Green Eggs and Flim Flam

To kick off National Education Month, President Obama sent out the missus to read Dr. Seuss to some school children. Then, apparently in conjunction with  quitting cigarettes, Obama also made a public announcement about the end of his Bush-bashing habit.  Not only is he no longer blaming George for leaving him a monumental mess, he is lauding the entire Bush clan as “outstanding public servants”.  He was joined by Jeb, former Florida governor, at a Miami high school this week, to announce some sort of weird hybrid between W’s No Child Left Behind  with his own Race to the Top education initiative, with a little of that nauseating Winning the Future P.R. tripe thrown in for good measure.

Outstanding public servants? Jeb a champion of education reform? While the collective bargaining rights of American teachers are under assault, while Republicans are threatening draconian cuts to education and all kinds of programs benefitting children and their families, the president chooses the Bushes for role models of social integrity?  I knew this guy was a corporatist president, but this was way over the top.

The most infamous Bush moment of education-championing chutzpah came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when matriarch Barbara made a public donation to a charity for victims – with the stipulation that the money only be used for son Neil’s educational software. His product, costing over $3,000 per pupil, conveniently was designed to help prepare students for the endless batteries of No Child Left Behind standardized testing. The NOLA kids had no desks, no classrooms, no teachers, no buildings – but they had some real nifty software!  Later on, the attempt by Jeb and Neil to sneak the software into Florida schools via no-bid contracts was brought to public  light and then apparently abandoned. From an AP story:

"A software company run by Neil Bush, a younger brother of Gov. Jeb Bush, hopes to sell a program to Florida schools that students would use to prepare for the test that is key to the governor's education policy.Texas-based Ignite Inc. makes software being used in a pilot program at an Orlando-area middle school to help students prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which the governor has championed as a yardstick for school performance.

Ocoee Middle School, which has received millions of dollars in state grants to study ways of lowering costs, is using the software for free.But a company spokeswoman said Saturday that Ignite soon hopes to sell its early American history course to other Florida schools, at a cost of $30 a year per student.

Ignite spokeswoman Louise Thacker denied the company had an unfair advantage because its founder and CEO, Neil Bush, is a brother of Florida's governor. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Education said Friday that Ignite officials had not approached the state about its product. Mike Eason, formerly the top technology official for the department, is a member of an Ignite advisory board.Katie Muniz, a spokeswoman for Jeb Bush, said the governor has never talked with his brother about the business”.(Associated Press, 2007).

It is widely reported that the Bush clan, including George and Laura, Poppy and Barb Sr., as well as investors from some of their oil-rich Middle East potentate friends, have made a profiteering fortune from the No Child Left Behind Act. One of their historic fortune-making accomplishments, it will be remembered, was when GrandPoppy Prescott Bush hid some money for the Nazis, kind of illegally. What a distinguished family, indeed.

But back to the bad blood between Obama and the Bushes. The feud continued all the way  through the bitterly fought 2010 campaign season, with the president sniping that the Republican president had left him a huge stinking mess of a car in a ditch, and Jeb grousing that Obama was like the kid who always complains that the dog ate his homework.  And it got personal. The president, Jeb said, was like “Hubert Humphrey on steroids.” (not a pretty picture).

Then Obama took his shellacking in November and decided to come around to the GOP's way of thinking. Not only did he cut, is cutting and will forever cut, he can never get enough of asking the Republicans just how much more deeply he needs to slash. This, at the Miami photo op:

“So what I’ve done is I’ve called for a five-year freeze on annual domestic spending -– and that freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and it will bring that kind of spending to a lower share of our economy than has been true for the last 50 years.  To achieve those savings, we’ve proposed eliminating more than 200 federal programs.  We’re freezing the salaries of hardworking civil servants for the next two years.  We’re finding ways to save billions of dollars, of tax dollars, by selling, for example, 14,000 government properties that we don’t need anymore.

And that’s just a start.  If we’re serious about tackling our long-run fiscal challenges, we’re going to have to cut excessive spending wherever we find it -– in defense spending, in spending on entitlements, spending through tax breaks and loopholes.  And I’m going to be sitting down with Democrats and Republicans to figure out how we can reduce our deficits.

But I want everybody to understand, our job is not just to cut.  Even as we find ways to cut spending, what we can’t do is cut back on investments like education that will help us create jobs and grow our economy.  (Applause.)  We can’t sacrifice your future.

Think about your family.  Let’s say something tough happens — somebody gets laid off in the family, or you have a medical emergency.  If you’re a family that has to cut back, what do you do?  First thing you do is you give things you don’t need.  So you give up vacations.  Maybe you eat out a little bit less.  Maybe you don’t buy as many new clothes.  Maybe you don’t buy that new car that you thought you needed.  But the last thing you give up on is saving for your child’s college education.  (Applause.)  The last thing you give up on is making sure that your children have the books they need and the computers they need — because you know that’s going to be the key to his or her success in life, over the long term."

Is it me, or was that just a whole truckload of doubletalk?  Cut, slash, starve , get evicted – but save for that college education, by golly!  Don’t eat, but buy the kids their computers (and don’t forget that educational software from you-know-who).

Meanwhile, I hope the president took the time to read the N.Y. Times op-ed today in which Bob Herbert wrote about American students’ abysmal lack of critical thinking, reading and writing skills. Obama’s main education thrust has been to “out-compete and out-educate the rest of the world” in science and technology (and  lead the way in acquisitions of huge, obscene profits presumably). He has mentioned little to nothing about the humanities or the liberal arts in his futuristic Race to the Top agenda. Wall Street has certainly proven you don't have to be a deep thinker to make, or even steal, money. You too can be in the one percent ownership of a third of all the wealth and leave your countrymen behind. It's called innovation, people!

So, the story of Jeb and Obama has a happy Dr. Seuss ending. Jeb has gone from singing “That Bam-I-Am, that Bam-I-Am, I do not like that Bam-I-Am” to taking a gander at Obama’s corporation-loving No Child Left in the Race to the Top of the Future, and chortling:

“Say! I like green eggs and flim flam!

I do!

I like them, Bam-I-Am!”