If you own a business, company, or farm, sign in to sponsor National School Choice Week. Ask your local educational parents’ organization to be a sponsor and, perhaps, to host an event or activity focusing on school choice. Share this video with your local school boards, private schools, and parent groups.

Imagine a country in which our children’s first memorable experience of liberty and freedom is their parents’ ability to choose where and how they are educated, without the intervention of government! Their mindset from there on in will be: How can I make sure my liberty and freedoms are protected?

Last fall, Harkin released a report that his office claimed detailed a host of transgressions on the part of for-profit or “career” colleges from misuse of student loan money to misleading counseling services and high default rates among graduates. The report was criticized by Senate Republicans as “unfair,” and Republicans boycotted subsequent hearings. It was later revealed that the report, compiled – with Harkin’s help – by the GAO, was faulty and many of its findings either fabricated or unusable and the GAO issued fix:

In November 2010, the GAO was forced to release a significantly changed report. The correction affected 16 of the 28 findings in the original report. The bias of the original report was also reflected in the fact that all 16 revisions were all of the same type: changing flawed statements that cast the for-profits in the worst possible light. Error after error took statements out of context or did not accurately portray what was said.

The report, however, had Harkin’s desired effect. Just days after the report was presented at a Senate hearing, the value of for-profit schools’ stock dropped 14% and companies that ran free-market educational facilities lost over $4 billion dollars.

A later journalistic  investigation revealed an even darker heart to the study. The website Daily Caller obtained a series of emails and memos detailing how Harkin and his staff had pressured the GAO, demanding the inclusion of detail after detail even after the deadline to the report drew close. One staffer even explained that these detail demands were heavily responsible for the GAO reports gross innaccuracies:

“The team’s unwillingness to say no to the additional insertion of details at the end of a job created some of our most obvious inaccuracies,” the email says, citing pressure internally at GAO for the inclusion of these “details” as well as from “stakeholders” and “congressional staffers.”…

The internal evaluation email says one specific “detail” demand in particular drove “most of our corrections.” The detail was a summary of how many schools made deceptive claims about graduation rates and accreditation questions in the form of “X of 15 schools,” the email says.

When asked about the emails and messages, Harkin couldn’t remember the time frames and denied having influence over the report. Later investigations, though, showed that not only had Harkin had a significant hand in altering the report, but that his staff may have been involved in coaching the testimony of a key witness after one person who testified in front of Congress was unable or unwilling to give them the testimony they were looking for without “help” from outside special interests.

Top aides to Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin collaborated with a special interest group and a law firm with a financial stake in the matter to edit the written and oral testimony of a witness at a key investigative hearing last year, ….Officials from The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) and the James, Hoyer, Newcomer & Smiljanich law firm edited Josh Pruyn’s testimony for a pivotal Aug. 4, 2010 hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), as did Harkin aides.

Pruyn, a disillusioned former employee of the for-profit Westwood College online, testified about high-pressure sales tactics used to enroll new students at the school. But ethics experts say the involvement of outside groups undermines the credibility of his testimony.

And that’s not even the end. While preparing to make his claims against for-profit education, Harkin met with noted short seller Steve Eisman who had an interest in seeing for-profit education stocks decline and participated in and shared his thoughts on for-profit education with $10K-per head meetings with groups of investment bankers with a history of short-selling entire industries. Industry analysts later reported to Inside Higher Ed that these meetings brokered important relationships between Harkin and investment companies whose clients would be well served by documents Harkin could produce from for-profit colleges through his own investigations and from actions Harkin could take to regulate or control the for-profit education industry.

So, of course, given these circumstances, is anyone willing to trust Harkin’s next “blockbuster report” due out any day purporting to eviscerate the for-profit education industry once again?

The Obama Administration certainly followed Harkin’s lead in approving a host of rules that restrict the for-profit education industry, even when they failed to address similar (and sometimes more egregious) shortcomings in not-for-profit and public education, despite all of the red flags. Since the Administration is so willing to simply rubber stamp the “findings” of a Senator who looks to be serving the needs of investment bankers rather than the American people, perhaps its time that the public put a more watchful eye on education policy coming out of this White House.

I was referring to Hassan Shibly, a representative of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who spoke at Tampa’s Steinbrenner High School in November. After I broke the story at my website Atlas Shrugs on December 4, giving specifics of where and when the CAIR rep spoke, and then published the article in the Thinker, “Hamas High School in Florida?,” patriots made hundreds of calls and sent hundreds of letters, emails, Tweets and Facebook messages in protest to Steinbrenner school officials.

The main person responsible was Kelly R. Miliziano, a teacher in the Social Studies Department at Steinbrenner. And she announced Wednesday that the school has scheduled additional religious speakers to balance the CAIR operative — a Hindu priest or a Christian pastor.

The problem with that is that Shibly is a political speaker. A Hindu priest or Christian pastor won’t counter the poisonous propaganda that Shibly spews to our impressionable young minds. An informed counter-jihad speaker such as Robert Spencer, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan or I myself must be given a chance to speak, so as to counter the lies of Hamas-tied CAIR.

Hamas-linked CAIR should not be speaking at all, but if the public school shills insist on presenting jihadi views, they must provide freedom lovers with the same opportunity. Further, political speakers should be off limits on school grounds.

Meanwhile, the email exchanges between CAIR and Steinbrenner High School are revealing. Miliziano wrote this in a November 14 email: “Every year I invite a representative from CAIR to speak to our AP World History Students.” After CAIR-Tampa responded favorably, Miliziano wrote again: “Over the years I have had many speakers from CAIR come to my classes, and it has been such a good learning experience for the students.”

Miliziano said that she “regularly asks” Shibly to speak. This is despite the fact that Shibly has a track record of defending jihad terrorist groups and acting as an apologist for the worldwide jihad and Islamic supremacism. Following the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War, Shibly granted legitimacy to the jihad terrorist group Hezb’allah by characterizing it as a “resistance movement” that provides valued social services to the Lebanese people. “They’re absolutely not a terrorist organization,” Shibly said, and “any war against them is illegitimate.”

Yet Miliziano refused to respond to parents’ requests to vet the notorious Mr. Shibly. Instead, she attacked the parents who complained. She even called parents’ concerns about CAIR “baseless and Islamophobic.” Yet although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has many links to Islamic supremacist and jihad terror groups. CAIR’s cofounders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad attended a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they conspired with Hamas operatives to raise funds for Hamas. And several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various jihad-related crimes.

This should be grounds for Miliziano’s immediate dismissal. Freedom lovers should urge Steinbrenner’s principal, Brenda Grasso, to fire Miliziano at once demand equal time for freedom fighters, while calling upon Steinbrenner High cease and desist from inviting Muslim Brotherhood groups to speak to public school students. Call for Ms. Miliziano’s removal. Demand equal time for freedom fighters. Brenda Grasso’s email is brenda.grasso@sdhc.k12.fl.us.

One parent of a Steinbrenner student, whose child went through Shibly’s indoctrination, wrote me that his daughter told him that Shibly said that “only 4% or 6% of Muslims were terrorists,” and that his presentation was so positive toward Islam as to be “borderline proselytizing.”

This parent went to Steinbrenner the morning of December 5 and spoke to Kelly King, the Assistant Principal for Curriculum. King confirmed that the speaker who addressed his daughter’s class was indeed a representative from Hamas-linked CAIR. “I explained to Ms. King,” wrote the parent, “that I strongly objected to CAIR being involved in the school, and recited some of CAIR’s more infamous highlights. She replied that the presentation was part of a history of religion unit in their history class. I told her that I have no problem with students being taught the history of Islam, but if the school was going to have a speaker do that, they should invite an Imam, not a representative from a religious based political organization, particularly one with such a dubious history.”

In response, King equated “a Christian pastor to a PAC” and ultimately referred the parent to Miliziano, who said that she regularly invited Shibly to give presentations, and “that the statements I had made about CAIR were baseless and Islamophobic,” even though the parent had expressly told her that he had no problem with the school bringing in an imam to discuss the history of Islam. When the parent tried to explain to her that “the school was associating itself with a religious-based political organization that propagandizes for Islam & Sharia, and are terrorist apologists,” Miliziano “completely dismissed these concerns.”

And despite Miliziano’s assurances that a Hindu priest and a Christian pastor would address the class, so far only Shibly has done so.

This is unconscionable. Freedom lovers must demand equal time.

Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and the author of the WND Books title “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance” and The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster).

Woodbrook Elementary, (principal Lisa Molinaro), allowed leftist activists into the school to train third graders in writing songs which were performed at an assembly organized by an outside group –  Kid Pan Alley – in October of this year.  The tune the 3^rd graders “wrote” and performed could have come from the soundtrack at Zuccotti park, minus the drug overdoses and rapes.

Some people have it all,

but they don’t think that they have enough

They want more money

A faster ride

They’re not content

Never satisfied

Yes-  they are the 1 percent

I used to be one of the 1 percent

I worked all the time

Never saw my family

Couldn’t make life rhyme

Then the bubble burst

It really, really hurt

I lost my money

Lost my pride

Lost my home

Now I’m part of the 99

I used to be sad now I’m satisfied

Cause I really have enough

Though I lost my yacht and plane

Didn’t need that extra stuff

Could have been much worse

You don’t need to be first

Cause I’ve got my friends

Here by my side

Don’t need it all

I’m happy to be part of the 99.

Remember, these are third graders.  The simplistic left wing economic nonsense of this ditty boggles the mind.  But to an impressionistic third grader, it plants poisonous seeds at odds with long egalitarian American traditions that disdain class hatred.  It mocks American traditions of industry, hard work and accomplishment.  It teaches the young to distrust and dislike, which of course is a tactic employed by thug cultures and governments throughout history.

Kid Pan Alley’s infiltration into government schools goes well beyond Woodbrook Elementary in Charlottesville.  They have a presence in Payne Elementary in Lynchburg (VA), Union Elementary in Montpelier (VT), Campbell Court Elementary in Martinsville (VA), Burnley Elementary in Charlottesville (VA), Thompson Elementary in Marshall (VA), Pierce Elementary in Remington (VA), Red Hill Elementary in Virginia, Brownsville Elementary in Crozet (VA), and many many more.

Consider the results of Kid Pan Alley’s residency inside Parker Elementary Waimea, Hawaii.  They spent a week inside the school writing the song “Walk to Japan” with an apocalyptic environmental message.  “Reduce, reuse and recycle, maybe it’s time to face what we messed up, cause if we don’t save the ocean, we’ll have to walk to Japan.”

When you consider the leftist activists who introduced this garbage into Woodbrook Elementary, the agenda is even more clear.  Kid Pan Alley receives money from the William and Mary Greve Foundation.

The Greve Foundation funds many other causes at odds with American traditions, including the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which is run by a 9-11 conspiracy theorist.  The Greve Foundation is headed by John Kiser, III, author of Communist Entrepreneurs : Unknown Innovators in the Global Economy.  (From a review: “the book is of value in confronting tired stereotypes about the inherent inferiority of technology under Communism.”)  Kiser is from Sperryville, Virginia, which might explain why so many Virginia elementary schools.

You can watch Kid Pan Alley’s video “If I Change One Thing” here for another whiff of Occupy.  The kids sing the answer: “If I could change one thing, I’d change all the rules.  Freedom would be free.  I’d be my own boss no matter what the cost.”  Sort of like a mob.

The nonsense continues in the song:  “What if kids could vote, its love that sets us free, when everyone has what they needed.  There would be no more war. Yeah, that’s what kids are for.”

Kid Pan Alley is also skilled at messaging in subtle ways.  It’s not often you find such veiled disdain for this group of heroes.  From Kid Pan Alley’s Changing the History of the World:  “Each generation adds to the history of the world, each generation does it’s part, it doesn’t have to be winning World War II.”  Why choose the Greatest Generation as a contrast?  Was it because the contrast between liberty and tyranny was so stark then, so clear to most Americans in that age?  Was it because moral relativism had few adherents among those who won World War II?

I’ve just scratched the surface of Kid Pan Alley in this article.  There is no telling what other subtle and obvious leftist messages are being brought into government schools by Kid Pan Alley’s musical projects.  Does Kid Pan Alley receive any taxpayer money?  If so from whom, and how much?  What bureaucrats are making the decisions to fund this presence in schools throughout the country?  What are the backgrounds of the board members?  Perhaps the readers of BigGovernment can explore further themselves and report.

School Officials in the Racine Unified School District tell Big Government that they had no idea that the approved group, Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES), had become the youth arm of Voces De La Frontera (Voices of the Frontier/VDLF), a well-financed leftist movement with a membership of several thousand, headquartered in Milwaukee with two satellite offices in Racine and Kenosha.

According to sources within the school district, several hundred students have joined YES and affiliated themselves with VDLF, an organization that has also recruited some of the teachers–who apparently promote the group’s agenda in their classrooms.

Big Government learned about the organization’s infiltration after a reader found out that YES had been given authorization to post 15 posters throughout the school featuring a rising fist with the words “Join the Student Revolution.” The poster was a promotional ad for a “youth summit” (held December 3rd) where hundreds of VDLF members were also present.

According to Kate Werning, a 24-year old “youth organizer” hired by YES (the students had apparently pooled their money together to hire outside assistance), teenage members of YES are eligible to join VDLF once they are out of high school or college. Werning described their mission as one supporting “social justice” but also explained that many of the children have an “understandable desire to protect their families from deportation.”

Stacy Tapp, a spokeswoman from the Racine Unified School District, confirmed that, but she added that school district officials were under the impression the group’s mission was limited to immigration and equality issues.

“They are a large student group within the district,” Stacy Tapp told this reporter in a telephone interview. “They’ve been active in many issues, but we’ve mostly known them to support racial equality on Martin Luther King Day, participate in ‘Get Out the Vote,’ and support the DREAM Act, which would make sense since many of them come from immigrant families. The extent of their involvement with this other group wasn’t really on our radar.”

The DREAM Act (Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors), if passed, would provide a pathway to permanent residency to certain illegal aliens of good moral character. Tapp says there are YES chapters at most schools within the school district and that they’ve been active in a great deal of “community organizing.” Sources tell Big Government that VDLF supports immigrant rights but also supports “the right to full employment,” a core principle of socialism.

A number of school administrators at William Horlick High and other schools have openly promoted the group and even participated in VDLF activities. Allen Levie, the group’s student advisor at William Horlick High, was reportedly physically carried out by police from the state capitol during a VDLF protest, and he was also apparently arrested in 2008 for obstructing police officers from interrogating a student about an unrelated matter.

Levie reportedly posted a YES poster in his classroom window.

Congressional sources from U.S. Representative Paul Ryan’s office confirmed that Horlick’s guidance counselor was one of three VDLF members arrested outside their Racine premises during a vigil, and school-based sources told Big Government that another teacher at a neighboring school has also promoted the YES group among her students.

Wisconsin became a hotbed for leftist activism earlier this year after Governor Scott Walker proposed and successfully passed a law ending most collective bargaining rights for most state employees in March. Since then, Democrats have been attempting to organize a statewide recall election to remove Gov. Walker from office.

Local sources within the school district tell Big Government that YES started at the school about 10 years ago, and became the youth arm of VDLF around 2004. Those familiar with the group say that their student members sell red t-shirts year-round emblazoned with the phrase “Solidarity!” The shirts are sold on school property, and feature numerous little fists charging a larger fist.

Tapp says the group has about 15 chapters at various schools in the district.

“We didn’t really know they were working so closely with this other group until you called us. We care about our kids’ First Amendment rights, but our first priority is protecting our kids so we are going to have to discuss the effect this outside group may be having inside our schools at this point. Like I said, it wasn’t really on our radar before, but it’s on our radar now.”

School Officials in the Racine Unified School District tell Big Government that they had no idea that the approved group, Youth Empowered in the Struggle (YES) had become the youth arm of Voces De La Frontera (Voices of the Frontier/VDLF), a well financed leftist movement with a membership of several thousand, headquarters based in Milwaukee and two satellite offices in Racine and Kenosha.

According to sources within the school district, several hundred students have joined YES and affiliated themselves with VDLF, an organization that has also recruited some of the teachers and who openly promote the group’s agenda in their classrooms.

Big Government learned about the organization’s infiltration after a reader found out that YES had been given authorization to post 15 posters throughout the school featuring a rising fist with the words, “Join the Revolution.” The poster was a promotional ad for a “youth summit” (held December 3rd) where hundreds of VDLF members were also present.

According to Kate Werning, a 24-year old “youth organizer” hired by YES (the children apparently pooled their money together to hire outside assistance), school-age members of YES are eligible to join VDLF once they are out of high school or college. Werning described their mission as one supporting “social justice,” but also explained that many of the children have an “understandable desire to protect their families from deportation.”

Stacy Tapp, a spokeswoman from the Racine Unified School District confirmed that, but added that school district officials were under the impression the group’s mission was limited to immigration and equality issues.

“They are a large student group within the district,” Stacy Tapp told this reporter in a telephone interview. “They’ve been active in many issues, but we’ve mostly known them to support racial equality on Martin Luther King Day, participate in “Get Out the Vote,” and support of the DREAM Act, which would make sense since many of them come from immigrant families. The extent of their involvement with this other group wasn’t really on our radar.”

The DREAM Act (Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors), if passed would provide a pathway to permanent residency to certain illegal aliens of good moral character. Tapp says there are YES chapters at most schools within the school district and that they’ve been active in a great deal of “community organizing.” Sources tell Big Government that VDLF supports immigrant rights, but also supports “the right to full employment,” a core principle of socialism.

A number of school administrators at William Horlick High and other schools have openly promoted the group and even participated in VDLF activities. Allen Levie, the group’s student advisor at William Horlick High was reportedly physically carried out by police from the state capitol during a VDLF protest, and he was also arrested in 2008 for obstructing police officers from interrogating a student about an unrelated matter.

Levie reportedly posted a YES poster in his classroom window.

Congressional sources from U.S. Representative Paul Ryan’s office confirmed that Horlick’s guidance counselor was one of three VDLF members arrested outside their Racine based office during a vigil, and school based sources told Big Government that another teacher at a neighboring school has promoted the YES group among her students.

Wisconsin became a hotbed for leftist activism earlier this year after Governor Scott Walker proposed and successfully passed a law ending collective bargaining rights for workers in March. Since then, efforts have been made by a citizens group called United Wisconsin to hold a “recall election,” and the group has already collected more than 300,00 of the required 540,000 signatures under state law.

Local sources within the school district tell Big Government that YES started about 10 years ago and became the youth arm of VDLF around 2004. Those familiar with the group say that their student members continuously sells red t-shirts year-round with the phrase “Solidarity!” The shirts are sold on school property and feature numerous little fists charging a larger fist.

Tapp says the group has about 15 chapters at various schools in the district.

“We didn’t really know they were working so closely with this other group until you called us. We care about our kids’ First Amendment rights, but our first priority is protecting our kids so we are going to have to discuss the effect this outside group may be having inside our schools at this point. Like I said, it wasn’t really on our radar before, but it’s on our radar now.”

We’ve all had human moments. President Obama is still trying to find all 57 states. Ronald Reagan got lost somewhere on the Pacific Highway in an answer to a debate question. Gerald Ford ate a tamale without removing the husk. And tonight Rick Perry forgot the third agency he wants to eliminate. Just goes to show there are too damn many federal agencies.

The governor said it best afterwards: “I’m glad I had my boots on, because I sure stepped in it tonight.”

While the media froths over this all too human moment, we thought we would take this opportunity to ask your help in doing something much more constructive: write us to let us know what federal agency you would most like to forget.

Is it the EPA and its job-killing zealots? The NLRB and its czar-like dictates? The edu-crats at the Department of Education who aim to control your local curriculum?

Send your answer to forgetmenot@rickperry.org, and if you are on twitter join us in using a new twitter hashtag: #forgetmenot. And, if you could, throw in a $5 contribution for every agency you would like to forget. We hope you have a long list. And we promise we will write down every last idea. So we don’t forget.

Still standing in our Boots,

Team Perry