What Trump Really Wants is to "Militarize" the Border

For the past three years, liberals and other opponents of Trump, have been ridiculing the idea of the border wall as an unnecessary, nonsensical, boondoggle. This ridicule has increased in the last month as "The Wall" has become the basis for government shutdown (currently in its 24 day - January 15, 2019). There has been a proliferation of memes and cartoons about ladders and stairs, as opponents try to point out the senselessness of a physical border, especially out in barren, desert and deserted areas of the border, when human ingenuity is easily capable of circumventing any humanly designed barrier. Opponents tried to show that it was a pointless exercise.

Turns out we, the opponents of the wall, were the ones that just weren't getting the point. We didn't get that Trump and his supporters never were talking about a physical barrier sitting out in the open by itself. They were always talking about a defended border, a "militarized" border, a border with guard towers, spotlights, and machine guns. A border where those who attempted to cross the barrier would be shot.

How in the f*k did I not grasp this before? This isn't about a wall, the wall is just the the first, necessary step, the place for soldiers to stand, a place for the machine gun turrets. He and his supporters want a 2-thousand mile "Berlin Wall" or Korean DMZ.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1084650944846012417

That's what it has always been about, a militarized border, with guard towers and search lights, and automatic weapons, where soldiers patrol,  and shoot to kill anyone who dares cross the line.

This wall is not just a pointless, ineffectual waste of money, its the first step in turning our country into an armed camp.

We must say "No!" to this, because if we give in, it will never stop.

My Reaction to President Trump's Address to the Nation

 Last night, January 8, 2019, my husband and I sat down in my living room to watch President Donald J. Trump address the nation from the Oval Office. We watched the address and the brief Democratic Party reply, then turned off the TV and went to bed. 

Over the years, I have found it difficult if not impossible to sit down and watch any president make an Oval Office address. It does not matter whether the President was one I voted for and supported or one that I voted against, despised and loathed (Nixon and Reagan come to mind). My usual preference is to read the transcripts of presidential speeches after the fact rather than watch them live.  However, this time it felt essential to see and hear President Trump while he was speaking.

This morning I awoke to find that I felt more positive and optimistic about the future of our government and country than I have in quite sometime, and that Trump's speech was the primary cause of my change in feeling. After spending much of the day reading through media reactions and the reactions of both the liberals and conservatives (Trump haters and Trump supporters) in my Facebook and Twitter feeds, it would appear that my reaction to the President's speech is atypical.

Let me be clear: Trump's performance last night did nothing to dissuade me from the belief that he is the worst president of my life time. His address contained multiple factual errors (lies), and substituted anecdotes for data and did nothing to convince me that $5 billion dollars (or any amount of money) for a new physical barrier ("the wall") was a good idea. Nor did he convince me that there was a crisis on our southern border, other than a humanitarian one created by his administration. Every bit of data and research that I have seen suggests otherwise. [For a nice review of such research see this article by fellow sociologist Dudley L. Poston Jr. professor sociology and demography at Texas A&M University in College Station.]

What last night's speech did do was convince me that:

• Someone with substantial influence over Trump cares about the continuance of government functionality at some level. That this person or persons does not want a shutdown to continue for "months or years" and certainly does not want the entire system to lose legitimacy and break down. 
• Someone with substantial influence over Trump understands the negative consequences of a shutdown even if Trump does not.
• This person has enough influence over Trump to get him to do something he hates doing: reading an entire speech from a teleprompter without even a single deviation. 
• Trump is mentally competent enough to follow these instructions and to coherently read, without stumbling, someone else's writing using a vocabulary substantially larger than he himself uses on a daily basis for 8 to 10 minutes, even though he clearly disliked doing it. 

These are not small things. Especially since I had become convinced in recent weeks that Trump's utter disregard for the functions of government and consequences of shutdown would lead us to the complete disintegration of order and the rule of law within the next year.

Moreover, in his speech, before he said anything at all about a physical barrier or wall, he laid claim to issues that have long been supported by Democratic law-makers, many of which were already included in legislation passed by one body or another but not enacted:

"The proposal from homeland security includes cutting edge technology for detecting drugs, weapons, illegal contraband and many other things. We have requested more agents, immigration judges to process the sharp rise of unlawful migration fueled by our very strong economy. Our plan also contains an urgent request for humanitarian assistance and medical support." (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/us/politics/trump-speech-transcript.html)

By laying claim to these proposals, Trump's address laid the ground work among his base (who aren't going to any pay attention to Democratic claims that these were their ideas in the first place), to claim that he wrested these concessions from the Democrats in any compromise that might be reached, even if he is not able to get all the funding he desires for a wall. 

This had given me some small hope for negotiations today, however, latest reports suggest that Trump is still stuck on the $5.7 billion for a while and nothing else matters to him. So today's meeting ended abruptly with Trump walking out on Schumer and Pelosi.

Selective attention to fact

Political bias and perception often are based on our selective attention to factual information rather to actual "fake news." Today (August 11, 2018) I noticed that several of my right-leaning friends on Facebook were sharing the first of the two stories below, while my left-leaning friends were sharing the second story. Both stories are accurate and factual, both were reported in more than one media source although here I chose to use two stories from one source. There was little bias in the mainstream media, only factual reporting on data reported by government agencies responsible for tracking economic trends. The first story pre-dates the second by 10 days because of differences in the release of data by different government agencies.

Headline: U.S. Workers Get Biggest Pay Increase in Nearly a Decade.
Basic information: Employment cost index, which measures wages and benefits, grew 2.8% in the 12 months to last month June 30, 2018. Reported on July 31, 2018.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-employment-costs-rose-in-the-second-quarter-1533040473

Headline: Rising U.S. Consumer Prices Are Eroding Wage Gains.
Basic information: Inflation is at 2.9% over the past 12 months ending June 30, 2018, a gain that was last exceeded in late 2011. Reported August 10, 2018.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-consumer-prices-rose-0-2-in-july-1533904402

Both articles share important pieces of information: 1) wage increases were higher in the last year than in the previous decade and 2) those wage increases were more than offset by increases inflation that was higher than in the previous decade - so people's standards of living did not increase.

Sociology courses can be an important vehicle for educating people about data sources, how to access them directly, what information those sources include and do not include, and how to evaluate them.

For example, the Employment Cost Index reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics looks at what employers have to pay in both cash wages and in benefits costs.  It is entirely possible (and has happened quite a few times), that much of the increase in the Employment Cost Index comes from employers having to pay more for benefits such as health insurance or retirement payments, than because they are putting more cash in employees pockets through wages. That was not the case in the year ending in June 2018 - both direct wages and employers costs for benefits increased by 2.8%. But this distinction between the cost to employers and the wages received by employees is important for people looking at this type of data to understand and look at how the data source breaks down the Employment Cost Index into its component parts.

Another lesson to learn about data sources is that many types of data including both the Employment Cost Index and the Consumer Price Index (the measure of inflation also provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) lump together information from millions of sources into a single index number.  With the Employment Cost Index wage and benefit, data is collected from thousands of employers covering millions of workers, and is an average of all the data collected. That means that some workers may have had wage increase far exceeding 2.8% and other workers had no wage increase or may have even taken wage cuts. A rise of 2.9% in the consumer price index does not mean that everyone across the nation saw all of their costs rise by 2.9%.  Some costs (such as higher education tuition and books) rose by more than 2.9%, other costs rose very little and even some products (such as some electronics) may have come down in cost. Moreover, prices for many things (such as rent and mortgage) vary considerably from one geographic area to another. Some elements of the consumer price index like food prices affect everyone, but others like prices of automobiles only affect those who are purchasing an auto.

Helping people understand the data that affects their lives is an important role sociology can and should play.

Family not Business

Republicans and conservatives are always talking about how we need to run our country like a business; they also talk a lot about family values but never link the two together.

We would be far better served if we decided to run our country like a family - a good family not a dysfunctional one. Good families put their frailest and most vulnerable members first, making them a priority. Families sacrifice for their children and their elderly, giving their time, energy and resources to those who can least go out into the economy and world and fend for themselves. The adults in good families know they are protecting the future -- of themselves, their families, and society -- when they put their children first, and that they are acknowledging the sacrifices of their parents when they put their elderly first.  Good families do not abandon or kill their children and elderly when money gets tight, they look for new resources, a second job, government assistance, even illegal sources of income (not condoning the latter, just observing).

Businesses on the other hand, when money gets tight, put stockholders and top executives first and throw away the most vulnerable of their workers, forcing retirement on older workers, laying off workers, abandoning the very people who make the business work.

Our present government leadership (both Houses of Congress and the Presidency) are taking a business rather than a family approach to running the country, cutting off the vulnerable (cutting programs), rather than expanding resources (returning taxes to previous levels before the huge tax cut giveaway of 2018):

House GOP plan would cut Medicare, Medicaid to balance budget https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-gop-plan-would-cut-medicare-medicaid-to-balance-budget/ar-AAySglD?li=BBnb7Kz

This Congress has already cut the programs that care for children (food stamps, welfare, education, and many others), and now it's taking aim at our elderly. All to give those who already have enormous resources, more than they could possibly spend in their lifetime, even more. Let's start thinking of our society as a family and not a business.

Thoughts on the Senate Passage of the Tax Cut Bill

The mechanics of an advanced capitalist economy hold a number of important contradictions within them that make it likely that economic growth (in this country) will continue to slow down, that fewer workers will be desired (here) by capitalist enterprises, more mechanization, computerization will replace workers, that wages will continue to stagnate or even decline. These changes are embedded in the essential nature of unfettered capitalism, and can only be altered by choosing to modify capitalism, to make decisions based on human welfare and NOT on profit (the essence of capitalism). 

There is also an essential contradiction between the need for a capitalist enterprise to grow, expanding markets and demand, and the finite nature of material resources. Moreover, that growth and expansion coupled with short-term profitability decisions, increasing the level of waste and its attendant pollution. Growth is an inherent requirement of capitalism and it cannot continue forever in a finite reality. So, therefore, capitalism cannot continue forever in a finite reality. 

Somewhere in our countries future we will hit a series of "walls" - a point at which standards of living have eroded past what is tolerable to maintain a free society, where environmental degradation (including global warming) will begin taking an even greater toll than it already does (wildfires, floods, hurricanes, extreme weather events). 

If we were to moderate our economic system now, make progressive changes that provide more (rather than less) support for the poor, the middle class, improve health care access, improved educational access, put people to work doing things that need doing rather than just what is profitable for investors (like we did during the Great Depression), we might possibly create a people and a society that will have the resilience needed to survive the shocks that our economy and environment will inevitably throw at us. 

But instead we have a government today, that is engaging in firesale tactics. We're stripping away supports and safety nets, not enhancing them. What I fear is that even if years from now we do elect people with a better vision, it will be too late. We will hit those "walls" full speed, head on and be smashed to bits as a society. 

That, unfortunately, is my vision for this countries future.

Zombie America - Installment 7

It appears that economists have finally glommed on to something that sociologists have been talking about for 30 years: the middle class is disappearing and there is a great divide between haves and have-nots in America. 

MIT economist Peter Temin is getting rave reviews for his new book The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy. While Temin certainly has some updated data, the phenomenon he is describing- the hollowing out of the American middle class and the increasing divide between affluent and those scraping by - has been in progress for decades at least since the deindustrialization of American began in earnest in the late 1970's. Sociologist Katherine Newman aptly described the early stages of the decline of the middle class in Falling From Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence in the 1980's.

Many social scientists, policy makers, and politicians have noted the decline of the "rust belt," but blithely assumed that new industries (especially in high tech fields) would replace the older manufacturing centers. They offered up condolences to industrial communities devasted by the closing of steel mills, automobile factories, and coal mines, but have done little of substance to change the decline of those communities.  The old economy workers who cannot be retrained for the new economy are members of the "unnecessariate" - disposable people who do not figure as workers in the new economy but become the fodder for the careers of law enforcement, prison guards, social workers, doctors, and therapists.  It is not terribly surprising that so many of them voted for the one politician that appeared to care about them, speak to them directly, and tell them they were worth something.

The cavalier abandonment of so many small cities and towns in America, who have not made the transition to the new economy is a major indicator of the rot in our society.  However, the real problem is that the new economy itself is divisive and destructive to American society.

Seattle with its booming tech/internet economy is an excellent example of how economic success contributes to the increasing divide in American society. Not all of the jobs of the new economy are "good" jobs - lots of lower paid, dead end warehouse and service sector jobs come out of the same economic developments that provide high paying tech jobs. Moreover, influxes of higher paying jobs can push up housing costs, tax rates, strain transportation, and other public services, increasing the cost of living on those who do not have the "good" jobs.  Nestor Ramos, a Boston Globe reporter describes the benefits and pitfalls of a booming high tech economy. An article intended as a cautionary tale to those communities that might be bidding for a new Amazon headquarters.

Why Assessment of General Education Competencies is Entirely Different from Grading

I have been aware for many years that the college where I teach has been doing a poor job with assessing general education. At times over the years I've tried talking to the people in positions of responsibility about the inadequacies of our assessment, but no one has listened. Finally I gave up and just made sure that I did things the right way even if no one else did. 

Ultimately the day of reckoning - re-accreditation - has arrived, and despite our having been slapped on the hand for our inadequate general education assessment and asked to address those deficiencies, those in decision-making positions are still not listening to me. Or rather they heard me and said you're right, but we'll deal with that sometime in the future.  Right now we're just going to do a whole lot more of the wrong thing and overwhelm them with reams of bad assessment data - done up in a pretty new chart that someone at the top thinks makes everything okay. Of course they didn't actually say that, but that seems to be the course we are taking. 

So I've been charged with collating and synthesizing these reams of bad data into some coherent whole (not really possible but I'm trying), and that is what I'm spending my "vacation" doing. As I review all of the assessment reports of all of our faculty, I am aghast at how bad things actually are - far worse than I had imagined.  I would like to be able to put all these people in a room somewhere and explain some things to them, but that is never going to happen.  For one thing, by the time the chickens come home fully to rest and the awfulness of our assessment is fully understood, I will have retired and it will be "not my circus, not my monkeys." 

So instead I'm going to deliver part of my "lecture" here, because I've got to let it out somewhere. Maybe somebody somewhere will benefit from my little rant. 

My college, as well as all other colleges in our system and most colleges in our state, has adopted a general education plan the "Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) Initiative" developed by hundreds of college faculty through the auspices of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU). The LEAP initiative includes 12 essential learning outcomes for a liberal education, including communication skills, quantitative reasoning, information literacy, critical thinking, life long learning, teamwork and problem solving, and several others (https://www.aacu.org/leap/essential-learning-outcomes). To assist colleges and faculty determine whether or not they are achieving these general educational goals, the AACU developed Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education rubrics or VALUE rubrics (Source: https://www.aacu.org/value).  Having spent many years now reading the literature around the LEAP initiative and the VALUE rubrics, it is clear that the students' entire educational career should contribute to the development of these essential skills, and that proficiency in them is something that accumulates over the student entire academic career.  This means that most first semester freshmen taking their first college level courses would not be expected to be fully proficient at most of the learning outcomes, but that one would expect the majority of last semester senior students to be proficient.  

The biggest mistake that most of our faculty have made is to assume that assessment is simply an extension of grading. Having made that assumption, the majority of my colleagues then assume that they can simply use the grade from some test, paper, exercise, project or even the course as a whole, as THE measure of assessment - for a whole host of different general education areas from "inquiry and analysis," "critical and creative thinking," to "life-long learning skills," and "integrative and applied learning." As a result I am seeing faculty with first semester freshman in the first English writing course reporting that because 95% of their students got a C+ or better therefore 95% of their students are fully proficient in written communication. If that is so, then why on earth do we then require them to take a second semester of writing? Because one semester of college writing does not make most people proficient at written communication. Proficiency in writing takes lots of practice in writing, and writing different types of content (history essays, sociology journals, science term papers, etc.). Assessment is not the same as grading.

A grade is a measurement of the student's performance in a particular course. How well did the student complete all the requirements of that course? That's what a grade indicates. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the difference between grading and assessment is to use some thing that most people can understand: studying languages.  A person who wishes to study French will begin with an introductory French course. That individual may study very hard in introductory French and do all of the required work at a high level of skill - for that course - and be rewarded for their efforts with an A.  That's grading.  But then we ask, is that person who has completed a one semester course in French with an A now proficient in the speaking, writing and communicating in French. Of course not. That is assessment. Assessment is about a larger life skill that accrues over time and practice. Moreover, it is entirely possible for a person to take four semesters of French, and get an A in every single class, and still not be particularly proficient in speaking and writing French. However, if that is so, then there's probably good reason to go back and review how the courses were taught since the ultimate goal of the courses is to develop proficiency. Nonetheless we would still not expect proficiency to be the outcome of the first, or even second course, but rather some mile stone measure along the way. 

In most courses at a community college (the first two years of college), such as where I teach, we should not be looking for proficiency in most courses, but rather from evidence that students have started along the way to a particular skill or ability - for milestones.  While the development of such skills and abilities should be part of grading, they are often not the most important element in the grade even on a single assignment or activity. So grades often are poor indicators of the development of general education skills.  Assessment requires a separate set of judgments about where a student lies in the development of a body of knowledge or a set of skills.   That separate assessment could be included within the grading criteria as a percentage of a score or grade, but is unlikely to encompass all of the things that go into the grade. 

A good example is developing the skills of life long learning. Reading the AACU's material and VALUE rubric on life long learning, some years ago, I realized that a project that I always have my Social Problems students do was something that could - if tweaked just a little - contribute to developing life long learning skills. The actual grade that I give students for this project (identifying a social problem specific to their home community, and following through with research, contact with others addressing the problem, and thinking about solutions for their community) depends on many different factors, such as how well they have learnt and used the terminology of sociology, how well they write, and only a small percentage of the grade is related to life-long learning skills.  A student could get an A (low A) on the project without having exhibited higher levels of life-long learning skills.  The Life Long Learning Value rubric has five dimensions. One of those dimensions is initiative, and the lowest level (scored as "1") on the rubric for initiative is "completes required work." The second level (scored "2") is "Completes required work and identifies opportunities to expand knowledge, skills, and abilities;" and the third level (scored "3") is "Completes required work, identifies and pursues opportunities to expand knowledge, skills, and abilities." 

I set up the project in such a way to create a climate where students are encouraged to identify and pursue opportunities to expand knowledge.  I use extensive feedback in the early stages of the project, making many suggestions to students about additional information sources, and avenues they might explore. Students who do so rank high on the Life-Long Skills rubric that is used for assessment. But students who do not, have still "completed required work," which is the primary basis for the grade on the project. 

Faculty often bemoan the students for whom the grade is the end-all and be-all of college. But sometimes we get blinded by same type of narrow minded thinking - grades are not always the best measure of learning.