American Glob

Sometimes coincidences have meaning. Now is one of those times.

It’s no secret that the teachers’ union in New Jersey doesn’t like Governor Chris Christie. It’s also no secret that teacher unions backed the Obama 2008 campaign big time.

With that information in mind, doesn’t it seem oddly coincidental that New Jersey has been denied $400 million in federal education funds because of a one page error in a grant proposal over 1,000 pages long???

Follow up: Guess which state got the $400 million bucks instead of New Jersey. Ohio.

Guess which state the Democratic Party is desperately trying to hold onto in the 2010 mid-terms. Ohio.

I’m sure this all just a coincidence though.

Oh and by the way, right on cue Rachel Maddow of MSNBC is delighting in all this.

I’m sure that’s just a coincidence too.

Read more at Memeorandum.

Reason TV has produced a video that profiles a new school voucher program in post-Katrina New Orleans that is enjoying tremendous success.

School vouchers and charter schools are a very libertarian approach to education that puts power and choice in the hands of parents instead of government bureaucrats. What a novel idea…

For the record, President Obama doesn’t support school voucher programs.

Change!

How bad? This bad…

“Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced,” – Dennis Van Roekel President, National Education Association

That makes no sense at all. Obama is a Constitutional Law professor and a big supporter of education. Isn’t that what we were told? I mean, until now…

NEW ORLEANS — For two years as a presidential candidate, Barack Obama addressed educators gathered for the summer conventions of the two national teachers’ unions, and last year both groups rolled out the welcome mat for Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

But in a sign of the Obama administration’s strained relations with two of its most powerful political allies, no federal official was scheduled to speak at either convention this month, partly because union officials feared that administration speakers would face heckling.

The largest union’s meeting opened here on Saturday to a drumbeat of heated rhetoric, with several speakers calling for Mr. Duncan’s resignation, hooting delegates voting for a resolution criticizing federal programs for “undermining public education,” and the union’s president summing up 18 months of Obama education policies by saying, “This is not the change I hoped for.”

The Stimulus Bill wasn’t enough, huh?

Bummer.

Apparently not.

Because the law in New Jersey states:

The Legislature finds and declares that: a safe and civil environment in school is necessary for students to learn and achieve high academic standards; harassment, intimidation or bullying, like other disruptive or violent behaviors, is conduct that disrupts both a student’s ability to learn and a school’s ability to educate its students in a safe environment; and since students learn by example, school administrators, faculty, staff, and volunteers should be commended for demonstrating appropriate behavior, treating others with civility and respect, and refusing to tolerate harassment, intimidation or bullying.

And yet, teachers in New Jersey who are unhappy with the fiscal responsibility of new governor Chris Christie, have taken to putting nasty messages about him on their Facebook pages.

HADDONFIELD, N.J. — They’re the kind of obscenity-laced schoolyard taunts that could get a student suspended.

But the target of this tirade is New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie — and the perpetrators are the state’s teachers, irate over his calls for salary freezes and funding cuts for schools.

In Facebook messages visible to the world — not to mention their students — the teachers have called Christie fat, compared him to a genocidal dictator and wished he was dead. The postings are often riddled with bad grammar and misspellings.

“Never trust a fat f…,” read one profane post on the Facebook page, “New Jersey Teachers United Against Governor Chris Christie’s Pay Freeze,” which has some 69,000 fans, many of them teachers.

“How do you spell A– hole? C-H-R-I-S C-H-R-I-S-T-I-E,” read another.

The acrimony intensified last month when Christie proposed cutting state and federal aid to districts by 11 percent, calling it a way to share sacrifice as the state tries to rein in spending.

That’s when the Facebook attacks really took off.

One educator, a librarian with a Master’s degree, described the cuts as “rediculous.”

Another pointed out that Christie’s late mother was a member of the teachers union: “It’s not right to bite the hand that feeds you. Oh I forgot it’s Chirs Christie, He’s so large I bet he’d bite anything that’s put in front of his face!”

“Remember Pol Pot, dictator of Cambodia?” warned another. “He reigned in terror, his target was teachers and intellectuals. They were either killed or put into forced labor… King Kris Kristy is headed in this direction.”

It’s shocking that this type of behavior could be engaged in by the very people who are responsible for the safety of school children. Particularly so soon after the death of Massachusetts student Phoebe Prince who committed suicide after being the subject of constant bullying, including offensive messages on Facebook.

Michelle Malkin, author of the bestseller “Culture of Corruption” on Hannity, from tonight’s show.

Students in Hingham, MA were initially told that President Obama’s memoir, “Dreams From My Father” was required summer reading. After some parents protested, the school administrators changed the rule but never made it public.

The Boston Herald reports:

“President Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” is creating a nightmare for 1,099 Hingham High students cramming to wrap up their “required” summer read – a book, it turns out, they didn’t have to read in the first place.”

“With school opening Tuesday, the Herald has learned teens whose offended parents complained were allowed by Principal Paula Girouard McCann and Helaine Silva, head of the Hingham Public Schools English Department, to pick any other memoir – an option they never publicized.”

“Lynne Powell-Pinto, chairwoman of the Hingham Republican Town Committee, has a son entering 11th grade.”

“Obama, she noted, “is a current political figure. He’s an important historical figure, no quibbles about that. But the goal of the community read is to bring people together. I just think they could have made a less divisive choice.”

Can you imagine the uproar that would have followed in San Francisco or New York if the public schools had required students to read George W. Bush’s book “A Charge to Keep?”

For more stunning news on political indoctrination in public schools, be sure to visit Michelle Malkin’s website and read her newest article – “No Junior Lobbyist Left Behind.”

Free college for everyone might not be the brightest idea…

This is a fascinating video from Reason TV. It asks a question that would be nice to hear at a press conference. Certainly it’s a more important question than whether or not the president is feeling “enchanted.”

How is it that a president who is comfortable spending TRILLIONS of dollars and sending his own children to a private DC school, could not find a measly $18 million to fund the DC school voucher program?

$18 Million normally wouldn’t be a small number but it’s tiny compared to what Obama is spending so far.