FDR was the absolute master of using state-owned and state-controlled enterprise for locally distinctive purposes. His methods were presaged in several plains states. North Dakota still has its state-owned bank, a sovereign wealth fund or Gosbank that stores revenues and uses them to get good things done. Oklahoma and Texas have similar wealth funds for oil. Oklahoma also invented the FDIC to protect people against failed banks, and the feds copied it.
A wonderful little book (if you can find it) is David Lilienthal's "Democracy on the March". Lilienthal directed TVA and describes the New Deal's purposes and achievements in the book.
Like many things with Trump, he’s a master at identifying the pain and has the right instincts on how to amass power but of course, uses it for all the wrong reasons.
It’s been eye opening for me to see how many things can get done quickly when our leaders aren’t afraid to exercise their power.
Let’s take this learning and do some good with it!
Lots to mull over here. Good stuff. A thought experiment which occurred to me is what would happen if these independent agencies weren't installed in the executive branch. What if Congress created them and installed them in the legislative branch, like the GAO?
The problem there is agencies are designed to carry out the law not make the law. The devil is in the details of whether a president is carrying out the law or whether he is making law. Everything I see Trump doing looks more like making law than carrying out the law. If independent agencies were installed under the legislative branch they would be carrying out the law instead of making the law.
So, how to solve for addressing the needs of a complicated, complex, technical and dynamic regulatory purpose? An independent agency with oversight by the courts which parse whether a particular regulation is making law or carrying out law? That's what we are supposed to be doing right now.
Corbin is right, these independent agencies have been captured and they were ripe for a guy like Trump to raid. I don't know what the answer is, but good kings only exist in Lord of the Rings. They don't really exist in historical fact. The answer the framers came up with is to put more trust in the people and to expect the people's will to be tested, tempered and deployed through the legislature. Congress has failed us for a very long time because representatives no longer fear the people.
So you like the "strong man" models of governance, Corbin? Think those models have worked out well in China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and other places? Want to live in those countries?
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The answer is not to move closer to absolute power models. Rather, it is to perfect the models (like ours) that have been designed to protect us from absolute power.
The mission of those executive agencies you decry should be to maximize the public good. "Cause" for firing should be significant obstacles to that mission.
The revolving door between industry and government service should be banned. Period. No loopholes or exceptions.
Elections shoulod be publicly financed. No more rich folks dominating the process. No more "Corporations are people, too!"
I think you've been right on many counts over the past months, Corbin. But in my opinion, you're way off the mark on this one!
To both Corbin and John, I agree with John. Corbin, if you want to visualize how government could work for the benefit of the 99%, with another FDR-like Pres--not a king--the novel, Ministry of the Future has a striking and well-thought-out vision of how much citizen effort it takes to turn around big issues like climate change. The audio book of Ministry of the Future is excelent and likely it's preferred form. Kim Stanley Robinson.
Corbin, Power is, has always been, and always will be used for someone's interest. The US Constitution divides powers to make the despotic use of power less likely. The Founders were well aware of the arguments for "enlightened despotism", but found a representative republic a more reliable model. You, Corbin, completely ignore a host of facts, most notably, the fact that our government has been made intentionally dysfunctional by a well organized, well funded, coalition of business interests, racist conservatives, authoritarian ideologues. Trump is implementing their agenda--Project 2025--at warp speed. Their ultimate goal is the enactment of a new constitution that will permanently entrench a plutocracy. Russia and Hungary have "unitary" presidencies. How do you like them?
Thank you for your piece. Although thought provoking and a bit abundance pilled, there is danger in giving anu one person, office or agency too much unregulated power. But I don't entirely disagree with your premise either. Humans cannot be trusted without some form of regulation. What a humane democracy would do is to insure that the power truly derives from we the people. This will take for that will of to confront out troubling past, an American reckoning, and create a true restructuring to safeguard against the influence of the rich and powerful to influence any part ot the government.
The point about regulatory capture already happening rings true. The revolving door between agencies and industries they regulate is well-documented but somehow never addressed. The Fed's inflation measurement games especially hit home, because CPI substitution methodology basically assumes declining living standards as normal. I worked adjacent to energy policy discussions and saw how "independence" often just meant independence from public accountability, not from industry pressure. The TVA comparison is instructive because itshows what direct government capacity-building can accomplish vs just subsidizing private actors. The real question is whether any political coalition has the will to actually redirect these agencies toward pubic benefit.
Another social fiction article (not sort of) – "a noble king among robber barons" story. It never has and never will happen in real life. China might be some distant model of it, but how many Americans (even poor ones) would prefer to live there? During the period of the New Deal the "noble" king (FDR) was saving the robber barons (the same as Obama did), who had devastated the country and brought it to the brink of a popular uprising. Eugene Debs in Statement to the Court was saying about "upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex". This was the power (the militant pressure of millions) that forced concessions from the capitalist class, not some liberal king. Obviously, except of illegal immigrants, this force cannot be currently relied upon. A more benign option that still could engender meaningful social changes on behalf of the majority would be popular democratic control from below. In other words, real democracy, not our faux electoral version of it. Of course, it's impossible under our existing economic and political system, but, at least, some meaningful version of it could be gradually worked towards by an organized political force of the united Left, which we don't currently have in this country. And the author's enthusiasm, political talent, and excellent organizational skills could greatly contribute to the formation of such a force.
My take on Corbin’s piece is that we’ve strayed from the original design in ways that have allowed special interests to capture the initiative and to some extent control of the system.
He’s not advocating for an authoritarian form of government. The original design where the executive branch was empowered to execute laws on its own with the judiciary as the referee is all he’s suggesting we go back to.
Congress still passes the laws and has the purse strings. But we do need some central authority that is accountable to the electorate to drive execution of the laws and budget.
The problem is not the "system" but the capture of the system by a well organized fascist minority. We the people have been divided and polarized by a decades-long campaign of misinformation and disinformation. Divided we fall.
Agree, I like this very much. Write more! The only missing piece I add is the endgame is thousands more worker-owned, worker-run businesses. Have you looked into these? The US has a long--mostly ignored--history of this.
I read an interesting book a while back (unfortunately, I can't remember the name) that proposed a small but significant change to the SEC rules for public companies. That is to have employees democratically elect the board of directors. That's the only change; all else remains the same. The board still hires/fires the exec team and approves the operating plan, including compensation.
I'd combine that with a rollback of the SEC rule that says maximizing shareholder value is the board's fiduciary duty. Before the 80s, the practice was to optimize stakeholder value (shareholders, employees, and the community where the company operates).
These changes would create some interesting dynamics.
The new board selection would still mean that shareholders couldn't be ignored, and the company would still need to attract investors to grow. But you gotta believe that outsized executive compensation would be dialed back in favor of spreading that cash to more of the employee base. You also gotta believe that factories wouldn't pollute the neighborhoods where the employees lived.
Rather than spread ourselves thin, exhausting our resources through struggling on dozens of fronts (Steve Bannon's "flood the zone" strategy), I continue to believe one focus would would resolve the vast majority of our social, economic, and political problems: limit the hoarding of personal wealth to somewhere between 30 and 100 million dollars.
We can continue to fight dozens of individual fires, but would it not make more sense to simply shut off the fuel supply?
I am not convinced that the antidote to public servants running amuck can be found in rearranging their organizational chart, either centralizing or decentralizing authority. The problem originates in American cultural emphasis on individualism, where competing, selfish interests are magically supposed to enhance the general welfare. If someone (not only Trump) rises to occupy a leadership position, the prevailing sentiment is to get what you can for yourself while you have the chance. Selfish leaders then are regarded by others as doing what comes naturally, i.e. what I would do if I had that chance. Leaders who actually put public service first, and can't be bought off, are often labeled as dumb and obstructive. We need to elevate the notion of serving the public good to a much higher level of awareness in selecting our leaders, and give more attention to their accomplishments, as opposed to rhetoric and vague promises. Ethics matter.
Solid case for rethinking the independence mythos. The Fed point cuts deep because evreyone treats their independence as sacred but nobody asks independent from who exactly. Seeing them jack up rates to crush workers every time prices rise while asset bubbles inflate unchecked tells you evrything about whose interests they serve.
excellent analysis and i like the tool analogy, big scary hammer, lock it away! please can we quit making trump THE issue because as terrible as he is, he's NOT the problem, he was never THE problem and if we dont widen our lens, our vehemence will be used against us, again. cut the head off the snake for sure love that idea but there is another head just below it ready to sprout and it might be more intelligent than the last. garden variety democrats have nothing to gain by dismantling the system so they just take advantage of the rhetoric of change, what elites have done for maybe forever. espoused values aren't the same as enacted ones and first order change isnt going to fix what broken, its going to take that hammer, that scary scary hammer to do the job. today please.
It’s becoming clear that Trump will pass and we will be left with a dysfunctional government and need someone who exercises power for the people to put it together correctly. Congress is unlikely to do the job. Which, even though it has been said too many times, this next presidential election may actually be the most important in our lifetimes. I still disagree with so much power in the hands of the executive and wish congress was a functioning body, but maybe we’re to the point the right leader is the only way to get there.
Executive power "can" be used for good, FDR was able to shift the balance of power toward the working class...
but it's been an anomaly in the history of our constitutional republic.
Our governments functional operational systems have historically been a duplicitous grift hiding behind a thin veil of propaganda to obfuscate political malfeasance, seize political leverage, shift the regulatory control to transfer wealth to the Wall Streets investor class, corporate monopolies, and after WWII the military industrial complex emerged as a central patron for both
Your analysis of government keeps missing the foundation from which all government grows. This is like analyzing a person with horrible values and never looking into his parents.
Everything and everyone has a foundation and our government’s foundation is its schools. That’s where we manufacture citizens including the people who turn out selfish as you describe.
Having gone into education because I know this to be true, and having discovered how corrupt our schools are in 1995, I made exposing this my mission. I knew then we’d lose our democracy since democracy either starts in schools or it doesn’t start.
Teacher whistleblowers have been trying to be heard at WhiteChalkCrime.com and EndTeacherAbuse.org since 2002. They’re behind the Epstein victims waiting to be heard. And we’re surprised we ended up trumped?
Our country is a mess because too many of our schools are run by fascists-like administrators and we haven’t had a wise education leader since Horace Mann died in 1859. Until people start looking into our schools, we’ll continue to be a country raised by wolves. And how we’re raised matters.
Too little power or too much power doesn’t explain our problem. Our foundation, our soul, our only spiritual institution—our schools—have been infiltrated by the worst people and we’ve let that happen.
That’s why this country is a mess and until someone takes the lead and does something about it, we’ll keep kicking our soul down the road.
Thanks for the validation! I wish more teachers weren’t afraid to speak out.
I agree there is gold elsewhere but far too little. I’ve read about Waldorf and Summerhill with enthusiasm. My focus though was on fixing the public schools that uphold our democracy, concerned we’d lose it. I have no doubt that our schools paved the way for Trump and those who read my book, A Graver Danger, seem to agree with me based on it having won seven awards.
Our nation’s problem is that few will read about education. It’s way too boring for most, which provides the best all time cover for the crooks who have stolen it from us.
Every time I hear Trump’s insanity I reminisce about my teaching days; it’s easier for me than most because I feel vaccinated against it. Abraham Lincoln warned “The way of the schoolrooms in one generation will be the way of the government in the next.”
He got that right! One day the world will know what it feels like to be a teacher because they had to endure Trump.
Really strong argument here on Fed independence. The comparison between how the Fed's monetary tools just crush workers while asset holders get richer really drives home the critique. When I was working in finance during the 2010s, rate hikes always translated to layoffs first before touching anything else. The piece about Wall Street middlemen profiting off every government borrowing transacton is wild when u lay it out like this.
Sure, power is great when the right people control it. But what about when dangerous or misguided people control it? And who decides who the right people are to control the power? And what about the fact that power corrupts? This is why we don't have or want kings or dictators or authoritarians. Once you give them all the power there is no way to control what they do with it.
What you have not addressed is how to vest power in governance organizations in such a way that they do the peoples' will in a way that will improve society, not destroy it. After all, crowds can also do stupid, impulsive things and are susceptible to being whipped up by propaganda or false flag attacks. So even 'the people' need checks and balances to avoid rash responses or being deluded by hucksters.
What governance structure will prevent capture by industry or bad actors? What governance structure will discern the will of the people, decide if it is good for society, and, if so, carry it out? What governance structure will monitor programs to see if they are working and correct them if they are not working? What governance structure will decide what is good for society? These are the problems we need to solve.
The Peoples' Republic of China appears to be doing a much better job than we are with transitioning to a green economy and investing in future-proofing research and industrial development while the US doubles down on whatever industries are making the most money for billionaires, regardless of existential threats to society and humanity.
But folks in China don't have free speech or freedom of religion or any say in their governance, and so on. And just because a country vests all the power in a dictator or a party does not mean the leaders will make good decisions. Putin is a great example, squandering his country's lives and wealth on a pointless resource/ego war to take Ukraine.
I'm really sick of hearing about how the opposition party can get back into power because then everything will be fixed because almost nothing is getting fixed, regardless of who is in power, because everything is controlled by the wealthy who seem to be largely driven by insatiable greed and who have wrested control of both political parties and all the regulatory agencies.
Older societies (hunter gatherer times and possibly a few of the earliest civilizations) seemed to put a lot more thought and effort into creating cultural and governance customs that made for a stable, healthy society. This is what we need to do, without delay. We need a well-governed, sustainable, egalitarian society where greed is compassionately treated as a medical problem, like any other addiction, rather than worshiped. We need to figure out how to live on this planet in such a way that everyone's basic needs are met and the ecosystem that supports our survival can thrive. Anything else is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.
I would love to hear more on this topic from people who have taken the trouble to study societies that had this and from those with both imagination and a solid connection to reality. This last one would seem to exclude most economists and politicians.
When people vote against their own interests, as our voters do, what we get is congressional gridlock, an ideal situation for promoting a "unitary" presidency..
Short response: making the president into a dictator certainly solves the Congressional gridlock problem in the same way as curing a headache with decapitation, however there are serious side effects which should not be ignored.
The congressional gridlock was intentionally created to enable a dictatorial president who would implement Project 2025. We are feeling the side effects already.
I may have misunderstood your original comment. I thought your were promoting a unitary president as a corrective for the gridlock, hence my first reply to you.
I always vote. For many decades now. It does not seem to be working, though of course I will continue as I view voting as a responsibility of citizenship.
FDR was the absolute master of using state-owned and state-controlled enterprise for locally distinctive purposes. His methods were presaged in several plains states. North Dakota still has its state-owned bank, a sovereign wealth fund or Gosbank that stores revenues and uses them to get good things done. Oklahoma and Texas have similar wealth funds for oil. Oklahoma also invented the FDIC to protect people against failed banks, and the feds copied it.
A wonderful little book (if you can find it) is David Lilienthal's "Democracy on the March". Lilienthal directed TVA and describes the New Deal's purposes and achievements in the book.
Yes. We need another FDR. And to increase the size of the Supreme Court, this time successfully. And immediately get rid of citizens united.
Team D never will get rid of Citizens United, as they are even more addicted to sweet superpac cash than Team R
To be fair, the North Dakota bank and other institutions had nothing to do with FDR.
Great perspective.
Like many things with Trump, he’s a master at identifying the pain and has the right instincts on how to amass power but of course, uses it for all the wrong reasons.
It’s been eye opening for me to see how many things can get done quickly when our leaders aren’t afraid to exercise their power.
Let’s take this learning and do some good with it!
Lots to mull over here. Good stuff. A thought experiment which occurred to me is what would happen if these independent agencies weren't installed in the executive branch. What if Congress created them and installed them in the legislative branch, like the GAO?
The problem there is agencies are designed to carry out the law not make the law. The devil is in the details of whether a president is carrying out the law or whether he is making law. Everything I see Trump doing looks more like making law than carrying out the law. If independent agencies were installed under the legislative branch they would be carrying out the law instead of making the law.
So, how to solve for addressing the needs of a complicated, complex, technical and dynamic regulatory purpose? An independent agency with oversight by the courts which parse whether a particular regulation is making law or carrying out law? That's what we are supposed to be doing right now.
Corbin is right, these independent agencies have been captured and they were ripe for a guy like Trump to raid. I don't know what the answer is, but good kings only exist in Lord of the Rings. They don't really exist in historical fact. The answer the framers came up with is to put more trust in the people and to expect the people's will to be tested, tempered and deployed through the legislature. Congress has failed us for a very long time because representatives no longer fear the people.
they polarized the people!
So you like the "strong man" models of governance, Corbin? Think those models have worked out well in China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and other places? Want to live in those countries?
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The answer is not to move closer to absolute power models. Rather, it is to perfect the models (like ours) that have been designed to protect us from absolute power.
The mission of those executive agencies you decry should be to maximize the public good. "Cause" for firing should be significant obstacles to that mission.
The revolving door between industry and government service should be banned. Period. No loopholes or exceptions.
Elections shoulod be publicly financed. No more rich folks dominating the process. No more "Corporations are people, too!"
I think you've been right on many counts over the past months, Corbin. But in my opinion, you're way off the mark on this one!
To both Corbin and John, I agree with John. Corbin, if you want to visualize how government could work for the benefit of the 99%, with another FDR-like Pres--not a king--the novel, Ministry of the Future has a striking and well-thought-out vision of how much citizen effort it takes to turn around big issues like climate change. The audio book of Ministry of the Future is excelent and likely it's preferred form. Kim Stanley Robinson.
Corbin, Power is, has always been, and always will be used for someone's interest. The US Constitution divides powers to make the despotic use of power less likely. The Founders were well aware of the arguments for "enlightened despotism", but found a representative republic a more reliable model. You, Corbin, completely ignore a host of facts, most notably, the fact that our government has been made intentionally dysfunctional by a well organized, well funded, coalition of business interests, racist conservatives, authoritarian ideologues. Trump is implementing their agenda--Project 2025--at warp speed. Their ultimate goal is the enactment of a new constitution that will permanently entrench a plutocracy. Russia and Hungary have "unitary" presidencies. How do you like them?
Thank you for your piece. Although thought provoking and a bit abundance pilled, there is danger in giving anu one person, office or agency too much unregulated power. But I don't entirely disagree with your premise either. Humans cannot be trusted without some form of regulation. What a humane democracy would do is to insure that the power truly derives from we the people. This will take for that will of to confront out troubling past, an American reckoning, and create a true restructuring to safeguard against the influence of the rich and powerful to influence any part ot the government.
The point about regulatory capture already happening rings true. The revolving door between agencies and industries they regulate is well-documented but somehow never addressed. The Fed's inflation measurement games especially hit home, because CPI substitution methodology basically assumes declining living standards as normal. I worked adjacent to energy policy discussions and saw how "independence" often just meant independence from public accountability, not from industry pressure. The TVA comparison is instructive because itshows what direct government capacity-building can accomplish vs just subsidizing private actors. The real question is whether any political coalition has the will to actually redirect these agencies toward pubic benefit.
Another social fiction article (not sort of) – "a noble king among robber barons" story. It never has and never will happen in real life. China might be some distant model of it, but how many Americans (even poor ones) would prefer to live there? During the period of the New Deal the "noble" king (FDR) was saving the robber barons (the same as Obama did), who had devastated the country and brought it to the brink of a popular uprising. Eugene Debs in Statement to the Court was saying about "upwards of sixty millions of Socialists, loyal, devoted adherents to this cause, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color, or sex". This was the power (the militant pressure of millions) that forced concessions from the capitalist class, not some liberal king. Obviously, except of illegal immigrants, this force cannot be currently relied upon. A more benign option that still could engender meaningful social changes on behalf of the majority would be popular democratic control from below. In other words, real democracy, not our faux electoral version of it. Of course, it's impossible under our existing economic and political system, but, at least, some meaningful version of it could be gradually worked towards by an organized political force of the united Left, which we don't currently have in this country. And the author's enthusiasm, political talent, and excellent organizational skills could greatly contribute to the formation of such a force.
My take on Corbin’s piece is that we’ve strayed from the original design in ways that have allowed special interests to capture the initiative and to some extent control of the system.
He’s not advocating for an authoritarian form of government. The original design where the executive branch was empowered to execute laws on its own with the judiciary as the referee is all he’s suggesting we go back to.
Congress still passes the laws and has the purse strings. But we do need some central authority that is accountable to the electorate to drive execution of the laws and budget.
Yes, but the current "unitary" executive is legislating and is ignoring court orders, and it does so with a complicit Republican-controlled Congress..
The problem is not the "system" but the capture of the system by a well organized fascist minority. We the people have been divided and polarized by a decades-long campaign of misinformation and disinformation. Divided we fall.
Agree, I like this very much. Write more! The only missing piece I add is the endgame is thousands more worker-owned, worker-run businesses. Have you looked into these? The US has a long--mostly ignored--history of this.
I read an interesting book a while back (unfortunately, I can't remember the name) that proposed a small but significant change to the SEC rules for public companies. That is to have employees democratically elect the board of directors. That's the only change; all else remains the same. The board still hires/fires the exec team and approves the operating plan, including compensation.
I'd combine that with a rollback of the SEC rule that says maximizing shareholder value is the board's fiduciary duty. Before the 80s, the practice was to optimize stakeholder value (shareholders, employees, and the community where the company operates).
These changes would create some interesting dynamics.
The new board selection would still mean that shareholders couldn't be ignored, and the company would still need to attract investors to grow. But you gotta believe that outsized executive compensation would be dialed back in favor of spreading that cash to more of the employee base. You also gotta believe that factories wouldn't pollute the neighborhoods where the employees lived.
Rather than spread ourselves thin, exhausting our resources through struggling on dozens of fronts (Steve Bannon's "flood the zone" strategy), I continue to believe one focus would would resolve the vast majority of our social, economic, and political problems: limit the hoarding of personal wealth to somewhere between 30 and 100 million dollars.
We can continue to fight dozens of individual fires, but would it not make more sense to simply shut off the fuel supply?
I am not convinced that the antidote to public servants running amuck can be found in rearranging their organizational chart, either centralizing or decentralizing authority. The problem originates in American cultural emphasis on individualism, where competing, selfish interests are magically supposed to enhance the general welfare. If someone (not only Trump) rises to occupy a leadership position, the prevailing sentiment is to get what you can for yourself while you have the chance. Selfish leaders then are regarded by others as doing what comes naturally, i.e. what I would do if I had that chance. Leaders who actually put public service first, and can't be bought off, are often labeled as dumb and obstructive. We need to elevate the notion of serving the public good to a much higher level of awareness in selecting our leaders, and give more attention to their accomplishments, as opposed to rhetoric and vague promises. Ethics matter.
Solid case for rethinking the independence mythos. The Fed point cuts deep because evreyone treats their independence as sacred but nobody asks independent from who exactly. Seeing them jack up rates to crush workers every time prices rise while asset bubbles inflate unchecked tells you evrything about whose interests they serve.
excellent analysis and i like the tool analogy, big scary hammer, lock it away! please can we quit making trump THE issue because as terrible as he is, he's NOT the problem, he was never THE problem and if we dont widen our lens, our vehemence will be used against us, again. cut the head off the snake for sure love that idea but there is another head just below it ready to sprout and it might be more intelligent than the last. garden variety democrats have nothing to gain by dismantling the system so they just take advantage of the rhetoric of change, what elites have done for maybe forever. espoused values aren't the same as enacted ones and first order change isnt going to fix what broken, its going to take that hammer, that scary scary hammer to do the job. today please.
I am skeptical, but you made this case well.
It’s becoming clear that Trump will pass and we will be left with a dysfunctional government and need someone who exercises power for the people to put it together correctly. Congress is unlikely to do the job. Which, even though it has been said too many times, this next presidential election may actually be the most important in our lifetimes. I still disagree with so much power in the hands of the executive and wish congress was a functioning body, but maybe we’re to the point the right leader is the only way to get there.
You've dialed it in again...
Executive power "can" be used for good, FDR was able to shift the balance of power toward the working class...
but it's been an anomaly in the history of our constitutional republic.
Our governments functional operational systems have historically been a duplicitous grift hiding behind a thin veil of propaganda to obfuscate political malfeasance, seize political leverage, shift the regulatory control to transfer wealth to the Wall Streets investor class, corporate monopolies, and after WWII the military industrial complex emerged as a central patron for both
Give give give, never take, its just their way!
Your analysis of government keeps missing the foundation from which all government grows. This is like analyzing a person with horrible values and never looking into his parents.
Everything and everyone has a foundation and our government’s foundation is its schools. That’s where we manufacture citizens including the people who turn out selfish as you describe.
Having gone into education because I know this to be true, and having discovered how corrupt our schools are in 1995, I made exposing this my mission. I knew then we’d lose our democracy since democracy either starts in schools or it doesn’t start.
Teacher whistleblowers have been trying to be heard at WhiteChalkCrime.com and EndTeacherAbuse.org since 2002. They’re behind the Epstein victims waiting to be heard. And we’re surprised we ended up trumped?
Our country is a mess because too many of our schools are run by fascists-like administrators and we haven’t had a wise education leader since Horace Mann died in 1859. Until people start looking into our schools, we’ll continue to be a country raised by wolves. And how we’re raised matters.
Too little power or too much power doesn’t explain our problem. Our foundation, our soul, our only spiritual institution—our schools—have been infiltrated by the worst people and we’ve let that happen.
That’s why this country is a mess and until someone takes the lead and does something about it, we’ll keep kicking our soul down the road.
Thanks for the validation! I wish more teachers weren’t afraid to speak out.
I agree there is gold elsewhere but far too little. I’ve read about Waldorf and Summerhill with enthusiasm. My focus though was on fixing the public schools that uphold our democracy, concerned we’d lose it. I have no doubt that our schools paved the way for Trump and those who read my book, A Graver Danger, seem to agree with me based on it having won seven awards.
Our nation’s problem is that few will read about education. It’s way too boring for most, which provides the best all time cover for the crooks who have stolen it from us.
Every time I hear Trump’s insanity I reminisce about my teaching days; it’s easier for me than most because I feel vaccinated against it. Abraham Lincoln warned “The way of the schoolrooms in one generation will be the way of the government in the next.”
He got that right! One day the world will know what it feels like to be a teacher because they had to endure Trump.
Karen, you'e a girl after my own heart. My K-12 teaching journey was similar to yours.
For you or anyone looking for where the gold is, where solutions are already worked out, they're here:
Waldorf-methods K-12 schools
https://www.waldorfeducation.org/what-is-waldorf-education/
Waldorf-methods adult education already doing this: Emerson college
https://emerson.org.uk/about-us/our-ethos/
Glasser Quality Schools have the remaining keys missing in Waldorf-methods:
https://wglasser.com/practice-areas/education/
Really strong argument here on Fed independence. The comparison between how the Fed's monetary tools just crush workers while asset holders get richer really drives home the critique. When I was working in finance during the 2010s, rate hikes always translated to layoffs first before touching anything else. The piece about Wall Street middlemen profiting off every government borrowing transacton is wild when u lay it out like this.
Sure, power is great when the right people control it. But what about when dangerous or misguided people control it? And who decides who the right people are to control the power? And what about the fact that power corrupts? This is why we don't have or want kings or dictators or authoritarians. Once you give them all the power there is no way to control what they do with it.
What you have not addressed is how to vest power in governance organizations in such a way that they do the peoples' will in a way that will improve society, not destroy it. After all, crowds can also do stupid, impulsive things and are susceptible to being whipped up by propaganda or false flag attacks. So even 'the people' need checks and balances to avoid rash responses or being deluded by hucksters.
What governance structure will prevent capture by industry or bad actors? What governance structure will discern the will of the people, decide if it is good for society, and, if so, carry it out? What governance structure will monitor programs to see if they are working and correct them if they are not working? What governance structure will decide what is good for society? These are the problems we need to solve.
The Peoples' Republic of China appears to be doing a much better job than we are with transitioning to a green economy and investing in future-proofing research and industrial development while the US doubles down on whatever industries are making the most money for billionaires, regardless of existential threats to society and humanity.
But folks in China don't have free speech or freedom of religion or any say in their governance, and so on. And just because a country vests all the power in a dictator or a party does not mean the leaders will make good decisions. Putin is a great example, squandering his country's lives and wealth on a pointless resource/ego war to take Ukraine.
I'm really sick of hearing about how the opposition party can get back into power because then everything will be fixed because almost nothing is getting fixed, regardless of who is in power, because everything is controlled by the wealthy who seem to be largely driven by insatiable greed and who have wrested control of both political parties and all the regulatory agencies.
Older societies (hunter gatherer times and possibly a few of the earliest civilizations) seemed to put a lot more thought and effort into creating cultural and governance customs that made for a stable, healthy society. This is what we need to do, without delay. We need a well-governed, sustainable, egalitarian society where greed is compassionately treated as a medical problem, like any other addiction, rather than worshiped. We need to figure out how to live on this planet in such a way that everyone's basic needs are met and the ecosystem that supports our survival can thrive. Anything else is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.
I would love to hear more on this topic from people who have taken the trouble to study societies that had this and from those with both imagination and a solid connection to reality. This last one would seem to exclude most economists and politicians.
When people vote against their own interests, as our voters do, what we get is congressional gridlock, an ideal situation for promoting a "unitary" presidency..
Short response: making the president into a dictator certainly solves the Congressional gridlock problem in the same way as curing a headache with decapitation, however there are serious side effects which should not be ignored.
The congressional gridlock was intentionally created to enable a dictatorial president who would implement Project 2025. We are feeling the side effects already.
I may have misunderstood your original comment. I thought your were promoting a unitary president as a corrective for the gridlock, hence my first reply to you.
What do you propose to fix the problem?
Vote!
I always vote. For many decades now. It does not seem to be working, though of course I will continue as I view voting as a responsibility of citizenship.