Bill Ayers and the Bombings in Boston [Alphamail]

Guest post by Alphamail


The major media outlets and their on-camera newslings, have now interpreted the Boston Marathon bombing as a new era in the ground assault on America.

“We’ve entered a new phase in the kind of tactics the enemy is willing to use against us,” they profess. “They’re resorting to a new unusual street warfare and we should be prepared for this new type of attack.”

Excuse me…? Is that some kind of confused ostrich disconnect? Were you alive in the 1970’s? Do you know your history? Do you have a pulse?

This is one bombing! Yes, it is tragic. Yes, we need to pray for and support the victims and their families. May God comfort and be with them all.

But this is one bombing! Have you forgotten…?

The esteemed American professor Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground bombed – are you ready? – nearly forty (40) American institutions in the 1970’s.

The Boston bombing is not new by any means – it has an evil precedent - produced by similarly evil people.

Here is a short list of Ayer’s groundwork:

• The South African Consulate in New York City
• ROTC buildings
• ITT Latin American Headquarters
• Draft and Recruitment Centers
• The Pentagon
• The National War College
• Israeli Aircraft Industries Building
• The US Capitol
• MIT Research Center
• Harvard War Research Center for International Affairs
• National Guard Headquarters, Washington, DC
• Presidio Army Base and MP Station
• Federal Offices of H.E.W.
• Long Island City Courthouse
• New York City Police Headquarters
• 103rd Precinct of the New York City Police
• Haymarket Police Statue (honoring officers killed in the line of duty)
• Department of Corrections, Albany, N.Y.
• Office of California Prisons, Sacramento
• Marin County Courthouse, California
• Department of Corrections, San Francisco

Add to this the killing of a San Francisco police officer; the murder of two Brink’s guards during a NY robbery attempt, to fund their malicious spree; the firebombing of Chicago police cars; abetting the escape of Timothy Leary from the California Men’s Colony; and the firebombing of a New York City judge’s home (the judge, his wife, and his children were forced to flee for their lives).

Bill Ayers set the stage – the precedent if you will – for American bombings. And for the Boston bombings.

To deny this would be to deny the following:

Both the Boston bombers and Bill Ayers want the worst possible outcome for America. We all agree the Boston perpetrators do not embrace American ideals. Well, neither does Bill Ayers, and he states that repeatedly.

Consider what anti-American, anti-Boston vitriol Ayers – the same man who is supplying the ideology and drive behind Obama’s national Common Core school curriculum - has adamantly and arrogantly proclaimed, has yet to refute, and has re-emphasized in recent months and years.

His own statement is self-condemning and suggests serious moral reassessment:

The only path to the final defeat of imperialism (America) and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.... Socialism is the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eradication of the social system based on profit.... Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted.... It includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony with the armed struggle. Without mass struggle there can be no revolution. Without armed struggle there can be no victory.

And his lovely wife Bernardine has chimed in with like-minded ill will:

...we’ve been trying to show how it is possible to overcome frustration and impotence that comes from trying to reform this system. Kids know the lines are drawn: revolution is touching all of our lives. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way.

Did you catch the part where Ayers is instrumental in reforming a new American educational system for your kids?

How long will it be before the madmen who blew up and murdered and maimed the innocent kids and families at the Boston finish line, will be forgiven, forgotten, and will be allowed back into society – into our schools – to instruct our children?

If we forgive a demon like Ayers, why pursue the Boston bombers at all?

The callous indignant Bill Ayers once proudly boasted, “'I don't regret setting bombs - I feel we didn't do enough.''

No, you remorseless ass.

Just ask the victims in Boston – they’d say you did plenty.


Illustrations from: Just a guy from the neighborhood.

MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry: children are property of the state

In what passes for intellectualism at the failed MSNBC network, Melissa Harris-Perry articulates one of the more ironic and bizarre messages ever uttered by a woman of color. That is, children are the rightful property of the state.

Narrating a new MSNBC "Lean Forward" spot, the Tulane professor laments that we in America "haven't had a very collective notion that these are our children ... [W]e have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities," Harris-Perry argued.

"Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the households, then we start making better investments." By "investments," of course, Harris-Perry means things like spending "as much in public education as we should have."


Of course, if as Harris-Perry holds,"[t]he cost to raise a child [is] $10,000 a year up to $20,000 a year," and if children should be viewed as collectively "owned" by "society," then taken to its logical extension, a woman's choices about having a child should be informed by the economic considerations of the "community"...

What's more, the notion of collective responsibility for children was a philosophy that undergirded the Cultural Revolution in Communist China under Chairman Mao. I bring that up because, as you may recall, another Harris-Perry "Lean Forward" spot contains a reference to a "great leap forward," which calls to mind the disastrous agricultural reform plan which starved millions of Chinese to death in the 1950s.

History teaches us -- not a malevolent crackpot like Harris-Perry, but the rest of us -- that once children are "everyone's" responsibility, they are no one's.


We've never spent more on education and received less. That the execrable Harris-Perry receives a forum on MSNBC to spout this dangerous Utopian propaganda reveals just how far-gone that network is.


Hat tip: Zero Hedge.

Department of Education Quotes Genocidal Maniac on its Website

But there's nothing to cut in the federal government!

The Department of Education has come under fire for showcasing an ‘inspirational quote’ from the Chinese dictator Mao Zedong on its site ‘Kids Zone’ which is produced by it’s auxiliary organization the National Center for Education Statistics.

‘Our attitude towards ourselves should be ‘to be satiable in learning’ and towards others ‘to be tireless in teaching.”


Red State, a conservative blog, took to Twitter to point out that Mao Zedong ‘murdered 65 million people...'

After a ruckus was raised, the quote was quickly expunged.

You may recall that former Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn was also an unabashed admirer of Mao. Whether she found his human rights record or his commitment to religious tolerance most appealing is currently unclear.


Hat tip: BadBlue Uncensored News.

Florida Atlantic University Prof Makes Students ‘Stomp On Mohammed’

The cojones on this guy!

Prof Deandre J. Poole, Florida Atlantic Univ Makes Students ‘Stomp On Mohammed’

(Fox) – A Florida Atlantic University student said he was punished after he refused a professor’s directive to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Mohammed” written on it. The university, meanwhile, is defending the assignment as a lesson in debate.

“I’m not going to be sitting in a class having my religious rights desecrated,” student Ryan Rotela told television station WPEC. “I truly see this as I’m being punished.”

Rotela, who is a devout Mormon, said the instructor in his Intercultural Communications class told the students to write the name “Mohammed” on a sheet of paper. Then, they were told to put the paper on the floor.

“He had us all stand up and he said ‘Stomp on it,’” Rotela said. “I picked up the paper from the floor and put it right back on the table.

The young college student told the instructor, Deandre Poole, that the assignment was insulting and offensive.

“I said to the professor, ‘With all due respect to your authority as a professor, I do not believe what you told us to do was appropriate,’” Rotela said. ‘I believe it was unprofessional and I was deeply offended by what you told me to do.’”

Rotela took his concerns to Poole’s supervisor – where he was promptly suspended from the class.

...A university spokesperson told they could not comment about Rotela’s case due to student privacy laws... However, the university is defending the instructor’s assignment to stomp on the name of Mohammed.

CORRECTION:

Oh, wait: did I say "Mohammed"?

Because I meant to say "Jesus". Sorry about that, the dogs were barking.

OBAMA CLASSMATE AT OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE: Barack sought "revolution, where the working class would overthrow the ruling class"

Well, this certainly helps explain things. Dr. John Drew was a classmate of President Obama at Occidental College. Several years ago, he was interviewed by Paul Kengor on The Glen Meakem Show. The little-publicized interview was previously available only in audio form and it did not receive significant attention. The following transcript offers some fascinating insights into Barack Obama's worldview.

Q: I interviewed you for my book Dupes a year ago and you had contact me a couple of years ago because you read a piece that I wrote for American Thinker and it was called "Dreams from Frank Marshall Davis" and it was on Obama's background and youth.

Frank Marshall Davis was an actual Party member and that's something, John, I spent two or three years on investigating, but there's no question about it... the documentation is there, a 1957 Senate report called him "and identified member of the Communist Party", there's an FBI file that's 600 pages, and I took ten or twelve pages from that report and put it in the appendix of my book. It even lists Davis' Communist Party card number, which was 47544, so very clear. Why is all of this relevant? Well, I think it explains, at least to some degree, that -- if he's not a Communist, he's at least very far to the left -- and has some very left-oriented views. But you met Obama when he left Frank Marshall Davis in 1980 coming from Hawaii and went to Occidental College. So tell us about when Obama got there and when you met.

A: I see myself as Barack Obama's missing link from his exposure to Communism through Frank Marshall Davis and his later exposure to Bill Ayers and Alice Palmer in Chicago. So, as far as I can tell, I'm the only one of Obama's extended circle of friends who's spoken out and verified that he was a Marxist-Leninist in his sophomore year of college, from 1980 to 1981.

I met him because I graduated from Occidental College in 1979 and I was back at Occidental visiting a girlfriend. I met him because of the relationship which I'd started my senior year at Occidental --

Q: By the way, tell us where Occidental is. We're way out here in Western Pennsylvania.

A: Sure, Occidental College is in the Eastern Los Angeles area. It's a very prestigious, very beautiful, sort of very garden, rose-garden sort of college, with three- or four-thousand students --

Q: And pretty competitive, I mean Obama would have had to have good grades and been a good student to get accepted there.

A: Yeah, my sense is because of affirmative action, guys like me were going to Occidental instead of even better schools and guys like Obama were going to Occidental instead of, uh, less challenging schools. A lot of very successful people were there, were part of Obama's social circle at the time.

Q: Now, was Occidental known for radical left politics? Would that have been an attraction for Obama?

A: Yeah, I'm certain that it was. It was considered sort of the "Moscow" of southern California. There were a lot of Marxist professors, many of whom I got to know pretty well, not just there but also at Williams College in Massachusetts. Two of the same Marxist-Socialist professors were on the staff with me at Williams.

Q: So, that might have been an attraction for him? I'm trying to think, what would have made him go to Hawaii to Occidental? Do you think Frank Marshall Davis could somehow have been an influence in having him choose Occidental?

A: I don't have any evidence of that...

Q: Because they won't release his records, I called them --

A: Yeah, I think that's odd. I don't know, I got straight A's my first year, it sounds weird, but I don't talk about it, Paul, you'd think that if Obama did well he'd release those transcripts.

Q: Now, this is speculation, but do you think those files might hold a letter of recommendation from Frank Marshall Davis? Right? Why not?

A: Wow.

Q: Davis was a mentor. Davis writes about him in Dreams From My Father very warmly, in fact Obama writes that Davis gave him advice on women, on race, on life, on college. So, he must have recommended Occidental, but it's sad we have to speculate. If they'd just release these records...

A: Well, this is what I know for sure, and this is why I'd sought you out, to be helpful to the historic record, is to verify that Barack Obama was definitely a Marxist and that, it was very unusual for a sophomore to be as radical, or as ideologically attuned as young Barack Obama was. I think people like David Remnick [a biographer], they make it sound like Frank Marshall Davis had no impact on Obama and that his friend Mohammed Shandu somehow converted him to Marxism at Occidental. And my impression is that Obama was the leader of that group and Obama was already very ardent and committed to Marxism. And Shandu struck me as somewhat more passive. So it doesn't fit the story that I read in Remnick's story The Bridge.

Q: And Remnick did not contact you, did he?

A: No! No! ...Well, Remnick interviewed my girfriend, Carolyn Bosch -- she's on three or four pages -- and they interviewed a guy named Gary Chapman, a guy who was very active in the Democrat Student [Socialists'] Alliance.

Q: I like David Remnick. I use his book in my Compartive Studies class at Grove City College.

A: He's a sharp guy. And he's got some good facts in there, but he didn't want to hear from little Dr. Drew...

Q: ...You said that Obama was introduced to you at Occidental as a Marxist because you were one at that point.

A: Yeah, that's embarrassing, but I had studied Marxist Economics at Sussex College in England. I had a junior year scholarship over there, and did my senior honor's thesis on Marxist Economics when I was at Occidental College. And I actually founded the Democrat Student Socialists' Alliance, under a different name, in 1976... it was as Marxist as you could get, but they come up with a more general name while I was away in England.

Q: ...John, you had told me before, and I'm reading from my book, that "Obama was already an ardent Marxist in the fall of 1980 when I met him. I know it's incendiary to say this, but although he said in Dreams From My Father that he'd 'hung out with Marxist professors', he did not explain in that book or clarify is that he was 100% in total agreement with those professors.

A: Yeah, you've got that exactly right. Obama believed, at the time I met him, this was probably around Christmas time in 1980. I'd flown out on Christmas break from Cornell, where I was in grad school. And Obama was looking forward to an imminent social revolution, literally a movement where the working classes would overthrow the ruling class and institute a kind of socialist Utopia in the United States. I mean, that's how extreme his views were his sophomore year of college.

...I was a comrade, but I was more... the Frankfort School of Marxism at the time. I was, I felt like I was doing him a favor by pointing out that the Marxist revolution that he and Caroline and Shandu were hoping for was really kind of a pipe-dream. And that there was nothing in European history, or the history of developed nations, that would make that sort of fantasy, that Frank Marshall Davis fantasy of revolution, come true.

Q: So you had a realistic sense that, even though you liked these ideas, that you knew they wouldn't really work?

A: Right... [There were some] who were puzzled why they didn't see Marx's predictions come true, and weren't interested in the role of psychology or false consciousness in preventing a revolution from happening. I was a card-carrying Marxist, but I was more of an east coast, Cornell University Marxist at that time.

Q: But Obama thought it was practical. He thought it could happen in America?

A: Oh, yeah! He thought I was a little reactionary... or insensitive to the coming needs of the revolution! He was full-bore, 100% into that very, kind of simple-minded Marxist revolutionary framework.

Q: And, also at this time, this is 1981, Jimmy Carter was President [?] and Ronald Reagan was yet to call the Soviet Union 'the Evil Empire' when he becomes President. Did you have talk about the election, about Reagan. I mean, that must have really upset Obama?

A: You know, it's so long ago. My clearest recollection was that we were more concerned with more U.S. intervention in Latin America and the repression of Communist and Socialist forces like the Sandanistas and things like that... this sound weird, but there was part of me at the time that was ready to go off and fight with the Sandanistas against the Contras. I was pretty crazy, Paul...

Q: Now this gets to a critical point and I know Obama supporters want me to ask this... to be fair, look where you were then and where you are today...

A: Oh, yeah. Now I'm a Ronald Reagan, church-going, Baptist conservative, so...

Q: So, what about Obama. That's the... trillion dollar question? ...We have to know this stuff about our Presidents, you can't leave this about biographies...

A: Well, I think that he, I've challenged President Obama to explain how he evolved this Marxist-Leninist viewpoint he had in his sophomore year of college. And he's just never articulated how he changed. In fact, he's buried and, I think, lied about his ideological convictions of his youth. And we can trace it all the way to Alice Palmer, I think, in 1995 [the Illinois state senator who he replaced]... who attended the Communist Party "Politburo" event. Or she was part of a big international Communist convention in Moscow!

Q: ...And Palmer was with Obama in the living room of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn when -- and The New York Times even wrote about this -- there was sort of a political blessing, where Palmer identified Obama as his chosen successor...

A: ...Well, I think I can knock down some doors here but stating that he had a very consistent ideology, I think, probably from the time he was in [Hawaii] to the time he was with Palmer and Ayers in Chicago. I think his current behavior demonstrates that he still has some ideological convictions. When ever he talks about taxing the richest two-percent? I think he knows that will harm the economy. To him, the redistribution of wealth is extremely important. And he never took economics or science like I did. He went straight to law school, never had any business experience, never had a payroll to meet. And I think he's locked in a very dangerous mindset, where if he didn't fight to redistribute the wealth that he'd be violating [his] ideology.

...You see people like Van Jones, who's an admitted Communist, you see Anita Dunn, who's praising Mao Tse-Tung, to me, it's like Obama's Marxist-Socialist ideology is hiding in plain sight! It's frustrating to me. It seems to me like people should be up in arms about this!

...I think whenever he talks about people clinging to their guns and religions due to economic stress, that's just the standard Marxist argument... he's still using the standard Marxist architecture, the way he talks about things. I think he's surrounded by people who share that mental architecture!

...I feel like our nation's life is at stake.

Yes. It is. Time grows short to save this republic.

Take the Civic Literacy Exam

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute offers an extremely interesting Full Civic Literacy Exam.

I was feeling really good about my score until I finished reading Dennis's email.


He got 32 of 33.


Note: If your score was disappointing, I recommend regular downloads of The Mark Levin Show. The podcasts are free, you cheap ***.

NO ONE SHOW JOE SALAZAR: The One Chart That Says It All About Women and Safety

One university in Colorado legalized concealed carry on campus in 2003. And here's what happened to sex offenses on campus:


Paging Mister Salazar. Mister Salazar. You have a telephone call at the front desk.

HOW COOL IS THIS? First Grader Becomes Youngest Person Ever to Develop a Mobile Game

What were you doing in the first grade?

Remember the name Zora Ball. At seven years old, she's the youngest person to ever create a mobile game app, which was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania's Bootstrap Expo last month.

Zora used the Bootstrap programming language, and lest you think her older brother Trace, who was a STEM scholar of the year at Zora's charter school, did the work for her, she reconfigured her app on the fly when asked, according to the Pittsburgh Courier.

This could be the beginning of a long career as a programmer and developer for Ball. But first she has to get through first grade.

Isn't it startling to consider that -- like Zora -- humanity remains in the infancy stage when it comes to computers? What will the next five or so decades bring? Or, for that matter, the next five years?


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: Marxist Indoctrination In Our Schools

Well, this can't come as much of a surprise.

This is a page out of a workbook for your government school student. What school and what schoolbook I can’t tell you … maybe the lady who sent this to me will step forward and let us know.

This is how our government schools – and the liberals who run them – effectively brainwash (though indoctrinate is a much more polite word) our children into accepting the liberal philosophy as basic truth... The headline at the top of the document reads “Distribute the Wealth.” And there you have the picture of the pretty little girl with the cute little pony tail.

She’s holding a bag of money in one hand, and giving away some of that money with the other. Yes! She’s distributing her wealth! But if you study the picture you’ll see there’s an even more subtle message. She’s not handing money away from her wallet or her purse. No! That wouldn’t get the real message across! Why pretty much every little girl has a wallet or a purse. No... this little sweetheart has a BAG of money! Not every little girl has BAGS of money … so this girl must be really RICH! And since she’s rich her money needs to be redistributed! So she’s being a good little rich girl and she’s smiling as she hands her money away.

As Thomas Sowell warns us, America's state-run schools are undermining American society."

I'm soliciting other examples: For those parents with school-age kids, please check out their textbooks and study guides. Email me any snapshots of interest, the age and grade of your youngster, your city and state and whether you wish to remain anonymous (my default assumption is to keep all contributions anonymous).

I BELIEVE IRAN HAS A CLANDESTINE AGENT-OF-INFLUENCE BURROWED IN ACADEMIA: And His Name is Alan Dershowitz

Oh, now he tells us, just weeks after a pivotal election in which he backed the most virulently anti-Israel president in U.S. history.

President's Nomination of Hagel May Encourage Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

by Alan M. Dershowitz - January 7, 2013 at 1:30 pm

President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense risks increasing the likelihood that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. It poses that risk because Hagel is well known for his opposition both to sanctions against Iran and to employing the military option if necessary.

These views are inconsistent with the very different views expressed by President Obama. The President has emphasized on numerous occasions that he will never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and will use military force if necessary to prevent that "game changer."

The nomination of Hagel thus sends a mixed message to the mullahs in Tehran, who will likely interpret it as a change from a red light to a yellow or green one when it comes to their desire to develop nuclear weapons... This is the wrong time to send mixed messages by nominating a man who has, at best, a mixed record with regard to sanctions and the military option against Iran and with regard to having Israel's back.

I can come to no other conclusion that Dershowitz is a clandestine agent for Iran, with op-eds like these serving as cover.

Well, it's either that or he's a delusional, progressive hack.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

UK TEXTBOOK FINALLY ACHIEVES AHMEDINEJAD'S DREAM: Wipes Israel Off the Map

Consider this Exhibit 7,038 demonstrating that England is headed down the crapper -- and fast.

Ahmadinejad promised it. Now British textbooks are doing it. Israel has been wiped off the map by Garnet Education, an English-language teaching company in Britain, whose educational textbook 'Skills in English Writing Level 1', aimed at foreign students and immigrants to the UK, contains a map with "Occupied Palestine" in place of the Jewish State.

Speaking to the Algemeiner, the prominent American Jewish newspaper which broke the story, school teacher Liz Wiseman noted that the book is "one of the more popular and mainstream English language teaching (ELT) textbooks published by Garnet, which is quite popular and mainstream itself."

...Using textbooks as propaganda, however, is not a new story. In 2007, it emerged that the King Fahd Academy school in London was using textbooks encouraged by the Saudi Ministry for Education, which described Jews as "apes" and Christians as "pigs". According to the Evening Standard, pupils were allegedly heard saying they want to "kill Americans", praise 9/11 and idolise Osama bin Laden as their "hero".

In the same year, an investigation by The Times uncovered that Mahmood Chandia, a senior lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, was teaching that music is a way in which Jews spread "the Satanic web" to corrupt young Muslims.

In 2010, it was revealed that the leading geography textbook for British school students encouraged students to ask questions such as "Why did the Jews seize land that is now Israel?" The textbook also sought to excuse terrorism, informing school students that "Palestinians feel powerless. They have no country, no government, no army and few resources - so they resort to bombing to make their point".

Sadly, these are but a few examples from many...

With "friends" like these characters and Egypt's leaders, keep Israel in your prayers.

10 Reasons the University as We Know It is Doomed

Culled from an excellent article at The American Interest (hat tip: BadBlue).

10. In fifty years, if not much sooner, half of the roughly 4,500 colleges and universities now operating in the United States will have ceased to exist. The technology driving this change is already at work, and nothing can stop it.

9. MIT is the first elite university to offer a credential for students who complete its free, open-source online courses. (The certificate of completion requires a small fee.) For the first time, students can do more than simply watch free lectures; they can gain a marketable credential—something that could help secure a raise or a better job. While edX won’t offer traditional academic credits, Harvard and MIT have announced that “certificates of mastery” will be available for those who complete the online courses and can demonstrate knowledge of course material. The arrival of credentials, backed by respected universities, eliminates one of the last remaining obstacles to the widespread adoption of low-cost online education.

8. In 2007 Princeton completed construction on a new $136 million luxury dormitory for its students—all part of an effort to expand its undergraduate enrollment. Last year Yale finalized plans to build new residential dormitories at a combined cost of $600 million. The expansion will increase the size of Yale’s undergraduate population by about 1,000. The project is so expensive that Yale could actually buy a three-bedroom home in New Haven for every new student it is bringing in and still save $100 million... What these universities are doing is pure folly, akin to building a compact disc factory in the late 1990s. They are investing in a model that is on its way to obsolescence. If these universities understood the changes that lie ahead, they would be selling off real estate, not buying it—unless they prefer being landlords to being educators.

7. The biggest obstacle to the rapid adoption of low-cost, open-source education in America is that many of the stakeholders make a very handsome living off the system as is. In 2009, 36 college presidents made more than $1 million. That’s in the middle of a recession, when most campuses were facing severe budget cuts. This makes them rather conservative when it comes to the politics of higher education, in sharp contrast to their usual leftwing political bias in other areas.

6. Student loan debt is at an all-time high—an average of more than $23,000 per graduate by some counts—and tuition costs continue to rise at a rate far outpacing inflation, as they have for decades. Credential inflation is devaluing the college degree, making graduate degrees, and the greater debt required to pay for them, increasingly necessary for many people to maintain the standard of living they experienced growing up in their parents’ homes.

5. The live lecture will be replaced by streaming video. The administration of exams and exchange of coursework over the internet will become the norm. The push and pull of academic exchange will take place mainly in interactive online spaces, occupied by a new generation of tablet-toting, hyper-connected youth who already spend much of their lives online. Universities will extend their reach to students around the world, unbounded by geography or even by time zones. All of this will be on offer, too, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional college education.

4. Recent history shows us that the internet is a great destroyer of any traditional business that relies on the sale of information... The higher-ed business is in for a lot of pain as a new era of creative destruction produces a merciless shakeout of those institutions that adapt and prosper from those that stall and die. Meanwhile, students themselves are in for a golden age, characterized by near-universal access to the highest quality teaching and scholarship at a minimal cost. The changes ahead will ultimately bring about the most beneficial, most efficient and most equitable access to education that the world has ever seen.

3. Technology will also bring future students an array of new choices about how to build and customize their educations. Power is shifting away from selective university admissions officers into the hands of educational consumers, who will soon have their choice of attending virtually any university in the world online. This will dramatically increase competition among universities. Prestigious institutions, especially those few extremely well-endowed ones with money to buffer and finance change, will be in a position to dominate this virtual, global educational marketplace. The bottom feeders—the for-profit colleges and low-level public and non-profit colleges—will disappear or turn into the equivalent of vocational training institutes. Universities of all ranks below the very top will engage each other in an all-out war of survival. In this war, big-budget universities carrying large transactional costs stand to lose the most. Smaller, more nimble institutions with sound leadership will do best.

2. What happens when a limited supply of a sought-after commodity suddenly becomes unlimited? Prices fall. Yet here, on the cusp of a new era of online education, that is a financial reality that few American universities are prepared to face.

1. The most important part of the college bubble story—the one we will soon be hearing much more about—concerns the impending financial collapse of numerous private colleges and universities and the likely shrinkage of many public ones. And when that bubble bursts, it will end a system of higher education that, for all of its history, has been steeped in a culture of exclusivity. Then we’ll see the birth of something entirely new as we accept one central and unavoidable fact: The college classroom is about to go virtual.

Big changes are coming, and old attitudes and business models are set to collapse as new ones rise. Few who will be affected by the changes ahead are aware of what’s coming. Severe financial contraction in the higher-ed industry is on the way, and for many this will spell hard times both financially and personally. But if our goal is educating as many students as possible, as well as possible, as affordably as possible, then the end of the university as we know it is nothing to fear. Indeed, it’s something to celebrate.

UNION SUCCESS STORY #7,407: Only Seven Percent of 8th-graders in Detroit Public Schools Read Proficiently

As they say, someone new is blocking the schoolhouse door.

...In the public schools in Detroit, Mich., according to the U.S. Department of Education, only 7 percent of the eighth graders are grade-level proficient or better in reading.

Some public school teachers in the City of Detroit and around the state of Michigan are reportedly taking a vacation or a sick day today to protest right-to-work legislation likely to be approved by the state legislature. Under current law, Michigan public school teachers must pay dues to the teachers’ union. If the right-to-work law is enacted, Michigan public-school teachers will be free to join the union and pay dues to it if they wish, but they will also be free not to join the union and not to pay it dues.

Detroit public-school eighth graders do even worse in math than they do in reading, according to the Department of Education. While only 7 percent scored highly enough on the department’s National Assessment of Educational Progress test in 2011 to be rated “proficient” or better in reading, only 4 percent scored highly enough to be rated “proficient” or better in math...

I blame Bush. And Sarah Palin.

But certainly not the unholy alliance of the Democrat Party and public sector unions, which exist only to fleece the beleaguered American taxpayer.


Hat tip: BadBlue News Service.

KEWL: Google introduces hiring and entrepreneurship courseware for veterans and military spouses

Well, this is a worthy cause made all the more timely because of the devastating cuts to defense spending orchestrated by President Obama.

...we’ve put the powers of Google+ behind a single hub called VetNet. Today, VetNet launches as a partnership with three founding organizations: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring Our Heroes program, the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) and Hire Heroes USA. In the long run, other organizations will be able to offer their services to the veteran community, all in the same easy-to-use place.

Through VetNet, these founding partners offer a full spectrum of employment resources for members of the community. Whether starting a job search from scratch, looking for mentors in a specific industry or starting a business, transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses will be able to connect with career services, job opportunities and each other.

All of the content and resources are organized into three tracks by objective, each hosted on its own Google+ page.

• Basic Training Track (google.com/+VetNetBasic): The place to start. From resumes to interviewing tips to advice from buddies. Dial into our first Resume Workshop today at 3pm EST.
• Career Connections Track (google.com/+VetNetCareer): Walmart, GE and Capital One are just a few of the companies that are participating in VetNet to help veterans and military spouses find civilian careers. Check out today’s Vets In Finance panel at 2pm EST.
• Entrepreneur Track (google.com/+VetNetEntrepreneur): An 8-week college-level course on the fundamentals of starting a business, starting next week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Pass it on to any active-duty and vets you know.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com/Tech.