Carnaval

'Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt'
Coined by the Roman poet Juvenal in the first Century in his Satires lamenting the continuing slide of his former Roman Republic into dictatorship.

Finally, the meeting of the masters of the universe in Davos ends, allowing us the time we need to stock up the booze, get our moves down, our bangles and beads ready for tossing, and our bodies greased for the press of the flesh that is Carnaval.
Dispatches from the front have been so depressing:
“I’ve never been as scared as I am about the world,” Donald Tsang, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said yesterday in Davos, Switzerland. “Nobody’s immune. You need decisive action. You need to inspire confidence.”
By Simon Kennedy and Jana Randow - Jan 29, 2012 3:00 AM GMT-0500

"While Soros, whose new book, Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States, will be published in early February, is currently focused on Europe, he’s quick to claim that economic and social divisions in the U.S. will deepen, too. He sympathizes with the Occupy movement, which articulates a widespread disillusionment with capitalism that he shares. People “have reason to be frustrated and angry” at the cost of rescuing the banking system, a cost largely borne by taxpayers rather than shareholders or bondholders.

Occupy Wall Street “is an inchoate, leaderless manifestation of protest,” but it will grow. It has “put on the agenda issues that the institutional left has failed to put on the agenda for a quarter of a century.” He reaches for analysis, produced by the political blog ThinkProgress.org, that shows how the Occupy movement has pushed issues of unemployment up the agenda of major news organizations, including MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. It reveals that in one week in July of last year the word “debt” was mentioned more than 7,000 times on major U.S. TV news networks. By October, mentions of the word “debt” had dropped to 398 over the course of a week, while “occupy” was mentioned 1,278 times, “Wall Street” 2,378 times, and “jobs” 2,738 times. You can’t keep a financier away from his metrics.
As anger rises, riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable. “Yes, yes, yes,” he says, almost gleefully. The response to the unrest could be more damaging than the violence itself. “It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.” Newsweek

A deterioration of Europe's debt crisis is the first thing analysts name when asked about economic threats in 2012. And by most accounts it's almost certain that things are going to get worse.

"It's going to blow up," said Harry Clark, head of Clark Capital Management. "They aren't doing enough to stop the problem."
The question is, just how bad will things get? Clark thinks several of the southern European countries will leave the euro and return to their previous currencies.
He says that will lead to massive bank failures in both Europe and the United States and plunge Europe into a "deep recession by the end of the first quarter of 2012."
Scarily, those aren't even the most dire predictions. Some fear the euro could disappear altogether, with Europe reverting to the type of ultra-nationalism that plagued the continent in the run-up to WWII.
Steve Hargreaves @CNNMoney

Here is a Der Spiegel story of the frightening trend they see emerging in Europe. For those who won't read it, the turn to the right is on the wheels of fears of Islam, and foreign immigration.

Any of the Islam-o-phobia, or anti-immigrant rhetoric sound familiar? The American political maelstrom adds nothing to the discussion of how we might right the world. We either deny that we have problems (climate change, debt, or justice) or send up vague memories of glorious times past that can be "re-claimed".

Respondents to Common Dreams coverage of Occupy Davos (WEF) included these two examples I copy here as indicative of a problem:
Posted by Wilber1 Jan 25 2012 - 12:41am

"I support OWS, I wasn't saying to not take part in the movement. I am just being realistic. How many people right now want to replace the system vs. how many want to simply spread the wealth a little more evenly, maybe do something on the environment? Relatively moderate changes. The question is, if the system does stay in place in the short term, even in a more humane, moderate form, can it sustain itself in the long run? What does keeping the system in place mean for poorer countries, or the environment? How will all of this impact our largely bi-partisan, reactionary foreign policy? Other countries are growing independent and standing up the US.
I agree that the movement is world wide, but it is at the present time very ideologically diverse. We agree that the current system sucks. Do we agree what to replace it with? How many are even aware of possible alternatives? Lots of work left to do."

Posted by skeptimist Jan 24 2012 - 8:27pm

"I don't think you can "make capitalism better". It's a mechanism like a chainsaw - best you can do is try to control it. Same for socialism. However, the answer to your complaints is out there and it's been working for hundreds of years. Look up Hutterites."

This frustration, this inability to construct even the beginning of what the alternative might look like in "our world", handcuffs them even before the terrorists cops grab them. They need to study viable options. The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy begins with the following premise: "Perpetual economic growth is neither possible nor desirable. Growth, especially in wealthy nations, is already causing more problems than it solves. Recession isn't sustainable or healthy either. The positive, sustainable alternative is a steady state economy." Learn More >>
Sharable.net is documenting the pragmatic implementation of the new commons.
These are but two examples of a world in the process of changing the root causes of our global crisis. Start here.

Persons of the Year

Persons of the Year-The Oligarchs

This was the year in which it was confirmed that corrupt politicians come in all flavors; ethnicities, colors, sexual orientations, and educational attainment levels. For anyone paying attention, the self interest of world leaders reached a level of such proportions that even the most docile acted up and out against them. It is yet to be determined if the activists have changed anything. The continued reliance on the processes of governance, without structural change, forebodes that where uprising happened, the net effect was to change the faces of the players, but not the game.

"Peanuts", first year psychology courses, ad-men and comedians all extol the truth of negative reinforcement, "don't care what you say about me, just say something". GM execs used to say of Nader, when he was busy critiquing the safety of their autos, he wasn't knocking the use of autos, (which claim 1 million lives annually), he was worried about them rolling over. Nader was occupying their space. He was critiquing them. He was not out advocating for something like public transportation.

As long as we validate the brutes, the greedy, the killers, by occupying their spaces, we insure that we are not contemplating what the alternative might look like.

No better evidence can be cited than the results of the COP 17 on global climate change that just ended in Durban, South Africa. There the players from all perspectives, pro-business, big oil, 350.org, or reps from the so-called 99%, pointed at "governments' policy" to increase, limit, change, control, or modify behavior by the imposition of rules. As if large third parties, can by the force, control the inclination of individuals to destroy their world. Evidence to the contrary abounds: speed limits, FDA's inability to regulate the food and drug industries, anti-smoking regulations, the SEC, are just the tip of a list, exclusively American, that would give credence to the observation that humankind is it's own worst enemy, and they are ungovernable.

Naomi Klein wrote a piece for the Nation that she discussed with Andrew Revkin here. "The piece begins with Klein’s conclusion, reached after she spent time at a conclave on climate sponsored by the libertarian Heartland Institute, that passionate corporate and conservative foes of curbs on greenhouse gases are right in asserting that a meaningful response to global warming would be a fatal blow to free markets and capitalism.

She challenges the environmental left to embrace this reality instead of implying that modest changes in lifestyle and shopping habits and the like can decarbonize human endeavors on a crowding planet."

These are statements well worth reading, within the context of seeing the world as left/right, corporate/individual, or as organized or randomized. What neither Andrew or Naomi can say, they do make their livings being pundits in mainstream media, is that the revolution, if you actually want it, is within our means. It is not dependent on powerful governments, or NGOs, or corporate reform.

What Gandhi knew, what MLK knew, was that margins are razor thin. The boycott is the easiest and most effective weapon for change. Outstanding examples are the refusal of American colonials to buy British goods after the passage of the Stamp Act (1765), the Chinese boycott of U.S. goods (1905) because of the poor treatment of Chinese in America, the refusal of Gandhi's followers to buy British-made goods in India, and the Arab League boycott (1948) of all companies dealing with the state of Israel.

The "market" and specific targets within it, cannot withstand a withdrawal of even 10% of their customer base. Here's a list of net margins.

Want to integrate a bus system, stop riding. Want to bring a consumer driven economy to its knees, stop buying. Want to change the global demand for carbon, stop driving. Don't appreciate one or another corporate policy, find out what they produce and stop buying it. Koch Industries is in the news a lot and produce many consumer goods. The Wonkette had some advice on the subject.

There are some very dedicated boycott organizers out there. Scan this site for inspiration. The point is to stop being driven by "their" agenda. That was the anti-message the OWS tried to deliver. The irony was that they validated (by occupying) Wall Street as the power center. What if all those college students prevailed on their institutions to stop dealing with the street? What if they implored their parents to move their money off "the street"? What if, like the example of these young Canadian delegates to COP 17, they turned their collective backs on the systems that oppress them?

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

Mahatma Gandhi.

Learning to count

You go girl

It is not enough to simply shout or sign that the system is unfair and thus has to be reformed. It would help if protesters knew how it was unfair and could target their rage appropriately. Protesters must learn to count.

OWS, strikes by British government workers, Greek citizens demanding political reform, are all doomed if the participants don't know how to count. The most recent example of the so-called liberal media getting it wrong and misguiding their readers occurred in today's NYT op-ed by Nicholas Kristof. In his article he recounts the confessions of a former Chase banker who cooked the country. He then goes on to report the findings of the Bloomberg revelation that has minds whirring; "as Bloomberg Markets magazine published a terrific exposé based on lending records it pried out of the Federal Reserve in a lawsuit. It turns out that the Fed provided an astonishing sum to keep banks afloat — $7.8 trillion, equivalent to more than $25,000 per American.
The article estimated that banks earned up to $13 billion in profits by re-lending that money to businesses and consumers at higher rates. The Federal Reserve action isn’t a scandal, and arguably it’s a triumph. The Fed did everything imaginable to avert a financial catastrophe — and succeeded. The money was repaid."
There's the rub, "the money was repaid".

To understand why the money was not repaid you have to know about an important fundamental: This is the definition of the Bond Carry Trade:
For the bond market, this refers to a trade where you borrow and pay interest in order to buy something else that has higher interest. For example, with a positively sloped term structure (short rates lower than long rates), one might borrow at low short term rates and finance the purchase of long-term bonds. The carry return is the coupon on the bonds minus the interest costs of the short-term borrowing. Of course, if long-term interest rates unexpectedly rose (and long-term bond prices fell as a result), the carry trade could become unprofitable.

The second fundamental is to understand that the long tradition of the Fed NOT signaling what moves it was about to make re. interest rates kept the process of a free market capitalism alive and cost players money in that they had to hedge (protect themselves) if the Fed were to change interest rates. Now the fed has spoken and told the players that they will not raise rates for at least two years. The effect of this is to allow the banks (the major players) to borrow Fed money at virtually no interest rate and invest the same money in long term treasuries. That is what they are doing with the majority of the money, not lending it to business or home buyers. They then pocket the difference, firm up their balance sheets, and return the loan when they want to.

What was lost to the Fed was the opportunity costs. Money they might have made in their portfolio had they not given it to the bankers for free.

Opponents of bailouts complain that to help "main street" or home owners, is impossible because of "moral hazard", picking winners and losers, giving one group an unfair advantage. But that is just what the Fed has done.

Imagine the following scenario for example. You own a failing cupcake business. The Fed decides that your business is critical; you employ people, are in the stream of commerce, and anchor a block of retail shops. They decide to bail you out. They lend you let's say 3 mil at no cost which you promptly invest in 30 year government bonds yielding roughly 4%. You pocket the 120k annual cash flow, (money the Fed would have earned) keep your business running, and when all turns bright again, you repay the original 3 mil loan. That opportunity doesn't exist for you. That is what is, has, and continues to be the unfairness that those who are suffering the consequences of Fed policy haven't been able to articulate. Make no mistake. Central Banks all over the world have made up some of the losses (most still remain off the books) of their member banks and allowed the underlying failures on investments wiped out in the crisis to fester. So housing value remains low, which limits tax revenue, which breaks governments ability to function (Teachers are fired, tuitions rise, services are privatized). Pension trusts losses mount and therefore are unable to meet their obligations. Businesses can't get loans, there is no job creation, and the economy craters.

Not to worry. the Fed triumphed and they are being repaid.

Enough is enough

Collee was an apple man. He grew them, picked and packed and shipped them himself from his several hundred acre orchard in the Shenandoah Valley. He brought Carrie and me an apple ladder and pointed toward a small grove where he kept his heirlooms; smokehouse, maiden's blush, and a variety of pippins. We strapped on pickers' vests, deep barrel chested leathers for collecting as you climb up into the trees. After we nearly toppled from the weight of it all we staggered back up to the farmhouse chomping on an apple that contained the nectar of the gods. I offered one to Collee and he refused: "I've had my last apple," he told us. "Every week for 60 years I've delivered apples to market. I would place a peck in the cab and eat as I drove. One day it occurred to me that I had eaten near a million apples. I surmised that that was all the apples God intended a man to eat. I quit then and there. Haven't had an apple since."

I brewed beer. English style ales. It is a relatively simple process, one you can learn, and was a great source of "real" beer in an era of PBR, Bud, and Corona piss. I never had a fail or any of the horror stories associated with brew your own. When we moved south I gave the works away. There were nothing but piss beers in Florida at the time, Sierra Nevada had to travel a great distance to get there, and so like Collee, I told myself I had had my last beer. Then we arrived in Maine. There is a vital micro brew industry here and it was easy to reconnect with a product. There are five breweries within 5 miles of where I live and we have visited them all. They make good beer.

I read an article in which a bar (Ebenezer's, Lovell, Maine) was mentioned as the best place in the country to sample Belgian beer. A perfect excuse for a day trip. We went and challenged the boss to tell me why my cost point was about to jump by a factor of three, and what all the fuss was about? He asked what our taste preferences were and when we told him we didn't appreciate fruit in our beer he offered that Coke nearly killed Belgian beer. The demand for sweet changed the brewers style in an attempt to keep up with the market BUT, there were many traditionalists that were making historic beers. The Trappists were the gold standard. This became one of those days. I'm sure this is old news to some of you, it brought us to our knees. We drank incredible beers and American crafters have learned the art.

I've done some research and I came upon this article which brought my attention to the economics of the enterprise. I am not moved to take on the cloth, but I appreciate the life lessons containing in the following quote:
"St. Sixtus brews just 60,000 cases of beer a year. The famous Westvleteren 12 sells for about $33 a case, the blond 6 is the cheapest at $23 for 24 bottles. That makes enough money to cover the costs of maintaining the abbey, where 28 monks work. There's also a little extra to help the needy. The brewery currently is running at maximum capacity. And the monks are not interested in raising prices or production, because that would require hiring more outside workers (they have three) and working with distributors."
An intentional community coming together, creating a great product, making enough money for themselves and those less fortunate, that is an ethic we can all learn from.

As we enter the gift giving season consider these other representative samples of great product being produced at other monasteries:
Trappist jams which distributes a variety of products from around the world.
Fruitcake, cheese, bourbon and fudge from Gethsemani Farms
Fruitcake, truffles, and honey
Simply divine cookies
Some of the world's finest liquors are crafted by monks.
and this story featured vinegar produced in the Hudson Valley

I am sure you can add others, please do, and any other examples of successful small scale commercial enterprises that suggest an alternative to business as usual.

Myth Busting

Myth Busting

For the first 6000 years of human organization armed forces were required to enslave or indenture a workforce to break their bodies doing something they didn't want to do; Build a pyramid, a temple, an edifice that ennobled the "king" who managed to employ those forces. Now we have evolved to the point that thousands line up for the privilege of enslaving themselves. We have instituted a set of fundamental myths that reinforce the process of self enslavement: There is a protestant work ethic that purports to demonstrate a person's grace through the observation of their hard work. Thank you Martin Luther.
We have instilled in the culture a corruption of Spencer's observation of natural selection and reduced "survival of the fittest" to a mano-a-mano fight for life.
We have embedded "what do you do for a living" so deep into our language that our job is now synonymous with our human value and the lack of job implies death.
Compensation for labor is said to be proportionate to the value of the earner and, as if you didn't have millions of examples of that myth, the new data by-product of OWS is proof enough, that those who have the most, do the least.

Of course 6000 years of this has made us insane and thus we contradict ourselves. We worship at the feet of the lucky; the heirs, the attractive, the criminal, those who have done nothing to deserve the inordinate wealth they possess. We devalue the uncompensated work of the people that perform our most critical tasks; rearing our young, or being companions for our aged. When we try to reform these behaviors we deflect from the personal to the general and get caught in the impossibility of revolution. There is nothing wrong with Marx's foundation logic. He nailed the issues all those years ago. What confounds his intellectual heirs is that portion of human activity that seems to bred in the bone, or worse, is excited by behavior en-masse, our fears and demons.

The myth of scarcity has forced us into a hoarding behavior. If there is not enough to go around, I must ensure mine.
The myth of the rugged individual is actually getting some juice from the Republican campaigns. Thank you Ayn Rand. We are not going to march 7 billion people across a prairie and settle them in single family homes. We are linked to each other from the womb to the grave and its time to acknowledge that mutuality.
The myth that people will not perform critical tasks necessary for our survival is belied by the fact the majority of us take out the trash, mow the lawn, read the bedtime story and make the coffee. The way we compensate for those tasks that require special talents or for which people will not volunteer is upside down. Why the basketball player, who would do his/her job for nothing makes more than the garbage man is absurd. We should compensate inversely to the degree the person doesn't want to do the job or perform the service. I love it when on a snow day the announcement goes out, "all non critical employees" need not show up for work today. They should never show up. They should be paid to stay home and save us the fortune it costs us in infrastructure to support them.

First Principles:
To fill the policy vacuum being created by OWS lets begin at the beginning and establish a set of first principles upon which we can build a workable society.
My first principle is that people have choice and the behavior of others is, (with few exceptions) none of my business. Intentional communities can come together to articulate common objectives, distribute responsibility, and achieve their objectives. Self selection happens everyday in the lunchroom, the disco, the neighborhood, the place of worship. So be it. The tribe, the club, the gang are viable forms of small scale groups that have the ability to unify around common cause. They don't delegate or elect representatives. They assume direct responsibility for the preservation of their lives.
Let's start here. We can determine how we get to the bigger issues later. For now small groups inventory our stuff, our capacity, our talent, and see what we have and how we can exploit it, in common. Enough of the madness of go it alone.

notes for a constitution in process:
We have to come to terms with stuff and when it matters a lot what other people do. Take for example the Atlanta man who in the midst of a drought consumed 60 times what the average person uses and got caught. The city can roll him back. What of the person flying the private jet, or driving the Escalade, or killing the tuna. The idea that affordability, one's ability to pay, is the sole criteria for a person's consumption is so disrespectful of the context in which we live, that the behavior is going to have to be checked. How? That's the beginning of the process. That's what OWS is starting to contemplate. It took us centuries of unbridled capitalism to get us where we are today. To unravel is going to take time and thought.
The idea that a person can behave in such a way as to suffer a medical consequence of their indulgence is a classic example of the effect of us all having to pay. The victim of smoking or alcoholism, or speeding, or drug abuse, drags us into his health care system. He may be "able to pay" but the fact is he syphons capacity away as cruelly as the water abuser in Atlanta. I should not be asked to pay for his abuse. We live in a world of limited capacity IF we extract resources at irreplaceable rates with no consideration of conservation. We have to muzzle the pigs at the various troughs and limit the excesses of unbridled capitalism. When we agree on limits, we can proceed.

And Now?

Occupy Wall Street reminds me of the occupation of the administration offices of Columbia U. and other universities across the globe in the late 60's. Net effect?; Nada. It seemed that what those protestors wanted 40 years ago was to change the occupants of the chairs, not fundamentally change the system. What was then, and is still required, is a fundamental change in the system. The system wherein Columbia U faculty is revealed to be co-conspirators in the financial collapse of 2008. See what the University intends to do about the problem here. For the forty ensuing years from the time of the protest and the revelations from the film "Inside Job", students were content to pay their money and earn the tickets they needed to be employed in the companies that perpetrated the greatest financial crisis in history. What they had protested for and won was greater inclusion in the system. They got it. Women and people of color now have equal opportunity to exploit and game a system in which they too can become members of the 1% club.

Many students from Columbia U are on the streets and participating in Occupy Wall Street. While celebrating the act up quality of these actions the fact is that they will come to naught unless protesters focus, and get very specific about who they are targeting. Wall Street is amorphous. It is at home in Greenwich, at work on K street, and their puppets are peppered all through Capitol Hill. Lap dogs are fighting any reform that might prevent the next collapse, any tax reform, and any remedial legislation. The extent of the spider web that is Wall Street extends to international banks, the IMF, and the World Bank, and the collusion of governments world wide. Nothing less than a world in evolution is going to change the foundations on which Wall Street thrives. Therefore protesters are going to have to get very strategic, If, and this is a big if, they really want to change any element of system that exploits them.

As long as the protesters understand the symbolic nature of their protest, and exploit the excessive police push back, they can gain the time they need, and the public forum in which some of them can specify what they demand in outcomes, and the policy changes that will correct the underlying problems they identify.

Maybe the single most horrible aspect of the collapse that has prompted this act-up is the foreclosure crisis.

Not only did Wall Street, (and here I use the terms to indicate the interlocking system of money men in allied agencies), create the systems that crashed on the backs of home owners, they continue to refuse to rectify the conspiracy they created, that is throwing people out of their homes. Let's demand that Fannie and Freddie reset the principle on the loans they control. We own them. We ought to demand they modify mortgages. The same energy that is being harnessed in protest on Wall Street should move to Washington in front of the responsible agencies. We can do this.

In terms of the pragmatics, what we can do to implement an outcome that will signal a change is gonna come, is the boycott. We vote with our pocketbooks. Let's see if there is any willingness to "sacrifice", do without the toys, that are manufactured by the companies represented on Wall Street. Let's begin with the hallowed. Don't like the fact that Apple off-shores the manufacture of all those devices that Steve Jobs created, Boycott Apple. That's what it is going to take. To get beyond the pettiness of personal gain we are going to have to accept our complicity in a system that while it is working to our advantage, is exploiting others. We've been here before. When it was revealed how and by whom, and at what wage rate our sport shoes were being made, we were asked to boycott in protest. We didn't. To protest is easy. To delay the purchase of an Iphone, or a pair of Nikes, that's an act of courage.

We are going to have to rethink what we mean by jobs. We are going to have to get beyond the myth of so called "free markets". We are going to have to stop adoring the rich, and being jealous of the less fortunate who get assistance in life support. We are going to have to fundamentally change a system that is extractive, that measures GDP in terms of the exploitation of nature, and that extends the worst aspects of capitalism to developing nations. We cannot count on politicians and organizers of any stripe that suggest what is needed is more inclusion, more of the same, more, so called, infrastructure development. Roads and bridges and cars got us here. They are not the way out.

Rotten to the Core

The school year has begun. It reflects the triumph of the "reactors" to the cultural changes that were behaviors of the actors of the 60's. Nowhere is their impact more keenly seen than in the new "national core standards of education" that is being adopted around the country.

The curriculum doesn't reflect any accommodation to the real world implications of the universal accessibility of knowledge, cross border economic activity, environmental degradation, or full earth pressures on the capacity of the earth to sustain its ever rising population. It is as if the last 50 years of educational progress never happened. This curriculum guide would look familiar to any educator from the 60s. There is lip service paid to some diversity in the suggested readings that teachers might pull from, but the thrust, tone and temper of the core curriculum is red state, Kansas, conservative. It is a finger up the ass of the reformers who would have our children integrated, capable of speaking to others in their native tongue, aware of the moral and ethical responsibilities of being a passenger on spaceship earth, and sensitive to the gender, race, ethnicity, age, class, and specific history of their fellow human beings. It is a testimony to the persistence and perseverance of those for whom change is a threat. It is the perpetuation of the school as factory, with universal evaluations, and the denial of individuation of students in the process. It is a political and contemptuous document. It is a perfect representation of professionals caving to the mean spirits of the reactors.

Though we are constantly told that reactors hate the elite liberal establishment and that it is the dominance of those persons who have stolen their country from them, that provokes their ire. I believe the objects of the reactors' contempt are not so far afield; They hate their own. While they dwell in/on the over written, over studied, over analyzed, fin de siecle, what is most galling to them is that their own children continue to turn on them with a fury. (Footloose 2 is about to be released). I thought that was history you say. Can't we get past those persistence analyses of the culture wars? The fact is that those wars have never ended. Their children elected O'bama. Their parents reference back to Reagan, harboring a desire for a big daddy that will spray hose the protestors, and reaffirm the cowboy tradition,

The turn against status quo happens in waves. That is why it is so persistent. Whereas coastal inhabitants of big integrated cities were the hot beds of the breakout of counter culture, it is only recently that, let's find the appropriate symbol, earrings started to be worn by local postmen in Salina, or full sleeve tats are seen on the arms of the short order cooks in Wichita.

In 2004 Thomas Frank, What's The Matter With Kansas, got real smart and historical about the process of the conservatives effectively taking over a group of people who should, by all rights, loath them. And that was before the Tea Party, before Obama, before the financial crash that threatens the very ground they plow on. Now they are only more entrenched.

Liberals fear these people. They fear the push back. They accommodate them despite all the evidence that they have been rendered ineffectual. They tolerate their rights to have hair brained opinions, their pro any business activity, their anti science, anti compassion, anti democratic, venomous rhetoric. The Core Standards is evidence of the depth of the fear of alienating these radicals.

No one I speak to has read the Core Standards. "They" take the time to write them. We should take the time to read them. Here are written the specifics of how it is that we will condemn our children to a life of missed opportunity. It has been so refined to conform to the 'taste" of the reactors, certified by the professionals who vetted it, and passed the political stress test, that it insures our students will have no tools to effectively negotiate their world.

The debate re. the effectiveness of this curriculum, see comments in the NYT is joined by those persons on the front line of the impacts of these dicta. Teachers argue with administrators re. whether teachers will be hand-cuffed by these standards and how they will be evaluated.

No one challenges the content of the curriculum. The chapters on English language skills and how through them students will also touch on social studies through readings in non fiction are so moribund as to be hilarious. Take for example the reiteration of a curriculum component I suffered through all those years ago. "The ability to write logical arguments based on substantive claims, sound reasoning, and relevant evidence is a cornerstone of the writing standards, with opinion writing—a basic form of argument—extending down into the earliest grades."

Now I imagine two alternatives to this standard: 1. Crap detection. By subjecting students from the earliest years to media hype, exploitation, hyperbole, exaggeration, outright lies, false claims, bad data, and marketing ploys, students will learn how to recognize these propagandistic means of mind shaping and develop the tools to resist them, They will also study political speeches, legal arguments, and debate techniques that are designed to obfuscate the truth. or, conversely 2. they will study the techniques of the big lie, the exaggeration, the creation of bad data, the fallacious argument, and marketing technique. They will make them their own.

Of course reactors are victims of and perpetuators of the big lie so when you peruse the non prescriptive but suggestive reading list you see the continued veneration of the founding fathers, the Bard, and the mundane. So Twain is represented by Tom Sawyer not Huck and Orwell's reading suggestion is Politics and the English Language not How the Poor Die

A Prof at Va. Tech looked at the "standards of learning" from 2009 and formed the following opinion re. how they are so much self serving propaganda.

There are alternatives, effective parents are going to have to create them. All of the following examples fall neatly into a world of ideas that so gall the reactors.

Bucky Fuller used to give a talk to that began with his blowing up a balloon on which was printed a globe. He tossed it among the children and asked them to find the spot where they were from. He grounded them on earth, and suggested that they work from the grand to the particular when learning their sense of place. It begins an understanding of where am I and shifts away from the parochialism of state citizenship. Having established that we live on a water planet we might build an aquarium in every learning environment and in the process create a microcosm that requires sensitivity to the delicate nature of eco-balance. By placing learners in a position of care re. the health and welfare of this micro environment we establish a baseline of human responsibility. We drill down into this environment and allow students to examine the structural nature of this/their world. As they examine the building blocks of life forms they are introduced to the concept of their place in the continuum of life. As the living elements in their aquarium have adapted so too have the creatures on the earth and the myriad of those forms are identified at least in the largest categorical forms. Moving through an overview of the evolutionary process they come to terms with the "family of man". We have begun the examination of "who I am". As we have come to appreciate the variety of adaptation of the creatures in our pool, we can begin to appreciate the same adaptive practices on earth. We examine the flexibility and mutability of creatures in their struggle to survive. We observe the art and culture that are the building blocks of adaptation. We realize that individuals live within the context and frameworks of groups. Within those groups there is shared responsibility and by sharing, the greater good for all is obtained.

You can see how this evolves. It is but one alternative to the linear, hind-bound, curriculum of yesterday. I wouldn't even broach english as a subject.. I would teach form, style, and manner in the context of substantive content.

I would introduce "foreign" language at pre-school, and again, as I have said in this blog, I would pull my kids out of school, form a cluster of up to 10 others, hire a teacher set, and turn them loose.