Lusting after the mitre and ermine

On reading Katherine Kersten’s column on Sunday, the first question that we must ask her is —

Are you crazy?

No, grasshopper, that’s not it. Here’s the question:

If journalism is so anti-religion, why does a newspaper print you?

Katie’s offering yesterday holds that journalists, shown interacting with Christians here, engaged in a ruthless century-long campaign to deprive religion of its role as the primary source of truth:

As journalists sought to wrest cultural influence from religion, they often appropriated religiously inspired language of truth-seeking and self-sacrifice to describe their efforts. Some extolled journalist-martyrs who had bravely stood against injustice, while others lauded journalism's "priestly mission."

Sort of like George Bush’s invocation of “crusade” in describing the fight against the Islamofascists, right, Katie?

Katie does have a point, though; the church has done such a great job of pointing out eternal truth. It almost had to kill that heretic Galileo before he would stop babbling about the earth not being in the center of the universe, but he did! And let’s not forget the yeomen’s work done by all those Dominicans in the Inquisition on behalf of the truth.

Kersten’s column seems to be entirely cribbed from the addled visions of Richard Flory, who Kersten describes as a “historian.” But in the only real reference that I can find (he does write a blog) to Flory is a book that he co-authored, Finding Faith: The Spiritual Quest of the Post-Boomer Generation. He is described as “a research associate in the Center for Religion and Civic Culture a the University of Southern California,” not a historian.

Here are a couple of other quotes cribbed from Flory:

Journalism was the ideal successor to religion, according to this view … because it alone could provide the "facts" and enlightened guidance on which public opinion should be based. In the future, journalism would become the new "educator of the masses" (in Flory's words), and journalists would assume religion's traditional task of working to improve society.

* * *

The Journalist's Creed -- written by Walter Williams, first dean of the University of Missouri's School of Journalism, and still used by the school -- captures this spirit. Each of its eight articles begins with "I believe," the first being, "I believe in the profession of journalism." The creed's obvious model? The historic confessions of the Christian church.

According to Katie, there was never a belief system before the Christian church came along. There is nothing in Katie’s quotes that say anything about the intent of journalism as a profession to attack religion.

If you rummage around long enough in the unfinished basement of Katie’s soul, you will figure out that what bugs her is not journalism per se, but its modernizing influence: its publication of Martin Luther King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail, its role in bringing the Vietnam war to an end, its role in bringing Richard Nixon low, its role in exposing the ghastly behavior of the Catholic Church hierarchy around the world in the continuing sexual abuse scandal, and its role in humanizing gays and lesbians and revealing the depths of their mistreatment, not to mentioning exposing the perpetrators of the same.

Katie says that if everyone would just obey the priest — and maybe pull down his pants when he is told — the world would be a better place.

The painting above hangs in a Jesuit museum somewhere in Canada; I’ve lost the link.

Update: Readers are encouraged to read the comments to this post, including one by Richard Florey, who doesn’t seem exactly tickled to be cited by Katherine Kersten.

Technorati Tags: Katherine Kersten,journalism,Richard Florey,Martin Luther King,Vietnam war,gays and lesbians,Catholic Church,sexual abuse victims

No Child Left Behind: Destroying success in Minnesota

When most people talk about the problems with the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education law they usually first cite the onerous effects of standardized testing. But just as bad is the part of the law that virtually mandates the destruction of any school failing to meet the unreasonable and sadistic Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) rules that stipulate that if even a small subgroup of a school's student population is not making progress for a few years in a row the school must either turn into a charter school, close entirely, or fire its principal and at least half its teachers.

In Brooklyn Center we've just seen what a travesty that policy accomplishes: A high school that serves some of the toughest students in the state that has been working hard and making progress for the past three or four years with a charismatic principal is now deemed "failing," and the school district must now fire him and half of his teaching staff.

While the Star Tribune blithely blames school teachers' unions for an "endless cycle of poverty and failure" in neighborhoods, the principal of Brooklyn Center High School, Bryan Bass, knows better. A report at Minnpost.com from reporter Beth Hawkins details the real, as opposed to political, problems facing schools:

Brooklyn Center High School serves more than 800 students in grades seven through 12. Although it is a suburban school, three-fourths of students are low-income and minorities. Up to one-fourth are learning English, and about 14 percent have learning disabilities

Many of those students come to school unable to learn and Bass thought he knew why, so he set about successfully organizing the community to setup a medical clinic in the school, and found

... that 70 percent of kids who have had physicals so far have had untreated vision problems, Park Nicollet contributed eye exams and glasses. Teachers who realize a student is acting out because of emotional issues now quietly help the student find a therapist at the clinic.

Portico Healthnet has an office in the clinic where staff can work with students' families to help them find health insurance. If they can't, the clinic treats them anyhow.

The impact was felt immediately. "Overnight — overnight, it absolutely decreased the amount of behavioral issues," said Bass. "By eliminating barriers, you start to really understand what's in the way of students getting to learn."

The success was stunning:

It [the high school] boasts an 82 percent graduation rate, enviable among districts with similar demographics.;

During the four years Bass has been principal, the number of suspensions each month has fallen from 45 to about 10. The number of graduates who go on to post-secondary education has doubled from 35 percent to 70 percent...

Someone should ask the Star Tribune how changing teachers will help students with vision problems learn better.

Thus does NCLB not only not foster success, it actively destroys it. The notion that educational achievement, with its many facets, could be existentially reduced to numbers is a folly of the highest degree. Writing in The Nation, Linda Darling-Hammond explains that other nations that are high achievers in education are doing the exact opposite of what we are doing in the US:

Other nations have been transforming their school systems to meet the new demands of today's world. They are expanding educational access to more and more of their people, and they are revising curriculums, instruction and assessments to support the more complex knowledge and skills needed in the twenty-first century. Starting in the 1980s, for example, Finland dismantled the rigid tracking system that had allocated differential access to knowledge to its young people and eliminated the state-mandated testing system that was used for this purpose, replacing them with highly trained teachers educated in newly overhauled schools of education, along with curriculums and assessments focused on problem-solving, creativity and independent learning. These changes have propelled achievement to the top of the international rankings and closed what was once a large, intractable achievement gap.

Get that? Finland eliminated state-mandated testing - which resulted in internationally top-ranked students and the closing of an achievement gap. Contrast that to the U.S., where irrational, punitive and unfair mandated testing results in the closing of community gems like Brooklyn Center High School, and expanding achievement gaps. Rather than focusing on rote learning, other nations are subtly changing curriculums to encourage creative and independent learning.Then again, countries like Finland have lavish social safety nets that largely prevent poverty, unlike the shredded one here in the U.S.

Given the undeniable failures of school choice and "teacher accountability" movements in the U.S., the stalling of progress in education and the outright destruction of success by NCLB, one is left to wonder why Democrats have jumped on this conservative bandwagon of failure. I can imagine only two reasons, the first being ignorance and the second being political expediency. As regards our president, no one believes he isn't extremely intelligent, leaving only crass political calculations as the reason why he would work to send our public schools down the toilet.

But there is a problem with Obama's political calculations: He seems intent on destroying the coalition and constituencies which got him elected. His stiffing of labor is now well known, and one of its biggest components, teachers' unions, seems to be his favorite target. As Shamus Cooke has written in Counterpunch, a gulf has now opened between teachers and the administration, as his education secretary, and Obama himself, have cheered on the destruction of public schools. If education is to be improved in this country, it will have to be done in the face of Democrats and their harmful policies.

UPDATE: It seems like the Strib likes to give affirmations to my writings on education. Today they have an editorial that asserts that if congress were to update NCLB according to its ignorant wishes GDP in the US would increase by one to two billion dollars.   Does that sound like an incentive? They don't do the math, as usual, but I do. US GDP is $14 trillion. $1 billion is .00007 percent of $14 trillion.  A butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong would give a bigger increase. If you figure in the cost of implementing NCLB it is a sure money-loser; after all, it's not free to close schools and create entirely new ones.

Free as a greased seabird

That’s us. There is plenty of news around about new spill estimates (higher, of course), new efforts to plug the gusher (come to think of it, there isn’t much news about that), and the effect on marine and economic environments (although journalists seem to be having trouble getting access to make photographs of the spill’s effects).

But the news that takes the cake is word that some GOP congressional members and industry groups are opposed to making British Petroleum (or the next big spiller and the next big spill) pay the freight for creating — that is the only word for it — the spill.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski:

Alaska’s senior senator blocked legislation Thursday that would have dramatically increased liability caps on oil companies, in the wake of one of the industry’s biggest disasters.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) objected to a voice vote request by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) on the bill, which would have spiked the maximum liability for oil companies after an oil spill from $75 million to $10 billion. The legislation has significant support from Democrats, and the White House has indicated it backs an increase in liability caps.

And this from the Wall Street Journal:

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--A key oil-refining-industry organization is opposing a provision in a Senate bill that would quintuple a federal tax specifically used by agencies to clean up oil spills because it would increase fuel costs for consumers.

If on the one hand, we don’t want the oil companies to have to pay for spills, and on the other hand, we don’t want to fund the federal government to clean up the spills, who is going to pay?

I know! Let’s get P&J Oyster Co. to pay!

NEW ORLEANS - An early morning workday ritual — the shucking of small mountains of oysters for New Orleans restaurants — fell victim to the BP offshore oil spill Thursday at a 134-year-old French Quarter oyster house where neighbors treated the news like a death in the family.

P&J Oyster Co. is paying for the spill, by dying, just like the seabird in the picture. These are scenes that are being and will be replicated countless times all over the Gulf for many years. They are a cost of BP’s operation as much as any of its other costs for drilling rigs, pipelines, ships, refineries, and all the rest.

Not picking up your externalities, and not being forced to, is as I’ve said before, socializing the risk of an enterprise.

If the “cost to consumers” went up to raise money for cleaning up oil spills, as the petroleum industry warns in the linked article, it would make buyers of gasoline pay more of the true cost of their consumption, instead of shifting to P&J Oyster Co. That would be socializing the risk, too, but it seems a little more fair allocation of it, doesn’t it?

Ironically, liability for the damage it has done, and taxes to cover the costs of cleanup, also make the market for energy a more accurate reflection of the real cost of a gallon of gasoline.

“Free as a greased seabird” are the words of commenter Randy. The photo is from the AP.

Technorati Tags: British Petroleum,BP,externalities,P&J Oyster Co.

Crabs in a bucket

This is a letter in the Strib today. It is not a Spotty winner.

Lots of people would like to have nursing salaries and benefits. Lots of people would just like to have a job.

Nurses had better clean up their acts and weed out bad nurses before skipping work and marching around the streets hiding behind a union.

Have nurses gone onto their own website and seen how many union officials are being paid?

Unions are necessary for trades such as construction workers, but not for professional people who make more $70,000 a year plus benefits. You will force the hand of the hospitals to hire fewer highly paid RNs and use licensed practical nurses and nurse aides.

Stop blaming hospital management and saying this is about your patients. It's about your greed.

This can be worked out without highly paid union officials, but in a professional way, with hospital management. Business professionals do this all the time.

The letter writer here demonstrates the phenomenon called “crabs in a bucket.” Here’s the Urban Dictionary’s description of crabs in a bucket:

A crab bucket is what it is: crabs in a bucket. However, what happens in the bucket full of crabs is what makes it a famous saying. When a single crab is put into a lidless bucket, it surely can and will escape. However, when more than one share a bucket, none can get out. If one crab elevates himself above all, the others will grab this crab and drag 'em back down to share the mutual fate of the rest of the group. Crab bucket syndrome is often used to describe social situations where one person is trying to better himself and others in the community attempt to pull him back down. Also often used in describing the ghettos of America (or anywhere, for that matter).

The writer lays it out in the first two sentences:

Lots of people would like to have nursing salaries and benefits. Lots of people would just like to have a job.

Undoubtedly both true. But that’s hardly a reason to knock the nurses down. This letter simply springs from a sense of grievance, resentment, and envy.

And did I mention the anti-union bile with which the letter is laced? The nurses need to “clean up their acts weed out the bad nurses,” before “skipping work,” and the nurses certainly don’t need “highly paid union officials.” The writer says that nurses should act more like “business professionals.”

In reality, of course, nurses are working people, like, police, fire fighters, mail carriers, teachers, and most of the rest of us, frankly. Nurses don’t get to sit around a conference table and discuss hospital management with the hospital board of directors.

What nurses have, they have bargained for. Without the union, nurses, or any other organized occupation, wouldn’t have the salaries that our writer friend is so envious of. Nurses certainly didn’t used to.

The other thing that struck me about this letter is how you could substitute the word “teacher” for “nurse” and replay all of the recent hot air about teachers’ unions. Teachers are by-and-large public employees, and nurses are by-and-large private employees, but no matter.

The source of the bile is the same: grievance, resentment, and envy.

Here’s where it gets interesting, at least for me. These are also the things that inform and animate the Tea Party movement. A lot of people, perhaps even our letter writer here, have a sense that America no longer functions for them. And for many of them, it doesn’t. Wages have stagnated for decades, good jobs are hard to find, job security, along with live savings, have evaporated. The middle class life is endangered.

Somebody has to pay. Frightened and confused, people are susceptible to the demagoguery of the cabal really behind the Tea Party, agents provocateur like Dick Armey, who say it’s the gummint; it’s the unions.

The Dick Armeys of the world want us all to behave like the crabs in a bucket.

Technorati Tags: Tea Party,nurses' strike,nurses unions,teachers unions,crabs in a bucket,Dick Armey

If Drinking Liberally was your Dalmatian

It would be 49 years old in dog years.

But it is the seventh anniversary, of course, of the founding of Drinking Liberally, which has blossomed into Living Liberally, in New York City.

We don’t have a guest scheduled for our get together tonight, but we’ll have a little observance of the anniversary and maybe try to trace the history of the Minneapolis chapter of Drinking Liberally, too.

Old timers are especially encouraged to come tonight.

As usual, it’s six to nine (or so) at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis.

And by the way, we’re hoping to have Justin Krebs, DL’s founder, in Minneapolis later this summer at one of our meetings.

Technorati Tags: Drinking Liberally,331 Club

The GOP brain trust strikes again

In one of the comments to the post below, Spot mentions that the Minnesota Republican Party filed a complaint yesterday with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board about the polling data that Candidate Horner has had access to. Party Chairman Sutton and Deputy Party Chairman Brodkorb speculate that Horner has had access to the internal polling data on a poll conducted by Decision Resources, an outfit owned by Horner friend and campaign supporter Bill Morris. If Horner had access, then he and Morris "colluded and shared information," something Sutton and Brodkorb believe to be "an illegal corporate contribution to the Horner campaign on behalf of Decision Resources, which is prohibited under 211B.15, Subdivision 2."

The action, according to the GOP leadership, is "deeply troubling." The complaint demands answers to a series of questions about the sharing of information. The aura of righteous indignation often associated with GOP complaints to the Board oozes from the complaint.

But there's a problem. (This is where the brain trust part comes in.)

Minnesota Statutes Section 211B.15 subdivision 2 was - just about a month ago - declared unconstitutional in a lawsuit brought by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce in light of the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010). Judge Paul Magnuson declared subdivision 2 unconstitutional in its prohibition of certain activities and he declared subdivision 3 (which prohibited corporate independent expenditures to promote or defeat a candidate) unconstitutional in its entirety. The judge ordered that:

2. Minnesota Statutes section 211B.15, subd. 3 is unconstitutional in its entirety;

3. Minnesota Statutes section 211B.15, subd. 2 is unconstitutional insofar as it prohibits or otherwise purports to restrict or limit Plaintiff's acceptance of contributions for the purpose of making independent expenditures or otherwise making corporate independent expenditures from its general treasury funds on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for political office, including, but not limited to, taking out print, television, [*12] or internet advertisements; endorsing candidates; placing endorsements on websites; using blogs to post messages of support or endorsement; renting advertisement space on a billboard; sending letters to businesses informing them of endorsements and encouraging members or the public to support certain candidates for political office; coordinating rallies; and organizing and staffing phone banks.

Minn. Chamber of Commerce v. Gaertner, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 51334, 11-12 (D. Minn. May 7, 2010).

So yes, Sutton and Brodkorb just filed a complaint alleging a violation of a statute their friends at the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce fought hard to have declared unconstitutional. I'll leave commentary on the irony of the GOP complaining about illegal corporate contributions to others.

Update: Not only have they filed the complaint about actions under law declared unconstitutional, they filed it with the wrong agency. Here is the letter from the Executive Director of the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board stating that they're not accepting the complaint because they don't have jurisdiction over the enforcement of the statute.

We Shall Overcome

I followed a link from Balloon Juice over to a post by Roger Ebert about race in America. The thing that got Ebert writing was the reaction of whites in Prescott, Arizona to a mural outside a school that reflected the diversity of the students in the school. Ebert writes great stuff; I recommend the post at the link and his site in general.

At the end of his post, Ebert embedded this video of the Morehouse College Mens’ Chorus singing “We Shall Overcome.”

It’s beautiful and stirring; it’s also gospel music rendered in a very “classical” style. The first time I ever heard a choir from a “traditionally black college” in concert, I was struck by the fact that it did all the music, including gospel music and spirituals, in the same classical way.

I asked a choir director friend of mine (yes, the dog can, or maybe could, sing) who was from the south about that. He said he thought it was because black choirs did not want be stereotyped as just “black choirs.” That’s rather sad when you consider it for a moment.

It is also hugely ironic. The number of Lutheran (or other mainline white Protestant) church choirs that struggle — very often unsuccessfully — to sing spirituals authentically is as countless as the stars.

Technorati Tags: Morehouse College,We Shall Overcome,gospel music,spirituals,Roger Ebert

Polling Firms Crash and Burn

So this morning we were treated to another poll on the race for Governor, and with each poll the picture get murkier. This morning's release of a Pioneer Press / Decision Resources Ltd. shows all DFLers leading Tom Extra Conservative and Tom Moderate Conservative. But what it really demonstrates that the real problem polling this race is coming up with a likely voter model.

Over the past month and a half there have been four major polls on the Governor's race. Of the three that reported partisan identification numbers, the differences are huge (Rasmussen does not report party ID in their publicly available toplines.)

SurveyUSA / KSTP (5/3 - 5/5)
36 GOP
35 DFL
24 Independent

Humphrey Institute / MPR (5/13 - 5/16)
42 GOP
42 DFL
15 Independent

Decision Resources Ltd. / Pioneer Press (5/28 - 6/2)
39 DFL
32 GOP
2 Independence Party
24 Independent

So while this morning's poll results had to be good news for DFLers, polling results so far are entirely about party ID numbers. I'll bet if I gave you these numbers and asked you to predict the results of each poll, you'd probably come close to the actual results. Unless and until the party ID numbers across different polling organizations settle down into a tighter range of agreement, the value of each of these polls turns on their proprietary voter prediction models. In other words, we don't know much, and what we do know is pretty shaky.

Let’s see, there’s the aroma therapist, that’s one

And of course the chaplain, that’s two; we’ll allow for a handful of assorted buffers and groomers. But it still hard to see how Congresswoman Michele Bachmann could employ enough courtiers to have only two slots left for constituent service:

An independent analysis of her staff by AOL News confirms that at the end of 2009, Bachmann had just two legislative staffers out of a staff of 17, according to public records. At the same time, Bachmann's media staff at the end of 2009 included a communications director and two press secretaries.

Mitch says, well, she’s leading a movement, and doesn’t have time to legislate. Nor take care of her constituents, apparently.

A thump of the tail to Bill Prendergast who you can read at the first link.

Technorati Tags: Michele Bachmann,aroma therapists,constituent service

Into thin(er) air

A report arrived at the doghouse this morning that Drew Emmer — clansman to Tom Emmer — has vanished. At least his blog has. Whether this was part of a general sanitizing effort by the campaign, or it means that Drew is going to take a position with the campaign, only time will tell.

Update: Dump Michele Bachmann was able to retrieve some recent endorsements of YCRBYCH from the now defunct Wright County Republican blog.

Technorati Tags: Tom Emmer,Drew Emmer,Into Thin Air

ə-pŏl'ə-jĕt'ĭks

a defensive method of argument

Apologia, related of course, is a formal written defense of something you believe in strongly.

There is a special branch of apologetics called Christian apologetics, dedicated to a defense of the Christian faith.

Which is why it was the perfect term to use in describing Mitch Berg’s overheated musings in defense of the thoughtful Christian, Tom Emmer.

But Mitch’s irony warning buzzer has been permanently disabled, so it went right over his head.

Just thought I’d clear that up.

Update: Here’s the post at Shot in the Dark that I’m referring to.

Technorati Tags: apologics,apologia

Whistling past the Bradlee Dean

You can run but you cannot hide, indeed. That is the name of the band — You Can Run But You Cannot Hide — for which our Wagnerian friend over there is the frontman. The “heavy metal” — which seems a kind of light weight aluminum, at best — band’s name is taken from the notion that Jesus, like the Mounties, always gets his man. It is a charming notion, and it has served both Jesus and the Mounties pretty well. (Photo from Newsvine)

You know, in looking closer at the picture, I think maybe that’s a scarf or kerchief on his head with a pair of goggles; that still doesn’t entirely explain the metal bustier around his, er, chest. Maybe it’s more of a Mad Max look, but I’m sticking with the original imagery.

It seems odd that a person whose best trait is perhaps picking up used costumes at opera company garage sales would have achieved a moral voice in America. I’m sure stranger things have happened; perhaps readers will offer examples in the comments.

If the band concept is a stretch, the fact that Tom Emmer is a fan is not. Here’s a picture of a couple of Sigfried’s sidemen with candidate Emmer. (Photo from the MInnesota Independent) It’s from the recent Republican State Convention.

According to the Minnesota Independent, the Emmer campaign made a contribution to Dean’s, um, ministry; the campaign says it was just for “dinner tickets.” At all events, when the Minnesota Independent brought it to light, the Emmer campaign decided it better bring the matter up with the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board.

If you go to the Minnesota Independent link, you’ll see that it’s also reported that Emmer visited Dean’s house, attended a You Can Run But You Cannot Hide fundraiser, etc. & etc.

Sadly, there is now trouble in paradise. Our Gantry with a Guitar, in the act of being himself, uttered some haunting words:

“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’s May 15 radio show on AM 1280 the Patriot. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean continued. “That is what you are seeing in America.” [For such a young fellow, this Bradlee Dean sure reminds one of Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps.]

“The bottom line is this… they [homosexuals] play the victim when they are, in fact, the predator,” Dean said, before going on to make a claim that has no basis in fact: “On average, they molest 117 people before they’re found out. How many kids have been destroyed, how many adults have been destroyed because of crimes against nature?”

A lot of Republicans naturally got the vapors, and everyone, including the Emmer campaign itself, is employing the Pope Benedict defense. “Met a lot of people in my life,” says Emmer, “Bradlee Dean might have been one of ‘em. Hard to say.” Even — well, maybe not even — Mitch Berg penned an apologia.

Spot’s question is: Why bother?

One of Tom Emmer’s first ideas as a legislator was to castrate sex offenders. Well, okay, not all sex offenders. No word on his view of amputating the hands of kids who nick DVDs from Target.

He also wanted to cut funding for MN Aids Project because he didn't like an organization that deals with a sexually transmitted disease talking about sex.

He supports whatever limitation on abortion rights, regardless of the constitutionality, offered by MCCL, and brags about it.

He supported pharmacists getting to decide which drugs that were actually prescribed to you that they would dispense. (Spot wrote a little ditty about that one, Onward, Christian Pharmacists!)

He voted against the Final Wishes bill that would have permitted a gay or lesbian person to direct the disposition of a partner’s remains after death.

Last year, he voted against the anti-bullying bill.

Both bills passed the Legislature, by the way, but Governor Gutshot vetoed both of them. The anti-bullying bill was directed, but only in part, at preventing the bullying of gay students.

So, is it so hard to believe that Emmer has the instructions somewhere on how to roast gay people on a spit?

Thanks to MNO for the links about Emmer’s positions on these social issues.

Technorati Tags: Tom Emmer,Bradlee Dean,Bradlee Dean Smith,gays and lesbians,Sons of Liberty,You Can Run But You Cannot Hide,anti-bullying legislation,Final Wishes bill,MCCL,castration of sex offenders,AIDS

Mark Busgens, campaign manager

Rep. Buesgens has moved from figurehead to the helm of the HMS Emmer. Bursgens has been the campaign chair, but now he moves to replace David FitzSimmons as campaign manager.

Doug Grow calls calls Busgens “a non-traditional choice to run a statewide campaign.” Here’s the lede from Grow’s article at MinnPost:

The big question asked by political traditionalists is how Tom Emmer will move to the middle for the general election.

The answer has become increasingly clear: The Republican Party's endorsed gubernatorial candidate won't move. He'll stay right where he is, at the center of the conservative movement.

Emmer underscored his own passionate political beliefs by naming Rep. Mark Buesgens, R-Jordan, as his campaign manager.

Buesgens is not merely “non-traditional.” He’s Allen Quist with pep. He’s not at the “center of the conservative movement;” he’s got a seat in the balcony on the right-hand side of it.

On the core values of alienation, being wound way too tight, and failure of empathy, however, Buesgens is right there.

Rep. Buesgens has always been right there as a champion of the school vouchers crowd and sitting on early education and K-12 finance committees in the legislature. He’s also on the record in the interview at the link in favor of abolishing the Metropolitan Council. He’s Annette Meeks’ fellow traveler on that one.

Here’s are Buesgens’ legislative priorities from his page at the Minnesota House site:

Tax cuts
Education reform
Local control of government decision-making

When your only tool is a machete, every problems looks like a jungle!

Buesgens is not running to be governor, of course. But Emmer’s choice of Buesgens, like his choice of Annette Meeks, signals the kind of governor Emmer would be. Certainly not a consensus builder or someone who would welcome contrasting views of policy in his administration. And certainly not someone who would reach out to another political party.

As governor, the only thing that Tom Emmer would have to do is cultivate the mullet.

Technorati Tags: Mark Buesgens,Tom Emmer,Annette Meeks,Metropolitan Council,school vounchers

The lying liars at the Star Tribune

A few days ago the Star Tribune ran an AP story - presumably first published by the New York Times - on the Gazilla Massacre in the Mediterranean. The story contained a blatant lie about Hamas - claiming that the political group took over Gaza violently by force. As the media watchdog FAIR noted, Hamas had to take over by force only after they won legitimate elections in 2006, after which the US and Israel stoked a civil war between rival Fatah and Hamas, in which Hamas prevailed.

After getting a complaint from FAIR, the New York Times issued a correction:

An article on Tuesday about the deadly Israeli naval commando raid on an aid flotilla that had attempted to defy Israel's blockade of Gaza referred incompletely to the governance of Gaza by Hamas, the militant group that opposes Israel’s existence. While Hamas took over Gaza by force in 2007, as the article said, the group’s representatives had won elections there in January 2006, defeating the more moderate rival Palestinian group Fatah. Subsequent tensions between Hamas and Fatah forces in Gaza led to open fighting, and Hamas routed Fatah from Gaza in June 2007.

This is not just some trivial detail in a small story. Outside the Gulf of Mexico it was the biggest story in the world. And it makes a world of difference whether those ruling a state are winners of legitimate democratic elections or whether they have taken power violently.

When the AP story first ran in the Strib I immediately tried to get them to correct the error - I emailed editors several times, and called and left messages for them. Eventually, three or four days later, I got an email back from an editor asking for more information, which I provided. This editor, who I am not naming because I believe the problem at the paper is systemic and not due to him, essentially replied to me that editors don't even look at AP stories, they just decide whether or not to publish them.

When I asked for a correction, this editor replied that if there was a problem with the story I should contact AP, and that essentially the newspaper was not responsible for AP content it published. That's a pretty odd attitude from professional journalists - not caring about the veracity of what it publishes - but that is what the Strib has become.

I've argued before that the Star Tribune is becoming an impregnable fount of false narratives that panders to right wing authoritarians. This present case is anything  but an anomaly. When informed of its mistake, the New York Times admitted its error, and ran a correction, but the Star Tribune, when informed of the gross error, merely yawned and moved on.

Upsetting the selling environment

Many horrific acts and scenes escape our consciousness in this country because of the commercial nature of our news media - can't upset the selling environment!

For sheer perfection of story telling this picture (click for bigger version) should win a Pulitzer Prize. Kudos to AP photographer Charlie Riedel who captured this oiled and dying sea bird in Louisiana.

What honest education discourse looks like

I've written about Diane Ravitch's about-face on school choice and teacher accountability many times. Her courageous abandonment of right wing education prescriptions is not the stuff of whimsy - it was a change of heart many years in the making, borne of a true desire for quality education for American children. As the evidence rolled in of the failure of school choice and teacher accountability Ravitch had more and more doubts, finally resulting in a book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, in which she admits the error of her previous thinking, and recommends the dismantling of right wing education "reforms" and instead advocates investment in families with children.

In a piece appearing in next week's Nation magazine, Ravitch makes a straight forward apology:

Many people have told me that I should have known better, and they are right: I should have. But I didn't, and I am trying to make up for it now.

But Democrats' embrace of the right wing attacks on education has made her job more difficult:

Just at the point where I had made an ideological break from my past support of accountability and choice, the Obama administration came into office. I expected that Obama would throw out NCLB and start over. But, on the contrary, his administration has embraced some of the worst features of the George W. Bush era...

...The expansion of charters fulfills the dreams of education entrepreneurs and free-market advocates, who would dismantle public education if given the chance. Judging teachers by test scores is wrongheaded because students' scores are affected not only by what the teacher does but by such important factors as poverty, student motivation and family support. Yet only teachers will be held accountable.

...When Rhode Island authorities announced their intention to fire the staff at the only high school in Central Falls, their decision was hailed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama. I thought the decision was meanspirited and wrong. Last year the state commissioner of elementary and secondary education sent a team to the same school and said it was making progress. Why not build on that progress? Why fire the staff without evaluating anyone?

Ravitch concludes that the endpoint of current "reform" efforts is likely a worsening of education:

...Accountability, narrowly focused as it is, dumbs down education. Choice may enfeeble public education by draining away the best students and leaving what remains to the remnants of the public education system. 

None of the policies that involve testing and accountability—vouchers and charters, merit pay and closing schools—will give us the quantum improvement that we want for public education. They may even make matters worse.

If the education debate could really be forced to talk about the education of children, there would be no more "choice" and "accountability" policies. But education discourse is NOT about children - it is about the political fortunes of the attackers. Education discourse is a way for Republicans and wrong-headed Democrats to claim they care about education, while not doing anything to fix it and all the while gaining political advantage. The fact that Democrats engage in this charade is doubly depressing.

Mark Dayton comes to Drinking Liberally

The Strib’s Hot Dish Politics noted a couple of days ago that Mark Dayton is going to be a guest at Drinking Liberally. I am now informed that it was mentioned by one of the local television stations, too. All accompanied, of course, by the obligatory reference to the fact that Mark is a recovering alcoholic.

I don’t think that Mark has ever gotten a DWI.

We were unable to put together an appearance for Mark at DL at the time the other candidates came through for guest appearances; some of the candidates had a beer, by the way; some did not. Since he is running — strongly, by most accounts — in the primary, I thought it was only fair to give Mark a chance to appear before the handicappers at Drinking Liberally.

I invited him to come, and he graciously agreed; I think we have a date that will work now: July 22nd, a Thursday night, of course.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that there would be a certain amount of twittering — so to speak — about Mark’s appearance, but it’s in part a failure to appreciate Drinking Liberally’s purpose: providing comfortable and convivial society in which to discuss liberal politics. We meet in a bar, a public house, but the drinking isn’t an important part of it. Lots of attendees don’t drink alcohol. I do usually, but not always.

I can write without fear of contradiction that everyone reading this post, or everyone who read the Host Dish Politics post, or heard about the appearance on the television report, knows family, friends, and co-workers who are alcoholics, including some who are practicing, not recovering.

As the host of Drinking Liberally, I haven’t — and won’t — endorse a DFL gubernatorial candidate in the endorsement or primary contests. But I will say this: Mark Dayton is a public-spirited man who has contributed a lot of time, energy, and his own personal wealth to the DFL and the State of Minnesota over many years. He has also won state-wide races twice.

It would be disrespectful, naïve, and a mistake to fail to take Mark seriously because he battles a disease as common as alcoholism.

Steve Timmer, host of Drinking Liberally Minneapolis

Technorati Tags: Mark Dayton,Drinking Liberally,alcoholism

A few programming notes

First, tonight is Thursday (June 3rd), and we will have our regular Drinking Liberally meeting at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis, starting at six and ending whenever the last hardy crew members go home. The weather is lovely and we’ll undoubtedly be outside at the picnic tables. There may be a special DL announcement, too.

Second, Thomas Franks, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas and more recently The Wrecking Crew, will be Two Putt Tommy’s call-in guest on Quick on the Uptake on KTNF this afternoon at five. That’s AM 950 on your radio dial. Franks is one of the best observers of movement conservatism extant.

And lastly, probably because he couldn’t find anybody else willing to come on the radio after Franks, I’ll be on the show with Tommy tomorrow, five to six PM.

Technorati Tags: Drinking Liberally,331 Club,Thomas Franks

The law professor’s law professor

Until I read Jon Tevlin’s column today, I was unaware that the University of Minnesota Law School’s Professor Don (Donald C., if I remember correctly) Marshall died from a head injury he suffered in a fall at his home last Friday.

The last time I had Professor Marshall – I cannot call him “Don” – as a professor was 1973, but I used to see him at the grocery store once in a while in recent years; he always remembered who I was. Believe me, that says a lot more about Professor Marshall than it does about me. I even called him Professor Marshall in the grocery store check out line thirty-five years after being in his class. I drove past his house this weekend and wondered how he was doing.

I’ve encountered maybe a dozen people in my life who were at the absolute top of their game and without peer, people who could inform your understanding about the essence of some subject in a way that others simply could not match. Professor Marshall was one of those people. And if you had any sense at all, you were greedy for the experience of being in the presence of his intellect — and his intellectual generosity.

Professor Marshall — along, in my case, with Professor Jack Cound — was my first inkling that this lawyering business was harder than it looked. He’d ask you a question in class, and you’d make what you really thought — you callow fellow, you — was a brilliant answer. Then Professor Marshall would ask a couple of simple, disarming questions that revealed you for the intellectual lightweight you were. But he never made fun of anybody (we did plenty of that outside of class), and people left encounters like that — I know I did — resolved to kick it up a notch and get on a plane somewhere near the one the Professor inhabited.

There wasn’t anybody who bested the Professor in a Socratic dialog — he did get to ask the questions, which was the home court advantage, but still — but by the end of that first year, some students had gained enough skill and confidence to fence with him a little, a fact that gave him obvious satisfaction.

So, today is a sad day for me, made sadder by the fact I’ll never have the chance to take Professor Marshall aside in the grocery story and tell him what a great prof he was and how much he influenced my education as a lawyer. I meant to.

My advice is, if there is a Professor Marshall in your life, please don’t miss the opportunity to tell him or her what they meant to you.

The photograph is from Jon Tevlin’s column.

Technorati Tags: Professor Donald C. Marshall,University of Minnesota Law School

Freedom(TM) is a Bumper Sticker

If you have any sense of historical memory, the last 24 months have marked a tremendous shift in right-wing rhetoric. Not more than two years ago, we were told that to be for freedom was to be for terrorists. Gubmint wants to wiretap your phone? Well, if you're not a terrorist, you don't have anything to worry about do you? 'Merica, love it or leave it, and all that. Now we have quotes like this:

"The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice."

Any guesses on who penned this one? Which small gubmint, freedom(TM) loving conservative would analogize the State to a religious altar on which freedom is slain?

Answer: Anarchist Emma Goldman.

Certainly, it's not news to point out the similarity between left anarchism and right libertarianism/anarchism, but the ability for the Republican media apparatus to turn on a dime away from the big-government "security over freedom" rhetoric two years ago to the small-gubmint "talkin' 'bout freedom(TM)!" line of 2010 depends on the existence of the libertarian Right. Without a libertarian component to the Republican ideological universe, navigating from the wiretapping, library record snooping, unitary executive halcyon days of the Bush administration would have taken more than one-third of an election cycle. With it, the GOP simply tosses one set of talking points for another and reloads. More Atlas Shrugged, less Reflections of a Neo-Conservative.

MinnPost's Eric Black published a nice piece last week on political messaging and the GOP bumper sticker slogan "Honk if you love Freedom."

I’ve asked some people wiser in the ways of political messaging than I, and they have told me that the Dems need to stay away from the rhetoric of freedom. The Repubs own the word, and the argument that government is sometimes a freedom-bringer rather than a freedom-taker is too complicated and could not be fit onto a bumper sticker rebuttal to “Honk if you love freedom.”

The Dems need a whole different “narrative” that plays to their strengths, these message mavens say. Maybe something about “community.”

Republicans "own the word?" Well, if they do, that's a tremendous failure of Democratic messaging. The GOP line that "freedom(TM) is an absence of government" is the preferred message of the moment, made possible by the overwhelming minority status of the GOP in the government. But not more than 36 months ago, dissent was treason and spying on Americans was the price we paid for living in this country. This conservative dialectic between authoritarian and anti-authoritarian rhetoric is one fundamental reason that the US has been on a long, slow drift toward center-right politics.

Democratic messaging is not so flexible, nor has it provided a clear alternative narrative. There's one available, but would require Democrats to do something that they don't seem willing to do - adopt an aggressively anti-corporate line. Some of the biggest threats to the real freedom and economic security of Americans come directly from corporations, and the freedom(TM) being peddled by Republicans is really about the freedom of corporations. They are people, after all.

If the GOP has the libertarian right on which to rely for a refreshed message, the Democratic party has the anti-corporate progressive left to look to for their own. Given the #BPocalypse in the Gulf, the culpability of the financial industry in the 2008 economic collapse, etc., there are no shortage of examples of corporate abuse of "freedom(TM)". But right-wing spinners are always hard at work to take the failings of corporations and turn them into failures of government. You know, the Great Depression was caused by government spending, the #BPocalypse was caused by regulation, and the 2008 market collapse was the fault of a 1977 law to eliminate discriminatory lending practices and Fannie and Freddie. All of these events are indeed failures of government, but are failures of under-regulation. I don't have a bumper sticker slogan for that, but I'm sure one of our readers can help.

Bottom line: When Sarah Palin can accuse President Obama of being in the pocket of BP without actually giggling at the absurdity herself, you've got problems. And when there's not enough contrast between Democratic and Republican policy to make that message seem patently absurd, you've got bigger problems.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz.