Dear Folks,
These are recent impressions about destructive power dominating our country: last night, I saw an ad by the oil industry, each big co. making billions and with billions of tax breaks, arguing that increased taxes on them would raise oil and gas prices. I watched Rachel Maddow wailing with John McCaine's daughter through this great gathering of gun buyers: mostly big men looking at assault weapons, and then a switch to a Pittsburg alderman taking Rachel to the street which at one time was considered the most violent street in the nation. Instead now we see literally miles of boarded up six and eight flats. In his area, five thousand houses are boarded up. All of this happening because of gun wars, with assault weapons dominating.
He says: "We are powerless because now our state legislature is totally controlled by the gun lobby."
In Newsweek, March 28-April 4, "What's Killing NPR," NPR top reporters such as Steve Inskeep and Ira Glass are arguing that its management has lost its guts, that it's not fighting for its moderate stance and caliber of programs that service the conscience and common sense of our nation. Same issue, "Obama's War on Schools, " He's still allowing The No Child Left Behind Act to stand even if "it has been deadly to pubic education."
I know several creative teachers, some here in our new system. One recently went to a conference of art teachers, 3,500 in number on West Coast. They feel that they have to be subversives in our school systems, in order to awaken the imagination and the critical thinking of their kids. Each of us are challenged to speak up.
Danger: we will drown as a democracy in a sea of money and power.
John G
