Bump and Gradgrind

Let's take a break from the trumped-up war on ISIS for a moment and turn our attention to the terror right here in America. Specifically, let's talk about the war on youth, and even more specifically, the war on poor students and unionized teachers.

Michelle Obama got one thing right at her "Reach Higher Prep Rally" in Atlanta the other day. She jokily referred to her traveling partner, neoliberal anti-union Education Secretary Arne Duncan, as her partner in crime.

What the Obama administration is doing to public education is indeed a crime: its cruel, billionaire-fueled Race to the Top-Common Core agenda is actually the antithesis of education. It's been called child abuse across the ideological spectrum. It's teaching children to un-think, to consume instead of to create, to compete instead of cooperating and caring for others.

To be fair, education in the age of Obama is only the latest variation on a classist theme as old as the oligarchy itself. It was the same scam in the last gilded age. Nearly a hundred years ago, British philosopher Bertrand Russell had capitalist education pegged as "the road to money, not the gateway to wisdom... a means of acquiring superiority over others; it is infected through and through with ruthlessness and glorification of social inequality."

Don't take my word for it. Let Mrs. Obama explain the goals of neoliberal education for herself... but only after her obligatory cool mom-in-chief (TM) dance routine, performed in a futile attempt to fire up her student audience:

Mrs. Obama: Well, I’m here today because all of that that I just mentioned -– all those tests, all the papers, the extracurricular activities –- here -- and I want you all to listen to this -- all of that stuff isn’t just important to get you through the day or even this year. Everything you are doing in school right now is critical to the rest of your life.

Study to the test, build up your college résumés through nonstop extracurricular activities, because the rest of your lives depends upon how well you can do the soul-killing Gradgrind. Getting enough sleep, kicking back once in a while, stopping to smell the roses, painting a picture, or reading just for fun? Not part of the neoliberal equation.

That’s why I’m here -- because I want you all to succeed. And I want you to understand how people like me go from being kids like you to standing here as First Lady of the United States. (Applause.) That’s my message to all of you and to all the students across the country who may be watching this today -- that your time in school is extremely important. And what you do here each and every day will set you up to achieve so many of the dreams that I know you have for yourselves in the years ahead.

Here's where Mrs. Obama departs from the pedantic Gradgrind teacher in Dickens's Hard Times and goes full Josiah Bounderby. That's the annoying up-by-the-bootstraps capitalist fraudster who inflicts guilt on a whole classroom full of inmates by incessantly bragging how, through sheer dint of grit and hard work, he rose up from the gutter to become rich and famous. He is such a "bully of humility" that at one point in the novel, his bloviating causes Gradgrind's daughter Louisa to literally pass out.

But, I digress... if you want to grow up to be Michelle Obama, here's what you need to do:

So first, the prep part. And one of the reasons why we’re here at Washington High is because you all already have a great head start. You have got teachers and counselors who are doing everything they can to help you get to college. Your school offers classes that give you college credit. And you’ve got access to special programs that will prepare you for careers in health sciences, business, finance.

Business and finance to serve the needs of Wall Street. Health sciences so that you may prolong the lives of Wall Street financiers, corporate CEOs and the rest of the .01% who possess more wealth than half the planetary population combined. Forget history, art for art's sake, theater, classic literature, the mental adventure and joy of learning. Those things will not help you succeed. Those things will only make you happy. Those things will only help you to think. And independent thought by the lower classes is anathema to CEOs and financiers. It makes their positions at the top of the teetering heap very, very tenuous.

So the first thing that you can do to prepare yourself for the future is to take advantage of all the resources that are right here for you. And to do that, you have to show up to school every day. Yes, attendance matters. You are not going to learn or get the support that you need if you’re not here. And then once you’re here, you have to completely commit to learning all that you can –- in other words, when you’re here, you have to challenge yourself. You just can’t -- you can’t be hanging out. You can’t just coast through. You can’t just take the easy classes. You’ve got to stretch yourself.

Since the students whom Mrs. Obama is addressing are mostly "of color" and from lower income families, there is that implicit racist assumption that all they want to do is have some fun, hang out, and skip class -- that is, when they are not taking easy-way-out classes like art or drama or music. It is an assumption that these kids need to be taught ethics and morals on a fairly continuous basis, lest they fall into the morass of critical thinking. Would the First Lady be talking this way to a group of students at the elite Chicago Lab School, or Phillips Andover Academy? Of course not. Nor, for that matter, would Nancy Reagan or Hillary Clinton ever have gotten away with scolding students at an all-Black school.

When rich kids "hang out," there is no price to pay. Minorities just normally have to work at least three times as hard as whites, because that's the way it's all set up. Michelle Obama never mentions changing the oppressive status quo -- she simply gives a "pragmatic" and  simpering pep-talk to the victims of the oppressive status quo. Don't ever dare challenge your oppressors as inherently unjust, kids. Just challenge yourselves. Work till you drop.

Because here’s the thing -- studies show that when you’re working hard and stretching yourself, when you’re struggling to solve a problem or read a book or write an essay, you’re actually making new connections in your brain. The brain is just like a muscle -- it needs exercise. And remember -- I want you all to remember, nobody is born smart. You become smart by thinking hard and challenging yourself. And that’s how you’re going to prepare your brain not just for college, but for the rest of the challenges that you’re going to face in life. And that doesn’t happen right away. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes planning -- and let me tell you, it takes a whole lot of courage. And I know this from my own experience.

OK. You knew the ubiquitous, guilt-inducing Personal Responsibility Profile in Courage was coming sooner or later: 

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago. Neither of my parents went to college. But I set a goal for myself: I wanted to go to Princeton University. So I sketched out a plan to get there –- which classes I needed to take, when I needed to take my SATs, when I needed to apply for financial aid. And I worked incredibly hard to execute that plan.My school was halfway across the city, so I had to get up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning just to get to school, to study in the morning. Had to stay up late at night doing my homework because it took me forever to get home. And when I didn’t understand something, I had to drum up the courage to ask for help, and believe me, there was a lot I didn’t understand going to high school.

Studies show that adolescents who are chronically sleep-deprived are at high risk for mental, emotional and physical problems, both now and in later life. So if Michelle Obama isn't exaggerating when she brags about getting only a couple hours sleep at night in her teenage years as the price for an Ivy League education, it is no wonder that there was a lot she didn't understand in high school. The girl was exhausted and "stretched" to the breaking point! But I guess the health risks were well worth it. She's still here, after all, and looking pretty damned good. (thanks at least in part to servants, hairdressers and make-up artists on call 24/7.)

In other words, I had to take control of my education, had to set my own course for my future. And here’s the thing that I do know, which is why I am here and I’m not anywhere else in this country -- I am here because I know that every single one of you can do that, too. I know that. If I can do it, you can do it. There is absolutely no excuse. You are no better or no different than me. I didn’t have money growing up. I didn’t grow up in a nice neighborhood. But I am here.

Ah, the Bill Cosby/Oprah "no excuses" cudgel, the vapid noblesse oblige of helicoptering into Atlanta... when she could have gone to Detroit! But that would have been so awkward. A lot of those kids have had the water turned off in their homes because of their parents' inability to pay. And that would not go well with Mrs. Obama's corporate "DrinkUp!"(TM) campaign in conjunction with the bottled water industry.  She saved her high-priced water gig for a group of wealthy (and non-scolded) students at a private New York City school. Meanwhile, her Let's Move initiative is partnering up with an entrepreneur who invented a talking water fountain get people fired up (TM) as they slurp. Wish I were kidding. But I'm not. 

Let's MoveOn.org to the gradgrind, though:

To the juniors and seniors, you all should be working hard to execute your plans. You should be studying for the SATs and ACTs. Let me tell you, my daughter, who is a junior, is studying for her tests right now. She studies every weekend, on the weekdays, in addition to her homework. I’m just telling you what one kid is doing, but I know that every kid in her school is doing the same thing. Got to fill out that FAFSA form, look for those scholarships and those grants that are out there just waiting for you. Got to start working on those college applications and essays starting now.

What utter bullshit. The Obama children will be accepted to the colleges of their choice, whatever their grades or test scores. The private school they attend does not teach to the test, nor even have class rankings. The Obama children are also traveling extensively, having fun, and do not spend all their waking hours grinding away like their mom. I guarantee it. There is no comparison between the Obama children and the students at Booker T. Washington. But the students at Booker T. Washington are supposed to feel something (guilt), knowing that the Obama children do their homework religiously even though it is not a prerequisite for their "success." The SATs are a for-profit, moral imperative when you are a child in America. To prove it, they've gotten rid of the creative and expository writing sections. Too hard, even for rich kids.

You’ve got to figure this stuff out. And the Internet is an incredibly useful resource. You can find all sorts of information online at websites like StudentAid.gov -- we’ll make sure your counselors have that information. KhanAcademy.org -- if you haven’t heard of Khan Academy, it is a free, online educational resource, and they’ve created this new platform to help young people like many of you prepare for college. They’ve got all sorts of videos, checklists to help you plan your high school classes and activities; to search for schools that fit your needs; to fill out your college scholarships and applications. So thanks to websites like these, it’s easier than ever to before to take the steps to prepare yourself for the future.

Khan Academy, heavily subsidized by billionaire school privatization advocate Bill Gates, also aims to substitute online courses for living, breathing teachers. The Internet, even in homes where electricity is spotty, is such an incredible source! So what a nice, sneaky neoliberal shout-out by Michelle Obama. And don't even get me started on all the rip-off student loan predators out there, kept in business with the help of "partner in crime" Arne Duncan. A couple of examples of his perfidy are here and here.

MRS. OBAMA: But here’s the thing –- even if you’re working hard and doing everything right, there will still be times when things don’t go according to plan. That ever happen to you all?

STUDENTS: Yes.

 MRS. OBAMA: Stuff just doesn’t work out. Maybe something goes wrong in your family or with one of your friends. Maybe you don’t do as well as you wanted on the SATs or the ACTs. Maybe you fall behind in classes. And when things like that happen, it’s easy to get down on yourself. It’s tempting to just give up. But trust me, that’s just not the answer.

At this point in the speech, one of the human props standing behind Mrs. Obama gave in to gravity and suddenly crumpled to the floor in a dead faint. Exhaustion? Disgust? Hunger? Sleep deprivation? Humility-bullying victim? Named Louisa Gradgrind? Who knows. But the first lady was at the rescue with her reliably firm moral support:

She’s okay? It’s okay, that happens to a lot of people who have to stand up for a long time. We need one of our medics here. We’ve got a young girl who fainted. But it happens all the time. She’s going to be okay. Sometimes standing up -- if anybody is starting to feel tired standing up, bend your knees -- and eat your breakfast and lunch. (Laughter.) You okay? Make sure she’s okay, too, right here. Right here. Everybody else feeling okay?

Wow. Since when does fainting happen all the time? In the New Normal Serf Economy, I suppose it does. Mrs. Obama is right. A lot of these kids don't get enough to eat, given that a bipartisan cabal in Congress drastically cut food stamp funding last year. Maybe a trip to a Talking Water Fountain will knock some fear and sense and fullness into them! 

But whatever. Once the unfortunate optics of a crumpled-up heap of insensate human flesh were removed from Mrs. Obama's sight, she forged right ahead:

MRS. OBAMA: Are you all still fired up and ready to -- are you listening to me? STUDENTS: Yes!

 MRS. OBAMA: Do you hear what I’m telling you? STUDENTS: Yes!

MRS. OBAMA: Because I’m giving you some insights that a lot of rich kids all over the country -- they know this stuff, and I want you to know it, too. Because you have got to go and get your education. You’ve got to.

Oh, wow... not again. The kids are never allowed to forget where they come from, are they? They get condescendingly treated to the insider-y Secrets of the Rich, so that they too can aspire to become Rich on three hours of sleep a night, and lots and lots of Gradgrinding and Bounderbying. It's the dogma of Personal Responsibility... a dog-whistle to the racists and the plutocrats out there watching in TV land that these kids who have already showed up have to be further prodded, poked and guilt-tripped into working hard! Besides being a grind, you gotta have Grit and Determination. (TM) Plus, live up to the legacies of Booker T. and MLK! (the sanitized version of MLK, that is -- not the socialist part where he marched with striking sanitation workers, nor the pacifist anti-Vietnam war rhetoric part.)

I would be absolutely fired up if Michelle Obama suddenly snapped, developed some grit and determination of her own, and urged the adolescents of  America to help get the money out of politics, demand social and economic justice, march for civil rights instead of cramming for standardized tests, and question just why the hell it is that the post-Jim Crow social contract dictates they have to work so much harder than their more affluent peers, just to avoid being slammed into prison.

But that would take real Thought, leading to a social upheaval of epic proportions. Therefore, public education in the Age of Obama avoids the teaching of independent thinking like a plague of Ebola.

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.” -- Bertrand Russell.

A Teachout Moment

 (*Updated below)

I'm going to break my own self-imposed rule of never endorsing a political candidate by urging my New York readers who are registered Democrats to go to the polls today to vote for anti-corruption candidate Zephyr Teachout, and her running mate, net neutrality advocate Tim Wu.

Teachout is challenging Andrew Cuomo, a Democratic governor so corrupt that even the New York Times refused to endorse him in the primary. It also refused to endorse Teachout, a Fordham University law professor and one-time manager of Howard Dean's campaign, but only on grounds of her alleged political inexperience. Unlike other outliers of recent history (I'm thinking Jill Stein of the Greens) she's actually gotten some pretty good coverage by the mainstream media. Then again, she is still operating within the safe confines of the established party.

As the fate of that other "invincible" corrupt pol, Eric Cantor, revealed earlier this year, anything is possible when even the few voters who ever bother with primaries actually show up and express their disgruntlement with the status quo. And if only 350,000 New Yorkers express disgruntlement today, Andrew Cuomo could well be out on his ass.

Cuomo, after months of refusing to debate Teachout let alone even acknowledge her existence (with the exception of sending a bunch of young Goldwaterish creeps out to her rallies to heckle her and sue her on grounds of residency; he lost both the original suit and the appeal), now looks to be in state of muted panic. He actually got Hillary Clinton to make robo-calls for him. He's openly strong-arming, with the help of his multimillion-dollar war chest, people he has the power to make very, very uncomfortable if he squeaks into other term.

That includes progressive darling Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has openly endorsed Cuomo for re-election. De Blasio, in turn, had allegedly dog-whistled a warning to members of this own apparatus to steer clear of a direct challenge to the Cuomo machine.

There's this from the New York Post: (a Rupert Murdoch rag, but apparently they despise Cuomo enough to try to make Teachout the lesser-evil winner. She, like many conservatives including Cantor's successful challenger, is running on an anti-corruption plank.)

The largely successful pressure has been especially intense to stop endorsements for Wu, who is given a real chance of defeating conservative-turned-“progressive” former upstate Rep. Kathy Hochul, Cuomo’s running mate for lieutenant governor, insiders said.

“Cuomo and de Blasio were pulling out all stops, making it clear that anyone who even considers endorsing Teachout or Wu will pay a big political price,” said a prominent Democratic activist.

“Cuomo especially is obsessed with Wu because he clearly thinks Wu has a chance to win, which would be a disaster for him,” the activist continued.

City Council members were told that pet projects would be endangered if they back either Teachout or Wu, said a source close to the council. “You wouldn’t believe how much we were intimidated and muscled,’’ said one.

Council members and state legislators were also warned that state-funded projects would be at risk if they publicly backed Teachout or Wu, several sources said.

Delivering some of the messages was Joe Percoco, Cuomo’s longtime aide and political enforcer, the sources said.

Zephyr Teachout herself has confirmed that some erstwhile supporters are backing out due to political pressure from the Cuomo machine. At this point, even the U.S. attorney who has Cuomo under criminal investigation for alleged witness-tampering and obstruction of justice has been mum on his probe in the weeks leading up to today's primary vote.

But stay tuned. Never say never. Even if Cuomo gets re-elected with Tim Wu as lieutenant governor, the Guv could be doing a perp walk before his second term is out. There's that little precedent of Eliot Spitzer being replaced by David Paterson on grounds of Spitzer's addiction to hookers.

A Teachout victory in New York would actually be huge. It could well turn the national campaign theme of 2016 into "It's the Corruption, Stupid."

*Update, 9/10: Teachout got over a third of the vote (NYT has good wrap-up here) and won handily in my particular county (Ulster). Pretty good for a law professor with no money going up, literally, against Wall Street. This vote tally represents a slow but sure public repudiation of neoliberalism and the worst income disparity in history. It should also give impetus to more "leftist" challengers to Queen Hillary (including but definitely not limited to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who to get my support, would still need to repudiate Forever War and the surveillance state.) Anti-war and anti-corruption could be a winning ticket. The trick, of course, will be to get any alternative candidates the same kind of coverage that Teachout enjoyed in the Times and elsewhere. It is probably too late this cycle, since the entire Congress is filled with corrupted politicians. But the disgust is out there. Change is coming. 

It Depends on What the Meaning of the Word IsIs

How to declare war the slick Clintonesque way?  Parse it to death. Drone on and  on and on until the free-floating angst of a nation is rendered into acquiescence. Bore them to death with clinical academic discourse. The only bodies shown on TV will be the headless ones. The only atrocities ever shown on YouTube will be the ones committed by the latest in a whole series of CIA-manufactured renegades.

Assure anyone still paying attention that there will be no American boots on the ground despite the fact that at least a thousand pairs of boots are currently on the ground. Assure them that it will take at least three years to exterminate whoever dares stand in the way of the profiteering oil companies which dictate American foreign policy. However, be sure to substitute the words "American interests" and "ethnic minorities" for the corporations and their multibillion-dollar luxury bunker known as the embassy in Baghdad. Assure the lesser American people that other, lesser countries are also being asked to "chip in," so that the atrocities and the terror can be spread around. Brag that you've already got a whole baseball team (nine) of them, but neglect to mention that to the extent it exists at all, it's a farm league made up entirely of back-benchers and cheerleaders, with an occasional at-bat by a pinch hitter: maybe a Jordanian pilot flying an American bomber.

Obama, whose first presidential campaign was also declared the winner of AdWeek's 2009 marketing campaign contest, who disingenuously claimed on TV that optics are not his forte, will very deliberately and very optically and very officially declare yet another surge in Forever War this Wednesday. It is, of course, purely a coincidence that this date coincides with our great National Terror Holiday, known as Nine-Eleven.

Let the government mouthpiece of record try to explain:

The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that may take three years to complete, requiring a sustained effort that could last until after President Obama has left office, according to senior administration officials.

The first phase, an air campaign with nearly 145 airstrikes in the past month, is already underway to protect ethnic and religious minorities and American diplomatic, intelligence and military personnel, and their facilities, as well as to begin rolling back ISIS gains in northern and western Iraq.

Oh, and they're going to Syria. It's the next best thing to Disneyland for the neocon war hawks. They're already measuring their pudgy little fingers for their World War Series rings:

“Everybody is on board Iraq,” an administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the policy is still being developed. “But when it comes to Syria, there’s more concern” about where airstrikes could lead. The official nonetheless expressed confidence that the countries would eventually come around to taking the fight into Syria, in part, he said, because “there’s really no other alternative.”

Once you've already "done" Afghanistan and Iraq, (and Yemen and Pakistan) there really is no alternative but to go on to the next theme park of terror. Might as well -- it's in the neighborhood, only a no-exit away on the Bellicose Highway.

As Bertrand Russell wrote nearly a hundred years ago in "Why Men Fight," there are only two ultimate aims of war: wealth and power. War is the manifestation of a profound lack of impulse control.“The state makes an entirely artificial division of mankind and of our duties toward them: towards one group we are bound by law, toward the other only by the prudence of highwaymen. The State is rendered evil by its exclusions, and by the fact that whenever it embarks upon aggressive war, it becomes a combination of men for murder and robbery.”

One such felon is George W. Bush's former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.N., now under investigation for money-laundering of the billions of dollars and euros he officially looted in his capacity as a "diplomat." The suspect, one Zalmay Khalilzad, is still active in the war business in his capacity as founder and president of Gryphon Partners, which "advises companies and wealthy individuals on business opportunities in several industries and regions, including high-risk territories."

According to AP, "he sits on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy, America Abroad Media, the Mideast studies center at Rand Corp., the American University of Iraq and the American University of Afghanistan. He also is a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and writes about foreign policy issues and frequently appears on U.S. news shows."

You can watch this war profiteer/media personality teaming up just last month with one of Obama's former "national security" advisers/media personalities to foment more war in this recent CNN (The War Channel) clip.

 If we do not have enemies, we create them. ISIS is the pure creation of neo-con warmongers and the military contractors and Wall Street capitalists. It's only the latest mutation in the toxic stew sloshing endlessly in the closed feedback loop of money begetting power begetting death begetting more money, more power, more death. The nightmare quest for "national security," in turn, begets nothing but endless insecurity.

Is it any wonder that American leaders are escalating international war in the wake of Ferguson and increasingly unsustainable wealth disparity? It is imperative that this dying republic herd the citizens into the veal pen to bray helplessly and fearfully at more and more manufactured enemies, thus keeping us in line on the domestic front. Just when we have met the Enemy and he is the plutocratic Police State (not us) our attention must be diverted to a different, external menace. That is the meaning of the word ISIS --  in the words again of Russell, "it is the essence of the State to suppress violence within and facilitate it throughout."

Come to think of it, World War I has never really stopped raging, has it?

Sweetness and Blight

The latest in Bam Spam:

Take it from one who knows: The constant maintenance of cynicism is exhausting. So when I eagerly clicked on the link in the email from Obama factotum Jon Carson to learn just how I, too, can stand up to cynicism and give Hope a chance, I fell right back into the morass.  It was nothing but another freakin' money grub from Obama's political machine! Not even one Panglossian quote, or a picture of Pollyanna, or a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, or anything to make us feel better. Just gimme, gimme, gimme.

You may cynically be thinking that the cynical' "Don't be cynical" campaign theme is the final gasp of a dying presidency to a moribund nation which, despite its abysmal ranking on the Gini coefficient scale of income inequality, seems bound and determined to start World War III. To be sure, there are only two fronts so far: the entire Middle East, and Ukraine. But please, stand up to the cynicism that I know that you are feeling right now! The entire continent of Africa is also up for corporate plunder.  And like a gigantic red. white, and blue vulture, USA is encircling China as well. There are shadow wars going on all around the world to keep hope alive. There will be plenty more military bases where that first thousand came from.

For his own part, Obama is fighting back against cynicism by channeling Herbert "Prosperity Is Just Around the Corner" Hoover rather than his successor, who sanely and cynically welcomed the hatred of the plutocrats. But Obama feels nothing but love for the plutocracy. He even told a bunch of working people so during his Laborfest speech this week:

It’s a good thing that corporate profits are high; I want American businesses to succeed.  It’s a good thing that the stock market is booming; a lot of folks have 401Ks in there, I want them to feel good.

And since the moonshot, there's the obligatory shout-out to war as our first weapon against cynicism:

Cynicism is fashionable these days, but cynicism didn’t put anybody on the moon.  Cynicism never won a war, it never cured a disease, it never started a business, it never fed a young mind, it never built a road or a bridge.Cynicism is a bad choice.  Hope is the better choice.  Hope is what gives us courage.  Hope is what gave soldiers courage to storm a beach.

Or drone a predator missile, or torture some folks, whether it be by waterboarding, force-feeding or sleep deprivation. Just who is being cynical here? Obama's words literally drip with it, along with disdain for common folk. His speech to working stiffs was.... you guessed it.... nothing but a vote-grabbing ploy in a midterm election year:

Don’t boo, vote.  (Applause.)  Don’t boo, vote.  It’s easy to boo -- I want you to vote.  Don’t boo, vote.

And would an Obama speech be an Obama speech without (besides his annoying verbal tics) a gratuitous mention of how grizzled he's getting in the War Against Cynicism? The constant bullshit must take a toll even on a clinical narcissist:

So I just want everybody to understand -- because you wouldn’t always know it from watching the news -- (laughter) -- by almost every measure, the American economy and American workers are better off than when I took office.  (Applause.)  We’re better off by almost every measure.  But, look, none of this progress has come easy.  Every inch of it we have had to fight for.  Every inch of it we’ve had to work against a lockstep opposition that is opposed to everything we do.But it was worth it.  Every gray hair is worth it.  (Applause.)  Every gray hair is worth it -- and at least I’ve still got some hair.  (Applause.)

Would it be un-Pollyannish of me to mention that by every measure, people are actually worse off since Obama took office? Of course, if you define "the economy" and "American workers" as the top One Percent who raked in more than 90% of the wealth regained since the 2008 crash, then yes, "we" are better off.

Still, even the Federal Reserve cynically insists that by every measure, only the most affluent Americans have actually recovered. As Binyamin Appelbaum reports,

For the most affluent 10 percent of American families, average incomes rose by 10 percent from 2010 to 2013. For the rest of the population, average incomes were flat or falling.

The least affluent families had the largest declines. Average incomes dropped by 8 percent for the bottom 20 percent of families, the Fed reported in its triennial Survey of Consumer Finances, one of the most comprehensive sources of data on the financial health of American families.

The new report, broadly consistent with other data on the aftermath of the Great Recession, underscores why so many Americans think the economy remains in poor health. While the pie has grown, most people are getting smaller slices.

Appelbaum is so cynical. Obama would tell him that even a tiny slice of rancid pie is better than no slice at all. Crumbs are especially tasty when they fall from the gilded plates of the wealthy, and the poor are forced to grovel on the floor for them. It's what gives the plutocrats the ego-stroking they crave when they join such philanthro-capitalist efforts as Obama's "Brothers' Keeper" program. It must give them the grand illusion of being gargantuan zoo-keepers.

The result is that wealth also is increasingly concentrated. While overall wealth barely changed during the survey period, the money sloshed from the bottom toward the top. For the top 10 percent of families, ranked by income, estimated average wealth increased by 2 percent to $3.3 million. For the bottom 20 percent of families, average wealth sharply declined by 21 percent to $65,000.

There is growing evidence that inequality may be weighing on economic growth by keeping money disproportionately in the hands of those who already have so much they are less inclined to spend it.

The passive "sloshing" of wealth from the bottom to the top is not quite cynically realistic enough, in my view. A better, non-Panglossian metaphor would have been that the elites took a giant straw and deliberately sucked up every last vestige of sustenance from the bottom of the glass. 

 The stock market bubble that Obama so effusively praised is bound to burst, sooner rather than later. I'd say that the gluttony of the elites will kill them right along with us, except that they've cynically come to expect bailouts and wrist-slaps as a reward for greed, rather than prison time or increased taxes on their ill-gotten gains.

So given the choice, I think I'll keep picking cynicism. It sure beats the mindless acceptance of corruption, which is hazardous to our mental, physical and emotional health. Sorry, Doctor Pangloss -- I'd rather be mad than depressed.

 

Democratic Platform: Wishy-Washy Worry

 "I worry a lot," Elizabeth Warren admitted this week. "I worry across the board."

If whining and complaining is how the Great Progressive Hope of the Senate inspires enthusiasm in voters, then despair all ye who enter the fresh hell of her Yahoo! interview with Katie Couric.

What's really worrisome to me is how narrowly Warren defines the "core economic issues" of our time (hint: it's not the record wealth inequality that was a popular talking point of Democrats for a couple of minutes last year before a plutocratic temper tantrum sent them all scurrying to fetch imaginary "opportunity ladders" for one and all.)

Not even close. Warren's core issues, the issues that "it is critical that we speak up for" are as follows: the $10.10 minimum wage, reduced interest rates on student loans, pay parity for women, and oh yeah, Social Security.

In other words, just enough crumbs to make the Democratic wing of the Uniparty seem slightly less bad than the Republicans. In other words, the same neoliberal agenda being wheezed out by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. No universal health care. No guaranteed income. No government jobs program. No increased taxes on the rich. No Fed money-drop on Main Street to stimulate the economy, as even some moderates are once again suggesting. 

Furthermore, Warren sets up her legislation for failure. The student loan bill, for example, dog-whistled its cynicism loud and clear by gratuitously including the "Warren Buffett rule" tax increase on the wealthy to fund it. Since the Buffett Rule is universally despised by the GOP, she should have and could have simply called for the reduced interest rates without any "pay-for" gimmick at all. The whole purpose was to make Republicans look like sadistic assholes. (Funny how you  never hear any of them clamoring for offsets or tax increases to pay for the escalation of the war in Iraq.)

To be fair to Warren, though, she is only a "progressive" because the Washington Consensus says she is. She's a moderate Republican who simply got fed up with all the blatant corruption. That disgust is pretty much all that separates her from such openly compromised politicians as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. On  domestic policy, she's as conservative as the rest of them; on foreign policy, she's as hawkish as the worst of them.

And she never, ever criticizes them by name. Like Barack Obama before her, she's a consummate insider only pretending to be an outsider.  

Obviously stung by criticism over her pro-Israel remarks last week, Warren did attempt to tone it down somewhat in the Couric interview, allowing that a two-state solution is probably the way to go... eventually. In that part, she sounded like a mildly sedated NetanYahoo! hawk very lightly tethered to a left-handed gauntlet.

On ISIS, though, she talked from both sides of her mouth as ably as Obama on one of his increasingly rare good days. We should rush with all possible speed to crush the terrorists, she says, but only with the careful cooperation of unnamed "others."

On Ferguson and race, she was just a total wuss. She wants to wait until the criminal investigation is complete before "assigning any blame."  Because only when we hear both sides can we have a hackneyed "conversation" -- that meaningless thing that all politicians fall back on when they don't want to discuss inconvenient truths in the here and now. While allowing that the militarized cops put a damper on peaceful protests, she uttered not one single word about the endemic poverty in Ferguson. She uttered not one word about that population having "a fighting chance." (the title of her book.)

So much for the Washington Consensus that the Democratic Party is split between liberal (Warren) and centrist (Clinton) factions. If Wall Streeters are really convinced that Elizabeth Warren is such a divisive populist, they are even more paranoid than I thought. 

She's a neutered pussycat, yowling on cue for appearance's sake. Meanwhile, those pampered colonies of rabid feral fat cats continue to hiss and claw with abandon, all the way to the teetering top of the scratching post.

Update: Elizabeth Warren and Paul Krugman, NYT columnist and new hire at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at CUNY, will team up for a livestream event this evening at 7:30 p.m. to discuss those hardcore issues of student loan interest rates, minimum wage, and women's health care. I won't be home to watch the live event, but will try to play catch-up tomorrow. In the meantime, if you do watch it, please weigh in with your comments. Since the think tank where Krugman works is supposedly dedicated to the study of wealth disparity, maybe it will actually be included as a core issue. One can always hope.

Yellow Journalism, Purple Prose

Frank Bruni is upset because President Obama's unemotional war rhetoric reminds him of his messy kitchen, when it should be reminding him of gourmet comfort food, the flag, and guns.

Bruni, who used to be a food critic for the New York Times, was elevated (to great fanfare) to the op-ed page as the Gray Lady's First Openly Gay Columnist (TM). His function is to spread the joy of neoliberal identity politics in the absence of any true liberalism, either at the paper of record or in the country as a whole. As such, he frequently uses food imagery in his centrist-leaning political columns; his latest is no exception.

Since he is soon to replace Maureen Dowd as hump-day columnist (she's down to one op-ed a week since her move to the Times magazine) Bruni is obligingly copying her style as well as her increasingly shallow content. Notice, for example, those trademark one-sentence paragraphs, hitting the reader with all the impact of a stalk of wilted celery: (sorry, I couldn't help myself.)

There are things that you think and things that you say.

There’s what you reckon with privately and what you utter publicly.

There are discussions suitable for a lecture hall and those that befit the bully pulpit.

These sets overlap but aren’t the same. Has President Obama lost sight of that?

To be a writer who counts the white space between sentences as consumable content, or not to be? That is the one-sentence question.

Now he boldly tiptoes, much like Obama evolving toward marriage equality, into slightly bigger paragraph mode:

It’s a question fairly asked after his statement last week that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for dealing with Islamic extremists in Syria. Not having a strategy, at least a fixed, definitive one, is understandable. The options aren’t great, the answers aren’t easy and the stakes are enormous.

But announcing as much? It’s hard to see any percentage in that. It gives no comfort to Americans. It puts no fear in our enemies.

OK, I take the Maureen Dowd slur back. Bruni is actually beginning to rival Tom Friedman in turgid Manichean froth. If you can't comfort Americans while making the rest of the world writhe in agony, then what good are you?

Speaking at a fund-raiser on Friday, he told donors, “If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart.” He had that much right.

But it wasn’t the whole of his message. In a statement of the obvious, he also said, “The world has always been messy.” And he coupled that with a needless comparison, advising Americans to bear in mind that the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the rapacity of Putin, the bedlam in Libya and the rest of it were “not something that is comparable to the challenges we faced during the Cold War.”

Set aside the question of how germane the example of the Cold War is. When the gut-twisting image stuck in your head is of a masked madman holding a crude knife to the neck of an American on his knees in the desert, when you’re reading about crucifixions in the 21st century, when you’re hearing about women sold by jihadists as sex slaves, and when British leaders have just raised the threat level in their country to “severe,” the last thing that you want to be told is that it’s par for the historical course, all a matter of perspective and not so cosmically dire.

Where’s the reassurance — or the sense of urgency — in that?

So much for the style. Now let's deal with Bruni's substance, which dutifully adheres to the war-mongering propaganda being churned out 24/7 in pixels and over cable: Video (probably faked) of one murder (all too real, but the actual date and circumstances remain unclear.) Crucifixions, drumming up the fundamentalist Christian vs. fundamentalist Islam outrage. The "rapacity" of Putin, vs the rabid exceptionalism of USA. Women being sold as sex slaves! -- Bruni absolutely has to include this War On Women wedge issue, carefully designed to ignite the tribal fighting spirit in fatigued anti-war Democrats. 

And what Bruni calls "cosmically dire" is actually pretty tame, compared to such historic atrocities as the Holocaust, the Rwanda genocide, the casualties in both World Wars, the Mongol conquest, the Napoleonic Wars. And on, and on, and on since the dawn of humanity.

This columnist doth protest too much, methinks. He is beginning to sound like a Richard Harding Davis wannabe. Remember the Maine? 

Is the president consoling us — or himself? It’s as if he’s taken his interior monologue and wired it to speakers in the town square. And it’s rattling.

When he came along, many of us were fed up with misinformation and “Mission Accomplished” theatrics and bluster. America had paid a price for them in young lives.

And we were tired and leery of an oversimplified, Hollywood version of world affairs, of the Manichaean lexicon of “evil empire” and “axis of evil.” We longed for something less rash and more nuanced.

More nuanced than Bruni's "cosmically dire," maybe?

I don't know about you, but what I "long for" is not more genteel war propaganda, but a slashing of the Pentagon budget, the dismantling of the surveillance state, the prosecution of Wall Street bankers, the banning of money from politics, universal health care, and ad infinitum.

The problem is not unenthusiastic warmongering or lukewarm jingoism. The problem is corruption and greed and the death of democracy.

But there’s plenty of territory between the bloated and bellicose rhetoric of then and what Obama is giving us now. He’s adopted a strange language of self-effacement, with notes of defeatism, reminding us that “America, as the most powerful country on earth, still does not control everything”; that we must be content at times with singles and doubles in lieu of home runs; that not doing stupid stuff is its own accomplishment.

Bruni dog-whistles his support of Hillary Clinton, who also recently derided Obama's "don't do stupid stuff" foreign policy. Bruni is a centrist through and through. His definition of liberalism is celebrating rich and famous females and shilling for charter schools. But now back to manly-man shilling for war:

 In The Washington Post on Sunday, Karen DeYoung and Dan Balz observed that while Obama’s no-strategy remark “may have had the virtue of candor,” it in no way projected “an image of presidential resolve or decisiveness at a time of international turmoil.”

And no matter what Obama ultimately elects to do, such an image is vital. But in its place are oratorical shrugs and an aura of hesitancy, even evasion, as he and John Kerry broadcast that the United States shouldn’t be expected to act on its own. Isn’t that better whispered to our allies and negotiated behind closed doors?

Echoing Hillary Clinton to some degree, Senator Dianne Feinstein just complained that Obama was perhaps “too cautious.”

Yeah, that whole tan suit debacle of a press conference was a real kick in the veneers of the style-conscious, wasn't it? And better yet, if wonder woman icons like DiFi and Hillary complain, then Frank Bruni can definitely be counted upon to exclaim, "You Go Girl!"

I love the way that Bruni, in this age of unprecedented government secrecy and unaccountability, suggests that the president needs to make his public bullshit simultaneously strident and reassuring, confining all his unpleasant truths to rooms where little ears cannot hear them. Actually, the truth is that this president is a lot more bellicose and rapacious than he lets on. Don't forget that although he has killed an estimated two thousand or so civilians with his predator drones, he is very modest in not wanting to reveal the gruesome details. He has acknowledged being very good at killing people only to his most intimate circle of friends and advisers.

The Bush style and the Obama style are different. But the all-important substance is the same.

The probable reason that Obama was able to enjoy a game of golf immediately after acknowledging the beheading death of a journalist is that he is so used to such images that he has been rendered numb by them. Plus, he is not exactly a fan of journalists. He either subpoenas/threatens them, censors them, stalks them, even jails them without trial when they're foreign and he can get away with it. This is a man who has seen the photos of Abu Ghraib and refuses to release them. This is a man who has read 6,000 pages of torture porn so graphic that even a redacted version is considered too inflammatory for the delicate sensibilities of Americans whom Bruni imagines only wanted to be lulled and soothed and comforted by a paternalistic, yet testosterone-fueled, commander-in-chief.

Here is my published Times comment to the "Obama's Messy Words" column:

"But there’s plenty of territory between the bloated and bellicose rhetoric of then and what Obama is giving us now."

Since when did the bellicose verbiage ever go away? Have you watched CNN lately, with its brand-new made-for-Doomsday soundtrack setting the tone for the bombast-on-crack of the chickenhawks?

 There's plenty to criticize Obama for (drone killings, the war on whistleblowers and journalists, CIA torture censorship, etc), but his perceived lack of a verbal middle ground between bloodthirstiness and sangfroid is the silliest complaint I've heard all day. Are you sure this column wasn't ghost-written by Maureen Dowd?

Obama was right to criticize the paranoid sabre-rattling of people who've never been to war, nor have any intention of sending their own kids into battle. The Cold War's Cuban Missile Crisis was indeed scarier than ISIS. We don't have nukes aimed at us.... at least not yet, despite the hysteria of the Neocons.

September 1st is the 75th anniversary of (the start of) World War II. With so many of our leaders and columnists slavering for a reprise, it makes me grateful when Obama, despite his many other faults, sounds so bored.

 What would you have him say? That it's a tepid war instead of a cold war? Maybe World War 2.5 instead of 3?

With his recent escalation of bombing in the Middle East and his coming confab with NATO to discuss military action against Putin (who has nukes) I hope against hope that his actual deeds will, for once, match his bland words.

The War on Job Corps

The first Monday in September was originally designated as "Labor Day" for the sole purpose of appeasing working stiffs who'd revolted against management in the bloody Pullman Strike of 1894. The legend that the Knights of Labor founded the holiday is only half true. That union did once hold a parade on the first Monday in September -- but Labor Day's eventual legal designation as a paid national holiday was essentially an olive branch proffered by nervous robber barons and the politicians who've always served them so well.

The other pro-labor day, May 1st, is observed in most other civilized countries and all but ignored in the United States. The irony is that this global May Day was inspired by Chicago's 19th century Haymarket Massacre. What happened in America not only didn't stay in America, it has been hidden and suppressed even as its pro-worker spirit has spread throughout the rest of the globe.

But aren't we constantly being reminded how exceptional America is? In America, a country of laws for everybody but the banks and the surveillance state, May 1 has been officially designated "Law Day." You are legally required to go to work, and not agitate.

Even Labor Day USA has been bowdlerized into a forced celebration of the last day of summer, the last weekend we can fire up the grill, cavort at the beach, and gambol in the town square to the sound of all-American brass bands and  politicians in taupe suits and flag pins tepidly wheezing out one tired platitude after another.

Labor Day USA is a special day to perpetuate the myth that the bosses, the politicians, and the workers are all part of one big American family. We get a three-day weekend! It ranks right up there with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Fourth of July!  It is one of onlya handful of  paid national holidays. Unless, of course, you happen to work at Walmart or McDonalds, or wherever minimum wage is paid and paid days off are a Marxist pipe dream.

Labor Day USA should be extra-special this year, because it marks the 50th anniversary of LBJ's Job Corps Program, a natural Great Society offshoot of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps. Although "unknown to most Americans," (by design?) it serves 60,000 of us every single year. As Time reports,

In total, some 2.7 million young people have participated in the Jobs Corps since President Lyndon Johnson launched the program as part of his Great Society initiative in 1964. And just like in the 1960’s, participants come from the harshest of circumstances. Still, 80 percent of program graduates leave with a full-time occupation.

With a successful track record like that, you'd think that President Obama and Congress would be champing at the bit to expand this program in order to alleviate our record wealth disparity and epidemic of wage stagnation and chronic unemployment and underemployment. Of course, you would then be thinking wrong. This, after all, is Exceptional America. The budget of the Job Corps has been cut in every succeeding year of the Obama administration, with the usual "mismanagement of funds" and "poor performance" excuses thrown out to justify the slow but sure whittling away of this valuable social safety net program.

Obama has proposed a permanent reduction in the Job Corps' "slot capacity" in his 2015 budget. Translated from Orwellian Newspeak, this means that about 10,000 at-risk youths will be left with no place to go. Since Job Corps centers feed and house participants as well as train them for careers, this will mean 10,000 more at-risk youths on the streets in such dystopian locales as Chicago and Ferguson.

If you needed any more evidence that the Obama administration's first allegiance is to tax-evading plutocrats who dictate prosperity for themselves and austerity hardship for the rest of us, look no further than the White House's own budgetary web-page for an explanation of why he is making these draconian cuts that harm some of the most vulnerable members of our society:

The Department of Labor (DOL) is charged with promoting the welfare of workers, job seekers, and retirees, which are key Administration priorities as our economy continues to recover and we work toward strengthening America’s competitive edge globally. The Department’s budget reflects the need to make sacrifices in many areas in order to invest in job creation and boost competitiveness for years to come. Accordingly, the President’s Budget provides $12.8 billion for DOL, a 5 percent reduction from the 2010 enacted level. To support effective job training programs, the Budget shifts resources from an underutilized portion of formula grants for states to a new Workforce Innovation Fund. Savings and efficiencies are achieved through a reduction in funding for the Senior Community Service Employment Program, which is transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services; and through a 25 percent reduction in the Job Corps construction budget. The Budget increases funding for worker protection and mine safety programs that were underfunded in the previous administration and are critical to Americans’ health and safety.

Translation: the little people must sacrifice in order that multinational corporations may profit globally and perpetually. No need to waste money on training programs for the dregs of society when the ravenous plutocrats can scrape the dregs in any corrupt Banana Republic at their disposal.("invest in job creation and boost competitiveness.")

The "workforce innovation fund" being diverted from the direct government-run Job Corps will include $53 million in grants to private businesses for use in training programs that in former democratic times, were funded by the employers themselves. Priority will be given to corporations that can prove they don't discriminate against veterans or the LGBT community and thus enable the predatory rentier class to feel good about themselves. It's all part of the neoliberal agenda of private profit at public expense that was sparked by Ronald Reagan and is raging full steam ahead under Barack Obama.

And to make creeping fascism more palatable to the American public, the job of demonizing the Job Corps is falling to the usual suspects in the sycophantic press. The tactic of destroying public education by closing "poor-performing"  schools in poor neighborhoods and firing unionized teachers is now also being extended to the Job Corps training centers. Rather than blaming their own poverty-inducing policies, the ruling class is blaming the programs that get in the way of profit and privatization. They forget to mention that any alleged poor performance is directly linked to low funding. And to the orchestrated epidemic of poverty itself.

One such Job Corps center, in a pristine yet indigent section of rural Oklahoma, is being closed in the wake of a Washington Post report revealing that half its trainees are either failing to complete the program or are failing to find jobs in their chosen fields upon graduating. The neoliberal agenda is trumpeted right in the scare-mongering headline:

 Great Society At 50: LBJ's Job Corps will cost taxpayers $1.7 billion this year: Does It Work?

Need we even read the article to get the answer to that question? Are readers ever even informed of the high success rate nation-wide? Reporter David A. Farenthold (more about him in a minute) cuts to the chase:

INDIAHOMA, Okla. — In the middle of an Oklahoma wildlife refuge — at a campus so remote that buffalo wander in — about 100 young people are taking classes in the hope that the U.S. government can turn their lives around.Given the statistics, most of them will be disappointed.

So many turns of slanted, right-wing free-market phrase in just a few little sentences. Job Corps: on a veritable game preserve in the middle of Nowheresville. A hundred youths, barely distinguishable from the herds of smelly cattle plodding around, are passively relying on the Nanny State to turn their lives around, when they could be acting proactive in Bootstrapville. They are instantly dehumanized and reduced to disappointing numbers.

This is the Treasure Lake Job Corps center, an outpost of a job-training program created as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. The program began with a noble, untested idea: Government could save troubled youths one at a time, taking them in and teaching them a trade.Today, students here learn subjects such as cooking, nursing and plumbing from employees of the U.S. Forest Service. A year of education and job placement costs taxpayers about $45,000, more than tuition at Georgia Tech.

There's that outpost at the back of beyond characterization again, when they should be out on the streets where the Washington Post can see them. And just think, they could even be going to college and owing a fortune in student loans to predatory lenders!

But at last count, only about 49 percent of Treasure Lake’s students completed their job training.

Guess what, Farenthold? The graduation rate at Georgia Tech has fallen for the fourth straight year, and is now at an abysmal 31%! So tear that college down, pronto, lest the taxpayers be peeved. (On second thought, never mind: their football program is still making scads and scads of dough. And even the non-grads are still on the hook for those usurious loans. So it's all peachy-keen.)

But Farenthold continues weaving his web of lies anyway:

The struggles of this place — and of the Job Corps program as a whole — have come to illustrate two powerful legacies of the Great Society. The first is that the government has vastly expanded its ambition to improve individual lives.

The "this place" (populated by "those people") phrase hovers uncomfortably close to a racial dog whistle.

For that matter, so does the bit about the government expanding its ambition to improve lives. As Paul Krugman and others have proven time and time again, the federal government has actually reduced the rate of spending on social programs, to the lowest levels in decades. Nor is this smear job on Job Corps  the first time Farenthold has spread the lie of government overspending and government inefficiency in programs that benefit ordinary people. He even tried to trash Medicare this summer by comparing it to the Russian Mafia. It seems that disabled people have been ripping off the taxpayers by joy-riding on motorized wheelchairs! Lucky for us, he approached the wrong source to get his scoop. Dave Farenthold, sycophant to the plutocratic centrists, got himself well and truly exposed by Wheelchair Junkie.

Another clue to Farenthold's deviousness is that he not only takes right-wing budgetary flim-flam man Paul Ryan seriously, he is seriously turned on by Ryan's lanky, sexy, sadistic wonkiness and their mutual hatred of Medicare and old people everywhere.

But I digress. Farenthold also cannot stand the thought of undeserving younger people daring to make themselves at home where the buffalo roam when they could be wage slaves at Walmart or drive-by shooting victims:

But Job Corps is still very popular in Washington, among lawmakers of both parties.

It is still considered a success — at least as “success” is defined now, after a hard and disappointing 50-year war on poverty.

The poor are still alive in places. The war on the poor has not been a success. So let's blame the poor, and rile up the white people.

The Job Corps program has 125 centers across the country. The students come as volunteers, some recruited by an online ad campaign: “Every day is a fresh start at Job Corps.”

To enroll, they must be from low-income families and at least 16 years old. More than half lack a high school diploma. Once accepted, nearly all students live at a center rent-free. Most stay there between nine and 11 months. In addition to academic and vocational classes, students also learn how to write a résumé and how to interview with an employer.

 It is an expensive way to get somebody a job.

What a bunch of moochers, living rent-free when there is such a demanding plethora of rent-seeking predators for whom too much is never enough. These kids learning a trade are snatching the caviar right out of the Kochs' mouths as far as Farenthold is concerned. He goes on to mutter over his keyboard that if Job Corps is such a great success, why are people on food stamps while these ghetto kids are living the life of Riley in a charm school? Really. Read his whole article for yourself, because I am feeling way too nauseous to continue.

But anyway, Farenthold's hatchet job on Job Corps was apparently a huge success, because just days before Official Labor Day USA, the Obama administration scheduled the Oklahoma training center for closure. And the Labor Department is looking for even more centers to shut down. With a 51% non-completion rate, Treasure Lake is only the first among many public treasures ripe for the privateer grant-plucking. Pretty soon even a 75% retention rate will be declared officially inefficient.

Obama to Youth: Go Jump In the Lake

When Job Corps students quit, it's called a failure. When college students quit, their institutions  simply have a non-retention problem. Even if both classes of student dropped out at approximately the same rates, (and Job Corps has much better stats) you don't hear the plutocrats calling for colleges to be shut down. That's because while both are in the business of education, one category is a money-maker for corporations and the other is not.

And speaking of quitters and slackers, look at Congress, due back in Washington this week after a month of laboring for private dollars on the public dime and against the public interest. Of the 9,732 bills and resolutions currently before them, only about 5% will become law.

That is a 95% failure rate.

Cut off the spigot, and throw the bums out.