My little prince

Karen B. Hunter

Nov. 23. 1951 - Sept. 2. 2005

I will always remember how beautiful the world looked when I was looking at it with you.

John Edwards On The Hostile Takeover of Our Government

Election '08 Meets The Great Education Myth
By David Sirota on November 15, 2007 - 3:53pm.
Regular readers know my frustration with what I previously deemed The Great Education Myth in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle. This myth, omnipresent in our media and political debate, states that America's problem with stagnating wages, job loss and benefits cuts is a problem of education. If only workers were better educated, the myth goes, their economic problems would be over.
This myth, which is a lobbyist creation designed to divert political pressure away from reforming labor, trade and economic policies, was most recently vomited up by a top editor and "expert" at one of the largest magazines in America - and then obliterated by government data and at least one leading presidential candidate.
That's right, the latest regurgitation of the myth comes from none other than U.S. News & World Report's chief financial reporter, James Pethokoukis. In the midst of an article asserting that "income inequality may actually be a good sign," this brave defender of royalism flippantly claimed "It really is all about education." He went on to state:
"Advanced economies, whether America's or Denmark's, are knowledge economies. And knowledge economies reward education. Get a degree, expand your skills, and you will do just fine."
Pethokoukis, in a non-sequitur, cites one macro unemployment stat, but offers up no actual data to support his central claim that if you just "get a degree and expand your skills you will do just fine." This is one of the top editors of one of the supposedly most Serious magazines in America regurgitating lobbyists' Great Education Myth without even bothering to check the most easy-to-find data - data reported in publications that are not exactly bastions of anti-capitalist sentiment.
Fortune magazine, for instance, recently reported that economic data proves that "the skill premium, the extra value of higher education, must have declined after three decades of growing." Specifically, "the real annual earnings of college graduates actually declined 5.2 percent, while those of high school graduates, strangely enough, rose 1.6 percent." Similarly, Businessweek has reported that "real wages for young Americans with a bachelor's degree have declined by almost 8% over the past three years" and "economists suspect that global competition has something to do with it."
That's an understatement, as shown in a stunning new report out today from the good folks at the Economic Policy Institute. Using government data, the think tank finds that "the educational group most vulnerable to offshoring are those with at least a four-year college degree." That vulnerability helps drive down wages for better-educated workers because they know that if they try to demand good pay, their employer could simply pick up and leave.
Obviously, this has everything to do with America's corrupt NAFTA-style trade policy - a policy that the U.S. House ratified last week in its vote for the Peru Free Trade Agreement, and that now awaits Senate ratification. This trade policy without enforceable labor, wage, environmental, human rights or product safety standards encourages large corporations to manufacture a race to the bottom in which workers have to keep accepting lower and lower wages (or other standards) in hopes of keeping their employer in their country.
This ain't rocket science to understand. Sure, we should all support improving our education system, because better education is just a good thing. However, it is not a cure-all to our economic challenges - not even close. No amount of education and retraining can overcome the effects of unfair trade agreements. And no amount of "customizing", to use Clinton administration jargon, by an American worker can beat an equally "customized" Chinese or Indian worker, particularly when such workers earn pennies, rather than dollars, per hour.
As I said to start, the Great Education Myth is a corporate creation. It exists to distract the public from demands to change our trade and economic policies so as to raise up all workers. If Big Business can get us all to be mad at the education system alone, then theoretically we won't demand serious populist reforms of an underlying economic system that is currently benefiting the Big Money players in Washington, while crushing the rest of us.
Now, the whole Great Education Myth is hitting the presidential campaign trail. Both Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama have announced their support for the NAFTA-expanding Peru trade deal all while - rather shockingly - engaging in a true Theater of the Absurd by continuing to tell union audiences that they oppose the NAFTA trade model. John Edwards, by contrast, has come out strongly against the Peru deal, and yesterday issued a statement tying the upcoming Senate vote on that trade deal to the Great Education Myth and the Economic Policy Institute's report. Here are some excerpts:
"Today, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report that should come as a clarion call to everyone concerned about the impact of unfair trade agreements and practices on America's working families. In their report, the EPI concludes that between 25 to 30 million American jobs -- about one in five American jobs -- in states all across the nation, are at risk for being offshored over the next decade. And it's not just manufacturing jobs - the report shows those jobs that require at least a four-year college degree are actually the most at risk. This report makes clear what the labor community has known for far too long: bad trade deals, cheap foreign labor, illegal foreign subsidies and foreign currency manipulation are having a devastating effect on American workers...Given this reality, I find it alarming that Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have chosen to support a flawed Peru Trade deal that will only further expand the NAFTA-model that has already cost us well over a million jobs."
How this plays out on the campaign trail is anyone's guess. As we see from Pethokoukis's piece and from many other political pundits like him, the Great Education Myth is such unquestioned orthodoxy among our elite media and politicians that it has become an assumption that is flippantly forwarded without even a flinch toward basic factual substantiation.
That means candidates like Edwards (or anyone other such populist) who dares to challenge the Great Education Myth and the Washington Consensus in support of NAFTA-style trade policies face not only hostility from other candidates chasing down Wall Street cash, but hostility from what is supposed to be an objective political press corps.

Still hope for Edwards!

John Edwards and Mike Huckabee are both doing well in Iowa. Edwards is my candidate of choice. Why is Edwards doing well. David Sirota writes in this week's column "It's the populism, stupid." Read the whole column at http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/the-huey-longs-of-iowa.html

My second choice is now Joe Biden, the only candidate who knows anything about the issues and what he's talking about. Sure, Herculean ego. But he has plans for what he would do right now. Check out his most recent interview with Bob Schiefer -- I am going to see if it is posted anywhere.

Not so spooky

Bernie likes to sleep on my laundrybag which is nestled in the hallway. It's full of clean clothes I just pull out as I go. Where the bag is, is close to where Henry used to sit on similarly poorly placed blankets and empty boxes. Like Henry, Bernie likes to tear up paper and he likes to get my attention mostly to himself. Food is also his favorite topic of discussion and he has a broad palate, including broccoli -- a favorite of Queequeg's.

Larry sits on one of Karen's chairs, waiting for me to come over and snuggle, very contented and at ease. He climbed that chair in her apartment and it's an old friend with good memories. Like Queequeg, he is very self-contained, except for those moments he spreads out flat on the chair with his paw hanging over, as if reaching for me. Queequeg did something similar, but it was to prepare to scratch me when I wasn't looking for something I had done (such as crossed over him or in his path without proper acknowledgement or permission). Larry monitors my movement throughout the house like Fred, did. He worries about me, though he pretends to be nonchalant. Fred covered his worries with a big appetite.

So, this Halloween is filled with good and many spirits. We three, Larry, Bernie and I, carry many good memories.

Swimming to my MP3 player

For two days straight, at lunch with colleagues whose political knowledge far surpassed mine, I gave up my usual attempt to learn on the fly. I listened to my MP3 player through the whole meal. At one moment, one of my colleagues leaned next to me and said, "Irish music?" "Karen liked it." He nodded. There, I got a lot done:
Avoided showing my ignorance about several politicians I looked up when I got home.
Held my ground on sentiment, romance and bagpipes. Karen usually liked the more adventurous and vocal, but the tone was right. She would understand.

It was a musical pause at lunch with homage to a close friend.

I couldn't take the picture fast enough

Larry and Bernie stood on a piece of furniture. Together. No negative energy. Just sharing the view. And tonight they returned to sharing my bed, sleeping a few feet apart.

BUY NOTHING ON NOVEMBER 6, 2007

It's the national strike against fascism. You can do it. Just buy nothing that day.

Fifteen year old African American girl sentenced to seven years in prison for pushing a hall monitor in Texas

By Tracy Stokes, BET.com News Staff & Wire Services Posted March 28, 2007 -
In Paris, Texas, last year, a 14-year-old White girl burns down her family's home. Her punishment? Probation. In the same town three months later, a 15-year-old Black girl, Shaquanda Cotton, is sentenced to seven years in prison for pushing a hall monitor at her high school. Shaquanda had no prior arrests, and the monitor, a 58-year-old teacher's aide, was not hurt, according to Black leaders in the northeast Texas town of about 26,000 residents. But in March 2006, the same judge, Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville, who let the White teenage girl go on probation, convicted Shaquanda of "assault on a public servant" and sent her to prison at least until she turns 21. Officials at the Texas Youth Commission declined to discuss the case with BET.com, citing Texas law. "State law forbids us from acknowledging whether we have any youths are in our system, despite the 50 million issues of print that's been run," said Jim Hurley, a spokesman for the Texas Youth Commission. "We'd have to break the law to talk about it."

Civil Rights Uproar

While the U.S. Department of Education is investigating the incident, the case has civil rights groups in an uproar. "I don't understand the judge's rationale for his decision," Dr. Howard Anderson, president of the San Antonio Branch of the NAACP, told BET.com. In highlighting what he called an egregious miscarriage of justice in a town with a long history of civil rights abuses, Anderson pointed to the case of the 14-year-old convicted arson (whose name was not released because of her age), who was slapped with probation, and the case of a 19-year-old White man in Paris, convicted of killing a 54-year-old Black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck. The latter, he said, was also sentenced to probation and told to send the family a Christmas card every year. "Then you have Shaquanda's case," Anderson said. "She pushed a hall monitor, and she gets seven years confinement? If I look at all three of these sentences, and I'm not a lawyer, I have to wonder what the judicial system is doing. In this particular case, what is this judge doing?" Gary Bledsoe, an Austin attorney who heads the state NAACP branch, told BET.com that Shaquanda was merely trying to defend herself. "All she (Shaquanda) did was grab the aide to prevent a strike," Bledsoe said. "It's like they are sending a signal to Black folks in Paris that you stay in your place in this community, in the shadows, intimidated."
Sad History

And keeping Blacks in their place is nothing new in Paris, say leaders, who remind that it's the site of the first highly publicized lynching of a Black by a large White mob. In 1893, fugitive Henry White was captured in Arkansas and brought to Paris, where he was tortured and burned alive on a train bed as more than 10,000 angry townsfolk cheered and jeered. Activists say that the Shaquanda sentence is nothing more than a modern-day lynching. Cotton has been incarcerated at a youth prison in Brownwood, Texas, for the last year on a sentence that could run until her 21st birthday. But like many of the other youths in the system, she is eligible to earn early release if she achieves certain social, behavioral and educational milestones while in prison. But according to The Chicago Tribune, officials at the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex repeatedly have extended Shaquanda's sentence because she refuses to admit guilt and because she reportedly was found with contraband in her cell - an extra pair of socks. "She's not admitting any guilt, because she doesn't feel that she did anything," Anderson told BET.com. "Not to mention, who saw the pushing, if it did occur?" Cotton's mother, Creola, who Anderson describes as "strong-willed," said her daughter was singled out because she accused the school district of racism on several occasions. In fact, 12 discrimination complaints have been filed against the Paris Independent School District in recent years. District officials dispute the charges, but the U.S. Department of Education, which is still investigating the case, has reportedly asked the U.S. Department of Justice to get involved.

In 1998, Paris, Texas, was named the "Best Small Town in Texas" by Kevin Heubusch in his book The New Rating Guide to Life in America's Small Cities.

*****FORWARD THIS ON TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE!!! WE NEED TO BRING THESE INJUSTICES TO LIGHT***** Are you interested in reaching out to Shaquanda? You can write a Letter directly to her at the address below: She also receive mail here:Ron Jackson Correctional Complex,Unit 2, Dorm 4P.O. Box 872Brownwood, Texas 768041125308

The Campaign Subway Ride #1

Most teachers ride the subways to get to work in NYC. Trains go on "rides" as if they were for amusement. I'm not distant enough -- yet -- from believing in the importance of the election to not put my messy shoeprints into this subway car. Overworked metaphors aside, calling anything a "trail" feels fuzzy to me. People are traveling by trains, busses, cars. It's more like an "expedition". Since that is even less visceral to me, I'll stick with "virtual subway ride through the nation." Very New York, but since I can't have the "Have mores" group that George Bush does as his base, I'll stick with the "Have New York" group as my base.

The UFT and the AFT -- our local and national teachers unions came out in support of Hillary this week. Since our unions have proven themselves to be more allies of corporations than the corporeal bodies in their classrooms, this adds to my skepticism of Mrs. Clinton.

Also this week, no viable Democratic candidate -- Hillary, Barack or John E. could promise the troops would be out of Iraq by 2013.

Essentially, on the larger issues, the more visible candidates grow more similar and more disappointing.

I'm sure they will say the requisite things about results, results and a little bit about class size when the time to talk Education comes.

So, I am now opting to look at candidates for "the little things". Who is polite, who is concrete and pragmatic and who seems to run a good campaign.

So far, my vote is for ...Barack Obama. I wouldn't have thought this months ago when I was a staunch Edwards supporter. People have pointed out how Obama makes slightly better linguistic choices in his speeches and seems to connect a bit better than Edwards. I am most convinced by his ability...for what reason I do not know...to understand the "on the ground" pragmatics of the campaign. His grassroots background has made him and his campaign very good and bringing in local support along his virtual subway ride. He has his methods down to personally pointing out where you can sign up to volunteer. See this cleverly written piece by Roger Simon for more details http://www.creators.com/opinion/roger-simon.html

Sounds of a room full of teachers

"Middle school kids will really get you. They'll come right up to you."

"She would dance to teach them conjunctions and they listened. I liked her. She was different."

"Not in my class."

"You have to be patient with kids."

"You can't let them walk all over you."

"In my class, that doesn't happen."

"And the Principal walked in and they pushed him and I didn't like that and I told him so and he laughed it off. I would never allow that."

Everything is an axiom. We're not just defensive. We're downright prophetic. Perhaps we've been so pushed to the wall that we ARE the aged prophets, near blind, coming out of our caves to warn the city of storms ahead.
Or, we've just been banished and are continually hollering from over the city walls.
Or, we feel as if we are about to be.

Where is everybody?

Over the past two years or so, I've gained friends, lost friends, gained friends...

I picked up the phone tonight and thought of a few people I could dial, but the list dwindled rapidly. One I had just spoken to yesterday, one I had seen this afternoon. One's phone was not working.
And there was my mother whom I called and the conversation was brief because we disagree on a great deal.

Five minutes later there was just one friend I have technically borrowed from another friend because he is the roommate of that friend. I mean, he is my friend....

He was at a friend's.

My cat's are sleeping off a round of playing.

I've sent out two cover letters and resumes and am listening to Mike Malloy. The radio will get me through the night and the cats will wake up in an hour.

When did the bus leave?

Frightened, as usual.

Photo by Karen Beth Hunter

Ocean up close

Photo by Karen Beth Hunter

Photo of the Ocean by Karen B. Hunter

She took a series of shots of directly of the water which we were to place up on the walls of her apartment. I still have to blow them up properly but it's hard for me to finish projects, but I promise to do so. I hang onto the promises because they delay the sense of real time passage.

Karen B. Hunter. Nov. 23, 1951 - Sept 2. 2005.

Bernie contemplates on his new pillow

Larry's notes on life with Bernie

1. Always let him wear himself out with a toy if that's what he wants to do.
2. Teach him that there is more fun to playing than just grabbing a toy and chewing it. Last night he learned to WAIT and WATCH and then CATCH the TOY as it goes by.
3. In general, I WATCH HIM while he plays and I hold my toy. If I don't hold my toy, he takes it. Mommy and I play later or as he gets tired.
4. He does get tired.
5. I really love him, but I miss Henry so much.
6. He's very sweet and he just wants love. He's pretty easy to love. I love to watch him play, eat and sleep. He's so cute. And he always wants to be with me. Always.
7. He's fun to run with. He's a great snooping partner, too. We spent an hour snooping on a couple of aunts on the windowsill and decided they were fun to watch and we'd just keep doing it till dinner.
8. He needs a lot of love. We want to give it to him.
9. He's getting fat.

The family that acts together

Well, folks, I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it...

At about 5:45, Bernie and Larry staged a fight to wake me up.

I was starting to wake up and I caught the two walking quietly out of the corner of my eye toward my bed. I was really sick so I had managed to get them to stop fighting over who would stay in bed with me by simply banishing all the healthy from my presence.

The two looked at each other. Larry took a step back. Bernie nodded. Larry made his usual, "Ack" = you've pissed me off noise, Bernie made his usual "Mrrreeoww"= I'm just a kitten who's going to sneak attack you in a minute. I woke up.

They got quiet WAY too quickly.

I looked at the clock. Indeed. 5:50. Close enough to 6:00am breakfast time.

I went to get their plates.

They followed me, POLITELY and IN TANDEM.

Oh yeah, they were just fighting...

Well, they get points for cleverness. Henry used to just paw my mouth or cuddle me, which Larry has done recently as well. Henry never needed to be clever because there were no games going on between him and me or anyone.
Directness takes time, however.

God, I miss you, Henry. So does Larry. So does Bernie. He can't find the ball after he kicks it so he can't practice for soccer by himself. And you know Larry can't. I practice with him and he is learning to kick the ball BACK TO ME and about TURNS and I know you are secretly helping him because he's not completely getting it with me. Keep working with him on your visits from cat heaven, man. And I am trying to remember how much Larry was like this when he was little like you said I should...

Meet cousin Bernie

Well, we heard the awful news about Henry and the family over on the other side of the borough sent me with my suitcases to bring condolences and, um, they said, "a cheerful distraction" to the Kay household. I was roaming around for a while until this nice Veterninary technician found me and thankfully she just happened to be Henry's old technician! So, she cleaned me up (I did a LOT of roaming...I'm only 8 months old so I can't read) had me "fixed" (all I know is when I clean up things don't look the same) took all sorts of care of me then called up Henry and Larry's mommy and she came and got me. I'm moving in with them! What do you know? That's good because we don't have a roof over our heads on our side of town, just the suitcases, which I lost while roaming.

Larry is a great cousin and I want to be exactly like him--but I don't want to take all of his things--well maybe this blanket and that toy...he lets me have a lot of stuff and he never does more than swipe the air around me and mildly hiss at me. We spend a lot of time playing together and he sat with me on the big windowsill in the kitchen for hours yesterday talking to me about Henry. He misses him so much but he says I am very much of a distraction. In fact, he called me a "tornado" -- "in a good way" he said.

My new mommy says I'm a "little wizard" and also a "trickster". She likes to pet me and Larry at the same time to teach us not to be jealous of each other.

By the way, I'm named Bernie after the great actor Tony Curtis -- who was born Bernie Schwartz.

I'm home!