Not the Greatest Place to Raise Children…
I saw this article on Alternet today and wanted to share it. It would be hard to say which one is necessarily the worst with regard to raising a family as all of them contribute significantly. With that being said, however, I think that privatized healthcare and the massive underfunding of education are the two issues that have effectively kept the U.S. spiraling downward.
9 Reasons Why America Is a Terrible Place to Raise Kids
As the GOP presidential primary heats up and the 2016 election draws closer, Republicans have been pandering to their far-right evangelical base and blaming social liberalism for the decline of “family values” in the United States. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal insists that liberals are declaring war on families and religious liberty [3]; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has been beating the culture war [4] drum and railing against abortion, gay rights, feminism, same-sex marriage and sexy images in pop music. And as usual, Republicans are overlooking the real reason why so many Americans are either delaying or opting out of parenthood [5]: economic stress. The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that the average cost of raising a child born in 2013 will exceed $245,000, and birth rates among women in their 20 have reached an historic low in the U.S. (according to the Centers for Disease Control). America’s middle class has been facing a full-fledged economic assault, making it harder and harder to take on the colossal expense of parenthood [6].
Below are 10 major reasons why the U.S., more and more, has become a terrible place to raise a family [7] unless you’re rich.
1. The High Cost of Childcare
American families are facing a variety of rising costs in 2015, from food to housing. But one of the biggest expenses of all is turning out to be childcare. A 2014 report by Child Care Aware of America found that daycare could be as high as $14,508 per year [8] for an infant and $12,280 per year for a four-year-old. And that is, in a sense, more troubling for new parents than the high cost of college tuition: while that expense is 17 or 18 years in the future, daycare is an expense working parents face right away.
2. Stagnant Wages Combined With Ever-Increasing Cost of Living
A 2014 report by the Center for American Progress offered little reason to be optimistic about family life in the U.S. The Center found that “investing in the basic pillars of middle-class security—child care [9], housing and healthcare, as well as setting aside modest savings for retirement and college—cost an alarming $10,600 more in 2012 than it did in 2000.” To make matters worse, the Center reported, incomes for most Americans remained stagnant during that 12-year period.
3. Public Education Is Struggling, and Private Schools Are Unaffordable
The economic meltdown of September 2008 has been bad news for American families on multiple levels. When families are struggling financially and have less money to spend, that harms a variety of businesses. And lower income also means less tax revenue, which harms public education because public education is funded with income taxes as well as sales and property taxes. In 2014, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that at least 35 states had less funding per student than they did before the Great Recession—and 14 of those states had cut per-student funding by over 10% [10]. Some parents will send their kids to private schools, but only if they can afford to: in 2014, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) found that annual tuition for private high schools [11] in the U.S. ranged from an average of $13,500 in the southern states to $29,000 in the western states to over $30,000 in the northeastern states.
4. Astronomical College Tuition
During the Fathers Knows Best/Leave It to Beaver era Republicans romanticize, a college degree practically guaranteed a middle-class income for families. College was much more affordable in those days, but now, a college education is more expensive than ever [12]—tuition costs have more than doubled since the 1980s, and there is no guarantee that a four-year degree or even a masters will lead to the type of job one needs to support a family. A college degree costs more now but delivers less. In the 1950s and 1960s, college graduates working in low-paying, dead-end service jobs was unheard of; now, it’s common. And someone making $8 or $9 an hour is going to have a very hard time paying off a six-figure student loan debt [13] and starting a family.
5. The High Cost of Healthcare
Healthcare is a colossal expense for families in the U.S. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 has brought about some desperately needed improvements: for example, health insurance companies can no longer deny health insurance to a child who has a preexisting condition, such as Type 1 diabetes. But the ACA, which was greatly influenced by health insurance lobbyists, needs to be expanded considerably before it offers families the types of protections that are the norm in France or Sweden—and Republicans in Congress continue to fight Obamacare every step of the way. Raising a healthy child is still much easier in Europe than in the U.S.
6. The Decline of Organized Labor
In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has been calling for a 20-week abortion ban [14] in his state and reminding anti-abortion groups that he has a history of defunding Planned Parenthood. But if Walker is really concerned about families, he should reconsider his opposition to organized labor. It is no coincidence that when roughly 35% of American private-sector workers belonged to unions in the mid-1950s, it was much easier to start a family: collective bargaining promoted economic stability for the middle class. But in 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the unionization rate in the U.S. was a mere 6.6% for private-sector workers [15] and 11.1% when private-sector and public-sector workers were combined. The BLS also reported that non-union workers were only earning 79% of what unionized workers were earning. At a time when union membership in the U.S. is the lowest it has been in almost 100 years, Walker just made Wisconsin a right-to-work state [16], which will bring union membership down even more.
7. U.S. Still Lags Behind in Paid Maternity Leave
The U.S. is the only country in the developed world that still lacks mandatory paid maternity leave [17]. That is quite a contrast to Europe, where government-mandated paid maternity leave ranges from 81 weeks in Austria to 47 weeks in Italy to 42 weeks in France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Republic of Ireland. Meanwhile, in the Pacific region, paid maternity leave ranges from 18 weeks in Australia to 58 weeks in Japan. Paid maternity leave is strictly optional in the U.S., where according to the organization Moms Rising, 51% of new mothers have no paid maternity leave at all [18].
8. Stagnant Minimum Wage
If the U.S.’ national minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be much higher than its current rate of $7.25 an hour. President Barack Obama has proposed raising it to $10.10 per hour, while economist Robert Reich favors raising it to $15 an hour [19] nationally. Raising the minimum wage would hardly be a panacea for American families, but it would be a step in the right direction. However, even Obama’s proposed $10.10 per hour is unlikely to come about as long as far-right Republicans are dominating both houses of Congress.
9. Outsourcing and the Loss of American Manufacturing Jobs
Thanks to globalization, neoliberal economics and disastrous trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the U.S. has been steadily losing manufacturing jobs for decades. A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that in 2011, globalization had depressed wages for non-college-educated Americans by 5.5%. [20] And now, both Republicans and the Obama administration are pushing for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free-trade deal that opponents have been calling “NAFTA on steroids [21].” Resulting in more manufacturing jobs being outsourced, TPP will make life even worse for blue-collar families in the U.S.
Starving…
From Occupy Wall Street
We and They in America…
America certainly does have a “we” and a “they” problem. What does this mean? It basically comes down to who we classify as “in” or “we” versus who is “out” or “they”. What is the criteria for this classification? This issue is a small, tight bottleneck that inhibits the overall good of our society.
Where does it come from? This is a question that many Americans and most people who live outside of the U.S. ask all the time. People ask: Why is the U.S. so opposed to income equality, welfare, and healthcare for all? Do they not understand that by helping all of their citizens, society as a whole benefits? In a nutshell, no, they don’t understand or do not make the connection. People get upset if they feel that their hard-earned tax dollars go to help anyone that they don’t know or care about. What people are failing to see is the demise of a society with a growing gap in income inequality that is ravaging the middle and lower classes.
This is a huge issue. It affects all facets of our society including education, healthcare, and more than anything else…poverty. Robert Reich wrote an excellent piece about this: America’s We Problem.
From the article:
One obvious explanation involves race. Detroit is mostly black; Oakland County, mostly white. The secessionist school districts in the South are almost entirely white; the neighborhoods they’re leaving behind, mostly black.
But racism has been with us from the start. Although some southern school districts are seceding in the wake of the ending of court-ordered desegregation, race alone can’t explain the broader national pattern. According to Census Bureau numbers, two-thirds of Americans below the poverty line at any given point identify themselves as white.
Another culprit is the increasing economic stress felt by most middle-class Americans. Median household incomes are dropping and over three-quarters of Americans report they’re living paycheck to paycheck.
This is certainly a fight that we must not lose. We must continue to raise awareness of the consequences of the “we” versus “they” mentality that is plaguing America. There is too much at stake to let this pass by.
2013: A Bad Year for Human Rights…
2013 was truly a bad year for human rights violations throughout the world. Things are bad enough right here in North America with poverty, income inequality, school shootings and other violence, apathy, and a main stream media that turns a blind to all of it.
While perusing the news this morning, I saw the following article written by Jodie Gummow for Alternet that details some of the horrible global human rights violations in the last year. My hope for 2014 is that world continues to wake up and is truly able to see the stamping out of human rights for the benefit of a few and that people offer resistance to this sick treatment of humanity.
14 Shocking Global Human Rights Violations of 2013
From rampant violence and sexual abuse against women, to the commission of crimes against humanity by dictators, 2013 was a year filled with pervasive human rights violations worldwide. Government response to the atrocities was disappointing, marked by lack of transparency and accountability, blatant malevolence and a disregard for human life. Yet, international human rights advocates remained tenacious, inciting massive protests and public condemnation in an effort to demand an end to the culture of impunity. Here are some of most outrageous travesties of justice that captured our attention and had us up in arms this year.
1. Unsafe labor conditions in Bangladesh led to world’s worst garment industry tragedy as thousands died in horrific building collapse.
On April 24, the Rana Plaza factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed six factories that produce clothing for Western brands, collapsed, killing over 1000 factory workers and injuring over 2500 people. While the owners of the factory came under fire for ignoring previous warnings of cracks in the wall, many pointed the blame at global corporations like Walmart and the Gap [3] for exploiting workers for cheap labor and failing to provide adequate fire and building safeguards in factories where their products are made. Worldwide protests ensued with a view to putting pressure on major retailers to sign a legally binding accord [4] aimed at improving labor conditions in Bangladesh, which to date has 100 signatories.
2. Egypt’s epidemic of violence and sexual abuse resulted in more than 600 deaths and 91 women assaulted in four days of riots at Tahrir Square.
On the first anniversary of the election of President Mohamed Morsi on June 30, thousands of Egyptians took to the streets in Tahrir Square in Cairo demanding the dictator’s resignation. During the four days of protests, at least 91 women were attacked [5] and sexually assaulted by mobs, while government leaders and police stood by and failed to intervene. Some women required extensive medical surgery [6] after being subjected to brutal gang rapes and sexual assault with sharp objects. After the protests, survivors came forward to tell their stories [6] and demand better protections for women. While the protests led to the end of Morsi’s presidency, the government downplayed the violence, prompting international calls to improve law enforcement and bring perpetrators to justice. These actions proved fruitless, as security forces again came under fire in August for using live ammunition against citizens [7] resulting in 638 deaths.
3. Burma committed ethnic cleansing against thousands of Rohingya Muslims; 28 children hacked to death and mass graves uncovered.
Burma’s quasi-civilian government was accused [8] of committing crimes against humanity in the Rakhine State for forcibly displacing more than 125,000 Rohingya Muslims, the religious minority. A Human Rights Watch report [9] revealed that authorities denied tens of thousands of stateless Muslims access to humanitarian aid, destroyed mosques, conducted mass arrests and issued a public statement promoting ethnic cleansing. Security forces stood aside and directly assisted Arakanese mobs in attacking and killing Muslim communities. In October [8], at least 70 Rohingya were killed in a day-long massacre in which 28 children hacked to death. Four mass gravesites [10] were uncovered. The persecution stems from a long internal conflict in Burma essentially emanating from an arbitrary citizenship law passed in 1982 which denies Burmese citizenship to Rohingya on discriminatory ethnic grounds. In recent times, lack of rule of law has led to thousands of Rohingya fleeing the country.
4.North Korea’s large-scale human rights abuses revealed: 120,000 prisoners held in gulags, citizens starved and publicly executed by firing squad.
North Korea’s appalling human rights record is no secret. Following the death of Kim Jong-il in 2011, any hope of improvement in the country was short-lived with the appointment of successor, Kim Jong-un. The young dictator quickly became more ruthless than his father, inflicting mass atrocities against his population. In September, a UN investigation revealed shocking evidence from defectors [11] who compared life in DPRK [12] to that of the German-run concentration camps in WWII. Prisoners in the gulags lucky enough to escape described atrocities including witnessing a woman forced to drown her own baby in a bucket. 120,000 people are still thought to be held in gulags. Public executions [13] by firing squad have also continued at unprecedented levels under Jong-un’s rule, including the execution of the dictator’s own uncle [14] and former girlfriend [15]. The Security Council has been criticized for failing to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court, a move that seems unlikely given North Korea’s long alliance with China.
5. A chemical weapons attack in Syria.
Syria’s ongoing civil war, which in almost three years has claimed the lives of approximately 100,000 people, continued full, force and throttle. In August, Syrian government forces under ruthless leader Bashar al-Assad were suspected of launching chemical weapon attacks [16] on two Damascus suburbs, killing hundreds of civilians including children. Following the attack, an influx of disturbing and emotionally wrenching video footage infiltrated social media. In September, Russia and the United States announced an agreement that would lead to the abolition of Syria’s chemical weapons. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [17] was subsequently tasked with ensuring all chemical weapons and equipment in Syria be destroyed by mid-2014, though many remain skeptical about Assad’s compliance with the order.
6. Uganda, India and Russia passed draconian laws against homosexuality.
While there were increasing wins for gay rights around the globe this year, including a number of U.S. states [18], LGBT rights took a major step back in other parts of the world. Uganda abolished the death penalty as punishment for having gay sex, but it passed an anti-gay law punishing “aggravated homosexuality” with life imprisonment. The new provision drew international criticism by gay rights activists, particularly after Uganda’s parliament expressed that the anti-gay law was a “Christmas gift [19]” to all Ugandans. Meanwhile, India’s Supreme Court reinstated a ban against homosexuality [20], making gay sex a criminal offense, prompting human rights groups to file a petition [21] seeking a review of the decision on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional. Russia’s anti-gay laws also came under fire for a bill that banned propaganda of “non-traditional sexual relations [22].”
7. Turkey’s Islamic fundamentalist regime attacked secular groups for peacefully assembling.
Once considered the most modernized and advanced Islamic nation [23] after founding father President Ataturk created a secular state, a number of civil rights violations in 2013 have led to fears that Turkey’s conservative government is heading toward Islamic fundamentalism. This summer, Turkish authorities were accused [24] of using excessive police violence to put down an environmental sit-in over government plans to build a barracks in Gezi Park. During the demonstration, police used live ammunition, tear gas, water cannons and plastic bullets to suppress the masses. Authorities were also accused of sexually abusing female demonstrators and severely beating protestors, leaving more than 8000 people injured. The actions have outraged Turkey’s secular population. Protestors viewed the move as another indicator of the authoritarian propensities [25] of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist party.
8. Qatar’s construction sector rife with migrant worker abuse leading up to World Cup preparation.
This year, the International Trade Union Confederation [26] found that as a result of the construction frenzy [27] surrounding the 2022 World Cup, 12 laborers would die each week unless the Doha government made urgent labor reforms. Half a million extra workers from countries like Nepal, India and Sri Lanka are expected to arrive to work in an effort to complete infrastructure in time for the World Cup kickoff. However, the ITUC said the annual death toll could rise to 600 people a year as construction workers are subjected to harsh and dangerous work conditions daily. A comparable study [27] revealed that 44 migrant construction workers from Nepal died in the summer working in exploitive conditions, with workers describing forced labor conditions where they work in 122 degree heat and live in squalor.
9. Forced sterilization for disabled underage girls in Australia sparked outrage as attempts to reform the laws failed.
The involuntary sterilization of disabled people in Australia remains lawful after the Senate ruled that it would not ban [28] the procedure in 2013. Disabled girls are sterilized to manage menstruation and the risks associated with sexual exploitation, which human rights groups argue is a form of violence against women. Australian families are able to apply for court orders to allow involuntary sterilization of their disabled children. A court previously ruled [29] that it was in the best interests of an 11-year-old girl who suffered a neurological disorder to have a hysterectomy, which caused a media storm. Human rights groups argued that fertility is a basic human right and that sterilization is not a substitute for proper education about family planning and support during menstruation. The Human Rights Commission said [28] “one sterilization, one forced or coerced is one too many.”
10. Afghanistan attempted to reintroduce public stoning for adulterers; women were forced to undergo vaginal examinations to prove virginity.
Women’s rights suffered a massive blow in Afghanistan in 2013. Cases of violence against women grew by 28 percent [30] and females continued to be treated as second-class citizens. President Hamid Karzai backed away from government plans [31] to implement a controversial law reintroducing public stoning as punishment for adultery after the draft law was leaked causing international outrage. Women’s rights groups condemned invasive vaginal examinations [32] women are forced to undergo to ascertain “virginity” every time a girl is arrested on a morality charge. As the 2014 deadline to withdraw combat action [33] in Afghanistan approaches, activists fear that the removal of soldiers will trigger further deterioration [34] of the chaotic human rights situation in the country, particularly for women.
11. Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian children resulted in 700 child detentions.
The precarious situation in the Middle East between Palestinians and Israelis led to a number of gross human rights violations committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian children. A UNICEF report revealed [35] that in the second quarter of 2013, 700 Palestinian children aged 12-17 were arrested and subjected to solitary confinement, threats of death and sexual assault by Israeli military and police in the occupied West Bank. In November, an Israeli Defense Force soldier on a Ukraine game show nonchalantly discussed killing Palestinian toddlers [36] as young as 3 years old. A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was paralyzed after he was shot and seriously injured by an Israeli solider [35] as he attempted to retrieve his school bag, and a 14-year-old Palestinian girl died en route to hospital [37] this month as a result of tightened Israeli security at Israeli-controlled checkpoints, prompting public outrage.
12. New wave of repression against civil society swept Saudi Arabia as women continued to protest against de facto ban on driving.
With more than 40,000 political prisoners in detention and democracy silenced by threats of intimidation and arrests, 2013 was one of the worst years for human rights in Saudi Arabia, according to activists [38]. In addition, women faced major oppression. While women will now be allowed to vote [39] in 2015, Saudi females are still not allowed to drive, despite the fact there is no express law making it illegal. In protest this October, women in Saudi Arabia defied the de facto ban on driving by getting behind the wheel in a brave display of civil disobedience, as part of their Women2Drive [40] campaign. The move prompted threats of punishment by the government and resulted in the detention [41] of 14 women.
13. South Sudan declared a humanitarian crisis with bloody massacres, 100,000 refugees, discovery of mass graves and violent attacks on U.N peacekeepers.
Post-independence, South Sudan was stricken with internal conflict in 2013 resulting in extrajudicial killings and numerous human rights atrocities. While Sudan’s north is home to mainly Arabic-speaking Muslims, South Sudan has no dominant culture. Instead, it is home to some 200 ethnic groups, each with its own beliefs and language. In a recent spate of ethnically motivated violence between the two largest ethnic groups, the Dinkas and Nuers, security forces shot and killed more than 200 people in the capital Juba. Almost 100,000 people have been displaced as a result of the violence. In reponse, the Security Council doubled UN peacekeeping troops to bolster its mission to protect civilians. The United Nations compound was raided earlier this year killing Indian peacekeepers [42]. This week alone, the UN discovered 75 bodies in mass graves, evidence of ethnic killings taking place [43].
14. French military intervention in Mali led to catastrophic escalation of retaliatory ethnic violence fueled by poverty and famine.
The security situation in Mali made headlines in 2013 following French intervention, which arguably exacerbated conditions in the wartorn country. The ongoing armed conflict led to appalling [44] human rights violations fraught with a lack of government accountability. In June, UN investigation revealed countless cases of extrajudicial executions, torture and enforced disappearances of civilians carried out by both Tuareg rebels and the army. Soldiers were accused of torturing Tuaregs while French-led forces attempted to oust Islamist [45] militants. The precarious situation was further aggravated by pervasive food insecurity and extreme poverty [46] throughout Africa’s Sahel region, which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.
Links:
[1] http://alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/jodie-gummow
[3] http://www.alternet.org/big-backlash-bangladesh-workers-escalate-demands-better-working-conditions
[4] http://www.bangladeshaccord.org/
[5] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/03/egypt-epidemic-sexual-violence
[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZmdhwd3axw
[7] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/08/19/egypt-security-forces-used-excessive-lethal-force
[8] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/22/burma-end-ethnic-cleansing-rohingya-muslims
[9] http://www.hrw.org/node/114882
[10] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/08/201288114724103607.html
[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/world/europe/un-panel-urges-action-on-north-korean-rights-abuses.html
[12] http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2013/09/18/nyt-human-rights-violations-in-north-korea-are-largescale-and-shocking-n1703462
[13] http://www.news.com.au/world/how-to-avoid-ending-up-in-front-of-the-firing-squad-in-north-korea/story-fndir2ev-1226707448497
[14] http://gawker.com/kim-jong-un-executed-uncle-after-violent-clash-over-cl-1489077656
[15] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/29/newser-kim-jong-un-girlfriend/2726081/
[16] http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/syrian-chemical-weapons-attack-western-intervention-draws-nearer-a-918667.html
[17] http://www.opcw.org/
[18] http://www.care2.com/causes/a-year-in-the-united-states-8-amazing-lgbt-rights-moments-from-2013.html
[19] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/20/uganda-anti-gay-law-life-imprisonment
[20] http://world.time.com/2013/12/11/homosexuality-is-criminal-again-as-indias-top-court-reinstates-ban/
[21] http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-criminalising-homosexuality-unconstitutional-gay-right-activist-to-supreme-court-1940135
[22] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-anti-gay-bill-passes-protesters-detained/
[23] http://voices.yahoo.com/the-enemy-turkey-back-islam-1792501.html?cat=9
[24] http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/turkey-accused-gross-human-rights-violations-gezi-park-protests-2013-10-02
[25] http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/172440#.Urod1GRDucc
[26] http://www.ituc-csi.org
[27] http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/26/qatar-world-cup-migrant-workers-dead
[28] http://disabilitynewsservice.com/2013/07/no-ban-on-forced-sterilisation-in-australia/
[29] http://www.smh.com.au/comment/protect-rights-of-women-girls-with-disabilities-20130328-2gx25.html
[30] http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/8/afghan-law-barringviolenceagainstwomenstallsunsays.html
[31] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/28/stoning-not-brought-back-afghan-president-karzai
[32] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/12/11/afghanistan-women-betrayed
[33] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/us-troop-withdrawal-from-afghanistan_n_3564139.html
[34] http://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/dismantling-human-rights-in-afghanistan-the-aihrc-facing-a-possible-downgrading-of-status
[35] http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/11/02/israels-mistreatment-of-palestinian-children-continues/
[36] http://mondoweiss.net/2013/11/discusses-palestinian-ukrainian.html
[37] http://www.alhaq.org/documentation/weekly-focuses/761-14-year-old-palestinian-girl-dies-en-route-to-hospital-after-delays-at-checkpoint
[38] http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/26/341963/2013-worst-human-rights-year-for-saudis/
[39] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/09/saudi-arabia-women-vote.html
[40] https://informationactivism.org/en/women2drive-campaign
[41] http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.554642
[42] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25456862
[43] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-sudan-violence-un-says-75-bodies-found-in-mass-grave/
[44] http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/serious-human-rights-abuses-pervade-mali-five-months-after-french-intervention-2013-06-07
[45] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22811108
[46] http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocusRel.asp?infocusID=150&Body=+Mali+&Body1=
[47] http://www.alternet.org/tags/human-rights-violations
[48] http://www.alternet.org/tags/justice-0
[49] http://www.alternet.org/tags/civil-rights
[50] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Understanding the American Right…
As I continue my search to understand right-wing America and movement conservatism, I find myself scratching my head and wondering why they do the things that they do. With the self-inflicted debt ceiling “crisis” and the ludicrousness of continuing to de-fund healthcare, the right-wing of the government appears to be on a path of self-destruction. Robert Parry has written an excellent article exploring the history of the American Right that provides considerable insight into why they behave the way that they do. It is lengthy, but well worth the read….
The Four Eras of the American Right
Exclusive: In the coming weeks, the Republican Party and its Tea Party extremists vow to create budgetary and fiscal crises if the Democrats don’t gut health-care reform and submit to a host of other right-wing demands. But a driving force in this craziness is an anti-historical view of the Constitution, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
As the world ponders why the American Right – through its Tea Party power in Congress – is threatening to shut down the federal government and precipitate a global economic crisis by defaulting on U.S. debt, the answer goes to the self-image of these rightists who insist they are the true defenders of the Founding Principles.
This conceit is reinforced by the vast right-wing media via talk radio, cable TV, well-funded Internet sites and a variety of books and print publications. Thus, the Tea Partiers and many Republicans have walled themselves off from the actual history, which would show the American Right to be arguably the opposite of true patriots, actually the faction of U.S. politics that has most disdained and disrupted the orderly constitutional process created in 1787.
President James Madison.
Indeed, the history of the American Right can be roughly divided into four eras: the pre-Confederate period from 1787 to 1860 when slave owners first opposed and then sought to constrain the Constitution, viewing it as a threat to slavery; the actual Confederacy from 1861 to 1865 when the South took up arms against the Constitution in defense of slavery; the post-Confederate era from 1866 to the 1960s when white racists violently thwarted constitutional protections for blacks; and the neo-Confederate era from 1969 to today when these racists jumped to the Republican Party in an attempt to extend white supremacy behind various code words and subterfuges.
It is true that the racist Right has often moved in tandem with the wealthy-elite Right, which has regarded the regulatory powers of the federal government as a threat to the ability of rich industrialists to operate corporations and to control the economy without regard to the larger public good.
But the historical reality is that both the white supremacists and the anti-regulatory corporatists viewed the Constitution as a threat to their interests because of its creation of a powerful central government that was given a mandate to “promote the general Welfare.” The Constitution was far from perfect and its authors did not always have the noblest of motives, but it created a structure that could reflect the popular will and be used for the nation’s good.
The key Framers of the Constitution – the likes of George Washington, James Madison (who then was a protégé of Washington) Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris (who wrote the famous Preamble) – were what might be called “pragmatic nationalists” determined to do what was necessary to protect the nation’s fragile independence and to advance the country’s economic development.
In 1787, the Framers’ principal concern was that the existing government structure – the Articles of Confederation – was unworkable because it embraced a system of strong states, deemed “sovereign” and “independent,” and a weak central government called simply a “league of friendship” among the states.
The Constitution flipped that relationship, making federal law supreme and seeking to make the states “subordinately useful,” in Madison’s evocative phrase. Though the Constitution did make implicit concessions to slavery in order to persuade southern delegates to sign on, the shift toward federal dominance was immediately perceived as an eventual threat to slavery.
Fearing for Slavery
Key Anti-Federalists, such as Virginia’s Patrick Henry and George Mason, argued that over time the more industrial North would grow dominant and insist on the elimination of slavery. And, it was known that a number of key participants at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, were strongly in favor of emancipation and that Washington, too, was troubled by human bondage though a slaveholder himself.
So, Henry and Mason cited the threat to slavery as their hot-button argument against ratification. In 1788, Henry warned his fellow Virginians that if they approved the Constitution, it would put their massive capital investment in slaves in jeopardy. Imagining the possibility of a federal tax on slaveholding, Henry declared, “They’ll free your niggers!”
It is a testament to how we have whitewashed U.S. history on the evils of slavery that Patrick Henry is far better known for his declaration before the Revolution, “Give me liberty or give me death!” than his equally pithy warning, “They’ll free your niggers!”
Similarly, George Mason, Henry’s collaborator in trying to scare Virginia’s slaveholders into opposing the Constitution, is recalled as an instigator of the Bill of Rights, rather than as a defender of slavery. A key “freedom” that Henry and Mason fretted about was the “freedom” of plantation owners to possess other human beings as property.
As historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg wrote in their 2010 book, Madison and Jefferson, Henry and Mason argued that “slavery, the source of Virginia’s tremendous wealth, lay politically unprotected.” Besides the worry about how the federal government might tax slave-ownership, there was the fear that the President – as commander in chief – might “federalize” the state militias and emancipate the slaves.
Though the Anti-Federalists lost the struggle to block ratification, they soon shifted into a strategy of redefining the federal powers contained in the Constitution, with the goal of minimizing them and thus preventing a strong federal government from emerging as a threat to slavery.
In this early stage of the pre-Confederacy era, the worried slave owners turned to one of their own, Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and a charismatic politician who had been in France during the drafting and ratification of the Constitution and enactment of the Bill of Rights.
Though Jefferson had criticized the new governing document especially over its broad executive powers, he was not an outright opponent and thus was a perfect vehicle for seeking to limit the Constitution’s reach. Even as Washington’s Secretary of State, Jefferson began organizing against the formation of the new government as it was being designed by the Federalists, especially Washington’s energetic Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.
The Federalists, who were the principal Framers, understood the Constitution to grant the central government all necessary powers to “provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.” However, Jefferson and his fellow Southern slaveholders were determined to limit those powers by reinterpreting what the Constitution allowed much more narrowly.
Partisan Warfare
Through the 1790s, Jefferson and his Southern-based faction engaged in fierce partisan warfare against the Federalists, particularly Alexander Hamilton but also John Adams and implicitly George Washington. Jefferson opposed the Federalist program that sought to promote the country’s development through everything from a national bank to a professional military to a system of roads and canals.
As Jefferson’s faction gained strength, it also pulled in James Madison who, in effect, was drawn back into the slave interests of his fellow Virginians. Jefferson, with Madison’s acquiescence, developed the extra-constitutional theories of state “nullification” of federal law and even the principle of secession.
Historians Burstein and Isenberg wrote in Madison and Jefferson that these two important Founders must be understood as, first and foremost, politicians representing the interests of Virginia where the two men lived nearby each other on plantations worked by African-American slaves, Jefferson at Monticello and Madison at Montpelier.
“It is hard for most to think of Madison and Jefferson and admit that they were Virginians first, Americans second,” Burstein and Isenberg said. “But this fact seems beyond dispute. Virginians felt they had to act to protect the interests of the Old Dominion, or else, before long, they would become marginalized by a northern-dominated economy.
“Virginians who thought in terms of the profit to be reaped in land were often reluctant to invest in manufacturing enterprises. The real tragedy is that they chose to speculate in slaves rather than in textile factories and iron works. … And so as Virginians tied their fortunes to the land, they failed to extricate themselves from a way of life that was limited in outlook and produced only resistance to economic development.”
Because of political mistakes by the Federalists and Jefferson’s success in portraying himself as an advocate of simple farmers (when he was really the avatar for the plantation owners), Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans prevailed in the election of 1800, clearing the way for a more constrained interpretation of the Constitution and a 24-year Virginia Dynasty over the White House with Jefferson, Madison and James Monroe, all slaveholders.
By the time the Virginia Dynasty ended, slavery had spread to newer states to the west and was more deeply entrenched than ever before. Indeed, not only was Virginia’s agriculture tied to the institution of slavery but after the Constitution banned the importation of slaves in 1808, Virginia developed a new industry, the breeding of slaves for sale to new states in the west. [For details on this history, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Right’s Dubious Claim to Madison.”]
Toward Civil War
The course to the Civil War was set, as ironically the warnings of Patrick Henry and George Mason proved prescient, the growing industrial strength of the North gave momentum to a movement for abolishing slavery. When Abraham Lincoln, the presidential candidate for the new anti-slavery Republican Party, won the 1860 election, southern slave states seceded from the Union, claiming they were defending the principle of states’ rights but really they were protecting the economic interests of slave owners.
The South’s bloody defeat in the Civil War finally ended slavery and the North sought for several years to “reconstruct” the South as a place that would respect the rights of freed slaves. But the traditional white power structure soon reasserted itself, employing violence against blacks and the so-called “carpetbaggers” from the North.
As white Southerners organized politically under the banner of the Democratic Party, which had defended slavery since its origins in Jefferson’s plantation-based political faction, the North and the Republicans grew weary of trying to police the South. Soon, southern whites were pushing blacks into a form of crypto-slavery through a combination of Jim Crow laws, white supremacist ideology and Ku Klux Klan terror.
Thus, the century after the Civil War could be designated the post-Confederate era of the American Right. This restoration of the South’s white power structure also coincided with the emergence of the North’s Robber Barons – the likes of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan – who amassed extraordinary wealth and used it to achieve political clout in favor of laissez-faire economics.
In that sense, the interests of the northern industrialists and the southern aristocracy dovetailed in a common opposition to any federal authority that might reflect the interests of the common man, either the white industrial workers of the North or the black sharecroppers of the South.
However, amid recurring financial calamities on Wall Street that drove many Americans into abject poverty and with the disgraceful treatment of African-Americans in the South, reform movements began to emerge in the early Twentieth Century, reviving the founding ideal that the federal government should “promote the general Welfare.”
With the Great Depression of the 1930s, the grip of the aging Robber Barons and their descendants began to slip. Despite fierce opposition from the political Right, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted a series of reforms that increased regulation of the financial sector, protected the rights of unions and created programs to lift millions of Americans out of poverty.
After World War II, the federal government went even further, helping veterans get educated through the GI Bill, making mortgages affordable for new homes, connecting the nation through a system of modern highways, and investing in scientific research. Through these various reforms, the federal government not only advanced the “general Welfare” but, in effect, invented the Great American Middle Class.
Civil Rights
As the nation’s prosperity surged, attention also turned to addressing the shame of racial segregation. The civil rights movement – led by remarkable leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and eventually embraced by Democratic Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson – rallied popular support and the federal government finally moved against segregation across the South.
Yet, reflecting the old-time pro-slavery concerns of Patrick Henry and George Mason, southern white political leaders fumed at this latest intrusion by the federal government against the principle of “states’ rights,” i.e. the rights of the whites in southern states to treat “their coloreds” as they saw fit.
This white backlash to the federal activism against segregation became the energy driving the modern Republican Party. The smartest right-wingers of the post-World War II era understood this reality.
On the need to keep blacks under white domination, urbane conservative William F. Buckley declared in 1957 that “the white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically.”
Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Arizona, who wrote the influential manifesto Conscience of a Conservative, realized in 1961 that for Republicans to gain national power, they would have to pick off southern segregationists. Or as Goldwater put it, the Republican Party had to “go hunting where the ducks are.”
Then, there was Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” of using coded language to appeal to southern whites and Ronald Reagan’s launching of his 1980 national presidential campaign with a states’ rights speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the notorious site of the murders of three civil rights workers. The two strands of historic conservatism — white supremacy and “small government” ideology — were again wound together.
In New York magazine, Frank Rich summed up this political history while noting how today’s right-wing revisionists have tried to reposition their heroes by saying they opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 simply out of high-minded “small-government principles.” But Rich wrote:
“The primacy of [Strom] Thurmond in the GOP’s racial realignment is the most incriminating truth the right keeps trying to cover up. That’s why the George W. Bush White House shoved the Mississippi senator Trent Lott out of his post as Senate majority leader in 2002 once news spread that Lott had told Thurmond’s 100th-birthday gathering that America ‘wouldn’t have had all these problems’ if the old Dixiecrat had been elected president in 1948.
“Lott, it soon became clear, had also lavished praise on [the Confederacy’s president] Jefferson Davis and associated for decades with other far-right groups in thrall to the old Confederate cause. But the GOP elites didn’t seem to mind until he committed the truly unpardonable sin of reminding America, if only for a moment, of the exact history his party most wanted and needed to suppress. Then he had to be shut down at once.”
Unholy Alliance
This unholy alliance between the racists and the corporatists continues to this day with Republicans understanding that the votes of blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other minorities must be suppressed if the twin goals of the two principal elements of the Right are to control the future. That was the significance of this year’s ruling by the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority to gut the Voting Rights Act. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Supreme Court’s War on Democracy.”]
Only if the votes of whites can be proportionately enhanced and the votes of minorities minimized can the Republican Party overcome the country’s demographic changes and retain government power that will both advance the interests of the racists and the free-marketeers.
That’s why Republican-controlled statehouses engaged in aggressive gerrymandering of congressional districts in 2010 and tried to impose “ballot security” measures across the country in 2012. The crudity of those efforts, clumsily justified as needed to prevent the virtually non-existent problem of in-person voter fraud, was almost painful to watch.
As Frank Rich noted, “Everyone knows these laws are in response to the rise of Barack Obama. It is also no coincidence that many of them were conceived and promoted by the American Legal Exchange Council, an activist outfit funded by heavy-hitting right-wing donors like Charles and David Koch.
“In another coincidence that the GOP would like to flush down the memory hole, the Kochs’ father, Fred, a founder of the radical John Birch Society in the fifties, was an advocate for the impeachment of Chief Justice Warren in the aftermath of Brown [v. Board of Education] Fred Koch wrote a screed of his own accusing communists of inspiring the civil-rights movement.”
Blaming the Democratic Party for ending segregation – and coyly invited by opportunistic Republicans like Nixon and Reagan to switch party allegiances – racist whites signed up with the Republican Party in droves. Thus, the Democratic Party, which since the days of Jefferson had been the party of slavery and segregation, lost its southern base, ceding it to the Republican Party, which essentially renounced its historical legacy as the anti-slavery and anti-segregation party.
A Flip of Allegiance
This flip in the allegiance of America’s white supremacists – from Democrat to Republican – also put them in the same political structure as the anti-regulatory business interests which had dominated the Republican Party from the days of the Robber Barons. These two groups again found themselves sharing a common interest, the desire to constrain the federal government’s commitment to providing for “the general Welfare.”
To the corporate Republicans this meant slashing taxes, eliminating regulations and paring back social programs for the poor or – in Ayn Rand vernacular – the moochers. To the racist Republicans this meant giving the states greater leeway to suppress the votes of minorities and gutting programs that were seen as especially benefiting black and brown Americans, such as food stamps and health-care reform.
Thus, in today’s neo-Confederate era, the American Right is coalescing around two parallel ideological motives: continued racial resentment (from the disproportionate number of black and brown people getting welfare to the presence of a black family in the White House) and resistance to government regulations (from efforts to control Wall Street excesses to restrictions on global-warming emissions).
Though the white racist element of this coalition might typically be expected to proudly adopt the Stars and Bars of the Old Confederacy as its symbol, the modern Right is too media-savvy to get boxed into that distasteful imagery of slavery.
So, instead the Right has opted for a rebranding as Revolutionary War-era patriots – calling themselves Tea Partiers, donning tri-corner hats and waving yellow banners with a coiled snake declaring “don’t tread on me.” So, instead of overtly defending the Confederacy, the Right proclaims its commitment to the Founding Principles found in the Constitution.
But this sly transformation required the Right to rewrite the Founding Narrative, to blot out the initial interpretation of the Constitution by the Federalists who, after all, were the ones who primarily crafted the document, and to pretend that Jefferson’s revisionist view – representing the pre-Confederate position of the southern plantation owners – was the original one. [For more, see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Right’s Made-Up Constitution.”]
Now this doctored history – hostile to any federal government actions that would “promote the general Welfare” – is leading the United States and the world into an economic crisis.
Setting It Straight…
I thought this perfect. This matches my own thoughts exactly.
The Value of Education…
Education is something that is very sacred to me. I also believe that if you ask nearly anyone that you know if they value education, the answer would be “yes”. So what’s the problem? We all value education….right? The problem is that we have completely and totally underfunded education from pre-school to post-secondary. It truly speaks volumes about what our policy makers value…and that is money.
We make it nearly impossible for students graduating from high school to get any kind of post-secondary education. Instead, we channel our taxpayer dollars into big banks and to the American War Machine (you know, so we can fight that war on terror??). Ellen Brown’s blog, War of Debt, discusses the issue of post-secondary funding and Elizabeth Warren’s bill to reduce student loan debt loads. An excerpt from the article…
Students are considered risky investments because they don’t own valuable assets against which the debt can be collected. But this argument overlooks the fact that these young trainees are assets themselves. They represent an investment in “human capital” that can pay for itself many times over, if properly supported and developed. This was demonstrated in the 1940s with the G.I. Bill, which provided free technical training and educational support for nearly 16 million returning servicemen, along with government-subsidized loans and unemployment benefits. The outlay not only paid for itself but returned a substantial profit to the government and significant stimulus to the economy. It made higher education accessible to all and created a nation of homeowners, new technology, new products, and new companies, with the Veterans Administration guaranteeing an estimated 53,000 business loans. Economists have determined that for every 1944 dollar invested, the country received approximately $7 in return, through increased economic productivity, consumer spending, and tax revenues.
Similarly in the 1930s and 1940s, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation funded the New Deal and World War II and wound up turning a profit, without drawing on taxpayer funds. It’s an initial capitalization was only $500 million; yet the RFC eventually lent out $50 billion – the equivalent of about $500 billion today. It raised money by issuing debentures, a form of bond. It got all of this money back, made a profit for the government, and left a legacy of roads, bridges, dams, post offices, universities, electrical power, mortgages, farms, and much more that the country did not have before.
In 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed an Economic Bill of Rights, in which higher education would be provided by the government for free; and in the progressive 1960s, tuition actually was free or nearly free at state universities. Some countries provide nearly-free higher education today. In Norway, Denmark, France and Sweden, the cost of college is less than 3% of median income, as compared to 51% in the U.S.
Education is clearly an investment that pays off over time. So why do we have to continue to watch the rich get richer? This should be a topic that people are vigorously protesting. Sadly, it falls under the umbrella of apathy that is covering the entire nation. Education funding (or lack thereof) is one of the biggest factors contributing to the inequality in America today. My hope is that Elizabeth Warren sheds enough light on this subject to wake up the American people. Education may be the last hope that we have in resisting the corporate takeover over the world.
Understanding Neoliberalism…
This is an excellent and very informative interview with Henry A. Giroux called The Violence of Neoliberalism and the Attack on Higher Education. Of particular interest is the ideology of neoliberalism as Giroux defines it: “As an ideology, it construes profit-making as the essence of democracy, consuming as the only operable form of citizenship, and an irrational belief in the market to solve all problems and serve as a model for structuring all social relations.”
So how much will the almighty dollar be worth once we have consumed all of the earth’s natural resources and left developing countries in ruins while ours crumbles from the inside?
The Violence of Neoliberalism and the Attack on Higher Education
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_violence_of_neoliberalism_and_the_attack_on_higher_education_20130327/
Posted on Mar 27, 2013
By C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout
This interview first appeared at Truthout.
In his speech titled “Youth and the Politics of Disposability in Dark Times,” Dr. Henry A. Giroux argued that with the rise of market fundamentalism and the ensuing economic and financial meltdown, youth are facing a crisis unlike that of any other generation. Young people, especially low income and poor minority youth, are no longer seen as a social investment but are increasingly interpreted as a social problem and burden.
Chronis Polychroniou: How do you define neoliberalism?
Henry Giroux: Neoliberalism, or what can be called the latest stage of predatory capitalism, is part of a broader project of restoring class power and consolidating the rapid concentration of capital. It is a political, economic and political project that constitutes an ideology, mode of governance, policy and form of public pedagogy.
As an ideology, it construes profit-making as the essence of democracy, consuming as the only operable form of citizenship, and an irrational belief in the market to solve all problems and serve as a model for structuring all social relations.
As a mode of governance, it produces identities, subjects, and ways of life free of government regulations, driven by a survival of the fittest ethic, grounded in the idea of the free, possessive individual, and committed to the right of ruling groups and institutions to accrue wealth removed from matters of ethics and social costs.
As a policy and political project, neoliberalism is wedded to the privatization of public services, selling off of state functions, deregulation of finance and labor, elimination of the welfare state and unions, liberalization of trade in goods and capital investment, and the marketization and commodification of society.
As a form of public pedagogy and cultural politics, neoliberalism casts all dimensions of life in terms of market rationality. One consequence is that neoliberalism legitimates a culture of cruelty and harsh competitiveness and wages a war against public values and those public spheres that contest the rule and ideology of capital. It saps the democratic foundation of solidarity, degrades collaboration, and tears up all forms of social obligation.
Polychroniou: You claim neoliberalism is the most dangerous ideology of our times. In what ways?
Giroux: Neoliberalism creates a political landscape that destroys the social state, social protections, and democracy itself. As a theater of cruelty, it produces massive inequality in wealth and income, puts political power in the hands of ruling financial elites, destroys all vestiges of the social contract, and increasingly views those marginalized by race, class, disability and age as redundant and disposable. It facilitates the dismantling of democracy and the rise of the punishing state by criminalizing social problems and ruling through a crime-control complex. It also removes economics and markets from the discourse of social obligations and social costs.
The results are all around us, ranging from ecological devastation and widespread economic impoverishment to the increasing incarceration of large segments of the population marginalized by race and class. The language of possessive individualism now replaces the notion of the public good and all forms of solidarity not aligned with market values. Under neoliberalism the social is pathologized. As public considerations and issues collapse into the morally vacant pit of private visions and narrow self-interests, the bridges between private and public life are dismantled, making it almost impossible to determine how private troubles are connected to broader public issues. Long-term investments are now replaced by short-term profits while compassion and concern for others are viewed as a weakness.
Neoliberalism drains the pubic treasury while feeding the profits of the rich and the voracious military-industrial complex. In the end, it abolishes institutions meant to eliminate human suffering, protect the environment, ensure the right of unions, and provide social provisions. It has no vision of the good society or the public good and it has no mechanisms for addressing society’s major economic, political, and social problems.
Polychroniou: What is, for you, the role and the mission of the university?
Giroux: Higher education must be understood as a democratic public sphere – a space in which education enables students to develop a keen sense of prophetic justice, claim their moral and political agency, utilize critical analytical skills, and cultivate an ethical sensibility through which they learn to respect the rights of others. Higher education has a responsibility not only to search for the truth regardless of where it may lead, but also to educate students to make authority and power politically and morally accountable while at the same time sustaining a democratic, formative public culture. Higher education may be one of the few public spheres left where knowledge, values and learning offer a glimpse of the promise of education for nurturing public values, critical hope and a substantive democracy. Democracy places civic demands upon its citizens, and such demands point to the necessity of an education that is broad-based, critical, and supportive of meaningful civic values, participation in self-governance, and democratic leadership. Only through such a formative and critical educational culture can students learn how to become individual and social agents, rather than merely disengaged spectators, able both to think otherwise and to act upon civic commitments that demand a reordering of basic power arrangements fundamental to promoting the common good and producing a meaningful democracy.
Polychroniou: For years now, you have been saying that higher education is under attack by market fundamentalism – and you are, of course, absolutely right. Why are governments all over the world keen on turning public universities into training facilities for corporations?
Giroux: In the United States and in many other countries, many of the problems in higher education can be linked to low funding, the domination of universities by market mechanisms, the rise of for-profit colleges, the intrusion of the national security state, and the lack of faculty self-governance, all of which not only contradicts the culture and democratic value of higher education but also makes a mockery of the very meaning and mission of the university as a democratic public sphere. Decreased financial support for higher education stands in sharp contrast to increased support for tax benefits for the rich, big banks, military budgets, and mega corporations.
Rather than enlarge the moral imagination and critical capacities of students, too many universities are now wedded to producing would-be hedge fund managers, depoliticized students, and creating modes of education that promote a “technically trained docility.” Strapped for money and increasingly defined in the language of corporate culture, many universities are now driven principally by vocational, military and economic considerations while increasingly removing academic knowledge production from democratic values and projects. The ideal of the university as a place to think, to engage in thoughtful consideration, promote dialogue and learn how to hold power accountable is viewed as a threat to neoliberal modes of governance. At the same time, higher education is viewed by the apostles of market fundamentalism as a space for producing profits, educating a docile labor force, and a powerful institution for indoctrinating students into accepting the obedience demanded by the corporate order.
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. His most recent books include: Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm Publishers, 2012); Education and the Crisis of Public Values (Peter Lang, 2011); Youth in a Suspect Society (Palgrave, 2009); Politics After Hope: Obama and the Crisis of Youth, Race, and Democracy (Paradigm, 2010); Hearts of Darkness: Torturing Children in the War on Terror (Paradigm, 2010); The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (co-authored with Grace Pollock, Rowman and Littlefield, 2010); Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism (Peter Lang, 2011), and Henry Giroux on Critical Pedagogy (Continuum, 2011). Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s Board of Directors and a founder of our Public Intellectual Project. His web site is www.henryagiroux.com.
The Dawn of Third World Status…
The devolution of America has definitely begun. Actually it started decades ago, but we are now seeing the pieces fall away. The deterioration of America’s infrastructure and the steady erosion of the middle class are surely at the forefront of this process. Through globalization and outsourcing, jobs and money have been stripped away from the middle class resulting in large profits for the elite and powerful. It has created a state of desperation that propels people to work more for less. Thom Hartmann has written an excellent article outlining the steps the U.S. is taking to become a third world nation.
New reports that Taiwanese transnational manufacturing corporation Foxconn may be opening up some plants in the United States indicate that our nation has now entered the terminal fourth stage of “third-worldization” or what may be better referred to simply as “recolonization.”
In case you don’t know, Foxconn is China’s largest private employer and is responsible for making many of those parts that go into your Apple iPhones, iPads, and iPods.
While Steve Jobs may have been a visionary when it came to technological design, he wasn’t a fan of labor unions – or American workers in general – so he outsourced most of his corporation’s manufacturing to Foxconn, which was notorious for its low-wage labor.
Foxconn workers live in over-crowded dorms that are located on the factory grounds. They work 12-hour shifts, and are routinely exposed to dangerous working conditions. Recently, 137 Foxconn workers fell ill after they were forced to use toxic chemicals to clean iPads. And in the last five years, 17 Foxconn workers have committed suicide on the job. Nets have since been installed around the factory to catch workers jumping out of windows.
So why the heck would Foxconn look beyond their Libertarian paradise of no labor laws to come to the United States and employ a bunch of Americans?
To know the answer to that question, we have to understand the four steps the United States is currently racing through to become a third-world nation.
Step 1: Destroy Manufacturing (Continue reading…)
My hope is that the results from this election will propel the nation forward as progressives took significant steps in possibly reversing this dreadful course the country is presently taking. I will remain cautiously optimistic that the U.S. will, once again, invest in itself and rebuild it’s infrastructure while promoting and growing a stronger middle class. I think it can be done, but it has to happen now.
thejumbledmind 