"The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves." -- John Adams

"No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution." -- Indiana Constitution Article 1, Section 6.

"...no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." – Thomas Jefferson

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Hallelujah, Corporations are Buying Public Education

The Citizens United Decision gave corporations the right to spend unlimited quantities of money on political campaigns. Justice Stevens dissented,
[the Court's ruling] threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution...At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.
Make no mistake, the push behind the privatization or the so-called "reform" of public education, is corporate based with high profits for online learning companies, private school and charter school management companies, and testing companies and those corporations are supporting candidates who will support them through privatization and anti-public education legislation.

Keeping that in mind, here is a musical number relevant to the Citizens United Decision.


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The Assault on Public Education: Confronting the Politics of Corporate School Reform

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