Dumb and Dumber

 

           Dumb and Dumber

One of the great tragedies in American politics is the decline of regard for the truth among those whose political aspirations exceed their moral fiber. Two such individuals are Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Let's consider Rubio first. As with Cruz and many others who get significant contributions to their campaign funds from the National Rifle Association, he immediately, in the wake of the recent Uvalde, Texas school shootings, said the following:

“There hasn't been a single of these mass shootings that have been purchased at a gun show or on the internet.”

        Apparently, the senator has forgotten the names of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Remember them? They were the individuals behind the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and they acquired their firearms at a gun show with the help of an 18-year-old classmate. In a similar vein, at least one of the handguns Seung-Hui Cho used to kill thirty-two persons at Virginia Tech in 2007 was purchased online. Those are the ones we know about, there are undoubtedly many more out there, sold at gun shows or on-line by unlicensed dealers or private individuals, whose current owners are on nobody’s radar. That is, of course until the shooting starts.

        Of course, like McConnell, Trump, and many others on the Red side of the aisle, these are attempts to dull the efforts of those who call for assault weapons bans and universal, stringent background checks prior to firearms sales. In truth, every single poll involving NRA members has returned results showing that more than half of responding NRA members support rigid background checks prior to firearms sales. In some polls, that percentage has been as high as 75%. So why would a nice Cuban immigrant boy like Rubio support the NRA so avidly? How about Last year’s NRA donation of $3,303,000 to his campaign war chest?

 How odd is it that Republicans excoriate Democrats for supporting labor unions while they, themselves, almost universally as a party, continue running interference for an organization who thinks there are never enough guns, regardless of whose hands they are in? As a former high school teacher, I find Rubio loathsome for several reasons but none more so than this.

 Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is even more off the rails, on the issue. On May 24 he said (referring to the Uvalde shootings),

 “We know from past experiences that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus.”

 Apparently not in this case. While there have been, and continue to be, various and often conflicting reports elated to what happened at Robb Elementary School, on May 25, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw initially said that before the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school and shot and killed at least 19 children and two teachers, he was confronted by a district school resource officer, the standard title for armed police officers who work on school grounds. That assertion was later “walked back” as it appeared that Ramos had entered the building unobstructed by the armed Resource officer who was on duty. However, related to Cruz’s statement: a non-profit which concerns itself with researching gun related issues found that in Santa Fe and in three other prominent shootings in 2018 — Kentucky’s Marshall County High School in January; Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February; Maryland’s Great Mills High School in March — "attackers stormed campuses despite the presence of armed guards." "In every case, guards failed to stop the shooter from killing.” As events, and the “operative explanations” unravel in Texas, it is beginning to seem that armed police even hesitated to engage the shooter for some time.

 The Rand think tank examined data from U.S. schools between 2014 to 2018 to evaluate the impact of school resource officers. It found that school resource officers "do effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent school shootings or gun-related incidents.”

        It is crucial, when engaging in this dialogue, to bear in mind who does the surveys and where their interests lie. Cruz, a recipient of significant NRA moneys, ergo hardly an unbiased observer, received $176,000 in NRA funding last year! One organization which is far more likely to be relatively unbiased, the American Medical Association, funded a 2021 study on the issue. Published in the JAMA, their data suggested “No association between having an armed officer and deterrence of violence" in mass shootings from 1980 to 2019. "Prior research suggests that many school shooters are actively suicidal, intending to die in the act, so an armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent," the study said.

Following Cruz’s statemen, a “spokesperson,” attempting to validate his falsehood, pointed to a 2019 article that referenced 2005 research that suggested “increased police presence leads to fewer people committing crimes”. So, what’s wrong with that? Unlike the studies referenced above, the article and research mentioned by Cruz’s talking head wasn’t even addressing school shootings specifically, but was generalized to all public situations such as concerts, sporting events, shopping malls, etc.

There are factors related to these tragedies which seem to slide under the radar to some extent. Guns seem to be seen by the school shooters as some sort of “solution” to what are obviously their significant underlying mental and emotional issues. Bullying seems to head this list exacerbated, so it would seem, by parents who are in some cases (Columbine, Uvalde, Stoneman Douglas, etc.?) either blind to the activities and issues of their children or unwilling to intervene until too late. Making guns available to these troubled adolescents just provides the modality for a far more deadly “acting out” event.

As a former teacher I also feel that “No Child Left Behind,” (NCLB) while undoubtedly well intended, can cause far greater issues at the local level that any bureaucrat ever intended or any President (“Is our children learning?”) was capable of understanding. The Stoneman Douglas and Uvalde shooters showed red flag behaviors both at home and in school, but both remained enrolled until it was far too late. In a similar vein, psychiatric heath care professionals had identified both James Holmes and Seung-Hui Cho as mentally unstable, yet there were apparently few concerns or interventions related to their propensity for violence, yet Cho killed thirty-two people and wounded seventeen others with two semi-automatic pistols, one of which was definitely bought online. Likewise, Holmes, whose youth was littered with emotional red flags killed twelve and wounded seventy with weapons he should never have been allowed to possess.

At the public school level,  NCLB (Subpart 14, Section 5541: Grants for the Integration of Schools and Mental Health Systems) would seem to provide for enhanced mental health concern and scrutiny at the Elementary and Mid-Hi levels, and yet…A comprehensive study related to connections between school mental health services and No Child Left Behind, conducted by a National Institute of Mental Health researcher, found that between 5% and 9% of students face emotional and behavioral issues that impede their learning.  Beyond this, a report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on the interaction between school policies and health for adolescents noted in 2008 that some twenty percent of students annually demonstrate evidence of experiencing a mental health issue.

As we continue to see demonstrated, it only takes one. This is a far from simple issue but banning assault weapons nationwide and negating easy and unverified access to guns by unstable individuals would certainly go a long way toward reducing the body count of our children. And by the way …the top two US states with respect to gun deaths last year? Texas (3,647) and Florida (2449). Think about that.

"Invisible Hand" job

 

         "Invisible Hand"Job (with a nod to                         Adam Smith)

        There's a strange phenomenon that occurs in American politics. In general, it goes something like this: If the party in power before you were elected committed The US government to some action and new administration follows through with that commitment and things go wrong then it's the fault of the current administration for carrying out the previous administration’s committed actions.

        Two cases in point. In the first, George W. Bush committed the United States to troop withdrawal from Iraq. Barack Obama carried out those, previously agreed upon, initial troop withdrawals and there was some criticism of that from the Right. In the second case, Donald Trump agreed with the Taliban that the US would pull out of Afghanistan. This commitment, made while Trump was president, was carried out, as scheduled, by the Biden administration. Of course, Trump's ardent sycophant fanbase immediately jumped all over Biden when the Taliban re-seized control of the country.

        In the same vein and along the same lines, Donald Trump constantly bragged about his “record breaking economy” as if we were to believe that he actually knew anything about economics. This runaway growth was fueled in large part by incredibly high federal deficits during what Trump himself styled as a period of “great prosperity.” Trump’s response to one staffer who dared caution him re: deficits, was “We won’t be here!” It is contradictory to common sense, but not surprising, that much of this deficit was what fueled economic growth and so it was, in essence, as if Trump was using the nation's credit card to make himself look good. Of course, he once referred to himself as “The King of debt” in his personal business dealings.

        We are currently experiencing a period of high inflation even as Republicans in Congress have complained about the Biden administration's spending plan, which was actually aimed at improving infrastructure nationwide, creating jobs in the process. The inflation, and this is really the bottom line, has been driven to great extent by one global occurrence over which we have little control, that of course being the COVID pandemic.

        Some of the fallout of this has been that many Americans have not gone back to work or are not going back to work in their previous occupations. Among these are longshoremen, warehousemen, truck drivers and others involved in the process of getting imported goods to consumers. As any 11th grade high school student could tell you, shortage causes prices to increase, ergo inflation. As the global economy began rebounding from the pandemic, the price of crude oil also skyrocketed – also contributing to inflation. High gas prices are one of the most frustrating phenomena for any White House because they affect almost every American, but they are essentially immune from presidential action.

        No matter how many Republican brickbats are hurled at Joe Biden, the awkward fact is that inflation is the job of the Federal Reserve Board and even their ability is limited. Of course, people are upset about inflation, and they want the president to solve their problems, but the harsh reality is that it isn't his problem to solve, and his scope of possible actions is extremely limited, as it is with gas prices and the other things which constitute the economic inflationary scenario.

        The Federal Reserve Board is charged with maintaining price stability and the current period of elevated inflation is anything but stable. Even so, the Fed continues attempts to stimulate the economy, keeping interest rates at low levels. The head of JPMorgan summed it up thus: "We put all of this on the President. We put him on a pedestal and pretend he has this power that he doesn't have. This is the Federal Reserve's job."

        There is one move which could help relieve the stress the pandemic-related supply chain crisis is having on US companies: Lift tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump. Trump put tariffs on roughly $350 billion of Chinese-made goods. US importers have paid more than $106 billion to cover the cost of those tariffs to date, and many of them are now also dealing with skyrocketing shipping costs. The nature of these tariffs is that they aren’t necessarily apparent to the consumer, but they have caused inflationary pricing for auto manufacturers, and even companies such as Black and Decker who use foreign components in most of their tools. When have you ever heard any Republican critique of these punitive tariffs? Me neither.

        The Biden administration has taken some actions within the current system aimed at inflation, but specific legislation would be necessary for major change. The President signed an executive order last September directing rulemaking at the Agriculture Department to boost competition and improve conditions for smaller farmers. The White House has also tasked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate potential price fixing in the energy sector.

The White House has said (correctly) that consolidation in the meat sector is part of what has driven up food prices. Some economists say more aggressively pushing antitrust laws could help ease inflation concerns.         Robert Reich, who was Labor Secretary under former President Bill Clinton, summed it up like this: "One of the big puzzles today is that corporate profits are at record highs and yet the corporations are passing on all these price increases to consumers."  He continued: "If they were really in a competitive market, if we were not dealing with monopolies or what we call oligopolies, these companies would not so easily just simply pass these prices on to consumers. They'd be worried about their competitors. But they're not and I think antitrust enforcement has got to go after these sources of huge market power, this corporate market power in the United States right now."

        One mantra of the Far Right is constant railing about “excessive” government regulation. This actually reflects the current political position of the Republican Party which is, to great extent dominated by two groups whose real situations could hardly be farther apart. On one hand, we have industrialists and corporations which, in reality, border on oligarchy in some key commodities, meat production and some agricultural products among them. (higher grocery bills?) These people benefit from a laissez-faire, or “hands off”, government attitude which says, in essence, “As long as you don't blatantly break the law, whatever you do is fine.” This includes price gouging, price fixing and market controls which benefit the corporation at the expense of the consumer. In the first decade of the 21st century it also meant bundling high risk mortgages and selling them as legitimate investment instruments. (And we all know how that worked out.) Of course, one of Donald Trump's first initiatives upon taking his seat in the White House was to gut the Obama administration's Dodd-Frank legislation which had tried to bring some regulation and assurance of legitimate operation to financial markets.

        One of the chief criticisms of laissez-faire theory is that capitalism as a system has moral ambiguities built into it (you think?) It does not inherently protect the weakest in society, nor is it even motivated to do so by any tangible means. While laissez-faire advocates argue that if individuals serve their own interests first, societal benefits will follow, modern society has not seen that altruism in action. This is why regulation “in the public interest” as Republican Theodore Roosevelt dubbed it, has evolved, primarily in the 20^th century.

        At the other extreme, we have the Red Hat wearing MAGA power base, motivated principally by carefully inculcated racial bias, who don't understand that those they support only care about their votes and could care less about their economic situation, One quick example and then we move on: As things stand right now, in the labor market, increased immigration could go a long way towards filling those jobs such as warehousemen and other labor related jobs that would get the supply chain moving again. This, of course, runs counter to the Trumpist propaganda, therefore they will continue railing at President Biden because of inflation while opposing actions which might help ease the situation.

        Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, referred to the vast and complex web of market pressures and influences as “the invisible hand,” a metaphor he coined to characterize the mechanisms through which beneficial social and economic outcomes may arise from the accumulated self-interested actions of individuals, none of whom may actually intend to bring about such outcomes. Even Adam Smith however, publishing in 1776, could not have predicted the impact of interdependent and interwoven international markets on individual national economies. He used the invisible hand metaphor to describe economics and markets in a far simpler world, without modern communications, labor unions, interlinked economies, and global markets.

        Smith’s “beneficial” social outcome assume some altruistic behavior, which is seldom seen these days. This does not mean Socialism is better, but it does imply that, for market capitalism to be sustainable for all citizens, some overarching authority elected by all the people should aspire to insure fair play for those voters. This is the “government regulation” so detested by Trump, Musk, and others.

        As it always has, inflation will level out, but in the modern scenario of linked world markets, affected as they are by events on other continents over which we have little or no real control, and dependent on resources unevenly distributed, it is far from a simple exercise in that most vague of the soft sciences, economics.

Betsy McCaughey Off the Rails Again

 

      Betsy McCaughey Off the Rails Again

    In a recent column in the local rag, the loathsome Betsy McCaughey leads with the following.: “Schools are becoming indoctrination factories, trying to turn children against their country and their own parents’ values. It's what the teachers’ unions intend. Amazingly, that's just fine with President Joe Biden.”

    Digging deeper into the article, it becomes soon obvious that the real complaint here is that teachers may not teach or reinforce their students’ parental biases and/or bigotry or might present factual materials to refute the Far-Right anti-revisionist history that says, in effect, that, “America has always done everything perfectly and nothing we ever did was detrimental to anybody else.” This is somewhat analogous to insisting that German schools ignore the Holocaust. America has had its own holocausts if you define holocaust as an attempt to either relegate an entire race or group to secondary status or even, in the most extreme cases, eliminate them.

    Ms. McCarthy proceeds to lambaste teachers’ unions, the President, Secretary of Education, and anybody else who believes America is a great country which could be an even better country if all our citizens were given the treatment the constitution supposedly guarantees them. When Ms. McCaughey says schools are trying to turn children against their country that is an incredibly misleading statement because what schools are actually doing, if they're teaching honest unbiased history, is discussing all things that have been done historically, not just the ones that support the Far-Right narrative.

    In my position as a teacher of Advanced Placement U.S. History that meant that we talked about the Tulsa race riots. We discussed the fact that even though the Constitution had been amended to attempt to protect the Black minority in the South, social Reconstruction was largely farcical, simply because the law was not enforced or simply just circumvented at the State level. That's not fiction and that's not revisionist history. That is data-based analysis of the situation. It is Ida Wells Barnett publishing every time somebody black was lynched in the South. it is the NAACP being formed as a reaction to the lack of constitutional protection being afforded to Black people in America.

    Now, if you're a bigot or white supremacist, you may very well not want your children to hear that. If you fear your children being told the truth and the whole truth about those less savory moments in our history, then you're the problem, not the victim. We talked about white soldiers coming home from World War One believing that their jobs, some of which were now being held by Black workers, should simply be given back to them and the Blacks should be fired. It means that, in 1920, Black people in Ocoee Florida died, or had their homes burned because they tried to vote. It means discussing Wounded Knee as what it was - an unwarranted attack on Native Americans and the absolute lack of any control of the armed US Army forces who fired upon them.

    One example I used is that of George Armstrong Custer who has been lionized on the silver screen by such actors as Errol Flynn in the movie “They Died with Their Boots On.” In that version of the Custer story or more correctly, the Custer myth, Custer's 7th cavalry was attacked for no apparent reason by a brutal horde of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors. The facts are categorically contradictory to that and every single reputable historian who has evaluated the situation acknowledges this. But don't tell that to the Far-Right. To understand the present and put it in proper context, it is crucial and absolutely necessary to understand the past. The Far-Right fears this in some degree.

    This has been a paradox in many historical contexts, one example and then we move on. The great famine in Ireland was a result of not only a crop failure, but prejudice against Catholic Irish by Protestant British who had simply been given control of land by royal grant. As some Southerners would say of Black people during reconstruction, British MPs were treated to such verbal pap as, “The Irish must learn to live within their means.” Of course, those “means” included lands which they were not allowed to farm for food because even in the face of starving Irish peasants, exports of food to Britain continued. Ireland continued to export large quantities of food, primarily to Great Britain, during the potato blight. In cases such as livestock and butter, exports actually increased during the Potato Famine.

     In 1847 alone, commodities such as peas, beans, rabbits, fish, and honey continued to be exported from Ireland, even as the Great Hunger ravaged the countryside. Some luckier Irish managed to immigrate to the USA.

     Now flash ahead to the 1900s. Many descendants of these abased and poorly treated Irish immigrants became, themselves, some of the most racist residents of northern cities. One reflects on poor whites being some of the most bigoted, Trump supporting, Americans today. Teaching critical race theory without calling it that is one way to at least address this paradox 

        Shining the light of truth on racial, sexual, or religious discrimination is not “Turning children against their own country.” It should, one hopes, help them to see that it could be better.

    Then, in a turn for the worse (if that’s even possible) Ms. McCaughey then says, “All children deserve kindness but that doesn't mean kindergarteners should be instructed in how boys can transition to become girls or vice versa.” She then says nearly half of teachers agree those issues don't belong in the classroom. There are two significant errors in her method again. The first is that no one with a brain has ever suggested kindergartners should be instructed and how to transition if they’re gender dysphoric. No public-school teacher who even suggested such a thing would lose their job soon after a parent called the principal. That is far different from teaching or even mentioning transitioning at the kindergarten level. It just doesn't happen, it hasn't happened, and no responsible teacher (not “almost half”) thinks it should happen but, using the dog whistle political type of rhetoric made popular by Richard Nixon, Ms. McCaughey throws it out there just like throwing feces at the wall, hoping that some will stick.

    She then states that the American Federation of Teachers website declares that “The U.S. is facing health, economic, and racial challenges all made worse because of Donald Trump. All are demonstrably true. She just tosses it into the conversation because she wishes the unwashed Red Hatters to somehow link an under-educated (couldn’t even get into Grad school) buffoon to real education issues. Go figure.

    Finally, she ends with a union-bashing quote which declares, as if it were the threat of nuclear destruction, that the American Federation of Teachers website urges visitors to “Take action on student debt, voting rights and passing the Equality Act.” For the uninformed, the Act prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. By implication, this seems as if Ms. McCaughey favors voter discrimination, predatory student debt lending and discrimination against some citizens for reasons which affect no one else. (And she probably does).

     I have to stop writing about Betsy McCaughey now, because my computer just threw up.