So very sexy…
1. The people in charge have all the answers.
That’s why they are so wealthy and happy and healthy and powerful—ask any teacher.2. Learning ends when you leave the classroom.
Your fort building, trail forging, frog catching, friend making, game playing, and drawing won’t earn you any extra credit. Just watch TV.3. The best and brightest follow the rules.
You will be rewarded for your subordination, just not as much as your superiors, who, of course, have their own rules.4. What the books say is always true.
Now go read your creationism chapter. There will be a test.5. There is a very clear, single path to success.
It’s called college. Everyone can join the top 1% if they do well enough in school and ignore the basic math problem inherent in that idea.6. Behaving yourself is as important as getting good marks.
Whistle-blowing, questioning the status quo, and thinking your own thoughts are no-nos. Be quiet and get back on the assembly line.7. Standardized tests measure your value.
By value, I’m talking about future earning potential, not anything else that might have other kinds of value.8. Days off are always more fun than sitting in the classroom.
You are trained from a young age to base your life around dribbles of allocated vacation. Be grateful for them.9. The purpose of your education is your future career.
And so you will be taught to be a good worker. You have to teach yourself how to be something more.
Ah the Koch brothers. Such paragons of virtue and a perfect representation of the current Republicans.
A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama’s energy agenda.
A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.
Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters.
The Koch brothers have more money than they’ll ever be able to spend in their entire lives, and they are actively trying to destroy efforts to make our planet safer for our children and grandchildren, just so they can have more money.
They are the platonic ideal of evil.
Required Reblog on what is happening to our rights. Again.
Moreover, for anyone who defends the Obama administration here and insists that the U.S. Government simply must have access to all forms of human communication: does that also apply to in-person communication? Should home and apartment builders be required to install monitors in every room they build to ensure that the Government can surveil all human communications in order to prevent threats to national security and public safety? I believe someone once wrote a book about where this mindset inevitably leads. The very idea that no human communication should ever be allowed to take place beyond the reach of the Government is definitive authoritarianism, which is why Saudi Arabia and the UAE — and their American patron-ally — have so vigorously embraced it.
Greenwald points out that the FBI does not need this, because they can go to a judge, get a warrant, and use traditional surveillance when it’s necessary. “But what about encryption?!” Well:
the problem cited by the FBI to justify this new power is a total pretext: “investigators encountered encrypted communications only one time during 2009′s wiretaps” and, even then, “the state investigators told the court that the encryption did not prevent them from getting the plain text of the messages.” As usual, fear-mongering over national security and other threats is the instrument to justify massive new surveillance powers that will extend far beyond their claimed function.
I’m profoundly disappointed in the Obama administration’s record on civil rights and privacy. I expected better from a president who is a Constitutional law scholar.
tl;dr: The very idea that no human communication should ever be allowed to take place beyond the reach of the Government is definitive authoritarianism
