A jaundiced look at the world we live in.
According to the New York Daily News, a Brooklyn principal has reprimanded a sixth-grade teacher for selling students a book that tells how to “recognize those serving Satan and bring them to Jesus.”
Steven Arizmendi sold “He Came to Set the Captives Free” to four of his students at Junior High School 220 in Sunset Park for $5 apiece. The science teacher also loaned copies of the evangelical novel to eight students.
One of the most persistent complaints about broadcast journalism–a complaint that comes from both left and right–is the practice on shows like Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week, etc. of asking questions of their guests, allowing those guests to answer, and then moving on to the next question. The hosts rarely challenge even the most obvious fabrications, exaggerations and spin. They rarely follow up a question with another, deeper one.
These exercises do little more than allow politicians to pontificate. They reiterate their talking points, confident that they will not be called out. Jay Rosen has a better idea:
NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen tweeted an idea about improving the Sunday morning talk shows. He says the programs, rather than letting politicians get away with distortions, should offer an online fact check each week of exaggerations and lies. For the guests, says Rosen, the format beckons them to evade, deny, elide, demagogue and confuse, but then they pay for it later if they give into temptation and make that choice.
Something along these lines would certainly do wonders for the credibility of our increasingly feckless pundits.
The charge that government wastes money (or “throws money at problems) is a favorite accusation of politicians of all persuasions. Certainly, lawmakers should refuse to fund activities that have been shown not to work. But as Steve Benen points out, the definition of waste generally owes more to ideology than evidence.
Sometimes, a “perfect storm” of problems forces us to make much-needed changes that are politically impossible in normal times. Perhaps—just perhaps—this is one of those times when we can use a few of the fiscal lemons we are being handed to make policy lemonade.
Storm number one is revenue. Indiana is in a world of fiscal hurt. Tax receipts are well below the levels that would allow us to keep state spending flat, and the cuts that have already compromised many essential services are now slicing education funding. Public universities are hurting, but by far the most damage will be done to public K-12 schools that are already struggling. As Matt Tully has reminded us in his outstanding series about Manual High School, these schools have virtually no human or fiscal resources to fall back on. They face enormous challenges, and we have an obligation to help them meet those challenges. It’s not only the right thing to do, our civic self-interest requires it.
Storm number two is costs. Which brings me to the Star’s recent report on the pay and perks of area school superintendents.
Let me be clear: I’m not begrudging the superintendents their compensation, nor criticizing the school boards who are paying them. I understand the competitive pressures that have brought us to a point where a superintendent’s compensation package in even a small district runs upward of 200,000.
What I don’t understand is why Marion County needs eleven of them.
The entire student population of Marion County today is less than the enrollment of IPS in 1967. Logic says it should not take eleven superintendents, eleven assistant superintendents, eleven curriculum directors, eleven lunchroom operations, eleven bus systems and eleven school boards –together with the costs of clerical staffs and physical facilities to house them all—to educate those students.
I understand that the politics of consolidating these districts is toxic. The number of interest groups fighting over the diminishing supply of public patronage is huge. Even the Kernan-Shepard Report avoided addressing Marion County’s overabundance of districts, although the principles they endorsed elsewhere certainly apply. And it is certainly true that a legislature without the will to make even the most obvious adjustments to Indiana’s dysfunctional governing apparatus—a legislature unwilling to abolish 1008 unnecessary township trustees and meaningfully reduce the 10,000 plus public officials we pay with our tax dollars—is unlikely to consolidate the administration of Marion County’s schools.
Ideally, the Mayor would provide leadership on this issue. The public schools, as Matt Tully has convincingly demonstrated, are key to our city’s ability to succeed, key to our economic development efforts and our quality of life. Consolidating the bureaucracies—not the schools themselves, but their duplicative administrations—would allow us to free up millions of dollars that could be used to improve what goes on in the classroom. The benefits to the city would be profound, and the message sent would be inspiring.
Stormy times call for something other than patronage as usual.
I’m at that time of life when the new years come around a lot more frequently. (As my husband says, “Life is like a roll of toilet paper—the closer you get to the end, the faster it turns.”) But no matter how often we ring out the old and ring in the new, it’s a time for reflections and resolutions, both communal and personal.
For those engaged in the fight for GLBT equality, the year that just ended brought mixed feelings and results. Maine and New York were bitter disappointments. On the other hand, progress more and more seems inevitable, inexorable. Little by little, as my generation “departs” (gentle term for “dies off”), younger people with gay friends and fewer prejudices take our place.
Obama has disappointed many in the community by not moving more quickly on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and other campaign promises. On the other hand, his White House has hosted more visibly gay people than any of his predecessors—and probably more than all of those predecessors combined—and his administration includes numerous openly gay appointees. Not very long ago, we would have all cheered just at the change in rhetoric emanating from the Oval Office. Much of the disappointment is a result of greatly expanded expectations, and the impatience nurtured by the truly stunning cultural changes of the past few years.
Speaking of those changes, this year the fourth-largest American city elected an openly lesbian mayor, and the California legislature chose an openly gay man as its next leader. Here in my own hometown of Indianapolis (a city often referred to as the buckle of the bible-belt), I attended a Christmas fundraiser for Indiana Equality, an umbrella organization formed a few years ago by GLBT groups to lobby our occasionally retrograde General Assembly. Among the 300 plus attendees were the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian Party chairs, and a number of elected officials and political candidates of all three parties. That just wouldn’t have happened a few years ago.
I could go on, but the bottom line here is that we need to reflect upon, recognize and celebrate the amazing amount of progress that has been made.
Which brings us to resolutions. And the first of those is to remind ourselves that, despite enormous progress, members of the GLBT community are not yet equal. There are too many states (including my own) where someone can legally be fired simply for being gay. There are too many states where the 1008+ legal benefits that come with marriage are inaccessible to gays and lesbians. There are too many states (including my own) where civil rights statutes do not bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. So resolution number one must be to recognize how much more needs to be done.
Resolution number two, obviously, is to keep fighting the good fight. Testify at legislative hearings. Write letters to the editors of local papers. Give every cent you can spare to the organizations that are fighting for equality. Work hard to elect gay and gay-friendly candidates. Talk to people—in your family, at your workplace, in your neighborhood—who may still not understand that gays remain second-class citizens in so many arenas. This can be incredibly difficult, but it is probably as important as anything you can do. The act of coming out by so many in the community—often at great emotional cost and financial risk—was undoubtedly the single biggest impetus to the positive social changes we have experienced.
And of course, no list of resolutions would be complete without the perennial one. This is the year I’m really going to lose weight. How about you?
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