Peter Greene, Retired English Teacher - Bucks County Beacon / Independent Media Institute
Stephan: The sabotage of public education by Republicans, in my opinion, is not getting anywhere near enough attention in the media. Republicans do not want an educated populace because the more education a person has the more likely it is that they will vote for Democrats. What the Republicans want, which is what all fascists throughout history have wanted, is a malleable indoctrinated, instead of educated, populace that can be easily manipulated through their fears and resentments. A country does not become a world leader in technology, for instance, when the population is indoctrinated instead of educated. This strategy has long-term multi-generational implications, as anyone who spends a few minutes looking at North Korea and its population can easily discern. Republicans are using school vouchers -- now they are calling them education savings accounts (ESAs) -- and charter and private schools to achieve their ends. Here is a useful explanation concerning what ESAs are all about.
Credit: gadfly on the wall blog
Although a sizable number of Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections who were counting on school vouchers to be a winning issue—including Tudor Dixon in Michigan, Kari Lake in Arizona, and Tim Michels in Wisconsin—went down to defeat, school vouchers are not about to go away. Voucher advocates are instead changing the name and pushing for education savings accounts (ESAs).
ESAs are legal in around 10 states so far, but if this new idea for promoting school choice hasn’t already been proposed in your state, it may be appearing there soon. Here’s what education savings accounts are, how they work, and what policymakers and families in your state should consider before rushing headlong into adopting this idea.
What Are ESAs?
Education savings accounts are a kind of super-voucher. While traditional vouchers give parents a chunk of taxpayer money that they could use for tuition at the school of their choice, an ESA gives parents a chunk of taxpayer money that […]
Annie Waldman, Aliyya Swaby and Anna Clark, - ProPublica
Stephan:
This is the latest in a trend SR has been following for several years now. From the report: "48 million American adults struggle to read basic English, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That may leave them unable to find and keep a decent job, navigate the signage on city streets, follow medical instructions, and vote. They’re vulnerable to scams and face stigma and shame." This illiteracy is worse in Red states than Blue, except for New York and California, which have atypically large non-English speaking, as a first language, immigrant populations.
Lowest Literacy Rates
New Mexico – 70.90%
California – 71.60%
Texas – 71.80%
Mississippi – 72%
Louisiana – 72.90%
Nevada – 74.70%
New York – 75.60%
Alabama – 76.10%
A student completes a worksheet during a one-on-one tutoring session through Literacy Mid-South. Applicants often face a monthslong waitlist. Credit:Kathleen Flynn / ProPublica
They never got the help they needed with learning disabilities. Or they came to this country without the ability to read English. Or they graduated from schools that failed to teach them the most crucial skills.
For a number of sometimes overlapping reasons, 48 million American adults struggle to read basic English, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That may leave them unable to find and keep a decent job, navigate the signage on city streets, follow medical instructions and vote. They’re vulnerable to scams and face stigma and shame.
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The main remedy available is adult education: free classes where they can improve their reading and earn a high school credential.
But the infrastructure for adult education is profoundly inadequate, a ProPublica investigation found — and, as the nation’s persistently low literacy rates reveal, the government’s efforts haven’t done enough to address the problem. About 500 counties […]
Stephan: Pew Research Center has just published a very interesting paper on the religious makeup of both the House and Senate revealing that Congress is far more affiliated with religions than the general American population. In the general population religious affiliation has been going down for years, but not amongst politicians. Based on the data it is my opinion that what is driving this is the increasing linkage in the Christian churches between fascism and religion, while the general population is becoming more spiritual but less churched.
As it begins its 118th session, the U.S. Congress remains largely untouched by two trends that have long marked religious life in the United States: a decades-long decline in the share of Americans who identify as Christian, and a corresponding increase in the percentage who say they have no religious affiliation.
Since 2007, the share of Christians in the general population has dropped from 78% to its present level of 63%. Nearly three-in-ten U.S. adults now say they are religiously unaffiliated, describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” up from 16% who did not identify with a religion 16 years ago. But Christians make up 88% of the voting members of the new 118th Congress being sworn in on Jan. 3 – only a few percentage points lower than the Christian share of Congress in the late 1970s. In the 96th Congress, which was in session in 1979-1980, 91% of members of Congress identified as Christian.
Just like in recent sessions, only one member of the new Congress – Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, independent of Arizona – identifies as religiously unaffiliated. Another (Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California)
Stephan: Utah is an overwhelmingly Red state, it has voted for Republicans 17 times in the last 18 Presidential elections, and it is strongly influenced, some would say controlled, by a fundamentalist religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) -- approximately 80% of Utah state lawmakers identify as LDS. Because of their views on climate change, the state has been woefully remiss in dealing with what has now become a crisis threatening the entire state, and particularly Salt Lake City. Here is the latest fact-based analysis of the situation of the lake from scientists.
The shrinking Great Salt Lake in September 2022.
The Great Salt Lake in Utah is facing “unprecedented danger,” experts say, as it has fallen to an alarmingly low level amid a climate change-fueled megadrought that’s tightening its grip in the West.
Less than two weeks away from Utah’s 2023 legislative session, nearly three dozen scientists and conservationists released a dire report that calls on the state’s lawmakers to take “emergency measures” to save the Great Salt Lake before drains to nil.
Without a “dramatic increase” in inflow by 2024, experts warn the lake is set to disappear in the next five years.
“Its disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah’s public health, environment, and economy,” the authors wrote in the report. “The choices we make over the next few months will affect our state and ecosystems throughout the West for decades to come.”
The Great Salt Lake, plagued by excessive water use and a worsening climate crisis, has dropped to record-low levels two years in a row. The lake is now 19 feet below its […]
Stephan: Here is some more good news from the Biden administration. They have reversed the incompetence and stupidity of Trump and his administration and restored a sensible EPA approach to water protection. Over the last several months I have been struck by how much Biden and his administration have been able to accomplish in spite of the swirling nonsense and criticism from the Republican Party Congress members.
A whooping crane and two white ibis stand in a saltwater marsh in the Aransas National WIldlife Refuge in Austwell, Texas on February 1, 2022. Credit: Jon G. Fuller/VWPics/Universal Images Group / Getty
Clean water advocates on Friday applauded the Biden administration for “resoundingly” rejecting the gutted regulatory framework left by former President Donald Trump as the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule restoring many water protections.
Under the new regulations, the EPA will define “waters of the United States” that are protected under the Clean Water Act as “traditional navigable waters, the territorial seas, interstate waters, as well as upstream water resources that significantly affect those waters.”
The rule does not go as far as former President Barack Obama’s administration went in protecting bodies of water including ephemeral streams and ponds, but they will restore protections for millions of marshes and other waterways that were stripped of safeguards by the Trump administration.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), which warned in 2020 that former President Donald Trump’s rule would put “drinking water for […]
