In his never-ending campaign to strip away any power from duly-elected State Superintendent of Education Glenda Ritz, Governor Mike Pence has removed oversight of the voucher program from the State Education Department. Apparently he won’t be satisfied until Ritz has nothing but a key to the bathroom.
Here’s a thought. Ritz won more votes than Pence. How about Ritz for Governor in 2016? Turn the rascals out! Restore decency to the Hoosier State!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The situation in Indiana is so sad to me, having mostly grown up there. The mentality that citizens have to tolerate idiotic egomaniacs until change comes is crippling. We saw with Pence’s discriminatory anti-gay legislation that the national threat to take business elsewhere was the only thing that made a difference. Unfortunately, with public education, we all know where the money is and those holding the purse strings fully support Pence’s privatization program.
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Why hasn’t anyone taken Pence to court for SCADs?
“State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADs) are actions undertaken in direct violation of sworn oaths of office to circumvent, exploit, or otherwise undermine or subvert laws and institutions to advance personal or political gain and/or to silence or otherwise suppress public foreknowledge and awareness.”
http://statecrimesagainstdemocracy.blogspot.com/
http://dehaven-smith.com/faq/default.html
New research in the journal American Behavioral Scientist (Sage publications, February 2010) addresses the concept of “State Crimes Against Democracy” (SCAD). Professor Lance deHaven-Smith from Florida State University writes that SCADs involve highlevel government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities for political advantages and power. Proven SCADs since World War II include McCarthyism (fabrication of evidence of a communist infiltration), Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (President Johnson and Robert McNamara falsely claimed North Vietnam attacked a US ship), burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in effort to discredit Ellsberg, the Watergate break-in, Iran-Contra, Florida’s 2000 Election (felon disenfranchisement program), and fixed intelligence on WMDs to justify the Iraq War.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/state-crimes-against-democracy/17922
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Don’t worry Lloyd, Stumblebum Ford took care of those crimes by pardoning Tricky Dick.
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Heard about this today on NPR.
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They’re back! :
“Former Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett is helping a former top aide start an Indianapolis charter school, according to documents filed with the state.
Plans for the ACE Preparatory Academy were submitted to the Indiana Charter School Board for consideration last month, and a public hearing on the proposal is planned for April 29. Bennett is listed as a top adviser for the school, which would be just south of Broad Ripple.
The school will be led by Anna Shults, a former Indiana teacher of the year and the former head of Common Core compliance for Bennett in Florida. Shults, along with the rest of Bennett’s top Florida staff, were dismissed in 2013 in the wake of an earlier Indiana grade-changing scandal that cost Bennett his job running the Florida education system.”
“Bennett, meanwhile, has kept a low-profile, working with the Institute for Quality Education, which was started by Gov. Mike Pence’s chief fundraiser and is a supporter of the ACE school proposal.”
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2015/04/14/bennett-helping-former-aide-open-indy-charter-school/25773395/
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Goes a long way to explaining things, eh!?!?!
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It’s a club:
“Governor Mitch Daniels and U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan are planning a town hall meeting Friday in Indianapolis. The event at the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School will feature the two visiting classrooms and then taking questions. The charter school opened in 2004 and has about 400 students in grades 6 through 12.”
Mitch Daniels led the charge on the attack on labor unions in the midwest. He was first. All of the rest of the GOP governors followed him.
The Obama Administration promoted him and his ed policies for years. They were his biggest cheerleader.
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Can you believe the demise in just a little over a decade?
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Is there no such thing as impeachment in Indiana? Clearly Pence is overstepping his boundaries. He is stripping an ELECTED official of all their duties to please BIG BUSINESS (ie his buddies). Is this not cause for dismissal/impeachment?
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Unfortunately he has done it through the legislature…a supermajority of Republicans.
And, lest we hold our breath for Democrats to come to our aid (assuming we can get people in this state to vote for any) John Gregg, the candidate who lost to Pence in 2012, just threw his hat into the ring for 2016…and he was a DFER. Perhaps he’s changed…but we’ll have to see.
It doesn’t make me hopeful for the future of public education in Indiana.
http://dfer.org/gifts-of-education-reform-in-indiana/
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Sadly, Indiana will continue to allow the bums to do what they want… either the majority of voters are apathetic OR they’re too busy trying to keep their heads above water working 3 jobs to pay attention to the politics. An interesting phrase I learned at NPE this weekend: “Lean Production.” It means, keeping the workers SOOOO busy and overworked, they don’t have the time or energy to give a hoot what the people in charge are doing… so, as Peter Greene says, “The resistance meets on the weekends.” Unless they’re independently wealthy or retired.
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But that’s the orientation of the entire federal government and the NGA. It’s the reason why Americans generally don’t get the vacations Europeans do. It explains why we don’t have single payer healthcare here.
Keep them dumbed down, exhausted, and stressed, and they will behave like good little boys and girls who never question big daddy and big mommy.
Most Americans are a bunch of children who don’t how to negotiate and assert, and then when things get to be unfair and rough, they blow up and tantrum.
But I see the failed trickle down policies since the Reagan era finally rousing the lethargic, self absorbed, sugar and TV addicted children, and I feel, with complete compassion and even some realistic hope, that it will facilitate the children to grow up and mature. How long and how far that growth spurt will last is to be seen, no?
These are the growing pains of a still young America. I sense shifts in public awareness. Just look at the national opt-out movement as a prime example of awareness, consensus, organization, and mobilization. It’s collectivist thinking and behavior at its best . . . . !
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I just wish I got the vacations Americans get.
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At the risk of angering some, I have to point out that this is… Indiana. My Dad was raised there; it was birthplace to KKK in his day (1930’s). He was taught bizarre things about Catholic priests & spent bored evening hrs in souped-up cars hunting ni^^^rs in the cornfields. An outlier, he escaped to the steel mills & Navy & found his way East to a liberal atmosphere that suited him. But his ignorant clan is still there. And we have a whole younger contingent that’s moved back there to live because it’s cheap– cheaper than ever since the family farms have gone under & the steel mills up north are gone. Cheap is as cheap does. The politicos in Indiana have a very easy time of it, All they have to do is touch on the sore points.
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I had hoped this post would be censored by Diane by now. It made me really uncomfortable about posting here anymore, but I feel I should speak up for myself and my neighbors who are not at all as you describe.
The good people of Indiana put Superintendent Ritz in office against the wishes of the politicos. Your venom toward us is misplaced.
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You will have to wait for eons for Diane Ravitch to censor any thing on this blog. She must love the cheap shots taken by her followers.
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Thank you, Raj. I don’t censor comments. I have kicked people off when they insult me or when they habitually use certain four-letter words or when they get deep into unsubstantiated conspiracy theories (like, the CIA was responsible for 9/11, the murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School never happened, or the new ESEA proposal would “medicalize” every child in the nation).
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If what the post is saying is true, no need to censor. Indiana is where the Klan started and there is still that element active in the U.S. Sunlight is always the best policy, not suppression of speech.
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Raj, censorship is not a good policy. Your statements are often inflammatory and anti-teacher, but they still appear for all to read. But the same freedom is often not extended to those supporting education on Reformer blogs and the pages of conservative politicians. Many of us have been deleted or blocked.
But if you want cheap shots or venom, go to any comment section of a conservative or even moderate web site when an article about teachers is posted. It will be an eye openor for you and makes our disagreements here look very tame in comparison.
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Thanks for the clarification Diane.
This is for all of the contributors to this blog. I am not now and never was and never will be against teachers and all others who genuinely believe that they are trying to do public good. I have relied on facts and pointed them out. But I certainly draw the line on name calling and the creation of facts.
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Mathvale: If wiki is right, the birthplace of KKK was Tennessee and the south, not Indiana. It might have found a home here, but that is true of many states, even some in the so-called liberal states. Indiana is, however, the birthplace of union leader Eugene Debs, and Carl Braden, civil rights activist, and was also home to Abraham Lincoln in his youth, and Levi Coffin and the underground railroad. Also, Bethree, the family farms that surround me are alive and well and don’t show any signs of having “gone under”.
Raj: I am myself a Ravitch follower and don’t have any disagreement with her on anything that I know of, not yet anyway. I was under the assumption (I guess I was wrong) that she wanted civil discussion on the blog, and objected to things like foul language and bigoted attacks people. I think lately the tone here has changed as attacks against Ravitch and like-minded people have ramped up. I’ll stay away from discussion from now on.
Diane: Thanks for the clarification that the rule of no insults applies only to you. And thanks also for your blog and all your hard work on education. I and all us “ignorant” Hoosiers living out here just because it’s “cheap” are very much in debt to you.
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The “rebirth” of the Klan in the 1920’s was indeed in Indiana…as well as a few other states.
That being said, not everyone in Indiana is a right wing, anti public education, whacko. Many are, I’ll admit, but there is a strong pro-public education contingent and we hope to prove it when the legislators who have done so much to decimate public schools in Indiana are up for reelection!
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Which public school district is slated for privatization next? This looks like a big political campaign by the ed reform movement. Must have a big project in the works.
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Why doesn’t Mike Pence get the promotion and attention Mitch Daniels got from the ed reform movement, including the Obama Administration?
They promoted Daniels like crazy, and Pence and Daniels are identical on education.
One would think if this was all about ed policy they’d be promoting Pence nationally. Daniels was everywhere, pontificating on public schools and his deep disappointment with the quality of the US workforce.
I hope no dirty, icky “politics” is entering into these data-driven decisions! 🙂
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Reblogged this on INDIANA, WE CAN DO BETTER and commented:
Here is a post from Diane Ravitch’s blog on the final legislative assault on Superintendent Glenda Ritz. Interesting suggestion at the end!
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Amen for Ritz for governor.
Already I see signs “Pence must go”.
I will not hold my breath. Common sense seems to be at a minimum in Indiana these days.
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