Category Archives: bullying

Monsanto bulldozer keeps on rollin’

by

While we’re looking the other way at issues that should be non-issues….another sneaky thing in the House version of the Ag part of the funding of the government is to continue the Monsanto Protection Act.  Yep.

From Organic Consumers:

URGENT: House Passes Monsanto Protection Act. Ask Your Senators to Stop It!

Dear Supporter,

On Friday, September 20, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the Continuing Resolution (H.J.RES.59), a bill to keep the government running through December 15. The bill will force a showdown with the Senate because it includes a provision to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

But the Continuing Resolution is controversial for another reason. It extends the Monsanto Protection Act, officially referred to as the Farmers Assurance Provision, a law that gives biotech firms immunity from federal prosecution for illegally growing GMO crops.

Please call your Senators today and ask them to pass a clean version of the Continuing Resolution, one that doesn’t extend the Monsanto Protection Act.

You can call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected with your Senator. Or find individual senators’ phone numbers here.

You can say:

“I’m calling to ask the Senator to oppose the Farmers Assurance Provision, sometimes referred to as the Monsanto Protection Act, and to vote no on any bill, including the Continuing Resolution, which includes the provision.”

If you want to go into more detail, you can add:

“New GMOs aren’t regulated enough as it is. Even the American Medical Association complains that the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t safety test new GMOs for human health risks before allowing them on the market for human consumption. The AMA last year recommended that GMOs undergo mandatory premarket safety testing.

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture does conduct a mandatory review of new GMOs, but not for human health risks.

“The USDA is notorious for ignoring the impact new GMOs will have on organic and non-GMO farmers who experience serious economic losses when their crops are contaminated.

“In recent years, the courts have had to step in and stop the planting of new GMOs. The courts did this by requiring that the USDA complete a thorough Environmental Impact Statement before approving a controversial crop. The Monsanto Protection Act strips the court of its constitutional power to review executive branch decisions, which means the courts can no longer intervene in order to protect the public. Now, the USDA can rubber-stamp new GMOs and, even if serious harm could result, the court can’t stop them from being planted.

“I hope the Senator will work to stop the Monsanto Protection Act from being extended past September 30 and vote against any bill that includes it.”

Background
The Monsanto Protection Act was first passed in March, when it was quietly and without debate slipped into the earlier version of the Continuing Resolution, a bill to fund the government through September 30. As Politico reporter David Rogers explained in his Monsanto Protection Act exposé, “Big Agriculture Flexes its Muscle,” the Monsanto-friendly rider was never voted on. Rogers, a seasoned political reporter, described how the Monsanto Protection Act became law “with little or no floor debate and in a period of turmoil.”

The backroom deal that made the Monsanto Protection Act law generated a public backlash. It was the subject of a Daily Show episode. And it helped spawn a worldwide March against Monsanto, reported on by the New York Times.

Because the Senate never voted on the Monsanto Protection Act, we don’t know where all of the senators stand on the issue. But here’s what we do know:

•    Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) conspired with Monsanto lobbyists to write the law.

•    Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), chair of the full Senate Appropriations Committee, publicly apologized for letting the Monsanto Protection Act slip through. But, she said, she had a responsibility to avoid a government shutdown.

•    Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), tried for a vote to repeal the Monsanto Protection Act during the Senate Farm Bill debate.

•    Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) blocked Merkley’s amendment.

•    Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D- Mich.) promised Merkley that the amendment wouldn’t be renewed without a vote.

Can Sen. Stabenow keep her promise? We’ll find out this week when the Senate debates the new Continuing Resolution. While the focus will be on the House’s provision to defund Obamacare, we need every senator to know that it is not acceptable to include the Monsanto Protection Act in the new bill.

Please call your senators today. Ask them to reject extending the Monsanto Protection Act and vote no on the Continuing Resolution unless this blatant giveaway to the biotech industry is removed.

Thank you!

— Alexis and the team at OCA

Organic Consumers Association

6771 South Silver Hill Drive – Finland, MN 55603 – Phone: 218-226-4164 – Fax: 218-353-7652

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don’t Be That Guy

by

A campaign is underway to bring date rape to the forefront.  It’s ironic that guys are finding the posters offensive….which is telling of how little men understand the devastation of rape.  I can tell you there isn’t a woman looking at the posters and not feeling anxiety and fear and vulnerability.

Someone put up posters protesting the campaign.  Note how the headline writer frames this as anti-feminist….instead of anti-woman.  It seems like a minor change of words, but has a huge impact because it’s easy to hate feminists, but if they say “woman”….that would be harder to justify.

And I think it is absolutely rape when a woman is intoxicated and is not able to give her consent.  And what kind of guy would take advantage of that??  Any decent man, no matter how much he desires her, is going to do the right thing and take her home and let her sleep it off.  If he wants to have sex with her, he will wait until she is sober.  A good man will want the woman to come to him willingly.

 

Klonskys Rainy Sunday Blog and others **edited

by

Fred Klonsky has an excellent blog covering the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham bombing, the NY Post slam piece on Diane Ravitch, and more.

As I was watching Bill Cosby speak on MSNBC Sunday, I thought of the bombing happening in August….and President Kennedy being killed just a few months later…and Martin Luther King just five years after that…the Kent State and Jackson State shootings…

Dailykos Teacher Ken blog on Diane’s book here.

The end of Clinton/Reagan politics.  We can only hope there will be no more Clintons or Clintonites in the White House after Bush, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush…and I don’t agree that Barack Obama has been quite as Clintonite as the author believes–maybe at first, but I really feel he has started to break away from that in his second term. …especially within the last year.  And I can do without all the psycho-babble of why people choose political candidates….psychology and sociology theorists would like to put people in packages that suits a scientific measure, when people are much more complex than that.  Take me, for example….I am nothing like they would like to pigeonhole me as….

If a person matures psychologically as they get older, they will make their own choices according to their inner voice–not according to outside influences.  I think this is especially true if they are a spiritual person.

Challenge for Steve Perry.  Wow, it is unbelievable this guy is a Principal!  Really on the outer edge in his tweets, rightwinger for sure.  So glad that NBC and CNN are supporting the destruction of the public school system. /very snarky, indeed

HIs “no excuses” garbage is just that–just look at the statistics for how many of them his school serves.  And making a five year old stand up during lunch period because her mother didn’t send her to school with the proper uniform?  Are you kidding me??

Nobody is making excuses…the teachers and parents fighting for the public schools ARE fighting for kids in poverty and in minority neighborhoods who have multitudes of issues to deal with.  Not getting shot on the way to school is one of them…

Nancy Flanagan why all the snark?

A word about competition and profits

Rhee tells Philly how to solve problems.

Michelle Rhee penned an article about how to fix the public schools of Philadelphia. She says it is time for performance pay, so that there is “a great teacher” in every classroom.

~~~~~~

Great.  let’s start with Michelle Rhee’s performance in D.C.  Fail!  Or…how about her taping the kdis’ mouths shut and then laughing about it when they peeled the tape off and it tore their delicate skin off, too, leaving them crying and bleeding? Fail!  Or…how she is married to a predator??  Not someone I would want in charge of schools.

Be sure to click on the renegade video by an attendee to the *cough* conversation of Michelle Rhee and I think she mentions Steve Perry, too.    I love this–passionate public school advocates standing up against the propaganda.   Notice that they tell her they are “at the end” of the program and they try to hurry her up to quash her statement…but that is only 7 minutes into the program…it goes on for another 20 minutes!

The man talking (Perry) uses a LOT of emotional language–a red flag he doesn’t have facts to back up what he’s saying.  And, as the video asks…who are these “wrong” students Perry is talking about?  Not the dreaded poor, disabled, and minority students…that he says he wants to serve and calls Ravitch, et al, racists for not sending them to charters who will dump their butts for not jumping through hoops…..okay, I’m confused….

Also–as the commenter notes–Rhee mocks Hannah Nguyen.  Um-hmmm….but, yes, of course Rhee sincerely wants a conversation.  bwahahahahaha  *snort*  bwahahaha

**edited to take off the school finance link.  Like I said, I was tired last night, and mistakenly put that up.  After viewing one of the videos, it appears that the blog is pro-charter schools.  Or perhaps I should say anti-public schools.  Sorry for the mistake.

More on Irish Slaves

by

I went back to read the blog again, and this time clicked on the comments section.  I found the comment below about further study of the Irish slave trade.  It is amazing that this went on for 200 years, and nobody knows about it!

Stumbled upon this website doing Irish Genealogy and thought I’d post that I just finished the book To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland by Sean O’Callaghan and am starting White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America by Don Jordan & Michael Walsh.

I highly recommend To Hell or Barbados. It reads a little like a history text but still fascinating none the less to learn about this little talked about portion of history even though it went on for almost 200 years!

-J

~~~~~~~~~~~

I found this blog on Sean O’Callaghan’s book To Hell or Barbados.   She writes a powerful paragraph in which she asks:

What if this story of the Irish and Scots had been exposed and well known; would slavery have had a different complexion and perceived differently today? Would the legacy of slavery, the blight and scourge it has inflicted upon people of African descent in the Americas be the same? Or would slavery have been understood for what it is: a system based on the conrol and subjugation of those who have no power–for economic gain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is a short documentary video on the site, as well, but it only covers the African slave trade, so no new information on the Irish/Scots slave trade there.

Something disturbing, though, as I’m trying to find other blogs reviewing the book–one had stamped on it “White Pride World Wide”.  That is the LAST thing I would want to come of this information—we don’t need the KKK (and cohorts) to use this to further its hate agenda.   Good God, it should cause them to pause and reflect on how it was done to the vulnerable whites, as well, and therefore, should be a learning moment on empathy and justice.  It should be a lesson on how once again, those in power create hatred towards a specific group to gain even more power (the Nazi’s flash in my mind as I write that).

Do unto others…

Since when is diplomacy a weakness?

by

According to this report, John “I don’t know how many houses I have” McCain says that the agreement reached between Russia, and the U.S. to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons is a show of….weakness.  Yep.  He asserts that the “friends and enemies” of the U.S. will view this as “provocative weakness”….um, what “friends” would view it this way?  McCain doesn’t tell us…but a clue might be in the next assertion that this will embolden Iran….so my guess is that Israel sees this act of diplomacy and peace as….weak.

Yeah, well, it takes courage and strength NOT to drop a bomb.  It takes courage and strength to negotiate.  Anyone can drop a bomb…but the conflict doesn’t end there, although by appearances it seems to take care of the problem.  Nope.  What it does is create more problems with more violence.

Leave to republicans to find something wrong with a historical moment when the United States and Russia thwart World War III…

…again, they (and some Dems) must be pissed off that they’re not going to be able to profit off yet another war….

 

Mexico City Teachers Protest

by

Apparently, they’re trying to break the teacher’s unions in Mexico, as well.  The teachers aren’t taking it lying down, either.    So now it appears this isn’t just the United States that this is happening to…

…the question is WHO is doing this…and why?

~~~~~~~~~

….and here we have one of the players, Arne Duncan, who has never set foot in a classroom, being called out for his nonsense.

If teachers and parents are protesting the lame testing that does not test  potential…and they’re protesting No Child Left a Mind…and if  money will be withheld if they do not comply–I say that is a case of taxation without representation.    Time for a true Boston Tea Party.

If parents don’t start getting organized against the hedge fund managers, Gates, Broad, Rhee, and others, they will succeed in destroying public education.

When is a public forum not a public forum?

by

When it involves ag committees who don’t allow the public to speak, but allow a corporate representative to spew their biased views.

Note how the Monsanto rep said she wanted a discussion but opponents to GMO’s were not allowed to speak.  They were characterized as “emotional”….now, how can they preemptively dismiss them if there has been no discussion?    From what I saw on the video, these folks were being respectful.  There were no reports of them disrupting the meeting, or interfering with the Monsanto toadie, so where do they come off saying these folks were emotional?

…and what, exactly, does “emotional” mean?  A definition, please…

Education News

by

Nancy Carlsson-Paige has a guide for parents who wish to advocate for their kids and schools.  Note in the comments section how they are requiring a kindergartner to know the value of money, and won’t let them into kindergarten without that knowledge.

Are you kidding me??  A child that young has no need to know the value of money.  They are not likely to be in a store buying items requiring them to know correct change–so why is this something they need to know when they’re 5 or 6?  Absurd.

Next, we have the New York Times reporting on how “loud” Diane Ravitch is…how can one be LOUD on a computer keyboard?  And where are the facts to back up their claim of Ravitch’s name-calling?  And again with the “personal attacks”?  What personal attacks?  Attacking someone on their record is NOT a personal attack.  She pumps out “hundreds of barbed words” in her blog? Really? Well, if Motoko Rich considers Diane’s blog full of barbed words….she would surely find my blog worse than that.   haha.

So…Tony Bennett is in the news yet again.  This time for using State time for political activities….against State employee ethical guidelines.   It is drilled into you that you cannot use your job for political activities or accept anything of value from political campaigns.  (hat tip Diane Ravitch)

Lastly, Tennessee Superintendents speaking out against Kevin Huffman, former husband of Michelle Rhee.  One of the commenters stated that Rhee was now married to a pedophile.  I went looking for information and found this.  Wow. So…not only does Michelle Rhee put tape over young children’s mouths and then laugh when they peel the skin off removing it, she defends a sexual harasser.  Good God.

Walker Backs Down

by

Gov. Scott Walker has rescinded a $500,000 grant to the United Sportsmen of Wisconsin.

You know, for folks who are so dead set against government in their lives, via taxation and regulation, they sure to go out of their way to get those tax dollars while trying to circumvent the democratic process.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the grant was slipped into the budget bill by outgoing Majority Leader Scott Suder with terms that excluded most sporting groups in the state. The grant was not properly advertised, conveniently leaving United Sportsmen as the sole applicant.

~~~~~~~~

More Wisconsin news here. 

You’re telling me that citizens throwing pop cans and shouting obscenities requires the use of armed guards?  Talk about overreaction.  Yes, it was wrong for the one demonstrator to destroy the camera, no doubt, but having armed guards with assault rifles is just soo over the top.

What I don’t understand is why  they are allowed in the forest at all.  Why are they destroying what little we have left?  People seem to think that climate change is this thingy down the road….hello, it’s happening now and destroying the forests is one of the reasons.    Why are they not valued as much as the mining operations?  Why aren’t the environmental impacts on the land and water considered as important?

The primary cause of this lasting pollution is acid mine drainage. Mining exposes sulfide-bearing ore that generates sulfuric acid and mixes with water. This outflow of acidic water, otherwise known as acid mine drainage, contaminates drinking water aquifers, lakes, and streams, agricultural lands, and prime fish and wildlife habitat. Because acid mine drainage can’t be stopped, once started it must be treated until the acid generating material runs out. As acknowledged in government mining permits, this can take hundreds or thousands of years.

~~~~~~~~~~

Texas’ Freedom of Information Foundation is aiding CMD in obtaining public records that members of ALEC are trying to keep in the dark.

The Fight for Fifteen in Wisconsin.  I think $15 per hour is reasonable and would put us back to where we would have been had our wages not stagnated over the last twenty or so years…

There is just something terribly wrong when a CEO can make millions in income while employees are forced on food stamps or food banks to feed themselves and their families.

Finally, in non-Wisconsin news, CMD has this up on the paper trail of Larry Summers.   I haven’t begun to read all the information here, so I’m off to read the links. …note, however, the link to education “reform”–he’s on the board of the Eli Broad Foundation.  Not only that, but Andy Stern is also on the board–he was head of the Service Employees Union…wow….a union supporter on the board of an organization trying to destroy teacher’s unions and public education.  Just wow.