"Check It Out" for Wednesday, February 18th
Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch discusses an apparently forgotten word: anti-trust.
"Now here’s a word you’re not hearing in America these days: anti-trust.
"The country is being dragged down by monstrous businesses, all of which, we’re told, are just “too big to fail.” As a consequence of this, the nation’s taxpayers, and their progeny born and yet unborn, are having trillions of dollars sucked away to prop up these giant rotting corporate corpses.
"Zombie banks, zombie automakers, zombie insurance companies, all bigger than nation states, and all on life-support.
"There is a simple answer to this problem. Bust them up.
"There is simply no need for national banks. Such institutions are a disaster for smaller companies and individuals, since they are only really interested in lending to big national or multinational companies. I remember years ago, back in the early 1980s, when bank consolidation was just getting underway, how Citibank began adding fees to its checking services simply because it wanted to drive away small customers. It was an indication of what was coming. Screw the little guy.
"It doesn’t matter to large companies if there are no national banks. When they want a big loan, they simply arrange for a syndicate of smaller regional banks to put a package together. That is the way things used to be done, and it can be done again.
"While we’re at it, let’s also break up the huge companies that dominate three crucial sectors of the economy, to the detriment of the public good: energy, media and the military...
"The tools are already at hand to tear all these anti-democratic, anti-social and uneconomic corporate monstrosities apart. So let’s fire up the legal chainsaws and start cutting them down to size. Instead of bailout, we need to start hearing the word anti-trust in Washington."
From Michelle Chen at In These Times comes a look No Child Left Behind's unequal education which requires equal test scores from students in neighborhoods dominated by economic inequality.
"The premise of No Child Left Behind, passed in 2001, sounds basic enough: ensure that children from all backgrounds attain a quality education from good teachers. But the debate over how to reach that goal is fractured by ideology, bureaucracy and entrenched barriers to opportunity.
"To Mildred Boveda, a special-education teacher at Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Miami Gardens, Fla., the obstacle to real change is the confinement of the school policy dialogue within classroom walls.
“ 'It’s not a coincidence that the schools that are failing are in the harshest neighborhoods. There’s social issues that are going on,' she says. The crisis in schools parallels other community problems: “ 'There are no street lights, there are no police. It’s filthy, there are drug addicts and prostitutes walking the streets. You’re going to tell me that that’s not going to affect teacher morale, student morale and then student performance—then you’re kidding me.'
"...current senior Tranette Myrthil sees the government’s report card as part of the failure. The school “reforms” the state has handed down are squeezing out the things that make education meaningful for her.
"Myrthil relished reading in English class, and is frustrated that her class spent so much time drilling for the FCAT (Florida’s multiple-choice reading test), instead of delving into more novels. In the end, she got a 10th-grade reading score of two (on a scale of five)—a grade that she says “doesn’t speak for me.”
"Recalling books that stirred her, she says, “I learned things that I could use now … in the 12th grade.” But the material she studied to pass the FCAT, “I can’t bring with me to the 12th grade, because it’s just for that moment. It’s just for that test.”
An IPS News article delves into the Taliban in Pakistan getting their first wish:
"Many Muslims believe that ancient Khorasan - which covers parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - is the promised land from where they will secure the first victory in the end-of-time battle in which the final round, according to their beliefs, will be fought in Bilad-i-Sham (Palestine-Lebanon-Syria).
"The geographical borders of Bilad-i-Sham-Khorasan extend from Samarkand in Uzbekistan to the small Malakand division in the northern fringe of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) that includes the militant-dominated Swat Valley.
On Monday, at a time when United States Central Command chief General David Petraeus was trying to set up a supply route for troops in Afghanistan through Uzbekistan, in this extreme corner of the promised land of Khorasan - Malakand division - militants had every reason to celebrate.
"As if Ali Zardari, the strongly American-backed Pakistani president, and the provincial government of NWFP gave in to the demands of militants and announced a ceasefire, lifted a two-year-old curfew and announced the implementation of Islamic sharia law."
Robert Scheer at TruthDig writes about the hypocritical GOP engineered controversy against the stimulus bill:
"The stimulus package that President Obama signed into law Tuesday is a modest effort, actually too modest, at arresting the free fall of the American economy. It's just not that expensive in light of the dimensions of the economic crisis, most of it is quite conservatively aimed at tax cuts for a suffering public and bailouts for beleaguered state programs, and it pales in comparison with the trillions wasted on the bloated military budget during the Bush years.
"Furthermore, it is obscene that the Republicans who created this mess dare question the cost of a stimulus package directed at meeting a crisis that their radical deregulation of the financial markets created. While it is true that too many Democrats went along with the Republican deregulatory zealots, it is the prime legacy of the GOP going back to the Reagan Revolution that has been called into question.
"The only valid criticism to be made of the stimulus bill that Obama signed Tuesday with deserved pride of authorship is that it is too small for the enormous problem at hand. But if it had been up to the Republicans, we wouldn't be doing anything at all."
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