The Ultimate "From The Beginning" From The Government

The government has an insatiable desire to collect data on children. That is a given. The starting age they are proposing keeps getting younger and younger. Illinois would like to begin at 24 hours old. Not to be outdone, Cincinnati has come up with a plan to begin tracking your child as soon as conception can be confirmed.

The Mayor's Challenge is a competition to inspire American cities to generate innovative ideas that solve major challenges and improve city life.This fan favorite (as voted by Huffington Post and Bloomberg Philanthropes) provides the answer to the higher than average infant mortality rate in many urban centers.

"From the first steps a pregnant mother takes into a healthcare facility, we want her to be on a path that will lead directly to her seeing the first steps her baby takes. From the moment a woman finds out that she's pregnant, we will enroll her in a secure database that follows her through the pregnancy and measures the interventions she receives."

All this will be done, of course, to ensure that her child doesn't die prematurely. They also will have a record for the school of everything that happened to that child in utero which may explain why he is having trouble learning.

The really great news is that, when fully implemented, Cincinnati will create a blueprint to share with cities across the country so everyone can start tracking babies. As the government begins to do with data what many people fear they will do with data, it's not like moms will stop going in for prenatal care or anything, like those with depression might stop seeking psychological services for fear of losing their ability to purchase a firearm. This is going to be awesome.

Convicted Missouri Democrat Politician Jeff Smith Supports Supposedly Conservative Republican Jeb Bush...

Former state Sen. Jeff Smith (center), D-St. Louis, exits the Thomas Eagleton Federal Courthouse on Tuesday after pleading guilty to two counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Smith faces up to 20 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine for each count. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

...so what's the problem?  Stop labeling all education reform as being proposed/directed by ALEC, conservatives and the right-wing.  Stop closing your eyes to the fact the educational blueprint being offered is supported and being implemented by a Democratic administration.  The old labels of "liberal" and "conservative" and Democrat and Republican are outdated and archaic terms.  The only term you need to understand is "global citizenship". Determine if your politicians/lobbyists/special interest companies and individuals fit into that reform mantra.

The post below details disgraced former Missouri Democrat politician Jeff Smith's (now a university professor) accolades for former Republican governor Jeb Bush (now an education reformer).  It seems as if this previously labeled "right-wing" former governor is embraced by a left leaning politician turned professor.  It's one big elitist party  of using taxpayer dollars and taxpayer children for their own version of what's best for local communities and children.

Questions.  Why are Republican Missouri legislators also supporting Jeb Bush's educational reform measures?  Do they want to support the same policies as former Democratic politician Jeff Smith?  Is there any difference in the Republican legislators and Jeff Smith when it comes to educational policy?  The Republicans tout "local control".  Are these reforms allowing decreased federal control and spending?

Why would a far left politician seemingly support a Jeb Bush presidency? 

From Grumpy Opinions:

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Overnight Sandra in Brevard sent me a link to a CNN Opinion Piece Can Jeb Bush sway the GOP on taxes, debt? By Jeff Smith. 


Smith was clearly lobbying for a Jeb Bush candidacy in 2016.  For the most part  the article was really complementary of the Bush family.  Smith went back as far as Prescott Bush, and pointing out that as a US Senator, back in the 1950s Prescott was somewhat of a social progressive and Eisenhower’s favorite golfing partner.

He was little bit harsh on George Bush for being too conservative, but pointed out he had to take conservative positions because at the time the Republican Party was moving in a conservative direction. Among other things Smith pointed out that:

• Jeff Smith: No American family embodies Republicanism more than the Bushes
• Smith: Jeb Bush, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, may be bucking the trend
• He says Jeb Bush advocates for fiscal responsibility and standing up to Grover Norquist
• Smith: If GOP can return to its more centrist roots, then it has a chance to win more voters

Read All of   Can Jeb Bush sway the GOP on taxes, debt?

There was something about the article and Jeff Smith’s promotion of liberal social agenda that made me wonder exactly who Jeff Smith is. According to his CNN profile:

Editor’s note: Jeff Smith, who represented Missouri’s 4th Senate District from 2006-09, is a professor in the urban policy graduate program at The New School. He is on Twitter: @jeffsmithMO.

Somehow it struck me odd that is CNN profile would mention that it been a Missouri State Senator, but did not mention any party affiliation, I was also curious about The New School, so I took a quick trip to Wikipedia and found Jeb Smith had been a Democrat when he served in the State Senate, I didn’t see anything to indicate he’s changed his party affiliation.  I also found:

In September 2004, Smith submitted a false affidavit to the Federal Election Commission relating to a conspiracy with a group called Voters for Truth in the summer of 2004, to run negative advertisements against Russ Carnahan, Smith’s opponent in a congressional race. In January 2009, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, acting upon newly discovered information, opened a criminal investigation to determine whether anyone had attempted to obstruct the Federal Election Commission proceeding. Smith was betrayed by his former associate Steve Brown after Brown was approached by the FBI to wear a wire. Brown escaped a jail sentence by betraying Smith, his longtime friend. Smith pleaded guilty to two felony counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Each conspiracy count is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. He resigned effective August 25, 2009 and was sentenced to one year and a day of prison. He also was fined $50,000. His lawyer requested Smith be sent to a prison camp in Marion, Illinois.^[7] However, Smith was sent to a federal prison in Manchester, Kentucky.^[8] In late August 2010 he was released to a halfway house in St. Louis.^[9] In November 2010, he was released early from the halfway house and is no longer in federal custody.^[10][11]

Current Life

In spring 2011, Smith was married and in September, he and his wife Teresa had their first child, Charlie Wallace Smith. Smith accepted a professorial position in urban policy at the New School’s Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy in New York City. At present he writes for The Recovering Politician ^[12]and contributes to Politico - The Arena.^[13] His writing has been published in Inc. magazine ^[14] and praised in New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix.^[15] Smith plans to publish a book, which details his time in politics and federal prison, in late 2011 to early 2012.^[16

Read More Jeff Smith (Missouri politician)
Yeah okay what kid of school hires an ex politician with a criminal conviction for conspiracy to obstruct justice– The line for Miracle On 34th Street comes to mind
It’s a Progressive School!!  Climate Change, Globalization, Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management  and all those other little catch phrases liberals love are very much on display

Again from Wikipedia

In 1964, the J. M. Kaplan Center for New York City Affairs was founded as the first teaching and research center in the United States devoted to the study of a single metropolitan area. In 1975, under the leadership of Dean Henry Cohen, the Kaplan Center evolved into the Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy (now the Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy), which was named in honor of the former New School trustee Robert J. Milano (1912–2000), who had also been a member of the advisory board of the J.M. Kaplan Center. Curriculum is structured to encourage creative thinking in aid of progressive social, economic, and political change in the public, private, and nonprofit arenas

In 2011, Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy came together with the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School to create the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy

More New School’s Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy in New York City 
So why would a leftist professor start lobbying Jeb Bush to be the Republican candidate almost 4 years ahead of the election. The answer’s simple, first of all with the political left considers a moderate Republican now Jack Kennedy (a democrat) we have considered a flaming liberal. Over the years progressives and their communist friends have managed to drag the Republican Party establishment so far to the left that they are more liberal now than the Democrats were 50 years ago.

The Bush Clan helped enable the party to be dragged towards the left.  Smith probably sees Jeb Bush as someone a progressive could beat an election. But Smith is also looking at the possibility that Joe Biden might run for president, get the democratic nomination and get clobbered in the general election. If that happens the left want someone in the White House they can depend on to help push their educational and globalization schemes. In other words they can live with another Bush, after all it was Jeb's Father that signed Agenda 21 for the United States.

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 You can check out Smith's writing at his site The Recovering Politician and also his recent talk at TED about what he learned in prison.

He talks about learning about "hustles" while in prison.  Is he now "hustling" education reform?

Who's Looking At ObamaCORE?

The people of the Utah Republic have done a great job pulling together the facts about Common Core Standards.  They are asking the questions we at MEW want answered: How is what's happening in American education any different than what's happening with American healthcare? Why aren't more people rising up against what the federal government is doing to education in their state?

We know ObamaCare will Destroy America... Who’s looking at ObamaCORE?

Bill Gates is funding Obama’s takeover of K-12 education and no one is blinking an eye.
• 45 states are implementing ObamaCORE...Obama’s unconstitutional Common Core State Standards for K-12 education which are national (international) standards & assessments created by two assessment companies funded by the 2008 stimulus.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) developed the
United Nations Millennium Declaration. The OECD sits on the Bill Gates-funded Advisory Group to the National Governor’s Association to implement the Common Core State Standards.[1]
Q: Why does it matter that Bill Gates is financing the United Nations Millennium Development Goals?
A: 2 of their 8 goals are Universal Education & Sustainable Development (Agenda 21).
Gate’s money funds the UN’s goals and they’re being implemented in our local K-12 schools right now!
Q: Why did Microsoft (Gates) sign a contract with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 2004? [2]
A: "to remold the entire American system" into "a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone," coordinated by "a system of labor market boards at the local, state and federal levels" where curriculum & "job matching" will be handled by counselors "accessing the integrated computer-based program." [3]
Education Secretary Arne Duncan at the Sustainability Education Summit in Sept. 2011 said,
"Today, I promise you that [the Department of Education] will be a committed partner in the national effort to build a more environmentally literate and responsible society... We must advance the sustainability movement through education... Education and sustainability are the keys to our economic future-and our ecological future. [4]
The UN called 2005-2014 the “Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.” [5]
By 2014, their education “standards” will be implemented into K-12 American Education.

See Gates calling for 0% carbon emissions through population control:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3WXcRfsrTQ 

HELP AMERICA WAKE UP!
PLEASE look into these stories to educate your friends, family and state leaders!

[1]: http://www.achieve.org/BenchmarkingforSuccess
[2]: http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/05/ed-watch/12-2-unesco-gates.htm
[3]: http://mississippipep.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/controversial-author-marc-tucker-to-speak-at-ms-dept-of-education-statewide-forum-sept-14/ [4]: http://www.uspartnership.org/main/view_archive/1
[5]: http://www.unesco.org.uk/education_for_sustainable_development
Many Organizations are Against Common Core including:
· Heritage Foundation · CATO Institute · Pioneer Institute · Friedman Foundation
· American Principles Project · Eagle Forum · Goldwater Institute · Hoover Institute
· Truth in American Education · Conservative Teachers of America · United Women’s Forum 

Compare: U.N. Logo  with U.S. Partnership Logo

 See Agenda 21 for Dummies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEEgtOFFlM
See How Agenda 21 is being implemented in the United States: 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h-lTRxKu3A

For more information go to: UtahsRepublic.org/common-core 


There is a great timeline for CCCS on their website. We have covered it before on MEW but follow their link if you need a concise refresher.

With Common Core Standards the federal government is telling you what the minimum coverage policy is and that you must buy it, whether you can afford it or not and whether you want it or not. There are companies in the education business, just like there are in insurance,  who are more than  happy to have the federal government mandate more business for them. And just as  insurance coverage does not guarantee you access to medical care (see Canada or the UK), having common core standards does not guarantee your child academic success. Neither program addresses the real problems in these areas, and the cynic in me believes they were never intended to. Where are the rallies and candidate promises to fight Common Core Standards like they promise to fight Obamacare?

The Adminstration Goes For the Education Hat Trick

They started with RTTT for K-12 education. Their stated goal was to help states with the problems created by NCLB which specifically addressed K-12.  It was the first wedge into the public school system  for Common Core Standards. However, in the RTTT grant application was a requirement for developing early childhood (pre-K) education programs. They had no intention of being limited to K-12.  States like Missouri, who did not receive RTTT funding, still began implementing pre-school programs because more money would be available in the future and they had to show they were really committed to what the feds wanted.  Given the lightening pace of standards developments, we know have standards for pre-K.  But last week the administration went for the hat trick of education and proposed RTTT type funding for higher education.

At a hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, Duncan summarized the administration’s plans for higher education, including a Race to the Top-like program for college affordability and completion and a major expansion of the Perkins Loan Program. While much of the discussion was about elementary and secondary education, many of the most pointed questions from members of Congress dealt with the administration’s proposed new spending on higher education.

Much of the administration's proposed $70 billion increase in the Education Department's budget for 2013 will go to higher education, including the Perkins loan expansion, the Race to the Top for College Affordability and Completion, and Obama’s proposal to spend $8 billion on community colleges over the next two years, Duncan said. What it won’t do, in many cases, is add new money to existing programs, including the TRIO and GEAR UP programs for college readiness and federal aid that helps minority-serving colleges.

Aside from the Department of Education's blatant intrusion into state run education, which they are forbidden to do, the biggest problem with the administration's proposal is that it would penalize colleges for the actions of their state legislatures.

If enacted, though, the fiscal 2013 budget would lead to more money for traditional four-year colleges as well. The budget would create a $1 billion “Race to the Top” fund to reward colleges that keep their net price low and their value high, as the president proposed in his State of the Union address in January (though details of how that would be measured remain unclear).

Because state budgets have been cut, the subsidies to state schools have dropped which has forced colleges to raise tuition. This latest administration proposal would penalize schools for being fiscally responsible and would, in essence, force federally mandated spending/allocation changes on state legislatures. As if we don't have enough unfunded federal mandates to deal with.

The $8 billion price tag for the next two years may seem like a deal, but when you consider the pre-K education requirements from RTTT will cost our state alone $1.6 billion, you have to wonder how far that $8B will go for all 50 states.Legislators at the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies where Arne Duncan testified about this program, questioned why the administration was funneling money into new untested programs, when existing programs with proven track records existed. Mr. Duncan's response was to defend the community college spending as absolutely necessary to addressing the problem of unemployment.

This administration can't seem to remember their goal:  is it college graduation or jobs training? Duncan said the new Race to the Top program, as well as a similar competition to encourage innovation, are needed to encourage colleges to keep prices down and states to spend more on higher education.  But perhaps his most telling comment was,

“We at the federal level can’t do it by ourselves. We have to put some incentives out there to try to encourage them.”

Who has been telling the people over at the Education Department that they have to do it by themselves.... or even at all?

Also inlcuded in the administration's proposal was a $55 million competition for colleges and nonprofit institutions called “First in the World,”

"that encourage productivity and efficiency, with up to $20 million reserved for minority-serving institutions. The “First in the World” grants would be administered through the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, according to a person briefed on the administration’s plan, so no Congressional action would be needed to make that happen, beyond funding FIPSE."

Here's an interesting little fact about FIPSE.  One of the programs it supports is an EU-U.S. one-semester study program which provides opportunities for seniors and graduate students to study at one of the EU partner institutions by completing coursework and/or research, and broadens the field of study from food to non-food agricultural  materials and applications. One of the EU partnering institutions is Ghent University, Belgium who has departments in cutting edge fields like genetics, biotechnology, and physical land resources. You may recognize the name Ghent if you are familiar with Agenda 21. Their Centre for Sustainable Development is world renowned for its work on developing systems to aid localities in implementing the objectives of Agenda 21.  Given that this particular grant program focuses on biomaterial production and utilization, we now know that your American tax dollars, through the funnel of the department of education, are going towards developing biofuels.  Apparently nothing is beyond the grasp of Mr. Duncan's department, even energy research.

Combine all this with the Community Education schools proposed and we will truly have cradle to the grave big government indoctrination and oversight of everyone in this country.