Upping the Ante In the Texas Schoolbook Wars

It looks like arch conservative wing nut Don McLeroy is not going to exit the Texas State Board of Eduction without raising the insanity to the maximum. His latest Texas textbook proposal would require teaching high school students about "alternatives regarding long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare" and "efforts by global organizations to undermine U. S. sovereignty."

The man is criminally insane and needs mental health care in the worst way. It looks like he wants to do as much damage to the students of Texas as he can before he is justifiably tossed out by the voters next year.

Ya'll Don't Need No Stinkin' Edjacashun

H/T to Digby

Howie Klein has an interesting post  this morning that is definitely worth taking a few minutes to read. It's about conservatism, education and the destruction of the middle class.

My best bud, Roland, is a dedicated public school teacher in Compton. He called this morning to tell me all his colleagues were buzzing about Utah Republicans trying to eliminate the 12th grade. "They don't know about the Mormons," he said; "never gave it much thought except how they put up the money to defeat gay marriage." I guess they never saw September Dawn and don't watch Big Love, South Park or... this (which has been removed, under pressure, from both YouTube and Vimeo and is only available in freer countries, in this case, France).

The bill, temporarily withdrawn, is the brainchild of arch conservative Republican Sen. Chris Buttars, an implacable, hate-filled foe of public education, gays, minorities. What I explained to Roland today is that organized, hierarchal religious organizations are, by their nature, supporters of the status quo and extremely conservative. Obvious scams like Mormonism and Scientology may seem more ridiculous and absurd than most of these organizations but they aren't inherently any more or less conservative. Each, though, requires followers with no capacity for critical thought. It is why education has always been a target of hatred for religious organizations and for conservatives. Buttars is hardly the first right-wing extremist to persuade ordinary voters that education isn't the way out of poverty for their children, but some kind of dark, conspiratorial enemy. read on

Like Digby I find the disregard or even dare I say distaste for a good education one of the most frightening things about modern conservatism. The 'jumped by Jesus' crowd have tried to keep their children away from a secular education for a long time but in the last decade or so the right wing bunch have embraced 'home schooling' with a vengeance. Couple all of this 'non standard' and a 'biased' education with talk radio and things like Faux news and you can see how it will be possible for people to be kept ignorant their whole lives.

Texas Board of Education Rewrites American History

H/T Jed Lewison at DKos

I rarely get completely gobsmacked by what I read of the wingnuts. I know they are insane. I know that they are hateful little people with no imagination, no love, no compassion and absolutely no sense of the 'big picture but the latest by the wingnuts controlling the Texas Board of Education is really at "WTF moment".  Read the next sentence and then close your eyes and contemplate the sheer insanity. The Texas Board of Education has elected to remove references to Thomas Jefferson from the state's social studies curriculum standards.

Think Progress:

The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

You can read the entire blog stream over at the Texas Freedom Network but here is the meat.

TFN:

9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.
9:40 – We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.
9:45 – Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” Here’s Dunbar’s replacement standard, which passed: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau,  Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.” Not only does Dunbar’s amendment completely change the thrust of the standard. It also appalling drops one of the most influential political philosophers in American history — Thomas Jefferson.
9:51 – Dunbar’s amendment striking Jefferson passed with the votes of the board’s far-right members and board member Geraldine “Tincy” Miller of Dallas.
9:56 – Here is what the Library of Congress says about Jefferson’s influence: “Recognized in Europe as the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson quickly became a focal point or lightning rod for revolutionaries in Europe and the Americas.” The Library of Congress notes, in particular, Jefferson’s influence on revolutionaries in France (including on the Declaration of the Rights of Man), other European nations, South America and Haiti.

I am basically speechless other than to say it is sad day in America when a handful of batshit crazy jumped by Jesus wingnuts can tell the children of America that they can't study the writings of one of Americas most important philosophers and the author of the Declaration of Independence. As Jed says. " The wingers are so far gone, so far off the deep end, so completely crazy...it's almost like the only thing left is...WTF?"

It Hurts

Jim Yeager has a YouTube posted at Skippy's place that makes me want to cry. Seriously.

Looking for the Good Life

The right will call it "class warfare" but Kevin Drum at Mother Jones sums up pretty succinctly what the current situation, at least economically, is in the U.S.

This isn't just a matter of social justice. It's a matter of facing reality. If we want a strong economy, we can only get it over the long term if we figure out a way for the benefits of economic growth to flow to everyone, not just the rich. This is, by far, Barack Obama's biggest economic challenge. Until median wages start rising steadily and consistently, we haven't gotten ourselves back on track.

The thing is, and it is hard to understand, that most of America doesn't seem to understand that if we are going to continue to provide a good life for ourselves, our children and their children then there are going to have to be some fundamental changes in how things work.

I surely don't have all the answers but I do know that part of what has to happen in the country is that we have to rethink what the "good life" means. One of the most glaring problems is that we have been taught that the "good life" is a personal measurement. By that I mean we have been educated to believe that as long as I and my immediate family have a roof over our heads, food at every meal, most of the toys we want, and all the other superficial things that have come to define us, then all is cool. We are not taught that the true "good life" is, or should be, a collective measurement. Does everyone in my community, state or country have a secure place to live? Does everyone have enough good food to eat? Does everyone have health care? Does everyone that can have somewhere to work that pays a fair wage and id reasonably secure? Currently, the answer to each of these questions is a resounding NO.

How do we get there? Again, I don't have all the answers but here are some suggestions. National single payer health care that includes everyone, not just the people lucky enough to have a job with benefits. Higher minimum wage. A better educational system. More progressive taxation. A rethinking of national defense. An energy policy that is not insane. A return to sustainable agriculture. And, most of all, a massive cultural awakening to what a truly healthy, progressive and enlightened society should be. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

The disparity between the wealthy in this country and the rest of us is staggering and it is going to have to change. The wealthy in this country, while they control far and away most of the wealth in the country, cannot, by themselves support a truly healthy and vibrant economy. For decades most of the strides made in this country in productivity and the resulting wealth have flowed into the pockets of a tiny minority of the population and while you can call it "class warfare" until you are blue in the face the reality is that until this changes and the wealth of this country is more evenly distributed we are going to continue our spiral into a second rate nation. I am not arguing that everyone should receive the same, just that the gap between the haves and have nots gets narrowed pretty brutally. They rich can still be rich just not so much.

Powerful Read

I got home Friday to find that my copy of Joe Bageant's book "Deer Hunting with Jesus" had finally shown up. I finished all but the last chapter over the weekend. I can't recommend it highly enough. Even though I grew up in the South and my relatives and my family are the ones Joe is talking about (America's working class/rednecks) it was a powerful and eye opening book. Joe lays out clearly what drives this huge part of American society, why they vote like they do and why they think like they do and why, when they vote, they invariably seem to vote against their own self interests. Guns, fundamentalist religion, living paycheck to paycheck, it is all there in spades.

Speaking of America's working class I am back in Augusta this week for another round with the corporate types. It was a nice relief last week actually working with the folks in the warehouse and distribution center. No corporate politics just getting the work done. This place reeks with all the intrigue and backstabbing that go along with a corporate office. Not very pleasant. Fortunately, it is a short week.

Nothing for Butter, All for Guns

Bush has just vetoed a bill that would add $10Bn to health and education using the excuse that America can't afford to spend the money. He did, however, sign a defense spending bill that spends four times as much. Not even included in the $40Bn defense bill is a request for another $200 billion for his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This kind of bullshit will not play well with the American public (if the MSM ever tells them). Every poll you see says that people are sick of this war and sick of Bush. They are tired of seeing money flow out of America and into Iraq. In a normal world there would be riots. How long can this insanity play out?

From AP:

President Bush, escalating his budget battle with Congress, on Tuesday vetoed a spending measure for health and education programs prized by congressional Democrats.

He also signed a big increase in the Pentagon's non-war budget....

Since winning re-election, Bush has sought to cut the labor, health and education measure below the prior year level. But lawmakers have rejected the cuts. The budget that Bush presented in February sought almost $4 billion in cuts to this year's bill.

Democrats responded by adding $10 billion to Bush's request for the 2008 bill. Democrats say spending increases for domestic programs are small compared with Bush's pending war request totaling almost $200 billion.

The $471 billion defense budget gives the Pentagon a 9 percent, $40 billion budget increase....

Huge procurement costs are driving the Pentagon budget ever upward. Once war costs are added in, the total defense budget will be significantly higher than during the typical Cold War year, even after adjusting for inflation.

All The Children Left Behind

The Class of 2007 posted the lowest SAT averages in several years, according to scores released this morning. Scores from the second year of an expanded, three-section college-entrance test declined by double digits in Maryland and the District, by five points in Virginia and by seven points nationwide, compared with the previous graduating class.

Education leaders said the modest decline reflected an ever larger and more diverse population of students taking the test. More blacks, Asians and Hispanics took the SAT in this year's graduating class than in any previous class; two-fifths of test takers are now minorities.

This is really not good news and I think it reflects on us all. Everything from the Britney's and Lindsay's to Faux news and the crap you see on TV is obviously not having a positive influence on a large portion of our young folks. The article blames some of this on the increase in minorities and to those for whom English is a second language but I think there is more to it than that.
It used to be that business managers complained about the lack of technical skills in new folks coming into the workforce but in the last few years it has switched to a lack of competency in writing and expressing themselves verbally. I know I see it pretty much everyday just in the email I receive from some of the younger folks I work with. I can only see this getting worse. Not that the SAT scores are the be all and end all of measuring our kids intelligence and ability but they are clearly an indicator.
If you have not seen the video of Miss South Carolina attempting to answer a question at a beauty pageant that is floating around ....it will make you cringe.