Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

The Department of Education has partnered with billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute to promote a global education initiative that seeks “a world where each and every person on Earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan kicked off a $25,000 “Why Open Education Matters” competition that will give a cash prize for the best short video explaining the benefits of what is known as Open Educational Resources, or O.E.R., for students, teachers and schools.The Department of Education has partnered with billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute to promote a global education initiative that seeks “a world where each and every person on Earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan kicked off a $25,000 “Why Open Education Matters” competition that will give a cash prize for the best short video explaining the benefits of what is known as Open Educational Resources, or O.E.R., for students, teachers and schools.
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O.E.R. is a form of global teaching that uses digital materials made available free through open licenses, which allow uses of the materials that would not be easily permitted under copyright alone.
The O.E.R. model of teaching heavily utilizes social media. A 2007 O.E.R forum announced the education group’s mission of creating “a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge.”
O.E.R leaders expressed hopes of using the education initiative to balance what they referred to as the digital divide between the “global North” and the “global South.”
In his remarks to launch the “Why Open Education Matters” competition, Duncan said O.E.R. “can not only accelerate and enrich learning – they can also substantially reduce costs for schools, families and students.”
The “Why Open Education Matters” competition is sponsored and organized by three groups – the U.S. Department of Education, Soros’ Open Society and a group known as Creative Commons.
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.
Creative Commons was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, a technology adviser to Obama. Lessig works closely with a Marxist activist who has argued for the dismantling of the U.S. capitalist system and whose George Soros-funded group petitions for more government control of the media.
Lessig has been mentioned as a future candidate to head the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC. He is an activist for reduced legal restrictions on copyright material and advised Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Lessig reportedly has known Obama since their days teaching law at the University of Chicago. Lessig now teaches at Harvard.
Lessig drew some controversy during the 2008 campaign after he circulated a video depicting Jesus lip-syncing to Gloria Gaynor’s late 1970s disco hit “I Will Survive.” In the video, a mock Jesus is seen stripping down to just a diaper while he effeminately struts along a city street and finally gets run over by a speeding bus.
Lessig is a close associate of Robert W. McChesney, an avowed Marxist who favors the dismantling of capitalism.
McChesney founded Free Press, a Soros-funded organization with close ties to the White House that petitions for more government control of the news media.
Lessig has penned numerous op-ed pieces with McChesney, and the duo have worked together on numerous media projects.
WND previously reported Free Press published a study advocating the development of a “world class” government-run media system in the U.S.
WND reported Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott was named in May 2012 as a policy adviser for innovation at the State Department.
McChesney is a professor at the University of Illinois and former editor of the Marxist journal Monthly Review.
“In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick-by-brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles,” wrote McChesney in a column.
The board of Free Press has included a slew of radicals, such as Obama’s former “green jobs” czar Van Jones, who resigned after his founding of a communist organization was exposed.
Obama’s former “Internet czar,” Susan P. Crawford, spoke at a Free Press May 14, 2009, “Changing Media” summit in Washington, D.C.
Crawford’s pet project, OneWebNow, lists as “participating organizations” Free Press and the now disbanded Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
Crawford and Kevin Werbach, who co-directed the Obama transition’s Federal Communications Commission review team, are advisory board members at Public Knowledge, a Soros-funded public-interest group.
A Public Knowledge advisory board member is Timothy Wu, who is also chairman of the board for Free Press.
Like Public Knowledge, Free Press also has received funds from Soros’ Open Society Institute.
With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott

Atheists love to bargain with people who believe in God as follows: “Show/prove to me God and I’ll believe.”

Imagine that. IF finite people of faith in an invisible, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God can only show/prove His existence atheists will believe in God!

Meanwhile, atheists and their more cowardly cousins agnostics profess to believe in science; really in unproven scientific theory. As if science can explain the entirety of the universe, the purpose and meaning of our lives, and our futures into eternity. It can’t. In fact, one could logically argue that MORE FAITH is needed to believe in science than in God! Why, because ONLY 5% of what comprises and “mechanizes” the universe can be SEEN of the universe.

“It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is (unseen) dark energy. (Unseen) dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to LESS THAN 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.”

“We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe’s expansion. OTHER THAN THAT, IT IS A COMPLETE MYSTERY.”

Of dark energy “more is unknown than known.” **

“We are much more certain WHAT DARK MATTER IS NOT THAN WE ARE WHAT IT IS. First, it is dark, meaning that it is not in the form of stars and planets that we see. Observations show that there is far too little visible matter in the Universe to make up the 25% required by the observations. Second, it is not in the form of dark clouds of normal matter, matter made up of particles called baryons. We know this because we would be able to detect baryonic clouds by their absorption of radiation passing through them. Third, dark matter is not antimatter, because we do not see the unique gamma rays that are produced when antimatter annihilates with matter. Finally, we can rule out large galaxy-sized black holes on the basis of how many gravitational lenses we see. High concentrations of matter bend light passing near them from objects further away, but we do not see enough lensing events to suggest that such objects to make up the required 25% dark matter contribution.”

So, hyper-faith atheistic/agnostic scientific sycophants ridicule believing Jews and Christians, et al, because neither we nor they can see God nor prove Him. But as part of our faith, we can detail and explain more about the essence, character, will and tenets of God than they can about 95% of the universe we live in and which their gurus — scientists — confess to know virtually nothing about. Ninety-five percent of the universe can not bee seen, measured, detected, understood nor predicted other than “it must be there.”

You have got to admire the radical faith of atheistic scientific sycophants. In many ways it puts to scale-shame (15 billion light years across the universe) the weak and sometimes wavering faith of God’s disciples and true believers!

TRUST THIS SOURCE — NASA?

** All quotes above are from NASA scientists contained here:

http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/

By Victor Volski
As a great fan of Jeff Foxworthy, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to use his hilarious you-might-be-a-redneck comedy routine in an attempt to characterize the liberal mindset (tweaking Jeff’s formula a bit to convert it from the suppositional to the unconditional). So, with apologies to the wonderful country comedian, here are some of the notable features of the liberal’s mental landscape:
If you believe that freedom of expression is sacrosanct but would like nothing better than to deny it to anyone who doesn’t share your views, you are a liberal.
If you believe that the 1st Amendment separates church from state, but not state from church, you are a liberal.
If you believe that the 2nd Amendment was the founding fathers’ big mistake and that the 10th Amendment shouldn’t be taken seriously, you are a liberal.
If you believe that endlessly discussing a problem amounts to actually solving it, you are a liberal.
If you believe that the results of progressive programs are irrelevant and that only good intentions count, you are a liberal.
If you believe that Mark Foley, who wrote salacious e-mails to a young but legally adult congressional page, was an evil libertine, while Gerry Studds, who had sex with an underage congressional page, was a knight in shining armor, you are a liberal intellectual.
If you believe that Obama is an intellectual giant whose IQ is off the charts even though you have no idea what his IQ actually is, you are a liberal.
If you believe that a decades-old drunk-driving episode in George W. Bush’s biography comes under the “people’s right to know” doctrine while the entire past of Barack Obama is protected by his right to privacy, you are a liberal.
If you believe that we can spend and borrow our way out of the recession in keeping with the thoroughly discredited Keynesian model, you are a liberal.
If you believe that taxpayers don’t change their behavior when the government tries to squeeze more tax money out of them, you are a liberal.
If you believe that Americans are undertaxed, while carefully hiding your own money in offshore tax shelters, you are a liberal.
If you believe, with Nancy Pelosi and Valerie Jarrett, that unemployment benefits are a boon to the economy (but without taking this brilliant insight to its logical conclusion: that the path to unprecedented prosperity lies through 100% unemployment), you are a liberal.
If you believe that affirmative action improves the lot of poor minorities rather than miring them in perpetual misery and dependence, you are a liberal.
If you believe that Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty failed because not enough money (a trifling $16 trillion) was spent on it, you are a liberal.
If you believe that God’s middle name is Kennedy, you are a liberal.
If you believe that Jimmy Carter, who has been working indefatigably over the last three decades to subvert his country’s foreign policy, is the best ex-president ever, you are a liberal.
If you believe that the Fox News Channel is the modern-day equivalent of Völkischer Beobachter and The New York Times a light unto the world, and whatever the Times publishes is God-given truth while whatever it deems unfit to print doesn’t deserve to be known, you are a liberal.
If you angrily castigate your compatriots for being profligate with their energy consumption while generously allowing yourself to use more than 20 times as much energy as a regular household (see Gore, Al), you are a liberal.
If you believe that your choice of a car affects the planet’s climate while sunspot activity doesn’t, you are a liberal.
If you are notoriously stingy with personal charitable giving but deliriously generous with other people’s money while proudly posing as the true benefactor of the poor, you are a liberal.
If you believe that human nature is infinitely malleable and that nurture easily trumps nature, you are a liberal.
If you believe that your women’s studies degree is superior to a Ph.D. in engineering, you are a liberal.
If you believe that the anarchists, hoodlums, and hobos who make up the Occupy movement are noble idealists who truly represent the 99 percent of America while the Tea Partiers are Nazi troglodytes and of course racists, you are a liberal.
If you believe that perjury is not a crime if it is about sex, you are a liberal.
If you believe that Bill Clinton defended the Constitution as he repeatedly perjured himself, you are a liberal.
If you believe that Hillary’s rather primitive bribery scheme with cattle futures was so complicated as to be beyond human comprehension and thus ought to be shoved into the memory hole, you are a liberal.
If you believe that Chuck Colson, who served seven months behind bars for procuring a single FBI file, got away with murder, but the Clintons, who demanded from the FBI some 900 files, were defenseless lambs relentlessly persecuted by cruel Republicans, you are a liberal.
If you believe that the mountains of corpses and rivers of blood that have been the chief result of all communist “experiments” are merely collateral damage, a possibly regrettable but unavoidable byproduct of the high-minded attempts to build paradise on earth and thus nothing to talk about, you are a liberal.
If you believe that Alger Hiss or Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were innocent victims of McCarthyism, you are a liberal.
If, to reinforce your salon cred, you bedeck your infant in a T-shirt bearing the likeness of that murderous sadist, Che Guevara, you are a liberal.
If you believe, against plentiful historical evidence to the contrary, that appeasement works and that America’s unilateral disarmament will surely mollify enemies by demonstrating our peaceful intentions and shame them into following our example, you are a liberal.
If you believe that negotiations are the be-all and end-all of international relations and that as long as our adversaries deign to talk to us, everything is fine and dandy, even if they clearly use the negotiations as a smokescreen to pursue their nefarious schemes unmolested, you are a liberal.
If you believe that the Palestinians sincerely want an accommodation with Israel and that only the stiff-necked Jews’ obduracy stands in the way of Middle East peaceful settlement, you are a liberal.
If you believe that all cultures are equal but that Western culture is less equal than the others, you are a liberal.
If you believe that a crucifix immersed in the “artist’s” urine or a bucket of paint splashed onto a canvas is genuine art, you are a liberal.
If you believe that a murderous hoodlum is not really guilty because he grew up in a tough neighborhood and that “judgmentalism” is really the only crime deserving of opprobrium, you are a liberal.
If you reflexively sympathize with the criminal while scornfully ignoring the crime victim, you are a liberal.
If you believe that Bill Maher is indeed politically incorrect and Warren Buffet is dying to pay more taxes, you are a liberal.
If you love the “people” but despise the “populace,” you are a liberal.
If you believe that you and your ilk will be able to fool the American people indefinitely…well, you may have a point there.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/a_guide_to_the_liberal_mind.html#ixzz1oDl1xZPK

Which explains

The Cyclical Rise and Fall of Bureaucracy

While at the same time answering the age-old question:

“What happened to the Maya?”

OR

I’M NOT GIVING YOU ANYMORE CORN TO BUILD PYRAMIDS

 

Introduction

“The Mayas were intelligent; they had a highly developed culture. They left behind not only a fabulous calendar but also incredible calculations. They knew the Venusian year of 584 days. . . ” (p.55)

Von Daniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods? Bantam Books: New York.

 

For years people wondered where did these peaceful geniuses go.  Did the mother ship come down and carry them back to Jupiter or wherever peaceful geniuses come from?  Did they evolve into a higher state of being? 

All this wondering provided the gist for popular speculation and pseudoscientific pontification for many years or at least until Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov and other linguists translated the Mayan language.  Then it was learned that they might not have been so peaceful after all, and as a matter of fact they may have been one of the most warlike of all peoples.  And low and behold archeological data began to supply the required evidence and the problem was solved: the Mayan had destroyed themselves in an orgy of fire and arrows.  It all seemed so neat, scientific, and profitable.

Then some smart aleck historian, who also happened to be an organizational leadership researcher, made the mistake of interviewing some of the Native Americans who today make-up a sizable portion of the population of Guatemala and Mexico who happen to look surprisingly like the people depicted in the Mayan bas-reliefs.  And inconvenient as it may seem once all this speculation, pontification, and general wondering had made several careers and helped some otherwise starving publishers buy much needed yachts and mansions this eager young researcher emerged from the wilds ofNorthern Arizona and declared, “The Maya had NOT disappeared after all.” 

“What!”  Cried the popular speculators. 

“Away with him!”  Yelled the enraged pseudoscientific pontificators. 

“Quick, have him write a book about it!”  Yelled the copious publishers from their thousand foot yachts docked outside their hundred room mansions.

Since it is impossible to categorically answer the question, “What?”  And since no one really ever feels like following the Red Queen’s advice and conveniently being, “Away withed.”  I figured I might as well at least write an article and do my little part to help keep poor, disadvantaged publishers supplied with at least enough caviar, truffles and European blended coffees to avert any relief from the high cholesterol and gout which serve as their red badge of courage.

So where did the Maya go?  To quote one of my sources, “We got tired of giving those guys all our corn to build pyramids so we moved to the next valley and kept our corn for ourselves or something like that.”

This somehow brings me to the breakthrough Organizational Leadership concepts that should make my career as a leadership expert and hopefully get me an invitation to sip European coffee and eat truffles on one of those yachts. 

Are you ready? 

Here they come:

1. Bureaucracy is a good thing.
2. History supports the theory that bureaucracy is fundamental to the human condition
3. Bureaucracies all start out as pyramids with a large base, a small peak, and a proportional center, which adequately supports the top and adequately covers the base.
4. Bureaucratic pyramids all eventually become diamonds as they bloat in the middle.
5. All organizational diamonds eventually collapse due to the bloated weight of the expanded center.
6.  The top is always lost in the crash. 
7. A majority of the center plunges back to the base.
8. The natural leveling process of change never leaves a level playing field.
9. A new peak immediately appears because there is always a point that rises above the field.
10. The remaining middle coalesces to support the new peak in order to accentuate and solidify its difference from the base.
11. Another pyramid establishes itself on the ruins of the preceding one. 

I call this Owens’ Law of the Oscillating Pyramid.  I propose that this Law explains the cyclical rise and fall of bureaucracy.  This Law is based upon observation and research and upon the fact that eventually the costs outweigh the benefits and someday, somewhere someone is going to yell, “I’m not giving you anymore of my corn to build pyramids!”

The collapse of the Soviet Union provided a perfect example of this phenomenon.  For decades, this highly bureaucratic “Evil Empire” had enforced its rule by giving benefits to one group (the communists) to brutalize and dominate other groups (everyone else).  As the model predicted the Soviet system admitted more and more people into the middle of the pyramid thus bloating the mid-level brutalizers and increasing the number of people who supposedly had a stake in the system.  But unfortunately for the Evil Empire the inefficiencies of the system didn’t allow the pyramid to provide the material advantages needed to continue the inflation nor to even sustain the growing weight of the middle level.  Therefore with no incentive to continue supporting the regime the pyramid collapsed.

Bureaucracy = hierarchical structure, division of labor, written rules, and records. 

This has been evident since the beginning of time. 

Examples:

Revolution every generation

Revolutionary youth becoming Reactionary adults

Luther from 99 theses to peasant revolt

British bureaucracy “the ministry” goes on though ministers may come and go.

Pyramids are made of pyramids, each department or group has a head, and each head is supported by layers. 

When a pyramid falls these component pyramids tend to seek independence (Chinese mandarins – Roman Empire) and then they begin to coalesce into succeeding pyramids, such as exemplified by the successive Egyptian and Chinese dynasties or the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne.

Signs that the end of a pyramids cycle is approaching:

• “I was just following orders,”  or “That’s the way we’ve always done it,” as an excuse for doing things that common sense tells us are foolish. 
• Malicious obedience.  When a subordinate follows the nonsensical orders of superiors in the hopes that doing so will bring about change.
• Geritocracy.  Look at Congress.  Almost automatic re-election ensures a constantly aging pool of leaders with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

In modern American society we have moved from Trueman’s “The buck stops here,” to Clinton’s “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.?’ ”  From Bill Gates leading an industry to change the world to octegenarian politicians whose secretary’s have to turn on their computers deciding what shape that industry should take.

At the time of the American Revolution there was no direct taxation there was instead taxes on various transactions which in total added up to a miniscule percentage of their income.  Today, for many it is now over 50%.  How much corn are we willing to give to those we don’t trust to do things we don’t want?  How long can this continue?  We are spending the money of the unborn to pay for the repose of the unproductive.  This is the ultimate expression of taxation without representation.

The Oscillating Pyramid Cycle:

Formless base – pinnacle dominated true pyramid – bloated middle diamond shaped twin pyramid – out of balance wobble (component pyramids strive for increasing individual autonomy) – collapse

Historical opportunity to break this cycle:

The Israelites at Mt.Sinai.  Instead they reject God’s offer to reinstate a personal relationship and demanded that Moses build them a social pyramid instead.

Proposed Exception to the Rule:

Steady-state primitive (Neolithic, pre-agriculture) societies both ancient and modern have been advanced as being different then the cultures of the present and therefore by implication exempt from this theory of bureaucratic/organizational structure.  There is not enough social or organizational data to make informed statements about unknown cultures.  Every one that has been extensively studied and reported on exhibited the pyramidal, hierarchical social structure and rule based operation even if a lack of writing precluded the development of true bureaucracy.

Long running societies (China, India, and Rome) exhibit this oscillating character within the ebb and flow of civil war and dynastic change.

In modern democracies, elections are designed to provide stability through a peaceful, periodic change in the pinnacle thereby allowing the base to exert influence and buy into the existence of the pyramid through nationalism.  Economic self-interest has also become a major factor in modern democracies.  Periodic major changes, Andrew Jackson, FDR, etc. change the tenor but not the shape as the middle continues to bloat.  Modern democracies are still too new of a phenomenon to contend that they will break the pattern and at the moment they appear to be textbook cases of its operation.

Change of focus for modern consideration: Bureaucracy is a GOOD thing.  The oscillating nature of its natural life cycle should be understood, recognized, appreciated, and factored into current calculations for what it is, the natural course of human organization.  Change is a constant component of life. 

So the next time you’re standing in line to renew whatever permit happens to need renewing at the time tell yourself that, “Bureaucracy is a GOOD thing.”  Tell yourself that about a thousand times as you wait for the clerk who has been standing at the window for ten minutes waiting to open the window at exactly 9 AM and not one second sooner.  And as your mind numbs through this exercise you can comfort yourself with the thought, “Eventually all pyramids fall,” as you fight to keep yourself from standing on a chair and yelling,

“I’M NOT GIVING YOU ANYMORE CORN TO BUILD PYRAMIDS!”

Then again as every pyramid falls another takes its place. That is Owens’ Law of Oscillating Pyramids.

 

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2011 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

 

Excerpt:

I propose that Owens’ Law explains the cyclical rise and fall of bureaucracy. 

Tags;

 

By Michelle Malkin  •  December 21, 2011 11:05 AM

The road to gastric hell is paved with first lady Michelle Obama’s Nanny State intentions. Don’t take my word for it. School kids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the east wing chef-in-chief’s healthy lunch diktats. Get your Pepto Bismol ready. The taste of government waste is indigestion-inducing.

According to a weekend report by the Los Angeles Times, the city’s “trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop.” In response to the public hectoring and financial inducement of Mrs. Obama’s federally subsidized anti-obesity campaign, the district dropped chicken nuggets, corn dogs and flavored milk from the menu for “beef jambalaya, vegetable curry, pad Thai, lentil and brown rice cutlets, and quinoa and black-eyed pea salads.”

Sounds delectable in theory. But in practice, the initiative has been what L.A. Unified’s food services director Dennis Barrett plainly concludes is a “disaster.” While the Obama administration has showered the nation’s second-largest school district with nutrition awards, thousands of students voted with their upset tummies and abandoned the program. A forbidden-food black market — stoked not just by students, but also by teachers — is now thriving. Moreover, “(p)rincipals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away.”

This despite a massive increase in spending on nutritional improvements — from $2 million to $20 million alone in the last five years on fresh produce.

This despite a nearly half-billion-dollar budget shortfall and 3,000 layoffs earlier this year.

Earlier this spring, L.A. school officials acknowledged that the sprawling district is left with a whopping 21,000 uneaten meals a day, in part because the federal school lunch program “sometimes requires more food to be served than a child wants to eat.” The leftovers will now be donated to nonprofit agencies. But after the recipients hear about students’ reports of moldy noodles, undercooked meat and hard rice, one wonders how much of the “free” food will go down the hatch — or down the drain. Ahhh, savor the flavor of one-size-fits-all mandates.

There’s nothing wrong with encouraging our children to eat healthier, of course. There’s nothing wrong with well-run, locally based and parent-driven efforts. But as I’ve noted before, the federal foodie cops care much less about students’ waistlines than they do about boosting government and public union payrolls.

In a little-noticed announcement several months ago, Obama health officials declared their intention to use school lunch applications to boost government health care rolls. Never mind the privacy concerns of parents.

Big Government programs “for the children” are never about the children. If they were, you wouldn’t see Chicago public school officials banning students from bringing home-packed meals made by their own parents. In April, The Chicago Tribune reported that “unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.” The bottom line? Banning homemade lunches means a fatter payday for the school and its food provider.

Remember: The unwritten mantra driving Mrs. Obama’s federal school lunch meddling and expansion is: “Cede the children, feed the state.” And the biggest beneficiaries of her efforts over the past three years have been her husband’s deep-pocketed pals at the Service Employees International Union. There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more at all costs.

In L.A., the district’s cafeteria fund is $20 million in the hole thanks to political finagling by SEIU Local 99. The union’s left-wing allies on the school board and in the mayor’s office pressured the district to adopt reckless fiscal policies awarding gold-plated health benefits to part-time cafeteria workers in the name of “social justice.” As one school board member who opposed the budget-busting entitlements said: “Everyone in this country deserves health benefits. But it was a very expensive proposal. And it wasn’t done at the bargaining table, which is where health benefits are usually negotiated. And no one had any idea where the money was going to come from.”

Early next year, Mrs. Obama will use the “success” of her child nutrition campaign to hawk a new tome and lobby for more money and power in concert with her husband’s re-election campaign. It’s a recipe for more half-baked progressivism served with a side order of bitter arugula.

In the topsey turvey world of 21^st century America those who live by the kindness of strangers wish to dictate how much kindness they deserve changing the strangers from benefactors to victims.  We have reached a point where our national motto should be “Stand and Deliver” as a runaway government devours everything in sight in an effort to satisfy the growing demands of their pre-programmed supporters. 

America has taken such a bizarre turn that oxymorons are the only things that make sense any more.  Organized anarchy has exploited militant apathy to create regulated liberty so that producers must provide for slackers and the informed must follow the dictates of the willfully ignorant. You can’t fix stupid but there is a cure for ignorance.  If we could just get these products of public education and sports hypnosis to take off the blinders long enough to understand the meaning behind the matrix perhaps we could garner one more electoral victory to stop us before we step off the cliff.  Except of course the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media are working as hard as they can to make sure our choice comes down to Tweedle De and Tweedle Dum. 

Our Progressive era seeks to change the old adage, “Those who refuse to learn from History are doomed to repeat it” to “Those who refuse to learn from History doom the rest of us to repeat it.”  The patients have seized control of the asylum.  The land of the free and the home of the brave is transforming into the land of the free lunch and the home of the knaves.  Symbiosis is the living together in more or less intimate association or close union of two dissimilar organisms as in parasitism. What we are witnessing today is symbiosis on steroids wherein the parasite isn’t merely along for the ride but instead demands the driver’s seat. 

Looking at the almost bewildering explosion of reality we call today our minds behold the organized anarchy of the occupy everywhere movement that is spreading around the world.  We are now witnessing a government supported revolution akin to Mao’s Cultural Revolution. This isn’t a revolt of the 99% seeking to devour the 1% it is the 46% that pay no federal taxes seeking to increase the production from their 54% milk cows. To call forcing one segment of the population to work to support another segment of the population paying your fair share makes theft a contribution and bondage a responsibility.  

The people involved express a variety of causes.  They want a bailout for home owners who are upside down or in foreclosure.  At the same time they want those who accepted the bailout on Wall Street prosecuted.  They want student loans forgiven, wars stopped, big corporations downsized, and an end to capitalism.  Many politicians and their major media publicity machine have embraced the movement labeling it the Progressive version of the Ta Party.  This is a window on the future.  Showing the silent majority what is to come: a shabby world where the Lilliputians have not only bound Gulliver they have harnessed him to the cart and forced him to be their beast of burden. 

By seeking the destruction of capitalism instead of seeking to break the umbilical cord between the crony capitalists and their bought and paid for politicians what they really seek is to force us to worship the myth of free enterprise as we sacrifice the energy and inventiveness of the productive on the altar of the indolent. 

It is time to lay our cards on the table.  It is time to call a spade a spade.  Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined by competition in a free market.  Socialism is an economic characterized by collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.  Fascism is an economic system that exalts the nation above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government with severe economic regimentation.  Essentially fascism is socialism pretending to be capitalism since private ownership exists in a government straightjacket. 

Which of these systems do we have?  Which of these systems is staring us in the face every day? 

I challenge anyone and everyone to take this test.   Watch the stock market for one month.  Watch its ups and downs.  What you will see is that the market does not move because of innovation or production it moves in response to government actions, statements, and policies.  While we still have private ownership the government is increasingly regulating and controlling the economy.  Take the test.  Review the definitions above and you decide.  Which of these systems do we have?  Or does it have us? 

America has never experienced a truly capitalistic system.  We were born under mercantilism. We grew to power under Henry Clay’s American System of nationalistic paternalism.  We have flirted with socialism in a mixed system since FDR reshuffled the deck and institutionalized the New Deal.  And now we struggle to maintain some visage of freedom at the edge of a crony capitalism whose Progressive public-private security blanket has become the pillow that smothers all incentive.  We have morphed from a representative republic operating on democratic principles into a state wholly owned by a good old boy coalition composed of the perpetually re-elected, the unions, and the crony capitalists: the Outfit. 

The over educated under informed lemmings that call themselves the 99% are being duped by the Outfit.  They are a collective battering ram assailing the last remnants of American individualism.  They are using the threat of social unrest to demand the final triumph of “I want what I want” over “I get what I earn.” 

What’s the cure for the Great Recession?  Is it more government spending and more government control as the Outfit and their 99% fellow-travelers tell us?  Is it “Drill baby drill” and a return to a golden-age of pure capitalism that never really existed?  

First we must understand our situation.  What is the cause of the chronic state of our anemic recovery?  Is it as our president tells us and the world: Americans are soft, arrogant  and lazy?  Or have we finally reached the tipping point?  Have we finally reached the point where all the Peters being robbed to pay for Paul’s vacation have decided to change their name to Paul? Is this a recession or is it a strike?  The central planners look at the wreckage of a once great economy that their programs have gutted and say, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.”  They should be asking “How many omelets can they make if the goose doesn’t lay any more golden eggs?” 

Which leads to one last question: “Who is John Galt?” 

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2011 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Should public school officials have the right to prevent students from wearing pro-American garb on Cinco de Mayo?

This question has been at the heart of a California court battle between the Morgan Hill Unified School District and students who were told by a principal and assistant principal that they could not wear American flag t-shirts on the Mexican holiday back in 2010.

Following the incident, a lawsuit against the district was launched by the students and their families. This week, the case came to a close, with a federal judge ruling against the students — a blow that is likely to infuriate some free speech advocates.….Read More

A negotiation is the formalized give-and-take side of a conversation. The blending of the two, a negotiation with the less formal tone of a family discussion, is aptly termed in the dictionary of the way we speak as “to conversate.” 

A debate is merely an argument dressed up in its Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.  So whether we should call our current national dialog a debate or an argument depends upon the sensibilities of the writer and the reader.  For the purposes of fairness and inclusiveness I will therefore coin a new term, “Argubate.”  

Has there ever been a time in American History when everyone at least seemed to agree on everything? 

Yes, there was a brief interlude forgotten by all save Historians, a moment of forgotten peace in our raging sea of political passion.    

In the overwhelmingly nationalistic years after the War of 1812 there was a brief period which saw a dramatic lowering of the heat in our perpetual political strife.  In the Election of 1816, James Monroe a Democratic Republican defeated the last of the Federalist candidates. Monroe and his policies were so popular and so well received that he won reelection in the Election of 1820 facing no opposition whatsoever.  This brief calm in the political storm is the popularly forgotten Era of Good Feelings. 

Ever since that one brief lull in the ideological conflagration the battle has flared.  First one side and then the other are in the driver’s seat while the other side plots its eventual return to power.  It has only been by compromise that we have avoided a series of fratricidal wars. 

Compromise today has a negative connotation for those on the limited government side of the aisle.  100 years of compromise with those who wish to progress past the limitations enshrined in our founding document have brought us to the strangulation of regulations and the oppression of an overwhelming central government.  However, compromise is still the only way to avoid the abyss which lies beyond our current position on the precipice of mutually exclusive partisanship.  

Compromise is the only thing that will preserve our country from either splintering into pieces all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put together again, a-la the USSR or sinking into the type of gulag from which the Russians are still struggling to escape. 

Beyond the eloquent explanations and focus-grouped sound bites compromise is essentially everyone doing what no one wanted.  Compromise can also be the tactic of any group that seeks to move ahead one step at a time.  Gain a little here and a little there until one inch at a time you have moved across the street.  And therein lays the problem.  The Progressives have used this tactic so often and for so long that the silent majority finally woke up to find their elected representatives had sold the cow for some magic beans.  It is hard to trust compromise when it has bargained away our heritage one new interpretation at a time.  However, the looming breakdown in civil discourse prompts me to urge a renewed effort to find some way to preserve the peace while preserving our freedom. 

Compromise has a long history in America for we were born in compromise. 

It was only due to the Great Compromise reached in Independence Hall that we have a Constitution.  The New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan were wedded to produce a compromise satisfying the desires of both the small states and the large states by creating a House of Representatives based upon population and a Senate with equal representation. 

The Union was preserved twice by compromise. 

By 1820 the division between the slave-holding South and the emancipated North was growing bitter.  The debate hinged upon the even division of the senate.  For every state admitted on one side the other side demanded a counterbalance.  When it came time to begin carving states out of the Louisiana Territory the Southern side was the first to advance to that stage, but the North could not abide admitting Missouri as a slave state since there was no free state ready for admission.  So the Missouri Compromise solved the problem and kept the peace. 

Missouri was admitted as a slave state. Maine was separated from Massachusetts and admitted as a free state.  A line was drawn along the southern boundary of Missouri. Everything North of that would be free, and everything South of that slave. Thirty years later a new compromise held off war for another ten years. 

The Compromise of 1850 was designed to address the sectional rivalry over slavery which was tearing our young nation apart.  It was in reality a series of five bills.  The compromise brought in California as a free state.  It allowed New Mexico and Utah to decide the slavery issue through a popular vote and gave Texas ten million dollars to pay its debt to Mexico for which it gave up lands claimed in present day New Mexico.  It abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia and the Fugitive Slave Act which made it a federal crime for any federal official not to arrest a runaway slave.  

This compromise only lasted four years when it was effectively repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act which once again opened the northern territories to the possibility of slavery and leaving the decision in the hands of the voters.  This led to increasing hostilities between the two sides culminating in John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry and the Civil War: the ultimate break down of America’s process of compromise. 

The Civil War did not end America’s use of compromise to avoid permanent division.  Reconstruction, the occupation of the South by Northern armies after the Civil war, eventually led to an impasse with the threat of renewed conflict.  War was averted when the Compromise of 1877 gave a disputed election to a Republican president, an end of Reconstruction, and various offices and political gains to the Democrats. 

Except for the fleeting Era of Good Feelings and those unusual and brief times when the same side controlled all three branches of government, America has moved forward by compromise.  For compromise, true compromise, not surrender dressed up in a palatable name, is the sweet spot where any group that is in reality two groups must dwell if there is to be peace, progress, and harmony.  Make no mistake, since the beginning America has ever been the home of two sides: the Patriots and the Loyalists, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, the Democratic Republicans and the Whigs, and those two rabid beasts we all love to hate the Democrats and the Republicans.   

Instead of just shouting our mutually exclusive slogans at each other what we need is a dialogue across the no-man’s-land which separates our entrenched positions.  This article is an attempt to urge both sides to realize neither side has the support to dominate the other long enough to legislate let alone legitimize total victory.  If we can get beyond shouting slogans at each other perhaps we can find our way to a compromise that will allow us to continue as the last best hope of humanity.  If not, we may well slide into the shabby collectivism which shackles the rest of the globe. 

Is there anything we can agree on?  Is there any way forward?  Can we at least conversate about the argubate?  I say this realizing that in our current atmosphere of hyper-partisanship this call for compromise will probably make neither side happy.  However, I am willing to be dammed if I do and dammed if I don’t in an attempt to preserve the peace if we can do so while preserving our freedom.  Keep the Faith.  Keep the Peace.  We shall overcome.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2011 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

In mid-October, New York Magazine conducted a survey of 50 random Occupy protesters in which they were asked a series of basic, politically-charged questions in order to gauge their level of understanding of economics, current affairs, elected leaders…and what, exactly, they are protesting.

MRCTV went down to Zuccotti Park and asked three of these questions to the protesters. The video below features their answers.

The questions asked were:

1. What is the Dodd-Frank Act?

2. Who is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve?

3. Who is Elizabeth Warren?

Watch below:

Tiffany Gabbay

CSantarelli

Supporters of Occupy Seattle have reportedly “occupied” lectures at Seattle Central Community College. And now, according to the Seattle Times, instructors who work at the college have started teaching classes in support of the movement:

“The classes are scheduled to be held in the plaza of Seattle Central Community College. They will focus on subjects such as legislative lobbying, the art of the protest sign and filming to document human rights violations.”
MSNBC reports that the ‘Occupy’ classes began at SCCC Sunday night, and were titled “Why We Support Occupy,“ ”The Art of the Protest Sign,“ and ”Filming to Document Human Rights Violations.”

Occupy Seattle protesters moved their location to Seattle Central Community College Saturday after administrators said they would tolerate protesters camping on campus.

“We’re excited to work with Occupy Seattle in recognition of the fact that the employees and students of the Seattle community colleges are the 99 percent,” said Karen Strickland, president of the American Federation of Teachers-Seattle to KOMO News. The SCCC president has said that legal ambiguities allow the encampment at the community college.

President Kilpatrick told KOMO that while he has allowed the camp, he fears it will end up costing the school up to $100,000 in extra security. Protesers are welcome to enter classrooms if invited by a faculty member. Since the Occupy Seattle protests began four weeks ago there have been nearly 60 arrests.
Video Link

Unfortunately most of what we are taught in History survey classes in American schools consists of simplistic formulas.  Formulas designed to persuade those forced to attend the government controlled education mills that they should ride the same ideological hobby horses as whoever currently has the power to select textbooks and prescribe curricula.   Whether it was the rabidly pro-American imperial History of yesteryear that pushed lines such as, “We never started a war and never lost one,” and “We turned a raw wilderness into a civilized nation.” or, if it is the rabidly anti-American propaganda of today spouting lines such as, “America was founded by deists who used serial genocide and economic fascism to steal a nation, pollute the earth, and poison the sea” neither are correct. Both versions are merely two sides of an extremely myopic view which does not seek to discover nor promote the truth but instead seek to mold the next generation into what they think will be foot soldiers in their own crusade. 

History, if it has any value at all is that it fulfills two goals.  First, the study of History should provide context.  A text without a context is a pretext and we must have context so we can understand how we as a people became who we are, how the world became what it is, and where it might go next.   Secondly, the study of History should help us learn from and hopefully avoid the mistakes made by those who have gone before so we can leave a better world to those who come after.   However, as stated above, these are rarely the goals of History education.  The reason why is summed up in a joke only Historians seem to get. 

Objectivity. 

Most people in the world believe objectivity exists.  They act as if the stories presented in survey of history classes are “the facts ma’am and nothing but the facts.”  I was once part of this blissful herd.  I was a self-taught Historian before I took the plunge and studied to become a card carrying member of the profession.  I was captured by the allure of History when I was nine years old.  Nothing in the world made any sense.  What I was taught and saw at home conflicted 180 degrees from what I was taught at church.  What I was taught at church conflicted 180 degrees from what I was taught at school.  What I saw on the streets appeared real because it seemed to be the way the world actually worked, but it was out of synch with my home my church and my school.  Not knowing myself well enough to know that I am a person who operates best when things make sense and the world appears orderly I was confused and uncomfortable living in a world so out of joint. 

Consequently when I learned in the third grade that there were histories of the world available I latched on to them like a drowning man latches on to a life preserver.  I began reading History books every day.  They became my raft in a swirling sea of confusion creating an orderly world of sequential reality that I used to build my bridge to the first positive value of History, gaining a coherent understanding of how we as a people became who we are, how the world became what it is, and where it might go next. However, I was a rebellious child. A child who never moved to the second value of History.  I never learned to profit from the mistakes of those who went before.  Following those in my family who went before I walked out of traditional education at age sixteen figuring I knew enough to make my way in the world.  Twenty plus years of manual labor later I thought it might be a good idea to finish my education. 

When I finished my Bachelor degree in History I realized that a Bachelor degree in History is good for two things, it can help you become the manager of the electronics department at Wal-Mart and it opens the door for a Master Degree in History.  Since I was determined to become a History professor, I chose the latter.  On my first day of graduate school this budding self-taught Historian had to grit my teeth as a professor told our class, “There are no facts, and History is only what Historians say it is.” 

Of course I had to run up after class to argue, “How can you say there are no facts?  Look at the Vietnam War.  We know it happened.  We know when it started and when it ended.  Those are facts and we can know them!”  After listening calmly to my impassioned tirade the professor quietly said, “Maybe there’s another side to that story.” 

This rude awakening sent me on a journey of discovery: searching for the other side of the story.  Along the way I contributed my first chapter in a History book.  My research helped me realize there is more than one side to every story.  There are often conflicting facts, overlapping timelines, and always another way to look at everything.  The truth of this is displayed in an endless series of quotes.  Napoleon once said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.”  Voltaire said, “History is a pack of lies we play on the dead.”  Ambrose Bierce said, “God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.”  And one of my favorite philosophers, Anonymous sagely added, “The certainty of history seems to be in direct inverse ratio to what we know about it.” 

What is the purpose of this self-revealing stroll down memory lane?  It isn’t for the purpose of either self-actualization or confession.  Both of those goals were achieved long ago.  It is instead my attempt to lead you my loyal reader (for those will be the only ones left after such a lesson in historiography) to the second value of the study of History.  I am encouraged by the multitudes of people who are today engrossed in this study.  So many of the recently awakened yearn to know the History of America, they long to know how our Constitution was written by whom and why.  I am here to remind everyone we need to look at all sides, consider every angle, and remember everyone has a point of view, even Historians, and objectivity is in reality subjectivity in a grey flannel suit. 

Remember that second value of History?  It should help us learn from and hopefully avoid the mistakes made by those who have gone before so we can leave a better world to those who come after.   If we merely exchange the unabashedly anti-American lenses of the present for the unquestioning pro-American lenses of the past we will be blind to what we really need to see. 

The complexity of reality defies the easy interpretations of partisan politics.  Has America always been right?  No, the jingoistic refrain of “My country right or wrong” will lead those who blindly salute it into supporting what is wrong as easily as what is right.  Has America always been wrong?  No, the view currently used to indoctrinate the youth in our public schools which sees America as an imperialistic power that used genocide, racism, and naked aggression to build a hegemonic empire forget all the good America has accomplished.  This view presents an America bent on maintaining the privileges of the rich over the rights of the poor and leads those who imbibe its venom into ignoring that America was founded as the world’s greatest experiment in personal liberty and economic freedom. 

Both views are too simplistic for people who want to break free of the matrix and see the world for what it truly is: a struggle between those who wish to control mankind for their own benefits and those who wish to see man set free so he can become all that he may be. 

This is a call for those who have taken the bread and circus blinders off their eyes not to replace them with another set.  Today we don’t have to rely on what we have been taught. We can use the Internet as a portal into every perspective imaginable, histories beyond counting, and all the great works of mankind.  Read broadly, study extensively and think for yourself.  Don’t exchange the purveyors of self-serving pap on the left for the purveyors of self-serving pap on the right.  Open both ears, hear both sides, use the mind God gave you, and find the center path.   

America has done some things wrong.  America has done some things right.  When it all is brought to the scales, when enough is seen to grasp the big picture, it is the non-objective view of this Historian that America has provided more freedom for more people than any other country that has ever existed.  It is also my opinion that powers of anti-freedom have sought to regain control since the Revolution, and if those who have been too busy working and raising families don’t spend enough time to learn what History teaches we will soon earn the reward for the failure to hold on to the past.  We will lose the future.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2011 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

 

When someone sneezes, a common response is, “God bless you.” But one California teacher finds this statement so offensive and disruptive that he’s working to cut back on its usage in the classroom.

Steve Cuckovich, a health teacher at William C. Wood High School in Vacaville, California, has attempted to banish the friendly gesture, as he believes it is both disrespectful and disruptive. To punish students who do, indeed, say “God bless you” after one of their classmates sneezes, he purportedly knocks 25 points off of their grade.

While this story may seem unbelievable at first glance, Cuckovich, himself, has commented on the classroom ban. According to KFSN, he says that the policy isn’t about religion. He simply believes that the gesture is outdated and that it is disruptive. He says:

“When you sneezed in the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body. So they were saying, ‘god bless you’ for getting rid of evil spirits. But today, I said what you‘re doing doesn’t really make any sense anymore.”

Parents, of course, are outraged, especially considering the fact that this move very clearly stands to impose Cuckovich’s view on the classroom. The school has come to agree with concerned parents, with the teacher now pledging to implement a more palatable punishment for the offense.

By MARTHA IRVINE – AP National Writer | AP – Sat, Sep 17, 2011

The young people in the ad look dissatisfied and pouty. Barack Obama’s voice and the words “winning the future,” from one of his old campaign speeches, echo in the background.

“You’re LOSING my future,” says one young man.

The ad, which has aired during sportscasts, reality TV shows and late-night comedy programs popular with younger people, was produced for the College Republican National Committee. It is an attempt to play on the fears that haunt college students, that they won’t find jobs and will be living with less than their parents did.

Their fears aren’t exclusive to their generation. But given that it seems to taken hold in a voting bloc that helped elect Obama with a wave of hope and change, there could be an opening for Republicans, unless the president can find a way to get young people fired up again.

“People are taking out $100,000 in debt and they’re graduating next year,” says Nick Haschka, a 25-year-old MBA student at Northwestern University.

Haschka voted for Obama in 2008 and remains a strong supporter. “I think he’s doing the best he can in these circumstances,” he says.

He knows others have been less patient.

That’s been confirmed by recent polls, which show that young voters’ support for the president is waning. It’s true even on campuses like Northwestern, one of many where Obamamania began to take hold four years ago, when young voters supported the president by a 2-1 margin.

“I don’t really think he can make a difference now,” says Charlotte Frei, a 24-year-old doctoral student at Northwestern who’s studying transportation engineering. She voted for the president in 2008 and will probably do so again, though she’s not very enthusiastic about it.

Others worry that apathy could cause a lot of young voters to sit this one out.

“It’s unfortunate — but I think the last election was an exception,” says Aubrey Blanche, a senior at Northwestern. She soon will graduate with a degree in journalism and political science. Like many others, she has “no idea” where she’ll get a job.

Young Republicans see an opportunity.

Even at the University of Chicago, a short walk from the Obamas’ home in Hyde Park, members of the small local chapter of College Republicans are feeling empowered to engage students in conversation as the fall term begins.

“The jobs issue is a major accelerant,” says Jacob Rabinowitz, a sophomore who is the group’s vice president.

In a recruiting video, Zach Howell, the outgoing chairman of the national College Republican group, says his party offers “real change” and “hope,” playing off the themes of Obama’s last campaign.

The group’s ads are edgy and catchy — and a good start, says political scientist Richard Niemi.

“Throwing back a candidate’s words at him or her is a tried-and-true method,” says Niemi, a professor at the University of Rochester in New York. “But you’ve got to have the candidate to go with it.”

That’s where it gets tricky for Republicans because young voters traditionally have leaned heavily Democratic.

In the 2012 race so far, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, with his libertarian leanings, is among those with a small but loyal legion of young followers. Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor, has attempted to make a play for young supporters, calling them “Generation H.”

Jacob Engels, a 19-year-old business student at Valencia College in Florida who is a delegate in the Republican straw poll later this month, is a Huntsman supporter. Though Huntsman hasn’t made a strong showing in early polls, Engels calls him the “pragmatic choice” because he’s less conservative on issues such as the environment and gay marriage.

That would make Huntsman more palatable to his college peers, he says.

Larry Berman, a political science professor at Georgia State University, says the president needs to find ways to inspire young people to vote for him, not just against his opponent.

He says the president might, for instance, find a different job for Vice President Joe Biden and choose a new running mate that would appeal more to the younger crowd.

The president also is likely to make more appearances on college campuses, as he did when he recently took his jobs plan to the campus of Ohio State University.

“He can’t win Ohio and other key swing states without a dramatic turnout of young voters,” Berman says.

Perhaps most important, “I think he’s got to fight,” Berman says. He suggests a re-election campaign speech like the one President Franklin D. Roosevelt made in 1936 in which he said of his detractors, “I welcome their hatred.”

Meredith Segal, who helped found and run Students for Obama during the last presidential election, says it’s far too early to discount young voters.

No, their response to Obama won’t be the same as it was in the 2008 campaign, she says.

“Inevitably there is a difference between something that is brand new vs. a known quantity,” says Segal, who’s 25 and now director of student and family services at a new urban charter school outside Boston. “It’s always virtually impossible to recapture the newness and energy of a candidate who is being discovered for the first time.”

But she adds: “This generation still has the potential to have a huge impact — not just in the election but on their campuses, in their towns, their cities and their country.”

By John Stossel
Published September 16, 2011
| FoxNews.com

School spending has gone through the roof and test scores are flat.
While most every other service in life has gotten faster, better, and cheaper, one of the most important things we buy — education — has remained completely stagnant, unchanged since we started measuring it in 1970.

Why no improvement?
Because K-12 education is a government monopoly and monopolies don’t improve.
The government-school monopoly claims: Education is too important to leave to the free market. At a teachers’ union rally, even actor Matt Damon showed up to deride market competition as “MBA style thinking.”
“Competition may be okay for selling movies and cell phones, but education is different,” says the establishment. Learning is complex. Parents aren’t real “customers” because they don’t have the expertise to know which school is best. They don’t know enough about curricula, teachers’ credentials, etc. That’s why public education must be centrally planned by government “experts”.
Those experts have been in charge for years. They are what school reformers call the “Blob.” Jeanne Allen from the Center for Education Reform says for years attempts at reform have run, “smack into federations, alliances, departments, councils, boards, commissions, panels, herds, flocks and convoys, that make up the education industrial complex, or the Blob.
Taken individually they were frustrating enough, each with its own bureaucracy, but taken as a whole they were (and are) maddening in their resistance to change. Not really a wall — they always talk about change — but more like quicksand, or a tar pit where ideas slowly sink.
And the most powerful part of the Blob is the teachers’ union.
This Saturday, I interview Nathan Saunders, the President of the Washington, D.C. Teachers’ Union, and Joseph Del Grosso, President of the Newark Teachers’ Union. They say things like, “the unions have a pretty strong history of advocating for high-quality public education… We have progress as a result of unions.”
Their predecessors were more candid. When the Washington Post asked George Parker, when he headed the Washington, D.C. teachers union, why he fought a voucher program that let some kids escape failing government schools, he said, “As kids continue leaving the system, we will lose teachers. Our very survival depends on having kids in D.C. schools so we’ll have teachers to represent.”
Albert Shanker, the teachers’ union president who, years ago, first turned teachers unions into a national political force, was even more honest. Shanker callously said, “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
Union leaders first. Teachers second. Kids third. Or maybe fourth or fifth, after the school board, the principal’s union, or some other part of the Blob.
John Stossel is host of “Stossel” on the Fox Business Network. His special “Stupid In Amerca” airs Saturday at 10 p.m. ET and 10 p.m. PT. “Stossel” airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. and midnight ET. It re-airs Fridays at 10 p.m., Saturdays at 9 p.m. and 12 midnight, and Sundays at 10 p.m. (all times eastern). He’s also the author of “Give Me a Break” and of “Myth, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.” To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at johnstossel.com.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/16/stupid-in-america/#ixzz1YDCwGKHy

The Wall Street Journal         AUGUST 13, 2011

 

Après le Déluge, What?