You know, I don't recall what we were taught about our wars. What I
think I thought was that we were driving our enemies out of Lands that
we wanted to make into States. Spain, Mexico and the Indians...and of
course those Rebels in the South.
And when the dust settled, we had established Freedom and democracy.
And at the time I believed it was true. As a child I would never
challenge the adults in my life. I know that as I read my history
books I wanted to be just like J. P. Morgan or John D. Rockefeller.
It was a long time before I came to understand that these were not
nice men. Andrew Carnegie also was someone I looked up to as a boy.
Sure, he worked his people hard and paid low wages, but he did "give"
all that money to set up public libraries, so the poor children could
learn.
But in my defense, all of my information was being spoon fed to me by
the Ruling Class. Even when I would be dragged to the local Communist
Meetings, I had no understanding of what communism was. All I knew
was that there was little difference between sitting quietly in a
Party meeting or a church service. They were not reaching me.
I remember joining the Methodist Youth Fellowship. My reason? Girls
outnumbered boys about 3 to 1. Anyway, I had this "heart to heart"
talk with the pastor, telling him that I planned to donate my second
million dollars to the church. By the way, the church is still
unpaid. While my figures show that we've actually earned over a
million dollars, most of it was spent as fast as it came in. And
along the way we did buy goats and cows for folks around the world,
and supported villages in Haiti, along with supporting many projects
in the effort to improve conditions for blind people.
It was through rolling up my sleeves and taking my place, shoulder to
shoulder with other folks that began to "improve" my thinking and my
understanding. Sadly, those old lesson books built a wall, rather
than opening channels. If I were starting over, I'd say that reaching
our children and teaching them to think for themselves, is the most
important thing we could do.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/29/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
But there's one truth that they taught us in the old days. They taught us
that wars were fought in order to control natural resources. That stands out
in my mind. No one said that wars were fought to spread democracy. Of
course, they were talking about old wars, not the one we were currently
fighting, world war 2. That war, we were told, was fought to overcome
Fascism. Certainly, that's why our young men were willing to fight, but I'm
not at all sure it was the reason that our government chose to support
England and it certainly had nothing to do with why our government
manipulated Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2018 10:32 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Republicans Come Out Swinging Against
Military Family Education
Ah yes. To the Rich go the privileges.
How well I recall learning in my grade school social studies that the USA
had no Classes. Of course we learned about the Upper Class, the Middle
Class and the Working Class at the same time. But of course that was
different. Americans could move from one Class to the next...always the
example was upward mobility, never a downward tumble. Look at the likes
of...fill in names...who rose from rags to riches. Why even old Abe Lincoln
did his lessons in front of the fire in his cabin, writing with charcoal on
the coal shovel. And if you wanted to seek your fortune, and we believed
that there was a fortune waiting for each of us, just follow the words of
Horace Greeley, "Go West young man, go West!"
We certainly did not question the source of our school lessons. They just
appeared at the beginning of each school year.
And while we learned of the major wars, the great generals, the great
industrialists, and the Kings and Queens still ruling nations around the
world, we understood that this was the important information on which we
built our history.
Not one word about our Working Class contributions. I didn't read about
such things as the IWW(wobblies) until college. Joe Hill?
Hmm...maybe CEO of Hills Brothers Coffee?
Anyway, so many Americans are owned by the Ruling Class, that we really have
only limited freedom. Still, I do hold onto the belief that the Corporate
Capitalists will, in their greed, overreach and tip the Ship of Fools. And
who can really know what will happen then.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/29/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Of course, a lot has already been privatized, including a good part of
our military. The NYC Police Department gets money from Wall Street to
provide private security for big banks, above and beyond what is
provided for the rest of the city.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2018 1:11 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Republicans Come Out Swinging Against
Military Family Education
After privatizing everything, who will Corporate America blame when
things go wrong?
King Midas learned the hard way just what happens to unchecked Greed.
Corporate America will keep on taking everything in sight until it
suddenly realizes that there is such a thing as, "Too Far!" Of course
we'll all suffer their stupidity and greed.
But we'll have the last laugh because we will have very little
distance to fall.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/28/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Republicans Come Out Swinging Against Military Family Education
Monday, May 28, 2018 By Emily Ludolf, Occupy.com | Report
Military parent with child
(Photo: LightField Studios / Shutterstock)
It's become an alarming trend that lawmakers sneakily attach
unpopular new amendments to big annual legislation that invariably
passes. This has happened repeatedly with the National Defense
Authorization Act, a very popular bill especially among Republicans
(passage of the NDAA hasn't failed once in the last 57 years).
The 2019 NDAA represents yet another campaign against public
education, this time with some unlikely victims: Now, the Republicans
are turning to attack their own base, because hidden in the language
of the annual "must-pass"
bill is a direct assault on the children of people in the military.
Certain terms in this bill -- which they've given the innocuous name,
"The Education Savings Accounts for Military Families Act of 2018
(H.R. 5199) -- would lead to an incredible defunding of public
schools, specifically those that cater to children of military
families. One might consider this an unconscionable tact for even the
Republicans to take, given their staunch support of the military.
But all the old rules are being re-written, in this case literally.
The language in the bill boils down to this: GOP lawmakers feel fine
about asking citizens to fight and die for our country, but not fine
about providing a proper education for those people's children.
The fact is, this bill does the opposite of what its title implies.
At its core it is a targeted effort to massively defund public
schools and shift more money into private institutions. If the NDAA
passes with the added terms -- which it's on its way to doing after
131 congressional Democrats joined their Republican colleagues in
voting Yes -- military schools will suffer a huge decrease of their
portion of the Federal Impact Aid, which provides funding to public
schools in areas that don't collect local taxes.
This happens, for example, on federal land, and since the majority of
these schools are located near military bases, they are also where
military families send their children.
A large portion of funding for military family schools comes from
Federal Impact Aid, but Republicans have suggested a perennial
conservative favorite to replace it: a voucher program. Why? Because
it would put the money directly into the hands of private businesses.
This will clearly hurt the most defenseless parts of our society. But
who's counting? Fortunately, we still live in a world where it's at
least nominally unpopular to pass legislation that strips funding
from children, especially those of military families. Yet even that
taboo may be broken.
Opposing the legislation are the Military Child Education Coalition,
Military Officers Association of America, National Military Family
Association, National Military Family Foundation, National
Association of Federally Impacted School and the Military Impact
Association. In a collective statement released recently, the groups
wrote: "Proposals to divert Impact Aid from schools that educate
concentrations of military-connected students are short sighted and
will only reduce opportunities for all students in these school
districts."
Those who are part of the military, and who know military children,
are the ones most likely to disapprove of this "short-sighted" plan.
But even they appear of little concern in the new political climate
where winning is more important than running the government in good
faith. Bolstered by the Trump administration, Republicans have taken
the sting out of controversy and scandal. Now, while everyone
intently watches the whirlwind of the Trump circus, the rest of the
Republican clan are making the most of the chaos by covertly passing
as much reprehensible legislation as possible, capitalizing on the
grand distraction.
Who, specifically, are we talking about that will bear the costs of
this policy? Nearly 60 percent of children in military families are
school aged, and 80 percent attend public schools. The majority of
these schools rely on the Impact Aid program, which has existed since
the 1950s to bridge the funding gap created by their non-taxable
federal regions.
If H.R. 5199 passes along with the NDAA, children attending schools
on federal land will have a choice of either attending their school
or receiving a voucher for a private school. But as we've seen time
and again, the quality of charter schools varies, and as a whole they
haven't shown themselves to be better than public schools.
Margaret Raymond, director of the CREDO program at Stanford
University and a self-described pro-market enthusiast, publicly
admitted that the supposed benefits of voucher programs have failed to
materialize.
Student results are not improving, and taxes are actually increasing
in many areas.
One large factor that has to be considered: Private schools lack any
form of standardized courses. Military families have special needs
because they are often impacted by frequent moving, which happens on
average six to nine times. Keeping them within the public system is
much easier for children because they can pick up where they left off
educationally, regardless of where they go.
Now, the new bill will bounce kids between private schools with
completely different curricula, generating potentially disastrous
results for their education. In an effort to avoid this pitfall, in
2015 Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, creating a
Military Student Identifier for each student with the hope of
improving the quality of education for military families by tracking
educational continuity. All that progress flies out the window with
the current legislation.
The changes proposed in the NDAA bill are, in fact, the brainchild of
the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank. If approved, the
bill would provide eligible families between $2,500 and $4,500 per
child from Federal Impact Aid if they pulled their children out of
public K-12 school. It's estimated that over 125,000 children would
be eligible under this change.
Like most of the ideas put out by the Heritage Foundation, this is
one too stems from ideology, not evidence. Heritage only cites a
survey of readers from the Military Times, and predictably concludes
from the data that the solution to all problems must be
privatization. Although military families have cited that school
performance can often be a factor for their leaving or staying in the
military, the solution to under-performing schools cannot, in any
rational world, be to take away their funding.
That same survey of Military Times readers found that, by a factor of
almost
2 to 1, moving between schools was the one factor that led to the
greatest difficulties in military families' children's education.
Heritage doesn't consider the impacts of curriculum discontinuity in
its advocacy and conveniently assumes that private schools will
handle these unique challenges well, even without the aid of
standardized curricula.
However, research has shown that kids in charter schools tend to move
between schools even more than public school children, mainly because
of the variability in the quality of education. Parents are forced to
shop around just to find adequate schools. Rather than focus on
passing legislation that might improve these schools, GOP lawmakers
have instead chosen to undermine public schools that actually work in
the name of ideology.
Defenders of the bill contend that they are trying to help military
families by giving them a choice of what school to attend. That
sounds alright in theory until you realize that the end result will
present military families with an impossible choice: between giving
their voucher to the owner of a charter school that is looking to
make a profit, or sending their kids to a school that has just had a
large chunk of its annual budget disappear.
It's hard to see how this could benefit the children, who are forced
to choose between the lesser of two evils/ Worse still, switching
students between private schools with different curricula actually
exacerbates one of the key challenges in educating military children.
The changes being advocated would negatively impact students'
education, and the unfounded notion that choice alone will solve the
issues of educating military children is an illusion.
The House author of the bill, a 37-year-old Indiana representative
named Jim Banks, is a relatively new congressmen. His first
contribution in Congress was to introduce a bill last year requiring
all visa applicants to have their social media accounts scrutinized.
A reluctant Trump enabler, he nonetheless shares the president's goal
of shifting public funds to private interests, and his bill typifies
the duplicity of modern conservative legislation.
After all, look at his own state. Indiana has the nation's largest
school voucher program, which conservatives hail as an unmitigated
success. But in reality, it is a shocking failure, robbing a proper
education from thousands of children.
A University of Arkansas study found that, for Indiana students at
the schools studied, "lower quality schools have a higher tendency of
participating in voucher programs." Although good charter schools
exist, on average voucher programs reduce educational achievement
because they introduce the nasty element of profit into the equation.
Not all the voucher money goes directly toward your child's
education; it's also used to pay off stakeholders.
If Rep. Banks had taken a closer look at the performance of voucher
schools in his own state, he would know this federal law will reduce
the educational opportunities of children nationwide, just like it
did in Indiana. Public schools, bled dry of funds, have resorted to
advertising on billboards and on the radio to attempt to increase
student retention. For Rep. Banks and his ideological followers,
these facts clearly don't play a part in their decision.
Sadly, HR 5199 will likely pass with little notice. The fact is, not
many people are looking too closely at the NDAA, even as the Trump
presidency threatens to send America rearing off a cliff. Though the
exact date of the vote isn't set, it won't occur until later in the
year. Meanwhile, propaganda pushing for the private looting of public
funds under the guise of "school choice" is in full swing. Military
families are more likely than not to vote conservative, but the
proposed GOP changes to Federal Impact Aid are most definitely not in
their children's interests. No wonder lawmakers are trying to sneak
the bill into the NDAA, hoping nobody will notice.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It
may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from
the source.
Emily Ludolf
Emily Ludolf is a contributor to Occupy.com.
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