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LARRY SAND We’re All Right-Wing Bastards Now —that is, if the NEA’s logic is to be believed. 20 November 2009 On the last day of the National Education Association’s convention this summer, its outgoing general counsel, Bob Chanin, gave a speech for the ages. After sharing fond recollections of his 41 years as the NEA’s top lawyer, he switched gears and started lobbing grenades at “conservative and right-wing bastards,” including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. The NEA and its affiliates, by contrast, were “the nation’s leading advocates for public education and the type of liberal social and...

The Empire Strikes Back Malcolm A. Kline, November 24, 2009 Bill and Melinda Gates, in their education reform efforts, have drawn the ire of NEA types, RiShawn Biddle at the Capital Research Center points out. “From the bastions of traditional public education—the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the university-level schools of education that dominate teacher training, and the public school superintendents—the alarm has sounded: the Gates Foundation engages in ‘misinformation campaigns,’ and wants to ‘effectively cripple public control’ of schools,” Biddle writes. “Two years ago the National Commission on Skills in the Workplace, a Gates...

We’re All Right-Wing Bastards Now—that is, if the NEA’s logic is to be believed. 20 November 2009 On the last day of the National Education Association’s convention this summer, its outgoing general counsel, Bob Chanin, gave a speech for the ages. After sharing fond recollections of his 41 years as the NEA’s top lawyer, he switched gears and started lobbing grenades at “conservative and right-wing bastards,” including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. The NEA and its affiliates, by contrast, were “the nation’s leading advocates for public education and the type of liberal social and economic agenda that...

The Arts Council has given a epileptic dancer £14,000 to stop taking her medication and have a seizure on stage. Rita Marcalo’s 24-hour performance, involving strobe lights and sleep deprivation, is billed as a study of the “conceptual and physical interfaces between dance, movement and epilepsy”. Epilepsy charities said that the event turned a much misunderstood condition into a freak show and warned of the potentially severe dangers of coming off epilepsy drugs. Marcalo said that she wanted to raise awareness of epilepsy as “an invisible disability” and would use next month’s adults-only show at Bradford Playhouse to explore “my...

I just got an email from the local Ronald Reagan Club in Orlando of a screen capture of the NEA (National Education Association) website, recommending to their members Alinsky's 2 books Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals. If someone tells me how to post a picture I'll post the screen capture. This is unbelievable.

AIP News exclusive commentary by:  Tom Kovach Yesterday, the Canada Free Press reported that the National Education Association had listed as "recommended reading" the pro-Communist book Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky.  The CFP report did not mention that it was the number-one choice on the NEA's list.To prevent the NEA from later altering its Web pages and backing away from this stance under public scrutiny, I have copied the relevant Web pages and converted them to PDF documents.  First, here is the NEA's "recommended reading" list for its members.  (NOTE:  the page's appearance was slightly altered in the PDF conversion...

The NEA’s (National Education Association’s, a.k.a. Nefarious Elitist A****’) recommended reading list includes two books by Brother O mentor and communist community organizer Saul Alinsky that advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. The Democrat-controlled teachers’ union praises Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals as “an inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!” The following book quotations are from the NEA website: “The Radical does not sit frozen by cold objectivity. He sees injustice and strikes at it with hot passion. He is a man of decision and action. “Society has good...

Hard as it may be to believe, the recommending reading list of the NEA — the powerful, Democrat-controlled teachers’ union — includes instruction manuals for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Two books by radical Communist activist Saul Alinsky advocate violence (“Radicals [must break] the necks of Conservatives”), destruction and revolution. Incredibly, the following quotes are not cherry-picked from the midst of Alinsky’s texts: they are highlighted on the NEA’s website.

It’s not like being named the ambassador to London or Paris, but an appointment to the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities is one of the cushier rewards for supporting a presidential candidate. And the 26 members President Barack Obama named earlier this week seemed like a motley group, with little in common except an ability to raise campaign money. Vogue magazine’s Anna Wintour and Minnesota State Senator Richard J. Cohen? Yo-Yo Ma and the guy who made a pre-fab house that floats? Disparate, yes. But these 26 private-sector appointees are intricately connected through years of leadership in the overlap...

The National Education Association has made a glowing assessment of radical socialist community organizer Saul Alinsky and is enthusiastically recommending American public school teachers read two of his books, including one dedicated to Satan. On its website, the NEA dubs Alinsky "an inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!" It recommends Alinsky's "Reveille for Radicals," a 1946 book about the principles and tactics of "community organizing," and "Rules for Radicals," a 1971 text that articulated a socialist strategy for gaining political power to redistribute wealth from the "haves" to the "have-nots." The NEA, the largest...

The National Education Association, the organization most identified as the voice of established educators in the United States, is recommending that its members read -- and promote the reading of -- two books by Progressive radical Saul Alinsky: Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals. The recommendation appears in the organizations website under, "Tools & Ideas>Association Representative Resources>Articles & Multimedia>Recommended Reading: Saul Alinsky, The American Organizer." The NEA has insisted over the course of its existence that it is a non-partisan organization that champions the education of America's children while advocating for the professional advancement of its educator membership. Their...

Look what crap can be found on the NEA's website: Recommended Reading: Saul Alinsky, The American OrganizerAn inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer! Saul Alinsky wrote the book on American radicalism - two books, in fact: a 1945 best-seller, "Reveille for Radicals" and "Rules for Radicals" in 1971. The "Reveille" title page quotes Thomas Paine... "Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul." Saul Alinsky, who was a labor and civil-rights activist...

Press release from Judicial Watch: “(Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it obtained more documents from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the NEA’s controversial August 10 conference call encouraging artists to create work that promotes the Obama agenda. The documents consist of internal NEA emails indicating the idea for the NEA propaganda effort grew out the Obama campaign while also providing new details regarding White House involvement. The Corporation for National and Community Service, which...

Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that "we're going to speak truth to power." Who's Valerie Jarrett? She's "senior adviser" to the president of the United States - i.e., the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth. You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would have a hard job finding anyone on the planet to whom to speak truth to power. But I suppose if you're as eager to do so as his senior adviser, there's always somebody out there: The supreme leader of Iran. The prime minister of Belgium....

It seems Rocco Landesman, the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, didn't get the memo, literally. On September 22, stung by controversy over the administration's effort to turn the arts community into proselytizers of its very special brand of hope and change, the White House issued a stern warning to all government agencies: Keep politics out of the arts. White House denied that was ever the intent. Many in the media, as is their wont, took the Obama administration at their word. But not the website Big Government (which broke the story) and the Washington Times. They demonstrated...

It's feeding time again, and artists and cultural groups are lining up at the trough. The bailout package approved by Congress in February threw another $50 million at the arts. For the better part of the past year, music impresario Quincy Jones beseeched Barack Obama to add a secretary of arts to his cabinet. In March the President established a new staff position to oversee arts and culture in the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs. Kareem Dale, named special assistant to the president for disability policy in February, was elevated to the new post. This — or any...

Kalpen Modi, the star of the Harold and Kumar Go To movies and the TV series House, made a big splash when he put aside his Hollywood career to take a White House position as “director of public engagement,” which everyone assumed would be more or less a liaison to Hollywood as an adjunct social secretary. Unfortunately for Modi, he apparently didn’t stick to those duties. According to new documents released as part of a FOIA request, Modi helped plan the notorious NEA call conducted by Yosi Sergant that attempted to link NEA grants with support for the Obama agenda,...

Not to get into a long, drawn out story, but something has certainly surprised me recently. To begin with I am a public school teacher and those of you who know me on Free Republic know I am anti-union to the core. In all my years of teaching in Texas, a Right-to-Work state, I did not have to belong to the NEA (National Education Association) and did not. Yet for the past five years or so I was a member of the ATPE (Association of Texas Professional Educators) a non-union professional alternative to the NEA. Recently I was assaulted by...

Former actor and present White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi was directly involved in planning the controversial conference call hosted by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) flack to encourage tax-supported artists to create propaganda for President Obama, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The emails reveal that Modi worked with now-former NEA national communications director Yosif Sargant in planning the August 10 conference call that was first revealed by Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood.com web site. Participants in the conference call were encouraged to use their talents...

Attorney General Eric Holder tries to kill a TV ad supporting D.C. school vouchers. President Obama isn't taking kindly to a television ad that criticizes his opposition to a popular scholarship program for poor children, and his administration wants the ad pulled. Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous of D.C. Children First said October 16 that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had recently approached him and told him to kill the ad. The 30-second ad, which has been airing on FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, and News Channel 8 to viewers in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, urges the president to reauthorize the...

Four weeks ago, Big Hollywood posted audio of a conference call in which Obama administration officials asked "grant recipients to plug Barack Obama’s domestic agenda." At least six federal laws and regulations were violated when then–NEA communications director Yosi Sergant and White House Office of Public Engagement deputy director Buffy Wicks tried twisting the arms of artists and arts groups interested in getting federal arts grants to produce government propaganda. To protect the scandal from expanding further, the White House threw Sergant under the bus, denied that they were involved issued new guidelines for the NEA and promised that it...

More states lowered their standards for academic proficiency in recent years than raised them, and nearly all used exams that fell short of federal testing benchmarks, according to a new study. The research, issued by the U.S. Department of Education, called into question the rigor of tests that states select to comply with student-improvement mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind law. It also cast doubt on claims of educational progress made by many states. Education Department analysts found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standard on at least one fourth- or eighth-grade test of reading or math between...

I'm amazed the NEA Chairman can make such a statement since Obama is hiding everything he published.

Rocco Landesman, the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) chairman, said, in part: "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists."...

Did I miss something? What did Obama write?

...Which brings me to President Obama, our Optimist in Chief. He is a writer, an artist but we’ll come to that later. His second book had a title that would resonate with Lionel Tiger: “The Audacity of Hope”. This is much more than a felicitous phrase that he found in a sermon: it is the manifesto of this presidency and will lay the groundwork for the most arts-supportive administration since Roosevelt. Again, optimism presumes positive outcomes, the exigencies of the real world notwithstanding. The Obama campaign, and now the Obama presidency, has always been about aspiration: the idea that our...

We would not have to ask the above question if public education had not become the great, costly, and tragic failure that it is. It has failed the children, but in reality it has not failed the progressives. They were the ones who engineered the dumbing-down process which parents and taxpayers continue to pay for. But it is the children who suffer in terms of becoming intellectually disabled, semi-literate, disoriented, frustrated, and terribly unhappy. But what is even a bit disheartening is that many liberals still believe that government schooling has been a noble experiment. Perhaps Walter Lippmann, the great...

A skirmish between powerful teachers’ unions and President Barack Obama over nearly $5 billion in education spending is shaping up as a preview of the battle to come over No Child Left Behind in Congress early next year. But the tables are turned: now the unions are worried that Obama, a Democratic ally, is going to be just as tough on them as President George W. Bush, a longtime foe.

The Democratic Party has battled for universal health care this year, and over the decades it has admirably led the fight against poverty — except in the one way that would have the greatest impact. Good schools constitute a far more potent weapon against poverty than welfare, food stamps or housing subsidies. Yet, cowed by teachers’ unions, Democrats have too often resisted reform and stood by as generations of disadvantaged children have been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools. President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, are trying to change that — and one test for the Democrats...

ROY -- The same day a 47-year-old Ogden High School teacher was accused of having a sexual relationship with a then 16- or 17-year-old former student, a Roy Jr. High teacher has been accused of the same thing with a former jr. high student. "They're victims. They're preyed upon. They're manipulated. They're not, by societal standards, mature enough to make some of these adult decisions on their own," said Roy police Chief Greg Whinham said. "We've been in this weird world where we're having one a week become the headline in the paper. There's definitely a problem." Ogden police and...

To ensure that psychiatry “permeate every educational activity of national life” and “infiltrate the professional and social activities of [all] people” was a global goal that originated with British Brigadier General Dr. John Rawlings Rees in a 1940 speech to the National Council for Mental Hygiene. He ended on an ominous note: “Though our knowledge be incomplete … I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity.” Canadian colleague Dr. Brock Chisholm chimed in with sinister comments of his own at the close of the war in 1946, in a speech to the World...

In the midst of the National Endowment for the Arts controversy, their former communications director Yosi Sergant has submitted his resignation. The NEA's Sally Gifford sent the Washington Times the following release.:

The official votes are tallied, and a winner has been determined in the Iowahawk Endowment for the Arts $33.18 Steel Cage Art Death Match. Before the official bestowing, let me first say thank you to all who participated. I was pleasantly astonished by all the awesome artwork. There were some superb entries that came in after the deadline which will be featured in an upcoming post. I would also like to give out special recognition to two entries that I thought went above and beyond the call of a stupid blog art contest. These are the entries that best reflected...

The Social Security Administration recently announced the average Social Security benefit for 2008: $13,500/yr. More recently I received via a Freedom of Information Act the names of all the retirees from Consolidated school District 211 in Palatine, Illinois. The average for those 13 retirees was $96,000/yr at an average age of 58 versus Social Security's age 63. Using the Champion News Teacher Salary Database I determined that none of the 13 had had a salary less than $103,500 over the period July 1, 2004 thru June 30, 2008. Using those 4 years to determine the estimated beginning pensions gave starting pensions from...

The total lack of respect among some of the young punks roaming the streets of America is absolutely appalling. They have no respect for their teachers, parents, law enforcement, neighbors, America, the rule of law, any authority or themselves. Some punks have no respect for your life or their own pathetic lives, and that makes them extremely dangerous. Rarely does a week go by that I don't read an article or hear of a teacher being attacked by one of these vicious punks in our schools. As I write this from moose camp in the Yukon Territory, this past week...

"This is just the beginning," Yosi Sergant told participants in an Aug. 10 conference call that seems to have been organized by the National Endowment for the Arts and certainly was joined by a functionary from the White House Office of Public Engagement. The call was the beginning of the end of Sergant's short tenure as NEA flack -- he has been reassigned. The call also was the beginning of a small scandal that illuminates something gargantuan -- the Obama administration's incontinent lust to politicize everything... Did the White House initiate the call...Or, even worse, did the NEA, an independent...

Last fall, when the American Federation of Teachers endorsed him for president, Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of 3,000 union members and promised that "we will change education in this country; and we will bring about a better future for our children..." One way to build that better future, Obama has said, is to increase the number of hours children spend in school, both by lengthening the days themselves and by shortening vacations to extend the school year. But now, as President Obama pushes for more hours in school, some of his staunchest supporters are moving in the other...

Two hours into a government shutdown last night, the Michigan legislature caved on passing a set of budget bills and instead approved a temporary measure that keeps the government running for another 30 days. The midnight hold-up: approval of a K-12 budget that cuts school aid fund spending by less than 3% ($218 per pupil). The demand: higher taxes on Michigan residents...

FINAL VOTING FOR THE IOWAHAWK $33.18 STEEL CAGE ART DEATH MATCHContinued

Chris Burgard of Big Hollywood Blog has a great entry out today entitled the War on Propaganda. Burgard writes: "From Sun Tzu to Psy Ops, propaganda has won wars, toppled cultures and changed civilizations. As a self-identified enlightened and educated culture, we thought ourselves beyond such base manipulation. We were wrong." Burgard continues "On Sept. 20, 2009, President Obama stated that he would look into bailouts for print newspapers because he is concerned that blogs will take over the world and be a threat to democracy. Imagine that: the President of the United States is concerned free speech may be...

Even though Obama's popularity has been sliding significantly, Shepard Fairey, designer of the viral blue-and-red Manifest Hope poster, thinks it's the perfect time to release a slick and comprehensive anthology of celebratory Obama-related artworks: Art for Obama, which he co-edited with Evolutionary Media Group founder Jennifer Gross, comes out October 2. In addition to getting a look at the imagery, we spoke with Fairey about Obama's approval ratings, how political art reaches beyond politics, and his thoughts on the artistic deification of our leader.Watch the Slideshow Siegel: Tell us about the idea behind Art for Obama. Fairey: People undervalue...

Long a subject of derision from conservatives, the National Endowment for the Arts ran into more trouble earlier this month when it was revealed NEA funding was granted to artists for creating works of art designed to promote President Obama and his domestic policy agenda. This was a clear case of the taxpayer-supported NEA stepping outside the ideals under which it was created. While some form of federal funding for the arts has occurred practically since our nation’s founding, the National Endowment was created by an act of Congress and signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 as part of...

After battling a head cold all weekend (with the old family cranberry juice and vodka remedy) I was delighted to discover my inbox runneth over with submissions for the prestigious Iowahawk Endowment for the Arts $33.18 Steel Cage Art Death Match. Continued

It’s been five days since questions were raised about the White House’s apparent desire to create a Department of Propaganda by leveraging Government funding for the NEA to create art that will push the administration’s agenda for Health Care. A cursory search on CNN and MSNBC’s website show no stories about this by either “news” organizations. ABC and CBS both did one story about the scandal, but nothing since Yoshi Sergent, one of the key players in the conference call, resigned late last week from the White House. Read more HERE

Win a $33.18 grant from the Iowahawk Endowment for the Arts Like you, when I read that a cabal of art-hating reactionary philistines had forced the resignation of Yosi Sergant from the National Endowment for the Arts, I was sickened. This was followed by shame, then fear. And then, finally, the realization that here was a golden opportunity for cheap blog traffic.

Yosi Sergant, a National Endowment for the Arts official, resigns after urging support for Obama's community service efforts. Republican senators want assurances that the law wasn't broken. Ten Republican senators have written to National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman, expressing concern that the Obama administration may have violated federal law by trying to use the agency for political purposes -- something the White House and NEA have denied. The charges stem from an Aug. 10 teleconference in which the NEA's communications director urged members of the arts community to help Obama's efforts to spur volunteer community service.

Via twitter from Jonah Goldberg JonahNROJust got email from NEA. Yosi Sergant resigned, effectively immediately.

Even before U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was sworn in, Big Labor insiders like AFL-CIO lawyer and Obama appointee Deborah Greenfield were busily dismantling useful union financial disclosures produced by former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. It’s another Big Government – Big Labor partnership aimed at keeping individual workers, whom they claim to represent, in the dark. Why the hurry? Perhaps Union Bosses wanted to prevent the Virginia GOP and inquisitive people like Patrick Semmens from visiting DOL’s UnionReports.gov website that clearly reveals the Big Labor-ACORN collusion. Semmens discovered that teachers’ union bosses gave about $500,000 to the same Brooklyn ACORN...

The Committee on Education and Labor released the following: Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the top Republican on the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee, is calling for a congressional oversight hearing into allegations that officials with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and the White House inappropriately used federal resources to promote a political and legislative agenda. Kline made his request in a letter delivered yesterday to the committee’s Chairman, Rep. George Miller (D-CA).

Press release from U.S. Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee: Enzi Leads GOP HELP Committee Inquiry Into Alleged NEA Political Activity WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, today led his fellow Republican HELP Committee members in requesting an explanation regarding possible violations of federal law at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Enzi and his colleagues sent the request to NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. In the letter delivered today the Senators questioned the possibility of “taxpayer...