations and the very rich are awash with money. Yet we wage earners and retirees, not the top 2 percent wealth recipients, are expected to sacrifice!

We are told that both parties need to compromise to solve the debt ceiling crisis. Just raise the damn thing! Congress has done it many times. Holding a gun to our (and the world’s) economy system’s head, Congressional Republicans have manufactured a huge crisis. “Give me everything I want or I’ll shoot your daughter,” is what they’re saying. President Obama, use the 14^th Amendment. Wield a pointed stick!

Why aren’t Republicans content to have the voting public sort out a year from now what crises are real and what are concocted? Tactics. Smoke and mirrors. Outright falsehoods. Exploit ignorance, voter anger, individual prejudices. Thwart recovery. Confuse. Vilify.

Republicans want our government to be a corporatocracy. I want our government to solve problems so that we all benefit. Why would you want to compromise that?

Printed July 29, 2011, in The World

July 30, 2011, in the Register-Guard

***

The Register-Guard edited the third sentence of the third paragraph to read “Holding a gun to our and the world’s head ….” It also deleted the last sentence of the letter.

Below is one of the internet comments submitted to The World’s website.

***

The World has changed, Mr. Titus. It’s no longer an economy that’s kind to anyone without skills or an education and we’re never going back, so best to move on. And if you’re looking to the government to “solve problems” you are sorely misguided, because we have one of the most inept and misguided governments on earth. Unfortunately, there’s not enough Chris Christies around it get it fixed.

        Sherman