Troy Senik at City Journal

EXCERPTS:

… CTA—now the single most powerful special interest in California—organized a “State of Emergency” week to agitate for higher taxes in one of the most overtaxed states in the nation. A CTA document suggested dozens of ways for teachers to protest, including following state legislators incessantly, attempting to close major transportation arteries, and boycotting companies, such as Microsoft, that backed education reform.

Seen as a national leader in the classroom during the 1950s and 1960s, the country’s largest state is today a laggard, competing with the likes of Mississippi and Washington, D.C., at the bottom of national rankings.

CTA began its transformation in September 1975, when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Rodda Act, which allowed California teachers to bargain collectively.

In 2009, the union’s income was more than $186 million, all of it tax-exempt.

CTA had spent more than $210 million over the previous decade on political campaigning—…. outspent the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry, and the tobacco industry combined.

CTA also funds a wide array of liberal causes unrelated to education, with the goal of spreading around enough cash to prevent dissent from the Left.

FULL ARTICLE

An unknown North Carolina school teacher attempts to intimidate student from asking a question that the teacher thought showed disrespect for Barack Obama. The student stands strong to his beliefs, and refuses to allow the teacher to push him around.

By Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.

Let’s be real. College student loans are sold as a way to help students pay the high cost of tuition. They’re nothing of the sort.

Individuals, in a private marketplace for education, already have a method to pay for college tuition. It’s called saving. It’s also called competition, among various colleges in a free market, that is.

People won’t save for college. Some do, but most do not. To be fair, many cannot save, because the government is so busy taxing and regulating the upper half of economic earners that fewer jobs are created than otherwise would be the case. Government takes from those who have to give to those who don’t have—or who will not—and does a damn poor job of it, as it turns out.

For years now, America has been stalled at either zero growth or barely 1 percent growth. In happier times, we could expect 4 percent growth in the economy, per year. In a totally unfettered free market, we’d probably enjoy 8 or 10 percent growth per year. Our interventionist government won’t permit an unfettered free market, so it’s no wonder that it’s so hard for so many people to save for college given the general lack of vibrancy in the economy.

Another problem is that the college student loan program is evolving into a college tuition subsidy program. Obama, in particular, has been in favor of making it easier and easier for people to get loans for college. His is a program to make college tuition as close to “free” as possible. Who does this benefit most? Colleges themselves. By making it so easy for students to gain loans, colleges are free to raise their tuition year after year. That’s why we have college inflation higher than inflation in the rest of the economy.

Imagine if government instituted a “gasoline loan program.” Everybody would be eligible to have loans of several thousand dollars per year to pay for gas. This would make it easier for people to buy all the gasoline they needed, and then some. Happier customers more able to spend is a good thing for politicians in both parties, but it would also be a good thing for the gas and oil companies. Why? Because they could raise their prices.

Remember, there are no restraints on colleges for what they set as tuition fees. Nor should there be. But colleges are not operating in a truly free market. Colleges are getting the advantages of a free market—determining their own tuition rates—while less of the responsibility, because a third party is picking up or relaxing the strain of paying the cost.

Sooner or later it had to come to this, even if an outright socialist had not been elected President. Obama is an outright socialist, and he wants everyone to have the cheapest college tuition possible. He views college as a right, just as he views everything else that’s a commodity, a service or a product as a right. People should not have to work for it, according to socialists. It should be given to them.

But if that were really true, then we should just get rid of college tuition altogether. Colleges should not be allowed to make a profit. If college is really a right, we shouldn’t tinker around the edges and make college cheaper and cheaper via government policy. We should simply ask the government to command that colleges provide that right to students. Politicians won’t go this far, of course, because they need constituents and interest groups. Academia, while there are heroic exceptions here and there, is the most powerful and vocal spokesperson for all things leftist and socialist in American society. You had better believe they will not see any cost controls, or cuts in student loans, coming any time soon.

What about the students and families being stretched to the limit with increasing college tuition? The reason they’re paying so much is precisely because of the college student loan program. It’s no different from health insurance and Medicare—another third-party payer concept—driving up the cost of health care. Education is, and should be, a high value. Like health care, it would be expensive even in a free market. But there would be competition and fairness across the board, if government simply stayed out and let the market—i.e., supply and demand among customers and suppliers—determine the outcome. Kind of like cell phones, smart phones and computers, where the market has done a very fine job. Are these products free? Does government provide loans and subsidies so everyone can buy them? No. But supply, demand and freedom of competition have given people choices and made these products possible to just about everybody who wants them. College is going in the opposite direction. It’s getting scarcer all the time. Once tuition is $100,000 a year, even at state colleges, then almost nobody will be going to college.

I’m realistic. I know there is absolutely no chance that politicians, of either party, will stop the gravy train that college student loan guarantees and indirect subsidies have become. That leaves only one option. A crash and burn for the whole system. Tuition inflation will continue, just as it has for decades under college student loans. Obama’s plan will accelerate the process.

For many colleges, especially the ones promoting all the big-spending, big-borrowing policies that are devouring us all, it will be well-deserved. In actual daily life, young people and their families are going to have to find new ways to approach and finance higher education. We need, perhaps, a “black market” underground for education to help people learn in contexts where government is not interfering and jacking up the cost of education. It will have to be a social and psychological or philosophical change, at its root. People will have to let go of the idea that “It’s Harvard or bust,” or “University X or bust,” because government inflationary policies simply won’t permit it, not for most people.

One thing is for sure. Government is not going to solve the problem of high tuition costs. Under government interference, college tuition has only gone up and up and up. Under the proposals now being thrust upon us by the President and Congress, they’re only going to go higher.

Colleges sit back and enjoy the assurance of permanent business. With an economy growing at 1 percent or less a year, and the government relying more on borrowed “theoretical” money to finance the ever-exploding demand for ever-more government services, it will be interesting to see how well this works out for them, in the end.

Dr. Hurd has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Psychology, Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, CA, November 1991. Degree awarded With Distinction. Master’s of Social Work (M.S.W.), Clinical, The University of Maryland at Baltimore, May 1988. Bachelor’s of Arts (B.A.), Psychology, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, May 1985. Distinguished Psychology Student Award, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude. Dr. Hurd blogs at DrHurd.com

From EAGnews.org:

Speaking at Al Sharpton’s recent National Action Network conference in New York City, Duncan was asked about the appropriateness of schools teaching students how to protest, as well as bringing students to political protests.

His thoughts are sadly unsurprising, given his boss’ background as a community organizer:

EAGnews.org Producer: I wanted to get your comments on the introduction of non-violent protest training activism in the schools with the children, specifically taking children to protests and advocating for their own change in the educational system.

Arne Duncan: Thank you — that’s a great question. I think whether it’s, you know, children in elementary school, middle school, or high school, or college, getting our students engaged in the civic life of our country is hugely important. So getting young people engaged — protest being a part of it — but creating clubs, participating in service, giving back — not just being recipients of service but being the givers of service … The more our young people are actively engaged, I think the more we’re going to have a strong and vibrant democracy. And so, I think, having young people at the earliest ages doing things that are somehow non-traditional, I’m a big supporter of. (emphasis added)

It is disturbing that America’s top educator (theoretically) would openly endorse utilizing children for political protests and having schools use valuable time teaching such tactics. It sends a signal to every school in America that it is appropriate and it will not be scrutinized by federal educational leaders.

Produced by Jeremy Segal.

By Michael T. Snyder

If you are in college right now, you will most likely either be unemployed or working a job that only requires a high school degree when you graduate.  The truth is that the U.S. economy is not coming anywhere close to producing enough jobs for the hordes of new college graduates that are entering the workforce every year.  In 2011, 53 percentof all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.  Millions upon millions of young college graduates feel like the system has totally failed them.  They worked hard in school all their lives, they went into huge amounts of debt in order to get the college education that they were told they “must have” in order to get a good job, but after graduation they found that there were only a handful of good jobs for the huge waves of college graduates that were entering the “real world”.  All over America, college graduates can be found waiting tables, flipping burgers and working behind the register at retail stores.  Unfortunately, the employment picture in America is not going to get significantly better any time soon.

All over the United States, “middle class jobs” are being replaced by “low income jobs” and young college graduates are being hurt by this transition more than almost anyone else.  Massive numbers of young college graduates are now working jobs that do not even require a high school degree.  Some of the statistics about young college graduates are absolutely astounding.  The following is from a recent CNBC article….

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

Can you imagine working really hard all throughout high school and college and always getting good grades and then ending up as a bartender?

Sadly, many hard working college graduates cannot seem to find a decent job no matter how hard they try.  The following is one example from the CNBC article mentioned above….

“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” says Michael Bledsoe, who described months of fruitless job searches as he served customers at a Seattle coffeehouse. The 23-year-old graduated in 2010 with a creative writing degree.

Initially hopeful that his college education would create opportunities, Bledsoe languished for three months before finally taking a job as a barista, a position he has held for the last two years. In the beginning he sent three or four resumes day. But, Bledsoe said, employers questioned his lack of experience or the practical worth of his major. Now he sends a resume once every two weeks or so.

Have you ever been there?

Have you ever sent out resumes week after week, month after month, only to get absolutely nowhere?

Many recent college graduates are being advised by “career counselors” that they should go back and “get more education”.

But is that really the answer?  The truth is that there are lots and lots of unemployed and underemployed Americans with advanced degrees too.  For example, a recent Business Insider article profiled a law school graduate named Erin that is actually on food stamps….

She remains on food stamps so her social life suffers. She can’t afford a car, so she has to rely on the bus to get around Austin, Texas, where she lives. And currently unable to pay back her growing pile of law school debt, Gilmer says she wonders if she will ever be able to pay it back.

“That has been really hard for me,” she says. “I have absolutely no credit anymore. I haven’t been able to pay loans. It’s scary, and it’s a hard thing to think you’re a lawyer but you’re impoverished. People don’t understand that most lawyers actually aren’t making the big money.”

But what “more education” will do is that it will get you into even more debt.  Student loan debt can be one of the cruelest forms of debt, because it cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

As I wrote about a few days ago, total student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.  Students keep on racking up student loan debt in the hope that they will find “the American Dream” at the end of the rainbow.

Sadly, many students do everything “right” and still end up in the middle of a nightmare.

But it is not just young college graduates that are suffering in this economy.

As I wrote about a while back, the U.S. economy is not producing enough jobs for anyone at this point.

The mainstream media keeps telling us that unemployment is going down, but the truth is that the percentage of working age Americans that are employed is not increasing.  In March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  In March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans had a job.

Does that sounds like improvement?

Of course not.

Unlike what we have seen after every other recession in the post-World War II era, the employment to population ratio is not bouncing back, and that is really bad news.

The main reason for this is because of the bad economy, but also it is important to understand that we are transitioning away from an “employment economy”.

Today, most large corporations view employees as very expensive “liabilities”.  The goal for most large corporations is to minimize those “liabilities” as much as possible.  In fact, these days some large corporations lay off huge numbers of workers even while they are making huge profits at the same time.

Once upon a time, Henry Ford made a conscious decision to pay his workers enough money so that they could afford to buy the cars that they were making.

Today, most corporations simply do not care about the living standards of their workers.  They simply want to maximize profits to the fullest extent possible.

Many small businesses would like to hire more workers, but the federal government has made hiring workers so complicated and so expensive that it has become exceedingly difficult to make a profit on a worker.  Most of the time it is simply easier to try to do more with what you already have.

The number of Americans that can work a job (“just over broke”) and still live “the American Dream” is steadily shrinking.  Increasingly, the financial rewards in our economy are being funneled to the very top of organizations and workers are finding that their living standards continue to slowly go down.

At corporations that belong to the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, CEOs earn 380 times what the average worker makes at those companies.  In 1980, CEOs only earned 42 times what the average worker made at those companies.

A fundamental shift is happening in our economy and it is not going to be reversed any time soon.  Workers are not valued at most companies anymore.  No matter how much of yourself you give to your company, when the day comes that you become “disposable”, you will be cast aside as so much rubbish.

That is why I try to encourage people to start their own businesses and to be their own bosses.  There is no job security anymore.  The job that you have today could be gone tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the federal government is actually spending your money to train foreign workers to take our jobs.  The following is from a recent Daily Caller article….

While the president has been urging “insourcing,” the government has been sending money to the Philippines to train foreign workers for jobs in English-speaking call centers.

According to New York Democratic Rep. Tim Bishop and North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones, this is unacceptable and “shocking.”

The pair are calling on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to immediately suspend what is known as the Job Enabling English Proficiency (JEEP) program.

Can you believe that?

Over and over again, our politicians talk about the need to keep jobs in the United States and then they go out and do things that have the exact opposite effect.

It is truly maddening.

So what are the hordes of American workers that cannot find jobs supposed to do?

Well, one thing we are definitely seeing is a huge rise in the number of Americans that are dependent on the government.

For example, at the end of the Reagan administration the ratio of workers on Social Security disability to active workers was about 2 percent.

Today, it is over 6 percent.

During the first four months of 2012 alone, 539,000 more Americans were added to the Social Security disability rolls and another 725,000 submitted new applications.

Another federal program that is experiencing explosive growth is food stamps.

Last year, one out of every seven Americans was on food stamps, and the Congressional Budget Office is projecting that the number of people on food stamps will continue to grow through 2014.

It is so sad to see what is happening to America.  Our economy is being dismantled all around us and the future looks incredibly bleak.

Right now there are millions upon millions of Americans that are sitting at home wallowing in despair.  They don’t understand why nobody will hire them and they are rapidly running out of options.

The following is a comment that a reader left on one of my recent articles about the middle class….

I cannot believe my present situation…

I worked hard in school and college so that I could escape the low income uneducated mess I grew up in.

I made all the correct decisions with my career, finances, etc. I cannot figure out how I got to where I am at now.

In late 2008 I was laid off in the IT field. I was a go-getter, and I didn’t let anyone tell me the economy would make it difficult to find a job. I had another within 4 weeks.

Was laid off from that job last year. I qualified for unemployment, but then my employer decides to bring a bunch of lawyers and fight my eligibility. After I won again, they appealed again. I finally couldn’t afford to keep paying attorney fees. I finally lost the appeal. I had to pay all that money back.

I’m still trying to find a job in my field. Being the go-getting I am, I immediately took a job waiting tables which amounted to a 75% pay-cut.

I had saved 6 months of expenses and that is completely dry. I have completely drained my retirement and savings. Still cannot find a livable wage job after almost a decade in my field.

Things are slowly going into default and it feels utterly hopeless and stressful. My pristine credit rating is gone, my savings and everything I worked for is gone. I haven’t missed a payment on my mortgage, but it is coming. I can’t cut anything more than I already have.

I just can’t figure out how this could have happened to me. I played by the rules and made all the right choices. I skipped vacations and time off to prove I was a good worker and had what it took to be a valuable employee.

I really am just at a loss at this point. I’m single and have no family. This is really make-or-break for me. I have no fallback plan. The feeling of failure is just gut-wrenching.

Please say a prayer for that reader and for all of the other hard working Americans out there that are desperate to find a job.

If you are at the end of your rope, please do not give up.  Even in the darkest moments, there is always a way to turn things around if you will just keep on fighting.

Sadly, way too many people are giving up on life because of the economy.  In Europe, economic conditions have deteriorated so badly that there has been a dramatic increase in suicides.  The following is from a recent article in the New York Times….

The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.”

When the next major economic downturn happens in the United States, we will probably see a similar thing happen here too.

But people need to realize that our lives are not about how much stuff we own.

Even if every single thing is taken away from you and you are left with nothing that does not mean that your life is over.

Even if you have not been able to find a job for years, that does not mean that you should give up.

In life, everyone gets knocked down.

But unless you are dead, there is always a way to get things turned around in a more positive direction.

One thing that I have learned in life is that you must never, ever, ever, ever give up.

The years ahead are going to be really hard for the global economy, but that doesn’t mean that they have to be horrible years for you.

The years ahead can be the very best years of your entire life, but that will never happen if you decide to simply give up.

Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and has a law degree from the University of  Florida. He is an attorney that has worked for some of the largest and most prominent law firms in Washington D.C. and who now resides outside of Seattle, Washington. He is a very active blogger and is also a respected researcher, writer, speaker and activist. He blogs at http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

By Phyllis Schlafly

The charter school movement was presented to the American people as a way to have more parental control of public school education. Charter schools are public schools financed by local taxpayers plus federal grants.

Charter schools are able to hire and fire teachers, administrators and staff and avoid control by education department bureaucrats and the teachers unions. No doubt there are some good charter schools, but loose controls have allowed a very different kind of school to emerge.

Charter schools have opened up a path for foreigners to run schools at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers, without much news coverage. One of the few breakthroughs in the media was a front-page article in the New York Times (6-7-11), carried over to two full inside pages, about the many charter schools run by a secretive and powerful sect from Turkey called the Gülen Movement.

Headed by a Turkish preacher named Fethullah Gülen who had already founded a network of schools in 100 other countries, this movement opened its first U.S. charter school in 1999. Gülen’s schools spread rapidly after he figured out how to work our system and get the U.S. taxpayers to import and finance his recruitment of followers for his worldwide religious and social movement.

The Gülen Movement now operates the largest charter school network in the United States. It has at least 135 schools teaching more than 45,000 students in at least 26 states, financed by millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars a year.

The principals and school board members are usually Turkish men. Hundreds of Turkish teachers (referred to as “international teachers”) and administrators have been admitted to the United States, often using H-1B visas, after claiming that qualified Americans cannot be found.

In addition, the Gülen Movement has nurtured a close-knit network of businesses and organizations run by Turkish immigrants. These include the big contractors who built or renovated the schools, plus a long list of vendors selling school lunches, uniforms, after-school programs, web design, teacher training, and special education materials.

Several other news sources have started to publish information about the Gülen charter schools. In Ohio, an NBC-TV station reported that Ohio taxpayers’ money was used to recruit teachers for charter schools from overseas, especially from Turkey.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Turkish scientists, engineers and businessmen have opened several charter schools in Pennsylvania, plus 120 charter schools in 25 states, funded with millions of taxpayer dollars. Just one charter school, called the Truebright Science Academy, received $3 million from the Philadelphia School District.

According to a guest post in the Washington Post (3-27-12), Gülen’s U.S. schools are openly discussed in the Turkish press. The goal for Gülen’s schools is to “teach tens of thousands of people the Turkish language, introduce them to our culture and win them over,” and so the schools regularly take students to Turkey for “cultural immersion.”

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that charter schools in New Orleans and Baton Rouge are linked to businesses run by people from Turkey.

In Texas, 36 Turkish charter schools, called the Harmony Network, have received over $100 million in government funds. These schools now have 290 (mostly Turkish) employees on H-1B visas, about 16 percent of its workforce.

In Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, a substitute teacher named Amanda Getz reported about what goes on inside a charter school called TiZA. TiZA is a K-through-8th-grade charter school funded by U.S. taxpayers and sponsored by Islamic Relief.

The teacher says there is no clear division between the subjects studied during school and the study of the Qu’ran after school. She says that homework assignments for after-school religious instruction are written on the board right alongside assignments for math and social studies.

Ms. Getz says she was informed that, on Fridays, the Muslim holy day, there would be a school assembly in the gym after lunch. She was instructed to take her students before the assembly to the bathroom, four at a time, for “ritual washing,” and afterwards “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap” led the students in Muslim prayers.

This school has only 300 students, but it has a waiting list of 1,500. TiZA shares its building with a mosque and also with the headquarters of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.”

Ms. Getz said almost all TiZA students stay after school for “Islamic Studies” instruction provided by the Muslim American Society. The religious instruction is technically not part of the school day, but the school buses don’t leave until after Islamic Studies are over. Most American taxpayers would be mighty surprised at what their money is financing.

Rep. Allen West was belittled in the press for making these comments about Democrats as socialists:

“I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party,” West had said. “It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.” Though serious, he was apparently using the term communist in a loose way, to suggest a far-left or radical “progressive” approach, and also to identify what have traditionally been called “fellow travelers” of the CPUSA.