By now, you probably have read that last week the Winooski school district’s thought-police enforced their their own democracy-repression agenda on taxpayer’s schoolchildren. Pretty shitty behavior for bureaucrats under any circumstances. This turns out to be worse.  The Board Members kicked the children’s President out of the classroom until those same Board Members could determine whether the President supported the Board Members’ subjective, individual political agendas. That crosses the line to subversive.

From Board correspondence, it looks like the flat-earthers running the Winooski School Board are a more unhinged, more inherently anti-democracy then first reported.

Out of step.  The Winooski School Board, as far as we know, is the ONLY school board in the State of Vermont to order its school superintendent to enforce total censorship of a speech by a sitting U.S. President.

Paranoid.  According to public documents circulated by School Board members and released to GMD, the Winooski School Board is just plain paranoid as well as unpatriotic. Through its Chief Politburo henchman, James Ticehurst, the School Board last week told schools that the President’s address to American students may not be seen by “the students until it should first be reviewed by the board for content.” (Arrogant? Chilling? Paranoid? Pick one.) By the high command of the school board, no teacher may “air the President’s speech to the students on Tuesday.”

Ticehurst also wrote that no student may see his or her President’s speech, directed to America’s students, unless he and other Board Members reviewed the content of President Obama’s speech and “approved it for distribution to the student population.” (Arrogant? Chilling? Paranoid? Pick one, or MORE!)

James Ticehurst thinks that Barack Obama needs to go through him first, for his “approval,” before Winooski students can have their President available for discussion, leadership, inspiration or uncensored.   What a paranoid asshole.

According to this story from NPR 73% of doctors surveyed want a public health insurance option. (Survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.)

So what did the US House waste time on yesterday? Why the “censure” of Republican Representative Joe Wilson!

Every minute blown off on telling someone not to interrupt the president’s speech could have been used to hammer home these twin realities: the public overwhelmingly supports a government run, public health insurance option (77% felt the public option was important or very important in this survey); and doctors overwhelmingly support a government run, public health insurance option.

But what the fuck does the public in general or doctors specifically know? None of us are insurance industry lobbiests.

Actually I think it all just goes to prove a point I’ve made on a reasonably regular basis: the DC Democrats and their “leadership” really don’t disagree with the Republicans on very much … and nothing of game changing import.

They would much rather tend to big money’s interests with distracting moans about Obama being called a liar then they would tend to the people’s business.

Here’s a developing story that’s percolating around the Intertubes.

The Timesonline reports that U.N. ambassador to Afghanistan Peter Galbraith has been removed from his position by his supervisor Kai Eide, of Norway.  James Bone in New York, Jerome Starkey in Kabul and Tom Coghlan report.

America’s top diplomat at the United Nations mission in Afghanistan has been ordered out of the country after a row with his boss over how to respond to last month’s fraud-riddled presidential elections, it has been alleged.

The alleged quarrel is threatening to spark a mutiny within the UN mission. At least a dozen senior staff are backing the American, Peter Galbraith, in the dispute with his Norwegian superior, Kai Eide.

Mr Galbraith, a close friend of the US special envoy Richard Holbrooke, left for Boston on Sunday after a heated meeting with Afghan election officials. His “pointed” questions to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) were evidence of a much tougher line towards the Afghan authorities than the “softly-softly” approach of Mr Eide, who heads the UN mission to Kabul.

“The relationship between Kai and Peter has completely broken down,” said a diplomat in Kabul. “Peter has left the country. The official line is that he’s on a three-week mission to New York. But Kai just turned round to Peter and said, ‘I want you out’.”

To read more click here.

Galbraith, a resident of Townshend, is a former ambassador to Croatia and played a significant role in the 1995 Erdut agreement, ending the war between Serbia and Croatia.  

Crossposted at Huffington Post.

How progressive is Barack Obama?  It’s a question pundits, bloggers, and journalists have trouble grappling with.  But one individual goes beyond the Obama phenomenon and investigates who Obama is and what he’s all about.  In Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics,  author Paul Street cuts to the chase and takes a closer look at the man who became the 44th president of the United States. What Street uncovers is a man crafted by campaign consultants with political beliefs consistent with elite party interests.  

Street is an independent journalist, policy adviser, and historian.  He is a former vice-president for research and planning at the Chicago Urban League, and author of Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History and Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era.

I caught up with Street to discuss his new book by Paradigm Publishers.  

You paint a portrait of Obama that shows he’s a centrist and not inclined to support progressive causes and ideas.  What has shaped Obama’s views on politics and how has he been shaped to representing elite interests?

Street: Trying to figure out who Obama is, is like trying to nail down a blob of mercury.  It’s very difficult.  Is he progressive or not may in a certain sense be somewhat besides the point.  It’s one thing to be a progressive as the head of a Urban League affiliate or a union Local or something, but Obama is in the top executive position, the apex of an empire as far as I’m concerned.  That’s the world you enter once you decide it’s really about getting into the political system and rising to the top.  

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was asked to run for president in 1967 and of course it would’ve been just a protest candidacy.  Dr. King turned it down.  He said something like ‘it’s not my role as a organizer or a social justice activist.’  So whatever Obama’s values may truly be, once you enter into that ‘I’m going to the prince or king and I’m going to rise to the top’ it really may not matter all that much.  Then you’re in a whole other ball game where you’re talking about money, concentrated wealth, and a disproportionate influence that is exercised in this dollar democracy we have.  I think Obama’s calculus was that he wanted to win.  

He was a progressive community organizer for years.  But what nobody seems to know was that Obama hated it.  Ryan Lizza wrote about it The New Yorker.  Obama told his mentor in community organizing that “there’s nothing for me to continue on this path.”  So he went into politics.  When that takes over and you’re working for David Axelrod and Richard Daley, etc., a lot of those principles that you may or may not have are going to go by the wayside.  

Supporters of Obama claim he’s a president who believes in the idea of pragmatism and consensus building.  Is it consensus building or conciliation?

I remember John Edwards saying in Iowa that you don’t cut deals with big business. I remember Edwards called out Hillary Clinton and Obama on the “complete fantasy” that meaningful progressive from could be attained by “sitting down at a negotiating table” with the big insurance and oil and drug companies. Whatever his motives, Edwards accurately said that “only an epic fight” with concentrated economic and political power could achieve big progressive change.  In Iowa, Edwards would quote FDR on how the “economic royalists hate me” and “I welcome their hatred.” Obama’s response to Edwards’ “big table fantasy” line at one of the Iowa debates was what the prolific left author Mike Davis calls “typical eloquent evasion”; “we don’t need more heat, we need more light.”  Well, shoot, crazy John Edwards was right!  We need more heat from the bottom up and on the left-progressive side.

I’ve often heard the argument that a majority of Americans don’t buy into party purity ideals of the likes of Dennis Kucinich, John Edwards, or Mike Gravel. Some Democrats believe if we elect leaders like that, we’ll only lost more elections.  Is that true?

They can’t get elected because they can’t be taken serious by the media. I saw Edwards destroy the opposition at a campaigner. Then I went to see Clinton and she was incredibly boring.  After that, it was really transparent that Edwards wasn’t being taken seriously.  Kucinich was also treated as a gadfly.  It just doesn’t make any sense for NBC, owned by General Electric, ABC, which is Disney, or Fox, which is Rupert Murdoch, to really give a lot of favorable coverage to someone they can’t trust to handle their corporate interests.  If that log jam could be broken, the two things I would emphasize that need to be changed are the money primaries, the need for money or access to people who have it, and the media filters.  If you can get past those, you’ll see there’s a lot of good progressive opinion data on issues.  If you can get the focus away from the marketing of politics (i.e. personalities, what they look like, what they’re name sounds like, whether we want to have a beer with them, etc.), then that could help the likes of Kucinich, Edwards, etc.  

You write a chapter called “How Black is Obama?”  What does he represent as an African-American leader and what does he represent in terms of change related to racism?

I remember Obama as a state Senator and I worked in black communities in the Urban League.  You’d be amazed how unpopular Obama was initially.  You didn’t hear people say Obama was “too white.”  Instead, he’s “too bourgeois.”  I heard that a lot. He got killed by Bobby Rush in a U.S. congressional primary in 2000.  Rush said again and again, Obama went to Harvard, he lived over in Hyde Park, etc.  As Obama’s star was rising, you heard a lot of “he didn’t really come from the community,” or “he didn’t rise from the community.”  Obama was handed to black America rather more than he arose from black America.  Obama was more African plus American than he was African-American.

If you track Obama’s positions on race, you can find a lot of traditional black-bourgeoisie, personal responsibility lectures to blacks, like his recent NAACP address.  He’s similar to Henry Louis Gates who has centrist-culturalist explanations of why black people are disproportionately poor.  Obama also said some things about history, that I find very odd.  He once talked about how the GI Bill was this great victory for ordinary working class Americans.  But the GI Bill was deeply discriminatory on race terms.  His Philadelphia speech was eloquent and effective, but if you dig down, there’s a narrative in there that a lot of racial justice advocates are not pleased with.  That narrative is ‘we can understand why Reverend Jeremiah Wright may be angry because of his age, where he comes from, and how he was a product of the Jim Crow era, but there’s a pronounced suggestion that that kind of anger is not appropriate.’  Many people in the general black community take exception to that, especially when 2.3 million people are behind bars and half of them are African-American.  

You also ask “How Anti-war is Obama?” Is he an imperialist just like George W. Bush or a more of a benevolent dictator with the same polices?

Obama has never denounced the war in Iraq as immoral.  Obama’s has been very careful to oppose something that’s not working.  He’s always been very careful to suggest that it is a reflection of benevolent intentions.  Even to the point of campaigning in Wisconsin by telling autoworkers, we’re spending enough money to help the Iraqis, now we need to spend it to help out America.  We’re not helping them and we ought to be.  We owe them big time.

In his career, Obama was much less anti-war in his image.  He did speak out against the Iraqi invasion in Daley Square in October 2002.  But on the day before Obama’s famous keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he told The New York Times, he might have voted for the war had he been in the U.S. Senate at the time and had access to the same information as other senators.  During the convention. Obama also told The Chicago Tribune reporters Jeff Zeleny and David Mendell “that there’s not that much difference between my position [on Iraq] and George Bush’s position at this stage.”  He told the journalists “the difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute.”  That’s a remarkable statement to make. Yes, he did speak against the war.  However, he never said it would be immoral, he never said it would’ve been criminal, and he never said anything about Iraqi casualties.  

Rep. David Zuckerman is considering doing what some thought he’d be the last Progressive Party politician to do; follow the example of State Senator Tim Ashe and use the Democratic Party primary as his path to office – in this case, (possibly) the office of Lieutenant Governor. Those of us who are surprised are surprised because, since his most recent re-election effort for State Representative in which he was challenged by Democratic opponents, Zuckerman has been the Progressives’ most strident partisan warrior – relentlessly scornful of the Democratic Party in sweeping, collective terms. He has been crusading against what he repeatedly calls the “myths” in circulation about the Progressive-Democratic conflict, and “myths” apparently refer to any perspectives on the matter that do not match his own.

This is a politician who would seem to face a very difficult time getting self-described Democrats to vote for him. And yet, it may well be important for Vermont that they do just that.

In simplest terms, the functional challenge in our winner-take-all voting system to multiple parties is the disparity created on the General election ballot. If there is one candidate of “the right” on a November ballot and two candidates of “the left,” you have, in effect, two elections happening simulaneously; a General Election for the office, and a Primary election on the left. These two elections are fundamentally incompatible (for obvious reasons) without some form of preference voting system (such as IRV). The push, then, is to try to decouple the left’s primary from the November ballot and – like it or not – for now, the clear path of least resistance and greatest participation for such a process is through the Democratic Party primary election.

These are the unyielding electoral mechanics we have often found ourselves talking about on this site, and it is precisely because of this reality that I was supportive of Tim Ashe’s foray into the Democratic Primary. All the talk at the time of him “hijacking” the Democratic Party process was, in any objective sense, parochial nonsense, as self-selecting Democratic voters were free to make the choice of who they deem to be a legitimate candidate regardless of anybody’s rumpled feathers over the crossing of social and institutional norms. Tim Ashe did precisely what he needed to do, and in doing so increased the Progressive Partiers’ impact on public policy as well as made the Democratic Party that much better, to the benefit of all Vermont.

But Ashe clearly recognized that – to be successful – he would not simply have to break with institutional dogma (and perhaps the first deadly sin of pride) himself, he would have to allow others to do so as well, joining him in the dogma-free niche he was carving out. He did this in a couple key ways.

First, If a self-identified Democrat wanted to support him he would let them support him. He did not demand that accept his worldview, back off from what he perceived as “myths” about Progressives that were actually just different opinions, or accept that by supporting him, they were actually engaging in some sort of process of accepting the Progressive Party on his terms. He would simply allow the voter to support him based on whatever personal, subjective calculus that voter was making about him.

Very simply, he did not demand that each individual voter either meet with his personal approval, or possibly agree to say 3 Hail Marys and an Our Father as penance for being such a meanie Democrat for all these years.

Second, he had to learn to listen, and in listening, accept the diversity of opinions among voters. Sure there are points of fundamental principle that matter. If I were running for something and somebody told me they supported me because they hoped I’d take point in rounding up all the homosexuals into prison camps, I’d set them straight. If they wanted to support me because they thought I was trustworthy, even though they were a lifelong Dem-hating Republican, that’s a disagreement at a different level. I wouldn’t feel the need to browbeat him into accepting my view of partisan institutions. I’d just say thanks.

The fact is that many of us on the left (and the right, for that matter) can’t differentiate between trivial disagreements and significant ones. We feel passionate enough about our opinions that we can’t abide dissenting ones, and we create a dynamic where all points of disagreement are created equal. We scream just as loudly about differing views on the Income Tax as we do about racism.

And that’s neither reasonable, nor sustainable.

A key part of leading successfully is listening to those you want to lead. If all we do is correct and cajole in a rigid, unyielding way – well… let’s just say that fundamentalist preacher might be a better career option than elected official.

Simply put, Ashe understood that he needed the votes. That it was he asking for something of them (voters), and thus, was not in a position to make demands. He was offering himself as an option and working hard with a strong message to persuade. He did not (that I could see from Washington County, at least), simply put up a Dem shingle and then either demand or expect that those whiny Dems would just fall into line the way he thought they should. He asked for their votes, thanked them for their support, and asked for their help in talking to their neighbors. Just what you’re supposed to do.

If David Zuckerman goes this route, it will be very important for the left that he do well and that it be a positive experience – whether or not that means ultimately winning. Many of us will see such a move as a very important one for the health and well-being of Vermont politics. And many of us will probably work hard to support him.

It will be up to Representative Zuckerman to decide whether or not he will actually let us.

(Bumped up, do to some fairly substantive updates below the fold. – promoted by JulieWaters)

Some time ago, I wrote about the fenceline limits at VT Yankee.  Basically, we were looking at two different ways of interpreting the amount of radiation leaked by VT Yankee, one of which tried to look at the amount actually released, the other of which tried to look at how much the human body will absorb.  This allowed Entergy to compare numbers under one formula, and then under another, and say it had only had a small change from one year to the next.  

It’s kind of like saying that someone grew around 61cm in a year, because one year they were measured in inches and the next in cm.  Exact same size, but different measurement standards.  

Now come proposed rules by the Department of Health, which eliminate that conversion factor and goes back to the more strict standards, and Entergy is not amused.  

Per today’s Rutland Herald, once again from Susan Smallheer:

Entergy Nuclear said the new standard would cut radiation limits by 30 percent to 40 percent.

Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said the state already had the most stringent radiation standard in the country.

“We have always committed to meet the state’s 20 millirem limit not a 20 milli roentgen,” he wrote in an e-mail, referring to the different measurements for radiation release versus radiation absorption.

See, here’s the thing: the new ruling doesn’t cut radiation limits.  It eliminates a loophole that Entergy used (with the help of the Douglas administration) to bypass radiation limits.  Now that there’s a proposal to remove that loophole, Entergy is whining about it, and talking about their commitment, not to the actual law, but to what they think the law should be.

But the long and short of it is that this is really good news.

UPDATES after the jump.

Two new stories this morning:

First, there’s an environmental lawyer suing over the warm water issue:

David Mears, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School, said that Judge Merideth Wright didn’t follow the law closely enough to protect the habitat of the American shad, applying warm-water fisheries standards to that section of the Connecticut River, which has been designated a cold water fishery.

Entergy wants to discharge the water into the river warm to make money: Company officials on Tuesday estimated that it uses 20 megawatts of power to operate Vermont Yankee’s cooling towers, power that it could be selling on the power market.

Yes.  You read that right.  Entergy is complaining that it’s unfair for them to have to use power that they could be selling in the process of generating a lot more power.  

Second, the state’s radiological health chief is saying that increased radiation is just fine and dandy, but in doing so, makes some fairly obvious admissions:

Irwin answered “yes” when Sen. Mark MacDonald, chairman of the committee, asked if Vermont Yankee could still be within state-mandated radiation limits even while higher doses of radiation were falling on the school across the road from the plant in Vermont’s southeast corner.

Entergy Nuclear, which owns the plant, has been buying property next to the plant and moving its site boundary farther from the reactor. The state monitors radiation using instruments called dosimeters posted at the plant site boundary.

Under the committee’s questioning, Irwin agreed that moving the dosimeters farther from the reactor would make it easier for the plant to stay under the state’s radiation limits, even though radiation emissions had increased since the plant boosted its power output by 20 percent in 2005.

“Does that not allow sources that emit radiation to emit more radiation than they used to and still be in compliance?” MacDonald asked.

“Yes,” Irwin replied.

I actually love the creativity of just buying nearby property and moving the sensors.  It’s very… inventive.  It’s like adjusting the scale so I can convince myself that I’ve lost weight.

Sometimes when I read this, I think, “do they think we are idiots?”

Then I realize that they probably don’t care if we are idiots.  They just care if there are the “right” people in government who will let them get away with this stuff.

And you know what?

There probably are.

The Committee on the Protection of Constitutional Rights is hosting a birthday party and appreciation celebration for the U.S. Constitution (note to Kestrel: yes, including the amendments) in the House chamber of the Statehouse, with refreshments in the Cedar Creek Room.

It’s all happening on September 17, Thursday, from 5-6:30 pm.

The speaker for the occasion is Professor Sheldon Novick of the Vermont Law School, where he has taught Constitutional law and American legal history, among other subjects. He’s also the author of a well-received biography of a Supreme Court Justice of whom nearly anyone who survived high school American Studies classes has heard: Oliver Wendell Holmes (no, no, not the guy played by Basil Rathbone who went around saying “Elementary, my dear Watson!”  That was Sherlock Holmes).

More on the flip.

We’re talking about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 30 years on the US Supreme Court, nominated by Teddy Roosevelt (on the recommendation of Henry Cabot Lodge), served until FDR was elected.

But I digress.

Professor Novick’s topic is “Toward a More Perfect Union.” From the press release:

People have always disagreed about the meaning of the Constitution, beginning with its first words, “We the People of the United States.” The Preamble seems to speak of one people, but owing to compromises made with slavery and tradition, not everyone could be a citizen, vote, or hold office. Gradually, since the Civil War, non-white men and women of all races have been gaining full legal citizenship. Our federal republic has been moving toward the “more perfect Union” free of compromises that the Preamble promised. President Obama says that his appointment of the first Latina to the Supreme Court is another step in that direction.

And wouldn’t you know it, the host group is a subcommittee of the VDP State Committee. Seems like Democrats are the only ones who actually care about the Constitution since oh, say, the year 2000, although schools are now required to “develop programming” to observe the Constitution’s birthday every year. (The regulation was set up in 2005 and somehow got through a Republican Congress as an unfunded mandate for any educational institution receiving federal money.)

C’mon down to the Statehouse on Thursday. I’m not promising birthday cake, but how often does anyone get to blow out 222 candles?

If you can’t make it, check out the Constitution Day website. Find out which “Founding Father” you’d be.

Here are some words that figured prominently in the one I was identified with: “extremely smart,” “happily married … no children,” “stir up support,” “not flamboyant,” “thoughtful leadership.”  

The Vermont teachers’ retirement fund has found plenty of front page space recently especially with calls from Governor Douglas to sluff it off wholesale onto the local property tax rolls. In today’s Barre/Montpelier Times Argus (Retirement funding tops agenda for new NEA chief, Times Argus, 09/14/09) new Vt NEA chief Martha Allen keeps pace with vocal disdain for recent attempts to review the system claiming “They are out to eliminate our pension system as we know it”.

The easy, comfortable solutions to this mess won’t work. I think the true answer lies in the uncomfortable and unknown which requires a different story line entirely.

Face it: teachers are invaluable parts of our educational system, and teachers in general deserve to have compensation commensurate with their experience and education and abilities.

Face it: unlike legislators and governors who are able to increase their salaries more or less in the dark, employees of Vermont’s various governments are generally held up to the public spotlight and discussion at salary negotiation time. Rightfully so in the latter … too bad the prior don’t have the courage to do so too.

Now we can get to the murky part …

First: the Vermont State Teachers Retirement System (VSTRS) is defined by state law (Title 16, Chapter 55) and administered under the auspices of Vermont’s State Treasurer by a board of varied sources (VSTRS Board of Trustees, State Treasurer’s site). Local school districts and supervisory unions have no power or decision making regarding this retirement fund. We (I’m currently serving on Williamstown’s school board) don’t set retirement, contribution, payout or any other rates.

There is some cloudiness in this in that supervisory districts do negotiate teacher salaries which does directly affect post-retirement payouts; but state law has so successfully insulated retirement from year to year salary negotiations that we end up with decisions in these two arenas being made in literal isolation.

The above by itself should have all the anti-unfunded mandate freaks screaming in anger when it comes to any attempt to push any part of the retirement fund onto the shoulders of local tax payers. I fall under the aforementioned category, and I know I’m at the alarmed hair pulling stage.

Unless, of course, the whole idea behind Douglas’ push was to send the money along to pay for the move … but that never was the intent behind the rhetoric.

One concept that has gained a certain amount of public currency is a statewide teachers contract. This would have the advantage of bringing the retirement and salaries systems to the same table at the same time, but it would also leave local communities totally at the mercy of state government regarding how education is delivered.

Not many years ago Williamstown was lucky enough to have a dedicated town resident who also had a wide range of education, knowledge and direct experience. Bill volunteered his services to the community by offering to teach a course in international events, and the Williamstown school board gratefully accepted his offer and expertise. The teachers’ union complained under the guise that Bill’s volunteer activity meant a certified (ie. union) teacher did not get a job because of Bill’s activities and thus contractual obligations were violated.

In the end the court’s sided against the union view, but imagine now a state teachers’ contract that arbitrarily decides no town can use volunteer teachers under any circumstance.

A state wide contract would also eliminate any possibility for local districts to offer anything beyond cash compensation … hire at the state’s prescribed wages or go without … end of story. Suppose a district comes up with an innovative educational process that teachers would almost pay to take part in (for their own professional development for instance)? Too bad … the state decided.

No, I don’t see bringing contract negotiations to the state level as being to anybody’s benefit other than the General Assembly and Governor’s office. They would get the power to dictate even more than already exists.

The easy, comfortable solutions to dealing with a burgeoning fiscal obligation aren’t going to work well for Vermont’s communities, and doing nothing will only make matter more untenable vis-a-vis the Vermont State Teachers Retirement System.

Here’s what I propose: end the statewide defined benefits retirement package for teachers’ retirement and engage in educational choice.

The first half is a fairly simple, even if distasteful to the fund’s membership, process. Move from defined benefits to a contribution system. A teacher gets out the actuarial (am I misusing that word?) value of what they put in. All people currently in the defined benefits system would be moved immediately over to the contribution system with allowances made for the current value of their retirement as defined under current law … complex financial equations but simple for those with appropriate computers and bookkeeping skills.

Doing this would alleviate any concerns over FUTURE needs. We, Vermont, would still be rightfully on the hook for catching up to what things should be today.

The other uncomfortable part of my prosal, educational choice, would give local school districts greater leeway in both the content and manner of education. This could be, for example, doing away with most state and federal mandated standards and letting the towns decide which standards make the most sense and work the best for them. Another possibility is to keep the mandated standards but drop the age/grade level correlation so students could progress at a pace that makes more sense to them. A student gifted in reading and writing but having problems with math and US history should not be kept back from advancing in reading and writing simply because of a lack in other subject matter.

I like this second option: forget the concept that you graduate high school at age 18. One should be graduating when the time is ripe whether it’s at 17 years old or 60. Meet the standards and receive a diploma.

An advantage with this educational choice approach regarding teachers’ retirement and salaries is local schools would now be able to offer something of substance beyond cash rewards. A young teacher, for instance, may find a low paying job in Vermont to be preferred because that young teacher can learn and develop in ways that aren’t available elsewhere.

Of course this would increase demands on local school boards and administrations. But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?

So how would I phrase my proposal? Pick up a funnel. Normally we pour our liquids into the wide end of the funnel so everything is directed to the small opening. Our intention is to place the liquid in a very specific spot.

Now turn that funnel over. Imagine pouring the liquid into the small opening so we can let it pour out over a larger, unknown area. This is my picture of a successful education: we don’t know all of what folks will need to know in 20 or 30 years. But we do know there are some fundamentals that will allow the future to understand what it is they need to know and how to learn what they need to know. Let’s focus on those fundamentals (ie. pour into the small hole) so, as the need arises, the future can learn what it needs to know (flow out the wide hole).

We should be reforming by inverting our educational funnels.

And when we start thinking this way, we can start finding sensible answers to the fiscal issues running amuck with the teachers’ retirement fund. We can disconnect entirely the link between local supervisory union salary negotiations and the state law making process vis-a-vis teachers’ retirement. We can offer teachers something of value in place of the comfort that comes from a state guaranteed defined benefits package.

We can do and be better.

Representative Joe Wilson Is Reportedly a Member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a ‘Southern Heritage’ Group Taken Over in the Last Decade By Radical White Supremacists Who Defend Slavery As ‘A Benign Institution;’ He Also Denounced as a ‘Smear’ the True Claim of Biracial Daughter of Late Senator and Ex-Segregationist Strom Thurmond

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Monday, September 14, 2009)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Until last week, Joe Wilson was virtually unknown outside of his South Carolina congressional district. Now, the entire country is learning who he is.

The conservative Republican stunned and outraged many of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle and was loudly booed when he shouted “You lie!” at President Obama as he was delivering an address to a joint session of Congress on health-care reform.

Wilson accused the president of lying about a promise he made that his health-care reform proposals would not provide coverage for the nation’s estimated 13 million illegal immigrants. The congressman apologized to the president within an hour after his speech and Obama accepted Wilson’s apology.

Two days after his apology, however, Wilson recorded a YouTube video defending his opposition to Obama’s health care plan – as well as requesting donations to the congressman’s re-election campaign. As of late Sunday, Wilson raised $1 million.

Wilson’s outburst against the president may have been motivated by more than annoyance over illegal immigrants.

It turns out that Wilson is, according to a candidate biography on the nonpartisan Web site OurCampaigns.com, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a longtime Southern-heritage organization that, according to the  Southern Poverty Law Center, has been taken over in the past decade by radical white supremacists, who advocate secession from the Union and defend slavery as a “benign institution.”

Nor is the nation’s first African-American president the first person Wilson has publicly called a liar. The congressman did the same thing to the biracial daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond, to whom Wilson was a former congressional page.

Wilson called Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a retired teacher, a liar when she came forward in 2003 that she is the eldest daughter of Thurmond and a black woman who worked for Thurmond’s family as a maid in the 1920s — despite the fact that the Thurmond family acknowledged her as a long-hidden relative.

DEFIANT WILSON WON’T APOLOGIZE TO CONGRESS, FACES REPRIMAND

Meanwhile, Wilson, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said emphatically Sunday that he won’t apologize to his colleagues in Congress for his outburst — increasing the likelihood that the House will reprimand him as early as today (Monday).

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Wilson made it clear that he would not bow to House Democrats’ demands that he stand on the floor and issue an apology to his fellow lawmakers. “I’m not going to apologize again,” a defiant Wilson Fox News’ Chris Wallace. “I believe the American people know I’m a civil person. I respect the institution of the House. I have apologized to the president. I believe that should be enough.”

Wilson took an even harder line after his TV appearance, issuing a statement declaring, “The American people are fed up with the political games in Washington. I refuse to participate in an effort to divert our attention away from the task at hand of reforming health insurance and creating new jobs.

“Having apologized on Wednesday to the White House, we agreed that we must move forward in a civil manner to do the work the American people have sent us here to do,” the Wilson statement continued.

Wilson denied a suggestion by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that his outburst against the president was racially motivated. In a column published Sunday, Dowd wrote that what she heard Wilson shout in the House chamber was, “You lie, boy!” — a highly racially-charged epithet that is deeply offensive to African-Americans.

“Surrounded by middle-aged white guys – a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club – Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t,” Dowd wrote. “But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

“Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber,” Dowd wrote.

Asked by Wallace whether race underlay his outburst, Wilson responded, “No, no, I respect the president.” the 62-year-old Wilson added that his ancestors lived near those of first lady Michelle Obama in Georgetown County, South Carolina.

WILSON’S REPUTED MEMBERSHIP IN RACIST-CONTROLLED GROUP RAISES QUESTIONS

But revelations of Wilson’s reputed membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans are likely to raise more questions about the motive for his outburst against the president.

The 113-year-old SCV, according to a 2006 SPLC report, had undergone a purge of its longtime moderate members — including several present and former U.S. senators — who were replaced by “racial extremists.” That, in turn, led to a bitter severing of relations between the SCV and other Southern heritage groups, including the Military Order of Stars & Bars and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

The report noted that some 300 moderate SCV members were expelled, accused by the radical racialists of disloyalty for criticizing racism in the organization.

And in a 2008 expose, The St. Petersburg Times revealed that since the 1990s, clusters of SCV members “have aligned themselves with ‘heritage groups’ like the League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens” — both considered racist hate groups by the SPLC, with the CCC essentially a revival of the white citizens’ councils that sprung up in the 1950s and 1960s to resist the civil rights movement.

The question arises: If it turns out that Wilson is indeed a member of the SCV, how credible then, in the face of its takeover by white supremacists, are his denials of Obama’s race being a factor in motivating his outburst against the president?

WILSON ATTACKED OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRACIAL DAUGHTER OF STROM THURMOND

In 2003, Wilson called Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a retired teacher, a liar when she came forward in 2003 that she is the the out-of-wedlock, biracial daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond and a black woman who worked for Thurmond’s family as a maid in the 1920s — only to apologize after the Thurmond family acknowledged her as their long-hidden relative.

Thurmond, a former arch-segregationist who became notorious for his fierce opposition to civil rights legislation — leading the longest filibuster in Senate history against the civil rights bill of 1957 — had a sexual liaison with the then-16-year-old Carrie Butler in 1925. Thurmond was 22 at the time.

Within days after Washington-Williams’ revelation, Wilson told The State newspaper of Charleston, South Carolina that he didn’t believe Williams. He deemed the revelation “unseemly” and “a smear on the image that [Thurmond] has as a person of high integrity who has been so loyal to the people of South Carolina.”

But after the Thurmond family acknowledged that Washington-Williams was indeed the late senator’s eldest daughter born out of wedlock, Wilson apologized but insisted that Washington-Williams should have kept the fact that Thurmond was her father private.

Washington-Williams, who now lives in Los Angeles and will turn 85 on October 12, did not learn of Thurmond being her father until she turned 16 and met the senator in person for the first time in 1941.

WILSON A RECIPIENT OF ‘GOVERNMENT-RUN’ HEALTH CARE HE OPPOSES FOR OTHERS

Wilson’s strident opposition to what he sees as “government-run heath care” in the president’s reform package is inconsistent with his being a recipient of government-run health care. Wilson is a retired colonel of the Army National Guard. As such, he receives full health-care coverage under the military’s TRICARE program and will retain such coverage for the rest of his life, according to Newsweek magazine.

In fact, Wilson’s family — he has four sons now serving in the military — has been a beneficiary of such “government-run health care” for several generations, according to the magazine.

Yet Wilson voted 11 times against expanding health-care coverage for veterans, according to the liberal-leaning South Carolina political site IndigoJournal.com, citing a blistering campaign ad by Rob Miller, Wilson’s Democratic opponent in last year’s election.

Miller, an Iraq War veteran and former Marine Corps captain who lost to Wilson by eight percentage points last year, is running against Wilson again in 2010 — and has raised more than $1 million in the days since Wilson’s outburst.

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Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

So, waddayaknow? Now Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie does sound like a candidate – this despite the near universal hubbub that said he wasn’t going to run.

Part of that conventional wisdom was always, in my view, flawed. The idea that if he were serious he would have jumped on it quickly may be an axiom that applies to most politicians, but ignores the fact that this is Brian Dubie we’re talking about. Brian Dubie does not do politics quickly. In fact, his same-day statement that he was considering it probably qualifies as a lightning speed political response on the Dubie scale.

But the hubbub was deeper and broader than that, so it does seem likely that the GOP rank-and-file groundswell on the Lieutenant Governor’s behalf may actually be swaying him – and Hallenbeck (at the only political blog, professional media or otherwise, that still refuses to link to anybody else’s sites) indicates that Dubie’s final decision is to be put off at least another week.

But it’s also likely that the hubub is being generated somewhat by those who want it to be true – and mutterings suggest they may well be some of the same folks who have also encouraged Tom Salmon to switch parties and make noises about the top spot himself. There are a lot of GOP or GOP-oriented movers and shakers who have little confidence in Brian Dubie to withstand the rigors of a full-on gubernatorial campaign, and I – for one – can see why they’d be concerned.

The fact is that Dubie’s continuing hesitation on making a final decision against the increasing pressure to make one as quickly as possible both underscores and exacerbates the fault lines in the Republican Party, and the longer he puts off an announcement, the more those tensions are likely to rise.

On the other side, Matt Dunne is sounding more and more likely to enter a race for Governor. After failing to oust Brian Dubie from the number 2 spot two cycles back, Dunne would need to make a big splash quickly after announcing – probably by raising a lot of money – to be seen as competitive given that the race (and the fundraising) is already underway. But the fact is that Dunne is perfectly capable of doing that, and in a Democratic Primary setting, he is not to be underestimated (just ask John Tracy).

Dems tend to fall into one of two categories regarding Dunne; those who really like him a lot, and those who refuse to accept just how many other Dems really like him a lot. If Dunne gets in, he may well jump to that shared leading status in just a few weeks.

The political shakeup means that the next month or so is an opportunity for new faces to jump into races up and down the ticket. For the top spot, the next organic opportunity to jump in and be taken seriously as a major competitor may not be until March, exploiting what is likely to be fatigue over a contentious legislative session. Clearly, though, anyone entering in March would face an uphill fundraising climb, so look for at least one new announcement this fall that will more or less set the battle lines.