This is a documentary about the factual side of the novel, True Grit, and its two movie versions. I found it illuminating and I think you’ll enjoy it as well.
In America, we often assume that in the past was a nation of bedrock religious belief, hardworking, nose to the grindstone solid citizens and just general goodness. It wasn’t like that. It was messy and cruel – and for much of American history, religious beliefs were simply not that big a deal. Lincoln, for instance, was elected in spite of the fact, he was not a church goer, did not believe in life after death and possessed many other beliefs disturbing to the religious minded. Robert Ingersoll stood a good chance of being elected to the Presidency in spite of the fact, he is also known as the “Great Agnostic.” Don’t believe me – look these things up – find that reality that is American history.
Here’s my promise: if you study American history in detail and with a determination to understand from the point of view of a regular citizen, you will find a complex story full of sex, scandal and intrigue; and you will also find an incredible saga of courage and determination to build a nation unlike any other. I promise you that will love this country more as you work to understand it.
I can’t recommend reading the novel highly enough – both films fail to
capture much of the story, although because it’s a short book with vivid
dialog, both do follow it faithfully far better than Hollywood usually
follows an original novel. The novel is dense with fictional details
that just don’t come out in the movies. Also, the novel is all about
the voice of Mattie Ross, and neither movie captures that. Movie makers
consider voice over narration the kiss of death, but I wish they could
have put more of book Mattie’s thinking into movie Mattie’s
performance. And strangely Portis sense of the dramatic appears
superior to each set of movie makers because when each film diverts from
his plotting and scene setup they suffer. Portis had a keen sense of
plotting and drama that both films wisely copy fairly thoroughly.
English: The corner of Wall Street and Broadway, showing the limestone facade of One Wall Street in the background. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Subverting Pensions for Profit
There are real plots, real conspiracies. It’s a sad thing that people sometimes unite not for ethical or moral principles but for the destruction of people’s lives, for predation, for money at any cost.
One of the constant themes in the lust for profits has been the conversion of public goods into private possessions: public and charity hospitals often run by churches converted into private property; parks, highways, parking meters, converted into private ventures, America’s public lands opened up for fracking in the one of the greatest land grabs in all of recorded history … I can go on and on.
Here is another one, public pension funds being converted into Wall Street Piggy Banks, looted with fees and then fed into speculation for anyone’s profit but the pension fund’s. It is as if the national looting of the last generation, the conversion of pensions into the predatory and vicious 401K’s didn’t generate enough profit, we must never stop looting, never stop stealing, never stop creating fictitious crises to be exploited.
Maybe this one can be stopped. I would like to see that.
James Pilant
The right’s sinister new plot against pensions – Salon.com
As state legislatures prepare for their upcoming sessions, you will no doubt hear a lot about public pensions. More specifically, you will hear allegations that states are going bankrupt because of their pension obligations to public employees. These claims will inevitably be used to argue that states must renege on their pension promises to retirees.This is what I’ve called the Plot Against Pensions in a report I recently completed for the Institute for America’s Future. Engineered by billionaire former Enron trader John Arnold, championed by seemingly nonpartisan groups like the Pew Charitable Trusts and operating in states throughout America, this plot is not designed to strengthen pensions or to save taxpayer money, as its proponents claim. It is designed to slash public employees’ guaranteed retirement income in order to both protect states’ corporate welfare and, in some cases, enrich Wall Street.Consider the math of state budgets. According to Pew’s estimates, “The gap between states’ assets and their obligations for public sector retirement benefits (is) $1.38 trillion” over 30 years. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research notes, this gap was not caused by benefit increases, as conservatives suggest. Data prove that most of it was caused by the stock market decline that accompanied the 2008 financial colla
Finding: Conservative activists are manufacturing the perception of a public pension crisis in order to both slash modest retiree benefits and preserve expensive corporate subsidies and tax breaks.
States and cities have for years been failing to fully fund their annual pension obligations. They have used funds that were supposed to go to pensions to instead finance expensive tax cuts and corporate subsidies. That has helped create a real but manageable pension shortfall. Yet, instead of citing such a shortfall as reason to end expensive tax cuts and subsidies, conservative activists and lawmakers are citing it as a reason to slash retiree benefits.
Finding: The amount states and cities spend on corporate subsidies and so-called tax expenditures is far more than the pension shortfalls they face. Yet, conservative activists and lawmakers are citing the pension shortfalls and not the subsidies as the cause of budget squeezes. They are then claiming that cutting retiree benefits is the solution rather than simply rolling back the more expensive tax breaks and subsidies.
According to Pew, public pensions face a 30-year shortfall of $1.38 trillion, or $46 billion on an annual basis. This is dwarfed by the $80 billion a year states and cities spend on corporate subsidies. Yet, conservatives cite the pension shortfall not as reason to reduce the corporate subsidies and raise public revenue, but instead as proof that retiree benefits need to be cut.
Finding: The pension “reforms” being pushed by conservative activists would slash retirement income for many pensioners who are not part of the Social Security system. Additionally, the specific reforms they are pushing are often more expensive and risky for taxpayers than existing pension plans.
English: Depiction of the Senate vote on H.R. 3590 (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) on December 24, 2009, by state. Two Democratic yeas One Democratic yea, one Republican nay One Republican nay, one Republican not voting Two Republican nays (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A Progressive Plan for Action
Michael Lind’s article, The South is Holding America Hostage, strikes me as compelling. Certainly, the history of the South and my personal experiences living in that part of the country provides support for that point of view. And he is also right that like an army on the offensive, they have their opposition constantly fumbling around trying to set up some kind of last minute, patchwork, cobbled together defense.
Lind offers a set of goals to put what he calls the “Southern Autonomy Project” on the defensive. I find many of them good choices.
I would like to add as goals, a nationwide system of high speed rail, a system of free college education and implied in that a total and complete end to the student load system and a repair of America’s failing infrastructure.
Setting political difficulty aside, it is intellectually easy to set forth a grand national strategy that consists of coordinated federal policies to defeat the Southern Autonomy Project.
A federal living wage. At one blow, a much higher federal minimum wage would cripple the ability of Southern states to lure companies from more generous states which supplement the too-low present federal minimum wage with higher local state or urban minimum wages. (Strong national unions could do the same, but that is not a realistic option at present.)
Nationalization of social insurance. Social insurance programs with both federal and state components, like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), allow Southern states to be stingier than many other states, creating more desperate workers who are more dependent on the mercy of employers and elite-dominated charities. Completely federalizing Medicaid (as President Ronald Reagan suggested!) and other hybrid federal-state social insurance programs would cripple the Southern Autonomy Project further.
Real voting rights. Using the authority of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Congress should completely federalize voting requirements for all federal, state and local elections, making it as easy as possible for U.S. citizens to vote — over the objections of kicking and screaming neo-Confederates.
Nonpartisan redistricting. Partisan redistricting by majorities in state legislatures should be replaced by nonpartisan redistricting commissions, as in California, New Jersey and other states. The redistricting commissions should be truly nonpartisan, not “bipartisan” arrangements in which incumbent Republicans and incumbent Democrats cut deals to protect their safe seats from competition. (Electoral reforms like instant run-off voting and proportional representation are struggles for a more distant future).
Abolish the Senate filibuster. The filibuster is not part of the U.S. constitution. It has been used by Southern white conservatives from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first to preserve Southern white power and economic privilege. This relic of premodern British parliamentary politics should be abolished. Democracy means majority rule. If the Southern Right loses a battle in Congress, it can try to round up allies and win next time. It should no longer be able to paralyze the Senate, the Congress or the federal government as a whole.
Abolish the federal debt ceiling completely. The federal debt ceiling is another institution like the filibuster which has now been ruined by being abused by Southern conservatives. Now that the Southern right is trying to turn it into a recurrent tool of hostage-taking when it loses votes in Congress, the federal debt ceiling should be abolished. The federal government should be authorized to borrow any amount necessary to fund spending appropriated or authorized by Congress, if there is any shortfall in tax revenues.
English: Slavery in Brazil, by Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848). Español: La esclavitud, de Jean-Baptiste Debret Deutsch: Sklaverei in Brasilien, Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848). Português: Escravidão no Brasil, Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was surprised to find that slavery in Brazilian history was quite likely to have been more savage and more laden with death and torture than American slavery. Blacks couldn’t catch a break in either North America or South America.
Today in 1888 (121 years ago) Brazil officially abolished its slave trade – the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to do so.
Slavery and the slave trade dealt exclusively with Africa and
persisted for nearly 400 years. Brazil lasted longer than any other
Western Hemispheric nation, although the US South had the highest
concentration of slaves that the world has ever seen – 6 million on the
eve of the Civil War in 1860. Brazil never reached those heights, but it
used slaves in the same fashion as white southerners did. Not only was
slavery economically essential to parts of Brazil, but it also created
castes of human beings that persist today.
Pablo Picasso, 1937, Guernica, protest against Fascism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was going to quote a paragraph from this. And then after reading it a while, I decided to quote four paragraphs. And then, I just decided this is just excellent writing and quoting a piece out of it was like slicing up a Picasso.
James Pilant
[Note: This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis. DLH]
From: Michael Cheponis <michael.cheponis@gmail.com> Subject: America’s government shutdown: No way to run a country | The Economist Date: October 4, 2013 4:46:01 PM PDT
AS MIDNIGHT on September 30th approached, everybody on Capitol Hill blamed everybody else for the imminent shutdown of America’s government. To a wondering world, the recriminations missed the point. When you are brawling on the edge of a cliff, the big question is not “Who is right?”, but “What the hell are you doing on the edge of a cliff?”
The shutdown itself is tiresome but bearable. The security services will remain on duty, pensioners will still receive their cheques and the astronauts on the International Space Station will still…
The distance between the supporters of the shutdown and their “perspective” on public support and actual polling data could not be more stark. It may be that in this nation, threats to destroy the nation’s economy to gain political ends may be considered “going over the top” of what is reasonable. Certainly, I feel that way.
James Pilant
Ted Cruz Is Living On Another Planet – Yahoo Finance
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the public hates the shutdown, Americans are 20 points more likely to blame Republicans for the shutdown than Obama, the Republican Party is scoring its worst poll numbers on record, Cruz\’s colleagues in the House and Senate hate him, and they\’re preparing to cave to the president by reopening the government and funding Obamacare.
Cruz is betting that his supporters are too stupid to notice that his strategy is failing and was doomed to fail. He\’s probably right.
Lots of people thought that when Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election after months of conservatives proclaiming that the polls were \”skewed\” and he was on course to win, the party\’s base might start to evaluate whether it misunderstood the world around it.
Remarkably, conservative delusion about facts on the ground is more intense than ever. The appetite for stories like the one Cruz is telling is unending, impervious to facts and sustainable no matter how far the Republican Party\’s poll numbers fall.
When constituencies become aggrieved minorities, seeing themselves as under attack by the establishment, they are vulnerable to hucksters like Cruz, because they disregard outside warnings and evidence that they are being had.
English: US Capitol, Washington DC, the seat of government for the United States Congress. Nederlands: Het Capitool, de zetel van de volksvertegenwoordiging van de Verenigde Staten. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I am appalled by what’s happening. I freely confess I don’t know what will happen if this last beyond the 17th and we go into default. It could be anything from very little happening to a worldwide economic catastrophe culminating in a decade long Depression. If I were a legislator, I like to think I would want to avoid going into default where the unknowns are so perilous. But I do not believe I can count on the intelligence or judgment of those willing to shut down the government as a form of blackmail. It was irresponsible to begin with, and it has only become less moral, less ethical and less intelligent as the days have gone by.
James Pilant
Trudy Rubin: Shutdown repercussions | Opinion | McClatchy DC
How far we have come since the heady days of the 1990s, when eager civic activists from ex-communist and third-world countries looked to U.S. experts to show them how a multiparty system worked.Indeed, America\’s longtime allies are bewildered by a system where a small minority of legislators can hijack Congress. They also can\’t understand why Congress has to vote separately to authorize the borrowing of funds to pay for expenses it has already approved. Perhaps because no other modern democracy except Denmark has such a system.The commentary in friendly countries has been scathing.\”For a country that fancies itself the greatest democracy on Earth, the fact that a small band of outliers in one party can essentially shut down the federal government over a petty political brawl seems woefully undemocratic,\” Lee-Anne Goodman of Canadian Press told the Talking Points Memo blog. Le Monde columnist Alain Frachon told the New York Times that \”Washington is looking more like the Italian political system, with its permanent crises.\”David Usborne wrote in the British newspaper The Independent: \”America is indeed exceptional, at least in terms of its place in the global financial system,\” but \”in almost every other respect right now it is starting to look exceptionally silly.\” Even if a budget and debt-ceiling deal is completed in the next two weeks, he add …
“That leaders of one of the most powerful nations on earth willingly
provoked a crisis that suspends public services and decreases economic
growth is astonishing….Even in the middle of its ongoing civil war,
the Syrian government has continued to pay its bills and workers’
wages.” In western Europe, a think-tank scholar tweeted, “Next time you
blame the woes of developing nations on ‘poor governance,’ think about
how the U.S. government arrived at today.”
In France, the newspaper Le Monde assailed the “grotesque” shutdown, and aimed its editorial message at one of America’s founding fathers: “Jefferson, wake up! They’ve gone crazy!” In Germany, Der Spiegel Onlinedeclared, “A superpower has paralyzed itself,” and the business daily Handelsbatt depicted the Statue of Liberty in chains, capped by the headline, “The Blocked World Power.” In Spain, the El Pais newspaper marveled at America’s “suicidal madness.”
Granted, some of these reactions have a touch of schadenfreude,
taking pleasure in our misfortune. That’s especially true with the
French, who always love to tweak us, even while forgetting that if not
for America 69 years ago, they would’ve stayed under the Nazi heel. But
why give them an excuse to treat us as a laughingstock?
And the current scoffing spans the continents. In China, an
entertainer tweeted, “Chinese must be wondering – When will America
embrace real reform? How long can this system survive? Where is
America’s Gorbachev?” In China, a government-run news website said
the nation should be “on guard against spillover of irresponsible U.S.
politics.” In India, business executives told the Voice of America that
they couldn’t fathom how an advanced nation like America could allow its
government to close, and a college student in New Dehli said it was
“sad and shocking.” In the Philippines, an editorial writer asked, “How
did the world’s lone superpower come to such a sorry pass?” In Malaysia,
a news website ran the headline, “U.S. shutdown leaves the world
scratching its head,” and the story said that some Malaysians “had
trouble suppressing smirks.” And The Australian newspaper said that the shutdown “doesn’t say much for the budgetary process in the world’s largest economy.” And so on.
A construction project to repair and update the building façade at the Department of Education headquarters in 2002 resulted in the installation of structures at all of the entrances to protect employees and visitors from falling debris. ED redesigned these protective structures to promote the “No Child Left Behind Act”. The structures were temporary and were removed in 2008. Source: U.S. Department of Education, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is the same kind of “reform” that is devastating high school education in the United States, a reliance on testing, a emphasis on monetary results from education (“practical” education) and diminished state funding. This is education being re-defined from public good to private acquisition.
Are we who teach in academia on the verge of living in the same world as the public school teacher, that is, teaching to the test, rigidly defined course materials and funding based on test results?
That is certainly the intent of organizations like the Bill Gates Foundation and the Neoliberal movement.
Haven’t we learned enough from the NCLB disaster in the public schools to not have to do this kind of disastrous social experimentation? You’d think so but these zombie ideas just keep on staggering along, rotting and contaminating intelligent thought as they throw off empty ideas and fancy slogans like the miasma from a swamp.
James Pilant
6 ways neoliberal education reform is destroying our college system – Salon.com
“An outcomes-based culture is rapidly developing amongst policymakers in the higher education sector,” declares a 2012 report sponsored by the Gates Foundation and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, “Measuring Value-Added in Higher Education.” With hardly contained delight, they add that this development “mirrors recent trends in the K-12 sector.”Like RTTT’s progenitor No Child Left Behind, much of the genetic material of higher education reform is drawn from Texas. Just as the apocryphal “Texas Miracle” became the backbone of NCLB’s testing and accountability model, college reforms propagated in Texas have captured the attention of reformers nationwide, with the Gates Foundation playing its usual capo-de-tutti-capi role.The foundation also funded Compare College TX, an accountability system, and supported—in fact helped inspire—Governor Rick Perry’s $10,000 degree plan. This initiative epitomizes the Republican higher-ed platform, defined by performance funding, value-added measurements and the likely curtailing of state funds.The foundation’s other forays into higher education—an accountability challenge, numerous nationalcollege completion initiatives, and a series of research paperswith consulting firm HCM Strategists made Gates “one of the strongest voices …
You could say I am angry, but I don’t see that as a negative quality. Anger is a normal reaction to suffering, whether you experience it or witness it. One can be angry without being hostile or violent. One can be angry and still be respectful and polite to others.
Anger is a positive emotion, because anger acknowledges the possibility for change. The opposite of anger is acquiescence – the acceptance of suffering as normal. Anger is a form of compassion.
Corruption and inequality are man-made problems. They are not inevitable and neither is the hardship that accompanies them. But in order to fix a problem, we have to see it as a problem, not an inexorable element of human life or human behavior. Saying “this is the way things are” discourages people from imagining how things could be.
If people are angry after they read my work, I am glad. I hope they use that anger to fight on behalf of others. One of the worst feelings in the world is to suffer in the open and have no one care or raise a hand to help you. We should not take terrible conditions for granted any more than we should treat the suffering they cause as acceptable. Anger demands accountability.
As for your question as to whether I am “mentally and emotionally exhausted“ — probably. But that’s because I am the mother of two young children, not because I’m some sort of revolutionary.
Criticizing corruption is not exhausting. It is far more exhausting to pretend everything is okay.
English: Graduate School (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve heard this same story several times. Being highly educated and a vital part of an educational institution is no guarantee of job security or a significant salary. it’s driving good people from the field and diminishing the value of higher education.
Increasingly society is viewed through a Neoliberal prism where immediate results and marketization are valued over long term success and more traditional value systems. The church, the school and the press are being increasingly infected with the idea of measurable profit over more difficult to measure values. I would argue that intellectual inquisitiveness, love, honor, culture, and an inclination toward an intelligent development of public policy might have values in a civilized society but my voice in increasingly being shouted down by the fine print in budget statements geared toward the short term and quite often the counterproductive.
I think business ethics are tied in with the higher values of Western Civilization. Once those values are thrown away by crass economic doctrine, there will be a decline of society to a system based on power and wealth until the inevitable turn of the wheel and an new society is born.
James Pilant
“Exploitation should not be a rite of passage” | Sarah Kendzior
I went into academia for the reasons you mentioned – I love to write and do research. I enjoyed having the freedom to study topics that interest me, such as the politics of authoritarian states. I never cared about prestige or making a lot of money. But I care about earning a stable income and providing for my children.
In my final year in graduate school, I realized that my ability to stay on the job market and pursue an academic career was dependent on financial resources that I didn’t have. I was a successful academic – I am well-published, in top journals, with strong teaching evaluations and a solid reputation in my field. But this was irrelevant when it came to finding a job in this economy. I was expected to adjunct, subsisting on poverty wages, until a tenure-track job came along.
Money, not merit, is the critical factor to staying in academia in the United States. Most recent PhDs are either living in poverty, in massive debt, or surviving off family wealth. The former two categories tend to drop out, while the latter pay to play.
In the end, I am glad I left, because what I am doing now is more interesting. I didn’t plan to work as a writer – I was recruited once I started writing for the public. Al Jazeera English contacted me after reading my work on website called Registan.net, where I had been blogging about Central Asia during my last year of graduate school. My Al Jazeera articles often go viral. Over time, other publications asked me to write for them as well.
I love to write so I am happy about how this turned out. But I know my story is not typical. That is one of the reasons I write about barriers to entry in journalism, because talented writers are being locked out because they cannot afford unpaid internships or expensive credentials. Journalism is structured in a similar way to academia, where pre-existing wealth is a de facto requirement for entry.
Everyone benefits from a more diverse and even playing field, so I try to draw attention to unfair labor practices in these professions. Exploitation should not be a rite of passage.
Increasingly, adjunct faculty are doing the teaching in the US education system, particularly at the community college level. This is because they are cheap. Much, much cheaper than tenured faculty. They are often paid by the unit, instead of receiving a salary, and don’t get benefits. It’s cheaper to higher multiple adjunct faculty members than one tenured professor. Some community colleges don’t even have a full time faculty member supervising some departments. The entire English department, for example, may be part timers.
Some people enjoy working as adjunct faculty. The work is a lot more flexible, and you can choose whether to renew contracts between semesters, or move on to something else. There’s less pressure to publish, to perform, to establish yourself. You have more time to work directly with students because you don’t have to do administrative work. Some institutions are very open to suggestions for classes, so you get an opportunity to teach courses that interest you and engage with students who genuinely want to learn. Adjunct faculty have a lot to add to academic environments and are an important part of the academic community.
But the exploitation of adjunct faculty is another matter altogether. Many undergraduate students are not aware of the byzantine workings of college administration. They may not know, for example, that administrators tend to make the highest salaries, and that even star faculty may not receive very much from teaching. Their income is from grants, which need to be continually renewed, or awards, not the university directly. Star researchers are informed that they need to fund themselves, and their graduate students. The university is happy to share in the glory, but it doesn’t want to incur any of the expenses.
Portrait of a young Choctaw woman her body turned to the left, her head turned back to the front, and her gaze directed toward the viewer. She wears a pair of earrings and an off-the-shoulder garment made of animal skin. Her long dark hair is parted in the middle and falls down over her back, Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Some of my Hispanic students have commented at one time or another about the problems of having lived in nations (or having relatives in those nations) where there is a mainly Spanish descended ruling class, a more middle group of Spanish/indigenous mix bloods and the indigenous peoples. This is confirmation of what they have told me. Being on the lowest rung makes life difficult and conveys a sense of powerlessness.
I’ll let the article speak for itself.
James Pilant
Indigenous Woman Gives Birth On Hospital Lawn In Mexico After Doctors Denied Her Care
An indigenous woman squats in pain after giving birth, her newborn still bound by the umbilical cord and lying on the ground. It\’s a photograph that horrified Mexicans because of where it took place: the lawn outside a medical clinic where the woman had been denied help, and it struck a nerve in a country where inequity is still pervasive.
The government of the southern state of Oaxaca announced Wednesday that it has suspended the health center\’s director, Dr. Adrian Cruz, while officials conduct state and federal investigations into the Oct. 2 incident.
The mother, Irma Lopez, 29, told The Associated Press that she and her husband were turned away from the health center by a nurse who said she was only eight months pregnant and \”still not ready\” to deliver.
The nurse told her to go outside and walk, and said a doctor could check her in the morning, Lopez said. But an hour and a half later, her water broke, and Lopez gave birth to a son, her third child, while grabbing the wall of a house next to the clinic.
\”I didn\’t want to deliver like this. It was so ugly and with so much pain,\” she said, adding she was alone for the birth because her husband was trying to persuade the nurse to call for help.
Carlos Ovando
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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