Month: June 2012

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Employ, Baby, Employ!

Keeping a low profile, the House of Representatives passed the extension of the Stafford Loans program, allowing college students to borrow at low rates for another two years. The funds to support Stafford mysteriously appeared before the July 1 deadline.

Perhaps college students and their families still have some clout in Congress, and the dream of middle class mobility is alive, but to realize that dream with jobs remains on the legislative agenda.  At the same time President Obama’s bill for 400,000 teaching positions remains neglected, and schools will open in the fall with overcrowded classrooms and decimated support services for students.

Republicans disdain jobs bills that do not expand the economy, and teaching can not be credited with stimulating the market. However, there is a case to be made for using our natural resources. If certified teachers were oil or natural gas, Congress would have no problem funding them.  Maybe we should call the bill the Keystone Educational Resources Act.

Unemployed, certified teachers are genuine natural resources. They are mostly young, some fresh out of school, with a fiery spirit to prove their worth.  They are a select portion of the population committed to public service, meaning they will work cheaply, too cheaply. They have met the rigorous standards for teachers demanded by No Child Left Behind.  They are committed to durable service, if they have not already been diverted into other job opportunities.

I personally know a half dozen recent graduates who are can’t-miss teachers, but can not find employment.  They stay in Michigan, because of their family, their spouse, or because of dreams they can’t shake.  We need them in our schools and in our profession. The idea that they will leave the state or the profession is painful to consider.

These future teachers are a genuine natural resource.  To leave them dormant, while the economy sags is to sell out our future and their potential.  Release the funding for teachers to go to work  Engage their intellectual energy!

Employ, baby, employ!

 

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Student Loans and Class Mobility

Yesterday the Senate passed the bill renewing the Stafford Student Loan Program at 3.4%.  Now the House of Representatives has to pass the same bill before July 1. So close and yet so far.

Mitt Romney has taken a great interest in employing college graduates, but shows less interest in financing their education. He will not support extending the low interest rates on student loans, but, if students somehow make it through college without that support, he will turn the economy around and find them jobs.

This sums up the the supply-side approach to class mobility. Find a way to be qualified for a competitive job, and we’ll put you to work. If you do not finish college or if you have child care issues or if you need medical care or if you want to work in the public service sector, don’t bother us.  We have productive jobs for competitive applicants, and the rest of you should resign yourselves to poverty.

The students I teach at a public university collectively have all these qualifiers that prevent them from getting jobs. They are living on part time work and student loans. They are depending on child care within their families so they can attend classes. If that child care falls through, they can’t come to class. They are depending on their parents’ health care or they don’t go to the infirmary when they are sick. I ask for medical documentation of their absence from class, but they didn’t see a doctor because they couldn’t afford to.

And finally, they want to be teachers. In spite of the dispiriting narrative in the media about schools, they want to teach, many of them in urban schools. Some of my best students are still waiting for their first permanent teaching job.

But these are public sector jobs, and they are not on the “to-do” list of the supply-slide economists.  They do not respect these jobs, because they do not produce anything tangible. They produce motivated students, public safety, and general health and well being, but nothing to stimulate the economy. They only produce “quality of life,” and who can price and sell that?

The mobile middle class depends on the funding that the conservative policy-makers have denied them.  They are not getting through college or finding adequate day care or minimal medical care without the aid that is being systematically cut from the federal budget. These are foolish economies. Penny-wise and pound foolish.

There are 7.4 million students depending on Stafford loans, who may have fifteen million advocates that want them to graduate.  That is an enormous voting block, assuming each person votes.  If their votes were counted in November, there would be sweeping changes throughout the federal government, changes that would make the 2010 Tea Party coup look like a tea party.

The revolution begins with voter registation. Some students will need absentee ballots and picture identification to vote. July 2 is a good time to start.

Then find out who stands for the upwardly mobile college student. Who is eliminating the life support systems that allow a first-generation college student to move out of poverty or stagnation.

Then inform your friends, your family about who stands for your interests and who is just blustering about a better economy.  Promises are cheap. Action is proof of whose interests are being served.

Then vote with a vengeance and determination. There is no need to give in to the conservative undertow and be swept out to sea. Swim above the rolling jobs rhetoric. Send the word that students, especially the mobile middle class students, are a force to be reckoned with.

 

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Who’s Afraid of the Voting Student?

If you are a college student who works and borrows for your education, July 1 is a portentous date. Unless Congress acts, your loan rates will double.

If Congress doesn’t act by July 1, more than 7 million undergraduates taking out federally subsidized loans to cover next year’s tuition will have to dig deeper in their pockets to pay them off. The average cost to students would be $1,000 in increased student loan debt, according to the White House. (CNN News)

Now if we were talking about reducing Social Security benefits or rolling back the middle class tax cuts, there would be frantic scrambling in both branches of the legislature to prevent an election-year disaster. Instead each party is squabbling about how to pay to keep the loan rates stable by cutting their opponent’s favorite program, and the deadline looms closer each day. It’s very likely the axe will fall and student loan rates will skyrocket.

Why? Because most legislators expect college students to remain on the sidelines come election day. They don’t see the college vote as consequential to their election. And yet seven million students affected by this? Isn’t that a likely margin for a Presidential victory in November?

Students, your legislators assume you are:

1) Cynical: You are willing to rationalize your lack of voting by saying your voice doesn’t matter.

2) Lazy: You aren’t going to the trouble to get an absentee ballot this summer, so you can vote from your campus in the fall.

3) Aloof: You don’t feel responsible, because your job is to get an education and let older adults run the country in the meantime.

4)  Ignorant and Complacent: You don’t know how to register to vote and neither do your friends.

Really? Is this what fifteen years of schooling has taught you? That your voice doesn’t matter and voting is not your business? That you are protected from the mismanagement of your elders? Well, these cop-outs are what your representatives are counting on.

We know there is a potent voting block of SEVEN MILLION of you who will be seriously affected by what doesn’t happen by July 1. Mark the date on your calendar.  Then on the next day, make another note: REGISTER FOR AN ABSENTEE BALLOT. Then when the ballot comes in the mail, VOTE. Or, if you can vote locally on campus or at home, GET OUT TO THE POLLS.

Sorry for the shouting. Sometimes it’s hard to get your attention. You’re not cynical or lazy or aloof or complacent or ignorant, but you’re distracted. So, LISTEN UP!

Imagine this headline on November 7.

Seven Million College Students Shake Up Incumbents!

Sweet revenge! They’ll never take you for granted again. When the bills for college loans and scholarships and internships and job training come up, Congress will rush to the floor and say: We have to get this done! College students vote!

Pay attention, now! This will not be on the test, but it could cost you a lot of money. Voting pays! Make your elected representatives pay as well.

 

 

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Angry Money

While we stand appalled at the outright usurpation of power by the military in Egypt, we are witnessing a more gradual wresting of power by the angry money of the world’s exemplar of democracy. We can shake our heads at the arrogance of the Egyptian generals, but we should not be surprised that the strongmen of American politics, those who write the checks, are assuming a similar take-no-prisoners approach to the elections of 2012.

Election-year politics usually takes the tone of “anything you can do I can do better,” but the intensity of the outrage has been building over the past year of budget wrangling in Congress. Last summer’s debacle over raising the deficit level showed the deadly resolve of conservatives to refuse any deal that hinted of raising revenue by any name.  Legislators have always declared their opposition to taxes on the threshold of an election, but their midterm show of principle extended beyond any campaign promises. It showed ruthless anger.

The anger is directed at a President who played his cards early by driving through Congress the Affordable Health Care Act, by bailing out the auto industry, and by welcoming Muslim peoples to the international discussion table.  These initiatives so alarmed the monied interests (activists like the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and Charles Simmons, Texas billionaire) that they have poured unprecedented millions into the legalized PAC campaigns unleashed by the Citizens United case.

It is remarkable how such potent financiers keep a low profile in this campaign. They shy away from public pronouncements, because they have sublimated their anger with money. They are joined by other ruthless campaign bank-rollers who are even more successful at dodging the press.  Their anonymity is their strength, because no one wants to believe that a few billionaires are selecting the next President. In fact, when the Obama campaign published a list of the top Republican donors, it sent Rep. Mitch McConnell into a frenzy, claiming that naming these donors was tantamount to an attack on free speech:

The Courts have said that Congress doesn’t have the authority to muzzle free speech, so the President himself will seek to go around it by attempting to change the First Amendment (New York Times, June 17, 2012).

Whereas the Egyptian military made a brazen grab for power in public, the American magnates want to keep their names out of the headlines. But their anger is projected onto their Congressional surrogates, the Mitch McConnells and the John Boehners, who make politics personal.   The anger of the campaign has been amplified by the relentless pressure of money flowing in from powers-behind-the-throne.

That politicians are complicit mouthpieces of the wealthy is evident by the fact that no one but John McCain is willing to stand up to them in an election year. Although McCain was less vocal about campaign financing during his run for the presidency, he has gone on the record against the disproportionate contributions of Sheldon Adelson, asserting that he is channeling money from his foreign enterprises into the Republican campaign.  Lately he has rehabilitated his conscience and returned to his role as gadfly of the Senate, but even his expedient return is refreshing.

Frankly there are a lot of reasons for anger when so many are unemployed and the economy proves so intractable or subject to the politics of Europe.  Perhaps finding a scapegoat for the interminable recession is what an election is all about. As President Truman eloquently acknowledged, “The buck stops here.”

But an election should not be about channeling the anger of the ruthless monied interests of this country.  The tidal wave of political advertising and the rising volume of political rhetoric should not be at the whim of the wealthy.  We should be entitled to our own anger, not the displaced fury of billionaires.

We can vote our anger, and we often do.  But when we hear the high-pitched indignation and the personal attacks that inevitably rise in the campaign, remember the “angry money,” and don’t let them usurp power by channeling their anger through you and their paid assassins.

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The Stigma of Public Service

It was refreshing to read the unvarnished differences between our polarized parties in the columns of David Brooks and Paul Krugman today (New York Times, June 15, 2012).  The rhetoric of the campaign has bombarded us with accusations about spending, deficits, loopholes and tax cuts. One party is maligned as the “spend and tax” party, while the other is labeled the “cut and reduce benefits” party, as if one was the profligate mother and the other the austere father of the nation. Excuse the gender stereotypes, but we are talking about caricatures here, not reality.

In fact, each party has it hands open to its own constituency and closed to those it considers over-compensated.  The question of the next election is who should be satisfied?

David Brooks characterizes our current economy as an obsolete “welfare state,” because government is spending more and more on services, such as health, retirement, education and protection, rather than “productivity.”

 . . . the current model shifts resources away from the innovative sectors of the economy and into the bloated state-supported ones, like health care and education.

Brooks’ assumption is that our society is energized by business and “innovation,” and the resources that we put into public services deny this productive sector its vitality.

The welfare state favors security over risk, comfort over effort, stability over innovation. Money that could go to schools and innovation must now go to pensions and health care.

Oddly he refers to education in one paragraph as “bloated and state-supported,” but in the next paragraph as a partner to “innovation.”  Perhaps he really favors education, but not so much public education.  So his distinction between the “bloated state-supported” institutions and the “innovative” enterprises that drive the economy is really one of public vs. private.  Public sector = wasteful; private sector= productive.

He has a point. After all, what useful products come from the public sector? Alert minds, safe neighborhoods, disaster prevention, disease prevention and healing. None of these make the Dow-Jones’ heart skip a beat.  They do nothing but improve our quality of life. They produce nothing but social welfare. “Welfare” is defined as one of the goals of government in the Preamble to the Constitution, which states, among other purposes, “to promote General Welfare.”  But there is nothing productive about this goal; it merely improves our lives.

As Paul Krugman points out, the public sector does not figure in Governor Romney’s plan for America. In an outburst he later qualified, Romney criticized President Obama’s interest in restoring jobs to the public sector:

He says we need more firemen, policemen, more teachers. . . . It is time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.

Krugman points out that in Romney’s campaign “government” is conflated with public sector jobs, so that waste is associated with the service professions. “Conservatives love to pretend that there are vast armies of government bureaucrats doing who knows what; a majority of government workers are employed in either education (teachers) or public protection (police officers or fire fighters). ”  So if you analyze the jobs that fall under the “public sector,” they are the services that sustain and improve our way of life. Unfortunately these services don’t “produce” anything, so they are demeaned by Governor Romney and David Brooks.

However, Krugman goes on to argue, the public sector does create jobs. Public sector jobs are down 1.4 million, says Krugman, “if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush.” These jobs alone would have lowered unemployment to 7.3 per cent, if they had not been severely cut by federal, state and local governments.

Public sector jobs are never part of the Republican stimulus equation because the party does not respect the service professions.  Romney’s gaffe about not needing “firemen, policemen and teachers” was no gaffe at all, but the dark subtext of his campaign to reduce government.  The irony of the right wing attack on public services is that while reducing the employees that provide them, it complains indignantly about falling test scores, rising crime rates, and exploding health costs.

Even more ironic is that politicians who complain about the public sector will soon be joining it, if they are elected.  Once in office they discover they can’t accomplish much, because of depleted funding, and suddenly they become the enemy for wanting to raise revenue or decrease the benefits of Social Security or Medicare.

Citizens who work in public schools, public safety, public health, and public administration are not the problem: most of them are gifted and self-sacrificing professionals who work hard for moderate compensation.  Yes, their health and pension benefits have to be recalibrated to balance local budgets, but so have private employees in the auto industry and countless others.  Who has not made contractual compromises to pay for expensive health insurance in the last five years?

Those who serve the public should not be cowed or debased by the ugly subtext of Governor Romney and the right wing.  There is honor in public service and a social vitality that is not measured in profit and productivity.  “General welfare” is a privilege insured by the U.S. Constitution, and those that work for it are valuable citizens, as much as those that innovate and spawn industries.

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Broccoli Ad Absurdum

The claim that if government can require the purchase of health insurance it can therefore require the consumption of broccoli is one of those so-called “slippery slopes” that judges are always scrambling around.  Courts, politicians and lobbyists have found our legal system utterly eroded by slippery slopes, endangering us with every change in the law. If they identify a law that rankles, they will immediately excavate a slippery slope and then point to it with mounting panic.

Oh yes, health insurance today, but tomorrow . . . broccoli!

In the world of logic, this move is called “reductio ad absurdum” or “a reduction to an absurdity; the refutation of a proposition by demonstrating the inevitably absurd conclusion to which it would logically lead.”  Although logic has a strong reputation in our legal system, the “ad absurdum” part of this strategy should not be overlooked.

A delightful parody of the “reductio ad absurdum” is the current run of Directv commercials, such as “See what happens when you make bad decisions. Don’t wake up in a roadside ditch!” (http://bit.ly/ymT7PP).  In this instance, a cable television user becomes angry at being on hold with his cable provider, leading to several hazards, resulting in getting an eye-patch and finally getting mugged and left in a roadside ditch. Directv has run several commercials on the same silly premise, but no one is buying satellite television service because they are worried about ending up in a roadside ditch.  They laugh at the ridiculous outcome of a simple behavior, such as getting angry on the phone while being on hold.

However, when “reductio ad absurdum” is introduced into the courts or on the floor of the legislature, no one is laughing.  We are all sobered by the possibility we may be forced to eat broccoli in the future.  Why do we take these arguments seriously?

The National Rifle Association is a past master of “reductio ad absurdum.” Every restriction on the licensing of guns appears to them a violation of their right to bear arms.  Most recently they mounted a furious attack on the new technology, which would imprint an identification number on shell casings, so that police gathering them at the scene of a crime could trace them to their users– the criminals.   But if we can identify criminals, we can also identify innocent users of guns, and we wouldn’t want that– would we?  Why should we be allowed to know who fired a weapon and when they did it?  Won’t this mean that the government will come to our houses and seize our weapons without recourse? Ad absurdum!

Judicial decisions are particularly hazardous, because they are used as precedents, so there really is a slippery slope out there, not an imagined one.  The federal government has used its Constitutional power to regulate “interstate commerce” to intrude into affairs many would see best regulated by the state, such as education or care of the indigent. The Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the degree of federal control, so it should take these cases of federal power seriously.

But the judges of the high court should be more wary of the “ad absurdum” arguments or they may find themselves with a satellite dish on the roofs of their houses.  Seeing broccoli as the outcome of universal health care really stretches the legal imagination. Health insurance is a lot more like Social Security and Medicare than it is like broccoli. Is the Constitutionality of Social Security at stake here? Should citizens be required to save money for retirement or for hospitalization? You can spot slippery slopes running off to the right as well as to the left.

We have a compelling social interest in citizens having funds for retirement, in having access to catastrophic health care, and ultimately to the high level of medical care this country offers. In no way does broccoli rank among these interests, and I will defend every citizen’s right to leave it alone. Regardless of the outcome of the Affordable Health Care decision, I am confident that the Supreme Court will protect my sacred right to eschew broccoli.

And I mean no offense to the broccoli growers and producers of America.

 

 

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Backpacks and “Game-Changers”

Mitt Romney’s school reform agenda rides the pendulum of change, carrying poor and disadvantaged students with it.  His proposal that students be equipped with a “backpack” of federal dollars to carry to the school of their choice shows how students of every new administration are the pawns of bureaucrats, who propose changes to get elected.

In the free market of schools students are movable pieces, representing federal dollars.  Grover Whitehurst, a Romney education adviser, says,

If you connected state funding with federal funding, then you’re talking about a backpack with enough money in it to really empower choice. . . . The idea would be the federal Title I funds would allow states that want to move in this direction to do so, and if they did so, all of a sudden it’s a game changer.

The metaphors of “backpacks” and “games” reveal so much about how politicians approach school reform.  The backpack represents the student as a unit of income for the school. There is no provision for what the student needs in that metaphor. Students with learning challenges need small classes, specialists who decrease the student-to-teacher ratio, programs in the arts and occupations that employ their strengths, professional development for their teachers to develop literacy across the curriculum, and paraprofessionals and volunteers to staff after-school programs.  In other words, schools need more and varied personnel, the single most-expensive budget item for schools, private or public.

In the past federal dollars have often made these programs possible, but in the current era of savage cost-cutting, what will happen to these federal dollars?  Oops, sorry, you’ll have to do more with less next year. But you’ll survive on American ingenuity and hard work.  Schools can do more with smaller backpacks.

Even more heartless is the metaphor of the “game changer.”  If a school principal says a new reading program is a “game-changer,” then we appreciate that some thought has gone into how reading instruction can be improved in her school. When a political adviser says a a voucher program is a “game changer,” we understand that “reform” means changing what has been unsuccessful in the last administration.  Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Education has traditionally been a “game” for politicians.  They believe somehow if you change the rules something good will happen.  Test and punish. Eliminate the Department of Education. Dismantle affirmative action. Invent a “race” and make your own rules.  None of this deals directly with the challenges of students lost in school bureaucracy.  But it represents “change” and that’s how candidates get elected: propose a new “game.”

A better metaphor would be to change the professional culture.  While politicians have complained that our schools do not compete with Finland, South Korea and Singapore, no one has suggested that we improve the status and conditions of teaching to emulate the teaching culture in those countries.   Because that would cost something. Linda Darling-Hammond outlines what meaningful change in the teaching profession would look like in The Flat World and Education.

  • universal high-quality teacher education
  • mentoring for all beginners from expert teachers
  • Ongoing professional learning, embedded in 15 to 25 hours per week
  • leadership development that engages expert teachers
  • equitable, competitive salaries  (198)

Most of these reforms would require major budget shifts at every level of government, and they would require more resources.  You don’t change a culture by moving the game pieces around. You invest in the members of that culture.

But since no one wants to hear that we need more resources in a decade of want, we will hear about “game changing.”  Moving students like pieces on the chess board. Moving schools out of neighborhoods. Moving teachers who can’t cut it to the unemployment line.  As they say in real estate, it’s all about “location, location, location.”

So for the next six months we will hear talk about backpacks and games, instead of slow, but relentless cultural reform.  We will hear about the magic of the free market, instead of the common sense of professional development.  We will hear about “change,” meaning moving the game pieces, instead of “reform,” which means investing in individual teachers and students.  We will hear about “races,” which are always predicated on more losers than winners.

These cheerful metaphors of American “can-do” will get someone elected. But they will not change the quality of public education.

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Why Teaching English Should Not Be Legislated

To require a course in “grammar, punctuation and usage” for the preparation of teachers is like requiring legislators to master the Michigan State Penal Code in order to legislate.  There’s probably a lot of important information there, but it will not make you a better legislator.  On the other hand, you will probably have to refer to the Penal Code before drafting certain legislation.  In teaching the English language the  analogous reference book would be a style book for composition.

Requiring courses is the task of universities, guided by professional standards. It is offensive for legislators to usurp this responsibility, as though they were the experts in language study. If they would keep their hands off the teacher education curriculum, I would promise not to send their legislation back to them edited for clarity and style.

Beyond this issue of authority I challenge those who think that the teaching of grammar and style can be improved by a theoretical course of study.  You only need to study the style of a bill “enacting” a mandatory course in “English Language Grammar, Punctuation and Usage” to see that grammar is contextual, and your prescriptive knowledge of it should be adapted to the circumstances of the writing. For example, the following bill is proposed in the Michigan House: HB 5728 of 2012

A bill to amend 1976 PA 451, entitled
“The revised school code,”
MCL 380.1 to 380.1852) by adding section 1531j.
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN ENACT:
SEC. 1531J. ( 1) BEGINNING JANUARY 1, 2013, BOTH OF THE
FOLLOWING APPLY:    repetitious: verbs “enact” and “apply” can be combined in one action
(A) THE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION SHALL NOT ISSUE
AN INITIAL ELEMENTARY LEVEL TEACHING CERTIFICATE TO A PERSON UNLESS
THE PERSON PRESENTS EVIDENCE SATISFACTORY TO THE SUPERINTENDENT

 OF
PUBLIC INSTRUCTION  Delete: redundant

THAT HE OR SHE HAS SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED – ambiguous: passed or attended?

A
COURSE APPROVED BY THE DEPARTMENT  ambiguous reference: which department?

IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE GRAMMAR,PUNCTUATION, AND USAGE.

Reading this with the eye of an English teacher, who has “successfully completed a course of English, Grammar, Punctuation and Usage,” I found a number of stylistic faults that I would circle in any high school student’s writing.  In the text of the House bill above I found instances of repetition, redundancy and ambiguity that confound the understanding of the bill.  Of course, I am not a legislator who is privy to the jargon of legislation.

But that is precisely the point.  Michigan legislators understand this writing, even if their constituents don’t.  Although I am annoyed by the style, I would not argue that it is not functional for its purpose: to propose a law for consideration by the Michigan House.  Personally if I had to consume this convoluted prose on a regular basis, I would wash it down with alcohol.

Fortunately I don’t have to read it, unless I am personally involved in its consequences. Unfortunately I am an English educator, so I am involved. Fortunately I am conversant in more than one dialect, so I can interpret the intent of the bill, even if I quibble about its meaning. No doubt the Michigan House knows what it means to “successfully complete” a course, even if I have some questions.

Understanding that grammar is contextual is more important than knowing any single grammatical rule.  The Michigan High School Content Expectations state that students will “Understand how languages and dialects are used to communicate effectively in different roles, under different circumstances, and among speakers of different speech communities (ethnic communities, social groups, professional organizations” (CE 4.2.1) This is what we teach about grammar in language arts methods classes, and this is what enables us to appreciate legislator-speak, along with education-speak, poetic diction, and vernacular language.

Before enacting legislation requiring a static knowledge of prescriptive English, I suggest that members of the Michigan House of Representatives consider the existing High School Content Expectations for English Language.  They could learn something about teaching language contextually before presuming to tell Michigan teachers what professional knowledge they should have.

 

 

 

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Squandering a National Resource

The most ambitious venture capitalist in the country has been shut down by the U.S. government. Who is it? The U.S. government. The most socially-beneficial industries, renewable energy,  restoration of the infrastructure (crumbling roads and bridges), career preparation programs from  K-college, have all been strangled by short-sighted cost-cutting measures in Congress.

Why do we applaud the ingenious, risk-taking entrepreneur, except if that entrepreneur is the federal government? Oh yes, the federal government is famous for waste and poor investments, but how many of our heroic entrepreneurs have misappropriated their own funds, in spite of careful forethought? The government is not the only investor to fund boondoggles.

Since the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) of 2008-09 private capital has been holding back, according to those who track investments. The heroic entrepreneur has not risen to the occasion, which is, of course, the privilege of capitalism.

Meanwhile a vast natural resource, college graduates, is going untapped. According to the New York Times ( June 5, 2012) 19.1 % of college graduates are underemployed. This includes the “jobless plus involuntary part-timers and those who have given up an active job search.” Such a neglect of natural resources would not usually be tolerated by advocates of the free market. Employ, baby, employ!

But since the heroic entrepreneur is not ready to venture the funds long-ago sent forth to stimulate the economy, let the government be our venture capitalist. Let the ultimate venture capitalist do what government does best– support socially-beneficial programs.  Who will otherwise repair our infrastructure, invest in renewable energy, and reduce the inhumane class sizes in public schools? Don’t even suggest that the private sector can rejuvenate these enterprises! They have had three years to enter the breech and still energy technology and roads and students are neglected.

But the ultimate neglect is focused on the underemployed college graduates who are flinging their resumes into the wind this June.  This neglected natural resource is a generational tragedy. As the Times  reported:

The damage will be deep and lasting. The lack of good jobs at good pay, combined with high student debt loads, means a slower economy for a long time to come, as underemployed and indebted workers delay starting families and buying homes. . . If young people with college diplomas cannot prosper in America, who can?

To consider the long-term damage done by the neglect of this priceless resource is to recognize the folly of holding back federal funds that could put college graduates to work. We can not let political stalemate squander our great national resource. Unleash the benign venture capitalist! Employ, baby, employ!

 

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Dear Student Voters of Wisconsin:

The recall election in Wisconsin Tuesday is a test of an under-funded majority to resist the super-funded minority, trying to maintain its base of power in the seat of the governor, Scott Walker. Your vote is the swing vote in a closely contested election that could determine the funding of public education, the funding of student loans, the rights of workers, and  the access to voter registration.  These issues reflect a national movement, some call it the Tea Party, that wields most of its clout through the financing of billionaires, who pretend to represent the middle class.

By any poll of national opinion the Tea Party is a splinter group, controlling the national dialogue about government reform, claiming to liberate citizens from laws that protect them. More to the point, the legislators who speak for the Tea Party are hacking at the student loan and public education system that has been the path to mobility for most first-generation college students.

How many of you would not be in college at all without the availability of student loans and the modest cost of publicly-funded universities? Yes, the tuition costs at state universities have been rising alarmingly in the last decade, but you should recognize that both the state and federal sources of these funds have been depleted by the so-called budget reformers, who claim we cannot afford your education.

Instead Tea Party reformers urge you to attend for-profit universities with higher tuition and without benefit of student loans.  This is one of many ways they refuse to support the mobility of the middle class. While their rhetoric trumpets reducing the deficit, their votes are blowing up the bridges to employment and financial stability for middle class students.

Governor Scott Walker proudly identifies with the Tea Party and has implemented their agenda consistently during his tenure. He is not a friend to students dependent on public education or to the struggling middle class.  How is it possible that he has undermined so many people, while maintaining his popularity and place in the polls?

It only depends on who votes on Tuesday. If the voter-eligible students in Wisconsin turned out in strength at the polls, the reign of Governor Walker would end, and Wisconsin could rightly claim to be governed by the majority of its citizens. The power of the Koch brothers and their Tea Party allies could be defused by the most conventional means: the ballot box.

Wisconsin has become a national symbol of the backlash against the Tea Party and the monied interests that have no stake in your future.  It has risen heroically against a politician and his regressive agenda. It is an inspiration to students across the nation.

If the eligible student voters of Wisconsin vote in strength on Tuesday, the state will be a national symbol of student power at the polls.  No one should stay home, claiming that they have no influence on the political tide in their state. You have decisive influence, not only for Wisconsin, but for the entire nation. Our hearts are in your hands. Seize the ballot and vote for the recall of Governor Scott Walker.