The Midmorning Refill: This lesson was sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce
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If you read one thing today…
Like something out of Edgar Allan Poe, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is knocking, gently knocking on our nation’s schoolhouse doors. The deep-pocketed, “what do you mean, climate change” business association that funnels untold millions of corporate dollars into swinging the elections now wants to influence young minds – specifically middle school minds – with their corporate-driven mad science on global warming.
How could a huge lobbying organization access our children with their pollution-friendly propaganda? By partnering with the established and wholesome educational publisher, Scholastic, Inc., producer and distributor of a wide range of educational products.
Chamber officials maintain that there is no “hidden agenda” behind the question or the educational outreach effort in general. But given the current political climate surrounding the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, the group’s direct involvement in public school education is expected to make environmentalists and like-minded progressives uncomfortable.
Overheard
Once upon a time in the land of the free and the home of the brave, many families across the country struggled to keep up with their mortgage payments and defaulted. The Big Bad Banks swooped in and said they had to foreclose. “Isn’t there anybody who can help us?” the families thought. The government, some answered. But the head of the Treasury Department said no. Here is Timothy Geithner’s fairytale, as told by Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:
[I]f the government imposes a foreclosure moratorium, it will lead to chaos in the housing market and jeopardise the health of the recovery. For the gullible, which includes most of the Washington policy elite, this assertion is probably sufficient to quash any interest in a foreclosure moratorium. But those capable of thinking for themselves may ask how Geithner could have reached this conclusion.