When discussing any conflict, it's always best to make sure everyone understands the facts. When it comes to the federal government shutdown, it was already obvious Tuesday morning that not everyone in the media either knew the facts, or was willing to acknowledge them.
The facts are as clear this morning as they were yesterday, and as clear as they were Monday night at midnight when a small group of extremist, far-right House Republicans forced the government of the United States to shut down.
As President Obama restated again yesterday afternoon, there will be no extortion of Democrats or the President to get House Republicans to do their jobs. In an interview with Greg Sargent on Tuesday, Rep. Chris Van Hollen confirmed that position: No Obamacare extortion. Period, full stop.
Multiple polls have already shown, Americans should ignore the daily spin wars, as they overwhelmingly agree with Democrats, and heavily blame Republicans for the shutdown. The hostage strategy being used by the extremist tea party wing of the GOP should be rejected strongly.
In short, by letting the teabaggers direct the GOP, Republicans have effectively put a gun to their own party's head and pulled the trigger - and the effects are already as brutal as we'd expected they would be.
It's not just that kids who have cancer are right now being denied access to clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health - which, like the rest of the government, is closed thanks to the House Republicans. It's that things like the World War II Memorial are also closed to veterans - who on Tuesday decided they weren't going to be denied by the group of spoiled brats within the Republican Party. So the veterans made one last charge on Tuesday, storming the closed memorial in order to pay their respects to their now-gone brothers-in-arms.
Actions like that, while somewhat stirring, shouldn't have to happen in America today.
It's not as though there isn't a large enough contingent of BOTH Democrats and Republicans in the House that would vote for the clean spending bill that Speaker Boehner couldn't get it passed right now. There are, as Jennifer Bendery confirmed Tuesday afternoon.
The problem, as Ezra Klein and Robert Costa made clear, is that Speaker Boehner is a selfish coward - and he's not the only one like that in the Republican Party. While a caucus of about 30-40 tea party Republicans appears to be terrorizing their colleagues in the House, the greater majority of the Republican caucus is also acting like gutless cowards, as Jonathan Bernstein pointed out yesterday.
We understand that many Republicans are whining to their own media outlets that they're frustrated too, with the way the teabag right has hijacked their own party and forced them into this stupid defunding fight that the GOP will never win.
Our response to those spineless Republican moderates is to suck it up, and stand up to the tea party bullies, who've already pulled the trigger on your own party.
As Esquire's Charlie Pierce noted on Tuesday, the Democrats have finally brought guns to a gunfight, for once. If the sane moderate Republicans ever want their political party back, now would be the time to stand with the Democrats for what's right.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Monkeying Around With Education
While we all were waiting for the inevitable shutdown to begin last night, we thought we might actually try to be more effective than the idiots in Congress - a low standard, we know. Still, we began by looking back through some recent news, and came across more stories about the ever-failing No Child Left Behind law. The law - also known as NCLB - now appears to be reaching critical levels of failure in our home state of Nebraska.
As Margaret Reist detailed in the Lincoln Journal-Star last week, sixty-five percent of Nebraska's schools failed to meet the Bush-era NCLB academic target last year. That failure is in part due either to a stubbornness to change or simple stupidity by both Nebraska's Governor and legislature to formally request a waiver from the Federal government on the NCLB standards, as other states have done.
As Joe Dejka outlined in the Omaha World Herald, even some Nebraska schools well-known for high academic standards, like the Omaha-area Millard North and Millard West high schools, have now run into some well-known problems with the NCLB - namely, the bananas requirement that schools be nearly perfect in their testing results. Those unrealistic standards, in fact, are a big part of why 42 other states have applied for waivers from the Obama administration on the NCLB standards and have been granted those waivers.
Many educators say the problem is simply that so-called educational "experts" keep insisting on more and more testing - the kind of nutty educational policy that's often the hallmark of educational standards efforts.
Some educators even say the Obama administration's attempt to do something similar, Common Core, is equally bad.
We hit on this issue just a month and a half ago, and we still believe one of the biggest problems remains, as we pointed it out at that time: Billion dollar for-profit educational testing companies, who have a vested interest in pushing ever-greater numbers of tests, for which they'll charge districts every-greater amounts of money.
We're not saying all standards testing is bad. Tests do have a place - but that place should not be a place that crowds out all other learning opportunities.
Whether the standard is Common Core or NCLB, standards testing must be completed and do need to be implemented wisely, in part because of the kind of fluid economic format we've chosen in America, at this time. Americans go where the jobs are today. If a parent moves from one state to another, their children will come with them. Therefore, what Eighth-graders learn in one state should be same for those children in all states. Unfortunately, it is not, currently.
Each child, school, and teacher should be given the leeway to actually teach. Broad standards are also good - but they need to be implemented carefully and given time to work. Amanda Ripley's great piece published online over the weekend, and in this week's edition of Time magazine, shows that Kentucky of all states, has been doing this - applying the Common Core standards broadly, with small individual exceptions. After three years of implementation, the Kentucky experience with Common Core seems to be going amazingly well.
Whatever the final solution to our academic standards problems may be, as the failures of No Child Left Behind have proven, hard, unrealistic standards don't work - and neither do ever-growing piles of testing. As the refusal by Nebraska's government to do anything about those failed standards has also shown, doing nothing is also bananas.
As Margaret Reist detailed in the Lincoln Journal-Star last week, sixty-five percent of Nebraska's schools failed to meet the Bush-era NCLB academic target last year. That failure is in part due either to a stubbornness to change or simple stupidity by both Nebraska's Governor and legislature to formally request a waiver from the Federal government on the NCLB standards, as other states have done.
As Joe Dejka outlined in the Omaha World Herald, even some Nebraska schools well-known for high academic standards, like the Omaha-area Millard North and Millard West high schools, have now run into some well-known problems with the NCLB - namely, the bananas requirement that schools be nearly perfect in their testing results. Those unrealistic standards, in fact, are a big part of why 42 other states have applied for waivers from the Obama administration on the NCLB standards and have been granted those waivers.
Many educators say the problem is simply that so-called educational "experts" keep insisting on more and more testing - the kind of nutty educational policy that's often the hallmark of educational standards efforts.
Some educators even say the Obama administration's attempt to do something similar, Common Core, is equally bad.
We hit on this issue just a month and a half ago, and we still believe one of the biggest problems remains, as we pointed it out at that time: Billion dollar for-profit educational testing companies, who have a vested interest in pushing ever-greater numbers of tests, for which they'll charge districts every-greater amounts of money.
We're not saying all standards testing is bad. Tests do have a place - but that place should not be a place that crowds out all other learning opportunities.
Whether the standard is Common Core or NCLB, standards testing must be completed and do need to be implemented wisely, in part because of the kind of fluid economic format we've chosen in America, at this time. Americans go where the jobs are today. If a parent moves from one state to another, their children will come with them. Therefore, what Eighth-graders learn in one state should be same for those children in all states. Unfortunately, it is not, currently.
Each child, school, and teacher should be given the leeway to actually teach. Broad standards are also good - but they need to be implemented carefully and given time to work. Amanda Ripley's great piece published online over the weekend, and in this week's edition of Time magazine, shows that Kentucky of all states, has been doing this - applying the Common Core standards broadly, with small individual exceptions. After three years of implementation, the Kentucky experience with Common Core seems to be going amazingly well.
Whatever the final solution to our academic standards problems may be, as the failures of No Child Left Behind have proven, hard, unrealistic standards don't work - and neither do ever-growing piles of testing. As the refusal by Nebraska's government to do anything about those failed standards has also shown, doing nothing is also bananas.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Simply Ridiculous
As our staff gathered up research and discussed today's commentary idea, the fact that the U.S. federal government is less than twenty-four hours from a completely unnecessary shutdown was on everyone's mind.
As much as the right-wing media has spent the weekend trying to complicate the reasons for this fight, writer Kevin Drum on Friday nailed - in one sentence - the simple reason why Congressional Republicans are about to shut down the government:
Sargent in fact, recently proved there is no real Republican alternative to Obamacare, even more than three years after the law's passage. That fact, however, hasn't kept Republican clowns - like Nebraska's entire congressional delegation - from trying to convince the gullible rubes who elected them that Republicans have any alternatives, or that a government shutdown could, in any way, stop Obamacare.
For the record, Obamacare has already been rolling for three years now, and a shutdown of the federal government isn't going to stop the health insurance exchange markets from opening on Tuesday around most of the country. Further, a delay in the rollout of the individual mandate like Republicans in Congress are demanding would actually cost Americans billions. As Tara Culp-Ressler points out, not only would it add to the national debt, it would also leave more Americans uninsured, while jacking up insurance premiums for ALL Americans by an estimated 15 to 20 percent.
All of these arguments become moot however, when you look at the facts behind both the shutdown, and the looming debt ceiling battle.
Republicans in Congress are acting like terrorists, effectively trying to force President Obama and Congressional Democrats into giving the GOP everything Republicans lost when they blew it in the 2012 elections. President Clinton even defended President Obama's refusal to be held hostage over the weekend, noting that it's Congressional Republicans who really have no intention of negotiating.
Clinton is right of course, as is conservative writer David Frum when he notes that this shutdown - like when the Republicans shut down the government under Clinton - will only politically damage the GOP. When Republicans financially hurt millions of Americans this time, we highly doubt it will win them more voter approval in 2014.
Of course, Republican stooges in Congress like Rep. Michele Bachmann - who is conveniently retiring from Congress - keep saying they don't fear a federal government shutdown. The Washington Post's Ezra Klein even said on Friday that a shutdown now might actually be good news, as a shutdown now might shock Republican freshman into being more responsible during the debt ceiling fight. That kind of thinking assumes the tea partiers holding the rest of the Republican Party hostage will listen and understand when they lose on the shutdown - something that Klein himself ended up arguing against over the weekend.
No matter how you look at it, two facts remain: Obamacare isn't going away, and the clowns in the GOP still don't have any real alternative to Obamacare.
That Republicans refuse to accept those two cold hard facts - potentially at the expense of millions of Americans and billions of dollars - is simply ridiculous.
As much as the right-wing media has spent the weekend trying to complicate the reasons for this fight, writer Kevin Drum on Friday nailed - in one sentence - the simple reason why Congressional Republicans are about to shut down the government:
"The Republican Party is bending its entire will, staking its very soul, fighting to its last breath, in service of a crusade to make sure that the working poor don't have access to affordable health care."Drum was right, of course, as was The Washington Post's Greg Sargent when he said something similar on Friday.
Sargent in fact, recently proved there is no real Republican alternative to Obamacare, even more than three years after the law's passage. That fact, however, hasn't kept Republican clowns - like Nebraska's entire congressional delegation - from trying to convince the gullible rubes who elected them that Republicans have any alternatives, or that a government shutdown could, in any way, stop Obamacare.
For the record, Obamacare has already been rolling for three years now, and a shutdown of the federal government isn't going to stop the health insurance exchange markets from opening on Tuesday around most of the country. Further, a delay in the rollout of the individual mandate like Republicans in Congress are demanding would actually cost Americans billions. As Tara Culp-Ressler points out, not only would it add to the national debt, it would also leave more Americans uninsured, while jacking up insurance premiums for ALL Americans by an estimated 15 to 20 percent.
All of these arguments become moot however, when you look at the facts behind both the shutdown, and the looming debt ceiling battle.
Republicans in Congress are acting like terrorists, effectively trying to force President Obama and Congressional Democrats into giving the GOP everything Republicans lost when they blew it in the 2012 elections. President Clinton even defended President Obama's refusal to be held hostage over the weekend, noting that it's Congressional Republicans who really have no intention of negotiating.
Clinton is right of course, as is conservative writer David Frum when he notes that this shutdown - like when the Republicans shut down the government under Clinton - will only politically damage the GOP. When Republicans financially hurt millions of Americans this time, we highly doubt it will win them more voter approval in 2014.
Of course, Republican stooges in Congress like Rep. Michele Bachmann - who is conveniently retiring from Congress - keep saying they don't fear a federal government shutdown. The Washington Post's Ezra Klein even said on Friday that a shutdown now might actually be good news, as a shutdown now might shock Republican freshman into being more responsible during the debt ceiling fight. That kind of thinking assumes the tea partiers holding the rest of the Republican Party hostage will listen and understand when they lose on the shutdown - something that Klein himself ended up arguing against over the weekend.
No matter how you look at it, two facts remain: Obamacare isn't going away, and the clowns in the GOP still don't have any real alternative to Obamacare.
That Republicans refuse to accept those two cold hard facts - potentially at the expense of millions of Americans and billions of dollars - is simply ridiculous.
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