Hasta La Gadget!

“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely,” President Roosevelt told Americans in 1938. “The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”

What if we can figure out this thing called public education? What if we can ensure that every child and family opts into public education and gets a great education? How amazing would the United States be if this dream was realized….

Take a moment, capture the idealism again…and dream…

It is that vision that drives me every day. It is that vision that drove me to co-found Rocketship Education. I deeply believe in the power and promise of public education. I’ve learned to ignore the anti-charter hype that accuses us (and others like us) of trying to privatize public education. C’mon… anyone who knows me knows that I cofounded a public charter school network because I wanted to explore the autonomies and possibilities necessary to further transform public education. I wanted to invigorate our collective work in public education so that one day, we can realize a vision where public education is defined by its quality and is the first and best choice for all students and parents.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a part of a traditional district school or a public charter school. As long as we get the job done for kids and are free and available to all students, we can create the democratic safeguard President Roosevelt talked about.

Now, have I made missteps in this vision? Yes.

Charter and reform leaders have taken our share of political shots over the years. Let me say as a former district principal, I know the dedication, talent, and commitment of teachers and leaders crosses sector lines. If you’re in this work for our kids, it doesn’t matter where you teach.

And on the same hand, the urgency and passion of families and communities is real. Moreover, the disruption and innovation of high quality public charters is necessary in our current public education system if we are going to be great again.

President Roosevelt reminded us that education can make this country great. Seventy-five years later, we’re still trying to fulfill the promise of great public education opportunities for all. To succeed, we must work together, but we must do so with an unyielding commitment to do better.

Public education in the United States is currently not where most of us want it to be and the consequences are real. Last year in California alone, more than 92,000 students dropped out of high school. What happens to these kids?

Of those who graduate high school, less than two-thirds go directly to college. I personally dealt with this when I was denied from a public university because I attended a low-performing high school; in the eyes of UC system, my grades were inflated. I look back at my public education and often wish I had experienced something better. And I’m not alone.

Five million families across the country choose to pay for private school. Nearly two million families choose to home school their kids , 91 percent of whom say they’re concerned about the environment of other school options. Of those who don’t, many fake their addresses so their kids can have a better education than they would in their neighborhood school.

For each child and family that does not participate in public education, a piece of our democracy and unity within our community is lost.

Like many political issues in this country, powerful special interest groups often fund campaigns, putting fuel on the fire. Such messaging collectively shifts our focus to debate, manipulating data, and mudslinging, rather than engaging in a thoughtful dialogue that makes us each better. The bedrock of our democracy and great country — our kids, our communities, and our system of public education — deserve better.

So, can we get back to the foundations of a democracy and a productive dialogue?

Yes, many might think that I’m naïve, and in the course of things I will probably falter at times, but I will remain focused on this objective and encourage us all to do so as well. I believe collaboration is one of the most powerful ways to take on the many challenges and high tensions that come with change.

I remain hopeful that in the coming days, months, and years the vitriol, divisiveness, and ‘interests’ will move further towards dialogue and common ground. We can do this! It’s what all of our kids, families, and communities deserve. And frankly, if public education is going to once again thrive and serve everyone — if America is going to thrive — then we better figure it out together, and soon.

One year ago this week, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and took yet another step toward undermining our democracy. Since then, civil rights leaders have been hard at work trying to clean up the Court’s mess.

The Shelby decision was a devastating loss, especially for those who fought to see the original Voting Rights Act enacted. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, the sole surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington and a leader of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, accused the Supreme Court of “stab[bing] the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its very heart.” Civil rights advocates mourned the naïve assumption that Selma had been relegated to ancient history and that racial discrimination in voting went with it. People For the American Way’s director of African American religious affairs noted on the day of the decision: “Those who sided with the majority clearly have not been paying attention, reading the paper, attending community meetings, living in America.”

Indeed, anyone who has been paying attention knows that voting discrimination is far from ancient history. A new report by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights found nearly 150 documented instances of voting rights violations since 2000, with each case affecting between hundreds and tens of thousands of voters.

Happily, reform is finally underway in the Senate. On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on legislation to put the VRA back together again. It’s a critically important first step in getting our country’s laws back to where they need to be on voting rights protections. But so far House Republican leadership has refused to move forward. Maybe they think that if they pretend a problem doesn’t exist, they won’t have to fix it.

The push for voting rights protections isn’t the only effort underway to clean up the mess the Supreme Court has made of our democracy. With the 2012 election the most expensive in history, this week the Senate Judiciary Committee is considering a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn cases like Citizens United v. FEC, the infamous 2010 ruling that paved the way for unlimited corporate political spending. Like Shelby, Citizens United was a contentious 5-4 decision with a strong dissent. Also like Shelby, it set our democracy back dramatically. Citizens United let corporate bank accounts overwhelm the voices of everyday Americans. Shelby made it easier for state and local governments to create barriers to voting.

But Americans know that the answer to attacks on our democracy isn’t despair — it’s action. Sixteen states and more than 550 cities and towns have called for a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics like the one moving forward in the Senate, and that number is growing rapidly.

National leaders are also speaking out. President Obama has expressed his support for an amendment to overturn Citizen United multiple times since the decision. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens are just a handful of other high-profile amendment supporters. And earlier this month, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not hold back her disdain for the recent democracy-harming decisions coming from the Supreme Court’s majority: “Like the currently leading campaign finance decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, I regard Shelby County as an egregiously wrong decision that should not have staying power.”

The Supreme Court has made some very bad calls when it comes to protecting the rights of all Americans to participate meaningfully in our political system. But Justice Ginsburg is right: These wrong-headed decisions shouldn’t have staying power. And if the American people have anything to do with it, they won’t.

Finance is the new form of warfare – without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means? — Dr. Michael Hudson, Counterpunch, October 2010

When the US Federal Reserve bought an 80 percent stake in American International Group (AIG) in September 2008, the unprecedented $85 billion outlay was justified as necessary to bail out the world’s largest insurance company. Today, however, central banks are on a global corporate buying spree not to bail out bankrupt corporations but simply as an investment, to compensate for the loss of bond income due to record-low interest rates. Indeed, central banks have become some of the world’s largest stock investors.

Central banks have the power to create national currencies with accounting entries, and they are traditionally very secretive. We are not allowed to peer into their books. It took a major lawsuit by Reuters and a congressional investigation to get the Fed to reveal the $16-plus trillion in loans it made to bail out giant banks and corporations after 2008.

What is to stop a foreign bank from simply printing its own currency and trading it on the currency market for dollars, to be invested in the US stock market or US real estate market? What is to stop central banks from printing up money competitively, in a mad rush to own the world’s largest companies?

Apparently not much. Central banks are for the most part unregulated, even by their own governments. As the Federal Reserve observes on its website:

[The Fed] is considered an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.

As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan quipped, “Quite frankly it does not matter who is president as far as the Fed is concerned. There are no other agencies that can overrule the action we take.”

The Central Bank Buying Spree

That is how “independent” central banks operate, but it evidently not the US central bank that is gambling in the stock market. After extensive quantitative easing, the Fed has a $4.5 trillion balance sheet; but this sum is accounted for as being invested conservatively in Treasuries and agency debt (although QE may have allowed Wall Street banks to invest the proceeds in the stock market by devious means).

Which central banks, then, are investing in stocks? The biggest player turns out to be the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the Chinese central bank.

According to a June 15th article in USA Today:

Evidence of equity-buying by central banks and other public sector investors has emerged from a large-scale survey compiled by Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), a global research and advisory group. The OMFIF research publication Global Public Investor (GPI) 2014, launched on June 17 is the first comprehensive survey of $29.1 trillion worth of investments held by 400 public sector institutions in 162 countries. The report focuses on investments by 157 central banks, 156 public pension funds and 87 sovereign funds, underlines growing similarities among different categories of public entities owning assets equivalent to 40% of world output.

The assets of these 400 Global Public Investors comprise $13.2 trillion (including gold) at central banks, $9.4 trillion at public pension funds and $6.5 trillion at sovereign wealth funds.

Public pension funds and sovereign wealth funds are well known to be large holders of shares on international stock markets. But it seems they now have rivals from unexpected sources:

One is China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), part of the People’s Bank of China, the biggest overall public sector investor, with $3.9 trillion under management, well ahead of the Bank of Japan and Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), each with $1.3 trillion.

SAFE’s investments include significant holdings in Europe. The PBoC itself has been directly buying minority equity stakes in important European companies.

Another large public sector equity owner is Swiss National Bank, with $480 billion under management. The Swiss central bank had 15% of its foreign exchange assets – or $72 billion – in equities at the end of 2013.

Public pension funds and sovereign wealth funds invest their pension contributions and exchange reserves earned in foreign trade, which is fair enough. The justification for central banks to be playing the stock market is less obvious. Their stock purchases are justified as compensating for lost revenue caused by sharp drops in interest rates. But those drops were driven by central banks themselves; and the broad powers delegated to central banks were supposed to be for conducting “monetary policy,” not for generating investment returns. According to the OMFIF, central banks collectively now have $13.2 trillion in assets (including gold). That is nearly 20% of the value of all of the stock markets in the world, which comes to $62 trillion.

From Monetary Policy to Asset Grabs

Central banks are allowed to create money out of nothing in order to conduct the monetary policies necessary to “regulate the value of the currency” and “maintain price stability.” Traditionally, this has been done with “open market operations,” in which money was either created by the central bank and used to buy federal securities (thereby adding money to the money supply) or federal securities were sold in exchange for currency (shrinking the money supply).

“Quantitative easing” is open market operations on steroids, to the tune of trillions of dollars. But the purpose is allegedly the same–to augment a money supply that shrank by trillions of dollars when the shadow banking system collapsed after 2008. The purpose is not supposed to be to earn an income for the central bank itself. Indeed, the U.S. central bank is required to return the interest earned on federal securities to the federal government, which paid the interest in the first place.

Further, as noted earlier, it is not the US Federal Reserve that has been massively investing in the stock market. It is the PBoC, which arguably is in a different position than the US Fed. It cannot print dollars or Euros. Rather, it acquires them from local merchants who have earned them legitimately in foreign trade.

However, the PBoC has done nothing to earn these dollars or Euros beyond printing yuan. It trades the yuan for the dollars earned by Chinese sellers, who need local currency to pay their workers and suppliers. The money involved in these transactions has thus doubled. The merchants have been paid in yuan and the central bank has an equivalent sum in dollars or Euros. That means the Chinese central bank’s holdings are created out of thin air no less than the Federal Reserve’s dollars are.

Battle of the Central Banks?

Western central banks have generally worked this scheme discreetly. Not so much the Chinese, whose blatant gaming of the system points up its flaws for all to see.

Georgetown University historian Professor Carroll Quigley styled himself the librarian of the international bankers. In his 1966 book Tragedy and Hope, he wrote that their aim was “nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.” This system was to be controlled “in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements,” central banks that “were themselves private corporations.”

It may be the Chinese, not acting in concert, who break up this cartel. The PBoC is no more transparent than the US Fed, but it is not an “independent” central bank. It is a government agency accountable to the Chinese government and acting on its behalf.

The Chinese have evidently figured out the game of the “independent” central bankers, and to be using it to their own advantage. If the Fed can do quantitative easing, so can the Chinese – and buy up our assets with the proceeds. Owning our corporations rather than our Treasuries helps the Chinese break up US dollar hegemony.

Whatever power plays are going on behind the scenes, it is increasingly clear that they are not serving we-the-people. Banks should not be the exclusive creators of money. We the people, through our representative governments, need to be issuing the national money supply directly, as was done in America under President Abraham Lincoln and in colonial times.

Sisters are genetically gifted to you as the optimum best friend choice.

1. Your mom’s grocery shopping caused you to like the same snacks.
2. Nothing depicts friendship compatibility more than corresponding snack preferences.
3. You basically have guaranteed Maid-Of-Honor privileges.
4. Anything and everything that you own is a shared commodity.
5. You have clothing options times two.
6. You will wage world wars over #4 and #5 on a fairly regular basis, yet the borrowing continues.
7. If you wear even remotely the same size as your sister and you don’t want something to be worn, it must be padlocked in a safe.
8. But sisters always know your goofy passwords anyway, so that probably won’t work.
9. Nothing you could ever do in front of her could feel embarrassing in the slightest.
10. She loves your pets just as much as you do.
11. Your sister literally knows everything about you; therefore she knows how to provide you with the perfect advice in any situation.
12. You have to take each other’s crap.
13. Being sisters is like having the highest level of b*tchiness insurance that you can possibly obtain.
14. Neither of you are going to go anywhere — you’ll always be there for each other.
15. Accurately portraying the insanity of your family dynamic to anyone other than each other is an impossible feat.
16. You also have a faithful companion to take on that insanity with at the various family functions that you both are required to attend.
17. By “take on,” I mean you have someone to eat a lot of baked goods with while you try to dodge awkward conversations about “how big you are now.”
18. You both are experts at helping each other get ready. It’s been that way since you first learned about the existence of braids.
19. Your natural sibling rivalry causes you to each motivate the other to work harder.
20. Sisters already know everything weird there is to know about you.
21. When you were kids, no one could ever understand how to play your favorite games like she did. (This is also true now.)
22. No one else really appreciates the movies you like or songs you listen to together, either.
23. No one else respects your “Weekend at Bernie’s” marathons like she does.
24. …Or whatever other abstract activities you two like to do together.
25. You’ve been cuddling since you were children, so you’re professionals at it.
26. Growing up together most likely caused you to have a lot of similar interests.
27. You’re going to get to be aunts for each other’s children one day.
28. Aunts are the absolute coolest.
29. You’ve experienced all of your weird fashion stages together.
30. You can be screaming obscenities at each other at one moment and laughing the next.
31. Let’s face it: You used to pull each other’s hair when you fought, so most current altercations can be regarded as minor.
32. You never have to explain memories from your childhood to her.
33. It was her childhood too.
34. So, when you reach into the deepest corners of your brain and find these little memories or funny stories, you have someone to share that with.
35. She brings about those moments for you as well. It seems like half of the recollections from your youth are stored in her mind and half in yours.
36. You can move thousands of miles away from each other, but you’ll still always end up in the same place for each holiday.
37. She has served as a helpful alliance against your parents during each of your teenage angst phases.
38. If she supported you in that war, you can combat anything together.
39. Your life has just been one giant sleepover with each other.
40. A sister is hardwired to defend you.
41. You can brawl with each other all that you please, but once someone else steps in against your sister, he or she better prepare for annihilation.
42. There’s a pretty good chance she could give you a kidney.
43. What is better than being best friends with someone that can offer you valuable organs if need be?
44. She has really high expectations for you and would never allow you to settle for less than you deserve.
45. She always seem to be around when you are in need of a late-night venting session or some Netflix binge therapy.
46. She’s constantly there to guide you, be honest with you, and hold you tightly through all of the ever-changing phases of your lives.
47. A best friend is the other half of your heart. That isn’t the case with sisters. This is because you are one heart.

This post is dedicated to my sister Morgan. My heart forever beats with yours and my love for you is infinite. May our days together be long and filled with an overabundance of crappy movies and inside jokes.

Always heed your mother’s advice, especially when that advice is to drive down to Firefly Music Festival , alone, at 6:30 in the morning. “It’ll be fun!” she told me. “Just go!”

Fast forward to 12 hours later, and I had somehow weaseled my way into landing an interview with Tegan and Sara, the sister duo I had adored for the last 10 years. After some brief editing of the nervous laughter and enthusiastic “Hell yeah!” responses on my part, here’s the conversation that ensued:

I’m so excited to be here with you guys. “I Know I Know I Know” was my favorite song for like, five years.

Tegan Quin: We just recently added “I know I know I know” back into our setlist! We’re relearning everything from “So Jealous” because we’re coming up on the 10th anniversary. Can you believe it’s been 10 years?

That makes so much sense, because 2004 was just the most emo year of my life and you guys got me through that.

Tegan Quin: We didn’t really understand “emo” or what that whole scene was but I remember meeting Andy Greenwald and he had written that book, “Nothing Feels Good.” He was writing about the emo scene and that’s when I started to be like, ‘Oh shit, this is like, a thing that’s happening’ and we kind of got caught up in all of that. It’s funny how it’s changed though. It’s kind of splintered and it seems like a lot of those bands aren’t really doing much.

Yes, did you guys ever play Warped Tour back in the day?

Tegan Quin: We were offered it, but we turned it down. At that point we weren’t into festivals. Especially in those years, we were a much more organic band, so we had like 10 guitars on stage. You don’t have a soundcheck, the sound sucks, your show sucks. It just was harder. Now we have our own soundboard. Things are easier. And I think festivals have become a really exciting way for you to get in front of an audience that knows who you are but wouldn’t necessarily come to your show. So it’s giving us a bigger audience than we would if we were just playing our own shows.

Your current music has definitely veered more toward EDM than acoustic sounds.

Tegan Quin: It’s a different time, and you’ve got to embrace it. Sara and I think that’s why we’re still relevant after 10 years. We’re not trying to make the same record, and we’re not trying to be the same band we were. We are evolving and allowing time to catch up with us. I think that’s a big part of what’s happening in music. We’re all having to accept that things are changing.

Even if your sound is more EDM, it’s still moody music. House music can actually be really deep and I’m not so sure people get that.

Tegan Quin: And it’s that way with pop music, too. That’s why we made “Heartthrob.” Because we felt like, even someone who’s extremely popular and mainstream as Taylor Swift, she’s singing really deep shit. She’s talking about really sad things. I think what Sara and I’s goal was to try and take the content and the deepness, vulnerability, and realness of “So Jealous” and match it with what’s popular today.

Sara Quin: And also, we don’t listen to that kind of music anymore. A lot of kids will come to our shows and be like “I liked ‘So Jealous,’ I wish you guys still sounded like that” and I’m like well when we were making those records, I listened to music that sounded like that and now I don’t.

Tegan Quin Sara’s listening to Kanye.

Sara Quin: I started listening to Beyonce, Alicia Keys, Robyn … for me to go back and do “So Jealous” or “The Con” again would be so disingenuous. It would be faking a style that is not me anymore. I think that’s the evolution that will hopefully keep us around for a long time, is that we don’t want to bore each other. If Tegan sent me a song that sounded like off “The Con,” I’d be like, “Sounds like ‘The Con.’ Let’s modernize it.” I think that’s what Tegan and Sara is. We’re not a band. We’re two songwriters, and every one of our records is really different than the one before. We’re in a time where we’re interested in pop music, and who knows what we’ll be doing in two or three years from now. But for the time being, what’s interesting to us is what’s currently happening in music.

Tegan Quin: Look at how many different bands are playing this festival. We’re at a time where you can just like any kind of music, and Sara and I are really embracing that.