Ryan Mauro is Back with Stop Radical Islam.org

Ryan Mauro is the National Security Analyst for RadicalIslam.org, a project of the Clarion Fund, which produced the blockbuster films, “The Third Jihad,” “Obsession” and “Iranium.” He is also a frequent analyst on FOX News Channel. Mauro founded his personal Web site, WorldThreats.com, in 2003. He is a consultant to government agencies and an adjunct professor. He’s also a national security writer for Family Security Matters and a strategic analyst with Wikistrat.


His analysis and research has been widely published and is featured at FrontPage Magazine. His work often appears in PJ Media and has been in the peer-reviewed journal, Middle East Quarterly. He has been quoted and cited in multiple books and newspapers, including the New York Times and Reuters. Ryan is a frequent guest on talk radio all over America as well as cable network television. [more...]

EAGnews.org is releasing a series of stunning reports to show taxpayers exactly how our dollars are being spent in government schools. We repeatedly hear from the education establishment that school coffers are being raided, requiring teachers to be laid off and programs to be cut. We hear schools are on the brink of bankruptcy and are operating on shoe-string budgets.

But local media outlets have long been derelict in telling citizens how the billions of K-12 dollars are really being spent. How can taxpayers determine if schools actually do need more money if no one is tracking where the dollars are going?

Enter EAGnews.org.

In the first of a series of reports, EAGnews.org examined the teachers’ contract for Milwaukee Public Schools for the 2010-2011 school year and discovered a slew of expensive provisions. The numbers are shocking. [more...]

Education Action Group Foundation, Inc., a national organization headquartered in Michigan, has a seven-person staff. EAG is a non-partisan non-profit organization with the goal of promoting sensible education reform and exposing those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.  Both Kyle Olson, Publisher; Founder & CEO and Steve Gunn, Editor-in-Chief, will be available for interviews.

SandyPundits.com Offers Expert Guests on the GOP Race

Check Guests Available every day for the best expert commentators on all the latest hot topics in the news.

New Film Skewers Chicago Teachers Union

Juan Williams pulls no punches in school expose

A Tale of Two Missions - a film by Juan Williams and Kyle Olson - tells the story of competing cultures in American education through examples from Chicago.

While the fight for school choice rages across the nation, perhaps no better example exists than that of the Windy City. Traditional alliances are breaking down. Both political parties are pushing for education reform and expanded school choice. The status quo is under attack, because most reasonable people understand that thousands of Chicago students are trapped in failing schools.

But the education establishment, led by the radical Chicago Teachers Union, is not willing to give an inch to allow better choices for underserved students. And the union still has enough money, influence and legal standing to make reform efforts difficult to implement.

The film features the Noble Street College Prep charter school and the amazing results its teachers and leaders are delivering for students and parents of Chicago. It also exposes the entrenched educational establishment bent on stifling school choice options and preserving its monopoly on state education dollars.

"Juan's voice cuts through the daily back-and-forth and issues a searing indictment of a system that is largely focused on the needs of adults," said Kyle Olson, executive producer of the film and founder of Education Action Group. "It is our hope that this will provide the public with an unvarnished analysis of the state of our schools, as well as a glimpse into what could be, if the teachers unions would drop their consistent opposition to reform."

Released during National School Choice Week, the film runs approximately 35 minutes and is geared towards generating discussion about the role of our schools and what obstacles can be overcome when school culture is focused on student success rather than adult demands.

To gain a good understanding of the state of affairs in Chicago Public Schools, take a few minutes and watch " A Tale of Two Missions," narrated by former National Public Radio and current Fox News analyst Juan Williams. Williams talks about a city that has invested heavily in charter schools in recent years, due to the persistent failure of union-dominated traditional public schools.

"Some argue that the solution is simple - just spend more money (on traditional schools)," Williams says in the film. "But others are convinced that continuing to chase good money after bad cannot continue. When parents are allowed to choose, schools will have the incentive to compete. And competition breeds flexibility, adaptability and innovation. But school choice also poses a significant threat to the status quo, and no single entity profits more from the status quo than teachers unions. They fight and resist education reform however and whenever it is found."

Williams focuses on the success of one charter school, Noble Street College Prep, which spends less per student than CPS and boasts a graduation rate of 99 percent, compared to CPS’s woeful 56 percent. The Noble Street school has a non-union workforce, which allows it to control labor costs and pursue groundbreaking education strategies without the permission of union bosses. The school's environment is focused on success. It has a much longer school day than traditional Chicago schools. It has a strict dress and conduct code. It's curriculum is focused on college preparation and acceptance. The school is currently at full capacity with 6,500 students, and has a long waiting list of parents who want their children enrolled. [more...]

"Coming Apart" By Charles Murray

From the Best-selling Author of The Bell Curve,

A Revealing Expose on the Collapse of the

American Culture

COMING APART

The State of White America, 1960-2010

By Charles Murray

"Murray offers sketches of life lived in the upper class and the lower class and argues for the need to focus on what has made the U.S. exceptional beyond its wealth and military power, the ideals that have held a highly diverse nation together: religion, marriage, industriousness, and morality. Writing from a libertarian perspective, Murray offers a hopeful long view of elites, who have enormous influence on economic and social policy, coming to understand the peril of their disconnection from the rest of America."

--Booklist, starred review

"A timely investigation into a worsening class divide no one can afford to ignore."

--Publishers Weekly

Charles Murray is no stranger to controversy. Named by The National Journal as one of the 50 "People Who Make a Difference" in national policy-making, he is one of the select few leading today’s debate on social policy. He is known for his frank and candid approach, and his best-selling books Losing Ground, The Bell Curve, and others works have provided a much needed dose of reality when it comes to the issues surrounding education, government, and social reform. Now, in COMING APART: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Murray offers an in-depth exploration of the evolution of American society that is sure to stir debate.

While America has never been a classless society, there has always been a collective identity - until now. COMING APART argues that the American classes have reached a level of separation unlike anything we have ever known before. Using data from the 1960 and 2000 censuses, Murray demonstrates the emergence of a spatial isolation between the social classes that has no parallel in American history. Murray first takes on what he calls the new upper class: a highly educated, successful, affluent group concentrated in what he calls "SuperZips" clustered around a few centers of national power. It is this upper class that is running the country, yet they are increasingly isolated from, and ignorant about, the rest of America, having never interacted with those outside their upper-middle class bubble. For the bottom third of white America, which Murray refers to as the new lower class, there has been a deterioration in the quality of life.

Murray examines specifically American trends regarding marriage, religion, honesty, and industriousness for the past fifty years to show how communities are socially collapsing. In taking on this task, Murray limits the data exclusively to non-Latino whites, giving the reader no choice but to recognize that the changes he describes are not grounded in racial or ethnic divisions, nor are they based on current economic hard times. (As the data show, life in the American working class was breaking down in the 1980s and 1990s when the country was enjoying an economic boom.) Those trends are frightening, showing wide gaps that have opened up in behaviors that once united Americans across classes. Hardly anyone in the upper class has even noticed the change, and COMING APART is the first book to bring this startling transformation to public attention.

Murray shows us that America has devolved into a class system where those at the top and those at the bottom barely inhabit the same culture. A startling long-lens view, COMING APART reveals the ways in which America is coming apart at the seams that once stitched us together. Murray evokes the civic culture that was so widely shared among Americans that it amounted to a civil religion. "To be an American was to be different from other nationalities, in ways that Americans treasured," Murray writes. "That culture is unraveling." Murray forces us to look unblinkingly at the nature of the problem because, as he argues, the price of turning a blind eye is the end to what has made America America.

About the Author: Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to his books and articles in technical journals, Murray has published extensively in The New Republic, Commentary, The Public Interest, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Washington Post. He has been a frequent witness before congressional and senate committees and a consultant to senior government officials on education and welfare.

SandyPR.com Celebrates 5 Years

I'm so thrilled to be celebrating my 5 year anniversary since going freelance with SandyPR.com.  And with the addition of SandyPundits.com, my business is growing like crazy and becoming quite a success with the pundits, authors and political and financial bloggers.  I've been privileged to be able to work with only the best in the business and I truly admire each and every one of my clients.  They place an enormous amount of faith in me representing them to the world of talk radio and I'm so excited to have been able to build a wonderful relationship with hosts and producers all over America since 1998.

It's a thrilling time in the world of technology and the Internet has given me so many opportunities to flourish as a publicist... and I still haven't had to advertise!  It's been all word of mouth and I thank my wonderful clients for spreading the word about my services.  I am happy to still be able to offer the lowest subscription rates while providing a quality service which helps my clients' careers onward and upward toward the success they so deserve, and radio tours for the best authors who are sent to me by the biggest and best publishers in Manhattan.  Here's to 5 more years!! --Sandy

New Film to Look at Education Fight in Chicago

Juan Williams pulls no punches in school expose

A Tale of Two Missions - a film by Juan Williams and Kyle Olson, Founder and CEO of Education Action Group Foundation - tells the story of competing cultures in American education through examples from Chicago.

While the fight for school choice rages across the nation, perhaps no better example exists than that of the Windy City. Traditional alliances are breaking down. Both political parties are pushing for education reform and expanded school choice. The status quo is under attack, because most reasonable people understand that thousands of Chicago students are trapped in failing schools.

But the education establishment, led by the radical Chicago Teachers Union, is not willing to give an inch to allow better choices for underserved students. And the union still has enough money, influence and legal standing to make reform efforts difficult to implement.

The film features the Noble Street College Prep charter school and the amazing results its teachers and leaders are delivering for students and parents of Chicago. It also exposes the entrenched educational establishment bent on stifling school choice options and preserving its monopoly on state education dollars.

"Juan's voice cuts through the daily back-and-forth and issues a searing indictment of a system that is largely focused on the needs of adults," said Kyle Olson, executive producer of the film and founder of Education Action Group. "It is our hope that this will provide the public with an unvarnished analysis of the state of our schools, as well as a glimpse into what could be, if the teachers unions would drop their consistent opposition to reform."

Being released during National School Choice Week, the film runs approximately 35 minutes and is geared towards generating discussion about the role of our schools and what obstacles can be overcome when school culture is focused on student success rather than adult demands.

Go Here for an exclusive look at DVDs of the film. An abridged version can be seen here or at twomissionsmovie.com.