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YOU ARE PAYING FOR ICLEI--WHETHER YOUR CITY IS A MEMBER OR NOT

4/19/2013

Take a look at the Statewide Energy Efficiency Collaborative (SEEC). Here are the members' logos for you to examine. This is how UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development gets into your town, into your house, into your business, into your life, regardless of whether your city is an ICLEI member or not. This is in California but I'll bet if you do a little digging you'll find it in your state, too. The following is from SEEC's website.
http://californiaseec.org/about-seec/seec-partners

STATEWIDE ENERGY EFFICIENCY COLLABORATIVE (SEEC). 'An alliance to support local government.'

SEEC is a collaboration created and implemented by the following nonprofits and utilities:

The collaborative is designed to build upon the unique resources, expertise and local agency relationships of each nonprofit organization, as well as those of the four investor-owned utilities. Read more below about each SEEC partner.

This program is funded by California utility ratepayers and administered by Southern California Gas Company, San Diego Gas & Electric Company, Pacific Gas & Electric Company and Southern California Edison Company, under the auspices of the California Public Utilities Commission.

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COMMON CORE BACKLASH

4/15/2013

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The joke is that you can mess with my kids but don't touch my dog. Well, luckily it's not true that people--parents and educators---will stand quietly and allow their children to be abused by standardized testing and 'educational' programs. I almost typed 'pogroms'. Look it up.

So the Associated Press finally broke down and did a story on Common Core, but didn't name it. They focused in on just standardized testing and not on standardized curriculum. According to a former Bush operative who helped write No Child Left Behind, Sandy Kress, the problem is in 'overtesting.'   After the Associated Press adds a couple of columns to muddy the issue and not address standardized 'education' and data collection, Kress wraps up the article in phony concern for the children. Here's the quote: "This is about way more than testing," Kress said. "The question is whether we're (she means 'Society' here) willing to hold ourselves accountable. The question is whether there are consequences for adults and whether we're serous about all children meeting standards. This is a test of our culture and whether we're prepared to see these aspirations to reality. I worry that we're not going to pass this test."

She's worried that society won't be able to pull off the most massive, comprehensive social manipulation since Nazi Germany, Maoist China, and Soviet Russia. Worried.

Now I want to read you something from a book called The Gulag Archipelago. This book was written by a man who was a prisoner in Soviet Russia during the years of Lenin and Stalin. The book covers the years 1918-1956, and it's painful reading. The passage I'm going to share with you will answer your question: How can people do these things? Do they actually believe that they're doing the right thing? Why can't they listen to us?

"Ideology--that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. .. Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist?...Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return."   From Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago.

According to the Associated Press article, students all over the United States are refusing to take standardized tests. Opt-outs, boycotts, protests, and moratoriums are spreading.

REFUSE TO COLLABORATE. FIGHT COMMON CORE. DIRECT INSTRUCTION. VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS. OUTCOME BASED EDUCATION. LIFELONG LEARNING. WHOLE CHILD TRAINING. INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE.   WORKFORCE TRAINING.
IT'S ABOUT TRAINING YOU TO BE AN OBEDIENT GLOBAL CITIZEN.
ARE YOU?

   COMMON CORE IS AGENDA 21.

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BEHIND THE GREEN MASK: UN Agenda 21 goes to all WA legislators

4/8/2013

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A great non-partisan group of people in Washington state just arranged to have 147 books sent to their state legislators. I was really pleased to receive the following video with the great news.

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GOOD MORNING, NEW ENGLAND. WELCOME TO YOUR FUTURE

4/3/2013

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If there are still any skeptics out there walking around with a bag over their heads, it's time to pull the bag off and get busy. Honestly, you'd have to be a fool or on the payroll to deny what is going on.

So here is New England Futures, the Fat Albert of the regional plans in the Northeast (Granite State Future in New Hampshire is part of this). I want you to take a look at who the players are (I almost typed 'payers') and who the payees are, too. This is a huge plan involving all aspects of life. You'll be told that you'll die as a town if you're not part of the 'region' and then you'll hear what it takes to participate. Just your sovereignty, that's all. Just your freedom, your ability to use your property, to make a living, to teach your children without coercion, to move freely. Just your life. This is not an exaggeration. And now---New England Futures. From their website.

Partners
The New England Futures Project is led by the Partnership for New England, a collaboration of seven organizations with a commitment to regional solutions to New England’s challenges. The members of the Partnership are:

The Citistates Group
Institute for Sustainable Communities
New England Council
New England Initiative at UMass-Lowell
Mt. Auburn Associates
New England Association of Regional Councils
The Orton Family Foundation

The Citistates Group (a lead partner). The Citistates team, headed by writers Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson, is the only group in the United States with a track record of preparing journalistic, region-wide-based series looking at current and future strategic issues and suggesting some ways they might be addressed. Their reports have appeared in 23 major metropolitan dailies, among them the Arizona Republic, Seattle Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, Miami Herald and Boston Globe. Peirce authored the 1976 book, The New England States, with a broad look at New England as a whole followed by chapters examining “people, politics and power” in each of the six states. He also wrote Over New England, companion to the New England Public Television program. He lives part of each year in New Hampshire and writes the country’s first nationally syndicated column focused on states and cities, distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group. Johnson, with Peirce, co-authored the 1993 book: Citistates: How Urban America Can Prosper in a Competitive World. A former chief of staff to a Minnesota governor, Johnson served four years as board chair of the Twin Cities’ Metropolitan Council. Farley Peters, a veteran government activist, serves as business manager and speaking agent for the Citistates Group.

Institute for Sustainable Communities (a lead partner and fiscal agent). ISC is an independent nonprofit organization that provides training, technical assistance, and financial support to communities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), businesses, and government agencies. ISC’s mission is to help communities around the world address environmental, economic, and social challenges to build a better future shaped and shared by all. Working in communities ranging in size from small rural villages to large industrial cities, ISC provides practical assistance that results in citizen leaders, organizations, and communities having the capacity to build on and extend the impact of projects long after ISC’s departure. ISC has a total of 92 staff and offices in Montpelier, Vermont; Washington, D.C., Ukraine, Russia, and the Balkans.

New England Council. Founded in 1925, the Council was the region’s first collective business voice and continues to coordinate the six states’ federal legislative policy, working with the region’s U.S. House delegations and 12 U.S. Senators. It also launches special projects of region-wide impact such as a recent “Creative Economy Initiative” that highlighted the major economic potential of the region’s fine arts, graphic design, theater, advertising, fashion, and web creation capacity.

New England Initiative at UMass-Lowell. Based at the Center for Industrial Competitiveness at UMass-Lowell, this newly-formed organization is headed by David Soule, former director of the Boston area Metropolitan Area Planning Council. The Initiative is assisting major regional groups research and address critical challenges shared across the six-state region.

Mt. Auburn Associates. This consulting organization has focused on economic development strategies and analysis of regional futures in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and across the U.S. Mt. Auburn forges broad economic strategies that merge sophisticated blueprints for region-wide business openings and wealth generation (grounded in new economic opportunities with a special eye to equity and social justice issues. The group’s specialty is to develop, on one side, economic cluster development, commercial revitalization, entrepreneurship and small business development), with a corresponding focus on workforce development and imaginative community development. A recent report dealt with economic potentials across New England’s northern tier.

New England Association of Regional Councils. This organization was created to increase the effectiveness of regional councils throughout New England. Its mission is to strengthen the capability of local councils, to enhance the regional concept of planning and development, and to spark educational efforts for the general public, governmental agencies, and public and private organizations.

The Orton Family Foundation. The Vermont-based Orton Family Foundation seeks to engage and empower citizens in land use planning as a pathway to sustainable communities. In partnership with non-profit organizations, government agencies, business associations, and other intermediaries, the foundation advances its mission by promoting a diverse suite of planning tools and techniques while cultivating a deep network of civic innovators. The foundation conducts its work primarily in the Northeast and Rocky Mountain West.

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GUEST POST: CHARLOTTE ISERBYT ON COMMON CORE

4/2/2013

7 Comments

We don't want Common Core even if it teaches the Ten Commandments. The reason is this: Common Core is a product of the federal government and no matter what kind of curriculum/assessment it imposes on us, it can be changed at the whim of the federal government (The United States Department of Education in bed with OECD and UNESCO).

If one wants to stop Common Core, one MUST abolish the U.S. Dept. of Education and probably all the state depts. of education which are funded by the federal Department and which take their orders from the federal Department of Education.

This is what I called for on the back of my little "Back to Basics Reform or OBE, Skinnerian International Curriculum, 1985, boycotted by ALL major conservative groups.

When I blew the whistle on Project BEST, Better Education Skills through Technology" grant which put computer software into all the states (all subjects) I was fired from my position as Senior Policy Advisor, U.S. Dept. of Education.

Changing the Common Core is like ripping all the tentacles off an octopus, but leaving the head.

Ronald Reagan did us in when he did not fulfill his promise to abolish the U.S. Dept. of Education.

Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt
Former Senior Policy Advisor
U.S. Department of Education

7 Comments

YOU ARE PAYING FOR ICLEI--WHETHER YOUR CITY IS A MEMBER OR NOT

COMMON CORE BACKLASH

BEHIND THE GREEN MASK: UN Agenda 21 goes to all WA legislators

GOOD MORNING, NEW ENGLAND. WELCOME TO YOUR FUTURE

GUEST POST: CHARLOTTE ISERBYT ON COMMON CORE

And the winner is...

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