Life, Liberty, Property
By Noel Sheppard | June 11, 2012 | Newsbusters
A regular media meme, especially since Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s comments regarding public sector employees last week, has been that there just aren’t enough school teachers in America.
Such statements ignore that according to the Census Bureau, since 1960, the average class size in our public schools has declined by 40 percent as the number of teachers rose almost four times faster than the student population. [Read more…]
By Stephanie Simon | June 1, 2012 | Reuters
(Reuters) – Louisiana is embarking on the nation’s boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.
Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.
The following year, students of any income will be eligible for mini-vouchers that they can use to pay a range of private-sector vendors for classes and apprenticeships not offered in traditional public schools. The money can go to industry trade groups, businesses, online schools and tutors, among others.
Every time a student receives a voucher of either type, his local public school will lose a chunk of state funding.
By Kevin Mooney | May 29, 2012 | Breitbart News
By Ellen Brown | May 18, 2012 | Truthout
An abandoned School. (Photo: Wout / Flickr)
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“You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised….
The revolution will be live.” -From the 1970s hit song by Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
Last week, the city of Philadelphia’s school system announced that it expects to close 40 public schools next year and 64 schools by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40 percent of its current enrollment and thousands of experienced, qualified teachers.
But corporate media in other cities made no mention of these massive school closings – nor of those in Chicago, Atlanta or New York City. Even in the Philadelphia media, the voices of the parents, students and teachers who will suffer were omitted from most accounts.
It’s all about balancing the budgets of cities that have lost revenues from the economic downturn. Supposedly, there is simply no money for the luxury of providing an education for the people.
By Ben Shapiro | May 3, 2012| Breitbart
Julia’s story begins when she’s 3. Thanks to President Obama, the website says:
Julia is enrolled in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve programs like this one, Julia joins thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.
Well, no. Head Start has been one of the worst failures of the federal government. The Department of Health and Human Services itself found that the government has invested $150 billion in Head Start since 1965 … and that has yielded precisely zero impact for the kids involved. But according to Obama, that dastardly Romney fellow would cut Head Start by 20%. The horror, the horror!
Apparently, nothing happens in Julia’s life until she’s 17. There’s a reason for that – America’s public school system is an utter failure, and Obama knows it. But Obama says that Julia at age 17 is flourishing (presumably she isn’t one of the approximately 25 percent of all students who drop out of school, or one of the 40 percent of black or Hispanic students who do so). Here’s Julia’s life under Obama at 17:
Julia takes the SAT and is on track to start her college applications. Her high school is part of the Race to the Top program, implemented by President Obama. Their new college- and career-ready standards mean Julia can take the classes she needs to do well.
Julia must be one of the lucky ones to get into a charter school. If she goes to one of America’s normal public schools, this is a pipe dream. But according to Obama, nasty Romney would cut funding for public education “to pay for tax cuts to millionaires.” Because what we need is more education spending, not less – even while districts like the Los Angeles Unified School District expend about $30,000 per year per student to achieve the worst results in the nation.
By age 18, Julia’s taking out college loans – with the help of the taxpayer:
As she prepares for her first semester of college, Julia and her family qualify for President Obama’s American Opportunity Tax Credit – worth up to $10,000 over four years. Julia is also one of millions of students who receive a Pell Grant to help put a college education within reach.
So Julia majors in lesbian dance at one of our nation’s colleges. Who pays? Obama doesn’t say.
At age 22, Julia undergoes surgery:
It is thankfully covered by her insurance due to a provision in health care reform that lets her stay on her parents’ coverage until she turns 26.
Because God knows that this independent young woman can’t buy her own health care, obtain it through her college, or find another way to pay for her surgery. Also, what kind of surgery is this? Is it elective? Is it required? Who knows? And let’s not mention that the average 22-year-old isn’t receiving surgery. Obamacare hurts Julia because she’s subsidizing her parents, since she has to pay higher costs once she obtains her own insurance.
At 23, Julia “starts her career as a web designer.” This assumes she will have a job in the private sector under Obama. Or, that she’s going to be hired to design programs like “The Life of Julia.”
Because of steps like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Julia is one of millions of women across the country who knows she’ll always be able to stand up for her right to equal pay.
She can sue people. Julia’s friends, the trial lawyers, are overjoyed!
Read the full article here.
Van Jones at the “Take Back the American Dream” conference.
Executive Summary
Newly recently released tax documents reveal how billionaire “philanthropist” George Soros expanded his U.S.-based empire by using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the Obama stimulus. Soros and Obama worked hand-in-glove through the stimulus, which has been called the largest single partisan wealth transfer in American history.
In 2010, tax records show that Soros, a convicted inside trader with extensive knowledge of the American financial system and government policies under Obama, deployed grantees from his Open Society Foundations1 to lobby for and acquire federal contracts for job training, green energy, and community redevelopment programs. By gaining control over those resources, Soros advanced his agenda for “green economics,” open borders, and increased government handouts. In short, he grew his empire, which includes much of the “progressive” movement in the U.S., as the federal government and Obama’s political constituencies grew in power and influence.
This report analyzes George Soros’s grants to organizations in 2010. The records show massive coordination of non-profit networks in the states and nationally. Four powerful organizations and coalitions — The STAR Coalition, The Gamaliel Foundation, the Apollo Alliance, and Green for All — are given detailed scrutiny in this regard, with the involvement of Van Jones getting special mention. Jones is the former Obama “Green Jobs Czar” fired after information about his communist past surfaced through the work of anti-communist blogger Trevor Loudon and then-Fox News personality Glenn Beck. The lobbying power of such efforts ensured that stimulus funds flowed from taxpayers into union coffers and into the hands of other activists who had been instrumental in putting President Obama into office.
This report, “Obama Stimulus Dollars Funded Soros Empire,” includes an analysis of how Soros-funded organizations and networks operate, the strategies used to steer stimulus money to special interest lobbies, and an explanation of how taxpayers were forced to subsidize the “progressive” movement in the U.S. However, only Congress, with its investigative powers, can get to the bottom of how this money was spent and into whose coffers it ultimately ended up.
America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI) began the process of analyzing the Soros empire, which has been financed with almost $8 billion from the controversial billionaire, during an October 27, 2011, “Soros Files” conference in Washington, D.C. Reports and speeches from this conference are posted at www.sorosfiles.com The reports available at this website include How Soros Finances Marxism in America, Soros Funds Marxist Legal Groups and Terrorists, and How Soros is Subverting the Criminal Justice System. This website is updated on a regular basis.
How the “partisan wealth transfer” called the Obama stimulus was applied to Soros-funded organizations that dominate the progressive movement and President Obama’s political base.
John Lott, an economist and co-author with Grover Norquist of the just released Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, writes that the Obama stimulus was “a massive partisan wealth transfer — the largest single transfer in American history.” In his book, Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer reveals that Soros helped craft the stimulus then invested in companies benefiting from it.
Surprisingly little has been written about George Soros’s role in the Recovery Act. This may be due in part to the fact that Soros’s Open Society Foundations in the U.S. (Open Society Institute and Fund to Promote Open Society) only recently disclosed their 2010 federal tax records. Whatever the reason for this delay, for almost two years it effectively concealed the influence the billionaire currency speculator exercised over the federal government’s efforts to “stimulate” the economy. Such “stimulation,” as we can see, was political in nature.
(This title is from a Soros-sponsored conference on how to use Obama stimulus dollars).
By the time hundreds of billions in federal Recovery Act dollars started flowing to the states, George Soros’s grantees were poised to take advantage of key provisions of the stimulus package. This is unsurprising, for Soros had already distributed grants to dozens of activist groups who lobbied for inclusion of those provisions. These organizations were then first in line for stimulus funds earmarked for “green jobs training,” “neighborhood stabilization” and other activist-driven projects.
In the alchemy of Open Society, a dollar spent on an activist can translate into ten dollars in federal subsidies. Hence, Soros and his rich allies give to the poor (and their representatives) in order to take from everyone in the middle.
For Soros, and the activist network he supports, the stimulus program represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to play Robin Hood with other people’s money. The Obama administration earmarked $787 billion, and much of that was for precisely the types of activities Soros favors: jobs programs, green jobs programs, green jobs programs for felons, “food justice” activism, mortgage assistance that transferred private debts to taxpayers, “neighborhood stabilization” and “weatherization” schemes that enriched community organizers, billion-dollar loans to “sustainability” start-ups, federal subsidies for schools, and social service money-sinks like Head Start. Meanwhile, Soros found other ways to meddle in the stimulus. Many Open Society grantees received funds from Soros specifically earmarked to demand “equity” and racial diversity in the distribution of Recovery Act funds.
Soros deployed his usual arsenal of socially divisive strategies in these efforts. He handed out grants to key minority groups to allege “inequality” in the distribution of Recovery Act funds. These activists injected racial and ethnic politics into mortgage relief efforts and jobs programs. Recovery Act measures to address the mortgage defaults especially empowered activists to denounce “the one percent” and accuse their fellow citizens of purported racial and anti-immigrant discrimination.
The Recovery Act was only one government initiative through which Soros prevailed upon taxpayers (largely without their knowledge or consent) to subsidize his non-profit programs. In New York City, Soros joined forces with Mayor Bloomberg and the Robin Hood Foundation to provide seed money for expensive social programs and new charter schools.
Such projects, which enjoy rabidly enthusiastic press, frequently end up being only fractionally funded by the wealthy philanthropists who start them, while taxpayers foot the bills. In the hands of George Soros, such private/public initiatives are a key back-door method of seizing control of the government. They are also a back-door method of implementing socialism. The Recovery Act speeded this process exponentially.
The Strategy
On May 10, 2010, a two-day event, “Organizing the Recovery,” was held in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation. The STAR (States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery) Coalition promoted the event and described itself as a network of groups working at the state and local levels to ensure that the Recovery Act was used to “address vital social needs and benefit those most harmed by the failed economic policies of the past.” This was an open invitation for the liberal/left to apply for funds.
The STAR Coalition consisted of:
Read the full article here.
"One man with courage is a majority." ~Thomas Jefferson
By Jonathan S. Tobin | August 11, 2012 | Commentary Magazine As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted […]
By Vanderleun | August 10, 2012 | American Digest [From 2008. Only the names have been changed because the target has changed.] This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it’s a fall, not […]
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