Laurie Essig

Time to reform higher ed

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A major victory was scored for economic justice and just plain old common sense this week when Congress finally put an end to the biggest rip off of college students ever seen: the Student Loan Industry.  As we all know by now,  Sallie Mae and Fannie Mae were not helping students as much as burdening them with high-interest student loans, paying financial aid offices to misdirect students to these "products" rather than lower-interest federally funded programs, and then shoving money into Republican lawmakers pockets so that no reform would pass. Thankfully, Democrats and principled Republicans who actually believe in the market, not the market pumped full of taxpayer dollars, got together and passed reform with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.  According to an article by Alexander Zaitchik,

This means an end to nearly four decades of corporate welfare for the government-created -- but now fully privatized -- icon of the industry, Sallie Mae. The savings to be had from terminating this subsidy -- estimated at between $60 and $70 billion over the next decade -- will go toward shoring up the Pell Grant program (which helps low-income Americans attend college), health care programs and deficit reduction. Where the Department of Ed has long paid private loan companies like Sallie Mae and Citigroup to issue and manage government-backed student loans, the department will now make all federal loans directly, without the help of a middleman, through its own Direct Loan program.

This is a major victory for the Dems and the Obama administration and they should be talking about it as much as possible.  If heath care reform left most of us with a sense of the blahs, the reform of the for-profit higher education industry should have us dancing in the streets. At the core of any democracy must be an educated and critical citizenry, something that higher education can create.  More importantly, at the core of any democracy must be the possibility of "making it," of actually moving up through economic and social hierarchies as the result of hard work and stamina.  For decades higher education provided a way for Americans to do that.  But for the past 25 years, with students from the middle and working classes graduating with tens of thousands (often hundreds of thousands) of dollars in debt, higher education has become a form of indentured servitude- indentured to debt service with no chance of getting ahead.  Worse, half of all student loan borrowers don't graduate- so now they have debt and no diploma. This will now end, partly.  The government, at least, has set the stage for real educational reform.  Now universities must do the rest and if they don't, the federal government must look into regulating university salary scales in the same way it must look into Wall Street pay packages that are subsidized with our tax dollars. The ugly truth of higher ed under the Neoliberal economy is that it has become "for profit" with an elite tier of over paid "executives" (presidents, vice presidents, provosts and deans), a few "superstar" faculty who are sought after with salary packages that are far too high for the good they produce, a dwindling core of middle management (tenure-track professors) and a growing number of day laborers (adjunct professors with no job security and usually no benefits who work for a fraction of the pay that tenure track faculty work for). The people who benefited from the Neoliberal university were few and at the very top.  The rest of us, including students, suffered the most as the point of higher education became not "education" but the "experience."  Universities invested in things like "climbing walls" and perfectly manicured lawns, penthouse apartments in major cities for their presidents and upper management, and far too many "support staff" who do things like hold students hands when they're stressed about exams. It's time for higher ed to get back to basics.  Education requires students and professors and reasonably equipped classrooms, dorm rooms, dining halls, basic support staff and medical services.  We do not need upper management making half a million dollars a year or a quarter of a million dollars a year or whatever ridiculous salaries they make.  We do not need superstar academics who make similar amounts.  Students want a good education from professors who care about them, not people who are in the news.  Professors want a livable wage and job security and benefits. It's time for some real soul searching in academe.  If those among us making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year aren't ready to self-regulate themselves, then it's time for faculty and students and even Congress to band together and  throw the bums out.

Even if big boobs are going out of style, I believe that the beauty industrial complex will still convince us we need cosmetic procedures- like anti-aging "breast lifts." Or maybe they'll just try to convince us to look like avatars?

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article7080421.e

What the US can learn from Russia

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I used to be a "Sovietologist."  One of those students of the former Soviet Union who tried to figure out what was going on there and then, sometimes, apply those lessons to here.  Unlike my more conservative colleagues, I was interested in what the US could learn about spending too much of its wealth on the military industrial complex rather than infrastructure.  I was also interested in the neo-political parties that began to form in the 1980s that seemed to signal an end to the Soviet Empire. But, after years of living in Moscow, I returned to the US and began to concentrate on this American life.  If I were going to continue to apply those lessons, they would be more or less the same: the US cannot continue to spend about half of its tax revenues on the military-industrial complex without facing both financial ruin and the end of its Empire.  And when proto-politial parties like the Tea Party appear, the existing and seemingly fixed 2-party system is about to collapse in the same way that the Communist Party lost hold on power. There are even more important lessons to be learned from yesterday's attacks in the Moscow metro, important lessons about the limits of force.  According to press reports, the attacks were carried out by two young women who are part of anti-Russian movements in the Caucasus.  The response of the Russian government in the past has been to increase the use of force and military might to "clamp down" on Muslim extremism.  Although the current Medvedev regime has spoken of addressing the systemic causes of terrorism (like unrelenting poverty), the man-behind-the curtain, Vladimir Putin, wants to rule with an iron fist.

On Monday... some senior members of Mr. Putin’s political party, United Russia, were already suggesting that the government needed to adopt a stern new plan to combat terrorism...Mr. Putin said the organizers of the bombings were hiding but would be captured. He said they needed to be “dragged out of the sewers into the broad daylight. And it will be done.”

Putin's talk represents the problem, not the solution. Russia's wars in the Caucasus have created a generation of young people who live with the effects of violence in their land.  Dead relatives, unrelenting poverty, and a highly-polluted environment that makes the next generation sick and often deformed does not lead to lasting peace.  It leads to lasting war, even if that war can sometimes be contained in the Caucasus. Sound familiar?  Think Afghanistan.  Think Iraq.  War creates enemies- dehumanized others to be "dragged from the sewers."  A few years back I spent some time with a young Chechen man who had escaped Russia's war there.  The young man  was a surgical assistant who operated on both Chechen and Russian soldiers, as needed.  The Russians captured him and tortured him.  Buried him in the ground and burned him with cigarettes.  Surprisingly, this man held no ill will toward the Russian people.  In fact, while he was studying English with a young Russian woman, he was shocked to learn that she thought of Chechens as "animals" and "subhuman."  He was also shocked by the glee with which young Americans went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He couldn't understand how anyone could embrace war as a solution. This young man was right.  War creates hate.  You can subdue your enemy, but they're still your enemy.  The Obama administration might or might not be successful in subduing their enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they will never be successful in creating lasting peace with war. This is illustrated by the words of Chechen rebel leader, Doku Umarov:

If Russians think that the war is happening only on television, somewhere far off in the Caucasus, and it will not touch them, then we are going to show them that this war will return to their homes."

Sound familiar?  It should.  It's the same thing anti-American Muslim groups have been promising to do on American soil for decades.  What the US needs is a policy of peace, not war.  Unless it wants to continue to face the same sort of terror that hit the Moscow metro system yesterday.  War does not equal peace.  That's the only lesson that can be learned from Russia.

' I ' m awesome ' is the anthem for our time

Have you seen [youtubevid id="fzqkOn9YMQ8"]yet?  "I'm awesome" is an anthem for our times.

I"m awesome.  (No you're not, dude, don't lie) I'm awesome. I'm driving around in my mother's ride. I'm awesome. A quarter of my life gone by and I met my friends online... Can't tweet upon my twitter  Cuz I haven't done shit Bank account red, body ungroomed  Only thing good about me is I'm off stage soon... On my game I'm only about as sexy as John McCain.

This brilliant parody of Americans today- doing badly by most indicators but still insisting that we're awesome- represents a real shift from the "We're number one" fanaticism of the Bush years.  No longer under the delusion that "America's the best country in the world" we now know that we have the worst health care of any industrialized country, the most unequal distribution of wealth by far of any industrialized country, and that even amassing the largest military in human history does not ensure us anything like "victory" in the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Because we're so awesome (NOT), we have come to accept the most pathetic baby steps as major victories.  Two stories in the news this week nicely illustrate our willingness to accept "lame" as "awesome"- health care legislation and the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy reform. The Progressives in this country, myself included, felt as if some sort of "victory" had occurred last weekend when the "historic" healthcare legislation passed.  When I walked by the news headlines announcing the passage of the healthcare bill, I actually pumped my fist in the air and said "Yes!"  An acquaintance at a business lunch on Monday insisted that we all treat this legislation as momentous, as if some major shift in this country had occurred whereby we Americans believe healthcare is a human right for all of us.  On Facebook, an invitation arrived to join a group that supports the health care legislation. On the left wing news sites, a lot of congratulatory pieces assure us that we have gained huge healthcare reforms. A similar "I'm so awesome" is occurring over the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military, which while still in place is slightly modified

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the biggest change since 1993 in the military's policy toward gays. He introduced new, more stringent regulations, which will slow - or could even virtually stop - the explusion of gay service members. I believe these changes represent an important improvement in the way the current law is put into practice," Gates said, "above all by providing a greater measure of common sense and common decency, to a process for handling what are difficult and complex issues for all involved."

MFer, we're so awesome.  We can't pass real health care reform.  We're awesome, we can't even let queers serve.  We're awesome, because those two wars are still going on, people are dying everyday, our educational system is a mess, but there's no money to fix it, and the rich got even richer in 2009 while the rest of us struggled to keep our homes and jobs and dwindling resources in tact. But seriously, what happened to Progressives in this country between 2008 and 2010?  Remember when we wanted to END the wars (not just let gays kinda sorta serve in them)?  Remember when we wanted to dismantle the military industrial complex and spend that huge chunk of our tax revenues on schools and infrastructure?  Remember when we wanted to take health care out of the for-profit realm and make it universal? I know, I know.  Baby steps.  But the role of the Left in any country is to push the agenda forward (it's the progress in Progressives)- forward to a more just, more equitable, more cohesive society and economy.  When the Left allows itself to be "awesome" because they make all their friends online and drive around in their mother's ride, they actually allow the agenda to be highjacked by the Centrists and the Far Right. We're not awesome and we better stop pretending as if we are and demand more or lose everything.

My book in thirty seconds

You have to watch this video.  It's what I was trying to get at in my book, but this is satire AND a political call to action for banking reform.  Brilliant.

The Pink Army strikes back at homophobic general

Last week the former Supreme Allied Commander John Sheehan suggested that gays should not be allowed in the military because they just aren't man enough to fend off "manly" foes.  His evidence?  The Srebrenica massacre where 7,000 Muslim boys and men were killed by Serb soldiers while an outnumbered and underarmed Dutch force was unable to stop it.  The Dutch force, Sheehan suggested, was too gay to be effective. Now the Dutch parliament has sided with a group of angry activists known as The Pink Army.  The Dutch have voted to

support Pink Army's initiative to secure a retraction and apology from Gen Sheehan. Pink Army hopes to raise the $200,000 (£134,000) it needs to bring a class action lawsuit in California against him.The group wants to force him to publicly retract the statements and possibly attend a sensitivity course.

I've got a better idea than a retraction and a sensitivity course.  How about Sheehan goes one on one with the toughest, butchest gay soldier in the US forces and we put it on reality TV?  A sort of extreme combat meets sick militaristic homoerotic yet still homophobic fantasy show?  Then the loser, which will definitely be that candy-assed Sheehan, has to lick the winner's combat boots.

The dead language of ' pro-life '

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Remember when your parents told you that the proper response to bullying was to chant "Sticks and stones can hurt my bones, but names can never hurt me"?  I think we all know by now that our parents were lying.  Or maybe they were just under the rather ridiculous assumption that there is only the material world and what happens in the world of the symbolic- the realm of language-is unimportant? While some of our parents might have been deluded enough to believe there is no such thing as "symbolic violence," journalists might be expected to know better.  After all, at the base of all language is the act of naming and naming has always been a divine source of power: from Creation when God got to name the world and all its creatures to today when political regimes get to name wars "peace keeping missions" and tax money for banker fat cats "economic recovery." That's why it's so surprising that for decades the media has acquiesced to the lie that abortion opponents are "pro-life."  Abortion opponents are actually anti-choice. Pro-life people oppose war and the death penalty and support universal access to healthcare as well as strong policies for a sustainable economy and environment. Pro-life people might oppose abortion rights, I suppose, but they might also support a woman's right to determine her own life and that of her children, born and never to be born. Today NPR announced that it would finally be

revising the terms we use to describe people and groups involved in the abortion debate.This updated policy is aimed at ensuring the words we speak and write are as clear, consistent and neutral as possible. This is important given that written text is such an integral part of our work... We should use "abortion rights supporter(s)/advocate(s)" and "abortion rights opponent(s)" or derivations thereof (for example: "advocates of abortion rights"). It is acceptable to use the phrase "anti-abortion", but do not use the term "pro-abortion rights".

Social theorist Pierre Bourdieu would have described calling anti-choice activists pro-life as a form of "symbolic violence." For Bourdieu, the symbolic order of things is a way of keeping the status quo in place.  The economy and culture rely on symbolic violence as a way of getting us to either ignore social inequality or to accept it as natural.  Using the term "pro-life" in supposedly objective journalism is a form of violence that marks those opposed to abortion rights as "ethical" and those in support of abortion rights as unethical sorts, selfish and self-interested people who just want "choice" as if it's the same as deciding between flavors of ice cream. I mean, who isn't pro-life?  Who wants to be identified as "anti-life" even if only by innuendo? Why would the press acquiesce to the "pro-life" language given that this is a profession devoted to language?  And what sort of symbolic violence was done to abortion rights because of it? Perhaps the press was afraid of the Christian fundamentalist revolution that took over much of our political leadership during the past few decades? Perhaps the press was unwilling to call a spade a spade because it did not wish to become marginalized in the power structures as they tried to survive under the various Neocons who have been running this country? And perhaps the shift in the use of language, the end of symbolic violence against women who have abortions and abortion advocates, symbolizes a slightly different order of things? We may now have a political order where most of the people in charge are no longer slaves to a radical religious movement.  And the few politicians who continue to kowtow to the likes of the Tea Party are no longer able to claim that they represent anything but the most radical right fringe of America .

The far right wins again as ACORN closes its doors

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Founded in 1970, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is finally shutting its doors and the far right wingnuts are celebrating.  After all, the far-right, which represents the interests of a certain subgroup of non-urban, straight white Americans best illustrated by the Tea Party, does not like ACORN and the work they have done.  It is not in the interest of white supremacists to have poor Blacks and Latinos registered to vote, campaigns against predatory lending practices, or taxpayer money being spent on rebuilding New Orleans. Of course, the majority of Americans are not white supremacists.  The majority of Americans want everyone to vote, want tax dollars to be spent on creating a more fair and just society, and support the work of organizations like ACORN.  Sadly, however, a right-wing smear campaign convinced ordinary Americans that ACORN was bad, worse than Haliburton bad, and had to be shut down. The height of this campaign happened six months ago when James O'Keefe, the Borat of the Right, released videos that supposedly showed ACORN employees supporting prostitution and tax fraud.  Although the employees were fired and ACORN was cleared of any wrong-doing, the mainstream media continued to act as if O'Keefe were a "journalist" and the videos were "reporting."  Congress responded by blackballing ACORN from receiving any Housing and Urban Development funds. A judge has since ruled Congress's defunding of ACORN unconstitutional. But what are truth and the Constitution when it comes to the far-right's effort to shut down democracy?  Over at FOX News, they are gloating that

The once mighty community activist group ACORN announced Monday it is folding amid falling revenues — six months after video footage emerged showing some of its workers giving tax tips to conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute.

And at Big Government, the site that first aired O'Keefe's "journalism,"  Kyle Olson suggests that ACORN timed its announcement that it's closing its doors to coincide with the passage of healthcare (for what is unclear?  to pacify the right wing-nuts so they don't take up arms... yet?). ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis acknowledged that the closing was the result of

a series of well-orchestrated, relentless, well-funded, right-wing attacks that are unprecedented since the McCarthy era. Our effective work empowering African-American and low-income voters made us a target. The videos were a manufactured, sensational story that led to rush to judgment and an unconstitutional act by Congress.

But it wasn't just the right that brought down ACORN.  It was mainstream media that circulated O'Keefe's work as if it were journalism when they would never circulate Sacha Baron Cohen's work as if it were journalism.  And it was Congress's willingness to defund ACORN, despite evidence and constitutionality, that destroyed the group.  Ultimately, the people in charge in Washington and in the press are uncomfortable with the promise of radical democracy that ACORN represents.  When ACORN registered historic numbers of African American voters and helped elect Barack Obama, they put what is primarily a white media and a white Congress on guard. Radical democracy involves all Americans voting and all Americans engaged in the political process.  That is not something that a lot of powerful people feel completely comfortable with.  The attacks on ACORN are evidence of this. Whatever corruption existed in the organization it was nothing compared to military contractors and the banks.  And ACORN wasn't making bombs like General Dynamics or a bundle like Citibank.  They were trying to help poor and underrepresented Americans get involved and shape their world and our country.  They were trying to inculcate democracy. In other words, ACORN is closing because it was so successful in getting Obama elected.   ACORN is closing because real democracy is not something that people in power in the America actually support. I can only hope that from the fall of ACORN, a stronger movement for radical democracy will spring up.

US general blames Srebrenica massacre on homo soldiers - I blame them for everything

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I personally like to blame homos for everything.  In fact, several times a day when confronted with minor traffic delays or the horrors of late modernity, I like to let loose a good "Goddamned fags.  It's their fault." It's nice to know that my "blame the gays" lifestyle is part of US military leadership as well.  Retired Supreme Allied Commander John Sheehan testified before Congress yesterday that when the Serbs massacred 7000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995, it was because of gay soldiers in the Dutch forces:

That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war. The case in point that I'm referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs," Sheehan said. "The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them." Carl Levin, chairman of the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, asked: "Did the Dutch leaders tell you it was because there were gay soldiers there? Yes, they did. They included that as part of the problem," Sheehan said, according to a webcast on the website of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

So there you have it.  Let gays into the military and genocide happens.  It may seem obvious to me, but let  me explain General Sheehan's logic to those of you who are not yet part of the "blame the gays" movement. It goes something like this: There are two types of men: masculine and feminine.  Masculine ones are straight; feminine ones are gay.    Masculine men protect women and children; feminine ones dress women and children in fabulous outfits.  This is what queer theorist Judith Butler has called "the heterosexual matrix."  It is nice and neat and, as Butler points out, a complete and total fiction.  But it serves to shore up heterosexual privilege by acting as if we can make these nice, neat lines between sex, gender and desire.  Since hetero men are always "masculine," they are always able to "protect" women and children and Nation.  Gay men are useless and are best left to exist in the margins of the nation state, if at all. The problem is when butch, gay men step into military roles and wanna kill them some Serbs or Muslims or Iraqis or Afghanis or fill in the blank.  Another problem is when masculine men want to have sex with other masculine men. The most difficult problem, however, with the fiction of masculinity as always straight and always good comes along with war in the first place.  What can we make of the fact that it was manly Serb men, straight in the eyes of God and Nation,  who systematically killed 6000 Muslim men?  Wasn't the real cause of genocide in Srebrenica hyper-agressive masculinity eliminating a perceived threat to itself? Actually, the more I think about Sheehan's logic, the more I see that the only conclusion we can draw is that masculine men, not gays,  are the problem.  Masculine men, regardless of desire, insist on "protecting" through "eliminating."   Masculine men insist on purging all that is unlike them from their midst: women, gays, racial/ethnic/religious others. So today, when confronted with a problem, like a hang nail or global warming, I will mutter "Goddamned masculinity" and leave the fags alone.

In today ' s culture, sex is public but love is private

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Ah love.  It's sacred.  It's special.  It deserves privacy.  At least that's what we learn from a growing sense of discomfort over couples publicly airing their grievances on Facebook.  An article in the New York Times yesterday, "I need to vent.  Hello Facebook," laments couples who like to fight online.  It's not so much that couples are doing this (after all, I am sure that couples have long complained to their friends about their significant other's stupidity or crassness or slovenly habits), it's that they're doing so in the semi-public forum of Facebook that bothers people (as opposed to a coffee shop?).

It’s a question being asked a lot these days as couples, who once had to leave the house to fight in public, take their arguments onto Facebook... People, like Mr. Gower,... view Facebook as an opportunity: How better to show everyone what his future wife puts him through? My friends have a biased opinion of her, and her friends have a biased opinion of me,” Mr. Gower said. Broadcasting his gripes on Facebook is “a way to get your side of the story out there to everybody. That way, they don’t just hear her side.” Ms. Andrews shares her fiancé’s view. “A lot of people aren’t with us if we have a fight at home," she said. This way, “All our friends can kind of comment on it.”

What is interesting about this story is not the fact that these two self-absorbed 22-year olds are getting married and therefore will have a 1000plus more rights and privileges than the unmarried majority of Americans.  No, that's old news.  What's interesting is the moral outrage over public fighting between couples.  Citing "experts" on marriage, we learn that couples need to put up a public face of harmony, to show themselves as a united front, regardless of what's really going on.

From the Victorian era through the 1950s, marriage was viewed as the source of all safety from a predatory world,” said Michael Vincent Miller, a psychologist and the author of the book “Intimate Terrorism: The Crisis of Love in an Age of Disillusion.” Striving for that ideal, he said, meant keeping your disagreements private, “to keep a public face of harmony.”

Readers' comments exhibit a similar demand that couples appear to be in harmony, even if they're not.

Privacy in relationships is key to success. Why would anyone want to make their partner look bad, especially in such a public way?

And

If you care THAT much about what your friends think of your relationship, you should not be getting married. I would never want to be with someone who would publicly denigrate me so that all my friends could see it and comment on it and I would want to me with someone that I respect enough to also refrain from doing that to them. Privacy in a relationship is special and valuable and should be protected.

But if as a culture we insist that married couples keep all disagreement private, sex is something to be investigated, especially loud sex.  At least that's what one unfortunate pot-smoking New Jersey resident found out when police responded to a 911 call about screams.  When Brian McGacken and his girlfriend came to the door and explained that they were having loud sex, police decided to search the house anyway and arrested him for possession of marijuana.  The Superior Court of New Jersey just upheld McGacken's conviction and ten-year sentence for possession. What exactly is going on in our culture where we want couples who are "in love" and legitimate to present a united, harmonious public front, while copulating couples disturb the peace?  I understand that the cops might have thought that it was an issue of domestic abuse, but rather than searching the premises, perhaps they should have interviewed the girlfriend privately, not search the home for pot?  Besides, if we're concerned about domestic abuse, why are we encouraging married couples to keep a united front at all times? I think the deeper cultural issue, is that as marriage disintegrates as a cultural form (most Americans are unmarried), certain segments of the population feel a need to protect it as an ideal.  Why?  Because marriage does a lot of work shoring up certain privileges in this society- and I'm not just talking about the family discount at the local gym.  Married people are considered more mature, more ethical, and more deserving of state rights and privileges.  Married people are also much, much whiter and much, much wealthier than unmarried people. How convenient that the people who have the most in this culture are also the ones most likely to get married.  What better excuse for giving them not just extra rights, but the social prestige of being "good" and "hard-working" and "stable."  Sadly for the ruling elites, married people today are misbehaving more than ever: fighting on Facebook or daytime talk shows or even publicly "dating" other married people. When married people refuse to keep their backstage behavior backstage, when they broadcast it on social networks, the claim that married people deserve extra rights and extra status disappears.  Suddenly the unmarried majority might just demand that we all get the same civil rights, regardless of how we organize our intimate lives.