Take the Responsibility and the Blame

I was very tempted to go to hear Diane Ravitch speak at an event here in Washington, so I could ask her what we, as a society, get now that she has seen the light. Public figures love to "take full responsibility" for misdeeds (when they get caught doing them), but accept none of the blame. Punishment? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Ravitch, a former assistant secretary of education in the Bush (pére) Administration, was by her own admission a "conservative advocate of charters, merit pay and accountability." Now she claims to be a "skeptical independent," having hit upon the novel notion of checking the data.

A bit too late, she has discovered that the policies she shoved down everyone's throat haven't suceeded at anything good. In the interim, from the 1980s to today, millions of children were subjected to aggressive teach-to-the-test instruction and a corresponding number of teachers were forced to become automatons in the service of some wonk's slash and burn approach.

I myself discarded the briefly held idea of becoming a teacher once I was confronted with one public school system's "competency-based curriculum." This was essentially one of those unreadable educratic policy tomes in which everything is a three-word something (pencil = paper-oriented wordprocessor) and single syllable, Anglo-Saxon words are never used if a longer, Latinate one can be had.

So, yes, Ms. Ravitch, you and your fellow edufascists-in-arms chased me away, even though I could have made learning something so enjoyable students might pursue it on their own, outside school.

Worse, still, the kids didn't get any smarter under the No Child Left Behind regime your propaganda inspired. Even you admit it now. What was the ditty? Ah, yes: those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, teach education.

In Ravitch's case, she's out to make money confessing her error in a new book. Borrow it from a library, if you must; just don't give her a dime she doesn't deserve.

How is it that all sorts of people can not only start wars, dumb-down schools, steal from the poor and give to the rich, steal from the rich and keep it, and -- only if caught! -- appear in public with crocodile tears about how terrible and wrong they were. They can even non-apologize "if" someone suffered as a result.

Then they get to rake in the real publicity and dough.

What ever happened to scarlet letters, stocks, public humiliation and taunting, drawing and quartering? Weren't these the preferred social catharses the uberconservatives loved? Or were those only for Galileo, English Jesuits and the victims of the unruly teenage girls of Salem?

I'd like to see some real, unremunerated effort to compensate society. Barring that, a good whipping would do.

GOP BS about Reconciliation

Let's retire the notion being pushed like crack that using "reconciliation" to get what's been watered down to health care consumer protection passed through the U.S. Senate is something terribly, terribly unusual and sinister. The pushers, Republicans such as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), should be ashamed of themselves for this naked effort to throw pixie dust at the public to protect their insurance industry patrons.

The facts of the matter are that reconciliation, a procedure created to bypass an arcane Senate practice to make sure, among other things, that the federal government has funds on which to legally operate, was first used in 1981 by the ... wait for it ... Republicans!

• 17 of the 23 reconciliation bills signed into law, were enacted by Republican presidents;
• If you have ever continued under your employer's health plan after you were laid off under "COBRA" benefits, that's due to the 1974 Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act;
• Welfare reforms were passed in 1996 thanks to one Newton Leroy Gingrich (then R-Ga), in the the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.

As to what reconciliation bypasses, it's called a filibuster, a maneuver not found nor based in the Constitution, to stop the Senate from even debating whether a law should be passed or voting on the law. The filibuster stops a 59% majority from approving a law.

Let's consider what 59% means.

Remember  Ronald Reagan's 1980 "landslide" electoral victory that made him president? He only got 50.7% of the votes cast. In contrast, Lyndon B. Johnson won 61% of the votes cast 1964 -- that was a real landslide.

Under the Senate's 60% supermajority rule needed to defeat a filibuster, neither Abraham Lincoln nor John F. Kennedy would have been elected. Nor would any president since Lyndon Johnson, including Barack Obama and both Bushes.

The famously portrayed filibuster by actor Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 film  "Mr. Smith Comes to Washington" isn't even how filibusters occur today at all. There's no continuous talkathon, no drama at all and really no effort.

Last week, by one vote upholding a filibuster, that of Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky), the unemployment benefits of millions of people came to a crashing halt this past Sunday, just when the duration of joblessness is at an all-time-record.

Telenovelas and the NPR Reporter

Just Thursday morning, I  heard a reporter on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" comparing the then-upcoming conference between President Obama and the Republicans on health reform to a "Latin telenovela." In case listeners didn't know what a telenovela is, he added, "you know, one of Latin American those soap operas that go on for hours and hours."

I get it. We're all supposed to laugh. Imagine Barack Obama and John Boehner (R-Ohio) going on like those crazy "Latins" sitting in the shade in their Mexican "sombreros" and going on endlessly about nothing while sipping their tequila! Ha, ha, ha!

You know, of course, that all Hispanics wear mariachi band outfits, right? In addition, they have no sense of time -- not like punctual, lickety-spit Anglos -- and can't use a pithy Anglo-Saxon phrase where a guitar-accompanied serenade can be had.

Right, Mr. NPR reporter? Ha, ha, ha!!!

Oh, but wait! I am no fan of telenovelas, yet even I know that they keep to their appointed half-hour or hour schedules. They don't go on continuously for "hours and hours" like the debatefest at the White House on health reform.

That's Anglo politicians, Mr. NPR reporter. Not Hispanics in telenovelas.

What's long about telenovelas and Anglo soap-operas alike is that they have interminable, implausible plots that go on for years over thousands of episodes.

The NPR reporter obviously merged in his mind the long plots with the stereotypes about Hispanics -- not "Latins," unless you want to count Andrew Cuomo as one. Doesn't NPR have editors capable of deleting a simile that not only runs against the facts, but is subtly racist?

I understand you didn't mean to offend anyone, Mr. NPR reporter. You wanted to show off that you are so culturally broadminded that you know the word "telenovela."