14th Corp-o-RAT Leaves ALEC!!!!

The right, especially the more far right to right wing extremists, favor all kinds of changes to the U.S. education system, from privatization so that our nations education becomes secondary, to corporate profit and finding ways to do favors for those loan companies that profit off of students at higher rates than government loans for college or other secondary education, to enabling the religious right to promote ignorance only failed sex ed and to assaults to teaching factual history, legitimate science and economics, and badly bowdlerized and censored literature.  The right also has sought to remove any coursework that doesn't feature exclusively European focused cultural orientation, attempting to remove any and all mention of Hispanics, Asians, Blacks and native Americans from education.  The right would also apparently like to keep our population stupid and ill educated along class lines, so as to ensure that more of them would accept conservative positions without critical thinking or a reliance on objective facts and reality - because conservative ideology is frequently at odds with those.  A right wing educated population is more likely than a centrist, competitive and comprehensive educated population to be compliant, submissive and conformist to the right wing elite manipulators.  They seek to keep people of color and other groups - notably women - poor and under their thumb, and they wouldn't mind keeping a lot of white men poor and stupid, bowing and scraping to wealth either.  Gutting a quality public education, at all levels, K-12 through post secondary levels is their ticket to control.  The right doesn't do well with a thoughtful, independent and well educated population, so no matter how much it goes against the ideals of our founding fathers, they want to keep people stupid like sheep.  Every effort, every educational policy provision is consistent with that analysis.

That is why the 14th Corp-o-rat to break with ALEC is particularly sweet.

From the Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch:

For-Profit Education Firm Kaplan Is 14th Company to Dump ALEC

by Rebekah Wilce — April 27, 2012 - 12:22pm

Topics: Corporations

Projects: ALEC Exposed

Kaplan, a for-profit education, tutoring, and testing empire that is the largest division of the $4 billion Washington Post Company, recently told the Republic Report (RR) that Kaplan's for-profit college division "was a member of ALEC for a one year period, which ended in August 2011." Kaplan's membership in ALEC's Education Task Force is documented in task force agendas and materials obtained by Common Cause and publicly released yesterday.
A Kaplan Education Center (Source: Rees Architecture)The Education Task Force is currently co-chaired by Connections Academy, a for-profit education company, owned by Pearson (a British-based company that publishes Prentice Hall and Addison-Wesley textbooks as well as the Financial Times and Penguin Group imprints), that contracts with charter schools, school districts, or governmental entities to provide "online" lessons to students.
As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported, ALEC's education agenda encompasses a 20 year effort to privatize public education through an ever-expanding network of school voucher systems, which divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools to private schools. ALEC bills also divert public funds into private charter schools or for-profit internet schools. ALEC bills also allow schools to loosen standards for teachers and administrators, exclude students with physical disabilities and special educational needs, escape the requirements of collective bargaining agreements, and experiment with other pet causes like merit pay, single-sex education, school uniforms, and political and religious indoctrination of students. Learn more about ALEC's education agenda in The Nation.
As RR reports and Common Cause documents attest, the following for-profit education companies were also members of ALEC's Education Task Force in 2011:

• Bridgepoint Education (a for-profit education services holding company which owns for-profit, online and land-based Ashford University and University of the Rockies)
• Corinthian Colleges (owns and manages a collection of for-profit career-oriented colleges in the United States and Canada including Everest College and Everest University, Heald College and WyoTech)
• Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU, formerly the Career College Association, the for-profit schools trade association)
• K12, Inc. (the nation's largest provider of online charter schools)
• Insight Schools, Inc. (now a division of K12)
• National Heritage Academies (a for-profit charter school management organization headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a collection of 67 charter schools in the eight states and a separate network of college preparatory high schools)
• International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL, the online schools trade association)

Kaplan, Bridgepoint and Corinthian are all under investigation by multiple state Attorneys General for waste, fraud, and abuse. APSCU works on behalf of the industry to mitigate these investigations and keep federal funding flowing.
Kaplan is the 14th corporation to announce publicly that it has declined to renew its ALEC membership, joining Procter & Gamble, YUM! Brands, Blue Cross Blue Shield, American Traffic Solutions, Reed Elsevier, Arizona Public Service, Mars, Wendy's, McDonald's, Intuit, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola. 28 legislators have also publicly cut ties with ALEC in recent weeks.
CMD, Color of Change, Common Cause and others are now asking Amazon, State Farm, AT&T and Johnson & Johnson to cut ties with ALEC.

artistic rendering of a greedy Pi-Rat

I hope Penigma readers will join with us in pressing corporations and legislators to break with ALEC and to repudiate (not refudiate, the ill-educated phrase of the chronically inarticulate Sarah Palin) corruption in government.  The World Bank describes corruption as the use of public office for private gain -- that tracks with ALEC legislation written in secret by corporations for their benefit being passed by right wing legislators.  The overwhelming majority of ALEC legislators and ALEC legislation is pushed through by Republican corrupt legislators, most of whom have received some form of compensation or benefit, directly or indirectly from ALEC, or ALEC members, including through PAC support and campaign donations.

Despite the parrots in the right wing blogosphere who so willingly repeat endlessly what they are told,  the facts are clear, and with the protest efforts they are loud.  ALEC acting for special private interest through the use of public office is corrupt, is bad public policy, and should at the very least lose its tax exempt status, and possibly be the subject of a government investigation.  Want to bet you won't see one of those from the investigation-mad witch-hunters on the right in Congress?  They will happily look the other way; and we know what direction that is.