[lbo-talk] The Neoliberalization Of Higher Education: What’s Race Got To Do With It?

[Somebody Somebody]

[WS:]  I agree with Doug.  The root of the problem is the fiscal crisis,
which itself is rooted in the idiotic ballot system that California has.  In
other words, the problem is democracy i.e. mob rule which makes any
progressive policy impossible.  Blaming the usual bogey men (racism,
capitalism etc.) obscures the basic fact that it is the way political
decisions are made - by pandering to the lowest common denominator - that
is the root cause of most what is wrong with this country.

[Somebody:] I think this is right. Take a look at what Derek Thompson from The Atlantic had to say about a recent poll:

"Sometimes, the Majority of Americans Are Really Stupid

I cannot believe this Rasmussen poll:

51 percent believe canceling the rest of the stimulus money would create more jobs.
That is insane.

...

The idea that canceling the stimulus would create more jobs implies
that passing the stimulus has actually killed more jobs than it's
created, which is bonkers... If nothing else,
the tens of billions we've sent to state budgets have, without
question, saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, like teachers, that are
supported by state taxes. It's just a very basic fact."

In
fact this has now become the prevailing opinion out there in the
manicured suburbs and prairie hinterlands of America: that it was TARP and the stimulus (which of
course, are conflated) that somehow caused the recession, instigated
double-digit unemployment, and ballooned the federal deficit. It's a
point of view so unhinged, so patently unfair, and unreasonable, it
would be like blaming welfare programs and a bloated federal government for the disastrous FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina. Which, of course, is precisely what conservatives argue. 

Marxists
can make a stink for their rest of their lives about how the
bourgeoisie controls the state apparatus and the ruling ideology... but
the fact of the matter is, the leading representatives in at least two
of the main branches of government in Washington are in many ways more progressive, more

 rational, and more *humane* than the bulk of the American people.