Replies

Plenty of finger pointing possible but blame is much easier than solutions...Bill Bennett had it right when he recommended there was no longer any use for a Dept Of Education. Let states attack the problem however they see fit with Federal funds kicked in to those states who show real progress. Attack the NEA, no small feat, since they are the nation's LARGEST organized lobbying organization.

The President has it right with accountability being the foundation of an educational reform program. Eliminate the union barriers that effectively keep out those who want to teach. Administrators outnumber teachers...ridiculous, restore sanity to our educational system.

Attack the NEA, no small feat, since they are the nation's LARGEST organized lobbying organization.

I admit that the NEA is big, but I submit that there is a more influential lobbying organization by far. An Establishment of unparalleled influence--"the press."
"The press" belongs in quotes not because it does not have First Amendment protection (though some of it patently does not) nor because "the press" (by which is meant nothing other than journalism) is not the only printing business protected by the First Amendment. "The press" belongs in quotes because it is not supposed to be--but in a very real sense is--a single entity like the NBA.
The NBA consists of competitive divisions such as the Lakers, Spurs, and so forth. But in regulating that competition by such means as giving each division the exclusive right to place certain players on its roster, the NBA acts as a single competition-limiting entity. It does that openly and publicly, and has lost antitrust suits over that behavior.
Like any illicit entity, "the press" denies its own existence as an entity; examples of this are nauseatingly routine whenever a journalist submits to Q&A. But any establishment coheres around a "turf," and must "send a message" when its turf is violated. What is "the turf" of "the press?"
Victory in any debate makes and the winner's side seems moderate, fair, objective, and balanced--and makes the loser's position seem "extreme". The turf of "the press" is the appearance of objectivity. Actual objectivity is of course impossible--topic selection is a fingerprint of the ineluctable perspective of the writer--but "the press" manipulates the appearance by use of the excuse of the fog of breaking news.
"The press" coheres in the following code:
The objectivity of anyone who adheres to the party line that journalists are objective is never challenged by any other member of "the press".
If a Bernard Goldberg does write a Bias, he does not cease being a journalist--he is an unperson who "never was a journalist."
The PR sythesis of the appearance of objectivity by "the press" is so pervasive and so effective that it is actually possible, even easy, to use that imposture in the"liberal arts academic fields. History , for example--precisely the field which should filter appearances out and, at the price of the wait, reveal truth which current events conceal--can be guilty of producing only a second draft of journalism. Some "truths" of journalism persist by the citation of journalistic reports alone, without serious scholarship in primary source material. See for example, the many fatuous "proofs" of the "McCarthyism" canard.