Some Reading References

The Bible (God and Jesus)

National Catholic Reporter (a Catholic newspaper, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Father John Dear, and Sister Joan Chittister write articles)

Non-Violent Jesus

Pax Christi USA

Commonweal (a Catholic magazine)

Haaretz (a Jewish newspaper)

Tikkun (a Jewish magazine and Rabbi Michael Lerner writes articles)

Network for Social Progressives (Co-founders are Rabbi Michael Lerner, Sister Joan Chittister, and Dr. Cornel West)

The Economist

The New Yorker

Antiwar.com

Common Dreams

Opednews

The Huffington Post

Democracy Now (Amy Goodman)

Informed Comment (Juan Cole)

Voices for Creative Nonviolence (Kathy Kelly)

Ravi Batra’s book, “Greenspan’s Fraud”

Stephen Lendman’s article, “A Culture of Violence”

Thom Hartmann’s articles, books, website, and Progressive Radio 1310 AM (Detroit) 12 Noon to 3 PM (Mon-Fri)

Mahatma Gandhi

Helen Thomas (a half century reporter in Washington, D.C.)

Greg Palast (an investigative reporter)

Paul Craig Roberts (an objective Republican)

Paul Krugman (an objective Republican)

Don Williams (a Southern columnist)

Uri Avnery (please take the time to read his articles)

Ray McGovern (a former CIA analyst writing articles)

Rachel Maddow has The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, weekdays at 9:00 PM.

Harper’s Magazine

The Atlantic Magazine

Ed Schultz has The Ed Schultz Show on MSNBC, weekdays at 10:00 PM.

Jesus gave us the Eleventh Commandment at the Last Supper.

LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU!

REAGANOMICS IS THE BIGGEST PONZI SCHEME THAT HAS EVER BEEN PERPETRATED AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. – Gerald

Public School Education

I want to share with you my ideas and thoughts on public school education. We had three children go through public schools, K-12. They had contact with 120 teachers in a supposedly good school district. My wife had more contact with the teachers. She was a room mother before we needed a second income. My wife said to me that there were only about 10 teachers she would say are good teachers. As you can see that is a low percentage. I also had contact with teachers away from our home school district. The classroom teachers wanted to work with A and B students. They did not want to see C and D students. Most of the teachers seemed to lack motivation!!! They taught to the test to look good at evaluation time. Not one teacher wanted to work with special education students. The worst label for a special education student was learning impaired or disabled because it was the easiest label to qualify a student for special education classrooms. Of the students who really were learning impaired about 25% were truly learning impaired. 25% lacked motivation; 25% came from homes where the parents did not work with them; and 25% had poor teachers.

The teacher unions did not stress the teaching-learning environment and school principals were more into politics than educational change agents in creativity and innovation. Central administration wanted team development but when you lack trust in these administrators, there can be no team development.

Today, public school education has to compete with Catholic schools, Christian schools, Jewish schools, Islamic schools, private schools, charter schools, home schools, and virtual schools. These schools are a combination of home school, independent study, and educational consultation with a designated mentor. New ideas for a variety of schools will surface because public school education has failed many students.

I do not have the answers for our many educational problems. I am glad that our children are finished with K-12 environments. From my comment public school educators will have to come up with the answers. There are answers but the GOP (Guardians of Privilege) will fight public school educators all the way and with money talking public school educators are up a formidable wretch.

Visiting Michigan

My wife and I had to drive to a medical center to remove staples from my procedure to change my generator for my pacemaker. Since we were close to Frankenmuth a city with a Bavarian motif, we had dinner at the Bavarian Inn and there world famous chicken dinners. We go to the Bavarian Inn. Zehnders Restaurant is across the street from the Bavarian Inn. Zehnders also have world famous chicken dinners and the restaurant is as good as the Bavarian Inn but the Bavarian Inn is our comfort zone.

If you ever visit Michigan, you must visit Mackinac Island. You can take a short ferry ride to the island from Mackinaw City or St. Ignace in the U.P, A second must visit is the drive along the western Michigan shore of Lake Michigan. Three cities on this drive are Petoskey, Charlevoix, and Traverse City. The beaches on the western shore are sandy. The beaches on the eastern shore along Lake Huron are rocky. Cities on the eastern shore are Cheboygan, Rogers City, Oscoda, and Tawas. If your stay in Michigan is a couple of weeks both drives are a pleasure. A one week visit in Michigan is Mackinaw Island and the western shore drive.

If you ever visit Solvang, California, you will see a city with a Danish motif.

Yes I think it has a clear effect: it demonstrates that not all politicians are hiding in the pockets of the war profiteers, and that is encouraging. And I have heard that mayors grow up to be governors, and governors grow up to be senators and representatives, and senators and representatives grow up to be presidents; obviously these mayors- as human beings who support human causes- are prime candidates for higher offices. And most of our current crop of legislators and sad to say Obama as well, are prime candidates for the trash heap of politicians who failed because they just didn't have the courage and patriotism to do what they said they would do. Unfortunately our political trash heap is so big that we are very aggressively exporting our problems to other countries, which is why it is so encouraging that at least some politicians on some level of government, are behaving like human beings.

We must speak out and demand a quicker end to Afgan war www.whitehouse.gov www.congress.gov www.senate.gov Pakistan is not our ally. They play both sides . We must get out of Libya & stay out of Yemen We can not police the world Those days are long gone USA needs much repair - healing we can not afford more lost lives and wasted trillions in far off lands where folks hate us. Instead GOP talks of cutting our kids education, disabled, old folks on medicaid, Pell Grants, school lunches, head start .We are headed for more severe problens IF we get another GOP Pres We are done for It will be even worse than Bush Cheney .This new GOP is even more greedy & determined to gut medicare, SS , EPA, FDA, all that safe guards our water air & medicines.. Corp run news media / Fox wil not give us all the facts . Read - fact check - use logic and reason

former REPUB voter

Thank you JLC for mentioning Peter Werbe....I used to listen to his excellent "Night Call" podcasts and enjoyed them a lot. I listen to a lot of podcasts and somehow got sidetracked on Peter's podcast.

Bravo to the US Conference of Mayors! True, their resolution will have little real effect on our foreign policy, but, hopefully, this action will serve as a harbinger of things to come. The more conferences, committees, agencies, churches, civic groups - any aggregation of people - protest the policy, the more likely politicians will sense the way the wind's blowing and work to end these senseless military escapades.

Guest Suggestion

Thom - - I wanted to recommend that you have on the show as a guest a proponent of the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) school of economics. I think that the MMT message is particularly relevant and important in this day and age of deficit hysteria and the consequent insane focus on deficit reduction rather than job creation. The MMT school of economics focuses on the opportunities the modern monetary system (since going off the gold standard in 1971) presents to the US government as the monopoly issuer of the US currency. Possible guests I would suggest would be Prof. Randall Wray (who was recently interviewed by your old friend, Peter Werbe) and Marshall Auerback (who has actually been on your show before but on another topic).

The significance of MMT was nicely summarized in a recent article by Michael Hennigan as follows:

“A new macroeconomic model has been developed by a pioneering community of heterodox economists based in the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Their Modern Money Theory (MMT) approach predicted the current crisis and so unsurprisingly, their analysis and economic solutions have attracted intense interest amongst economic commentators including Nobel Prize winning, Paul Krugman.”

“Under the MMT perspective, a central bank should not be concerned per se by the mounting sum in the sovereign government’s deficit account as it does not, despite ‘common sense’ claims to the contrary, represent a debt analogous to that of a household, business or bank debt. Instead the central bank should watch intently for signs of inflation – of which there are few at present in our struggling economies – as its overarching guide for money creation and taxation levels. Taxation both destroys money – by removing it from circulation – and gives it value – as only a national currency is ever accepted in payment of taxes. Once it is understood that money can be safely issued by a central bank without repayment of capital and interest and does not have to be first borrowed in the bond market or raised in taxes (yes, that means given free) new policy options open to tackle unemployment and inflation – not forgetting resource peak and climate change.

. . . . Even though a sovereign government does not have to sell bonds to raise money, MMT tells us it should still do so to a certain extent, in order to provide secure interest-bearing saving vehicles for its citizens.”

@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.

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!

SAM!!!! I urge you to spend a little time looking into ALEC.ORG . . . They are the fount of evil pre-producing all the recessivist legislation being dumped on every state.

JUSTICE.ORG dishes on them at: http://www.justice.org/cps/rde/xchg/justice/hs.xsl/15044.htm