Glenn Beck's Action Plan

The Data-Mining & Marketing of "Choice"

From a report on Beck's We Will Not Conform event (Source)

"TV host Glenn Beck on Tuesday night leveraged a variety of media tools—including a nationwide simulcast at movie theaters, social media, and his own loyal audience—to call on Americans to rise up against the Common Core State Standards by persuading state lawmakers to reverse their states' participation."
[SOURCE, emphasis added]

"It's a live interactive event linking parents, teachers, students, and more from across the country with a live event in Dallas. This will bring everyone together, on the same page, to develop a comprehensive action plan."
[Comment made by Matt Kibbe, SOURCE, emphasis added]

Reports are coming from participants to Glenn Beck's theater event on Tuesday night, July 22nd, We Will Not Conform. In this interactive event, they took polls repeatedly from the audience. This means that the audience in the 700 theaters across the country functioned as a national FOCUS GROUP. Focus groups are widely used in marketing and politics as a way to ascertain people's feelings, opinions, beliefs, attitudes, values and behavior, etc. in order to discern ways to CHANGE their attitudes and behaviors. A few examples of what was being polled were cited in the media:

For example, audience members were asked to name a national politician who might best serve as a leader against the common core. The winners were U.S. Senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rand Paul, R-Ky.

In another instant poll, two-thirds of participants said taking to Twitter would be the most effective tactic to battle the standards, followed by 17 percent for Facebook, and single digits for options such as circulating petitions and contacting the traditional news media.

Indeed, a number of parents and educators in the studio discussed how they have been using social media to build opposition to the common core. [Source, emphasis added]

What is a Focus Group?

A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members.... Group discussion produces data and insights that would be less accessible without interaction found in a group setting—listening to others’ verbalized experiences stimulates memories, ideas, and experiences in participants.... Focus group data provides the opportunity to analyse the strength with which an individual holds an opinion. [Source, emphasis added]

This theater-based Focus Group approach had been previously used by Hollywood actor and director, Mel Gibson, as he prepared to launch his controversial movie THE PASSION. According to firsthand reports from those who attended his pre-launch screenings, Gibson was seeking to evaluate potential opposition to the movie's message and strong violence in order to fine-tune the marketing for his movie.

Likewise reports from the Beck theater event reveals that he (with his partners, including FreedomWorks) performed extensive data-mining and polling of the audiences. The end result was destined to be an audience ready to commit to activism by signing up for Beck's anti-Common Core Plan of Action.

BUT NOTE -- Beck's anti-Common Core Plan of Action agenda is pre-scripted. This managed agenda is often referred to as "controlled opposition." His agenda to defeat Common Core is very public, accessible to anyone who signs up, but it will mutate with the continual assessment by polling, data-mining, and other modes of monitoring interactions and activities. This means that the outcome will be controlled from the top down, a brazen form of managed change. And with the ongoing data-mining and polling, attitudinal readjustments and marketing realignments can be updated on a continuous basis.

Make no mistake about it! This has nothing to do with grassroots! This is a data-driven method of containing opposition and controlling an education reform agenda. The data-mining will assist in maneuvering this agenda -- through the use of sophisticated psycho-social and political marketing techniques -- to pre-determined outcomes that work in favor of the charter school operators (so-called "choice").

One estimate of Tuesday night's program was that it was to assess the potential strength of any opposition to the next stage of education reform, which is "choice" -- charters, vouchers, etc. The powers-that-be who ran the polls at the Beck event were evaluating the potential areas of conflict and controversy, identifying the laggards, and seeking new ways to market the anti-Common Core agenda which offers the pre-digested solution of fake "choice to unwitting activists.

According to longtime researcher Mary Thompson, who has been observing this process for decades,

these "interactive," and "participatory" events are variations of the same methodology that works to foster the collectivist mentality. The similarity in all applications of the process is that "input" of participants is never intended to be taken into consideration for the agenda which is already predetermined.  The "participation" is to find out where the participants are in accepting the already determined outcome, in order to identify any deviating thoughts or reactions in order to concentrate on bringing them around, or if recalcitrant in their skepticism, identify them to boycott and cut them out of the loop. The participatory process of whatever name it is given, also serves to create a perceived investment in the event or process itself on the part of the those who contribute comments, which works to keep them in the pre-determined action since they think the have become part of the larger agenda through their input. Furthermore Glenn Beck's Plan of Action discourages people from doing the research for themselves.

Confirming Mary's hypothesis about discouraging independent research, one news account noticed that the issues involved with Common Core itself weren't really dealt with in any detailed manner:

One curious aspect of the event: It seemed to expect a certain level of basic knowledge about the debate over common core. Even though participants were asked to invite a friend or neighbor who may be unfamiliar with the debate, there were no primers or taped background pieces.

Several participants made oblique references to common-core-inspired math worksheets that students and parents found perplexing and overly complicated, but there were no displays of specific examples. (Later, though, parents and other activists were encouraged to post such materials online to help build opposition.) [Source]

David Barton at the Glenn Beck event (SOURCE) wearing a paisley shirt that he also wore earlier (SOURCE)

Another researcher also observed that the event seemed dumbed down:

What sort of a man wears black paisley to be on a nationally broadcast forum? That was David Barton of course....

I also noticed that Freedom Works Ellen Wheeler appears to be the same Ellen Wheeler who used to be a soap opera actress.

I was horrified by the lack of info (someone had bought me a ticket and asked me to come) and the audience where I was left complaining that they came to learn and that they really didn’t get much.

What is the PROCESS for this interactive "participatory" sort of orchestrated change? Mary Thompson (cited above) gave a speech about it back in 1972. At that time she was addressing one version of this change process called "Planning, Programming, Budgeting Systems" (PPBS). Below are relevant excerpts of her speech:

What is involved is the use of government agencies to accomplish mass behavioral change in every area…. 

PPBS is the systems management tool made possible by technology of computer hardware to affect the planned change….

Taking each element of PPBS will show how the process is accomplished. PLANNING—Planning phase (please note that the process involved with a systems approach is always described in terms of “phases”) always includes the establishment of goals committees, citizens committees, needs assessment committees.... These are referred to as “community involvement.” The committees are always either self appointed or chosen—never elected. They always include guidance from some trained “change agents” who may be administrators, curriculum personnel or local citizens.

Questionnaires and surveys are used to gather data on how the community “feels” and to test community attitudes. The ingeniousness of the process is that everybody thinks he is having a voice in the direction of public schools. Not so... for Federal change agencies, specifically regional education centers established by ESEA, influence and essentially determine terminology used in the questionnaires and surveys. The change agents at the district level then function to “identify needs and problems for change” as they have been programmed to identify them at the training sessions sponsored by Federal offices such as our Center for Planning and Evaluation in Santa Clara County. That is why the goals are essentially the same in school districts across the country. It also explains why three years ago every school district was confronted with the Family Life Education issue at the same time....

Unknowing citizens’ committees are used by the process to generate acceptance of goals already determined. What they don’t realize is that professional change agents are operating in the behaviorist’s framework of thought and Mr. or Mrs. Citizen Parent is operating in his traditional education framework of thought. So, the local change agents are able to facilitate a group to a consensus in support of predetermined goals by using familiar, traditional terms which carry the new behaviorist meanings.... [Excerpted from the deliberate dumbing down of america, pp. 110-111, emphasis added]