Here’s the background on the rally today at Saucedo Elementary in Chicago.
It’s pretty serious when a teacher is threatened with termination if she/he refuses to subject the kids to this form of bullying.
Category Archives: Big Brother
Alert: Chicago Parents and Public Ed Supporters
Fred Klonsky has this up on a rally for Chicago Teachers Union and parents against the testing, testing, testing mentality of the education profiteers and their toadies.
Rally is at 3:30 p.m. at Saucedo Elementary at 2850 W. 24th Blvd. Wear red in support!
Eye Candy
This week’s pics of beautiful Canada. I was thinking about Neil Young’s song and the video of the Earth before the energy companies move in, and how much is lost that cannot be regained after they’re done stripping the land…
Joe Donnelly on Obama exec order
So…Joe Donnelly was on the local radio station getting free air time, er I mean, informing the public…
…when he was laying into President Obama for the executive order to force the minimum wage to $10.10 for federal workers.
Donnelly casually mentions that George W. Bush did this (and so did several other presidents, including Reagan and Clinton, who were neck and neck with executive orders). More here on Mike Pence (now Indiana’s governor) who thinks executive orders are just fine for George W. Bush.
Donnelly stated that President Obama “should have tried to work with us…and he jumped the gun…”
bwahahahahahaha
Um, he has tried to work with Congress. Members of Congress have had a secret agreement to deliberately thwart Obama and block nominees, legislation, etc.
They have blocked raising the minimum wage for as long as I can remember. While they complain that they need an automatic pay raise every year, Congress looks the other way while people go hungry, lose their homes, go without medical care, and live under constant stress of deciding whether to pay the light bill, mortgage, heat bill, or put food on the table.
You might remember Donnelly phrased cutting food stamps as “savings” when on the radio just before Thanksgiving….absolutely callous while ignoring waste and fraud and bloated budgets in other areas, such as Defense spending.
The mother of the dying child speaks out
Ken Previtti (Reclaim Reform) has a follow up to the mother whose child was in hospice and the state of Florida was demanding he be tested. Keep the kleenex handy.
Godspeed to her and her family.
Heartless creeps.
Charter Schools Gravy Train
(hat tip to scathing purple musings) Forbes, of all places, has this article up that pretty much summarizes all that is wrong with charter school profiteers.
As mentioned here before, the article notes that Bill Clinton allowed them to proliferate by giving them tax credits and not only that, but green cards for foreign investors. Yep.
As I’m reading about the for-profit scheme and how the author notes that they have not been that profitable…I’m thinking of the “classes” being given to kids via video or online “learning”…so they don’t have to pay a teacher at all. Or–they have one teacher to answer questions or grade tests for however many kids they can squeeze in….I don’t even know the answer to that and I’m not going to even try to guess. They don’t really care, anyway, if the child is getting a good education…as long as it looks something like an education, they’re just fine with that…
Lastly, I’m even more impressed with public schools after reading this–the author notes that charter schools can pick and choose their students, so they should be showing better test scores than public…less than a third do that.
So…even with the students that are autistic or mentally challenged, the public schools still outdid the charters. Here’s to the dedicated and beleaguered public school teachers….::clink::
The Fourth Amendment
…is the right to be let alone. The right to have privacy from the government unless there is a court order stating there is probable cause (there is evidence you did something against the law).
It should also be fiercely enforced for whistleblowers.…a democracy depends on it.
The NSA uses intelligence to interfere with trade
Well, now, just when you think things can’t get any worse with the NSA…they continually amaze one with their lack of ethics.
Liaison officials asked the NSA general counsel’s office, on behalf of the Australians, for guidance about the spying. The bulletin notes only that the counsel’s office “provided clear guidance” and that the Australian eavesdropping agency “has been able to continue to cover the talks, providing highly useful intelligence for interested U.S. customers,” according to the Times story.
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…and the question of the hour is…would any of this come to light if Edward Snowdon had not brought it to light?
And yet another example why we need diversity in media. The whistleblowers of the world will not get a chance to be heard if media continues to be consolidated into a few privileged hands….
Video segments of Kochs Exposed
Here are snippets of the documentary on the grip the Kochs have on policy. It’s truly heartening what happened in Wake County, a southern area, and how they were not willing to go backward.
Also, this documentary leaves out the Gates Foundation and Eli Broad and the Walton family’s influence on destroying public education…just wanted to note that important piece of this pie.
Well, this is different…dancers disrupt protest
Well, you have to hand it to them–the Vietnamese gov’t deployed ballroom dancers to disrupt Vietnamese folks from laying wreaths and chanting anti-China slogans.
The protesters were marking the 35th anniversary of a bloody border war between China and Vietnam, where anger over Beijing’s increasingly assertive territorial claims on islands in the South China Sea that Hanoi insists belong to it is already running high.
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Instead of using guns and armed forces, they use…dancers.
Eagle 
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