Quoted in the NYT – tendentiously
It’s always flattering to be quoted in the New York Times, but the context looks designed to refute me—and the reporter calls me a “liberal.” Ouch.
AARP Is Open to Future Cuts of Social Security Benefits
But other advocacy groups that are pushing to preserve Social Security benefits accused AARP of effectively abandoning its core constituency.
Doug Henwood, the Brooklyn editor of a liberal business blog and Internet radio program who has written on Social Security, said AARP’s willingness to consider cuts in benefits “reads like a sign that this former lobby for the interest of older Americans has now transformed itself completely into an insurance company.” He continued, “Surely they can’t be persuaded by the merits of the arguments, since the alleged Social Security crisis is a phantom that can’t survive a serious round of fact-checking.”
The most recent estimates from the Social Security Administration, issued last month, indicate that under currrent law the program’s trust funds will be exhausted by 2036, and that $6.5 trillion in additional money will be needed over a 75-year period to pay all scheduled benefits.
Help wanted (cont.)
Several people asked if the LBO assistant position had to be done by someone local. Yes, it requires on-site work in lovely Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
Help wanted
LBO needs a new assistant/intern/researcher. Tasks include maintaining the subscription database, responding to sub queries, making bank deposits, doing various sorts of research. Working conditions are charming, hours short and flexible (5-10 hours a week), and pay is modest but hardly scandalous. If you’re interested, send a query with resume to dhenwood@panix.com.
Lots of fresh audio product
Four shows newly posted to my radio archives:
June 11, 2011 Vincent Reinhartat the Council on Foreign Relations on Greece and the political trick of austerity (thanks to the CFR for allowing broadcast; full event here) •Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia, on all the great political developments in South America
June 4, 2011 Another Hoover interview: Morris Fiorina on American public opinion and the nonexistence of the “culture war” • And in non-Hoover content, Yanis Varoufakis updates the Greek and EU crises
May 28, 2011 Hoover Institution special. Two interviews from my week as a Hoover media fellow. Paul Gregory on Russian politics (Putin vs. Medvedev) •Terry Moe on school “reform” (i.e., charters, testing, unionbusting, etc.)
May 14, 2011 Deepa Kumar, author of this article, on political Islam [The last 20 minutes of the broadcast version of this show was devoted to fundraising for KPFA. This has been excised for the web version. But if you like what you hear, please donate.]
And now the show has a new Facebook page: Behind the News, with Doug Henwood.
Sidwell Friends teacher: tests are unreliable
Sidwell Friends faculty member: “We don’t tie teacher pay to test scores because we don’t believe them to be a reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness.” That’s where Obama sends his kids.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan sends his kids to Arlington County, Va., public schools. They don’t use tests in evaluating teachers either.
Thanks to Amy Offner for pointing me to this on Facebook: Teacher evaluations at the schools that Obama, Duncan picked for their kids.
Compare & contrast: KIPP vs. Sidwell Friends
Education “reformers”—who love testing, discipline, and charter schools—wouldn’t send their own kids to the institutions they prescribe for other people.
Cases in point. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has praised the KIPP schools (Secretary Arne Duncan’s Remarks at the KIPP Annual Dinner) as “extraordinary” models. Here’s KIPP’s “Commitment to Excellence”:
Teachers’ Commitment
We fully commit to KIPP in the following ways:
• We will arrive at KIPP every day by 7:15 am (Monday-Friday).
• We will remain at KIPP until 5:00 pm (Monday -Thursday) and 4:00 pm on Friday.
• We will come to KIPP on appropriate Saturdays at 9:15 am and remain until 1:05 pm.
• We will teach at KIPP during the summer.
• We will always teach in the best way we know how and we will do whatever it takes for our students to learn.
• We will always make ourselves available to students and parents, and address any concerns they might have
• We will always protect the safety, interests, and rights of all individuals in the classroom.
• Failure to adhere to these commitments can lead to our removal from KIPP.
Parents’/Guardians’ Commitment
We fully commit to KIPP in the following ways:
• We will make sure our child arrives at KIPP by 7:25 am (Monday-Friday) or boards a KIPP bus at the scheduled time.
• We will make arrangements so our child can remain at KIPP until 5:00 pm (Monday – Thursday) and 4:00 pm on Friday.
• We will make arrangements for our child to come to KIPP on appropriate Saturdays at 9:15 am and remain until 1:05 pm.
• We will ensure that our child attends KIPP summer school.
• We will always help our child in the best way we know how and we will do whatever it takes for him/her to learn. This also means that we will check our child’s homework every night, let him/her call the teacher if there is a problem with the homework, and try to read with him/her every night.
• We will always make ourselves available to our children and the school, and address any concerns they might have. This also means that if our child is going to miss school, we will notify the teacher as soon as possible, and we will carefully read any and all papers that the school sends home to us.
• We will allow our child to go on KIPP field trips.
• We will make sure our child follows the KIPP dress code.
• We understand that our child must follow the KIPP rules so as to protect the safety, interests, and rights of all individuals in the classroom. We, not the school, are responsible for the behavior and actions of our child.
• Failure to adhere to these commitments can cause my child to lose various KIPP privileges and can lead to my child returning to his/her home school.
Student’s Commitment
I fully commit to KIPP in the following ways:
• I will arrive at KIPP every day by 7:25 am (Monday-Friday) or board a KIPP bus at the correct time.
• I will remain at KIPP until 5:00 pm (Monday – Thursday) and 4:00 pm on Friday.
• I will come to KIPP on appropriate Saturdays at 9:15 am and remain until 1:05 pm
• I will attend KIPP during summer school.
• I will always work, think, and behave in the best way I know how, and I will do whatever it takes for me and my fellow students to learn. This also means that I will complete all my homework every night, I will call my teachers if I have a problem with the homework or a problem with coming to school, and I will raise my hand and ask questions in class if I do not understand something.
• I will always make myself available to parents and teachers, and address any concerns they might have. If I make a mistake, this means I will tell the truth to my teachers and accept responsibility for my actions.
• I will always behave so as to protect the safety, interests, and rights of all individuals in the classroom. This also means that I will always listen to all my KIPP teammates and give everyone my respect.
• I will follow the KIPP dress code.
• I am responsible for my own behavior, and I will follow the teachers’ directions.
• Failure to adhere to these commitments can cause me to lose various KIPP privileges and can lead to returning to my home school.
And here’s the School Philosophy for Sidwell Friends, where Barack Obama sends his kids:
Sidwell Friends School is an educational community inspired by the values of the Religious Society of Friends and guided by the Quaker belief in “That of God” in each person. We seek academically talented students of diverse cultural, racial, religious and economic backgrounds. We offer these students a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders. We encourage these students to test themselves in athletic competition and to give expression to their artistic abilities. We draw strength from silence—and from the power of individual and collective reflection. We cultivate in all members of our community high personal expectations and integrity, respect for consensus, and an understanding of how diversity enriches us, why stewardship of the natural world matters and why service to others enhances life. Above all, we seek to be a school that nurtures a genuine love of learning and teaches students “to let their lives speak.”
No uniforms, no threats—but instead a counselor who is “available to provide emotional support to students and families.”
Bye-bye employer health insurance
McKinsey is out with the results of a survey of 1,300 employers (How US health care reform will affect employee benefits), and the lead finding is a shocker: a third or more are likely to drop health insurance coverage for their workers as Obamacare takes effect. Clearly, not all bosses fully understand the economics of the new health insurance universe. Right now, 30% of respondents to McKinsey’s survey “will definitely or probably stop offering ESI in the years after 2014”—but 50% of those with “high awareness of reform” will do so. (The CBO has been assuming that just 7% of insured workers will be affected.) Almost all workers are likely to stay with their current employers even if they lose coverage—what else are they going to do, really?—though most expect “increased compensation” to offset their having to pay for insurance on their own (and how likely are they to get that?).
In the short term, this could provoke a real social emergency, as scores of millions are thrown onto the private individual insurance market and forced to pay $1,000 a month for crappy coverage. But this could vastly increase the constituency for a single-payer scheme, such as Medicare for All—assuming our rulers don’t destroy Medicare first.
What fiscal emergency?
I break into the big time! My antidote to deficit hysteria is up on CNN.com: What fiscal emergency?
Education policy in the USA
Golf, militarism, Jesus, and noblesse oblige. From Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook :
IF YOU’RE FREE AT LUNCH: Cornerstone Schools of Washington, an oasis of rigor and stability for 220 African-American pupils in inner-city D.C., is holding its annual benefit golf tournament in Alexandria. At an 11:30 a.m. reception before the golfers tee off, students will be on hand who would love to meet you. You don’t have to golf or give: The students would get a kick out of hearing about your exciting life. The executive director and principal is Clay Hanna, a young father of three and former Army captain who was awarded the Bronze Star during 600 combat patrols in Iraq. Event is at Belle Haven Country Club, south of Old Town in Fairfax County — 6023 Fort Hunt Road, Alexandria. Sponsorship info http://bit.ly/jUlvqg
Cornerstone is a Christian school whose mission mission is to provide “a Christ-centered, nurturing, and academically rigorous education to the children of Washington DC, equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to become leaders who serve others in light of Christ and His Truth.”
They’re very upset that the Obama administration has blocked the U.S. of DC public money to fund a voucher scheme—created by a Republican Congress in 2004—that would allow kids to attend schools like this. Separation of church and state? No doubt an alien, treasonous idea. So get out those clubs and golf for Jesus and the U.S. Army! That stuff about turning the other cheek and loving they neighbor must be about some other Jesus.
Education: how the U.S. stacks up
I’ve just posted the latest in a series of pieces on education that I’ve been doing for LBO. This one is a review of how the U.S. stacks up internationally on spending, enrollment, attainment: “In and out of school.”
Capsule summary: we spend lots of money, but enrollment and attainment numbers are mediocre. It’s kind of like our health care system. We pay our teachers badly, don’t reward experience, and prefer spending money on things rather than people.
Earlier education pieces: “Charter to nowhere” and “Beastly numbers ”(how poverty explains test scores).
Reminder: this stuff doesn’t grow on trees, so if you like it and don’t yet subscribe, please do: LBO subscription info.
Learning nothing from crisis (cont.)
An update to Back to the status quo ante bustum: Aline van Duyn reports in the Financial Times that corporate America is once again borrowing money to buy up its stock to boost share prices.
The rise in buy-backs and deals marks a turning point in the credit cycle, as companies become more willing to invest their cash and borrow more money. Since the 2008 financial crisis, many companies have been hoarding cash and building up ever greater treasure chests and rainy-day funds.
No more of that prudent stuff. But hire, boost capital spending, or fund R&D? Heavens no! Much better to do M&A or buy your own stock. And if you don’t have enough money to fund those noble pursuits, well just borrow it. Senior management loves stock buybacks because they boost the value of their options packages. And if things go sour? Well Uncle Sam can always help out.
No protest songs!
Reading The Nation’s new list of protest songs, I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with the whole genre: it assumes you’ll never be able to change anything. It’s like naming your magazine Dissent. You’ll always be on the sidelines, complaining.
An outlier on this second Nation list is “The Internationale,” which is about transformation, not whining. But they pick the Billy Bragg version, which drains the song of a lot of its militance in that folky way.
Bankers fly in private jets, regulators ride the bus
These guys are supposed to regulate Wall Street?
U.S. Regulators Face Budget Pinch as Mandates Widen: “On a recent trip to New York to tour a trading floor, a group of employees from the commodities watchdog [the Commodity Futures Trading Commission] rode Mega Bus both ways, arriving late to their meeting despite a 5:30 a.m. departure. The bus, which cost $30 a person round trip, saved the agency roughly $1,000 over Amtrak.”
Buy this book!
Excellent collection of interviews (not that I’m praising myself here). Perfect for teaching, or just reading. Order your copies here.
Sasha Lilley, Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult (PM Press, 2011)
The Left luminaries in Capital and Its Discontents look at potential avenues out of the mess—as well as wrong turns and needless detours—drawing lessons from the history of post-colonial states in the Global South, struggles against imperialism past and present, the eternal pendulum swing of radicalism, the corrosive legacy of postmodernism, and the potentialities of the radical tradition. At a moment when capitalism as a system is more reviled than ever, here is an indispensable toolbox of ideas for action by some of the most brilliant thinkers of our times.
Praise for Capital and Its Discontents:
“Few journalists can match Sasha Lilley’s knowledge of political economy, nor her keen instinct for the important questions. Read these interviews—with some of the left’s most clearheaded thinkers—for a far deeper understanding of contemporary capitalism and its problems, and, perhaps more surprisingly, a bracing and contagious optimism.”
—Liza Featherstone, author of Selling Women Short
“Enveloped by a crisis that seems to have no end, heirs to ideas that seem unable to carry us through the present—the combination is disorienting. For that, it is right to scour the intellectual malcontents to gain from their recovery of ideas from the past and their sense of how to understand the present. Ideas are the soul of social activism. Without them action dissipates into futility; the ideas help us focus our energy toward building the kind of alternative world that our hopes encourage. Sasha Lilley’s Capital and Its Discontents is a superb introduction to some of the best traditions, given to us through some of the sharpest thinkers of the Global North.”
—Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World
“In this fine set of interviews, an A-list of radical thinkers demonstrate why their skills are indispensable to understanding today’s multiple economic and ecological crises.”
—Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing and Stuffed and Starved
“These conversations illuminate the current world situation in ways that are very useful for those hoping to orient themselves and find a way forward to effective individual and collective action. Highly recommended.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of The Mars Trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt
“Capital and Its Discontents presents the thought of many of the most astute analysts of contemporary political, economic and cultural developments in accessible interview form. Sasha Lilley’s wide-ranging and probing questions prompt her interviewees to address the intersecting crises of our time and to outline frameworks for understanding and responding to them. This collection of interviews introduces the reader to much of the best thinking about social issues on the U.S. left today.”
—Barbara Epstein, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Reading this wonderful book feels like having a face-to-face discussion with each author. These brilliant radical thinkers from many parts of the world generously and lucidly share their knowledge and insights on capitalism, empire, and resistance.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian and author of Red Dirt and Outlaw Woman
LBO News from Doug Henwood 