CERTAINTY - October 7, 2010

In the matter of teacher competence, it is upsetting to see how partial is the evidence on which important people rely, and the ease with which they take devastating action in the absence of what we would ordinarily think of as due process. This applies not only to almost every school administrator, but even infects the thinking of the President. There are tests that are taken to be fully indicative of understanding. Some of these apply to difficult subjects like geometry and Physics, to name the outstanding failures of testing in US high schools. But even in subjects where there is less certainty about deep motivational understanding, the failure of these tests to be more than an educated guess of the test-takers knowledge is well known. There is a wide gap in the depth to which the tests probe understanding. Yet the schools, and the local, state and even federal governments will take on this shabby thinking to inflict permanent joblessness on those who do not come up to the standards of the administrators. If the roles were reversed, and teachers’ union officers could remove administrators on their own very partial beliefs, we would all recognize the injustice inherent in the situation. It is as though being hired in the supervisory role invests them with the ability to say definitively what is true. Teachers’ unions do not require categorical certainty in matters of competence, but do require the application of due process in such cases. When the sloth of the accusers does not allow them such a degree of certainty, they demand the power to take final action on just their own opinions or, worse, on the beliefs of their advisors. Such practices take away from teachers one of the pillars of their belief in the justice of their profession. The school administrators and boards that act without due process always want the power to act on just their guesses, often wrong, about who is doing a good job. Where will they find the substitutes for those they discharge so casually? Would the administrators survive the application of similar standards on their own work?

LAST CHANCE - September 23, 2010

The key to the coming election, if there is one at all, is that this is the last chance for the populace to avoid the devastating consequence that would attend a GOP control of the US Congress. While I fully agree with the dismay of the People over the leadership of the Dem Party offered in this time of desperate crisis by Barack Obama, the imposition of the consequences upon the People of that failure of the Enlightenment’s ability to foresee and manage the affairs of the nation would be ruinous not only for the next 2 years, but for however long it would require to resuscitate the economy after that. We have seen how hard it has been to make any improvements after the catastrophic Bush-Cheney regime, and the legacy imposed upon us in the form of the manic Supreme Court will only grow worse. The People can punish Obama for failing to remedy things quickly without their support, but it is we, not he, that will bear the burden of joblessness, homelessness, and despair if we put things back into their hands. The starkness of that choice must be made clear to them right now. Another month of nursing our disappointment and annoyance will fall, unfortunately, on those seeking revenge for the slowness of response that seems to have eluded Mr. Obama’s dream of securing consensus for the methods of recovery that match his bipartisan hopes. Unfortunately, little people like me have no means to stand against the power that the SC has conferred on the wealth of the plutocracy to deliver the mechanisms of persuasion to a somnolent populace. The only voice loud enough to be heard, not to say credited, is that of Obama, not only President, but also said to be the leader of the Dem Party. It is we, the People, who will bear the true costs of having our precious Economy degenerate into a peculiar form of plutocratic servitude if it falls into the half-witted control of the unthinking mob that is the Tea Party. It is now over 2 millennia since Plato, and his ghost of the future is facing us today.

TRUMPET - Thursday, September 16, 2010

It is possible that Obama has issued forth the trumpet that will never call retreat, though in any case, it is an uncertain trumpet, and late at that. In any case, there is the hope that it will not be like W’s trumpets. That one was full of promise after promise and those were all that we were offered, while his owners in the proprietor class were satisfied aplenty, due to the ministrations of Cheney. Still, it was a lesson in how easily the US people could be satisfied by talk, if it seemed full enough. But if one is going to play very hard ball, there are positions that Obama has the power to take and which would confirm his alleged concern with the vast majority of the people at the center of the income pyramid.It has been abundantly obvious from Election Day 08 that the GOP strategy was one of total obstruction, aimed at delivering a record of uselessness for the Dems. And once that was seen, the strategy of seeking to seduce them with sweetness and compromise was as dead as it could be. If the Dems could not be rallied to confront venom with anger, then that has given us the impasse we confront today. And if they will not take advantage of the fact that they have a lot of power left, in both the veto and the power of appointment, then they become the owners of the impotent mess that half-measures and failed compromise cannot cure. If that is their destiny, then it is possible to commit themselves to battle, sound the trumpet and let slip the dogs of war, to mix the metaphor. It is better to go down fighting for a worthy cause than to allow the hirelings of the plutocracy to bring a decent offer of participation to degenerate into a policy that will allow one’s self to be nibbled into impotence. There are still troops ready to fight the good fight, if one can believe the leader’s devotion. But the promise of compromise has proven to be a door to failure in this case, and we should not see Obama beaten by relying on a dream of decency from GOP.

TRUMPET - September 9, 2010

It is possible that Obama has issued forth the trumpet that will never call retreat, though in any case, it is an uncertain trumpet, and late at that. In any case, there is the hope that it will not be like W’s trumpets. That one was full of promise after promise and those were all that we were offered, while his owners in the proprietor class were satisfied aplenty, due to the ministrations of Cheney. Still, it was a lesson in how easily the US people could be satisfied by talk, if it seemed full enough. But if one is going to play very hard ball, there are positions that Obama has the power to take and which would confirm his alleged concern with the vast majority of the people at the center of the income pyramid. It has been abundantly obvious from Election Day 08 that the GOP strategy was one of total obstruction, aimed at delivering a record of uselessness for the Dems. And once that was seen, the strategy of seeking to seduce them with sweetness and compromise was as dead as it could be. If the Dems could not be rallied to confront venom with anger, then that has given us the impasse we confront today. And if they will not take advantage of the fact that they have a lot of power left, in both the veto and the power of appointment, then they become the owners of the impotent mess that half-measures and failed compromise cannot cure. If that is their destiny, then it is possible to commit themselves to battle, sound the trumpet and let slip the dogs of war, to mix the metaphor. It is better to go down fighting for a worthy cause than to allow the hirelings of the plutocracy to bring a decent offer of participation to degenerate into a policy that will allow one’s self to be nibbled into impotence. There are still troops ready to fight the good fight, if one can believe the leader’s devotion. But the promise of compromise has proven to be a door to failure in this case, and we should not see Obama beaten by relying on a dream of decency from GOP.

DUE PROCESS - September 2, 2010

It is interesting to see how the processes of law impact differently on people of differing social positions and resources. I am looking today at the behavior of the legal process in the cases of ex-Governor Blagojevich of IL and ex-House whip Delay of TX. In the one case, he was overheard bemoaning that it was not possible for him to cash in on a unique opportunity to profit from his political position, as so many others had done before him, and in the other, he was proven to have profited from his own. The apparent logic seems to be that Blagojevich was revealed to be greedy, though unavailing, while Delay was shown to be successfully corrupt, if possibly not proven beyond reasonable doubt. In the one case, Blagojevich was shown to be a Bad Man, and the federal attorney has promised to have him punished for the moral lapse, while the other managed to get his case dismissed by the Department of Justice (?) because doubt about its legal certainty hangs on a thin thread. Of course, Delay comes from TX, a state almost as widely considered morally corrupt as IL, except that he found a way to collect his booty with support from those who share his degree of exemption from the fingers of the Law. In fact, the situation of those exposed as morally corrupt is that they can be punished without any such due process, while “solid citizens” can often get away with open flouting of the law. TX conservatives, of course, are considered solid citizens, and their Party stands behind them, so Obama’s administration turns them free. Meanwhile, the US Attorney has made himself the agent of the Wrath of God, so that anything so strict and formal as certainty is not required when harassing a Democrat of working class roots. In this administration, the nature of one’s persona might be sufficient to respect the façade of a GOP grandee, while Obama’s regime might otherwise extract vengeance in a case of bare suspicion.

SAVING - August 19, 2010

As a recent retiree who has a certain concern about savings for possible necessities, I find it distressing to consider the options that I see as a saver and to consider that in contrast to the options available by others more affluent and by those who are in a position to profit from the rules for lending money to the US government. For various reasons, this nation gives special benefits to those lending us money from abroad, even when that money has its origin in domestic earnings and loses its identity when shunted through the labyrinth of foreign banks and institutions. It does not seem unreasonable that our treasury should look to domestic savings as a prime source of borrowed funds, especially if that should result in economic gains for our financial situation. The middle-class saver is treated as an unwelcome supplicant when it comes to federal borrowing, while foreign companies and even nations are courted with the best rates and freedom from income taxes. Indeed there are several dimensions on which our economies would profit from the unexpected consequences if our treasury would pay private borrowers the same rates available to strangers, and as tax-free as apparently alien funds. Such a change would free us from the need to borrow as much from overseas, even not counting the fees paid to the agents that maintain the foreigner fiction for us. Also, more of the interest would be spent on domestic products, which might even help in the cause of recovery. Finally, the extension of the existing benefit to Americans might make domestic borrowing enough better so that the interest paid on that borrowing would decrease. Is it possible that this obvious result has not been seen by the supposed scientists who advise our government, or is it the case that these are again a recital of the benefits that the rich and the powerful rain on each other and that are denied to those of us who scrape by as best we can?

SOLAR VS. NUCLEAR - August 12, 2010

In a stunning article in the International Herald-Tribune recently, it was revealed that the cost of a kwhr in NC has dropped (to 16c) below that for nuclear, which continues to rise. And this is in NC, not AZ. That puts a seal on the question of what we can do to rein in the peril of disasters like that at Chernobyl. Because the true cost of solar is just what was reported, while the cost of nuclear does not satisfactorily reflect the total insurance cost that should be paid by nuclear to protect the public from that kind of industrial disaster. The US law simply lays the bulk of the risk on the populace, which makes losses over a certain level unrecoverable. And we have recently seen new developments that further reduce to cost of solar panels. Indeed, a prize of Eu 800k was given by a Eu foundation for a new way of building these more cheaply, and promises transparent panels in window panes. That makes glass houses a new way of dealing with that placement problem. So the new differential will continue to grow, and we should be able soon to decommission the old nuclear reactors as the new solar ones continue to grow cheaper. It is a genuine change in the nuclear game to the advantage of the human race. Thus, the atomic age, which promised for over 65 years to deliver unlimited power, both military and electrical, to the people is now over. The new technology leaves us only with the question of how to deal with the detritus of the existing atomic works. Of course, that problem has never been solved, and we are now at least saved from having to consider what we can do to protect ourselves from the shadow that continues to hang over our future as the electrical issue clouds that one from the consideration of nations that claim that their nuclear efforts are economic in nature, while the sun continues to offer a better answer to that.