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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Report here.
Republican leaders said food stamps, traditionally part of the farm bill, would be handled later and that, for now, they needed a way to start negotiations with the Senate over a compromise bill.
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If you believe that, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Indiana I want to sell you….
No doubt these members of Congress will go to church Sunday and puff their chests out at what good Christians they are…
I’m not going to comment any further because I’m too upset and I’ll say something I’ll regret later.
Janet Napolitano is leaving the Dept. of Hysterical Security to head up….wait for it…the University of California, including Berkeley.…
While reading the article, I again ask myself, “why is one person head over natural disasters, the CDC, as well as security?”
Diane Ravitch has a blog up on the Indiana Charter schools playing the shell game of accountability. Now you see it, now you don’t…well, you never really did see accountability…
The financial profits aspect turns my stomach to no end…
And Gates Foundation being involved….well, there’s a red flag if there ever were a red flag. My blogs on Gates here and here and here and here, on the Gates Foundation and Brookings Institute that tossed Diane Ravitch aside when she began to question what was happening to public education.
I love this! Instead of encouraging women to break the glass ceiling in the corporate world, here is an article about them breaking into farming–traditionally viewed as a man’s work. (Although anybody who knows farmers know that the the entire family helps and that women had traditionally helped in the fields, along with taking care of the household. You know the old tale that great grandma gave birth in the morning and plowed the back forty in the afternoon…)
Farming means independence in so many ways–owning your own land, growing not only your own food, but earning bucks selling to others, playing in the dirt is always fun :), and just being out in the fresh air uplifts the spirit. During the last Depression, folks were very poor, but they could still feed themselves if they had enough land to grow food. This time around, things have changed….making people more dependent on food stamps, IMO.
When I worked on the farm that summer a few years ago, it was such a great experience. I could be planting, when a butterfly floats by…or a grasshopper hops past…we would see clouds rolling in and wait until the last possible moment to make a run for it. If it wasn’t lightening out, we would just continue to work (as long as it wasn’t a downpour). Just being out in the fresh air away from office cubicles (and office politics) is so freeing.
And if you needed to, you could bend the farm schedule around the family needs. And then there is the sense of community that is a part of farming–farmers know one another and will help another out. I’ve heard stories of a farmer being injured and unable to get the crop harvested, which would mean losing the crop, their income and their farm…and the other farmers would come to his aid and harvest the crop.
And the wonder of watching a seed planted grow and eventually produce food is nothing short of a miracle. You never know when drought will occur, when torrential downpours will wash things out, or when overbearing heat will scorch the plants….and on…farming is not for the faint of heart. It’s an art. A craft borne of experience.
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Here is a neat story on a man from Bangladesh whom now calls the U.S. home. He started his own restaurant and began growing fresh food to supply the restaurant. He wanted to expand that with emphasis on food justice and found it with the help of Julia Nerbonne of the HECUA (Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs). This ambitious project seeks to have fresh food brought to restaurants from nearby farms…and I love the idea of rickshaws bringing it to market. As the story states, though, winter is the hard part–not only the end of growing season, but difficulty in transporting food to the restaurant. It’s an interesting idea that I hope grows and takes hold.
Here’s to good food! And the farms that do it sustainably!
A Saudi princess has been arrested for what basically amounts to slavery. Good Grief, these people have money out the wazoo, and they’re still not happy with that…have to have it all and if they can force someone to work for them for nothing….well, then, more for them….
….they and the Kochs must be on a first name basis….
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.
This is such a hard subject for me, because I’ve been from one extreme to the other with my feelings on it. And feminists marginalize those women who believe in equality but have reservations about abortion. It’s probably one of the biggest reasons that the women’s movement lost steam in the 70s.
When I was younger, before I had my children, I thought abortion was okay. But when I had my children, I thought that it was wrong. But I have seen the horrible picture of the woman who was so desperate that she had her boyfriend use a coat hangar on her to abort her pregnancy. She died of an embolism. I don’t want us to go back to that, but at the same time, I feel that there needs to be restrictions. The heart starts beating at six weeks.
I learned something from Bill Moyers’ book published in the 80s–it stated that Europe is not as lenient about abortion as America is. This shocked me–thinking that Europe has always been more open and “liberal’ about stuff, I presumed that they were of the mind that a woman could have an abortion at any time. Nope. Here is a list of the countries and their abortion policy. Most of them cut off abortion at 12 weeks, even for rape. They only make exceptions for the physical and mental health of the mother, but even then, there are some cut-off dates. The book stressed that the Europeans have a much more supportive structure in that they educate women and men on contraceptives. And if a woman has the baby, she is supported the first five years of life. Amazing, isn’t it??
In the not too distant past, women were not informed on how to prevent a pregnancy (Comstock laws) . They were having five and six kids and desperate not to have another when they became pregnant again. They were too poor and uneducated to provide for the children they did have….what were they to do?
We’ve had politicians who want to deny women the means to prevent pregnancy, but then they also want to deny them abortion. It makes absolutely no sense. And when those children arrive, they will deny them food stamps and decent housing.
Educating women and men is key.
Providing safe contraceptives is also key. (Despite the popular idea that birth control pills are safe, there are many, many problems with them. I have read that gluten intolerance is linked to them, but now can’t find the reference. )
Spermicidal foam had been found to have mercury in it. More here on other issues with it. As far as I know, sponges are safe, but since they also contain N-9 there are issues.
Some women use the natural sea sponge for menstruation as well as a contraceptive. I had heard that the ladies of days past used the sea sponges.
Here’s a report from a lady who had issues with chemically treated sponges. On another site, a poster said she had heard that honey was a natural spermicide. Interesting. Here’s another site that had a brand of spermicide that is non-chemical. It’s made in the UK, however, and I don’t know whether it’s available here. I looked on their website, and it says there is an extra charge for shipping outside of Europe. If one is interested, probably best to contact them and ask.
So…a complicated subject with emotions running high and no quick, easy answers.
It’s not easy for women to prevent a pregnancy in a safe way. Why is that?
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.
I was thinking about the previous post and I misstated something: my doctor actually urged my (ex) husband to urge me to get a hysterectomy. Incredible, eh? Not to mention a sneaky way to influence me to get an unnecessary operation that would have caused more problems than it solved.
Again, I am so grateful that I did my research and listened to my intuition and didn’t succumb to the pressure.
Giving thanks. 🙂
Eagle 
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