Preview - JAMES W. GUTHRIE

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Preview - JAMES W. GUTHRIE
Volume VII, No. 3
                                                                                                March 2021 Edition

                                Preview
Tower Talk carries articles about health and
wealth. Three articles discuss the creation and
distribution of wealth. There are two COVID-
19-related articles by Peter Hertzmann, one
that unravels the mysteries of “95% effective,”
and another suggests appraising not only the
medical advice itself but also its source. There
is also a polemic advocating recall of the San
Francisco School Board for its misplaced efforts
at renaming 44 schools and failing to operate the
schools it has. Of course, there is a predictable
argument between Austin and Van Ness.                     San Francisco School Board President, Gabriella Lopez

                                                          Few northern cities serve such a small percent of
                 Throw the Bastards Out                   the school age eligible students as does SFUSD.
                          James W. Guthrie                Middle-class parents rely on private and other
                                                          non-public schools to a greater degree in San
In an early draft of A Connecticut Yankee in King
                                                          Francisco than any other major American city
Arthur‘s Court, Mark twain wrote, “First, God
made school board members for practice, then              outside of former Confederate states.
he made monkeys.” The San Francisco Unified               While SFUSD enrollments have been shrinking,
School District Board of Education and high-              school district spending and hiring have been
level central office administrators provide added         on the upswing. Over the last two decades,
evidence of Twain’s derisive observation.                 enrollments have plummeted by a third, but the
It is likely that our city’s school board and             district has added one-third more employees. If the
central administration represent one of the               added employees were classroom teachers, there
most irresponsible government agencies in San             might be some justification. However, they are not.
Francisco’s modern history. Even the City’s left-         It is non-teaching staff, mostly administrators and
leaning Mayor has said that the school board is           central office personnel, that have been added.
acting in an unproductive manner and has filed            Money cannot be claimed as an issue. Per pupil
a lawsuit against the board for not re-opening            expenditures are approaching $20,000 annually.
the public schools. An interview with the school          That is nearly twice as much as the U.S. public
board President published in The New Yorker               school average.
displayed how empty a vessel she is, engaging in
double-speak and criticizing Lincoln and other            Teacher salaries have not been the beneficiaries
historic notables for their flaws rather than             of the school district’s profligate spending. The
proclaiming their heroic accomplishments.                 highest possible salary for a classroom teacher is
                                                          less than the median household income for San
While the school board wastes time and money on
                                                          Francisco residents.
personal political agenda items, such as sponsoring
reparations for Native Americans, covering up or          For the kind of student to personnel ratios and
destroying world-class historic art, and thinking         per pupil spending that are taking place in
of new names for historically labeled schools, they       our city, we should have world-class schools.
are defaulting on their principal responsibility:         Instead, with our school board and central office
providing a good education to students.                   personnel, we appear to have world-class fools.

Opinion, Vignettes, Nostalgia                         1                                           Fair & Accountable
Preview - JAMES W. GUTHRIE
One proposed solution is to subordinate the               capacity on the face of the earth and has no
school board to the County Board of Supervisors           comparison in modern human history.
and empower that body to appoint school board
                                                          Genghis Kahn’s empire would be a rival. Spain
members. Research fails to reveal differences
                                                          at the height of its accumulation of Latin
between appointed and elected school boards.
                                                          American treasure or Victorian England with its
Thus, more to the point, a recall election is in
                                                          colonial hegemony might have been equals, but
order. If you have an opportunity to sign a recall
                                                          those were nations, not a collection of private
petition, please do so.
                                                          individuals and corporations.
                                                       In the San Francisco Bay Area alone, the
                 Wealth and Its Problems
                                                       aggregate market value of Apple, Facebook,
                   James Guthrie
                                                       Alphabet, Netflix, Oracle, Uber, Tesla, and Cisco
The United States is the World’s wealthiest            Systems exceeds the annual gross domestic
nation. Our annual Gross Domestic Product of           product of modern-day Great Britain, and equals
$33 trillion exceeds all other                                            40% of the GDP Germany,
nations, including China, by a               Program Note                 Europe’s wealthiest nation.
wide margin. (On a per capita
                                     On Fridays at 11:30am turn to        It is not simply financial
basis, Switzerland, Ireland, and
                                     Channel 998 and watch Your           capital that is shifting.
Norway have higher GDPs than
                                     San Francisco hosted by James        Demographers have
the U.S.) However, U.S. wealth
                                     Guthrie and Megan Sullivan.          documented the flow of
is not distributed equally,
                                                                          advanced and scientific
either by geography or by            March guests will be:                degree holders from the East
household, and as a nation, we
                                     March 5: Peter Spencer – Social      coast and Midwest to the
are deeply in debt.
                                       Security and San Francisco.        western tech corridor.
A seismic social and economic
                                     March 12: Peter Hertzmann –          Wealth of this magnitude
shift began in the 1990’s. The
                                       San Francisco and food.            portends of disproportionate
U.S. economic and technical
                                                                          political influence. All of us living
centers of gravity began             March 19: Adrienne Jonas – her
                                                                          in San Francisco Towers marvel at
moving rapidly west. New York          unusual path to SF and her
                                                                          and derive investor and consumer
remains a major center for             interesting business career.
                                                                          benefits from the brilliant
finance, and Washington DC is        March 26: Paul Sedway – San          efforts of our neighborhood’s
the nation’s government hub.           Francisco City Planning Issues.    technological experts.
Conventional manufacturing,
energy, and agricultural                                                  Nevertheless, one must
production dominate the Midwest and South.             acknowledge that these ambitious, brilliant
However, here is the change.                           entrepreneurs possess the possibility of unduly
                                                       influencing the political landscape. Apple’s
A massive geopolitical migration of high-tech
                                                       Tim Cook is routinely discussed as a national
knowhow, personal and corporate wealth, and
                                                       political candidate. Facebook’s founder, Mark
potential political influence has congregated
                                                       Zuckerberg, the fourth wealthiest American after
within a 25-mile-wide coastal corporate corridor
                                                       only Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Tesla’s Elon Musk,
beginning with Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks,
                                                       and Amazon’s Jeffrey Bezos, is said to harbor
Boeing, and Costco in Seattle and stretching a
                                                       presidential or senatorial aspirations.
thousand miles south through Apple, Netflix,
Google, and Cisco, in Silicon Valley and               Not only do Tech Titans and their corporations
continuing downward to the defense businesses          have unmatched wealth and visibility that could
of Los Angeles and San Diego. This is the largest      be converted to political capital, but they also
concentration of privately controlled economic         have an additional asset never before previously

Opinion, Vignettes, Nostalgia                         2                                           Fair & Accountable
possessed. Tech companies have unquantifiable                 The two institutions maintain a friendly rivalry
reams of information about each of us: our                    and each probably benefits from the competition.
assets, our aspirations, our consumer tastes, and             Both are academically distinguished, and
our preferences.                                              sometimes they also have good athletic teams.
                                                              This is particularly true of Stanford which for
Modern America is characterized by seldom
                                                              several recent years has had more successful
seen wealth concentration. Today’s Tech Titans
                                                              athletic teams than any other university in the
and their peers comprise less than 1% of the total
                                                              nation. On the academic side, when combined,
U.S. population. They control almost 40% of
                                                              the two institutions have more living Nobel
the nation’s wealth. The situation is every bit as
                                                              Laureates (35) than any nation, except the United
pregnant with the prospect of evil as was possessed
                                                              States.
by Gilded Age Titans of a century ago. Key
ingredients then were oil, steel, brute labor, and            These schools have contributed powerfully to
guile. It is now silicon, technical genius, and hubris.       the Bay Area’s, California’s, and the nation’s
                                                              economies. It is no accident that the electronics
Gilded Age tycoons were conservative. They used
                                                              and emerging biotech revolutions owe their birth
their partisan political power to protect their               in large measure to the scientific R&D activities
interests. Some of today’s Tech Titans follow. For            of these two schools. Cal and Stanford together
example, the Koch brothers, Charles Munger,                   are estimated to contribute $200 billion annually
and Peter Thiel lean right. However, judging by               to California’s $3.14 trillion Gross State Product,
their contributions to electoral campaigns, a                 the fifth largest economy in the World after, the
majority of tech billionaires are liberal in their            U.S., China, Japan, and Germany.
outlook and are capable of using their wealth and
foundations to further their political views.                 The University of California, founded in 1868,
                                                              is the older and by far the larger of the two
Solutions to wealth concentration and                         institutions. It now enrolls approximately 42,000
disproportionate political influence are hard                 undergraduate and graduate students. Stanford
to come by. Breaking up huge companies risks                  was founded in 1885 as a private university
ceding markets to competitors in China and                    by California’s former governor and railroad
Korea. The issue of potentially inappropriate                 magnate Leland Stanford and his wife Jane.
political influence is complicated by recent a                The university is actually named for their son,
Supreme Court ruling sustaining the right of                  Leland Stanford Junior, who died prematurely. It
corporations to be political actors. Thus, for the            enrolls approximately 19,000 undergraduate and
moment, there is little to be done but to be alert            graduate students.
to corporate misdoing.
                                                              Cal is a public institution, deriving its charter
                                                              from the state legislature and governed by a
         Where Wealth Begins: Economic                        gubernatorially appointed Board of Regents,
           Engines in Our Back Yard                           members of which serve extended terms.
                          James W. Guthrie                    Stanford has a self-perpetuating Board of
Wealth formation relies upon land, labor, and                 Directors. Each of these oversight bodies is
capital. It is in the domain of intellectual capital          comprised of highly visible business and political
that the San Francisco Bay Area excels. The Bay               luminaries who are expected to make substantial
Area benefits from the presence of two world-                 financial contributions.
class universities: University of California at               Cal’s annual operating budget is $3 billion.
Berkeley (“Cal”) and Stanford. The 2020 Forbes                Stanford’s annual operating budget is twice as
University rankings proclaims Stanford as the                 large, but that includes Stanford Hospital. Even
best university in the United States and Cal as               though it is a public institution, Cal derives
number seven.                                                 only a small percent of its annual revenues

Opinion, Vignettes, Nostalgia                             3                                          Fair & Accountable
(about 15 percent) from the state. It, like                 debt, probably, forever. We have borrowed this
privately chartered Stanford, depends heavily               money from future generations. This effects the
on charitable and alumni donations, contract                economy because there is less money for each
research funding, endowment income, and                     person to spend on day to day living.
student tuition.
                                                            Most of the debt is held publicly by U.S.
Institutional leadership and governance provide             corporations and agencies. Japan and China are
an interesting contrast. Stanford has risen to              the largest foreign holders of treasury bonds.
greatness, primarily as a consequence of having             This house of cards will collapse if the United
brilliant and dynamic Presidents, seemingly                 States can no longer pay interest on this debt and
blessed decade after decade with creative and               sacred treasuries are devalued. And that will
forceful CEOs.                                              include treasuries in which the Social Security
                                                            Trust Fund is invested. We are currently lulled
Cal certainly has had highly visible and
                                                            into complacency because interest rates are at
dynamic Chancellors. However, Cal’s academic
                                                            such a low level that the payments are tolerable.
prominence, far more than Stanford’s, is due to
                                                            This will not continue.
the comprehensive role in governance played
by the faculty. Faculty appointments and                    The billionaire map on the next page, brazenly
promotions, student academic requirements,                  expropriated from Money Magazine, is evidence
and oversight are provided at Cal by faculty                of the increasing household income disparity in
committees. Stanford’s faculty is active, but it is         America. We are now matching and en route to
far more advisory and less operational than is Cal’s.       exceeding the excesses of the Gilded Age, more
                                                            than a century ago. These were the “malefactors
The two institutions together and their
                                                            of great wealth” against whom Teddy Roosevelt
multifaceted R&D efforts have spawned literally
                                                            railed and eventually tamed.
thousands of Bay Area and worldwide companies
and contribute billions to the economy. Boston              At the end of the 19th century and into the early
has Harvard and MIT, Los Angeles has UCLA and               years of the 20th century, the U.S. economy
Cal Tech, but no other U.S. city can boast of two           was controlled by a relative few oligarchs.
powerhouse universities.                                    Rockefeller, Carnegie, JP Morgan, and Vanderbilt
                                                            were household names, much as Bezos and
One worrisome trend, particularly if it
                                                            Gates are today. While touting the virtues of
accelerates, is the hundreds (Hoover Institute
                                                            capitalism and competition, Gilded-Age Barons
claims thousands) of corporations abandoning
                                                            relied on cartels, monopolies, stock scams, and
California over high taxes and crazy politics. So
                                                            illegal contracts to control more than half the
far, these firms include large employers such as
                                                            nation’s economic assets and exercised vastly
Oracle, Tesla, and Schwab.
                                                            disproportionate political influence. At the time
                                                            of his death, in 1877, Cornelius J. Vanderbilt
 Glaring Problems: Debt and Distribution                    controlled 15 percent of the U.S. economy. In
                          James W. Guthrie                  today’s dollars, Vanderbilt’s wealth would equal
The United States Federal Government has not                approximately $210 billion, more than Jeff Bezos.
had a balanced budget in a quarter-of-a-century.            While not quite as wealthy or powerful as their
The national debt is $23 trillion and growing.              counterparts from yesteryear, today’s billionaires
Per capita debt share approximates $80,000.                 are adding to their wealth at alarming rates.
(A family of 4 owes $320,000) That means we                 Together, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg,
have borrowed $80,000 per person from future                Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet (the five top-ranked
generations, an amount unlikely to be repaid                American billionaires) experienced a collective
in our lifetime. It matters because our children            85% increase in their wealth since the pandemic
and grandchildren will pay interest on that                 began. This equates to an added $303 billion in

Opinion, Vignettes, Nostalgia                           4                                          Fair & Accountable
wealth in a year. In contrast, the median wealth of        resort, always purchase their own island and
American households is about $121,700, and due to          establish their own nation.
COVID-19, there has been a rising inability to cover
                                                           On the other hand, catering to the low-income
monthly bills and a risk of losing one’s home.
                                                           side of the ledger, financial giveaways, such as
Another way to view the enormous concentration             guaranteed annual incomes, create government
of wealth among America’s billionaires is to realize       dependency, encourage individual sloth and
that the top five, listed above, have more combined        criminality, and dash personal dignity. Similarly,
wealth than the total of public-school annual              elevating the minimum wage serves principally
expenditures for all fifty states. Five persons have       to eliminate entry level jobs.
more wealth than is spent annually on the schooling
                                                           New, or at least renewed, approaches are needed.
of more than 50 million U.S. school children.
                                                           A multi-pronged approach is in order. Billionaires
Something must be done about wealth                        need added incentives to give their money away
inequality. If it continues at the current pace,           or direct it toward good causes. (Bill and Melinda
the less fortunate among us, perhaps having                Gates are model citizens in this regard.) At the
lost hope, will withdraw their fealty to the social        lower end of the wealth spectrum, we need
contract, and further imperil democracy.                   financial help and renewed lifetime hope for
Simple and outmoded solutions are discussed                individual workers, poverty impacted families,
everywhere. Vastly increased taxes on the super-           and small businesses. We need bold ideas, not
rich never fully succeeds They find dozens of              old political rhetoric. It is time for a modern-day
ways to shield their wealth. They can, as a last           equivalent of The New Deal or The Great Society.

Opinion, Vignettes, Nostalgia                          5                                          Fair & Accountable
Previously, innovations such as Social Security,            two doses of the vaccine compared to the number
Medicare, space exploration, Obamacare, federal             (162) of study subjects who tested positive on
aid to education, environmental protect, and                a PCR test for COVID-19 after two doses of the
ingenious infrastructure projects such as the               placebo. The median follow-up time was two
Interstate Highway System have resulted from                months. The ratio assumes that the number of
Presidential Task Forces. It is time to try this            subjects in each study group was equal, which it
mechanism again.                                            essentially was.
Joe Biden should convene a Presidential Task                This method of determining effectivity is one of
Force focused on “Post-COVID America.” Its                  convention and is typically used in drug trials.
charge should be a practical plan for a revitalized         The difference in this trial is that the placebo is
economy, debt retirement, and more equitable                not expected to have a positive effect.
society. It must be perceived as being and indeed
                                                            A statistician would state the results differently:
operate in a nonpartisan manner. It should be
                                                            Of the 21,720 subjects who received two doses
co-chaired by Vice President Harris and Stanford
                                                            of the vaccine, 8 subjects tested positive on a
University’s Condoleezza Rice. It should be
                                                            PCR test for COVID-19 in a median period of two
provided with expert and bipartisan staff and
                                                            months following injection. This translates to less
required to report by November of 2021. It should
                                                            than 0.04% of the subjects who were vaccinated
scour the nation for ideas, hold widespread
public hearings and public forums, distill ideas,           later contracted tested positive for COVID-19.
and issue an understandable report intended to              In lay terms, the vaccine administered in the SFT
mobilize Congress and state governments and                 Lounge is probably much more effective than
give Americans confidence that hopeful and                  95%. But what about the word “contagious”? We
peaceful days lie ahead.                                    are hearing news as to how the South African
                                                            variant of COVID-19 is twice as contagious as the
           COVID-19 Vaccination: The                        initial (?) variant. What does this mean? How
         Significance of Two Little Words                   contagious was the first variant?
                          Peter Hertzmann                   From a technical viewpoint, a contagious disease
    A two-dose regimen of BNT162b2 conferred 95%            is a category of transmittable diseases where the
    protection against Covid-19 in persons 16 years         disease is transferred by physical contact with a
    of age or older. Safety over a median of 2 months       sufferer or by casual contact with their secretions.
    was similar to that of other viral vaccines.            Contagiousness is calculated from an entire
This is the conclusion stated in the abstract to            population model, not a sample. Thus, much of
a paper published in the New England Journal of             the current publicity is inaccurate. The measure
Medicine on December 31, 2020. BNT162b2 is the              of contagiousness is R0. If R0 is less than 1, the
technical name for the Pfizer vaccine most of us            outbreak will become extinct. If R0 is greater than
received. Later in the paper, “95% protection”              1, the outbreak will become an epidemic. The
is replaced by “95% effective.” What does “95%              value of R0 represents the number of secondary
effective” mean?                                            infections caused by one infected individual.
It does not mean that you have a one-in-twenty              There is disagreement in the infectious disease
chance of contracting COVID-19 after two doses              profession as at how accurate a predictor R0 is
of the vaccine, even though this was written                since it is only looking at individual transmission
in one of the unsigned emails from Covia                    instead of the population as a whole. Another
Headquarters in Walnut Creek. It simply is the              way of stating this is that a non-random small
ratio of the number (8) of study subjects who               sample of the population may not correctly
tested positive on a PCR test for COVID-19 after            predict how the entire population may react.

Opinion, Vignettes, Nostalgia                           6                                           Fair & Accountable
The CDC estimated value of R0 as of last                    to use a chemical-based approach and surgeons
September for the original variant of COVID-19              tend to use an extraction-based approach. Each
is 2.0 to 2.5, or one infected person will cause 2 to       looks at illness differently. By the time I was
2.5 secondary infections. With the South African            entering that operating room, there were three
variant estimated to be twice as contagious, its R0         other common types of doctors: psychiatrists,
would be between 4 and 5.                                   pathologists, and radiologists.
Last month, it was reported that the South                  The field of gynecology has become a crossover
African variant was believed to have an R0 value            profession in that gynecologists are surgeons by
of 3. This would indicate that either it is not twice       training, yet they also tend to be primary care
as contagious or that the R0 value of the original          physicians for premenopausal, adult women.
variant was only 1.5.                                       Other crossover doctor-types include groups like
Further inquiry discloses a wide range R0 values            interventional cardiologists. Cardiologists, by
of all the virus variants. The South African                training are physicians, but an interventional
variant may be twice as contagious as the                   cardiologist is trained to perform limited
original variant, but what does that mean it is             surgery.
twice as contagious for us as individuals?                  Why does this matter? For the past year, we
We are willing to accept that the effectiveness of          have been listening to advice and counsel
a vaccine in a sample population is a predictor             from different doctors and public health
of how effective the vaccine will be in the entire          officials regarding COVID-19. Sometimes their
population. Scientists seem to be less likely to            counsel are provided in their introduction and
accept contagiousness on the same level.                    sometimes not. The most common group counsel
                                                            epidemiologists, but there’s also virologists,
                                                            immunologists, biostatisticians, evolutionary
                     And Your Source Is?                    biologists, and persons with the three letters
                          Peter Hertzmann                   MPH after their name. Some of the experts are
In 1978, I was awakened by a phone call                     just identified as holding an endowed chair or
instructing me to rush to El Camino Hospital to             as being the administrator of a department in
witness ear surgery. My boss was scheduled to               a university or hospital. One expert commonly
observe the procedure, but luckily for me, he felt          seen on MSNBC giving advice has both a Master
faint upon entering the operating room. I was               of Public Administration and a Master of Science
called to take his place. That morning was the              degree in addition to his medical degree. My
start of my future career developing new surgical           issue with all these experts with alphabet
devices. It was also the first of many mornings             overload is that each looks at the same problem
where I would learn about the practice of surgery           through different types of training.
from the many surgeons I worked with in the                 Another basic facet of medicine I learned is
U.S., Europe, and Japan.                                    that for most doctors, the principles of practice
One concept that I learned early in career that I           have not changed in one aspect since doctoring
later taught other non-doctors who came to me               was learned by apprenticing: do what you were
for training was that there are different kinds of          taught. On many occasions when I was talking
doctors and each treats human maladies from                 to surgeons about changes to a procedure I was
a different approach. Initially, there were just            proposing, I was told that they do what they
physicians and surgeons. Although there are                 learned in medical school and residency and
some differences dating back to guild-produced              there was no reason to change. I learned that to
doctors versus university-produced doctors in               introduce new procedures it was often necessary
the late middle ages, the primary difference is             to find ways of putting market pressure on the
how each approaches illness. Physicians tend                surgeons before they would consider a change.

Opinion, Vignettes, Nostalgia                           7                                         Fair & Accountable
The most common title given seems to be                   to be some of the most credible people discussing
epidemiologist. How many viewers or readers               COVID-19. They tend to be fact based and stay
know anything about the field of epidemiology?            away from both advice and predictions. Their
Wikipedia provides this definition:                       answers are the least sensational and therefore
“Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the            least likely to be found on news programs.
distribution (who, when, and where), patterns
                                                          Immunology is another branch of biology, and
and determinants of health and disease
                                                          it covers the immune systems in all organisms.
conditions in defined populations.” By definition,
                                                          There is a subset of immunology that study
epidemiology is a data-driven science that relies
                                                          diseases caused by disorders of the human
heavily on statistics. Unfortunately, the advice
                                                          immune system. Every once in a while, when I see
given by epidemiologists is based on little real
                                                          an immunologist being quoted or interviewed. It
data or little accurate data, and more likely to be
                                                          often feels like the expert has been sought by the
predictions based on opinion. It’s not uncommon
                                                          reporter to say what the reporter wanted, rather
for modern epidemiological studies, prior to
                                                          than provide new information.
the pandemic, to be controversial and often
discredited. Epidemiologists have learned how to          The last type of expert we hear from, the one that
coax precise conclusions by selectively applying          touches each of us most personally, is the public
statistics to carefully massaged data. (I learned         health official with the letters MPH behind their
this from a biostatistician I worked with at              name. The letters mean the person has a master’s
Stanford.) Advice from epidemiologists has to             degree in public health. (In my career I worked
always be investigated further.                           with many people with the title. They tended to
                                                          also have the initials JD behind their name and
Virology “focuses on the following dimensions
                                                          work as regulatory lawyers.) A public-health
of viruses: their structure, classification and
                                                          masters is a non-thesis degree with a heavy
evolution, their ways to infect and exploit host
                                                          emphasis on regulations and public policy. Most
cells for reproduction, their interaction with host
                                                          public health workers spend their time enforcing
organism physiology and immunity, the diseases
                                                          codes written by others.
they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture
them, and their use in research and therapy.”             As we are pummeled with information about the
Virology is a subfield of microbiology. Virologists       pandemic each day, it is important understand
have masters or doctorates in the field, and a few        the source of the information and how the
have also studied medicine. I have found that the         training and background of the person providing
virologists I have heard interviewed on television        the information may color it.

                                     My wife is blaming me for
                                     ruining her birthday. That’s
                                     ridiculous. I didn’t even
                                     know it was her birthday.

Opinion, Vignettes, Nostalgia                         8                                         Fair & Accountable
Entrez Nous              graduate? What if by prank, seniors adopt Adolf
                                                         Hitler High?
Austin and Van Ness reside in SFT 1501. They are
bickering again. We can listen.                          Aus: Perhaps there could be a contest for a
                                                         school’s name?

Aus: London Breed said some nasty things about           Van: Good thinking. Schools could sell naming
the school board; she is even suing them. That           rights just like stadiums. Jeff Bezos could offer
seems out of line.                                       some pocket change and change Lowell to
                                                         “Amazon Prime” or Zuckerberg could pay for the
Van: As Mayor she can use the bully pulpit on            naming rights for Lincoln and call it, “Face Lift
matters important to constituents.                       High school.” How would that suit you?
Aus: But why pick on the school board? What              Aus: That would be wrong. Private individuals
have they done that justifies a Mayor unloading          can name their own buildings however they like.
on them?                                                 Salesforce Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid
Van: Perhaps the question ought to be framed             are effectively advertising for big business.
differently. Has the school board done anything          Lowell is a public institution.
NOT deserving of criticism?                              Van: Oh! So names do matter. Maybe they should
Aus: You and I went to school in San Francisco.          carry names important historically. Washington
We did all right.                                        contributed to the founding of the nation.
                                                         Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Van: When we were in public schools, the school
                                                         Lincoln freed slaves and kept the Union intact.
board did not busy itself with irrelevant issues
                                                         Those seem to me to be significant
like recommending Native American reparations,
                                                         accomplishments and of continuing relevance.
destroying world famous Victor Arnautoff
murals at Washington High School, or renaming            Aus: I think you are missing the School Board’s
44 schools, including your beloved “Lowell.”             point. All of these white men had flaws.
                                                         Washington owned slaves, Jefferson exploited a
Aus: What is wrong with renaming schools? Who            slave as his mistress, and Lincoln is said to have
cares?                                                   held Indians in low regard.
Van: One group that cares are alumnae. It takes          Van: FDR cheated on his wife, Clinton exploited a
away a part of their personal history. You went to       youthful intern, Martin Luther King was a
Cal. What if the name were changed to Ché                philanderer. No human, save possibly Mother
Guevara U?                                               Teresa, is without blemishes. I think we had
Aus: Might it not be good to have schools named          better select heroes for their preponderance of
after modern heroes rather than those whose              good lest we never have any heroes whatsoever.
relevance has faded?                                     Aus: Covia could change SFT to “Kevin Gerber
Van: Who might those modern heroes be?                   Senior Self-Fulfillment Center.”
Aus: Let students decide.
                                                          Tower Talk is published by SFT resident James W. Guthrie.
Van: Hip Hop HS, Justin Bieber Nursery School,            It is known to but neither seeks nor possesses COVIA
Snoop Dog Technical High?                                 approval. The publisher is assisted in typesetting by Peter
                                                          Hertzmann, proofreading by Jennifer Hamilton, and
Aus: If that is what students want, let them have         archiving by John Darby. On occasion, other authors
it. After all, they attend, we do not.                    contribute substantive articles. Tower Talk is distributed
                                                          electronically. Recipients should write to sugarcaen00@
Van: With what frequency should a school’s name           gmail.com if they wish to be removed from the distribution
change, every year? Should high school seniors            list. Recipients wishing an enlarged print copy should
                                                          make a request and it will be supplied.
decide what to name the school for the year they

Opinion, Vignettes, Nostalgia                        9                                                 Fair & Accountable
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