Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law

What do you conservative’s think of this

Williams Paid.

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Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams “to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts,” and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.


If this isn’t corruption, abuse of power, unethical, I can’t think of anything else.

THIS S*CKS!!!

Mr Soul

I saw that article. No big surprise. That kind of “greasing” goes on all the time in politics. This one just made the news. Williams indicated he does believe in the program. It still does not sit well that someone paid him to tout something he “believes” in.

Nothing new here though…

TG

As a teacher I can tell you that NCLB has very little to do with increasing the quality of education in this country…The inside joke is that it should be called “no child moves ahead”. Because that is the biggest result of it…we have to spend so much money and time on students that really don’t give #### that those with some ambition are held back severely because of high class sizes and shortage of money…my budget for 3 history classes per year is $100.00. not for each class but for all three, that’s 33.33 dollars per class and each class has about 20 25 kids…do the math. When Shrub boasted that his state schools had a very high percentage of passing schools after he took over was because he dropped the benchmark by 25 points, it’s not that they were raised by better teaching…none of this testing does a #### thing for raising the quality of education. No matter what the Falwells and Robertsons say we still have one of the best systems in the world. They just want to fill their schools and rake in the tuition money. We as a country test all our students, special ed and regular while most of the rest of the world only test the top 10% that’s why you see the listing that shows the U.S. as failing at education…Also why does everybody want to come here for their education? Because we do it better!

cheers??? :blues:

Williams indicated he does believe in the program.
If he believes in the program, he doesn't need money to talk about it!!!

It still does not sit well that someone paid him to tout something he "believes" in.
He was paid with taxpayer's MONEY!!! Surely this is wrong?!?!

Oh, I agree! It’s just not surprising to me. That stuff goes on ALL the time. We just don’t hear much about it.

TG

Well said crusier. My sense is that if we want to improve outcomes, right now the best thing we could do would be to improve the home lives of lots of those kids who are having problems. What say you?

Absolutely Tom…Parenting is 90% of a childs future success in school and in the system. Kids of good parenting do remarkably better in school regardless of the school they go to.

cheers

I listened to Williams himself be interviewed by msnbc on this issue. While he said a few things that I thought were questionable, he does claim that he shouldn’t have taken this contract (he was contracted by an ad agency as I understand it). He said he wouldn’t do this again, even though he doesn’t think it was unethical. Easy to say - now he’s pocketed $200 grand of our money.

FCC chair orders investigation of Williams deal.

It’s a good day. Have a great weekend!

Mr Soul

Quoted from the article linked by Mike…

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“In this era of huge corporate media, it is becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between news and entertainment, to differentiate between information and propaganda,” FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, said Friday.



Now ain’t that the TRUTH!!

The thing is now, because some putz decided to circumvent common sense and decency, the GAO will spend MILLIONS of OUR tax dollars to investigate this junk. Thus, I see a net loss of millions PLUS the $240,000 they gave this guy already! Lessee…at my current salary and tax rate…carry the one…round to closest whole number…yep. I can pay this off as long as I keep working until I’m 283 years old. No problem. :D :D

TG