I'm going to keep hitting Michelle Rhee and the lies she tells for as long as it takes to get this message across. For example, in this video she says kids will graduate less educated than their parents. That's an outright lie and she can't back it up with any facts at all. But if it were true, it would be true because the idiotic NCLB has been around for ten years and has caused schools to suffer from testing-itis, where teachers teach to a set of standards instead of critical thinking and analytical skills. It might also be true because schools are the target of funding cuts, particularly as the right wing tries to ram "school choice" down our throat and pay the for-profits instead of the public schools.
In the comments to the post where this video was embedded one commenter's remarks stood out, because the person claimed to be progressive, but defended Michelle Rhee to the core. This comment in particular was interesting:
“Michelle is a pioneer in education reform, unafraid to challenge the status quo and offer real solutions. Her policies are neither left nor right, but driven by research and the desire to bring accountability to the education system.”
A check over on Twitter shows that GardenStBadger, as he is known on the Huffington Post, recently changed his twitter handle to Arman Belding. Arman Belding worked for Joe Trippi in the Washington DC area as a social media coordinator, before posting an excited announcement in May that he was taking a job with StudentsFirst.
So it appears that in addition to hiring away Hari Sevugan, Rhee is also employing some astroturf types who know their way around social media to push back on the truth about her: She is not progressive, does not have progressive ideas, and is funded by those who want to see public education die altogether.
One usually sees this kind of astroturf effort from the right wing, sort of like Freedomworks' efforts during just about every debate on every policy there is. So, is Rhee showing her right-wing stripes in order to try and convince progressives up is down? You make that call. It sure looks like it to me.
