18 years of lies on Afghanistan revealed

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” -- Napoleon Bonaparte

Three U.S. presidents, Bush, Obama, and Trump, have bought and sold this big lie to the public and built their failed foreign policies upon it.

A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. -- Craig Whitlock, Washington Post

LOOKING BACK...On Oct. 2, 2002, then IL State Senator Barack Obama said in a major speech at an anti-war rally we organized in Chicago that "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars." He referred to the Iraq War as his "dumb war" example in contrast to Afghanistan, which was billed as a winnable and necessary war to topple the Taliban government, drive out al Qaeda terrorists and install a pro-U.S. regime in Kabul.

"We must embrace America's singular role in the course of human events but we must also be as pragmatic as we are passionate, as strategic as we are resolute. 

Then there was...

Hillary Clinton supported the 2009 increase in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. During the administration's Afghanistan War review in 2010, Clinton endorsed General Stanley McChrystal's recommendation for 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, before endorsing a fallback proposal (ultimately accepted by Obama) for 30,000 troops. -- NYT

And regime-changer McCain...

Robert Kagan, a former adviser to his 2008 opponent John McCain, warned that a quick withdrawal threatens recent gains against the Taliban - and popular opinion could swing against the president if an emboldened enemy takes the speech as a cue to step up attacks.

"This is a political decision, not a military decision," he told POLITICO. "Americans are tired of this war, that's true. But they hate losing more, and if there's the perception that we're being run out of there, the public will turn on him fast." 

Since 2001, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.

The government has not carried out a comprehensive accounting of how much it has spent on the war in Afghanistan, but the costs are staggering -- into the trillions.

Now, Trump says he's ready to engage in peace talks with the Taliban, in preparation for a U.S. troop withdrawal.

News of the talks came just before The Washington Post reported it had obtained more than 2,000 pages of government documents that it says show how U.S. officials have for years misled the public about the war in Afghanistan.

What an irony it would be if Republican Trump, facing impeachment and a difficult 2020 re-election campaign, ended the war that Democrats couldn't or wouldn't end. Shades of Republican, Richard Nixon in March of 1973, withdrawing his defeated army from Vietnam, only to be impeached in October of that same year.

I'm doubtful. Most likely, this is for media consumption.

The media has been complicit... The editorial board of the very same WaPo that this week revealed the pile of lies driving the Afghan war, opposed the war's end just months earlier.

The Washington Post’s editorial board (1/28/19) was similarly apprehensive at the prospect of US withdrawal. Lamenting what it considered a deal brokered “mostly on the enemy’s terms,” it proclaimed that “an end to the Afghan war is desirable, but not at the expense of everything the United States has helped to build there since 2001.” -- FAIR

Tell us, WaPo. What exactly has the U.S. built there? The truth, this time please.  

Class Size: The Common Sense Bus doesn't stop on School Reform Blvd.

Reformers say: "But there's no research on benefits of smaller class size."

I'm increasingly confronted by some local, self-described school reformers who minimize the effects of rising class sizes on effective teaching and learning. "There's no research supporting smaller class size", they tell me. Of course, they are wrong.

But even showing them a pile of evidence, including the famous STAR study, doesn't seem to do much good. Actually, I don't think they are really into "looking at the data." Evidence seems to confuse or bore them. Instead they seem content to merely repeat what they hear from teacher-bashing, budget-slashing politicians like Mitt Romney or corporate-style reformers like Bill Gates and Secretary Arne Duncan, who claim that fewer, higher-paid teachers teaching larger classes is the solution to the budget crisis.

Higher teacher pay does sound nice. But, as you might expect in these difficult times, what we really end up with are massive increases in class size, downward pressure on teacher pay and our best, most experienced teachers being replaced by cheaper newbies or TFAers.

Kindergarten class with 51 children 

My argument now has been reduced to an appeal to common sense. I say, just try teaching a kindergarten class with 51 children or a first-grade room with 48 kids likes the ones at Avalon Park Elementary, a school with nearly all African-American kids from low-income families on Chicago's south side. I don't care how accomplished an early-childhood teacher you are, you are being set up to fail.

Unfortunately, the common sense bus no longer stops on School Reform Blvd.

The numbers cited above are not isolated examples but typify the conditions for thousands of CPS students who started this year in grossly overcrowded classrooms and will likely face even worse conditions in the coming school year. They come from a new report from Sarah Karp at the Better Government Association (BGA) who writes:

System-wide, about 1,600 elementary classrooms – or about 20 percent of the nearly 8,500 non-charter elementary classrooms in the 2014-2015 school year – exceeded CPS’ own standards, the BGA found. Two-thirds of those overcrowded classrooms are on the South and West sides. About half have 90 percent or more low-income students.

There are no formal penalties for exceeding classroom size standards.

Even though the teachers union is technically barred under recent legislation from negotiating down class size, you can bet that it’s an issue at the center of current contract negotiations.

CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey says,

"We are worried about [CPS] devastating class sizes. We are worried about them herding students into classes, like animals into stockyards. We are looking for some assurances, especially in the lower levels."

At some point, I'm hoping the reformers will be forced to come to their senses. More research probably won't do it. But maybe growing community anger will.

After all, even the neo-confederates in South Carolina have now agreed to take down that flag.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Election Results

"Mitt Romney is the president of white male America." -- Maureen Dowd, NYT 

Rehabilitating Michelle Rhee 

Debate about how to improve schools will continue, as in the sadly effective effort by the teachers union in Chicago and in some election-day initiatives to defeat reform. Evidence that the common-sense changes engineered by Ms. Rhee are paying off should be part of the discussion and hopefully will spur other systems to follow the District’s lead. -- Washington Post editorial

Testing: Enough is enough

About a month and a half ago, astute journalists covering the historic Chicago teachers’ strike realized the issues brought up by the strike weren’t just about money, but were also a reaction to the tsunami of testing that is overwhelming teachers and students. -- Lisa Guisbond of FairTest

'YOLO --"You only live once"

  738 minutes in 3 weeks

In my school, in just three weeks’ time, I have calculated that we spent 738 minutes (12 hours and 18 minutes) on preparing for and administering standardized tests. -- Adam Heenan, WaPo

The Government and the Storm

Over the past four decades we have sown the seeds of privatization and relentlessly eroded our public services. With Katrina, Irene and Sandy — and more names surely to come — we are reaping the whirlwind. -- Kenneth M. Coughlin. Letter to the Times

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"CPS and Mayor Emanuel want to do to our schools what Mayor Daley did to the parking meters." -- Windy Pearson (Action Now) at Friday's City Hall sit-in [Video]

Barbara Byrd-Bennett

“We need to acknowledge that the community simply does not believe what we say we’re going to do.” -- Sun-Times 

Pauline Lipman (UIC Prof.)

 "If school closings were such good policy, why aren't they closing schools in white communities?" - At Friday's City Hall sit-in. 

Aquila Griffin

Dyett High School student, Aquila Griffin 

“My message to our mayor and Barbara Byrd-Bennett is we are not collateral damage. CPS has to answer for ignoring the voice of the people most impacted.” -- At Friday's City Hall sit-in

Ben Joravsky

And it's true, most of my friends tend to fall on the Democratic side of the Democratic Party, as opposed to the Republican one the mayor represents. -- "More Rahmnesia: Chicagoans trying to forget they elected Mayor Rahm"

Mitt Romney

"If I'm president of the United States, instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the union behind..." -- Huffington: Mitt Romney "Makes Education Pitch In Final Days Before Election"

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"Throw out the [public school] system."

Ann Romney

I've been a First Lady of the State. I have seen what happens to people's lives if they don't get a proper education. And we know the answers to that. The charter schools have provided the answers. The teachers' unions are preventing those things from happening, from bringing real change to our educational system. We need to throw out the system. -- Good Housekeeping

Ben Joravsky

The board members are like the two characters in Waiting for Godot. Only the Godot they're waiting for is Mayor Emanuel to tell them what to do on school closings, high-stakes testing, diverting millions to the well-clouted charters, and so on. The idea is that with an elected school board we might have a few members who actually dare to defy our all-powerful mayor. You know, like in a real democracy. -- The Reader

Chris Hayes

The history of the American republic is black people having to vote for white people. No one votes for people of a different race more — more reliably and historically than African-Americans, who just have been voting for white people for years and years and years and years. And you know who votes for white people, also? White people vote for white people. -- Up w/Chris Hayes

Texas Tea Party Sen. Dan Patrick

“When people attack me on vouchers, I look at the word ‘voucher’ as some people see it like I look at a rotary telephone. It’s outdated. When we talk about choice today, it’s the choice to choose schools within a district, potentially across district lines. It’s charter schools. It’s virtual schools. It’s online learning. It’s the secular and religious schools in the private sector.” -- Texas Tribune

The CREDO alternative?

Funny. I continually get mailings from a company called CREDO Mobile asking me to switch from AT&T over to their company, which claims to be politically progressive. CREDO (formerly known as Working Assets), claims to contribute heavily to groups like Planned Parenthood, United for a Fair Economy, Earthjustice and the ACLU. Credo Mobile is basically a re-seller, wholesaling bandwidth from Sprint and then repackage it as their own.

I have no love from AT&T and would gladly dump them for a viable alternative, and not just for political reasons. Their rates are outlandish and their coverage, even in certain Chicago neighborhoods is weak. So I was ready to make the move, especially after reading CREDOs latest mailer denouncing AT&T for contributing to the Romney campaign.

In fact, says the letter from CREDO President Michael Kieschnick,

AT&T "contributed to his [Romney's] campaign -- making this the fifth straight presidential election where they've supported only the Republican nominee."

But before switching, I decided to check. The only thing worse to me than AT&T would be some corporate hustler trying to pimp off the progressive movement through deceit. I'm not saying that about CREDO.

I know that AT&T has no love for the Obama administration. You see AT&T Inc. Chairman Randall Stephenson lost $2.08 million in bonus pay after Democrats killed his bid to build the biggest mobile provider. Six weeks after the deal for T-Mobile USA collapsed, he made his largest campaign donation in more than two decades of giving to Republicans. Stephenson’s personal $30,800 contribution to the Republican National Committee punctuated months of sniping between the biggest U.S. telephone company and the Democratic-controlled Federal Communications Commission.

Sixty-five percent of donations from AT&T employees and their families are going to Republicans for the 2012 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s up from 55 percent in 2010, when the Democrats were in charge of both houses of Congress and the presidency, and is the highest percentage since the center began keeping records in 1990. Republicans got 63 percent of the AT&T donations when they controlled the White House and Congress in 2006.

But OpenSecrets.Org  carries an organization profile of AT&T Inc. on their website showing a list of their corporate political contributions. Here it is.

 Top Candidate Recipients, 2011-2012 (Source: Center for Responsive Politics)

Barack Obama (D)	$138,641
John Boehner (R-OH)	$103,450
Mitt Romney (R)	$47,269
Thomas C. Leppert (R-TX)	$35,200
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)	$29,250

As you can see, not only is Romney not the only beneficiary of AT&T corporate generosity, he ranks only third behind Obama and Boehner. Even with the bad blood from the FCC fallout, the company still hedges its election bets and contributes heavily to both campaigns. I put all this information in a missive to Mr. Kieschnick and asked for a reply. I will let you know what I come up with.

Open Secrets had lots of other good information about creepy AT&T. Here's an interesting tidbit:

57 out of 84 AT&T lobbyists in 2012 have previously held government jobs

There's also a list of the 49 members of Congress who own stock in the company.

And there's more from Fast Company including that AT&T has donated $377,500 to members of the House Tea Party Caucus.

Binders of horses and bayonets

"There were no binders full of women at the final presidential debate on Monday, but there were certainly horses and bayonets." -- Huffington Post

"I love teachers" -- Mitt Romney   "I think we all love teachers" -- Bob Schieffer 

Sharpton spun it best, comparing Romney to a boxer clinching and holding on to his opponent just to keep from getting knocked out. Romney handlers knew that few among his right-wing base gave a crap about his foreign policy positions, their main concern being making the White House white again.

So instead of a badly-needed debate on our  foreign policy, we were treated to an Obama beat-up on the weakest, least-prepared-to-be-president of any Republican candidate I can remember in my time. If the Dems can't defeat this guy, PAC money, voter suppression and all, they should break up their party and start anew.

The take-away for me was that both men (parties) still believe that this is still the American Century, that the world can still be dominated by a single U.S. superpower in political, economic and cultural terms. Romney, posing as a born-again peacenik last night, is really an old-line imperialist who sees every world hot spot or disaster as "an opportunity." Obama and the Dem globalists are more in tune with the new diplomatic and war-making realities (drones and mercs instead of boots on the ground). This was all brought out with Obama's horses and bayonets zinger planted squarely on Romney's slack jaw.

It was also a zinger on the Marines, who still use bayonets and who appear to be on the road to extinction under drones-and-mercs.

Poor ill-informed Romney is still fighting the Cold War while both aim to contain China, not as an ideological enemy, but as economic one, in a battle for markets. Good luck on that one.

Other take-aways:

• Even though this was supposed to be a foreign policy debate, Romney couldn't resist bashing teacher unions  while claiming to "love teachers.”
• Even though Romney's main point of attack on Obama re: the 10-year war in Afghanistan (remember Obama called this his "smart war") had to do with setting a date for withdrawal of forces, last night he said, "When I'm president, we'll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014."
• Both are also apparently willing to continue uncritically backing Israel (Netanyahu's regime) as the main U.S. client state in the Middle East, and making support for Israel the heart of U.S. foreign policy, even if it means billions more in military aid and risking war with Iran and a possible nuclear conflagration. 

And so it went. A tactical win for Obama. A strategic no-knockout event for Romney. A pathetically weak discussion of foreign policy. A likely meaningless debate in terms of influencing the outcome of the election. 

Take-aways from last night's debate

"Candy, I don’t have a policy of stopping wind jobs in Iowa." -- Mitt Romney

"I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women." -- Mitt Romney

It was a good thing I left the Give a Sh*t Happy Hour at Cole's Bar early to head home and watch the debate (with one eye on the Tigers/Yankee game). If I had stayed, I would have gone broke buying rounds of drinks every time Romney blew it, misspoke or blurted out one of his his string of inanities.

My (everybody's) favorite was "Binders full of women" which is still trending world-wide but has been largely ignored by the media. I also loved "wind jobs" (sounds salacious, doesn't it?). And didn't Romney's "5-point" plan for cutting the deficit remind you of whatshisname's "9-9-9"?

Low points for Obama were:

-- He was asked, "What has your administration done or planned to do to limit the availability of assault weapons?" Since the correct answer would have been -- nothing, Obama began his response by throwing a bone to the NRA:

"We’re a nation that believes in the Second Amendment, and I believe in the Second Amendment. We’ve got a long tradition of hunting and sportsmen and people who want to make sure they can protect themselves."

Yeah, right. With AK-47s? 

Romney was even worse. His response to the plague of assault weapons was essentially to tell children to have a full set of parents.

"But gosh to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that’s a great idea."

You see, the deal was, every time he said, "gosh," or "golly gee", everyone has to belt down a double.

-- Obama's short recitation on the wonders of his corporate-style education reform which was mercifully cut short by Candy Crowley.

-- His attempt to find common ground with Romney on tax breaks for the corporations:

"We need to create jobs here. And both Governor Romney and I agree actually that we should lower our corporate tax rate. It’s too high."

It brought back sickening memories from the last debate when the president found common ground with Mittens on Social Security.

Anyway, it was a good night for Obama, although the bar for his success was set pretty low after the last debate. It reaffirmed my axiom -- if you don't hit it, it won't fall.

 Axelrod obviously was forced to dump his abysmal  prevent-defense strategy and script Obama with some  punch-back. This I'm sure, to the delight of the gang over at Cole's. And speaking of bars, yes, glad I left early -- sober and with money still in my pocket.

What's the difference (if any) on education? And why?

"I once thought classroom size was … [the] only thing I could do to make our schools better." -- Mitt Romney

"Come be in a classroom with fifth graders and tell me class size doesn’t matter." -- Pres. Obama   

"But in secondary schools, districts may be able to save money without hurting students, while allowing modest but smartly targeted increases in class size. -- Arne Duncan

How can voters make sense out of any of this?

Joy Resmovits, posting at Huffington, analyzes Mitt Romney's appearance at Education Nation. 

In stressing teacher quality and the importance of testing over money and class size, Romney has aligned himself with many Democrats -- including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan -- who support a movement known as education reform. However, Romney differs from the Democrats on the issue in his views on school choice, vouchers, accountability and the role of teachers unions. "The teachers union has every right to represent their members in the way they think is best," Romney said. "But we have every right to say, 'No, this is what we want to do,' which is in the best interest of our children."

Funny, if not for this corporate-sponsored and controlled farce of a televised ed summit, I doubt that either candidate would be saying a word right now about public education. Drawing lines on this issue isn't in either party's playbook.

Brother Fred takes on the question of why the Democrats "suck" when it comes to school policy.

The question I keep getting asked is why are the Democrats so bad on education issues? Why is there no attempt to distinguish themselves from the Republicans on this issue. They at least pay lip service to differences for electoral purposes on other issues?

He points to Republicans, under the influence of T-baggers and anti-gumint libertarians, who stake out a weakened role for the feds under a Romney regime. Dems see an expanding role for the DOE in framing the Common Core curriculum. That's why DFER hedge-funders stake out a position within the Democratic, rather than in the Republican Party, where they'd probably feel more comfortable.

But once in power, both parties use federal aid to education as well as the DOE as a way to funnel billions in contracts to politically favorable suppliers and contractors, as they've always done. A T-Party backed Romney would be no exception.

Diane Ravitch says the trouble is that Obama isn't listening to the right people -- teachers -- and is ill-informed about the failure of the very policies he is pursuing.

...he is woefully misinformed about his own education policies, about the absence of evidence for them, about the lack of results, about the harmful effect they are having on students and teachers and the quality of education, about the shared assumptions of Race to the Top and the failed No Child Left Behind. He doesn’t seem aware that his own policies require “teaching to the test,” which he says he opposes.

She may be right but it's hard to believe he's that misinformed. I mean Obama has been around the ed reform scene for years. In Chicago, he was head of the Annenburg Challenge for Public School Reform and I'm sure talked with many teachers and parents. The question is, why has he turned a deaf ear to them now?

I tend to think it has more to do with the Democratic Party abandoning its traditional base among badly-weakened unions, poor and working-class voters and its courting of support needed to win national elections from ownership society corporatists and power philanthropists who see so-called education reform as part of a bigger, global strategy of market-driven reform

President Obama came to power at least partly on the back of a powerful grass-roots, democratic (small "d") movement. But once in power, the Democrats have managed to send their base back to the barracks and turn current politics back into a spectator sport.

BTW, I don't think this shift could have happened without compliance from traditional union leaders. Thank you CTU for finally breaking ranks.

More to come on this.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Rauner's revolution

In any case, Rauner sees the strike as the start of "a multi-year revolution." His reactionary "revolution" imposed from above, however, now faces a revolution from below. -- David Moberg, In These Times

Poverty's death sentence

“We’re used to looking at groups and complaining that their mortality rates haven’t improved fast enough, but to actually go backward is deeply troubling,” said John G. Haaga, head of the Population and Social Processes Branch of the National Institute on Aging. -- N.Y. Times

Apartheid schooling in U.S.

 "Simply sitting next to a white student does not guarantee better educational outcomes for students of color," the report reads. "Instead, the resources that are consistently linked to predominantly white and/or wealthy schools help foster real and serious educational advantages over minority segregated settings." -- Study's author, The Root

Maureen Dowd

As a candidate, Mitt Romney is awkward, off-putting and hollow, so bad that if he were a Bain company, he would shut himself down. -- N.Y. Times

Jay Mathews

The team that former chancellor Michelle Rhee brought in five years ago, including current chancellor Kaya Henderson, can’t explain what it will do differently in the next five years. Even worse, the new goals might inspire more of the corner-cutting and dishonesty that have tainted the effort to help kids. -- Washington Post.

Romney, Ryan Support Rahm

This from ABC10 in Philadelphia:

"Teachers unions have too often made plain that their interests conflict with those of our children, and today we are seeing one of the clearest examples yet." -- Mitt Romney

And this:

"I've known Rahm Emanuel for years. He's a former colleague of mine. Rahm and I have not agreed on every issue or on a lot of issues, but Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher's union strike is unnecessary and wrong. We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel." -- Paul Ryan

More from Ryan:

And so, we were going to ask, where does President Obama stand? Does he stand with his former Chief of Staff Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with the children and the parents, or does he stand with the union? On issues like this, we need to speak out and be really clear. In a Romney-Ryan administration we will not be ambiguous, we will stand with education reform, we will champion bipartisan education reforms.

Actually a damn good question. Where does Obama stand? Answer:

Obama "has not expressed any opinion or made any assessment," White House spokesman, Jay Carney said.

The view from right-field on class size

Checker Finn (right) and his Fordham Foundation crew are upset at White House report.

“So it should concern everyone that right now – all across America – tens of thousands of teachers are getting laid off....Think about what that means for our country. When there are fewer teachers in our schools, class sizes start climbing up. Our students start falling behind. And our economy takes a hit.” -- President Obama

Finn, Petrilli & Co. (pictured above) over at the right-wing Fordham Institute are freaking out over a recent White House report, Investing in Our Future: Returning Teachers to the Classroom, which they describe as"decrying lost teaching jobs that will allegedly swell classes around the country." In the latest edition of Fordham's Flypaper, TFAer (of course) Tyson Eberhardt goes off on Obama for his apparent flip on the question of class size. 

As the election heats up, the Obama camp clearly sees class size and teacher layoffs as promising lines of political attack and important ways to energize powerful labor allies less than thrilled with many of the White House’s education priorities over the last four years. Unfortunately for the Dems, however, strident infomercials and gloomy white papers can’t undo the now-awkward but still-sound remarks of Mr. Obama’s education secretary on the issue. “Class size has been a sacred cow and we need to take it on,” Arne Duncan correctly said in 2011, a year after arguing that “districts may be able to save money without hurting students, while allowing modest but smartly targeted increases in class size.”

Eberhardt has a point. Why has it taken until election time for the Dems to say the right thing on this crucial ed issue? Is this a real break from Duncan's blathering about the benefits of larger class size or just a bone being thrown to bring union voters back into the fold?

Either way, the fact remains that Obama has finally responded to Romney on an important issue of education. Will the Dems actually come up with a convention education plank?

With the loss of 300,000 teaching jobs in the past two years, resulting from budget cuts as well as from  the administration's own Race To The Top policies, class sizes in urban districts (not where Duncan or Obama send their children to school) have swelled to crisis proportions.  According to the report, "the national student-teacher ratio increased by 4.6 percent from 2008 to 2010, rolling back all the gains made since 2000." But that doesn't even begin to tell the real story.

In urban districts with high concentrations of children of color, like Detroit and Los Angeles, class sizes are now reaching 45-60 students. Duncan, along with his pals on the right -- remember, Duncan first made ridiculous bigger-is-better comments at an American Enterprise Institute conference -- continue to pose the false choice between a good teacher or a rational class size -- a choice wealthy suburban or private school parents never have to make.

Whatever his motives, Obama has taken a meaningful step forward in this report. It's no wonder he has the flies at Flypaper buzzing. I'm sure the boys at DFER aren't too happy either.

For more info and the latest research on class size, go to Class Size Matters.

Steering clear of the fight

After Romney laid out the Republican platform on eduction, including union busting, vouchers and larger class size, the Democrats, including Pres. Obama and Sec. Duncan, immediately went into hiding. The reason? Thus far, their own agenda on education has been essentially the same as the Republicans and their appears to be no change in sight. Even on the few issues where they supposedly disagree, for example on school vouchers, Obama won't take Romney head-on, for fear I suppose, of alienating his wealthy and powerful corporate "reform" backers in Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).

As a result, the fight to save and transform public education has been left to a growing and vibrant grassroots movement of independent voices. Here's Dan Archer and Adam Bessie, masters of graphic journalism, posting their hard-hitting comic strip at Truthout:

Welcome to other side of the looking glass, and into the Bizarro world of so-called "education reform" - an upside-down universe in which up is down, left is right and multimillionaire CEOs are civil rights heroes championing social justice, while public school teachers are corrupt fat cats, maintaining a status quo which oppresses students in poverty and racism. -- The Disaster Capitalism Curriculum

Along the same lines, with a day to go in the Walker recall election in Wisconsin, the president finally spoke out in support of Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett -- sort of.  After Obama flew over Wisconsin twice without stopping,  White House spokesman Jay Carney was repeatedly asked by reporters, why Obama, who has been criss-crossing the country to raise money for his reelection bid, did not do more to help Barrett, Carney replied:

"The president endorsed Tom Barrett right after he won the primary. The president supports him, stands by him. The president absolutely stands by Tom Barrett and hopes he prevails. The fact is the president has made clear all along his opposition to those who would take away workers' rights, to actions that would take away or diminish workers' rights, and he's also made clear his support for Tom Barrett."

Oliver Knox posts at The Ticket:

The phrase "stands by" might not be such a bad way to describe Obama's support for Barrett. The president hasn't exactly poured it on for Walker's challenger. In fact, he has mostly steered clear of the fight.

That pretty well sums things up until this point.

Skip the serious face, Arne

How do we as a teaching profession create a climate in which everyone is clamoring to come into schools like this ... where this is a badge of honor?" -- Arne Duncan

Serious face...

Arne Duncan looks so intense, like he's seriously listening and looking for answers. Don't be fooled. He's not. He's done these "listening tours" before. They make for great photo ops.

How do we get more Tamara Raifords “clamoring” to teach in low-performing schools? he asks some New Haven Teachers. Tamara Raiford who teaches pre-K at Brennan/Rogers, introduced herself as the only teacher in the district to leave a top-performing Tier I school to join a low-performing “turnaround.” She says she chose Brennan "because of the challenge."  -- New Haven Independent

But Duncan already knows full well why there aren't thousands of teachers "clamoring" to leave high-scoring, predominantly middle class or wealthy suburban schools to come teach in resource-starved, inner-city schools. He has been one of the architects of the modern, two-tier school system -- one tier for elite and one for the rest. It's been his Race To The Top policies that have reinforced the system by punishing schools with high concentrations of poor, black and Latino students, closing them down and arbitrarily firing their teachers in mass.

Duncan has also been a leading proponent of so-called "merit pay" for teachers, a system based on rewarding a handful of teachers and docking others' salaries based on their students' standardized test scores. As research has shown, these scores are indicators of poverty much more than anything going on in the classroom. So if you leave a high-scoring school for a lower one, prepare to take a serious pay cut.

Duncan has joined with Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney in calling for larger class sizes thereby making certain that teachers in overcrowded urban schools will face much tougher challenges. Duncan claims that "class size has been a sacred cow and we need to take it on." Another disincentive for teachers thinking about making the switch.

It's also Duncan who has forced states and districts in need of federal funds, to close neighborhood schools and fired entire school faculties, along with their principals while they turn those schools over to private management companies. The remaining charter school teachers are dis-empowered in many ways, including the loss of their collective bargaining rights, job security and protection from discrimination.

To top it off, Duncan has voiced support for newspapers like the L.A. Times, publishing the names of teachers alongside their student test scores as a way to debase and insult teachers working with low-scoring students.

So, Sec. Duncan, please spare us the serious listening face. No need to ask why their aren't more Tamara Raidfords. You already know the answer. So do we.

Romney throws a right. Obama ducks.

I must admit, I was glad when Mitt Romney fired the first education salvo across the Democrats' bow last Wednesday at the Latino Coalition annual economic summit in Washington. My fear was that both parties were going to avoid mentioning the E-word right up through November. I thought, now that Romney has come out openly and purposefully, in a white paper,  with his party's anti-public school line, including support for vouchers, larger class size and a direct, unambiguous assault on teacher unions, Pres. Obama would have no choice other than to respond.

But not only did the president and education chief Arne Duncan personally duck out of sight on this one, in the one instance where Team Obama did respond -- on teacher unions -- they revealed to all those who still have illusions, the Democrats' own complicity in the corporate version of school "reform".

The exchange has gone something like this:

Romney: President Obama has been a tool of the teachers union,  unwilling to stand up to the "union bosses" and he has caved in to greedy teachers and their demands for collective bargaining rights and smaller class size.

Team Obama: No he hasn't. The President has been just as anti-union as you have and Sec. Duncan has consistently pushed for larger class sizes.

As Mitchell Landsberg reports in yesterday's L.A. Times: 

In fact, Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, have clashed repeatedly with teachers unions over the administration's support for charter schools, merit pay and standardized testing. And Obama has won praise from a number of Republicans for pursuing an education agenda that, in some significant ways, builds on the policies of former President George W. Bush.

 It was none other than brother Jeb who put it most succinctly:

"I am very, very encouraged, and excited that the president has taken on a core constituency of his party, which is the teachers' union," Bush said on MSNBC's Morning Joe. (Video here.)

It's now clear that Obama, the great triangulator, believes he has positioned himself just barely enough to the left of the Republicans, to maintain his AFT and NEA support while also placating his fund-raising base of anti-union, DFER hedge-fund reformers. Team Obama thinks he can win the election without enthusiastic support from the nation's 6.2 million teachers, and he may be right. We shall see.

But the question remains, who will stand up for public education, teachers and children?

AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten will probably face some tough questions on this score when she turns up as the guest on #SOSchat tonight on Twitter. 

Early registration is now open for the Save Our Schools (SOS) People's Platform Convention, Aug. 3-5 in D.C. As one of the placards at last summers SOS march read, "You have the right to remain silent, but I wouldn't advise it."

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Pedro Noguera

"The way we are now as a country, not only aren't we living up to the Brown decision, we're not even living up the Plessy v. Ferguson of separate but equal." -- Up W/ Chris Hayes

Melissa Harris-Perry 

"I  live in the 7th ward of New Orleans, and I  don't like what I see happening there in the KIPP schools. I am distressed by the movement away from teachers unions that can actually fight for teachers." -- MSNBC

John McCain

Defending Romney's record at Bain Capital: "And yes, the free enterprise system can be cruel” -- TPM

Charles Blow

Louisiana is the starkest, most glaring example of how our prison policies have failed.  -- NYT, "Plantations, Prisons and Profits"

Who will stand up for Public Education in this election?

Romney lands the first punch. Will Dems strike back? If not, who will?

In the run-up to the elections, neither candidate(s) has said much about education issues. As for party platforms, neither party has a real education plank. The Republicans have been playing only two notes -- bust the teacher unions and don't tax the rich. The Democrats have been playing none. They have been tight-roping between the teacher unions and the influential hedge-fund "reformers" like Democrats For Educational Reform (DFER) and have seemingly decided to play it safe and go without an education plank. Neither party dares to utter the words No Child Left Behind or Race To The Top which are both vote killers for any candidate.

But today it was a clever Mitt Romney who fired the first salvo across the bow of the reticent Dems. Speaking before a friendly crowd at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Romney co-opted much of the Democrats ed "reform" initiative, launched a broadside against the unions, etch-a-sketched on his former support for NCLB, and called for a national system of school vouchers for private schools.

"This president receives the lion's share of funding from organized labor, and the teachers' unions represent a massive source of funding for the Democratic Party," Romney said.    He continued, "If I'm president of the United States, instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future."

Romney's speech puts the ball squarely in Obama's court. In what appears to be an extremely close race, public school parents and three million union teachers, most of whom are Democratic voters,  could make the difference. But until now, the president's reform agenda, led by Ed Sec Arne Duncan, has been almost equally anti-teachers union and eerily similar to that of the neocons who preceded him. It's an agenda that so far has generated little if any enthusiasm among teachers and ed activists at the grass-roots level. And without that enthusiasm, a la 2008, it's doubtful Obama can win, or even if he does, carry congressional candidates with him.

Romney's open embrace of vouchers is a bone thrown to energize the far right wing of his party and would seemingly give Obama room to distinguish himself from Romney. The problem is, his DFER patrons have no problem with vouchers, and echo or even outdo Romney's anti-labor rhetoric. With the NEA and AFT vote already locked up, the Democrats have no need to take Romney on regarding collective bargaining rights or issues like test-based teacher evaluation, smaller class size, mass firings, or school closings. And on privatization issues, such as replacing charter schools with private ones, Obama and Duncan are marching in lock-step with the Republicans.

Romney also officially announced his appointment of his education team, led by former Bush Ed Secretary Rod Paige.  Paige, you may recall, distinguished himself by calling the teacher unions "terrorists" and calling for more Christian religious teaching, including the teaching of  "intelligent design"  in public schools. He also engineered the phony "Texas Miracle" while Superintendent of the Houstonools. Along with Paige, Romney's list of education advisers reads like a who's- who of Bush-era, corporate-style education reform and school re-segregation.

So the question is, where will the pressure from below come from to make public education issues front-burner? Save Our Schools (SOS), which organized last summer's march and rally of thousands of teachers, is trying to organize a national discussion and develop a national platform. With few resources and a late start,SOS  is trying to pull together a People's Platform Convention in D.C. in August with such notables as Jonathan Kozol, Deborah Meier, and Nancy Carlson-Paige heading the speakers list. If they can unite a critical mass around a policy platform, SOS activists and allies could then organize actions and occupations at the upcoming conventions and hopefully provide a voice for teachers and public school advocates.

But to do so successfully, the fledgling  organization will have to raise some big money fast. A presidential election year is the most difficult time to try to raise money. And it's a daunting task to pull together locally-based activists around such a national project.

You can register for the SOS Convention or make a contribution here.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Visiting a wealthy suburban school

"This is a school? I thought it was a museum." -- Terence Lewis, 17, a senior at Furness High in South Philadelphia

Chicago Rep. Cynthia Soto

“We need explanations, specific explanations” for the decisions to close or restructure the schools. -- Chicago News Co-Op

GOP candidate Buddy Roemer

"I believe that Mitt Romney represents the one percent and I believe that Newt Gingrich is the lobbyist for the one percent." -- ThinkProgress

Operation 'Urban Shield'

The use of anti-terror techniques to suppress a civilian protest complemented harsh police measures demonstrated across the country against the nationwide “Occupy” movement, from firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into unarmed crowds to blasting demonstrators with the LRAD sound cannon. -- Max Blumenthal, MondoWeiss

WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

Fred Shavies

"That’s our Birmingham. So, twenty years from now this movement could be the turning point, the tipping point, right. It’s about time your generation stood up for something. It’s about time young people are in the streets. [...] Ya’ll don’t need to throw gas canisters into a group of people occupying an intersection."  -- Undercover Cop At Occupy Oakland Condemns Police Brutality

Mitt Romney

“Sometimes you wonder, would there be someway to introduce some private sector competition, somebody else that could come in and say, you know, each soldier gets X thousand dollars attributed to them and then they can choose whether they want to go on the government system or the private system and then it follows them, like what happens with schools in Florida where they have a voucher that follows them.” -- TPM

How He made his millions

“Millions for me, a pink slip for thee,” is the playbook of many private equity firms, and Romney was one of their savviest players. -- Columnist Robyn Blumner

Rick Perry

“I will defend waterboarding until I die.” -- At Republican debate

Michelle Bachmann

"America Should Be Less Socialist… Like China." -- TPM