Where There's Smoke, There's Ire

This is the worst smoke I have ever seen in my life, and it is predicted this shit will continue clear into next week.

Wildfires in Douglas and Josephine counties have made the air almost unbearable. The smoke has spread all over the region, including here in Medford. Face masks are flying off the shelf.

I plan on going to a couple of class reunions this week, and I hope I can survive that long.

Details:

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber declared a state of emergency Tuesday for Josephine and Douglas counties as wildfires burned about 33 square miles north of Glendale.

Kitzhaber said the declaration allows the National Guard to aid in efforts to douse the Douglas complex. The collection of about 50 lightning-sparked blazes have been burning since Friday and were 5 percent contained Tuesday evening.

About 1,260 firefighters and other personnel have responded to the area, where 43 structures along Lower Cow Creek Road and 30 homes on Graves Creek Road have been evacuated. More than 40 other structures in the area have been issued pre-evacuation notices.

The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise has made the Northwest its top priority among 11 regions. That means that when crews and equipment become available, the Northwest gets first dibs.

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Bennettfits

Here'a report on the Tony Bennett scandal (the ed reformer, NOT the singer):

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Etc.

O.J. Simpson "won" parole for some charges stemming from his robbery case, but he is still a Lovelock resident for at least another four years.
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The parasitical class of Wall Street crooks, billionaires, and would-be billionaires had better understand that once a parasite can no longer feed off its host, the parasite eventually dies.

We are near the tipping point because of widespread misery.

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Clueless Barry

Obama's been so shielded off from reality, he thinks he can go to a warehouse employing low-wage workers and tout it as some kind of alternative for the millions of people who are trying to get income to survive since he and Congress won't do one goddamned thing to fix the jobs crisis. He was gallivanting around Chattanooga yesterday, offering platitudes about how warehouse work is one (fruitless) avenue for jobseekers to look into.

Unfortunately for him, most of these jobs like Amazon.com's are located in out-of-the-way places where there is NO public transportation; in fact, in most of the country, public transportation either doesn't exist or is very limited. People have to have cars, and many of them cannot afford the gas and any possible mechanical problems that could result.

Furthermore, Amazon and its ilk are notoriously bad places to work.

For people who can afford cars, the takeaway from these numbers is straightforward: Drive to work and hope you keep earning enough to pay for gas, insurance and any unplanned maintenance. Even for people in this group, the risks can be considerable. Many people fall into joblessness when their car breaks down, depriving them of the means to get to work -- a downward spiral that can extend all the way down to homelessness.

For those who cannot afford a car, the disconnect between jobs and transit poses uniquely grave challenges. It makes for long odds that poor people will ever climb their way to a better place. According to Brookings, 1 in 10 low-income residents of major American cities relies on some form of public transportation to get to work.

All of which makes Obama's visit to the Amazon warehouse in Chattanooga hard to square with his recent job creation push. He went there to urge Congress to strike "a grand bargain for middle class jobs." My colleague Dave Jamieson has already covered the fact that many of the new Amazon jobs are temp positions, meaning they are low-paying and generally devoid of health benefits -- in short, no ticket to the middle class. Putting that aside, how will the people who need these jobs the most get to work? In Chattanooga, less than 23 percent of the metro area's working-age people have access to public transit, according to Brookings, making it the worst endowed metropolis in the United States.

This is just another example of how compromised "Democrats" like Obama really are. He talks a lot of talk, but he has no intention of doing one goddamned thing about it.

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Speaking of Crackpot Cults

Michael Lind wrote an article for Salon detailing the latest incarnation of the Ayn Rand "philosophy," which would never work in the real world and only cause suffering and even revolution by the masses hurt by such ideas.

It has been said Ayn Rand probably suffered from Asperger syndrome, something that wasn't even given a name (until around 1944) when she was a young girl trying to make sense of the world around her, and something that wasn't formally recognized as a disorder and standardized as a diagnosis until after she died. In interviews she came across as somebody who tried hard to explain her philosophy and seemed to have put a great deal of thought into her ideas, but it was obvious to anybody but the most brainwashed of cultists that something was missing from her analysis. That missing piece was a complete inability to empathize with others, to be able to see issues from other viewpoints.

Rand had an excuse for having such a harebrained outlook, but the same cannot be said for her "followers," many of whom are now in positions of influence and are wrecking the country with idiotic ideas that have never worked in the past (after all, history bears this out) and would never work now.

The Gilded Age was a goddamned disaster and nearly destroyed the country economically. There should even be nostalgia for such a destructive time in our history.

Everything old is new again, I am afraid. These con artists are now trying to rebrand this radical cult as "populism." "Libertarianism" and populism are total opposites.

Lind:

Ben Domenech, for example, tries to define libertarian populism by arguing that it takes “a few of its aims from the Rand Paul approach – a balanced budget amendment, flatter and simpler taxes, and more – but there is also a stronger focus on issues which cut across party lines, including reform of higher education, prison and justice systems, civil liberty protections, and an assault on D.C. cronyism from green energy to Big Banks.” But all of this is standard-issue libertarianism, including libertarian critiques of “prison and justice systems” and “civil liberty protections.” Nothing new here, folks, move along.

What Domenech and others mean by “populist” appears to be “popular.” They want a popular libertarianism, a libertarianism that majorities of Americans might vote for, not a movement that has anything to do with actual historic populism in the United States, which has generally been, to coin a phrase, illibertarian.

Of course the proponents know that. It's call about protecting the "rights" of the privileged to continue to live off of everybody else and not have to be held accountable for it.

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Bait and Switch

The gangsters running this country sure have it all mapped out: By hook or by crook, especially the crook part, they are going to get their way in order to continue mooching off of the masses to further line their pockets.

They have this game down to a science: Have Republicans who are certifiably batshit propose radical agendas, which will upset the majority of people who are scared enough they will vote Democratic, and then these fake "Democrats" will turn around and do the exact same thing or even worse.

Obama, as I have said repeatedly, is their puppet, and he is STILL trying to cut deals on programs like Medicare and Social Security.

He SHOULD be impeached for being an outright fraud, but of course the votes aren't there.

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News, Etc.

Another political oldie has died: Harry F. Byrd, Jr., a former senator from Virginia, has died at the age of 98.

Byrd was also in the publishing industry.

Politically speaking, Byrd was one of those old "southern Democrats" who resisted civil rights legislation, and he ultimately quit the Democratic Party to run and be elected as an "independent."
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The Griffith film The Birth of a Nation, released nearly a century ago, actually makes me more sad and embarrassed over Griffith's ignorance than angry.

The film's depiction of the KKK as heroes is still the most shocking thing I have ever seen on film.

It isn't watchable for most audiences today.
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The faker in the White House tells Detroit to drop dead and basically knifes African Americans in the back.

He should just change party affiliations and be done with it.
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Bradley Manning has been acquitted of "aiding the enemy" or whatever bullshit charge was leveled at him, but he was convicted of a bunch of other counts:

Bradley Manning, the 25-year-old Army private who gave thousands of classified U.S. military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, was acquitted of aiding the enemy in a military court-martial, but was convicted on multiple other counts.

Judge Col. Denise Lind released the decision Tuesday after three days of deliberation. Manning requested that a judge and not a jury decide his fate.

The charge of aiding the enemy was the most serious of 21 counts. It carried a possible life sentence without parole.

Manning was convicted of six espionage counts, five theft charges, a computer fraud charge and other military infractions. Manning's sentencing hearing is set to begin Wednesday.

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Obituary: Actress Eileen Brennan, 80, of bladder cancer:

Brennan was known for character roles as sassy, brassy women, the kind with a sandpaper surface but a light, pure heart.

She played a waitress in "The Last Picture Show" (1971), the companion of Paul Newman's conman in "The Sting" (1973), a wisecracking maid in "At Long Last Love" (1975) and Mrs. Peacock in "Clue" (1985). She also did a great deal of television, including a reprise of her "Private Benjamin" role in the TV series of the same name.

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Ed Etc.

Creating the myth of public school "failure" was absolutely essential for the privatizers to get their filthy mitts on the public till.
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Obituaries

I thought he died a long time ago: Former Pennsylvania governor and presidential candidate William Scranton, 96, has died after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage:

Scranton, a progressive Republican from the northeastern Pennsylvania city named after his wealthy family, was elected to Congress in 1960. He served one term before he was elected as Pennsylvania's 38th governor in 1962.

His foray into presidential politics occurred in 1964, during his one term as governor, when he emerged as a moderately liberal alternative to conservative Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater after New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller dropped out of the race.

Scranton, who committed to the race barely a month before the national convention in San Francisco, lost the Republican nomination to Goldwater by a 4-1 margin after a hoped-for endorsement from former President Dwight D. Eisenhower failed to materialize. In the general election, Goldwater lost to President Lyndon B. Johnson by a landslide.

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A few days late on this one: Musician and songwriter J.J. Cale, 74, of a heart attack:

He is best known as the writer of "Cocaine" and "After Midnight," songs made famous when they were recorded by his collaborator, Eric Clapton.

A multi-instrumentalist, Mr. Cale often played all of the parts on his albums, also recording and mixing them himself. He is also credited as one of the architects of the 1970s Tulsa sound, a blend of rockabilly, blues, country and rock that came to influence Neil Young and Brian Ferry, among others. He won a Grammy Award in 2007 for an album with Mr. Clapton.

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THIS Tony Bennett Never Had a Heart to Leave in San Francicso

He also doesn't have any kind of conscience when it comes to helping big donors. A big-time scandal is a-brewing in Indiana, where the "great" education "reformer" Tony Bennett has been caught in a "grade-fixing" scandal.

He and Michelle Rhee would look good in orange jumpsuits, don't you think?

As teachers know, administrator pressure to change grades can jeopardize their careers, but administrators can and do get away with outright fraud, especially if they are state superintendents or education commissioners:

Former Indiana and current Florida schools chief Tony Bennett built his national star by promising to hold "failing" schools accountable. But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett's education team frantically overhauled his signature "A-F" school grading system to improve the school's marks.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press show Bennett and his staff scrambled last fall to ensure influential donor Christel DeHaan's school received an "A," despite poor test scores in algebra that initially earned it a "C."

"They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work," Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12 email to then-chief of staff Heather Neal, who is now Gov. Mike Pence's chief lobbyist.

Time for Florida to ditch this prick, but Florida is run by an even bigger crook.

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Cartoon of the Day

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Gangsterism

That's the only word for what is going on with the American economy. What is happening with Detroit is the most obvious instance of outright criminality so crooked politicians and their crooked backers can get at the money.

This is happening EVERYWHERE, and these parasites won't stop until they have drained every last available dollar from the public.

Obama goes around and gives interviews so he can brazenly lie about how he really, really cares about the suffering by the vanishing middle class and the burgeoning poor, yet he doesn't do shit to stop the criminality. That's because he is the crooks' puppet; he does whatever these puppetmasters want.

Even if one were to accept Obama’s professions of concern for the middle class as sincere—and we do not—there is nothing that his administration, or any Democratic or Republican administration, could do to seriously alleviate the present crisis. The current impasse is a product of the historical crisis of American capitalism, centered in the protracted decline in its global economic position.

The very policies adopted by the American ruling class to deal with this decline have eroded any possibility for a genuine program of social reform. For more than four decades, the ruling elite has been dismantling the country’s industrial infrastructure and shifting its investments to financial manipulation and speculation. The result has been a staggering growth of financial parasitism, embodied in the immense power wielded by Wall Street and the stock market over every aspect of economic, social and political life.

The increasing separation of the process of wealth creation for the ruling elite from the creation of real value has led to a rotting out of the economic foundations of the United States. Today, over 50 percent of US profits are generated by the financial sector.

No country can survive long without a solid manufacturing base. The seditious bastards who fostered globalism should be rounded up, jailed, and their assets seized.

It may eventually happen.

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Actually It Is a Result of Excellent Planning

if 4 out of 5 people report having lived at or near poverty sometime in their lives. Eventually it will be 99.9 percent. It's "excellent" planning by the gangsters running our economic policy so that we are all living in third world conditions.

Snip:

The figures reported Sunday are only the latest in a string of indices released this year pointing to the growth of social despair and destitution. Among those aged 35 to 64, suicides soared nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2010, according to figures released in May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More people in the US now commit suicide than die in car accidents.

More than 16 million children in the US, 22 percent, live in families whose income is below the federal poverty line, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty. The United Nations Children’s Fund released a report in April showing that, among developed countries, children living in poverty in the United States rank 26th worst out of 29. Only children in Lithuania, Latvia and Romania are more impoverished. And children in Greece, which is gripped by massive government austerity policies, rank 25th most poor, above children in the US.

The disastrous growth of poverty is taking place as the social safety net is being dismantled in the United States. As a result of the so-called sequester cuts, extended unemployment benefits have been slashed by up to 25 percent in some states, and hundreds of thousands of workers are being furloughed. Meanwhile Medicare and Social Security, which keep millions out of poverty, are on the chopping block in the budget proposals in Congress of both the Democrats and Republicans.

A society with a tiny number of obscene rich and everybody else poor cannot be sustained without bloodshed. The U.S. is just about at the tipping point.

The election of a fake Democrat guaranteed we'd be on the brink of ruin. The gangsters control both political parties, and there is NOBODY out there who is defending the masses whose message isn't being buried under tons of propaganda.

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WHAT "Money"?

Unless you are in the top half of one percent in this country, it is almost impossible to "plan" for a "comfortable" retirement thanks to the worsening economy.

It's all a part of the plan to steal from the masses to enrich the tiny few and then blame the masses for their "poor planning" if they just happened to be left holding the bag.

How in the HELL can you plan so you don't "outlive" your money unless you DIE BEFORE you can retire, IF you can retire, or IF you can get a job after being kicked to the curb after age 50 so you CAN retire?

The article should be filed under "humor." It's pretty sick.

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Nastiest Shit EVER

All you need is Red Bull to wash this godawful shit down. Of course I LOATHE Red Bull.

My brother bought a bag of this "chicken and waffles" concoction, and I tried it tonight. It was indescribably awful:

But what about the strangest of the three flavors: Chicken & Waffles?

It's definitely... unique.

You immediately get the maple syrup flavor right up front as you crunch into the chip, and it stays with you all the way through.

The basic potato chip flavor serves as a backdrop as a tiny bit of chicken seeps its way onto the palate along with a bit of paprika.

It's quite lacking in chicken flavor, though. You're waiting for the chicken, but it just doesn't quite hit, and you're left wanting more.

It takes forever to get rid of that aftertaste.

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Etc.

NCTQ gets raked over the coals.
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It's a terrible month for yours truly; I had to renew the pawn ticket for my mother's ring. If I ever get that thing out of there, it will be a miracle, indeed.

It has been in the pawnshop for almost three years.

That payment has wiped me out for the month, literally. I am behind on the storage unit payment again, and I hope I can keep the thing.

I know nobody reads this blog much, but in case anybody takes pity on me, there is that donation button on the left.

I have signed on with Experience Works, but the woman who coordinates it seems to be completely ditzy and just can't understand that I have all of the paperwork, and it was sent to her via fax from Kentucky, so there shouldn't be any problem at all getting an interview with her.

It's getting really old, this poverty, and there appears to be no end in sight.

On Tuesday I will be taking the ORELA special education test. I don't know what good it will do me, with my age a factor, being out of the loop a factor, having been shitcanned illegally a factor, and not having three references a factor.

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Cartoon of the Day

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Gotta Keep Up With the Chinese

Pretty soon, we will all be making a dollar a day, and the rich will have EVERYTHING.

That's assuming people will ever be able to work again.

There is something truly evil about the neoliberal economic theories that have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. They only foster more human misery.

It's coming very close to bloodshed in this country. When millions discover they have nothing to lose, they WILL lash back against the parasites and criminals who are running this country into the ground.

Snip:

Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."

"I think it's going to get worse," said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend, but it doesn't generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks.

"If you do try to go apply for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do than to get on drugs."

And if poverty-level wages and jobs aren't enough to satisfy these sadistic bastards, there's always prison labor.

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Obituaries

Time to round up a few that I haven't previously noted:

Former congresswoman Lindy Boggs, also known as the mother of what's-her-face, who in turn is married to what's-his-name (I know: Cokie Roberts and Steve Roberts, respectively), has died at the age of 97.

She replaced her husband in Congress after he was presumed dead in an Alaska plane crash back in 1973. Lindy spent many years in Congress, representing Louisiana.

More:

When she was elected to her first full term in Congress in 1974, Mrs. Boggs became the first woman elected to Congress from Louisiana. During close to 20 years as Representative of the state’s Second Congressional District, which includes New Orleans, she would show a particular interest for women’s and children’s issues. She helped to write the Employment Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 and held seats on the powerful House Appropriations Committee and the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families.

Roberts called her mother "a trailblazer for women and the disadvantaged."

When Boggs announced her retirement in 1990, she was the only white representing a black-majority district in Congress. "I am proud to have played a small role in opening doors for blacks and women," she said at the time.

Hale Boggs was first elected to Congress in 1940, two years after the couple married. Both were also active in local reform groups. Breaking with most Southern whites, Lindy Boggs saw civil rights as an inseparable part of the political reform movement of the 1940s and '50s.

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Actor Poncie Ponce, featured in the 1960s show Hawaiian Eye, has died at the age of 80:

During Hawaiian Eye’s opening each week, Ponce was seen floating in the ocean on an inner tube, wearing his trademark straw hat and stroking a ukulele. His character Kazuo "Kim" Quisado had a lot of friends in Honolulu, and he helped the show’s handsome private investigators (Anthony Eisley and Robert Conrad) crack cases. Connie Stevens played a nightclub singer/photographer on the series, which was actually filmed on a lot in Burbank.

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Welterweight and middleweight boxing champ Emile Griffith, 75, died a few days ago in an extended care facility.
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Actor Dennis Farina, 69, died Monday. He had earlier been found to have a blood clot on his lung.

Farina had a long career in law enforcement before turning to acting.

Mr. Farina quit police work after Mr. Mann cast him in 1986 in the NBC series "Crime Story" as Lt. Mike Torello, a detective who pursues a Chicago mobster to Las Vegas. "Crime Story" was well regarded by critics but lasted just two seasons.

Mr. Farina's work in "Crime Story" led to a role in the 1986 film "Manhunter," which Mr. Mann also directed. In 1988 Mr. Farina appeared in the film "Midnight Run" and in 1998 in Steven Spielberg's World War II epic, "Saving Private Ryan."

One of his most notable characters was the mobster Ray (Bones) Barboni in the 1995 film "Get Shorty," based on the novel by Elmore Leonard. The movie, which also starred John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo and Danny DeVito, was a critical and commercial success; Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, called Mr. Farina's work "a funny deadpan performance."

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Only Those Who Have Never Done It Think It Is Easy

Teaching is harder than hell because dealing with dozens of kids during the course of a day or a class of 20-30 or more a day is difficult.

Little of the job can be delegated, and you must be "on" all the time. There is no time to mentally "remove" yourself from your work, unlike business or other public sector jobs. Then, especially in the elementary grades, is the specter of always getting sick. Eventually that takes a toll on a teacher's body.

You have to not only be familiar at least with your subject matter, but it is vital to know which methods of teaching work best with different students. In special education classes, it's like a three-ring circus and is difficult to manage. You have to know HOW to teach, which is more important than WHAT to teach. You have to understand child development to be able to do the job.

The hardest and worst part of the job is putting up with idiot or insane administrators. You have utterly no control over your job.

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Etc.

TFA is pulling out of the urban school districts and focusing on charter school expansion thanks to its ready supply of cheap labor.

It's time for AmeriCorps to stop sponsoring this scab outfit.
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"Co-Location"

Charter schools are parasites out to destroy the host, meaning public education. One way they do this is through "co-location," a fancy word that actually means eventual takeover.

Both the charter and the real public school exist in the same building, but it's obvious which is going to get the upper hand:

As Miles Elementary prepares for a co-location with a charter school this fall, Smith-Vincent and other teachers are worried. In a list of talking points titled, “Potential Negative Impact of Charter Co-Location,” they say that playground space is limited; that the custodial staff is currently insufficient for the current school population and that co-location would result in unclean bathrooms and unswept classrooms; that computer labs and library space is already full, and that Miles students will have reduced access to books and library staff; and that parent volunteers will no longer have full access to the school’s Parent Center.

“It undermines what we can and should be doing for traditional schools,” Smith-Vincent says of the scheduled co-location. “It takes resources away and prevents us from being able to meet all the needs of our students.”

The charter--private--school will eventually crowd the public school out.

Count on it.

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Common Core is the Gates Foundation's Baby

It's not because the states wanted it. It's not that teachers want it. It's not that parents want it. It's that Bill and Melinda Gates, both of whom have way too much money and too much time on their hands, want to dictate education policy which is something they have NO knowledge of whatsoever.

Common Core is ultimately about creating an educational and thus economical caste system in the United States. Bill Gates has yapped in the past he'd like to see education done like is done in some European countries, where kids are cut off higher education and forced to go into apprenticeships at a young age if they haven't decided on college. Well, the United States, unlike most of the rest of the world, has traditionally been about equality of opportunity, and that includes the right to access higher education. That includes going to college in midlife just as much as at age 18.

Neolibs and bastards like Gates don't think like this. They want to cut off ALL education access, and what almost all students would be stuck with aren't with apprenticeships anyway, but with shitty-paid jobs to "compete" with third world countries.

With Gates it is much more than that. Force Common Core down people's throats by buying off politicians and dipshits like Arne Duncan, and that way once all kids in all parts of the country are forced to have the same curriculum, why bother with teachers at all? Just collude with Pearson and force all kids except for the rich to sit in front of computers all day long, "supervised" by poorly-paid teacher aides, and get rid of teachers altogether.

That's where this Common Core shit is headed if it isn't stopped dead in its tracks.

However, it is very important for the Gates Foundation and the other usual suspects to lie to the public:

The truth is that the National Governor's Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers were simply front groups for the cravings of the Gates Foundation. Using the power and influence that comes with controlling huge amounts of money, Bill and Melinda Gates, educational dilettantes at best, bought their way into the hierarchy of American public education. In doing so, they became public education's most influential voices.

By giving the NGA $30,679,116 and the CCSSO $71,302,833, they set in motion their callow vision of what American public schoolteachers should be teaching and what American public school students should be learning. They also managed to get the support of United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who threatened to withhold federal funds from individual states if they did not adopt the Common Core. The Gates team also bought themselves the support of a cadre of second-stringers, such as the American Federation of Teachers for $11,343,925; the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction for $823,637; the Center for American Progress for $2,998,809; the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for $5,711,462; the PTA for $2,005,000; the Teaching Channel for $11,076,761; and the National Writing Project for $2,643,593, to mention only a few. A colleague of mine, Susan Ohanian, wrote about these giveaways, saying, "He who pays the piper calls the tune, and with money in their pockets, many are eager to sing the Common Core song and eat the funeral meats."

The Gateses are totally corrupt.

If this isn't a case for increasing the tax burden on the superrich, I don't know what is.

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We Have Nowhere to Go But Up

Of course Harry Reid thinks Obama is doing just fine, and that's why he thinks Hillary Clinton could do better, but the truth is it would be very difficult to find a worse president than that fake Democrat in the White House. Doing better than Obama would be like taking candy from a baby.

I honestly don't see Hillary Clinton even running for president. By the time 2017 rolls around, she will be pushing 70 years old, and she is TIRED, worn out now thanks to her stint as secretary of state.

I am sure she's just as big a globalist as her glad-handing husband is, and we don't need anymore of those, but I just don't think the financial elites want her. They want a puppet just like ol' Barry, and people like Cory Booker or Andrew Cuomo are more palatable to them.

I have written that if some outright fraud like Andrew Cuomo or Cory Booker is on the presidential ticket, I am ditching the Democratic Party and changing my voter registration.

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Miscellaneous News and Such

More evidence, as if there isn't enough out there, to show AFT's Randi Weingarten (an attorney by trade--NOT a teacher) is nothing but a mole for the privatizers.
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Obituary: Champion racehorse and sire Unbridled's Song, 20, had to be euthanized after discovery of an inoperable, aggressive mass that was inside his sinus cavities and around his optical nerves. His health was declining rapidly.

Details:

Unbridled's Song burst on the scene in 1995 when he sold for $1.4 million at the Barretts March sale, a world-record price for a horse at a 2-year-olds in training sale. But buyer Hiroshi Fujita would back out of the sale because he said his veterinarian detected a bone chip in the colt's left front ankle. Seller Ernie Pargallo and consignor Taylor Made would dispute that diagnosis, but Paragallo also would say he welcomed the opportunity to race the promising son of 1990 Kentucky Derby (gr. I) winner Unbridled.

Paragallo, working with bloodstock agent Buzz Chace, landed Unbridled's Song for $200,000 at the 1994 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga August yearling select sale.

On the track, Unbridled's Song would quickly deliver, winning the 1995 Breeders' Cup Juvenile (gr. I) at Belmont Park. He would continue that success at 3, winning the Florida Derby (gr. I) and Wood Memorial Stakes (gr. II) before finishing fifth in the Kentucky Derby, where he raced with a sore left front foot.

Trained by Jim Ryerson for most of his career, he then finished second in the Peter Pan Stakes (gr. II) at Belmont Park and skipped the final two Triple Crown legs. Unbridled's Song made his final two career starts for trainer Nick Zito, going out with a victory in the 1997 Olympic Handicap at Gulfstream Park.

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Haiku of the Day

Michelle Rhee's a crook
Involved in cheating scandal
Orange jumpsuit time

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O.J. News

No matter how hard he tries, O.J. Simpson will NEVER get out of jail--except in a pine box.

He expressed regret today at the hearing that he ever got caught committing armed robbery, not realizing Nevada doesn't put up with shit in its hotels/casinos.

For that stupidity and hubris, he received a 33-year sentence.

Snip:

Parole officials did not immediately rule on his request, which Simpson made remotely from a video conference room the Lovelock Correction Center. But their decision will have little impact on his overall sentence because he is only eligible for parole on one of his consecutive sentences.

As a result, even if the Nevada Parole Board ruled in his favor, he would then begin serving sentences attached to other charges and spend at least another four years in prison.

In other words, he is shit out of luck seeing freedom for at least another four years, if he doesn't die of his rumored diabetes first.

Below is a video clip. Make sure you have a hankie handy:


The complete version is here, but no embedding is allowed.

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Obituaries, or, I Am Curious Orange

A blast from the distant past has passed: Virginia Johnson, who at 88 was a lot younger than I thought she was, died. If you will recall, or maybe you are too young to remember or couldn't care less, Johnson was a researcher famous for her professional and personal relationship with Dr. William Masters. Both of them were very curious about human sexuality, so they decided to do some research on the subject. They wrote a number of books based on their findings. The two were also so curious about sexuality they not only observed others screwing around, they decided to screw WITH themselves.

The two got married along the way after Masters ditched his wife to marry Johnson.


"Masters & Johnson" became synonymous with the sexual revolution of the 1960s-1970s. It was like the phrases "love and marriage," or "bacon and eggs," or "oil and water." The names just simply went together.


They published two bestsellers: Human Sexual Response and Human Sexual Inadequacy. They basked in their fame and lived happily ever after.

Well, at least for awhile. The two called it quits in 1991, when Masters dumped HER for a girlfriend from his youth, and their St. Louis clinic shut down three years later. Masters died off in 2001.
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Miscellaneous News

Since billionaires are running and ruining education policy in the United States and own all of the politicians, what parents happen to think of the mess is irrelevant.
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Prisoner O.J. Simpson, who the National Enquirer claims has only three months to live, is going before the Nevada parole board today.

It won't do him any good.
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WCSD "Scream" Rooms? It Doesn't Sound Like It

Despite the claims of a disability advocate group that these rooms exist in some of Washoe County School District's schools, it appears that may not actually be the case at all:




I am sure more details will become available.

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Pure Evil Is All It Is

Bill Gates and the rest of the parasites in the billionaire and Wall Street classes MUST be defeated or we will have NOTHING left in this country.

It is a case of a few people having way too much money, and they are wrecking havoc on our public institutions including and especially public education:

The flashpoint of the war being waged by capital and its political allies against the public provision of services is education, especially that which serves poor and minority communities. Billionaires like Bill Gates (Microsoft) and the Walton family (Walmart) have established organizations and contributed enormous sums of money to do two things. First, they seek to revolutionize the way in which students are taught. Here they have achieved great victories, with two presidents enacting sweeping laws: No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Both condition federal aid to schools upon what has been described as “teaching to the test.” Literature, art, music, and all critical education are to be sacrificed so that children do well on standardized examinations. Then, how schools and their teachers fare, including whether or not a school continues to exist, depends on students’ scores.

Second, these plutocrat “reformers” want to alter radically the way in which schools are organized. The best way to describe their aim is to say that they want the schools to resemble assembly lines, with students as outputs and teachers as assembly-line-like mechanisms who do not think or instill in their students the capacity to conceptualize critically and become active participants in a democratic society. And this Taylorization of schooling has a military-like component, with pupils expected to react to commands with rote discipline and respond unthinkingly to rewards for appropriate behavior.

"Taylorization" is absolutely right. Then, when the bastards have milked every last dime of the public coffers, the schools will be abandoned, and massive numbers of people will be illerate.

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The Assault on Detroit

is actually a naked assault on the American people, with Detroit being used as a guinea pig in order to destroy everything this country holds dear in order to instill an aristocracy. It MUST be stopped or we will lose it ALL.

The fact that Detroit is primarily African American makes it the perfect experiment. Nobody outside of Detroit will even notice the dictatorship going on that will destroy it once and for all:

n Detroit, even the thin gruel of democracy that America advertises to the world, has ceased to exist. Not one of its 700,000 residents retains the political rights of citizens, those rights having been usurped by the agents of Wall Street: Governor Rick Snyder and bankruptcy lawyer Kevyn Orr, the Lone Ranger and Tonto who were the sole authorities empowered to file bankruptcy for the city. Their mission is to render the judgment of capital that Detroit is too poor, in its present demographic composition, for participation in the democratic order, and must be forcibly reconstituted, beginning with a divvying up of its assets. At the end of this process, a “new” Detroit is supposed to emerge, which will have divested itself of enough Black and poor people to allow the reinstatement of some form of electoral franchise.

Or, maybe not. Direct rule by Wall Street, which is the real meaning of the Emergency Financial Manager regime, is not some idea especially concocted for Detroit. It is the political and economic superstructure that the plutocracy envisions for the whole country – for the entire planet, if they can get away with it. Due to the particular racial history of the United States, where Black citizenship rights have always been deemed illegitimate, those who would strip away democratic freedoms and privatize the public sphere have always found it easier to mount their offensives against heavily Black regions and sectors of society. White people with identical interests in democracy and fairness in schools, public services and in the workplace root for the plutocrats when Blacks are under attack, never imagining that the same weapons will soon be turned on them.

It's going to happen everywhere if it isn't stopped dead in its tracks.

And there's more regarding the bankruptcy scheme:

Leaked emails show that as far back as January, there were backroom discussions being held between Detroit and Lansing public officials and corporate law firm Jones Day suggesting that the best course for Detroit would be to send it through Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

The revelations expose the charade by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr who claimed he only made the“tough decision to file bankruptcy reluctantly after thorough negotiations with creditors, pension trustees and public sector unions. In fact, all along Orr, Republican Governor Snyder, Detroit’s Democratic mayor and the powerful financial interests behind them, were determined to use federal bankruptcy laws to circumvent legal obstacles, including the state constitution and the city charter, for the gutting of city worker pensions and sale of public assets.

The emails were obtained by Robert Davis, a figure in the local political establishment tied closely to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 25. The Detroit unions have complained that Orr’s bankruptcy filing halted their efforts to reach a “good faith” deal with the emergency manager to impose his demands on their members.

Criminal conspiracy indictments are in order.

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Ed Etc.

It looks like FERPA is now on the ropes thanks to a "Democratic" administration.
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Nothing But Child Abuse

Louisiana is now beginning what will be a caste system in the United States. Little kids, who should be enjoying the fun and innocence of childhood, are now going to be tracked so that the vast majority of them NEVER have any kind of upward mobility in jobs.

Little three- and four-year-olds are being subjected to what can only be called organized child abuse:

Louisiana is pushing school accountability a step further, moving this fall to start measuring the academic performance of 3- and 4-year-olds in a pilot program for day-care and early-childhood centers in 15 parishes. It's a practice already underway on a limited basis in some other states, although Louisiana officials don't yet know how they will use the data they gather.

The goal, they say, is to create a grading system like the current School Performance Score reports for public elementary and secondary schools, which are ranked for student performance on standardized tests and progress made from year to year.

But whether pre-schools will be rewarded for academic progress, or sanctioned for lack of it, like elementary and secondary schools are, remains to be seen.

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Ed Etc.

No doubt this Broadie will land on his feet and get passed to another district in another part of the country.

Not one of these Broadies has ever amounted to shit.
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Illegal "scream rooms" allegedly still exist at Washoe County School District:




The report is linked here, and it appears most of the offending schools are in the ritzier area schools:

Brown, Moss, Hunsberger, Hidden Valley, Van Gorder, Caughlin Ranch, Bennett, Picollo (the special education school), Alice Smith, Melton, Mathews, Double Diamond, and Taylor

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North Carolina Wages War on Teachers

ALEC created the blueprint in the state destroying what few protections teachers have.

When states do away with “tenure,” which should NOT be called that anyway, but still allow other civil service employees due process rights, teachers should be SUING the state legislatures for engaging in disparate treatment of a class of employees–teachers.

I would add I believe teachers don’t sue because they actually believe they have “tenure,” which they have never had, no matter what civil service protections are called. They thinthey have what amounts of “lifetime employment,” but they have never had that.

Civil service protections were put in federal, state, and local levels to prevent patronage hires and favoritism in treatment of employees. Not that it’s perfect, as we all know with rampant nepotism in hiring in many school districts, but it is there. A government job, including a public school teaching job, is considered a property right, and that right cannot be taken away without “due process.” It’s not the same as private sector work since the government is the employer.

We still have police, fire personnel, and other civil service employees who have “due process” rights, yet teachers are treated differently. Teachers shouldn’t even have an extended probationary period to begin with if other civil service employees don’t have it. This is clearly illegal in my book.

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The English Language Takes a Beating

A clue to the clueless: The word "orgasm" is a noun, NOT a verb. One does not "orgasm" but "has an orgasm." I refuse to read an article where the author cannot even use standard English.

That idiot Shere Hite misused the word "orgasm" in her book The Hite Report, but unfortunately her editor was sleeping on the job and didn't make her rewrite it. The word has suffered from widespread misuse ever since.

Furthermore, the word sounds atrocious when used as a verb.

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No Whine Before Its Time

I had to post this thing separately. I personally don't give a shit about the travails of a bunch of rich drunks (oh, I know some of these people affected aren't all that rich and few affected lost some inventory), but it is illustrative on how we are supposed to feel sorry for people who engage in a frivolous hobby like wine collecting.

The comments following the article are more worth reading than the article.

A key paragraph:

Now, amid concern that century-old bottles have been spoiled or celebrated vintages rendered anonymous by lost labels, some of the city’s most prominent wine collectors — including Donald Drapkin, a hedge fund manager who estimated the value of his wine collection at $5.2 million — have sued WineCare, which is now in bankruptcy court.

If you got that much money to blow it in on a bunch of wine bottles, you should be paying your fair share of taxes.

I'd throw his frivolous lawsuit out.

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Etc.

It's beat the press time with a "Democrat" waging war on it.
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Public employees are about to get kicked to the curb if the assholes in Michigan get away with destroying pensions in Detroit.

These crooks may not get away with it, though.

You piss off the police, you might as well cash in your chips.

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The Windsor Saga: The Next Generation

For Wills and Kate, it's a boy. He's a fairly big baby, too, at 8 pounds, 6 ounces.

Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well and will remain in hospital overnight, said a spokesman for the palace.

Palace sources said the couple chose to delay the public announcement of the birth to allow them to spend 'quality time' together.
In a statement tonight William said simply: ‘We could not be happier.’

William's father, Charles, the Prince of Wales said this evening: 'Both my wife and I are overjoyed at the arrival of my first grandchild.
'It is an incredibly special moment for William and Catherine and we are so thrilled for them on the birth of their baby boy.

'Grandparenthood is a unique moment in anyone’s life, as countless kind people have told me in recent months, so I am enormously proud and happy to be a grandfather for the first time and we are eagerly looking forward to seeing the baby in the near future.'

The tabloids will also be happy for the next seventy or eighty years documenting the ups and downs of royal family. It appears the royal family has once again become popular largely due to the popularity of Wills and Kate.

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Time for a Lawsuit

It doesn't matter what state teachers live in: If they have "tenure," it only means they have identical "due process" protections all other public employees get. It stems from the concept of a public job being a property right, and the government cannot deny you your right to property without due process.

Teachers who have had their due process rights stripped need to sue all over the country because there is clearly disparate treatment between teachers and other civil service employees, such as police and fire.

You bet your ass these assholes in the legislatures won't go after police and fire, male-dominated professions, and take away their rights although Snyder in Michigan is trying to gut pensions in Detroit. One could even argue this is wholesale sex discrimination writ large.

Not even Pinochet in Chile was that goddamned stupid as to go after the military, which is the closest thing there is to police.

I have heard the teachers' association in North Carolina plans to sue over the "tenure" abolition.

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The House of Cards of Education "Reform"

From the Badass Teachers Association:



Eli Broad:



It would help if the people making this would pronounce Eli's last name correctly. It's pronounced "Broad" as in "road."

Michelle Rhee:




I am sure there is more to come.

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O. J. Death Watch

Call me skeptical. I'll believe it when I see it:





Supposedly O.J. has a "deathbed" confession all written out to be released after he dies explaining what happened the night he killed ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. It's also claimed by the Enquirer O.J. has some $2 million stashed away in offshore accounts that his family will get after he dies in an attempt to circumvent the 1997 civil suit award.

I don't think the Goldmans will care one bit about the money when he dies. It never was about the money with them anyway; it was about O.J. having to be held accountable for what he did to Ron and Nicole, and if it meant he went to prison for the rest of his life on something unrelated to the murders, so be it. That was and is satisfaction enough.

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Etc.

More proof prostitution isn't a victimless crime.

That is the worst myth of all about it.
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UK's Chris Froome won this year's Tour de France.
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Teaching as a profession is dead in North Carolina.

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Remember Rigoberto Ruelas

and then you will see that the L.A. Times editorial board is made up of a bunch of hypocrites.

As far as I am concerned, that paper has blood on its hands.

It's a little bit too late in the day to save face and criticize federal education policy.

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Bonnie and Clyde Economics

That's why all of the bullshit about how pensions are "unsustainable," even when they get a great return, as in Nevada PERS system.

It's about getting that goddamned money to steal for the rich.

One way they try to do this is create a hell of a lot of envy by those who don't have real pensions versus those who do. Of course, many government workers don't pay into Social Security, and many, like yours truly, get a pittance or about the same as they would get in SS.

The neolibs went after private pensions to loot them and force most private workers into scam 401(k)s. Now that the money is drying up there to loot, it's time to go after government pensions.

When those dry up, Social Security will be next.

After all, the Koch brothers, Peterson, and all of the rest just can't survive on their obscene wealth.

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Obituaries: Helen Thomas

Pioneer female journalist Helen Thomas, long a fixture on the White House press scene and somebody who asked questions politicians, especially U.S. presidents, often didn't want to answer, has died at the age of 92:

When President George H.W. Bush announced that the defense budget would remain the same after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of communism in Europe, she succinctly asked, “Who’s the enemy?”

“I respect the office of the presidency,” she told Ann McFeatters for a 2006 profile in Ms. magazine, “but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants. They owe us the truth.”

Ms. Thomas had a number of scoops, including her exclusive interviews with Martha Mitchell, which helped expose some aspects of the Watergate scandal. Mitchell, the wife of Attorney General John Mitchell, told Thomas in late-night phone calls that she had seen a Nixon campaign strategy book that included plans for Watergate-style operations. Thomas also broke the story that Nixon’s speechwriters were working on a resignation address that he would give the next day.

Her strength was her indefatigable pursuit of hard news, the bread-and-butter staple of the wire services. She arrived at work every morning before dawn and accompanied presidents on overseas trips. She was the only female print reporter to accompany Nixon on his historic visit to China, and later, in her 70s and 80s, she often outdistanced younger reporters on arduous around-the-world travels.

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Misleading

This article claims there were "hundreds" of positions "filled" by WCSD this summer, but of course this includes the so-called "overaged" employees as well as transfers. Even with those new kindergarten and ELL jobs included, very, very few jobs are available for outsiders who have no connections.

“It’s fast and furious, but nothing about this year is much different than other summers,” she said.

The district has hired about 100 new teachers and is processing about 300 teacher transfers. There are still about 100 teacher openings, a number that changes every day, said Huckaby.

A hundred new jobs out of over 3,000 certificated employees isn't very much. Most of the remaining jobs will be filled internally, no doubt.

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Evil Is All Around

Rahm Emanuel needs to go to prison for attempting to loot the CPS treasury and laying off thousands of teachers.

A few politicians in Michigan should join him in the hoosegow as well. This is flat-out criminality.

These crooks don't even hide it. It's time to throw them ALL in prison, along with the billionaires who have bankrolled these crooks.

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Figures Lie and Liars Figure

It figures those figures are lies:

Keith Hall, the former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the federal government's monthly jobs report, told New York Post columnist John Crudele that the official unemployment rate of 7.6 percent is wrong and might be too low by 3 percentage points, according to Crudele's column on Thursday.

Though Hall now works for the Mercatus Center, a right-wing think tank at George Mason University partially funded by the billionaire Koch Brothers (Charles Koch sits on its board), he is not suggesting that the BLS is cooking the books, as Jack Welch and other conservatives have suggested.

What he is saying is that the unemployment rate doesn't capture all of the people sitting on the sidelines in despair of finding a job. The employment-population ratio, the percentage of the working-age population actually working, sits at 58.7 percent, Hall notes, well below a peak of 63 percent before the recession and the lowest rate since the early 1980s. This suggests to Hall that there are a lot of people not showing up in the official unemployment rate.

Tell me all about it. I am officially "employed" though I am actually underemployed with no silver lining in sight. It's almost hopeless in my case because what employer is going to "invest" money into an older employee who will get early Social Security in three-and-a-half years?

There is little out there at all in the way of real jobs that aren't a bunch of blue collar or sales-crap positions. Blue collar is definitely out because of weight requirements and sales jobs are out since I don't have the ability to bullshit people. Of course there is no money (to say nothing of no demand) for self-employment.

link


Congress has no intention at all of doing one damned thing about it. The faster the United States slides into a third world country, the better in their view.

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Jimbo Eruptions: The Final Chapter

Former Vegas cocktail waitress Chrissy Mazzeo has decided to take an out-of-court settlement in her case against former Nevada governor Jim Gibbons.

The amount of the settlement was a relative pittance, $50,000, but I am sure Mazzeo will put it to good use.

Gibbons was a U.S. representative for the second district and running for Nevada governor when he allegedly accosted and assaulted Mazzeo in a parking garage. The scandal didn't hurt his chances for election, but his antics and incompetence while he was governor DID end his career.

Now Nevada has somebody in the governor's mansion who could be worse.

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Those Not-So-Pearly Gates

If Bill and Melinda Gates and their "foundation" aren't evil, I don't know who or what is.

Their cancer is infiltrating higher education.

All they see is education is for job training, not for making people well-rounded, informed citizens.

It is a recipe for disaster.

The goal really is to limit higher education access.

The roots of the Gates foundation's higher-education reform effort go back to 2006, when a $31-billion pledge from Warren Buffett doubled the size of the foundation and allowed it to expand its programs. The foundation hired Hilary Pennington, who had co-founded Jobs for the Future, to identify the most effective lever for increasing social mobility. She was struck by research that showed two things: (1) the upward mobility of children is affected by their parents' level of education; and (2) if a poor person fails to get a college degree by his mid-20s, his chance of ever getting one plummets.

Gates came up with a strategy to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty by doubling the number of low-income students who earn degrees or credentials with labor-market value by the age of 26. Ms. Pennington would lead it. Success would require an annual increase of some 250,000 graduates.

Anthony P. Carnevale, a Georgetown University scholar whose research on the work force has informed the foundation, says education posed one major advantage over other ways to fight poverty, such as strengthening the social safety net: Increasing college completion was politically feasible.

The son of a bitch should be forced to channel that money back into the U.S. Treasury to help get this country back on track economically.

I want billionaires to stay the FUCK OUT of policy making.

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Lousy Is as Lousy Does

A better list would be one where there are good governors in the United States, but you'd probably only be able to count them on the fingers of one hand. That goes for both political parties which seem bent on destroying the country to help the elites.

The competition is especially fierce for the "worst" title, and I would say it could change from day to day. Andrew Cuomo is the second-highest of the lowest Democratic governors. He is just hideous, nothing at all like his father. My worry is he could very well be the Democratic Party nominee for president in 2016, and I will have to change my voter registration as a result. He is that bad.

The list:

I. Nathan Deal (R-GA)
II. Paul LePage (R-ME)
III. Robert McDonnell (R-VA)
IV. Rick Perry (R-TX)
V. Rick Scott (R-FL)
VI. Scott Walker (R-WI)
VII. Steven Beshear (D-KY)
VIII. Jan Brewer (R-AZ)
IX. Tom Corbett (R-PA)
XI. Susana Martinez (R-NM)
XII. Pat McCrory (R-NC
XIII. Terry Branstad (R-IA)
XIV. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY)
XV. Bill Haslam (R-TN)
XVI. Bobby Jindal (R-LA)
XVII. John Kasich (R-OH)
XVIII. Rick Snyder (R-MI)


Honestly, Jindal should be on the very top of the list. He has absolutely murdered the state of Louisiana.

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The Faces of Evil

This long piece doesn't actually say anything people who have looked into the Kochs don't already know. Their crackpot influence is EVERYWHERE, and I would argue since the two are batshit crazy and are among those who own the Libertarian and Republican parties, they have also influenced the Democratic Party as well.

These parasites, and that is what they are, are killing the American body politic with their insane political beliefs. They literally don't want to pay for anything at all but want even more for themselves. They are desciples of Ayn Rand's weird ideas which she formulated as a result of her having had some kind of developmental disorder (believed to be Asperger or something similar). These jerkwads are "worth" upwards of 50 billion EACH. They got it through inheritance, through outright theft of wages and salaries of employees, and through bribing politicians.

The most shocking part of the article, though, is mention of the fact there are now some 1,400 billionaires worldwide. This class of superrich exists as a direct result of economic policies designed to decimate and destroy working and middle class people and through outright theft against the people who actually create the wealth, the workers, by gutting their wages and salaries.

I can remember a mere 40 years ago there were only three or four billionaires in the entire WORLD. Forty years ago, you could actually name all of the billionaires in the world because there were so few of them. Let's see, there was H.L. Hunt, J. Paul Getty, (possibly) Howard Hughes, and Ross Perot. That was it. Even taking inflation into account, one cannot deny the rise of a parasitical class in the world whose numbers have greatly increased. It coincides with the rise of neoliberal, Friedmanite policies designed to destroy the working and middle class to create a parasitical class of superrich.

Anybody who thinks there isn't a class war by the few against everybody else hasn't been paying attention.

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Beyond the Candelabra

Scott Thorson lucked out:



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The REAL "Budget" of McDonald's Workers

This link from CNN Money makes the fast food giant look like a bunch of idiots.

Note that most of those profiled don't have a second job, and no doubt most if not all of them have to "double up" or shack up with some boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse to make ends meet or borrow money from anybody who will loan them some.

One of several profiled:



Kind of looks like my "budget."

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Crime Etc.

If you didn't see the Arias status conference yesterday, here is a link to the video.

It's hardly worth bothering to watch. Jodi Arias wore a bun hairstyle to court, but that is about the only notable thing about the proceeding.
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The WSWS has some scathing commentary about the Zimmerman acquittal.
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An earlier commentary by the same site is here:

The naked miscarriage of justice announced Saturday night has triggered protests in cities across the United States. From the political establishment, beginning with President Barack Obama, it has evoked pious and hypocritical admonitions to "respect" the verdict and honor the “rule of law.” Behind such sanctimonious statements from media commentators, lawyers and officially designated “civil rights leaders” is an awareness of the explosive state of social relations in America and the potential for an event such as the acquittal of Martin's killer to spark upheavals.

Obama posted a brief statement on the White House web site Sunday that declared, “We are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken.” This was written by a president who has effectively suspended the Bill of Rights in order to carry out the illegal surveillance of the entire US population and untold millions more people around the world, and has ordered the drone assassinations of thousands of people, including American citizens.

The murder of Trayvon Martin and acquittal of his killer reflect a deeply dysfunctional society. The prosecution case, undertaken in the first place only under pressure from popular protests denouncing the failure to charge the killer, was conducted in an ineffectual manner, with police who testified for the prosecution barely bothering to conceal their sympathy for Zimmerman.

If you can be shot and killed for merely walking home alone after purchasing some items in a convenience store and your killer gets away with it, NOBODY is safe. Certainly minority groups aren't.

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"Common Core" is EVIL

You read between the lines in this interview, and it is clear this principal has some fear in her voice. If she doesn't, she should. Common Core is the death knell of American public education. It's Bill Gates' baby, and anything Bill Gates wants you KNOW is bad. Everybody will do the same thing everywhere in the country at the same time, most of which will be developmentally inappropriate for kids in order to weed them out early so they can be tracked into low-wage jobs and denied higher education, and local control of schools will be done away with. Then the next thing on the agenda will be getting rid of teaching as a profession, the ultimate goal of CCCS. Teachers and principals can be replaced by teacher aides monitoring--babysitting--kids while they are parked in front of computers all day long with software by Microsoft and curriculum by Pearson. If people don't wake the hell up, in 15 years there will be no public education left, and probably no formal education at all for the 99 percent of the population when the billionaires finally squeeze every last dime from the public coffer. Think I am making it up? Read the work of Lois Weiner, who says pretty much what I am saying about the privatizers/neoliberals who want industrialized countries like the U.S. to be on the same economic level as third world countries. Neolibs see education not as a way to create productive, informed citizens, but as merely vocational training. There are few jobs requiring any education beyond middle school. Neoliberals/privatizers don't want to invest in education because it is a waste of money, so why should the U.S.? CCCS is absolutely EVIL.

By the way, she isn't being entirely honest here about the "scripted curriculum." Teachers have LESS freedom than ever before.

During the summer break, such as it is, teachers at my old district, and, for that matter, all around the country, are being sold this bill of goods--actually FORCED this bill of goods--so they can be stifled of any creativity in lesson planning. It's all coming from Washington, D.C., of course, by fake Democrats.

Teachers are being told what to teach and how to teach it. It is little different from scripted curriculum and is in fact nothing more than test prep. If those almighty test scores aren't up, teachers will be fired outright or placed on probationary status and ultimately fired anyway. For the first time in history, principals, typically people who DO have lifetime jobs no matter how bad they are, will have their heads on the chopping block as well. That might be a good thing, but the few good principals may be thrown out along with the lousy ones.

This is called "burn and churn." As long as there is a glut of teachers around the country, there will be more lambs to the slaughter.

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Stupid Is As Stupid Does

For the record, last night's interview with Zimmerman juror B37. I'd hide my face and be anonymous, too, if I were that damned stupid.

I guess there's a part two as well from this evening.



Of course she already decided she was going to let the killer off the hook.

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"Stable Work History"

That requirement is another way for employers to fuck over the unemployed, especially people who have been victimized via age age discrimination.

I had some damned moron who runs a local tutoring service DEMAND that I resubmit a resume so that it was chronological instead of functional/combination. I was going to be DAMNED that I was going to do that for some shitty little "job" where they might work me a couple of hours a week, and I let her know it was discriminatory to demand dates of employment (and presumably dates of graduation).

I didn't bother with it.

Last month, a much further-reaching New York law went into effect, banning employers from having any job requirement that could disparately impact the unemployed, unless the employer can demonstrate that the requirement is substantially job-related. A "very stable work history" could very possibly fall into that category, according to Emsellem.

For while certain skills and years of experience in a particular field are relevant requirements for a position, it's not as obvious how "stable work history" is a bonafide qualification.

"There may be some job where it's absolutely critical that they have a stable work history, whatever that means," says Emsellem. "But what jobs are those exactly? What are we talking about?"

It means never having been unemployed, never working for more than one or two employers over a work history.

I guess since I have worked for perhaps 30 to 35 different employers over the course of my working career, I wouldn't count. That despite the fact some of those "jobs" were part-time that enabled me to get my graduate degree. I held one full-time position 12 years, another one five years, a part-time position eight years, a private school job two years, a public school district six years total, and my current employers for one and three years, respectively. No stable employment history there.

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Despite the Fact They Are De Facto Private Schools

charter schools, with all of the advantages of private schools in being able to keep out the "riffraff," are no better than public schools, which have to take everybody. In other words, they are actually much WORSE.

From the PR blurb of a review examining the CREDO study which was less than it seemed despite all kinds of publicity about the so-called superiority of these scam schools:

The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University announced in a June 25th press release that “charter school students now have greater learning gains in reading than their peers in traditional public schools.” This conclusion was repeated in newspapers across the nation. But there is much less to the CREDO study and to its claim than meets the eye, according to a new review.

The National Charter School Study 2013 examined charter schools in 27 states and New York City. Andrew Maul and Abby McClelland reviewed the study for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review is published today by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

You can read it here:



Ttr Credo2013 by National Education Policy Center

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Jodi Arias Trial: Status Hearing

Update: Apparently there was no video of the proceedings. The next hearing has been set for August 26.

Details:

Arias’ attorneys argue that the definition of “especially cruel” is too vague for jurors with no legal experience to determine what makes one killing more cruel or heinous than another. Their June motion appears to challenge a landmark 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found a defendant has the right to have a jury, rather than a judge, decide on the existence of an aggravating factor that makes the defendant eligible for capital punishment.

The high court in that case, which originated in Arizona, determined that allowing judges to make such findings violated a defendant’s constitutional right to a trial by jury. Prosecutors argue that state and federal courts have found the process continues to pass constitutional muster, and that the defense motion lacks merit.

Judge Sherry Stephens gave defense attorneys until Aug. 5 to file final motions supporting their arguments. She set another status conference in the case for Aug. 26.

“It appears there are a number of issues that are unresolved so I am reluctant to set a firm trial date for the penalty phase retrial at this time,” Stephens told attorneys Tuesday.

It is supposed to happen at around 10:30 PDT, give or take a few hours knowing that courtroom. I expect the retrial for the penalty phase will be postponed for several months. The defense attorneys have several other cases they are working on for the next few months.


Video:

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Etc.

This is so disturbing on so many levels:

This is only the fourth confirmed case of a 6-year-old committing suicide in the United States since 2007, Payette Police Chief Mark Clark said. Both the Payette and Fruitland police departments responded to the scene, as well as Payette Fire Rescue.

“The first thing I’d like the community to know is that we assigned four detectives to work solely on this case,” Clark said. This was to ensure that the case was given proper attention by qualified individuals to determine that a child so young did in fact commit suicide.

According to Clark, the victim was watching cartoons on the TV in the living room with his 7-year-old sister, while another sibling, a 13-year-old, was napping in a bedroom. The young boy’s mother and stepfather were both home at the time and were showering when the incident occurred.

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401(k)s are already scams, but some lobbyists out there want to make them even more of a ripoff:

But rather than going to bat for mom-and-pop retirees or other small investors, the day-long event on the hill was actually the latest salvo in a three-year campaign by brokerage firms to block regulations that would ensure that advisers to your 401(k) work in your best financial interest, or in other words, as your fiduciary. The Financial Services Institue, a trade association for broker-dealers, organized the trip, which included representatives from Pershing, FSC Securities, TransAmerica and other industy leaders.

While many Americans rely on 401(k) plans for their retirement, few are aware that their financial advisers are often working for commissions, and have no legal obligation to have their clients’ best interests in mind. The vast majority of 401(k) advisers, around 85 percent, are not actually fiduciaries. Critics say brokers often steer small investors into funds that may not be suitable, or are burdened by an array of high fees.

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I think I'd call this a frivolous lawsuit:

Asiana Airlines will sue Bay Area television station KTVU-TV for using fake, racially insensitive names of pilots flying the ill-fated Asiana Airlines Flight 214, the Associated Press reported Monday.

A spokeswoman for the South Korean airline, Lee Hyomin, said the broadcast seriously damaged Asiana’s reputation and that it will sue the station to “strongly respond to its racially discriminatory report,” according to the Associated Press. The suit will likely be filed in the United States, she said.

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Yes, "they" want us dead, but they will be dead before everybody else is.

These parasites think they are better than everybody else, but they are by and large morons who inherited or stole everything from the masses who created the wealth in the first place.
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This should prove interesting: Interviews are set for the final four candidates for Nevada's superintendent of public instruction.

Remember James W. Guthrie abruptly quit in March before he could get fired from his job.
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Obituary: Nixon's lawyer Leonard Garment, 89, a Watergate figure, has died according to his daughter:

Mr. Garment himself stepped down as Nixon’s Watergate lawyer in late 1973 once it became clear to him that the scandal was moving inexorably toward the president’s downfall.

Long after many other Watergate figures had gone to prison or faded into ignominy, Mr. Garment remained one of official Washington’s most sought-after lawyers, known for his quick puns, gift of gab and savvy media skills. He often represented powerful figures in trouble, among them Attorney General Edwin Meese III and Robert C. McFarlane, a national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan.

But for all his later successes, Mr. Garment remained linked in many minds to Nixon, his longtime friend and former law partner, and the scandal that was his undoing. Mr. Garment regarded Nixon as an older brother of sorts.

The two made for an odd pairing. Mr. Garment was a liberal in a Republican administration, a Democrat who voted for John F. Kennedy over Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. He was a Jew from Brooklyn working for a native Californian given to making anti-Semitic comments in private. He was a gregarious man with a talent for jazz who counseled a dour president. He was a champion of human rights in an administration that many blacks considered hostile to minority issues. And he was regarded as a voice of conscience in a White House that had lost its ethical bearings.

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