Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

Debbie Squires, associate director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association, explained to members of the House Education Committee why her association opposed allowing more cyber (or online) schools to operate in the state.

“Educators go through education for a reason,” Squires said. “They are the people who know best about how to serve children. That’s not necessarily true of an individual resident. I’m not saying they don’t want the best for their children, but they may not know what actually is best from an education standpoint.”

Committee chairman Tom McMillin, a Republican, seemed taken aback by Squires’ comments.

“Wow … Parents don’t know what’s best for their child?” McMillin asked.

“I said they may want what’s best for their child (but) they may not know,” Squires replied.

Squires’ comments are noteworthy because they give parents and citizens a window into the minds of the nation’s self-proclaimed education experts. Despite their talk of “collaborating” with parents to reform public education, the establishment honestly believes that parents are too ignorant and ill-informed to choose the best learning option for their child.

Not only that, but they believe charter schools and cyber schools are consuming tax dollars that rightfully belong to the government-run public schools. They argue that the only thing preventing traditional public schools from producing amazing student results is a lack of money.

They claim to “know best about how to serve children.”

The facts suggest otherwise.

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Services, per pupil spending increased by 82.5 percent – in constant dollars – from the 1980-81 school year to the 2008-09 school year.

What did taxpayers get in return for their increased investment? From 1980 to 2010, Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) scores in critical reading dropped one point (from 502 to 501), while the average math SAT score increased a meager 24 points (492 to 516). (A score of 500 is considered to be average.)

The experts have had 30 years and untold billions of dollars to turn things around, and they haven’t.

It’s difficult to see how parents could do any worse.

To the government of the state of Israel.  We are Anonymous.  For too long we have tolerated your crimes against humanity and allowed your sins to go unpunished.  Through the use of media deception and political bribery, you have amassed the sympathies of many.  You claim to be democratic, yet in reality, this is far from the truth.  In fact, your only goal is to better the lives of a select few while carelessly trampling the liberties of the masses.  We see through the propaganda that you circulate through the mainstream media and lobby through the political establishment.

Your Zionist bigotry has displaced and killed a great many. As the world weeps you laugh while planning your next attack.  All of this is done under the veil of peace, but so long as your regime exists, peace shall be hindered. You label all who refuse to comply with your superstitious demands as anti-Semitic and have taken steps to ensure a nuclear holocaust. You are unworthy to exist in your current form and will therefore face the wrath of Anonymous. Your empire lacks legitimacy and because of this, you must govern behind a curtain of deceit.  We will not allow you to attack a sovereign country based upon a campaign of lies. Your grip over humanity will weaken and man will be closer to freedom. But before this is accomplished, the people of this world will rise against you and renounce you and all your worth.

Our crusade against your reign of terror shall commence in three steps.

Step one will be initiated after the release of this video and will be comprised of systematically removing you from the internet. Step two will be later disclosed and is already in initiation; and, as for step three, well, think of this one as a present from Anonymous to you – we will not stop until the police state becomes a free state. We are Anonymous, we are legion, we do not forgive, we do not forget. Israeli government expect us.

It is not known whether Anonymous will actually follow through on the threat, as the collective has been known to abandon some plans, while misunderstanding others.  Additionally, an operation is sometimes thwarted when it’s been discovered to be the scheming of a rogue Anon.

But there has already been plenty of cyber-warring amongst hackers in the region, if this is any indicator.  Earlier in the week, Israeli hackers identifying themselves as the “IDF Team” attacked several Arab websites, including the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency and the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange, after Arab hackers launched a distributed denial of service attack on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al airlines.  One of the lead hackers in Monday’s attack on Israeli targets told the Jerusalem Post that attacks would cease only “if the Israeli government apologized for what he described as a ‘genocide in Palestine.’”

A collective of Saudi hackers also hacked one of Israel’s largest sports sites and published the details of thousands of Israelis’ credit cards online.

According to Agence France Presse, a statement by “anonymous Saudi Arabian hackers” from Group-XP, the “largest Wahhabi hacker group of Saudi Arabia,” appeared on Israeli sports website One.co.il yesterday, announcing that the customer databases of multiple Israeli sites had been hacked.

Visitors were then redirected to another page, where they were invited to download lists of thousands of names, addresses, credit card numbers, expiration dates and security codes. Cards used to make payments to “Judaism” websites or “Israeli Zionist Rabbis” were among those listed, Haaretz reported.

The hackers’ statement described the attack as “a gift to the world for the new year” that they hoped “would hurt the Zionist pocket,” according to Ynet:

“It will be so fun to see 400,000 Israelis stand in line outside banks and offices of credit card companies to complain that their cards had been stolen. To see banks shred 400,000 cards and reissue them. To see that Israeli cards are not accepted around the world, like the Nigerian cards,” the hackers wrote.

Coincidentally, the incidents come at a time when some are speculating that Hamas leaders are pushing for another ‘Arab Spring’ in the region in light of their recent signing of a unity agreement with Fatah, a deal that was denounced by Israel’s prime minister.

In fact, just yesterday analyst Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics identified Ohio as the key state between a Romney runaway and the possibility of a brokered convention.

So the viability of a three-way split probably comes down to Ohio, which has a fair number of evangelicals, though not to the degree that Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia do. Santorum has some strengths he can draw on in the Buckeye State, as his blue-collar message could play well even among Republicans there. If he wins, it means that we probably do have a deeply divided GOP, with Gingrich taking the anti-Romney vote in the South, and Santorum taking the anti-Romney vote in the Midwest.

So with Ohio holding such incredible importance to Mitt Romney’s hopes of becoming President, why is he betraying the very Ohio conservatives he needs to assure victory?

Let me explain.

As many of you may have read already, Ohio Republicans are currently in the midst of a major power struggle between moderate Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine and Governor John Kasich, Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder, and other conservative elected officials.

Conservatives are up in arms against DeWine for a number of offenses, such as actively working against Governor Kasich in the mainstream media, by working to divert fundraisers away from Kasich near the end of his close battle against incumbent Gov. Strickland in 2010, lying to contributors, outright shunning members of the Tea Party in Ohio, and most recently, blatantly abusing and violating the Party’s own bylaws in order to prevent Tea Party candidates from getting seated on the State Central Committee.

So how does this all connect to Romney?

Brett Buerck, widely known among Ohio political activists for his scandal plagued career, is now back as one of Mitt Romney’s point men in organizing Ohio. Buerck is also known as ORP Chairman DeWine’s closest consultant on Party politics. Finally, Romney’s sole appearance in Ohio during this entire campaign season was months ago when he appeared arm-in-arm with DeWine in southeast Ohio and proceeded to flip flop against Kasich’s government union reform bill, all at the recommendation of DeWine.

In other words, Romney is counting on Buerck and DeWine to lead him to victory in Ohio.

Make no mistake. Conservatives and Tea Party members are actively engaged in Ohio state politics. With such an intense focus on Ohio’s GOP primary, there is no doubt they’ll play a huge part in who ends up with Ohio’s massive number of delegates on Super Tuesday.

By working with Buerck and DeWine , Romney is making it crystal clear where he stands when it comes to wooing Ohio’s conservative base. In fact, by allowing Buerck and DeWine to lead his Ohio effort, Romney is effectively aligning himself against the very people he needs if he wants to win the nomination and the general election in November.

Ohio is well known among national political strategists as being the home of a bevy of quality political hacks. There are throngs of men and women with a strong history of leading congressional and statewide candidates to victory. In other words, Romney has no requirement to rely so heavily on state organizers with such sordid stories as DeWine and Buerck. He can easily look elsewhere and avoid the danger of giving the middle finger to Ohio conservatives and Tea Party members.

If he wants to win the Presidency, that is…

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics

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He wanted to establish a charter school in his hometown that specialized in helping disadvantaged and at-risk students earn their high school diplomas.

So he did what Florida law required. He took his proposal for the new charter school to the Polk County School Board’s Charter Review Committee, two different times. And twice he came away without permission to open his school, according to the Sunshine State News.

What was the committee’s hang-up? Were members afraid that Feacher would establish a bad school? Do they have a problem with the idea of creating a special school for children who are struggling in traditional schools?

It was nothing like that. The board members were just worried about losing money.

Every student that transfers from a traditional public school to a charter school takes with them thousands of dollars of per-pupil state aid. And many school boards and teachers unions are very hesitant to give up any state money, even if changing schools is in some students’ best interest.

Luckily, Feacher appealed to the full Polk County school board and received permission to open New Beginnings High School last fall. But the hoops he had to jump through left a lot of reasonable people shaking their heads.

“To say that only school districts may issue charters is as anti-competitive as saying Publix can’t open a new store in a particular county unless the local Winn Dixie or Wal Mart gives its permission,” commented Bob Sanchez, director of public policy for the James Madison Institute.

School boards, unions hate competition

From one angle, it appears as though charter schools are thriving across the nation. They are legal in 41 states and the District of Columbia. There are roughly 5,600 charter schools serving two million students.
But many more charters are waiting to open, and that’s frequently a difficult process, even in areas where the public demands more school choice.

The problem is that many states require proposed charter schools to gain the permission of the school board in the district where they want to locate. Not surprisingly, many school boards, urged on by teachers unions, often do everything possible to squash competition.

Ninety percent of all charter school authorizers in the U.S. are public schools, yet they only approve and oversee about 48 percent of charter schools, according to a report from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. The other 10 percent of authorizers – universities, special state governing boards, etc. – approve and oversee the other 52 percent.

That suggests a definite hesitation on the part of school board members to approve charter applications.

In short, school boards don’t want to share their resources with charter schools, even if families in the community demand more options. Teachers unions tend to oppose charter schools because they generally hire non-union staffs who do not pay union dues.

For many in the educational establishment, happiness means no competition and no accountability.

This dilemma goes back years. Here are just a few examples, courtesy of a 2007 article published by Joe Williams, president of Democrats for Education Reform:

The organizers of a proposed charter school in Albany, New York hoped to obtain a zoning variance to occupy a particular building. Local school and union officials protested, and the city council and zoning board of appeals denied the request, claiming the building was on a site inappropriate for a school.

Here’s the zinger – the same building had been home to Albany’s Public School #3 for 70 years. The New York Supreme Court eventually stepped in and allowed the school to open.

The problem has not gone away in more recent years.

In Brooklyn, the Success Academy charter network has been fighting for permission to use space in a building that has room for 700 student desks. Success Academy already operates nine charter schools in various locations that have made great strides with traditionally underprivileged students, according to the New York Post.

But the United Federation of Teachers has been putting up a fight, claiming the new charter school would disrupt existing school programs in the building. A recent informational session for parents who might be interested in the charter school had to be cancelled due to insults and catcalls shouted at Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz.

“There are some (charter applications) that never get off the ground,” said Todd Ziebarth, vice president of state advocacy and support for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “And some applications should get bounced. But there are some jurisdictions where local school districts take more of an ideological view. They are not looking at applications, but their own personal dislike for charter schools.”

A handful of states have no appellate procedure when a charter school is turned down by a local school board, Ziebarth said. One good example is Virginia, which has only four charter schools in the state, he said.

“If you just leave it up to local school boards, you’re not going to end up with many charter schools,” Ziebarth said.

Appeal mechanisms on the rise

Not all the news regarding charter school authorization is bad.

A majority of states now have some form of meaningful appeal process for charter schools that are shot down by local school boards, according to Ziebarth. Some states allow colleges or universities to approve and oversee charter schools, while others are creating statewide agencies that have the power to approve a charter application in any school district.

One good example is Illinois. While there are 109 charter schools in and around Chicago, there are only 14 in downstate areas, according to a report from WBEZ radio. That’s because Chicago Public Schools officials want to give students an escape route from failing neighborhood schools, while many downstate school boards are hostile to the idea of sharing resources, the radio report said.

Under the old system, if a local school board rejects a charter application, the only appeal was to the state board of education, which displayed little inclination to overturn school board decisions, Ziebarth said. While there have been dozens of appeals, the state board only reversed school board decisions and authorized charter schools three times.

But now a new entity, the Illinois State Charter Commission, has the power to approve the establishment of charter schools that have been rejected by local school boards. The commission will also have oversight powers over those schools.

But the new board has its critics, including Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery, who was quoted as saying “I don’t think the people of Illinois would stand for the gaming industry, say, to have the right to reverse a community’s decision not to allow a race track in its town. I don’t know why we wouldn’t give at least the same protections to the children of Illinois.”

As if children need protection from charter schools. On the contrary, charter schools were created because many children desperately need protection from failing neighborhood union schools.

A similar new law in Florida allows “high performing charter school systems” to replicate their programs in various communities without the interference of local schools boards. Florida now has more than 500 charter schools, Ziebarth said.

But the war is clearly not over. In California, where there are 900 charters serving about 2 million children, the powerful California Teachers Association is sponsoring a bill that would give local school districts and other authorizers more power to deny charter applications based on finances.

The bill says “a chartering authority may deny a charter petition if it makes a written factual finding that the charter school would have a negative fiscal impact on the school district,” according to the Orange County Register.

As Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network put it, “This law seems like an attempt to make it more difficult for charters to come into existence. Some oversight is good, of course, but this seems to be excessive.”

If so, then this weekend’s three-day retreat in California, attended by some of the richest billionaires (is there really a poor billionaire?) is a step in the right direction.

The Huffington Post reports (read full story here) David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries pledged a combined $60M to defeat Barack Obama in the upcoming election. Some 250-300 other billionaires made the remainder of a pledge drive netting 100 million bucks to the overall effort (and what does it say, really that the majority of the pledges came from two men?).

To this I say, ‘Thank you billionaires for holding yourselves up in a plush hotel all weekend, buying out all the restaurants so you wouldn’t be discovered AND sitting around on overstuffed couches plotting how to take back the country … then deciding all you really had to do was throw a hundred million dollars into the fight and you’ve done your job.’

If it were really that easy (and if we all had that kind of dough to throw around at our problems) … then would we really be in this predicament right now?

Money helps, don’t get me wrong. It’s noted Obama will have more than $1 billion in support for his reelection. And these generous donations by the Koch brothers and others allow us to get our message out there on billboards across America (ugh I have a story to write about a billboard here in Va that disgusts me … but another time); television stations in prime time and also gets us bombarded with email campaigns that basically end up in our SPAM folders.

These are all mediums we have learned to turn off. We run to get popcorn during commercials. We turn our radios down or change the channel when ads come on. And hopefully, we’re keeping our eyes on the road when driving and the billboards end up in our blind spot.

Continue to throw money after bad advertising and all we get are turned-off constituents who don’t know any more about our agenda than what they hear on Jon Stewart, Jay Leno and David Letterman. They think all they’re going to get in our leaflets or info packs is a bunch of negative campaigning, empty promises and rich-boy rhetoric …

It’s sobering when you think 100 million additional dollars doesn’t really make us any closer to winning a presidential election we so desperately need to get this country back on course. It’s damning … and all we can do (including me, the rich dudes in California and yes … even you) if we indeed can’t retake the White House this round, is point our fingers at ourselves for not using the common sense given to us to move along our cause.

Most of us of the conservative mindset are not rich. We’re not able to sit down and write enormous checks at all. But we can talk. We can stand up for what’s right in political circles and we also can make sure people know the truth about this government.

It pains me to no end to criticize an industry I love so dearly, but when I look at the liberal media now – it is sickening to see the bias and sensationalism. I know the media’s tactics. I’ve been involved in TV, newspapers and online for many years – back to when it was frowned upon to insert even an ounce of personal opinion into a story. Now, opinion , disgust, inflection and emotion rule a segment and taint real-life truth in “news” reporting. The media today isn’t going to give us the platform we need to get these points across.

Our candidates’ spots on Meet the Press or even during the debates do little to actually help us gain grown in the quicksand of politics. We’re sinking. And the people have got to take this election into their own hands.

The average voter does not take the time to watch multiple news sources or read more than one opinion on a political topic. In fact, they don’t even take time in most cases to research the Washington DC water-cooler chitchat. It converts to ‘fact’ and substance.

This doesn’t necessarily make people gullible … it makes them busy.

People of this country are thirsty for info in non-traditional ways because the traditional ways have become cynical, sensational and sometimes just horrifically stupid.

So … it’s up to us to be the evangelists of the change we want to make and need to make to keep this world safe and our country prosperous. Stop playing to people’s fears but speak truth, change and patriotism.

Rich dudes, take this cash and pay for people to get time off work and go door to door to talk to those who are undecided. Use the cash to throw a few big rallies for undecideds who can get their questions and concerns answered.  Organize a few bus tours of average joes and joannas to college campuses to help along the youth who really need to step up and take a stand for their future. …

… Step out from behind your check-writing desks and hit the pavement yourself. Use your notoriety for something besides throwing more campaign money down the drain. Show you’re willing to put money, action and reality behind your cause.

Time is running out. And it looks more and more like if we can’t get this election sewn up, we only have ourselves to blame for not doing all we can right now to turn the tables. And to truly make tables turn, we need all hands on deck … not just all money in the bank.

If you want to keep up to date on the Occupy movement, you’ve come to the right place. This is Breitbart.com’s running chronicle of Occupy’s chaos, political machinations and internal power struggles as we head towards the Occupy movement’s planned Spring rebirth.

The Occupy movement is the Obama administration’s shadow campaign; community organized shock troops helping to spread the President’s strategic 2012 campaign message that we need to stop income inequality. With Big Labor calling the tactical shots, Occupy is President Obama’s direct action to bring real radicalism into the mainstream American politics, while another faction of Occupy organizers struggles to extract the movement from the grips of the Democrat Party establishment.

The crowds may have dwindled with the cold weather, but there’s still a tremendous amount of Occupy activity preparing for an “American Spring.”  We’ll be keeping this page updated with links to all of our Occupy coverage.  Catch it all right here, in one place.

View All Occupy Stories on Big Government ** View All Occupy Stories on Big Journalism

View 2011 #OccupyWallStreet Rap Sheet

February 2012

Occupy DC Slams Brick in Cop’s Face; AP Spins as ‘Nonviolent’, 2/8/2012

Occupy Wall Street Now Promoting the Weather Underground, 2/8/2012

Ohio Dem Gives Occupiers Tickets to Disrupt Kasich Speech, 2/8/2012

Occupy DC Plans Chaos At CPAC, 2/7/2012

Conservative Group to Share Freedom Plaza with Occupy DC, 2/6/2012

U.S. Park Service Moves in Against Occupy D.C. Encampment at McPherson Square, 2/5/2012

#Occupiers Targeting Breitbart at CPAC, Threaten Physical Violence, 2/2/2012

Big Labor Plans Super Bowl Chaos, 2/2/2012

Why Geezers Are Occupy Wall Street’s True Enemy, 2/1/2012

EXCLUSIVE: #Occupy Plans Cross-Country Marches for Mayday: ‘We’ll Quarter Our Troops in Homes Across America!’, 2/1/2012

January 2012

Occupy Wall Street Shows How We Can’t Get Our Message Out Over Old Media Din, 1/31/2012

What’s Next? Occupy the Super Bowl, of Course, 1/31/2012

Racist Occupy Wall Street: ‘Absolutely’ Race Problems & Hypocrisy, Says Black Occupier, 1/31/2012

White House Backs US Park Police in Occupy Conflict–Calls Tolerance of Protestors ‘Appropriate’, 1/30/2012

Martin Luther King’s Family Halts Occupy Event at Atlanta Memorial Center, 1/30/2012

Adbusters Tells Occupiers to Take to the Streets of Chicago a la 1968, 1/30/2012

Occupy Oakland Burns American Flag While Reciting Anti-Semitic ‘Pledge of Allegiance’, 1/30/2012

Racist Occupy Wall Street: Movement ‘Clearly’ Has Race Problems, Says Occupy Newark Leader, 1/30/2012

Occupy Slams National Prayer Breakfast for ‘1 Percent’; Will Lead ‘People’s Prayer Breakfast’ in Protest, 1/29/2012

Media Endorsed OWS Movement: “F*** The Police”, 1/29/2012

EXCLUSIVE–Inside Occupy DC: ‘Obama Is Not Why the US Park Police Are Letting Us Stay’, 1/29/2012

New #OccupyOakland Violence: Police Injured, 100 Arrested as Left’s ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Movement Returns, 1/29/2012

SUPER PACs: Occupy the Courts and the Fight for Free Speech, 1/27/2012

President Obama’s State of the Union & 2012 Campaign Based On Occupy’s ‘Income Inequality’ Messaging, 1/24/2012

One Occupier’s Sad Story Of Foreclosure Is A Bit Less Sad Than Reported By The Press, 1/24/2012

Media Hypes Occupy’s Rose Parade “Octopus” Float, 1/1/2012

View All Occupy Stories on Big Government ** View All Occupy Stories on Big Journalism

View 2011 #OccupyWallStreet Rap Sheet