Visiting Schools

Today, during the most uninspiring visit to a public school, I thought of Yeats:

William Butler Yeats Among School Children I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and histories, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way - the children's eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling public man. II I dream of a Ledaean body, bent Above a sinking fire. a tale that she Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event That changed some childish day to tragedy - Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent Into a sphere from youthful sympathy, Or else, to alter Plato's parable, Into the yolk and white of the one shell. III And thinking of that fit of grief or rage I look upon one child or t'other there And wonder if she stood so at that age - For even daughters of the swan can share Something of every paddler's heritage - And had that colour upon cheek or hair, And thereupon my heart is driven wild: She stands before me as a living child. IV Her present image floats into the mind - Did Quattrocento finger fashion it Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mess of shadows for its meat? And I though never of Ledaean kind Had pretty plumage once - enough of that, Better to smile on all that smile, and show There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow. V What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap Honey of generation had betrayed, And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape As recollection or the drug decide, Would think her Son, did she but see that shape With sixty or more winters on its head, A compensation for the pang of his birth, Or the uncertainty of his setting forth? VI Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird. VII Both nuns and mothers worship images, But those the candles light are not as those That animate a mother's reveries, But keep a marble or a bronze repose. And yet they too break hearts - O Presences That passion, piety or affection knows, And that all heavenly glory symbolise - O self-born mockers of man's enterprise; VIII Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul. Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

Gross National Happiness

And the best place to live turns out to be The Kingdom of Buthan...

Nine Myths about Socialism in the US --Bill Quigley

Glenn Beck and other far right multi-millionaires are claiming that the US is hot on the path towards socialism. Part of their claim is that the US is much more generous and supportive of our working and poor people than other countries. People may wish it was so, but it is not.

As Senator Patrick Moynihan used to say “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But everyone is not entitled to their own facts.”

The fact is that the US is not really all that generous to our working and poor people compared to other countries.

Consider the US in comparison to the rest of the 30 countries that join the US in making up the OECD – the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These 30 countries include Canada and most comparable European countries but also include some struggling countries like Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Slovak Republic, and Turkey. See www.oecd.org

When you look at how the US compares to these 30 countries, the hot air myths about the US government going all out towards socialism sort of disappear into thin air. Here are some examples of myths that do not hold up.

Myth #1. The US government is involved in class warfare attacking the rich to lift up the poor.

There is a class war going on all right. But it is the rich against the rest of us and the rich are winning. The gap between the rich and everyone else is wider in the US than any of the 30 other countries surveyed. In fact, the top 10% in the US have a higher annual income than any other country. And the poorest 10% in the US are below the average of the other OECD countries. The rich in the U.S. have been rapidly leaving the middle class and poor behind since the 1980s.

Myth #2. The US already has the greatest health care system in the world.

Infant mortality in the US is 4th worst among OECD countries – better only than Mexico, Turkey and the Slovak Republic.

Myth #3. There is less poverty in the US than anywhere.

Child poverty in the US, at over 20% or one out of every five kids, is double the average of the 30 OECD countries.

Myth #4. The US is generous in its treatment of families with children.

The US ranks in the bottom half of countries in terms of financial benefits for families with children. Over half of the 30 OECD countries pay families with children cash benefits regardless of the income of the family. Some among those countries (e.g. Austria, France and Germany) pay additional benefits if the family is low-income, or one of the parents is unemployed.

Myth #5. The US is very supportive of its workers.

The US gives no paid leave for working mothers having children. Every single one of the other 30 OECD countries has some form of paid leave. The US ranks dead last in this. Over two thirds of the countries give some form of paid paternity leave. The US also gives no paid leave for fathers.

In fact, it is only workers in the US who have no guaranteed days of paid leave at all. Korea is the next lowest to the US and it has a minimum of 8 paid annual days of leave. Most of the other 30 countries require a minimum of 20 days of annual paid leave for their workers.

Myth #6. Poor people have more chance of becoming rich in the US than anywhere else.

Social mobility (how children move up or down the economic ladder in comparison with their parents) in earnings, wages and education tends to be easier in Australia, Canada and Nordic countries like Denmark, Norway, and Finland, than in the US. That means more of the rich stay rich and more of the poor stay poor here in the US.

Myth #7. The US spends generously on public education.

In terms of spending for public education, the US is just about average among the 30 countries of the OECD. Educational achievement of US children, however, is 7th worst in the OECD. On public spending for childcare and early education, the US is in the bottom third.

Myth #8. The US government is redistributing income from the rich to the poor.

There is little redistribution of income by government in the U.S. in part because spending on social benefits like unemployment and family benefits is so low. Of the 30 countries in the OECD, only in Korea is the impact of governmental spending lower.

Myth #9. The US generously gives foreign aid to countries across the world.

The US gives the smallest percentage of aid of any of the developed countries in the OECD. In 2007 the US was tied for last with Greece. In 2008, we were tied for last with Japan.

Despite the opinions of right wing folks, the facts say the US is not on the path towards socialism.

But if socialism means the US would go down the path of being more generous with our babies, our children, our working families, our pregnant mothers, and our sisters and brothers across the world, I think we could all appreciate it.

Bill Quigley is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. There is a version of this article with footnotes for those interested. Quigley77@gmail.com

Henry Miller

Sometimes late at night
Full of dark Panama rum
I curl myself into a tiny ball--
Fetal, the doctors would say.

And all rolled up, I enjoy the cool tile floor,
The bright bathroom lights,
Clinical and soothing and mirrored,
Like the green room into which I was born.

There is little safety in this green place
Outside the womb and a diffident mother’s embrace
So very little that is secure or wanted or sweet--
Nearly nothing that matters in the night.

I was in love yesterday, for example.
During the day and the evening,
Drinking coffee in a bar with a green tiled floor.
Even the necktied waiter enjoyed that love.

And tonight I curl into this space
While the music pounds on the street.
There is nothing to hold here
And less to want outside.

There are pictures in the travel agent’s window
That promise something more upright:
Some Grecian light and sea and air--
Henry Miller returned to life.

Dying in Panama

Dying in Panama is a technical error
A busted taxi trapped in traffic
An rusted ambulance that doesn’t arrive
A problem of noise and streets to be remedied.

Doctors are the priests here, in charge
Of keeping me from the afterlife.
Insurance premiums the modern indulgences
that we pay and pay to not go anywhere special.

Heaven just redefined is not only possible.
It is here and sinfully green.
It includes still iguanas and waxy orchids.
So much better than we were told in the Catholic school.

There are no corny Austrian harps,
No cloud banks turned into chairs.
The apartments have tile floors and there is salsa
With trumpets and damning drums.

Recreation is the point of this tropical life:
We can recreate everything and at all times.
Ourselves, our lives, our loves—
Doctor willing. Kyrie eleison

One Hand

There are things I can do with only one hand,
Though the exercise is meaningless.
I can cross myself in the Catholic tradition,
Cut most food with just a fork.

I can hammer but not hold a nail,
Fix a drink and get it drunk.
Brush my teeth and look in the mirror
And regret the one-handed image that is there.

But then there are the other things, sometimes dark:
I cannot tie my shoe or close my belt.
I cannot steer the car and touch your cheek.
I cannot pull the trigger of a rifle.

I cannot give birth or swim.
I cannot listen or scream at demons
(Since they require hands that wave.)
I cannot dance in any way that matters.

I cannot pray or plead or weep,
According to the rules of Renaissance art.
But I can keep the sun from my eyes
And the moon on most nights.

Bouquete

Bouquete

Just ahead, around the coming curve,
There will be an intersection.
A guava tree where two red-dust roads will cross.
The woman with such poor memory waits there,

Shy as an adulterer, not knowing exactly
What to do with her eyes or breath or hands.
I’ll get there in a moment and I’ll stop.
Life works that way in the tropics.

Fruit falls off the trees whether we hear it or not.
Black birds slam into my window just to say:
Something is ahead. (Or something is behind.)
I have always known the woman waiting by the road.

And feeling the sharp memory, I focus.
How was it before, I ask.
And so we walk north,
hearing only the yellow-topped parrots.

After a while, our talk begins in earnest,
And centuries of words appear,
Words that must be said before
the next curve in the road. Before you leave.

By the mountain we slow our walk.
Freed from time but not from space,
We dread what’s around the curve.
Maracuya vines climbing the side of a hill.

We know the painful logic of these meetings,
Complicated by the tropical warp of time,
Full of tragic ending well before they end,
A promise that will have to wait for yet another life.

changing course

When Obama was elected, I decided not to write about politics for a while. Now that he's won the peace prize for continuing the Bush policy of killing innocents, I've decide to publish poems here. (Think of Yeats' poem "On Politics"--one of my favorites.)

So here's one from a book I'm writing called Panama.

Things we know by their consequences

We believe so simply in the unseen:
Gravity, electricity, light and grace.
We register their effects quite precisely
And learn early not to question any motives.

The mango drops from a dark tree.
Tides move against a rocky shore.
My chest aches under the sky of birds.
Or do the birds themselves bring that pain?

I saw a clip of a movie once:
A golfer struck by lightning,
Exploded on an afternoon pasture,
Dropping to the ground for some heavenly reason.

The camera itself, godlike, recording that strange fall,
Is beyond my understanding. Electrons traveling
In some unknown medium, making precise marks
On an impossible mirror that records what is seen or not.

Jesus, I tire of so much mystery.
Holy spirits and sleepless nights.
This Equatorial moon and ghosts
Arranging the movements of waters and lives
And those graceless bolts of Panama lightning.

Naomi Klein's Lexicon of Disappointment

Trying to explain the disappointment that many of of feel about the Obama presidency, Klein writes:

"All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.

"Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard."

Friends tell me my expectations are too high, that the system resists change. But I know all that and so did Senator Obama when he ran. Obama said recently that he won't prosecute the CIA torturers who were following orders. He needs to reread Hannah Arendt. The world has been through this before.

You can read the rest of Klein's article in the Nation.

Who Wrecked the World's Economy?

Here's a snippet from Bill Moyer's recent interview with William K. Black:


*BILL MOYERS:* Yeah. Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?

*WILLIAM K. BLACK:* Absolutely.

*BILL MOYERS:* You are.

*WILLIAM K. BLACK:* Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They're scared to death of a collapse. They're afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we'll run screaming to the exits. And we won't rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it's foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, "We just can't let the big banks fail." That's wrong.

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Ever wonder why the banks had to be saved? Read on.