NO TIME FOR THIS!

I'm concentrating all of my efforts on the Educator Roundtable and leaving this behind...there's just no time...if you are still reading this, check out a favorable piece regarding ER from my hometown paper...

Sign the petition

Please.

Sign the Petition!

Visit our new project and help us out!!!

Democracy

If we don't teach people to defend it...why should we expect it?

Part of democracy is debate: the asking of tough questions, the consideration of opposing viewpoints, the acceptance of different views of the same events. If we silence debate, we thwart democracy.

No time

Out the door in 2 hours for Spokane but had to get this link up.

Bill Moyers via Susan Ohanian. A MUST READ.

Activism

A number of events have transpired over the past 7 days which have led to serious introspection and a renewed commitment to end corporate-driven educational reform.

I believe I speak for tens-of-thousands of teachers when I say: NO MORE NCLB.

As unions, think tanks, and other progressive organizations have had little success in challenging the law, I have decided to take a different approach.

While this is in its nascent state, you can see the details here.

Googlebomb

For information on what this is all about see here.


--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert

IN CASE YOU FORGOT

My New Unlikely Friends

The John Birch Society.

To say they are conservative is like saying the pope is catholic.

To say they are concerned about the Military Commisions Act is probably a poor choice of words. I'd say terrified, but terror has been overused lately.

Their words:

If Bush is protecting the American people by taking away our freedoms, then what are we supposed to be fighting for in Iraq?

I'd like that question on the SAT...


HT to 8ackgr0und N015e for the find.

The Most Important Person in the Country

is the one speaking truth to power...

Kieth Olbermanspeaks on the end of our country as we knew it.

Commercial Alert

Commercial Alert is a child advocacy organization run by Gary Ruskin. This organization does a great deal to protect children from corporations who look at them as if they were little dollar signs.

This morning the following letter was in my inbox:

Dear friends,

Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate finance committee released a report about the infamously corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The report documents Abramoff’s work for Channel One, a company that compels seven million children to watch ads in schools each day.

The report says a lot about how companies try to derail our Schools not Shopping Malls campaign. For example, here’s an email from Abramoff’s colleague Dennis Stephens:

“Have you guys ever looked into Gary Ruskin, a Nader protégé who runs Commercial Alert (which is attacking Channel One, our client)….The guy is a weasel…Someone should consider doing an in depth piece on Ruskin and his Nader front groups. We should have lunch and review the options.”

Abramoff responds: “Great. Can you get this moving?”

Amy Berger, another Abramoff colleague, responds:
“Jeff [Ballabon, VP of Channel One] just raised this with me. He said, why aren’t you guys doing more on Ruskin? Please move ahead with this! Please keep me informed. Thanks”

This is what we're up against: big money and corruption. But we can win because what Channel One and Abramoff have done to children is outrageous and unpopular.

They have millions of dollars; we have thousands. They can buy all the right friends in Washington. All we have is you.

Children should not be forced to watch ads in school. Help us to keep fighting for a world where children are more important than corporate profits.

Do yourself a favor and visit commercial alert, become part of the organization, and help keep children away from people like Jack Abramoff.

I am (hopefully) about to begin work on a book, which will include a chapter on religion and public schools...This link may not be of much interest to you, but it is a great roundup of the activities of the religious right...

Thank you Jennifer Booher-Jennings:

In dire circumstances — a battlefield, a devastating natural disaster or an overcrowded emergency room — we accept the rationing of scarce resources as a necessary if regrettable choice. We triage. We divide patients into three groups: the safe cases, those suitable for treatment and the hopeless. And we ration resources in an effort to do the most good for the largest number.

But there are areas of life where we have rejected the idea of triage. Public education, an institution charged with disbursing equality of opportunity for all children, is certainly one of them. In our loftiest moments, we see public education as one place where we dispense with the blunt, utilitarian logic of triage and seek equal treatment for all. But try as we might, deep inequalities persist and belie our rhetoric.

It’s ironic that the No Child Left Behind Act, intended to right the injustices suffered by poor and minority children, has in fact caused more rationing of education.

i've had it all wrong

it isn't teaching to the test, it's selling to the test...