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Updates for government notices, Things to do, Artists, General things

Tuesday, December 31, 2019 - 8:45am
not Necessarily the view of this paper/ outlet

2019 witnessed many changes in the network infrastructure globally, but several areas are stagnating in comparison with the IT industry overall

December 27, 2019. As for 2019, the sector of network infrastructure has been quite vibrant and moving due to many changes. However, there is still some room for improvement, in particular areas which may be regarded as far from being disruptive.

The following network infrastructure industry trends were among the most prominent in 2019.

Industry disruptors improved the Internet

It would be difficult to name a single or even a few influencers of various improvements regarding the technical side of the Internet. 2019 was exceptional because of the collaboration of many different companies working within the Internet ecosystem while contributing with their own ideas and innovations. “We could see that a number of technologies were developed within the network ecosystem. The main ones would be IoT (Internet of Things), 5G, AI (Artificial Intelligence), Serverless computing and open computing. All these technologies are disruptive and developing further. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how they are going to evolve next year and beyond,” - explains Vincentas Grinius, CEO of Heficed, a network infrastructure provider.

More alarms raised about IPv4 depletion

IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is the newest version of the IP (Internet Protocol). Some experts of network infrastructure claim that the Internet as a whole should switch to IPv6; however, others disagree and claim that the resources of the current IPv4 are still unused and the Internet is not ready to move on from there. As stated by Grinius, this situation is multi-faceted. “The fact is that right now we have 25% of Internet accessibility over IPv6, which means that since 1999 we made very small progress in adopting it. However, high prices of IPv4 will push the adoption forward and we might see faster adoption to keep cost efficiency. In the upcoming years, IPv4 will remain the dominant protocol.”

Some parts of Internet infrastructure are still stuck in the past

Despite the advancements in Internet infrastructure listed above, there is still a way to go for the infrastructure to be truly up-to-date and geared towards the future. “It is great to see such ideas as the IP lease splitting into two markets – residential IPs and IPs for verticals like ISP/Telcos, Hosting industry – becoming true. However, what can be noticed is that IPv4 demand is growing and more management will be required to control it. Therefore, it should be good to become laser-focused on both network and IP to be more appealing to large companies which still use Excel spreadsheets to track their IP assets.”

Large ISPs focused on hyperscalers only

Overall, the decrease in internet pricing could be noticeable, suggesting that providing these services became more affordable. However, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) generally targeted hyperscalers (large companies seeking to dominate the public cloud and cloud services), which caused issues on broader network infrastructure developments. “This happens because of many competitors, lack of unique market proposition combined with the IP address shortage, which also means higher IP address pricing,“ - claims Grinius.

2019 was a year of changes and challenges for the network infrastructure. As the large part of ongoing development is looking promising, 2020 may bring further advancements, especially if new technologies and solutions will be integrated and adopted on a wider scale.

- END - 

ABOUT HEFICED

With its headquarters in London and server locations in every continent, Heficed is an IP address-oriented company offering flexible and custom IP address infrastructure solutions, cloud services and bare-metal servers. At the core of Heficed‘s business is its world‘s first automated IP address infrastructure engineering platform, which streamlines the process of leasing and managing IP addresses. www.heficed.com

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Climate alarmists winning the war of words, despite real world evidence that nothing unusual is happening

 

By Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris 

 

Thanks largely to Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders and 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, “existential’ was selected as the word of the year by Dictionary.com. The on-line dictionary describes the phenomenon as follows:

 

Searches for existential spiked throughout 2019, especially after politicians used the word to characterize the dangers and disruptions climate change is widely held to pose for human life and the environment as we know them.

 

At a town hall on February 25, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders helped send searches for existential up over 179% when he called climate change “an existential crisis that impacts not just you and me and our generation but our kids and our grandchildren.”

 

Search volume for existential was higher than average throughout summer and fall 2019. August witnessed fires rage across the Amazon and Hurricane Dorian ravage the Bahamas. Many outlets and organizations discussed these disasters not only in connection to climate but also in existential terms. The non-profit Amazon Watch, for instance, framed the conflagration starkly: “ … it’s not only the Amazon, but our entire planet that is in crisis as the devastation of this life-giving biome poses a real, existential threat for all of humanity.”

 

September saw the worldwide Climate Strike and major speeches by the Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg. On September 18, Thunberg notably urged the US Congress: “I have a dream that the people in power, as well as the media, start treating this crisis like the existential emergency it is.”

 

Similarly, Oxford Dictionaries picked “climate emergency” as its word of the year. Clearly, alarmists are winning the war of words in the climate debate. Here’s why none of it makes any sense.

 

Our atmosphere is made up of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 0.9% Argonne, some trace gases and only 0.04% of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas most often blamed by alarmists for the supposedly ‘existential’ climate change threat. There is no way that this miniscule volume of life-giving gas (the only reason we can inhabit the Earth) is a threat to life as we know it today.

 

Direct atmospheric CO2 measurements began in 1958 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. They show a steady rise in CO2 from 314 parts per million (ppm) in 1958 to 406 ppm in 2017.

The 40% increase from 280 ppm at the end of World War II to 410 ppm in 2019 is widely recognized to be mainly man-made, derived primarily from fossil fuels, including power plants, factories, and automobiles. But these CO2 levels are neither unusual nor dangerous when viewed in the context of the long-term record of our planet’s climate.

 

We know from our fossil record that CO2 levels throughout Earth’s history have averaged more than six times our modern concentrations. We also know that nuclear submarines submerged beneath the ocean for weeks at a time, average 5000 ppm CO2, with no health problem ever reported.

 

Antarctica has had the longest continuous accumulation of ice. It has provided data going back 800,000 years, while data from Greenland in the Northern Hemisphere gives CO2 data going back into the last interglacial period 128,000 years ago. Temperature and CO2 levels have varied during this long period, and importantly, temperature changes preceded changes in CO2. In other words, carbon dioxide has NOT driven temperatures for the last 800,000 years.

 

During each glacial advance, CO2 levels dropped to dangerously low concentrations, to below 200 ppm. These low levels were dangerous because the minimum threshold for plant life to exist is 150 ppm, and we nearly reached that ‘line of death’ during our most recent ice age. Not only is rising CO2 not a bad thing, it could save civilization for future generations, centuries and thousands of years into the future.

 

Dr. Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, who now battles the lies that alarmists often tell to enrich themselves, believes the day will come when we will be crushing limestone to add more carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. He seriously describes this future need because the record shows that over the past 150 million years in the fossil record there has been an alarming downward trend toward CO2 starvation.

 

Slide shown by Patrick Moore in seminar presentations in Montreal and Toronto, October 2019.

 

The forecasters of climate doom assert that CO2 levels have never been as high as today. Well that is only true for the past 800,000 years. They prefer to view the increase of 120 ppm over the past 150 years through the narrow lens of recent geologic time. To properly analyze the current levels, we need to put the data into the proper context. During our current geologic period, called the Quaternary, there has existed the lowest average CO2 levels in the entire history of the Earth. In the lush vegetative days of the dinosaurs, the CO2 levels stood in excess of 1600 ppm. The average C02 concentration in the preceding 600 million years was more than six-times our modern era level.

 

The combustion of fossil fuels has allowed humanity to increase concentration of this beneficial molecule and perhaps avert an actual CO2-related climate apocalypse. The climate delusion used by alarmists in their attempts to defeat capitalism and destroy human freedom would set us back centuries to a time when backbreaking work and shortened life expectancy was the norm.

 

Carbon dioxide emissions are not an existential threat, but the climate alarmists most assuredly are.

 

Portions of this article were excerpted with permission of the author of the book “Inconvenient Facts” by Gregory Wrightstone, which is recommended for everyone desiring the full story of the climate delusion.

_________________________________________________

Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Advisor with the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC). Tom Harris is Executive Director of ICSC.

======================

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=================================

A more perfect union

by Wim Laven

1103 words

Current partisan politics frequently returns to questions and debates about the supreme law of the land—The Constitution—as it should, because two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump passed on December 18, 2019. This affirmed an ugly truth about Trump’s illegitimate use of the office of the White House. Trump will go down in history for his transgressions. 

 

Forget the bizarre Republicans like Barry Loudermilk who defended the crimes by comparing Trump with Jesus. The greater offense is the near instantaneous promises from Republican gargoyles like Mitch McConnell, who has publicly declared that he will work as a member of Trump’s defense team and forgo his oath as a juror to perform an impartial Senate trial based upon evidence and facts. 

 

Lines from Trump loyalists that keep being repeated ad nauseam assert that the goal of impeachment is to annul the votes of 63 million Americans because the left hates the right. However, the key principles of the Constitution could not be more clear.

 

Impeachment is not an effort to annul a vote, because it is clearly written as the means to respond to Presidential unconstitutional offenses. Allowing Trump to cheat in elections is blatantly in violation of our Constitution. 

 

But if there were even a shred of honesty in the fake claim of a desire to protect the right to vote then Republicans would stop taking steps to discourage, limit, and restrict access to voting. They would stop justifying disenfranchisement on fraudulent claims on abuses happening domestically and they would take strong action to limit the well documented and systematic efforts of foreign states to interfere with our democratic processes. They would stop calling me a “hater” for insisting that we safeguard our institutions and honor our esteemed principle that we are all equal under the law. 

 

“Establish justice”

Current events are frustrating absurdity. Removing Trump from office is a process clearly defined and instituted for responding to high crimes and misdemeanors; abusing the office of the White House and obstructing Congress qualify. These crimes are treated seriously because the power of people—through their vote—is of paramount importance to the function of a democratic republic. I have a deep concern for the continued dereliction of the oaths sworn by elected officials who refuse to serve the American public, honor the Constitution, or serve in the impartial and fair roles assigned to them to prevent any president from acting outside the law, to prevent Trump from being above the law. 

 

“Insure domestic tranquility”

Trump’s puppets assert that the 63 million people who voted for him have a right for their voices to be heard, but what about the people who voted for the candidate who won the popular vote? Where has the recognition of the mandate of the almost 66 million people who present different values, needs, and desires been reflected? Trump is bound to serve all Americans, but he only serves himself by rewarding those who are loyal to him and punishing opposition—even if it means bullying children. A deeper look presents an ugly betrayal of American elections and the right to vote. But even before he was impeached—the entirety of his tenure in office—has all been an effort to divide the country one bigoted lie after another.

 

“Provide for the common defense”

Trump never matured into the role of serving all Americans, and he never tried to. His xenophobic rants and juvenile bullying have inspired increases in hate crimes and threatened the security of all Americans. Trump treatment has no moral bottom, his condemnation is nonpartisan, he has insults for everyone: POWs, Gold Star families, those with physical and mental disabilities. His defenders ignore their obligation to put the country first; the only defense is the one provided to the master they fear. He does not understand common good; he only sees personal gain. He can betray any ally for the right price, no matter how grotesque, and each time he gets away with it he sinks to a new low and brings us along. Compromise and collaboration are absent from his toolbox, but these are the very skills required to hold civilized society together.

 

“Promote the general welfare”

Republicans continue to block measure after measure to protect the integrity of elections. They do nothing to rebuke the ongoing requests Trump makes that foreign states should interfere in U.S. elections. It is not just the core of the articles of impeachment, it is the single most important protection of American democracy as whole—it is clear winning is what they are concerned with—national security does not even register as an afterthought to such a hypocrisy. Meanwhile national and international epidemics are only getting worse. Global climate change is only a joke to a man who does not understand much beyond fiscal quarter profiteering at any cost, but the consequences are real and indisputable to those with any knowledge of science.

 

“Secure the blessings of liberty”

It is not hate to affirm that the President is not above the law. It is a love for my country that causes me to continue to demand action in the Russian campaign to interfere with the 2016 Presidential election—an the impeachable intention to do so again in 2020. It is moral courage that compels me to continue to join with millions of fellow Americans in protesting the urgent needs of the day, like public safety, national security, human rights, etc., which are being categorically ignored by an increasingly fascist leader and his spineless sycophants. Do not obfuscate, opposition to Trump is not the cause of the push to remove him from office; his crimes are the cause, and there has been no challenge to the evidence or facts. The only recourse at this point is removing everyone who fails to put the country—The Constitution—ahead of party from office.

 

The tools available to the public are clear. Trump’s defenders must be voted out. Trump, however, has stated that he is not sure he’ll voluntarily give up the power he wields. All citizens must be united in the common goal of holding Donald Trump accountable to the law. We can resist his efforts to divide us; we can be civilized though he refuses to. We can take care of those impacted most significantly by his bigoted and failing policies. We can take heed of the wisdom of our heroes like Martin Luther King Jr. “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Our institutions are weakened now by Trump and his coterie, but we must stay strong, our democracy depends on us.

~~~~~~~~

Wim Laven, Ph.D., syndicated by PeaceVoice, teaches courses in political science and conflict resolution. 

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Court Rules in Favor of FTC in Case Against Mortgage Relief Scammers

Order bans defendants from providing debt relief, imposes $18.5 million judgment

FOR RELEASE: December 30, 2019

The U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada has ruled in favor of the Federal Trade Commission in a case against the operators of a scheme that deceived financially distressed homeowners by falsely promising to make their mortgages more affordable.  The defendants also charged consumers illegal advance fees and unlawfully told consumers not to pay their mortgages to or communicate with their lenders.

The case was originally filed by the FTC in January 2018, and the court issued a temporary restraining order against the company at that time.

In granting the FTC’s motion for summary judgment, the court found that the defendants’ practices violated the FTC Act and the Mortgage Assistance Relief Services Rule.

Under the terms of the newly issued final order, the defendants will be permanently banned from the debt relief business and will be banned from misleading consumers about the terms of other financial services they may offer, as well as from making misleading claims in advertisements.

The ruling also imposes an $18.5 million judgment against the defendants. The order requires that the contents of numerous bank accounts be turned over to the FTC, along with the proceeds from selling assets belonging to the defendants. Among the assets that will be liquidated are a Park City, Utah ski chalet, an office building, a Mercedes Benz S550, and a Porsche Carerra.

Funds received as a result of the order may be used by the FTC to provide redress for consumers affected by the defendants’ scheme.

The defendants subject to the order are Preferred Law PLLC; Consumer Defense LLC (Nevada); Consumer Defense LLC (Utah); Consumer Link Inc.; American Home Loan Counselors; American Home Loans LLC; Consumer Defense Group LLC, formerly known as Modification Review Board LLC; Brown Legal Inc.; AM Property Management LLC; FMG Partners LLC; Zinly LLC; Jonathan P. Hanley; and Sandra X. Hanley.

The Federal Trade Commission works to promote competition, and protect and educate consumers. You can learn more about consumer topics and file a consumer complaint online or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP (382-4357). Like the FTC on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, read our blogs, and subscribe to press releases for the latest FTC news and resources.

PRESS RELEASE REFERENCE: 

FTC Halts Deceptive Mortgage Loan Modification Scheme

======================

Dear Editor:

Please consider this guest commentary on white nationalism by two co-authors, one a primary health care provider and health equity leader, and one a professor of conflict transformation. For PeaceVoice, thank you,

 

White nationalism and public health

by Leslie D. Gregory and Tom H. Hastings

1239 words

George Wallace ran for president in 1968 and garnered a great deal of support from white working class voters, though by then he had learned to use code words and phrases to substitute for overtly racist language—hence his focus on “welfare” and “crime,” “drugs,” “thugs,” and “law and order.” His base comprised white nationalists, largely from the South. Northern white working-class voters were mostly solidly Democrat—until black people finally grew tired of waiting and waiting for economic equality, and until Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. 

Then came the riots in many northern and far Western cities. Then came the white fear that had been virtually eliminated by the nonviolence of the 1955-1965 Civil Rights Movement, led in part by Rep. John Lewis, the last surviving speaker at the historic 1963 March on Washington where MLK delivered his I Have a Dream speech. Lewis was on fire that day, promising a nonviolent fight that would not stop until segregation and inequality were done. 

In the aftermath of the riots that followed Dr. King’s assassination, white voters in much more of the country were drawn to a more sophisticated Republican candidate who saw that opening, Richard Nixon, and his coded language was lifted from Wallace but Nixon had a less overtly racist image and a deeper political machinery connection. His “Southern strategy” was to out-Wallace George Wallace, but in a more nationally sellable fashion. 

That plus his “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam got him elected. His opponent, Hubert Humphrey, was associated strongly with the stupid escalation of the war, since he was Lyndon Johnson’s Vice-President while LBJ ratcheted up the war and thus the daily death toll of American boys. 

LBJ was anathema to white Southerners who saw his flip to support civil rights as a betrayal to his race. So the 1968 election saw the gains of the Civil Rights Movement slide backward and the dogwhistle language appealing to race-based animus grow popular across the country. 

Now we see the trailing effects in Trump and his base. 

Trump appeals to his white nationalist base again and again: 

·       "I play to people's fantasies."--1987 Art of the Deal

·       " “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists."--from his July 16 campaign kickoff rally in Laredo, Texas, when he announced that he would build a 2,000-mile wall across the border to keep out Mexicans and that Mexico would pay for it. 

·       Muslims are the enemy. Shortly after his inauguration, Trump delivered on his hate for Muslims promises that he made in his campaign rallies--less than two weeks into his presidency he issued his Executive Order banning Muslims from entering the US. Very specifically: "This executive order banned entry into the United States for 90 days of nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syrian, Sudan, and Yemen), banned the entry of all refugees for 120 days, and indefinitely banned the entry of all Syrian refugees." And despite his campaign pledge to get us out of endless wars that take a terrible toll on US armed forces, including great numbers of the white working class, Trump has actually expanded the numbers of troops fighting in various Middle East and Central Asia countries, and just now bombed Iraq and Syria yet again, guaranteed to escalate resentments in those countries.

All this fear and hatred is felt by his white nationalist base as support. His strong suit is that he hurts them less than he hurts people of color--but he still hurts his white nationalist base. Examples: 

·       Faking out his white nationalist base with his false stories about Obamacare and false promises to bring health care to them—and lower prescription drug prices. He has not made any of this happen. Instead his base are the most frequent addicts to opioids, which is hurting them too. His rhetoric about all this is belied by lack of achievement.  

·       “Mortality rates have risen for members of the white working class in midlife, mainly due to increases in drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related liver mortality,” notes Proceedings from National Academy of Sciences in 2018. 

·       Fortune magazine points out that his infamous wall with its projected scores of $billions price tag, could fund health insurance for virtually every American. 

·       For the first time in years, the numbers of uninsured Americans are again on the rise under Trump’s regime, up more than seven million Americans without health insurance last year. Yes, this hurts people of color more, which is Trump’s coded “victory,” but it is, for his white nationalist base, a Pyrrhic victory indeed (from the ancient general Pyrrhus, who noted after a devasting battle in which he “won” at a cost of a great many of his warriors, “Another such victory and I shall be undone.”).

“You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings,” the famous Georgia populist leader Tom Watson told a crowd of black and white laborers in 1892," noted writer Keri Leigh Merritt. 

How have we overcome such shenanigans? 

·       When the 1960 Nashville Sit-In Kids engaged the community, they were not merely nonviolent in their original announcements, but they refused to fight back with violent self-defense when attacked without provocation. They escalated not into violence but into a highly effective boycott of downtown businesses, eventually breaking the business owners away from the avowed racists, flipping the divide and conquer strategy of the white elite in the South. They continued, maintaining nonviolent discipline until the mayor--a man who had been a "law and order" Southerner--did an about face and declared segregation unjustified and ordered it ended in his town. This model worked from Rosa Parks to Selma voter rights. It was hard but the nonviolent discipline taught by leaders such as Rev. James Lawson and John Lewis worked again and again.

·       Similarly, in South Africa, nonviolent resistance to apartheid was hard, and the dreaded security forces were employed with draconian effect. But in the 1980s a new generation of local black leadership devised a similar strategy of maintaining nonviolent discipline and backing it with a massive boycott, meaning the overwhelming majority stopped buying from white merchants, eventually causing a similar reversal of the divide and conquer practice, and the ruling elite split, ousting determined overtly racist P. W. Botha and installing white pragmatist F. W. DeKlerk, who released Mandela and ceded the right to vote to all adults, not just whites. This strategy is available to us in the US at any point we decide to organize around it.

Yes, there is a trend across much of the world toward the strongman ruler, the Trump/Putin/Erdogan/Duterte/Jong-un model, but that is reversible and is indeed being reversed on the continent historically noted for that strongman model, Africa, where a number of countries have seen a rise in metrics of democracy over the past few years. Nothing about this is permanent or inevitable. We always have a choice. 

We can regain our global image as champion of human rights, which is currently undone. We can be the leader in environmental protection, which Trump is wrecking. And we may even catch up to the rest of the tech-advanced world in universal health care if we choose to drop the politics of division and start the politics of unity. We can start small—sign a petition calling for equity in health care—and think big as we consider the stakes of the 2020 election. 

—30—

Leslie Gregory is a PA-C focusing on Preventive Cardiology and is Executive Director, Right to Health. Dr. Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice Director and on occasion an expert witness for the defense in court. 

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120 Organizations Creating a New Decade for Food

 

 

 

Dear Friend,

Greetings from Baltimore!

2019 was a great year for Food Tank. We hosted our largest ever NYC Summit and Gala, spearheaded our first-ever event series across the U.S., and created completely original, informative content for our international readership every day. We participated in global discussions about the food system in Abu Dhabi, Australia, Italy, and across the United States. And we met many of our members and readers—and heroines and heroes—in person!

With 2020 on the way, Food Tank is excited to expand our activities in innovative ways. We’ve planned new cities for our Food Talk Live events and Summits (here we come Tempe, AZ; Chicago, IL; Minneapolis, MN; Washington, DC; and more cities), a new podcast season with inspiring food and agriculture experts, amazing events at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and South by Southwest, original research and reporting daily, and even an original off-Broadway musical about climate change and the food system!

Now is the time to join Food Tank—it’s not too late to become a member this year and support our mission of bringing all sides to the table! And to celebrate the New Year, use coupon code FoodtankNYE25 for 25 percent off your membership—and your membership is tax-deductible!

To leap forward into 2020, we’re highlighting 120 organizations with plans for a more sustainable food system in the next year.

Which organizations give you an optimistic outlook for the food system in 2020? Please email me at danielle@foodtank.com to let us know about the work they’re doing!

Sincerely,

Danielle Nierenberg

 

Read More 

“While it cannot cure everything, education is the best antidote for ignorance.”

Dear Friends,

I hope you’ve had time to enjoy the company of family and friends this holiday season. My heart goes out to those who are suffering in numerous ways from the tragedies that seem to beset us at every turn. I remain convinced that while it cannot cure everything, education is the best antidote for ignorance.

Here is just a brief summary of what we are resolved to do to ensure light is shed on the critical importance of education opportunity in each and every community this year:

Coalesce and build up the efforts of individual citizens, teachers, and parents who are trying to create their own schools and education programs to serve more students. There’s nothing like the American spirit to turn upside down the status quo (think Tocqueville).

At CER, we’ve never been big fans of working through pre-existing organizations that have their own challenges, goals and constituents to worry about. We’d rather bolster the efforts of real people doing the work daily — with advice, counsel, connections and the strategic public relations influence that CER has to connect the individual to the agency that he or she needs to get their idea recognized, expanded or pushed through state halls.

Engage the tens of thousands of education entrepreneurs who are at the heart of the technological advances that make learning accessible to people everywhere!

With a special connection to the edtech universe globally, and our connections with the best of schools and school pioneers in the charter movement and larger education choice arena, we can move mountains to ensure that new schools and proven practices are expanding and growing. What we’ve seen accomplished in just under 30 years with the entrepreneurial innovations borne in the edreform movement could, if expanded, provide millions more students with what they need and deserve.

 

 

Inspire the movement that we helped launch 26 years ago to put parents front and center in leading policy, advocacy and their own efforts to educate their children.

We need PARENT POWER like never before. I’m gratified the term we once helped coin for education is actually making ripples in politics today, thanks to the inspiration of Dr. Howard Fuller and his new army of advocates who are challenging any one who stands in front of the proverbial schoolhouse door to prevent parents from making the decisions most critical to their own children’s lives.

We will accomplish these things in many ways — from engaging in legal efforts, advocacy, public relations, research, information sharing and good old fashioned public awareness. Regardless of tactic, however, we must ensure the opportunity for learners at all levels to find the best education — rich in content and in character formation — and tailored to their needs.

As we begin the last hours until the New Year and a New Decade, let us resolve to hold leaders to account for what we know to be consistent with the values this country holds dear — freedom, equality and prosperity for all! And to those who stand in the way of applying all those things to education, we say, look out! You haven’t seen anything yet!

Please consider giving to CER this calendar year before the clock strikes midnight! There are many ways to engage — donations (click below!), memberships, sponsorships of our programs and podcasts, or consider engaging our new CER Advisory team to help you advance your idea, your school or your product! Whichever way you decide, just remember that if you want something to get done, you always go to the busiest people… and those who’ve shown their impact consistently year after year.

And please designate The Center for Education Reform as your charity when shopping through AmazonSmile .

That’s CER! Please join us.

And from all of us, Cheers to a Healthy, Prosperous and Opportunity-filled New Year! Happy 2020!!

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“While it cannot cure everything, education is the best antidote for ignorance.”

Dear Friends,

I hope you’ve had time to enjoy the company of family and friends this holiday season. My heart goes out to those who are suffering in numerous ways from the tragedies that seem to beset us at every turn. I remain convinced that while it cannot cure everything, education is the best antidote for ignorance.

Here is just a brief summary of what we are resolved to do to ensure light is shed on the critical importance of education opportunity in each and every community this year:

 

Kriss Hupp and Patricia Dahmen are educators at the Cornell School District who created an extracurricular live broadcast journalism program for students. Students produce a daily news program for other students, faculty, and staff in the community called “TheCornellCHSTV”. The show is entirely developed and produced by the students. The curriculum teaches students how to operate and construct their own broadcasts “in the doing”. Students learn a broad range of skills including presentation, camera angles, lighting and communication. Through the program, students become masters of their own education. “The students who join CHSTV are looking to learn more about broadcast journalism, and some of them have become “experts” in their job positions. This enables them to become teachers,” says Dahmen.

Hupp and Dahmen believe technology is a powerful tool that should be used to enable students to create and collaborate with their peers around the world. “As technology evolves, so does our student experiences,” says Dahmen.

Read the full article here

Kris Hupp is the 21st Century Teaching and Learning Coach at the Cornell School District. Patricia Dahmen is an English and Journalism Teacher at the Cornell School District. Kris and Tricia are CHS-TV sponsors.

CMRubinWorld’s award-winning series, The Global Search for Education, brings together distinguished thought leaders in education and innovation from around the world to explore the key learning issues faced by most nations. The series has become a highly visible platform for global discourse on 21st century learning, offering a diverse range of innovative ideas which are presented by the series founder, C. M. Rubin, together with the world’s leading thinkers.

For more information on CMRubinWorld

Follow @CMRubinWorld on Twitter

Contact Information:

David Wine

David(at)cmrubinworld(dot)com