We don't need a Congressional investigation controlled by the likes
of Diane Ravitch or any of her former or present education cronies!
IMPORTANT NOTE FROM CHARLOTTE: Before one reads this post, please remember that Bill Gates and his foundation are closely connected with the Carnegie Corporation which was at the center of the Reece Committee Investigation, and certainly one of the leading players in the restructuring of American education!!
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| "Ravitch: Time for Congress to investigate Bill Gates’ role in Common Core" |
A new Washington Post story by Lyndsey Layton about how Bill Gates’ funded the Common Core revolution is startling. His role and the role of the U.S. Department of Education in drafting and coercing almost every state to adopt the Common Core standards should be investigated by Congress.
The idea that the richest man in America can purchase and — working closely with the U.S. Department of Education — impose new and untested academic standards on the nation’s public schools is a national scandal. A congressional investigation is warranted. The close involvement of Education Secretary Arne Duncan raises questions about whether the federal government overstepped its legal role in public education.
Thanks to the story in The Washington Post and to diligent bloggers, we now know that one very rich man bought the enthusiastic support of interest groups on the left and right to campaign for the Common Core. Who knew that American education was for sale? Who knew that federalism could so easily be dismissed as a relic of history? Who knew that Gates and Duncan, working as partners, could destroy state and local control of education?
The revelation that education policy was shaped by one unelected man — who underwrote dozens of groups and was allied with the secretary of education, whose staff was laced with Gates’ allies — is ample reason for congressional hearings.
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| "GATES-FUNDED INBLOOM STUDENT DATA PROCESSING COMPANY SHUTS DOWN OVER PRIVACY CONCERNS" |
Are we being set up through the use of the Hegelian Dialectic in order to come to "their" (the corporations' and education establishment's public/private partnerships) consensus -- whatever it is? Heaven help the American people! Is this what the highly-funded extensive Neoconservative opposition to the Common Core (a diversion) has been all about? To bring the American people to "their" consensus, promoted by the media during a Congressional investigation? All the while public education is being crashed by publicly-funded education (i.e., charter schools) with unelected boards and no voter accountability? To bring about the "publicly funded private education" that change agent Marjorie Ledell called for (Education Leadership, Jan. 1994)?
Is Diane Ravitch suffering a severe case of amnesia? Is it possible she has never heard of the Reece Committee Investigation of the Tax-Exempt Foundations in 1953 which operated for a couple of years and which was abruptly shut down due to the foundations' influence within both political parties? Americans should demand nothing less than a resumption of those hearings, NOT the commencement of new hearings called for by the likes of Diane Ravitch.
The late Jesse Helms, during a ceremony held to honor the work of Norman Dodd, promised the American people that he would have the hearings resumed. He did nothing, and then he (Helms) died. He had promised Norman Dodd something he never attempted. Is there another Senator out there with the guts to fulfill the promise made to the late Norman Dodd?
We don't need a new investigation run by the likes of Diane Ravitch, or any persons associated with the educational establishment. We need the resumption of the incredible hearings in 1953 which were abruptly terminated. There is a copy of the transcript of those hearings posted at American Deception.com. I purchased the last copy of the Cox and Reece Committee Hearings several years ago in order that they could be made available to the American people.
The following historical account is excerpted from my book the deliberate dumbing down of america, page 46-48:
The following historical account is excerpted from my book the deliberate dumbing down of america, page 46-48:
1953
NORMAN DODD, A YALE GRADUATE, INTELLECTUAL AND NEW YORK CITY INVESTMENT BANKER, was chosen to be the research director for the Reece Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1953. The Reece Committee was named for its creator, Rep. Carroll Reece of Tennessee, and was formed to investigate the status of tax-exempt foundations. Dodd sent committee questionnaires to numerous foundations, and as a result of one such request, Joseph E. Johnson, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, invited Dodd to send a committee staffer to Carnegie headquarters in New York City to examine the minutes of the meetings of the foundation’s trustees. These minutes had long since been stored away in a warehouse. Obviously, Johnson, who was a close friend of former Carnegie Endowment’s president and Soviet spy Alger Hiss, had no idea what was in them.
The minutes revealed that in 1910 the Carnegie Endowment’s trustees asked themselves this question: “Is there any way known to man more effective than war, to so alter the life of an entire people?” For a year the trustees sought an effective “peaceful” method to “alter the life of an entire people.” Ultimately, they concluded that war was the most effective way to change people. Consequently, the trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace next asked themselves: “How do we involve the United States in a war?” And they answered, “We must control the diplomatic machinery of the United States by first gaining control of the State Department.” Norman Dodd stated that the trustees’ minutes reinforced what the Reece Committee had uncovered elsewhere about the Carnegie Endowment: “It had already become a powerful policy-making force inside the State Department.”
During those early years of the Carnegie Endowment, war clouds were already forming over Europe and the opportunity of enactment of their plan was drawing near. History proved that World War I did indeed have an enormous impact on the American people. For the first time in our history, large numbers of wives and mothers had to leave their homes to work in war factories, thus effectively eroding woman’s historic role as the “heart” of the family.
The sanctity of the family itself was placed in jeopardy. Life in America was so thoroughly changed that, according to Dodd’s findings, “[T]he trustees had the brashness to congratulate themselves on the wisdom and validity of their original decision.” They sent a confidential message to President Woodrow Wilson, insisting that the war not be ended too quickly.
After the war, the Carnegie Endowment trustees reasoned that if they could get control of education in the United States they would be able to prevent a return to the way of life as it had been prior to the war. They recruited the Rockefeller Foundation to assist in such a monumental task. According to Dodd’s Reece Committee report: “They divided the task in parts, giving to the Rockefeller Foundation the responsibility of altering education as it pertains to domestic subjects, but Carnegie retained the task of altering our education in foreign affairs and about international relations.”
During a subsequent personal meeting with Mr. Dodd, President Rowan Gaither of the Ford Foundation said, “Mr. Dodd, we invited you to come here because we thought that perhaps, off the record, you would be kind enough to tell us why the Congress is interested in the operations of foundations such as ours?” Gaither answered his own rhetorical question with a startling admission:
During a subsequent personal meeting with Mr. Dodd, President Rowan Gaither of the Ford Foundation said, “Mr. Dodd, we invited you to come here because we thought that perhaps, off the record, you would be kind enough to tell us why the Congress is interested in the operations of foundations such as ours?” Gaither answered his own rhetorical question with a startling admission:
Mr. Dodd, all of us here at the policy making level of the foundation have at one time or another served in the OSS [Office of Strategic Services, CIA forerunner] or the European Economic Administration, operating under directives from the White House. We operate under those same directives.... The substance under which we operate is that we shall use our grant making power to so alter life in the United States that we can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.
Stunned, Dodd replied, “Why don’t you tell the American people what you just told me and you could save the taxpayers thousands of dollars set aside for this investigation?” Gaither responded, “Mr. Dodd, we wouldn’t think of doing that.”
In public, of course, Gaither never admitted what he had revealed in private. However, on numerous public occasions Norman Dodd repeated what Gaither had said, and was neither sued by Gaither nor challenged by the Ford Foundation. Dodd was subsequently warned that “If you proceed with the investigation as you have outlined, you will be killed."
The Reece Committee never completely finished its work of investigating and receiving testimony in open hearings involving the representatives of the major tax-exempt foundations. The process was completely disrupted and finally derailed by the deliberately disruptive activity of one of its members, Congressman Wayne Hays of Ohio. According to general counsel for the Reece Committee, Renee A. Wormser’s account in Foundations: Their Power and Influence (Devin-Adair: New York, 1958, p. 341), “[Hays] was frank enough to tell us that he had been put on the committee by Mr. [Sam] Rayburn, the Democratic Leader in the House, as the equivalent of a watchdog. Just what he was to ‘watch’ was not made clear until it became apparent that Mr. Hays was making it his business to frustrate the investigation to the greatest extent possible.”
[Ed. Note: The Cox Committee, created by Congress as a result of Rep. E.E. Cox of Georgia submitting a resolution to the House of Representatives in the 82nd Congress, was a forerunner of the Reece Committee. The Cox Committee was created to “direct a thorough investigation of foundations.” However, just as the Reece Committee which followed, the Cox Committee was unable to get to the bottom of tax-exempt foundation affairs. Again, according to Mr. Wormser, “The Cox Committee did find that there had been a Communist, Moscow-directed plot to infiltrate American foundations and to use their funds for Communist purposes.”]
And from page 266 of my book, there is more relevant history:
The late Norman Dodd in 1986 made an extremely pertinent and important observation regarding
Americans’ growing preference to “think and act collectively” and the resulting dangers. Mr. Dodd’s
comments were made upon his receipt of the National Citizens’ Alliance Americanism Award presented by Senator Jesse Helms. This award recognized Dodd’s courageous work as research director for the 1953 Congressional investigation of the tax-exempt foundations.
Americans’ growing preference to “think and act collectively” and the resulting dangers. Mr. Dodd’s
comments were made upon his receipt of the National Citizens’ Alliance Americanism Award presented by Senator Jesse Helms. This award recognized Dodd’s courageous work as research director for the 1953 Congressional investigation of the tax-exempt foundations.
In Dodd’s words:
"What is happening I can best explain by describing to you where you would end up if you could sponsor a resumption of the inquiry into the effect of foundation-type organizations in this country. If that were to be done, you would come into possession of proof… exposing a fundamental truth which has never been put into words.
"I shall try to recite that truth to you and you can take it home and act on it as a premise. This truth is that whenever a people show by their actions that they prefer to think and act collectively, their dynasty becomes a reenactment of the story of the Fall, as told to us by God through Moses…. We are now in a position where we can see that it is that dynastic effect which you are experiencing today.
"We have a task and that task is to sponsor an inquiry which would pull out into the open the proofs which show that it is that dynasty that is being worked out by us as a people, unwittingly, in complete ignorance.…
"I wish I could help you… think about that truth because it has never been put into circulation. It now deserves to be, and it is persons like yourselves [dear readers] who can contribute to the circulation of that particular finding which the foundations, in their zeal, have actually made understandable. They [the foundations] have made a mistake.… The mistake they have made is now represented by their determination to cooperate with the Soviet Union educationally."
