Race to the Top, Common Core... not consistent with precautionary prinicple.

Why I reject Race to the Top, Common Core, Standardized Testing linked to rating teacher performance, and the privatization of Education: they are not consistent with precautionary principles nor the necessity for diversity as a basis for life itself.

Here is a brief description of the premise (bare with me):

Firstly, bee colony health and the corporatization of American policy are intimately related.

Crop yield and pesticide dependent agriculture is likely the cause of bee colony collapse around the world. It has already been demonstrated that bee populations have been negatively impacted by mass systemic pesticide use in agribusiness. Large acreages of single crops have often enough been cited as contrary to natural processes, contrary to the necessary condition of diversity of species which supports a healthy ecosystem. But this is wholey new level of danger given the role of the bee in the vital process of plant pollination.

In Europe for example you will find decisive actions have already been taken preventing the use of systemic pesticides. Comparisons of the bees' physical behavioral responses while on the organic v. the systemically treated plants have been put on film. Disorientation and even abrupt neurological failure occurred for bees foraging on the treated plants.

The basic premise then: EPA regulation by example does not use the precautionary principle. The federal financial regulatory system in the US is also just as lacking in precautionary principles. Nor does the sterilization of American education through generic texts and testing prove worthy of the promise of the "Character of Our Nation" if such promise guarantees diversity and tolerance.

The entire framework of human practices here it would seem is corrupted by this lack of forethought regarding sustainability. The principle of profit determined by the corporate structure of American business is likely the primary generator there.

How did this happen? Well, for one thing the appointment process allows government to input conflict of interest into the infrastructure of regulation. At least as far back as the Reagan administration we know that regulation was frowned upon, that it appeared to government itself it only hindered American dominance in world business and trade. So in order to ensure this competitive edge corporate figures have been allowed in and out of government departments and regulatory agencies. And we know that this occurred during the G.W Bush administration as well as in the current Obama administration. (Monsanto and other Biotech appointees: Michael Taylor, Islam Siddiqui, Tom Vilsack, Ramona Romero, Rajiv Shah...)

The two realms of power in free trade economies have in effect merged into one force. Any postulations of checks or balance are a sham and misdirect attempts to find a solution. The government has merely become a front for corrupt and inhumane practices. Even the Supreme Court has resumed this bent of discontinuing scrutiny of corporate behavior. For example, there is no precautionary principle protecting the integrity of the Federal Election system from high concentrations of corporate funding now. See the recent decision: Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission.

The point here is that while we in America presume to follow democratic principles this very openness to activities has fostered a one-sidedness in leadership, one of monolithic corporate control of everything including governance―to the ultimate collapse of earth's life friendly ecosystem.

We need not list the many inhumane events such as political detainment, torture or genocide to call attention to the great horrors we are capable of? But these are the extreme result of this same obcesion to homogenize ideas and peoples which has been the focus of many interest groups, especially the Christian right―and not just in America, but also in China where to be a member of a minority religion could mean imprisonment (China maintains a rather sinister combination of communist totalitarianism with profit-making principles of corrupted capitalism). Sadly we see it now in our educational reformers too. From NCLB to Race to the Top common core standardization, the idea of getting everybody on the same page of preparing for innovation and global competition for jobs has been tainted by the same corrupt profiteering that has begun the toppling of global economic stability.

So how is it that very few question this conflict of interest in America, our single-minded forging ahead with standardized testing and the privatization of education? How is it that our ethical environmental principles have dissolved and been resigned to accepting the patenting of genes and the genocide of the bees? It's because most of us are too busy entertaining ourselves to see the quid pro quo and the outright corrupted nature of our governing and corporate powers, nor even the harm being done each and everyone of us on a daily basis through the poisoned food web. So now what? Are we just waiting for Fukashima to kill us all off? We can't just choose to launder our problem with biodegradables and sort the recyclables, nor single crop or common core our way to fix this. The whole structure needs to preserve diversity otherwise you just get more of the same dirtied water, and stagnant minds.

Think about this now: all that our biotechnology has done so far with modified genes is to increase the yield and size of food, including animals. And this in turn benefits not the ecosystem, human health, nor the original organisms. All it does is increase the gluttony of the global corporations that impose these major effects upon the biosphere. We have allowed ourselves to assert that life on earth is a "product" and therefore its manipulation mandated by markets and financial gain.

If genetically modified plants and animals are ultimately sterilized in the process, this is equivalent to genocide and seriously unethical! How does it benefit life to denude its life cycle. And whence will come the life when all procreation is terminated by genetic contamination. The laboratories experimenting with genetic modification harbor not solutions to our overconsumption but rather the final solution for life on earth. Does this supposed attribute of the supposed developed world truly serve us? Doesn't the same follow for monoculturalism in our educational system then, if homogenization of any one thing is to give it a death sentence. To my mind we are undermining the credibility of anything we've claimed to "develop" or reform!