Tom Ultican is one of the very best chroniclers of the “Destroy Public Education” movement. He was thrilled to discover a new book that explains the origins of the attack on public schools and calls out its founding figures. Lily Geismar’s Left Behind is a book you should read and share. It helps explain how Democrats got on board with policies that conservative Republicans like Charles Koch, the Waltons, and Betsy DeVos loved. This bipartisan agreement that public schools needed to be reinvented and disrupted brought havoc to the schools, demoralized teachers, and glorified flawed standardized tests, making them the goal of schooling.
Ultican writes:
Lily Geismer has performed a great service to America. The Claremont McKenna College associate professor of history has documented the neoliberal takeover of the Democratic Party in the 1980’s and 1990’s. In her book, Left Behind: The Democrats Failed Attempt to Solve Inequalityshe demonstrates how Bill Clinton “ultimately did more to sell free-market thinking than even Friedman and his acolytes.” (Left Behind Page 13)
When in the 1970’s, Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, Paul Tsongas, and Tim Wirth arrived on the scene in Washington DC they were dubbed “Watergate Babies.” By the 1980’s Tip O’Neill’s aid Chris Mathews labeled them “Atari Democrats” an illusion to the popular video game company because of their relentless hi-tech focus. Geismer reports.
“Journalist Charles Peters averred that ‘neoliberal’ was a better descriptor. Peters meant it not as a pejorative but as a positive. … Neoliberals, he observed, ‘still believe in liberty and justice and a fair chance for all, in mercy for the afflicted and help for the down and out,’ but ‘no longer automatically favor unions and big government.’” (Left Behind Pages 17-18) [Emphasis added]
Democrats in search of a “third way” formed the Democratic Leadership Council to formulate policies that moved them away from unions, “big government,” and traditional liberalism.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger labeled the DLC “a quasi-Reaganite formation” and accused them of “worshiping at the shrine of the free market.”
Union pollster Victor Fingerhut called them “crypto-Republicans.”
Douglas Wilder a black Virginia politician criticized their “demeaning appeal to Southern white males.”
Others called them the “conservative white caucus” or the “southern white boys’ caucus.”
Jesse Jackson said its members “didn’t march in the ‘60s and won’t stand up in the ‘80s.” (Left Behind Pages 46-47)
In 1989, From convinced Bill Clinton to become the chairman of the DLC. That same year the DLC founded the Progressive Policy Institute to be their think tank competing with the Heritage Foundation and the CATO Institute. Today, it still spreads the neoliberal gospel.
This is an important book that explains how the Democratic Party lost its way.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think it’s important in these discussions to distinguish between What Democrats Do and What Democrat Politicians Do.
What is/are that/those difference(s)?
The Meaning of Ic”
Democrats were democratic
Politicians feigned
Voting folks are emblematic
Politicians ain’t
Race to the Top
The Neoliberal road
“Will lead to top” we’re told
But “upward” trend
Has deadest end
A cliff we have been sold
I’ve always said that the reason the Republicans hated Bill Clinton is that he out-republicaned the republicans.
The trend began after the 1968 Chicago Debacle when the Dem Wit Leadership decided they had no choice but to start playing on the Republican board. But the One Ring has but One Master …
You stole that from me. Or did I steal it from you?
The only thing that “worshiping at the shrine of the free market” has achieved is more income inequality. The rich have gotten richer, and poor are poorer.
The PPP loans could have helped thousands of “mom and pop” stores, if a lower threshold for the number of employees had been part of the requirements to qualify for the loan. Instead, big companies, celebrities and people connected to Congress walked away with huge loans that were forgiven.
We still haven’t learned our lesson. Our schools and teachers remain under siege, and the big companies are using the pandemic to rake in higher profits than ever. Unbridled capitalism is still the American way.
Well known socialist billionaire Charles Koch got a $1 million PPP loan, half of which was forgiven.
https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/loans/koch-industries-inc-1947547207
Guess who is now whining about — and scheming to overturn — the student loan forgiveness plan?
Groups funded by Koch.
Americans for Prosperity, an organization founded by billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David, also expressed outrage at the Biden administration’s plan, wailing that “this shameless handout will only push education costs even higher, cause people to take out even bigger loans, and set a dangerous precedent that the government will just come along and erase their debt in the future.”
https://truthout.org/articles/dark-money-groups-are-scheming-to-bring-down-bidens-student-debt-relief-plan/
The Kochs have no shame.
True enough.
But that is hardly a secret, so billionaires like Koch should never have qualified in the first place.
If there is one thing we know for sure about billionaires it is tgst if you hand them a dollar (or even a Lenny), they will never ever turn it down
Probably the most outlandish thing about the fact tgst billionaires got PPP money is that billionaires have made money hand over fist since the start if the pandemic, which has resulted in trillions of dollars in wealth being moved from the lower classes to the billionaires over just the past few years.
While Amazon (Below) was not a direct recipient of PPP loans, many Amazon delivery companies did.
And as everyone knows, Amazon and Bezos have done exceedingly well during the pandemic.
The idea that Amazon would not have continued to pay delivery companies and that they would have had go lay off employees is just absurd.
Id be willing to bet that those delivery companies used by Amazon actually hired more employees go keep up with demand during the pandemic.
But I also bet that whoever dispersed znd subsequently forgave PPP loans was not even keeping track of us h stuff.
The same pattern keeps repeating.
In response to the near collapse of the financial system.
In 2008, F
Brought on by massive fraud by big Wall Street banks, Obama bailed out Wall Street to the tune of over $10 trillion dollars (TARP plus Quantitative easing) and essentially left Main Street to fend for itxelf. If that were not bad enough, his DOJ did not prosecute any of the individuals at the banks who committed billions of dollars in fraud and brought the world economy to its knees..
We the People don’t ever learn. We are just saps.
Wall St. is attacking poor cities just like the Chinese are attacking African nations. Debt is their weapon of choice. Some poor towns have lead in their water so a company, funded by private equity, makes a deal to fix the lead pipes and throw the community into massive debt. The rates for poor citizens explode, and some cannot pay. More debt! This is a race to the bottom.
Parasites don’t worry about killing the host because they can always move offshore to a different host.
DOJ did not prosecute any of the individuals at the banks who committed billions of dollars in fraud and brought the world economy to its knees..”
As I remember it; Obama actually appointed some of those Wall Street execs/enablers to “fix” (aka: bail out) the problem.
“There’s plenty of blame to go around” was his line.
To which we asked, “And…?”.
Crickets.
Reference for a comment I’ll make later —
School Finance Reform in Michigan : Evaluating Proposal A
Julie Berry Cullen and Susanna Loeb
Click to access MIschfin.pdf
Policy change through the passage of Proposal A {…]
On July 20, 1993, the state senate was debating Governor Engler’s latest proposal to reduce
property taxes. Senator Debbie Stabenow proposed an amendment to entirely eliminate the
property tax as a source of local school finance, a move widely interpreted as an attempt to show
how impractical it was to cut taxes without specifying new revenues for schools. Surprisingly,
the senate passed the amended bill the same day, the house followed a day later, and the
governor signed the bill. With little debate the state had eliminated $6.5 billion in school taxes
for the 1994-1995 school year.
The only thing the extremist right hates more than “socialist” Democrats is taxes. They believe private enterprise can do everything better. It’s a myth. Some services that people depend on like public education are more efficient and effective than privatization. When communities disinvest in their own community to cut taxes, civil society suffers
I donât read your articles, just look at the headlines. It is sickening to see what is going on in the US – this no longer is one nation under godâ¦this is becoming a godless nation under who ever is stronger. Vera Gottlieb Switzerland
Inconvenient speech is curtailed by propaganda, by censorship, by algorithm manipulation and by media marginalization. Caitlin Johnstone (Australian blogger)
>
lol! Do you mean Caitlin Johnstone who publishes at Putin-funded RT and never has a bad word to say about Putin?
Propaganda is believing that Putin is in favor of free speech because he locks up or even murders critics. Free speech doesn’t mean acting violently against those who dare to speak out and tell the truth, just because the liars you love demand critics be silenced.
Criticizing a liar isn’t taking away their free speech. Why do you and the Republican party want an America that looks like Putin’s Russia?
For startersâ¦thank goodness I no longer live in the US. I donât favour liars regardless of their country of origin. Yeahâ¦and propaganda is making the world believe that the US is âthe greatest nation on Earthâ – but countries are waking up and seeing the US for what it is: liars and thieves. Although I donât read your articles – just the headlines, Iâll say âhats off to youâ for your consistent and insistent critiques of all that is going wrong in the US. I understand that Caitlin Johnstone resides in the US (no longer Australia) – she certainly is calling it as she sees them and you, and most probably many other Yanx, donât like it because she doesnât participate in the rabid Russophobia presently affecting (and generated) in the US. Perhaps an America that looks more like Russia would actually be beneficial – Yanx are NOT free to express their opinions unless they match the opinions of the âeliteâ. The average Russian (and Cuban) is better educated than the average American. In a previous email you stated âI hate communismâ – your prerogative. What you should really hate is the âkiller kapitalismâ coming out of the US and affecting the entire world. Years ago my mother (RIP 2000) once stated: all bad things come from America. Indeed⦠Vera Gottlieb Switzerland
The collective West is viscerally impervious to admitting any social, cultural, historical merits by Russia. Glenn Diesen (from article in Global Research)
>
I hope the USA never looks like Russia.
Russia is a war-mongering country that invaded a neighbor. The state controls all the media.
It imprisons critics like Alex Navalny.
Many thousands have left Russia in search of a free country.
Putin is a tyrant, cut from the same dirty cloth as Stalin. I suppose you love Stalin too.
Please learn to spell.
peskyvera — completely off-topic word salad.
Learn to spell? I use the Canadian/British English…I KNOW how to spell.
Is it as sickening as the genocide your dear leader is conducting in Ukraine? This obvious Russian-paid asset should not be allowed to spew her idiotic hate on this blog. There plenty of space on the Pravda website for her (or him or it).
Good advice, Greg
Who asked you?
Adam Smith, child of the enlightenment, sought the great engine by which society might run economically without interference. In Theory of Moral Sentiments, he suggested that qualities of being trustworthy were a fundamental brake on moral behavior in economics. Governments (read kings and queens in his day) need not regulate commerce, for it would take care of itself. This utopian fantasy has been amended over the years but remains as the basis of laissez faire economics. I think it was a fond dream of what this post calls neoliberal Democrats.
The education issue is a different matter. I believe the past generation of political leaders came to agree on the failure of American education largely because they did not know it. Their experience was their only teacher about education. Like Joe, who evaluates good teaching by recalling a teacher he thought was good, people like Clinton, Gore, and their generation looked to their own good teachers as examples of what should happen in school. Since they spent no time in a public institution, they knew nothing about the things that went on there. Perhaps they were wise men, but they never understood what it means to “…be thick as a brick.” They failed on the basic level. Teachers told them. They did not listen.
These civic leaders were susceptible to the siren call of false statistics, and their political rhetoric was adjusted to the prevailing notions of general failure and malaise. Whether this attitude was shared in the same way by other leaders like Reagan or Bush I is a matter for the historians. Perhaps they felt the same way for the same reasons. Perhaps they were entirely cynical. Now we have rising evidence that their suggestions for reform were mostly if not totally misguided, but the residue of political belief will continue to hold back the needed changes in public policy so long as leaders make schools a whipping boy for all societal ills.
qualities of being trustworthy were a fundamental brake on moral behavior in economics. Governments (read kings and queens in his day) need not regulate commerce, for it would take care of itself. ”
That was precisely what Alan Greenspan tried to pretend he believed when he said he had “found a flaw” in his approach.
Anyone who actually believed what he said — then of any other time — was a fool.
Greenspan and his pals Larry Summers and Robert Rubin surely understood that lack of oversight and regulation of banks would invite massive fraud.
Economists know this,but try as hard as they can to ignore it because it dire you contradicts their free market ideology, which is really what tgey base all their theories and policies on.
https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/10/economics-science-economists-scientists.html
From the above link
“Economists do not study fraud. They have a primitive tribal taboo against using the word. This, of course, is because economics is assuredly not “firmly grounded in fact.” Ignoring fraud is a pure ideological construct that requires economists to ignore fraud, particularly private-sector “control fraud.” Economists do not study the criminology literature on elite white-collar crimes. Economists do not study and do not understand sophisticated financial fraud schemes.”
If public education were a failure, we would not see about 75% of parents saying they are happy with their public schools. As Roy mentions, many of the neoliberals have been influenced by the problems in many urban systems that have been systematic underfunded for years. These stories have been in the media for years, and these schools are often the targets of privatization. While there is always room for improvement, most public schools are doing their best despite the hammering from many politicians financed by billionaires and corporations.
Roy, that’s very generous of you. I have always thought that ed-reform [starting in 1980 & still with us] is strictly a means to privatizing public goods. I base that on: the bipartisan politicians driving it (from neo-conservatives to neoliberals) were on the same page with any other public good you can name. During the same era they have been bashing/ undermining unions, deregulating the financial sector, slashing funds to higher ed & public media & national parks & museums, the IRS, the SEC, public infrastructure, on & on, while underwriting “public-private partnerships” in every department of public affairs. The message has always been “public services are failing” and can be delivered more efficiently by the private sector. They have been absolutely no different than the hatchet-job CEO put in place by a hostile takeover that goes through the company cutting anything that looks like overhead to the bone, so as to compete with 3rd-world banana republics.
Please note that all this took place in an economy lurching from massive changes in global trade as well as automation happening much faster due to digital revolution, resulting in volatility, shrinking middle class, spiraling rich-poor gap. Those were the policies chosen when things got tough: absolutely zero planning other than pumping assets to top so that $cloutiest could grab & keep biggest pieces of a shrinking pie.
“Public schools are failing” was not some mistake by bumbling politicians who didn’t know any better, it was part of a major bipartisan shift in approach to the way we’d been doing things since the Great Depression, affecting every public sector. Loud proclamations of failure of the govt to do its job, coupled with transferring funds to the private sector is a hallmark of movement toward oligarchy and authoritarianism.
It would probably be unfair of me to label all those moves as undermining democracy, borrowing the methods widely used be wannabe leaders of an authoritarian dictatorship. But what’s the diff? You do stuff that turns a functional democracy into an oligarchist-dominated banana republic, and you’ve set the stage for it.
Beth: I appreciate your spending time on my comments. I alwYs enjoy yours. If I was too kind, I plead guilty. A soft answer turneth away wrath. But I do believe that false hope in an unregulated economy typified many leaders and voters. Like Adam Smith, they were too trusting. Even the ones who were cynics allowed this idea to guide them because it polled well.
Well we can’t let the American people who cheered the changes on, off of the hook. Those included many Union Voters who forgot their roots and to this day are lost. It included the Leadership of the AFL-CIO in 72. Meany doing all but endorsing Nixon vs the most Pro Labor Member of the Senate. The Teamsters in 1980 endorsing Reagan and then after an orgy of Union busting, they did the same in 1984 .
Neo Liberal deregulation starts with attempts to break up the monopoly of the Phone Company, then the Airline Industry followed by the Trucking industry . ATT through the Courts and the others through legislation. The Airlines had captured the Civil Aeronautics board. The unintended consequence was that the (Union )worker and the consumer has paid the price for that deregulation.
. “The net result of deregulation is that the five-member Civil Aeronautics Board has, in effect, been replaced by the chief executive officers of the largest five or six airlines.”
So when you get on your next flight if you don’t get bumped you might want to bring back the CAB. When you add up the fees you are paying a lot more for a lot less. And this has been the case for decades.
But by the time Bubba becomes President the American people like Lemmings had been drowning themselves since 68.
I doubt you will see much about the history of labor included in history curricula in certain states. The right does not want young people about the sacrifices so many made so that we can have a 40 hour week for hourly jobs, a weekend, benefits and other things like safety standards.
Thanks, Joel. The labor story is huge input to all this, and as retired teacher says, gets little examination, although it’s arguably the biggest piece of the political story for the last 50+ yrs. I would like to know a lot more about the Ford-Carter years’ bipartisan deregulation project. It is painted as a good thing & long overdue– but was the bottom line really just that it made transportation cheaper for all by squeezing living-wage $s out of the labor-force? [I’d ask the same Q about communications, except I’m assuming that the main driver there was digital automation].
I had no idea what I was voting for back then. Neoliberals seemed like real Democrats.
This is a great book!
I am buying it right now.
Oh, this is long overdue and greatly welcome. The Democratic party has a great deal to answer for where its betrayal of public education is concerned….
“Neo Liberal deregulation starts with attempts to break up the monopoly of the Phone Company, then the Airline Industry followed by the Trucking industry . ATT through the Courts and the others through legislation. The Airlines had captured the Civil Aeronautics board. The unintended consequence was that the (Union )worker and the consumer has paid the price for that deregulation”
Interesting points, Joel, in addition to others on this thread (including the two union endorsements of Ronnie).
I think the neoliberal label became more “acceptable” under Clinton and continues to this day.
Dukakis and his liberal platform had been trounced by Bush Sr, which made for three terms of the same party presidency for the first time since 1948. The Democratic Party decided it had to become more centrist (I read many articles about this at time), and thus did we see two terms of Clinton who, as was said earlier, “out-Republicaned the Republicans”. (eg: Billy opened the floodgates to privately managed Medicare. UFT retirees got a nice dose of that this past year and it’s still on-going).
But it’s not just Clinton. The spectacle of him, Jimmy Carter, and Bush Sr on pre-empted prime time national television; hawking NAFTA and GATT still looms large in my mind. “The days of the factory down the road where your kid can work are over”, marked the beginning of the end regarding faith in our government from the millions who were directly impacted. The promise of, “training for the jobs of the future” wasn’t well thought out or implemented and resentment has only festered and worsened, over the decades. Trump recognized and capitalized on this in a big way. Propaganda always starts with an element of truth.
I always thought the centrist Democrats were only interested in making money. This book is showing me that their hearts were in the right place, but their ideas were misguided. Thank you for pointing it out. It explains a great deal of history I previously misunderstood. My friends are reading it too.