Opinion
4A
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Other Views
So now
Republicans hate
Coke and baseball
R
epublicans and corporate America have been
conjoined for so long that any breach in the
bond is almost impossible to imagine. Yet
we’re seeing one now, thanks to the GOP’s decision to
give free rein to its authoritarian impulses.
The way it has long worked is easy to explain. Corpo-
rate America
shovels big
bucks to the
Republicans,
DICK POLMAN
who in turn
POLITICAL COLUMNIST
ensure via leg-
islation that
corporate America makes as much money as possible,
which in turn ensures that the Republicans will be further
rewarded. That’s why Mitch McConnell has long cham-
pioned corporate donations as “free speech” and insisted
that those donors have the right to give money without
disclosing their names.
But now that some corporations have belatedly
decided it’s in their best business interest to oppose the
GOP’s vote-suppression efforts (most notably in Georgia),
all of a sudden Republicans like McConnell are out-
raged. Apparently it’s freedom when corporations say
and do stuff that echoes the GOP agenda, but if they dare
stray from the lockstep party line — and speak ill of
the strategy to sabotage democracy — then Republican
heads detonate with maximum decibels.
And so now that Georgia-based Coca-Cola has
denounced the state GOP’s voter-suppression law as
“a step backwards,” and that Georgia-based Delta Air-
lines has accurately pointed out that the law “will make
it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly
Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right”…well,
suffice it to say that McConnell and other party hacks are
suddenly not big fans of corporate free speech.
In a statement Tuesday, McConnell complained that
“parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving
like a woke parallel government,” and he warned that
unless these firms cease their “frantic left-wing sig-
naling,” they would pay a steep price: “Corporations will
invite serious consequences.”
You have to laugh at these people. They’re all for cor-
porate free speech — unless corporations say something
they dislike. Then their impulse is to threaten some form
of punishment. (A government crackdown on rebellious
corporations? Gosh, that smacks of socialism.)
McConnell and his pals don’t seem to grasp the irony
of the situation: Coca-Cola, Delta, and Major League
Baseball (plus, in Texas, American Airlines and com-
puter magnate Michael Dell) have decided that defending
the right to vote would best serve their interests in the
free market. They decided that silently abetting author-
itarianism would be bad for business, pissing off cus-
tomers as well as their employees. Yes, folks, it’s all about
the free market — which Republicans purport to worship.
Granted, you can make the case that Republicans have
reason to be angry. After all, corporate America has
long pumped money into the GOP, to the same state leg-
islators who’ve been concocting vote suppression bills
nationwide. Since 2015, corporations have reportedly
steered $50 million to those state legislators — not neces-
sarily for the express purpose of suppressing the vote, but
simply because they were Republicans.
Their state legislative races are financed by the Repub-
lican State Leadership Committee. Here’s a partial list
of recent corporate donors to the RSLC, just give you a
flavor: 3M, Amazon, Anheuser-Busch, Autozone, Bank
of America, Best Buy, Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb,
Capital One, Charter Communications, Chevron, Citi-
group, Coca-Cola, Comcast, ConocoPhillips, Ebay, Eli
Lilly, ExxonMobil, Facebook, FedEx, General Motors,
GlaxoSmithKline, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Home
Depot, Honeywell, iHeartMedia, JPMorgan Chase,
Juul, LexisNexis, MasterCard, Microsoft, MillerCoors,
Motorola, Nationwide, PayPal, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Ray-
theon, Reynolds American, Sheetz, Target, TIAA, T-Mo-
bile, UnitedHealth, UPS, Visa, Volkswagen, Waffle
House, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, Waste Management, Wells
Fargo, and Yum Brands.
So corporations have long been political players, lob-
bying for interests that typically align with Republican
priorities; the only thing that’s different now is that, from
the GOP’s perspective, they’re suddenly playing for the
wrong team.
One more irony: The GOP, in its knee-jerk opposi-
tion to President Biden’s infrastructure plan, insists that
it’s unfair to finance the rebuilding of America by hiking
taxes on corporations. So what are they going to do now
— agree to hike taxes on corporations, as punishment for
“woke” free speech?
Three words: Pass the popcorn.
———
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist
based in Philadelphia and a writer in residence at the
University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net.
Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com
Education Corner
Testing, testing, testing — Why?
WRITE TO US
SCOTT SMITH
EDUCATOR
T
esting has become quite contro-
versial in education. We often
hear about students’ test scores
or teachers reporting test results. Then
in social groups, you might experience
people discussing that there is too
much testing imposed on our children
in schools. Is there a misconception?
Depending on your generation and
where you attended school, perspec-
tives on student testing have prob-
ably changed dramatically. Testing
in schools in the past was most often
for determining grades in classes
over material taught by the instructor.
Often those tests were teacher-de-
veloped or may have come with the
curriculum covering the information
taught during the instruction. As we
have moved to a more mobile society
we have come to expect students to
learn the same material whether in
a little country town or a large city,
no matter what geographical loca-
tion education looks different than 25
years ago. Publishers created curricula
for all subjects along with creating
tests to ensure that all students receive
the same instruction.
Testing in education has changed
over the years and we have also been
able to learn more about how our
brains learn and develop, thanks to
sciences. We have learned that waiting
for a student and allowing additional
time for them to catch up may not be
the best and may make it even harder
for the child to learn because of what
we now know about brain develop-
ment. Borrowing from the sciences
and using the scientific process of
gaining a baseline, applying theory
and then checking for change means
education takes a different path.
LETTERS
• The Observer welcomes let-
ters to the editor. We edit letters for
brevity, grammar, taste and legal
reasons. We will not publish con-
sumer complaints against busi-
nesses, personal attacks against pri-
In education, if the child is not
showing understanding we are now
able to provide instruction at their
level and check for understanding by
monitoring, which is often referred to
as testing. If the child understands the
concept, they are ready to move on; if
not, some reteaching is necessary. Past
practice often was to assume students
understood it because we taught it to
the whole group or they will catch up
— and some will, but many don’t and
fall behind. This is true in both math
and reading. Moving on and hoping
in time they will catch up is more of a
myth than reality.
Back in the 1970s, publishers were
creating reading materials as fast as
they could. Then they set out to show
how their programs were superior to
teacher-based programs. These cur-
ricula provided instructional mate-
rials along with assessments. During
the 1980s, studies were completed
showing when teachers used and fol-
lowed their programs, students scored
higher. They took their results to the
U.S. Department of Education getting
them to sign off that teachers needed
to follow the programs with fidelity.
We have all experienced changes
in the medical field and the impact
on our health and lives. Look at dia-
betes for example. Twenty years ago
the way we tested sugar levels is much
different than today. It has been life-
changing for many. Schools that have
embraced using data to inform edu-
vate individuals or comments that
can incite violence. We also dis-
courage thank-you letters.
SEND LETTERS TO:
letters@lagrandeobserver.com
or via mail to editor Phil Wright,
911 Jefferson Ave., La Grande, OR
97850
cation rather than teaching what a
teacher feels is best have experienced
greater student learning. There are not
many people who would want the doc-
tors to treat their cancer as they did
40 years ago. The same should be true
with how we educate our youth.
Students are assessed more in
today’s schools than in the past. In the
younger grades, the short screeners
used can determine if the student
knows the skill or needs additional
support and are usually less than
10 minutes. As a teacher, having to
screen each student can seem over-
whelming and feel like all they do is
test, but the students are not spending
all that time testing. The teacher can
use that information to adjust their
lessons to give additional instruction
on skills a student might be struggling
with within the curriculum. This then
allows the student not to fall behind
and keeps their skills moving forward,
whereas in the past students often fell
so far behind it was hard for them to
catch up with their classmates.
———
Scott Smith is a Umatilla County
educator with 40-plus years of
experience. He taught at McNary
Heights Elementary School and
then for Eastern Oregon University in
its teacher education program
at Blue Mountain Community
College. He serves on the Decoding
Dyslexia Oregon board as its
parent/teacher liaison.