inside job - see it NOW while you can

[oddlots]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

Great piece DS.

Obviously you would disagree, but I think you are being unnecessarily harsh here.

1) I don't think the film casts Soros or Frank in a particular light one way or the other. They barely appear. I think Frank's only statement was "I don't hear confessions." Soros simply pointed out that the music had already stopped by the time Chuck Prince uttered his famous banker's lament: "We have to keep dancing etc." Frankly and in general I think Soros's commentary on markets is quite valuable and highly-under rated. (E.g., the observation that reciprocity is - conveniently - ignored as a factor in markets.) I still don't understand why he is so hated. In short, I don't think this is a strong point in your argument (and therefore in your review.)

2) I think this analysis is questionable:

The banking collapse was a carefully planned strategic attack on the working people of this country and the world. It was designed to do exactly what it is doing here and in Europe: create a massive crisis to justify "austerity" for the masses. This is what Naomi Klein has styled "disaster capitalism" at its most perverse. The capitalist class--the bankers and corporations and the Super-Rich--planned and encouraged this collapse in a thousand different ways precisely to create a disaster so compelling that they could dismantle every social benefit that ordinary people have achieved in the last century and a half. Tens of thousands of people have lost their homes to the banks and thousands more will. Millions have lost their jobs and may never find work again; the real unemployment rate--that is, if you count people so discouraged that they have given up the job search, and those who can only find part-time work--is a Depression-level 22.5% Thousands of teachers and other government employees are being laid off and many more will be as the disaster unfolds. The voices that are already calling for gutting or cutting Social Security and Medicare will become a swelling chorus as soon as the mid-term elections are over. Throughout Europe governments are gutting the social programs that have been in place in some countries since WWII and in others since the 1880s. The rulers created this crisis to strip the working class of the protections it had gained and to reinforce raw elite power. The disaster is a strategy in the class war.

To put it mildly, I think this is a very hard thesis to prove. I also think ultimately it's a distraction.

"Rulers"? "Class war"? In terms of the downfall of the middle classes of the industrialised west, I think what people need to learn is how their belief in real estate undid them. There's obviously much more to the story than that, but without this "buy in" the most recent chapter could not have happened. Real estate was what enabled the bait and switch by which a formerly relatively industrial economy could be switched for a financialised "new" economy of financial and derivative "services" and the decline masked. Or, more broadly, what people need to realise is that asset-price Keynsianism was never going to end any other way than badly. In short, I just don't buy that the entire citizenry is faultless and the "rulers" are to blame. It's just not credible.

3) The film does not achieve everything that one might want it to but I really can't see that it could have achieved effectively much more than it took on in a feature documentary format. (What you seem to have in mind is simply a different film.)

4) Great Hussman piece. He's not alone in arguing for this. It is the Swedish model and was championed by Yves Smith and many others.

[Adeptus]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

So how the hell can you see it if its not in a city near you?

Torrent download: http://tinyurl.com/4c23kwr

Just make sure you buy the DVD when it comes out ;-)

[Dave Stratman]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

Great piece DS.

Obviously you would disagree, but I think you are being unnecessarily harsh here.

1) I don't think the film casts Soros or Frank in a particular light one way or the other. They barely appear. I think Frank's only statement was "I don't hear confessions." Soros simply pointed out that the music had already stopped by the time Chuck Prince uttered his famous banker's lament: "We have to keep dancing etc." Frankly and in general I think Soros's commentary on markets is quite valuable and highly-under rated. (E.g., the observation that reciprocity is - conveniently - ignored as a factor in markets.) I still don't understand why he is so hated. In short, I don't think this is a strong point in your argument (and therefore in your review.)

2) I think this analysis is questionable:



To put it mildly, I think this is a very hard thesis to prove. I also think ultimately it's a distraction.

"Rulers"? "Class war"? In terms of the downfall of the middle classes of the industrialised west, I think what people need to learn is how their belief in real estate undid them. There's obviously much more to the story than that, but without this "buy in" the most recent chapter could not have happened. Real estate was what enabled the bait and switch by which a formerly relatively industrial economy could be switched for a financialised "new" economy of financial and derivative "services" and the decline masked. Or, more broadly, what people need to realise is that asset-price Keynsianism was never going to end any other way than badly. In short, I just don't buy that the entire citizenry is faultless and the "rulers" are to blame. It's just not credible.

3) The film does not achieve everything that one might want it to but I really can't see that it could have achieved effectively much more than it took on in a feature documentary format. (What you seem to have in mind is simply a different film.)

4) Great Hussman piece. He's not alone in arguing for this. It is the Swedish model and was championed by Yves Smith and many others.

Thanks, oddlots.

I think there is a great deal of merit to FDR’s statement, "If it happens you can bet it was planned that way." Some indications that something was planned to happen a certain way are if something required a lot of coordination to pull off, it benefits very powerful people, and it is allowed to continue even after it has brought disaster to a great many ordinary people.

The bankers and mortgage underwriters who perpetrated massive fraud in creating the current disaster were rewarded for their efforts with salaries and bonuses in the hundreds of millions, much of it from the public purse, rather than being prosecuted and imprisoned for their crimes–which is what happened to 1,100 Savings and Loan executives at the close of the S&L debacle. The CEOs and public officials (e.g., Geithner, Bernanke, and Larry Summers [who split on his own] and elected officials responsible for this calamity are still in charge. Why? Because they did the job they were supposed to do.

Where did people’s belief in real estate come from? People have been trained from an early age to aspire to home ownership and to see it as a mark of maturity and responsibility. The tax laws are set up to encourage it. The Fed’s interest rates encouraged the housing bubble. Alan Greenspan, the Maestro himself, encouraged people to take out adjustable rate mortgages at precisely the time when ARMs were the worst possible choice. People who didn’t own homes were told by the media that other people were making big money selling their homes and "trading up." In many different ways, people were manipulated by very powerful figures–figures they had been taught to respect–into believing that they should buy a home.

But the history of training, tax policy, and outright manipulation misses a crucial point: that the real estate bubble was based on fraud perpetrated by many powerful actors. I’m sure you must be aware of Prof. William Black’s work. Bill Black was part of the federal team that put nearly 1,100 S&L executives in prison in the early 1990s and he has been outspoken on the current crisis. Quoting Black:

"Let us deal with the ‘borrower fraud’ argument first because it is the area containing the most erroneous assumptions. There was fraud at every step in the home finance food chain: the appraisers were paid to overvalue real estate; mortgage brokers were paid to induce borrowers to accept loan terms they could not possibly afford; loan applications overstated the borrowers' incomes; speculators lied when they claimed that six different homes were their principal dwelling; mortgage securitizers made false reps and warranties about the quality of the packaged loans; credit ratings agencies were overpaid to overrate the securities sold on to investors; and investment banks stuffed collateralized debt obligations with toxic securities that were handpicked by hedge fund managers to ensure they would self destruct.

"That homeowners would default on the nonprime mortgages was a foregone conclusion throughout the industry -- indeed, it was the desired outcome." http://dailybail.com/home/william-bl...d-everywh.html

I understand that "rulers" and "class war" are terms whose use is not encouraged in our society, but they accurately describe the situation. Warren Buffet famously said, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Buffet is right. Otherwise one would have to conclude that the many developments of the past forty years that have resulted in the massive transfer of wealth in our society from the working class to the wealthy and the super-rich were somehow just a mistake. Maybe if we asked for our money back...

The banking collapse has to be understood in its context. Its context is the past 40 years or so since the "revolution of rising expectations" swept the world. The revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s and early '70s scared the hell out of the ruling elites, and they embarked on a counteroffensive designed to lower people's expectations and make them more tractable. The government gave companies tax breaks to ship their jobs overseas and to replace workers with machines; passed NAFTA; slashed welfare for mothers of dependent children; trashed workers' retirement programs; launched the War on Terror and invaded Iraq and Afghanistan: all these and many more such actions by government and corporations were designed to make working people feel frightened and insecure and unwilling to challenge corporate and government power.

These policies are succeeding. Workers’ wages peaked in1973, even though their productivity advanced 2.8% a year from 1973 to 1990 and 4% a year after that. The effects of fear in the workforce are clear: 2009 witnessed the fewest days lost to strikes since 1947, when record-keeping began.

The banking collapse is part of this history. We have not even begun to feel its full effects or to experience "the new normal" that the gigantic debts incurred through the crisis will be used to justify.
　

　

[oddlots]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

You make a very strong argument. I just think that the beast does not have a brain. It has an ideology which is more akin to the "plan" that appears to animate an ant colony and yet cannot be located no matter how hard one looks.

Trying to restate my admittedly foggy argument, my point in suggesting that the "ruled" need to consider their part in the process is not to apportion blame but to expose how the ideology has infected their brains.

But perhaps the point is really more of a distraction than its worth. I certainly agree with your characterisation of the effects of the ideology as being a massive transfer of wealth and power away from the wage dependent (that is, from the democratic majority.)

[oddlots]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

Lecture given by Charles Ferguson, director of Inside Job, at MIT care of Naked Capitalism:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/...al-crisis.html

[lektrode]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

Lecture given by Charles Ferguson, director of Inside Job, at MIT care of Naked Capitalism:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/...al-crisis.html

funny how on the _comments_ it immediately devolved into a foodfight re: the congresswoman from AZ....
(why i stayed way away from that one...)

ps - funny how comments re the INSIDE JOB movie vs the attempted assasination will likely be used as a distraction by the left to send us onto guns an stuff, rather than the fact that the NYC bankster mob is screwing The Public - figger it only a matter of time before they use samesex marriage for same (distraction from the real violation of 'civil rights' of not being spent to oblivion while the political class makes hay)

[Dave Stratman]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

funny how on the _comments_ it immediately devolved into a foodfight re: the congresswoman from AZ....
(why i stayed way away from that one...)

ps - funny how comments re the INSIDE JOB movie vs the attempted assasination will likely be used as a distraction by the left to send us onto guns an stuff, rather than the fact that the NYC bankster mob is screwing The Public - figger it only a matter of time before they use samesex marriage for same (distraction from the real violation of 'civil rights' of not being spent to oblivion while the political class makes hay)

I agree. I just had a look at the comments on "naked capitalism." Incredible how they got immediately into this crazy argument about Tucson and gun control. That is the usual role played by the left: focus on the divisive BS and obscure what's really being done to us.

How's this for a crazy use of Tucson? In the Boston Globe this morning, Social Security offocials announced that they will no longer be sending representatives to meet with seniors in smaller Mass. communities--because of "security concerns" raised by the Tucson shooting.

[lektrode]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

Thanks, oddlots.

yes - many thanks to _both_ of you! = fabulously spot-on commentary on the movie + full-throttle, bare-knuckled, un-varnished debate on the issues... gawd how i love this stuff! = why i said on an earlier post re Best Investment of 2010 was easy: a subscription to: http://www.itulip.com/ - eye think i've learned more about whats _really_ going on The USA on these 2 posts than in the past 30+ years of reading the wsj (where the oped section and the letters to the editor are my faves ;)

1) I don't think the film casts Soros or Frank in a particular light one way or the other. They barely appear. I think Frank's only statement was "I don't hear confessions."

HOOOOO HAAAAAA hahahaha!!!!
no, i guess he woudnt would he -- and one would hafta wonder, if he did, what the "listening hole" would be used for....

i also thot it funny to listen as Mr Hot Money himself, now that he's made his billions raping-pillaging/plundering, gets all warm n fuzzy about whats gone 'wrong' - but he's hardly blameless, but hey, move-on-over-to-the-left's staff needs to eat too, so....

I think there is a great deal of merit to FDR’s statement, "If it happens you can bet it was planned that way."

precisely: where theres smoldering ruins, there mustave been a match lit somewhere (as much as i hate to agree with F-depression-R's point of view - i'm getting round to the idea that he was right when he said:
"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
and why methinks he ended up being right when he basically set forth to "tax em till they bleed" at upto 90% to bail out the rest of us - its just no small irony that his policies led us to where we are today!

Some indications that something was planned to happen a certain way are if something required a lot of coordination to pull off, it benefits very powerful people, and it is allowed to continue even after it has brought disaster to a great many ordinary people.

whats even 'funnier' is the political class' solution is the cluster-f__k known as: ''Restoring American Financial Stability Act''
nears one can tell from what eye have seen of it, its another obamacare plan for the banksters, as tell me what part of this nightmare is actually 'helping' us? all ive seen so far is fees go up, terms tightened and "minumum payments" on things like home depots charge accts that A: dont even come close to paying down the balance in the "0% interest period" and B: if you should miss that min payment, YOU GET NAILED WITH A $35 charge!?

bee-u-tee-ful, aint it? barney and chrissy must sure be proud of themselves!
why is it every phreakin time the dems start "helping the little guys" we get even MORE screwed?

The bankers and mortgage underwriters who perpetrated massive fraud in creating the current disaster were rewarded for their efforts with salaries and bonuses in the hundreds of millions, much of it from the public purse, rather than being prosecuted and imprisoned for their crimes–which is what happened to 1,100 Savings and Loan executives at the close of the S&L debacle. The CEOs and public officials (e.g., Geithner, Bernanke, and Larry Summers [who split on his own] and elected officials responsible for this calamity are still in charge. Why? Because they did the job they were supposed to do.

like i said: WHEN DOES THIS BECOME CRIMINAL???

Where did people’s belief in real estate come from? ... Greenspan, the Maestro himself, encouraged people to take out adjustable rate mortgages at precisely the time when ARMs were the worst possible choice. People who didn’t own homes were told by the media that other people were making big money selling their homes and "trading up."...

again, we can thank the lamestream media, for "flip this house" and/or the purveyors of "how to make a million, with no money down, using OPM and - the kicker: Pay No Taxes" = the purrfect crime - with the FIREmen providing the matches and gasoline!

But the history of training, tax policy, and outright manipulation misses a crucial point: that the real estate bubble was based on fraud perpetrated by many powerful actors. I’m sure you must be aware of Prof. William Black’s work. Bill Black was part of the federal team that put nearly 1,100 S&L executives in prison in the early 1990s and he has been outspoken on the current crisis. Quoting Black:

"Let us deal with the ‘borrower fraud’ argument first because it is the area containing the most erroneous assumptions. There was fraud at every step in the home finance food chain: the appraisers were paid to overvalue real estate; mortgage brokers were paid to induce borrowers to accept loan terms they could not possibly afford; loan applications overstated the borrowers' incomes; speculators lied when they claimed that six different homes were their principal dwelling; mortgage securitizers made false reps and warranties about the quality of the packaged loans; credit ratings agencies were overpaid to overrate the securities sold on to investors; and investment banks stuffed collateralized debt obligations with toxic securities that were handpicked by hedge fund managers to ensure they would self destruct.

and what in hell has congress done about it all - what - dont any of them remember any of this?

"That homeowners would default on the nonprime mortgages was a foregone conclusion throughout the industry -- indeed, it was the desired outcome." http://dailybail.com/home/william-bl...d-everywh.html

i also found it interesting that the movie left out the part in 2005 when the former gov of NH, sen john sununu on the senate banking commt brought up the 1st bill to reign-in fannie&freddie and none of the dems on the commt would vote for it and then in 2006, they all VOTED AGAINST IT - now tell me why is anybody surprised that while they were _fully_ in control of all 3 branches, that the biggest crime in the history of the world was committed, the bankster mob got cleanly away with nearly all of the money AND NOBODY, NOT ONE OF THESE SOBS, HAVE GONE TO JAIL???

all i can say is, after the hootin and hollerin from the left about how ole GeeDubya was "the worst prez ever" - the hypocracy is absolutely breathtaking!!!!

I understand that "rulers" and "class war" are terms whose use is not encouraged in our society, but they accurately describe the situation. Warren Buffet famously said, "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Buffet is right. Otherwise one would have to conclude that the many developments of the past forty years that have resulted in the massive transfer of wealth in our society from the working class to the wealthy and the super-rich were somehow just a mistake. Maybe if we asked for our money back...

heh!
i got a better idea: until the accounts balance - on social 'security' at the very least - that 100% of _all_ income get the soc-sec tax levied on em - I WANT WARREN BUFFET and the rest of the billionaire-boyz-club, including the sports heros and the the 'celebrity universe' making millions while producing lousy-to-the-point-of-unwatchable tv/movies to PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE and limiting the soc-sec tax to the 1st 106grand isnt PATENTLY UNFAIR!!! (and i'm from NH, the live free or die state ;)

The banking collapse has to be understood in its context. Its context is the past 40 years or so since the "revolution of rising expectations" swept the world. The revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s and early '70s scared the hell out of the ruling elites,

hell, if we can get the masses to watch INSIDE JOB and peruse a few of EJ's notes, they havent seen _anything_ yet!

and they embarked on a counteroffensive designed to lower people's expectations and make them more tractable. The government gave companies tax breaks to ship their jobs overseas and to replace workers with machines; passed NAFTA; slashed welfare for mothers of dependent children; trashed workers' retirement programs; launched the War on Terror and invaded Iraq and Afghanistan: all these and many more such actions by government and corporations were designed to make working people feel frightened and insecure and unwilling to challenge corporate and government power.

These policies are succeeding. Workers’ wages peaked in1973, even though their productivity advanced 2.8% a year from 1973 to 1990 and 4% a year after that. The effects of fear in the workforce are clear: 2009 witnessed the fewest days lost to strikes since 1947, when record-keeping began.

The banking collapse is part of this history. We have not even begun to feel its full effects or to experience "the new normal" that the gigantic debts incurred through the crisis will be used to justify.

its almost unbelieveable - i must say dave/oddlots - eye havent read anything this thot-provoking since i sat down one night and read the entire 'fear & loathing in las vegas' in one sitting.....

[Dave Stratman]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

lektrode--Thanks for the comments and the analysis.

[Chomsky]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

You make a very strong argument. I just think that the beast does not have a brain. It has an ideology which is more akin to the "plan" that appears to animate an ant colony and yet cannot be located no matter how hard one looks.

Trying to restate my admittedly foggy argument, my point in suggesting that the "ruled" need to consider their part in the process is not to apportion blame but to expose how the ideology has infected their brains.

But perhaps the point is really more of a distraction than its worth. I certainly agree with your characterisation of the effects of the ideology as being a massive transfer of wealth and power away from the wage dependent (that is, from the democratic majority.)

I'm with you: systematic ideology shapes individual behavior. It's what Bill Black describes as a "control fraud," where the system parameters are set up to encourage fraud from the top down. With each successive rollback of market regulations, we've gone further and further down the road to massive control fraud, just as we did before the Great Depression. One's own behavior in such a system need never be questioned, since the parameters are "given," absolving one of guilt for one's actions. Hence, no convictions.

[tsetsefly]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

Charles Ferguson’s new documentary about the current financial crisis, Inside Job, has gotten rave reviews from TIME, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe among others. The Globe’s reviewer virtually guaranteed the film would lead to riots in the streets. As you can imagine, my expectations were high for this movie, if tinged a bit by cynicism about its Establishment reviewers. Unfortunately my cynicism was well-founded.

Inside Job is an entertaining but misleading view of the economic crisis. True, watching the Chair of Harvard's Economics Department and the Dean of Columbia Business School make fools of themselves on camera is worth the price of admission. But the documentary minimizes the extent of the looting of America and the world by the bankers, insurers, and their government enablers. It parades some very guilty and inviting targets across the screen but fails to look deeper into the forces behind the crisis. It obscures the role of the Federal Reserve. It presents some of the perps and other Establishment figures as reliable commentators. Finally the movie offers laughably inadequate solutions to the banking disaster.

Minimizes the extent of the looting: The movie discusses TARP--the $700 billion bank bailout engineered by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, fresh from his job as CEO of Goldman Sachs, and the $120 billion bailout of AIG, the world's largest insurance company. The entire AIG bailout, it so happens, went straight from AIG to Goldman Sachs, paying Goldman 100 cents on the dollar for bad investments it had made in AIG. While the obvious conflict of interest here and the fact that U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for bankers' losses on unwise, often fraudulent, investments are surely causes for outrage, the amounts in these two instances are mere drops in the bucket compared with the heavy-duty bailouts undertaken in the following months. The combined Bush and Obama bailouts were estimated in July 2009 by Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, at $23.7 trillion dollars. Inside Job's focus on the relatively piddling amounts--less than a measly trillion dollars, for Pete's sake--gives an entirely false picture of the extent of the damage that the bankers and government have wrought, the real effects of which will impoverish generations of Americans.

I am continually amazed by people's unwavering faith in government and members of congress are happy to join in on the Wall Street finger pointing, completely forgetting the critical role government played in all of this. Even after the Bear Sterns debacle you had Dobbs urging banks to lend more to the low income brackets, fannie and freddie was the end buyer for most of the junk mortgages, the federal reserve has served only the banksters interest since its inception yet on the mainstream the criticism of them is timid at best.

Until people realize that government plays a big role in the ripping off of America then nothing will change.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

I'm with you: systematic ideology shapes individual behavior. It's what Bill Black describes as a "control fraud," where the system parameters are set up to encourage fraud from the top down. With each successive rollback of market regulations, we've gone further and further down the road to massive control fraud, just as we did before the Great Depression. One's own behavior in such a system need never be questioned, since the parameters are "given," absolving one of guilt for one's actions. Hence, no convictions.

What this line of reasoning misses are the key questions, Who set up "the system parameters...to encourage fraud" and why? Or who devised the ideology which then shapes individual behavior--and why?

Let me give an example from my own field, education policy. I was an Education Policy Fellow in the U.S. Office of Education from 1976-77 and then became Washington Director of the National PTA. On the day I took office with the PTA--9/2/77--Senators Moynihan and Packwood with 55 co-sponsors introduced their Tuition Tax Credit Act, which would have given parents a tax credit of up to $500 to send their child to private school. The bill, had it passed, would have cost about $6 billion, at a time when the total federal commitment to public education was about $13. More significantly, the bill would have reversed the federal role in education. Since the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the role of the federal government had been to equalize education opportunity. The effect of the Tuition Tax Credit Act would have been to disequalize education, since only wealthier parents would have been able to capture the entire tax credit.

A coalition of 80 major education, civil rights, labor, civic, and religious organizations (which I directed) defeated the bill in August, 1978--by one vote.

But this bill was only the opening shot in the current war against the public schools which has continued to this day. In April 1983 the Reagan commission on public education produced "A Nation at Risk," which famously began, "If a foreign nation had imposed the present public school system on our nation, it would be seen as an act of war." ANAR recommended a range of measures, all of them destructive of the schools: privatization, school-based management, school "choice," merit pay for teachers, and others. ANAR was swiftly followed by a spate of national and state-level commissions organized by the Business Roundtable. These were accompanied by a huge--and ongoing--media blitz: "Why Teachers Can't Teach," Why Have Our Schools Failed?" and numerous, almost daily articles painting a bleak and thoroughly misleading picture of the public schools performance. (There's no space here to refute all the false claims about public schools. The key point is that American students perform at the highest international standards when family income is taken into account; for example, US students from upper-income suburbs have the highest scores in the world. But the US has the highest incidence of childhood poverty among all industrialized nations. Students from poverty-stricken families have a range of problems, including homelessness, dental and health problems, and others that schools are in no position to fix.)

The most sophisticated of these state plans was proposed in Minnesota. In 1985 I was hired by the Minnesota Education Association to develop a long range strategy for the union and to help it defeat the Minnesota Education Reform Act. This bill proposed many of the common reforms, but it went one step farther. It proposed that, at the end of the 10th grade, all Minnesota publc school students would leave school with a "completion certificate." The top 20% would be invited back to school for pre-college courses.

Minnesota at the time had the highest school completion rate in the country; 91% of its youngsters completed K-12. Passage of the Reform Act would have dramatically reduced that number.

We asked the Minnesota Business Partnership why they were proposing this radical act. They replied, "To give the students more personal freedom." We said, "Bullshit. You're doing this to drive kids out of school without a diploma so that the only work they can get is flipping hamburgers."

We defeated the Reform Act, but it was soon followed by reform bills in other states that required students to pass a "high-stakes test" to get a diploma. Florida, Texas, then Massachusetts, then dozens of other states soon followed. A consequence of these tests is that a high proportion of students drop out of school in the ninth grade. Now these high stakes tests are required in every state. In addition, many states have moved to privatize their schools.

In December 2001 Congress passed the No Child Left Behind act, written by Sen. Kennedy and Cong. George Miller--two liberals--and championed by George Bush and the Business Roundtable. NCLB was the most intrusive and draconian education law ever passed. (The NEA and AFT didn't fight it. They simply demanded that it be "fully funded.") In 2010 President Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, are pushing school privatization (charter schools), high-stakes testing, merit pay, and the whole range of Business Roundtable-designed reforms.

The purpose behind all these reforms is to make public education more fragmented and more dramatically unequal, to crush the self-confidence of young people so that, if they can only find a low-paying job or no job at all, they will blame themselves instead of the system. The policy goal is that the schools will make the students fit into a society that is more unequal and less democratic. This profound change in the direction of eucation is part of the corporate strategy to lower people's expectations of life in our society. It is part of the same strategy as the banking crisis.

My point in this rather long example is to show that the change in ideology and "system parameters" did not just happen. They were planned, promoted, and fought for by the most powerful business forces in the society, and they didn't win acceptance without a great deal of pressure from the top. Even now I don't know a teacher or a parent who is in favor of them. But teachers have been betrayed by their unions--as usual--and parents don't have an organization that has a coherent undertanding of what's happening or is willing to fight it. The education and labor and other organizations that fought these measures in the National Coalition for Public Education in 1977-78 have been pressured and coopted into accepting these measures, even as their members still resist them. (Interestingly, according to the annual Gallup poll on education, parents give the public schools that their children attend high marks, while they tend to give the public schools in general low marks; the media campaign contradicts their own experience.)

So the issue isn't simply one of ideology but one of power. On one side are teachers, parents, and students, who generally share the goal that each student be educated to the fullest of his ability. On the other side are the policy makers (school boards, state legislators, Congress, and the business forces behind them) whose goal is that education replicate and legitimize social inequality. The battle over the schools is part of the class war.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

I am continually amazed by people's unwavering faith in government and members of congress are happy to join in on the Wall Street finger pointing, completely forgetting the critical role government played in all of this. Even after the Bear Sterns debacle you had Dobbs urging banks to lend more to the low income brackets, fannie and freddie was the end buyer for most of the junk mortgages, the federal reserve has served only the banksters interest since its inception yet on the mainstream the criticism of them is timid at best.

Until people realize that government plays a big role in the ripping off of America then nothing will change.

I guess I'm not clear on your point here. Clearly it was the government that bailed out the banks and played a key role in the looting of America. Are you agreeing with me here, or do you think I'm letting the government off the hook by also pointing the finger at Wall Street?

My own view is this: the government is controlled by Wall Street, the big corporations, and the war machine. The politicians are merely front men for the real rulers.

[Dave Stratman]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

If anyone is interested in further analysis of the battle over public education, let me suggest two articles:

"School Reform and the Attack on Public Education" - the text of a keynote speech by Dave Stratman to the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents in 1997.


"You'll Never Be Good Enough: Schooling and Social Control" by Dave Stratman.

[lektrode]

Re: inside job - see it NOW while you can

What this line of reasoning misses are the key questions, Who set up "the system parameters...to encourage fraud" and why? Or who devised the ideology which then shapes individual behavior--and why?
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The purpose behind all these reforms is to make public education more fragmented and more dramatically unequal, to crush the self-confidence of young people so that, if they can only find a low-paying job or no job at all, they will blame themselves instead of the system.

it also seems to me to be a misdirected effort to push most into the college/lib-arts career-track when lots would benefit more by vocational training, then maybe followed up by a biz/science-type curriculum once one gets past the k-12 stage - i say this because altho i went thru a HS vocational program; industrial electronics (with all k-12 in MA public schools) and altho i think my results came up short from the viewpoint of my losing interest late in my jr year - it was quite ironically those 3 years in voc-hs that led to my current career/trade in the boatbiz (at 75/hour _when_ i can get it, which hasnt been all that much since the meltdown began oct07 - but it beats the hell out of my 'career' in manufacturing, which by 1985 was quite clearly doomed as a future for me, as by then i'd figgerd out that my only 'job-security' was my trunk full of tools and knowing how to use em)

anyway... i digress and getting off topic for this thread - these discussions are facinating, BTW - an amazing resouce that some of you guys so passionately contribute, seemingly effortlessly (esp for a guy like me who types with 2fingahz, but can cut/paste with the best of em ;)

The policy goal is that the schools will make the students fit into a society that is more unequal and less democratic. This profound change in the direction of eucation is part of the corporate strategy to lower people's expectations of life in our society. It is part of the same strategy as the banking crisis.

My point in this rather long example is to show that the change in ideology and "system parameters" did not just happen. They were planned, promoted, and fought for by the most powerful business forces in the society, and they didn't win acceptance without a great deal of pressure from the top. Even now I don't know a teacher or a parent who is in favor of them. But teachers have been betrayed by their unions--as usual--....
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So the issue isn't simply one of ideology but one of power. On one side are teachers, parents, and students, who generally share the goal that each student be educated to the fullest of his ability. On the other side are the policy makers (school boards, state legislators, Congress, and the business forces behind them) whose goal is that education replicate and legitimize social inequality. The battle over the schools is part of the class war.

havent ever heard it put so thoroughly eloquently - thanks dave!

what do you think of this ?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...896954626.html

* OPINION
* JANUARY 11, 2011

In Budget Crises, an Opening for School Reform
School systems can put students first by making sure any layoffs account for teacher quality, not seniority.

By MICHELLE RHEE

In the past year, 46 states grappled with budget deficits of more than $130 billion. This year could be worse as federal recovery dollars dry up. And yet, for education reform, 2011 could be the best of times.

California, to name one example, bridged its $25.4 billion budget gap by cutting billions from public education. It is now forced to cut another $18 billion to fill its current deficit. State executives and legislatures face severe choices and disappointments that could undo political careers and derail progress.

On the bright side, public support is building for a frontal attack on the educational status quo. And policy makers are rising to the challenge, not only because their budgets are tighter than ever, but also because they see an opportunity to reverse the current trend of discouraging academic results for our children.

Three weeks ago, I founded StudentsFirst, a national organization to defend and promote the interests of children in public education and to pursue an aggressive reform agenda to make American schools the best in the world. In the first 48 hours, 100,000 Americans signed up as members, contributing $1 million in small online donations.

This was a sign that we had tapped into a vein of both concern and hope. There were others: Several governors, in states such as Florida, New Jersey, New Mexico and Nevada have been interested in how we might join forces. Mayors in big cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Newark want to push the envelope, too.

This week StudentsFirst is introducing its legislative agenda, "A Challenge to States and Districts: Policies that Put Students First." It is a comprehensive set of policies and legislation that we believe must be adopted to create the right environment at local and state levels, where transformational school reform can take hold.

We do not pretend that we are the first to advocate for the ideas in this agenda—many organizations, policy makers and individuals have made important contributions to educational reform. However, we do believe that the fiscal crisis, and the latest embarrassing rankings of U.S. students by the Program for International Student Assessment compared to their international peers (of 65 countries, American 15-year-olds were 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math), can focus the nation on the need for change.

Reversing this country's quiet retreat from international educational superiority will require courage and prioritization through several legislative cycles. But not all of the ideas in our agenda require big spending—and some are even budget opportunities for savvy governors and lawmakers.

StudentsFirst's efforts will center on three key areas:

• Treating teachers like professionals. Compensation, staffing decisions and professional development should be based on teachers' effectiveness, not on their seniority. That means urging states and districts to implement a strong performance pay system for the best teachers, while discontinuing tenure as job protection for ineffective teachers. This will ensure that the money spent on teacher salaries goes to the hard-working professionals who are improving student achievement every day.

The budget crisis inevitably requires layoffs of school staff. Teacher-layoff policies are a good example of how recognizing quality over seniority translates into responsible decision-making during difficult economic times. Currently, layoff decisions are based on seniority, which means the last person hired is the first person fired. However, research, such as a recent study by Dan Goldhaber at the University of Washington, shows that when teacher layoffs are determined by seniority it hurts students and teachers.

• Empowering parents and families with real choices and real information. Parents, especially those who live in lower-income neighborhoods, have limited educational options for their children. StudentsFirst believes that states and school districts must remove the barriers that limit the number of available seats in high-quality schools. This includes allowing the best charter schools to grow and serve more students. It also means giving poor families access to publicly funded scholarships to attend private schools. All children deserve the chance to get a great education; no family should be forced to send kids to a school they know is failing.

StudentsFirst also urges legislation to equip parents and communities with the tools they need to effectively organize and lead reform efforts when their public-school system fails them. California's "parent trigger" law, for example, forces the restructuring of a poor performing school when more than 50% of the parents whose children attend it sign a petition.

• Ensure accountability for every dollar and every child. Due to the financial downturn in the states, it is critically important to ensure that every dollar spent on public education has a positive impact on student learning. Unfortunately, billions of dollars today are wasted on things such as paying for advanced degrees for teachers that have no measurable impact on student achievement.

States will continue to find it difficult to solve budget deficits if they continue to ignore problems surrounding the current structure of their benefits and pensions for teachers and administrators. For example, states and districts must shift new employees from defined-benefit pension programs to portable, defined-contribution plans where employees can contribute a proportionate amount to their own retirement savings. This will help ensure that states aren't draining their budgets with pension payouts.

Sometimes only a shakeup in the school governance structure can bring about fiscal responsibility. After all, the buck has to stop somewhere—and knowing exactly who is responsible and accountable for spending and academic achievement has proven to show positive results. Mayoral control is one way to achieve this. We've seen success is places like Washington, D.C., and New York City, where funds are directed toward initiatives that improve achievement, and test scores and graduation rates have greatly increased.

Now is the time to act. With 28 new governors, 10 big mayoral races this year, and shifting ideological balances inside of old political parties, there is a real opportunity for change.

Ms. Rhee was chancellor of the public school system in Washington, D.C., from 2007-2010. She is founder and CEO of StudentsFirst.