Washington Post

Romney Loves American Cars; Obama Loves American Car Workers

Leo Gerard — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:17:49 -0400

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, son of an American Motors CEO, naturally says he loves American cars. His wife, as he put it, “drives a couple of Cadillacs.” He’s installing an elevator in his beach mansion just for his cars. Though a millionaire, he rejected flying his five sons to a vacation destination, instead packing them into a car, then strapping their dog Seamus’ carrier to the car roof for a ride that, shall we say, challenged the canine’s intestinal fortitude.

President Barack Obama, by contrast, has given some love to American car companies and American car workers. He rescued Chrysler and General Motors, preserving the American icon companies and hundreds of thousands of American car manufacturing jobs. He imposed sanctions on Chinese tires that received improper export subsidies, a move that saved thousands of U.S. tire-building jobs. And now he’s challenging illegally-subsidized Chinese auto parts to sustain American companies and workers.

Romney has blasted Obama every auto-manufacturing-job-preserving step of the way. On the auto bailout, Romney admonished, “Let Detroit go bankrupt.” He condemned the tariffs on Chinese tires. Romney claims he loves American cars. But the actions of his private equity firm, Bain Capital, in buying companies that were “pioneers” in offshoring American jobs, suggest he’s fine with American firms making cars and car parts overseas. Obama, by contrast, took the action necessary to ensure American cars are made in America by American companies employing American workers.

Here’s what Romney actually said about his adoration for cars:

“I love cars. I love American cars. And long may they rule the world.”

When it came to helping them continue to rule the world, however, Romney dissed Detroit.

President Obama embraced Detroit. He took money from the Wall Street bailout fund and used it to help GM and Chrysler continue to rule the world. GM regained the title of world’s largest car company in January and hundreds of thousands of auto and auto part manufacturing workers retained their jobs.

Similarly, in September of 2009, President Obama imposed duties on unfairly traded Chinese tires. My union, the United Steelworkers (USW), filed the trade case that led to those duties. The sanctions saved thousands of tire-making jobs in the United States and contributed to creation of 1,000 more.

Earlier this year, the USW, the Alliance for American Manufacturing and 189 members of Congress urged Obama to take yet another trade action, this one to protect American auto parts manufacturers and their workers. The request followed publication of four reports detailing China’s illegal export subsidies to its auto parts sector. Nations may subsidize manufacturing for internal consumption, but international law prohibits subsidizing products to be exported because it distorts the market, causing the bankruptcy of manufacturers in countries where the artificially cheap products are sold.

The auto parts complaint says that forbidden export subsidies, including cash grants, preferential tax treatment and other perks valued at $1 billion over the past three years enabled China to jump from 16^th largest producer of auto parts in 2002, when it exported $7 billion in parts, to 5^th largest last year when it exported $70 billion.

The upshot is that imports of auto parts from China increased seven fold, contributing to the loss of nearly half of all U.S. auto parts jobs – 400,000 – since 2000. An example is Olymco, Inc. a Canton, Ohio, metal-plating company where 100 workers, members of the USW, once made auto parts. Now, mainly as a result of subsidized Chinese competition, only 11 workers remain.

The predatory Chinese practices encourage U.S. auto parts makers to offshore manufacturing, and now some of the largest U.S. auto parts companies produce in China.

Sensata, a car parts manufacturer in Freeport, Ill. is among those on the way to China. The 145 workers in Freeport, who make sensors and controls, are training their Chinese replacements.

These workers may return to China to join many there who are packed into dormitories that rival turn of the 20^th Century U.S. tenements for slum conditions. Romney described workers in a Chinese appliance factory he visited:

“working, working, working as hard as they could, at rates of roughly 50 cents an hour. They cared about their jobs; they wouldn’t even look up as we walked by.”

That’s right. These exploited workers kept their heads down. These 50-cent-an-hour laborers feared they’d be fired for the audacity of looking at a quarter billionaire American visitor.

Sensata is owned by Bain Capital, the company Romney founded in 1984, the private equity firm that Romney claims he left in 1999, even though it continued to pay him millions for a decade afterward. The workers at Sensata have publically begged Romney to intervene with Bain on their behalf to keep the factory in the United States. They’ve collected 35,000 signatures supporting their cause. They’ve got the backing of the Freeport City Council, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn. They’re camping outside the factory in a tent city called Bainport. But Romney hasn’t responded. No word from the candidate who claims to love American cars.

He loves owning ‘em. He relishes riding them up and down on elevators. But when it comes to showing a little love for car businesses and car workers, Romney’s frigid. Just ask the workers cooling their heels at Bainport.

The auto parts case is Obama’s ninth trade action against China. The Washington Post wrote:

“The Obama administration has steadily amped up its enforcement actions against China at the WTO.”

Obama has repeatedly confronted countries whose illegal trade practices threaten American companies and workers, filing twice as many cases in one term as Bush did in two. He has tangibly demonstrated his love for American cars and American car workers.

On Social Security, Say It IS So, Joe!

Richard Eskow — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 00:30:09 -0400

What Vice President Joe Biden said today was, to use his now-famous phrase, "a big effin' deal." No, we're not talking about his "chains" comment which, as usual, has fascinated a press corps obsessed with taking statements out of context and playing "gotcha" games. We're referring to the comments he made about Social Security in a Virginia coffee shop.

From a press corps pool report, as relayed by NBC News:

"Hey, by the way, let's talk about Social Security," Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn't talking about changing the popular entitlement program. "Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security," Biden said, per a pool report.

As if that weren't enough, Biden said it one more time:

"I flat guarantee you."

What does it mean when those words come from the Vice President of an Administration that's been talking for years about a deal to cut Social Security? A lot.

Could the Vice President have been "off the reservation," as the saying goes, speaking unscripted words that don't have the White House's full backing? Possibly, but it seems unlikely. These words sound like they were pretty well thought out: "Hey, by the way, let's talk about Social Security."

And the Vice President said "I guarantee you" - not once, not twice, but three times.

It's true that the President has spoken about making cuts to Social Security as part of a larger deal, even saying things like this (unwisely, in our opinion): " Okay, we'll make some modest adjustments that are phased in over a very long period of time. Most folks don't notice 'em."

We criticized him for those words then, and if he repeats them we'll criticize him again. But this is a sign that the White House's thinking may have shifted now that Paul Ryan's in the race. Not only has the Republican Party shown that its most intransigent wing is now in the ascendancy, making a post-election deal unlikely, but the Ryan nomination makes it easier to draw a clear distinction between the parties on Social Security and Medicare.

Ryan may be laying low on Social Security right now, but he's on record as supporting the unpopular plan to privatize it. Legislation he co-sponsored in 2005 would have allowed workers to divert up to 40 percent of their contributions into private accounts - accounts that would have enriched Wall Street bankers and then would have been devastated by the financial crisis those bankers created in 2008.

Ryan's Social Security plan would have drained nearly five trillion dollars from the Social Security Trust Fund which Americans rely upon for future benefits, according to Social Security's Chief Actuary. It would have cut guaranteed benefits by nearly 40 percent when it was fully implemented. Ryan's bill would have funneled billions to Wall Street bankers - and this supposedly "fiscally serious" politician's plan would have forcedthe government to borrow $1.2 trillion which it wouldn't have been able to repay until 2083.

That makes this the perfect time for the Administration to describe a stark difference between its ticket and the GOP's: They'll cut your Social Security and we won't. They'll privatize it to make bankers rich off the public dime - think of it as another bailout - and we won't. They'll drive the nation deeper into hock to benefit their rich friends, and we won't.

And the White House can even add, as Vice President Biden did: We flat out guarantee it.

Why have the Vice President say it first? Remember, Vice President Biden also spoke out in support of gay marriage shortly before the President did. Part of the Number Two guy's job is to take some arrows for the boss. That gives the President's team the chance to see what works and doesn't work in the messaging before he speaks up.

To which we say: Great. If we're going to criticize the top guys when we disagree with them, we should have their back when they do something we support. Mr. Vice President, we've got your back on this one. Mr. President, we'll have yours too.

And they'll need it. There's a highly-funded, highly misinformed, highly misleading manufactured "consensus" in Washington around the idea that cuts in Social Security benefits need to be cut. They trade in a small but widely disseminated body of lies, and they're going to fight this with everything they've got.

The coffee was barely cold in that Virginia coffee shop when the Washington Post,, which is Ground Zero for this dishonest cabal, went on the attack against the Vice President. The Post Editorial Board, which would have repeatedly been sued for journalistic malpractice if such a thing existed, even mendaciously repeated the often-disproven lie that Social Security is "going broke" when it attacked Mr. Biden.

Shame on them for lying.

"Is 'going broke' too strong?" the Post Editorial Board asks rhetorically. "Well, let’s ask the experts — the trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund ..." The editorial then takes a lot of language out of context before stating the trustees' conclusion that Social Security's trust fund (which doesn't include the billions in revenue the plan collects each year) will "become exhausted and unable to pay scheduled benefits in full on a timely basis in 2033.”

Let's ask that question again: Is "going broke" too strong?

"Broke": According to Merriam-Webster, it means "penniless."
"Broke": According to Cambridge Dictionaries it means "without money."
"Broke": According to MacMillan Dictionary it means "to have no money." And "go broke," according to MacMillan, means "to no longer have any money and be unable to pay what you owe."

The fund will continue to pay full benefits, with money in the bank, until 2033. It will pay most of those benefits - 75 percent - after that, because it will be collecting hundreds of billions of dollars each year in new revenue. Yet the Post says that it will be "penniless," will "have no money," will be "without money," or will be "unable to pay what it owes."

Liars.

Washington's lousy with insiders who are willing to peddle dreck like this. It would make sense for the White House's calculus to include letting Joe Biden take the heat for a while before the President makes his case.

Of course, as we've already said, Biden could simply be off-message. If so, the President's campaign is likely to incur real damage if his team tries to walk it back. But it seems more likely that this a prelude to comments from the President in which he'll explain how he has "evolved" on this issue.

That seems much more likely - and much smarter. A firm stance in defense of Social Security - and then Medicare - could be spun off into a number of winning themes for the White House, such as:

A youth issue: All the DC insiders' plans to cut Social Security are designed to hurt young people the most. Defending Social Security for younger people is a great way to energize the demoralized and disillusioned young people who are graduated with record student debt into the worst job market in modern memory.

An issue for seniors: That should need no explanation.

A 99 percent/tax fairness issue: The best way to stabilize Social Security's finances is by lifting the payroll tax cap and a financial transactions tax, and therefore asking the wealthiest among us to help undo the harm they've caused through exploding wealth inequity and Wall Street gambling.

Of course, the White House could say all the right things about Social Security - and then make that December deal and cut it anyway. But when candidates "flat out guarantees" something, that gives citizens a lot of leverage to pressure them with after the election.

Citizen action was able to stop the President from offering Social Security cuts in his 2010 State of the Union message. It can work again, especially if the White House makes a clear stance like this a central part of its campaign. Could there be a fight in December? Sure -- but this makes it much more likely that we could win that fight.

And enough talk about fighting. Let's have a swords-into-plowshares moment. Right now I'm givin' it up for Joe Biden and the Administration. Biden said the right thing, and he said it straight up, without weasling or waffling. Keep on saying it, Mr. Vice President, and get the President and the rest of the team to join you. Everybody will win that way.

Say it is so, Joe, and we'll be right behind you.

Democrats Must Oppose Republicans On Education

Jeff Bryant — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:47:24 -0400

A funny thing happened on the way to the news cycle the past two weeks when the issue of education -- specifically, public schoolteachers and student loan relief -- maintained a presence on the political stage.

Because the conclusion among the Very Serious People is that the upcoming election is all about the economy, it was expected that the subject of education would quickly get the hook after last month's candidate sparring on the topic.

Yet after nearly a month in the limelight, we still see issues related to education hanging around stage left.

Education Just Won't Leave The Stage

For instance, just last week, all-but-certain Republican contender Mitt Romney bashed President Obama for "hiring more teachers." His comment was quickly affirmed and doubled-down this week when Romney surrogate, former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu, declared that there are places where we "need fewer teachers." Sununu apparently must be referring to a country other than America because where we live student population is at an all time high and will continue to grow in the near future.

Romney's pronouncement about desiring fewer schoolteachers was repeatedly rebuked by the Obama campaign on YouTube and Twitter, with Obama surrogate David Axelrod on CBS News asking "Does anybody really believe we don't need more teachers?" (Um yes, David, that is exactly what "some people" believe. So you have to name those people and counter with something stronger than a rhetorical question.)

Student loans also stayed in the headlines the last few days. With the interest rates on student higher education loans about to double, unless Congress acts before July 1, the issue has now become yet another front where Republican lawmakers in DC push back against any opportunity to advance the interests of ordinary Americans.

At a campaign stop at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, President Obama criticized Republicans for stalling on student loan relief and declared to his student audience that keeping the interest on their loans from going up was "the No. 1 thing Congress should do for you."

Republicans in Congress responded to the president's insistence on student loan relief with a raspberry this week when John Kline, who heads the House committee responsible for education, penned an op-ed at Politico declaring, basically, that all deals on student loans are off. Kline's solution for the student loan crisis -- now a $1 trillion issue, surpassing even the nation's credit card debt -- is to "take politicians out of the college-cost equation and base student loan interest rates on the free market."

These are the same Republicans, mind you, who have no problem supporting massive government subsidies to Big Oil and an Export-Import Bank that, according to The Wall Street Journal, "doles out billions of dollars of taxpayer-backed loans, loan guarantees, and insurance" to big businesses every year.

Nevertheless, with education staying stubbornly on the election front, it's clear that Republicans are going to make it yet another barb to sling at Democrats. But what's not clear is what Democrats are going to do about that.

Republicans, Democrats "Copy Each Other" On Education

Despite the recent back and forth between the political parties, differences of opinion on education are generally quite narrow.

As veteran education reporter Alyson Klein explained in the pages of Education Week, "Back in Massachusetts, then-Gov. Mitt Romney proposed ideas on turnarounds and teacher quality that closely mirror proposals that President Barack Obama put forth just a few years later."

In another blog post, Klein noted, "Romney himself praised Obama for being strong on merit pay and choice -- two issues that really rankle teachers' unions -- in an interview with People magazine."

Another seasoned edu-journalist, Jay Mathews of The Washington Post, observed that "Romney, Obama are education twins."

"Republican and Democratic presidential candidates," Mathews noted, "have been happily copying each other since a group of Democratic governors (including Bill Clinton) started the school accountability movement in the 1980s and several Republican governors (including George W. Bush) joined in."

And one may ask, "Where has that gotten us?" Not much, based on gains in student achievement, (pdf) as measured by National Assessment of Education Progress.

Regarding higher ed, the parties have chosen to square off -- not on the issue of the spiraling costs of college or the mounting levels of student loans -- but over how to "balance" student loan relief with cuts somewhere else in the federal budget.

When it comes to Pell grants, which help the most needy students pay for higher education, the argument is equally piker in scope. As Matt Miller recently observed in The Washington Post, arguments between Republicans and Democrats about "modest Pell grant boosts" are "teeny steps" and not "remotely serious" attempts to solve a huge problem.

Unfortunately, no one is arguing that relieving students of the unfair cost of higher education is an investment this country should make that should be accepted without a need to "balance" it with cuts somewhere else.

Current Education Debates Miss The Bigger Picture

In trying to identify differences between the parties on education, many have stated, as Diane Ravitch just did in The New York Review of Books, that school vouchers have become a "third rail" in the education debate that separates candidates.

Of course, Romney and the Republicans can recast "vouchers" with another name as Trip Gabriel explains in the The New York Times. In North Carolina for instance, vouchers are being reintroduced as"tax credits."

But as Ravitch points out there's a much bigger debate Democrats are refusing to engage in. For K-12, what Romney proposes can be summed up as "using taxpayer money to pay for private-school vouchers, privately-managed charters, for-profit online schools, and almost every other alternative to public schools."

For higher ed, the Romney plan, again, is to "encourage private sector involvement" by promoting for-profit colleges and letting commercial banks serve as the intermediary for federal student loans. Ravitch concludes:

Romney’s plan [for education] is animated by a reverence for the private sector. While little is said about improving or spending more on public education, which is treated as a failed institution, a great deal of enthusiasm is lavished on the innovation and progress that is supposed to occur once parents can take their federal dollars to private institutions or enroll their child in a for-profit online school.

The Real Goals Of The Romney, Republican Plan For Education

If you want to see where the Romney plan will lead us in K-12, cast your eyes upon Louisiana. Louisiana’s new voucher plan, already approved by the state legislature and poised to be signed by the supportive Governor Bobby Jindal, "directly defunds public education," according to an analysis by Kristin Rawls at AlterNet.

The Louisiana plan, Rawls explains, is "so wide in scope that it could eventually cut the state’s public education funding in half." And rather than creating more equity in the system, it will likely "increase inequality" because "the poorest students will get the same amount of tuition assistance as middle-income students. And in fact, since poorer areas of the state usually have lower per capita student spending than other parts of the state, the poorest students could receive less funding than their wealthier peers."

A recent article at Reuters describes the Louisiana plan as a "bold bid to privatize schools," siphoning taxpayer funds meant for education to " to industry trade groups, businesses, online schools and tutors, among others."

The article goes on to explain that among the likely recipients of public education funds are many small religious academies, such as New Living Word, "where students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such as chemistry or composition." Other likely recipients include the Upperroom Bible Church Academy, "a bunker-like building with no windows or playground," and Eternity Christian Academy, "where "first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains 'what God made' on each of the six days of creation."

In higher ed, Romney's plan will produce more institutions like Full Sail University and the University of Phoenix, providers that Romney has openly praised.

As the intrepid David Halperin explains at The Republic Report, the Romney plan for higher education "would allow federal financial aid -- presently about $32 billion a year -- to continue to flow to even the worst offenders in the industry, schools that lure veterans and low-income students with deceptive and coercive recruiting practices, provide low-quality programs, and leave many students with insurmountable debt and ruined lives."

Will Democrats Draw A Stark Line

Against the rapacious, greed-driven plan for education that Romney and the Republicans are pushing on the country, Obama and the Democrats are responding with . . . what? "R triple T?"

As another article from Education Week explains, the president's signature program, and other education initiatives, are very much "works in progress," at best, and "divisive" to say the least. Many of the recipients of the grant money are falling short of deadlines to impose new policies and erect grandiose structures, and none of those recipients can claim a cause-and-effect relationship of these costly new ventures to actual improved results in student achievement and well being.

For instance, this week, RTTT recipient Tennessee proclaimed its highly controversial teacher evaluation program a success. But if you read through the report, available here, it's apparent that success is defined purely on the basis of erecting the program, not on any direct services to students.

In fact, during this implementation of RTTT, Tennessee's results worsened. According to the most recent NAEP results, the state "dropped from 45th to 46th in the nation in fourth-grade math; 39th to 41st in fourth-grade reading; 43rd to 45th in eighth-grade math; and 34th to 41st in eighth-grade reading."

In the face-off between the Romney and Obama plans for education what is clear is that the Republicans are playing a long game while the Democrats settle for the scrimmage line. While Republicans plod inexorably toward the dismantling of our public education system -- K through college -- Democrats are fumbling with duct-tape-and-string measures that show little evidence of real results for children.

With this year's election turning into a "crapshoot," that's not a place where Democrats want to be, parsing "measured progress" while the fate of our children becomes more and more defined by a right wing mandate for restricting opportunity to the elite alone. Indeed, that Democrats are playing along with this ground shifting is damning to the party and deeply hurtful to the American public and its future well-being.

In the education arena, it's long past time for Democrats to go bold in their opposition to Republicans, to call them out as active agents in the dismantling of public schools, and to call for a renewed commitment to the best education that can be provided equally to children and young people everywhere.

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Why Democrats Should Oppose Parent Trigger Laws

Jeff Bryant — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:35:03 -0400

Last week in Florida there was an important victory for progressive Democrats that not many Democrats know about. Even worse, most Democrats may not even be aware why this was a victory.

The important win was generated by a coalition of parent groups, schoolteachers, and advocates for public education who were able to pressure the Florida State Senate to block HB 1191, called "The Parent Empowerment Law." The law creates a process known as the Parent Trigger, in which a majority of parents at a "low-performing school" (usually defined by test scores) can sign a petition to trigger one of a narrow set of options, which often include firing all or some of the staff, turning the school over to a charter operator, or closing the school outright.

According to the education trade newspaper Education Week, the first Parent Trigger law passed in California in 2010, and two similar laws were then passed in Texas and Mississippi. Now, Parent Trigger laws are being considered in more than 20 more states.

When the Parent Trigger narrowly passed the California state legislature in 2010, it was widely portrayed as a grudge match between "parent rights" advocates and "the education establishment."

But in traveling cross-country from California to Florida, something happened in the Parent Trigger debate. By the time the Parent Trigger arrived in Florida, parents were against it, as Valerie Strauss explains in her blog at The Washington Post, and the coalition against it was led by none other than the Florida PTA. What happened?

Those who back these Parent Trigger measures couch their support in the progressive rhetoric of "giving parents a voice" and "getting parents engaged." Those are good things, right?

So how did the Parent Trigger become a lightening rod for opposition led by parents? And why should Democrats care?

So far, Democrats at the national level have few if any answers to these questions. Indeed many may not even be considering the questions at all.

As Beltway edu-gadfly Alexander Russo explains, "Democratic lawmakers and centrist think tankers are all struggling to figure out what to do with the 'parent trigger' idea."

Russo points to evidence that influential Congressman George Miller, who is minority leader of the committee determining education policy, already favors the idea. And so does Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.

"So where will Barack Obama be on this," Russo asks, "as well as the rest of the Democratic Caucus? Nobody seems to know."

Well, here's where they should be . . .

Look At Whose Fingers Are On The Parent Trigger

As with lots of education-related legislation that's being peddled by the "reform" movement, Parent Trigger laws have a patina of "bipartisanship."

In Florida, boosters of the Trigger ranged from former Republican governor Jeb Bush to self-avowed Democrat Michelle Rhee.

According to an Orlando Sentinel blogpost, a leading national proponent of the legislation is California-based Parent Revolution which is "run by a former President Clinton aide."

"Mayors in Los Angeles and Chicago -- both Democrats -- have praised trigger legislation in Parent Revolution's press releases," the post continues and then quotes ex-governor Bush claiming that, "it came from an organization …whose roots are from the left."

But let's be accurate in locating where the idea of the Parent Trigger really came from. Like so many policy proposals rolling out in state houses across the country, the source of the Parent Trigger is the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which is funded primarily by big corporations, trade groups, and Republican-favoring foundations such as those funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.

As the Wikileaks site ALEC Exposed reveals, one of the templates for "model legislation" conceived by ALEC reads very similarly to how Parent Trigger bills in both Florida and California were written:

The Parent Trigger places democratic control into the hands of parents at school level. Parents can, with a simple majority, opt to usher in one of three choice-based options of reform: (1) transforming their school into a charter school, (2) supplying students from that school with a 75 percent per pupil cost voucher, or (3) closing the school.

True, some of the "reform" options tend to change with the context, but the main thrust of the ALEC model is identical to what is being rolled out in one state after the other.

Also, behind these Parent Trigger laws are the loudest and most deep-pocketed proponents of charter schools. As Valeri Strauss writes, again, on her blog, backers of the Florida Parent Trigger endeavor were the "big money" and "big business" interests that are identical to funders and leaders of the charter school movement, including the Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations, big publishing firms, e-learning "solution providers" such as Apex Learning and Cisco, and charter proponents like Charter Schools USA.

This undeniable overlap of interests was not lost on the parent and educator groups in Florida who beat down the Parent Trigger push. Writing in yet another post on Strauss' Washington Post blog, Jean Clements, president of Florida’s Hillsborough County Classroom Teachers Association, explains that the Parent Trigger "is designed to give private companies and charter management organizations an open invitation to exploit parents and take over schools -- destroying school communities. Rather than a grassroots process, it’s an Astroturf mechanism by which companies circulate petitions to take over schools."

By now, the fact that charter school organizations frequently resort to backroom deals and strong-arm tactics to force their way into reluctant communities should not be a surprise to Democrats. Charter school organizations are known to have engineered deliberate shut downs of popular public schools and are big lobbyists behind legislation that forces charter schools on communities that reject them.

Parents and educators in Florida quite rightly saw through the promises of the Parent Trigger and identified it as a "power grab" being engineered by the for-profit charter industry.

This Is Not About Accountability

A major selling point for the Parent Trigger is that it makes local schools more "accountable" to parents in the community. And Democrats should all be pushing for public schools to be accountable to their communities.

But Parent Trigger laws in fact lead to schools being less accountable, as parents in Florida who led the charge against these laws quickly realized.

Writing in an op-ed appearing in The Florida Times Union, Kathleen Oropeza -- co-founder of FundEducationNow.org, a non-partisan Florida-based education advocacy group -- points out that "not one legitimate Florida parent group has asked for this Parent Trigger/Parent Empowerment legislation."

These parents realized that wrestling schools away from local school district control and putting them in the hands of private entities like charter boards and education management organizations headquartered nowhere near the schools -- not even in Florida -- would actually make neighborhood schools less accountable to parents.

Perhaps in Florida, more-so than elsewhere, parents now see that "the bloom is off the rose" in the charter school movement.

Even if politicians can't see it yet, parents notice that study after study show that charter schools do no better than traditional public schools. In fact, they may do worse.

Adding to the faded luster of the charter school movement is the persistent news reports about charter school fraud, embezzlement, and violence -- especially in Florida.

Are there innovative charters making a difference in their communities? Of course. But there are traditional public schools that fit this profile as well. So the "innovation" argument alone does not justify the need for more charter schools. Parents are starting to realize this.

So what charter proponents are doing more often is pivot to the idea that the main purpose of charter schools is to offer parents a "choice." As charter school analyst Gary Miron recently observed in Education Week, "As charters are increasingly well-studied and the variation in quality becomes clearer, there's been an interesting change in the discourse. We don't hear as much about innovation or performance. Instead, we hear that charters promote parent choice."

So much for putting students first.

Parents Don't Own Schools

Finally, Democrats need to renounce the whole notion that education is a commodity that parents shop for like groceries.

"Empowering" a group of parents to shut down or hand over a local school to a charter outfit makes about as mush sense as allowing people who live along a stretch of a public street to close the street when they find it doesn't "serve their needs."

Parents don't own schools and are not the only stakeholders in public schools, although, granted, they are one of the most important. All taxpayers in a local community have contributed to their local schools and therefore all have a stake. That's why we have democratically elected school boards.

Furthermore, that a single cohort of parents -- a snapshot in a long portfolio of families -- should have the power to forever alter the trajectory of a local public school is a violation against all that the parents preceding them and an injury to the generation of parents to come.

But parent ownership aside, the reality is that parents in general do not feel that they are being shut out of their children's education by their local public school. In fact, the most recent MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Teachers, Parents and the Economy found that parent engagement in schools is in fact steadily on the rise. And "fewer parents now than 25 years ago believe that there is widespread parental disengagement with their children's school and education in general."

So in many ways, the Parent Trigger is a solution in search of a problem.

Where Democrats Should Stand

If Democrats want to see firsthand what Parent Trigger laws are more apt to result in, they should cast their eyes toward Compton, California where the nation's first attempt at a Parent Trigger-initiated school makeover was attempted.

What they'll see is that rather than uniting a community behind the interests of children, it divided parents into factions. And instead of using competition to generate better approaches to teaching children, it pitted parents in a competition against each other over dueling interests and visions for their children's education.

Democrats are making a very bad mistake if they continue to see that the only way forward in rewriting the nation's education policy is to start with ideas born in conservative think tanks and then hew them into something resembling "bipartisanship."

Their party and the nation's school children would be much better served if they looked at policy ideas that have shown some evidence to have actually worked.

The Parent Trigger is simply not one of those.

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Memo From Austerity Land To Teachers: Caring No Longer Counts

Jeff Bryant — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:30:11 -0500

Although it's a bit early to know for sure, let's hope that 2012 is the year that the economic policies known as "austerity" finally crashed and burned. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is certainly ready to bid adieu to austerity, writing in The New York Times this week that deep spending cuts leveled by state and local governments have proven to be "a major drag on the overall economy" and most probably have erected an "unnecessary" detour in "the road to self-sustaining growth."

Nowhere have the ravages of austerity policies been more apparent and more ruinous than in public education, where deep budget cuts to schools have taken spending back to 2008 levels or earlier. What we've witnessed over the past two years is the biggest cut to education since the Great Depression, and it has had catastrophic and long-lasting effects on a generation of kids -- beginning with the very youngest.

Austerity Is Eviscerating Early Childhood Education

A recent article in the Huffington Post recounted that, due to state budget cuts and roll-backs to early childhood programs, "roughly a quarter of the nation's 4-year-olds and more than half of 3-year-olds attend no preschool, either public or private."

Unbelievably, only three states currently offer prekindergarten to all 4-year-olds, even though "kids from low-income families who start kindergarten without first attending a quality education program enter school an estimated 18 months behind their peers. Many never catch up, and research shows they are more likely to need special education services and to drop out."

Simultaneous to this article's warning bell, the medical journal Pediatrics reported the results of a new study showing that "lack of adult support" in a child's early years results in a build up of "toxic stress" that has life-long negative ramifications, including harmful effects to "learning capacities, adaptive behaviors, lifelong physical and mental health, and adult productivity.”

Writing at the Core Knowledge blog, Robert Pondisco commented that "the report should have a profound impact on educators and education policymakers because we now know that interventions in children's lives -- especially those who grow up in the difficult circumstances associated with poverty, homelessness, crime, malnutrition, and abusive households -- "must start from Day One. Not Day One of school, Day One of life. Kindergarten is too late."

The federal government's attempt to alleviate some of the harm being done to the youngest Americans falls way short of what's needed. The Obama administration's recent debut of a $500 million Race to the Top grant competition for early childhood education has been widely dismissed as being "too little, too late" and being too reliant on reviving assessments of four-year-olds that were tried and abandoned by the Bush administration.

So there's little doubt that the dreadful results of economic austerity have been equal to if not worse to education than they've been to the economy. But as the failure of economic austerity becomes a more widespread realization (hopefully) in the media, far less attention is being paid to another form of austerity that is at least as pernicious and potentially far more poisoning.

Austerity of the Soul

This other austerity -- call it "austerity of the soul" -- is most obvious when you look at how the people on the frontlines of public education -- classroom teachers -- are being treated. By now, for instance, anyone who is paying attention has heard about classroom teachers in the Chester-Upland, Pennsylvania school district who agreed to work without pay while their school budgets were being savaged by state officials and their resources and students were bled away to competitive charter schools.

One of the teachers, writing at Valerie Strauss's blog at the Washington Post explains what should trouble everyone who cares about the welfare of children:

My heart bleeds for these kids. Many of these students have seen so much tragedy, loss, and rejection in 16 years than most will see in a lifetime. Now, when faced with the possibility of their schools closing they are hit yet again. In discussions between students regarding the possibility of being sent to other districts, a common response from students is, "They won’t do that; nobody wants us." Heartbreaking.

These teachers refused to abandon the kids because they cared, unlike the hapless Italian cruise ship captain who recently abandoned ship before his passengers had fled to safety. So what do they get in return for their sacrifice?

The governor's office has drafted a legislative proposal that calls for a state takeover of the distressed district. And if this state takeover follows the course of others in Pennsylvania, this will put a "school reform commission-type" oversight board in place which would likely cancel the teachers' contracts and turn all the district's schools into charters.

In other words, these teachers, despite their sacrifice, are more apt to get fired.

It's important, by the way, to remember that the spending cuts that slammed Chester-Upland and other school districts like it were deliberately aimed at those schools. State lawmakers purposefully designed the budget cuts to draw the most money away from the poorest districts. And regardless of the rationale used justify such an act, this has been nothing but a despicable attack on people who are least capable of fighting back.

"People like you destroy morale"

Pennsylvania isn't the only place where teachers are being treated badly. In Dallas, Texas classroom teachers are being forced to work longer days, with no extra pay, simply because local school officials, regardless of any objective evidence, decided that the district wasn't getting its money's worth from teachers.

Texas is, of course, a "right to work" state that prohibits unions from organizing on a mass scale to negotiate fair wages. But when one of the school officials made the comment that he didn't feel the district was getting its "eight hours" worth from teachers, it prompted one teacher to speak out in an email: (emphasis added)

It is sad that individuals like you make this noble profession of teaching America’s future leaders more and more miserable each day. We already give more of our daily selves to the students and community than an average worker, including lawyers. I have been on the same salary step for 4 years, due to the fact that the district shifts it each time I am due for that coveted next step. I have received no substantial raise in 4 years. I am the father of 6 children and am the only income for my family. I am struggling to pay bills and just make it through life. We get dumped on by administration each day, cursed out by students, yelled at by parents, receive very little respect from the community, work long hours, and receive meager pay. But that’s okay. I see, on the other hand, that according to the Dallas CAD you have several nice properties in your name at [address deleted] (value $155,770), [address deleted] (value $187,310), and [address deleted] (value $225,330). I, on the other hand, am struggling to pay bills and just make it through life. I used to think I was doing something good for society. People like you destroy morale, beat us down into the ground, and make us wish we had been greedy enough to go into the business world as yourself.

For speaking his mind, the teacher, Joseph Drake, was summarily placed on leave. And although he has since been reinstated, the message is clear that how teachers feel about the way they're being treated matters little to local politicians.

The Great Big Disconnect

Politicians at all levels love to talk in glittering generalities about how "valuable" good teachers are and how much they "matter." In his recent Sate of the Union address, President Obama, with one of the Chester-Upland teachers sitting practically within arm's length of his wife, called for an end to teacher "bashing" and exhorted them to "teach with creativity and passion" and "stop teaching to the test."

All this sounds well and good -- except it is completely disconnected to what is happening on the ground.

As Diane Ravitch recently wrote in her regular blog at Education Week, the President's policies actually promote "teaching to the test" and do more to advance "teacher bashing" than quell it.

The truth is that if we want teaching with "creativity and passion," we want to reinforce in teachers that act of caring. But teachers everywhere are being told that caring -- whether it's caring about the welfare of students or caring about work conditions -- is no longer something that counts.

This discrepancy of what our political leaders profess and the deliberate actions they take produces an austerity of the soul that is at least as crippling to education as economic austerity has been. The reality is that in addition to closing its pocketbooks, America its hardening its heart to children and the people who care for and educate them.

As a Texas school superintendent, John Kuhn, recently wrote at the site of edu-blogger Anthony Cody,

"Accountability is only for the teachers in our modern republic. There is no visible or sustained pressure to address school funding, no pressure to address the inequity of resources or the unequal opportunity to learn that, while many are content to pretend it doesn't exist, nonetheless devastates kids . . . . We [teachers] are supposed to accept poverty as "part of the deal." There will be no hue and cry in opposition to inequality. And to that I can only say, "Why?"

Why indeed!

As John Dickerson recently observed at Slate.com, we're likely heading into a Presidential election between two candidates -- Barak Obama and Mitt Romney -- who portray all the characteristics of "aloof men trading charges about who is more out of touch." This stands in stark contrast to what's needed for the times.

Writing at, coincidentally, In These Times, Thomas Franks notes that in the destructive wake of economic austerity what's needed is an "idealism in the grand sense" that can rise above "our fallen economic world" and point the way to a better future.

If Obama can heed the times and break through with an idealistic message extolling the value of caring and the need to extinguish our current austerity of the soul, it could make all the difference.

Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/jeffbcdm

Don't Blink. The DC Machine Is Killing Medicare Right Before Our Eyes

Richard Eskow — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:05:42 -0500

This last week we've seen how Washington's elites are able to suppress popular opinion, work against the public interest, and wrap it all up with a bow so that it looks like 'democracy in action.' It's not. What we're seeing isn't democracy, and it isn't a free press either. It's merely another cynical ploy to rob Americans of government programs they both need and want.

The latest assault is on Medicare. The "Ryan/Wyden plan" is a perfect case study in the cynical workings of an antidemocratic machine - a machine whose cogs are lazy journalists, whose gears are selfish politicians, and whose levers are pulled by the wealthy and powerful.

I held my fire on this for a few days, to see if more details would emerge on the proposal from Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Paul Ryan, who were initially (and deliberately vague) on its specifics. That turned it into Rorschach test for observers, and where the Washington Post sees a butterfly I usually see a vampire bat.

But Malcolm Gladwell would be pleased: It turns out that the first 'blink' impression of Ryan/Wyden is the right one. It's a Medicare-killing publicity stunt that undermines the financial security of the 99%. And if you happen to be reading this in the Nation's Capital, please note: The 'lefty' position on Medicare is supported by most Republicans.

Let's not kid ourselves. Unless we act quickly and aggressively, the Machine will succeed in killing Medicare.

The Program

We've seen this software before. It's been run against Social Security, jobs, and other government services that are both popular and effective. Here's how it works:

Concept: An intellectually thin but highly-funded network of corporate-funded and billionaire-backed "think" tanks draft a proposal that would eviscerate a popular government program.
Rollout: Congressional Republicans act in lockstep to implement the think tank's policy by gutting something that's typically supported in overwhelming numbers by Democrats and independents - and which is often backed most registered Republican voters, too.
Blowback: The backlash from aggrieved citizens comes from all across the political spectrum, but is spun by compliant media figures as a reflexive hostility to "new ideas" from "ideologues" and "extremists" on the left.
Sellout: A cynical, self-serving Democrat sees an opportunity to curry favor with billionaires, corporations, and media outlets by endorsing the radical moves the Republicans have proposed.
Spin: The media uses that Democrat's endorsement as proof that the corporate position is actually that of "responsible" and "moderate" politicians in both parties.

The software has a political side effect, too: The distinction between Republicans and Democrats is blurred a little more, depriving Democrats of a winnable election issue.

Think of these five steps as a computer program you can run in almost any situation. The only variables are the program that is to be killed, the Democrat that'll do the dirty work, and which media outlet will deliver the machine's message this time. Plug in those three items and the program pretty much runs itself - or, as they used to say in the tech world, it "executes."

The Execution

This time around the government program is Medicare, the Democratic hack who's willing to undermine it for selfish reasons is Ron Wyden, and the media outlet is (who else?) the Washington Post. Here's how the five steps played out this time around:

Concept: Rightists in think tanks like the Heritage Foundation designed a system that dismantles Medicare, replacing it with vouchers that would provide less and less medical coverage with each passing year. The dovetails nicely with the rightwing Peterson Foundation's twenty-year jihad against so-called "entitlements," Social Security and Medicare, which have very little fiscal relationship to one another.
Rollout: Congressional Republicans dutifully encoded this radical scheme into a proposal called the "Ryan Plan," after Rep. Paul Ryan, who was chosen to present this idea as if it were his own. Their voted nearly unanimously for Ryan's plan, placing their party in an extremely vulnerable position with voters (while ingratiating it to many high-dollar corporate and individual campaign donors).
Blowback: The Machine media tried to claim it was not a plan to end Medicare, a radical reality inversion which had an hallucinatory effect on your correspondent. But no Orwellian inversion could conceal this plan's true nature or protect Republicans in Congress from a public backlash. That's why so many Republican representatives ran into a hailstorm during the next recess.
Sellout: Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon dutifully stepped up to play the 'Democratic hack' role that's been played by so many of his colleagues, co-authoring a modified 'Ryan/Wyden plan' that was nothing more than a diluted version of Ryan's radicalism.
Spin: And now - with a predictability that should be astonishing, but isn't - the Washington Post is celebrating Ryan as a shining example of true bipartisanship in action.

Make no mistake about it: This program would have a devastating effect on Medicare. (See here,, here, and for a more general overview of "premium support" programs, here.)

How would we recognize real bipartisanship? It's what you'd see if a few Republicans heeded the wishes of their own voters by crossing the aisle to oppose the Ryan plan, sincepolls show that 56% of registered Republicans are against a voucher system. But that ain't gonna happen. And if a single Republican on the Hill strays from corporatist/Republican orthodoxy, you can be they won't be the subject of a laudatory editorial in the Washington Post.

What's more, if voters are told that plans like Ryan/Wyden won't cover all the costs currently covered by Medicare, overall opposition to the idea rises to 84%. But who's going to tell them that - the Post?

Don't hold your breath.

Party Line

Call it the "Uni-Party," the alignment of corporate-funded politicians from both parties who serve a narrow elite. Corporate Washington's company paper is the Post, and its editors can usually be counted upon to toe its party line. Like the five-part plan, the Uni-Party's editorials follow a strictly preprogrammed algorithm.

It starts with Orwellian wordplay, which the Post happily provides in the title of its editorial: "Healing Medicare." (Ryan/Wyden would heal Medicare, I suppose - the same way cutting my head off would cure this headache.)

"In the maelstrom of dysfunction and partisanship better known as the 112th Congress," it begins - and let me stop right there for a second. Since when is partisanship a bad thing. One party advocates a policy, another opposes it, and voters choose. The Uni-Party hates that, so it stigmatizes it by calling it names. I call it "democracy."

"it is always surprising and gratifying when lawmakers from opposing parties manage to work together. That is particularly true when their collaboration involves an issue as politically charged and substantively complex as Medicare ..."

It's very important that cynicism be rewarded with praise and good press, as well as lavish campaign donations. Politicians can't serve the Machine if they can't get reelected, after all. The editors continue:

"Some will read the last sentence and chuckle knowingly about its seeming naivete."

Not at all. The editors aren't naive at all. They just think we are.

The rest of the proposal comes straight out of the software: "Jump-starting the conversation" is a favorite phrase, because it's code for "introducing radical conservatism into the debate." I doubt they'd praise anyone for suggesting, oh, I don't know, the confiscation of homes and property of rich bankers. Ryan/Wyden is at least that radical, but the Post probably wouldn't praise a revolutionary socialist for "jump-starting a conversation" about the economy, would it? Would they call it a "serious proposal"?

The editorial ends by slamming the White House for "stomping" on Ryan/Wyden, an act that resembles the killing of an insect, and which most Republican voters are likely to applaud. We can only add that if stomping doesn't work, the Administration can always try hitting it with a rolled-up newspaper. The Post will do nicely.

Last Rites

Some people are giving this radical scheme cover by saying we'll still have access to public-sector Medicare, as well as private plans. But that's how Medicare works today. The big difference is that, under Ryan/Widen, total expenditures would be sharply capped without any way of controlling runaway medical costs. So those costs would be shifted to seniors more and more with each passing year.

Others are pointing out that the public/private competition would resemble the "public option" under Medicare. But why is an "option" only acceptable when it undermines a public system? As a former health insurance exec myself, I know how easy it would be to game and undermine this kind of program under a fixed budget and without clearly defined benefits.

What happens next is critically important. As Nate Silver noted, the public's opinion on this topic is highly malleable. Misinformation from media outlets like the Post can affect the fate of Medicare, and the failure of Democrats to forcefully repudiate Wyden will further weaken its chances

Things aren't looking good. By presenting a united front, which they rarely do anymore, Democrats have been able to get their message across about Medicare and the Ryan Plan. But the Machine is always looking for new recruits, and it always seems to find willing Democrats. Conrad on health care, Durbin on Social Security, Wyden on Medicare ... it doesn't take more than one or two to cloud the issue and undermine a vital and popular program.

No wonder most Americans are disgusted with this Congress and don't believe it will act effectively to protect their interests. The dissatisfaction is widespread among Republicans and Democrats and is most pronounced among independents, 57% of whom voted for Democrats last time around.

In the long run Medicare will need saving - from the devastating impact of for-profit medicine on our health economy (and on our health). That will take aggressive cost control measures. Those measures could include new provider reimbursement plans, along with a highly robust public option that restricts private-sector gamesmanship. But first Medicare has to be protected from crazy schemes and stealth attacks like the Ryan/Widen plan.

If politicians and the public don't strike back hard against scams like "Wyden/Ryan," make no mistake about it: Medicare will die, and the Machine will begin locking onto its next target.

Fact Sheet: Inaccuracies in Washington Post's Halloween Social Security Article

Richard Eskow — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:37:56 -0400

A Huffington Post commenter responding to my recent piece on the Washington Post's recent Social Security article by saying that I "claimed 'inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies' but delivered problems of tone, and emphasis."

Then, and without irony, the commenter links to a 'fact sheet' on Social Security from - the Washington Post!

Here's a fact sheet on those "inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies"- or at least, as many as I could squeeze in here:
___________________________________________________

"Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury."

False. The Treasury owes the Social Security $2.6 trillion.

"This year, it will add a projected $46 billion to the nation's budget problems ..."

False. It is drawing on its own funds.

"Replacing cash lost to a one-year payroll tax holiday will require another $105 billion."

False. See Dean Baker for more.

"Social Security is hardly the biggest drain on the budget."

False. It does not drain the budget at all.

"... Modest change to Social Security ... "

False. It's a significant change.

And those are only from the lines I directly quoted. Here are some other falsehoods from the piece:

"The $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund will provide little relief."

Are you kidding? It provides $2.6 trillion in relief!

"The government has borrowed every cent and now must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors to keep benefit checks flowing."

False, false, and false. The government has borrowed from Social Security's contributors - you and me - to fund its tax cuts for the wealthy and two wars. Since when is repaying a creditor - us - considered spending?

And that comment about benefit checks is a particularly egregious lie. With no changes to the program whatsoever, it will still be able to pay its benefits in full until sometime in the 2030's, after which it will still be able to pay 75% of its benefits - without taking a single penny from other sources.

"Many Democrats have largely chosen to ignore the shortfall, insisting the program is flush ..."

False. All the Democrats and independents defending Social Security acknowledge the long-term shortfall. Many, like Bernie Sanders, advocating making up the difference by lifting the payroll tax cap in some fashion and applying it to higher earners. (That's the approach recommended by Reagan's former actuary.)

"Such statements (like Harry Reid's, that Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit) have not been true since at least 2009, when the cost of monthly checks regularly began to exceed payroll tax collections."

False. Social Security is drawing on its own funds and is not contributing to the deficit.

"The Bowles-Simpson plan would have righted the system's finances with a combination of payroll tax increases and reductions in scheduled benefits, mainly years down the road. It would have hit upper-income workers ..."

False. Their overall plan, heavily skewed toward the right, included tax cuts for the wealthy. And it raised payroll taxes so slowly that it would have taken fifty years to have those taxes apply to 90% in income, as they did decades ago.

Obama "endorsed the panel's proposal to tie future benefits to a less-generous inflation index."

Less generous? The current index understates the real increases in living costs for people on Social Security. It isn't "less generous"- it's a benefit cut.

"Retirement benefits were available at 65, at a time when life expectancy was significantly lower than today."

False - and disproven repeatedly. The shorter lifespans in Roosevelt's day were primarily due to infant and childhood mortality. The life expectancy for working adults is only a few years longer than it was then.

This should get readers started on the topic. They can read Baker's piece for more.

Boo! W. Post Dresses Up Like a Newspaper To Tell a Social Security Ghost Story

Richard Eskow — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:44:08 -0400

What do they call the night before Halloween? Oh, yeah. Hell night. That makes tonight just right for grabbing a fistful of mashmallows and candy corn before sitting down to read this article.

It'll make your blood run cold, and afterwards you'll probably agree: It's time to stop letting this propaganda outlet keep dressing up as a newspaper.

A History of Mendacity

The paper's own media critic, Howard Kurtz (no liberal himself), reported fairly extensively on the paper's bias back in 2004.

And the paper's former ombudsman, Michael Getler, wrote that the Post " displayed a pattern of missing or downplaying events that unfolded in public-events that might have played a role in public opinion during the run-up to the war." Getler cited a long list of cases where the paper prominently featured inaccurate assessments of the Iraq situation, ignored prominent critics of the prevailing pro-war sentiment, and buried evidence of the hawks' misstatements in its back pages.

Kurtz reported that the paper's Executive Editor, Leonard Downie Jr., later displayed remorse and reflection: "(W)e were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea ... We didn't pay enough attention to the minority."

They expressed remorse. But they didn't change.

Judy Lives

Today the Post seems determined to play the same vital role in destroying our elder safety net that it played in leading us into war.

It's easy to imagine that journalists there are in a tough spot. But Judith Miller's fate should be a cautionary story for anyone who writes a story like this one. After Miller's "Curveball" stories played a key role in the drive for war in Iraq, and were then discredited, she went from Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist to blogger (at last report) for the right-wing "Newsmax" site.

One imagines that, even worse than the ignominy, is the guilt (or karma, or whatever you want to call it) that flows from causing all that needless suffering.

Curveball Comes Home

This time it's elderly and disabled Americans who will suffer the consequences. How can a 2,363 word piece in on Social Security be so densely packed with inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies?

It almost takes a cryptographer to unpack the deceptions contain in an article published Saturday with the headline, "The debt fallout: How Social Security went 'cash negative' earlier than expected."

The piece's author sits us down by the campfire, holds the flashlight up to her chin, and spins a yarn filled with quotes from right-wing ideologues from both parties. Most of her "sources" have a long history of trying to gut Social Security, often under the employ of billionaire former Nixon Cabinet member Pete Peterson (whose own organization, Fiscal Times, provides financial journalism services for thePost. Coincidence? You decide.)

How many quotes are included from the organizations and groups defending Social Security? None.

How many quotes from economists like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Dean Baker, who have a proven record of accuracy of domestic economic matters? None.

How many quotes from truly nonpartisan observers like Harry C. Ballantyne, the Chief Actuary for Medicare and Social Security appointed by Ronald Reagan who coauthored a report which put the lie to many of these claims? None.

A director of the AARP is quoted, but only so that he can be characterized as the spokesperson for an 'interest group.' conducting a "public relations campaign."

Reporting like this makes Judy Miller look like John Peter Zenger.

Close-Captioned For the Economically and Ideologically Non-Impaired

If we had the space we'd deconstruct the entire piece. Instead we'll use a selected sample, beginning with the first line:

" Last year, as a debate over the runaway national debt gathered steam in Washington, Social Security passed a treacherous milestone. It went "cash negative."

Holy cow, that's a lot of deception in one sentence. First, the sentence conflates the national debt with Social Security. But Social Security is expressly forbidden by law from contributing to the debt! It must be entirely self-sustaining. So why connect the two in one sentence?

And that "treacherous milestone" isn'tnot treacherous at all. The plan's huge surplus, currently $2.6 trillion, was amassed because planners know that baby boomers would retire someday. That supposedly "treacherous" switch to "cash negative" has been anticipated for decades.

"Now, Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury. This year, it will add a projected $46 billion to the nation's budget problems, according to projections by system trustees."

No. Social Security is entirely self-funded. This is a falsehood. And note the use of the word "sucking."

"Replacing cash lost to a one-year payroll tax holiday will require another $105 billion."

The President and Congress agreed to use the payroll taxes that fund Social Security as the mechanism for a tax break. That was a bad idea, in my opinion, precisely because it opened the program up to this kind of deception. But it's misleading at best to complain that this is adding to the nation's budget woes.

"Lawmakers in both parties are ducking the issue, wary of agitating older voters and their advocates in Washington, who have long targeted politicians who try to tamper with federal retirement benefits."

The word "ducking" is straight out of the Pete Peterson playbook. If you're not willing to back unnecessary cuts to Social Security to please billionaire political patrons like Peterson, you're somehow a cowardly politician.

Another Peterson trick is to ignore disabled recipients of Social Security and focus on the elderly, painting them as demanding, selfish, and cruel for expecting the benefits they'd paid for all their working lives. (Remember Alan Simpson's "greedy geezers" remark?) In Montgomery's case, these aggressive oldsters are "agitated" and have a practice of "targeting politicians" who cross them.

"In his February budget request, Obama ignored the Social Security blueprint put forth by his own bipartisan panel on debt reduction."

Get it? He didn't reject it; he ignored it. Coward.

"Social Security is hardly the biggest drain on the budget."

That's how one makes oneself reasonable, while at the same time reinforcing the lie. Social Security doesn't drain the budget at all.

"Many Democrats have largely chosen to ignore the shortfall ..."

See Obama, above.

"Last week, Reid softened his stand, backing a ... change in the Social Security inflation index ... "

Modest? Dean Baker can clear that one up for you. (He also explains the sleight of hand that's used by throwing Medicare into the equation.)

"Even that modest change to Social Security is drawing fire, however, from a powerful network of organizations representing the elderly, unionized workers and traditional liberals."

The reporter marginalizes groups working to protect Social Security as "traditional liberals," which in DC is like calling them "flat-earthers." Yet polls prove this is not a "traditional liberal" position: 75% of Republicans and 76% of Tea Party members oppose cutting Social Security benefits to balance the budget.

Our Liberal Overlords

And as for that "powerful network of organizations": You mean the one that's so powerful it stopped the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed through the level of stimulus we needed to fix unemployment, broke up the big banks, passed the EFCA to help unions, and resisted destructive budget cuts to programs that range from law enforcement to helping the needy? You mean that network?

Oh, right. It doesn't exist. And why not? Partly because organizations like the Post suppress or distort their views while relentlessly promoting those of their powerful and well-funded opponents, often in the guise of "news" articles like this one.

Behind the Mask

There's more - much more - but you get the drift.

It's time to accept the fact that the Post is no longer a reputable newspaper. It's been criticizing again and again for its slanted and biased reporting and yet it refuses to correct itself. It requires extraordinary credulity to keep assuming this is accidentally sloppy reporting.

What thePost does isn't journalism. It's propaganda dressed up in a newspaper outfit, going door to door to its subscribers and shouting "Trick or Treat!" Problem is, we keep getting the trick instead of the treat.

Happy Halloween.

___________________________________________________________________

UPDATE: Some guy with a beard and a Nobel Prize weighs in on this. He was not quoted in the Post piece. Apparently he lacks the economic gravitas of people like Erskine Bowles, who's on the Board of the bailed-out financial firm Morgan Stanley.

UPDATE II:

A Huffington Post commenter insists that I "claimed 'inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies' but delivered problems of tone, and emphasis." Then, without irony, the commenter links to a 'fact sheet' on Social Security from - the Washington Post!

Here's a fact sheet on those "inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies" - as many as I could squeeze in, anyway.

Back To School: The Vain Search For The Right 'Formula' For Education

Jeff Bryant — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:23:06 -0400

Much in the same way that September ushers in a new football season every year regaled by a bombast of armchair quarterbacks analyzing "the game," the month also brings on yet another Back to School Season with a chorus of commentators declaring their prescriptions to "fix our schools." Unfortunately, too often the rhetoric of these two orations sounds an awful lot alike.

For instance, take a recent blog post by edu-journalist Jay Mathews. Writing at the Washington Post, Mathews exhorted his readership to "get serious about fixing our schools" without ever identifying exactly who the "unserious" are in the ongoing conversations about education. Then he suggested what may be one of the most "unserious" education observations of all: that the way to "fix" American public education is to find the right "formula."

First off, it's interesting to note, that formulas for public schools that always seem most in demand, as is true in Mathew's post, are ones that will work for "low-income children," as if somehow schools that seem to work well in better-off communities -- you know, schools that are adequately funded, that are safe and inviting, that have a broad curriculum emphasizing critical thinking with ample opportunities to engage in extra-curricular learning activities -- somehow are inappropriate for the lesser-off in our society.

Second, the sample formulas that are frequently cited by edu-pundits tend to steer around the very things that currently make public education in America today so fraught with complications. Take the examples offered by Mathews for instance.

The first, is a network of high schools in New York that are allowed to be exempt from four of the five New York state tests that students in all other NY public schools are required to take. The second is a prominent chain of charter schools, KIPP, that has never actually run a school district, has a reputation for pushing out students who misbehave or perform poorly academically, and practices a form of instruction that I can't imagine many middle class American parents would like for their children.

Not to pick on Mathews alone, one of the most popular flavors of school reform being peddled this new school year is for schools to spend goo-gobs of money on laptops, software, and Smart Boards in order to create "technology-centric classrooms." Even during a year when state legislators and governors are cutting public school spending back to levels below what was being spent in 2008, many of these very same officials are requiring schools to ramp up their outlays for tech.

Here again, as yesterday's article in the New York Times revealed, there's no silver bullet -- even when it has been digitized:

In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning.
This conundrum calls into question one of the most significant contemporary educational movements.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed at all to the idea that school systems should borrow interesting ideas and practices from each other to try out in their own situations. But I would submit that the nation's fixation on getting the right "formula" for our public schools is less of a solution than it is part of the problem.

There are reasons why perfect formulas for public schools are so elusive. First, education is a complex endeavor that often defies simple solutions. Just as no two kids are the same, the dynamics of any two classrooms are apt to differ, as will the strengths and character of the teachers, and the environment in different schools. The fact that research identifies some factors that appear to be more critical than others gives us a baseline only -- one worth working from, for sure. But by no means something to roll out across the country.

Second, public schools by their very nature reflect their communities. Scratch any dysfunctional public school, and what you're apt to find is a dysfunctional community. Not that schools don't occasionally rise above their surrounding circumstances. But community inputs matter -- a lot. To argue otherwise is to assert that schools for black children in the Jim Crowe-era South would have somehow gotten better on their own without a strong federal intervention.

So let's start this new school year off with a vow to resist the rhetoric of education's armchair quarterbacks pushing simple solutions to fix public schools. Unless of course, they're actually proposing to literally "fix" schools, by providing funds to repair and renew dilapidated school buildings in our most impoverished school systems.

Instead, what we need from the national media are the voices of teachers, parents, and students who live and learn from their experiences with teaching and learning every day.

Ezra Klein Is Right About Social Security, Wrong About The Threat

Roger Hickey — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:30:19 -0400

Ezra Klein has a prominently displayed piece in the Washington Post this morning, entitled The Pro-Social Security case for Social Security reform. He takes to task liberals most committed to Social Security for being unwilling to “reform” Social Security out of fear that reform would turn out to harm the system. He then goes on to outline his version of reform that no liberal would ever quarrel with: no cuts to benefits, dealing with future shortfalls by lifting the cap so all the income of the wealthy is subject to FICA tax – and improving Social Security benefits for low income retirees and spouses.

And then he pooh-poohs the fears of program’s defenders who, he says

“are so concerned that conservatives will slash benefits — now or down the road — that they are afraid to open the pension plan to any reforms at all. I think they’re wrong. This country is better than that. A political party that tries to tell ordinary Americans their retirements are too secure and too long will quickly learn its lesson when the election rolls around. Poll after poll shows the vast unpopularity of cutting Social Security benefits, and Republicans can read those surveys as easily as Democrats can. A politician may as well burn a flag on the Capitol’s lawn.”

My only response is to ask: “What planet have you been living on, Ezra?:

This country is, indeed, better than the huge number of proposals to cut Social Security benefits. Polls show that voters hate the idea of benefit cuts, and increases in the retirement age. But in Washington, these kinds of plans are everywhere. For example:

Yesterday, as Richard Eskow reported, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had to hold a big rally and press conference to vow to protect Social Security from the deficit hawks in both parties who want to cut benefits.

Gene Sperling, who Ezra quotes approvingly for his plan for “add-on” private accounts, is now the national economic czar for Barack Obama. President Obama appointed Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, whose proposals to cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age are being cited as the centerpiece of bi-partisan Senate budget negotiations. Neither Sperling nor Obama have denounced those Social Security cuts, and they keep signaling that “everything is on the table.”

Ezra might want to read the countless editorials by his own paper and columns by Samuelson and others, all calling for cuts to Social Security and increases in the retirement age. Washington Post editorials have repeatedly asserted that Social Security contributes to the Federal Deficit, denied that the Social Security trust fund is real, and urged Social Security cuts as the first step to reducing deficits.

Even good liberals, like John Podesta, who in a piece about the Deficit Commission, acknowledge that Social Security contributes not a dime to the federal deficit, but urges cuts anyway because Social Security “reforms could starkly demonstrate to skeptical debt markets that the United States is willing to take on a politically difficult fiscal issue." This is akin to the argument that the real problem is rising health care costs, driving Medicare costs, but another round of health reform is too difficult right now, so cutting Social Security is the easy place to start, even if it has nothing to do with the deficit.

The point is that politicians and policy wonks from both parties all over Washington are calling for drastic cuts to Social Security. Some, like the folks at the conservative Third Way Democratic corporate front group, are making the case that Social Security benefit cuts are the best way for liberals to “save Social Security” even if what remains is a welfare system that abandons the middle class who are now struggling to figure out their own retirement and have only Social Security to count on.

Ezra Klein’s reputation is as a straight shooter who looks at the data and the facts. He courageously changed his position on raising the retirement age when he realized its impact on older working people. His position on Social Security is a good one: no cuts, raise revenues, and improve. But he ignores the strong and deadly serious push that is swirling all around him. The enemies of Social Security want to do all those destructive cuts that Ezra opposes. And they call their destructive policies “reform.” Defenders of Social Security are right to oppose that kind of “reform” coming from conservatives and misguided liberals – and we are going to have to defeat even them, even as we wait for the right time to strengthen the social insurance system that means so much to all Americans.

For similar take on Klein’s column, see Dean Baker today.