With a Little Help from My Friends

I have other things that need to get done. Deadlines that have passed. Deadlines that approach. But I'm going to take 30 minutes to write something. This has been brewing for awhile, but I have neither energy nor time to allow it to mature. I'm thinking this will be quick and painful.

The immediate exigence for this post is quite commonplace: another massive, sweeping educational cut. They are everywhere these days. One doesn't have to read the Chronicle to find them. They have become commonplace in the worst way. Today's comes from Las Vegas, where UNLV plans to cut 300+ total jobs, over 100 of them faculty positions. Additionally, they'll lose 77 graduate students. Entire departments will be eliminated in the process.

Yesterday I read an article on gambling in Las Vegas. Apparently, lawmakers there do not think casinos should be held responsible for gambling addictions.

Louisiana approves layoffs for faculty.

In Florida, we face an over 3 billion cut to our state education fund. Additionally, the state is voting to wipe out tenure at the primary and secondary levels--teacher retention will be tied directly to test scores. This is considered good for learning. No wonder why people don't want to be teachers anymore. And no wonder why, supposedly, students don't want to learn.

I'm not even going to touch Wisconsin. There's more going on in Wisconsin than my brain can handle. Friends pass me articles such as this one, by Ed Kilgore entitled "Republicans want Wisconsin to Become Just Like the South," and a piece of my soul dies. I want to vomit in my mouth. Or break something.

I'm not even planning on going pedagogical here; I wasn't planning on sending you to watch Sir Ken Robinson's excellent animated lecture on education in the 21st century. You probably should watch it. But that's not what this post is about, not today.

Today is more about showing a graph I found while collecting visualizations for my Visual Rhetoric class. This graph has been haunting me for quite some time, since I first saw it last week. I can't get away from it. I came across it through a friend's feed on Facebook--part of a series of 11 visualizations exposing income inequality in America over at Mother Jones. All 11 of the visualizations are telling, but one is specific stood out to me:

I never thought I'd say this: but lets go back to 1945. If you make more than a million dollars, then its time to pony up and pay to support the people around you. Sharing is fundamental to existence (seriously, metaphysically, it is--that's the kind of writing I'm supposed to be doing right now, a review of this book).

On a melodramatic note, I'm reminded of Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous statement:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Maybe I am speaking of Wisconsin after all. Maybe they are speaking not just for teachers--but for Americans--men, women, and especially children everywhere who deserve a quality education, doctor, home, and dinner. More than anything, children deserve a chance. In terms of education, a chance requires attention.

I'm sick of hearing that we can't afford education. I'm sick of hearing we can't afford "Obama Care." We can't afford not to care. We need to care. And we need to stop putting greed ahead of sharing.

When Economics Become Espionage

I just came across this story in /. on a new Chinese policy demanding that corporations importing electronics into China provide the government with all source code for their products. The story, of which I've heard nothing in our country, has become a point of contention in Japan--where companies such as Sony are worried that the Chinese government will pass sensitive information on to Chinese corporations (which, um, are owned and operated by the Chinese government).

In his recent book Source Code China: The New Global Hub of IT Technology, Cyrill Eltschinger argues that today's companies are missing out on China as a potential resource (and cites a number of companies who are shifting their outsourcing from India to China). He gives a number of reasons for considering China, most of which would make someone interested in global human rights cringe. What he doesn't comment on (at least on the website), is the dubious position the Chinese government holds regarding Western intellectual property laws. (I admit that I am relying on the website--I have not read the book. I use it as an example).

I am no expert on global relations. But to this outsider, it seems that China is practicing global economics as the USA and USSR practiced espionage during the Cold War. I might be paranoid. I might be disillusioned. But if I were Bill Gates, I wouldn't be pushing Windows into China under these conditions.

The American economy is fragile--as we are now all aware. The decimation of the American dollar isn't primarily tied to our inflated real estate market (the current crisis). The underlying problem is our massive trade deficit. Or so tells my stock broker every week as he laments our demise and warns of worse times. For those who don't dabble in the market, let me assure you that its worse than you think. Here's how to tell, the price of gold. Gold is an international standard, to see that gold prices have tripled means that, on a fundamental international level, our dollar is worth a third of what it once was. It doesn't help (as some might assume), that other countries are experiencing a similar state. It means that a bigger market correction lies on the horizon, a global correction. It means things could get much, much worse.

In an era when our exports are tied almost exclusively to digital/intellectual products, we must protect this property as if it were our land.

Sometimes, in the middle of the day, I think of this shit and it makes me want to scream. I can't wait for that next wave of meaningless presidential ads.

On a side note, the /. forum discussion is quite interesting and some of the best public dialogue I've seen in awhile. Sigh.