Meg's Illegal Nanny

by Dennis Green

It's a paradigm familiar to anyone who lives in California -- the wealthy matron who hires an illegal alien from Mexico to rear her children. Much more common than the tomato farm field hand toiling in the hot sun just outside Bakersfield, all over Southern California, tucked away in little make-shift apartments over the garage are these live-in nannies available 24/7 who work for little more than room and board, exploited by their employers.

When I was married to the Blonde Bombshell from Orange County, I had a sister and brother-in-law who lived on Balboa Island in Newport Beach, two blocks from John Wayne, who fit the stereotype completely. They had two little girls, belonged to the John Birch Society, and paid a live-in Mexican nanny a pittance to live in that one-room apartment over their garage and be constantly on-duty.

"Green Card? I don't need no stinking Green Card!" And they never bothered to verify, or even do the most cursory background check to be sure they were not breaking the law. In her first debate with Jerry Brown this week, Meg Whitman said, in response to the subject of illegal immigration, "All employers have a strict responsibility to verify the Green Card status of people they hire to work for them."

A good, sensible, conservative answer, right?

But now Meg's nanny of 9 years is suing Whitman for lost wages, and the story of her firing is perhaps typical of Compassionate Conservatism. "She called me in and told me I was fired, and that 'From this moment on, I don't know you and you don't know me!'" No sverance pay, or even back wages. Unfortunately, Meg had not, in the words of Ronald Reagan, done due diligence to "Trust and verify!"

How embarasking, as Olive Oil might say. More importantly, Supreme Court nominees have been disqualified for less.

Whitman's first excuse? "I didn't know. She used her sister's immigration papers. How could I know?"

Her second excuse? "Well, her attorney is Gloria Allred, a notorious lawyer for pushing women's rights and defending immigration scofflaws. She's also supported Jerry Brown, contributed money to his campaign, and is hardly objective." Look who's talking.

But in my opinion, Meg is a goner. Her high-priced political consultants must know that. SHE must know that. For she has suddenly been identified to the voters as "One of THEM!" the ugly, dreaded Super Rich who are above the law, who needn't abide by the rules of polite society that the rest of us respect. All along, we've had our suspicions, and now they are confirmed.

We might vote for a sassy, successful female, even a centrist conservative like Meg. Until she takes on that awful shroud -- Privilege! Once she identifies with the very rich, the very privileged, we all know how the rich get richer. They cheat on their taxes. President Bush cuts their taxes way below the rates they paid under Reagan. On Wall Street, they cheat on their investments, and when they get in trouble, Bush bails them out.

And they hire illegal aliens at wages far below,, minimum -- the Growers to pick their crops, the people who live in McMansions the gardeners to trim their McLawns, the big contractors hiring men off street corners to repair their leaking roofs, and the Fifth Avenue matrons hiring the housekeepers and nannies to clean their homes and tend to their McKids. It isn't that we envy them the ability to skirt the law, to get all this cheap labor. No, we resent the fact that they turn right around and bemoan, as Meg has, the porous U.S. Southern border.

If you hire them, they will come. Most of us can't afford to have a live-in nanny, or an obedient housekeeper, a gardener, or a field hand. We may even have sympathized with Cesar Chavez and Huelga! And even if we didn't, we recognize rank hypocrisy when we see it, and the terrible unfairness of people who take advantage of the system, and then tell the rest of us to complain, and to look down upon those "Lawbreakers." Those other lawbreakers.

No, I never liked Meg Whitman, caught the sickly stench of her hypocrisy from afar. But now I have a good reason to get out that Voodoo Doll.

Remediation Is Not Education

by Dennis Green

The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates that California spends about $135 million annually to teach college students what they should have learned in high school. Among the many other courses I taught at UC Santa Barbara and Westmont College — including Shakespeare and Bible Lit — I also taught remedial English composition classes for many years, so I saw the problem up close.

UC campuses enroll the top 12.5% of California high school graduates, and yet 65% of those incoming freshmen flunk the English Composition entrance exam. Many of them receive “A’s” and “B’s” in high school English, but are semi-literate at best.

The National Assessment Governing Board administers a test of core subjects, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, (NAEP), which found recently that in English and math, 4^th and 8^th graders in California rank near the bottom among all states. That is unacceptable.

Even more discouraging, a 2005 survey by Achieve, Inc. found employers estimated nearly 40 percent of recent California high school graduates were not prepared for entry-level jobs. Even in the workplace, they need remediation, further training in the basics.

In public schools, on average, only 65% of those entering high school ever graduate. In 2006, just one quarter of the 520,000 California students who had begun high school four years earlier completed the courses necessary to enroll in a four-year public university. Obviously, our schools are failing us.

While we are constantly reminded of the benefits of great schools, we are rarely or never told the social and criminal costs of those drop-outs. If public schools can take all the credit for those benefits, they should also take the blame for the costs of failure.

And no, I’m not going to blame the teachers, or their unions, for this malaise. In Sacramento, education funding has been hijacked by redevelopment agencies and budget-balancing tricks foisted off on we the people by our elected representatives. Their pet projects do not, in many instances, include the schools. Much of the effort by PTA’s and teachers’ groups now directed at raising new and much larger parcel taxes should instead be directed at Sacramento.

By the same token, if the students are failing too often, and in too many schools, let’s take the administrators by the throats and give them a good shaking. Never vote to re-elect a school board Trustee, for example, whose district is mediocre in its proficiency scores, or who has so poorly managed the district budget that it faces multi-million dollar deficits. They have been spending money they knew they didn’t have, and future monies they knew they wouldn’t have in years to come.

Shake up the School Superintendent and all his or her minions — by tying their salaries to the success and well-being, fiscally and otherwise, of the district and the individual schools they manage. Start with a ten percent cut. Their rate of failure in managing finances, physical plant and personnel would not be tolerated in the private sector. No Superintendent should be earning in a district as mediocre as Alameda, for example, nearly $200,000 per year, as Kirsten Vital does.

Finally, since Alameda teachers average $87,000 in salary and benefits per year, give them something more to do to earn their keep. Lengthen the school day past 3:00 p.m. Shorten that long summer vacation, and cut Xmas and Easter breaks in half. WITHOUT increasing that $87K.

We can’t fix our schools without major reform in the way teachers and their students interact. More use must be made of technology, and the way youngsters eagerly learn computer games. Finally, discipline must be maintained, and students must be kept busy working, learning new skills every day. Curriculum must be strengthened, even in job training programs leading to entry-level jobs upon graduation.

Until such reforms begin — from Sacramento to the teachers’ lounge — don’t give them another dime.

©2010 Dennis Green

Credo

by Dennis Green

I believe. And like all believers, I am a sum total of all that I have met, all the things I have believed in over the decades, including beliefs I held as a child and thought I had abandoned many years ago. That’s the richness of my personal mysticism after three score and ten.

There are times in all our lives when we feel it is important that we reject or deny something we once held to be true, in order to make room for something new, or simply to grow beyond where we were. But by that time, we have usually incorporated those old, previous beliefs into our very bones. That’s how it is with me.

I was raised Roman (French) Catholic, grew up in the midst of all that glory, the arched ceilings, the stained glass windows, the mourning, grieving, suffering alabaster statuary…the Mass in Latin, the rituals of standing, sitting, kneeling, genuflecting…the incense and the candles…the miters and the ceremonial processions…a worldly depiction of Heaven on Earth.

So there’s still a part of me that resonates to ritual, to ceremony and glorification. And I would not be true to myself if I denied that resonance, that connection to my own past. Taking it into account makes me a larger personality and persona than I was, say, as a sophomoric agnostic in the dorms.

And the agnostic is still there too, the denier. A very rational part of me knows that religion is corrupted by all sorts of worldly influences, that politics in church are as vicious as politics in academia, or anywhere. And so, I don’t go to church anymore, but that doesn’t mean my life is spiritually bereft.

And like Thoreau, I feel no obligation to be consistent, even with myself. Some days I scorn the concept of a personal God, at other times, I implore Him. Why should I narrow myself according to someone else’s theology or doctrine? Sometimes, I think Saul of Tarsus is still a Pharisee, and other days he strikes me as a Saint. “Do I contradict myself? Very well then…”

Some days I believe we were created in the image of God, and others that we created God in our image.

So it’s safe to say that I believe many things. Like Dylan, I believe in every breath I take. And like Dylan, I believe in Jesus and in Yahweh, in darkness and in the Light. But I don’t believe everything, or nothing. I am not a nihilist, or an atheist or a hard-headed pragmatist. No, I’m still rather dreamy-eyed, and optimistic in spite of myself.

I believe in natural selection, and that mutations happen all the time, that most of us contain at least an element or two of a mutated humanity, traits that will serve us very well someday. A very large comfort zone with computers, the internet and electronic gear may be a mutation serving us already, making some of us more successful, and more connected, than others are.

Some days I believe that “Faith” is just another word for “Ignorance” and other days I believe in the future of art, without any evidence or proof, along with the existence of my Muse.

Our DNA, after all, changes. Every one of us is a combination of the DNA from our father and the DNA from our mother. So besides those mutations and variants within an individual, each generation contains new combinations and variants. Even as an embryo, I was a platform for diversity.

I see no need to narrow my vision. Yes, I can be cynical about religion, and yes, I can still believe in the Holy Spirit. My whole life has been an encyclopedia of learning and belief. I believe in Evolution, and Plane Geometry, in politics and love. I don’t believe in politicians or ex-wives, however, or city council members scorned.

Credo. I believe. Do you?

©2010 Dennis Green

Perspective

A Young Man’s Game

by Dennis Green

There are many advantages to being an Elder of the Tribe, not the least of which is being exempt from “The Game.” The Game is also known as The Rat Race, and while I played rodentia racecara very well, I’m glad to be out of it, sitting not so much on the sidelines as in a reserved box seat, watching the action impassively.

Vying for the attention of the sweet young ladies is part of The Game, and that is much better played by young men, especially the feckless, those who are not attached to outcomes. For regardless of the outcome, even the young man knows that when he wakes up in the morning, he’ll still be all alone, and will love it that way!

But it isn’t love nor money I’m so thankful to be free of now. It’s politics. I still dabble from the sidelines in this game, which is not, as has been noted, Softball, but I don’t take any of it very seriously anymore. I know that regardless of who wins, just another rascal will be taking office in January.

For all of us, the entire species, is made up of Little Rascals — some in finance, some in education, some in marketing, but more in politics than anywhere else feel free to flaunt the Jolly Roger. And flaunt it they do. Only the politically naïve continue to believe it makes any difference which party, or even which individual, is in power.

“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Bring in those checks and balances! With any luck at all, we’ll get gridlock.

And I had a fascinating meeting with a younger man, Jeff Cambra, who is attempting to act as a mediator between the Alameda business community and the school district, gathering people together from business and asking them what sort of new tax proposal would be, in our eyes, fair.

“I don’t even use the word ‘Fair’ anymore,” Jeff says. “I call it ‘Equitable.’” And he smiles, even though I don’t appreciate his distinction.

I’m not exactly hostile to his views, but they confirm for me a deeper understanding of what I already know about politics. A) It’s a swirling, massive cloud of forces, some of them appealing to our rationality, some to our baser instincts and emotions, and everything in-between. B) A very few people can wag the dog, and usually do. NOT consensus, not GroupThink, but the inspired brilliance of a Mad Man or two!

And now that I’m too old and lame to walk the precincts, I think I know my place, sitting by the campfire, pushing twigs into the flames all night, letting my thoughts go where they will, but eventually to the Council of Elders — those players significant enough to understand and appreciate them. That’s why I’m NOT a Jacksonian Democrat! Or a Reagan “New Morning in America” Republican either!

Nope, I’m an Elder of the Tribe, hopelessly Independent and unfettered by sexual desire, ambition or partisanship. When they pass the Peace Pipe, my lips touch it first. And when they don the War Bonnet, mine is more colorful than all the rest!

I wish Jeff Cambra well, but I also know that he’s wasting his time. At least I didn’t let him waste mine. That’s a young man’s game, and I haven’t got time for the pain, haven’t got time for the waste bin, and haven’t got time for the illusions! And from that brief meeting, another epiphany!

©2010 Dennis Green