Sun Jul 6, 2008 at 9:07 AMBy: George N. Schmidt No Flip-Flops For Obama In NEA Endorsement Acceptance None of the three main positions stated by Oabam at the NEA convention should surprise anyone from Chicago. Obama has been in the Daley camp on corporate "school reform" from his days in the General Assembly.

Hence, "No Child Left Behind" gets supported (with all the double talk about unfunded mandates, but not critique of high stakes multiple choice computer scored so-called "standardized" tests).

His support for merit pay was announced (to boos) at last year's NEA RA.

And his support for charter schools is longstanding. In fact, in the NEA speech yesterday, be brags that he even supported expanding (Chicago-only) charters while he served in the General Assembly.

At least in these things of corporate "education reform," Obama is consistent with his own corporate record and corporate praxis.

The disappointed are those vast throngs across the USA who thought that a family with corporate and political ties to the ruling class in Chicago was really an agent of the kind of "change" that most people in the USA are demanding today. The Obamas want the same kind of "reform" and "change" as are wanted by the Pritzkers and Ariel Capital Management people.

It's slightly different from some of the agenda of the Bush oil cowboys, but not by much -- and certainly not what his legions of workers had in mind (for the most part) when they formed the infantry of his amazing nomination machine.

Mon Jul 7, 2008 at 3:06 AMBy: George N. Schmidt No Flip-Flops For Obama In NEA Endorsement Acceptance As important as the kinds of schools Barack Obama attended (after all, his wife Michelle is a graduate of Chicago's Whitney Young Magnet High School) are the policies he has supported since he gained political power in the Illinois General Assembly. His record has been unswerving support for the agenda of the Daley administration -- privatization, union busting, test-based "accountability," charter schools, and, most recently, merit pay. With No Child Left Behind having had its most avid Big City Mayor Fan Club here in Chicago since 2002, there was adequate time for Barack Obama to do some criticism of the mayor's corporate "school reform" agenda and its national counterpart, both under the Clinton administration's "school reform" plans and since the election of George W. Bush and the bipartisan support for No Child Left Behind.

One of the most interesting things about Obama's record (to me at least) has been his support for segregated charter schools in Chicago, but for few or no charter schools in Illinois outside Chicago. Since Mayor Daley's version of "school reform" has always been "separate and unequal" (with the maintenance of 300 all-black, mostly serving poor children, public elementary and high schools), the politicians who supported Daley's plans and programs (and the two CEOs who implemented those programs, Paul Vallas and Arne Duncan) have been among the most consistent segregationists of the 21st Century.

Examined at ground level, in a vast area stretching from Austin Blvd. on the West Side all the way out to 135th St. in Altgeld Gardens on the far South Side, the "audacity" here has been the ability to market a Chicago politician who has supported several 19th Century realities (massive segregation; union busting; privatization as opposed to public service) as "Change We Can Believe In..."

As I have said before.

I've voted for the guy before and will vote for him again.

But not because this election is going to yield any major changes in the corporate "reform" agendas of the past 18 years:

"School Reform"

"Housing Reform" and

"Welfare Reform"

have all been an attack on some very basic and necessary public programs in the USA, and a source of massive wealth for those who profited from the privatization (and in most cases, emiseration) of the poor and working class people who were the victims of those programs.