Fresh Voice Sees the Downside of Bush's 'Ownership Society'

LA Times ^ | 05/02/05 | Ronald Brownstein:

[Angel]

Mark Winston Griffith has spent most of his career helping low-income and minority families enter what President Bush calls "the ownership society."p . . .

The central flaw in Bush's ownership society, Griffith believes, is that its key elements actively encourage such tunnel vision. Vouchers that allow parents to send their children to private school, for instance, provide a lifeline for some, but invite them to flee a shared investment in public schools.

Reducing guaranteed benefits under Social Security, and urging workers to make up the difference with individual investment accounts, erodes the program's role as a shared safety net for all Americans. Health savings accounts that encourage younger and healthier workers to abandon group health insurance plans work the same way.

[Angel]

Vouchers that allow parents to send their children to private school, for instance, provide a lifeline for some, but invite them to flee a shared investment in public schools.So, you have an investment in private schools, but your children get no education. Who wins with that? At least your chldren in private schools can succeed. Would he rather ALL the kids fail, or at least some become successful.

I don't agree with the premise that either all make it or none do. I prefer that the ones who care, or who are willing to work have the opportunity to succeed.

[freepatriot32]

Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.

[JohnLongIsland]

isn't the key to give poorer people the chance to wean themselves away from the indignity of government dependence? but if that happens then the libs go out of business. the stae of the nation is strong when each individual is strong. someome tell the person that wrote the article that "collectivity" failed

[clee1]

Fresh voice???

Sounds like the same old stale leftist bullsqueeze to me.

[Darkwolf]

Fresh Voice Sees

How, exactly, does a voice see anything?

[CurlyDave]

"The ownership society," Griffith worries, "is about getting the best deal I can, and forget everybody else."

Isn't this Adam Smith's "invisible hand"? Simply the most powerful concept in economic thought ever articulated.

And Mr. Griffith is against it.

[Darkwolf]

"The central flaw in Bush's ownership society, Griffith believes, is that its key elements actively encourage such tunnel vision. Vouchers that allow parents to send their children to private school, for instance, provide a lifeline for some, but invite them to flee a shared investment in public schools."

PERFECT summation of the libbie BS on public schooling--forget the individual child--YOUR child--all that matters is that the average IQ of those attending public schools stays high, the smarter kids being kept from their full potential just so the kids who don't want to be there and cannot achieve won't feel left out. Which they will anyway.

All my life libs have been SCREECHING about "smaller class sizes". Now that some want to leave the schools, those classes are gonna get smaller and smaller, and since they're still being funded by the government it's not like the money's just gonna dry up. Kids using vouchers will leave the public system, leaving behind smaller classes taught by teachers who couldn't make it in the private sector but they CAAAARE, so they will be able to lavish extra attention on the dumber kids. The libbies say this kind of attention will bring these kids up to their smarter peers's levels.

OK--you want smaller classes, you got em!

[HowardDeanScream08]

Mark is a twit. He is approaching the whole thing from the angel on someone who wants the government to be the sponsor of peoples' lives, not as one who wants those peoples' lot in life to necessarily improve. I've heard from crusaders like him, a whole lot of them over the years, and they would prefer stability at a lower level of existence over a likelihood of improvement to a better one. He is scared of failure -- the possible failure of others to do better and his own perceived failure as their protector.

It is also important to note that protectors are almost always above those protected, either by adulation or by fiat, and it is also important to note that throughout Western history it is when the protection is no longer requisite that the protector often, either directly or inadvertantly, manufacturing another need for protection. I'm not saying he and his sort are necessarily evil or malign, just that its rather one of the haunts of human nature. I believe some call it "belonging" or "identification". When either becomes threatened, often even the most dedicated altruist can become quite desperately selfish.

If poverty and other social ills were ever markedly rememdied or reduced, what call would their be for the "modern liberal"?

[Darkwolf]

"The ownership society," Griffith worries, "is about getting the best deal I can, and forget everybody else."

The libbie solution being FORCING PEOPLE TO 'CARE' about everybody else?

Translation: We libs CARE about "everybody else," so we're going to take YOUR money to fund our CARING.

You, on the other hand, get spit if you expect to use your own money for your own kids.

[ApplegateRanch]

"The ownership society," Griffith worries, "is about getting the best deal I can, and forget everybody else."

EXCEPT: You have to negotiate the 'best deal' with another party who ALSO is trying for 'their best deal'; and where both parties are willing particpants, AND have other options.

It also ignores statutory limitations on 'explotation' and misrepresentation, fraud, etc., which protect ALL parties.

The 'traditional' set up, for schools, Social Security, and 'safety nets' is that you can NOT make any kinds of deal, let alone 'best'; it is strictly a take it or leave it proposition. Worse, it is ultimately at the tender mercies of politcoes that more interested in votes, power, and donations than they are in 'the public good', and that has to be bad.

[HateBill]

He reveals the meretriciousness of his complaint against the "ownership society" by a very revealing anecdote in the L.A. Times story. He had a "community bank" which failed because so many of the borrowers never paid the loans back. He didn't attribute this failure to the cause (i.e., that he lent money to people who were poor credit risks and thus the fault was his for lack of due diligence) but rather bemoaned the fact that the borrowers did not realize that when they didn't pay the loans back they were depriving some other member of their community of needed funds.

How about you educate the people you lend money to about the necessity of paying the money back? Then you might have some success with your banking venture. Otherwise you just recycle money (probably taxpayer money) from one set of deadbeats to another.

So basically his viable alternative to the Republican concept of the "ownership society" is to require nothing of individuals but to create a wider circle of deadbeats.

[Non-Sequitur]

At least your chldren in private schools can succeed.

As the government starts to subsidize private schools, how long do you think it would be before they start mandating what those schools must teach and who they must teach?

[driftless]

That's where the hypocrisy of liberals "helping" the disadvantaged shows through. Libs love poor people all right, they love the fact they are poor and are dependent on big government to survive. The last thing libs and the Pie Party (Democrats) want is for dependents to wean themselves off dependency. The whole reason for the Pie Party to exist is to have a constituencies that can't take care of themselves. If they become independent, then there is no reason for the Pie Party to exist. Pure and simple. And that is why they are against SS overhaul and private accounts. The last thing Dems want is for their constituencies to make it out of poverty or financial hard times.

[driftless]

"...what call would there be for the modern liberal". Ditto!!

[kcvl]

Open Society Institute - George Soros

Grantees

Mark Winston Griffith
2003

Talking Democracy Media
Democratizes public discourse using community-based independent media to provide an alternative platform for issues and voices systematically excluded from commercial media.

New York City | 18 Months |


http://tinyurl.com/ddx5h


******


"We are basically community activists from the hip-hop generation who decided it was time to resume the work of the civil rights and black power activists," Griffith explains. "We believe that building community-owned economic institutions is the final frontier."

Two neighborhood activists, Mark Winston Griffith (see above) and Errol Louis started the Central Brooklyn Federal Credit Union, alias the "Hip Hop" Bank.

[kcvl]

Bush's Strengthening America's Communities Initiative

To
From "Mark Winston Griffith"

Date Mon, 07 Mar 2005 14:53:19 -0500
Importance Normal
In-reply-to <0ICZ001XVUUYBFK0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net >
Message-Tag 3107
Reply-To MWGriffith@TalkingDemocracy.org
Sender owner-COMMUNITYDEVELOPMENTBANKING-L@cornell.edu

I’m writing a story on Bush’s budget proposals and the Strengthening America’s Communities Initiative (SAC). Among other things, SAC proposes a bonus grant program for low-income “development-ready” communities that have already taken steps to improve economic conditions by meeting No Child Left Behind goals, reducing regulatory barriers to business creation and housing development and reducing violent crime rates.

Does anyone have any insight on what communities or what kinds of communities are likely to meet this set of criteria as interpreted by the Administration?

I’m on deadline. If you can help me with this, please email or call me directly.

Thank you in advance.

Mark

Mark Winston Griffith
Talking Democracy Media
1238 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York
11216
Phone: (718) 953-1110
MWGriffith@TalkingDemocracy.org

[kcvl]

Mark Winston Griffith ’85

[gakrak]

You pushed all of the right buttons when it comes to public (government) schools. To add to my dismay, I was told by our school district that the No Child Left Behind, is working because now there are no children repeating a grade. What this means is that they socially promote every child, regardless of the fact that the child can not do the work in his/her current grade. This is reform? Amen.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Vouchers that allow parents to send their children to private school, for instance, provide a lifeline for some, but invite them to flee a shared investment in public schools.

Thats the whole idea to get away from government indoctrination by getting away from the Dumbing down of our children the smarter our kids the less dependant on government the less dependant on government the less government is needed in private life No SMOTHERING Socialist Security Blanket no government control on personal decisions

Reducing guaranteed NON guaranteed benefits under Social Security, and urging workers to make up the difference with individual investment accounts, erodes the program's role as a shared PONZI SCHEME safety net for all Americans.

Health savings accounts that encourage younger and healthier workers to abandon group health insurance plans work the same way.

Group plans are supported by Government through employee payroll and yet the employees role is getting more expensive while he company and the employee suffer while the government controls more and more of what you cannot get !

[Popman]

As a vision of citizenship, Griffith maintains, ownership is too narrow and isolating. "The ownership society," Griffith worries, "is about getting the best deal I can, and forget everybody else."

It is ??? Huh

"What America really needs," Griffith wrote, "is a policy vision which sparks community building and cooperation among its citizens rather than instructing them to simply spend their way into the American Dream."

Sounds like Communism lite?

For a seemingly pretty smart guy, this gentlemen is clueless