Common Core is a Racket

Katie Aguilera

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published a report titled A Nation At Risk and set in motion a series of education reform efforts that ushered in an ever-growing, insatiable industry for private education companies.  Like so many things: healthcare, drug use, war, etc…education has become the target of, and is being driven by, greedy corporations seeking yet another avenue to increase profit.  With A Nation At Risk, the Reagan administration had successfully conjured up a crisis in public education, one that was certain to destroy the nation due to failing schools and illiterate citizens.  A crisis to which the inevitable solution would be to pour billions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of private education companies.

The National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) had 18 members, appointed by then US Secretary of Education Terrel Bell.  The formation of this commission was likely driven by a need for more political support from women who tended to lean democratic, and also the need for a scapegoat for the precipitously lagging economy.  A poorly educated populace tends to be more of a drain on the economy than a boost to it, after all.

Their report was armed with strong words and lots of statistics that appeared to show the destructive decline in public education, and it got a lot of media attention from the moment President Reagan announced it’s release.  The clamor for improving public education grew, and the promises to do so became political campaign ammunition with the right and the left each proclaiming their plans would be the better solution.  The lobbyists and corporations swooped in, leading eventually to No Child Left Behind, Race To The Top, and Common Core, but not a lot of improvement in public education.

It didn’t matter that another study in 1990 by the Sandia Laboratories in New Mexico found the statistics to show a different picture than the one painted by the NCEE.  The decline in test scores from 1963 to 1980, according to A Nation At Risk, was an indication of the failing public education system.  But when the scientists at Sandia Laboratories examined the statistics in individual subgroups, such as ethnic minorities, rich versus poor students, and student rankings, they found the averages held steady or even increased for the same period.  This difference is explained here as Simpson’s paradox.  “The average can change in one direction while all the subgroups change in the opposite direction if proportions among the subgroups are changing.”  The number of students taking tests increased in those years, causing the proportion of those students that ranked high to decrease.  This resulted in the total average scores declining, even as they held steady within different subgroups of test-takers.

It also didn’t matter that the National Commission on Excellence in Education was made up largely of school administrators and only one teacher.  Administrators chosen and appointed by the Secretary of Education with what appears to be the goal of proving a fore-gone conclusion.  Consider the following statement in this May 2015 Salon article:

A Nation At Risk began from the assumption that our public schools were failing.  Of course our public schools were failing.  Our public schools are always failing.  No investigative panel has ever found that our public schools are succeeding.

Well, of course, because schools that aren’t failing don’t need reform, they don’t need new curriculum, texts, and tests year after year.  They don’t generate steady profits for private corporations.

The Sandia study should have highlighted the question of whether or not attempting to gauge the success or failure of a nation’s public education system can be accurately accomplished with statistics and averages while ignoring the problems of individual schools and students.  But it was never released by the government, it wasn’t published until 1993, in the Journal Of Educational Research.  The criticism that the Commission was made up of administrators rather than teachers, parents and child development professionals should have called into greater question the usefulness of the findings in defining positive reforms, but such criticism was lost in the fearful rhetoric on the risks of failing schools.

None of that mattered because by then, the education-reform machine had gained a full head of steam and was well under way.  There were voters to sway and profits to be made.  And now, decades later, the Common Core State Standards Initiative is just the latest iteration of this education reform racket.  Indeed, the development of the Common Core standards seems disturbingly similar to the development of A Nation At Risk with its disregard for the input of teachers and parents in favor of pandering to corporate interests.

According to this site, the US federal government spent $621 billion on elementary and secondary public education in 2011/12.  And that money is supplemental to what each individual state is spending on education.  While compared to military spending that is only a tiny fraction of the money the US government is spending, its still a tempting pot to dip into for corporations looking to profit from public education.

Race To The Top was a competitive grant program launched by the US Department of Education in 2009, ostensibly to encourage schools to make substantial improvements in their standards and outcomes.  States would compete for a share of the $4.35 billion in grant money, and one of the easiest ways they could do so was to adopt the Common Core Standards.  And of course, increased use of high stakes testing in order to measure the improvements and maintain funding.  This proved to be highly successful in pushing CCSS into the public education system, ensuring states would then spend a small fortune on curriculum and test changes.  (Ironic, considering that ultimately states will spend more implementing CCSS than they gained from RTTT, read more on that here.)

The director of RTTT, Joanne Weiss is quoted in this Breitbart article as writing in her own article (subscription required), “…the large pot of funding we had to offer was a significant inducement for states to compete.”  The Breitbart article goes on to say she adds “the surprise number of 46 states willing to sign onto the Common Core standards initiative was due to ‘our decision to leverage the spirit of competition.'”  Weiss states:

It [RTTT] arguably drove more change in education at the state, district, and school levels than any federal competition had previously been able to achieve.

The nationwide cost of implementing the CCSS, according to this article, is around $15.8 billion to $16 billion.  In my own state of Oregon, it is estimated to cost $182.027 million, according to a resolution opposing CCSS by Oregon Republicans quoted here.  To be fair, it is difficult to gauge the cost of implementation because it can always be argued that states will be spending large sums on improvements all the time.  As this Watchdog.org article points out, the money would likely have been used in education anyway, and the article points to a claim that CCSS could actually save states money for “an educational product far superior to what is being offered today.”

Of course, that is based on the premise that the Common Core Standards do represent a superior product, one that will enact positive reform to our ‘failing’ public education system.  A premise that numerous corporations are happy to promote.

One such company is Pearson PLC, which according to Wikipedia is the “largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world.”  Pearson has a considerable stake in the roll out of CCSS.  This Huffington Post article from 2013 states that Pearson says “that education business accounts for more than 60% of earnings and sales,” in a statement issued in 2012.  The Huff post article also says: “As of May 2012, Pearson worked with eighteen states in the U.S., as well as Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.  In New York, Pearson held a $32 million, five-year contract to produce standardized tests.  In Texas its contract was worth $500 million.”

In 2014, Pearson was awarded a “major contract to administer tests aligned to the common-core standards, a project described as being of ‘unprecedented scale’ in the U.S. testing arena by one official who helped negotiate it,” according to this  EdWeek Market Brief article.  This contract was awarded by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a consortium of states tasked with creating exams that are aligned with the CCSS.  The EdWeek article goes on to state:

While a number of companies inquired in response to PARCC’s request for proposals for the project, ultimately Pearson was the only bidder, said James Mason, who helped negotiate the contract as part of a team of PARCC state leaders.

and:

While a number of companies initially inquired about bidding for the contract, in the end Pearson was the only one to bid, Mason said. Despite that, PARCC state officials are convinced the process was sound and resulted in the best vendor getting hired, Mason said.

Surely there is no cause to question how Pearson managed to be the sole bidder on what is undoubtedly a lucrative contract, or how the PARCC members felt so certain that Pearson would be the best company for the job.  Or is there?

Pearson has proven willing to go to questionable lengths before in order to secure contracts.  According to this 2011 New York Times article, “since 2008, the Pearson Foundation, the nonprofit arm of one of the nation’s largest educational publishers, has financed free international trips–some have called them junkets–for education commissioners whose states do business with the company.”  The trips are supposedly for attending conferences with “educators from around the world to get ideas for improving American schools.”  But the NY Times article also points out that they meet with “top executives of the Pearson company” on these trips as well.  It goes on to say:

Illinois is paying Pearson $138 billion to administer the state’s standardized testing program; Virginia is paying $110 million and Kentucky $57 million.  All three of their commissioners have attended the conferences.

This 2013 New York Times article follows up by stating “The Pearson Foundation, the charitable arm of one of the nation’s largest educational publishers, will pay $7.7 million to settle accusations that it repeatedly broke New York State law by assisting in for-profit ventures.”

The New York State attorney general, in an inquiry into the foundation’s actions, “found that the foundation had helped develop products for its corporate parents,” and “had helped woo clients to Pearson’s business side by paying their way to education conferences that were attended by its employees.”

The case shed a light on the competitive world of educational testing and technology, which Pearson has come to dominate. As federal and state leaders work to overhaul struggling schools by raising academic standards, educational companies are rushing to secure lucrative contracts in testing, textbooks and software.

Unfortunately, those paying the price in all these manufactured ‘failing schools crises’ and the resulting “rushing to secure lucrative contracts” is the students and teachers.  As the CCSS are implemented, the need to assess how well students are meeting them becomes critical in order to maintain funding.  This means that, in spite of the claims that the CCSS do not impose specific curriculum on states, the curriculum will be structured to ensure students perform well on the CCSS aligned assessments.  Schools will be forced to “teach to the test” because their job depends on their pupils passing those tests.  The end result:  narrowly focused curriculum, memorization rather than learning, an undermining of the development of critical thinking skills.

Consider a few quotes from How A Generation Lost Its Common Culture by Patrick Deneen (and please please go read the entire essay!):

My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation.

and:

Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings.

and finally:

Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes “flexibility” (geographic, interpersonal, ethical).

In such a world, possessing a culture, a history, an inheritance, a commitment to a place and particular people, specific forms of gratitude and indebtedness (rather than a generalized and deracinated commitment to “social justice”), a strong set of ethical and moral norms that assert definite limits to what one ought and ought not to do (aside from being “judgmental”) are hindrances and handicaps.

“Cookie cutter” students indeed.  Good little boys and girls who will not be taught to  question, who will not be taught to reason for themselves.

Common Core is just the latest in what is sold as a desperate need for school reform, for improvement in public education in order to compete with other nations, all while companies like Pearson rake in huge profits.  All while public education not only does not improve, but becomes more and more uniform and indoctrinating.  If we are to truly improve our children’s education, we must stop allowing our public schools to be turned into profitable markets for greedy corporations.  We need to return the control to the local level, to the educators and parents and students.

As a footnote, here is a link to a 17 minute video of a TedX talk by Joshua Katz (thanks RD for sending this my way!) that explains the “toxic culture of education” we find ourselves in currently, I highly recommend watching it.

You can read my other posts on Common Core related issues at the following links:

Will the Higher Standards of Common Core Improve Early Childhood Education

Common Core: Is There Sense in the Mad Math?

Common Concerns With Common Core

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Will the Higher Standards of Common Core Improve Early Childhood Education?

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Katie Aguilera

If the experience of “doing school” destroys children’s spirit to learn, their sense of wonder, their curiosity about the world, and their willingness to care for the human condition, have we succeeded as educators, no matter how well our students do on standardized tests?

Steven Wolk, Joy In School

It is a well accepted fact that growth and development happen in stages, and research into brain development has shown that the human brain is still developing into our early 20’s.  With that in mind, it seems reasonable to believe that specific skills are best learned when the brain is developmentally ready to understand and conquer them.  Most experts in child development and early childhood education recognize this.  Unfortunately, it appears that the creators of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) either do not, or were unwilling to take that into consideration when the standards were written.

In March of 2010, in response to the January 2010 draft release of the CCSS, an impressive group of early childhood health and education professionals issued a joint statement through the Alliance for Childhood stating their concerns with the Common Core standards for young students.  In this statement (which I encourage you to read) they list their four primary concerns with the standards, and conclude with the following statement:

We therefore call on the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to suspend their current drafting of standards for children in kindergarten through grade three.
We further call for the creation of a consortium of early childhood researchers, developmental psychologists, pediatricians, cognitive scientists, master teachers, and school leaders to develop comprehensive guidelines for effective early care and teaching that recognize the right of every child to a healthy start in life and a developmentally appropriate education.
Edward Miller and Nancy Carlsson-Paige wrote a critique of the CCSS in January 2013 in which they address the disregard the CCSS creators showed for early childhood development and the concerns raised in that joint statement.  They write, “we reviewed the makeup of the committees that wrote and reviewed the Common Core Standards.  In all, there were 135 people on those panels.  Not a single one of them was a K-3 classroom teacher or early childhood professional.  It appears that early childhood teachers and child development experts were excluded from the K-3 standards-writing process.”
As for the joint statement signed by so many early childhood professionals?  Well, Miller and Carlsson-Paige go on to say:
We know that the instigators of the standards at the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers were aware of the Joint Statement well before their summary of public feedback was written. Copies of it were hand-delivered to eleven officials at those two organizations, including Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the CCSSO, and Dane Linn, director of the Education Division of the NGA, who were primarily responsible for the creation of the standards.
and
Why were early childhood professionals excluded from the Common Core Standards project? Why were the grave doubts of our most knowledgeable education and health experts missing from the official record of this undertaking? Would including them have forced the people driving this juggernaut to face serious criticism and questions about the legitimacy of the entire project?
Why indeed?  And what are the potential ramifications of pushing these standards on elementary schools?  Well, as so many early childhood professionals and parents around the nation have been repeatedly saying, there are numerous to consider.
In this Forbes article by Alice Walton, it is pointed out that there is no research or evidence to support pushing higher standards for young students to meet.  In fact, there is evidence to support the opposite.  Consider what David Elkind, child development expert at Tufts University and author of The Hurried Child, is quoted as saying in that Forbes article while pointing out that “children are not standardized”:
Some children attain these abilities—which enable them to learn verbal rules, the essence of formal instruction—at different ages. With the exception of those with special needs, all children attain them eventually. That is why many Scandinavian countries do not introduce formal instruction, the three R’s until the age of seven. In these countries children encounter few learning difficulties. Basically, you cannot standardize growth, particularly in young children and young adolescents. When growth is most rapid, standardization is the most destructive of motivation to learn.
Finland provides a good example of what Elkind is getting at.  Students in Finland consistently rank at the top in worldwide studies of education.  This BBC News article states that “children in Finland only start main school at age seven.  The idea is that before then they learn  best when they’re playing and by the time they finally get to school they are keen to start learning.”  It also points out that “Finnish children spend the fewest number of hours in the classroom in the developed world.”  It appears their education model works very well, yet here in the US, with no research to back it up, we are moving the opposite way by pushing greater expectations on younger and younger children.
This puts our children at risk of failure due to classroom burnout or frustrated despair.  Carol Burris, named New York State high school principal of the year in 2013, points out in the Forbes article, “if this continues the way it’s going, my prediction is that by the time they get to high school, they will not like learning.  We’ll see tremendous academic push back, over-anxious kids, and school phobia issues.”  Gene Beresin, Executive Director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School is quoted as saying, “if kids are pushed to work on material too far above their intellectual level, it could be highly demoralizing, and some may simply give up…”
According to this article by Amanda Morgan, Rae Pica, in her book What If Everybody Understood Child Development, discusses how this sort of stress can effect early child education.  Morgan writes:

Rae Pica cites Dr. Willis’ work in this chapter as well as Dr. William Stixrud who said, “stress hormones actually turn off the parts of the brain that allow us to focus attention, understand ideas, commit information to memory and reason critically.”  So why would we expect our youngest learners to gain more from a high-pressure environment?

As Rae writes: “Imagine the lost potential as students continue to struggle to learn when anxious and unhappy.  Imagine the ever-increasing number of students stressed out, burned out, acting out, and dropping out if things don’t turn around and quickly.  Imagine the lost potential if students are kept from discovering the power of joy in the classroom.”

Proponents of the CCSS will argue that the standards do not dictate the curriculum chosen by individual states and schools, nor do they call for the elimination of the sort of activities that might keep the play and joy in the classroom.  But as Carol Burris makes clear in Walton’s Forbes article, it is much more time consuming to teach students things that they are not developmentally ready to learn.  She says, “if you have goals that are developmentally inappropriate, so much time is spent getting students to achieve what they’re supposed to, that there’s very little time left for music, social studies, science.”

Amanda Morgan, in her article, adds to that by pointing out that these increasing expectations have a “trickle-down effect.”  It is changing not only K-3rd grade classrooms, it is affecting preschool as well with preschool teachers attempting to prepare their young charges for Kindergarten.  She writes:

I’ve listened as some preschool teachers have said, “With kindergarten the way it is, I just can’t do preschool the old way anymore.”  So they get rid of the sand table and the dramatic play area and cut back on outdoor play time.  And they spend more time sitting at tables, filling in worksheets, and, well, being quiet.

This is the opposite of what we know about what children need developmentally.
[Emphasis supplied.]

These are all very real concerns with the potential for very serious consequences for our children.  What appears to me to be pretty blatant ignorance of the developmental needs of our young and vulnerable students is incredibly disturbing and brings me back to the question of why?  Why were the Common Core State Standards developed without the input of early childhood educators, and why were the concerns of so many early education professionals, and parents, ignored as the standards were completed and approved?  Why are those concerns still being ignored today as CCSS is being implemented around the nation?

These are questions I’ll tear into in my next post, “Common Core is a Racket.”

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Common Core: Is There Sense In The Mad Math?

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Math has always intimidated me.  Well, honestly, it has always terrified me.  I was never able to make a connection with numbers like I did with words, and so I struggled all through school with math.  I had many great math teachers who offered a variety of methods to solve problems, but since I didn’t understand math easily, I never pushed myself to make sense of it.  I did just enough to get along, enough to pass, without ever really gaining a solid grasp of the concepts.

Meeting my old math nemesis once again through viral internet memes about Common Core math problems admittedly made me defensive and dismissive of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  Bizarre, incomprehensible math problems being shared on Facebook and YouTube by frustrated parents were basically my first introduction to the CCSS, as is probably the case for many.  And there is no question that there is an abundance of bizarre math problems shared online to choose from these days.

This strange math being developed for new, common core compliant curriculum around the nation has become one of the most loudly and frequently targeted parts of the CCSS, especially in the realm of social media.  This may have made it somewhat of a distraction from what I see as much more worrying complaints about common core, but because it is a valid concern, it should be addressed.

I certainly believe there are reasons to question the changes in the way math is being taught.  When what should be a simple equation is made into a series of confusing and complex steps in order to find the answer, it seems reasonable to ask if this is only going to make math even more intimidating and challenging for children.  Are we sacrificing speed and accuracy by moving away from rote memorization?  Are we requiring students to master mathematical concepts they are not yet developmentally ready for?

Since math was so challenging for me as a student, I really tried to dig into this issue with an open mind.  After all, had I been taught math fundamentals in a different way, perhaps it would have been easier for me to understand.  And the truth is, I have found some explanations and examples of the reasoning behind the mad math of common core that do make sense.

Consider the ‘ten-frame’ being used in early grade level math.  According to this site, “a ten-frame is a hands-on and pictorial model that teaches number sense and mental math.”  This idea goes along with the concept of breaking larger numbers into groups of ten in order to make them easier to work with.  When multiplication was explained to me in this way, I see the reasoning.  For example, if you consider 6×12 as 6(10+2), you can do the multiplication this way:  6(10) + 6(2) is equivalent to 60+12 which equals 72.  That is a simple equation, but if I apply the same method to bigger numbers, I can do multiplication in my head pretty quickly that used to take me a lot more time and thought, or a pen and paper.

I think one more good example to look at is the use of the number line.  This article from Salon.com by James Goodman gives this example of solving a problem using a number line that does look confusing at first glance.  However, the article goes on to explain the method this way:

If you haven’t yet made sense of the second diagram, think about the way that people used to give change at the store (perhaps a bit of a lost art these days). Suppose you purchased something that cost $8.27 and paid with a $20. The clerk would start at the value of the item purchased (in this case $8.27), then start with the change, bringing you first to $8.30, then to the 50 cent level, then to an even dollar amount, then a ten dollar amount, and so forth, until the value was brought up to the $20 you paid with:
“Okay, $8.27, 30 cents <putting three pennies in your hand>, and 20 more is 50 cents <putting two dimes in your hand>, and two quarters makes nine <dropping two quarters in your hand>, and ten <giving one dollar>, and ten more makes twenty <giving a ten>.”

This makes sense to me, and I can see many reasons for giving kids different tools to solve equations.  Children all learn differently, as we well know, and it seems advantageous to allow for different problem-solving methods.  Proponents of the Common Core math standards repeatedly point out that this gives greater flexibility at the classroom level, as well as stronger math fluency for all students.   According to this USA Today article,

Learning math this way leads to deeper understanding, obviates the need for endless rule-memorizing, and provides intellectual flexibility to apply math in new situations, ones for which the rules need to be adapted.

That article goes on to say that the CCSS expectations for math “have been endorsed by every major mathematical society president, including the American Mathematical Society and the American Statistical Association.”

However, these arguments in defense of the Common Core math standards do not take into consideration the very real effect that high-stakes assessment testing is having on curriculum development.  This is a note-worthy problem that I will get into at greater length in an upcoming post.  In isolation, the ideas behind the math standards sound sensible, great even, but the reality on the ground tends to show that the benefits are quickly lost in the application.

Along with the problems associated with test-driven curriculum, there is also the question of whether these math standards are developmentally appropriate.  Is it realistic to push pre-algebraic thinking on elementary school students, with the expectation that their young brains can successfully absorb the ideas for future expansion?  This is certainly a difficult question to which there is no easy way to find answers.  Yet it must be asked if the Common Core math standards are to be regarded as an improvement in education.

In a Huffington Post article from May 2014, it is posited that Common Core math standards are modeled on reform mathematics which it describes as math where “kids should explore and understand concepts like place value before they become fluent in the standard way of doing arithmetic.”  It goes on to say,

Stanford University mathematician James Milgram calls the reform math-inspired standards a ‘complete mess’–too advanced for younger students, not nearly rigorous enough in the upper grades.  And teachers, he contends, are largely ill-prepared to put the standards into practice.

‘You are asking teachers to teach something that is incredibly complicated to kids who aren’t ready for it,’ said Milgram, who voted against the standards as part of the committee that reviewed them.  ‘If you don’t think craziness will result, then you’re being fundamentally naive.’

I would like to point out that James Milgram, Professor emeritus in Mathematics at Stanford University, served as a member of the Common Core validation committee, and you can find more of his opinions on CCSS here.

I do think there is much to be said for the fact that it is always hard for parents and educators to transition into something new.  Remember the emergence of computers and the internet in schools, and now the increasing use of tablets (and WiFi with it’s potential dangers).  I realize it can be difficult to accept having our children taught differently than we were, and, of course, we should be able to set that aside in order to be open to improvement in education.  However, I also believe there are intended improvements that might actually prove to be detrimental, and it is imperative that those be questioned, highlighted, and scrutinized.

That gets to what I consider to be even deeper problems with the Common Core State Standards than math that is hard to understand out of context.  Problems that these bizarre, confounding, maddening math problems all over social media may well be distracting us from.  Problems I will continue to explore and write about at length in upcoming posts.

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Common Concerns With Common Core

“In the most individual country in the world, we try to make cookie cutter kids. It makes no sense.”
-Alvin Rosenfeld, MD, faculty at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and author of Hyper-Parenting and The Over-Scheduled Child, in this October 23, 2014 Forbes article.

Last week we had Parent/Teacher conferences at my children’s school.  Each time I attend one of these meetings with the teachers who I’ve entrusted my children’s formal education to, I am reminded of the problems and challenges facing our public education system in this nation.  Problems that concern me as a parent, problems that also have me very concerned for the future of this country.

There are many such problems in education today, ranging from budget issues to dilapidated buildings, school security to the food that is served in the cafeterias.  Most of us, whether or not we are parents or students ourselves, are aware of these as they are often immediate and visible issues.  But underlying the financial and inequality challenges, the infrastructure problems, etc, is the contentious questions about what and how our children are taught.

There has been a growing push to ‘fix’ our schools over the past two decades with curriculum changes and increased testing, all in the name of improving student outcomes. This has led to a series of shifts and changes affecting the classroom, and we are in the midst of yet another with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a series of standards that dictate what skills and knowledge students should acquire by the end of each grade in Kindergarten through 12th grade. These standards are designed to ensure that students in every state will meet the same academic goals, rather than different ones determined by each individual state.  They have been developed ostensibly with the goal of better preparing students for college and career.  They are being heralded as high standards that will bring American students up to speed with nations that have higher student success rates.

Common Core has been pushed as a national reform of public education.  According to this site, 43 of the 50 states have adopted the CCSS and are implementing them in their schools.  (There is a map on that site that shows which states have and have not adopted the CCSS, if you are curious to check on your own state.)

This sounds good at first glance.  Why not have some standard benchmarks for all students all across the nation?  After all, just because you attend K-12 in Oregon public schools does not mean you will attend college in Oregon, so having all students achieve equivalent standards to graduate high school in any state makes some sense.  Ideally, this would also mean that students in poorer states would be given the same education opportunities as students in wealthier states.  And as it is often pointed out by CCSS proponents, these are standards, not a curriculum, so states remain free to adopt any curriculum they choose as long as it teaches their students what they need to know to meet the standards.

However, the Common Core State Standards need more than just a first glance.  And not just because they effect any child in public education in the 43 states that have adopted it, as well as all the educators employed in those states.  We have to remember that these children currently transitioning into this new set of standards are the future leaders, innovators, business owners, employees, etc of our nation.  Their education effects us all, and there are very real causes for concern.

After numerous conversations with teachers and parents over the past couple of years, I have developed many reasons for questioning the motives behind the creation of the CCSS, as well as its necessity or success potential.  There is a wealth of information available on all things Common Core related on the internet for anyone who takes the time to look, and it is a really big topic, so for my own education and for this blog, I decided to approach this in pieces.  I have been asking people I know, as well as people in internet groups, what their main concerns are with the CCSS in order to decide what to focus the most attention on.

I have gotten a range of answers, but the most commonly mentioned concerns are related to the math standards (and bizarre math problems), privacy and data concerns, the increasing number of tests, including high-stakes testing that play a role in judging teacher performance and school ratings, and how those tests effect the everyday teaching in the classroom, and whether or not the standards are even developmentally appropriate.  And don’t forget the quote at the beginning of this post, the worry of “cookie cutter kids” who are not encouraged to be individuals who think and learn for themselves. In an upcoming series of posts, these will be the common concerns shared by many regarding the Common Core State Standards that I will be looking at.

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Grant County, Oregon’s Sheriff Palmer Has Enemies In High Places

Author’s Note:  I am no longer affiliated with Newsbud and no longer endorse the site.  I have removed most of this post because I cannot in good conscience, promote Newsbud’s work.  I originally posted this with a link to a Newsbud article because I was asked to do so.  I am leaving the link to that article, but I do not agree with the conclusions of that article.  11/2/2017  You can read more about why I don’t agree with those conclusions here.

Sheriff Glenn Palmer, of Grant County, Oregon (the only county in the United States that, interestingly, has declared itself a UN free zone by vote) appears to be in the cross hairs for some of his actions during the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife refuge in neighboring Harney County.  Sheriff Palmer met with some of the people involved at the refuge and also voiced support for releasing Dwight and Steven Hammond (more on their story here and here.) and for sending the FBI packing from Harney County.  Those are two opinions I suspect the majority of Harney County residents would agree with, but the federal government certainly does not.

…The rest is deleted.  The Newsbud article that this post originally linked to can be found here.

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 Author’s Note: I am no longer affiliated with Newsbud and I no longer endorse the website, or the linked article above.  Additionally, when I attempted to contact Sheriff Palmer to ask for verification of his reaction to the strange letter, my phone call was not returned.

Questioning the News

 

The reporting on the Malheur refuge occupation in Harney County has, for me, been a perfect example of how corporate news networks manipulate the narrative of events to fit their own position on the issues and people involved. Admittedly, I have questioned corporate media for a very long time, for many reasons.  Perhaps it started for me with the way events were covered between September 2001 and March of 2003.  Confusion, lies and omissions, controlling (and co-opting) the narrative, and what do you know, endless war resulted.  There have been so many big events since (and before) then that show the same patterns in the media as the narrative is spun to portray a story a certain way.  So, the way the narrative in Harney County has been spun hasn’t surprised me, but it has been an up close view of the process.

With this situation taking place so close to home, I have had the opportunity to communicate with some of the people involved.  I have had the opportunity to learn about the underlying issues, to try and get a genuine understanding of why the protests and occupation happened.  Now, I certainly don’t expect everyone to come away from this story changing everything about their own opinions on the matter.  I don’t expect people to agree on every aspect of the issues involved.  It is, after all, a tangled combination of complicated and sensitive matters.  But, what I do expect, or rather, what I would like to be able to expect, is some honest reporting.

It has been sadly lacking, both in the mainstream media and the alternative media.  There have been some honest and unbiased stories here and there, scattered throughout a wide range of sources.  I’ll specifically shout out to Oregon Public Broadcasting here who’s reporters have followed the story closely.  But the good coverage was often buried in avalanches of speculation, distortion, name-calling, and outright hatred.  Social media has played an increasing role in this as well.  On one hand, social media has given us a platform to communicate with people involved in these stories and to share what we learn.  On the other hand, in what appears to me to be a desperate attempt to keep their stranglehold on the narrative by the media, it has become a place to whip the hateful and divisive rhetoric into a frenzy.

What is perhaps even more notable to me as I’ve followed the story obsessively, is the meticulous avoidance by the mainstream media of any perspectives that challenge the narrative the federal government has an interest in maintaining.  After all, if it isn’t in the news on TV, we Americans won’t bother to look at or think about it.  On the flip side, what has stood out to me in the alternative media is the sensationalizing and manipulations of the facts, and the constant repetitions of false information.  Again, social media, with all of its clever algorithms, plays a powerful role in this.

How many have taken the time to look beyond our own assumptions about the Malheur refuge occupation and the shooting of Robert Lavoy Finicum?  How many have bothered to challenge the media’s presentation, whether mainstream or alternative, of the story rather than simply allowing it to shape or reinforce our own perspectives?

Can we not see that an inability, or unwillingness to question the distorted narrative handed to us will only lead to more excessive police force, more ambushes conveniently hidden from public view?  More lies about safe drinking water?  More invasions of foreign lands, more slaughtering of countless civilians?  More division, more laws, more repression?  Have we become so hopelessly detached from reality that we can’t see that every American is losing rights?  The front line is different for all of us, but the enemy is the same.

You may not see or feel it yet.  It may not have touched your life yet, and your news might not be telling you about it yet.  I wonder at what point the citizens of Germany woke up to the tyranny of the Nazi regime?  I doubt the media in Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s was doing much reporting on all the atrocities being committed by the Nazis.  And the same can be said for our own media today when it comes to the atrocities being committed by the US government.

I’m sickened by that fact.  Rather than bowing to the government’s narrative, or acting as advertising for mega-corporations, the press is supposed to report the truth.  The press is supposed to investigate all angles and ask the hard questions.  The press is supposed to be a weapon for the people to wield to maintain transparency and accountability within our government.

The press isn’t supposed to be info-tainment to benefit corporate or political interests.

We can do better.  We need to do better.  And we can’t wait any longer.  Let’s start asking the hard questions in order to get to the truth in any story.  Let’s push our lawmakers to confront the hard questions in order to make positive changes.  Let’s make the Tamir Rices, Eric Garners, Lavoy Finicums, lead-poisoned Flint families, PTSD suffering Veterans, homeless, under-educated children, victims of wars of aggression, victims of excessive prison sentences…WE THE PEOPLE relevant again.

 

Author’s Note:  this post has been edited from its original version to remove content that promoted Newsbud, as well as to reflect changes in my own perspectives.  If you want to read the original version, contact me.

What’s The Beef, Part Two: How Lawsuits Shape Land Management Policies

Range management is more a result of lawsuit than science…Special interest groups sue the land management agencies and they agree to settle on terms that do not benefit the general public and are almost never disclosed…

Victor Iverson in Deseret News, January 22, 2016

When protesters occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County on January 2nd, 2016, I had no idea where the story would lead me.  I’ve written before about being open to opposing viewpoints and ideas, and questioning one’s own opinions.  This story has certainly had me questioning mine, in many ways.  One of those is my feelings and opinions on the ways we go about preserving and protecting our wild lands and wild life.

I love rivers.  I have spent years paddling on them, hiking beside them, swimming in them, finding peace sitting next to them.  And there are a few that are especially precious to me, right in the middle of my favorite place I’ve been to so far, the Kalmiopsis wilderness in Southwestern Oregon.  These rivers, and this area, are the scene of another land use debate, and I side with saving the rivers, and the land.  Because I love them, they are home, and, well, I am not a nickel miner.  Another one of my favorites is the incredibly remote and beautiful Owyhee River, yet another place that is contested, and again I view that issue from the perspective of one who wants to preserve the river and canyon.  Again, I’m not a miner, or a rancher.

If you love the lands, the wild places of our world, and you are upset over the occupation of the Malheur refuge because you see it as an attack on your right to public lands, I can understand.  If you believe that ranchers are subsidized with low grazing fees and are still demanding more hand-outs from the government by grabbing land, well, then I would ask you to take a step back and consider some things.  Take some time to consider their side of the story.  Because you may realize that the reasons they are angry isn’t all that different from the reasons you are angry.

Sue and Settle

Back in the heyday of clear-cutting, over-grazing, strip-mining, etc, when a generation of passionate environmentalists were inspired by Hayduke and his Monkey Wrench Gang, it seemed that the only way to bring attention to the problems of over-use and degradation of lands was with aggressive, sometimes dangerous, protest actions.  From removing survey stakes and tree spiking to bombings and arson labeled as eco-terrorism, considered one of the greatest threats of terrorism in the United States, environmentalists wanted to be heard.  In desperation to save what they loved, they demanded change in the only ways they felt were left to them.  But then another way was found to effect change in land use policies.

We decided, let’s just sue instead.  It got settled with the Service agreeing to do a wolf study, which led to reintroduction.

That was the moment when we looked at it and said, ‘Wow.’  The environmental movement spent a decade going to meetings and demanding action and getting nothing done.  They were asking powerful people for something from a position of no power.  We realized that we can bypass the officials and sue, and that we can get things done in court.

Kieran Suckling of the Center For Biological Diversity in an interview with High Country News

The use of lawsuits to force the agency overseeing the land or wildlife in question to act has proven to be effective.  And it has been steadily increasing.  When the agency agrees to reach a settlement in these lawsuits, the terms are negotiated behind closed doors, outside of the public’s view, away from the public’s input.  It is referred to as ‘sue and settle.’  Here is a short definition from a report from the US Chamber of Commerce:

“Sue and Settle” refers to when a federal agency agrees to a settlement agreement, in a lawsuit from special interest groups, to create priorities and rules outside of the normal rulemaking process.  The agency intentionally relinquishes statutory discretion by committing to timelines and priorities that often realign agency duties.  These settlement agreements are negotiated behind closed doors with no participation from the public or affected parties.

Here is another from the Washington Examiner:

Here’s how the process works: First, the private environmental group sues the EPA in federal court seeking to force it to issue new regulations by a date certain. Then agency and group officials meet behind closed doors to hammer out a deal. Typically in the deal, the government agrees to do whatever the activists want. The last step occurs when the judge issues a consent decree that makes the deal the law of the land. No messy congressional hearings. No public comment period. No opportunity for anybody outside the privileged few to know how government regulatory policy is being shaped until it’s too late.

This means that the very people affected by the policies and actions agreed upon are left out of the decision making process, they are not a part of the equation.  Until it costs them their livelihood, or until they are the local officials in charge of enforcing the policies, often at the expense of their neighbors and even families.  Add to that the issues of water rights, reductions in land use, and devastating wildfires that threaten homes and livestock that are the result of federal mismanagement.  Now can you begin to see where some of the anger comes from?

Beaver County Commissioner Tammy Pearson described struggling ranchers held hostage by the proliferation of wild horses that are ruining a drought-striken range for cattle, wildlife and other uses.

Pearson, a rancher herself, said the situation is dire.

“Producers have exhausted their financial reserves, have lost their faith in federal agencies and have been backed into a corner by those agencies and so-called environmentalists and advocacy groups,” she said. “This grief has caused the uprisings that we see in Nevada, Oregon, and quite possibly in Utah.”

Deseret News, January 22, 2016

It shouldn’t be surprising either that mistrust in the Federal government has only increased alongside these sue and settle, closed door agreements that increasingly shape policies.  It is reminiscent of the mistrust environmentalists felt towards federal agencies and wealthy land owners and corporations in the days of Hayduke.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these lawsuits cost money.  Karen Budd-Falen, an attorney with a long history in land use law who works to protect property rights, and to bring attention to the use of the legal system to effect environmental policy, has been attempting to find out just how much they cost for years. “I was floored to learn that the federal government couldn’t tell me (after multiple Freedom of Information Act requests) how many times they had been sued and how much money they had paid,” said Budd-Falen in this article from The Dalles Chronicle from May of 2014.  The article goes on to quote her claim that environmental groups received settlements of more than $4.7 billion as a result of more than 15,000 suits filed in a six year period in the 2000’s.

According to another article from The Dalles Chronicle published two days later, John Buse, legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity, disputed the claim.  He also disagreed with a figure of $52, 518,628.00 total payouts for 489 cases filed between January 2009 to April 2012 that was revealed in a U.S. Department of Justice report provided to the House Natural Resources Committee.  Buse stated, “although that report appears to cover a little over a three year period, we believe it actually covers more than 20 years.”  He said that the figure included cases from the past that were still open.

Budd-Falen also points out that,

Unlike lawyers who seek redress of grievances on behalf of veterans, senior citizens and the disabled, the fees that an environmental attorney can recoup are not capped, according to Budd-Falen.

“Attorneys suing most agencies can recover $200 per hour in fees if they prevail but environmental lawyers are often awarded $750 per hour or more,” she said…

…“There are lawyers across the nation that make their total living from suing the government.”

That article goes on with this:

Dustin Van Liew, executive director of the Public Lands Council, which is affiliated with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, believes the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, the two agencies that oversee public grazing, are also trying to pre-empt lawsuits by using administrative powers to appease environmentalists.

For example, he said the bureau has cut 30-50 percent of livestock grazing in Owhyee County, Idaho, by placing restrictions on permits. He said the agency is making those decisions without a scientific review of any issues that environmentalists raise or attempt to work out a mitigation plan with ranchers, if that is necessary.

“We believe they are not making decisions based on what’s happening on the ground,” he said.

It would make sense, in order to limit the money being paid out in these settlements, for agencies to do just that.  And that only adds to the list of grievances of ranchers and loggers, etc.  It adds to their mistrust of these agencies and their employees, as it appears to be collusion with environmental organizations.

Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity, in the interview with High Desert News linked above, has this to say about the use of lawsuits:

They are one tool in a larger campaign, but we use lawsuits to help shift the balance of power from industry and government agencies, toward protecting endangered species. That plays out on many levels. At its simplest, by obtaining an injunction to shut down logging or prevent the filling of a dam, the power shifts to our hands. The Forest Service needs our agreement to get back to work, and we are in the position of being able to powerfully negotiate the terms of releasing the injunction.
New injunctions, new species listings and new bad press take a terrible toll on agency morale. When we stop the same timber sale three or four times running, the timber planners want to tear their hair out. They feel like their careers are being mocked and destroyed — and they are. So they become much more willing to play by our rules and at least get something done. Psychological warfare is a very underappreciated aspect of environmental campaigning.

I would argue that what may have been a useful and sometimes justifiable tool has been corrupted and turned into an industry.  And it prevents communities on the local level, people from all sides of an issue, from coming together to work out solutions that probably won’t make everyone completely happy, but will at least keep people working while preserving lands and wildlife.  As a result, we are seeing more and more aggressive and sometimes violent acts of protest coming from the people who rely on land use.  From bulldozing fences and turning cattle loose to graze without paying grazing fees, to occupying wildlife refuges.

The reality is, as long as the balance of power keeps shifting back and forth between huge, special interest lobby groups and wealthy power players on both sides of this issue, we on the ground with our passionate desires to save what we love, will be forced apart.  We will continue to fight it out by enforcing increasingly over-bearing restrictions, and resorting to increasingly aggressive guerrilla tactics.

“In a lot of ways, the forest service and grazing community have more in common than not.  Anyone whose livelihood comes from the land understands that we have to keep the land healthy to sustain production.”

Laura Pramuk, public affairs officer for the forest service, said in The Dalles Chronicle in May, 2014

 Read What’s the Beef Part One: The Anger Over Federal Land Management here.

 

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What’s The Beef? Part One: The Anger Over Federal Land Management

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Katie Aguilera

The land out here is vast, in some places stretching as far as the eye can see in between homes, towns, any signs of humanity.  It is rugged and dry, and holds a sense of emptiness, of loneliness.  But to the observant wanderer, it is in fact a place full of life, from the twisted juniper trees to the strange-colored lichens spreading over the ground.  One can find traces of the animals that have passed through, coyote scat, rabbit tracks, the remnants of a cougar kill up in a tree, huge bird nests up in the craggy cliff bands.  And, of course, the evidence of people, shotgun shells, broken glass, old appliances, and cows.

People seem to have a habit of taking what they have for granted until threatened with its loss.  It is certainly true when it comes to land use.  We have a long history of over-use, it is evident in any industry that involves using or extracting natural resources.  It begins with discovery, then fortunes are made, and more and more people jump on board, and then, the resource begins to run out.  That is the point at which people either destroy the resource altogether, or take steps to protect and manage it.

It is undeniable that humans impact the environment, our proliferation around the world has clearly changed the land.  It is also undeniable that natural resources are required for our survival.  We need food, water, shelter, just like every species.  And this need, and all the times we’ve allowed it to devolve into excessive over-use of resources, along with the desire to protect what we don’t want to lose, has left us with a decades-old, emotional, sometimes violent debate.

Once again, this debate has exploded out of its usual confines of rural America and into the national spotlight with the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife refuge in Harney County.  Ignoring the very basic fact that nature seeks balance, the media is frantically fueling the polarizing rhetoric.  Either you are an angry, spoiled white guy with lots of guns attempting to grab all of the public land, or you are against the occupation and want the spoiled white guys arrested, maybe even bombed with drones.  Few seem willing to pause long enough in the argument to really listen to each other.  Just what is the beef with Federal land management?

The situation in Harney County presents a good starting place to look at this question because there is a long history of problems there.  Anyone who has paid any attention to the story of the refuge occupation knows that it began with a protest rally in support of Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were sentenced for arson under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act for starting two fires on their land that spread to BLM land, burning a total of 140 acres.  The group occupying the refuge want the Hammonds freed from prison, among other things.  The Hammonds’ battle with the BLM has been going on for decades, long before they lit the two fires that got them branded as terrorist arsons.  And they aren’t alone.

Water

Many from the area claim that there have been numerous attempts to get ranchers off of their private lands over the years.  According to Ammon Bundy, some of those attempts included reducing the number of grazing permits from 53 to 21, raising grazing fees, and even deliberately flooding Malheur, Harney and Mud Lakes to force ranchers from the lands around the lakes.  The lakes did flood in the early eighties, causing an estimated $32 million in damage in 1984.  According to The New York Times:

‘Twenty-seven families have been flooded out as the lakes’ level has risen about 12 feet over the last three years,’ said William H. Beal, Harney County’s water master.

I haven’t found any evidence to support Bundy’s claim that the US Fish and Wildlife Service deliberately flooded the lakes somehow, but the solution sought by the ranchers to make a flood-relief canal to lower the levels in the lakes was ultimately dismissed.  Again from the above New York Times article:

Harney County officials want to deepen and widen the old waterway to the Malheur River and use it as a flood-relief canal, timing the releases to minimize flood danger downstream.  Mr. Beal said the canal would cost $8 million to $12 million.

The Army Corps of Engineers said two years ago that the economic benefits would far outweigh the cost of the canal.

In the end, after another study by the Army Corps of Engineers, in a reversal from their previous statement, the canal was ruled out as its benefits would not outweigh the costs of construction, or possible detrimental effects on the river from the influx of lake waters.  This study goes into much more detail about the different ideas for mitigating the flood damage and resolving the problem.  I can see why local residents might feel as though their needs, and solution ideas, were disregarded, and perhaps that has led to Ammon’s claim.

As for the Hammonds, Ammon Bundy writes this:

In the early 1990’s the Hammonds filed on a livestock water source and obtained a deed for the water right from the State of Oregon. When the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) found out that the Hammonds obtained new water rights near the Malhuer Wildlife Refuge, they were agitated and became belligerent and vindictive towards the Hammonds. The US Fish and Wildlife Service challenged the Hammonds right to the water in an Oregon State Circuit Court.  The court found that the Hammonds legally obtained rights to the water in accordance to State law and therefore the use of the water belongs to the Hammonds.* 
In August 1994 the BLM & FWS illegally began building a fence around the Hammonds water source. Owning the water rights and knowing that their cattle relied on that water source daily the Hammonds tried to stop the building of the fence.
The Hammonds did indeed try to disrupt the building of the fence repeatedly.  It resulted in a hostile showdown, angry threats made towards government employees, and the arrest of Dwight Hammond.  You can read more about that here, I recommend the read.
Land

Grazing fees are a hotly disputed issue.  The low fees charged by the federal government for ranchers to graze their herds on public lands is often described as a subsidy because it is lower than private land owners charge for grazing rights, and it doesn’t cover the costs of managing those lands where the grazing occurs.

Wildlife advocates have long criticized the low price for grazing fees on public lands, calling it an effective subsidy to a fraction of the ranching industry. Generally, grazing fees returns only a fraction of the money the Federal government spends to manage public lands grazing: less than a sixth in 2004, according to the General Accounting Office .

[Read more of that article here on the argument for raising fees.]

According to this:

The Federal grazing fee for 2015 will be $1.69 per animal unit month (AUM) for public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management and $1.69 per head month (HM) for lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The 2014 fee was $1.35.

An animal unit month is defined as “the use of public lands by one cow and her calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month.”
It does seem like a good deal.  But the BLM itself says that “the grazing fee is not a cost-recovery fee, but a market-driven fee.”
There are several important reasons for keeping grazing fees low to consider according to this article written in 1992 by William G. Laffer III and John Shanahan.  They point out that grazing on private land typically costs more because the grazing is generally of better quality, and the property owners “provide ranchers with fences, roads, water, and protection for livestock.  Ranchers must provide these services for themselves on public land.”  Public lands are “of poorer quality, more remote, and more difficult to manage and control than private lands.”
Not only that, and perhaps even more important, is the matter of fencing.  It is no small matter.
…if ranchers are priced off federal rangelands, the government would have to build hundreds of thousands of miles of fences to keep cattle from trespassing onto federal land.  In the Eastern states, a cattle owner is responsible for putting a fence around his land to keep his cattle in, and is liable to his neighbors if his cattle escape and trespass onto the neighbors’ land. However, in most Western states, a landowner who fails to put a fence around his own land may not recover for trespass if other people’s cattle come onto his land because the landowner is legally responsible for fencing the cattle out.  Billions for fences.  No one knows precisely how many miles of fencing the federal government would have to build.  Because federal land in most Western states is interspersed with private land in a checkerboard pattern, however, the amount of fencing required would be enormous.  In one grazing district in Wyoming alone, the BLM estimates that it will have to put up 13,222 miles of fencing at a cost of almost $98 million if cattle grazing is discontinued because of excessive fees.
Remember, that was back in 1992, and the estimated cost doesn’t include the cost of surveying the land to determine actual property boundaries.  Of course, a little pressure from the federal government could certainly push states to change their laws to require ‘fencing in.’
As to the argument over whether or not cattle should be grazed at all on public lands, well, I would say that I agree they shouldn’t be allowed everywhere.  Cattle move slowly over the land, remaining in one place until they can no longer find anything to eat, and this causes soil compaction and the destruction of plants.  It is reasonable to believe this is harmful to native species, and there are studies that show how harmful.  From another perspective, however, they can be beneficial too, mowing down potential fuels for wild fires.  But regardless of what you think about the issue, the fact is people eat beef, a lot of beef, and it is no more environmentally responsible to ship our beef from far away lands.  A more reasonable approach is compromise, grazing on some lands, and cattle-free areas too.
Fire

On top of all of that, we can’t forget fire.  It’s no secret that forest fire management policies over the past century have led to dangerous conditions throughout the western United States.  The idea that all forest fires are bad, and must be extinguished immediately has left forests and rangelands loaded with fuel.  When fires start, they burn hotter and longer, causing greater damage to the land, and they are much harder to contain.  In the sweeping sage brush country of eastern Oregon, prescribed burns were used as a means to improve grazing lands and reduce Juniper trees, preventing a build up of fuel and lowering the risk of catastrophic fires.  According to this article by Carrie Stadheim:

[Erin] Maupin, who resigned from the BLM in 1999, said that collaborative burns between private ranchers and the BLM had become popular in the late 1990s because local university extension researchers were recommending it as a means to manage invasive juniper that steal water from grass and other cover

and,

‘In 1999, the BLM started to try to do large scale burn projects.  We started to be successful on the Steens Mountain especially when we started to do it on a large watershed scale as opposed to trying to follow property lines.’

Because private and federal land is intermingled, collaborative burns were much more effective than individual burns that would cover a smaller area, Maupin said.

Like the Hammonds’ fires, these prescribed burns, as well as fires lit as back-burns while fighting wild fires, haven’t always stayed within their intended boundaries.  Again from Stadheim’s article:

During her tenure as a full time BLM employee from 1997-1999, Maupin recalls other fires accidentally spilling over onto BLM land, but only the Hammonds have been charged, arrested and sentenced, she said.  Ranchers might be burning invasive species or maybe weeds in a ditch. ‘They would call and the BLM would go and help put it out and it was no big deal.’

On the flip side, Maupin remembers numerous times that BLM-lit fires jumped to private land.  Neighbors lost significant numbers of cattle in more than one BLM fire that escaped intended containment lines and quickly swallowed up large amounts of private land.  To her knowledge, no ranchers have been compensated for lost livestock or other loss of property such as fences.

Gary Miller, who ranches near Frenchglen, about 35 miles from the Hammonds’ hometown, said that in 2012, the BLM lit numerous backfires that ended up burning his private land, BLM permit, and killing about 65 cows.

Oregon Representative Greg Walden, in a strong statement to the U.S. House of Representatives after the refuge occupation began, had this to say about back-burns started by federal employees:

There was nobody sentenced under the terrorist laws there.  Oh heck no, its the government, they weren’t sentenced, no one was charged.

Good point.  Its no wonder the residents in Harney County, and Ammon Bundy, are suspicious of the motives behind charging the Hammonds for their fires by the federal government.  It really doesn’t surprise me that there seems to be growing support for the occupation on the ground as residents of Harney County, and surrounding counties and states, see an opportunity to force these issues into the spotlight.  And an opportunity to find solutions.  And I think that makes the federal government increasingly nervous, and it shows in the media narrative.

It may be that it is simply too boring to report on the people on the ground, directly affected every day by the land use debate that is more vast than the land itself.  Or, maybe reporting on their efforts to find balanced solutions to the problems doesn’t serve the purpose of the Federal government as it seeks to increase its control.  Reporting on the reality on the ground might expose a widening crack in that control as the people are re-discovering that they don’t need the federal government to solve their problems for them.

Don’t miss “What’s The Beef, Part Two:  How Lawsuits Shape Land Management Policies.”  Read it here.

Another note: just as I finished this, I learned the news that Ammon Bundy and three others have been arrested after an incident involving shots fired while they were on the way to a meeting in John Day, Oregon. 

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What the Stand Off in Oregon is Distracting Us From

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Katie Aguilera

On April 24, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act into law.  This act was introduced by Senator Bob Dole, and it had bi-partisan support.  It passed the Senate with a vote of 91 to 8 and passed in the House of Representatives with a vote of 293 to 133.  Not unlike the Patriot Act, this act was introduced and passed in response to terror attacks, both the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred Murrah building in 1995. The stated purposes of the act are to “deter terrorism, provide justice for victims, provide for an effective death penalty, and for other purposes.”

In the years between the two bombings, the panic-inducing rhetoric was in full swing over home-grown, right-wing extremist, anti-government terrorism (not unlike today).  Of course, Timothy McVeigh played into that perfectly with a Ryder truck with home-made fertilizer bombs in the back.  It is easy to see, after that bombing, how law makers on all sides would want to be viewed as doing their part to fight terrorism.

Since 1996, the existence of this law, and its use, seems to have been largely under-reported.  I have not been able to find out just how often it has been used in prosecution to date.  David Cole, lawyer and Georgetown University Law Professor, in an interview on Democracy Now discussing possible revisions to the Patriot Act in 2009 said:

This law was passed, as you indicated, in 1996, but it really was left unenforced until September 11th. Since September 11th, however, it’s been a favorite tool of the government. There have been over a hundred prosecutions. And the reason it’s the favorite tool is precisely because it doesn’t require the government to prove up that an individual actually is connected to any kind of terrorist activity. It allows them to paint with a broad brush.

It is a very broad brush indeed.

In 2012, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) filed charges against Dwight and Steven Hammond, a father and son and long time residents and ranchers in Harney County, Oregon.  The Hammonds were prosecuted under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.  What was this act of terror committed by the Hammonds?  Well, Dwight and Steven Hammond were charged with, and they admitted to, setting two fires on their land which subsequently spread to federal land.   Admittedly, there is a lot of background to this case, including questions surrounding the two fires and a long history of protests and threats, and I am working on another post that will go into greater detail on those.  But, for now, lets look at the two fires in question, and consider how these acts qualified the Hammonds for prosecution under this broad law.

The first fire was lit in 2001.  According to the Western Livestock Journal, it was a prescribed burn that spread to 139 acres of BLM land.  From court documents:

At trial, historical data and testimony established a long-standing plan between the Hammonds and their BLM range conservationist to burn off invasive species on the “School Section” of the Hammonds’ property. ER-316-18. Fire is a tool regularly used by the BLM to rehabilitate grazing lands.
Defendants had acknowledged intentionally setting a fire on September 30, 2001 to burn off invasive species on the School Section, which then spread to approximately 139 acres of adjacent public land (the “Hardie-Hammond Allotment”). ER-287, 243.
At trial, the government presented evidence that the fire was set in
a manner designed to spread on to the public land, and had endangered members of the Hammonds’ party.
The “endangered members” part is referencing testimony during the trial of Dwight and Steven Hammond by Dusty Hammond, Dwight Hammond’s grandson.  This OPB article says:

Nearly 11 years after the fact, Dusty Hammond recalled for a jury Wednesday in a U.S. District Court how he stumbled through juniper and sagebrush to escape a fire bearing down on him, a fire he helped set.

Hammond, 24, softspoken and clean cut, explained how his first-ever deer hunt near Frenchglen turned to arson after his uncle Steve Hammond passed out boxes of strike-anywhere matches to the four-man hunting party.

“Light the whole countryside on fire,” Dusty said his uncle told him. “I started lighting matches.”

Afterwards, he said, over lunch his grandfather and uncle instructed him to “keep my mouth shut; nobody needed to know anything about the fire.”

It has been reported that this fire was started to cover up evidence of poaching on federal land by the Hammonds.

The second fire that plays a role in the Hammonds’ case was lit in 2006.  This fire is said to have been started as a back burn to protect the Hammond’s winter feed from fires that were ignited by lightning.  Court documents say:

The facts of this fire are straight forward. The Ninth Circuit stated:
In August 2006, a lightning storm kindled several fires near where the Hammonds grew their winter feed. Steven responded by attempting back burns near the boundary of his land. Although a burn ban was in effect, Steven did not seek a waiver. His fires burned about an acre of public land.
So there you have it.  Poaching deer and destroying the evidence with fire, lighting fires without the proper notification in an attempt to save property in what may well have been an emergency response, burning a total of 140 acres of federally held land.  Regardless of the Hammond’s history of conflict with the BLM and the federal government (I’ll get into that in my upcoming post), it seems like a stretch to say that these are crimes that should be prosecuted under the anti-terrorism act.  Also, as I will get into here, the Hammonds were not prosecuted for the charges related to their previous threats and actions against federal employees, which could arguably be considered terrorism under the legal definition:
(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended—
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
According to this report in 2010, the Hammonds were originally indicted on 19 counts, “charges that include conspiracy, arson, depredation of federal property, threatening federal officers, and tampering with a witness.”
Two years later, according to this article, they were brought to trial, now facing nine counts.

A federal indictment charges the pair with nine counts, including conspiracy and setting illegal fires on federal grazing land, fires that coincided or contributed to the Hardie Hammond, Lower Bridge Creek and Krumbo Butte fires.

One count alleges witness tampering, a charge Papagni [prosecutor in the Hammonds’ case] said stems from a confrontation in Frenchglen between Steve Hammond and Joe Glascock, a rangeland conservation manager who suspected the Hammonds of setting rangeland fires. Hammond in 2006 told Glascock: ‘This could get ugly, and this could be a sticky situation,’ the prosecutor told jurors. ‘You set those fires, not me.’

This July 2015 article states:

BLM pressed charges for the above-mentioned fires, citing endangerment of human lives and damage to federal property. However, the district court found that no one had been endangered by the fires, and that the fires had caused minimal damage. In fact, the court found, the fire had arguably increased the value of the land for grazing.

The jury deliberated, and agreed that the Hammonds were guilty on two of the nine counts, for the 2001 Hardie-Hammond fire and the 2006 Krumbo Butte fire, but could not agree on the remaining seven charges.  A plea agreement was made, the Hammonds would not contest the two charges if the remaining charges were dropped.  Again from the July 2015 article:

In determining the Hammonds’ sentences, Judge Hogan had decided that applying the “mandatory minimum” of five years cited in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act would ‘shock the conscience…’ He referenced the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which states, ‘Excessive bail shall not be required…nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.’

To call for five years’ imprisonment, he said, ‘would result in a sentence which is grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses here…’ He said that Hammonds’ actions ‘could not have been conduct intended under [the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act]…’ Judge Hogan used his discretion under the Eighth Amendment to sentence Dwight (now 74) to three months in prison, followed by three years’ “supervised release.” Dwight’s son Steven (45), father of three, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison—also to be followed by three years’ “supervised release.”

The Hammonds were ordered to surrender their firearms, and Dwight Hammond’s pilot’s license was revoked.  In a separate settlement, they were fined $400,000.00 by the BLM for damages and they had their grazing permits withheld.  However, for the US Department of Justice, this wasn’t enough.

Judge Hogan’s decision to sentence the Hammonds to prison time of less than five years challenged the federal government’s mandatory minimum sentencing structure.  It challenged the use of the anti-terrorism act to prosecute the ranchers.  The prosecutor in the case, Assistant US Attorney Frank Papagni, said this:

“Congress decided that this particular offense should carry a mandatory, statutory minimum term of five years,” Papagni wrote in the government’s sentencing memo.  “The evidence of defendants’ guilt was substantial. The jury’s verdict of guilt for this particular offense mandates imposition of the required statutory minimum term, as the statute constrains this court’s discretion.”

In the comment section of the same article, I found the following two comments to be especially interesting.

Has an appellate court ever decided that a particular sentence under the USSG [United States Sentencing Guide] is grossly disproportionate to the crime? I don’t think so. It would open a huge can of worms and possibly undermine the entire federal sentencing scheme. I think that it being the judges last day and that these were decent white ranchers had more to do with this decision than anything else.

and:

From the government’s point of view, assuring that judges obey MM’s [mandatory minimum] is a paramount interest. That’s why it will appeal this. To do otherwise is to virtually send the other district judges a gold-plated invitation to deviate from the MM when they want to.

The US Department of Justice appealed the ruling, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case back to the Oregon US District Court.  In the appeal, according to this article, the government admits it doesn’t have to prove that someone is committing acts of terror when they state:

“the fact that they are ranchers who set fire to rangeland and not terrorists adds nothing to the analysis.”

 Also in the appeal, the government uses the following disturbing examples of mandatory minimum sentences as justification:  25 years for the theft of three golf clubs; 50 years to life for stealing nine videotapes; 40 years for possession of nine ounces of marijuana with the intent to distribute; life sentence for obtaining $120.75 under false pretenses (what?!); 430 months for using arson in commission of a felony; and so on.  Because let’s see, one, two, three…many wrongs make a right, right?

Chief Judge Ann Aiken over-ruled Hogan’s sentence, and declared the Hammonds would have to return to prison and serve what remained of the mandatory minimum sentence of five years.

Dwight and Steven Hammond have returned to prison, but the re-sentencing sparked a protest rally in Burns, Oregon on Saturday, January 2, 2016.  The peaceful protest was subsequently over-shadowed by a takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters by non-local militia members who claim to have done so to demand that the Hammonds be released and the refuge lands be returned to the area ranchers.  You can read my thoughts on this take-over and stand off here, as well as a similar perspective here.

In the vast majority of the reporting and social media noise about this situation, very few are talking about the use of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty law in the prosecution of the Hammonds.  In my opinion, this case has demonstrated the government’s willingness to expand the use of this law in its efforts to shut down dissent of federal policies.  Ranchers angry over the increasing restrictions on their livelihood, pushed to the point of what has sometimes been destructive and threatening protest, can effectively be sentenced as terrorists.  And, as we know, terrorists are very, very scary.

The take-over of the Malheur refuge has created a distracting and extremely divisive debate here in America. In public opinion it seems that protests over police killings, which have also involved arson in the past, are acceptable because it involves racism and is a matter of authorities violating the rights of African Americans (and I 100% agree that rights are not just being violated, but entirely obliterated, racism is a problem, and I do support those protest movements) while the protests of frustrated ranchers over perceived violations of their land use rights by Federal authorities is unacceptable and labeled as terrorism.  In fact, both are about the violations of the rights and freedoms of Americans.  Consider a comparison different than the one the media is currently pushing with this quote from a 2001 article:

“They [rural land owners] are neglected by the state and by the federal government, and they’re mad,” says Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada. “They’re out of the loop; decisions get made for them. It’s not unlike inner cities, whose needs don’t get heard until there’s violence.”

While we argue and call names loudly over this stand off and those involved in it, the government has quietly set a precedence of using its very broad anti-terrorism law and its ability and willingness to set and enforce mandatory minimum sentences under that law.  Regardless of who is sentenced, and for what.

Consider the following from an ACLU report as you think about that.

There is a pall over our country. In separate but related attempts to squelch dissent, the government has attacked the patriotism of its critics, police have barricaded and jailed protesters, and the New York Stock Exchange has revoked the press credentials of the most widely watched television network in the Arab world. A chilling message has gone out across America: Dissent if you must, but proceed at your own risk.

Government-sanctioned intolerance has even trickled into our private lives. People brandishing anti-war signs or slogans have been turned away from commuter trains in Seattle and suburban shopping malls in upstate New York. Cafeterias are serving “freedom fries.” Country music stations stopped playing Dixie Chicks songs, and the Baseball Hall of Fame cancelled an event featuring “Bull Durham” stars Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, after they spoke out against the war on Iraq.

Compounding the offense is the silence from many lawmakers. There is palpable fear even in the halls of Congress of expressing an unpopular view.

No matter how you feel about the presence of those scary guns at the Malheur Refuge, and no matter how you feel about environmental stewardship, and no matter how you feel about inner city people or rural people or race or racism, it is time to look beyond all that and look at the underlying problems we are all facing.  It is past time to admit we have allowed our government to step way out of its boundaries. Each time we ignore cases like the Hammonds’, every time we give up rights of our own or others, we slide a little closer to fascism.

 

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Bowe Bergdahl And The Question We Should Be Asking

Looking back now, it seems odd to me that I did not first hear of Bowe Bergdahl from the news.  At the time of his capture, back in June of 2009, I listened to NPR, a LOT.  Yet I don’t recall hearing his name.  Considering the media circus that has arisen since he was released from Taliban custody in May of 2014, the limited reporting of his story during his captivity seems strikingly silent.

I happened upon the story through my research, when I clicked on this YouTube video the Taliban released after Bergdahl was captured.  I found this not long after Rolling Stones published Michael Hastings’ report on Bergdahl in 2012.  I read that article with much interest, and if you haven’t read it, I recommend you do.  I was captivated by the story of a disillusioned young man who apparently decided to simply walk away from war.  Of course, only Bergdahl himself could really say if this was what happened that night in 2009, and at that time, he was still being held prisoner by the Taliban.

Hastings’ article describes Bergdahl as a restless young man, ready to explore and experience a life bigger than he could find in his small hometown in Idaho.  He says Bergdahl liked survival manuals, and the TV show Man Vs. Wild.  Hastings quotes Bergdahl’s father, Robert Bergdahl, as saying, “He (Bowe) is Bear Grylls in his own mind.”  The article goes on to mention that Bergdahl attempted to enlist in the French Foreign Legion and briefly entertained a desire to go to Africa to help villagers targeted by militias learn self defence.  Curiously, Hastings leaves out the reports of Bergdahl’s extremely brief stint in the Coast Guard two years before he enlisted in the Army, as reported in this article:

‘He did join in early 2006 and he did enter boot camp training,’ Coast Guard spokeswoman Lisa Novak confirmed to USA Today.  ‘He left after 26 days…with an uncharacterized discharge.’

No further explanation of this discharge was offered, although other reports attribute the discharge to psychological reasons. Bergdahl enlisted in the Army in the spring of 2008, and in March of 2009, his unit deployed to the Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan.

Sean Smith, of the Guardian, spent a short time embedded with Bergdahl’s unit before Bergdahl disappeared.  His video footage from that time seems to show some of the discipline and morale issues later reported in the unit by Hastings and others.  He described Bergdahl in a brief article as follows:

‘Bowe was particularly thoughtful.  Its a long time to be in that situation, and though I didn’t get to know him very well I’d think if anyone was equipped to deal with it, he was probably one of them.  He wasn’t the sort who saw everyone as good guys or bad guys.’

Bowe Bergdahl was rescued from Taliban custody on May 31, 2014.  This rescue was not some spectacular midnight raid of an isolated Taliban fortress by special forces, but rather was the result of negotiations that had been going on for years.  The United States agreed to release five Taliban prisoners in exchange for Bergdahl’s freedom.  And this would set off a fire storm of debate and angry vitriol in Washington D.C. and the media.

I think for many Americans, this may have been the first introduction into the controversies surrounding Bergdahl.  At this point, the question of whether or not Bergdahl had intentionally deserted his post in Afghanistan had not had as much play time in the mainstream media.  But much was made of the decision to trade five Taliban prisoners for one American, as well as the rushed and seemingly secretive way the deal happened.

According to this USA Today poll from June 10, 2014, just nine days after Bergdahl’s rescue,

Public opposition to the exchange of five Taliban prisoners for captive Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has less to do with Bergdahl himself and more with how President Obama handled the transfer, according to a new USA Today/Pew Research Center poll.

In fact it hadn’t been a rushed deal, and the debate over the deal had been going on for some time.  Michael Hastings wrote in his Rolling Stones article, a full two years before Bergdahl was even freed as a result of the prisoner swap:

‘The Hill is giving State and the White House shit,’ says one senior administration source. ‘The political consequences­ are being used as leverage in the policy debate.’ According to White House sources, Marc Grossman, who replaced Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was given a direct warning by the president’s opponents in Congress about trading Bowe for five Taliban prisoners during an election year. ‘They keep telling me it’s going to be Obama’s Willie Horton moment, Grossman warned the White House. The threat was as ugly as it was clear: The president’s political enemies were prepared to use the release of violent prisoners to paint Obama as a Dukakis-­like appeaser, just as Republicans did to the former Massachusetts governor during the 1988 campaign. In response, a White House official advised Grossman that he should ignore the politics of the swap and concentrate solely on the policy.

What had already long been an ugly debate in D.C. erupted in the media after Bergdahl’s release, instantly becoming a divisive debate as talking heads took their usual sides on the left or the right.  Some railed against the choice of the Taliban prisoners, reporting that they were top level militants who had killed Americans and would surely return to the battlefield to kill more.  The fact that President Obama did not give Congress 30 days notice of the swap was another point of contention, both on Capitol Hill and in the media.

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, said the swap was illegal because Obama didn’t give Congress the required 30-day notice before transferring detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The requirement is in the 2014 Defense Authorization Act.

‘The president has released, illegally, arguably the five most vicious, serious Taliban terrorists,’ Inhofe said. ‘Sure they’re happy to have him home,’ he said of Bergdahl’s family, but ‘you weigh that against the circumstances that will present themselves by five terrorists out killing Americans.’

LA Times, June 3, 2014

Judge Napolitano on Fox News went so far as to say that President Obama should be arrested for “providing material assistance to the Taliban.”  It appeared to be a growing sentiment among the public.

Others pointed out the importance of not leaving any of our military personnel behind as the war came to an end (no, seriously, it was supposedly coming to an end at that time, according to the media and the politicians) and that prisoner swaps had been a part of ending wars for ages.  As this article points out:

‘…time is running out for those who believe that Guantánamo is a place where they can hold people forever without due process, and that John Bellinger is correct to point out that, with the drawdown of U.S. troops at the end of the year, it will no longer be acceptable under international law for Taliban prisoners to continue to be held.’
All of this made for interesting debates in the media, but the real fuel for the fire was something with much, much bigger implications in public opinion.  It was the question of whether or not Bergdahl should be considered a deserter.  Had he committed the terrible crime of leaving his own men to run away from the fight?  This is a crime that is widely viewed as treasonous and cowardly, no matter the deserter’s reasoning. The focus of the politicians and the media turned increasingly to Bergdahl’s actions.
Initially, hints of this had leaked out here and there, even in Hastings’ Rolling Stones article back in 2012.  It seemed that Bergdahl had possibly considered the option even before deploying when he told a fellow soldier, Jason Fry, as reported by Hastings:
‘If this deployment is lame…I’m just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan.’
After Bergdahl’s release, the scattered comments and reports coalesced. According to The New York Times, a classified military report that contained the details of the Army’s investigation of Bergdahl’s disappearance mentioned two other times Bergdahl apparently left his post, once in California during training and another time while in Afghanistan.  He returned both of those times.  The media jumped on the questions of Bergdahl’s mental state before he vanished from his outpost.

Before he became a Taliban prisoner, before he wrote in his journal “I am the lone wolf of deadly nothingness,” before he joined the Army, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was discharged from the Coast Guard for psychological reasons, said close friends who were worried about his emotional health at the time.

The 2006 discharge and a trove of Bergdahl’s writing — his handwritten journal along with essays, stories and e-mails provided to The Washington Post — paint a portrait of a deeply complicated and fragile young man who was by his own account struggling to maintain his mental stability from the start of basic training until the moment he walked off his post in eastern Afghanistan in 2009.

The Washington Post, June 11, 2014

The men who had served with Bergdahl, and who had served in the region in the months after Bergdahl was captured began to speak out about what happened.  They had been pushed hard in the months after the capture to find their fellow soldier at the same time as US activity increased in Afghanistan due to the surge.  They faced exhausting pressure, in terrible conditions.  And they were understandably angry.  These men had remained mostly silent during the years of Bergdahl’s captivity, and according to Matthew Farwell, a veteran of the Afghanistan war who helped Michael Hastings with the 2012 Rolling Stones article, they had been required to sign non-disclosure statements.  Here is what Farwell said about it on Democracy Now in an interview I recommend listening to:
MATTHEW FARWELL: Yeah, and, you know, that was one of the biggest things that disturbed me so much about this whole story and that really got me thinking it must be something, is it’s unprecedented to have an entire brigade—3,500 people have to sign a nondisclosure agreement about pretty much their entire tour in Afghanistan when they come back home. And so, these guys have bottled up this emotion. I’ve spoken with them.

AMY GOODMAN: But explain that, signing a confidentiality agreement to protect? I mean, what was the reason given?

MATTHEW FARWELL: The official reasons was that if they said anything about Bowe Bergdahl, it could, you know, hurt him or possibly cause him to be further mistreated by the Taliban or the Haqqani Network. But, to me, having served in the Army both as a trigger puller and then as a desk jockey at a four-star general’s headquarters, it seemed like it was an exercise in covering the Army’s butt and, you know, trying to not make themselves and this war look as bad as it was.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the soldiers being told not to say anything—

MATTHEW FARWELL: Right, right.

AMY GOODMAN: —having to sign confidentiality agreements. What about the media?

MATTHEW FARWELL: Well, that’s the other funny thing, is how complicit the media was with this. I’ve spoken with the White House official that was in charge of coordinating the media response and kind of ensuring that no one in the media spoke out or wrote about this. And frankly, you know, he managed to snow a lot of the people in the media…

There was reporting on soldiers who, it has been claimed, were killed as a direct result of the search for Bergdahl, although the Pentagon says it can’t confirm any direct link.  And Stars and Stripes has recently written the story of Navy SEAL James Hatch who was injured during an attempt to rescue Bergdahl.  Hatch had his femur shattered, and has endured 18 surgeries since, along with suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Bergdahl’s platoon members are even planning for the release of a book and a movie about Bergdahl’s “premeditated desertion.”
And now, stirring up the debate once again, as Bergdahl faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, the Serial Podcast, a spin-off of the radio show This American Life, has released the first three episodes of its second season, featuring Bowe Bergdahl’s story.  The podcast episodes include recordings of Bergdahl himself, talking with Mark Boal, the movie producer famous for Zero Dark Thirty.  According to Sarah Koenig who hosts the podcast, Mark Boal contacted Bergdahl because he wants to make a movie about him, and ended up recording hours of conversation, in which Bergdahl explains his side of the story.  In what strikes me as a bizarre assertion, Bergdahl tells Boal that he walked off the base that night because he wanted to create chaos in order to bring attention to what he felt was a dangerous situation within his unit.
The timing of this brings up the question of the effects the podcast will have, not only on public opinion, but also on Bergdahl’s court-martial proceedings.  Indeed, this Military.com article says:

‘I think Gene Fidell [Bergdahl’s attorney] decided it was time to get his client’s side out,’ Gittins [a former military defense attorney] said. ‘While the lawyers are limited in what they can do, the client is not.’

The public airing of Bergdahl’s side of the story may create an additional challenge for the Army, as it will make it even more difficult to ensure that the jurors selected for the court-martial remain impartial and unaffected by the Bergdahl narrative as it continues to unfold on Serial, Gittins said.

The podcast also may affect widespread public perception of Bergdahl’s case. On the internet forum Reddit, a discussion of the first Serial episode showed a broadening variety of perspectives on Bergdahl in the military community, which has overwhelmingly condemned him until now.

Bergdahl opted to defer his plea in his first court appearance, and he is scheduled back in court next month.  The Serial podcast will resume next month as well, and more details of his terrible ordeal will emerge, unfortunately through a source who’s motives I find questionable.  I’m sure there will also be more reporting on the military personnel who were effected by the search operations for Bergdahl as well as the court-martial begins, especially if their stories come out in a book and movie.  The media will undoubtedly keep spinning it as a left versus right political issue as election coverage ramps up.  And no doubt, it certainly remains a compelling story, which I clearly felt the need to write about at length.

But what I find most compelling in all of this, is how, in our ongoing national conversation, we are all failing to ask what I see as the most important question of all.  It isn’t whether or not Bergdahl is a traitor who put the lives of fellow soldiers at risk, and it isn’t whether his freedom is worth the release of five Taliban members.  The question is how are we ignoring that, with our silence, we have allowed our leaders to put these young men and women into the situation that resulted in all of this?  We bought the lies that led us into these wars, repeatedly.  We continue to allow them to send our children off to fight, to die, to suffer the consequences of the devastating trauma, for the profit of themselves and their cronies.  We continue to allow them to use returning soldiers to further their political agendas in the all-too-complicit media.  We jump to take sides based on our own political beliefs, arguing, name-calling, and finger-pointing when we should be examining our tacit support for these wars of aggression.  We should be asking our “free press” why they continue to spout the lies, supporting the wars and promoting militarism.  We should be supporting our youth, giving them better options than fighting in a war we don’t even understand, and that we largely ignore.