THE MODERN WAY TO DEAL WITH ECONOMIC DISTRESS
Stimulus Bill Compromise Appears Dead (washingtonpost.com) "The new bill would speed up a planned reduction in the 27 percent tax rate, repeal key elements of the corporate minimum tax, allow companies to write off investments more quickly, extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks and give the unemployed a tax credit to buy health insurance."
Tax credits to help the unemployed! I guess people are just supposed to tell the kids to cut out breakfast and lunch, and all diseases until May, then it's high livin' off that tax refund all summer long. Do even Republicans actually believe this will help families devastated by the recession?
Wednesday, December 19, 2001
REPUTATION REHABILITATION DEPT.
The anti-terrorism war has provided many opportunities for former villains, depredations, and debacles to win their good names back. To the list that includes CIA assassination programs and the king of Afghanistan, we must now add British rule (colonialism?) in Ireland:
Britain to Lead 5,000 Troops in Kabul Peacekeeping Role "The British military's years in Northern Ireland have given it tough experience in maintaining law and order . . ."
I am also bemused by the fact that the British get to be the major western force in Afghanistan, in one of those former imperial regions that the Brits still seem to think of as their responsibility in some way. Will this be Tony Blair's Falkland Islands? He has been acting like he wants one.
The anti-terrorism war has provided many opportunities for former villains, depredations, and debacles to win their good names back. To the list that includes CIA assassination programs and the king of Afghanistan, we must now add British rule (colonialism?) in Ireland:
Britain to Lead 5,000 Troops in Kabul Peacekeeping Role "The British military's years in Northern Ireland have given it tough experience in maintaining law and order . . ."
I am also bemused by the fact that the British get to be the major western force in Afghanistan, in one of those former imperial regions that the Brits still seem to think of as their responsibility in some way. Will this be Tony Blair's Falkland Islands? He has been acting like he wants one.
Tuesday, December 18, 2001
The Bushwhacking of Public Education
This just in from the Associated Press/MSNBC:
Senate easily passes education bill
"Pupils in the third through eighth grades would be tested in reading and math annually, and the results used to judge the performance of their schools. Failing schools would receive increased funds, although if scores did not improve after six years the schools could be restaffed."
Thus the Bushes family education policy has been imposed on the nation. Not for their family, but for everyone else's. Already in place in the family fiefs of Texas and Florida, this plan "improves" public schools by forcing them to give more standardized tests than they already do, and then makes sure that they overemphasize the tests (and rote learning) by making their reputations and funding dependent on the results. This is known in conservative public policy circles as "accountability."
The virtues of the system are of course on display in the Bush domains of Florida and Texas, where (as in the most of the South) middle-class people send their children to private school at much higher rates than in other parts of the country, if they can afford it. Bush-style educational policy does not change that, being aimed primarily at raising the test scores of impoverished schools where most upper middle-class children would not have to go if even their parents would let them. We moved away from Florida partly because of the fact that the school curricula and teacher energy were obviously focused on the mandatory tests to the detriment of everything else one supposes that schools might be teaching. Doubtless kids who spent their days drilling for tests will develop a life-long fondness for learning and knowledge, kind of like prisoners grow to love laundry, rocks, and license plates.
The main winners from the national system that the bill will create are politicians and the media, who have sold themselves quite thoroughly on the "crisis" in public education and need a way to generate some results. The new tests will generate cool sets of numbers that can be charted and graphed, allowing the local newspapers to churn out annual horse race stories (always better and easier than qualitative analysis) on how the area schools are doing, while politicians will be able to claim credit for the percentage rises in test scores that inevitably result once the schools shift their focus to preparing students for the tests. (A pleasant side-effect is the centralization of power that results when there is such a simple and concrete index of success and failure that can be used against dissident school districts, schools, and teachers.) The education policy achievements of the Bush brothers were manufactured in exactly this fashion.
This just in from the Associated Press/MSNBC:
Senate easily passes education bill
"Pupils in the third through eighth grades would be tested in reading and math annually, and the results used to judge the performance of their schools. Failing schools would receive increased funds, although if scores did not improve after six years the schools could be restaffed."
Thus the Bushes family education policy has been imposed on the nation. Not for their family, but for everyone else's. Already in place in the family fiefs of Texas and Florida, this plan "improves" public schools by forcing them to give more standardized tests than they already do, and then makes sure that they overemphasize the tests (and rote learning) by making their reputations and funding dependent on the results. This is known in conservative public policy circles as "accountability."
The virtues of the system are of course on display in the Bush domains of Florida and Texas, where (as in the most of the South) middle-class people send their children to private school at much higher rates than in other parts of the country, if they can afford it. Bush-style educational policy does not change that, being aimed primarily at raising the test scores of impoverished schools where most upper middle-class children would not have to go if even their parents would let them. We moved away from Florida partly because of the fact that the school curricula and teacher energy were obviously focused on the mandatory tests to the detriment of everything else one supposes that schools might be teaching. Doubtless kids who spent their days drilling for tests will develop a life-long fondness for learning and knowledge, kind of like prisoners grow to love laundry, rocks, and license plates.
The main winners from the national system that the bill will create are politicians and the media, who have sold themselves quite thoroughly on the "crisis" in public education and need a way to generate some results. The new tests will generate cool sets of numbers that can be charted and graphed, allowing the local newspapers to churn out annual horse race stories (always better and easier than qualitative analysis) on how the area schools are doing, while politicians will be able to claim credit for the percentage rises in test scores that inevitably result once the schools shift their focus to preparing students for the tests. (A pleasant side-effect is the centralization of power that results when there is such a simple and concrete index of success and failure that can be used against dissident school districts, schools, and teachers.) The education policy achievements of the Bush brothers were manufactured in exactly this fashion.
What This Is
I am a political historian and former journalist who believes that historians that have more to offer public discourse than the presidential anecdotes and bland reassurances you may have seen on television. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch named my recent book, "The Tyranny of Printers": Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic, one of the best non-fiction works of 2001, and declared that it "should be read by many of the great number who are now exposed to the conservative biography of Adams by David McCullough." This blog will be conducted in a similar spirit. I have been engaging in sporadic historical e-punditry for about a year now, but have been looking for a way to do regular commentary without writing full essays or worrying about web page design. It's looks like "blogging" might be the ticket. Interested readers should also check my more formal outlets: the "Publick Occurrences" column at the online history magazine Common-Place, and "Publick Occurrences Extra" on my own web site.
I am a political historian and former journalist who believes that historians that have more to offer public discourse than the presidential anecdotes and bland reassurances you may have seen on television. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch named my recent book, "The Tyranny of Printers": Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic, one of the best non-fiction works of 2001, and declared that it "should be read by many of the great number who are now exposed to the conservative biography of Adams by David McCullough." This blog will be conducted in a similar spirit. I have been engaging in sporadic historical e-punditry for about a year now, but have been looking for a way to do regular commentary without writing full essays or worrying about web page design. It's looks like "blogging" might be the ticket. Interested readers should also check my more formal outlets: the "Publick Occurrences" column at the online history magazine Common-Place, and "Publick Occurrences Extra" on my own web site.
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