John Edwards' Bold EducationPlan Should be Enacted by the Next President

Edwards Announces Bold Education Agenda To Restore The Promise Of America's Schools

Plan will radically overhaul No Child Left Behind, expand early education, support teachers and create a "School Success Fund" to help struggling schools
Des Moines, Iowa – Today, Senator John Edwards delivered a major education policy speech at Brody Middle School in Des Moines where he unveiled his plan to radically overhaul the No Child Left Behind Act and ensure that every child in America gets the quality education they deserve. Edwards' plan for Restoring the Promise of American Schools is based on three guiding principles: every child should be prepared to succeed when they show up in the classroom; every classroom should be led by an excellent teacher; and every teacher should work in an outstanding school.

"Education is an issue that's very personal for me," said Edwards. "I grew up in a small, rural town and my parents didn't have a lot of money. But I was lucky to have public school teachers who taught me to believe that somebody from a little town in North Carolina could do just about anything if he worked hard and played by the rules."

"Every child deserves to have the same chances I had," Edwards continued. "But today, millions of young people don't get these opportunities. More than a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, we still have two school systems, separate and unequal. George Bush's No Child Left Behind law is not working, and Washington is simply not doing its part to invest in early childhood education, teachers, or support for struggling schools."

Edwards' plan for education reform will address the failures of the current system through focusing on the following principles:

Preparing Every Child to Succeed: As president, Edwards will launch a national "Great Promise" partnership to give a quality early childhood education to every four-year-old in the country – starting with poor children in neighborhoods with struggling schools. To reach even younger children, Edwards will create a national "Smart Start" program that will improve child care and invest in child health.

An Excellent Teacher in Every Classroom: Teachers, not tests, are the single most important factor in successful schools. As president, Edwards will increase pay for teachers in successful high-poverty schools by up to $15,000 a year. He will also create a National Teacher University – a West Point for teachers – to recruit 1,000 top college students a year, train them to be excellent teachers, and encourage them to teach where they are needed the most. His plan also will give extra support to teachers in the first years of their careers, reduce classroom sizes, and train more excellent principals.

Making Every School an Outstanding School: No Child Left Behind used cheap standardized tests to measure our children's learning, failed to accurately identify struggling schools, and mandated unproven cookie-cutter solutions for our schools' problems. Edwards will totally overhaul it so it meets its goals of helping all children learn through accurately identifying and improving struggling schools. Based on North Carolina's successful education reforms, Edwards proposed a School Success Fund to allow teams of experienced educators to spend a year at struggling schools helping launch reforms. Edwards will also launch a "Great Schools" initiative to build or expand 1,000 successful schools.

In May, Edwards introduced an initiative to improve access to higher education by making college more affordable for millions of students. Edwards' College Opportunity Agenda includes a national "College for Everyone" initiative, which would pay for public-college tuition, fees, and books for any student who is willing to work hard and stay out of trouble.

For more information on Edwards' plan for Restoring the Promise of America's Schools, please read the fact sheet below. Excerpts from Edwards' education address are also included.


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Excerpts from Edwards' Education Address:
"Education is an issue that's very personal for me. I grew up in a small, rural town. My family didn't have a lot of money, but my parents worked hard to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. And they told me that if I worked hard in school, I could be anything I wanted to be. In the classroom, I had heroic public school teachers who taught me the same thing. I had teachers who cared about me, who took an interest in my life, and who taught me the skills I needed to succeed. My high-school English teacher, Ms. Burns, made me believe that somebody from a little town in North Carolina, where their father worked in the mill, could do just about anything if he worked hard and played by the rules."

"Every child deserves to have the same chances I had. But today, millions of young people don't get them. In America today, children who live in the right zip code get the best education our country has to offer, while children who live in rural and low-income communities face an uphill battle. In America today, two schools separated by a five-minute drive can be miles apart in the quality of education they offer their students. More than a half-century after Brown vs. Board of Education, we still have two school systems, separate and unequal."

"The 'American Century' was built on the skills and knowledge of American workers, trained by one of the best education systems in the world. If we want this 21st century to be an American century as well, our workforce will need the skills to successfully compete against rising global economic powers like China and India. And today, we are failing to equip them with those skills."

"There are three simple pillars to my plan: First, every child should be prepared to succeed when they show up in the classroom. Second, every classroom should be led by an excellent teacher. And third, every teacher should work in an outstanding school."

"When it comes to reform, a good place to start is by radically overhauling No Child Left Behind. NCLB is a case study in the broken system in Washington, D.C., a system that has looked the other way as its failed policies and incompetent leadership have broken our schools and broken the spirits of our children and their teachers."


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Restoring the Promise of America's Schools
As the product of public schools in a small rural town and the father of four children who attended public schools, John Edwards understands the importance of education. He believes every child should have the same chance to get a great education – a commitment that is at the core of his plan to build One America where everyone has a chance to succeed. But more than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, we still have two school systems that are separate and unequal. No longer legally separated by race, our children are sorted by economics, often with a racial or ethnic dimension. At the same time, our children are preparing for unprecedented global economic competition.

Unfortunately, Washington is letting down our children. George Bush's No Child Left Behind law is not working for schools, teachers and – most importantly – our children, and it needs to be radically overhauled. And Washington is simply not doing its part to invest in early childhood education, teachers, or helping struggling schools. Our students are falling behind in key subjects like math and science, good teachers are leaving the profession, and our graduates aren't as prepared for the global economy as their peers in other countries. Students in poor rural areas and major cities often don't have the same chances as other students, and an achievement gap that falls along economic and racial or ethnic lines undermines the promise of equality.

Today, John Edwards outlined his vision for excellent American schools, based on three principles:

Every child should be prepared to succeed when they show up in the classroom.
Every classroom should be led by an excellent teacher.
Every teacher should work in an outstanding school.
Preparing Every Child to Succeed
Half of the achievement gap between children from poor families and their more fortunate peers exists before they start school. Quality preschools compensate for the learning opportunities some children miss at home, reducing remedial education, welfare, and crime. Its benefits are strongly supported by academic research and the experience of universal pre-K programs in Georgia and Oklahoma. Children from poor families benefit most from high-quality preschool, but less than half of poor children attend pre-school compared to two-thirds of other children. [Denton and Germino-Hausken, 2000; Aspen, 2007; PPI, 2004; RAND, 1998; Barnett, 1996; EPI, 2002; Education Sector, 2007]

John Edwards believes that quality preschool education should be as common as kindergarten. As president, he will lead the way toward universal preschool, starting with the children who need the help most. In addition to maintaining and expanding support for existing programs like Head Start and the child care block grant, Edwards will:

Offer Universal "Great Promise" Preschool to Four-Year-Olds
Edwards will provide resources to states to help them offer universal high-quality preschool programs for four-year-olds. Great Promise programs will:

Teach academic skills: Preschool is much more than babysitting; it is a unique opportunity to teach children the skills they will need in school. Great Promise will help develop children's language abilities and introduce them to early math, reading, and other academic concepts, as well as help develop their social and emotional skills.
Start in needy communities: The federal commitment will begin in low-income neighborhoods where schools are struggling and expand to serve more communities over time.
Be led by excellent teachers: Research shows that the most effective preschool teachers have at least a bachelor's degree. Lead teachers in Great Promise will have four-year college degrees and be paid commensurately.
Involve parents and their families: Research shows that preschool benefits children the most when their parents are involved. Parental involvement will be essential to Great Promise.
Be voluntary and universally affordable: Participation would be fully voluntary for families. Tuition would be charged on a sliding scale based upon family income and waived for children from low-income families.
Create National Smart Start
North Carolina's innovative Smart Start initiative promotes the healthy development of children under the age of five. It helps local partnerships make child care higher quality and more affordable, provides health services and supports families. Participating children show better cognitive and language skills and fewer behavioral problems. Edwards will help other states duplicate Smart Start programs, prioritizing children who are not served by other pre-K programs. Smart Start will:

Offer integrated services for young children: By linking together health care, child care, education, and family support services for children under five, Smart Start addresses all aspects of young children's development and helps them begin school healthy and ready to succeed.
Perform health care outreach: Smart Start makes it easier for young children to get screening for health problems related to hearing, speech, vision, dental, and learning disabilities.
Sponsor home visits to new families: Home visits improve prenatal health and the quality of caregiving after birth. Children receiving nurse visits are cognitively more advanced, have fewer behavioral problems, and are less likely to be abused or neglected. The Smart Start program will fund home visits by registered nurses to 50,000 low-income new parents. [AAP, 2004; RJWF, 2006; NFP, 2006]
An Excellent Teacher in Every Classroom
Nothing is more important in a school than the relationship between a teacher and a child. In a single year, a good teacher can raise student achievement by a full grade level more than a less effective teacher. Yet students with the greatest needs are more likely to have less experienced and effective teachers. Poor urban and rural schools in particular struggle to attract and retain excellent teachers. While pay for CEOs and other highly paid workers skyrocketed in recent years, teachers earn a fraction of the salaries paid to other educated professionals.

John Edwards believes we need to invest more in training and paying our teachers to help every child learn at high levels. As president, he will:

Raise Pay by up to $15,000 More for Teachers in High-Poverty Schools
Two-thirds of states do not offer any incentives of any kind for teachers to work in high-poverty schools, and many veteran teachers choose to teach in other schools. Edwards will fundamentally change teachers' incentives by helping states pay teachers in successful high-poverty schools as much as $15,000 more a year. The $15,000 raise includes:

$5,000 for all teachers in successful high-poverty schools: High-poverty schools with high academic performance, good student behavior, and high parent satisfaction could give up to $5,000 in bonuses to each of their teachers, encouraging a schoolwide culture of success. Bonuses will grow over time to reward continuing success and give teachers an incentive to stay. Successful schools will open their doors to share their experiences with other schools.
$5,000 for teachers with national certification for excellence in high-poverty schools: The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certifies excellent teachers, but few of these teachers teach in high-need schools. Teachers who have demonstrated high effectiveness in a national process, such as National Board certification, will be eligible for the higher pay.
$5,000 for veteran teachers who serve as mentors in high-poverty schools: Giving veteran teachers the opportunity to mentor new teachers creates opportunities for career advancement for longtime successful teachers, while providing much-needed guidance to new teachers.
To address other recruitment hurdles, Edwards will help states and school districts improve working conditions and increase time for teacher collaboration and planning. He will also address barriers for teachers moving between states by encouraging reciprocal credentials and studying ways to make pension plans compatible. [NCTAF, 1996 and 2002; Sanders and Rivers, 1996; Jordan, Mednro, and Weerasinghe, 1997; Peske and Haycock, 2006; Rural School and Community Trust, 2006 and 2007; NY Times, 8/27/2007]

Create a National Teacher University
While there are some successful education schools, many future teachers graduate without the skills and knowledge they need. In one survey, more than 60 percent of graduates said their education school did not prepare them. Because having great teachers is a national priority, Edwards will create a national teachers' university – a West Point for teachers – to recruit 1,000 top college students a year, train them to be excellent teachers, and encourage them to teach where they are needed most. The school will waive tuition for students who go on to teach in schools and subject areas facing shortages. It will also lead improvements at education schools nationwide by developing and sharing model curriculum and practices and serve as a forum to promote shared certification and licensing requirements across states. [Levine, 2006]

Help Teachers in Their Early Years
A third of all new teachers leave the profession within three years. Students in high-poverty and high-minority schools are twice as likely as other students to be taught by inexperienced teachers. Edwards will help states support teachers during their early years. He will encourage a transition year for rookie teachers with smaller class sizes, reduced teaching loads, and minimal extra duties. Resources will support structured mentoring programs pairing new teachers with successful veterans. Finally, he will support professional development based in actual classroom needs. [Ingersoll, 2003; Ed Trust, 2007; Levine, 2006; NCATF, 2006]

Reduce Class Sizes
Smaller classes help students learn more by allowing them to get more individualized attention from teachers. According to a Tennessee study, young students in small classes are less likely to drop out of school and more likely to graduate on time, complete more advanced math and English courses, and receive honors. Poor and African-American students gain the most from smaller classes. Edwards will dedicate federal resources to reduce class sizes, particularly for young children who are learning below grade levels. [Krueger and Whitmore, 2001, 2002; Smith, Molnar, and Zahorik, 2003; U.S. Department of Education, 2000]

Train More Excellent Principals
Principals can have a large impact on student achievement by setting high expectations and recruiting and supporting teachers, but many districts face principal shortages and the turnover rate for principals in poor urban and rural districts is as high as 20 percent a year. Edwards will help train excellent principals for high-need schools. Programs could be operated by schools of education, school districts, business schools, or other non-profits with a proven track record like New Leaders for New Schools. Establishing programs to train 3,000 principals a year will meet the needs of most of the country's high-need urban and rural schools. [Education Sector, 2007; Aspen Commission, 2007; Leithwood et al. 2004; Education Week, 9/12/2007]

Use Highly Qualified Teachers for Tutoring
No Child Left Behind requires schools that fail to make adequate progress for three years in a row to set aside up to 20 percent of their Title I funds to pay for "supplemental service" tutoring programs, often offered by private companies with unproven capabilities. Edwards will require that tutors be highly qualified teachers.

Making Every School an Outstanding School
Every child in America should have the chance to attend an outstanding public school that has high expectations for every child. Children need to master both basic skills in reading, writing and math and advanced thinking skills like creativity, analytic thinking and using technology. We cannot tolerate the benign neglect of our schools. No Child Left Behind has lost its way by imposing cheap standardized tests, narrowing the curriculum at the expense of science, history, and the arts and mandating unproven cookie-cutter reforms on schools. As a result, it has lost the support of teachers, principals, and parents, whose support is needed for any reform to succeed.

John Edwards believes that we need to overhaul No Child Left Behind to center our schools around children, not tests, and help struggling schools, not punish them. He will:

Overhaul No Child Left Behind
The law must be radically changed to live up to its goal of helping all children learn at high levels, accurately identifying struggling schools, and improving them. Its sole reliance on standardized, primarily multiple choice reading and math tests has led schools to narrow the curriculum. Its methodology for identifying failing school can be arbitrary and unfair. And it imposes mandatory, cookie-cutter reforms on these schools without any evidence they work. Edwards supports:

Better tests:Rather than requiring students to take cheap standardized tests, Edwards believes that we must invest in the development of higher-quality assessments that measure higher-order thinking skills, including open-ended essays, oral examinations, and projects and experiments.
Broader measures of school success: Edwards believes that the law should consider additional measures of academic performance. The law should also allow states to track the growth of students over time, rather than only counting the number of students who clear an arbitrary bar, and give more flexibility to small rural schools.
More flexibility: Edwards will give states more flexibility by distinguishing between schools where many children are failing and those where a particular group is falling behind. He will also let states implement their own reforms in underperforming schools when there is good reason to believe that they will be at least equally effective.
Launch a "Great Schools" Initiative to Build and Expand 1,000 Successful Schools
Across America, there are public schools that are helping children from all backgrounds succeed, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, small schools, and other models. Edwards will help 250 schools a year expand or start new branches. Federal funds will support new buildings, excellent teachers, and other needs. Among the schools he will support are:

Small schools: Small high schools create stronger communities, reducing adolescent anonymity and alienation and encouraging teachers to work together. At 47 new small high schools recently opened in New York City, graduation rates are substantially higher than the citywide average. Communities can establish multiple schools within an existing facility, build new schools, and reopen old facilities. [Aspen Institute, 2001; N.Y. Times, 6/30/2007]
Early college high schools: High schools on college campuses let students earn both a high school diploma and an associate's degree (or two years of transfer credit) in only five years. In North Carolina, Governor Mike Easley's Learn and Earn initiative raises rigor and aspirations, reduces tuition costs, and relieves overcrowded college campuses. [American Institutes for Research and SRI International, 2007; Easley, 2007]
Economically integrated schools: While income diversity is not a substitute for racial diversity, low-income students perform best when in middle-class schools where they are more likely to have experienced teachers and classmates with high aspirations. States can build magnet schools in low-income communities and create incentives for middle-class schools to enroll more low-income children. [Kahlenberg, 2007; Harris, 2006; NY Times, 7/15/05]
Create a School Success Fund to Turn Around Struggling Schools
Improving our worst schools is going to take more than federal mandates of unproven remedies; it will require a serious commitment of resources. A new School Success Fund will:

Let experts design and implement reforms: Based on North Carolina's successful reform, Edwards will ask teams of experienced educators to spend a year at struggling schools helping start reforms. These educators will tailor comprehensive solutions to each school, rather than adopting silver bullets or one-size-fits-all solutions.
Provide resources to implement them: Some schools need more resources to help their children succeed. The School Success Fund will target resources to the neediest schools. Resources will be available to recruit new school leadership and a core of excellent teachers, reduce class sizes, duplicate proven models, strengthen the curriculum, and other reforms.
Emphasize extra learning time: Due to our 180-day school year, American children spend much less time in class than their foreign competitors. Many other countries have 25 percent more instructional time, which adds up to more than two years by the end of high school. When combined with making better use of learning time and designed with educators, longer school days and years create new opportunities for children to master the basics and a broader curriculum. [ED in 08, 2007; Zimmerman, 1998; CAP, 2006]
Establish stronger academic and career curricula: The rigor of high school classes is the number-one predictor of college success. Even students who do not go to college need strong math and reading skills in the workplace. Edwards believes that all schools – even those in small, isolated, and high-poverty areas – should have access to challenging Advanced Placement courses. And he will support partnerships between high schools and community colleges to help high school students get the training they need for the good jobs where skilled workers are in short supply today. [US Department of Education, 1997; ACT, 2006; ED in 08, 2007]
More Resources for Poor and Rural Schools
Four out of five urban school districts studied nationally spend more on low-poverty schools than on high-poverty schools. Rural schools enroll 40 percent of American children – including most children in Iowa, New Hampshire, and North Carolina – but receive only 22 percent of federal education funding. Edwards will increase federal Title I funding and dedicate the increases to low-income schools and districts and rewarding states that distribute funding where it is needed most to increase learning. He will also invest in distance education and cutting-edge software to bring the promise of new learning technologies to remote areas. [NASBE, 2003; Rural School and Community Trust, 2007; Digital Promise, 2003]

Meet the Promise of Special Education
More than thirty years ago, Congress committed to fund 40 percent of the excess cost of educating children with disabilities, but it provides less than half that amount. George Bush has proposed a $300 million cut. Edwards opposes the Bush cuts and supports getting on a path toward meeting the federal promise. [Committee for Education Funding, 2007]

Raise Graduation Rates
Almost a third of all students drop out of school before earning a high school diploma, and rates among children of color or from low-income families are higher. At nearly 2,000 high schools nationwide – called "dropout factories" – more than 40 percent of students won't graduate. Edwards will create multiple paths to graduation such as Second Chance schools for former dropouts and smaller alternative schools for at-risk students. He will focus on identifying at-risk students and support the Striving Readers literacy program and one-on-one tutoring to keep them in school. Edwards will also fund additional guidance counselors in high-poverty schools. [Baron, 2005; Alliance for Excellent Education, 2007; Balfranz and Legters, 2004; NCES, 2004]

Support High School Service Programs
The energy and enthusiasm of high school students who want to make their community and their country a better place to live. One type of service program, service-learning, has been shown to have positive impacts on students' civic engagement, college enrollment, career development, and personal relationships. Nearly half of school-age children lack the activities and role models that are opportunities to make a difference through helping others. Edwards will create a Community Corps service programs for high school students. It will provide resources to high schools that choose to make community service a graduation requirement, helping them make service opportunities higher in quality and integrate them into the curriculum. [NYLC, 2006; America's Promise Alliance, undated]

Senator Dodd is a Genuine Hero of the People with Senator Reid Something Else

More disruptions to the Cheney/Rockefeller plan caused by Senator Dodd are taking place as we write. Dodd may not have impressed enough people to gain the presidency, but he certainly has impressed the activists' wing of the Democratic Party while Senator Reid appears to be disgracing it.
-Shundahai39



-- Glenn Greenwald

Once again, the forces behind telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping powers were stymied in their efforts to ensure quick and seamless passage of their bill.


Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the FISA and telecom immunity conflict, there is something quite unique about how things have proceeded that I think is worth noting. Telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping powers are exactly the types of issues that normally generate very little controversy or debate. Identically, the bill advocated by Dick Cheney, Jay Rockefeller and Mitch McConnell is the type of bill that is normally passed, quickly and quietly, by Congress without any trouble. That isn't happening this time, and it's worth looking at why that is.

The establishment media has virtually ignored these matters from the beginning. Most establishment-serving pundits who have paid any attention -- the David Ignatiuses and Joe Kleins and Fred Hiatts -- have done so by advocating, as usual, the Establishment position: retroactive immunity and warrantless eavesdropping powers are the right thing to do. Although there is no citizen-constituency whatsoever crying out for telecom immunity or new warrantless eavesdropping powers, the forces behind those provisions are the ones which typically dictate what Congress does: namely, the largest corporations and their lobbyists, who have been working, as always, in the dark to ensure that the law they want is enacted.

That's typically the way Washington works -- the most significant laws are seamlessly enacted with little real debate or attention, driven by corporations and lobbyists working in secret with Senators, cheered on by the Serious media pundits, with bipartisan pools of lawmakers silently and obediently on board. And once those forces line up behind any measure, it is normally almost impossible to stop it -- not just stop it, but even disrupt it at all. That's the insulated Beltway parlor, virtually impervious to outside influences, least of all the opinions of the citizen-rabble.

* * * * *

All of those standard Beltway forces are squarely lined up behind telecom immunity and new eavesdropping powers, and yet, things are not proceeding smoothly for them at all. Back in December, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller and Mitch McConnell scheduled just a couple of days for the FISA debate because they assumed that was all that would be needed to deliver quickly and quietly to the President everything he demanded.

But when Chris Dodd and others impeded that plan by obstructing and filibustering, Reid just cynically assumed that once Dodd was out of the presidential race, he would cease with the "grandstanding" and allow the Senate to function the way it is supposed to: collegially delivering to the Establishment what it wants, without disruption.

But Dodd's commitment to impede these corrupt and lawless measures is clearly authentic and was not grounded in cynical political concerns -- as was obvious to anyone uninfected by the jaded Beltway Virus. Dodd's willingness to join Russ Feingold in single-mindedly pursuing what are considered extreme and alienating steps in the Senate to stop this bill -- holds, filibusters and withholding of unanimous consent agreements -- along with Dodd's increasingly eloquent and relentless advocacy on behalf of the Constitution and the rule of law, has disrupted the Cheney/Reid/Rockefeller plan just enough so that it may now unravel altogether.

Dodd has been in the Senate for 24 years. As he is the first to acknowledge, engaging in filibusters and obstruction and defiance of his party's leadership are things he has almost never done. Dodd isn't Russ Feingold. He has been the picture of the establishment Senator in the party's "liberal" wing, rarely deviating and almost never standing alone to oppose the party leadership. So what has changed? Why has he been so willing so tenaciously to pursue this fight -- even in the face of overt though anonymous threats that he could alienate his party's leadership and lose influence as Banking Committee Chairman if he persists?

Dodd himself provided the answer in his Senate floor speech (h/t Kitt):

I've promised to fight those scare tactics with all the power any one senator can muster. And I'm here today to keep that promise.

For several months now, I've listened to the building frustration over this immunity and this administration's campaign of lawlessness. I've seen it in person, in mail, online -- the passion and eloquence of citizens who are just fed up. They've inspired me more than they know.

That is exactly what happened. When the administration first demanded retroactive immunity in the wake of the passage of the Protect America Act, nobody was talking about that issue outside of blogs and grass-roots and civil liberties organizations -- the roster of annoying citizen-groups that are typically ignored. But the pressure built; it became increasingly intense and relentless; it found a political official in Chris Dodd willing to ride it; and it unquestionably has altered the course of how all of this has played out.

As a result, even the three presidential candidates have become increasingly attentive to it -- not enough, to be sure, but more than before. Strictly in response to calls from blog readers, John Edwards issued a series of statements against telecom immunity this week, even sending out a mailing to his email list solely on this topic, despite the fact that he is in the middle of a critical primary fight in South Carolina. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have been making commitments to increase their involvement, with Hillary even vowing to speak out against it today. This week, Barack Obama also made his most emphatic statement to date: "I strongly oppose retroactive immunity in the FISA bill. . . . That is why I am proud to stand with Sen. Dodd and a grassroots movement of Americans who are standing up for our civil liberties and the rule of law."

The lead Editorial in The New York Times this morning is devoted to lambasting Harry Reid and Jay Rockefeller for their active efforts to ensure passage of the Cheney/Rockefeller FISA bill. After failing to do so the first time around, the House in November passed a decent bill that contains no immunity and has numerous safeguards on eavesdropping powers, and -- at least as of now -- appears unlikely to capitulate. The only reason any of that happened is because enough citizens were sufficiently intense and active to catapult this issue to the fore and prevent the quiet and easy enactment of telecom immunity and new warrantless eavesdropping powers. In the absence of that, this would have all been over with, easily and without trouble, back in December.

* * * * *

There is never any shortage of super-sophisticated cynics to come along and say how none of this matters, how it's so pitifully naive to think that any difference can ever be made, how the System is so Corrupted and the Deck So Stacked Against Us that everything is doomed and defeat is the inevitable option. And there is an element of truth to the premises of that defeatist mindset. The principal reason blogs exist, after all, is precisely because all other institutions intended to provide some adversarial check on what our government does -- the establishment media, the "opposition party," the Congress -- typically do the opposite: they serve as enablers of it rather than checks on it. That's all true enough.

But what incidents such as this one conclusively demonstrate is that it is always possible, if enough citizen intensity is mustered and the right strategy is formulated, for citizens to disrupt and defeat the best-laid plans of our corrupt political establishment. There's a comfort and temptation in denying that truth. Those who insist that defeat is inevitable and All is Lost are relieved of the burdensome task of trying. But defeat occurs because the right strategy isn't found, not because it is inevitable.

As always, the significance of what has occurred here shouldn't be overstated. The only reason Senate Democrats became angry on Thursday is because Republicans actually refused to allow Democrats to capitulate, as they were ready and eager to do. Senate Republicans blocked Democrats from caving in completely to Bush because they didn't want this issue resolved. They want to ensure that Bush, in Monday's State of the Union address, can accuse Senate Democrats of failing to act on FISA, and thus attack and mock them as being weak on national security and causing the Terrorists to be able to Slaughter Us All.

And, rather pitifully, some Democrats are shocked -- so very upset -- that, yet again, their demonstrated willingness to give the Republicans everything they demanded has not prompted a Good, Nice, Courteous Response. "We did everything you told us to do. Why are you being so mean and unfair?" That sad posture is what led even Jay Rockefeller apparently to announce that he will vote against cloture on his own bill.

Worse, even if Democrats prevent the Republicans' cloture vote on Monday, that will mean we'll just be right back to where we were before that happened: with a series of votes that will almost certainly end in the Senate with some form of retroactive immunity and vastly expanded warrantless eavesdropping powers. So it isn't as though there is some victory here yet that is complete or even all that meaningful.

* * * * *

Still, it is very worth doing what's possible to encourage Democrats to sustain a filibuster on Monday and prevent a cloture vote on the Senate Intelligence Committee bill, which will mean that there will be no new law in place before the Protect America Act expires (February 2). Bush will then have to choose -- at least as Reid is boldly promising -- between some short-term extension of the Protect America Act (with no immunity) or have the bill lapse altogether.

Even just a two-week or one-month extension will allow more time to marshall the opposition to telecom immunity and a new FISA bill and to do what's possible to encourage the House to stand firm behind their bill -- in exactly the way that the Dodd Delay in December prevented quick and easy resolution. The longer this drags on without resolution, the more possible it is to push the opposition to a tipping point, and sometimes unexpected developments or even some luck (such as McConnell's overplaying his hand on Thursday) can prevent it all from happening.

As the events of the last two months demonstrate, if citizen opposition is channeled the right way, it can make a genuine difference in affecting the course of events in Washington. Defeating telecom immunity will keep alive the lawsuits that will almost certainly reveal to some extent what the Government did in illegally spying on Americans over the last six years or, at the very least, produce a judicial adjudication as to its illegality. And, in turn, the effects from that could be extremely significant. Because victories are so rare, it's easy to get lulled into believing that none of these campaigns are ever effective and that citizens can never affect any of it, which is precisely why it's so important to remind ourselves periodically of how untrue that proposition is.


-- Glenn Greenwald

Edwards Can Take on the Moguls

Corporations are running America. We know the story – send jobs out of the country while cutting wages and benefits at home. This needs to change.

The presidential campaign is under way. Republicans are owned by corporations so no help there. On the Democratic side, polls indicate that Sen. Hillary Clinton is leading with Barack Obama second and John Edwards a distant third.

What is wrong with this picture?

Clinton was once on the board of directors of Wal-Mart. She receives more health industry money than any other member of Congress. She was a cheerleader for the administration's push for NAFTA that lubricated the job flow out of the country. She is going to say no to corporate dominance? I don't think so.

Obama is a nice, intelligent, well-intended young man who may well become a great president. But he likely will be crushed by the corporate empire.
Wake up, peope. Edwards is the man.

A Simple Plan to Fix Education and By So Doing Fix America

Peter Schrag wrote in The Sacramento Bee, “Tight Budgets Needn’t Halt School Reform Planning,” Jan. 23, 2007, on the Governor’s Education Budget cuts, “It might be nice for once to do some thinking before more money was spent.” John Edwards’ education plan has done that thinking on the national level, implementing large pay raises for teachers and creating a National Teaching Academy comparable to our military academies.

California needs a quick fix and data to validate the fix. So far the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on education have produced no quantum improvement or the data to indicate what is necessary for that improvement. With a combined sixty nine year of public school teaching, my wife and I have concluded that the millions of dollars spent on education should be spent to attract the very best, the most qualified teachers. Californians have constantly heard throwing money at education is not the way to fix education. Not throwing money at education will guarantee failure. The mistake is not throwing money at education, but the way that thrown money is used.

High pay usually guarantees quality workers. Let’s pay each teacher a starting salary of $100,000 with a top of $250,000 and see how long it takes for California to once again have our education the envy of the world. The total budget for California in 2006 was 67.1 billion dollars. For example, had we paid each of the 292,012 teachers $100,000 their salaries would have comprised 43 % of the education budget. High salaries will attract the brightest and the best – creating one educated generation after another. All the No Child Left Behind fixes simply waste money and precious time on unworkable innovations.

If a teacher is well-educated, loves his subject matter and strives to develop his teaching skills to maximal efficiency, then his expertise will follow. The prospective teacher will thoroughly prepare himself before he applies for a teaching job because the hiring with become extremely competitive. The morale of the hired teacher will rise because his skills are rewarded which is a societal validation of his professional worth. His students will have added respect for their teacher because society values him as evidenced by his large salary. His best students will want to become teachers.

Critics will say teachers do not deserve such salaries. Nothing else has worked so let us try this very simple idea for ten years. Let’s see if teachers indeed are worth the salary and the high trust the public places in them. Nothing that all the think tanks and the universities have come up with has worked so far. Let’s enjoy watching teachers earn their salaries by educating all our children. The results will be so exemplary the system will be used throughout the nation. All innovation begins in California; this one is long overdue.

Many will say that this idea oversimplifies the problem; this fix is too simplistic and therefore cannot work. Education however needs a simple fix now. Let’s call this idea the Simple Plan to Fix Education (SPFE). This idea is always discussed but never tried while hundreds of unsuccessful fixes have failed.

In my thirty-eight years of teaching, I observed that teachers who were well-educated in their fields, who loved their jobs because they knew they were qualified and were teaching their students successfully, who usually had other incomes to supplement their teaching salaries and were satisfied sacrificing pay for helping society were always the best teachers. Every teacher cannot afford a financial sacrifice for the luxury of teaching. Raising pay, guaranteeing teacher expertise and making teaching especially attractive as a profession, will return California to its former position as the world’s educational leader. California, the nation and the world will benefit from this transformation. Let’s have the courage to try to work out the devil in the details of this plan.

Only Improving Education Will Keep Us the World Leader

The key to fixing America is education. Education prepares for the future and our future is imperiled. America must provide the world’s best education to keep America leading the world. John Edwards’ Restoring the Promise of American Schools is based on three guiding principles: every child should be prepared to succeed when he shows up in the classroom; every classroom should be led by an excellent teacher; and every teacher should work in an outstanding school.

"Education is an issue that's very personal for me," said Edwards.
" … I was lucky to have public school teachers who taught me to believe that somebody from a little town in North Carolina could do just about anything if he worked hard and played by the rules.”

Edwards will also create a National Teacher University – a West Point for teachers – to recruit 1,000 top college students a year, train them to be excellent teachers, and encourage them to teach where they are needed the most. His plan will give extra support to first year teachers, reduce classroom sizes, and train more excellent principals.

Edwards gives America a future through his education plan. Imagine the improvement if teachers were paid $100,000 a year.

Let's Usher Kranz Out the Door with Doolittle

Lets' see if I have this right.

Placer County Supervisor Bruce Kranz and real estate developer Michelle Ollar-Burris (alias "Mary Smith") are two big supporters of - and contributors to - the disgraced John Doolittle, a pal of convicted felon Jack Abramoff. Bruce and Michelle are also old friends, so Bruce appoints Michelle to the county planning and zoning commission, stacking it with pro-Big Development supporters. Kranz and Michelle Ollar-Burris encourage building John Doolittle's Auburn Dam with taxpayers’ money so their developer friends will have enough water for all their planned communities located between Roseville and Lincoln.

But Michelle also has a checkered past as a realtor and has been suspended, something Kranz either forgot, overlooked or completely ignored when vetting her. So Kranz hires her anyway.

Soon, she gets caught doing illegal lot splits and avoiding rural conservation requirements. At first, Kranz defends her, but public pressure mounts as the investigation of her proceeds and a week later Kranz flip-flops, He asks her to leave. She refuses. She gets fired.

Now, thanks to Kranz's bad judgment in hiring her in the first place, Placer County is the subject of a rather nasty lawsuit from Michelle Ollar-Burris, which promises to cost taxpayers plenty.

It sounds like Kranz is a paid agent for Big Land Development and John Doolittle's chosen successor in the local office of the GOP Culture of Corruption. In appointing a friend who he must have (or should have) known was potential trouble, Kranz acted contrary to Placer County' best interests.

Of course the shepherd always tries to convince the sheep his interests and theirs are the same, but ask yourself one question; Do we really need another Big Developers For Doolittle clone running things around here?

Bush Lie #12, 007 - The Surge is Working! Or is it the Bribes Paid to Iraqis Are Working?

No matter what the administration says, the troop surge didn't work and is not working currently. Dropping another 30,000 warm bodies into Iraq did not reduce the violence against U.S. troops.

So what did reduce American deaths? Bribery did. In May 2007, 126 U.S. troops were killed during the second deadliest month of the entire Iraq war. Gen. Petraeus was under pressure from Bush to reduce spiraling casualties in an increasingly unpopular war. So Petraeus "cut a deal" with enemy Sunnis and al-Qaida insurgents.

The military calls Petraeus' program "Concerned Local Citizens." We call it bribery, protection, ransom, tribute, or extortion. Petraeus implemented the policy that no one in Washington seems ready to praise or even talk about; that of paying the enemy money so they don't hurt us.

Some 70,000 former al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents are now being paid by the U.S. military, paid with TAXPAYERS' MONEY, YOUR MONEY. Did you or I authorize Bush to use our money for bribes to cover his failure? It adds up to about a quarter billion dollars ($250,000,000) OF YOUR MONEY a year.

How can we be sure that the bribery worked and not the troop escalation? You have only to look at the numbers. Violence in Iraq reached an all-time high during the initial six months of the surge. Payments, however, suddenly and dramatically turned al-Qaida insurgents into our erstwhile employees, on salary to not kill us.

Now that we're funding them, arming them and training them, they have become "concerned citizens." But these same people who were recently shooting at us are not our friends, they do not like us, they do not want us in their country, and they are still Islamic mujahadin, al-Qaida. That much is unchanged.

Who says OUR money can't buy Bush friends? Why not just give all Iraqis informants jobs with Blackwater so Cheney can make more money too and bring the troops home? The informants won't last long because their fellow Iraqis will kill them as traitors.

When An Irresistible Conqueror Meets an Unsuspecting People

Imagine that a conqueror with an irresistible army invades your county. He institutes martial law, suspending the U.S. and California Constitutions. He replaces the Board of Supervisors with his Board of Directors, replaces the Sheriff Department with his mercenary companies, replaces the public school system with charter schools with arbitrary requirements for teachers, no set pay or graduation requirements, and privatizes all utilities and transportation. He replaces all city governments with his own people. He installs a multinational corporation to run the water supply. He commandeers all Tahoe lakeshores and the prime lands in all cities and turns them over to developers for hotels and casinos and displaces the original owners to temporary shelters.

All these changes are installed instantly while the people are in shock. All personal rights and freedoms are suspended. YOU, THE TAXPAYER, PAY FOR ALL OF THIS.

This Milton Friedman technique is called disaster capitalism under the Shock Doctrine of Bush and his neocons. If it sounds familiar, it is because it was done in New Orleans and Iraq and to a large degree to the U.S. after 9/11, with the creation of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. The conqueror awaits the next hurricane or 9/11.

Limbaugh is Despicable ... Again ... And Again

"Obama is holding his own against both of them [Bill and Hillary Clinton], doing more than his share of the 'spadework,' maybe even gaining ground at the moment using not only the 'spade,' ladies and gentlemen, but when he finishes with the 'spade' in the garden of corruption planted by the Clintons, he turns to the 'hoe.' And so, with the 'spadework' and his expertise - using a 'hoe' - he's faring well."

--- Rush Limbaugh, January 14, 2008

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Can it be that Rush is making jejune racial references? I'm just shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you!

So the fat dope addict couldn't even find the cojones to come right out and say " he's a nigger."

'Spade' and 'hoe' - that's the American conservative message?

He's back in the oxycontin bottle again. He cannot even be a forthright racist. He has corrupted the Right as much as he has corrupted himself, and the Right does not even know it.

Romney and Huckabee Are Not Religious?

Did you hear Romney and Huckabee bickering about religion? Their patter is faith-based politics running amok. After eight years of St. George W., who would have thought the madness would continue?

Although I hate to admit it, Baptist leader Robert Jeffress may have a valid point when he said, "even though Romney talks about Jesus as his Lord and Savior, he is not a Christian. Mormonism is not Christianity, Mormonism is a cult." Let's examine the evidence.

According to Mormon scripture, God and his son Jesus (called Jehovah in the Old Testament ), first appeared to Joseph Smith in New York in 1820. God told Joseph Smith that Christan teachings were all wrong, their creeds were an abomination in his sight, their ministers and theologians were corrupt charlatans. HIs words are clear enough. Mormons not Christians.

During a debate the Huckster asked the Mitten if Jesus and the Devil were brothers. Later, Huck had to apologize for the cheap shot.

Being an observant devout Mormon, Mitt Romney knows full well that Jesus and Satan are two of God's many sons. Yes. They are brothers. In fact, when God accepted his favorite son Jesus' divine plan for humankind rather than his other son Satan's divine plan, Satan went ballistic, causing the Great Sibling rivalry.

Mitt also knows that a lost tribe of biblical Hebrews sailed to America. Their descendants are known as American Indians (in Mormon, they're called "Lamanites"- bad Jews). Romney knows that Jesus Christ once materialized in New York where he announced he would found his Heavenly Kingdom in Independence, Missouri. Mitt knows that obedient Mormon men can become Gods, with their own planet in outer space, just as the formerly-human God the Father does - on his own home planet of Kolob.

Mormons believe there are three Gods; that God embraced integration in 1978 (before which people of black African ancestry were cursed by God). Mormons scripture says the Prophet Brigham Young visited the moon where he found kindly tall people who dress like Quakers, and where each day is 1,000 years long. Romney believes that God finally repudiated thousands of years of polygamy just so Utah could become a state.

This nonsense is not at all like the Huckster's rational, orthodox Christian beliefs. Huck knows that God, disguised as a ghost, raped a Palestinian virgin peasant girl, then abandoned her to raise his son alone. And that the son grew up to be a sort-of guru/faith healer who promised to make his country into a theocracy and kick out the imperialist occupation forces, but instead was executed by the occupiers for being an insurgent, and then his reanimated corpse was seen eating some fish, visiting his former students and flying up into the sky saying, "I'll be back."

The moral? Real Christians are rational? Non-Christian Mormons are gullible dupes. Look at the FACTS!

Christianity and the Republican Party Have Become Sanctuaries for Perverts

What is it about folks on the Christian right who preach the Good Book but are really, really bad? You know, guys like Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggert and Ted Haggart, who never flinched at taking their pious flocks' money but always managed to set aside a little for some out-of-town sweet young stuff of either gender?

That got me thinking about other Christian conservative "holier-than-thou" folks. Their perversions have been routinely reported in various national publications so I don't have to make anything up.

Their commonality is that they are most often Republican Conservative Christian activists who have preached "Christian family values" while performing unspeakable acts of perversion, usually illegal, often with minors, frequently with their own family members. Is this behavior family values from the conservative Christian right?

Now, I am not saying that there aren't perverts who call themselves Democrats. But somehow the conservative Republican brand are true and certain holy hypocrites, along with being perverts. When a political party presents itself as the Party of God ("Hezbollah," in Arabic) - whether it is Christians in Georgetown or Shiites in Iran - you can be absolutely certain that there is something kinky being hidden underneath all of that religious puffery.

Consider the child rape scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church over the past few years and you will realize that this is an alarming national problem with attempted coverups by the church whose primary mission seems to be to protect its own not its children. The fact that child rape is even more common among Protestant clergy than among Catholic priests is truly horrifying.

When you count the number of Christian Republican anti-gay,anti-choice police that have been arrested and sentenced for perverse acts with children, you come to realize that Christianity and conservative Republican politics are truly a dark, moist hiding place for perverts and scoundrels of all stripes - perhaps in larger numbers than anywhere else. It just goes to show that the worst thing you can do with a dogma is provide it an empire.

A Guide for Christian Biblical Textualists

For those folks who read the Bible literally and insist that all truth is Bible derived and the word of God, let me ask, " Are you drunk? You think more Bible is what the world needs?"

"... blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock."(Psalms 137:9) -

"Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered and their wives raped"(Isaiah 13:16). -

"Kill old men, young men, old women, young women, and children..." (Ezekiel 9:6)

"...take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the LORD against the sun..."(Numbers 25:3-4) -

" ...hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung and drink their own piss with you?"(II Kings 18:27) -

...Give thy son that we may eat him to day and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son and did eat him..." (II Kings 6:28-29) -
I don't think any sane person would follow these biblical principles, but then we are talking about Christian fundamentalists.

That's just what perverts need ... like a serial killer needs a new chain saw. "