WHAT DO VICE-PRESIDENTS DO?

Harry Targ

I was reflecting on the wisdom I acquired in one of my early college classes, “Introduction to American Government” and subsequent historical readings. First, the conventional wisdom of American political life was that Vice-Presidents are rarely of any administrative or political consequence. Generally, sitting Vice-Presidents represent the United States at funerals of foreign dignitaries. They throw out the first pitch at baseball games at season openers. They may be selected to provide “balance” on a presidential ticket. If the Presidential candidate is from the North, the vice-presidential candidate is from the South, or one of the team is from the East and the other from the Midwest or West Coast.

In office, the traditional wisdom suggests, sitting Vice-Presidents have little influence or even knowledge of current policies, programs, and pending crises. The classic example of this is signified by Vice President Harry Truman’s ascendency to the Presidency upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April, 1945. The new President was informed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson, in April, 1945, that the military was about to test a new weapon, the atomic bomb, which could bring an end to the war in Asia. This was news to the sitting Vice-President! And Stimson proposed a strategy for using the bomb, if the test was successful, to threaten the Soviet Union to bow to U.S. post-war demands.

Truman, like most twentieth century Vice-Presidents was not part of the public policy inner-circle before or after presidential elections. He was only on the ticket in 1944 to assuage Southern Democrats because the incumbent Vice-President, Henry Wallace, was seen as a dangerous radical who had publicly opposed racial segregation.

Southern Democrats and other racists and conservatives in the Democratic Party organized to oust Vice-President Wallace to make sure that no dangerous radical could be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. They mobilized around a traditional machine politician from a border state with no record of opposing racism, Harry Truman. And, as suggested above, while FDR caved to rightwing pressures in the party, the new Vice-President was not made part of the policy team.

Subsequent to the Truman nomination, Vice Presidents included Alben Barkley, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George H. W. Bush, Dan Quayle, and Al Gore. For the most part they were of little political influence at best or embarrassments at worst.

The role of Vice-President changed markedly with the election of the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney ticket. Bush came from a wealthy political family and had served with less than distinction as governor of Texas. The election was close and the outcome in November, 2000 was largely determined by a Republican-led Supreme Court.

The real influence over the next eight years was the Vice President, Dick Cheney. Former Congressman from Wyoming, Cheney had served every administration since Richard Nixon. He was the Secretary of Defense when George Herbert Walker Bush launched Gulf War One. General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of forces during that war and his superior General Colin Powell, Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, originally opposed military action in the Gulf. But Secretary of Defense Cheney made it clear that if these military men continued their resistance to war on Iraq he, Cheney, would find a way to get the job done.

Later in the decade, Cheney would participate in the formation of PNAC, Project for the New American Century. This organization of inside the beltway hawks, descendants of the anti-Communist Committee on the Present Danger, and other advocates for high military spending and war rather than diplomacy as the primary tool of empire, used every opportunity during the decade to pressure President Clinton and Congress in the new post-Cold War era to remake the world, including attacking Iraq.

In the 2000 election the PNAC point man, who also served time as CEO of a major defense contractor, Haliburton, became the number two man in the White House.

Serving a new president who during a foreign policy debate with candidate Gore suggested that the United States should not engage in overseas adventures, Cheney went to work to transform United States foreign policy. The so-called “neo-conservative” agenda promoted war over diplomacy, lied about threats to U.S. security, used the 9/11 tragedy to launch two wars that lasted a decade, and created fear about a global terrorist threat. In short, the new Vice-Presidential role was one of power, influence, and control over the presidency not seen since Theodore Roosevelt served as William McKinley’s second in command.

Cheney was the idea man with enormous clout derived from his associations with the military/industrial complex. As a smart, manipulative politician he transformed the role and influence of the vice president, particularly on foreign policy.

Saturday, August 11, 2012, Republican candidate Mitt Romney announced that his running mate for the fall election would be Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, also smart and skilled in the ways of Washington politics. He has articulated a vision of opposition to “big” government for the vast majority of the population. But at the same time his proposed budget remains committed to “big” government for the supper rich. These include the military, insurance companies, and bankers. He will serve as the idea man for the weak Romney candidacy and if elected will do for the domestic economy what Dick Cheney did for United States foreign policy.

Of course, the losers will be working people, women, people of color, the elderly, and the environment. One does not have to be happy with the Obama presidency to see that this fall real choices exist for the future of the 99 percent.

     

SYRIAN POLICY LOOKS FAMILIAR TO CUBANS

Harry Targ

The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution Friday, August 3, 2012, that The New York Times said, “severely criticized the Syrian government, blaming it almost exclusively for the killings and other atrocities that have come to shape the 17-month uprising there.”

The resolution condemning Syria ironically implied that it was that country that refused to carry out the peace plan that was proposed four months earlier by Kofi Annan. No mention was made in the resolution that the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, among others had been feeding supplies to anti-government militias that encouraged them to violence rather than negotiation. While 133 Western and Arab League allies voted for the resolution, 33 countries abstained, and 12 voted “no.” These were portrayed as Syria’s “slim group of backers, which include Russia, China, and Iran.”

Syria is a dictatorship that in the recent civil war has leveled brutal violence against its own people. But the Syrian Ambassador was correct in asserting that those who sponsored the resolution condemning violence were the same nations that had “played a major role in the militarization of the situation in Syria, by providing weapons to the terrorist groups.”

It is not surprising that The New York Times failed to mention that Cuba has been one of the longstanding critics of U.S. inspired wars on weak countries such as Libya and now Syria. The Cuban Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Pedro Nunez Mosquera, warned that the resolution which was adopted would encourage more violence from the opposition and retaliation by the state. With growing instability, he asserted, foreign intervention would become legitimized the way it was in the Libyan case.

In an article in Prensa Latina, the Cuban diplomat’s position was summarized: “Cuba considers that all acts of violence, massacres and terrorist acts that claim innocent lives in Syria should cease” but this will require that the anti-Syrian coalition “must put an end to arms smuggling and money to insurgent groups and their training.” Nunez also criticized the major Western media’s one-sided reporting on the violence in Syria.

It is clear that Cuba’s criticisms of the wars on Libya and Syria and the Western economic blockade and military threats toward Iran are motivated by self-interest as well as principle. Cuba, as a country that has suffered an economic blockade by the United States for over fifty years and a U.S. policy designed to diplomatically isolate it, sees similarities between its experiences and U.S. policies toward Syria and Libya.

Despite some U.S. liberalization of travel to the island nation, government agencies and counter-revolutionary organizations in Miami continue to funnel funds, technology, and propaganda to create an opposition that, they hope, will lead to an armed resistance against the Cuban government. If the Cuban government responds to terrorist acts, a U.S orchestrated coalition of dependent allies can justify the transfer of arms, propaganda campaigns, and escalating calls for revolution.

What may be called today “The Libyan Model of Destabilization” is not new to Cubans and as a result they see the necessity of continued vigilance. Alan Gross, hired by the United States Agency for International Development, was caught distributing computer technology to selected communities on the island. A global propaganda campaign was raised about a recent car accident in which two well-known opponents of the regime who were traveling with rightwing Europeans in the countryside were killed. No evidence of foul play was provided concerning the accident although charges by Miami Cubans of government violence have been broadly distributed. Also a recent Miami scholarly conference was organized with presentations by counter-revolutionaries who argued that the recent economic reforms on the island will never work. And repeatedly U.S. and British media highlight alleged growing disenchantment with the regime.

The Libyan Model of Destabilization, which has its roots in the years of economic blockade of Cuba, terrorist acts and assassination plots, the creation of counter-revolutionary groups in Florida and New Jersey, and even an armed invasion, is not likely to work in the Cuban case. First, the Cuban regime has broad popular support. Second, Cuba’s first priority remains social and economic justice. Third, Cuban health care and education is among the best in the Global South.

And, finally, Cuba remains an inspiration to those countries throughout the Western Hemisphere (such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil, and El Salvador) who seek to create political and economic autonomy in the twenty-first century. As evidenced in positions taken at the recent Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, Latin American countries defended Cuban national sovereignty and are demanding that the latter be included in future meetings of Hemisphere nations.

But as the Libyan model and now the Syria crisis suggest, weak countries everywhere in the world must remain vigilant. Imperialism still survives.

THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL

Harry Targ

(People who spend part of their lives writing at one time or another assume they can write the “Great American Novel.” For about two weeks a few years ago I too suffered such a self-delusion. I wrote about twenty pages before I stopped writing. Yesterday I found what I had written on an old floppy disc. I thought I would share the first few pages with my millions of blog readers. It takes place at Heartland State University and was inspired by the great academic novel by Richard Russo called “Straight Man.” Of course the pages below bear no relationship to reality. HT)

IN THE BEGINNING: THE CALL

He stood tall on the stage behind a large mahogany podium. To his right was a huge portrait of Steven J. Struck, twelfth president of the university, alleged to be the man who built Heartland State University from a small agriculture college to a major university in the 1950s. To the president's left was another overpowering painting, this one of Reverend Jones the deep-voiced representative of the Almighty who used to open all faculty/student meetings and football games with a prayer urging God to make the university "first class." Unfortunately, the damn atheists and liberals raised so much hell about "separation of church and state" that the good Reverend had to cease presiding over public events.

President Vision, in this, his first speech to the university community since arriving on campus, pointed to the portrait on his right. "President Struck took Heartland State to the first level. He put us on the academic map." Then he pointed to the good Reverend: "Reverend Jones showed us how our quest for academic greatness fits the heavenly quest. Our job is to take the university to the next level. We must rise to the heights of the power and the glory that befits our talents. Anything less would be failure."

President Vision, still handsome at middle-age, wearing a brown suit, exhorted 1,500 faculty and probably 75 student leaders to follow him to greatness. While some faculty could be seen smirking, the atmosphere created for most was electric. The faculty was embracing the call to action. Sid Glick, ever the cynic, leaned over to Charles Parks, his close-mouthed and obedient colleague saying: "I hope he moves to the next level and falls off the stage." Charles responded: "He's our new president. Give him a break. He might have something to say." As several dutiful faculty sitting around the two glare at them for talking during the speech, Glick thinks to himself: Most of the older faculty have lived through " the new frontier," "light at the end of the tunnel," "I'm not a crook," "the new world order," and now they sit hands folded drooling over moving to "the next level."

In a deep and passionate voice Vision said: "How do we do it? How do we move from a good university to one of the best universities? We must compete with each other. We must set department against department, faculty colleague against faculty colleague, student against student, and yes janitor against janitor. It is through cutthroat competition that the best shall emerge and lead us all to the Promised Land."

First there is puzzled silence. And then, as if by magic, one then another then almost 1,500 seated listeners nod their approval. Trickles of applause slowly spread until row after row of hands begin to clap and to Glick's dismay, ten, then twenty then fifteen hundred faculty, men and women, young untenured and old wizened tenured faculty, white and African-American, Latino, Asian, rise to signal their support for the new president's call for struggle, struggle for greatness.

The speech goes on to describe how the competition will proceed. Each unit of the university, schools, departments, work groups will develop five-year plans and begin to carry them out.

The plans and the immediate effort to bring them to fruition will be judged by key university administrators with standards yet to be determined. The winning units will get more resources--salaries, paper clips, copy machines- and the losers will have to give them up to the more deserving. In the end, the strongest, most competitive shall survive.

Glick rather loudly says to Park: "Charlie what happens if we beat out the English Department? Do they shut down? What will be the impact on the university as a whole?"

Dour Charles whispers in Glick's ear: "You always see people’s ideas in the worst possible light.  Remember in 1983 on the Faculty Affairs Committee. You were the only person to vote against the new Mortuary Science Department. Just because they were proposing to use freezer facilities in the cafeteria to store bodies you raised all sorts of objections to the program. We almost lost the five million dollar contribution to the university from the Digemup Funeral Corporation because of you."

Glick smiled and responded: “How can I have been so shortsighted?”

"So my friends, members of the Heartland State College family, are you prepared to follow me as we embark on this great adventure? (Shouts of “Yes"). Will you compete with your faculty brothers and sisters in the name of this great university? (Again “Yes"). Will you not be deterred if you engage in ruthless competition with spouses, lovers, long-time friends? (Again the crowd shows its approval). Then let us begin tomorrow and see if we can levitate this university to a new level. Let our research and teaching resonate across the atmosphere like a tornado that moves through space destroying all that stands in its way. To Victory!"

President Vision turns to his left and leaves the stage as the auditorium darkens. The student band launches a Sousa marching tune as the 1,500 inspired souls (or 1,500 minus a few doubters like Glick) march out of the auditorium and head home for supper.

(More later…)

FAIRNESS IN HYPOCRISY VALLEY

Harry Targ

(a fable published a long time ago)

I spent much of my adult life in Hypocrisy Valley, a small community which is the regional center of commerce, agriculture, and modest industrialization. It also is the home of a major university, Hypocrisy Valley State University, which has a reputation, we are told, in agriculture, engineering, and science. As a state supported institution it is obliged to serve the research and educational needs of the citizens of the state.

The faculty size of the university and the student population has grown by 25 percent in forty years. The university is the largest employer in the county, and many workers say that while they receive low wages, are not treated with particular respect (except for the annual spring fling distribution of free hot dogs), they work at the university because of the health and retirement benefits, which exceed benefits from other employers in the area. Of course, state law prohibits Hypocrisy Valley employees from organizing staff or faculty unions.

Hypocrisy Valley historically has had mediocre sports teams but from time to time they defeat the other major state universities. Masses of alumni do descend on the university during the football season to drink, eat, and watch Hypocrisy Valley players suffer defeat. Unrelated to performance levels, football and basketball coaches make huge salaries, as is common in collegiate sports, and the Director of Athletic Programs makes hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary and perks and participates in several academic decisions at the university.

Over the last twenty-five years, the number and cost of higher administrative personnel have grown enormously. In addition, selected “star” faculty have enjoyed huge raises. Gaps between the salaries of high-tech, big business, drug company researchers and professors of liberal arts, education, and the pure sciences have grown as well. But all celebrate the fact that Hypocrisy Valley has developed a world reputation, even ranked highly by U.S. News and World Report, the arbiter of quality in higher education.

Presidents at Hypocrisy Valley have served one or more five-year terms before retiring and being replaced. Ordinarily, these presidents are celebrated for their historic contributions to the evolution of the university, only to be all but erased from the University’s history upon retirement. Often the Board of Trustees, the big business elites appointed by Governors to rule the university, name buildings or roads after retired university presidents.

This gets to the heart of academic rule at Hypocrisy Valley. The Board of Trustees makes major decisions about the character and future of the university, including faculty and staff employment. Generally, high-paid administrators accept decisions as they are announced. And since the Board is appointed by sitting Governors, higher education policy is directly related to the distribution of political power in the state.

In addition, since elections, the public expression of political power, are significantly determined by millionaires, trustees at Hypocrisy Valley usually are the wealthy and powerful. Often Trustees come from multinational corporations, banks, and real estate interests in the state and the country. And this influence “trickles down” from the selection of higher levels of administration at Hypocrisy Valley, to curricula, to admissions policy, staff and faculty salaries, and student tuitions.

Recently, decisions at Hypocrisy Valley generated more commentary than usual. The outgoing president, who served one five-year term was encouraged to retire. She was granted a $500,000 severance payment, a continuation of her tenured position in an academic department related to her expertise, and a full-paid sabbatical leave, while she serves on boards of distinguished national scholarly institutions.

Information about the severance payment was reported, in the usually pliant local newspaper, the Hypocrisy Journal. The Journal reported also that the Board is reconfiguring faculty and staff health care costs, including increasing recipient co-payments. The severance package of $500,000 will be paid out of university discretionary funds. Increased health care costs for Hypocrisy Valley employees will be paid for by them.

In addition, with the impending retirement of the University president, a nationwide search for a successor was carried out. A search firm, a faculty staff committee, and the Board of Trustees, after extensive work decided that the best candidate to be the next president of Hypocrisy Valley was the outgoing governor of the state, who in fact appointed the Board of Trustees which now decided that he, the governor with no academic experience, was the best candidate to be the next president.

In addition to the appearance of political skullduggery, the governor had already cut higher education budgets, helped establish an online university as an alternative to traditional higher education, supported the privatization of public education from K to grade twelve, opposed women’s access to reproductive health and signed anti-labor legislation. Some of his strongest defenders argue that having a new president with no higher education administrative experience might make him best equipped to run this world-class institution.

Meanwhile, the Hypocrisy Journal, while publishing a few opinion pieces criticizing the appointment of the outgoing Governor as the new president, shifted most of its editorializing to strong support for the appointment, despite a few well-researched stories about the less transparent aspects of the appointment.

I am sure that Hypocrisy University will survive the moral and political corruption of the presidential appointment. Major changes in university policy will not occur. Big corporations and banks will continue to be served by the bulk of ongoing research and teaching. The Board of Trustees will continue to rule in relative secrecy. Faculty, in the main, will complain in the corridors but will not think of organizing. Students will endure higher tuition to pay for administrative salaries. Growing numbers of young people from around the state, often minorities and working class kids, will search for alternatives to the prohibitively expensive education costs at Hypocrisy Valley.

As Hoosier novelist, Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: “So it goes.”   

GROTESQUE MILITARY SPENDING IS BROADLY OPPOSED

   Harry Targ

Like a festering cancerous growth that has not been exorcised from the body politic for over sixty years, militarists continue to defend escalating military spending. This time it is former Vice President Dick Cheney visiting Washington to encourage his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives to stand tall and oppose any cuts in military spending.

Of course, military imperatives have a long history. NATO was formed in 1949 and     the United States militarily and financially was its anchor. National Security Document 68 in 1950 called for military spending to be every president’s top priority. With subsequent “crises” in Korea, the Persian Gulf, the Caribbean, Indochina, Southern Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending continued to grow, taking up about half of all discretionary government spending.

Anticipating changes in challenges to U.S. global hegemony, President Carter in 1980 called for the establishment of a “Rapid Deployment Force” which could quickly move into trouble spots to address threats to allied regimes. Such a RDF might have prevented the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Carter’s advisers argued. President Reagan, of course, boosted military spending beyond the costs of the entire historical period before he came into office. And President Clinton, remained committed to being able to fight one and half wars and to be able to engage in “humanitarian interventions.”

The Bush Administration began a shift in defense doctrine even before the 9/11 tragedy was used to justify two huge, long, and unwinnable wars. Defense intellectuals warned of an “arc of instability” all along the equator from the northern portion of Latin America, to North Africa, the Persian Gulf and East Asia. With this new threat the military needed to be transformed into a new high speed force to move on a moment’s notice to any threatened area; a new high tech RDF.

After 9/11 the Bush Doctrine considered any military action as justified if the U.S. perceived that an enemy, state or non-state actor, might be considering an attack on the United States. The new high tech RDF required literally hundreds of military installations on every continent. Given the new technology, these bases did not have to be mini-cities like the old Cold War military installations of the past. And as Chalmers Johnson, Nick Turse, and others have documented, close to 1,000 military bases were in place before Bush left office.

David Vine, an anthropologist, (“The Lily-Pad Strategy: How the Pentagon Is Quietly Transforming Its Overseas Base Empire and Creating a Dangerous New Way of War,” at TomDispatch.com, July 17, 2012) uses an interesting metaphor, the lily-pad, to describe the latest generation of U.S. global military bases. The metaphor, Vine says, comes from the military who conceptualize bases as lily-pads, where like frogs, troops alight then jump across a pond to attack their prey. Vine describes the ‘lily-pads” as “small, secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, spartan amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.”

He points out that while hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are being closed, the lily-pads are expanding. Consequently, the U.S. today still has some kind of military presence in 150 countries on every continent, 11 aircraft carrier task forces, and untold space-based military capabilities. So while the troops are being brought home, unbeknownst to the American people, the U.S. global military presence is growing.

In Vine’s words: “Beyond their military utility, the lily-pads and other forms of power projection are   also political and economic tools used to build and maintain alliances and provide privileged U.S. access to overseas markets, resources, and investment opportunities.”

Although this story is not new, Vine suggests that opposition to military doctrine and spending is growing, an opposition that peace activists might use. “…. overseas bases have recently begun to generate critical scrutiny across the political spectrum from Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul to Democratic Senator Jon Tester and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. With everyone looking for ways to trim the deficit, closing overseas bases offers easy savings. Indeed, increasingly influential types are recognizing that the country simply can’t afford more than 1,000 bases abroad.”

A recent survey sponsored by the Program of Public Consultation, the Stimson Center, and the Center for Public Integrity reinforce the argument Vine is making about military spending. In April, 2012 a representative sample of respondents from Democratic and Republican (Blue and Red) districts were asked their opinions about cutting military spending in 2013. Respondents were given arguments in support of and opposition to such spending before they answered questions. In so-called Blue districts 80 percent of respondents supported defense spending cuts and 74 percent of those in Red districts also supported the cuts. In addition, respondents in Congressional districts which received high levels of defense spending contracts were as supportive of the cuts as those in districts where DOD spending was lower.

The Director of the Program for Public Consultation, Steven Kull said that “The idea that Americans would want to keep total defense spending up so as to preserve local jobs is not supported by the data.”

Perhaps more Americans than one expects are aware of the fact that military spending, as economists have claimed, is a job killer. United For Peace and Justice, advocating active opposition to reversing the military spending cuts agreed to by Congress in 2011, has pointed out that $1 billion in government spending for the military creates 11,200 jobs, while an equal amount spent for creating clean energy would create 16,800 jobs, and education 26,700 jobs.      

Now is a good time for peace activists to expand education about the history of unchallenged military spending, continued military basing all across the globe, the use of high technology and mobile troop formations to intervene everywhere, the consequences of military spending for making the world a more dangerous place, and the costs, not only in lives overseas but to a basic standard of living at home. The survey data indicates that a progressive peace majority might be ready to listen and act.

Reissue from The Rag Blog: Let the Poets Speak

28 June 2010

Vision of a Better World : Let the Poets Speak

Meridel Le Sueur. Photo from Working Women.
Class, race, empire, and resistance:The vision of the poet

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / June 28, 2010

• Oil Spills as the Gulf of Mexico is Destroyed
• Judge with BP Stock Rules Against Government Regulation
• Several States Contemplate Arizona-Like Laws to Install Police Repression Against People of Color
• Millionaire Politicians Vote to Cut Off Benefits to the Jobless
• Media Ignores Massive Detroit Mobilization Against Poverty and War
• Media Continues to Advertise “Tea-Party” and Sarah Palin Without Ever Addressing Capitalism(fantasy headlines by the author, morning June 26)

Some of our finest poets described so well the nature of the empire in which we live and the need for resistance against it. Meridel Le Sueur, the socialist/feminist poet, novelist, and chronicler of the Great Depression and beyond wrote with power about twentieth century America in a way that could have been written this week.

None of my sons or grandsons took up guns against you.

And all the time the predators were poisoning the humus, polluting
the water, the hooves of empire passing over us all. White
hunters were aiming down the gunsights; villages wrecked,
mine and yours. Defoliated trees, gnawed earth, blasted embryos.

We also live in a captive country, in the belly of the shark.
The horrible faces of our predators, gloating, leering,
the bloody Ford and Rockefeller and Kissinger presiding over
the violation of Asia

-- Meridel Le Sueur


Langston Hughes. Photo from Arts Edge / Kennedy Center.

Langston Hughes, African American poet, captured United States history powerfully in the words of class and race

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek --
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean --
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today -- O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

-- Langston Hughes


Woody Guthrie, 1943. Photo from Rounder Records / Bluegrass Journal.

And balladeer Woody Guthrie wrote verses, often unsung, for the unofficial American anthem, “This Land is Your Land?”

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

-- Woody Guthrie


Carl Sandburg. Photo by Al Ravenna, 1955 / World Telegram / Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons.

Carl Sandburg, poet, biographer of Abraham Lincoln, and children’s author, reminded us of who has made history and ironically created the exploitation of the producing class.

I am the people -- the mob -- the crowd -- the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and
clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me
and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons
and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing.
Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out
and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes
me work and give up what I have. And I forget.

-- Carl Sandburg

Poets usually are driven by a vision of a better world. For Langston Hughes:

O, let America be America again --
The land that never has been yet --
And yet must be -- the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME --
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

-- Langston Hughes

And for Woody Guthrie:

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

-- Woody Guthrie

And finally poets offer the hope of resistance and change:

How can we touch each other, my sisters?
How can we hear each other over the criminal space?
How can we touch each other over the agony of bloody roses?
I always feel you near, your sorrow like a wind in the
great legend of your resistance, your strong and delicate strength.

It was the bumble bee and the butterfly who survived, not the dinosaur.

-- Meridel Le Sueur

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

-- Woody Guthrie

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to
remember. Then -- I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the
lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year,
who played me for a fool -- then there will be no speaker in all the
world say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a sneer in his
voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob -- the crowd -- the mass -- will arrive then.

-- Carl Sandburg

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain --
All, all the stretch of these great green states --
And make America again!

-- Langston Hughes

Selections from the following poems:
Meridel Le Sueur, "Doan Ket”
Langston Hughes, "Let America Be America Again”
Woody Guthrie, "This Land is Your Land?”
Carl Sandburg, "I Am the People, the Mob”

[Harry Targ is a professor in Political Science who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. His blog is Diary of a Heartland Radical.]

The Rag Blog

UNIVERSITIES AND POLITICAL CONFLICT

UNIVERSITIES AND POLITICAL CONFLICT

Harry Targ

Since Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement almost every institution in American life--financial, corporate, political party, media, military, and religious--has appropriately become subject to scrutiny and evaluation. In each case analysts and activists have begun to raise questions about what these institutions look like, whose interests they serve, and how they contribute to the well-being of society.

Until recently colleges and universities have been largely above reproach. Research and education have been seen as the cornerstone of American democracy and economic development. The appointment of Governor Mitch Daniels as the new president of Purdue University and the firing and rehiring of the University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan provides the occasion for a reexamination of higher education.

Institutions of higher education have traditionally performed four tasks in the service of maintaining and enhancing the development of the other institutions referred to above. First, universities, particularly since World War II, have provided research resources to produce the products and technologies that have stimulated the capitalist system. Often basic research has fed into major enterprises in society, from promoting a global food system, to building sophisticated armies, to developing new high speed systems of communication that maximize control of economies and peoples. Major universities bring together talented research scholars and public and private research dollars to create inventions that promote greater control of nature and people and to expand profit.

Second, universities train work forces. Some graduates will become the research scholars who will continue the tradition of study and economic development to advance the economy and the polity further. Others will be provided the skills to work in the private and public sectors to carry out the work of institutional perpetuation. Corporate managers, computer specialists, tourism experts, and employees in the public sphere are trained at the modern university. And, increasingly universities train the soldiers who will fight the wars that the United States continues to fight.

Third, universities provide an education that in the main facilitates the transfer of legitimated knowledge to consumers of that knowledge. Particular attention is given to the promotion of a scientific worldview that reduces physical and social reality to a multiplicity of “variables” that can be studied with statistical rigor. Knowledge is primarily scientific knowledge.

Legitimated knowledge that is passed along to college students also includes highly selective portraits of how economies work, what constitutes democratic political institutions, and what constitutes standards of quality in the arts. In subtle forms, universities pass along celebratory, often uncritical, images of the society in which students live.

Finally, universities are credentialing institutions. They reward students with degrees, recommendations, and honors, which can be used as licenses to participate in the other institutions in society. Even when political and economic elites receive prestigious degrees through family connections, it is the degree that helps the accumulation of power.

The four functions --research, training, legitimizing, and credentialing--have changed concretely over time. For example, in the United States, the development of the modern university paralleled the industrial revolution. Prestigious universities, such as Harvard, initiated modern departments at the dawn of the twentieth century replacing the primacy of theology and law with economics, business administration, and industrial engineering. Training in fields such as education was designed to create a literate work force that could staff the factories of modern society. And social sciences were created to develop theories that comported with industrial development, such as Social Darwinism. These theories largely justified the distribution of wealth and power within societies and in the international system.

After World War II higher education took on vital functions in new ways. The GI Bill funded college education for veterans to train the scientists and managers of the new age. Also, higher education would credential students to be placed in higher paying jobs so that they could earn enough to buy the goods that a booming American economy was producing.

By the 1960s, higher education experienced enormous growth. For University of California President Clark Kerr, the “multiversity” was the institution critical for the development of a new global economy, scientific and technological advances, and the invention of new tools to fight the Cold War. In addition, social scientists and economists, studying development, would generate theories to guide public policy, particularly in poorer countries experiencing revolutionary ferment.

The massive growth in higher education from the 1960s to the new century led to increased university budgets, higher tuition costs, over-trained and underemployed college graduates, and a layer of overpaid administrators who had taken over the operations of most universities from the professor ranks. In addition, many non-professional workers at the university kept universities operational and were paid a living wage with justifiably secure benefits.

Now, in the midst of a deep economic crisis, political and economic elites are lobbying to create new structures of power in higher education while still supporting research, training, legitimating, and credentialing. The approach that is increasingly promoted by political leaders, educational foundations, and most important, Boards of Trustees of universities, is what Kevin Phillips labeled “market fundamentalism.”

The market fundamentalist approach emphasizes cutting public support for higher education and reducing financial support for students, particularly underrepresented students. In other words, as opposed to the era of the GI Bill, the operant vision is ultimately to reduce access to higher education which will contribute to the increasing inequality in wealth and income in the United States.

Also, market fundamentalism relies on the market to induce “competition” to reduce costs among universities. It encourages new profit-based universities that can sell college degrees cheaply, primarily by substituting on-line courses for campus experienced-based education. In addition, market fundamentalists call for forcing universities to make every academic unit in the university pay for itself.

What is new about the crisis in higher education today, what appointment of new presidents such as Tea Party friend Mitch Daniels represents, is that economic and political elites wish to continue the traditional functions of the university while reducing costs in higher education.

They want to transfer continuing costs to students and workers at the university.

They are working to streamline university education to research on corporate agriculture, medicine, computer technology, military developments, and allied fields.

And they want to cut educational programs that link research, education, and community service. This may entail eliminating programs that cannot be linked to the making of profit, such as in literature, the arts, and various social sciences and cultural studies. This is probably what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce meant when it warned of “growing skepticism about whether those lucky enough to graduate have acquired the skills and knowledge necessary for success in the 21^st century economy.”

And finally, since politics has never been absent from debates about higher education, in today’s context corporate elites including those in the media, wish to eliminate the enduring tradition of “academic freedom” which has celebrated the view that the university must be a venue for the pursuit of “the marketplace of ideas.”

Expect the university to be another emerging site for contestation and political struggle.