Category Archives: taxes

Bill Gates hasn’t destroyed public education yet….

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…but damn,he sure is trying with everything he’s got.

<sigh>  I was all ready to rip into Gates once again… but I’m halfway through the article of Chronicles of Higher Education….and this one sentence that Gates “just wants to get more people through the system with college degrees so that it will lift them out of poverty…”

bwahahahaha.  That’s rich.

Then, further down, they disclose that Gates Foundation is supporting the Chronicles of Higher Education financially.  I think I’ve already read that somewhere, but alas, the brain didn’t bring it up…the article is clearly a promo by Gates…so yeah….

So…I’ll have to refer to previous blogs on Gates…

Here.

Here. Silencing teachers.

Here. Supporting Brookings Institute that dismissed Diane Ravitch

Here. Not content with just controlling education, but the food supply, as well.

Here.

Indianapolis schools target for charter takeover

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Diane Ravitch has this up on the continuing guttering of public schools….now with Indianapolis in its sights.

This sentence pretty much tells you they’re up to no good:

Kloth’s been loath to share the NEO Plan with taxpayers through Indy’s media. He especially didn’t want this columnist to have a copy.

Keep out the press so that we can do our dirty work in the dark before the public knows we’ve taken their key to a better life away from them and given them junk instead.

And then there’s this:

Since African-American researchers were forbidden to participate in NEO, I did my own research.

And this:

African-American students have a greater higher risk of attending a low performing school in Indianapolis/Marion County than whites and Hispanics.

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Black folks should be all over this.  A clever way to get Separate but Equal schools.

More on Fort Wayne Vouchers

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Karen Francisco, of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, made a comment on Diane Ravitch’s blog that was outstanding.

It pretty much outlines what these creeps are getting away with–robbing the public schools of funds while laughing all the way to the bank:

Bakke’s company to operate two underperforming schools. In addition, an out-of-state real estate investment trust — EPT Properties — will continue to collect about $1 million a year for the charter school lease.

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$382 million withheld from affordable housing funds

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A lawsuit has been filed alleging that millions of dollars have been withheld from affordable housing funds.

More from Housing Authorities around the country:

New York.  Okay, I’m a little confused, because the folks in Fort Wayne were having budget cuts even before sequestration….some forty percent was reported.  It was supposed to be nationwide, so I’m wondering why NY wasn’t cut previously?

Seattle, Washington.  This report is more in line with what Fort Wayne is going through–they have had to close the Section 8 (Voucher) program many times because they are just flooded every time they open it up.  They have had as many as 4,000 people on the waiting list (If I recall correctly, that was for both  Voucher and Public Housing).

From the report:

At the same time, the waiting list for Housing Choice Vouchers remains closed, and the agency is unable to issue new vouchers at all. Nearly all vouchers are in use (99.6 percent), and the 1,552 households still on the waiting list remain stuck there. Total waiting lists exceed 25,000, and 884 new households were added in January alone. At a time when need is growing dramatically, the Seattle Housing Authority is unable to expand to meet that need.

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Here’s a good article from The Nation on the stupidity and callousness of cutting a housing budget when there is so much need.

From the article:

Although housing assistance takes only one penny of every federal budget dollar, right-wing ideologues since at least the Reagan years have long used “deficit reduction” as a pretext for achieving their dream of eliminating government housing aid. Reagan infamously slashed the housing budget at a time of recession and the emergence of modern homelessness, while the deficit exploded. There’s no question that when it comes to housing assistance, the Reagan legacy lives on. This year the Cato Institute outlined a plan to tackle the budget deficit that would, among other things, “terminate” the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And Reagan’s Tea Party descendants in Congress promise further chops of the budget ax for housing and other safety net programs.

If you read on down, it mentions the Trust Fund created in 2008….but yeah, no funding.  Cruelty by dangling a carrot to the caged rabbit.
3.5 million homeless Americans….

Bradley Foundation

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PRWatch has this up on the behind-the-scenes work of the Bradley Foundation.

From the article:

In advance of the 2012 elections, Bradley was revealed as the secret funder that had bankrolled giant billboard ads, exclusively in neighborhoods of color, stating “Voter Fraud is a Felony” during a period when voter ID was on hold in Wisconsin and many were confused as to its status. It funded groups that employed James O’Keefe, whose heavily-edited undercover videos hyped voter fraud allegations and helped take down ACORN, which had helped millions of low-income people register to vote. It also funded the legal advocacy group that represented O’Keefe.

Both Bradley and Searle have funded the American Legislative Exchange Council, which promoted voter ID laws in states across the country. And in the wake of Shelby County, ALEC-inspired voter ID bills and other restrictions will likely take effect across the South. As many as eleven percent of registered voters don’t have government-issued photo ID and would be unable to vote under the laws, with those percentages even higher among communities of color and students.

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(In case you missed it, James O’Keefe has crawled out from the rock he was under (after pleading guilty to misrepresenting himself as a telephone employee at Mary Landrieu’s office)  and is now proclaiming to be a journalist who was victimized. Bwahahahahahahaha….seriously….bwahahahahaha.   Let’s hope that his *cough* journalism efforts land him in jail for a looong time this go around…)

Be sure to click on the link explaining the Bradley foundation and its links to none other than….the Kochs and the John Birch Society.  Also, the link for  “group that brought both challenges”  is very informative.  Truly, their motives are to go back to “separate but equal” status of education.   Yeah, we all know how that worked out.   And the Searle connection…you know, one has to consider all the possibilities of drug companies that are behind racist overtures.  Kind of scary, isn’t it?

Good God,  these people  are control freaks.  And evil.

More on ALEC

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From the last post, Center for Media and Democracy has this up on filing suit for Ethics investigation of unreported gifts.

I really wanted to get access to the Financial Times article that includes John Kerry’s dirty fingers in the pie, but I don’t have a subscription….can Kerry get any farther from the Vietnam protester that he once was?  What the hell happened to him?

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Here is a group fighting back against the privatization of public interests.  What bothers me about this is that I don’t see language here that expressly denies privatization, but rather, it seeks to make more stringent rules.  Making rules is good, don’t get me wrong, but to me, privatization should be illegal when taxpayers have already foot the bill for building roads (and keeping them maintained with paving and such); when taxpayers paid for parking meters; when taxpayers built huge water reservoirs, when taxpayers paid for library books that are now being dumped and then sold by so-called ‘friends of the library”…and on….

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The dirty nine

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Nine state legislators were flown on a chartered flight and…well, you can read the rest here.

From the article:

The tar sands of Alberta are estimated to be the third largest reserve of crude oil on the planet. But the process of turning the tar-like bitumen into a refined product that can be used as fuel is extremely energy intensive and highly polluting. The former NASA scientist James Hansen, warned that the extraction and use of Canadian tar sands would mean “game over” for the climate. TransCanada is the operator of the proposed KXL pipeline, which would carry the tar sands to Texas for processing and likely for exports to markets abroad.

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I think it’s really important to highlight NASA scientist James Hansen’s statement on this because most folk think that folks who believe in climate change are “fringe” liberals, when they’re not.  Dr. Hansen is a prime example of that.

More:

TransCanada, which is a member of ALEC, sponsored ALEC’s Spring Task Force Summit in Oklahoma City in May 2013, alongside other corporations with tar sands interests including BP, Devon Energy and Koch Industries. TransCanada’s Vice President Corey Goulet presented to legislators at the conference during a session called “Embracing American Energy Opportunities.“

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Dimon stayed in touch with Adams’ office over the proceeding months, providing his staff with further materials about Keystone XL, including a set of talking points stamped with the TransCanada logo.

By February 14, Adams had an updated draft that had been reviewed by the Ohio legislative service commission, the non-partisan body that assists legislators with drafting legislation. Adams staffer Ryan Crawford sent this language to Rob Eshenbaugh, a lobbyist with Ohio Petroleum Council, the state affiliate of the American Petroleum Institute. “Please let me know if I can be of further assistance,” Crawford wrote to the lobbyist. Eshenbaugh responded with some requested changes, which Crawford then incorporated into the bill.

 

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So…yeah….pretty glaring examples of not so subtle bribery.  Unethical. Unethical. Unethical.

I have something of a quibble with the story saying that the XL has become a national issue….where were you when Enbridge was getting the northwest Indiana pipeline approved even though it runs near Lake Michigan and other sources of water?  Does anyone know why Indiana is ignored?    I’d like to know why we don’t matter….somebody tell me, please.

 

 

 

 

Burr on your being paranoid

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Thomas Burr, a *cough* reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune,  was on CSPAN this morning telling everyone what paranoids they are…the NSA is not spying on you, they are just gathering data.

And that 1 million square foot facility in Utah?  Pshaw…it’s only got a tiny, tiny bit of space devoted to that data.

And they *only* have 200 employees for that giant space (well…as far as we know….the exact number is…you guessed it…secret.)

And they’re not analyzing the data collected.  Really.  Would he lie to you?  Why are you so paranoid?  You probably need to take something for that.   /extra snarky

And when a  caller point blank said this was illegal and needs to be stopped, Burr spent the next few minutes speaking in double speak evading the question she asked about the legality of it.

 

 

Cultural Revolution of the United States – a la destroying public schools

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Diane Ravitch has this up on the lack of accountability and oversight of a voucher program.  Children watching DVD’s in a gymnasium…seriously??

I found the comments particularly poignant–that what is happening to public schools is akin to the Chinese Cultural Revolution.   Can you imagine how the American public would react if these were called Communist Revolution programs?  The * fit * would hit the * shan *….

And I like the idea of some of these folks bankrupting school systems to be brought up on criminal charges and serve some jail time for fraud.

Why aren’t they?

Nina Olson, Taxpayer Advocate

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…was on CSPAN today.

She is responsible for advocating for the lowly taxpayer and gives an annual report to Congress…which they promptly ignore.

She stated what I had surmised what the real problem was when this whole IRS mess came up–that there weren’t enough people to process applications for those wanting tax exemptions.  She stated that this has been an ongoing problem.  The graphic they showed was that it now takes 17 minutes of waiting on hold before an IRS staffer can take someone’s call.  It was only 3 minutes in 2004.

So…the whole whining by the Tea Party/repub conservatives who want tax exempt status for their dirty little political organizations but don’t want to pay up like everybody else…was a…wait for it…repub fiasco by wanting to shrink the gov’t down to drown it in a bathtub….which means cutting federal employees….

…but yet they’re whining about not getting fast enough service for the IRS to do its job of investigating whether they are political organizations or not….where’s Mrs. Alito when you need her?

Is anyone else sick of the Tea Party whiners?

And can we define mental illness by the act of cutting the budget, cutting employees but demanding that they get a speedy answer on their applications….and then playing the victim?