DAY OF NEW BEGINNINGS

Today is Pentecost at my church, as it is in most of Christendom that still follows a liturgical calendar.   The rhythms of the 'church year', with its seasons, commemoration of past saints and various festivals is, indeed, part of Christianity.  In Wesley's always-useful metaphor, they are aspects of tradition, which is one 'leg' of the chair that upholds faith and practice in Methodism.

It is also the first Sunday since the Fresno Teachers Association's Bargaining Team reached a Tentative Agreement (TA) with our employer (Fresno Unified School District).   It is the first Sunday since an effort that began over a year ago to obtain a fair contract from administration, one that honored teacher time, provided a modest boost in salary and restored the value of our underfunded health benefits.  As the acting record-keeper of FTA's team, I took more than 160 pages of notes in 10-point Calibri, to the tune of over 50,000 words of abbreviated and often cryptic remarks about over 200 hours of meetings.

I say that not to brag, but just to point out how involving and dense the assignment has been.   From the very beginning, I knew that it would be huge amounts of additional work for which I would never receive any real additional compensation.   I would do it because I know that it would help me to the same extent that it would help the rest of my colleagues individually, and because collectively it would have a very positive impact not only on the teaching profession in the San Joaquin Valley, but on many other employees of Fresno Unified represented by other collective bargaining units.   These units typically have parity clauses in their contracts, sometimes called 'me-too' clauses, that guarantee that whatever basic terms are agreed to by FTA with the district on salary and benefits would apply to the other units as well.    So it's not just teachers that stand to gain from a fair contract:  custodians, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and so forth would all tend to do better.

That, in turn, transfers millions of dollars from the public agency that employs us into the local economy.   Families of teachers and other district employees have more money to make their bills, better health benefits to cover the unpredictable challenges, and greater ability to demonstrate income to realtors and bankers.  Because of this deal, there will now be more district employees who will now be able to get a mortgage, settle in the communities they serve and start raising families of their own.   The monies they spend  will stimulate the local economy, encouraging businesses to create more jobs and augmenting the tax base that helps feed local government, including Fresno Unified.   This is a big win not just for teachers, but for the Fresno community, that the largest employer in the county is poised to offer its employees substantially-improved wages and health benefits.

Has all my work been worth it?   Yes.   But is the work over?   Not quite.  The Association's Rep Council must approve sending it to our membership for an up-or-down vote (ratification).   The Rep Council meets on Monday.   If the TA is approved by the Rep Council, it goes to our members on Friday, June 13th.   In two sessions on that date, teachers by the thousands will be asked to approve the agreement.   At that moment, I will finally be able to breathe easier about the 362 days I spent on the Negotiating Team.   I will know that while it is not a perfect agreement, it was almost certainly the best deal that could be obtained at this time.   Since I am also on the FTA's Executive Board for another year, I will work in that role to help implement and monitor the terms of the new contract.   And, behind the scenes, I am going to work to improve the often-fractious and polarized governance of the Association.

At some point, one hopes, the fire that has burned inside and sustained this journey will be extinguished, and I can turn my attention to other interests.   But the fire has burned long and hard, and has left its mark on me. If I feel some satisfaction on the outcome, I also feel a little wounded on the inside.   It is hard to turn off the often-adversarial nature of the process, to quit running potentially-confrontational scenarios in my head when I'm trying to go to sleep at night, to suppress---again and again---the very real worry that all of my FTA work has left too little time for family, too little time for friendship, too little time for my church and my music and my students.   A price had to be paid to get this agreement.   So, today, on Pentecost, I will pray for another kind of fire:  the movement of the Spirit, to convict me of my shortcomings, purify my motives and prompt my future actions.

MARRIAGE EQUALITY: WHY I CHANGED MY MIND, PART 2

Previously, I talked about how my experience as a classroom teacher and my commitment to examining scientific evidence led me to reconsider my opposition to same-sex marriage.   Now, I want to talk about another line of reasoning whose roots are in law and in history.

The opponents of same-sex marriage (which, in this state, means the backers of Proposition 8) made essentially three arguments in the public square as to why it was necessary to add a new provision to the California Constitution's Declaration of Rights.   It is worth considering these related and distinct arguments separately.

Proponents of Prop. 8 argued that:

1)     Exclusively heterosexual marriage was "an essential societal institution", so in order to preserve this institution, it would be prudent to formally redefine marriage in the the state constitution.

2)     If marriage in California was not explicitly defined as a heterosexual institution, children in the public schools would be taught that "gay marriage is OK", contrary to what their parents, community organizations or houses of worship might be affirming.

3)     Gay residents of California did not have the right to "redefine marriage for everyone else."

More generally, the Prop. 8 logo contained the words "Restore Marriage", while the main organization that sponsored (and which continues to sponsor) Prop. 8 is known as ProtectMarriage.com.

So the backers clearly believed that the way to get people to vote for the ballot measure was to convince them that the institution of marriage was threatened if it was not restricted to heterosexual couples.  Formal redefinition of marriage as an exclusively heterosexual arrangment in the state constitution was needed to restore what had never been explicitly stated, but always assumed as normative by the common culture.  The institution of marriage had to be protected from homosexuals, who would otherwise destroy it.

Now, there can be no denying that the backers of Prop. 8 had history on their side in at least one respect, which is the fact that the Judeo-Christian understanding of marriage was widely assumed for most of this country's history to not differ significantly from the state in terms of sexual orientation.   The expression "heterosexual marriage" would've been foreign to the thinking of virtually all Californians in much of the state's history, because marriage was impliticly understood to be a union of one man and one woman.   Supporters of marriage equality have to acknowledge that the diversity they celebrate today was not acknowledged in the past, and that the notion of "gay pride" is actually a recent, albeit proactive movement that was prompted by near-universal rejection of homosexuals in the popular culture.

But that is not the same thing as arguing that the laws of California in and of themselves inherently privilege any particular sectarian understanding of marriage, either today or in the past!

In fact, until 1977 there was no mention of gender or orientation in California statutes regarding marriage, which was defined as "a personal relation arising out of a civil contract, to which consent of the parties making that contract is necessary."  In that year, a nervous legistlative committee realized that there was nothing specific in the language prohibiting same-sex marriage, and so added the phrase "between a man and a woman" to the statute.   The first attempt to redefine marriage in California was not prompted by those arguing for marriage equality, but for those who wished to prevent anything but heterosexual unions being recognized as valid in that state!   To put it another way, prior to 1977 no particular understanding of marriage was privileged in California law, and the first attempts to privilege any particular understanding was taken by those opposed to marriage equality.

As it so happene, at no time after 1977 did those Californians who spoke of "gay pride" and (eventually) "marriage equality" ever attempt to redefine marriage in California law.  Rather, advocates of marriage equality used the courts to attempt to obtain the same legal protections and benefits accrued opposite-sex couples, by invoking long-established California statutes.  Eventually, the California State Supreme Court ruled that, in fact, it was the opponents of marriage equality who had attempted to redefine marriage in California law, beginning in 1977 with an act by the legistlature and continuing with a ballot measure (Proposition 22) which was the state's attempt to emulate DOMA.  The state would go on to rule that those attempts to redefine marriage as such were unconstitutional, because such redefinitions inherently deprived same-sex couples of a fundamental right.  

Now, this brief of the state's legal history is filled with technicalities that a lot of people find impossible to discuss objectively.   As with DOMA, which explicitly condemns homosexuality on moral grounds, the ballot inititiaves proscribing same-sex marriage in this state was largely an exercise in privileging the attitudes of beliefs of many (but not all) heterosexuals at the time they were placed on the ballot.   Supporters of Prop. 22 and, later, Prop. 8 might have made the specific arguments I listed above, but the heart of their "argument" is that their traditional understanding has always, by tradition, been privileged in that state, and in order to protect their understanding, its position of privilege must be formally affirmed by the laws of the state.   How to privilege that understanding?  By-----redefining it!

What an irony!   Defenders of traditional marraige claimed that laws are needed, because "gays don't have the right to redefine marriage for everyone else", yet it was not gay-rights folk who actually attempted to redefine the civil compact of marriage, but their opponents.   If gay residents of the state didn't have that right, why did non-gay residents of the state have that right?  How could defenders of traditional marriage make that argument with a straight face?   The answer, of course, is that they couldn't, and lawyers for the backers of Prop. 8 have never attempted to make such an argument in court. 

The truth is, the majority of voters does have the right to redefine marriage in California's state Constitution if they so choose, because if such a right didn't exist, no one would've attempted to pass a ballot proposition to do exactly that.  That's why, ultimately, Prop. 8 is doomed whether or not SCOTUS affirms all, part or none of it this summer: as the voters move on this issue, it will no longer be possible for a minority to impose their privileged definition of marriage on the majority.

I have more to say on this subject in the future.   Let me just conclude by emphasizing that the real motivation for Prop. 22, Prop. 8 and DOMA are the same: to privilege a traditional understanding of marriage, and thereby deny same-sex couples the social, psychological and legal benefits of marriage.   You can't sugar-coat it: there is an entire class of persons who feel that their morals and traditions are under assault, who feel that honor and duty requires them to use the apparatus of the state to privilege their views, even if the consequence of that action is deprive gay men and women (and their children) of certain benefits.  There are not content to let the same constitutional guarantees of religious liberty protect both themselves and homosexuals equally.  Rather, they believe that the very existence of gay people and their families pose a threat to their conception of the moral and social order, and that the laws of the state must be leveraged in favor of their beliefs and against both the beliefs and the welface of same-sex couples and their families.

If I have said anything that is inaccurate or unfair with respect to such persons, I encourage comments.

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MARRIAGE EQUALITY: WHY I CHANGED MY MIND, PART 1

I haven't posted much of late, and I'm probably not going to be posting much in the future, either.  

I've had so much additional work from various quarters in the last year that this blogging pasttime had to either start to significantly benefit other areas of my life, or else be neglected.  

But today, I'm wearing red, and with some free time courtesy of "Spring Break", this teacher has a chance to say something about an issue that's become important to me in the last few years:  marriage equality.

First of all, as a practical matter, I've never seen any convincing evidence that same-sex couples make worse parents than couples of the opposite sex.

Interestingly, when I was younger, I assumed the opposite was the case: that, in order to promote healthy development, that it was important for young men and women to have healthy role models of both sexes in their immediate family.  Reasoning this way, I argued that while I had no animus against homosexuals per se, that the state could justifiably prohibit same-sex marriage on the grounds that the state had a vested interest in acting when possible to promote the optimal development of minor children.

Well, turns out that my assumptions are terribly flawed.   It seems that the stability of the family unit is far more important than the gender or orientation of the parents.   Whatever contribution relative to healthy development is made by homosexuals versus heterosexuals seems to be so small that it's easily swamped in the noise of all the other factors that arguably can make childhood heaven or hell for a young person.   Homelessness, unemployment, addiction, the reckless accumulation of debt and marital infidelity seem to pose far greater threats to the health and well-being of the child, because all of these items appear to contribute directly to the breakdown or dysfunction of the family relationships that sustain the child's development.   Divorce or abandonment, especially in adolescence, can be particularly traumatic for young people.   Again, compared to the obvious bludgeoning of the child's circumstance by these factors, the role of gender and sexual orientation is so muted that it probably can't even be estimated with any degree of reliability.

Now, it could be argued that homosexuality is just part of a continuum of aberrant behavior, and that it could be seen as symptomatic of other issues that directly threaten the family.   Again, the data doesn't seem to bear that out.   When comparing committed couples who have been together for a decade or more, the incidence of things like homelessness or addictive behavior does not seem to vary significantly based on the parent's sexual orientation, especially when compared with heterosexual couples who were not married.   The American Psychological Assocation has made a number of recommendations, including the following:

1)  There is no scientific basis for concluding that gay and lesbian parents are any less fit or capable than heterosexual parents;

2)  There is no scientific basis for concluding that the children of gay and lesbian parents are any less psychologically healthy or well adjusted;

3)  The institution of marriage offers social, psychological and health benefits that are denied to same-sex couples;

4)  The children of same-sex parents will benefit if their parents are allowed to marry.

So, the available data does not in any support my original position on same-sex marriage.   It suggests, in fact, quite the opposite.   I am now in my fifties, and whether I like it or not, it appears that something that I confidently asserted for much of my adult life simply lacks evidential support and probably reflected stereotypical (and limited) experiences with gay people, rather than any real understanding of what it might be like to be any sort of parent with grown children.

This realization came gradually to me, and I should probably express gratitude for the many gay people who may have heard my clever rationale for denying them oppotunity, yet continued to engage me with courtesy and dignity. While I certainly don't think I ever held homophobic views, I definitely was ignorant, and I definitely was operating under stereotypes that discouraged me from thinking critically about my views.   Thank God I have an opportunity to make my mea culpa now, though to be completely honest, it wasn't logic that initially propelled me to reconsider my views, or even increased familiarity with the social science literature on the topic.   It was the practical experience of having a very diverse student population, including kids who were nerds, misfits or even (as some claimed) "gay."

*

Teaching was a second career for me.  During my forties, as I gained experience in the classroom, I came to see that the one putdown that was still universally accepted by my students was the word "gay", which had become a stand-in insult for anything that the present clique might regard as outlandish.  It wasn't necessarily hate speech as used by most of my students, but it was clearly acceptable practice for them to use this term in such a way, and I came to realize that this caused a few students more than discomfort, but pain.  This was disruptive to the learning environment, but it was not enough in my view to forbid the practice on practical grounds.   What was needed, I felt, was a sound justification not based on sentiment, but logic, as to why we should not use the word "gay" as a put-down.  Yet, as an agent of government, it was probably not be prudent for me to advocate for "gay rights" per se in a public school classroom.   That would create even more controversy and disruption of the learning environment.

Searching for a professionally-appropriate way to protect these students from this sort of language, I realized that the reason the word could be used in a perjorative way had to do with it having originally been embraced as an identify statement.   Few people wake up in the morning and announce to their bathroom mirror their pride at their particular sexual orientation, but for many homosexuals it became essential in the late 20th century to develop a self-descriptive term that was empowering, rather than clinical.   Heterosexuals who bemoaned the loss of a "perfectly decent word" (gay) from their lexicon had missed the point:  gay people had chosen to call themselves gay, as a means of identifying themselves in a fashion that was assertively positive.  Indeed, "gayness" was often deliberately invoked in the phrase of "gay pride."   Thus, what made the use of the word "gay" as an insult so obnoxious was that it attempted to invert the target's positive self-image, and turn their very identity against them.

This was a revelation for me, personally.   The very next time a student used the word 'gay' as a put-down, I matter-of-factly explained that for many people in our state, the word 'gay' described their identity, in the same way that the word "Jew" or the word "black" might describe another person's sense of their self.   "We should never use another's identity as a weapon against them," I would say.  And, at some point, that saying became a mantra, because (of course) students being students, that particular "teachable moment" would come again.   I can honestly say that in my classes, that sort of moment is becoming less frequent.   What was a mantra, adopted out of convenience as a way of finessing disruptive behavior, has gradually become a core belief that informs not only my instruction, but how I view others.   I disagree with political conservatives on many points, probably more so now than at any point in my life.   But I no longer view it as legitimate to use words like "conservative" or "Republican" as a put-down; such folk, like everyone else, deserve to be engaged on the basis of their ideas and not rejected on the basis of how they identify themselves.  

To be consistent with my classroom practice,  a fair-minded person would have to reconsider the arguments made against same-sex marriage with respect to the claimed (negative effects), rather than simply assume that (being gay) that somehow such unions must be sub-optimal with respect to children's development.  It was at this point that, for the first time, I made a serious effort to understand the social science literature, to see if it would actually provide any support for my earlier rationale.   The discovery that such evidence was not forthcoming was not entirely a shock.   My mind was prepared to consider the possibility that I was wrong.  What was surprising, however, was that confronted by the evidence it still took time for my views to crystallize.

So, to summarize what I've written, the scientific evidence that is available suggests that marriage equality provides a net benefit to society as a whole, but I was only prompted to carefully consider that evidence (and thus modify my views) on the basis of practical challenges of managing conflict in a public school classroom.   That is, I was persuaded as much by necessity as reason to find another way.   In my next post, however, I will discuss the legal and historical rationales for and against same-sex marriage, and how they form an eerie parallel to the "creationism vs. evolution" struggle that has been so formative for me as a science educator these last twelve years.

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DEFICITS ARE DECLINING: BUT NOT ENOUGH, YET

 PLEASE READ THIS.

As you read it, keep in mind that Reich is actually not all that enthused by recent events.   Reich and progressives like him wanted to go over the fiscal cliff, in order to cut a deal with greater leverage against the GOP obstructionists.    He doesn't say so explicitly here, but he clearly believes that had we gone over the cliff, the leverage would've been there to get an agreement not to hold the "debt ceiling" hostage in the next round of deficit talks.

I was sympathetic to the "go over the cliff" talk a month ago, but the federal government hit the debt ceiling about 3-4 weeks earlier than was projected as recently as Election Day, and that means that Treasury had to start with the usual round of "extraordinary" measures to keep government working.   Going "over the cliff" in that fiscal climate would've been a blow to the market and the global economy, and it was probably less risky to get the quick patch that passed this week, even though that patch didn't address either the debt ceiling or the sequester.

Reich was more willing to take that risk than others, and we'll never know now whether the risks involved would've been worth whatever extra concessions could've been extracted from the 113th Congress up-front.  Certainly, Reich's point (that deficit spending relative to GDP is declining) deserves to be better-publicized.

That said, the deficit as it stands now is not sustainable.   At a bare minimum, it needs to be cut in half from 2012 levels.   Pressure needs to be brought to bear on Dems and tea-party types alike to lower the deficit significantly in a balanced way:  that means more revenue (fixing the tax code to eliminating or reducing many deductions) and spending cuts (but ESPECIALLY cutting military R and D), as well as tweaking the ACA to streamline health care costs.   These are very difficulty politically, a daunting combination of tough medicines that will draw resistance from both sides of the aisle, from the GOP-led House and the Obama Administration.   Tough to negotiate, tough to sell to the public and incredibly difficult to get past the lunatic fringe.   But it has to happen, if we are to restore the ability of government to supply essential services without throwing the economy into the toilet.

Word Count:   387

Total:  29,011

BRAGGING RIGHTS, POST-ELECTION NIGHT

In this just-completed election cycle, one thing should be clear to everyone: the GOP got thumped.   Their candidate failed to upend Obama.   Their slate failed to retake the Senate, and in fact lost seats.   The Boehner team in the House retained control, but saw the chamber’s approval ranking plummet to historically-low levels while losing, as of this writing, at least six seats.   Tea-party backed candidates who promised to usher in a revolution in 2010 faced the stiffest opposition in both House and Senate races, and it was the rejection of many such candidates that prompted the unlikely spectacle of Democratsretaining seats in red states.

Meanwhile, in this state, the biggest number haunting the California Republican Party is not the 1 percent that have benefited the most under the Bush tax cuts, or the 47 percent figure that Gov. Romney described to a group of millionaire donors.   No, thenumber that should concern them, more than any other, is 29.4 percent:  the historically-low percentage of registeredCalifornia voters who now identify as Republicans.   As I write this, the state GOP is in danger of being so much in the minority that Democrats in Sacramento will be able to ignore them on most measures.

Why did the GOP fail so miserably, especially in the Golden State?   It certainly wasn’t because they didn’t have their advantages.   The President sought reelection in an economic climate that historically dooms incumbents.   The Democrats had far more seats to defend in the Senate than the GOP, many in red states.    And, just two years ago, the highest court in the land had struck down campaign finance law that had placed limits on the amount of money that could be spent by corporations in political campaigns.   A bad economy, far less seats to defend and unlimited cash had Republicans throughout this country salivating at the prospect of capturing the White House and both houses of Congress.

Despite all that, the GOP experienced colossal reversals, especially in California, where the party’s positions are increasingly unappealing to the majority of registered voters.  The views articulated in the GOP state and national platforms, in turn, reflect a party whose base is older, less diverse and (surprisingly) less able to respond to changes in the political environment.    While the Romney campaign and other Republicans attempted to frame this election as a referendum on the economy, time and again GOP candidates at all levels (and especially Tea Party types) were unable to stay “on message”.  

When they went “off message”, GOP candidates invariably either made statements that hurt them with independents, or which solidified Democratic opposition, or both.   On foreign policy, on immigration, on abortion, on marriage equality, over and over again Republicans were forced to own their previous words and deeds in ways that turned off independents.  And, in various schemes at the state level intended to suppress the size of the electorate, GOPlawmakers cemented the resolve of minority voters to do whatever it would taketo turn out and vote against the party that would attempt to make it moredifficult for them to cast a ballot.

That is why, in an election night betting pool, I chose 332 electoral votes.  I had seen for myself the impressive determination of many African-American and Hispanic voters waiting five, six, even eight hours to cast ballots during early voting that had been rather cynically curtailed by Florida Governor Rick Scott.   Unlike other places where either the Justice Department (Texas) or local courts (Pennsylvania) got involved, the people of Florida had largely been unable to stop the GOP-controlled Florida state houses from reducing the number of days of early voting, and they certainly hadn’t been able to convince the state to make extra machines and manpower available in densely-populated, Democrat-leaning urban areas.  

The fact of voter suppression attempts itself had been well-reported by some media, but how registered voters were taking the whole affair was not.  It was my sense that the media was understating the degree to which such tactics (or what is almost as bad, the threat of such tactics) would affect the psyches of the potentially-disenfranchised.   Throughout the country, but especially in Florida, where there was little relief from these ploys, I felt that groups of people were talking in their churches, their barber shops and their neighborhood watering holes about what people in other parts of the state were attempting to do to them.  It was my sense that, just beneath the surface, there was a growing anger that would boil over on Nov. 6^th, like soldiers from an exposed nest of fire ants.   My sense of this grew palpable on Sunday night before the election, and by Monday morning I became convinced that this anger would show up at the voting booth in ways that the polls couldn’t quite anticipate.

So, with great confidence on Tuesday evening (around 5:30 in California) I raised the eyebrows of many by boldly predicting 332 votes, based on the assumption that the President would not only take those swing stakes placed in his column by Nate Silver’s “538” model, but that he would take Virginia and Florida.  In a word, I thought there were lots of votes from people who didn’t really love the President’s performance, but who were determined to vote, to stand in line however long it took, to defy the attempts of any “monitors” to intimidate them,  to spite the forces who would attempt to take away “Big Mama’s vote”.

And, if it wasn’t for chronically-strapped Miami-Dade Countyin Florida giving up and going home after midnight on Tuesday, I would’ve seen my bold prediction come true then and there.   As it was, Florida was still officially “too close to call” at the time both Colorado and Ohio broke, “too close to call” at the time Karl Rove had histiff with FOX News analysts, “too close to call” when Governor Romney conceded and still (insert eye roll here) “too close to call” for days after the election.  

What a joke!   I hope the people of Florida look at the stinking turd of governance called Rick Scott* and send him packing when he is up for reelection, because he accomplished a double-whammy:   he snubbed the basic human dignity of many citizens by making it harder from them to vote, and he (yet again) reminded the rest of the nation that the government in Florida still conducts elections like a third-world country.    

Thankfully, this time the citizens of Florida reminded this nation that the right to vote is a sacred obligation, a defense of the bonds that unite all of us.  The Romney camp has already conceded this point, but regardless of when the official pronouncement comes, make no mistake:  the Obama team won in Florida.   The President garnered 332 electoral votes, as I predicted.   The high number of electoral votes captured is not a fluke, but in line with the margin of error in what the best models predict.   Romney and the Republicans collided with reality, and (as it always will) reality prevailed.

 

(* You might wonder how Rick Scott, being so dreadful---his highest approval ratings so far are in the high 30's----how did he ever win election?    Well:  it's because he's a Rich $cott, to the tune of $75 million)

 

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SEEING DOUBLE!

I wanted to give a little love to my friend Max De Vivo, an outstanding guitarist, and his new project, the Foreigner tribute band "Double Vision".   Most so-called "tribute" bands are basically just playing the hits.   But, like Fresno's Fab Faux ("The Beetles") and a handful of other acts I've seen over the years, Max and his friends deliver the whole vibe, including songs and memorable playing only real fans would recognize.

I first met Max several years ago when he was auditioning players for "Midnight Run", a Journey tribute band, and I've always had a twinge of regret that at that time I wasn't able to pursue new musical opportunities, because they had a sensational act, delivering all of the Journey sound with just a four-piece band and a talented singer.   Max is originally from Italy, but you'd never know it to talk to him:  he's a genuinely nice guy, a 'people person' who knows how to make friends, and truly one of the tastiest and most versatile players I've had the privilege of meeting.   I'm thankful that Max was able to play some licks on my long-running CD project, because he has beautiful tone and real grace as a soloist.

Given all that, I shouldn't be surprised that his latest project tickles my interest.  Max's new band ups the ante quite a bit, and based on what I'm hearing I can't wait to see what these guys will sound out when they play out.   The players are as talented as his previous group, and this band is a six-piece, which gives them significant flexibility and power in live performance.

And, speaking of live performance, Double Vision will headline a big show at the Tower Theater on Saturday, November 24th.   The show is a benefit for Bruce Conte, a long-time friend of Max's and formerly a guitarist with Tower of Power.   Conte, who is battling leukemia, is slated to make an appearance with his band, along with Vinyl and Snail. 

There is a Facebook page set up to support Bruce, and more information should be available there in the near future concerning the November benefit here in Fresno and Conte's ongoing struggle to obtain the (very) expensive medications required to treat his condition, which is complicated because of his past history of diabetes.   Like millions of Americans, Bruce Conte has a "preexisting condition" that limits his ability to access affordable health insurance....something to think about, perhaps, as we near another date in November.

At any rate, on Nov. 24th fans of Foreigner can do "double duty": they can hear a first-rate band with top players play classic rock hits, and they can help a legendary and well-loved guitarist tackle a very difficult health situation.   Two for the price of one, and everyone wins.   Come out and support this event, you'll be glad you did.


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CRYPTIC VOICE MAIL: DETENTION AND FAILURE

I got a curious voice mail just a few minutes ago from a "Blocked Number".   It SOUNDS like the person was trying to say, "You eight detention-failed me last year."   I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but if you have my number, "mystery caller", you might also know I'm on Facebook, or you might know I have a blog.   So let's clear up a few things, about detention and failure....

First of all, I DO assign detention to my students, usually for gross academic negligence rather than misconduct.   I usually start by assigning detention at lunch ("Study Hall"), and I expect my students will arrive within ten minutes of the lunch bell to serve it, with or without lunch.   I allow students to eat in my room during lunch, and I also provide them something to do that gives them an opportunity to raise their grade, which is typically disastrous by the time I assign Study Hall. 
 
Now, students can decide for themselves whether this is a punishment or an opportunity, and their attitude about Study Hall will no doubt have an effect on whether or not this intervention will prove helpful.   Frankly,  as a personal matter I'm more interested in their choices than their feelings.   If they feel motivated by having the opportunity to raise their grade, and they make the choice to take their work seriously and complete it, that's great.   If they simply think they are being punished, and their only motivation is to do whatever they have to do to avoid future punishment of the same sort, then the outcome is likely the same:   that is, they make the choice to take their work seriously and complete it.   I'm focused on the outcome, not the kid's emotional journey.   If they hate my guts but do what they need to do to be successful, that's all that I care about.

That may seem a little harsh, but the reality is that if the kid is assigned Study Hall, they have established a pattern of indifference or hostility to education, and I've done some research on the kid in question.   I've typically got a couple of test scores in the books, I have their current and previous year's grades in the system to peruse, and there is usually some interesting entries in their behavioral file.   What I typically discover is that the problems I have with them are not problems just for me, or just for the science curriculum, but long-standing problems that are largely a reflection of the student's choices, and what choices have been tolerated in the past.

There's a line of defense that I've heard dozens of times every year of my teaching career, usually from exasperated teachers and administrators who are drawing a line about what they are willing to do with a particularly difficult student who has already exhausted the usual remedies.   It goes something like this: "The student has the right to fail."   It's the public school version of that old saying about assuaging a horse's thirst.   All we can do is lead our little chargers to the trough of education.   We can't actually force them to drink much if they aren't thirsty for knowledge.

So, yes, the student has the right to fail, Lord knows we can't force them to care and actually do the work needed to pass their classes.    I tell the students that they have the right to fail, if they so choose.   But, unlike some of my colleagues, I add the following:   as their teacher, I not only have the right, but I have the moral obligation to make that choice as difficult as I can.

So, let's suppose that the student doesn't attend Study Hall as I direct, and their parent or guardian won't excuse that absence.   In that case, the student is defiant.   I'll assign them after-school detention, which is strictly punishment, and that will bring the matter to administration's attention.  And then I'll call the home, and give the parent an earful.   And then I'll (firmly) assign Study Hall again.   At this point, the student will usually attend.   Those who make a different choice typically don't last much longer with me, or with the public schools.

From time to time, I'll have a parent who won't support Study Hall even after signing a contract at the beginning of the course where they stipulated they would support it.   This is a bit trickier, but in general these cowards will do anything to avoid further conflict with their kid, and since I won't budge, they'll move the kid out of my class, convinced (incorrectly) that I am somehow the problem, rather than their coddled spawn.   Again, I care more about their choices than their feelings, and the result is the same:  the kid who won't work, who won't respond to discipline, they end up self-selecting out of my class one way or the other.

Now, it would be a mistake to think that I don't have other strategies to motivate students.   I do, and after nearly fifteen years of teaching, I know what will work for me and what won't work.   Some kids are going to need more motivation than an occasional Study Hall.   For those kids, I will offer Saturday School.   This is another opportunity, only longer and more grating on the student's sense of their freedom.   Unlike Study Hall at lunch, which I assign as I see fit, I will enlist the parent's support before I assign it, and will expect students to complete a permission slip to receive the opportunity.   Most parents, as it turns out, will support this intervention if given sufficient advance warning.

But, whether we are talking about detention or Study Hall, punishment or opportunity, during lunch or in Saturday School, none of these interventions are intended to fail the student.   So, "mystery caller", I have no idea what you mean by "detention-failed".  In fact, I would think it very odd if there was a teacher in the core curriculum who based any part of a student's academic grade on behavioral choices regarding attendance or misconduct.  It would make more sense if you said "test-failed" or "homework-failed" because it is usually specific student lapses on various assessments that set the stage for a failing grade.  

One more thing, "mystery caller":   maybe you were my student, but don't make the mistake of thinking that I, the teacher, failed the student just because you received a failing grade.   If you received a failing grade, it is because YOU failed to earn enough points to pass the course.   It is YOUR choices, not my feelings, that determine the grade you earn.   My feelings are not on the table, and even if they were on the table, most of my students haven't had enough life experience to understand them, much less appreciate them.   You're not getting a rise out of me, no matter how many times you decide to "drunk dial" your old teacher. 

The only reason I'm writing this now is to help my present students connect-the-dots on likely consequences, because my students are entering the critical period where I start assigning, as I like to call them, opportunities.   Perhaps reading some version of this on-line will help them understand how I will handle cases of gross academic negligence.


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PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE (KOLOB, NOT COBOL)

A reader of my blog (and a formidable acquaintance) takes me to task for an earlier post about Mitt Romney in which I alluded to Kolob, a legendary planet that figures in LDS traditions.   Their comment is too sharp and too thoughtful not to be reproduced in full:

This just in: planet Kolob has yet to be discovered, but Willard Romney's 2011 tax returns have been released,Yes, planet Kolob has yet to be discovered. In fact, science has yet to verify any religious belief.

That does not stop people from thinking their own magical thinking is superior to the magical thinking of others, and use this is a form of condescension.

Is there some connection between the Romney tax problem and his improbable belief God lives near Kolob? About as much a connection between Obama's problems and his improbable belief in the Resurrection I would imagine.

Unnecessary mockery of another's religious beliefs is always an implicit invitation to unnecessary mockery of one's own religious beliefs. Most who believe in intellectual honesty try to avoid it, as it is always a quick race to the bottom.



Hmm.   I guess I'm not wearing a seamless garment?  Actually, I don't know that Romney believes anything about Kolob, as it's apparently a minor heterodox claim among the LDS that is not, as far as I know, believed to be essential to the Church's teachings.  An appropriate comparison for the President would not be his improbable belief in Resurrection (which is surely central to Christianity), but perhaps to a dispute about whether St. Paul was married, or no.
At any rate, nothing in my post asserts that any belief held on faith on my part is superior to any belief held on faith on the part of LDS, and I think my critic misread my intent if they presumed that I was  mocking the beliefs of LDS generally, or Romney's beliefs in particular.   My reader is a principled skeptic on a host of topics, so perhaps he or she was too quick to seize upon comments that referenced religion as being inherently critical?  Alternatively, my writing sacrificed clarity for a stylistic flourish? (More on that in a moment).

At any rate, my critic asks about the connection between Romney's taxes and his (supposed) beliefs about where God hangs out.  Well, at the risk of being picky please note that I didn't reference that belief at all, but merely the fact that Kolob hadn't been discovered.   Unlike God's existence (which my reader correctly notes cannot be verified), the existence of a planet like Kolob is, in principle, verifiable.   If some LDS astronomer predicted (for whatever reason) that a planet with certain properties and dimensions would be detected around a certain star, that could be tested.   This would still not prove any theological claims about any planet, whatever you called it, but again I wasn't referencing those claims.   For that reason, it would be a mistake to think that I am somehow invested in a contrary, but equally theological claim about Kobol's properties, or that I could imagine that the failure to verify Kobol's alleged existence could be enlisted to support my own brand of "magical thinking."  (Shoot, I don't even like the term "verify" that much, because of its association with logical positivism. )

The actual linkage that I had in mind was not God's existence, but Kolob's existence.   There is a play on the word "discovery" in a legal sense, in that in releasing his 2011 tax returns Gov. Romney was finally providing some transparency and documentation on an item that was as previously remote as an alleged (and as yet undiscovered) planet.   In the back of my mind I also had the image of other things that are remote to the average American: Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island tax shelters.   Perhaps I should've chosen some other image of a remote, fantastic place (Shakespeare's "undiscovered country", or Shangri-La, etc.) as a means of making that point.   My critic is quite right about one thing: given that Mr. Romney's LDS beliefs (whatever they are) are not germane to how his taxes are perceived, it would not be appropriate to mock them.  I'm disinclined to discuss such things in general in the political arena, except perhaps in the case where a person's professed beliefs are explicitly contradicted by their actions.   That seems fair game to me, but even there I suppose I should be cautious.  Throwing stones can be contagious.

Anyway, the substance of my post clearly has nothing to do with what items either I or Mitt Romney take on faith.  It was an attempt by me to parse the whole issue of taxes and wealth in the context of framing a winning political message.  I think I was actually very fair to the Governor and made clear I think arguments that appeal to envy of another's class or wealth are non-starters with me.  Those kinds of arguments also lead pretty quickly, in my critic's phrase, to a "race to the bottom."   But I think I also made clear that Mr. Romney's lack of transparency hurts him with voters, regardless of what I or anyone else thinks about class envy.  That lack of transparency makes Mr. Romney more remote, and makes a difficult task (connecting with the average person and winning their trust) all but impossible. 

As I noted, I'm not really all that concerned about how Mr. Romney made his money.   The IRS got to see it, and presumably they apply a pretty good "smell test" to returns on income of seven figures, or more.   I was trying to explain why Romney's success, in my view, could've been part of a more user-friendly narrative that could've pointed to the Governor's potential strengths, and why his choices were simply bad politics.  This post doesn't really critique Romney's beliefs or character one bit: it's about the choices he made in the course of several news cycles that any reasonably talented politician would've understood were not in his best interests.

In conclusion, I would like to thank my critical reader for provoking this response, because one of my goals this year is to write, write and write some more...and, hopefully along the way, polish my writing skills.   Part of writing is editing, but one of the bracing things about blogs is that people often do not edit their own work.   It's a format that lends itself to a "quick-write" sort of response.  I wrote the first thing that popped into my head for an opening paragraph, looking for an exotic "grabber" to bring the reader in, and those kind of "impulse buys" clearly have their drawbacks.   While I don't think my general argument is in any way compromised by my poor choice of parallelism, my skeptical reader seized upon my first nineteen words, ran it up the yardarm and fired away.    To me, it was just another literary reference, like Croesus or "death and taxes".  If someone thought I was fanning the flames of anti-Mormon bigotry, I ask for a mulligan.   I ask my skeptical readers to consider giving me the benefit of the doubt.

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TELL ME ANOTHER ONE

Today, Governor Romney proclaimed that Pennsylvania was in play, and that he believed that his supporters in the Keystone State would triumph, and that because of that, Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes are going to go to Team Red.

In further news, the Romney camp announced that 147 percent of Americans now support him, that catsup is a vegetable, that being down in the polls means that you are up in the race, and that once elected they intend to normalize diplomatic relations with the Ministry of Magic.

Seriously, politicians all say stuff at times which is so transparently the opposite of what is actually happening.   It's a disease, an occupational hazard, it goes with the territory, my GOD, what state am I in right now and WHO am I supposed to be talking to in a few minutes?   In the whirligig of rope walks, puddle jumps, bunting-bearing bandstands and squalling brats, even the best-rested, best-prepared pol is going, from time to time, say things that are patently at odds with reality: witness both camps, with their Harvard-educated, highly-successful and heavily-polished candidates each busily dialing down expectations for the first debate with a furious (and utterly disingenuous) exchange of money quotes about their opposite's strengths as a public speaker.   Yeah, I've been implying the other guy is not qualified, incompetent, clueless, out-of-touch for months now, a guy who doesn't "get" the average American, but by golly, now that push comes to shove and we have to, you know, actually talk to each other it wouldn't surprise me the least if he can make a few points, so let's not get crazy expecting that, you know, I'll actually win.

So both sides do it, but some do it better than others.   Case in point:  Gov. Romney's big "secret", that Pennsylvania were back in play.   It's both highly unlikely and pointless.  In the first place, Pennsylvania, by all accounts is so solidly blue right now that you can't even find a projection that lists it as even being a possible "swing state."   Nate Silver, whose application of sabermetric style to political forecasting has an enviable track record of transparency and accuracy, has two observations about the state that are hard to ignore:

First, that this state is solidly with Team Blue:   as of this morning, the polling averages show that the President has an eight-point lead in a state that will begin early voting next week.  The respected Quinnipiac Poll even has the President up by TWELVE points.  There isn't going to be enough news cycles, enough debate fireworks, to erase eight points, much less twelve,  before early voting begins.   At best, you might see a two-point dip in that time, and so by the time the general election begins, much of Pennsylvania's electorate will have already cast their votes in such a way that the President is likely to be ahead.

What is Romney's big "secret" that could overcome that?   Well, perhaps he's hoping (though he'd be foolish to say so openly) that Pennsylvania's new "voter ID" law could reduce the number of pro-Obama supporters from making their voice heard between now and Election Day.   If so, the musings of this federal judge, who must rule by this coming Tuesday, can not give Romney supporters any confort.  It seems likely that, given the fact that Democrats in the state have gone on the offensive on this point, that whether or not the law is partially hamstrung or not, its effects will be minimized.

Here's a second problem: an upset win in this state might not mean diddly.   Let's suppose Pennsylvania actually did manage to "flip" by November, and that Gov. Romney stages a last-minute rally and wins a close race.   That's not impossible:   Nate Silver estimates that, as of this moment, there is a three percent chance that such an event could happen.  Here's the problem:  Silver's model also shows that this is highly unlikely to be dispositive on the outcome of the electoral college, giving Pennsylvania just a 1.1 percent chance of being a "tipping point" state, ahead of every other state listed as a potential "toss-up" a month ago other than New Mexico which (by the way) is favored to go the President's way, as well.   In fact, other than Rasmussen Reports, every poll now shows the President ahead in all ten of the top "swing states", a list that often as not does not even include Pennsylvania!  Thus, Silver concludes that there isn't any point in putting significant resources into Pennsylvania for either side.

There's been a lot of talk lately about poll bias, but in general polls (and especially averages of leading polls) tend to arrive at numbers that are very close to what actually happens.   In this case, we can evaluate whether or not the two camps really believe the polls by assessing their actions:  if either the President or the Romney camp believed that Pennsylvania might be in play, the story would not be a declaration of upset by the Republican challenger, but a sudden influx of money into the state to rev up the ground game and buy advertising.

That is manifestly not happening.   As the POLITICO article makes clear, neither side is opening the wallet.   In this light, Romney's declaration seems positively quixotic.   The only way he could really believe that an upset is in the works without investing real resources into the ground game and attack ads is if he believed that the dynamic on the ground will be more effected by the voter ID law than by campaigning.    I prefer to believe the Governor is opportunistic rather than personally invested in voter suppression efforts, so in that scenario he couldn't really be hoping that the laws will do what this man clearly intended them to do (I love it when they actually say what they believe):




One more thing, and this really isn't the thing that anyone likes to emphasize, but it's true:  Pennsylvania's importance in the overall scheme of things for national elections has been in decline for a long time.   Beginning in 1960, the Keystone State lost two electoral votes with every census until the last, when it only lost one.  That's a lot of electoral votes, and the changing demographic of the state makes those votes increasingly urban, diverse and...Democratic.   So Mitt Romney isn't just whistling in the dark, he's looking for a blip that goes against a lot of historic trends, and a short-term surge of mythopoeic proportions.

Not gonna happen, sorry.

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I'M READY FOR SUPPER'S READY

Look at this.   I mean, seriously, look and listen to this.  

This is five guys back in 1973, just five guys, but just so much happening musically and visually during 26 minutes or so.   It's not a single, it's not a rock opera per se, but it's a piece of music that's organic, ever-shifting, with recurring themes and development.   Visually, it's still arresting: the costumes, the stagecraft, the instrumentals that engage as the stage goes dark, allowing lead vocalist Peter Gabriel time to metamorphize into something new and weird.   It's damn entertaining, but there's also a serious attempt to play with William Blake and related subject matter.  

The thing begins with something that sounds like a joke.   It's whimsical at first, but there's something unnerving, too:  a pastorale, all earthy and concerned with reproduction, but also a feast of crows assembled from the wreckage of a great battle.   Disturbingly, it seems that the author of this feast is the "mighty One" that slays with the sword that comes out of his mouth....which, it turns out, looks very much like a black light, wielded as one might carry a crucifix.  Yeah, it's weird and wonderful.  I sure would like to have a shot at playing the whole thing some time.



Make no mistake, it would take a bit of doing. You need an outstanding drummer to handle the tempo changes and odd meters (2+2+2+3 vs. 3+3+3 at times).

You need a keyboardist who can play two rigs at the same time, and do a reasonably good job of aping the Mellotron sounds and organ registrations (particularly difficult: an instrumental that builds out of the rhythm of a Leslie speaker at a certain speed and level of overdrive).

 You either need two players to cover the bass and rhythm guitar parts like Mike Rutherford, or you can have a double-neck guitar and sit next to a pair of bass pedals.    I mean, those kind of guys have just got to be falling out of the woodwork, common as church mice, right?

Your other guitarist needs to be pretty versatile, playing little filigree work as one of either two or three guys on acoustic 12-strings, but also able to do the volume knob business and finger-tapping on the electric. Oh, and you need a vocalist who is a showman who can also play the flute.

I'm game if anyone else is.

DEATH, TAXES AND ROMNEY

This just in: planet Kolob has yet to be discovered, but Willard Romney's 2011 tax returns have been released, which means that an issue that had seemingly lost interest for nearly everyone but Nevada Senator Harry Reid is suddenly back front-and-center, which had the handicappers who cover these things scratching their heads.

Puzzled about what's puzzling them?   Let's recap:   Governor Romney, the Republican nominee for President, is the wealthiest man to ever be nominated by a major American political party, maybe the wealthiest to head the ticket of any party, period:  conservative estimates of Romney's wealth total about a quarter of a billion dollars.   He's the kind of guy who, if he wanted, could easily buy a professional sports team, and while not a billionaire, could put together a billion-dollar deal if he wanted to.

Romney's best argument for pursuing the highest office in the land, frankly, is that he has been a striking success in the private sector.   After all, he began young adulthood as, you know, only a millionaire, and he's easily increased his net worth by a factor of, oh, 200 or more.   The feeling in some quarters is, if you want to grow the economy, now's the time to find someone with that invaluable private sector experience to run things, not another professional politician who has spent most of his time in the public trough.

It's a success story that is beyond the imaginings of most Americans.   OK, well maybe not me or Han Solo: we can imagine quite a bit, but it's impressive.   But here's the problem: while emulating Croesus, Governor Romney has also had quite a few public instances of playing King Midas--in reverse.   For one thing, he has so far refused to release tax returns from between 2003 and 2009, and only got around to releasing last year's returns today.   Along the way, it became public knowledge that before Romney became governor of Massachusetts, he divested many assets into his wife's name, including Swiss bank accounts and some kind of mysterious tax shelter thingy in the Cayman Islands.   These are the kinds of moves that can effectively conceal God-knows-how-much from the IRS and the scrutiny of the general public, and also the kinds of moves that the average American could only imagine having the resources to make.

As a consequence, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has for some time been repeating an unsourced rumor to the effect that Mr. Romney hasn't paid taxes sometime in the last ten years.  That claim took a mild hit yesterday in terms of its credibility, given that for 2011 at least Mr. Romney has provided a return, and a supposed audit of his returns showed that, on average, he paid significant taxes over that ten-year period.  However, that claim hasn't been disproven, either.   It is still quite possible that during some of the last ten years, Romney paid little or no taxes.   So, while today's release provides some details, it's not a "smoking gun" to make Reid's smear campaign go away.   There are also some fascinating details in the 2011 returns that show that the Romney camp has tweaked the return in order to remain consistent with prior claims made by the candidate about the size and nature of his 2011 returns.   The short version is that Romney ended up paying more than he was legally required to pay, in order that his effective tax rate would hover around 14 percent (as he had previously claimed), rather than less than 10 percent, if all of his charitable giving had been deducted as the law requires.

On MSNBC, the largely partisan analysis had a field day with this, while Reid essentially doubled down on his dark hints, supposedly telling a Las Vegas Sun reporter that he still believes that the Governor is hiding something.   Well, maybe, maybe not, but the fact remains that the decision to release the returns now, with the first debates less than two weeks away, is quite curious.   It will be interesting to see if the President even alludes to tax returns at all, and perhaps the Romney camp simply felt that a preemptive strike would make the DNC people think twice about returning to the issue.    Well....think again:




Yes, if the thought this would make "the chattering class" just "stop it", as Mrs. Romney had pleaded earlier this week, well, this is an enormous blunder on the part of the Romney camp.   Most Americans had been focusing on his other miscues, and this reminds voters of a detail that makes his ill-chosen "47 percent" reference seem not just a question of indifference, but indicative of arrogant disregard for the lot of ordinary Americans who pay taxes at a rate well above what's been shown in Mr. Romney's returns released to date.   Releasing these numbers gave his DNC foes more grist for the mill, and pretty much forced media outlets, even FOX, to address the question of whether he had something to hide.   Heads you lose, Mr. Romney, tails they win.

Let's be clear:  a lot of this criticism is just patently unfair.   Governor Romney makes a lot of money, and he gives a lot of money, and that's one reason why his effective tax rate is so low.   If I was in a position to give at Romney scale, I certainly would, and I would certainly take advantage of a tax code that allows me deduct charitable giving, because that would allow me to give even more to the causes that I care about.   There is absolutely nothing wrong with Governor Romney paying 14 percent or 9 percent, and charitable giving is absolutely something we should encourage our more fortunate fellow citizens to do.  As far as I can see, Mitt Romney is doing nothing I wouldn't do to maximize my own investment in this country and its people.   Nothing.

But you know what?   I'm not running for President of these United States.    If I was, and I was burdened with potential voter envy due to my success, I would certainly not approach the question of my personal wealth the way that Mr. Romney has.   I would release all my tax returns, and I would've liquidated my foreign investments years ago and be completely transparent about them, even those transactions that provoke envy, because first and foremost I would not want to give anyone, anywhere, anything to hang their hat on where they could claim that I was hiding something.   I would do that even if my effective tax rate would approach zero, because full disclosure up front would allow me to turn a potential negative (wealth that most Americans can only dream of) to a positive.   Governor Romney's greatest asset in a troubled economy is his well-established ability to make a good living by making business ventures more profitable, but he can't effectively make that point if he hides behind the skirts of the law and refuses to discuss details about how he made those ventures more profitable, and just how profitable they were.

This could've been so different.  Romney is a citizen of a country where, as one wag put it, most people don't see themselves as poor, but merely as future millionaires who are likely to strike it rich, any day now.   If Romney had recast his business ventures and his income in terms of that great American dream, he might not become more likeable, but he instantly becomes harder to actively dislike.   The way to counter the stereotype of "to the manor born" is not to allow your foes to characterize your success as privilege, but to paint yourself as a man who has worked very hard to achieve success in business, to describe the agonizing, the soul-searching that could attend making the very hard decisions about businesses that affect people's lives.   Even blue-collar workers who've lost jobs due to mergers and outsourcing could appreciate why decisions for the greater good often involve short-term sacrifice, the distinction between eggs and omelettes.

Similarly, the way to counter the stereotype of "miserly plutocrat" is to emphasize the relationship between financial success and charitable giving.  Mr. Romney could've pointed to people who are far wealthier than he, people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, and praise them for their philanthropy, and to tightly wrap their ability to give to a tax code that rewards personal generosity.   You would pick billionaires on the other side of the aisle to praise, and draw careful attention to specific acts of charity that they have produced, rather than appear boastful about your own giving.   This would make you look generous and principled in discussing "wealth creation", and walks you nicely back toward the conservative narrative as to how wealth is created.

(Now, keep in mind I don't buy that narrative, precisely because people like Gates and Buffett are exceptional.   Rich people as a group tend to invest in old businesses rather than start new businesses, and "trickle down" fiscal policies, combined with increased leveraging of the system with money by the very rich, has created an economy that is increasingly stratified and which squeezes the middle class in a way that stifles economic growth.   But I'm not arguing that narrative is true, merely that it has been historically persuasive for many Americans when sold a certain way, a way that Mr. Romney ought to understand how to sell.)

Yes, these are the kinds of things you could talk about if you were completely transparent about your own finances:  hard work, tough decisions, charitable giving as a form of economic investment.   In the hands of a skilled politician like Bill Clinton, you might not persuade an independent voter that your prescription for the economy is entirely sound, but it would be clear that your views on how to grow the economy, views that differ from the President, proceed directly from your own experience, your own hard work, your own success, and that becomes increasingly difficult to criticize without seeming mean-spirited.

Well, at this point we should all know that this path was not the path pursued by Gov. Romney.   He chose to keep his tax records secret but, as Roger Simon points out, require his running mate (Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan) to provide ten years worth of returns, just like Senator McCain required Romney to release ten years of returns back in 2008 when he was being considered a potential running mate, just like Romney's own father (former Michigan Gov. George Romney) provided decades of returns.    That Romney remains patently unwilling to abide by the same standard his father advocated, and that he and other politicians require of each other, can only be described as hypocritical.   Perhaps his camp thought that the news that the Governor paid millions more than he had to in 2011 would make him more sympathetic and make the whole tax return thing go away, but you can't elicit sympathy when people see you as a hypocrite.   It's only full disclosure that creates the dynamic where an open discussion of your wealth and privilege can be turned into a positive.

So, do I believe Gov. Romney has something to hide, as Harry Reid wants us to infer?   I don't really care at this point, and I don't think most Americans care at this point, either.   The issue is not whether or not Romney has anything shameful hiding in his returns, nor is the issue the supposed attempts of the left to revive class warfare and pillory Mitt for the "crime" of financial success.   The issue is that Mitt repeatedly fails to connect to regular Americans in a way that embodies his views on fiscal policy, which is supposedly his strong suit as a candidate.  

You can't separate the man from the policy, because the man manifestly embodies not the 47 percent, not the 53 percent, not the 100 percent, but the ultra-rich: the one-tenth of a percent of Americans who are doing fabulously well in this stagnant economy.   It's not class envy to demand that a historically wealthy candidate in a time of great income disparity show transparency and consistency in their own financial dealings in order to be regarded as credible on fiscal policy:  it's common sense.

Common sense would also suggest that if, for whatever reason, you don't want to shine the light of day on your tax records, it would be unwise to remind the electorate of that less than two weeks before your first presidential debate, and just 45 days before the election.   Common sense, that any reasonably competent politician who knows how to connect with voters would appreciate.    The problem is that Mitt Romney is not a competent politician.   There are things that he is good at, including making money and building organizations behind the scenes.   He is ambitious and smart, but he utterly lacks the common touch that politicians with less money and less brains have in earnest.

That's why any mention of taxes is now "death" for the Romney campaign, and just as I am certain of death and taxes, I am now certain that the Romney campaign will continue to shoot itself in the foot all the way to November.   Mitt Romney isn't just a flawed candidate: he embodies a flaw in the Republican Party, he embodies a flaw in the entire conservative wing of American politics, he IS a flaw masquerading as a candidate.  The flaw: the belief that money and power and the "right" ideas should be enough to buy an election. 

I passionately believe otherwise.   I believe a compelling and winning candidacy must have more than dollars, more than influence and more than a list of tired talking points.   They have to personally connect to the American people, and it is striking that the Romney organization not only doesn't appear to understand that, but they don't appear all that interested in trying to understand that.  Indeed, the entire GOP apparatus seems to hang, increasingly, on the idea that the big money made available in the Citizens United decision will allow them to leverage the election with a billion dollars worth of late advertising.

Mitt Romney may not really buy into every part of the ideology of the "Tea Party" movement, he might be something of a RINO who is attempting to conceal his more moderate views, but in this one thing he is definitely lock-step with the rest of his party:   he's got the money, and he manifestly believes that the guy who's got the money should prevail, for both pragmatic and ideological reasons.    I think that's a flawed outlook, likely a fatal flaw.  But let's consider the possibility that I'm wrong, and that like death and taxes, the eventual ascendancy of Mitt Romney and his money is inevitable.   If so, this election becomes a test of whether monied interests can prevail over the 47 percent of Americans who, Mitt Romney implies, are not carrying their weight.   If Mr. Romney and his allies are correct, America is for sale, and the people who are the "job creators" are the ones who have both the means and the compelling moral obligation to put in the highest bid, and take over.

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SCHIKELGRUBER STYLE

So...there's usually nothing remotely amusing about the Third Reich.

However, this is a well-known Internet meme, whose purpose is most certainly not to celebrate anyone in jackboots.   There are a zillion versions of this, so I beg your pardon in advance if you don't think this is funny.  But, since we're now in the middle of the Seoul Pop Invasion, this gave me a chuckle:

IT'S ABOUT TIME

Today, Dr. Tony Vang officially resigned from the Fresno Unified School District Board of Trustees.

I am relieved, to put it mildly.

Dr. Vang's tenure as Board President undermined some of the good will he had built up in nine previous years of service on the Board. As the first Hmong-American to be elected to the FUSD Board, and one of the more prominent Hmong-Americans in the Valley, his Board service had met with mixed reviews on policy, but until last year no one had ever questioned his judgement or character.

That all ended when reporters for the Fresno Bee investigated discrepancies between his official residency (within FUSD boundaries) and other residences listed for the purpose of voting. Residency requirements are often skirted or even ignored by elected officials, but any chance that Dr. Vang could've defused the controversy came to an abrupt end when he stonewalled the media, issued misleading statements to the public to justify his residency, and publicly attempted to bully fellow Board members and citizens wishing to address the Board.

In a space of a few hours, Vang (using his power as the Board's President) precipitated a walkout by other Board members by denying them the opportunity to speak, selectively set limits on the time for public comment based upon whether the citizen was critical of his actions, and used police power to, in essence, throw out the local union representative when he attempted to exercise his usual perogative to address the Board. It was, as the local media reported, an extraordinarily blatant attempt to use power to quash legitimate public concerns, unprecedented as far as anyone could recall in the history of elected bodies in Fresno County.

Dr. Vang shortly stepped down as Board President, and has now read the tea leaves: no further good can be served the Hmong-American community or the electorate at large by remaining on the Board, because Dr. Vang's actions undermined not merely the form, but the substance of what is essential in local government: access and accountability. His self-serving statement does not admit the obvious, that he is stepping down largely due to his own missteps, abusing the public's trust and publicly abusing the power he was granted as Board President.

Why did he wait so long? Here is where Vang's legacy is unsettled, because he represented a key supporter of Dr. Hansen, who like all Superintendents of large urban school districts eventually make a lot of people unhappy. Hansen has a difficult job, and we are currently at the point in the "leadership cycle" where in attempts to generate evidence of progress on various fronts the administration increasingly is adopting "top-down" measures that, no matter what the good intentions, are likely to generate more heat than light from the workforce (teachers) that are expected to implement them, mid-stream, in addition to all the other bureaucratic layers that we are expected to "check off" in lesson planning, classroom management, grading and the like. To put it simply, the heat's on Hansen, and so pressure is being brought from downtown to the classroom in a last-ditch effort to put some lipstick on the pig.

With Vang gone, however, there is no guarantee that a new Board majority will coalesce around the Superintendent's agenda. It's more likely that the new Board member will be an independent voice, not commited either to the Supe or to the increasingly-restless trio of Board members (one from the Bullard area) who feel that they have been continuously sabotaged by the present administration. If Vang isn't replaced by someone who will at least give Dr. Hansen a chance to make his case, then he's on borrowed time. I'm not sure, myself, how I feel about that. All I know is Dr. Vang had to go in order to build a new Board majority, one that the public could be reasonably certain would allow it adequate access and accountability in public meetings. Please, no future dictators need apply.

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