The "Warm and Fuzzy" Agenda to Control Mankind.

Smart grids, smart growth, smart phones, smart meters, smart cities, smart streets...are they trying to tell us something? That we're not smart enough to run our own lives without all of this smart technology?  Of course they are, but the real purpose behind all of this overwhelming smart and inter-connected technology is the control of individuals through steady indoctrination, and procure compliance from a centralized "government". At the same time, this smart technology is gathering all the information they can about you so they can track your every move if they so desire. Meanwhile, the proliferation of superficial and shallow "relationships" maintained by texting, tweeting and Facebooking are becoming the new normal. That may sound conspiratorial (see image above) but that's because it is. There is an agreement by powerful people in high places to deceive us into cooperating with a system that will try to control every aspect of human life. It goes by many names, often warm and fuzzy, but underneath it all, it's Agenda 21.

According to Rosa Koire,

“UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development/Globalization is the standardization of systems in order to facilitate global control. ICLEI was created as a non-governmental spin-off by the United Nations in 1990 to implement Agenda 21 locally across the world. Headquartered in Bonn, Germany, it is a lobbying and policy group that is designed to influence and change local governmental policies related to all aspects of human life. By concentrating power in cities this group circumvents requirements for ratification of international treaties and gives the illusion of local control. In fact the cities then ally in regional conglomerates which break jurisdictional boundaries and will destroy local control. Ultimately this facilitates global governance by invalidating individual cities, counties, states, and nations with contractual agreements and interwoven systems.

The Kyoto Treaty is an example of this. The United States did not ratify Kyoto, a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by adopting carbon trading, repudiating sprawl, and changing land use. But 1,055 United States Mayors did agree to Kyoto, indirectly, by signing onto ICLEI's Mayor's Climate Protection Campaign. Seattle, Bellevue, Bellingham, and many other Washington cities signed it. In fact it was the brainchild of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

Jeb Brugmann, founder of ICLEI (International Council For Local Environmental Initiatives) says the agenda is to "re-engineer what a city is." ICLEI was created, in 1990, as a non-governmental spin-off by the United Nations to implement Agenda 21 locally across the world and ICLEI's international standards have crept into our code and regulations in all of our cities, counties, states, school districts, etc..

Common Core standards are a big part of Agenda 21.  Below, Clint Richardson explains:



So far, 45 states have passed Common Core.  It will only take five more states and Common Core will be federal law:

According to Clint Richardson, CORE Education and Technologies LTD, the "for-profit education corporation that teaches American children and teachers hails not from the United States – but from India." Their annual financial report can be found here. 

Moreover, speaking of control, did you know that there is a "Constitutional Free Zone" in the United States? I did not, but there is a 100 mile border around the U.S. that contain 2/3 of the population—197.4 million people! Airports throughout the country are also included no matter where they are located. The Dept of Homeland Security has the authority to stop, search and detain anyone for any reason within the constitution free zone, resident or traveler.

Constitutional Free Zone

Agenda 21

Links:

Agenda 21 Land Grab: Facts and Resources

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48% of American Public School Children are Poor

As income inequality continues to rise and more people fall into poverty, or near poverty, innocent children bear the brunt.  According to a new study by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), "A New Majority: Low Income Students in the South and the Nation", "low income children are a majority of students in the public schools of 17 states across the nation - and 13 of those states are in the South. Without fundamental improvements in how the South and the nation educate low income students, the trends that this report documents will ricochet across all aspects of American society for generations to come."

Unfortunately, problems faced by children coming from households where poverty is a daily fact of life are only exacerbated by conditions in schools that are severely lacking funds, as in the Philadelphia school district, where they suffer from a $304 million deficit--where thousands of staff and teacher positions have already been eliminated in recent years--which threatens to devastate Philadelphia, putting its school children in harm's way.

“In 2011, Gov. Tom Corbett cut $1 billion in state school aid. The cut fell hardest on Philadelphia and other districts with high enrollments of poor children, English language learners, and students with disabilities...

The state aid cut has devastated Philadelphia. Tens of neighborhood schools closed. Class sizes of 30 or more. No art, music and physical education. Librarians and support staff gone. A handful of high school guidance counselors left with astronomical case loads. Children are now in harm's way from the loss of school nurses, social workers and security personnel.

The Governor's aid cut has transformed Philadelphia into an education wasteland, consigning students to schools without the most basic resources."

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The Transformation of American Education: Common CORE: Providing Human Capital For Global Industry.

Whether you know it or not, American children, in 45 states, in public and even Catholic schools (over 100 Diocese across the nation have succumbed to the nationalized one-size fits all secular standards of Common Core) are falling under the human capital Public Private Partnership (PPP) model of education called Common CORE  (CC)--"cradle to career education agenda"--curriculum.. Yes, there is a Catholic version of CC, called the Common Core Catholic Identity Initiative (CCCII).

“For those not familiar with the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model of privatizing government functions through corporations, you should be very afraid. For when this form of partnership happens, the government hands over the operation and supervision of government functions and infrastructure to private and publicly traded corporations like General Electric, Monsanto, JP Morgan Chase, and other less than desirable corporate entities. These lease agreements and multi-decade contracts take the government out of government, allowing companies like CORE to sweep in and… well – “Re-imagine” the education of your children.-- Clint Richardson

According to Clint Richardson, best known for his work exposing the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report's or “CAFR”, CORE Education and Technologies Ltd, is a for-profit corporation (see their annual financial report for 2012 here) based out of India that sells an outcome based education model that tracks  children  for the purpose of creating a “master” plan for a global workforce, which according to the state of Illinois -- the most advanced data system at this time, supposedly mirrored at the federal level -- is defined as:

“The term workforce is defined as consisting of the workers engaged in a specific activity, business or industry or the number of workers who are available to be assigned to any purpose as in a nation’s workforce.

The public workforce system is a network of federal, state, and local offices that function to support economic expansion and facilitate the development United States workforce. The system is designed to create partnership with employers, educators, and community leaders in order to foster economic development and high-growth opportunities in regional economies so that businesses find qualified workers to meet their present and future workforce needs.

In other words, as Richardson states, "CORE is a global network of for-profit corporations literally taking over the entire structure of education." This is the business of human capital management, and as Richardson states again, “human capital” means humans as trade-able and disposable commodities. In other words… SLAVES!" CC, which is not law-- not an act of Congress-- is an untested and unproven system that usurps local control, a hallmark of the U.S. education system, to a “one size fits all” solution imposed by elitist bureaucrats who are only interested in creating a global workforce of industry ready workers

Why did 45 states adopt CC so quickly, even when it means they are not allowed to change any of the standards (CC standards are copyrighted)?  It's called coercion. They wanted to stay eligible for Race to the Top funding. 

“Why did 45 states agree to do this? Because the Obama administration had $4.35 billion of Race to the Top federal funds, and states had to adopt "college-and-career ready standards" if they wanted to be eligible to compete for those funds. Some states, like Massachusetts, dropped their own well-tested and successful standards and replaced them with the Common Core, in order to win millions in new federal funds."

Keep in mind, under CC, things like cursive hand-writing will no longer be taught. Why? Well, kids no longer need it, right? After all, they text, send emails, etc.  But what about reading historical documents from early America? Or letters written prior to email?  Since much of history is written in cursive the inability to read it will sever future Americans from the ability to check their own history. Also, the plan is to replace classical literature with “informational text” approved by the Common Core State Standards, something that's already taking place in public high school libraries across the nation.

“Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council.

The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors' Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."

However, all is not lost.  Although CC does not have a required reading list, it does have a recommended reading list.   Here's one example of what is on its list of exemplar texts for 11th graders: The Bluest Eye

“He further limited his interests to little girls. They were usually manageable . . . His sexuality was anything but lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in his mind with cleanliness.” And later, this same pedophile notes, “I work only through the Lord. He sometimes uses me to help people.” p. 174

“The little girls are the only things I’ll miss. Do you know that when I touched their sturdy little t*** and bit them—just a little—I felt I was being friendly?—If I’d been hurting them, would they have come back? . . . they’d eat ice cream with their legs open while I played with them. It was like a party.” - p. 181

I guess "Bluest Eye" falls in line with CC's National Sexuality Education Standards , therefore, would be considered "informational text".   Yep, parents will no longer have the right to decide what is developmentally and age appropriate for their individual child.

“Students need opportunities to engage in cooperative and active learning strategies, and sufficient time must be allocated for students to practice skills relating to sexuality education." - National Sexuality Education Standards, p. 9

and this...

“Students need multiple opportunities and a variety of assessment strategies to determine their achievement of the sexuality education standards and performance.

If that's not bad enough,  CC gives schools and third parties unprecedented access to  student's personal information.   Every child will have a data set that follows that child into the workforce. This data will be merged with the Departments of Labor, Health and any other third party organizations or research firms that the Department of Education thinks needs your child’s data. The sets include such things as hair color, eye color, gestational age at birth (whether a child was premature or not), blood type, blood test results, birth marks, and even bus stop arrival time.

The bottom line is that the teachers will be teaching to the test, and only to the test, because not only do their jobs depend on it, the principal’s jobs depend on it, and the superintendent’s jobs depends on it, and so on...

CC is a job training program and training stifles innovation, creativity, and competition. The Chambers of Commerce, corporations, and governments love CC because they've been told this will make for great workers. Mark my words, Common Core standards are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the transformation of American Education. 

 Links:

Microsoft Common Core Standards  Exxon, Bill Gates Common Core Spending

unauthorized student data mining., not to mention teacher data mining.

student longitudinal data [tracking] systems (SLDS)

A Framework for Multi-State Human Capital Development Data System

“This “human capital development data system” must be developed to answer “master” policy questions that benefit each of the principal state stakeholders – the K-12 education system, the post-secondary system, and labor/workforce development system….

This “human capital development data system” must be developed to answer “master” policy questions that benefit each of the principal state stakeholders – the K-12 education system, the post-secondary system, and labor/workforce development system…"

Outsourcing the match (the actual task of linking the student unit records together) to a state with a proven capacity to do so….Advantages and disadvantages of this approach…the additional disadvantage that the states, other than the state to which the match was outsourced, give up direct control of their data to a “foreign” state government entity. (Page 16)

A multi-state data exchange – what we have chosen to call a human capital development data system – that enables policymakers to look comprehensively at the stock and flow of human capital has become essential for effective policymaking and planning in the globalized
knowledge economy. Technology now permits the development of longitudinal systems that follow individual students from elementary school through college or directly into the workforce,...(Page 17)

Welcome to the new Common Core fuzzy math.

From the World Bank: “Improving Human Capital in a Competitive World—Education Reform in the United States”

BUSINESS SIGN-ON LETTER IN SUPPORT OF THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

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Delphi Technique at Work: Parent Arrested at Public Meeting for Asking Unauthorized Question

“Look, I am being manhandled and shut down because I asked inconvenient questions.  Why won’t they allow an open forum where there can be a debate? We are told to sit there and be lectured to about how great common core is.” -- Robert Small

The Delphi Technique, developed by the RAND Corporation during the 1950s, is simply a method developed for the purpose of maneuvering segments of the public into accepting a predetermined outcome or course of action, while, at the same time, presenting the illusion of participatory democracy. In other words, people are "included" to create a false consensus.

In this case, the Baltimore County School district held a public meeting to go over the "Common Core" curriculum now being taught in Maryland schools. All questions from parents were required to be written down and submitted beforehand in order to avoid ones that might derail their pre-planned agenda. 

“Dr. Dallas Dance, Superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools, and Lillian Lowery, Maryland Superintendent, had the opportunity Thursday night to make minor amends at an MSDE-sponsored informational meeting after a three-plus year information blackout on Common Core, the new federal curriculum for Maryland schools.

Instead, Dr. Dance added insult to injury by screening, omitting, and editing parents’ questions.

Questions from the audience of about 160 people, which consisted of parents, PTA members, teachers, and school administrators, were submitted on cards prior to and during the 1-1/2 hour meeting for the Q&A period which lasted about 40 minutes.

Dr. Dance chose which questions to read or omit, opting for teacher and school administrator or softball questions. But he also altered the wording of the questions themselves.

[...]
“As the pom-pom and rah-rah session neared an end about 20 minutes before the meeting close, parental frustration was mounting as our questions were still going unanswered. One parent, Robert Small, decided to interject to try to force some answers (see video at top of article).
He said: “I want to know how many parents here are aware that the goal of the Common Core standards isn’t to prepare kids for full-fledged universities, it’s to prepare them for community college.....Parents, take control. We’re sick of this. This is not a CNN political game. This is a public town hall... Listen, don’t stand for this. You’re sitting here like cattle. You have questions. Confront them. They don’t want to do it in public.... Parents, you need to question these people....Do the research, it’s online.”

According to the Baltimore Sun he was taken to the Towson precinct, detained, and charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, which carries a fine of $2,500 and up to 10 years in prison, and disturbing a school operation, which carries a fine of $2,500 and up to six months.



Parents questions unanswered at Common Core meeting:



The Delphi Technique--How to Disrupt It.

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Why Encourage Students to Take on Crippling Debt in Pursuit of Degrees That Don't Even Provide the Earning Potential to Pay it Off?

We're creating an uber-debt ridden population in order to support an uber-wealthy class and maintain the largest economic inequality in our nation's history, and we're doing it through our higher-educational system.  How? We're graduating students leveraged to the hilt, who either can't get a job, or if they're lucky enough to find employment, make just enough to pay off their debt. In other words, they are indentured servants, who can't save or build for their futures, who cannot become entrepreneurs, who, in a nutshell, cannot serve broader society because they must follow the almighty dollar first and foremost. Moreover, this albatross of debt impacts on the ability to start families, because, as we know, children are expensive!

This is not just a problem for young people. Many parents take out parent plus loans to support their kids. Some have to go back to college to change careers and take out loans when they're in their 40's and 50's, especially now when jobs are scarce. They can look forward to having their social security garnished.

“About twice as many Social Security recipients are not receiving all of their Social Security payments this year because they have unpaid federal student loans, according to a report by SmartMoney.com.

According to a 1996 law, the federal government has the authority to withhold portions of Social Security payments if defaulted debt is owed to the government, including federal student loans.

“It’s quite extraordinary because normally Social Security benefits can’t be touched by creditors,” said Deanne Loonin, a staff attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

From January through August 6 of this year, the government reduced the size of about 115,000 retirees’ Social Security checks, almost double the department’s enforcement in 2011, according to data from the Treasury Department. In 2007, there were 60,000 cases and in 2000, there were only six cases.

Yet, not going to college is not an option for many young people. In fact, too many parents/teachers/friends insist that getting the "best education" at the "best schools" no matter what the cost, is absolutely necessary to that young person's future. The problem is most--parents/teachers/friends and students, alike-- do not consider the long-term consequences of accumulating life-long debt.. They do not consider that student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. Instead, our young people are given a rosy prognosis when choosing schools and told not to worry about the future with easy to qualify for loans.

Universities are now corporatized. The parasitic corporate model of inflated infrastructure and bureaucracy that rewards elite executives with enormous salaries and squeezes everyone else, making them jump through endless bureaucratic hoops. Between the ever-increasing growth of administrative expenditures--huge amounts devoted to funding unnecessary administrative positions--and government subsidized institutions, colleges and universities have no incentive to reduce cost.

“U.S. universities employed more than 230,000 administrators in 2009, up 60 percent from 1993, or 10 times the rate of growth of the tenured faculty, those with permanent positions and job security, according to U.S. Education Department data.

Spending on administration has been rising faster than funds for instruction and research at 198 leading U.S. research universities, concluded a 2010 study by Jay Greene, an education professor at the University of Arkansas."

There is about $1.2 trillion in student loans outstanding with all but 15% of that owned or guaranteed by the government. The chart below shows the student loan amount held directly by the federal government., rising at about $110 billion per year.

“The Obama administration is forecast to turn a record $51 billion profit this year from student loan borrowers, a sum greater than the earnings of the nation’s most profitable companies and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks by assets.”

Learning to live below one's means and gaining the ability to distinguish between "needs" and "wants" might be the only way out.

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Average Student Loan Debt Up 58% Since 2005!

The average student loan debt was $17,233 in 2005 and had risen by 58 percent to $27,253 by December 2012 and the federal government will take in $34 billion in profit! 

"With the current level of unemployment, American college graduates are finding it difficult to find jobs commensurate with their education. Without a steady income, many former students are unable to pay back their student loans.

America’s unemployment rate was as high as 13.8 percent at the end of March, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) alternative measures of labor underutilization. This number is far higher than the published official statistic of 7.6 percent because it includes those who would like to work but are not currently looking for a job—including so-called discouraged workers—as well as those who only work part-time because they cannot find a full-time job.

The Economic Collapse website said in April 2012 that in 2011 (the latest such statistics available) more than 50 percent of college graduates had not landed a job or had accepted a position that did not make use of their skills. Often, these individuals took a part-time position, leaving them at or below the poverty level.

The Debt.org website states that student debt is at $1 trillion and increases another $3,000 every second. The average student debt amounts to $26,000.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Fed) provides statistics that correspond to the Debt.org information, published at the end of March using data from the last quarter of 2012.

“Student loan debt is the only form of consumer debt that has grown since the peak of consumer debt in 2008. Balances of student loans have eclipsed both auto loans and credit cards, making student loan debt the largest form of consumer debt outside of mortgages,” the Fed states.

Enriching the Federal Government

On April 9, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), an alliance of student groups and young people, released an Issue Brief accusing the U.S. federal government of making billions on the federal student loan program.

The brief states that the U.S. government earns 36 cents profit on each dollar loaned to students. With an estimated 21.8 million student loan recipients and approximately $108.9 billion in outstanding loans, the federal government will take in $34 billion.

On subsidized Stafford loans, which are federally guaranteed loans based on financial need, the federal government earns an estimated $3.5 billion, while on unsubsidized Stafford loans (also federally guaranteed loans, but anyone may apply for such loans), the federal government makes an estimated $20 billion.

With Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loans, the federal government makes $5.1 billion and $5.3 billion respectively. Under the Parent PLUS student loan, parents may take out a loan on behalf of their children to cover any amount not covered by any other financial aid package.

“The federal student loan program as it currently operates is the opposite of a low cost program to student loan borrowers—it makes billions in revenue yearly. Meanwhile, student loan borrowers, continuing to face economic uncertainty, bear the brunt of continued high costs,” according to the U.S. PIRG brief.

Subsidized Stafford Loan Impasse

The interest rate on federally subsidized loans, which serve low- and moderate-income families, will increase from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1.

The interest rate was lowered over time from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent under the 2007 College Affordability Plan and was meant to return to 6.8 percent in 2012. The Obama administration and Congress extended the availability of the lower rate until July 2013.

The brief suggests that the increase in the interest rate will harm students and only add to the federal government’s profit.

“More than two-thirds of all subsidized student loan borrowers come from families with annual incomes of less than $50,000. These families have been hard hit in the recent recession and continue to face high unemployment and tight family finances,” the brief states.

Student Loan Debt and Defaults on the Rise

Research by credit-scoring company FICO stated on Jan. 30 that student loan defaults are rising at an accelerated rate. At the forefront are students who took out student loans more recently.

The percentage of student loan defaults by those who took out a loan during the last two months of 2005 and the first month of 2006 was 12.4 percent. But the default rate by students who took out loans during the last two months of 2010 and the first month of 2011 was 15.1 percent. That’s a 20 percent increase in the rate of defaults over a five-year period.

A FICO December 2012 survey of lending industry professionals indicates that close to 60 percent of respondents expect student debt delinquencies to rise by mid-2013. Yet these professionals are still providing ever-increasing loan amounts. The average student loan debt was $17,233 in 2005 and had risen by 58 percent to $27,253 by December 2012.

“The stakeholders in the student lending industry have to take a hard look at the terms and repayment rules for student loans, and the industry may have to develop a new lending model to prevent a bad situation from getting completely out of hand,” said Dr. Andrew Jennings, FICO chief analytics officer, in the FICO release.

Quoting a March 2012 Fed report, FICO said in January that outstanding student loan debt reached $870 billion, exceeding the $693 billion in credit card debt and $730 billion in auto loan debt.

In 2005, the credit reports of 12 million Americans showed two or more student loans, according to the FICO report. By 2012, that number had more than doubled to 26 million.

“The worsening state of the student loan industry should raise concerns. The combination of lower credit quality, increased debt loads and trying economic conditions will lead to even more distress in the industry,” the FICO report warns.

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Behind the Glossy Presentation Prepared & Edited for General Public Consumption

Norman Dodd

A few years ago I blogged about the "deliberate dumbing down of America" and I included congressional investigator (Reece Committee) Norman Dodd's interview that exposed the charitable trusts and tax-exempt foundation's hidden agenda toward the acceptance of global government based on the principles of socialism which is to be ruled from behind the scenes by those same interests which control the foundations.  This interview includes such a wealth of information that I thought I'd post it again, adding to it, some background of what led up to the Reece Committee, and additional information and links.

Some background:

After America had freed the world--winning WWII, that is--by 1950, Eastern Europe and China had fallen to communism.  But a U.S. senate investigative committee found that General Chiang Kai-shek had virtually won the civil war against communist China, and was very much committed to creating a democratic form of government. So what happened?  Well, the American State Department decided that's not what they wanted and demanded that Chiang Kai-shek form a coalition with the Chinese communists. He refused. So the American State department put an arms embargo on China and saw to it that Chiang Kai-shek did not get the weapons he already purchased. Not only that, his efforts at buying weapons elsewhere were blocked by the State Department.

From the Institution of Pacific Relations Report

"The guiding and influencing of [Vice President] Wallace that John Carter Vincent [Chief of the State Department's Division of Chinese Affairs] acknowledged included the following:

(1) He steered the conversations between Chiang and Wallace during the mission toward a settlement between Chiang and the Communists;

(2) he had Wallace emphasize the desire of the United States that Chiang make peace with the Communists;

(3) when Madame Chiang Kai-shek proposed during the conversation that there be a North Pacific Conference, Vincent directed the conversation toward an insistence by Wallace that China and the U.S.S.R. settle first (p.2062);

(4) Vincent conceded he urged Wallace to press that the United States would not aid Chiang until he made his peace with the Soviet Union (pp. 2065-2066);

(5) Vincent kept bringing the conversation back to the question of the United States sending a representative to Communist territory in Yenan, and finally extracted a promise from Chiang that one would be sent (pp. 2060-2061);

(6) when Chiang, recognizing the prestige such an act would give the Communists, argued against it (p.2051), Vincent urged Wallace to stress that the United States was not interested in Chiang's opposition (p.2052) from the Communists but were interested in the military intelligence such a representative would yield (p. 2055);

(7) Later it was shown that Vincent again steered the conversation so that the promise given by Chiang for the representative to Yenan was really nailed down."

Now, the U.S. Congress voted $125 million to be sent to Chiang Kai-shek but the ships were kept in the harbor in San Francisco for months. Finally, when the weapons arrived in China, there was no ammunition to be found, therefore, utterly useless. Without weapons, Chiang Kai-shek and his large army was defeated by a small well-armed communist army in 1949.  This is backed up by the 1952  McCarran Committee's report on the Institute for Pacific Relations (IPR) .

The IPR was an organization, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation, specifically designed to use as a propaganda tool for the Communists.  For instance, they   spoke of Mao and Zhou Enlai,as if they were George Washington and Abe Lincoln, and through a carefully crafted propaganda campaign, convinced many in the U.S. that Chinese Communists were not Communists at all.  The American State Department got their wish, and the newly formed Chinese government-- that America helped to establish--resulted in the death of up to 80 million Chinese. 

After the report on the IPR came out, it sparked a congressional investigation to determine which of these "foundations and organizations are using their resources for purposes other than the purposes for which they were established, and especially to determine which such foundations and organizations are using their resources for un-American and subversive activities or for purposes not in the interest or tradition of the United States." The first of the Congressional Committees to attempt such an investigation was the Cox Committee, created in 1952 under the leadership of Congressman Eugene E.Cox. However, not only did this congressional committee suffer great obstacles, their leader, Congressman Cox died. Fortunately, Congressman Carroll Reece of Tennessee, demanded a new investigation which became the Reece Committee, of which Norman Dodd became director of research.

According to the book, Foundations Their Power and Influence, tremendous pressure was brought to bear on members of Congress to force them to stop the investigation as well as to cut off appropriations. The committee was routinely attacked in the New York Times, Washington Post and all of the major media outlets. Congressman Wayne Hays was appointed to disrupt its hearings.

". . . Mr. Hays told us one day that 'the White House' [Eisenhower] had been in touch with him and asked him if be would cooperate to kill the committee."

What the record quickly shows is that a considerable portion of the IPR activities operated not to discover, analyze, assemble and publish data (the normal primary concern of scholarship and research), but to influence public opinion. The subcommittee noted throughout all the testimony and all the exhibits that so great a portion of the IPR energies went into public relations, lobbying, propaganda, and other activities, having the primary effect of influencing public opinion that it is not correct or adequate to describe the IPR as a scholarly and research organization. Its chief function was rather that of a crucible of United States public opinion on the Far East.

Rowan Gaither [head of the Ford Foundation]: "Those of us here at the policy-making level have all had experience either with the OSS or the European Econmoic Administration in operating under directives the origins of which is the White House.  We today operate under just such directives.  Would you like to know what the substance of those directives is

Norman Dodd: Yes, Mr. Gaither, I would very much like to know.

Rowan Gaither: The substance of the directives under which we operate is that we shall use our grant-making power so to alter life in the Untied States that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."

Norman Dodd: "Mr. Gaither, in light of what you just told me, many of your grants make sense, but I don't think you're entitled to withhold this information from the people of this country to whom you are beholden for your tax exemptions so why don't you tell them what you just told me?"

Rowan Gaither: "Mr. Dodd, we would not think of doing that"

Norman Dodd: Well, Mr. Gaither, in answer to your first question, you forced the Congress of the U.S. to spend $150,000 to find out what you just told me.

Once one opens their eyes to the truth behind the carefully crafted presentation of the "truth," it takes some time to reflect upon, and deal with this reality: that our subversive public education system and mainstream media is basically a tool to brainwash, condition, and fool us into compliance with the agenda of the ruling class. As Norman Dodd sincerely points out the ruling class has been scheming to consolidate all the power to rule America by corporate monopoly. Why communism? Because collectivism at centralized levels is easy to manipulate toward a tyrannical government.  This type of system needs  communitarian law, which is based on the "consensus reached by globalist "do-gooders."

Economic and psychological weapons of destruction rather than full out war...that's the plan. A man in a stupor is harmless. A mind befuddled by reality shows, iPhones, Twitter, Facebook is manageable. So the elite can continue to offshore our jobs and loot the treasury to the tune of trillions of dollars as was the plan all along by aforementioned major subversive forces.



Related Links:

2020: Our Common Destiny & The Anti Communitarian Manifesto

"...explores the history, philosophy, and modern-day implementation of Sustainable Development, Communitarian Law, and Community Policing.

Part-autobiography, part-thesis, and part-guidebook to International Law, this 327-page book introduces Community Law with a mix of personal experiences, field research, and direct quotes from American presidents and international heads of state, domestic and foreign courts, officials, ecclesiastics, gurus, agencies, think tanks, universities and law schools, foundations, conferences, scientific reports, newspapers, and academic journals.

The Roosevelt Neighborhood Plan (Washington) and The Anchorage 2020/Anchorage Bowl Comprehensive Plan (Alaska) are highlighted to show how Local Agenda 21 plans balance individuals, laws, and economic growth. Readers are challenged to consider some of the little-known aspects of Community Economic Development, like mapping and mobilizing human assets, data-mining, innovative militarized policing, mandates for service, global citizenship, the Hegelian Dialectic, and the ancient spiritual foundation for a worldwide, corporate, quasi-religious legal framework.

The Turning of the Tides

Hearings before the special committee to investigate tax-exempt foundations and comparable organizations House of Representatives 83rd Congress Second Session on H. Res. 217 (1,000 pages)

Report on the Commission on Social Studies, 1934

"Conclusions and Recommendations for the Social Studies", funded by the tax-exempt Carnegie Corporation of New York, published in 1934, is the most important report ever written on the future of American education. All its recommendations and its philosophy are an intrinsic part of education in the United States today. Professor Harold Laski, a philosopher of British socialism, said of this report: "At bottom, and stripped of its carefully neutral phrases, the report is an educational program for a 'Socialist America'. One excerpt from this important report reads "The implications for education are clear and imperative: (a) the efficient functioning of the emerging economy and the full utilization of its potentialities require profound changes in the attitudes and outlook of the American people, especially the rising generation--a complete and frank recognition that the old order is passing, that the new order is emerging, (pp. 34-35).

click here for The Dodd Report

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U.S. is Only Developed County where Younger Generation will Receive Less Education than their Parents

From All Gov:

The expectation that young Americans will always be better educated and more successful than their parents is no longer true.

A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says the United States is now the only major economy in the world where the younger generation will not surpass the preceding generation in terms of schooling.

Andreas Schleicher, special adviser on education at the OECD, told the BBC News: “It’s something of great significance because much of today’s economic power of the United States rests on a very high degree of adult skills—and that is now at risk.”

Today, only about 20% of young adults will reach a higher level of education than their parents, a rate that’s among the lowest rates in the developed world, according to the OECD. Schleicher says that a major problem in the U.S. is that the skyrocketing cost of going to college has created a barrier for many young Americans who do not come from wealthy families.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

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US Government's Dual Accounting System and Their Enormous Hidden Surplus

Our nation was setup as a Republic supposedly governed by the "Rule of Law" in order to protect wealthy and powerful individuals and their property from the tyranny of government and the tyranny of the mob. It is not a democracy as we're so often told. But what they don't tell you is that our nation is a massive and all-powerful corporation, complete with a Dun and Bradstreet number(s). Not only that, every single agency, county, city, township, municipality, etc., is also a corporation, also complete with Dun and Bradstreet numbers.

While some may brush this aside as the government's need to act as a corporation in order to do business on a large scale--to purchase/to supply/invest--it does not explain the two sets of books the government keeps: public and "public".  The public budget, we're told, has such a severe deficit and that is used as justification for cutting basic human services to the 99% of taxpayers who have sacrificed a good portion of their paycheck to gain these services when most needed. However, what you're not told is that this public budget only records approximately only one-third of our tax money, which brings us to the "public" budget, where the other two-thirds is reported?

As I've posted about before: here, here, here, here, here, and here,  hidden in plain sight, silenced from public disclosure, it's called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the CAFR. These CAFRs, various “investment funds,” “dedicated funds” and “pension funds” show the billions, possibly trillions of public dollars that are not available to us.

"The scam works something like this: Anything that was a cost or expense for public services (the traditional side of the Annual Service Budget, such as the Department of Transportation, health and welfare, etc.) was reported on the Budget where public taxes paid 100% of the bill for those services...

However, any governmental agency that was a profit center (the Port Authority for New Jersey, the New Jersey Turnpike, an investment account, etc.) that generated non-tax revenue was “restricted by statute” from being reported in the Annual Budget. Why? Because the state legislature passed laws to prevent reporting the income from profit centers on the Budget. Instead, income from these profit centers was disclosed only on the CAFR.

But that disclosure was not immediately apparent. For example, when Mr. Burien looked for New Jersey’s 1989 “gross cash receipts” in the CAFR, he found the figure buried on page 174, under the “Waste Water Treatment Trust Fund.” It showed the amount of the total cash receipts for 1989 from all 69 autonomous state agencies and departments was almost $87 billion. In other words, New Jersey was charging $87 billion to provide $17 billion in public services. New Jersey citizens were paying $5 for every $1 in services they received, and the state was pocketing the other $4 as “profit”.

The CAFR also reported the state owned $32 billion in common stocks – but this figure was footnoted. The footnote revealed that the stocks were valued according to their original purchase price, not current market value. In other words, if the state bought a stock in 1968 at $1.25 a share and it’s worth $3,000 a share now, they still report it on the CAFR as worth $1.25 a share. Burien determined that the true market value for the “$32 billion” in stocks reported on the New Jersey CAFR was actually about $70 billion.[...]

[As of 1998] “CAFR reports indicate that the composite totals for all government
(Federal, state, county and city) ownership of publicly traded stock exceeds $32 TRILLION (53% of the total ownership of all listed stocks), $8 TRILLION in insurance company equity (should we be surprised by high priced mandatory auto insurance or unaffordable health care?), and $5 TRILLION in Bond Surety Escrow Accounts for future liability of existing or potential debt."

So while our legislators cry poverty and bankruptcy, proclaiming "austerity for the masses" from every rooftop, the truth is our government has a surplus of billions, if not trillions, in very profitable investments, unaccounted for in the budgets that  are disclosed to a very uninformed, and all too trusting We-the-People. That's right. Our federal and state governments own at least 53% of the stock in all publicly traded companies. This, of course, allows our government, at all levels, to wield enormous power over the stock market, and our economy in general, all the while casting "We, the People" into an ever-growing black hole.

Take the state of Washington's fiscal crisis and their proposal to use state higher education funds to gamble in the derivatives markets that was on the ballot--Washington SJR 8223, which thankfully did not win--once again and may be coming to a state near you. Many of these government investments are in toxic investment instruments such as collateralized debt options (CDOs) set on unstable “trading platforms,”  set to collapse in the near future. These toxic investment instruments are based on the purchase of packaged debts, and constitute legalized gambling on the stock markets with billion/trillions of our money using the most irresponsible methods imaginable. (1)

Moreover, there is a little known agency of the Federal Reserve called the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) or Cede, INC. Notice, the website link is .com, not .gov. It is a private, for profit corporation as are all the government agencies. What is the DTCC? Well, once you invest money, as an individual or institutional, and it's registered with a stock broker, which is required, that money or investment is ceded--property of--to the DTCC. In other words, according to corrupt corporate statutory law, you no longer own that stock, you are a beneficiary.

(1) Now is the Time -

Rebecca Campbell, who owns this website, filed a lawsuit on behalf of all of the peoples of the world so that they might hold their own governments accountable for the crimes that these governments have perpetrated in their names against other peoples, as well as against themselves.

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The Next Bubble Burst: Student Debt?

Private lenders have preyed upon unsuspecting young people desiring to further their education for years. Of course, they have intentionally targeted those coming from poor socio-economic backgrounds. What else is new?

Well, now that the student debt bubble has accumulated over $1 trillion in student loan debt, starting July 1, Federal Pell Grants are set to be cut for hundreds of thousands of students across the US. Whats more, the Senate "blocked President Obama’s student loan interest-rate reduction plan and also shot down a GOP proposal, leaving the chamber without a solution and little more than a month to go before rates are scheduled to double".

The reforms will save $11 billion over 10 years, according to reports. Students will lose the $5,550-a-year grants in order to find the savings.

"The loss of Pell Grants could put college out of reach" for many students with fiscal hardships, the newspaper reported.

Under old rules, students who had taken at least six units of college courses but who did not have a diploma were eligible for the loans. The new rule eliminates the Pell Grants as well as other subsidized loans for the students, known as "ability-to-benefit" students.

Here's the thing. We're told the government can't find a way to pay for extending student loan rates, yet, we're not told that the government earns more money on these student loans than they pay out!  Meanwhile, half of all college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed.  And unlike a mortgage, one cannot walk away from one's student loan debt, even if one can't walk, can't talk...in other words,  in a coma, as student loan debt cannot be expunged, nor forgiven.

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The Diminishing Returns of a College Degree

Not all that long ago, a college education in America ensured not only a job, but elevated socio-economic status. In fact, just as recently as 2007, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, more than half of all  college graduates who had applied for a job received an offer by graduation day, albeit, without the elevated socio-economic status. In 2008, that percentage fell to 26%, and in 2009, less than 20%.  Moreover, not all that long ago, one person - usually, the father, even without a college degree - could provide for a family of six, eight, and even ten. Today, it takes two people, sometimes working two jobs, to support a family of four.

Meanwhile, student debt is the only sector growing at an ever-increasing rate since the 2008 financial crisis. The average annual tuition at a private nonprofit four-year college is about $35-40,000! So, now that student debt has reached the $1 trillion mark - the second biggest debt sector for US households - leaving college grads with unprecedented levels of college debt, not to mention, the youth unemployment rate in the US is rivaling many third-world countries, is a college education really worth it? Could it be that those who choose not to attend college may actually end up earning more than their college-degreed counterparts?

Over 17 million Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. For instance, over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (8,000 of those, doctoral or professional degrees), 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants.

It should be more than obvious that public policy designed to create more college graduates isn't really concerned with sustainable jobs for future graduates. The purpose of the policies is to prop up the education bubble and the lending industry that supports it.

So, maybe it's time to reexamine our assumptions about the necessity of a college education, those ideological templates we use to understand the world, especially when, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the US has one of the highest number of employees working in low wage jobs of high paying industrialized nations. One out of every four Americans employed work in jobs that pay less than $10 per hour.

Between NAFTA, tougher bankruptcy laws, the repeal of Glass Steagall, bubbles galore, and and a financial system that might as well be a roulette wheel, the best we can hope for is a low-wage recovery. Newly added jobs are coming from lower paying sectors while productivity increases and profits filter to the top of the economic class. 3,500,000 high-wage jobs lost during recession and only 179,000 have been added so far. Therefore, a college degree that's risen anywhere from 500-1000% since 1970,  in inflation adjusted dollars, is sure to sap  future earnings with few exceptions.

Older Americans are 47 times richer than younger Americans.

In 1984, households headed by people age 65 and older were worth just 10 times the median net worth of households headed by people 35 and younger.

But now that gap has widened to 47-to-one, marking the largest wealth gap ever recorded between the two age groups.”

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Is the Government Turning School Children into State Informants?

In August, 2004, the ACLU, published a report entitled, The Surveillance-Industrial Complex, in which it stated that a massive recruitment, to enlist American citizens in surveillance activities, is underway.

Cultivating a crop of schoolhouse snitches sounds like a good place to start, as children are natural tattletales. So, will the schools now become a place for gathering information, and for training Americans to battle terrorism, if they're not already?

Officials Detail Plans To Fight Homegrown Terrorism

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SWAT Teams Taking on Student Loan Default?

It's bad enough that recent college graduates and the African-American population face an unemployment rate nearly double that of the rest of the population. It's bad enough that the cost of a college degree is at an all-time high, up 3,400% since 1972.   But, as Kenneth Wright, who woke up to hear SWAT team members kicking in his front door, can tell you, it's even worse than that.  Why was the elite of the municipal police force  kicking in his door?  To collect on his ex-wife's defaulted student loan, who didn't even live at the address. Who ordered the raid? The Department of Education, who ordered 27 shotguns, last year.

After the SWAT team broke down Wright's door, he was handcuffed and locked into a hot police car for over six hours. This terrorized his 3, 7, and 11-year-old children, of course, who were held at gunpoint, and then locked into the car with their father.

Wright is not alone. SWAT teams raid over 100 homes per day, many times, for non-violent crimes ranging from possession of marijuana, to student loan collections or fraud, depending on who you believe. There are over 150 cases of nightmarish SWAT teams waking innocent families, who then violently search them at gunpoint. There are other cases of SWAT teams apprehending the medical marijuana of patients, many of whom are bedridden.

Why is this happening? Two reasons:  One, the "War on Drugs" that started in the 1980s, in which, the U.S. has seen a 1,300% increase in the number of SWAT team deployments, from 3,000 per year in 1981, to more than 40,000 per year in 2001 (the number is likely even higher today). Two, the militarization of law enforcement by The Homeland Security Act of 2002 signed by President George W. Bush. This "SWAT team" finds its home at the federal Office of Inspector General, who was granted law enforcement powers.  And, let's not forget the draconian student loan laws* .

"The HSA of 2002 first authorized IG special agents in large offices to carry firearms, make arrests, and execute search warrants on their own. The Inspector General Reform Act of 2008 – enacted one month before the election – reaffirmed that IGs must be appointed based on competence and without regard to political affiliation. It established new pay levels, required the President to give Congress 30 days’ notice before trying to remove or transfer any IG, and created a new unified Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. All IG offices now will get certain law enforcement powers."

Now, the DOE claims the raid was ordered due to an ongoing probe into alleged financial aid fraud, but then refused to discuss the case any further.  Let's just say that this is true. Does it call for a visit from the terror squad? It's a non-violent crime! It was the wrong address! If police state intimidation tactics are the new normal...please, let us start with the real criminals:  banksters, hedge fund managers...people who have plundered  billions, perhaps, trillions of dollars.

Overall, the substantial increase in SWAT raids on non-violent American citizens is alarming, to say the least. Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Crime on June 21, 2007 concerning militarized police forces (using military-style weapons, tactics, training, uniforms, and even heavy equipment by civilian police departments) claimed that the dramatic rise in paramilitary SWAT teams since the 1980s can largely be attributed to acts passed by the U.S. Congress, at the time...basically, thanks to the War on Drugs.

Links:

* Administrative Wage Garnishment

As the agency responsible for administering the programs that provide this Federal loan financing, the U. S. Department of Education (ED) pursues collection of student loans aggressively through debtor contact, credit reporting, litigation, collection agencies and offset against Federal payments, such as Federal income tax refunds. ED also uses another tool for collection of defaulted student loans— garnishment of wages of defaulted borrowers. Section 488A of the Higher Education Act authorizes ED and student loan guarantors to collect defaulted Federally-financed student loans by means of an administrative garnishment order to the employer, without the need for a court order. This order requires the employer to withhold and pay over to ED a portion of the debtor’s disposable pay. Federal law authorizing this action supersedes any state law that might limit or prohibit wage garnishment, or would require a creditor to obtain a judgment or use specific procedures for wage garnishment. Beginning in 2003, ED will issue garnishment orders to employers to withhold 15% of wages from student aid debtors, in reliance on a newer law, part of the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996.
[...]
34 CFR Part 34: These regulations implement for the Department of Education the provisions for administrative wage garnishment in the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 (DCIA). The DCIA authorizes Federal agencies to garnish administratively, that is, without court order, the disposable pay of an individual who is not a Federal employee to collect a delinquent nontax debt owed to the United States. These regulations implement this authority for a debt owed to the United States under a program administered by the Department of Education.

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Is College Becoming a Very Expensive Dead-End?

The average annual cost of attending a private college in America today is $27,293.00, and of course, that does not include the cost of room and board, or textbooks, which has tripled over the past decade (with almost no resale value). So, at the end of four years, the student is left, facing a very dismal job market, and $109,172, in debt - that is, if he doesn't buy any books and he lives at home.

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Aren't America's Youth Worthy of the Promise of a Decent Future?

Apparently not. With unemployment rates at 18.6% (nearly double the 9.7% unemployment rate for the population at large), skyrocketing tuition, escalating gas and food prices, and virtually no help from our government, it is very clear that we do not consider our  youth, worthy of investment.

"Young workers have seen unemployment rates double since the start of the Great Recession to 18.6 percent. Without employment, what options exist for this group?

Often framed as a way for a young person discouraged with the job market to ride out the downturn, school enrollment is an assumed safety net for 16- to 24-year-olds. However, enrollment rates have not increased during the Great Recession beyond what would be expected given the long-term trend. The lack of a meaningful increase in enrollment shows that this is not a realistic option for the majority of young workers, due to the prohibitive cost.

In the 2008-09 school year, the total cost of attendance for an on-campus student—including tuition, books, room and board, and transportation expenses—at a four-year public school averaged $18,539 and for a four-year private school, it was $38,100, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Therefore, the expected cost of a four year education can be anywhere between $80,000 and $120,000, with graduate school costing even more. Unrealistic for many families to pay, many students are forced into unbearable debt loads (that cannot be discarded via bankruptcy), at a time when employment prospects are grim.

Our youth face an extremely difficult job market, with long-lasting effects. High unemployment among new college graduates underscores the fact that this unemployment problem is not the result of a mass shift among undergraduates toward the wrong major, a lack of motivation or work ethic, or even a lack of skills in finding jobs. America's youth are one of the many casualties of a lack of demand for workers in the overall economy.

Essentially, it is extremely problematic that a group that has seen its unemployment rate nearly double has virtually no help from the government. Youth generally cannot qualify for unemployment benefits, Medicaid (though that changes in 2014), the Earned Income Tax Credit, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. They are only allowed to utilize food stamp programs on a limited basis. In a very real sense, young workers do not have a public safety net to fall back on, even in times of persistent high unemployment as virtually every other demographic can. This causes them to have to rely on relatives and friends, placing more strain on the economy.

While young workers’ position in the labor market is unique, and thus so are the repercussions, that just means that more than anyone, they need the strong job growth that characterizes a strong recovery. By having forgotten about the issue of unemployment in favor of deficit reduction, our leaders could potentially cause even greater upheaval to a group hit hardest by the financial and emotional strain of America's failed financial, trade and economic policies. A revitalized focus on fixing those issues and getting people back to work is paramount to a thriving society and nation."

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Incarceration Instead of Education?

At one time, it seemed that prison was reserved for violent offenders who posed a threat to public safety and to those who were repeatedly convicted for felonious acts. Those times have changed. The number of federal crimes, newly enacted by Congress, have exploded over the last three decades.

Consider this. From 1925 to 1972, the prison population fluctuated between 100,000 and 200,000 inmates. In 1980, there were less than 500,000 Americans in prison. On June 30, 2002, the number of incarcerated topped 2 million. At the beginning of 2008, the nation’s total inmate count was more than 2.3 million. To be sure, the great majority of America's incarcerated population has one thing in common: poverty. Yet, it's clear the opposite is occurring. Rather than trying to reduce the over 4,000 offenses that carry criminal penalties in the United States Code, more are being created everyday... in addition, lawmakers are upgrading misdemeanors to felonies!

Take, Tonya McDowell, a 33-year-old homeless mom, who was charged with "first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools," for using her babysitter's, Ana Rebecca Marques, address to send her six-year old to school.  Not only that, Ms. Marques was kicked out of her residence at the housing authority.  Can you say, 

Dr. Boyce Watkins, a social justice advocate and Syracuse University professor said the following:

“The message now is that they would rather incarcerate than educate. This is no different from the days when slaves were jailed for trying to learn to read."

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness  would agree, I'm sure.

In another case, in January, Kelley Williams-Bolar of Akron Ohio was convicted and sent to jail after she used her father’s address to enroll her two children in a suburban school district, in an effort to better their education.

"Additionally, Williams-Bolar’s father, Edward L. Williams, was charged with a fourth-degree felony of grand theft, in which he and his daughter are charged with defrauding the school system for two years of educational services for their girls. The court determined that sending their children to the wrong school was worth $30,500 in tuition"

What makes these arrests all the more horrifically absurd, is that our nation's elitist thugs not only go free, but are continuing to reap enormous reward.

Links:

Children of Incarcerated Parents Fact Sheet

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The Criminalization of Learning in a Knowledge Based Economy.

"The right to learn is now aggressively opposed by intellectual property advocates, who want ideas elevated to the status of land, cars, and other physical assets so that unauthorized acquisition can be prosecuted as theft." - Robert Laughlin, Nobel Prize winning physicist

Sequestering knowledge under  the cloak of a freely available information-rich world is alive and well, as the barriers that scientists, engineers, etc, encounter get larger and larger.  Since the 1970s, intellectual property law (knowledge restriction law) has expanded exponentially, and as I have posted several times before, is about ready to expand once more, as many powerful forces conspire to make acquiring information dangerous, or even a crime.   Now, an innocent  flash of insight could potentially lead to to infringing on a patent or, even threaten national security!  Nevertheless, as paradoxical as it sounds, in a knowledge based economy,  real knowledge will become increasingly less available.  Why? Because, when you commodotize something, it must become less available in order to retain its value.

Sure there is a ton of disposable knowledge, on the Internet, but how useful is it?  Nobel prize winning physicist, Robert Laughlin, author of The Close of Reason and the Closing of the Scientific Mind claims that  increasingly, the really useful stuff is classified or privatized. The knowledge connected to how you make your living is and will become more scarce. At the same time, the information connected to advertising has and will become more plentiful.  In other words, through the dumbing down of our current public education system, absurd patent laws, and excessive disposable knowledge, the knowledge based economy will continue to increase our ignorance. Can you say scary??

Take word processing software, for example. It has made the technology of communication proprietary. It's a computer program that you must buy. In addition to the monetary cost, the price you pay is that it becomes illegal for you to know how it works. If you figure out the communications protocol and write it down on a piece of paper,  and then show someone that piece of paper, you're in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. 

And in Oregon, someone wrote a computer program to control his electric trains and promptly got sued. Why? Because the concept of controlling your train with a computer had been patented!

As more and more technical knowledge is outlawed, there is a very real danger that our most brilliant and creative minds, when trying to learn how the world works through the discoveries of others will be rendered impotent by a legal framework that prohibits them from attempting learn about the world around us .

Within the past ten years it has become illegal to to understand encrypted communication and distribute code-cracking devices.  Moreover, it is now legal for corporations to monopolize certain forms of communication; and it is possible to patent sales techniques, hiring strategies, and gene sequences. There are now attempts to patent the entire idea of Internet learning. So, if you want to teach someone over the Internet for profit, you will have to pay a liscencing fee to the people who invented Internet learning. Broad areas of science, in particular, physics and biology, are now off limits to public discourse because they are national security risks and there are notorious examples in the literature of medical research at universities that are blocked because of a patent position that a company has taken.  You can't do research on it without paying them a liscence fee. These ever increasing restrictions on fertile scientific and technological fields are creating a new Dark Age

In effect, the decision to deindustrialize is making us an even more ignorant society.  The more knowledge based our economy becomes the less knowledge there is going to be for free.  The  continuation of this trend will end up in a situation where there is nothing left but knowledge and none of it is free.

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Is America Dumber Now Than Over 100 Years Ago? Take This Test and Find Out.

The use of the intellect to subvert the masses is not a new dynamic. Powerful men knew/know that if you want to keep power, you must always have the intellectual edge, and make sure the public stays dumbed down. How? Subjugate the public through poor education.

America is being deliberately dumbed down. The absence of critical thought, as a result of a dumbed down public education, in addition to the escalation of mind-numbing entertainment and technology, is producing a nation of Schnookies.

Anyway, this is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, Kansas. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas and reprinted by the Salina Journal.

Granted, some of the questions are outdated; however, there are enough questions that still apply.

1895 TEST:

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the
practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it
hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. for
tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school
seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognateletters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi,
post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates
the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein,
raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical
marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St.
Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

Answers

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The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

Charlotte Iserbyt, author of The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America (click to download free copy), whose father was a former Skull and Bones member, and who served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education  during the first Reagan Administration,  tells the story of how she discovered, and eventually blew the whistle on the the major initiative to deliberately dumb down America, in order to mold obedient citizens to be dependent on government and multi-national corporations for survival.

Before Charlotte went to Washington, she was very pro-Reagan, so when she was warned about him by a group of California Republicans. She paid no attention. In fact, it angered her...that is, until she found out about him, and much more, for herself.



In addition, in an interview with Yale graduate, Norman Dodd, the 1954 staff director of the Reese congressional special committee to investigate tax-exempt foundations, Dodd exposes the tax-exempt foundations hidden agenda for a One World Government under the UN, which includes dumbing down America.



Funded by the Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation, the following excerpts are from the American Historical Association’s Report on the Commission on Social Studies:

“The Commission was also driven to this broader conception of its task by the obvious fact that American civilization, in common with Western civilization, is passing through one of the great critical ages of history, is modifying its traditional faith in economic individualism, and is embarking upon vast experiments in social planning and control which call for large-scale cooperation on the part of the people.” – pp. 1-2

“As to the specific form which this “collectivism,” this integration and interdependence, is taking and will take in the future, the evidence at hand is by no means clear or unequivocal. It may involve the limiting or supplanting of private property by public property or it may entail the preservation of private property, extended and distributed among the masses. Most likely, it will issue from a process of experimentation and will represent a composite of historic doctrines and social conceptions yet to appear. Almost certainly it will involve a larger measure of compulsory as well as voluntary co-operation of citizens in the conduct of the complex national economy, a corresponding enlargement of the functions of government, and an increasing state intervention in fundamental branches of economy previously left to individual discretion and initiative-a state intervention that in some instances may be direct and mandatory and in others indirect and facilitative. In any event the Commission is convinced by its interpretation of available empirical data that the actually integrating economy of the present day is the forerunner of a consciously integrated society, in which individual economic actions and individual property, rights will be altered and abridged.” – p. 17

“The implications for education are clear and imperative: (a) the efficient functioning of the emerging economy and the full utilization of its potentialities require profound changes in the attitudes and outlook of the American people, especially the rising generation-a complete and frank recognition that the old order is passing, that the new order is emerging.”pp. 34-35

"In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher has many parts to play... He can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children for global understanding and cooperation...At the very top of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession." -- National Education Association Journal, 1946

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