The National Free Press - World Edition: Free Speech, Free Press and Human Rights

An Answer to the Tea Party - In the beginning it was a simple concept: majority rule. Whether it claims root in ancient Athens or some unknown tribal community, it has survived the millennia as the democratic ideal and remains today a powerful force in the governance of nations.

Modern democracy emerged in the eighteenth century as an alternative to monarchy, aristocracy, dictatorship and other forms of tyranny. The founding of the American nation, with all its flaws and inequities, was civilization’s first marriage of the nation state to the democratic ideal.

Rightwing cynics will point out that America is not and has never been a true democracy; it is rather a republic. They are of course literally correct yet fundamentally misguided. Democracy is an ideal that has never been attempted on the scale of nations and until the advent of advanced technology has never in fact been possible. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries no nation could afford to wait for a poll of the franchise before making a critical decision. 
 

Feckless: 1. Unable or unwilling to do anything useful. 2. Lacking the thought or organization necessary to succeed. - Call me a conspiracy theorist. I have speculated since the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963 that the true source of power in this country is neither the people nor those we elect to public office. It is neither the governors nor the congress nor the regal senators nor the president of the United States that call the shots on national policy. It is rather the corporate aristocracy that is neither elected nor American by any standard.

It follows that our elections are only for show. Every two to four years activists and politicos devote countless hours and dedicated effort to choosing a government that better reflects our collective will, that better represents our interests, or one that is at least more competent and thoughtful in conducting the business of the nation.

Every two to four years we are disappointed with the results. We moved from Gerald Ford (the man who pardoned Richard Nixon quid pro quo) to Jimmy Carter and watched his presidency rendered impotent by the price of oil and the Iranian hostage crisis. Betrayed by his own military-intelligence command by sending a rookie pilot into a sandstorm in a failed rescue attempt, he was betrayed again by his rival for the presidency who promised arms to Iran in exchange for the release of the hostages. They were released on Inauguration Day.

It is not just the Gulf of Mexico.

I hoped but never really expected this president to be the architect of a second New Deal. I hoped but never expected Obama to pull our troops out of foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before the end of his first term. I hoped but never expected this administration to champion the universal right to healthcare. I hoped but never expected the Obama White House to turn its back on the elite of Wall Street and the financial aristocracy. I hoped but never expected Obama to christen the age of clean energy and universal mass transit.

I realized long before the election that Obama was not an ideologue and if he fell on the left of the political spectrum it was more rhetorical than real. Barack Obama was and is a pragmatist in the Clinton mold of triangulation and compromise.

Lobbying Congress for favorable legislation: Millions - Cost of deep-sea drilling: Billions - Destruction of an ecosystem: Priceless

On April 20th an attempt to cap the Deepwater Horizon, a British Petroleum rig in the Gulf of Mexico, resulted in an explosion. Eleven workers were lost and the subsequent failure to shut off the oil flow and contain the rapidly spreading slick has resulted in an ecological catastrophe of epic proportions.

As the oil continues to flow and a slick of over 2,000 square miles collides into the Gulf Coast, comparisons to the Exxon-Valdez destruction of Prince William Sound in Alaska begin to fall short. Right wing media, unable to fathom the breadth and depth of this catastrophe, unwilling to accept that we have brought this on ourselves, no longer able to justify the usual “so what” response to environmental crises, have decided to focus on conspiracy theories. On the level of pure speculation, the Limbaugh crowd has raised the specter of a terrorist attack.

The decimation of the California economy was a long-term project. It began in earnest in 1978 with the passage of the infamous Proposition 13 (the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation). Like the current Proposition 16 (a proposal that protects private utilities while pretending to uphold the right vote), Prop 13 was perhaps the first use of the most brilliant means of circumventing democracy ever devised.

Embodied in the state constitution that appropriately numbered ballot proposition not only set a limit on property taxes at one percent of value but it also made it virtually impossible for the state to raise sales or income taxes by requiring a two-thirds vote in both legislative houses. Since property taxes were the primary source of funding for education, Prop 13 was the poison pill that sickened and eventually killed the future of education in the state once known as golden.

When a district in Rhode Island announced its intention to fire all teachers at Central Falls High School in an unmistakable gesture of blame seeking, I knew without knowing it was an impoverished school. When a school board in Kansas City announced it would close 28 schools before the start of the next school year I knew they were the poorest of the poor.

Indeed, just a little research revealed that Central Falls is one of the poorest cities in the state and after the exodus of some 18,000 students to charter schools and more affluent suburban districts, the remaining 17,400 students in the schools scheduled for demolition in Kansas City are “mostly black and impoverished.” (NY Times, March 11, 2010)

If we take a hard look at what the government under the dictates of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) considers failing or failed schools they are invariably schools impacted by a community in poverty. Moreover, if we consider the effects of the recent economic implosion (high unemployment, home foreclosures and declining home values) and the disproportionate impact on impoverished communities, it is easy to see why schools are struggling