Unpleasant Truths

Corporate personhood

I am an American citizen.  My government, in part created by me, insists that I act within certain norms:  that I be a "good citizen."  If I fail to do so, I must pay penalties (after due process of law).  That's a basic part of the social contract we all agree to as Americans.  In fact, it's a necessary part:  as part of a society I surrender certain rights to that society (i.e. the right to avenge acts against me by committing acts to that person) in order to create a stable society.  I believe that concept is desirable and necessary.

Corporations are created by me.  I mean that in the legal/constitutional sense.  The government I created/participate in/am a part of has passed laws that allow corporations to exist (see Dean Baker's The Conservative Nanny State).  The Supreme Court, long ago, assigned corporations elements of "personhood" in that they are separate legal entities from those who own them.  Yes, that is a legal fiction, but has been affirmed over and over.

If I must be a good citizen, why does a corporation not?  If I can suffer the death penalty for committing certain crimes, why do corporations not, potentially, live under the threat (again, after due process) of "corporate deaths" if they fail to act as good, responsible citizens?  Can it possibly be true that the only punishments possible for these behemoths are fines?  Yes, I know that, in theory, corporate heads can be held criminally liable for acts of their companies, but when does that actually happen?

I'm not sure I buy the idea of corporate personhood, but I find it impossible to see any logic in the idea that this fictional legal entity has more legal rights than I do:  that it can subvert all other moral realities except the mindless desire to pursue profits, that it can buy itself access (yeah right--just "access") to politicians that actual, breathing people cannot (for instance).  I can be arrested for all sorts of "crimes" that corporations regularly commit:  extortion, political influence peddling, bribery, to name but a few.  But somehow, somewhere, we as a society have decided that corporations, in their pursuit of profit, can ignore them all.

The above paragraphs were written and stored before the BP Gulf disaster.  They are even more urgent now, perhaps even prescient.

Glenn Greenwald (subscription required), when writing about the Citizens United case responded to some of his critics who doubted the "corporate personhood" concept by noting that the dissenters (including John Paul Stevens who wrote that dissent) on the Court did not challenge this concept in their opinion, and pretty much left his argument at that.  Intimation:  the very concept is such settled law that no legal scholar will, any longer, challenge it.

I'm a big fan of Greenwald, but I think he was too parochial here.  As a society we need to begin thinking farther "outside the box" (sorry, I hate that cliché).  We need to begin, again, more forcefully guarding ourselves against these money-eating monsters in the name of a civil society.

No, I am no socialist.  I believe very much in the free enterprise system, as long as it is tempered by a reasonable countervailing attention to individual rights.  The old constitutional saw works well here:  "your rights end where mine begin."  We have swung way too far toward corporate interests and away from individual:

• Isn't Walmart subverting law with many of the strategies it uses to resist unionization in its stores?  Where is the enforcement?  It accomplishes this only because it knows no one will hold it accountable.
• Is there really any virtue in the "takings doctrine," that suggests any limit on corporate profits from law are due, by the people, back to that corporation for interfering with its ability to make money?  (And while we're at it:  if we owe corporations money for limiting their profits, do they not also owe us for ruining the place where we live?)

I'm posting this now but will continue to revise it.

Bill Gates and Education

As reported to me by ProPublica:  Bill Gates Offers Stimulus Advice by Christopher Flavelle: Bill Gates waded into the stimulus debate Tuesday, calling for states to be more ambitious in the way they spend stimulus money earmarked for public education. Speaking to the National Conference of State Legislatures in Philadelphia, Gates urged states to increase online learning, better assess both pupils and teachers, and create more schools modeled on charter schools, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. “Our schools need to get better, or our economic positioning relative to others will get worse,” said Gates.

Here we go again.  "I'm rich so listen to what I say about [insert issue here]."

The last I heard Mr. Gates had NO educational background and was a college drop-out.  He has seemed to become a regular purveyor of advice to the nation's schools.  As a 25-year-teacher, I'd like to say that he is invariably wrong.  Without going into the long, extremely complex problems with this particular speech, let me say that I know of few schools without access online --almost always high speed--and few teachers (especially new teachers) who lack the knowledge to get public students using the Internet, he misses a lot of necessary background learning required for students to effectively use said Internet.

Kids are whizzes at texting, less so at Emailing (most text now and rarely use Email accounts).  Their writing skills are awful (but getting better), as are their reasoning skills.  I often ask students to doonline research.  They cannot 1)  distinguish legitimate websites from those that are not; 2)  put words together to make a cogent search string, often trying one search and telling me "they can't find anything."  Other computer-use skills seem to pass by many.  The computer/keyboarding teacher who taught next door to me would often get papers handed in where students hadn't bothered to spell-check, for instance, in spite of her REPEATED efforts trying them to get them to do so.  (I graduated from high school in 1967 and took touch-typing in either 1965 or 1966.  What I would not have given, back then, to have a "spell checker" on my manual typewriter.)

I also, disappointingly, hear lots of talk about "charter schools," which are nothing more than private schools by a different name.  I hear president Obama talking about them, for God's sake.  The great leveler of America is its access of education to all.  Charter schools will, in time, guarantee that regular public schools will become dumping grounds for those students charter schools will not accept.

Mr. Gates clearly needs to have some knowledge of public education before he comments on it.  The possession of vast fortunes means, often, that a person was in the right place at the right time, not necessarily that he or she has/had some sort of special knowledge about a particular field of study, especially one which is unrelated to the fortune he or she has accumulated.

This speech, like so many others of his, is full of platitudes which lack any sort of meaningful specificity, and prove beyond reasonable doubt that he simply doesn't know what he is talking about, at least not when it comes to education.

Maybe, just maybe, instead of these harangues, Mr. Gates ought to work on developing a piece of system or office software that isn't inherently inferior to a previous version of his own work.  And maybe, for once, evaluations of our educational system might be left to those who actually teach.  That would be a pleasant change.

The Good Old MSM

My thinking this day has moved beyond berating singly vacuous incidents in the MSM like Michael Jackson's death and the over-the-top bemoaning of the passing of 92-year-old Walter Cronkite.

What is increasingly apparent is that the main stream media will, whenever possible, inflate a non-news story beyond all reason as an excuse not to report anything that resembles actual news.  "If we are 'covering' Michael Jackson," an NBC corporate head might say, "we won't have to mention Iraq or Afghanistan or the way Shell is treating Nigerians in the Niger River delta (insert your true news story here)."

These events are not tragedies for the MSM, they are opportunities to further avoid mentioning real, hard but tough news in favor of missing blonds.  It's incredible but unmistakably true.

Walter Cronkite

It's fascinating to me that all the networks are, it seems, continuously beating their breasts about the passing of a 92-year-old icon.  He is featured on ALL news programs, all the time.

Cronkite was, for the most part, good.  What's supremely ironic about this nonstop mourning is that I'm sure Cronkite himself would hate it and insist that the media report on actual NEWS, maybe after a brief mention of his passing.

Particularly egregious are the eulogys of the current crop of "anchors," who are as far from being "journalists" as it is possible to be:  pretty vacuous faces who are little more than stenographers (see Glenn Greenwald) and whores for Beltway conventional wisdom.

Late in his life Cronkite bemoaned what he saw happening to journalism.  How interesting it is to watch the practitioners of the "new 'journalism'" act like their status is even in the same universe as his was.

One of the current crop of network fools mentioned, yesterday, that "Cronkite cashed in his one non-objective chip when he came out against the Vietnam War."  At least he believed he HAD a chip.  Where were these anchors when we went to war in Iraq? -

The Today Show, July 10th

The Matt Lauer, MSM, Inside the Beltway show has performed yet again.

Why is Obama's popularity down, Lauer asked of Dee Dee Myers and Pat Buchanan early this morning.

Myers:  I'm 100% defending Obama and his actions, blah blah blah.

Buchanan:  The Stim is a failure and we need more tax cuts blah blah blah.

None in this little gab session, of course, approached the reality of what is really happening.  The assumption, beyond question, is that if Obama's numbers are down it's because his actions are "too liberal."  In order to recover, the president needs to move toward a more "centrist" (!?!?!) position and embrace, among other things, further cuts in payroll taxes.  Myers:  status quo, he's (we've) got problems.  Buchanan:  move right.  Yawn.

Not entirely, of course, but I cannot help but believe that our president is losing support because he is, slowly but surely, becoming a huge disappointment to the left--to those who significantly helped him get elected.  There's no need here to tick off the ways in which he (the president) has failed in his promises, and "incrementalized" his way into a huge mess--a larger mess than he inherited.

The big, bold promises of the campaign are nowhere to be found.  Equality for the LGBT community, the rule of law, the ending of Bush-era state secrets?  All have fallen flat.  I'm past "just wait and see."  I'm to "get with it, sir."

If I was asked, this day, whether or not I "supported" what Obama has done so far, how would I answer?  It would depend on how nuanced the questions were, of course.  A flat "support" or "not support" would be difficult (and a meaningless stand-alone question).  Is he better than Bush?  Maybe 1,000%  Are his actions helpful?  Only sometimes.  Is he becoming encompassed by the "Beltway Bubble?"  Almost certainly.  Is he being led by the nose by traditional Wall Street thinking?  Yep.

How disappointing.  What tremendous opportunities have already been lost.  How many more will there be?

Coulter

This is the last thing I'll ever say about her, and I won't repeat her name.

I don't know who this person is, and I sometimes don't think she does either.  Otherwise clear-headed pundits are constantly shocked at her verbiage and behavior.  And, of course, this impels them to write about it.

This means more ink spilled over her and feeds her growing media empire, making her (I'm sure) a multimillionaire.

So what?  Can anybody with even a modicum of sense take her seriously?  I don't see how.  Simply being outrageous is her business model, and she has found she can draw more attention by being outrageous from the far right wing than she could from the left.  What does she actually believe?  Nobody knows--probably not even her.

Apparently there's some new outrage over something she's said about the murder of Dr. Tiller.

It was outrageous.

I'm shocked.

And, by the way:  if American conservatives want to be taken seriously as a sober, thinking movement in the American framework, they're going to have to eliminate voices like hers from their litany of opinion.

Guns and gun ownership

In a perfect world, I agree with those on the side of limiting ownership and sale of guns, and absolutely support bans on assault rifles.

The sad truth, though, is that America is awash in guns; we probably have as many weapons as people, maybe more.  It is simply not realistic to talk about any significant effort to limit gun ownership.  People who own them are far too intent on keeping them and any effort to seriously limit them will run aground each and every time.

As with other "absolute divide" issues (like abortion), it is difficult to see how this cultural divide can be bridged.  As a rural resident it is fascinating to observe the fervor with which gun owners cherish their weapons.  I travel frequently to Chicago, and it is equally fascinating to observe urban-Americans hold and espouse the opposite attitude.

(Full disclosure:  I own four guns myself, three of which are collector's German Lugars I own as investments, and which have more than doubled in value in the ten to fifteen years I have owned them.  I do not shoot them and to do so would lessen their value.)

We need rational policy on guns, but any policy must take into consideration the obvious fact of current ownership and accept, however reluctantly, that mass ownership of weapons in this country is not going to change.  The "culture war" the screeching Right proclaims is surely a fiction, but an attempt to limit gun ownership would be one way to make it a reality.

Iranian Elections

The Mullahs overplayed their hand. They are religious leaders but they don't appear to have much understanding of political realities.  Maybe Ahmadinejad did win (even though I doubt it), but certainly not by the margins reported.  While I wish no deaths or injuries to the Iranian public (thinking specifically of young Iranians who will be at the forefront of the opposition), my hopeful (and probably naive) mind thinks back to the late '80s and early '90s in Eastern Europe.

This all reinforces a pet theory of mine:  true democracy is evolutionary.  When stomachs are full and personal safety is assured (see Maslow's Hierarchy), people want a say in how their lives are managed by their governments and democracy, in fits and starts, erupts.  This is probably not yet true in rural Iran, but seems to be in Tehran and other cities. We might be witnessing the start of something remarkable.

Update:  All you need to know about the Iranian elections is here.