Buenos Aires Tour Part 2: San Telmo And More

This is a continuation of our tour of parts of Buenos Aires with Carolina and Belem.  Part 1 which covers La Boca is here. 

While we were with Belen, Carolina had moved the car so it was close to the museum and we then went off to San Telmo market.  Again, we were dropped off and with Caroline walked the open market, saw the church, and bought some home made soap.

 Here’s where we got dropped off, with the church behind this muraled wall.

And across the street was a very spiffy looking apartment building.  
     
     
       

  

We went in to look at the church.  

 You can learn more about San Telmo - who was born in 1175 and was the patron saint of fishers and sailers in the south of Italy at the church website.

I got fascinated by the floor tiles.  They have this Escher like patterN, and then in a spot of light, I saw that it was made up of pentagonal tiles.  I want these in my house somewhere.  

J liked the tiles out in front of the church.  

Here’s the street market from in front of the church.  

We got to what looked like a larger square that was filled with booths that looked more like a flea market and then up another street passing musicians, a magician, until we got to the San Telmo market.  It was teaming with people.  It’s a regular neighborhood market shops selling all sorts of things - fruits, vegetables - beautiful fresh vegies - meat.  And lots of little places to eat.

On the right, they’re making empanadas.  

We got a couple of vegetarian empanadas - the best I’ve ever had - and a humita chala, which was a mix of corn and onions and something else wrapped in a corn husk.  I am going to have to figure out how they made that because it was delicious.  

I found a Youtube of someone preparing humita chala.  This is not an Argentine version because she adds some spicy sauce at the end, but it’s close enough for now.  

We wandered around a bit more.  At one point a car was trying to figure out where it wanted to go and the car behind it almost touched it and honked.  Hands flew out the windows of the first car.  I was in sympathy with them.  They pulled into a parking place, but someone called out from a window to say they couldnt.  But Belen told them we were just up the street and leaving so they followed us and all was well.

From there we wandered over to ‘the most expensive part of town”. Puerto Madero.  It’s on an island and there are only a couple of bridges there.  Lots of fancy high rise business and residential buildings.  

We stopped and Belen wanted to show us the very fancy Faena Hotel,  in a refurbished old brick building.  We didn’t see much, but this long red space was striking.  There’s a lot of money involved here.    Belen asked for information on a tango show they have.  “It’s not ‘a’ tango show, it’s ‘the best tango show” was the response.  It’s $250 a person.  I asked if that was pesos or dollars.  Dollars.  Is Lady Gaga in it?  Belen smiled.  

Then we got caught in a traffic jam.  Nothing was moving.  Well, sometimes the bridges are pulled up to let boats pass.  In 15 minutes we were off the island and headed by the Colon National Theater and then by the old Synagogue.  

We went through Recoleta - below is the church by the cemetery - and then back to where we are staying.  

It was a gorgeous sunny day, in the upper 60s.  But it got chilly in the late afternoon.  

 We got to talking about how they are building up this business.  It’s hard.  But they both know Buenos Aires well and are warm and helping people.  They seemed to be having as good a time as we were.  It was like good friends were showing us around.  They are willing to just give people basic advice - how to get into town from the airport and find a good place to stay and get a bus pass - to actually arranging everything for people including taking them around to see things.  Carolina also has special connections into some fields like polo.  

i don’t usually make recommendations like this, but if anyone is going to Argentina and wants some help planning their trip, their website is Choice Buenos Aires.  As I said in the previous post, it’s a work in progress.  These women are much better at guiding tours and planning trips than making their website just the way they’d like it.  And they also  have a Facebook page and a Twitter page.   (@aireschoice) 

We had a really wonderful day yesterday.  And tomorrow morning early, we head for the airport and our plane back to the US.  I’m not ready to go back, even though we’ve been here a month.   

More Cordoba and French Bike Riders

Here are some more Cordoba shots from the Free Tour as well as a few others.

The building in the middle was pointed out as the narrowest building in South America -  3 meters at the widest.  It had to do with land issues.  It’s got some businesses and apartments.

These folks were standing there, but the tour moved on before I could find out exactly who they were and why they were there.  Are these Anonymous supporters?  Don’t know.

The cabildo is the government building.  It was in a back section of this building wh ere the  detention and torture center was located.

This is the Museo de Marques de Sobremonte. It’s an old building you can find out more (with video) here.

This is a much newer apartment (I think) building we passed a few times.

This is  Paseo de Buen Pastor and  was once, as  described by Lonely Planet  ‘a combined chapel, monastery, and women’s prison.’  That sounds like a strange and suspicious combination of institutions.  Today, though it is a community center with lots of activities for people of all ages.


Below are the leftovers of the tour who had lunch together at the place the tour guide recommended.  It turned out to be us two US folks and four French folks.  The two on the right were wrapping up a year long bike trip that started in Calgary and took them to LA down the west coast.  From there they flew to Ecuador and biked down to Argentina.  They were on their last leg - to Buenos Aires.  They met the two French women, who are studying civil (I think) engineering in Argentina for five months., on the tour.

  

 That’s enough for now.  We’re in the Cordoba airport waiting for our last inside Argentina flight - to Buenos Aires.  We were supposed to leave at 5;m, but the flight is delayed to 6:35pm now.   We’ll have three more full days in Argentina, then we fly back to LA for a couple of days before finally making it home.  I’m ready for an Alaskan vacation.  When we left I told people that while I hated to leave Alaska in the summer, I didn’t wish them rain or a bad summer at all.  But I certainly wasn’t wishing them the record high temperatures and fire  smoke, or the failed veto override.

Though reading the Alaskan complaints about the heat reminded me of how Alaskans scoff at Outsiders who complain about the cold.  True Alaskans should be able to handle heat as well as cold without whining.  (I know, easy for me to say, I wasn’t there.).

Cathedrals, Bank Lines, The Disappeared And Their Killers

I really owe you more than pictures, but it’s hard keeping track of and sorting out my impressions and what I’ve been told.  People I see on the streets - what they look like, what they wear, their constant cell phone use - look exactly like the people I see in the US.  Pizza and hamburguesas and beer are among the most popular foods here in Cordoba. But these folks live among buildings that, in a few cases, go back to the 1500s.  They walk down narrow streets with little shops on every block - at least in this neighborhood - with fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, and a few other items, that are right next to bakeries with all sorts of decadent sweets.  There’s history here (not counting the original people prior to European conquest) that makes even the US east coast seem young.

Argentina has free health care and free higher education.

US citizens have a way of feeling superior to the rest of the world, but there’s more to culture than military superiority.  Of course, this is what I’ve discovered every time I’ve been to a new (for me) part of the world.  People are people.  And everywhere you go there are very smart, sophisticated people.  People with great common sense and wisdom.  And there are jerks.  When we were surveyed at the airport by someone from a tourism agency, we were asked to rate a number of things.  I asked if we were going to be asked about the people.  No, we weren’t.  Well, I said, you should ask us.  The people were absolutely the best part of our trip.  Tolerant of my terrible Spanish and always wanting to know “De desde son?”  Where are you from?  And Alaska always elicits a smile and ‘frio.’

That said, here are the pictures.  These are two days old.  We walked up to Plaza San Martin, the center of Córdoba, Argentina’s second largest city.  While we were at the Museum of Memories, a group came in with a guide speaking in English and when we listened in we got invited to join.  It’s a company that puts on free tours - it’s up to you to decide what to pay the guide.  The group was mostly Spanish speakers and the English speakers got a much shorter version.  And two dropped out during the two hour plus tour, leaving just us.

But first here’s a picture from our 8th floor balcony.  Airbnb had a two bedroom apartment  for under $50 a night.  It’s by far the most spacious place we’ve stayed.  Well, the Buenos Aires homestay was bigger, but we didn’t have it to ourselves.            

  

I couldn’t pass up the shadows - also from the balcony.

 

This is the inside of the main Cathedral on Plaza San Martin.  If you’ve been reading the blog lately, you’ve  heard this name before.  San Martin, someone said, was the George Washington of Argentina.  But he was more than that.  Besides getting Argentina free from Spain, he did the same in Chile.  Then passed the torch to Simon Bolivar in Peru.

Here’s a view of the plaza. It’s much warmer here in central Argentina.  Up to about 70˚F in the afternoon.

    

Here’s the cathedral from the plaza.

Construction of the Cathedral began in 1582 according to Wikipedia and it was finished in 1709.  For the historically challenged, the Mayflower got to North America in 1620 and George Washington was born in 1732.

If you look closely below, you can see a long line of people at the bank.  We’ve seen shorter lines before and asked.  Someone suggested about a Friday lineup that people were getting money out for the weekend and wanted to get their money in case the ATMs ran out of money over the weekend.  In this case, it was Tuesday after a holiday weekend.  (This is here because it was on the way to Plaza San Martin.)

 

The Museum of the Memories is in a former detention and torture center from the 1970s when the government rounded up suspected opponents.


The Free Tour guide (in the red in the center) said about 30,000 people disappeared.  Tortured to death, shot, and others were  thrown out of airplanes over the ocean.  Children were kidnapped and given to other families.  I knew some of this.  Netflix has The Official Story up - well it’s here in Spanish without English subtitles.  It’s about this period.

 I was going to save this museum for a post all its own, but I have so many backed up photos I should just put it up.  It’s a chilling account.  30,000 people is a tiny fraction of the population.  But if it’s your son or daughter or husband, it’s everything.  And all the relatives and friends and acquaintances of 30,000 people is enough to spread terror among millions of others that they will be next.  Sort of like undocumented Americans waiting for ICE to knock on their doors.
 
Buzzfeed reported in May that over 52,000 people were being held in ICE detention centers.  The vast majority of these are decent, innocent people fleeing violence in their own countries.  But the Trump administration is full of heartless people who easily rationalize the evil they are doing.  Here is a picture of some of their Argentinian colleagues from the 70s and 80s.

.  The guide mentioned that the detention center that houses the museum is right next to the cathedral and part of the cabildo - the main government building of the province.  Both were complicit.  

Here are a few more memories.

This giant (5 or 6 feet high) fingerprint is made up of names of the disappeared. There were several more such fingerprints on the wall.    

A courtyard in the detention center.

A poster about one of the young women who disappeared.

Another victim.

And interrogation room, I think.

The difference between what happened in Chile and what’s happening today is great.  We still have enough accountability that people aren’t being actively and intentionally  tortured or thrown out of airplanes into the ocean.  But it’s not because some of the people in charge wouldn’t do those things if they could.  They did it at Guantanamo.  We still have some safeguards.  But being locked up indefinitely without adequate food and, bad sanitary conditions, having your kids separated from you, is all pretty terrifying by itself.  We’re watching the cold-bloodedness of Mike Dunleavy in action.  He would have gone along with the men in the picture above.  And I’m guessing the 22 legislators who went to Wasilla and refused to vote to override the vetoes  have moral compasses that don’t recognize evil either.         

      

Imagining And Accomplishing - A Chinese Video Offers A Great Metaphor Of What Citizens Climate Lobby Is Doing

It's amazing what some human beings can imagine, and then accomplish.  This video is short but it will lift your spirit.  And everyone needs a lot of spirit lifting these days.

😳 pic.twitter.com/N0lsqXatY9

— Carl Zha (@CarlZha) June 9, 2019

But it's also depressing how so many get stuck with the routine, and refuse to use the imagination they were born with to do the things that need to be done - like fighting climate change.  And we're in a particularly difficult time where people focus on stopping things rather than making the world a better place.

Yesterday was the monthly Citizens Climate Lobby meeting and the speaker was Dr. Shi-Ling Hsu.  His book, The Case for a Carbon Tax:  Getting Past our Hang-ups to Effective Climate Policy pulls together all the issues to show why a carbon tax with dividend is the most effective and most likely single act people can take to slow down climate change.

It's a little pricey, but maybe you can find it in your library.  The author has his own eight page precis of the book online here.  I'm sure most of you will never read it, so here's my outline of Chapter 1 which pulls together all the key points:

Chapter 1:  IntroductionGlobal Climate Change the dominant environmental issue of our time.
    Basic Dynamic and ImpactGreenhouse effect - GH gases like carbon dioxide trap the heat.  Balance disturbed by CO2 emissions since Industrial Revolution.
Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius reported build up of ‘carbonic acid’ in the earth’s atmosphere 1908 creating the possibility of earth growing warmer.  As Swede, he thought this was good.
But since at least 1970s people knew of possible dire consequences. Not just warmer weather, but heat waves and droughts, water shortages, more violent storms, rise in sea levels ‘jeopardizing trillions of dollars of real estate worldwide.”  Heating causes more heating as warm temperatures unlock methane from the frozen tundra “unleashing a GH twenty-five times more powerful than carbon dioxide.”
    Societal Impacts Political DilemmasIncreasing inequity as equatorial countries impacted harder, mostly less developed, less wealthy.  Northern, mostly more developed and wealthy have less impact.  Leakage problem:  If developed Northern nations cut back, price of oil drops, developing countries will snap it up and little gained.  Also, most of the problem caused by Northern developed countries which have used the most oil.  Developing countries believe the rich countries used their allotment already and now it’s poorer countries’ turn.  Thus the need for world wide cooperation.  But there’s resistance to a global response:

1. China v. US  - Both, together, largest emitters - 40% of world’s CO2 emissions. in 2006 when China became the world’s biggest emitter.  China sees itself as developing country and wants to catch up with what the US has used already.  But they have engaged the climate change problem.  The US has contributed 240 gigatons into the atmosphere from 1950-present. US still uses 4X the carbon per person than China.  

1. Rest of the world. (Even if China and US agree, saving is only 40%)

1. Generously assuming that European Union would support bilateral US-China agreement, brings us to 55%, with 45% left over. India? 5%   Russia?  5%  Brazil?

• The Big Question:  How will diverse nations come together to curtail emissions of GHes?  Burning carbon products and emitting CO2 is such a part of our economies, hard to imagine changing.  “ . . .most developed countries [are] taking some steps to address climate change..  Most developed countries seem to accept that their participation in an agreement to reduce emissions is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to bring about global cooperation in addressing climate change.

• Alternative to do nothing without knowing if others will reciprocate = do nothing.  So developing countries could undo reduction efforts.  US doesn’t know its efforts will succeed, but does know if it does nothing the world “will hurtle toward an historic and frightening climatic experiment.”

• Climate change poses security threat   - “poor countries left with nothing to lose by violence, and the sheer numbers of dispossessed could overwhelm the ability of rich countries to insulate themselves from climate-induced unrest.”  US Department of Defense is “developing policies and plans to manage the effects of climate change on its operating environment [and] missions.”

• Imperative to act - what could work? - “Because of the leakage problem, global engagement with the reduction of GH is absolutely necessary, and almost every country, developed or not, has to be a party.  What can possibly be proposed, that could satisfy almost every country in the world” 

• Purpose of the book: - explore the options and argue that a carbon tax is currently the most effective means of reducing emissions.  Tax is levied on emission of quantity of carbon dioxide.  

• Basic level:  levied on fossil fuel, at some transaction point before combustion, basically a sales tax on the carbon content of fuel.  CO2 most abundant GH, regulating it the most important aspect of controlling GH.  CO2 is most long lived GH gas -  remaining in atmosphere 100 years after emission -  need to start now.

• Book proposes a “carbon tax on fossil fuels, expanded to include a few other sources of GH emissions that can be monitored and measured with relative ease.”

• Why right now?  - Politically difficult.  No perfect policy.  Some others more popular, but can’t stop climate change.  Tax would start out modest and gradually increase allowing less drastic adjustments. 

• The longer we wait, the more difficult and disrupting it will be to fix things.  “Doing something modest now is vastly preferable to finding just the “right” GH policy.  

• Not the only needed policy.   Other options also needed.  Carbon tax doesn’t preclude other options.  No jurisdictional conflicts between feds and states/provinces. No problem having carbon tax AND cap and trade.  No legal obstacles to carbon tax.  “More work  will certainly need to be done in addition to a carbon tax, but there is no first step more important, more effective, and more flexible than a carbon tax.”  

• Carbon tax idea not novel,  - but all the arguments for it never collected together before.   Easy to cherry pick flaws of carbon tax, but real task to comprehensively compare carbon tax to other alternatives.  This book does that reducing the most important considerations down to ten arguments for a carbon tax and four against.

• Explores psychological barriers to carbon tax - Reviews human cognitive bases when processing information and weighing different options, biases that are mutually reinforced by public opinion polls that ask questions that contain subtle but powerful bias against certain policies.    Economists’ assumptions that humans act rationally is false.  People’s bias against taxes causes misjudgments and misperceptions about policies.  Book applies research findings that come closest to answering ‘why people dislike the carbon tax as a way of addressing climate change.”

Chapter 2  describes “a typical carbon tax and three alternative policy instruments: a cap-and-trade program, “command-and-control” - type policies or standards and government subsidies.
Chapter 3 sets up ten considerations for choosing a policy to reduce GHes.
Chapter 4 explores challenges to carbon taxes including political barriers, including its perceived regressiveness and how to pay off industries that will be disadvantaged, such as the coal industry.
Chapter 5 addresses the psychology of carbon taxes.  Approaches thus far have hidden the real cost of mitigation.
Chapter  6:  Changing Political Fortunes?
Chapter  7:  Conclusions

Why do I write about  Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) so often?

Here's why.  CCL:

1. Has the right objective
2. Goes after that objective as efficiently and effectively as any organization I've ever seen
3. Uses constituents from its local chapters (in 87% of all congressional districts) to lobby their members of congress to pass the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act
4. Focuses on building relationships with members of congress through respect and providing the best available information
5. Embraces an inclusive approach that treats everyone as a human being and a potential ally
6. Works with many other climate change groups

Studies show that people who believe that climate change is real, often have no idea of how they can meaningfully work to slow it down.  Well joining CCL is an easy and empowering way.

There are chapters throughout the US.  You can find your closest chapter here.  

And there are many chapters outside the United States.  You might find one near you here.

Like the guys dancing on the bar in the video, the founders and members of CCL have used their imaginations to come up with a viable idea and they are doing an heroic job to make it happen.

They need your help.  You don't have to join CCL to lobby your member of congress, but it doesn't cost anything to join.  And finding all the other people working for this goal is very gratifying.  And it's empowering.  Over 1500 volunteers are in Washington DC for the CCL annual conference and to lobby Congress.  

One of the resources I found most interesting and encouraging is a document with the statements of the many different religious and spiritual groups in the US on climate change.  Many people don't even know their group has taken a stand on this issue. 

SF1: Clement +

After dropping the kids off at pre-school we wandered (foot and bus) around San Francisco.  Most of these pictures are on Clement, except for two on Geary.

A doorway like this ought to make some sort of impression on the kids that go to school here.

These last two are on Geary.

Upon what meat do these, our legislative potentates, feed? " An Analysis Of A Letter To The Editor

Go ahead and read this letter to the editor that was in the Anchorage Daily News the other day:

The Letter

THE LAST OF A DYING BREED
Upon what meat do these, our legislative potentates, feed? The constant whining, wailing and caterwauling politicians of both stripes, lining up like pigs at the feeding trough of public spending, have gorged themselves for years.
Since Tom Fink, I’d given up all hope of ever seeing another fiscal conservative. To make actual cuts of real substance — ’twas a consummation devoutly to be wished. To take on the biggest governmental fraud, public indoctrination of our youth masquerading as education, requires a strength of courage that was thought never to be seen again.
So-called public education, for approximately 140 years, has produced decade after decade of declining test scores, rewarded in the following decades by increased funding. In the private sector, such a business model would have been diagnosed and terminated 135 years ago as an unmitigated failure. The answer is not more funding, but the fraud’s replacement with charter, private and religious schools that educate.
— Ed Wassell
Anchorage

How to review it?

I feel I need to respond. But who should my audience be?  I should respond to the ADN, but my response is way too long.  Then who?  My first impulse was to respond to people who might be taken in by these words, to help them see between the lines, or below the surface as some might say.  That would be easy to do.

But the real challenge is to address myself directly to the author.  But how?  A human being wrote this, and my intent is not to belittle him, but to try to engage in conversation about what he wrote.  Does he really believe this?  So I thought about how a graded my graduate students' papers.  I had to stay strictly objective.  My point was to help them improve, not to make the drop out of the class.

So let's see what I can do.  Line by line.  

"Upon what meat do these, our legislative potentates, feed?"

Mr. Wassell, I think you'd acknowledge this is not how most people speak today.  I even googled "Upon what meat do these potentates feed?"  I got several close citations.

"Upon what meat do these men feed that we should be their slaves, that they should not pay the same taxes that other people pay?"

This comes from a book called State Republican Legislative Souvenir, 1897, and Political History of Michigan  and recounts a debate over getting railroads to pay their fair share of taxes.  It's not that different from Alaskans asking that the oil industry pay its fair share of taxes.

Here's another example I found:

"Upon what meat do these men feed that they are grown so great?"

This was a harangue against school boards that fought against  teachers unionizing.  It appeared in a 1919 article in "The Public:  A Journal of Democracy.  (p. 396)

So, Mr Wassell what is it about late 19th/early 29th century rhetoric that you feel is so relevant for the opening of your letter?  How does it add to the readers' understanding of the issues you appear to discuss?  I ask in all seriousness.  Perhaps that's how you talk.  Or you want to be a little more poetic than we hear today.  Perhaps you want to impress people with your erudition.  Or perhaps it's a time you would feel more comfortable.  You don't tell us, so I have to guess.

Let's move on.

"The constant whining, wailing and caterwauling politicians of both stripes, lining up like pigs at the feeding trough of public spending, have gorged themselves for years."

The phrase 'legislative potentates' in the first sentence was the only hint of judgment on your part.

Merriam Webster tells us that potentate means:

" RULER, SOVEREIGN
broadly : one who wields great power or sway"

But you're applying it not to sovereigns or rulers, but mere legislators who have to struggle with other legislators.  They really don't have anything near a potentates' power.  But you convey that they are all powerful.   

Then this second sentence slides into anti-government liturgy, like repeating verses of the Bible that everyone takes as a natural truth.  At least members of that political religion.  But it is simply empty rhetoric that attacks the honor of all politicians.  Without any factual evidence.  As though all politicians are equally venal and none are in Juneau because they believe in the serving the public.  It's typical anti-government clichés.  Perhaps you are surrounded like people who talk in those kinds of phrases, but to many of your readers, I'm sure this language will be jarring and hurt your credibility.  

And you seem to condemn both 'potentates' and 'legislators.'  So if you disapprove of authoritarian rulers and you think democratically elected legislators are all hacks, what do you believe in?  I guess no government at all.  Let the natural state of humankind work things out?  Is that what you're saying?  If that's what you believe, why not just say you are opposed to government altogether?   

OK, on to the next sentence.  

"Since Tom Fink, I’d given up all hope of ever seeing another fiscal conservative. To make actual cuts of real substance — ’twas a consummation devoutly to be wished."

Conservapedia tells us:

"Fiscal conservatism is a political position (primarily in the United States) that calls for lower levels of public spending, lower taxes and lower government debt. It is a variety of conservatism concerned with economic rather than social issues. Fiscal conservatives oppose unnecessary government expenditures, deficits, and government debt. They take the perspective of the present and future taxpayers, and worry about the possible burden on them. They support balanced budgets. This should be contrasted with those who believe that lower taxation will stimulate industrial development, even though it causes higher deficits."

But it also says:

"Fiscal conservatism may also support limited periods of higher taxes in order to lower the public debt."

I'm not sure why you thought it useful to lift a phrase from Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be speech.  This time you're reaching back, not 100 years for your style, but 400 years.  What do you mean by this?  Hamlet was referring to death.  And you seem to be referring to cutting the budget.  I guess that's a form of death.  At one time, people might recognize the line, but today I doubt very many would know where it comes from, so it might be helpful to give Will some credit here.

OK, next sentence.

"To take on the biggest governmental fraud, public indoctrination of our youth masquerading as education, requires a strength of courage that was thought never to be seen again."

Again, rather flowery language, but that's a stylistic issue I won't quibble with other than to ask you what purpose you think it serves here?  But embedded in this sentence is another mantra of the anti-government, anti-public school movement.   Here are a couple of examples of this wording Google found for me:

From the Montana Standard

" the socialist liberal progressive, politically correct liberal idiot-logical indoctrination camps that masquerade as public schools inculcating our youth instead of instructing them on what they need to know to be productive and responsible citizens."

A bit over the top I'd say.

From the New American:

"Global citizenship education is also a frequent topic in the report and all throughout the UN's global indoctrination efforts masquerading as education."

Can't you make your point using your own words?

Let's move on.

"So-called public education, for approximately 140 years, has produced decade after decade of declining test scores, rewarded in the following decades by increased funding."

Finally, there is something factual we can actually debate.  By factual, I don't mean it's actually true, but rather it talks in terms of facts that we can look up.  And so I did.  It's not easy to find such statistics.  Here's 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Report, but I don't see anything on testing.  Here's a history of standardized testing.  It's hard to tease out anything like your numbers.   OK, you'll probably say these are liberal and biased reports.  So please give me your statistics - but make sure they are objective and not conservative biased stats.

School testing was just an idea a few people  had 140 years or so ago.  The idea was to test kids to see how much they learned.  But it took a while for such testing to be implemented. Then there was a huge market for tests. But there were no national tests where schools were tested on a regular basis using the same test with scores traced and monitored until very recently.  So, the idea that scores declined decade after decade for 140 years has absolutely no basis in fact.

And if such declining test scores did exist over that time period, I think it would say more about the inaccuracy of the tests than the abilities of the students.  This was a time when the United States became the leading nation in the world, built on ingenuity, scientific discoveries, inventions, industrial technology.  Countless great Americans graduated from public high schools -
Jonas Salk, Steve Jobs, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Google co-founder Larry Page, Spike Lee, Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Warren Buffet, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Elvis Presley, and Bob Dylan - just to name a few.

There certainly are problems with public schools. But there are also problems with private schools.  And private schools have the luxury of expelling students who don't fit in well.  Public schools can't do that.  So they have all the more labor intensive (and costly)  students - from behavior problems, cognitive problems, etc.  .

Your claim of 140 years of decade by decade declines in test scores is hard to swallow.  You would be much more persuasive if you included some data to support your claim.  I doubt it exists.


Moving on to the next sentence.

" In the private sector, such a business model would have been diagnosed and terminated 135 years ago as an unmitigated failure."

First, businesses live or die based on making money, not test scores.  Businesses can be run very sloppily and make money in the right place and right time.  And they can be run well, but suffer from a bad economy - what I expect will happen to many businesses in Alaska if Dunleavy's budget were to pass.  Public schools are not businesses, because many of their students simply could not afford to go to school if they had to pay.

Second, the sentence is seems contradictory.  You just said that schools have had declining test scores 'decade after decade" for 140 years.  So, 135 years ago - had there actually been any testing - it would still be five years before the first decade was up.  So, even in your fantasy scenario, nothing would have been closed down.  I point that out because I think it's reflective of the lack of rigorous thinking throughout the letter.  Nearly all the sentences are cliché filled opinion.  There's nothing of substance there.  So the conclusion in your last sentence doesn't really follow from what you've written up to that point.

"The answer is not more funding, but the fraud’s replacement with charter, private and religious schools that educate."

I don't follow how you got to this conclusion.  You've offered us fact-free tirades against public schools.  You've not given us any data that shows - for educating all kids in the US - private schools are any better.  Yet that's your conclusion.

In addition, early on you talked about indoctrination.  While there are many good religious private schools in the United States, the very reason most people send their kids to private religious schools is to 'indoctrinate' them in the values and beliefs of that religion.  For example, here's the mission statement from Holy Rosary Academy:

"Holy Rosary Academy seeks to complete what the attentive parent has begun by forming students in faith, reason, and virtue through a classical education in the Roman Catholic Tradition."

Public schools indoctrinate kids in belief in the greatness of the United States.  Good public schools expose kids to many different ideas and ways of seeing the world.

Closing

This post could go on and on.  But I think I've made my key points.  And I'm afraid I've failed to do it in a way that might cause Mr. Wassell to even pause a bit.

After I wrote a first draft,  I couldn't help wondering who had written this letter for ADN readers, so I  googled and learned a bit that helps explain where some of this comes from.  I'm not certain it's the same Ed Wassell, but it seems likely.

Here's the key thing - in terms of understanding this letter - I found out.  An Ed Wassell from Anchorage got an award from the Acton Institute:

 "Best thing Going: “What you do is still far and away one of the best things going for Catholic Education in the United States.” Ed Wassell, Executive Director, Holy Rosary Academy, Anchorage, AK. 4-time honoree."

There are several other links to Ed Wassell being involved with Catholic affairs in Anchorage, but the school link probably tells us a lot.

What will happen if public school funding is drastically cut?  Class sizes will get much bigger, teachers will get overworked, and parents who can afford it will start looking for private schools.  And I would be surprised if Dunleavy didn't push, next go around, to use public money to give parents vouchers to private schools, even private religious schools, which I understand to be unconstitutional in Alaska.

I also found a video of a Holy Rosary teacher who won a national award as teacher of the week.  [Video is at the bottom of the page on the right]  She sounds like a great teacher.  What I found striking is that they showed her in her fourth grade class.  There were nine students.  Imagine what public school teachers could do with classes that size.

One last note.  Tom Fink, who Wassell mentions in the letter, is the chair of the board at Holy Rosary Academy.

There's nothing wrong with Mr. Wassell's involvement with Holy Rosary Academy, though it would be nice if he had disclosed that in the letter.  And would still like to hear Mr. Wassell's explanation for the somewhat old fashioned way of writing.

Let me also note that Jesuit schools have a reputation for teaching rigorous thinking skills, so this is not a condemnation of Catholic schools. Though victims of sexual abuse at Catholic schools will be less forgiving of their failures.    I have less confidence in the thinking skills students get in Evangelical schools, particularly those that deny evolution and teach traditional roles for males and females and believe that homosexuality is a sin.  But that is straying a bit.

Limits Of Religious Freedom, How Do We Know Who Is Good?, And How Many Wheelchairs Do Airlines Lose Or Break A Month?

The title doesn't necessarily reflect the aim of the authors of these three stories, but it does reflect what I took from them.


1.  Limits of Religious Freedom.   This is as good a description of how I view freedom of religion's boundaries.

From Washington Post article on South Bend, Indiana mayor, Pete Buttigieg,  running for president.  The article also offers a way to pronounce his name offered by his husband.

“Our right to practice our faith freely is respected up to the point where doing so involves harming others,” he said. “One of the problems with RFRA* was it authorized harming others so long as you remembered to use your religion as an excuse.”

*Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2015

Of course, this still leaves lots of room for debate on what 'harming others' entails.

The article also discusses Buttigieg's own religious faith (it's not uninformed) and his bid to get the religious left more active in the next round of elections.


2.  Judging People In The Era Of Non-Stop Headline News

This next one is about James Comey and it raises interesting questions about who becomes a hero and who doesn't in our modern age.  It seems - she doesn't say this, but it's my takeaway - we often judge people nowadays by one action rather than the totality of their lives.  (And you can also question why we're judging other people rather than working on ourselves.)

From the Bulwark:  Why Do We Love To Hate James Comey?

"Comey has six children, all with the same woman. He has been married to his wife since roughly the Pliocene epoch and in his spare time they serve as emergency foster parents for homeless kids. No, really. He explained to NPR that, as foster parents, they often get more love out of these relationships than they put into them, even. “Little boy who came to us born a month premature in a homeless shelter to a drug-addicted mother and born in very very difficult circumstances so we got him right out of the hospital,” Comey said of one of his many foster children. That baby boy was later adopted, but, as NPR reports, the Comeys still watch him a couple times a week. “[W]e’ve stayed very close,” Comey said. “We’ll look after him his whole life.”
As I said: A good man. A fine human being.
But good people can still be annoying as fuck and James Comey is proof of this."

3.  The importance of diversity in the legislature.  From the LA Times:

"The largest U.S. airlines damaged or lost a daily average of 26 wheelchairs and scooters used by disabled passengers in December, according to a report championed by a lawmaker who lost both legs while serving in Iraq.
From Dec. 4 to Dec. 31, the 12 largest carriers damaged or lost 701 passengers’ wheelchairs and scooters, according to the first report of its kind from the U.S."

It took a wheelchair bound Senator - Tammy Duckworth of Illinois who lost her mobility in a helicopter crash in Iraq - to require the FAA to report such losses.

It took a disabled US Senator to get attention paid to this problem.  I don't know how many people bring their wheelchairs to the airport each day.  I know there's usually five to ten waiting for passengers when I get off planes, so the total number of wheelchairs might be huge and 26 per day isn't that high a percentage.  But it's HUGE for the person who needs the chair.  Can you imagine being dependent on your wheelchair to get around and find out when you got off the plane, yours had been lost or damaged?


Enjoy your weekend!