A fifty-nine minute video!

Bill Moyers knows!

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=133163

With our rigged elections from various sources the conservative crazies will never lose in our devil incarnate nation.

Privatization is the Smurfiest word for fascism.

To clarify. Ron Paul is not for public school privatization or vouchers. But rather tax credits if anything, as is explained on his site.

Thom, Bill Moyers after his speech said there are guests who conceal instead of reveal. You have many guests from the GOP who conceal. He felt that guests needed to reveal their minds. His best guest was Jimmy Carter and his worst guest was Henry Kissinger!

I was a teacher in Chula Vista Elementary Schools when Edison stole one of the public schools to convert to a charter run by them. They promised the moon to the Board and took teachers off the District Contract and put them on a pay scale that was not comensorate with the one teachers were barely scraping by on then. The first year they juked the test scores to make them look good and tried to explain why they didn't have to test their special ed students. At the time we, the CVE (Chula Vista Educators) were in a fight with the district and Pete Wilson because we had gone some 4 or 5 years without a pay raise to the class and step scale that teachers were paid on. All of this is to say that these guys started out hinky and this is just further proof that they are indeed crooks and should never, ever get another school charter approved from any Public School District.

Bonsai

Does the same apply to the recent house, senate, and president all from the same party?

Oh yes, those poor, poor rich people. So severely abused throughout all history, under-represented in government when they have been represented at all, and with every law that the middle class forces congress to pass, the misfortunes of the sorrowful rich are multiplied. My heart just bleeds for those neglected rich people who have always had to bear such an unfair burden for the selfish, rotten bastards in the middle class. When the middle class wants roads, schools, hospitals, telephone service, tv, cable, food, water, clothing, cars, houses, and other complete and total crap that they do not need at all, who pays for those services and goods? The rich and the corporations, that's who! The middle class people sit there in their nice houses, ordering the rich people around just like they have always done. Get me a drink of water. Cook me some food and feed it to me. Dress me. Do my laundry. Mow my lawn. Pay for my kids' education. I tell you, there is no rest for the rich. And if you can name ONE middle class person who has ever paid even one penny in taxes, I will eat some broccoli. I'm not joking, I'll do it.

But sarcasm aside, let's get back to the topic at hand: it's obvious what to do with governor Christie: put him in a Haliburton-owned prison. No, not as the warden but as a prisoner.

One can only be Truffaldino for so long.

OOOOO

David good job! I can't imagine all the hard work those top 400 with more wealth than the bottom 150 million put into that unearned income every year. WHEW!!!!!! It makes me exhausted to think about it......all those phone calls to the hedge fund manager, got to cash in on all those losers stuck in their 401K's.

I agree with Thom, Christie is all about good old fashion cronyism, using political ideology as the disguise/ justification.

Americans will see a tsunami sweep for the GOP in 2012. Obama seems to be elated with only a one term presidency. He should be with the massive wealth he has from the coffers of his first win. He should be able to add another $100 million to his $170 million in his current trust fund. A $270 million haul for four years in office should please Obama even more!!!

Letting the banksters dictate the rules about banking and finance is the same as letting bank robbers dictate the rules about bank robbery. DUH!!! Deregulation of the financial system is like deregulation of robbery, rape, and pillage. We can see the results. Do we want the world economy to degenerate into something akin to the wild west where murder robbery and mayhem go unchecked? The economy is like a snake who's head has been severed from it's body and, so far at least, niether the head or tail has gotten the memo.

regardless of Christie's intentions, his personal history makes his actions appear cronyistic... nepotistic... inappropriate... ps, if you're a high school physics teacher, you know that the lion's share of educational failure in this country is the result of a lack of parental support and guidance, not a couple of lame teachers.

For 38 years the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been forwarding thier agenda of privatization. ALEC's reasoning behind this is that government agencies and government regulations create an unfair competitive advantage for their private corporate sector members - thus regulations must be eliminated or government services / agencies must be privatized. I was kind of surprised yesterday when Thom was perplexed about the possibility of privatization of foster care and adoption , so I offer this diary link for review: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/01/971944/-ALEC-Experiments-on-America?via=history

People choose to associate what is happening in today's political arena with Reagan. But that is only part of the story, as the American Legisaltive Exchange Council has been slowly and drastically changing the face of our political envionrment for the past 38 years, through our state legislatures and through their past members who are now serving in the US Congress. Any discussion of how government, government services, politics and democracy in the US is changing is incomplete without including the extremely strong impact that ALEC is having on our political process.

With a second run for the presidency Obama will rake in at least another $100 million dollars if not another $150 million!!! Yes, I can live very well on $300 million. Thank you very much for the money!!! America is a cesspool and a garbage dump of filth, murder, hatred, corruption, and lies!!!

Running for political office is a racket and not an interest in service!!!!!

No nation can survive without developing its natural resources. Our children are our most valuable resource and the American Education System is failing to adequately develop that resource. Privatization will just create a larger "Landed Aristocracy" than we now have. How can the crisis be solved?

I've been an English Language teacher since 1966. In one hour I'm walking out of my final class. Here's what I know from experience. Not all children can appreciate or even have an interest in what we consider to be the “Standard American Education.” The problem is 3 fold.

1. A.) Teachers must be required to take more college courses in the subject they intend to teach. Each year the quality of my cadet teachers has gotten worse. Colleges are now turning out graduates with what I would consider to be a good high school education. Too much time is spent on researching the problem and developing new ways to "motivate" students. All of it is junk. I have never been able to teach anything I don't know, nor can anyone else. I have college credits equivalent to 9+ years and in the last 45 years have never stopped learning. B.) The administration must make and ENFORCE rules. To this day I don’t understand exactly what administrators do except have meetings to make them look busy. I been told that those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. I have news for you. Those who can’t teach, administer.

2. A.)The students must be in school to get an education. I have unbelievable absenteeism. The system is permeated with the attitude that an excused absence is also an excuse for not being held responsible for the day’s lesson. B.) Parents must, must be held responsible for providing a quiet, safe place to study, getting their student(s) to school on time, making sure they are well fed, and verifying that all homework is done. Too often I am just babysitting unruly children that make maintaining a classroom learning atmosphere difficult under the best of circumstances and impossible under most. I average 5 of these students an hour. Even friends have difficulty believing the stories I tell about what I have to handle in my classroom. C.) Students who cannot be educated in the regular classroom MUST be offered some kind of valuable alternative education. The Europeans had a vocational program designed into the system years ago.

3. The Puritans made education free, public and required. Our founding fathers knew that we need an educated public in order to maintain our basic freedoms. Yet today Education is the first to have budgets cut. Colleges are under funded. The cost of college has gotten totally out of control. We, the people, must help our able students get into and stay in college. Class sizes must be maintained at approximately 25 students per hour. Larger class sizes make it impossible to get to every student each period. Smaller class sizes tend to limit classroom discussions.

It may sound trite but the truth is that I teach children English, not English to children. I get to know my students so I can give each one what is needed. Maybe that is why I still hear from so many students I've had in my classes over the last 45 years.

Well, my final bell just rang and I’m out of here!

@TheCart1942: Thank you for being a teacher...and obviously a very good one. We have been propagandized into the necessity of showing our gratitude to men and women of the armed forces whenever we address them. We thank them for their "service to their country"...and do not cavil about the definition of "country" as possibly meaning those who are getting rich and powerful from blood money and who are the real driving force behind various wars we engage in. And many only give up a few years to that endeavor..some actually risking their lives...but not all.

But is that same courtesy extended to teachers...ones who have spent their lives in the classroom battlefield?

My father was a school administrator and teacher and I remember some of the frustrations he expressed with the "system"....the school board, the parents, the politics...and the expectations of the various forces that considered themselves to be "messengers and proselytizers from their particular brand of religious righteousness". Teachers have always had to "walk the line" and be very careful not to say anything that could upset the sensitivities of the community. And as I remember it the school systems have been used by political and religious groups to mold children in ways that did not foster questioning authority sufficient to support a real democracy.

Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and Lord's Prayer every morning before class, Fish on the menu for Fridays, and never being able to read or discuss material that would have fostered real democratic ideas....but only "approved" textbooks and literature...is what gave it away that we were meant to be automatons for the ruling classes.

Just as Japan's schools would always gloss over, or never mention, Japan's atrocities in Manchuria and China, the US downplays it's own criminal history and glorifies the nation. And the beat goes on......

Teachers are not paid as well as they should be nor given the respect that they deserve.