March 25, 2013

Durbin wants new fiscal commission. Wants to raise retirement age, cut COLA.

What is wrong with that man? He wants it to be fashioned like the old fiscal commission, aka the Bowles/Simpson Commission, or the Catfood Commission.

Durbin Proposes Social Security Commission

Durbin wants the commission to make recommendations to make Social Security solvent for 75 years. The panel would be expected to consider increases in the payroll tax, a higher retirement age and a lower annual cost-of-living adjustment for beneficiaries.

"You would basically say to a commission, within a very limited time frame, to come up with a proposal for 75-year solvency of Social Security and then — and this is important — it would be referred to both chambers on an expedited procedure," Durbin told reporters at a Washington breakfast sponsored by The Wall Street Journal…

Durbin's proposed 18-member commission would contain an equal number of Republicans and Democrats but require 14 votes to send a plan to Congress.

In a 1997 article at FAIR, John Hess said it very well. They are going to keep trying to "rescue"
Social Security until great harm is done.

Can Social Security Survive Another Rescue?

The rescue of Social Security has been a staple of American journalism for 20 years now—a story all the more remarkable in that Social Security has never been in peril except from its rescuers.

The rescues have all been based on faulty arithmetic. First, in 1977, the rescuers humbly confessed that they had made a mistake in adjusting benefits to inflation, as a result of which Social Security was threatening to go broke. (They never say the Army is threatening to "go broke," only that it needs more money to do the job that it's asked to do.) Not to worry. Amid the Yuletide hosannas of our massed punditry, our leaders found the courage to enact a correction that would, they swore, assure solvency into the 21st Century.

..In the early '80s, when income taxes were slashed and the great military buildup began, it was clear that some luxuries would have to be sacrificed, like housing, welfare, health and education. But Social Security was the promising target, one with a tax attached that bore mainly on the little folk. Because, however, the little people cherished their Social Security, a frontal attack by the Reagan White House was a political disaster, so a campaign of deception was mounted.

A bipartisan commission under Alan Greenspan went to work on the numbers, while the media developed an unprecedented campaign of vilification of the elderly. On magazine covers, in cartoons and columns and on broadcast commentaries innumerable, they were depicted as hogs, vampires, sharks, gorillas and card sharps scooping up the sustenance of the young. While the investment banker Peter G. Peterson led the media legions, Greenspan fabricated a hurricane warning. Multiplying one false assumption by another (for example, he assumed that the C.P.I. would rise nearly three times as fast as it actually did rise, while his private firm was forecasting an even smaller increase), he predicted that Social Security would go bankrupt in 1983.

Disappointed in Democrats like Durbin who are continuing this effort to cut the safety nets.

March 24, 2013

The marginalization of "The Left" through the years. Not hearing us now at all.

As the Republicans catered to their right wing extremists, the Democrats made sure their left wing was not given much credence. In a way they were even preceding the time that Newt Gingrich and his GOPAC made liberal a bad word.

In 1985 at the formation of a Democratic policy think tank it was made clear whom they were going to target.

1985 Blueprint for reforming the party

In his "Saving the Democratic Party" memo of January 1985, From advocated the formation of a "governing council" that would draft a "blueprint" for reforming the party. According to From, the new leadership should aim to create distance from "the new bosses"-organized labor, feminists, and other progressive constituency groups-that were keeping the party from modernizing. From's memo sparked the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council in early 1985. According to Balz and Brownstein, "Within a few weeks, it counted 75 members, primarily governors and members of Congress, most of them from the Sunbelt, and almost all of them white; liberal critics instantly dubbed the group 'the white male caucus.'"

And there was a conference by them in 1986, where it was made even more clear what they thought about liberals.

In a 1986 conference on the legacy of the Johnson administration’s "Great Society" initiatives, DLC chairman Gov. Charles Robb of Virginia took up the neoconservative critique of liberalism first articulated in the early 1970s by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Norman Podhoretz, and other neoconservatives. According to Robb, "While racial discrimination has by no means vanished from our society, it's time to shift the primary focus from racism – the traditional enemy without – to self-defeating patterns of behavior – the enemy within." This speech signaled the end of the "New Politics" of the 1960s and 1970s in the Democratic Party and the rise of a new social conservatism in the party. Robb's speech opened room for Democratic Party stalwarts to back away from political agendas that proposed government initiatives to address poverty, discrimination, and crime, and to join the traditional conservatives and neoconservatives in opposing affirmative action, social safety-net programs, and job-creation initiatives. Thus, the New Democrats of the DLC added their voices to the chorus of those calling for stiffer prison sentences, an end to affirmative action, reduced welfare benefits, and less progressive tax policies.

Actually Simon Rosenberg, head of the New Dem Network, and a founder of the DLC said it even more plainly.

freed... from positions making it difficult for us to win. Simon Rosenberg.

"Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

After Obama was elected, Al From wrote an op ed. He said that the anti-war people could not be allowed to control the party.

Recently, Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, used a front page New York Times story to warn Senator Obama and other Democratic leaders that, "the antiwar people cannot define the Democratic Party."

Al From is wrong, again.

For years, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has been warning the Democratic Party about the dangers of being associated with progressive values, ideas and policies. Time and again, their advice has proven disastrous.

The truth that From hopes we'll forget is that, after years of failure using the DLC's Republican-lite strategy, Democrats took back Congress in 2006 with a progressive, antiwar message. As the New York Times reported that fall, "the vast majority of House candidates in competitive races ran as Iraq war critics," as did all six new Democratic Senators.

Then they ran differently in 2010....and lost.

When Bruce Reed took over as chair in 2009, he declared the battle won. The battle against the left, that is.

Our party should cherish its left, its liberals...not speak condescendingly toward them.

“The political mission of the DLC has been largely accomplished,” said Reed, who’s had the group’s No. 2 post since 2001. “Twenty-five years ago, the forgotten middle class had serious doubts about Democrats, and now Democrats are winning the middle class, suburban voters, moderates by handsome margins. Our next challenge is to deliver on that promise and earn those votes for years to come.”

Notice he did not mention the rest of the Democratic party. Not a word about those on the left.

Evan Bayh had the nerve to say the Democratic party was being taken over by the left.

Bayh has a history of sparring with the left in his party. As chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council in 2003, he warned of then-rising presidential campaign of Howard Dean. “The Democratic Party is at risk of being taken over by the far left,” he told DLC members in 2003. “We have an important choice to make: Do we want to vent, or do we want to govern?”

Blanche Lincoln was very upset with the criticisms of the left in her last campaign. Her words were not very sympathetic.

In a new interview with The Hill, Sen. Blanche Lincoln -- facing a tough Democratic primary challenge funded by national progressives on Tuesday -- called out her opponents on the Democratic left wing. Lincoln said she is facing criticism from a political movement that she suggested is divorced from the political reality.

"Just like the far right, I think the far left also believes that you've got to be with them 100 percent of the time or you don't meet the test," Lincoln told the paper. "I don't think there's anybody that you're going to be with 100 percent of the time -- not and be true to your constituency. My first commitment here is to Arkansas."

Trouble is that the votes taken on a national level affect people throughout the country. We must speak out if we disagree.

There was on very insulting comment made about us in the 90s by Rob Shapiro, a VP of the group.

Seems the "intellectual leveraged buyout" of the Democratic party has worked quite well.

Rob Shapiro, the DLC VP at the time, and a Clinton advisor, spoke clearly about their purpose.

What we've done in the Democratic Party," explains institute Vice President Rob Shapiro, a Clinton economic adviser, "is an intellectual leveraged buyout." The DLC, presumably, is acting as arbitrageur, selling off unprofitable mind-sets to produce a lean and efficient philosophy for the "New Democrat," as DLCers call their slick bimonthly magazine.

Unprofitable mind-sets sold off to be more efficient. We have learned through the years that a whole lot of Democratic ideals were considered "unprofitable mind-sets"...and they had to go.

That's us liberals and progressives by the way.

March 21, 2013

Arundhati Roy on Iraq War's 10th: Bush May Be Gone, But "Psychosis" of U.S. Foreign Policy Prevails

Here is the full transcript at the Democracy Now website.

http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2013/3/18/arundhati_roy_on_iraq_wars_10th

Apart from the invented links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, we had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent—went to the extent of saying it would be suicidal for Iraq—for the U.S. not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries. Earlier, there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Granada, Panama. But this time it wasn’t just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was frenzy with a purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the doctrine of preemptive strike, also known as the United States can do whatever the hell it wants, and that’s official. The war against Iraq has been fought and won, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found, not even a little one.

....AMY GOODMAN: Do you see President Obama going in a different direction?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Of course not. I don’t see him going in a different direction at all. I mean, the real question to ask is: When was the last time the United States won a war? You know, it lost in Vietnam. It’s lost in Afghanistan. It’s lost in Iraq. And it will not be able to contain the situation. It is hemorrhaging. It is now—you know, of course you can continue with drone attacks, and you can continue these targeted killings, but on the ground, a situation is being created which no army—not America, not anybody—can control. And it’s just, you know, a combination of such foolishness, such a lack of understanding of culture in the world.

And Obama just goes on, you know, coming out with these smooth, mercurial sentences that are completely meaningless. I was—I remember when he was sworn in for the second time, and he came on stage with his daughters and his wife, and it was all really nice, and he said, you know, "Should my daughters have another dog, or should they not?" And a man who had lost his entire family in the drone attacks just a couple of weeks ago said, "What am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to think of this exhibition of love and family values and good fatherhood and good husbandhood?" I mean, we’re not morons, you know? It’s about time that we stopped acting so reasonable. I just don’t feel reasonable about this anymore.

March 19, 2013

2002 Senator Bob Graham D-FL about Iraq vote. "the blood's going to be on your hands"

Graham was very critical of those who refused to read the entire NIE and not just the sanitized version. He did not mince words. These are strong words for Bob Graham who always thought and thought about things before speaking.

We need to remember things like this at this anniversary of the time that our country invaded another country based on lies.

I remember Bob Graham's rant on October 9, 2002, two days before the IWR vote.

The Palm Beach Post link is no longer available, but I saved the text and the article.

..."On Oct. 9, 2002, Graham — the guy everyone thought of as quiet, mild-mannered, deliberate, conflict-averse — let loose on his Senate colleagues for going along with President Bush's war against Iraq.

"We are locking down on the principle that we have one evil, Saddam Hussein. He is an enormous, gargantuan force, and that's who we're going to go after," Graham said on the floor. "That, frankly, is an erroneous reading of the world. There are many evils out there, a number of which are substantially more competent, particularly in their ability to attack Americans here at home, than Iraq is likely to be in the foreseeable future."

He told his fellow senators that if they didn't recognize that going to war with Iraq without first taking out the actual terrorists would endanger Americans, "then, frankly, my friends — to use a blunt term — the blood's going to be on your hands."

It was a watershed moment. Gone was the meticulous thinker who would talk completely around and through a problem before answering a question about it...

In contrast to those words were the ones spoken by other leaders.

Clinton defends successor's push for war

"I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over," Clinton said in a Time magazine interview that will hit newsstands Monday, a day before the publication of his book "My Life."

Clinton, who was interviewed Thursday, said he did not believe that Bush went to war in Iraq over oil or for imperialist reasons but out of a genuine belief that large quantities of weapons of mass destruction remained unaccounted for.

Noting that Bush had to be "reeling" in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Clinton said Bush's first priority was to keep al Qaeda and other terrorist networks from obtaining "chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material."

"That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for," Clinton said in reference to Iraq and the fact that U.N. weapons inspectors left the country in 1998.

Of course his views were the basis of many of the votes for the invasion by others in Congress.

And Hilary also spoke on the topic in 2008, when there had been plenty of hindsight.

Hillary and the Iraqi People

Sometimes one can agree with a great part of what one says, but then can be appalled by one statement. This was that kind of time for me.

As Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, prepares to give a major address on Iraq today, I’m reminded how much I was struck by this part of her Friday speech in Pittsburgh, when she sounded as if she were implying that the Iraqi people were entirely to blame for their current troubles.

Democrats, it seems to me, have blurred the line between the Iraqi government officials unable or unwilling to come together, and the Iraqi people — the millions of people who have been victimized by Saddam Hussein, then a poorly-planned war, and on and on.

Her words from that ABC article in 2008.

"And I believe that at the same time that we have to make clear to the Iraqis that they have been given the greatest gift that a human being can give another human being – the gift of freedom. And it is up to them to decide how they will use that precious gift that has been paid for with the blood and sacrifice and treasure of the United States of America.

Changing the reason for the invasion from protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction to giving Iraqis the gift of freedom.

March 19, 2013

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp get 12.5 mil contract from Ed Dept for more testing. Shameful.

Where's the accountability? Seems only the public school teachers are held accountable. Corporate heads whose companies wiretap are in the good graces of Arne's Department of Education.

In case anyone thought our testing protests were being heard, this is the answer. The Department of Education has $175 million in grants to give out for developing more tests for the future. They are not listening to the teachers, parents, students.

Amplify Insight Wins Contract from Common-Core Testing Consortium

One of the two consortia developing tests for the Common Core State Standards has awarded a $12.5 million contract to Amplify Insight to develop a digital library of formative assessment professional learning tools for educators.

Amplify Insight is a division of Amplify, an ed-tech company whose chief executive officer is Joel Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor. Amplify is the education arm of the media conglomerate News Corp., led by Rupert Murdoch. Last week, Amplify received a blast of media attention when it unveiled a new tablet device, loaded with classroom management tools and interactive lessons, at the South by Southwest education gathering.

This will be the second contract awarded to Amplify Insight by Smarter Balanced, with the first one being granted last year to what was then Wireless Generation, in partnership with ETS, to develop software to report and analyze results from the assessments.

A competitive procurement process was used to issue the award, one that was overseen by Washington state's office of the superintendent of public instruction. (Washington state is one of the member states in the Smarter Balanced consortium).

Murdoch and Amplify are also getting big money from Chicago schools. Maybe these school systems haven't heard of his companies problems abroad? I doubt that. Must be they don't care.

In case Chicago missed it, Rupert Murdoch is now profiting from the testing craziness hitting Chicago's public schools. He owns an outfit called "Wireless Generation" that is now a contractor with CPS. Anyone who doesn't already know that the administration of Chicago Public Schools, the nation's third largest school system, is in the hands of amateurs (or worse, outsiders who want to destroy public education and turn it over to the private sector at all costs), should be contacting any of the 241 principals of the so-called "Track E" schools which begin receiving their students on August 13, 2012.

Things have gotten so crazy in the 2012 world of edits, memos, Power Points, orders, reforms, re-reforms, and re-re-re-reforms from the administration of former Rochester school supt. Jean-Claude Brizard and former "Relationship Banker" Rahm Emanuel that it would take a team of a dozen investigative reporters on the ground school-by-school (with a backup team of another dozen researchers) to separate out the greed, mendacity, incompetence, and silliness that is being foisted on Chicago behind the smokescreen of the latest iteration of "School Reform." Meanwhile, the city's communities, teachers, principals, and children will be facing centrally planned chaos as the first full year of Rahm's version of "School Reform" kicks in non Monday August 13, 2012. The 241 Chicago "Track E" schools would make this sub-system one of the 20 largest school districts in the USA were it a separate system. But it would be one of only three (the other two are Detroit and New Orleans) currently ruled by a group of outside mercenaries dedicated to destroying public education.

NYC was going to give Rupert Murdoch's Wireless Generation 27 million in 2011, but with all the outrage they thought better of doing it.

NYC stops News Corp contract

New York City ditched a $27 million education contract with News Corp subsidiary Wireless Generation, citing the ongoing investigations into the phone hacking allegations related to News Corp's now-defunct News Of The World tabloid.

State Controller Thomas DiNapoli rejected the Education Department's contract with the company, the New York Daily News reports, which would have paid $27 million to create software to track test scores. The funding would have come out of the state's $700 million "Race to the Top" education funds, but DiNapoli's office said that there were concerns about News Corp's "incomplete record" and about the ongoing scandal

"In light of the significant ongoing investigations and continuing revelations with respect to News Corp., we are returning the contract with Wireless Generation unapproved," wrote DiNapoli's office of the decision.

Accountability is only for public schools teachers, the corporations not so much.

March 18, 2013

This blog shares my sentiment in part about Ed Schultz changeover to week-ends.

It's just an opinion of course in my case. But right now the way the major media is sounding is way way too reminiscent of the days leading up to the Iraq invasion. Only one side of the arguments are presented, and it is not the side of the 99%.

Schultz had good ratings, he was one of the ones many discouraged people watched. His support of unions was invaluable.

From the Between the Lines blog:

Downgrading Ed Schultz

I’m skeptical because of the timing of the change, which will see Chris Hayes take over the coveted 8 p.m weeknight slot, and be pitted against Bill O’Reilly of FOX and Anderson Cooper of CNN. Schultz had been getting increasingly agitated over the possibility of President Obama and the Democrats caving in to the GOP to allow cuts in social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as part of a “grand bargain” for reducing the deficit.

One week before the change was announced, Schultz said he had always supported Obama, but now was wavering. One night before he announced his change, Schultz said "President Obama may really be the president who starts the undooing of the New Deal."

Ouch. That line had to go over very badly with the White House and senior Democrats. It’s quite possible that the White House called to complain, and put pressure on the pro-Democratic network to push Schultz aside.

I very much agree with this paragraph.

The sidelining of Ed Schultz couldn’t come at a worse time. Progressives are fighting a bitter struggle against Republicans, big business interests and now Obama, to hold the social compact together. To win the battle, they need as many strong voices in the media as they can get.

I remember sadly how all we had just before the war was the struggling network Air America and the Phil Donahue show. He was escalating his criticism of the invasion of Iraq, and poof....he was gone though he had high ratings.

I know the feeling of feeling strongly about something and realizing that your voice is just a teeny tiny one. I feel that way about the the destructive reforms being loosed on public education. The media never tells the truth about it, they owe too much to the billionaire reformers.

We are experiencing something in this country I never expected to happen. We have both parties and their leaders playing games with our safety nets and with our public schools. It is shocking.

A P. S. on edit:

I did not think I needed to say that I don't agree with the blogger on President Obama's possible involvement. I did not think I needed to say that. However I do believe there is more to the story.

Many people are upset with Democrats putting the safety net on the table for discussion with extremists....I am. If you are not, you should be.

March 17, 2013

Barack Obama's 2006 speech at launch of Brookings Hamilton Project.

Here is the transcript of the speech in pdf format

Here is an excerpt:

I think that if you polled manyof the people in this room, most of us are strong free traders and most of us believe in markets. Bob and I have had a running debate now for about a year about how do we, in fact, deal with the losers in a globalized economy. There has been a tendency in the past for us to say, well, look, we have got to grow the pie, and we will retrain those who need retraining. But in fact we have never taken that side of the equation as seriously as we need to take it. So hopefully, this is not just going to be a lot of preaching to the choir. Hopefully, part of what we are going to be doing is challenging our own conventional wisdom and pushing boundaries and testing these ideas in a vigorous and aggressive way.

....Just remember, as we move forward, that there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. There are people in places like Decatur, Illinois, or Galesburg,Illinois, who have seen their jobs eliminated. They have lost their health care. They have lost their retirement security. They don't have a clear sense of how their children will succeed in the same way that they succeeded. They believe that this may be the first generation in which their children do worse than they do. Some of that, then, will end up manifesting itself in the sort of nativist sentiment, protectionism, and anti-immigration sentiment that we are debating here in Washington. So there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. This is not a bloodless process.

Well, he is right. I know I am beginning to feel very protective about this country and what is happening to it in the name of globalism. Also he is right again, it is not a bloodless process. People are suffering a lot. There are a lot of "losers".

One of the best summaries of the Hamiltonian Democrats came from Harold Meyerson at the Washington Post in 2006.

Hamiltonian Democrats

It's come to this: The chief project to restate Democratic economics for our time was unveiled a couple of weeks ago, and it's named after the father of American conservatism, Alexander Hamilton.
Necessarily, the authors of the Hamilton Project preface their declaration with an attempt, not altogether successful, to reclaim Hamilton from the right. The nation's first secretary of the Treasury, they note, "stood for sound fiscal policy, believed that broad-based opportunity for advancement would drive American economic growth, and recognized that 'prudent aids and encouragements on the part of government' are necessary to enhance and guide market forces."

Which is true, as far as it goes. Hamilton believed in balanced budgets and in the government's taking an active role to build the infrastructure and fiscal climate that business and the nation need to succeed -- ideas as alien to the current administration as support for collective farms. But Hamilton also feared the common people, dismissed their capacity for self-government and supported rule by elites instead.

That might be enough to deter most Democrats from naming their firstborn economic revitalization scheme after him, but the authors of the Hamilton Project are made of sterner stuff. They include Peter Orszag, an estimable Brookings Institution economist; investment banker Roger Altman, formerly of the Clinton Treasury department; and, chiefly, former Treasury secretary and current Citigroup executive committee Chairman Robert Rubin, whose iconic status within the Democratic mainstream has waxed as the median incomes of Americans under the Bush presidency have waned. Rubin has also become a seal of good housekeeping for Democratic candidates seeking money from Wall Street. When Bob Rubin talks, Democratic pols don't just listen; they scramble for front-row seats and make a show of taking notes.

March 16, 2013

Chicago schools CEO bans Persepolis from classrooms.

Chicago schools are doing a lot of controversial things right now, like closing schools, forming more charter schools, despite the outrage of students, parents, and teachers.

I loved the words of a teachers' union member in this video and article:

"I'm kind of baffled by it," said CTU's Kristine Mayle. "The only thing I can think of is they don't want our children reading about revolution as they're closing our schools down."

Chicago students protest after Persepolis pulled from classrooms

The book depicts various acts of violence, including torture, in the context of the revolution, and that's why CPS has now deemed it inappropriate for teaching in 7th grade classrooms and younger, a move to which the American Library Association objects.

"It reflects the totalitarian society that this book is actually all about, because this book is about the Iranian revolution," said the ALA's Barbara Jones

The book had been approved for this year's 7th grade curriculum, but CPS says CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett decided to pull it from classrooms after reviewing the novel.

In a letter sent to principals, Byrd-Bennett writes, "If your seventh grade teachers have not yet taught this book, please ask them not to do so and to remove any copies of the book from their classrooms."

There seems to be some confusion as to whether Byrd-Bennett asked the book to be removed from school libraries.

'Persepolis' Memoir Isn't Appropriate For Seventh-Graders, CPS Boss Says

The controversy was sparked by reports of an email sent Thursday in which the Lane Tech principal told school staff members that he was informed by one of the CPS' Network Instructional Support Leaders group that all ISLs were given a deadline of Friday to make sure the book was not in the library, that it had not been checked out by a student or teacher, that it was not used in "any classrooms" and "to collect the autobiographic graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi from all classrooms and the Library."

"I was not provided a reason for the collection of 'Persepolis,'" Dignam's message concluded.

A second email, sent from the principal later the same day, revised the previous directive, exempting removal from the library.

In her statement, Byrd-Bennett said, "We are not requesting that you remove 'Persepolis' from your central school library."

Chicago has been under the mayoral control of Rahm Emanuel. A lawyer and parent there reminded us of the problems there in in a speech during the recent strike of the Chicago Teachers Union

Farmer’s method for exposing the hypocrisy that exists between the rhetoric and the reality of power brokers making public school policy is dramatic and effective. Farmer puts billionaire Chicago Board of Education member Penny Prizker on trial at this CTU rally. By all accounts, the University of Chicago Lab School, where Professor John Dewey first began testing his educational theories in 1896, is indeed an excellent place. The point here is that it offers the model for what politicos, phony philanthropists, and power brokers should want for all children, not just their own. We need to put all politicos, phony philanthropists, and power brokers on trial, exposing what they give to their own children but withhold from everybody else’s.

March 15, 2013

John Morgan, Obama fundraiser and Crist boss, to lead medical-pot initiative in FL

Source: Miami Herald Blog

John Morgan, a major President Obama fundraiser and the boss of former Gov. Charlie Crist, is taking the reins of a Florida medical marijuana initiative, promising to pump major money and political muscle into the popular issue.

...Morgan said he hasn't spoken about the issue with Crist or Obama, with whom he had dinner Monday. And, he said, he doesn’t care whether they support it or not.

...Morgan, head of the Morgan & Morgan firm, said he’s going to lead the initiative for personal reasons: His father had struggled with cancer and emphysema, and only marijuana helped him.

“He was tethered to machines and on all these drugs that he had no appetite,” Morgan said. “One of my brothers was able to get marijuana for him so he could eat and be happy.”



Read more: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2013/03/john-morgan-obama-fundraiser-and-crist-boss-to-lead-medical-pot-initiative-in-fl.html

---

People in Central Florida are used to seeing the ads for Morgan and Morgan. They make no secret of being for the people.

Here is one of their ads that is a favorite.

March 15, 2013

John Legend and the Well-Meaning Corporatists. An education blogger's excellent post.

John Legend and the Well-Meaning Corporatists

Last Wednesday, Huffington Post Education’s Twitter feed tweeted this out:

John Legend: out to save schools? http://huff.to/14pCkEs
2:58 AM - 07 Mar 13

In the pithiest attempt at a response, I said “From what?”

John Legend’s presence in this debate particularly disturbs me because of the allure and seduction of having a musician stand side-by-side with the very people who condemn poor children, colored or not, to an artless, factory-inspired sense of schooling. Bloomberg’s distaste for public servants and their unions is well documented, as is Michelle Rhee’s bobbing and weaving of cheating allegations, both masterfully playing mainstream media to look like vanguards and radicals. I expect as much from them.

John Legend is different, though. Since my last letter to him, he’s gone further past original thought and more into neo-liberal think tank mode. A line like “If we think demography is destiny, we will allow our school system to confirm that belief” sounds like a Washington lobbyist read up on Deepak Chopra and tried to apply his tweets to education reform.

When the reformers use terms such as "demography as destiny", they are being completely and totally insulting to the whole public school system, and to all teachers there.

I think that is one of the biggest lies the "reformers" have used in their effort to make schools profitable for them.

They are saying that teachers do not expect those in poorer areas to be successful in school. It implies they don't teach them with success in mind.

That is a big fat lie. It is kind of lie that was perpetuated by the failed movie, Won't Back Down, which is still being peddled in local communities where the reformers want to set up shop. They are still using this propaganda around the country.

Filmmakers hope 'Won't Back Down' inspires reform

(AP) — The movie "Won't Back Down" starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis was a box-office dud, barely earning $5 million and disappearing from theaters soon after its September 2012 release.

But the film's creators, and a cadre of influential admirers, have more than ticket sales in mind. They hope the classroom drama about two single moms in Pittsburgh trying to save their kids' failing inner-city school also sparks a wave of activism while igniting widespread legal changes to give parents more control over how their children learn.

The article states they are using it to help get Parent Trigger laws passed.

The private screenings allow the business group's Institute for a Competitive Workforce and lobbyists from organizations such as StudentsFirst, the education reform group created by former Washington, D.C. superintendent Michelle Rhee, to woo state lawmakers over beer and finger sandwiches, as was the case recently in Jefferson City.

Apparently not many in Missouri watched the movie, but a lawmaker did file a bill for a parent trigger law.

He used the same bold lie that John Legend used, he just worded it a little differently.

"Children should not be the victims of the ZIP code they live in when their education is at stake," the Eureka Republican said. "I don't think parents would go such a route unless they have exhausted all other remedies because it is a drastic remedy. But it's only going to be utilized in drastic situations. So I think parents should be the ones who are ultimately in charge of their children's education, and not bureaucrats."

Victims of a ZIP code? Demography as destiny? Who thinks this stuff up?

And how are they getting away with this propaganda?

Oh, wait, I think maybe I know. They are getting away with it because there are no national leaders standing up for public education.