You have to love this: Congressional Republicans — all but three of whom voted against the stimulus and nearly all of whom have signaled that they have no intention of going along with the Obama administration on its economic plans — are criticizing the president’s apparent willingness to use “budget reconciliation” to avoid a filibuster on his health and energy plans.
Reconciliation may not be the best approach, but the president cannot continue to seek bipartisan support from a political party that refuses to play ball unless it can pick the ball and set the rules.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has sent Congress an explanation of his plan to deal with the AIG bonus fiasco. Essentially, Treasury will dock the $165 million in bonuses from AIG’s next bailout payment. Here’s a question: If AIG can do without that $165 million, why were we giving it to the company in the first place?
This question, in the end, is the operative one — and one that could damage the Obama administration’s credibility with the American people. The AIG debacle has ignited a firestorm that could engulf Obama and his economic advisers.
The reality is that this mess is wonderfully (sarcasm alert) bipartisan — a bailout negotiated by the Bush administration and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and exemptions for AIG and others pushed by the Obama financial team has created federally subsidized bonuses for bad behavior. What should happen now is that the Obama administration should step up and take responsibility for its role in the AIG fiasco, work to recoup the bonuses and put tough rules in place to prevent it from happening again.
Once among the leaders in educational success, the United States generally falls in the middle of most educational rankings on math, science, graduation rates, etc., putting it behind such economic powers as Estonia, Liechtenstein and Slovenia.
It is a problem that demands attention — and a significant increase in spending.
The Obama administration has made education one of its three priorities (along with health care reform and the environment), including $46.7 billion in its proposed fiscal year 2010 spending plan for schooling, a $500 million increase. The stimulus plan also includes $81.1 billion for education to prevent teacher layoffs and help fund school construction projects, according to press reports.
That is a nice down payment, but doesn’t go nearly far enough to address the disparities that plague our educational system or the difficulty we have in attracting and retaining teachers.
The president, in a speech on Tuesday, reiterated his commitment to education, promising to increase spending on early-childhood schooling and teacher recruitment — which is good news for schools.
At the same time, however, President Obama bought into a dangerous fallacy, one that has been public policy for quite some time and that was enshrined in the failed No Child Left Behind legislation early in the Bush administration.
He said his administration plans to “finally make No Child Left Behind live up to its name by ensuring not only that teachers and principals get the funding that they need, but that the money is tied to results.”
I admit, the proclamation has a nice ring, but it really doesn’t move the reform ball down the field. Rather, it makes clear that the Obama administration is not ready to abandon the high-stakes testing that is at the center of current federal education law.
NCLB was sold to the American public as a way to heighten standards for students and accountability for teachers and administrators. The argument was that American schools were in decline because we no longer expected much from our students or staff.
The legislation required a massive testing regime and tied results to aid, with under performing schools being penalized and the most creative classroom work being replaced by what critics call a “drill and kill” approach to teaching.
Linda Darling-Hammond, an education professor Stanford University, writing an assessment of the law in The Nation magazine in May 2007, said the law “misdefined the problem.”
It assumes that what schools need is more carrots and sticks rather than fundamental changes.
She believes that, to effectively reform the educational system, we need to address “an educational debt that has accumulated over centuries of denied access to education and employment” that has “reinforced by deepening poverty and resource inequalities in schools.” Reform also would encourage creativity, rather than rote learning, and would return teachers and parents to the center of the educational process.
This not only will take money, but a commitment to restructuring schools — especially in a state like New Jersey, where the explosive growth in expensive suburban housing has created a de facto segregation based on race and class, with poor blacks and Latinos centered in the cities and older suburbs.
The newer suburbs, which also have attracted a lot of the corporate growth in recent years, tend to have larger tax bases and a greater ability to fund innovative programs and attract better teachers. City schools, lacking these ratables, are forced to rely on the state and often get by with the basics.
We can do as the president says and institute merit pay for teachers, raise expectations for students, test, test and test some more, but none of this will matter if we are unwilling to pump a significant amount of federal cash into our schools to address the core problems.
Osama bin Laden? Child’s play — let’s see George W. Bush take on Darth Vader.
Apparently, there is a Japanese toy company marketing a Barack Obama action figure that comes with an American flag, several different hands, two ties, a microphone and a stool (I think — the site is in Japanese).
There was an interesting — if misguided — comment on this week’s Dispatches that I want to comment on. Here is the comment:
Those of us who were skeptical of Obama before he became president knew that he was an empty suit just wanting to get elected first and then promote socialist policies once he got there. His supporters of course were blinded by the Hope and Change mantra.
The only things that were somewhat documented about Obama before the election were his socialist beginnings through his parents, friends, and mentors like Saul Alynski etc. This part of him is coming out clearly in his policies trying to ram down all these social programs, bigger government, nationalization of this and that. Many of us suspected this but what we got was actually worse. The stock market and business is dropping like a rock and he couldn’t care less as long as he gets his agenda rammed down out throats. Wealth transfer and bash the rich.
Personally I don’t think he could care less about the war. To win the election he jumped on the left wing moveon.org bandwagon to bash the war and gain support. So now you are upset not getting what you wanted. But ask yourself, what did you expect? You had no history, just one vote in the Illinois senate against the war that had meaningless consequences. Most other votes were “Present”. What was the basis for your believing what he stood for, he had no record, except for rhetoric. People do not become chief executives of major companies without an extensive resume with years of prior work experience. What did Obama present to you for review? College records are not available, professor of little consequence, community organizer, Illinois Senator who voted “Present”!
Obama wants to be remembered for his Change to Socialism in the country and not the potential bloodshed in Iraq if he pulled all the troops out. This is a price you are paying for history, his history to be sure.
Of course I am upset at what this joker is doing to the economy and the country. At times I would just love to raise a middle finger or honk my horn in disgust to a driver sporting an Obama sticker. But, Frankly My Dear, people seem to be removing these stickers faster than they were put on before the election.
That is called Buyers Remorse!
Reading this, it is difficult to know where to start. But the key to understanding what we have here is that this commenter was never just skeptical of Barack Obama. He was downride hostile to him, which is fine, but he should say that.
More importantly — and this is something that exists in the mindset of too many on the right (and the fringes of the left) — is the idea that to criticize is to oppose, that for me or anyone else to question an Obama policy is to have buyer’s remorse. (There also is the great self-deception at base here that assumes that the echo chamber in which this person lives — the anti-Obama fringe, that 30 percent who think he’s doing a poor job, is actually the majority.)
It is the same way of thinking that underpinned the Bush/Cheney manner of framing of dissent as unpatriotic.
I think the president has done a pretty good job so far; at the same time, I think he could have been more aggressive at the beginning of the stimulus debate and should be more aggressive in getting us out of Iraq and winding down the brewing disaster that Afghanistan has become.
Hank Kalet 