Burying the Lede ans

Here's the latest from Brad Hicks.  It's about funding schools, and there were so many interesting comments that I included them all. 
Find it here:  http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/445461.html 
--Kim


The Infamous Brad

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Burying the Lede

• Oct. 17th, 2010 at 10:43 AM

Because I watch the local NBC news and The Rachel Maddow Show, I've been seeing non-stop ads for their upcoming reality show "School Pride" about armies of volunteers swarming public schools to clean, repair, and upgrade them. And every time I saw one of those ads, I asked the same question: who's paying for it?

The Sunday NYT has a puff piece about the new series (Brian Stelter, " 'School Pride,' Reality TV Brings School Makeovers," New York Times, 10/14/10) that doesn't get around to addressing that question until the seventeenth paragraph, the fourth from the last: "For the most part NBC handled the TV production costs, while sponsors covered the renovation costs and made donations. Like other reality shows, product placement abounds, with Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and General Motors all playing starring roles for their contributions to the schools."

Translation: if we had higher taxes, so that every school could afford to buy all these building materials, computers, software, supplies, and vehicles, our schools wouldn't look like they do. Is this really terribly shocking? Once counties and states learned that they had to bid against each other in a destructive race to the bottom, first eliminating property taxes on corporate property and then, when that wasn't enough, handing out huge chunks of local taxpayer funded corporate welfare, in order to bid against each other for the too-few jobs that the corporations were auctioning off to the lowest bidder, pretty nearly every school except for the ones in a few very wealthy districts ran almost completely out of maintenance money.

And counties had no choice in the matter: run-down schools or high unemployment, it's not even all that hard to see which of the two hurts not just the county, but the kids as well, the more. So we learned to put up with schools that look, not just like prisons, but like long-abandoned prisons. When people move out to the exurbs for "good schools," it's not just to escape the feared black male students who might hurt (or worse, befriend) their precious white snowflakes, it has the bonus attraction of having school buildings that were built more recently, so they haven't had as much time to decay.

So I'm not terribly surprised that wealthy and powerful corporations donated money and materials to a fellow wealthy corporation, enough money and materials to remake just a couple of the country's thousands of decayed schools. They can count on that fellow wealthy corporation to package the school makeovers in such a way as to find some way to blame labor unions and lack of volunteers, not three decades of anti-tax blackmail and corporate welfare, for the state of our schools. And if they're very lucky, they can hope that remaking those five or ten schools or however few it is will stave off the pressure to raise the taxes it would take to fix the rest of them, and thereby make the issue go away for a little while longer.

Color me "not impressed."

• Mood: okay
• Music:Throbbing Gristle - Tiab Guls (Doomed: Dark music for tortured souls [SomaFM])

Comments     [BAD WORD ALERT]

( 22 comments ­ Leave a comment )

nebris wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 04:05 pm (UTC)
fixed
"the feared black male students who might fuck their precious white snowflakes"
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bradhicks wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 11:13 pm (UTC)
Re: fixed
Don't be unfair; that's not all that they're afraid of. Not only do they "know" that all black males are sexually voracious predators who can't resist white girls, they also "know" that all black males are drug-dealing gang members who might recruit their precious white snowflakes into gangs or forcibly make them take drugs.

If they don't say these things out loud, they think them; if they don't let themselves think them out loud, they're at a loss as to explain why they just "don't feel safe" and "don't feel like it's a good environment for their kids" as soon as there's more than one black male in the school, can't explain why they only feel safe when their kids are "around people who are our own kind" if they don't mean it racially.

(In case it's not obvious, no, I don't think that all white people think this way. Just so many of them as to power white flight to this very day. Why, right here in the St. Louis metro area, St. Charles County stopped growing and people started moving to meth-lab covered Jefferson County "for the schools" right at the point where St. Charles County passed the 5% black mark. Nobody moves to meth lab country "for the schools. Nobody moves to meth lab country "for the property values." They move to meth lab country because it's only 1% black; they feel safer with their kids going to school in an almost completely unfunded semi-rural school district where an amazing percentage of the other kids' parents are meth dealers, that's how fucked up white flight is.)

See also Richard Benjamin's excellent, well-researched, insightful, thought-provoking, and side-splittingly hilarious Searching for Whitopia, which I can't recommend highly enough. A good, fast read, I think most of you would enjoy the heck out of it.
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whip_lash wrote:
Oct. 18th, 2010 01:01 am (UTC)
Re: fixed
they're at a loss

I doubt they are. Most of them can probably explain it mathematically. That's one of the tools that standardized testing has given us: you can see that for each additional percentage x of minority students, test scores drop by percentage y.

What you think when you notice that may be racist, but needn't necessarily be. If you're liberal you can think (partly correctly, in my view) that standardized tests are flawed and that any real achievement gap exists in part because of a history of discrimination. And if you're conservative you can think (partly correctly, in my view) that minorities tend to be poor, and that except for recent immigrants, poor people tend to stay poor in part because of a culture of low achievement especially in education.

Should people of good will of either political persuasion try to make the local school better rather than running? Of course. Is it easy to do that when it's your kid's education on the line? Nope.
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whip_lash wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 04:06 pm (UTC)
Translation: if we had higher taxes, so that every school could afford to buy all these building materials, computers, software, supplies, and vehicles, our schools wouldn't look like they do.

Not sure if you have kids, but I assure you that affluent school districts do have all of these things.

So your transalation actually reduces to: If poor people had more money, poor people would have more money.

That's not a jab or a political point, as far as I'm concerned, by the way.
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bradhicks wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 04:34 pm (UTC)
Fair enough; we're mostly agreeing with each other there. But, for one thing, there aren't that many affluent districts in America. I don't have a count handy, but the St. Louis greater metro area has probably twenty or so school districts, and two of them, Ladue and to a lesser extent Parkway, have enough affluent residents that the property taxes can cover maintenance costs and routine upgrades even after all the corporate welfare giveaways are funded. The state's vastly larger number of rural school districts don't even have that many; there probably isn't a single rural district in Missouri that can afford to fully fund their maintenance budget.

But, secondly, just raising wages for poor people wouldn't help enough, if poor people's property didn't also appreciate. Centuries from now, some of the historians arguing over the dismal state of late-dark-age (20th and 21st century) schools will bring up the historically stupid and completely indefensible decision made all the way back in the 17th century, here in America, to have all school funding be local and almost all of that funded off of property taxes. A better system for guaranteeing that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer would be hard to design, even if you were doing so on purpose.
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kraygern wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 04:51 pm (UTC)
"Once counties and states learned that they had to bid against each other in a destructive race to the bottom, first eliminating property taxes on corporate property and then, when that wasn't enough, handing out huge chunks of local taxpayer funded corporate welfare, in order to bid against each other for the too-few jobs that the corporations were auctioning off to the lowest bidder, pretty nearly every school except for the ones in a few very wealthy districts ran almost completely out of maintenance money."

Can you explain more about how schools have been forced to "bid against each other", i.e. bid for what and from whom, and how this system was implemented in the first place?

How does corporate welfare directly ties into a shortage of school funding: i.e. what types of corporate welfare do you speak of?
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greymalkini wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 05:05 pm (UTC)
They competed to reduce taxes and tax-write offs. If county A offered 10% tax and county B was taxed at 5%, guess which one people would be moving to?

I think the welfare he is talking about are the tax breaks various states and counties would offer to corporations to open an office in the area.
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bradhicks wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 07:11 pm (UTC)
Not JUST tax breaks, it's frequently outright cash grants. For example, to get my old company, Mastercard International, to move from St. Louis County to St. Charles County (and to keep them from fulfilling their threat to move to Texas) they were given, flat out-right, at taxpayer expense, $190 million; a company that manufactures money for a living had their corporate campus built for them at taxpayer expense.

(I was out of town for a year and a half on business, working for myself, at the time. When I came back, and found this out from my state representative, I actually lost my temper over it and screamed at him, something I'd never normally do.)
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subnumine wrote:
Oct. 18th, 2010 12:40 am (UTC)
And it has been far more than thirty years. New Jersey, with 566 competing municipalities, has been worse than most, but the effects of repeatedly competing for the favors of corporations have been seen at least since 1920.
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Oct. 18th, 2010 03:29 am (UTC)
Maybe municipalities need to unionize?

Oh, wait. That's why it's supposed to be called the UNITED States.
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whip_lash wrote:
Oct. 18th, 2010 12:49 am (UTC)
Centuries from now, some of the historians arguing over the dismal state of late-dark-age (20th and 21st century) schools will bring up the historically stupid and completely indefensible decision made all the way back in the 17th century, here in America, to have all school funding be local and almost all of that funded off of property taxes.

Well, in Texas, we've already addressed this (by court order). The legislature implemented a plan popularly known as Robin Hood, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Rich districts (we actually have lots of these; affluent areas tended to make sure they got their own district) send a chunk of their cash to poor ones.

The result was kind of predictable if you think about it. Rich districts lowered their property taxes so that they wouldn't have to be rich districts and pay the luxury tax. Poor districts got some money, but not as much as they were expecting; about enough, in a number of spectacularly publicized cases, to squander on ludicrous administrator salaries and outright graft.

The rich districts made up the difference with donations and still have enough for things like, in nearby Southlake, a natatorium with Olympic-sized indoor pool attached to the high school (it's technically a community center, I believe, and so not a part of school funding).

Grapevine-Colleyville, the nearly as affluent district next to Southlake where my sister taught for a while, has a high-school Cisco certification program with a nicer lab than the community college where I did the same program. At Diamond Hill, a Fort Worth ISD school in a Hispanic Barrio where my sister also taught, she had to help the kids buy school supplies.

Robin Hood is one practical example of why I'm always skeptical that wealth distribution actually does any good beyond preventing outright starvation, let alone that the good outweighs the harm. I will freely admit I don't know of a better answer in the case of schools however.
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kimchalister wrote:
Oct. 19th, 2010 04:20 am (UTC)
Brad -- what system would you suggest for paying for schools? (I agree that local property taxes isn't working well.)
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bradhicks wrote:
Oct. 19th, 2010 04:27 pm (UTC)
1) Raise the progressive income tax and the capital gains tax by the amount that the nation collects in property taxes for schools right now, and distribute that amount to each school on a per-student-enrolled basis, with a small multiplier based on the percentage of students qualified to be enrolled in the free student breakfast and lunch programs.

2) Make it illegal for local communities and local charities to fund the schools beyond that; if they want better schools, throw the money into the pot to be distributed among all students.

Most people would call this radical and unworkable; I admit that it's unlikely to pass any time soon. Critics of this idea (which, by the way, isn't far off from one that the courts have come close to ordering in several states, including my own, because of state constitutional guarantees of an education for every child) will say that it's natural for parents to want the best for their children, and that this infringes on parents' natural right to give their children every advantage they can. To which I say: are poor parents' children not citizens? And what moral justification can you give, what legal justification can you give, what merit among rich kids can you point to, that justifies the government giving rich kids a better education than poor kids?

(And yes, while I'm at it, I would also outlaw private schools. As a private school graduate myself, I've seen what a blight on the country they are.)
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simulated_knave wrote:
Oct. 20th, 2010 02:46 am (UTC)
You mean the way Canada does it, IIRC?
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simulated_knave wrote:
Oct. 20th, 2010 02:47 am (UTC)
Well, education's provincial, so the equivalent would be raising state taxes, but the point stands.
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phillipalden wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 05:38 pm (UTC)
Here in California we're spending more on prisons than we are on education - something the Governor and other state politicians would rather the public not know.

And the majority of those prisoners are in there for non-violent drug offenses.
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kraygern wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 06:04 pm (UTC)
The prison/security industrial complex is big business in America, but especially California where I'm also from. Many of the 'tough on crime' and 'for the children' laws pushed are often backed by prison guard unions, private prison operators, and prison construction and security firms.
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phillipalden wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 10:37 pm (UTC)
Sadly, voters kept approving those so-called "get tough on crime" laws - without considering the ruined lives and the outrageous amount of money spent on prisons.

The Governor and many state legislators are "in bed" with the prison guard's union - a connection that Californians should be more aware of.

I love my home state, but it's seriously messed up in many ways.
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silveradept wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 08:17 pm (UTC)
For people who have looked at school systems with any sort of critical eye, I suspect this premise is not news. And NBC's presentation will shower the corporations with praise and not point out that white flight combined with corporate tax breaks is what got those schools into that situation in the first place.
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harmfulguy wrote:
Oct. 17th, 2010 10:54 pm (UTC)
After Gene Crannick's house burned down because he'd missed his "pay to spray" bill, the Professional Left podcast proposed that he put a sign out front saying, "Your Tax Cuts At Work". I think decaying schools (and other abandoned public works) would be an even better place for such signs.
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(Anonymous) wrote:
Oct. 18th, 2010 09:20 am (UTC)
It seems as though current leaders are treating our education system the way conquerors treated the Sumerian irrigation system. Why feed the cow when you can run off with the cheese?

(analogy shamelessly stolen from this article (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/02/unnoticed-technologies.html), which I highly recommend)
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samael7 wrote:
Oct. 18th, 2010 06:20 pm (UTC)
Only somewhat related, the story reminded me of a plaque I saw at Versailles, thanking John D. Rockefeller (the person, not his foundation or legacy trusts) for financial assistance in restoring parts of the chateau and grounds in the early 20th century.

I wonder if there will be a plaque at those schools for Wal-Mart and Home Depot. I'm thinking "probably, with brand logos."

I don't have any very deep or well-formed thoughts about the comparison. It's just that I know history repeats itself, and I'm trying to figure out "how much."
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( 22 comments ­ Leave a comment )

Fwd: Monday: California voter registration deadline

Just a reminder to register to vote if you haven't already.  Vote!!!!
--Kim

Kim --

According to our records, you live in California -- and there's a crucial deadline approaching there. You have just three days left to register to vote if you're planning to mail it in -- your registration must be postmarked by this Monday, October 18th.

If there has been any change in your status or eligibility since the last election -- did you move? change your name? turn 18? -- you likely need to register in order to cast a ballot this fall.

We've got all the information you'll need about how to register at our voting information site, www.RaiseYourVote.com.

Registering by mail is a very easy process -- but it's absolutely essential that you do it by Monday, October 18th, in order to cast your vote this year.

Confirm your eligibility to vote, and register if you haven't yet done so:

www.RaiseYourVote.com

Thanks,

Jeremy

Jeremy Bird
Deputy Director
Organizing for America




Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee -- 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

This email was sent to: Kimc@astound.net

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Fwd: 3900 Saturdays

I don't usually send this kind of thing on, but this one says it so clearly....  Enjoy!
--Kim

 
3900 Saturdays



The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles." I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say…

"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays." "I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear."

"Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time."

"It was nice to meet you, Tom. I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles.

A friend sent this to me, so I to you, my friend.

And so, as one smart bear once said..."If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." - Winnie the Pooh.

Pass this on to all of your FRIENDS, even if it means sending it to the person that sent it to you.

And if you receive this e-mail many times from many different people, it only means that you have many FRIENDS.

And if you get it but once, do not be discouraged for you will know that you have at least one good friend...

And that would be

      ME.
 

Quote of the Day ANS

This is a little short one from Brad Hicks; a quote from an author he recommended, and I am currently reading.  I included the comments: if you read any at all, read the first comment from Brad himself (it's the second comment).
Find it here:  http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/444433.html 
--Kim

Quote of the Day (One More from Geoghegan)

• Sep. 28th, 2010 at 2:13 AM

"At the SPD headquarters, I met people on the left, the best and the brightest, who can at least think in this framework. They grasp what their job is: to protect the way of life of a largely high school-educated middle class. That way of life is what constitutes the crown jewels. The protection of the crown jewels is a fiduciary responsibility. I hate to say so, but Democrats and Kennedy School-types (with honorable exceptions) -- certainly Democratic politicians -- really do not think seriously about how, in a practical way, to raise the standard of living of non-college grad population, who happen to be, well, 73 percent of the adult population. Look, I like Larry Summers in some ways: at least he is wiling to blush about the shameful number of people we have locked up in prison. But he would never be in the SPD. He could never relate to the striking kids under twenty-seven rapping in German on YouTube. If I ask most Democrats and their think-tank minions how to help the middle class, they have no real answer except to tell them to go to college. But for most Americans that's no answer, so essentially we Democrats are telling them to pound sand. If they didn't go to college, their lives are over. ¶ And it is symptomatic that, when they look at Germany, everything that holds up the German middle-class way of life, the U.S. Democrats would tear down."

Thomas Geoghegan, Were You Born on the Wrong Content? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life. New York: The New Press, 2010. From chapter 6: "After the Krise"

• Mood: good

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comments

( 5 comments ­ Leave a comment )

penguin_attie wrote:
Sep. 28th, 2010 07:06 pm (UTC)
Wow, either he went to Germany while we still had Kohl, or the US must be fucked up beyond belief; in any case it's weird to see someone praise the party that has earned the nickname "traitor party" for consistently making things worse than the conservatives already had when they got in power. Some of their brilliant "solutions" include a welfare reform that removed all provisions for unexpected hardships (if your washing machine broke down while you were unemployed, you could apply for help towards a new one) in favor of a barely-enough-for-survival fixed sum ("too little to live and too much to die", anything else "would be unfair" towards the working poor who barely make enough to eat) and "resocialisation measures" for longterm unemployed where they are forced (on pain of losing all assistance) to work for salaries that makes them competitive with china (seriously, manufacturing that had been outsourced has moved back thanks to those "socialist" reforms!) while the state pays all ancillary costs like health/retirement insurance. Basically the whole government is continually occupied in a game of unemployment statistics tampering to disguise the fact that we are effectively at almost 15% unemployment and that this isn't going to change anytime soon. Now that the socialists have been voted out again they are suddenly incensed that the recent 5€ hike in welfare by the (fiscally-)liberal-conservative government is far too little, when the previous rate had been their own doing!

Really, they are just as bad as Obama at actually passing socialist measures, Germany just started from a better initial situation than the US, so they haven't managed to remove everything yet (not for lack of trying!)
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bradhicks wrote:
Sep. 30th, 2010 07:37 am (UTC)
His argument is that the Social Democrats didn't get credit for the things that they did do, got blamed for things they couldn't stop the Christian Democrats from doing, and that the German voters perversely punished them for it by making the Christian Democrats even stronger.

Granted, as he argues in several places in the book, the most right-wing member of the CDU is to the left of Barack Obama. His real point, in the passage above, is that even the most left-wing of the Democrats, even guys like Kucinich, are stupid on the subject of what's good for the actual working class in the United States, compared to the SPD.

He doesn't go so far as to put it this way, but I will: in America, if you prefer that corporate subsidies and subsidies for the wealthy be restricted to the less brutal among them, and insist on some minor conditions on that welfare for the rich, this makes you a liberal. If you care even a little bit about the concerns of the professional class, of the upper-middle class, this makes you a far-left liberal in America. If you care at all about the needs of the middle class, the working class, or the poor then you are unserious, beyond the pale, radical, to the point of being considered laughable at best and at worst, insane for suggesting that the life of anybody who didn't finish college can or even should be in any way anything other than nasty, brutish, and short.

Edited at 2010-09-30 07:39 am (UTC)
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penguin_attie wrote:
Sep. 30th, 2010 10:03 am (UTC)
While I agree that it was pretty ridiculous to go vote CDU (or FDP) after being disappointed by the SPD, I think they deserve a lot of the blame they got. You'll notice that most of the things I blamed them for were 100% Schröder and the Red/Green government's brainchildren. And even during the great coalition, I think they had a lot more room for blocking the more contested legislations, but they always voted for it en bloc.

But, while slightly more extreme, that still doesn't sound that different from Germany. Here, the "radical extremist left" has a party and 15-20% of the vote, but the other parties manage pretty well to keep them perceived as some lunatics it's impossible to form a government with, all with just one word: SED successor.
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bradhicks wrote:
Sep. 30th, 2010 07:41 am (UTC)
And, oh, he doesn't deny that there are some people in the Christian Democrats who would like to make Germany a whole lot more like America, or at least a whole lot more like Britain. He suggests that one of the reasons why they haven't succeeded is that America acts as a safety valve, that eventually all of the plutocratic assholes in Germany give up and move to America.
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cumawing wrote:
Oct. 6th, 2010 10:05 am (UTC)
Lol,? AWESOME video! Is it a bit sad that I got all of the MoM in jokes?
treehamallama

Christine O'Donnell, Mike Warnke and the imaginary Satanists ANS

This is from Slacktivist.  It's an interesting perspective on Christine O'Donnell and her "dabbling in witchcraft" claim. 
Find it here:  http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2010/09/christine-odonnell-mike-warnke-and-the-imaginary-satanists.html  
go to the site if you want to watch the short video of O'Donnell talking about the "episode".
--Kim

Christine O'Donnell, Mike Warnke and the imaginary Satanists

The oddest thing to me about Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's "I Was A Teenage Witch" claims is that so much of the reaction has accepted her claim that such a thing might be possible.

It is not. Her claims of "dabbling" in what she called "witchcraft" are not true. The supposed witchcraft she describes is not something that exists. Such stories of bloody altars and Satanic covens are common and they are false. All of them. That is a matter of established fact.

The supposed witchery O'Donnell describes is simply the stuff of Satanic panic urban legends. Her descriptions come straight out of the fabrications of proven liar and con-man Mike Warnke. He made this stuff up. Her claims are about as credible as if she had said that she once conjured Bloody Mary by repeating her name three times in the bathroom mirror.

"I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things," she said. This is not true. The wholly imaginary form of Satan-worshipping "witchcraft" in which O'Donnell claimed to have dabbled has never actually existed. You can't dabble in things that don't exist.

That Christine O'Donnell would repeat such well-established lies as facts -- embellishing them with additional patently false claims of first-hand experience -- is not surprising. Her entire political career has taken place within the strand of the evangelical Christian anti-abortion movement that is driven and shaped by this very same late-20th Century variant of the medieval blood libel. These imaginary Satanic baby killers form the core of her identity -- they are the Other against whom she has always defined herself. They are the enemy in contrast to whom O'Donnell and her supporters are able to feel good and righteous and special. That these enemies do not, in fact, exist -- that they have never, in fact, existed -- only highlights the desperate insecurity of O'Donnell and her witch-hunting comrades.

Let me here again commend and recommend two remarkable books on these imaginary Satanists and their ongoing influence in America.

The first is Jeffrey S. Victor's Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend. Victor's study of the re-emergence of this odd hysteria in the 1980s and '90s documents the spread of this nonsense and offers insight into why it continues to be so popular. The back-cover blurb neatly captures the core of the book:

Again and again we are told -- by journalists, police and fundamentalists -- that there exists a secret network of criminal fanatics, worshippers of Satan, who are responsible for kidnapping, human sacrifice, sexual abuse and torture of children, drug-dealing, mutilation of animals, desecration of churches and cemeteries, pornography, heavy metal lyrics and cannibalism.

This popular tale is almost entirely without foundation, but the legend continues to gather momentum, in the teeth of evidence and good sense. Networks of "child advocates," credulous or self-serving social workers, instant-expert police officers and unscrupulous ministers of religion help to spread the panic, along with fabricated survivors' memoirs passed off as true accounts and irresponsible broadcast "investigations." A classic witch-hunt, comparable to those of medieval Europe, is under way.

It was that same baseless popular tale that Christine O'Donnell was defending on Bill Maher's old show. She claimed it was all true. And when her fellow panelists challenged her on that claim, she preposterously insisted that she knew it was true because she personally had seen the evidence.

That evidence -- her claim to have seen a "Satanic altar" with "a little blood there" -- is cribbed entirely from Mike Warnke, the subject of the second book I'm recommending here: Selling Satan: The Evangelical Media and the Mike Warnke Scandal, by Mike Hertenstein and Jon Trott. Selling Satan is a remarkably thorough piece of investigative journalism by two devout evangelical Christians whose reluctance to cast judgment on a purported fellow believer lends them to document Warnke's lies in devastating detail. (The Cornerstone magazine articles summarizing this investigation can be read online here.)

Warnke's influence on this legend and his contributions to its shape and popularity really can't be overstated. He first achieved fame as a "Christian comedian" who became one of the first million-selling Christian-label recording artists. But he went on to even greater fame and wealth as an "ex-Satanist" speaker, author and expert-for-hire. He wrote a series of supposed memoirs describing his alleged past as a "Satanic high priest," leader of a 1,500-member "coven" in Southern California. The books were best-sellers, his speaking tours packed churches and concert halls, and his articles "exposing" the grisly practices and behind-the-scenes machinations of this Satanic cult were published throughout the evangelical press.

Warnke's books and "ministry" created the template for a host of imitators and supposed exposés of Satanism quickly became a lucrative revenue stream for religious publishing houses. Thumb through any of those other alleged memoirs or through the slew of books on the imaginary epidemic of "Satanic ritual abuse" and you will find details and descriptions lifted directly from Warnke's fabrications. Turn to the index or the bibliography of such books and you will find Warnke cited as an authority. His lies have even been cited in court testimony in cases where Satanic panic has brought innocent people to trial for imaginary crimes.

Part of what makes Hertenstein and Trott's book so compelling is that, as evangelicals of just the sort being cynically exploited by Warnke, there were initially predisposed to accept his claims of a Satanist conspiracy. They approached his claims believing that such things might really be true -- believing them to be likely and probable. That makes their conclusion -- it's all a hoax and nothing like this has ever existed -- that much more devastating. (The book ends with a surreal coda, an appendix describing the authors' pleasant visit with none other than Anton LaVey -- the self-proclaimed Satanist who for decades has served as an arch-bogeyman for evangelical culture warriors. His wife serves tea. LaVey plays the piano. Gershwin. He's particularly fond of "Somebody Loves Me.")

Hertenstein and Trott's initial willingness to believe Warnke's implausible claims also leads to the most frustrating aspect of their book. The authors are not at all curious as to why so many evangelical Christians were so eager to believe Warnke's lies about Satanic baby killers.

This is, to me, the most fascinating aspect of all such purported legends -- the more horrifying and appalling the tale, the happier audiences seem to be to believe it. Here's one little snippet of Warnke's standard spiel:

So [the Satanists] took this little girl and they killed her by cutting her sexual organs out while she was still alive. and after she was dead they cut her chest open, took out her heart and cut it up in little pieces and took communion on it.

Believing such things involves more than just your basic blind trust in a church-approved "evangelist." It requires more, even, than a willingness to suspend disbelief. To accept this kind of outrageous horror story as fact requires the expulsion of disbelief, the abolition of disbelief. The only way to believe such stories without question is by actively, deliberately and desperately wanting them to be true.

This seems an appallingly strange thing to want to be true.

Q: Do you think there is a huge underground conspiracy of Satanic priests and priestesses ritually abusing children and committing human sacrifices and other atrocities?

A: Gosh, I sure hope so.

That's a deeply weird answer, a deeply disturbing answer. But it's the only explanation for Mike Warnke's phenomenal popularity and the enduring enthusiasm for his lies even now, years after they have been painstakingly and utterly disproved.

And that was what Christine O'Donnell was saying in that strange "I dabbled into witchcraft" clip from Bill Maher's old show. She was saying that she really wants such horrors to be true -- that she enjoys the idea of such stories being true so much that she wants Maher and Jamie Kennedy and the other panelists to play along.

When the panel fails to share either O'Donnell's credulity or her enthusiasm for human sacrifice, she attempts to persuade them by embellishing with more details from Warnke's stories repackaged as a claim of personal knowledge. We know that Christine O'Donnell was lying about this supposed personal experience because we know that all such stories are not true.

But you don't have to read Victor or Hertenstein and Trott to know that Christine O'Donnell is lying in that clip. All you have to do is watch the video.

[VIDEO WOULD BE HERE]


Watch her building panic as the fight-or-flight instinct kicks in during her classic Bad Jackie moment. Caught in a lie and challenged on it, she doubles down and improvises clumsily. Look at the fear in her eyes. Listen to the nervous laugh. We don't need to call in Tim Roth to analyze this video. This is simply what lying looks like.

I wish I could say here that an audacious and unapologetic liar is not the sort of person who ought to be elected to the United States Senate, but sadly that would just come across as a too-easy straight line for an obvious joke. But in any case the lying itself is not the most disturbing thing about this video.

The problem here is not that Christine O'Donnell is lying, but that she reveals herself as the sort of person who wishes that her horrific lie were true. Christine O'Donnell would prefer that America really was infiltrated by a powerful and nefarious conspiracy of Satan-worshippers performing unspeakable acts and slaughtering babies. She wishes she lived in a world in which Mike Warnke's horror-stories were all true.

Posted by Fred Clark on Sep 29, 2010 at 04:51 PM

S.F. 1st U.S. city to start college savings plan ANS

Here is an interesting idea, starting small: the first year it starts with a quarter of a million dollars.  It's from the Chronicle.
Find it here:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/05/MNPO1FO4MR.DTL  
--Kim

S.F. 1st U.S. city to start college savings plan

John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Ingrid Lopez just started kindergarten at San Francisco's Sanchez Elementary School, but she already has big plans.

"She's saying, 'I will buy you a car, mom,' " chuckled her mother, Julissa Cruz, who walks or takes public transportation to pick up her daughter from the school near Dolores Park.

But for young Ingrid's plans to become reality, "she needs to go to college, she needs to go to a university," her mother, speaking in Spanish, said through an interpreter.

Today, Ingrid will be helped in taking a small first step as officials unveil Kindergarten to College, the nation's first city-bankrolled college savings plan. The program is fueled by the belief that those who save for college are more likely to go.

The 5-year-old will be among about 1,200 newly enrolled kindergartners at 18 San Francisco public schools who will get a one-time payment of at least $50 in taxpayer funds placed in a special trust account. It can only be used to fund post-secondary education like a city college, vocational school or four-year university.

Lower-income students who qualify for the federal government's free or reduced-price lunch program will start with $100, city officials said.

Matching incentives

The plan is to have corporations, nonprofit groups and others offer matching incentives to encourage children and their families to save.

EARN, a local nonprofit that specializes in micro loans and other financial services for low-income workers, has already committed to contributing $100 for every student whose family also saves $100 during the first years of the program.

The San Francisco Foundation has agreed to make additional matches for parents who take financial education classes and make recurring deposits.

Citibank has agreed to set up the accounts at no cost to the students or parents, said Robert Annibale, global director of Citi Community Development. City officials plan to have the accounts open and funded for families by Dec. 1.

"No one else in the country is doing this," Mayor Gavin Newsom said. "We are not just saying every child can go to college. We are now providing families with the financial tools necessary to make this a reality."

Encouraging saving

Officials acknowledge that the city's portion alone won't pay for a college education. But family deposits, other matches and compounding interest over about 12 years will go a long way toward tuition, they say, especially for the roughly half of all Latino and African American families in San Francisco that don't have savings accounts.

"We're going to work with the families so they can see that if they could do just $5 a month, or $10 ... that's going to result in literally thousands of dollars after 12 or 13 years," city Treasurer Jose Cisneros said.

City officials point to a study from the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis that found children who had just some savings set aside for college were about seven times more likely to go.

"We have to start somewhere," said Supervisor David Campos. "The fact that this isn't full tuition from the start doesn't mean this is not something we should do. You cannot overestimate what it means for a child to know that college is a possibility."

The program is the evolution of the Baby Savings Bond proposal that Newsom rolled out in his inauguration address in 2008 that would have covered all children born in the city. Newsom says he poached the idea from then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Great Britain has a similar program, but the local version stalled amid resistance to publicly subsidizing a college education for wealthy residents.

Three-year rollout

The current program, which Cisneros formulated with Newsom, covers only students enrolled in public schools. It is designed to be rolled out over three years.

This year, there is $257,000 in the city budget to set up the program and cover about one-fourth of incoming kindergartners. Schools in every supervisorial district, including those in low-income areas, were chosen for the initial year. The number of pupils would double next year, with the entire kindergarten class covered by the third year. The money will come from the city's general fund, and officials have not decided how to invest it.

$460 million deficit

But that expansion is dependent on future funding, and the city is already looking at a projected deficit next year of about $460 million. Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, a Newsom ally but also a fiscal hawk, fought to strip funding for the program from the current budget and vows to do so again.

"It's an absolutely wonderful idea if the San Francisco government could print money, but we can't," Elsbernd said. "It doesn't get to the core function of local government, and I don't think it should be a part of our budget."

Julissa Cruz, whose husband supports their family by working at a coffee shop, said the program would allow her two daughters to thrive in an increasingly globalized world.

"We're here in this country to become more educated," Cruz said. "That's what I want my daughters to have, what I didn't have."

Kindergarten to College

This year, $257,000 is budgeted to set up the program and cover about one-fourth of kindergartners. For now, 18 elementary schools are covered, with full coverage planned for 2012-13. How it works:

The accounts: The city gives kindergartners at public schools $50 to $100 in a trust account.

Other funding: Nonprofit organizations and other groups offer matching funds.

Spending rules: Money from the accounts can be used only for post-secondary education.

E-mail John Coté at jcote@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/05/MNPO1FO4MR.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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Social Justice and Modern (Biblical) Obligations ANS

Here is an interesting reply to the Right Wingers who were speaking against Social Justice.  It's written by Ogre, on Sparks in the Dark. 
Find it here:  http://sparksinthedark.blogspot.com/2010/08/social-justice-and-modern-biblical.html  
--Kim

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Social Justice and Modern (Biblical) Obligations

From the very beginning of the Jewish state in Canaan, there was a fundamental (divine) directive to share. The land was divided up among the tribes, and the tribes were to support and sustain their own (but that's not all). Recognizing that some would become wealthy, and would hoard, and that some would become poor, simply through ill fortune, or being born to poor, unfortunate parents, God's directive was that the land be taken back and redistributed equitably every 50 years. Every seven years, all debts were to be canceled, forgiven, forgotten.

Now, it's questionable (say the scholars) as to whether that was ever actually done. But you know what, that's moot. These folks want to argue that they shouldn't have to care for the sick, the ill, the unfortunate, the homeless­that it should be voluntary, that the state should not be in the business of doing that with money taken from them in taxes. It ought to be... well, optional. Pure charity.

Hogwash.

Let's just note in passing that for all their talk, that voluntary care of the poor isn't happening­and hasn't, not in this country, nor any other, to a level that begins to be sufficient. So the idea that it'll get taken care of by good Christians out of charity is poppycock. Not that there aren't all kinds of charitable works­Christian, Jewish, Muslim and otherwise. There are. But not enough. Not nearly enough. Not even close.

So, back to that argument from Biblical grounds.

Just WHO was responsible in ancient Israel (and Judah) for such care?

Well, the original Israelite community was tribal; the tribes were responsible. But those chieftaincies didn't last very long. Various pressures from inside and outside resulted in the creation of the Israelite kingdom. So the king took on the responsibilities of the relatively anarchic tribal confederation. The Hebrew scriptures are pretty clear; just check almost any of the prophets­raging criticism of the wealthy (that would be the rich…) and the powerful (nobility, priests…) and particularly the kings. Railing against those storing up abundance and living in plush accommodations with gold and ivory and pleasant oils, luxuries… while the poor starved, while widows and orphans were dispossessed and abused.


Check any of the prophets. Shall I wait while you check? I recommend Isaiah (an especial fave of most Christians). I recommend Isa 1:14-17.Or heck, there's 5:1-23 (there's more, too). Gee, my translation even subheads Isaiah 5:8-23 "Social Injustice Denounced"­what do you mean that social justice doesn't appear in the Bible?

Most of the justification for the destruction of Israel and Judah, and the Babylonian exile, is that the rulers and the powerful were corrupt, greedy, selfish and unjust. They didn't share with the rest of the people, they let the poor starve and they stole their land. Which was God's anyway, according to the Bible, and people only got to use it­and only until it was redistributed again.

Short form: having more than enough when there are people homeless and hungry is viewed by God as the worst of sins­just like theft, just like murder. In fact, it is essentially apostasy; the willful violation of God's commandments. Sin.

So, back to the question of responsibility. Who's responsible? Well, the king. And so you find the prophets just ripping into the kings for their malfeasance, warning everyone that God is going to devastate the kingdom, that they will be laid low, slain, dragged off into slavery... and that it's God's will if this crap continues.

But heck, what's that got to do with today and all those folks who don't want to share with the poor? They're not king (for which we can all be grateful…).

No, they're part of The People. Here in the USA, that means that they are, by definition, collectively the sovereigns­just like being king. Which means we're ALL responsible. It's not just a question of whatever charity we feel like giving. We bear the responsibility. We The People­the government.We stand in the same relationship to the missing king as the king did to the defunct tribal confederation. All those responsibilities, from defense to justice to... caring for the poor... those are ours.

So when they whine that it's unfair to tax them to give alms to the poor, to care for the sick, to house the homeless, to feed the hungry… they're wrong. All those conservative Christians have a responsibility to meet­as sovereign­to see that the wealth of the nation is shared equitably with all, before excess is used for comfort and luxury. Taxation is how We The People take our money from our pockets to do our collective business.

It's a Biblical, social justice obligation for good Christians and Jews.


For the rest of us, there are other good arguments. But that's for another post, some other day.
Posted by ogre at 8:41 PM 4 comments
Labels: Bible , social justice