Do The Rich Want To Kill The Rest Of Us? No, Of Course Not! Who Would Be Their Servants, Slaves And Customers?

Don't mention Thomas Jefferson to Texas nutbag Ted Cruz

As soon as the Texas plutocrats won control over the state Board of Education, through their pathetic Tea Party puppets, one of the first orders of business was to eliminate Thomas Jefferson from the history books. Dangerous revolutionary, that Jefferson, with his subversive ideas. I wonder how long it will take for them to move against historical Jesus too. This account is from 2010:

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

...Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.

No history books that anyone plans to sell in Texas are likely to have the Jefferson quote at the top of the page. The Tea Party hero William Blackstone, a Tory Member of Parliament and a much disliked sociopath and narcissist, who, of course, opposed independence for the American colonies, is a much more fitting figure for the anti-democracy forces than Thomas Jefferson. Former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, would probably opt for Jefferson. His essay Saturday is a stark warning that American democracy is in grave jeopardy from the very forces Jefferson saw as the biggest danger to our country's enterprise: the banksters and plutocrats who have been coddled and fluffed by the political elites they finance.

One way to view Detroit’s bankruptcy-- the largest bankruptcy of any American city-- is as a failure of political negotiations over how financial sacrifices should be divided among the city’s creditors, city workers, and municipal retirees-- requiring a court to decide instead. It could also be seen as the inevitable culmination of decades of union agreements offering unaffordable pension and health benefits to city workers.

But there’s a more basic story here, and it’s being replicated across America: Americans are segregating by income more than ever before. Forty years ago, most cities (including Detroit) had a mixture of wealthy, middle-class, and poor residents. Now, each income group tends to lives separately in its own city-- with its own tax bases and philanthropies that support, at one extreme, excellent schools, resplendent parks, rapid-response security, efficient transportation, and other first-rate services; or, at the opposite extreme, terrible schools, dilapidated parks, high crime, and third-rate services.

The geo-political divide has become so palpable that being wealthy in America today means not having to come across anyone who isn’t.

Detroit is a devastatingly poor, mostly black, increasingly abandoned island in the midst of a sea of comparative affluence that’s mostly white. Its suburbs are among the richest in the nation. Oakland County, for example, is the fourth wealthiest county in the United States, of counties with a million or more residents. Greater Detroit-- which includes the suburbs-- is among the nation’s top five financial centers, the top four centers of high-technology employment, and the second-biggest source of engineering and architectural talent. Not everyone is wealthy, to be sure, but the median household in the region earns close to $50,000 a year, and unemployment is no higher than the nation’s average.

The median household in the city of Detroit earns half that amount, and unemployment is staggeringly high. One out of 3 residents is in poverty; more than half of all children in the city are impoverished. Between 2000 and 2010, Detroit lost a quarter of its population as the middle-class and whites fled to the suburbs. That left it with depressed property values, abandoned neighborhoods, empty buildings, lousy schools, high crime, and a dramatically-shrinking tax base. More than half of its parks have closed in the last five years. Forty percent of its streetlights don’t work.

In other words, much in modern America depends on where you draw boundaries, and who’s inside and who’s outside. Who is included in the social contract? If “Detroit" is defined as the larger metropolitan area that includes its suburbs, “Detroit" has enough money to provide all its residents with adequate if not good public services, without falling into bankruptcy. Politically, it would come down to a question of whether the more affluent areas of “Detroit" were willing to subsidize the poor inner-city through their tax dollars, and help it rebound. That’s an awkward question that the more affluent areas would probably rather not have to face.

But in assuming that the relevant boundary includes just the poor inner-city, and requiring it to take care of its compounded problems by itself, the whiter and more affluent suburbs are off the hook. “Their" city isn’t in trouble. It’s that other one-- called “Detroit."

It’s roughly analogous to a Wall Street bank drawing a boundary around its bad assets, selling them off at a fire-sale price, and writing off the loss.  Only here we’re dealing with human beings rather than financial capital. And the upcoming fire sale will likely result in even worse municipal services, lousier schools, and more crime for those left behind in the city of Detroit. In an era of widening inequality, this is how America’s wealthy and middle-class are quietly writing off the poor.

Blue America Welcomes Fred Johnson (D-MI)

One of the sharpest candidates running for the House this year is Dr. Fred Johnson in western Michigan, for a seat being abandoned by the ever-ambitious twitterer Pete Hoekstra. In April Fred did a great guest post at DWT on education and societal priorities-- well worth reading. Today, Blue America's latest endorsed candidate, he's joining us for a live blogging session at Crooks and Liars, 2pm in Michigan, 11am, PT. Before we get into the reasons we've endorsed Fred for the seat, I want to mention that he gave us an autographed copy of a book he wrote with Tayannah Lee McQuillar, Tupac Shakur: The Life And Times Of An American Icon which we will be giving away to a randomly selected donor today. To qualify for the drawing, please give any amount-- there is no minimum-- at the Blue America PAC page. You might be interested in knowing that all the money donated through this page this weekend will be put towards campaign advertising on Michigan blogs.

A former marine and a genuine progressive, Fred is well positioned to take advantage of the rapidly changing demographics and political identifications in the district. 2008 saw a huge jump in the Democratic vote throughout the district. This was delivered primarily through the top-notch voter registration and GOTV efforts of the Campaign for Change. The district now has a whopping 45,000 first time voters, who can deliver this seat to Fred in November. Despite the fact that conventional wisdom calls this a safe Republican district, it is very much worth noting that Senator Levin won here with 53% of the vote, and President Obama fell just short, at 48.5%. This district is turning purple rapidly, and 2010 can complete the process.

To give you a sense of Fred's priorities, here's a statement he gave me soon after I first met him this spring:

There are two interrelated issues that command the attention of any freshman progressive Representative: financial reform and campaign finance reform. The hard fact is that the two are so intertwined as to be inseperable. 
 
The mavens of Wall Street have proven both their incompetence, and their venality. Only the strongest possible financial reform package will stop another catastrophe from hitting our economy.  As a historian, I strongly reject the revisionism currently in vogue on the right, and feel that the reimposition of Glass-Steagall, and a whole host of strong reform measures is now demanded of Congress by the American people. This is one area where I diverge from the President. I believe we need stronger financial reform. Too big to fail is just plain too big.
 
But, how do we get there when the lobbyists and PACs of Wall Street have so much influence? My number one priority upon taking office will be the Fair Elections Now Act. This bill is a great first step in leveling the playing field at election time. But we need to do more. I strongly support the package of legislation being drafted by Rep. Frank and his colleagues in the Banking Committee. We need to take every avenue available to us to undo the destruction of the last vestiges of fairness in our campaign system wrought by the Citizens United decision. Whether it be through statutory restrictions on the political activities of corporations or, at minimum, much greater influence on the part of shareholders, we must strongly address campaign finance in order to have any chance at real reforms in other areas.

There are virtually no problems our country faces that can be solved without first solving the way the ruling elites can buy and sell our politicians and manipulate our system for their own benefit. One that Fred would very much like to address-- as would the people living along Lake Michigan's eastern shore has to do with protecting the environment, something very much treasured for its natural beauty and recreational opportunities by most of the people living there. I say "most" because, believe it or not, there are Big Oil corporate types and the Republicans who they finance and who serve their interests who actually want to drill for oil in the Great Lakes! I'm not kidding. Just last week Pat Toomey, an ex-congressman running for the Pennsylvania Senate seat was yelling about drilling in the Great Lakes again, despite the fact that they contain some 20% of all the world's surface fresh water and that even a smaller spill than the BP Gulf disaster could contaminate every drop of drinking water for 40 million people and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. What is wrong with these people?

"The level of debate regarding energy policy," Fred told me a few days ago, "just amazes me. Here you have a disaster of unprecedented scope, and yet there is very little of what I would call 'jumping up and down' in Washington. I mean, good grief, if this doesn't wake people up on energy policy, what will it take? What we've actually seen is a calcification of the partisan positions that are out there-- which I don't mind on our side because I know we're on the right track. But there hasn't been one single Republican who has moved in the direction of strong changes to our energy policy -- not one!

"I also wonder what the endpoint is of this process. When you have elected officials responding to this disaster by proposing greater deregulation of the oil and gas industry, where does that lead us?  Do we end up with oil drilling in the Great Lakes? That's the kind of thing that gets voters in my district just going crazy. But we have to see this as all interconnected. If you don't want drilling in the Great Lakes, then you have to send folks to Washington who get the picture on energy policy.  And I'm doing my best to lead on this locally-- I talk about it with voters all the time. That's why I've been very supportive of wind power here-- against some of the usual NIMBYism. We just gotta do this stuff."

George Orwell's Ministry Of Truth Can't Hold A Candle to The Texas Board Of Ed-- Which Has Just Made Dolores Huerta An Unperson

As much as I feel that going Inside-the-Beltway is like crossing enemy lines into territory wholly owned by corporate special interests hell-bent on destroying the essence of my country, I occasionally venture to DC for a day or two at a time, being on the boards of a couple of public interest groups. And one of the things I do enjoy about those meetings is getting to know extraordinary men and women who I might otherwise never have had a chance to interact with. One of those women is Dolores Huerta, a cofounder of the United Farm Workers of America, the group for which I gave up eating grapes for my entire time in college.

In 1988, when she was 58 years old and already a national treasure, she was demonstrating peacefully against the platform of George H.W. Bush when she attacked and severely beaten, nearly to death by out of control San Francisco policemen who gave the 58 year old women several broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. This week another kind of violence was perpetrated against Dolores. People For The American Way alerted their community about it:

The Texas State Board of Education voted to adopt new curriculum standards, which uses the state’s education system to push a conservative political agenda.  Among the changes the board agreed to were resolutions adding the study of Right Wing movements to the curriculum, and pushing strongly conservative viewpoints on issues ranging from the United Nations to Social Security and Medicare benefits.
 
In a 6-9 vote, the Board rejected a proposal to restore labor and civil rights leader and People For the American Way board member Dolores Huerta to the elementary school curriculum. Huerta was previously taught as an example of good citizenship in third grade history classes, but was removed from the curriculum in January.
 
Michael B. Keegan, President of People For the American Way, issued the following statement:
 
“The Texas Board of Education’s decision to remove Dolores Huerta from the state’s curriculum standards, while adding divisive Right Wing figures such as Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlafly is an insult to the millions of Americans whose lives Huerta has improved, and detrimental to the education of children in Texas and throughout the United States.
 
“The state’s previous curriculum included Huerta because she has played an important role in our nation’s history.  Erasing her from the curriculum not only denigrates her work; it belittles the invaluable contributions of generations of minority activists. That’s unacceptable and a disservice to Texas students.
 
“Dolores Huerta is a hero for all Americans who value a fair and just society and she shouldn’t be removed from our history. In her decades of work as a labor organizer and civil rights leader, she has helped millions of workers gain a voice at the bargaining table in order to earn fair wages; she has worked to ensure that people of all races and ethnicities are treated equally under the law; and she has been a role model for women in leadership.
 
“The removal of an important figure like Dolores Huerta from the Social Studies curriculum is emblematic of the School Board’s decision to force politics into the classroom.”