My Latest Newspaper Column: Tornadoes and Zombies, Oh My!

Practical skills still relevant

St. Cloud (MN) Times
5/2/2012

Each spring, as tornado season approaches, we are reminded to prepare for possible power outages and to have supplies on hand in case disaster strikes. With care and foresight most of us will be prepared to ride out a major storm and even to survive without power, food or water for a few days after should the unthinkable happen. But how prepared are we for a longer or more widespread disaster?

Many writers are exploring these questions in fiction, as in Max Brooks’ best-selling novel “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War,” soon to be a major film starring Brad Pitt. The zombie-fighting genre is popular precisely because it asks its fans: Are you prepared not only to deal with the loss of daily conveniences, but the core necessities that make life possible?

Preparing for a fictional zombie apocalypse might seem like a ridiculous thing to consider, but consider the challenges: Survivors would need access to food, fuel, shelter, a group of friends large enough to provide for themselves, and a means of defense.

The problem is that few of us are prepared for any real long-term emergency, like a Hurricane Katrina or a major influenza pandemic, that could cut us off from outside aid for days or weeks on end. Could you manage a day without a cell phone? A week without electricity? Fifteen days without refilling your medication? A month without gasoline? A half year without shopping or adding anything you didn’t make yourself to your household?

In practice few of us can grow our own food, repair our own cars, make our own clothes, doctor our own wounds, or even keep warm without being tied to a global chain of mines, mills, farms, and factories. We are a nation of consumers, not producers. We can’t make, build, or do much of anything, but exist mostly to sell goods and services to one another while depending on a range of imported technologies we don’t understand but can’t live without. Close the stores, turn off the power, and use up the gasoline and we’d be on our way to total collapse even without the added threat of the living dead.

Zombie stories are popular not simply for their violence or horrific imagery, but because they offer an imaginary setting for conflict in which competent people survive. Indeed, in zombie fiction it is never the rich, rarely the beautiful, and often not even the strong who live to see the next day. Being prepared – which means being capable of self sufficiency – is the key to survival.

A century ago Americans would have enjoyed better odds against zombies (or a real natural disaster) than most of us today. People canned their own food, walked or rode horses for transportation, learned practical skills in school and on the farm, and they would have been just fine for a week or four if the power cut out or the trains stopped running. Most importantly, they knew their neighbors, so coordinating a group of survivors wouldn’t require an email chain to organize or introductions between people who had lived next door for years but never met in person.

Modern conveniences offer us a lot. We have more leisure time, a wider range of luxuries to enjoy, and the opportunity to specialize in whatever pursuits we like. But they’ve also isolated us, made us more dependent on things we can’t control, and left us soft. As any good zombie movie will tell you, being prepared means more than having some snacks in the basement or a flashlight by the bed. It means knowing how to take care of yourself, and your neighbors, until things get better. Your iPod won’t be much help, but grandma’s canned cherries might save your life.

Hopefully most of us are ready for storm season. Perhaps we can spend some of it relearning a few of the practical skills our grandparents took for granted. Just in case.

My latest newspaper column: birth control in historical perspective

April 4, 2012

Times Writers Group: Birth control access is vital

Big changes in society, biology support its use

The idea that birth control would become a key issue in the GOP primary race would have seemed preposterous last summer, but Rick Santorum’s unexpected rise to become the last obstacle in Mitt Romney’s preordained path to the nomination changed everything this winter.

Now, thanks largely to the arch-conservative from Pennsylvania, a debate that was effectively ended by the Supreme Court a half-century ago has been reopened, and again Americans are arguing about whether women should have access to birth control.

Birth control was a controversial topic in the 19th century, and several states had banned the sale of birth control devices and medications by 1900. These laws were collectively struck down with the Supreme Court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which found an 1879 state law prohibiting the use of birth control and banning doctors from discussing the issue with their patients to be unconstitutional. Writing for the 7-2 majority, Justice William O. Douglas identified a “right to privacy” in the Constitution that invalidated Connecticut’s attempt to legislate morality.

Santorum disagrees, however, claiming the court erred and claiming “the state has the right to pass whatever statues” it wishes.

Legal arguments aside, the truth is that Santorum’s campaign against birth control is as quixotic as his run against Romney. What hasn’t been said often enough is that arguments against birth control are not only political losers, but that scientific and sociological observations alone should convince rational observers that America will never go back to its pre-Griswold stance.

Modern necessity
Our bodies and our society have changed enough since the 19th century that it simply wouldn’t work.

Consider Santorum’s favorite alternative to birth control for unmarried people: abstinence.
Avoiding sexual intercourse before marriage may well have been a rational idea in the late 19th century, when social morés strictly limited unchaperoned contact during courtship.
The age of consent then was 10 to 12 years in most states, and marriages in the early teens were not uncommon.

The average age of menarche – onset of puberty in girls – was slightly older than 14 in 1900. The odds were good then that the gap between sexual maturity and marriage was quite small, perhaps three to five years on average and often less.

In a culture that outwardly condemned premarital sex and lacked widespread access to birth control, abstinence may have been viable for some percentage of teens, especially if they were only expected to rely on it for a short time between puberty and marriage.

Fast forward to 2012. Today, the age of consent ranges from 16 to 18 in all states. The median age of first marriage has climbed to 28 for men and 26 for women. And most significantly, biological changes ascribed to a range of factors have driven the age of menarche down to 12, with many girls entering puberty as young as 10.

Do the math. Now the average span from sexual maturity to marriage is 14 years, often longer.

Abstinence that sometimes worked for about three years in 1900 is simply unrealistic when applied to the 14 year gap young people face today in a dramatically more sexualized culture.

Changing norms
Even if one ignores the evidence, abstinence is not only unrealistic, it simply doesn’t work because most people fail to abstain.

The investment of more than $1 billion in federal funds to support abstinence-based sex education the past decade has not impacted our changing bodies and social norms at all. A 2007 study published in Public Health Reports found that the vast majority — 95 percent — of Americans have sex before marriage, 75 percent of them before 20.

Those are the facts and regardless of what Santorum thinks, we need to maintain access to birth control and comprehensive sex education for everyone if we’re even remotely serious about reducing the numbers of unintended or unplanned pregnancies among American youth.

Join the Party!

Wondering if the GOP is the right political home for you?  Betty Bowers will help you decide with this delightful and engaging video. Watch, and you'll know if it's time to Join the Party!

Why abstinence won't work-- and why telling kids it will is wrong

A century ago adolescents reached puberty (sexual maturity) around age 15 or 16. They married on average at age 17, so a net gap of 1-3 years during which abstinence was socially expected, if not actually practiced.

Today the average girl is reaching menarche at 10-11 years of age in the US. (Lots of data are available on that.) Meanwhile, the average age of first marriage has risen to 26 for women and 28 for men. The net gap is now between 15-18 years.

This is basic biology: social constraints *may have* once prevented unmarried youth from engaging in intercourse (though Kinsey found 50% of women and 68% of men did it anyway). When the expected period of abstinence was 1-3 years it might have worked.

Today it's five times that, and basically nobody is "waiting for marriage." To pretend otherwise is not only to enbrace ignorance, it's dangerous. Children and young adults need to be equipped to live in reality, not some perverse fantasy-land vision of a 1950s that never existed.

Let'e get focused-- with Focus!

There is no more amazing music than this 1973 track from the Dutch band Focus. Seriously.

Breaking news from Iowa: Fall 2012 movie release scheduled!

Coming soon to a struggling republic near you!

Texas Fratboy II: The Saga Continues

Because what America really needs is another C/D student from Texas who thinks Jesus told him to run for president.

Funny becuse it's true...

But no less painful.

Larger image here.

The 20 most dangerous conservative organizations

The Christian Left has published a list of the 20 most dangerous conservative organizations in America. These groups stand united in a broad attempt to forever alter the face of our country: they favor various flavors of rich white men running things for their own profit behind a veneer of repressive Christianity.

None of this will be news to those who carefully follow the insidious web of money and influence the right has developed to manipulate elections, public policy, and fear in our country. For those who haven't had time to ferret out the links, however, this serves as a fair introduction.

Wash hands carefully after reading.

-Dr.DRL

My latest column: the value of public lands

Here's my latest column from the St. Cloud (MN) Times:

Public land evidence of government's good


If one spends enough time listening to anti-government ideologues like Rep. Michele Bachmann, it’s possible to conclude that “the government” does very little that’s worthwhile.

That position is easily proven wrong by a simple visit to any of our nation’s public lands. The federal public lands represent the legacy of 19th century American expansion and the wisdom of the 20th century conservation movement.

Today a handful of agencies manage about 575 million acres anyone can access for recreation or other pursuits — an area more than 10 times the size of the state of Minnesota. These lands stand as a symbol of democracy: they are open to all, often at no charge, to use on your own terms, on your own schedule, as often as you wish. There is no private equivalent because they fulfill a role that simply would not exist without government action.

The agencies

Our public lands are primarily managed by four federal agencies: the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

The Forest Service is familiar to many Minnesotans, who know of the Superior National Forest, rightly famous for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, or the Chippewa National Forest, home to two of the state’s largest lakes, Leech and Winnibigoshish. But do they know the service manages 192 million acres of forest and grasslands in other states that absorb more than 200 million recreational visits each year? The local economic impact of sustainable timber harvests from these publicly owned forests should not be overlooked either.

The National Park Service is also well known, primarily for the “crown jewels” of the system: Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon national parks. But the NPS is responsible for 391 other sites nationwide, including not only natural wonders such as Glacier National Park but also historical structures, battlefields, ancient cliff dwellings, wild-and-scenic rivers, national trails and recreation areas. The agency’s 84 million acres are found in 49 states and served 281 million recreational visitors in 2010.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is the primary steward of public lands dedicated to wildlife habitat, especially for waterfowl. It is responsible for 96 million acres of wildlife refuges, including the 14 refuges in our state, including the nearby Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. These lands provide not only habitat, but hunting, fishing, hiking, bird watching and other recreational opportunities to nearly 40 million visitors per year.

The Bureau of Land Management is the largest of all the federal land agencies. Its 245 million acres are confined to the Western states and include vast tracts of range land, desert and mountains. It serves about 55 million recreational visitors annually while providing grazing, mineral development, timber and other natural resources for economic development.

Foresight

The key is that all of these lands are, by definition, public. We all own them collectively. We benefit from the recreation opportunities, wildlife habitat, biodiversity and other ecosystem services they provide.

A simple glance at history will tell us that had these lands not been protected by the federal government they would have been destroyed or fenced off long ago. Private interests would have cluttered the Grand Canyon with tourist developments. They would have logged Yellowstone and Yosemite. They would have mined, grazed and drilled every scrap of valuable resources long ago for private profit, then developed the remains into expensive condos for the wealthy, leaving little, if anything, behind for the rest of us to enjoy.

Some bright Americans more than a century ago realized that the private sector wasn’t always perfect and that government action was sometimes a much better option. Their leaders — including Republican heroes such as Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot — helped establish the policies that maintain the federal public lands as part of our national heritage.

Pinchot coined the term “conservation” to describe these policies, defining it as action that produced “the greatest good, for the largest number of people, over the longest period of time.”

Unfortunately many of our current leaders are so blinded by their own anti-government ideology that they can’t even recognize the value in what was considered common sense back when horses still pulled streetcars in Washington, DC.

-Dr.DRL

It's the Conservatism, Stupid!

I ran across this column from 2006 and felt the core argument deserved repeating: conservatism represents everything that is wrong with America-- and has for at least 200 years! You name the issue (slavery, women's suffrage, child labor, immigration, Civil Rights, McCarthyism, sexual liberation, environmental regulation, and on ad nauseum) and the conservative position was always wrong, always backward, always looking to the past to divide us instead of toward the future to unite us.

The original column by Paul Waldman ran at TomPaine.com in 2006. It's worth a read yet today.

Ever wonder where all that conservative legislation comes from?

Isn't it puzzling how one state legislature after another can suddenly produce very similar bills? And that they are almost always quite conservative, pro-business, anti-labor, and anti-regulation?

For those who didn't already know, the answer to that puzzle is ALEC: The American Legislative Exchange Council. For years they've operated as a sort of conservative back-bench, churning out "model legislation" which they hand to (mostly GOP) legislators on high-priced junkets. Then-- amazingly --this model legislation gets introduced around the country. What better law making process could ALEC's corporate funders hope to buy?

This year, due in part to the conservative overreach in Wisconsin, the media is finally paying attention to ALEC. Today a new site called ALEC Exposed was launched, literally exposing over 800 model bills funded by this conservative operation.

Take a look. It's certainly an example of the best government money can buy. Just keep in mind whose money is buying it-- and what they think of workers, kids, or the environment.

-Dr.DRL

My latest newspaper column: class warfare is real- and we're loosing!

Class warfare is real; we're losing

St. Cloud (MN) Times
July 6, 2011

Americans don’t like to talk about class. If pressed, the vast majority of us will identify as “middle class” and simply label those who are visibly more wealthy as “rich” and those who struggle to meet basic needs as “poor.”

Certainly very few Americans would accept the notion that we are somehow involved in class warfare. But in truth we are deeply engaged in an ongoing struggle between classes that pits the very wealthy against essentially everyone else.

The social contract that binds our common interests has, sadly, fallen apart. That is evident to some members of the upper class, including investment guru Warren Buffett, who in 2006 admitted “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

In the wake of the Great Recession, it’s actually surprising that more people aren’t talking about it. The impacts of the recession fell hardest upon working families. About 30 million people remain unemployed or underemployed despite the official declaration that the recession ended in 2010.

But in 2008, the year the Dow fell 38 percent, the richest 400 American taxpayers reported an average of $153 million in capital gains. Due to the lower tax rate on capital gains, these wealthy Americans paid a 15 percent rate on their millions while members of the “middle class,” who reported most of their income as wages, typically paid effective tax rates of 20 percent or more. During the Great Recession, the median wealth of American families dropped by 36 percent, while the wealth of the top 1 percent fell just 11 percent.


Teddy Roosevelt
A century ago, the 1912 presidential election was marked by open class conflict. Conservative Republican incumbent William Howard Taft was challenged not only by Democrat Woodrow Wilson, but by socialist Eugene Debs to his left. Theodore Roosevelt, unhappy with Taft’s abandonment of the progressive reforms that marked TR’s presidency, formed a fourth party. Roosevelt’s Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party platform included calls to establish a national health service, a program of social insurance to support the elderly and disabled, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage for women, workers’ compensation, new estate and income taxes, and the eight-hour workday.

In this case the middle class voted its interests; the Republican incumbent won only eight electoral votes that year and as we know most of the Progressive reforms were eventually adopted under Wilson’s Democratic administration.

Representing “us”?
The fact that power flows from wealth should be of no surprise. The cost of running today’s political campaigns — and the access to influential people that comes with money — means very few members of the “middle class” are elected to federal office any longer.


In 2009, when the unemployment rate exceeded 10 percent, one study found there were 261 millionaires in Congress. That these millionaires and the people they associate with favor policies that enhance their fortunes is not that shocking. One might expect a millionaires’ club to promote policies that focus on limiting inflation rather than job creation, prioritize debt reduction over providing public services, or favor tax cuts for themselves instead of investments in education, infrastructure, or the environment. What is surprising that the lack of outrage in response.


The puzzle today is not that the wealthy are organized to protect their own interests, or even that they have largely succeeded. Is is that the rest of us — the 99 percent who are not hedge fund managers, CEOs, or bank presidents — are not outraged. Both major parties are complicit. Our political debates have come down to not what can be done to help the middle class, but how we can best protect tax cuts for the very rich. The government of our state was shut down over that very issue. The Republican majority in Congress is pushing the country toward default on its debts for the same reason.


Why do we accept accusations of “class warfare” when someone suggests raising taxes on the wealthy, but are silent when policies punish the majority of Americans who make up the middle class as a matter of routine business?



Certainly Teddy Roosevelt would want to know.

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Read the crazy comments at the SC Times for more fun!

My latest newspaper column: class warfare is back!

My regular column ran again today, March 2nd, under the header "Class warfare is nothing new." I've linked to the St. Cloud Times but their archive is only free for seven days after publication, so I've pasted the text in below as well.

-Dr.DRL
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Class warfare is nothing new
St. Cloud (MN) Times March 2, 2011


Recent events in Wisconsin eerily echo those of a century ago, when progressive reformers in both political parties sought to constrain the power of corporations and the influence of money in politics for the good of the nation. They saw a healthy working class and a growing middle class as bulwarks of democracy and central to a strong economy. The consolidation of economic and political power by corporations representing a wealthy minority was seen as a threat to the very character of America. Fears of class warfare were not unfounded, as radical representatives of socialist and anarchist groups marched to protest the growing power of corporations while those who ran the corporations sought to cement their power over the working class.


Early 20th century
In his 1905 State of the Union message Republican President Theodore Roosevelt noted “The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give ... the government, which represents the people as a whole ... some effective power of supervision over their corporate use.” Antitrust laws and other regulations were enacted to constrain the power of corporations and to weigh their political and economic interests against those of the working and middle classes they employed.

Though widespread in the tumultuous years of the Great Depression, accusations of class warfare fell to the margins of American politics in the 1950s, reflecting an amicable truce made possible by a rapidly expanding economy, new opportunities for education and increasing geographical mobility that began to erode some of the historical barriers that separated the working class from the wealthy. The corresponding growth of the middle class — buoyed by rising wages, access to education, widespread home ownership and relative political stability — yielded a period of social and economic progress unmatched in our history.



Income disparity

Unfortunately we’ve lost much of the ground gained during the past half-century as political power and wealth have again become increasingly concentrated at the very top of pyramid, while the wages and rights of workers have been curtailed. Income disparity has risen to levels unseen since the 1920s. Today the top 1 percent own 38 percent of all wealth in the United States and the top 10 percent control 71 percent, leaving a relatively small piece of pie to be split among the 270 million Americans who don’t fit in either group.


Union membership was at its highest in the late 1950s; today only 15 percent of all workers are unionized and the collective voice of labor has become muted as a result. Nonunion workers have taking to questioning why unions receive “unfair” wages and benefits, instead of demanding more from their own employers.

In a shocking rebuke to Roosevelt, the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United last year effectively ended limits to political spending by corporations, handing them a massive cudgel to use against unions, politicians and even government agencies that might question their interests or motives.



It seems Roosevelt’s opinion that “in order to insure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by, and be accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct” has been forgotten. One result is the growing influence of corporations on elections, clearly evident in the financial support the anti-labor Koch Industries provided for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign in 2010.

Ongoing class warfare



Today we are seeing the results of this long process played out on the streets of Madison and other state capitals. Despite limited coverage by the mainstream media, hundreds of thousands of Americans have stood up to protest Wisconsin’s attempt to eliminate collective bargaining for public employees, knowing that once the public sector unions are gone the private sector comes next. Once the unions are gone, there is nothing to stand between the interests of working people and the power of corporations and the plutocrats who control them.




As protesters in Madison have been pointing out in recent days, “It’s only class warfare when the workers fight back.” The truth is that class warfare has been going on in America for decades, but we’ve all been too polite to talk about it.

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On wealth, income, and power in America

I highly recommend William Domhoff's article below. First written in 2005, he's just updated the data and charts. It's the best single presentation I've seen on this critical issue.

-Dr.DRL
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Wealth, Income, and Power

by G. William Domhoff

September 2005 (updated January 2011)

My latest column: Income inequality needs attention

This will make my congressperson (Michele Bachmann, Nutcase-MN) even more crazy. I hope.
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Income inequality needs attention
St. Cloud (MN) Times
Feb.2, 2011


Last week’s State of the Union address and the two Republican responses overlooked the problem at the very foundation of our economy: rising income inequality.

One of the complaints heard from crowds of protesters rocking Egypt in recent days is about income inequality, which has reached record levels in recent years. The fact is income distribution is far more balanced in Egypt than in the United States.

Economists and demographers use a measure called the “Gini index” to calculate income inequality. Though easy to understand it is perhaps too complicated to explain in detail here. Suffice it to say that the calculation reflects the proportional distribution of income, with an index of zero indicating total equality (i.e. every individual has an equal share) and a score of 100 indicating total inequality (i.e. one person receives all income.)

Using this method, the CIA has calculated Gini indexes for 134 nations, producing a list in which higher ranking indicates greater inequality. The worst inequality is found in Namibia (No. 1) while the most positive conditions are in Sweden (No. 134). Within this negative ranking the United States appears in 42nd place for most inequality, while Egypt is 90th.

Americans have historically been complacent about income inequality. After all, a central part of our national mythology is the “up from the bootstraps” belief that with hard work anyone can become wealthy.

But that’s simply no longer true.

Real wages — average weekly earnings corrected for inflation — peaked in 1973 and remained 8 percent below that peak in December 2010. Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index increased 490 percent that period.

Even before the housing crisis and recession rocked our economy, families were struggling to pay their bills, save for college and plan for retirement. The number of Americans living in poverty is higher now than at any time since the Census Bureau started keeping track during the Eisenhower administration. Today the deck is stacked against even the middle class, most of whom can only hope for a winning lottery ticket if they aspire to break into the top 10 percent of income distribution.
Extreme income inequality threatens our economic future. Given our consumer-based economy, if the middle and working classes do not have the means to consume the goods they help produce, demand will decline.

The corresponding concentration of income at the top does not help either; even the idle rich can only own so many cars or vacation homes.

The results of steeply declining demand for everything from new homes and cars to clothing and luxury items has had an all-too-real impact on our economy the past two years. Some observers, including former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, believe underlying income inequality was in fact the root cause of the recession and Wall Street’s gambling simply a symptom.

In any case, income inequality has grown rapidly the past two decades and is at a level last seen in the 1920s, before the Depression, when the richest 1 percent of the population received 23.9 percent of all income.

The income tax is a good place to start a reform program. In the era of “no new taxes” and budget austerity, this is a hard subject to broach. But public investment, funded by higher tax rates on top earners, could dramatically improve the economy and the standard of living for the bottom 99 percent of the income curve. The top marginal income tax rate has been locked at 35 percent since 2003; couples who earn tens of millions annually pay the same tax rate as those who earn $336,550.

Historically the top rates were 50 percent when Ronald Reagan was president, 70 percent under Jimmy Carter, 91 percent under Kennedy and Ike, and 92 percent under Truman. Revenues from those taxes built the interstate highways, paid for the GI Bill, funded the Cold War, landed men on the moon, expanded public education, and subsidized the information infrastructure and engineering innovations that made the modern economy possible.

It’s not that anyone is suggesting our economy should be like Egypt’s. Nor that we should necessarily look to the countries with the highest income equality (Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg) for inspiration. But the company we keep in these rankings — Nigeria, Iran, Uruguay, Uganda and Argentina are near us — should at least give us pause.

If we were to address some of the core causes of income inequality by improving our trade balance, creating disincentives for companies to outsource jobs overseas, increasing wages, investing in education and most importantly returning to a more progressive tax structure, the economy would improve along with our Gini index. But first we need the leaders of both political parties to recognize the inherent problem.


-Dr.DRL

My January newspaper column: what's wrong with Facebook (and America?)

Here's my January newspaper column from the St. Cloud (MN) Times:

What do we do now? Facebook

Jan. 5, 2011


Monday’s financial headlines were dominated by Goldman Sachs’ $500 million investment in Facebook, raising the value of the privately owned Internet social media company to an estimated $50 billion.

All those connections between high school classmates, former colleagues and people who share an interest in online farm simulations are apparently worth more than anyone could have imagined when Facebook began as an undergraduate’s side project at Harvard in 2003.

With more than 500 million users worldwide, Facebook’s value now exceeds that of US Bank, Ford, Target, Monsanto or Visa. When Facebook goes public, as many assume it will in the next year, its market capitalization could exceed that of Boeing, Home Depot, Kraft or 3M, placing it within striking distance of Disney and McDonald’s among America’s largest corporations.

And Facebook doesn’t make a thing.

Fifty years ago, the largest corporations all made stuff. In 1961, the top 20 slots in the Fortune 500 were held by oil/chemical companies, automobile manufacturers, defense contractors, steel producers and food processors. Only one media company — CBS — was even in the top 100.

In 1961, 38 percent of American workers were producing something tangible: cars, steel, appliances, houses, oil, airplanes, bombs, etc. Today that number has fallen to 21 percent; about one in five of us actually makes something for a living now. The rest of us? Apparently we’re on Facebook.

This raises some basic questions about the future of our economy and the middle class.

The post-war American economic boom was based on the production of goods consumed domestically, relatively high wages in the manufacturing sector and public investment in education and infrastructure. The GI Bill, expansion of public universities and increased spending on K-12 education helped lift veterans and their children into the middle class, while those who did not pursue higher education could still get there by holding a union job. Still more families climbed into the middle class by sending mom into the work force, a shift that conveyed great advantages for the first generation to do so — but much less on subsequent generations when dual incomes became the status quo.

Today a $50 billion company makes no products at all, but rather supplies a virtual space in which people chatter, share pictures and play games. Facebook employs a few thousand people, has no factories, no warehouses, no distribution centers, no retail arm and no maintenance shops. Its founder did not graduate from college but was a billionaire before the age of 25.

Of course, this is all legal and proper; Facebook would not have 500 million users if people didn’t want its services.

What is wrong with the bigger picture is lack of counterbalancing stories for Facebook. When was the last time you read about a hugely profitable new product — an actual manufactured good — invented by, developed in, produced by and sold to Americans that wasn’t a drug? What was the last new industry that employed thousands of Americans at wages that would ensure a place in the middle class? When was the last massive public investment in our collective future, or that of our children?

America has long been in a state of slow decline. We have become a nation of consumers, rather than producers. Incomes have stagnated, and income inequality is growing. The middle class is eroding under a mountain of debt and fears that unemployment or illness could end their American dream.

We have stopped investing in schools, instead choosing to “train” children and young adults in skills that aren’t needed for careers that may not exist when they enter the job market. Few, if any, of our elected leaders appear to think beyond the next election cycle, and horizons beyond the next quarter don’t matter to Wall Street. Today’s children may well be the first generation in American history to collectively end up worse off than their parents when they reach middle age.

That, more than the $50 billion valuation of Facebook, should be dominating the headlines as we enter 2011.

Why Things Are The Way They Are

This was posted on a DailyKos discussion thread today and nicely sums up the state of the economy and politics in these United States. Worth sharing, I think-- credit to MFTALBOT:

Let's get clear on something: (5+ / 0-)

Thomas Frank has said that, for a purportedly rightist party, the Republicans talk an awful lot about class resentment, but in a strangely inverted way: they define the elites in terms of cultural preferences rather than economics - "elitist, Volvo-driving, Latte-sipping, gay-loving liberal snobs in their big cities, sipping lattes and looking down their noses at the humble, hard-working common folk out in 'flyover country.'"

Thomas rightly points out that the one thing never mentioned by Republicans is the role of economics in the class structure.

The reason Republicans get away with this is the Democrats changed from having their policies grounded in economic fairness, and instead increasingly defined themselves by cultural issues. As the Republicans started defining themselves as champions of working people (a definition that, if you look at their economic policies, is ludicrous) the Democrats stopped talking about economic fairness and went along with defining themselves more along cultural lines.

One of the most disheartening things about the Democratic Party's haplessness is that it has allowed the Republicans to incrementally dismantle the hated New Deal, which they want to do because the New Deal costs Our Reptilian Corporate Masters power.

Our Reptilian Corporate Masters hate New Deal style policies because what they desire is a frightened, submissive, and most of all low-wage workforce, because that will allow them to Make More Money, And Thus Have More Power. The New Deal was absolutely hated by the oligarchy because it took away a lot of means of asserting absolute dominance over working people.

This is why single-payer health care represents such a threat to the Republicans' real constituency (the Oligarchy): fear of losing medical benefits keeps people from daring to step out of line and demanding better wages or working conditions.

This is why Our Reptilian Corporate Masters absolutely love crippling student loan debt: it is a potent tool to hold over folks to keep them from threatening the system. They want a population that is "educated" along the lines of vocational training (the knowledge that one is incurring a large debt tends to focus one's mind on the income potential of one's major...) rather than what used to be considered an "education" before the rise of Our Reptilian Corporate Masters in the late 19th century.

This is why raising taxes, and especially making our tax system more progressive (i.e., raising the tax rates as one goes up the income scale) is spoken of as That Which Must Not Be Done, if you listen to Republican rhetoric.

The thing is, actions have consequences, and the tiger the Republicans rode to success in the 2010 mid-terms will eventually start asking awkward economic questions of the Republicans, and then their venal fraud will be made plain. I pity them when that day comes.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. -Bertrand Russell

by mftalbot on Tue Dec 14, 2010 at 04:15:53 PM PST

My latest column: American religious knowledge falls short of ideal

How well do you know religions?
St.Cloud (MN) Times
Wednesday, 6 October, 2010

A groundbreaking new study on the religious
knowledge of Americans was released last week, and
the results will be surprising to some.

The U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, conducted by
the Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life, asked
about 3,400 people to answer 32 basic questions
about Christianity, world religions and the role of
religion in American life.

The average respondent got about half right, and
while the folks at Pew refused to issue a grade we all
know that scoring 50 percent on most tests does
not earn you an A.

Other studies, including Pew’s own 2008 American
Religious Landscape survey, have shown Americans
are much more likely to identify themselves as
religious than residents of other industrialized
nations. Almost 84 percent of us claim an affiliation
with one religion or another. But the new survey
uncovered a striking gap in knowledge not just
about “other” religions but in many of the
respondents’ own traditions.

Little knowledge

Americans may be very religious, but many of us
still don’t know much about the Bible or the history
of Christianity. More than a third could not identify
Genesis as the first book of the Bible. Only 39
percent could identify Job as the biblical figure who
remained true to his faith in God despite terrible
suffering. Less than half could name the four
Gospels that open the New Testament. And Martin
Luther? Just 46 percent could identify him as a
leading figure of the Reformation.

Our knowledge of other religions is even less
impressive. Less than half of the survey respondents
knew the Jewish sabbath begins on Friday. Only 46
percent could identify the Quran as the holy book of
Islam. Just 47 percent correctly associated the Dalai
Lama with Buddhism. And a scant 27 percent
recognized Islam as the dominant religion of
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country.

Our understanding of the role of religion in public
life was also found lacking. Though a solid 68
percent could identify what the Constitution says
about religion in general terms, their understanding
of the application of that tradition was poor.

While 89 percent knew that a public school teacher
cannot legally lead a class in prayer, only 36
percent knew that public schools may offer courses
in comparative religion. And a bare 23 percent
realized that it is also legal to teach the Bible as
literature in public schools.

Atheists, agnostics

More than a few Americans will be surprised to learn
that the group scoring the highest were self-
identified atheists and agnostics, who averaged
20.9 correct answers out of 32. Close behind were
Jews and Mormons, at 20.5 and 20.3 respectively.
Well back in the pack were white Catholics (16) and
Protestants (15.8), followed by “nothing in
particular.” At the bottom of the list were black
Protestants (13.4) and Hispanic Catholics (11.6),
who scored only slightly better than half as well as
the atheists/agnostics.

In an era marked by increasingly divisive religious
debates, de facto religious litmus tests for political
candidates and growing hostility toward those
whose beliefs fall outside perceived norms, the fact
that many Americans cannot even answer simple
questions about their own traditions reliably should
give us pause.

Who are we to condemn members of other faiths
when we know almost nothing about them? Why
should we demand an elected official profess a
particular set of beliefs when many of us don’t even
understand the implications of those beliefs? And if
we are such a religious nation, why are so many of
us unable to answer even basic questions about
such mainstream texts as the Bible?

One way to address this shocking deficit in
knowledge might be to assign an atheist to lead a
study group in every religious congregation in the
country. Or people might just open their minds, talk
to their neighbors, and read a book or two about
some belief system outside their own.

But foremost, all of us might try to remember the
Golden Rule. Although 45 percent in the Pew survey
incorrectly identified it as one of the Ten
Commandments, it’s really a decent philosophy for
anyone to follow, no matter what their faith.

-Dr. DRL

My latest newspaper column: year-round school?

Let's hit the books year-round

St. Cloud (MN) Times• September 1, 2010

In the early stages of Minnesota’s gubernatorial race, the three major candidates have been quick to link education and economy, noting that without a well-educated work force our state has little hope for economic growth. But none has suggested any major reforms to K-12 education, and the debate has largely centered on funding mechanisms and levels.

A more ambitious reform agenda might start with the school calendar.

Our common nine-month schedule is a 19th-century relic reflecting the need for young family members to serve as farm labor in the summers and the outdated belief that young minds can be easily overexerted by too much learning. It was also based on the assumption that mothers generally don’t work outside the home and are available to provide child care. Through the 20th century, this status quo was reinforced by economic interests that came to rely on cheap summer labor from teens, though the largest of those sectors (agriculture) eventually eliminated many of its summer jobs.

‘Balanced calendar’

Twentieth-century educators repeatedly told us of the loss of skills, knowledge and positive habits that occurs over the long summer break. Some schools adopted the “balanced calendar” as a solution. It does not add instructional days to the school year, but simply redistributes them more evenly so that students are out of the classroom for no more than four weeks at any one time. This alternative addresses the summer slump, but shows little evidence of increasing overall educational results. It also leaves families needing to find child care in four-week blocks every few months.

A more radical reform would actually increase the number of instructional days in the school year by invading part of the sacrosanct summer vacation. Simply adding a summer session of 50 days — extending the typical school year from 175 instructional days to 225 – would be the equivalent of adding 3.7 years worth of instructional time under the current K-12 system before graduation.

What student would not benefit from three years of additional education before the age of 18? And what employer or college would fail to recognize the value of this extended preparation?

Many advantages

A longer and more rigorous school year offers myriad benefits. Curricula can be refocused. An entire quarter could be dedicated to innovative teaching techniques or developing skills and knowledge in areas underrepresented in the curriculum. Experiential learning programs could be developed to shift students from theory to application.

Resources could be pooled to establish short-term magnet schools to foster deeper exploration in the arts, sciences, trades, or other areas.

Students could take on projects that can’t be done under a traditional schedule, or that required intense focus for several weeks at a time. Perhaps most importantly, academic rigor and expectations could be raised for all grades — making Minnesota’s children the best educated in the nation.

The biggest benefits would likely accrue to the youngest children, who would gain most from an engaging summer program and avoiding the summer slump. But older students would benefit as well.

At the extreme, the three-plus years of additional contact time provides could be used to eliminate the final year of high school. In its place, 17-year-old students could be required to complete an internship, apprenticeship, service project, technical college course of study, or on-the-job training program that would better prepare them for college or a career. It also could prove invaluable to better understanding their own interests, skills and vocation, as opposed to following default paths into work or college under the current system.

Of course, such reforms would come with costs. Teacher salaries would have to increase, and certainly some would prefer not to work summers. Operating expenses for schools would go up, as would demand for air conditioning, busing and other services.

Seasonal employers might find it harder to get cheap summer labor. And families would have to adapt to a new summer rhythm. But if education is as important as the gubernatorial candidates claim, good leadership should help us find ways to overcome barriers.

It would be great to hear some ideas for real educational reform between now and November. Year-round school should be part of that debate.

-Dr.DRL

Dr. DRL on video-- MyMN.org

The new public advocacy group My Minnesota has just issued its first "people's report" on the state of the state. They basically made their film by taking a camera to summer events (parades, festivals, etc.) and asking people in the crowd to talk about the future of the state.

You can view it online at www.mymn.org and look for Dr. DRL to spout Words of Wisdom (tm) at about 1:50 into the roll.

-Dr.DRL