| Number 226 | October 17, 2003 |
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This Week:
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April...May...June...July...August...September... OCTOBER is the month for the autumn edition of the twice-a-year event known as the * NYGAARD NOTES PLEDGE DRIVE! * Yes, in the world of Nygaard Notes, the months of April and October have been somewhat arbitrarily chosen as the months in which I ask all the readers of this free newsweekly to contribute MONEY towards sustaining the effort. That is, NOW is the time for you to consider making a pledge of financial support for Nygaard Notes. Why? I explain elsewhere in this issue. How? I explain elsewhere in this issue. How much? I explain elsewhere in this issue. If you already know that you would like to make a pledge to Nygaard Notes, you don’t have to read most of this issue. Just send your check to:
Once you’ve done that, you can skip to the non-Pledge-Drive section of this special double issue of the Notes, which consists of a case study on market-based school funding and a fantasy about the media. NOTE TO CURRENT PLEDGERS: I try to send out “official” reminders to renew your pledge after 44 issues, but I am not always prompt about it, due to time constraints. So, if you have already sent in your renewal, or if you just want to wait until you get your own personal letter, there is no point in your reading any more about pledging than the following six words: THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! For the rest of you who may need some convincing, please read the interesting stuff that I have in this issue (there’ll be more in the coming weeks, too!), which is a variety of information about the pledging process, and why it’s such a good idea to join the already-existing legions of Nygaard Notes supporters. THANK YOU (in advance). |
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Greetings, It’s Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive time and, as fate would have it, Minnesota Public Radio chose to copy Nygaard Notes and have their pledge drive this week, also. I suppose you could contribute to both, if you have a mind to do so. But I think your hard-earned dollars would be better spent in supporting Nygaard Notes. Of course, I would think that, but I plan to give some pretty compelling reasons for my self-serving opinion in the next couple of weeks. See for yourself. Last week’s editor’s note began by saying, “This week I include one of my fantasies about living in a society ...” In fact, that fantasy got edited out of last week’s issue. Too bad the editor’s note did not get edited! So, the fantasy appears this week, and I think it actually fits better here. So, my apologies for that error. Whatever excuses I might have are irrelevant, so I won’t bother you with them. Many people are brilliant thinkers, and many are courageous actors. Not too many people manage to be both. The late Edward Said was one of them. That is why I was particularly saddened by the death on September 25th of this scholar, activist, writer, and man of conscience. The particularly unique thing about Edward Said was that he was able to be intellectually fearless while at the same time remaining connected and accountable to an activist community struggling for human rights. He was truly an individual, and he was truly embedded in his communities, which is not at all easy to do. He was a role model for me, and I will deeply miss his voice of conscience. In solidarity, Nygaard |
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The late Edward Said, speaking to the Association of Arab-American University Graduates in Washington, DC in 1997, on the 80th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration:
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The Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive is, in principle, very similar to the pledge drives that public and community radio and TV stations do all the time. (Maybe a little less annoying; I hope so.) That is, anybody can turn on the radio or TV to see and hear the offerings from public stations without paying a dime, and many people do so. Just like anyone can subscribe to Nygaard Notes without paying a dime; many people do that, too, which is fine. But, to repeat what you undoubtedly know, your local community radio station could not stay on the air without the financial support of its members. So they have the interminable and unavoidable Pledge Drives on a regular basis. Nobody likes them, but they are absolutely necessary to keep these stations running. Likewise, Nygaard Notes relies on the financial support of its readers to keep publishing. There is absolutely no way that this project would have lasted until now without the financial pledges of many, many people. One big difference between the Notes and the broadcast stations is that public and community radio and TV receive, in addition to member pledges, large sums of money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other large funders. Increasingly, in the case of public radio and TV—as opposed to the community stations—large corporations pay the bills. You’ve all heard the commercials on NPR, even though they aren’t called “commercials.” With Nygaard Notes, in contrast, every penny that goes into producing each weekly edition comes directly from the readers themselves. There is no advertising, no corporate support (can you imagine?), no public funds, no nothing. Except the faith and goodwill of the actual readers of the Notes, the people I sometimes call Nygaardians. Please be one of them. |
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It’s been a little more than five years since I started publishing Nygaard Notes. Now that I am emerging from a long spell of bad luck, which long-time readers know about, I hope to get back to building and developing the readership of the Notes, which has been growing very slowly for the past months and currently stands at about 800 subscribers. In the next six months I hope to double that number, with your help. (Details will be in Notes in coming weeks.) It’s not just a personal ambition to increase the reach of the Notes; here is my mission statement:
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There are two ways to make a pledge to Nygaard Notes. You could just make out a check, payable to “Nygaard Notes” and send it to the address found both at the beginning and at the end of this issue of the Notes. Or, if you’re more comfortable in cyberspace, you can pledge online, using the PayPal system. All you need is a credit card. Then you go to the Nygaard Notes website at http://www.nygaardnotes.org/. Right under “This Week’s Issue” you’ll see a little yellow dot that says “New!”, with a link for online contributors to click on. When you do that, you’ll get to a page with a little box that says “Donate Online!” From there it’s pretty easy, I’m told. I don’t, personally, have a credit card, so I’ve never done anything like this. But you’ll figure it out. A number of people have already donated to the Notes using PayPal, so I know it works. As a point of reference, I can state that if every one of the current subscribers pledged just TEN dollars per year, that would make up the majority of my annual income. Now, I don’t expect every subscriber to pledge, but I do expect some readers to pledge more than $10. Maybe some will pledge $50, or $100, or....who knows? The last time I did this, the pledges ranged from $5 to several hundred dollars, and EACH AND EVERY ONE was much appreciated. To help you calculate what is fair for you, I give some ideas of how to think about it in the essay elsewhere in this issue: “Deciding How Much To Donate.” Donations to Nygaard Notes are not tax-deductible. I do not, and will not, ever make a “profit,” but I am not legally a “not-for-profit” organization, in the sense of being organized as a 501(c)3 organization like the government requires for tax-exempt status. I have some experience with not-for-profits, and I have my reasons for Nygaard Notes not being one. If I ever do make a “profit”—that is, if I ever make more money than I need to support myself—it will go into expanding the project. The first thing I would do with any extra money would be to start a real campaign to try to build circulation for this newsletter, so I could do the next thing. The next thing, I hope, would be to help create a collectively-run media organization/think tank. Then, depending on what the folks involved wanted to do from there, perhaps we would start a collectively-run radio project, or TV. Maybe a research and propaganda organization along the lines of the Heritage Foundation, except one that is coming from a Social and Cooperative direction rather than the Individualist and Competitive orientation of Heritage and its ilk. Who knows? Lots of ideas, not much money at the moment. As you can see, there are lots of possibilities for this project. But, for now, suffice it to say that you can’t deduct from your taxes your contribution to the Notes. |
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There are at least three different methods for determining the amount of your donation: Method #1: The traditional way of pledging, or subscribing, is to have someone determine what each issue is “worth.” That may involve a look at the “market,” which we’re not going to do, or you may simply ask yourself, “How much is each copy of Nygaard Notes worth to me?” I don’t care for either one of these approaches, since they both imply that the project is some sort of commodity for sale like a box of corn flakes, but the “What’s it worth” approach is one way to think about it. If this is your choice, here are some numbers: A pledge “year” I consider to be 44 issues. That seems to be how many I put out in a calendar year, although it’s quite fluid, as regular readers well know. If each issue is worth a dollar to you, then you could send me $44. Fifty cents each? Then it’s $22. If you would be willing to shell out eight-and-a-half cents for each issue, then send a check for $2.86. You get the idea. Method #2: A second way to think about this is to relate your contribution to your own income or wealth. Are you willing to devote one or two hour’s worth of your wages each year to supporting Nygaard Notes? Then send me that amount. If you make minimum wage, I am more than happy to accept $5.15 or $10.30 for your annual subscription donation. If you make closer to the average household income, then you would make an annual contribution of something like $17 to $55. Using this yardstick, the average American physician, for example, would send me $90 to $180 per year. You get this idea, too, I’m sure. In a related way, you could send one-tenth of 1% of your net worth. For the average household, this would be $37. (For help in figuring out your own wealth, the average household income, etc., see Nygaard Notes #138, “Wealth in the United States.”) Method #3: Some of you may want to make up an arbitrary annual amount and send that along. Fine. Not everybody likes to formalize things like I do. The point is that I will record whatever you send and then I will contact you 44 issues later (give or take a few weeks) and ask you to renew your pledge. I will even send a pre-addressed and stamped envelope—what a classy operation! |
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Way, way back in March of 2001—in Nygaard Notes number 108—I discussed the program called “Target School Fundraising.” Target, for those who don’t know, is a gigantic retail store corporation, born right here in Minnesota. Surely you’ve seen their red-and-white “bull’s-eye” trademark. Here’s how their “School Fundraising” program works: “Target will donate an amount equal to 1% of your qualifying Target Guest Card purchases to the eligible K-12 school of your choice.” (A “Guest Card” is what most of us call a “Credit Card.”) So, credit card-wielding “Target Parents” get to subsidize their “Target Schools” every time they buy a new DVD player or Jumbo-pak of Q-Tips. Target now also donates “one-half percent of Target Visa purchases everywhere else you use your Target Visa.” Who could have a problem with that? Well, a couple of problems leap to mind. One is that access to a Target Visa card is, as always, “subject to credit approval,” and the kids whose parents can’t get approved probably go to the schools that need the money the most. Another problem is one I mentioned in 2001:
I bring this up now because it seems that the Target Corp. has now “given” over $100 million dollars to schools through the “Target School Fundraising” program. At a rate of one percent, that means that “Target Parents” have purchased more than $10 billion worth of “qualifying purchases” at Target stores in the past two years. I know this because Target took out a huge two-page advertisement in the local paper, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) of Sunday, August 3. In the ad was a list of “schools in your area that have benefitted the most, thanks to the support of Target cardholders.” Back in 2001 I didn’t have sufficient information to test my hypothesis that the “Target School Fundraising” program would largely benefit those schools that are in the more affluent areas of the state, and mostly bypass the poorest areas of the state. But, thanks to Target’s 2-page ad (and lots of slogging through statistical tables, calls to the State Department of Education, etc), I have enough information now. Who Benefits from “Target School Fundraising”? The first thing I did was to make a list of the 10 poorest counties in Minnesota and the ten least-poor counties. (There are 87 counties in Minnesota.) There are a number of ways to measure poverty, but I used “County Estimates for People of All Ages in Poverty for Minnesota: 1999,” from the U.S. Census Bureau. I think this is a more useful measure than “average income,” since the presence of a few very wealthy people can make the “average” income appear deceptively high. That’s why I refer to the ten “least-poor” counties, and not the “richest” counties. The ten poorest counties have at least 11 percent of their people living in poverty; in the least-poor counties there are no more than 7 percent. This may not seem like a large gap, but these kind of demographics play a large role in corporate decision-making, as we’ll see in a moment. Next I looked at the list of “schools in my area that have benefitted the most, thanks to the support of Target cardholders.” There followed a tedious process of determining exactly where these schools were, and in which counties. (This is the type of moment where I wish I could hire a research assistant, believe me!) Once I was done gathering all the facts, I discovered that my research pretty much confirmed what I expected. As far as “Target Schools” go:
How about Target Stores?
So, what we see is that Target stores, while seemingly everywhere, are not really everywhere. They tend to be in larger towns, cities, and suburbs. As I expected, Target does not, for the most part, operate stores in the poorest areas of the state. These facts seem to support my hypothesis, that the “Target School Fundraising” program largely benefits those schools that are in the more affluent areas of the state and largely bypasses the poorest areas of the state. This case study of the Target Schools is a small part of a very large and very dangerous trend. Next week I’ll spell out some larger lessons that can be drawn from this market-based response to underfunded schools. |
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“How are we doing?” Everybody wants to know, and the newspapers report every day...on some things. Every newspaper has a special “Business” section to report on the details of our economic life. There is never a day when “nothing happens.” And, even if there were, there are always some corporate goings-on that, while they may not be “news,” will still work to fill up the section of the paper set aside for them. For all these reasons, everybody has a general sense of “How we are doing”—economically—at all times. The same with Sports. Sports has its own section, and those who turn to it will find stories about sports. It is assumed—and apparently it’s true—that a significant number of readers want to know, every day, “how we are doing” in these realms. (This means “how the team is doing,” but sports fans always say “we.”) The fact that several Minnesota sports teams were recently doing quite well at the same time even merited a front-page story in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) headlined “Winnesota!” Cute, huh? In the realm of economics, we have several indicators that serve to provide a simple answer to the question “How are we doing?” The most well-known of these is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. People who pay any attention at all to the TV or the radio will hear, several times a day, whether “The Dow is up,” or “The Dow is down.” It’s very crude and very simple—it’s just a number, after all—so it’s easy for newspeople to handle and to report. It’s not particularly meaningful, certainly the daily changes are not, yet we obsess about it. When it comes to sports, we again have easily-quantified and thus easily-reported measurements that tell us “how we’re doing.” The football team is either winning, or it’s losing. What could be simpler? Then there are batting averages, scoring averages, rankings, standings, and so on. In sports, if the home team is losing, there will be calls to replace the coach, or to otherwise “do something.” When it comes to economics, if people think we are “doing well” in general terms, then the president or the governor will get re-elected. If people think we’re not doing well, then we will vote for “change.” California provides a great case study at the moment. Just Like Business, Just Like Sports... Imagine, if you can, that we as a society were as interested in our social health as we are in our economic health, or in the success of our sports teams. First of all, imagine that everyone understood the concept of “Social Health,” which can be thought of as the overall “social climate” that results from the complex interweaving of such things as infant mortality, child poverty, unemployment, wages, health care coverage, inequality, and so forth. Do we know “how we are doing” in this realm of Social Health? In my fantasy, every newspaper would have a “Social Health” section. Channel 4 News would include “News, Weather, Sports, and Social Health.” There might be a simple number—an “Index on Social Health”—that would be reported every day, whether it changed or not. Everyone, everyday, would have a general sense of how we, the people, are doing. If we were doing well—say, if infant mortality rates were to go down unexpectedly—it would be known to everyone. If that rate—or the unemployment rate, or the rate of inequality, or the number of uninsured—went up, that would be known, too, and the pressure would mount to “do something” about our poor social performance. Just as when we call for a new coach for a losing team, what if a decline in the Index of Social Health brought about calls for a new governor? Or maybe calls for a tax increase that would allow us to “Do something!” to improve the welfare of our citizens? This wide reporting of an “Index on Social Health” is a fantasy, but the Index itself is not. Such an index has already been created, by the Institute for Innovation in Social Policy at Fordham University, and I reported on it in Nygaard Notes #84-86. I’ll have a report on the 2003 Index in the next week or two. |