This Ezine was named as a tribute to the father of our nation, Tom Paine. Now I know that you were taught in grade school that the father of our nation was George Washington. That is simply not true. Washington was the first president; Paine was the father.  Washington was a Tory (a colonist who sided with the King and opposed the American Revolution) as late as six months prior to the revolution. He met Tom Paine on a street in Philadelphia and told him that he was a Tory until he read Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense. So were most Americans. The Adamses and the Jeffersons of the colonial world were having a devil of a time getting Americans interested in their ideas of a break with England.  Up until the time of the publication of Tom’s immortal pamphlet, the best selling book in the colonies was Ben Franklin’s book on electricity. It sold 10,000 copies. Common Sense sold 120,000 copies at once and went on to sell 500,000 copies–a staggering amount when you consider the population of the colonies.

Common Sense showed that words matter. That words could move mountains and change history. Words could inspire a people to “reach for the sky” rather than “settle for the crumbs” of history. Paine’s call to arms was read to the illiterate on Friday and Saturday nights in the pubs of America. Paine was bold and he was unequivocal. His words stirred the hearts of men. Tom Paine taught me the value and power of words.

Tom Paine was one of the most disliked, despised and hated men of his day. He was also feared because of his power to move men’s hearts. You might think I’m exaggerating. But consider this: Years later John Adams, as president, let Paine rot in a French jail even though he’d been told by the French that if the U.S. came and got him and agreed to take him out of France, they could have him. Adams feared that, once home, Paine would immediately turn the public  against his Alien and Sedition Act (The founder’s version of The Patriot Act). He was right. Paine would have. Tom Paine taught me that you must be bold, you must accept being despised and disliked in order to pursue that which you know is morally right. If you’re an activist in one of the political parties and you are liked and accepted by  the establishment of that party, I’ve got news for you: you’re not an activist. The reason you’re liked is that those with an investment in the status quo have come to the conclusion that you are no threat to it. No one ever came to the conclusion that Tom Paine was no threat to the status quo.

Tom Paine made the most eloquent statement ever made about liberalism and its intentions. In his battle with the conservative intellectual Edmund Burke (still the greatest conservative – liberal debate ever to take place), Tom wrote The Rights of Man. If you have not read The Rights of Man, then you are not armed to take this country back. This book provides the moral imperative for liberalism, just as relevant and on the mark now, as then.  So it’s fair to say that Tom provided the intellectual framework  for what I believe.

Lastly, Tom provided the example of how a public man should live. Tom entered the world of public affairs as a man of modest means and he left this world the same way. Unlike today’s politicians, it was never about the accumulation of wealth for himself. He viewed real wealth as the quality of the legacy he could leave to future generations. A legacy of liberty and freedom from tyranny. A legacy that respected “The Rights of Man”.

For all the reasons cited above, and many more that would require a book and not a newsletter to espouse, I believe Tom Paine to be the father of our country. He has inspired me and thus CS2. When CS2 fails to live up to the standards of morality, boldness and resistance to tyranny that Tom set, the fault, dear reader, rests squarely on my shoulders. While I aspire to be like Tom, I know that I am not. While the ability to achieve those heights might be lacking, the intent to try is not. And so we will push on in an attempt to be bold, fearless and moral to the best of our abilities. And that, friends, is what CS2 is all about.

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Now on to our best issue yet:

Dorothy Reilly is one of our writers who is no stranger to being despised. In my tenure as editor of this publication, no one has been a greater lightning rod than Dorothy. There seems to be no in-between ground when it comes to Dorothy. You either love her or you hate her. It might surprise those of you that hate her that Dorothy has as many readers as anyone at CS2. I want to address myself to one particular group of readers here. Let’s say that you consider yourself liberal and you are a big fan of Barack Obama’s. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that if that description fits you, you probably intend to skip this article. I want you to do me a favor if you will.  Read The Velvet Glove Over the Iron Fist. As you read it, disregard all of Dorothy’s opinions  about Barack Obama since they fly in the face of what you believe. Once finished, I would ask you to go back and read the supporting material in the links by Glen Greenwald, Chris Hedges and Naomi Wolf and others. These are well known liberals that many of you may respect. When finished, I would ask you to answer two questions. They are: 1) If you’re a liberal, how can this be okay? and 2) If it’s not okay, what do you as a liberal plan to do about it? Leave your answer in the feedback section. Maybe we can start a constructive dialogue about this. Maybe not. But let’s give it a try.

The great Kevin McCloskey returns after a long hiatus and doesn’t disappoint. His profile of Mr. Fish called Mr. Fish Comes Knocking is sure to amuse. Spend the time to check out all the great drawings and captions. My favorite is the JFK-Hoody one.

There’s plenty on and by “The Woman Who Connects the Dots” in this issue. First we have part 1 of my interview with Dory titled Meet the 1st Lady of Fracking. Then Dory gives us part 6 of her indispensable series: Connecting the Dots-The Marcellus Natural Gas Play Players. This month’s edition is titled Aubrey McClendon: Chesapeake Energy’s Little Problem. As always – First Rate!

Rudy Avizius looks at The Big Picture and asks the toughest question of all: What Can We Do?

Jack Lindeman is here with his unique brand of cultural and literary criticism with a unique piece titled Sons of God. Jack also graces us with a poem as memoir called Remembering Jack Lewis.

Lynn M. Petrovich is a certified public accountant, and so during the tax season readers of CS2 are not treated to her wonderful writing and rare wit. Some of us are going through our Lynn Petrovich withdrawal symptoms. I’m happy to report that Lynn is back with us for this issue to discuss one of my favorite topics–socialism. You’ll want to read The VA Monologues.

Ron Stouffer and Rosie Skomitz have been tracking the life and death of single-payer in this magazine since the first issue. Just when it seems that the matter was settled, along comes this Supreme Court  case that could throw a monkey-wrench into Obamacare. I hope it does so we can trade the Democrats’ pretend reform for real Single-Payer reform. As we await the Supreme Court’s decision, check out the ins and outs of the case in What Will SCOTUS Do?

Walter Brasch is here with two important pieces. First: The Trayvon Martin Case: A lesson Can Still be Learned. Check it out and see what that lesson is. He follows that up with a creative piece titled Spearing a Tax Deduction.

Elizabeth Walters makes her CS2 debut with How Do We Improve  Public Schools? Her answer isn’t the usual crap you hear from politicians. We hope to hear more from Elizabeth in the future.

GK Thomas rounds out the issue with a poem titled Dreams.

Hope you enjoy this issue as much as we did putting it together.

Until next month, keep on keepin’ on.

Charlie

if they ask for us
tell them we are out with the dancers
or walking to mars
with our hands in our pockets
or anything
but don’t tell them
that here we lie
and that here we’ll remain
dust stuffing our heads
and dreams theirs

Robert Hayden

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Dory Hippauf is a special lady. I knew that as soon as I first laid eyes on her first submittal to CS2--Connecting the Dots: The Marcellus Natural Gas Play Players - Part 1. I was astounded to see the quality of this woman’s research. And I had

Dory hugs her dog

nothing but admiration for the fearlessness with which she exposed the movers and the shakers behind the destruction of our environment that is otherwise known as fracking. She laid out the facts on the rich and the powerful: those greed merchants who buy our politicians and spoil our drinking water without regard to the consequences. If we had more activists like Dory who are willing to take on the corporate elite in the public sphere, as opposed to the majority of today’s so-called activists who merely want to establish relationships with the corporations’ representatives in order to lobby them (otherwise known as Congressmen and Representatives), we’d be much further down the road to stopping this insidious practice than we are. More on that later in another part of this issue. See my editorial: How Liberal Democrats Lost America coming in the June issue.

Dory has gone on to publish 5 sequels to her first installment. They are all essential reading for the serious and committed activist. You should print them out and reference them when you are going up against the fracking industry. It’s a great way to let them know that you know what’s going on and are not a country bumpkin . Those sequels are: Part 2: Chesapeake Energy – Peeking Behind the Curtain; Part 3 Connecting the Dots: The Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Play Players; Connecting the Dots Part 4;  Part 5: Pieces of Silver – Act 13; and in this issue Part 6-Aubrey McClendon: Chesapeake Energy’s Little Problem.

Dory makes a point

So you can see that after reading all this wonderful research that establishes the interconnected nature of this country’s 1% and our politicians slave-like compliance with their wishes, I decided to have lunch with Dory and her significant other (a nice person who is publicity shy and shall remain nameless in this piece).  I wanted to meet the remarkable woman who put this all together by “connecting the dots”.  So one fine Saturday I took  a ride up to Wilkes Barre to find out how Dory became involved in exposing those folks who would ruin our environment to make a quick buck. I wanted to know what made her tick and how she manages to keep her eye on the ball with all the distractions of life.

Below are excerpts from that conversation. I trust you’ll find Dory as interesting as I did.

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Chuck: You are now writing the most popular articles ever published in CS2. We are on our 51st issue so that is saying something. Can you tell me how you got started  in your fracking crusade?

Dory with Chuck

Dory: Well, a man came knocking at the door. He wanted us to sign a lease. We were very skeptical about it. We didn’t know anything about what was going on. So I went on the internet and started reading stuff about it. I didn’t really like what I was seeing but I wanted more information. The local organization called Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition were having meetings. I started going to those. I began to find out all the things that the gas companies were not telling us. So we began to become involved.

Chuck: So when was this?

Dory: About two years ago.

Chuck: So now you’ve gone from attending meetings to writing articles. You’re exposing the forces and the money behind this push and the politicians who can’t seem to say no. How did this series come about?

Dory: Well, originally I was reading a lot of politics and stuff on line. In 2000 with Bush down in Florida, there was a photograph in the Miami Dade County Newspaper of a bunch of supposed Floridians protesting the recount. Somebody had managed to find out that this photo of all these people that were being portrayed as being of people that were from Florida of local people upset about the recount, were actually staffers from various Republican Senators and representatives from GOP headquarters.

Chuck: I even recognized one of them who were pounding on the windows as being a former member of the Gingrich campaigns in the 90′s.

Dory: That started me getting into the habit of paying more attention to who was in the photos and the background of things. It just made me more alert to the people around the events. Other than that, I didn’t do much. But then, years later, when I got involved with the Gas Coalition, I found that what the gas company was telling you about how they were doing everything by the book in terms of the hazards and the risks was simply not true. There wasn’t much out there about who these people were. Because of my habit of looking in the background, I found that there was very little information about these people. I found there was a gap. I wanted to know who the spokesman was speaking for. I noticed that all these people were members of a group called The Marcellus Shale Coalition. All of them. I asked myself: Who are these people? What is the connection? I know now. I found a couple of web sites that you can go into and type a person’s name and find some things out about them. So I started playing around a little with those, typing in the gas company names I could ascertain. It wasn’t giving me the in-depth kind of information that I was looking for.

So I went to the Marcellus Shale Coalition, who were very nice,  and they gave me a list of all their members.

Chuck: Did they? (laughing) That’s unbelievable.

Dory:  Yes, they did. So I started randomly going through the list and looking at the websites. And I would go to the company sites and see who the CEOs and mentioned executives of the company were. I’d also see who’s on the Board of Directors. Then I would go over to Chesapeake and see who’s who, and I begin to realize that I’m not going to be able to remember all these names. So I decided to create a spreadsheet putting down who the company is, who works for them, what their title is and the link to the web page that I was referencing. I also created a little section for notes. If there’s something interesting about an individual that I can’t fit in a category, I’ll stick it in the notes.  As I started doing more and more of this I started seeing the connections.  The more I dug into it, the muckier it got. (Dory laughs).

If you look at an organization chart, it’s very easy to follow. You’ve got somebody at the top and you’ve got the next level down and the next level and the next level. It’s sort of a pyramid shape. If you look at it in terms of networks, there’s a hub and then things branch out. Believe it or not, we’re jut scratching the surface of where people connect and where they branch to. It’s crazy. The closest I can come to it is: If you have 30 cats and they are high on catnip and you threw them into a yarn shop for a day. After a day, go in there and try to unsnarl all that yarn. That’s what we’re doing here. We’re unsnarling these connections. It’s unbelievable how people connect.

Chuck: As you trace the money and uncover the vast array of power that is behind this movement to do what I call poison our water and spoil our land so that China can grow its economy, when you see the vastness of it, does it ever depress you to contemplate how big the obstacle that we must overcome is?

Dory: Yeah, it does. It does get me down. It gets me angry. It gets me frustrated. The way I deal with it is humor. I just  look at it and shake my head in disbelief at what’s going on and come out with some smart-ass remark to break the tension. Because if I don’t diffuse it, I’m gonna stick my head through a wall.

Chuck: Contrast your pre-activist life to your activist life. I’m thinking in terms of this: How did you make room in your life to put in all the hours that you now give to activism? What had to go? How did it affect your friends and did they all accept it?

Dory: I was never big on having much of a social life. I never really did before. We’re the kind of people that like it out in the woods. We don’t want to see anybody. We don’t want to talk to anybody. We just want to come home and relax. We don’t go out much. It’s not our thing. So, as far as a social life being ruined, it’s not a factor.  I drive my partner nuts because I’m always on the computer researching something.

Chuck: Your partner wants to watch a movie and you want to go on the internet and connect some dots.

Dory: Yeah. (laughs). Time-wise I’m up early enough in the morning to get things done. I wake up with the roosters. I’m up anywhere between 3 or 4 in the morning. That’s my quiet time The dogs are asleep. Nobody’s going to call. So I have two or three hours in the morning before I have to leave for work. So that’s when I do the bulk of it, and of course, on weekends.

Chuck: Of course, you realize that now that you’ve done all of this research on politicians and corporate donors and stuff, that you’re not going to get a job with them. (laughs)

Dory: I know. I wasn’t going to get a job with them anyway.

Chuck: How do you see the future of the movement? What can be done over the next couple of years? How can we grow it? How can we become a more formidable obstacle to them?

Dory: We’ve already become pretty much of an obstacle to them. There was an article a week or so ago, I don’t remember the guy’s name. He was in the gas industry. He was expressing concern over the fact that the gas industry has negative relations with the public. There’s negative perceptions out there. He was lamenting about that. He was complaining about how we’re not even out there fracking yet and they’re already out there protesting. So the word is out there. It’s just a matter of getting more and more people involved.

Unfortunately, at least in Pennsylvania, if it’s not happening in somebody’s back yard, then they’re not going to get involved. And the money is very tempting. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, “Well, when I make my first million dollars I can just sell the property.” They don’t care if the water is screwed up. They’re thinking that they’re going to get a million dollars, put a cement pond in their back yard, and move to Beverly Hills. That’s the mentality. As this industry grows and affects more people, that’s when you’ll see people start screaming about it. Especially when they realize that it’s not a bed of roses.

At the Jersey Shore there’s a mobile home park where 32 families are being evicted  because the owners of the park sold it to a drilling company. These people live in trailers. They don’t have a lot of money. Some of them have been living there for 20 or 30 years. Where are they going to go? They’re getting kicked out so a company can make money selling water to the gas industry. As this stuff continues to happen the public will rise up against the industry.

**********

In next month’s conclusion to this interview, I will explore with Dory strategies to move the movement forward. You’ll want to read her take on these and other issues right here in CS2 in our June issue. See you then.

Dr. Bill Davidson

Single payer advocates have traditionally sought help from Liberals and Democrats when attempting to effect universal, publicly financed and privately delivered healthcare legislation.  Thus, with the election of President Obama and a Democratic Congress we felt our time had come.  Unfortunately, Big Money and Corporate Power carried a lot more weight than the needs of America’s middle and lower classes, and as a result we got  the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)——a giveaway to the private insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Ironically, it may be Republicans and Conservatives that come to our rescue.  A  conservative Federal Court Judge in Richmond, Virginia has ruled part of Obamacare unconstitutional.  Judge Henry Hudson believed that Congress did not have the authority to require that every citizen purchase health insurance (individual mandate).  If this lynch pin of Obamacare would be eliminated from the legislation, then the private insurance industry would quickly withdraw from most markets and Obamacare would disintegrate allowing real solutions, such as Single Payer, to be considered.

Judge Hudson’s ruling (and others) has made its way to the Supreme Court where the majority’s party loyalty seems to determine most decisions. This time the decision won’t be so easy. Ruling against the individual mandate may make Conservative ideologues happy and doom Obamacare Democrats to another defeat; however, it risks the ire of the pharmaceutical and private insurance industries whose windfall profits that decision would jeopardize. These industries which have generously bankrolled many a Conservative Republican cause will make it known to the Judiciary that the “wrong” decision could cost both of them a lot of money.  Conservatives supporting Single payer—-now that’s an idea I can believe in.

Britney

On a bright Monday morning, a day before tax returns were due, I bumped into my ersatz friend Marshbaum who was placing a change container at the Gas-High Mini-mart on Low Octane and Greed avenues.

“March of Dimes?” I asked.

“Dimes. Quarters. Ten-dollar bills. Whatever.”

Since he misunderstood my question, I tried it another way.

“What charity? Humane Society? MS? Veterans Relief?”

“Even better. A museum.”

“Science museum for kids? Art museum?”

“Not even close.”

“I’m not playing 20 Questions. Put the danged label on your change can.” From a tattered vinyl briefcase, Marshbaum took out a peelable label proclaiming donations for the

“Marshbaum Museum of American Culture.”

“You can drop your spare change into it now.”

“What’s the scam?” I asked suspiciously.

“No scam. Legitimate museum. Just like the Historic Voodoo Museum, the International Toaster Museum, and Britney Spears’ one.”

“Britney Spears has a museum?”

“Not really a museum, but four rooms in a museum in her hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana. Been there more than a decade. Even has a scale model replica of the stage of her HBO concert and a full-scale replica of her pre-teen bedroom.”

“Just because she can dance, flash skin, and lip sync at the same time doesn’t warrant a museum. And in your case, even if you do build a monument, it will remain as empty as your own life.”

“I shall build it, and they will come.”

“They will come and be taken.”

“I got credibility,” Marshbaum said, wounded by my skepticism. “I took first place in Air Guitar at the county fair. If I had a gaggle of marketing geniuses and choreographers, I’d be bumping and grinding before every teen, making millions, and creating designer labels.”

“I doubt you’d have even enough to fill a small case.”

“I think I’ll have three sections. Just like the Queen of Bubblegum Pop. Teething years. Mouseketeer years. Pop star–”

“Marshbaum! You weren’t ever a Mouseketeer.”

“I watched them. I’m donating my TV set. It’s the same age as Britney.”

“And how do you justify your pop star section?” I asked sarcastically.

“I eat Pop Tarts all the time. I should have a used box somewhere.”

“Mold has no value outside a lab.”

“IRS doesn’t think so.”

“The IRS may be moldy, but I doubt–” I didn’t even have to finish the sentence. Revelation and french horns played all at once. “It is a scam, isn’t it! Most people have yard sales. You’re donating junk to a bogus museum and taking tax deductions.”

“And you think Miss Oops-I-Did-It-Again isn’t? She’s a one percenter who has found loopholes in loopholes to tax cheat the people. Probably pays less tax than the person who stuffs her into her costumes. Their whole philosophy is Gimme More. And why should we hold it against her till the end of time? She’s probably getting tax deductions for her traffic tickets and marriage certificates. Probably a half-fortune for her clothes. She has more costumes than an elementary school at Halloween. I mean where else would she put all that drek and get paid for it?”

“Are you really serious about this scam?”

“From the bottom of my broken heart.”

[Walter Brasch is an award-winning syndicated columnist. His latest book is the critically-acclaimed social issues comedy, Before the First Snow, available in hardcover or as an ebook through http://www.greeleyandstone.com or amazon.]

Elizabeth Walters, a proud graduate of Central Columbia High School in Bloomsburg, PA, Smith College, and the teacher-certification program of the University of New Orleans, is a journalist and a teacher at Chalmette High School in St. Bernard Parish, LA.

How can we improve public education for our children?

The answers to this question–and the perspectives on the current quality of public education in the United States–are as varied and individualized as the 55 million students who attend public school in this country. Recently, legislators in Louisiana, like their counterparts in many other states, have sought to improve their state’s educational climate. They have good reason for doing so–in its annual Kids COUNT ratings, meant to evaluate quality of life for children in each state and based on measurements that include educational indices, the Annie E. Casey Foundation consistently ranks Louisiana as 49th (thank you, Mississippi).

As a public-school teacher in Louisiana, I can think of many ways to improve public schools here, and I heard the same sentiments voiced by fellow teachers during a rally outside the Capitol in Baton Rouge as the legislation was being debated last week (April 4). It seems self-evident that one of the best ways to  improve public education would be to allocate more resources for public schools–to improve technology, to expand professional-development opportunities for teachers, to buy classroom supplies, up-to-date textbooks and all the other materials that come with a good education. Perhaps one of the best ways to improve public education would be to loosen the strictures that tie student and school evaluations to test preparation and instead to allow teachers to instruct students in the sort of project-based units supported by educational research and the sort of critical-thinking skills that cannot be measured by filling in bubbles–the sort of academic freedom that is praised in charter schools but restricted in traditional public schools.

Perhaps most importantly, one of the best ways to improve public education would be to work to alleviate those factors beyond teachers’ control that affect students’ ability to learn. They are some of the same factors that lead to Louisiana’s dismal Kids COUNT rating–unemployment, poverty, violence, crime rates, family instability, childhood hunger, access to health care.

No, no, and no, according to the politicians. What do teachers know about education, anyway? Public-school teachers, according to most of the Senate members who testified, are obviously part of the problem, not the solution, so it’s better to follow non-educators’ recommendations when improving schools. The philosophies behind the legislation passed last week echo the pro-charter, pro-private philosophies of distinctly non-local figures as diverse as the anti-union former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee (who now finds her former district embroiled in a cheating scandal), the deep-pocket GOP puppet masters the Koch Brothers and, most significantly, the American Legislative Exchange Council. (ALEC, a conservative think tank that prizes small government and free markets, hosts large meetings at which it gives politicians dummy legislation that they can personalize and file in their home states; its influence is clear in some of Louisiana’s education bills.) Similar legislation has been proposed in other states across the country, particularly in legislatures that, like Louisiana’s, are overwhelmingly Republican, and teachers and others with an interest in public education would do well to pay attention to what’s going on here. According to the experts in Baton Rouge, the following principles underscore our best hopes for improvement:

–Charter schools are always better than traditional public schools, no matter what the data says.

Charter schools, which receive public funding but are generally given wide academic freedom, are lauded as an end-run around the stifling bureaucratic regulations that can hamper traditional public schools. Why other public schools are not permitted to escape the regulatory morass has never been clear, and the new legislation does nothing to clarify the situation while handing over to charters some of the funding that had been reserved for public schools.

In fact, the success of charters is anything but proven. A Stanford University study found that being enrolled in a charter school was a “negative and significant” indicator for poor test scores in reading and math for Louisiana students living in poverty. Charter schools in New Orleans, a city that has come to be viewed as a model charter incubator in the years since Hurricane Katrina, have come under fire for underenrolling and underserving students with special needs. Four years ago, one of the most lauded new charters in New Orleans was Sojourner Truth Academy, a school based around twin ideals of social justice and academic achievement that was founded by Channa Cook, an optimistic young educator from California who was lauded by NPR and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. Apparently, the praise was a little premature. In November, the school’s board announced that due to low test scores, it would close after this year, and last week, the Times-Picayune reported that the school’s accounting practice were being questioned. Cook left last summer, not even sticking around long enough to see her school’s first (and only) graduates finish their high-school careers.

Some of the biggest cynics of charter schools at the Capitol rally were a group of public-school students from New Orleans. Their school, John McDonogh High School, is being converted to a charter next year.

“They promised us fifty percent of our teachers back for next year, but they only hired three of them,” said Erick Dillard, the student-body-president. “We’re trying to fight for our teachers.”

Students held a rally, after which the charter directors met with them alone, barring faculty from the room, Dillard said. The students said in the meeting, the directors told them the school would have a lot more resources as a charter, including iPads for students.

“It seemed like a bribe,” Dillard said.

“Fancy technology,” said Qwame Robertson, a sophomore.

Steve Barr, the school’s new director, who recently broke with the national charter network he founded, told a Times-Picayune reporter that he is recruiting teachers from New York and Washington for next year, not local teachers. He also opined that the main problem at John McDonogh is that students are bored–notwithstanding the fact that the school’s reputation still suffers from it having been the site of a shooting in 2003, or that a teenager accused of killing a Good Samaritan who tried to stop a carjacking was arrested at the school in January.

Dillard disagreed that he and his classmates are bored, or that their teachers are not good enough.

“I feel the reason why the charters do so well is that charters finally give low-funded public schools the things they’ve been needing, like new technology and new textbooks,” he said.

–In fact, charter schools are so good that they do not need state oversight–again, despite what the data says–and they can bring in money for their parent organizations.

Despite a state audit that found lax oversight for charter schools less than a year ago, lawmakers have decided that rather than require charters to be directly approved by the state or by local school boards, the state should appoint local agencies and nonprofit groups as “local charter authorizers.”  The local authorizers must pledge to approve and oversee (but cannot directly run) at least five charter schools. For their trouble, local chartering boards can charge their schools up to 2% of the $5,053 annual state per-pupil allocation–about $100 per child per year, which, for a chartering board with five schools of 500 students each, would amount to a quarter of a million dollars.

–Private schools are also always better than public schools–no proof is needed.

They just are, okay? Yes, technically, there is no evidence for this assertion, if by “evidence” we mean the incontrovertible “evidence” of state standardized-test scores that politicians assert are essential in evaluating public schools and public-school teachers–multiple-choice tests, of course, being the very best way to measure all students’ achievements. If private schools accept voucher students (more on that in a moment), they will to be held to some sort of accountability standard, but the legislation is murky as to the details. And yeah, private-school teachers don’t have to be certified. But they have such cute uniforms! And they pray every day. We should just trust them, you know?

–The way to improve public schools is to give them less money, while giving more money to charters and private schools.

Under current law, charters are financed by the state Department of Education from funds created for that purpose. Similarly, a pilot private-school voucher program for children in New Orleans was financed from the state’s general fund. Echoing some parts of a dummy bill from ALEC, the new legislation expands the voucher program statewide for children whose schools score “F,” “D” or “C” under the state’s new letter-rating system and declares that for students with vouchers or for students who attend charters, the per-pupil allocation that would normally follow a child to his or her home public school will now be taken from that school and given directly to the school the child attends. If just eight students left a school, taking their $5,053-per-student state allocations with them, that school would lose the equivalent of the salary of one first-year teacher–a teacher who could have been employed to teach 20 other children.

–Private schools deserve our tax dollars.

The new voucher program uses tax dollars to pay tuition at private schools–schools that, in Louisiana, are generally religious. The contributions will likely be welcome at some New Orleans parochial schools, given that the archdiocese is warning parishioners about a rise in tuition because it is running low on money. It’s a win-win!

–The way to help teachers become better teachers is to keep them perpetually in fear for their jobs.

One of the things that the legislation does is eliminate the possibility of teachers ever being considered permanent employees. Teachers must be rated “highly effective” for five out of every six years. If a teacher is ever rated “ineffective,” the teacher must improve by the following year, and if she again fails to attain a rating of “highly effective,” she will be terminated. The actual criteria for being rated “highly effective” by the state have not been released, although they will go into effect in August; we do know that they will be tied to students’ standardized-test scores.

This philosophy probably makes a lot of sense to people who have never taught in a public-school classroom, but teachers know that there are so many other factors that affect a student’s success that, while all teachers obviously strive to help their students learn, sometimes their test scores still fall short of a targets. A few years ago, a remedial sophomore whom I had been working with for two years bombed his Graduation Exit Exam. I asked him what went wrong. He said, “Well, I figured I wasn’t going to do well on it, so I decided I wouldn’t even try.” Theoretically, if this student–who passed the GEE on his next try and graduated in good academic standing a year early, despite his efforts to drop out–failed this test two years from now, his bad day could have cost me my job.

–All teachers are created equal, but some are more equal than others.

Teachers’ salaries will now be determined by a locally calculated formula based on student test scores, experience, and demand for the teacher’s subject. This means that, theoretically, teachers in content areas that tend to attract large numbers of aspiring educators, such as my subject, English, can be deemed less valuable than rarer educators such as, for instance, science teachers–and, accordingly, can be paid less. That makes sense; students need to be able to do science experiments, not read about scientific theories or write lab reports, right?

–Anyone can step into a classroom and be a good teacher; no special training is required.

Under current state law, all public-school teachers must be either fully certified or enrolled in a post-baccalaureate certification program, and 75 percent of charter-school teachers must be certified. The legislation passed last week removes that quota for charter schools; now, potential charter teachers merely need to hold a bachelor’s degree to get hired. The state’s overall pro-charter climate, and the new “flexibility” in certification for charter staff, would seem to imply that state officials believe that teacher certification is of little value, although officials haven’t actually come out and said so–at least, not yet. This turn of events is not entirely surprising in a state whose top education official, Superintendent John White, spent just two years as a classroom teacher and holds no degrees in education. (Like Channa Cook, White hops jobs quickly. Prior to being named state superintendent, he was the superintendent of New Orleans’s Recovery School District–for all of seven months.)

Some public-school teachers have proposed that, if lawmakers believe teacher training to be unnecessary, they could come substitute for a day in our schools and experience the joy of instantly being excellent educators. Strangely, as far as I can tell, none of them have taken us up on our offer.

–Students don’t actually need in-person teachers, they need virtual ones–and the virtual ones need our tax money.

In a move that ALEC will surely applaud, the legislation also addresses “course providers,” instructors for online and virtual courses. These course providers can be teachers; they can also include colleges and business entities. Using allocations from the funding formula that calculates the allocation per pupil to the local school district, the state will pay course providers to educate not only public-school students but also private-school and home-schooled pupils (a la Rick Santorum). The state plans to create a course catalog of all classes offered by approved course providers, and all public schools will be required to include these class listings in their own course catalogs. Course providers will receive 1/6 of 90 percent of a district’s per-pupil allocation, or about $758, per student per course. At that rate, a course provider who ended up carrying a student load of 90, which is near the upper limits for teachers at schools with block schedules, could earn as much as $68,000 per semester, nearly $30,000 more than the annual salary for a beginning teacher. A course provider who amassed 150 students, the equivalent of a full student load at a traditional-schedule high school, could make nearly $114,000.

–However, in-person teachers must be held responsible for their students’ achievement in online classes.

The legislation states that, via their school-performance score, brick-and-mortar public schools will be graded on their students’ performance in virtual classes–even though those classes will not be taught by educators from the school, and even though those educators might not even be certified. This is bad news for the host schools, considering that a study by Stanford University found that students in virtual schools in Pennsylvania, one of the first states to allow widespread cyberschool enrollment, scored far below students at public schools. Ultimately, a public school could be labeled as a failing school and face sanctions if its students do not perform well in privately administered classes taught by people with no educational credentials who have never even met their pupils.

–All children are welcome at private schools–unless they have special-education needs.

Special education requires extra money for extra staff, extra professional development for those staff members, extra software, and extra materials. The expenses of special education, paired with the fact that students who receive special-education services are usually identified as having a learning difference only after struggling academically, are the main reasons that many private schools offer limited special-education services. Under the new legislation, a parent or guardian of a child with special needs who enrolls the child in private school using a voucher will have to sign a release form agreeing that the child will receive only the special-education services that the private school offers–which are likely to be far less comprehensive than special-education services at public schools.
Because private schools participating in the voucher program must accept all voucher candidates, refusing special-education services could arise as a strategy that private schools use to exclude students with special needs without technically breaking the law.

Some private schools already use special-education status as a reason to exclude kids. Last semester, a senior in my college-bound English class who has dyslexia wrote of her disappointment as an eighth-grader when she could not get into one of New Orleans’s Catholic schools. “They didn’t want me because of my learning problems,” she said. This student, one of the most determined people I have ever met, will graduate with honors next month. I told her that the private school had certainly lost out by not admitting her–but I felt honored to have her in my classroom.

–All children are welcome at charter schools–unless they’re gay (or English language learners, or not good at sports).

In 2011, Louisiana passed a bill that allowed for-profit corporations to propose and operate charter schools; the businesses are allowed to control half of their schools’ board seats and half of the enrollment slots. Now, legislators are using the connection of business with charter schools to try to allow legalization of discrimination. The Department of Education’s regulations state that “charters may not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, creed, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, mental or physical disability, age, ancestry, athletic performance, special-need proficiency in the English language or in a foreign language, or academic achievement in admitting students.” SB 217, which is awaiting action in the Senate, seeks to restrict the anti-discrimination clause solely to race, religion, national ancestry, age, sex or disability, the only categories protected against discrimination as it relates to business deals in the state. In a committee hearing, which was covered by a reporter for Baton Rouge’s newspaper, The Advocate, a woman from New Orleans said she refused to run a charter school because she would not be able to bar students based on their sexual orientation.

Given that GLBTQ students have reported bullying rates of nearly 9 in 10, and given that studies have indicated that GLBTQ teens can be as much as four times as likely to attempt suicide compared with their straight peers, using legislation such as SB 217 to exclude them isn’t just cruel–it amounts to child endangerment. The Advocate article also quoted the leader of the Louisiana Family Forum, a group whose stated mission is promoting “faith, freedom, and the traditional family in the great state of Louisiana,” as saying that the legislation was meant to send a message to Gov. Bobby Jindal, a conservative Republican who appears in a video endorsement on the group’s website. In an e-mail to the article’s reporter, Mark Ballard, Jindal’s press secretary said, “We don’t believe in special protections or rights.”

The bill cleared committee by a vote of 5-1 and is expected to pass in both chambers.

–By the way, all of this is totally legal–unless it’s not.

The authors of House Bill 976–the bill dealing with charters and vouchers–appear to be worried about whether they might be breaking the law. They were concerned enough about the constitutionality of certain bill provisions (perhaps all of them) that they included a clause at the end of the bill stating that if some component of the legislation were found unconstitutional, it didn’t mean that all of the legislation was unconstitutional. Hmmmm.

So that’s how to fix public schools, at least according to Louisiana’s legislators. Evidently, as a public-school teacher, I’m part of the problem. Maybe I should just go teach at a charter or a private school. Then I’d instantly be part of the solution, right? I’d automatically be smarter, more dynamic, more engaging. My students would automatically learn more. I might even get a free iPad. Maybe I should be a “course provider” so I can sit on my couch all day and teach online. I could double my salary, and I’d never have to write another discipline report.

Except. I’m not ready to give up on public schools, and I don’t think my colleagues are, either. I’m a proud public school graduate who went on to succeed at a prestigious college. I believe that the education that can be received in public schools is the heart of the American dream.I believe that instead of starving those schools, we should work to improve them. I believe in schools that open their doors to every child, with no exceptions. I believe that schools that restrict admission, either overtly or covertly, to any students send the message that some people just aren’t welcome in the world. I do not want to live in a world like that.

And honestly, I don’t think that I’m doing such a bad job. My students are, on the whole, succeeding in my courses. Those who have graduated are now succeeding in college. Alan Rocha, a 2011 graduate of the school where I teach, and a current student at the University of New Orleans, drove from the city to attend the rally. After observing for a while, he approached the microphone and asked to speak. This was his message:

“I am here for my teachers, who gave me an education that I would not trade for any charter or private school. I value the education they gave me. I am here for my sister that is currently in school, and I do not want to see her education ruined, because I am a proud public-school graduate. I am not a failure. My sister is not a failure. My teachers are not failures. Do not think of our youth as failures, because we’re not.

“That’s all I have to say.”

“Editorial cartooning has never had a Mozart, much less a Bob Dylan, although there have always been a shitload of Donovans in the profession.” -Mr. Fish

Election Advice

Mr. Fish isn’t his real name. His real name is Dwayne Booth. When he decided to launch his career as a cartoonist, he realized signing his work ‘Booth’ might confuse fans of the New Yorker’s George Booth.  “I didn’t want to sign just my first name Dwayne. That would be pretentious,” he said, “I’m not Madonna or Cher.”

After dropping out of Rutgers, Dwayne boomeranged back to his old bedroom at home in New Jersey. He holed up in his room simultaneously working on his music, his drawing, and attempting to write a novel, “a dark existential masterpiece.” One day in 1984 his Mom bought a pet bird. Dwayne was convinced she should name it Mr. Fish. He made a ‘Mr.Fish’ sign with an arrow and taped it next to the the bird’s cage. Mom was not amused; she removed the sign and put it in her son’s room with the arrow pointing toward his sketchbook. So the name stuck, but not to the bird.

I met Mr. Fish when he came to visit the Kutztown University’s Rohrbach Library for Library Week. He is a regular contributing artist for Harper’s online and Truthdig.com. He shared his images from his first book-length collection, Go Fish. The book has an apt subtitle: How to Win Contempt and Influence People. At first glance the cover image on Go Fish looks like one happy Daddy heading to work, circa 1965. On second glance, you notice the bombs dropping from the sky blowing up the neighborhood.

Uncle Sam

Mr. Fish may look like a mild-mannered grad student in his Clark Kent glasses, but he is one angry young artist. He lobs grenades at the right, the left, the middle, and even other cartoonists. Mr. Fish argues that no cartoonist should be considered a genius, “the same way a tournament level nose picker will never compete in the Olympic Games, no matter how good he is.” Doonesbury creator Gary Trudeau, for one, is not likely to buy him a drink after reading Mr. Fish’s assessment that he “hasn’t had anything to say for thirty years.”

Go Fish is mostly pictures with a few wild essays. In the afterward, Mr. Fish insists he does not want to be considered a cartoonist. He is especially unimpressed by humorists poking fun at President Bush. “What makes George W. Bush the most lampooned U.S. President in history, surpassing all 20^th Century Presidents combined, is the fact that you don’t need a house of mirrors to confirm that he is a complete asshole from every angle.” Much of this vitriolic essay, “Leave Me Alone, I Like the Company,” can be found here on his website, www.clowncrack.com.

The President Sells

Mr. Fish does not cut Barack Obama any slack. He is certain Martin Luther King would be protesting in the streets against Obama’s Afghan war and his domestic policies. Mr. Fish drew Obama’s face on a southern sheriff unleashing police dogs on peaceful demonstrators. He also drew Dr. King visiting Obama in the Oval Office. King says, “So, that’s my dream. What’s your dream?” Obama answers, “To not piss off rich people- that’s really about it.”

Mr. Fish won the Society of Professional Journalist’s Sigma Delta Chi award for editorial cartooning in 2010 and 2011. The 2011 award was for his drawing of a worn out man with a sign, “Will HOPE for Work.” The unemployed man in his dusty fedora might have been plucked from a Dorothea Lange photo of the Great Depression. The only color in the drawing is the Obama campaign logo in the O of HOPE. I had guessed that Mr. Fish used Photoshop to composite old and new photos. He tells me while these works are based on photo reference, they are actually original pencil renderings. Typically, artworks like this one take him five or six hours at the drawing board. On the other hand, his simpler line art style, like the art grant cartoon, can be completed in less than half an hour.

After Mr. Fish’s library talk, he spoke to a senior level illustration class. One student asked if she should go to graduate school. He told her as a college dropout he might not be the ideal guidance counselor, but he didn’t see the point of an advanced degree in illustration.

Another student asked, ‘Where does an artist need to live?’ His answer: “Anywhere you want.”  Mr. Fish explained that early in his career he lived and worked in L.A. His illustrations often appeared in the L.A Weekly, a newspaper owned by the Village Voice. Technology freed him to work from home. Now married, with twin children, he lives in a Philadelphia suburb that he chose, in part, for its good schools. His neighborhood is not where his readership resides, most of his “fan base” comes from L.A and New York.

Mr. Fish earns a modest salary from his editorial artwork for Harpers and Truthdig. His original drawings are sold at The Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. He supplements this income by selling Mr.Fish “merch” on his web site –mugs, tee shirts and signed prints. For a while, he was making “around twenty dollars” each time he sold a pair of Noam Chomsky sneakers. If you didn’t get your Chomsky sneakers, it may be too late. Seems they are sold out.

Prof. Chomsky is one of the few living thinkers Mr. Fish admires. Mr. Fish is working on a graphic book project based on his conversations with Chomsky. He interviewed Chomsky at length at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on June 19, 2008. The date, Mr Fish reminds us, is not only the anniversary of the first baseball game played in Hoboken’s Elysian Fields, but also the 111th birthday of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges. This loopy interview was recorded and the transcript can be found here.  Spoiler alert: Prof. Chomsky reveals that La Bohème doesn’t have a happy ending.

One of the seismic shifts in Internet publishing is that artists lose control of their images the moment they hit the web. I told Mr. Fish that I saw his JFK hoodie cartoon on Facebook, not at Harper’s. I also found his cartoons on a web page that had been viewed 55,000 times with no link to his site. Mr. Fish shrugged and said he has no way of telling which of his images go viral. He only knows how many viewers he gets at Harper’s, Truthdig, and Clowncrack. He enjoys reader feedback, though. For the 10th anniversary of 9/11 he did a drawing called Rewind. It is a simple pencil sketch of the burning twin towers with the rewind icon superimposed over the center of the image. Emails poured in from readers who repeatedly clicked on the rewind button and were disappointed when nothing changed. That was Mr. Fish’s point, some moments in our shared history, no matter how much we would like to rewind them, can not be undone.

A number of Mr. Fish’s drawings struck me as lewd and crude, others struck me as absolutely brilliant. Internet cartooning is uncharted territory. This new frontier is often described as limitless. I have a gut feeling there may be limits and Mr. Fish is having fun racing towards these limits. Go Fish!

Occupy Wall Street has a point.

 “I don’t want to shock anyone here, have people dashing out of the room;

but the VA is a socialized health care system.

[So] that’s socialized medicine in the US.

Anyone here want to bring up an amendment to eliminate the VA?

Didn’t think so.”

Bernie Sanders on the floor of Congress 7/15/2009

Lynn M. Petrovich

Professional athlete Mia Hamm was born with a club foot.  Despite that fact, her feet literally corner-kicked Mia’s amazing rise to fame as one of the greatest soccer stars in history:

-       At the age of 15, the youngest member of the US National team;

-       Leading the University of North Carolina Tar Heels to 4 straight national             championships;

-       Helped the US win the first (ever) World Cup of Soccer;

-       Winner of two Gold medals at the 2004 Summer Olympics;

-       Scoring more goals (149) than any other female soccer player in the world;

-       An inspiration to millions of girls across the globe.

Given her congenital defect, Mia’s accomplishments seem all the more amazing; especially when you factor in she grew up as an Air Force brat which required that the family move often.  Treatment for a club foot should begin immediately after a child is born and involves manipulating the tendons by stretching and rotating them on a weekly basis and then serial casting.  Sometimes, surgery is required; night braces are often worn past the age of two.  For Mia, these medical procedures were performed by The Veterans Administration – all at little or no cost to her family.

I’d call this one a win for socialized medicine.

If a club foot deformity is not corrected, typical results are an abnormal gait, along with skin problems and infections, requiring a lifetime of chronic medical intervention.

The Veterans Administration, which has been around since1636 when the Pilgrims were at war with the Pequot Indians, is, according to the US Department of Veterans Affairs website:

 “The most comprehensive system of assistance for veterans of any nation in the world.”

Its wide-ranging services include 152 hospitals, 800 community-based outpatient clinics (one in Brick, NJ where my dad, a World War II veteran, enjoys excellent, caring medical attention), 126 nursing home care units, and 35 domiciliaries.   Employing over 13,000 physicians and 55,000 nurses, it operates under a global budget authorized each year by Congress (2013 budget $140.3 billion – a 10.5% increase over 2012) and according to the President’s FY 2013 budget, maintains the following as top priorities:

-       Expand Access

-       Eliminate the Claims Backlog

-       End Veteran Homelessness

Since 2009, critical program funding increases include

Mental health (45%)

Prosthetics (161%)

Women Veterans (158%)

Long-Term Care (50%)

Spinal Cord Injury (36%)

Funding for medical and prosthetic research and development has improved by six percent over the past three years; 80% of the VA’s information technology budget directly supports benefits and services.

So how is the VA socialized medicine?

Because treatment is based on patient need, not ability to pay.  The VA is not profit-motivated (so-called “free” market), treating all patients regardless of preexisting conditions.  Its comprehensive, federally (taxpayer) funded budget employs the staff, owns the facilities, coordinates the research and development, finances capital improvements, and maintains outreach programs.  In direct contrast to our corporate-controlled profit-first health care system, physicians employed by the VA make decisions on patient care not predicated on approval first from giant, apathetic insurance conglomerates.

Those in the VA health system who have little or no financial resources can actually be treated instead of getting kicked to the curb due to their inability to pay.

Do the majority of Americans know the VA is socialized medicine?

I’d say not because over the past few decades, the ownership of media communication channels has been consolidated (and the message controlled) by a select few capitalists (ABC, FOX, CBS, and don’t forget NBC which is owned by General Electric).

Here’s FOX’s Bill O’Reilly on socialism:

“It’s long past time for Americans to wake up. The far left in this country want to diminish personal power and impose social justice on the nation. They want to erode our personal freedoms in order to right what they consider wrongs brought about by capitalism.  Socialism has no place in the USA.  Period.”

Bill O’Reilly

Are you a Socialist?

Pinheads and Patriots 2/12/10

Now I ask:  Who in their right mind wants social justice in America?

And just another thought:  Aren’t our personal freedoms expanded by the ability to seek medical care when needed without regard to economic status?

Here’s Rush Limbaugh on his 4/28/10 radio show explaining why socialism is stupid:

“[Socialism] has never worked; it cannot work because socialism is in direct violation of human nature.”

Huh?  The VA treats the most critically wounded in direct violation of human nature?

I wonder if Rush Limbaugh has ever taken a dump.  I ask because our communities’ sewer systems are socialized structures of waste removal.

Rush Limbaugh’s $400 million, 8-year syndicated contract to tow his corporate master’s rhetoric allows him to broadcast on no less than six hundred (publicly owned) airwaves in all 50 states and overseas on Armed Forces Radio (wonder how soldiers feel about his anti-socialist – thus anti-VA – rages).  His devoted followers, known as “ditto heads” conservatively number in the tens of millions.  How can citizens get (accurate) information under that kind of dictate?

Brendan Marrocco was a bright, spry, charming 22 year old Army soldier when a roadside bomb exploded under his vehicle on Easter Sunday 2009 in Baiji, a town in northern Iraq.  He is the first quadruple amputee to survive the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His mother, Michelle, after seeing him for the first time:

 “I would close my eyes and see a head and a torso.”

Thanks to the doctors, medics, nurses, and surgeons on the front lines, these soldiers receive excellent, critical, timely, and extensive medical treatment without any prejudices.  Can you imagine Humana, Aetna, or Blue Cross running the medical facilities in Afghanistan?  “Eh, before I reattach your leg, can I ask how you’re going to pay for that?”

Or the more repulsive: “You know that reattachment is gonna cost you an arm and a leg.”

(Outrageous and inflated medical bills are the number one reason for bankruptcy filings in the US.)

With the return of soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan along with veterans from other eras, the Department of Veterans Affairs treats over 5 million veterans each year and is responsible for a total of about 24 million.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Report dated 12/21/2007, pgs 5-6:

 “VA tracks many aspects of its health care along the dimensions highlighted by the ION [Institute of Medicine…including] Safe, Effective, Patient-Centered, Timely, Efficient, and Equitable [guidelines] – providing care that does not vary in quality because of personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, geographic location, and socioeconomic status.”

Further, page 9:

“While some [veterans] have serious injuries, most are relatively healthy; the average cost of patients with special eligibility status was only $2,600 in 2006, compared with about $5,800 for all VA patients.”

Our Veterans Administration treats the most critical, chronically wounded citizens – for pennies on the dollar – compared to their capitalist counterparts.

The CBO Report (page estimated the VA health care cost per enrollee grew by only one point seven percent from 1999 to 2005 (three tenths of one percent annually).  Private sector insurance market premiums jumped by more than 70% during the same time.

From his book “Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Healthcare is Better than Yours” by Phillip Longman:

“In study after study published in peer-reviewed journals, the VA beats other health care providers on virtually every measure of integration of care, cost-effectiveness, and patient satisfaction.  The VA is also on the leading edge of medical research, due to its close affiliation with the nation’s leading medical schools, where many VA doctors have faculty positions.”

So why aren’t we having a discussion about a health care system with over three hundred years of proven qualitative, cost-effective experience in treating everyone from traumatic brain injury to club feet?  Why are we not talking about the VA model as a means of universal health care for all Americans?

Oh yeah, I forgot:  Corporate control of the message by our manipulative economic system of capitalism.