Lots of work to do

Dear Friends,

By now I am sure that you have all contacted your Senators, Representative and President to see if we can't get Representative McCarthy's bill banning extended magazines for automatic weapons.

Unfortunately, there is still much work to be done, and I am afraid that neither major political party is willing to help.  So paraphrasing President Obama paraphrasing President Franklin Roosevelt, make me do it.  The job is ours.

On January 13th, The New York Times published a column by Paul Krugman (here) that clearly stated the difference between the conservatives today and the liberals today. It was entitled, "The Tale of Two Moralities".  Mr. Krugman describes the two moralities as follows:

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.
The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

While this philosophical divide has always been present, it is a relatively new phenomenon that the Republican Party and I might a portion of the Democratic Party has been taken over by people who really believe that there is no role for the Federal government to play in helping those least able to help themselves.  As Mr. Krugman points out the Obama health care law is really what the Republicans were proposing in the 1990s.  Now they are defiling the idea of making sure that all American can receive health care and some Democrats are joining them.

In Mr. Krugman's column in The New York Times published on January 16th (here), Mr. Krugman summed up his previous column in this way:

And it’s not about the money. As I tried to explain in my last column, the modern G.O.P. has been taken over by an ideology in which the suffering of the unfortunate isn’t a proper concern of government, and alleviating that suffering at taxpayer expense is immoral, never mind how little it costs.

The recent mass murder in Arizona not only pointed out the need for more gun control.  It also pointed out the need for better system to insure that those with mental health issues can and do receive the help they need - that there is a way to get those that need mental health care to a place that can help them.

Unfortunately, the idea that there is no role for government in helping people extends to schools as well.  In Nicholas Kristof's column in The New York Times on January 15th, entitled "China's Winning Schools"(here), Mr. Kristof makes it clear how the Chinese are devoted to education and while that does not result in a perfect education system, it gives their children a real advantage over US kids.

An international study published last month looked at how students in 65 countries performed in math, science and reading. The winner was: Confucianism!
At the very top of the charts, in all three fields and by a wide margin, was Shanghai. Three of the next top four performers were also societies with a Confucian legacy of reverence for education: Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. The only non-Confucian country in the mix was Finland.
The United States? We came in 15th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math.

This paragraph really hit me hard.

These days, even in backward rural areas, most girls and boys alike attend high school. College isn’t unusual. And the teachers are vastly improved. In my Chinese-American wife’s ancestral village — a poor community in southern China — the peasant children are a grade ahead in math compared with my children at an excellent public school in the New York area. That seems broadly true of math around the country.

The Chinese feel that education is so important they are constantly looking for ways to improve their system.  As Mr. Kristof says, "Many Chinese complain scathingly that their system kills independent thought and creativity, and they envy the American system for nurturing self-reliance — and for trying to make learning exciting and not just a chore."  Yet in this country much of our political leadership and many of our citizens seem to have a disdain for knowledge and education.  In addition, the push is for standardized tests that are suppose to measure which teachers and schools are doing a good job.  Unfortunately, teaching to the test will destroy that part of the American education system that the Chinese envy - independent thought, creativity and self-reliance.

Mr. Kristof also points out that the teachers in the Chinese education system have improved even though it is virtually impossible to fire a government worker.

For a socialist system that hesitates to fire people, China has also been surprisingly adept — more so than America — at dealing with ineffective teachers. Chinese principals can’t easily dismiss teachers, but they can get extra training for less effective teachers, or if that doesn’t work, push them into other jobs.

Today in the United States it seems that Republicans and some Democrats are trying to blame all the ills of the country on unions.  They say that the teachers' unions prevent good education, and they say that government employee unions are the cause for all government deficits.  Both are lies.  An article published in The New York Times on January 3rd by Steven Greenhouse entitled "Strained States Turning to Laws to Curb Labor Unions" (here).  In Minnesota, the Republicans who now control both the House and the Senate (thank goodness we have Governor Dayton, a true progressive) are planning on introducing changes to make Minnesota a right to work state.

These objections to unions are just a part of the attack on the poor, those that are in any way different, those who have no power and those that are in need.  These objections grow out of the ideology that there is only a very limited role for government.  These objections support the continued economic gap between the richest Americans and the rest of us.  That gap is not good for the richest, for the rest of us, for our country, or for our world.  A letter to the editor published today in The New York Times captured what I am trying to say very well.

To the Editor:
Once again, labor unions are under attack (“Strained States Turning to Laws to Curb Labor Unions,” front page, Jan. 4).
What is remarkable is the extent to which politicians (primarily, though not exclusively, Republicans) are using the current economic situation to fulfill longstanding political goals. We should not be surprised that the dominant response seems to be: weaken labor unions; undermine entitlement programs; cut taxes on the wealthy; privatize public assets; deregulate.
Not surprised, perhaps, but certainly angry. We got into this mess because of the greed and stupidity of bankers, and the willingness of legislators to deregulate the financial sector in the first place and permit a wide polarization of income and wealth.
No plausible case can be made that this economic crisis is somehow the fault of the elderly poor, or Medicaid recipients, or union members or the unemployed, but it is these people who are bearing the brunt of budget cuts and deregulation. Using an economic crisis as an excuse to reduce further the threadbare safety net and labor market protections — to further a political agenda that far predates our current sorry economic condition — is shameful.
Chris Howell
Oberlin, Ohio, Jan. 4, 2011

The writer is a professor of politics at Oberlin College.

We have lots of work.  We need to speak out in favor of a government that provides for those least able to help themselves, that provides real opportunity for all, that provides our children with an education, that values all people and their distinct contributions to our country and that permits all of us to share in the fruits of our labors.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal