tagged w/ vouchers
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AlterNet / By Rachel Tabachnick
By now you've surely heard of the Kochs. Meanwhile, the powerful, wealthy DeVos family has remained largely under the radar, while leading a stealth assault on America's schools.
May 6, 2011 |
Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks
Since the 2010 elections, voucher bills have popped up in legislatures around the nation. From Pennsylvania to Indiana to Florida, state governments across the country have introduced bills that would take money from public schools and use it to send students to private and religious institutions.
Vouchers have always been a staple of the right-wing agenda. Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But "school choice," as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system.
The decades-long campaign to end public education is propelled by the super-wealthy, right-wing DeVos family. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, the multi-tiered home products business.
By now, you've surely heard of the Koch brothers, whose behind-the-scenes financing of right-wing causes has been widely documented in the past year. The DeVoses have remained largely under the radar, despite the fact that their stealth assault on America's schools has the potential to do away with public education as we know it.
Right-Wing Privatization Forces
The conservative policy institutes founded beginning in the 1970s get hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy families and foundations to develop and promote free market fundamentalism. More specifically, their goals include privatizing social security, reducing government regulations, thwarting environmental policy, dismantling unions -- and eliminating public schools.
Whatever they may say about giving poor students a leg up, their real priority is nothing short of the total dismantling of our public educational institutions, and they've admitted as much. Cato Institute founder Ed Crane and other conservative think tank leaders have signed the Public Proclamation to Separate School and State, which reads in part that signing on, "Announces to the world your commitment to end involvement by local, state, and federal government from education."
But Americans don't want their schools dismantled. So privatization advocates have recognized that it's not politically viable to openly push for full privatization and have resigned themselves to incrementally dismantling public school systems. The think tanks’ weapon of choice is school vouchers.
Vouchers are funded with public school dollars but are used to pay for students to attend private and parochial (religious-affiliated) schools. The idea was introduced in the 1950s by the high priest of free-market fundamentalism, Milton Friedman, who also made the real goal of the voucher movement clear: “Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a free-market system." The quote is in a 1995 Cato Institute briefing paper titled “Public Schools: Make Them Private.”
(more at link)AlterNet / By Rachel Tabachnick
By now you've surely heard of the Kochs.... more
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Thirty thousand people turned out in East Point on Wednesday seeking applications for government-subsidized housing, and their confusion and frustration, combined with the summer heat, led to a chaotic mob scene that left 62 people injured.
At the Tri-Cities Plaza Shopping Center, emergency vehicles passed each other, transporting 20 people to hospitals. Medical and police command posts were se More..t up on scene. East Point police wore riot gear. Officers from four other agencies supported them. Yet no arrests were made.
All of this resulted from people attempting to obtain Section 8 housing applications and, against long odds, later securing vouchers for affordable residences. Some waited in line for two days for the applications.
Renee Gray, a single mother holding her one-year-old daughter, Marion, came looking for a housing break and nearly got trampled, forcing her to run from the crowd and into the street.
"It could have been better organized," said Gray, a customer service employee. "A lot of adults lost focus.”
Jacquelyn Cuffie, 50, of Duluth, used a walker to cross the parking lot and navigate the huge gathering, determined to improve her living situation. It didn't matter how hot or crowded it got.
“It’s difficult to pay [the rent] with a disability check,” Cuffie said.
Offering applications for the first time since 2002, East Point Housing Authority officials had triple the crowd they anticipated, and one that was three-fourths of the 40,000 population of the south Fulton city. Things got out of hand when people started cutting into lines and authorities attempted to move groups to different areas.
More:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5d7_1281717735Thirty thousand people turned out in East Point on Wednesday seeking applications for... more
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