Posted by
American Sweetheart on Saturday, October 03, 2009 3:35:00 PM
I haven't posted in about a month because I have been busy writing papers for class in place of writing blogs. This semester I am taking History of the American City-which is a class about how Los Angeles, New York and Chicago became global economies and Intro to Political Science for my first 8 weeks and The Politics of Terrorism and Lit 101 the second 8 weeks. (I'm taking accelerated courses).
My Poli Sci class so far has been great. My professor never ever shows a favoring of one side of the aisle to the other and has been greatly supportive with regard to my current events assignments, emailing me additional news articles and research materials that she believes would interest me on a personal level and suggesting other courses that she thinks I would excel in for the political science portion of my major. Mind you, I am 1. the only person in that class there for her major and 2. have been outed as the only conservative. I hear people whispering behind me on a regular basis when I give answers in class and poking fun of my beliefs. (It's really funny that most of the things I hear in counter to my statements are totally 100% false.)
Well, up until this week I was enjoying my history course to the point of my professor is wildly amusing (and once again, I am the only person in that class for her major and am performing extremely well) and the book is rather interesting. However, I have come to notice a trend in the text. The book is the underlying history of the cities mentioned above and their rise to the top in global economics. There is a lot of real US history in the text, facts, events, etc. I have noticed recently that most of the book is about racial injustice. I don't exactly have an issue with that, except that one black woman in my class constantly makes it known that she hates white people and was so kind as to talk about me to the person next to her throughout my entire presentation on post-Depression Los Angeles that I did the other night (and didn't have very nice things to say about me).
That night I was a bit upset during class because we had to watch the movie Chinatown, which we all know was directed by Roman Polanski, the pedophile rapist currently in Swiss Custody. My teacher didn't have much to say about him other than the fact that he was in police custody and kind of dropped it at that.
Now, I am sitting here doing a reading assignment in preperation for my final exam and come across this:
The Unwelfare State
These measures, however, ignore government transfer payments that, if included, further increase the gap between the United States and other developed countries. One study that compared six advanced industrial nations (the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Germany) in terms of their social wages did include transfer payments, distinguishing between the net returns to labor and those to capital. This better account of the differences among "welfare states" found that the United States lagged considerably behind other developed nations. Whereas government transfers in other countries tended to reduce inequality, those of the U.S. government not only failed to redistribute wealth to assist workers but over time actually tended to transfer wealth in the opposite direction.
Regressive Taxation
Not only declining welfare supports but differential tax burdrens have been responsible for the deteriorating position of the middle-class and poor Americans. As Mishel and Franklin note, "Changes in federal, state, and local taxes since 1977 have worsened the distribution of after-tax income by taxing the middle class and poor more heavily and giving large tax cuts to the richest 1%"
New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities by Janet L. Abu-Lughod page 278
WOW. So the United States is failing because we don't promote monetary equality and give tax breaks to the top tier of people that provide the rest of the country with jobs? How are the middle class and poor taxed more heavily than the richest 1% when that top tier pays approximately 80% of all taxes??
Oh it gets better. I am sitting here completing a study guide of possible test questions and one of them is:
In the historical Owens Valley vs. Imperial Valley debate, whose side would you be taking and why?
Why is my opinion on the aqueduct relavant to the text? How can I possibly be graded on this question fairly? We discussed the case in class and the woman that doesn't like me so well said that the water was diverted to Los Angeles County for the "white people." Okay, the correct answer was that salt water was sent to the orange groves to poison the land so that it could be purchased as wasted land and developed into suburban areas and incorporated into Los Angeles. She REALLY didn't like it when the teacher called on me to correct her completely off base answer and then joked that I should just teach the class.
A class that I had originally been enjoying is now turning into a complete liberal mockery, doing its best to pin blacks against whites and bring about more racial divide. It is becoming an extremely uncomfortable environment to sit in as it is a small class of only about 12 people, 3 of whom are black and 1 is from Argentina. So when we get into hispanic injustice, that just makes is worse.
I also just learned that my Politics of Terrorism class is taught by a woman that isn't shy about teaching from a liberal angle. A few of our books are Bush bashing books by a bunch of truthers.
The semester is starting to get nasty...