Who he identifies with

Digby described a meeting between the only African-American Republican senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and DJT:

Tim Scott of South Carolina, who had requested a meeting with the president to talk about Charlottesville. Scott reportedly believed that if Trump heard his story and understood the history better he might come to understand why his remarks were so provocative and hurtful.

          ...

Trump is asked about the meeting on Air Force One during the trip to Florida. Apparently, he thinks he taught Scott a thing or two: 

We had a great talk yesterday. I think especially in light of the advent of Antifa, if you look at what’s going on there, we have some pretty bad dudes on the other side also and essentially that’s what I said.

Now because of what’s happened since then with Antifa, you know really what’s happened since Charlottesville, a lot of people are saying, in fact a lot of people have actually written, “Gee, Trump might have a point.” I said, you’ve got some very bad people on the other side also, which is true.

It's telling that Antifa is 'the other side.' Apparently DJT sides with white supremacists.

All speakers

TRNN reported about student protests at University of Baltimore against Betsy DeVos as commencement speaker. My comment:

1) Betsy DeVos is a horrible choice for commencement speaker for a publicly funded educational institution because she doesn't believe in the mission of public education thus would not celebrate the accomplishments of its graduates.

2) Betsy DeVos and other guests should be invited and warmly welcomed to speak at any and all universities under equal conditions of academic scholarship. This means all invited speakers will be allotted the opportunity to speak after which they must answer uncensored and not pre-selected audience questions for some minimum period of time. The overarching purpose of all institutions of higher learning is to train students to think critically; this involves identifying the logical and evidentiary strengths/weaknesses of any position/argument. Critical thinking is not restricted to any field or subject but applies across the board to all specialities. The best way to develop and strengthen an argument is to address its weak points - for example, false assumptions, circular logic. In the end, a university presentation is an opportunity for invited speakers to test the strength of their arguments and for students to test the power of their analysis; positive for both.

I suspect that under the conditions of (2), Betsy DeVos would not accept an invitation to speak. Many of her positions are ideological and have little evidentiary support by scholarly research.

Real scholarship needs challenge. Real scholars welcome challenge. Universities should normalize scholarly challenge.

Related comment at PZ Myers' blog: 

Universities are places of scholarship so all speakers should be challenged on scholarly grounds. Invited speakers are free to speak but not free of challenge. Every point made by every speaker is fair grounds for scholarly challenge. Where’s the beef [evidence]!

School a la drone

With the appointment of Betsy de Vos as Secretary of Education, I read an article which mentioned that public schools were developed during the industrial revolution to teach children the skills needed by factory owners. 

In the U.S., the notion of citizen elected governance further promoted the need for voters capable of independent reasoning, at least in theory. But the advent of neo-liberal laissez-faire capitalism and government austerity, public policy has been focused on privatization of public schools and de-empowering local and teachers-union control/input into public schools. Much of this is driven by profit through two mechanisms: (1) privatizing schools to allow private school corporations to skim profits from public monies; (2) produce compliant workers and voters who are not intellectually capable of challenging the status quo or any forms of authority, in other words, worker drones.

Down with Tyranny has a post describing many yeshiva schools operated Hasidic Jewish communities which seem to exactly match the eo-liberal laissez-faire vision of public education. My comment:

Deliberately denying children a good education is child abuse analogous to sensory deprivation as torture. Unlike uncontacted people who make a deliberate choice to live isolated from modern technology, the Hasidim live in the heart modern society and hold themselves separate and morally superior while taking full advantage modern infrastructure and technology (medicine for example). Children raised in these restrictive environments never have the opportunity to fully develop their potential, a waste for themselves, personally, and their communities. These children are also taught to behave opposite of their moral code - take from society without contributing to society.

There's an important lesson here for non-Hasidims/secular citizens. Schools that provide a "...very basic English reading and arithmetic, along with minimal levels of English writing..." education produce young people who "...lack the requisite skills to obtain employment with a decent income to support themselves and their (often large) families...". This is a major goal of some powerful economic players and education reformers. They want workers who cannot think critically to challenge the status quo. They want workers who compliantly conform to authority (God, rabbi, employer). But depriving children of education is unpatriotic. A dynamic, vibrant and functioning democracy relies on the participation of informed voters & citizens capable of analytical reasoning. So the Hasidic model described here fails at all levels, from individual development to Constitutional expectations.

What is freedom?

Mike Lux asked this at C&L. My response:

In the novel, "The Kite Runner", the narrator's father said all crimes are forms of theft. For today's Republicans, freedom is their freedom to commit any and all variants of theft on anyone not in their tribe, especially for personal gain or profit. This same freedom does not extend to 'outsiders'. For progressives, freedom is the right of all people to live meaningful lives so long as they are respectful of the rights of others. The progressive view of freedom does not have an out-group.

This is my impression of how each group defines freedom. I agree with what I've assigned to progressives. I just doubt that nation-states are the best way to organize societies to deliver that form of freedom. All nation-states concentrate power and concentrated power is inherently about mass reallocation of power; in other words, a form of theft.

Orthodox Economic Theory does not Explain the Economy

Comment at TRNN. Economist Bill Black was discussing union membership in the U.S. and along the way, mentioned conventional economics does not explain today's economy:

"…that's far worse than simple inequality… economists really can't explain with conventional economics how this is occurring... that's of course because their economic theories are falsehoods... They're basically cover stories for laissez-faire..." 

The most important take home message of the segment: orthodox economic theory is wrong. If economists were responsible [social] scientists, they would go back to the drawing board, re-examine the data, develop better models/theories and test them as rigorously as possible.

It's striking how outright wrong economic theory is used to justify government policy that's bad for most people compared to how well validated science (climate change, theory of evolution) is demonized and ignored to the detriment of most people. [Climate change is validated by annual record breaking heat records of the recent 2 decades, increasing droughts & flooding and stronger hurricanes. The Theory of Evolution is supported by a wealth of biological, geological and paleontological data. The success of modern medicine also validates evolution: medicine is based on animal studies which are informative because they are evolutionarily related to humans; otherwise, there would be no way to justify the research.]

Name of segment: Low Rate of Unionization in US Consequence of Deregulation