Tuesday, October 16th, 2012
JEFF FAUX, - truthout.org/AlterNet
Stephan: Free to all high quality public education from K through 12 used to be a national priority. It was one of the key programs that allowed a healthy middle class to arise.
I am searching my files to publish in SR the 8th grade exam given at a one room school house in a small rural town in Kansas in 1890. Most college graduates couldn't pass it when I showed it around.
Turning away from this laudable commitment to public education, replacing it with vouchers and various forms of private schools and charter schools is, in my view, a trend motivated only by profit. Some charter schools are very good it is true, but one has to ask: 'Why isn't the public school system up to this standard. Why are we an increasingly ignorant country?
Wall Street’s involvement in the charter school movement is presented as an act of philanthropy, but it’s really about greed.
The end of the Chicago teachers’ strike was but a temporary regional truce in the civil war that plagues the nation’s public schools. There is no end in sight, in part because — as often happens in wartime — the conflict is increasingly being driven by profiteers.
The familiar media narrative tells us that this is a fight over how to improve our schools. On the one side are the self-styled reformers, who argue that the central problem with American K-12 education is low-quality teachers protected by their unions. Their solution is privatization, with its most common form being the privately run but publicly financed charter school. Because charter schools are mostly unregulated, nonunion and compete for students, their promoters claim they will, ipso facto, perform better than public schools.
On the other side are teachers and their unions who are cast as villains. The conventional plot line is that they resist change, blame poverty for their schools’ failings and protect their jobs and turf.
It is well known, although rarely acknowledged in the press, that the reform movement has been financed and led […]
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Monday, October 15th, 2012
CHRYSTIA FREELAND, - The New York Times
Stephan: Here is a very thoughtful and, I think, notably prescient assessment of the one per cent and where the uber-elite are taking us. It's not pretty, and it is going to impact your life seriously.
Chrystia Freeland is the editor of Thomson Reuters Digital and the author of 'Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else,
In the early 14th century, Venice was one of the richest cities in Europe. At the heart of its economy was the colleganza, a basic form of joint-stock company created to finance a single trade expedition. The brilliance of the colleganza was that it opened the economy to new entrants, allowing risk-taking entrepreneurs to share in the financial upside with the established businessmen who financed their merchant voyages.
Venice’s elites were the chief beneficiaries. Like all open economies, theirs was turbulent. Today, we think of social mobility as a good thing. But if you are on top, mobility also means competition. In 1315, when the Venetian city-state was at the height of its economic powers, the upper class acted to lock in its privileges, putting a formal stop to social mobility with the publication of the Libro d’Oro, or Book of Gold, an official register of the nobility. If you weren’t on it, you couldn’t join the ruling oligarchy.
The political shift, which had begun nearly two decades earlier, was so striking a change that the Venetians gave it a name: La Serrata, or the closure. It wasn’t long before the political Serrata became an economic one, too. Under the control of […]
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Monday, October 15th, 2012
Stephan: This is a good look at what is happening in the American car industry that the Republicans would have let die. Also note that this would not have happened had it not been for the unions. People who are anti-union, and who do not acknowledge its role in creating the American middle class are willfully ignorant about American history. The data is out there; it actually takes work to avoid it.
When Kim Riddle took the 700-mile trip from Athens, Ala., to her new home in Lordstown, Ohio, last year, it was the first time she had left either her home or her 18-year-old son. Riddle had certainly gone on road trips out of state, but she had never moved and never been on an airplane or a subway before transplanting to Ohio. (She has since traveled on the former but expressed no desire to try the latter.) ‘When you’re from the South, you don’t want to leave,
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Monday, October 15th, 2012
SEVERIN CARRELL, Scotland Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This is an historic vote which will have implications far beyond the U.K. Personally, I think it is a mistake to break up the U.K.. In my view it would leave both England and Scotland weaker, and less able to deal with the real geopolitical issue of the day, the rise of the Virtual Corporate State. This is the dying gasp of nationalism, promulgated by a small group of men who stand to profit from it. The truth is nationalism itself is increasingly an outmoded model.
David Cameron is to sign a historic deal with Alex Salmond to hold a legally watertight referendum on Scottish independence, signalling the start of a 100-week battle over the UK’s constitutional future.
The prime minister will fly to Scotland on Monday to settle the terms of a Scotland-wide referendum, expected to be held in autumn 2014, by publishing a 35-clause long deal with the first minister that is already being dubbed the ‘Edinburgh agreement’ by Salmond officials.
With disputes over legal limits to campaign spending still yet to be solved, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s deputy first minister, said on Sunday that the deal would allow all the key elements of the referendum to be ‘made in Scotland’.
After months of negotiations, it would allow both sides to properly begin making the choices clear to voters. Speaking on BBC1, Sturgeon said ‘it will be for the Scottish parliament to decide the date, the question, the franchise, for the referendum’.
Sturgeon signalled that a core message for the nationalists will be to portray their main opponents, the Scottish Labour party, as allies of the Tory government in London after Labour began questioning the costs to Scotland of free university tuition, free prescriptions and the council tax freeze.
‘We […]
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Monday, October 15th, 2012
LAURA MICHELLE BURNS, - Care2
Stephan: I read this as a significant change in the climate change denier trend. It may be belated, and it may be tentative, but it is change in a life-affirming direction by one of the major groups blocking responsible action in what I think is the most important trend facing humanity.
m a strong believer that climate change is the highest moral issue of our time. Just because one is a conservative, or religious, or some combination of both; there is no reason to ignore the climate crisis. Young people of all political and religious persuasions are teeming with ambition and enthusiasm and want to take on the world’s problems. Want to know what is so awesome about this fact? When young men and women are passionate about something before they become parents carry their convictions with them once their lives are forever changed by diapers and 2 am feedings. This is true for a young group that is pushing the presidential candidates to talk about global warming.
Young Evangelicals for Climate Action
Recently, I was introduced to the Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA) and my heart was warmed by the energy of this group. Every member of the steering committee is less than 30 years old, well-educated and passionate about showing the religious community that it is our responsibility to work as citizens of a nation to influence action against climate change. They believe God holds Christians accountable for caring for the Earth. And each member of YECA is committed to […]
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