Election 2020: Defunding the future

Two crises are facing remarkable silence this election cycle: public education and climate change. Perhaps because these crises cannot be addressed with an “incremental approach” do they face silence. Not because we don’t care about these issues. Rather we have discovered that our institutions whose mandate is protecting the public welfare are ill-equipped to take on these crises with the urgency they demand.

Need evidence? Read the street protests signs. Watch for climate related calamities test local and state governance.

Over the past four years Americans woke up to a country that valued individual freedom to own a gun over maintaining public safety in schools.

Over the past four years Americans woke up to a country that values “return on investment” over sustaining environmental health.

Over the past four years Americans woke up to a generation ready to privatize social security which will double the cost of the next generation’s retirement, if the concept of retirement is even feasible 20 plus years from now.

These are not jeremiads but political realities.

I

Public Education

We can blame Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for starting the march to defund public education but DeVos is “carrying water” for those elites who propose a radical shift in funding our future; a shift moreover which reveals a link between public education and affordable, safe housing in much the same way as the current pandemic exacerbates and is linked to economic injustice and inequality.

This shift in an age of relative abundance in America — after all, we are the world’s richest country across several metrics — is a harbinger of a return to an “elitist” form of education as distinct from a “common” form of education reflecting the dual phenomenon of class settlement of America.

Since the mid seventeenth century, America was settled by a “planter class” who schooled children at home, with private tutors and “finishing” education abroad, predominantly in England and Scotland. Also settling in America were “indentured servants,” basically unpaid laborers who barely survived the New World, malnutrition and deprivation. Those who survived received not freedom but continued economic bondage. These groups created the “common school” open to all citizens, paid for by a “toll,” and predominantly neighborhood situated as transport to and from school was a challenge. Later several northern colonies mandated that schooling be compulsory, in part to ensure their future and in part to support a literate populace. As new state by new state mandated the idea of compulsory education, neighborhood planted, available to all families, the responsibility to train, to inform and to sustain learning was passed from family to community. The fiscal viability of schools and schooling became contingent on community funding first through annual “tolls” and more recently by community and county levied property taxes.

In 1978 California became the first state to dislodge the relationship between community and school with the passage of Proposition 13. Without going into the origins of the “Taxpayer’s Revolt,” the passage of Proposition 13 yielded the consequence of reducing public school expansion and posing the challenge to local school districts to annually adjust their fiscal requirements to the broader “needs” of the community. These consequences in turn spurred the creation of community “tax increment financing (TIF),” the reliance on standardized test results as a measure of success, and a cap on teacher salaries.

An “unseen consequence” of California’s passage of Proposition 13 was that instead of reducing the reliance on an increase in property taxes to fund public education, by capping property tax increase, a “bad genie” emerged resulting in those communities “who couldn’t carry their fair share” becoming marginalized and removed from the benefits accruing to those who could. “Redlining” neighborhoods resulted from and added to this development.

Evidence: compare a teacher’s salary in. Chicago’s suburb Lake Forest, Illinois with a teacher’s salary in the south side Chicago neighborhood of Englewood. Now imagine this disparity replicating across America. Compare class size, student-teacher ratio, quality education opportunity, social services access: you get the idea.

II

Climate Change

In 2015 literally foot steps from Angela Merkel’s office is an office of “environmental initiative.” The office is busy as the Merkel government is deep into reducing Europe and Germany’s dependence on fossil fuel. This comes at considerable political risk for Merkel and for Germany, one of the prime European producers of fossil fuel. Politics and legacy aside, there are assessments of social cost, both immediate and projected. There are job restructuring programs to design and implement. There are financial liabilities to share. There are health costs to be calculated and addressed.

The office is staffed with scientists, economists, sociologists, medical doctors, actuaries. And the office is a “branch” of a reputable global environmental consultancy based in…San Antonio, Texas.

San Antonio, Texas?

When asked the “gotcha question” of why Germany/why not America, the CEO of the consultancy confided that ‘sure, we’d love to help Texas, help the US address the impact of fossil fuel emissions. We tried to reach out. No one’s interested.’

“To be fair,” this was 2015. But also ‘to be fair,’ how much has changed in the US?

And on another plane are we seeing the migration of brains and talent to countries committed to addressing climate change. We have ditched the Paris Accord. We have cost the planet years of mitigating the effects of climate change. We haven’t bought “time,” we have squandered the little time we have.

We complain, “Easy to say, hard to achieve.”

Really?

Consider that the political innuendo of ‘hard to achieve’ has less to do with “reality” than with vision. The effects of our collective amnesia and procrastination are largely “invisible” which probably explains why with all the horrible pictures of fire destruction and flooding we are not up and marching in the streets, carrying messages for future inhabitants: “Enough is enough!”

When assessing environmental cost, nothing really matters until all the constituents are engaged. This is the hard part — the cost of power sharing. Merkel knows this. The San Antonio environmental consultancy knows this.

And for “the rest of us,” what are these denial effects we are “willingly” blind to?

scientific evidence

environmental stewardship

building constituencies beyond national borders

balancing governance with industry “standards”

Except for the first, all “effects” require negotiation: a negotiation with the future, a negotiation with ourselves.

In 2000 the United Nations adopted Millenium Goals. (1) These goals formed the intellectual framework around a “Green New Deal” (GND), a basket of resolutions sponsored in the 116th US Congress by Rep. Alexandra Octasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey.

The GND has been effectively “dumped” by both parties in the 2020 Election.

September 14–17, 2020

1- “United Nations Millenium Development Goals,” www.un.org

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