In Today's News...

Charter schools were created for two reasons: to provide a market-driven alternative to public schools that might push all schools to improve and to weaken (or bust) teachers unions.  The former justifies reducing support for already impoverished public schools with an alternative designed (sometimes) to educate better.  The latter justifies public impoverishment to enrich conservative insiders like Akron businessman David Brennan. 

For years, the tension between these two justifications combined to hurt public schools and prop up dubious charter experiments that could not demonstrate success or even innovation.  In the most recent budget, the charter experiments justified as political weapons are now stealing resources from both public schools and from their more effective charter school counterparts.

According to today’s Beacon, ‘[t]he 5,300-page state budget, approved with no Democratic support and little opposition from House or Senate Republicans, gives the highest dollar increases to some of the state’s lowest-performing charter schools, while state aid for many of the highest-performing charter schools could be cut.’

The schools run by non-educators like Brennan will receive significantly more funding (and a larger increase in funding) than charter schools that have actually been innovative and successful.  Further, these failing charters run by political hacks will continue to be exempted from any form of accountability.  Since these schools continue to fail (receiving ‘Fs’ in most recent state report cards) this year’s budget will ensure that they are excluded from any reporting in next year’s report card.  Do we need any additional evidence that the constant call for accountability in education from conservative leaders is a red herring?

Bob Dyer (for the second time in the last 17 years) wrote a column worth reading.

Michael Douglas provides valuable context for understanding the SCOTUS Voting Rights Act decision, even as Charles Krauthammer provides his usual fear-mongering drivel to distract and confuse readers about what he imagines to be the hidden threat of the DOMA decision.  The Douglas commentary is worth reading and pasted below in its entirety. 

I provide the link to Krauthammer, so anyone can see for themselves just how paranoid the far right can be.  Yes, we are likely on a road where gay marriage is legal everywhere, but not because the court ‘neither nationalized nor delegitimized gay marriage,’ as CK put it in his tired effort to pound the anti-Roe drum yet again. 

The court is applying national standards in the Constitution, so by definition SCOTUS decisions nationalize our framing of a conflict, from the right to choose to right to marry as applications of the individual rights protected in the Constitution.  What he means to say is he does not like the decision because of its immediate impact and because it establishes a principle for the nation, rooted in our shared value called ‘equal protection of the laws,’ as applied to marriage equality.

Michael Douglas on Voting Rights Act decision…well worth reading…

They gathered at the White House in late July seven years ago, President Bush, Cabinet members, representatives and senators, Republicans and Democrats, along with many civil rights leaders. The president signed the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the law, as he put it, that “broke the segregationist lock on the ballot box.”

“Today, we renew a bill that helped bring a community on the margins into the life of American democracy,” Bush told the audience. He added: “My administration will vigorously enforce the provisions of this law, and we will defend it in court.”

The occasion reflected a broad consensus. The reauthorization cleared the Senate by a 98-0 vote, and the House, 390-33. The legislation stemmed from the 15th Amendment — that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged … on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude” and that “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

It is important to emphasize here that strictly by the numbers we have a case of overwhelming bipartisan support in both houses of Congress for legislation then signed by a very conservative Republican President.  While Douglas and Ginsburg provide even more important reasons below, this alone should raise serious questions about the court’s decision to intervene in this case. 

Thus, the question before the U.S. Supreme Court this past session: Did Congress act appropriately?

On Tuesday, a 5-4 majority answered no. The court held that lawmakers failed to update the criteria for a key component of the law, the formula for determining which states must get federal approval in advance, or “preclearance,” of changes in voting procedures and election laws.

As we will see this claim by the court is empirically inaccurate; Congress did take current conditions into account, and anyone who has paid attention to our most recent election cycles knows that current conditions remain filled with efforts to legally block access to the vote. 

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the formula must be driven by “current conditions,” taking into account dramatic advances in voter turnout among blacks and the election of scores of black candidates. He invited Congress to start from scratch. Until it does (an unlikely prospect), the court ruling amounts to “striking at the heart of the nation’s signal piece of civil rights legislation.”

Those are the words of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her dissenting opinion, a comprehensive effort, rich in detail, even in tone, yet pressing forward, exposing the hubris and the harm of the majority.

Ginsburg applauds the progress that has been made, reminding that the Voting Rights Act has succeeded where other laws long failed. Why? Because of the preclearance requirement in the covered areas. It works to avoid lengthy litigation, lawsuits following new instances of discrimination, remedies arriving years later. More, the Justice Department works with states, counties and cities, showing how proposed laws and procedures must be improved, resulting in swift action to prevent injustices.

Most striking about Ginsburg’s dissent is the record she reveals, how Congress did act in a responsible and informed way, and why the nine states, most in the South, still require federal oversight, discriminatory schemes still at work.

Read the majority opinion, and you would think Congress lacked care and seriousness. Not so. Ginsburg recalls James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and chairman of House Judiciary Committee, describing the effort as “one of the most extensive considerations of any piece of legislation” that he had seen in his more than 27 years in Congress.

The record covered 21 hearings, many witnesses and 15,000 pages. What did lawmakers find since the previous reauthorization in 1982?

Congress learned there were more Justice Department objections between 1982 and 2006 than during the first 17 years of the act. The department won the withdrawal or alteration of more than 800 changes.

Ginsburg uses bullet points, conveying “a sense of the extent” to which the law “continues to protect minority voting rights.” Among other instances, she cites Mississippi seeking a dual registration system, a Georgia town proposing a redistricting plan designed to diminish black voting strength, a South Carolina county pursuing an at-large system for the school board after black candidates won a majority of the seats.

Congress conducted a study to test the coverage formula. Ginsburg points to this finding: Although the covered areas amount to less than 25 percent of the country’s population, they accounted for 56 percent of the successful litigation under the act since 1982. The study also found that the covered areas had a greater degree of racial polarization.

Ginsburg notes that since 2006, an Alabama town has sought approval of a plan that would have eliminated its sole majority black district. In 2010, the FBI caught on tape Alabama state senators referring to blacks as “Aborigines” and expressing concern about a referendum that would boost black turnout. The trial judge viewed the recordings as “compelling evidence that political exclusion through racism remains a real and enduring problem” in Alabama.

Here we see a summary of the record demonstrating that the majorities reasoning is without basis in fact. 

The record makes plain that Congress wasn’t stuck in 1965, as Chief Justice Roberts contended, applying old data to new circumstances. The thinking of those gathered at the White House that summer day involved concerns about backsliding and subtler forms of discrimination, “second generation barriers,” current evidence shaping their judgment.

They acted appropriately, at the intersection of what Justice Ginsburg describes as “the most constitutionally invidious form of discrimination and the most fundamental right in our democratic system,” or where “Congress’ power to act is at its height.”

Fear and Citizenship

This cartoons captures what I am afraid will (is?) happen, but if average Americans across the country were to step up and do the right thing despite the fact that there are powerful elites encouraging them to enact their particularly disgusting and hurtful kind of stupid, it would not be the first time.  Keeping my fingers crossed and preparing to pay close attention to election rules at the local level, as just one of those average Americans.

Words Have Actual Meaning

I do not watch cooking shows and have never heard of celebrity chef Paula Deen until this week.  While her televised apology for racist remarks she made years ago might be sincere, that conclusion is clouded by the fact that she is clearly (as this article notes) scrambling to save her crumbling empire. 

 

At the same time, I would not want to held forever labeled on the basis of something I said years ago, since like most of us I was once a teenager, which means I have a long history of saying incredibly stupid things. 

That being said, something else about the Deen story caught my eye.  The Beacon always tries to find the local angle on any story, and in this case, while Wal-Mart and Caesars and the Food Network and Smithfield foods have all dropped Deen (and Target is ‘evaluating the situation’), Medina-based Sandridge Food Corp is standing behind Deen.  Okay.  Seems like an odd place to draw your line in the sand, but when Sandridge took the time to prepare a statement for the press they noted that in her apology Deen “reaffirmed what we already knew to be true—her genuine equality for everyone.”

This makes no sense.  She reaffirmed her equality?  This is what you came up with after sitting with your leadership team and crafting a public statement?  This statement demonstrates either a complete failure to communicate clearly or a complete failure to understand the controversy here, instead choosing to just say words that sound ‘nice’ without regards to what they might actually mean.

Some See Conspiracy, Others See Bureaucracy

The AP covered news that the IRS targeted progressive groups as well in an odd way today.  Here is how they opened their analysis: 

‘Leaders of progressive groups say they, too, faced long delays in getting the Internal Revenue Service to approve their applications for tax-exempt status but were not subjected to the same level of scrutiny that tea party groups complained about.

Several progressive groups said it took more than a year for the IRS to approve their status while others are still waiting as IRS agents press for details about their activities. The delays have made it difficult for the groups to raise money — just as it has for tea party groups that were singled out for extra scrutiny.

But even with the delays, leaders of some progressive groups said they didn’t feel like they were being targeted.

“This is kind of what you expect. You expect it to take a year or more to get your status because that’s just what the IRS goes through to do it,” said Maryann Martindale, executive director of Alliance for a Better Utah, a small non-profit that advocates for progressive causes. “So I don’t know that we feel particularly targeted.”’

Two things to think about:  what is the message the AP is trying to send by suggesting that since progressive groups did not feel targeted…is this meant to say that the original story line about the outrageous targeting of tea party groups can still be justified? 

And, what does it tell us about these two types of groups, when each encounters the same situation and cries about being treated unfairly and the other simply notes that ‘this is what you expect’ in a complex world?

Court Cowardice Calls for Public Vigilance

Steve Hoffman, Beacon columnist, reminded us that even the simple act of counting can be a hyper-partisan action.  Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted found no instances of voter suppression in an election campaign when his office’s repeated changing of the rules, times, places and processes for voting confused even those who professionally follow politics. 

On the flip side, his office encouraged county election boards to forward cases to prosecutors where his office saw voter fraud, even though the League of Women Voters (among others) argued strenuously that both voters and poll workers were doing exactly what the law expected and required. 

His encouragement resulted in 270 cases of possible voter fraud being referred to prosecutors.  But out of 5.6 million votes cast, we have a rate of voter fraud well below .01 percent of voters…and as Hoffman points out none of the 270 are likely to be prosecuted, because they did nothing wrong, which leaves us with even less…zero…voter fraud.

Since the SCOTUS is unwilling to see the ongoing (and impactful) effort to suppress the vote (and the related effort to trump up fears about phony voter fraud arguments), this will become a conflict we all need to place high on our agenda for ongoing, data-driven, strict public scrutiny.

Proud
With politics at the national level dangerously dysfunctional the daily news can often make it harder to be proud of my country.  Today, as we have, however reluctantly and incompletely, affirmed that everyone gets equality before the law...I am proud, today.

Heard a voice on NPR angrily denounce the liberal court's ruling today.  Liberal court?  What world does that voice live in?  That person is certainly entitled to disagree with the court's opinion, but we need thoughtful disagreement, so avoid saying 'liberal' when you really mean 'something I disagree with,' since this same court just gutted the Voting Rights Act.  And, using fairly standard understandings of liberal/conservative and activist/deferential, that was a very conservative and activist ruling. 

So this court is at best divided.  It is probably most accurate (in a universe of just these two most recent rulings) to say the court is divided.  It is certainly not a liberal court.  In fact, while it would take more space than I am using to defend it, I would argue that this court is best described as conservative.  I think most analysts would agree with that assessment.  And that assessment is not a proxy for me saying I do not agree with the VRA decision.  Those are two different kinds of statements.

One final point.  Hard not to keep concluding the Scalia, Alito, and Roberts are overly politicizing the court, threatening to undermine its role and the rule of law.  But that is for another day.

Can't Shake It
Today's Beacon had a front page story about residents in Summit County losing their welfare benefits.  Very sad stories, but the first story opened with a quote that has stuck with me all day.

“I had a job at McDonald’s for five years. I had a car. I was doing good,” she said. “But the day before my maternity leave was up, my car was stolen and it was totaled. I had no way to get to work, so I lost my job.”

Such a razor sharp line between doing good and collapse.  Such a diminished sense of what doing good looks like.  Maybe I am being insensitive, but that is what struck me and I can't shake it.

Taking Education Seriously

A commentary in today’s New York Times reminds us that our current fixation with all things quantitative risks diminishing our capacity to understand the world we live in.  While it is unclear if Einstein is the source of this quote often attributed to him, the idea remains worth reflecting on: 

‘Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.’

My chosen field is the study of politics.  Most of my colleagues call it political science, and many of them do very worthwhile work, producing material that I value very much.   My own work, however, straddles disciplines and, while in conversation with and relying on quantitative work in many fields, is most decidedly in the qualitative camp. 

A colleague in engineering often dismisses this camp with the phrase ‘fuzzy thinking,’ because her approach to analysis has yet to find a way to quantify what we do.  This is not to say there is not a fair amount of fuzzy thinking here, it seems equally unlikely that there are not as many fuzzy thinkers, doing non-innovative, within the paradigm, worker-bee work, with numbers. 

Klinkenborg argues that pressures related to the competiveness of the job market are driving students and their parents to focus more narrowly on a vocational approach to education, which they hope will justify the rising cost of college.  This approach, however, carries great risk for individual students and for societies that choose to overlook the importance of education more broadly construed. 

Learning to write and think and communicate clearly, with text as well as with numbers, remain foundational skills that must be taught and practiced.  Because, as Klinkenborg concludes about writing well, even though  “[n]o one has found a way to put a dollar sign on this kind of literacy…everyone who possesses it — no matter how or when it was acquired — knows that it is a rare and precious inheritance.”

What kind of job can I get with a degree in Political Science?  My colleagues hear the same question about a degree in English or History or German or Philosophy.  This is the wrong question for two reasons.  First, as Klinkenborg rightly notes, “[f]ormer English majors turn up almost anywhere, in almost any career, and they nearly always bring with them a rich sense of the possibilities of language, literary and otherwise.”  So, the fact that there is no one predetermined career for your 18 year old does not mean she will be unable to find a job.  She will bring to her career skills that are widely recognized…by public and private employers and by the free market.

It is the wrong question for a second reason, noted by Klinkenborg:  the ability to think and write and communicate clearly and persuasively is a foundational gift rooted in a liberal arts education.   In the language of vocational education, this is a skill.  Klinkenborg refers to this skill as writing, with writing understood as inescapably associated with thinking. 

“Writing well used to be a fundamental principle of the humanities, as essential as the knowledge of mathematics and statistics in the sciences. But writing well isn’t merely a utilitarian skill. It is about developing a rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you.”

Klinkenborg concludes that “[t]here is a certain literal-mindedness in the recent shift away from the humanities. It suggests a number of things. One, the rush to make education pay off presupposes that only the most immediately applicable skills are worth acquiring (though that doesn’t explain the current popularity of political science). Two, the humanities often do a bad job of explaining why the humanities matter. And three, the humanities often do a bad job of teaching the humanities. You don’t have to choose only one of these explanations. All three apply.”

Worth thinking about.

Is our fixation with immediate payoff driving us to invest lots of time and energy unwisely, just as the short-term profitability of derivatives, or of CEO decision making in general, destabilizes financial markets, suffocating innovation by distorting incentive structures?

Is our fixation with immediate payoff a sign of desperation, as we frantically scramble to cope with the new uncertainty associated with the eclipse of our unchallenged superpower status?

Why is political science growing in popularity anyway?

Why do we (in the humanities and social sciences) do such a lousy job of explaining to our students, and to larger communities, about the value of a liberal arts education?  Should we integrate thoughtful responses to the ‘so what?’ question into every module we teach? 

Has the expectation from our students of immediate job-related value contributed to our own declining capacity or willingness to help our students understand and appreciate and master the skills of democratic citizenship central to the mission of a liberal arts curriculum?

Intolerance 2.0
The point of tolerance is to avoid silencing opposing positions, and instead learn to listen and respond in a way that respects the fellow American expressing that position, so we can make democracy work by achieving agreements.  This is the problem with Tea Party activists who aggressively dismiss and silence opposition, including moderate opposition like the positions held by President Obama. 

Of course, Tea Party activists are just the current version of SNCC activists of old and the present value for future activists on the left or right.  It is a characteristic of activists, but today these have captured the center of one of our two major parties.  That is dangerous.

Just like this cartoon. Reminds me of a great old friend, Tim, whose love for musis is as deep as I have ever seen.  Like a wonderful wound that never heals.  Also reminds me of our year in China where one guitar player liked to announce to his fellow players 'pick one,' as he passed off the lead. 

Humility and Gratitude as Democratic Virtues

Ian handed me a copy of today's EJ Dionne column and I am thankful he did.  EJ Dionne cites a study done by a former economic advisor to the president to remind us that no matter how hard we work there is always an element of luck in our good fortune, which is why, in our more honest moments we think ‘there but for the grace of god go I’ when we see or hear about a former classmate or neighbor who has fallen on very hard times.

Dionne reminds us that income inequality is extreme and getting worse in America.  That the social mobility we expect to generate innovation and we cite as evidence that the poor are just lazy is nearly absent in the US when compared to allies like Finland, Sweden, Germany or New Zealand.  Then Dionne refers to the study of twins.

 “On the one hand, he found that ‘on average, twins with higher education tend to earn more than their other half with less education.’ So schooling really matters. But he also found that among identical twins with the same level of education, ‘earnings differed by 25 percent or more . . . in half our sample’ and by ‘more than 50 percent in a quarter of identical twins with identical school levels.’

‘These discrepancies for such similar workers,’ he concludes, ‘suggest that luck is an important factor in the labor market, as well as in the music industry.’

I confess: I love any economist willing to say straight out that luck plays a large part in how well we do. The prosperous are especially disinclined to acknowledge that however hard they worked or ingenious they were, they were also lucky. The role of good fortune in determining success provides a powerful moral underpinning for more egalitarian policies.”

The affluent do indeed resist recognizing the role of good fortune, legacy or racial or gender or geographic privilege, in making sense of their individual success.  This attitude stands as an important obstacle to seeing and defending the moral and instrumental imperative behind egalitarian policies like public education, national health care, equality before the law, and functioning democratic forms of decision making.

Turn the Tables
...and we will see those who are distainful of minority rights today suddenly arguing passionately that these same rights mark the core of our inheritance from the framers of the constitution....

Happy Father's Day Dad
There are no words, but saying nothing will not work either.  You have always been there for me, for all of us, with Mom and for Mom as well.  This meant sacrifice of your time and energy and patience.  Everyday, day in and day out, without hesitation, with love.  It has always been so routine and taken-for-granted that I am sorry that your integrity and honor and selflessness and intelligence can go unnoticed.  So, even though words cannot capture, they can at least register seeing and noticing and appreciating and reminding me to tell you how much I love and appreciate you, how lucky I feel to have you in my life.

Yesterday, I was able to receive a gift from Brian and Philip in the form of their wonderfully warm Father's Day wishes.  They are two amazingly kind and strong young men.  I tried to follow your lead, and when I did I think I was able to be a good role model, advisor, and fellow-traveller.  Since my relationships with Brian and Philip have become as central to my life as my relationship with you, and I have a tattoo to remind me, thanks for that as well.  Thanks for helping me get to the point where I am happily and proudly seeing all I love in you in Philip and Brian!

Happy Father's Day Dad.  I do not say it enough: I love you, without you my life would immeasurably diminished, all the lessons that matter in life you (and Mom) taught me, you are in my heart and thoughts daily, today and always.  Much love, Bill

Life Lessons, framed for those in their twenties, but more timeless than all that.

You can read the author’s list of 13 life lessons at the link, which makes me feel fine about using those 13 as a starting point for a slightly modified list here.  This is not really ‘my list,’ but only my take on the list that was provided.

1. Know Accept Yourself As You Are, Warts and All.  Acceptance and a letting go of ego attachments frees us from being repeatedly surprised when we are victimized by our own weaknesses and from living a life where we self-deluded into thinking happiness comes from outside ourselves. 

2. Whenever possible learn to let go of failures, being let down or hurt, and the past. Build on failure and learn from your mistakes. Give up all hope of a better past.

3. Neither working hard nor working smart are sufficient on their own to produce success, contentment, or satisfying relationships. Intelligence without effort ensures mediocrity. Effort without intelligence ensures frustration.

4. Be grateful. For everything. Don’t just think it, feel it. A deep appreciation prevents taking things for granted.

Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance. – Eckhart Tolle

5. Be humble. If you lack humility, learn it. Acknowledge you don’t know everything…not even close.  Instead, like everyone else, you depend on others and live in an interdependent world.

6. Play your game, not theirs. Blaze your own path. Be a leader in your own life. Celebrate other people’s success and don’t be too hard on yourself if you misstep.  When others try to drag you into ungrateful, arrogant, self-righteous, denial, either/or thinking…change the game.

7. Do what you love.  When you love your job you never work another day in your life.

Bottom of Form

8. Be fully present in each moment, celebrating your chance to engage with the people and challenges in your life. Some people wait their whole lives. For what, who knows, but they’re still waiting. You remember that really inspiring movie about the guy who sat on his ass? Yeah, me neither.  Carpe Diem. 

9. Career and Money are not everything in life: You get that promotion, hit the sales goal, or that record contract and you have no one to call …

10. Be spontaneous.  Surprise yourself and others, because engaging with the new and different is a source of learning and excitement and living fully.  The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.

11. Be willing to listen and learn. Life is a series of choices. Be willing to make them and learn from them. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

12. Surround yourself with good people and put yourself in situations where you are more likely to be the person you want to be. Your environment matters and you can impact your own environment.

13. Think before you make important decisions.  Try to live a thinking and thoughtful life.

We are lucky women put up with us...

Just Disappointed
There is no shortage of outrage in response to revelations of dramatic increases in government surveillance since 9/11.  I am deeply disappointed.  While it might be both naive and unfair to the president, I hold President Obama in high regard as a leader and thinker and achiever.  My hopes have been placed in him in ways that seem like how my father had high hops for JFK.  I really wanted him to reduce the partisan polarization of elites crippling our political communication and believed he could do it.  He certainly has made it a priority.  And perhaps threats to national security are such that I am wrong to be disappointed about continuing the surveillance program.

But I am disappointed nonetheless.  Deeply so.  Hard to even follow the news these days.  Franklin comes to mind; something about anyone who sacrifices liberty for security deserves neither.

Have we become the delivery mechanism for the terrorist threat?  With technology changing so fast, is privacy no longer possible; is it just a quaint notion from a previous century disappearing with telephone booths?  How will individual and family and community level privacy be either advanced, or further undermined, by the fact that big players (states in the recent summit between Obama and Xi) share an interest in finding ways to protect intellectual property and contain cyberattacks?

And when will our elites find new ways to come together, respecting the outcome of elections and allowing opponents to govern, with a loyal opposition ready to compete for its chance to govern after the next election? 

Reading the Beacon Journal Today...
Several important conflicts covered in our local paper today.  As usual, the Beacon stands out as a valuable community resource, introducing readers to important stories.  There is always more to say.

Wages of US Workers Continue to Decline

When I search the Beacon online for the article at the link below from today’s paper using the author’s name, no hits.  Then I go to the business section and it is right there, as expected.  How hard is it to set up a search engine for your own publication?

Wages across the entire US economy fell more than one percent in the past twelve months, the fourth time this has happened since 2009.  Wages have tripled in China over the past decade.  The average worker in China earns $8,700 a year and the average worker in the US earns $47,000.  US labor productivity has continued to increase, growing at rates close to our historical average from 2000-2007 and at a lower, but still positive, rate from 2007-2012. 

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics  http://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm

Adjusted for inflation the average hourly wage for US workers remains well below its peak in 1972.  Since 1972 the average hourly wage dropped consistently until 1993 and has increased since then, though still not back to 1972 levels and only slightly higher than 1964 levels.

It is finally a bit more clear why Beacon columnist Bob Dyer keeps winning journalism awards, despite the fact that he is an embarrassing cliché with a megaphone.  Today’s Beacon reports annual press club awards and it seems just about everyone at every paper in the region gets a trophy.  Precious.  Too bad those doing the heavy lifting, like Michael Douglas and others, have to share the limelight with Bob, making their recognition suspect when it should be unambiguous.

Concentrated Disadvantage Reprise

We know that living in an inner city area brings with it a whole host of undesirable disadvantages, and that doing so with dark skin simply adds additional layers of disadvantage.  In today’s Beacon Doug Livingston reports on another layer.  Students walking to school in inner city neighborhoods are 3.3 times more likely to be hit by a car on their way to or from school.  Livingston, quite rightly, directs our attention to the transportation policy decisions at the root of this unequal distribution of disadvantage.

Santa Monica Shooting Spree on Page A3

Four were killed when a 24 year old man with 1,300 rounds of ammunition went from a home to a campus library on a murderous rampage.  This have become so common it is no longer front page news.

Elite Law Breaking Ignored

A poor kid without a stable home and in a crumbling school sells pot and becomes a felon for life; our best and brightest, growing up with every advantage, continue to ignore the law (and these are the law makers) by not fixing our school funding system that has been four times ruled unconstitutional since 1997 and we just wait patiently for them to comply with the law. 

Two Powerful Presidents Meet in Rancho Mirage

Arguably the two most powerful individuals in the world met for eight hours of one-on-one informal but important conversation over two days.

Cybersecurity, an interest shared by both nations, emerged as the center of the conversation, to no one’s surprise.  The US framed this conflict as the ‘key to future’ of Sino-US relations more broadly.  Xi Jinping framed it as a shared interest that should not block good relations, without accepting any responsibility for hacking and, instead, emphasizing that China has also been victimized by hackers.  Both leaders emphasized hacking without specifying blame.

“‘Cybersecurity should not become the root cause of mutual suspicion and frictions between our two countries. Rather, it should be a new bright spot in our cooperation,’ said Yang Jiechi, Xi’s senior foreign policy adviser.”

In the ChinaDaily, the summit was reported as a positive exchange between the leaders of the world’s two most powerful economies toward establishing a new relationship of mutual respect, emphasizing the Pacific Rim large enough for both superpowers and that doing so peacefully will advance the ‘Chinese Dream,’ which has been a recurring theme in Xi’s domestic political campaigns.

China Daily, which covered Xi’s trip to Trinidad, Tobago, Costa Rico, Mexico and the US as a global journey demonstrating the influence of China in the Americas, has a picture of the two presidents with Xi appearing to be the senior leader as Obama listens, in contrast to all the pictures in the US media.

 

The two presidents agreed on the importance of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, again as expected.  And they agreed to work together to reduce hydrofluorocarbons, one of the most potent greenhouse gases associated with industrialization.

Noticeably absent from reports (there was no formal press conference at the end, punctuating their shared emphasis on the informality of these extended conversations) was discussion of the following, though BBC reports that the presidents did discuss US-China rivalry in the Pacific.

·        Chinese or US human rights violations;

·        Political prisoners in China (including Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo);

·        Chinese currency valuation;

·        Expanding Chinese influence in the Americas;

·        Expanding American influence in the Pacific;

·        Treatment of Chinese businesses in the US;

·        Tibet and the Dalai Lama;

·        US weapons sales to Taiwan;

·        Chinese naval developments;

·        Diaoyu Islands and the South China Sea.

There were the usual US platitudes about encouraging China to shoulder its responsibility as a global power by ‘playing by the rules.’  President Obama struggled to make clear his distinction between the problem of cybersecurity in hacking and intellectual property theft and the problem as manifest in US government surveillance of US citizens. 

The shared script describes a Sino-US fresh start, but it is not clear that both sides understand the new relationship the same way. 

According to the Daily Beast, we should read Xi’s focus on a fresh start through the lens of his domestic political campaigns for a ‘Chinese dream,’ where he appears to be

‘thinking that the “new model” of relationship meant that Washington would recognize Chinese prerogatives and keep quiet about its concerns. That’s the subtext for another one of Xi’s recent phrases, the “new China dream,” a vision of the Communist Party leading a strong and revitalized country. As Zhang Lifan, a Communist Party historian, said about the Chinese leader, “He is falling back on nationalism, talking about making China the No. 1 superpower of the world.”’

Will this meeting lay groundwork for their next meeting at the International Economic Summit in Russia in September?  Xi invited President Obama to visit China for informal conversations round two and committing to continuing the conversation on the phone and in writing between visits.  In-depth conversations, and a fresh start to a new relationship, are needed.  So that is the good news.  But the nature of the conversations and relationship remain unclear at best so do not bet the house on progress just yet.

 

 

 

IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN IT LOOKS: HOW THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM COLLIDED WITH THE NEW POLITICS OF EXTREMISM

It takes some effort to understand politics
Two friends asked me to recommend summer reading material this morning, so here is a link to a book review for a book that I recommend.  This book took great courage to write, as the review makes clear, and is well worth reading. 

IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN IT LOOKS: HOW THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM COLLIDED WITH THE NEW POLITICS OF EXTREMISM

 

by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein. New York: Basic Books. 226pp. Cloth $28.00. ISBN 9780465031337.

Reviewed by Tracy Lightcap, Department of Political Science, LaGrange College. E-mail: tlightcap [at] lagrange.edu

pp.175-180