Guest,
Do better than shopworn sarcasm, to important an issue. Read my comment on this issue from last week's broadcast.
Mr. Mack

Is it at all surprising that Mr. Lowry in his 'rant' attacked Mayor De Blasio and his program of innovation, that is really an imitation of the Charter School Model? Which bypasses the Board of Education and the Teachers Union. Mayor De Blasio is simply attempting to co-opt the utterly bankrupt Neo-Liberal educational model, that has it's genesis in Pinochet's Chile. Perhaps the mayor thinks that he, as a democratically elected official, has a more defensible civic position that a for profit corporation.
The 'Market' has no place in the education of children,or anyone. Diane Ravitch has become disillusioned with both the Charter Schools and No Child Left Behind. See this news story in the New York Observer on Mayor De Blasio: http://observer.com/2014/05/de-blasio-counters-ch...
And see this Wikipedia entry on Ms. Ravitch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Ravitch
See this telling quote from the Wiki entry:
'Ravitch said that the charter school and testing reform movement was started by "right wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation," for the purpose of destroying public education and teachers' unions.[12] She reviewed the documentary Waiting for Superman, directed by Davis Guggenheim, as "propagandistic" (pro-charter schools and anti-public schools), studded with "myths" and at least one "flatly wrong" claim.[13] Of Education Secretary Arne Duncan's Race to the Top program, Ravitch said in a 2011 interview it "is an extension of No Child Left Behind ...[,] all bad ideas." She concluded "We are destroying our education system, blowing it up by these stupid policies. And handing the schools in low-income neighborhoods over to private entrepreneurs does not, in itself, improve them. There's plenty of evidence by now that the kids in those schools do no better, and it's simply a way of avoiding their - the public responsibility to provide good education."[14]'
Mr. Lowry and his Nihilist Republican allies wish to destroy one of the most powerful public sector unions, the Teachers Union, and to subvert and destroy the idea and practice of Public Education! The indispensable idea and practice of cultivation of civic republican virtue through politics and education is the target of this nihilism. The public thing (res publica) must, in Mr. Lowry's world view, be replaced by the Market, which has loyalty to one imperative profit, not the welfare and flourishing of children. Nor does it seek to ameliorate the current failings of public education: the Free Market Delusion is bankrupt as a guide to the Economy, the evidence around us is inescapable. But we still do not or will not finance public education with the money that is needed, etc. etc. Mr. Lowry as usual is ideology first, he is nothing if not a good soldier!
StephenKMackSD

At the end of the discussion/arguments that ends at about the 17:00 minute mark, that both Mr. Lowry and Mr. Wilson frame in the etiolated, shopworn Wilsonian Idealism( i.e. the Innocents Abroad self-exculpatory mythology) in regards to the Ukraine Crisis, does not hold up to even to a cursory examination of the facts of past, and the contemporaneous flow of American and E.U. money to the 'Yats' lead coup. It is a manifestation of American dishonesty in it's attempt to whitewash American/E.U. Subversion, and the enabling of the Right Sector/Svoboda faction. America made the mistake, or rather Victoria Nuland and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies made the mistake, or was it calculation, to confront Putin in his own backyard. Although, you would not know this from the comments of the Lowry/Wilson alliance’s recitation of a rehabilitated Cold War mythology, with Putin as the New Stalin. Nothing like an injection of political hysteria wedded to shopworn melodrama to invigorate the unremarkable, conformist Neo-Liberal politics of the present! I thought I would post this while fresh in my mind.
StephenKMackSD

My comment was long by usual standards, and my comments on Mr. Barro and Mr. Frum were negative, but nothing that entailed outright insult or vulgarity.' Agree, disagree, present a different perspective -- engage.' This is the imperative!
Best regards,
StephenKMackSD

My comment was removed. In case you are interested you can read it here: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s1i8d1
StephenKMackSD

Ebenezer and Stan H,
Great comments today! Enjoying you two on a roll!
Thank you and best regards
StephenKMackSD

One wonders at the comments of both Mr. Pesca and Mr. Continetti regarding Ukraine. It's as if each were reading Neo-Liberal and Conservative talking points memo, without even doing a bit of extemporizing on a theme. Independent thought utterly absent. The 'Imperial Ambition of Putin' the theme of their commentaries. It felt like I was reading the waste paper of the Lake/Rogin/Kichick alliance at the Daily Beast, or their fellow traveler Mr. Leslie Gelb.
Luckily, Mr. Scheer could not remain silent in the face of such American Hypocrisy and with his usual aplomb, recited the historical actualities to these political bumpkins, or are they just hacks? The player seems to be out of order, at least from my end, so I will try again later to hear the rest of the broadcast: the exciting news about the decline of Neo-Liberal Hillary Clinton awaits analysis!
StephenKMackSD

notMike L,
Thank you!
SKMSD

Ebenezer,
The beginning of the end was Gorbachev's introduction of Perestroika and Glasnost in 1985, well before the internal collapse of the Soviet Union. And very importantly it put to rest the closely held belief/lynchpin of Cold War Theology, that the Soviet system was incapable of internal reform! The utter loss of legitimacy of the Soviet system internally, a sclerosis had set in, in the leadership and the Party: it became untenable from the inside, even given Gorbachev's attempt at reform. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost
Ms. Freeland, as Mr. De Angelis cogently points out, does not begin at the beginning, the billions spent by the USA an the EU to foment internal trouble, with the plan to install a government hand picked by Ms. Nuland. See the two transcripts of her conversation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland
Ms. Freeland is not naive, witness her book length study of the transition of the Soviet economy from command to 'Free Market', Sale of the Century, but to give her the benefit of the doubt, surly her ties to Ukraine, and obvious symapthy for the very legitimate strivings of it's people for a better government i.e. less corruption and a better life, which we must as observers must not discount. But the very possibility of her association with the R2P Neo-Liberals like Ignatieff and his dubious Neo-Con political allies should make us wary of awarding the laurel to Ms. Freeland, at least at this unpropitious moment!
Best regards,
StephenKMackSD

Andy95,
I am on Mr. Miller's mailing list, and all I've seem is pleas for money. Thank you for posting the valuable links, much appreciated!
Best regards,
StephenKMackSD