Covid-19 Politics

[holzz]

https://www.theguardian.com/global-d...ns-sex-workers

pretty sad.

[Stavros]

Thanks for posting that Stavros. I had read that article from the Guardian when it was posted on Yahoo. I agree with most of it, but with reservations.
.

Fred, thanks for a detailed response to the article. Your post raises a number of issues I can only deal with in general terms as I don't live there. On education, for example, if State education has now deteriorated so much you think the private sector would do better, is that because State education cannot be reformed? Is it just a case of money? I would like to say our system is better but it has a wide range of problems, but for me I think curriculum is vital, and I wonder, on both sides of the Atlantic, if our children are being given an education that will help them both improve, and right now, survive over the next 50 years, just 10 of which will probably see more changes than I have seen in the last 60.

I can't really comment on the specifics of Cuomo and DeBlasio, other than to suggest most politicians who reach high office bring baggage with them, it is certainly the case in the UK. It may be the case that it is not even possible to become a Mayor or Governor of party leader without crawling over 'dead' bodies to get there, I guess it comes down to 'reputation management' with the chilling thought that however much we know about the details of this President, before and during his time in office, the 'reputation management' issue that was supposed to make him unelectable clearly didn't have a negative impact even though his conduct in office is probably worse than was imagined.
It is as if being an idiot is now an acceptable aspect of a candidate's reputation. And if not an idiot, extreme positions expressed in extreme language that once would have been unthinkable in Congress, or were the left to known extremists, usually from the 'Deep South'.

It raises the question of competence, and decision making. What Covid 19 has exposed across the world, is the difference between swift and decisive action -often as bold as it has been extreme- and its alternative. We can see the winners are the ones that did the former, and that the losers, in the UK and the US, dithered at the start, were reluctant to make bold decisions that cost a lot of money, and made public statements designed to weaken fears -but have ended up spending ten or twenty times the sums they might have spent even before the crisis, and have probably created more fear than is necessary.

A year or so ago I was talking with a former colleague and we agreed that we (same age) had never before known such a cohort of useless, incompetent politicians, the issues at the time being the catastrophic Conservative election campaign of 2017 and the atrophy of decision-making on Brexit with a paralysed House of Commons. Boris Johnson has not shown himself to be superior to Theresa May, indeed, his actions as party leader as well as Prime Minister beg so many questions about what it means in the UK to be a Conservative as to fall outside this thread on Covid 19.

But, in comparison in the US, the Obama administration was staffed by smart people with years of experience in policy making, and while I am sure it was a disappointment for many because they feel so little changed, those changes Obama sought were often delayed or dismissed by a hostle Congress which it seems to me, often opposed Obama's policies because of him, not because the policies were inherently good or bad. That his successor has staffed his administration with amateurs who seem incapable of grasping what policy making in government is, that they seem more concerned with rolling back the policies of the past because of their loathing of Obama, rather than developing policies for the future, is just one part of what looks in the UK like a country determined to go backwards in time.
But it also means that the inherent incompetence of the Presidency has been matched, in the early stages of this attack, by incompetence at the level of the State in the US, but not everywhere- why does it appear that New York has fared worse than California and Washington State, two States which were most at risk in the early phases of the pandemic? Was it luck, or more competent management?

It may be easy in retrospect to say how things could have been handled differently -but it didn't take two months for the Bush administration to shut down the USA in 2001 -it took less than 24 hours. But if the politicians could not take Covid 19 seriously as a threat to the US, why should the American people take politicians seriously as managers of the country?

I fear the 2020 election may not just be about 'China' or 'Covid 19', but competence and confidence, and if more people do not vote at all, this may further weaken, rather than strengthen American democracy. And it means you could end up with leaders who divide more than they lead.

[Stavros]

Not long after writing the post above, I read the New York Times article inked below, that looks at public faith in Washington DC, or the lack of it. On the one hand it feeds into my view that what this Presidency shares with Rupert Murdoch is a libertarian loathing of Government and the belief that now is the time to undermine publlic belief that Federal Government is good for the country, that it may even be reduced to almost nothing, to 'set the people free' as I am sure they would say. Phase One: destroy the faith in government; Phase Two: cut it to the bone.

On the other hand, the article also suggests a higher degree of faith -presumably based on performace- in local government (evidently not in NYC! -?) -but as I know nothing about local government in the US I cannot comment, and I guess it undermines some of my ideas about the relationship between government and the governed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/u...gtype=Homepage

[fred41]

Fred, thanks for a detailed response to the article. Your post raises a number of issues I can only deal with in general terms as I don't live there. On education, for example, if State education has now deteriorated so much you think the private sector would do better, is that because State education cannot be reformed? Is it just a case of money? I would like to say our system is better but it has a wide range of problems, but for me I think curriculum is vital, and I wonder, on both sides of the Atlantic, if our children are being given an education that will help them both improve, and right now, survive over the next 50 years, just 10 of which will probably see more changes than I have seen in the last 60.

I’m just going to stick with this one topic for now. I really don’t have reason to write much anymore...even for leisure and I suspect you may have done so as part of making a living...not so much as for myself. Also, I gave my Mac Book Pro to someone who found a better use for it and am presently doing everything on an iPad Pro, which is more suited towards my leisurely needs (actually, I could’ve just gotten a simple iPad, but I have a tendency to buy more than I need). It’s really quite intuitive, but I’m still working out the differences and I still can’t always grasp some of the hand commands a younger hand would be able to deal with. For me, typing was easier done on a computer - the trade off being, the ability to do art work (which I thought I would be doing more off) And writing with a stylus. But again, I’m still learning even some it’s most basic functions, so please bear with me.

Even on the topic of education it sometimes makes more sense to deal with locally (at least on the State or City level), because speaking about it federally is a bit too abstract (also, as a comparison, speaking Nationally between the UK and USA, often doesn’t make any sense because of the vast difference in size).

When opining on a topic like this, it helps to know where that opinion comes from, so I will say, up front, that I’ve never worked in the educational field and though I was married at one time, now live alone and have never had any children and that’s by choice - I think that’s important to know because an active parent or teacher can give a different point of view based on their personal attachment to the issue. Private schools have always existed in NYC. Of the types...well wealthy private schools exist everywhere, I assume ...you would think that a school, only for the wealthy would do well compared to a public school, but whether or not it does isn’t really important to any conversation in education (obviously I’m only speaking of grades 12 and down). Leaving out parochial schools for the moment, the big debate here is usually about charter schools.

As I’ve stated before, as well as I can remember , statistically charter schools don’t always do better on a national level in comparison to public schools, but the reasons for that sometimes changes with the locale of the schools in question, and obviously, how they are run. From what I recall, I believe about 50% of them do better than public schools locally, with the rest being about the same and a handful doing worse. At the end of this topic I’ll post a link. Apparently , foundational charters seem to do better than small individual ones. I understand from an ideological point of view public funds should go to public schools, but in the real world, money isn’t always the problem. NYC , from what I understand, spends about $28,000 per student. That’s approximately double the national average and we still have failing schools. I’m going to be honest - from what I know from growing up in this city - often public schools in poor districts are literally hell holes you or I would not set foot in. There’s a reason some of those schools had metal detectors. Before even considering curriculum, don’t you think a safe, healthy environment would be a foundational necessity to be able to even attempt to learn? Aggressive students rarely even get suspended anymore. The child who wants to learn is in an environment that makes it impossible, so why not offer a choice that’s both safer and makes it possible? Sure you’re probably more likely to get positive parental support in a charter (probably the most important thing in a child’s educational performance) but so what? It’s fine to ideologically disagree with giving public funds to private schools...they should fix the problem instead of shoving it off, but every politician promises that and it never, ever gets done. A student in the system now ,can’t wait years ...life doesn’t work that way. Why are adults willing to shrug their shoulder and condemn kids like that for an ideology?

here’s a link from the Manhattan Institute. I believe it’s a conservative think tank, but that doesn’t change anything about my argument. It’s just for statistical info.

This is an easy read from 2018 : https://www.manhattan-institute.org/...ows-10975.html

A slightly more comprehensive one from 2019 : https://www.manhattan-institute.org/...public-schools

[blackchubby38]

While its fair to question the leadership of politicians before and during the pandemic, I think we have to start paying attention to them as the pandemic starts to wane and the lock downs end. Or if they ever do end. According to Mayor Deblasio, shuttered business can hold on for months.

What fucking world is he living in?

[fred41]

While its fair to question the leadership of politicians before and during the pandemic, I think we have to start paying attention to them as the pandemic starts to wane and the lock downs end. Or if they ever do end. According to Mayor Deblasio, shuttered business can hold on for months.

What fucking world is he living in?

You’re right - here’s where he said that: https://nypost.com/2020/05/22/de-bla...le-to-hang-on/

I don’t know where he thinks he’s going to get the money to make up for all the tax revenue he’s losing and will continue to lose, especially when he has a history of handing out six figure jobs like candy. He’s not going to get it from the Feds and he doesn’t deserve to. I’m baffled.

One thing Cuomo realizes though, needs to sink in to DeBlasio also - people listen because they realize it’s the right thing to do. When they stop listening , he has very little enforcement power. You can write citations, but if that fails, what then?

[blackchubby38]

You’re right - here’s where he said that: https://nypost.com/2020/05/22/de-bla...le-to-hang-on/

I don’t know where he thinks he’s going to get the money to make up for all the tax revenue he’s losing and will continue to lose, especially when he has a history of handing out six figure jobs like candy. He’s not going to get it from the Feds and he doesn’t deserve to. I’m baffled.

One thing Cuomo realizes though, needs to sink in to DeBlasio also - people listen because they realize it’s the right thing to do. When they stop listening , he has very little enforcement power. You can write citations, but if that fails, what then?

I think we are getting to a point (if we are not there already) that even the people who were favor of the lock down, are going to start saying enough is enough. Eventually intolerance and money are going to take over.

[Stavros]

I’m just going to stick with this one topic for now. I really don’t have reason to write much anymore...even for leisure and I suspect you may have done so as part of making a living...not so much as for myself. Also, I gave my Mac Book Pro to someone who found a better use for it and am presently doing everything on an iPad Pro, which is more suited towards my leisurely needs (actually, I could’ve just gotten a simple iPad, but I have a tendency to buy more than I need). It’s really quite intuitive, but I’m still working out the differences and I still can’t always grasp some of the hand commands a younger hand would be able to deal with. For me, typing was easier done on a computer - the trade off being, the ability to do art work (which I thought I would be doing more off) And writing with a stylus. But again, I’m still learning even some it’s most basic functions, so please bear with me.

Even on the topic of education it sometimes makes more sense to deal with locally (at least on the State or City level), because speaking about it federally is a bit too abstract (also, as a comparison, speaking Nationally between the UK and USA, often doesn’t make any sense because of the vast difference in size).

When opining on a topic like this, it helps to know where that opinion comes from, so I will say, up front, that I’ve never worked in the educational field and though I was married at one time, now live alone and have never had any children and that’s by choice - I think that’s important to know because an active parent or teacher can give a different point of view based on their personal attachment to the issue. Private schools have always existed in NYC. Of the types...well wealthy private schools exist everywhere, I assume ...you would think that a school, only for the wealthy would do well compared to a public school, but whether or not it does isn’t really important to any conversation in education (obviously I’m only speaking of grades 12 and down). Leaving out parochial schools for the moment, the big debate here is usually about charter schools.

As I’ve stated before, as well as I can remember , statistically charter schools don’t always do better on a national level in comparison to public schools, but the reasons for that sometimes changes with the locale of the schools in question, and obviously, how they are run. From what I recall, I believe about 50% of them do better than public schools locally, with the rest being about the same and a handful doing worse. At the end of this topic I’ll post a link. Apparently , foundational charters seem to do better than small individual ones. I understand from an ideological point of view public funds should go to public schools, but in the real world, money isn’t always the problem. NYC , from what I understand, spends about $28,000 per student. That’s approximately double the national average and we still have failing schools. I’m going to be honest - from what I know from growing up in this city - often public schools in poor districts are literally hell holes you or I would not set foot in. There’s a reason some of those schools had metal detectors. Before even considering curriculum, don’t you think a safe, healthy environment would be a foundational necessity to be able to even attempt to learn? Aggressive students rarely even get suspended anymore. The child who wants to learn is in an environment that makes it impossible, so why not offer a choice that’s both safer and makes it possible? Sure you’re probably more likely to get positive parental support in a charter (probably the most important thing in a child’s educational performance) but so what? It’s fine to ideologically disagree with giving public funds to private schools...they should fix the problem instead of shoving it off, but every politician promises that and it never, ever gets done. A student in the system now ,can’t wait years ...life doesn’t work that way. Why are adults willing to shrug their shoulder and condemn kids like that for an ideology?

Thank you for a well written reply, not least if you don't have a keyboard attached to your iPad Pro (I have also thought of buying one) -I struggle with the flat keyboard on iPads.

Education can be linked to Covid 19 because the fundamental question is about resource management, and what it is that the State spends money on, or what individuals spend their money on. It can range from environmental concerns such as clean water and traffic problems, to health and education, but it seems to me that a major difference between the US and Europe is the different attitude to public service, and the historical origins in Europe of State funded health, education and welfare, where the impact of both the industrial revolution and urbanization in the 19th century forced Governments to reconsider what the State coudld do, indeed, morally ought to do, if only to secure peace in the public realm that threatened to be undermined by social protest, as happened in Germany, where it was Bismarck who initiated their first welfare programmes.

But note that in Germany prior to unification in 1870, and dating from the 18th century, the Prussians had created a universal education system that was compulsory, paid for from taxation, and that included basic subjects in reading, writing and arithmetic, but also had a military/authoritarian component which included the teaching of obedience to authority be it in government or the army. So far, so Conservtive, not leaving education as a matter of choice to individuals -but as the Prussian model became the German model after 1870, and by 1900 Germany had overtaken the UK to become the largest economy in Europe and was the only serious rival in industry to the USA, you might think the Prussian model worked on the level necessary for industrial strength. Then note how the education system became more liberal in the Weimar Republic and, tragicaly, racist in the Third Reich.

But consider that today, two of the most successful economies in the world, and countries with a high standard of living and high levels of achievement in all fields, are Germany and Switzerland, which also have some of the lowest proportion of private schools, something like 5% of the total.

It is also the case that while there was always a religious component to education in Germany, and the Prussian model tended to be Protestant rather than Catholic, religion was an obligatory subject until the new Federation was created after 1945 in the West, where religion was compulsory to the age of 14 but then optional.

A similar commitment to universal education developed in the UK but was distorted owing to religious conflicts, with the Churches playing a leading role as providers of education in essence to defend their 'flock', thus laying the foundation for the 'Faith Schools' that we have today, in spite of the Labour Government of 1945 creating a National Education Service funded from taxation with in general terms all pupils following the same curriculum and exams, there being variations in Scotland which has its own but related system.

Key point- what we have in the UK is an Apartheid education system. Labour did not abolish private schools in 1945 which has meant that the rich can send their children to private schools or colleges which have international renown -Eton, Harrow, Charterhouse, Winchester, Christ's Hospital and so on, the irony being that many of them were founded to teach the poor, as is the case with Eton. The Dragon School in Oxford is one of the best in the country, but even Oxford parents struggle to get their children into it, and the annual fee is £29,580 (approx $35,987).

If the Rich occupy one level, there is the State system, there are 'Faith Schools' which enable Muslims to go to Muslim schools, Jews to Jewish schools, and crucially, Church of England and Roman Catholic schools to maintain an ancient and bloody prejudice, and while some of them are outstanding schools -and legally are obliged to take in children of different faiths-, sectarian education in Northern Ireland has been blamed for a culture of prejudice that fed into the bigotry and violence of 'the Troubles'
Add in the Blair Government's new tier of 'Academy' schools (similar I think t Charter schools) -and you can see that there is a danger of the State system becoming a gutter into which those children fall who don't make it to the other levels, though in none of these cases is there any guarantee the education is actually producing more intelligent and capable pupils, though the assumption is that a child's life chances are improved if he leaves a State school to go to an Academy, and I suspect this is also true in the US if the options are a State school or a Charter school.

But why? Your links explain the differences and look at some of the arguments of State schooling versus Charter Schools, but does not explain why the different options exist. In the UK, Class was the key divider -Eton was founded by King Henry VI in 1440 to educate poor boys; by the 19th century it had been swept up in the economic and social progress of Empire and Industrial Revolution to become the reserve of the rich and the elites ,whose children went from Eton to University and then to Government, Empire, Church, the Military and most obviously Parliamen- as it true today, Cameron and Johnson both travelling the Eton-Oxford-No 10 route.

Is it not also the case that what Charter schools offer is what what private education and Academies offer here? A form of Apartheid where the dividing line in America is Race rather than class? One of your links argues Black children are beneficiaries of Charter Schools, but if so, what about the Black children who are not in Charter Schools? Are these factors in the teaching of poor white Children in the post-industrial towns of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia? What happened to that slogan 'No Child Left Behind'?

Consider the difference: Apartheid education in Britain and America, a Universal system in Germany and Switzerland, and then compare quality of life in all four.

But, and this relates to Covid 19 and health, is the major difference the reluctance of the US to extend the concept of public service to areas outside local government, law enforcement and the military?

You don't have to be a Socialist to believe taxation can be the foundation of a Federal Health Service, because it makes sense on any level, but it does require the citizens of the US to begin to re-think States Rights, not as a form of Independence, but a form of Integration.

Why should each State have its own rules on elections? Why should States have the right to create or organize health and education differently? There is nothing wrong in creating a National system because it would be a means of integrating and unifying the country, rather than separating it, and I can see how at this moment in time when the President not only sneers at public service but denounces men and women with decades of public service as 'Human Scum' it is a febrile issue- but overall, does the present system deliver for people who need health care? Does it deliver the education parents want and what their children, and the country need?

The odd thing, is that the Liberal experiment that began in 1776 was determined to promote individual liberty, and not impose taxes on citizens. Yet to maintain the Continental Army as the armed force of the new United States, still threatened by the British Empire, Washington knew he had to fund the Armed forces from taxation. And while the Liberal idea that the State should not impose rules on individuals capable of making their own decisions, creating a free space between the State and the Citizen, many if not most new Americans lived in close-knit Christian communities which stifled free expression to maintain a common, collective identity and purpose. Thus as the Revolution and America evolved, you might say you had the free and the unfree living in the same country under the same regime: one that produced The Scarlet Letter on the one hand, and Call of the Wild on the other.

But at some point, if you are going to spend trillions of dollars on this and that, why not decide to spend it creating an integrated health service, and has the time not come to abolish Apartheid in education, and take a more imaginitive and egalitarian route to learning for the benefit of all? As soon as children are shut out of education, they are shut out from hope. And given them a second-class education and they may feel like second-class citizens and not care what happens, losing a moral compass that might guide them better in life.

Choices, decisions, and, I think, choices and decisions that must be reviewed as the challenges of the Covid world demand action for real long term change. In the UK we are sleepwalking into a Brexit that has as many bright prospects as it does dark corners, nobody knows if it will work. In the US you face four more years of decline, weakness and division -is it too late to save the Union?

[holzz]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...ropical-trump/

Tropical Trump?

[fred41]

Education can be linked to Covid 19 because the fundamental question.....

Thanks for the excellent read. I don’t know if you write this strictly from memory, use reference texts or both, but it’s often quite an impressive history lesson. I still remember the long debates you and Prospero (r.i.p.) used to have...I’d learned more about the history of the Middle East from those than I ever did in any school.

I will say that - once again, my answers/opinions, for the most part, tend to pertain mainly to the local than the rest of the country. I think of it as running for Mayor, City Council Rep., or Legislative Rep., as opposed to POTUS. You have to be able to tackle the problems of a smaller group of individuals, before you attempt the gargantuan task of 325 or so million people. While public sector jobs here in the USA probably trail Europe by about 2% , you are obviously correct on taxation. Our highest taxed States don’t even come close to the European average. Also, I believe that the majority of funding for public schools in many of our States is based on property taxes. This of course means - wealthy counties / wealthy schools ...poor counties/poor schools.

New York City’s school budget is more complicated than that however. I believe it gets money from NYS (not really certain of present day formula or how that’s collected other than Federal and property taxes) and local collected taxes, including corporate taxes , which are distributed to the City and then a portion given to the Board of Education, to be allocated to the school districts and their individual public schools. If someone reading this post works in the NYS or City education dept., or is familiar with budgeting, please explain this better, because it can definitely cause headaches.

The allocation of Charter schools is dependent on changing formulas and available spaces given, under the direction of the Governor and Mayor. If a politician wants the support of the Teacher’s and other Public education Unions, then they tend to fight them. This is a problem. Public schools in general, in NYC, haven’t been very good. This helps to explain why more than 50% (perhaps even higher) of the City’s white student population is in private school...and why ever increasing black and Hispanic people leave to find better school districts outside the city or in their own Parochial Schools. I should mention that there are a few other choices in the Public School system...Specialized schools for more gifted students that have to be applied to , where entrance is traditionally based on testing and /or particular skills in the Arts - Music, performance, painting,..etc. Our Mayor and his School’s Chancellor is trying to change the admission process to these schools to balance their racial disparities. The Mayor is being accused of trying to “dummy down” or entirely eliminate the testing requirements of his top Specialized High School’s testing requirements (While it should be noted, that his own son Dante, attended such a school - Brooklyn Tech.). For this he receives , in my opinion, a lot of fair criticism ..such as: Why not ensure a higher percentages of black and Hispanic entrants simply by vastly improving the public schools they come from. He rarely even closes or replaces public schools that continue to grossly fail in all bench marks...over and over again.

I have said public schools in NYC haven’t been very good. Overall this is true, but in as best defense of the Mayor I can muster - I believe test result wise NYC schools have made gains this last year. But some of the worst schools are in poor (and higher crime) areas such as the Bronx..and so if you don’t want to risk your child in one of the ‘bad’ schools, in terms of lack of safety or scholastics, what choice do you have? It is noble to fix both the educational system and it’s disparities between minorities and economic classes. But again, this can often take years, because it takes a balance of the right politicians and informed parents willing to fight for their children regardless of personal ideology. If a charter school can step in and offer your child a better future right now, why not allow it. What if it were your child? What would you want Now?!

Now for some more generalized thoughts on some of what you have mentioned. I suppose in an ideal world, for the whole country’s public educational system to be better, you would need a more socially, ethnically and economically integrated country. Sounds simple, but how to make that happen? In theory Socialism doesn’t actually sound bad at all. But the problem isn’t always the particular political system you either believe in or live under, but the people you entrust to run it and how much power over your life you give them. Also, that means you need a government in place With a system to protect against gross manipulations. You need politicians who follow programs that work and scrap them when they don’t - regardless of ideology. That’s hard to do in a place where at least half of time in office spent is running for re-election and trying to amass voters by any means necessary. If you want to create a better educational system (or any such system) without making it a form of Apartheid, as you mentioned, then you have to improve all of it. Make it better. The problem with rigid political ideologues often comes when they are hit with the realization that they can’t do this, so too often they seem tempted to balance the whole thing out and make it equally worse...because then it would , at least to the uncritical eye, seem fairer.

Gotta end it here for now. Good talk.