Selective Rage

I saw this on my FaceBook feed a few days ago. I saw it as ill-informed, but not particularly aggressive. But I got to thinking about it and realize how it exemplifies the selectiveness of right-wing contempt and where it is directed. I think what did it for me was a comment from someone who declared: "This is one of those issues that puts a burr under my saddle." A common expression, but in this case quite revealing.

In the first place, it is curious that the poster's creator says Social Security is running out of money, as if that is a factual observation. It isn't, it is a Republican conceit, but I suppose the joke doesn't work unless you have been conditioned to ignore evidence.

I wonder if he, Mr. bur-in-my-saddle, is equally bothered by unending corporate subsidies? Or the bank bailouts, where there was clear evidence of criminality. Or the phenomenal waste at the Defense Department which, wouldn't you know it, gets little press.

Sadly, there are quite a few who get worked up if a single mother on food stamps buys anything other than gruel. but excuse or even cheer on the likes of Cliven Bundy, who is both a thief and a scofflaw. Actually, it is not sad; it is disgusting. That law and order stuff is for the poor and vulnerable. As Scythian philosopher Anacharsis famously observed: "Laws are like cobwebs; strong enough to ensnare the weak, but not the strong."

When pressed, some on the Right will admit Bundy is wrong, or they will insist they don't like to see waste anywhere. But that is usually not their visceral, instinctive reaction. And they usually have to be called out on their inconsistency. It is not something that comes to mind easily. If you don't think your rage is selective, name one US Army General you demanded to be held accountable for the $8.5 trillion dollars the Defense Department cannot account for.

When we do look at welfare so many fail to see the broader picture; welfare payments go disproportionately to working class neighborhoods. The money helps to buy essentials --and little else-- for children and the elderly. It is almost never a matter of cash out of your pocket and into the pocket of a some deadbeat, though you have been encouraged to believe this. The Republican Party has, in recent decades, made an art form out of putting carefully selected burrs under your saddle. Much involves stoking white working class resentment. This has both divided voters that once were Democratic constituencies, and has deflected criticism away from the overclass.

And that, of course, was always the intent. Republican politicians and operatives know their voter base. They realize those on the Right are tribal, fearful, and insular. They also know conservatives are bothered by someone else getting benefits, not just anyone, but those perceived as undeserving, as they define it. Those who express anger, irritation, or contempt for welfare recipients and for the poor in general are revealing their own authoritarian personality.

It is that authoritarian personality, coupled with an often breath-taking level of misinformation, that compels so many on the right, tea baggers and plutocrats alike (I'm looking at you, Donald Trump), to so frequently mischaracterize that which they despise, but refuse to understand. The result is an intellectual whipsaw of contempt for food stamp recipients but not massive Pentagon waste; for social security, but not Wall Street's pension plunder. They rally behind Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's effort to undermine teachers, but shrug when defense contractors routinely gouge the government and then pay themselves obscene salaries.

That's a lot of burrs that somehow go unnoticed.

Dude, Where's My Pension?

One of the most egregiously inaccurate memes in America today is that there is a large class of takers/losers/slackers/Democrats who rake in money, benefits, and services they did not earn so they can continue an indolent lifestyle. They take it, as the story goes, from hard-working Americans, the ones who have jobs, pay their taxes, are pro-family, and vote Republican. I can hear it now: "This country would be fine if it weren't for certain of us getting what they don't deserve."

But as has been so common as of late, redstate angst has been fueled and then redirected by those who jerk their nose ring. One wonders how unequal wealth has to get in this country before all of us, not just some of us, realize how jaw-droppingly wrong the "creators vs takers" mythology really is.

Wall Street continues to play the central role in the trickle-up of assets from the middle class to the one percent. One way not well publicized, no surprise, is how these financiers raid public pension funds.

First a prelude. You have undoubtedly heard how burdensome state and local pension funds have become and how the gap between funded and unfunded obligations continues to grow. It is this growing gap that has conservatives howling about how public employees, goaded on by their reckless unions, are destroying state finances. Underneath it all is the conviction that the teachers and other workers have padded themselves enormous nest eggs they not only don't deserve, but have to be paid by the rest of us. Teachers living high on the hog? Who knew?
  
That brings us to Matt Taibbi, a journalist among the best at getting at the facts and telling a great story, especially the kind oligarchs would prefer you didn't hear. In a recent Rolling Stone article, Taibbi relates how pension funds are being looted by Wall Street. There is a lot in it, including some background on Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo and her Wall Street-financed role in gutting her state's public pensions and how Rhode Island became a model now being inflicted on the rest of us.

I urge you to read it all, but I'll highlight several points here. Whiz-kid Raimondo helped push through state legislation a cynic would call "pension reform", but financiers call gravy. The new legislation has enabled Raimondo to turn over millions of dollars of pension assets to hedge funds, who have the unmatched ability to generate huge fees, regardless of performance. Worse, the hedgies are run by ideologues who sit on the board of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes privatizing public pensions. Nice way to get paid.

One implication, as Taibbi notes, is that Rhode Island's public workers are losing control of their assets, where they are invested, and how hefty the fees might be.

The state's workers, in other words, were being forced to subsidize their own political disenfranchisement, coughing up at least $200 million to members of a group that had supported anti-labor laws. Later, when Edward Siedle, a former SEC lawyer, asked Raimondo in a column for Forbes.com how much the state was paying in fees to these hedge funds, she first claimed she didn't know. Raimondo later told the Providence Journal she was contractually obliged to defer to hedge funds on the release of "proprietary" information, which immediately prompted a letter in protest from a series of freaked-out interest groups. Under pressure, the state later released some fee information, but the information was originally kept hidden, even from the workers themselves. "When I asked, I was basically hammered," says Marcia Reback, a former sixth-grade schoolteacher and retired Providence Teachers Union president who serves as the lone union rep on Rhode Island's nine-member State Investment Commission. "I couldn't get any information about the actual costs."

 Taibbi goes on to say:

Today, the same Wall Street crowd that caused the crash is not merely rolling in money again but aggressively counterattacking on the public-relations front. The battle increasingly centers around public funds like state and municipal pensions. This war isn't just about money. Crucially, in ways invisible to most Americans, it's also about blame. In state after state, politicians are following the Rhode Island playbook, using scare tactics and lavishly funded PR campaigns to cast teachers, firefighters and cops - not bankers - as the budget-devouring bogeymen responsible for the mounting fiscal problems of America's states and cities.

Taibbi tells us that the looting began as early as 1974, with the passage of ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Not a bad law, as it was intended to protect retirement accounts in sundry ways. Unfortunately, congress saw to that a huge loophole exempted public pensions. And that is when the fun began. The loophole in ERISA is what has allowed politicians of all stripes to raid --they would say "borrow"-- public pensions to redirect funds to more immediate needs, some worthy, some less so. But this is the reason there are unfunded pension liabilities; it's easier to borrow than it is to pay back.

It is not unlike social security, which has grown an enormous surplus-- the opposite of what conservatives tell you--only to see it "borrowed." Paying back the unfunded pension plans, just as putting the money back into the Social Security Trust Fund, is indeed painful, but it is not because the funding requirements have been onerous. Wall Street and mostly Republican politicians want you to think they are, so you will acquiesce to the ongoing destruction of middle class pensions.  

This shit gets so depressing. What galls me is not just that Wall Street and the politicians it has bought continue to reshape the country to suit moneyed interests, it's that so many of us don't see it, or believe crap that tries to pin it all on unions, spending, deficits, or those "job-killing" regulations. People at the top, where the money and power are, have convinced people in the middle, where the votes are, that undeserving people at the bottom, where the misery is, are the problem.

Impressive

You've got to hand it to Republican Party operatives. After more than 30 years of constant effort, conservatives within the party, media, the judiciary, and in the corporate world, have managed to turn upside down much of what the public thought it knew about government, unions, taxes, and even teachers.

I make a distinction between Republicans and conservatives that some may see as unnecessary; are not Republicans and conservatives synonymous? Pretty much, at least in 2012, but it would be difficult to overstate just how far to the right the Republican Party has lurched; a process that began, to the dismay of millions of moderate and liberal Republicans, with the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964. The cleansing process picked up rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, with numerous watershed moments, such as the arrival of Newt Gingrich and the politics of destruction. As testimony to Republicans' new approach to governing, many will recall that the Party was able to keep Whitewater in public view, with the help of a stupidly compliant press, for literally years on end, only to have the process finally wind down having demonstrated no presidential malfeasance.

From the judicial standpoint, it was a waste of time and taxpayers' money. But upholding the law had nothing to do with it. The objective was to vilify a Democratic President, obstruct his agenda and ability to govern, and convince the public that conservatives stood on principles. The never-ending rush to spin the story helped feed the narrative that liberals are not to be trusted. Even today people will refer to Whitewater as a scandal, forgetting that there was no wrongdoing, despite years of investigation. It was only a scandal because the Republican hierarchy kept claiming it was. And many will be surprised when reminded that the 12 years of Reagan and Bush saw a dramatically greater number of actual convictions, not accusations, than in the eight years of Clinton. If the reality goes against what you had heard and "just assumed," it is because Republicans worked hard to make it so, for they have shown a superior ability to get their ideas into the media and into people's heads. They dominate most narratives because they understand how to make their messages simple and emotional. What sounds implausible or even ridiculous at first becomes accepted as truth if repeated enough. All propagandists understand this. This why Republicans have said for decades they, against all evidence, are the party of personal responsibility, fiscal prudence, and limited government. Voters who don't study the facts have come to accept this narrative.

And now we see Republican spin taken to new heights, creating a parallel world of logic and reason. They have managed what should have been impossible in a sane world of evidence, facts, and reason; divert enough of the electorate's, and the media's, attention away from the Wall Street banks and turn the middle class against itself. Significant numbers of Americans now think that public workers earn too much, are lazy and irresponsible, and are a drain on our fragile economy.Too many show an infantile understanding of economics by buying into Republican rhetoric that teachers' salaries are too high, so we must rein in those destructive teachers' unions. "Never mind that stuff you hear about Wall Street. Those guys deserve every penny they got, and besides, look at all the jobs they create."

The truly reprehensible thing about Mitt Romney is that he personally promotes these ideas and never once has acknowledged that the Bush tax cuts, which he wants to deepen, have been a prime contributor to the federal deficit. Everything the man says indicates he will be for the one percent and will penalize the working class, and yet he is running as a viable candidate.

And as we just saw in Wisconsin, there are plenty of voters who are fine with Scott Walker's effort to strip away the hard-fought gains by teachers and other public workers. Many now instinctively believe that there is such a thing in America as "big labor," and that cutting back salaries and benefits of teachers, librarians, firefighters, cops, and others, will somehow drive the economy forward, that and more tax cuts for the wealthy. Republicans have apparently convinced more than a few that teachers are now fat cats. The Wall Street bankers that drove the economy into recession have almost entirely avoided legal scrutiny. Forgotten is their unforgivable act of paying mammoth executive compensation with the very tax dollars meant to stabilize the catastrophic mess they created. No accountability, no significant judicial proceedings, and the few penalties levied have been easily paid and treated as nothing more than the cost of doing business.

The banks got away with it while attention has been diverted to where Republicans want it. They, including Mitt Romney himself, have convinced many that pushing back against the oligarchy is class warfare, but endless bitching about teachers and other members of the middle class, with an eye to stripping their rights and reducing their pay, is productive policy. And they have roughly half of that middle class believing it.

That is quite an accomplishment.

Tax Loafers? Maybe Not

Conservative media continues to repeat the infantile and laughably incomplete argument that roughly half of Americans don't pay taxes, the implication of which is that rich guys are bearing the burden and that millions of Americans are loafing off the hard work of others.

There is a lot to this Republican morality play, except maybe for facts. I will set aside the political psychology of conservative morality for the moment, except to say that it drives all conservative attitudes; not facts, not empiricism, not logic.

The federal income tax burden may be low for many of us, but payroll taxes disproportionately hit the working poor and the middle class. The tax-free argument really falls apart when we include all taxes. Republicans either don't notice, or hope you don't notice, these numerous other taxes; they are much more regressive, and they hit lower income people much harder. These include sales taxes, especially those on food and other basic needs, and indirect or semi-hidden taxes, such as those on phone bills, or those with a tax already built into the price, such as gasoline.

Here is David Leonhart of the New York Times, explaining why the conservative spin is so misleading:

The reason is that poor families generally pay more in payroll taxes than they receive through benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s not just poor families for whom the payroll tax is a big deal, either. About three-quarters of all American households pay more in payroll taxes, which go toward Medicare and Social Security, than in income taxes.

Focusing on the statistical middle class — the middle 20 percent of households, as ranked by income — underlines this point. Households in this group made $35,400 to $52,100 in 2006, the last year for which the Congressional Budget Office has released data. That would describe a household with one full-time worker earning about $17 to $25 an hour. Such hourly pay is typical for firefighters, preschool teachers, computer support specialists, farmers, members of the clergy, mail carriers, secretaries and truck drivers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Taking into account both taxes and tax credits, the average household in this group paid a total income tax rate of just 3 percent. A good number of people, in fact, paid no net income taxes. They are among the alleged free riders.

But the picture starts to change when you look not just at income taxes but at all taxes. This average household would have paid 0.8 percent of its income in corporate taxes (through the stocks it owned), 0.9 percent in gas and other federal excise taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. Add these up, and the family’s total federal tax rate was 14.2 percent.

If anything, the government numbers I’m using here exaggerate how much of the tax burden falls on the wealthy. These numbers fail to account for the income that is hidden from tax collectors — a practice, research shows, that is more common among affluent families. “Because higher-income people are understating their income,” Joel Slemrod, a tax scholar at the University of Michigan, says, “We’ve been overstating their average tax rates.”

State and local taxes, meanwhile, may actually be regressive. That is, middle-class and poor families may face higher tax rates than the wealthy. As Kim Rueben of the Tax Policy Center notes, state and local income taxes and property taxes are less progressive than federal taxes, while sales taxes end up being regressive. The typical family pays a lot of state and local taxes, too — almost half as much as in federal taxes.

There is no question that the wealthy pay a higher overall tax rate than any other group. That is an American tradition. But there is also no question that their tax rates have fallen more than any other group’s over the last three decades. The only reason they are paying more taxes than in the past is that their pretax incomes have risen so rapidly — which hardly seems a great rationale for a further tax cut.

I have slightly edited the original due to length. Go here to read the whole article.

Always More for Defense

The post below is originally from a blog called Southern Belle, who is rightfully disgusted that the US continues to spend vast amounts of money on defense. As always, Congress finds piles of it to spend on lucrative defense contracts, meaning your tax dollars going to upper management of corporate America and the investor class. They just can't break themselves from this gravy train. And Congress just can't muster the will to do the right thing. All this crap about shared sacrifice is a supremely obscene insult to anyone who cares to pay attention.

And remember, it is immoral socialism only when the jobless get unemployement benefits or the destitute get foodstamps. When corporate America gets $ billions for weapons we do not need, well, that is moral capitalism. So naturally they get tax breaks on top of it, too. It's only fair, you see.

"We don't need these weapon systems," you say?  Son, you are missing the point. The military brass is addicted to shit that blows things up and we enrich ourselves off that addiction because we can, just like those financial types on Wall Street. You could do it too if you just stopped caring about people that don't matter.

* * *

I am reproducing Southern Belle's article in its entirety. Go on over and read what else she has to say.

                       Because There’s Always Money For War!

WTF? We’re slashing budgets right and left, cutting back on “entitlements” and Medicaid and Pell Grants and having hissy fits over the paltry sums of money NPR receives, but we have a spare $7.5 billion to build nuclear bombs in Oak Ridge?

It’s a YES on the new bomb plant for Oak Ridge. Last Wednesday, the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration published its Record of Decision in the Federal Register. And the decision was no surprise: they selected the alternative they previously identified as their “preferred alternative;” a Uranium Processing Facility with the capacity to produce 80 nuclear secondaries per year.
The Record of Decision came on the heels of an audit performed by the Army Corps of Engineers that projected the cost of construction will soar to $7.5 billion. Of course, no one imagines costs will be constrained to that total over the next twelve years of construction. With half a billion dollars already spent on designing the facility and designers saying they are only 50% complete, it is clear that neither common sense nor fiscal responsibility will stand in the way of the bomb plant.

What the hell? Who are we building these bombs for? We already have more nuclear weapons than any other country on earth. What are we going to do, use them on some guys armed with box cutters? If 9/11 proved anything at all it’s what a colossal waste of money our Defense budget is. Anyone else remember how the big conversation pre-9/11 was the resurgence of the ridiculous “star wars” program?

It’s not just $7.5 billion for Oak Ridge, either. We’re set to spend $100 billion on a fleet of new ballistic missile launching submarines and $55 bilion on new bombers.

Why do we need these weapons? Who are we fighting? Who is the enemy? A bunch of men in pajamas in the hills of Waziristan riding around on donkeys? Are you kidding me?

I’m not the only one wondering:

At this stage in history, U.S. nuclear weapons serve no useful purpose other than preventing another nation from using nuclear weapons against the United States. And a study by two professors of military strategy at U.S. military colleges has suggested that that mission could be accomplished with roughly 300 warheads, compared with the 1,550 deployed warheads permitted under the New START treaty, and the roughly 5,000 currently in the U.S. stockpile if one counts all categories of non-deployed weapons. Going down to these levels would save additional billions in reduced operating and maintenance costs for the arsenal as a whole.
Not only have a growing list of former secretaries of state and defense, presidents and prime ministers, scientists and retired military officials called for the elimination of nuclear weapons, but if pushed by budgetary realities so would many current U.S. military leaders. While they won’t say so publicly, if forced to choose between nukes and major conventional systems it is my bet that nukes would lose out in that particular budget battle.

That wasn’t some pot-smoking DFH, that was William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy.

It is the height of hypocrisy that Republicans and Conservadems like Joe Lieberman refuse to touch our Defense budget, yet keep crying about how the nation is broke. Oh my, we’re broke, we can’t pay our bills, oh dearest me, we’re just going to have to make grandpa go without his blood pressure medicine and grandma will have to eat cat food, what else can we do? Meanwhile we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars on nonsense like this. We’re supposed to think of the jobs making those fighter jet engines, but somehow teachers and social workers don’t have real jobs?

This is insanity.

Ass Backwards Anger

Yesterday I came across this little item posted on my Facebook page by a teabagger who has often posted or commented approvingly of teabagger nostrums. We'll call her Sal.

Sal had the following data posted on her FB page:

Salary of the US President ..................$400,000
Salary of retired US Presidents .............$180,000
Salary of House/Senate .......................$174,00​0
Salary of Speaker of the House ............$223,500
Salary of Majority/Minority Leaders ...... $193,400
Average Salary of Soldier DEPLOYED IN IRAQ $38,000
I think we found where the cuts should be made ! If you agree.. RE-POST

This is the sort of pointless, feel-good pablum that ignorant teabaggers cannot resist. It's identity and tribalism substituting for knowledge and analysis.

So let's see; in our multi-trillion dollar economy, the salaries of Congress and the President are budget-busters and must be cut; you know, to save the country. Most members of Congress could make more in the private sector; most will when they leave government. Let's be clear about this: Congressional pay is relatively low compared to what most members of Congress could be doing; law and lobbying are two lucrative choices. Some prefer to line their pockets at Fox News.

Most members of Congress are relatively wealthy. They did not go into politics for the salary; the graft, kickbacks, and influence-peddling, perhaps, but not the salary. And while most are wealthy, some are not. Suppose we did slash pay for elected officials. That would make Congress more of a rich man's club than it already is. Only those independently wealthy could afford to serve in Washington. I think we already have a serious problem of bright and able, but not rich, individuals spurning government service because of low pay.

I realize that may not make any sense to people who think we can fix education by cutting teachers' salaries and benefits.

Sal is correct in her concern over the plight of our troops serving in harm's way. She seems unconcerned about the massive amounts of money being spent on the twin rat holes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Corporate America loves a bloated defense industry and it loves war. Every bomb, every sortie, every meal, every piece of equipment and spare part represents profits for defense contractors.

Now I know full well we have legitimate national defense interests, so you teabaggers can stop soiling your pants. My disgust is with simpletons who lose all sense of perspective. I mean, how many times do we have to hear about how defense contractors have overrun cost projections and trot back to the Pentagon for more. "We figured $4 billion for this project, but we will need a few billion more." And they get it. Talking about gaming the system.

Where is the outrage when the Army is charged $800 for a wrench, or $2000 for a toilet seat? Where is the outrage when the Pentagon admits it cannot account for billions of dollars in cash, lost in Iraq? Or the fact that Donald Rumsfeld himself publicly stated that the Pentagon's accounting was so flawed that a total of $2.3 trillion could not be located?

Do you remember when he said this? Sept 10, 2001. Talk about being pushed off the front page by subsequent events! And that does not account for the disappearing billions in Iraq after 9/11. Here is the video explaining where teabaggers should be venting their pathological and misplaced rage:



So um... yeah, government wastes money. But getting worked up over salaries of our elected officials and ignoring the real costs inflicted on us by corporate America, special interests, and our increasingly powerful overclass requires willful ignorance from those who have their brain stuck up their ideological ass. Pull it out, clean it off and give it a chance to learn about the pitfalls of misinformed ideological sophistry.

The videos below is a parody starring the infamous Nathan Spewman, but makes the same points in a slightly different way (I see Ugly Betty is grown up and very un-ugly).

Part One



Part Two:

Voter Suppression Heading Your Way

On Sunday, July 24 I wrote about voter suppression, specifically as it relates to denial of voting rights for ex-felons. I also said that I would revisit the numerous state bills currently under consideration that are intended to make it harder to vote. 

Unfortunately they are not hard to find. One excellent summary comes from Sarah Jaffe who captures the intent of these state bills in her article, 11 States Trying Really Hard to Keep Poor, Black, and Student Voters From Voting. Her list is as follows: Kansas, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, Maine, and Rhode Island. 

First, Jaffe cautions, this list is far from complete; it is only the 11 worst offenders in an even longer list. Second, these states are fairly or deeply red. No surprise, except for Rhode Island. Jaffe provides some background on how that came about.

Wisconsin, home of the great progressive, Bob La Follette, continues to disappoint. Despite a long blue tradition, Republicans in the state legislature keep pushing an anti-middle class agenda. 

Now, despite the strong and encouraging push-back from unions, teachers, and working families, and despite his own dismal approval ratings, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is aggressively pursuing the only tactic that can work; make it harder for your enemies to vote you out of office. Read Meredith Clark's analysis on this at Seven Ways Scott Walker and the GOP are Still Trying to Screw Wisconsin's Poor, Working Class, and Just About Everyone Else. 

Wisconsin has just passed a voter ID law. Most of us in the middle class might not object to laws requiring a photo ID in order to vote. We do not appreciate how and why such laws can be relatively onerous and expensive for society's poor, elderly, handicapped or otherwise marginalized. Americans have a hard time turning out to vote under the best of circumstances, which is why Wisconsin's restrictive voting law matters, and why Republicans push for such legislation in the first place; they know exactly what the impact will be. 

So now, just to show us what a mean-spirited prick he really is, Governor Walker is working on a plan to shut down multiple DMV offices around the state. Not only does this come right after requiring voters to get official state ID's if they want to vote, it appears the closures are concentrated in Democratic strongholds.

What kind of Kafkaesque crap is that?     
I hope they recall his sorry ass.

Let the Teacher Pushback Begin!

This is great.  MSNBC has an article on a teacher in Philly who dares to say what so many teachers feel: "A high school English teacher in suburban Philadelphia who was suspended for a profanity-laced blog in which she called her young charges "disengaged, lazy whiners" is driving a sensation by daring to ask: Why are today's students unmotivated — and what's wrong with calling them out?"

Nothing's wrong with calling them out, and their parents as well. One or more students, none of whom was ever identified by the teacher, had their feelings hurt, so naturally the teacher, Ms. Munroe, was suspended. That is what school administrators do best; cave in to loud and threatening students and their parents. 

That won't change the facts; Munroe's sentiments are shared by thousands of teachers. Their message is my message; far too many students are indeed lazy, unmotivated, rude, and indifferent to education and personal effort. And do they ever have a sense of entitlement.

A lot has changed in a generation. Veteran teachers are struck by the changes in student attitudes; many will not read, will not carry large books (too heavy, uncool, and won't read it anyway), expect a passing grade just for showing up, and spend absolutely minimal time on homework. Teacher authority has been undermined by social attitudes, demanding parents, and a constant stream of more interesting alternatives, such as social media. Video games are more fun than algebra.

Along the way, many parents have adopted an attitude of their own: if my kid is not learning, it must be the teacher's fault. And while many parents remain supportive, Republicans seen an opportunity to chip away at yet another public institution. Their constant hectoring reveals an almost pathological contempt against teachers and especially their unions.

My advice to right-wing loudmouths, pseudo-experts, and other assorted assholes: If you have not taught in a US public school in recent years, you have no idea what teachers have to go through and the blame-teachers-for-everything attitude that eats away at their morale.

Is it any wonder that teacher turnover is so high?