Original Proposal

[johnkarls]

.
Original Proposal - A Pox On Both Former Sen. Phil Gramm and Pres. Biden Re Jonathan Kozol’s “Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”

Originally Posted by johnkarls » Mon Oct 10, 2022 8:01 am – 216 views in Sec. 3 (Possible Topics for Future Meetings) before being transplanted here.


As suggested by George Kunath, I propose that we read “The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate” by Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund and John Early (Rowland & Littlefield Publishers 9/15/2022 – 197 pages sans notes & index - $24.99 + shipping or $20.99 Kindle from Amazon.com).


***********
The primary reason for this proposal is that you can’t react properly to a viewpoint unless you understand it.


***********
The secondary reason is our 2/7/2018 focus book “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America” by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer [Originally published by Houghton Mifflin September 2015] which was proposed by Ted Gurney, a retired U/U Biology Professor.

Johns Hopkins U. Professor of Sociology and Public Health Kathryn Edin recruited U/Mich Professor Shaefer to help lead a team THAT INTERVIEWED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS TO SHOW THAT THE REPEAL OF FDR’s NEW-DEAL CORNERSTONE “AID TO FAMILIES WITH DEPENDENT CHILDREN” (aka AFDC) by Pres. Bill Clinton on 8/22/1996 in the middle of his Presidential re-election campaign (Clinton’s famous “abolition of welfare as we know it”) meant that the number of families living in $2/person/day poverty had more than doubled to 1.5 million households WHICH CONTAINED 3 MILLION CHILDREN!!!

NB: The $2.00/person/day included the value of food stamps – and the value of any governmental assistance with housing costs (Professors Edin and Shaefer found that 80% of the families were “couch surfing” with friends/relatives, in a homeless shelter, or out on the street).

THE POINT HERE IS THAT PROFESSORS EDIN AND SHAEFER DID NOT RELY ON U.S. GOVERNMENT INFO BUT DID THEIR OWN RESEARCH!!!


***********
The third reason is our 6/3/2020 focus book “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” by Jonathan Kozol (Crown Publishing 9/13/2005 – 416 pages – 2006 paperback version available from Amazon.com for $14.56 + shipping or $11.99 Kindle).

Jonathan Kozol graduated 1958 from Harvard summa cum laude in English Literature and won a Rhodes Scholarship. Upon returning to the U.S. he taught in inner-city schools and then began a 50-year career as an author of award-winning best-selling books on inner-city education including --

Death at an Early Age (1967)
The Night is Dark and I am Far From Home (1975)
Illiterate America (1986)
Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America (1988)
Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (1991)
Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (1995)
Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope (2000)
The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (2005)
Letters to a Young Teacher (2007)
Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America (2012)

THE POINT HERE IS THAT THE U.S. SUPREME COURT EFFECTIVELY OVERRULED ITS FAMOUS 1954 BROWN VS. BOARD OF EDUCATION DECISION WHICH DECLARED UNCONSTITUTIONAL THE DE JURE DUAL-SCHOOL SYSTEMS OF THE 11 STATES OF THE OLD CIVIL-WAR CONFEDERACY AND THE 6 SLAVE STATES THAT WERE DUPED INTO REMAINING IN THE U.S. BY PRES. LINCOLN’S CLAIM THAT THE PURPOSE OF THE CIVIL WAR WAS TO PRESERVE THE UNION AND HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ABOLOSHING SLAVERY!!!

BROWN VS. BOARD WAS EFFECTIVELY OVERRULED BY PARENTS VS. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 (551 U.S. 701 (2007)) WHICH HELD THAT “APARTHEID” SCHOOLING WAS JUST FINE SO LONG AS IT REFLECTED “APARTHEID” HOUSING PATTERNS!!!

NB: Jonathan Kozol’s “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” was published 9/13/2005, which was less than 15 months before the 12/4/2006 Supreme Court oral argument in Parents vs. Seattle School Dist. No. 1. “The Shame of the Nation” was focusing on the conditions and early litigation that led to Parents vs. Seattle School Dist. No. 1.


***********
The fourth reason is PHIL GRAMM’S AND PRES. BIDEN’S REFUSAL TO PERMIT 10 MILLION INNER-CITY CHILDREN TO ESCAPE “A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH”!!!

Sections 4 and 5 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org are entitled “Legal Briefs, Etc. – Inner-City Holocaust and America’s Apartheid ‘Justice’ System (In Honor of Jonathan Kozol and In Memory of John Howard Griffin).”

Following the example of Eugene Lang who promised in 1981 the graduating sixth graders of Harlem PS 121 their college tuition if they stayed in school and then provided tutors and mentors until they graduated, I was one of 178 people (most of whom were CEO’s of major corporations) to step forward when in 1986 his efforts were publicized by “60 Minutes” and on the front page of the NY Times, in order to replicate in 51 American cities what he had done (my Stamford CT program served 200 housing-project children from third grade through college graduation).

During the 1990’s, I served as the volunteer national treasurer for Eugene Lang’s “I Have A Dream”® Foundation which oversaw those 178 projects in 51 cities.

BTW, in that capacity I noticed that the early IHAD programs (including Gene’s) only transformed the SINGLE-DIGIT high-school graduation rates of the class just ahead and the class just behind the “Dreamer Class” to 60%-65% because half of the females were becoming pregnant and dropping out, so I asked the sponsors of those early programs to ask their female Dreamers who had become pregnant why they had, and those who had not, why not. The heart-breaking answers – (1) those who had become pregnant invariably felt that there had never been anyone who loved them and they were determined to create someone who would, and (2) those who had not, had had tutors/mentors (virtually all our tutors/mentors became surrogate parents) who had happened to tell their female Dreamer “you could make something of yourself with this program – and it would BREAK MY HEART if you didn’t!!!)!!!

Accordingly, I asked all of the sponsors of the later IHAD programs to have all of their tutors/mentors express that hope EARLY AND OFTEN!!!

As a result, virtually all of the later programs had no trouble driving the SINGLE-DIGIT high-school graduation rates to more than 90%!!!

BTW, although IHAD programs were spectacularly successful, their scale was extremely limited – fewer than 15 thousand children served.

In 1997, I switched to investment banking in order to “cut out the middle man” and raise substantial funds to bring “IHAD” to scale.

During 2009-2011, I was forced to sue 15 of the world’s largest financial institutions for the $84 billion that they owed me and which had been pledged since 1997 in legally-binding fashion to provide IHAD- or IHAD-style programs for 10 million inner-city children.

Zillions of court opinions and other legal documents are available for download at viewforum.php?f=150&sid=f82659409d31b9b ... fcea8168dd and viewforum.php?f=211&sid=f82659409d31b9b ... fcea8168dd.

Unfortunately, President Obama and 20 other US and California governmental officials (including my then Congress-person Nancy Pelosi) refused three requests over the three years to file amicus curiae briefs, as they routinely did in such cases.

And Gwen Ifill (Co-Anchor and Co-Managing Editor of PBS Newshour and sole Moderator and sole Managing Editor of PBS Washington Week) and 42 other news-media superstars refused three pleas over the three years to “shine a light” on what was happening, even though each of them knew that any one of them shining a single ray of light might have saved 10 million inner-city children from “a fate worse than death.”

The “Question Presented For Review” in our final Petition for Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court was –

“Can state court judges order their decisions which they know are diametrically-opposed to well-settled law, not to be published or cited (a strategy labeled ‘the segregated toilet’ in correspondence with 51 inner-city clergy who represent the 10 million inner-city children who have been disclosed from the outset as the ‘real parties at interest’ in this law suit) in order to flush away the rights of the 10 million inner-city children without disturbing the rights of first-class American citizens -- without violating the ‘Equal Protection of the Law’ requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?”

Our final report on 10/5/2011 to each of the 51 inner-city clergy from San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland who had been supporting the cause (A) informed them that the US Supreme Court on 10/4/2011 refused to hear our appeal, (B) thanked them for their efforts with the solace that each of us would be able to say at The Pearly Gates with St. Paul (II Timothy 4:7): “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” and (C) requested them and their congregants to pray for the 43 news-media superstars, the 21 governmental officials, the California judges and the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, that MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON THEIR SOULS!!!

THE POINT HERE IS THAT – SINCE PRES. OBAMA BLOCKED THE $84 BILLION OF PRIVATE FINANCING THAT WOULD HAVE ENABLED 10 MILLION INNER-CITY CHILDREN TO ESCAPE “A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH” – NEITHER FORMER SEN. GRAMM NOR PRES. BIDEN HAS “LIFTED A FINGER”TO PROVIDE PUBLIC FINANCING TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM.

IN OTHER WORDS, PRES. BIDEN HAS BEEN “SPENDING MONEY LIKE A DRUNKEN SAILOR” WHO, UNFORTUNATELY, DOES NOT UNDERSTAND “THE CAUSE OF RACISM (IN AMERICA)” – please see our 6/3/2020 “Six Degrees of Separation” E-mail Campaign entitled “Addressing The Cause of Racism (vs. a Mere Symptom)” AIMED AT BOTH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES (Biden & Trump) at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1925&sid=f82659409 ... fcea8168dd.

NB: The 6/3/2020 campaign resulted from our 6/3/2020 focus on Jonathan Kozol’s “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.”

BTW, “full disclosure” Yours Truly has often opined that (though long may he live) an appropriate epitaph for Pres. Obama would be –

Barack Hussein Obama
American’s First “Token” Black President
He “Knew His Place” on The Establishment’s "Plantation"
He Condemned 10 MILLION Inner-City Children to “A Fate Worse Than Death”


*********************************
*********************************
*********************************
Amazon’s Description of Gramm’s “The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate” (which usually quotes the book’s dust jacket) claims –

“Everything you know about income inequality, poverty, and other measures of economic well-being in America is wrong. In this provocative book, a former United States senator, eminent economist, and a former senior leader at the Bureau of Labor Statistics challenge the prevailing consensus that income inequality is a growing threat to American society. By taking readers on a deep dive into the way government measures economic well-being, they demonstrate that our official statistics dramatically overstate inequality. Getting the facts straight reveals that the key measures of well-being are greater than the official statistics of the country would lead us to believe. Income inequality is lower today than at any time in post- World War II America. The facts reveal a very different and better America than the one that is currently described by policy advocates across much of the political spectrum. The Myth of American Inequality provides clear and convincing evidence that the American Dream is alive and well.”

[johnkarls]

Originally Posted by johnkarls » Fri Oct 14, 2022 9:38 am
.

NB: This event is in-person (vs. Zoom) at the NYC Harvard Club – 35 West 44th Street.

If you are not a member of the club, please let me know and I’ll register you as a guest.


******************************
The NYC Harvard Club Notice --

Senator Phil Gramm: Facts Matter

Thursday, November 17 @ 07:00 pm – 08:00 pm ET

If you remember when Bill Clinton was President, then you’ll remember Phil Gramm. A three-term Republican Senator from Texas (1984-2002), he ran for President in 1996, on a platform of fiscal responsibility, and Chaired the US Senate Banking Committee from 1999-2001.

Sounds like a long time ago, until you begin reading his recent economic treatises, including his eye-opening book, The Myth of American Inequality. Senator Gramm tackles the narrative of systemic inequality in America, and uses simple math to look at wealth and the incentive to work, once government transfer payments and taxes are taken into account.

Whether you’re a Libertarian, or fan of Big Government, you’ll want to hear why the US is both different and better than you might think.

This will be an in-person talk. Seating will be limited.

David Wagener, Program Committee

This event is part of the Harvard Club’s ongoing effort to present talks and events for the interest and pleasure of its members. The opinions expressed are solely those of the guest speaker.