Free Trade

by Dennis Green

People calling themselves “conservatives” bitch and moan about “illegal aliens,” those some 12-14 million undocumented immigrants, most of them from Mexico, residing now and looking for work in the good old U.S. of A. And do they ask why these folks risk life and limb to be here? Of course not, for that would mean using their god-given human intelligence.

President Ronald Reagan, their hero, achieved two things that have changed America forever: 1) The so-called “War on Drugs,” and, 2) Free Trade. Neither legislative policy is truly conservative, let alone libertarian. Both involve big government intercession. And both have had many unintended consequences.

The use of drugs, especially marijuana and methamphetamine, have gone up considerably since the launching of the War on Drugs, just as rates of teen pregnancy, sexual diseases and abortion have risen in the face of the so-called “Abstinence Only” policy of sex ed. All the effort, time and money spent on intercession and discouragement of drug use has been largely ineffective. These policies just don’t work.

With NAFTA — born during Reagan’s presidency, furthered by President Bush Senior and by the administration of Bill Clinton under the policy of “triangulation,” i.e., pre-empting and co-opting conservative policies, finalized by George W. Bush — protectionist trade barriers between America, Canada and Mexico were eased if not entirely removed. These same policies of free and open trade were extended through the World Trade Organization (WTO) to the E.U., South Korea, South America, East Asia and to China, encouraging the first phases of globalization.

Supporters argued that globalization is inevitable, and a good thing, as American products and companies would thrive in a multi-national business environment. Opponents said that environmental standards would weaken, labor would be cheapened and exploited, and capitol would flee to developing countries like China and India.

One measure of the benefit derived from free trade is a nation’s world trade balance. Following the institution of NAFTA, WTO and other free trade agreements pushed by the GOP, as of 2008, America wound up dead last among industrialized nations, at #188, with a trade deficit of some $568 billion per year. China comes in at first place, with a trade surplus, (more in exports than in imports), of more than $368 billion annually. [See: http://useconomy.about.com/b/2008/04/24/nafta-pros-and-cons.htm]

Meanwhile, Chevrolet opens new factories in China, financed in part by the U.S. taxpayer bailout, where it will build automobiles it will sell to Chinese citizens benefiting from free trade. Harvesting of the rain forest, especially in the Amazon Valley, continues at a rapid pace. Twenty five percent of Mexican small farmers have been forced out of business by cheaper American surplus crop imports, and Canada has become ever more resource-dependent, exporting to the U.S. only coal, gas and oil.

The few new factories opened in Mexico cannot provide manufacturing jobs to all those Mexican farmers and laborers displaced by free trade policies with the U.S. But they can find work in California fields, or as gardeners or day laborers or nannies or housekeepers in middle class New York neighborhoods.

The winners are the multi-national corporations which fund GOP coffers, and nations besides China, such as Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Kuwait, Venezuela and other emergent economies. Conservatives such as Pat Buchanan decry this lack of protection for U.S. workers and smaller companies located here,

And both these policies have encouraged a rise in the Mexican drug trade.

Meanwhile, Chinese venture capitalists fund development of a battery exchange system for an electric bus at the Beijing Institute of Technology. Guess who’s going to be importing those!

But rarely do we ask ourselves why all those people from Mexico are looking for work north of those oh so porous borders…made all the more so by NAFTA, which was supposed to expire last year.

©2010 Dennis Green

Big Nurse

by Dennis Green

I’m just an old sack of flour. Throw me in the car and drive me to my next appointments… But watch out, I still bite!

WellPoint Clinic, in Emeryville. Peritoneal Dialysis. Luxurious reception room, offices and exam rooms, where, two years ago, I endured six months of dialysis training and prep.

Big Nurse. Blonde and buxom, in her fifties. Emma. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years!” she announces, “and I’ve never heard of adding supplement to the fluid to be any help!” Very assertive.

Oh, yeah? I think, just like I did when I was five years old, and first talked back to my mother.

“Well, listen to me!” I tell her. “I’ve been doing this for 63 years, passed my first kidney stone at six. And I will respect your expertise, but you will NOT be the boss of my life. I am the boss of my life, and my health and I will be in control of everything that goes on here.”

I’ve learned over the years that even a sack of flour has to be in control of his own healthcare. With Kaiser Permanente coverage, I’m facing a lot of choices and a lot of latitude regarding my care. And this Big Nurse is very capable, but needs to understand that I am not a passive “patient.”

Diane and the coordinator both smile. Big Nurse nods in agreement, and I tell her about my resigning from Children’s Hospital rather than agreeing to lie to the press during the nursing strike there in 1989. I wouldn’t betray all my friends, and I want her to understand that she can be one of those persons.

The rest of the exam goes reasonably well, until we get to the catheter in my belly. When Big Nurse, Emma, tries to flush it out, nothing works. No fluid will go inside the peritoneal cavity. She tries again, and gets a little fluid to go in. But then, she has trouble draining it back out. She asks me to stand, and I do.

Still no draining. This is what happened in the hospital, after the peritoneal catheter was first installed by the surgeon. We speculate that it might be blocked by my internal organs, or that the tip is bent. She gets on the phone and calls one of the team of nephrologists who is attending my case, Dr. Chien.

He advises me to take a medication I have at home, and to come in for x-rays of the area. Emma cleans the catheter and re-tapes it against my belly. I stand up again and make my way slowly back to the front office. Diane is right behind me and we get to the car and she drives us home through rush hour five o’clock traffic.

I come away somewhat encouraged. WellPoint is a much nicer setting than the Piedmont hemodialysis clinic in Oakland. Big Nurse, once she understood my nature, impressed me as a very capable source of comfort and support. But I’m still a sack of flour.

When you’re sick, and in some process of treatment, it’s a choice. You can sink into yourself and let the world of care come to you, attend you, push you around, and run your life. Or you can be assertive. There’s a sensitive line between doing that and becoming merely a bitchy pain in the ass, and I trust that I’ve not crossed over.

©2010 Dennis Green

The Invisible Hand

by Dennis Green

In spite of my generally libertarian leanings, I’m completely disabused of Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” theory, which says that left to its own devices, the marketplace, the consumer, the investor needs no protection whatsoever against fraud. Left to our own devices, America has fallen to 18^th place globally in broadband penetration and even lower in our outcomes with health care and education. No thank you, Mr. Smith!

“We can stifle innovation. We can stifle economic development…” complain the so-called conservatives, such as Orin Hatch, who simply stand aside and let the bankers roll the dice. Oooops! House odds.

What trumps Adam Smith’s theory, for me, is John Calvin’s notion of “Total Depravity,” that our human natures are corrupted by imperfection, by failure and weakness and sin, in all their many aspects and to their greatest depth. The Great American Demiurge, in what might be called the “Puritanical Reaction,” is the belief that our best efforts toward perfection are quite enough to counter that human nature.

Thus, we are always looking for excuses, for exemptions from such a state of providential depravity. Milton Freedman’s “Possibility of cooperation without coercion” is one of those. And let’s face it, behind Smith’s concept of the “invisible hand” is the Deist image of a benign, even benevolent godhead nurturing his Creation. If there is a hand in this, it is God’s.

The Enlightenment poet Alexander Pope expresses it one way:

Thus God and Nature formed the general frame,

And bade self-love and social be the same.

It was, so far, viewed as a natural inclination rather than a social mechanism as defined by later economists such as Leon Walras. At this stage, the belief is still that self-interest drives actors to beneficial behavior, since the welfare of the entire community is served by a balanced trade-off of goods, values, prices and returns. And the key to this balance is open and free competition.

Critics of the “Nanny State,” on the other hand, argue against any form of protectionism or regulation, but say that man should be left to his own devices. If he wants to smoke tobacco, that is his choice, they say. “Let the smoker beware!” would be their motto.

Others argue that “Informed Choice” is more often a myth of the marketplace, that credit card companies, for example, count on the failure, or neglect or inability of a borrower to calculate the penalties for making a minimum payment on an outstanding balance, but must be informed of the penalties for doing so — the difference in ultimate cost and extension of such a payment schedule compared to even a slightly accelerated one.

Smith developed his own version of such general theories into six common virtues found in man, which he detailed in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Along with The Wealth of Nations, Smith’s sentiments became the foundation of much of laissez-faire modern economic theory driving GOP policies for the past century. Only recently have we been reminded by circumstance of the counter-theory, often referred to as “The Tragedy of the Commons,” that is, an example where self-interest tends to bring about disastrous results.

Smith also famously wrote: “The rich…consume little more than the poor…and in spite of their natural selfishness…They are led by the invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessities of life…” So much for that invisible, impartial hand! It is invisible because it is so often not even there!

“Enlightened self-interest” is an attractive theory of human nature, but when it leads a major investment firm like Goldman Sachs to bet against its own investors, and profit from their enormous losses, something is amiss. The Greater Good is not amused.

©2010 Dennis Green

A Little Perspective

by Dennis Green

Back from the Dead, I’m looking around me like Lazarus, or even at moments like a newborn babe. Special moments. There are many ways to distance oneself from the hurly-burly of daily events, the crush of local politics and national crises. One of the most unusual, and extravagant, is the sort of near-death experience I’ve just undergone. Perspective.

And no, from a slightly more cosmic perspective, the upcoming special election initiative in Alameda considering a new school parcel tax is NOT the beginning, or the end, of the world. No more than the new immigration law in Arizona, nor the fact that Iran may acquire nuclear weapons. Not such big deals, after all.

Everyday circumstances will continue to challenge us, threaten our sense of security, rub our notions of justice and fairness the wrong way. The difference today is that we have multi-billion dollar media whose job it is to stir up those emotions from a distance, from the moment we open our eyes to the moment we close them in our evening or our eternal rest.

As a provocateur, a journalist, a blogster, a writer of op-ed commentary, it’s often been my task to add to the stresses that you feel around such emotions.

So for me, this jarring re-set of my own point of view comes as a refreshing breeze between me and my usual determinations. I’d rather, I feel now, add clarity to the world view I share with my chums and neighbors than to simply stir the pot. Beyond, for example, the immediate conflict here in Alameda over Measure E comes my overriding concern for comity, for the peaceful community I’ve come to know and love.

That means that I don’t have to tear out the jugular of my opponents over this debate. If the Measure fails, students will continue to receive more or less the same quality of education they get now, and have gotten for the past several generations. If Measure E passes, a few families may have to re-locate to San Leandro, or Hayward or the Oakland hills, rather than meeting the tax burden here on the island, but their lives might even improve overall.

For our attachment to Alameda, to a particular standard of living, to the views of San Francisco and the short commute into the City in the off-hours, our fondness for the small town feel, the familiar faces of merchants and servers, our love of the climate advantages — all just lead us to believe that this is God’s Country. And if, in our attachment to Paradise, we wind up resenting our neighbors, or the newer arrivals, or those who support real estate development theories we eschew, then we have lost our very humanity in the bargain.

I lived in Santa Barbara for 20 years, and was convinced I was living in Paradise there and then too. After tearing myself away, twice, I came to see that being able to choose where you live is a particularly special privilege some of us Americans enjoy. Most humans, though, are pretty much stuck in one place most of their lives. Living “up in the air,” simultaneously anywhere and everywhere, is still a very rare experience.

And ultimately, it’s attachment that is the deadly trap, that woos us away from our divine nature as holy, sentient, cosmic beings. I realize today that I have allowed my “Alameda-ness” to become a grotesque part of my persona, and that my ever-lovin’ personality is much, much bigger than that.

Locale…nexus…our location within the galaxy and the universe…can be no more nor less important than anything else, no matter what the real estate agents say. So let’s just all lighten up a bit and recover a perspective that crosses city lines and transcends all these pressing special local issues.

©2010 Dennis Green

Too Pee or Not To Pee

by Dennis Green

Enormous, nondescript building at the foot of Piedmont Ave in Oakland, the Clinic. Inside, an empty reception room, two elderly people, both black, in wheelchairs, smiling and talking. No receptionist in sight.

We’d come in through the small parking lot, me with no idea what to expect. Diane had been here earlier this morning, to sign me up. Now she indicates that I should sit in a small chair at the window off to one side. I sit.

The place feels clean, but still neglected somehow, as if no one wants to be there. Custodians, security guards, the occasional staffer getting off shift come and go. I sit and wait, my energy level dropping by the minute, until I can barely concentrate.

A little after one p.m., a young Filipino woman comes out of the security door and sits behind the reception window. She looks at me askance, until Diane intervenes. “This is Dennis Green,” she says. “You have some papers for him to sign…”

She nods and pushes toward me a thick pile of official-looking papers. Consent forms, release forms, acknowledgement of my rights under Medicare, etc. Each time, the young lady indicates where I should sign and tells me whether or not to include the date. I must have signed 36 times before I’m through, and also initialed many lines as well before I’m through.

Then, when I am done, Diane indicates another chair where I can sit and watch TV if I am so inclined. Freddie Mercury singing “Mama..?” Nope. Afternoon soaps and talk shows. But I’m only one white boy in this waiting lounge, so let it be.

Finally, just past one-thirty, my name is called and Diane and a staffer escort me into the big open clinic room. Larger than any gymnasium, with ceilings a good 60 feet high, the room is configured with little stations of grief, one machine shared by every two patients, in front of each patient chair a small TV on an adjustable arm, the chair itself adjustable too, and as I settle into mine, the young girl attending me, who tells me her name, which I immediately forget, eases me back into a reclining position.

She fiddles with the catheter at my carotid artery, then puts on a face mask, and also fits one over my mouth. She attaches the little hose from the machine to the catheter in my artery, and soon a dark red flow of blood is running through the little hose. “This will take about three hours now,” she says.

Seems simple enough. Something I’ve been doing all me life. And then I stopped. So there I was on the 9^th Floor, trying to pee in a plastic container, and nothing is happening. They check my vital signs, and only this one is missing in action.

“Put in a Foley,” says the doc. A Foley, in this instance, is a catheter, a plastic tube inserted into the penis that allows the bladder to drain without any effort or around some obstruction. And immediately, several hundred liters of urine come bursting out. Such a relief…and yet..?

So here I am three days later, in Clinic. A very young, hip black kid wearing his baseball cap on regulation style, the bill set front and center, with a big bling-bling silver chain around his neck, checks my blood pressure, adjusts the dialysis machine, and I feel utter safety in his presence.

“Thank you,” I tell him, “Thank you for your help and your kindness. I feel so safe here!”

“That’s what I’m here for,” the lad says, and I know that he means it.

And then Freddy Mercury comes on the TV, strutting around, singing, “Another one bites the dust!” in his white cut-off shorts, looking so athletic. “We will, we will ROCK YOU!” And you’d never know he was dying of AIDs at the time…And I think to myself, another one bites the dust…And yet..they sing on...

“We are the Champions of the World!”

©2010 Dennis Green

Pieta

by Dennis Green

On my one visit to Rome, I spent a day at St. Peter’s Basilica near Vatican City with Diane, and inside we took in all that magnificence. I stood for nearly an hour in the little Pieta Chapel off to one side, immersed in the sight of Michelangelo’s sculpture. Madonna and Child here become the Grieving Mary cradling the body of her dead son, Jesus.

His lifeless corpse sprawls across her lap, his face showing not a trace of the tortures he has endured, his eyes closed in eternal rest. Her face is turned downward, resolutely coming to terms with the terrible outcome of his ministry. Tears streamed down my face that day as I felt myself sinking inside the very marble itself. That is the power of great art.

Michelangelo was only 24 when he completed this sculpture, and yet he had an amazing vision of this sad moment in time, after Jesus was taken down from the cross and before his body was laid in the tomb and sealed inside with a huge stone. The style is “High Renaissance,” but the work is not about style at all, rather the artist’s awful realization that even the Son of God is mortal.

There are three Michelangelo Pietas altogether — the one in Rome, one in Milan, and a third in Florence, which I also saw on that incredible journey across Italy. The Florence Pieta is, if anything, even more powerful, because after working on it for ten years as the intended capstone for his own tomb, Michelangelo tried to destroy it in 1555.

The sculpture was saved by a servant named Antonio, bought by the Florentine Banker Bandini and repaired by one of Michelangelo’s assistants, Cacagni. The Bandini Pieta features four figures, Mary on her knees trying to support the body of Jesus, helped by a bearded man, (Nicodemus?), whose countenance is said to be based on Michelangelo himself.

A second woman, angelic, perhaps Mary Magdalene, also helps support the body of Jesus, holding up his thigh, while Jesus’ arm encircles her shoulders in a final embrace. This drama of death illuminates despair and loss, but also loving and compassionate support. What frustrations led Michelangelo to attack and then abandon his own work, we can only imagine.

“The Pity” as the Italian translates is a much more complex concept than our simple English word suggests. It is what I felt that day, a surge, a spasm, a passionate rising of sympathy, for the dead Jesus, for his stricken mother, but also for humanity — including those who whipped and scourged and crucified him — and for ourselves. Not self-pity, but realizing with a shock that we are a part of that drama, that we are not exempt from his suffering, his mortality or his death.

There is a certain tendency among cynics to a glib and shallow dismissal of such emotions, and such events. How could it possibly include ME? I’m virile, I’m healthy, I’m athletic, lively, bright, comfy, amused and entertained. I’ve got mine, and I am IMMORTAL! “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

I pity the poor fool I was when I sounded just this way, all puffed up with my own self-importance. I visited Rome that year, stood before the Pieta, only a few months after my third heart attack and bypass surgery, which altered my outlook on life. Before all that, I would not have been so absorbed by the Pieta.

And now, I feel that pity for my former self, and for anyone who feels immortal. Such supercilious arrogance as mine merely puts one at a far remove from reality, from other people, and from the compassion that takes its place the minute we learn otherwise.

©2010 Dennis Green

Locals Have the Right of Way

Commentary by Dennis Green

Our favorite cowboy/biker/locals bar — Steiner’s on the Plaza in Sonoma — once had a little sign on the wall behind the bar that read simply, “Locals Have the Right of Way.” The first time I noticed that sign, some seventeen years ago, I felt a little threatened by it, because I had not yet made a commitment to love and respect these people. I was not a “local,” but a tourist, a visitor, a day tripper, a newbie.

I was, in short, from a more civilized part of the world than these yokels. I had lived in San Francisco, Berkeley, Walnut Creek, Alameda! I was superior.

The first time I met one East Bay editor, she told me that her previous assignment had been in Eureka — with the Humboldt Times/Standard — and how the people living there were such rubes and hicks and rednecks, these sawmill and fishing folk. I then mentioned that I had grown up there, graduating from Eureka High School in 1958, and that my father had worked in sawmills. Imagine her surprise.

So I emailed some old friends in Eureka, who told me that as an editor, this woman had impressed them as a condescending, aloof snob. Imagine my surprise.

So that’s what a “newbie” is — a state of mind of the more recent arrival who has not yet put down roots, who looks disdainfully at the natives and old timers and feels superior. “How can locals have the right of way? I’m not a local, but I’m always right!”

I no longer feel that way when I spend the day in Sonoma. Not since we attended the funeral of our favorite bartender, Sam, at the little cemetery on the edge of town. Sam was a Marine, and a ‘Nam vet, we learned only that day, because he’d never talked about it, referring to himself merely as a “recovering attorney.”

All the locals were there that day, and they treated us like locals too.

Over the years, a wonderful sea change had come about. We had demonstrated that we could be counted on to be good sports, to buy the occasional round for someone we especially liked and admired, that we loved the town and would live there if we could. The time came when we would enter Steiner’s and a cry would go up, “ALAMEDA!”

People ask us, knowing Diane and I like to have lunch at the Swiss Hotel, out front in the patio with the lovely waitress Sharon, where we can have our dog Lucca beside our table, “So what did you have for lunch today?” They tell us stories about their families, their love lives, what it’s like growing up in Sonoma. They know we don’t resent the fact that locals have the right of way.

Many people come to Alameda, this former Navy town, with that same attitude of superiority toward the long-time, working class locals. They do so, however, at their own peril, and they will learn that these people are very bright, and uncanny in their wisdom. They know something about this island that it takes many years of living here to learn.

And they always have the right of way.

[545 words]

©2010 Dennis Green

Death & Kids

by Dennis Green

The silence of the grave is absolute. A recent “Sunday Morning” report detailed the affect on children of the death of a parent. Heart-wrenching stuff. And very brave. Because in our society, we don’t often use “The D-Word” even among adults. Dead. As a doornail.

“Children grieve for the rest of their lives. They never get over it. It doesn’t end. Your whole life is different.” And yet, the implication is that for children it’s oh so very different than for us grownups. If only.

My father died at the age of 90, after five years of terminal illness, knowing that he was dying. And yes, I felt some relief upon hearing the news, but that didn’t last. That was seven years ago, when I was 62, but I’m still grieving his death. I still miss him.

My sister came upon a box of old photos recently, and there he is, Herb Green, tall and a bit remote, handsome, that wide forehead and prominent cheekbones and black hair, looking almost Native American. And in many of the photos, he’s standing proudly next to me, his boy, his first-born, his namesake, Dennis Herbert Green.

The day that I was born, my father swore that I would never work in a sawmill, as he did most of his life, that I would go to college and have a better, perhaps a little easier life than he had. Years later, when my usual summer job in a gas station fell through, he let me come to work at the stud mill where he was Superintendent, the Cannon Ball Lumber Company midway between Arcata and Blue Lake, on the Mad River, as a “trashpicker,” the lowest and most menial job in the mill.

He brought around a canteen of water for me, got me up at 4:30 a.m. to get to work on time, sat with me on our half-hour lunch breaks, and generally looked after me. When, deep into summer, that gas station job opened up, he saw me retire from sawmill work with some relief. And only then did my mother tell me about that day that I was born, and what my father had sworn.

So I look at the old photos. There I am in my Standard Stations uniform, the white twill pants and shirt, the white overseas cap, black shoes and belt and little black clip-on bow tie. Or in my Cub Scout uniform, or dressed in a suit for my senior prom, standing beside my dad, who was over six feet, a good four inches taller than me. Tall enough that when we were little, my sister and I would play with him “Skin the Cat,” walking up his legs and doing a somersault back to the floor.

We weren’t close in the beginning, and he wrote me a letter once apologizing for being so distant after a sawmill accident that almost tore off his arm and left him crippled when I was only four. But in his last five years we became as tight as any father and son can possibly be. So when he died, I felt abandoned, but also very much loved.

And in one of those ethereal experiences, I was convinced that his spirit stayed with me, looking over me, just to be sure I would be alright. I could feel him in my room for a good two years after the Christmas morning that he died.

So if we’re going to keep the child in us alive, that also means that a part of us will always be vulnerable to the loss of a parent, as much so as a little child is. That’s what it means to be human. And I suspect that when his cousin John the Baptist was beheaded, Jesus was devastated too.

©2010 Dennis Green

Ten Good Reasons To Vote Against AUSD Parcel Tax

Commentary by Dennis Green

Not Again!

Too Soon, Too Much.

No on Measure E!

There are many good reasons to vote NO on the upcoming new school parcel tax, which would last eight years and, at $659 per year for residential real estate, would be an increase of 114% over Measures A&H combined, which equal $309 per year and don’t even expire until the end of 2012.

1) If you’re among the 55% of Alamedans who don’t own real estate, rising home prices — whether they’re tied to schools or not — do not benefit you. In fact, they make Alameda less affordable for middle class people, and raise the rents and taxes and all other prices on the island.

2) The parcel tax initiative would do an end-run on legislation pending in Sacramento that would reduce the requirements to pass a parcel tax from 2/3 of the voters to 55%, but would also limit any new parcel tax to $250. AUSD is attempting to thwart the intention of such a legislative compromise.

3) The initiative says it will “exempt seniors and the disabled” from having to pay the new tax, but in the past many disabled have not qualified for the exemption, and seniors have to sign up during a brief, unadvertised window of opportunity every year to receive the exemption, and many seniors fail to qualify. This so-called “exemption,” however, makes it easier for the backers to achieve the 2/3 necessary margin.

4) Property values in Alameda, regardless of high property and parcel taxes going to the schools, regularly suffer depressed markets — by 40% in the early 1990s and again in 2008. Expensive schools are no guarantee of high prices, even for the 45% of voters who own real estate.

5) High expenditures on public schools are no guarantee of quality outcomes or excellence in teaching. If they were, Oakland schools would be twice as good as Alameda’s, (and the housing prices there would be double ours,) since they spend twice as much per pupil as AUSD does.

6) The language of the parcel tax initiative is intentionally vague, because, as School Board Trustee and Board Vice President Mike McMahon says, “We don’t want to tie our hands to specific expenditures because we won’t see the State budget until much later this year.” But that means there is no relationship between the initiative, its spending, and the new Master Plan.

7) Even the new Master Plan, which was formulated in part by political consultants Erwin & Muir, contains many inefficiencies — such as keeping smaller, underenrolled “neighborhood schools” open, code language for schools distinguished by de facto segregation. Also requires special teachers for art, music and P.E. classes for elementary schools.

8) California, and especially Alameda, already have some of the highest taxes in the nation. Even with Prop. 13, there are sixteen states with lower property taxes than California, including Oregon, Nevada and Utah, which often poach businesses away from our state.

9) There are many questionable expenses in the AUSD budget — including a full-time attorney with staff support, well over $217,000 in expenses fighting lawsuits filed against the last parcel tax, (of the very sort which will be filed against the new one as well), a “webmaster” who happens to be the daughter of Trustee Mike McMahon, $300/hour to Erwin & Muir, and $140,000 earmarked for a new “development director.”

10) Most compellingly, a “Yes” vote encourages waste in school spending, a lack of accountability and transparency, and simply delays the kinds of radical reforms desperately needed in American education — features of President Obama’s “Race to the Top” Program and Funding — such as teacher evaluation, merit pay, parental school choice, classroom discipline and the Virtual Classroom, all in return for extra funding.

©2010 Dennis Green

The Promised Land

by Dennis Green

President Barrack Hussein Obama is perhaps the most misunderstood figure in all of American history. As others have observed, he is the great national Rorschach test — what you see is what you feel about yourself and the world around you, more than it is some objective perception of the man.

His election was, and remains, remarkable. But he did not win a majority of white votes. (And neither did John Kerry.) But we are no longer a white nation, and his election, in spite of his unpopularity among white voters, proves that.

The latest code phrase, used by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, (that Wop!), is “social democrat,” i.e., sort of a limp-wristed socialist. A liberal, a Pinko, a Commie sympathizer…or something like that. Sputter, sputter, gasp!

Well, we’ve heard from White Supremacists before, most notably that Aryan perfectionist, Adolph Hitler, who valued the purity of the race enough to attempt to exterminate the Jews. And Obama is also disliked in a very mean-spirited fashion by African-American commentator Tavis Smiley, who resents the competition, and appears to identify with an older generation of black revolutionaries, which Obama is not.

A new book — The Bridge by author David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker — explains in some detail an Obama most of us are not familiar with at all, a man “in translation,” who, though black, grew up in a white household, never knew his Nigerian father, lived most of his life in Hawaii, where most black kids are U.S. military dependents living on Navy bases, who attended schools with very few black students. In short, he had to search for what it means to be black, in an entirely new, post-Civil Rights era. And he finally found it in Chicago.

Ironically, Martin Luther King, before his assassination in Memphis turned his attention from “Civil Rights to Human Rights.” We must now, he preached, look deeper, for economic justice. So long as unemployment, dropout rates, imprisonment, earning power, life expectancy, and every other measure of success in our society is weighted against blacks, especially black males, there is no justice, and there will be no peace.

King also spoke out against the War in Vietnam before he died, and in the process lost the support of many of his followers, both white and black. Such sentiments, in early ’68, were still not widespread in America, even if they were in Isla Vista. King saw that a disproportionate number of black soldiers had been fighting and dying in that far off land, to support a dictator who didn’t even have the allegiance of the South Vietnamese people, and was toppled from power.

When Obama claims to stand on King’s shoulders, and then ramps up troop numbers in Afghanistan, he is sadly mistaken, and taken in by the generals whose only raison d’etre is warfare. (So long as they aren’t the ones dying.)

But his treaty with the Russians for arms reduction, cutting the nuclear arsenals in half, will save billions in money currently wasted in “defense” weaponry outdated since the 1980s. Republicans fail to acknowledge that success, and in fact talk about increasing defense spending on large occupation forces and other outmoded strategies.

And just because his election is a sign of remarkable changes in America, that doesn’t mean he’s perfect, or even staying even. But the typical Republican, and Tea Party sound-bite criticisms are mostly beside the point. They distract from the real critique we should all be making as his presidency unfolds.

But if President Obama is imperfect, his worst critics are, for the most part, seriously deluded. Their greatest delusion is that they will win back control of the Congress, and in 2012 the White House, by their carping. Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. If anything, Obama is a hundred times more powerful every victory he wins. And there is no real GOP contender anywhere in sight.

©2010 Dennis Green