Farahmandpur is a doctoral student and McLaren is a professor at
the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
By Ramin Farahmandpur and Peter
McLaren
Some critics have described the events that recently transpired
in Florida as a case of “voter cleansing.” It has been
alleged that thousands of votes by African Americans were denied by
polling stations that had mysteriously run out of ballots. Other
allegations included wide-spread voter intimidation, including road
blocks that were placed to prevent African Americans from reaching
voting centers in time to cast their ballots.
Jewish seniors in Palm Beach County were shocked after they
learned that they had mistakenly voted for Buchanan instead of Gore
in the now famous butterfly ballot episode. (Buchanan has been
known for his openly sympathetic views towards Hitler). Finally,
there was the storming of the building where the Miami-Dade County
canvassing board was working by a group of angry and screaming Bush
supporters, and their violent intimidation of state workers, all of
which was scrupulously orchestrated by Republican Party operatives
who succeeded ““ as planned ““ in shutting down the
process of ballot counting.
All of these “democratic” practices exemplify the
right-wing’s desperate objective to steal the elections at
all costs. Should we be surprised?
In the United States, the presidency is auctioned off to the
highest bidders, which in this case consisted of large corporate
financiers of George W. Bush: the oil, tobacco and pharmaceutical
businesses who contributed over 90 million dollars to his election
campaign.
Of course, having a father who served as the president and a
brother who is the current governor of Florida does increase your
chances of successfully stealing the presidency. Conservative
Supreme Court justices (Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas, O’Conner)
who support your 11th hour efforts at the risk of participating in
some of the most shameful legal decisions in U.S. history
don’t hurt either. After all, membership in the
“Millionaires ‘R’ Us” club does have its
privileges.
ZACH LOPEZ/Daily Bruin George W. Bush’s “cabinet of
rogues” reads like a who’s who list of pro-business,
union-busting appointees, many who had previously worked under the
Bush and Nixon administrations. Take the case of Attorney General
appointee, John Ashcroft, who has been known for his racist and
anti-abortion viewpoints; or the appointment of former general
Colin Powell as the Secretary of State, a move that advertises the
Bush administration’s firm commitment to military
prowess.
Not only does this move resonate with the foreign policy
objectives pursued by the Bush administration in Panama (1989) and
in the Middle East (1991), it lays the groundwork for the
country’s future role as the Alpha Male of the New World
Order, ready and willing to defend the free market and to demolish
any country foolish enough to keep its borders closed to U.S.
business investment.
In addition, Bush has nominated Donald H. Rumsfeld as Secretary
of Defense, a die-hard anti-communist who has promised to revive
Reagan’s strategic missile defense plan, better known as
“Star Wars.” Finally, the future environmental
secretary, Christie Whitman, has given Texas millionaires the green
light to begin oil exploration in the federally protected Alaskan
wildlife.
Bush’s unwavering support for school vouchers, charter
schools and support for the local control of schools and their
protection from federal regulation is cause for great concern. His
appointment of Rod Piage as the Secretary of Education shows his
commitment to pushing forth his school voucher initiative. School
vouchers, the brainchild of economist Milton Friedman, are intended
to provide a wider range of choices for parents and students.
Vouchers permit working-class parents to send their children to
better performing schools.
But Bush’s school voucher plan, which includes giving
$1500 of federal money to parents to send their children to their
school of choice, does little to cover the cost of attending
expensive private schools and academies such as the ones Bush
himself attended. In fact, school vouchers transfer federal and
state funds intended for public schools to private schools, which
in this case also includes religious schools.
In his new book, “Is Our Children Learning? The Case
Against George W. Bush,” Paul Begala notes that school
vouchers are a “cruel hoax” that Bush and the rest of
the Republicans supporting his reform plans are playing on
working-class and minority children.
In addition to school vouchers, Bush has been an adamant
supporter of charter schools (charter schools are schools that are
granted autonomy from the state to create their own curriculum and
are not directly accountable to the state board of education).
Yet, in a recent article published in the LA Weekly (Dec. 29,
2000-Jan. 4, 2001), Howard Blume makes a strong case against
charter schools by revealing that charter schools have shown little
if any success in improving the academic performance of
working-class and minority students in California.
More disturbing is the fact that charter schools have
facilitated the re-segregation of public schools. One of the main
limitations in charter schools is that working-class and minority
parents are not able to make real choices with respect to the
schools they wish their children to attend because they cannot
afford transportation costs or student fees.
According to Blume, recent studies show that most charter
schools have a highly homogeneous student population. In other
words, the student population of charter schools in urban
communities consists of poor minority students, while in suburban
communities they are made up of middle-class white students.
Blume adds that “the evolving choice system (associated
with charter schools) runs a tangible risk of segregation, and also
for engendering a two-tiered system. In this nightmare scenario,
prosperous families would have access to charters with creative
curricula, arts education, college prep and experienced teachers,
while impoverished minority neighborhoods would have to settle for
last-chance or vocational schools, or for-profit charters that cut
costs with inexperienced teachers using idiot-proof canned
curricula.”
George Bush’s compassionate conservatism, coupled with a
Bob Jones-style Christian fundamentalism, constitutes a relentless
attempt by the Republicans to deflect attention from the current
social and economic crisis (not to mention the growing fear of a
new recession). It does so by blaming the misfortunes of the poor
on their moral and ethical weaknesses.
Further, Bush’s call for “personal
responsibility” combines the imperatives of neoliberalism
with Sunday School ethics and moral certitude, transmuting religion
into an instrument for manufacturing consent, marketing hope and
decapitating moral and ethical issues from political and economic
ones. It is nothing more than an excuse for further reducing social
programs and entitlements for children, women, minorities and the
elderly. In doing so, it hides the sins of the New Right by
camouflaging all the signs of their privileged class interests
behind a perfumed bouquet of compassion.
The Bush administration’s domestic policies will continue
where the Bush Sr. Administration left off: to put in motion
anti-abortion legislature, promote religious teaching in public
schools, increase tax cuts for the wealthy, institute partial
privatization of social security, continue welfare reform, and curb
the role of the government in the free market. As we should know by
now, the only “free” cheese within the Republican
agenda is in the mousetrap.