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To: Ron who wrote (244143)	2/6/2014 3:29:05 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 540759

And on that note, I give you this rather decent article on the Common Core- the next issue for deranged right wingers, who fail to understand the Core is just a set of guides for curriculum- which can still be created and put in to use by local or state implementation, and is not mandated by that bete noir "the federal government": The Tea Party’s Next Bogeyman: Obama's Common Core Conspiracy The educational community is divided on new national curriculum standards. But conservative activists see something more sinister. —By Tim Murphy \| Thu Apr. 4, 2013 2:00 AM GMT 240 [iframe style="WIDTH: 110px; HEIGHT: 20px" id=twitter-widget-0 class="twitter-share-button twitter-tweet-button twitter-count-horizontal" title="Twitter Tweet Button" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/tweet_button.1390956745.html#_=1391718233780&count=horizontal&counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.motherjones.com%2Fpolitics%2F2013%2F04%2Fglenn-beck-obama-common-core-conspiracy&id=twitter-widget-0&lang=en&original_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.motherjones.com%2Fpolitics%2F2013%2F04%2Fglenn-beck-obama-common-core-conspiracy&related=davidcorndc%3AWashington%20editor%20of%20Mother%20Jones%20magazine%20and%20blogger%20at%20www.davidcorn.com%2Ckdrum%3APolitical%20blogger%20and%20writer%20for%20Mother%20Jones%20magazine.%2Ctomphilpott%3AThe%20cofounder%20of%20Maverick%20Farms%20and%20food%20%26%20agriculture%20correspondent%20for%20Mother%20Jones.%2Cclarajeffery%3ACo-editor%20of%20Mother%20Jones.%20Mom.%20One%20very%20tired%20lady.&size=m&text=The%20Tea%20Party%E2%80%99s%20Next%20Bogeyman%3A%20Obama's%20Common%20Core%20Conspiracy&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.motherjones.com%2Fpolitics%2F2013%2F04%2Fglenn-beck-obama-common-core-conspiracy&via=motherjones" frameBorder=0 allowTransparency scrolling=no data-twttr-rendered="true"][/iframe] [iframe style="BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; WIDTH: 83px; HEIGHT: 20px; VISIBILITY: visible; BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none" title="fb:like Facebook Social Plugin" height=1000 src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?app_id=132888650146012&channel=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.ak.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter.php%3Fversion%3D40%23cb%3Df16f6a5a694503%26domain%3Dwww.motherjones.com%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.motherjones.com%252Ff1bd113643ce6de%26relation%3Dparent.parent&href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.motherjones.com%2Fpolitics%2F2013%2F04%2Fglenn-beck-obama-common-core-conspiracy&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&send=false&show_faces=false&width=90" frameBorder=0 width=90 allowTransparency name=f3e13486ad0eaf scrolling=no][/iframe] Pete Souza/Flickr Last week, conservative talk show host and media mogul Glenn Beck decided to let his listeners in on what he dubbed "the biggest story in American history." It's called System X. "If you don't stop it," he warned, "American history is over as you know it." As Beck explained it, a little-known Department of Education program, supported by rich philanthropists, business interests, and the United Nations, was turning public schools into the world’s next great data-mining frontier. Using carrots offered up in the 2009 stimulus bill, the federal government and its contractors could compile hundreds of points of data on your kids and use it for who knows what. The result: "System X: a government run by a single party in control of labor, media, education, and banking; joined by big business to further their mutual collective goals." The gateway to this dystopian future, which Beck predicted would lead to some portions of the United States embracing Nazism, was President Barack Obama's controversial push for a new national curriculum known as Common Core. The conspirators are far-ranging. Rupert Murdoch is in on it. So is the American Legislative Exchange Council, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Jeb Bush. Chart: Almost Every Obama Conspiracy Theory Ever Beck's not the only person fighting Common Core. Lawmakers in 18 states have considered legislation to block the implementation of the curriculum standards. Five—Alaska, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia—have successfully rejected or partially rejected Common Core. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell reiterated his opposition to Common Core in late March, just one week after Texas Gov. Rick Perry went on Beck's program to denounce it. On the most basic level, the fight over Common Core is same fight parents and policymakers have been waging over public education for the last century, centering on two basic questions: What is the appropriate level of federal involvement in local schooling? And if we did settle on an umbrella curriculum, what should it actually look like? Education reformer Diane Ravitch, for one, opposes Common Core on the grounds that, while there should be a set of national education tenets, she believes "such standards should be voluntary, not imposed by the federal government." But in the hands of activists like Beck, Common Core has taken on a more ominous tone. The long-standing fever swamp fears of enforced secularism and multiculturalism, like those promoted by now-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) in the 1990s, have been given a digital makeover. The core itself is what it sounds like—a broad curriculum standard. States that choose to accept Common Core gain access to a pot of billions of federal dollars. Social conservatives have never liked that kind of incentive game, especially when it's connected to a Democratic president. (GOP Rep. Rob Bishop, whose Utah district is ground zero for the anti-Common Core movement, called the Common Core a "hook" from which the state could never extricate itself.) According to its critics, the most nefarious consequence of Common Core is a data collection program that's part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus). The idea is to better track student demographic and achievement data to figure out what's working and what's not, and respond accordingly. Some of the biggest names in American politics and business support the idea. In 2011, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation teamed up with the Carnegie Foundation and an educational subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to develop a database of student data that states can access for free until 2015. (After that it will charge an annual fee.) At a speech at the White House last November, Shawn T. Bay, CEO of the education data company eScholar, called Common Core "the glue that actually ties everything together" in the Department of Education's Big Data push. A writer at the anti-core site Truth in Education synthesized the movement's fears thusly: There will be a massive data tracking system on each child with over 400 points of information collected. This information can be shared among organizations and companies and parents don’t have to be informed about what data is being collecting. They will collect information such as: your child's academic records, health care history, disciplinary record, family income range, family voting status, and religious affiliation, to name a few. Big brother will be watching your child from preschool till college (P20 Longitudinal Data System). You, the parent, are UNABLE to opt your child out of this tracking system. According to anti-Common Core activists, the government won't only collect student data from test scores and paperwork—they'll also use actual lab experiments. Beck cited a February draft report released by the Department of Education on the future of learning technology. Among other things, the report highlighted studies that had used tools such as a "wireless skin conductance sensor," "functional magnetic resonance imaging," and a "posture analysis seat" to measure how students learn. As Beck put it, "This is like some really spooky, sci-fi, Gattaca kind of thing." But the Department of Education draft report didn't actually recommend that these tools be incorporated into the classroom. Critics also take issue with what's in the standards—particularly the math portion. Writing about the math standards in The Atlantic last November, retired educator Barry Garelick feared that kids would become "'little mathematicians' who don't know how to do actual math." But as Kathleen Porter-Magee and Sol Stern point out at the conservative National Review Online, much of the criticism about the contents of Common Core has been based on misinformation, if not "deliberate misunderstanding." Although conservative critics like Michelle Malkin allege that Common Core brushes aside classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird, it in fact holds up Harper Lee’s novel as an " examplar" of what students should be taught. For now, most GOP lawmakers' concerns about the Common Core focus on the curriculum and the idea of federal control, not Big Data. But the Obama administration is wary of Common Core taking on a life of its own in the conservative fever swamps. Last February, when South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley suggested she might block the implementation of Common Core in her state, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released a statement punching back. Citing the endorsements of Republican governors like Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Bill Haslam of Tennessee, and Chris Christie of New Jersey, Duncan dismissed Haley's concerns as little more than tinfoil-hat trolling: "The idea that the Common Core standards are nationally-imposed is a conspiracy theory in search of a conspiracy." Then again, when has that ever stopped Glenn Beck?

To: Ron who wrote (244143)	2/7/2014 12:45:05 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 540759

They are giddily hysterical on some of the RW threads about the CBO report, which I suppose must mirror the RW blogs, since they constitute the consistent echo chamber I have ever seen. Here is Ezra Klein on both the hysteria and the report itself. Republicans Discover Evidence of Jobs Crisis By Ezra Klein Feb 6, 2014 5:47 PM ET bloomberg.com The U.S. has been in a jobs emergency since at least 2008. The cause of the crisis -- too little demand -- isn’t mysterious, and neither are the solutions. We could invest in infrastructure to create construction jobs. We could give tax breaks to employers who hire new workers. We could restore the payroll tax cut to workers so they have more money to spend. We could help state and local governments hire back some of the employees they laid off during the recession. Macroeconomic Advisers, an economic consulting firm, found that the American Jobs Act, which contained many of these policies, would have created 2 million jobs. But in recent years, these policies have been either blocked or canceled by congressional Republicans. They fought Democrats to scuttle the American Jobs Act and allow the payroll tax break and long-term unemployment benefits to expire. Creating jobs, they argued, was neither feasible nor affordable. That’s the proper context in which to view this week’s hysteria about Obamacare. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just released updated estimates for the health law. It found that the disastrous rollout last fall put Obamacare behind schedule -- on track to insure 2 million fewer people than projected by the end of 2014. On the other hand, it also found that insurance premiums were about 15 percent lower than projected, and that the law would cost less than previously estimated. It found that the risk corridors designed to safeguard insurance companies from the effects of acquiring too many high-risk customers -- which Republicans have been calling an “insurer bailout” -- will actually yield $8 billion in net payments from insurers to the federal government. The finding that made the news, however, concerned the Affordable Care Act’s long-term effect on labor supply. In past reports, the CBO has estimated that the law will, on net, lead some people to drop out of the labor market or cut back on their hours because their health insurance is no longer tied to their job. Imagine a 62-year-old who would like to shift to part-time work but can’t because he can’t afford -- or, due to pre-existing conditions, wouldn’t even be sold -- insurance on the individual market. Now, because Obamacare has made that insurance affordable and available, he can -- and will. As a result, his work hours will be (voluntarily) reduced. Previously, the CBO had estimated this would reduce total hours worked by about 0.5 percent. Now, it estimates the effect at 1.5 percent to 2 percent of hours worked -- a reduction in hours equivalent to more than 2 million full-time jobs. The CBO was very clear about what this means: “The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in business’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment.” The CBO’s clarity didn’t forestall a festival of motivated misreadings. The conservative Washington Times, for instance, featured this headline: “Obamacare will push 2 million workers out of labor market.” That has the distinction of being not only untrue but also the very opposite of the truth. Workers are choosing to cut back hours -- not being pushed to do so. Whether this is good or bad depends on your views about human flourishing. Lower labor-force participation is bad for economic growth. On the other hand, the point of life is not for everyone to work every possible hour until they die. Workers should be able to choose to leave their jobs or cut their hours without worrying that their families won’t survive a medical emergency. In addition, as the Urban Institute’s Donald Marron tweeted, “employers will be competing harder for workers,” which will push wages to rise for everyone remaining in the workforce. In context, the freakout over the CBO estimate is perverse. Is it really the Republican position that we should do nothing - - in fact, cut aid -- for the millions of long-term unemployed, but express shock and terror that employed people will, in a few years, cut back their hours or leave the labor force by choice? Shouldn’t we be more concerned about people desperate to join the workforce, who can’t, than about people voluntarily leaving the workforce, who can? Some Republicans will say, of course, that they don’t oppose helping the jobless. They just oppose increasing the deficit or increasing taxes to do so. But repealing Obamacare raises the deficit, too! So rather than increasing the deficit to help people who want jobs get them, we would be increasing the deficit to make sure people who want to leave their jobs can’t. That’s insane. Policies don’t exist in vacuums. By untying the link between employment and health care, the Affordable Care Act reduces the incentive to work. But there are ways to increase incentives to work without making people dependent on their jobs for health insurance. We can help people without taking away their health care. So here’s a simple proposal. Repeal of the Affordable Care Act would cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades because of the law’s spending cuts and new revenue. So instead of repeal, how about if Congress devotes that same amount of money to policies to increase employment now. Republicans could even dictate that all the money flow to targeted tax cuts. If they are worried about employment rather than scoring points against Obamacare, this should be an easy compromise to strike. Anyone think it will be? ( Ezra Klein is a Bloomberg View columnist.) To contact the writer on this article: Ezra Klein in Washington at eklein22@bloomberg.net.