Obama’s Educational Waivers: Toward the Political Consolidation of an Empire

A decade after the No Child Left Behind federal law was enacted, “President Obama freed 10 states from some of its crucial provisions.”[1] The states’ freedom from a deadline for bringing all students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014 came with strings—accepting Obama’s own educational agenda, which focuses on accountability and teacher effectiveness and includes higher standards than the ones set in NCLB. Many state education officials have criticized the 2014 deadline as “an impossibly high bar” that “did not take into account the needs of some of the most disadvantaged children.” In announcing the waivers from the deadline, Obama said that the goals of NCLB should be met “in a way that doesn’t force teachers to teach to the test, or encourage schools to lower their standards to avoid being labeled as failures.”[2] However, if the standards are to be even higher, might even fewer schools wind up passing—even if the deadline is extended?

The full essay is at "Obama's Educational Waivers."

1. Winnie Hu, “10 States Are Given Waivers from Education Law,” The New York Times, February 10, 2012. 
2. Ibid.
3. Personal Correspondance.

Conflicts of Interest and Paradigm-Shifts: The Case of Financial Regulation

It is perhaps all too easy to perceive a sea-change in perception when the reality of societal change is much more gradual. There is something to the argument that John D. Rockefeller’s reputation was salvaged in the 1930s not because the old man was passing out dimes, but, rather, simply because he had outlived his critics. Similarly, Thomas Kuhn, in his text on paradigm changes in scientific revolutions, bemoans that the advocates of a default theory must finally die off before their darling can finally be replaced by a new one. In other words, any given person is not apt to shift paradigms. The culprit, I suspect, is pride, which Augustine suggests in his writings is inherently self-idolatrous. I believe the human brain is capable of accepting inter-paradigmatic change, just as a person can be humble. That this is not the norm does not mean that we ought not raise our expectations to it.

The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Leadership Vision at Facebook

On Charlie Rose, a television show, in early 2012, a former CEO of Coke told Charlie that companies view corporate social responsibility as lying within the domain of strategy. Specifically, it is in a company’s strategic interest that its sources of raw materials do not “dry up.” A corporation’s societal responsibility dovetails with its interest that the corporation’s own “footprint” (a.k.a. “Big Foot”) not put the company’s own survival at risk. One could say a company is “responsible” (as if it were felt as a duty rather than simply self-interest) for safeguarding those things on which it depends. In other words, it goes out from its immediate interest in securing supplies to assume a “societal” role in protecting the sources themselves, as if acting as a good citizen. The motive is more like stewardship—the objective being maintaining an ability to extract the material in the long term. Profit, in other words, is foremost, and any word of duty is mere marketing. This does not mean that leadership vision beyond profits as an end is a façade.

The full essay is at "Taking the Face Off Facebook."

Refusing for Its Own Sake: Israel on the Palestinian Unity Government

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority reached a deal for a unity government with Hamas on February 6, 2012—which was also the sixtieth anniversary of the Accession Day of Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned that a unity government with Hamas would rule out any chance of making peace with Israel. Meanwhile, the E.U. and U.S., as well as the state of Israel, had conditioned recognition and aid to Hamas on that party renouncing violence, recognizing Israel, and agreeing to previous agreements reached between the P.L.O. and Israel. In short, for all that achieving a unity government requires in terms of hard decisions and effort, the accomplishment was not exactly valued by Israel and the West. Aside from the baleful consequences in refusing to recognize something of value out of stubbornness and inflexibility, Israel and the West may have been hurting themselves by ruling out a chance for peace at the outset.

The full essay is at "Refusing for Its Own Sake."

Windfall Oil Profits

Conoco Phillips reported a 66% increase in earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011, “attributed to high crude prices and asset sales.”[1] With the prices of most crudes above $100 a barrel, the company gained a windfall that vastly made up for a drop of nearly 3% in its refining and marketing business. Chevron, on the other hand, reported a 3.2% decline in fourth-quarter earnings due to “poor refining results” that “overwhelmed higher revenue from oil sales.”[2]

The full essay is at "Windfall Profits."

1. Clifford Krauss, “Higher Oil PricesRaise Earnings at Exxon Mobil,” The New York Times, February 1, 2012. 

2. Ibid.