…so they’re going to make sure that if you get $1 over your allotted meager unemployment check, they’re going to freeze your bank account. Holy crap, I think Walker is the anti-Christ….by that I mean doing the opposite of what Christ would do…you know, Loaves and fishes….Walker would tell them to get a freaking job and stop expecting free handouts.
In keeping up with all the dirty little deeds the Gates Foundation promotes….here is an article on the link between Gates, Monsanto, and Blackwater. Really disturbing.
The article mentions The Nation with Jeremy Scahill—while looking for the Scahill article, I happened upon this with a scathing reply by the authors:
We agree that it will ultimately be up to farmers to decide what is best for them. Our concern continues, however, to be that the choices farmers face is systematically skewed, with some ideas being amplified over others. Any policies that involve redistribution–such as land reform–are off the Gates agenda, despite being a live concern to many African farmers’ movements. This demonstrates our broader point. Despite the foundation’s best efforts to be accountable once the policy has been laid down, the Gates Foundation’s interventions reflect, at heart, the undemocratic vision of a single very powerful and ultimately unaccountable organization.
Sincerely,
RAJ PATEL
ERIC HOLT-GIMENEZ
ANNIE SHATTUCK
www.foodfirst.org
(sorry, couldn’t help myself)
It would seem that the attempts by the ALEC groups to infringe on the First Amendment right to speak out have been thwarted…at least for now.
Stories here.
Be sure to click on the link for the Amy Meyer story. Chilling.
And Indiana drops it for the year. Knowing how they like to bring stuff under the radar, I’ll assume that it will be back next year and voted in when attention is diverted elsewhere…
(**edited to fix links. Oops.)
Diane Ravitch has a link up to this piece on the dirty little secrets of charter schools. Everything that parents want in education is not in these schools. They’re all fluff and no substance. They’re not there to educate, but to collect funds. (it is so arrogant to think that you don’t have to be audited…you’re using the public funds for your endeavor–you better have your books open to the public. Gah…where have we heard this before? IRS, anyone?)
They dump the learning disabled and behavioral cases.
I also clicked on the link to the “Ten Things Your School District Won’t Tell You” and have a few quibbles with the writer. One is the licensing thing–Indiana has required licenses from teachers and not only that, but that they further their education into Master’s degrees–at least they used to. I can’t say whether that is still true–I haven’t checked it lately…and with Governor Daniels’ assault on the public education in Indiana, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that standard has lapsed. )
Another thing I have a quibble with is the student-teacher ratio. People want to have smaller class size? Then you better be prepared to spend more in tax dollars towards the amount of teachers in the school. But no…we can’t spend tax money on schools…we need to spend it on the military industrial complex because of a boogey-man enemy….meanwhile, our society crumbles all around…
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Ravitch also has another blog up with this link to the continuing meanness of the Queen of Mean, Leona Helmsley,. whom uttered the line: “Only the little people pay taxes….”
(gotta love the snarky style of the writer…heh.)
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…something tells me that you won’t see this with Charter school teachers. Nope. Nor would I think they would lay down their lives for their students, as we saw with the Oklahoma tornado. I’m sure there will be exceptions to the rule, but as a general application…I just don’t see that kind of caring about the kids. It’s hard to care about something when you’re looking at it with $$ in your eyes….
Incredible. Just incredible. The game is on, folks. Be aware of anything that plays on your emotions…as these opportunists are doing…look how they have tried to using anger, outrage, and the ever effective “don’t be a dummy and let them get away with whatever it is WE say they’re doing” and the “us versus them” divisional tactics.
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And now we have the modern day “witch hunt” where it only takes a few disgruntled people to start a whispering campaign, or in this case, a petition drive, to disparage and ultimately permanently damage someone. (from Ravitch’s blog here.) (and the fact that it is once again a woman who is the target speaks volumes.)
I can’t get past this:
Parent leader Llury Garcia said that although her second-grade daughter has done fairly well at Weigand, Cobian was inaccessible and rude. She and other petition backers were assisted by Parent Revolution, a Los Angeles nonprofit that lobbied for the parent trigger law and is aiding overhaul efforts at several other Los Angeles campuses.
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…although her second-grade daughter has done fairly well at Weigard….mindboggling—just mindboggling….that this parent would start a drive to oust her because she wasn’t “accessible” and perhaps was curt with her. No telling what Garcia did that would warrant a crisp reply. It says more about Garcia than about Cobian, as you read that Cobian was very accessible to the kids and frequently popped into the classrooms. And the parent whose child had academic and behavioral issues…well, I don’t know the parent or the child personally, but what I do know is that the parent has to take responsibility towards the child’s education and is perhaps responsible for the behavioral issues (not always, as there are other factors in behavior, but the ultimate responsibility is the parents’. ) I mean, I have seen children come to school without breakfast! And the parent expects the child to learn on an empty stomach? Or worse, blame the teacher because the child can’t concentrate because they’re hungry…?!! (Or perhaps with this economy, the parent is poor and not able to provide a good nutritious breakfast…)
I have seen parents who don’t want to take responsibility…and expect the schools to be miracle workers. They won’t put out the effort towards their own kids…
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…and then there is the subtext–I can’t help but wonder if Cobian is a liberal/progressive and Garcia is a conservative….just throwing that out there…
Every time I think things can’t get any more disturbing…something comes along that makes my heart sink even lower….(and the great irony of all ironies is that as I’m reading this article, a pop up slides out and asks me to “like” them on the social media site they’re writing about…nope not going to—don’t have an account and won’t have an account…)
This is not acceptable. Not acceptable. Not acceptable in any way. This is, in my view, part of the problem with p_rn. It desensitizes one towards sexual violence. And we live in a culture that already thinks of women as second-class…but this is going down a level beneath the basement of one’s soul.
How dark one must be to not only rape a woman, but boast of it with graphic display. A total lack of empathy for physically and psychologically hurting another human being…
God help us.
My other blog on Steubenville here.
In India here.
Sexual assault in the military.
I missed this from Glenn Greenwald. It’s more in-depth on the specifics…and what it means to investigative journalists. In essence, it is criminalizing the act of journalism.
From the article:
Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ – that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for “soliciting” the disclosure of classified information – is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself.
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Our democracy depends on being able to inform the citizens of their government’s actions, so that they can make informed decisions towards that government. As Greenwald points out—the media was silent with Julian Assange…and only now are they starting to squawk now that AP has been caught up in the assault on the freedom of speech and the press…
There’s a worldwide protest against Monsanto this Saturday. Info here. You’ll need to scroll down to find your spot in the U.S.
(hat tip to commondreams.org)
This is so inspiring….people are waking up to the monster of genetically modified organisms.
Really, the repub party should go from the “party of NO’ to the “party of whine”. Good God, can they play the victim…
They were seeking approval to operate under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. This would require them to be “social welfare,” not political, operations. There are significant advantages to being a 501(c)(4). These groups don’t pay taxes; they don’t have to disclose their donors—unlike traditional political organizations, such as political-action committees. In return for the tax advantage and the secrecy, the 501(c)(4) organizations must refrain from traditional partisan political activity, like endorsing candidates.
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Since when is asking questions “singling-out” someone? Asking questions is the IRS’s job. And the last line of the above quote is enough to revoke their tax exempt status.
George Will is trying to compare this to Watergate. Seriously?? How lame.
If Republicans had controlled both houses of Congress in 1973, Nixon would have completed his term. If Democrats controlled both today, the Obama administration’s lawlessness would go uninvestigated.
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Committee members of Watergate- Senate: three repubs on it.
A brief on the Watergate affair.
On CSPAN this morning, they had Jenny Martin, the CEO of Tea Party Patriots. She was playing the victim well–without really offering any hard evidence of the accusations of the IRS…even when asked for specifics by a caller. I listened carefully to her mini-speeches, and once when she began to divulge what actually occurred, she caught herself and went back to “safe mode” without giving the details. Hmmm….
Meanwhile, when the point was made that the IRS has been inundated by groups applying for tax exempt status, so there was possibly a backlog AND good reason to scrutinize these groups that don’t want to pay taxes. (The irony here is that the Tea Party is all about reducing government workers, but it would appear that the backlog is created because of a lack of skilled workers to process them…)
It is clear that Tea Party Patriots is a political group and they promote their political causes aggressively…so why shouldn’t the IRS ask them pointed questions about their fundraising and their activities?? If you want to avoid taxes, you’d better be prepared to answer some questions.
(Gah, I never in a million years thought I’d be sticking up for the IRS. Lord knows they’ve used their strong arm tactics on me–when I lost my house, they actually wanted to charge me for taking a profit(!!) and then when I owed a measily $200 (and didn’t have the money to pay them) they threatened to take what was left after the crash and burn. I did eventually pay it off in installments. but it was difficult at that point in time. )
This Mother’s Day was a tough one. Tears as we listened to “You’ll Never Walk Alone”….
So…I thought instead of the usual syrupy “Happy Mother’s Day” stuff, I’d do things a little differently~~
In Honor of the Mothers of the kidnapping victims of Cleveland….the two mothers who never gave up…God Bless. I can’t wrap my brain around this case–clearly, there were people sounding the alarm about something going on at that house. The police even showed up once–only to knock and then walk away when no one answered. The message this case is sending: women don’t matter–or worse, they wanted to be there. I’m just waiting for them to start pointing the finger at the victims–some already have started the “if they hadn’t done this, that wouldn’t have happened…” While ignoring that domestic violence happens every day in the U.S. in blue collar households and professional households. People with money. People without money. Those with college educations, and those with high school diplomas. Makes no difference.
In this case and I suspect the Boston Bombers’ case, domestic violence played a key role. …and yet, it’s never singled out as the cause of violence. And I also caution against making broad generalizations that the psychiatric profession is noted for–just because one comes from a home of domestic violence does not mean they will repeat it. Another mystery to be solved is why some go on to perpetuate the violence, and others rise above it.
Related to this, I’ve been reading blog after blog of mothers who have lost custody of their children. It is heartbreaking. And it’s damning of the U.S. court system that use Guardian Ad Litem’s testimony as golden, without ever examining their motives nor the actual qualifications, personal biases, and time spent with the children whose lives they are about to destroy. On top of all of this, parents are now charged a fee to see their children!! This is outrageous.
Phyllis Chesler has written a book, Mothers on Trial that blows away the myth that mothers *always* get custody of children. This is only true, she says, if the father doesn’t fight for custody. If he does take the mother to court, he will win custody in most of the cases. (I think I read 70% of the cases). It’s especially true if the woman is uppity. In five cases I had reviewed, the Guardian Ad Litem had awarded custody to the father in all five cases….even though there was undisputed abuse in two of the cases and as far as I could tell, no abuse nor neglect of care of the children on the mother’s part. As with the blogs I read…even in cases of a father molesting the kids, the mother was treated as the criminal and the father was awarded custody.
This has to stop.
…news at 11:00. Seriously??
Cue the “outrage” that such action occurred….then quietly continue with status quo….
This is more than a military issue. This is a culture issue.
Yeah, rape is hilarious. It’s just so freaking funny to listen to a woman scream “no, no, no” over and over again. And hey, it’s great fun to force yourself on someone who is asleep and unable to fight you off. /snark
Elizabeth Smart and why she didn’t run away--her self esteem was so low she felt like a “chewed up piece of gum”….because the way she was raised, if one lost their virginity, one was worthless. The ever important hymen must be intact (Gah, can someone say Al-Queda?) in order for her to be worthy….it is so sad that she felt so awful about herself instead of putting the behavior onto her captor. It should also be noted that when feminists began working to uplift women’s self esteem, the evangelicals put a stop to it (Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within).
And the lovely gun manufacturers’ target, “The Ex”. …they included a woman, dripped in blood, because they didn’t want to be sexist…?! I’m surprised they didn’t also say that they wanted to include a black man because they didn’t want to appear racist….and he just *happened* to look like President Obama…just like the “devil” on the Mark Burnett / Roma Downey “Bible” series…these things just happen, dontcha know?
See my blog here on the Steubenville case and rape culture around the world.
Eagle 
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