Liberals have taken way too long to understand that the bipartisan educational agenda, which started with the so-called “excellence” reforms in the 1990’s, has done harm.

     Perhaps you shouldn’t be surprised that the chief economist during George W. Bush’s presidency seems happy that economic inequality in our country is at its most extreme since the Great Depression.

     After all, the Bush administration delivered huge tax breaks to the wealthy, the very people described by the former president as his political base.

The coincidence of the “Justice for Trayvon” protests all over the country and the 50^th anniversary of the March of Washington for Jobs and Freedom presents the African American people and all of those concerned with social justice a real opportunity to revive the black freedom and equality movement in the United States.

[The following review of mine appears as Hardhats for Peace in the July 18 issue of The Indypendent, which calls itself with considerable justification "A Free Paper for Free People." An expanded version surveying a number of recent (and quite good) critiques of U.S. misadventures in East Asia from the Philippines to today, will appear in the forthcoming New Politics.]

     The International Monetary Fund acknowledged making an egregious error in its evaluation of the Greek bailout it helped create after its ambitious push for harsh austerity last month. Their failed analysis highlights the dangers of austerity measures imposed on Greek citizens. According to the IMF report:

I’d be heart-broken by the layoffs announced by the Chicago Public Schools, (CPS) even if my pal Xian Barrett (in the photo, talking teaching with me at the DC Save Our Schools demo last April) weren’t one of the folks given a pink slip.

On Sept. 17, Grand Theft Auto V, the latest installment in the wildly popular video game franchise, will be released for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, perhaps as one of the final major games for the current console generation.

     The acquittal of George Zimmerman on charges of manslaughter and murder in the Trayvon Martin case on July 13 represents another incident in the long history of impunity for those who in the name of the law and order kill African American men and boys.

The exchange between Herman Benson and Dan La Botz highlights one, if not the primary, issue that has to be resolved if we are to turn back the tidal wave of anti-union and anti-democratic policies that have transformed the nation’s social and political landscape.  I think both Herman and Dan would agree that we need a revived labor movement. But what will drive the revival? And what form should it take?

     This discussion has shifted ground. It started with what I proposed, but now we're discussing Dan La Botz's views on the AFL-CIO. I wrote about the need to democratize unions. Dan wants to turn existing unions into "real unions."

[from Weekly Worker 969, July 4 2013]

Diane Ravitch has been a powerful voice for US teachers against the Billionaire Boys Club, who have carried out a program of social engineering that has devastated our schools.  Ravitch is a friend of public education, a friend of the social movement trying to push back these terrible "deforms." This distinction is one Ravitch misses when she defends her personal pal, Randi Weingarten, who is coming under intense pressure for  supporting the Common Core,  a national curriculum that is gener