Self-deception is a universal human phenomenon. Everyone is capable of convincing him or herself that the world's problems are all someone else's handiwork and that he or she has been doing everything and more to make the world a better place. Whether it's a discussion of which household member is responsible for the most bathroom clutter or one regarding which country is doing its fair share to underwrite the costs of the United Nations, just about everyone has a natural tendency to magnify one's own contributions to the common good and feel underappreciated or abused.

If you doubt this proposition, listen carefully the next time some multi-millionaire hedge fund manager, pop star or professional athlete starts whining about his or her taxes and America's costly "welfare state."  This is not to say that taxes are always fun to pay or that there haven't been low income people who have abused public systems down through the years, but come on - let's get real!

For all of its many and important good points, neither the "market" nor the astonishing wealth it bestows upon some lucky members of our society is divinely ordained. Even the most ardent of "conservatives" must concede that Aubrey McClendon, who made more than $100 million in 2008 as the head of Chesapeake Energy Corporation, was not 3,122 times more deserving than his average employee or 6,000 times more deserving than the average office janitor. LeBron James and Alex Rodriguez are great athletes, but their contributions to society are not a couple of thousand times more important than those who change the oil on their fleets of sports cars. Such comparisons grow even more offensive and egregious when the subject is Paris Hilton or some other silver spooned socialite.

Fortunately, for most Americans of great wealth, they are seldom reduced to complaining publicly about their taxes or bragging about their innumerable contributions to the general welfare. As with most other things in their lives, they can pay someone else to do it for them. In the finest tradition of American "free markets," not only can the wealthy deceive themselves, they can also pay someone with an income hundreds or thousands of times less than theirs to try and deceive everyone else.

Like the John Locke Foundation.   

To see an example of such embarrassingly obsequious propagandizing, check out yesterday morning's "Daily Journal" effort from the Locke group. Its premise: Americans should start making use of Labor Day - our one tepid national effort to honor the working men and women of the country - to honor…wait for it… rich people and business owners! 

We're not making this up.

Here are some of the "highlights" of this essay along with a brief response to each that attempts to set the record straight:

Claim #1: "…from the political class to mainstream America, it is politically correct to lash out with words and policies at those who will make or break our economic future…. they deserve our appreciation, not our scorn."   

Setting the record straight: Let's get this straight: it's "lashing out…at those who will make or break our economic future" to ask the richest 2% of all Americans to return to the still historically low tax rates they paid during the boom period of the 1990's? This is "lashing out"?

Perhaps even more to the point, who says these are (or ought to be) the people who will "make or break" our future? Aren't the nation's mom and pop businesses and entrepreneurs the real economic engine? For that matter, wouldn't it be more accurate to ascribe that role to the teachers and kids who populate are embarrassingly underfunded public schools? 

Claim # 2: "You and I are the beneficiaries of the jobs they create to carry out their investment. If the idea catches on, they hire more people, sell more products, and reap rewards for their willingness to risk. We all win. But if the business goes bust, you and I take only a temporary hit. The entrepreneur's investment is gone forever." (Emphasis supplied).

Setting the record straight: Oh really? Perhaps the Locke Foundation got this interesting spin on economics by talking to all of the laid off textile and furniture workers in North Carolina who have taken "only a temporary hit." Or maybe it was the various industry magnates and heirs who have all, no doubt, headed straight for the Food Stamp line when their businesses closed.

Claim #3: "In 2007, nearly $3 of every $10 of all federal taxes paid - 28.1 percent - were paid by the highest-earning 1 percent of U.S. households - those with income of more than $352,900, according to Congressional Budget Office reports. That same group of earners accounted for 39.5 percent of federal income tax liability. Remember this the next time someone tells you the 'rich' don't pay their 'fair share.'"

Setting the record straight: Actually, 28% of federal taxes is not a "fair share." Even with our modestly progressive federal income tax, the income and wealth of the top 1% still far exceeded (and continue to exceed) that percentage. Moreover, their share of national wealth has been growing at a rapid clip for decades. When it comes to state and local taxes, the rich actually pay much less of their incomes than do people in the middle and at the bottom. In North Carolina, they pay roughly 33% less of their incomes than do the middle class and poor.  

Claim #4: "The top 5 percent of U.S. households drive the economy. They're the people who, in good times and bad, buy products and services from the stores and businesses that employ millions of Americans."

Setting the record straight: This is from a recent study published by the experts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

"The [Congressional Budget Office] recently examined 11 options to stimulate growth and job creation and found that extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts in general came in last in effectiveness…. Furthermore, CBO indicated that extending the tax cuts for high-income households in particular would rate even lower in effectiveness than extending all of the tax cuts. This is because, as CBO explained, ‘higher-income households … would probably save [rather than spend] a larger fraction of their increase in after-tax income.' An economy in a recession or the early stages of a recovery needs more spending, not more saving." (Emphasis supplied).

As for the Locke Foundation's final two contentions (that we should honor rich people because a) they give away a lot of money and, b) they buy a lot of nifty new products and services that eventually trickledown to the masses, pardon us if we don't get too dewy-eyed. As study after study confirms, poor and middle class Americans give more of their income to charity than the wealthy. This may even partially explain why they buy fewer $5,000 massage chairs at the Sharper Image each Christmas.

Getting real about Labor Day

Of course, setting aside all debates regarding the worthiness of the American over-class, the bottom line fact about Labor Day is this: its existence and purpose are both based on the intuitively obvious fact that the rich and powerful don't really need their own special day of recognition because virtually every other day in the calendar year already fits that bill. Honoring the owners of Wal-Mart and Morgan Stanley on Labor Day makes about as much sense as paying tribute to children on Mother's Day.

Even the apologists and deceivers for hire over in the right-wing think tanks ought to be able to figure that out. 

You've got to hand it to some of the folks on the modern far right: their capacity for manipulating facts and statistics to the point of self-deception is often quite impressive. Take, for instance, two of the loudest voices in the debate over the move to re-segregate the Wake County public schools: school board member John Tedesco and the Raleigh News & Observer columnist, Rick Martinez.

While both men are loyal foot soldiers in the right-wing army (Tedesco speaks at Tea Parties and Martinez is a former Locke Foundation staffer), both also take pains to portray themselves as modern, untraditional conservatives. They may work closely with some of the hardcore descendants of the George Wallace and Jesse Helms - people who never really made peace with the passage of the Civil Rights Act - but Tedesco and Martinez genuinely seem to think of themselves as different and truly "color blind." Unlike many with whom they are often in league (i.e., unrepentant segregationists and the "what's in it for me and my kids?" crowd who simply don't give a darn about the common good), both men appear to have convinced themselves that what they are arguing for really is in the best interest of poor and minority kids.

Self-deception in action

Tedesco's weirdly contradictory stances have been on regular display over the last several months. One minute he's ranting online about the "liberal agenda of Forced Bussing" (sic) and the next he's claiming that his work to dismantle Wake County's socioeconomic integration plan is the modern equivalent of the anti-segregation work of the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education.

This week, Martinez took a similarly convoluted approach in a column he wrote for the News and Observer entitled "Distraction from the classrooms." In it, on the one hand, he celebrates the narrow school board majority's "different set of beliefs" and lobs rhetorical hand grenades that would have resonated with Wallace, Helms or Nixon. He accuses the NAACP, the Great Schools in Wake Coalition and the mayor of Raleigh of "playing the race card," using "theatrics," "romantic rhetoric" and trying to "intimidate the school board majority." In short, he does everything but call them "communist agitators".

Then, like Tedesco, he quickly pirouettes. He attempts to defend the board majority's action by claiming that it's really an effort to respond to the fact that Wake's current system does a bad job of helping poor and minority kids. This is from the column:

"According to Wake County schools' own data published in October, the overall graduation rate for black students fell from 69.9 percent in 2006 to 63.4 percent in 2009. For Hispanics, it dropped from 57.7 to 51.1 percent. For black males, the graduation rate in 2009 was 57.4 percent, and it was a paltry 45.5 for Hispanic boys.

The graduation rate for students receiving free and reduced-price meals is also in a free fall. From a high of 63.3 percent in 2007, it plummeted to 54.2 in 2009.

This is the fruit produced by Wake County's socioeconomic student assignment system. Why anyone would want to preserve it is beyond me."

To complete the strangely contradictory column, Martinez concludes with this bizarre statement:

"Frankly, I doubt neighborhood schools will improve poor and minority student achievement one iota. But once the policy is implemented, local leaders, hopefully, will refocus on the academic output of Wake classrooms rather than being fixated on their racial and economic makeup."

Setting the record straight

Laying aside for a moment the holier-than-thou barbs Martinez directs at the re-segregation opponents, the gist of his (and Tedesco's) argument can be summarized as follows:

The performance of poor and minority kids in Wake County has slipped in recent years and is well-below where caring people would like to see it. During this period, socioeconomic diversity has been a factor in school assignment in the Wake County Public School system. Therefore: a) Wake County should re-segregate (Tedesco) or b) Re-segregation won't make any difference and is therefore just fine if the people in charge want to do it (Martinez). This is especially true since the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system appears to have made up some lost ground to Wake in some areas in recent years even as it was re-segregating its schools.

This is like an oncologist saying the following:

After making some progress under chemotherapy X, my cancer patient has suffered some setbacks in recent weeks. I therefore draw the conclusion that a) all chemotherapy is worthless and should be discontinued and/or b) that it doesn't really matter whether I administer chemo or not. This is especially true in light of the fact that a cancer patient in another town actually made some short term health gains at the same time that he gave up all treatment and started smoking again.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that many re-segregation critics have long acknowledged that the Wake schools are far from perfect. Student discipline policies in Wake County have pretty clearly been biased against poor and minority kids. Explosive growth and a reduced adherence to diversity goals in recent years have also taken their toll. There are other noteworthy problems. Still, things are still a heck of a lot better than they were several decades ago when perhaps a quarter of poor and minority children were graduating in the Jim Crow era.

And just because the current system is flawed and has suffered some recent setbacks is no reason to throw out a key policy that was widely acknowledged to be an important part of decades of progress. One might just as well draw the conclusion that the schools ought to do away with free and reduced price lunches for poor kids. After all, they've been in place the last few years too. Heck, even Martinez admits that re-segregation won't do any good!

The solution, of course, is not to casually discard years of hard won progress because of a rough patch, but to stop, take a moment, and honestly assess where we are and what ought to come next. This is especially true given the fact that the new Board's own survey showed that almost 19 out of 20 families liked their current school assignment. Such an assessment is precisely what the board majority opponents have asked for - i.e., real analysis, real dialogue, and real collaboration.

Are there improvements to the Wake school assignment system that could be made? Undoubtedly. Indeed, such improvement might well include a renewed commitment to socioeconomic diversity - something that had waned during the last decade as explosive growth overtook the county.

Do the Wake schools have things to learn from Charlotte-Mecklenburg (and other places as well)? Certainly. But to pretend that that some short-term fluctuations in the comparative performances of the two systems provides license for a wholesale abandonment of socioeconomic integration in Wake (and, indeed that such a course is being pursued for the benefit of poor and minority kids) is, at best, self-delusion and, at worst, cynical dishonesty.

Going forward

Finally, a few words about Martinez's attack on the anti-re-segregation leadership for "playing the race card": This would be laughable if it weren't so sadly uninformed. If anyone is playing the "race card" right now in Wake County, it is not the remarkably diverse and humble group of protesters that is challenging the board majority; it is those who made "neighborhood schools" their rallying cry.

As author, scholar and NAACP historian Tim Tyson has explained on multiple occasions of late, the term is a slogan cooked up by segregationists in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Especially in light of the undeniable fact that it is literally and physically impossible to transform Wake into a genuine "neighborhood schools" system (a truth of which all five of the school board majority and defenders like Rick Martinez are well-aware), one can't help but question the motives of those who would rely upon such a slogan. That some claim to have pure hearts does not absolve them from responsibility for the kinds of messages it sends or the kinds of instincts and emotions it has been proven to arouse over the last half-century or so.

In other words, no matter how genuine the self-deception of some re-segregation defenders, their messages and policies remain repugnant and it is not "playing the race card" to say so.

American politicians of all ideological persuasions have been spouting misleading statements, half-truths and bald-faced lies since the beginning of the Republic. We've also always had our share of plain old kooks running for office. Remember Lyndon LaRouche?

Still, there's something especially startling and pernicious about the way a combination of cynicism, irrational fear and widespread gullibility seems to have infected so many people on the modern far right - candidates and citizens alike.

Consider for a moment the long and growing list of patently false and utterly irrational claims (especially about President Obama and his administration):

• The abjectly crazy "birther" and "Obama-is-a-Muslim" movements,

• The allegations about health care reform "death panels,"

• Last year's absurd claims that, by addressing American schoolchildren, Obama was trying to "indoctrinate" them and spread a "socialist" ideology,

• The myth that the Obama administration was "coming to get" the guns of law abiding citizens,

• The claims that plans to expand the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps were part of an effort create a "civilian national security force" and to herd young people into "re-education" camps.

• The claim that Obama was launching a nefarious plot to mandate circumcision!

It would be one thing if these moronic assertions were merely the flotsam and jetsam of the blogosphere - wacky urban myths that occasionally "go viral" on the Internet at the hands of spammers and other troubled souls who spend too much staring at computer screens. It's quite another, however, when these claims are repeated as fact by supposedly serious politicians affiliated with supposedly responsible political parties.

Recent examples

Here in North Carolina, we have been "blessed" of late with a rich and blossoming assortment of delusional politicians who seem to get their "news" from places like World Net Daily. Chris Fitzsimon has written at some length recently about the leading Republican vote-getter in this past Tuesday's primary in the Eighth Congressional District, Tim "Christ's War" D'Annunzio. Mr. D'Annunzio, you will recall, is the body armor magnate turned crusading politician (and I do mean crusading) who has promised to essentially dismantle the federal government and whose Internet ravings give new meaning to the word "troubled."

And then, of course, there is the tag team of State Senator Andrew Brock and State Representative Bryan Holloway who run the website "WakeupAmerica.com." As Chris has noted:

"[The site] calls ‘Barack Hussein Obama' the ‘face of socialism' and says that he is intent on destroying the Constitution. Brock says Obama is a ‘radical left-wing socialist with a hidden agenda that could destroy the America we know….Wake Up America produced television ads that accused Obama of freeing terrorists, hiring communists, and dignifying dictators, all as part of his socialist agenda…."

In a related (and more amusing vein) of delusion, defeated Democratic State Representative Earl Jones of Greensboro (perhaps best known for his avid defense of the video poker industry) told reporter Mark Binker this week that he's thinking about starting the "Earl Jones Institute for the Advancement of Human Society."

The club gets a new member

The newest member of the Delusional-politician-repeating-nutty-urban-myths-as-political-talking-points Club is the Republican nominee for Congress in the Second District, Renee Ellmers. Ms. Ellmers is a trained nurse who helps her husband, a physician, run a "wound care center" in Harnett County. Unfortunately, she does not appear to be a trained reader of the news or reality.

Ms. Ellmers' "positions" on the issues are well-stocked with the kind of shallow tea bagger malarkey that you might expect (e.g. health care reform is "unconstitutional," "liberals" are coming after people's "guns and fishing poles," etc…).

But she doesn't stop there. Here, in this brief video, you can hear Ellmers repeat with a straight face another absurd urban myth - namely that "President Obama gives cell phones to welfare recipients."

What could make a supposedly serious politician say such a thing? Does she really believe that President Obama has some kind of secret stash of Blackberries in the Old Executive Office Building that he and Michelle are passing out to shiftless alcoholics and drug dealers every other Thursday night? It almost sounds that way. Whatever her motivations, Ellmers' prevarication is a classic example of the way the anti-government right has helped to poison our public debate and delude millions of disaffected and frustratingly gullible Americans into believing scads of harebrained conspiracy theories.

Setting the record straight

The apparent impetus for Ellmers' absurd allegation is a venerable and highly effective federal program that traces its roots to the early part of the 20^th Century when Ma Bell was first constructing the nation's telecommunications infrastructure and federal officials were seeking to promote the concept of "universal telephone service."

The idea, in short, was to enact rules and programs that would make basic phone service as widely available and inexpensive as possible so that even the poorest of Americans - rural and urban - could enjoy the security, peace of mind and access to opportunity that comes with having a phone. Moreover, such a policy would enhance the overall value of phone service for all other phone subscribers by expanding the network of which all were a part.

Over the years, the principle of "universal service" has given rise to numerous rules and regulations and programs. In recent decades, elected officials of both political parties have worked with hundreds of private telephone companies to develop programs known as "Lifeline" and "Link-Up." Both programs provide very modest subsidies toward the cost of establishing (up to $30) and maintaining basic local phone service (up to $13.50 per month) for very poor people. While rules and details vary from place to place, the basic idea is that people poor enough to qualify for the most basic, safety net programs (like Food Stamps) are eligible to apply for the subsidy.

Here's where we get to the apparent source of Ellmers' urban myth. In recent decades, as telephone service has rapidly evolved, many Americans have come to use cell phones as their local phone service. In some places, some cell providers (not wanting to miss out on an opportunity to compete with traditional phone companies and to woo potential customers) have opted to simply give away cheap cell phones in lieu of the $30 "Link-Up" connection subsidy. After this, the customer is eligible for the $13.50 monthly service assistance, but remains liable for all other charges.

Got that? President Obama is not "giving cell phones to people on welfare." Large corporations are and have been providing phones of all kinds (much like they do with middle class consumers now) in an effort to gain customers who will be eligible for a very modest monthly subsidy. The program has been around for decades and several presidents. As an attorney, I represented the North Carolina Justice Center in proceedings to modernize North Carolina's Lifeline and Link-Up rules back in the 1990's when President Obama was just starting out in the Illinois state senate.

Going forward

So what are we to make of Ms. Ellmers' ridiculous assertion? Whatever the explanation (that she knew of her wild exaggeration and proceeded anyway or that she simply got some bad information and was too lazy and/or too uninformed to even think to question it) neither is very flattering or encouraging. Both speak to the intellectual sloth and dishonesty that seems to be metastasizing in this era in which Palin and Limbaugh and Fox News are each available "24/7."

With luck, the flipside to the widespread availability of lies and misinformation - namely, the fact that we can all see them and shine a light on them will, in the long run, be enough to counteract and deflate them.

Let's hope Renee Ellmers' urban myth/talking point is the next to be permanently debunked.

Here's a topic that hasn't received the attention it deserves in the ongoing battle over the future of the Wake County public school system: magnet schools. This is surprising since, in many ways, the accomplishments and prevalence of Wake County's magnet schools have been synonymous with the system's national reputation as a beacon of progress and success.

But what are they? Why do we have them? What will happen to them if the new board follows through with its plan to re-segregate the schools? These basic questions seem to have been frequently shunted to the side in the current process.

The basics

The basic idea behind magnets is pretty simple and straightforward: 1) identify a struggling public school - usually in a less desirable neighborhood with an older physical plant, 2) add some additional resources that make its curricula attractive to families in more affluent neighborhoods, and 3) open enrollment and provide transportation so that some of the comparatively well-off children can attend. Boom: instant (or at least relatively quick) and voluntary socioeconomic and racial integration on significant scale.

Even more importantly, the influx of families of higher incomes sets a chain reaction of events into motion that strengthens the school's overall culture. Because some of the new parents are more likely to have at least some time and resources on their hands, more people start participating in PTA. This, in turn, builds connections with the broader community - leveraging resources (volunteers, tutors, gifts) that further strengthen the school. Schools (and, often, the neighborhoods around them) become healthier.

Meanwhile, the opportunity to explore different subjects and the overall invitation to innovate draws many good and creative teachers. Before too long, what was once just a struggling school in a tough neighborhood has been lifted up. As an added bonus, as magnet school teachers, administrators and graduates gradually fan out into traditional schools, they take many of the ideas and innovations with them. Non-magnets benefit by a kind of osmosis. Finally, because of the demand to attend, magnets tend to run at full capacity - thus making them more cost efficient than schools running at less than 100%.

Of course, magnets are not a perfect solution. To keep them desirable, enrollment must be limited. In an ideal world, of course, all schools would have all the resources they could possibly want. Moreover, the tendency toward socioeconomic segregation within the magnet school can often be a real challenge.

But, of course, in an ideal world, there wouldn't be widespread socioeconomic segregation and large numbers of low income families to begin with. As for in-school segregation, it's clear that magnets do far better than so-called "neighborhood schools" in promoting interaction between various groups. The bottom line: As a practical matter, magnets are a proven and cost-effective way to meet numerous, critical pedagogical and societal objectives.

The Wake County situation

The success and overall cost-effectiveness explains why magnets have been an important part of the Wake County schools for three decades. At last count, there were 33 magnet schools in Wake County - roughly one out of five. Here are some other key numbers:

29,609 - Student enrollment in magnet schools

10,353 - Number of magnet students (i.e. kids who attend magnets that are not their natural "base" school.)

8% - Magnet students as a percentage of total student enrollment

9,213 - Number of magnet applications in the spring 2009

40% - Percentage of applications accepted

100% - Average membership/capacity of magnet schools

92% - Percentage for Wake County as a whole

35% - Percentage of students in magnet school eligible for free or reduced price lunch (FRL)

28% - Percentage for the system as a whole

17% - Average percentage point reduction in magnet school FRL

41% - Average percentage increase in magnet school membership/capacity

In short, Wake County magnets have been extremely successful - so successful that they have become a model to school systems all over the country. Retired Wake County magnet program director Caroline Massengill told a gathering of concerned parents at a Great Schools in Wake Coalition meeting earlier this month that whenever she attended magnet conferences and other such events around the country she was often besieged by those who wanted to learn more about Wake's record of success and how they could copy it.

Federal dollars at risk

Proof of the acclaim and effectiveness of the Wake County magnet program can be seen in its repeated success in attracting federal Department of Education grants. Over the last two-plus decades, the program has brought in $36 million in Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) funds. According to Massengill, this means that Wake was successful in the extremely competitive nationwide grant program six separate times - nearly every time it applied. The most recent success came in 2007 when Wake pulled in a three-year, $8.3 million to help upgrade Southeast Raleigh High School, Garner High School and East Garner Middle School. It was the fourth largest grant in the nation out of 41 that were awarded. The next round of grant applications is actually due in April.

Unfortunately, this important source of funding and national acclaim for Wake County schools could well be in jeopardy in the future if the new Board carries through with its threat to remove socioeconomic diversity as a school district priority. Here is the opening sentence of program description of the federal MSAP:

"These grants assist in the desegregation of public schools by supporting the elimination, reduction, and prevention of minority group isolation in elementary and secondary schools with substantial numbers of minority group students."

The description goes on:

"Magnet programs aim to eliminate, reduce, or prevent minority group isolation in elementary and secondary schools while strengthening students' knowledge of academic subjects and their grasp of marketable vocational skills. The special curriculum of a magnet school attracts substantial numbers of students from different social, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds and provides greater opportunities for voluntary and court-ordered desegregation efforts to succeed."

In other words, if Wake County moves to abandon its longstanding commitment to socioeconomic diversity, it's hard to see how it will have much chance of future success in a competitive federal grant process based on that very principle.

This fact, in turn, raises fundamental questions about the future of magnets, generally. While some of the members of the new school board majority have professed support for "magnets," it doesn't appear that their vision is congruent with the basic premise behind the concept. How can one be for magnets and against an intentional commitment to promoting socioeconomic diversity? It's like being for roads and against ending traffic congestion. Such a position is oxymoronic - unless, that is, what you're really for is a narrow and cramped view of magnets (or roads) that's actually about getting a bigger piece of the public pie for your neighborhood and constituents rather than benefitting the community as a whole.

Going forward

One of the toughest lessons for any newly elected public official - especially those elected on an anti-government platform - is to discover that governing is a heck of a lot tougher that campaigning. It's easy to rail against things, but to actually make a complex public system work - to make the trains (or school buses) run on time and to do so in such a way that benefits the entire community - is a tough task. Let's hope that learning some of the hard truths about magnet schools will have that effect on the new members of the Wake school board. Once they learn how hard and important it is to build a system that works, maybe they'll be less inclined to tear the existing one down.

One of the most common problems for those involved in contentious policy debates is a lack of historical perspective. For those with little or no memory of the events that led up to present-day controversies, it's often difficult to see the forest for the trees. Lacking an understanding of how the present circumstances came about, they often act as if there were no precedent for solving the problems at-hand or, worse yet, act to undo important accomplishments.

The ongoing controversy surrounding North Carolina's public schools and the headlong drive to end socioeconomic integration is one such issue. While some of the people behind that misguided effort are simply driven by a repugnant ideology, many others have gone along with the effort simply because they didn't understand how we got where we are today. These folks don't necessarily share the goals of the conservative ideologues, they're just worried about themselves and their kids and are either too young or too new to the issue (or too new to North Carolina) to understand what's really at-stake.

Fortunately, there are ways to remedy this problem. Last week, for example, North Carolinians were given a gift that will, if they accept it, help to cure the widespread amnesia and lack of knowledge that afflicts the debate over the schools. The gift was a history lesson in the form of a lecture delivered by a special man, Dean Jack Boger of the UNC School of Law.

The talk ought to be required reading for anyone who wants to take part in pubic education policy debates in our state. And happily, we've been able to post the entire transcript on the N.C. Policy Watch website. You can read it by clicking here.

In the talk, Boger explores the history of public education ("common schooling" as it was originally known) in the United States and explains how the current debates over socioeconomic integration that are causing such a hubbub in North Carolina today may well serve as bellwethers for its very survival.

Here are just some of the highlights of what you'll find in this rich and powerful document:

The commitment to "common schooling"

After tracing the history of American "common schooling" to the work of a Massachusetts reformer (and the nation's first state schools superintendent) named Horace Mann, Boger turns to North Carolina:

"In North Carolina, it was Calvin Wiley, a lawyer and legislator who was appointed this State's first state school superintendent in 1852, who traveled the Old North State tirelessly. ‘With infinite labor, by travel, speeches, and writings,' an historian wrote in the 1964 Peabody Journal of Education, ‘Wiley overcame opposition to and popularized public schools. The North Carolina system was the best in the South in 1860….' Notably, in his 1860 report to the State, Superintendent Wiley cautioned ‘that there is as much danger from prejudice between the rich and poor as between master and slave.' ‘The peace of every social system,' he wrote, ‘depends upon a just recognition of the mutual dependence of every rank on the other and of the mutual obligations which this imposes . . . . And all attempts . . . . to widen the breach between classes of citizens are just as dangerous as efforts to excite slaves to insurrection.'

That was in 1860, a year before the Civil War. One hundred and fifty years later, it seems, we are again testing, in our two largest metropolitan school districts, the wisdom, or the folly, of Superintendent Wiley's warning."

Modern applications

Most of Boger's lecture is taken up with an explanation of the 56 years that have followed the Supreme Court's landmark school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education. In it, Boger documents the tortuous history of desegregation in North Carolina, including the famous Swann case that helped integrate the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, as well as his own role in the work.

Perhaps most striking in this discussion, however, is Boger's description of his work in the state of Connecticut in the early 1980's where, as counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the then-young North Carolinian learned some of the hard facts about school integration. Boger explains how Connecticut, a very rich but very segregated state was failing to solve the problem of low achieving inner-city schools despite determined efforts and the infusion of huge resources.

"Thus for every State dollar sent to a suburban school where a middle-class child was doing well, Connecticut sent literally 50% more, toward schools that were educating each low-performing, lower income children. In addition, the Connecticut legislature had adopted many special grant programs-remedial assistance, dropout prevention, health services-that strongly favored either low-wealth districts or districts with poorer and low-achieving students, or both. Under these combined state aid programs, the Hartford school district regularly received nearly three times as much State funding, per pupil, as did suburban districts. Only one minor problem remained: none of it was working to improve educational performance in Connecticut's largest urban districts."  

In effect, like Charlotte's re-segregated schools of today, Connecticut was attempting to "throw a lot of money over the wall" in an effort to solve the problem of low-achieving schools without taking the step of true socio-economic integration. This, of course, is what has been proposed for Wake County by some members of the new, conservative school board majority.

It was in the work to grapple with that situation that Boger and his colleagues rediscovered the research of social scientists who had found that the solution to such situations was not more money, but more integration. He quotes a 1965 Congressional study that found that:

"Attributes of other students account for far more variation in the achievement of minority group children than do any attributes of school facilities and slightly more than do attributes of staff."   

When this realization dawned on Boger, he says he remembered thinking "thank goodness that southern school desegregation had already done its work." Little did he know, of course, that determined conservative advocates would continue to do their worst to roll back the progress that so many had fought to achieve.

Where we are and where we're going

At the end of the lecture, Boger ties the Connecticut experience to what's going on in North Carolina today. He quotes a meticulous 2008 study from two North Carolina academics that confirmed, yet again, the simple and undeniable truth that integration is essential:

"Even after taking into account these effects of individual student characteristics, higher concentrations of poor and minority students within a high school reduce average EOC scores. In other words, low-income students perform worse on EOC exams when they are in schools with high percentages of other low-income students. . . . The combined effects of students' individual characteristics and the overall composition of a high school's student population are extremely powerful influences on the average level of academic performance in that school…. [L]ocal school districts have the best chance for improving academic performance in North Carolina's high schools by undertaking the following actions. [first] reducing [the] concentration of students with low entering skills and from low-income families, [second] increasing spending on regular instruction, [third] improving teacher quality, and [fourth] improving principal leadership."

In short, what's going on in Wake County right now is a misguided effort to repeal the use of the one tactic that's done more than anything else to make our schools work for all children. As Boger puts it:   

"In other words, Wake County committed itself self-consciously to Horace Mann's ideal of ‘common schools,' designed to bring together children from all socioeconomic backgrounds,, and they likewise assured parents that the percentage of low-performing students in their child's school would be capped, so there would be no low-performing school, no ‘academic genocide' [Judge Howard Manning's term for the state education's system's failings in many places] underway in Wake County."

Though ultimately hopeful, Boger's conclusion features a warning in the form of a 1974 quote from the late, great Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall:

"In the short run, it may seem to be the easier course to allow our great metropolitan areas to be divided up, each into two cities - one white, the other black - but it is a course, I predict, our people will ultimately regret."

Marshall was right, of course. Let's hope the people of North Carolina rediscover his and Jack Boger's wisdom on the matter before it's too late.

The connection between prominent political leaders and the causes they stand for (or, at least, the causes they come to be associated with) is often very strong in the minds of the members of the general public. Sometimes, it's as if the political leader and the stands he or she takes are indistinguishable. It's hard to think of New Deal, for instance, without thinking of Franklin Roosevelt (and vice versa).

For those who champion a particular cause, however, these kinds of automatic connections are frequently a two-edged sword.

On the one hand, one charismatic person's personal popularity can almost singlehandedly elevate a cause or issue well-beyond the heights to which it would have otherwise risen. Think of Ronald Reagan's sunny charm and the way it helped advance what was really a pretty dark and pessimistic ideology about government and human nature.

The downside to these kinds of connections is that when one individual leader's career flames out as the result of some peccadillo or other personal transgression unrelated to the actual issues he or she stood for, it can often wreak undeserved havoc with the cause. Whatever the substantive strengths or weaknesses of conservative Christianity, for example, its ultimate success or failure as a philosophy ought not to be byproduct the fact that some of its most prominent spokespeople have proved to be corrupt hypocrites.  

Of Easley and Edwards

Right now, in North Carolina (aka "Corruption Central") we're seeing plenty of examples of this kind guilt-by-association politics. With the absurd self-destructions of sometime-progressives, Mike Easley and John Edwards, it seems as if all who have ever held positive feelings about the men or any of the issues they championed are on the defensive.  

To make matters even more confusing, illogical and unfair, sometimes a flawed leader's fall can inflict damage upon a cause that wasn't really even his or hers to begin with. This is especially common when cynical and opportunistic political opponents try to conflate the two.

To witness this kind of cynical opportunism in action, one must look no further than the work of North Carolina's various conservative blogs, radio talking heads, commentators and think tanks of late as they've done their worst to link the political self-destructions of Easley and Edwards to the ideological debate. Scarcely a day goes by when Easley or Edwards (or Jim Black for that matter) isn't derided by one of these ideologues as a "liberal" or "big government" Democrat - as if shady, insider deal-making and marital infidelity and narcissism were somehow a function of where one stands on the political spectrum.

Some of this is to be expected, of course. The two men were the most prominent Democratic officeholders in the state at one time. That they are now disgraced under such ignominious circumstances was sure to inflict at least a little collateral damage on their political party and some of the causes it sometimes champions.  

But, for the most part, this is a ridiculous result for at least two reasons that have been widely ignored of late in the public debate.

"Buy-partisan" corruption

The first and most obvious flaw in the effort to link corruption to progressives is the disputable fact that political sleaze is, as local good government advocate Bob Hall reminded us on the Democracy NC website this week, a "buy-partisan" matter:

"The head of the Republican Party in North Carolina is excitedly claiming the GOP will make corruption in Raleigh a big enough campaign issue to win majority control of the General Assembly. NC GOP Chair Tom Fetzer is fond of saying the "culture of corruption has risen out of a century of one-party dominance in state government." He was in the news again today, chastising Gov. Bev Perdue for not forcing Democratic fundraiser Lanny Wilson off the NC Board of Transportation and NC Turnpike Board as soon as it became known that he used his insider influence to get environment permits for the coastal developments of Gary and Randy Allen.

Fetzer may want to be careful where he points. One of those developments, Cannonsgate, is becoming well known because of the waterfront lot purchased by former Democratic Gov. Mike Easley and because of its central role in the indictment of Ruffin Poole (see Jan. 22 entry below). Now Jack Betts of the McClatchy chain has a column that traces the Cannonsgate mischief back to the days when Republican Gov. Jim Martin was in charge and the original developer of the Cannonsgate property, GOP fundraiser E. Steve Stroud of Raleigh, was using his influence to gain favored treatment from Martin's environment officials. Betts' column names the secretary of Gov. Martin's environment agency, Tommy Rhodes, but he doesn't name one of the department assistant secretaries: Tom Fetzer. Fetzer was later a chief deputy secretary in Gov. Martin's Department of Transportation, which provided so many favors to GOP political patrons that it merited an investigative series by ace reporter Barry Yeoman in the NC Independent called "Highway Robbery." Political corruption is buy-partisan."

In other words, North Carolina conservative activists and political types ought to be careful when they attempt to turn malfeasance by public officials into a partisan or ideological issue. There are plenty of conservative Republican crooks and philanderers out there - both in North Carolina and elsewhere.

The real source of the problem

The truth of the matter, of course, is that the real sources of corruption (and probably even a lot of marital infidelity) are power and greed - power because one usually has to have some in order to have something to "sell" and greed because one has to be willing to puts one's own self-interest ahead of the public good when one does it.

This last point about greed highlights another interesting fact. If there is a popular modern ideology that is more closely connected to (and used to self-justify) greedy behavior by politicians, it is the "me-first," "every person for him or herself" ideology of modern, market fundamentalist capitalism.

This is not to say that more conservative politicians are corrupt. Rather, it is to point out the obvious fact that we live in a time in which the conservative, hyper-competitive, market fundamentalist, "greed is good" ideology is ascendant in our culture. Politicians are people too. They watch television. They see the way modern America celebrates the individual entrepreneurs and giants of industry who "make something of themselves." Not surprisingly, many of them identify with that approach to life and view their public service as, at least in part, connected to their personal rise up the ladder.    

Unfortunately, the conservative, "greed is good" ideology has come to so permeate our culture that it's almost impossible for any officeholder who's not already extremely wealthy - whatever his or her party - to escape its tug. These people get elected to office and see the money and other perks being thrown around by corporations and other moneyed interests and find it impossible to resist. Pretty soon they're looking in the mirror each morning and telling themselves that their greedy behavior is just part of "how things work in America."  

Sadly, they may be right. But it hasn't always been this way. No matter what the conservative propaganda machine says, there have been periods in our country in which the common good was widely elevated over the personal acquisition of wealth and in which, as a result, fewer politicians fell prey to temptation.

Let's hope that in addition to boosting new and tougher state ethics laws, the Easley and Edwards episodes can also be used as a part of a general effort to push back against the influence of the "greed is good" ideology in our culture.

Perhaps more people will come to see that while conservatives may be leading the charge in attacking the misdeeds of Easley and Edwards, in many ways they're just reaping what they themselves have helped sow.      

Are you smarter than (or at least as smart as) a fifth grader? If so, you probably know the difference between "weather" and "climate." In case, however, you find yourself having a senior moment and wouldn't mind a little refresher, here's a brief one courtesy of good ol' Webster's New World College Dictionary:

weather (weth' er)  n. 1 the general condition of the atmosphere at a particular time and place, with regard to the temperature, moisture, cloudiness, etc.

climate (kli' met) n. 1 the prevailing or average weather conditions of a place, as determined by the temperature and meteorological changes over a period of years.

Oh, and one more:

global (glo' bel)  adj. 1 round like a ball; globe-shaped 2 of, related to, or including the whole earth; worldwide.

Why the science refresher course? Well, in addition to serving as a useful primer for any readers who might be contemplating a tryout for the popular TV game show hosted by comedian Jeff Foxworthy, a review of these definitions might just provide a little assistance to some state lawmakers who recently made the mistake of attempting to speak out on an important subject without first checking their old elementary school text books.

The lawmakers in question are State Senator Andrew Brock of Mocksville and his House colleague, Representative John Blust of Greensboro, and the subject is global climate change. Brock, among other things, runs the borderline extremist website, "Wake Up America" and is the Senate's up and coming prince of malapropisms. Blust is a conservative lawyer and loyal water carrier for the market fundamentalist cause who, to his credit, retains a sense of humor and a willingness to try and engage in serious debate on occasion.

This past week, in an apparent (but failed) attempt at humor and pseudoscience, the two men sought to use the recent cold snap that has affected parts of the U.S. as grounds to urge Senate President Pro Tem Basnight and House Speaker Hackney to disband a House-Senate study group known as the Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change. 

Open mouth, insert foot

Here is Brock's original email:

"From: Sen. Andrew C. Brock
Sent: Wed 1/6/2010 2:29 PM
To: @All Exchange Users
Subject: Dismissal of commission

Speaker Joe Hackney and President Pro Tem Marc Basnight,

Hope you are staying warm as we are experiencing one of the coldest winters on record. I will add with new discoveries that information used in Global warming studies were altered for false representation of climate data.

At this time in our state's economy it is imperative that we be wise stewards of the Taxpayers' money.  With that being said, I call for the immediate dismissal of the Global Warming Commission.  It has not produced any reports or information during its four years of existence, only costing taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money.

Thank you,

Andrew"

To which, Blust quickly added:

"From: Rep. John M. Blust
Sent: Wed 06-Jan-10 4:23 PM
To: Sen. Andrew C. Brock; @All Exchange Users
Subject: RE: Dismissal of commission
 
Can the global warming commission provide any advise (sic) for staying warm and for how I can pay for my humongous heating bill?"

And finally, Brock again:

"Also can a commission that was passed into Legislation as Global Warming Commission legally change its name to Climate Change Commission? 

For NC, please cancel the meeting schedule next week before the taxpayers have to pay all these people (many of which do not take mass transit) to travel to Raleigh.

Senator Andrew C. Brock"

Setting the record straight

First of all, it's not clear what Brock is talking about when it comes to his beef about the name of the Commission.  The legislation that created it in 2005 dubbed it the "Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change" and that's what it appears to be called today.   

Regardless of such details, however, the Brock/Blust emails will undoubtedly be dismissed by Senator Basnight and Speaker Hackney as the drivel and lame attempts at humor that they are. Indeed, if that were all there was to this story, they wouldn't even deserve any further attention. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that these emails are symptomatic of a bigger and more dangerous problem - namely, that many people (some in positions of power) actually think this way!

From Fox News to the market fundamentalist think tanks, the notion that that short-term incidents of cold weather somehow disprove the phenomenon of global warming and climate change continues to rear its ugly head. It's a brand of "logic" that's as scary as it is shallow.

Remember, the point of Brock's and Blust's emails is that North Carolina should halt its study of the issue. This is like calling for an end to public studies of child abuse because the number of cases in one jurisdiction dropped for a few weeks.

Of course in fairness, unlike child abuse, Brock and Blust see the recent cold weather as proof that climate change and global warming aren't even taking place.

So, one more time, for the lawmakers' benefit (and anyone else whose attention may have wandered), here's a quick and useful refresher from the website "UN Dispatch":

"Weather is the conditions in the atmosphere in a certain place during a certain time. Weather is always changing.

Climate is what the weather is generally like over long periods of time, such as years or decades in a particular area. A place that has little rainfall has a dry climate, and a place that has high temperatures has a hot climate.

Climate, obviously, is what the scientific community is worried about…The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988, and, ever since then, they've published periodic reports that represent the consensus view of thousands of climate scientists. These are some of the most peer-reviewed papers in scientific history. Everyone in their right mind believes these reports. In fact, they receive a lot of flak for being too conservative, as they tend to be quite cautious in their findings and predictions (as scientists are wont to be).  

The most recent IPCC report came to these conclusions:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.

There is high agreement and much evidence that with current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades…. In short, the last IPCC report signals that the scientific debate is over and has been for quite a while. We have changed our planet, and that change will have dire consequences. 

…We are already beginning to see the consequences of a lack of action — rising sea levels, droughts, increased storm activity. The list goes on.  We can't yet say with 100 percent certainty that these are a direct result of increased global temperatures, but we do know for sure that we'll be seeing more of the same in the future if we don't turn the corner. People will die because of something that these people are using as a yuk-yuk one liner. And, if you don't care about that, it will devastate the world economy, as the Stern Review makes plain."

In other words…

There are at least three facts worth taking away from the discussion of this matter:

1)    Despite overall planetary warming, it will still get cold in winter.

2)    The reality of human-caused global climate change and the need to study it and do something about it ought to be clear to anyone as smart as a fifth grader.

3)    Maybe it's time to send some people in positions of authority back to school.   

Forty-nine years ago this month - the time in which most Americans gorge themselves on the fruits of the nation's incredible agricultural bounty - legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow hosted one of the most acclaimed documentaries in the history of television. The program was entitled "Harvest of Shame" and it explored the largely hidden scandal of American agriculture: the treatment of the nation's farmworkers.

Here's Murrow opening statement from that program as the camera panned a group or workers being recruited for "picking" work:

"This scene is not taking place in the Congo. It has nothing to do with Johannesburg or Cape Town. It is not Nyasaland or Nigeria. This is Florida. These are citizens of the United States, 1960. This is a shape-up for migrant workers. The hawkers are chanting the going piece rate at the various fields. This is the way the humans who harvest the food for the best-fed people in the world get hired. One farmer looked at this and said, ‘We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.'"

The program went on to document the abysmal conditions in which vast numbers of farmworkers subsisted. At the time, it was thought by many that the program would have a galvanizing effect on the nation - that most Americans would be shocked by what they saw and demand policy changes that would, at least over time, put an end to the scandal. Sadly, despite the passage of nearly a half-century, much remains the same.

Murrow's closing statement of the documentary seemed to presage the lack of action that has followed:

"The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything about the migrants. The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruit and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do. Good night, and good luck."

The scandal continues

Over the last half-century, progress for farmworkers has been spotty, at best. Most still struggle for meager wages and subsist in living conditions that would appall average, middle class Americans. A 2008 congressional hearing explored the ongoing existence of virtual slavery in the tomato fields of south Florida. Child labor remains a huge problem.

What little progress that has occurred is mostly attributable to the tireless work of unions/advocacy groups like the United Farm Workers and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and the complementary efforts of a scattered collection of legal aid lawyers, faith groups and other activists. These groups and individuals struggle to keep the spirit of "Harvest of Shame" alive in an era in which economic uncertainty and soaring income inequality have combined to leave most Americans in an uncharitable state of mind.

Add to this reality the fact that American agribusiness remains enormously powerful, well-connected and one of the most uncompromising and reactionary political forces in the nation and it's a wonder that farmworker advocates haven't found themselves having to defend against efforts to repeal the 13^th Amendment.

The "guestworker" program

Of all the policy debates related to America's treatment of farmworkers (pay, pesticides, toilets, the "short-handled hoe," housing, healthcare, education) none has drawn more attention in recent decades than that of foreign workers. In general, agribusiness interests consistently seek to assure that the barriers to hiring foreign workers (often referred to as "guestworkers") will be as low as possible.

This makes obvious economic sense for growers. Foreign workers are willing to work for a pittance and constitute an easily controllable workforce. Complaints about pay or working conditions are usually few and far between when workers know they can be fired and deported at the drop of a hat.

Farmworker advocates, in contrast, argue that there would be much less need for importing foreign workers in the first place if agribusiness were simply required to provide American workers with decent pay and treatment for such grueling and dangerous work.     

The battle over this issue is often joined in the debate over rules concerning what is known as the "H-2A visa" program. As a general matter, Congress has required the U.S. Department of Labor to certify that there are not enough domestic workers to do the available work - even at a pay rate slightly above minimum wage (a rate known as the "adverse effect wage rate") - before agribusiness will get the okay to ship in H-2A workers from Mexico or other countries. Not surprisingly, agribusiness has fought hard to keep the wage rate very low.

In recent years, the bar has moved back and forth a few times. During the waning days of the Bush administration, the Department of Labor did its best to slash the requirements on agricultural employers. As a practical matter, these changes lowered the wages for U.S. workers (and, thereby, foreign H-2A workers) substantially - by as much as $2 per hour. The New York Times called this action "a cheap shot at workers."

Earlier this year, the Obama Department of Labor began to take action to reverse the Bush administration's wage-slashing rule changes and to return standards to where they had been for years before - a level that was still absurdly inadequate, but that at least raised the standard of living of both foreign and domestic workers.

N.C. congressional delegation: doing the bidding of agribusiness

Earlier this week, in a discouraging bow of subservience to the agribusiness lobby, almost the entire North Carolina congressional delegation (progressives and conservatives alike - with the sole exception of Congressman David Price) penned a letter to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis questioning her efforts to restore worker standards to where they had been prior to the Bush administration's big cuts. (North Carolina imports more H-2A workers than any other state in the country).

Congressman Bob Etheridge, an apparent leader of the effort, even claimed that the Department of Labor standards would result in higher grocery bills for consumers and somehow harm workers!

As the Department's detailed and lengthy explanation of its proposed changes makes clear, however, such arguments are make no sense at all. First of all, wages for workers have fallen dramatically under the Bush administration rules and are currently almost 19% below where they will be under the new rules (and would have been had the Bush rules never been adopted - see page 45927).  When this fact is combined with all of the other worker burdens that the new rules would repeal (the Bush rules, for instance, made guestworkers pay more of their own travel expenses) it becomes clear that the delegation is either disingenuous in its professed concern for workers or badly misinformed. 

As for the claims about grocery bills rising under the return to the old regimen, this might be marginally persuasive if there were any evidence that agribusiness passed on the Bush-imposed wage cuts to consumers in the form of lower grocery bills. Anyone noticed their grocery bills going down lately? Even if this were true, though, is that what Americans really want - to force our most vulnerable workers to accept below-poverty-level wages so that we can save a few cents at the check-out line?

Going forward

In 2008, the experts at a national advocacy group known as Farmworker Justice published a report entitled "Litany of Abuses: More - not fewer - labor protections needed in the H-2A guestworker program."  It ought to be required reading for all members of the North Carolina congressional delegation and their staffs (except perhaps for David Price).

And after that, perhaps they could check out an old copy of "Harvest of Shame." Better late than never.

Here's a question to ponder the next time you buckle yourself into a seat in a commercial airliner: which approach would you rather see the United States take toward air carrier safety - the free market fundamentalist approach (in which airline safety would be left up exclusively to airlines responding to "consumer demand") or the regulatory approach in which a public watchdog is charged with enforcing a basic set of safety standards? How about when it comes to restaurant inspections? Hospital licensing? Stock exchanges?

That you, like any sane person, answered "regulatory approach" to these questions does not, of course, make you a "socialist." What it makes you is an average American with a measure of common sense. By acknowledging the need for government regulation of the market in order to protect consumers, you are not arguing for its abolition. Rather, you are arguing for a structure that makes it work better and, in many important ways (e.g. with fewer deaths) more efficiently.

Despite having popularized the term "invisible hand," Adam Smith was in fact an adherent to the regulatory approach.

Here's modern economist Joseph Stiglitz on Smith:

"Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, is often cited as arguing for the "invisible hand" and free markets: firms, in the pursuit of profits, are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do what is best for the world. But unlike his followers, Adam Smith was aware of some of the limitations of free markets, and research since then has further clarified why free markets, by themselves, often do not lead to what is best. As I put it in my new book, Making Globalization Work, the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.

Whenever there are "externalities"-where the actions of an individual have impacts on others for which they do not pay or for which they are not compensated-markets will not work well. Some of the important instances have been long understood-environmental externalities. Markets, by themselves, will produce too much pollution. Markets, by themselves, will also produce too little basic research. (Remember, the government was responsible for financing most of the important scientific breakthroughs, including the internet and the first telegraph line, and most of the advances in bio-tech.)"

Financial transactions

Few areas of the economy lend themselves more naturally to consumer protection regulation than financial transactions. If ever there was a field in which one side of most transactions (and sometimes both) have imperfect information, this is it. One need look no further than the recent economic meltdown, which was in large measure, precipitated by the widespread deregulation of home mortgage financing and the spread of ridiculously complex and poorly understood (much less regulated) investments like "mortgage-based securities," "derivatives" and "credit default swaps," to see what happens when the Wild, Wild West meets Wall Street.

This reality is plainly apparent to any American consumer who thinks for even a minute about any number of their basic daily transactions. Consider, for instance, that credit or debit card that currently resides in your purse or pocket. Who among us is truly conversant with all of the terms of the contract that accompanies it? How many average consumers are actually up to speed on how the interest rates and late fees will be calculated and under what terms they can be amended? What about the mandatory arbitration clauses?

Now, if you're lucky enough to own (or be buying) a home, think about all of the terms that one agrees to and what's at-stake for one's economic future. Is this really a matter in which an average consumer can really approach, say Bank of America, on equal terms?

The fact of the matter, of course, is that Americans have long understood and acknowledged that effective government regulation is essential when it comes to consumer financial transactions. This is especially true when it comes to transactions that target people of lower income who, by and large, tend to be less economically sophisticated and, often, even functionally illiterate. The classic recent example of this kind of regulation in North Carolina was the General Assembly's wise decision to ban the making of so-called "payday loans" - an almost invariably predatory product that harmed a huge percentage of the borrowers who made the mistake of getting involved with it.

Restoring a balance

One of the best things that's occurred in recent months in Washington has been the slow but steady movement to revive a federal commitment to strong consumer protection laws in the world of finance. During the Bush years (and to a lesser extent the Clinton years as well), such laws were regularly ignored and weakened. President Obama, in contrast, is taking important steps to restore some semblance of balance.

This past week, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper weighed in to support one of the most promising of the Obama proposals - the establishment of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Currently, authority to regulate the dizzying array of consumer financial transactions that occurs in the American economy is spread across a wide variety of agencies. In many instances, lenders have so much leeway that they can actually choose the federal regulator that oversees them. Many experts lay the blame for a good share of our recent economic troubles on this scattering of authority.

Under the Administration's proposal, the new agency would have the power to rein in the current free-for-all and establish some measure of uniformity and consistency when it comes to governing mortgages, real estate, credit cards, debit cards, consumer loans, payday loans, credit reporting agencies, debt collection, stored-value cards, investment advisory and financial advisory services, and selected other businesses. Moreover, as is noted in this Los Angeles Times article,

"The agency would write the user-safety rules for virtually all consumer financial products and would have the legal firepower to levy huge fines — tens of thousands of dollars a day per violation in some cases — and prosecute lenders, brokers and others who break the rules."

According to Cooper, who has established a national reputation for helping to make North Carolina both pro-consumer and pro-business, such a change would be an extremely welcome development. He notes that given the exclusive federal jurisdiction over many of these issues, there's little his staff can do for most of the consumers who complain to his office in this area. This has been particularly frustrating in recent years (during which consumer complaints to his office have tripled).

If such an office is established (and rest assured, market fundamentalists will fight it tooth and nail), it will have plenty to do. In addition to consolidating and streamlining oversight of a daunting variety of traditional products, it will also need to act fast to get a handle on a number of new and potentially abusive products that lenders have been rolling out in recent years.

Tops on this list will be the explosion in hidden bank fees for overdrafts (most typically applied to debit cards). As was detailed last week in a powerful report from the Center for Responsible Lending, banks and credit unions collected nearly $24 billion in overdraft fees in 2008 - 35% more than they collected just two years previously. A huge proportion of these fees were collected from consumers automatically and with little, if anything, in the way of notice.

Setting the record straight

In the market fundamentalist view of the world, the economic "invisible hand" is the cure-all for just about every problem. If each individual pursues his or her own self-interest and government stays out of the way, goes the logic, the invisible hand of the market will take care of the rest. Like a lot of fundamentalists, however, the free "marketeers" have misread their original texts and ignored the reality before their eyes.

Perhaps the saddest thing about this is that in their absolutist zeal, they have helped grievously wound the very institution they profess to cherish most. As in the era following the Great Depression, it appears it will be up to pro-regulation progressives, to restore the health of the market economy.