Education

Potpourri v1.0


Reading time – 2:07; Viewing time – 5:21  .  .  .

A while back Paul Ryan offered an updated version of his budget plan that would at last make our national economy whole, solid and debt free. The only problem with his plan is that it will not make our national economy whole, solid or debt free. In fact, it would create an additional $1.8 trillion of debt, while making wealthy people far wealthier and  middle class and poor people even poorer. It is based on outright fraud, the wishful thinking of fairy dust sprinkled upon us (“I can fly!”) and it is the plan that Ryan continues to promote today. Have a look at Paul Krugman’s analysis in his essay, The Flimflam Man.

Gary Klaben is one of those guys who manages to be sensible in a world that – let’s face it – usually doesn’t seem too sensible. Watch his most recent video, where he compares how we believe certain things, even in the face of a very different reality. It isn’t always easy to see reality, as our news media only brings us the sensational. Example: CNN’s month-long, non-stop coverage of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappearance, even as there was never any new information. That very sensationalism causes our understanding of reality to be skewed in the direction of fear and danger. Pay special attention to that part as you watch Gary.

Wonderful news!

We no longer have to enforce sanctions against North Korea or Iran, nor do we have to worry about cutting off funding for terrorist groups.

We no longer need civilian leadership to set the priorities or address the needs of the U.S. army, which has been at war since 2001.

We no longer have to deal with our southern border security or the influx of Central American immigrants, nor do we have to concern ourselves with counter-narcotics efforts.

All of those things must be true, since the Republicans in the Senate continue to block appointments of people who would be charged with leading our efforts to deal with these issues. Have a look at this article from the New York Times editorial board and you’ll see that partisan politics is far more important to Republicans than having our nation safe and operating well, notwithstanding their chest thumping and promises to carpet bomb and torture. And, lest you believe that we should be apportioning responsibility for this insanity equally between the political parties, have a look at Ezra Klein’s explanation here.

You already know that Donald Trump couldn’t possibly get any crazier or more dangerous, right? Yet, maybe he’s just warming up and this is the minor league of his xenophobia, his bigotry, his misogyny. Have a look at this MoveOn.org video and decide for yourself what’s coming at future Trump rallies and, if total insanity grips our nation, what will happen if Trump is elected president. It isn’t difficult to imagine storm troopers smashing down your door in the middle of the night and then Trump telling the nation, “It’s a beautiful thing. Believe me.” Maybe staying silent right now isn’t an acceptable option for you.

You’ve heard Bernie Sanders tell us the truth, that no president can reform our nation on his/her own because this is not a dictatorship. Instead, he calls on us for a political revolution, for millions of us to demand the reform we need. Thom Hartmann tells us in his book Unequal Protection that he believes that it will take 10 – 20% of us to stand up and make our voices heard. That is exactly why I offer this platform for our discussion of the truth and encourage you to comment, to make your voice heard. Go ahead – offer your ideas in the What Do You Think? section below.

And that is why I crafted and deliver my program, Money, Politics & Democracy: You’re Not Getting What You Want. I’ve reached hundreds of people from across the political spectrum and not a single person has given me push-back because this is strictly a non-partisan presentation of the truth of what is going on in America. It is also a call to action.

If we are to become the millions of Americans making our voices heard and demanding reform, I’m going to have to bring this clarity to a lot more people. Will you help me to do that?

We need to educate young people who will live for a very long time with the consequences of our actions today. We need to reach poor people who are suffering and don’t understand why life is so hard for them or how to make things better. We have to reach blue collar workers like those at Carrier Corporation in Indianapolis who are all losing their jobs, as their manufacturing plant and all 2,100 of their jobs are being sent to Mexico.

I don’t want money to do my part to educate and motivate Americans. I just want to shove us back to being a democracy. That will make all the difference.

So, make the connection with a group you know who will listen to my message. Tell me when and where and I’ll show up.

Thanks for being part of the solution.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

YOUR ACTION STEPS: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

In Service To America – Up Close and Personal


Reading time – 107 seconds; Viewing time – 3:55

The late 1960s was a deeply troubling time. Political assassinations, civil injustice and upheaval and a divisive war all had America in spasms of confusion and conflict, even down to an individual level.

I spent a large portion of my senior year in college,1967-1968, wrestling with what I would do when my 2S deferment would run out in spring. I felt a deep sense of duty to my country, yet the war in Viet Nam seemed so wrong to me that I did not want to support efforts to prosecute it – not even indirectly. My problem was solved at the end of my pre-induction physical, when a military doc processing the herd of fresh meat for that day pronounced me a 1Y.

That didn’t satisfy my sense of duty to country, though, and it didn’t take a great deal of introspection to realize that if I didn’t go to war, some poor kid from somewhere else would take my place. What did I owe that kid? What did I owe America? I’m guessing the avoidance of military duty left many others with similar feelings, a sense of lack of obligation fulfillment.

I looked into running for Congress as a way to serve my country, but after much investigation realized that I couldn’t stomach the continuous begging for campaign cash that our elected representatives have to do, so I looked for a better way to contribute. That was around the same time that I came to realize the corrosive effect big money has on our politics and on our democracy.

The influx of big money into our politics is the mother lode of our national dysfunction. Jimmy Carter calls it “legalized bribery.” It drives our insanely expensive and second rate healthcare outcomes, our too-big-to-fail banks that are once again driving us to the precipice, our continuing refusal to create and follow any energy policy for this new century (or even the last one) in order to avoid catastrophic global warming, the entrenched refusal to do anything to prevent three dozen gun murders per day – the list goes on and on, and 4 out of 5 Americans who know about the big money in our politics that drives our dysfunction want that changed. Once I saw that with sufficient clarity, not surprisingly, an idea emerged and it turned into a program.

I deliver leadership keynote presentations and workshops for a living, so it was a natural fit to harness the skills I use in the business world to educate and motivate Americans to action over our campaign finance and lobbying dishonesty. That is to say, more Americans need to know what’s really going on, because 80% of those who know will demand that we clean up this cesspool of political corruption. I set out to let them know about it.

I created Money, Politics & Democracy: You Aren’t Getting What You Want. It is a 1 hour, 15 minute presentation that outlines how we got to where we are, the mess we’ve made of our democracy such that We The People aren’t getting what we want and, most importantly, what we can do about it. The program is non-partisan and is not aligned with any political candidate for any office. It is an equal opportunity exposure of the outrageous mess that is our campaign finance and lobbying systems. It is designed to open eyes and catalyze Americans to demand change, the nation-defining transformation we need if we are to remain a democracy.

Here’s the call to action: Connect me with groups where I can deliver this message. I don’t want anything other than to have the opportunity to serve our country and change it for the better. This is about our duty – my duty – to make a difference for America. Will you help me do that?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The New History – Texas Style


TEAReading time – 41 seconds  .  .  .

Norman Goldman likes to rename our southern states because in so many ways they resemble third world despotic countries. I’m talking about things like voter suppression, denial of women’s rights and more. So, for example, Goldman has renamed Texas, calling it Texassistan (“tex-ASS-i-stan”), and with good reason.

Texas is one of several southern states vying to be the most fervently ignorant among an unenlightened few which deny the brutal reality of the “forced migration and enslavement of Africans in America.” * They even deny that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. I understand that denial of guilt-provoking reality feels better than facing the truth, but it doesn’t change what happened. It does change people’s perception of reality, and that’s a problem for the next generation.

In a recent New York Times article, How Texas Teaches History, author Ellen Bressler Rockmore discusses how slight grammatical construct changes and focus shifting can dramatically alter our understanding. For example, she looks at a Houghton Mifflin Harcourt text called Texas United States History and points out that,

” .  .  .  in the sentences that feature slaves as the subject, as the main actors in the sentence, the slaves are contributing their agricultural knowledge to the growing Southern economy; they are singing songs and telling folk tales; they are expressing themselves through art and dance.”

Really? That’s what slavery in America was about – singing songs and telling folk tales, art and dance? Apparently, there’s no need to dwell on the unpleasant stuff, like slave owners and field foremen beating, whipping, branding and killing slaves, children ripped from their mothers’ arms and sold down the river. Dem happy blackies, jus’ singin’ ‘n’ dancin’ and havin’ a good ol’ time** is the history of slavery that Texas wants to teach its children.

And that Pablum version of slavery gets multiplied, because Texas is by far the largest purchaser of school texts in America – they buy for 5 million school kids – so creating books that satisfy the Texas State Board of Education is a financial imperative for publishers. What that means is that history text books used throughout the nation are getting poisoned by the Texassistan far right wing dishonesty and cruelty. The result is that your kid is reading that version of history.

If you click through to Rockmore’s article, be sure to review some of the many comments. They’re enlightening, something that cannot be said of the Texas State Board of Education.

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*That phrase is lifted from Rockmore’s article referenced in the next paragraph and is done so because it so accurately captures the truth.

**I do recognize how deeply offensive those stereotype words are and I intend no offense to anyone who has even as little as a mere foothold in reality. Those words are used to illuminate the deeply offensive attitude expressed in Texas’ revisionist history and they are used mockingly toward the Texas State Board of Education.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Get Up


William McNary - Justice Project 2015

William McNary at the Justice Project 2015

Reading time – 47 seconds  .  .  .

“Democracy is a verb.”

That’s what William McNary told us, speaking on July 26, 2015 on the Winnetka, IL Village Green at the 2015 Justice Day event. It was 50 years to the day since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to 10,000 people gathered in that same place for the North Shore Summer Project – 1965. The imperative to be vigilant in the fight for civil rights remains and will do so for a long time.

Think about that as you listen to the Republican presidential aspirants at the CNN debate on Wednesday, September 16. What kind of future for the American people do they envision and what will they do to create it? Do they appeal to our better angels or do they take the lazy route to a nomination by stoking anger, fear and hatred? Do they enlighten us or do they dumb us down?

Let your own vision for America, for an American Dream that you want to live and to leave to your children and grandchildren, guide your thinking. And for the sake of you, your children and your grandchildren, get up and get active.

Get up and get active, because we cannot afford more never-ending wars or more American children living in poverty (1 in 6 do now), more gun massacres and more Americans forced into bankruptcy because of catastrophic medical expenses. We cannot afford more American students unable to compete with their Asian rivals because of archaic, out-of-date and unequal education, or a planet ready to assault itself and us with acts that won’t be of God, but of us. And we cannot afford the more than 2.4 million incarcerated Americans, more than any other nation – ever.

Make your voice heard – for example, right here on this post in the “What do you think?” section below.

Pass a link to this blog to three others and insist that they subscribe and comment – that they get up and get active – because you and a lot of other people are counting on them.

Democracy is a verb. Get up.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Congressional Monkeys


Rhesus monkey

Rhesus Macaque

Reading time – 1 minute, 19 seconds  .  .  .

My brother recently sent along a story (thanks, JHA) that is an adaptation of the findings of a 1967 ground-breaking experiment with rhesus monkeys performed by Gordon R. Stephenson. It is presented here for your review. See if you can read this without nodding your head in fundamental agreement at the end.

Start the experiment with a tall cage containing four monkeys. Hang a banana on a string dangling from the top of the cage, out of the reach of the monkeys. Then place a set of stairs under the banana. Before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana. As it does so, spray all the monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey will make an attempt to reach the banana. When the second monkey starts up the stairs, spray all the monkeys with cold water. The next time a monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will assault and stop it. There is no further need for cold water.

Next, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new monkey. The new monkey, having no experience with the cold water spray, will see the banana and attempt to climb the stairs to reach it. Immediately, all of the other monkeys will attack him to keep him off the stairs in order to avoid another spray of cold water. After another attempt and attack, he will know that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted and he will not try again.

Next, remove another of the original four monkeys, replacing it with a new monkey.  The newcomer will head for the banana and will then be attacked by the other monkeys. Note that the previous newcomer will take part in the punishment and do so with enthusiasm.

Then, replace a third original monkey with another new monkey, followed by a fourth.  Each time the newest monkey takes to the stairs in an attempt to get the banana he will attacked by all the other monkeys and will not try to reach the banana again.

Having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, none of the monkeys will try to climb the stairs for the banana, because in their experience, being attacked while trying to get a banana is the culture of the group. It’s the way it has always been.

And that is how today’s House and Senate operate, with no members having a memory of a time when hard negotiations led to compromise for the betterment of the country. Instead, we see near-universal demand that, “It’s all about me and my getting my way and I’ll attack you if you disagree with me because I’d rather get nothing done than to compromise.” (Look for a Disambiguation on this topic soon.)

And that is why, from time to time, we need to replace all of the monkeys at the same time.

Note: This narrative is meant as no disrespect to rhesus monkeys.

Here is a link to the publication of the original work by Stephenson.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

If I Agreed With You


http://www.zazzle.com.au/if_i_agreed_with_you_wed_both_be_wrong_t_shirts-235415623791821038

http://www.zazzle.com.au/

Reading time – 16 seconds  .  .  .

Frequent business travel offers many opportunities to learn.

For example, I saw a guy wearing this T-shirt at O’Hare Airport last week. It pretty well defines our national attitude toward open-mindedness, eagerness to learn, tolerance of change and even to creativity.

How’s that working for us?

If it isn’t working well, what can you do to help to change things for the better? Try this notion.

My pal Ozzie Gontang likes to say, “None of us is as smart as all of us.” As you can see, he’s a pretty smart guy. He’s wise.

So, what you can do about all that closed-mindedness in America is to be open-minded. Go ahead – I promise that just listening to people with whom you disagree won’t damage you or compromise your integrity. And for one brief shining moment America will be the better for your effort.

Then, after listening to those people with different thinking than yours, you still have the opportunity to call them an idiot and things will be back to what passes for normal in America.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

It’s The System, Stupid


Freddie Gray being arrested in Baltimore for no known reason

Freddie Gray being arrested in Baltimore for no known reason

Reading time – 71 seconds

It’s been wall-to-wall coverage of the riots in Baltimore and the conversation has largely been focused on who is to blame. It’s the thugs. It’s the mayor. It’s the police. And everybody wants to figure out what the police should do to tamp down the violence. Once again we’re looking the wrong way and solving the wrong problem.

Our hard liners look at the rioting and are appalled, calling the people in the streets lazy and shiftless (“Why don’t they get a job instead of looting the CVS?”), ignorant and useless (“Why don’t those kids stay in school?”). They say that those people should have respect for the police.

Really? What happened in West Baltimore was predictable with a certainty matched only by gravity.

The people who were able to get out left long ago, taking their money with them to the suburbs and allowing the city schools to rot, so the kids left behind now receive a lousy education. The factories were rewarded for sending their jobs first to the south, then to other countries, leaving those still in the city without jobs. The businesses that stayed have been rewarded for their short term thinking that only enriches stockholders and the bosses. There was no money left for innovation or for worker training. The police aren’t policed and the bad cops take out their meanness and anger on helpless citizens, like Freddie Gray.

It doesn’t work the way proscribed by the hardliners when there is no education to be had. It doesn’t work that way when there are no jobs to be found so that the unemployment rate in West Baltimore is 21%. And it doesn’t work that way when the police beat the stuffing out of people, even if they aren’t suspected of a crime.  Wake up: The entire system is broken.

People don’t riot because they are ignorant, shiftless or lazy or inherently bad. People riot because they are angry and frustrated and feel trapped. They riot because the people who are supposed to protect them instead beat them and kill them. They riot because they have been abused all their lives and it’s gone on for generations and it’s nearly impossible to see even a tiny ray of hope.

If we don’t want people to riot, we have to fix the reasons that people riot. Just being reactive to the violence won’t get the job done. In fact, all it will do is to ensure that there will be yet another round of rioting in the future.

None of this excuses the rioting, the looting, the arson or the brick throwing. But answer these questions for yourself: If you lived in utter hopelessness, as had all your forebears, how long would you tolerate it? If the kid next door was beaten so badly by the cops that he died, how would you react? If you were constantly the last one hired and the first one fired and your children were hungry, what would you do?

This isn’t a game. It is the lives of millions of Americans in our cities and especially those in areas like West Baltimore. We can change this if we have the will to stop thinking short term and solely for the benefit of just a few and instead focus relentlessly on what really needs to be done. We can change this if we are willing to do something other than just clamp down harder. Or we can go on pretending that more police will cure the problem.

But how’s that working for us?

One last question: Who benefits from a system that works like this? Hint: Follow the money.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Chores


Raking LeavesReading time – 59 seconds  .  .  . 

Were you required to do chores around the house when you grew up? Chances are, you were. When I was a kid, chores were simply what had to be done and we all had a hand in the work.

I recall that once in an moment of teenage male iderntity seeking I balked at doing the dishes after dinner because, I had decided, that was women’s work. My dad listened calmly, then pointed out that there were no girls in the family and my mother was busy with other things and we didn’t have a maid, so get over here and do the damn dishes. That cured me of such nonsense permanently. Note that I learned to be a really good dishwasher.

And mower of lawns, shoveler of snow, taker out of the garbage and many other chores. All of that was simply the way things were.

Mom had a moment of clarity for me one time when I complained about having to do some chore. She said that was alright. But no chores, you don’t eat. I got the point quickly and it’s a point that has relevance today.

In a recent article Why Children Need Chores by Jennifer Breheny Wallace she reports on several studies that tell us that doing chores, ” . . . helps to build a lasting sense of mastery, responsibility and self-reliance  .  .  .  ” She further reports that, “Chores also teach children how to be empathetic and responsive to others’ needs.”

Can you think of a group of people who lack a sense of responsibility? Perhaps those same people seem to have no empathy and are completely unresponsive to the needs of others?

I can’t help but wonder if a lot of those in Congress got away with not doing chores when they were kids. They certainly aren’t doing their chores now, like passing budgets without self-imposed crises, voting on a new attorney general, overhauling our immigration system, passing sensible gun safety legislation, amending the Constitution to get the big money out of our politics and bringing our education system into the 21st century.

And it’s not just the current mix of slugs in Congress. This has gone on for at least the past eleven Congresses, most notably when there was a Democrat in the White House and Republicans flexed obstructionist muscles in Congress.

Somebody metaphorically hand those lazy children a rake, a dishcloth or a lawn mower and tell them to get to work. Perhaps they should be given Mom’s instruction, that they won’t be allowed to eat until they do their chores.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue.

ACTION STEP: Please offer your comments below and pass this along to three people, encouraging them to subscribe.  Thanks!  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

We’ve Forgotten


brainReading time – 39 seconds  .  .  .

Before the New Deal millions of Americans spent their later years, when they were no longer able to earn a wage, in abject poverty. That’s a key reason Social Security was created. We seem to have forgotten about all that suffering of our elderly.

Before Medicare millions of Americans spent years in health crisis, which often led to bankruptcy. It frequently led to having to choose between getting critical medical care and eating. We seem to have forgotten about that suffering, too.

Before the GI Bill only a small percentage of Americans went to college. That bill and the education it spawned were major contributors to the phenomenal economic growth of our nation and the personal wealth expansion that followed World War II. It lifted millions of Americans out of poverty and into middle class security. At the same time that was happening we were expanding our state colleges and universities in order to provide low cost education. That, too, made it possible for Americans to be prepared for our rapid economic expansion and to join the ranks of our middle class. But we seem to have forgotten about how those investments in education helped everyone.

Before we had food stamps millions of Americans were hungry all the time and children went to bed at night with empty stomachs. That program alleviated the suffering of our poor to a great extent, but it appears that we’ve forgotten how bad it was for them.

Actually, we’ve forgotten how bad it was for us, because the ancestors of most Americans suffered like that.

And that’s the point. We have a national amnesia about how bad some people had it before we as a nation decided that there was something we could do about it and we’ve forgotten that those people who suffered were our own families. Now many of us are comfortable, removed by multiple generations from our families’ suffering and our comfort has caused us to lose sight and to lose compassion.

If loss of compassion for others who suffer is somehow okay, we at least should recognize that pulling the plug on programs that help our own people is the same as pulling the plug on America.

But we seem to have forgotten where we came from.

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Anyone?


U of WIReading time – 47 seconds  .  .  .

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is making all the right moves to play in the Big Game. Over the past few years he has slashed support for state workers, those leaches on society who do unnecessary things, like plow snow from the highways, supply clean drinking water and ensure a safe food supply. He has even suspended state workers’ merit (as in: earned) pay raises. Now Walker has taken aim on higher education. He has proposed cutting $300 million from the budget of the University of Wisconsin. That’s right in the sweet spot for raving radicals and should play well in the early, red-meat state primaries in 2016.

Oddly, Walker’s proposal would not allow an increase in tuition to offset the reduction of state funds for the university. He seems to think that replacement money will come from some vaporous “out there,” which of course will not happen. What will happen as state support for higher education is methodically eliminated is that the university will incrementally become impoverished, unable to maintain value and will, at last, become irrelevant. That’s down from the rare air of being ranked 47th in the nation.

In other states where support for higher education has been slashed, tuition increases have and will continue to rise. That has the effect of eliminating education for many of the very people we’ll need to be educated if we are to succeed in a globally interconnected world. Think: second-tier status America.

That is to say, consider what happens to higher education, to our students and then to the future of America when we pull the rug out from under ourselves. Here’s what the folks at Bloomberg think of that.

Before you fall into complete despair and climb to the roof of the gymnasium of your local high school and scream from the edge (hoping that roof repairs haven’t been eliminated due to slashing of state funding for education), have a look at Andy Borowitz’s satire.

Meanwhile, our task is to understand Walker’s subversion of President Kennedy’s famous declaration,

“Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.”

If Kennedy was right – and he was and still is – then Walker’s gambit is the next nail in the coffin for America. But why would he pound that nail?

Think through this: If state funding for education is eliminated, who will benefit? Anyone think that it might be those who want to privatize and profit from education? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

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Ed. note: There is much in America that needs fixing and we are on a path to continually fail to make things better. It is my goal to make a difference – perhaps to be a catalyst for things to get better. That is the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people and a robust dialogue. Please help by offering your comments, as well as by passing this along and encouraging others to subscribe and do the same.  Thanks.  JA


Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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