Now Who’s the Flip-Flopper?

With time running out as President of the United States, surely Mr. Bush realizes that he has lost all credibility with the vast majority of the American people, to say nothing about the rest of the world. 

These are just a few of the reasons I can think of for the presi- dent’s approval rating to have hit an all-time low of just 34 percent this week:  his refusal to admit and back away from the mistakes he has made in the War on Terrorism; his failed plan to “rescue” Social Security; his No Child Left Behind program; his tax cuts that favor the political donor class over the majority; his confusing MEDICARE plan that benefits industry at the expense of the elderly; his lame excuse for not allowing Americans to buy less-expensive pharmaceuticals from Canada; his plan to give a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports, and; his conspiracy to undermine international scientific consensus on global warming. 

Despite his record of denial and attempts to confuse the facts regarding human-caused climate change, Mr. Bush called for global cooperation to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions last week.  Sig- nificantly, this apparent policy reversal came just days before he will attend the annual meeting of the Group of Eight leading economic nations of the world, where climate change tops the agenda.  But then today, Mr. Bush reportedly dismissed a report from his own Environmental Protection Agency that sided with the world’s environmental scientists (read all about it in the CBS News report).  So… which is it Mr. President?  Do we have a problem or don’t we?  Who’s the flip-flopper now?

Before we let Mr. Bush re-write history in the last few minutes of his eleventh-hour by attempting to turn this ecological disaster into an economic argument for “nonbinding” cooperation between ourselves and the world’s other major polluters, we all deserve to have a good belly laugh about it, don’t you think?  So, enjoy the following video brought to you by YouTube (click the “play” button twice).

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Published in: on June 4, 2007 at 1:42 pm  Comments (3)  

Religion and Politics — Strange Bedfellows

“In the end, the Republican-led Legislature did its share of kowtowing to the Religious Right. What is amusing, however, is that in the Republican majority’s rush to cloak itself in the robes of religious (self-) righteousness, it failed to live up to the very religious mantle they proposed to carry: they abandoned the poor, the children, and the elderly.”

Never one to guild a lily, I commend to you the writing of Vince Leibowitz, author of a prominent political blog here in Texas.  In this posting, Vince points out the lack of true religious values observed by the Texas legislature this past legislative session.  Click here to read what he had to say today.

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Published in: on May 31, 2007 at 3:42 pm  Leave a Comment  

Iraq — An al-Qaeda Tar Baby for Us

As but one theater of the greater war that Congress gave President Bush cart blanche authority to wage after Nine-Eleven, Iraq has devolved into an order-less hodgepodge of mixed national objectives inflamed by ethnic rivalries in the region.  It has become an al-Qaeda tar baby for us.  Could we not have seen this coming? 

NOTE:  For those who are unsure as to the meaning of the term, “tar baby,” please be assured that I am referring to the character in the second of the Uncle Remus stories from African-American folk lore, the one about Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox.  In this sense, the term metaphorically implies a situation or problem from which one finds it virtually impossible to become disentangled.

Home alone this year on a rainy Memorial Day, I morosely sat in front of the TV watching war movie after war movie in which the “good guys” always win. Growing increasingly glum, I pondered the prospects for success by our military in Iraq. War! I thought, remembering my own experience in Vietnam where the enemy wore no uniform and could be anybody, man, woman or child, is this even the right name for it?

In something akin to agony, I concluded that patriotism today, and all that it implies for us veterans of American foreign wars, is definitely not as simply defined as it once was. In the wake of WWII and Korea when I was still a boy, none of us doubted the righteousness of America’s military might. We played soldier in neighborhood vacant lots and proudly marched in our Boy Scout uniforms in Fourth of July parades. We read comic books featuring defenders of Truth, Justice and the American Way.  Our high school history books glossed over details of the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars. These were but side shows to the great American Civil War which was fought, so we were taught, to end slavery in this country. In college U.S. History courses we learned something else. Then came the nightly news programs on TV, Vietnam and the Bay of Pigs. Students of draft age and others, many in the media like Jane Fonda and future politicians like John Kerry, began to question American foreign policy and demonstrated against it. As the war in Southeast Asia dragged on year after year, soldiers returning for state-side rotation assignments were spit upon and called, baby-killers. I know, I was one of them. So, to be proud of our men and women in uniform today, which I am, and to continue affording them moral support on the one hand while doubting the mission for which they are dying or coming home from in pieces on the other hand… well, Memorial Day this year hardly seemed like an occasion to celebrate.

More than four years ago now, as our armed forces were pre- paring to launch “Iraqi Freedom,” one of my World Geography students here in Waxahachie, Texas raised his hand and asked, “Mr. Garry, are we going to win this war?” I hesitated only briefly, thinking back on Vietnam, then responded, “Yes, we will win this war, but I seriously doubt that we’ll ever be able to win the peace.”  I knew that my student didn’t understand the dis- tinction that I was making, but I wanted to be reassuring to my class without fostering naivety.

According to a CNN news story, in a recent polling of 1,027 adult American opinions conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation, fewer than half said that they thought the United States can win the war in Iraq, forty-six percent.  Another forty-six percent said they thought we could win. However, only twenty-nine percent said they thought things were going well in Iraq, and nearly sixty percent said that they want to see U.S. troops leave Iraq either immediately or within a year. Had I been included in this polling, I’d have had to cast my lot with the majority. Frankly, I think the pollsters asked the wrong question. I think they should have asked, “Can Iraq ever have peace if we don’t get out of the way so that they can resolve their own differences?”

Writing for the Associated Press in an article published on Saturday, May 26th, Katherine Shrader reported that intelligence analysts warned President Bush in advance of Iraqi Freedom that al-Qaeda would see U.S. military action there as an opportunity to increase its operations and that Iran would try to shape a post-Saddam Iraq. This, she reported, was revealed to the Congress in secret papers declassified on Friday. The top analysts in the government who authored these papers also warned Mr. Bush that establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a “long, difficult and probably turbulent process.” Democrats in Congress said that these papers, part of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, make it clear that the administration was warned about the very challenges it now faces as it tries to stabilize Iraq. “Sadly,” said Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), according to Ms. Shrader, “the administration’s refusal to heed these dire warnings — and worse, to plan for them — has led to the tragic consequences for which our nation is paying a terrible price.”

This now revealed, I anticipate the next polling of opinions on the war in Iraq will reflect an even greater percentage of Americans wanting our President to accept the reality of a failed strategy.  Better military minds, retired generals who would not serve under this Commander-In-Chief, have advised for some time now that we stop playing the jihadists’ game. Read what Lt. General Gregory Newbold, retired director of operations at the Pentagon’s military joint staff has to say about this. I sense a consesus among many from the recent editorials I have read that we should start the redeployment our forces in Iraq to other locations in the region from where they can do more good.

The ongoing Surge, I am convinced, is delusional thinking, a costly mistake in experimental counter insurgency tactics that plays right into al-Qaeda’s game book. Border control, in my own opinion, to restrict the movement of foreign insurgents, weapons and munitions into Iraq might well be the best thing that we can do for the Iraqi people now, that and continued training of the Iraqi army.  But whatever else we do, we must begin now to prepare for the next phase of the War on Terrorism.

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Published in: on May 29, 2007 at 10:55 am  Comments (2)  

Excellence in the Classroom — Indeed

The following is an open letter to teachers’ professional organizations in Texas. It is in response to a recently-received, full-color mailing from an organization purporting to “Support Our Teachers.”

 What, if anything, is our collective response to this organization’s political agenda (http://www.excellenceintheclassroom.com)?  Should we not be mounting a defensive campaign of some kind?

It seems clear to me that this movement is a well-funded marketing effort to garner public support for a bill that, if passed, would mandate merit pay, impose TEA performance evaluations, and force the early retirement of many good, hard-working educators in our state. Rather than improving teacher retention (one of this organization’s stated goals), I foresee just the opposite happening.  Public school teachers’ jobs will become even more frustrating and difficult than they already are. 

Talk about a crisis in education!  When enough teachers walk away from their careers in public education, they will be hired back by an increasing number of private schools that are funded, at least in-part, by school vouchers.  In these schools, teachers will be free from government mandates and restrictions (these are the real problem as I see it).  Once free, teachers will finally be able to focus on students’ individual learning needs.  Hmmm… Maybe I should just relax and, borrowing from the title of a 1960s satirical film on the Cold War, “…Learn to Love the Bomb.”  However, when the bomb finally drops there will no longer be even a pretense of equal educational opportunity.

Whether you are persuaded by this mailing (you should have received you own copy by now if you are a homeowner in Texas and not employed by one of our “independent” school districts), or see through it for what it is and really do side with teachers in your area, please contact your state representative to let him/her know where you stand.

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Published in: on March 15, 2007 at 9:17 am  Comments (1)  

Methane: A Growing Factor in Global Warming

According to the National Energy Technology Laboratory, methane is 23  times more effective than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and as the Arctic warms and permafrost melts, vast amounts of this gas are being released into the atmosphere. 

So Al Gore’s dire projections in his Inconvenient Truth book and movie, based as they are primarily on atmospheric increases of carbon dioxide alone, may actually be conservative.  What! Al Gore conservative?

Sitting in a waiting room recently, I leafed through the latest copy of  Mechanics Illustrated.  I don’t know why I don’t subscribe to this magazine, I’m always fascinated by the articles it contains.  This edition contained a story about how the attention of environ- mental scientists is turning to the thousands of shallow lakes formed by seasonal melting of permafrost areas in Siberia and Canada.  According to the article, the lakes in Siberia appear to be “boiling” over with huge bubbles of methane gas rising to the surface.  This is being caused by decomposing organic matter below the surface of these lakes.  The article peaked my interest, so I decided to do a little on-line research today.  I found the following National Geographic article:  Study, Siberian Bogs Big Player in Greenhouse Gases.  Here’s a quote from the article, which you might want to visit: 

“Since we focus so much today on manmade sources of greenhouse gases, it’s easy to forget that global climate changes also occur naturally.  But we’re in uncharted territory when it comes to combining manmade sources with natural sources.  If the Siberian peatlands, with 11,500 years’ worth of organic matter stored in them, start to rot away, we could be in for a big shock.”

Evidently, this has already started to happen, big time.  So, get ready for the big shock.

As a teacher of geography and an armchair activist myself, I have little doubt that our environmental canoe is precariously tilted.  It may in fact already be too late for us to stop it from completely rolling over in our own lifetimes.  And what will happen when it does?  Island nations, such as the Maldives in the Indian ocean and the Marshalls in the Pacific, will cease to exist.  There will be wholesale extinctions of many species;.  Many of the world’s great rivers, rivers that support food production for billions, will dry up and disappear along with the glaciers now found in the Alps and the Himalayans.  Tropical diseases and insect pests will migrate farther north and south into temperate zones.  And finally, our great coastal cities will experience massive flooding.  Just think what will happen to Amsterdam, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, and New Orleans when sea levels are twenty or more feet higher than today. 

Accordingly, I believe the 110th Congress really needs to move on this issue, bringing it to the top of their legislative agenda, and acting on it agressively.  In the meantime, you ask, what should we be doing as individual citizens?

I invite you to consider joining with me and the other 602,350-plus members of the Global Warming Virtual March in com- municating our concerns to Washington.  Join the march, then send individual messages to your representatives via Environmental Defense.  Finally, work toward becoming “carbon neutral” yourself.  You can do this by taking a big step — sign-up for clean, renewable electricity for your homes.  If you live in Texas or other states that are serviced by Green Mountain Energy, check them out for wind-generated and hydroelectric alternatives to coal, gas, and nuclear power.  The cost to you, here in Texas anyway, is the same either way.  So what are you waiting for?  Doing this will send an economic message to energy producing companies.  You will also be sending a political message to your states’ governments.  For example, Governor Rick Perry of Texas is a big supporter of TXU’s near term, profit-minded plans to build more coal-fired energy plants over more environmentally friendly, long-term alternatives. 

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Published in: on January 20, 2007 at 5:37 pm  Comments (5)  

A Message to Senator Barack Obama

Dear Mr. Obama,

Responding to your email, I’m not at all confident that this will ever get to you personally — I’m familiar with electronic marketing techniques.  But perhaps someone on your exploratory committee will read it and count it as a vote of encouragement.

Having just read your second book, The Audacity of Hope, I do personally believe that you have what it takes to begin a healing process in America.  It comes at a most critical time. And so I encourage you to not hesitate long in declaring your candidacy.  The race is obviously already on.

I do not anticipate agreeing with you on every issue.  But on the basics, I trust you.  These basics include:  doing the right thing, not because of political payoff or expediency, but just because it’s the right thing to do; deciding on issues not for just the present, but for the future as well; caring about people regardless of race, religion, creed, sex, age, marital status, or sexual orientation, and; restoring equity, justice and dignity to our republican form of democracy.

You have broad appeal, sir, not just because you speak and write well, not just because you are young and handsome, not just because of your humble beginnings, and not just because you symbolize for many like myself a melding of cultures, social status, and faith traditions.  It’s because of all these things and more. So don’t worry about the sound of your name.  America is getting used to it.  Do watch your back on the issue of religion, however.  The religious right in this country is already attacking your prior affiliation/association with Islam via schools that you attended as a youth.  Politics, afterall, is a full-contact sport

Your relative lack of experience on the Hill is not a weakness, neither is your enthusiasm for public service.  The American people sense that it will take a new face, someone not tethered to the old culture of the way things are currently done, to blaze a path back to bi-partisan cooperation.  I trust that the new kind of politics of which you speak in your message to Americans will lead to a democracy that gives all citizens a voice — finally.  To this end, you or someone like you will need to marginalize the fundament- alists among us and build a constituency of the mainstream, including both business and labor.  But then, you already know this.  So, my audacious hope is that this can be done at all.  And, if it can be, I’m betting that you are just the right guy to do it.

I don’t know that I’ll be able to contribute a great deal to your campaign, I’m just an average guy.  But I do plan to give what I can and do so regularly in the coming months.  Additionally, you can count on my labors when the time comes, even against the conservative political machine here in Texas.

See Barack Obama’s Website at http://www.barackobama.com/video/about.php.

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Published in: on January 19, 2007 at 2:32 pm  Comments (1)  

Government’s Resistance to Change

Change is very difficult for people — especially in faith, tradition and conviction.  But sometimes change is forced upon us.  Other times, because what is just isn’t serving the interests of the majority anymore, change becomes both necessary and desirable. 

When the majority of Americans want change, our government is designed to respond.  That’s what democracy is.  Sometimes the wheels of progress turn slowly, and that can be good.  But when the desire for change is overwhelmingly strong, as was indicated by the 2006 mid-term elections, the wheels of progress shift into high gear.  This shifting took place recently in the 110th Congress with passage of  Senate Bill 1.  This bill contains two parts, or “titles”.  The first is the Legislative Transparency and Account- ability Act of 2007.  The second is the Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007.  You can see the full text of Senate Bill 1 at the Library of Congress site.  But, in short, provisions of this bill increase penalties for failure to comply with disclosure requirements for lobbying.  It is aimed at reducing, if not eliminating entirely, the habit that Lawmakers have acquired over time, and increasingly of late, to reward special interest groups by “earmarking” funds for things like the notorious “bridges to nowhere” in Alaska.  But some legislators just don’t seem to understand what voters sent them to Washington to do.  Or maybe they do but don’t care, not understanding that, what with the advent of the Internet, their actions are already transparent.  Without this bill becoming law, our representatives may have to wait until the next election to experience accountability.  But, because there are so many of us these days using blogs like this to express ourselves and disseminate information, government will be more accountable.

Case in point —  on Senate Bill 1, the Senate voted 81 to 6 to approve with 8 not voting.  Of those voting against the bill, all were Republicans:  Tom Coburn and James Inhofe from Oklahoma, Orrin Hatch from Utah, Kay Baily Hutchison from Texas, Trent Lott from Mississippi, and Pat Robers from Kansas.  You may email any of these senators from this U.S. Senate website, as I will do for my own Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison.  I will be asking what in the world she was thinking about when voting against this bill and I will be inviting her to respond to all of my readers by commenting to this posting.  

During the 2006 gubernatorial race in Texas, the Democratic candidate, Chris Bell, was said by Governor Perry’s campaign to be “Too Liberal” for Texas.  Hmmm, maybe Kay Bailey Hutchison, popular as she has proven to be over the years among Texas voters, has now become “Too Conservative” (resistant to change), even for Texas, by voting against this bill.

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Published in: on January 14, 2007 at 11:52 am  Leave a Comment  

Liberal vs. Conservative ~ Democrat vs. Republican

Updated from my original publication (Dec 31, 2006)

As a former social studies teacher, I was often asked by my students what the real difference is between Democrats and Republicans. They seemed to sense that parents and other authority figures extol the virtues of one political party, the one to which they subscribe, and vilify the other.  Accordingly, I attempted to teach the subject in as balanced a manner as possible.

Symbols of American Political PartiesAll of what follows, save for my own observations, is readily available elsewhere on the Internet.  However, I’ve not been able to find a good, unbiased site that compares and contrasts the two major political parties in the United States today.  I shall endeavor to do so.

Political parties exist for the singular purpose of installing people to positions of power and influence in government.  It is the same all over the world and has always been so.  To do this they compete with the opposition for support of the electorate by inciting passion over issues of the time.  Whether the issues have to do with the economy, national security, individual liberties, the environment, Constitutional interpretations, or matters of moral and social conscience, parties stake claim to various convictions then pretend, as necessary, that they have always been philosophically faithful to their positions.  But this is done more often than not to simply gain support in terms of dollars and votes for their own candidates.  Additionally, many people are attracted to particular parties over single wedge-issues like abortion or gun control and discount other party positions.  So the association of any party over time with a particular political philosophy is problematic at best.  Follow along and see if you don’t agree.

The Democratic Party, claiming a position on the left of the political theory continuum, has been labeled “liberal,” both by supporters and detractors alike.  The name is derived from the Latin, liber, which means free.  And until the end of the eighteenth century, it simply meant “worthy of a free man”.  It is from this sense of the word that we speak of “liberal arts”, “liberal sciences”, “liberal occupations”, etc.  Then, beginning in the early part of the nineteenth century, the term came to imply the qualities of intellect and behavior that were considered to be characteristic of those who occupied higher social positions, whether because of wealth, education, or family relationships.  Thus, an intellectually independent, broad-minded, magnanimous, frank, open, and genial person was said to be liberal.  The suffix, “ism,” added to descriptive words produces nouns that mean a belief, an ideology, or study, as to be immersed in.  “Liberalism” then connotes a political system or tendency that is opposed to centralization and absolutism.  However, the word liberal is generally used in a derogatory way today by those who subscribe to more conservative philosophies.  For them, a liberal is someone who believes in big government and wasteful, giveaway social programs (background/definition).

Most who have political persuasions to the right on the political theory continuum label themselves, “conservative.”  According to Webster, being conservative means a tendency to conserve or to hold back.  But this understanding of the term does not necessarily apply to all who consider themselves to be Republicans today.  Since the end of the Civil War in America, conservatives have tended toward resisting change and preserving established institutions.  Thus, a conservative person would be one who would tend to be more moderate or cautious.  But it was Republicans, as we all recall, who brought about the end to slavery in America though the Civil War years and the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments during Reconstruction – this was major social change (background/definition and History of the Republican Party)!

The Republican Party today attracts many different groups, including sportsmen and other gun owners who consider their right to bear arms to be under attack, business corporations (particularly defense, energy, and pharmaceutical industries) and wealthy individuals who benefit from limiting social programs, limiting regulations, and reduced taxes, as well as various fundamental or evangelical Christian groups who are lobbying for social change. Although some may argue that this is not true, the Tea Party, never a viable political party in it’s own right, and Libertarian politicians who once ran for office under the Libertarian Party banner, have now merged with the main stream Republican Party.

The Republican Party had its roots in opposition to slavery when, in 1854, former members of the Free Soil Party, the Whig Party, the American Party, and some Democrats came together in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have allowed these territories to enter the Union as slave states.  Party founders adopted the name “Republican” to indicate that it was the carrier of “republican” beliefs about civic virtue, and opposition to aristocracy and corruption (History of the Republican Party, Republican Party Today, and Reconstruction Period).

In western democracies the terms, “conservative” and “right-wing” are often used interchangeably, as near-synonyms.  This is not always accurate, but it has more than incidental validity.  The political opposition is referred to as the political left (although left-wing groups and individuals may have conservative social and/or cultural attitudes, they are not generally accepted, by self-identified conservatives, as being part of the same movement).  On economic policy, conservatives and the right generally support the free market and side with business interests over rank-and-file workers and environmentalists.  This is less true of conservatives in Europe and in places other than the United States.  Attitudes on some moral issues, such as opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia, are often described as being either right-wing or conservative.  Liberals, on the other hand, have traditionally drawn much of their support from labor unions, small farmers, civil servants, environmentalists, artisans, academics, philanthropists, immigrants and such – the “huddled masses”.  Collectively, liberals pretty much agree today that government should be a force for social change, to improve the lot of the disadvantaged and to protect the individual rights of all Americans, regardless of their race, sex, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.  Liberals would tend to agree that all should have affordable access to quality education and health care (Right-wing, Left-wing).

The Democratic Party in the United States traces its roots back to the early 1790s, when various factions united in opposition to Alexander Hamilton’s fiscal policies, which included a strong central treasury and new taxes to pay-off the states’ debts. Back then it was called the Anti-Administration Party, its subscribers were called Anti-Federalists.  For a time, this movement was added to other minor parties to form the Democratic-Republican Party under Thomas Jefferson.  Yes, in some ways, if not in name only, the two major political parties of America were combined. Then, after the War of 1812, the party split over whether to build and maintain a strong military.  Those favoring a strong military, especially a modern navy, came to be called the Old-Republicans.  Then, during the administration of Andrew Jackson, the Democratic Party was reborn, appealing, as had Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party, to the largely agrarian society of the times and to the common man.  At that time, the Old Republicans strongly favored states rights, while Jackson, even though he was a Southerner, put down the Nullification Crisis which threatened to divide the nation – North and South (History of the Democratic Party).

So, the distinction between liberal and conservative political philosophies and the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, over time tends, to blur. Philosophies and allegiances have switched back and forth over the years.  For example, after the Civil War, most whites in the South became Democrats (Southern Democrats), known then unofficially as the “White Man’s Party“.  Then, following the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many of these Democrats switched over to support Republican candidates.

And so it goes; political parties come and go. Sometimes the names stay the same, but the philosophies and respective positions on issues change according to the winds of war and fortune.  As I tell my students, it is impossible to separate politics from economics.  It’s all about power and influence.

For the latest on what U.S. political parties and individual candidates believe, see http://www.ontheissues.org/Quiz/Quiz2010.asp#sec0. At this site you may also test yourself and your beliefs to determine your closest party match.

For more on what I personally believe and how political parties have performed in recent years, see Americans’ Political Persuasions ~  Based More on Myth than Fact?

I invite your comments whether pro and con.

Published in: on December 31, 2006 at 3:36 pm  Comments (101)  
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Reaching for the Highest Rung

I encourage all of my students to stay in school and to reach for the highest rung on the economic ladder, and to do so not just for their own sakes.

Having spent many weeks learning about physical geography this school year, my students and I have just completed a series of lessons on human geography.   This includes the studies of culture, population, government, urbanization, and economics.  I wish that we had had more time for this — we just barely skimmed the surface.  But alas, we had to move on so that we can cover our full curriculum this year.  Now we have begun to explore the world, region-by-region, beginning with the United States and Canada.  Oh, how I love my job…

One of the more difficult concepts in human geography for my students to grasp seemed to be the various levels of economic activity that take place in a market economy such as ours.  These levels are: primary, the basic harvesting of resources, which includes farming, ranching, fishing and such; secondary, the making of things from the harvested resources to include the processing of food; tertiary, the services that are necessary to enable and sustain the other levels, and; quaternary, information management and research.  I tried to impress upon my students how important will be the tertiary activities in their futures, that most of them will in fact be employed providing services of various kinds to individuals and businesses.  I also tried to impress upon them the fact that the fourth level, quaternary, is where real prosperity is to be found for themselves and for all of us. 

Innovation — that’s where the real payoff is going to be.  If we’re going to stay economically ahead of our competition in this increasingly competitive world of ours, we’re going to have to stay ahead literally with new ideas and new technologies.  And this will require a whole new generation of highly-educated, highly-motivated young people. 

With all our ongoing challenges, the war on terror, global warming, illegal immigration, deficit spending, an aging population, ethics scandals, and lawmakers who spend more time and effort getting re-elected than making tough choices, America’s going to have to be even more creative and forward thinking than ever before.  If we’re going to survive as a people, we’re going to have to start pulling together.  Lo, some would say that we’re going to have to start pulling together as a world, not just as separate nations, if we’re going to survive as a species.  So, I encourage all my students to stay in school and to reach for the highest rung on the economic ladder, and not just for their own sakes.

Somehow our textbook publisher failed to include the word, altruism, in the many lists of Places and Terms to know about in the study of human geography.  I’ll have to remember to correct that oversight.

My Libertarian son will probably disagree with this, but I also think that, if we’re going to survive and thrive in the competition presented by this growing global economy of ours, we’re going to have to start worrying about more than just the bottom-line.  Corporations are going to have to start thinking globally (not just internationally), long-term and “out-of-the-box.”  I think too that we are excessively rewarding CEOs and others in high manage- ment positions in this country based on quarterly profits and stock values.  We put stockholders’ interests ahead of our employees, and this motivates the kind of behavior that results in Worldcom and Enron debacles.  And, as my other, more liberal-minded son might say, when the private sector fails to make the better choices for the greater good, government needs to be willing and able to step-in with incentives of various kinds.  It cannot do this, however, when it is joined at the hip with industry.

Case in-point, there’s been lots of talk here in Texas recently about TXU’s proposal to build eleven new coal-fired electricity plants in the near future and how the state’s local and regional leadership are all united in opposition owing to the increased pollution that will ensue.  Governor Perry, siding with the energy industry, is all for it saying that Texas can’t afford to be without the energy that these plants will produce in the future to sustain our economic growth.  His Democratic challenger, Chris Bell, and all the big-city mayors in the state are saying that we can afford even less to build these plants without using the latest technology, coal gasification.  Of course, what they’re talking about is avoiding costs associated with increased damage to the environment and the respiratory health of our state’s citizens.  TXU and the governor, while seemingly thinking long-term, are really more worried about the near-term, the bottom-line, and profitability.  That’s why TXU’s management is claiming that coal gasification is an unproven technology despite the success of Tampa Florida’s Polk Station and the Wabash River plant in Indiana, plants that have been in successful operation for over a decade.  Click here to see what the U.S. Department of Energy has to say about these plants. 

In an October 23d TIME magazine article, “The Future is Bright,” I read where a German company, CONERGY, bought-out the New Mexico-based Dankoff Solar Products last year.  “If the U.S. market had started in 1996, maybe a U.S. company would have bought us,” said CONERGY’s CEO in this article.  This is just one example of how our competition is pulling ahead, preparing for a future wherein energy dependence will no-longer be just strategic- ally naive, but economically disastrous as well.  All the coal we have, and we do have lots of it, won’t solve the problem.  In fact, using it increasingly without applying the latest technology to spare the environment, could well mean the end of times as we’ve come to know them.

Parents, your generation, mine before yours, and my parents generation, have left a real mess for our kids to have to clean up.  So let’s stop borrowing against their tomorrows and give them an honest shot at getting it done.

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Published in: on October 21, 2006 at 10:02 pm  Comments (1)  

Too Many Good Choices

It seems to me that citizens who sincerely care about public education in Texas have too many good choices for governor this year.  Normally, having more than one good option is a good thing, except during elections.  This is because independents and “other party” candidates generally turn out to be spoilers in the process, except as in rare cases like the 1998 Minnesota elections when the outspoken Reform Party candidate, Jesse Ventura, was elected governor there. That’s why I believe in a two-party system.  Unfortunately, the two major parties in the United States tend to polarize over “hot-button” issues like gun-control, taxes, funding for social programs, and abortion.  But that’s a subject for another post.

As a teacher and a member of the ATPE (Association of Texas Professional Educators), I recently read the Fall 2006 ATPE News article, “Educators Hold the Trump Card on Election Day.”  The four candidates for governor responded in this article to association questions on education.  It was a great article, and if you haven’t read it, I do highly recommend it.  But I think it was inappropriately titled. Why?  Well, I’ll try to explain.

The three challengers all responded personally while Governor Perry chose to have a campaign staff member respond, which was most unfortunate, I think.  This alone said something to me, but it probably went over the heads’ of most readers.  I took it to mean that Mr. Perry has effectively written off educators’ votes to his opponents.  He knows he is not likely to carry the teachers’ voting block in Texas.  But he also knows that he probably doesn’t need to.  This block will be pretty much divided between his three opponents, all three of whom said things that spoke to fixing problems consistent with educators’ recommendations and sympathies.  The Governor’s spokes- person responded defensively, taking credit for legislative measures like Senate Bill 1691, which was intended to shore-up unfunded liabilities in the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) fund with punitive changes like the rule of 80 and increasing the minimum retirement age.  This bill is expected to decrease the current $13 billion dollar liability, but only to the tune of about $1.5 billion.  However, Mr. Perry, unlike the other three, does have a track record of actually doing something.  The others could only offer campaign promises.  All three challengers spoke against what they consider to be an over-emphasis on “rewards-based” TAKS testing.  The Governor’s spokesperson strongly defended TAKS, as currently employed, which punishes “under-performing” schools regardless of the reasons behind students’ poor performance.  But public opinion has been shown to be pretty much split on the value of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the federal mandate responsible for TAKS.  So, it seems obvious to me that, whether you agree or not with Governor Perry’s assessment of where the problems lie with Texas education and what to do about them, educators do not, in fact, hold the trump card.  Hold on now… hear me out.

In a state like Texas, a state that is solidly in the “red” column nationally, many folks are going to cast votes based on issues other than education, issues like taxes, law enforcement and immigration.  And many teachers in Texas are die-hard Republicans, don’t forget.  They’ll vote for Mr. Perry regardless of how he stands on education issues.  Party loyalty in Texas is a tradition, don’t you know?  Some who are not firmly committed to one of the two major parties (folks who are, for the most part, not Texas-born and Texas-bread), will vote for whomever they like.  These are the beauty-contest voters, voters whose support all of the candidates are trying to win over.  Then there will be some who may have been impressed with what “Grandma” Strayhorn or “Kinky” Friedman have had to say since the primaries earlier this year.  But, since they voted in either of the two primaries, they cannot, by state law, sign petitions or campaign for independents, the candidates who have been attracting most of the media attention to the demise of Mr. Bell’s campaign.  So, my prediction, for what it’s worth is this:  25 percent (perhaps less) for Bell, 15 percent (maybe more) for Grandma, 20 percent (more or less) for Kinky, and 40 percent for Perry.  Congratulations, Mr. Perry.

Oh m’gosh! Y’all don’t suppose that one or both of the inde- pendent candidates this year are actually running campaigns at the behest of the Republican Party, do ya?  Nah…  But just suppose they were.  Wouldn’t that just be a perfectly brilliant political strategy, one that’s right up there with the redistricting done by Republicans here in Texas back in 2003?

So, my conclusion is this:  if Texas educators really want to see a change in the direction public education is headed, they will need to get together and collectively encourage one or both of the independents to step aside, effectively throwing their support to the remaining contender, democrat Chris Bell.  Good as their ideas may seem to be, as I see it, the chances of either winning are extremely remote anyway, despite the growing tide of support for political independents in this state.  But of course, by charter, none of our professional organizations in Texas can suggest that we do this.  So, maybe our best bet is a letter-writing campaign that says, “Teachers, don’t waste your vote on a candidate that is not a true contender this year, no matter how much they may impress you by what they say.  Check the polls before going to your polling place.”

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Published in: on September 10, 2006 at 3:02 pm  Comments (7)  

Taking the Measure of NCLB

Here’s an interesting quote for my teacher and parent friends from an article that was published last week in the on-line version of USNews and World Report…

“According to a new Gallup Poll, 58 percent of Americans believe the five-year-old No Child Left Behind law has either harmed or had no effect on schools, compared with just over a quarter who believe it has helped. And while most people approve of NCLB’s goal of raising standardized test scores, few seem to support its methods. ‘Systematically, the public rejects every strategy in it,’ said Lowell Rose, director of the poll, which is jointly authored by Gallup and the Phi Delta Kappa teachers’ association.”

Click here to read the whole article, which goes on to say that nearly 70 percent of poll respondents believe that no “single test” could “provide a fair picture of whether a school needs improvement.”  But then, I don’t suppose our present admini- strations at state and national levels care too much about what the public thinks.

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Published in: on August 28, 2006 at 8:00 pm  Leave a Comment  

The Sagging Problem

It has become a real issue here in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex, especially in our public schools.  More and more guys, especially African American guys, have adopted the “sagg’n ‘n bagg’n” style and are defiantly resisting school administrators’ attempts to ban the practice.  So we talked about it today in my World Geography class.  Having to do with the evolution of culture, ethnic identity, and juvenile defiance in the face of mounting adult frustration, it was a valid topic for discussion and debate.  But I had no idea how divided our young people are on the rightness and wrongness of what I consider to be a petty thing, a thing not unlike the long hair and rock ‘n roll issues of my own teen era.  I guess I was expecting more consensus and agreement among the youth.  There was some, but only within individual socio-ethnic groups.

Dallas School Board member, Ron Price, who is rumored to be seeking a city council seat himself, has appeared before the Dallas City Council to ask them for an ordinance that would prohibit pants that hang well below the waist. Price said, “To me, it’s disrespectful and dishonorable to women for men to walk around with their bottoms showing.” Several council members are backing the proposal. But Jesus Toscano, Assistant City Attorney, said he was unsure of the legality of such an ordinance and would have to research it.  See the article in the Dallas Morning News.

When asked about the issue, Texas ACLU Director Lisa Graybill said, “Is it a civil liberties issue? I don’t know. It’s a silly issue, I know that. Why can’t people just look away?”

I have to agree with Ms. Graybill.  As offensive as the practice is to me personally and to my wife, these kids are not really exposing themselves. They’re just making the same kind of in-your-face, independence statement that I made when, as a teenager, I wore my hair in my face and almost down to my shoulders.  My mother had the right idea about how to deal with it.  She told me she thought it was cute.  Then, when I started wearing my shirt unbuttoned below the breast bone, ala Elvis Presley, she laughed about it.  After several iterations of this, I finally had to give up and find something more worthy upon which to establish my identity.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s my position on this:  Kids are always going to push the line and break the rules wherever they can, especially the rules that don’t make any sense to them.  It’s been the bane of every adult generation since Aristotle tried to mold Athenian youth of his time into their parents’ image.  And the more we make an issue of things like this, the more our kids are going to defy us.  Don’t we all become our parents soon enough anyway?  So, chill out Mr. Price.  Lets get real, and let’s let the city council focus on solving the real issues of our times — real crime, real poverty, real illness, real divisiveness.

By this, I do not mean to imply that school dress code policies should be relaxed in anyway.  In fact, I am a strong advocate for school uniforms, which would largely obviate such issues as this at school.  But I do not believe that a city ordinance to address this issue would be enforceable.  So, if passed, it would only make matters worse.

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Published in: on August 25, 2006 at 8:07 pm  Comments (5)  

Quality Education in America

Every child in America has the right to a free, quality education, Right?  After all, do we not have a law called “No Child Left Behind?”

Many of my teacher friends know that my wife and I are hosting a foreign exchange student this year.  She is a delightful young lady from the Republic of Korea who likes to be called, Betsy.

On our way home from school one day recently, Betsy was asking me questions about the meaning of various English phrases.  Question after question after question… “Oh!” she would say in response to each answer, followed immediately thereafter by another question.

Growing weary of being the constant respondent, I asked, “So, Betsy, tell me, what do you think of American schools?”

“Um… American schools very different… better… everything in America is better.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes, schools very nice.  Teachers all very good and very… kind… but…”

“But what, Betsy?”

“American students not so kind… they make it… um… difficult.”

How very astute, I thought.  It takes a sixteen year-old girl from a foreign country, after less than two weeks attending classes in an American public school, to put her finger right where it sores the most.

Thinking about this, I remembered having heard our principal, a fine, well-liked, professional educator in his own right, tell the young people at our school on many occassions that they have no special rights as students, save for the right to a quality education.  Now, in all fairness, I’m sure that he believes this.  Hey… I believed it too until doing a little research on the subject.  I’m sorry to have to say that it simply is not true.

If it were true, the state would be compelled by law to make sure that every young person could graduate from high school with a diploma, or at least finish with a certificate of completion and trade skills of some kind.  If it were true, with things as they are, millions of parents would be suing school districts all across the country because we are not meeting the educational needs of all — not in Texas, not in Utah, not even in states like California where teachers are paid the highest salaries.  If it were true, we would have to have many, many more special education teachers in public schools, and ten times as many bilingual teachers in Texas would not suffice.  If it were true, public education would cost taxpayers a great deal more, and teachers wouldn’t have class- rooms filled with special needs students and English as a Second Language students trying to keep up with gifted, talented, and highly motivated students sitting right next to them.  If it were true, we would be more worried about each young person learning as much as they can, according to each student’s individual gifts and interests, rather than worrying about whether they can all be made to squeeze through the same academic sieve in the same way and in the same amount of time.

Truth is, none of us is created equal, and none of us has the right to a free, quality education — not in the good ole U.S. of A.  Education in the United States, contrary to the beliefs of many, is not one of our freedoms under the Constitution or any state law, neither is free access to it.  Provisions of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 do prohibit discrimination by states in the manner by which edu- cation is provided.  But it is not a right.  Rather, it is a privilege that is given according our our states’ various priorities and resources.

I made this connection after Betsy’s comment because I recently read where the Washington, DC city council has declined to pass a measure called the DC Education Rights Charter Amendment.  This amendment would have added to the city’s essential governing charter the requirement to provide a “free, high-quality education” to all citizens.

Now, why do you suppose they declined to pass such an amend- ment?  Sounds like a good thing to me, “a free, high-quality education.”  It’s something most of us think our kids all have coming to them, considering all the tax dollars that we give to our states, ostensibly, on it’s behalf.  But what would politicians really do by passing such a mandate, a mandate that says that the same public schools that they say are failing today shall, by their decree, hereby instantly provide a free, high-quality education?  Well, it would certainly launch a million lawsuits.  Today’s lack of quality public education would become actionable.

But lawsuits forcing even higher taxes won’t solve a problem that’s even more basic than school budgets.  The problem isn’t about money, folks, nor do I believe it’s about the lack of quality, dedicated teachers.  The problem is about apathy, especially among our kids from lower income households.  And I’m not just talking about African American and Hispanic students either, although they do seem to be afflicted with this more than European and Asian American students.  Many students from lower income families, not all mind you but many, simply enter the system with low expectations for success and, over time, validate their reckoning. 

So, where have we gone wrong?  Well, maybe it’s time for legis- lators, parents, and the courts to back off from integration and pro-inclusion mandates that do nothing to motivate slower students to try harder.  All they do is squash young people’s self esteem and distract the otherwise self-confident, highly motivated students.

Maybe Betsy’s got something.  Maybe, just maybe it’s time to let teachers, administrators and educational counselors start making class placement decisions based on students’ needs and teachers’ special gifts and qualifications.  One size, after all, never did fit all.

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Published in: on August 15, 2006 at 2:53 am  Comments (11)  

Losing the Will to Win

In the immortal words of U.S. philosopher, poet, George Santayana (1863–1952), “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

In the news this week was a story about the Democratic primary race going on in Connecticut between incumbent Senator, Joseph Liebermann and challenger, Ned Lamont for the party’s nomination.  The fight, which Liebermann seems to be loosing at this point, is over whether America should stay the course in Iraq or start bringing our troops home now.  As I understand it, the three-term senator (Lieberman) isn’t saying we were right to go into Iraq in the first place, he’s just saying that it would be irresponsible for us to “cut and run” now.  There’s an article about this, published just this morning, in the Houston Chronicle.

This all brings to mind a discussion I had with one of my sons shortly after President Bush made his now-famous speech from the deck of  the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1st 2003, the one in which he announced “major” combat in Iraq finished.  During our exchange of e-mail messages, I expressed a serious concern I had about Iraq turning into another Vietnam — by that, I meant a quagmire, both in a military and a political sense.  Of course, my son, at that time an avid supporter of Mr. Bush and his administration’s decision to take Saddam out and establish “democracy” in the region, argued that Vietnam and Iraq have nothing in-common.  Well, just look at it now, son.

Historically, Vietnam was a quagmire waiting to happen even before Eisenhower handed over the reins to Kennedy.  How was Iraq different?  Anybody?  Anybody? 

Kennedy saw Vietnam for what it was, and started laying the groundwork for our disengagement.  Now, some conspiracy theorists believe that it was this objective, coupled with his brother’s running battles with Hoover and the intelligence community, that eventually led to his assassination… the industrial-military complex that Eisenhower tried to warn us about. 

Vietnamization was Nixon’s brainchild early-on in his administration, four administrations after the conflict and our involvement in it began.  Vietnamization, which sounds a lot like what Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is arguing as the current plan for Iraq (see this recent Fox News report on the face-off between Senator Clinton and Secretary Rumsfeld), was Nixon’s strategy for getting us out of that mess.  This, coupled with our country’s waning support for a continued military presence there, is what makes Vietnam, in my mind, similar to Iraq. The problem with the whole idea of Vietnamization was that the government we had engineered for the Republic of Vietnam became too corrupt for its own good, and the RVN forces, to include their leadership, could never be trusted to conduct independent operations.  Sound familiar?  All the billions that were spent to help the country stand on its own never built anything better than a house of cards. 

Now, corruption may not be a major problem with the Iraqi government, but dissention between major factions there certainly is.

Today, the Bush administration argues that the Iraqi government is functioning well.  But then, for all the American public knew about the government of the Republic of Vietnam back in the early 70s, it was functioning well too, right up until the day it surrendered to North Vietnamese forces.  In case you’re interest in the history of Vietnam… http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/South-Vietnam.

Vietnam proved beyond a doubt that success in war depends upon more than economic power and an edge in technology.  Carl von Clausewitz (German general and oft-quoted authority on modern war), years before the war in Vietnam, pointed to the importance of “moral factors” — fear, the impact of danger, and physical exhaustion — observing that “military activity is never directed against material forces alone; it is always aimed simultaneously at the moral forces which give it life, and the two cannot be separated.”  Our adversaries in Iraq are well aware of this and they are growing increasingly effective by appealing to moral forces according to fundamentalist interpretations of the Islamic faith.  This, to the majority of the people in the region, justifies, their use of terrorist tactics against us and their own countrymen.

Another requirement for success in war, of which the Bush administration must be painfully aware, is the commitment of the people behind the opposing forces.  Call it, the will to win.  In Vietnam, long before we had endured ten years of bloody battle scenes on the nightly news and suffered 47,410 recorded battle deaths, 10,789 other deaths in-theater, and 153,303 non-lethal battle casualties, we lost the will to win.  And so we lost the war.  As a nation, I fear that we are already losing our will to win in Iraq too.

In March 2003, when Operation Iraqi Freedom was first launched by the U.S., one of my geography students asked, “Mr. Garry, will we win this war?”

I answered that I had no doubt that we would win the war.  I hedged, however, by also saying that I questioned whether we would ever be able to win the peace. Was I wrong?  Is it time yet to admit our mistakes, cut our loses, and come home?  Lieberman doesn’t think so.  I wonder what you think?

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Published in: on August 5, 2006 at 3:57 pm  Comments (2)  

No Room for Compromise

Congress argues Living Wage vs. Death Tax, but it ain’t about what’s good for the country that matters, it’s about what gets politicians re-elected. 

August 4, 2006 — I received an invitation from Senator John McCain today to give my opinions on major issues of the times through his Straight Talk America program.  As an outspoken political activist that tends to lean more to the left, I have no idea how I got on his mailing list, but I was happy just the same to respond.  I was even quite happy to contribute the requested $15 to defray distribution and tabu- lation costs.  I made my contribution, not as a PAC member, but simply as a concerned, supportive citizen who is impressed with this Senator’s emphasis on reforming the way business is done in Washington.

As I was filling out the questionnaire this evening, I got to thinking about the shameful way our lawmakers squander legislative opportunities, especially during an election year, arguing over partisan issues on which neither side will budge just to appease their constituents.  The proposal for a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as being only between two persons of the opposite sex is an obvious example.  Advocates always knew there was insufficient support for this with decent on both sides of the aisle.  Dead-on-arrival bills like this are given floor and media attention at the expense of more critical problems such as immigration reform.

In what would seem to be a rare case of compromise on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives voted last week to give some of the lowest-paid American workers in this country their first raise in nearly a decade, a decade in which politicians voted themselves pay increases ten times.  But the bill they passed also included a big tax cut for some of the country’s wealthiest, cutting estate taxes, derided by Republicans as a “death tax,” and extending several other tax cuts popular among wealthy campaign contributors.  The estimated cost to the government for these tax cuts, According to a Chicago Sun-Times news article, will be about $310 billion over 10 years.

There was a bitter debate leading up to an early-hour vote Saturday, the 29th of July, according to the Chicago Sun-Times article.  The bill, which would raise the current $5.15-per-hour minimum wage in three 70-cent steps until reaching $7.25 in 2009, finally passed 230-180.  But I personally doubt the bill will ever become law.  House Democrats, as well as Republicans, know the minimum wage provision of the bill will never pass the Senate where the idea of wage increases face stiff opposition.  Both sides, in my opinion, just wanted to look good to their constituents before leaving Washington to begin a five-week summer break that will give members time to campaign for re-election.

So, it’s business as usual…

Let me again raise to my readers’ attention, the only solution that seems to make good sense: Congressional term limits.  For more information on this grass-roots initiative, visit Americans for Limited Government.

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Published in: on August 4, 2006 at 2:01 am  Comments (3)  
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