We Fight Low Information
Bob Letcher: Remember the ad, “This is not your Father’s Oldsmobile.”—the one with Captain Kirk beaming into his daughter’s Oldsmobile? Well, these days, there isn’t anyone’s Oldsmobile anymore; not yours, not your Father’s, not Captain Kirk’s… it’s all just gone: the nameplate, the jobs, the factories, the towns—and the lights have been turned out. And that’s just at Oldsmobile.
Robert Letcher: Heck! Just talking about progressive social change is difficult. If I try to “tell it like it is”, it’s too complicated for many people to comprehend, and for some people who think that anything worth knowing should require no effort from them to understand it.
Robert Letcher: Conflicting interests aren’t the only obstacle, either. Ambiguities run through and through the whole matter. I myself benefit from technological breakthroughs that have elevated me from only a bit better than existing into really living. I tell people that I know how Lou Gehrig felt.
Robert Letcher: For decades until the recent economic “troubles”, middle classes readily bought into the elite-serving argument: if we don’t question the morality of—and possible connections between—extreme poverty and extreme wealth, elites will act to assure that most of us will never be as poor as those poor Haitians (best delivered with a Glenn Beck quiver).
Bob Letcher: Taxpayers have a right to expect more for their money, and during these difficult times, they desperately need more for their money. They have a right to expect their support of institutions of higher learning to provide higher learning.
I might add a third possibility: doing what one is called to do. That is to say: going beyond the narcissism inherent in indulging one’s passions, to accepting one’s destiny.
To me, that makes education crucial to this country’s future. What will be required to avoid losing? If people detect either that they are no longer being challenged by their work, or if they find themselves reading beer bottle labels under tables, then I would suspect that the country is on its way to History’s Great Dustbin.
This past June, heads of energy companies and heads of Ohio’s State Government came together to announce something that was, for me, both dreadfully unexpected and dreadfully dreadful, too: that they would undrertake to build a new nuclear power plant in Piketon, Ohio
“The long memory is the most radical idea in America.” –Utah Phillips, as recalled by Amy Goodman I was reminded of Utah Phillips’ observation as I sat down to write this essay on how we approach public policy for dealing with unemployment during a time of mass unemployment. I intended to start off the essay [...]
“Is there anything in all of that to suggest a way forward”, a colleague asked me, “or are we just stuck here?” This essay draws on Mancur Olson’s “logic of collective action” to address this question by interpreting two anecdotes through Olson’s logic: both anecdotes involve short-sightedness, and in very different ways both involve the [...]
South LA Reintegration Calls for Increased Funding for Community-Based Prison Realignment Support Services
Dan Bluemel: Women’s rights advocates entered a Walgreens pharmacy this week in downtown Los Angeles to protest the Obama administration’s efforts to restrict access to the emergency contraceptive commonly known as the morning-after pill.
Robert Reich: Is the central goal of his second term to achieve a grand bargain on the budget deficit? Or progress on gun control? Or restore jobs? Or reform the immigration laws? It is difficult to tell.
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