Here's what I found out when I followed the link.http://schoolchoiceweek.com/about-us This popped up as an ad next to a google search I did for something that included the word school. My guess is that it was funded by sources similar to those who put a third party candidate into the governor's race to take out Libby Mitchell, and put in a Tea Party governor in Maine who would gut public education as we know it.
... Charter schools are union busting pure and simple. School choice is an entirely different matter, and I am all for it. Here's a modest proposal: let Maine high school students choose any school they want to attend, and provide the transportation for them to do it. By and large they will flock to the rich communities that have a local tax base supporting schools -- who wouldn't?
Please help to counter the flood of propaganda about to engulf us as Obama's Chicago-style school "reform" comes to steal yet more resources from our children.
The "Commonwealth Foundation", which has put this whole propaganda effort forward, is an extremely well financed and super slick organization. Clicking through their web site will show a distortion of facts, name calling and labeling (" Generational Theft," to describe public worker`s pensions.) on the order of Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity. The object is to bust the unions.
This is coming to Maine soon as the new Governor attacks the working people while slashing the state budget.
In the past, when people worked hard, they were able to count on an agreed upon retirement plan. Then the Corporations began their attack on labor, union or not, under the guise of " being more competitive" with other nations. Constantly demonizing and scapegoating domestic labor and demanding concessions, corporate profits grew. Capitol moved offshore saying they just couldn`t afford to do business here because of the greedy workers. With the manufacturing sector of the economy gutted for corporate profit, state and public workers are the target now for all the states with giant budget deficits.
The public was frightened into, and forced to accept, the immense bailouts of big banks and Wall Street to the tune of trillions of dollars. The people who run these institutions were rewarded with large bonuses and nothing has changed in how they are regulated or do business. This, coupled with the wars of occupation that corporate profiteers are engaged in, is true Generational Theft.
I think Cutler took votes away from LePage. You go to a few local Democratic Party committee meetings and you see how far the party is from any sort of mainstream except the Beltway mentality, sort of Nixon's East Coast Liberal Establishment updated. I heard ten years ago that ninety-plus percent of Ph.D.'s are Democrats. If you speak up at those meetings about Israel, racism, and war, they move the venue and don't send you a reminder. It IS all about money, but follow the money: money doesn't move itself. It certainly doesn't pull the trigger itself. The Israel movement went crazy eleven years ago ("the world has changed forever", which I dubbed the spirit of Crazy Horse: imagine if Lakota warriors had raided Washington in 1870) and decided to trash the economy to make the world safe for the Jewish state. To finance this mobilization, they had to pay off a lot of tycoons, out of the public coffers and by gutting the economy of rationality and efficiency, bidding processes, transparency, anything like government stewardship. With those pork-barrel dollars they bought themselves a lot of Congressional votes, etc.
ReplyDeleteBring Our Pork-Barrel Dollars Home! Then there is the matter of the oil price. I'm pretty sure that if we cancelled the Global War On Terror, the price of oil would fall by half. Certainly if Israel declared a democracy, it would. Stieglitz said this a few years ago, I think. Why should "peak demand" strike just when we were terrorizing the oil-producing regions with an illegal, irrational war? And a collateral target like Chavez gets thrown into the target list just because these guys are greedy and sloppy. Then he gets reelected by a large margin and drops off the target list. The Emir of Qatar visits Gaza and the media is silent. "Oh, this will all blow over and we'll find you a new video of actual aerial combat by the weekend, just you count on us." Yawn, the people are tired of this.