By MARSHA MERCER
We’re No. 12. The United States has dropped from first in the world to twelfth in the percentage of young people with college degrees.
The problem isn’t that we’re sending fewer students to college. College enrollment in the United States is at an all-time high; 70 percent of those who graduated high school in 2009 were in college last fall. The problem is that other countries are pumping ever more students into their educational pipelines, particularly in science and math.
President Obama wants to raise the number of college grads by 8 million by 2020 “because America has to have the highest share of graduates compared to every other nation.”
But do we, really? It’s red, white and blue, but we should ask if we’re serving our people and our country well by simply churning out more of the same.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for a large, educated citizenry, but increasing the quantity of college graduates without improving quality won’t boost our national smarts or our global competitiveness.
Americans still want to believe education is the key to personal and national triumph, but a growing body of research and literature challenges that view. College-educated Americans still do better economically than those without college, but a degree no longer guarantees success or even employment.
And there are signs our schools need to do a better job teaching people to think critically. The latest Pew Research Center poll found nearly one in five Americans mistakenly believe Obama is a Muslim. In fact, the Obama’s-a-Muslim contingent is growing. The poll was taken before Obama’s remarks about a mosque on the World Trade Center site. People said the source of their information was TV.
Obama pledges to make sure that “every one of our young people has the best education that the world has to offer.” That’s hardly a novel notion from a president, but fine words still don’t butter the parsnips. He didn’t go into details on how he’d target funds to improve the quality of higher education.
We already spend about 2 ½ times more than the average of developed countries on higher education, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. U.S. education costs rose four times faster than inflation over the last 25 years and twice as fast as our health care costs.
It’s easy to burn a thousand dollars a week on tuition, room and board at a private college or university. Financial aid helps, of course, and state schools are a better bargain. Nevertheless, many students graduate with $100,000 in student loan debt only to find that a college degree isn’t a silver bullet.
Scholars at the Brookings Institution studied economic mobility and found that education tends to reinforce, rather than compensate for, the differences associated with family background.
“Strikingly, children from low-income families with a college education are no more likely to reach the top of the income ladder than children from high-income families without a college education,” Ron Haskins wrote in “Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America.”
Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, authors of the new book, “Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids – And What We Can Do About It,” suggest that colleges are padding their staffs and are building luxury facilities that would be more appropriate for country clubs.
Full-time professors teach fewer undergrads and poorly paid adjuncts are teaching more students, the authors note. (I’ve taught as a college adjunct instructor, and my father was a university professor.)
Hacker and Dreifus cite Williams College in Massachusetts for having as many administrators to students as teachers to students. More than 70 percent of employees at the college do something other than teach. With about 2,000 students, Williams has 84 coaches on staff and 73 fundraisers, Hacker and Dreifus write.
Students don’t escape blame either. Several studies have found college students study less than they did decades ago -- but expect better grades.
College students in 1961 studied 24 hours a week while students in 2003 studied just 14 hours a week, Philip Babcock and Mindy Parks wrote in a study for the American Enterprise Institute.
The shorter study time stemmed not from students being pressed for time from working part-time – although they do have jobs. Nor was it because they picked less demanding majors or because they saved time with computers.
No, the authors said, the most plausible explanation for the decline in time spent studying is that academic standards have fallen.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Obama, college, higher education, spending, academic standards, students, time studying
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Politics and the 14th Amendment -- Aug. 12, 2010 column
By MARSHA MERCER
To hear Senate Republicans, pregnant women around the world can’t hop on planes fast enough to get to the United States to give birth. Their babies then become instant American citizens, thanks to the 14th Amendment.
This is a problem, the men say. Here’s Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.: “I’m not sure exactly what the drafters of the (14th) amendment had in mind, but I doubt that it was somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., raised the specter of rich foreign women going to resorts to “drop” their babies on American soil.
“You come to a resort, you have your child at a hospital within the resort [and] that child is an American citizen,” Graham said in an interview with Fox News. And then there are the “thousands of people coming across the Arizona-Texas border for the express purpose of having a child in an American hospital so the child will become an American citizen,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have suggested it’s time to reconsider the wisdom of the 14th Amendment, which was adopted in 1868 to ensure that freed slaves and their descendants had full rights and protections as citizens.
“I think we ought to take a look at it – hold hearings, listen to the experts on it,” McConnell told The Hill newspaper.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for a change in birthright citizenship, however. What’s going on here is more politics than policy.
The situation is not exactly as the politicians present it. Imagine that in an election year.
A new Pew Hispanic Center study did find that 8 percent of newborns in the United States in 2008 had at least one parent who was an illegal immigrant, a statistic that is sure to inflame anti-immigration sentiments.
But the report’s analysis, which was based on Census Bureau figures, also said that 80 percent of the mothers had lived in this country for more than a year, and more than half had lived here five years or longer.
Despite all the rhetoric, nobody expects a serious run at the 14th Amendment, the salient part of which reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…”
And yet, GOP candidates seem intent on outdoing each other to prove their toughness on the issue. A Republican gubernatorial candidate in Wyoming, Rita Meyer, even wants to see the children of illegal aliens deported along with their parents.
Republicans are more likely than Democrats to favor tougher immigration laws, but even among Republicans there’s no great groundswell of public opinion for changing the 14th Amendment.
Measures to do so previously have failed in Congress. There’s a dispute over whether ending birthright citizenship requires amending the Constitution, but passing an amendment is very difficult. It requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.
Several public opinion surveys have asked if the Constitution should be amended to bar citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, and overall responses split about 50-50. Republicans are warmer to the idea than Democrats, but they are not overwhelming.
What’s more significant than the party divide is that people under 50 view the country very differently than their elders.
Younger people are far less inclined to change the Constitution to end birthright citizenship than older people. Only 30 percent of those 18 to 29 favored a constitutional change to end birthright citizenship. Slightly more, 38 percent, of people 30 to 49 favored a constitutional change. Among people 50 to 64 and over 65, though, roughly half supported the change, according to Pew.
Similarly, younger people are less supportive of Arizona’s immigration law than older Americans, polls have found.
Differences in attitude are understandable, given the country’s demographics. While Hispanics are 34 percent of the general population, they make up only 7 percent of the population over 65. The Census Bureau projects that Hispanics will be 20 percent of the elderly population in 2050.
The country’s attitude toward immigrants evolves with each new citizen born.
© Marsha Mercer 2010. All rights reserved.
30
To hear Senate Republicans, pregnant women around the world can’t hop on planes fast enough to get to the United States to give birth. Their babies then become instant American citizens, thanks to the 14th Amendment.
This is a problem, the men say. Here’s Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.: “I’m not sure exactly what the drafters of the (14th) amendment had in mind, but I doubt that it was somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., raised the specter of rich foreign women going to resorts to “drop” their babies on American soil.
“You come to a resort, you have your child at a hospital within the resort [and] that child is an American citizen,” Graham said in an interview with Fox News. And then there are the “thousands of people coming across the Arizona-Texas border for the express purpose of having a child in an American hospital so the child will become an American citizen,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have suggested it’s time to reconsider the wisdom of the 14th Amendment, which was adopted in 1868 to ensure that freed slaves and their descendants had full rights and protections as citizens.
“I think we ought to take a look at it – hold hearings, listen to the experts on it,” McConnell told The Hill newspaper.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for a change in birthright citizenship, however. What’s going on here is more politics than policy.
The situation is not exactly as the politicians present it. Imagine that in an election year.
A new Pew Hispanic Center study did find that 8 percent of newborns in the United States in 2008 had at least one parent who was an illegal immigrant, a statistic that is sure to inflame anti-immigration sentiments.
But the report’s analysis, which was based on Census Bureau figures, also said that 80 percent of the mothers had lived in this country for more than a year, and more than half had lived here five years or longer.
Despite all the rhetoric, nobody expects a serious run at the 14th Amendment, the salient part of which reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…”
And yet, GOP candidates seem intent on outdoing each other to prove their toughness on the issue. A Republican gubernatorial candidate in Wyoming, Rita Meyer, even wants to see the children of illegal aliens deported along with their parents.
Republicans are more likely than Democrats to favor tougher immigration laws, but even among Republicans there’s no great groundswell of public opinion for changing the 14th Amendment.
Measures to do so previously have failed in Congress. There’s a dispute over whether ending birthright citizenship requires amending the Constitution, but passing an amendment is very difficult. It requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.
Several public opinion surveys have asked if the Constitution should be amended to bar citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants, and overall responses split about 50-50. Republicans are warmer to the idea than Democrats, but they are not overwhelming.
What’s more significant than the party divide is that people under 50 view the country very differently than their elders.
Younger people are far less inclined to change the Constitution to end birthright citizenship than older people. Only 30 percent of those 18 to 29 favored a constitutional change to end birthright citizenship. Slightly more, 38 percent, of people 30 to 49 favored a constitutional change. Among people 50 to 64 and over 65, though, roughly half supported the change, according to Pew.
Similarly, younger people are less supportive of Arizona’s immigration law than older Americans, polls have found.
Differences in attitude are understandable, given the country’s demographics. While Hispanics are 34 percent of the general population, they make up only 7 percent of the population over 65. The Census Bureau projects that Hispanics will be 20 percent of the elderly population in 2050.
The country’s attitude toward immigrants evolves with each new citizen born.
© Marsha Mercer 2010. All rights reserved.
30
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Soak the rich? Not now -- Aug. 5, 2010 column
By MARSHA MERCER
During the 2008 campaign, three little words summarized the Democrats’ plan for George W. Bush’s expiring tax cuts: Soak the rich.
Candidate Obama promised to keep lower tax rates for middle-class Americans while raising taxes on families making more than $250,000 a year. Life was simpler than.
President Obama remains firm on letting the tax cuts expire for the wealthiest taxpayers Dec. 31, but some Democrats, along with congressional Republicans, are balking.
A spirited tax debate on Capitol Hill likely will commence next month, just as midterm campaigning hits its stride.
In this election year, with most Americans less than confident about the economy, raising taxes is hardly a way to win votes. But if Congress does nothing, taxes on personal income, dividends and capital gains, and estates will rise to 2001 levels come January.
So, get ready for some fancy rhetorical flourishes as politicians in both parties explain why raising anyone’s taxes – even the richest among us – would be a huge mistake.
Once again, blame the economy.
“I don’t care if it’s the wealthiest of the wealthy, you don’t raise their taxes” during a recession, Rep. Bobby Bright, D-Ala., told The Hill newspaper. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., also a freshman, said that the economic recovery is so fragile, tax rates should remain where they are.
“People in the upper tax brackets have a huge impact, a disproportionate impact, on consumer spending,” Connolly told The Hill.
A sleeping issue is the estate tax. The United States has had an inheritance tax since 1916, but the Bush plan began phasing out the estate tax in 2003 and repealed it for 2010. This year, billionaires can die and their estates pay no estate tax. If Congress does nothing, though, in 2011 the tax is scheduled to return to 2001 levels. Estates over $1 million would face a 55 percent tax rate.
Obama favors restoring the estate tax to 2009 levels, which would mean a 45 percent tax on inheritances of more than $3.5 million for individuals and $7 million for couples.
Republicans have long smelled political opportunity in the so-called death tax. A recent attempt by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., to repeal it failed when only two Democrats backed repeal.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats still favor letting the tax cuts expire. Some Democrats though want to delay pulling the plug until after Obama has run for re-election in 2012.
Others have suddenly discovered that their wealthy constituents already face a high tax burden. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, supports letting the tax cuts expire, but he and several other New York City area representatives want to shield their voters from the consequences by requiring the IRS “to adjust tax brackets proportionally in regions where the average cost of living is higher than the national average.”
“The reality is that a dollar in New York isn’t worth nearly as much as a dollar in Spokane or Knoxville or Topeka,” Nadler said. The Wall Street Journal mocked him editorially, saying “the bill is called the Tax Equity Act, but a more acurate title would be the Blue State Tax Preference Act.”
Republicans have hypocrisy of their own to explain. They just fought extending unemployment benefits on grounds it would add to the ballooning deficit. Now, they say it’s fine to retain income tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent, even though that would cost nearly $700 billion in lost tax revenue over 10 years.
They also argue that repealing the tax cuts would harm small businesses. Not so, says Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has taken the lead in refuting the Republicans on tax cuts.
Geithner called the GOP claim “a political argument masquerading as substance.” Fewer than 3 percent of small businesses would be affected, he said.
“There is no credible argument to be made that the purpose of government is to borrow from future generations of Americans to finance an extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent,” Geithner said in a speech at the Center for American Progress.
Economists disagree over the effects of raising taxes. The rich haven’t been spending enough as it is to boost the economy, some argue. Others say raising rich people’s taxes won’t lead to higher tax revenues anyway.
That’s because one thing doesn’t change. The rich have the resources to avoid getting soaked.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
During the 2008 campaign, three little words summarized the Democrats’ plan for George W. Bush’s expiring tax cuts: Soak the rich.
Candidate Obama promised to keep lower tax rates for middle-class Americans while raising taxes on families making more than $250,000 a year. Life was simpler than.
President Obama remains firm on letting the tax cuts expire for the wealthiest taxpayers Dec. 31, but some Democrats, along with congressional Republicans, are balking.
A spirited tax debate on Capitol Hill likely will commence next month, just as midterm campaigning hits its stride.
In this election year, with most Americans less than confident about the economy, raising taxes is hardly a way to win votes. But if Congress does nothing, taxes on personal income, dividends and capital gains, and estates will rise to 2001 levels come January.
So, get ready for some fancy rhetorical flourishes as politicians in both parties explain why raising anyone’s taxes – even the richest among us – would be a huge mistake.
Once again, blame the economy.
“I don’t care if it’s the wealthiest of the wealthy, you don’t raise their taxes” during a recession, Rep. Bobby Bright, D-Ala., told The Hill newspaper. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., also a freshman, said that the economic recovery is so fragile, tax rates should remain where they are.
“People in the upper tax brackets have a huge impact, a disproportionate impact, on consumer spending,” Connolly told The Hill.
A sleeping issue is the estate tax. The United States has had an inheritance tax since 1916, but the Bush plan began phasing out the estate tax in 2003 and repealed it for 2010. This year, billionaires can die and their estates pay no estate tax. If Congress does nothing, though, in 2011 the tax is scheduled to return to 2001 levels. Estates over $1 million would face a 55 percent tax rate.
Obama favors restoring the estate tax to 2009 levels, which would mean a 45 percent tax on inheritances of more than $3.5 million for individuals and $7 million for couples.
Republicans have long smelled political opportunity in the so-called death tax. A recent attempt by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., to repeal it failed when only two Democrats backed repeal.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats still favor letting the tax cuts expire. Some Democrats though want to delay pulling the plug until after Obama has run for re-election in 2012.
Others have suddenly discovered that their wealthy constituents already face a high tax burden. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, supports letting the tax cuts expire, but he and several other New York City area representatives want to shield their voters from the consequences by requiring the IRS “to adjust tax brackets proportionally in regions where the average cost of living is higher than the national average.”
“The reality is that a dollar in New York isn’t worth nearly as much as a dollar in Spokane or Knoxville or Topeka,” Nadler said. The Wall Street Journal mocked him editorially, saying “the bill is called the Tax Equity Act, but a more acurate title would be the Blue State Tax Preference Act.”
Republicans have hypocrisy of their own to explain. They just fought extending unemployment benefits on grounds it would add to the ballooning deficit. Now, they say it’s fine to retain income tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent, even though that would cost nearly $700 billion in lost tax revenue over 10 years.
They also argue that repealing the tax cuts would harm small businesses. Not so, says Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has taken the lead in refuting the Republicans on tax cuts.
Geithner called the GOP claim “a political argument masquerading as substance.” Fewer than 3 percent of small businesses would be affected, he said.
“There is no credible argument to be made that the purpose of government is to borrow from future generations of Americans to finance an extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent,” Geithner said in a speech at the Center for American Progress.
Economists disagree over the effects of raising taxes. The rich haven’t been spending enough as it is to boost the economy, some argue. Others say raising rich people’s taxes won’t lead to higher tax revenues anyway.
That’s because one thing doesn’t change. The rich have the resources to avoid getting soaked.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
All we need is mojo -- July 29, 2010 column
By MARSHA MERCER
If we Americans “get our mojo back over the next several months,” President Obama said on “The View,” “then I’m absolutely confident that we are going to be doing terrific.”
It may have been the first time a sitting president had visited a daytime TV talk show, but Obama was hardly the first to try to brighten a gloomy midterm campaign season.
During the dark slog of the 1982 recession, Ronald Reagan shined his famous optimism coast to coast on behalf of Republican candidates. A couple of weeks before voters went to the polls, Reagan conceded that Americans weren’t out of the recession yet, but he insisted things were looking up. There was no need to listen to the doom-peddlers.
After all, Reagan said in a radio address Oct. 23, “Yesterday, a leading bank lowered its prime rate to 11½ percent, and others will soon follow.”
That’s right: Eleven and a half percent. There you have it. Progress is a matter of perspective and presentation.
We may be struggling through our own deep recession and soaring unemployment, but the prime rate today hovers mercifully around 3 ¼ percent.
Obama is probably right that we need our mojo back, but the country needs more than talk of joie de vivre. Americans need jobs and a sense of security and possibility.
Mojo and momentum, like favorable winds, have been at Republican backs this year. Republicans benefit from the historical trend that the president’s party almost always loses seats in off-year elections. Democrats warn sourly of serious erosion in the House and perhaps loss of control to Republicans.
It’s worth remembering that in 1982, Republicans were in the minority and lost 26 seats in the House, and it was considered a victory of sorts, considering the dreary economy. The Great Communicator’s popularity plummeted below 50 percent during his first two years in office and yet he roared back to re-election. Obama’s approval ratings have nearly tracked Reagan’s. Democrats hope that means he could bounce back too.
In the 1994 midterm elections, President Bill Clinton’s Democrats lost 52 House seats, and he too won re-election two years later.
To be sure, it’s a stretch to liken 2010 to previous years. Circumstances are always different. The economy is just one difficulty facing the country. Lasting wars on two fronts have alienated the Democrats’ core constituency.
Obama contends he’s doing what’s right and not necessarily what’s popular -- but he has done a poor job of making the case for a larger role for government. Critics have hammered the Obama-is-a-failure line.
Polls show a majority now favors Republican control of Congress. Six in 10 voters say they don’t trust Obama to make the right decisions.
Reagan, in contrast, struck a chord with Americans with his easy formulation that government is the problem -- not the solution. Naturally, it’s more popular to give people a tax cut than to take one away.
Some Republicans even suggest that people are nostalgic for President George W. Bush and his policies.
“President Bush’s stock is going up a lot since he left office,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a C-SPAN interview recently. People appreciate Bush’s resolve and commitment to national security after Sept. 11, Cornyn said.
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a TV interview that the country needs to “go back to the exact agenda that is empowering the free enterprise system rather than diminishing it.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seized on the Sessions sound bite for an ad charging that Republicans want to take the country backwards.
Praising Bush may be a Republican strategy to defuse bombshells from Bush’s memoir, to be published in November. Excerpts from “Decision Point” could be an October surprise. Obama is still running against Bush, even though neither is on the ballot.
Four days before the ’82 election, Reagan wowed crowds of Republicans saying, “This morning America awoke to see another patch of blue…” By 1984, he was talking of “morning in America.”
We’ll see if Obama finds the right words to help Americans rediscover their mojo.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
If we Americans “get our mojo back over the next several months,” President Obama said on “The View,” “then I’m absolutely confident that we are going to be doing terrific.”
It may have been the first time a sitting president had visited a daytime TV talk show, but Obama was hardly the first to try to brighten a gloomy midterm campaign season.
During the dark slog of the 1982 recession, Ronald Reagan shined his famous optimism coast to coast on behalf of Republican candidates. A couple of weeks before voters went to the polls, Reagan conceded that Americans weren’t out of the recession yet, but he insisted things were looking up. There was no need to listen to the doom-peddlers.
After all, Reagan said in a radio address Oct. 23, “Yesterday, a leading bank lowered its prime rate to 11½ percent, and others will soon follow.”
That’s right: Eleven and a half percent. There you have it. Progress is a matter of perspective and presentation.
We may be struggling through our own deep recession and soaring unemployment, but the prime rate today hovers mercifully around 3 ¼ percent.
Obama is probably right that we need our mojo back, but the country needs more than talk of joie de vivre. Americans need jobs and a sense of security and possibility.
Mojo and momentum, like favorable winds, have been at Republican backs this year. Republicans benefit from the historical trend that the president’s party almost always loses seats in off-year elections. Democrats warn sourly of serious erosion in the House and perhaps loss of control to Republicans.
It’s worth remembering that in 1982, Republicans were in the minority and lost 26 seats in the House, and it was considered a victory of sorts, considering the dreary economy. The Great Communicator’s popularity plummeted below 50 percent during his first two years in office and yet he roared back to re-election. Obama’s approval ratings have nearly tracked Reagan’s. Democrats hope that means he could bounce back too.
In the 1994 midterm elections, President Bill Clinton’s Democrats lost 52 House seats, and he too won re-election two years later.
To be sure, it’s a stretch to liken 2010 to previous years. Circumstances are always different. The economy is just one difficulty facing the country. Lasting wars on two fronts have alienated the Democrats’ core constituency.
Obama contends he’s doing what’s right and not necessarily what’s popular -- but he has done a poor job of making the case for a larger role for government. Critics have hammered the Obama-is-a-failure line.
Polls show a majority now favors Republican control of Congress. Six in 10 voters say they don’t trust Obama to make the right decisions.
Reagan, in contrast, struck a chord with Americans with his easy formulation that government is the problem -- not the solution. Naturally, it’s more popular to give people a tax cut than to take one away.
Some Republicans even suggest that people are nostalgic for President George W. Bush and his policies.
“President Bush’s stock is going up a lot since he left office,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a C-SPAN interview recently. People appreciate Bush’s resolve and commitment to national security after Sept. 11, Cornyn said.
Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a TV interview that the country needs to “go back to the exact agenda that is empowering the free enterprise system rather than diminishing it.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seized on the Sessions sound bite for an ad charging that Republicans want to take the country backwards.
Praising Bush may be a Republican strategy to defuse bombshells from Bush’s memoir, to be published in November. Excerpts from “Decision Point” could be an October surprise. Obama is still running against Bush, even though neither is on the ballot.
Four days before the ’82 election, Reagan wowed crowds of Republicans saying, “This morning America awoke to see another patch of blue…” By 1984, he was talking of “morning in America.”
We’ll see if Obama finds the right words to help Americans rediscover their mojo.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
A teachable moment on race -- July 22, 2010 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Vilified, then vindicated, Shirley Sherrod did what Americans do in such circumstances. She made the rounds of TV and cable talk shows.
Unlike most people on the talk circuit, however, Sherrod actually had something to say – and teach.
Within about 24 hours, she had been accused of racism and fired from her Agriculture Department job, then bathed in apologies and offered a new job. Sherrod, 62, who is black, wanted to talk to President Obama and clue him in:
“He’s not someone who has experienced some of the things I have experienced through my life, being a person of color. He might need to hear some of what I could say to him,” she said on ABC.
“I don’t know if that would guide him in dealing with others like me…” she said. The implication, was that this embarrassing episode could be a teachable moment for the president.
Obama did call Sherrod Thursday, and he apologized. They talked for all of seven minutes.
If there’s one thing people didn’t expect in electing the first black president, it’s that he would need tips on understanding the African-American experience. But there’s a sense he is removed from ordinary experience.
He “hasn’t lived the kind of life I’ve lived,” Sherrod said on CNN. “He’s part African American … (but) he really, where the rubber meets the road, needs to understand what life is really like.”
Obama was born in Honolulu and grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii. His age – he turns 49 Aug. 4 -- and his Ivy League education also set him apart from many who lived through the civil rights era.
So far, hopes that he would usher in a post-racial era haven’t materialized. Speeches aside, he has been less than sure-footed on race.
Last summer, Obama stumbled when his friend and black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested – “stupidly,” the president said -- by a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer. A “beer summit” photo op at the White House followed.
This week, the administration jumped to conclusions and fired Sherrod after viewing a 2-minute video clip from a 43-minute speech Sherrod gave in March to an NAACP group in Georgia. The clip, posted on the Web by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, seemed to show Sherrod describing a time in the 1980s when, working for a non-profit agency, she had done less than she could to help a white farmer facing foreclosure.
No one at the NAACP, the White House or Agriculture bothered to watch Sherrod’s entire remarks before concluding she was a racist and had to go. The news media and bloggers ran to keep up with events without checking into the facts.
Spurred by fear that Fox News host Glenn Beck would take up the story, the administration pushed out Sherrod, the first black director of federal rural development efforts in Georgia.
Her speech in its entirety shows a woman whose personal story of forgiveness and redemption is interwoven with the nation’s civil rights struggle. Growing up on a farm in Georgia in the 1960s, Sherrod dreamt of leaving the fields and heading north.
Then, in June 1965, when she was 17, a white man murdered her father, shooting him in the back in a dispute over cows. Her mother was seven months pregnant with her sixth child. Sherrod said she vowed that night to stay in the South and devote her life to working for social change.
Her father’s death went unpunished. Despite three witnesses, the Grand Jury refused to indict anyone. White men burned a cross on the family’s lawn, Sherrod said.
After college, she began helping black Georgia farmers keep their land. She discovered after helping a white man save his farm that the true fight was not between blacks and whites but between haves and have nots. The farmer, Roger Spooner, now in his 80s, is still grateful.
“It’s not just about black people; it’s about poor people,” she said in the speech. “I’ve come to realize we have to work together.”
With the full content of the speech known, the NAACP said it had been “snookered” by the reports, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized. Vilsack offered Sherrod a job in race relations, but she was skeptical. She said she doesn’t want to be the one person charged with cleaning up discrimination at USDA.
But she could use her moment to teach the president about race.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Vilified, then vindicated, Shirley Sherrod did what Americans do in such circumstances. She made the rounds of TV and cable talk shows.
Unlike most people on the talk circuit, however, Sherrod actually had something to say – and teach.
Within about 24 hours, she had been accused of racism and fired from her Agriculture Department job, then bathed in apologies and offered a new job. Sherrod, 62, who is black, wanted to talk to President Obama and clue him in:
“He’s not someone who has experienced some of the things I have experienced through my life, being a person of color. He might need to hear some of what I could say to him,” she said on ABC.
“I don’t know if that would guide him in dealing with others like me…” she said. The implication, was that this embarrassing episode could be a teachable moment for the president.
Obama did call Sherrod Thursday, and he apologized. They talked for all of seven minutes.
If there’s one thing people didn’t expect in electing the first black president, it’s that he would need tips on understanding the African-American experience. But there’s a sense he is removed from ordinary experience.
He “hasn’t lived the kind of life I’ve lived,” Sherrod said on CNN. “He’s part African American … (but) he really, where the rubber meets the road, needs to understand what life is really like.”
Obama was born in Honolulu and grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii. His age – he turns 49 Aug. 4 -- and his Ivy League education also set him apart from many who lived through the civil rights era.
So far, hopes that he would usher in a post-racial era haven’t materialized. Speeches aside, he has been less than sure-footed on race.
Last summer, Obama stumbled when his friend and black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested – “stupidly,” the president said -- by a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer. A “beer summit” photo op at the White House followed.
This week, the administration jumped to conclusions and fired Sherrod after viewing a 2-minute video clip from a 43-minute speech Sherrod gave in March to an NAACP group in Georgia. The clip, posted on the Web by conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, seemed to show Sherrod describing a time in the 1980s when, working for a non-profit agency, she had done less than she could to help a white farmer facing foreclosure.
No one at the NAACP, the White House or Agriculture bothered to watch Sherrod’s entire remarks before concluding she was a racist and had to go. The news media and bloggers ran to keep up with events without checking into the facts.
Spurred by fear that Fox News host Glenn Beck would take up the story, the administration pushed out Sherrod, the first black director of federal rural development efforts in Georgia.
Her speech in its entirety shows a woman whose personal story of forgiveness and redemption is interwoven with the nation’s civil rights struggle. Growing up on a farm in Georgia in the 1960s, Sherrod dreamt of leaving the fields and heading north.
Then, in June 1965, when she was 17, a white man murdered her father, shooting him in the back in a dispute over cows. Her mother was seven months pregnant with her sixth child. Sherrod said she vowed that night to stay in the South and devote her life to working for social change.
Her father’s death went unpunished. Despite three witnesses, the Grand Jury refused to indict anyone. White men burned a cross on the family’s lawn, Sherrod said.
After college, she began helping black Georgia farmers keep their land. She discovered after helping a white man save his farm that the true fight was not between blacks and whites but between haves and have nots. The farmer, Roger Spooner, now in his 80s, is still grateful.
“It’s not just about black people; it’s about poor people,” she said in the speech. “I’ve come to realize we have to work together.”
With the full content of the speech known, the NAACP said it had been “snookered” by the reports, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized. Vilsack offered Sherrod a job in race relations, but she was skeptical. She said she doesn’t want to be the one person charged with cleaning up discrimination at USDA.
But she could use her moment to teach the president about race.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
On the FCC, indecent speech and the pig -- July 15, 2010 column
By MARSHA MERCER
Dear Big Brother, thanks for your help keeping the pig out of the parlor all this time, but we aren’t living in 1978 anymore. You’re excused.
That was the gist of a federal appeals court ruling Tuesday on the government’s power to police indecent speech on TV.
This, as Joe Biden might say in the East Room, is a big _____ deal.
The court struck down a Federal Communications Commission policy that allows the agency to fine broadcasters for “fleeting expletives,” those stray curse words that spring spontaneously from the mouths of celebrities.
The court said the FCC’s policy was unconstitutionally vague and could chill free speech by causing broadcasters to limit what people say on TV. The ruling likely will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
The federal government has been struggling with what’s unfit for American ears at least since 2 p.m. on Oct. 30, 1973, when an FM radio station in New York played a recording of George Carlin’s 12-minute monologue, “Filthy Words,” about the seven words you couldn’t say on television.
In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that the FCC could fine the station’s owner for the broadcast. The high court, emphasizing the narrowness of its ruling, used a quaint and telling analogy.
“Nuisance may be merely the right thing in the wrong place – like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard. We simply hold that when the Commission finds that a pig has entered the parlor, the exercise of its regulatory power does not depend on proof that the pig is obscene,” the Supreme Court wrote.
Part of its rationale was that TV held “a uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of all Americans” and was accessible to children, even those too young to read a newspaper.
As part of its ongoing efforts to keep the pig out of the parlor, the FCC tightened its rules following Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl 2004 “wardrobe malfunction” and several incidents of unscripted profanity. The new rule threatened "the heart of the First Amendment," the appeals court ruled.
"By prohibiting all `patently offensive' references to sex, sexual organs and excretion without giving adequate guidance as to what `patently offensive' means, the FCC effectively chills speech, because broadcasters have no way of knowing what the FCC will find offensive," the appeals court wrote in the decision in Fox Television Stations v. FCC.
The court noted how much has changed in three decades.
“Indeed, we face a media landscape that would have been almost unrecognizable in 1978.” The Internet was known only to a few guys at the Pentagon; YouTube, Twitter and Facebook weren’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eye. Since January 2000, every TV 13 inches or larger has contained a V-chip, which enables parents to block TV programs based on a standard rating system. Digital converter boxes also contain the V-chip.
The Supreme Court had sent Fox Television v. FCC back to the 2nd Circuit after ruling that the FCC had not acted capriciously in changing its policy. The Supreme Court did not address the rule’s constitutionality.
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps blasted the appellate court’s decision as “anti-family” and said the court focused on the policy’s chilling effect on broadcasters when it should have focused on “the chilling effect today’s decision will have on the ability of American parents to safeguard the interests of their children.”
The 32-page decision, however, portrays the FCC as wrestling over when a word is OK and when it’s indecent. Different standards prevailed for different circumstances. Words deemed OK in a news interview or a war movie like “Saving Private Ryan” would be unacceptable in a music documentary about “The Blues” or an awards program.
The appeals court cited that uncertainty in its ruling. It left open the possibility that the FCC might be able to craft a rule that is constitutional.
The case raises questions about the role of government in the 21st century. We don’t need a Big Brother censor in the world of the V-chip, numberless Web sites and cable TV stations. And many who want TV language policed also decry the nanny state and insist they want a less intrusive federal government
The pig may be in the parlor to stay, but we still have the power to turn off the TV.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Dear Big Brother, thanks for your help keeping the pig out of the parlor all this time, but we aren’t living in 1978 anymore. You’re excused.
That was the gist of a federal appeals court ruling Tuesday on the government’s power to police indecent speech on TV.
This, as Joe Biden might say in the East Room, is a big _____ deal.
The court struck down a Federal Communications Commission policy that allows the agency to fine broadcasters for “fleeting expletives,” those stray curse words that spring spontaneously from the mouths of celebrities.
The court said the FCC’s policy was unconstitutionally vague and could chill free speech by causing broadcasters to limit what people say on TV. The ruling likely will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
The federal government has been struggling with what’s unfit for American ears at least since 2 p.m. on Oct. 30, 1973, when an FM radio station in New York played a recording of George Carlin’s 12-minute monologue, “Filthy Words,” about the seven words you couldn’t say on television.
In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that the FCC could fine the station’s owner for the broadcast. The high court, emphasizing the narrowness of its ruling, used a quaint and telling analogy.
“Nuisance may be merely the right thing in the wrong place – like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard. We simply hold that when the Commission finds that a pig has entered the parlor, the exercise of its regulatory power does not depend on proof that the pig is obscene,” the Supreme Court wrote.
Part of its rationale was that TV held “a uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of all Americans” and was accessible to children, even those too young to read a newspaper.
As part of its ongoing efforts to keep the pig out of the parlor, the FCC tightened its rules following Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl 2004 “wardrobe malfunction” and several incidents of unscripted profanity. The new rule threatened "the heart of the First Amendment," the appeals court ruled.
"By prohibiting all `patently offensive' references to sex, sexual organs and excretion without giving adequate guidance as to what `patently offensive' means, the FCC effectively chills speech, because broadcasters have no way of knowing what the FCC will find offensive," the appeals court wrote in the decision in Fox Television Stations v. FCC.
The court noted how much has changed in three decades.
“Indeed, we face a media landscape that would have been almost unrecognizable in 1978.” The Internet was known only to a few guys at the Pentagon; YouTube, Twitter and Facebook weren’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eye. Since January 2000, every TV 13 inches or larger has contained a V-chip, which enables parents to block TV programs based on a standard rating system. Digital converter boxes also contain the V-chip.
The Supreme Court had sent Fox Television v. FCC back to the 2nd Circuit after ruling that the FCC had not acted capriciously in changing its policy. The Supreme Court did not address the rule’s constitutionality.
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps blasted the appellate court’s decision as “anti-family” and said the court focused on the policy’s chilling effect on broadcasters when it should have focused on “the chilling effect today’s decision will have on the ability of American parents to safeguard the interests of their children.”
The 32-page decision, however, portrays the FCC as wrestling over when a word is OK and when it’s indecent. Different standards prevailed for different circumstances. Words deemed OK in a news interview or a war movie like “Saving Private Ryan” would be unacceptable in a music documentary about “The Blues” or an awards program.
The appeals court cited that uncertainty in its ruling. It left open the possibility that the FCC might be able to craft a rule that is constitutional.
The case raises questions about the role of government in the 21st century. We don’t need a Big Brother censor in the world of the V-chip, numberless Web sites and cable TV stations. And many who want TV language policed also decry the nanny state and insist they want a less intrusive federal government
The pig may be in the parlor to stay, but we still have the power to turn off the TV.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Frustrations spew in oil-spill summer -- July 8, 2010 column
By MARSHA MERCER
She was on Metro after work, heading home, when a complete stranger got in her face and blurted, “Why aren’t you in the gulf? Why aren’t you guys doing anything?”
The target of the verbal attack was a young woman whose mistake in this summer of the oil spill was wearing her federal I.D. card. It identified her as working for the Environmental Protection Agency.
No matter that she’s a gentle scientist whose area of responsibility is far from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
With up to 100,000 barrels of oil a day still spewing and no relief from the environmental crisis in sight, some people are so frustrated they’re venting their frustrations on random bureaucrats they see in Washington’s subway system.
“They take it out on the low-level people who have nothing to do with the oil spill or the clean-up,” the woman told me.
Confrontations are rare, thankfully, but without doubt the worsening oil disaster has shaken people’s confidence in government. There’s an eerie, anxious similarity to the Iran hostage crisis, when another president was tested. Jimmy Carter’s powerlessness to bring the hostages home proved to be his undoing.
Starting in November 1979, the news media began counting the days Americans were held hostage in Iran. The crisis dominated the news for 444 days and helped make Carter a one-term president. Today, media outlets count off each day of the oil disaster. President Barack Obama vows to kick someone’s ass, and oil still poisons the water and coats defenseless waterfowl. Tar balls soil beaches.
More than half of Americans disapprove of Obama’s response to the oil spill, and more than eight in 10 think BP is doing a poor job responding, an Associated Press-GfK poll found last month.
The AP also reported that some BP employees have stopped wearing the company’s green-and-yellow logo. A BP security official sent a memo warning workers to keep a low profile, watch when walking to their cars at night and avoid conversations that could turn nasty.
Taking frustration out on workers – whether for BP or the government – is senseless, of course, and won’t plug the leak. But what can we do? Jesse Jackson and others proposed a boycott of BP gas stations, but the idea turned out to be counterproductive. A boycott would hurt individual franchisees and their employees, not BP.
People expect, at the least, that the White House will fight for a cleaner environment. A report by House Republicans charged that the administration cared more for favorable public opinion than about cleanup.
A report by Republican staffers of the House oversight committee said the White House’s oil spill PR campaign had hurt the cleanup. After interviewing local officials and reviewing documents, the staffers said “the situation in the Gulf is actually more dysfunctional and dire than what has been portrayed through official reports and press accounts…This blurring of reality is exacerbating problems with the clean-up effort.”
The report said “local officials describe White House outreach efforts as more focused on stopping bad press than on addressing the disaster at hand.”
It’s an election year, and the White House dismissed the GOP report. Admiral Thad Allen, the national incident commander, insisted that the oil spill information he has given in numerous press briefings was accurate.
For its part, the government honed its PR efforts. Allen launched a new Web site Wednesday. RestoreTheGulf.gov describes itself as the official federal portal for spill response and recovery. It provides information about state-specific cleanup efforts and a place to file claims and submit suggestions.
Already up are spill-oriented Web, Facebook and Twitter pages run by EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies. The new site will replace DeepwaterHorizonResponse.com, jointly run by BP, Transocean and 14federal agencies and departments.
A new, “streamlined” Web site may look good, but it will do little to restore public confidence. Americans won’t begin to relax until oil stops gushing, but even then, we’ll face years of cleanup.
For now, people count the days of the disaster, and one EPA employee takes off her ID card and shoves it in her purse before she gets on Metro. She doesn’t want strangers to know where she works.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
She was on Metro after work, heading home, when a complete stranger got in her face and blurted, “Why aren’t you in the gulf? Why aren’t you guys doing anything?”
The target of the verbal attack was a young woman whose mistake in this summer of the oil spill was wearing her federal I.D. card. It identified her as working for the Environmental Protection Agency.
No matter that she’s a gentle scientist whose area of responsibility is far from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
With up to 100,000 barrels of oil a day still spewing and no relief from the environmental crisis in sight, some people are so frustrated they’re venting their frustrations on random bureaucrats they see in Washington’s subway system.
“They take it out on the low-level people who have nothing to do with the oil spill or the clean-up,” the woman told me.
Confrontations are rare, thankfully, but without doubt the worsening oil disaster has shaken people’s confidence in government. There’s an eerie, anxious similarity to the Iran hostage crisis, when another president was tested. Jimmy Carter’s powerlessness to bring the hostages home proved to be his undoing.
Starting in November 1979, the news media began counting the days Americans were held hostage in Iran. The crisis dominated the news for 444 days and helped make Carter a one-term president. Today, media outlets count off each day of the oil disaster. President Barack Obama vows to kick someone’s ass, and oil still poisons the water and coats defenseless waterfowl. Tar balls soil beaches.
More than half of Americans disapprove of Obama’s response to the oil spill, and more than eight in 10 think BP is doing a poor job responding, an Associated Press-GfK poll found last month.
The AP also reported that some BP employees have stopped wearing the company’s green-and-yellow logo. A BP security official sent a memo warning workers to keep a low profile, watch when walking to their cars at night and avoid conversations that could turn nasty.
Taking frustration out on workers – whether for BP or the government – is senseless, of course, and won’t plug the leak. But what can we do? Jesse Jackson and others proposed a boycott of BP gas stations, but the idea turned out to be counterproductive. A boycott would hurt individual franchisees and their employees, not BP.
People expect, at the least, that the White House will fight for a cleaner environment. A report by House Republicans charged that the administration cared more for favorable public opinion than about cleanup.
A report by Republican staffers of the House oversight committee said the White House’s oil spill PR campaign had hurt the cleanup. After interviewing local officials and reviewing documents, the staffers said “the situation in the Gulf is actually more dysfunctional and dire than what has been portrayed through official reports and press accounts…This blurring of reality is exacerbating problems with the clean-up effort.”
The report said “local officials describe White House outreach efforts as more focused on stopping bad press than on addressing the disaster at hand.”
It’s an election year, and the White House dismissed the GOP report. Admiral Thad Allen, the national incident commander, insisted that the oil spill information he has given in numerous press briefings was accurate.
For its part, the government honed its PR efforts. Allen launched a new Web site Wednesday. RestoreTheGulf.gov describes itself as the official federal portal for spill response and recovery. It provides information about state-specific cleanup efforts and a place to file claims and submit suggestions.
Already up are spill-oriented Web, Facebook and Twitter pages run by EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies. The new site will replace DeepwaterHorizonResponse.com, jointly run by BP, Transocean and 14federal agencies and departments.
A new, “streamlined” Web site may look good, but it will do little to restore public confidence. Americans won’t begin to relax until oil stops gushing, but even then, we’ll face years of cleanup.
For now, people count the days of the disaster, and one EPA employee takes off her ID card and shoves it in her purse before she gets on Metro. She doesn’t want strangers to know where she works.
© 2010 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
30
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