The Quiet Revolution - New Republic

Every US communitarian law I've studied started in an administrative agency. Violations of these new community codes were "tried" in administrative courts. Seattle's Administrative Hearng and Review Boards had what's called "quasi-judicial" authority over city residents, but somehow we kept getting charged and fined under their newly expanded full judicial authority.

Our experiences with Seattle's new regulatory powers, powers the City claimed "balanced" our Fourth and Fifth Amendment Rights, were the motivator for all my early ACL research. Over the years my research naturally expanded to these progressive agency workers' belief in their being "more enlightened" than me and my podunk neighbors. It took ten years before I finally researched what they mean by enlightenment in Enlightened Rule by scientists and experts. I am completely convinced there is nothing "disinterested" about these trained individuals.

The success of the regulatory agencies, he wrote, depended upon “a sufficient popular confidence in the ability of enlightened and trained individuals … and the actual existence for their use of a body of sufficiently authentic social knowledge.” John B. Judis, Senior Editor, The New Republic

Last March I wrote an article called Join the Quiet Revolution, about the global-to-local policing revolution. I gave a summary of the history of community oriented policing and the ideology used to implement the global program. A month prior I wrote an article called How Communitarians Change the US Legal System with Federal Regulators, about the advance of Administrative Law and it's role in creating a more communitarian nation.

In both the above mentioned articles I based much of my slant on our ACL Manifesto, which includes the possibility that President William McKinley was saved from an assassination attempt and then murdered by attorneys working for Harriman Brothers (From dialectic2.html: "McKinley was moved to the home of Expo Board Director John G. Milburn, where he died a week later. Milburn was one of the attorneys for HARRIMAN v. INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION, 211 U.S. 407 (1908). More here.")

So how interesting is this Feb 1, 2010 article in The New Republic, which tells us the "three great reform periods" began right after McKinley was killed and Harvard's own Teddy Roosevelt was crowned First King of the British American Colonies. The New Republic, like every other expert source, curiously leaves out the part about McKinley's murder as part of how all this progressive reform started. Look in most any book that claims to "tell all" about the FED, the banker's schemes to control America, and "real" American history and you'll find few (if any) references to President William McKinley. If there are references to him, they usually claim that McKinley was responsible for the expansion of the American Imperialist designs. Yet even a quick study of McKinley proves that to be blatantly false. And it should come as no suprise to learn that VP Roosevelt eventually took credit for McKinley's trustbusting efforts. That McKinley died under very mysterious circumstances in the home of one of the attorneys defending the Harriman's monopoly of the railroads doesn't seem to bother anyone besides me.

The regulatory agencies, most of which date from one of the three great reform periods (1901–1914, 1932–1938, and 1961–1972) of the last century, were intended to smooth out the rough edges (the “externalities,” in economic jargon) of modern capitalism--from dirty air to dangerous workplaces to defective merchandise to financial corruption. With wide latitude in writing and enforcing regulations, they have been described as a “fourth branch of government.”

That wide latitude could invite abuses of power, but the old-time progressives who fashioned the regulatory state rested their hopes on what could be called “scientific administration.” Louis Brandeis and Herbert Croly--to name two of the foremost turn-of-the-century progressives--believed that the agencies, staffed by experts schooled in social and natural science and employing the scientific method in their decision-making, could rise above partisanship and interest-group pressure. Brandeis’s famous concept of states as “laboratories of democracy” comes out of his defense of state regulation of industry and was meant to conjure an image of states basing their regulatory activities on the scientific method. For his part, Croly often made the progressive case for disinterested expertise. The success of the regulatory agencies, he wrote, depended upon “a sufficient popular confidence in the ability of enlightened and trained individuals … and the actual existence for their use of a body of sufficiently authentic social knowledge.” The Quiet Revolution, Obama has reinvented the state in more ways than you can imagine, by John B. Judis, Senior Editor, The New Republic, http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-quiet-revolution?page=0,0

Can the EPA really become the substitute for Climate Change legislation? http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-substitute

Rahm Emanuel and Obama's "Quiet Revolution"

Some of my readers may remember my article last spring, "Join the Quiet Revolution" where I detailed the quiet revolution of US policing. At the end I used a quote from the Harvard Crimson Review about Emanuel's philosophy of "universal citizen service" in the style of the IDF.

"It’s not only the promise of money that is motivating change."
David Brooks

Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times

The Quiet Revolution

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/opinion/23brooks.html

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: October 22, 2009

A few weeks ago, “Saturday Night Live” teased President Obama for delivering great speeches but not actually bringing change. There’s at least one area where that jibe is unfair: education.

David Brooks

When Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan came to office, they created a $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund. The idea was to use money to leverage change. The administration would put a pile of federal money on the table and award it to a few states that most aggressively embraced reform.

Their ideas were good, and their speeches were beautiful. But that was never the problem. The real challenge was going to be standing up to the teachers’ unions and the other groups that have undermined nearly every other reform effort.

The real questions were these: Would the administration water down their reform criteria in the face of political pressure? Would the Race to the Top money end up getting doled out like any other federal spending program, and thus end up subsidizing the status quo? Would the administration hold the line and demand real reform in exchange for the money?

There were many reasons to be skeptical. At the behest of the teachers’ unions, the Democrats had just shut down a successful District of Columbia voucher program. Moreover, state legislatures around the country were moving backward. They were passing laws prohibiting schools from using student performance as a criterion in setting teacher pay.

But, so far, those fears are unjustified. The news is good. In fact, it’s very good. Over the past few days I’ve spoken to people ranging from Bill Gates to Jeb Bush and various education reformers. They are all impressed by how gritty and effective the Obama administration has been in holding the line and inciting real education reform.

Over the summer, the Department of Education indicated that most states would not qualify for Race to the Top money. Now states across the country are changing their laws: California, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin and Tennessee, among others.

It’s not only the promise of money that is motivating change. There seems to be some sort of status contest as states compete to prove they, too, can meet the criteria. Governors who have been bragging about how great their schools are don’t want to be left off the list.

These changes mean that states are raising their caps on the number of charter schools. When charters got going, there was a “let a thousand flowers bloom” mentality that sometimes led to bad schools. Now reformers know more about how to build charters and the research is showing solid results. Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University recently concluded a rigorous study of New York’s charter schools and found that they substantially narrowed the achievement gap between suburban and inner-city students.

The changes also will mean student performance will increasingly be a factor in how much teachers get paid and whether they keep their jobs. There is no consensus on exactly how to do this, but there is clear evidence that good teachers produce consistently better student test scores, and that teachers who do not need to be identified and counseled. Cracking the barrier that has been erected between student outcomes and teacher pay would be a huge gain.

Duncan even seems to have made some progress in persuading the unions that they can’t just stonewall, they have to get involved in the reform process. The American Federation of Teachers recently announced innovation grants for performance pay ideas. The New Haven school district has just completed a new teacher contract, with union support, that includes many of the best reform ideas.

There are still many places, like Washington, where the unions are dogmatically trying to keep bad teachers in the classrooms. But if implemented well, the New Haven contract could be a sign of perestroika even within the education establishment.

“I’ve been deeply disturbed by a lot that’s going on in Washington,” Jeb Bush said on Thursday, “but this is not one of them. President Obama has been supporting a reform secretary, and this is deserving of Republican support.” Bush’s sentiment is echoed across the spectrum, from Newt Gingrich to Al Sharpton.

Over the next months, there will be more efforts to water down reform. Some groups are offering to get behind health care reform in exchange for gutting education reform. Politicians from both parties are going to lobby fiercely to ensure that their state gets money, regardless of the merits. So will governors who figure they’re going to lose out in the award process.

But President Obama understood from the start that this would only work if the awards remain fiercely competitive. He has not wavered. We’re not close to reaching the educational Promised Land, but we may be at the start of what Rahm Emanuel calls The Quiet Revolution.

Sign in to Recommend Next Article in Opinion (2 of 29) » A version of this article appeared in print on October 23, 2009, on page A35 of the New York edition.

Over 10,000 readers have visited my "Quiet Revolution" article at the ACL which was linked from rense.com yesterday morning. Whereas normally I get from 20 to 100 emails after my articles are published at rense and nwvs, this one has generated only one response from a stranger. So much for opening up a public debate about community policing and COMPASS.

Here's a good example of what passes for "public debate" in America these days: http://www.infowars.com/senate-rubber-stamps-national-enslavement-bill/. This article warns us about all the new legislation that will establish a civilian defense force. "One such program has seen hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers recently trained and dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database." I just love how Watson neglects to explain how all these programs have already been implemented in community economic revitalization and sustainable development, how our citizen's information is gathered via COMPASS & ABCD mapping, (or the program's directors role in creating Obama). The COPS' COMPASS database and Obama's guru is a "secret." Shhhhh.

In the UK, the "quiet revolution" isn't so quiet.

Straw advances constitutional 'quiet revolution'

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/14/20090323/tpl-straw-advances-constitutional-quiet-81c5b50.html

Monday, March 23 05:23 pm

Jack Straw sought to continue the government's "quiet revolution" in constitutional arrangements today as he published a green paper on rights and responsibilities.

The justice secretary wants to develop a full British Bill Of Rights and duties "as a step towards a written constitution" and today's green paper is designed to act as a framework for debate on that goal.

"If by the end of the process the Bill is perceived to provide protection to rights and freedoms then it will become effective in defining common values so that people in Britain of different backgrounds may feel ownership of it," he told the Commons.

Mr Straw said Britain's incremental constitutional development made it distinctive from other nations and argued a "similar unifying force" would be desirable in Britain.

The Bill would explicitly outline the responsibilities which go with the rights of citizenship and by so doing become "emblematic of the fair society we want to live in".

Among the responsibilities named are paying taxes, obeying the law, reporting crimes, voting, jury service and "treating NHS and other public sector staff with respect".

Mr Straw stopped short of saying the Bill would have the force of law, however, claiming that "even without full legal enforcement words have power".

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve focused his criticisms on the Human Rights Act 2000, which the Conservatives had opposed at second reading but backed at third reading.

He said the opposition's concerns had been confirmed since then and warned today's green paper "can only really make matters worse".

Mr Grieve added: "It will not result in any legislation this side of the next general election – in other words, it's for the birds."

The justice secretary replied by saying Mr Grieve "protests too much", claiming the Tory supported most measures in the bill.

Fourteen months have passed since Gordon Brown, in one of his first acts in No 10, called for a "sustained debate" on the development of a Bill of Rights and Duties".

Mr Grieve said the green paper outlining the government's proposals had taken so long in coming because it had been repeatedly "scuppered" by Mr Straw's ministerial colleagues.