Your Credit Rating/Our Credit Rating Just got Cut!!

It seems rather crazy that in the world of 24/7 cable news that the very fact that our nation's Credit Rating was cut this last week has gone with barely a whisper from the corporate media. Could it be that there is some fear on the part of the media that such news may in some way impact the current perception by Main Street USA regarding this economy and the real truth about its underpinnings?

Credit rating agency Egan Jones (EJR) downgraded the United States on concern over the sustainability of our public debt. Egan Jones is one of the most important ratings firms in the world; they lowered the US credit level from AA+ to AA. The firm reduced the US from AAA to AA+ in July 2011, just before Standard & Poor’s did the same

Egan Jones further warned: “Without some structural changes soon, restoring credit quality will become increasingly difficult . . . without some structural changes soon, restoring credit quality will become increasingly difficult.” They added that there was a 1.2% probability of US default in the next 12 months. The company cited the fact that the US’s total debt, which now equals its total GDP, is rising and soon will eclipse the national GDP; the company sees the debt rising to 112% of the GDP by 2014.

So dire have economic conditions become in the United States that American freelance alternative press online columnist Allen Roland stated to Press TV this past week that the United States is experiencing a deep depression and cited the following facts:

“Reality is finally coming to the surface. The stock market is not the American economy. Eighty percent of the stock market is basically high frequency trading of the big boys playing games with their money.

And 61 percent of the American debt is being bought by, guess who? The Fed (US Federal Reserve Bank) – So we’re printing money. So let me give you the raw economic numbers, which basically what this is telling us – raw economic numbers about the American economy:

38 percent of all Americans are either considered to be low income or living in poverty; 57 percent of all children in the US are living in homes that are either considered to be low income or impoverished; the average amount of time a worker stays employed in the US is now over 40 weeks and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self-employed in 2006; today that number is 14.5 million.”

Most astounding to note in these horrible statistics about the US economy are that they are apparently welcomed by Obama who yesterday stated about the weekly jobs report: “We welcome today’s news that our businesses created another 121,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate ticked down…”

Failing to be mentioned by Obama, or his propaganda mainstream press corps lap-dogs, was that the only reason the US unemployment rate was able to be tagged lower was due to the record number of 88 million Americans dropping out of the work force because there are no jobs for them.

To how the Obama regime is really dealing with the catastrophic rate of unemployment, aside from keeping the American media from telling the truth, appears to be through mass arrests of those who dare to protest, and as of 29 March showed nearly 7,000 US citizens jailed for protesting in at least 113 separate cities.

Even worse, new reports from the United States are further warning that a new wave of home foreclosures is underway that will rival the upheaval seen by those who lived through the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

To how the Obama regime will deal with future instability caused by unprecedented economic dislocation and chaos Americans are being warned that their police forces have now adopted Israeli techniques which, in essence, labels all protesters as terrorists while at the same time the US Department of Homeland Security is still refusing to say why they ordered 450 million rounds of ammunition.

One of the rare exceptions to those American media organizations doing lap-dog service for the Obama regime is the highly respected lawyer and New York Times best selling author Glenn Greenwald who in his latest article in Salon Magazine writes: “The uncritical relationship and overlapping functions of government officials and establishment media organs are more severe than ever.”

Most sadly in all of these events, the once great United States, whose press freedoms were once legendary, has been placed at No. 47 on the world’s press freedom index by the internationally respected Reporters Without Borders (RSF) organization in a stunning move reflecting how deprived of real truth the American people truly are.

The great American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson once warned his fellow citizens, “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.”

With that warning going unheeded, however, the quote of the great American author Mark Twain seems to be the more appropriate one to use for this American generation, “There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.”

What Have Our Public Schools Become?

I would like to pose a simple question; are our public schools really about education anymore or more about some form of social engineering?

Ask yourself why it is you feel we need public schools in the first place and then read the following from Rick Gray from the Village News. I am sure you will have more questions than answers once you read his thoughts:

"Recently, in this space, I have challenged our superintendent’s plan to “reform” education in Chesterfield’s public schools. After three columns on that topic, I’m going to give it a break in hopes that parents, teachers and others with more at stake will take up the banner.
True, I have strong views on the subject, but, in a sense, I really don’t have a dog in this fight. I left public education eight years ago, for good, because of an earlier “reform” called SOLs.
Still, having devoted over a decade to teaching, and more years studying the theory and practice of school administration, education is a subject close to my heart. And it occurs to me that having spent so many words on what educational reform shouldn’t be, I should begin to outline some ideas on what it might be.
Because there are a great many things we could do to improve our schools, if and when Americans ever get serious about public education.
Now, some of these ideas will surprise my readers. In the field of education, the big issues are seldom discussed. As in the Catholicism of the Middle Ages, most of the fundamental questions have been settled by authority. Instead of seeking the right answer, or even a better answer, the educational establishment has simply forestalled discussion by adopting one answer and declaring all other opinions heretical.
As a result, most of the educational debates covered by the media are arguments over detail – in effect, discussions of how to rearrange the deck chairs on The Titanic.
No one discusses changing course. But let’s try.
The most fundamental question never discussed is this: “Why do we have public schools?”
We don’t often ask the question, because nearly all Americans agree that schools are necessary. But because we don’t ask the question, an interesting situation has developed:
America’s public schools lack a mission statement.
Now, if you ask, every school district – and every school – can dig out some sort of mission statement. But examined closely, these missions statements are incredibly vague, phrased in terms of warm, fuzzy intentions such as “educational excellence for all children”, or “an atmosphere of inclusion”, or “preparation for life”.
None of which sets any goals, or, really, means anything.
In simple truth, the last time America had any meaningful educational goals was between 1957 and 1969, from the time the Soviets launched Sputnik, starting the “space race”, until we claimed victory by landing on the Moon.
Since July, 1969, a month before I started college, Americans haven’t truly been able to answer the question: “Why do we have public schools?”
Not even highly paid educational bureaucrats with Ph.Ds or Ed.Ds can answer this question in a meaningful way, setting forth clear goals which delineate what our schools should do, and what they should not; what our schools should produce.

As a result, over the past forty years, we have loaded all sorts of non-academic tasks onto our schools, creating an ever-more-muddled set of expectations.

We expect our schools to provide nutritious meals and fight childhood obesity on a budget of pocket change.

We expect them to teach sex education without offending parents, religious groups or secularists.

We expect them to help college-bound students choose the right schools, and help the rest of their students acquire critical job skills while studying an essentially college-prep curriculum.

We expect them to provide social services for all manner of troubled youth.

We expect them to teach our children to be polite, respectful and law-abiding, without hurting their feelings (or their backsides) – and without suggesting that parents have some obligation to assist in the process.

We expect them to treat all children, and their parents with absolute respect, even if those children and parents refuse to return the favor.

We expect them to provide babysitting services into the late teens for unfortunate kids whose intellectual abilities will never be equal to the demands of the secondary curriculum.

We expect them to provide babysitting services for all young people into their late teens, despite the fact that these kids are, during non-school hours, free to come and go as they please .

Now, to be sure, most of the things we expect our schools to do should be done by somebody. But when we ask schools to do them, the result is that they become less and less like schools and more like all-purpose social service agencies.

So here’s a suggestion: We should decide what we want our schools to do, what kind of young citizens we expect them to produce, in clear, specific terms.

And, having done that, we should create other entities, non-educational entities, to take care of the other stuff.
Because, as of now, our schools are trying to do far too much and accomplishing far too little"