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Be the change you wish to see in the world…Gandhi**

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It is truly unbelievable how spoiled celebrities in Hollywood are wasting precious water to show off.

People watering their lawns is one of my pet peeves…and in California, where they are in desperate circumstances…it’s doubly irritating to me.

Listen up, egocentric Kardashians, JLo, Streisand, et al:  If you cut your grass to 3 inches in height, the grass roots will go deeper, where there is moisture, and should not need to be watered.

Here in July, where it gets really dry, I never watered my lawn because I always had the mower set to at least 3 inches so the grass could survive without watering.

See, the Ayn Rand selfishness theory doesn’t work in the real world…people’s survival depends on one another.  What are you going to do when the water runs out???

Oh, right, I forgot for a moment…the rich celebrities will have water trucked in from other states, taken from poorer communities that won’t have the money nor resources to fight off the takers.

All of this is the backdrop of yet another pipeline break and the water being polluted with oil on California’s coast….disaster.

**edited to correct spelling of Gandhi.  Stupid dyslexia.

Why hasn’t the IRS investigated ALEC for a fraudulent tax exempt status?

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Center for Media and Democracy has this up on the IRS doing NOTHING against American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

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“It has been almost exactly three years since we uncovered ALEC’s tax misrepresentation and first reported it to the IRS,” Rapoport said. “Three years later, the IRS Whistleblower Office has not taken action, despite its legal mandate to investigate complaints. Meanwhile, ALEC continues its secretive lobbying activities that often benefit the corporations’ bottom line.” –
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Funny how those opposed to “big government” and “welfare” think nothing of taking money from the government, a la not paying taxes along with government handouts.

Obama pushing for more spending for Charters…while nobody is held accountable…

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DN!  has a great segment with Lisa Graves, of the Center for Media and Democracy that covers a lot of the players behind the scenes of Charters.  It’s a compelling segment with tying into Milton Friedman and Michael Milken, a criminal junk bond trader/corporate raider….you know, the guys in the 80s who were convicted of insider trading while making millions of dollars.  They would start the predatory overtaking of small companies by larger companies…leading to Too Big Too Fails.

Link here.

Keiser Report: Modern Slave Masters

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Max and Stacy have a really depressing piece up today — just to give you fair warning.  When Stacy says “Americans have no hope — they have no jobs and are living on food stamps”  it brought tears to my eyes.  Because she’s right.  Especially if TPP goes through.

I once had hope for Barack Obama, but no more.  I don’t give a crap what China or anyone else is doing.  They are a Communist country that the people are living in slums eking out a living by making just enough to pay their rent for the slum and have a bit of food in their stomachs.

I don’t think calling Barack Obama a  modern day slave trader was too much, because there is something terribly, terribly wrong when sooo much wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few who consider themselves above everyone else and in that thinking decide for the world.

Meanwhile, he has general disregard for the freedom of the press and for personal freedom.  The spying on innocent Americans is unconscionable. And Unconstitutional.

But no matter…laws, like taxes, are for the “little people”.

Selective biases of Centers for American Progress and “low-performing” schools

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National Education Policy Center has a press release on the flawed report:

School Turnaround Report Is in Need of Intervention

Reference Publication:
Review of Dramatic Action, Dramatic Improvement

Report neglects available research in making unwarranted claims

Contact: 
William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Tina Trujillo, (510) 642-6272, trujillo@berkeley.edu

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/kyhd8b8
BOULDER, CO (May 11, 2015) – A recent report from the Center for American Progress claims to offer clear lessons about research-based, effective methods for turning around low-performing schools. A new review, however, concludes that these lessons are not supported by rigorous research.

Tina Trujillo of the University of California, Berkeley reviewed Dramatic Action, Dramatic Improvement: The Research on School Turnaround for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

Trujillo, an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, studies the political dimensions of urban district reform and trends in urban educational leadership. The report Trujillo reviewed was written by Tiffany D. Miller and Catherine Brown and published by the Center for American Progress.

Dramatic Action, Dramatic Improvement argues that the body of available research determines that bold actions are necessary for schools to improve measurably. The authors advocate for the School Improvement Grant (SIG) federal program to bring about the most effective methods for turning around low-performing schools.

The SIG program’s policies have a superficial appeal, given the unsatisfactory outcomes at these schools. But those policies, like the report, are based on unwarranted claims, are unsupported by rigorous research, and are in fact contradicted by the empirical evidence, Trujillo writes.

She points, for instance, to the claim that dramatic changes in staffing and management can spur fast and sustainable improvement. Such disruptions often lead to poor school performance, but this readily available research is not mentioned or addressed in the report.

In her review, Trujillo finds the authors’ rationale “narrow, incoherent, and misleading.” The report, she asserts, fails to incorporate lessons learned from plentiful research on school improvement, high-stakes accountability, and federally funded turnarounds.

“In the end,” Trujillo states, “schools, districts, and states that follow the report’s advice stand only to reproduce the unequal conditions that have led, in part, to their need for dramatic turnaround in the first place.”

Find Tina Trujillo” review on the NEPC website at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-school-turnaround

Find Dramatic Action, Dramatic Improvement: The Research on School Turnaround by Tiffany D. Miller and Catherine Brown on the web at:
https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/SchoolTurnaround-briefv2.pdf

The Think Twice think tank review project (http://thinktankreview.org) of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) provides the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. The Think Twice think tank review project is made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information on the NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/

United Airlines and autistic Juliette’s meltdown…

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I was appalled at what happened when an autistic child, Juliette, was forced off a United Airlines plane because she was making the pilot uncomfortable.  And let’s not let the flight attendants off so easily, because they had to have alerted the pilot that this child was acting “abnormally”.

I feel so bad for her and her parents.  The amount of stress of dealing with an autistic child is made twice as hard as it has to be with insensitive, over-reactive people like the pilot.

Genetically Modified Food and Supplement Guide

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I found this and thought my thoughtful readers would like to know this stuff, too.  I was looking up supplements because of the recent finding of Nature Made not denying their Vitamin C contained GMO’s.

I had taken one bottle and was almost through with another before the discovery…and I can tell you that I’m feeling it in my gut.  I’m real sensitive when I bump up against the kitchen counter.  I haven’t felt that much inflamed since before I began the GAPS diet.  Since I was feeling pretty good before the Vitamin C, I have to say that it likely contained GMO’s and they are affecting my gut by creating an inflammation response.

It’s coming here, next folks: protests after UK elections

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This is the second time in the last few days that I have read of peaceful protestors being treated with violence by police.  I read the same about protestors in Baltimore who were not provoking the police, but were thrown to the ground because they were protesting.  Not only that, but Palestinian observers at Baltimore were saying the police were worse than the Israelis.  WTH?  How bad does one have to be to be called worse than the Israelis?

Keiser on UK elections

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Some of you may think that the UK elections are “over there” and not really relevant to the U.S. or elections…but wait…if you listen carefully to Max and Stacy, you can see the One Nation Under Fear politics are being played in the UK, as well as Israel, and right here.   Please keep these tactics in mind with the coming election…you’re going to be inundated with media messages that will play on your fear, your biases, and your emotions.

As we have seen here, people get caught up in the messages without looking for what is lurking beneath the noise…and then vote against their best interests.

Even worse than that…as Max mentions, they voted for a person, believing they were going to keep student loan rates low, and then the rates went up soon after elections (I think he said within hours?).

A voter will not get the information they need by the media — you have to look at who is sponsoring a candidate to know who’s their Daddy.  I would not pick any of them that are getting millions of dollars to bankroll their campaigns…you know that money like that is coming from corporations and the Koch brothers.  Writing in a candidate looks to be an option, as I’ve noted before.