WELCOME TO OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)
&
THINGS YOU MAY
HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)
YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO
YEAR THREE
YEAR FOUR
|
OBOF YEAR FOUR INDEX
|
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-01
|
Jan. 02, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-02
|
Jan. 09, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-03
|
Jan. 15, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-04
|
Jan. 24, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-05
|
JAN 30, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06
|
Feb. 06, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06 EXTRA
|
Feb. 09, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-07
|
Feb. 13, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-08
|
Feb. 21, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-09
|
Feb. 27, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-10
|
Mar. 08, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-11
|
Mar. 13, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-11 EXTRA
|
Mar. 15, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-12
|
Mar. 21, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-13
|
Mar. 29, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-14
|
Apr. 03, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-15
|
Apr. 12, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-16
|
Apr. 19, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-17
|
Apr. 26, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-18
|
May 03,
2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-19
|
May 10,
2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-20
|
May 20,
2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 21
|
May 28, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - Ho 22
|
June 10, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 23
|
June 20, 2014
|
|
noteOBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 24
|
July 04, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 25
|
Aug. 04, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 26
|
Aug. 25, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 27
|
Sept. 03, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 28
|
Sept. 10, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 29
|
Sept. 14, 2014
|
|
OBOF TYMHM Vol 14 - No 30
|
Sept. 21, 2014
|
Agenda
1.
Misc. from Floyd.
2.
Koch Brothers three step plan to
conquer
the next generation.
3.
Koch Brothers threaten campus Democracy.
4.
American amnesia - why GOP leads on
National
security.
MISC. FROM FLOYD
Just a few tid-bits before we get into the serious stuff. By the way, this posting is loaded with
really serious interesting stuff. Sorry
I'm really late again, but I think you will find it worthwhile.
I noticed a stat the other day that interested me. Did you know that over half of Congress are
Millionaires. Also, five of the nine
Supreme Court Judges are Millionaires.
Who owns them? You get one guess.
World population to hit 12 billion by 2100. Currently, the population is a little over
seven million. Excuse my saying so, but
that is one hell of a jump. You would
think people would learn what is causing that increase. Get your place staked out, if you and parts
of your family are still planning to be around.
Now hear this. There is a definite plan now in the works to overthrow our
Democracy. It is being set up to cover
at least two generations with the money and program to make it happen. If you don't think so, be sure to read the
first two articles below. If it doesn't
open your eyes, as it did mine, then you are a strong mis-beliver. Of course, if all of us that have very strong
feelings about our Democracy take note and work against it we can save our
Country as we know it. I think it is
serious.
~~~
The Koch Brothers’ Three-Step Plan to Conquer the Next
Generation
Carl
Gibson
Reader Supported News / Op-Ed
Saturday 20 September 2014
Right-wing oligarchs dominating our political process,
like the Koch Brothers, are wealthy beyond measure. Combined,
Charles and David Koch are worth over $100 billion, and make $6 million per hour. That translates to over $1600 per second,
which is enough to feed someone on food stamps for an entire year. Compare that figure to the $13 million that
former Kroger CEO David Dillon earned in his last year with the company, which
he called “ludicrous.” (add to
that, ridiculous, laughable, absurd, preposterous - from Floyd).
Their only problem is their age – David Koc000010h
is 74, Charles Koch is 78. For their
class to maintain power over American politics and government, they have to
make investments in future generations to ensure their ideology will live on
beyond them.
It’s been well-documented by now how the Koch
Brothers are sponsoring economic programs at colleges and universities around
the country. By itself, this could be
interpreted as philanthropy. There’s
nothing inherently wrong with a billionaire donating some of his wealth to
education. But the greater strategy in
the Kochs’ chess game isn’t just to make themselves wealthier, but a far more
sinister one. That strategy can be
broken down into three steps:
1. Defund Public
Schools
2.
Make Schools Dependent on Private Entities for Money
At Florida State University, emails from an economics
professor in 2008 show that the Koch Brothers were willing to donate millions
to the university through their foundation, but only if they had a say in the curriculum
that was taught and in the hiring of professors to teach the curriculum. FSU took the donation, and consulted with the
Koch Foundation on who would be hired to teach courses that largely vilified
government services and promoted the Kochs’ unique brand of libertarian free
market ideology. At the time, Florida
Public universities traditionally depend on state government funding for 53
percent of their operational budgets. But without a dependable key funding source
like state governments, colleges and universities are forced to raise tuition,
which results in only a privileged class of students able to attend college. Public universities are also forced to come
crawling to private interests like Koch-funded foundations for funding, which
always comes with strings attached.
3. Ingrain students
with Greed-Based Ideology
To be blunt, the Kochs’ economic philosophy is
essentially, “Fuck you, I’ve got mine.” In
1980, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party ticket. Some
of his proposals included killing Medicare and Medicaid,
eliminating federal campaign finance laws, doing away with all environmental
protections, abolishing the minimum wage, and privatizing water systems,
railways, and the post office. Koch also
called for eliminating laws that prevent creditors from gouging debtors with
high interest rates, deregulating private health insurance companies, and
killing the food stamp program.
In the college and high school courses on Libertarian
thought offered by the Institute for Humane Studies, a Koch-funded think
tank, many of these ideas are taught to
unsuspecting and impressionable young students. As the Center for Public Integrity reported, students are taught about how sweat
shop workers in third world countries don’t have it so bad, how the federal
minimum wage kills jobs, and how the Environmental Protection Agency is bad for
the environment.
With this strategy, students attending college would mistakenly interpret
such greed-inspired drivel as scholarly research to be taken as gospel. Upon graduation, it can be assumed they would
start families and impress their ideologies upon their children. Colleges themselves would be transformed from
institutions that cherish and develop critical thinkers into additional cogs of
the corporate machine, with corporate-approved professors churning out obedient
workers instead of independent-minded leaders.
This strategy is nothing short of generational conquest. It is only by
insisting that our public schools be properly funded by our tax dollars,
instead of by oligarchs with their own agendas, that we can stop the corporate
brainwashing of our kids.
ABOUT Carl Gibson
Carl Gibson, 27, is
co-founder of US Uncut, a grassroots direct action group that mobilized
thousands against corporate tax dodging and budget cuts in the months leading
up to Occupy Wall Street. Carl and other
US Uncut activists are featured in the Sundance-selected documentary We're Not
Broke, available on Netflix. He is a
contributing editor for Reader Supported News, and the lead investigative
reporter for Occupy.com. Follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
~~~
Kochs,
ALEC Threaten Campus Democracy at Florida
State , US
Roshan
Bliss
Popular Resistance / Op-Ed
Saturday 20 September 2014
From Floyd:
This article is very long, but has a definite
purpose. If you will read through it,
you will see the devious way that Koch Brothers plan on taking over our
education system, Nation wide, so that the next two generations will have been
indoctrinated in the ideology of the Brothers in the next few years.
You are going to see an acceleration in the activities of
these Brothers during the next few years.
As was point out in the first article, they are getting along in age and
want to get their plan fully implemented before they are gone.
Of course, I am 90 and still moving along and I don't
have a penny compared to their billions.
So, they can get the best that money can buy to extend their lives.
~
Koch Money Seeks To Buy The New President Of
Florida State University
For
months now, a battle has been raging at Florida State
University
Students,
faculty, alumni, and the Tallahassee community have mounted a campaign of
protests, disruptions, petitions, letters, and a proposal for a reset of the
process in response to the increasingly clear reality that FSU’s Presidential
Search Advisory Committee (PSAC) has been rigged to select former Florida
Republican Senator John Thrasher, described as “one of the most powerful
Republican politicians in Florida history,” as FSU’s next president.
The
FSU community has been staunchly opposing Thrasher’s candidacy for president
because he is, by almost all standards normally applied to university
presidents, a terrible candidate for the job.
Whereas
university presidents are almost always required to have a Ph.D., Thrasher
lacks real academic credentials. As a
legislator, Thrasher has opposed institutions that are essential to higher
education like faculty unions and tenure, was caught violating ethics laws twice in the Florida
House of Representatives, has voted
several times to cut Florida’s higher-education budget, and he
himself sponsored a failed bill that would have made exactly this kind of legislature-to-university
transition illegal for him to make.
Thrasher
also, is currently serving as chair for the reelection campaign of Florida Gov.
Rick Scott – who appointed FSU Board of Trustees Chair Allan Bense (and
others), who in turn has handpicked much of the search committee’s members. And to top it all off, Thrasher was recognized
in 1998 as Legislator of the Year by the infamously anti-democratic,
pay-to-play legislation mill for corporations known as the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC) and has continued to have ties with the
democracy-corrupting organization.
Thrasher’s
candidacy has been consistently, loudly, and unanimously opposed by the
students and faculty on the PSAC and across campus since the search began back
in May. Yet he is being interviewed as one of four finalists in the search, and
many in Florida
Presidential search process “a sham,”
student & faculty dissent silenced
When
former Florida State University president Eric Barron announced that he was
stepping down to take a job at Pennsylvania State University earlier this year,
FSU began the process of finding his replacement by having FSU’s Board of
Trustees Chair Allan Bense establish the PSAC and appointing its members.
The
number of PSAC appointees has bloated from 19 in the search that selected Barron
to 27 in the current search. Yet despite the growth, students and faculty – the
primary stakeholders in the university – hold only one third of the seats on
the committee. The rest are held by what
students and faculty have called “political appointees” who have looser ties to
the university and include several former politicians and Rick Scott
appointees.
“The
corporate/political influence on Bense’s PSAC is blatant and unapologetic,” say
members of the FSU Progress Coalition, a bloc of students,
faculty, and campus organizations opposed to Thrasher’s candidacy and the
current search process. Their research
has documented that not only do conflicts of interest abound among the PSAC
appointees who have been favoring Thrasher, but several of them are connected
to not only ALEC, but also have ties to Charles and David Koch, the billionaire
bankrollers of many conservative causes, think tanks, and organizations that
advocate for their far-right positions.
“Many
members [of the PSAC] have direct connections to the controversial
corporate-legislative partnership ALEC and Koch-funded institutes,” Progress
Coalition students wrote in an August op ed in the Tallahassee
The
first occasion was on May 21st. At the
suggestion of the William Funk & Associates search firm the PSAC hired to
assist with the search – the same firm that “helped” Purdue University select
former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels as its president, despite similar conflicts of interest and impropriety -
there was a motion to consider Thrasher as the only candidate for the
presidency.
Case
in point, they say, is Bense himself. “Chair Bense himself is the Chair of the
Board of Directors of a Koch funded think tank – the James Madison Institute
(JMI). JMI is also a member of ALEC’s Education Task Force,” the body
within ALEC that conspires to pass policies across the country that treat
education as a business more than a public good.
With
Bense’s appointments, the “outside” members of the PSAC constitute a 17-member
“super majority” on the committee is capable of voting down even unanimous
opposition from the students and faculty. And it has done just that every time
the students and faculty on the PSAC have tried oppose Thrasher’s advancement
as a candidate.
“Funk
advised the committee to vet only Senator John Thrasher as a candidate for the
position,” FSU faculty member Dr. Jennifer Proffitt explained
in an op ed. “This, he
argued, would allow for a more level playing field–if the committee votes for
him to be president, the search would be over; if the committee votes no, then
other candidates may apply.”
The
move was obviously political, Proffitt continued. “[I]t clearly demonstrated Florida political
cronyism as the motion to interview Thrasher was made by a former President of
the Senate, seconded by a former state senator and current FSU lobbyist, and
supported in debate by Bense, former Speaker of the House… This is Florida
The
motion to fast-track Thrasher as the only candidate for the presidency passed
15-9 in the PSAC, despite the unanimous “no” vote of all the students and
faculty.
Emails
between William Funk, the head of the search firm, and top FSU
administrators later revealed that Thrasher had
communicated his interest in the position through back channels, prompting Funk
to suggest him as the lone candidate. Even Funk admitted that to continue to
pretend to actually be considering other candidates in the search after the
fast-track vote “would now be a sham… and would be roundly seen as such.”
Search reopened, students and faculty
demand restructure
The
initial effort to fast-track Thrasher as the sole candidate failed, however,
after the FSU Faculty Senate formally voted “no confidence” in the Funk search
firm, saying that Funk “appears to be following an agenda which is not
committed to an open and honest search for the best candidates.”
As
news spread about the failed fast-track proposal, students and faculty were
outraged. The flagrantly inappropriate strong arm tactic touched of broad
efforts across the campus supporting a push to “Reset the Search” because it had
become clear that the process was “illegitimate” and stacked in favor of
“outside” interests, whereas real democracy called for the students and faculty
to be the ones with the most say in who their next president would be. Days later, Funk & Associates bowed out
of the search process, the search was reopened, and a new application date was
set for Sept. 2nd.
“It’s
great if outsiders want to help select the next president,” said Jerry Funt,
co-president of the FSU Progress Coalition. “But inside stakeholders should
have a lot more say.”
Within
weeks after the failed fast-track, students, faculty, and community members had
created a Moveon.org petition, which gained nearly
1,500 signatures, a #ResetTheSearch hashtag, and a Student Plan calling on FSU and Chair Bense to restructure of
the PSAC to include fairer representation: one third students, one third
faculty, and one third other “appropriately interested community members.”FSU’s Student Senate and Congress of Graduate Students (COGS) both passed
resolutions supporting the call for the restructure as well.
Ultimately,
the movement on FSU’s campus has been about democracy. “We believe that without representation in
votes the student and faculty voice has been squelched,” FSU Progress Coalition
student activists Ralph Wilson and Lakey (her full legal name) explained. “Therefore, we demand a PSAC restructure that
includes one third student and one third faculty.”
It
seems utterly reasonable that the people directly impacted by the presidential
decision would be the ones who have the lion’s share of influence on the
question. But Chair Bense and the PSAC
think differently.
Despite
the fast-track debacle, the search process continued, with other, more qualified
candidates eventually applying for the FSU presidency. Thrasher, who
formally applied this time, was included.
Koch-FSU funding contracts create deeper
corruption worries, doubts about academic freedom
The
relationship began in 2008, when FSU’s economics department agreed to receive a
$1.5 million from the CKF – with strings attached. The donation would only be made if the
department could ensure Koch representatives that it would be used for
conservative academic courses and that the CKF’s representatives would have
final say over which professors would be hired by the department. The deal would allow them to bend the
department’s intellectual focus toward that of the pro-market, anti-government
values the Kochs themselves hold – a move that is an affront to the
university’s academic credibility.
“It amounts
to the Koch brothers’ foundation basically trying to buy a position on the
faculty.” Association of American University
The
details of the agreement were circulated in an internal memo penned by economics
department head Dr. Bruce Benson, who, as another one of Koch’s conditions of
the agreement, would be required to remain the head of the economics department
for three more years, despite the fact that Benson had already stated that he
would retire soon.
Despite being called a “two-fold conflict of interest” by the FSU
Faculty Senate and serious concerns that it would compromise academic freedom,
the questionable contract giving the CKF influence over economics faculty
hiring and curriculum was signed. Many
of Benson’s statements in the memo are telling of just how well he understood
the inappropriate amount of influence the Kochs were exercising.
“As
we all know, there are no free lunches. Everything comes with costs,” Benson wrote in
the memo. “Koch cannot tell a university
who to hire, but they are going to try to make sure, through contractual terms
and monitoring, that people hired are consistent with ‘donor intent.’”
The
contract was quietly renewed as one of the last acts of outgoing FSU president
Eric Barron last year, though that administration claims it included
“amendments” that were supposed to remove the inappropriate influence that the
original agreement gave to the Koch brothers.
“But
the changes to the hiring in the new agreement give the Koch brothers just as
much, if not more, power over hiring as they had in the first agreement,” the
FSU Progress Coalition’s Funt told NPR. “Nothing has
been improved. The agreement is still bad. It’s still harming academic integrity at FSU
and giving private donors inappropriate access.”
The
new agreement reduced the number of Koch’s representatives in the process and
no longer gave them the final decision about whether to hire a professor or
not. But it stipulated that Koch representatives would get to decide on
whether or not professors could be paid from
the pot of Koch money, which essentially guarantee that the cash-strapped FSU –
hobbled by years of large budget cuts from the state legislature, many of which
were supported by then Senator Thrasher – would not hire a professor it could
not afford to pay, and thus would only hire professors it knew would be
acceptable to the Koch Foundation.
Even
Benson, the economics chair, seemed to admit that the contract was less about
academics than it was about political games. “I wish that universities were free of
political manipulation,” Benson wrote in the memo. “Unfortunately, the reality is that we live
and work in an environment that is subject to all sorts of political
manipulations.”
ALEC-supported bill bans Koch funding
transparency
Not
only has the administration’s commitment to academic freedom come into
question, but the university’s transparency has become an issue as well. When asked to disclose details of their
agreements with the Koch’s, the administration has been slow to do so. It took over a year for the agreement with the
economics department to be made public.
Labeled
the “Koch Cover-Up Law” by FSU student activists, the bill was supported by a
number of Florida
Equally
troubling is the suspicious coincidence that in the same year that the FSU-Koch
agreement was renewed, the Florida legislature passed SB 318, a law that bans the public from of all meetings between
universities and their private funders where “research funding” arrangements
like the one with the CKF were discussed. Counter intuitively, the bill even
bans public participation when private groups are “providing a statement of
public necessity” for their projects.
“Predictably,”
the student coalition wrote in an op ed in the Tallahassee Democrat, “[the bill] was sponsored by
legislators who champion the Koch-funded organizations American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC) and Americans for Prosperity.”
Students
and Faculty testified against the bill in a Senate Committee chaired by
then-Senator Thrasher himself, to no avail. Thrasher voted for the bill.
In
addition to the presidential search’s clear bias, FSU students and faculty are
deeply concerned that, now that the Koch Cover-Up Law has passed, Thrasher
would have both the incentive and the ability to expand Koch’s growing and corrupting influence over
university policy, curriculum, and hiring far beyond the economics department
if he becomes the next president. “President” Thrasher would be poised to make
decisions to give Koch- and ALEC-connected friends access to the entire
university.
Thrasher advances as restructure motion
defeated.
The
pressure to restructure the Presidential Search Advisory Committee continued
throughout the summer, with a national petition calling on FSU and Chair
Bense to support the restructuring plan gaining 2,600 signatures, shining a spotlight
on the university’s cronyism and compromised integrity. The student plan for restructure – which was
supported by the faculty senate, student government, multiple student groups on
campus -continued to attempt to restore some semblance of legitimacy to a
process that has seemed rigged from the start to select Thrasher.
A
key August 26th meeting of the FSU Board of Trustees was the last moment that
Chair Bense could respond to the Student Plan and restructure the committee.
But in the week before the meeting, Bense dodged the decision by quietly
cancelling the Board meeting, meaning that the restructure question would be
left unanswered before the next September 5th PSAC meeting, where the field of
eleven applicants would be narrowed to four finalists.
The
September 5th meeting erupted. Students
and faculty disrupted the proceedings in protest of the defeat of a motion to
exclude Thrasher from the final set of candidates. Several were removed by police, with several
more threatened with arrest or expulsion for continuing to vocalize their
support for removing Thrasher.
The student and faculty resistance to electing Thrasher continued in that
meeting, when the PSAC student and faculty representatives proposed and
unanimously supported a motion to simply remove Thrasher from the list of
candidates being considered to make room for other, more academically qualified
candidates, including the well-liked current interim FSU president, Garnett
Stokes. But once again, the students’ and faculty’s
motion was shut down by the PSAC’s corporate super majority.
The
students and faculty removed were attempting to read aloud their proposal to restructure the PSAC and
decrying the university’s failures in transparency and integrity, saying that
the search process demonstrated a “total disregard for process, democracy,
transparency and the integrity of FSU’s [Presidential Search Advisory
Committee].”
The
three other candidates Thrasher is competing with are former university leaders
and faculty from across the country who, unlike Thrasher, have the requisite
academic credentials and experience in higher education leadership. Yet Thrasher remains the likely nominee.
Faculty
and alumni threaten consequences, make Thrasher unwelcome
In
response to the continued politicization and corruption of the search process
and the undemocratic exclusion of student and faculty voices, the FSU community
has started raising the stakes. A series
of faculty and alumni have spoken out, saying that if Thrasher wins, they will
take action against the university.
One
professor wrote in an email that the consideration of Thrasher had them “ready
to leave FSU for good, after two decades here. And,” the faculty member added, “I plan on
taking my grant money, post docs, lab and graduate students with me.”
Another
faculty member remarked that “I have always remained faithful to FSU. I will, however, quit immediately if Mr.
Thrasher is chosen. Immediately.”
A
series of alumni have spoken out as well, threatening to withhold donations to
the university if Thrasher is selected. One alumni said, “I believe it was a grave
mistake to eliminate Provost Stokes [current interim FSU president] from
consideration, however the Presidency must now go to a qualified academic
individual (read, one with a PhD, not a corporate minded politician).”
In
spite of consistent opposition, Thrasher came to campus on Monday for
interviews with students, faculty, and staff where he was met with protests and faced with tough questions.
In
his interview with university faculty, he was asked if he believed in evolution
or climate change. Thrasher dodged both
questions, saying he has “a great faith that guides his work.” The non-answer
gave credence to the idea that Thrasher would use his position to advance
climate change denial, a key agenda of the Koch brothers’ influence at universities.
Thrasher
became visibly upset and even threatened to walk out of the interview and
when audience members laughed at his response to the question.
Importantly,
students exposed Thrasher’s ties to the Koch brothers during his interview with
them, asking him whether he had ever accepted Koch brothers funding and how he
could protect the university from corruption. Thrasher lied in his response, saying he has
never accepted money from Koch Industries – a claim students quickly proved was not true.
Students
also asked if he would pledge to not sign future agreements with Koch brothers
– he again dodged the question.
In
contrast, the other three more academically qualified candidates provided clear
answers to questions and appeared to be much more comfortable during their
interviews.
With
on-campus interviews complete, the PSAC will meet on Monday that 22nd to
eliminate one candidate of the four, and recommend the final three to the FSU
Board of Trustees for their final selection. Given the many connections Thrasher has on the
Board and the way the PSAC has taken pains to keep his candidacy alive, Thrasher
is still widely expected to be the Board’s pick for FSU president.
On US
campuses, democracy is in decline,
corporatism is on the rise
The
process unfolding at FSU looks troublingly similar to much of American politics
today: decision makers support outcomes or agendas favoring the rich and
well-connected despite broad public opposition, well-publicized conflicts of
interests, and with disregard to legitimate requests for redress of grievances
voiced by those affected in processes that seem rigged from the start.
And
it’s not just in Florida
The
FSU situation is reflective of a broader national trend in recent years that
has seen powerful politicians appointed by questionable processes to head
prestigious universities – despite lacking the qualifications normally required
of university presidents and clear conflicts of interests. They are right.
FSU’s
connections with the Koch brothers’ influence is also part and parcel of rise in “charitable” contributions that they have been using to gain control over
ideas and curricula in US colleges and universities.
The
FSU Progress Coalition students’ research documents that “the Charles Koch
Foundation is already funding over 300 universities in the United States
It’s
part of the disturbing reality that American higher education has been
progressively shedding even the semblance of democracy it used to have in favor
of an increasingly corporate style of governance where money and influence
trump academic integrity and openness. The
rise of this corporate higher education model – complete with questionable
funding and political appointees – does not bode well for democracy at US
universities or, in turn, for the US as a whole.
Over
the last few decades we have seen the discourse about the purpose of higher
education shift from a narrative about education as a public good that brings
broad benefits to society – which it does – toward one that says going to
college is an individual good that is necessary solely so that young people can
land a high-paying job after graduation.
Since
its inception, public education has been tasked with teaching each new
generation how to be effective citizens, because educated citizens are critical
to a well-functioning democracy. And
higher education, with its values of the intellectual freedom and spirit of
fair and reasoned debate, has been the capstone lesson in that civic education.
We
do, of course, want to see that university graduates, as well as their
uncredentialed peers, are eventually able to find security in a good job. But
more than that, we also want – indeed, we need – to see those same young people
prepared by the end of their education for more than a job. We need them to be ready to be an effective
citizen in a democracy. Citizenship is
its own type of work, but like most work, it is not an innate skill set. We need to learn how to do it.
Baby
Boomers learned the lessons of democracy well during the ’60s and ’70s when
American college campuses were hot beds of political activity, centers of
social movements, and places where ideals of democracy were consistently lifted
up as guiding principles for how the university should function.
But
in today’s more anti-democratic, neoliberalized university, with campuses much
less open than in the past and students much more demobilized, there is
increasingly no place for those kinds of positive civic lessons. In fact, the lessons taught by corrupted
processes like the one at FSU are quite the opposite.
The
growing trend of universities being corporate-funded and hostile to democratic
influence is teaching the Millennial generation a very different lesson:
democracy is just window dressing because in reality, cash rules.
With
the influence of the Koch brothers and ALEC written all over the search
process, the economics department agreement, and possibly much more of the
campus if Thrasher is elected president, no campus appears to be teaching that
lesson better today than Florida State University.
Bigger than FSU
The
FSU students’ and teachers’ fight against the corrupted search process is about
more than just the next president of one university. It’s about whether American universities will
continue to be places where another generation of young people will learn to be
engaged, responsible, critical citizens, or if they will be seen more and more
as only potential employees.
The
lesson that FSU will ultimately teach through its presidential search process –
that democracy and integrity matter, on the one hand, or that cash and
connections are what matters on the other – is not yet clear.
If
Thrasher is given the FSU presidency, despite the students and faculty being
united against him, it will prop the door open at other universities for
similar “hostile takeovers” of their governance. The beginning of Thrashers tenure as president
would mark the end of campus democracy at FSU. And we should all beware what that means for
our broader democracy down the line.
But
there is still time to change the story at FSU. The Board of Trustees still has time to come
to its senses, to finally hear what the students and faculty it ostensibly
serves have been saying all along, and to select another candidate. It would be a huge win for democracy at FSU,
but it could also possibly be the beginning of a reversal in the trend of
American universities toward corporate-funded and political, rather than
academic, institutions.
The
history of US
The
FSU Board is set to issue its decision on FSU’s next president on the 23rd of
this month. And the nation will be
watching.
American
Amnesia:
Why
the GOP Leads on National Secuity.
Ha Ha
Joe
Conason
NationofChange / Op-Ed
Saturday 20 September 2014
If the latest polls are accurate, most voters believe that Republican
politicians deserve greater 0trust on matters of national security. At a moment when Americans feel threatened by
rising terrorist movements and authoritarian regimes, that finding is
politically salient — and proves that amnes0i.00a is the most durable
affliction of our democracy.
Every year around this time, ever since 2001, we promise never to forget
the victims of 9/11, the courage of the first responders and the sacrifice of
the troops sent to avenge them all. Our
poignant recollections seem to be faulty, however, obliterating the hardest
truths about that terrible event, as well as the long aftermath that continues
to this day. The result, attested to by
those polls, is that Republicans escape responsibility for the derelictions and
bad decisions of their party's leaders at crucial moments in the recent past.
Not long after the 9/11 attacks occurred, the Republican
noise machine instantly began blaring a message of blame aimed at former
President Bill Clinton, insisting that he had ignored the threat posed by
al-Qaida during his White House tenure. That
accusation was wholly false, but discovering the truly culpable wasn't easy —
because President George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, worked
hard to prevent a full investigation by the 9/11 Commission.
In due course, that probe revealed how Bush and Cheney
had ignored clear warnings — from Clinton himself, from counterterrorism
adviser Richard Clarke and finally from the CIA on Aug. 6, 2001 — that al-Qaida
was preparing to strike the homeland. Preoccupied by their tax cuts and their plans
for an invasion of Iraq
The country and the world rallied around Bush as he declared war on the
Taliban and sent U.S. and
NATO troops into Afghanistan Baghdad
Even the most forgetful citizens probably recall how Bush, Cheney, their
national security advisers and their allies in Congress misled the nation into
war against Iraq
They may even recall how those great Republican statesmen pursued the
invasion, lawlessly and without adequate preparation or clear objectives,
costing thousands upon thousands of Iraqi and American lives and trillions of
dollars. Their actions led to horrific human rights and Geneva
Conventions violations; they embarrassed the United
States and enhanced the regional influence of the
ayatollahs in Iran
And now, of course, the current dismal situation in Iraq — unfairly blamed
on President Barack Obama — is a direct consequence of the war, the American
occupation and the divisive sectarian government installed in Baghdad by the
Bush administration, which also disbanded the Iraqi army and all of Iraq's
government institutions. Without the
destruction inflicted on that country — especially on its Sunni population — by
Bush and Cheney, there would be no burgeoning Islamic State today.
Disremembering all of those unpleasant facts, voters may well consider the
Republican Party better able to manage foreign and defense policy. After all,
Republicans have long styled themselves as the tough-guy "daddy
party" and bamboozled much of the public with that image. What remains to be seen is how much more of
their brilliant stewardship this country and the world can survive.
ABOUT Joe Conason
Joe Conason has written his popular political column for
The New York Manhattan
~~~
If the good Lord is willing and the
creek don't rise, I'll talk with you again at the end of this week.
God Bless You All
&
God Bless the United
States of America
Floyd
No comments:
Post a Comment