Lloyd Lofthouse

It will take only a few minutes to read this post and less than an hour to watch the five videos. The question is: If you’re an American, are you willing to give up that much time to learn about the threats against your democracy and the loss of the freedoms you take for granted? In fact, you don’t have to give up an entire hour in one sitting. You could read the Blog post and watch the first video, and then return to watch the second, etc., spread over several days.

“A new report shows that top CEOs were paid 331 times more than the average US worker in 2013. At the same time, the poorest fifth of Americans paid an average tax rate of 11 percent while the richest one percent contributed half that rate at state and local levels. In this essay, Bill reflects on the forces that are causing inequality to skyrocket, why it matters and where we’re headed in the future.” (Moyers & Company)

2:57 minutes: a Bill Moyers Trailer

A 24:30 minute segment where Economist Paul Krugman explains how the United States is becoming an oligarchy – the very system our founders revolted against.

My Conclusion: The public schools are the canary in the coal mine. If the United States loses its public schools to corporations owned and controlled by billionaire oligarchs, then the United States will no longer be a democracy because Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, billionaire Hedge Fund CEOs, etc. will be the rulers of the United States and the other 99.9% will be their serfs and slaves.

Teachers and America’s public schools are under attack by the same billionaires mentioned in the previous paragraph and they already own the White House and President Obama.  They gained control of the White House under President G. W. Bush. This war against public education, labor unions, teachers and children started more than forty years ago and like a snowball rolling downhill has grown worse and more dangerous.

To learn more about this war on Public Education and the people’s democracy, I suggest you start by reading Diane Ravitch’s “Reign of Error” and then “The Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

If you’re not a reader or don’t have time to read those two books, then you might learn something from the next three videos.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine, Vietnam Veteran and English-journalism teacher.

His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy that started life as a memoir and then became a fictional suspense thriller. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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