And they call it Democracy

One of the salient features of democracy is the right to dissent. If the average person were to imagine a state without dissent we would think of the one-party states of communist societies or fascist societies in which only one party is allowed. There are also defacto one party states where there are nominally elections, but one party completely dominates. For a long time, Mexico was essentially a one-party state. These examples seem to us undemocratic because they don’t allow dissent or make it too difficult to achieve.

We have our own example of a defacto one party state in Greece. It is not simply the fact that republicans dominate, after all there are many places in the US where one party has dominated for a long time, it is the fact that the Greece Republican party allows no dissent. Every item that goes to a vote is passed with a 5-0 vote. Moreover there is never  discussion that indicates any deviation from the party line.. It doesn’t matter if the people elected you, the party has control. Dissenting is a sure sign that you will be removed as a town board member

I wonder why this is necessary. After all an item before the board that passes 4-1 or 3-2 still passes. Republican control of the town is hardly threatened. Nor would the occasional dissent bring collapse. It might even lead to improving a proposal. I can only conclude that the reason for the lack of dissent is the need for absolute control by and fealty to the Republican Party. In Greece most town board members fortuitously end up with jobs for other republican politicians like Joe Robach or work for the county government. Given this kind of patron client relations it seems to me fair to ask whether our elected representative serve the people or are guided by their ties of loyalty or to a generous patron. That is certainly not democracy. Instead it seems to assure a system I which benefits, and rewards are given to other friends and cronies with little consideration of the public interest. It takes political sovereignty away from the people who are supposed to have the authority

When confronted with these issues in the past, that the real discussion happens in the agenda meetings that are usually held a week before the board meetings. There they say you will see real debate and discussion. There are two problems with the claim. The first is that it is not true. As far as I can determine there is not a lot of discussion that and input at these meetings either. A lot of time is expended over who gets to introduce items and who seconds. It is more like a preshow run-through of a tv show than debate. But let’s be generous and say that discussion goes on. This still falls short of the bar. Democracy is not a system in which we elect leaders and let them to go off in private to make decisions. Democracy is a theory of public authority and elected officials have to vindicate their policies through public debate and discussion. While they get to set an agenda, the agenda is still open to critical examination and open deliberation just as we see on the state and national level.

I won’t ask anyone here to vote for a specific candidate nut I think you should not vote for anyone who does not pledge to dissent if needed and to make government more transparent and open.

 

The History of Educable part 1

Educable in the beginning

 

 In the early 1980’s a recently retired director of Adult Education at the Greece Central School District was looking for a new venture for his energies. Retiring early he still had a strong interest in community involvement. He ran across information on Public Access Television and it turned out to be a perfect fit for his interests and abilities. In 1982 Sal Caterino, my father, and Angie Caterino, my mother, along with John Kells, a media specialist at a local college, formed Edu-cable corporation as a not for profit corporation as a vehicle for running public access television. (I -- Brian Caterino – was also on the board of directors but not in town and active in the operation at that time.) Later another non-profit Educable Communications Corporation would succeed it. In July of 1982 Edu-cable began broadcasting on cable channel 12 (I believe there was only one access channel then) the public access channel on the People’s Cable system. 

Educable despite difficulties and tensions with the towns in establishing and maintaining public access had some initial successes. It became established as a presence in the community and contributed to the public discussion of local events. Still Educable’s ability to achieve its aims were very limited. These I think were both financial and part of the political culture. The lack of financial support or secure funding meant that public access was never far from a crisis. It didn’t have the facilities or the resources to do its job fully. Neither the municipalities educable served, nor the cable company have fulfilled their mandates to provide funding for facilities, equipment and staff to run public access. While public access was lauded and its aims accepted it still had to be limited and its more radical aims co-opted if possible. Thus in this case Educable had to pay for things that should have been provided by the cable company (or the towns). One of the main cleavages and one that increased over time was the truly public character of access.  These revolved around whether Educable would receive sufficient funding and be free enough from governmental interference to run a truly community and public access operation, In the end neither condition turned out to be fulfilled.

It was not easy to get public access going in the town of Greece and the two other towns they first served. It took him a couple of years to get town approval and there was definitely opposition to the idea. It was only due to the intervention of the cable company that public access began. In the early days of cable, the cable companies viewed PEG channels as an asset. It distinguished them from over the air channels and attracted viewers. People’s cable was a small company looking for an edge in the market. They told the towns they had to allow public access to operate. Their support however did not extend to aid with funding, facilities or equipment. At first the cable company that served the city of Rochester (a different company at first) had run a studio for public access. When an independent non-profit took over public access, the cable company had to make an extensive commitment to supporting it. The 1992 franchise agreement with the city of Rochester stipulated that cable company provide an original grant of $175,000, renovate facilities for access, provide equipment for the studio a remote truck and provide an additional grant of $5000 per year for equipment.            

The Long Shadow

                       The Long Shadow

Review of Daniel Geary, Beyond Civil Rights: The Moynihan Report and Its Legacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 288 pg. and Susan Greenbaum, Blaming the Poor: The Long Shadow of The Moynihan Report on Cruel Images About Poverty, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015.

 

In Rochester NY where I live, a recent poverty initiative has been proposed to address some of most deeply entrenched poverty areas of this country.  History casts its long shadow over the understanding of poverty embodied in these initiatives. Short on proposals to empower the community, the reading list for the working groups are filled with reports that view poverty as an individual. psychological or social problem rooted in family structure and individual psychological trauma. You can find Paul Ryan and the Cato Institute as well as the work of several liberal think tanks on their suggested reading list, but nothing of the tradition of Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward. The role of political economic structure in the creation of inequality and the continuing prevalence of poverty gets nary a mention.

Much of this history, according to both Daniel Geary and Susan Greenbaum, was shaped by the views first formulated in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s infamous 1965 “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” which has generally come to be called “the Moynihan Report.” Moynihan was working at the Department of Labor in the Johnson administration when he prepared a report for the President hoping to influence Johnson’s War on Poverty. The report exerted a tsunami-like effect on thinking about poverty in America, sweeping away more critical and radical views of poverty. It brought the concept of the pathological black family into mainstream discourse. Moynihan subsequently was a major force in the culture wars of the later 60’s and 70’s, leading the charge of neo-conservative intellectuals. The two interesting books under review here look back on 50 years of influence of the Moynihan report and attempt to assess its impact on public policy and culture.  How did this report, which was first meant for a small circle of government officials and itself short on prescription, come to have such a profound influence on the political debates of its time?

The Moynihan Report argued that the breakdown of family structure in African American communities was the main source of its persistent poverty. As Greenbaum notes in her lucid summary, despite the general rise in prosperity in the country, African American families were not prospering.  In fact, increases in employment lead to increases in welfare. Moynihan argued that jobs alone would not end welfare “dependency”: “The fundamental problem . . .. is that of family structure” (Greenbaum, p. 3). The economic progress of the African American community was being held back by the high number of fatherless families. Wherever such a family structure exists, a “tangle of pathologies” follows; including crime, delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and elevated school dropout rates. Men without jobs were stripped of their masculinity and boys reared in matriarchal families were set on a path of failure that reached across generations.

Both venerated and vilified, Moynihan was a complex figure whose exact views are not easily pigeonholed. He was a Kennedy/Johnson liberal with social democratic leanings who later became associated with the neo-conservatives, yet as a Senator in later life he opposed Bill Clinton’s regressive welfare reform. In the early stages of his career he retained elements of social democratic theory.  He agreed with civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. that the question of equality required more than just civil rights, but social and economic ones. Moynihan supported measures that would strengthen social rights such as a family wage and even a guaranteed annual income while seeing cultural differences as crucial. The difference between Moynihan’s view and the more radical versions of social democracy lies both in his cultural conservatism and in his elitist and technocratic approach, which was typical of many intellectuals of the cold war era.

Understanding the conflicts and even contradictions in Moynihan’s work requires seeing the interrelation between several different elements of his approach: his social democratic version of vital center liberalism which accepted the pluralistic approach to ethnicity and was uneasy with social protest against pluralism; his Catholicism which simultaneously encompassed commitments to social equality and a culturally conservative paternalist notion of the family; and a technocratic view of social reform in which social science and not popular mobilization was the motor of social change.

In Daniel Geary’s reading, Moynihan’s position reflected the tensions in the postwar liberal conception of equality.  Moynihan, like other liberals, understood the barriers to equality that African Americans faced, but he retained a liberal commitment to meritocracy. He believed that individuals had to be able to compete in an open marketplace. These ambiguities made Moynihan’s theory usable by many different groups. As Geary notes, “The report contained the seeds of a left-wing challenge that deepened liberals’ war on poverty and a neo-conservative attack on the welfare state” (p. 9).  Like many left intellectuals, Moynihan moved from the New Deal Left to the so called vital center. These vital center liberals were strongly anticommunist and sought order and valued consensus over conflict. They were often at odds with the protest movements of the time. Moynihan was highly critical of community action programs in his work Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding. He believed in a regulated capitalism and in the importance of integrating labor unions as a buttress against communism. But this labor accord was to be strictly capitalist. The Moynihan Report articulated tensions that are still with us today.

Moynihan had earlier analyzed the problems of ethnic groups in American society when Nathan Glazer invited him to write a chapter for Beyond the Melting Pot, a role which expanded to coauthor. Like Glazer he equated the situation of African-Americans with other ethnic groups in American society who had experienced upward mobility and integration into American society. In the north at least Glazer and Moynihan saw fewer impediments to this advancement than in the Jim Crow south. Thus, the failure of the African Americans to advance in the north needed a different explanation. In addition to an insensitivity to the uniqueness of the African American experience in society Geary argues that this view of American society as a pluralistic competition of ethnic groups was inconsistent with Moynihan’s economic assessments of the effects of inequality and class. Like many liberals of his time he thought that the problems of inequality could be solved within the bounds of elite pluralism through the application of social science.

Moynihan’s biography combined with his politics to shape his perspective. He was the product of a broken family. His father left the family when he was young, throwing the family into chaos. He was raised a Catholic and attended Catholic school as a youth. He absorbed elements of Catholic social teachings which lead him in diverging directions. He was influenced, on the one hand by the progressive aspects of catholic social philosophy, especially the emphasis on the rights and dignity of workers. On the other hand, he also shared the patriarchal assumptions of the church. The male dominated family was the basic unit of society, and the pillar of economic and social stability. While Moynihan’s fusion of new deal economic liberalism and social conservatism was not unique it decisively shaped his interpretation of ethnic and racial matters and later lead him in a different direction,

Like many of his fellow Kennedy/Johnson liberals, Moynihan took a technocratic approach to reform, trusting the power of social scientific knowledge to diagnose and remedy social ills. Moynihan and his peers in the policy community felt that use of statistics provided precise and irrefutable proof of social patterns. As Geary argues the legitimacy of the policy intellectual was linked to the perception that they were neutral scientific advisers, not political partisans. They were social technicians, using their knowledge to fine tune society. In Moynihan’s view the statistical evidence in favor of what came to be called “Moynihan’s scissors” –the view that welfare usage increased at the same time as employment increased -- was definitive evidence that the mother-centered families in African American culture led to a pathological dependency on government aid. Of course, Moynihan’s evidence did not in fact “prove” this in any definite way. But his assumption that a statistical correlation established a causal connection, and his unexamined commitment to a patriarchal family structure, had lasting impacts on welfare policy.

By the late 60’s Moynihan’s outlook began to change. After Nixon was elected, Moynihan went to work for him, and while supporting Nixon’s notion of a basic minimum income for all, he also famously counselled Nixon to employ benign neglect in dealing with problems of race and poverty. How did Moynihan’s analysis change its meaning and purpose?  One answer is rooted in a changing perception of what government can do to bring about change. Post war liberals’ faith in scientifically directed social change and government intervention declined. They felt that social engineering had failed. Now the source of social ills more persistent; it was found in an excessive demand on government services it was unable to fulfill. Radical groups wanted too much too fast. African-Americans like other immigrant groups were supposed to “wait their turn” to get ahead. Moynihan allied with the journal. The Public Interest, the leading voice of neo-conservatives. Since centrist liberals were also skeptical of the capacity of popular action to achieve social change yet retained the pluralist model of liberal democracy, they had no option but to preach quiescence. They had no answer to the demands for greater equality and political participation by social movements.

Along with Glazer who felt that the ''The breakdown of traditional modes of behavior is the chief cause of our social problems”, Moynihan had become skeptical of creating change though deliberate social policy. While Moynihan’s commitment to equality as well as civil rights still seems apparent in his advocacy of a minimum wage, he was offended by the criticism of his work as racist. In contrast, he was pleased by the praise of conservatives like William Buckley who agreed with his emphasis on the moral deficiencies of the African American family. In allying with the right Moynihan gave credence to a fundamental rejection of equality that undermined his own position.  His views were used to lend credence to the conservative backlash against both civil rights and racial equality.

Greenbaum takes these issues in a more radical direction than Geary. The Moynihan report is less a reflection of the tensions in liberalism then its abandonment. She stresses the reception and use of Moynihan’s ideas and not its inner tensions. For Greenbaum,

Moynihan’s report came at a turning point in US history when funding for the adventurous social programs of the Johnson administration was cut to provide funding for the Vietnam war, and the urban riots of the 60’s were eroding support for social programs.  Moynihan’s report fueled a backlash: “Framed as a policy document to help uplift poor black families and correct past discrimination, it came to be regarded by both supporters and distractors as an indictment of African American culture, a pessimistic warning that legal rights and safety net programs would not be enough.” (p. 2)

Certainly, both Greenbaum and Geary give attention to the reception of Moynihan’s work. Critics challenged not just the causal explanations contained in the report, but the interpretive frameworks and normative commitments employed by Moynihan and his supporters. Black sociology for example, challenged the privilege of liberals to interpret African American experience to African Americans in an elitist way. Feminists challenged the patriarchal assumptions about the family and extensive changes in family life. Moynihan and his fellow centrist liberals however, proved singularly unable to acknowledge some of the legitimate issues these critics raised. 

Greenbaum’s book takes us beyond the debates of the 70’s, where Geary’s book essentially ends, to demonstrate how the long shadow of the Moynihan Report has had an impact on policy up to the present. Whereas the neo-conservatives still supported some version of the welfare state, the neo-liberalism of the 1980’s and beyond sought to roll it back. Moynihan’s view of the pathological black family became part of an activist and reactionary attempt to roll back the social welfare state. Greenbaum follows these debates from the 80’s through to recent attempts to commodify and privatize welfare and profit off the new neo-liberal deregulatory environment.

Moynihan’s original view of the mother dominated family as the prime source of delinquency and crime found its way into popular consciousness as a fear of the rebellious black man and the denigration of the poor black women as a welfare queen. The latter revives the old notion of the deserving poor. The images were carried forward to neo-liberal approaches to poverty. “Increasingly” Greenbaum writes, “poverty has been viewed as an individual problem that can be solved only by individuals making changes that enable their ascension into the middle class – gaining new skills or overcoming impediments like addiction.” (p 115). Neo-liberals pursue remedies like improving the manners and motivation for the poor to make them more acceptable to employers, to show proper work discipline and acceptance of authority. Other reformers sought to promote marriage, upgrade parenting skills and support for children to break the generational cycle of poverty. The lack of personal responsibility, not social inequality and political domination are the major causes of poverty.

Far from the benign neglect of the neo-conservative era, Greenbaum thinks neo-liberalism introduces of new forms of social engineering that are aimed at disciplining and shaping individual behavior to conform with the neo-liberal behavioral ideals. Greenbaum traces the consequences of the neo-liberal outlook on several issues, including marriage promotion programs, which locate the key to poverty eradication in intact families, the decimation of public housing which displaces the poor, breaks up their culture (which it sees as the basis of their pathology) and isolates them in the suburbs, to the criminalization of African American culture especially youth, in which the stereotype of the pathological black family operates. She also shows how these developments usher in a new type of governmental surveillance and management of the poor. Fostered by groups like ALEC, conservatives have gone on to promote laws that have reduced the discretion of judges, increased mandatory sentences and created a permanent population of prisoners incarcerated for relatively trivial crimes. Once the poor, especially the African-American poor, are seen as criminal and socially deviant, punitive government action is easily justified to change their behavior. For Greenbaum. the carcerial state illustrates this a type of neo-liberal paternalism, a form of governmental management of the poor and minorities. Similarly, the Clinton era welfare to work reform, reinforced the image of the unproductive welfare recipient incapable of middle class self-regulation. In order to qualify for aid recipients are subject to constant testing for drugs and monitored for proof of their willingness for work.

Still Greenbaum’s characterization of the Clinton era reforms as reactionary is misleading. However misguided, DLC centrists thought that by proposing a politics of personal responsibility they would cut the ground under conservatives and set the stage for renewed anti-poverty efforts.[1] Even Moynihan, however, by then a senator, recognized the fallacies in this argument and foresaw the likelihood that Clinton’s welfare reform would create greater extreme poverty. Counter to Clinton’s expectations, these reforms did not generate support for anti-poverty initiatives but served to reinforce preconceptions about the pathological qualities of those who live in poverty. In her haste to document the reactionary retrenchment of the welfare state she sometimes misses important difference between the players.

Under neo liberalism many public institutions were privatized and marketized including social services. With the outsourcing of public services, a new group of entrepreneurs stepped in to fill the lacuna. Greenbaum decries these private and even non-profit groups who benefit financially from poverty. Her prime example is Ruby Payne’s aha! Process Program. Although rooted in dubious social science and personal testimony, Payne successfully marketed an anti-poverty program that claimed to discover the sources of poverty in the distinctive class cultures of the poor, middle class and wealthy.  The poor family is an intergenerational structure which passes on poverty from its parents to its progeny and is morally deficient.  Greenbaum points out the condescending character of Payne’s approach.  She assumes that middle and upper class reformers possess a moral and intellectual superiority. They know best how to mentor poor people and remedy a culture that has left the poor with damaged capacities and little self-control. Payne ignores widespread evidence the wealthy are less compassionate and have fewer moral scruples than the rest of society.

Taken together Geary and Greenbaum are excellent guides to the career of Moynihan’s concept. They provide a cautionary tale about the way in which the democratic impulses of postwar American politics have been subverted by the tensions inherent in its dominant form of liberal democratic practice. The distrust of popular initiatives and social movements combined with the assumptions of elite expertise, inhibited movement towards policies that would have bring structural reform and democratic inclusion into the American political system. I prefer the historical complexity of Geary’s approach to Greenbaum’s sometimes blanket characterization of welfare policy as an uninterrupted process of reaction, but the reader will profit from both studies. My main reservation concerns the fact that both authors examine primarily elite and academic discussion and not the reception of these ideas by ordinary citizens

Geary focuses primarily on the ideological tensions in liberalism. Greenbaum however, raises questions of the social construction of knowledge via the question of poverty knowledge: “how do we know, or think we know what poverty is and, more important what are its causes” (p 139). This is an important question but Greenbaum too focuses primarily on how policy professionals and academics construct this knowledge and not the knowledge of ordinary social actors.  Such an approach to the construction of everyday knowledge would have fit well with her emphasis on studies that take the perspectives of the poor seriously When she does take up questions of social construction, she sometimes falls into functionalist platitudes. She claims that those in power tend to like ideas that support their point of view even if they are poorly thought out.  While true, this is a circular explanation. It does not tell us how power interests structure public discourse for example though control of media, through social and political hegemony in which issues are defined and their relevance delimited. More important it does not show how the individuals accept these ideas and give them meaning in their own lives. Why have many Americans accepted reactionary ideas and the characterization of African American families as criminal or deviant?  Why have authoritarian attitudes also increased in our society.

Greenbaum rejects the approach of the elite expert who wants to direct social change from above.  Culture based welfare reform like relocating poor, supporting marriage and individual tutoring are forms of expert driven neo-liberal social engineering which have by and large failed. They rarely included reference to the inequalities generated though political economic forces which continue to undermine viable solutions. Instead of band aid solutions like mentoring, structural reform is needed:” Without reforming distorted structures of banking, real estate, criminal justice, public education and civic participation” Greenbaum notes, “these measures will not stanch the tide of poverty.” (p142) The real causes lie elsewhere in low wages and the lack of jobs.

Greenbaum supports a collaborative community approach, which hearkens back to some of the original anti-poverty programs of the 60’s. It rests on the idea that “poor people have valuable insights and creative energy to offer in finding solutions to the problems they face” (p 145). Community organization and strong involvement by those directly impacted by policy is a central to this approach to the problems of poverty. Moynihan rejected community based approaches, and in the ensuing years, Greenbaum thinks, the matter not has progressed much. Policy researchers do not listen to the poor and do not take their experiences, feelings and concerns seriously. Their voices are rarely heard and they often lack political influence. In ignoring these voices however, researchers often employ their own middle class assumptions and produce unsubstantiated research and poor policy. The reason these failed approaches continue is not social scientific but ideological.

 The community based approach also requires that we change the relation of the researcher and the policy analyst to groups studied.  While Greenbaum does not reject empirical research, she thinks we also need to incorporate interpretive approaches and participant observation studies. We should try to understand individuals as they understand themselves in their own social world. She is critical of an excessive reliance on large date studies and quantitative methods. No matter how sophisticated its techniques of measurement, social research is an inherently normative enterprise. It is never value-free technical enterprise. This is clear in Moynihan’s own work.  Although his criticisms of the welfare state were based in his moral concerns he claimed they were based in neutral scientific research. Normative issues were concealed as empirical facts. Yet it is impossible to separate out the normative elements from these policy proposals.

I suggest that we need to take this idea further. We need more collaborative notions of social research.  Rather than being the subject or recipient of socially engineered policies in which they study have no say, the members of the community are active participants in both politics and policy.[2] Researches are co-participants in this process. Their claims of expertise can never be assumed in advance. They must be proven in action and discussion. Participants can articulate their own concerns and organizing for their own benefit, but they also have the capacity to criticize the assumptions, procedures and conclusions of those who study them.

 

 

 

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[1] Schram, Sanford and Joe Soss 2006. “Welfare reform as a failed political strategy: Evidence

and explanations for the stability of public opinion.” Focus vol 24 no 3 :17-23; and Schram and Soss 2007. “A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback.” APSR Vol 101 no 1:111-127

[2] Caterino, Brian, The Practical Import of Political Inquiry New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2016

                  

Who Owns U

Who owns your work?

When you design a course or project, you probably think its your creation, your own intellectual property, in the same way a book is considered your own work. If you're an adjunct teaching an on-line or distance education course, you may be surprised to find out that your institution owns your course work.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in its June 5, 1998 issue, that many colleges and universities are developing contracts with faculty that give the institutions rights to ownership to online courses developed at that institution. These provisions indicate a new zone of conflict between faculty and administration.

Of course such issues of intellectual property aren't entirely new to business or academia. Scientists and researchers who work for industry often find that any patents they receives for new products of procedures belong to their employer including universities. In such cases employers claim that inventions created using their resources are the property of the employer. Rights to license them for general use belong to the employer. Courses which consist of lectures, demonstrations, group projects etc. were never considered inventions in this sense, nor were they marketable. However, the advent of on-line courses is changing the notion of way is commercially exploitable. Now course work could be marketed through CD-ROMS or other forms of online distribution, and can become a source of profit for cash starved universities.

Institutions claim that such courses depend on their the technologies and resources in order to develop and distribute courses. On-line courses are interpreted by some universities as a form of "work for hire", in which case the employer claims to own the work. Kathleen Davey, dean of instructional technology at Florida Gulf Coast University asserts that where professors are paid to create courses "first rights belong to the university" At the New School for Social Research on-line program (where I have been employed) instructors are independent contractors with no affiliation the university and no rights. In both of these cases academic work comes close wage labor. Just like factory work, one sells one's labor or the employer for a fee and the products of that labor belong to the employer.

Full time faculty have contested these changes. They fear the loss of control over their work and potential threats to academic freedom. They also fear the advent of a supermarket approach to education, in which education becomes akin to a grand commercial shopping mall of courses. To a large extent these fears have a real basis, but not simply because of their threat to intellectual property. They herald a drastic change in the nature of academic work.

Academics, including adjuncts tend to view themselves as processionals whose dedication and calling in the dissemination of specialized knowledge buffets them from market forces. Professionals like to se themselves as self-regulating and autonomous groups who control their own work. However, this conception is being challenged by the transformations of higher education. The new arrangements give greater power to administrators rather than faculty.

In the case of adjuncts , the image of the professional largely independent of market forces has been an illusion for a long time. In fact they have been the shock troops for the successful downsizing of academia. For all intents and purposes adjuncts have already been converted to works for hire. Today's adjunct is decidedly the creation of market conditions. They are largely another commodity to be bought and sold on he market as conditions warrant.

Labor historian David Noble, has argued in a widely circulated online paper, "Digital Diploma Mills" that higher education is undergoing a large scale commodification. At some schools like UCLA online courses are being market in a for profit corporation in partnerships with private firms. Noble contends that universities are being viewed as a prime area for investment and capital accumulation by large corporations. The first stage entailed the licensing of patents the second the market of "courseware." Second is more troublesome since it "entails the commoditization of the educational function of the university, transforming courses into courseware, the activity of instruction itself into commercially viable proprietary products that can be owned and bought and sold in the market."

Noble disagrees with technological optimists, including some who should know better that the Internet represents the emergence of large scale alternative democratic public and forms of democratic empowerment, uncensored and unregulated, by the forces that have constricted other mass media. Technological changes are also wedded to social purposes. Whatever the potential in the abstract for technology, its function in our society has entailed harder and longer work, under worsening economic circumstances, with less control lower benefits and less pay.

These changes need to be viewed in a broader perspective. One for the basic tendencies of the economy in its post Keynesian stage is the extensions of market control over areas previously regulated either by government or by non-market social ideals. Protections guarantee by the welfare state ideals are being eased away as everything is justified by the discipline of the market. If faculty were to view their situation in this larger perspective they could take positive action. Otherwise they find themselves fighting a rear guard action. It will be hard for academics to call on others to help them avoid downsizing if they are unwilling to fight for others in the same position. Full-time faculty would need to make a common cause with adjuncts too. If adjuncts are marginalized while other faculty are protected it will only increase the tendency toward a two-tier academic system. Education for the few and courseware for the many.

Trump U

 

 

Donald Trump is a smart man, just ask him. He will tell you he went to the best schools and has the best education around. He knows what you don't. You would think he would be concerned about the quality of education. At the very least he would want to make sure that smart people like himself get exposed to the best idea around. Maybe he would even show a little interest in the education of those with less privilege and opportunity than himself.

Unfortunately, you would be wrong. In the event he gets elected Trump would never be called an education president. Trump has the same cavalier attitude toward education that he has toward almost every important problem in America. Just take a look at the inner workings of Trump "University" that has been in the news of late. The attorney general of New York called Trump U "a fraud from beginning to end" and a bait and switch scheme. While Trump supporters tend to minimize these charges as either politically motivated and a simple private matter, even a brief consideration of the facts shows that it is a much bigger problem.

The first thing to keep in mind is that Trump University isn't a University. It is not accredited. It does not offer any degree nor is it accredited as an institution of higher education. It doesn't have a faculty trained in the area or qualified to teach courses. You don't get college credit you could transfer from another university or college or use to get a degree.  To advertise Trump’s programs as a university is a fraud. When Trump U opened in 2005 it received a letter from the New York Attorney general's office that it was operating without an NYSED license. The individual who thinks that thinks they are getting the world class education that Trump claims to offer would be sadly disappointed. Would you go the Trump dental clinic if you knew that is was actually staffed by a bunch of a barbers or the Trump pharmacy if it is was run by the local drug dealer? You can't simply advertise yourself as a professional institution without some accreditation. It's a bit like the claims of the old medicine men of the 19th century. They have the remedy to cure all your ills. It's a fraud

What Trump actually offered under the guise of a university is really set of seminars. Now there is no law against running a seminar where people can brush up on skills or learn new ones. If Trump would have advertised his "university" as a training session it might have been okay, However, even here Trump U turns out to be a fraud. Trump U advertised the courses/seminars as a free real estate seminar that provided a chance to learn Trumps real estate strategies from his staff of hand-picked instructors,  In fact, the content of Trump seminars were written by a third party company that creates materials for motivational speakers and sales men, In short it was a prewritten sales pitch. Trump instructors often seemed to have little connection to the area in which they were supposed to give instruction. While promising that the seminars would allow the average person to make a fortune in real estate, the seminar's main purpose was to get attendees into paying programs. Attendees were promised the best real estate education that money could buy.

To the extent that Trump's University followed any model of education it most closely follows the for profit model. Education is not primarily something that is helps people to understand their own lives but a commodity to be exchanged. The aim of the for-profit school is to make a surplus for its owners. Like any business. the desire for profit is more important than any social or educational benefit. In many cases for profit universities have been found guilty of using high pressure tactics to get students to enroll, and to take out large students’ loans to cover tuition with no attention paid to the qualifications of the students to undertake college level education. Since they were accredited institutions which largely ran online, the for-profit colleges qualify for Pell grants as well as student loans. The colleges got Pell grants and loan money and students often got the shaft. Graduation rates were very low. the course work often inferior and most students ended up with huge student loans and no degrees.

Trump U took the predatory strategies of the for profit colleges and added bait and switch tactics. At the frees seminar attendees were urged to enroll in the three-day seminar for $1495. The free seminars contained little information or access to Trump secrets. Rather they were largely testimonials and inspirational stories of the pitchman's business success. Enrolling in the seminar was the step to getting access to the keys to success.

But the $1495 three-day seminar proved to be little more than another pitch to enroll in a much more expensive program. To learn the true secrets of Trump real estate success the attendee would have to enroll in additional mentoring workshops. These could cost up to 35,000

Students at these seminars were urged to call their credit companies to request an increase in their credit lines. These increases were ostensibly meant to make sure that attendees would have money to invest in real estate. In fact, these credit line increases went mostly to cover the cost of the expensive workshops. Think about it: the average person is only going to be able to get the 25 to 35 thousand dollars the top of the line Trump courses would cost. At the high rates credit card companies charge, the payments would be onerous. Where would the new real estate mogul get the additional capital to invest in real estate after the course.

One attendee who only had $25,000 in credit reported that his "instruction" consisted or a 2-day trip to Philadelphia where he and his mentor did walk throughs of 20 properties. He received no classroom instruction of any kind.

Sales playbooks and documents released as part of court cases illustrate how trump seminar leaders and salesman were encouraged to pressure attendees into taking expensive courses. The playbooks instruct the salesmen to always be on the offensive. They should take the lead in discussion and guide attendees toward taking more courses. They were never to be put on the defensive. Salesman were given directions on how to handle reluctant spouses who did not want their significant others to spend money for expensive seminars and to maneuver around the fears that prospective students lack money for the courses. Salesmen were told never to take lack of funds as an excuse for not enrolling. They should tell the prospective clients that where there is a will there is a way, and encourage them to use their credit cards. The emphasis in theses playbooks is in closing the deal. There is little with the quality of the instruction or the benefits to students.

Several former employees have testified about their dissatisfaction with the high power sales tactics. One sales manager claimed that he was reprimanded for failing to sell a $35,000 package to a couple in financial difficulties. He came to fell that Trump U preyed on the vulnerable older people and the uneducated. The playbooks counselled salesman to take advantage of people's anxieties. One set of instructions told salesman to let prospective students know we have the answer to their problems. Other employees were dissatisfied with the content of Trump U. One called it a total lie.

It is really hard to fathom what benefit people really got out of these expensive seminars. Perhaps they felt a kind of confidence that comes from identifying with a powerful figure.  Based on the testimony and information presented in public accounts, it doesn't seem like much knowledge was imparted. There certainly not anything that represents Trump's "secrets" or his own philosophy

Trump U began in a time of economic downturn. It preyed on the fears and insecurities of middle class Americans who saw their incomes decline their pensions shrinking and the value of their houses shrinking. Instead of providing solutions. Trump U was little more than another get rich quick scheme. He seems to be using the same bait and switch tactics, and the same inflated promises of a quick fix on the American electorate.

Dual offices

This is an editorial I published in 2007. The situation has not changed too much today. The local Rochester newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle, did not want to publish it and besides making me do some silly busy work, telling them about office holders in different towns to "prove" what I had already proved in the editorial withheld it until after the municipal elections in our area.

Last year Tom O’Neill from New Jersey Policy Perspectives authored a report titled One to a Customer. Which focuses on  the political practice of dual office holding, a practice all too common in New Jersey but also quite common in New York. In a survey several years ago close to 30% of New Jersey legislators held other jobs in government and when close relatives such as spouses were added on the total rose to 44%

Dual office holding occurs when one public official holds two (or more!) offices in a municipality or holds offices in different jurisdictions. Offices can be elected or appointed.  For example, someone might be a county legislator and a town district attorney. While dual office holding poses problems because of conflicts of interest and personal enrichment involved in holding more than one position, the real threat is due to a conflict of duties involved in holding dual offices. For dual offices are often incompatible offices, the duties involved in holding one office conflict with the duties involved in other offices. Incompatible offices are always illegal, but dual offices even when they are permitted pose major ethical problems for government weaken our trust in the integrity and accountability of our elected officials. That’s why 38 states have laws prohibiting  many if not all instances of dual office holding and groups like common cause oppose it. Extensive dual office holding often goes hand in hand with patronage appointments, nepotism, cronyism and unaccountable government.

O’Neill stresses the American ideal of the citizen legislator, who takes time from his own work to serve the community. As average citizens we want a government that is both accountable and responsive to our wishes, and open to all. The ideals’ of the citizen–legislator embodies  the idea that anyone with sufficient motivations interest and willingness to learn can run for public office, and then after a time return to private life.  While we appreciate disinterested public service, we dislike the idea of permanent politicians who come to represent entrenched interests Dual Office Holding, along with other forms of patronage undermine the ideal of participation in public service.

On the most basic level these practices, conflict with the idea that offices are open to everyone. When public offices are held by a few officials in a close groups then citizens are discouraged form participating in government. Dual office holding and double dipping make political office holding seem more like  a reward for loyalty and obedience than  a service to the community,  It tends to create government that is secretive, closed and unaccountable. And most of all it raises questions about the commitment and integrity of governments,  When public officials serve two  masters their ability to serve either is called into question.

Greece residents don’t have to go very far to find example of dual office holding, incompatible offices, double dipping and just plain cronyism. Our town government is a virtual lab experiment in ethically challenged government. Government in the town of Greece is closely intertwined with county government that Maggie Brooks and John Auberger have to be restrained from holding hands.

Of the four current town councilmen, only Rick Antelli is not employed by our county government. Councilman Mike Barry is clerk to the county legislator, Bob Bilsky  works in the county finance office and Jerry Helfer is Assistant County Executive. In the past  other town councilman have held positions of authority in the county as well

More troubling still Greece Town Government currently has not just one but two county legislators serving in positions of considerable authority. Jeff McCann  serves as both as a county legislator  and as deputy superintendent, while Raymond Dirado serves as Town Attorney and as county legislator. 

The increasing interconnections of levels of government authority complicate the problem of incompatible offices. Increasingly, services and even sources of revenues are shared among different levels of government. Under these conditions almost all dual offices can have elements of incompatibility.

Promoting widespread dual office holding and double dipping reflects badly on the ethical judgment of the public “servants” who accept such offices, but they also reflect very bad on the ethical  integrity of those who appoint  them or who  turn a blind eye to double dipping and condone a political culture of cronyism and patronage based on an uncritical loyalty (at least in public) to the “boss” Both Greece Supervisor Auber and County Executive Brooks need to clean up their act and their governments

 

Time for Bob Lonsberry to be replaced

It’s really time for Lonsberry to go

 Rochester is plagued by racial tensions deep seated inequality and persistent poverty. It has one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the nation, a high rate of childhood poverty and a history of maltreatment of racial minorities. The gap between the richest suburbs and urban poverty are vast. Yet throughout much of its history elite Rochesterians and today suburbanites have had an air of superiority. In the title of the famous book by Curt Gerling.  The old Rochester is a Smugtown. Its leadership has little use for the working folks of Rochester

Unfortunately local Rochester broadcast media haven't been of much constructive use in helping Rochesterians address and understand the problems it faces. News here is mostly infotainment, Remember back in the 80's and 90's when Rochester was shedding jobs the media promoted happy talk and a Pollyanna mentality. I remember news features like positively Rochester trumpeting all the good things about our area and telling people prosperity was just behind the next door, These pieces were not news but civic boosterism and entertainment, Their job was not too inform but to distract and avoid the real social and economic issues

In the meantime the middle class was disappearing and poverty rising, Sometimes negativity, if it is based in reality is a good thing, It forces one to act to change the situation or to do something constructive, But for the elite of Rochester, negativity was not desired. It was bad for business, and any though the masses of Rochester folk might start to want change was scary as hell.

There is of course a dark underside to the happy talk. It doesn't really convince anyone, but acts as a form of official censorship again critical thinking. People who aren't happy in Rochester are told they don't have a case and left out of the conversation.

Still someone or somebody has to be to blame for our discomfort and distress and the poor and minorities make a great scapegoat. Personally I have never met a poor person who laid off several thousand people, moved a plant to a foreign country or gave one his crony friends a sweet government job or a no bid contract, yet the poor  became the target of the and tool a lot of blame for the country's woes.

Rochester has sunk a long way in its racial attitudes. Once the home of Frederick Douglas and other abolitionists, and an important stop on the underground railroad the greater Rochester area has become its opposite, a hotbed of racial intolerance. A recent article I read found that upstate New York was one of the areas with the greatest indications or racist attitudes. I don’t really know the whole story of how Rochester turned away from its abolitionist heritage, but one part of the story has to include Rochester’s patron saint George Eastman, He thought that African Americans did not have the intelligence and discipline to work at Kodak and hired few if any at his burgeoning industrial complex. This refusal was one among many reasons (police brutality was another) fueling the race riots in the early 60’e that shook staid Rochester to its core.  Despite some reform efforts racism and its partner economic inequality

The rise of hate radio has played a large role in creating this climate of blame. Figures like Rush Limbaugh arose and targeted liberal ideas and vulnerable people or groups like feminists and gays who are seem to threaten the conservative values.

Originally the media were seen as public property. No one owns the airways. Licenses for radio and broadcast TV are not ownership of the frequency but groups are granted use of a frequency based on the public interest. To be sure that notion of the public interest was never very well developed or realized but it did provide a small bulwark against the worst offences through the fairness doctrine and the notion that broadcasters had to provide coverage of controversial public issues. Even this weak public interest standard along with a number of others was eliminated in during the Reagan administration and the deregulation continued under Clinton, THe argument was basically economic. The fairness doctrine had according to this argument been based on the scarcity of frequencies. The limited number of frequencies limited competition necessitating regulation. But the expanded number of outlets along with cable (at the time later the internet would be invoked) created an abundance of outlets thus cancelling the need for regulation. Of course the fallacy of this argument is apparent. It doesn’t matter if there are an expanded number of channels if they are controlled by just a few people and if ordinary folk don’t have the resources the capacity or the influence to use them. As deregulation increased the limitation on the number of stations one company could own in a market were lifted and the number of total stations a corporation could own giant conglomerates like Clear Channel were able to own thousands of stations nationwide and localism in radio declined, and as localism declined so did diversity both in opinion and in ownership. Few women or minorities were represented in ownership and on the air. THe rise of talk radio would have been impossible without the deregulation that left the fairness doctrine in abeyance. Otherwise every time a Rush Limbaugh went on a diatribe about liberalism feminazis or Obama a station would have to grant equal time to those discussed. We shouldn’t think either that talkers like Rush stepped in and got an immediate audience, They were creations of the market power of the large conglomerates created after deregulation, Stations owned by the mega companies were forced to run Limbaugh who then immediately had a captive audience market for that national advertisers would get onboard,

Along with national figures like Limbaugh and for time Glenn Beck spawned a host of local programs, and Rochester has its own hate radio platform on WHAM a 50,000 watt superstation and host Bob Lonsberry. Just like his bigger cousins, Lonsberry has a history of racially insensitive comments, Back in 2002 when a young African American boy had been shot by police and raised tensions Lonsberry criticized urban teens who were "raised like animals, groomed as predators” and called the victim “genetically a man, but socially a wolf.”2003 he called the African American mayor of Rochester, William Johnson an orangutan. He was suspended and subsequently fired for this transgression. Somewhat chastened he made a public apology and returned less than a year later promising to take sensitivity training,

While it is the American way to give people second chances, Lonsberry has long since squandered it and more. He quickly showed his promise to be more sensitive and inclusive to be empty. Over the years he has continued to disparage people of color women gays and of course liberals. Like Rush Limbaugh you cannot really have a discussion with Lonsberry He will just call you a name an Obama supporter and hang up.

Lonsberry may have learned to be a bit more subtle in his racism although only a little. Lonsberry sells merchandise call FUBO (F*&# You Barack Obama) and his disdain for this African American president along with African American mayor of Rochester (and a women to boot) drips off his microphone. He continues to use racially charged rhetoric and thinly disguised racial stereotypes. He has extended his racism to included Latinos.

If you were to listen to Lonsberry you would find a consistent thread running through his diatribes. There are two kinds of people in this world. The hard working people who earn and create wealth and the takers. All our problems like poverty, taxes and even inequality derive from this divide. The takers are the lazy no good ones who live off the dole. We all know who Lonsberry has in mind here.

In the genteel language we academic types sometimes use this view is basically crap. It reverses cause and effect, the results of economic inequality and racial prejudice are transmuted into its causes.  We don’t live in a Horatio Alger world where everyone succeeds by pulling themselves up form their bootstraps, but one in which mobility and climbing up the social ladder is harder than ever. Our society is one of small individual enterprises but one dominated by large corporation and interests who hold an inordinate amount of power. Here economic barriers to mobility are multiplied by institutional racism. The upshot of this is kind of bankrupt moralism in which the others lack of character we “honest and hard working” people possess. It averts out gaze from the larger social issues.

Back in 2008 Lonsberry made fun of Rochester Urban League awards horning students who achieved a B average in schools for its low standards and made also made light of another program honoring teen mothers for graduating from high school. His response telling them to keep their pants on seem a bit ironic coming from a Christian conservative with several failed marriages but this seemed lost on Christian warrior Lonsberry.

These actions led the Rochester School superintendent jean Claude Brizzard to call for Lonsberry's removal amidst a threatened boycott of his advertisers. He survived this storm too,

More recently you can read in Lonsberry's blog he views that the real problems in racially charged areas like Ferguson is the disrespect African American's have for police. He was more worried about the ruined life of policeman Darren Wilson than Michael Brown who lost his life. Clearly black lives don't matter to Bob.  More recently he has upped the rhetoric again. In wake of the recent resignation of the President of the University of Missouri for his inattention and insensitivity to racial and ethnic hate on campus, Lonsberry claims that the students who protest are petulant spoiled brats who can't take criticism, They are instituting a new wave of repressive PC that threaten our universities. If course having attended Brigham Young University, Lonsberry is no doubt an expert on the campus climate in our nation, Had he ever wonders in a P stupor onto one of our local campuses say for example SUNY Brockport he might have noticed that racial tensions often simmer just beneath the surface of campus life,

However, in recent days Lonsberry has visited his crusading wrath on the whole of Islam in the wake of the terrible even in Paris. Islam is a "gutter religion." that has to be eliminated. Of course Obama gets roped into this too.  Obama's careful considered response lacks the understanding of the world historical clash that is occurring, Rather than an attack on humanity, it humanity (short for godless humanist or non-Christians) that are at war with beleaguered Christianity. He seems to be advocating a new Crusade by Christians against the heathens. Luckily we have some advanced mathematics to create new war technologies that were facilitated a long time ago by the mathematical discoveries of these uncultured heathens,

I think Bob Lonsberry has had enough chances to show he can be a voice for community dialogue and discussion of important issues. he provides little substance or thoughtful considerations of issue. He is more concerned with keeping his profile high and expanding his audience to find a regional or even national base than helping us address crucial issues.

This was illustrated in an article in the Syracuse Post discussing Lonsberry’s expansion to the Syracuse Market in 2012 a move that according to the article gives him a chance to become "the region's most powerful radio commentator/

Joel Delmonico a vice president of Clear. Channel in Syracuse, the radio conglomerate that owns WYSL in Syracuse WHAM in Rochester along with thousands of other stations nationwide thinks that Lonsberry is a good host because he inspires intense followers an intense dislike. THe important thing for him is that a radio host shouldn't be bland, Lonsberry he says attracts listeners who think he is a 9 and who think he is a 1. This is apparently the criterion for successful talk radio in his view the creation of outrage.

While it might be useful for talk show hosts to provoke listeners to think there is a major difference between a provocation that leads to discussion and provocation that is designed to stop it. As in Rochester Syracuse listeners quickly found that only certain opinions are allowed on Lonsberry’s after first being dismissed with the usual thank you mister Obama, the same caller on his next try got a simple hang up another time he was told we don’t want the same type of caller as Jim Reith (the previous local Syracuse middle of the road host let go in favor of Lonsberry) Sandwiched between Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in Syracuse and ahead if both of them in Rochester. The aim of this block of shows is not to educate and inform but to disinform. It is in the business of playing on the fears and anxieties of working folks and to inculcate authoritarian and dogmatic patterns of thinking,

 

I don’t make this claim lightly.  the dumbing down of the American citizen has been a topic in the news in recent years While there may be a number of causes, certain high among them is the deliberate disinformation provided through hate radio and outlets like Fox News, It has long been remarked that Fox News viewers are less informed than other viewers and are more likely to believe conspiracy oriented ideas such as President Obama was not born in America and is a secret Muslim or that global warming is a liberal conspiracy. One recent study claimed that watching Fox News makes one less informed than watching no news at all. Surely studies of hate radio listeners would come to similar conclusions. No doubt it contributed to the deepening political polarization of our country and the local Rochester region too.

 

 

Even in times when public interests standards are on the decline, we still can make headway against hate radio.  An organized nationwide boycott of sponsors of Rush Limbaugh has had an effect. The number of stations running Limbaugh has declined. Equally as important in many major markets he has been dropped from high profile stations, and is running on low rated low profile stations, and advertisers are fleeing Limbaugh in the wake of the boycott and his increasingly intemperate remarks,

 

Rochester can’t afford to continue on as a bastion of hate radio. We need forums for a serious discussion of the issues facing Rochester and the nation and radio that provides information not disinformation, and sows prejudice both petty and large. Lonsberry has been on the edge for a long time subject to firing and boycotts, he may seem like he is Teflon but he is not invincible. A concerted and sustained effort to remove Lonsberry will succeed if local groups take up the issue again and press both advertisers and WHAM executives to change. Public interest arguments can have an effect.

We have to make the argument for better public interest standards and press stations to live up to the public interest obligations and call to account those who are supporting hate Radio in Rochester. One of the pressing needs in our community is intelligent discussion and thought our dilemmas not ignorance and bigotry. We can’t settle for less.