Vote No on Massachusetts Question 2. Part I.

The debate over the merit of Massachusetts ballot Question 2 has been enfeebled by its he-said-she-said quality. Those who want the referendum defeated, with whom I agree,* have presented their case vaguely; their obtuseness could lead to passage of the referendum to the detriment of nearly a million public school students.

Leading the opposition is Save Our Schools. If Save Our Schools, in its TV ads, would say just a little more, it would make its case ironclad.

It would also expose the corporation-laden opposition’s cynical assumption that a significant number of voters will, for whatever reason, accept uncritically any assertion made on a TV ad as fact. 

If passed, the ballot question would remove the limit on the number of charter schools that can be established in the commonwealth. Those in favor say that Massachusetts is loaded down with under-performing schools, and that charter schools districts offer high-quality educational alternatives.

The referendum calls for licensing of no more than 12 new schools each year. Seventy-eight operate now.**

Charter schools are private, and they have disparate foci. For instance, the Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School and the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts School are located in Hampshire County.

When a child transfers from his or her public school to a charter school, the money budgeted to educate the child is transferred from the public school district to the charter school.

What we have seen on TV has boiled down to this:

·         Save Our Public Schools has spent $714,400 on advertising to inform the public that charter schools take money from public schools.

·         Not true, asserts Great Schools Massachusetts, which has spent $10.8 million on ads to assert that the more charter schools there are, the more the state funds public schools. 

In January the truth, in all its complexity, was reported by The Boston Globe:

``When a student enrolls in a charter school, state law requires that the public school district in which they reside pay the student’s tuition costs. The state is then supposed to reimburse that cost. But that doesn’t always happen.’’

So, what Save Our Public Schools has failed to spell out is that Massachusetts makes some reimbursements to public schools, but not remotely enough to cover the difference.

For the fiscal year that ended June 30, charter school tuitions totaled $486, 259,852. The state reimbursed $73,448,032. Public schools had to cover the difference -- $412,811,820.

Charter school proponents, also citing education department figures, have appealed the public to consider the 32,646 students who are on waiting lists to get into charter schools.

That sounds like a lot of students, but keep in mind that that leaves exactly 917,007 public-school students who don’t wish to transfer. So of all public school students, only 3.6 percent want to get out.

Another way to illustrate the discrepancy is to point out that 32,646 would fill 86 percent of Fenway Park’s 37,949 seats. While the charter school waiting list equals less than one Fenway Park, 917,007 would fill 28 Fenway Parks.

I don’t mean to make light of any student’s desire to go to a school that is better than the one they are in now, but 3.6 percent just does not justify removing, year after year, hundreds of thousands of dollars from public school budgets.

The more charter schools there are, the worse that problem will get.

* I am a substitute teacher at three public school districts in western Massachusetts.

** Statistics regarding spending on advertising are taken from the Massachusetts Office of Campaign & Political Finance Web site. Information pertaining to the number of charter schools and enrollment are taken from the Web site of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Copyright © 2016 Daniel Steven Miller

President Trump's dream: his very, very own news empire, where anything could be true

    The media coverage of Donald J. Trump's presidential campaign has had a one-thing-after-another feel. An inundation of bigotry, misogyny and homophobia. And, more recently, revelations about his taxes and putting the moves on women.

    The experience of taking it all in has been dizzying, like being stuck on an islet, watching a twister blow around and around the terrain for months on end. The results have been noise and murky water.
    However, from the pattern of the sediment that has settled on the shore, I discern a plan for something more sinister than a rash of chauvinism and boorishness. There are signs that if Trump wins, he will establish a state-run medium – in other words, an administration-run propaganda organ.

       This is not far-fetched, so don't touch that dial.

       For starters, in May, Vanity Fair reported that Trump may consider starting a cable outlet. The magazine quoted an anonymous source close to the campaign as saying that Trump’s thinking is 

        ``(W)in or lose, we are onto something here. We’ve triggered a base of the population that hasn’t had a voice in a long time.’’¹

       The source does not answer the question of whether Trump would wait until his presidency is finished before setting up his cable network. It also does not say what kind of content it would broadcast. A Trump spokeswoman said the Trump circle has given ``not a thought’’ of going into media.

If current trends continue, a Trump Administration outlet could come to pass.

Consider:

• The administration of President George W. Bush provided fake news segments to TV outlets. Some of these were broadcast, with no disclaimer that they were government product
• Roger Ailes, the Fox News founder who works for Trump, proposed to President Nixon the idea of setting up a GOP TV channel. Nixon rejected the idea
• In early 2015, Trump’s running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, initiated ``Just In,'' which would, as a government outlet, broadcast news about the state. Pence backed off the idea following public outcry.

       Most people know that Trump hates what some call the``mainstream'' media. He claims that election coverage has been rigged against him. He has described reporters as ``the lowest form of life.’’

       He will do business only with journalists who agree with him all the time. It follows that as president he would establish a media channel that would transmit only the information he wants the public to know.

Trump has hired Ailes, fired from Fox News amidst charges of sexual harassment, to be a consultant to the campaign. The campaign hired as its CEO Stephen Bannon, the head of Bretibart News, a right-wing Internet news site. Bannon and Ailes are aligned ideologically with Trump; they could provide him with considerable business and technical expertise.

       Ailes’ "A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News,’’ according to Gawker reporter John Cook, who broke the story five years ago, was ``a plot by Ailes and other Nixon aides to circumvent the `prejudices of network news’ and deliver `pro-administration’ stories to heartland television viewers.’’ The memo is not signed, but Cook, who examined hundreds of pages attributed to Ailes, said the copy at the Nixon Library ``literally has Ailes' name written all over it. ''The memo states:

     ``Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you.’’

     In a piece that appeared August 17 in the conservative journal The Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes wrote that by taking on Bannon, Trump has chosen to live in  Breitbart’s ``alternative reality.’’ Armed with a state-run news outlet, Trump would not have to explain himself. Broadcast anchors or reporters would speak for him – no questions, please. Hayes writes: 

    ``When Trump can't explain his own words, Breitbart faults the journalists who have asked the questions.’’ 

The platform would allow the administration to broadcast, with a straight face, assertions as staggering as Trump’s remark that Ted Cruz’s father was with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before Oswald was shot, or that African-Americans are living in the worst time of their history, ``ever, ever, ever.'' Skeptics would not be allowed airtime.

After a while, the members of an audience loyal to Trump media would start to see the world through a prism of deceptions and of propaganda. They would come to live in a reality alternative to those who got their information from other sources. And even though myriad other news outlets exist, a state-run channel could have a large, loyal following. Witness the adherence to Fox and Breitbart.

The idea of a media-generated alternative reality reminds me of ``1984,’’ George Orwell’s tale of a dystopia in which the only public information is generated by the government. 

Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth. He has been tasked with getting the polity to accept the notion that ``two plus two make five.’’ He wrestles with his work. Orwell writes:

``Anything could be true. The so-called laws of nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. `If I wished,’ O’Brien had said, `I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.’ Winston worked it out. `If he thinks he can float off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.’ Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind. `It doesn’t really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.’ He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a ``real’’ world where ``real’’ things happened. The arithmetical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as `two plus two make five’… needed… a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.''2

     Under those circumstances it would be hard to think straight.

       In the 1930s,  ``2 + 2=5’’ was the slogan of  the Five Year  industrialization plan of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin. The idea was that the Soviets would achieve their goals in four years instead of five.    

      From Eugene Lyons, an American journalist in Moscow then:

      ``It seemed to me at once bold and preposterous. The daring and the paradox and the tragic absurdity of the Soviet scene… 2 + 2 = 5: in electric lights on Moscow housefronts, in foot-high letters on billboards, spelled planned error, hyperbole, perverse optimism. ’’3

         A concept central to ``1984’’ is the Memory Hole, which the Ministry of Truth uses to destroy information the government no longer wants its citizens to have. Once placed in a Memory Hole, things that had happened or had been said no longer exist, and no one remembers them ever existing.

       Of course, the Memory Hole is a metaphor; today we have YouTube and our world is loaded down with cell phones and security cameras. The disappearance of any piece of public information would impossible.

       Not that Trump hasn't tried. In March he said Japan and South Korea should develop nuclear arsenals defend themselves against North Korea, China, Pakistan and Iran. In May he denied making the remark even though had been recorded. And during the Sept. 27 debate, Trump denied saying that global warming was a hoax perpetrated by China, even though he had posted the assertion on Twitter in 2012.

        If he could, Trump would immobilize reporters. Seeking to limit coverage from press organizations that have run stories that Trump found disagreeable, he barred about a dozen of them access to himself and the inside of his campaign airplane. Those banned included BuzzFeed, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast and the Huffington Post. In early September, he lifted the ban.

      Trump has also stated that he would revise libel law to make it easier for him to sue media organizations that disenchant him.  

     ``We're going to open up libel laws and we're going to have people sue you like you've never got sued before,’’

he told a rally in Fort Worth, Texas.

Libel protection is intended to safeguard the reputations of private citizens so that they can continue to earn a living and, in general, stay in their neighbors’ good graces. News outlets may report, without legal consequences,``provably true’’ damaging material about private persons. But libel protections do not apply to public figures; among these are politicians and eminent people in business. Trump is one of each.

Yet this month Trump threatened to sue The New York Times after the paper ran a story that quoted two women as saying that Trump had touched them inappropriately. Trump’s attorney said the timing of the article was politically motivated. The paper’s lawyer said the Times ``welcome(s) the opportunity to have a court set him straight.

A final signal that Trump sympathizes with state-owned media is his tacit support of those in Russia and North Korea. Both nations, by way of their media organs, have endorsed Trump. He has not disavowed the endorsements.

In September, Trump granted an interview with RT America, which is owned by the Russian government. In it, he said American media will

``take a statement that you make which is perfect and they’ll cut it up and chop it up and shorten it or lengthen it or do something with it.”

        This month, the Obama Administration confirmed that last year hackers who work for the Kremlin knocked France’s TV5Monde off the air.

How can we know that Russia would not, at Trump's request, do the same thing to a station in the United States?

Recall that Trump said Japan and South Korea should develop nuclear arsenals to defend themselves from North Korea. If North Korea is so bad, why has Trump not repudiated its endorsement?

Because the man finds it hard to think straight.

Stay tuned.

¹ Although Vanity Fair does not identify the speaker, I trust the editorial staff of the magazine to have vetted the source and found it credible.

² Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Signet, 1949.

³Lyons, Eugene.  Assignment in Utopia. London: Harrap, 1938, in Tzouliadis, Tim. The Forsaken. New York: Penguin Press. 2008.

Copyright 2016 Daniel Steven Miller

Grace dances with Mr. D.

Yesterday Grace survived a chance of death that was small but probable enough so that her surgeon and my household could not ignore it.

One drowsy dog late last night

Here is a photo of grace at 10 last night, 12 hours or so after having a "mass" removed from the right side her of head. Before the removal of fur from the side of her head and the insertion of stitches, the vet at The Countryside Animal Hospital administered general  anesthesia. Since Grace is considered an old dog at 11, she stood the average elderly dog's chance of dying of the anesthetic.

But she's also a strong healthy mutt -- her recent senior-screen blood test came back normal,  and she behaves as though she doesn't know that she's old.

Grace had to have the mass removed because if left there it would repeatedly be lacerated and she would be infected. 

The vet tech I consulted with was very somber. After I turned the dog over to her I picked up four cans of Grace's prescription food. The woman at the desk said she would charge me for the food when we retrieved the dog. Although she did not say it, the meaning was, Why pay for something in the morning when you may have no use for it that evening?
 
I drove home more confused and scared than I have been in a long time. I wondered how I would cope with the pain of her loss. I wondered how we inform our six-year-old friend Ava of Grace's death. I imagined that Ava's mother and I may have agreed to have her mother tell her, or perhaps I would have to make a special pre-arranged to tell her. What would her questions be? How would I  answer them?

I fashioned the scarf that Grace, which she got a week ago after a bath at Kim's Dog & Cat
Grooming, into a bracelet, and wore it work. Before I went to work I had already been informed that she had survived, but I needed to express the fact I don't live only to answer stupid questions from customers and smile in the face of their ignorance of or thoughtless disregard for basic etiquette.

Earlier today the dog was sluggish, but she started to pick up steam in the afternoon. She is still enthusiast about eating, greeting the neighbors, cats and Pedro the chinchilla.

The stitches come out in 10 days to two weeks. The lumpy mass will be biopsied; the vet has said it's most likely benign.

Around here, we try not to step on anyone's toes

Taken in a certain retail establishment that would go unnamed  if it hadn't been named already.

Woody on guitar learning and playing

This appeared in the edition of ``The Folksinger's Guitar Guide'' that I bought in 1974. About 20 years later I was looking at a newer edition and I noticed the essay was missing. But a few months ago, ``Folksinger's'' author Jerry Silverman was kind enough to scan the essay in his copy and send it along.

I don't know where my copy went to.

A rarity: I found this in Tim's Books on Main Street

in Hyannis, Massachusetts last weekend. It was published in 1963 by Ludlow Music, Inc. Perhaps a few hundred songs, many that I've never heard of (I suspect that not all of them were recorded). There are a lot of illustrations by Woody. Woody is never listed as the author. Apparently it wasn't his project. Of course by 1963 he was pretty well incapacitated by Huntington's.

great journalism, VII

This is the earliest thing of mine that I recall being published, except a letter to the editor of the now-defunct Amherst Times, which I'm pretty sure I've lost. The Phoenix Press had published a short piece in which one Robert Croke defended nuclear power. Well, that didn't exactly hit my sweet spot, so I penned this treatise -- it was much longer than what Croke wrote -- to put him in his place and, by golly, set the record straight once and for all. I don't remember anyone from the Holyoke (Massachusetts) Community College student newspaper contacting me before publishing this. There were a good number of conservative students at the school back then, and I assume that the political demographic of the student body must have been reflected in the Phoenix Press's editorial board. At least one of the editors must have been less-than-utterly welcoming of the trashing of nuclear power and the nuclear-power industry; one of them would therefore call me on my facts with the goal of quashing the article. That radical can't get his facts straight, so there's no use running this. But nope, without even consulting me, they published the whole dang thing. Where did I get my facts? I don't remember, which is understandable, seeing as how it was 32 years go. However, back then I knew many members of the Clamshell Alliance, and I had read Barry Commoner's ``The Poverty of Power,'' so I can say that I have a vague memory of being well-versed in this stuff. Still I do question some of my assertions. I mean, is the area ``immediately surrounding'' the ``temporary waste storage facility'' in Hanford, Washington really uninhabitable for 250,000 years? How come I haven't heard anything about it since? Must be the liberal media.

Great journalism, VI

The good old days, sort of. Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts when there were still James McManus, Gas Lite I and Classe Cafe, and the state unemployment rate was below 5 percent. Of course we could have been talking about a ton of shit jobs. At any rate it was the 80s, so something had to have been going wrong. From the Amherst Bulletin, Aug. 19, 1987

Great journalism V, or I met somebody who knew Ed Meese

``In the end, I'm not sure if he did anything illegal. I'm not sure if I'm a pro-Meese man now. But working in the press office, you get a defensive attitude.''

Story about Anthony Forte, press intern at the Justice Department during the Golden Years. The Amherst Bulletin, Sept. 21, 1988 Of course you know that when I say Great Journalism, I'm displaying an ability to laugh at myself. It's not great journalism. Heck, half the time it wasn't even fun.

Great journalism, IV

``Their drumming was drowned out by loud rock 'n' roll music blasting from what Singingtree discovered to be a loudspeaker mounted in a tree in the Smead's yard, pointed at the teepee, Singingtree said.''

This from another clip having to do with the 1996 Sally Singingtree teepee flap in Amherst, Massachusetts. I wish I had stumbled across my story in which Fred Smead, the disgruntled neighbor, went on the record -- but only after moving to Hadley. Still looking for it -- in my spare time.