Category Archives: taxes

Bombs, not food, say repubs…

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Susie Madrak has this up on the continued republican war against the poor.    To say it is demoralizing would be an understatement.

Shall we play the six degrees to Clinton game?  He pushed for “workfare” , which required welfare recipients to work for free–truly a corporation’s dream of forcing people to work and not pay any wages or benefits!  Slave labor rocks!!  /snark

When I asked for assistance after first moving to FW, I was required to do community service for two and a half days.  The money I requested?  $25.  Yes, you read that right— $25,   It was a humiliating experience when having to ask in the first place and then being put down by the social worker for having moved to FW without a job.  I was, um, hoping to get a job….

The Brits who are conservative are also playing the “we want to help you help yourself” game–

links here and here.

From the last link:

There is no reason to think, however, that the criticisms levelled at workfare won’t also apply to the new scheme. Is, for example, a person spending 30 hours a week picking up litter more or less likely to find a paying job? Research which looked at similar schemes in the US, Canada and Australia found that:

“There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers. Subsidised (‘transitional’) job schemes that pay a wage can be more effective in raising employment levels than ‘work for benefit’ programmes. Workfare is least effective in getting people into jobs in weak labour markets where unemployment is high.”

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Truly disgusting how punitive these people are towards the poor.   Why not just have a public hanging and be done with it, already?

Lastly, here is the video someone suggested on crooks and liars:

Diane Ravitch on Melissa Harris-Perry

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Diane Ravitch was on Melissa Harris-Perry, and had a wonderful discussion on public education.   I wish they could have had more time to go in-depth about it, but I’ll take it.  You’ll have to click on each link separately, because NBC has chosen to not run them in sequence.

 

Students against Reform

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Teacher under Construction has this up on a documentary by a student asking the same questions that conscientious parents, teachers, and the public who care about education are asking.

“Why do people tell me to think outside the box when they barely ever let me out of it….??”

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….out of the mouths of babes…

A parody of the Race to the Bottom, No Child Left a Mind…

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This is funny….and yet….

“Relentless standardized testing is the ONLY WAY to stop children from learning to think for themselves….

….the children must ALL  be taught to think ALIKE…they must not ask questions or use their imaginations…”

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Take Action for Food and Family Farms

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National Sustainable Agricultural Association has this action alert up on the latest fight for your food, family farms, and organic farms.    Again, we have corporate interests battling against….well, stuff that benefits the average person…..like clean air, water, and chemical free food.

Not to mention the diseases sure to come with the filthy practices of the factory farms.   (A side note~ chicken manure IS worth some money, if left to season.  It’s one of the best fertilizers out there.  And natural to boot.)

From the link:

Carole Morison: Perdue showed up on the farm when the Food, Inc. film crew was here. When the company finally figured out who was visiting, we received a letter threatening contract termination for “violating bio-security.” Their threat stemmed from me not having people sign a log book that the company had placed on our farm to monitor our visitors.

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Oh.My.God. Can you say Big Brother?  I knew that you could.  Violating bio-security?  Seriously?  bwahahahahaha, that’s rich!  How do they figure “security” is involved?  “Security” is the new “cloak” word—something to hide behind when you want to coerce people to do something against their better instincts….

And this is yet another example of the Too Big Too Fail as a way to monopolize a market–the detrimental aspects are seen with bullying these farmers to give into their demands “or else”, to unhealthy practices that most folks would find appalling if they knew, to the environmental impact of upsetting the ecology by having so many chickens crammed into such a small space.

And speaking of monopolizing the market, my blog here on Senators who voted against GMO labeling, links to gut inflammation, etc.

Broad and Clinton

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I posted these links in a comment on Diane Ravitch’s blog yesterday, but they are still awaiting moderation….so I thought I’d post them here:

Bill Clinton’s Big Ideas for education.  Note the mention of Eli Broad in the audience.

From the article:

One of his big ideas for U.S. education: “We have to move toward somewhat local operational control but a national commitment to a longer school year, better trained and better paid teachers, to principals and superintendents who can actually be held accountable for results

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What the hell does that mean?  Oh, I forgot for a second that he’s a politician speaking doublespeak….let’s try to deconstruct, shall we?

“local operational control for a national commitment”  =  we have to be sure we have toadies willing to foist this crap onto the kids even when it’s evident that it is detrimental to them, by holding onto tax dollars paid by the public and not releasing them until these schools follow our mandates.

“better trained” = teachers that are pressured into teaching to the test so that their kids will pass (and not feel like idiots) so their school won’t “fail” and be closed…..to reopen with for charter profiteers.

“better paid” = bwahahahahahahaha

“principals and superintendents who can be held accountable”  = what does “held accountable” mean, anyway?  By what standards?  Who decides? Gates? Broad? Clinton? Rhee?

Bill Gates and Clinton Global Initiative.

Note the Big Brother aspect of videotaping teachers….always done with a positive twist–to “improve” the teachers’ performance.  Um-hmmm….to monitor the teachers to ensure that they teach only the rigid No Child Left a Mind.

And the final sentence says it all:

It is startling, however, to hear Gates state so bluntly the power of teachers.

He is concerned that they may be able to thwart his plans. And Gates isn’t someone who is used to being thwarted.

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Joanne Barkan’s excellent piece that I’ve posted before but bears repeating.

More news from Diane:  Eli Broad secretly funded anti-public school, and anti-union initiatives.    I see that Broad has the politician doublespeak down:  he publicly states he is for something, but then he funds efforts against that very thing.  Yep–keep people off balance and questioning, that’s the key.  Note that Gov. Brown felt compelled to be “nice” to Michelle Rhee to keep in good favor with Eli Broad to get the tax increase passed.  That’s how they work it, folks….kiss the toad and he just might turn into a prince….

This is also more proof that these folks are not paying enough in taxes if they have this kind of money to throw around….and why Citizens United needs to be overturned.

Someone posted this quote:

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Absolutely, Dr. King.  Absolutely. And the ability to think critically with creativity with character is not going to be had with a for-profit school run by hedge fund managers who see kids as machines to be built with little regard for humanity, democracy, and potential.

Drinking the Clinton Kool-Aid

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<sigh>  Diane Ravitch has apparently drunk the Clinton kool-Aid.  The Clintons are so stealth in their involvement in corporate take over of public schools, that even a smart cookie like Diane has been unaware of it.

Someone posted a link to a photo of the Clintons with Eli and Edythe Broad.

 

Strokes and youth

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This is sobering news.  Note that the article doesn’t go into diet, but if GMO’s were introduced in the 90s, and strokes started increasing at that time….is anyone going to look into the connection?

Also, colorectal cancer has increased in youth at the rate of 13%  from 1992-2005.  The article goes for the easy blame of fast food….without exploring the GMO connection or toxic environment.   I’m not saying that fast food isn’t a factor, because it is not healthy, but they need to go more deeply.

Also, neither of these articles explore economic factors where the families buy processed food because it’s cheaper, and the family’s health suffers because of it.

Breast cancer rates among the young, and especially young black women, are rising, too–tripling from 1976 to 2009.  Red flags all over the place, folks.

For me personally, one of my lumps has shrunk, the other has stayed the same, a little over a year after discovery.  Interestingly, I had read somewhere that women with fibrocystic breast disease respond well to iodine.  If you recall, last year, about this time,  I had three breast lumps and they were increasing in size.  After increasing my iodine, one disappeared and the other stayed the same size.

Within the mercury poisoning group, there is great debate about low thyroid and iodine.  Some folks are adamantly against iodine, saying if one has Hashimoto’s (which I suspect I have because it is autoimmune and goes with Celiac), that iodine will make it worse.  That hasn’t been my experience.  With the shrinking breast lumps, I would say that my intuition has been right in increasing the iodine.

Mercury interferes with iodine absorption.  the Barium sprayed from chem trails interferes with iodine absorption.    These are most likely factors in the increases in cancer, since the thyroid is a master gland controlling nearly every important body function, from the pituitary to the adrenals, to the gut, to brain function.  This is serious stuff, and messing with the environment is coming around to bite us in the arse.

 

Education News

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Diane Ravitch highlights a blog by David Greene. 

From the post:

When Hinshaw compared the rollout of these school policies with incidences of A.D.H.D., he found that when a state passed laws punishing or rewarding schools for their standardized-test scores, A.D.H.D. diagnoses in that state would increase not long afterward.

Nationwide, the rates of A.D.H.D. diagnosis increased by 22 percent in the first four years after No Child Left Behind was implemented.

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Bingo. Greene says it’s not a causal, but yeah, I disagree.  It’s certainly one of the causes, in addition to toxins in the environment and probably GMO’s.  

And it’s not that the kids are suddenly stricken with this subjective “disease”—rather, they are a) made to feel inferior by testing that isn’t really able to define what their brain cells are capable of (potential); and b) put under pressure by teachers and parents who must teach to the test in order for the school to keep from being downgraded to “failing” in order for them to get the money from the Federal gov’t to keep the school open….and do it all again the next six months….

That is a HUGE burden to put on a kid.  For shame.

He links to A World Without Privacy by Joe Nocera of the NY Times.   He talks of “The Circle” of a hybrid of internet companies like Google, F_cebook, and Twitter and the information they gather.    Even if you don’t subscribe to the last two, your privacy can be taken away from you by family members and friends who do use them.    That is probably how Nocera’s acquaintances/colleagues were connected to him. 

And they say you should not expect privacy in today’s world.  I say, unless you express in writing your willingness for someone else to have private information, then, yes, you have an expectation….and a right to privacy.  And giving up the right to privacy should not be coerced, as in, you have to click on this agreement to use our website.