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Recall Tom: The Video

Done to the tune of Elton John’s “Levon”

Referenda Organizers Hit The Mark

Press release today from Idahoans for Responsible Education Reform:

Idaho citizens are eager to have a chance to vote on the three education laws passed by the Idaho Legislature. That’s the message sent by more than 48,000 citizens who have signed each of the three petitions to put the laws to referendum votes next year.

“We are announcing today that we have passed 47,432 verified signatures for each of the three petitions,” said Mike Lanza, chair of Idahoans for Responsible Education Reform. The parent-led committee initiated the petition drives on April 8 and the Idaho Education Association joined the coalition a week later.

“We’re still collecting signatures because we know that many Idahoans still want to sign the three petitions,” Lanza added. “We know that people don’t want to see the larger class sizes, layoffs and unfunded technology mandates that these laws are already causing.”

“Our members have joined with parents and other working Idahoans to collect these signatures in just 40 days,” said IEA President Sherri Wood. “Unfortunately, we won’t have a chance to vote on the laws until November 2012, but by then, Idahoans will have seen ample evidence on just how damaging these laws are.”

County clerks offices across Idaho continue to verify signatures. Organizers will deliver the petitions to the Secretary of State’s office in Boise and hold a news conference on Monday, June 6. The petitions will not be officially qualified until the Secretary of State’s office reviews them.

We must keep gathering to gather at least 60,000 signatures as there will surely be challenges from the so-called “Freedom Foundation” or other Right-wing Luna supporters.  And Don’t forget we still have a month to gather enough signatures to Recall Luna. IT CAN BE DONE!!

Rugged Individualists, or Sheep?

In Idaho, the loonitarian right has taken over the Republican Party. This was made clear to me by the fact that the Local Republican Women  are hosting a fundraiser  in Pocatello, charging 10 bucks to see the incredibly unwatchable  movie version of  Ayn Rand’s incredibly unreadable novel  Atlas Shrugged.  The fact that Rand, a third rate writer with a fourth rate philos0phy, was an active atheist doesn’t even register with this band of white mormon/fundy/evangelical  housewives and amway pushers.  Rand spent the last years of her life on the dole, but that doesn’t seem to phase these folks for whom reality is an inconvenience, easily dismissed.  At Huffington Post  today Alan Krinsky posts an article “It began With Ayn Rand”.

Here’s an excerpt:

Ayn Rand’s world is one without community, a place where rugged individuals achieve success all on their own. Rand is therefore blind to the societal infrastructure that makes the accumulation of wealth possible and makes a polity stable enough for an economy to function. I would suggest that the logical outcome of Rand’s philosophy is a fractured world, where the wealthy pay paramilitary forces to protect them in their gated communities. It is a world not of some ideal, free market competition, but one in which the absence of regulations leads to monopolization, the further concentration of wealth, and the breakdown of consumer protections. And in that sort of world, the production of wealth becomes more difficult, even for the wealthy. As trite as the phrase has become, it does take a village. Individual success and triumph often requires individual initiative and perseverance, but it also depends upon so much else and so many other people to create and maintain the foundations of a stable society.

Read the whole piece here.

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