Michelle Rhee is smiling.

[nikto]

61. Unbelievable decision----America is destroying itself!!

No foreign enemies necessary.

America-hating terrorists only have to sit back and watch America dis-embowel itself.

Seppuku on a national scale, just because a bunch of fuckhead investors and money-makers
want some easy plunder. Politicians are in for part of the take, so most are just enablers.

Sympathetic elite-owned mass-media kicks-in with a drumbeat of "failing schools! failing schools!!"
or "Teacher in sex-abuse case--Film at 11!" providing a background of noise-level support for
the investor/privatizers relentless siege on Public School Teachers.

Teachers and schools are not equipped to fight back in
the ways necessary to save themselves, so they are easy prey now for big money.

The Privatizers' modus operandi:
Big Money just gets a few local unhappy parents, sublimates their gripes (which may be legit in many cases),
uses the families as window-dressing, wins again (as with Parent Trigger, or a misgided court case like this),
weakens unions, cut teachers' pay/benefits and investors pocket the money shaken loose
via for-profit charter schools.

Later on, the parents often realize they were duped and used, but alas, too late, as their school is
subsequently run by portfolio managers in another part of the country, and local control has, in reality, been LOST.

As a retired teacher, I probably shouldn't let myself be bothered so much by this loathsome process.

But I enjoyed the benefits of REAL, NON-PROFIT public schools, both as a student and later an employee,
and goddamn it, with all its problems, the system worked.

Now?
Not so much.
And it will only get much worse.

This is how a foolish nation dies.

Slowly.

Self-inflicted.