Happy Circumcision Day!

January 1 is a weird day for the first day of the year.  It is not astrologically significant as in a solstice or equinox.  It is an arbitrary date rooted in other religions as in the worship of the Greek God Janus, and rooted in Christianity as the day Jesus was circumcised, 8 days after his birth.  Ugh.  Not a source of celebration as far as I am concerned.  Clearly sexist as women do not experience this ritual cutting, but last time I checked a New Year’s party is not really a party without both sexes present and no male is asked to verify circumcision at the door.  Regardless, by the mid 1700’s most western civilizations had adopted January 1 as the first day of the new year.  We just as easily could make it any other day.  If I had a vote it would always fall on the spring equinox somewhere around March 20^th, but I do not have a vote.

However the wizards and politicians selected this date, our tradition is to review the year just ending and make projections for the year to come.  Zealots will make resolutions regarding what individual accomplishments they seek to implement in the coming year.  From my point of view anyone who wants to make a change can do so and not have to wait until January 1 to start.  I see most resolutions as statements of future guilt trips.  I don’t do resolutions.  I do evolutions, as in what direction I want to grow, but that is fodder for another post.  I shall begin with observations of the year ending.

2016 was the year truth died at the hands of falsehoods.  Americans chose to believe falsehoods over truth.  I remain in shock and fear.  Trump did not win by a landslide.  He lost the popular vote and in terms of electoral votes he ranks 42^nd among all presidential candidates. This is the same man who said Obama was a Muslim and was not an American born citizen, both falsehoods.  The economy is not in bad shape.  It is in the best shape it has been in over 20 years and all the data support that.  It is the year when accusations of guilt equaled guilt.  Clinton was charged with a record number of legal infringements, millions were spent trying to prove there was evidence that merited prosecution and nothing was found.  And yet, most believe she lied and should be in prison.  I remain amazed that a lie can be told three times and forever be perceived as the truth.  This was the year a candidate for president promised the American people what he would do as president, and as soon as he was elected starting saying he wasn’t going to do those things.  This was a year when fossil fuel producers convinced a lot of people that there was not global warming caused by human behavior, an undisputed fact among scientists who are not on the payroll of fossil fuel companies.  This was the year the broadcast falsehoods of some media outlets that were constantly shown to be perpetrating lies were believed by the American people.  “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” Albert Einstein.

2016 was the year that bigotry overcame the goal of equality.  I believe that many Americans awoke in 2009 and realized we had elected our first Black President.  Few in this group would admit to bigotry, but on the other hand took joy in any little criticism of President Obama.  We saw the rise of the KKK in the election and the rise of the Alt-Right, both groups advocating for an America of the Anglos, by the Anglos and for the Anglos.  After years and years of progress in the arena of civil rights we have now elected a man who is clearly a bigot.  His talk of walls, immigrants, judges, etc. are laden with bigotry, hard for other bigots to hear.  He advocates making America great again, but when pressed to identify when America was great he points to the turn of the last century and the industrial revolution, and the 1940’s and 50’s.  He dreams of the Ozzie and Harriet Days, he longs for an Archie Bunker approach to life.  The days he cites as great in our history were in many ways terrible.  Those days were before we integrated public schools, segregation was the norm, women were not expected to work and if they did it would be in clerical, nursing or teaching.  No one could imagine a Black or female president in those days.  Workers were abused and the growth of unions stemmed from those days.  Children and adults with special needs were ignored and sent home, as were pregnant girls.  These may have been a wonderful time for the educated, prosperous Anglo males in American, but it was a terrible time for anyone else.  A return to those days does not advance our culture.  It is not a time when America was great.  It was the stone age of civil rights.  Even worse, our courts have now allowed discrimination based on the religious beliefs of the discriminator, the most twisted ruling in the court’s history as far as I can tell.  Tantamount to allowing people of one faith to kill people of another faith because it is their religious right.

2016 was the year that wealth became a protected class and poverty was attacked.  With the SCOTUS ruling by 5 to 4 in Citizens United that corporations were entitled to the same 1^st amendment free speech rights as individuals thereby opening the door for huge corporate donations to political campaigns.  Such donations were limited prior to Citizen’s United.  Such large donations continue to shape American election outcomes especially in favor of corporations, the wealthy, and opposed to civil liberties and labor unions.  The new President-elect has proposed revamping the tax code so that the wealthiest individuals receive a tax break with more of the taxation burden falling on the middle class.  Talk in Congress of reducing funding for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid out of proposed fear of insolvency would only benefit the wealthiest Americans.  The insolvency is not real in that it exists because Congress continually takes money from those funds to finance other projects, and because the wealthy to do not pay the same share of taxation for these programs as does the middle and lower class.  The rumors of welfare fraud are consistently debunked but not reported.  No study has found more than 1% fraudulent use of the funds, making welfare the least fraudulent of all federal programs, another fact not widely disseminated.  Programs that support the poor and lower middle class are under attack.  Labor Unions are under attack.  For the first time low income Americans have access to medical insurance and 20 million Americans have signed up.  But because conservatives are loath to give credit where credit is due the Affordable Care Act has been subject to conservative attack since its passage.  And the gap between our poor and our rich grows annually as the rich continue to benefit from protected status.

2016 was the year when winning meant more than integrity.  The notion that all is fair in love and war implies that winning means more than integrity.  We have consistently seen candidates boldly lie and gain in credence at the same time.  When Trump announced that John McCain was a loser because he was captured during the Viet Nam war my jaw dropped.  Trump has yet to reveal his tax returns.  We know he has not paid taxes for years.  Saying whatever it takes to get elected is an announcement that outcome means more than integrity.  Doing whatever it takes to win is an announcement that integrity takes a back seat.  Assuming people of wealth are somehow smarter, more deserving, more qualified to manage industries they know nothing about is another example of winning in one area and celebrating the victory across other areas.  If you lie, cheat, steal, or withhold information to win, there is no integrity.  If making money means more than protecting American citizens then winning means more than integrity.

2016 was the year that we ignored history in favor of delusions.  There has never been an effective wall erected between people to keep one group out and another group safe within.  There has never been a time when trickle-down, supply-side or “voodoo economics” has successfully improved our economy.  There has never been a time where discrimination by ethnicity, race, gender, or beliefs has improved the climate in a company or a country.  The notion that Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A can discriminate in their hiring practices because of their religious beliefs is unholy and delusional.  We have been though these times before.  They were not times when we were great.  They were times that we admit now were mistakes.  And yet, the delusional continue to want to return to those times ignorant or oblivious to history. 

And my hopes and projections for 2017?

My hopes: Truth will reign, bigotry will be replaced by efforts to increase civil liberties, wealthy people become engaged in supporting the US and withdraw from political ambitions, integrity means more than winning, and we review our past efforts in light of results and ethics. 

My projections:  I believe that Trump’s audacity and lack of global view will engage us in another military conflict.  I believe that Trump is better able to alienate than he is to ameliorate.  I believe the hostility between income groups, racial groups, gender groups and sexual preference groups will escalate.  I believe 2017 will be worse than 2016.

But as I prepare to celebrate Circumcision Day, rather than be totally depressed and very concerned about our nation, it occurs to me that it would be nice if I lost a few pounds next year.

Regardless, I hope your wishes and resolutions come to be and that yoiu feel OK when you wake up on Circumcision Day.

End of Public Education?

If you are a public school employee and you voted for Trump, this post is for you. 

First, some simple and verifiable facts.  Trump never attended a public school.  All his pre-college education was received in very expensive private schools.  Trump has vowed to end the public school monopoly of education.  He is pro school choice.  His choice for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is an unashamed opponent of public education who has never worked in a public school or public school system.  She is a billionaire and believes that charter schools and vouchers are the way to improve education.  Both Trump and DeVos are billionaire “school reformers.”  Both are hostile to public education.  Both want to see money earmarked for public education re-directed to charter school operators and parents via vouchers.

If Trump and DeVos have their way, the dismantling of public schools will not only continue, it will accelerate.  Four years of such an effort will decimate public education.

I suppose that first each of us must decide whether the idea of educating every child in this nation is a good idea.  Should we do as many other nations do and simply give a test at the end of 8^th grade that determines who gets to continue their education and who is done?  Should we do as private schools and charter schools do and simply expel students who are low-performing or trouble makers or are in need of special services?  Should we as a nation accept the notion that not all kids will get a high school diploma?  Should we as a nation accept the notion of vouchers so that people of wealth will not have to pay school taxes and private school tuition?  Should we as a nation accept the notion that public dollars may be used to duplicate the public school system in a charter school system that operates with much more flexibility than public schools?  Should we accept the notion that after years and years of data collection it is obvious that charter schools do not outperform public schools and that they can serve as a new tool for segregation?  If your answers to these questions, or even some of these questions, are “yes” then you voted for the correct candidate in the election.

If, on the other hand, you answered “no” to these questions then I surely hope you did not vote for Trump.  A source of real anger and confusion for me is the perpetrated belief that lack of expertise, training, education, knowledge and experience means less in the governing of public schools than wealth.  It is as though one earns a billion dollars and becomes qualified to “fix” public schools.  It is as though one wins an election and becomes qualified to “fix” public schools.  Both theories are seriously flawed.  Neither the wealthy and/or the winning candidate is qualified by the nature of their victory or wealth to make rules governing the medical profession, engineering profession, legal profession, or even ship-building or airplane manufacture, carpentry, plumbing or welding.  And yet we continue to listen to uneducated billionaires who propose a gross array of improvement and reform strategies.  If this were not so ludicrous it would be hysterical.  It is for me a declaration of ignorance to declare I can fix something that I do not understand and admit I do not even know what I do not know and that I do not need to learn.  Why in the world would we listen to the ignorant in an effort to improve the educational system?

Most sad to me is that it looks like we are going to get more money siphoned away from public schools and placed in the hands of the CEO millionaire charter schools and the pockets of wealthy parents who currently still pay school taxes.  As money leaves public education the number of public school employees will also drop.  As money leaves public education the performance outcomes of the most challenging students will drop.  As money leaves public education to flow to charter and private schools we are robbing the poor to feed the wealthy.  Even if charter schools outperformed public schools, which they do not, the real ethical question for me is how are those students remaining in public schools performing after the money has flowed elsewhere?  If charter schools and vouchers were the savior they are lauded as being we should see an improvement in the performance of all kids, those in charters and in private schools and in public schools. But if we see what we continue to see is that public school students suffer when money flows elsewhere, then simply backing strategies that we know harm a majority of the kids in the US is, by definition, immoral.

Unless you are OK with a “yes” answer to the questions in the fourth paragraph.  If you are, then you really do not believe in public schools at all.  If you are an employee of a public school and do not believe in public schools you should probably resign, or do so before your job is cut as the money flows elsewhere.  This nonsense must stop.  I for one want to see every single child in this nation receive a top-notch education in ways that do not line the pockets of charter school CEO’s and wealthy parents.  Unless there were an equal number of seats in charter and private schools to serve all the public school kids there will never really be school choice.  Such a rally cry is just money-driven smoke and mirrors.

Please support public education.  You can do so by opposing more charter schools and vouchers. You can do so by not voting for people who do support charter schools and vouchers.  It is too late for now to cast your vote for President, but in the next two years you will vote for school board members, and state and national legislators.  If the 300,000 employees of public education in Texas voted with one mind they would determine the election outcome.  It is time we do so.