Leveraging success one customer at a time

I just saw the CEO of the reconstituted GM, Mr. Fritz Henderson, on the News Hour. It was like a scene from a Christopher Guest movie: imagine a folk music record executive, from A Mighty Wind, talking about coming back from bankruptcy. “Smoking hot!” Can’t find the video but here’s a taste from another recent Fritz presentation.

Currently playing:"Can't Let Her Get Away," Michael Jackson

Unsung Heroes of the Collapse

Banker's Holiday Continues, Part 8 (or 9)--
“Four of the [Banking] industry’s top trade groups spent nearly as much on lobbying in the first three months of this year as they did in all of 2001.” Stepehen Laboton, NY Times, 6/4/09


End of school: grading, graduation, and goodbyes. Gawd, I hate goodbyes. Kids have the get-out-of-jail-free smiles plastered on their faces since Memorial Day. They don’t want to sit through lessons about racism as a justification for economic exploitation during the age of imperialism; Kipling’s “the white man’s burden,” etc. “Yeah, right, Mr. T, can we have our party now?” RIF-d (i.e., “reduction in force,” a euphemism for you no longer have a job) teachers shuffle out the door wondering what they did wrong (nothing), blaming older teachers that don’t work as hard as they do. Everyone else heads home, again, shaking their heads.

This year’s graduates, the first batch at my school I taught as 9th graders, were especially touching as they crossed the dais with their diplomas, looking simultaneously like they’d been shot out of a happy cannon and totally unsure of where the hell they were going. Politicians like to huff and puff about our failing public schools (usually as a pretext for cutting funding and implementing some punitive accountability measures), but this year’s grads are better prepared for what lies ahead than I ever was, at least as smart as my generation, and a whole lot smarter than the collective stupidity of this country’s leadership since I graduated from high school.

But those goodbyes. I freeze up tight. I fear I'll explode in tears; red face, snot, choked up, “I’ll really miss you, man!” So I really have to psych myself up to make it through w/ the right degree of stoic composure, ‘onward and upward, summer adventures, don’t forget me when you make it big, fond farewell and pip pip cheerio.’ And, still, I probably reflexively do a little avoidance. But I muddle through, hug someone too tight, gush too much after a couple beers, but I make it through another year w/ my stodgy dignity more or less intact: happy to collaborate and learn from students and colleagues and do what I can to give kids a little leg up and over on their way who knows where, to English literacy and world citizenry! The stuff of teacherly hopes. But I still hate the goodbyes.

So, at any rate, I haven’t had any time (or emotional energy) for writing for awhile but I’ve followed the news on the economy some. (I can’t help myself.) Sorry to say, if you haven’t noticed (and if you follow only TV reports you might not have), but our side is losing. Sure, the stock market is rebounding, banks credit is loosening. Unfortunately, unemployment continues to grow (pushing 10%), there’s no certain ebb to the tide of mortgage foreclosures yet, and there are more blue hairs working at Fred Meyers. But Wall Street’s confidence in its ability to continue fleecing the public is rising, so things are getting back to normal. Some catch-up.

preposterous hopes— too big to fail?

Maybe foolish but there really did appear to be an opportunity in this economic crash, because of its shocking severity (“apple pie and Chevrolet,” the latter just went bankrupt!), to see some real political-economic reform. At minimum, some basic national antitrust wakeup call to the effect that private banks and corporations “too big to fail” are a threat to democracy and nothing more than a “socialism for the rich.” If a business is too big to fail then make it public, and so politically accountable, or reduce and limit its size so that it cannot become too big to fail. To fail to make this correction makes a massive shell game mockery of our democratic system, one that people recognize (here and abroad) even if they don’t understand the complexities of the economy.

banks win, consumers lose

It’s embarrassing, really. Despite promises and rhetoric to the contrary, Obama has given in to the status quo on Wall Street. Lawmakers who have discussed the issue with the administration say the president’s senior aides concluded that a battle with Wall Street was simply not worth the cost. What aides? His guys from Wall Street, Geithner and Summers? What costs? Their friends in banking, their investments?

It’s so galling you couldn’t make this stuff up. The economy tanks, demand plummets. The government pours trillions of dollars into saving the financial sector, instead of nationalizing and reorganizing it. So out of gratitude the banks sit on the money because they don’t want to start lending until they know the full extent of the damage from the housing crash. And then at the first signs of stabilizing markets they begin raising staff salaries, again, and rates on customers (you know, to cover their costs from losses in the housing market). Meanwhile, the O Team finally gets around to some “compromised” regulatory reform proposals (being furthered by galling bank interests as I write) that, mostly, will increase the power of the Federal Reserve to police Wall Street, which is like asking Miller Brewing to police drunk driving.

The proposed regulations do nothing structurally about the size of those private profiteers too big to fail and little about the shadow banking and “off balance sheet entities” that mark the most grotesque dishonesty of the banking crisis. According to those that know better, the proposal to require some skin-in-the-game (5%, reportedly)from loan operators is laughably insufficient. No one has been more wrong in the run-up to this collapse than credit-rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor's. And, yet, not a peep about reforming these institutions. Nor a word about limiting the “brokered deposits” or “hot money” that has destroyed many regional banks.

The administration’s talk about consumer protection, see Geithner on Meet The Press, seems like token public relations. (Throw the dogs a bone, watch them scurry after it.) Curbing predatory credit card practices is welcome but small potatoes compared to losing your job or home or pension. Obama made promises about helping save people’s homes from foreclosure and then abandoned those plans to a congress full court pressed by the banks. (How, at this point, you might wonder, increduously, could the unpopular banks exert this kind of influence? I don't know but I bet it has something to do w/ money.) Consumers trying to hang-on to their homes are lost in the black hole maw of the mortgage servicing industry: a Kafkaesque labyrinth of customer service reps, a system mismanaged and overwhelmed by the demands put on it. Meanwhile, the banks squeeze another cool $13 billion in “bailout” money out of a congressional bill intended, in the President’s words, to “stand up to the Special Interests, and stand up for the American people.”

Bernie Madoff’s Wall Street

Mad greedy Bernie Madoff goes to jail for 150 years. Yes. It’s like dunking some asshole at a county fair. But let’s remember Madoff was NOT some rogue operator or extreme aberration on Wall Street. He was an insider’s-insider, a respected confident to the head of the Securities Exchange Commission. Madoff helped set the rules. For goodness sakes, if insider expertise was what’s needed to save the economy than Bernie Madoff would have made a better (or at least more honest) choice to join the O-team than Geithner and/or Summers. And it’s hard to imagine, grand larceny thief that he is, how he could have advised any more favorable terms for Wall Street than those two supposedly paragons of business propriety.

Obama explains the collapse thusly: "A culture of irresponsibility took root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street. And a regulatory system basically crafted in the wake of a 20th century economic crisis--the Great Depression--was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy."

And William Greider responds: “That is not what happened, to put it charitably. Unlike some other presidents, Obama is much too intelligent not to know this. The regulatory system was not overwhelmed by historic forces. It was systematically gutted and dismantled by the government in Washington at the behest of the banking interests.”

Banking interests from which Madoff was not an exception but a leading light. They believed in the wonder of securitization, investments without risk, based on inscrutable formulas and off the books trading. It’s guys playing with other people’s money, with said people totally oblivious until it is too late. So that’s their own damn fault, say P.T. Barnum capitalists. But is playing suckers really the kind of “business model” we need or want? I wouldn’t think so but, to this point, the O Team has done everything they can to mask the problem and jumpstart the banker’s game of bubbles and busts. More casino capitalism for everybody!

In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi (The Great American Bubble Machine), already identifies the new bubble sector as the carbon cap-and-trade still being ironed out in congress.

apologies and promises

Obama apologists will argue he’s too busy with health care or creating this carbon trading system to take on the banks. But if he’s doing this alone then we’re lost. And if he cannot put some people on the job to make sure the right thing gets done in congress in support of new bank rules and forestalling more home foreclosures then he does not possess the leadership we need. Come on, all the talk about standing up for Main Street, while turning a blind eye to cutthroat Wall Street deal-making, after already giving these guys the farm and then some, is contemptible.

Reagan Did It

Of course, Obama did not make the deregulatory mess our financial system is in but he’s enmeshed in a wonky conservative account of the crisis. It was Alan Greenspan, as Fed Chair, with Ben Bernanke’s help, who, back in the High Tech bubble recession of ’01-’02, reduced interests rates too much, setting the stage for the housing bubble. Or the one I heard the other day, the crash was caused by government over-reaction to the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers in September. (Apparently, the trillions the public have put into the financial system has been necessary only because the government started a panic!) These aren’t credible explanations for the scale and systemic reach of this economic downturn, but they support the status quo economic policies coming out of the Wall Street-Washington axis.

So where did this whole mess really start? Krugman nails it on the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, of 1982. This is some Reagan supported legislation that deregulated standards on debt-to-asset ratios and led directly to the Savings & Loan collapse of the late-80s. And, most importantly, it inaugurated a “free market” revolution of deregulation and privatization and tax cuts for the rich and a general drift towards levels of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age. The Reagan Revolution. And it ended as a credible economic model, even if some haven’t got the memo yet, in the crash last fall.

More Chapters

As an epic novel the crisis has entered one of those long, digressive passages in Moby Dick. Emerging are the stories of forgotten heroes like Brooksley Born and Sheila Bair and Elizabeth Warren (pictured above). I don’t know what to make yet of the preponderance of women fighting the good fight here. I hope there are more of them to step up, though.

community services and the free market religion

Locally, it would seem the free market religion still holds sway. Tax revenues are down so the state budget was slashed. You might expect some politicians to question a tax base structure that puts such basic community services as police, health care, and education at the mercy of the ups and downs of the market but I haven’t heard a word.

It seems like the same old game. Russel Investments, for example, is this huge investment services firm-- homebased, or up to now, in Tacoma—who manages $136 billion in assets from 147 countries. Because Russel has been talking about moving, local congressman, Norm Dicks, has pledged more than $148 billion to keep them in Tacoma. (And Gov. Gregoire will chip in another $700,000.) You have to wonder how the math here adds up to benefit the local community? What it appears to be is the same old state and municipal groveling to win favor with big corporations in hopes for some growth trickle down.

Which brings me back to where I started following this crazy mess last summer. I’ve supported government spending because I hate to see people lose their jobs or homes or pensions. I watched people lose jobs this spring and I felt bad for them. I do not know what I’d do if in their place; I’d really feel lost. Or if my parents lost their pensions, it’d be very hard on them. These are hardships I would not wish on anybody. But these wishes beg the question as to how much longer this growth economy, that I hope the government can revive, can be sustained?

People have been raising this question for a long time and been dismissed as hippy-dippy Chicken Littles for a long time as well but the signs of stress on climate and our food and water supply have multiplied in the last decade more than anyone expected. It is becoming increasingly apparent to all that we cannot continue to consume resources as we have indefinitely, and the rate of per capita consumption in our country cannot be extended to the billions in China and India without dire consequences for the planet.

The grandeur of “free market” theory is based on the delusion of a perpetual motion machine. It fails to account for the finite energy sources it needs as inputs or the impact of the wastes it generates as outputs. From a broad view what we’re experiencing economically are pressures, breakdowns caused by debt (investments in the future) growing faster than our ability to produce real wealth. We’re pushing up against Malthusian limits (the days of cheap energy are numbered) and need another green revolution to stretch those limits. But at the moment it’s hard to imagine how this need can be reconciled with an economic growth model based on ever increasing demand and consumption.

muddling through

Back in the day my friend Pam and I used to go for these long walks after work. Ranting, laughing, shaking our heads at the office drama, upside-down politics, the impossibly Dilbertian people that filled our work lives. We developed a ritual in these conversations where at some point one of us would, sigh, and exclaim as to the wonder that the world keeps spinning, that people don’t stop in the street and go stark raving mad from the upside down craziness of it all. Something like Peter Finch in Network, I suppose we imagined. We settled on this little ritual as an ironic punctuation mark on our ravings: because at the end of the day what always astonished us most was that, despite all the dysfunctional drama of our workplace, our programs and organization always seemed to muddle through. And that seems true of the world, too: it seems to muddle through just like us. You have to wonder, though, how long this can last.

Currently playing:"Tell Me," The Rolling Stones

Happy Birthday, America!

I Hear America Singing, by Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics--each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat--the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench--the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter's song--the ploughboy's, on his way in the morning,
or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother--or of the young wife at work--or of the girl sewing or washing--Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day--At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.


America, by Cluade McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

America, by Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.


Obama and I do email (although I get the eerie feeling he isn’t reading mine)—
Jack --

This weekend, our family will join millions of others in celebrating America. We will enjoy the glow of fireworks, the taste of barbeque, and the company of good friends. As we all celebrate this weekend, let's also remember the remarkable story that led to this day.

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when a courageous group of patriots pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the proposition that all of us were created equal.

Our country began as a unique experiment in liberty -- a bold, evolving quest to achieve a more perfect union. And in every generation, another courageous group of patriots has taken us one step closer to fully realizing the dream our founders enshrined on that great day.

Today, all Americans have a hard-fought birthright to a freedom which enables each of us, no matter our views or background, to help set our nation's course. America's greatness has always depended on her citizens embracing that freedom -- and fulfilling the duty that comes with it.

As free people, we must each take the challenges and opportunities that face this nation as our own. As long as some Americans still must struggle, none of us can be fully content. And as America comes ever closer to achieving the perfect Union our founders dreamed, that triumph -- that pride -- belongs to all of us.

So today is a day to reflect on our independence, and the sacrifice of our troops standing in harm's way to preserve and protect it. It is a day to celebrate all that America is. And today is a time to aspire toward all we can still become.

With very best wishes,

President Barack Obama

July 4th, 2009

P.S. -- Our nation's birthday is also an ideal time to consider serving in your local community. You can find many great ideas for service opportunities near you at http://www.serve.gov.

Reply: Thanks for the holiday wishes, President Obama. Right, I should do more, I’ll get right on that. BTW, could you ask your friends on Wall Street to do a little more to serve their communities— as opposed to extorting money from them? A more perfect union means you have to stop this long cycle of fucking over the little guy with deregulatory greed and regressive taxes. More equality, less greedy hustle. Be sure who your friends are, Mr. President. Thank you very much. Best, Jack.


Currently playing: "Poker Face," Lady Gaga

sweeter than the rest

I'm no big Kobe or Phil Jackson fan but this is the most convincing and, I would expect, the most satisfying ring for both guys. You could certainly make an argument that before this one Kobe would have no rings at all if it wasn't for Shaq. And, yeah, passing Red Auerbach is awesome and all but, again, I'm sure some sports talk radio wag has contended that, hey, PJ Carlisemo could have coached championships with Jordan and Pippen and then Shaq and Kobe. This one, however, is different. What was it-- three years ago?-- the Lakers didn't even make the playoffs and Kobe was demanding to be traded to the Clippers. This is a strong Laker team, deep, but not bought like the one (w/ Malone and Payton) that lost to the Pistons and sports only one superstar, Kobe. And now the most successful coach, Jackson, in the history of the NBA.

Currently playing:"i wish i were," Martha Wainwright

Star Trek's Multicultural Imperialism

Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.

As evidenced by the crew of the Enterprise, the mission has presumably already been accomplished on earth. On the bridge is a veritable rainbow coalition of skin colors, continents, funny accents, and even a guy from another planet, Vulcan, where all actions are guided by (gasp) reason. Created at the height of the Civil Rights era, the original Star Trek projects the 1964 Voting Rights Act into the future: all races, classes, and gender (although women still wear mini-skirts, thankfully) push the buttons and pull the levers of power as a team. It’s the inclusive dream of liberal capitalism (note, again, ship’s name) come true: democracy, cross cultural understanding, and the entrepreneurial spirit of economic development all mutually reinforcing the fundamental human drive for adventure and creative contact with what’s new. And I love it for this reason alone: it rubs wrong the stodgy, narrow conservatism that hates anything new or different (read: people of color, non-Christians, and gays).

Star Trek XI (the first in over a decade) is, in the best sense, a popcorn movie, a summer blockbuster. It’s awesome big, goofy cliché fun, and jumps up and down like an 11 year-old on a can of Monster. I’m no Trekkie but like many who were kids at that time I watched every episode of the original series multiple times as it was broadcasted daily as reruns in the early ‘70s. With that background, I found the prequel vision of the principle characters fun and, particularly, in the case of Spock even touching. Although, I must say, the cameo appearance of the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy, felt gratuitous (if obligatory) and seemed only to ground a film that otherwise warps through space.

(I am left wondering, though, what the uninitiated make of the cheesy character acting? If they like it they ought to check out more of the original because even as fine as Chris Pine is as the brash young James T. Kirk he cannot prepare you for the Shakespearean hambone antics of William Shatner. And if that’s not enough for you check out Rhino Records compilation series Golden Throats for some Shatner and Nimoy musical performances. Show stoppers!)

At any rate, I’m happy to report that in the Star Trek future discrimination, disproportionality and, apparently, group oppression of any kind disappear. Although, unfortunately, bad guys are still around. Turns out some cultures are just genetically predisposed to being meanies; or, rather, not getting enough love as children, for them, has become a cultural tradition, it is not clear which is the case. In the original Star Trek one group of perennial evil doers, the Klingons, look vaguely like Genghis Kahn’s Mongol horde on a spaceship, evoking a murderous cold war Sino-Soviet hybrid. In the latest installment the bad guys, Romulans, look like white supremacists with a tattoo fetish. Nero, their leader, is bent on revenge against Spock and the Starfleet Federation for failing to save his home planet from an exploding star. In either case these baddies are presented as if they’d be welcomed into the Federation if it wasn’t for the simple fact that they’re all haters and can’t get along with others.

This is just about when, if you think about it, the multicult dream starts to sound like a good old fashion whitewash. Or a Benneton ad, might be more like it! Nero and his Romulan gang want to destroy the Federation because of a natural disaster. Right, and Lil Wayne and his posse are bound and determeined to bring down the United States government because of Katrina. Anybody that doesn’t join hands with the Federation (or celebrate the joys of shopping)must be a cracked sociopath; an “enemy of freedom,” a violent actor filled with blind, misplaced hate. This is the appropriation of civil rights goals to rationalize liberal capitalist imperialism: making the structure of power transparent and inclusive to all races and genders (or other marginalized groups) (or at least commitment to the same) renders opposition to the system as negligible— the actions of incorrigible cranks like Klingons and Romulans. In short: it’s a belief that full civil rights can be achieved without any rethinking and reforming of the system that generates economic inequality. Ideologues of the left and right may snicker at this feel good liberalism but its importance as dream making myth rallying support for the status quo should not be underestimated.

This is no mere red state-blue state divide. Even if the republicans drag their feet on policies that promote inclusiveness, and thinly veiled demagogic bigotry remains their chief campaign strategy, any open opposition to the equal opportunity for all creed would spell their decline, if not total destruction, as a major political party in America. From this viewpoint, democrat or republican, civil rights have become the American Dream in that in America everyone, regardless of their background, ought to be able to strike it rich and live like a King in their castle. But this creed ignores the economic origins of equal rights claims. And the consequences of this outlook on U.S. foreign policy is, in short, an inability to recognize (and so confront and reform) the divisive injustice of American imperialism. Team America is seen as at worst a bumbling superpower with good intentions. By contrast, Kim Jong II is a megalomaniacal dictator threatening world destruction as a way to shore up insecurities about his own power. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iranian Mullahs view all individual human rights as a conspiracy against the Koran and Islam. Like Klingons and Romulans, these guys were just born evil.

From another viewpoint, however, it is international forces of economic development, beginning with Columbus, colonialism, imperialism, and subsequent mass human migrations, that generated the social ills from which the civil rights movement emerged to correct. It is represented by a democracy for the rich that depends, as viewed globally, on the disenfranchisement and impoverishment of a majority of the planet. It is operationally this amazingly creative machine that makes shiny stuff out of natural resources and human labor but does not take responsibility for its impact on the planet or costs in human life. “Free trade,” the liberal capitalist idea of cross cultural understanding, is a euphemism for: see, you give us raw materials and cheap labor and we will give you Coca-cola and some cell phones. Understand?! Right, Iran’s Mullahs’ are intolerant religious extremists— who rose to power in reaction to the 26 year long U.S. puppet dictatorship of the Shah, who jailed and/or executed any Iranian who opposed him. And, right, Kim Jong is a oppressive, violent, crackpot— who sees nuclear power as the last guarantor of national independence. If the U.S. wants to end nuclear proliferation then, as the country with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, it needs to lead in eliminating nuclear weapons, of course. And yet, apparently, this is obvious to everyone except Americans.

Truth is most the action in Star Trek revolves around the apparent conflict between Kirk's guts and glory and Spock's emotionally wrought rationalism. But it's precisely this preoccupation with the unification of an Us against a cartoon, evil Them that grates politically. In all likelihood Nero and his angry Romulans, all miners, had probably been aware of the danger of the exploding star that ultimately destroyed their planet for some time and had been asking the powers that be, The Federation, for help and protection, which they did not receive. And as working class people, working for low pay, they did not have the means to move out of harms way but, instead, to provide for their families, they continued to work in these dangerous conditions. That would certainly present a more credible explanation for the maniacal revenge of Nero but it would also put the whole Star Trek mission in a different light.

Star Trek XI must have started production before Obama’s rise but still what timing. Our first black President. Civil rights, led by African Americans, peaked as a movement at a time when class and economic discussion in this country was polarized by Cold War propaganda. Almost 50 years later we live at a time of another civil rights milestone, almost 20 years after the end of the Cold War, and yet the old either-or discourse on economic issues still seems to prevail. Even Obama’s tepid efforts so far to reform a system of wrecklessly inefficient privatizing profit gouging, demonstrating degrees of wealth inequality not seen since the Gilded Age, are pilloried as socialism. Unions are more than ever regarded as shady unpatriotic special interests that hurt competition and are unwilling to make sacrifices for the good of the country. Meanwhile, corporate (let’s compare the criminal records of union’s and corporation’s some time, shall we?) and banking bad actors are lavished with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts. Even when the evidence that we need economic reform screams out the reaction continues.

In an important way this is a struggle for the soul of America that goes back to the beginning of the republic and the Alien and Sedition Acts. Concerns over national security push back at efforts to mature, to walk the talk of American ideals, to reconcile civil rights with economic justice, in domestic and foreign affairs. Obama’s recent face off with Dick Cheney is the most recent case in point. To Cheney failing to fight fire with fire, failing to take the fight to our enemies, increases the chances of another 9/11, makes us less safe. In other words, torture and secret prisons and suspension of habeas corpus rights and crony capitalism and executive privilege (i.e., to decide who are our “enemies”) are just what it takes to stay free (meaning: rich). On Obama’s side, torture is a recruitment tool for our enemies, provides unreliable intelligence, and is a profound disrespect to our troops in harm’s way. Etc. And around we go… spinning off topic, democrats brainlessly puffing out their chests for fear of appearing weak on national security.

Civil rights progress is measured as slow, hard-won milestones against a, frustratingly, always receding horizon of full equality, and will do so as long as the causes of gross economic inequality go unexamined and unchecked. In contrast with the liberal capitalist dream, as Martin Luther King put it at the height of the Civil Rights era, it’s still racism, materialism, and militarism that we see tragically reinforcing each other in the modern era. It should be a national embarrassment that the U.S. refuses to participate in the International Criminal Court. In the American imperium, as in the Starfleet Federation, multicultural representation or not, there will always be Klingons and Romulans, terrorists and rogue states.

Currently playing: "Life In Marvelous Times," Mos Def

Corporate Frankensteins: The Final Conquest

By Ralph Nader. Democrats will never forgive him but, to me, he’s still an American hero. (One of only a few, by my count.) And still making a case that someday will seem, we can only hope, obvious to everyone.

Corporate Frankensteins

Currently playing:"For All The World To See," Death

Health Care Newsflash--

The profit motive drives up health care costs!

In addition, while increasing costs it frequently hurts the quality of health care.

(There are times since the “free market” bubble burst last fall it feels like waking from a bad dream. Or at least I hope it’s waking up and not just muttering in sleep.)

The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande

Currently playing:"Oh Lonesome Me," M.Ward & Lucinda Williams

Johnny Cash American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002)

This is NOT Johnny Cash the shitkicker-folkie man-in-black icon. This is a Mount Rushmore legend, his voice a sepulchral croak. But it reminds me of this broadcast I ran into of Cash and Carter around the same time going through an emotionally wrenching version of “Jackson” and saying goodbye to all their guests as if doing so for the last time. It ripped my heart out. These songs, obvious choices, several he’s recorded before, stamped with the same weary, loving gravitas, do that too. “Freedom, freedom, oh that’s just people talking/your prison is walking this world alone,” he confides, cutting through the everyday murk like a thunderbolt.

Currently playing:"Desperado," Johnny Cash

That's Why They Play The Game

The Cavs were favored over the Magic, even though they’d lost to the Magic both times during the regular season, one of those losses suffering their worst, most humiliating defeat of the year. But the Cavs ended the season with the best record in the NBA and powered through the first two rounds like a locomotive going downhill. The Magic, by contrast, took seven games to dispatch the Garnett-less Celtics and in the first round even allowed the 76ers some reason for hope. By the end of the first game of the Eastern Conference Championship, however, the Cavs looked like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. The formerly supercharged Cavs, w/ the exception of Lebron, looked out of their league. Every position but Lebron’s a mismatch, all in the favor of the Magic. You’d think that the Cavs could take some advantage w/ their faster guards but the Magic defense was always on lockdown, giving up very few fastbreaks. As for the Cavs defense, a strength all season, their frontline looked slow and their perimeter guys totally unprepared for the size of the Magic’s Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu. It’s a wonder, really, that the Cav’s won two games and a testament, again, to the fact, despite of all the King James hype, this guy is the greatest all-around player to come along in a long time. He’s not quite the scorer that Kobe is but that is the only quarter he gives to any other NBA player right now. His points-assists-rebounds averages have not been seen since Oscar Robertson in the ‘60s. Now Denver, on the other hand, not expected to match up with the Lakers, everyone’s pick this year, looked in games two and four like they were a match and then some. But just as soon as you began to think that this could be an upset in the making the Nuggets rolled over and played dead. It looked like they stopped playing defense but some credit should go to the Laker’s disciplined execution on offense. Still, the number of times Chauncy “Big Shot” Billups drove to within a few feat of the bucket and then gave up a difficult pass instead of shooting was maddening. And Carmelo Anthony had another head-freeze letdown in a big game. Really, Anthony is beginning to look cursed. I should have expected this when notoriously erratic J.R. Smith was the Nuggets best player in their two wins. At any rate, in the championship series, the Lakers will be expected to win. Here’s hoping the Magic can upset those expectations and finish this Dwight Howard coming out party in style!

Currently playing:Buraka Som Sistema's Black Diamond

"The Ballard of Orange and Grape" By Muriel Rukeyser

After you finish your work
after you do your day
after you've read your reading
after you've written your say —
you go down the street to the hot dog stand,
one block down and across the way.
On a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth century.

Most of the windows are boarded up,
the rats run out of a sack —
sticking out of the crummy garbage
one shiny long Cadillac;
at the glass door of the drug-addiction center,
a man who'd like to break your back.
But here's a brown woman with a little girl dressed in rose and pink, too.

Frankfurters, frankfurters sizzle on the steel
where the hot-dog-man leans —
nothing else on the counter
but the usual two machines,
the grape one, empty, and the orange one, empty,
I face him in between.
A black boy comes along, looks at the hot dogs, goes on walking.

I watch the man as he stands and pours
in the familiar shape
bright purple in the one marked ORANGE
orange in the one marked GRAPE,
the grape drink in the machine marked ORANGE
and orange drink in the GRAPE.
Just the one word large and clear, unmistakable, one each machine.

I ask him: How can we go on reading
and make sense out of what we read? —
How can they write and believe what they're writing,
the young ones across the street,
while you go on pouring grape into ORANGE
and orange into the one marked GRAPE —?
(How are we going to believe what we read and what we write and we hear and we say and we do?)

He looks at the two machines and he smiles
and he shrugs and smiles and pours again.
It could be violence and nonviolence
it could be black and white women and men
it could be war and peace or any
binary system, love and hate, enemy, friend.
Yes and no, be and not-be, what we do and what we don't do.

On a corner in East Harlem
garbage, reading, a deep smile, rape,
forgetfulness, a hot street of murder,
misery, withered hope,
a man keeps pouring grape into ORANGE
and orange into the one marked GRAPE,
pouring orange into GRAPE and grape into ORANGE forever.

Wow, just a walk in the park (or the 'hood), stopping for a hotdog, and reap the whirlwind! What I like so much is the volcanic power building under the surface of restraint.

Currently playing: "You're Not Sorry," Taylor Swift

"cruelty" by Lucille Clifton

cruelty. don’t talk to me about cruelty
or what i am capable of.

when i wanted the roaches dead i wanted them dead
and i killed them. i took a broom to their country

and smashed and sliced without warning
without stopping and i smiled all the time i was doing it.

it was a holocaust of roaches, bodies,
parts of bodies, red all over the ground.

i didn’t ask their names.
they had no names worth knowing.

now i watch myself whenever i enter a room.
i never know what i might do.

What makes the concision so brilliant is its double-edge. The gulping conclusion. Violence is part of our everyday experience. This is the basis of real conscience: I know what I'm capable of. So "now I watch myself whenever I enter a room." It's both funny and devastating in its humility.


Currently playing:"My Wife's Home Town," Bob Dylan

My Old Friend Is A Monster

Criminally overlooked new wave indie garage (art house) rockers from early '80s Lawrence, Kansas. A fierce blend of jangle and chunky riffage, noodling post-punk bass, hiccuping forcebeat rhythm, and a spastically singular lead voice permanently caught between horny swagger and pubescent emotional crisis. Lyrics are merely willfully obtuse or throbbing hooky eminations from the Id: this post's title, "I must have been stung once," "I think I like you, for goodness sake," "going on a sex drive," "pass my life, pass it by," "roaming through the woods of love," "brought up on hoodoo hive," "if you try, don't try," "we won't be coming back," etc. Their too-cool-for-school (all members wear Clark Kent glasses)revenge-of-the-nerds demeanor (quintessentially Amerindie punk, actually) might appear dated but The Embarrassment make it work because they make every song sound as though they'd stayed up all night cramming. Unheard classic.



Only Al Green could take a song as precious as this one (guess I have a thing for Bee gees songs these days) and make it sound overbearingly sexual, almost menacing. It seems amongst soul man afficianodos Al is appreciated mostly as an eccentric. I'm okay with that: there is definitely an ethereal fragility to Green's art. But this is also a guy who sustained his artistry in peak form for at least five albums, far more than Otis or Sam or Wilson. I resist the label "genius" because of its connotation of inheritance (you're either born with it or not) but I don't know what else to call the whole-body musicality of Al Green.

One Kiss

By Tess Gallagher

A man was given one kiss,
one mouth,
one tongue,
one early dawn,
one boat on the sea,
lust of an indeterminant amount under stars.
He was happy
and well-fitted for life,
until he met a man with two cocks.
Then a sense of futility
and the great unfairness of life befell him.
He lay about all day like a teenage girl
dreaming
practicing all the ways to be unconsciously beautiful.
Gradually his competitive spirit began to fade
and in its place a giant kiss rode towards him.
It seemed to recognize him
to have intended itself only for him.
'It's just a kiss,' he thought,
'I'll use it up'
The kiss had the same thing on its mind,
'I'll use up this man.'
But when two kisses kiss it's like tigers
answering questions about infinity
with their teeth.
Even if you are eaten, it's okay,
you just become impossible a new way.
Sleepless.
Stranger than fish.
Stranger than some goofy man with two cocks.
That's what I meant about the hazards of infinity.
When you at last begin to seize those things
that don't exist,
how much longer will the night need to be?

Our annual spoken word night comes this week, so we've been messing around with some poetry at school. Admittedly, what I know of poetry you could squeeze into a tin can but nearly all my favorite poems don't meet school-age appropriate subject matter and language limits, so this will have to serve as my alternative venue, while I prepare "What If" and "Ode To My Socks" prompts for the classroom. A gentle poke at male vanity, hubris, of "One Kiss," I love best the last few lines: when you at last begin to seize those things that don't exist (i.e., take charge of your long-standing, paranoid, exaggerated, illusions), how long will your self-imposed night need to be? Step into the light.

Currently Playing: "Strange Enough," N.A.S.A.

Don't Stop The Music

Robin Miriam Carlsson, Swedish, goes by Robyn. Starting when she was only 15, between 1994 and 1997, she put out three perfect RnB singles, “You’ve Got That Somethin’,” “Show Me Love” and “Do You Know (What It Takes).” From ’98 to ’04 she put out a couple of LPs and some good music, like the charmer above, that was stylistically a little awkward. During this period she often battled with her record label over artistic freedom and identity. In ’05 she started her own record label, Konichiwa Records, and put out an album, Robyn, finally released in the States last year, that is, as I’ve raved b/f, an electro-pop masterpiece. Christgau dismisses her as a Euro Madonna. That’s fine but she’s more b-girl than diva. She’s a spitfire with a heart of gold. And her sense of dance and melody is right now unsurpassed. I adore her and would like to do everything I can to expand her popularity in the US. Spread the word: Robyn rules!

Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes

A favorite back when I collected only 45s. It all started on trips to the Villa Mart w/ my mom. She'd buy my sister these fruit slice candies and me a 45, as long as we didn't pester her too much while she shopped. My source was Super 62 KGW, Portland's Top 40 station in the late-60s, early-70s. Most of the sleeves were lost almost immediately and I played "Love Grows..." and "Backstabbers" and "The Letter" and "Tighten Up" and "No Matter What" and other faves until I wore as many scratches in the records as there were grooves. They were not being saved for Ebay.

Can Wall Street Play By The Rules?

About time, sheesh. Now I await some insider analysis as to whether this is the real deal or some cover justification for more bailout money. We'll see.

Obama Proposes a First Overhaul of Finance Rules

Currently playing: "My Heart Is Open," Keith Urban

They knew him then, they know him now: Lebron's SVSM teachers are beaming with pride

Terry Pluto/The Plain Dealer Columnist
Cleveland.com

May 4, 2009

There was LeBron James in a dark blue business suit, with a light blue tie looking as much like a young corporate executive as the 24-year-old star of the Cleveland Cavaliers. There was James only showing his nerves as his fingers bounced a bit on the podium.

James took a deep breath and stared out at the packed gym, where he starred for the Irish when they were the nation's top ranked high school team in 2003 by USA Today. But instead of dunking, James was talking about winning the MVP award in a landslide with 109 out of a possible 121 first-place votes.

James thanked his teammates, coaches, friends, family and great players such as Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius Erving "who laid this path before me." He was composed, clear and in his own way (even without notes) and prepared -- just as James was in Allison's speech class, where James earned a B as a sophomore.

"I graduated from here six years ago," said James. "I'm not that far away from this school ... it has helped me become the man I am today."

James told Burdon that he wanted the teachers and students only to be admitted. Instead of receiving his first MVP award in a glitzy studio, he stood in a gym built in 1950 where the walls are cement blocks painted in green and white. The side baskets have old, square wooden backboards. The seats are long, wooden bleachers.

As Barbara Wood listened Monday, the school's librarian remembered how a young James would walk into the library and sit on her desk to talk. They'd Google his name on the computer, how there were only a few mentions at first -- then thousands.

She thought of how she corrected his grammar: "There is no such thing as fiddy cent. It's fifty cents ... with an S. It's more than one S."

She fought back the tears as he spoke with such poise, usually keeping the syntax and sentence structure together.

"He didn't have it easy growing up," said Wood. "But he wanted a better life for himself and his family."

James stops by the school a few times each year, "just him, not with his entourage," said Allison. He still wanders into the library and sits on Wood's desk. He also visits Beth Harmon, an English teacher for the last 11 years at the school.

"I had him as a freshman and sophomore, he was a solid B student," she said. "He was a pleasure to have in class, punctual and polite. As a senior, he'd come to my room and grab some of the candy on my desk. I used him to help me grade papers. We stay in touch, we text 2-3 times a week, and he always answers quickly."

Allison had James as a sophomore for speech, and then as a junior and senior for English. Allison said he knew James was a good basketball player, but had no idea of his national reputation until the middle of his junior year -- probably when James first appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

"I remember his senior year, he gave a speech in my English class," said Allison. "I worked with him a lot. I told him that he'd need these skills, and he has used them well."

About that senior year speech...

"He talked about why it made sense for some people to jump straight from high school to the NBA," said Allison. "He had to do the research, and give real reasons. I still have his notes."

James went from the inner city Akron high school to the top pick in the 2003 NBA draft and Rookie of the Year. Allison said James drew two pictures that the teacher still has -- one of Michael Jordan, his favorite player and whose No. 23 he still wears. The other was of Macbeth.

"We were studying Macbeth and he drew it with a pencil for extra course credit," said Allison. "For a few years, I had it on my classroom wall. But when he became famous, I took it down and put it in a bank vault."

Headmaster David Rathz said the only once did he have to deal with James on a discipline issue -- for making noise in the hallway. He remembered seeing James in a geometry class, his long legs and knees up, his head down over a desk as he worked a problem.

"As a senior, I called him in and said that I was supposed to tell him and the other students they should aim for college," said Rathz. "But I smiled and said I wouldn't mention it again. We knew he was going to the NBA, but he still made the honor roll in his last grading period. He really wanted to do the right things."

Currently playing: "Strange Enough," NASA

Time Tough in Public Education

SSD riffed (i.e., laid-off) 8 teachers from my school yesterday. After bitching and moaning for a few hours over a beer after school w/ soon to be ex-workmates I walked home, plopped on my couch, deflated, and slept for ten hours. At lunch today people were talking about turning out for the School Board Meeting next week. Amidst these cuts, and teacher’s COLA (cost of living adjustment pay raises) frozen, our new Super, Maria Goodloe-Johnson, has been awarded a 10% pay increase. It feels like the Super is spoiling for a fight w/ our teacher’s Union. It’s a story repeated around the country for years now: “failing” schools are the fault of teachers and moribund Unions; the solution is cost-cutting management measures and performance-based number-crunching testing models from the corporate business world. You might think this crap would be wearing a bit thin as the country bails out Wall Street’s failed mathematical models but the simplistic stupidity of NCLB’s testing clampdown continues. It's not that testing or standards or alignment or accountability are bad ideas (or new ones, for chrissakes!)but imposed as the high-stakes be-all-end-all of school reform just distracts and distorts from learning to processing paperwork as evidence of learning. The dirty little secret, though, is that the Union’s intransigent position on teacher evaluations for years is at least partly culpable for these slanderous anti-teacher policies. The truth is that there remain on staff at my school nearly as many teachers as were cut who have been phoning it in for years and put out not a fraction of the creativity and effort of that shown by the 8 riffed teachers. This doesn’t mean I think teacher’s are at fault for “failing” schools. Even calling the schools “failing” has become mostly an agenda to privatize and so undermine public education. (More corporate performance-based management.) Higher on the list of factors responsible for struggling schools, I’d say, are, yes, lack of adequate funding, poor organization, lack of leadership, and a host of social ills for which public schools are at worst a mirror. But the Union has stretched its attention to job security to the point of undermining expressed commitment to student learning. And this dysfunction has made it easier for retrograde ideas ab merit pay and charter schools and the like to get in the door. It’s discouraging. And now the District is just passing the buck, or lack thereof. It strikes me as wrong that public education and health care services should be at the mercy of boom and bust cycles of the economy. Next to our home utilities what could be more basic community services? What could be more essential to America’s democratic promise than public education? And when could there be a more important time to invest in education and health care than in tough times?

Currently playing:"Time Tough," Toots and the Maytals

Hard Times

She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and she will believe in his affection to the last moment of her life, said Mr Gradgrind.

It seems to present two things to a person, don't it, squire? said Mr Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depths of his brandy and water: One, that there is a love in the world, not all self-interest after all, but something very different; the other, that it has a way of its own of calculating or not calculating, which somehow
or another is at least as hard to give a name to, as the way of the [faithful] dog!

Squire, take heart, first and last, don't be cross with us poor vagabonds. People must be amused. They can't be always a learning, nor yet they can't be always a working, they ain't made for it. You must have us, Squire. Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us; not the worst.

It is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain
blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself.

By Charles Dickens

Currently playing:"I Remember Every Kiss," Jens Lekman

Grading O's First 100 Days

The grading period ended last Wednesday. Grades are due. Another crunch time for teachers. After 100 days, somewhere between a quarter and semester in school time, and admittedly not very much time at all in the grindingly slow speed of democracy in our nation’s capitol, Obama is like the student who you think is doing fantastic. A standout member of daily class. Regularly engaged in group discussions, he always has clever, thoughtful things to say. In collaborative activities he assumes leadership responsibilities, suggesting creative solutions to problems and pushing the group work forward. But then when grading, looking back over records of assigned work (fulfilled campaign promises?), you note they have not turned in much and what they have turned in were the simplest tasks requiring the least effort.

Establishing conservative plans to close Guantanomo and exit Iraq, getting a stimulus bill passed (that is too small), opening relations with Cuba, and releasing some memos that authorized torture during the Bush years. Welcome deeds but nothing very substantial.

Worse yet is when you pause to consider more closely the new Pres’s comments on, say, education, a subject close to my home. O’s stimulus bill includes, reportedly, the most money for education ever in an annual federal budget. One of its stated goals is to reduce job losses in education from the economic crisis. But the losses have already started. Cuts locally are being announced weekly without any word from the feds. Another round of cuts in the school district where I work is scheduled for May 15th.

O has repeated an intention that the stimulus money contribute to reforming our troubled public school system. How? Charter schools and merit-pay pop up in his spare remarks like talismans. Without clarifying details these aren’t just bad ideas but, frankly, old hat and dangerously stupid. Charter schools within the public school system, as alternatives programs (e.g., smaller schools, lower teacher-student ratios, more flexible schedules, etc) to the comprehensive high school, are a fine idea. Both comprehensive high schools and alternative programs have their place and should compliment each other in meeting the varied needs of students passing through the ruthless popularity contest and emotional minefield that is teendom. Charter schools as an end-run around teacher unions, however, by profiteering corporations seeking access to public education funding only undermines public education. (O, BTW, sends his own kids to private schools.) Early reports suggest O’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan might be no better than Bush’s Rod Paige. It’s no small irony that in these times of economic crisis public education is going to be saved, again, by corporate conceits.

Merit pay is an even bigger can of worms. Linking teaching pay to student economics—the lower the student economic demographic the higher the pay— makes some sense: certainly, in my experience, the lower the economic demographic, for a host of reasons, the greater the learning challenges and so the more difficult the teaching work. But so far O’s allusions link teacher merit-pay to standardized test scores. This would be idiotic on multiple fronts: 1) Foremost, the pressure to game the system (don’t forget Paige’s so-called “Texas Miracle”); 2) The contested reliability of standardized testing, in general; 3) The impracticality of linking annual test scores from year-to-year to a teacher without looping teacher schedules (which in the short run will weaken instruction); and 4) The tendency to reinforce the already existing tracking system in most schools that matches the more experienced teachers with the easiest to serve students and young inexperienced teachers with the hardest to serve students. I am really not a standardized test basher; such tests have their place. But at my high school the WASL takes up too much time and over time marginalizes subjects not on the test. Moreover, I’ve been to enough meetings on the subject to know the WASL has wrecked even more havoc at the elementary level. I think standardized tests should be part of a graduation portfolio (with course requirements, GPA, community service, etc), not the high stakes be-all-end-all of graduation. At any rate, tying “merit” pay to test scores, really, just continues No Child Left Behind’s punitive model of school reform and accountability. Neither of these— charter schools or merit pay— are new ideas at all. They are parcel to the privatizing, free market stratagem that is crashing down around us as I write.

At this point, perhaps inaction is the best that can be said of Obama’s education policies. His banking plan, by contrast (and still subject to change we can only hope), is already out there. It would be hard to imagine (although we might see even more over the next few years!) more concrete refuting evidence of the Reagan Revolution’s supply side, deregulatory, privatizing, free market bullshit than the current debacle on Wall Street. But rather than exposing the-- literal-- bankruptcy of this economic model, O seems bent on rallying support for necessary reforms talking the talk while at the same time spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on helping giant banks and corporations continue to cover up their gargantuan boondoggle. Bailing out the banks is crony capitalism; bailing out the auto industry, after its conduct the last 30 years, without the most heavy-handed mandates requiring a green restructuring is just plain embarrassing.

Worst, this government coddling has the bizarre effect of keeping alive right wing boilerplate about the perils of big government and socialism and entitlements when in the current context these canards should appear as merely absurd. Government should be big enough to enforce the rules, takeover, and break-up, if necessary, businesses that have become too big to fail (what could be more anti-free market than this notion of businesses too big to fail?). It should be socialist enough to ensure all citizens have the opportunity to share in our national prosperity and are protected from predatory business practices. And, yes, the citizens of this government are entitled to job opportunities, safe food and water, good health care and education, and a fair legal system. These entitlements are the very reason for the government’s existence. Entitlements of the sort (capital gains tax rates on hedge fund managers, for instance) that have generated the widest wealth inequality gap since the 1920s, and the right fiercely defends, are the ones that gotta go.

The risk here, for Obama, trying to maintain popular support while slathering more butter on corporate bread, is NOT small. Bailing out the banks to the tune of hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars risks running the congressional and public wells dry before it’s time to draw support for the reforms necessary to reestablish a regulatory structure that rewards hard work and honesty and rebuilds a green based manufacturing economy that can support a living-wage working class. It’s a risk that is wrongheaded at best. Some, I know, say taking on Wall Street would be political suicide. I don’t believe this and, if not now, then when? And if not ever than things are as bad as some say.

Oh yes, this is what any leftie worth their salt would have said was inevitable given the Clinton team (including Wall Street insiders) O has teamed with in the White House. But I’m not ready to give up on Obama. If we get out of this presidency with a reasonable semblance of affordable universal health care and carbon limits factored into the economy he would be the best president since before my time. And, perhaps I’m grasping at straws, but I see something significant in the video above when Summers gives Geithner a look in the background just as Obama says that when banks play chicken with the government on bailouts he sides with workers and consumers. I still think that with the right leverage O might take a stand and provide the leadership necessary to turn his words on the economy into deeds. Not just because I think O has more to offer in terms of leadership than Clinton did but because in the world today, the pieces are there, financial collapse, threadbare infrastructure and safety net, looming environmental crisis, worldwide pressures from the have-nots, and the time is right for a paradigm shift. Messy, lurching, full of denials, it feels like we’re already in one now.

Like much of America, I’m still charmed by Obama like no President before. I’m still holding out hope that O is the man to lead us out of this wilderness. (And if I’m wrong I had hope for awhile and let it animate my actions.) For now, I recommend President Obama come in after school to catch up on his homework and get some extra tutoring support. Good luck.

Grade: C-

Currently playing: Robyn "Don't Stop The Music"