Fitting In

It seems to be one high-stakes drama after another. Extreme dissension defines the day in that we pretend that our black-and-white ethics and standards would apply and appeal to all.

Reason has become a sapling amongst a forest of political agendas. Without the strength of reason, that tree that marks the center of the forest, the populace is lost.

From that tree of reason, People run free. Trees of the ideological species have grown such a canopy, however, that People are losing their footing on the dimly lit ground.

People want to feel empowered again.

In schools, students want to feel equally empowered – empowered with choice, opportunity for growth, cohesion, caring, belonging, and control.

People can no longer, particularly today, feel like they are being operated on. People must know that they are the operators.

America is now the macrocosm of schools.

The political culture has become a non-democratic, negative culture.

A negative culture robs us of our reason, rationality, long-term interests, and sense of well-being. We People have lived in communities, learning to get along, establishing rules for behavior, and meeting the expectations of these rules in order to survive and thrive. People inherently have the capability of creating positive culture because of the quest for survival, a quest which has lasted for millions of years. Fitting in with a group and promoting its success is a basic human drive. If it’s ones perception he belongs to a group, he will promote the well-being of that group. If, however, one feels outside of the group, that he doesn’t belong, can’t contribute, and is without influence, that person will not only mistrust those around him but will work toward their destruction. More so, that person will work to create an opposing culture, recruiting peers who also sense that they do not belong.

Welcome to America.

Welcome to our schools.

Schools must become a microcosm of America. Schools may empower students, offer them opportunities for control and influence, and breed positive culture. Schools connect members to one another, constructing community and belongingness. Schools are a springboard into our democracy. Schools are trees of reason, the center of the forest, and not a sampling but a redwood.

Watch closely our schools.

Listen to what’s happening.

Know that our democracy will return as students springboard into recreating our culture.

Middle Class Spinning in the Mud

This might be the most orderly manner in which to teach middle class economics:
1. Middle class makes $.
2. Middle class doesn’t make enough $ consume what the nation is capable of producing.
3. Middle class families accumulate debt in an effort to consume. (Consumption is very much propelled by the act of comparing with those who earn more $.)
4. Economic growth is slow and fragile because of middle class debts.
5. Nation enters debt as its economy sputters.
6. Nation takes from middle class in order to address the debt. (Conservative rhetoric casts middle class figures as reckless and financially undisciplined. Conservatives demonize middle class figures has being lazy, undeserving, and already having too much. Parties also misinform the public about deficits.)
8. Middle class makes relatively less $...
and the cycle spins and spins and spins and spins.

The Packers Led by Walker

Back in the ‘90s, it’s fairly well known that the Three Amigos (Favre, Winters, and Chmura) committed some “indiscretions”.
 
What’s lesser known is that the Packers organization hired the young ladies who participated in these indiscretions. They became communication specialists for the Packers.

What’s also lesser known is that Mike Holmgren hired the millionaire son of Bed, Bath and Beyond CEO Steven Temares to be Favre’s back-up quarterback. Bed, Bath and Beyond was one of the local Green Bay businesses behind the sponsorship of Holmgren Way.
 
Holmgren knew how to take care of his own and that, maybe above all other reasons, was why the Packers were able to go on a successful Super Bowl run in ’96-’97.

Of course, the Packers and Holmgren never behaved in such a manner. Packer fans and Wisconsinites would have never stood for such incompetency and lack of integrity.

Apparently, sports and politics are revered differently.

Last month, Governor Walker hired the 26-year-old mistress of a Republican state senator, making her one of the capitol’s communication specialists. Not only did this 26-year-old receive a state job but a salary which is 35% higher than her predecessor. (We’re broke don’t you know.)

Today, it’s reported that Walker hired another 20-something person to bring vibrancy and expertise to the capitol. Brian Deschane, a person with no college degree, little management experience, and two drunken-driving convictions, was hired to oversee the state’s environmental and regulatory matters.

Deschane will earn $81,500-per-year, a raise of 26% over his predecessor. Deschane’s qualifications? No, he wasn’t an adulterer. His father is the executive vice president for the Wisconsin Builders Association, an organization that gave the Walker campaign over $121,000 in donations. (We have a deficit to address after all.)

As a Wisconsinite and public school teacher, I’ve been thrust into purchasing box seats for the season. Anyone want my season tickets?        

Sunday Sermon

This is often called a Christian nation.

It is the role of all Christians to serve. One’s church and government are vehicles through which Christians in this nation may serve.

I appreciate the opportunity to serve my local community through church-sponsored dinners. I wash dishes.  Financially-stricken families attend with their children to satisfy their hunger. It’s a small price to pay, washing dishes.

Taxes are an equally small price to pay for hardship-stricken families in need of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security benefits.

This Christian nation, however, has developed the perception that only the Anti-Christ would raise taxes – the devil himself up from the pit of hell to reach into our pockets and steal our tax dollars. 

As a Christian nation, we’ve developed instead a political philosophy that takes from the needy, funnels what’s been taken to corporations which in turn hire these needy folks thereby allowing them to earn their money back. It’s a deliberate strategic cycle to insure the poor remain poor and the rich maintain their lifestyle. The maintenance of this status quo is called conservatism.

In Wisconsin, Governor Walker plans to remove Medicaid benefits from over 70,000 people. We’re broke he claims.

At the national level, Republican Representative Ryan from Wisconsin proposed a plan this week which funnels tax payer dollars to corporate insurers, which in turn will offer insurance benefits to the poor and elderly. This voucher system that he proposes will lessen care and promote corporate profits.

In Wisconsin, Govern Walker plans to take funds from middle class public workers while offering tax breaks for the wealthiest sector of our population.

The cycle is easy to illustrate: The conservative government takes moneys from the middle class, working class, poor, and elderly - - it distributes this money to corporations - - these corporations are to hire more workers - - the middle and working classes go to work in an effort to earn their money back. 

If taxes are to be taken, it’s the price Christians pay to serve those in need. 

Allow my taxes to promote the well-being of the elderly, the working class, and the elderly. My government, my Christian government, is to use my tax dollars to grow the well-being of folks in need at the same rate this nation grows. I don’t want the needy and the elderly to be merely maintained. My government and my church are to work to grow the hardship-stricken out of their plight…

…because we are to serve as Christians.        

Wealth vs. Purchasing Power

In 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression, 23% of this nation’s wealth was in the hands of the richest 1% of our population.  It took 16 years to strengthen the middle class and to rise from the depths of the Depression.

In 2004, the richest 1% owned 34% of all wealth and the top 10% of this population owned 71% of this country’s wealth. 

What occurred next?  Come on!  You know the answer.

Yes, the Great Recession. 

In Wisconsin, blame has come from the right, accusing the middle class of not saving or investing more of their increasingly smaller piece of the pie. The middle class’s houses are too big, their cars too new, and accusations fell from this 10% that the middle class lacked fiscal discipline. 

How else might a middle class family live, want their children to live, and improve on how their parents lived without accumulating debts? 

In Wisconsin, blame has reached middle class public workers in the form of “budget crises”. They are to blame for debt because their benefits and pensions are unsustainable. 

In a recent CNN Poll, cutting the pensions and benefits of government workers is a popular option to balance budgets “but most Americans overestimate how much that costs the government. On average, Americans think the federal government spent 10 percent of its 2010 budget on pensions and retiree benefits; the OMB figures indicate the real number is about 3.5 percent.”  (Source: cnn.com)

Despite these polling results, the governor of Wisconsin has attempted (at the public worker’s expense) to redistribute wealth from the middle class to the upper class. The governor has proposed and may very well execute the attempted redistribution of moneys from public pensions and benefits to the wealthiest citizens in the state via tax breaks.

As the governor attempts to draw more finances from the middle class to the richest 10% of this state, consider that General Electric has not paid taxes on their profits during this Great Recession. In 2010, GE made $14.2 billion worldwide and $5 billion within the domestic United States – all tax free. 

Locally, there are two General Electric service centers. There are three in Ohio, a state which owns a projected $6 deficit.

The money continues to filter up.

Now, I understand the counter argument: GE needs these tax breaks to hire more people. These people will work and pay taxes. These tax dollar pay of the state debt.

Well, with the purchasing power in this state declining by trillions with the enactment of Walker’s plan, how many GE products will be bought? How many will need service?

A lesson from the Great Depression is that companies will not supply goods which will not in turn be purchased.

The lesson from the Great Depression is that when money disproportionately spirals up, the economy will come tumbling down.

From the Mouths of Teens

By the Election of 1860, America was polarized well beyond the sectionalism that had long existed.

Lincoln was a moderate; he was a figure that could potentially serve as a funnel through which two solutions could be poured. The resulting concoction America can only imagine. “For the polarized sides, ideas must be funneled down into ideas on which both sides will agree.” Our leaders must serve as “filters” of extreme ideas, promoting instead ideas of moderating reason.

Before his inauguration in March, South Carolina and six other states had already seceded because “change that appears to favor one side of a polarized nation cannot exist. Although Lincoln believed that slavery was an immoral system based on greed, he did not plan to abolish slavery.” Lincoln did not believe that blacks and whites should share equal footing.

Despite this, “a peaceful bond cannot exist between two sides of a nation when there isn’t a satisfying equilibrium achieved.” Sides were drawn, alternate teams were formed and citizens of one nation began to show an allegiance to their team rather than their nation. When an alternate allegiance and “a stubbornness is initiated, you might as well be preaching to a deaf crowd.”

“A disagreement of two people separated by an ocean will only end if a reasonable man will come to build a bridge. At a time when civil war was about to break, the people had taken sides and lost their willingness to reason and to compromise.”

We value democracy but do we understand democratic leadership? A democracy must be characterized by democratic leadership which values “change that meets somewhere in the middle.”

The moral of the story is that one must “be reasonable in unreasonable situations.”

Just Read It

“Throughout six years of deficit spending and fiscal mismanagement, Governor Doyle left us with a state deficit…” – {source}

"We are broke in this state. We have been broke for years. People have ignored that for years, and it's about time somebody stood up and told the truth. The truth is: We don't have money to offer. We don't have finances to offer. This is what we have to offer." – {source}

Wisconsin’s deficit is ranked 4^th in the nation.” – Scott Walker

“This is 100% about balancing the budget.” – Scott Walker

Walker's bill to fill deficit this year would push debt payments into future

{headline source}

“The state would delay debt payments to help pay for rising costs for prisons and health care for the needy, under Gov. Scott Walker's bill to balance the state budget this year.”

“In a desperate attempt to remedy a $6 billion deficit.” – {source}

Walker says the changes will help balance a $3.6 billion shortfall for the 2011-'13 budget. – {source}

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities And the Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance, Wisconsin’s projected deficit will amount to $1.8 billion.