independentsforkerry.org

ThinkProgress: Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), a potential presidential candidate, has been quietly pushing initiatives that would transform the state’s public university system into a business-style model driven by “efficiency and profitability,” The Washington Post reported today.

The reforms Perry is seeking to implement are favored by one of his top campaign donors and the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), an affiliate of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

ALEC is a conservative public policy organization that often drafts model legislation for use in state legislatures across the country, and Republicans in several states have used its model legislation directly.

Perry’s push to turn the university system into profit-driven business centers began in 2008 with a higher-education summit led by oilman Jeff Sandefer — a long-time Perry family friend, a consistent top contributor to his campaigns and a TPPF board member. The proposals, based on “Seven Breakthrough Solutions” offered by TPPF, including measuring professors as “profit or loss centers,” separating research and teachers budgets to avoid wasting time on “esoteric, unproductive research” and basing professor pay, in part, on anonymous student evaluations. Perry’s alma mater, in fact, has already begun implementing some of these policies, the Post reports:

The initiative stayed pretty much under the radar until last fall, when it became public that Perry’s alma mater, Texas A&M University, had compiled a spreadsheet ranking faculty members according to whether they were earning their keep or costing the school money. The university already had rankled professors with a program that paid bonuses based on anonymous student evaluations.

Both ALEC and TPPF have established a close working relationship with Perry, donating around million and .5 million, respectively, to his campaigns. Perry, who accepted ALEC’s highest award last August and spoke at its December conference, has benefited “far and away the most of any candidate” from its corporate donations. In turn, he donates the proceeds from his latest book to TPPF, which he describes as “a quality outlet.” Since becoming governor, Perry has appointed three TPPF board members to high-profile positions and can count on TPPF’s president as his former Deputy General Counsel and Policy Director.

But while Perry follows the legislative outline provided for him by ALEC and TPPF, higher education leaders have criticized the policies roundly. Distinguished Texas A&M alumni, the American Association of Universities (AAU), the chair of the state Senate Higher Education Committee, and other higher education groups urged Texas A&M and Perry to resist the “ill-conceived reforms,” and AAU president Robert Berdahl, a former president of the University of Texas-Austin, called the reforms “a crazy set of proposals.” Upon receiving a letter from Berdahl asking him to reconsider the policies, Texas A&M Chancellor Michael D. McKinney — Perry’s former chief of staff — threw it in the trash.

The perils of running higher education like a business, meanwhile, are well-known. The nation’s for-profit college system — which targets efficiency and profits the way Perry hopes Texas’ universities will — is rife with fraud and abuse of students, promising quick degrees and quality job opportunities at low prices. In reality, they more often leave students with “crushing debt and bleak job prospects,” hardly the situation one finds in the current Texas university system, which is regarded as one of the nation’s top statewide university systems.

Related:

• American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC’s) connection to Texas law making
• Gov. Perry’s Legislative Agenda Bears Strong Resemblance To ALEC’s Corporate-Backed Model Bills
• Wisconsin Dem State Rep. Kicked Out Of ALEC Conference
• EXPOSED: The Corporations Funding The Annual Meeting Of The Powerful Right-Wing Front Group ALEC
• VIDEO: Security Guards At American Legislative Exchange Council Conference Physically Attack ThinkProgress Reporters

Democratic Blog – News

I consulted my thesaurus because I thought I have been over-working the word “despicable” in my articles. However, my research confirmed the word best describes what passes for the modern civil rights movement and Obama administration.

I watched a video in which Al Sharpton concluded that MLK fought for social justice. He mischaracterized Dr. King’s dream, saying it was to make everything equal in everybody’s house. Sharpton said MLK did not fight simply to put one black family in the White House.

MLK was a Republican. And yet Al Sharpton addressed a congregation of ill-informed blacks, lying to them about MLK’s mission. Sharpton thrives on keeping racial tension, suspicion, and hate alive.

To maintain relevance and his cherished seat of power at the Democratic Party round table, Sharpton must continue to deliver a mind-numb, monolithic black vote – proving himself to be an asset to the furtherance of their social justice agenda. Thus Sharpton’s hatred of successful conservative blacks such as I. We threaten his gig.

Ironically, Sharpton is guilty of betraying his race, the very crime of which he accuses black conservatives. Imagine the cruelty of not only allowing a person to believe, but reinforcing the lie that the individual is a pauper, all the while seeing a thousand-dollar bill in the hopeless person’s back pocket unknown to him or her.

This is what Sharpton does to black America when he preaches that they are not equal, while in realty, they are extraordinarily blessed to live in the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to go for it. Despicable!

Then, there is former Obama administration Green Jobs Adviser Van Jones. Jones is another strong advocate for social justice. Incredibly, this man truly believes fairness is government making everyone’s life equal. Jones was forced to resign when Glenn Beck and others raised heck. However, Obama would not have appointed the anti-traditional America radical socialist in the first place unless he agreed with Jones. My fellow Americans, we’re in deep trouble.

Patriots, the concept of social justice (government making everyone’s life equal) is insane, absurd, and evil. It completely nullifies the human spirit, ambition, freedom to be all one can be, and American exceptionalism – all the things which have made America great.

In typical mindless “make himself feel good” fashion, a lib once told me, “Everyone deserves to live in a mansion.” While sounding compassionate, his statement is idiotic.

When I was 9 years old, my family moved into a brand-new government-funded housing project – an eleven-story building. As per my recollection, most residents trashed the building. Only a handful displayed gratitude, pride of ownership, and respect for their homes. Poverty-minded “gimme” parasites would turn a mansion into a ghetto.

As I said, the concept of social justice, government attempting to manufacture equal overcomes, is totally un-American and just plain nuts. And yet, this is obviously Obama’s agenda.

Please take a moment to comprehend the extreme consequence of Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform America.” Think of the unmitigated gall and arrogance in his statement.

Who the heck is Obama to change the vision of our Founding Fathers and shred our Constitution which has made us the most powerful, successful, and altruistic nation on the planet in only 235 years? How dare Obama conclude that America needs a fundamental transformation? Patriots, where is the outrage?

No one has asked, “Mr. President, you vowed to fundamentally transform America. But, into what?”

Written by Lloyd Marcus.

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.

Question: Do you really want your kids exposed to this?

National Education Association (NEA) Lists Its Goals and Democrats Agree.

Some critics have complained that the issue of education has been conspicuously absent from presidential television debates. But the Democratic candidates did sound off about their pro-federal-government, pro-spending policies when addressing the annual convention of the National Education Association, and the nation’s largest teachers union liked what they heard.

Hillary Clinton told the NEA delegates that she will fight school vouchers “with every breath in my body.” Reiterating the message of her book It Takes a Village, she called for universal preschool for four-year-olds.

Barack Obama likewise inveighed against “passing out vouchers.” Former Senator John Edwards also announced his opposition to vouchers and proposed that the federal government pay college tuition for all students who will work ten hours a week. Governor Bill Richardson wants to “raise teacher’s average minimum wage to ,000 a year.” Rep. Dennis Kucinich goes all-out for “a universal prekindergarten system which will provide year-around daycare for children ages 3-5.”

All Democratic candidates look forward to increased federal control of and spending for public schools. And they all attacked George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law for not appropriating more funds to implement it.

After cheering the promises made by the Democratic candidates, NEA delegates buckled down to the serious business of spelling out their political goals, many of which have nothing whatever to do with giving schoolchildren a better education.

The NEA demands a tax-supported single-payer health-care plan (socialized medicine) for all residents (a word artfully chosen to include illegal aliens). The NEA supports immigration “reform” that “includes [note: this is a change from last year’s verb “may include”] a path to permanent residency, citizenship, or asylum” for illegal aliens.

For many years, and again this year, the NEA urged a national holiday honoring Cesar Chavez. The NEA must have forgotten that Chavez, a strident advocate for farm workers, vehemently opposed illegal immigration because he knew it depressed the wages of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants.

The NEA supports a beefed-up federal “hate crimes” law with heavier penalties. The NEA wants federal legislation to confer special rights on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.

The NEA passed at least a dozen resolutions supporting the gay rights agenda in public schools. These cover employment, curricula, textbooks, resource and instructional materials, school activities, role models, and language (with frequent use of terms such as sexual orientation, gender identification, and homophobia).

The NEA enthusiastically supports all the goals of radical feminism, including abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, school-based health clinics, wage control so the government can arbitrarily raise the pay of women but not men, the feminist pork called the Women’s Educational Equity Act, and letting feminists rewrite textbooks to conform to feminist ideology.

The NEA supports statehood for the District of Columbia. The NEA supports affirmative action. The NEA calls for repeal of right-to-work laws, which allow teachers in some states to decline joining the NEA.

The NEA supports United Nations treaties, especially the UN Convention on Women (CEDAW), the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Criminal Court. The NEA loves global education, which promotes world citizenship and taxing Americans to give away our wealth to other countries. Another NEA favorite is environmental education, which teaches that human activity is generally harmful to the environment and population should be reduced.

Here are some of the things the NEA opposes: vouchers, tuition tax credits, all parental choice programs, making English our official language, the use of voter ID for elections, and the privatization of Social Security.

High on the list of NEA policies that actually relate to education is opposition to the testing of teachers as a criterion for job retention, promotion, tenure, or salary.

The NEA reiterated its support for pre-kindergarten for “all three-and four-year-old children,” mandatory full-day kindergarten, and “early childhood education programs in the public schools for children from birth through age eight.” The NEA demands that this “early” education have “diversity-based curricula” and “bias-free screening devices.”

The NEA wants the right to teach schoolchildren about sex without any interference from parents, but on the other hand wants its pals in the bureaucracy to regulate all homeschooling taught by parents. The NEA opposes allowing homeschoolers to participate in any public school sports or extracurricular activities.

Two of the NEA’s favorite words in its resolutions and policies are diversity (that means teaching that gay behavior is OK), and multiculturalism (that means stressing negative things about America and positive things about non-Christian cultures).

The exorbitant dues that teachers pay to the NEA enable its well-paid staff to lobby Congress and state legislatures in behalf of all these goals.

The National Education Association since it’s beginnings have NEVER contributed one dime to a conservative candidate running for public office AT ANY LEVEL!

But they have contributed millions of dollars and time to the Democrat Party.

Source: United States Government News

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.

BLACK REPUBLICAN: National Black Republican Association E-News