The Chris Lee affair exemplifies the weird results obtained from the mixture of politics and private life.  Lee is the married-with-lovely-children Congressman who just resigned from office because a photo he had emailed to a woman he had met through a Craigslist ad showed him naked from the waist up.  He was outed when a third party recognized the photograph and it was posted on Gawker.com.  We don’t know what extramarital adventures this upstate New York Republican had in the past, but he never even met the woman. All he really did was go hunting for an extramarital affair.

Why should the act of sniffing around for an affair lead to immediate resignation?  The problem, of course, is that he’s part of the party of high morality, the party ready to condemn the sinner even when the sin has nothing to do with his job.  

We’ll never know the entire story of his personal and family life, so we’ll never know what prompted his action.  

Whose business is it anyhow?

The immediate response to the argument that we shouldn’t care about the private lives of our leaders, as long as it doesn’t relate to job performance will say, yes, but he (or she) lied about it.  That’s why they said they impeached President Clinton: not for what he did but because he lied about it. 

But Lee never lied to the public.  As soon as Gawker.com published the photo, he came clean.  Of course, he had no choice because the truth was semi-nakedly staring at him from a computer screen.

I think Lee wanted to get caught, perhaps out of guilt or maybe to end a long and painful charade.  He must have known that if he put it on the Internet there was a much greater chance of getting caught than if he sent someone a photo in the mail.  He must have known that someone would recognize a Congressman.  There are ways to mask the origin of words but few ways to disclaim your own image.

I have found no record of Lee taking the overly moralistic stands of some other recent offenders against the morality police, such as Governor Elliot Spitzer or Senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig did.  So unless some dirt starts emerging, we have to assume that he made himself a victim of the overall moral head-hunting tone of his party and especially its recent adherents from the far right.  He did not have to resign.  He could have said it’s a private matter.  That he decided to do so as soon as it hit the fan may make some suspicious, but to me it merely looks as if he made himself a victim of the righteousness that his party is now professing.  And that’s too bad, because I really do think we should judge people’s job performance on what they do in the job and not what they do with their private parts in their private lives.

In Western Europe outside perhaps Great Britain, no one would give a damn about Lee’s trolling for partners as long as the taxpayers weren’t paying for it and the paramour was of age.  Like universal healthcare, cheap public colleges, wonderful vocational school education and extensive inter-city mass transit, it’s another way in which the “socialist” countries of Western Europe offer a superior model to ours.

The weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan, and a lot of people used the occasion to wrap themselves in the flag called Ronald Reagan.  Our current President Barack Obama reminded the country how much he admired Reagan.  Sarah Palin did her best prophet-of-doom  imitation with her warning that we as a nation are straying from the true path of Reaganism.  Articles on Reagan abounded in the news media, virtually all of them in admiration.

There is no doubt that Reagan is an important figure in U.S. history, both as a symbol and an instigator of the great turn that our nation made in and around 1980.  But as usual with American icons, much of the coverage this weekend assumed Reagan’s importance rather than explaining it, or if explaining it, did so in the broadest and most inclusive of terms. 

Here then is my take on why we should and will remember Ronald Reagan:

1. Reagan led the first and biggest wave in the 30-year (and counting) movement towards a less equitable society by instituting or being the front man for the destruction of the air traffic controller unions, the restructuring of the tax code to reduce the tax burden of the wealthy, the first attacks on Social Security (including the decision to lump Social Security trust fund into the rest of the federal budget for bookkeeping purpose) and the first successful attacks on social programs for our poor, disadvantaged and elderly.  All of these moves shifted wealth up the socio-economic ladder from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.
2. Reagan symbolized the step back from the beginnings of environmental consciousness that our nation had developed in the 70’s.  Reagan led the charge against government regulation and environmental standards and articulated passionately and convincingly the “head-in-the-sand” mentality of many right-wingers regarding clean energy, pollution and the impact of man-made environmental changes. 
3. Reagan and/or his administration broke the law repeatedly, sometimes in ways that should have been labeled traitorous.  The best example of the rampant law-breaking of Reagan’s team came before he even became President, when his people entered into separate negotiations with the Iranians and promised them secret help if they held the American embassy hostages until after the election.  This traitorous  (but as yet unpunished)  act turned the 1980 election in Reagan’s favor, just as much as the illegal peccadilloes of Florida Republicans turned the 2000 election from the man who had won the popular vote nationwide to the man who would bring us two senseless wars and a torture gulag.   Other Reagan lawbreaking involved the Iran-Contra drugs-for-arms scheme and its cover-up and the savings-and-loan scandal.  In total, Haynes Johnson’s Sleeping through History finds 138 Reagan administration officials who were convicted of some crime. 

As a society we currently remember Ronald Reagan as we remember Robert E. Lee, who was a virulent racist, an active supporter of slavery and a bull-headed general who sent his men out to slaughter, yet is today considered a Southern gentleman and a great soldier.  In both cases, our views are inaccurate, smoothing over some truly disreputable actions and forgetting about the base nature of his real views. One day I hope we look at both men more realistically, perhaps in the same way we now consider Benedict Arnold or Richard M. Nixon.

Texas high school football has been in the news a lot lately.  First came the report last weekend that a high school in Allen, Texas is building a $60 million stadium for its football team.  Then came the story about how amazed the Green Bay Packers are at the luxuriousness of the indoor football practice facilities of another Texas high school.

My immediate question when I see these stories is: how does Texas rank in spending money on its students?  Studies tell us that while spending more money does not necessarily lead to better school performance, it does when the money is spent on more teachers and instructional materials.  Although many funding decisions are made by school districts not states, the state sets the tone and the standards, so it’s fair to ask this question of the entire state.

The question behind the question is really: Are Texas and many of its school districts so rich and generous that they can lavish their high school athletes OR is Texas taking money from education to spend on sports?

As many OpEdge readers may have suspected, Texas has made the decision to prefer football over education.

According to the National Education Association (NEA), using 2009 numbers, Texas ranks 38th in spending among the states and the District of Columbia.  Education Week numbers are a little older and push Texas even further down the list to 48th among the states and D.C.  The difference between the two studies is that Education Week rankings adjusted for regional cost differences but the NEA did not.  Also, Education Week used U.S. government data and the NEA collected its own data.

Either way, it’s a poor showing for a state that so royally funds the extracurricular activity of a handful of boys aged 16 to 18 years.

Let’s put it into perspective:  $60 million could pay the salaries of approximately 750 experienced high school teachers, which would allow 3,000 high school students to receive instruction in classes with an average size of 16 students instead of an average size of 20.  The impact on elementary school would be greater, as elementary school teachers tend to earn less than high school teachers do.  $60 million would also pay for four years of tuition for about 1,700 students at the University of Texas at Austin, one of a handful of state universities across the country considered a “public Ivy.”

For those who aver that a football stadium is a one-time cost whereas we have to keep paying teachers year after year (ignoring of course the stadium’s annual maintenance budget), consider instead the number of text books, computers, musical instruments, easels, foreign language instructional DVDs/CDs and science labs that the state could buy for each $60 million pleasure dome in which they ask young males to hit and tackle each other.

And for those who claim that the football team brings in needed revenue, consider that no football team could possibly stimulate the economy as much as a random selection of 48 competent, well-educated and skilled nurses, computer technicians, dieticians, plumbers, human resource specialists, middle school teachers, small franchise operators, administrative assistants, professional writers, physicians and civil engineers.

Our news media always seems to mimic the overly optimistic view of our government, at least at the beginning of the events. For that reason, one thing that an analysis of past media coverage of wars and insurrections can teach us is that at this point we don’t really know exactly what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia.

We all look for positive signs in events, but those positive signs always orient to our viewpoint.  For example, I would like Egypt and Tunisia to end up having democratically elected secular governments with two or more major parties in which Moslem and country traditions are accepted, but not mandated.  For that reason, I look at the news that Mubarak will step down for September elections as very positive.  And yet the violence in the streets continues.

By the way, I don’t believe the U.S. government really places democracy all that high on its wish list for Northern Africa and the rest of the developed world.  Past experience demonstrates again and again that what our government really wants are docile partners that will support us in global initiatives and cooperate fully with our large businesses.

But whatever the dreams our government or our people may have for Egypt, our leaders tied our hands in acting to achieve them by engaging in the fiasco known as the Iraq War.

The Iraq War hurt the United States’ ability to influence both world events and the events in other countries in two ways:

1. The Iraq War significantly harmed the credibility of the United States among Moslem countries and throughout the developing world. The rest of the world did not like the fact that we superseded the United Nations’ investigation of weapons of mass destruction.  It did not like that we invaded a nation under false pretenses.  It did not like that we tortured prisoners and rendered other prisoners to other nations for torturing.  It did not like that we destroyed a nation with no plans to rebuild it.  I believe that under Hillary Clinton’s leadership, our reputation has improved somewhat, particularly among the leaders of nations.  But there is still a lot of residual distrust and suspicion about the United States out there.  Let me ask you this: If you were a moderate Moslem leader in Egypt, would you rather “play ball” with the United States or China at this time?
2. The Iraq War drained the U.S. of trillions.  We’re broke and it’s not because of Social Security or high pensions to public workers.  It’s because our taxes are too low and we have thrown more than one trillion dollars (and counting since we still have 100,000 troops in Iraq plus pay for 130,000 military contractors still there) into the deep pit we call the Iraq War.  While we have given the Egyptian government and military a lot of money in the past, more money used wisely and not earmarked for guns could do a lot to influence the outcome of the current situation:  The United States could offer incentives to these nations to form democratic governments.  It could give legal and open support to all the parties which favor a secular government (even Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood).  It could give aid to address the most pressing social and economic problems facing these nations.  But money is one thing that our government doesn’t have a lot of right now, and one major reason is that we spent it leveling Iraq and then dealing with the mess our leveling created.

If the United States is no longer the world’s polestar in political and economic affairs, it’s because of self-inflicted wounds like the Iraq War that are still bleeding out.

Change of subject: Since I ripped Mark Bittman in 2009 for his subtle attempt to knock healthy cooking in his piece about the anxiety of preparing a Thanksgiving feast, I should praise him for his Op/Ed piece in today’s New York Times.  In it, he lays out a careful program for improving our food delivery system, our diets and our nutritional health.  At the heart of his recommendations is the strategy to end government support of processed and unhealthy foods and begin government support of growing local foods and preparing meals from scratch.  Check out his column.

How can a word convey a wonderfully positive sense in one context but mean something immoral and hateful in another?  If you’re an archetypal right-winger, it can happen if the word is “choice,” which for some reason means a good thing to people on the right when it comes to education, but not when it comes to a woman’s right to control her own body.

I’ll postpone my consideration of what choice means in the area of reproductive rights until a later OpEdge column.  I want to focus instead on “choice” in education, since this week,  January 23-29, 2011,  is National School Choice Week, a collection of local events under a national public relations rubric sponsored by an ad hoc organization representing and funded by a large number of right-wing and Republic organizations, plus business associations of charter schools (AKA for-profit or non-profit-run-like-a-business private schools operating with public money), religious school organizations and some right-leaning religious organizations. 

National School Choice Week proclaims itself for a wide tent of objectives that include, as the organizers put it, “charter school growth and success, universal vouchers and tuition tax credits, corralling out-of-control spending, or union accountability…” saying that “each is equally important and all should plan to be a part of this special week.”

What all these initiatives have in common is they take money from public school districts and give it to private entities.  Now while I support the right of people to select private schools, I don’t see why taxpayers should pay for it.

When you hear what will likely be an endless barrage of local and national publicity about “National School Choice Week” or learn about the laws now being proposed in many states to give parents school vouchers, keep these facts in mind:

• Virtually all studies show that the charter school movement has yielded disappointing results in the area of student performance in school and standardized tests (which don’t test all skills, but do test a lot of skills such as reading and math that are needed to get through life and hold down a job).  For example, a recent Stanford University study found that the math performance of 46% of charter schools is indistinguishable from public schools, 17% had substantially higher scores and 37% of charter schools had substantially lower scores than their public school equivalents.
• Private schools are able to kick out or not accept disruptive students, underperforming students or those with disabilities, whereas the public schools must try to educate these students.  The fact that we ask public schools to educate these “hard cases,” leads to a lower overall performance record of public schools.  Net out these “hard cases,” and I think we’ll find that most public school districts do a good job of educating their students.  But voucher programs and charter schools take funds from the public school system and so make it much harder for public schools to meet the higher standards and more rigorous goals that our society places on them by making public schools educate these “hard cases.”
• Public schools are large organizations that have the resources to address a wide range of challenges.  Only a public system can have magnet programs and schools for languages, performing arts, math and science, vocational training (which means training in skills needed for some of the more than 70% of all jobs that do not require a traditional college education) and gifted children.   The ability to offer a program for the kid who is great at shop and the one who can get a perfect score on the math SATs at the age of 12—now that’s real choice.
• A recent study showed that better-performing schools spend more money on the classroom and teachers than do underperforming schools, which tend to spend more on administration.  Private schools create additional administration, except for those for-profit charter school chains that follow the fast-food model of complete standardization, which makes a mockery of the concept of “choice.”  The key to improving childhood performance is more teachers in classrooms with more resources, so the way to make education more efficient is to reduce administration, not increase it which is the natural result of charter schools and voucher programs.
• Teachers in private and charter schools get paid less money, primarily because they are not unionized.  In virtually every field I have encountered over my years, the best people always tend to get paid the best money (without quibbling over whether Lady Gaga should make more than the great classical music conductor Simon Rattle, let’s admit that they both make more than the average drummer in a local bar band).  While there are many great private and charter school teachers, almost by definition in this country the overall quality of teaching must be higher in schools that pay more money, i.e., public schools. Of course, one central objective of many supporting charter schools and vouchers is to kill teacher unions.

The charter school movement makes no sense to me except as a political vehicle for killing unions, but there are many reasons to send a child to private school, among them religion, need for after-school care, social pressure, desire to segregate your children from certain groups or family tradition.  I see all of these as private reasons.  If people want to pay for it, fine, but it’s not society’s responsibility. 

Someone is going to say that not giving parents vouchers gives the children of the wealthy extra edges because they can send their kids to fancy private schools but the poor can’t.  But rather than give poor parents $20,000 or $25,000 a year in vouchers for a fancy private school, why not take advantage of the economy of scale of public schools to level the playing field.  In fact that’s what well-funded public schools have done for decades in this country: level the playing field.  If we destroy their ability to continue doing so by denying them funds, we will create an even less equitable society than we currently have.