. . . because much of the content relates both to Washington, D.C., and "outside the beltway" -- the heartland, specifically Iowa -- and because after going from Iowa to Washington via Texas and California I subsequently returned, From DC 2 Iowa.
The discussion in today's blog entry is limited to this evening's [March 30] meeting regarding our local schools.
But later this week I may be writing about the six days that began last Wednesday evening with my Cyberspace Law Seminar, the Thursday morning visit at home with one of the nation's leading speech pathologists, Dorothy Craven (back here from Hawaii for a distinguished alum award), Thursday evening dinner (and the following day's breakfast) with a Japanese scholar, Shinji Uozumi, who came to discuss his work and mine promoting "community" media, Paul Krugman's lecture Friday afternoon and dinner Friday evening (I'll report on my exchange with him), and a Saturday trip to the Riverside Casino where the remarkably creative, talented, and very, very funny Tommy Smothers (aka, "Yo-You Man") suggested my wife and two of our sons come early for the sound check and to have a private dinner with him before the show that evening (thereby providing us an additional 1-1/2 hours of entertainment before the "Smothers Brothers" show at 8:00 with Dick -- and a visit with both of them after the show), and today, which started off with my teaching "media law" for 50 minutes to Professor Gigi Durham's "Journalism Issues" class in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication, following which in a half-hour I'll be meeting with a distinguished Serbian physicist and journalist, Baki Rexhepi, who is, among other things, Editor in Chief of RTV Spektri, and here on a State Department-sponsored "International Visitor Leadership" tour.
. . . Tonight: I can't attend the Parkview Church Iowa City Community School District public meeting at the Parkview Church this evening, so you please go and represent my positions along with your own..
Parkview, if you don't know, is at 15 Foster Road, off of North Dubuque Street to the left (as you're heading north), near the Iowa River, but before Dubuque crosses Interstate 80. The meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. and there's plenty of parking there.
It's an important meeting for the future of pre-K-12 education in Iowa City and Johnson County.
My own most recent comments about "boundary issues" followed the March 7 meeting held at Northwest Junior High regarding the proposed Roosevelt Elementary School demolition. Nicholas Johnson, "Roosevelt: Valuing Our Schools," March 9, 2009; and Nicholas Johnson, "Demolition Disaster," March 10, 2009. The former contains links to, among many other things, seven prior pieces on the issue, some from my time as a school board member, and the latter contains a reproduction of "Long Range Planning Process and Parameters, An ICCSD Board Document," Approved April 11, 2000.
If you're not yet familiar with it, I'd also urge you to take a look at the Web site of the local organization "Citizens for Outstanding Public Education in Iowa," available at http://www.copeiowa.org, and the op ed by one of its members in this morning's paper, Gary Whittington, "Looking at the big picture,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, March 30, 2009 ("preserving existing attendance areas and policies would have [a 'catastrophic effect'] on our schools and our community").
My previous writing on the subject, some of which is linked above, is the best source of my ideas, but here are some overly-summarized snapshots.
To make change politically possible announce plans/intentions that will not take effect for, say, six or seven years -- with the result that no child now in school would be affected by the proposal. With that in mind:
1. Build more, and smaller high schools. The best data indicates enrollments from, say, 600 to 800 students are ideal. Above that the problems increase: absence, dropouts, drugs, fights and bullying, graffiti and other property damage, teen pregnancy, etc. Increasing the enrollments at City, Tate and West is the exact opposite of the best way to go. Putting construction dollars into expanding them is irresponsible financial management as well as educational lunacy. (The least worst way to go down that ill-fated path would be to use temporaries.)
Question my assertion? As but three supporting examples of the rather overwhelming data and arguments favoring smaller schools in general and smaller high schools in particular, see Roger Ehrich, "The Impact of School Size," (with "Factors Affected by School Size" and some 13 referenced works); U.S. Department of Education, "School Size: Archived Information;"Karen Irmsher, "School Size," College of Education, University of Oregon, Clearinghouse on Educational Policy and Management, ERIC Digest 113, July 1997 ("None [of the studies] recommend fewer than 300 or more than 900 students").
Don't have the money to staff a fourth high school right now? It wouldn't be the first time an educational or other institution built first and staffed later. Besides, if you moved some of the students from the two overcrowded, conventional high schools into the new high school presumably some faculty would be shifted as well; it's not like all faculty positions would be in addition to those we already have.
West High's capacity is 1800; City High's is 1600; and we'll soon (2017) need space for 4,000 -- coincidentally 600 over our current capacity, a near ideal size for a high school. Why not build it now rather than wait for a crisis?
2. Consider (a) district-wide after-school activities centers, for, e.g., sports, music. This could be done by designating existing high schools as the District's center for all District high school students interested in a given activity, or a new, multi-purpose center for all activities. (b) Individual schools could retain their own teams and music groups, or (c) if we really want to win state-wide football and other championships year after year, we could have single "Iowa City" teams that draw on all schools.
3. Relieve over-crowding in high schools by adopting the recommendations of the National Commission on the High School Senior Year. It concludes the senior year is largely wasted by students anyway. By getting, say, different groups constituting roughly one-half of the senior class out of the building on any given day you can pretty much eliminate the overcrowded hallways some students (and teachers) now believe to be a problem. So what will they be doing out of the building? A variety of things, from attending courses at the University of Iowa or Kirkwood, to job shadowing assignments, to public policy research on community problems.
4. In elementary schools equalize class size, building utilization, boundary equity, while easing the burden on administrators, with the "cluster school" concept -- with three or four elementary schools to a cluster. Each school would have a "lead teacher," and the cluster would have one administrator/"principal." Some 50-to-70% of the enrollment for each would come from within a circle around that school; a population guaranteed attendance at that school. The rest would come from (a) within the much larger circle around all three or four schools, but outside the schools' smaller circles, and (b) from the areas beyond all the elementary schools' large circles. Those students could be assigned to schools at the discretion of the Administration, in an effort to balance the assignment of low income students, or achieve other goals.
5. If there would still be gross disparities in the percentages of low income students in each school, bus them the minimum distances necessary to achieve near parity of distribution.
6. And, of course, as COPE-Iowa suggests, make an equal effort with junior high schools and high schools with regard to percentage utilization of each building, and distribution of low income students.
7. Exhibit a little more willingness to "think outside the boxes" that we've always had. I'm told last evening's [March 30] meeting produced a couple: (a) make one of the junior highs a K-12 school. (There's Iowa City precedent in the University Elementary and High School, now "North Hall," that operated from the early 20th Century through the early 1970s.) (b) Move the 9th graders from West into the west-side junior high buildings. I'm not suggesting either of these suggestions would represent nirvana; but they do represent the kind of creative thinking about alternatives that we have failed to fully explore.
8. Someone needs to provide a little reality and tough talk for Iowa City's parents. The Iowa City Community School District is a public educational system, funded by all property tax payers regardless of whether they have children in school or not. I'm happy to pay my share, and probably most are willing to do so. As the bumper sticker has it, "if you think education's expensive just wait 'til you start paying for ignorance." Everyone benefits by living in a community with a well educated population.
But parents whose children are in the public schools are getting the benefit of an essentially cost-free education for their kids that would be at least $10-20,000 a year in a private school -- an amount that some could afford to pay now (and a fraction of what they will later be paying for a child's undergraduate and graduate tuition). That doesn't mean all of Iowa City's kids shouldn't get the best public education we can provide, that their parents shouldn't be kept in the loop on educational policy and future decisions, or that they are not entitled to being treated with dignity and respect by the District's administrators, teachers and staff.
In fact, parental involvement in the schools, monitoring students' homework, attending teacher conferences, considering a run for school board or other volunteer work in the schools, and attending a meeting like the one at Parkview March 30, are one of the most important factors in a child's academic success. So parental advocacy for students is natural, to be expected, and should even be encouraged.
But none of that means that parents can have it all; they cannot dictate District decisions (as they might at a private school). Professions of a sense of entitlement are misplaced. In a public school system district boundary lines may need to be redrawn for the sake of district-wide equity and efficiency in ways parents would not have chosen, courses may not be offered that a parent would like to have, days and hours of school schedules may change, and students may be bused in, or out, of schools -- including their own children -- in ways that cause the parents minor (or even major) inconvenience.
There's a lot there to discuss, debate (and probably dismiss) I realize. But it's some of what I've thought about as a school board member and since. (And of course see "Long Range Planning Process and Parameters, An ICCSD Board Document," Approved April 11, 2000, referenced above, which I played a major role in drafting.) _______________
* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
Like many Americans who believe an informed citizenry would be kind of nice to have in a self-governing democracy, I've also been concerned about the future of the newspaper industry as compared with, say, what it was during the first 60 years of my life. See Nicholas Johnson, "Whither Newspapers?" (offering some alternative futures and possible solutions to the industry's economic woes).
At breakfast this morning with an Iowa City businesswoman she reminded me of that blog entry.
When asked, she replied that she didn't have a copy of the morning paper (containing an item of relevance to our conversation). "Why?" I asked, incredulous that anyone doing local business could function without that particular paper.
"Oh, I tried to get it," she said, "I just never could get them to deliver it regularly."
It had been my problem as well -- a kind of multiple-variable analysis, given that (a) sometimes the paper was not delivered at all, and when it was (b) it was impossible to predict when that might be, or (c) where it would be located.
So it seemed to me timely to do a follow-up blog entry to the earlier "Of Newspapers and Nails." Here it is.
There's good news and bad news.
The good news is that for a full six days straight both papers were at the kitchen door by 5:00 a.m.
The not so good news was that the record-setting series of timely, well-placed deliveries then changed.
The other not so good news involved our effort to suspend delivery for a few days over spring break. In "Of Newspapers and Nails" I noted that the paper that is a little erratic in delivery also has no humans to handle customers' calls on days when they receive no paper at all.
It turns out that one needs to "talk" to that same machine to suspend delivery. And, like the machine's failure to make a second attempt at delivery, in this instance it was also unsuccessful in suspending delivery.
And then this morning, before going off to breakfast, it turned into another of those scavenger-hunt-for-your-newspaper kind of days. Ultimately I found it, on the driveway, under a vehicle.
This blog entry is not about the delivery services accorded customers in one neighborhood. When the paper is delivered at all we can usually find it and, if not, just read it online.
This blog entry is about the future of the newspaper industry generally.
To borrow a bit of advice, the industry needs to control what it can, accept what it cannot, and be wise enough to know the difference.
Newspaper delivery is something it can control.
And it's kind of important.
Neither how much advertising a paper has, nor how many Pulitzer Prizes its reporters have received, will make any difference if it can't get the papers to its subscribers. That's why I used the "for the want of a nail" analogy in "Of Newspapers and Nails."
Even the smallest of details matters in any institutional enterprise. And newspaper delivery is no small detail in the newspaper industry.
Punishing Thieves in Suits: Piano Wire or Stocks? (brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
As I've repeatedly conceded, I don't claim expertise as an economist. On the other hand, I've also urged that our instincts and intuition are entitled to more weight than we're modestly inclined to accord them. Nicholas Johnson, "Trust Your Instincts, Auto Bailout's Terrible Idea," November 14, 2008.
Clearly, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers do know something about economics.
Equally clearly the New York Times staff of editorial writers and columnists are not necessarily among the nation's top economists -- although one did win the Nobel Prize in economics, which is not something those three can claim .
Nonetheless, it was reassuring in terms of my "trust your instincts" theory that so much of what appeared in the Times over the weekend echoed analyses and concerns I've expressed over the last six months in the blog entries linked below.
For example, while I'd prefer to let the market sort this out, rather than simply throw taxpayers' dollars at bankers, if we are going to bail out those who have brought us this disaster I'd rather it be used to purchase the banks ("nationalization") rather than their so-called "toxic assets."
On Saturday the Times editorialized:
This crisis is unlikely to turn around until President Obama and his aides come up with a plan for failing banks that does not arbitrarily reject the idea of nationalization.
Thursday morning [March 19] I wrote:
And if it makes no sense to try to revive the auto economy by giving billions to auto executives [when consumers would rather save their money than buy cars], it makes even less sense to try to revive an entire economy by transferring trillions of taxpayer dollars to bankers. Here again, the problem is not that businesses and consumers don't have the opportunity to run up even more debt. The problem is that they have the wisdom not to want to do so, especially at this time. ["What a Mess," March 19, 2009.]
Saturday's editorial continues:
On Wednesday [March 18], it [the Fed] announced that it would buy hundreds of billions of dollars more [of mortgage-backed securities] and as much as $300 billion of Treasury bonds. . . . Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that this will work. With unemployment rising, debt loads high and household wealth falling, consumers may be reluctant to resume spending anytime soon, no matter how low rates and prices go. And even if consumers and businesses want to borrow, banks — stung by their own losses — may not be willing to lend.
I have repeatedly noted that the multi-trillion-dollar transfer of taxpayers' money to the banking and financial community has emphasized only the benefits of a rational benefit-cost analysis. There are potential downsides of this approach as well -- most notably, inflation -- and that the Administration and Congress have, at a minimum, an obligation to evaluate, and then share with the American people, those costs and risks.
The Times editorial went on:
To buy up securities, the Fed creates money. To provide fiscal stimulus, Congress borrows money. The more money that is created and borrowed, the greater the risk of future inflation and higher interest rates. . . . [A] forthright acknowledgment of the risks is necessary to keep policy makers from venturing too far into dangerous territory.rates.
By this morning [Monday, March 23] at least four, count 'em four, Times columnists, card-carrying members of the "liberal media," were expressing something far shy of enthusiasm for President Obama.
Paul Krugman (that Nobel Prize winner) writes of his "Financial Policy Despair":
If the reports [of the Administration's bank rescue plan] are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy — specifically, the “cash for trash” plan proposed, then abandoned, six months ago by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
I have expressed concern about the Administration and Fed secrecy regarding what the banks and AIG have done with the money we gave them. Krugman notes that,
the administration has failed to quell the public’s doubts about what banks are doing with taxpayer money.
From the outset I've expressed concern about the President's close ties to the financial community, that community's financial contributions to him and members of Congress, the role of Goldman Sachs and Geithner's selection of the firm's lobbyist, no less, as his chief of staff, and the seeming obliviousness of the lot of them to the public feelings about corporate excesses.
Krugman comments:
And now Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they’re doing. It’s as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street.
In "What A Mess" I wrote:
[E]ven the world's best and most honorable bankers couldn't solve this problem with that much money. Trickle down doesn't work. In addition to common sense, intuition, and long history, we now have the lack of results from the most recent six months of trying.
Paul Krugman shares this conclusion:
But the real problem with this plan is that it won’t work. . . . And no amount of financial hocus-pocus — for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to — will change that fact.
On Sunday [March 22] Tom Friedman bemoaned the consequences of what he called "politics worse than usual":
There don’t seem to be any adults at the top — nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle. . . . Right now we have an absence of inspirational leadership. From business we hear about institutions too big to fail — no matter how reckless. From bankers we hear about contracts too sacred to break — no matter how inappropriate. And from our immature elected officials we hear about how it was all “the other guy’s fault.” . . . [Meanwhile,] our country, alas, is not too big to fail.
Maureen Dowd shares my concern about the consequences of the close ties between the Administration, AIG and Wall Street. She thinks "we need less smooth jazz and more martial brass" and, inspired by Michelle Obama's declaration that the President (and their daughters) are going to be pulling weeds in her new White House garden "whether they like it or not," believes "the wrong Obama is in the Oval."
[T]he fury directed at the robber barons by the robbed blind in America has been getting hotter, not cooler. And that’s because the president and his Treasury secretary have been coddling the Wall Street elite, fretting that if they curtail executives’ pay and perks too much, if they make the negotiations with those who siphoned our 401(k)’s too tough, the spoiled Sherman McCoys will run away, the rescue plan will fail and the markets will wither. . . .
The shafters of the universe have been treated with such kid gloves that they remain obnoxiously oblivious. Vikram “Pandit the Bandit” at Citigroup, which received $50 billion in bailout money, is . . . spending $10 million to renovate his Park Avenue offices . . .
Fannie Mae . . . brazenly intends to give $1 million apiece in retention bonuses to four top executives, even though the word retention in a depression is pure Ionesco. Freddie Mac . . . has yet to disclose its planned bonuses. . . .
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who grew up as a Republican . . . sees things from the point of view of that wellspring of masters of the universe, Goldman Sachs. (His Treasury chief of staff was a Goldman lobbyist, who fought then-Senator Obama’s attempt to curb executive compensation — just as Geithner has done within the administration.) . . .
Virtually unnoticed amid the bonus imbroglio was A.I.G.’s grudging disclosure that it had funneled $93 billion — more than half its federal money to date — to its high-flying insurees, including Goldman Sachs . . .. Yet as Goldman sneers at the federal money at the front door, it’s taking delivery of billions in no-strings federal money through the back door. . . .
The issue is how much we must pay to preserve financial stability over all, not how much one company promised to pay. At this point, A.I.G. seems to be the only party paying face value on toxic derivatives.
Frank Rich used some very tough language to hit on a number of the issues that I have written about, many of which are identified above. He also mentions an issue (the legality of much of what was done) that I've often described in these words: "the problem is not just that corporations violate the law, the much more serious problem is that they are writing the law."
A charming visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger . . . his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. . . .
The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public’s revulsion at the moneyed insiders’ culture illuminated by [former Senator Tom] Daschle’s post-Senate career. Yet last week’s events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster.
Otherwise it never would have used Lawrence Summers, the chief economic adviser, as a messenger just as the A.I.G. rage was reaching a full boil last weekend. Summers is so tone-deaf that he makes Geithner seem like Bobby Kennedy. . . .
[AIG] has, in essence, been laundering its $170 billion in taxpayers’ money by paying off its reckless partners in gambling and greed, from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup on Wall Street to Société Générale and Deutsche Bank abroad.
Summers was even more highhanded in addressing the “retention bonuses” . . ..
[M]ost Americans don’t know how A.I.G. brought the world’s financial system to near-ruin or what credit-default swaps are. They may not even know what A.I.G. stands for. But Americans do make the connection between their fears about their own jobs and their broad understanding of the A.I.G. debacle.
They know that the corporate bosses who may yet lay them off have sometimes been as obscenely overcompensated for failure as Wall Street’s bonus babies. . . .
Since Americans get the big picture of this inequitable system, that grotesque reality dwarfs any fine print. That’s why it doesn’t matter that the disputed bonuses at A.I.G. amount to less than one-tenth of one percent of its bailout. . . .
What made Jon Stewart’s takedown of Jim Cramer resonate was less his specific brief against CNBC’s cheerleading for bad stocks than his larger indictment of the gaping economic inequality that defined the bubble . . . [the] “two markets”. . ..
No one is more commanding on this subject than our president. . . . But rhetoric won’t tamp down the anger out there, and neither will calculated displays of presidential “outrage.” . . .
Obama must do what he has repeatedly promised but not always done: make everything about his economic policies transparent and hold every player accountable . . . actually answering the questions that officials like Geithner and Summers routinely duck.
Inquiring Americans have the right to know why it took six months for us to learn (some of) what A.I.G. did with our money. . . . [W]hy Goldman, which declared that its potential losses with A.I.G. were “immaterial,” nonetheless got the largest-known A.I.G. handout of taxpayers’ cash ($12.9 billion) while also receiving a TARP bailout. We need to be told why retention bonuses went to some 50 bankers who not only were in the toxic A.I.G. unit but who left despite the “retention” jackpots. . . . And where are the M.R.I.’s from those “stress tests” the Treasury Department is giving those banks?
[I]t's hard to imagine taxpayers shelling out billions for a second bank bailout unless there’s a full accounting of every dime of the first, and true transparency for the new plan whose rollout is becoming the most attenuated striptease since the heyday of Gypsy Rose Lee. . . .
[W]hy . . . has there been . . . so much evasiveness so far? The answer, I fear, is that too many of the administration’s officials are too marinated in the insiders’ culture to police it, reform it or own up to their own past complicity with it. . . .
The “dirty little secret,” Obama told Leno on Thursday, is that “most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal.” An even dirtier secret is that a prime mover in keeping that stuff legal was Summers [of whom his mentor, Robert Rubin] wrote in his 2003 memoir . . . underestimated how the risk of derivatives might multiply “under extraordinary circumstances.”
Given that Summers worked for a secretive hedge fund, D. E. Shaw, . . . you have to wonder how he can now sell the administration’s plan for buying up toxic assets with the help of hedge funds. It will look like another giveaway to his own insiders’ club. As for Geithner, people might take him more seriously if he gave a credible account of why, while at the New York Fed, he and the Goldman alumnus Hank Paulson let Lehman Brothers fail but saved the Goldman-trading ally A.I.G.
To remove any possible question I want to repeat that with which I began. I suffer no illusion that anyone -- members of Congress, the Obama Administration, or New York Times' columnists -- are even reading this blog, let alone influenced by it. Nor do I believe that I've come up with insights over the past six months or so that had not occurred to others. Indeed, that's exactly my point.
If I, and thousands of other bloggers, can come up with these insights and analysis drawing on nothing much beyond intuition, why oh why cannot our elected and appointed officials do as well?
So what should we do with these folks who've brought the world to this economic disaster?
At dinner last evening talk turned to appropriate punishments for those who are coming to taxpayers for multi-trillion-dollar bailouts necessitated by a 40% (give or take) decline in home values and stock prices brought on by their own incompetence and greed.
Nicholas Night, who hails from Bisbee, Arizona ("the town too high to care" -- a response to Tombstone's claim to be "the town too tough to die"), made reference to AIG Ed Liddy's concern regarding threats he's received from those who believe piano wire should be put around the necks of the most guilty of AIG executives. Bisbee is something of a music town, and Nick observed that there are now so many electronic keyboards in use that there may well be a shortage of piano wire -- at least in Bisbee.
So what he next proposed is that they be put in stocks. No, not the kind they're already in, the stocks of profiteers; the stocks the Puritans put folks in, with criminals' heads, arms and legs sticking through and locked down. Guards would be provided to protect them, so that nothing more damaging than tomatoes and rotten eggs would be thrown.
After being freed from the stocks they, and indeed all white collar criminals in Nick's proposal, would then be required to pay back in full whatever losses they'd caused or thefts they'd pulled off. They would have to earn that money selling ice cream bars by driving a truck through neighborhoods primarily occupied by persons of a different color from themselves. And these customers could pick a 38-second excerpt from a song that the perps would have to listen to over-and-over, constantly, until the debt was paid.
It's possible you had to be there, but I think Night is on to something. If Obama is going to continue to refuse to prosecute and imprison them the least we can do is identify who they are and do some form or another of public shaming.
__________
Related Blog Entries on Global Economy and Bailouts
* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
Since last September I have repeatedly been arguing against transfers of massive amounts of taxpayer money to those who created this problem, for reliance upon "the market" (with examples of where and how it has been working even during this crisis), against "trickle down," and for trickle up. (E.g., "There are three groups of people I care about in this mess -- none of which is made up of Wall Street or Main Street bankers. I am concerned about (a) depositors, (b) workers, and (c) homeowners." Nicholas Johnson, "Alternatives to 'The Plan,'" September 28, 2008.)
And speaking of "the marketplace," note the comment in this morning's New York Times about the 90% tax on bonuses that "Several banks are considering refusing to participate in government financial rescue programs if the bill passes, according to a person briefed on the banks’ plans." Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn, "House Approves 90% Tax on Bonuses After Bailouts,"New York Times, March 20, 2009.
Secretary Paulson had passed along an earlier, comparable threat last fall.
There is no positive spin one can put upon those sentiments. (a) If the banks, if the market, will function with or without these bailouts, why are we giving them trillions of dollars of our money? (b) If their executives are so selfish, greedy and unpatriotic that, even though their incomes put them somewhere between the top 2% and top 1/100th of 1% of the nation's wage earners, they would rather see their bank go bankrupt than lose their precious bonus, why would we want to protect them from failure (so long as the depositors are protected by FDIC)?
Much as I continue to hope that Washington knows what it is doing and will eventually succeed and prove me wrong, I must confess to a little sense of vindication this morning [March 20].
Presumably the goal here is to reverse a downward spiral of reduced sales, leading to reduced manufacturing, leading to increased unemployment, leading to a repetition of this further deepening cycle, that has thrown business and consumers alike into a personally rational (even if group irrational) reassessment of their borrow and spend behavior. They want to reduce expenses and debt, use cash rather than credit, save rather than spend. Businesses cut costs by laying off workers; consumers by no longer running up debt, spending money they don't have to buy things they don't need.
As we've discovered with the auto industry, you can't revive an economy through a program of increased automobile sales by putting billions of dollars into the hands of auto executives -- especially those with a proven track record of inability to make cars people want to buy or otherwise run a corporation at a profit. The problem never was a shortage of GM cars coming off the assembly lines, or sitting in dealers' show rooms.
The problem was that there weren't all that many people who wanted to buy them in the best of times. And now, in what is fast becoming the worst of times, the problem is not a lack of opportunity for consumers to take on a hefty increase in their debt load to buy a new car. The problem is that laid off workers are not the only ones who are hunkering down, reapplying the Depression-era wisdom ("Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without"), and wisely deciding this is not the time to be taking on more debt.
And if it makes no sense to try to revive the auto economy by giving billions to auto executives, it makes even less sense to try to revive an entire economy by transferring trillions of taxpayer dollars to bankers. Here again, the problem is not that businesses and consumers don't have the opportunity to run up even more debt. The problem is that they have the wisdom not to want to do so, especially at this time.
"Trickle down" didn't work in the best of times, and certainly won't work now.
And I'm not even talking about fairness and equity, "government by campaign contribution," outlandish bonuses, or the near criminality and stupidity of putting these trillions of dollars into the hands of those who, like auto executives, have a demonstrated inability to run a corporation with ethics, common decency and common sense (not to mention long term survival and profit), executives who created the problem through their own greed.
No. Of course those are reasons enough not to be giving them our grandchildren's trillions of dollars. But my point for now is that even the world's best and most honorable bankers couldn't solve this problem with that much money. Trickle down doesn't work. In addition to common sense, intuition, and long history, we now have the lack of results from the most recent six months of trying.
The solution? I won't repeat everything laid out on this blog over the last six months (most of which are linked at the bottom of this entry), except to say that it involves trickle up not trickle down, a focus on the consumer, on 300 million Americans, not 300 thieves in suits, a massive and yet precisely targeted jobs program, mortgage relief for deserving homeowners, immediate health care for all during the downturn (while long term solutions are being crafted), and continued protection for bank depositors (not investors).
If that had been how we'd invested all those trillions given to bankers over the past few months I think we'd be well out of this mess by now.
Meanwhile, on top of everything discussed in this blog entry yesterday, below, there are now a couple of other, equally disgusting revelations.
(1) Apparently taxpayer protection language -- that AIG couldn't be paying millions in bonuses to the guys who created this problem while receiving billions of taxpayer dollars -- was once in Senate and House versions of a bill and then deleted under cover of darkness in conference as a result of Secretary Geithner's pressure on Senator Chris Dodd. Raymond Hernandez and Thomas Kaplan, "Connecticut Senator Draws Voters’ Ire for His Bonus Role,"New York Times, March 20, 2009 ("[AIG's] employees, political action committees and subsidiaries have made campaign contributions of nearly $300,000 to [Senator Chris] Dodd since 1989. . . . [Senator Dodd] finds himself a symbol of the political establishment’s coziness with tainted corporations and a target of populist wrath over their excesses. . . . That change [in the bill] exempted bonuses protected by contracts, like those at American International Group . . . that received billions in federal bailout money. Mr. Dodd said that his staff revised the bill at the urging of Treasury officials . . ..").
Edmund L. Andrews and Jackie Calmes, "Many in Government Knew Weeks Ago About A.I.G. Bonuses,"New York Times, March 20, 2009 ("Interviews with senior Federal Reserve and Treasury officials, as well as members of Congress, leave little doubt that the bonus program was a disaster hiding in plain sight. Mr. Geithner is not the only one who appears not to have understood the populist fury the bonuses would set off. Career staff officials at the Treasury, Fed and Federal Reserve Bank of New York exchanged e-mail messages about the A.I.G. bonus program as early as late February, according to a person familiar with the matter. A.I.G. itself revealed the bonus plan in regulatory filings last September.").
The rationale? The sanctity of contracts. You can't retroactively change an employment contract. Oh, really? Apparently that's a legal principle only applicable to thieves in suits. Auto workers' contracts, and those of millions of other workers across America, have already been changed, with more to come -- contracts regarding wages, health care benefits, and pension funds. It's just one more example of the stench that's accompanied this con game from the beginning.
(2) Apparently Treasury secretaries and other appointees are not the only folks who don't feel they need to pay taxes. A hefty proportion of the corporations receiving billions of taxpayer dollars aren't paying their taxes either.
"[T]he AP reported Thursday [March 19] that 13 firms receiving billions of dollars in federal bailout money owe a total of more than $220 million in unpaid federal taxes. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., chairman of a House subcommittee overseeing the federal bailout, said two firms owe more than $100 million apiece. . . . Banks and other firms receiving federal money were required to sign contracts stating they had no unpaid taxes, Lewis said. But the Treasury Department did not ask them to turn over their tax records . . .." "House OKs Hefty Tax on AIG Bonuses," PBS Online News Hour, March 19, 2009.
It turns out this is actually only a small part of a much larger problem: "Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released . . . by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress." Linley Browning, "Study Tallies Corporations Not Paying Income Tax,"New York Times, August 12, 2008.
There are some feigned expressions of outrage from Washington, that those who created the problems through personal enrichment are now enriching themselves further with taxpayer-funded multi-million-dollar bonuses, but little in the way of prosecutions, or efforts to get our money back. There are expressions that "we must re-examine and improve our regulatory model so that this never happens again." But we have had this conversation before; this is the happening that is "again;" and the problem is not entirely the model, it is also the people running it -- and few to none of them seem to be being prosecuted either.
Congress has a lot of explaining to do -- after we clean out the lot of them. I've documented before how those who make campaign contributions in the $100,000 to $1,000,000 range generally get something like a 1000-to-2000-to-one return on their "investment" -- for an investment it is, and one that pays much better returns than any on Wall Street. Nicholas Johnson, "Campaigns: You Pay $4 or $4000,"Des Moines Register, July 21, 1996, p. C2.
So it comes as no surprise to me to find out that the financial community has contributed some $5 billion to Congress over the past 10 years in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses. After all, members of Congress and senators are honorable people; they don't take $5 billion from someone and then give them a poke in the eye with a sharp stick -- not if they want another $5 billion over the next 10 years. They behave as they've been behaving; they give Wall Street its $5-to-10 trillion return on its $5 billion investment. See the report, Robert Weissman and James Donahue, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," Essential Information/Consumer Education Foundation, March 2009, linked from "$5 Billion in Political Contributions Bought Wall Street Freedom from Regulation, Restraint, Report Finds," March 4, 2009, Wall Street Watch.
Nicholas Johnson, "The Story of Stuff," March 16, 2009. And for more detail about what AIG and the bankers did and how they did it see the "Prologue" and "No More for AIG" in Nicholas Johnson, "Bankers as Arsonists," March 3, 2009 ("[Arsonists'] fires are not 'acts of God.' Nor is this economic calamity. Both are the clearly predictable result of reckless and irresponsible behavior by humans. The only difference is that those who deliberately set the woods on fire don't personally profit financially from their acts. These men and women did.").
But it didn't. If anything, yesterday just made it worse.
Of course the $160 million in extra pay for those who brought down AIG and the world's economy with it is outrageous -- as is the role of the past and present administrations in going along with it. So are the expensive corporate gatherings at spas and expensive resorts, the $50 million private jets for executives, and Bernie Madoff's jewelry and yachts.
But all of that day-long ranting and raving by members of congress yesterday is one big shell-and-pea game of diversion. Those AIG bonus payments are less than 1/10th of 1% of the $170 billion taxpayers are in hock to for AIG. That doesn't make the bonus payments any more justified, but it does kind of put them in perspective.
Meanwhile the President, understandably, wanting to get as far from Washington as possible went to California to get some positive vibes and re-creation from "the people," doing what he does best: campaigning at a town meeting. Helene Cooper, "President Takes Campaign for Budget to California,"New York Times, March 19, 2009.
He answered that part. Geithner may have frightened Obama enough to make him leave town, but not enough to reduce the President's professions of "confidence" in him.
The part of the question left unanswered; actually the first part?
What do you have to say about that $100,000 campaign contribution you got from AIG?
Yes, even the President is not free of the questions raised by the $5 billion the financial community contributed to public officials over the past 10 years. (See the "Government by Campaign Contribution" excerpt, above.)
And at another appearance yesterday he almost literally echoed the line quoted in that excerpt, that we should see to it that "this never happens again": "My goal is to make sure that we never put ourselves in this kind of position again." Mary Williams Walsh and David M. Herszenhorn, "AIG Seeking Return of Half of Its Bonuses,"New York Times, March 19, 2009.
Yeah, right; who can argue with that? But isn't it just another diversion? When we focus on future reforms, as when we focus on 1/10th of 1% of the problem, we aren't focusing on what's going on right now!
And what's going on right now is what AIG is doing with that $170 billion. To the extent AIG executives are not entertaining themselves at resorts, and enriching themselves with bonuses, they are essentially flowing through that $170 billion of ours to other members of that vast army of "thieves in suits."
And who might they be? Try Goldman Sachs -- yes, the same Goldman Sachs we've already financed with taxpayer money directly -- now getting our taxpayer money from us indirectly, by way of payments of our money we gave to AIG, to the tune of $8 billion.
And then the Fed, in another burst of great generosity, decided "Oh, what the hell, another day another trillion dollars" -- and I'm no more confident we'll ever find out where this trillion will go than the last, now uncounted, trillions of our money they've already given away. The resulting increases in the prices of gold and oil, and decline in the value of the dollar, gives you a clue as to how the world views this additional step toward inflation. Edmund L. Andrews, "Fed Plans to Inject Another $1 Trillion to Aid the Economy," New York Times, March 19, 2009.
No, I'm afraid yesterday didn't make me feel any better.
Nor will today, as Congress endeavors to redeem itself in our eyes for falling sway to to the $5 billion in campaign contributions and lobbying of the financial industry by passing a special extra tax of 90% on those bonuses. Even if it passes, and even if it's legal, it really is far, far too little too late. Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn, "House Approves 90% Tax on Bonuses After Bailouts,"New York Times, March 20, 2009.
P.S. Congressman Barney Frank said yesterday he wanted to have the names of those who received bonuses, and how much each has returned to the government. AIG CEO Liddy expressed concern of mass assassinations by outraged members of the public were that to be done. Mary Williams Walsh and David M. Herszenhorn, "AIG Seeking Return of Half of Its Bonuses,"New York Times, March 19, 2009. If that proves to be a reasonable concern, rather than fail to reveal anything about this outrage, here's a modest suggestion.
Let's at least start with a list, released to the public and media, with the names redacted and replaced with numbers, along with the title/job description of the individual (or department -- enough to give some idea of what they were paid to do, as narrowly identified as possible without revealing their identity), along with what they did to earn the bonus or "retention" payment, their total salary, benefits, and other perks, the amount of the bonus, and how much has been returned.
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Related Blog Entries on Global Economy and Bailouts
* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
"The Story of Stuff," the Alternative, Government by Campaign Contribution, and Population Control (brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Note: Since writing this, a reader posted a comment (see below) taking issue with the accuracy of "The Story of Stuff" video (embedded below). Indeed, "taking issue" is an understatement. He is "appalled" that I am "enthralled" by a video that is "beyond belief" and "so full of patent falsehoods" as to be little more than a "load of neo-Marxist garbage."
The comment was posted here on May 14. By coincidence, the very next evening Bill Moyers led one of his "Journal" segments with an excerpt from that very same "Story of Stuff" video, prior to his interview with the New York Times former science reporter, Daniel Goleman. The Web site for this segment, which contains a link to the entire "Story of Stuff," explains,
"Goleman's latest book is ECOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE: HOW KNOWING THE HIDDEN IMPACTS OF WHAT WE BUY CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING. The book argues that new information technologies will create 'radical transparency,' allowing us to know the environmental, health, and social consequences of what we buy. As shoppers use point-of-purchase ecological comparisons to guide their purchases, market share will shift to support steady, incremental upgrades in how products are made — changing everything for the better."
The comment on this blog entry does not cite any specific "patent falsehood," nor would I research and respond with any confirming sources of data if it had. I'll leave that to those who, like Goleman, write books rather than blog entries, or research and produce nationally-distributed television programs, like Moyers.
Of course, everyone should make an effort to be as accurate as possible in what they put into a video, such as "The Story of Stuff" -- or the videos they embed in a blog entry, as I have done.
But there is a concept in defamation law that I think is applicable by analogy in this instance. It is referred to as "the sting of the charges." It goes to the question of the "truth" defense. For example, if the plaintiff alleges that he was defamed by the defendant's charge that the plaintiff embezzled "over $100,000 from the bank," because in fact he only embezzled $87,000, the plaintiff can still use the "truth" defense because the inaccuracy did not diminish the fact that "the sting of the charges" (embezzlement of a significant amount) was true.
What "The Story of Stuff" and Goleman and Moyers and perhaps hundreds of others with and without scientific credentials seem to be suggesting is that there are economic, ecological, and epidemiological externalities that flow from our consumer consumption. They take into account the extraction process that obtains the basic natural resources, the manufacturing process, transportation to our stores, and the ultimate disposal of the product and the packaging in which it comes. As the story of these consequences gets around, governmental and personal decisions can better take them into account -- for the benefit of ourselves and future generations.
Debates about details aside, it seems to me "the sting of the charges" is something to which we need pay attention.
-- N.J., May 16, 2009
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A week or so ago I posted a blog entry called, "Don't Buy Stuff," March 6, 2009. It addressed the values of paying cash, my experience doing so with automobiles, and it included the "Saturday Night Live" 2:28-minute sketch entitled "Don't Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford" ["Don't Buy Stuff: The sure-fire way to get out of debt," NBC Saturday Night Live, Season 31, Episode 12, aired February 4, 2006].
If you missed that blog entry you might want to go back and check it out, along with that "Saturday Night Live" sketch.
Meanwhile, today I'd like to continue the theme with a little more in-depth look at "The Story of Stuff."
The Story of Stuff
A week ago Tom Friedman asked, "What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: 'No more.'” Thomas L. Friedman, "The Inflection is Near?"New York Times, March 7, 2009 [hard copy version, March 8, 2009, p. WK12, New York edition]. The entire column is very much worth reading.
His is a profound and fundamental question being asked, and discussed, around the world today as the friends and beneficiaries of bankers and financiers, who are now running Washington, blindly continue on with their multi-trillion-dollar giveaway of our grandchildren's money in a failing effort to reconstruct the capitalist, consumer economy that enabled greed to fuel a drive off the cliff -- and will undoubtedly succeed in doing so again if we merely rebuild what we had before.
"The Story of Stuff" is a video narrated by Annie Leonard and made possible by the Tides Foundation, Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption, and Free Range Studios; see also http://www.storyofstuff.com/. My thanks to Trina L.C. Sonnenberg, TLC Promotions, Internet Marketing Maven, for bringing it to my attention.
The video is suitable for all ages -- and if you're a teacher of a subject as to which it would be relevant (whether K-12 or college) you might want to think about it as a discussion-starter for your class. Although it runs 21:19 I think you'll find it very much worth your time (as a summary of what would otherwise have taken you an entire semester in a classroom!) -- entertaining in its own way as well as educational. It contains occasional observations some might consider ideological -- causing you either to cheer or sneer depending on your orientation -- but they are few and far between and seemed to me mostly just factual.
India: The Alternative
NPR's "Morning Edition" had a segment this morning that provides one illustration of how another country is faring, and why, during this global economic collapse. "Why India's Economy Fares Better Than Others," NPR, Morning Edition, March 16, 2009 ("Steve Inskeep talks with Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute for International Economics about how India [is] . . . significantly less affected than the U.S. and Europe").
It's as if the country's billion people had watched "The Story of Stuff" video and decided to begin practicing its clear implications.
India hasn't had a banking problem because it decided "government is the solution, not the problem," and nationalized all its banks long before our bankers became "thieves in suits."
It hasn't bought into the idea that global trade is good for everybody, and let its companies outsource, go offshore, and otherwise destroy jobs, as we have with NAFTA in the name of increased corporate profit. It only exports about 20% of its production -- comparied to some 40-50% in China -- so it doesn't feel as much hurt when global trade declines.
And why haven't its farmers been hurt economically? Because, for whatever reason, India has bought into the idea ecologists have long been urging upon us: eat locally grown foods. Not only is it a way of supporting the agricultural sector, it also radically cuts back on the economic, energy, and ecological consequences of transporting foods -- often into other agricultural areas, as we do in Iowa.
The result? While the U.S. economy is now going into "negative growth" India's economy, while declining, was 9% growth annually, is now 7%, and has 5% predicted for the future.
None of this is to say that all is wonderful in India -- I presume you've seen the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" -- but it does provide a specific example of what we, too, could do if we would really take the lessons of "The Story of Stuff" to heart.
Government by Campaign Contribution
There are some feigned expressions of outrage from Washington, that those who created the problems through personal enrichment are now enriching themselves further with taxpayer-funded multi-million-dollar bonuses, but little in the way of prosecutions, or efforts to get our money back. There are expressions that "we must re-examine and improve our regulatory model so that this never happens again." But we have had this conversation before; this is the happening that is "again;" and the problem is not entirely the model, it is also the people running it -- and few to none of them seem to be being prosecuted either.
Congress has a lot of explaining to do -- after we clean out the lot of them. I've documented before how those who make campaign contributions in the $100,000 to $1,000,000 range generally get something like a 1000-to-2000-to-one return on their "investment" -- for an investment it is, and one that pays much better returns than any on Wall Street. Nicholas Johnson, "Campaigns: You Pay $4 or $4000,"Des Moines Register, July 21, 1996, p. C2.
So it comes as no surprise to me to find out that the financial community has contributed some $5 billion to Congress over the past 10 years in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses. After all, members of Congress and senators are honorable people; they don't take $5 billion from someone and then give them a poke in the eye with a sharp stick -- not if they want another $5 billion over the next 10 years. They behave as they've been behaving; they give Wall Street its $5-to-10 trillion return on its $5 billion investment. See the report, Robert Weissman and James Donahue, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," Essential Information/Consumer Education Foundation, March 2009, linked from "$5 Billion in Political Contributions Bought Wall Street Freedom from Regulation, Restraint, Report Finds," March 4, 2009, Wall Street Watch.
And Population Control?
Of course, as my son, Sherman, is constantly reminding everyone -- most recently me, by email, this morning, "It's gotten to the point where I have a hard time listening to the environmentalists and smart growth advocates. Of course I agree with most of their ideas, but I just don't see how a person/group can rant and rave about the many ways in which humans are destroying the Earth yet not even mention population control as a primary part of any solution."
I'd say what he's pointing out is "the elephant in the living room" but for the pathos: one of the many consequences of largely uncontrolled population growth is its impact on endangered species, all wildlife in general, and elephants in particular.
More on "Stuff"
As far back as 1972 I was writing about this stuff, and my stuff, in a book that still enjoys a bit of a cult following, called Test Pattern for Living. It's available as a free download from my Web site, if you're interested.
My son, Gregory, has a more current version of the theme in his new book, Put Your Life on a Diet.
And let us never forget George Carlin, 1937-2008, and his insights about our "stuff." "George Carlin Talks About 'Stuff,'" George Carlin's classic standup routine about the importance in our lives of "stuff" from his appearance at Comic Relief in 1986, from YouTube:
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
Today's blog entry is a reprint of an op ed column of mine in this morning's Gazette.
Don't Fear Fairness Doctrine Nicholas Johnson The Gazette March 13, 2009, p. A4 (brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
For reasons difficult to fathom, some Republicans fear a born-again Fairness Doctrine.
For example, Richard Jacobson, willing to assert his opposition to “fairness,” writes in the March 1 Gazette that Fairness Doctrine advocates are “liberals” who “seek to stifle free speech.”
For the last 30 years, Washington’s Republicans — and Democrats — have been working the horses hard as they drove their buggy toward the mirage of the promised land of their dreams: “marketplace deregulation.” Now they’ve taken that buggy over the inevitable cliff, and the resulting global economic collapse is only one of the costly consequences.
Loss of common-sense media regulation is another.
Iowa’s Herbert Hoover, that great lefty radical, was the secretary of commerce who was asked by the radio industry to please regulate it. Out of Hoover’s “radio conferences” of the 1920s came the broadcasters’ recommendations, enacted as the Radio Act of 1927.
Broadcasters recognized they were being licensed to profit from public property, the airwaves, and that the privilege carried with it a public responsibility. From the beginning, an evolving Fairness Doctrine has been considered a central feature of that responsibility. For 30 years, its application was seldom if ever questioned by the public, broadcasters, FCC, courts or Congress.
When challenged in the Supreme Court in 1969, the court shocked broadcasters by unanimously upholding the doctrine’s constitutionality. (Lower courts subsequently ruled the Federal Communications Commission had the authority to repeal it. The FCC’s deregulation revolution swept away the Fairness Doctrine.)
Misunderstandings about the Fairness Doctrine abound.
There are many reasons it couldn’t have been used to censor, let alone cancel, Rush Limbaugh.
For starters, it didn’t apply to talk show hosts — or any other programmers. They’re not licensed by the FCC. It was only a requirement for overthe-air radio and TV stations’ overall programming.
It didn’t apply to cableonly channels, and certainly not newspapers.
It did not require “fairness.”
It did not require equal time — disparities of 10-to1 might be acceptable.
It did not give any individual a right to air time.
The FCC didn’t monitor programming for violations. It depended on citizen complaints. Few, if any, stations have ever lost a license or suffered serious sanction for a mere fairness violation.
All it forbid, in effect, was the private use of this licensed, community resource as an unrelieved mouthpiece of one-sided propaganda.
In fact, it would be virtually impossible for responsible journalists to violate the Fairness Doctrine. It simply required what they would do anyway: report on at least some “controversial issues of public importance” and, when doing so, present a sampling of views.
That would be required by editors of papers, and news directors of stations — and their owners. Why? It boosts audience numbers and advertising revenues.
The Fairness Doctrine: It’s not just a good idea, it ought to be the law — again. _______________ Nicholas Johnson is a former FCC Commissioner who now teaches at the University of Iowa College of Law.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
I have written enough, on a variety of subjects, over the years that it is no longer uncommon for me to Google a subject in the course of research and discover I've already written about it in a prior document I'd long since forgotten.
This morning I am indebted to Ed Stone for bringing to my attention a document I helped draft nine years ago that I wished I'd recalled, and included in my blog entry, yesterday. Ed Stone, "Revisit 2000 Long-Range Plan,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, March 10, 2009, p. A9.
One of my efforts as a member of our local school board (1998-2001) was to try to bring some rational analysis to the governance and policy making process of the board itself. (We ended up choosing, studying, and implementing the John Carver model. For more see, Nicholas Johnson, "Board Governance: Theory and Practice.")
As one of a number of consequences of that reconfiguration of Board-Superintendent relations, the Board addressed and ultimately approved the document to which Ed Stone refers -- a document it turns out he (but not I) found on my own Web site! (The Press-Citizen includes excerpts from the document in the hard copy edition, and a link to the entire document in the online edition.)
I have observed over my years in Washington and elsewhere that (a) when civil, intelligent, informed, and independent individuals get together (i.e., persons not representing clients, causes or ideologies), and freely explore, discuss and propose solutions to a public policy challenge, they often (not always, but often) end up coming to consensus, and that (b) when other, similarly constituted groups engage in a similar exercise they will, more often than not, come up with the same (or very similar) consensus as the first group..
So it is when one compares the contents of the "Long Range Planning Process and Parameters" document of 2000 with the objections raised to the Roosevelt demolition plan in 2009 by the small groups reporting to last Saturday's assembled citizens (including the concerns I reported in my blog entry yesterday).
Here is the entirety of the Board's impressively brief "Long Range Planning Process and Parameters" policy and governance document:
Long Range Planning Process and Parameters An ICCSD Board Document Approved April 11, 2000
Long range planning. We want to take advantage of this somewhat unique opportunity to begin an ongoing effort to envision many aspects of the ICCSD five to ten years out, not merely come up with “boundaries” and lines on a map. Many of these options or proposals will have implications for buildings, boundaries and programs; others will not.
Research. We want our decisions, and those of the Superintendent, to be research-based. By this we mean not only the best demographic projections and other District data available, but also the alternatives, experience and best practices reflected in the literature and Internet-published material.
Optimum school size. The Board expressly requests from the Superintendent a research-based report regarding the optimum range of elementary and secondary schools’ enrollment from the standpoint both of cost (schools that are too small) and educational and social values (schools that are too large).
Community communication and concerns. We want to make every effort to minimize unnecessary community concerns during the course of our deliberations and those of the Superintendent. We need the freedom to be able to consider the widest possible range of options while reassuring stakeholders that it is not our intent to implement any option without thorough discussion with the community. As always, the Board and Superintendent welcome public input and will develop a communications plan to ensure that end.
Timing. The Board is looking five to ten years into the future. It recognizes the difficulty of doing so with any precision. But it believes it is in the District’s interest to have such a plan, even if it needs to be revisited and revised every year. It will seek to minimize disruption on District families by notifying the community as far in advance as possible of impending changes. Such advance notice makes planning and transitions easier for everyone.
Board decision-making responsibility. The members of the Board have the ultimate, personal and political responsibility for developing the policy and parameters that will be used to guide the long range and boundary planning process. The Board seeks input from the community and administration, and envisions an ongoing, back-and-forth dialogue and regular revision. It expressly requests the Superintendent to inform the Board, as promptly as possible, if and when he believes a Board-established parameter is seriously flawed, impossible of attainment, or simply unwise. But the policies will be worked out by the Board. It will not merely approve a Superintendent’s recommendation. The decision regarding the determination of boundaries will be that of the Board.
Superintendent’s responsibility. The Superintendent is responsible for completing the long range and boundary planning process. While doing so he will provide the Board with such data and research as it may need for its deliberations. He will keep the Board informed of the progress of the long range and boundary planning process. He is expected to guide the process in accordance with all relevant Board policies and parameters. Prior to implementation he is expected to bring the final plan, including the implementation schedule, to the Board for its approval.
First option: Present Schools. An option that must be considered is the use of existing schools. Any and all other options may also be considered.
The first boundaries option as to which the Board requests input from the Superintendent involves full utilization of the District’s present buildings with no new buildings or major additions. The 2004 projections indicate that some of the east side elementary schools will then be at 40-60% of capacity. Many of the west side elementary schools will be nearer 100% of capacity. One (Wickham) will be at 153% of capacity. (Kirkwood will be at 111%, Coralville at 109%.) What would be the cost – in increased busing expenditures and increased student time on buses – of shifting students from west to east? The Board cannot declare in advance how much such cost is “too much.” But it believes its responsibility to property tax payers is such that, if the additional cost is not too much, such a solution is preferable to a multi-million-dollar construction program for new school buildings while existing buildings remain underutilized.
The Board encourages the Superintendent to examine the feasibility of options such as (but not limited to) magnet schools, middle schools, age-grouped schools (i.e., all-kindergarten or K-3 schools), year-round schools, increased job shadowing or independent research (to reduce high school crowding), to use existing facilities in the most cost effective manner.
Second option: New buildings, building remodeling and expansion. Another option is to remodel and expand the District's present schools. (Of course, some remodeling may be a part of long range planning even if not necessary to reduce overcrowding.) The Board requests from the Superintendent in this connection (in addition to the “optimum school size,” above) information regarding the capacity, present and projected enrollment of each school, along with information regarding the amount of available land for expansion. It will then consider a parameter that will produce the maximum benefit (in terms of reduced crowding, and optimum school size) at the least cost (in terms of quantity of construction, adverse impact on families, and lengthened bus rides).
New buildings. Only if the present buildings are inadequate – with or without remodeling and expansion – will the Board consider the option of building a new schools. “Inadequate” includes the conclusion that the use of present buildings will “cost too much” as defined above.
Closing schools. The Board’s preference is that all present schools continue in use – subject to being persuaded that such a preference makes no educational or economic sense.
Low income students’ distribution. The Board’s present intuition is that there are educational and social benefits from elementary school students’ exposure to a diversity of classmates. (As with any other intuitive beliefs of Board members the Board invites the presentation of research findings that either support or challenge its assumption.) At the present time, with a District average of 17% low income students, the proportion in each elementary school varies from 2% to nearly 50%. The Board expressly requests the Superintendent prepare for its consideration a number of alternative models reflecting the implications (economic costs, number of students bussed, time spent on buses) of a more equal distribution of students. Prior to knowing those costs the Board expresses no view as to its preferred range of the percent of low income students at each elementary school.
Occupancy as percent of capacity. The Board wants to maintain an equivalency of educational opportunity between buildings.
Impact on junior and senior high schools. The Board presumes that any boundaries or long range planning decisions will result in a roughly equal allocation of students among the two junior highs and two high schools. If this is not the result of its decisions it will want to revisit them.
Neighborhood schools. To the extent consistent with the Board's preferences and options, above, it would like to maintain the concept of neighborhood schools, keep attendance areas contiguous, keep families together, and limit students to one forced transfer during their elementary years. __________
[Of these 16 bold-headed paragraphs, the Press-Citizen hard copy edition excerpts paragraph numbers 1, 3, 8, 10, 12, and 16.]
Note how the governance model is working in this instance. These are clearly the Board's "planning process and parameters" -- not a Superintendent-drafted document rubber stamped by the Board. It is the Board that has done the very hard, analytical and creative work of thinking through and then establishing the policy, the goals, what John Carver calls "ends policies." At the same time the Board makes it expressly clear that it respects the Superintendent's professional expertise, and that it is willing to modify its approach when data and research suggest that modifications are required. Having made its very specific policy preferences and parameters expressly clear, it then leaves the implementation of them to the Administration (with a requirement of management information reporting against mileposts of progress and other updates from the Administration to the Board), free of Board members' micro-managing of the Superintendent's day-to-day decisions.
Ed Stone is writing about, and drawing upon this document regarding, allocation of students between our two conventional high schools (City and West; Tate serves the entire District).
But its relationship to the Roosevelt demolition proposal, and the reasons citizens have offered for opposing that proposal, is obvious.
Note that it is also a District-wide long range plan, not an effort to deal with a couple schools at a time.
As for process, see another op ed in this morning's Press-Citizen, Jim Throgmorton, "It's How the Light Gets In,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, March 10, 2009, p. A9. Here are some excerpts:
A couple of weeks ago, the Iowa City School Board had a public discussion of its Strategic Facilities Improvement Plan as part of a regular board meeting. It didn't go very well. Parents were angry and the board members appeared defensive. Tension filled the room. . . .
Gad, I thought, this is a no-brainer. The president of the board . . . could have greeted the audience with a genuine welcoming smile. Having solicited "feedback" from parents about the district's plan, . . . board members and staff could have taken no more than 10 or 15 minutes to welcome people, lay out the agenda for the night and indicate what they hoped to learn from the public during the hearing.
[They] could have displayed genuine pleasure that so many people had committed their own time and energy to read the plan, to come to the district's office on a cold February night, and to share their assessment of the plan with board members.
Instead of telling this very well-educated audience that they "misunderstand," board members could have acknowledged that one of the primary purposes of the hearing was to let people say how the facts should be weighed.
Once the hearing had ended, [they] could have thanked people for speaking and indicated how their views would be incorporated into the district's final plan.
In his lovely song, "Anthem," Leonard Cohen sings:
"Ring the bells, the bells That still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That's how the light gets in."
There was a crack in the district's plan. Parents saw it and drew attention to it. Feedback like that should be welcomed and embraced. It's how the light gets in.
A functioning governance model, and long range planning that is truly of the Board (not mere rubber-stamping of Administration proposals), are essential. But, as Throgmorton emphasizes, the Board's process in community relations is also important. Indeed, the more inadequate its planning and proposals the more essential it becomes.
Hopefully, Board members are learning from their "demolition disaster," reason will ultimately rule, Roosevelt will be saved, diversity will be better balanced, and a reasoned, sense of boundaries' evolution within a District-wide long range plan will emerge. _______________
* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
