Shalom Shanghai - A Story of Survivors Holocaust Remembrance Day

SHANGHAI

CONNECTIONS

by Barry Primus

The night before I left Shanghai I went down to the waterfront, called the Bund, the stand out spectacle of that city. Part colonial, part futuristic, it is the very heart of the history of Shanghai, running from the opium trade to Mao and to its present image as the Manhattan of the east. As I walked along the promenade the fabulous buildings of the Bund ablaze with light over my shoulder, I kept my eyes on the Huangpu River just below me. It is still a busy port with ships and barges, pushing down the river into China's South Sea or making their way toward the Yangtze River not far away. For all the changes China has gone through Shanghai is still full of mystery. Shanghai is synonymous with trickery and kidnapping and an undesirable verb (to be Shanghai-ed is to be kidnapped or taken advantage of). 

As an actor my work brought me to many special locations and experiences, but this journey was unique. I was glad I had said "yes" when Lee Breuer called. 

Lee Breuer was the founder and director of the famous New York City experimental theatre, Mabou Minds. 

"I'm going to China to put on a play about the Shanghai Jews for the Shanghai International Theatre Festival. It's going to be a cutting edge, cross-cultural piece in the flesh, using both Chinese and American actors, how about coming?" Lee said to me. 

Here was chance for me as a Jew and an actor to experience and create an inspiring piece about our history and the co-operation and friendship between two suffering peoples during very hard times.

"Shanghai!" My wife Julie was horrified. "They're having one of the worst heat waves ever. And with the pollution you'll have to wear a mask the entire time, taking it off only to say your lines and eat!"

"At least the food's got to be good!" After all, for a Jew it's always Christmas in Shanghai. "Let's go," I said. Four weeks later I took a leave from teaching at UCLA to work with Lee and start rehearsals in New York. 

Shalom Shanghai is written by the Chinese playwright, William Sun with music by Eve Beglarian and video installations created by Eric Marciano. In July 1938 the Evian Conference was held in France to find ways to deal with the Jews fleeing Hitler's persecution, thirty two countries were present (China not included), and typical of the times none of the nations attending agreed to take in any Jewish refugees. This is a story about a father, Yacov and his daughter, Shana who escape Poland before Hitler's invasion to take refuge in Shanghai which at that time was the only port open to them that didn't require visas. Between 1932 and 1941 Shanghai became a modern day Noah's Ark accepting around 18,000 Jews fleeing the Nazis and the Holocaust. The play is performed bilingually with scenes in English and Chinese with subtitles running throughout the evening. Julie Arenal, my wife, would choreograph the piece, using actors and acrobats trained in Chinese Opera. The style of the evening was predicated on creating the surreal atmosphere the refugees and the Chinese must have found themselves in at that time. 

Nanking Road 1930's

Using real life situations is always a good way to deepen imaginary relationships of the play and create a deeper bond between actors. So during rehearsals Jessica Weinstein, the young actress playing Shanna and I decided to head down to the Chinese Consulate to get our visas together. The office was crammed and noisy, alive with mostly Chinese people waiting for their visas. It was easy to imagine being in China already and a stimulating place for us to wonder how our characters might have gotten to Shanghai in 1938. Like most Warsaw Jews then, we must have known very well that Hitler's invasion was imminent. I had just finished Isaac Bashevis Singer's book Shosha which painted a very vivid story of the Warsaw Jews on pins and needles as they waited for the Germans. Possibly Yacov and Shanna hooked up with people fleeing from Germany and Austria and like them headed south to Italy then on to China by ship. Soon after Italy would enter the war on the Axis side and the overseas route to Shanghai would be cut off. The only route then would be through the Trans Siberian Railway traveling through North East China to Shanghai.

Lee Breuer and I both felt my part could use a deeper Jewish flavor. Yacov came from pre-Hitler Poland, and we began to pepper the part with Yiddishism. We both knew a lot of the familiar phrases that have become part of New York speech. But a big help to me was using my mother-in-law Rose Arenal's "vert-a-lach," a collection of "sharp sayings" from her hometown of Motziv, Poland (the village was completely destroyed in World War II and no longer exists). My dialogue seemed far more authentic to me now. Calling someone like the Japanese Officer not "a bad guy," but a "farshlepte crank," (meaning a prolonged illness) can make quite a difference. Instead of saying "a difficult situation,"
"se teet zich tish a benk" (which means bedlam) has much a more particular flavor. 

We added a Yiddish style Cabaret act in Yacov's café including a song about a mixed menu that food shortages might have presented. 

"Shanghai Jews have much to offer -

                      more than Warsaw I'd say 

Look moon-cake-pie, how about carp-on-rye 

We've got egg-drop-Borscht with Soy 

Matzo ball wantons, jellyfish heads - oy!

Just leave your cares behind with hairy crabs so fine 

                      and kugel soaked in brine. 

Try our latkes, stir fried tchotchkes, 

                      gefiltefishy dim sum."

At the New York public library I read that most of the Jews arriving in Shanghai moved to Hongkau an area that had been extensively bombed during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai. Hongkau was the heart of the Jewish District, left extremely crowded and very poor by the war. Historically, it had always been the rowdiest part of the city, brimming with bordellos and Opium dens. The majority of refugees were very poor and forced to move into the Heine (home in German). These were community centers supported by donations from wealthier Jews in the city and for a while the American Jewish Distribution Committee. As the refugees moved in they tried to improve their conditions and some even managed to open small restaurants, cafes and shops.  They all brought with them the Jewish culture in the form of athletic clubs, newspapers and theater. My character, Yacov runs one of the Viennese type coffee shops that dotted the Jewish Quarter. To keep his shop open, Yacov finds himself in the dangerous situation of maintaining a good relationship with the Japanese Officer in charge who has eyes for Yacov's pretty young daughter, Sharma. What a moral and ethical challenge for Yacov? What compromises would he have to make to stay alive?  

By the time we arrived to Shanghai the weather had turned mild, the pollution no worse than it was when I first came to Los Angeles in the 1970's. Thank god, Julie was wrong! My first challenge in China was crossing the street. Cars, motorcycles, bicycles all seem to follow their own rules miraculously never hitting one another but continually driving Julie and me back to the curb. Then we try to negotiate another way across the street. We never did figure it out. This Shanghai was certainly every bit a metropolis with its own particular sense of life and vitality. 

Taking a cab we see a remarkable transition from the ultra modern highways and sleek high-rise buildings to the solemnity of the Jewish Refugees Museum in Hongkau. The area is still very poor and a far cry from the new Shanghai. How strange it would have been for Yacov and Sharma and the other refugees to live here with those smells and sounds of China. 

The Museum is located inside Ohel Moshe Synagogue that was the spiritual center of Jewish life in the Ghetto in the days of war and the Holocaust. The streets around the museum are teaming with small businesses in tiny spaces. We find a restaurant with one table and three chairs, a stand selling socks and underwear with a tarp to cover the goods, and a man with a sowing machine and stool set up shop on the sidewalk. In the old four story houses they dry clothing on poles instead of lines. We see impossibly small balconies jammed with bicycles, birdcages, plants and packed boxes with god knows what. 

After their ordeal in Europe what a blessed relief it must have been for the Jewish people to be with these equally poor Chinese people who opened their port for the refugees. Living in their own desperate poverty the Chinese people gave way to these strangers, showing them absolutely no resentment over sharing what little they had with the newcomers. 

China and the Chinese people always held a fascination for me. As a teenager I had a job in lower Manhattan and spent many of my lunch breaks wandering through Chinatown. Now that I was there, I found the Chinese people open and with a certain grace and sweetness in whatever dealings I had with them. And it was endearing to me that they were called the "Jews of the East." Yes, the Chinese people possess an instinct for commerce and business, and we share their strong values of education and family ties. But for me, even more so, I delight in the way they engage each other. Their playfulness and humor creates its own kind of tumult that is reminiscent of my New York background. I also found that many of the Chinese people I met had a strong affinity to Jews. The playwright himself talked about how his strongest mentors for much of his American education were Jewish. As I worked on the play I thought about my family on my grandmothers side in Tarnow, Poland. Like my character Yacov, they owned a restaurant. They did not survive the Holocaust. But what if they had gone to Shanghai? What would life have been like for them?

A terrified baby seen near Nanking Road

The Battle of Shanghai and Japanese Bombing 1942 - 1945

The Japanese army had been brutal toward the Chinese people ultimately slaughtering more than three hundred thousand of them over two weeks during "the Rape of Nanking." But strangely the Japanese were not anxious to persecute the Jews. The Japanese laissez faire policy towards the Jews stayed in place as long as they could envision possible deals with the Jews that might benefit them. But after Pearl Harbor all bets were off. Under increasing pressure from the Nazis and particularly the German Police attaché in Tokyo, Colonel Joseph Meissinger, known as "The Butcher of Warsaw," the Jews were forced into a designated ghetto area. 

To leave the ghetto, my Yacov would have to obtain a pass from the highly unpredictable and sometimes sadistic Japanese Officer, Suzuki. Suzuki tries to make a deal whereby we can move outside the ghetto if my daughter lives with him. Yacov tries to flee with Sharma along with Chinese Red Army Guerillas who are fighting the Japanese in the north. He had already escaped a murdering vice admiral in Poland and would not be caught this time. In the end Yacov dies, but his daughter survives. 

Although the Japanese army never resorted to "The Final Solution," in China the Jews there felt terribly uncertain as to their fate. They did not know the full extent of the horror that was going on in Europe, perhaps. But the Jews knew enough to fear of the long arm of the Nazi Gestapo. Although I could imagine the constant anxiety the Jews must have felt, I could also add my feelings as a father whose daughter, Raphaela lives far away in Israel. Any unsettling news from the middle east leaves me anxious and on edge.  

The theatre where we performed was full of contradictions with plush seats and modern equipment on one end and squat toilets and hazardous backstage conditions on the other. During rehearsals "our hosts" wanted "changes." The Red Army Guerrilla who Sharma falls in love with in the play  was to be treated more heroically. A kiss between them became a hug. Lee Breuer's more absurd ending was changed to clarify the Chinese as saviors. Some things in the play were lost in translation, and the subtitles were often not enough to convey the emotion of my performance. My Yiddish jokes at times fell flat, but we decided the cabaret act was a slice of life of the Ghetto and important on that level even if some laughs fell flat.

The play came together, getting tighter and stronger as we performed it. The mix of languages and actors worked well. It was a hot ticket in the festival, and audiences were warm towards it. I had "fleshed" out a lot of my Yacov, and it became satisfying to play him. Most of the crowd by far were Chinese people. And though they had lived in Shanghai and were aware of the Jewish presence there, they weren't knowledgeable about this particular period.

Bad pollution, very aggressive business policies and some corruption were all good reasons for Chinese officials to want such a positive story out in the world. And maybe, as a friend of mine so cynically put it, "... the Jews were important in the building of Shanghai, now they want them back to renovate it." This was a piece about surviving under oppression. The arts are always a place for the unexpressed and forbidden needs and feelings of repressed people to surface, as it were in camouflaged forms. I saw this while working in Argentina, Mexico and Russia in their more oppressive periods. Was this consciously or unconsciously at work here? Whatever the motives this is an important tale of generosity and tolerance during terrible times and a miracle for those few who survived the Holocaust.

Walking that promenade the night before I left Shanghai, I watched the lights of the fantastic city around me and its dark river below. What must it have been like for my Yacov and his daughter, Sharma to first arrive this harbor city and its total strangeness? They had made the decision. This was their home now. The play may have been over, the Hongkau district empty of Jews, but my character was still vividly alive in me, challenging me to constantly evaluate the city, the people and myself.

A few days after arriving back in Los Angeles I met a neighbor of mine. He was excited to hear about my adventure in China. He had a cousin who had been born in Shanghai, during the war to parents who had fled Holocaust Europe. They had settled in New York, and older now they came out to L.A.

"They moved down to Monterrey Park, past downtown," he mentioned.  

"Isn't that the Chinese section?" I asked. 

"Yes," he answered. "They always liked them. They wanted to be around them again."  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Barry Primus

A graduate of Bennington College, Barry Primus worked on the New York stage for the first decade of his career including a role in the historic Lincoln Center production of After the Fall by Arthur Miller directed by Elia Kazan.  Barry appeared in multiple network television dramatic series and in dozens of major motion pictures. In television, one continuing role as a troubled police detective in the CBS series Cagney and Lacey with Sharon Gless gained him much acclaim.  In motion pictures Barry performed for Martin Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha with David Carradine and Barbara Hersey and in Sidney Pollack's Absence of Malice with Paul Newman and Sally Field.  Director Mark Rydell called on Barry as his assistant and Second Unit Director on The Rose with Bette Midler.  Moving into his own projects, Barry directed and wrote along with John Lawton the dramatic short film, Final Stage with Richard Romanus and John P. Ryan.  This led to Barry's first theatrical motion picture, Mistress with Robert DeNiro and Eli Wallach and Martin Landau.  Barry is a board member of the Actors Studio in New York and Hollywood.  He has taught acting and directing at the American Film Institute, Columbia University, the Lee Strassberg Institute, UCLA, Loyola-Marymount University and the Maine Media Workshops.  He and his wife of sixty years, Julie Arenal live in both New York and Hollywood.  

Macroeconomics In Our Modern America: The Big Picture 21st Century World Update 2016

Hong Kong Harbor 2010

The 21st Century Asian Hub  

In Economics 101, we all learned that Macroeconomics in America is a big deal. It is the analysis of literally all the transactions that take place every nanosecond for some given time period over the entire economy of our nation. Therefore it's complicated and many geometric progressions beyond the normal calculator in your head. The speedy supercomputers of the present day can chart the lines or bars to see what's going more accurately than ever in world history. So why are there so many competing stories about the economy? 

Let's look back to the financial crisis of late 2008. To get what's going on I think we must look at the Japanese economy circa 1992. They were over-extended, and there was a real estate collapse, and their stock markets crashed, and the central bank made the borrowing rate very cheap mainly because the central/federal government had very little power to stimulate the economy with fiscal policy. Japan's Central Bank even tried negative interest rates paying companies to borrow money. Things moved better, but very, very slowly in recovery. The central banks like our federal reserve bank can only help so much, then we need fiscal policy, or the government paying for refurbishing our rusted bridges for example or building a national high speed rail service for another good example. 

To better understand what happened in Japan, read some John Maynard Keynes, because Keynes applies well. When you read Keynes keep in mind that in 1919 he predicted the rise of a fascist Germany because of the forced austerity of the Treaty of Versailles. That same scheme of austerity mirrors the simplistic almost Randian, certainly delusional, "voodoo" by Wall-Street-And-Big-Bank shills Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek and Alan Greenspan. The three mythic names of Friedman, Hayek and Greenspan were touted by every International Banking huckster from the 1980's and on to justify their criminal schemes to literally steal money from both private clients and our federal government. 

Now here's some market advice. The US stock markets are today doing pretty well. Maybe the stocks are a bit overpriced. So my advice is to sell any bitcoins you have, and watch the market vacillate just like Japan for the next twenty years or so until we get rid of the fake patriots like the Koch brothers and green card Rupert Murdoch and all their Pay-Per-Vote™ politicians and Judges. 

Please be careful not make the mistake of saying that because the markets follow a certain chart upward and then downward, it will repeat the curve. Each time the market moves upward or downward it is by definition an "independent event." Basic probability says that it may or may not repeat. 

The thing to watch on the 1929 charts is how the economy went up for a while, and then crashed hard again in the late 1930s. If we follow this then we are in for a bad ride any day now. Put that with our Pay-Per-Vote™ egoist US Congress members who are used to making killings on shorting the US markets and we have a problem, Houston. 

The single grand solution is for the National Government to start spending some money unlike the Pay-Per-Vote™ politicians and the Koch-Murdoch media cartels all say we should do. Those creeps think they are living in Greece or someplace that doesn't make massive amounts of stuff like we do. 

About that, here's a little dialogue I made about how our government spends it's money, and how we should not worry too much. A FB Friend asked about the trillions of dollars of debt owed by our federal government. I told my friend, "Don't worry. If the Federal Reserve comes up short... they'll just print more money to make it up. Promise! That's how the Fed works." Now look for where all our treasured USA money may have gone. Look closely to the Federal Budget that is originated and written finally in the US House of Representatives, not the US Senate, and not the White House. Then in that budget:  The Department of Defense is by far the biggest spender in Washington. 

Then someone asked: What about our gold reserves? Remember, it's only money. The gold doesn't matter. Look closely at the top of any US bill in circulation now. It says "Federal Reserve Note." That means there's nothing other than "The Full Faith and Credit of the USA" backing the bill.  So when the tea party Republicans in congress say they're not going to raise the debt ceiling the value of the US dollar and US Treasury Bonds drops in world markets. That's why those same tea party Republicans like Ryan and McConnell were probably shorting US treasury notes and the US Dollar when they say... "We're not going to raise the debt ceiling because we don't want to spend any more money." Then when the market falls those tea party Republicans make a killing on their shorting the bonds. Very, very unethical. But somebody voted for those hustlers. Ugh and pity those tea party muppets! 

But what about inflation? And how we compete across the world? Don't worry about other countries out-producing the USA because they still make stuff here that is valuable in all world markets... like rice and corn and soy beans and Fords and Chevys and lots of other stuff.... trillions and trillions. Hyperinflation comes from no control at the national income and central banking level and corruption as in Argentina sometimes. For all those billionaires out there and the Saudi Kings, the US Dollar is and will continue to be a good shield against inflation. And it is safe because hopefully the tea party republican congress members will not continue to ruin our credit rating which in turn is really a measure of confidence in the US Economy. I would worry much more about some warhawk like John McCain or Ted Cruz who wants to fight a war with Iran and then one with North Korea and then Syria and then on and on. That is the most horrible scenario brought to you by sad tea party Republican muppets in power. 

One more thing: Of course you all know that China holds USA bonds to the tune of about US$1.6 Trillion. But what you probably don't know is that there's a lot of other countries playing that game. For example, Japan holds about US$1.3 Trillion in USA bonds. So don't worry if some rube who watches a lot of Fox TV says "Oh, the Chinese own us!" It's not just the Chinese. Everybody owns us. And we own them. All ties together in this small world of creeps in jets. Look at Donald Trump and look at Mitt Romney and look at Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers and all their sewer of billions in secret banks all over the planet. 

Just so you'll understand about the bonds, the nation of the People's Republic of China has extra Kwai's, or RMB's or Renminbi's (in Mandarin, People's Money) because  their factories shipped a lot of iPhones to Hong Kong last month, and the Hong Kong bank made a payment for the gadgets, so they need a place to put all that money while they are deciding on which type of French fighter jets to buy. So they buy US Bonds on the Bond Market in Hong Kong or New York or wherever... the bonds pay a little interest so they make a little.  But in the PRC case a $1.3 trillion dollar US bond can lately pay about $1.3 billion a month or more in interest. But that's not a lot for the truly huge amounts of money in International banking. The real advantage is that US Bonds are very, very, very safe investments. You will not lose your principal (as in your capital). As I noted in my reputedly "dogmatic" post earlier, a lot of nations have some US Bonds in their savings portfolios. That guy in North Korea, Kim Jung Un and a lot of other wealthy world leader people own some bonds personally. Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal who until recently, was the all-American number two owner of News Corporation (Fox News and such) along with that other pluperfect patriot Rupert Murdoch certainly have some personal money in US Bonds. 

But buying bonds are different from buying Dollars in the currency markets. A nation or an individual can buy say, dollars because s/he believes the dollar will increase in value relative to say the Euro where s/he had some holdings last month. So the buyer gets some dollars and holds on to them for a month. If the Euro falls a little relative to the dollar then s/he can make a little bit of money. The currency markets are an extreme sport rather like the derivatives in mortgages and such that cued the breakdown in 2007. 

Now let's look at what exactly is meant by "increasing the debt ceiling." It means only that the Government of the US will allow an increase in the amount of money it can borrow in order to service (pay) it's debts. That includes all debts... paychecks for soldiers, rent for the FBI offices in Memphis, F22 parts from Lockheed, Senator Ted Cruz's new girl intern assistant from San Antonio, and everything else the Government of the US needs to keep functioning. Every cent of the money to be paid came through and was approved by the budget committee in the House of Representatives and then passed by the whole House of Representatives and then to the Senate for a nod and then to the President for a signature. The House originated and completed the spending. The House is controlled by Speaker Paul Ryan. He controls it along with his other tea party Republican people. But we have seen that Paul Ryan and his sub rosa group of tea party Republicans may be gaming the credit rating of the United States as a political stunt. Please note China is not the only owner of US debt... there are lots more. The Japanese for example own about as much as the Chinese. But the PRC (China) gets a lot more fearsome press, probably because tea party Republican people in power like Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell are delighted by more TV time on cable news shows. 

A credit downgrade by a Chinese agency serves even more text for cable TV blurbs and little else. The rates for our bonds are determined by the worldwide market controlled mainly by enormous mutual funds and shady investment banking cartels owned by shady people who may even be Americans holding off-shore accounts. 

Now here's some information about big-time corporation and government accounting operations and the differences for you to learn about: Most large corporations run their financial operations exactly the same way as the US Government. DuPont has an agreement, for example with Citibank in New York to cover their payrolls for the month of July when revenues are a little short because the sales of fertilizer are less than in spring planting. So DuPont pays Citibank a fee to cover the payroll funds borrowed. Citibank is assured of payment by DuPont putting up some of their assets as security. The same for film and media companies. Comcast's people at Universal studios need the cash for their production calendar for the summer. They call Bank of America or City National Bank here in LA and ask to borrow the funds and they put up their film library as collateral. So the bankers give them the money that Universal then uses for production.  Revenues (income) from movies in theaters everywhere will bring in the money to pay the money back to the banks. 

For the US Government tax revenues (income) are coming in the spring (from the IRS) to pay the money back. Next, because of it's unmatched reputation over more than two hundred years the US Government does not need to put up collateral. That is our credit rating.  It is the credit rating for all the people of America, and that is why the tea party Republican people who disparage and attempt to exploit it for politics should be tried for treason.  

Of course the possibility of default is near zero. And any default would come from the House of Representatives which controls the money. It's like judicial acts in courtrooms. Judicial ethics requires judges* to never, ever appear to be biased to one side of a case over another. The operative is "appear." For a trial to be fair it must "appear" wholly unbiased. Same for financial markets. No appearance of problems for payment ever can be seen. The appearance of problems to jittery financial markets world wide is as bad as really having a problem in payments. So exploiting the "Full Faith and Credit" of the United States is a truly criminal act. 

It took me years in upper level economics work plus financial statistics and probability in grad school plus years of picking through all the media hucksters all over the planet to get a handle on this. So there you go, enjoy the dismal science at it's darkest. Note that Einstein gave up economics because he thought it was too easy. But the brilliant British philosopher and physicist, Bertram Russell gave it up because it was too hard. I abandoned economics for media mainly because the entire realm of economics in those days was an inhuman wasteland for ethics thanks to the rising dark stars of trickle down.  

*Please note that most judges have pretty tight ethical standards except for our US Supreme Court that has none.  Please see my March 3, 2016 blog post "The Trickle Down Jurist™ Is Buried."  

Los Angeles Skyline 2011

The 21st Century Western American Hub  

Education In America

Algebra Cloister 2004

No Windows LAUSD Middle School 

All over America in the 1950s, local TV News opened their weather reports with a cheery jingle and down-home lyric:  

     "Everybody talks about it ... 
      no one does a thing about it... The Weather!" 

Education in America is just like those weather reports used to be. Academics and politicians and newspaper columnists and many, many other experts ("everybody") have definitive opinions about how to solve our problem. 

The problem is not a "self-esteem" problem. The problem is not the "tiger mom" problem. The problem is not a wait for "superman" as in the documentary about education superstar Michelle Rhee who was a really terrific charismatic teacher and administrator. And there are hundreds of thousands of great teachers out there in America who work their tails off every day. Why do we not have a better result?  

Surprised Algebra Kids Walking Campus

Cutting Class 2004

The core problem is way too many politicians in the classroom in two different ways. Think back to your elementary school or middle school. There was a Principal and there was a secretary. Two person administration. Now a typical urban school like the ones where I taught for several years in LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) may have five times as many people in the "office." Why is this? 

It's not necessary unless the "Admin" people up in Sacramento need constant reports about the school's "progress" in teaching the "Standards" written by the Admin people and unknown experts up in Sacramento.  

Therein is the second great problem. The standards are necessary for covering subject matter, but they are dogma.  And dogma can easily be abused. So it always felt like I was in some rigid religious classroom demanding a recital of every word from some holy text. In the horror of present-day Texas and Louisiana public education, politicians have tried to insert religious dogma into science classes. Similar travesties are occurring all over America in these days of desperate politicians. In completely controlling standards statewide, those state politicians are more confident that they'll survive the next election cycle by cow-tailing to some religious cult or secret racist fold. 

The LAUSD also has it's local board, but that board is rigidly controlled by Sacramento and the state people. But the three hundred pound gorilla is the federal government. The state government kicks in some of the budget, but the major amount comes from Washington.  And Washington always has their say in how the money is to be spent.  Remember "No child left behind" of the W. Bush administration. 

The entire bureaucracy is a chaotic can of worms. I think we can get rid of the entire structure including the rigid edicts declaring exact subject matter in the "standards." Over the past decade, this has happened a little through the semi-private charter schools that are partly financed by committees of billionaire do-gooder types. Charter schools do shield teachers a bit from the vagaries of the downtown admins and the Sacramento admins and the politicians everywhere. The decisive difference in Charters is that they are not required to keep kids that are "failing." Also the Charters do respect both the students and the teachers significantly more than the regular LAUSD schools. 

In most county systems like LAUSD teachers are considered hourly workers. The "Admins" view teachers like assembly line drones in a Van Nuys Chevrolet factory of the 1950s. The best workers have their time cards exactly in order. There's very little respect for the assembly-line teacher. But there's certainly no real freedom in Charter schools or regular schools. 

So I propose we keep the certification process for teachers.  It seems to be pretty good. Also there are many schools set up for special needs students. These seem to be working pretty good also, so we can keep those in place. 

Now we can move into unexplored territory. I propose we have a state-wide elected committee choose a really top-notch text for all subjects. Then we give the text to the teachers and leave them alone for an entire year. No standards. No achievement testing every five weeks. Banish the politicians from the classroom. Banish too much intrusion by the local or the school Admins. Let the teachers be free to teach. 

For the paranoid and to protect the kids, let's put HD cameras in every the classroom and record it every day. Allow the teacher access to the video files, to see how they are doing. Put the video securely and privately on the web to open the system up. A classroom is not a confessional booth. Let all the curious Moms and Dads watch the kids in class. Then at the end of the year we can give the kids a test and take a look at the video files. Let's see how they all do. 


California once had the best public system in the world. 
I believe that California system was so good because of the freedom granted teachers to teach and not to assemble. 

Distill it down, toss the tests, give some freedom to the teachers and we can see clearly two competing methods for evaluating our education system and thereby entire society: Quantitative or Qualitative. It's the MBA vs. the MFA if you will. I'll buy art over output. 

Get the politicians out of the classroom now! 

Algebra Cloister 2004

Wall of Fame

Algebra Kids in Class 2004

November 22

The Inauguration

My first semester in college I went to University of Tennessee in Knoxville before I transferred to Tulane in New Orleans.  The word of the shooting came to all of us at the start of Engineering Chemistry.  We were a big class of over fifty of the best and brightest.  The Professor, Dr. Bowman curtly stated,  "It is sad, but there's nothing we can do so let's begin..."  Science was everything to Bowman.  He put out the cigarette and began his lecture on atomic weights.  

Bowman was a brilliant teacher.  Everyone thought he was an angry character because the school didn't choose his book as the official text for Chemistry 101.  Bowman always wore red ties and brown leather Wellington boots, and he chain smoked unfiltered Chesterfield cigarettes.   

After class I walked alone slowly through the main hall.  A young black man in a nice jacket and tie trudged past me crying openly swaying clenched fists as if to ask why.  The blonde woman who taught me freshman english leaned against a doorway and held her face in her hands to hide her tears.  A girl I knew from math class sat on the stairs shaking her head.  

As I walked back home to my dorm, I recalled the year before as I waited with my friend Marbut Gaston on the roadside near Vanderbilt University in Nashville.  We heard the president was speaking at the stadium there and his motorcade was going by soon.  For those days in small-town Nashville we always knew what was going on... always.  

Soon the motorcycles came by and then a couple of dark cars with very important people.  Then the black convertible slowly came over the rise to almost a stop.  The handsome sandy haired man looked directly into my eyes and smiled.  He saluted me and my friend as he spoke.  

"Hello boys you're looking good,"  said President John Fitzgerald Kennedy to me and my friend.  

"He's just like us!  What a good guy,"  I thought.  

What an incredible guy he was.  

The Neo-Know-Nothings

The Know-Nothing Flag of 1850

Long time Republican good old boy Ed Meese was Attorney General under Reagan. Nowadays Meese is part of Heritage Foundation... a John Birch Society clone from the Koch Brothers legacy (Poppa Koch founded the original). In the 1960s Civil Rights times, the Birchers wore respectable suits and ties, but if you scratched one you'd find a hooded white robe and a burning cross tattoo. 

As for our modern John Birchers, the Tea Party Republicans, to find any comparable movement I think you must go back in time to another Republican skin disease in the early days of our republic.  The stylishly named Know-Nothings had a run from about 1845 to about 1860. Nationally they called themselves both the American Republican Party and the Native American Party. In those days a "Native American" meant a white person born in the USA. They were a big deal in Ohio in the area that is now Boehner's district. Their big issue was immigration and they hated the Catholic Irish people invading America in those days. They were a violent sect, and they even burned a Catholic church in Maine. They had chaotic shoot outs over governor candidates in Kentucky leaving twenty-two dead. They were very secretive and even sounded like a fraternity. They probably had a secret handshake. In their twilight Lincoln quashed their candidates in Illinois. 

The Know-Nothings one saving grace was Congressman Nathaniel P. Banks who helped buy Alaska. Old Nathan served in the Union army where in perilous battle he learned well the corporate raider instincts that in our century young candidate Romney very safely picked up at Harvard Business School. All those business people in Washington knew there was certainly a lot of mining money to be made up north to Alaska. Just like the Mitten, the pluperfect patriot Nathan served a time as Governor of Massachusetts. 

Much later after the great Civil war some of the Know-Nothings Southern "nativist" members were founders of the Ku Klux Klan. Finally in our time, Martin Scorsese used one sordid killer Know-Nothing character in his "Gangs of New York" movie. All of the smelly Tea Party Republican creeps in congress are basically Neo-Know-Nothings. 

Really all these Tea Party Republican types and John Birchers should just move on down to Texas... where all are sheltered from everything Western civilization has discovered in the past thousand years. 

But please, please everyone... know about this: The present-day Tea Party Republican rave is not because of beliefs or opinions or philosophy. 

It looks like they really do not care about the polls. They must be getting their payoff some other way! And I believe it is all about the money. Everybody knows we have a Tea Party Republican Pay-Per-Vote™ US Congress. 

If the Tea Party Republican crew in our Congress can cause the market to tank or to rise they stand to make millions. Tea Party Republican skippers Ryan and Boehner and McConnell and Cruz and the Koch Brothers are all short-selling America and manipulating the stock market. 

Plus the whole scam is timed to be in the center of the Tea Party Republican Congress's term. They are counting on their constituents back home forgetting about all the disruption they caused. Very treacherous but probably very true. 

They should all be in jail with old Bernie Madoff... we could build a new prison in Texas.  

The Klan Parading in DC 1926 

Paul Ryan Posing in DC 2012  

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Special thanks to Terraplane Marquez for his evocative comments 
on Ed Meese the original Neo-Know-Nothing pinup.

Trickle Down Economics Failed America

Any realistic look at the past six years of the US Economy proves without question the need for more reliance on Fiscal Policy for economic recovery. That is, the US Economy needs some pure Keynesian Fiscal Policy. The national government needs to hire people to boost the economy. National monetary policy is conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed has done as much as it can with bond purchasing and interest rate reductions. 

Mainly by boosterism the Reaganist economic trust of the past century exalted the monetarists as the fountainhead of America's economic greatness. Monetary economists like Milton Friedman were deified and adored by the Reaganist "trickle down school." Reagan nominated Alan Greenspan to run the Fed based on that delusional pet dogma coupled later with the laissez-faire everything destruction of the Glass-Steagall Act. Passed under FDR in the depths of the Depression of the 1930s to closely regulate the banking sectors of the US Economy, the Glass-Steagall Act worked well for sixty-seven years. The Act had a simple purpose: To prevent the Federal Government from ever paying the bill when the banks went bankrupt. Under Glass-Steagall the banks had to pay for their own corrupt practices. Glass-Steagall was effectively repealed by the ironically entitled Gramm–Leach–Bliley Financial Modernization Act of 1999. 

As we all witnessed in 2007 our Federal government was forced to correct the lousy decisions made by unknown hucksters in the banking and finance businesses all over America and literally across the world. It was and remains a huge tab to both shore up these huge financial corporations, and deadly ground wars in Asia. The tab is still largely unpaid because the US Congress is unable to pass any needed increases in taxes. Many older people may recall that under President Eisenhower after World War II taxes were very heavy on higher income people and companies. The war debt needed to be paid. And incredibly, the American taxpayer continues to give a lot of money to some very, very wealthy managers and CEOs in the deal. 

Latter day Reaganists continue to celebrate the freedom for the very, very wealthy people who run corporations to trickle down their money to the peon workers of our nation. "Trickles" of money dripping into the economy controlled by hyper-wealthy individuals and oligopoly banks and other financial companies is now clearly not enough drip to sway the national economy one direction or another. So, listen to this all you GOTP congress people and loudmouths on cable news: Conspicuous consumption by a privileged few is not the key to a better nation or an elixir to an ailing US economy. 

The lack of funding for the US Federal budget engineered by the US Congressional GOTP faction has been a heavy weight on our growth. Sadly the USA has become a third world country in many ways. Our Economic system is a circus without a ringmaster because our national and state governments are largely controlled by sordid extremist business interests. 

The Reaganist laissez-faire dogma gives us streets controlled by militaristic police forces financed largely by the state and national governments. Can't really blame them. Look at the weapons the local police face in their day to day jobs. AK47s and Glocks and all manner of military assault weapons. Thank you NRA and other extremist dogmatic gun people for aiding and abetting murder of our police people and regular citizens. The nation looks like Lebanon in 1975. 

Every administration since World War II has tried to improve our educational system. Here the problem is too much regulation. Too much of some political agenda in the classroom. Our educational system is controlled largely by dogma from state and national governments and religious and political fascist groups. Teachers in schools all over America need more freedom to teach. Leave them alone and let them teach bird watching if they want. And if some GOTP creep representative can't stand more freedom for a worker teacher, let the representative go and try it themselves for a while. Put the class up on Cable news and C-Span. Let's all see how they do after seven months of ten hours a day classroom work for an eighth of the pay they get in Washington. 

Why does all of this continue? Our Pay-Per-Vote US Congress. Not satisfied with their Federal paychecks, GOTP creeps like Canter and Boehner and Rubio and many others are Cashiers for our Pay-Per-Vote congress. Now Ka-Ching, vote for this. Ka-Ching, vote for that. Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching. They love that sweet Ka-Chingy sound. Rubio even touts some cheapo bottled water by guzzling from the product bottle brand for his devoted audience on C-Span.  Ka-Ching. Ka-Ching. Ka-Ching. 

What more can be said? One long term solution may be to get the money out of politics, but this is such a cliche it has lost all meaning to the body politic. 

Call it what it is! The GOTP people are not clowns nor is their circus funny. They are dangerous and destructive to everything that is democracy. Their stated goal is to destroy our present form of government. Once we have voted these people and their Reaganist dogmas out of office we must restore the power of the Federal government to monitor and regulate not only our financial systems, but also all those weapons in the hands of hateful racist and sociopathic GOTPs in hiding. The time is now. We can't wait any longer because all our lives are at stake and our childrens' freedom is in the balance.