StickWithANose

It appears as though Left Blogistan is waking up to the corporatist take over of Obama’s education policy… better late than never I guess.
Open Left:
It’s really hard to see this as anything other than a Shock Doctrine-style deal, since it’s a way to force cash-starved states and schools to change education policy and practice, regardless [...]

One of the scariest phenomena that I’ve encountered in my research on education policy and public discourse has been the emergence of Education Philanthropy. While it may sound like a rather inocuous subject, it is a prime example of corporate politics in action. Beneath the banner of education reform and closing “achievement gaps” there is [...]

In its push for Health Care reform, the Obama administration has made a series of deals with various stake-holders in the health care industry in order to get them to play ball, and these deals with devils are going to be paid for by a middle class that is already under siege.
Big Pharma is on [...]

Here’s one for the next time you have to endure a “Real American” waxing about old mother Reagan. Note that in the golden years of American capitalism, when the top federal tax bracket was hovering around 90%, the federal government paid its bills. Via Barry Ritholtz.

This article on Reverse Brain Drain got me thinking about the disconnect between political discourse and concrete realities, especially as it relates to international comparisons of education systems. One of the key message frames employed by our public intellectuals to justify all manner of education reforms is the idea of global competition from nations such [...]

If you want to know how bad things really are in the world of education policy take a look at the Obama administration’s “listening tour” featuring the brain trust of educational All-Stars: Arne Duncan, Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton.
Only in 21st America can the executive branch set up a listening tour that doesn’t actually listen [...]

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
I’ve watched with great interest over the past few years the evolution of Matthew Yglesias from being a popular independent blogger and university student to being a [...]

Courtesy of Lykins… a man of exquisite taste in music.

Yves Smith has demonstrated herself to be a tough, fair-minded critic of the shadow economy and D.C.’s enslavement to it, so I was happy to see her offer a review of Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story.
While Moore brings some immediacy to the oft-recounted misdeeds of the last few years, he also catalogues [...]

As is usual, Glenn Greenwald offers us a truly contrarian take on the politics of Obama’s Nobel prize that hits the nail on the head.
Calling people unpatriotic and comparing them to Terrorists for failing to fulfill their solemn duty to praise the President on his Special Day and mindlessly support his accolades isn’t clever or tough [...]