Mr. and Mrs. Bill Gates apparently feel they are not winning enough battles in the court of public opinion, so they have created a lobbying organization to promote their ideas in Congress and state legislatures.
Will the Gates lobby push for Common Core? For more high-stakes testing? For more federal funding for charter schools? For evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students? For more technology in the classroom?
These are but a few of Bill Gates’ failed education initiatives. Has he learned from failure or will he use his C4 lobby to push his failed ideas even more?
Bill and Melinda Gates have launched a lobbying organization to advocate for issues in health, education, and poverty, The Hill reported on Thursday.
The Gates Policy Initiative, which was announced on Thursday, will work with lawmakers on issues such as global health, global development, moving people from poverty to employment, and education for black, Latino, and rural students. The initiative, which will be a 501(c)(4) organization under the US tax code, is independent from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the billionaire couple’s philanthropic organization.
Rob Nabors, the director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the former White House director of legislative affairs during the Obama administration, told The Hill that the Gates Policy Initiative would work in a bipartisan way.
In an article in The Hill, Rob Nabors said the new lobbying organization would reflect the work of the foundation.
Much of what they’ve learned running their foundation will help them through the process of establishing a lobbying shop.
“Probably the most important point for us is similar to the way Bill and Melinda have approached their philanthropic giving and other things that they do. They are interested in learning what works and what doesn’t work,” Nabors said.
He said that if they are not successful in a couple of years, they will “shutter the shop and figure out what else could potentially be done.”
“I think that experimental type of approach, that innovative type of approach, is both relatively unique in this space and embedded into the DNA that Bill and Melinda bring with them,” he said.
Nabors said that when he worked in the Obama White House, his job was often described as the White House chief lobbyist.
“I’m excited to get back into the mix of talking to people specifically about the work that they are doing every day, trying to put bills together that will make people’s lives better,” he said.
He added that Bill and Melinda Gates also bring a unique lens to a lobbying shop.
“They are very data-focused so a number of the types of issues that we will be exploring and the solutions that we are exploring are based on data that we collected from programs that we funded,” he added.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane My first thought was this: United States of Gates. That was just after remembering how ALEC works its power so insidiously. I do think the Gates’ are well-meaning and may even do some good, but I also think they need to understand the import and meaning of democracy and of supporting democratic institutions, and the dangers of privatization. Wealth does not equate to intelligence or a right to power. CBK
The Gates are no more well-meaning than the Koch’s unless you think “…brands on a large scale”, replacing democratically elected school boards and local education dollars going to Silicon Valley is altruistic. Gates and Z-berg, as individuals, not their foundations are invested in the largest for-profit seller of schools-in-a-box.
What Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Waltons, and most the other billionaires have in common is contempt for democracy, for local school boards, for local decision making. They prefer state or mayoral control, where they can wield power by campaign contributions.
dianeravitch . . . .Yes, at the state level, where they need only rubber-stamp ALEC’s: “legislative exchanges.” CBK
Linda I was thinking of the Gates’ work with eradicating diseases. But that work is based on nuances in the natural sciences, and research and technologies associated with it.
I think at the root of the problems you mention (rightly) is that the Gates seem to see human education from the same lens as with the natural sciences (a form of positivism), as if knowledge of computer science and medicine were the zenith of knowledge formation and, more importantly, of being an educated person. If so they suffer from the same problems as the bean-counters who make tests and who don’t only make money from them, but actually believe in their efficacy. It’s an extremely limited horizon, and they have the money to project their view out onto everyone of us, and to gather sycophants as they go on.
As others have said here, they could probably look to what their own kids get at their schools, and support such activities and methods in public education, and spend allot less money getting what they want. CBK
Nothing Gates does is well-meaning. Gates will be lobbying for privatization, deregulation, and low taxes. Not even Gates’ work with diseases is charitable. Everything he does is selfish and neoliberal. He thwarts governments around the world by bribing them to privatize public services, and uses the unregulated businesses that replaced public services to scale up data collection experiments. Then he sells the data. You can’t even view Gates’ blog unless you accept cookies so he can make some money off you.
The Gates’ investment in Monsanto corroborates LCT’s point. Critics have examined and explained the harm caused when Gates, the two-ton gorilla stomps in under the guise of altruism.
Gates lives in the state with the most regressive tax system in the U.S. The poor pay a rate up to 7 times that of Gates. Bill spoke out against raising minimum wage and public pensions.
Gates pays to have his image burnished. Now that he’s officially a lobbyist, we can hope greater scrutiny will lead David Letterman, Steven Colbert, Ellen Degeneres and the rest of Hollywood to understand that Bill and Melinda are oligarchs.
Linda: Oprah, who is considered one of the top 10 spiritual leaders in the world, interviewed Melinda Gates on Super Soul Sunday.
It’s on my DVR but I sort of get ill at the thought of any praise for this billionaire who has all the answers. Us mere mortals obviously don’t understand the wealthy who are ‘doing so much to better mankind”…..BS!!
There’s too much worship of the rich and entertainment celebrities. And, there’s too little respect for the sacrifices of the people who build the nation and receive negligible reward for their productivity.
“well-meaning” for billionaires is a concept tightly and irrevocably connected to both power and the bottom line
YEP!
Well said.
“They are interested in learning what works and what doesn’t work,” Nabors said.”
“They are very data-focused so a number of the types of issues that we will be exploring and the solutions that we are exploring are based on data that we collected from programs that we funded,” he added.”
Give me a break. They are extremely slow learners. How many years and years and years will pass while students and teachers suffer from their ignorance?
These rich individuals are bad for public education and excluding one [presidential candidate who has taken money from the Trumps the others support of public education. These presidential candidates excluding one that we are aware of, will make the lives of rich people miserable. The Gates have wasted money because they and their staff are smarter than educators Well the world has changed and money cant buy everything.
Our new congress will see that the Rich people stay in their lane taking care of their own private schools and ensuring that children don’t get vaccinations like the Waldorf school does.
Bi-partisan is defined as Koch-Gates-Walton colonialism. One oligarch strategy has been to exploit religion to achieve the authoritarian goals of the richest 0.1%. (1) Rewire News reports that Catholic nuns (Little Sisters of the Poor) teamed up with the Trump administration to attack contraception coverage. Their court case is now before the Federalist Society, U.S. Supreme Court, where 6 of the 9 justices were reared in the Catholic faith.
(2) A search for charter schools at the Alliance for Catholic Education displays pro-charter school articles like, “Walton Family Foundation Looks Ahead to Next Stage of Transforming Education” and “Expansion of Indiana Vouchers Could Spur Further Catholic School Growth”.
Bernie in 2020 and the election of more Justice Democrats provides hope against the tyranny of the barbarians who entered through the Gates.
Leo Leonard of the Federalist Society received the Bradley Prize, he’s praised at the Acton Institute and, he is a member of the Knights of Malta, an ultra conservative Catholic organization.
Allowing billionaires to insert themselves into policy undermines the democratic principles that are our foundation. Billionaires often seek to impose their world view on society at large. Privatization of public education and widespread cyber instruction are perfect examples. Billionaire money never comes without strings attached. Our representatives are supposed to be representing their constituents, not wealthy interests. We would be far better off if these oligarchs paid their fair share of taxes, sent the money to the common coffers and served the needs of the people. Public, profit “partnerships” are a means to usurp public policy that is often to the detriment of the common good. Our people deserve more than being a social experiment operated by the 1%.
retired teacher: “Our representatives are supposed to be representing their constituents, not wealthy interests.”
Relying heavily on rich donors leads candidates to be more sympathetic to the general concerns of their donors. And what they want isn’t what the rest of us want.
We were screwed when the Supreme Court put its okay on Citizen’s United. How can my measly contribution compete for attention when the candidate gets $1 million or more from some wealthy person?
correction: public private “partnerships,” although there is a pot of gold at the end of this social impact rainbow. Take a look at “Wrench in the Gears” to see how the wealthy intend to profit from manipulating public policy.
With so much money in politics, so-called representatives forget about the public. Our campaign system has politicians always seeking donors. The wealthy have an unfair advantage that tips the scales and meddles with the democratic process. We need to limit the amount of money in politics in order for democracy to function.
It’s hard to know for sure what this new Gates lobbying group will push but I would guess it will focus on requiring more govt data collection — to overturn the ban on the federal govt creating a comprehensive database of student information — and also to further encourage the spread of online learning and charter schools. I watched a video interview with Nabors, the new head of this C4. He seemed to be pretty aware of the strong push back and collapse of support for the Common Core and that parents and local districts didn’t want policies pushed on them from above: ” there is probably no more personal decision that parents make than how their kids should be educated; the last thing that any parent wants is from for someone who is not in their school or their school district to be telling them what is going on or not going on.”
But then he added that he was “very excited” about the potential of online learning, “effective curriculum” and “social and emotional learning.”
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n08vWilHn-o transcript below:
…the biggest thing that has changed over
68:57
time is a recognition by us it’s sort of
69:03
a humbling recognition that we can have
69:07
the ideal solution that the data tells
69:10
you is absolutely going to work but
69:13
every every location is different every
69:17
school is different every school
69:18
district is different and we need to be
69:22
more flexible and more open to being
69:25
able to say we can all agree that a
69:29
certain problem exists in a particular
69:31
school there’s probably three or four
69:33
different solutions that you can
69:34
implement in order to arrive at that
69:37
solution and there’s various pieces of
69:39
evidence that suggest that those three
69:41
or four solutions may work
69:43
you principal you superintendent should
69:46
pick what those solutions are it
69:48
shouldn’t be someone from Seattle
69:50
picking that decision it shouldn’t be
69:52
someone from Washington DC the person in
69:54
Jetson should be making those types of
69:57
decisions that is that is a pretty big
69:59
deal. I think the second thing is which
70:03
is a very hard lesson to learn
70:05
we love scale we love scope we love to
70:08
to go out and change the world in one
70:15
fell swoop and we’ve done really good
70:17
work in places like the Global Fund or
70:19
Gavi G Pei these places that are
70:22
fundamentally changing health care we
70:25
had when we tried those types of things
70:27
with education it falls a little bit
70:30
flat and part of the reason is part of
70:33
the reason is the first name that I
70:35
talked about the second thing though is
70:38
that there is probably no more personal
70:46
decision that parents make than how
70:48
their kids should be educated the last
70:50
thing that any parent wants is from for
70:53
someone who is not in their school or
70:55
their school district to be telling them
70:56
what is going on or not going on one of
70:59
the more powerful pieces of polling that
71:01
we’ve seen is that just about every
71:06
parent thinks that their kids school is
71:08
awesome like even the ones that are
71:11
failing they they aren’t know our
71:12
teachers are great this is going well
71:14
like I’m like no that’s demonstrable a
71:17
that is not the case they’re viewing
71:20
things in a slightly different way but I
71:22
mean part of the message here is that
71:24
education decisions are deeply personal
71:29
and have to be made at a lower level and
71:32
when we’ve tried scaling exercises like
71:36
common core or various regulations that
71:41
we worked with with Arne Duncan and the
71:43
like it may have been effective in terms
71:45
of creating a change in the moment but
71:50
it was never it was never absorbed they
71:53
are the and when we saw the collapse of
71:56
common core in part it was a rejection of
71:59
someone from far away imposing their
72:03
view on us and if you’re ever looking
72:06
for a bipartisan consensus both
72:08
Republicans and Democrats don’t want you
72:10
telling them to education so that is a
72:14
second thing but in terms of the the
72:16
types of things that we are investing in
72:21
which there’s a lot of them I mean some
72:24
of the things that I’m more excited
72:26
about online learning and access to
72:30
online learning is something that looks
72:35
very promising we are doing some deep
72:39
research on curriculum and trying to
72:42
figure out what the most effective
72:43
curriculum and not just what the most
72:44
effective curriculum is but how you
72:47
train teachers on effective curriculum
72:50
we’re excited about that increasingly
72:55
one of the things that we expect to be
72:58
spending more money on as social and
73:00
emotional learning because it is a
73:03
centerpiece of a lot of challenges that
73:06
many kids are facing especially women
73:10
and minorities how they are dealing with
73:13
challenges in schools so there’s
73:17
probably not a single type of solution
73:20
that we’re not investing in right now
73:22
because again we want to make sure
73:24
there’s a lot of solutions at work we
73:26
want to collect the evidence on
73:28
specifically what works about the
73:30
solutions and at the end of the day what
73:32
we want to be able to do is essentially
73:34
be able to provide networks of schools a
73:37
menu of things and say if you’re looking
73:40
for smart things to do in your school
73:41
because you have you have a tardiness
73:45
problem or or you are scoring lower on
73:48
math scores here’s some things that
73:50
we’ve demonstrated that have worked
73:52
across the country why don’t you try one
73:54
of these types of things so that is the
73:57
investment model and that is the way
73:58
we’re trying to …
“But then he added that he was “very excited” about the potential of online learning, “effective curriculum” and “social and emotional learning.””
I’ve been getting a lot of Gates’s foundations feeds on my facebook page, even in spite of me showing the absurdities of their proposals in the comments section. They’re pushing (as in a drug pusher) the “effective curriculum” and “social and emotional learning” big time. Big big time!
Duane E Swacker What in the world could be wrong with “social and emotional learning”? (ha)
The problem, of course, is not only getting into the weeds of what they mean by those terms, and also that it’s THEM (the oligarchs with money-power-voice) who have swallowed the poisoned propaganda of “bad (public) schools,” and who also see themselves as fixers of all-things-wrong with everyone else; and see nothing wrong with destroying democratic institutions through so-called public-private partnerships which, again, is a rather innocuous term, but in THEIR meaning, it turns out to be public-minded people naively making deals with the devil. CBK
Social emotional learning in the hands of wealthy “reformers” amounts to colonialism and cyber eugenics. It implies that minorities will become middle class if they can be trained to think like the middle class. They should “learn self control and delaying gratification.” Once again this narrow view of poverty refuses to understand how deeply being poor impacts the health and well being of the poor. Brain training like Neurocore or “grit” is going to train the poverty out of them. It is a naive assumption like education deform. However, at the end of it, they will still be poor and forced to function in a world without access to healthcare, scant resources and lots of dysfunction.
No excuses charters are colonialism in action
Duane: Hard to understand exactly what “social & emotional learning” is when one doesn’t (Gates, that is–don’t know about Melinda) know just what “s-&-e learning” is/means in the first place.
IOW (&, being a retired sped teacher who’s still active in the sped advocacy community & keeps current), it has often been discussed that Bill may have Aspergers or high-functioning autism (I am not being facetious or name-calling or anything of the kind; some of my closest friends & relatives have been diagnosed w/high-functioning autism)–he appears as a genius in another way, but he seems to lack social intelligence.
I’m sorry, but anyone who touts “online” & “social emotional learning” in the same breath does not have a whit of knowledge or sense of just what s-e-l is & what it is not.
This is why we have social workers & psychologists at our schools
(well, actually, they’re amongst the first to be laid off–& see what we now have in school shootings & other youth violence as a result?)–trained professionals who provide face-to-face human interaction.
Such as our “tech” society, whereby every man, woman & child is glued to his/her not-so-smart-phone, rather than actually interacting with human beings.
&…thanks for that, Bill!
(Please go back to underdeveloped nations–America is already turning into one–& pay for medicine that will cure diseases, help to advance food growth & aid the impoverished {how about pouring some big $$$$ into reconstructing Puerto Rico–?!)
That last having been said, do leave their schools alone…
Duane Maybe we should ask Bob Shepherd what social and emotional learning is.
When a live-teacher teaches literature well, as well as other aspects of a full LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION, (by any other name) then any theoretician worth their salt can pick out and make a general diagram of exactly where and when S & A learning is both taught and learned.
S & A is the so-called “hidden curriculum” that’s been around for years. Though it tends to dissipate when that live teacher has 40 children in a class and cannot attend-well to each of the questions and essay-writing of those 40 children (or even 20?).
First, the method goes: starve the beast; second, scream about how weak and “failed” it is. Third, kill it. CBK
I know it is going to be an unwieldy debate coming up with 20 candidates…….but any nailing down of any of them, ESPECIALLY JOE BIDEN, HERO OF THE BLACK VOTERS BECAUSE OF HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH OBAMA, it would be huge information…..A lot of the media, many of whom simply have not had time to pay attention to education issues figuring it was dull and not very important at the federal level anyway………would have a hard time resisting taking a look at negative reactions to Bill Gates…….or even carefull tip toeing around. I hope somebody manages to do something with what should be a significant opportunity.
FYI, WV republicans are at war with the teachers again and passed a retaliatory bill to prohibit public worker strikes & allow charter schools to open. Teachers rallied at the capital yesterday. The attacks on public ed are coming from Republicans and centrist Democrats who take money from the same group of oligarchs.
http://www.theintermountain.com/news/local-news/2019/06/trump-sanders-weigh-in-on-w-va-reform/
So far only Bernie Sanders made a strong statement in favor of the teachers & against privatization. Maybe Warren will weigh in? .
Bernie Sanders statement to WV:
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., used his campaign website to encourage supporters to rally at the State Capitol Building on Monday morning to oppose efforts to pass legislation including charter schools or education savings accounts.
“Republican legislators in West Virginia have called a special legislative session to impose school privatization and to further criminalize striking after educators led successful statewide strikes in 2018 and 2019,” according to the post.
“Teachers and other school workers are coming from all across the state to make their voices heard at the capitol. Join educators in WV as they fight for their rights — and for the rights of all students to receive quality public education.”
jcgrim We’ll probably have to do what Hong Kong is doing to protect themselves from their Chinese wannabee overlords: MASSIVE, PEACEFUL, PERSISTENT PROTEST. CBK
Catherine, do you know what the protests in Hong Kong are about? Hint: it isn’t about democracy. China is not crushing another “alleged” democracy movement.
Those protests are over proposed extradition laws to move criminals from Hong Kong to China to be punished for a list of crimes.
For instance – Number One on that list: Murder or manslaughter, including criminal negligence causing death; culpable homicide; assault with intent to commit murder.
https://qz.com/1636663/the-37-crimes-included-in-hong-kongs-proposed-extradition-law/
Click the previous link and discover the other thirty-six crimes. You might also want to read the nine that were removed like “offenses involving the unlawful use of computers” or “offenses against the law relating to environmental pollution or protection of public health”.
Because Hong Kong abolished the death penalty in 1993, the protests might be more focused on that because the CCP in China executes many criminals who are found guilty of capital crimes.
Lloyd Lofthouse Yes. I know. I guess it’s not really a foot-in-the-door, a camel’s nose under the edge of the tent, or a wolf in sheep’s clothing kind of deal. Whew. CBK
I think the Chinese Communist Party does NOT approve of Hong Kong’s no death penalty for capital crimes. China executes a lot of convicted criminals and that includes fraud/bribery.
Lloyd Lofthouse . . . and political prisoners, and people who speak out the truth; and those from the U.S. who tour and take souvenirs, then are sent back home to die. Also, my guess is that those who reside in circa Hong Kong have a vibrant memory of Tiananmen Square. I doubt all that million+ protest is about being outside on a nice day with your friends. CBK
China’s Constitution clearly says you cannot speak out about what you think is the truth in public when it is political in any way.
China does not have a freedom of speech amendment like we do in the U.S.
Whatever happened to “When in Rome, do as the Roman’s Do?”
This is what China thinks of people who speak out too much. How about a political prisoner who was 6 years old?
…..
Chinese political prisoner Liu Xiaobo dies at age 61
18:40 13 july 2017 Source: ap.org
Officials say China’s most prominent political prisoner, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, has died. He was 61.
Liu had been hospitalized for advanced liver cancer diagnosed in prison in May. The judicial bureau in the northeastern city of Shenyang said Thursday he died of multiple organ failure.
His supporters and foreign governments had urged China to allow him to receive treatment abroad, but Chinese authorities insisted he was receiving the best care possible for a disease that had spread throughout his body.
Liu was imprisoned for the first time in connection with the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while serving his fourth and final prison sentence, for inciting subversion by advocating sweeping political reforms and greater human rights in China.
…………………………….
Global Voices · Who are China’s political prisoners? A human rights assessment, 29 years after Tiananmen
Posted 2 June 2018
… the Political Prisoner Database of the United States’ Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), which has tracked cases in China since 1981, provides important details about the situation. A cross-reading of this data with mainland Chinese political history in the past three decades can also help us to develop a clearer picture of the state of human rights in China.
Who are China’s political prisoners?
The CECC defines political prisoner as:
an individual detained for exercising his or her human rights under international law, such as peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of association, free expression, including the freedom to advocate peaceful social or political change, and to criticize government policy or government officials.
The database has 9,116 cases of political prisoners in mainland China from 1981 through 2018. However, the commission only began keeping records in 1987, thus the actual number of cases may be higher than their records show.
Most prisoners in the database have been released, but more than 1,000 were believed to be behind bars as of 2017….
Nearly half of those behind bars (4,012) were Tibetans. With a population of just six million Tibetans in China, where the total population is more than 1 billion, the number of detained Tibetans is disproportionately high.
Only about half of the records include information on a prisoner’s age at the time of their detention. Of the available data, the youngest political prisoner was just 6 years old at the moment of detention, while the oldest was 84. Around 65% were detained between the ages of 20 and 45 years old…
https://globalvoices.org/2018/06/02/who-are-chinas-political-prisoners-a-human-rights-assessment-29-years-after-tiananmen/
carolmalaysia I appreciate the links. Here’s another view from the World Post:
Weekend Roundup: There will be no “number one.” A multi-civilizational global order is emerging where neither the United States nor China dominate. Nathan Gardels, Editor in Chief
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong opens the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue on May 31, 2019. (Prime Minister’s Office of Singapore)
The Shangri-La Dialogue, held this past weekend in Singapore, is the Asian counterpart to the Munich Security Conference in Europe. It brings together political and defense leaders from across the region and the world on an annual basis to assess the evolving geopolitical landscape and shifting balance of military might. As such, it is a prism that refracts not only superpower tensions, but how other nations in the rest of the world align themselves accordingly.
It is how the rest of the world beyond the superpowers is shaping the future that interests Parag Khanna, author of “The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict and Culture in the 21st Century.”
Writing from Singapore, he sees, for the first time in history, the emergence of a connected but multi-civilizational and multipolar order where neither the U.S. nor China will be “number one.” “The cardinal myth to discard,” he argues, “is the notion that the world is undergoing a power transition from one global hegemon (America) to another (China). This proposition is as dangerous as it is unlikely.”
(I couldn’t find the link): ALL BELOW COPIED
Asia Is Where American Superpower Began. Is It Also Where It Ends?/By Parag Khanna
SINGAPORE — For the past year, one of the most fear-inducing topics on defense blogs has been China’s Dongfeng-17 ballistic missile. Capable of carrying nuclear or conventional payloads, it is the first weapon equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle that enables low-altitude flight rather than descending from the higher apogee that radar systems can more easily detect.
Then there is the Starry Sky-2, a hypersonic aircraft that uses its own shockwaves to accelerate to up to Mach 6 (about 4,600 miles per hour) while maintaining high maneuverability. Chinese strategists hail these technologies — as well as nuclear-armed submarines, space-based lasers and other high-tech weapons — as “levelers” against the U.S. Navy, which has been the dominant military force in the Pacific Rim since World War II. Some experts argue that American bases and other installations are vulnerable against China’s increasingly sophisticated military technology.
This past weekend, defense ministers from both sides of the Pacific gathered in Singapore for the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, with ample posturing across the U.S., China and other nations to claim leadership and relevance for the unfolding century in which Asia represents more than half the world’s population and about a third its gross domestic product. To be clear: Asia has always been the geography that determines whether or not an empire is a global superpower in the first place. Five hundred years ago, tiny European monarchies Portugal and Spain, followed by the Dutch and British, became global powers partly by establishing colonies in Asia and elsewhere and commanding global trade networks. America earned superpower status through its victory in the 1898 Spanish-American War, ousting Spain from its Caribbean and Asian colonies. Simply put: If you’re not an Asian power, you’re merely a regional or local one.
Japan briefly challenged America and Britain’s maritime empires in World War II, after which the U.S. emerged with even greater leverage in the Pacific through alliances with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Thailand and the Philippines. To this day, America’s prominent naval power and troops stationed in Japan and South Korea give the impression that America is Asia’s preeminent power. But America is not an Asian power at all. It is a Pacific power with interests in Asia — all of which are negotiable.
China’s military increasingly has the capacity to deny the U.S. sustained access to the bases, ports and allies that constitute what remains of America’s once omnipotent posture across the Pacific. At a time when America’s aging carriers, lack of combat training and numerous non-combat incidents have worn down both morale and credibility, merely the uncertainty surrounding the 7th Fleet’s capability is enough to give China the psychological and strategic edge in any direct confrontation over Taiwan or other territory so far from America’s shores.
While the U.S. continues to wave the flag of freedom of the seas by contesting China’s island building in the South China Sea, nobody in the Pentagon wants to see uninhabited atolls trigger large-scale conflict. It was the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu who declared that “to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” Surely American strategists wish they could achieve his dictum rather than being its victim. They can — but only if they jettison outdated prisms for how Asia’s future is unfolding.
The cardinal myth to discard is the notion that the world is undergoing a power transition from one global hegemon (America) to another (China). This proposition is as dangerous as it is unlikely. Superpower status requires robust economic, diplomatic and military foundations. By those measures, America’s emergence as the main victor in World War II was a historical anomaly. At the end of the war, the U.S. represented nearly 50 percent of the global economy; today its share is around 25 percent. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that the U.S. has to be prepared “so that we can continue to be the world’s leading power 10, 20, 50 years from now.” But the world he is planning for is already a distant nostalgia.
China also aspires to be the world’s dominant power by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the end of its civil war. Yet China too represents less than 20 percent of global GDP, and its economy is already slowing while its population peaks and debts mount. It has many of the world’s largest banks, industrial firms and technology companies and has made huge strides in industrial automation and artificial intelligence. But America, Europe and other economic powers are demanding reciprocal access to its market and limiting its ability to capture their intellectual property.
The correct way to understand China’s rise, then, is not as replacing the U.S. as the world’s largest economy but rather joining an already multipolar global system in which there are many multi-trillion-dollar economies, including Europe, Japan, India and others. All of them have become wise to China’s ways.
The U.S. has not done itself any favors with the trade war against China, however. During the Cold War, the U.S. transferred military capabilities to European and Asian allies, helping them become more integrated and self-sufficient. While one consequence has been great power stability in both regions, another is that these geopolitical allies have become geoeconomic competitors. Since the trade war escalated last year, European exports have surged around $70 billion, while Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada have seen their collective exports grow significantly as well.
But precisely because of America’s autarkic geography on the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from Europe and Asia, it has much more to lose in the long run. The more the U.S. and China negate their trade advantages through reciprocal tariffs, the more Europe and Asia converge through moves like the EU-Japan free trade agreement (with plans for similar arrangements with India and Southeast Asian countries) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which many European countries have joined. Europeans fundamentally disagree with the U.S. on how to deal with powers to their east such as Russia, Iran and China. Germany is moving forward with its Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, Europeans are settling up a parallel payment system to do business with Iran, and their trade with China continues to expand. The U.S. has gone from liberating Eurasia from the Nazis, Soviets and Japanese to being marginalized by the key powers that are building a continental zone of commerce encompassing the vast majority of the world’s population and economy.
Asia has become an existential wedge issue between America and its historical allies. Whereas in the 1990s, Europeans chafed at American military dominance but accepted their subordinate status within NATO, today they are explicitly building out a European defense capacity. In Asia, Japan, South Korea, Australia and India are keen on American offensive and defensive military equipment but are also firm in not wanting to be party to any bilateral conflict between the U.S. and China. China’s proximate geography, economic diplomacy and military build-up have all but neutralized America’s once sacrosanct alliances.
But that doesn’t mean China is taking over. Over the past 4,000 years, only one empire — the nomadic Mongols of the 13th century — truly dominated Asia (though not for very long). China is both a continental and maritime power, but it has struggled to sustain influence far from its eastern core. Its missiles, submarines, lasers, drones and other stealth weapons have given it a commanding presence in its immediate waters, but they have also awoken significant countermeasures such as greater cooperation between Japan, India, Australia, Vietnam and Indonesia — all proud maritime nations increasingly sharing defense equipment and jointly exercising their navies to assert freedom of the seas. This will give weaker states, such as the Philippines, greater confidence to limit Chinese expansionism beyond the islands China has already taken. Last month, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who until recently was seen as kowtowing to China’s island-building spree, threatened to send his troops on “suicide missions” to destroy Chinese vessels if they harassed the Philippines’ naval outpost of Pag-asa.
The U.S. has undoubtedly played a positive role in stimulating cooperation among the so-called “Quad” powers of maritime Asia (India, Australia, Japan and the U.S.). But this success is more the result of America letting Asian powers lead the effort and because it is very much aligned with the Asian powers’ own interests. It is instructive that the very phrase that now governs American strategy for Asia — a “free and open Indo-Pacific” — has long been favored by Japan and India and only recently borrowed by the Pentagon. This suggests that the best course of action for America is to follow an old adage: to help them help themselves. Or more bluntly: to help China’s neighbors push back on their own, constantly reminding Beijing that while America’s dominance in Asia may be ephemeral, its neighbors are permanent and growing in confidence.
This logic should also apply to how America responds to China’s forays across terrestrial Eurasia. Here America is hamstrung by the fact that it is not a contiguous Asian state and lacks historical appreciation for the rhythms of the silk roads that dominated the Asian trade system for millennia before European colonialism. This is why both the Obama and Trump administrations so badly underestimated China’s Belt and Road Initiative, cherry-picking examples of financial mishaps to denounce it as debt-trap diplomacy even though dozens of countries across Asia, Europe and Africa are enthusiastically participating in it. Instead of missing the forest for the trees, the U.S. should be actively engaged in the infrastructure arms race to modernize dozens of fragile post-colonial and post-Soviet societies, elevating them into the next wave of growth markets into which America can sell Apple phones, Ford cars, Cisco routers and Johnson & Johnson Band-Aids.
Washington should also support an industry coalition of technology champions such as Intel and AT&T to compete with Huawei in deploying 5G infrastructure. Telling countries that need infrastructure loans not to borrow from China isn’t nearly as helpful as offering an alternative by ramping up the activities of the International Development Finance Corporation, for example, or fast-tracking legislation like the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act. As with the Indo-Pacific region, this too will give more countries the confidence to undertake counter-maneuvers to prevent excessive Chinese dominance of Central and Southeast Asia.
All of this suggests an alternative narrative for today’s geopolitical moment. For the first time in history, we live in a truly multi-civilizational and multipolar order. There will be no number-one nation. Americans should not delude themselves into thinking that the world faces a choice between benign American hegemony and authoritarian Chinese diktats. Centuries of colonialism and the Cold War have taught most of the world how to shrewdly transact with competing suitors — America, China, Europe, Japan, Russia, India and others — to get the best deal for themselves. A multipolar and self-governing Eurasia is the historical norm and encouraging that future would greatly reduce the costs to America in blood and treasure. Whether in the name of burden-sharing or avoiding imperial overstretch, this should be an agenda American hawks and doves can agree on.
To accord others the importance they deserve is not a sign of resignation but of humility and maturity. Asia is already the center of the world economy, trade and population as well as the locus of large-scale investments in transport and energy infrastructure, construction of megacities and deployment of the latest technologies from 5G to artificial intelligence. Asia used to make for the West. Now the West makes for Asia. The more self-sufficient Asians become in resources, capital, technology and talent, the more America will need Asia for its markets — rather than the reverse.
This does not make America irrelevant. With its bewildering diversity and unresolved conflicts, Asia is not yet a mature system. With so much at stake in Asian stability, the most crucial role for America is to be a diplomatic fixer, intervening where necessary to offer military, financial or other lifelines to the more than three billion Asians who are not Chinese. America can also do more to help solve Asia’s long-standing disputes over islands and borders by encouraging countries to arrive at permanent settlements rather than militarized stalemates.
A century ago, America’s power in the Pacific was welcomed. Shortly after America’s victory in the Spanish-American War, Teddy Roosevelt earned the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese war with a treaty signed in Maine. The American century began by combating colonialism and negotiating for peace in Asia. America would be wise to pursue the same mandate during the Asian century as well.
If you are going to list all of China’s alleged sins (while there is some truth to all of them, they are often widely exaggerated to be worse than they are), also point out what China has achieved since Mao died.
For instance, China is responsible for 90-percent of the reduction of people living in poverty — in the world, while that “wonderful” democracy next door, India, still has the largest population of people living in extreme poverty, a large ratio of people that are illiterate, and also the largest number of trafficked slaves (many are young girls in the slave six industry) in the world, 18 million the last time I looked.
Isn’t it wonderful to live in a “free” country like India where they don’t have enough safe water to drink, and thousands of children die of starvation and/or malnutrition every day?
Lloyd Lofthouse There is freedom, and then there is the abuse of it. (I think we’ve had this conversation before.) By definition, in a democracy, it’s not the system that is the problem; but rather the people who abuse it. For myself, I’d rather live in India or here. CBK
Why do people keep throwing the “democracy” word around like it means we live in heaven?
The U.S. is the Constitutional Republic. It is not a democracy by definition.
The U.S. has the largest prison populations on the planet.
The U.S. has 655 people in prison for every 100,000 and is ranked #1
China is ranked #133 with 118 people in prison for every 100,000.
Is that freedom?
The U.S. produces more pornography than the rest of the world combined
Is that an example of freedom?
The U.S. private sector arms industry sells more weapons to the world than any other country on the planet, more than a third of all weapons sales in the world — even to some of our enemies?
Is that an example of freedom?
“Horrrible” China does not restrict travel. More than a 110-million Chinese visit other countries around the world every year, more than any other country on the planet.
Is that an example of freedom?
China does not block Chinese citizens from sending their children to schools and colleges in North America and Europe. Inf act, the largest foreign student population in the U.S. are from China.
Is that an example of freedom?
China has its own Constitution and it is not the U.S. Constitution, so judging China by using the U.S. Constitution is not logical or fair.
Lloyd Lofthouse At the core of the difference is a migrating shift of power–from (1) external forces in (looser or tighter) governments and their laws (at several levels), or as corrupt, in greed-driven corporations and oligarchs; and (2) internal development and forces, fostered by families, neighborhoods and the social order; but where as adults, the center of power manifests in us, maturely or not (demo-cracy/power of/for/by the people/voting, public service, etc. A constitutional republic is just a variation of that same movement and placement of power–their difference is not the point here?).
That built-in migration of power is WHY PUBLIC education is such an important part of the spirit of democracy. Education purveys that migration of power towards freedom and taken-up responsibility. There is a lived tension in that migration–insofar as it is involved in failure, we have too many people in prison, etc. Insofar as it carries the day well, it is involved in the freedoms of the human spirit rightly chosen and manifest in responsible speech and act.
Llolyd, you (not me) seem to expect some sort of gnostic perfection out of “freedom.” Of course, it comes with human development towards reasonability and responsibility with an aim towards a dynamic peace. If that’s absent, then it’s in failure mode, and on a slippery slope. I’m not much of a China watcher; But I think there is a totalitarian living in the hearts of most of us, if not all, and that it’s much more manifest in many other cultures and countries than in ours–though Trump and McConnell are doing a great job of seeding its revival. And so I think a Constitution like we have, with tri-part shared powers and the court system, is built around mediating factions and the bad-souled among us, so that none can become all-powerful. Until deux ex machina, that’s the best we can do as merely human.
I never said it was a panacea where we didn’t have to work through it every day. That seems to be your assumption about freedom, not mine. BTW,I just read where they are trying to stop news coverage in China of the Hong Kong protest. . . . I rest my case. CBK
If China is trying to stop the coverage of the protests in Hong Kong and you think that proves your point, you don’t understand China and why China’s leaders want harmony instead of the troll fest in the U.S. led by the leader of the trolls, Donald Trump.
Lloyd Lofthouse Well, if you want to live in a formal paternalistic political field, go for it. I don’t. CBK
Catherine King: China does not want people speaking out. People in Hong Kong are worried about political dissidents being transferred to mainland China and prosecuted…disappearing.
……………………..
What Is Hong Kong’s Extradition Bill?…NYT
June 10, 2019
Mass demonstrations have revealed tensions between Hong Kong, a semiautonomous territory, and China’s central government.
…But the Basic Law guarantees that the Chinese authorities cannot stifle dissent in Hong Kong with an iron fist, as they do across the mainland and in the autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.Analysts say that has forced Beijing to chip away at the independence of Hong Kong’s institutions by other means — for example, by pressing the extradition plan…
What is the extradition plan?
Critics contend that the law would allow virtually anyone in the city to be picked up and detained in mainland China, a country in which judges must follow the orders of the Communist Party. They fear the new law would target not just criminals but political activists as well.
The extradition plan applies to 37 crimes. That excludes political ones, but critics fear the legislation would essentially legalize the sort of abductions to the mainland that have taken place in Hong Kong in recent years. (The mainland authorities are typically not permitted to operate here.)
Under the law, the chief executive would need to approve an extradition request before an arrest warrant is issued. A Hong Kong court would also be empowered to check that there is a basic case against a suspect.
Yet Hong Kong’s subordinate status to the mainland would make it extremely difficult for a local leader to reject an extradition request from her superiors.
Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, has said it will not comply with any extradition agreement that defines it as a part of China. And many in Hong Kong — where the government has ousted opposition lawmakers and rejected demands for free elections — see the extradition plan as the endgame of a long battle to disable dissent and political opposition in their city.
Who opposes the plan?
The plan has prompted petitions from people across Hong Kong who fear they could end up in a mainland legal system where the Communist Party routinely prosecutes dissidents and others for political reasons…
Ah, I never said I wanted to live in China.
But the real China is not the China that too many Americans think it is.
All I am doing is attempting to set the record straight — erase some ignorance and bias.
Lloyd Lofthouse You may pat me on the head now. CBK
Why do you want me to pat you on the head?
Catherine, have you been/lived in China?
Mate Wierdl No–and I said I was not a China watcher at least not closely. CBK
My first trip to China was in 1999 with my wife at the time Anchee Min (author of Red Azalea and seven other books that are all blacklisted in China but available on the black market) who grew up in China under Mao and came to the United States on a student Visa in the mid-1980s.
I thought I was going to see a country of ant people all wearing baggy green clothing like a Maoist blindly marching everywhere and doing what they were told without question.
What I discovered was a much happier, vibrant population than the one I grew up with in the states where most people distrust their neighbors and fear being killed in a shootout or carjacking, or whatever.
Even in 1999, Shanghai put New York to shame. The people were friendly. They were happy. No one was being forced to do anything they didn’t want to do.
But the Chinese that grow up in China live in Confucian thinking, Buddhist, Taoist influenced collective culture. What’s good for the collective means that what an individual thinks or wants is not acceptable if it threatens the harmony of the collective.
I went on to visit China with Anchee eight more times during our marriage. My last trip was in 2008. When in Shanghai, we slept on the floor in their parents one and a half room apartment that had been carved out of a mansion in the old French Sector of Shanghai after the Communists won the Civil War in 1949 and confiscated all the land from the wealthy landowners that made up about 0.0025 percent of the population at the time.
Even Sun Yat Sen, the man that both Taiwan and Mainland China agree is the father of their respective republics, said if China became a republic like the U.S. or the countries in Europe, it would have to fit the Chinese culture.
If you do not understand the Chinese culture, then you cannot understand what China’s leaders are doing when they arrest people who are speaking out in public trying to change the country.
If anyone in China’s recent history is a match for Trump, it would be Mao. The only difference, a BIG difference, is Trump is for the rich and Mao was for the poor. Trump would never take all the land away from the richest Americans and divide it up among the poorest. Today in China, 800 million rural Chinese have not paid rent, a mortgage, or property tax — since 1949, unless they want to have a home in urban China and then they have to lease the property for 77 years and pay for that.
These are the two freedoms that Chinese are not allowed to have.
Chinese citizens are not allowed to speak out in public challenging the government and possibly causing unrest like we see in the United States.
China limits the number of religions to 7 or 8 and does not allow those religious and their members to criticize the government in any way. The members of these approved religions are allowed to worship their god but they cannot become political like in the United States. The last religion to challenge China’s government was the Falun Gong and they were outlawed. The CIA had been funding the Falun Gong’s protests from the United States ever since. The Falun Gong is not a religion. It is a cult that worships more than one god.
Lloyd, how do Chinese leaders refer to their society/country? Is it communist, socialist, democracy?
In Vietnam the guides said “we have a socialist government with a capitalist economy”
Since Mao died in 1976, and Deng Xiaoping managed to pull off a coup without a shot and get rid of Mao’s replacements known as the gang of four, China’s leaders see China has a hybrid socialist-capitalist country.
The biggest fear among most if not all the Chinese people is that the power base will shift and return to Maoism. There is still a faction in the CCP that wants to return to Maoism.
Then they will nationalize the private sector and return to the Mao era of brutal insanity.
Currently, China’s government controls the banks, owns all the property, and has its own industrial sector.
In rural China, the property is cooperatively owned between the rural people and the government.
In the cities, the government holds title to all the property but leases it to the private sector to live in or do business from. The only lease I’ve read about is for 77 years with the right for your surviving family members to extend the lease when it expires.
But there is a thriving real estate market in China where original lease holders sublease the property they have leased to others to live in or use for business purposes.
You can lead more than one property/home but the second home taxed much higher than the first one.
Lloyd Lofthouse: One of the unique things about China is their toilets. At one pit stop, the toilet was a long trough that that went between the stalls. There was nothing to flush. You had to straddle the trough.
One stop had a pull string flush but one section of the toilet seat was covered with a pile of poop. Some visitor didn’t know how to use the toilet. I believe someone sat on top of the seat and went. [I’ve seen many squat toilets in Malaysia.]
I visited one small fishing community and the toilet was a small room above a fish pond. There was a slat in the floor [no toilet paper but I’d learned to carry my own roll] and the ‘deposit’ fell through the floor into the pond. Our bus stop was the first tour group to visit this village. I was the only white person in a bus full of Malaysians. I always felt that the locals were watching to see what would fall down.
Bathrooms in China run the gambit from modern to what you described, but I spent a combat tour in Vietnam when I was in the Marines and the bathrooms in China were all better than what we were using in Vietnam so that never bothered me.
China still has a long way to go to bring everything up to the level of a developed country and I’ve more than one read piece where high ranking party official in the CCP admit as much. China has a long way to go to modernise the entire country rural to urban.
There are even a few remote areas that haven’t been hooked up to the electric grid although I’ve read that the CCP has installed solar and batteries for those remote rural villages.
Lloyd, don’t forget, most Americans sign up for “We are number one” without knowing much about other countries. Many others feel, the present Trumpism in the country is just a temporary hiccup, and the freedoms and checks and balances in the Constitution will smooth things out.
Mate Wierdle I posted a long article today saying generally the same thing–did you see it, and where the original talk came from? Also, I have a vivid memory of “Tank Man”–I was in college at the time. And just today, the news came out that China was blocking the news coming from the Hong Kong protest. I’d like to hear that from more than one source, before I take it as true . . . . perhaps we’ll hear more today or tomorrow about that–but government blocking news from beyond its borders?
That’s certainly not all, as others have said here; however, . . . . why am I defending freedom and democracy, such as it is in the United States, on a pro-public-education blog, to (what I thought were) American citizens? That said, I’d like to end this conversation, but do carry on if you wish–and criticize the government if it suits you. You can still do that here, BTW. CBK
I was in Shanghai last year.
I stayed at a very fabulous hotel but there was no way to connect to the web or google to get my email, as I had done when traveling in Vietnam and Cambodia.
The guide explained that the government censors access.
It is possible to sneak through China’s Internet censorship using a proxy server, if you know how, but that connection can be cut off at any time when the censors detect them.
The Chinese government fears the unrest they see being stirred up in the United States between Forever Trumpers and Never Trumpers and in Europe between Nazi type nationalists and progressives in countries like France, Germany and the UK.
There is a reason for that. Starting with the Opium Wars in the early 19th century, China was torn apart by unrest, invasions, World War II, and civil war up until 1949 for a few years until Mao’s Cultural Revolution that was just more of the same insanity. It wasn’t until after Mao’s death that China finally started to know peace and harmony that is the reason for China’s incredible growth and modernization.
Lloyd Lofthouse: I question the ‘peace and harmony’ that you say exists in China.
On one of my tours I had a tour guide who spoke excellent English. He told us what he knew was happening in China vs. what the government officials stated. I don’t remember all that he said but I do remember he was an engineer and he wanted to purchase a jacket. He said he didn’t make enough money to be able to purchase that jacket. He decided to become a tour guide and he made more money that way.
He was very unhappy and let us know why.
I also remember him saying that doctors and teachers made the same wages. Now that is something the US can emulate…provided it is the high $$ of doctors and not the low $$ of teachers.
Not all is rosy when governments decide what is best for everyone.
I wonder what brand jacket the tourist guide wanted to buy that cost too much.
Our daughter, who looks Chinese (Chinese-American born in Chicago almost 29 years ago) and speaks fluent Mandarine, Spanish, and English, loves shopping in China for the bargains but she does not go to the brand stores. She shops at small stalls and shops that offer knock-offs of the expensive brand name items.
Even as a middle school and high school student, when she visited her grandparents in China, she went bargain shopping and came back with loads of stylish clothing for next to nothing compared to clothing prices in the U.S.
Anchee does the same every time she visits China, and never spends the kind of money top fashion brands costs. They both know where to go and shop to find something that looks similar.
I have also shopped in China and I enjoy bargaining. My wife and daughter often had to take a walk because of the fun I had bargaining down the posted price.
Once, I ended up buying fancy chess set for such a low price, Anchee said it wasn’t fair to the shop owner because they should be allowed to make a profit.
Another time, I bought a hand-carved wood sculpture depicting a scene from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The first time I saw this piece, it was priced at $2,000. A year later, on another trip, I returned to that shop near the West Lake in Hangzhou, and it was still there.
I decided to bargain the 2nd time around and ended up buying that wood carving for $400. Then the challenge was getting it back to the states undamaged because a lot of that wood carving (33 inches wide and 23 high) was delicate.
Lloyd Lofthouse: I love the Chinese brocade jackets that I’ve purchased and the artifacts that adorn my condo.
I have no idea what type of jacket he wanted.
One other problem that this tour guide mentioned was that tall apartment buildings dwellers had to use public restrooms that were located on the street. Apartments do not have to have toilet facilities.
I never saw an apartment building that didn’t have a bathroom in every unit or one bathroom for everyone to use at no cost.
It’s true that some smaller buildings would only have one bathroom that everyone had to share.
The building that Anchee’s parents lived in had one bathroom on the second floor for all six families until Anchee’s only brother paid to turn a closet in the one-room flat into a bathroom-kitchen combination. The toilet was in the corner next to the counter where food was prepped and the bathtub had a slab of wood sitting on it to use as a chopping block. When you wanted to take a bath, you had to remove the chopping block and slip it behind the bathtub.
Lloyd Lofthouse: One thought that just came to me is that I wasn’t traveling with tours set up by Western tour companies. I lived in Malaysia and all of my tours were for Malaysians. Usually I was the only white person anywhere in the vicinity. Perhaps that is a difference in our perceptions of what exists in China.
True, I never visited China with a tour group.
A sampling:
I visited China with my wife and daughter and Anchee was a walker. Back in the early 80s before she came to the U.S. on a student Visa, she had been a location scout for Shanghai studios and had visited many locations throughout China. That came in handy when we were traveling by slow train, fast train, subway, hired driver, by air, …
Anchee has many contacts in China that belong to her guanxi network.
We walked everywhere in Shanghai. Not so much in other cities and provinces. We didn’t go for a week or two. When I was still teaching, we went for most of each summer and the two-week winter break. When we were in Shanghai, I’d be up at 5:00 AM and on my way to the nearest open-air farmer’s market to get some fresh, hot tofu juice and bring some back for the rest of the family.
One December we visited The Forbidden City when the temp was five degrees below zero and freezing cold. There weren’t many tourists there. That’s a big place when you have it almost to yourself but it isn’t easy to enjoy when you are cold clear through no matter how much you got on.
In Xian, one year when we were showing some friends around China, we ended up renting a limo driver that we found outside the airport. It turned out that he had been an embassy driver for China in other countries and when he reached retirement age he bought the limo with his brother. Boy did he show us stuff few ever see in and outside of Xian.
He knew the back way in to reach the Terra Cotta Warriors tourist park. While everyone else was waiting in a long line to get into the parking, lot, he just breezed in through a back gate.
Anchee has friends and family scattered all over China and we were always dropping in to visit them when we were in this city or that.
In Hangchou. one of her friends was a famous Chinese opera star who had her own theater and theater group, and we got front row seats. Lavish costumes, Chinese music, and singing.
When a family member of a friend was in a hospital as a patent, we went. I have to say this, Chinese hospitals do not look antiseptic and clean as ours, but one year a friend from the states joined us for a couple of weeks before he and his wife had to fly back and didn’t heed our advice about eating from the street vendors (even though Anchee does it all the time) and he ended up really sick with the runs. He spent the next day in a Chinese hospital with my wife acting as his interpreter. He was there for hours, saw more than one doctor, ended up with an IV and medication and several hours later was released with the problem solved. The bill for all that care was $50 US.
One year, while visiting my wife’s middle sister in Beijing (forget about taxis. The street traffic is horrendous in that city. It was easier to walk or take the subway), we went to Prince Gong’s Palace (now a tourist destination because of its imperial style gardens) that is located in a Hutong across Tiananmen square from the Forbidden City. Tour groups were flowing through the place like dots and dashes following their group’s flag stuck to a long stick the tour guide carried.
Lloyd Lofthouse: “Tour groups were flowing through the place like dots and dashes following their group’s flag stuck to a long stick the tour guide carried.”
I remember this very well. On one tour I got tired of going to one more Chinese temple and stayed with a row of stalls selling goods. The tour guide got a little ticked off with me but I stayed and bought a beautiful winter Chinese brocade jacket for $6.00. I had the hang of bargaining although I’m sure I got taken a number of times.
Lloyd Lofthouse Certainly, a “people” cannot jump overnight from a tribal to a civilized culture, ready overnight to live in a democracy that demands, for its maintenance, that “the people” be responsible to it. Tear the head off a tribal culture, with no long-term transitions in place, and you have chaos. A cultural’s history makes a huge difference, of course–but fundamentally, not enough to rescind at least endemic developments towards the politically maturity and able-ness of “the people” to enjoy basic freedoms. If there ever was a political birthright in human history, those basic freedoms are it.
Americans in the US, however, are “cradle democrats” (small d), brought up in the “air” of political freedom. My view is that a big part of our own problems reside in our taking that for granted our (limited to some degree freedoms) and so failing to recognize when they are threatened, even by our own omissions and lack of responsibility to their maintenance. (The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville says this in his political classic “Democracy in America” written back in the mid-1800’s after he toured the US.)
But taking our political foundations for granted leaves us in an un-reflective position–of failing to recognize the import of seemingly-innocuous activities and changes made by the paternalistic snobs who think their xxxx don’t stink with the same human foibles that they try to “eliminate” in the people. In very few cases in history does power NOT corrupt.
Maybe not so oddly, the distinction made here earlier about Vietnam, between socialism and capitalism, and being both, is probably an example of one of those long-term transitions, though probably not understood reflectively by most if not all of those involved as a movement towards the responsibility of the people that can support more democratic political orders, even though “fitted” rightly to a culture’s specific history<–but not so much that the people’s freedoms have left the building.
The people of Hong Kong apparently have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on and the threat coming from what others see as an innocuous move built on pragmatism. The Chinese leadership may end up having lit a fuse they were not aware of. My prayers and best wishes go out to the protesters in Hong Kong. CBK
I just remembered something about Hong Kong. There was a huge population surge into Hong Kong from 1945 – 1951 and the population of Hong Kong grew by 600k to 2.1 million.
Unrest in China also prompted businesses to relocate their assets and capital from Shanghai to Hong Kong.
Most of these refugees were Nationalists and/or wealthy.
I’m sure many of those people and their descendants fear what will happen if China changes the law so they can extradite people who might belong to a family that fled China out of justified fear of what would happen to them when the CCP won the Civil War to stand trial in China for alleged crimes.
Millions were purged, sent to labor camps or executed, in the early years after the CCP took over, and those who survived int he labor camps long enough to be free are kept on a blacklist and watched to make sure they don’t cause trouble.
It stands to reason that many of the protesters fear what might happen to them if they belong to that group of refugee families even if they were born after they arrived in Hong Kong, because it has been common practice in China for millennia that if there is one bad seed in a family, then the rest of the family must be bad too.
And that kind of thinking hasn’t changed.
Lloyd Lofthouse I had a fifth grade class once where we did a section on South American countries, some of their histories, and differences with the U.S. There was a little boy in my class from one of those countries who had experienced his uncle being “disappeared” in the middle of the night by the regime at the time.
I asked the class questions about the United States and differences in other countries, and the class did their usual light-touch about what they had learned. Then this little boy stood up and told his story, gave an eloquent statement about how wonderful it was to live in a country with laws, and said that he never feared anyone being “disappeared” since he came here. The rest of the class was drop-jawed and finally began to take the section seriously, including defining the writ of habeas corpus, Lady Justice, and the freedoms listed in the First Amendment.
To this day, I think that little boy was the catalyst for a political education for those in that class that I could never had made happen (though I had occasion to use his story many times in similar circumstances). CBK
I wonder what that boy thinks now that Trump is having ICE make people disappear and tearing children away from their families and throwing those children in concentration camps.
And this isn’t the first time people have vanished from their lives in the U.S.
There was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (to 1945) where Asian immigrants ended up being held like prisoners for years on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.
Then there were the Japanese Interment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II.
Then there was Joseph McCarthy’s List and all the lives he destroyed.
I’m sure we could add other incidents like these to the list.
That, I think, is the reason the Founding Fathers added the Oath of Office to the U.S. Constitution.
“I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well …”
http://www.twothirds.us/the-oaths-of-office/
Those who uphold the oath are patriots.
Those who do not are loyalists to someone like Trump or the Republican Party.
If China has a similar Oath in its Constitution, I wonder what it says.
Oregon has a shady past in dealing with the Chinese. I visited tunnels under Portland in which the Chinese men were not allowed above ground. They died alone. Chinese women were not allowed to come to the US. Isn’t it amazing how much hatred we can have for people who look different or dress differently. Now, its the brown people from Mexico or Central American who are the targets of our venom.
……..
Oregon has had Chinese residents since before statehood, with the first Chinese immigrants arriving in the 1850s to work as miners in southern and northeastern Oregon. As Portland and Oregon grew, they attracted more Chinese immigrants – according to the Oregon Historical Society’s Oregon Encyclopedia, Oregon’s population of 413,500 in 1900 included more than 10,000 Chinese residents.
By then, however, anti-Chinese feeling was swelling. Starting in 1882, Congress passed, expanded and renewed legislation suspending Chinese immigration and requiring Chinese people traveling in and out of the country to carry identification. The Chinese Exclusion Acts remained on the books until 1943.
In Oregon, Chinese residents were prohibited from voting, holding public office, attending public schools, serving on juries, entering professions and becoming naturalized citizens.
For some, the effects of exclusion rippled down through generations. Some Chinese Americans won’t talk about how their forebears entered the country because they fear deportation, even decades later, said Jackie Peterson-Loomis, curator of the local exhibit. Other Chinese American families didn’t experience exclusion at the border but felt it in other ways, such as having to buy houses in certain neighborhoods through white proxies.
Anti-Chinese sentiments in Oregon developed as early as 1857, where EuroAmericans adopted similar discriminatory laws against Chinese miners to that of California and Nevada. Chinese miners also had to pay a $50 yearly tax to the Government of Oregon and although they paid taxes, Chinese were prohibited from voting. Article IX, Section 8 of the Oregon Constitution stated that “No Chinaman, not a resident of the state at the adoption of this constitution, shall ever hold any real estate or mining claim, or work any mining claim therein.” In 1882, the United States government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Together with the Exclusion Act, Oregon also banned interracial marriage. Chinese were also banned from attending in public schools, entering professions, and were discriminated against in housing.
During the exclusion era, most of the Chinese in Oregon lived in Portland, where they lived in their own communities, most in the west bank of the Willamette River. Many of the Chinese were not allowed to live beyond their own communities except as live-in domestics. These Anti-Chinese discriminatory laws highly affected the Chinese population in Oregon, decreasing its numbers to 2,102 by 1950.
Lloyd Lofthouse It’s an experiment of living up to what our founders left for us–not in a bloodline, but in a set of founding documents that are general and comprehensive enough to allow for changes over time; and insightful enough to foster intelligence and to portray an order and dynamism that constantly points back to “the people’s” decisions and well-being. If we fail, as in your and Carol’s examples, it’s on us. CBK
What if some of us stand up and fight back but lose the 2nd Civil War to Trump’s basket of deplorable supporters?
Although I think the odds are against Trump and his deplorable basket winning the 2nd Civil War, there is a slim chance they could win and then crush the rest of us.
Once Trump has control of the history books, he’d make sure that those who stood against his fascist regime look like terrorists, traitors, and losers. He’d probably follow in Hitler’s footsteps and have our families all executed. Using DNA, he’d have his ICE agents hunt every member of our extended families down, even those that didn’t know they were related to the patriots that fought back and get rid of them, too.
Trump has said more than once, “he likes to get even, to get revenge”
Lloyd Lofthouse That’s allot of people to kill. (We should ask Hitler about that.)
The choice, however, is capitulation to a new “great leader” (aka: tyrant-despot) sooner or later.
Also, I find hope in two things: First, the cradle/inborn-ness of our desire for our freedoms; and second:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands . . . a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation, . . . We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. . . . Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all **Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer while Evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. . . . **” <–then there’s that. (Quote from The Declaration of Independence, Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776/Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America) CBK
Catherine King: I find it despicable that certain people are making money off of abusing children. It costs $775 a day to ‘warehouse’ children who are sleeping with army blankets on cold floors, one blanket on top and one on the bottom, and getting sick. Older children are taking care of younger ones. Some guards are kind and some are not. Why is this country accepting that this abuse of children is acceptable? I am abhorred by the lack of decency that these children are experiencing. We are creating children who will never mentally recover and the Orange Moron who is responsible is proudly talking about what great things he is doing to get rid of the immigrants.
……………………………
Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children
Warren Binford, a lawyer who has been interviewing children held in the detention facilities, was so disturbed by what she saw that she decided to talk to the media.
Hundreds of immigrant children who have been separated from their parents or family members are being held in dirty, neglectful, and dangerous conditions at Border Patrol facilities in Texas. This week, a team of lawyers interviewed more than fifty children at one of those facilities, in Clint, Texas, in order to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement, which mandates that children must be held in safe and sanitary conditions and moved out of Border Patrol custody without unnecessary delays. The conditions the lawyers found were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility for weeks….
For example, in Flores, which is the class-action suit that governs the standards for the care of these children that are in U.S. custody, it clearly says that children are supposed to be kept in safe and sanitary conditions. And there is nothing sanitary about the conditions they are in. And they are not safe, because they are getting sick, and they are not being adequately supervised by the Border Patrol officers. This is a violation of the case law. In addition to that, these children are not supposed to be in a Border Patrol facility any longer than they absolutely have to, and in no event are they supposed to be there for more than seventy-two hours. And many of them were there for three and a half weeks.
And in addition to that, they are not supposed to be breaking up families. In the Ms. L case that was brought last year, when children were being routinely separated by their parents, that judge ruled that these children need to be kept with their parents, that family integrity is a constitutional right and is being violated. There were children at this facility who came across with parents and were separated from parents. There were other children at the facility who came across with other adult family members. We met almost no children who came across unaccompanied. The United States is taking children away from their family unit and reclassifying them as unaccompanied children. But they were not unaccompanied children. And some of them were separated from their parents….
…as far as direct care, at the facilities that we have the numbers for, such as the large facilities like Homestead, it costs seven hundred and seventy-five dollars a day to care for these kids. There is no reason for the American taxpayer to have to pay seven hundred and seventy-five dollars a day to care for children who have families who love them, and are here in the United States, and want to take care of them. There are multiple kids that we could put on a plane this week to be with their parents in the United States. Many of them have never spoken with their parents since they got there…
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/inside-a-texas-building-where-the-government-is-holding-immigrant-children
carolmalaysia Yes, and the proximate cause is our present political situation and leadership; but ultimately, it’s in our name, just as was our treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII. CBK
AOC is recognizing that the US is putting children and adults in places where they have no freedoms and are getting sick and dying from the abuses. I agree that we are now putting humans in concentration camps. Nobody with any sense of morals would accept this.
I know who I stand with. How can we be so cruel?
Trump proclaimed, “I’ve done more in 2 1/2 years than any President in the history of this country.”He filed for re-election on the first day of his presidency. “We’re building the wall right now. It is under major construction.” “They [on immigrant children] have very accurate lists, actually.””..they’re trying to come in because the economy is so good.”
………………………………….
Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet was “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis.”
In an article in Esquire Andrea Pitzer, a historian of concentration camps, was quoted making the same assertion: that the United States has created a “concentration camp system.”
Less than an hour and a half after AOC’s Tweet, Representative Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, tweeted, “Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this.”
Carol, I retweeted a rabbi who said AOC was right to call these detention centers “concentration camps.”
I’m a Jew. Liz Cheney does not speak for me.
dianeravitch Touche’. I have never listened to Liz Cheney when my teeth didn’t start hurting. CBK
Tweet by @raices
The border agents got so mad about a lost lice comb that they took away the children’s blankets and mats.
Children had to sleep on the floor as a punishment for losing the comb.
When are we going to #CloseTheCamps?
Sorry but when I hear about mass punishment of all for misdeeds or rebellion by one, I think #Lidice.
dianeravitch (irony alert) Didn’t you know that they have lice because “those people” are from below the border? CBK
Catherine King: It makes me sick to realize that many of these children and their close relative or parent walked so far for the chance to have a better life. This is how they are treated. Many are farmers whose crops won’t grow because of climate changes that have had five years of dry spells. Some teens were threatened with death if they didn’t join a gang. Even their families are at risk.
Fox Tucker Carlson said that immigrants make America dirty and Laura Ingraham compared detention centers with children in cages to summer camps.
As I said, how low can American get? Every day with the Orange Swamp Monster the low continues to descend even though I thought it had previously hit bottom.
He should send his grandchildren to such a ‘summer camp’.
Does South of the Border mean countries that Trump defined as shit holes and/or countries that do not have a Trump Hotels or golf courses?
I think a case could be made that Saudi Arabia should be on Trump’s list of shit hole countries but Saudi Arabia’s leaders bought Trump’s fragile loyalty long ago explaining why Saudi Arabia does not appear on the list of Muslim countries that he blocked so none of their citizens could enter the U.S. even though most of them didn’t contribute even one terrorist to the group that hit the twin towers in NY on 9/11 as Saudi Arabia did.
“The Trump Organization does not own any buildings in Saudi Arabia, but the president has worked closely with officials from the country over the years. Trump has been paid tens of millions by Saudi investors and its government through a variety of business deals.
“In fact, Trump has long done business with the Saudis”
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-saudi-arabia-financial-interests-ties-hotel-bookings-sales-2018-10
Lloyd Lofthouse: “King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi,” Trump said. “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”
It’s just like Putin who denied ever being involved with our elections. The Swamp Monster believes dictators over our allies and over our intelligence agencies. How sweet that he also got love letters from Kim Jong Un.
Trump can be easily manipulated because he is guided by his gut. There is no intelligence or knowledge behind anything that he says or does. His gut is influenced by how much the dictators manipulate him.
He is a demented con man.
I agree, but you are going easy on DT. I think the orange golf ball is much worse than Putin or Kim.
Lloyd Lofthouse I’ll bet he doesn’t even hold his nose. CBK
That’s right, Trump has one of his mistresses hold his nose for him.
Lloyd lofthouse Well, maybe (about holding Trump’s nose). But my guess is that, if the “border people” were wealthy, we would be wise to invest in red carpets. CBK
You can buy an inexpensive mouth guard on Amazon to help with the grinding of the teeth and the pain that comes with it that is caused by the Fascist Kleptocracy of Trump.
The mouthguard I bought on Amazon is probably saving my teeth from being ground into powder.
carolmalaysia Of course it’s “not so bad” as what occurred under Hitler during WWII. And it would be hyperbole to claim the “border situation” is exactly the same as the concentration camps at that time.
However, as far as the tenor of the events is concerned as they continue to unfold, it seems to me that the border situation is on the same track, insofar as it’s rooted in elitist racism and tribal provincialism, and reveals, at the very least, a carelessness of all we have done in human rights since WWII, and a total lack of regard for other human beings that, in any other situation, would be understood as pathological.
So in my view, and though it’s certainly “not as bad,” the difference can be stated as only a matter of degree.
Also, in terms of the methods of fascism that are explored in Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism,” the border situation can be understood as a part of the long-term planning of a small group of fascists–to soften the moral sensibilities and the initial outrage of those in the “outer circles” who are the real targets of the fascist. So then there’s that. And perhaps a “lesser degree” in such situations is more (or less) substantial than some of us might think. CBK
“So in my view, and though it’s certainly “not as bad,” the difference can be stated as only a matter of degree.”
Not as bad … YET! Tyranny takes hold one step at a time until they have trampled and crushed all opposition under their boots.
If we do not stop Trump and his corrupt GOP, then eventually, they will come for us in the dark hours of the early mornings one at a time.
Lloyd Lofthouse Yes, . . . only in degree . . . CBK
dianeravitch Again doesn’t surprise me. But not to worry. Lloyd says: “Whatever happened to ‘When in Rome, do as the Roman’s Do?’” Maybe when visiting, perhaps? but to live there?
Also, there is a big difference between a constitution, its systems of change, and then its applications–so to understand the differences between different national constitutions, one would have to go into the weeds to do some comparisons. One’ country’s written constitution gives freedom of religion as does another, but one jails some religious orders, and one does not, as an example. But we’re off course here. Thanks for your response. CBK
No doubt, socialism sounded pretty good on paper but the reality was (and has been where it has survived) restrictive. Similarly, the US Constitution mostly sounds pretty good, but the reality is not so shiny.
I think the common error in both cases is the naive assumption that political leaders will act reasonably and try to follow the Constitution presented to them.
Trump and friends have had ample to figure out ways around the Constitution, Hungary’s prime minister, since he faces a more precisely written, more modern constitution, changes it when he wants something to go his way.
Mate Wierdl That’s why, if he experiment with democracy fails, true to its form, it’s OUR failure. CBK
“Maybe when visiting, perhaps? but to live there?”
Anchee bought a three bedroom, two-bath flat on the 7th floor of a highrise in Shanghai to “live there” when she visits sometimes for months at a time.
Visiting China for much longer than the usual tourist tour with someone who grew up there and didn’t leave until she was in her twenties is a different experience than going on a tour with a guide.
What I can definitely say is that Hungarian reality is almost completely misrepresented in the US media—and this misrepresentation seems uniform and independent of the source.
I conclude that media is really hard to trust, and it’s not advisable to form any opinion based on them.
Back, 40 years ago, I had American university student visitors in Hungary who had been convinced that specifically bred communist monster-like people would wait for them at the Budapest airport and they were shocked not to find extreme poverty and hunger anywhere.
The Voice of America radio station told its English speaking Eastern European listeners that they lived in the most terrible part of the world while capitalism in the West was the only way to Heaven.
I think it’s difficult to form an opinion about a foreign country without actually spending an extended time there.
Mate Wierdl Well, we can watch what they DO, and pay attention to the difference between what they SAY they do, and what they actually do.
And BTW, if it’s difficult to know truth from reading one press, then we need to watch for other reports from more than on, and from those we know we can trust from our experience over time. The option is to wait for the Ministry of Information (sic) to talk in a political situation that is ‘closed-to-the-internet’ AND the press, AND free speech, for example, to criticize even the leader and the government.
On the larger issue–the one that all of the other “China-doings” point to, as our founders knew: an authentic democracy is an experiment, and in our case it’s up to the American people–not the fake gods of the oligarchy–or worse, some dumbo who, with Russian help, faked his way into the White House–to keep it in tact.
It CAN fail and ‘the people’ have to live up to its embedded responsibilities; but at least it’s more attuned to the openness of the human spirit than all the other political systems.
BTW, I read that the Chinese leader is putting an end to term limits, and they used to have “freedom of the press” written into their constitution. <–The envy of Trump. CBK
When Anchee first visited the United States in 1986 on a student Visa, she expected to see masses of starving people and shortages of everything, even toilet paper. That’s why she filled one suitcase with only toilet paper.
That was what the Chinese were taught about America during the Mao era.
Then she landed in Seattle to switch flights and fly on to Chicago where she started to see all the overweight, colorfully dressed Americans and fast food everywhere. When she was waiting at the airport in Seattle she used a public bathroom and discovered the quality of American toilet paper was heaven compared to the rough, sandpapery type of toilet paper she brought with her from China.
The U.S. media isn’t the only one that misrepresents other countries and cultures. When countries are adversaries, they tend to demonize each other.
But it isn’t easy for China to get away with that today because so many Chinese have visited the US as tourists and students. Even Xi Jinping knows better because his daughter went to Harvard and graduated from there about the time he became president of China.
Easy for the U.S. media to keep fooling people since most Americans don’t speak another language and never travel outside the U.S. unless it is to Canada or Mexico.
Because of the closeness of the countries, it was impossible to hide the Wealth of the Western countries, and their attraction was great. Communist leaders were afraid that people would leave their countries for the West, and so in some countries like Romania, people were not allowed to travel to the West at all. In Hungary, we were allowed to travel to Western countries every 3 years. Athletes were exeptions.
also…..for a candidate like Kamala Harris……she should be able to introduce the subject and identify it for what it is……a serious difference of attitude for democrats…..it is time to put up or shut up. It is an opportunity for Sanders and Warren, too.
Ha,ha…waiting for the NEA & AFT Conventions in the upcoming weeks to see who they will endorse (not asking their rank-&-file, of course).
Anyone wanna bet me $100 that it’s going to be…Joe!–??
(I’m sorry–I just can’t help myself, interchanging that Jeb! campaign sign/motto with Joe! I picture IQ45 tearing J.B. apart on stage, mocking him, just as he did w/Jeb!, & Joe! crumpling.
Again, I would LOVE to see Elizabeth (“nevertheless, she persisted”) Warren on the same stage–wouldn’t you all?
Not sure at all about Warren. Probably not.
Data driven? Here we go again. . . .
Kit Burns “Data-driven”. . . the shiny cloak of positivist thought. CBK
YES!!!! Beautifully said, Ms. King!!!
And it’s not difficult to guess what these dirty old men are hiding under their cloaks.
Diane, I remember when you called for Congressional hearings to ask how one person was able to change the curriculum in all 50 states. It is an obvious affront to democracy.
Thank you! Yes, the Common [sic] Core [sic] has, in fact, become a default curriculum, and it is VERY MUCH still with us, as many states are still using it but have simply changed its name to something state-specific, and publishers are still using them as outlines for their products. And many idiots in educational administration still refer to the puerile Gates/Coleman bullet list as “higher” standards.
In many states they are higher standards indeed, compared to previous state standards.
The Common [sic] Core [sic] should have been laughed off the national stage the moment they were put forward. They look to me like what one would get if one asked a much of small-town business people in some part of rural America to make a list, based on what they vaguely remembered from their own K-12 schooling, of “stuff to learn in English class.” If your state standards were worse than these, then they must have been pathetic indeed!
Command of the English language arts, like command of most any other field of human endeavor, involves descriptive knowledge (knowledge of what) and procedural knowledge (knowledge of how). The former is almost completely absent from the Common [sic] Core [sic], and the latter are described so abstractly and so vaguely as to not to be operationalizable sufficiently to be tested. Yes, the previous standards were ridiculous, but these are ridiculous as well. Here, an analysis of one of these “standards”: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/ And here, another: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/what-happens-when-amateurs-write-standards/
But one could do the same for almost any “standard” on the puerile Gates/Coleman ELA bullet list. Here, a discussion of the reading “standards” and the ways in which they fail: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2017/09/02/on-the-pseudoscience-of-strategies-based-reading-comprehension-instruction-or-what-current-comprehension-instruction-has-in-common-with-astrology/
Whatever higher standards mean. Personally, I would never use the word “high” in connection with CC in math.
One of Bill Gates’ accomplices has an epiphany about “educationalism”; too bad he’s twenty years too late.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/
Better late than ever said this Recanter.
One less billionaire to find bad ideas.
Diane recently posted about this, RAT2. If you missed it, you must go back & read the multitude of comments!
A proper title for Bill and Melinda Gates Political Lobbying Organization is “The Final Solution”.
If anyone is curious about what that means, click the following link:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-final-solution
I think this announcement is nothing but a technical shift by the billionaire couple, Bill and Melinda Gates. The Gates Policy Initiative will allow them to engage in overt lobbying versus the very thinly disguised but relentless lobbying accomplished through grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF).
Recall that almost very grant from the B&MGF is NOT made from an open line of eligible topics. You cannot approach the B&MGF for a grant, say, in relation to preschool. B&MGF hires people who will send money to Gates-approved recipients. On the rare occasions when the B&MGF has issued an open “request for information,” or “request for proposals’’ the parameters for funding are clearly spelled out. Everything funded is part of a lobbying campaign, including the Gates-funded “Data Quality Campaign.”
The Gates Foundation database has hundreds of grants clearly tagged “advocacy” or “global advocacy.” There are hundreds where the purposes of the grants are defined as “building public support for….” or ” increasing the capacity of x group to influence y.” On matters of education, B&MGF has functioned as one very deep pocket lobby shop. It is a shop that will even send “operating support” to his preferred groups in order to have them give voice to his agenda, but at a distance from the Gates name and money pot.
Anyone who paid attention to the US Education Department during the Obama years knew about the revolving door of personnel, from the B&MGF, or the reverse. With Trump there are some differences is who gets in and who gets kicked out. I think that is a main reason for the NEW and OFFICIAL policy shop of Bill and Melinda Gates.
Not long ago I actually looked at the list of registered federal lobbyists. I wanted to see who, if anyone, was lobbying for S.800 “The College Transparency Act” first introduced in 2017 and following a template prepared with money from B&MGF titled: ”A Blueprint for Better Information: Recommendations for a Federal Postsecondary Student-Level Data Network. That report is pitched to Congress. It is the culmination of a postsecondary project Gates had funded since 2015, complete with 11 commissioned policy papers from the specific “metrics” (p. 10) for tracking student’s personally identifiable information (PII). Elizabeth Warren was a co-sponsor of The College Transparency Act. It is being advanced in connection with the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, as if to address the student loan crisis. It does not serve that purpose.
In any case, B&MGF has many surrogate/proxy organizations to do his bidding. For example, the Education Trust has active lobbyists on all matters of education and it has received at least $44.8 million from the B&MGF, most of it for “operating support.”
My Excel file, copied from the B&MGF database on “education” is incomplete at 2,815 grants, with about 1,900 more to go. Without intending to perform an operation, the software ran a total of those grants at nearly $6 trillion dollars ($5,925,239,846), and that is not the full roster, or measure of the felt need of Bill Gates to control education in the US. I say Bill, because he is the conspicuous half of the marriage when it comes to education. He says he is a learner. I think not. He has a habit of mistaking anything easy-to-code and act upon as valuable, no matter the collateral damage.
Was the Gates-funded SETDA, an association of public employees, listed as a federal lobbyist? If so, whose interests were associated with the listing, the Gates Foundation, or public employees, or the private partners (Gold, Silver, Event and Strategic)?
Citizens should force the religious organizations they belong to, to reject the out-of-touch, outsized influencers like Adelson and Koch/Leo Leonard who steer national policy. The faithful should demand their churches and synagogues substantially counter the false narratives of the rich. Cases in point, “Polls Show Israel Advocacy is Divorced from What Most American Jews Want” and, polls show Catholics support public schools.
Common Core was not the worst thing that happened to American education (do I need to mention Whole Language or failed NCTM “standards”?) This country is in dire need of a federal Ministry of Education.
The Common Core math “standards” are nothing but the NTCM standards tweaked, a bit, to add more “conceptual understanding” at earlier grade levels, which is ridiculous, of course, because most kids are not ready to do extremely abstract reasoning when they are very young. There are few differences between the Common [sic] Core [sic] math standards and the NCTM ones, and those differences that do exist aren’t, for the most part, defensible because of issues with a) developmental inappropriateness and b) rigidity resulting from the math standards being taken as the grade-by-grade curriculum map.
The last thing the US needs is a curriculum commissariat to do the thinking for the rest of us. Here’s an alternative to some sort of Orwellian national Thought Police:
A national wiki, continually added to, containing competing, alternative curriculum maps, suggested resources, diagnostic and formative assessments, lesson plans, and so on posted by subject matter experts, researchers, and classroom practitioners who are free to choose among these.
Thank you for telling me what I wrote on this forum a year ago 🙂 Still, could be worse.
Gates and et al money is based on one thing: they think we, the people, are too damn stupid to figure things out on our own. And after all this discussion about how few have read the Mueller Report—much less the Constitution, the daily newspapers, and a minimum of history—I’m starting to conclude that they’ve made a safe bet.
“I think that experimental type of approach, that innovative type of approach, is both relatively unique in this space and embedded into the DNA that Bill and Melinda bring with them,”
Experimenting with 300+ million people? That’s unique to the .1%. That’s why they exist.
The German experiments in the 1940s were confined only to a few million. Our .1% have learned from this mistake and now they involve the whole population.
You really think low of others if you compare Hitler to Gates and hope people will swallow it. Hitler cannot even be compared to Stalin, let alone Gates. Hitler’s policy was not “experimentation”, it was deliberate extermination of a particular group of people, it was genocide. As a mathematician you should avoid populist hysteria.
In the past 60 years, which person(s), never elected, had the greatest destructive effect on a democracy? What person(s) garnered the largest share of the world’s wealth while the working citizens in his country lost ground? What person(s) took over government power with the end result that citizens, once living in a developed nation have been forced into health and financial security situations rivaling 3rd world countries?
Let’s start the ranking with the Koch/Gates/Walton/Zuck oligarchs.
While the comparison of Gates to Hilter is, indeed, over the top, there are significant similarities between standards-and-testing-based Education Deform and the Eugenics Movement of the early twentieth century. Both were pseudosciences involving large-scale collection of dubious “data,” fallacious inferences from that “data,” and harmful social policy based upon these. Both were funded by oligarchs serving as self-appointed social engineers. And both involved leveraging, by oligarchs, of their influence over governments to put their stupid policies in place.
BA, I was thinking of the “medical” experiments in camps. Gates and similar people think of us and our kids only as subjects for their experiments. Can you tell how far Gates would go if he had direct political control ?
Preschool teachers in Michigan don’t need a bachelor’s degree and can be paid $11 an hour and get no health insurance.
……………………….
Defusing tantrums, tying laces, and changing young lives — while living under the poverty line
“Wages are actually comparable to animal care workers and fast food workers,” said Tiffany Tilley, a member of the Michigan board of education. “Some of them are on public assistance. Teachers are drastically underpaid.”
Preschool teachers in Michigan make an average of $14 an hour, she said. If, like Lester, they don’t have a bachelor’s degree, it goes down considerably. She makes just $11 an hour and gets no health insurance.
Those wages put Lester, a single mother of three, well below the poverty line, making it hard to survive. She is her family’s sole breadwinner…
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/detroit/2019/06/13/drastically-underpaid-childcare-workers/?utm_source=email_button
Which is related to BMG initiative… how?
BA: Sometimes I see things that I believe are important but are not necessarily connected to the main topic. I may not see where to post it.
This should not annoy you. I look for meaningful comments.
It bothers me that teachers don’t get paid enough to survive. It should bother you.
Breaking one’s back at an Amazon warehouse, picking up a hundred items per hour for $15, or spending time with kids for $14? That’s a toughie.
How much do you make BA doing what?
BA appointed himself hall monitor like the Gates/Koch’s appointed themselves to have dominion over all.
BA
The financial sector drags down GDP by an estimated 2%. Let’s compare both the Amazon worker and the the rest of American labor to Dan Loeb, Whitney Tilson, Bernie Madoff, John Arnold, Walton heirs, Warren Buffett whose kids’ foundations received $600,000,000 from him (Buffett made famous by saying he wasn’t going to leave his money to his kids.)
If Bill Gates was interested in future American prosperity and, if he was intelligent enough to best his equals and had competitive spirit, why didn’t he take on the unproductive Wall Street?,
A quote from author, Frances De Pontes Peebles—-You know what scares rich people the most? Someone doing something unexpected—- doing something they didn’t even think existed. You know why? Because suddenly they see this world with people and talent that aren’t there because of them. They didn’t make it or pay for it, and they can’t buy it or control it. And this scares the sh_t out of them.
Enabling students to see the richness of life beyond money and building emotional connections and compassion among people as they learn is the talent teachers have. It scares the sh_t out of rich people.
Linda . . . talk about getting to the existential core of things. . . CBK
Through the Gate’s so-called philanthropy, they’ve artfully seeded a network of so-called non profits to deliver the health, income, and other such data to create a new web of self profit. This web is the same as the old web. Designed to profit the elite, feed their stooges, mob bosses, prison pipeline, you name it.
Health info, education info, socio-emotional info and the fake wellbeing industrial complex marketing it. What a disaster.
Who funded Theranos? DeVos, Ellison, (Gates? )
Did investors receive data from the privately held company?
https://www.businessinsider.com/who-invested-in-theranos-betsy-devos-walmart-heirs-2018-5
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hershshefrin/2018/04/14/the-theranos-con/#2ccb5102314a
Tim Cook admonishing others not to “claim credit w/o taking responsibility”. That’s rich. Watch his interview on 60 Minutes where he was asked about the suicide nets on the buildings in China where the parts for Apple’s products are made.
If you want to be really scared about the threat from data collection, read the articles at AWrenchintheGears.com
Theranos…my G-d, there’s a very scary tale. Read the book Bad Blood. I couldn’t put it down. It’s chilling.
Oh, the greed & ignorance of mankind (or, in this case, womancruel).
Lloyd Lofthouse BIG ERROR ALERT–that young man was Otto Warmbier and was detained in North Korea, and not China. Sheesh. CBK
Did you know that the half brother that N Korea’s Kim had assassinated in Singapore was not only working for the CIA but he was working for/with China to get rid of Kim and replace him as the leader of North Korea.
Someone high up in China’s government tipped off Kim. I’m not sure, but I think that guy in China bought a six-foot deep plot under a farm because of it, once Xi found out one of his people had a big mouth and blew China’s plans to fix North Korea so it wouldn’t be such a dysfunctional problem child.
Lloyd Lofthouse No, I did not know that about Kim’s half-brother. Thanks for the update. Doesn’t surprise me, however. I have read where when people applaud Kim, they do so for a very long time for fear of being the first one to stop clapping–so frightening is he. But of all people, those protesters in Hong Kong are certainly well-aware of the tenuousness of their situation. ANY encroachment, even seemingly benign, has got to have red flags sticking out all over the place. Some people have all the luck . . . What a shame for Trump–such a personality to have been born into a democratic political system. CBK
If Trump had been born in North Korea, Kim would have had his family executed because they would have been a threat to his total hold on power.
And if Trump had been born in Iran, imagine his con there to become the top mafia don: His title would be: Ayatollah Donald Trump, the Supreme Leader of Iran. One benefit to the world, we wouldn’t have to look at his orange mop because he’d be wearing a black turban.
“Did you know that the half brother that N Korea’s Kim had assassinated in Singapore…”
Kim’s half brother was killed at the KLIA…Kuala Lumpur International Airport. [I’ve been there many times and am very interested in what happens in Malaysia.]
I did read that this brother worked for our government. He was much too knowledgable about what was occurring in N. Korea and posed a threat to dictator Kim.
Kim exterminated one of his uncles who didn’t show enough loyalty. He didn’t clap hard enough at political rallies.
I think Trump worships Kim’s power to have anyone that he doesn’t like or thinks is a threat killed anywhere in the world just like Putin does to anyone that gets on his wrong side.
I wonder if Trump is having people murdered here yet.
How many drones does the US have? This one that was recently shot down by Iran costs $131 million. Is this really the best use of taxpayer money? [NO!] The Iranian military is celebrating this. I fear for how Trump will react if he learns that.
Congress is supposed to declare war, not a demented president who is looking for something to take our minds away from his many problems.
American Global Hawk surveillance drone (list price $131 million)
“A special blessing for the commander who ordered the attack on the American drone and for the fighters who carried it out,” a preacher declared, as recalled by one of the guests present, who said a raucous chorus of “amen” arose from the room.
The following quote was dated August 2012:
“The US is the most open about its drone stocks. The IISS data shows that is has at least 678 drones in service, of 18 different types. Some 14 of them are identified as ‘heavy’, and includes UAVs such as the MQ-1B Predator, of which it has over 100.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/aug/03/drone-stocks-by-country
Lloyd Lofthouse: Killing by drones is supposed to make us feel better? How can anyone kill remotely and have any sense of morality?
$131 million, or something like that, times 678 drones = $88,818 million. This is our tax dollars at work…searching, killing and destroying remotely so US soldiers don’t get killed.
I feel so much better. [Extreme sarcasm!!] No wonder there is no money for increasing Social Security benefits, Medicare for All, SNAP, CHIP, homes for the homeless, clean water, research for green jobs, Green New Deal, judges for amnesty for immigrants or increasing unemployment insurance.
No wonder people in the Middle East see our drones and tremble in fear of who will be killed next. 17 years of bombing isn’t enough.
That $131-million was only for that one drone that was supposed to be the latest and most sophisticated of them all. All the drones are not the same. Some only cost $4.5 million. These spy or killer drones come in all sizes and shapes. Some are the size of horseflies and look like bugs.
And since 2012, I think the number of these drones and increased dramatically.
Lloyd Lofthouse: “Some only cost $4.5 million.”
ONLY $4.5 MILLION! They’re cheaper but I still say the military never has to account for its massive budget. They are given even more than they ask for. Lost money and munitions are unaccounted for and nothing happens. Contractors are making out like bandits and they are never questioned.
I despair of the amount of money that goes into the military. 800 bases and how many countries are we now actively engaged in? My bet is that Congress doesn’t even know.
There is a better use for this money.
Not changing the subject … but, did you know that the DOD spends almost $300 billion annually for mercenaries (called private contractors) to not only fight for the U.S. but move supplies, make repairs, and spy for the U.S. et al.
Sign the petition! US House and Senate: Stop the War with Iran before it starts
I signed a petition on Action Network telling US House and Senate to Stop the War with Iran before it starts.
The drumbeat for war with Iran is growing louder by the hour. Trump, and cabinet members Bolton and Pompeo, are ready to start a war without the legal authority to do so. According to Vox, “in April, a group of bipartisan senators led by Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the Prevention of Unconstitutional War with Iran Act of 2019, which would require Trump seek authorization from Congress before beginning any military engagements with the country.”
Please sign the petition demanding that our Members of Congress support this legislation to prevent war with Iran.
Click here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/stop-the-war-with-iran-before-it-starts?source=email&
Thanks!
Trump will start a war when it benefits him most, closer to the election.
I agree. Trump will launch the war close enough to the 2020 election so the causality counts won’t reach the media in time and if any do, he will just say it is all FAKE NEWS and lie saying we are winning without losses.
Trump will do and say “anything” to win the 2020 election so he has four more years to become America’s first president for life and once he has launched the Trump Dynasty, his daughter Ivanka will follow him on the throne once he’s gone.
Trump admires and is jealous of Kim in North Korea and the Kim Dynasty.
And once Trump wins the 2020 election, expect the military draft to return so Trump can wage war on the world until the combined countries of the world crush the United States.
I’m glad that this is happening but I’m appalled that is HAS to happen. There is enough money in the US that there should be no poverty. Nobody needs 10 yachts. [DeVos, I’m talking to you.] This comes from The Times of NW Indiana.
……………………………
[NWI Times] More than 100 Region locations will be serving up free meals to kids this summer. Here’s where to get breakfast, lunch or snacks
From Hammond and East Chicago to Valparaiso and Michigan City, more than 100 locations in Northwest Indiana will serve up free meals this summer to children ages 18 and younger.
Schools, churches and other community centers participating in the 2019 Summer Food Service Program will prepare breakfast, lunch and even snacks in some locations for eligible communities.
The program, established more than 40 years ago, seeks to bring nutritious meals and snacks to students in the summer months when the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs are not offered…
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/education/more-than-region-locations-will-be-serving-up-free-meals/article_68d70f9b-3b28-52d1-98d4-baa7072c30bc.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share
Addendum to our conversation about protecting our freedoms, from the LA Times op ed re China’s and Russia’s influence: SNIP from below: “In addition to cultivating ties with journalists, China also seeks out academics and business leaders to amplify Beijing’s propaganda. While Russia seeks to divide its target societies, China seeks to capture them. . . . Taiwan is not an isolated case. China has increased its influence operations in key democracies that include Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines.”
FULL ARTICLE
“How to avert foreign meddling in the 2020 election interference operation was a clumsy collection of fake memes and leaked emails. Still, it divided American society, eroded trust in national institutions and caught Washington flat-footed. A new wave of sophisticated, artificial-intelligence-enabled influence campaigns is surely headed our way in 2020, yet the United States is nowhere near ready.
“Continued division over the meaning of meddling in 2016 must not eclipse what should be a clear bipartisan priority — a national strategy to combat malicious foreign influence.
“The tip of the influence operations spear is found in the Asia-Pacific region, yet few are paying attention. Working with the Defending Digital Democracy project at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, we conducted more than 30 interviews with government officials, journalists and civil society members in Taiwan and found that Taiwanese society is saturated with Chinese disinformation and influence.
“Our findings highlight how Beijing has systematically assaulted Taiwan’s democracy via economic, political and cultural lines of influence. Beijing has also inundated Taiwan’s social media with misleading reports about Taiwanese officials’ corruption and incompetence and used fake accounts to steer internet traffic toward pro-China stories. China’s actions have fueled protests, impacted elections and may have triggered a diplomat’s suicide.
“Meanwhile, traditional media are self-censored by owners with economic interests on the mainland. Taiwanese billionaire Tsai Eng-Meng, for example, controls Taiwan’s largest news outlets and operates over 100 manufacturing plants in China. In May, Tsai organized a closed-door meeting for Taiwanese journalists during which a high-ranking Chinese official spoke about the inevitability of reunification and the folly of relying on the U.S. for Taiwan’s security.
“In addition to cultivating ties with journalists, China also seeks out academics and business leaders to amplify Beijing’s propaganda. While Russia seeks to divide its target societies, China seeks to capture them.
“Taiwan is not an isolated case. China has increased its influence operations in key democracies that include Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines.
“China’s approach is more subtle than Russia’s political memes and bot farms. China plays a long game focused on securing elite support through economic incentives, blackmail and digital pressure that shapes public opinion. And now it’s beginning to employ those tactics in the United States. Beijing imposed tariffs on goods, such as soybeans and whiskey, that target those likely to vote for President Trump, and placed an anti-trade-war advertisement in an Iowa newspaper during the 2018 midterm election. Much subtler and more impactful tactics will follow. As Vice President Mike Pence put it last fall: ‘China has initiated an unprecedented effort to influence American public opinion.’
“Beijing promotes a pro-China perspective in Hollywood scripts, American media stories and U.S. academic researchby threatening to curtail access to Chinese consumers, funding and research opportunities in response to negative narratives. As China’s influence grows, our public discourse will become increasingly self-censored.
“Americans can begin fighting back by not making ourselves such soft targets. As politicians stoke distrust in traditional gatekeepers of information, partisan disinformation grabs viewers’ attention. In a so-called post-truth environment, our society becomes easy prey for sophisticated foreign adversaries. America’s competitors need only lend willing policymakers the verbal weapons to savage their opponents and watch our democracy erode.
“The U.S. has made some strides in combating influence operations. The FBI’s Combating Foreign Influence Task Force, together with the Department of Homeland Security, has established relationships with local election officials to help identify and react to social media posts with false election-related content, such as an ad that encouraged voters to text their vote on election day. Major technology companies such as Facebook and Twitter have pledged to devote more resources to address misuse of their platforms. Start-ups and civil society groups such as Factmata, NewsGuard and the Defending Digital Democracy project use data analytics and government engagement to raise public awareness around disinformation.
“A recent doctored video the viral video claimed millions of views of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi illustrates remaining vulnerabilities. The video had been slowed down to make it look like Pelosi was drunk. Although debunked, and was reposted by prominent U.S. officials. Facebook said the video did not violate its terms of service and declined to remove it.
“Of course, the United States cannot defend against or deter all foreign influence. However, by focusing on building societal resilience, it can mitigate many of its effects.
“The U.S. should adapt its counterintelligence abilities to identify multi-channel influence campaigns such as China’s United Front strategy, which uses legal tactics to develop public and private-sector assets and recruit elites. Then the U.S. must apply a whole of government approach to communicate findings to the public so they can judge the reliability of the reports for themselves.
“To counter foreign influence, the old adage is true: Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Increased government transparency at all levels will allow for independent fact verification by citizens and journalists and help revive faith in institutions. Federal agencies can start by declassifying influence reports in real time and granting researchers access to technical indicators that explain how intelligence analysts traced content to foreign sources. Legislators can mandate transparency around online and print advertising. State and local election officials can continue to strengthen communication plans and formal agreements with federal response teams and social media companies to enhance their rapid response capabilities.
“However, none of this will matter if politicians continue to reduce this national security threat to partisan gamesmanship. Democrats and Republicans need to reach a consensus about the red lines of foreign influence that neither party will tolerate. U.S. citizens must be told the risks associated with foreign influence.
“Every government official should characterize foreign influence as a real and pressing threat to the public. Without a coordinated campaign to build societal resilience, the U.S. risks succumbing to foreign influence or tearing itself apart.”
Do people seriously think, the South and the Mountains think differently and support Trump because of foreign influence?
Mate Wierdl writes: “Do people seriously think, the South and the Mountains think differently and support Trump because of foreign influence?”
Do you think they don’t have TV and internet? Many who remain Trump’s “base” believe what they hear and see, and what they hear and see is influenced heavily and regularly by Russia and others who are not exactly interested in our survival as a democracy or as a world power. Where have you been? CBK
I’m embarrassed to say that I have a sister who is a Trumper, which causes me never to blame people for their sibling’s choices (think Joe Biden and his brother Frank, who runs a for-Profit charter chain in Florida). My sister lives in a small town in the panhandle of Florida. She gets her news watching TV and the Internet, all of which reinforce her views.
dianeravitch Funny you should mention it. I also have a sister and her husband from Arkansas who support Trump. We cannot talk about anything that even hints at politics. They are also military and evangelicals who have always been good and moral people; but nothing he does changes their support, not even things that so obviously fly in the face of their Christian tradition. And one word TV: FOX. CBK
I’m sorry.
dianeravitch Probably time to start reading up on the cult studies. CBK
We were talking about foreign influence. What makes us think, it is really significant? It’s entirely possible that a significant portion of the US population is very much in tune with Trump’s “culture”. If we accept this, perhaps it’s easier to deal with it. Having lived in the South for 30 years, I wasn’t surprised one bit that they voted for Trump.
Mate Wierdl writes: “It’s entirely possible that a significant portion of the US population is very much in tune with Trump’s ‘culture’. If we accept this, perhaps it’s easier to deal with it.”
Mate: I won’t do your homework for you on the evidence of foreign (specifically Russian) influence.
Neither will I “accept” those who look aside at Trump’s moral depravity, political corruption, daily disregard for anything resembling truth, ignorance of history, not to mention the violation of a pot-full of Christian principles, and from those who have claimed Christianity for all of their adult lives, and then more generally, ignoring Trump’s obvious desire to be a fascist/emperor rather than president of a democracy? (like my sister whom I wrote about earlier.) I knew there was poison in the political stew when Trump got away with mimicking a disabled person. And it’s just gotten worse. He actually recently said to a reporter, about his off-the-record meeting with Putin: “It’s none of your business.” It’s a democracy–it’s our business.
And I “accept” the willful ignorance that comes from a waste of democratic freedoms by Trump supporters like I would accept stage-4 cancer. If we keep a modicum of democracy, it won’t be because of those who see truthful discourse as a put-down coming from a so-called “elite.” Such is the case with willful ignorance. Trump is the despicable liar who lies and then calls everyone else a liar. CBK
She can’t be any worse than my brother who lives in Idaho. “Trump is the best president this country has ever had. Listen to Hannity and Rush L to learn something.”
Obama built FEMA camps to kill people. I have no idea where he got that idea.
carolmalaysia Fox, Hannity, and Limbaugh: Where free speech went to get weaponized to fight against democracy, along with wealth. CBK
Catherine King: “Democrats and Republicans need to reach a consensus about the red lines of foreign influence that neither party will tolerate.”
The Orange Swamp Monster got elected with the help of foreign influence. The GOP isn’t concerned because their warped party is getting votes. The GOP has no problem with , voter suppression and now can continue and expand legal gerrymandering.
How does one get through to the GOP that foreign influence is not good for this country when they know it helps keep them in power? The downfall of this country is at stake.
I just sent the following letter to Senator Todd Young R-IN]:
Here is a quote from your recent email to me: “As a former member of the Crisis Pregnancy Center and Hannah House Maternity Home in Bloomington, I value human life at all stages of development. I strongly believe in pro-life principles and will continue to support legislation that upholds the sanctity of life.
Sounds beautiful. “The sanctity of life.” Where do you stand on gun control that is allowing mass killings almost every week, some inside schools? You also believe that gun lovers should have easy access to all types of guns, including assault weapons that exist only to kill people. Is this ‘sanctity of life’?
Where do you stand on the caging of children immigrants? I don’t hear you speaking out against the inhuman practices loved by Trump. Immigrants are rapists, criminals and drug dealers. Really? They are desperate people trying to escape their home countries that are run by gangs and are corrupt. I don’t hear you speaking out about their ‘sanctity of life’.
Where do you stand on DACA? These poor children only know the USA as their home. I don’t hear you speaking out and supporting DACA’s.
Where do you stand on wars that never end in the Middle East? I guess that funding wars in the Middle East is acceptable when it’s ‘those inferior people’ and their children who are being massacred by our military.
Where do you stand on proper funding of public schools since 85-90% of our children attend public schools that are in dire need of repairs? I don’t hear you blasting the ‘privatization of schools’ when such thievery is espoused by Betsy DeVos.
Where do you stand on expanding Medicare for All so that everyone in the US gets healthcare at an affordable rate? I don’t hear you supporting Bernie Sanders.
Where do you stand on free college tuition for those who can’t afford college? Surely if you want everyone to succeed in life, even the poor should be able to attend college.
I don’t hear you supporting any of these ideas. No, the US can’t afford this when it needs tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations which you do support.
It is easy to say, “I respect the sanctity of life at all stages,” it’s easy to be a hypocrite who believes only in “Get that fetus born.” After that it is on its own to live or die.
Hoo-rah! The Baby Trump balloon is coming to DC to help celebrate King Trump’s speech declaring once again that he’s done more for this country than any other president in history.
Trump is full of hot air. Hope all of the GOP top fundraisers who come see the baby in all of his full glory.
carolmalaysia I read somewhere that war veterans groups plan to pass out John McCain battleship T-shirts on the Mall for the 4th of July. I’m for that. CBK
Don’t enlarge the crowd. Even those with McCain T-shirts will be counted as crowd size.
dianeravitch Trump even wants to rip-off the human spirit. And talk about “tone-deaf.” My eyes want to turn away in shame when I even think of tanks rumbling their way down Constitution Avenue. CBK
This just came from the NYT:
“…the Justice Department reversed course on Wednesday and said it was hunting for a way to restore the question on orders from President Trump….he was “absolutely moving forward” with plans to add it despite a Supreme Court decision rejecting the move.”
So now Trump is above decisions made by the Supreme Court? This man is truly working to become our first dictator.
He is taking money from the park department so that he can have his military parade and fly over jets. He is ruining the 4th of July by turning it into a political event where he can tell ticketed people of all the wonderful things he has done since becoming president. Why are taxpayers funding one more campaign-ego trip?
When are we going to start acting like a democracy again? I’m sick of the ‘Trump wants_____________________’ and he demands one thing after another. STOP THIS TYRANT!!
I’m not the only one revolting over Trump’s love of himself.
………………………………………………………..
Trump Wants Tanks on the National Mall. What Could Go Wrong?
A show of military might to gratify the president’s ego—on Independence Day, no less—is yet another blow to republican virtue.
…If only this were more of a parody. In fact, President Donald Trump’s plan to turn the Fourth of July into a gigantic ritual of reassurance for his spun-glass ego has now fully matured from a crackpot idea into an expensive, authoritarian, and truly weird hijacking of our most important national holiday. Armored vehicles have already been moved through the streets of the District, and we can only be relieved that there aren’t any Minuteman III nuclear-armed ICBMs near Washington, or Trump would probably be ordering the Air Force to cart one of those down Constitution Avenue, as well.
Instead of observing the Fourth like a normal president and engaging in some quiet ritual of civic virtue—swearing in new citizens, or visiting our troops, or perhaps just watching the fireworks and leaving his fellow citizens alone for a day—Trump has decided to order up a spectacle. Rather than honoring the day on which the Founders risked being hanged as traitors in order to proclaim a new republic, Trump will preside over a show of might meant to quiet the constant thunderclaps of insecurity that fill his every waking moment.
His choice of a military parade, replete with all kinds of weapons he does not understand, makes perfect sense. After being exiled by his own family to military school, Trump has repeatedly compensated for his subsequent evasion of military service by imagining himself as the reincarnation of George Patton…
This is an assault on fundamental American cultural and constitutional traditions. Making the military dance for the president’s pleasure is yet another abuse of our civil-military relationship….
And then, as better stewards of our republic than the current chief executive, let us say nothing further about Trump’s parade and consign any notice or memory of this embarrassing mess to the oblivion it deserves. It is the only proper response to the president’s insistence on this unpatriotic—and, yes, un-American—ritual of personal self-glorification.
Read More:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/trumps-fourth-of-july-is-a-cheap-version-of-patriotism/593248/?utm_source=atl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=share
This was posted by the WH:
Watch the greatest Fourth of July celebration in our Nation’s history tomorrow
Inbox
1600 Daily
The White House • July 3, 2019
Watch the greatest Fourth of July celebration in our Nation’s history tomorrow
Tomorrow, Americans will gather in Washington, D.C., for a celebration of our Nation’s independence on its 243rd birthday.
Year after year, the Fourth of July is a patriotic reminder of the freedoms and opportunities this country has blessed us with. This year, President Donald J. Trump is inviting Americans to join him for a first-of-its-kind ceremony on the National Mall.
🎬 Watch: President Trump’s “Salute to America” live tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. ET
The “Salute to America” will be kicked off by President Trump at the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. ET, followed by a celebration that will honor each of America’s five military branches with music, military demonstrations, and multiple flyovers.
“This is going to be a fantastic Fourth of July with increased access across the National Mall . . . and an address by our Commander-in-Chief,” Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said. “We received an extraordinary donation for a phenomenal fireworks display, and our colleagues from the Department of Defense will be providing a one-of-a-kind music and air power experience including a flight demonstration from the Blue Angels.”
Of course, there’s no better way to cap off Independence Day than with a spectacular fireworks show. Tomorrow night, the National Park Service and its partners will host one for the ages. With D.C.’s iconic monuments and memorials as the backdrop, the 35-minute show will be the largest fireworks display ever in the Washington capital region.
“Our July 4th Salute to America at the Lincoln Memorial is looking to be really big,” President Trump wrote on Twitter today. “It will be the show of a lifetime!”
Plan your visit: More on tomorrow’s “Salute to America.”
Washington Examiner: Boom: Donations to Trump’s July Fourth ‘Salute’ to Double Fireworks Display, Longest Ever
Trump is getting crazier by the day.
………………………………………………..
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE! We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.
69.4K
10:06 AM – Jul 3, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
39.8K people are talking about this
Trump has demonstrated his contempt for Congress. Now he demonstrates his contempt for the Supreme Court.
The garbage never ends. This is true from Snopes.
……..
Did Trump’s 2020 Campaign Publish a Heavily Slanted ‘Trump vs Democrat’ Poll?
Readers questioned whether the outrageous framing of the poll questions was intended as satire. It was not.
DAN MACGUILL
PUBLISHED 3 JULY 2019
…The poll’s true purpose may not have been to create a set of results that reflected in a misleadingly positive way on the president but rather to harvest contact information — respondents were required to enter their name, zip code and email address in order to submit their answers.
The full list of questions was as follows:
Who would you rather see fix our Nation’s shattered immigration policies?
– President Trump
– A MS-13 Loving Democrat
Who would you trust more to protect America from foreign and domestic threats?
– President Trump
– A Corrupt Democrat
Who would you rather handle our Nation’s economy?
– President Trump
– A Radical Socialist Democrat
Who do you believe is more transparent with the American People?
– President Trump
– A Lyin’ Democrat
Who do you trust to NOT raise your taxes?
– President Trump
– A High Tax Democrat
Who do you believe will ALWAYS put America FIRST?
– President Trump
– A Sleazy Democrat
Who do you believe will keep their promises?
– President Trump
– A Lyin’ Democrat
Who do you believe will fight for you every day?
– President Trump
– A Low Energy Democrat
Who do you believe is better for America?
– President Trump
– A Low IQ Democrat
Who will you vote for in 2020?
– President Trump
– A Radical Socialist Democrat
The “Trump vs Democrat” poll bore similarities to another survey on the subject of “mainstream media accountability,” which Trump’s website published in February 2017, and that included heavily slanted questions such as. “Do you feel that the media is too eager to slur conservatives with baseless accusations of racism and sexism?”
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-democrat-poll-survey/