Everywhere you look, jobs are cut, programs are eliminated, and the fat is trimmed as closely as possible leaving only the bare bones of our society. Well, almost everywhere. It seems that for all the costs being cut surrounding education and employment benefits, a disproportionate amount of money has poured into intelligence, better known as the U.S. Military Industrial Complex. This imbalance in public spending and private contractors prompted the Washington Post to conduct a two-year long investigation into this hidden, growing world.
The Nation's Media FIX Blogger Greg Mitchell joined us in the studio to discuss this phenomenon, along with the recent PBS documentary "Turmoil and Triumph"--an uncomfortably flattering three-part documentary on George Shultz's three years as Secretary of State. Normally, PBS would not air an apparently biased piece, but, as Mitchell implies, both the media and the government work together to keep their people sorely in the dark.
"We're lying to our kids," says professor and former charter school advocate and supporter of No Child Left Behind Diane Ravitch. High-stakes testing and punishing teachers for low-scoring kids is failing, according to her research; moreover, charter schools are only successful, when they are, because they can select the best students from the failing districts in which they are located.
In a new piece at The Nation, and in her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, Ravitch lays out the case against the policies she once supported. She joins Laura in studio to discuss the problems with education--and how Obama and Arne Duncan might be making things worse, not better.
Finally, Jaclyn Friedman, Executive Director of Women, Action & the Media and editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, has some thoughts on the recent sexual assault allegations against Al Gore--and why we should accept that "nice guys" can do bad things.
Why do we respect Al Gore in the first place?
By Guillermo on July 21st, 2010 at 6:34 pm
This was a good show. It shows how sick, neurotic this nation is. Just as the media denies how deep sexual perversion exist among our top leaders (rather than listening to a victim, it denies a just debate on the issue, blaming the victim as making up the crime for financial gain or fame, shoving that reality back into its subconscious), so it also denies the crimes of our past and present paths to prosperity (glorifying a few intraprenuers, few random acts of kindness, patriotism, and spirituality); yet it denies the bloodshed, slavery, and continued oppressiveness of its/our current policies. Who will admit that our nation thinks it’s better to invest in bombs and bullets than kids. Who will admit that our prosperity has been had at the expense of thousands of innocent lives. Millions of people have died, but we’ve got oil and gas for our cars. Yeh, our nation has a special calling to bring democracy to the world!
By Gordon Dills on August 23rd, 2010 at 10:30 pm