I have lots of friends on Facebook, and politically they range from socialist to liberal to conservative to Tea Party. Makes for some fun conversations. Some of my conservative friends insist that President Obama is hopelessly and incomparably bad at being President, that he has visited incalculable harm on the United States during his time in office, that his Presidency is one from which our nation may never recover. And when you ask what events, what policies, what actions have led them to this preposterous conclusion, they will point out, accurately enough, that the deficit has never been higher, and go on to assert that the debt incurred during the Obama Presidency will cripple our economy.

I get that, I really do. If you point out that the deficit isn’t as high as conservatives think it is, that it’s falling rapidly, and that it’s not actually damaging the US economy, you will be accused of ‘drinking the Kool-aid.’ Which is to say, of blindly and thoughtlessly following Obama, of being swayed by this President’s charisma to believe in absurd and untrue things. Oh, and of complete ignorance of economics. The debt is huge, the deficit massive, and the only way out is via huge cuts in federal spending, especially cutting Medicare, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, and all other federal strands of the social safety net.

So the question is this: how sincere are the concerns of Tea Party politicians, of House Republicans and other fiscal conservatives? Is Paul Krugman right, when he argues that the debt and deficit are being used cynically by right wing ideologues to further their ‘small government’ political agenda? Or are the concerns about the debt and deficit genuine? Is US indebtedness an actual, for reals, honest-to-Pete national emergency? Or is it all a big bluff?

From the point of view of actual Tea Party folks, voters, of course their concerns are genuine. They see this issue in personal terms. If they had family members who were racking up huge amounts of credit card debt, they’d be terribly concerned, and they’d do whatever they had to do to fix it. That’s how they see this, through the lens of personal finance. They are terrified of burdening their grandchildren with debt. The fact that the federal government can do things, and is required to do things that no family would or could ever do is immaterial. It’s all about the grandkids.

(But only up to a point. In fact, the US is doing something right now that is quite absurd. We’re saying to young people ‘you should go to college. It’s the key to your financial future. But the reality of college nowadays will require you to incur debt equal to a home mortgage in order to get that education.’ That’s a rotten deal for young people, and they know it. Especially when they know perfectly well that, in Europe, college is free.  Ask the Tea Party folks if they support free college education, and I can predict the response. ‘We can’t afford it.’ Meaning the US. Can’t afford to educate our 18-22 year-olds. Uh, the richest country in the history of the world).

But back to the debt and deficit, because it’s much more comforting to worry about potential problems fifty years from now than actual-factual problems right now. Let’s suppose that the Tea Party is right, and that the national debt is a huge problem, crippling the US economy going forward, and the deficit adds to the debt annually and is dangerously fiscally irresponsible. To go back to the ‘family finance’ model, let’s suppose that your family has incurred a debt. Let’s suppose that you’re living beyond your means, spending more every month than you bring in. There are two things you can do (and you may have to do both). You can increase your income (perhaps by having someone work more hours, or take a second job), or you can cut family spending. So if the deficit is really a big problem, you need to do both things; increase revenues and decrease expenditures.

So lately, to be obnoxious, I’ve been conducting a little thought experiment with my Tea Party friends. Let’s suppose that you’re right. Let’s suppose that the debt really is destructive, that continuing deficit spending really does need to end. Let’s suppose that we’re facing a national emergency if we don’t do something about it.

All right then, what is the current budget deficit? Tea Partiers will usually say ‘it’s a trillion dollars.’ It isn’t. The deficit was $483 billion in fiscal 2014. But fine, we also need to pay down the debt, so let’s go with their figure; let’s say we need to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars.

Now, this is a national emergency, right? This has to be done. And cutting discretionary domestic spending won’t get us there. We need to look at both sides of the ledger, at cutting spending, and raising revenue, right? As you would do with your family. So we ask two questions: what is the most bloated, irresponsible part of the federal budget? And what sector of the population is most conspicuously undertaxed?

The answers are clear enough; the US spends more on defense than the next seventeen highest countries in the world combined. Is it a national emergency if we shut down the six golf courses the Navy operates in Guam? No. Let’s cut $400 billion from the defense budget. We’d still be the highest spending country in defense in the world, by a wide margin. And the super-rich, the top 1% have seen their taxes decline for years. Let’s raise the top marginal tax rate to 1970 rates. And we just made another $400 billion. Add increases in capital gains taxes and estate taxes, and we’d come pretty close to reaching our goal. One trillion dollars.

Then I ask this: if in fact the national debt is a national emergency and eliminating the deficit our top national priority, would you support the budget I just proposed. Would you support cuts in defense spending, and raising taxes on the richest folks in the country? If you’re saying, we must do this, we have to do this, we are bankrupting the future of our grandchildren if we don’t eliminate the deficit immediately, all right then. I have a concrete proposal that would accomplish it. Granted, perhaps, cutting defense and raising taxes wouldn’t be your first choice. But would you support it? In an emergency? Which you insist we have right now.

There have been two usual responses. Here’s one: ‘look, squirrel!’ In other words, a very rapid change of subject. The second is anger: obviously, I don’t understand foreign policy or economics. Cutting defense spending would leave us open to terrorist attacks. (Not true; we’d still have plenty of resources to fight terrorism). Taxing rich people would destroy our economy. (That’s never been true historically; in fact, the economy has never grown faster than during times when the highest marginal tax rate was 91%).

But the Up response, the ‘look, squirrel’ one has been the response of the national Republican party. Right now, in fact, the Republican dominated House and Senate have both proposed budgets, exercises in fantasy really, because there’s no chance at all of President Obama signing either of them into law. And both those budgets include increases in defense spending.

Which suggests to this Hoosier boy one thing: conservatives are not serious about the deficit. They’re using it as a pretext to cut domestic spending. It’s not about fiscal responsibility, it’s about conservative small-government ideology. Sorry to be cynical, folks, but it’s so. The Republican party is, and remains, the party of the rich, of big business, of Wall Street excesses. The Democratic party, in instructive contrast, is only mostly the party of rich business interests. Meanwhile, kids really are getting screwed, but not in the nebulous future, by debt and deficits, but right now, by the student loans that make college, which is a good thing, possible. Some day soon they’re going to get fed up, and kick all the old rich white people out. Can’t happen too soon either, says this rich old white guy.

The Utah legislature meets annually, for a limited time: 60 days. This wasn’t a bad session for education, with 515 million in new ed spending, always welcome news. The leg also had discussions about SAGE, the Utah year-end assessment test that all students have to take, which in part determines school funding priorities. A bill was proposed that would have phased SAGE out. That bill did not pass, unfortunately. But at least they’re having a conversation about it.

Because of that, I can’t help but think that, even with all the new funding, this was an inconsequential session in regards to education. They could have made a genuine difference; they could have actually improved the way kids are educated in the state. But education professionals and education reformers won again, armed with their two great buzz words: ‘accountability’ and ‘assessment.’ And so testing will continue. What a shame.

Here’s why I hate testing so much. I am a teacher, the son of two teachers, grandson of another. I have three sisters-in-law who are teachers. My brother was a teacher. My son is training to become a teaching. Teaching is in my blood. And when I teach, my loyalty, first and foremost, is to my students. Nothing else, no other considerations, can be allowed to get in the way. Teachers focus on kids, those kids, in that classroom, their needs and difficulties and strengths and weaknesses. Of course there’s a subject matter that needs to be taught, and lesson plans that need to be developed, and we do have to come up with some way to figure out how much the kids are learning. But it’s always kid-oriented, directed for and about students. And sure, testing can be a valuable tool, when subject-matter and classroom limited. (Though I never once in my entire career gave a multiple-guess or true/false kind of test. Never once.)

This is just fundamental. Teaching has to be about students. We learn as much as we appropriately can about them. And the point isn’t just to get them to superficially understand certain facts or concepts. The point is empowerment. We want our kids to learn new skills, develop new ways of understanding the world, while always, always respecting their independence, their autonomy. We don’t teach math because there’s anything inherently valuable about figuring out an algebraic equation, but because there’s a kind of mental discipline that working out algebra problems helps develop.

Now, of course, the whole time we’re focusing all our attention on the students, we also are getting paid by the school system. We do owe our employees a certain loyalty. But teaching works best when we’re able to forget that, and lose ourselves in a kind of illusion of selflessness. And honestly, it’s not that much of an illusion. Teachers aren’t paid all that well, and the hours we spend outside the classroom, and the dollars we spend of our own money for classroom supplies all do suggest that teaching really is more a calling than a profession.

And think back to the genuinely great teachers who made a difference in your life. I think, for example, of my old high school drama teacher, Mary Forester, who routinely put in 80 hour weeks to give the school’s outcasts and misfits a place where we belonged. I think of Kenny Mann, my high school English teacher, who told me that short stories I wrote were genuinely engaging, and encouraged me to keep writing. (And I remember how painfully I took the news of his premature death from AIDS). I think of Marvin Carlson, my grad school advisor, who made a point of greeting me every time he saw me in his own bad Norwegian, because he never forgot that I had some fluency in the language.

Bad teaching, though, is what happens when the teacher has some other agenda than caring for students. I remember, for example, a grade school teacher of my oldest son’s. Her own son was in her classroom, and was the school bully, and when we would talk to her about it, it was clear that her primary agenda was to stand up for her kid, and not protect mine. Understandable, perhaps, but immensely damaging, until we were able to transfer Kai to a different school.

Conservatives sometimes complain about higher education having a liberal bias, suggesting not only that some college professors have an ideological bias, but that indoctrinating students ideologically is more important to them than just teaching. I think that does happen, and that it’s wrong. Overly tendentious political correctness is genuinely damaging to academic discourse. At the same time, feminist or Marxist or post-colonial literary theory are important lenses through which we can and often should view texts. The best teachers are those who can teach such theories, without insisting on the ideology. Good teaching is an effort to genuinely engage students in the world of ideas. All ideas, at least initially.

Ultimately, though, good teaching isn’t liberal or conservative. It’s personal, it’s respectful, it’s deeply and powerfully empathetic. And the best classroom moments are those when you sense that this classroom needs something other than the lesson you’ve prepared, and toss your entire plan out the window.

So what happens if institutional imperatives clash with the personal attention you have to give your students? I taught at BYU, I got a paycheck from BYU, and BYU has an Honor Code. I taught playwriting, and some student plays were frankly confessional. What if a student, in a play, admitted to having violated the Honor Code? Would I feel some kind of divided loyalty? Honestly, I never did. It never even occurred to me. I never turned a student in, and can’t imagine ever doing so. I was a teacher. Confessions made in class were, to me, privileged communications.

But once you introduce a state-required standardized test, and tell teachers that their raises and the funding of their schools requires that students do well on it, you’ve fundamentally changed the entire teacher/student dynamic. Suddenly, the worst possible kind of education process–forced rote memorization of worthless facts–becomes the way you have to teach. (Of course teachers teach to the test; the stake are too for them high not to). Suddenly the illusion of selflessness disappears. Your loyalty isn’t to your students anymore; it’s to the dictates of the state, or the principal of your school, or the school board, or whoever else in power needs your kids to do well on the SAGE.

It’s destructive, and it’s unnecessary. Education professionals insist on the necessity of ‘assessment,’ and when you protest, they respond with the other ‘a’ word: accountability. Suddenly, if you protest, you’re a freeloader, a cheat, someone who wants to be paid to do a job but opposes being held accountable for how good you are at it.

But teachers are already accountable. You’re accountable every time you look over a classroom of students. You feel that responsibility; you want them to do well, you care about them, you want them to excel.

When a student wrote a paper for one of my classes, I read it, I marked it up with comments, I gave it a grade. I always gave students the opportunity to re-write. Did their re-writes improve the paper? Yes, without exception, they did. How did I know? How could I prove it? By what assessment metrics could I demonstrate that improvement? I didn’t have any. The paper was better. I have read how many student papers in my lifetime? Several thousand? I know a good paper when I see one, and I also can tell when a paper improves. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.

Assessment and accountability. Those have become the two most destructive and damaging words in contemporary American education. They have become the false gods our education establishment worships. And both find their perfect expression in standardized, state-required tests.

The way teachers survive, I think, is through a kind of practiced mendacity. Teachers pay lip service to the A-words, while preserving as much of their own integrity as they can. Some teachers, of course, take it a step farther, by falsifying their student results. That’s understandable, and, in a sense, laudable, as acts of civil disobedience are often laudable as a response to tyranny. But what really needs to happen is for parents to get involved. Make a fuss. Insist that states end testing. End it now, end it everywhere. And meanwhile, when your kids take the SAGE test (or whatever malevolent equivalent your state’s cooked up), tell them to flunk on purpose. If everyone did that.. . . .

 

 

 

Freshman Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) is not a stupid person, at least if we assume that dummies don’t graduate from Harvard and Harvard Law. Nor should we really question the man’s patriotism; he served in the military, with tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Like a lot of young politicians (he’s 37), he’s ambitious; he wants to make his mark. He’s off to a rousing start. He authored, and got 47 senators to sign, a letter to Iran, carefully explaining our Constitutional form of government. And also why any deal their government negotiates with President Obama isn’t worth doodly-squat.

The ‘Cotton letter’ really is something to behold. Here’s how it starts: “It has come to our attention . . . that you may not understand our constitutional system of government.” That’s the tone; condescending and imperial. Insulting? I think so. It’s an open letter to “The Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and it’s about Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the Obama administration. Which suggests that it’s intended, first of all, to Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif.

So who is Zarif, this Islamist fanatic, this provincial Persian, this ignorant non-entity? Well, Zarif has two Master’s Degrees in International Relations, one from San Francisco State University, and one from the University of Denver, and a PhD from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, also in Denver. I’ve learned all kinds of stuff about Zarif; took me three minutes to find his his Wikipedia article. (I assume Cotton has, at least, a staffer who could have shown him how to find Wikipedia). Zarif’s an expert on nuclear disarmament. He has two kids, both born in the US (and thus eligible for American citizenship). He probably speaks better English than Cotton does.  So, yeah, I think we can safely assume that Zarif is reasonably familiar with the US constitution.

All across the country, newspapers are condemning the Cotton letter. One of them is the highly conservative Deseret News, which called it ‘ill-timed,’ which is about as far as they dared go in criticizing a Tea Party darling. What at least some of these op-ed pieces have pointed out is not just the questionable judgment (even patriotism) of a bunch of senators criticizing an on-going negotiation. The Senate’s constitutional ‘advise and consent’ role is, actually, limited to formal treaties. The Senate has no constitutional role in on-going negotiations. The President is charged with conducting foreign policy. Which this President happens to be particularly good at. Sorry, but it’s so.

The Cotton letter reminds the Iranians that President Obama will be out of office in 2017, and that it’s quite possible that the new President will not share his foreign policy objectives and tactics. That’s certainly true, as far as it goes. But what the President and Secretary Kerry is currently negotiating is not a formal treaty between the US and Iran. It’s a complicated multi-national agreement involving Britain, France, China, Germany and Russian, in addition to other nations. Are 47 Senators really intent on binding the hands of the incoming President like this? Let’s suppose that the Republicans win in 2017 (the letter seems to take that as a given). Will the first act of President Republican Guy’s new administration be an open slap in the face to our closest allies, as well as a de facto declaration of war against Iran? Seriously?

The last paragraph of Cotton’s letter states that ‘any agreement . . . that is not approved by Congress’ is nothing more than ‘an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khameini.’ It would therefore be easily revokable. That’s factually inaccurate; it would be an agreement involving many other nations. And it’s also ignorant of Iran’s complex governmental structure. As the Deseret News editorial pointed out, Khameini is not a dictator. He certainly has a lot of power in Iran, but it’s delicately balanced between the elected government, the Council of Mullahs, and other entities. It’s certainly true, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week (in his equally ill-advised speech) that Khameini has made appallingly anti-Semitic statements in the past. Those statements have, however, been repudiated by, among others, Zarif.

I’m not quite sure that it’s fair to call Cotton ‘Sarah Palin with a Harvard degree’ as Salon.com did recently. Nor is it fair to call his dumb letter an act of treason. That’s a strong accusation, and overstated in this case. It was just stupid. That’s all, and that’s enough. Basically it sends a message internationally that a lot of people in the American Congress are dimwitted. And that some of them are running for President.

As, for example, Marco Rubio, who seriously asked Secretary Kerry, earlier this week, if the reason we haven’t sent more troops into Iraq, or launch more air strikes, to fight against ISIS is because we didn’t want to offend Iran. Secretary Kerry’s rather starchy reply “the facts completely contradict that.” Among those facts would be the presence of Iranian troops liberating Tikrit. Or the 2700 air strikes the US has already launched against ISIS.

At least for now, it appears as though the Republicans have their foreign policy issue heading into 2016. It’s going to be Iran. The Obama administration is soft on Iran, apparently, and also soft on ISIS. Because John Kerry is willing to sit in a room together with Mohammed Zarif.

I do think that the Cotton letter accomplished one thing. It persuaded Zarif that the US Senate doesn’t need to be taken seriously on foreign policy. And now negotiations can continue. And when she takes office, President Clinton may even have a functioning majority in the Senate again. I can think of 47 guys who are going to be vulnerable.

 

The big news Tuesday, of course, was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress at the invitation of House Speaker John Boehner. Post-speech analysis described it as an extraordinary piece of political theatre, which it certainly was. It was also essentially unprecedented. To have the head of state of an American ally address Congress to attack the foreign policy of a sitting President, at the invitation of Congress really does seem to be something brand new. And as a card-carrying liberal, I guess my reaction is supposed to be offended outrage. I’m supposed to describe the invitation as ‘disloyal’ or, depending on how partisan I feel, ‘treasonous.’I think I’ll pass.

I watched the speech, then later read it on-line, and the main thing I remember about it was the ovation Congress gave Netanyahu. It lasted forever. It was a huge standing ovation. It was Beatles-at-Shea-Stadium fervid. And, like those early Beatles performances, the noise of the wildly over-the-top ovation tended to overwhelm the music and the performance.

Basically, Netanyahu hates the idea of negotiating with Iran. The preliminary deal with Iran that the President announced in November 2013 was described by Netanyahu in apocalyptic terms. Here’s the key passage:

We must always remember — I’ll say it one more time — the greatest dangers facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen.

But that, my friends, is exactly what could happen, if the deal now being negotiated is accepted by Iran. That deal will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It would all but guarantee that Iran gets those weapons, lots of them.

And the US Congress went nuts applauding.

I don’t know how it played in Israel. Netanyahu is in a tough election, and Likud (his party) is very slightly behind in the polls. It’s possible that this speech, made in America, might turn the corner in a close Israeli election. It’s more likely that it won’t make much of a difference. It’s not like he said anything new. That kind of apocalyptic rhetoric has resonance with some of his voters, but certainly not all of them. A poll taken right after the speech showed Likud getting a slight bounce, but not enough to win the election. It’s still basically tied.

So, okay, negotiations with Iran continue, and have been fruitful.  What’s Netanyahu’s counter-proposal? To continue with economic sanctions. Those sanctions were originally designed to damage Iran’s economy, thus encouraging Iran to discontinue it’s nuclear program. The fear is that Iran, if not stopped (or pressured to stop themselves) will build and deploy nukes, and launch an attack on Israel.

But they won’t. Vox.com’s Max Fisher carefully explained why this is not a realistic possibility. As Fisher points out, Israel has a second-strike capability that would wipe Iran off the planet, and Iran knows it. So we’re to assume that Iran’s leaders are suicidal loons capable of destroying their own nation if they can take Israel with them? Then why on earth would economic sanctions have any effect? That’s really the essence of Netanyahu’s speech: Iran is run by completely insane anti-Semites intent on Israel’s destruction no matter what the cost to themselves, but who are nonetheless rational enough to be deterred by some short-term economic pain. Really?

That kind of rhetoric, though well received by Republicans, isn’t anything new. Netanyahu’s been giving speeches in the US warning everyone of the dangers of a nuclear Iran since 1996. His rhetoric was apocalyptic then too. A nuclear Iran was immanent then, too. They were ‘on the brink’ of nuclear capability then too. And, as President Obama noted, Netanyahu made very specific predictions in 2013 about the bad things that would follow the deal when it was made, none of which have come true. The speech may have done Netanyahu’s electoral chances some minimal good. But it was a deeply illogical and dangerous speech.

I don’t think, though, that that’s what Congress heard. I think what the Tea Party wing of the Republican party heard was nothing more complicated than a foreign politician (from Israel, no less, the one foreign country loved most by religious conservatives), stand up to that Kenyan Commie in the White House.

But the speech, and the invitation to give the speech, is very likely to backfire. There’s a bill before Congress that would impose new sanctions on Iran in June if no final, comprehensive disarmament agreement is reached before then. President Obama has criticized that bill pretty strongly, saying that diplomacy is on-going, and Congressional interference would endanger complex and important negotiations. Despite the President’s opposition that bill looked like it had strong bi-partisan support, and was likely to pass the Senate, in addition to the House. Remember, there are a lot of Democrats who strongly support Israel. And you can count pro-Iranian Senators on the toes of one hand. Or the fingers on one foot. (They don’t exist, in other words).

But that bill is now dead in the water. Maybe it gets revived. But for now, the spectacle of Republicans insulting the sitting President of the United States over a question of foreign policy (constitutionally, the exclusive purview of the executive branch) has completely soured Democratic support for that bill in the Senate. Rhetoric has consequences. And applause, in this case, may have been emotionally satisfying, but it was a rhetorical blunder of the first order.

Meanwhile, one of the largest cities in Iraq, Tikrit, presently under the control of ISIS, is under attack from Iraqi forces trying to take the city back. I say Iraqi, but it’s more accurate to call it a joint military operation by Iran and Iraq. In fact, two thirds of the troops engaged in combat against Isis are Iranian. And I can’t imagine the courage of those soldiers. If they’re captured by ISIS, there will be no prisoner exchange or humanitarian treatment of wounds. Shi’a troops, captured by ISIS, are summarily executed.

In his speech, Netanyahu compared Iran’s government to ISIS:

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world. They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire.

And it’s not difficult to find evidence to support that contention in the speeches of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But Ahmedinejad is out of office, and Hassan Rouhani is in. And Iran’s fighting alongside Iraq in the battlefield even as we speak. And what’s the reaction of General Dempsey, in charge of the American portion of the fight against ISIS? Awesome.

So Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech to Congress. He spoke eloquently and his remarks were well received. His speech was also extreme, illogical and almost certain to backfire. Well done, sir.