Category: <span>Professional</span>

Prisons and Schools

December 19, 2012 8:21 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

A growing number of lawmakers are indicating they are open to considering new gun control measures in the wake of Friday’s school shooting in Newtown, Conn. But while much of the national debate has focused on limiting access to guns, others are suggesting that schools should arm themselves to defend against attacks.

“Amid Calls For Gun Control, Some Push For Weapons At School,” Wade Goodman

I was grew up, or came into some sort of consciousness, just as the collective rebellions of the 1960’s dissolved into the chaos of individual self-expression. In the early 1970’s my suburban schools were slowly but surely transformed into institutions more like prisons, complete with an almost total lack of social services and armed guards with trained dogs stalking the hallways. This was justified, it was said, by the search for drugs.

This happened over the course of a few years, from around 7th grade or so to around 10th grade. At that point I quit high school to go to a technical school and become a photographer. That school, Houston Technical Institute, although it was in the inner city in Houston, enjoyed a special status that somehow allowed it to escape from the usual constraints of the emerging police state in the public schools.

All of this only grew worse as more and more small-town school districts combined into large consolidated schools in the name of saving money. Meanwhile, of course, the Reagan revolution grew, making a national health care system, much less a national health care system with mental health parity, nearly impossible. Standardized testing drained education of life wherever they were used, and they are used a lot.

So here we are, three or more decades into Reagan’s American Morning. Guns we can get in a heartbeat, medical care not so much. So what’s on offer as the current right-wing leaders fight over the budget? More cuts. Ironically, and perhaps not surprisingly, it’s those rebellious youth of the 1960’s, now nearing retirement, that are their main targets. The right will chase them right to their graves, dragging the rest of us along for the ride.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Professional

Lemonaide

December 12, 2012 7:33 am \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

As income and wealth become ever more concentrated in America, the nation’s billionaire political investors will invest even more.

A record $6 billion was spent on the 2012 campaign, and outside groups poured $1.3 billion into political races, according to data from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics.

That’s why Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission has to be reversed – either by a Supreme Court that becomes aware of the poison it’s unleashed into our democracy, or by constitutional amendment.

It’s also why we need full disclosure of who contributes what to whom.

And public financing that matches public money to contributions from small donors.

Most fundamentally, it’s why America’s widening inequality must be reversed.

“Why Billionaire Political Investors Will Keep Pouring Money Into Politics — Until They’re Stopped,” Robert Reich

Last night, with the help of more of these billionaires (in this case, the Koch brothers) Michigan’s legislature passed a right to work law, almost in full secrecy, and the governor signed it within hours, as if there was some danger that the ink would fade before he got his pen on it. The sneakiness is the point; these folks are afraid of their own constituencies. As always with the right, if the problem is democracy, dump the democratic process.

Or, perhaps, they are afraid of people more powerful than their citizens: those billionaires again. The right has been working on this for decades now, starting with the election of Reagan and the destruction of PATCO. The billionaires seed the state legislatures with right-wing legislation, written through ALEC, and they push astroturf Tea Party candidates to make sure they have the votes to get their laws passed. It’s a nearly ideal system.

We managed to stop one of them from becoming president, but that single presidential election, and even the gains in the Senate, or even in the Michigan legislature, can’t overcome the billionaires’ political machine, which rolls on, seemingly unaffected. As Riech says, they won’t stop until something makes them stop. He puts his faith in the Supreme Court, or a constitutional amendment. I think the only real hope lies in well-organized people.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Union

Totally Romney, Dude

December 10, 2012 1:32 pm \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

To emphasize the importance of limiting student debt, Chattanooga is in the second year of its “Live Like a Student” campaign, a universitywide approach to financial literacy. The key is making the ideas of living within one’s means and borrowing only what one needs an integrated part of undergraduate and graduate education, not just “a random drop-in process,” Ainsworth said.

“We have banners and posters all over campus to advertise this,” he said, in addition to “emphasis months,” when bankers and other financial experts visit campus and speak to students about interest rates, scholarships, investments and other topics. Business students also have signed on to become peer financial counselors, and financial literacy has been incorporated into university orientation days for students and parents.

“Living Cheap Enough?” Colleen Flaherty

I am going to coin a new term: a Romney (after our former beloved candidate). A Romney is a person so out of touch that it’s either funny or shocking or some disturbing combination. These administrators now suddenly concerned with student debt are total Romneys. I am not sure how they missed it but graduate student debt has been a very public issue for at least 15 years. Not that these Romenys listen to graduate students much.

When I was a graduate student in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s, I taught writing classes to earn my way. My wages were so low that I was eligible for government food assistance. (We couldn’t actually get our food help, though, because a special provision made students ineligible.) As if this weren’t enough, I had to pay tuition as well, since at that time there were no tuition waivers. We were taking classes, too, but in essence we paid for our jobs.

We were experts in living on almost nothing, we rarely took vacations, and we ate a lot of rice and beans. Unless you had parents– or a spouse– who could support you, debt was inescapable. It was especially bad in the second half of your Ph.D., when you were required to fly to conferences all over the country. There was little money for these trips either. Some people used student loans for that, but I used credit cards. It took years to pay them off.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional, Writing

ACTA Doesn’t Get the Joke

December 5, 2012 4:36 pm \ Leave a Comment \ by Ray Watkins

With the retraction of the invitation that the College Republicans offered to Ann Coulter, Fordham University savaged a core principle of American higher education the free exchange of ideas.

Fordham’s president, Joseph McShane almost did the right thing as campus pressure to withdraw the invitation to Coulter mounted. He wrote to the College Republicans that his intervention to forbid the lecture “would be to do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of fearless and robust engagement.”

That was in the fifth and penultimate paragraph of his official statement. In the second paragraph of his message, however, he slapped the College Republicans, and slapped them hard: “To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous understatement.” What was President McShane’s real message? Encouraging vigorous dialogue or submissive conformity?

“Fordham Fails the Coulter Test” American Council of Trustees and Alummi’s Must Reads

The College Republicans have unwittingly provided Fordham with a test of its character: do we abandon our ideals in the face of repugnant speech and seek to stifle Ms. Coulter’s (and the student organizers’) opinions, or do we use her appearance as an opportunity to prove that our ideas are better and our faith in the academy—and one another—stronger? We have chosen the latter course, confident in our community, and in the power of decency and reason to overcome hatred and prejudice.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President, Fordham

You just have to wonder if these guy are really paying attention. After all, you could spend ten minutes or so on Anne Coulter’s website and figure out that she has no more intellectual or academic legitimacy than your average rock. She’s a right-wing entertainer at best, a charlatan who makes her living by saying things that she calculates will either cause outrage or will feed into the deeply divisive fears of the American public. She isn’t that good at it and remains a relatively obscure figure outside her rightist-circles.

If she were honest about what she does she might gain legitimacy– there are lots of comedians who could be described in a similar way– but Coulter’s act, like Fox News, is profoundly deceptive. She pretends to offer political insight not comedy; there’s little or no irony in what she does. I don’t think she belongs on campus any more than Father Coughlin did, in the 1930’s, when Fascism was the right’s favored rhetoric. The university ought to stick to its guns; the young Republicans, with a little effort, can find a legitimate conservative.