Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Charter schools privatize the costs of universal daycare. That doesn't commend them. Why not fight this easy fight? It's a good preface to the larger argument about the penetration of the profit motive into social welfare, no?

"Just what is it about our public schools that cupcake progressives find worth "saving" from the budget axe?"

The opportunity to carry out basic indoctrination. "Give me the child to seven..."

(And by 'indoctrination' I mean 'catechism'.)

The pwogpwobwem wif Chawduh Skoohs iz de connexion to Reel Idgin. The pwoggie worships Sy Ens, not a Gawd, 'n' is pwowd uvit.

Public schools lick the equine sweat off donkey balls, and should be collapsed IMO.

That's probably because I'm not a smallminded Pwoggie though.

(Not that that wasn't a good thing for other reasons.)"(Not that that wasn't a good thing for other reasons.)"

"Fiat justitia ruat caelum"

Using baby talk like that ought to be a flogging offense.

So, yeah, about babt talk, except for this: "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...."

Give us a boy at 7...

I'm not *entirely* with OP on this one, though I do like the Paine Plan. But I really dislike charter schools, for two reasons: 1) I think privatization of almost anything is almost always bad, and 2) charter schools get to be selective.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232076996440.htm

the face of charter and e-cation

from mjs's favorite listswurve:

"this whole push toward school reform results from unholytriumvirate of business interests who seek privatization of publiceducation for profit, Republicans who seek busting teachers unions,their political nemesis,...."

NB:

" ....and the brand of liberals
who believe that tinkering with education
is the sole remedy to all social-economic problems, class inequality, etc. in this country.... useful idiots providing
the cloak of legitimacy to vile profiteering and union-busting."

" These are the same forces
that legitimated dismantling
of the public mental health care system
some forty years ago"

A lot of the pwoggies actually like charter schools from what I can tell, just as long as their side is for them, of course. They'll wring their hands over those evil teacher-hating Koch brothers and Teabagging governors, but then talk about how much they liked Waiting for Superman.

Pwoggies are great believers in education. Over the years, I have become a great disbeliever in education -- having had, perhaps, a bit too much of it for my own good.

While my opinion on academia ranges from "burn it all to the ground" on through to "string 'em up from the lampposts," I see no reason to got on the charter school hobby horse.

The SMBIVA ideal:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/FSA_school_in_Alabama.gif

Correction: the ideal except for the shoes.... unnecessary according to my brother-in-law, who attended unshod in Montgomery in the 1950's.

I'll appreciate more of this "education? who needs it!" talk when it stops coming from well-off white dudes with college degrees.

Chris M,

Seems like you're assuming public schooling has something to do with "education." Most of the people pushing the "college degree for everyone" line are also, for the most part, well-off white dudes (or dudettes) with college degrees. This strikes me as bit more suspect than a handful of cranks complaining about the public education charade.

When the SMBIVAns go on about education, they reveal their own elite bias and advertise their own educations. Give me a break. Dahlings, remember, "Father Smiff" and his kiddies used to ride the school bus with Bill Keller!! Wonder which inner-city public school the bus was destined for.

In other words, when it comes to poor and lower-middle-class kids: Do as Father Smiff says, not as he did.

If you want to understand the utter futility of much left-wing politics, and how disconnected it is from the lives of the working class and the poor it purports to support, read anything the SMBIVAns have ever written about education --- not all of which is without merit, but all of which reveals the elite bias of the site's pied piper and his comrades.

Goddamn elitists trying to say it's bad for kids of all economic levels to have to sit and be talked at for at least 12 years in preparation for the same, albeit at reduced pay and with less benefits, shit jobs their poor to lower-class parents have had! How dare you assume that those with degrees aren't smarter than those without them! Children need their degrees!

Paul, if you actually ever had a conversation with an actual person in an actual inner city --- or had any actual experience engaging with such people --- you would know that a *good local school* is very high on their list of things for which to be fervently wished. They are most certainly not advocating that kids not have to go to school after 12, or to wander around after 1 in the afternoon, playing in parks or telling each other little stories, which are among the lunacies advocated on this site.

Paul, if you actually ever had a conversation with an actual person in an actual inner city --- or had any actual experience engaging with such people --- you would know that a *good local school* is very high on their list of things for which to be fervently wished. They are most certainly not advocating that kids not have to go to school after 12, or to wander around after 1 in the afternoon, playing in parks or telling each other little stories, which are among the lunacies advocated on this site.

Maybe all the liberated youths could join local communist revolutionary armies? 13 year old mini-Ches striking fear into the hearts of the boogwazee?

smilesburger,

What are the contours of these "good education" schools that your "inner city" acquaintances desire?

Aren't you instead just talking in meaningless phrases and empty platitudes, while pretending to offer weighty criticism?

And if you want to know the value of Modern American Education, wouldn't you want to first ask those who have been through it's network and system, and nodes and points and obstacles?

I'll bet the anthropomorphic Good Schools entity is proud of your protection of public education in such empty phrasing, however.

The majority of charter schools are built in minority, poor neighborhoods.

That's "good schooling" for profit, on the backs of kids who will still graduate with fewer and declining prospects, and a 33% chance of finishing their educations inside a correctional institution, smiles.

I don't even know what an 'innercity' is! That's how elite I am!

When I was a kid, I used to want to eat *cookies* for dinner. Then I found out it wasn't a good idea.

The only alternative to schools is obviously kids wandering cities aimlessly, creating their own versions of reality and teaching each other misinformation.

Though I actually agree with many of the criticisms of the ed system made here, I've never once seen the hint of a viable alternative proposed, one that might actually resonate with poor and working class people, and one that might actually be effective in any way. Sorry if this sounds too earnest --- deal with it.

Most of you undoubtedly have had rather impressive educations yourselves, and some of you clearly have no problem advertising the fact. More power to you: It's fun to play at populism or anarchism or whatever, while never letting too much time elapse before reminding us all, "But I, of course, am much better than the great unwashed. I went to the University of Chicago! Dahlings, I rode with bus with Bill Keller!" You get to have all the fun of playing at anarchists while never forgetting to flash the badge of class. God, what phonies.

So, again, what's good for you in terms of your own educations isn't good for anyone else. "I'm alright, Jack...."

Back to the original post: Fighting charter schools is actually a very worthy cause. The fact that one of this site authors thinks that it's just fine leave public ed vulnerable to the depradations of capital --- I should say, leaving yet another sphere of this society so vulnerable --- tells you how frivolous this site is.

Damn straight I don't want the unwashed masses getting to my level. It will water down my illustrious high school diploma!

It makes sense that 'school' resonates with people not doing so fantastic because it offers the only possible escape route. Unfortunately, that escape route only works for a small percentage of lower income people. The rest will get washed out and end up right where their parents are.

Oh here we go again. Smilesburger "attacks" vapid, generic sentiments without once labelling the poster or commenter responsible for those sentiments.

You can't think of an alternative to bloated, know-nothing Public Education? Seriously? Not a single idea in your brain?

How about simply remaking the whole fucking thing, with the focus being on EDUCATION instead of inculcation, brainwashing, and paradigm-setting?

As to the generic broadside against those who supposedly have Excellent Educations: I'm afraid I went to One Of The Nation's Best Public School Systems for grades 7-12, and some of the nation's less-best schools for post-secondary. I'm not someone who went to Hotchkiss and Yale and Stanford and Chicago, but wants to deny others An Equal Footing.

I'm someone who has been through the shitshow pretending to be "schooling" and found it stultifying and dull.

Go ahead and "attack" that vaguely and obliquely, though. It is a swell treat to figure out your passive-aggressive angles, Shitbird.

smiles,

Criticism doesn't obligate construction. A person doesn't need to have a solution to identify a problem.

Not that I agree with OP, above. I don't. It's not even a position consistent with his more run of the mill public unionism...

When Huck Finn gets pregnant, who you gonna call?

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jun2011/cath-j08.shtml

You're right, Jack, but what few constructions I've actually seen here have been laughably absurd, and in MJS's case, laughably hypocritical. Parents of poor and middle-class kids should do as he says, not as he did with his own kids. His construction was to send his kids to the same school as Bill Keller's. What a prole.

I don't know anything about where Mssrs. Smith and Paine have sent their children to school, anonymous. Nor do I care.

I just don't see how to connect OP's more consistent support of public unions with union busting, fee based, for profit charter schools.

Jack, why are you trying to make sense of anything Owen says? He's a clown and a joker. You're wasting your time.

Just for the record: Neither Owen nor I is against people learning things, or the state paying people to teach things. What we're against is the present state of overreach on the part of the compulsory or quasi-compulsory Credentialling Sector. If Smiley's posited "inner city families" want to send their over-twelve kids somewhere to learn more stuff(*) -- and why not? -- it ought to be available, and it ought to be good, and it ought to be free, and it ought to be open to everybody -- no selection allowed. And of course it shouldn't give grades -- just pass/fail, with fails not recorded or reported. If I had the social purse-strings in my hand, I'd happily spend quite a lot of money on such a project, and employ legions of well-compensated public-sector union members to staff it.

Owen, tell me if I'm misrepresenting you.

This has been discussed here before, and I believe I'm repeating myself, but maybe Chuckles missed it. As he missed the point of my few autobiographical revelations of my own and my kids' educations: it's precisely my experience of elite education that made me loathe it so.

---------

(*) I mean substantial stuff, of course, like calculus or history or Akkadian or music. I don't mean Gender Studies or "Political Science".

I actually agree with just about everything you wrote in your first paragraph. Tell Owen to quit posting nonsense like he did above about charter schools, with his above-it-all, why-should-we-care pose. And lighten up on the teacher-trashing, which you must admit you've done in prior posts. (I realize that I have just now invited a torrent of contrarian teacher-trashing. Oh well...)

"Okay, that first paragraph, I agree with it. It can stay. But you need to change how you talk about teachers and you need to take control and talk to Owen about his attitude towards charter schools and his tone in general. Otherwise, I will remain unhappy with you."

This smilesburger fellow sure is a tough taskmaster. He reminds me of a dumb public school teacher.

The problem with teachers is a structural one. The credentialling sector in some ways can be considered an arm of the enforcement and incarceration sector -- certainly the two are joined at the hip, anyway. Consequently the teacher is also by necessity something of a bureaucrat and something of a cop, and people who can't tolerate (or even relish) those roles tend to get weeded out.

Grading and plagiarism-detection are the reasons why I gave up teaching.

Of course there are teachers who manage to maintain their humanity in spite of all the system's attempts to deprive them of it, and they deserve a tip of the hat. But the unlovely and all-too-common Gradgrindian physiognomy is, alas, something of a déformation professionnelle.

(DISCLAIMER: I went to a Very Good High School in a classic American suburb, where I had very good teachers who recognized my talent for drawing and satire and steered me towards the yearbook and the student newspaper, where I nabbed a couple of national awards and, after graduation, headed off to a medium-sized state college -- not a Name-Brand University -- where I would've gotten a Bachelor's Degree in Illustration & Design if not for the semester I was suspended after I pied the Dean at the Christmas Ball over several unpopular campus policies which I don't need to go into here. So, technically, I'm a college dropout, but that doesn't seem to have kept me from having a pretty nice career for myself.)

I've always been pretty much down with Smiff'n'Paine's takes on public education, even though I worry about there being no viable alternative, unless you want to tear the whole shithouse down and start over properly (yeah, good luck with that).

Still, I have a soft spot for Education in that in all the crucial points in my youth, at those points where I realized I had a gift for drawing and painting, I was very lucky to have a supportive family, supportive classmates and perceptive and supportive teachers as well, so I'll always remember high school happily as that time when I was finally getting my chops together. Beyond that insulated space, though, my larger general memory of high school was as a big-assed holding tank for all those kids who had no big ideas about what they wanted to do with themselves besides "uhh, y'know, like, get a job".

I knew I was headed for college fairly early on, when I'd nabbed a couple of big national high-school journalism honors, and gotten a gig doing the editorial-page cartoon at a local weekly; by 16, my parents and teachers knew that in order to develop my talent to where I could use it to build a real career, I was going to need college-level training in art and design. Add to this the fact that my parents, born during the Depression, knew this would make me the first in my family to go to college, and it meant that after finishing high school, it was going to be siss-boom-bah time for Mikey -- as well as beer-drinking, weed-smoking, studio model fucking, Yippie magazine illustrating and pie-tossing time.

One thing Mom'n'Dad were sure to teach me, though, was not to look down on people who weren't "college material", that not being "college material" didn't make people stupid. Case in point: my own father, who not only didn't go to college, but dropped out of high school at 17 to join the Army. Dad was still a damn' sharp guy, and his failure to finish high school didn't stop him from spending his life self-educating in areas of interest and importance -- auto mechanics, fish & wildlife, carpentry, American history. It was my high-school dropout father who first turned me on to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Asimov, Leon Uris, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. He was a big fan of Charles M. Russell, Frederic Remington, Herblock and Bill Mauldin -- and the Ol'Man couldn't have been happier to hear that I wanted to go to art school.

Long story short: when Smiff or one of the other folks here comes on and says that college isn't for everybody, don't necessarily assume that they think they're smarter than the kids who aren't "college material", or that they don't give a shit about kids who aren't "college material" because "we got ours, so fuck the dumb kids". My Dad was an old working-class kid from West Pennsylvania and knew he had no chance at getting into college, but he knew he wasn't stupid by any stretch.

Mjs speaks for me too
On the free open ungraded and apply funded bits
Btw
Nothing about vouchers precludes any of this
Nor of course chartering

One might consider the voucher charter movements
Seperately but equally with the nasty intentions and motives of the vast majority
Of amerika's leading
Voucherites

The swedes seem to make charters "work"

Fill me in if I over state the Nordic case for hyper choice

Single payer education might be just fine

As to the profit motive in these social function outfits like schools and hospitals
that deserves a separate posting

Single payer sounds like a cool idea.

I had a significant and lasting experience about all this when I read Ivan Illich 40 years ago.

http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm

what's this guys beef ??

'unless you want to tear the whole shithouse down and start over properly (yeah, good luck with that).'

Yeah, exactly, good luck.

And please, please Owen don't start in with the Swedes. Or the Finnish. These are wealthy, unicultural, uniracial wonderlands. The moment you introduce "diverse" populations, the whole wonderful social experiment --- education, national healthcare, etc -- goes out the window.

If I hear one more comparison to some little Northern European country.....

I'd like to hear more about the Swedish version. I have a soft spot for the Swedes. What's wrong with the US version, in my view, is that charters can be *selective*, which is bad, and both charters and vouchers drain funds from the very system I would want to fund amply. Anyway, in my educational dream world, taking a course wouldn't cost you anything, so there's no point in vouchers. I suppose the Gummint could contract out the provision of free courses to contractors or companies, who would have to meet certain standards --- naaah. Fuck the market. Build the schoolhouses, hire the teachers, and keep laying 'em on until the waiting list drains.

But I think Owen's original point was that regardless what you think of charters on their merits, the actually existing credentialling sector is no better than almost any alternative educational regime you can realistically imagine, and thus not worth going to the barricades for -- right?

At the risk of sounding like a dumb public school teacher, your points at 12:21pm are valid, Michael, but what's with the "arm of the enforcement and incarceration sector" lingo? Did Melissa Harris-Harris-Harris-Harris take over your brain? An awful lot of words to say jail.

Gatto's done some solid historical work for "Underground...," OP, but he's a New York Conservative Party candidate, an American type libertarian and a freemarketeer.

smiles,

The educational system is disciplinary and taylorized. It was modeled on the Prussian system, purposely.

vizmike

illich was only the 60's installment of a long soap opera

the primal anti horace mann insight
is simple enough:

mass compulsory
schooling isn't about education

the peers of horace mann saw that coming

the secondary insight
the anti dewey critique :

something aweful happens
when secondary schooling becomes
a two stage processing gauntlet

the first stage for all post pubbe pre 16
youthfuls :
a complusory work hours incarceration
or better detention project

the second half
for post 16 or post grade 8 raw spirits:
--something far far worse--

a voluntary prison

a "family" hope fear shame and guilt
propelled parent enforced
internment
a daygo prisoning for all "who want to get ahead or even just get by in this country "

"not worth going to the barricades for " mjs

ya that was my post's point
....that is ....with a few show off elbows thrown along the passage way

i really don't give a shit so long as the class struggle focus is on
hyper employment macro

job markets so hot
we get "take home pay max "
and " necessary hours min "
and of course
lavish uncle subsidized premia
for "over time "

the rest i'd leave to smiley
and the secular ad hoc
college of cardinals

" An awful lot of words to say jail."

poor smile-in-ski :
just another over confident
under weight
tone deaf philistine

err just what the underclass needs
to champion their up lift

"he's a New York Conservative Party candidate, an American type libertarian
and a freemarketeer."

and .....????

John Taylor Gatto is a very eloquent and convincing ex-teacher against compulsory schooling. I really recommend reading or listening to him, although you will have to separate some chaff from the wheat.

Well, since Melissa was mentioned above, please allow me to divert the discussion for a moment. I came across this passage in the current Nation, in which the professor discussed the vibrancy of debate within the black "intellectual" "community" about el presidente. I thought of what a field day SMBIVA would have with this:

"We’ve written critical articles, gathered conflicting data, argued unflaggingly on e-mail and rolled our eyes at one another at conferences. Sometimes we’ve even changed our opinions, moderated our viewpoints and thanked one another for new information."

"and .....????"

Gatto's an opponent of public schooling because, after years as a teacher in NYC, he came to the conclusion that it's real purpose is to create passive consumers and compliant worker-drones, and not much else.

"and.....????"

That's it. That's all. He's good on history. Eye-opening. I recommend him all the time.

He's not my cup of tea, on solutions.

If you're half as red as you proclaim to be, OP, his solutions are problematic.

But, I dunno, perhaps we can tinker with marginal rates and full employment until the revolution comes on history's holy schedule...

"That's it. That's all. He's good on history. Eye-opening. I recommend him all the time.

He's not my cup of tea, on solutions. "

Good way to put it.

Now, now, boys. Play nice.

testing

job markets so hot
we get "take home pay max "
and " necessary hours min "

One only wonders how all of the wealth will magically appear to fund this fantasy. Who will heat up those jobs markets and how? Who will be paying that "max take home pay," and with what money? And who, and how, will it be possible to have all that take home pay with "necessary hours min."

Oy, only an Ivy Leaguer would have the imagination to spin such a fantasy. The rest of us philistines, and proles, are far too dim and limited.

smiley

your ignorance of macro economics astounds me

nothing i suggest in my maximum reform plan
is in the least bit
economic fantasy

our existing institutions could weather
at least enough of the early action invoved in these maxi-mins
dared
inaugurate them invincible post facto
at the polls

but its surely a political fantasy
to think a leap to this program
can come thru the ballot box

getting the power to implement all this as easy as it would be technically
well
that's a horse of a different complexion

the very same mechanism that might sustain such a hyper reformist administration
in reality today makes the initial election of such a resulte bunch as close to impossible
as our social system makes possible

after more then 200 years of purblind modifications and streamlinings
we the people thru our elites
have contrived a mechanism
that can almost insure
the present multi national corporate elite
against such an administration
ever winning election in the first place

and if it did win ??

one thinks of 1861

so why this maximum plan ?
because it runs as a continuous course from here for the wage class
get as much of it as you can
beyond your own neighborhood and job site
forget the rest
forget
civic enhancement
forget sound finance
forget green fields and blue skies
forget national security
forget social progress itself
tforget em all
that is except for these couple things:

more take home pay hourly rated
good freer health care
and more time in the middle years
to be among
friends and familly
of these things
go for as much as possible

I am going to go down this road with you Owen.

I want max take-home pay with min hours. I want more time right now with my friends and family. Now.

Millions of other people want these things too.

How do we get it?

How do we get it?

Smiles,

Though you directed the question to OP, I am inclined to answer it myself. Well, not answer it, just to throw in a comment or two. I think MJS is right: clear the mind of cant. (Maybe also of can't.)

I think for people in the good ole USA to clear the mind, to stop believing...to stop trusting, etc, things are going to have to continue to get worse and worse, before they get better, if they get better. The only way for people to have a sense of class solidarity, or any kind of class consciousness, is to *feel* it, and that means pain.

I don't wish this pain on anyone, but I think it's inevitable ---- it's happening already ---- and that pain and frustration are the only things that will cut through the illusions.

The illusions must be stripped away, and people must stare at the naked power and class relationships behind the illusions, the cultural mythology, the ballot box, the media noise, the bells n whistles, bread n circuses, etc.

Strip that away. Confront capital directly.

Smiles, you ask, "How do we get it?"

We fucking take it.

smiley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Vickrey

start with this guys late work on macro

like this popular broadside

http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/wp/econ/vickrey.html

might clear off a few of mjs's

"things that aren't true"

if you can't read it
so much for a humanist education
you might as well be a plant

here's greg mankiw an utter corporate sycophant on wv:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/search?q=vickrey

try this guys stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Vickrey

like this late broadside

http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/wp/econ/vickrey.html

here's corporate sycophant greg mankiw on wv

do you know who greg m is ???

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/search?q=vickrey

do you know who greg m is ???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._Gregory_Mankiw

wage rate max starts with hyper tight job markets ie more jobs then jobsters

macronautics can achieve this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_finance

this guys work

abba lerner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abba_P._Lerner
in particular

the limit of wages ??

when wage push inflation takes command

anti dote ???

the lerner vickrey colander
market anti inflation plan

MAP

if you get this far find me here
and i'll play beatrice for you

to get more leisure requires
job hours regulations that yield more leisure

and i like this guys notions about
extended periods of time off
over the full job life cycle

Rehn G. (1990) Flexibility and free choice in working life. In: Habib J, Nusberg C (eds.). Rethinking worklife
options for older persons. Washington, D.C.: International Federation on Aging, 1990: 199-215.

first step always
get to high employment fast
by using uncle's transfer system

ie payroll tax

health premium full rebates

property tax rebates
SSI bonus checks

make the fuckin dip shit masses crave you
like they craved FDR

fdr piece mealed a master work
but unfortunately he had just one shot
right at the start
one shot at total reformation
and we got watered down euro-corporatism mussolini lite stuff
ie the NRA

we know lots more now
primarily thank to his three terms
each one containing precious discoveries
nostly cast aside at one point or other since
except for where we could start his de facto social democratic transfer system
the heart of the swedish model

only we want to put it into warp speed
and force radical institutional metamorphics

err till this pink potus one way or other
takes
her allende exit

CZ,

I'm all for taking it.

But, OP's plan depends on positioning people within a system that will negate their influence the moment they take bureau, office or chair.

It depends on the existing state, and that monster is impervious to reform.

I agree with sir crow
If reform here is used in the sense of a reformed drunk

Yes every state has it's day in the sun
But state produced rain storms floods and blight

Always with time
come to any

Philidelphia

States always fall off the wagon
Even brand new dry as a bone states like soviet Russia

And yet

We work thru states anyway
And armed organizations that are the dark cellar foundation of all states

Till the lambs fuck the wolves and the lions blow the goats

You are naive, OP. I don't mean that as criticism. Just a description. No one has yet used this monster without becoming its appendage.

crow conjecture:

"No one has yet used this monster
without becoming its appendage."

well i'm not sure how you intend us to take the word appendage

control of states ??

seized by organizations
ad hoc self forming pre formed whatever
but not by individuals
so the one here must be a group of souls
they as organized
build and rebuild states

even existing bureaucracies are
sub sets divided against each other as much or more then co ordinatedwith each other
in the end the state is a creature of a class or classes or a class fraction or coallition of class fractions
but thru organizations

lets call these orgs parties
in some very loose sense

these parties can indeed become so intricated with the state aparatus as to become undisentangleable

your point these entangled entities will in time do the dirty deeds the state functions require and of course often more dirty deeds then the state requires but once they do less they either are supplanted or the state itself collapses

its that aspect the two end games
the ttwo opennings to morphic motions
you seem to underweigh mr crow

states can't have an earthly eden
with em
but
prolly can't get there without em

at least Clio so far has stomped the state less alternatives eh ??

paine's conjecture

like wars and revolutions
states are necessary to social evolution
all three are violent and in the whole
from the pov of a goodly hunk of "the people"
means to largely involuntary outcomes

force is the midwife of deep progress

this dark truism
wanders the soul space
of our best
left anarchists and libertarians
scaring the holy shit out of em

let us all quake b4 the long and terrific shadow of the state
glowering down fangs glistening
on all ...all
class cloven societies

You're cut when you respond to yourself, Owen.

I'm not talking abolitionism, here. I'm stating that there's no time in American history where the state has been captured and turned to the uses you anticipate, because it's not and cannot be organized to do so.

Even its least heartrending concretizations of goodwill - the EPA and the FDA - are fully owned subsidiaries of their putative corporate wards.

This idea that the American state can be turned to the use of providing guaranteed income and reduced hours is bunk.

And methinks you know it.

Any advances made have been in spite of it, and against it - and yet you still persist in the fuddling and blinkered Americanized version of Fabian tinkering.

Look at your social environment, your academic posturing, your insistence on fiddling with imaginary figures while real people starve and the EBT disbursements get smaller, and challenge your damned self first and only most of all.

There's no revolution, no even mild social alteration, because yours is a generation of cowards. Maybe not you, personally. But, you own it because you claim it.

And there you are, from your position of comfortable Bostonian brahmin obscurity, whimbling away as if the imaginary capture of the Fed and the SEC will change everything.

It's no wonder you mock Haywood, Flynn and the wobs.

They got it done. Sure, they lost in the end. But, they fought a fight your generation of academics and parlor pinks can only critique from safe remove...

Paine's expertise in theorizing is on fine display here.

Paine's ...uh... experience in DOING, that's a different story.

Theory... so much more interesting than action... even to a "Marxist" who will debate "praxis."

As Moon Zappa said, "gag me with a spoon."

new deal built transfer system

"Fabian tinkering " ???

"methinks you know it"

nope i don't know it
a mr cox on the hencvlub list wrote something like this today

revolution is just what happens when a bunch of necessary reforms don't happen

karl u make a good point

if i weren't a very practical failure i'd still have my own business now
and prolly
i'd by now
be funding a think tank
that mjs and al could run
from the comfort of their residential bugalows
some where warm and breezy
if they so choose

but alas i crashed it into a wall back in 2000

y2k by other means

since then i've been
swimming with the wage sardines

as to praxis
i got all too much of praxis
between
1980 and 2000

"mock Haywood, Flynn "
gads no

why big bill is the highest kind of hero to me

flynn ettor and st john too

Clio however dealt cruelly
with their
noble romantic illusions

they all lived into a second or third life
after the roaring days of the OBU

So 11 years later the response is to tinker with currency exchange rates because the 20 years of doing said that's all there is to do?