This week’s eye candy from Canada.
#2 is breathtaking. Can you imagine this being gone due to fracking or polluted with bitumen from a leak in tar sands pipeline, a la Kalamazoo?
Another beautiful rainbow on #3.
#9 talk about spoiling an otherwise gorgeous picture…same with #11.
Otherwise, great pics…
Anne Clair, an Elsipogtog mother, wrote this about her son being jailed while protesting SWN trespassing on the native owned land.
Again, I ask– If most of the taxpayers are against fracking and tar sands, then why are the oil companies allowed on that land? Why were the police there and who are they working for if the taxpayers do not want this?
Protestors in Venezuela were blocked on twitter from posting images of the protests.
PBS, which is supposed to be free from corporate influence, is now under fire for airing an anti-Pension series sponsored by John Arnold. David Sirota’s article on it here.
In recent years, Arnold has been using massive contributions to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits. His foundation which backs his efforts employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX). According to its own promotional materials, the Arnold Foundation is pushing lawmakers in states across the country “to stop promising a (retirement) benefit” to public employees.
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…both PBS’s “Pension Peril” correspondent and the AP reporter did not mention that according to budget data, pension shortfalls in Illinois are far smaller than the amount the state is spending on expensive taxpayer subsidies to corporations.
[…]
The state is just choosing to spend that money on huge subsidies to corporations like Sears and Google rather than paying its bills or making its required pension payments.
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See…the money is there…but it’s going into the pockets of the 1%, see? Note the $4 billion per year in subsidies in New York! OMG talk about greedy, greedy, greedy!
And here we have the smoking gun of executives knowing who was funding it and refusing to disclose it:
“We were sitting in a meeting talking about another issue and (PBS officials) were drawing examples of how they were working with other campaigns, and one of their executives said they’ve got a series called pension peril coming up talking about the threat of pensions at the state and local level,” said the source. “I asked who was funding that project, and the executive said that at this point they are not disclosing who their funders are, and everybody sitting around the room kind of paused.”
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Link to Jane Meyer’s article in the New Yorker here.
In 1997, he [David Koch] began serving as a trustee of Boston’s public-broadcasting operation, WGBH, and in 2006 he joined the board of New York’s public-television outlet, WNET. Recent news reports have suggested that the Koch brothers are considering buying eight daily newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, one of the country’s largest media empires, raising concerns that its publications—which include the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times—might slant news coverage to serve the interests of their new owners, either through executive mandates or through self-censorship. Clarence Page, a liberal Tribune columnist, recently said that the Kochs appeared intent on using a media company “as a vehicle for their political voice.”
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$50 for Christmas bonus? Are you kidding me? So much for trickle down economics, eh?
Meyer’s piece brings up the ABC News story on Disney hiring pedophiles being cancelled…because Disney owns ABC. If I recall correctly, the reporter of the story was asked if he was crazy for investigating it….
Even more depressing is the upcoming PBS pieces by Chitester on the “evils of the welfare system” I can hardly wait. What a bully this guy is…pick on the ones who are least likely to fight back. Creep.
…meanwhile *crickets* from the corporate owned media…
…which is why we should be alarmed at even more consolidation by the media with this deal which most certainly violates the Sherman Act of antitrust law.
I read a couple of reviews which were light and not really addressing the seriousness of the deal. Our democracy depends on a robust press that is diversified.
Let’s start with the beginning of the country–when a publisher printed unflattering things about the King of England, he had the publisher thrown in jail and the printing presses destroyed. No matter that the publisher was printing the truth. If I recall correctly, the newspaper had printed a story that the King had syphilis. He in fact did have syphilis (which there was no cure and led to madness), but the presses were still destroyed anyway.
So…if you didn’t want your printing presses destroyed (therefore, your means of income), you printed only nice things about the King. The King could accuse you of Sedition (treason, basically), and that was that.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the King of England that resorted to this:
Related — Book Burnings History
So, with Reagan and Clinton, our media has been more and more consolidated, meaning you, the American public, does not get the coverage and opposing views necessary to make an informed decision about what is happening in your country and the world, such as TPP. If it weren’t for Ed Shultz on MSNBC, you would not hear about it at all.
1987The Fairness Doctrine — the rule held since the founding of the FCC that mandated time for opposing viewpoints on significant issues of the day — is eliminated. This paves the way for the existence of entire networks (Fox and Sinclair) that proudly proclaim a one-side point of view. Thus “fair and balanced” becomes a trademarked phrase, instead of a principled and regulated way of presenting opinion. While the congress voted to extend the Fairness Doctrine, it was vetoed by President Reagan.
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The Fairness Doctrine explained here.
Only alternate sources such as commondreams, democracynow.org, and alternet.org have you heard about TPP….and even then, you’re not really informed because the White House has not been forthcoming with what is in it or allowing the press to examine it.
Additionally, more concentrated media means you don’t get fair coverage of whistleblowers like Edward Snowdon, Brad Birkenfeld, Thomas Drake, et al.
President Jefferson or perhaps it was President Madison said,”Information is Power.” when referring to the Freedom of the Press. This is why the NSA is doing all it can to gather information that it does not deserve….gathering more power.
And we all know too much power concentrated in a few hands leads to corruption.
Power corrupts. Absolute Power corrupts absolutely.
We’re dangerously close to absolute power.
Incidentally, in case you didn’t know, the American public owns the airwaves. Here’s a group explaining ways to hold the media accountable.
…in this case, the big bad teacher’s unions. They are portrayed as taking away the civil rights of children…by billionaires who are paying their parents less than livable wages…so they can have even bigger bank accounts and totally take over public education.
Meanwhile,Diane has this up on the Schools as Soap Operas, brought to you by corporate profiteers.
Additionally, Reclaim Reform has this up on the hypocrites of reform. Pretty sobering.
But wait…here is some good news–Pittsburgh schools cancel contract with Teach for America. Yay!
Well, those of us following the Education fiasco already knew this, but perhaps the doubters will finally realize the school profiteers have wanted to close public schools all along.
“For the next several years, 5% of public schools must be named as failing – even if those schools weren’t failing by current standards. With few exceptions, schools that failed for three years would be required to close or be operated by an independent private charter management company with a minimum five-year contract. Local school boards would have little authority over this company for five years. For Milwaukee, this change would apply to schools that failed for just one year.”
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Well, I’m glad that these folks have come out against the XL Pipeline.
This is, essentially, a rebellion by 22 progressive congressional Democrats against the Clinton-Obama effort to provide a market for the Kochs’ oil. The letter was actually written by Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and co-signed by senators Barbara Boxer, Ed Markey, Dick Durbin, Jeff Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren; and Representatives John Conyers, Jr., Barbara Lee, Raúl M. Grijalva, Rush Holt, Louise M. Slaughter, Jerrold Nadler, Judy Chu, Peter DeFazio, Anna G. Eshoo, Sam Farr, Peter Welch, Alan Lowenthal, Mark Pocan, and Steve Cohen.
Note how deeply involved Hillary Clinton is in XL– how Paul Elliott, a former staff member, is a lobbyist for TransCanada, along with David Goldwyn.
Secretary Clinton’s State Department allowed the environmental impact statement on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline to be performed by a petroleum industry contractor that was chosen by the company that was proposing to build and own the pipeline, TransCanada. That contractor had no climatologist, and the resulting report failed even at its basic job of estimating the number of degrees by which the Earth’s climate would be additionally heated if the pipeline is built and operated. Its report ignored that question and instead evaluated the impact that climate change would have on the pipeline, which was estimated to be none.
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Be sure to click on this link about the March, 2013, XL Pipeline “environmental report” as a hoax.
[…] Therefore, the reason no calculation was done of the XL pipeline’s global-warming impact appears to be that no one who was involved in the study had any climatological expertise or interest.
[…]
But be that as it may: it is by now clear that the State Department’s Draft “Environmental Impact Statement” on XL is neither by the State Department, nor does it address the pipeline’s impact on global warming, nor was anyone who had expertise on global warming even involved in its preparation. The report is thus a triple-hoax, so that to call it fraudulent would put the matter mildly.
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Note that the Obama Administration is trying to force the EU to purchase the Koch Brothers’ dirty oil. Unreal.
Additionally, I don’t see it mentioned in the article, but I have a huge concern about the petcoke byproduct of this dirty oil that will make its way to Whiting, Indiana. This is devastating to our environment and the people breathing this toxic garbage. It seems to me that Indiana has become the garbage can of the Kochs and others who have nowhere else to dump this stuff. Like I said before, they should start dumping this stuff on the Koch’s lawn, and see how long it takes them to change their minds about the petcoke (haha, I first typed “petchoke”…really, more accurately describes its affects on the lungs of people).
I had to watch this video (top) twice because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing–from a distance, it looks like a couple talking…he even has his arm around her like a good friend, and then *boom* he starts to haul her off. She showed no weapon, was not yelling or otherwise threatening anyone…I was just stunned.
Even more stunning? How everyone else just allowed it to happen. She had every right to be there and Harper and his goons had no right to interfere with that.
In the second video, she is saying that she wasn’t even tweeting–that she did not have her phone. So they’re lying on top of taking away her rights?
Tweeting is not a threat. Freedom of Speech is not a threat.
Seriously, these folks are running schools by script. Unbelievable. (from Diane Ravitch’s blog)
As Diane says, it’s dangerous to speak out….but this has been going on in the private sector for quite some time–somehow, one’s right to Freedom of Speech stops at the corporate door.
So now it has reached the Education doors….and that is why Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, et al, have tried to destroy teacher’s unions. It’s much harder to fire a teacher who speaks out against corruption when that teacher belongs to a strong union that stands behind her or him. That’s kind of the bully playbook—separate people into aloneness, and attack. It’s much easier to take one down than a group.
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More on Education--this post is just sickening. Depressing as hell that Pearson has now monopolized the United States Education system.
This post from Mom of Five is alarming:
My daughter’s principal just informed me that she doubts any California district will ever order a textbook again: Everything bought in the future will be digital. Her school has pretty much phased out textbooks already and at my mom’s high school the district just got rid of over 4,000 books from the library. Even though the high school has just been built (3 weeks ago) I find it sad that the library is very small. Instead, there are numerous “student lounges” where kids go to hang out.
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Really disturbing. Of course, the technology terrorists will wrap this in a “progress” blanket to quash any objections to it. We’ve been sold this line of garbage that anything new in technology is automatically a good thing and means we are “progressing”. What does that mean, exactly? They don’t really say. All it is is something “new”. They know that marketers put “new” and “improved” on can labels so that consumers will buy it…doesn’t matter that it’s the same stuff as before and “improved” is a subjective word.
And if you notice the comment of teachingeconomist, the resident troll, he uses the word “nostalgic” as a code word for “you’re so far behind the times clinging to the past…” to shut people up…
I see farther down the comments that Mom of Five had the same sentiment:
Momoffive
Oh yeah, I forgot the best part…she let me know that the reason I’m having a problem with all this is because “us older parents” have a difficult time with change and moving into the global 21st century.”
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Diane has probably blogged on this, but with all the information out there, I have trouble keeping up–Valerie Strauss (God love her) has this up on the Bush connection to this education fiasco.
More here from an old post at dailykos. I think I may have posted this before–but doesn’t hurt to repost…easier to keep up with the octopus of education $$.
Diane Ravitch has a great blog up today on one family’s monopoly on charters in Minnesota and the resulting segregation.
A great comment by Reteach for America explains just how charters actually give parents less choice…and less power…when it comes to their child’s education:
Charter schools have no civic responsibility.
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Many parents don’t realize this lack of democratic representation or really any say whatsoever in their children’s school is a serious issue until they have a concern about the charter and the charter tells them they are welcome to shop for another school. When they turn to the district for help, they’re often told the same thing. You don’t like McDonalds? Go to Burger King.
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So, imagine that your town no longer has independent restaurants, but only McDonald’s, Burger King, or any other national chain….you dislike the fast food and wish for a home-cooked meal that fits your diet…none of these chains have decent food, so you no longer have a choice. You either eat the stuff that resembles food, or you stay home. They don’t care about you, as an individual, but only YOU as a collective group to profit off of…
….this is essentially what charters like the ones in Minnesota are doing. McSchools.
Eagle 