The Common Good and the General Welfare

A conservative e-mailed me an article by Tom Coburn that said that the United States was broke but Democrats are still spending. My response was that the United States is by no means broke but that we need more revenue enhancers such as taxes on the wealthy, who have benefited enormously even in the Great Recession. His response was that government was overhead for a functioning society and that you have to cut overhead to make the economy more efficient. We agreed that we are on two separate planets. He has a nice government pension plus his own defense business and is on the military healthplan and I am not. So he must understand the realities of America better than me.

But I'm struck by the fact that in conservative speak there is absolutely no consideration or debate about the common good or general welfare. This remains me of Toni Morrison speaking about the linguistic changes in our identity over the years. Even in the days of segregation,people were referred to as "citizens". Now she says we are all "consumers". Government services form a type of niche market and we should lobby, according to class and profession, for whatever little crumb we can get. And to benefit the "consumer",corporations must be allowed to be efficient to produce lower cost products.

Yesterday National Geographic scientists announced that they had found Atlantis near Cadiz, Spain. The article will be available in this month's National Geographic. But the whole quest was pepppered in how they used multiple disciplines to track down Plato's account of Atlantis. A great story and one of the discoveries that excites everybody. But my question while reading this is where will tomorrow's scientists and geographers learn the skills for tomorrow's quest. On the fringes of our brains we are all aware of extraordinary discoveries, which will radically affect our lives and maybe will entertain our imagination like another discovery of Atlantis. But will our society actually allow for this education to occur, the investment in scientific research that will lead to these discoveries?

I've spent the day reviewing other states' new budget proposals and found them oddly and disturbingly alike. Iowa, South Carolina,Michigan and Ohio all call for massive corporate tax breaks and breaks for commercial property and all call for draconian cuts to public education as well as state universities. In Wisconsin,Governor Walker spoke today of his $900 million cut to education, the biggest in that state's history. Recall he didn't even have a budget crisis. Rural schools will be closed and class size in many districts will rise to 45 students. Well-to-do citizens can use vouchers to pay for exclusive private schools. Charter Schools will be created that will not be subject to school boards. In Michigan, which does have a budget crisis,the Attorney-general started raids on underperforming schools, which will lead to the first cases of the economic manager.

These states are privatizing public education, creating an apartheid system based on class, not race. The public education system in our country is both a laboratory of democracy, a place where students know and understand there are people in other circumstances than their own and also a place where we make real the American Dream that your ability should take you as far as you can go. Minorities know that education was the only vehicle or weapon they had to overcome the institutionalized racism that existed in this country and continues to exist to this day. It is sometimes the only place where you can 'better yourself." While President Obama has focused on education as a key part of his program, including the welcomed strengthening of our community college system, which is one of our great hidden resources,Speaker of the House Boehner wants to test this with an expansion of the voucher system on a national level.

It's too long a subject to get into education reform. I remember Al Shanker sitting at the table in our conference room at Freedom House with the dropout numbers from the decades and the various reforms that had been implemented to determine whether anything had successfully worked. I'm not certain how he would feel about the Billionaire's Boys Club of reformers and Madam Rhee campaigning across the country arguing against teachers' unions and the tenure system.

But the key question we have to ask about these radical new political agendas is whose America is theirs. Early reports from Wisconsin see an almost instant rise in homelessness because of programs like Medicaid being defunded and the safety net eliminated. The parts of healthcare, which the states were supposed to support, are now being eliminated. The parts of our society, which were rungs on the ladder to the Middle Class, are being stripped away--public service and union membership.

Jeffrey Sachs, whom I normally dislike, today said it best," It's coming to a point where the American people will not take it anymore."

My conservative colleague does not believe that government can play any productive role in economic development. He reflects the current belief of the right-wing that you do not need to invest in children and the development of secure families. You do not need to invest in infrastructure--which we haven't done in a generation. We have to cut so-called "entitlement" programs,even though huge sectors of our society are dependent on them. They have to learn how to exist without them. Government should not invest in scientific research because corporations can do it better.

Is there waste and fraud that can be cleaned up? Sure. Can government programs be made efficient? Of course. Does Medicare need serious reflection to prevent escalating costs in the future? Of course. But it seems to me that these are issues that need open and thorough and candid discussion, not the passage of laws in the middle of the night that eliminate them overnight. The political tactics used recently in the various states are repugnant and should offend any fair-minded American.

But we have gone far away from any sense that we are a community or even a nation. To say government is overhead is to studiously ignore the essence of our country. You could talk about the old Soviet Union in this manner. Does the private sector work more efficiently than the pubic sector? I'm not so sure. Social Security can not be run more efficiently than it has. It is the most successful social welfare program in the world, one of the few we ever devised. Is the public interest really served by privatizing prisons and schools? I don't think so.

And this doesn't even get to the idea of America itself. If you want to believe we are a great and free country, which sometimes I believe, but not always, you have to pay for it. And we have to relearn the lesson that wealth concentrated in the hands of 1% of the country is dangerous and destablizing. Today, the disparity of wealth between the top 1% and the rest of America is worse than in the 1920s before the Great Depression and as bad as some of the worse Third World countries I work in.

If there is not a new discussion about the common good and the general welfare,we will experience more of today's events where foreign educators announced their findings about our own school system. We have to make an effort to recruit more qualified teachers and pay them alot more if we are going to be equal to the rest of the developed world. Ouch. But we are beginning to hear more from the international community as we make these fateful budgetary decisions. We are foreclosing our own future and some of us know this.

The nature of our society has dramatically changed since I was young. The nature of our families have changed. The ethnic diversity of our country has changed. We must assimilate that into a new reality that fosters a new appreciation of a common good.

But what I find most disturbing is the studied ignorance of how the private sector can abuse individual rights and liberties and how corporations can distort both the common good and our national interest. The heavy power of the 21st century corporation is felt everyday in Washington through an army of lobbyists, who direct discussion away from things that matter to the average American.

I feel we are drifting closer to becoming the Third World countries I am used to. In a day of economic anxiety and uncertainty, there has to be shared sacrifice. We had one President tell the people "go shopping" when he should have passed taxes to pay for his imperial ventures. So far the only sacrifice has been from the middle class and the poor. For the wealthy and corporations, it has been a free ride. That has to change but I am afraid, waiting two years these days, may be too late. If we do not change our ways soon, we will lose at least another decade before we see any positive change in this country.

I am afraid that the actions of these new governors will stop any recovery and plunge us back into the economic deprivation that was so dramatic in 2008.