Another great Saturday for Doug.
The first up was Kevin Gray on South Carolina, as in the Confederate State of South Carolina.
``On July 2, 1776, the `anti-slavery clause' was removed from the Declaration of Independence at the insistence of Edward Rutledge, delegate from South Carolina. Rutledge threatened that South Carolina would fight for King George against her sister colonies. He asserted that he had `the ardent support of proslavery elements in North Carolina and Georgia as well as of certain northern merchants reluctant to condemn a shipping trade largely in their own bloodstained hands.' Fearful of postponing the American Revolution, opponents of slavery, who were in the clear majority, made a `compromise.' Thus, July 4, 1776, marks for African Americans not Independence Day but the moment when their ancestors' enslavement became fixed by law as well as custom in the new nation.''
http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/12/21/south-carolina-and-it-s-confederate-flag/
The next up was Catherine Lieu on the death of the American Mind via public education. By coincidence, I spent the entire afternoon reading around those elitist Old Dead White Guys, ODWG from Europe.
This morning I found this humorous story on the rising cost of private school tuition in NYC:
``THERE are certain mathematical realities associated with New York City private schools: There are more students than seats at the top-tier schools, at least three sets of twins will be vying head to head for spots in any class, and already-expensive tuition can only go up. Way up.
Over the past 10 years, the median price of first grade in the city has gone up by 48 percent, adjusted for inflation, compared with a 35 percent increase at private schools nationally - and just 24 percent at an Ivy League college - according to tuition data provided by 41 New York City K-12 private schools to the National Association of Independent Schools.
Indeed, this year's tuition at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory ($38,340 for 12th grade) and Horace Mann ($37,275 for the upper school) is higher than Harvard's ($36,305). Those 41 schools (out of 61 New York City private schools in the national association) provided enough data to enable a 10-year analysis. (Over all, inflation caused prices in general to rise 27 percent over the past decade.)''
Why am I laughing? Wouldn't it be cheaper to just pay your damned taxes, advocate for quality public education, and spend time with your kids doing homework? I certainly found it cheaper.
CG