On Saturday, March 30, 2013, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION and THE NEW YORK TIMES ran front page stories on the cheating scandal raging in the Atlanta Public Schools. Both pieces stated the time frame and the enormity of the wrong doing. Both tell that 35 educators face racketeering charges that could send them away for from five to twenty years.
While the AJC quotes concerned business leaders like banker George G. Andrews and tycoon Robin C. Loudermilk, Jr. , THE NEW YORK TIMES inches closer to the fire.
The TIMES publishes,
“What made Dr. Beverly L. Hall just about untouchable, was her strong ties to local business leaders. Atlanta prides itself in being a progressive Southern city when it comes to education, entrepreneurship and race – – and Dr. Hall’s rising test scores were good news on all those fronts. She is an African-American woman who had turned around a mainly poor African American school district, which would make Atlanta an even more desirable destination for businesses.
“And so when Mr. Perdue (former Governor of Georgia) challenged the test results that underpinned everything – – even though he was a conservative Republican businessman – – he met strong resistance from the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.
“There was extensive subtle pressure,” Mr. Perdue said. “They’d say, ‘Do you really think there is anything there? We have to make sure we don’t hurt the city.’ Good friends broke with me over this.”
“I was dumbfounded that the business community would not want the truth,” he said.
“Once the special prosecutors’ report was made public, it did not matter what the business community wanted; the findings were so sensational, there was no turning back.”
As stated above most of the Atlanta 35 (I like to call them) face racketeering charges. Any one or all found guilty in a court of law could get 5 to 20. That is Georgia law now, but it was first established as a means to jail mafia family breakers of the law. RICO is an acronym for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
My readers will recall my blog long ago entitled, “RICO, RICO, RICO.” Now 35 educators charged with the nurturing and educating of third graders face RICO charges. I smiled gently when I read Rhonda “the whole truth” Cook’s piece in the Saturday AJC, entitled, “Officials facing RICO charges.” Rhonda “the whole truth” Cook is all over my blog. You may recall that she is the AJC reporter who rushed over to Central Atlanta Progress in The Hurt Building to sit at the feet of propagandist Richard “We’re in!” Orr, who at the time along with Debi Starnes was spinning yarns about the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless and The Center at Peachtree Pine. Orr’s middle name comes from the words he emailed his boss, A. J. Robinson when Cook called to let him know she’d be right over.
I rejoice that Rhonda “the whole truth” Cook is an expert on The RICO Act. Who knows, she may have opportunities to write about others who face RICO Act charges.
The egregious acts of cheating on test scores over the years is incorrigible. And the cheating was not committed for the children, the victims; it was committed for the commercial interests in order that they could lure more of themselves to Atlanta.
Both Mark 10:14 and Matthew 19:14 quote Jesus as saying, “Suffer the little children to come to me and do not stop them because the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.” (translation mine)
Jeremiah 7:31,32a records the terrifying passage that reads, “They have built the pagan shrines of Topheth in the valley of the son of Hinnom, where they sacrifice their little sons and daughters in the fire. I have never commanded such a horrible deed; it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing. So beware, for the time is coming, says the Lord, when that place will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.” (New Living Translation)
Let us stop slaughtering our little ones at the Shrine of Commerce. How dare we allow public schools to become The Valley of Slaughter?
James Wilson Beaty
Jeremiah 22:16
April 1, 2013
Dr. Jim Beaty 