Why Harvard?

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

“But the Trumpist effort to destroy Harvard and other elite universities — for that is clearly their intention — will do vast damage to our nation’s future.” Paul Krugman

           FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

Huffington Post

The dumbing down of the Republican party has a history long before I began to write about it in The Huffington Post. The attempt to dumb down Harvard University that Paul Krugman is talking about, by wanting to control even its curriculum and course content, is the latest attempt to bring down our educational system to the Republican Party’s dismal intellectual level.

When one political party needs ignorance to keep its followers in compliance, believing whatever the party hacks want its followers to believe, its messages will be based on conspiracy theories, rumors, or made up fictions, as Trump does with his accusations that Harvard has anti-Semitic policies.

His habitual lying hides the unpleasant truth that he just wants to pick the wallets of his followers. It’s why the poorest Americans live in Republican-controlled red states.

I first witnessed it in 2015 during the CNN Republican candidate debate that seemed to be a prolonged campaign to discount almost all scientific facts, as well as intelligent discussion of the most important issues of the day.

Especially scary was Donald Trump saying if we build up our military enough, we won't have to negotiate with anybody. Or Marco Rubio, the seemingly most moderate Republican, endorsing a 1,900 mile fence along our entire border with Mexico (or double fence, says Dr. Ben Carson) over mountains and rivers, or Carli Fiorina saying that Planned Parenthood was aborting live babies to harvest their organs.

But the anti-intellectual, anti-science bias goes much further and deeper. It is in fact an almost totally American phenomenon that Republicans have taken advantage of in an attempt to dumb down the electorate to levels that would even deny evolution.

Why would anyone not want to support public education, when it educates more than 80 percent of our students? The result is that higher education is also falling behind.

According to the National Research Council, only 28 percent of high school science teachers consistently follow the National Research Council guidelines on teaching evolution, and 13 percent of those teachers explicitly advocate creationism or "intelligent design," said Psychology Today in a very damning 2014 article entitled, Anti-Intellectualism and the Dumbing Down of America:

"After leading the world for decades in 25-34 year olds with university degrees, the U.S. is now in 12th place," said Psychology Today. "The World Economic Forum ranked the U.S. at 52nd among 139 nations in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010. Nearly 50 percent of all graduate students in the sciences in the U.S. are foreigners, most of whom are returning to their home countries"

What else was debated in 2015, before Trump won his first term in the White House? Republican candidates were echoing the Republican platform that advocated the deportation of all illegal aliens, would abolish or cripple whole government agencies (including the Environmental Protection Agency), shut down the federal government over Planned Parenthood funding, and maintain that a fertilized egg is a viable human being that can't be aborted.

I reported then (in 2015) journalist Chris Hedges said in a PBS interview that President Clinton in co opting moderate Republican positions, such as deregulation of the financial industry, putting 100,000 more cops on the street, and 'reforming' welfare, had driven the Republican Party to "insanity".

That’s as good a description of what Trump’s MAGA Republicans are attempting to do again. Isn’t it the perfect definition of insanity—doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results?

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Where are the Job Openings?

Popular Economics Weekly

Calculated Risk

The number of job openings increased to a series high of 10.9 million on the last business day of July, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job openings increased in several industries, with the largest increases in health care and social assistance (+294,000); finance and insurance (+116,000); and accommodation and food services (+115,000).

Health care job openings surged because the Covid-19 Delta variant is filling hospitals again, while surging consumer spending on leisure and travel is creating a higher demand for jobs in finance, accommodation and food services.

And now we have looming school openings, which could foster even more job openings, if teachers are reluctant to return to work because of conflicting mask mandates in red states, which I reported last week, and induces classroom shutdowns with quarantines affecting those not vaccinated or wearing masks.

As of September 2, over 5 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic, reports the American Academy of Pediatrics. Although a lower percentage of them are hospitalized, it is putting a burden on school openings.

The number of children and teens suffering from the coronavirus-borne illness COVID-19 exceeded 250,000 for the first time since the start of the pandemic in the week through Sept. 2, a worrying trend coming just as they return to school in person.

The current 7-day moving average of daily new cases (153,246) increased 4.9% compared with the previous 7-day moving average (146,087), said the CDC. The current 7-day moving average is 123.6% higher than the value observed approximately one year ago (68,533 new cases on July 20, 2020).

It really looks like there is too much uncertainty keeping many workers from returning to work. Total hiring slipped for the first time this year. Job hires fell by 160,000 to 6.7 million, with hiring in the retail sector down sharply. This is while separations rose 174,000 to 5.8 million. This includes those fired and those who left the job.

What will bring them back? More vaccinations and mask mandates will be most effective, according to experts, with CNN saying President Joe Biden will push for vaccine mandates and testing programs as part of a revamped approach to ending the pandemic.

As American students return to classrooms, battles over masks and vaccine requirements for older children have erupted in school districts around the country, as I’ve said. Health officials say they expect vaccines to be authorized for children under 12 in the next several months, but parents have become frustrated at the pace with which the process is unfolding.

So, although the huge number of job openings show economic activity speeding up, some of the country still needs convincing that the coronavirus pandemic must be vanquished.

Harlan Green © 2021

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

 

What is the Bully Mentality?

The Mortgage Corner 

Olweus Bullying Prevention Program

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans’ “stonewalling” efforts, as House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi has put it, are the latest example of the bully mentality, but few pundits or even Democrats seem to understand its exact meaning.

I began to write about the bully mentality, as I called it in 2014, initially in response to Republicans’ bullying tactics, such as House Majority Leader John Boehner’s “no compromise” vow to block any Democratic legislative initiatives, rather than negotiate bills and policies acceptable to both sides of the aisle.

And Republicans have been getting away with using such bully tactics to forward their agenda for years, perhaps even since House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich in 1994 as part of the Contract With America dissolved the congressional joint committee to work out differences in legislation with Democrats, “because I can”.

And Democrats don’t seem even now to want to confront Republican stonewalling in carrying out their constitutionally mandated oversight of the Executive Branch when the White House is attempting to block every attempt to investigate the many possible crimes enumerated in the Mueller Report.

Most people recognize bullying when they encounter it—someone using strong- arm techniques in the school yard, or cyberbullying in social media—but not the bully mentality behind it.
Personnel Today, an organizational management website, provides an easy definition: “Bullying behavior often seems gratuitous, with no obvious motivation other than to cause pain and humiliation and satisfy something in the mind of the bully.”

It lists the characteristics of a bullying mentality:
o Underlying feelings of insecurity, inadequacy and a fear of ‘being found out’
o Fear that their status is based on their position, rather than their own qualities
o Being in the wrong job (fearing that they are ‘not up to it’)
o Authoritarian personality characteristics
o Excessive use of defense mechanisms, such as projection, rationalisation, displacement and denial
o An inability to accept or engage with their own shortcomings
o Trying to ‘right wrongs’ – taking revenge on innocent people for perceived wrongs done to them
o Boosting their own ego by undermining other people
o Feeling a need to crush people whom they perceive as a threat to their precarious status

Most research on bullying has been with schools as they have been battling the rise of bullying in schools.

Following the 2016 Presidential election, the Southern Poverty Law Center conducted an online survey of 10,000 K-12 teachers, counselors and administrators on the negative impact of the election. Educators reported a skyrocketing of targeting and harassment of students that began last spring, most frequently in majority white schools, including verbal harassment, slurs and derogatory language, and incidents involving Nazi salutes, swastikas and Confederate flags.

“The behavior is directed against immigrants, Muslims, girls, LGBT students, kids with disabilities and anyone who was on the ‘wrong’ side of the election,” reads the SPLC report, The Trump Effect: The Impact of The 2016 Presidential Election on Our Nation’s Schools. “It ranges from frightening displays of white power to remarks that are passed off as ‘jokes.’” Ninety percent of educators say their schools have been negatively impacted for the long-term, while 80 percent said students are increasingly worried about the effect of the election on themselves and their families.”

And a national survey just released by the Human Rights Campaign found that bullying—which has occurred more frequently since the onset of the 2016 presidential campaign—is on the rise since the election.

“The survey of 50,000 young people ages 13-18 is the largest study of its kind, and it tells a disturbing story. Seventy percent of teens said they witnessed bullying, hate messages or harassment during or since the election. Of those incidents, 70 percent were racially motivated, 63 percent were based on sexual orientation, 59 percent were motivated by immigration status, and 55 percent of incidents were related to gender.”

Such behavior cannot be tolerated in a participatory democracy such as ours. The current White House’s behavior is a case in point, and endangers more than our domestic security, but that of our democratic allies as well.

It endangers our warming planet as well, when such a bully mentality prevails in our alliances, including the Paris Accord which many be the world’s best effort to mitigate global warming that even the US Pentagon warns endangers national security.

One vanguishes bullies by standing up to them—in whatever form they manifest, whether a dictator, autocrat, terrorist or gang leader—who we mustn’t forget prey on the weak and defenseless, yet seem to magically disappear when the fear they attempt to engender is opposed by sufficient courage.

Harlan Green © 2019

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

The Red Tide in Education

ANSWERING THE KENNEDYS CALL

The Guardian

Red tide algal blooms have been threatening coastal beaches for decades, killing sea life and sickening bathers; a sign of rising ocean temperatures due to global warming as well as human pollution.

But another red tide is benefiting Americans by threatening the wealth of oligarchs like the Koch Brothers and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who have diverted funds so desperately needed by America’s public schools where most of our children are educated, to not only preserve their wealth, but increase it.

It is the red state Teacher’s movement for better salaries and benefits in public schools in the conservative states that have either cut education spending in public schools, or diverted funds to Charter Schools and private school vouchers benefiting the wealth-holders of this country and their supporters who own and operate for-profit schools that can receive up to 90 percent of their revenues from federal taxpayers, typically in the form of student loans and Pell Grants.

The Teacher’s movement is another example of powerful ‘grass-roots’ movements generated in local communities to solve grievances that have worsened their citizens’ quality of life.

A 2016 report by the NYU Brennan Center for Justice entitled Secret Spending in the States stated in its introduction: “Six years after Citizens United enabled unfettered spending in our elections, the use of so-called dark money has become disturbingly common. Contrary to the Supreme Court’s assumption that this unlimited spending would be transparent to voters, at the federal level powerful groups have since 2010 poured hundreds of millions of dollars into influencing elections while obscuring the sources of their funding.”

In the six states the Brennan Center report detailed—Alaska, California, Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts and Maine—1) At these levels, dark money sources often harbor a narrow, direct economic interest in the contest’s outcome;  money sources often harbor a narrow, direct economic interest in the contest’s outcome; (2) relatedly, contentious ballot measures that carry major economic consequences frequently attract dark money; and (3) in the relatively low-cost elections at these levels, it is easy for dark money to dominate with unaccountable messages that voters cannot meaningfully evaluate.

Who were the recipients of this largesse in PAC money that ballooned after Citizens United? It has to be no secret that the supporters of vouchers and/or Charter schools that favored higher-income constituencies won out in the funding struggle.

This is what started the “Red for Ed” teachers’ movement fighting for better school funding who had suffered for years, in underpaid salaries and underfunded public schools. “Red shirts and blouses had emerged as the official uniform of teacher uprisings against low pay that were spreading from West Virginia to Oklahoma and Kentucky under the rallying cry “Red for Ed,” said an excellent NYTimes Magazine article, about the Arizona teachers’ uprising.

“Public education is a $650 billion national enterprise,” said the NYTimes, “comparable to the U.S. defense budget, except that the federal government pays only 8.5 percent of the cost. States and local school districts split the rest in varying proportions, but each state finances it differently. Texas and Louisiana tap plentiful oil and gas revenues; Northeastern states like Massachusetts and New Jersey rely on high income and property taxes.”

Arizona is an example that hasn’t raised income taxes in more than 25 years, and counts more on sales taxes and other revenues generated by a growing economy. However they pay for it, K-12 schooling is the biggest single expenditure for all states, accounting for 36 percent of general-fund budgets on average.

“A half-dozen Arizona teachers — and more than 25 others, current and retired, with education backgrounds — declared their candidacy for the State House and Senate with a promise to increase funding for public schools, said the NYTimes. “They’re part of a sudden wave of educators on ballots as first-time candidates in every walkout state.”

The ultimate solution has to be political action, especially political action by women who make up 80 percent of the teaching profession. In fact, the red wave is turning into a blue wave, as this has energized even the less liberal voter base. Data from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University shows that more women have filed to run for Congress than at any point since at least 1992 — and by a wide margin. That year, 298 women ran for the House of Representatives. This year, 476 have — most of them Democrats.

Education has always been the responsibility of governments, not private institutions, if we want to educate all Americans, not just those most favored by circumstances.

Harlan Green © 2018

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen