A lovely five hour drive through a snowstorm. Have I ever mentioned how much I love my Subaru?
Archives for October 2011
No Dark Sarcasm In The Classroom
No, the kids are not alright under GOP rule in Michigan.
City fire marshal investigators plan to inspect every Detroit Public Schools classroom after receiving complaints this week about overcrowded classes with more than 50 students.
Detroit Fire Department representatives met Thursday with district officials to determine the maximum number of students for every classroom in the district, said Assistant Fire Marshal Osric Wilson.
The fire marshal issued a violation this week at Nolan Elementary-Middle School after receiving a tip that a kindergarten class had 55 students.
Other complaints followed and investigators visited other schools, Wilson said. “This issue is not going to go away; people are going to continue to complain.”
Best part is you already can see the GOP solution to the problem of twice as many kids in classes because of half the needed teachers and wrecked schools: sharp cuts in fire marshal inspections because of “unnecessary government interference when these societal parasites should be out stopping fires like we pay them to do” followed by taking a orbital cannon that shoots chainsaws at the state’s education budget because “our schools are clearly failing students.”
Besides, if the little drains on taxpayer dollars took up a trade to contribute to the economy instead of wasting time and money pretending like an education would ever get them out of the urban hellholes of America, they’d be better off in the long run or something, right?
Layer cake
Kthug touches on one of my favorite topics:
What I found myself thinking about, however, is the way the inequality debate illustrates some typical features of many debates these days: the way the right has a sort of multi-layer defense in depth, which involves not only denying facts but then, in a pinch, denying the fact that you denied those facts.
Think about climate change. You have various right-wingers simultaneously (a) denying that global warming is happening (b) denying that anyone denies that global warming is happening, but denying that humans are responsible (c) denying that anyone denies that humans are causing global warming, insisting that the real argument is about the appropriate response.
I’m not sure there are three levels (yet) on inequality, but we definitely have (a) right-wingers denying that inequality is rising and (b) denying that anyone is denying the rise in inequality, but attacking any proposal to limit that rise.
I also like the various fall-back positions: “even if global warming is happening, that’s not bad, ask people in Buffalo!”, “income inequality is good because it makes the lucky duckies want more than a gubmint hand-out”. And then “even if liberals are right, do they have to be so shrill about it, Real Murkins don’t like that kind of talk”. Then “liberals only believe this because they hate America/freedom/capitalism/Joos.”
Even the liberal Slate/New Republic say that sure, a five degree increase in world temperature seems like a problem, but once you get past the conventional wisdom of our hippie overlords, you may be surprised to learn that blah blah blah. My new favorite (an Easterbrook special) is that conservatives are poised to fix whatever the problem is (even though they deny its existence at various levels, as above) because only Nixon could go to China.
I defy you to name even one issue where this dynamic — multiple layers of conservative denialism, with a creamy name-calling filling, topped with the icy frosting of neo-liberal contrarianism and general smart-assery — doesn’t effectively dominate the national discourse.
Afternoon Open Thread Type Thing
College football appears to be happening around the country, also some sort of localized winter death storm in the Northeast where brimstone and/or razor sharp obsidian is falling from the skies.
TNC on Up with Chris Hayes this morning was a nice change of pace, but then Mort Zuckerman showed up to blame everything economic, social and political on Obama not having enough meetings with Turtle Man and Orange Julius.
Commence discussionary activities, and such.
“Why Our Generation is Screwed”
I’m at a conference where a twenty-something student is giving an OWS presentation with this title, and he included this graph (click to embiggen). I can’t really argue with him.
Last night, Rochester Police arrested 32 protesters at Occupy Rochester. I have to believe the violence in Oakland influenced the police approach, which included multiple warnings and spaced-out arrests, led by the Chief of Police.
Update: Southern Beale has details on the Nashville arrests, which were thrown out of court.
Open Thread: “In Republican campaigns, the difference between an “issue” and a “distraction” is whether the Koch Brothers have busted out the checkbook yet.”
Wherein I once again give thanks to whatever aspect of Murphy, the Trickster God, inspired the NYTimes– owned suits busily destroying the last worthwhile parts of the Boston Globe to give Charles P. Pierce his freedom. The un-mealy-mouthed precincts of Esquire and the boundaryless generosity of regular blogging have given him the chance to produce wonders:
Serious Republicans have become concerned. By Serious Republicans, I mean the people who would like to forget how much their party has profited politically over the past 50 years by allying itself with Bible-thumpers, sexual bigots, the sad detritus of American apartheid, the black-helicopter crowd, and people who would like the federal income tax to be as flat as they believe the earth is. By Serious Republicans, I mean the likes of Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour, David Frum, John Podhoretz, and Karl Rove.
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(Yes, for the purposes of argument, Karl Rove is a Serious Republican, and not just an unusually successful ratfker who, at one point or another, has used all the above-listed constituencies to win elections. Just play along, okay?)
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The Serious Republicans have become concerned over the 2012 Republican presidential field in general, and over Rick Perry in the specific. The other day, Podhoretz, showing the true loyalty to self of the career Legacy Hire, took to the pages of that deeply serious newspaper, The New York Post, which will publish anything written by a conservative that is not written in bodily humours, to moan about the quality of the help his party is being asked to hire…
Read the whole thing, and improve your mood. Unless, of course, you are a paid ReThug troll, in which case, sucks to be you.)
Somewhere, Finley Peter Dunne is smiling.
Five Bucks, Chucked
After being rightfully pegged as the poster child of Wall Street greed in a lousy economy, Bank of America is reconsidering that whole $5 a month debit card fee for its customers.
Bank of America is considering softening its controversial policy of charging some customers for making purchases with their debit cards, according to a person familiar with the bank’s plans.
In September, the bank announced that it would begin charging most customers $5 a month if they used their debit cards to make purchases.
The fee, which would begin in January, set off a barrage of public outrage at the bank.
Now, under proposals being considered by the bank, Bank of America would offer customers new ways to avoid having to pay the fee.
Currently, only customers with certain premium accounts would be exempt from the fee.
Unless one of the ways B of A is planning to have customers avoid the fee is “are you a customer?” then the damage is already done. The whole concept of knifing people in the back for $5 a month was the best thing to happen to efforts like the Move Your Money project since the financial crisis, and hey, let’s remember that a week from today is Bank Transfer Day.
They must be scared if they’re backtracking already on the plan.